by John Buchan
“I send Will Murray to Scotland to inform my friends of the state of my affairs, and to require both their advice and assistance. You are one whom I have found most faithful, and in whom I repose greatest trust. Therefore I address him chiefly to you. You may credit him in what he shall say, both in relation to my business and to your own; and you must be content with words until I be able to act. I will say no more but that I am your loving friend . . .”
It would have been well for Charles had he trusted Montrose in Scots affairs. But Hamilton, as we know from Clarendon, had given him assurances that “he would at least keep that people from doing anything that might seem to countenance the carriage of the Parliament,” and it was to Hamilton that Murray went. In the previous November the king had appealed to the Scottish Privy Council for help in dealing with the Irish rebellion. The Council responded by an energetic levy of troops, the first batch of which went to Ulster in February 1642, and sent Lothian and Lindsay to London to attempt to mediate between king and Parliament. Scotland found herself courted diligently by both sides, and returned evasive answers. A special meeting of the Council was held in May 1642, when Montrose and his friends endeavoured to induce it to stand to its many pledges and refrain from assisting the Parliament with arms. The presence of the royalist nobles in Edinburgh raised the usual cry of a design against the lives of the Covenanting leaders, the gentry and clergy of Fife flocked to the capital as a bodyguard for the menaced statesmen, and the Privy Council was confirmed in its cautious detachment.
But this detachment could not be kept up for ever. In July the General Assembly met in St. Andrews, when king and Parliament renewed their solicitations to the body which especially represented the opinion of Scotland. The English Puritans did not ask for a definite alliance, but they declared their detestation of the English episcopacy, and their earnest desire for “an advancement of the true religion and such a reformation of the Church as should be made agreeable to God’s Word.” This gave the Assembly its cue; “agreeable to God’s Word” must mean Presbyterianism; so it petitioned the king to labour for “blessed unity in religion, and uniformity of Church government” — in other words, the establishment of Presbytery in England. Argyll was in command at St. Andrews, and ruled the Assembly as he ruled the Scottish Parliament. When Murray arrived in the early autumn, he found Hamilton living in Argyll’s company, and negotiating a marriage between his eldest daughter and Lord Lorn. The Assembly’s appeal brought a reply in September, for the English Parliament voted unanimously that the present government of the Church of England must be abolished, and that the national Church must be reconstructed with the aid of an assembly of divines. This seemed to grant to the Kirk what it had been seeking — the end of the hated episcopacy, and Presbytery established from Devon to Caithness. Small wonder that it leaned to the Parliament’s side, and that the Scottish people, whom it controlled, had the same bias.
Meantime Edgehill had been fought, and in November the Parliament applied to Scotland for aid. Charles replied with a defence of his policy, and Hamilton, roused out of his dreams by the sudden crisis, and anxious at least to save his country from naked rebellion, persuaded the Privy Council to publish the royal declaration. But Argyll insisted that the English Parliament’s appeal should also be published, and there was the usual game of petition and counter-petition, in which Argyll won. That of Traquair and Hamilton asked no more than that Scotland should do nothing to commit itself to the path of disloyalty and civil war. That such a policy should have been vehemently opposed both by the Assembly and the Estates shows how Scottish opinion had hardened against the king.
1642-43
It was high time that Charles should know the facts — that from Scotland would come no aid for his cause, but only augmentation to his enemies — for he could learn nothing from the vain and obtuse Hamilton. An effort had been made to draw Montrose again into the Covenant camp. He had no following among either nobles or people, but his opponents appreciated the strength of his character and his talents for war, and he was offered, if he would join them, the lieutenant-generalship of the army, and, says Wishart, “quæcunque alia quæ suæ forent potestatis.” The offer must have come from Argyll, who had the wits to recognize ability, who desired to have on his side a military genius which he did not himself possess and which he may well have believed to be superior to old Leven’s, and who must have noted Montrose’s sincere attachment to Presbytery and the reluctance with which he differed from the Kirk. If Hamilton was privy to it, it can only have been because he desired to compromise one whom he hated, for his shallow mind still held to the belief that he could keep Scotland out of the war. The incident forced Montrose to be up and doing. The royal cause at the moment was not unprosperous in the field. In spite of the check at Turnham Green, Charles had consolidated his position in the Oxford district, Newcastle was firm in Yorkshire, and Hopton had cleared the south-west. The way to London might soon be open unless the Scots army took the royalists in flank from the north. The peril from Scotland must at once be made known to the king.
