from a solitary apartment to three or four rooms, next to the freedom of the whole fortress, and at last to his full liberty. He next brought him to Court, where he kissed the king's hand; and Charles was so infatuated as to take this traitor into favour, and to send him down to Scotland with a commission to reduce the covenanters to obedience1!

Thus Charles was betrayed, on all hands, by those men on whose fidelity he reposed a fatal confidence that they would perform their respective sworn duties; but who pretended to misunderstand his instructions, and who wilfully acted in direct. opposition to his known will and designs, and his peremptory commands, which he unfortunately wanted firmness to enforce. Indeed, it appears evident that God had given over the chief actors in the transactions of these times to a reprobate mind; had placed a lying spirit in the mouths of the presbyterian ministers, a strong delusion to believe their lies on the people, and an infatuated monomania of concession, confidence in false friends, and infirmity of purpose on the king himself, that was fatal to his crown and life, as preludes to a national punishment for national crimes. De Foe has well described a covenanter, when he says, "It is no difficulty for him to take oaths against what he really purposes to do; to abjure the cause he from his breast espouses, and the person he reserves his allegiance for; no parliament will make an oath he will not take, and should you ask him to abjure God or the devil, the matter is equal; for if he abjures the last, he is never the farther off from his service, and if he does not abjure the first, he is never the nearer to regard him. Under this jury are couched and concealed innumerable mischiefs, such as these: he becomes protected by the very government he abhors; he eats the bread of the nation he betrays, obtains the favour of the prince he conspires to depose; he is cherished by the poor well-meaning creatures that he debauches; he is embraced by that church he in his heart disowns, and he is ignorantly received by those that in their hearts abhor his designs." They addressed a foreign prince at the very time that they were swearing fidelity to their own natural sovereign, and calling God to witness the sincerity of their loyalty. In the session of parliament for this and the succeeding years, they insidiously but quietly effected a complete revolution, which subverted the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and paved the way for the republic and the dictatorship of Argyle, and all the bloodshed and national infamy, distress, and suffering, that followed.

Hist. of the Rebellion, i. 211, 212.-Nalson's Collection, i. 377.

44

CHAPTER XVII.

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES

PRESBYTERIES, THE COVENANT, AND THE GRAND REBELLION.

1640.-The Covenanting forces rendezvous at Dunse-passage of the Tweedtheir proclamation-the military presbytery-passage of the Tyne-Newcastle occupied. The king repairs to York-his proclamation.-The Covenanters petition the king-earl Strafford's advice-Hamilton's counsel-Leslie's oppression.-Treaty of Rippon-removed to London.-Meeting of the English parliament and of the Scottish parliament.-A popish plot.-Sir William Boswell's letter.-Plots of the jesuits-Monsieur Conn's intrigues.-Impeachment of the earl of Strafford.-Acts of the English parliament.-Bishops interrupted in their way to the House-Conduct of the Commons.-Reflections.

1640.-IT HAVING BEEN unanimously agreed to invade the realm of England, the covenanting troops rendezvoused at Dunse on the 27th July, where they lingered in inactivity a full month. The passage of the Tweed was made at Coldstream on the 21st of August, when dice were cast to see who should be the leading traitor, and the first to pass the Rubicon. The lot fell on Montrose; "either it was so managed, to test his willingness, and commit him conspicuously in the rebellion, or the fortune was remarkable1." Sir Alexander Leslie had been again chosen the general; and a declaration was issued, to precede the rebel forces," wherein they obtest the all-seeing God, that they intended not the least diminution of the king's honour and greatness, nor any prejudice or hurt to England, but only to seek their peace!" To assault the king, and invade the realm of England, appears, to the uninitiated in covenant ing casuistry, rather a strange way of "seeking peace and ensuing it," but such was the hypocrisy of the age, that the worst acts of sedition and rebellion were always reputed to be done for the glory of God, and to make the king the most glorious and exalted monarch in the world!

In this expedition every regiment was attended by a chaplain, who was always "the most eminent of the ministers in the bounds where they were raised;" and, consequently, their parishioners were left without " supply of sermon." Mr. Henderson, Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. John Livingstone, Mr. Robert Baillie, Mr. Andrew Cant, Mr. George Gillespie, and others,

1 Napier's Montrose and the Covenanters, i. 318.

were vested with presbyterial authority, and were to perform every part of the ministerial functions, proper to them in such circumstances 1."

Notwithstanding all their activity and preparations for war, with the advantage of religious fanaticism in their favour, the rebels might have been easily subdued had the king been made of sterner stuff; but his clemency and repugnance to shed blood, which amounted almost to a monomania, induced him to negociate and temporize, where he ought to have smitten with the edge of the sword. The insurgents discovered the king's disposition, and were proportionably emboldened in their proceedings, and treated with him more as independent princes than as dutiful subjects; and it was his great mistake to suffer them to assume this unprecedented attitude, from which he was never able afterwards to strike them down. It was an amazing infatuation in Charles, to take a traitor out of the Tower, into his counsels, and put him into a capacity for effectuating a greater damage to his affairs; and it reflects no little discredit on the marquis of Hamilton that he had recommended this fatal measure to his sovereign. But Charles was betrayed and deceived on all hands; and the gentlemen of his bed-chamber were in full correspondence with the Tables, and furnished them with ample intelligence of all his intentions, and with copies of the despatches which he received relating to their movements, so that they were always enabled to anticipate his designs. The Covenanters had taken the initiative in the war, whilst Charles was negociating with them, and vainly attempting, by concessions and heaping favours on their chiefs, to recal them to a sense of their duty. But, without revenue or munitions of war, he was exposed to the furious assault of a bigotted and implacable faction, whose fundamental principle made rebellion a sacred duty, and who had actually united with papists in order to extirpate popery and the church.

