That "the gallant Gospellers" of Scots ought to be chastised and subdued he had no doubt. But, as to the policy to be pursued, he would take a middle course between the warparty and the peace-party in the English committee. On the one hand, he would make no farther concessions to the Scots than in the King's recent Declaration; he would grant them no Parliament. On the other hand, he would not, with Arundel, plunge into immediate war. He would wait over winter, pressing on all kinds of preparations; and, in the spring, if the Scots had not come to their senses, he would seize Leith, and commence a series of operations which should not end, he says, till the Scots "had received our Common

Prayer Book, used in the churches of England, without "any alteration, and the Bishops settled peaceably in their "jurisdictions; nay, perchance, till I had conformed that kingdom all in all, as well for the temporal as ecclesiastical affairs, wholly to the government and laws of England, "and Scotland governed by the King and Council of England, "in a great part at least, as we are here" (i.e. in Ireland). Whatever Wentworth says or writes has the merit, at least, of being emphatic.1

The more peaceful counsels of Northumberland having prevailed, though with a reserve in the King's mind of plans not unlike Wentworth's, it was resolved that Hamilton should return to Scotland. By a new set of instructions, dated "London July 27," he was empowered to resume his negotiations on an advance of terms. He was to yield the Scots their General Assembly, only staving it off to as late a period of the year as possible, and employing himself on what was called its "prelimitation "—that is, on such arrangements and bargainings with the Covenanters beforehand as might make the Assembly, when it did meet, as innocuous as possible.

1 See the letters quoted in this paragraph in the Strafford Papers. The last letter, in reply to Northumberland, is of date July 30.

2 Some share in disposing the King to peaceful methods has been attributed to the young Duke of Lennox, a speech of whom at the Council-Board,

strongly in favour of peace, is quoted by Stevenson (214-216) and other historians. Such a speech was in circulation in London; but, as a MS. copy of it which I have seen in the State Paper Office, of date July 15, is endorsed by Windebank "D of Lenox: his supposed specche," I infer that it was not genuine.

It was to be pre-arranged, if possible, that the Bishops should sit in it, that a Bishop should be its Moderator or President, and that the debates should not run in very deep channels. Still, even if there should be little or no success in these efforts at "prelimitation," the Assembly was to be considered as granted. There might also be promised a Parliament, to meet soon after the Assembly. In short "you are," said the instructions, "by no means to permit a present rupture to 'happen, but to yield anything, though unreasonable, rather “than now break." On that point, of the surrender of the Covenant, which had been ostensibly the reason of the Marquis's return to Court, there was a special device by which, it was hoped, difficulties would be obviated.

Thus reinstructed, the Marquis was back in Edinburgh on the 10th of August. During his absence there had been much preaching and praying all over Scotland to keep men's minds up to the mark of the emergency. Advantage of the brief leisure had also been taken to look after those parts of the country where the Covenant was weakest, or where on other grounds there was danger.

During a great part of the month of July, Lorne, I find, was away on very distinct business in his Argyleshire domain. It was the season when that romantic region of Scotland, now so well known to tourists, reclothes its wintry wildness with the annual return of beauty, and the expanses of sea and promontory, of island and channel, of winding loch and heathy mountain, are as often under the sunshine and the clear blue as enwrapped in the grey mist. Argyleshire nature was the same then as now; but man how different! Not in the spirit of a modern admirer of the picturesque was the lord of that region then surveying its various scenery, traversing its mountain-passes, sailing in his galleys down Loch Fyne, or skirting the long peninsula of Cantire, whence the gaze seeks the coast of Ireland. "My dewetie "to his sacred Majestie," we find him writing to Wentworth, as Viceroy of Ireland, on the 25th of July, "tyes me to late your lordship know that there is zitt some few resting in thir pairtes of the rebellious race of Clandonald, who hes

"evir" &c. In short, the astute Lorne had obtained intelligence of Antrim's intended expedition; he was now taking his precautions; and one of these was the opening of a correspondence with Wentworth with a view to clearer information. The correspondence was continued through several letters till the end of the year. In Wentworth's reply to Lorne's first letter there is great evident respect; but he takes the liberty of hinting that Lorne's conduct in such a crisis was not quite what was to be expected from a person of his lordship's "blood and abilities," of whom the world had "so great an opinion." Lorne again answers with equal politeness, in more civilized spelling than in his first letter, and with an irony and at the same time a strength of reasoning which must have made even Wentworth wince.1

