were vested with presbyterial authority, and were to perform every part of the ministerial functions, proper to them in such circumstances1."

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

1 Stevenson's Church and State, 439.

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.

Covenanters were unopposed, the chiefs addressed a petition, with the sword in their hand, to the king, who in reply desired them to come to particulars, and state really what were the grievances to which they had only alluded in general terms. He at the same time informed them that he had summoned a meeting of the peers of England, on the 24th of September, by whose advice he should act. They returned a list of their demands, more in the style of independent powers than the petition of subjects, that he would confirm all the ordinances of their late parliament-deliver the fortresses of the kingdom into their hands-exempt their friends from all such oaths as were inconsistent with their covenant-that the common incendiaries, who have been the authors of this combustion, may receive their just censure that the losses and charges of the Covenanters may be restored-that the declaration of traitors may be recalled, and all garrisons removed from the borders1. While they were thus insulting the king, they were not forgetful of their secret friends in London; they made a merit of allowing the free trade in coals to the metropolis, and they despatched an emissary with a letter to the lord mayor, on the 9th September, to solicit him to embarrass the king with an urgent petition for the meeting of parliament. This the lord mayor and aldermen immediately did; and at the same time, to add still more to the king's embarrassment, twelve peers sent forward a petition for the same object. His majesty was much affected at these unseasonable petitions, and their taking advantage of his distress to press their own desires, instead of enabling him to combat and beat back the invading enemy.

The earl of Strafford alone gave the king the best counsel, of paying the rebels with steel, and prosecuting the war with vigour, taking the initiative, and not to stand on the defensive. He urged the king not to treat with rebels having arms in their hands, and neither to give nor accept terms from them in their present position. He intreated his majesty to give him leave to fight them, when he did not doubt of being able to drive them back, and to reduce them to obedience. This manly and loyal counsel was immediately communicated to the Covenanters at Newcastle, by their bed-chamber friends, and so enraged them, that they never ceased to pursue the earl of Strafford till their friends and allies in the English parliament brought him to the block. With the design of secretly favouring the invaders, the marquis of Hamilton earnestly ad

1 Nalson's Collections, i. 434.

vised the king to enter into a treaty with his rebels, and most of the peers were of the same opinion, and also advised the king to call a parliament in England, as most expedient in the present circumstances, and so to avert the danger with which they were threatened1.

66

Charles agreed to the advice thus pressed upon him by the peers, and he nominated Rippon, and the 1st of October, as the time and place of meeting. In the meantime, Leslie had laid in provision and forage for his winter quarters at Newcastle, and had seized the rents of the bishop and the dean and chapter of Durham, and also of all the popish and loyal gentry of the northern counties. Great," says Nalson, 66 were the disorders and insolencies which these barbarous pretenders to religion and reformation committed; they treated the counties where they lay as a conquered people, and even when they pretended to fight for the security of laws, liberty, and religion, they trampled them all under their feet, and without sense of religion they made their will their law, and arbitrarily imposed taxes upon his majesty's subjects 2." Among the Scottish commissioners who met at Rippon, were Johnston of Warriston, and Alexander Henderson; the English commissioners were those noblemen who had petitioned in favour of the Scots and for the meeting of a parliament; so that the commissioners on both sides were of the same mind, and decided enemies of the king. The conclusions of the last parliament formed the basis of the terms to be insisted for by the Scots; and they were instructed to demand £40,000 per month for the pay and maintenance of their army. The English commissioners heard complacently all the complaints of the Covenanters, who cunningly mixed up some of the grievances of which the English puritans complained, which pleased the king's commissioners, who made no defence for their royal master, nor reduced the complaints of their antagonists. But the king being in no condition to comply with the extravagant demands of the Covenanters, the treaty was adjourned to London, whither the king also returned. During the interval, the Scotch commissioners tampered with the people, whilst Henderson and some other covenanting ministers inflamed them by seditious sermons in St. Antholine's church, which had been set apart for their use. "Our puritans," says a reverend author, 66 were but dull trumpeters of sedition;

1 Nalson's Collections, i. 438.-Balfour's Annals, ii. 394-407.-Guthry's Memoirs, 74. 2 Collections, i. 440.