General Baillie, a trained soldier, took the command of the Covenanting levies and regular troops (“Red coats”), and nearly surprised Montrose in Dundee. By a retreat showing even more genius than his victories, he escaped, appeared on the north-east coast, and scattered a Covenanting force under Hurry, at Auldearn, near Inverness (May 9, 1645).
Such victories as Montrose’s were more than counterbalanced by Cromwell’s defeat of Rupert and Charles at Naseby (June 14, 1645); while presbytery suffered a blow from Cromwell’s demand, that the English Parliament should grant “freedom of conscience,” not for Anglican or Catholic, of course, but for religions non-Presbyterian. The “bloody sectaries,” as the Presbyterians called Cromwell’s Independents, were now masters of the field: never would the blue banner of the Covenant be set up south of Tweed.
Meanwhile General Baillie marched against Montrose, who outmanœuvred him all over the eastern Highlands, and finally gave him battle at Alford on the Don. Montrose had not here Colkitto and the western clans, but his Gordon horse, his Irish, the Farquharsons, and the Badenoch men were triumphantly successful. Unfortunately, Lord Gordon was slain: he alone could bring out and lead the clan of Huntly. Only by joining hands with Charles could Montrose do anything decisive. The king, hoping for no more than a death in the field “with honour and a good conscience,” pushed as far north as Doncaster, where he was between Poyntz’s army and a great cavalry force, led by David Leslie, from Hereford, to launch against Montrose. The hero snatched a final victory. He had but a hundred horse, but he had Colkitto and the flower of the fighting clans, including the invincible Macleans. Baillie, in command of new levies of some 10,000 men, was thwarted by a committee of Argyll and other noble amateurs. He met the enemy south of Forth, at Kilsyth, between Stirling and Glasgow. The fiery Argyll made Baillie desert an admirable position – Montrose was on the plain, Baillie was on the heights – and expose his flank by a march across Montrose’s front. The Macleans and Macdonalds, on the lower slope of the hill, without orders, saw their chance, and racing up a difficult glen, plunged into the Covenanting flank. Meanwhile the more advanced part of the Covenanting force were driving back some Gordons from a hill on Montrose’s left, who were rescued by a desperate charge of Aboyne’s handful of horse among the red coats; Airlie charged with the Ogilvies; the advanced force of the Covenant was routed, and the Macleans and Macdonalds completed the work they had begun (August 15). Few of the unmounted Covenanters escaped from Kilsyth; and Argyll, taking boat in the Forth, hurried to Newcastle, where David Leslie, coming north, obtained infantry regiments to back his 4000 cavalry.
In a year Montrose, with forces so irregular and so apt to go home after every battle, had actually cleared militant Covenanters out of Scotland. But the end had come. He would not permit the sack of Glasgow. Three thousand clansmen left him; Colkitto went away to harry Kintyre. Aboyne and the Gordons rode home on some private pique; and Montrose relied on men whom he had already proved to be broken reeds, the Homes and Kers (Roxburgh) of the Border, and the futile and timid Traquair. When he came among them they forsook him and fled; on September 10, at Kelso, Sir Robert Spottiswoode recognised the desertion and the danger.
Meanwhile Leslie, with an overpowering force of seasoned soldiers, horse and foot, marched with Argyll, not to Edinburgh, but down Gala to Tweed; while Montrose had withdrawn from Kelso, up Ettrick to Philiphaugh, on the left of Ettrick, within a mile of Selkirk. He had but 500 Irish, who entrenched themselves, and an uncertain number of mounted Border lairds with their servants and tenants. Charteris of Hempsfield, who had been scouting, reported that Leslie was but two or three miles distant, at Sunderland Hall, where Tweed and Ettrick meet; but the news was not carried to Montrose, who lay at Selkirk. At breakfast, on September 13, Montrose learned that Leslie was attacking. What followed is uncertain in its details. A so-called “contemporary ballad” is incredibly impossible in its anachronisms, and is modern. In this egregious doggerel we are told that a veteran who had fought at Solway Moss a century earlier, and at “cursed Dunbar” a few years later (or under Edward I.?), advised Leslie to make a turning movement behind Linglie Hill. This is not evidence. Though Leslie may have made such a movement, he describes his victory as very easy: and so it should have been, as Montrose had only the remnant of his Antrim men and a rabble of reluctant Border recruits.
