Political History Part IX

Only the chief moments in the struggle between Charles I. and the Scots can be touched on in this summary. James VI. had succeeded in his struggle with the preachers Charles I partly by satisfying the nobles with gifts out of old church lands. Charles I. reunited the kirk and the nobles by threatening, or seeming to threaten, to resume or impair these gifts, and also by his favour towards the universally detested bishops (1625-2629). Mr S. R. Gardiner speaks of the final shape of Charles's measure as "a wise and beneficent reform" and he did aim at recovering the "teinds" or tithes, and securing something like a satisfactory sustenance for ministers. But he had caused alarm, and he refused all demands for the withdrawal of the loathed articles of Perth. The younger bishops too were not " sound " in Calvinism; many were looked on as Arlninians. Protests were uttered in 1633, when Charles entered Edinburgh and held a parliament. Above all, and most legitimately, the revival of General Assemblies, now long discussed, was demanded vainly.

By 1636, Charles and Laud had decided to introduce a liturgy, a slightly, but in Scottish apprehensions " idolatrously," modified version of the Anglican prayer-book. Anglicanism was a limb of Antichrist; extempore prayers were regarded as inspired: a liturgy was "a Mass-book." The procedure was purely despotic, and at the first attempt to use the liturgy in St Giles's there broke out the famous "Jenny Geddes" riot in the church (23rd of July 1637). The nobles of the country, the ministers and lairds, met in Edinburgh and sent a petition against the liturgy to Charles. In November were formed "The Tables," a standing revolutionary committee of all Estates.

Constant meetings hurled protestations against the bishops; no man was more active than the young Montrose. In February 1638 the Covenant, practically a "band" of the whole country, enforced on reluctant signers, was launched. It made Scotland, like Israel," a covenanted people" for the defence and propagation of the old Presbyterianism of Andrew Melville, and many devotees held that it was for ever binding on the nation. Legistlatures differ as to whether the band was legal or not, but revolutions make their own laws, and the Covenant could not be more illegal than the imposure of the liturgy. Charles drove on the bishops, who better understood the situation, and he sent the half-hearted Hamilton to negotiate and threaten in Edinburgh, where the Covenanters were blockading the castle. But Charles did grant a General Assembly in Glasgow (21st of November), where, among unseemly uproar, the ecclesiastical legislation of James I. was rescinded, the law and custom of forty years were abolished, conformist clerics were expelled, and the earl of Argyll appeared as leader of the extreme party, while Montrose was the general of the armed Covenanters. In 1639 he was as active in arms in the north as Hamilton, on the king's side, was dilatory and helpless in the south. By May the chief clerical leader, Henderson of Leuchars, was denouncing Royalists as "Amalekites," and by biblical precedent Amalekites receive no quarter. Prelacy was "Baal worship," and the kirk thus turned the strife in the direction of religious ferocity.

While Charles hung irresolute on the eastern border, the Covenanters, under Alexander Leslie, took heart, occupied Duns Law, and terrified Charles into negotiations. A hollow pacification was made: the assembly of August 1639 imposed the signing of the Covenant on all Scotsmen. A parliament (31st of August) demanded the loss of votes (fourteen) by bishops, and freedom of debate on bills formed by the Lords of the Articles, who had practically held all power; while Argyll demanded for each estate the right to select its own representatives among these lords. Traquhair, as royal commissioner, prorogued parliament; negotiations with the king in London had no result; and in 1640 the prorogation was condemned, and though opposed by Montrose, the parliament constituted itself, with no royal warrant. War was at hand, but Montrose formed a party by "the band of Cumbernauld" to suppress the practical dictatorship of his rival and enemy, Argyll, who, he understood, was to be one of a triumvirate, and absolute north of Forth.

Argyll allowed the committee of Estates to rule, as before, and bided his time. On the 20th of August Montrose was the first of the Covenanting army to cross the Tweed; Newcastle was seized, and Charles, unsupported by England, entered on the course of the Long Parliament and the slaying of Strafford. In Scotland the secret of the Cumbernauld band came out; Montrose, Napier and other friends were imprisoned on the strength of certain ambiguous messages to Charles, and on the 27th of July, being called before parliament, Montrose said, " My resolution is to carry with me honour and fidelity to the grave." Montrose kept his word, while Hamilton stooped to sign the Covenant. Montrose lay in prison while Charles I. visited Scotland and met the parliament, perturbed by the dim and unintelligible plot called "The Incident" (October 1641), which seems to have aimed at seizing the persons of Argyll, Hamilton and his brother Lanark.

