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more thoroughly in Scotland-were mere play beside the operations in which these men had taken part. Round some small town in the Low Countries there might be as much apparatus of fortification as all the fortified places in Scotland could furnish. Almost all the elements of war -defences, artillery, small-arms, drilling, and disciplinehad been readjusted with a vast increase of efficiency.

The possession of a few thousands of her sons thus trained gave Scotland the advantage over England which a country with a standing army has over the country which can only bring raw recruits into action. From the fugitive nature of the Scots feudal array, the opportunities which other nations, including England, had of keeping troops embodied for a longer period, had been telling against Scotland in the fortunes of war. Now a concurrence of affairs, in which Scotland as a nation seemed to have no concern, had changed the balance. At the same time, while England had been brought under the reign of law and order, Scotland had elements of dispeace which compelled the citizen to be a soldier. The English country gentleman lived, as we have seen, in a mansion; but the Scots laird still required the protection of a fortress. Such servants as he kept required to be fighting men, for the Scots Borderers had not been as yet completely quieted, and the Highlanders had become more formidable than ever as reivers. Such were the conditions which rendered Scotland strong and regardless of the threats which found their way northwards.

In the midst of the supplications, protestations, and other wordy warfare following on the first outbreak, it is a significant incident that General Alexander Leslie comes over from Sweden "in a small bark," having thus evaded a ship of war, which might have intercepted him had he come in a more conspicuous shape. This Leslie-not to be confounded with his nephew David-was not a man of high military genius. He had worked, however, in half the mighty battles and sieges of the Thirty Years' War, and was so accomplished in all the military mechanism brought to perfection in that long contest, that no one who had spent his days at home in England or Scotland could have

a chance against him in the field, or compete with him for the command of an army. It was said that, unconscious of the destiny awaiting him, he had come to spend his old age in peaceful retirement, and that he had to this end purchased an estate in Fifeshire, in the midst of his kindred, or those whom he chose to claim as such.1 But a casual word dropped by the well-informed Baillie showed that when he arrived, during the sitting of the Assembly, he had been preparing for other things; for he had "caused a great number of our commanders in Germany subscribe our Covenant, and provided much good munition." 2

So early as the month of June, one of the grievances of which the Tables complained was an interruption of the commerce of Scotland by vessels of war sailing under the English flag, and by the interference of the Estates of Holland, which, at the request of the king's English ambassador there, had set an embargo on certain merchandise bought by Scots traders in Amsterdam. The excuse made for this interference was that the goods in question were arms and other munitions of war. This could not be denied. One of the agents in whose hands the goods were intercepted makes explanations about having "prepared some five hundred muskets and as many pikes, and paid custom for them; that he had put them in a ship, with some two hundred muskets besides, that he had not paid custom for." 3 Still the Tables maintained that they were free to buy what goods they pleased,

1 Spalding, who did not highly esteem him, says: "There came out of Germany from the wars home to Scotland ane gentleman of base birth, born in Balveny, who had served long and fortunately in the German wars, and called by the name of Felt-Marschal Lesliehis excellence. His name, indeed, was Alexander Leslie, but by his valour and good luck attained to this title 'his excellence,' inferior to none but to the King of Sweden, under whom he served among all his cavalry. Well, this Felt-Marschal Leslie, having conquest [acquired] from nought honour and wealth in great abundance, resolved to come home to his native country of Scotland, and settle him beside his chief the Earl of Rothes.". - Memorials of the Troubles, i. 130.

2 Letters, i. III.

3 Rothes's Relation, 170.

and it was a wrong done to interrupt their commerce. This was at the time when they had themselves placed guards to intercept any munitions that might be conveyed to Edinburgh Castle. There was much scornful ridicule cast at the grievances of these merchants whose commerce was interrupted in the matter of preparing to make war upon their king; and the whole is characteristic of that curious position ever taken by the Covenanter-that they were loyal subjects, all along performing their duty to their king and country.

