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to declare and assure that, according to the petitioners' humble desires, all matters ecclesiastical shall be determined by the assemblies of the kirk, and matters civil by the parliament, and other inferior judicatories established by law; which assemblies shall be kept once a year, or as shall be agreed on at the General Assembly 1." The more the king conceded, the more dissatisfied the covenanting chiefs became; and the earl of Cassilis offered the Lyon a protest after reading the proclamamation, which he refused to receive. The king then sent him post to Edinburgh, to read the proclamation there, which he did at the Cross with great solemnity, assisted by the magistrates. Here again the earl of Rothes, with all the other Table chiefs, were ready to protest that "they did adhere to the Assembly of Glasgow in so far as was communed betwixt his majesty and the commissioners in his majesty's camp, at the Birks-on-Tweed2." This perverseness is the more singular, inasmuch as Rothes, Loudon, and Henderson," in the name of all the Covenanters, gave his majesty most humble thanks for the gracious answer he had given their petition, in his Declaration 3."

The Covenanters discharged the raw undisciplined part of their army, but retained all their experienced and veteran officers, with the better-disciplined part of their troops, and kept them on full pay. Besides this act of bad faith, they prosecuted all the loyalists, and those who had either not signed or had slackened in their zeal for the covenant; and they continued the false charges and condign penalties against the exiled prelates. This last resolution was adopted in consequence of the king having remitted a paper to the Tables containing eighteen "grievances," or remonstrances, against their bad faith and non-fulfilment of the agreement at Birks; the tenth and eleventh of which are, "Why seditious ministers, who in their sermons preach seditiously, are not taken order with? Why our good subjects are deterred and threatened, if they should come home to their own native country and houses?" Answers to the articles were sent, but in a tone very unbefitting the extreme humility which they affected, and very unbecoming loyal and obedient subjects to their lawful sovereign. To these it was answered-" We know no such seditious ministers; and when any ministers, alleged seditious, shall be called before the judge ordinary, they shall be punished according to justice." To the eleventh-" We know

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none of his majesty's good subjects who are now deterred or threatened, nor do we allow that any should be troubled; and if any fear themselves, there is an ordinary way in justice which they may use; and if under the name of good subjects is meant excommunicated persons [the bishops to wit], who by the laws of this country should be rebells, and caption used against them, which has been desired by the kirk and country, and refused, and who also are the authors of all the evils that has come upon this kingdom, none can give assurance for their indemnity, who stand thus guilty and odious to the people." They renewed all their former menaces against the prelates by proclamation, and imposed grievous penalties upon whosoever should assist or shelter any of them in their houses: "so that by the time the king came to London, it appeared plainly that the army was disbanded without any peace made, and the Scots in more reputation and equal inclination to affront his majesty, than ever. Upon which a paper published by them, and avowed to contain the matter of the treaty, was burned by the common hangman; everybody disavowing the contents of it, but nobody taking upon him to publish a copy that they owned to be true 1."

The castle of Edinburgh was delivered up to the marquis of Hamilton on the 22nd of June, who gave the command of it to General Ruthven, who found the marquis of Huntly and his son in it, and set them at liberty, and the royal navy returned to England. The honest and well-disposed part of the nation now hoped that the rebellion was at an end, and that affairs would be conducted, as formerly, by the royal authority; but nothing was farther from the intention of the Covenanters. A well-planned accident broke the terms of the pacification; for as general Ruthven and lord Kinnoul were walking in the street, "the devout wives (who at first put life in the cause) did now (when it was in danger of being buried) restore it again, by invading them, and throwing stones at them." This assault on the king's servants was privately arranged by those who dared not appear in such an infamous affair, for, as Guthry observes, "those women used not to run unsent." Lords Loudon, Lothian, and Montrose, were despatched to Berwick to explain and excuse it; and returning, brought an order from his majesty, requiring fourteen noblemen and gentlemen to repair to Berwick, to consult with them respecting the ensuing Assembly and parliament. As they were themselves so full of trick and subterfuge, they were suspicious of

1 Balfour's Annals, i. 331-329.-Clarendon's Rebellion, i. 203.

his majesty's honour, and some of the double-dealers in his court had written to their friends that it was the king's intention to make them all prisoners; a piece of treachery which was altogether abhorrent to his majesty's disposition. The party who had been summoned, however, made as if they would go, but privately they had organised a riotous assemblage of the "pious women" and their husbands, who had been prompted to accuse the king of designed treachery, and meeting the party at the water-gate on the commencement of their journey, riotously compelled them, nothing loath, to return to their homes. This was just the pretence which they wanted, and accordingly the lord Loudon was despatched to Berwick, to state how they had been forcibly detained, and to apologise for not waiting on his majesty at all. His majesty was so disgusted at their low cunning and disrespectful carriage, and so indignant at their unworthy distrust of his royal word, that he would not attend the parliament, but set out post for London on the 29th of July. The Covenanters raised a mighty clamour against the king, as if he had been guilty of a very heinous sin, and the whole of the alleged plot was charitably ascribed to the advice of archbishop Laud1. Nalson says, that at the late interview the king entirely gained Montrose to his party and interest, and much softened the lords Lothian and Loudon, from whom he penetrated the determination of the Covenanters to repeal all former acts of parliament for the establishment of episcopacy, and to alter the established form of introducing bills into parliament through the lords of the Articles 2.

