Chapter XXV: The Covenanting Struggle (3)

Shortly after the battle, Montrose marched in pursuit of Seaforth, who had blocked his way at the north-eastern end of the lakes, but Seaforth fled. Montrose marched round, and when he reached Elgin Lord Gordon and Lewis Gordon, Huntly’s sons, joined him, and their followers supplied him with a small body of cavalry. Seaforth and Sir James Grant joined Montrose at Elgin, and thus saved their estates from plunder: but the lands and farmhouses of the Covenanters from Inverness to Kintore were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. On the 11th of February the Scotch Parliament declared Montrose and his chief supporters to be guilty of treason. He then marched southward, and when he reached Forfarshire, he found his advance checked by Baillie and Hurry. Much time was spent in manœuvring. At last Baillie marched away and entered Fife. Instead of following him Montrose proceeded to Dunkeld, where his army rapidly melted away, many of the Highlanders returning home. In a short time he was left with only six hundred foot and two hundred horse. On the 3rd of April he commenced to march on Dundee, and on the 4th he forced an entrance into the town, and the sack was immediately begun. In the midst of the tumult, tidings came that Baillie and Hurry with their whole force were rapidly advancing to the relief of the town. To fight them was impossible; but Montrose drew off his men from the prey on which they were intent, and marched out of the eastern gate as Baillie was entering the western one. Forming his one hundred and fifty horsemen as a rearguard, he placed two hundred of his best men in the last ranks of the foot, to face about and support the horsemen in case of an attack. Baillie followed close on Montrose, and before nightfall he made a charge which was repelled, but he resolved to out-general his enemy. While Montrose and his small party were running onward in the dark towards Arbroath, Baillie was rapidly advancing to the left of their line of march, with the intention of cutting them off from the hills to the north-east, in order to hold them against the sea when they reached Arbroath. After a short time, however, Montrose wheeled to the right and slipped past Baillie. At last Baillie discovered his enemy’s tactic, and started in pursuit on the right track. He came in sight of the enemy separated about three miles from the shelter of the hills. Montrose’s men were tired out and had fallen asleep on the ground; but when Baillie’s cavalry approached, the officers managed to rouse a sufficient number to present a front to the enemy, compelling the hostile horsemen to withdraw and enabling his small party to escape to the hills.

For some time Montrose wandered about Perthshire with very few followers, and had again to begin the work of collecting a force. On the 20th of April, 1645, Aboyne joined him at Balquhidder. Baillie was watching the Highlands from Perth, and Hurry had gone north to muster the adherents of the Covenant for an attack upon the Gordons. Montrose moved northward and Macdonald rejoined him on the march, and in the upper stretch of the valley of the Dee he met Lord Gordon at the head of a company of horsemen. He was again between the two hostile armies, and to save the lands of the Gordons from plunder, he resolved to attack Hurry. Montrose advanced toward the upper region of the valley of the Spey; but when Hurry ascertained that his enemy was descending the valley of the Spey, he formed his plan. With the aim of drawing Montrose into a hostile quarter, Hurry marched from Inverness to meet him near Elgin, and upon his approach, retreated so skilfully that Montrose was unable to injure him. On the night of the 8th of May, Montrose had reached the village of Auldearn, intending to follow Hurry the following morning; but ere dawn on the morning of the 9th, Hurry had fronted round, and intended by a rapid march to surprise Montrose; and, if an untoward incident had not occurred, it seems probable that he would have effected his object; but the night was rainy and wetted the powder in the muskets of Hurry’s soldiers, some of whom fired a volley to clear the barrels. It so happened that Macdonald’s sentinels heard the sound, and thus Montrose had time to post his army in battle array, which he did admirably. The battle was severe, and was long and fiercely contested; the greater part of Hurry’s infantry stood their ground and were slain on the field.

