It was a terrible and most exciting crisis for Scotland, when the
people found themselves constrained by all they held sacred to resist
their sovereign. Revering the institution of monarchy, and long
accustomed to yield to the powerful king of Great Britain a deference
which had neither been asked by nor paid to the sovereign of their own
rude and inferior state, nothing could have brought them into such
an attitude but their anxiety for the avoidance of soul-endangering
errors. Even after the riots of July--such was the unwillingness to
adopt strong measures--they might have been induced to remain at peace
under bishops and Perth articles, if the king had been so far well
counselled as at once and gracefully to withdraw the Service-book.
So might a moderate Episcopacy have been preserved in Scotland, and
the Civil War itself avoided or postponed. The king unfortunately
determined to persevere in his unlucky course. The consequence was
that the great mass of the people, including many of the nobility and
gentry, was led into measures, at first of protestation, and latterly
of resistance. There was indeed a district in the north-east where
Episcopacy was the favourite system. In some other places, papist
nobles exercised a limited local influence. The Highlanders were an
uninstructed people, with no religious predilections. But in the
Lowland provinces generally, a people far from void of intelligence
were intensely earnest in favour of their old simple forms of worship
and model of church-government. In the agitation of the subject during
a few months, their prepossessions acquired a strength and fervour
which never had been known before. It were quite impossible for any
individual of our cool and temperate age, to form an adequate idea of
the earnest feelings of the men who now arrayed themselves against
Charles’s Episcopal innovations, without a careful perusal of the
numberless documents in which these feelings found expression.
In the latter part of 1637, the Service-book not being withdrawn, four
committees, called _Tables_, respectively representing the nobles,
gentry, clergy, and burgesses, met in Edinburgh to concert measures
for giving it an effective resistance. When it became evident, in
the ensuing February, that the king was obdurate, the Tables framed
a NATIONAL COVENANT, binding all who should sign it to spare nothing
which might save their religion. It was signed by a large majority
of the people, in a paroxysm of enthusiasm beyond all example in our
history. The king, at length alarmed, sent the Marquis of Hamilton
(June 1638) as a commissioner to treat with the Covenanters; and he
soon after was induced to offer concessions far beyond what would
have been grasped at a twelvemonth before--namely, to withdraw the
Service-book and an equally unpopular Book of Canons, to abrogate the
Court of High Commission, and place the Perth articles on a footing of
indifferency. But while the people at large were at first disposed to
be at peace on these terms, the leaders were by this time influenced
with higher views. Feeling their power, they now hoped by perseverance
to obtain a complete abolition of Episcopacy. Accordingly, when the
matter came to be debated in a General Assembly of the Church, which
sat at Glasgow in November, the royal commissioner proved unable to
keep them within moderate bounds. On his formally dissolving the
Assembly, they sat still under a clerical president, until they had
deposed the bishops and declared Episcopacy wholly at an end.
The king, notwithstanding that a respect for his person and rule was
still professed, could not acquiesce in a movement so contrary to the
policy he had so long maintained, and which interfered so violently
with his own religious convictions. He began to prepare an army for
the subjugation of the Covenanters. They on their part made ready for
an armed resistance, not professedly to their sovereign, but to the
statesmen who guided his counsels. By a great effort, he got together
twenty thousand men, and (May 1639) led them towards the Border. A
fleet, having a few thousand troops on board, at the same time entered
the Firth of Forth, under the command of the Marquis of Hamilton.
Under their nobles, gentry, and clergy, the Scots mustered forces to
defend their shores from the fleet, to meet the anti-Covenanting party
in the north, and to oppose the king at the Border. To the number
of about twenty thousand men, commanded by Sir Alexander Leslie, an
experienced officer from the German wars, they took post on Dunse Law,
while the king advanced with his army towards the Tweed. What with
constant praying, preaching, and fasting, it was such a camp as perhaps
never existed before or since. The king, seeing their resolution and
discipline, and feeling that he had but slack support from his own
army, was induced to offer a pacification. He could not sanction the
acts of a General Assembly which had defied his authority; but he
proposed that everything should Be submitted to another such body
sitting under his representative, and to a subsequent parliament. His
hope was that time and his personal influence with the leaders might
bring things to some passable issue. At the worst, he should meanwhile
prepare a greater army for enforcing subjection.
