A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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This, in the opinion of the great majority of the preachers and populace,
was flat blasphemy, an assumption of "the Crown Honours of Christ." The
Liturgy was "an ill-mumbled Mass," the Mass was idolatry, and idolatry
was a capital offence. However strange these convictions may appear,
they were essential parts of the national belief. Yet, with the most
extreme folly, Charles, acting like Henry VIII. as his own Pope, thrust
the canons and this Liturgy upon the Kirk and country. No sentimental
arguments can palliate such open tyranny.

The Liturgy was to be used in St Giles' Church, the town kirk of
Edinburgh (cleansed and restored by Charles himself), on July 23, 1637.
The result was a furious brawl, begun by the women, of all presbyterians
the fiercest, and, it was said, by men disguised as women. A gentleman
was struck on the ear by a woman for the offence of saying "Amen," and
the famous Jenny Geddes is traditionally reported to have thrown her
stool at the Dean's head. The service was interrupted, the Bishop was
the mark of stones, and "the Bishops' War," the Civil War, began in this
brawl. James VI., being on the spot, had thoroughly quieted Edinburgh
after a more serious riot, on December 17, 1596. But Charles was far
away; the city had not to fear the loss of the Court and its custom, as
on the earlier occasion (the removal of the Council to Linlithgow in
October 1637 was a trifle), and the Council had to face a storm of
petitions from all classes of the community. Their prayer was that the
Liturgy should be withdrawn. From the country, multitudes of all classes
flocked into Edinburgh and formed themselves into a committee of public
safety, "The Four Tables," containing sixteen persons.

The Tables now demanded the removal of the bishops from the Privy Council
(December 21, 1637). The question was: Who were to govern the country,
the Council or the Tables? The logic of the Presbyterians was not always
consistent. The king must not force the Liturgy on them, but later,
their quarrel with him was that he would not, at their desire, force the
absence of the Liturgy on England. If the king had the right to inflict
Presbyterianism on England, he had the right to thrust the Liturgy on
Scotland: of course he had neither one right nor the other. On February
19, 1638, Charles's proclamation, refusing the prayers of the
supplication of December, was read at Stirling. Nobles and people
replied with protestations to every royal proclamation. Foremost on the
popular side was the young Earl of Montrose: "you will not rest," said
Rothes, a more sober leader, "till you be lifted up above the lave in
three fathoms of rope." Rothes was a true prophet; but Montrose did not
die for the cause that did "his green unknowing youth engage."

The Presbyterians now desired yearly General Assemblies (of which James
VI. had unlawfully robbed the Kirk); the enforcement of an old
brief-lived system of restrictions (_caveats_) on the bishops; the
abolition of the Articles of Perth; and, as always, of the Liturgy. If
he granted all this Charles might have had trouble with the preachers, as
James VI. had of old. Yet the demands were constitutional; and in
Charles's position he would have done well to assent. He was obstinate
in refusal.

The Scots now "fell upon the consideration of a band of union to be made
legally," says Rothes, their leader, the chief of the House of Leslie
(the family of Norman Leslie, the slayer of Cardinal Beaton). Now a
"band" of this kind could not, by old Scots law, be legally made; such
bands, like those for the murder of Riccio and of Darnley, and for many
other enterprises, were not smiled upon by the law. But, in 1581, as we
saw, James VI. had signed a covenant against popery; its tenor was
imitated in that of 1638, and there was added "a general band for the
maintenance of true religion" (Presbyterianism) "_and of the King's
person_." That part of the band was scarcely kept when the Covenanting
army surrendered Charles to the English. They had vowed, in their band,
to "stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King's Majesty, his
person and authority." They kept this vow by hanging men who held the
king's commission. The words as to defending the king's authority were
followed by "in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true
religion." This appears to mean that only a presbyterian king is to be
defended. In any case the preachers assumed the right to interpret the
Covenant, which finally led to the conquest of Scotland by Cromwell. As
the Covenant was made between God and the Covenanters, on ancient Hebrew
precedent it was declared to be binding on all succeeding generations.
Had Scotland resisted tyranny without this would-be biblical pettifogging
Covenant, her condition would have been the more gracious. The signing
of the band began at Edinburgh in Greyfriars' Churchyard on February 28,
1638.