In February 1643 Montrose, with Ogilvy and Aboyne, crossed the Border. The Court was at Oxford, whither Ogilvy and Aboyne repaired, but Montrose, hearing at Newcastle that the queen was arriving from Holland, went to meet her at Bridlington Bay. A year before she had gone to the Hague to sell the crown jewels for munitions of war, and had now returned with stores and money, to be greeted in her bedroom by the round shot of the Parliament fleet. Montrose urged an immediate grant of a royal warrant to authorize a loyal rising in Scotland. He believed that if Charles struck the first blow the opposition might be overawed, or at any rate crippled. Henrietta was too sea-sick and flustered to listen, and told him that she would discuss the matter at York. But to York had posted Hamilton and Traquair with their smooth words, and the distracted lady followed the path of least resistance. Montrose was dismissed as an alarmist, and Hamilton’s optimism prevailed.
1643
He had not long to wait for his vindication. Loudoun, Henderson, and Wariston had gone as a commission to the king at Oxford, to mediate for peace on the basis of Presbyterian uniformity in England, and there Henderson argued the question of episcopacy with no less a person than Jeremy Taylor. The commission asked for a Parliament that summer, though under the grant of triennial parliaments the next did not fall due till June 1644, and this request Charles refused. But Argyll had business on hand which could not wait, and on his own account he arranged for the summoning of a Convention of Estates on June 22, 1643. Here was an act of rebellion as final as Sir John Hotham’s, but Hamilton persuaded the king to ignore the breach of prerogative and sanction the meeting, which he himself attended, to watch, as he said, the royal interests. He had just been made a duke, to encourage his slack-lipped loyalty.
Montrose did not attend the Convention. For him and his friends the final parting had come. During the spring of 1643 Argyll’s offer had been renewed. He would be given high military command, and his debts, mainly incurred in legal expenses, would be paid if he would join the dominant party. The story reached the ears of the queen, and in a letter of 31st May she offered him arms from Denmark and assured him of her confidence, though she had heard that he had “struck up an alliance with certain persons that might well create apprehension in my mind.” In the early days of June Montrose was in the north with Airlie, Huntly, and Marischal, attempting to form a coalition — an attempt frustrated by the lightheadedness of the latter two. This visit seems to have alarmed Argyll, for he made one last desperate bid for Montrose’s support. If others were blind to the powers of this young man of thirty, the dictator of Scotland knew capacity when he met it. He was aware that Montrose had been snubbed by the queen, and he hoped to catch him on the rebound. Montrose had not bluntly refused his overtures, but had hinted that certain scruples stood in his way. To solve them, the Moderator of the Kirk, Alexander Henderson, was dispatched to interview the doubter.
One day in the middle of June he met
Montrose in a meadow on the banks of the Forth near Stirling. It was a curious meeting, the embarrassed Sir James Rollo, brother-in-law of both Montrose and Argyll, acting as Henderson’s second, and Lord Napier, Lord Ogilvy, and Stirling of Keir being present as witnesses. The Moderator frankly avowed that the Covenanters were about to send an army to England in support of the Parliament, and repeated the old offer. “Nothing was more earnestly desired than that he should join with his peers and the other estates of the realm; it would bring joy to all, and not only profit, but also honour to himself. His example would at once bring over the few, if there were any, who respected the empty shadow of royalty. As for himself, his most hearty thanks would be due to God if He would deign to make him the minister and mediator of so great a work.” Montrose asked Rollo if Henderson had authority to make the offer. Rollo said he had, but Henderson said no, but believed that the Convention would substantiate his promises. This gave Montrose the chance to avoid a direct refusal. He replied that in these circumstances he must ask for time to consider, and took a friendly leave of the man in all Scotland from whom he was most loth to differ. They never met again. Three years later, after he had seen Montrose’s splendour and decline, as well as the failure of his own hopes, Henderson died. His last words were: “I am near the end of my race, hasting home, and there was never a schoolboy more desirous to have the play than I am to have leave of this world.”