As soon as the pressure from without was removed, the worthy citizens of Aberdeen returned to their duty and allegiance, and publicly renounced the covenant, which had been forced upon them at the point of the sword. The lord Aboyne also had collected a small body of his father's tenants, to the amount of two thousand foot and about three hundred horse, with which he came to the assistance of the loyal citizens. The treachery of a colonel Gun, under the private advice of the marquis of Hamilton, gave Montrose an easy victory at the bridge of Dee, which laid the city at his feet. Some covenanting ministers, who hovered like birds of prey round the armies, were very urgent that the town should be burnt, and given up to military pillage; but which Montrose's humanity

1 Guthry's Mem. 52-53.-Stevenson's Church and State, p. 386.-Balfour's Annals, ii. 340-345.

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sternly prohibited, to the regret of principal Baillie, and which Mr. Napier calls "the characteristic longing of a clergyman of the covenant" for the blood of its enemies, for "that country's malicious disloyalty1." Montrose now disbanded his forces, and retired to his own house, where he remained for some time, and where he had leisure to reflect on his own hitherto disloyal conduct, which had exalted the cause of the rebels more than any of their other successes.

Before Charles's departure from Berwick it was necessary to appoint a commissioner to the Assembly and parliament; he never doubted but that both these courts would confirm the acts of the Glasgow Assembly, and it seems he at one time entertained some thoughts of not allowing them to meet. But the specious reasons which Traquair advanced made some impression on the king's mind, and determined him to allow the meeting. Traquair said, "that let the next parliament do what it would, there were still good grounds to introduce episcopacy whenever the king was able to carry it; for bishops being (by all the laws of Scotland) one of the three estates of parliament, no act that passed without them could have force in law, much less the act that abolished them, especially when they were not appearing, nor consenting, but protesting against it." This reasoning partly allayed the king's fears, and he urged the marquis of Hamilton to accept the office of commissioner, which "he wisely declined;" and therefore Traquair was appointed to represent the king's person at both the meetings, and the following instructions were given him, dated Berwick, July 27, 16392.

Lay-elders to be admitted as members, but not to be allowed to vote in fundamental points of religion. To make the Assembly sensible of the king's condescension in convoking it, and of his prohibiting the bishops from attending as constituent members of it.-To prevent all questions about the last Assembly, and whatever shall be done in ratification, our will is, that you declare the same to be done as an act of this Assembly, and that you consent thereto only upon these terms, and no ways as having relation to the former Assembly.-To shun all disputes about the king's power, either to call or to dissolve Assemblies. To declare the king's disposition, for the people's full satisfaction, to remit episcopacy and the estate of bishops to the freedom of the Assembly; but without respect to the last Assembly. To be done without warrant from the bishops,

1 Napier's Montrose and Covenanters, ch. viii.-Guthry's Memoirs, 49. Nalson's Collections, i. p. 245.

and not as if episcopacy was unlawful, but only for satisfaction to the people, and for settling the present disorders.. The Assembly is not to meddle with any thing that is civil, or hath been established by act of parliament." We will not allow of any commissioner from the Assembly, nor any such act as may give ground for continuing of the Tables or Conventicles. If episcopacy be abolished, the king to have the power of choosing fourteen ministers to represent the fourteen bishops in parliament; or if that cannot be, that fourteen others whom he shall present be agreed to, with a power to choose the lords of the articles for the nobility for this time, until the business be farther considered upon.-We allow that episcopacy be abolished for the reasons contained in the Articles; and the covenant, 1580, for satisfaction of our people, to be subscribed, provided it be so conceived that thereby our subjects be not forced to abjure episcopacy as a point of popery, or contrary to God's law or to the protestant religion; but if they require it to be abjured as contrary to the constitution of the church of Scotland, you are to give way to it rather than to make a breach.-After all Assembly business is ended, and immediately before prayers, you shall, in the fairest way that you can, protest that in respect of his majesty's resolution of not coming in person, and that his instructions were upon short advertisement, whereupon many things may have occurred, wherein you have not had his majesty's pleasure, and for such other reasons as occasion may furnish, you are to protest, that in case any thing hath escaped you, or hath been condescended upon in this present Assembly prejudicial to his majesty's service, that his majesty may be heard for redress thereof, in his own time and place1."

These instructions were dated at Berwick, the 27th of July, by which the king vainly hoped he would soften the rigid tempers of the Covenanters, and disarm them of their hostility; but in this his majesty was greatly mistaken. They very soon shewed that they were incapable of being satisfied or conciliated by the king's condescension, and that all his concessions only led to further and higher demands. For, says Nalson, "the ink was scarce dry which had written the articles of the accommodation, before they had broken it in almost every particular; for though they dissolved their camp, yet they did not disband their army, for they marched away and kept in great bodies, contrary to the first. The Tables continued to sit and act, alleging it was necessary they should do so till the

1 Nalson's Collections, i. 245-247.-Stevenson's Church and State, p. 287, 288.

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