All that is known of Montrose, in this matter, is that from prison he had written thrice to Charles, and that Charles had intended to show his third letter to Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark, on the very day when they, suspecting a plot, retired into the country (12th of October). An agitated inquiry which only found contradictory evidence was disturbed by the news of the Irish rebellion (28th of October). Charles heaped honours on his opponents (Argyll was the one marquis of his name), and hastened to England. The country was governed by fifty-six members of the Estate and by the dreaded commission of the General Assembly, for now the kirk dominated Scotland, denying even the right of petition to the lieges.

The English parliament, at war with the king, demanded aid from Scotland; it was granted under the conditions of the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), by which the Covenanters expected to secure the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, though the terms of agreement are dubious. Scotland, however, regarded herself as bound to war against "Sectaries," and so came into collision with Cromwell, to her undoing. In January 1644, a Scottish army crossed Tweed, to aid the parliament, with preachers to attend the synod of Westminster. Already some 2000 men from Ireland, mainly of Macdonalds and other clans driven into Ireland by the Argylls, were being despatched to the west Highland coast. Lanark, from Oxford, fled to join the Covenanters; Charles imprisoned Hamilton in Cornwall; Montrose was made a marquis; Leslie, with a large Scottish force and 4000 horse, besieged Newcastle. Montrose arrived a day too late for Marston Moor (2nd of July 1644); Rupert took his contingent; he entered Scotland in disguise, met the ill-armed Irish levies under Colkitto, raised the Gordons and Ogilvies, who supplied his cavalry, raised the fighting Macdonalds, Camerons and Macleans; in six pitched battles he routed Argyll and all the Covenanting warriors of Scotland, and then, deserted by Colkitto and the Gordons, and surprised by Leslie's cavalry withdrawn from England, was defeated at Philiphaugh near Selkirk, while men and women of his Irish contingent were shot or hanged months after the battle.

The clamour of the preachers was now for blood, and gentlemen taken under promise of quarter were executed by command of the Estates at St Andrews, for to give quarter was "to violate the oath of the Covenant " as interpreted by the clergy. It would have been wiser to put the revenges as reprisals for the undeniable horrors committed by Montrose's Irish levies. The surrender of Charles to the Scots, the surrender by the Scots of Charles to the English, for £200,000 of arrears of pay, with hopes of another £200,ooo (February 1647), were among the consequences of Montrose's defeat. But the surrender of the king festered in Scottish consciences; for the country was far from acquiescing in the transaction.

Leslie, by the advice of one Nevoy, a preacher, massacred, on his return to Scotland, the Macdonalds in Dunaverty castle. A strife arose between Hamilton, who wished to disband the Covenantin'g army, and Argyll, and gradually the struggle was between Hamilton and the sympathizers with the imprisoned king and Argyll at the head of (or under the heels of) the more fanatical preachers and Presbyterians. The Scottish commissioners in England, with Lauderdale, and with the approval of Hamilton's faction, signed, at the end of 1647, "The Engagement" with Charles, and broke away from the tyranny of the preachers. The Engagers had the majority in parliament, but were frantically cursed from the pulpits; they and their army mustered for the deliverance of their king. In August 1648, they crossed the border, leaving the fanatics to arm in their rear, but Cromwell, by a rapid march across the fells, caught and utterly routed them at Preston and on the line of the Ribble, taking captive the infantry and Hamilton, who was sent to the block.

This was the kirk's proudest triumph; the countrymen of the preachers had been ruined on "St Covenant's Day." The preachers, with Lords Loudoun and Eglintoun, Argyll and Cassilis, armed and raised the godly, and occupied Edinburgh. The parliamentary committee capitulated with the extremists, who sent friendly messages to Cromwell, and Argyll met him on the Tweed. Then Cromwell sent Lambert with seven regiments to Edinburgh, where he himself stayed for some time. A parliament in Argyll's and the preachers' interest met there in January 1649; only sixteen nobles were present, as against fifty-six in the previous year.

The execution of Charles I. (30th of January 1649) left the extreme party in a quandary. How could they keep terms with "bloody Sectaries" that had slain their king, in face of the protests of their envoys? They did pass the Act of the Classes, disabling all "Engagers " from all manner of offices, military and civil, and dividing the distracted country into two hostile camps. On the 5th of February Charles II. was proclaimed king in Edinburgh, if he took the two Covenants. This meant war against England, and war in which the Engagers and Royalists could not take part. The situation developed into ruin under the strife of the wilder and the gentler preachers.

Communications with Charles II. at the Hague were opened, and the Scots accused the English of breach of the Solemn League and Covenant. Huntly, as a Royalist, was decapitated at Edinburgh; and the envoys of Charles, thanks to the advice of Montrose, failed to induce him to stamp himself a recreant and a hypocrite by signing any covenants. But Montrose (January 1650) was sent by Charles to " search his death," as he said, in an expedition to the north of Scotland, while, in the absence of his stainless servant, Charles actually signed the treaty of Breda (1st of May). In April Montrose was abandoned by his royal master, and was defeated at Carbiesdale, on the south side of the kyle, or estuary, of Shin and Oykel; he was betrayed, insulted, bullied by the preachers, and, going to his death like a bridegroom to the altar, was hanged at Edinburgh, on the 20th of May. "Great in life, Montrose was yet greater in his death." He had kept his word, he had "carried fidelity and honour to the grave". His head was set on a spike and his quartered limbs were exposed in various places.

