Ann. 1650.

While Cromwell was thus flying from victory to victory in Ireland, fortune, ever propitious to the bold, was preparing for him more important successes in Scotland. Charles II. was at the Hague when sir Joseph Douglas brought him intelligence that he was proclaimed king by the Scottish parliament; but the conditions annexed to it were too hard not to damp almost entirely the joy which might arise from his being recognised sovereign in one of his kingdoms; and as the prospect of affairs in Ireland was at that time not unpromising, he intended rather to try his fortune in that kingdom, from which he expected more dutiful submission. But before taking any final resolution about it, he found it necessary to depart from Holland, where, though the people were very much attached to his interest, the states were uneasy at his presence. They dreaded the violent and haughty dispositions of the English commonwealth, particularly since the death of Dorislaus, their envoy to Holland, who having been employed as assistant to the high court of justice who condemned the late king, no sooner arrived at the Hague than some royalists, chiefly retainers to Montrose, put him to death as the first victim to their murdered sovereign.

Charles having passed some time at Paris retired to Jersey, where his authority was still acknowledged. There he received a deputy from the committee of estates in Scotland, who informed him of the conditions to which he must necessarily submit before he could be admitted to the exercise of his authority. He returned a civil answer to the deputy and desired commissioners to meet him at Breda, in order to enter into a treaty respecting these conditions. Four commissioners were accordingly sent

to him at Breda but without any power of treating, as their ultimatum was, that he must submit without reserve to the conditions imposed upon him. The terms were that he should issue a proclamation banishing from court all excommunicated persons, that is, all those who, under Hamilton or Montrose, had ventured their lives for his family; that no English subject who had served against the Scottish parliament should be allowed to approach him; that he should bind himself by his royal promise to take the covenant; that he should ratify all acts of parliament by which the presbyterian government, the directory of worship, the confession of faith, and the catechism were established; and that in civil affairs he should entirely conform himself to the direction of the parliament, and in ecclesiastical to that of the assembly.

Most of Charles's English counsellors dissuaded him from accepting conditions so disadvantageous and dishonourable, while the duke of Hamilton, the earl of Lauderdale, and others of his Scotch friends, desirous of returning home in his retinue, earnestly pressed him to submit to the conditions imposed on him; and were confident that much of their rigour would be abated by the estates after the prince had entrusted himself to their fidelity. These solicitations were seconded by the advice of the queenmother, and of the prince of Orange, the king's brother-in-law, who both of them thought it ridiculous to refuse a kingdom merely from regard to episcopacy. But what chiefly determined Charles to comply, was the account brought him of the fate of Montrose, one of the most deservedly renowned heroes of the royal cause. He was employed in levying a regiment for the Imperial service when he heard of the tragical death of the king, and at the same time received from his young master, a renewal of his commission of captain-general in Scotland.

He immediately gathered followers in Holland and. the north of Germany. The king of Denmark and duke of Holstein sent him some small supply of money; the queen of Sweden furnished him with arms; the prince of Orange with ships, and with about five hundred men, most of them German, which his great reputation had allured to him. He set out with great haste for the Orkneys, lest the king's agreement with the Scots should make him revoke his commission. He armed several of the inhabitants of the Orkneys, and carried them over with him to Caithness, hoping that the general affection to the king's service would make the islanders flock to his standard. But all men were now fatigued with wars and disorders. The committee of estates ordered Lesley, their general, to march against him with four thousand men; he was suddenly attacked at the same time by a body of cavalry. The royalists were put to flight, all of them either killed or taken prisoners; Montrose himself having put on the disguise of a peasant, was perfidiously delivered into the hands of his enemies by a friend to whom he had entrusted his person. All the insolence and indignities which successful revenge can suggest to ungenerous minds, and fanatical antipathy to a miserably deluded multitude, were exercised with the utmost barbarity against him, without in the least altering his magnanimity. With the same constancy he, in the 38th year of his age, beheld the gibbet thirty feet high, destined for him, and submitted to the ignominious death reserved for the meanest malefactors. Thus perished the gallant marquis of Montrose, the man whose military genius both by valour and conduct, had shone forth beyond any which during these civil disorders had appeared in the three kingdoms, and whom the famous cardinal de Retz, that penetrating judge of characters, celebrates 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.

Charles, according to his agreement with the commissioners of Scotland, set sail for that country, escorted by seven Dutch ships of war, and arrived in the frith of Cromarty. Before he was permitted to land he was required to sign the covenant, and as he passed through Aberdeen, he saw one of the quarters of Montrose hanging over the gate by which he entered. He found that the only part he was expected to act was that of a pageant of state; and that the few remains of royalty allowed to him, served only to draw on him the greatest indignities. The facility which he discovered in yielding to all the demands of the clergy and covenanters, made them doubt his sincerity; and there never was any doubt more reasonable; indeed how could he have been sincere in that shameful declaration extorted from him, and for which his extreme youth and inexperience, the necessity of his affairs, his lying entirely at mercy, and having no assurance of his life or liberty, are hardly an excuse. In this declaration, which was worded in the usual mystic and hypocritical style of the presbyterians, Charles desired" to be deeply humbled and afflicted because "of his father's following wicked measures, op"posing the covenant and work of reformation, "and shedding the blood of God's people through"out his dominions. He lamented the idolatry of "his mother, and the toleration of it in his father's

house. He professed that he would have no ene"mies but those of the covenant; and that he de"tested all popery, superstition, prelacy, heresy, "schism, and profaneness, and was resolved not to “tolerate, much less to countenance any of them "in any of his dominions."

The covenanters and the clergy, had another trial

prepared for the king. Instead of the solemnity of his coronation, which was delayed, they were resolved that he should pass through a public humiliation, and do penance before the whole people. They sent him twelve articles of repentance, which he was to acknowledge, and he had agreed that he would submit to this indignity. The various transgressions of his father and grandfather, together with the idolatry of his mother, were again enumerated and aggravated in those articles. In short, having brought the royalty under their feet, the presbyterian clergy were resolved to trample on it and vilify it by every instance of contumely.

In the mean time, Charles's authority was annihilated; he was not called to assist at any councils, he was consulted in no public measure. Argyle, governed by this wild faction, was deaf to all advances the king had made to enter into confidence with him.

The parliament, apprehending, however, that the treaty between the king and the Scots, would probably terminate in an accommodation, prepared for war, and sent for Cromwell, who having completely subdued the Irish, left the command of that kingdom to Ireton, who governed it in the character of deputy. It was expected that Fairfax, who still retained the name of general, would command the forces destined against Scotland. But he still entertained unsurmountable scruples against invading the Scots, whom he considered as zealous presbyterians, and united to England by the sacred bands of the covenant. He was, moreover, extremely disgusted at the extremities into which he had already been hurried. A committee of parliament was sent, in order to endeavour to persuade him; Cromwell was of the number, and knowing the rigid inflexibility of Fairfax in his principles, he ventured to solicit him with the utmost earnestness, to retain that