The new General Assembly and the parliament met in the course of
summer (1639) under royal commissioners, but with only the effect of
formally affirming the abolition of Episcopacy. The king accordingly
resolved on a second expedition against the Scots. After trying in
vain to induce an English parliament to grant supplies, he obtained
some assistance from a convocation of the English clergy, and from a
number of friends among the gentry. He calculated much on the public
fortresses of Scotland being now in his hands, and on the zeal of a
small loyal party. All his hopes were frustrated. In the early part
of 1640, the Scots mustered a second army as good as his own. They
succeeded in seizing the most of the fortresses. His expectations of
co-operation from the loyalists in Aberdeenshire proved fallacious.
The attention of a patriotic party in England was now hopefully fixed
on the proceedings of the Scots. The truth is, Charles was leading the
army of a party of his English subjects through a country generally
disaffected to his policy, against a country altogether hostile. In
such circumstances, a great blow to his authority was inevitable.
The Covenanters did not now deem it necessary to confine themselves
to a defence of their own borders. They crossed the Tweed with a
gallant army (August 28, 1640), and advanced on the Tyne. After a smart
action, in which they were victorious, they crossed that river, and
took possession of Newcastle. With a disaffected army, and all but a
few zealots muttering around him, the king could only come a second
time to a convention, but now it was upon less favourable terms than
before. It was arranged that a new parliament should be called in
England for the settlement of the affairs of the kingdom, and that
meanwhile the Scottish army should remain in the north under English
pay; thus the patriotic party calculated on having a guard to protect
them while reforming the state. Efforts were made to raise resentment
against the Scots as invaders of the English territory; but the Scots
took care, by their published declarations, to shew that they solely
aimed at the preservation of the religious forms which had long before
been established among them, and that they desired nothing more than
the friendship of the English people. Among the English themselves,
objections to Episcopal authority and a formal style of worship had
been advancing since early in the reign of Elizabeth; giving rise to
what was called the Puritanic party. English Puritans, aiming at the
same objects as the Scottish Covenanters, readily gave them their
sympathy. Thus it was with the cordial concurrence of a large portion
of the English nation that the Covenanters rested under arms in England.
The parliament which now sat down, and which was not to rise again
for eleven years, proceeded to take into consideration a number of
grievances under which the country was considered as having suffered
during the king’s reign. His prime advisers, Laud, archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, were imprisoned. Other ministers
of the king--opprobriously styled _Malignants_--were obliged to fly
from the kingdom. It became evident that the church itself was in
danger. Strafford, after a trial in which it has never been pretended
that he got fair-play, was (May 1641) condemned and beheaded. While
thus sorely pressed by his English parliament, Charles began to think
that his Scottish subjects might be conciliated so as to become his
friends, and perhaps to some degree his partisans. In August 1641, he
revisited Edinburgh, in order to preside at a meeting of the Estates;
and there he sanctioned all the measures they had themselves taken,
and distributed honours and rewards among the Covenanting leaders. He
spent three months in Edinburgh, doing all in his power to cultivate
the affections of the Covenanters, and apparently with success, though
there were not wanting some troubles, occasioned by a small loyalist
party, who wished to act more energetically in his behalf than was
convenient for him. He at length returned, as he said, a contented
prince from a contented people. Before this time, the Scottish army had
been satisfied of their pay by the English parliament, and had returned
from Newcastle, and been disbanded.
While the king still remained in Scotland (November 1641), intelligence
arrived of a frightful outbreak of the Catholics in Ireland, and
the dreadful vengeance executed by them upon their Protestant
fellow-subjects. Ten thousand Scottish troops were quickly mustered,
and sent over to assist in preserving the king’s authority in that
country.
The arbitrary rule which King Charles had exercised down to 1637, had
in four years been brought low in both Scotland and England. A severe
lesson had been read to him, if he had had the wisdom to profit by it.