Before the Convention in June, Charles, in a declaration to the people of Scotland, had stated his case against the English Parliament, and had solemnly protested his loyalty to the rights recently assured to the Scottish nation. He was not believed. The war in Ireland had ceased, and the Kirk dreaded that an army might thereby be freed for the defence or restoration of episcopacy. Moreover, Lord Antrim, whose incompetence rivalled Hamilton’s in every field of action, had got himself captured in Ulster, along with a budget of letters from Nithsdale, Aboyne, and others. There seemed a risk of a popish invasion. Scotland was to be overrun by Irish kerns, Charles was to join hands with Nithsdale on the Solway, Macdonalds and Macleans were to harass the Campbells, and Huntly and Montrose were to fire the north. Montrose’s recent visit to Aberdeen seemed to give authority to the tale. Moreover, things were going ill with the English Parliament. In June John Hampden had fallen on Chalgrove Field, and Fairfax had been defeated in Yorkshire at Adwalton Moor; in the south-west Hopton had cleared Devon, and in July scattered Waller’s forces at Landsdown and Round way Down, while Bristol, the second port of the kingdom, was about to fall to Prince Rupert. To Baillie it seemed that “for the present the Parliament side is running down the brae.” But the Covenanters had gone too far to draw back: the triumph of the king meant in their eyes summary vengeance on those who had intrigue with his enemies.
Prince Rupert as a Knight of the Garter,
after the painting by Sir Peter Lely.
Formerly the English Parliament had asked chiefly for a deputation of divines, but in August commissioners from the English House, among them the younger Vane, arrived to ask for an army. The General Assembly met on 2nd August in a small room in the east kirk of St. Giles, and to Convention and Assembly was presented the English demand. The request for 11,000 troops was complied with, Lanark using the royal seal for a warrant which levied war against its owner, and the price of this support, a new bond to bind still closer the two countries, was drafted by Wariston and Henderson. This document, the Solemn League and Covenant, was accepted by the Estates, and ratified at Westminster by what was left of the English House, being thereafter solemnly subscribed in St. Margaret’s Church on September 25, 1643. On 13th October it was sworn by the Estates and the Assembly, and later by the Scottish people in the parish kirks. It was signed by English Parliamentarians, because it was the price of the sorely needed Scottish help. It was extensively signed in Scotland, because the authorities saw to it that those who did not sign should suffer in person and estate.
The Kirk had seized the chance to realize its dream of uniformity, but the dream came through the gates of horn, and was to vanish ere morning. In return Kirk and nobility had involved their land in a course of hypocrisy and dishonour. They wished both to have their cake and eat it; in the Solemn League and Covenant, of which the price was armed rebellion, they vowed also to “preserve and defend the king’s majesty’s person and authority.” They had broken a plain contract with the king; was it any defence to say that they feared lest Charles at some future date might break his contract with them? Montrose, the day before his death, put the point to his inquisitors. “When the king had granted you all your desires, and you were every one sitting under his vine and under his fig-tree, that then you should have taken a party in England by the hand, and entered into a league and covenant with them against the king, was the thing I judged it my duty to oppose to the yondmost.” It was not as if the Scots were republicans or shared the advanced constitutional views of certain of the Parliamentarians. They were almost to a man confused and sentimental royalists, and they had been granted every liberty which they had asked for. The verdict of history must be that for the sake of an ecclesiastical whimsy the bulk of the nation chose the path of civic dishonour. The question was not of the relative wisdom of monarchist or Parliamentarian doctrines, but of Scotland forswearing a creed, which she avowedly and sincerely held, for the bribe of a futile dream.