A news letter from Haddington, of September 16, represents the Cavaliers as making a good fight. The mounted Border lairds galloped away. Most of the Irish fell fighting: the rest were massacred, whether after promise of quarter or not is disputed. Their captured women were hanged in cold blood some months later. Montrose, the Napiers, and some forty horse either cut their way through or evaded Leslie’s overpowering cavalry, and galloped across the hills of Yarrow to the Tweed. He had lost only the remnant of his Scoto-Irish; but the Gordons, when Montrose was presently menacing Glasgow, were held back by Huntly, and Colkitto pursued his private adventures. Montrose had been deserted by the clans, and lured to ruin by the perfidious promises of the Border lords and lairds. The aim of his strategy had been to relieve the Royalists of England by a diversion that would deprive the Parliamentarians of their paid Scottish allies, and what man might do Montrose had done.
After his first victory Montrose, an excommunicated man, fought under an offer of £1500 for his murder, and the Covenanters welcomed the assassin of his friend, Lord Kilpont.
The result of Montrose’s victories was hostility between the Covenanting army in England and the English, who regarded them as expensive and inefficient. Indeed, they seldom, save for the command of David Leslie, displayed military qualities, and later, were invariably defeated when they encountered the English under Cromwell and Lambert.
Montrose never slew a prisoner, but the Convention at St Andrews, in November 1645, sentenced to death their Cavalier prisoners (Lord Ogilvy escaped disguised in his sister’s dress), and they ordered the hanging of captives and of the women who had accompanied the Irish. “It was certain of the clergy who pressed for the extremest measures.” 28 They had revived the barbarous belief, retained in the law of ancient Greece, that the land had been polluted by, and must be cleansed by, blood, under penalty of divine wrath. As even the Covenanting Baillie wrote, “to this day no man in England has been executed for bearing arms against the Parliament.” The preachers argued that to keep the promises of quarter which had been given to the prisoners was “to violate the oath of the Covenant.” 29
The prime object of the English opponents of the king was now “to hustle the Scots out of England.” 30 Meanwhile Charles, not captured but hopeless, was negotiating with all the parties, and ready to yield on every point except that of forcing presbytery on England – a matter which, said Montereuil, the French ambassador, “did not concern them but their neighbours.” Charles finally trusted the Scots with his person, and the question is, had he or had he not assurance that he would be well received? If he had any assurance it was merely verbal, “a shadow of a security,” wrote Montereuil. Charles was valuable to the Scots only as a pledge for the payment of their arrears of wages. There was much chicanery and shuffling on both sides, and probably there were misconceptions on both sides. A letter of Montereuil (April 26, 1646) convinced Charles that he might trust the Scots; they verbally promised “safety, honour, and conscience,” but refused to sign a copy of their words. Charles trusted them, rode out of Oxford, joined them at Southwell, and, says Sir James Turner, who was present, was commanded by Lothian to sign the Covenant, and “barbarously used.” They took Charles to Newcastle, denying their assurance to him. “With unblushing falsehood,” says Mr Gardiner, they in other respects lied to the English Parliament. On May 19 Charles bade Montrose leave the country, which he succeeded in doing, despite the treacherous endeavours of his enemies to detain him till his day of safety (August 31) was passed.
The Scots of the army were in a quandary. The preachers, their masters, would not permit them to bring to Scotland an uncovenanted king. They could not stay penniless in England. For £200,000 down and a promise, never kept, of a similar sum later, they left Charles in English hands, with some assurances for his safety, and early in February 1647 crossed Tweed with their thirty-six cartloads of money. The act was hateful to very many Scots, but the Estates, under the command of the preachers, had refused to let the king, while uncovenanted, cross into his native kingdom, and to bring him meant war with England. But that must ensue in any case. The hope of making England presbyterian, as under the Solemn League and Covenant, had already perished.
