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322 or teaching in any kind of school. Thus the bullk of the natives were deprived of all participation in the affairs of their own country, and, what was worse, might be imprisoned or removed from one part of the country at the will of these dictators.

In Scotland Monk carried matters with the same high hand. On the 14th of August he compelled Stirling to surrender, and sent off the royal robes, part of the regalia, and the national records to London. He then commenced the siege of Dundee, and whilst it was progressing he sent colonels Alured and Morgan to Alyth in Angus, where he suprised the two committees of the estates and the kirk, with many other noblemen and gentlemen, to the number of three hundred, and amongst them poor old Leslie, earl of Leven, met on royalist affairs, and sent them after the regalia to England. On the 1st of September Monk stormed Dundee, and gave up the city to the plunder and violence of the soldiery. There were said to be eight hundred soldiers and inhabitants killed, of whom three hundred were women and children. The place had been considered so safe that many people had sent their property there for security, and that and the ships in the harbour all fell into the hands of the conquerors. They are said to have got two hundred thousand pounds in booty, and perpetrated the most unheard-of atrocities. The fate of Dundee induced Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews to open their gates. The earl of Hutley and lord Balcarras submitted, and scarcely any noblemen of note, except Argyll, held out; and that was merely for the purpose of making good terms with the parliament.

The most vigorous means were adopted to keep the country in check. Military stations were appointed through out the highlands, and sites fixed upon for the erection of strong forts at Ayr, Leith, Perth, and Inverness. The property and estates of the crown were declared forfeited to parliament, as well as the lands of all who had taken arms under the duke of Hamilton or the king against England. English judges were sent to go the circuits, assisted by Scotch ones, and one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year was voted for the maintenance of the army in Scotland, which was raised to twenty thousand men. These were galling measures for the Scots, who had hoped to subject England again to the king, but they were far from the most humiliating. Vane, St. John, and six other commissioners were appointed to settle a plan for the incorporation of Scotland with England. They met at Dalkeith, and summoned the representatives of the counties and the burghs to assemble and consult with them on the matter. The ministers thundered from their pulpits against a union, and especially against putting the kirk under the power of the state; but twenty-eight out of thirty shires, and forty-four out of fifty-eight burghs complied, and sent up twenty-one deputies to sit with the parliamentary commissioners at Westminster, to settle the terms of the union. The power of the English parliament, or rather of the army, was now so supreme, that both in Scotland and Ireland resistance was vain.

The all-absorbing interest of the events of the last several unexampled years within the kingdom, have prevented us noticing the transactions of the commonwealth with the other kingdoms of Europe. We must now bring them up Prince Rupert, by his cruising on the coasts of England and Ireland, had not only kept the nation in alarm, but had inflicted great injury on the coasts and commerce of the realm. In the spring of 1649 he lay in the harbour of Kinsale, keeping the way open for the landing of the foreign troops expected to accompany Charles II. to Ireland. But Vane, to whom was intrusted the naval affairs, commissioned Blake, Dean, and Monk, three army officers, who showed themselves as able at sea as on land, to look after him, and the victories of Cromwell in Ireland warned him in the autumn to remove. He found himself blockaded by the English fleet, but in his impetuous way he burst through the inclosing squadron with the loss of only three ships, and took refuge in the Tagus. In the following March Blake presented himself at that river, and demanded of the king of Portugal permission to attack the pirate, as he termed him, at his anchorage. The king refused; Blake attempted, notwithstanding, to force his way up the river to Rupert's fleet, but he was assailed by the batteries from both shores, and was compelled to retire. This was deemed a declaration of war by the republic, and Blake was ordered to seize any Portuguese ships that fell in his way. Don John thereupon seized the English merchants in his dominions, and confiscated their goods. But the ravages committed by Blake on his subjects, soon induced him to order Rupert to retire from the Tagus, who sailed thence into the Mediterranean, where he continued to practise open piracy, capturing ships of almost all nations. He afterwards sailed to the West Indies to escape the English admirals, and inflicted there great injuries both on the English and Spanish. His brother Maurice was there lost in a storm, and in 1652 Rupert, beset by the English captains, made his way again to Europe, and sold his two men-of-war to cardinal Mazarin. The Portuguese, freed from the presence of Rupert, soon sent Don Guimaraes to London to treat for a pacification, but the treaty was not finally concluded till after Cromwell had attained to supreme power.

The king of Spain, who never forgave Charles I. the insult put upon his sister and the whole kingdom, acknowledged the republic from the first moment of its establishment by continuing the presence of Cardenas, his ambassador. The king of Spain made use of his ambassador in London to excite the commonwealth against Portugal and the United Provinces, but an unlucky accident threatened to disturb even this alliance, the only one betwixt the commonwealth and the courts of the continent. As Spain kept an ambassador in London, the parliament resolved to send one to Madrid, and for this purpose they selected a gentleman of the name of Ascham. He did not understand Spanish, and, therefore, he employed three friars, who accompanied him, and informed him of all that he wanted to know regarding Spain. But he was no sooner arrived than half-a-dozen royalist English officers, who had served in the Spanish army against Portugal, and in Calabria, went to his inn, and finding him at dinner, exclaimed, "Welcome, gallants, welcome!" and ran him and Riba, one of the friars, through with their swords. This was precisely what some royalists had done to Dorislaus, the parliamentary ambassador to the Hague, in 1649; for these cavaliers, with all their talk of honour, had no