1st Marquis of Montrose Society – Autumn Lecture – 1st November 2025 – Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Professor Karin Bowie, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Glasgow, will give a talk on the political lead up to the signing of the Covenant. All are welcome. Please contact the secretary on 1stmoms1650@gmail.com if you wish to attend.

In August 1640, James Graham, earl of Montrose joined a small group of noblemen in signing the Cumbernauld Bond, a secret agreement to combat ‘a few’ in the Covenanter leadership—notably Archibald Campbell, the earl and future marquis of Argyll—who seemed to have gained too much power from the Covenanter rebellion. Argyll had been late in joining the Covenanter movement, finally signing the Covenant in April 1639, yet he had rocketed to the top of this revolutionary regime. New research on prayer book petitions brought to Edinburgh in 1637 shows how this extraordinary campaign combined public leadership by nobles like Montrose with previously unknown behind-the-scenes activity by Margaret Douglas, Lady Lorne, Archibald Campbell’s wife. The supplications show that leading Campbells were integral to the Covenanter movement from the beginning, though Lorne held back until he gained his earldom and suddenly became, according to the marquis of Hamilton, ‘the dangerousest man’ in Scotland.