This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In 1637 King Charles I ordered the Church of Scotland to adopt a new prayer book modeled on the English liturgy, a change many Scots read as a step toward Catholic ritual and a direct assault on Presbyterian church government. The protest it provoked produced the National Covenant, signed at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh in February 1638, binding its signers to defend Scotland's reformed religion against the change, and two short military campaigns followed. In the First Bishops' War of 1639, Charles's poorly prepared army faced a well organized Covenanter force under the professional soldier Alexander Leslie, and the king accepted the Pacification of Berwick rather than risk battle.
The dispute reopened in 1640, when a Covenanter army crossed into England, routed English forces at the Battle of Newburn and occupied Newcastle, cutting off London's coal supply. The Covenanters won both campaigns without Charles ever imposing the prayer book, and the loss of Newcastle's coal gave them decisive leverage: Charles was forced to summon the Short Parliament and then the Long Parliament to raise funds, recalling an English Parliament he had governed without for eleven years, a step historians treat as opening the road to the civil wars that engulfed all three of his kingdoms later in the decade.