A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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In a year Montrose, with forces so irregular and so apt to go home after
every battle, had actually cleared militant Covenanters out of Scotland.
But the end had come. He would not permit the sack of Glasgow. Three
thousand clansmen left him; Colkitto went away to harry Kintyre. Aboyne
and the Gordons rode home on some private pique; and Montrose relied on
men whom he had already proved to be broken reeds, the Homes and Kers
(Roxburgh) of the Border, and the futile and timid Traquair. When he
came among them they forsook him and fled; on September 10, at Kelso, Sir
Robert Spottiswoode recognised the desertion and the danger.

Meanwhile Leslie, with an overpowering force of seasoned soldiers, horse
and foot, marched with Argyll, not to Edinburgh, but down Gala to Tweed;
while Montrose had withdrawn from Kelso, up Ettrick to Philiphaugh, on
the left of Ettrick, within a mile of Selkirk. He had but 500 Irish, who
entrenched themselves, and an uncertain number of mounted Border lairds
with their servants and tenants. Charteris of Hempsfield, who had been
scouting, reported that Leslie was but two or three miles distant, at
Sunderland Hall, where Tweed and Ettrick meet; but the news was not
carried to Montrose, who lay at Selkirk. At breakfast, on September 13,
Montrose learned that Leslie was attacking. What followed is uncertain
in its details. A so-called "contemporary ballad" is incredibly
impossible in its anachronisms, and is modern. In this egregious
doggerel we are told that a veteran who had fought at Solway Moss a
century earlier, and at "cursed Dunbar" a few years later (or under
Edward I.?), advised Leslie to make a turning movement behind Linglie
Hill. This is not evidence. Though Leslie may have made such a
movement, he describes his victory as very easy: and so it should have
been, as Montrose had only the remnant of his Antrim men and a rabble of
reluctant Border recruits.

A news letter from Haddington, of September 16, represents the Cavaliers
as making a good fight. The mounted Border lairds galloped away. Most
of the Irish fell fighting: the rest were massacred, whether after
promise of quarter or not is disputed. _Their captured women were hanged
in cold blood some months later_. Montrose, the Napiers, and some forty
horse either cut their way through or evaded Leslie's overpowering
cavalry, and galloped across the hills of Yarrow to the Tweed. He had
lost only the remnant of his Scoto-Irish; but the Gordons, when Montrose
was presently menacing Glasgow, were held back by Huntly, and Colkitto
pursued his private adventures. Montrose had been deserted by the clans,
and lured to ruin by the perfidious promises of the Border lords and
lairds. The aim of his strategy had been to relieve the Royalists of
England by a diversion that would deprive the Parliamentarians of their
paid Scottish allies, and what man might do Montrose had done.

After his first victory Montrose, an excommunicated man, fought under an
offer of 1500 pounds for his murder, and the Covenanters welcomed the
assassin of his friend, Lord Kilpont.

The result of Montrose's victories was hostility between the Covenanting
army in England and the English, who regarded them as expensive and
inefficient. Indeed, they seldom, save for the command of David Leslie,
displayed military qualities, and later, were invariably defeated when
they encountered the English under Cromwell and Lambert.

Montrose never slew a prisoner, but the Convention at St Andrews, in
November 1645, sentenced to death their Cavalier prisoners (Lord Ogilvy
escaped disguised in his sister's dress), and they ordered the hanging of
captives and of the women who had accompanied the Irish. "It was certain
of the clergy who pressed for the extremest measures." {186a} They had
revived the barbarous belief, retained in the law of ancient Greece, that
the land had been polluted by, and must be cleansed by, blood, under
penalty of divine wrath. As even the Covenanting Baillie wrote, "to this
day no man in England has been executed for bearing arms against the
Parliament." The preachers argued that to keep the promises of quarter
which had been given to the prisoners was "_to violate the oath of the
Covenant_." {186b}

The prime object of the English opponents of the king was now "to hustle
the Scots out of England." {187} Meanwhile Charles, not captured but
hopeless, was negotiating with all the parties, and ready to yield on
every point except that of forcing presbytery on England--a matter which,
said Montereuil, the French ambassador, "did not concern them but their
neighbours." Charles finally trusted the Scots with his person, and the
question is, had he or had he not assurance that he would be well
received? If he had any assurance it was merely verbal, "a shadow of a
security," wrote Montereuil. Charles was valuable to the Scots only as a
pledge for the payment of their arrears of wages. There was much
chicanery and shuffling on both sides, and probably there were
misconceptions on both sides. A letter of Montereuil (April 26, 1646)
convinced Charles that he might trust the Scots; they verbally promised
"safety, honour, and conscience," but refused to sign a copy of their
words. Charles trusted them, rode out of Oxford, joined them at
Southwell, and, says Sir James Turner, who was present, was commanded by
Lothian to sign the Covenant, and "barbarously used." They took Charles
to Newcastle, denying their assurance to him. "With unblushing
falsehood," says Mr Gardiner, they in other respects lied to the English
Parliament. On May 19 Charles bade Montrose leave the country, which he
succeeded in doing, despite the treacherous endeavours of his enemies to
detain him till his day of safety (August 31) was passed.

