apply it to existing conditions. The late innovations were clearly in the direction of that Popery which had been abjured by the subscribers' ancestors, and were justly amenable to the same denunciations. Hence, stripping their Protestant faith, as set forth in the authorised confessions, of the innovations of recent times, they conclude: 66 Therefore, from the knowledge and conscience of our duty to God, to our king and country, without any worldly respect or inducement so far as human infirmity will suffer, wishing a farther measure of the grace of God for this effect; we promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all those contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power which God hath put in our hands, all the days of our life." The new additions made to the old confession were powerful in professions of loyalty to the king, as if they were more needed than they had been on the previous occasion. The adherents go on: "With the same heart we declare before God and men, that we have no intention nor desire to attempt anything that may turn to the dishonour of God or to the diminution of the king's grace and authority. But, on the contrary, we promise and swear that we shall to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread sovereign the king's majesty, his person and authority, in the defence and preservation of the foresaid true religion, liberties, and laws of the kingdom; as also to the mutual defence and assistance, every one of us of another, in the same cause of maintaining the true religion and his majesty's authority with our best counsel and bodies, means and whole power, against all sorts of persons whatsoever; so that whatsoever shall be done to the least of us for that cause, shall be taken as done to us all in general, and to every one of us in particular." And in a subsequent announcement that they were determined to hold by the Covenant, they say: "We were, and still are, so far from any thought of withdrawing ourselves from our dutiful subjection and obedience to

his majesty's Government, which by the descent and under the reign of 107 kings is most cheerfully acknowledged by us and our predecessors, that we neither had nor have any intention or desire to attempt anything that may turn to the dishonour of God or diminution of the king's greatness or authority; but, on the contrary, we acknowledge our quietness, stability, and happiness to depend upon the safety of the king's majesty, as on God's vicegerent set over us for maintenance of religion and administration of justice." 1

When it was put to them that this determination to stand by each other through all things was scarcely harmonious with their professions of loyalty, they said: "The same was cleared by the plainness of the words of the Covenant itself, and by the sincerity of their purpose, who only intended, first, the defence of the religion presently professed; next, of his majesty's person and authority; and, lastly, to defend each other in the defence of the said religion and of his majesty's person and authority." 2 If there was a touch of demure sarcasm in this definition, there was an element of sincerity too.

In the Scots section, indeed, of the great contest, there is scarce a whisper about touching the throne, though the actors were determined that the king should do as they willed. As an onlooker put it, "the sense of all was, that they would continue obedient subjects, so that the king would part with his sovereignty-which was in effect that they would obey if he would suffer them to command." 3 Though the doctrines of resistance had their chief fountain in Scotland and in the writings of Buchanan, yet they did not take in that country the republican form to which they tended in England. Yet the Scots form was perhaps still harder on crowned heads. The sovereign was eminently responsible to his people. If he were virtuous and beneficent, he would be blessed with prosperity and happiness; but if he were an evilliver or a tyrant, he would be thwarted, harassed-per

1 Rothes's Relation, 123.

3 Gordon's Scots Affairs, i. 79.

2 Ibid., 172.

haps put to death. And yet a sovereign was in their eyes as much a necessity to a State as a general to an army or a commander to a ship.

For all their vehement announcements of loyalty, there was a misgiving that this virtue would not be absolutely conceded to them; and in their new clauses they say: "Neither do we fear the foul aspersions of rebellion, combination, or what else our adversaries, from their craft and malice, would put on us, seeing that what we do is so well warranted, and riseth from an unfeigned desire to maintain the true worship of God, the majesty of our king, and the peace of the kingdom, for the common happiness of ourselves and our posterity."

The document thus renewed, with some additions, had for its own time and purpose only been signed by a select group of influential people. Its promoters on this occasion had views of a wider and more popular kind—they determined to attempt at least to draw to it the adherence of the adult male community of Scotland at large. It was signed in a public manner in Edinburgh with tumultuous enthusiasm, and, as we are told, "with such mutual content and joy as those who having long before been outlaws and rebels are admitted again in covenant with God."

