Their Lordships state that, “when your Majestie was pleased to indict a General Assembly, we, and most parte of all your good subjects of this kingdome, wer overjoyed, in expectation that the doubts in religious worship and kirk government, quhilk was tossed to and fro this whyle bygone, should have then beine cleerlie settled; and altho’ the greater part of your people be weill pleased with the constitutions therein concluded, yet your Majesties displeasure against that Assembly, and the proceedings thereof, and your expresse dislike of those who adheres to the same, and the fearfull consequences therefra like to ensue, hes turned all the hopes of comfort which we expected, in sorrowes and teares.”—“Your Majestie may be pleased to pardon us to avere, that in this, they are but badd counsellours, and no better patriots, who will advis your Majestie to adde oyle and fewall to the fire.” And among their “Instructions,” (advices,) their Lordships inform his Majesty, “that, if our neighbour nation doe invaid this countrie, it will assuredlie be taken be all Scotsmen, albeit not affected the present way, for a national quarrel; and all will strive as one man, to defend themselves, as for their lives, estates, and liberties of the countrie.” This salutary advice, however, was slighted by King Charles.
We shall not pause to notice all the deliberations and preparations on either side which ensued, but hasten on to the main points of our narrative.
On the 21st of March, Leslie, and other officers, commanding about 1000 men, took Edinburgh Castle—having forced the outer gate—securing twenty-five field-pieces, and other munitions. The day following, Rothes, Lowdoun, Home, and Lothian, with a similar force, invested Dalkeith House, which was surrendered, without resistance, by Traquair, the keeper: and they seized the Regalia of Scotland, forty-eight barrels of gunpowder, twenty-four of balls, and six cart-loads of muskets, which they deposited in Edinburgh Castle. On the 23d of March, (being a Sunday,) Dumbarton Castle was secured by a stratagem; and, besides these chief forts, (Stirling was in the hands of Mar, one of their own party,) Strathaven Castle and Douglas Castle, in Lanarkshire, and Tantallan Castle, in East Lothian, Dairsy, in Fife,[153] and Broderick Castle, in Arran were seized; the only enterprise of this kind which failed, being in the case of Karlaverock Castle, in the south, which it would have been hazardous to attack, and difficult to maintain. Dumfries, however, was taken possession of by a body of Covenanters.
In the north, the Earl of Montrose, with a well-appointed force, of seven or eight thousand men, (“the most were brave, resolute, and well-armed gentlemen,”) levied in Angus and Mearns, moved to Aberdeen, appalled Huntly and his adherents, who fled; and Montrose took possession of Aberdeen, where he levied contributions, though very generously. There was a subsequent rallying of the Royalists, headed by Aboyne, Huntly’s son, and Ogilvy of Banff, who gained some petty advantages; but they were worsted in a skirmish at Turreff; and Montrose kept all the north country in awe and subjection—Huntly being seized and conveyed to Edinburgh Castle, as the only security his opponents could get for his neutrality. In the Western Highlands, Argyle was on the alert, with a sufficient force. The enthusiasm was so high, that nobility, gentry, ladies, and persons of all ranks, joined in the humblest labours for self-defence. “Leith fortifications went on speedily—above 1000 hands daily employed; plat up towards the sea, sundry perfect and strong bastions, well garnished, with a number of double cannon, that we feared not much any landing of ships on that quarter. The towns of Fife, all along the shore, made up such sconces and fosses, and planted such a number of ship-cannon upon batteries, that they were all in the case of a tolerable defence. Thus, in a short time, by God’s extraordinary help, we cut the main sinews of our adversaries hopes; all the strength of our land came in our hands; no man among us but those who swore they were stout friends. All otherwise disposed, both Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Ministers, were got away to our professed enemies, and the whole country put in such an order and magnanimity, that we found sensibly in every thing, the hand of God going before us; so all fear of human force was clean banished away.”[154]
Such were the energetic and successful movements, which, in the course of a few days, put the Covenanters in possession of all the strongholds of Scotland, and inspired them with assured confidence. Let us now turn to the preparations of King Charles for his enterprise against them.