Yet this battle was not decisive, for Montrose had soon to contend against forces more numerous than his own. Baillie advanced from Athole northward, crossed the Dee with two thousand men, and was joined in Strathbogie by Hurry with a hundred horsemen, the remnant of the army defeated at Auldearn. Montrose’s force was greatly diminished, and being unable to fight, he advanced up the valley of the Spey for safety. Baillie remained in the north to ravage Huntly’s lands. After a time Montrose had again increased his force, and marching in search of Baillie, he found him in a strong position at Keith. He did not venture to attack him, but marched southward, crossed the Don, and halted at Alford, Baillie following him. On the 2nd of July Montrose placed his men in battle array on an elevated position. Baillie crossed the river and prepared for battle. The engagement began and raged furiously with no apparent success on either side; but at last Montrose was victorious and no quarter was given to the vanquished Covenanters. For some time after the battle Montrose made little progress with his scheme of conquering the kingdom for Charles I., as he had only reached Fordoun on his way southward in the middle of July. The Parliament was transferred to Perth on the 24th of July to attend to the arrival of the new levies of men for the army; and Montrose crossed the Tay with the object of annoying them as much as possible. He manœuvred round Perth for some time, and retired without effecting anything of importance.

On the 24th of August the battle of Kilsyth was fought, in which Montrose completely defeated the Covenanters under Baillie and the nobles. Upwards of five thousand of the Covenanters were slain in the battle and pursuit. This was Montrose’s last victory, and henceforth his real difficulties and the utter futility of his career became painfully apparent. His vision of a great army of the Lowland Scots, weary of the tyranny of Parliament and the Church, rallying under the standard of the King’s Lieutenant, vanished like a dream. He had disappointed the expectations of his actual followers, and they mourned and returned to their homes. All his fond hopes were soon to be blasted. His weakness was that he utterly failed to understand the real problem of his day, and the spirit and feeling of the great majority of his countrymen.

David Leslie on the 6th of September crossed the Border, from England to join issue with Montrose. He encountered the great hero of six victories at Philiphaugh on the morning of the 13th of September 1645, and completely routed him and his army. After his defeat Montrose lingered about the Highlands; and in May 1646, Charles I. ordered him to disband his followers, and go into France. On the 3rd of September he escaped from Scotland and proceeded thither.

Since the battle of Marston Moor, on the 2nd of July, 1644, in which the Covenanting army took an active part, under David Leslie, the King’s cause had been falling lower and lower; and by the end of the year 1645 he was hardly able to keep the field. At last, driven to despair, he fled to the Scottish army at Newark, in May, 1646. To conquer the King had been an extremely difficult task; but to make a treaty with him afterwards proved to be an impossible operation. He was received by the Scots with every mark of respect, but he soon found that his kingly powers were gone. The English parliament demanded that the Scots should surrender the King, but they declined to do this. They were still eager to extend Presbyterianism to England, and directly attempted to work upon the King. He was asked both by the Scots and by the English Presbyterians to abolish Episcopacy, to ratify the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, to sign the Covenant himself, to compel others to sign it, and to establish a Church in harmony with its principles. Charles on his conscience declined to do this, as he had a firm conviction of the divine right of Episcopacy. The Episcopal party in England was crushed, and the struggle for supremacy now lay between the Independents and the Presbyterians. The latter party were anxious to come to terms with the King; and if he had agreed to their conditions, he might still have had a chance of saving his crown and life, and of reigning as the head of a limited monarchy. Commissioners from the Long Parliament, and from the Scotch Estates implored the King to yield, but in vain. Charles pleaded that his conscience would not allow him; and it may be admitted that this was a redeeming feature of the King’s character. This attitude of the King proved favourable to the power of the Independents, as most of them desired the complete overthrow of the monarchy, and were strongly opposed to the establishment of Presbyterianism in England.¹

¹ Burnet’s _Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton_, pages 274‒283;
Baillie’s _Letters and Journals_, Volume II., pages 400,
406‒417.

