THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR
The word pacification can hardly have deceived even the most sanguine
advocates of peace. None who knew the character of Charles or of the
Scottish nation can have believed in their hearts that any final
solution to the quarrel between them had been found at Berwick. It was
at most a truce; and it was soon made clear how short and hollow a
truce it was destined to be. The Pacification was signed on June 10th,
and before the year was out both sides were arming fast again for war.
It was the old story. Charles had refused to recognise the acts of
the Glasgow Assembly, as indeed he could not but have refused while
he called himself King of Scotland; but he had agreed that a lawful
Assembly should be convened in August at which all the ecclesiastical
points at issue should be settled, and that a Parliament should follow
to make the settlement good. It had been his intention to preside
in person at both meetings, but the temper of the Scottish capital
made him hesitate. Almost immediately after the Pacification he had
issued one of his foolish proclamations, summoning the bishops to take
their places in the forthcoming Assembly. A protestation of course
followed. Charles was indeed within his legal rights, for Episcopacy
had as yet been abolished only by the Glasgow Assembly, which he
had refused to acknowledge and which the Covenanters had agreed not
to press. But though Episcopacy had not yet been legally abolished,
Charles, by renewing the assurances made in his name by Hamilton at
Glasgow, had given his word for its abolition. Within a fortnight
of this solemn promise he had issued a proclamation which, if there
were any meaning in words, could mean only one of two things; he was
summoning the bishops to vote for their own extinction, or he was
summoning them to quash the motion for their extinction by their own
votes. It is no wonder that the Scottish people, with their previous
experience of the royal diplomacy, chose the latter interpretation,
and, finding that the King was breaking his share of the treaty, made
no haste to keep theirs. The army was not disbanded; the Tables were
not dissolved; the fortifications of Leith were not dismantled. The
fortresses were indeed restored to the Crown, but Hamilton had to make
his way through sullen and menacing crowds to install a new governor
in Edinburgh Castle. A few days later Aboyne, who had imprudently
shown himself on the High Street, was forced to fly for his life,
while the unfortunate Treasurer was for the second time roughly
handled by the mob. Charles, who was still at Berwick, sent in anger
for the Covenanting leaders to explain these things. Only six obeyed
the summons. The rest were stopped, or pretended to have been stopped,
as they were leaving Edinburgh, by the citizens, who would not suffer
their champions to place themselves in the King's power. But among the
six was Montrose.
It is an infinite pity that no report exists of any interview between
Montrose and the King during this visit. We know that Hamilton was
instructed to confer with the Covenanting chiefs, and to use any
device necessary to discover their intentions. We know that there was
a stormy scene between Charles and Rothes, in which the latter was
twice called a liar to his face. But how it fared between Montrose
and his sovereign history is silent. How it was believed in Scotland
to have fared between them is sufficiently shown by an incident which
occurred soon after the meeting of Parliament. A paper was found one
morning on the door of Montrose's lodgings bearing the inscription,
_Invictus armis verbis vincitur_. It began now to be whispered abroad
that the gallant young enthusiast who had led the soldiers of the
Covenant to their first victory had in his turn been conquered by
gracious looks and fair speeches.
The belief was natural in a society where no man could trust his
neighbour. And there was possibly this much foundation for it, that
Charles had succeeded in persuading Montrose that he was now really
sincere in his intention to abolish Episcopacy and leave Scotland free
to worship God after her own fashion. It is at least unlikely that
Hamilton, whatever language he might speak, should have persuaded him
to anything. And the change that is now perceptible in Montrose's
attitude both towards King and Covenant is compatible with our
belief in his intelligence and honesty only on the ground that he
believed the work of the Covenant, as he interpreted it, to have been
done, that he believed Charles to have learnt his lesson, and that
thenceforth it was the part of every true Scotsman to stand by the
King so long as the King stood by his word.
But in truth Montrose understood his countrymen as little as he
understood the King. He had framed for himself an ideal constitution
as unlike anything possible in such a country and at such a time
as the ideal sovereign of his imagination was unlike the reality.
