ton, and having recruited his forces from same night within four miles of him, Mon among the king's party in Lancashire, at- trose remained perfectly ignorant of his tempted to continue his march to Scotland proximity. Leslie's plan was to march to by way of Kirby-Lonsdale. But colone! Briggs, with a detachment of parliamentarian troops, had been beforehand with them, and secured the pass. The royalists now turned off by way of the sands, hoping to pass through Cumberland, and although they were watched and hemmed in by a strong body of horse sent by David Leslie, who was also on his march northward, and by the lord Balmerino with some forces from the Scottish borders, they contrived to elude both, and passing over the fords at low water, escaped. But another and still more serious reverse awaited them; for lord Digby had no sooner reached Carlisle sands, than he was attacked and entirely routed by sir John Brown, the Scottish governor of Carlisle. Finding it impossible to reach Scotland with the few men who still continued about him, he embarked in a ship he found on the coast and sailed for the Isle of Man, from whence he passed into Ireland. Thus ended Montrose's last hope of any assistance from the south. On the other hand, David Leslie crossed the Tweed on the 6th of September, and mustered on the other side an army consisting of nine regiments of horse, two of dragoons, and eight hundred foot. While Montrose remained at Bothwell, his forces began rapidly to diminish. The highlanders, when they had got booty enough, marched off home, according to their usual practice, to secure it. In his Irish, alone, he could place any confidence, and he was obliged to overlook their depredations, which increased the hatred with which the population in general regarded him. He was himself arrogant and overbearing, appropriating all the honour of his successes to himself, and giving none to the other nobles who were fighting under his banner. The consequence was that the lord Aboyne and the Gordons, who had been among his steadiest supporters, left him in disgust. With his force considerably diminished, he now turned his eyes to the south, and, expecting the arrival of lord Digby, marched from Bothwell to meet him. So ill, however, was he served by his scouts, or perhaps rather so great was his habitual negligence and want of intelligence, that although Leslie had mustered his troops on Gladsmuir, in East Lothian, on Friday, the 12th of September, and encamped the The Montrose's rear, and cut off his retreat to the north, but when he learnt at Gladsmuir that his opponent was lying secure at Philiphaugh, in Ettrick forest, near Selkirk, he at once changed his plan, and ordered his whole army to turn to the south through Strathgala. Leslie's movements had been concealed by the night, and it was not till ten o'clock on the morning of the 13th, that Montrose's scouts rushed in breathless to inform him that the enemy was within half-amile. Taken entirely by surprise, Montrose sent two hundred musketeers in advance to endeavour to retard the approach of the enemy till he had had time to form his army in order for battle. With as little delay as possible, he drew up his force in line, with the horse on the right; one flank being secured by a ditch, and the other by dykes and hedges lined with musketeers. advanced guard of musketeers was soon beaten back in confusion, and then the engagement became general, and lasted for an hour (from eleven o'clock to twelve) with great fury, Montrose's foot resolutely resisting every attempt of the enemy's horse to break through them. At length Leslie, at the head of his own regiment, made a desperate charge, and succeeded in breaking them. The confusion now became general among the foot, and the slaughter was dreadful. Montrose's horse was not numerous, but in the fury of desperation he twice rallied them and attempted to renew the combat, but in vain. The victory of the covenanters was complete. A thousand royalists perished on the field, and a great number were taken prisoners. Among the latter were the lords Drummond, Hartfield, and Ogilvy, a number of knights and gentlemen, among whom were sir Robert Spotswood, sir Willian Rollock, Nathaniel Gordon, the master of Napier, and many others, and two Irish colonels, O'Kean and Laghlin, who were all sent to the castles of Stirling and Edinburgh as state prisoners. A hundred Irish, who were taken prisoners, were soon afterwards shot at the stake, in retribution for the atrocities they had committed. The marquis of Douglas and the lords Crawford, Erskine, Fleming, and Napier, were fortunate enough to make their escape. Montrose, attended only by a few horse, rushed headlong towards the north, stopped only time enough to take some hasty re would no longer share in his dangers, disgusted, it would appear, by his selfishness in prosperity; and this redoubted chief was obliged to wander during the winter in the remotest districts of the north, with only a small band of desperate followers, and watched by Middleton, who had been appointed by the committee of the estates with a sufficient force to hold him in