Grace Kennedy's 'Philip Colville; or, A Covenanter's Story' 1825

 

        

First edition 1825

This is the third of Grace Kennedy's novels which I have read and, after the didactic Dunallan, it was an improvement. As the title page states, the work was unfinished at her death, thus it only runs to one volume of 269 pages. There is a two and a half page (anonymous) addition at the end, where the novel is called a fragment and no more than the commencement of a delineation of the principles, characters, and circumstances of the persons introduced into it. Apparently, Kennedy was going to describe the fidelity of a group of individuals to the Covenanting cause over a much longer canvas, but whether that was be be done in two or three volumes will never be known.

The anonymous writer goes on to say: had she been permitted to have finished her plan, it would have been an abridged, but a most faithful and impressive account of the sufferings of the Presbyterian Church, under the execrable Charles and James, of hateful memory. Apparently, the author has done no more than transfer from Wodrow, &c. with altered names, those trees and plants of righteousness... This refers to Robert Wodrow (1679-1734), who wrote The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland... and talked of The Killing Times in the Seventeenth Century.

I felt Kennedy was more 'restrained' in her religious proselytising than in her previous two novels. Perhaps, it was because she was trying to follow and explain actual History. She had clearly read in depth about the events of 1679 and characters such as Torriswood (I know it my poor child - but, Olive, there are duties superior even to regard for the safety of those we love) and his offspring, Olive, Florence and Eric; Andrew Wellwood, the young minister forced out of his church onto the fields to preach the Word; Lindsay and Ormistoun, the Edinburgh lawyers, reacting differently to their roles in supporting the Covenanters; are all well drawn. The more extreme views of the gloomy looking person, Hackstoun of Rathillet; the fortitude of Mrs Leslie, the Lady Dalcluden, Torriswood's sister; the unnerving presence of James Sharpe, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and persecutor of Covenanters; Lady Osborne who has decided views about the latter: I protest I never saw a Covenanter at a party who did not make it seem a meeting at a funeral. Death, death. Conscience, conscience. How intolerable!; and her frightened, but brave, daughter Mary Osborne; all help to establish and bolster a convincing and realistic narrative.

 Philip Colville's own credo is clearly put: Colville's aim was single. It was simply to obey God. Could he do so, and at the same time subject himself to a human lawgiver in matters of religion?  Impossible. Could he, with the Bible in his hand, obey God by closing it, and by receiving from an earthly ruler his notions of what was the best mode of worship - and that ruler profligate and irreligious? Absurd! As the story develops, so does Philip's mindset and decision-making. And, thus, he signs the Covenant in Edinburgh.

There are several striking and realistic scenes - in particular,  the Covenanters' service in the Abbot's Glen near the Tweed and the crowded, frightening Canongate jail. Who knows how Grace Kennedy might have sustained the standard over a further one or two volumes, but the novel is probably the best of the three I have now read, and is not a bad antidote to Walter Scott's version of 'The Killing Times'.