I've done some homework now at www.google.com thanks to our Mr. Drake's
suggestion, by inputting "covenanters" which brings up a zillion
references; and then reducing the number by clicking <Search the Results>
on the bottom of the list and typing "Spotswood" in the search that comes
up.

Among other things, this brings up an array of early Virginia specific
settlement history, including a number of authors defining and redefining
the sorely abused term "Scotch-Irish".  (Just when I think "I've got it",
I go and read someone else's interpretation ... )

As for my particular quandary, in this very unusual period of time around
1646, apparently it was uhmm,  politically expedient,  for the
covenanters, whose basic tenet was that
religious authority was derived from the Christ, rather than from any
divine
right of kings, did in fact "wholly comprise the Parliament" as Rev.
Slaughter's sentence suggests. [Robert Spotswood, 1596-1646, was not a
covenanter, he was the son of John,  1565-1637, Archbishop  of Glasgow,
and one of a long line of  King's men, who made a few unfortunate
comments during the short-lived state of affairs.]

In the process of reading thru reams of unedited webstuff, I ran across
answers to
a wide variety of things I've been meaning to look up over the years.
Cut and pasted from the authors:

>The Church of England is an episcopal church, that is, power resides in
bishops. The bishops appoint and direct the priests, and traditionally
the lay people had very little to do with the running of a local church.<

>After the Revolution the Church of England that was left in
this country could no longer call itself English, so it changed its name
to the Protestant Episcopal church, or simply the Episcopal church.
("Protestant" is an important part of its name because the Methodists
also have bishops and are often called the "Methodist Episcopal"
church.)<

>Originally Whig meant a Presbyterian guerrilla fighter, and Tory meant
an Irish bandit, or worse, king supporter. In 1648, the Army under Oliver
Cromwell took virtual custody of King Charles and banished him to Isle of
Man. Some Covenanters attempted to deal with the
weakened king to realize their goal of universal Presbyterianism. But
other armed Covenanters, 6000 strong, marched on Edinburgh in what became
known as Whiggamore’s Raid. That unusual word is a loose variation of
"whig a mare" meaning prod a horse.  The participants, and later all
Presbyterian fighters, became
known by the nickname Whig. <
[Note: The author of the above contends the original meaning of Whig
became its reverse and follows up his analysis with the interesting
remark that "The most infamous Whig was Virginia judge Charles Lynch
whose last name became a verb."]

Miscellaneous nuggets:

On that weird /date stuff..........
>In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a more precise calendar. It
revised the standard 1600-year-old Julian calendar by removing leap-year
day from each century year not divisible by 400. To correct the
accumulated 10-day error, Thursday 4 October 1582 was
followed immediately by Friday 15 October 1582. Protestant England
refused to adopt the new calendar because it was labeled an invention of
the Pope. On the other hand, Scotland adopted the new calendar in 1600 to
be consistent with its trading partners, especially France. For the next
152 years, calendars of Scotland and England with its colonies differed
by 10 days prior to 1 March 1700 and 11 days prior to 14 September 1752.
In a family tree database, birthdays and death dates in English colonies
prior to 14 September 1752 are obsolete Julian Calendar dates. So, for
example, on the day George Washington was born, the calendar read 11
February. Later, that day was converted to 22 February, the official
commemoration date. In addition, in 1752, New Year’s Day was moved from
25 March to 1 January. That is why days between 1 January and 25 March in
prior years are written with hyphenated years. For example, today, when
we want to write George Washington’s Julian calendar birthday, it is best
written 11 February 1731-1732.>

On those weird appraisement figures:
>English currency was based on the pound sterling, each equal to 20
shillings, each equal to 12 pence, each equal to 4 farthings. Notation
was £ pound.shilling.pence. A guinea was a pound and a shilling, and thus
written £1.1.0. One pound in 1760 equals approximately US $20 in 2000.<


..

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