When the news of the defeat reached Edinburgh, the magistrates fled to the headquarters of the Scottish army at Stirling. Four days after the battle, Cromwell took possession of the city, but it was not till the end of December that the castle surrendered. Other fortresses, Glasgow, and all Scotland south of the Forth, submitted to Cromwell. But the Scottish army was so strongly posted at Stirling that he did not attempt to dislodge it. In the western shires, a party calling themselves Remonstrators, opposed to Charles, and also to Cromwell and his army of Independents, raised an army of about four thousand men, and attacked a body of English troops at Hamilton. They were at first successful, but through their very success they got into disorder, and were ultimately defeated.
The Scottish Parliament, having retired beyond the Forth, now ordered that Charles should be crowned at Scone. He was residing in Perth, and had been so preached at, prayed for, and pelted with good advice, that his patience became exhausted, and one day he made a bolt for the highlands. He reached Clova, a village amongst the Grampians, expecting to find there a large concourse of Royalists, pure and simple. But very few such met him, and he returned to Perth with a small party which had been sent after him.
On 1st January, 1651, the coronation took place. A sermon was preached, in which the insincerity of the Stuart family was a leading topic. Then Charles swore to the Covenants, and to the maintenance of the Presbyterian Kirk, and he was duly crowned and annointed King of Scotland. Thereafter, not being lacking in personal courage, he took a more prominent place in the field. He was sadly in want of money. The Edinburgh mint was in the hands of the English; a mint was established in Dundee—then well fortified—but there was a scanty supply for coinage of the precious metals.
The records of the Dundee Town Council give a letter from the king dated from Dunfermline, May 12th, 1651, asking the town to advance by way of a royal loan, one thousand pounds sterling; but the King’s personal security was then of doubtful value, and the Estates having passed an Act ordering all the lieges to contribute voluntarily for the necessities of the army, the cautious Dundonians at once entered into such a contribution.
Meanwhile, the northern passes being strictly guarded, Cromwell sent gunboats up the Forth. These were beaten off at Burntisland; but at Queensferry they effected a landing of Commonwealth troops, and Cromwell made his way through Fife, and took Perth. He thus gained a commanding position in the rear of the Scottish army. But his northerly movement left for the Royalists a clear way into England; and Charles expected to find many friends there. So with the Scottish army he entered England by Carlisle; and, by rapid marches, in three weeks from leaving Stirling he reached Worcester. In hot pursuit, to give no time for raising a Royalist army, Cromwell followed the king. He left General Monk with a small army to complete the subjugation of Scotland.
Six days after Charles arrived at Worcester, Cromwell was there, at the head of thirty thousand men. On the 3rd of September—being the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar—a desperate battle was fought on the banks of the Severn, and the inferior Scottish army—for comparatively few English Royalists had joined on the march—was utterly routed. Three thousand Scots were slain in the battle, and ten thousand were made prisoners; the majority of these were barbarously shipped off to the plantations, and sold into slavery. After many adventures and narrow escapes, Charles contrived to reach France. For eight years he was a hanger-on at various continental courts, and looked upon as a hopeless claimant to thrones which had vanished from the earth.
When Cromwell left Scotland, Dundee was almost the only fortified town which held for the king. Many Royalists, with their valuables, had taken refuge therein. In anticipation of an attack by the English gunboats, heavy guns were placed on the river frontage, and other means of defence were hurriedly adopted. A committee of the Estates sat in the town; and when, in the middle of August, General Monk, with four thousand horse and foot, appeared before it and demanded its surrender, this committee issued a defiant proclamation, and then decamped to Alyth, a little town about eighteen miles to the north of Dundee, carrying with them a considerable amount of public money. Monk, by a sudden swoop, captured the committee; some, and amongst them the veteran General Leslie, were killed; the others were sent to the Tower of London, and the troopers enriched themselves by their plunder.
THE PROTECTOR OLIVER CROMWELL.
(From a painting by Vandyke.)
On 1st September, after a fortnight’s bombardment, Dundee was taken by assault. Monk had had a training in military savagery under Cromwell in Ireland, and he now beat the record of his master. Not only was the brave governor Lumsden—after quarter had been given him—with eight hundred of the garrison, put to death in cold blood, but it is said that two hundred women and children shared the same fate. Carlyle, without any note of disapproval, says: “Governor Lumsden would not yield on summons; General Monk stormed him; the town took fire in the business; there was once more a grim scene, of flame and blood, and rage and despair, transacted on this earth.” It is said that the plunder of the town exceeded two-and-a-half million pounds, Scots (£125,000 sterling.) There were sixty vessels in the harbour. After the fall of Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews surrendered, and Monk was, for Cromwell, master of Scotland.