Covenant to revenge himself on the King no one who has studied his character will believe, any more than they will believe that he joined the King to revenge himself on the Covenant. But is there anything unreasonable in believing that his resentment at behaviour of which he was conscious of having given no cause, and so much the reverse of what he had every right and reason to expect, may have rendered an ambitious and impulsive young man more amenable to the plausible arguments and misrepresentations of artful and interested counsellors? If the story of Hamilton's intrigue be true -and it is hard to believe there can have been no truth in it-Montrose had been instructed that the King was ill disposed to Scotland, and the Scots had received what he could not but consider a convincing proof of it. With his own eyes he had seen what the King's disposition was to the religion he had been bred in. Everything that had happened since his return to Scotland had unfortunately tended to confirm the original impression of his own reception and Hamilton's explanation of it. A young man of Montrose's disposition would in such a frame of mind be easy game for such cunning hunters as Rothes and his crew. There was nothing in the letter of the Covenant he signed incompatible with the peculiar nature of Scottish loyalty, which had never been of that patient, unquestioning, one might almost say unreasoning, nature which has sometimes marked the English loyalist. To save the country meant to save the King in spite of himself, in spite of those evil counsellors who stood ever at his ear to poison him against his Scottish subjects. It was an enchanting prospect for an ardent, aspiring young man who had fired his imagination with II MONTROSE'S DREAM 37 the romantic pages of Plutarch. "As Philip's noble son," he had written, As Philip's noble son did still disdain All but the dear applause of merited fame, What greater or more heroic venture could there be than to preserve the religion, laws, and liberties of his country! Hamilton and the unconscious King between them had provided the hour; Rothes found the man. It is true, therefore, to say that Montrose signed the Covenant deliberately and on reflection, and with the assurance that in so doing he was pledging himself only to a constitutional resistance against an illegal attempt to subvert the religion and liberties of his country, and in nowise combining to undermine and overthrow the lawful authority and prerogative of the Crown. But it is not therefore illogical to believe that various causes conspired to give him that assurance; and that among those causes the jealousy of Hamilton and the cunning of Rothes had their place together with the fanaticism of Laud and the folly of the King. CHAPTER III THE COVENANT YOUNG as Montrose was, discerning eyes had already marked him for one likely to play a conspicuous part on whichever side he might engage. The news that he had joined their enemies filled the Episcopal party in Scotland with consternation. So highly, it is said, did the bishops esteem his talents, that they thought it time to prepare for a storm when he had declared against them. Nor did his allies show themselves less conscious of his worth. They at once appointed him to an important place in their councils. The movement had assumed such proportions that it was found necessary to devise some less unwieldy method of conducting business than a large and tumultuous body of men with no very clear notion of what they wanted or how to secure it. It was above all things necessary for Rothes and his friends to keep the controlling power in their own hands. A committee of sixteen, representing the four Estates of the kingdom, was framed for this purpose. It was known as the Tables, from the rule that all motions were to be formally tabled, or recorded, before discussion, and was authorised to act as the responsible agent and mouthpiece of the party. The CHAP. III A GRIM JEST 39 four noblemen chosen were Rothes, Loudon, Lindsay of the Byres (one of Montrose's college friends), and Montrose himself. His nephew, by marriage with Napier's daughter, Sir George Stirling of Keir, was one of the four representatives of the lesser barons. Meanwhile Charles had abated no jot of his arbitrary policy. He had been advised by the Treasurer, Lord Traquair, to withdraw the offending liturgy, and to content himself with enforcing his civil authority. The advice was good, but it may well be doubted whether Baillie was not right in holding that affairs had now gone too far for Charles to follow it. At all events it was not followed. A proclamation was issued announcing the King's entire approval of the new liturgy, his responsibility for it, and his determination to regard all further opposition to it as treasonable. This inflammatory document was read at the city-cross in Edinburgh amid frequent and open expressions of derision. So soon as the heralds had finished, and before, owing to the crowd, they could come down from the platform, a protest prepared for the occasion was read aloud by Warriston from a scaffold raised for that purpose by the side of the old cross. He was supported by a party of sixteen noblemen. Among them was Montrose, who, in the exuberance of his zeal, had mounted on a cask that stood upon the scaffold. Rothes, who was of course present, remarking the young enthusiast's elevated position, and remembering that the place where they were standing was also the place of public execution, said laughingly to him, "James, you will never be at rest. till you be lifted up there above the rest in a rope." And this grim jest, its chronicler adds, "was afterwards accomplished in earnest in that same place; and some even say that the same supporters of the scaffold were made use of at Montrose's execution." And now the work was done, and Scotland was ripe for the Covenant. Whatever may have been the motives of its originators, there can be no question of the feelings with which the bulk of the people regarded it. Never, even in the heat of the Reformation, had the stern Scottish nature been stirred to such a depth and fervour of passion. Its two strongest feelings had been artfully inflamed, national sentiment and religious enthusiasm. It would be difficult to separate the two, and to apportion to each its share in the general movement. But it is clear that love for the religion they had deliberately chosen and established with tears and blood was at this time strongly deepened by the thought that it was menaced by a king of the hated English. The place and time for the great ceremony were chosen. The time was the last day of February, 1638. The place was the church but lately raised beneath the shadow of the great castle whence had issued but a few short years previously, with all the pomp of a monarch moving amid a rejoicing people to assume the crown of his fathers, the King whose authority they were now met to renounce. Of all the historical spots in that beautiful city there is none that an Englishman surveys with more mingled feelings than the churchyard of the Greyfriars. There at the appointed hour came the leading members of the Tables, with Warriston to read the sacred document and Henderson to explain it for any who still wavered. Loudon and Rothes spoke with all their |