About the middle of March, the King published a declaration of the reasons for his expedition against Scotland, and soon after issued the “Large Declaration,” or Manifesto, containing a more minute statement of the grounds of his projected invasion. The latter of these, as has been already noticed, was written by Balcanquel, Dean of Durham; and, although we have had occasion to select public documents from it, which could not be materially falsified, it is to be regarded merely as a varnished and partial statement on behalf of the King’s policy, on which no reliance can be placed, except when his testimony operates against the cause which he advocated. His Majesty thereafter took his departure from London, on the 27th of March, and, on the 1st of April, arrived at York, where he remained till the beginning of May, when he moved on to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He marched thence to Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the vicinity of which he arrived about the beginning of the month, and continued there till the negotiations and treaty, betwixt him and the Covenanters, put a stop to the impending hostilities, on the 18th of June following.
The movements of the two armies, however, during that interval, form too prominent a picture of the times to be passed over without a brief notice—referring to the Royal Letters, and other documents of the day, which will be found annexed, as embodying the most authentic accounts, not merely of what was visible to the common eye, but of what was passing behind the scenes, in the secret councils of the antagonist courts and camps.
Charles, with a well-appointed army, which had preceded and accompanied him from London to York, was there joined by the English nobility; and, from the splendour of the national chivalry who there joined his standard, the march, from thence to Berwick; of betwixt 20,000 and 30,000 infantry, cavalry, and artillery, is described as resembling a military triumph. The English host was under the nominal command of the Earl of Arundel and Essex, but having its monarch and his standard in the midst. It finally encamped at the Birks, a few miles above Berwick, on the southern bank of the Tweed. The long inaction, however, which ensued—the peculiar nature of the service, in which the sympathies of the officers, as well as of the common soldiers, were, to a great extent, with the Scotch—and the unpopularity of Charles’ Government in England, created by his arbitrary dissolutions and discontinuance of Parliaments, paralysed the energies of this showy army; and Charles ere long discovered symptoms that there was peril in relying on a force the military prowess of which was unnerved by these inherent moral affections.
During the progress of this prolonged and hesitating advance towards the boundary which divided the kingdoms, the Marquis of Hamilton, who had remained in London at the King’s departure, to superintend the outfit of the naval expedition, had only reached Yarmouth Roads on the 15th of April, and being there detained by adverse winds, it was not till the 29th of that month that he reached Holy Island with his squadron, on board of which there were about 5000 raw levies, so inefficient that the greater part of them, including even the non-commissioned officers, did not even know how to fire a musket. On the 1st of May, he entered the Frith of Forth; and his squadron, consisting of about twenty vessels, cast anchor in Leith Roads.
The Covenanters were not unprepared for the threatened invasion. Whenever the fleet appeared in the offing, the beacon fires blazed along the summits of the mountains, awakening the land to a sense of its dangers and its duties. From all quarters, the stout peasantry and burgesses of Scotland followed, with ardour; the Nobles and gentry, and veteran officers, as their “Crowners” and commanders, to the point of danger; and, ere Hamilton could refresh his sickly troops, by landing them on Inchkeith and Inchcolm, or issue the King’s proclamations, the shores of the Forth, on both sides of his fleet, gleamed with twenty thousand Scottish spears and broadswords—the well-known symbols of ancient renown and national victory—and stood, “a wall of fire,” in defence of their native land, against what every man deemed an invasion by a foreign foe. Whatever we may now think of the circumstances of a political nature which led to this unhappy difference betwixt the King and his Scottish subjects, and however clearly we may trace, as it appears to us, through the backward vista of two hundred years, the errors and the failings of our fathers—there is not a true Scotchman, of these times, or in any future generations, who can look back on the records of such a scene, without a throb of pride and of patriotism swelling in his heart, that he is descended of a race who thus gathered themselves around the altar of their country and their God, in the hour of peril—in defence of what they deemed the highest and the holiest privileges of their fathers, of themselves, and of their children.