The Scots of the army were in a quandary. The preachers, their masters,
would not permit them to bring to Scotland an uncovenanted king. They
could not stay penniless in England. For 200,000 pounds down and a
promise, never kept, of a similar sum later, they left Charles in English
hands, with some assurances for his safety, and early in February 1647
crossed Tweed with their thirty-six cartloads of money. The act was
hateful to very many Scots, but the Estates, under the command of the
preachers, had refused to let the king, while uncovenanted, cross into
his native kingdom, and to bring him meant war with England. But _that_
must ensue in any case. The hope of making England presbyterian, as
under the Solemn League and Covenant, had already perished.

Leslie, with the part of the army still kept up, chased Colkitto, and, at
Dunavertie, under the influence of Nevoy, a preacher, put 300 Irish
prisoners to the sword.

The parties in Scotland were now: (1) the Kirk, Argyll, the two Leslies,
and most of the Commons; (2) Hamilton, Lanark, and Lauderdale, who had no
longer anything to fear, as regards their estates, from Charles or from
bishops, and who were ashamed of his surrender to the English; (3)
Royalists in general. With Charles (December 27, 1647) in his prison at
Carisbrooke, Lauderdale, Loudoun, and Lanark made a secret treaty, _The
Engagement_, which they buried in the garden, for if it were discovered
the Independents of the army would have attacked Scotland.

An Assembly of the Scots Estates on March 3, 1648, had a large majority
of nobles, gentry, and many burgesses in favour of aiding the captive
king; on the other side Argyll was backed by the omnipotent Commission of
the General Assembly, and by the full force of prayers and sermons. The
letter-writer, Baillie, now deemed "that it were for the good of the
world that churchmen did meddle with ecclesiastical affairs only." The
Engagers insisted on establishing presbytery in England, which neither
satisfied the Kirk nor the Cavaliers and Independents. Nothing more
futile could have been devised.

The Estates, in May, began to raise an army; the preachers denounced
them: there was a battle between armed communicants of the preachers'
party and the soldiers of the State at Mauchline. Invading England on
July 8, Hamilton had Lambert and Cromwell to face him, and left Argyll,
the preachers, and their "slashing communicants" in his rear. Lanark had
vainly urged that the west country fanatics should be crushed before the
Border was crossed. By a march worthy of Montrose across the fells into
Lanarkshire, Cromwell reached Preston; cut in between the northern parts
of Hamilton's army; defeated the English Royalists and Langdale, and cut
to pieces or captured the Scots, disunited as their generals were, at
Wigan and Warrington (August 17-19). Hamilton was taken and was
decapitated later. The force that recrossed the Border consisted of such
mounted men as escaped, with the detachment of Monro which had not joined
Hamilton.

The godly in Scotland rejoiced at the defeat of their army: the levies of
the western shires of Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark occupied Edinburgh: Argyll
and the Kirk party were masters, and when Cromwell arrived in Edinburgh
early in October he was entertained at dinner by Argyll. The left wing
of the Covenant was now allied with the Independents--the deadly foes of
presbytery! To the ordinary mind this looks like a new breach of the
Covenant, that impossible treaty with Omnipotence. Charles had written
that the divisions of parties were probably "God's way to punish them for
their many rebellions and perfidies." The punishment was now beginning
in earnest, and the alliance of extreme Covenanters with "bloody
sectaries" could not be maintained. Yet historians admire the
statesmanship of Argyll!

If the edge which the sword of the Covenant turned against the English
enemies of presbytery were blunted, the edge that smote Covenanters less
extreme than Argyll and the preachers was whetted afresh. In the Estates
of January 5, 1649, Argyll, whose party had a large majority, and the
fanatical Johnston of Waristoun (who made private covenants with Jehovah)
demanded disenabling Acts against all who had in any degree been tainted
by the _Engagement_ for the rescue of the king. The Engagers were
divided into four "Classes," who were rendered incapable by "The Act of
Classes" of holding any office, civil or military. This Act deprived the
country of the services of thousands of men, just at the moment when the
English army, the Independents, Argyll's allies, were holding the Trial
of Charles I.; and, in defiance of timid remonstrances from the Scottish
Commissioners in England, cut off "that comely head" (January 30, 1649),
which meant war with Scotland.

