CHAPTER XIV
CROMWELL AND SCOTLAND
1650–1651
The execution of the King destroyed the alliance which Cromwell had established between Argyle and the Independents. Argyle would have been glad to preserve it, but his power depended on the clergy and the middle classes, both deeply incensed with the sectaries who had dared to kill a Scottish king. The day after the news of the King’s death reached Edinburgh, Charles II. was there proclaimed King, not of Scotland only, but of Great Britain and Ireland. The Scottish envoys in England protested against the late revolution, denouncing the establishment of toleration or any other change in the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and demanding that Charles II., “upon just satisfaction given to both kingdoms,” should be placed upon his father’s throne. The Long Parliament retorted by expelling the envoys and declaring that their protest laid “the grounds of a new and bloody war.” Henceforth indeed the war took a new character,—it was no longer a constitutional but a national struggle. Scotland like Ireland was attempting to dictate to England the form of government which it should choose, and thus the English contest for self-government inevitably widened into a contest for the supremacy of the British Isles.
Nothing delayed war between Scotland and England but the difficulty of effecting an agreement between Charles and the Scots. Except on their own terms the Presbyterians would not fight for him, and till no other way of regaining his crown was left Charles would not accept their terms.
The Scottish Commissioners demanded that he should not only accept the Covenant and the Presbyterian system for Scotland, but pledge himself to impose them on England and Ireland. As he declined to force Presbyterianism on those two kingdoms without the consent of their parliaments the negotiations were broken off in May, 1649, and while Charles prepared to join Ormond in Ireland, Montrose was commissioned to call the Scottish Royalists once more to arms.
In September, 1649, Charles landed at Jersey on his way to Ireland, but Cromwell’s victories checked his further progress. Before the year ended, it was evident that if he was to be restored it must be by Scottish hands, and in February, 1650, he returned to Holland. Necessity left him no choice. “Indeed,” wrote a Scottish agent from Jersey, “he is brought very low; he has not bread both for himself and his servants, and betwixt him and his brother not one English shilling.” Negotiations began again at Breda in March, 1650. The Scots required him to take both Covenants, to impose Presbyterianism on England and Ireland, and to disavow both Ormond and Montrose. Charles struggled hard to modify these conditions, and the treaty by which he agreed to them was not signed till he was actually on his voyage. He hoped that when he came to Scotland his presence would win concessions from the Covenanters, and a royalist party would gather round him. But he found himself treated more as a captive than a king. English Royalists who had accompanied him from Holland were ordered to leave the country, Scottish Royalists were excluded from his army and his Court, and when he reached Edinburgh he saw, fixed over the tower of the Tolbooth, and fresh from the hangman’s hands, the head of Montrose.
The diplomacy of the King had sacrificed his noblest champion. Instead of holding Montrose back till the negotiations ended, he had urged him to immediate action. “Your vigorous proceeding,” he wrote, “will be a good means to bring them to such a moderation ... as may produce a present union of that whole nation in our service.” When the Scottish envoys at Breda demanded the abandonment of Montrose, Charles agreed to order him to disband his troops with a secret promise of their indemnity. But the countermands came too late. Knowing that Charles was treating with the Covenanters, and that he was in danger of disavowal, Montrose still resolved to spend his life for the King’s service. In March, 1650, he arrived in the Orkneys with a little body of Danish and German mercenaries. In April, with about twelve hundred men and forty horse, he advanced through Caithness to the south of Sutherland. There, at Carbisdale, on April 27th, Major Strachan, with two hundred and fifty of David Leslie’s disciplined cavalry, fell upon him in his march south, scattered his handful of horsemen, and cut to pieces his foreign infantry. Montrose escaped from the rout, and wandered amongst the hills till starvation obliged him to seek shelter. Macleod of Assynt gave him up to the Scottish Government, and on May 21st he was hanged at the market-cross in the High Street of Edinburgh.
THE SEAL OF THE “TRIERS.”