were moved by the One Eternal Spirit, | excited to the utmost pitch of possible en-with low heart-wrung groans, and durance, the mighty multitude melted faces bathed in tears, they lifted up their quietly and peacefully away, each to his right hands to heaven, avowing, by this own abode, their souls filled with holy sublime appeal, that they had now "joined awe and spiritual elevation, by the power themselves to the Lord in an everlasting of the sacred pledge which they had muCOVENANT, that shall not be forgotten." tually given to be faithful to their country and their God. What but the Spirit of God could have thus moved an entire people to the formation of such a bond, in which every worldly consideration was thrown aside, every personal interest trampled under foot, every kind of peril CHAPTER VI. FROM THE SUBSCRIBING OF THE COVENANT IN calmly confronted, solely for the main 1638, TO THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II. IN 1660. temporizing Negotiations with the Covenanters-The sioner-Deceitful and fruitless Negotiations of Ham tenance of religious truth, purity, and freedom? Worldly politicians might The Covenant Subscribed throughout the Kingdom well stand amazed; selfish and ambitious with great zeal-Plans of the Prelatists-Applications of both Parties to the King-The Covenant Subscribed prelates might be confounded and apin the Highlands-The King resolves to enter into palled; and a despotic sovereign and his Marquis of Hamilton appointed Lord High Commis- flatterers might cherish fierce resentilton-Preparations for a Meeting of Assembly-The ment, when they heard of the wonderful General Assembly of 1638 held at Glasgow-Struggles transaction and men of similar views, of Hamilton---Triumph of the Assembly Summary of its most important Acts-Reflections-Supplication characters, and feelings, may still pour to the King-His Resentment, Schemes of Revenge, forth their virulent invectives against and Preparations for War-Deliberations and Prepa rations of the Covenanters-Montrose at Aberdeen Scotland's Covenant, and the men who The King resolves to invade Scotland---The Cove-framed and signed it, obeying the divine King enters into a Treaty-Defection of Montrose sembly and Parliament--Prepares again for War The Covenanters prepare also-Contentions in the Assembly respecting Private Meetings of a Religious The King displeased with the Proceedings of the As Character-Reflections-The Army of the Covenanters enter England-The Scottish Commissioners in London-The Idea of Religious Uniformity in the Two Kingdoms suggested-Repeated in the Assembly resolve to enter into Treaty with the English Parlia -First Commission of Assembly-The Covenanters Contemporaneous Events in England and Scotland nanters The Confession of Faith-The Engage- claimed King-Signs the Covenant-Cromwell in Internal State of the Church-Divisions-Resolution NEVER, except among God's peculiar people the Jews, did any national transaction equal in moral and religious sublimity that which was displayed by Scotland on the great day of her sacred National Covenant. Although it was computed that there could not be less than sixty thousand people from all parts of the kingdom assembled at that time in Edinburgh, there was not the slightest appearance of confusion or tumult; and on the evening of that solemn day, after hours of the deepest and most intense emotion, when every chord of the heart and every faculty of the mind had been impulse by which they were guided and upheld; but we do not hesitate to state our opinion, that the sublime deed of that great day will ever, by all who can understand and value it, be regarded as the deed and the day of Scotland's greatest national and religious glory. On the next day, the 1st of March, the Covenant was again publicly read in a large meeting of those who had come too recently to the capital to have had leisure to take its main propositions into sufficiently deliberate consideration. Freely were its principles stated, that no man might bind himself to a measure the full nature of which he did not comprehend; and yet so remarkable was the unanimity of the meeting, that about three hundred ministers at once added their names to the large number already subscribed. The Covenant was then carried to the most public parts of the city, to afford an opportunity to people dwelling in the different districts of adding to it their signatures; and whereever it appeared, it was hailed with joyful welcome, as a bond of unity and a pledge of sacred peace. Great numbers are said to have followed it from place to place, imploring the blessing of God upon it, with gushing tears and fervent supplications, that this return of their the signing of the Covenant. But these country to its ancient covenant union scenes of intemperate zeal or petty retaliwith God might be the means of averting ation were almost entirely the sudden the Divine indignation, and procuring ebullitions of passion among a few women deliverance from their calamities. Copies and boys, unattended by serious conseof it were soon afterwards written, and quences. Not an instance is recorded of sent to every part of the kingdom, that personal injury having been sustained by being universally signed, it might be- by a prelatist, but one, and that to a very come indeed a National Covenant. It trifling extent.