This Covenant was a most potent instrument for the day, but the fruits
thereof were blood and tears and desolation: for fifty-one years common-
sense did not come to her own again. In 1689 the Covenant was silently
dropped, when the Kirk was restored.

This two-edged insatiable sword was drawn: great multitudes signed with
enthusiasm, and they who would not sign were, of course, persecuted. As
they said, "it looked not like a thing approved of God, which was begun
and carried on with fury and madness, and obtruded on people with
threatenings, tearing of clothes, and drawing of blood." Resistance to
the king--if need were, armed resistance--was necessary, was laudable,
but the terms of the Covenant were, in the highest degree impolitic and
unstatesmanlike. The country was handed over to the preachers; the
Scots, as their great leader Argyll was to discover, were "distracted men
in distracted times."

Charles wavered and sent down the Marquis of Hamilton to represent his
waverings. The Marquis was as unsettled as his predecessor, Arran, in
the minority of Queen Mary. He dared not promulgate the proclamations;
he dared not risk civil war; he knew that Charles, who said he was ready,
was unprepared in his mutinous English kingdom. He granted, at last, a
General Assembly and a free Parliament, and produced another Covenant,
"the King's Covenant," which of course failed to thwart that of the
country.

The Assembly, at Glasgow (November 21, 1638), including noblemen and
gentlemen as elders, was necessarily revolutionary, and needlessly
riotous and profane. It arraigned and condemned the bishops in their
absence. Hamilton, as Royal Commissioner, dissolved the Assembly, which
continued to sit. The meeting was in the Cathedral, where, says a
sincere Covenanter, Baillie, whose letters are a valuable source, "our
rascals, without shame, in great numbers, made din and clamour." All the
unconstitutional ecclesiastical legislation of the last forty years was
rescinded,--as all the new presbyterian legislation was to be rescinded
at the Restoration. Some bishops were excommunicated, the rest were
deposed. The press was put under the censorship of the fanatical lawyer,
Johnston of Waristoun, clerk of the Assembly.

On December 20 the Assembly, which sat on after Hamilton dissolved it,
broke up. Among the Covenanters were to be reckoned the Earl of Argyll
(later the only Marquis of his House), and the Earl, later Marquis, of
Montrose. They did not stand long together. The Scottish Revolution
produced no man at once great and successful, but, in Montrose, it had
one man of genius who gave his life for honour's sake; in Argyll, an
astute man, not physically courageous, whose "timidity in the field was
equalled by his timidity in the Council," says Mr Gardiner.

In spring (1639) war began. Charles was to move in force on the Border;
the fleet was to watch the coasts; Hamilton, with some 5000 men, was to
join hands with Huntly (both men were wavering and incompetent); Antrim,
from north Ireland, was to attack and contain Argyll; Ruthven was to hold
Edinburgh Castle. But Alexander Leslie took that castle for the
Covenanters; they took Dumbarton; they fortified Leith; Argyll ravaged
Huntly's lands; Montrose and Leslie occupied Aberdeen; and their party,
in circumstances supposed to be discreditable to Montrose, carried Huntly
to Edinburgh. (The evidence is confused. Was Huntly unwilling to go?
Charles (York, April 23, 1639) calls him "feeble and false." Mr Gardiner
says that, in this case, and in this alone, Montrose stooped to a mean
action.) Hamilton merely dawdled and did nothing: Montrose had entered
Aberdeen (June 19), and then came news of negotiations between the king
and the Covenanters.

