Reformation Tours: Archibald Johnston of Wariston

Not all the prisons for the Covenanters were in Scotland. The Tower of London was a place where several of the Covenanter leaders were held too. One of them was Archibald Johnston of Wariston.

He was a successful lawyer whose clients included important people in the government, such as the chancellor and the lord treasurer. He has been described as ‘unusually devout, even by seventeenth-century standards’ and he often prayed for up to three hours at a time. He wrote in his diary that the success or failure of the Covenanters would depend on their own personal relationships with God.

In 1637, Wariston was involved in the opposition to the Book of Common Prayer and in 1638, at the age of 27, he was given the responsibility of writing the legal section of the National Covenant. This contained a list of all the Acts of Parliament against Roman Catholicism. Wariston’s legal skills, as Charles I’s legal advisors had to admit, ensured the covenant didn’t break the law of the land. At the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 Wariston was appointed clerk and produced the minutes of all the previous General Assemblies since 1560 – using them to argue that episcopacy had always been condemned in the reformed Church of Scotland.

Wariston continued writing for the Covenanting cause and wrote their official protestations to the king’s proclamations against them. During the Bishops’ Wars he accompanied the army as a legal advisor, and he was involved in peace negotiations with the king. In 1643, he was also appointed as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.

In the following years Wariston was very involved in the government of Scotland, and in 1649 he was given the responsibility of putting the Act of Classes into practice.

When Charles II was restored as king in 1660, Wariston was charged with high treason and fled to Germany and then France, but he was eventually caught, arrested, and after time in the Tower, was brought back to Scotland and hanged in Edinburgh in 1663.

We have led many tours to the Tower of London as well as other sites in London relevant to not just Scotland’s Reformation and Covenanters but also England’s Reformation too. And it’s not just London, we visit many other locations across England also.

Get in touch if you would like to get more information at admin@reformationtours.org