[CHAPTER V]
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR
The word pacification can hardly have deceived even the most sanguine advocates of peace. None who knew the character of Charles or of the Scottish nation can have believed in their hearts that any final solution to the quarrel between them had been found at Berwick. It was at most a truce; and it was soon made clear how short and hollow a truce it was destined to be. The Pacification was signed on June 10th, and before the year was out both sides were arming fast again for war.
It was the old story. Charles had refused to recognise the acts of the Glasgow Assembly, as indeed he could not but have refused while he called himself King of Scotland; but he had agreed that a lawful Assembly should be convened in August at which all the ecclesiastical points at issue should be settled, and that a Parliament should follow to make the settlement good. It had been his intention to preside in person at both meetings, but the temper of the Scottish capital made him hesitate. Almost immediately after the Pacification he had issued one of his foolish proclamations, summoning the bishops to take their places in the forthcoming Assembly. A protestation of course followed. Charles was indeed within his legal rights, for Episcopacy had as yet been abolished only by the Glasgow Assembly, which he had refused to acknowledge and which the Covenanters had agreed not to press. But though Episcopacy had not yet been legally abolished, Charles, by renewing the assurances made in his name by Hamilton at Glasgow, had given his word for its abolition. Within a fortnight of this solemn promise he had issued a proclamation which, if there were any meaning in words, could mean only one of two things; he was summoning the bishops to vote for their own extinction, or he was summoning them to quash the motion for their extinction by their own votes. It is no wonder that the Scottish people, with their previous experience of the royal diplomacy, chose the latter interpretation, and, finding that the King was breaking his share of the treaty, made no haste to keep theirs. The army was not disbanded; the Tables were not dissolved; the fortifications of Leith were not dismantled. The fortresses were indeed restored to the Crown, but Hamilton had to make his way through sullen and menacing crowds to install a new governor in Edinburgh Castle. A few days later Aboyne, who had imprudently shown himself on the High Street, was forced to fly for his life, while the unfortunate Treasurer was for the second time roughly handled by the mob. Charles, who was still at Berwick, sent in anger for the Covenanting leaders to explain these things. Only six obeyed the summons. The rest were stopped, or pretended to have been stopped, as they were leaving Edinburgh, by the citizens, who would not suffer their champions to place themselves in the King's power. But among the six was Montrose.
It is an infinite pity that no report exists of any interview between Montrose and the King during this visit. We know that Hamilton was instructed to confer with the Covenanting chiefs, and to use any device necessary to discover their intentions. We know that there was a stormy scene between Charles and Rothes, in which the latter was twice called a liar to his face. But how it fared between Montrose and his sovereign history is silent. How it was believed in Scotland to have fared between them is sufficiently shown by an incident which occurred soon after the meeting of Parliament. A paper was found one morning on the door of Montrose's lodgings bearing the inscription, Invictus armis verbis vincitur. It began now to be whispered abroad that the gallant young enthusiast who had led the soldiers of the Covenant to their first victory had in his turn been conquered by gracious looks and fair speeches.
The belief was natural in a society where no man could trust his neighbour. And there was possibly this much foundation for it, that Charles had succeeded in persuading Montrose that he was now really sincere in his intention to abolish Episcopacy and leave Scotland free to worship God after her own fashion. It is at least unlikely that Hamilton, whatever language he might speak, should have persuaded him to anything. And the change that is now perceptible in Montrose's attitude both towards King and Covenant is compatible with our belief in his intelligence and honesty only on the ground that he believed the work of the Covenant, as he interpreted it, to have been done, that he believed Charles to have learnt his lesson, and that thenceforth it was the part of every true Scotsman to stand by the King so long as the King stood by his word.
But in truth Montrose understood his countrymen as little as he understood the King. He had framed for himself an ideal constitution as unlike anything possible in such a country and at such a time as the ideal sovereign of his imagination was unlike the reality. His political views were in truth a dream like Dante's, but, like the great Italian's, a dream based on what had been in the past, and an anticipation in part at least of what was to be again in the future,—the dream of a real State, a government based on justice and law and supported by obedience. A parallel has been drawn between Montrose and that singularly interesting and attractive man, William Drummond of Hawthornden. Fanciful as the resemblance may at first seem between the fiery ambitious man of action and the shy meditative man of letters, the parallel is on one side good. Drummond, it is said, was a passive or theoretical Montrose, Montrose a rampant or practical Drummond. The latter's Irene indeed embodies, in more elaborate detail and more fanciful language, the peculiar form of Scottish Conservatism which Montrose was afterwards to express in a remarkable paper rescued by the industry of his biographer from two centuries of neglect. The plan of each discourse is very similar. Both draw a picture of the hopeless state of anarchy and confusion into which Scotland must fall if certain evil counsels prevail. Montrose, writing later in time and influenced by personal dislike as well as disappointment, aims clearly at Hamilton and Argyll; while Drummond includes in his censure all the noblemen who had joined the Covenant, and Montrose among them, openly accusing the majority of acting solely under the influence of private revenge and ambition. Both then proceed to appeal to each Estate particularly, to the nobles, the clergy, and the people. In both is the same recognition of the necessity for a paramount authority in the State, and the conviction that from the temper of the times that authority must be vested in the hands of a king. In both is the same dislike of all clerical interference, whether Episcopalian or Presbyterian, in matters of State. Both show the same mistrust of any alliance between the aristocracy and the people. Both warn the latter in almost the same strain that they are not fit for power, and that the nobles who would persuade them otherwise can do so only for their own selfish ends. Both, in short, may be said to preach the doctrine of passive obedience; but both imagine a king under whose wise and beneficent rule passive obedience should mean no more than happy and prosperous quiescence in the secure enjoyment of their religion and liberties. Of the two Drummond was readiest to push his doctrine to its last conclusion, as the man of theory always will be. Resolved on no consideration and in no extremity to suffer himself to be dragged into the vortex of politics, in the solitude of his beautiful home on the wooded banks of the Esk he could weave his fairy fabric without any disturbing sense of its impracticability. Montrose, with his active experience of men and things, could not quite blind himself to the possibility of a king under whom passive obedience might be only another name for tyranny. Yet he was practical to this extent, that, while the other was content to dream, he was ready to put his dream into action. He would carry into the sphere of working politics the reform on which they were both agreed. He would be the active exponent of the ideal Constitution under Charles the ideal King. Yet both are at one in recommending the subject patience even under the worst sovereign. It is better, they argue, to bear the ills we have and trust to time to cure them, than to fly to others we know nothing of. And of all forms of tyranny, says Montrose, the tyranny of subjects over their king is "the most fierce, insatiable, and unsupportable in the world." Drummond, who could on occasion speak boldly enough for the liberty of the subject, and who disliked religious intolerance in any shape and from any quarter, foresaw that in this respect at least the Covenant was likely to chastise with scorpions where Charles had chastised with whips. Passive obedience to a king who had shown himself (as he, like Montrose, believed) ready to remove the old yoke and resolved to add no new one, was surely more tolerable than passive obedience to a league of self-seeking nobles and fanatical clergymen.[7]
In the summer of 1639 Montrose had not formally broken with the Covenant, nor was his scheme of political reform probably as yet fully matured. Nevertheless, he was soon to have an opportunity of making trial of his countrymen's temper, and of learning how utterly he had misconceived it.