As Charles approached from the south, Alexander Leslie, a Continental
veteran (very many of the Covenant's officers were Dugald Dalgettys from
the foreign wars), occupied Dunse Law, with a numerous army in great
difficulties as to supplies. "A natural mind might despair," wrote
Waristoun, who "was brought low before God indeed." Leslie was in a
strait; but, on the other side, so was Charles, for a reconnaissance of
Leslie's position was repulsed; the king lacked money and supplies;
neither side was of a high fighting heart; and offers to negotiate came
from the king, informally. The Scots sent in "a supplication," and on
June 18 signed a treaty which was a mere futile truce. There were to be
a new Assembly, and a new Parliament in August and September.

Charles should have fought: if he fell he would fall with honour; and if
he survived defeat "all England behoved to have risen in revenge," says
the Covenanting letter-writer, Baillie, later Principal of Glasgow
University. The Covenanters at this time could not have invaded England,
could not have supported themselves if they did, and were far from being
harmonious among themselves. The defeat of Charles at this moment would
have aroused English pride and united the country. Charles set out from
Berwick for London on July 29, leaving many fresh causes of quarrel
behind him.

Charles supposed that he was merely "giving way for the present" when he
accepted the ratification by the new Assembly of all the Acts of that of
1638. He never had a later chance to recover his ground. The new
Assembly made the Privy Council pass an Act rendering signature of the
Covenant compulsory on all men: "the new freedom is worse than the old
slavery," a looker-on remarked. The Parliament discussed the method of
electing the Lords of the Articles--a method which, in fact, though of
prime importance, had varied and continued to vary in practice. Argyll
protested that the constitutional course was for each Estate to elect its
own members. Montrose was already suspected of being influenced by
Charles. Charles refused to call Episcopacy unlawful, or to rescind the
old Acts establishing it. Traquair, as Commissioner, dissolved the
Parliament; later Charles refused to meet envoys sent from Scotland, who
were actually trying, as their party also tried, to gain French mediation
or assistance,--help from "idolaters"!

In spring 1640 the Scots, by an instrument called "The Blind Band,"
imposed taxation for military purposes; while Charles in England called
The Short Parliament to provide Supply. The Parliament refused and was
prorogued; words used by Strafford about the use of the army in Ireland
to suppress Scotland were hoarded up against him. The Scots Parliament,
though the king had prorogued it, met in June, despite the opposition of
Montrose. The Parliament, when it ceased to meet, appointed a Standing
Committee of some forty members of all ranks, including Montrose and his
friends Lord Napier and Stirling of Keir. Argyll refused to be a member,
but acted on a commission of fire and sword "to root out of the country"
the northern recusants against the Covenant. It was now that Argyll
burned Lord Ogilvy's Bonny House of Airlie and Forthes; the cattle were
driven into his own country; all this against, and perhaps in consequence
of, the intercession of Ogilvy's friend and neighbour, Montrose.

Meanwhile the Scots were intriguing with discontented English peers, who
could only give sympathy; Saville, however, forged a letter from six of
them inviting a Scottish invasion. There was a movement for making
Argyll practically Dictator in the North; Montrose thwarted it, and in
August, while Charles with a reluctant and disorderly force was marching
on York Montrose at Cumbernauld, the house of the Earl of Wigtoun made a
secret band with the Earls Marischal, Wigtoun, Home, Atholl, Mar, Perth,
Boyd, Galloway, and others, for their mutual defence against the scheme
of dictatorship for Argyll. On August 20 Montrose, the foremost, forded
Tweed, and led his regiment into England. On August 30, almost
unopposed, the Scots entered Newcastle, having routed a force which met
them at Newburn-on-Tyne.

They again pressed their demands on the king; simultaneously twelve
English peers petitioned for a parliament and the trial of the king's
Ministers. Charles gave way. At Ripon Scottish and English
commissioners met; the Scots received "brotherly assistance" in money and
supplies (a daily 850 pounds), and stayed where they were; while the Long
Parliament met in November, and in April 1641 condemned the great
Strafford: Laud soon shared his doom. On August 10 the demands of the
Scots were granted: as a sympathetic historian writes, they had lived for
a year at free quarters, "and recrossed the Border with the handsome sum
of 200,000 pounds to their credit."

