HISTORIANS are obsessed with dates and facts, so the popular theory goes, but unfortunately there are also a few who are so obsessed with advancing their own careers that they think their every utterance, however daft, is of crucial importance to the public.

Those devout Unionists David Starkey and archaeologist-turned-telly hack Neil Oliver spring most readily to mind as presenters of history programmes who think that because they are on the box, their views are important. They’re not – their ideas on politics have as much validity as anyone else’s but no more. They just have a bigger platform, and woe betide any telly historian who thinks that their interpretation of history and current affairs is the only one that makes any sense.

Historians, especially amateur ones like myself with little university training in the subject, should stick to presenting the facts and yes, the dates. Modern historians are taught that interpretation of facts is their true calling, but sometimes don’t you just wish they would stick to the facts and the dates and keep their politics to themselves?

For dates are important, which is a roundabout way of apologising to the good people of Penicuik for this column’s failure hitherto to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Battle of Rullion Green which took place on November 28, 1666. Our only excuse is that we knew The National’s Roadshow is heading to Penicuik on Thursday, when yours truly will be joined at the Town Hall at 7pm by the Wee Ginger Dug’s custodian Paul Kavanagh – do come along and meet us – and we wanted to keep the subject until nearer that time.

So today we tackle the subject of one of Scotland’s smallest yet most intriguing battles. For somewhat fewer than 100 men died at Rullion Green, but it is an encounter that has interested historians and writers ever since – one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s earliest published works was a short account of the battle and the uprising that led to it – not least because of the fact that it was a Scottish army against Scottish “insurgents” as we would call them nowadays, and because of the deep impact that Rullion Green and the whole Pentland Rising – a misnomer, as we shall see – had on religion and history in this country.

As Historic Environment Scotland’s official description of the battle – it is on their excellent list of denoted battlefields – puts it, Rullion Green “is an important event in the history of the Kirk of Scotland’s dissenting religious tradition and is particularly important in the history of southern and western Scotland”.

Theirs is as good an explanation as any as to why: “The persecution and martyrdom of Covenanters in the Pentland Rising and the Killing Times of the later 17th century are deeply embedded in the religious identity of Scottish Presbyterianism.

“The Covenanters are integral to understanding the history of popular protest and religious intolerance in Scotland. The repercussions of Stuart policies towards dissenters in, which fuelled Covenanter anti-government sentiment, echo throughout the later Glorious Revolution, Jacobitism and even in opposition to the Treaty of Union.

“The Battle of Rullion Green highlights the instability of seventeenth 17th-century socio-political life in Scotland and the Restoration government’s tenuous and difficult grasp on civil order.”

That latter paragraph is so true. The authorities of late 17th-century Scotland had to label the insurgents as rebels against the Crown, so they could be killed almost at will, but they called themselves Covenanters.

This battle was the culmination of a combination of religious fervour and genuine rebellion against the Government of King Charles II that was determined to impose his form of religion – episcopalianism – on a Scotland that was largely Presbyterian but which was a Kirk split between those who followed the King’s path and those who devoutly and defiantly preached strict Presbyterianism.

THE Covenanters took their name from the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 which effectively put Covenanters in power in Scotland for many years, strong in their declared intention to defend the Presbyterian faith. Local presbyteries – meetings of ministers and elders – and not bishops, were their chosen form of government for the Church of Scotland. The Covenanter Government, often known as the Rule of the Saints, got involved in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, or English Civil War as some call it, and lost out to Cromwell before Charles II, below, was restored and ordered the restoration of the bishops in 1662.

The National:

That was anathema to many adherents to the Covenant, but Charles would not give quarter and some 400 ministers who denied the new Kirk regime were ejected from their manses while Covenanters were barred form their churches. The faithful met in conventicles, mostly in the open air, and the Covenanting cause was strongest in the south-west of Scotland, particularly Dumfries, Galloway and Ayrshire.

It was in these areas that armed rebellion broke out in late 1666, not the Pentlands. By then, Charles II’s Privy Council, the Scottish Government of the day, had already been so alarmed by Covenanter truculence that they had established a standing army of some 3,000 horse and foot under General Sir Tam Dalyell (sometimes spelled Dalziel) of the Binns.