His political views were in truth a dream like Dante's, but, like
the great Italian's, a dream based on what had been in the past,
and an anticipation in part at least of what was to be again in the
future,--the dream of a real State, a government based on justice and
law and supported by obedience. A parallel has been drawn between
Montrose and that singularly interesting and attractive man, William
Drummond of Hawthornden. Fanciful as the resemblance may at first
seem between the fiery ambitious man of action and the shy meditative
man of letters, the parallel is on one side good. Drummond, it is
said, was a passive or theoretical Montrose, Montrose a rampant or
practical Drummond. The latter's _Irene_ indeed embodies, in more
elaborate detail and more fanciful language, the peculiar form of
Scottish Conservatism which Montrose was afterwards to express in a
remarkable paper rescued by the industry of his biographer from two
centuries of neglect. The plan of each discourse is very similar. Both
draw a picture of the hopeless state of anarchy and confusion into
which Scotland must fall if certain evil counsels prevail. Montrose,
writing later in time and influenced by personal dislike as well as
disappointment, aims clearly at Hamilton and Argyll; while Drummond
includes in his censure all the noblemen who had joined the Covenant,
and Montrose among them, openly accusing the majority of acting solely
under the influence of private revenge and ambition. Both then proceed
to appeal to each Estate particularly, to the nobles, the clergy, and
the people. In both is the same recognition of the necessity for a
paramount authority in the State, and the conviction that from the
temper of the times that authority must be vested in the hands of
a king. In both is the same dislike of all clerical interference,
whether Episcopalian or Presbyterian, in matters of State. Both
show the same mistrust of any alliance between the aristocracy and
the people. Both warn the latter in almost the same strain that
they are not fit for power, and that the nobles who would persuade
them otherwise can do so only for their own selfish ends. Both, in
short, may be said to preach the doctrine of passive obedience; but
both imagine a king under whose wise and beneficent rule passive
obedience should mean no more than happy and prosperous quiescence
in the secure enjoyment of their religion and liberties. Of the two
Drummond was readiest to push his doctrine to its last conclusion, as
the man of theory always will be. Resolved on no consideration and
in no extremity to suffer himself to be dragged into the vortex of
politics, in the solitude of his beautiful home on the wooded banks
of the Esk he could weave his fairy fabric without any disturbing
sense of its impracticability. Montrose, with his active experience
of men and things, could not quite blind himself to the possibility
of a king under whom passive obedience might be only another name for
tyranny. Yet he was practical to this extent, that, while the other
was content to dream, he was ready to put his dream into action. He
would carry into the sphere of working politics the reform on which
they were both agreed. He would be the active exponent of the ideal
Constitution under Charles the ideal King. Yet both are at one in
recommending the subject patience even under the worst sovereign. It
is better, they argue, to bear the ills we have and trust to time to
cure them, than to fly to others we know nothing of. And of all forms
of tyranny, says Montrose, the tyranny of subjects over their king
is "the most fierce, insatiable, and unsupportable in the world."
Drummond, who could on occasion speak boldly enough for the liberty of
the subject, and who disliked religious intolerance in any shape and
from any quarter, foresaw that in this respect at least the Covenant
was likely to chastise with scorpions where Charles had chastised
with whips. Passive obedience to a king who had shown himself (as he,
like Montrose, believed) ready to remove the old yoke and resolved to
add no new one, was surely more tolerable than passive obedience to a
league of self-seeking nobles and fanatical clergymen.[7]
In the summer of 1639 Montrose had not formally broken with the
Covenant, nor was his scheme of political reform probably as yet fully
matured. Nevertheless, he was soon to have an opportunity of making
trial of his countrymen's temper, and of learning how utterly he had
misconceived it.
The first act of the new Assembly was to sweep Episcopacy off the
face of Scottish earth. The first act of the new Parliament was to
ratify the decision of the Assembly. But before it could effect this
ecclesiastical reform it had to consider a question of political
reform which was infinitely more important to the King's authority.
Hitherto the committee known as the Lords of the Articles had been
so formed as to be practically no more than the mouthpiece of the
Crown; and as no bills could be presented to Parliament till they had
passed this committee, and, when so presented, could only be accepted
or rejected in their entirety without amendment or alteration, it
is clear that the power of the Scottish Parliament as a national
assembly was little more than a cipher. This state of things was
due to the influence possessed by the bishops in the formation of
the committee. But now that the bishops had gone, by whom was this
influence to be exercised? Charles would have been glad to see it
exercised by a corresponding number of ministers, who might at some
more tranquil time be translated into bishops. But this was obnoxious
to all parties. The nobles would not consent to share their power
with the clergy, and the clergy would not consent to see any of their
order elevated above the rest. Business was made possible by a
compromise; but as the compromise entailed a majority of Covenanters
on the committee, the business was not palatable to the King. It
was now that the two great rivals, Montrose and Argyll, were first
brought into direct conflict. Montrose would not support Charles in
filling the bishops' places with other clergymen, though they should
wear the black gown of Geneva instead of the hated lawn-sleeves.