Ere this time the Covenanters were in possession of a revenue. A project for a "contribution" appears among their papers so early as the month of February 1638.1 In the beginning of March a sum amounting to 670 dollars is subscribed by thirty-seven of the leaders. The name of Montrose appears at the head of the list, put down for 25 dollars, the highest rate of contribution, the scale being from 10 to 25 dollars. At the same time an arrangement was completed for levying a tax over all Scotland: "It was resolved anent the contribution that eight shall be appointed collectors in every shire, according to one dollar the thousand marks of free-rent, as they can try, taking the party's declaration whether it be more or less. The contribution is voluntary, and every one must be valued as they are pleased voluntarily to declare the worth of their free-rent. The half of the contribution raised in ilk shire must be delivered to John Smith, and after the same is spent to send for the other half." 2 Of this contribution, which was to be merely "voluntary," and to be given according to the giver's estimate of his means, it may be said that it was a tax exacted to the last penny with a rigid uniformity unknown before either in England or Scotland, unless, indeed, it might be said that in the levying of ship-money the English Council had achieved a like exactness. The committee appointed to collect this tax in each county afterwards obtained the appropriate title of "the War Committee." 3

1 Rothes's Relation, 72.

2 Ibid., 80, 81.

* See the "Minute-book kept by the War Committee of the Cov

So stood Scotland when, on the 21st of November 1638, the General Assembly opened in the cathedral church of Glasgow. A second time that community, which abjured all pomp and all attempt to draw influence from external conditions, was fortunate in a fitting stage for the enactment of a grand drama. Had it been a great council of the old Church that was to assemble, it could not have found any other building in Scotland so well suited for the solemn occasion by supplying conditions of time-honoured ecclesiastical magnificence. It was the only great church in Scotland which had suffered nothing save the removal or destruction of the apparatus for the mass and the other decorations held to savour of idolatry.1 It was a meeting

enanters in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in the years 1640 and 1641;" Kirkcudbright, 1855.

There is a story told by Spottiswood how the magistrates of Glasgow had agreed to sacrifice the cathedral to Andrew Melville and others of the clergy as "a monument of idolatry," but that the city mob rose and protected the building. Dr M'Crie said he could find no contemporary trace of such an event, and where he was baffled in such a pursuit nobody else need attempt it. He says: "I never met with anything in the public or private writings of Melville, or of any minister contemporary with him, that gives the smallest ground for the conclusion that they looked upon cathedral churches as monuments of idolatry, or that they would have advised their demolition on this ground."-Works, ii. 39. The Cathedral of St Mungo owed its preservation to the wealth and liberality of the community of Glasgow. The other churches which rivalled or excelled it-Elgin, St Andrews, the Abbey Church of Arbroath, and others— fell to pieces through poverty. The Church of St Mungo was rever completed, but its fabric was sustained in the condition in which the Reformation found it. Neglect had begun to work on it, and, as in other neglected buildings, the materials available for sordid purposes had begun to disappear. After fruitless attempts to obtain funds from the proper revenues of the see, on the 21st of October 1574, the provost and council, with the deans of the craft and other publicspirited citizens, held a meeting, the result of which is thus recorded: "Having respect and consideration to the great decay and ruin that the High Kirk of Glasgow has come to through taking away of the lead, slate, and other graith thereof in the troublous time bygone, so that such a great monument will alluterly fall down and decay without it be remedied, and because the helping thereof is so great and will extend to more nor they may spare, and that they are not addebted to the upholding and repairing thereof by law, yet of their own freewill uncompelled, and for the zeal they bear to the Kirk, of

eminently solemn. Of the general councils of the old Church, hallowed by the presence of dignitaries whose rank made them princes over all Christendom and adorned by every superfluity of pomp, few were so momentous in their influence as the gathering together, in a small corner of Christian Europe, of a body of men acknowledging no grades of superiority, and indulging in none of the pomps which were the usual companions and symbols of greatness.

The opening of the Assembly of 1638 may fairly vie with that of the Long Parliament as a momentous historical event. It was the earlier in time. Had it not been, perhaps the Long Parliament also might not have been. At that juncture, so far as England alone was concerned, the looker-on would have said that the Court would prevail, and that without a struggle. The organisation for the collection of ship-money got the prerogative out of its only remaining difficulty-the supply of money capable of supporting a standing army. All things had the aspect of a monarchy serene and absolute, such as Englishmen knew only from specimens on the other side of the Channel. This General Assembly takes precedence in history as the first meeting of a body existing by constitutional sanction, yet giving defiance to the Court. It assembled under royal authority, the king being through his Commissioner an element of its constitution.

But memorable as this Assembly is for its influence over the history of the coming times, it stands not less memorable as a monument of the fallacy of human calculations. The power it achieved not only fulfilled the expectations of its promoters, but realised, or even exceeded, the wildest dreams of the most enthusiastic among them. They felt as if the Almighty were leading them on to absolute triumph, when, by a mysterious and scarce perceptible agency, the great power of which they were a

mere alms and liberality, all in one voice consented to a tax and imposition of two hundred pounds money to be taxed and paid by the township and freemen thereof, for helping to repair the said kirk and holding it waterfast."-Burgh Records of the City of Glasgow, Maitland Club.

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