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194 continued their flight to Darlington, where they met Strafford coming up with reinforcements. He was suffering from both gout and stone, and in a marvellous bad humour at the late scandalous disaster; and he must have seen enough of the demoralisation of Conway's troops, for he turned back with him to Northallerton, where Charles was lying with the bulk of his army. Altogether, Charles had now twenty thousand men and sixty pieces of cannon wherewith to face the Scots; but the disaffection became so manifest, the desertions so frequent, and the whole condition of the force so unsatisfactory, that though Strafford affected to speak with contempt of the Scots, he assured Charles that it would require two months to put his army into fighting order. They therefore fell back upon York, concluding to entrench a camp under its walls, and send the cavalry to Richmond or Cleveland, to guard the passes of the Tees.

The Scots had meantime taken unopposed possession of Newcastle, Durham, Shields, Tynemouth, and other towns, and were masters of the four northern counties of England, without having lost twenty men. In this position it has been matter of wonder that they did not still advance, and drive the king before them; but those writers who have thus imagined have greatly mistaken the whole business. The object of the Scotch was not, as of old, to annoy and devastate, much less to conquer England; it was simply to force from the king and his evil ministers the recognition and the guarantee of their just national rights. They had advanced into England with this plain declaration; they had attempted not to fight except so far as to force their way to the king's presence. To that they were, in fact, now come. They had achieved a vantage-ground from which to treat, and, though strongly posted, and possessed of the whole country north of the Tees, they had refrained from all ravages and impositions on the people with whom they had no quarrel, paying for whatever they needed. To have done otherwise, would have broken faith with the people of England, who were seeking the same redress of grievances as themselves, and have at once roused all the jealousy of the English public, who would have regarded them as invaders instead of friends, and thus strengthened the hands of the king. The Scots knew perfectly well what they were about, and how best to obtain their just demands. They now therefore sent the lord Lanark, secretary of state for Scotland, and brother of the marquis of Hamilton, to present the petition of the covenanters to the king, who was plainly in a strait, and therefore compelled to listen to it. They respectfully repeated their pacific designs, and implored the king to assemble a parliament, and by its wisdom to settle peace betwixt the two kingdoms. This was precisely what the people of England were earnestly seeking, and demonstrates the perfect concert betwixt the leaders of the two nations. To assemble a parliament was of all things the last which Charles was disposed to consent to, but he was in no condition to refuse altogether. He therefore took three days to consider their request, and on the 5th of September returned to lord Lanark the answer, that he would assemble a great council of English peers in York to settle the matters in dispute between them, and that he had already summoned this assembly for the 24th of that month. By this means Charles endeavoured to escape the necessity of calling a parliament, but his hesitation did not avail him. All parties were too much interested to let this opportunity slip. Twelve peers, Bedford, Essex, Hertford, Warwick, Bristol, Malgrave. Say and Sde, Howard, Bolingbroke, Mandeville, Brooke, and Paget, presented a petition, urgently representing the necessity of a parliament, and describing the sufferings of the nation from the lawlessness of the soldiers, the damage done to trade by the arbitrary levies on merchants, and the danger of bringing in wild Irish troops. The citizens of London prepared a similar one, which Laud endeavoured to quash, but in vain; they obtained ten thousand signatures, and despatched some of the aldermen and members of the common council to present it at York. The gentry of Yorkshire presented another, detailing their sufferings from the support of the army, and their cry, too, was for a parliament. Strafford, who was desired to present it, endeavoured to persuade them to leave the prayer for a parliament out, on pretence that he knew the king meant to call one; but they would on no account omit it. Thus pressed on all sides, Charles was reluctantly compelled to promise, and on the meeting of the great council of peers on the 24th, announced to them that he had issued the writs for the meeting of a parliament on the 3rd of November.

The Scots had comprised their demands under seven heads, the chief of which were the full and free exercise of their religion; the total abolition of episcopacy; the restoration of their ships and goods; the recall of the offensive epithet of traitors; and the punishment of the evil counsellors who had created all these troubles. The lords, delighted at the prospect of a parliament, saw no difficulty in coming to terms with the Scots. They named sixteen of their own body to meet with eight commissioners of the covenanters at Repton, to negotiate the terms of a peace, and sent a deputation of six other lords to London, to raise a loan for the king of two hundred thousand pounds, on their own securities. Charles would have drawn the conference from Repton to York, where his army lay, but the Scots were too cautious to be caught in such a snare. They represented the danger of their putting their commissioners into the power of an army commanded by Strafford, one of the very incendiaries against whom they were complaining, and who termed them rebels and traitors in the parliament in Ireland, and had recommended the king to subdue and destroy them. The conference was opened at Repton, but got no further from the 1st to the 16th of October, than the settlement of the question of the maintenance of the Scotch army till all was concluded. Charles offered to leave them at liberty to make assessments for themselves, but this they declined, as looking too much like plundering; and it was finally agreed that they should retain their position in the four northern counties, and receive eight hundred and eighty pounds for two months, binding themselves to commit no depredations on any party; and the time for the meeting of parliament approaching, the conference was adjourned to London on the 24th.

Thus was finished what the soldiers called the Bishops' War, though neither army would be disbanded, but lay there in the north near each other; but still every one believed that parliament would put an end to those