But he had no mind to see the authority of the Crown a cipher, and
the King without a voice among the new Lords of the Articles. He
proposed, therefore, that the bishops' places should be taken by a
corresponding number of noblemen to be chosen by the King. In his
ideal State the Crown and the nobility should mutually support and
counterpoise each other, both acting together against the dangerous
encroachments of the people. Far different were Argyll's views. With
clearer eyes than Montrose he read the signs of the times, and saw
what the victory of the Covenant really meant. He saw that it meant
the inevitable rise of the middle classes to a share in the control
of public affairs. He saw that the old monarchical supremacy and the
old aristocratic supremacy were alike doomed, and that henceforth his
order, if it would retain any vestige of its ancient influence, could
do so only by acquiescing in a partition it was powerless to prevent.
Henceforth the Scottish Parliament, like the English Parliament, must
represent the voice, not of the sovereign, but of the people. Nor
was this recognition unpleasing to an ambition far other and more
dangerous than the generous desire for fame which swelled the heart
of Montrose. As a member of the old aristocracy he was but one among
many, richer, indeed, and more powerful than most, but subject like
the rest to the caprice of a king, and to the jealousy, the intrigues,
and the violence of his peers. But with a national Parliament at his
back, speaking and acting as the mouthpiece and agent of a people, he
might rise in fact to that power his countrymen would no longer brook
in name. Conscious of mental abilities and a genius for statecraft
immeasurably superior to those around him, he felt confident of
wielding to his own ends this new force that he saw rising on the
ruins of the old. And Argyll carried the day, though not without a
hard struggle. By a majority of only one it was determined that in
future each Estate should choose its own Lords. Henceforth the nobles
would be represented by eight votes, the lesser barons and burghers
by sixteen; and thus at one stroke the voice of the sovereign was
silenced in the Scottish Parliament. In the first direct struggle
between Montrose and Argyll there could be no doubt with whom victory
rested. Under their new constitution the Covenanting majority carried
all before them. Episcopacy was abolished, not, as Charles would have
had, as contrary to the usage of the Scottish Church, but as actually
unlawful. A general tax was to be levied, to cover the expenses of
the late war, on Royalists as well as on Covenanters. The castles of
Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton were to be entrusted to the charge
of none but Scottish subjects, who, though chosen by the King, were to
be approved by Parliament. No more drastic Reform Bill has, in short,
been passed even in our own century. Charles at once sent orders to
Traquair to prorogue a Parliament under which the very existence of
the Crown was at stake. The Treasurer was at once met with the answer
that Parliament could not be prorogued without its own consent. A
short adjournment was therefore arranged, and two Covenanting lords,
Loudon and Dunfermline, were despatched to plead their case in London.
Charles had been informed of Montrose's action during this momentous
time by that Earl of Airth whose disgrace and subsequent reinstatement
has been already mentioned. The result was a summons to Court for the
repentant Covenanter. But Montrose excused himself on the ground that
the visit would breed suspicion both of himself and of the King, and
so tend to prevent the accommodation of existing difficulties which
they both desired. "I hope," he wrote, "that your Majesty will do
me the honour to think that this is no shift,--for all of that kind
is too much contrary to my humour, chiefly in what your Majesty or
your service is concerned in--but that, as I have ever been bold to
avow, there are no things your Majesty shall be pleased to command me
in--persuading myself they will be still such as befits and do suit
with all most incumbent duties--that I shall not think myself born to
perform as your Majesty's most loyal and faithful subject and servant."
These things passed in the autumn of 1639. The winter wore itself out
in barren diplomacies and preparations for war on both sides. The
Scottish Commissioners could do nothing with the King, and Parliament
was prorogued till the following June. Strafford was now supreme in
the royal councils, and that imperious voice was never for submission.
At this time, moreover, a discovery was made which gave fresh weight
to Strafford's arguments and fresh heart to his perplexed master.
