See also: What is a Covenant?

The King’s Confession (or Negative Confession) was a covenant which was signed by the king and people across Scotland in 1581. It was made because people were worried about Roman Catholic influences on the young king James VI ]. It was written by an Edinburgh minister called John Craig, apparently at the request of the king himself. In it, the people promised before God that they would accept the true religion and oppose Roman Catholicism. The covenant ended with a promise to defend the king, the gospel and the country. This covenant became the first part of the National Covenant of 1638.

Further Reading:
J. G. Vos, The Scottish Covenanters (Edinburgh, 1998 [1940]), p. 185.
King’s Confession
DSCHT: King’s Confession
James Kirk, ‘Craig, John (1512/13?–1600)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004