The Covenanters strike back
On 1 June 1679, a force of armed Covenanters routed a troop of government dragoons under John Graham of Claverhouse at Drumclog in Lanarkshire. It was one of the very few occasions during the long and bloody Covenanting struggle when the Presbyterians defeated the government in open battle, and the victory electrified the southwest of Scotland.
The encounter was almost accidental. Claverhouse had been hunting Covenanters in the moorlands south of Glasgow when he stumbled upon a large conventicle — an illegal open-air prayer meeting — near Loudon Hill. Several hundred armed men were gathered, and Claverhouse, with only about 150 dragoons, decided to attack. It was a serious miscalculation. The Covenanters were positioned behind a bog that disordered the cavalry charge. When the dragoons faltered, the Covenanters surged forward with swords and pitchforks. Claverhouse's horse was wounded under him, and his force broke and fled toward Glasgow.
The Covenanting movement had deep roots in Scottish Protestantism. The National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 committed Scotland to Presbyterianism — a church governed by elected elders rather than bishops appointed by the king. When Charles II reimposed episcopacy after the Restoration, thousands of Scots refused to comply. Ministers were ejected from their parishes. Congregations took to the hills to worship in secret conventicles, hunted by government soldiers. The southwest of Scotland — Ayrshire, Galloway, Lanarkshire — became the heartland of resistance.
Drumclog was a moment of triumph, but it was brief. Three weeks later, the Covenanters were crushed at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge by a much larger government force under the Duke of Monmouth. The repression that followed was savage — the "Killing Time" of the 1680s, when suspected Covenanters were shot on sight by government troops. The Covenanting martyrs are remembered across southern Scotland in memorials, gravestones, and in the fierce Presbyterian tradition that shaped Scottish identity for centuries.