A letter had fallen into Traquair's hands addressed by some of the
leading Covenanters to the French King, praying him to come to their
aid. This, it was thought, would surely establish the treasonable
nature of the Scottish movement. But when the letter was read before
the English Parliament, which met on April 13th, it made no impression
on either House. Both were too intent on their own affairs--the
pressing question of Ship-Money among others--to interfere in a
matter which, so far as it concerned them at all, made for their own
interests. The Scottish Covenanters were the very good neighbours of
the English malcontents, and no obstacle was to be put in their way to
work out their own salvation. Lewis, to whom a second letter had been
addressed on the miscarriage of the first, was too cautious to enter
into a quarrel which could be safely trusted to shape itself to his
own gain. Loudon, who was then in London as one of the Commissioners,
and whose name was subscribed to the letter, was indeed sent to the
Tower on a charge of treasonable conspiracy; but nothing could be
brought home to him, and he was soon released. Parliament did not
choose to adopt Charles's interpretation of words that could be
strained to bear a less criminal significance; and the affair passed
quickly out of sight.[8]
Among the signatories to the French King was Montrose. Whether this
was done to lull the growing suspicions of his colleagues, or done
through fresh mistrust of Charles's clerical policy, it is hard to
determine. Probably both motives were at work in a mind that could
as yet see firm ground nowhere. At all events, when on reassembling
in June the Scottish Parliament aimed a further blow at the royal
authority by the appointment of a permanent Committee of Estates with
supreme power both in military and civil matters, Montrose was named
among the noblemen, with his kinsmen, Napier and Stirling, among the
lesser barons. In obedience to the orders of this new power he at once
proceeded to his own territories to levy men for the army a second
time mustering under Leslie for the Border. While engaged in this
business he was commissioned to effect the reduction of Airlie Castle,
the main stronghold of the loyalists in the shire of Angus. The chief
of the Ogilvies, lately raised to the earldom of Airlie, was then with
the King, having left his house in charge of his eldest son. The work
was accomplished without resort to arms or any violence. Lord Ogilvy,
after conference with the commissioner, rendered his father's castle
quietly, being in truth in no position to defend it, for the good of
the public, as the convenient phrase ran; and Montrose, leaving a
garrison of his own men in charge of it, marched south to join Leslie.
Unfortunately for the loyal North, and most unfortunately for the
House of Airlie, others besides Montrose had been entrusted with
the charge of "pacification." Commissions had been also issued for
that purpose to Monro, one of the roughest and most brutal pupils of
the German wars, and to Argyll. To Monro was assigned the district
of Aberdeen, while Argyll was to take order with the more southern
Highlands. Commissions of fire and sword the style ran, and seldom can
it have been more literally vindicated. Monro harried Aberdeen and
the surrounding country, destroying what he could not remove, putting
some of the citizens to torture after a fashion practised in his
school of war, and carrying back a crowd of prisoners to Edinburgh.
Argyll did his work even more thoroughly. Montrose had advised him
of the surrender of Airlie Castle, and that all was now quiet on the
braes of Angus. But not thus was Argyll to be balked of his vengeance.
Between the Campbells and the Ogilvies there had been feud for many
generations, and so rare a chance of masking private vengeance
under the cloak of duty was not to be lost. Montrose's garrison
was dismissed, and the Bonny House of Airlie burned to the ground.
Forthar, the seat of Lord Ogilvy, was next served in the same fashion,
the young lord's wife, who was then daily expecting her confinement,
being turned out of doors, her own family only venturing at their own
risk, and after permission had been asked and refused, to shelter the
unhappy outcast. Craig, an unfortified building, and therefore not
rightly within this strange peacemaker's commission, but also the
property of an Ogilvy, shared the same fate. Argyll next turned his
attention to the lands of Breadalbane, but finding his way barred
by Athole with a force almost amounting to one-fourth of his own, he
preferred to effect by diplomacy what he dared not put to the trial
of the sword. Athole, unmindful of the fate of Huntly, was caught
in the same snare. Under promise of a safe-conduct he was persuaded
with his captains to meet Argyll in conference. The conference was
an ambuscade. The whole party were seized and sent as prisoners to
Edinburgh. Then, after settling a longstanding account with the
Macdonalds, against whom he held a twofold grudge as hereditary foes
of his House and as friends and in some sort vassals of the House
of Gordon, and laying Badenoch waste from Lochaber to Braemar, this
great warrior returned in triumph to Edinburgh to impeach Montrose for
treason against the Covenant in dealing too leniently with its enemies.
From this ridiculous charge Montrose found little difficulty in
exonerating himself. Argyll would have had him tried by court-martial,
but neither Leslie nor the Committee of Estates would entertain the
proposal, and Montrose was unanimously pronounced to have done his
duty as a true soldier of the Covenant. But he had now far more
serious matter for thought than this paltry ebullition of temper.