After such a struggle, it is not easy, either for the monarch to rest
corrected, or for his subjects to make moderate uses of their victory.
Bigoted views on his part as to both state and church, fostered by
the support of a loyal party more generous than wise; a strong sense
in the patriotic or parliamentary party that the king and his friends
would resume the system of arbitrary authority if possible, and use
it mercilessly against all who had taken part in the late movements;
made it in a manner impossible that things should rest at the point now
attained. Accordingly, soon after the return of the king to London, the
popular party in the English parliament presented to him their famous
_Remonstrance_, recapitulating all the errors of his past government,
and recommending that he should put himself into the hands of ministers
who enjoyed the confidence of the people. His imperious spirit,
strengthened by his hopes of support in Scotland, refused to yield to
such counsels. When he made his unfortunate attempt (January 1642) to
seize the five leading patriots in the House of Commons, the distrust
of the parliament was completed, and reconciliation became impossible.
The king had for some time contemplated warlike means of recovering
his lost ground; but it was not till the bishops had been impeached,
and he had been asked to surrender the command of the militia to the
parliament, that he raised his standard at Nottingham (August 1642),
with the support of a large body of loyal gentry.
In this civil war, the Scottish nation had no formal reason or pretext
for joining on one side or the other; but their sympathies and
interests were all engaged in behalf of the parliamentary cause. When
the first two campaigns, therefore, made it seem likely that the king
would be triumphant, they naturally felt some uneasiness, as fearful
that if he should put down the parliament, their recovered liberties
and reinstated church would be in danger. The temptation to assist the
English patriots thus became irresistible. A set of commissioners from
the English parliament came into Scotland to court its alliance; they
were instructed to give the Scottish nation hopes that, in the event
of success against the king, the Presbyterian model should supersede
the Episcopalian both in England and Ireland. With the enthusiastic
conceptions the Scots then had of the value of Presbyterianism, as the
only pure and saving vehicle of the gospel, they were unable to resist
this bait, though it was after all put into an ambiguous shape. Their
Estates, accordingly, entered into what was called a SOLEMN LEAGUE
AND COVENANT with the English parliament (August 1643), one of the
provisions of which engaged them to send an army against the king.
Eighteen thousand foot and three thousand horse, to be supported by
English pay at the rate of £30,000 a month, crossed the Tweed in the
depth of winter (January 1644). With a view to gratify and encourage
them, their enemy, Laud, was taken from his prison in the Tower,
tried, and sent to the block--a piece of political revenge merely,
as the old man was unable to have done any one further harm. Joining
the parliamentary troops at York, the Scots assisted materially in
gaining the important victory of Marston Moor, from which the king’s
party never entirely recovered. They also besieged and took Newcastle,
preserving a laudable moderation in their triumph. The season ended
with a marked depression of the royal cause.
While affairs in Scotland were wholly managed by a Committee of the
Estates and the Commission of the kirk, several of the nobles and the
inhabitants of certain districts, chiefly in the Highlands, formed a
tacitly royalist party. The young Earl of Montrose, raised to the rank
of marquis, and invested by the king with a commission, set up the
royal standard in Perthshire (August 1644), and was soon surrounded,
by three thousand men, part of whom were Irish papists. Montrose was
a man of extraordinary genius, with conceptions far beyond his narrow
sphere. Originally a zealous Covenanter, he had changed when he thought
the king too hard pressed by his subjects. A generous loyalty and
romantic heroism enabled him to perform wonderful exploits; but it is
at the same time to be owned that he was fearfully unscrupulous about
plunder and the shedding of blood. With his ill-armed followers, he
overthrew a carefully embodied army of militia, of twice his number, at
Tippermuir (September 1644). Then marching to Aberdeen, he defeated a
second army under Lord Burleigh, and entering the city, subjected it to
a pillage even severer than any he had inflicted on it as a Covenanter.
