For Christ's Crown & Covenant!

Lady Grizel Baillie - Wikipedia Posted at Electric Scotland/ Women of Covenanting Times (Part 2): My early home was at Redbraes Castle in Berwickshire; the Blackadder river ran close to our house and the country round was hilly; farther away we could see much higher hills. My childhood was very happy, and it was busy because I had so many younger brothers and sisters that I was always helping my mother. We were not rich and had not many servants. It did make me sad sometimes to see my father look so anxious, and to hear him talk about the poor folk, further away to the west, who were being hunted by the King’s troopers. Indeed, my father was not safe, and his greatest friend, Mr. Baillie of Jerviswood, was in prison in Edinburgh on account of his opinions. One day, when I was about twelve, father said to me: ‘Grizel, I want you to take a letter to Edinburgh for me; Jamie Winter shall go with you and you must go to the Tolbooth prison and give the letter to Mr. Robert Baillie. The guard...

Posted at Electric Scotland: (Part 1) In order to understand what is meant by "Covenanting Times’ we must imagine ourselves to be watching a scene in the church of St. Giles in Edinburgh in the summer of 1637, when King Charles I. is reigning in England. The Dean of St. Giles is preaching, in a white surplice, not in the black Geneva gown approved of by those of the Reformed Church. Suddenly, a stool flies at the preacher’s head, not striking it, indeed, but other stools follow till the place is in an uproar ‘and the Dean is fain to come out of the desk and pull off his surplice for fear of being torn to pieces.’ And even when the Bishop tries to speak from the pulpit sticks and stones flew at him till at length both Bishop and Dean were obliged to give over and retire to the vestry.’ So runs an old account of the matter. We may laugh at such doings, we, in our easy-going tolerant days, but it was all deadly earnest to the citizens of Edinburgh. For here was King Charles, a Stuart...