check. freshment at Peebles, and by day-break next and for a time hovered upon Glasgow, until morning passed the Clyde. Thence con- he was obliged again to shelter himself in tinuing his flight northward, he never Athol. Even sir Alexander Macdonald stopped till he reached the wilds of Athol, where he hoped again to raise the highlanders. But Montrose's fortune had left him, and with that the prestige of his name, and, though he sent the lords Douglas and Airlie into Angus, the lord Erskine into Mar, and sir John Dalziel to the lord Carnagie, to stir up the people of those different districts, all their efforts were fruitless. There can be no greater proof of the weakness of the fabric which Montrose seemed to have raised, than the rapidity with which he was hurled from the highest pitch of exaltation to become a proscribed wanderer among the northern mountains. At length Montrose succeeded in raising about four hundred men in Athol, who served to keep up a partisan warfare in the north, but the other highlanders showed no inclination to join him. He sought the assistance of the Gordons in vain; for in spite of the services he had received from them, he never represented those services in his despatches to the king, nor sought for them any share in the royal favour, and Huntley, who had now left his concealment, refused to let his clan serve under anybody but himself. Disappointed in all his attempts, Montrose returned through Braemar into Athol, and marched thence into Lennox, Meanwhile, Montrose's continuance in arms probably hastened the fate of his companions who had been taken at Philipshaugh. After that victory, Leslie marched into Lothian, where the two Irish officers passed through a hurried trial by court-martial, and were executed. The committee of estates, who met at Glasgow, proceeded to show their gratitude to Leslie and his second in command, Middleton, by voting to the first a gift of fifty thousand marks and a gold chain, and to the other, twenty-five thousand marks. They then proceeded to the trial of the prisoners, and three of them, sir William Rollock (Montrose's companion when he first entered Scotland from England), sir Philip Nisbet, and Ogilvy of Innerquharity, were convicted of treason against the state, and immediately executed. The others were reserved until the ensuing meeting of the Scottish parliament. CHAPTER XVII. STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS; THE KING GOES TO THE SCOTTISH ARMY; HIS INTRIGUES UNTIL HIS ARRIVAL IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT. KING CHARLES's battles were now fought, had decided in favour of presbyterianism, and in the field his party was entirely broken but the exclusive and persecuting spirit of in both kingdoms. After the entire defeat the presbyterians met with strong oppoof Montrose, David Leslie had marched sition in the parliament, where the party of back with his cavalry to rejoin the Scottish the independents were strongest. Disaparmy in England, which was still occupied pointed in their hopes of a complete victory in the siege of Newark, the only place of over the sectarians, as they called all their any strength which the royal party still opponents, the presbyterians insisted pertiheld. All the king's hopes now rested on naciously upon all the important points, and secret intrigues, and to these the state of the assembly voted "That the keys of the religious rivalry and jealousy gave an open-kingdom of heaven were committed to the ing. officers of the church, by virtue whereof The assembly of divines at Westminster they have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut the kingdom of heaven against the impenitent, both by word and censures, and to open it to the penitent by absolution; and to prevent the profanation of the holy sacrament by notorious and obstinate offenders, the said officers are to proceed by admonition, suspension from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for a season, and by excommunication from the church, according to the nature of the crime and the demerit of the person." The presbyterians wished, moreover, that the punishment of excommunication should be attended with the same civil penalties as in Scotland, which made it a powerful instrument of oppression But it was contrary to the liberal spirit of the English leaders to admit a spiritual tyranny which they saw would be not less grievous than that of the papists, and they resolved that the civil power should not be made secondary to that of the church. They obliged the assembly to specify the cases in which sentence of excommunication or suspension should be given, and even in these they allowed of an appeal to the civil power. The parliament permitted the church to hold or exercise no power over the sword, and excluded it in most cases from any interference in high judicial matters or in civil contracts. With these restrictions, the forms of the presbyterian church, as they existed in Scotland, were agreed to by the English parliament. The presbyterians felt aggrieved that any restrictions should be placed on the power of the church, but they were much more so