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Rh have done. To put an end, if possible, to the religious distractions in Scot- land, and which were then coming to a crisis, the marquis was despatched to Scotland with instructions, and a power to grant further concessions on some important points. The demands of the covenanters were, however, greater than was expected, and this attempt at mediation was unsuccessful. He returned to London, and was a second time sent down to Scotland with enlarged powers, but as these embraced no concession regarding the covenant, this journey was equally fruitless with the other. The marquis now once more returned to London. In the beginning of winter, he was a third time despatched, with instructions to act as commissioner at the General Assembly, which had been appointed to meet for the settlement of differences, and which sat down at Glasgow in November. The concessions, however, which he was authorized to make, were not considered at all sufficient. The opponents of the court in the assembly proceeded from measure to measure inimical to the king's authority, carrying every thing before them in despite of all the marquis's efforts to resist them, and to stem the tide of disaffection. Finding this impossible, he dissolved the court. The covenanters, however, were in no humour to obey this exercise of authority. They continued their sittings, went on subscribing the covenant, and decreed the abrogation of bishops in the Scottish church. Having been able to render the king little more service than the gain of time which his negotiations had secured, the marquis returned to London. Indeed more success could not have been expected from an interference where the covenant, the principal subject of contention, was thus spoken of by the opposite parties: the king writing to his commissioner, "So long as this damnable covenant is in force, I have no more power in Scotland than a duke of Venice;" and the covenanters again replying to some overtures about its renunciation, that "they would sooner renounce their baptism." The king, who had long anticipated a violent issue with the Scottish malcontents, had in the meantime been actively employed in collecting a force to subdue them ; and the marquis, soon after his arrival in England, was appointed to a command in this armament, and sent down to Scotland, no longer as a negotiator, but as a chastiser of rebels. Whilst the king himself proceeded over land with an army of 25,000 foot and 3000 horse, the marquis sailed from Yarmouth with a fleet, having on board a further force of 5000 men, and arrived in Leith roads on the 1st of May. On his arrival, he required the leaders of the covenanters to acknowledge the king's authority, and seemed disposed to proceed to hostilities. But the king, in the meantime, having entered into a pacific arrangement with the covenanters, his military command ceased, and he proceeded to join his majesty at his camp near Berwick. Soon after this, the marquis once more retired from public employment, and did not again interfere in national affairs for several years. In 1642, he was once more sent to Edinburgh by the king to promote his interest, and to resume negotiations with the covenanters; and on this occasion was so successful as to alarm Pickering, the agent of the English parliament at Edinburgh, who wrote to his employers, recommending them to bring him immediately to trial as a disturber of the harmony between the two kingdoms. This representation of Pickering's, however, was attended with no immediate result, whatever effect it might have on his ultimate fate; and it is not improbable that it was then recollected to his prejudice. As a reward for his faithful and zealous services, the king now bestowed upon him by patent, dated at Oxford, 12th April, 1643, the title of duke. The same patent invests him also with the title of marquis of Clydesdale, earl of Arran and Cambridge, and lord Avon and Innerdale. By one of those strange and sudden reverses, however, to which the favourites of kings are so subject, the duke was