Leslie, with the part of the army still kept up, chased Colkitto, and, at Dunavertie, under the influence of Nevoy, a preacher, put 300 Irish prisoners to the sword.
The parties in Scotland were now: (1) the Kirk, Argyll, the two Leslies, and most of the Commons; (2) Hamilton, Lanark, and Lauderdale, who had no longer anything to fear, as regards their estates, from Charles or from bishops, and who were ashamed of his surrender to the English; (3) Royalists in general. With Charles (December 27, 1647) in his prison at Carisbrooke, Lauderdale, Loudoun, and Lanark made a secret treaty, The Engagement, which they buried in the garden, for if it were discovered the Independents of the army would have attacked Scotland.
An Assembly of the Scots Estates on March 3, 1648, had a large majority of nobles, gentry, and many burgesses in favour of aiding the captive king; on the other side Argyll was backed by the omnipotent Commission of the General Assembly, and by the full force of prayers and sermons. The letter-writer, Baillie, now deemed “that it were for the good of the world that churchmen did meddle with ecclesiastical affairs only.” The Engagers insisted on establishing presbytery in England, which neither satisfied the Kirk nor the Cavaliers and Independents. Nothing more futile could have been devised.
The Estates, in May, began to raise an army; the preachers denounced them: there was a battle between armed communicants of the preachers’ party and the soldiers of the State at Mauchline. Invading England on July 8, Hamilton had Lambert and Cromwell to face him, and left Argyll, the preachers, and their “slashing communicants” in his rear. Lanark had vainly urged that the west country fanatics should be crushed before the Border was crossed. By a march worthy of Montrose across the fells into Lanarkshire, Cromwell reached Preston; cut in between the northern parts of Hamilton’s army; defeated the English Royalists and Langdale, and cut to pieces or captured the Scots, disunited as their generals were, at Wigan and Warrington (August 17-19). Hamilton was taken and was decapitated later. The force that recrossed the Border consisted of such mounted men as escaped, with the detachment of Monro which had not joined Hamilton.
The godly in Scotland rejoiced at the defeat of their army: the levies of the western shires of Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark occupied Edinburgh: Argyll and the Kirk party were masters, and when Cromwell arrived in Edinburgh early in October he was entertained at dinner by Argyll. The left wing of the Covenant was now allied with the Independents – the deadly foes of presbytery! To the ordinary mind this looks like a new breach of the Covenant, that impossible treaty with Omnipotence. Charles had written that the divisions of parties were probably “God’s way to punish them for their many rebellions and perfidies.” The punishment was now beginning in earnest, and the alliance of extreme Covenanters with “bloody sectaries” could not be maintained. Yet historians admire the statesmanship of Argyll!
If the edge which the sword of the Covenant turned against the English enemies of presbytery were blunted, the edge that smote Covenanters less extreme than Argyll and the preachers was whetted afresh. In the Estates of January 5, 1649, Argyll, whose party had a large majority, and the fanatical Johnston of Waristoun (who made private covenants with Jehovah) demanded disenabling Acts against all who had in any degree been tainted by the Engagement for the rescue of the king. The Engagers were divided into four “Classes,” who were rendered incapable by “The Act of Classes” of holding any office, civil or military. This Act deprived the country of the services of thousands of men, just at the moment when the English army, the Independents, Argyll’s allies, were holding the Trial of Charles I.; and, in defiance of timid remonstrances from the Scottish Commissioners in England, cut off “that comely head” (January 30, 1649), which meant war with Scotland.
SCOTLAND AND CHARLES II
This was certain, for, on February 5, on the news of the deed done at Whitehall, the Estates proclaimed Charles II. as Scottish King – if he took the Covenant. By an ingenious intrigue Argyll allowed Lauderdale and Lanark, whom the Estates had intended to arrest, to escape to Holland, where Charles was residing, and their business was to bring that uncovenanted prince to sign the Covenant, and to overcome the influence of Montrose, who, with Clarendon, of course resisted such a trebly dishonourable act of perjured hypocrisy. During the whole struggle, since Montrose took the king’s side, he had been thwarted by the Hamiltons. They invariably wavered: now they were for a futile policy of dishonour, in which they involved their young king, Argyll, and Scotland. Montrose stood for honour and no Covenant; Argyll, the Hamiltons, Lauderdale, and the majority of the preachers stood for the Covenant with dishonour and perjury; the left wing of the preachers stood for the Covenant, but not for its dishonourable and foresworn acceptance by Charles.
