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should make them, as an independent nation, submit to the laws and customs of a foreign country. Though the king once and again renewed his efforts to secure the union of the two countries, the house made no advance, nor was anything really done for the effecting of it, till more than a century of years had rolled away. On his own authority, he had assumed the title of king of Great Britain, and had quartered the arms of Scotland with those of England, on all the coins, flags, and ensigns. He had also engaged the judicial authorities to make a declaration that all those who, after the union of the crowns, should be born in either kingdom, should be naturalised in both. Still the parliament watched with the most vigilant spirit every movement likely to affect the national liberty. The Scots were still a free people, and their constitution had in it all the freedom which was inherent in the ancient feudal institutions, and it was all but impossible that James should encroach on the liberties and the independence of the nation. Disappointed and thwarted in his efforts, James now turned his attention to his English affairs. In these he was equally unsuccessful. He carried matters with so high a hand, as to lead to an open rupture between him and his parliament. He became more arbitrary and more despotic than ever. It was well for both countries that his course was nearly run. After having distracted Scotland by ecclesiastical questions and usages, and converted England into a field for civil war, he was seized with tertian ague, or with bilious fever, and died on the 27th of March, 1625, in the fiftyninth year of his age, and the twenty-second after his accession to the throne of the Tudors.

We deny not that he was a man of considerable talent, and of great learning, but he had neither courage, nor sagacity, neither mental nor political energy, neither dignity of feeling, nor grandeur of purpose, nor manliness of action. Nor can we conceive of anything more humiliating, than to go down to the grave neither lamented nor honoured, and for posterity to find no more appropriate epitaph for his tomb, than that "HE WAS THE WISEST FOOL IN CHRISTENDOM."

disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposed and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was still as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. All along the southern border, and all along the line between the highlands and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of the country, men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts, had cooled during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mind was divided between two classes of malcontents, the lords of the soil and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had often impelled the old Douglases to withstand the royal house, and preachers who had inherited the republican opinions and the unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the population had been wounded. All orders of men complained that their country, that country which had, with so much glory, defended her independence, against the ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had through the instrumentality of her native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province of England. In no part of Europe had the Calvanistic doctrine and discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The church of Rome was regarded by the great body of the people with a hatred which might justly be called ferocious; and the church of England, which seemed to be every day becoming more and more like the church of Rome, was an object of scarcely less aversion.

"The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the whole island, and had already, with this view, made several changes highly distasteful to every presbyterian. One innovation,

however, the most hazardous of all, because it was directly cognisable by the senses of the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worship of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid protestants, for the worse. To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, our country owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution, Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English people sympathised with the religious feelings of the insurgents; and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and to make the calling of a parliament necessary."

*Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 92-94.

SECTION 1.-CHARLES AND THE COVENANTERS.

To

Like his father, Charles was a zealous episcopalian, and would have preferred a papist to a presbyterian. It therefore became a question, how he could bring the church of Scotland, in her worship and polity, into perfect accordance with the church of England. establish an episcopacy, with its graduated clergy, required larger funds than Scotland could command. But this difficulty, the king and his councillors attempted to overcome by revoking all the tithes and benefices which had been conferred on the lay nobility at the time of the reformation, and placing them at the disposal of the crown. This the nobility and gentry refused to the utmost; and still Charles was bent on recovering the patrimony of the church. A commission was appointed, with the earl of Nithsdale at its head, to receive the surrender of the ecclesiastical property; and those who refused to submit to the arbitration of the sovereign, were punished and imprisoned. A secret disaffection to the government was thus created; not a few of the nobles came over to the side of the presbyterians, and a conspiracy was formed against the throne.

At this juncture, Charles visited his native land. At first he was well received, but his unceasing efforts to impose episcopacy upon his Scottish subjects, rendered him obnoxious in their eyes. It is true that the parliament of Scotland voted him large and unprecedented supplies, and so far gratified his vanity, as to pass an act for the introduction and use of episcopal vestments in public worship, but such was the flame which he had kindled, that he was glad to withdraw into his English dominions. It was not till four years later, that the creature Laud ventured to change the order of the service. The rash and fatal experiment was made on the 23rd day of July, 1637, in the high church of St. Giles, Edinburgh. The congregation was large, and to increase the solemnity, the judges, the prelates, and certain members of the council, attended. For a little while, the audience remained apparently attentive and devout, until the officiating clergyman gave out the collect for the day, when an old woman named Janet Geddes, hollowed out:-" De'il colic the wame o' thee, thou false thief! wilt thou say mass at my lug?" And with that she flung the stool on which she had been sitting at the dean's head, and an indescribable tumult followed. The dean was attacked, the surplice torn from his shoulders, and himself driven out of the church. The bishop of Edinburgh ascended the pulpit, with a view of restoring order, but he was assailed with missiles, and there was raised the shout of "a pape!-a pape! antichrist!--pull him down !-stane him!" He was forced to make his escape, or his life would have been in danger. This tumult was the signal for a general resistance to the Book of Prayer throughout the country. The nation partook the feeling and the sentiment of the citizens of Edinburgh, and the privy council had no alternative but to write and inform Charles of the nature and extent of the opposition. More than thirty peers, a large proportion of the resident gentry, and the greater number of the royal burghs, entered into an agreement to resist the farther

a donation of three hundred thousand pounds, granted under the name of brotherly assistance, the Scottish army withdrew, and left the king and the parliament of England to settle their own affairs.

