Archibald Johnston of Wariston: The Formation of a British Puritan (1611-38)

In so doing, it proposes a fresh account of the religious origins of Covenanter radicalism – and by extension, of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms – by rooting them in key loci of Calvinist theology and Puritan spirituality. It begins with a ground-breaking study of the complex domestic, ecclesiastical and literary influences on the young Wariston to 1634, which presents a far more moderate and nuanced social and religious context for his development than formerly assumed.

Wariston’s intellectual formation was shaped by a ‘Scottish Puritan’ consensus in the Kirk in the late Jacobean and early Caroline period, but it is also illustrative of an incipient ‘British Puritanism’, of which Wariston would become a passionate advocate. A detailed analysis of Wariston’s diary on the eve of the Scottish Revolution (1632-34) explains his reception of three key elements of theology and spirituality that had a significant bearing on his development as a Covenanter radical: covenant theology, sin and repentance, and an openness to ‘extraordinary’ spiritual experiences.