the state. In other words, government became a committee of persons appointed by the people to attend to the interests of religion. This commit tee may be said to have been composed partly of clerical, and partly of secular persons, namely, of the General Assembly and the parliament, or of their respective committees. When the circle was little narrowed, it was found that about half-adozen clergymen, and as many members of parliament, or state-officers, possessing a sway over the rest, founded either in talent or superior pretensions to sanctity, exercised all the functions of govern. ment. When the circle was still farther narrowed, the Marquis of Argyle, the minion of the church, and at the same time its lord-primate, was found in the centre, like the horrid divinity of some pagan labyrinth, apparently inert and insensate, yet dic tating the destinies of thousands by its slightest

movements.5

The reader has already seen how this nobleman re-established himself in his government, after the temporary ascendency of the Engagers or moderate loyalists. It will now be necessary to advert to the methods which he took for fixing himself in his place of authority. The first of his proceed. ings was one which had for its object that import→ hant matter, the proscription of his enemies. By an act which he caused to be passed through parliament, the whole of the Engagers, from the nobleemen who had acted as chief councillors and generals, down to the individuals who had merely promoted the levies, were declared infamous, and incapable - of ever after serving the state. Another of his

doings," as Father Hay terms them, was one which tended to ingratiate him more than ever with the clergy he abolished patronage, and rai

sed their stipends. By a third measure, he rid himself of a rival, the last and most dangerous that now remained to disturb the enjoyment of his illgotten power. This was the Marquis of Huntly, who, on the 22d of March, was beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh.

On the very day of Huntly's execution, the Scottish parliament, or rather the Marquis of Argyle, dispatched a body of commissioners from the Frith of Forth to Holland, there to lay before Charles the Second the terms upon which he might be admitted to the sovereignty of his northern-kingdom. Argyle, who was forced to this measure, as to the proclamation of the king, pure ly by the popular feeling of loyalty, had purposely made these terms very hard, that the young mo narch might reject them; at the same time, they ap peared so essential to the existence of religion, that the people could not complain of them as bes ing unreasonable. They required Charles, in the first place, to sign both Covenants, and thereby to establish the Presbyterian religion in Scotland, and endeavour to extend it to England. In the second place, they required him to discard all his friends from around his person, and deliver himself entire ly up to the possession of the present members of government, who were avowedly his greatest enemies. In the third place, they required him to submit himself, for the future, in all things civil, to the direction of Parliament, in all things eccle siastical, to that of the General Assembly. The prospect which they altogether held out to hima was one of the most miserable description; a king to appearance, but in reality a puppet and a slave. The benefits which they promised to him, might have been of some account with a person who had

no pretensions to the kingly office, or who would have been content, in the language of children, to eat good meat and wear a crown. But to a person with the rights of this young prince, and who had yet friends that promised to restore him on better terms, they appeared revolting and contemptible in the extreme.

One party in Charles's little exiled court viewed the terms as he himself did, including his English counsellors, the Marquis of Montrose, and other loyalists of the more sanguine complexion. But there was another party which strongly advised him to close with them, as at least offering him an opportunity of taking one step towards his restoration. This party comprehended, besides the Duke of Buckingham, the proscribed lords of the Engagement, Lauderdale, Callander, and Lanark, (the last by the death of his brother, now Duke of Hamilton,) all of whom, although themselves precluded for ever from office by the very terms of the treaty, recommended his majesty's return, either upon the disinterested and patriotic principle, that they conceived it would be conducive both to his own good and that of the country, or because they were anxious by that means to get back to their estates. In opposition to such moderate counsels, Montrose offered to invade Scotland with what forces could be gathered on the Continent, to raise all the royalists in the country, and, dashing forward upon the rebel government, endeavour, by one decisive action, to re-establish King Charles in all his native authority, and deliver his enemies bound into his hands.

Charles adopted a line of conduct very natural under his circumstances; he resolved to make a secret trial of what Montrose and the other

thorough-paced loyalists could do for him, and, only as a dernier resort, to accept the terms of the Scottish Presbyterians. Such conduct brought him into the risk of offending the Presbyterians, against whom the loyalists were of course to bend their whole force; but the prospect held out to him of procuring an unconditional restoration was so much more tempting than the offers of the Covenanters, and there was in reality so strong a chance of its being realized, that he scarcely hesitated to decide. He, indeed, seems to have rather considered his treaty with the Covenanters as an interruption of Montrose's scheme of conquest, which had been previously projected, than Montrose's scheme an interlude in the treaty.?

AFTER departing from the kingdom, (September 1646,) in obedience to the commands of Charles the First, Montrose proceeded with his retinue to Paris, where he endeavoured to procure the countenance of Queen Henrietta Maria, and to instigate various expeditions to Britain in favour of his distressed sovereign. He there became ac quainted with the celebrated Cardinal de Retz; and that penetrating judge describes him in his Memoirs, as one of those heroes, of whom there are no longer any remains in the world, and who are only to be met with in Plutarch. Unfortunately for his hopes, although his late achievements in Scotland (embodied in an elegant Latin narrative by his chaplain Wishart) procured for his name the notice and respect of all Europe, it was not judged expedient by either Charles or his consort to employ him again in the assertion of the royal cause, on account of the invincible antipathy