* And when it is rememwas almost everywhere received with bered how long the country had groaned feelings of reverence and gratitude. No beneath the prelatic yoke,-how many compulsion was required to induce men of the most faithful ministers had been to subscribe a bond, the placing their banished from their attached congreganames on which they held to be at once tions, and how much injurious and ona high honour and a solemn duty; nor pressive treatment both ministers and would compulsion have been permitted, people had suffered from the Court of had it been required. "The matter was High Commission, the chief cause of so holy," says the Earl of Rothes, "that wonder is, that so little of a vindictive they held it to be irreligious to use vio- spirit was displayed by the nation, when lent means for advancing so good a arising in its might, to shake off the gallwork." And in his answer to the Aber-ing domination of its proud oppressors. deen Doctors, Henderson says, that "some men of no small note offered their subscription, and were refused, till time should prove that they joined from love to the cause and not from the fear of man."* Before the end of April there were few parishes in Scotland in which the Covenant had not been signed by nearly all of competent age and character. It deserves to be stated, in confirmation of the thoroughly religious character both of the Covenant itself, and of the feelings regarding it or those by whom it was subscribed, that Baillie, Livingstone, and every writer of the period of any respectability, agree in declaring that the subscribing of the Covenant was everywhere regarded as a most sacred act, and was accompanied in many instances with remarkable manifestations of spiritual influence, and in all with decided amendment in life and manners. It awed and hallowed the soul, imparted purity to the heart, and gave an earnest and foretaste of peace, that peace which the world can neither give nor take away,-peace of conscience and peace with God. We do not affect to conceal that some slight instances of popular violence took place in some parts of the country, where either the people had previously suffered injurious treatment from the prelates and their partizans, or where attempts were made by that party forcibly to prevent But this truly glorious blending of strength and forbearance, of judgment and mercy, was merely a new manifestation of the Presbyterian spirit and principles, first shown at the Reformation, when Popery was overthrown, but the popish priesthood spared,-repeated in this, the Second Reformation, when Prelacy was condemned, but the prelatic faction rarely exposed to the slightest degree of that retaliation which they had so wantonly provoked,-again to be re-exhibited in still more trying circumstances. by the truly Christian-minded Presbyterians, but never imitated by their antagonists in their periods of triumph. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland has often suffered persecution, but has never been guilty of committing that great crime. The prelates had always declared, when urging forward their innovations, that the greater part of the nation would readily receive the Canons and Liturgy, and that the opposition was that merely of a very few, who might be safely despised; but now, when the Covenant was received with such cordiality and gratitude throughout the kingdom, they were overwhelmed with shame, conster nation, and despair, mingled with bursts of fury and passionate longings for revenge. Spotswood, who better under * Even the prelates, in their artiches of information, mention only four instances of popular violence. (Burnet's Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, p. 41.) Other authors mention about as many more, but not so well authenticated. stood the character of his countrymen | regarded a civil war as a slight matter, than the younger prelates, exclaimed, provided they could recover that wealth "Now all that we have been doing these and power which they had so grievously thirty years past is thrown down at once;" and, yielding to despair, he fled to London, and remaining chiefly there in a state of gloomy dejection, survived the ruin of his pride and power little more than a year. abused. Unfortunately their pernicious advice sunk deep into the mind of Charles, impelling him to those measures which involved the kingdom in the miseries of revolutionary strife, and issued in the death of the beguiled and infatuated monarch. Well indeed may Prelacy canonize as a martyr the sovereign who perished, the victim of its dark, The privy council felt almost equally paralyzed. After a deliberation of four days at Stirling, during which they were receiving hourly intelligence of the rap-bloody, and fatal policy. idly-extending influence of the Covenant, The Earl of Haddington, to whom the they resolved to send to the king informa- Covenanters had sent their deputation, tion of the state of affairs, suggesting the and with whom they maintained a secret necessity of listening to the remonstran- but very constant correspondence, was ces of the aggrieved nation, and giving aware of the advice which had been promise of redress, to the extent at least given to the king, and of the measures of refraining from the enforcement of the which were in contemplation. Orders Book of Canons and Liturgy, and miti- had been given to seize Livingstone the gating the despotic conduct of the High moment he arrived, and to throw him Commission. About the same time, the into prison; but Haddington concealed Covenanters, as they began to be desig- him, presented the supplication of the nated, and as we may henceforth term Covenanters, which was, however, rethem, sent a deputation to London, to turned unopened; and sent the messengive his majesty a faithful