Charles had hitherto cherished hopes that he might be restored to his thrones by a Royalist movement in Ireland; but every such hope had been dashed, and now Scotland held out to him the only chance of sovereignty which remained. The terms were hard; but he was not a man to stick at terms, and he gave them his consent. He promised to remove from the court all who had been excommunicated by the Church; to take the Solemn League and Covenant; to ratify all acts of parliament enjoining it; to establish the Presbyterian government and worship; to practise the same in his own family; and to allow all civil matters to be determined in the parliament, and all ecclesiastical matters in the Assemblies of the Church. This done, the king set sail for Scotland, and reached the mouth of the Spey by the middle of June. He was not allowed to set his foot upon the shore till he had subscribed the Covenant, and, with all his profligacy of principle, he could not conceal his reluctance to do so. The Duke of Hamilton (whom we have previously known as the Earl of Lanark) and the Earl of Lauderdale were in his train; but it was intimated to them that they must begone, as they were implicated in the sinful Engagement. The Marquis of Argyll hastened to pay his respects to his sovereign; but it was soon evident, that, while he might give the badges of royalty to Charles, he was determined to keep the power to himself.1

"He

Charles was now amongst Covenanters of the strictest sect, and it was necessary he should conform to their ways. wrought himself," says Burnet, "into as grave a deportment as he could; he heard many prayers and sermons, some of great length. I remember in one fast-day there were six sermons preached without intermission. I was there myself,” says the bishop," and not a little weary of so tedious a service." We shall not wonder that the king was weary too, when we hear that the blood-guiltiness of his father and the idolatry of his mother sometimes formed the principal subjects of discourse. Charles would have liked a quiet walk on the Sunday afternoon, but this was forbidden; he would have enjoyed a dance or a game at cards, for he had been accustomed to these things when an exile; but he could not have them when he was king.2 Every morning and every evening, throughout the whole week, there was a lecture, and the unhappy 1 Burnet's Memoirs, p. 422. Cook's History of the Church, vol. iii. 2 Burnet's History of his own Times, pp. 57, 58.

monarch was not often allowed to be absent.1 But he could not be always kept in the strait-jacket of Presbytery, and gave occasional scandal by his frolics and sinnings.

But the worst was coming. The king was asked to sign a declaration in which he professed himself to be deeply humbled in the sight of God for his father's opposition to the Solemn League and Covenant, by which so much of the blood of the Lord's people had been shed, and for the idolatry of his mother, and its toleration in the king's house; and that he himself had subscribed the Covenant sincerely, and not from any sinister intention or crooked design.2 This document had been drawn up by the Commission of the Church, and ratified by the Committee of Estates; and when presented to the king for his signature, he was shocked at the words which it put into his mouth. He was plainly told, however, that unless he subscribed they would not espouse his quarrel. Charles II. was a different man from Charles I. The father's conscience perpetually came in the way of compromise; the son had no conscience at all, when concessions, however base, promised to secure some important end. At Dunfermline, on the 16th of August, he put his name to the paper. Was it not too bad that the ministers of religion should compel the unprincipled youth to break the first commandment with promise, by casting public dishonour on his father and mother? They knew he was not sincere. They had blamed the sire for yielding nothing; they had now got a son who would yield everything. He seemed to be sent by Providence to teach them the folly of concussing the conscience.

When it was known in England that Charles II. had landed in Scotland, Cromwell instantly marched northwards with those warriors who had never shown their back to any foe. But the Scots were prepared for his coming, and an array of twenty or thirty thousand men was gathered around the metropolis. It was resolved that the army of sectaries should be opposed by an army of saints. The Scottish musters were drawn out on Leith Links, and purged of every one who was suspected of Malignancy, or had taken part in the Engagement. The purgation went on day after day, and upwards of eighty officers and several thousand men were struck from the strength of the

1 Trail's MS. Cook's History, vol. iii. p. 191.

2 Balfour's Annals, vol. iv. p. 92. A copy of the document will be found in the curious tract called "Eschol Grapes, or Some of the Ancient Boundaries and Covenanted March Stones."

army.1 Every one, from the commander-in-chief to the drummer-boy, behoved to be a Covenanter, without the least spot or blemish of Malignancy. Sir Edward Walker declares that those left in command were mostly "ministers' sons, clerks, and other sanctified creatures, who hardly ever saw or heard of any sword but that of the Spirit." Some of the nobles and gentry who had been involved in the Engagement offered their services to hang upon Cromwell's rear, since they were forbidden to act with their more orthodox countrymen; but the preachers declared that the least compliance of this kind would bring the judgments of God upon the land. While this was going on, Cromwell wrote a letter to the Commissioners of the Kirk of Scotland, in which he asked—“ Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. There may be a covenant made with Death and Hell. I will not say yours was so ;" and, finally, he begged them to read the twenty-eighth of Isaiah from the fifth to the fifteenth verse.3 The uncompromising Covenanters had met their match on their own ground.