While this tedious treating was still proceeding, the Long Parliament intimated that there was no longer any necessity for the Scotch army in England; while the Scots announced that they were ready to retire as soon as their arrears were paid. In the matter of pay, however, there was a serious difficulty, since between the amount claimed by the Scots, and the amount which the English admitted as due, there was a difference of many hundred thousands of pounds. The difference between the two accounts in a large degree related to provisions, which the English charged in full, but the greater part of which the Scots asserted never came to them, having been taken by the enemy at sea, part of it lost, and part damaged. The English charged in full a levy of twenty thousand pounds per month, which the Scots averred never yielded half that sum; the English charged ammunition and arms furnished, which the Scots contended should have been supplied at the expense of the English, as they were used in their service, and so on with other items in the accounts. The sum claimed by the Scots was nearly two million pounds, of which they acknowledged the receipt of seven hundred thousand, but which by the English mode of accounting, as indicated above, was made out to be fourteen hundred thousand――thus leaving seven hundred thousand of a difference between the sum claimed by the Scots and the sum admitted as due by the Long Parliament. Accordingly at this time the arrears due to the Scots, according to their reckoning, amounted to more than a million. A long wrangle between the parties ensued; and every item in the account was minutely examined and hotly debated, till at last the Scots offered to accept a gross sum of five hundred thousand pounds. On this there was a vehement debate in the Long Parliament. Finally, the English agreed to pay a sum of four hundred thousand pounds――one fourth of it before the Scots left Newcastle, and the remainder by instalments. If this transaction had been a collusive bargain for the purchase of the King, as Mr. Buckle and other writers have asserted, there surely would not have been so much minute examination of the accounts, so much debating in order to reduce the Scotch side of the account: but seriously to say that the Scots sold their King for this money is an absurdity only of those who have never really investigated the matter.

The Long Parliament claimed a right to the possession of the King’s person, and passed a resolution that it would dispose of him as it thought fit. The Scots demurred to this, but the English determinedly insisted that they must have the King. At last the Scotch Estates agreed to let the King go to Holmby, in Northamptonshire, “there to remain until he give satisfaction to both kingdoms in the propositions of peace; but in the interim, that there be no harm, prejudice, injury, nor violence done to his person.” On the 23rd of January, 1647, the English Commissioners appointed to receive the King arrived at Newcastle; and on the 30th of the month the Scotch army withdrew, and proceeded to their own country.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume VI., pages
239‒241.

The Presbyterians were bitterly opposed to the policy of the Independents, who were waxing almost supreme in England. Towards the end of the year 1647, the Scots sent commissioners to make a last attempt to treat with the King, then a captive in the Isle of Wight. He now promised to be the Covenanted King of a Presbyterian people, and entered into a treaty with the Scots; but it came too late, and was regarded as an act of treachery to the Long Parliament and the English army, with whom he was at the time openly treating. This underhand treaty with the Scots is known in history as “the Engagement.”

The Estates met at Edinburgh in March, 1648, agreed to the Engagement, and commissioned an army to aid the King. But the commission of the General Assembly was opposed to this, and proclaimed that the King’s concessions were incomplete. They demanded that he should take the Covenant himself, and at once establish Presbyterianism in England. The time for half-measures was past, and they insisted that their whole polity should be established throughout the three kingdoms. Parliament, however, ordered the army to muster, and to fight for the King, while the Duke of Hamilton was placed in command.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, pages 295‒318, _et
seq._; Baillie’s _Letters and Journals_, Volume III., pages
33‒40, 44‒50.