representation ger back to Scotland, with private inforof the real state of public matters, and of mation of the secret designs of the court. the views and wishes of his oppressed The Covenanters lost no time in countersubjects. The prelates were already in acting the dangerous policy recommendLondon; so that the representatives of all ed by the prelates. Deputations were parties in Scotland were at one time sent to those districts of the country where within the precincts of the court, afford- the Covenant had been but partially ing an opportunity to his majesty of ob- signed, and on the support of which the taining full and accurate information of prelates mainly relied for the ultimate the condition of the kingdom, had he triumph of their cause. These deputabeen disposed to seek it. But he had al- tions met with success beyond their most ready listened to the partial statements of sanguine hopes. In some of the seats of the prelates, and formed his determina- learning, as at St. Andrews and Glasgow, tion. They, anxious to extenuate their the ministers and professors subscribed own failure, had still represented the but partially; but even in these towns, Covenanters as weak in station, influence, the magistrates, burgesses, and citizens and numbers, and, however violent in joined their countrymen almost univertheir procedure, forming but a small fac-sally. Even in the Highlands the Covtion in the kingdom. They had sug- enant was welcomed with perfectly amazgested that the north was steady to his ing cordiality. Clans that rarely met majesty's interest; and that the south but in hostile strife, and, if they did so was so divided, that if the powerful fami- meet, never parted without exchanging lies of Hamilton, Douglas, Nithsdale, and | some others, should raise their forces, and form a junction with Huntly and the Highland chiefs, the Covenanters might be easily overpowered, and the whole kingdom brought into complete subjection to his commands.* Such were the counsels of the prelates, who seem to have * Baillie, vol. i. pp. 70, 71. blows, met like brothers, subscribed the bond of national union, and parted in peace and love. Nowhere was this unwonted but most lovely sight more sig nally displayed than at Inverness. There the fierce feuds of ages melted and disappeared beneath the warming and renewing power of that Divine influence which so strongly and brightly shone around he Covenant, as the snows melt from their native mountains, when the summer sun is high in the smiling heavens. Thus did her sacred Covenant first make Scotland truly a nation, melting and fusing into one united mass the het erogeneous and jarring elements which had previously lain partially compacted together in space, but uncombined, and mutually repelling and repelled. Then, too, was seen a portion of the good which God brings out of what man intends for evil; for then was seen some of the fruits of the zealous and faithful labours, among these warm-hearted Highlanders, of the pious ministers who had been from time to time torn away from their own congregations; and banished to the remote regions of the north, there in tears to sow a seed which was now springing up in gladness. James and the prelates had sent Bruce, and Dickson, and Rutherford, and others, to Inverness, Aberdeen, and other Highland districts, as if to show the inhabitants what true religion was, and thus to prepare them for the Covenant, although they did not mean it so. But such has often been the mysterious course of all-wise Providence, to pour contempt upon the wicked desires of ungodly men, overruling their machination, and causing them to promote the very cause which they are seeking to destroy. Meanwhile the king was busily engaged in concerting his schemes; and for a time it seemed as if he were truly desirous to learn the real state of matters before he should come to a final determination. He sent orders to the Earl of Traquair, Roxburgh, and Lorn, to repair to London without delay; and he required from the most eminent Scottish lawyers a legal opinion whether the conduct of the Covenanters were not treasonable. Sir Thomas Hope, then Lord Advocate, and two other distinguished lawyers, gave their opinion, that there was nothing decidedly illegal in the proceedings of the Covenanters. Lord Lorn also spoke very strongly in defence of these injured and calumniated men; and laid before his majesty a full account of the actual state of the country. About the same time the king received the unwelcome intelligence, that the Covenant had been received with enthusiastic delight, even in those parts of the country where the prelates had assured him it would be indignantly rejected. This rendered the prelatic cry for war a more doubtful question; especially as the English nobility concurred in recommending peace, being better aware of the wide-spread discontent existing in that kingdom also, than was its blindly-obstinate sovereign. Perceiving that he must. for the present abandon his warlike designs, the next care of the king was to engage the Covenanters in negociations, partly in the hope of dividing them, and partly to gain time till he might muster power enough forcibly to overwhelm them. He resolved, therefore, to appoint a commissioner to treat with his Scottish subjects, to hear their grievances, and, if he could not flatter and delude them into submission, at least to lull them into security, or wear them out by procrastination. The choice of a person to undertake this difficult task was a matter of vital importance, as its success would greatly depend upon