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500 tween Aberdeen and the castle of Strathbogie. The stipulations under which this meeting took place were strongly characteristic of a semi-barbarous state of society. Each of the parties was to be accompanied by eleven followers, and those armed only with swords. Each party, too, before meeting, sent an advance guard to search the other, in case any of the parties might have forgotten or overlooked this so far pacific arrangement. After considerable time spent in rather passionate conversation, it was agreed between them, that Montrose should march his army from Inverury, where it was now encamped, to Aberdeen, leaving Huntly and his countrymen in the meantime unmolested. Guthrie affirms that Huntly subscribed a writ substantially the same with the covenant. Other writers contradict this, and say that he only signed a bond of maintenance, as it was called, obliging himself to maintain the king's authority, and the laws and religion at that time established, which indeed appears substantially the same with the covenant; though the phrase "established religion" was somewhat equivocal, and probably was the salvo, on this occasion, of the marquis's conscience. Montrose, on his return to Aberdeen, without any of the formalities of moral suasion, imposed the covenant, at the point of the sword, upon the inhabitants of the town and the surrounding country, who very generally accepted it, as there was no other way in which they could escape the outrages of the soldiery. As a contribution might have been troublesome to uplift, a handsome subsidy of ten thousand merks from the magistrates was accepted as an equivalent. This is the only instance with which we are acquainted, in which the covenant was really forced upon conscientious recusants at the sword's point; and it is worthy of remark, that the agent in the compulsion was one of the most idolized of the opposite party. Having thus, as he supposed, completely quieted the country, Montrose gave it in charge to the Frascrs and the Forbeses, and on the 13th of April, marched for Edinburgh with his whole army, leaving the Aberdonians, though they had put on a show of conformity, more exasperated against the covenanters than ever. Scarcely had the army left the city, than, to testify their contempt and hatred of their late guests, the ladies began to dress up their dogs with collars of blue ribbons, calling them, in derision, covenanters, a joke for which they were, in the sequel, amply re- paid.

In the meantime, the preparations of the king were rapidly going forward, and by the first of May the marquis of Hamilton, his lieutenant, entered the Firth of Forth with a fleet of twenty-eight sail, having on board five thousand foot soldiers, and a large quantity of arms. This circumstance had no real effect but to demonstrate the utter hopelessness of the king's cause to all those who witnessed it; yet, operating upon the highly excited feelings of the Gordons, they flew to arms, though they had no proper leader, the marquis of Huntly being by this time a prisoner in Edinburgh castle. Their first movement was an attack, 18th May, upon a meeting of covenanters at Tureff, which, being taken by surprise, was easily dispersed, few persons being either killed or wounded on either side. This was the first collision of the kind that took place between the parties, the prologue, as it were, to the sad drama that was to follow; and it has ever since been remembered by the ludicrous appellation of "The Trot of Tureff." Proceeding to Aberdeen, the Gordons, as the fruit of their victory, quartered themselves upon their friends the citizens of that loyal city, where they gave themselves up to the most lawless license. Here they were met by the historian, Gordon of Straloch, who endeavoured to reason them into more becoming conduct, but in vain. Finding that they intended to attack the earl Marischal, who was now resident at Dunnottar castle, Straloch hastened thither to mediate between them and the earl, and if possible to prevent the