To Montrose the way was clear. To him it seemed that towards Scotland the king had behaved, though tardily, with justice and generosity, and had been rewarded by flagrant bad faith. Apart from the matter of personal honour, he believed that the path which the Covenant had chosen led only to anarchy and an ultimate tyranny. Every article of his political philosophy was at stake. The one hope seemed to lie in Charles’s success. He set off at once for the south, and reached Oxford some time in August. The king had gone to the siege of Gloucester, and Montrose found that he could do nothing with the queen. Her trust in Hamilton was unshaken, and on 28th August she wrote to him reaffirming her confidence. He then sought the king at Gloucester, but the courtiers persuaded Charles that the young man was an alarmist, and that the scheme he proposed was moonshine. Meantime the Solemn League and Covenant had been ratified, Leven was mustering his men, and every day the chance of forestalling him grew more slender. In an agony of anxiety Montrose pled and expostulated.
But as the autumn passed and the king returned to Oxford to winter, the letters of Hamilton and Lanark took a new tone. They confessed that the game was up, that they had been deceived, that Leven was on the eve of marching. Charles sent for Montrose at last and listened to his plan, and Antrim, who had escaped from captivity, was at hand to promise support. In December the Hamiltons came to Oxford to brazen it out, and found their conduct the subject of a commission of inquiry. There could be no question of the verdict. Montrose and Aboyne, Nithsdale, Kinnoull, and Ogilvy were there to testify to a long course of double-dealing, supineness, and folly, which was only saved from being flat treason by the mental confusion of those who pursued it. Hamilton was arrested and sent a prisoner to Pendennis castle in Cornwall; Lanark escaped — first to London, where he shared the bed and board of Mr. Robert Baillie, and then to the Covenant army. At long last the king turned to the only man who could give him hope.
1644
Montrose abode with the court at Oxford during the bitter early months of 1644, and elaborated his plans. It seemed a desperate remedy. The only project he could offer was to “raise Scotland for the king”; but it seemed as if Scotland had effectively risen for the king’s opponents. Leven’s blue-bonnets were over the Border, and the whole line of the Marches was controlled by the Covenanters. They held every city and town in Scotland; Parliament and General Assembly alike were their creatures; the revenue of the country was in their hands; the greater part of the nobles had joined their standard. A year ago there had been a chance; now it seemed the wildest of wild ventures. If the Scottish people were tired of their taskmasters they had given no sign of it, and the sup
posed loyalists, with a few shining exceptions, had proved the most brittle of reeds. Except for Kinnoull, Ogilvy, and Aboyne, Montrose seemed to have no following even among the royalists of his own class. Huntly disliked him, Crawford was jealous of him, Traquair feared him; the nondescripts, like Carnwath, Morton, Southesk, Nithsdale, Roxburgh, and Home, were disinclined to obey a youth.
George Gordon, Second Marquis of Huntly,
after a portrait by Vandyke.
But in that strange Oxford, where the colleges had become courts or barracks, and trenches were at the back of Wadham and across St. Giles’s, and Rupert and his horse swung over Magdalen Bridge of a morning to raid in the Chilterns — an Oxford of junketing and brawling, hymns and drinking songs, fiery hearts and anxious minds, there were men like Endymion Porter and Digby, men in the inner circle of the royal councils, in whom the grave purpose of the young Scottish earl commanded respect. Among so much that was self-seeking and half-hearted, his ardour was like a sea-wind in a stifling room. They had the wit to recognize that a certain kind of spirit may win against any odds. Hyde, too, was probably his friend. The future Lord Clarendon detested Scotland and all things connected with her, but he loved an honest man and a stout heart; and we know from a letter of Evelyn to Pepys that “the brave Montrosse” was one of the portraits in his private cabinet at Cornbury. In any case it was no season for prudence, for Newcastle was in desperate straits in the north. “I will not,” said Montrose, “distrust God’s assistance in a righteous cause, and if it shall please your Majesty to lay your commands upon me for this purpose, your affairs will at any rate be in no worse case than they are at present, even if I should not succeed.”