SCOTLAND AND CHARLES II.

This was certain, for, on February 5, on the news of the deed done at
Whitehall, the Estates proclaimed Charles II. as Scottish King--if he
took the Covenant. By an ingenious intrigue Argyll allowed Lauderdale
and Lanark, whom the Estates had intended to arrest, to escape to
Holland, where Charles was residing, and their business was to bring that
uncovenanted prince to sign the Covenant, and to overcome the influence
of Montrose, who, with Clarendon, of course resisted such a trebly
dishonourable act of perjured hypocrisy. During the whole struggle,
since Montrose took the king's side, he had been thwarted by the
Hamiltons. They invariably wavered: now they were for a futile policy of
dishonour, in which they involved their young king, Argyll, and Scotland.
Montrose stood for honour and no Covenant; Argyll, the Hamiltons,
Lauderdale, and the majority of the preachers stood for the Covenant with
dishonour and perjury; the left wing of the preachers stood for the
Covenant, but not for its dishonourable and foresworn acceptance by
Charles.

As a Covenanter, Charles II. would be the official foe of the English
Independents and army; Scotland would need every sword in the kingdom,
and the kingdom's best general, Montrose, yet the Act of Classes, under
the dictation of the preachers, rejected every man tainted with
participation in or approval of the Engagement--or of neglecting family
prayers!

Charles, in fact, began (February 22) by appointing Montrose his
Lieutenant-Governor and Captain-General in Scotland, though Lauderdale
and Lanark "abate not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their
discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of
honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended
as--given the character of Charles II. and his destitution--it must end.
Charles (January 22, 1650) despatched Montrose to fight for him in
Scotland, and sent him the Garter. Montrose knew his doom: he replied,
"With the more alacrity shall I abandon still my life to search my death
for the interests of your Majesty's honour and service." He searched his
death, and soon he found it.

On May 1, Charles, by the Treaty of Breda, vowed to sign the Covenant; a
week earlier Montrose, not joined by the Mackenzies, had been defeated by
Strachan at Carbisdale, on the south of the Kyle, opposite Invershin, in
Sutherlandshire. He was presently captured, and crowned a glorious life
of honour by a more glorious death on the gibbet (May 21). He had kept
his promise; he had searched his death; he had loyally defended, like
Jeanne d'Arc, a disloyal king; he had "carried fidelity and honour with
him to the grave." His body was mutilated, his limbs were exposed,--they
now lie in St Giles' Church, Edinburgh, where is his beautiful monument.

Montrose's last words to Charles (March 26, from Kirkwall) implored that
Prince "to be just to himself,"--not to perjure himself by signing the
Covenant. The voice of honour is not always that of worldly wisdom, but
events proved that Charles and Scotland could have lost nothing and must
have gained much had the king listened to Montrose. He submitted, we
saw, to commissioners sent to him from Scotland. Says one of these
gentlemen, "_He_ . . . sinfully complied with what _we_ most sinfully
pressed upon him, . . . _our_ sin was more than _his_."

While his subjects in Scotland were executing his loyal servants taken
prisoners in Montrose's last defeat, Charles crossed the sea, signing the
Covenants on board ship, and landed at the mouth of Spey. What he gained
by his dishonour was the guilt of perjury; and the consequent distrust of
the wilder but more honest Covenanters, who knew that he had perjured
himself, and deemed his reception a cause of divine wrath and disastrous
judgments. Next he was separated from most of his false friends, who had
urged him to his guilt, and from all Royalists; and he was not allowed to
be with his army, which the preachers kept "purging" of all who did not
come up to their standard of sanctity.

Their hopeful scheme was to propitiate the Deity and avert wrath by
purging out officers of experience, while filling up their places with
godly but incompetent novices in war, "ministers' sons, clerks, and such
other sanctified creatures." This final and fatal absurdity was the
result of playing at being the Israel described in the early historic
books of the Old Testament, a policy initiated by Knox in spite of the
humorous protests of Lethington.

For the surer purging of that Achan, Charles, and to conciliate the party
who deemed him the greatest cause of wrath of all, the king had to sign a
false and disgraceful declaration that he was "afflicted in spirit before
God because of the impieties of his father and mother"! He was helpless
in the hands of Argyll, David Leslie, and the rest: he knew they would
desert him if he did not sign, and he yielded (August 16). Meanwhile
Cromwell, with Lambert, Monk, 16,000 foot and horse, and a victualling
fleet, had reached Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, by July 28.

