holders of it were thus unable to tell him whether or not it conformed with the conditions.1

At length it was rumoured that a great potentate allied to the throne was to come as the Lord High Commissioner and representative of the king. The Duke of Lennox was, among the Scots nobles, the highest in rank and the nearest of kin to the king, in whose confidence and affection he held a high place. There was another, however, who stood nearer to the succession to the throne in Scotland. Both kingdoms had fallen to King James by hereditary succession; but Scotland came through his mother, and would go to her near collateral representative if the house of Stewart became extinct. This nearest representative was the Marquess of Hamilton, the descendant of the daughter of James II.2 He thus was chosen to settle the vexed affairs of Scotland. The selection seemed judicious, looking to the irritable condition of Scotland. Some, however, maintained that the very condition which seemed to recommend it made it a mistake. Hamilton had an interest in any special quarrel between Scotland and the house of Stewart which might end in the separation of the united crowns; and people thought they saw the influence of this interest in the events which have presently to be told. He came, in the words of one of the bishops, "as Commissioner, with power to settle all."3

As the day of Hamilton's arrival approached, the leaders of the Covenanting party busily mustered their adherents, and brought another great concourse on the streets of Edinburgh. On his way to Holyrood House by the flat sandy beach between Leith and Musselburgh, he passed between two rows of the principal Covenanters, lay and clerical. The clergy were estimated at five, by some at six, hundred-surely a large number for Scotland to send to one spot, even though it is explained that a portion of them were refugees from Ireland. A dense crowd, computed as containing twenty thousand people, gathered round.

They had commissioned Livingston, "the strongest of voice and austerest in countenance,' "1 to assail him with a speech; but the Commissioner managed to evade its public discharge and hear it in private.2

A separate incident, small itself, but giving an opening to large and formidable conclusions, had just stirred the multitude. A ship had arrived in Leith Roads with a cargo of ordnance, musketry, powder, ball, and other munitions of war. It was the ship of a private Leith merchant, but had been freighted by the Government. The Covenanters, who, as we shall have to see, were beginning to raise money, placed guards to intercept the removal of these stores to Edinburgh Castle. They were quietly conveyed by night from the ship to the Castle of Dalkeith; and in vindication of this step it was described as a mere precaution to save the stores from being seized by the Covenanters.3 These, on their part, said that there were other suspicious doings at Dalkeith, such as the

1 Rothes's Relation, 115.

2 Baillie's Letters, 83.

3 An incident connected with this vessel was an example, in a petty shape, of the prevailing national propensity to carry political points through the machinery of private litigation. It was found on inquiry that a merchant in Leith, named Patrick Wood, had acted as shipping agent in the matter. Hence "the report of Patrick Wood having a hand in that ship business did so commove people's minds that he durst not come abroad out of the house, and provoked some of his creditors to charge him for payment of many and great sums whereby he was in danger to be broken "—that is, to be made bankrupt. In his difficulties he sought the protection of some of the leaders, and obtained it on declaring "that he would employ whatsoever he was worth in the service of the Supplicants for the advancement of the common cause."-Rothes's Relation, 133.

Baillie writes to the same purport: "Wood is much detested by all for his readiness in such employment. He is called to the commissioners' table ofter than once, and strictly examined. His answers at first were somewhat proud; but at once his courage cooled when his bands began to be posted to the registers many in one day. Much he did quickly pay; the Covenant without delay he did subscribe. Many good friends did for him what they could; yet all had enough ado to keep him from the hands of the people, and hold off for a time his numerous creditors."-Letters, &c., 80. "Posting his bands" meant putting his pecuniary obligations on record, so that they might be immediately enforced against person and property.

erection of a new drawbridge. Their suspicions lay between the strengthening of Dalkeith and the removal of the military stores to the Castle of Edinburgh. To make matters sure, having now men and money at their disposal, they sent armed parties to hold the communications with the castle and stop the passage of the stores. This looked

very like a blockade of a royal fortress; and Hamilton said he could not, as royal commissioner, enter a town where such a thing was done, and hold peaceful conference with those concerned in it.

