Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/254

240 general opinion coincided with that of Montrose, that he was a traitor. The royalists called upon him to summon them to his aid, to assemble them in a large body, mounted and armed, and, supported by them, to forbid the meeting of parliament as illegal. But that, Hamilton assured them, would frighten the people, and load to disturbance. He proposed that the meeting should take place, that all the royalist members should appear in their places, and then he would declare the meeting illegal, and dismiss it. To their astonishment, however, Hamilton did not dismiss it, but allowed it to sit. On this Montrose posted away to England, followed the king to Gloucester, and represented to him the conduct of Hamilton as confirmative of all his former declarations of his perfidy. After the battle of Newbury, Charles listened more at leisure to these representations. He was so far convinced, that he thought of ordering the earl of Newcastle to send for Hamilton and his brother lord Lanark, and to confine them at York. But at that moment the two brothers, probably aware of the proceedings of Montrose, appeared themselves at Oxford, where Charles ordered the council to examine into the charges against them. Lanark managed to escape from custody, and hastened direct to London and to the parliament, which received him most cordially, a pretty strong proof of mutual understanding. This satisfied Charles of Hamilton's complicity, and he sent him in custody to the castle of Bristol, thence to Exeter, and thence to Pendennis, in Cornwall.

The commissioners sent to Scotland were Henry Vane the younger, Armyn, Hatcher, Darley, and Marshall, with Nye, an independent. The Scots proposed to invade England on condition that the parliament adopted the covenant, and engaged to establish uniformity of religion in both countries, "according to the pattern of the most reformed church," which, of course, meant presbyterianism. But the commissioners knew that this was impossible, for though a considerable number of the people were presbyterian in doctrine, many more were independent, and just as sturdy in their faith, to say nothing of the large section of the population which held conscientiously to both episcopacy and Catholicism. Vane himself was a stanch independent, and he was at the same time one of the most adroit of diplomatists. He consented that the kirk should be preserved in its purity and freedom, and that the church of England should be reformed "according to the word of God." As the Scots could not object to reformation according to the word of God, and "the example of the first reformed churches," which they applied especially to their own, they were obliged to be content with that vague language. Vane also obtained the introduction of the word league, also giving the alliance a political as well as a religious character. It was concluded to send a deputation with the commissioners to London, to see the solemn "League and Covenant" signed by the two houses of parliament, at the head of which went Alexander Henderson, the well known moderator of the assembly. Whilst they were on their journey, the ministers in Scotland readily proclaimed from their pulpits that now the Lord Jesus had taken the field against antichrist, that Judah would soon be enslaved if Israel was led away captive, and that the cause of Meroz would fall on all who did not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

On the 25th of September, the very day that Essex arrived in London after the battle of Newbury, and received the thanks of parliament, the two houses met with the Westminster divines in the church of St. Margaret, where, after various sermons, addresses, and blessings, the two houses signed the league and covenant, and their example was followed by the Scotch commissioners and the divines. It was then ordered to be subscribed in every parish by all persons throughout the country.

It was agreed that the estates of Scotland should send an army of twenty-one thousand men into England, headed by the old earl of Leven. That they should receive thirty-one thousand pounds a month, and one hundred thousand pounds of it in advance, and another sum at the conclusion of peace. Sixty thousand pounds were soon remitted, the levies began, and in a few months Leslie mustered his army at Harlaw.

The union of the Scots with the parliament was an alarming blow to the royalists. If they had found it difficult to cope with parliament alone, how were they to withstand them and the Scots? To strengthen himself against this formidable coalition, Charles turned his attention to Ireland. There the army had actually grown to fifty thousand men. As the restorers of the English influence, these were to be paid out of the estates of the revolted Irish, and numbers of both English and Scotch had flocked over. A large body of Scotch had landed under the command of general Monro, eager to revenge the massacre of their presbyterian brothers in Ulster. The natives had been driven back, and the invaders were busy parcelling out the evacuated lauds. Two million and a half of acres had been promised by the English parliament as the reward of the victors.

To resist the tempest which threatened to exterminate them, the Irish catholics formed themselves into a confederation, and created a kind of parliament at Kilkenny. They imitated in everything the measures by which the Scotch had succeeded in enfranchising their religion. They professed the most profound loyalty to the sovereign, and asserted that they were in arms only for the protection of their religion and their lives. They established a synod which assumed the same religious authority as the Scotch assembly, and ordered a covenant to be taken, by which every one bound himself to maintain the catholic faith and the rights of the sovereign and the subject. They appointed generals in each province, and all necessary officers for the command of their force. Charles, who suspected the allegiance of the earl of Warwick, had contrived to remove him, and appointed the marquis of Ormond in his place. To him the confederate catholics transmitted their petition, avowing the most unshaken loyalty, declaring that they had only taken up arms to defend their lives and properties from men who were equally the enemies of the king and their own. They were the same puritanic people, they said, who were seeking to deprive the king of his crown. These petitions, forwarded to Charles, suggested to him the idea of deriving use from these forces. As they prayed him to assemble a new parliament in Ireland, to grant them the freedom of their religion and the rights of subjects, he instructed Ormond to come to terms with them, so that in their pacification they might be able to spare a considerable body of troops for his