Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/346

406 endeavouring to raise a new army. Leslie now returned to his station in the Scottish army, under the earl of Leven, whom he joined in the siege of Newark upon Trent It was here that Charles, baffled in all his projects, came into the Scottish camp a flying fugitive, on the 5th day of May, 1646. He was received with great respect, the commander-in-chief, the earl of Leven, presenting him with his sword upon h's knee. On the return of the Scottish army it was reduced to about six thousand men, of whom Leslie was declared lieutenant" general, with a pension of one thousand pounds a month over and above his pay as colonel of the Perthshire horse. With this force Leslie proceeded to the north, whera the Gordons still kept up a party for the king. These men, who had been so formidable to Argyle, Hurry, and Baillie, with the parliamentary commissioners, scarcely made the shadow of resistance to Leslie. He seized upon all their principal strengths, and sent their leaders prisoners to Edinburgh. The lives of the inhabitants, according to his instructions, he uniformly spared; but upon the Irish auxiliaries he as uniformly did military execution. Having gone over the northern districts, and secured every castle belonging to the disaffected, he left Middleton to garrison the country, and with instructions to seize upon the person of Huntly, who had taken refuge among the hills. These arrangements made, he passed into the peninsula of Kintyre, to look after Mon- trose's colleague, Alaster M'Coll This chieftain, after making some ineffectual resistance, took to his boats with his followers, and sought safety among the western isles, leaving his castle of Dunavertie to the care of a body of Irish and Highlanders, to the number of three hundred men. As this force, however, was wholly inadequate to the defence of the fort, it was taken, and the garrison put to the sword. Alaster himself was pursued by Leslie, with eighty soldiers, to his castle in Isla. He had, however, fled to Ireland, leaving two hundred men under the command of Colkittoch, his father, to defend his castle of Dunevey. This stronghold Leslie also reduced, the garrison having surrendered, on condition of having their lives spared, but to be sent to serve under Henry Sinclair, a lieutenant-colonel in the French service. Colkittoch being given to the Campbells, was hanged. Having gone over the other islands with the same success, Leslie returned to the low country in the month of September, where he was honoured with the approbation of his party for the fidelity, diligence, and success with which he had executed his commission. The king, in the mean time, had been delivered up to the English parliament, and passed through that series of adventures which ended in his taking refuge in the isle of Wight When the duke of Hamilton in 1648, raised an army of moderate Scottish covenanters, to attempt the rescue of his royal master, Leslie was offered the command ; but, the church being averse to the undertaking, he declined accepting it. After the duke had marched on his unfortunate expedition, the remaining strength of the country was modelled into a new army under the less moderate covenanters, and of this the earl of Leven was appointed commander, and David Leslie major-general, as formerly. Immediately after the death of Charles I., when the cavaliers rose in the north for his son, in what was called "Pluscardine's Raid," Leslie sent a party against them in the month of May, 1649, under the command of Charles Ker, Hacket, and Strahan, by whom they were totally dispersed. On the resignation of the earl of Leven, Leslie was appointed to the chief command of the army raised on behalf of Charles II., after he had accepted the covenant, and been admitted to the government. In this situation he showed himself an able general, repeatedly baffling by his skill the superior forces of Cromwell, whom he at last shut up at Dunbar; and but for the folly of the church and state committee, which had been the plague of the army during all the previous troubles, had undoubtedly cut