During the absence of the army the Kirk exhibited symptoms not favourable
to its own peace. Amateur theologians held private religious gatherings,
which, it was feared, tended towards the heresy of the English
Independents and to the "break up of the whole Kirk," some of whose
representatives forbade these conventicles, while "the rigid sort"
asserted that the conventiclers "were esteemed the godly of the land." An
Act of the General Assembly was passed against the meetings; we observe
that here are the beginnings of strife between the most godly and the
rather moderately pious.

The secret of Montrose's Cumbernauld band had come to light after
November 1640: nothing worse, at the moment, befell than the burning of
the band by the Committee of Estates, to whom Argyll referred the matter.
On May 21, 1641, the Committee was disturbed, for Montrose was collecting
evidence as to the words and deeds of Argyll when he used his commission
of fire and sword at the Bonny House of Airlie and in other places.
Montrose had spoken of the matter to a preacher, he to another, and the
news reached the Committee. Montrose had learned from a prisoner of
Argyll, Stewart the younger of Ladywell, that Argyll had held counsels to
discuss the deposition of the king. Ladywell produced to the Committee
his written statement that Argyll had spoken before him of these
consultations of lawyers and divines. He was placed in the castle, and
was so worked on that he "cleared" Argyll and confessed that, advised by
Montrose, he had reported Argyll's remarks to the king. Papers with
hints and names in cypher were found in possession of the messenger.

The whole affair is enigmatic; in any case Ladywell was hanged for
"leasing-making" (spreading false reports), an offence not previously
capital, and Montrose with his friends was imprisoned in the castle.
Doubtless he had meant to accuse Argyll before Parliament of treason. On
July 27, 1641, being arraigned before Parliament, he said, "My resolution
is to carry with me fidelity and honour to the grave." He lay in prison
when the king, vainly hoping for support against the English Parliament,
visited Edinburgh (August 14-November 17, 1641).

Charles was now servile to his Scottish Parliament, accepting an Act by
which it must consent to his nominations of officers of State. Hamilton
with his brother, Lanark, had courted the alliance and lived in the
intimacy of Argyll. On October 12 Charles told the House "a very strange
story." On the previous day Hamilton had asked leave to retire from
Court, in fear of his enemies. On the day of the king's speaking,
Hamilton, Argyll, and Lanark had actually retired. On October 22, from
their retreat, the brothers said that they had heard of a conspiracy, by
nobles and others in the king's favour, to cut their throats. The
evidence is very confused and contradictory: Hamilton and Argyll were
said to have collected a force of 5000 men in the town, and, on October
5, such a gathering was denounced in a proclamation. Charles in vain
asked for a public inquiry into the affair before the whole House. He
now raised some of his opponents a step in the peerage: Argyll became a
marquis, and Montrose was released from prison. On October 28 Charles
announced the untoward news of an Irish rising and massacre. He was, of
course, accused of having caused it, and the massacre was in turn the
cause of, or pretext for, the shooting and hanging of Irish prisoners--men
and women--in Scotland during the civil war. On November 18 he left
Scotland for ever.

The events in England of the spring in 1642, the attempted arrest of the
five members (January 4), the retreat of the queen to France, Charles's
retiral to York, indicated civil war, and the king set up his standard at
Nottingham on August 22. The Covenanters had received from Charles all
that they asked; they had no quarrel with him, but they argued that if he
were victorious in England he would use his strength and withdraw his
concessions to Scotland.

Sir Walter Scott "leaves it to casuists to decide whether one contracting
party is justified in breaking a solemn treaty upon the suspicion that in
future contingencies it might be infringed by the other." He suggests
that to the needy nobles and Dugald Dalgettys of the Covenant "the good
pay and free quarters" and "handsome sums" of England were an
irresistible temptation, while the preachers thought they would be
allowed to set up "the golden candlestick" of presbytery in England
('Legend of Montrose,' chapter i.) Of the two the preachers were the
more grievously disappointed.