In August, 1641, his majesty again visited Scotland, in the hope, no doubt, of attaching to his person and interest, some of the principal Scottish leaders, and of forming a party which might be disposed to serve him in the event of an open rupture with his English parliament. But prodigal as he was of his gifts and dignities, the only nobleman of whom he made a convert, was James Graham, the earl of Montrose -that Montrose who had taken so active a part in framing the National Covenant, who had been sent by the covenanting lords to chastise the prelatic town of Aberdeen, and disperse the royalist party, and who, when the Scottish army entered England, was the first to ford the Tweed, and then return to lead over his troops. Mortified on finding the precedence given to Argyle, he withdrew his attachment from the covenanters, and Charles discovering his dissatisfaction with the party, found no difficulty in engaging him in the royal cause. He began to raise a party in favour of the afflicted monarch; and the covenanters, to punish his defection, threw him into prison. Still he found means of communicating with his majesty, and in his secret intercourse, betrayed both the covenanters and the opposition party in the English parliament. Fondly would Charles have founded a charge of treason against both, but his strength was too feeble to run such a hazard, and he left Scotland with a smile upon his face which ill corresponded with the burden upon his heart. When he returned to England, Charles found it on the very point of explosion. Throughout, it heaved and trembled, as if with volcanic force. The elements of destruction were gathering strength and concentration. It was apparent that an open and uncompromising opposition to the policy of the king could alone save England. Her salvation called aloud for patriotic men and true. Nor were they a few of either house, but all the great patriots of both houses, who concurred to make enquiry into the grievances of this reign. The nation now became divided into two sections-the cavaliers, or the party royalist, and the roundheads, or party popular. In this latter section, the stern and sturdy covenanters of Scotland formed a prime element, and performed no field-day part in the mighty struggle for civil and religious liberty. The parliament of England was now in the ascendency, and Charles had no alternative but either to submit or have recourse to arms. He left London, assembled his adherents at Nottingham, and raised the royal standard as the signal of civil war. This was on August 22nd, 1642. The fates favoured him not. Heaven was not auspicious to his design. The very elements conspired against him. The wind, which was very tempestuous, that very night, blew down his standard, and laid it with the dust. Bad omen this for poor Charles. So he must have believed, for at no very great distance from this spot the earl of Essex was organising the parliamentary army, in which Cromwell served as captain, and from which he was destined to rise to the highest rank. Liberty was now to fight the ground with tyranny. Exclusive of the eastern association, where Cromwell, by his extreme vigilance, prevented the designs of

the royal party, every county in England was a stage on which the great tragedy of the civil war was about to be acted.

The war commenced. It was no vulgar conflict. The Scottish estates sent a commission to Oxford, to negotiate a peace between the king and his parliament; but Charles treated them with coldness and indifference, and was advised to give no ear to men who had been the first to resist his authority. They left Oxford less attached to the royal cause, and more prepared to side with the popular party in support of their common liberties. In some of their earlier engageinents, the parliamentarians sustained positive defeat, and it was feared that the issue of the war would be decidedly in the royal favour. To secure this, nothing was wanted but the aid of the Scots; and it now became the policy of Charles either to attach them to his interest, or to engage them to be neutral in the strife. Never did he more mistake the Scottish character. While he was madly carrying on war with his people in the south, his subjects in the north had been busy in framing THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, in which they agreed to defend each other against all opponents, to endeavour, without respect of persons, to extirpate popery and prelacy, superstition, schism, heresy, and profaneness; and to maintain the rights and privileges of parliaments. Another, and still more extraordinary stipulation, was, that both nations should endeavour, with their estates and lives, not only to preserve the rights and privileges of the parliaments and the liberties of the kingdom, but to preserve and defend the king's majesty's person and authority, that the world might bear witness of their loyalty, and that they had no thoughts nor inclinations to diminish his majesty's just power and greatness. This famous document was signed and sworn to in Scotland with acclamation: and the English parliament having given a general consent to its propositions, the Scots proceeded with eager haste to send to their assistance. An army, twenty-one thousand strong, had crossed the Tweed, and were marching knee-deep in the cold snows of the cold days of January. In conjunction with the parliamentary troops, they commenced the siege of York, which was defended by the marquis of Newcastle. The parliamentarians, from growing divisions among themselves, and from other causes, were at first disposed to resign the city to their new adversary. As if to dishearten them still more "in the last days of June, prince Rupert, with an army of some twenty thousand fierce men, came pouring over the hills of Lancashire, where he had left harsh traces of himself, to relieve the marquis of Newcastle, who was now, with a force of six thousand, besieged in York, by the united forces of the Scots, under Leven; the Yorkshiremen, under lord Fairfax; and the associated counties under Manchester and Cromwell." On hearing of his approach, the parliament generals raised the siege, and drew off in the direction or Marston moor, on which the great decisive battle was fought. The Scots, having marched in the advance, were hastily recalled, and, forming into line of battle with their comrades upon elevated and advantageous ground, they unitedly, upon the appearance of their common foe, presented such an extensive and imposing front, as more effectually to check the accustomed impetuosity of the prince, than to

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