and authority, according to their allegiance, were real, and that they had no intention to diminish his power and greatness; he, therefore, consented to confirm that deed, as soon as he could with freedom, honour, and safety, be present in a free parliament, provided that none who were unwilling should be constrained to take it. He engaged to confirm by act of parliament, presbyterian church government in England, for three years; during which, the assembly of divines, assisted by twenty whom he should nominate, together with his majesty and the two houses of parliament, would, at the expiration of that term, establish such a form as should be most agreeable to the word of God.—He also engaged that an effectual method should be taken by act of parliament for suppressing schism and heresy, the opinions of the arians, socinians, independents, anabaptists, separatists, and seekers, or any others, destructive to order and government, or to the peace of the church and kingdom.

In their instructions to their commissioners, the estates of parliament had, last year, desired them to attempt procuring the freedom and privilege of trade with England and Ireland -that the natives of all the kingdoms should be declared capable of any incorporation trade, or society, in either—that Scottishmen should be capable of all places, faculties, professions, and benefits, within the two kingdoms, the natives of which, should enjoy equal privileges with them, and that a part of the English fleet should be appointed to guard the Scottish commerce from depredation. These the king engaged to see carried into the fullest effect. In return, the Scottish commissioners engaged that an army should be sent out of Scotland into England, for the preservation.and establishment of religion, for defence of his majesty's person and authority, and restoring him to his government, to the just rights of the crown, and the full revenues; they further agreed that all such in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, as would join with the kingdom of Scotland, in pursuance of this engagement, should be protected by his majesty in their persons and estates, and that all his subjects in England or

Acts of the Scottish Parliament, vol. vi. p. 227.

Ireland, who would join with him, in pursuance of the engagement, might come to the Scottish army and join with them, or else put themselves in other bodies, in England or Wales, for prosecution of the same ends as the king's majesty should judge most convenient, and such commanders and generals of the English nation as his majesty should think fit.* This engagement, the terms of which, if they had been granted at Newcastle, would have, long ago, reinstated the king in his seat, were acceded to by Charles, in the full conviction that it was impossible they could be ever performed, and that if the Scots, in conjunction with the Irish and the English royalists, should succeed, when he found himself at the head of a victorious army, there would be no power by which they could be enforced. The Scottish commissioners insisted upon them, as they knew nothing short of them would be for a moment listened to in Scotland; but with the tacit understanding that the performance would not be too rigidly exacted. A treaty so foul, and which would have treacherously thrown away all that the nation had so fervently contended for, could never come to good; and it is somewhat surprising, how men of such acuteness as Lauderdale and Loudon, should have ever expected to reconcile the Scottish nation, to what carried in its front the marks of its insincerity in the almost open avowal of a union with the papists of Ireland and the malignants of England; but it is equally surprising that historians should have been found who could extenuate or excuse so nefarious a transaction on the part of the king, by which more than twenty thousand of his subjects were immolated at the shrine of his irrational obstinacy. The treaty when finished, was enclosed in lead and buried in the garden, to be afterward transmitted to the commissioners in London, fears being entertained that they might be searched by the road.

When the engagement was settled, it only remained to amuse the English commissioners till Charles should effect his escape to Ireland, whence he could easily transport him

Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 82. Lord Loudon's Speech. vol. iii. p. 1218. Rushworth, vol. vii. p. 807, 946.

Stevenson's Hist.

self to England or Scotland, to head his forces and recommence the war-it only wanted one falsehood more to have effected this; but Charles hoped to avoid that by a manœuvre: instead of a direct refusal, he imagined the parliamentary commissioners would accept of a sealed evasion; they, however, rejected the office, declining to be the bearers of a message with the nature of which they were unacquainted, and the king was reluctantly forced to open his packet. When they read the contents, suspecting the king's intentions, they, upon retiring, gave orders for his majesty to be more strictly watched, which an attempt to carry him off, by one captain Burley, next day, evinced to be no unnecessary precaution.*

The republican party, as they were afterwards styled, who dreaded that Charles would have accepted the bills, when his rejection of them was announced, gratified as they were, and eager to take advantage of his refusal, would, notwithstanding, have found it difficult to proceed to the extreme measures they did, had his refusal been sincere and unconnected with any other transaction; but the engagement with the Scots transpiring, which, not even his keenest friends in parliament could defend, it was laid hold of for putting an end to all temporizing measures;-Cromwell acknowledged the king's abilities; but pronounced him so false and hollow a dis

After the attempt had been frustrated, the confidential servants of the king were removed, and his guards redoubled. The garrison was re-enforced, and every precaution, to prevent his getting away, was observed with the strictest security. That this was done in consequence of the opposite party being acquainted with his plotting, was plainly enough intimated to him by Hammond; who, when the king sent for him, and asked him the reason "Why he had given orders for dismissing his majesty's servants, and whether it stood with the engagement to them who had so truly cast themselves upon him, and with his honour and honesty ?" told him, " That his honour and honesty, were, in the first place, to them that employed him, and next, that he thought he [the king] could not but confess that he had done more, as things stood, for him, than he himself could have expected." The king then asked him, whether the commissioners were privy to the [last] order? he said no; and on the king's demanding, by what authority he did it? answered, "By authority of both houses of parliament; and that he supposed his majesty was not ignorant of the cause of his doing thus."-The king professed the contrary-to which the governor replied, that he plainly saw his majesty was acted by other counsels than stood with the good of the country. Whitelock, p. 288.