While in Leslie's camp at Dunse a proposal was submitted to him, which
of all men in Scotland he was the last to hear calmly. Already there
had been some secret debate among the extreme party of the right of
subjects to depose a faithless king, and Argyll had already maintained
in Parliament the right of the Estates to pass laws without the royal
sanction. How far matters had gone Montrose did not yet know, but
he had other grounds than mere pique for suspecting Argyll and his
faction of some deep design against the King's authority. The plan
now submitted to him confirmed his worst suspicions. It inflamed his
jealousy of Argyll, while threatening to break for ever the dream he
still cherished of placing Charles at the head of a constitutional
government with a Presbyterian Church. The precise details of the
scheme are rather obscure; for when it afterwards became matter of
public inquiry, those most directly concerned repudiated all knowledge
of it. There seem in fact to have been more than one scheme, that
submitted to Montrose having been chosen as least likely to alarm
his inconvenient loyalty, while at the same time offering a sop to
his ambition by assigning him a share in the executive. According to
this the government of Scotland was to be placed in the hands of a
Triumvirate, consisting of Argyll, Mar, and Cassillis. Argyll was to
rule all the lands beyond the Forth, while the southern counties were
to be in charge of his colleagues. A committee or council was to work
with the Triumvirate, and in this Montrose's name had been inserted.
But though the particulars of the various schemes may have differed,
they all practically tended to the same end. Whether he was to stand
alone, an absolute dictator, or to be one of a nominal council, Argyll
was the only man who could save Scotland in her present straits.
But Montrose had a party as well as Argyll. Besides the few who,
like Napier and Stirling, looked to him as their head, there were
many who, while not sharing his sanguine loyalty, and perhaps not
altogether trusting him, were agreed with him that the time had come
when the Covenant needed to be saved from itself. They were indeed
in much the same predicament as Montrose himself, though his peculiar
temperament and aspiring genius made impossible for him what was
merely troublesome for men of commoner mould. They had subscribed the
Covenant not to destroy their king, but to save their religion. They
had subscribed it, in short, without sufficiently considering whether
it must inevitably lead them among such a people and at such a time,
unless Charles were to undergo some marvellous change in his nature
and ideas which only dreamers could hope for, and which, it is not
too much to say, no man then wearing a crown was likely to undergo.
To dethrone Charles merely to set up Argyll in his place was to their
taste neither as Scotsmen nor Covenanters. To this party Montrose
determined to appeal. A conversation held with Lindsay during a hasty
visit to Edinburgh convinced him that this idea of a dictatorship was
no mere fancy of Argyll's ambitious brain, nor promoted only by his
creatures.
In seasons of great peril
'Tis good that one bear sway.
Almost in these words, and using this very illustration from the
practice of ancient Rome, did Lindsay in private approve a scheme
of which he afterwards publicly disowned all knowledge. Montrose
accordingly resolved to play these men at their own game, and to
form a counter-plot in the interests of Scotland, her Covenant, and
her King. This was the origin of the secret alliance known as the
Cumbernauld Bond, from the place where it was signed, the house of
Montrose's uncle Lord Wigton. "Montrose's damnable bond," Baillie
calls it, "by which he thought to have sold us to the enemy;" but he
is careful not to quote it, nor to give the names of the subscribers.
Among them were Mar, the governor of Stirling Castle, Almond, Leslie's
second in command on the Border, and Erskine, whose accession to
the cause Baillie had welcomed but a short while since as a signal
instance of God's mercy. The presence of such names sufficiently
proves the genuine nature of the bond, and disposes of the assertion
that it was merely designed by Montrose to further his own personal
aggrandisement or in treachery to the Covenant. The purpose of its
subscribers is plainly declared in the clause levelled against the
"particular and indirect practising of a few," by which the Covenant
that they had signed and pledged themselves anew to promote "to the
hazard of their lives, fortunes, and estates," was now brought into
danger, and with the Covenant the country. That Argyll and his scheme
of dictatorship were the danger ahead was of course understood by
all who signed; but this danger was as manifest to Mar, Almond, and
Erskine as to Montrose.