The stage on which this scene was enacted was the Greyfriars' Churchyard. The selection showed a sound taste for the picturesque. The graveyard in which their ancestors have been laid from time immemorial stirs the hearts of men, the more so if it be that final home to which they are themselves hastening. The old Gothic church of the Friary was then existing; and landscape-art in Edinburgh has by repeated efforts established the opinion, that from that spot we have the grandest view of the precipices of the castle and the national fortress crowning them. It seemed a homage to that elevating influence of grand external conditions which the actors in the scene were so vehemently repudiating.

Steps were taken to propagate adherence over the rest of the country. It is noticed that several existing copies of the Covenant of 1638 bear the same names. In fact, according to a practice well known in later times, the

eminent adherents of the cause-those whose names were likely to catch others-signed several Covenant sheets, which were dispersed over the country, so that obscure people in remote districts added their names in the assurance that they were in good company.

We cannot decide with exact precision on the progress of creeds and opinions, numerically, or by the numbers accepting them; but from the general tone of the literature and events of the day, it would be legitimate to conclude that at this time the Presbyterian standards had made more progress in Scotland during three years than they had made in the previous seventy. The national religion had got for its base that old spirit of national independence which had ever resented so fiercely all interference from without.

An excited wildness now took possession of the sedate Scots character, and strange things were done. In Edinburgh, Fife, and some part of the west country, the Covenant superseded all other interests public and private. A well-educated country clergyman of the north, who looked at the scene with divided interest, gives us what follows: "Gentlemen and noblemen carried copies about in their portmanteaus or pockets, requiring subscriptions thereunto, and using their utmost endeavours with their friends in private for to subscribe. It was subscribed publicly in churches, ministers exhorting their people thereunto. It was also subscribed and sworn privately. All had power to take the oath, and were licensed and welcome to come in; and any that pleased had power and licence for to carry the Covenant about with him, and give the oath to such as were willing to subscribe and swear. And such was the zeal of many subscribers, that for a while many subscribed with tears on their cheeks; and it is constantly reported that some did draw their own blood, and used it in place of ink to underwrite their names. Such ministers as spoke most of it were heard so passionately and with such frequency that churches could not contain their hearers in cities, some of the devouter sex, as if they had keeped vigils, keeping their seats from Friday to Sunday to get the communion given them

sitting; some sitting alway before such sermons in the churches for fear of losing a room or place of hearing, or at the least some of their handmaids sitting constantly there all night till their mistresses came to take up their place and to relieve them." The narrator, conscious of the strangeness of his tale, makes the remark,-"These things will scarce be believed; but I relate them upon the credit of such as knew this to be the truth."1

This is not all; but the rest of his story is too loathsome for repetition. We can all too readily realise what a crowd of human creatures become if they betake themselves to a lair unprovided for the abode of civilised beings. At length was reached the much-sought antithesis to the old worship, with its pomp and state, its triumphs of decorative art, and its perfumed incense.

66

At this time the persons heretofore spoken of by contemporary writers as Supplicants" receive the far more renowned name of "Covenanters."

Again the dispute was suspended until the month of June. The interval was not one of idleness; but its activity showed itself rather in small fussy mattersexchanging of messages amidst blunderings and delays -than in historical events. The one significant and important sign of the times was in what was not done-in the frustration of every effort to obtain from the king a distinct utterance of his views and intentions. Further, the authors of the Great Supplication sent to him had conclusive evidence that he had never seen it. They sent it up to London to be presented to the king by three chiefs among those nobles who were not CovenantersLennox, Huntly, and Morton. These returned it with the seal unbroken.2 The king forbade them to deliver it to him unless it conformed with the conditions which he had laid down both as to the matter and the manner of appeals to the throne. The Tables, on the other hand, had sent instructions that the parcel should not be opened unless the king agreed to receive its contents.

1 Gordon's Scots Affairs, i. 46.

The

"Still stamped, and never stirred."-Rothes's Relation, 127.