A General Assembly of July-August 1642 was, as usual, concerned with
politics, for politics and religion were inextricably intermixed. The
Assembly appointed a Standing Commission to represent it, and the powers
of the Commission were of so high a strain that "to some it is terrible
already," says the Covenanting letter-writer Baillie. A letter from the
Kirk was carried to the English Parliament which acquiesced in the
abolition of Episcopacy. In November 1642 the English Parliament,
unsuccessful in war, appealed to Scotland for armed aid; in December
Charles took the same course.

The Commission of the General Assembly, and the body of administrators
called Conservators of the Peace, overpowered the Privy Council, put down
a petition of Montrose's party (who declared that they were bound by the
Covenant to defend the king), and would obviously arm on the side of the
English Parliament if England would adopt Presbyterian government. They
held a Convention of the Estates (June 22, 1643); they discovered a
Popish plot for an attack on Argyll's country by the Macdonalds in
Ireland, once driven from Kintyre by the Campbells, and now to be led by
young Colkitto. While thus excited, they received in the General
Assembly (August 7) a deputation from the English Parliament; and now was
framed a new band between the English Parliament and Scotland. It was an
alliance, "The Solemn League and Covenant," by which Episcopacy was to be
abolished and religion established "according to the Word of God." To
the Covenanters this phrase meant that England would establish
Presbyterianism, but they were disappointed. The ideas of the
Independents, such as Cromwell, were almost as much opposed to presbytery
as to episcopacy, and though the Covenanters took the pay and fought the
battles of the Parliament against their king, they never received what
they had meant to stipulate for,--the establishment of presbytery in
England. Far from that, Cromwell, like James VI., was to deprive them of
their ecclesiastical palladium, the General Assembly.

Foreseeing nothing, the Scots were delighted when the English accepted
the new band. Their army, under Alexander Leslie (Earl of Leven), now
too old for his post, crossed Tweed in January 1644. They might never
have crossed had Charles, in the autumn of 1643, listened to Montrose and
allowed him to attack the Covenanters in Scotland. In December 1643,
Hamilton and Lanark, who had opposed Montrose's views and confirmed the
king in his waverings, came to him at Oxford. Montrose refused to serve
with them, rather he would go abroad; and Hamilton was imprisoned on
charges of treason: in fact, he had been double-minded, inconstant, and
incompetent. Montrose's scheme implied clan warfare, the use of exiled
Macdonalds, who were Catholics, against the Campbells. The obvious
objections were very strong; but "needs must when the devil drives": the
Hanoverian kings employed foreign soldiers against their subjects in 1715
and 1745; but the Macdonalds were subjects of King Charles.

Hamilton's brother, Lanark, escaped, and now frankly joined the
Covenanters. Montrose was promoted to a Marquisate, and received the
Royal Commission as Lieutenant-General (February 1644), which alienated
old Huntly, chief of the Gordons, who now and again divided and paralysed
that gallant clan. Montrose rode north, where, in February 1644, old
Leslie, with twenty regiments of foot, three thousand horse, and many
guns, was besieging Newcastle. With him was the prototype of Scott's
Dugald Dalgetty, Sir James Turner, who records examples of Leslie's
senile incompetency. Leslie, at least, forced the Marquis of Newcastle
to a retreat, and a movement of Montrose on Dumfries was paralysed by the
cowardice or imbecility of the Scottish magnates on the western Border.
He returned, took Morpeth, was summoned by Prince Rupert, and reached him
the day after the disaster of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644), from which
Buccleuch's Covenanting regiment ran without stroke of sword, while
Alexander Leslie also fled, carrying news of his own defeat. It appears
that the Scottish horse, under David Leslie, were at Marston Moor, as
always, the pick of their army.

