On the first day of October the Scottish army crossed the Tweed, and drew up on English ground, when General Douglas (to quote Captain Crichton, the cavalier-trooper who served in the Grey Dragoons) "gave a strict charge to the officers that they should keep their men from offering the least injury on their march; adding, that if he heard any of the English complain, the officers should answer for the faults of their men."
That night the Scottish drums were ringing in the streets of "merry Carlisle." There Douglas halted for the night, and Dunbarton's regiment bivouacked in a field on the banks of the Eden. Provisions were brought from the city in abundance, fires were lighted, and the cooking proceeded with the utmost dispatch.
English troops kept guard at the gates of the city, which was inclosed by a strong wall, and Saint George's red cross waved on the castle of William Rufus—the same grim fortress where, a hundred and twenty-one years before, Mary of Scotland experienced the first traits of Elizabeth's inhospitality.
General Douglas, who commanded the Scottish troops, was a traitor at heart, and deeply in the interest of William. On the morning after the halt at Carlisle, he ordered the Viscount Dundee, with his division of cavalry, to march for London by the way of York; while he in person led the infantry and artillery by the road to Chester. Anxious that William should land before the army of James could be strong enough to oppose him, Douglas, by a hundred frivolous pretences, and by every scheme he could devise, delayed the march of his infantry, which did not form a junction with the English under the Earl of Faversham at London until the 25th of October.
James VII. had now under his command a well disciplined and well appointed army, led by officers of distinguished birth and courage, and he awaited with confidence the landing of his usurping son-in-law. The whole of his troops were quartered in the vicinity of London.
For many reasons, the people of England, like those of Scotland, were prepossessed against all the measures of King James, and to his brave army alone did this unhappy monarch look for support in the coming struggle; but notwithstanding that for years he had been a father rather than a captain to his soldiers, and had watched over their interests with the most kingly and paternal solicitude, quarrels and disgusts broke out between them, and he was yet to find that he leant on a broken reed. The strict amity subsisting between him and Louis of France, excited the jealousy of the nation, who dreaded an invasion of French and Irish catholics, to enforce the entire submission of the protestants.
Never were fears more groundless; but the Irish appear to have been particularly obnoxious to the English soldiers, who flatly refused to admit them into their ranks. The officers of the Duke of Berwick's regiment, on declining to accept of certain Irish recruits, were all cashiered, and the evident weakness of his position alone prevented James from bringing them to trial as mutineers.
Finding that the civil and ecclesiastical orders opposed him in every measure, James unguardedly made a direct appeal to his English army, by whose swords he hoped to enforce universal obedience. Anxious that each regiment in succession should "give their consent to the repeal of the test and penal statutes," he appealed first to the battalion of the Earl of Lichfield, which the senior Major drew up in line before him, and requested that "those soldiers who did not enter into the King's views should lay down their arms."
Save two catholics, the entire regiment instantly laid their matchlocks on the ground!
Astonishment and grief rendered James speechless for a time; but his native pride recalled his energies.