by John Buchan
1646 Jan.-Mar.
The operations of the year 1646 began, therefore, with good promise of success. The promise was not fulfilled. The next few months must have been among the most wretched in Montrose’s life. With a heart aching from the loss of his comrades, with a drenched and starving following, and with no news save the gloomiest from the south, he conducted an ineffective guerilla war up and down Speyside. Huntly had nearly twice his number of foot and thrice his number of horse, but he refused to co-operate. The splendid fighting force of the Gordons was frittered away, and their chief declined to undertake any operation of war except the siege of some little castles in Moray to gratify private animosities. Montrose’s patient letters to him are the only clues we have as to the movements of the royal army. It was at Advie and Castle Grant in the end of December 1645, moving about Strathspey in January 1646, at Kylochy on the Findhorn in February, and at Petty on the coast in March.
1646 March-April
Elsewhere there were bold deeds to record. Twelve hundred of Argyll’s clan, under Campbell of Ardkinglass, finding commons short in Lorn, had come raiding to the Menteith lands of Napier and other royalists, where they were joined by oddments of various clans, like the Menzieses and the Stewarts of Balquhidder. Inchbrakie and young Drummond of Balloch, having been sent to recruit in Atholl, heard of these doings, and, with some 700 of the Atholl men, came up with the raiders on the 13th of February, near Callander, and thoroughly routed them. The remnant was found by Argyll huddling under the walls of Stirling; he dispatched them into Renfrewshire, where the local Covenanters would have none of these strange allies of the Covenant, and finally — Inchbrakie and his men having gone north — sent them back into the Lennox to live on the country. Another fine performance was the defence of Kincardine castle by the young Lord Napier. With fifty men he held the place against Middleton for fourteen days, and then, when capitulation was imminent, escaped by night with Drummond of Balloch to Montrose. Middleton, on the 16th of March, burned the house where Montrose had spent his youth, and left the viceroy landless and homeless.
There were no such exploits to redeem the futile campaign in the north. The vital objective was Inverness, the capture of which would not only give control of a large piece of territory and important communications, but would recruit trimmers like Seaforth and the Mackenzies, the Grants, Macleod of Skye, and Macdonald of Sleat. Accordingly, early in April Montrose sat down before Inverness, and on the 29th of that month drew his lines close and fixed his guns on the top of the old Castle Hill. The Ness was unusually low, and the invading army lived largely on the Fraser country to the west of it. The garrison was strong and well-supplied, and it ruthlessly destroyed all outlying buildings of the town which might give shelter to the enemy; but Montrose, strengthened by some of Seaforth’s Mackenzies and by Macdonalds from the west, would beyond doubt have captured it had it not been for Huntly. Middleton had come north again, Leslie having departed for England to look after arrears of pay, and the 1,400 men he brought with him, joined to the Aberdeen garrison he had left behind, made a formidable army on the royalist flank. The Gordons lay between Middleton and Montrose, and it was their business to watch the former and prevent him from crossing the Spey. But Huntly was busy with private vendettas, and sent only insulting replies to his colleague’s appeals. Montrose was, therefore, compelled to detach three troops of horse, which he could ill spare, to watch the Spey crossings. Lord Lewis, who held the castle of Rothes, whether out of treachery or a misplaced sense of humour, sent a false message to the troops, decoyed them to Rothes, and detained them there till Middleton was across the river.
1646 May
The first news Montrose had of Middleton was the sounding of his trumpets on the 5th of May, two miles from Inverness. He had nothing to withstand so strong a cavalry force, so he was compelled to raise the siege. With Crawford commanding his rearguard, he crossed the Ness above the town, marched north-west by way of the Caiplich, and put the Beauly between him and his pursuer. In the hurry of his retreat he was compelled to leave behind him all his stores and ammunition and his two brass field-pieces. Middleton followed at his leisure, but on 8th May Montrose gave him the slip, doubled back by Strathglass and Stratherrick, and presently was again on Speyside.
Matters had now reached a crisis. Huntly was not only no friend, but was becoming an active enemy, and Montrose resolved to treat him as such. He had just, with considerable losses, taken and plundered Aberdeen, and was clearly determined to play for his own hand. But first Montrose made one final effort to see him and bring him to reason. On the 27th of May he rode twenty miles to the Bog of Gight, but Huntly saw him coming and fled. It was the last straw. The viceroy decided to write off the Gordons from the royal strength in Scotland, and to let Middleton make of them what he pleased. He would form a light flying squadron and ride through the northern Highlands to beat up recruits for the king. If Alasdair was gone beyond reach, he had some hopes of Seaforth and Sleat, he had Reay on his side, and he was certain of the Macleans, of Clanranald, and of Glengarry. It was a course which his wisest counsellors advised, and, with such allies, it would be strange if he could not bring to the field as stout a force as that which had scattered the Covenant in a year of battles.
