his hand. He even consented, contrary to their expectation, to sign the Covenant, (only reserving a slight explication of the Bond of Defence in favour of the king,) and he also ordered that it should be signed by the rest of his majesty's coun cil.

The Assembly rose on the 30th of August; and the establishment of Presbytery, by deputed sanction of royalty—an event so little to have been expected two years before was celebrated by the people with bonfires, ringing of bells, and other demonstrations of national joy.

The affairs of the church thus settled, the parliament was next to be assembled for the consideration of those of the state. It sat down next day." For some time its proceedings were perplexed by the deficiency of the bishops, who, in the single parliamentary house peculiar to Scotland, had served as a third Estate. It was judiciously feared by the Covenanters, that the king might afterwards take occasion from this to declare the constitution of their body and all their acts unlawful; to obviate this, they framed an act, declaring the lesser barons to be substituted as the third Estate. As for the election of the committee called the Lords of the Articles, whose office it was to prepare all bills for discussion, and who had hitherto been always named by the prelates, it was conceded to the commissioner, though not without a protest, that it should afterwards be managed by the three assembled Estates for themselves. These points settled, they proceeded to business, and a great number of bills were prepared, of a nature calculated to restrain the king's prerogative, and render parliaments in a great measure independent of him, when, by an order from the king, the com

missioner abruptly prorogued them to the 2d of June next year.

The members, with a spirit in which may be discerned the first dawn of modern liberty, declared the prorogation of parliament illegal without its own consent; but, to avoid giving real cause of offence to their sovereign, they resolved to obey his present order by rising. They contented themselves with dispatching a committee of their number to London, to remonstrate with his majesty, and to supplicate him for a revisal of his commands.

Before the commissioners procured audience, Charles had determined in his council, with the advice of the Earl of Traquair, to renew the war. To justify his resolution in the eyes of the English nation, he set himself, by various publications, to prove, that the real object of the Covenanters was not, as they had always hitherto alleged, the security of their religion, but the overthrow of his government; and he instanced the various bills for the restriction of his prerogative, which had been introduced into the Scottish Parliament. As it was doubtful, however, that the people would sympathize very deeply with distresses which concerned only himself, he presented to them a still more obvious proof of Scotch sedition, in the shape of a scroll letter, signed by the chief Covenanters ; which, being written in French, and addressed Au Roi, he presumed to be intended for the French king, and which, as it called upon that individual to interfere in their quarrel with him, he denounced as a proof of a treasonable correspondence between them and his enemies. To carry on the war which he meditated, he condescended to receive contributions of money from his councillors, from his officers

of state and of justice, and from all who considered their interests connected with his. These resources being eventually found insufficient, he was obliged at length to resort to the desperate expedient of calling a parliament. His parliament met on the 13th of April 1640, but being found to engage itself rather in inquiring into the national grievances than in providing supplies for the war, was soon after dissolved.

The Covenanters watched the progress of Charles's preparations with unceasing vigilance, and met all his appeals to his English subjects with counter-statements of their own innocent and patriotic intentions, which, as might have been expected, were more willingly listened to. It was in vain that he endeavoured to affix the stigma of sedition upon them. That charge, though it has been credited by his partizans in even modern times, was at once seen by the great bulk of the English people to be totally unfounded; and it was soon apparent that if, in the former war, there was a reluctance to fight against the Scots, there was now a decided party in their favour. A good deal of this favourable impression is ascribed by historians to the activity of the commissioners sent by the Scottish Parliament to treat with the king, and to the preachings of the Presbyterian clergymen who accompanied them as chaplains.

CHAPTER XI.

CAMPAIGN OF 1640.

Their arms are to the last decision bent,
And fortune labours with the vast event.
DRYDEN.

THE period under review-the winter of 1639, -1640 is a remarkable era in the history of the civil war, inasmuch as the quarrel between the king and his Scottish subjects then began to change the pacific complexion which it had hitherto borne, for one of a decidedly warlike character. The demon of war, which had arisen in the preceding ́spring, was very easily dismissed from the scene; but, being again invoked, we are now to see him, like the imaginary devil of the sorcerers, refuse to vanish without a sacrifice of blood. Both parties may now, for the first time, be said to have lost temper; the king resolving to endeavour, by all possible means, to revenge the insults and aggressions of the Covenanters ; while they, on the other hand, seem to forget the objects for which they first took up arms, and, provoked by opportunity or fear of a reaction, press upon the royal power, till they sink it below its proper level in the constitution.

When the whole affair is contemplated without feelings of partizanship, it is not 'easy to see, on

either side, the great merit, or the great demerit, which its respective friends or enemies have ascribed to it. Both acted from impulses perfectly natural. The king was naturally inclined to defend the privileges which he conceived unalienably his; which he had received from his fathers, and which he wished to hand down to his children. If he was obstinate in resisting, or mean in eluding, the attacks of his enemies, he only did what nine men in ten would do, if pressed, as he was, by distresses more than they could well bear. In estimating, moreover, his motives for going to war with his subjects, it ought to be kept in mind, that, besides consulting his feelings of revenge as a man, he perhaps judged, as a king, that such a course was necessary for the salvation of the state. The Covenanters, on the other hand, had equally natural and justifiable reasons for battling against him; first, their wish to preserve a favourite system of worship, and maintain unimpaired certain honours and pieces of property; finally, the necessity of protecting themselves from the vengeance of the king, or rather from incapacitating him from exercising that vengeance. When it is once clear that neither party was criminal at the commencement of the quarrel, it follows that neither was criminal, generally or particularly, throughout its continuance. Both only acted according to a train of circumstances which they had been mutually instrumental in giving rise to, and which were then altogether incontrollable by either. All that can properly be said regarding the moral merits of the disputants, is, that the representatives of both, in the present day, ought to take a lesson of mode ration from the violence of their respective ances tors: the advocates of high measures in church