Rupert took over Montrose's men, and the great Marquis, disguised as a
groom, rode hard to the house of a kinsman, near Tay, between Perth and
Dunkeld. Alone and comfortless, in a little wood, Montrose met a man who
was carrying the Fiery Cross, and summoning the country to resist the
Irish Scots of Alastair Macdonald (Colkitto), who had landed with a force
of 1500 musketeers in Argyll, and was believed to be descending on
Atholl, pursued by Seaforth and Argyll, and faced by the men of Badenoch.
The two armies {181} were confronting each other when Montrose, in plaid
and kilt, approached Colkitto and showed him his commission. Instantly
the two opposed forces combined into one, and with 2500 men, some armed
with bows and arrows, and others having only one charge for each musket,
Montrose began his year of victories.

The temptation to describe in detail his extraordinary series of
successes and of unexampled marches over snow-clad and pathless mountains
must be resisted. The mobility and daring of Montrose's irregular and
capricious levies, with his own versatile military genius and the heroic
valour of Colkitto, enabled him to defeat a large Covenanting force at
Tippermuir, near Perth: here he had but his 2500 men (September 1); to
repeat his victory at Aberdeen {182} (September 13), to evade and
discourage Argyll, who retired to Inveraray; to winter in and ravage
Argyll's country, and to turn on his tracks from a northern retreat and
destroy the Campbells at Inverlochy, where Argyll looked on from his
galley (February 2, 1645).

General Baillie, a trained soldier, took the command of the Covenanting
levies and regular troops ("Red coats"), and nearly surprised Montrose in
Dundee. By a retreat showing even more genius than his victories, he
escaped, appeared on the north-east coast, and scattered a Covenanting
force under Hurry, at Auldearn, near Inverness (May 9, 1645).

Such victories as Montrose's were more than counterbalanced by Cromwell's
defeat of Rupert and Charles at Naseby (June 14, 1645); while presbytery
suffered a blow from Cromwell's demand, that the English Parliament
should grant "freedom of conscience," not for Anglican or Catholic, of
course, but for religions non-Presbyterian. The "bloody sectaries," as
the Presbyterians called Cromwell's Independents, were now masters of the
field: never would the blue banner of the Covenant be set up south of
Tweed.

Meanwhile General Baillie marched against Montrose, who outmanoeuvred him
all over the eastern Highlands, and finally gave him battle at Alford on
the Don. Montrose had not here Colkitto and the western clans, but his
Gordon horse, his Irish, the Farquharsons, and the Badenoch men were
triumphantly successful. Unfortunately, Lord Gordon was slain: he alone
could bring out and lead the clan of Huntly. Only by joining hands with
Charles could Montrose do anything decisive. The king, hoping for no
more than a death in the field "with honour and a good conscience,"
pushed as far north as Doncaster, where he was between Poyntz's army and
a great cavalry force, led by David Leslie, from Hereford, to launch
against Montrose. The hero snatched a final victory. He had but a
hundred horse, but he had Colkitto and the flower of the fighting clans,
including the invincible Macleans. Baillie, in command of new levies of
some 10,000 men, was thwarted by a committee of Argyll and other noble
amateurs. He met the enemy south of Forth, at Kilsyth, between Stirling
and Glasgow. The fiery Argyll made Baillie desert an admirable
position--Montrose was on the plain, Baillie was on the heights--and
expose his flank by a march across Montrose's front. The Macleans and
Macdonalds, on the lower slope of the hill, without orders, saw their
chance, and racing up a difficult glen, plunged into the Covenanting
flank. Meanwhile the more advanced part of the Covenanting force were
driving back some Gordons from a hill on Montrose's left, who were
rescued by a desperate charge of Aboyne's handful of horse among the red
coats; Airlie charged with the Ogilvies; the advanced force of the
Covenant was routed, and the Macleans and Macdonalds completed the work
they had begun (August 15). Few of the unmounted Covenanters escaped
from Kilsyth; and Argyll, taking boat in the Forth, hurried to Newcastle,
where David Leslie, coming north, obtained infantry regiments to back his
4000 cavalry.

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