When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh in July, 1648, the members manifested a spirit of opposition to the resolution of the Estates. The committee on public affairs, consisting of the leading men of the Assembly, took up the question of the Engagement, and approved of all the proceedings of the commission concerning it. In reply to a letter from the committee of the Estates, the clergy again declared that they saw no possibility of securing religion so long as the Engagement was maintained; since a union of the Malignants against the Independents was an unlawful combination, for both were enemies to the cause of the Covenant, and therefore all association with them should be avoided. They reiterated the demand, that before the King was restored to the exercise of his power, he should be bound by a solemn oath, under his hand and seal, for settling religion according to the Covenant; that there should be no engagement without a solemn oath; and that the Church ought to have the same interest in it as she had in the League and Covenant. They insisted that the control of public affairs should be entrusted only to persons of unquestioned integrity. Finally, on the day the Assembly rose, the 12th of August, they addressed a supplication to the King, in which his Majesty was told that he had already caused the blood of many thousands to be shed by his obstinacy, and warned him no longer to set at nought the word of exhortation, or to incur the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, who brings down the mighty from their throne, and scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts.¹

¹ Peterkin’s _Records_; Baillie’s _Letters and Journals_,
Volume III., pages 52‒65.

While the nation was in this divided state, the army of the Engagers, undisciplined and poorly equipped, entered England with the grand aim of delivering the captive King from the power of sectaries. But the Duke of Hamilton was not a military genius; and his army straggled forward in several divisions, at too long distances from each other. Cromwell attacked him at Preston, on the 17th of August, 1648, and defeated the Scots in detail, finally scattering them. Hamilton himself was taken prisoner, and shortly after he was tried and executed.¹

¹ Carlyle’s _Letters and Speeches of Cromwell_, Volume I.,
pages 330‒351.

When tidings of the defeat of the Engagers reached Scotland, Argyle, Cassillis, and Eglinton assembled their adherents, and the clergy joined them and called the people to arms. Some of the ministers, at the head of their followers, marched towards Edinburgh, preaching and praying by the way to excited crowds of Covenanters. The Committee of Estates, who had supported the Engagement, after some attempts at resistance, gave up the struggle; and Argyle with other nobles, assumed the government. Cromwell had advanced to the vicinity of Berwick, when Argyle and his party came to terms with him, and invited him to Edinburgh. He arrived in the capital on the 4th of October, 1648, and was received with much respect. His object was the suppression of all those concerned in the Engagement, and in this the party at the head of affairs in Scotland concurred with him; and then Cromwell renewed the Covenant along with his new allies. The leader of the English army was delighted with his reception; and in a letter to the House of Commons, he says:――“I have received, and so have the officers with me, many honours and civilities, from the city of Edinburgh, from the Committee of Estates, and the ministers; with a noble entertainment,――which we may not own as done to us, but as done to your servants.”¹

¹ _Ibid._, Volume I., pages 379‒382.

The Estates met on the 4th of January, 1649. The members were mostly those who had been opposed to the Engagement, and those who had since renounced it, the Earl of Loudon being chosen president for the session. They resolved to begin the session by publicly humbling themselves before the Lord for their sins, and to renew the Solemn League and Covenant, according to the order set down by the commission of the General Assembly. All the Acts of Parliament sanctioning the late Engagement were repealed, and some of the officers of state were deprived of their posts. But their most sweeping statute was the “Act of Classes,” for purging the judicatories and places of public trust, which applied to all persons in any way concerned with “the late unlawful Engagement,” and to other persons guilty of certain sins, or who neglected family worship. Thus the parliament itself was purged, a number of ministers deposed, and all officials suspected of malignancy, turned out of their offices.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume VI., pages 335,
341‒346, 352‒356.

The party at the head of affairs in Scotland, it seems pretty evident, did not fully realise or foresee that a power was arising to crush both them and their Church polity. At the moment when they were indulging the hope that their triumph was at hand, the committee of the English army was already taking steps to arraign the King.

The narrative of the trial of Charles I. belongs to English history, and has often been admirably told. The Scotch Estates, through their Commissioners at London, remonstrated against any injury to the King’s person, and insisted that it was on this very condition that they had consented to part with him; but his fate was decreed. On the 30th of January, 1649, he was beheaded before his own palace of Whitehall. It was Charles’s lot to be educated and trained in a one-sided and pernicious political belief. He seems to have been almost incapable of distinguishing between his moral and his political rights; and this led his comparatively narrow mind to assume and to maintain that his political position gave him an unquestionable right to dictate to his people the form of their worship. Moreover, he was placed in trying circumstances, and found himself face to face with great political and religious problems, which he failed to appreciate and to surmount.