As a Covenanter, Charles II. would be the official foe of the English Independents and army; Scotland would need every sword in the kingdom, and the kingdom’s best general, Montrose, yet the Act of Classes, under the dictation of the preachers, rejected every man tainted with participation in or approval of the Engagement – or of neglecting family prayers!
Charles, in fact, began (February 22) by appointing Montrose his Lieutenant-Governor and Captain-General in Scotland, though Lauderdale and Lanark “abate not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their discourses,” wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as – given the character of Charles II. and his destitution – it must end. Charles (January 22, 1650) despatched Montrose to fight for him in Scotland, and sent him the Garter. Montrose knew his doom: he replied, “With the more alacrity shall I abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty’s honour and service.” He searched his death, and soon he found it.
On May 1, Charles, by the Treaty of Breda, vowed to sign the Covenant; a week earlier Montrose, not joined by the Mackenzies, had been defeated by Strachan at Carbisdale, on the south of the Kyle, opposite Invershin, in Sutherlandshire. He was presently captured, and crowned a glorious life of honour by a more glorious death on the gibbet (May 21). He had kept his promise; he had searched his death; he had loyally defended, like Jeanne d’Arc, a disloyal king; he had “carried fidelity and honour with him to the grave.” His body was mutilated, his limbs were exposed, – they now lie in St Giles’ Church, Edinburgh, where is his beautiful monument.
Montrose’s last words to Charles (March 26, from Kirkwall) implored that Prince “to be just to himself,” – not to perjure himself by signing the Covenant. The voice of honour is not always that of worldly wisdom, but events proved that Charles and Scotland could have lost nothing and must have gained much had the king listened to Montrose. He submitted, we saw, to commissioners sent to him from Scotland. Says one of these gentlemen, “He.. sinfully complied with what we most sinfully pressed upon him… our sin was more than his.”
While his subjects in Scotland were executing his loyal servants taken prisoners in Montrose’s last defeat, Charles crossed the sea, signing the Covenants on board ship, and landed at the mouth of Spey. What he gained by his dishonour was the guilt of perjury; and the consequent distrust of the wilder but more honest Covenanters, who knew that he had perjured himself, and deemed his reception a cause of divine wrath and disastrous judgments. Next he was separated from most of his false friends, who had urged him to his guilt, and from all Royalists; and he was not allowed to be with his army, which the preachers kept “purging” of all who did not come up to their standard of sanctity.
Their hopeful scheme was to propitiate the Deity and avert wrath by purging out officers of experience, while filling up their places with godly but incompetent novices in war, “ministers’ sons, clerks, and such other sanctified creatures.” This final and fatal absurdity was the result of playing at being the Israel described in the early historic books of the Old Testament, a policy initiated by Knox in spite of the humorous protests of Lethington.
For the surer purging of that Achan, Charles, and to conciliate the party who deemed him the greatest cause of wrath of all, the king had to sign a false and disgraceful declaration that he was “afflicted in spirit before God because of the impieties of his father and mother”! He was helpless in the hands of Argyll, David Leslie, and the rest: he knew they would desert him if he did not sign, and he yielded (August 16). Meanwhile Cromwell, with Lambert, Monk, 16,000 foot and horse, and a victualling fleet, had reached Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, by July 28.
