Short History of Scotland — 32 - Ch. 24: Charles I, pt 2

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"!