Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/197

Rh afterwards found to be a cheat indeed, but a cheat of lord Saville's, who had forged all those subscriptions. * * * The lord Saville's forgery came to be discovered. The king knew it; and yet he was brought afterwards to trust him, and to advance him to be earl of Sussex. The king pressed my uncle (Johnston) to deliver him the letter, who excused himself upon his oath: and not knowing what use might be made of it, he cut out every subscription, and sent it to the person for whom it was forged. The imitation was so exact, that every man, as soon as he saw his hand simply by itself, acknowledged that he could not have denied it" Burnet had certainly the best opportunities for both a public and private acquaintance with such an event, and the circumstance has been at least hinted at by others; but Mr Laing justly remarks that "in their conferences with these noblemen, and with Pym and Hambden, the Scottish commissioners during their residence in London must have received such secret assurances of support, that, without this forged invitation, the committee of Estates would have chosen to transfer the war into England."

At the parliament which met on the 2nd of June, 1640, the representative of majesty in that body choosing to absent himself, or dreading the danger of a journey to Scotland, the Estates proceeded to reduce themselves to a formal and deliberative body, by the choice of a president. To this convention Johnston produced a petition from the General Assembly, which had been ratified by the privy council, praying for a legislative ratification of the covenant, and an order that it should be enforced on the inhabitants of the country with all civil pains, a requisition which the convention was not in a disposition to refuse. On the 11th of June, by the 34th act of this parliament, the celebrated committee of forty, having, in absence of the superior body which called it into existence, the full legislative power of a republican congress, was elected, and the members were divided betwixt the camp and Edinburgh. Our surprise that so influential and laborious a man as Johnston was not chosen a member of this body, is relieved by the place of higher, though somewhat anomalous trust to which we find him appointed, as general agent and adviser to the body a sort of leader, without being a constituent member. "And because," says the act, "there will fall out in the camp a necessitie either of treatties, consultations, or public declarations, to schaw the reasones of the demands and proceedings in the assemblie and parliament, and the prejudices agains either of them, the Estates ordaynes Mr Archibald Johnston, procurator for the kirk, as best acquaint with these reasons and prejudices, to attend his excellence (the general) and to be present at all occasions with the said committee, for their farther information, and clearing thairanent." Johnston was one of the eight individuals appointed to treat with the English commissioners at Rippon, by an act of the great committee of management, dated the 30th of September, 1640. When this treaty was transferred to London, Johnston was chosen a member of the committee, along with Henderson, as supernumeraries to those appointed from the Estates, and probably with the peculiar duty of watching over the interests of the church, "because many things may occurre concerning the church and assemblies thereof."

The proceedings and achievements of this body are so well known, that, in an article which aims at giving such memorials of its subject, as are not to be readily met with in the popular histories, they need not be repeated. On the 25th day of September, 1641, Johnston produced in parliament a petition that he might be exonerated from all responsibility as to the public measures with which he had for the previous four years been connected, mentioning the