III
But on the 31st of May a fateful message arrived from the king. This is not the place to describe the alternations of hope and despondency through which Charles passed, between Digby’s fiasco in the north and that day in April when he slipped out of beleaguered Oxford to cast himself upon the mercy of the Scots. Negotiations had been for long in progress with Montreuil, the French ambassador, as intermediary, but Leven and his friends, while hinting at much, would commit nothing to writing. The Scots had lost all love for their English allies. The ministers had begun to realize that their conception of Presbytery was very different from that held by the English Parliament and the City of London. “The Pope and the King,” wrote Baillie, “were never more earnest for the headship of the Church than the plurality of this Parliament;” and again, “The leaders of the people seemed to be inclined to have no shadow of a king; to have liberty for all religions; to have but a lame Erastian Presbytery; to be so injurious to us as to chase us home by the sword.” The Scottish laity were now less high-flying in their demands. They wished to see Presbyterianism entrenched in England as a protection to their own liberties, for they realized the growing military power of Independency; they wished the neighbouring government to be in the hands of their friends; and they could not mistake the meaning of the clause in the capitulation of Exeter which exempted the besieged from taking the Covenant. The Independents were rapidly becoming the national English party, hostile alike to the French, the Irish, and the Scots. Argyll saw this clearly, and his speech in the House of Lords on 25th June is perhaps his chief claim to statesmanship, for he proposed an elastic and tolerant form of Presbytery and combined it with some admirable good sense on the subject of a constitutional kingship.
But the time was past for such moderation. Antagonisms and suspicions had been created which must battle together till they destroyed each other. The mood of the nation was too feverish to permit of compromise. The future lay with Hyde and men like him, who would make no concession to what they regarded as sectional tyrannies. “He represented . . . the only living force with which Cromwell had seriously to count. The English Presbyterian members of Parliament, the Scottish Presbyterian lords — nay, even the king himself — were but the weavers of one vast intrigue with many faces. Hyde stood firmly upon the ground of a sentiment which would one day, through the errors of his antagonists, gain a hold upon the nation, and he knew how to bide his time till the nation had declared in his favour. It was not Puritanism, but the very opposite of Puritanism — the expansion of the reasoning intelligence — which held the main current of the thought of the seventeenth century. Cromwell, mighty as he was, could but dam back the current for a time, and when he had done his utmost he would have toiled only th
at Hyde might step into his place.”
Even had there been a chance of agreement, it would have been wrecked on the personality of the king. He could not realize that the establishment of Presbytery in England was a bed-rock claim for the Scots; they could not realize that their sovereign could be blind to this constant article of their faith. Hence all talk about the king being secured in conscience and honour if he entrusted himself to them was idle; by these words the two parties did not mean the same thing. Charles did not realize that, though the breach between the Scots and the Independents was widening, there remained between him and them an impassable gulf. No doubt there was on the Scottish side a grave lack of candour and honesty, but there was an equal disingenuousness on the part of the man who could write, as Charles did from Oxford in March, that he was “not without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with me for extirpating one another, that I shall really be a king again.” It is not safe to take refuge with an army if it is your settled purpose to betray it; the deceiver is apt in turn to become the deceived.
1646 April
On 25th April Charles, disguised as a servant, rode out of Oxford over Magdalen bridge, and about seven in the morning of 5th May he arrived in the Scots camp at Southwell. For what happened in Montreuil’s lodgings at the Saracen’s Head we have the evidence of an eyewitness, Sir James Turner. Before the king had eaten or drunk, Lothian hurried to his presence and formulated his demands. The royalist garrison must surrender Newark, the king must sign the Covenant, and establish Presbytery in England and Wales, and must order “James Graham” to lay down his arms. To this imperious speech Charles replied with the dignity that never failed him: “He that made thee an earl made James Graham a marquis.”
1646 May-June
Then began a pathetic correspondence between the king who had done so little and his captain-general who had done so much. The esteem of Charles for his great servant had ripened into a warm affection. “From henceforth,” he had said a few months earlier, “I place Montrose among my children, and mean to live with him as a friend, and not as a king.” On 18th April he wrote to him from Oxford, telling him of his intention to go to the Scots army, and suggesting that Montrose, if he found that Leven had declared for the king, should join forces with him; the letter was sent in cypher through Nicholas to Montreuil to be delivered at the latter’s discretion, and naturally was not forwarded. On the 19th of May he wrote to Montrose from Newcastle:
“I am in such a condition as is much fitter for relation than for writing. Wherefore, I refer you to this trusty bearer, Robin Ker, for the reasons and manner of my coming to this army; as also, what my treatment hath been since I came, and my resolutions upon my whole business. This shall therefore only give you positive commands, and tell you real truths, leaving the why of all to this bearer. You must disband your forces and go into France, where you shall receive my further direction. This at first may justly startle you; but I assure you that, if for the present I should offer to do more for you, I could not do so much.”
Montrose received this letter on Speyside on the last day of May. He called a council of his officers and laid it before them; he invited Huntly, who replied haughtily that he knew all about the matter, having himself had letters from the king. In his reply on 2nd June Montrose declared himself at his Majesty’s commands, but asked that some protection should be secured for those who had risked all in the royal cause.