Having thus, as he supposed, provided the means of checkmating Argyll
and his faction, Montrose returned to the army. He found it on the
point of entering England. The spot chosen was the ford over the Tweed
at Coldstream. It was a strange irony of fate that twenty years later
led another army southwards by the same ford to restore to his throne
the exiled King for whom Montrose had given his life, and against
whose father he was this day in arms! The river was in flood, and for
three days the army halted on the plain of Hirselhaugh. On August
20th the passage was practicable. But whether at the last moment they
shrank from incurring the charge of rebellion against which they had
all so strenuously protested, but which, when the Rubicon was once
passed, they would no longer be able to avoid, or from a preconcerted
plan to test Montrose's good faith, there was a strange unwillingness
among the leaders to be the first to make the passage. It was agreed
to cast lots. The lot fell on Montrose. Instantly he sprang from
his horse, and entering the stream waded through waist-high to the
farther bank. Then returning he led his division across. The whole
army followed, each captain wading on foot at the head of his men.
The passage was begun at four in the afternoon, and by midnight
five-and-twenty thousand armed Scotchmen were encamped on English
ground.
His earliest biographer, the loyal and affectionate Wishart, maintains
that it was Montrose's purpose, when once fairly across the Border, to
carry his own men over to the English camp; and that, if his friends
had kept their faith, so large a part of the Scottish army had gone
with him that the rest could have effected nothing. It is possible
that some such plan may have crossed his mind for the moment. His own
regiments, men of Perthshire and Forfarshire, raised under his own
supervision and many of them his own tenants, would have followed
whithersoever he chose to lead them. Nor is it impossible that many
of his colleagues who, like him, had put their hands prematurely to
the plough, and were now, like him, looking back, might have welcomed
any opportunity of extricating themselves from a false position.
But Wishart vouchsafes no authority for his statement. No hint of
such a design is to be found elsewhere. It was not made a charge
against Montrose during his trial before the Estates in the following
year, though it is impossible to suppose that a secret shared by so
many would not have leaked out when the tide had turned against its
author. We may therefore suppose that the generous biographer was only
endeavouring to find for an action which he conceived to need some
explanation, an excuse which his own uncompromising loyalty would
prevent him from seeing in its true light. Against treason treachery
itself would in his eyes be fair. To Wishart the Covenant had
always been an unlawful and impious league, masking under dishonest
professions of reverence to God and King designs subversive of the
authority of both. He had himself stood stoutly out against it from
the first, for which he had been deprived of his ministry, despoiled
of his property, and flung a prisoner into the Tolbooth. Such a man
may be pardoned for failing to understand his hero's conduct at this
crisis; he may be pardoned for being unable to appreciate the peculiar
nature of that loyalty to the Throne which could allow a man to bear
arms against its occupant. Even passive adherence to the Covenant
was incompatible in his plain mind with duty to his King; he would
have preferred to believe his hero capable of treachery to the rebels
whose commission he had accepted, rather than of disloyalty to the
monarch whom he professed to serve. But we must hope that Wishart was
mistaken; and that if such a course of action at any time crossed
Montrose's mind, he put it away from him as unworthy of an honest
man. Yet in truth it is not easy to reconcile Montrose's behaviour
during the past few months with his presence in the army which was now
at open war with its sovereign. The time was indeed critical enough to
have perplexed an older and a cooler head. Even were he now convinced
that to declare frankly for the King was the only course consistent
with his duty to his country, to do so before he was strong enough
to make his declaration good might for ever ruin his prospects of
serving either country or King. By still siding with the Covenant he
might yet be able to guide it to a sense of its true purpose. With
what feelings Montrose saw the royal cavalry flying in disgraceful
panic before his countrymen at Newburn, and Newcastle unbar its gates
at the first sound of the Scottish drum, we cannot tell. That he
bore his part like a brave and skilful captain we may be sure; but
that figure wading sword in hand through the swollen waters of the
Tweed is the sole glimpse of Montrose that history affords through
the brief and inglorious campaign to which it has given the name of
the Second Bishops' War. Once, indeed, he is mentioned in a way which
suggests how keenly the Royalists kept their eyes on him both as a
present foe and a possible friend. Writing to the King from Darlington
on August 30th Strafford reports as the most significant item of
news a rumour that Montrose had fallen in the affair at Newburn. His
signature also appears, along with Leslie's, Almond's, and the rest of
his principal colleagues, to one of those extraordinary documents in
which the Covenanters still continued to profess their peaceful and
loyal intentions. Of this there will be more to say hereafter. For
the present we may leave to the historian the narrative of the events
which led to the Treaty of Ripon and to the King's second and last
visit to Scotland. Montrose had pressed him to come; and when he came
Montrose was a prisoner in the hands of their common enemies.