First Marquis of Argyle.
Argyle next proceeded against the Earl of Athole, who, with about 1,200 followers, was lying in Breadalbane, ready to meet him. Argyle, whose army was about five times the size of Athole’s, instead of giving fight, managed by stratagem to capture Athole and some of his friends, whom he sent to the Committee of Estates at Edinburgh.
Argyle, after having thus gratified his private revenge and made a show of quieting the Highlands, returned to the lowlands.[251]
On the 20th of August General Leslie crossed the Tweed with his army, the van of which was led by Montrose on foot. This task, though performed with readiness and with every appearance of good will, was not voluntarily undertaken, but had been devolved upon Montrose by lot; none of the principal officers daring to take the lead of their own accord in such a dangerous enterprise. There can be no doubt that Montrose was insincere in his professions, and that those who suspected him were right in thinking that in his heart he was turned Royalist,[252] a supposition which his correspondence with the king and his subsequent conduct fully justify.
Although the proper time had not arrived for throwing off the mask, Montrose immediately on his return to Scotland, after the close of this campaign, began to concert measures for counteracting the designs of the Covenanters; but his plans were embarrassed by some of his associates disclosing to the Covenanters the existence of an association which Montrose had formed at Cumbernauld for supporting the royal authority. A great outcry was raised against Montrose in consequence, but his influence was so great that the heads of the Covenanters were afraid to show any severity towards him. On subsequently discovering, however, that the king had written him letters which were intercepted and forcibly taken from the messenger, a servant of the Earl of Traquair, they apprehended him, along with Lord Napier of Merchiston, and Sir George Stirling of Keith, his relatives and intimate friends, and imprisoned them in the castle of Edinburgh. On the meeting of the parliament at Edinburgh in July, 1641, which was attended by the king in person, Montrose demanded to be tried before them, but his application was rejected by the Covenanters, who obtained an order from the parliament prohibiting him from going into the king’s presence. After the king had returned to England, Montrose and his fellow-prisoners were liberated, and he, thereupon, went to his own castle, where he remained for some time, ruminating on the course he should pursue for the relief of the king. The king, while in Scotland at this time, conferred honours upon several of the covenanting leaders, apparently for the purpose of conciliation, Argyle being raised to the dignity of a marquis.
Although Charles complied with the demands of his Scottish subjects, and heaped many favours and distinctions upon the heads of the leading Covenanters, they were by no means satisfied, and entered fully into the hostile views of their brethren in the south, with whom they made common cause. Having resolved to send an army into England to join the forces of the parliament, which had come to an open rupture with the sovereign, they attempted to gain over Montrose to their side by offering him the post of lieutenant-general of their army, and promising to accede to any demands he might make; but he rejected all their offers; and, as an important crisis was at hand, he hastened to England in the early part of the year 1643, in company with Lord Ogilvie, to lay the state of affairs before the king, and to offer him his advice and service in such an emergency. Charles, however, either from a want of confidence in the judgment of Montrose, who, to the rashness and impetuosity of youth, added, as he was led to believe, a desire of gratifying his personal feelings and vanity, or overcome by the calculating but fatal policy of the Marquis of Hamilton, who deprecated a fresh war between the king and his Scottish subjects, declined to follow the advice of Montrose, who had offered to raise an army immediately in Scotland to support him.
A convention of estates called by the Covenanters, without any authority from the king, met at Edinburgh on the 22d of June, 1643, and he soon perceived from the character and proceedings of this assembly, the great majority of which were Covenanters, the mistake he had committed in rejecting the advice of Montrose, and he now resolved, thenceforth, to be guided in his plans for subduing Scotland by the opinion of that nobleman. Accordingly, at a meeting held at Oxford, between the king and Montrose, in the month of December, 1643, when the Scots army was about entering England, it was agreed that the Earl of Antrim, an Irish nobleman of great power and influence, who then lived at Oxford, should be sent to Ireland to raise auxiliaries with whom he should make a descent on the west parts of Scotland in the month of April following;—that the Marquis of Newcastle, who commanded the royal forces in the north of England, should furnish Montrose with a party of horse, with which he should enter the south of Scotland,—that an application should be made to the King of Denmark for some troops of German horse; and that a quantity of arms should be transported into Scotland from abroad.[253]