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one, and paying for what they needed, "till," they say, we were pressed by strength of arms to put such forces out of the way as did, without our deserving, and—as some of them have at the point of death confessed—against their own consciences, oppose our peaceable passage at Newburn-on-Tyne, and have brought their blood upon their own heads against our purposes and desires."

The king received this document at York. He was already in the midst of a sea of troubles when his defeated troops came scattering in upon him. The victors had let it be known that they were prepared to march on to York; and as surely as they did, so would they again scatter the king's army before them. His answer to the appeal seemed to partake of the trouble and confusion of his spirit; but it sufficed for the time, since its general import was, that before striking he would listen. It was signed by the Earl of Lanark, Hamilton's brother, as Secretary of State for Scotland.1

The Scots sent in a paper of seven demands, not so important in their own substance as because they were a basis on which conference might be held. Perhaps the most significant of them was for protecting from the imposition of "new oaths" their compatriots in England and Ireland. The king intimated that the whole state of the case was to be laid before that great council of the peers which, following a practice which had grown obsolete, he had summoned at York. The great council recommended the holding of a treaty, to which the Scots should send representatives. The time fixed for it was the 1st of October, and the place Ripon, in Yorkshire. Eight commissioners represented Scotland. Two nobles, Dunfermline and Loudon, were already well acquainted with the ground they had to go over; two representatives of the smaller barons; two clergymen, one of them Alexander Henderson, the great preacher. The Covenant was farther represented by the great Church lawyer Warriston, and the town-clerk of Dundee represented the burghal community. These gentlemen showed how suspicious

1 Rushworth, iii. 1255, 1256.

the Scots had become, by requesting a safe-conduct, not only under the sign-manual, but under the signatures of the assembled peers; but this being refused with something like a rebuke, they were content to drop the request.

The commissioners had ample opportunities of diving into the recesses of the quarrel in the mass of disputative documents which had accumulated round it. In addition to those already noticed, a later and fruitful crop had appeared. They are of less moment and interest, however, to the student of the present day, than those which preceded warlike action. In these we see the gradual growth of the conditions which brought on the quarrel. The later controversy is in general but tiresome comment, in the shape of attack and defence, on the events passing before the world. The most important of these was a continuation of the king's Large Declaration, with the title, "His Majesty's Declaration concerning his Proceedings with his Subjects in Scotland since the Pacification in the Camp near Berwick." 1 It has the same sort of qualified success as the old Declaration. Grant that the king was an absolute monarch, he shows that he yielded with wonderful facility to the desires of his troublesome subjects, abandoning his own better judgment to yield to their unreasonable caprices.

The Scots printed and circulated in England a paper called 'The Lawfulness of our Expedition into England manifested.' Whatever interest attached to this document has been enhanced by the discovery of a copy of it enriched with Laud's marginal notes. As they are the abrupt comments set down as he read and grew angry in reading, they probably give us his and his master's political creed more broadly and emphatically than we can find them in the deliberative announcements contained in the

king's Declarations and other State Papers. The spirit

of these notes cannot be better told than in the words of him who found and edited them: "Taking the notes in connection with the statements of the Scots, we have at one glance the views of both parties. Those of the arch

1 It will be found in Rushworth, iii. 1018, and in other places.

bishop were simple in the extreme. Politically he had but one complaint to make against the Scots. It was their duty' to have obeyed the king. They failed in this respect, and that failure brought on all the succeeding trouble. As applicable to the king's commands, no question of right or wrong, of reason or unreason, of legality or the contrary, seems in the slightest degree to have disturbed the equanimity of the archbishop. In his estimation the whole case turned upon one single consideration. The premises were unquestionable, and the conclusion irresistible. The Scots had not yielded 'the dutiful obedience of subjects;' they could not, therefore, be otherwise than to blame, and not less so in the sight of God than in that of their sovereign and of the archbishop." 1

"1

1 Bruce, preface to Notes of the Treaty carried on at Ripon, xl. The following specimens may be selected from the Scots manifesto and Laud's criticisms on it :

THE MANIFESTO.