David Leslie very artfully evaded every attempt to force a fight, but hung about him in all his movements. Cromwell was obliged to retreat for lack of supplies in a devastated country, and on September 1 reached Dunbar by the coast road. Leslie, marching parallel along the hill-ridges, occupied Doonhill and secured a long, deep, and steep ravine, “the Peaths,” near Cockburnspath, barring Cromwell’s line of march. On September 2 the controlling clerical Committee was still busily purging and depleting the Scottish army. The night of September 2-3 was very wet, the officers deserted their regiments to take shelter. Says Leslie himself, “We might as easily have beaten them as we did James Graham at Philiphaugh, if the officers had stayed by their own troops and regiments.” Several witnesses, and Cromwell himself, asserted that, owing to the insistence of the preachers, Leslie moved his men to the lower slopes on the afternoon of September 2. “The Lord hath delivered them into our hands,” Cromwell is reported to have said. They now occupied a position where the banks of the lower Broxburn were flat and assailable, not steep and forming a strong natural moat, as on the higher level. All night Cromwell rode along and among his regiments of horse, biting his lip till the blood ran down his chin. Leslie thought to surprise Cromwell; Cromwell surprised Leslie, crossed the Broxburn on the low level, before dawn, and drove into the Scots who were all unready, the matches of their muskets being wet and unlighted. The centre made a good stand, but a flank charge by English cavalry cut up the Scots foot, and Leslie fled with the nobles, gentry, and mounted men. In killed, wounded, and prisoners the Scots are said to have lost 14,000 men, a manifest exaggeration. It was an utter defeat.
“Surely,” wrote Cromwell, “it is probable the Kirk has done her do.” The Kirk thought not; purging must go on, “nobody must blame the Covenant.” Neglect of family prayers was selected as one cause of the defeat! Strachan and Ker, two extreme whigamores of the left wing of the godly, went to raise a western force that would neither acknowledge Charles nor join Cromwell, who now took Edinburgh Castle. Charles was reduced by Argyll to make to him the most slavish promises, including the payment of £40,000, the part of the price of Charles I. which Argyll had not yet touched.
On October 4 Charles made “the Start”; he fled to the Royalists of Angus, – Ogilvy and Airlie: he was caught, brought back, and preached at. Then came fighting between the Royalists and the Estates. Middleton, a good soldier, Atholl, and others, declared that they must and would fight for Scotland, though they were purged out by the preachers. The Estates (November 4) gave them an indemnity. On this point the Kirk split into twain: the wilder men, led by the Rev. James Guthrie, refused reconciliation (the Remonstrants); the less fanatical would consent to it, on terms (the Resolutioners). The Committee of Estates dared to resist the Remonstrants: even the Commissioners of the General Assembly “cannot be against the raising of all fencible persons,” – and at last adopted the attitude of all sensible persons. By May 21, 1651, the Estates rescinded the insane Act of Classes, but the strife between clerical Remonstrants and Resolutioners persisted till after the Restoration, the Remonstrants being later named Protesters.
Charles had been crowned at Scone on January 1, again signing the Covenants. Leslie now occupied Stirling, avoiding an engagement. In July, while a General Assembly saw the strife of the two sects, came news that Lambert had crossed the Forth at Queensferry, and defeated a Scots force at Inverkeithing, where the Macleans fell almost to a man; Monk captured a number of the General Assembly, and, as Cromwell, moving to Perth, could now assail Leslie and the main Scottish force at Stirling, they, by a desperate resolution, with 4000 horse and 9000 foot, invaded England by the west marches, “laughing,” says one of them, “at the ridiculousness of our own condition.” On September 1 Monk stormed and sacked Dundee as Montrose sacked Aberdeen, but if he made a massacre like that by Edward I. at Berwick, history is lenient to the crime.
On August 22 Charles, with his army, reached Worcester, whither Cromwell marched with a force twice as great as that of the king. Worcester was a Sedan: Charles could neither hold it nor, though he charged gallantly, could he break through Cromwell’s lines. Before nightfall on September 3 Charles was a fugitive: he had no army; Hamilton was slain, Middleton and David Leslie with thousands more were prisoners. Monk had already captured, at Alyth (August 28), the whole of the Government, the Committee of Estates, and had also caught some preachers, including James Sharp, later Archbishop of St Andrews. England had conquered Scotland at last, after twelve years of government by preachers acting as interpreters of the Covenant between Scotland and Jehovah.