David Leslie very artfully evaded every attempt to force a fight, but
hung about him in all his movements. Cromwell was obliged to retreat for
lack of supplies in a devastated country, and on September 1 reached
Dunbar by the coast road. Leslie, marching parallel along the
hill-ridges, occupied Doonhill and secured a long, deep, and steep
ravine, "the Peaths," near Cockburnspath, barring Cromwell's line of
march. On September 2 the controlling clerical Committee was still
busily purging and depleting the Scottish army. The night of September 2-
3 was very wet, the officers deserted their regiments to take shelter.
Says Leslie himself, "We might as easily have beaten them as we did James
Graham at Philiphaugh, if the officers had stayed by their own troops and
regiments." Several witnesses, and Cromwell himself, asserted that,
owing to the insistence of the preachers, Leslie moved his men to the
lower slopes on the afternoon of September 2. "The Lord hath delivered
them into our hands," Cromwell is reported to have said. They now
occupied a position where the banks of the lower Broxburn were flat and
assailable, not steep and forming a strong natural moat, as on the higher
level. All night Cromwell rode along and among his regiments of horse,
biting his lip till the blood ran down his chin. Leslie thought to
surprise Cromwell; Cromwell surprised Leslie, crossed the Broxburn on the
low level, before dawn, and drove into the Scots who were all unready,
the matches of their muskets being wet and unlighted. The centre made a
good stand, but a flank charge by English cavalry cut up the Scots foot,
and Leslie fled with the nobles, gentry, and mounted men. In killed,
wounded, and prisoners the Scots are said to have lost 14,000 men, a
manifest exaggeration. It was an utter defeat.

"Surely," wrote Cromwell, "it is probable the Kirk has done her do." The
Kirk thought not; purging must go on, "nobody must blame the Covenant."
Neglect of family prayers was selected as one cause of the defeat!
Strachan and Ker, two extreme whigamores of the left wing of the godly,
went to raise a western force that would neither acknowledge Charles nor
join Cromwell, who now took Edinburgh Castle. Charles was reduced by
Argyll to make to him the most slavish promises, including the payment of
40,000 pounds, the part of the price of Charles I. which Argyll had not
yet touched.

On October 4 Charles made "the Start"; he fled to the Royalists of
Angus,--Ogilvy and Airlie: he was caught, brought back, and preached at.
Then came fighting between the Royalists and the Estates. Middleton, a
good soldier, Atholl, and others, declared that they must and would fight
for Scotland, though they were purged out by the preachers. The Estates
(November 4) gave them an indemnity. On this point the Kirk split into
twain: the wilder men, led by the Rev. James Guthrie, refused
reconciliation (the Remonstrants); the less fanatical would consent to
it, on terms (the Resolutioners). The Committee of Estates dared to
resist the Remonstrants: even the Commissioners of the General Assembly
"cannot be against the raising of all fencible persons,"--and at last
adopted the attitude of all sensible persons. By May 21, 1651, the
Estates rescinded the insane Act of Classes, but the strife between
clerical Remonstrants and Resolutioners persisted till after the
Restoration, the _Remonstrants_ being later named _Protesters_.

Charles had been crowned at Scone on January 1, again signing the
Covenants. Leslie now occupied Stirling, avoiding an engagement. In
July, while a General Assembly saw the strife of the two sects, came news
that Lambert had crossed the Forth at Queensferry, and defeated a Scots
force at Inverkeithing, where the Macleans fell almost to a man; Monk
captured a number of the General Assembly, and, as Cromwell, moving to
Perth, could now assail Leslie and the main Scottish force at Stirling,
they, by a desperate resolution, with 4000 horse and 9000 foot, invaded
England by the west marches, "laughing," says one of them, "at the
ridiculousness of our own condition." On September 1 Monk stormed and
sacked Dundee as Montrose sacked Aberdeen, but if he made a massacre like
that by Edward I. at Berwick, history is lenient to the crime.

On August 22 Charles, with his army, reached Worcester, whither Cromwell
marched with a force twice as great as that of the king. Worcester was a
Sedan: Charles could neither hold it nor, though he charged gallantly,
could he break through Cromwell's lines. Before nightfall on September 3
Charles was a fugitive: he had no army; Hamilton was slain, Middleton and
David Leslie with thousands more were prisoners. Monk had already
captured, at Alyth (August 28), the whole of the Government, the
Committee of Estates, and had also caught some preachers, including James
Sharp, later Archbishop of St Andrews. England had conquered Scotland at
last, after twelve years of government by preachers acting as
interpreters of the Covenant between Scotland and Jehovah.