“For, when all is done that we can, I am much afraid that it shall trouble both those with your Majesty, and all your servants here, to quit these parts. And as for my own leaving this kingdom, I shall in all humility and obedience endeavour to perform your Majesty’s command, wishing (rather nor any one should make pretext of me) never to see it again with mine eyes; willing, as well by passion as action, to witness myself your Majesty’s most humble and most faithful subject and servant.”
1646 June-July
He also wrote privately to the king, asking if his surrender to the Scots had been by his own will or by compulsion; if the latter, he would keep his army in being. Then he broke up his camp and marched to Glenshee to await the king’s answer.
Charles replied on the 15th of June, repeating his commands, and promising protection for Montrose’s followers.
“I assure you that I no less esteem your willingness to lay down arms at my command for a gallant and real expression of your zeal and affection to my service than any of your former actions. But I hope that you cannot have so mean an opinion of me that, for any particular or worldly respects, I could suffer you to be ruined. No. I avow that it is one of the greatest and truest marks of my present miseries that I cannot recompense you according to your deserts, but, on the contrary, must yet suffer a cloud of the misfortunes of the times to hang over you. . . . For there is no man, who ever heard me speak of you, that is ignorant that the reason that makes me at this time send you out of the country is that you may return home with the greater glory; and in the meantime to have as honourable employment as I can put upon you. This trusty bearer, Robin Ker, will tell you the care I have had of all your friends and mine; to whom, albeit I cannot furnish such conditions as I would, yet they will be such as, all things considered, are most fit for them to accept. Wherefore, I renew my former directions of laying down arms unto you, desiring you to let Huntly, Crawford, Airlie, Seaforth, and Ogilvy know that want of time hath made me now omit to reiterate my former command to them, intending that this shall serve for all, assuring them and all the rest of my friends that, whensoever God shall enable me, they shall reap the fruits of their loyalty and affection to my service.”
1646 July
On the 16th of July the king wrote again:
“The most sensible part of my many misfortunes is to see my friends in distress and not to be able to help them, and of this kind you are the chief. Wherefore, according to that real freedom and friendship which is between us, as I cannot absolutely command you to accept of unhandsome conditions, so I must tell you that I believe your refusal will put you in a far worse estate than your compliance will. This is the reason that I have told this bearer, Robin Ker, and the Commissioners here, that I have commanded you to accept of Middleton’s conditions, which really I judge to be your best course according to this present time; for, if this opportunity be let slip, you must not expect any more treaties; in which case you must either conquer all Scotland or be inevitably ruined. . . . Wherefore if you find it fit to accept, you may justly say I have commanded you, and if you take another course you cannot expect that I can publicly avow you in it until I shall be able (which God knows how soon that will be) to stand upon my own feet; but, on the contrary, seem to be not well satisfied with your refusal, which I find clearly will bring all this army upon you — and then I shall be in a very sad condition, such as I shall rather leave to your judgment than seek to express.”
1646 Aug.-Sept.
The command admitted of no refusal. Seaforth and Huntly were making their own terms; moreover, the futile Antrim had arrived in Scotland to assist Alasdair in a private war in Argyll, and was summoning the Highlanders to follow his own standard. Accordingly, towards the end of July Montrose met Middleton on the banks of the Isla to arrange terms. Middleton was to stain his later record with many crimes, but he had some of the instincts of a soldier. He granted better conditions than might have been looked for. A free pardon was given to all the royalists except the viceroy, Crawford, and Sir John Hurry, who, since Kilsyth, had been with Montrose. These three were to leave the country before the first day of September, the Estates providing a vessel. All forfeited lands were to be restored, except in the case of the three excepted, and of Graham of Gorthie, whose estate was already in the hands of Balcarres. Montrose accepted the conditions, and, assembling his army on 30th July at Rattray, near Blairgowrie, bade his men farewell. He told them that what he did was for the king’s sake and by the king’s command. It was a melancholy parting with those High
landers of Atholl who had never failed him, and with comrades such as Airlie and Ogilvy and the young Napier, who, in good and evil report, had been true to their salt. For such men “passion” was a harder service than “action.”
The Committee of Estates did not accept with any graciousness the terms which Middleton had agreed. They dared not repudiate their general, for Middleton was not a man to brook insults, and his forces, added to Montrose’s, might soon be hammering at the Edinburgh gates. But they did their best to defeat the bargain by delay. Montrose had received a private letter from the king at Newcastle, dated the 21st of August, of which the postscript bade him defer his going beyond seas “as long as you may, without breaking your word.” It was a dangerous instruction, but Montrose accepted it. As the last days of the month approached he grew suspicious of the Covenant’s good faith. There was no sign of the promised vessel till, on the 31st, a ship put into Montrose harbour with a sullen master and a more sullen crew. English men-of-war, too, had appeared off the coast. When Montrose proposed to embark at once, the skipper declared that he must have time to caulk his vessel and attend to the rigging. This meant that the days of grace would be exceeded, and the viceroy left stranded, an outlaw at the mercy of his enemies.
