Sanquhar Declaration

1680. Delivered at the Burgh Cross of Sanquhar in S Scotland by Richard Cameron* and a band of Covenanters,* this was an audacious but significant piece of defiance against Charles II. The Declaration directs its anathemas against him as the chief author of the persecution against the Covenanters, and does so, moreover, for his civil as well as ecclesiastical tyranny. It warns against the implications of the (Roman Catholic) duke of York as heir to the throne, and is the first Covenanting statement in which allegiance to Charles II was renounced because of his claim to supremacy over the church. Ostensibly a futile gesture, representing only a tiny minority in 1680, it was to represent the mind of Great Britain as a whole nine years later, when it was the basis for the Revolution Settlement.