The Marquis of Argyle pursued him round the Highlands without gaining
any advantage. Suddenly breaking off his course, he invaded Argyleshire
in the depth of winter, and ravaged it without mercy, killing a
great number of the men fit to bear arms. The Marquis of Argyle came
to revenge this frightful proceeding at Inverlochy, but was there
defeated with immense slaughter (February 1645). Montrose then made a
deliberate march through Inverness-shire, Moray, Banffshire, and the
east coast, using fire and sword wherever the king’s cause was not at
once acknowledged and supported. It was a warfare such as had not taken
place in England since the contentions of the Roses, and strongly marks
the lower civilisation of Scotland at this date. At Dundee, he received
a check from a Covenanting army under General Baillie, and with some
difficulty succeeded in obtaining a refuge in the mountains. Descending
again to the plains in Nairnshire, he defeated with great slaughter
a small army under Colonel Urry at Auldearn; soon after, he in like
manner overthrew Baillie’s forces at Alford. He was now confident
enough to promise King Charles the speedy recovery of Scotland; and
the king, finding his affairs becoming more and more discouraging in
England, was inclined to trust to this promise, and migrate northward.
Montrose, however, only distressed his country; he did not conquer or
convert it to loyalty. He never accomplished any solid or permanent
advantage, but was as much the mere guerrilla chief at the last as at
the first. One other victory, gained over a large militia force at
Kilsyth (August 1645), left him without any apparent opposition in
Scotland. Yet within a few weeks (September 13), he was completely
defeated at Philiphaugh, in Selkirkshire, by a body of horse detached
under David Leslie from the Scottish army in England; and he was soon
after obliged to retire to the continent. Montrose’s course was like
that of a meteor, which alarms and excites wonder, but passes without
leaving any tangible effects.
Meanwhile the battle of Naseby and the second battle of Newbury had
left the king’s cause in a hopeless condition, and at the close of
1645, he was scarcely able to keep the field. It was now absolutely
necessary for him to make peace with his subjects, if he hoped to
retain even a nominal power or place in the state, and, seeing that
the resources of the pure royalists had proved insufficient for his
support, his best course would have been to place himself in the hands
of the party next in the sentiment of regard for his person. This was
the party of Presbyterians, as distinguished from a more extreme
party, which had latterly sprang into importance in England, under
the name of Independents, who professed to support a primitive form
of Christianity without any ecclesiastical organisation whatever.
The Presbyterians hated Episcopacy; but they were not averse to a
moderate or limited monarchy; while the Independents were generally of
republican principles. Charles, unfortunately a bigot for Episcopacy,
could not bring himself to sanction the Presbyterian model, even for a
limited time on trial. He hoped to bring out a better issue for himself
by the dangerous game of playing off the various parties against each
other. Having thus lost a good opportunity of treating, he was obliged,
in May 1646, to take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark.
Whatever may be thought of the conduct of the Scots in entering into
the Solemn League and Covenant, and sending troops against a sovereign
who had so thoroughly redressed their own national grievances, there
can be no reasonable doubt that they were prompted on that occasion by
a pure zeal for their church establishment, and a sympathy with those
of the neighbouring nation who desired to be equally free from the
rule of bishops. But it cannot be denied that in engaging themselves
to ‘endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery,
prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever
shall be contrary to sound doctrine’--for such are the terms of the
League--they had wholly changed the nature of their policy. From a
laudable defence of cherished institutions of their own, menaced with
danger, they passed into a very questionable system of propagandism and
aggression. It might be said that they were committing the same mistake
as King Charles had done in his original policy towards themselves,
going against the religious traditions and prepossessions of a people;
for, while Puritans and Independents had an apparent ascendency in
England, ‘the church,’ nursed by the blood of martyrs, and endeared
by long habit, had still a great hold on the bulk of the English
nation. Success in such a movement, if it could by any be considered as
deserved, was scarcely by common sense to be expected. As if in natural
punishment for a great error, nothing had gone well with the Scots ever
since. An Assembly of Divines, including commissioners from Scotland,
had sat at Westminster for two years, in deliberation on the proper
ecclesiastical system and articles of faith to be adopted by both
nations; and its decision was substantially for the Presbyterian forms
and Calvinistic doctrines so much beloved in the north. But the English
House of Commons could never be induced to take any active measures for
imposing this decision on the nation, doubtless feeling that it was not
generally acceptable. Pure presbytery never came into true operation
except in London and in Lancashire. To the Scottish leaders, who had
been accustomed to impose and enforce doctrine upon all recusants in
their own country, this slackness seemed inexcusable, and occasioned
the deepest disappointment. They also found that their army, after the
first useful service at Marston Moor, was comparatively neglected in
England, and its pay allowed to fall into arrear. Themselves courted
at first as allies, they had latterly been little inquired for or
consulted; their advices and their remonstrances were alike overlooked.