Charles came to Scotland; he signed the Covenants, while his tormentors well and duly knew that the action was a base hypocrisy, that they had tempted him to perjury. Cromwell, who now crossed the border, impressed this Royalist truth, as far as he might, on ,the preachers, who made Charles sign declarations yet more degrading, to the discredit of his father and mother. Meanwhile David Leslie, with singularly excellent strategy, foiled and evaded Cromwell in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, till the great cavalry leader was forced to retreat towards England.

At Dunbar Leslie held Cromwell in the hollow of his hand, but his army had been repeatedly "purged" of all Royalist men of the sword by the preachers; they are said, and Cromwell believed it, to have constrained Leslie to leave his impregnable position and attack on the lower levels. Leslie appears to have intended a surprise, as at Philiphaugh, but "through our own laziness," he confesses, the surprise came from Cromwell's side, and few of the Scots except the mounted gentry escaped from the crushing defeat at Dunbar (3rd of September). Of the prisoners an unknown number died of hunger in Durham cathedral, others were sold to slavery in the colonies.

Cromwell had occupied the country south of the Forth, while Argyll was Charles's master, extorting hard terms from the prisoner, who once ran away. The committee of Estates, on hard terms, gave an indemnity to Royalists whose swords they needed; many ministers acquiesced (" The Resolutioners "), the more fanatical dissidents were called " Remonstrants," and now the kirk was rent in twain by the disputes of these two factions. The Remonstrants, clerical and military (Guthrie and Strachan), would not support Charles while he was not "under conviction," and Strachan was excommunicated by the Resolutioners. On the 20th of July 1651 Lambert defeated the Royalists at Inverkeithing; Forth no longer bridled Cromwell; Leslie was sure to be outflanked, and, with Charles, he evaded Cromwell, marched into the heart of England (unaccompanied by Argyll), and was defeated and taken, while Charles made a marvellous escape at Worcester (3rd of September 1651).

The conquest of Scotland was soon completed; at last she lay at an English victor's feet; the General Assembly was turned out into the street by " some rats of Musketeers and a troup of horse," and the risings of Glencairn, Lorne (eldest son of Argyll) and others in the highlands were easily crushed. Argyll, deserted and detested, compromised himself by letters to Monk, containing intelligence as to the movements of the Royalists. While the rival bands of preachers squabbled, Cromwell, like Edward I., arranged that Scottish members should sit in Westminster, and, commercially, as in the administration of fair justice, and the peace of the country, Scotland prospered under English rule. But Monk withdrew his force to London. in January 1660, and hurrying events brought the joyous Restoration of the 29th of May.

The festivities in Scotland were exuberant, but it was impossible that tranquillity should be restored. The Remonstrants, that is, the clerical fanatics to whom toleration was more especially abominable, are reckoned (Hume Brown) as the majority of the preachers, but exact statistics cannot be obtained. In their eyes, as Charles had taken both Covenants, he was bound to remain a Presbyterian and to establish Presbyterianism in England, a thing impossible and entailing civil war in the attempt. Even the representatives of the Resolutioners urged Charles not to use the Anglican service, though they confided to Sharp, their agent in London, their opinion that, if the Remonstrants (or Protesters) had any hand in affairs, "it cannot but breed continual distemper and disorders." Suppose that the kirk was restored by Charles to her position in 1592, with General Assemblies. With the violent party in a majority, refusing the jurisdiction of the state, insisting on the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, excommunicating and scolding, Scotland would be as much disturbed as in the days of Andrew Melville. "Neither fair nor other means are likely to do with them " (the fanatics), says Baillie, principal of Glasgow University, himself Covenanter from the beginning. He wished to banish the Remonstrants to Orkney.

Historians do not usually seem to perceive that Charles was faced by the old quarrel of church and state, in. which "fair means" were seen to be unavailing, while "unfair" means only succeeded, after some thirty years, in breaking down the old Presbyterian spirit so much that, after 1688, the state could hold her own. Charles, without first summoning the Estates, named his own privy council and ministers, of whom Lauderdale, long a Covenanter, came presently to be governor of Scotland. As Argyll, in face of all warnings, went to court, he was arrested, and during the session of parliament of January 1661 was tried for treason, and, on the ground of his letters to Monk, was convicted and executed, as was the leading Remonstrant preacher, James Guthrie, accused of holding an illegal conventicle, "tending to disturbance, and, if possible, rekindling a civil war."

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