CHAPTER XXV. CONQUERED SCOTLAND.

During the nine years of the English military occupation of Scotland
everything was merely provisional; nothing decisive could occur. In the
first place (October 1651), eight English Commissioners, including three
soldiers, Monk, Lambert, and Deane, undertook the administration of the
conquered country. They announced tolerance in religion (except for
Catholicism and Anglicanism, of course), and during their occupation the
English never wavered on a point so odious to the Kirk. The English
rulers also, as much as they could, protected the women and men whom the
lairds and preachers smelled out and tortured and burned for witchcraft.
By way of compensation for the expenses of war all the estates of men who
had sided with Charles were confiscated. Taxation also was heavy. On
four several occasions attempts were made to establish the Union of the
two countries; Scotland, finally, was to return thirty members to sit in
the English Parliament. But as that Parliament, under Cromwell, was
subject to strange and sudden changes, and as the Scottish
representatives were usually men sold to the English side, the experiment
was not promising. In its first stage it collapsed with Cromwell's
dismissal of the Long Parliament on April 20, 1653. Argyll meanwhile had
submitted, retaining his estates (August 1652); but of five garrisons in
his country three were recaptured, not without his goodwill, by the
Highlanders; and in these events began Monk's aversion, finally fatal, to
the Marquis as a man whom none could trust, and in whom finally nobody
trusted.

An English Commission of Justice, established in May 1652, was
confessedly more fair and impartial than any Scotland had known, which
was explained by the fact that the English judges "were kinless loons."
Northern cavaliers were relieved by Monk's forbidding civil magistrates
to outlaw and plunder persons lying under Presbyterian excommunication,
and sanitary measures did something to remove from Edinburgh the ancient
reproach of filth, for the time. While the Protesters and Resolutioners
kept up their quarrel, the Protesters claiming to be the only genuine
representatives of Kirk and Covenant, the General Assembly of the
Resolutioners was broken up (July 21, 1653) by Lilburne, with a few
soldiers, and henceforth the Kirk, having no General Assembly, was less
capable of promoting civil broils. Lilburne suspected that the Assembly
was in touch with new stirrings towards a rising in the Highlands, to
lead which Charles had, in 1652, promised to send Middleton, who had
escaped from an English prison, as general. It was always hard to find
any one under whom the great chiefs would serve, and Glencairn, with
Kenmure, was unable to check their jealousies.

Charles heard that Argyll would appear in arms for the Crown, when he
deemed the occasion good; meanwhile his heir, Lord Lorne, would join the
rising. He did so in July 1653, under the curse of Argyll, who, by
letters to Lilburne and Monk, and by giving useful information to the
English, fatally committed himself as treasonable to the Royal cause.
Examples of his conduct were known to Glencairn, who communicated them to
Charles.

At the end of February 1654 Middleton arrived in Sutherland to head the
insurrection: but Monk chased the small and disunited force from county
to county, and in July Morgan defeated and scattered its remnants at Loch
Garry, just south of Dalnaspidal. The Armstrongs and other Border clans,
who had been moss-trooping in their ancient way, were also reduced, and
new fortresses and garrisons bridled the fighting clans of the west. With
Cromwell as protector in 1654, Free Trade with England was offered to the
Scots with reduced taxation: an attempt to legislate for the Union
failed. In 1655-1656 a Council of State and a Commission of Justice
included two or three Scottish members, and burghs were allowed to elect
magistrates who would swear loyalty to Cromwell. Cromwell died on the
day of his fortunate star (September 3, 1658), and twenty-one members for
Scotland sat in Richard Cromwell's Parliament. When that was dissolved,
and when the Rump was reinstated, a new Bill of Union was introduced,
and, by reason of the provisions for religious toleration (a thing
absolutely impious in Presbyterian eyes), was delayed till (October 1659)
the Rump was sent to its account. Conventions of Burghs and Shires were
now held by Monk, who, leading his army of occupation south in January
1660, left the Resolutioners and Protesters standing at gaze, as hostile
as ever, awaiting what thing should befall. Both parties still cherished
the Covenants, and so long as these documents were held to be for ever
binding on all generations, so long as the king's authority was to be
resisted in defence of these treaties with Omnipotence, it was plain that
in Scotland there could neither be content nor peace. For twenty-eight
years, during a generation of profligacy and turmoil, cruelty and
corruption, the Kirk and country were to reap what they had sown in 1638.

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