Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/397

H caused an outburst of popular feeling which placed Henderson at the head of a strong movement for presbyterianism. On 10 Aug. 1637, shortly after the riotous outbreak in Edinburgh, Spotiswood, carrying out an order of council, charged the clergy of his diocese to procure copies of the service book for public use; the moderators of the several presbyteries were directed to enjoin compliance. In the presbytery of St. Andrews, Henderson, with two others, refused to obey. A messenger-at-arms served them with an order to use the book within fifteen days, under penalty of imprisonment. Henderson and his friends petitioned the council on 23 Aug. to suspend the order, on the ground, among others, that the book had not been ratified either by a general assembly or by parliament. They declared that they had offered to take a copy of the book in order to study its contents before deciding on its use, but this had not been conceded. On 25 Aug. the council temporised, explained the previous order as extending only to the purchase of the book ‘and no farder,’ and addressed the king on the subject of the prevailing discontent, asking him to summon a deputation from their number to London. The answer of Charles (10 Sept.) was a peremptory injunction of conformity. Henderson's example was immediately followed by a crowd of petitioners, and a general remonstrance in the name of nobility, clergy, and burgesses, who had resorted in great numbers to Edinburgh, was presented to the council on 20 Sept. by the Earl of Sutherland. Communications between Edinburgh and London served only to make plainer the unyielding attitude of Charles. At length on 17 Oct. a proclamation from the council ordered the petitioners to quit Edinburgh within twenty-four hours. With great determination Henderson seized upon this act as the ground for a new remonstrance, in which objection should be taken, not simply to the service book, but to the presence of bishops in the council as inimical to liberty. At a meeting of the petitioners on 18 Oct., held while the populace of Edinburgh was in a condition of dangerous ferment, this document was adopted and signed, not in the form drafted by Henderson and Lord Balmerino [, second, q. v.], but in a shape proposed by David Dickson [or DICK [q. v.] ] and John Campbell, first earl of Loudon [q. v.] Its plea for bringing the prelates to trial had the effect of causing them generally to absent themselves from the council. The petitioners did not disperse till 17 Nov., and they left behind them in the parliament house a representative body of sixteen, meeting at four ‘tables,’ and appointing a committee of four as a ‘table’ of final decision. In this presbyterian cabinet Henderson and Dickson were ‘the two archbishops’. Suggested by the council as a means of creating divisions in the presbyterian party, this plan of the ‘tables’ became under Henderson's management an agency for gaining all information and directing every movement.

On 20 Feb. 1638 the council was to meet at Stirling and proclaim the petitioners' meetings as treasonable. To be beforehand, Traquhair and Roxburgh made the proclamation at the cross of Stirling on the 19th. The petitioners at once affixed their formal protest to the cross. The scene was repeated on the 22nd at Edinburgh. Next day, amid an enormous concourse, Henderson proposed a renewal of the solemnity of national subscription to a bond of common faith and action. The response was a mighty outburst of popular enthusiasm, which spread over the whole country. The instrument henceforth known as the ‘national covenant’ was prepared by 27 Feb. It consisted of the document known as the ‘king's confession’ or the ‘negative confession,’ drawn up in 1581 by John Craig (1512?–1600) [q. v.], followed by a recital of numerous acts of parliament against ‘superstitious and papistical rites,’ and concluded with an elaborate oath to maintain ‘the true reformed religion.’ In the afternoon of Wednesday, 28 Feb. 1638, this covenant was read in the Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, after prayer by Henderson and an address by Lord Loudon. The Earl of Sutherland was the first to sign. On 2 March a copy was sent for signature to every parish in Scotland. At first discrimination was exercised in the admission of names; Henderson's statement is that the signatures of prominent men, reckoned unsound, were rejected. But the multitude used threats and violence to those who withheld their adhesion. The universities of St. Andrews and Aberdeen had formally condemned the document, but by midsummer the city and shire of Aberdeen stood almost alone in opposition to it.

Henderson's diplomatic ability was conspicuous in the skill and firmness with which he met the tactics of James Hamilton, third marquis of Hamilton [q. v.], sent down in June as the king's commissioner to procure the renunciation of the covenant, and failing this to temporise till Charles was ready to put down the movement by force of arms. In July Henderson was a leading member of the deputation despatched to Aberdeen to argue with its divines and win over the opponents of the covenant. The doctors of