sembler as not to be trusted-that while he professed with all solemnity to refer himself wholly to parliament, and depended only upon their wisdom and counsel for the settlement and composing the distractions of the kingdom, he had, at the same time, secret treaties with the Scottish commissioners to embroil the nation in a new war, and destroy the parliament: he therefore moved, in the house of commons, that the affairs of the kingdom should be settled without farther recourse to the king; and, after a debate of a whole day, from morning till late at night, it was resolved, that no more addresses should be made to Charles, or messages received from him, and a declaration, announcing to the public that he had virtually ceased to reign, and detailing the causes which had led to this consummation, was directed to be published.

Internal tranquillity was partially restored to Scotland, during these important transactions in England, by the reduction of the Gordons in the north, and Macdonald in the west. But this was unhappily accompanied by acts of equally sanguinary retaliation upon the Irish, as that which marked the victory of Philiphaugh. When the army returned home, it was immediately reduced to about six thousand men. These chiefly officered by soldiers of fortune, who professed a rigid zeal for the covenant, were sent north, under the command of David Leslie, who successively captured the principal strengths belonging to Huntly, and in accordance with his instructions, spared the lives of the natives; but uniformly did military execution on the Irish auxiliaries. Thence crossing through Badenoch to Kintyre, he surprised the strong passes of the country. Terrified at his approach, Macdonald, placing a garrison at Dunavertie, a castle upon the top of a hill, fled to Isla, where he left his father, Col Kettoch, in the fortress of Duneveg, with two hundred men, and carried the rest of his followers to Ireland; where, some time after, he fell in battle. The house of Dunavertie, although strong, had no water within its walls, but what fell from the clouds, or was supplied from a small streamlet at the foot of the hill, defended by some outworks; these being carried by assault, and a sultry month of July affording no rain, the garrison

was constrained, by thirst, to surrender at discretion, when nearly two hundred were put to death, and the rest were sent to serve in the French wars."

*

From Kintyre, the expedition went to Isla, where Duneveg made a more protracted resistance; but the governor being taken prisoner, when he incautiously ventured without the

Sir James Turner, in his MS. Memoirs, when mentioning the massacre at Dunavertie, after acquitting the earl of Argyle of any share of blame in the transaction, makes the following observations:-" Fourthlie, I have several times spoke to the lieutenant general to save these men's lives, and he always assented to it; and I know of himself, he was unwilling to shed their blood. Fifthlie, Mr. John Nevay, who was appointed by the commission of the kirk to wait on him as his chaplaine, never ceased to tempt him to that bloodshed, yea, and threatened him with the curses befell Saull, for sparing the Amalakites; for with them his theologie taught him to compare the Dunavertie men: and I verilie believe that this prevailed most with David Leslye, who looked upon Nevay as the representative of the kirk of Scotland. Lastlie, there is no doubt but the lieutenant general might legalie enough, without the least transgression of either the custom, practice, or law of warre, or his own commission, have used them as he did; for he was bound by no article to them, they having submitted themselves absolutelie to his discretion. It is true, on the other hand, sunmum jus summa injuria; and in such cases, mercy is the more christian, the more honourable, and the more ordinare way in our warres in Europe. But I really believe, advise him to that act who woll, he hath repented it many times since, and even very soon after the doing it." The saving clause in the last sentence goes, I think, far to exculpate Nevay from the odious imputation of urging Lesly to this cruel act. Salmonet, who apparently confounds forcing the pass of Tarbet with the affair at Dunavertie, suggests an excuse, in the dread Lesly had of a fresh invasion from Ireland. But his instructions seem to have been founded on the treaty between the two kingdoms, formerly noticed; and his ready obedience in other cases, render it rather dubious whether he needed any monitor in this. In his own account of the taking of Lismore, the conditions, he says, were, "That he, the captain, should yield the house, and all that therein wes-that all the Irish should dye, and his own life and Harthill's be spared;" and adds, with great coolness," so I caused hang twenty-seven Irish." In the same despatch, he says, "Wardhous was reduced without much dispute, wherein were fourteen Irish and a captain, all which I caused to be put to death." And in a letter from Dounebog, June 25th, he gives the following as his opinion of the treatment the islanders should receive: "Because I think hardly this yle, or anie others, can be brought to obedience without totallie ruine of them, I thought it my ductie to desyre your lordship's order by the bearer what you will command me to do therein."-A person who could recommend the total ruin of the isles, as the best mode of effecting their subjugation, cannot be supposed very unwilling to shed blood.