his skilful management. At last the Marquis of Hamilton was appointed lord high commissioner, and intrusted with the hazardous and disreputable enterprise of attempting to deceive or overawe a nation famed for courage and sagacity, and now doubly vigilant and thoroughly united. Aware of the perilous nature of the task, Hamilton would willingly have declined it; but the king would take no denial, and he was obliged to prepare to meet it as he might. For this reason he strove to secure himself against the possible consequences of the dark intrigues in which he must be involved; and knowing well the character of those who were urging the king to the adoption of hostile measures, one of Hamilton's first steps was to secure the absence from the court of all the Scottish courtiers, and especially of the prelates. After he had seen them all sent off, he left London himself; but not thinking his protection yet sufficiently secure, he delayed his journey at Berwick, and remained there till he had procured from the king private instructions, ample powers, and a secret pardon for whatever he might say or do in the matter, which might be represented by his enemies as contrary to the king's intentions. In that strange specimen of state diplo unity of heart, mind, and effort, which was essential to their safety. macy, the real intentions of the king are revealed, and are enough to cause any man of common honesty to blush for On the 10th of May the king sent to shame. It states, that Hamilton was ex- the Scottish privy council intimation of pected, and even required, to enter into his commission to the Marquis of Hamil the most intimate intercourse with the ton, requiring them all to meet his Grace Covenanters, to pretend friendship and at Dalkeith on the 6th of June, to render compassion, and to throw them off their him all due honour, and to support him guard and detect their schemes, that he in the discharge of his high trust. The might the more easily circumvent and Covenanters, on their part, sent informaoverpower them. "For which end," tion of the approaching negociations to says his majesty, "you will be necessi- all their supporters, requiring them to tated to speak that language which, if come to Edinburgh in such numbers as you were called to account for by us, you should protect them from any meditated might suffer for it. These are therefore hostile attempt. And still placing their to assure you, and, if need be, hereafter trust in the Divine guidance and support, to testify to others, that whatsoever ye a general fast was appointed to be held shall say to them to discover their inten- on the 3d of June, to humble themselves tions, ye shall neither be called in ques- before God, and to supplicate his protection for the same, nor yet it prove in any | tion. The fast was kept in the most solway prejudicial to you." It may be emn and impressive manner, and had a hoped that a high-minded nobleman, powerful effect in preparing the kingdom such as Hamilton, would feel it indeed a degrading and irksome employment, when thus required to act the part of a spy and a deceiver; and when courtly and prelatic historians assail the Covenanters in the language of vituperation and reproach, they may be reminded that the whole conduct of Charles was a tissue of despotism and treachery, fatal to his character and ruinous to his cause. The Covenanters received warning of the secret intentions of the king, and of the real object of Hamilton's commission; but though thus aware of the treacherous devices to be put in motion against them, they resolved to act as became their sacred cause, and, whilst guarding against deceit and guile, to make their own course one of truth and rectitude. For this reason they drew up and promulgated two papers, of a public nature. The one was sent to the nobles at court, stating plainly the articles required for the peace of the Church and kingdom of Scotland, that they might be aware what was demanded, and be prepared to advise his majesty accordingly. The other contained a general statement of the plan of procedure which would require to be followed in the approaching negociations with the high commissioner; and was sent through the kingdom, to prevent division of sentiment, and to secure that for the approaching struggle, enabling them to keep their position on ground avowedly sacred. At the same time, the Covenanters, whose councils were still guided by the Tables, resolved that they would not attend the commissioner at Dalkeith, but would remain in a united body at Edinburgh, and by that means avoid the danger of being divided by the subtle insinuations of their crafty opponents. Having received information that the king meant to subdue them by force, they judged it expedient to prevent that force from being concentrated in the heart of the country; and therefore placed a guard on the Castle of Edinburgh, that it might not receive any large supplies of provisions and military stores. Hamilton at first refused to come to Edinburgh, which was completely in the possession of the Covenanters; but after some concessions had been made, he consented to make the Palace of Holyrood his residence. Accordingly it was concerted that on the 19th of June the Marquis of Hamilton should make his public entry into Edinburgh in state, as lord high commissioner from the king. The Covenanters prepared to give him a stately reception. Both parties agreed that he should approach by Musselburgh along the level sea-line,-. circuitous route, but one peculiarly adapted for display. All the nobles who had signed |