There was a stiff suspicious discussion on this point. The Covenanters took strong assurances from the Council -some of them personal obligations which almost amounted to the rendering of hostages-that nothing would be done while Hamilton professed to be among them for the purpose of giving them satisfaction in the matter of their supplications. It was even conceded to them, that to satisfy themselves of his fair dealing they might keep persons to hold watch around the castle provided they were not an armed guard. 'Whereupon," we are told, "order was given for breaking the public guard; and eight were appointed to stay in a house in the West Port, and two of them by turns to walk still betwixt the West Port and the West Kirk, without any other weapons than swords about, which was a way unsuspect.' Hamilton was angry that assurances should have been given to the Covenanters he would rather they had been left to act on their peril; and he threatened to withdraw the assurances. He did not execute this threat; but the unarmed guard were troublesome and suspicious, and on one occasion searched his wife's luggage, or, as it was put, "had riped my lady marquise's trunks." 2

Perhaps as much as most people may care to read has been taken out of the supplications, protestations, and other documents of the Covenanters, which had now accumulated to an appalling mass, ever increasing. But on one point it is as well that, before going further, we take the impression of their distinct utterance. As yet no concession had

1 Rothes's Relation, 140.

• Ibid., 163.

been made by the king. The events now to follow are sometimes told so as to leave the impression, that ever as the king yielded point after point, the pitiless Covenanters pressed on him and demanded something more. A great deal might be taken from the documents of the day without disturbing this impression. It comes naturally to the mind of those whose notions of history are learnt from the classic fables, and who love to meet with an example of the moral announced in the story of the Sibylline books.

It is certain, however, that before the king announced any concession, the demands of the Covenanters were complete. They announced them with a distinct candour, which, like so many other things, shows their consciousness of their own power. Their primary demands were, the abolition of the Court of High Commission; the withdrawal and disavowal of the Book of Canons, the Book of Ordination, and the Service-book; a free Parliament; and a free General Assembly. That there might be no mistake on these points, they were stated with much fulness, some time before Hamilton's arrival, in a paper called "The least that can be asked to settle this Church and Kingdom in a solid and durable Peace." It was prepared by Warriston and Henderson; and the reasons for its promulgation were: "At that time the Supplicants, finding both bishops and statesmen incline to urge a discharge of the Service-book, Book of Canons, and tempering the High Commission as it was in King James's time, did think it necessar to set out something for informing the people in the nature of our desires, that so they, being found so necessary, might not be deceived, nor taken with the suggestions of such as thought the discharge of the books and tempering of the High Commission sufficient.” 1 They did not conceal their expectation that the Parliament and Assembly, when they set to work, would repeal the Articles of Perth, and other offensive measures of their own enacting-perhaps would abolish Episcopacy.

Hamilton and other friends of the king dealt with the leaders of the Covenanters to guarantee certain limits

1 Rothes's Relation, 96.

which the Parliament and Assembly should not pass; but these answered that it was impossible for private persons to dictate what a supreme legislature would do or abstain from-if they promised any such thing, they would undertake what they could not perform.1 Here, certainly, the Covenanters had the better argument. We get glimpses of curious little devices suggested for outweighing the Covenanting interest in a possible Parliament or Assembly. They had on previous occasions been unable to make majorities north of the Forth; why not, on this occasion, try Aberdeen, the Cavalier city, where Huntly's influence prevailed? The reason of the suggestion, in Covenanting view, was, "because the ministers and professors of the university there are unsound, and the people thereabouts for the most part more averse to our Cove nant than any in Scotland." "But finding the Suppli cants would come there in great numbers, as to a place suspected, the Commissioner changed his resolution." 2

After Hamilton's arrival as Commissioner, there was a long diplomatic contest, tedious, and in some measure monotonous, relieved by a few spirited passages-at-arms. The Commissioner opened the eyes of astonishment with a demand for "the rescinding of the whole Covenant" as the only way to make peace with the king. Those he ad dressed "showed that was utterly impossible, and cleered it would be gross perjury in them, and so could not but be grievous to his majesty to have such a pack of perjured subjects; and said they wished his majesty's subjects in England and Ireland had subscribed the like Covenant-it would be much to his majesty's advantage, and a greater type of their fidelity." It was suggested, as a sort of retort against the new demand, that it would be more suitable for the king himself to sign the Cove

nant.

The Commissioner extolled the king-his domestic virtues his conscientious sense of justice-his love of

1 Rothes's Relation, 167.

2 Narrative appended to Rothes's Relation, 220.

3 Rothes's Relation, 122.

VOL. VI.

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