Dalyell was a career soldier who had fought on the Royalist side throughout the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and was captured at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. He later went to Russia and fought against the Turks and the Tartars, and his martial skills were known to all.

After incidents in Dumfries, soldiers under Sir John Turner were sent to garrison the town and surrounding areas and the Covenanters were soon being harassed. On 15 November 15, local Covenanters took Turner prisoner in his nightclothes, but they had no idea what to do.

The Privy Council in Edinburgh did. They despatched Dalyell and his army with orders to quell the rebellion, as they called it.

With little choice but to carry on what they had started, the Covenanters marched north via Lanarkshire to Colinton on the edge of Edinburgh, gathering more troops along the way to form an army of sorts under a Colonel James Wallace, also a veteran of the War of Three Kingdoms.

On failing to add any reinforcements in the capital, and suffering desertions in horrible weather, Wallace decided to turn south for home and took the old Roman Road that is roughly the line of today’s A702 beside the Pentland Hills.

Dalyell took off in pursuit, and Wallace and his officers decided they had no choice but to fight, a Royal proclamation having made it clear that the “rebels” would get no quarter.

Wallace chose his high ground at Rullion Green well, and in an opening skirmish, Dalyell’s cavalry were repulsed, though the Covenanters lost two of their leading figures, Irish ministers called James Cruickshank and Thomas McCormick.

The main battle was not long in coming and did not last long. The Covenanters were poorly equipped, mostly untrained and Wallace was no Dalyell.

About 800 of the Covenanters remained, and though they fought well, the devastating musket fire of the regular troops broke their ranks and when Dalyell’s cavalry charged, Wallace saw his army disintegrate.

As Historic Environment Scotland recounts: “Once Dalziel’s (their spelling) vanguard and his main body of cavalry and infantry were united, they forded the Glencorse River and arrayed themselves against the Covenanters at the bottom of Turnhouse Hill.

“From this position Dalziel attacked Wallace’s left three times, only managing to turn the line in the final attempt by pushing forward his full force along the entirety of Wallace’s line.”

Wallace wrote an account later: “We were beaten back, and the enemy came in so full a body and with so fresh a charge, that, having us once running, they carried it strongly home, and put us in such confusion that there was no rallying but every man runs for his own safety”.

Wallace made it all the way to the Netherlands. Others were not so lucky, more than 50 Covenanters being killed for the loss of a handful of Government troops.

John Carphin from Ayrshire managed to get away despite his terrible wounds. He somehow made it past West Linton to Dunsyre, where he would not let anyone shelter him for fear of exposing them to Government punishment, ie death. He asked only that he be carried into sight of his beloved Ayrshire, and when his body was found the next morning he was indeed buried by a local shepherd on the summit of Black Law, from where you can just about see the hills of Ayrshire.

LOCAL people kept alive the memory of the Covenanting martyr, and a gravestone was erected in 1841 by the Minister of Dunsyre. It states: “Sacred to the memory of a Covenanter who fought and was wounded at Rullion Green Nov 28th 1666 and who died at Oaken Bush the day after the battle and was buried by Adam Sanderson of Blackhill.”

The reprisals against the Covenanters were exhaustive and terrible. Some 30 prisoners taken at Rullion Green were executed after show trials. Their heads and arms were cut off and placed on the town gates of places like Lanark to show the populace what would happen if they took up the Covenant cause or aided and abetted those who did. Still more were sent in chains to work on the plantations in Barbados.

These and other violent actions after Rullion Green earned Dalyell the nickname “Bluidy Tam”, and according to Covenanting legend, he once played cards with the Devil – and won.

The repression failed. Inspired by the martyrs, the Covenanters kept their faith alive and armed insurrection broke out again, leading in turn to the Killing Time, a blot on Scotland’s history that we will examine next Tuesday.

Meanwhile let’s close with the poignant inscription on the memorial stone at Rullion Green. It states:

"A cloud of witnesses lyes here,
Who for Christ’s interest did appear
For to restore true Liberty
Overturned then by Tyrrany
And by Proud Prelats who did rage
Against the Lord’s own heritage.
They sacrificed were for the Laws
Of Christ their King, his noble cause,
These heroes fought with great renown,
By falling got the Martyr’s Crown.”