"As all men know and confess what is the great force of necessity, and how it doth justify actions otherwise unwarrantable, so can it not be denied that we must either seek our peace in England at this time, or lie under three heavy burthens which we are not able to bear. First, we must maintain armies on the Borders," &c. "This we say not from fear, but from feeling; for we have already felt, to our unspeakable prejudice, what it is to maintain armies, what to want traffic, what to want administration of justice and if the beginning of these evils be so heavy, what shall the growth and long continuance of them prove unto us?-so miserable a being all men would judge to be worse than no being.'

"If we consider the nature and quality of this expedition, it is defensive, and so the more justifiable. The king's majesty, misled by the craft and cruel faction of our adversaries, began this year's war-not we."

"We have laboured in long-suffering, by supplications, informations, commissions, and all other means possible, to avoid this expedi

tion."

"When they talk of "invasions by sea which have spoiled us of

The commissioners of both kingdoms assembled, accordingly, at Ripon on the 1st of October 1640, and began business next day. There were, as there always are in such conferences, minor details of business to be adjusted at the beginning. The king, for instance, desired that some persons in his own interest should attend as "assistants;" for the English commissioners did not properly represent the Crown, but were accredited by the great council of the peers. The Scots seemed not to concern themselves with the English assistants; but they were jealous of the presence of Traquair, Morton, and Lanark, in that capacity. They were told that these attended not to vote or take part in the conference, but, as persons versant in the business of Scotland, to explain matters relating to that country which might be unintelligible to Englishmen; and some preliminary diplomacy was necessary to keep these assistants within such limits.

On the general question the Scots felt the ground consolidating, as it were, beneath their feet day by day. In every diplomatic conference there are truths behind any that appear on the smooth and tranquil face of the discussions; and the great truth behind the treaty of Ripon was, that the Scots were absolute masters of the situation.

Did they come as enemies? Then they were invaders who had conquered the north of England, and redeemed for their country that ancient district of Northumberland which the voice of tradition assigned as an old possession of the Scots crown; and in the existing condition of England there was no rational prospect that the conquest would be taken out of their hands. This great calamity had a government, by its feebleness or its folly, or by something worse than either, brought upon England; and all who befriended the Government and valued the

our ships and goods," the commentator says, with angry astonishment, "The king invade his own!"

At one point he gets so angry as to employ a scurvy jest frequently used by the common people of England against the Scots of that day. Where they say that for the provisions of their army they either paid or gave security, he notes, "Not worth three of their lice."

honour of England must avert such a stigma at any sacrifice.1 Did the Scots come as friends? Then to the Government they were friends by mere forced courtesy. Their real friendship was for that great Parliamentary party which was about to rise against the Government. They were conscious of the thorough amity of that party. The great voice of England was calling for a Parliament, and the Scots put in their word too for a Parliament; in fact, before the commissioners left Ripon the writs had been issued for "the Long Parliament," and it was the Scots who had procured this for their English friends.

In whatever sense the word was to be taken, they were called and were dealt with as friends. Well, if friends, they were friends who had done eminent service to England at much sacrifice to themselves. It was but fair that their friendship should be requited-that their sacrifices in the cause of their English friends should at all events be refunded. In short, the army had been embodied and marched across the Border in the service of England, therefore the expense incurred and yet to be incurred in that service must be paid by England. If not, the Scots could easily help themselves. They hinted that they would be content with the estates of the Papists and of the bishops, who were their natural enemies, and they began by taking possession of the princely domains of the see of Durham. Some abrupt notes of private conferences held among each other by the English lords might be likened to the hurried and nervous estimate of resources for the purchase of life and liberty by captives in the hands of banditti, or perhaps a more appropriate analogy would

1 Among some notes of what was said in the council at Yorknotes intended apparently to refresh the memory of the notemakerthere are some glimpses of meaning intelligible to others, and among these nearly the most distinct is a passionate burst by Strafford. It will be understood that "this army" means the English, "the other" the Scotch: "If this army dissolve and disband, the other army being, as it is, in such a posture, this country is lost in two days, and the fire will at last go to the farthest house in the street. No history can mention so great an infamy as the deserting this."-Hardwicke's State Papers, ii. 211.