After some skirmishes in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, Cromwell found himself beset with such difficulties that he was forced to retreat southwards toward Dunbar. The Scots followed hard upon his heels. Cromwell had some thoughts of embarking his troops and returning to England by sea; but the Scots had taken up a position on Doon Hill, a spur of the Lammermoors, which rendered such an operation difficult and dangerous, and besides, they held possession of the passes between Dunbar and Berwick. "Because of our weakness, because of our strait," wrote Cromwell, when all was over, "we were in the mount, and in the mount the Lord would be seen, and would find out a way of deliverance and salvation for us. After Cromwell and his officers had thus sought the Lord in the mount, they were walking in the Earl of Roxburgh's gardens, and through their telescopes they observed a great motion in the Scottish camp. They are coming down to 1 Balfour's Annals, vol. iv. Nichol's Diary, 25th July 1650. Sir Edward Walker's Historical Discourse. Peterkin's Records. "Articles for Purging the Army," may be seen in "Eschol Grapes." 2 Sir Edward Walker's Historical Discourse.

623.

"4

Peterkin's Records, p.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches by Carlyle, vol. iii.

• Cromwell's Letter to Mr Speaker Lenthall, 4th September 1650. Harris's Life of Cromwell, pp. 244, 245.

us; God is delivering them into our hands!"1 cried Oliver, with the strong confidence of a man who had never lost a battle. "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered." They did come down; the caution of Leslie had been overborne by the fanaticism of those who surrounded him; and on the 3d of September they fell in thousands before the sword of the sectaries. It was perhaps well that the illiberal spirit of the Covenanting host should have been thus sternly rebuked; but it did them no good; for, on the day of fasting proclaimed on account of the defeat, they, amongst other causes of a like kind, ascribed their disaster to the allowing a most malignant and profane guard of horse to be about the king, and to fight in his cause.

2

After this decisive victory Cromwell marched upon Edin burgh, and then, proceeding westward, visited Linlithgow, Kilsyth, and Glasgow. The discipline of the Puritan army was so strict that few had to complain of any injury done them by the victorious troopers. In accordance with his principles, Cromwell made it known to the ministers that they might go on with their worship, and would meet with no disturbance; but in Glasgow and other places most of them fled at his approach, lest contact with him might bring upon them the taint of Malignancy. Stout Zachary Boyd, however, kept his ground, and in the High Church of Glasgow railed against Cromwell and his sectaries to their face.3

The spirit which animated the host scattered at Dunbar was high; but there was a spirit higher still in the State. There were some who had never been satisfied with the king. It was true he had granted all that they desired-signed every paper laid before him-professed himself willing to do anything; but they declared it was all hypocrisy ; and it was not easy to answer them, for there was truth in what they said. Defeat, instead of producing union, created exasperation, and led to division. The opinions we have referred to now became war-cry of a party strong in the west country, led by Patrick Gillespie and Colonel Strachan-a man whose pretensions to surpassing sanctity made people remember rather than forget that his youth had been devoted to lewdness. In the month of October they directed a remonstrance to the Committee of Estates, in which they reckoned among the sins of the land

the

1 Burnet's Times, vol. i. p. 57.

2 Balfour's Annals, vol. iv. pp. 102-7. 3 Baillie's I.etters, vol. iii. p. 119.

Ibid. pp. 112, 113.

the treaty with the king, as he had as yet given no evidence of a real change; and declared that the Lord had a controversy with them, both because of this, and because some malignant and profane persons were still allowed to remain in the court, in the judicatories, and in the army.1 The menacing tone of this document received meaning from the fact that Strachan was at the head of a considerable body of troops, and seemed inclined to wage war both against the English sectaries and the Scotch Covenanters. He was attacked, however, near Hamilton, by a division of the Puritan army, and defeated, and it was felt that by this the teeth of the Remonstrance were broken. Strachan himself joined Cromwell, and his party was dispersed; but their opinions still lingered in the land. They were called REMONSTRANTS, and we shall hear of them again.

Meanwhile, the king grew weary of the restraints imposed upon him, and, giving his keepers the slip, fled from Perth, crossed the Tay, and rode rapidly to the north, to which he had been invited by some of his friends. But finding that he could expect no effective support in such a quarter, he quietly returned, after an absence of two days. This runaway affair was called the "start," and, though rash and foolish, led to some improvement in the king's condition. He was henceforward allowed to preside in his council, and steps were taken to have him crowned at Scone.

The 1st of January 1651 was fixed for the A.D. 1651. coronation, and, according to the custom of the time, two days of fasting were held throughout the country toward the end of December-the first for the general contempt of the gospel; the second for the sins of the king and his father's house. When the day came, the crown was placed upon Charles' head by the Marquis of Argyll, with all the usual solemnities of such an occasion,-the king, with uplifted hand, taking the usual oaths, and the nobles, upon bended knees, rendering the customary homage.2

While the king was being crowned at Scone, all the country south of the Forth was in the hands of the English sectaries -the castle of Stirling forming the frontier fortress of the royalists. The army of Leslie had been scattered at Dunbar, the host of Strachan at Hamilton, and the operations of the 1 A copy of this Remonstrance will be found in Balfour, vol. iv., and also in Peterkin, p. 604.

2 Lamont's Diary. Baillie's Letters, vol. iii. Cook's History, vol. iii.