STRICTLY PARTIAL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 929, 31 May 1957, Page 12

STRICTLY PARTIAL

COVENANTS AND MISCONCEPTIONS, by ree Lane; Robert Hale Ltd., English price ERHAPS it is impossible to write a completely impartial history. But blatant prejudice surely disqualifies a writer from being taken seriously. More the pity in this case, because Miss Lane has delved deep in her research for the story of the Covenants through which 17th century Scotland expressed her fight for spiritual freedom. It is no service she renders to the cause of AngloScottish amity by her biased selection and compilation of the documents. Miss Lane has three prejudices: (1) That Scotland was backward. There is a near-scurrilous vein in her account of the "primitive" insanitary conditions of Edinburgh in 1634. She should have remembered what caused the Black Death in London at a later date. She cannot bring herself to accept a standard of education in Scotland at all comparable to that existing south of the Border, and is archly surprised by the standard of debate and document which the northern kingdom produces. She will not admit the bona fides of Scottish leaders, and has to apologise (continued on next page)

when, for example, Campbell of Argyll fails to fit in with her iniquitous portrayal of him. "His pretence to piety" leaves Miss Lane unmoved. She dismisses his brave bearing at his execution under Charles II as "surprising." (2) Miss Lane is unable to see any good in Presbyterianism. She begins her story twenty years after the imposition of Episcopacy on Scotland, and fails to ~ see the significance of the Kirk’s earlier history. She is apparently unaware of the existence of such documents as Knox’s liturgy or the Scots Confession. She is unwilling to see any value in a system of Church government which allows lay representation in Church courts, (3) The Stuarts could do no wrong, in Miss Lane’s view. They, and especially Charles I, were a persecuted and misunderstood dynasty, men of gentle manners, noble ideals and humble mien. She appears to have no conception of the struggle for constitutional government being played out in the years of the Stuarts... A unified government had already been established under the Tudors, and the Stuarts, with their conception of the Divine Right of Kings, were trying to turn the clock back, so that their eventual banishment was inevitable. Miss Lane has unearthed much valuable material, though not all that is available. It will remain for a more impartial historian to give a more sober and realistic reading of these momentous

events.

G.

D.