On the 26th of August the Covenanters halted at Frewick, on Newcastle muir, and thence sent letters to the commander of the king's forces and to the mayor, requesting permission to pass through the town, as the king's highway, in order, as they pretended, to lay their grievances before the king. The letters having been disrespectfully sent, by the hands of a common drummer, were not received, but were returned unopened. On this rebuff the Covenanters marched about five miles up the river to a fordable place at the village of Newburn, where they found a detachment of the royal army, posted on the opposite

Stevenson's Church and State, 139.

bank of the Tyne, to oppose their passage. At low water the Tyne is here fordable; and lord Conway, who commanded the royal troops, made but a faint resistance. The Covenanters effected the passage with only the loss of a dozen killed, and five-and-twenty wounded; a circumstance which shews that no effectual resistance had been made, but that lord Conway and his detachment had fled without coming to blows.

On the following day, Leslie, and the committee of parliament, which attended the army as a sort of council of war, wrote to the mayor of Newcastle to provide quarters and provision for their men; which was granted, and the mayor and municipality came out in procession on Sunday morning to meet the general, and conduct him to the mayor's house, where he established his head-quarters. Henderson and Cant were appointed to preach in two of the churches; which they did, on the merits of the covenant, whose fruits had hitherto been only bloodshed and rebellion. It appears, however, that many of the soldiers, who had been forced into the rebel army through the patriarchal power of their landlords, were not so enamoured of the covenant as to fight for it willingly; for Balfour informs us, that they deserted in whole companies, and, wherever secured and brought back, were decimated as an example to deter others. "And because many of our soldiers have run away, which may be an occasion to the whole army to mutiny, whereof some ran away in whole companies, who were brought back, and the tenth man hanged." Had Charles acted with so much cruelty and vigour he would have been much better served, and some of those who were now in arms against him would have justly met the fate of traitors; but mere justice like this, when exercised by him, would have been counted tyranny and cruelty, and arbitrary power. Clarendon calls lord Conway's flight "an infamous and irreparable rout;" but, as he also says, he was a man who "had no kind of sense of religion, and thought all was alike," it is probable that he may have wished well to a religion which was one entirely of hypocrisy and outward show1.

The shameful flight of the horse was imitated by the infantry, which had not been brought forward; but on hearing of the rout of their advanced guard, they left the town precipitately. So unexpected was this victory, that the Covenanters were uncertain how to act, being unacquainted with the full retreat of the royal troops; and when they took possession of

1 Clarendon's Hist. of Rebellion, i. 231 33.-Balfour's Annals, ii. 383-88.Stevenson's Church and State, 447-48.-Guthry's Memoirs, 70.

Newcastle, they secured the royal magazine both of arms and provision, and finding the traitor Colville, who had been the bearer of their letter to the king of France and Cardinal Richlieu, they set him at liberty. By this shameful defection of the lord Conway, the Covenanters gained the first impression of victory, which encouraged their troops and their friends at home, besides it confirmed the wavering, and brought many accessions to their body. In an equal degree it dispirited the royalists, who, although they were so much more numerous than the rebels, yet, from dispersion and retirement, were unconscious of their strength.

On hearing of the march of the Covenanters, the king repaired to York, and there was apprized of the disgraceful flight of lord Conway's division; where he issued a proclamation, declaring all Scotsmen who should enter England in an hostile manner, and those who assisted them, to be traitors, and liable to incur the penalties of high treason: yet he declared his readiness to forgive the rebels if they would return to their obedience, and solemnly professed that he never did or would hinder his Scottish subjects from enjoying their religion or liberties according to the civil and ecclesiastical laws of the kingdom. The Covenanters also published two papers, on their entry into England, to justify their invasion, on the score, they said, of seeking a thorough reformation of religion, and in obedience to that clause of their covenant which bound them to extirpate the church. These two papers contained the seeds of the English puritans' rebellion, and shew the utter perfidy of the Covenanters, who violated their fairest promises almost with the same breath that they had made them, and that there was a secret confederacy betwixt them and a party in England. Charles was surrounded, even in his domestic circle, with traitors, and an intercepted letter shews that even the queen was playing the game of the jesuits :-" Trust me," says the writer," for I heard it from the best of them, and therefore provide as you write, and advertise the honest and true lads that are near you, and they may advertise others which are of the faithful; for we know as well what the honest king does in his bedchamber as that papist wench that lies by his side, who is the only animator of the best sort of men that are against us 1."

As soon as the Covenanters had taken possession of Newcastle, they laid the town and surrounding country under contribution. The royalists retreated into Yorkshire; and as the

1 Nalson's Collections, 509-11.