The following opinion of a foreign historian on the fate of the King is worth quoting:――“It would have been easy for him to have saved his life, had he conceded to the Scots the exclusive domination of presbyterianism in England, or to the Independents the practical freedom of the army as they themselves desired. That he did not do so is his merit towards England. Had he given his word to dissolve the episcopal government of the Church, and to alienate its property for ever, it is impossible to see how it could ever have been restored. Had he granted such a position to the army as was asked in the four articles, the self-government of the corporation and of the Commons, and the later parliamentary government itself, would have become impossible. So far the resistance which he offered cannot be estimated highly enough. The overthrow of the constitution, which the Independents openly intended, made him fully conscious, perhaps not of their ultimate intention――the establishment of a republic, but certainly of his own position. So far there was certainly something of a martyr in him, if the man can be so called who values life less than the cause for which he is fighting, and in perishing himself saves it for the future.”¹

¹ Ranke’s _History of England_, Volume II., page 553.

In the latter part of the third volume of Dr. Masson’s
elaborate and valuable work, _The Life of Milton_, there is
a full and complete account of the trial and the execution
of Charles the First.

Viewed from a political and moral standpoint, the Covenanting struggle was a very important factor in Scottish civilisation. The sole aim of James VI. in his constant efforts to establish Episcopacy in Scotland, was to render religion completely subservient to the power of the State, and to compel every one to recognise and yield an abject submission to the absolute supremacy of the King in all things civil and religious. In short, this was the view of James VI., Charles I., Charles II., and James VII., they all claimed the power to impose on the people whatever form of religion they thought fit. Although the contest thus forced upon the Scottish people was at the outset ecclesiastical and religious, and even in this relation its influence in moulding the character of the Scots of the seventeenth century was very great; inasmuch that in those days religion was a real power, and the Covenanters were intensely earnest and firmly held their religious convictions; they were prepared to make any sacrifice for the tenets of their faith. Yet, as matters then stood, the religious problems could not be settled without raising many other collateral questions, some of them even more important than the original problem. Thus the controversy once raised soon assumed a very wide range. It compelled the combatants on both sides to have recourse to the original and natural rights of man, and the principles of justice, as a solid foundation for their claims. For this the Reformation and George Buchanan had prepared the way. By their constant appeals to conscience and to private judgment, the Reformers had taught men to reason and to think, instead of blindly and submissively bowing their heads to the unlimited claims of authority. The Scots learned and practised this lesson. In self-defence they took their stand upon first principles, and based their claims upon the inalienable rights of man. They boldly assailed and demolished the claims to arbitrary and absolute power advanced by the kings of the period. Thus it was that the ecclesiastical contest speedily developed into a political conflict, in which arguments were of more importance than arms, inasmuch as argument and conviction supplied the real motive power. As we have seen, and will see further in the sequel, in petitions and protestations, in speeches and sermons, and pamphlets, the Covenanters urged their claims, and clearly vindicated their proceedings at every stage of the conflict, not only by many texts of Scripture, but also by appeals to principles which are now recognised as political axioms. The people listened intently to all this, and read and discussed amongst themselves the merits of the various points of the controversy. Thus every intelligent man became a keen theologian and a politician, ready to argue with all comers any point, either of divinity or of public policy, or the limits of the power of kings. For a century the people had been battling for their rights; while they were also being well trained in political and moral principles. The lesson was well taught and retained in the internal consciousness, for the impression stamped upon the national mind during the Covenanting struggle has continued as a political characteristic of Scotsmen to the present day. This was the chief contribution of the seventeenth century to the civilisation of Scotland. The historian, however, in stating this, may not justify all the proceedings and actions of the Covenanters, for it is clear that they often erred in the application of their principles to practice; still they contributed much to the political and moral progress of the people.