But it was not only against the wild race of Clandonald, Children of the Mist, that precautions for the Covenant had been taken within Scotland. Quite on the opposite coast, and among a race as little Celtic in their temperament or ways as it would have been possible to find in the island, there was a block of opposition. At that point of the Scottish east coast, nearer to Norway than to London, where the gloomy Don and the sprightly Dee join their differing waters in the ocean, stands the town of Aberdeen. Partly from native tendencies, partly from the influence exercised by the "Aberdeen Doctors," this town was the fastness of Prelacy in Scotland. There were Covenanters in it; but hitherto the tide of Evangelicism, as understood by the rest of the nation, had dashed vainly in the main round the city. Accordingly, while Lorne had been away looking after the children of the mist, a deputation from the Tables, including the Earl of Montrose, Henderson, Dickson, and Cant, had been commissioned to visit Aberdeen and try what could be done with its children of the granite. Never were Henderson, Dickson, and Cant more hard beset in their capacity of debaters than in this visit to Aberdeen (July 20-28). Their preachings to the students in the yard of Marischal College,

1 The following is the series of the letters in the Strafford Papers: 1. Lorne to Wentworth, July 25, 1638 (as in the

text); 2. Wentworth to Lorne, Aug. 28; 3. Lorne to Wentworth, Oct. 9. The letters are worth reading.

and to the townspeople elsewhere, in behalf of the Covenant, brought out the Aberdeen Doctors-Dr. John Forbes, Dr. Robert Barron, Dr. William Leslie, Dr. James Sibbald, and Dr. Alexander Ross-to the defence of their flocks and their principles. Not content with their spoken arguments, the Aberdeen Doctors had set the local press to work; and, after the Covenanting deputies had left the town, they were pursued with printed Replies and Duplies, which it tasked their subsequent industry to answer. These pamphlets in defence of Prelacy from Aberdeen found their way at once into England.1

Both Lorne and the Aberdeen Deputation were back in Edinburgh in time to take part in the new negotiation with Hamilton. It lasted but a fortnight, or from August 10 to August 25. We have said that, in the matter of the Covenant, Hamilton had been provided with an ingenious contrivance which, it was supposed, would answer the purpose. It was a kind of homoeopathic remedy, and seems to have been suggested by Hamilton himself. If the Scots would have a Covenant, might they not have a Covenant somewhat like their own, but of a quieter nature, and approved by the King,-nay, signed by him along with them? Their own Covenant consisted of a revival of a document known as the "Short Confession of Faith, or First National Covenant, of 1580," with certain subsequent additions and an attached bond" or oath adapted to the immediate exigency. But out of the old documents of the Scottish Kirk might not a Covenant be devised less fierce in expression and yet sufficiently orthodox and Knox-like, and might not a "bond" of a loyal nature be attached to this Covenant?

1 Baillie, I. 97; and the Pamphlets themselves as follows:-1. "General Demands concerning the late Covenant, propounded by the members and Professors of Divinity in Aberdene to some Reverend Brethren who came thither to recommend the late Covenant to them; together with the Answers of these Rev. Brethren to the said Demands; As also the Replyes of the foresaid members and Professors to their Answers: Printed by His Majestie's Printer for Scotland, anno 1635”

(pp. 37). 2. "The Answers of some Brethren of the Ministrie to the Replyes of the members and Professors of Divinitie in Aberdene concerning the late Covenant: Printed by R. Y., his maj. Printer for Scotland, 1638" (pp. 42, and signed by Henderson and Dickson). 3. Duplies of the members and Professors of Aberdene to the second Answers of some Reverend Brethren, &c. 1638" (pp. 133). All these pamphlets were reprinted together at Aberdeen in 1662.

It is not worth while to describe the plan more minutely, for the Marquis seems to have found it hopeless and to have quietly dropped it. He devoted all his strength to the "prelimitation" of the promised Assembly, and this more especially on two points. He was anxious, first, that the Assembly should be in the main a clerically composed body, in the election of the members of which laymen should have no voice; and, secondly, that the scope of its deliberations should be restricted beforehand. On the first of these points he seemed likely at first to have some success; for the Table of Ministers (such is clerical human nature) were rather taken with the idea of an Assembly elected solely by themselves. Even they, however, were far from being agreed on the point; and, the Tables of the Nobles, Lairds, and Burgesses being unanimous for the electoral rights of laymen, the matter was settled, and a treatise was put forth clearing up, definitively for the future, the whole question of the place and power of lay-elders in the Presbyterian system. On the other point also Hamilton found the Tables resolute. They would have no "prelimitation" of the business of the Assembly; and, if they could not have a full and free Assembly by his Majesty's authority, they would call one without that authority. To the Marquis's alarm, this matter of an Assembly by popular authority alone began to be boldly discussed both in conference and in print. There was one incident which contributed to this boldness and to the difficulties of the Marquis in dealing with the Covenanters. The Marquis of Huntley's son, Lord Gordon, had arrived from Court (August 13) with letters from the King to the Magistrates and Doctors of Aberdeen, thanking them and the town for the loyal stand they had just made against the Covenant; and it was quickly known that Hamilton had backed these letters with others from himself to the same effect, and with a remittance to Dr. Barron of £100 to keep the press going with Aberdeen pamphlets. Suspicion of the Marquis's good faith was the natural result; and when, professing that he had again reached the limit of his instructions, he proposed once more to return to Court to have them enlarged, it was rather sternly that the Covenanters consented