Sternest punishment of all, while their best troops were kept idle and
half mendicant in England, Montrose avenged the king’s sense of injury
by sweeping their defenceless provinces with the besom of destruction,
and putting thousands of hastily armed citizens to the sword. It was
a most melancholy result of a movement entered on, as they in all
sincerity protested, purely for the glory of God.
There still remained an event most unfortunate for Scotland
before the war could be concluded. The arrears of pay due by the
English parliament to the Scottish army had been allowed to run
up to £1,400,000. The House of Commons tried to abate the sum to
a comparative trifle, but ultimately (August 1646) agreed to pay
£400,000, the one half immediately, after which the Scots were to
retire into their own country. But, meanwhile, the Scots were awkwardly
placed by the king being in their camp. If he had agreed to the
propositions of the parliament, all would have been well, for then he
would have proceeded in peace and honour to London. As he could not be
induced to assent to these propositions, a question arose between the
two nations as to the disposal of his person. The English parliament
affected the sole right to deal with it. The Scottish Estates could
not agree to this; but as they were not disposed to take up the king’s
cause against the English--and, indeed, such a step would have been
ruinous--it was not easy for them on any terms or understanding to
retain him within their grasp. After much troublesome negotiation, they
were induced by some of the leading English Presbyterians to give up
the king, in order to facilitate the disbanding of the English army,
which latterly was manifesting a refractory spirit. There was scarcely
a relation, if any, between the receiving of the arrears of pay and the
surrender of the king; nevertheless, as the events took place about
the same time, they have become connected in popular conception, to
the discredit of the Scottish name. It will be ages before the English
commonalty ceases to believe that the Scots sold their king, and for
slaughter too, although such a tragical end for his life was certainly
not dreamed of by anybody till long after.
The king being now a captive, and his friends reduced to silence, the
English parliament set themselves to two objects--a re-establishment
of the royal authority on suitable terms, and the disbanding of the
army. The king’s obstinacy defeated the one object; the growth of
sectarianism in the army balked the other. Charles hoped to thrive by
the disunion of these two bodies, and coquetted with both. The army
seized his person; but he afterwards escaped, and fell under the care
of a kind of neutral power, in the person of the governor of Carisbrook
Castle, in the Isle of Wight. The Scots, hating sectarianism, still
maintained a modified loyalty. Under the influence of the Duke of
Hamilton and a few other nobles, who had come to an understanding or
_engagement_ with the king regarding a possible restoration of his
authority, the Estates in spring 1648 raised an army in his behalf,
thus renewing the Civil War; and with this movement the remaining
English loyalists concurred. The more zealous Presbyterians of Scotland
denounced it on that account, notwithstanding many plausible pretences
set forth in its favour. The English Presbyterians gave it their
good-will, but could do little in its behalf. In July, a too hastily
prepared army of 15,000 Scots entered England under the command of
Hamilton, and proceeded as far as Preston, while a small army of
English loyalists marched near by, but, for the sake of appearances,
carefully abstained from a junction. A portion of the English army,
under Oliver Cromwell, attacked the small body of loyalists and
destroyed it; then met and overthrew the Scottish army; soon after
which, the Duke of Hamilton was taken prisoner. Cromwell came to
Edinburgh, and fraternised with the more zealous Presbyterian leaders,
who had by that time resumed an ascendency. Then, returning as a victor
to London, with no force to oppose him in any part of the island, he
joined with a number of other men of his own stamp, in putting an end
to the English monarchy. In January 1649, the king was tried for the
alleged crime of raising war upon his subjects, and publicly beheaded.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1637.