Note 412 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
The following passages illustrate the state of public feeling in reference to the Covenant:—
"Men cry shame on the Covenant. Those that took it down cast it up again, and those that refuse it have given a world of arguments that it is unreasonable, which arguments our Assembly, like dull, ignorant rascals, never answered. I know, my Lords, many of our friends never took this oath, but they refused it out of mere conscience." ... "I hold the Covenanters extremely reasonable. Though some malignants take it, yet many refuse it; and, as some who love us do hate the Covenant, so some who hate us do take it. Yet our friends who hate it do love to force others to it, for their hatred to malignants is more than to the Covenant; and, as the one takes it to save his estate, so do others give it to make him lose his estate. They both love the estate, and both hate the Covenant."—A learned Speech spoken in the House of Peers by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery upon the 28th July last, taken out of Michael Ouldsworth's own Copy. State Papers, 1647.
"All this while I did not take the National Covenant, not because I refused to do, for I would have made no bones to take, swear, and sign it, and observe it too, for I had then a principle, having not yet studied a better one, that I wronged not my conscience in doing any thing I was commanded to do by those whom I served. But the truth is, it was never offered to me, every one thinking it was impossible I could get any charge, unless I had taken the Covenant either in Scotland or England."—Sir James Turner's Memoirs of his own Life and Times, published by the Bannatyne Club, 16.
Turner was a Royalist.