when they found that the presbytery was not to be the sole form of church government, but that there would be toleration of others, and they beheld with the utmost uneasiness the increasing power of their great opponents, the independents. The Scots were greatly mortified at all these proceedings, and the more so because their army, embarrassed by the same religious jealousies, had been far more backward in the campaign than was expected, and had allowed the English army and its commanders, who were mostly of the opposite religious party, to reap the glories and advantages of victory. These cirumstances naturally made the English parliament pay more attention to their own army than to that of their allies, which led to discontent, complaints, and reclamations on the part of the latter. This feeling of dissatisfaction was at its height when the earl of Leven raised the siege of Hereford and marched away with the intention of returning to Scotland, and it was not without some difficulty that he was induced to change his design, and return to undertake the siege of Newark. The king saw in these divisions and jealousies a new opportunity for exercising his talents at intrigue and deception, which he seized upon with avidity. He was, however, approaching rapidly to the moment when all his intrigues would be without effect, and when neither his promises nor his assurances would command any further respect; for the chances of war had latterly been exposing more and more the falsity and baseness of his disposition. The capture of the king's own cabinet at Naseby had exposed to the public such extensive treachery as destroyed all Charles's further claim to trust or confidence from his subjects, and still further proofs of his insincerity were found in the correspondence of lord Digby, taken at his defeat in Yorkshire. In spite of these exposures, the king continued to pursue the same dishonest and fatal course. His favourite plan always was to weaken his subjects by keeping up divisions among them, and he now imagined the moment was come for playing off the presbyterians and independents against each other, and when they were weakened by their mutual dissensions, to bring in another power, which should be at his own devotion, and crush them both. The source from which he determined to seek this third power was Ireland. The exploits of the Irish band under Montrose in Scotland had led him to form extravagant notions of the effect which a larger body of the same savage warriors would produce in England, caring little what miseries such a visitation might inflict on his subjects, and reflecting as little on the real causes of Montrose's ephemeral success. He intrusted Ormond, his lord lieutenant in Ireland, to negotiate immediately a treaty with the Irish rebels, with this object; but their demands were so extravagant, that to accede to them publicly would have led at once to an irremediable breach with all his protestant subjects, and it is not probable that Ormond himself would have consented to be a party to it. The Irish, on their part, well knowing no doubt with whom they had to treat, would accept no verbal assurances. Under these circumstances, the king entered into a very disgraceful transaction. This was, to employ the young earl of Glamorgan, a devoted royalist and a catholic, and as such connected with many of the leading catholic families in Ireland, to conduct a secret treaty with the Irish rebels, unknown to the lord lieutenant. While people were deluded with the attempt at negotiations made by the lord lieutenant, Glamorgan concluded a secret treaty, by which the confederated Irish catholics were to furnish the king with ten thousand troops to assist in subduing his rebellious subjects in England, and to advance him two-thirds of the rents and revenues of the church for the payment of his forces, on condition that they should enjoy the full and free exercise of their religion, that they should be eligible to all offices of trust and advancement, that they should be exempted from the jurisdiction of the protestant clergy, and that their priests should retain all the churches held by them since the 23rd of October, 1641. The king had so contrived it, that, whenever he found it necessary, he could disavow this treaty by sacrificing Glamorgan. king confessed "That the earl having made offers to him to raise forces in the kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them into England for his majesty's service, he had granted him a commission for that purpose, and for that purpose only; but that he had no commission at all to treat of anything else, without the privity and directions of the lord lieutenant; and this clearly appeared by the lord lieutenant's proceedings with the said earl, who had orders to call him to an account." This declaration, however, obtained no credit, and everybody believed that the king had been the mover and director of the whole transaction. It was well known that Glamorgan had been in great favour, and had enjoyed the king's especial confidence, and it was not consistent with probability that he should have acted in such a case upon his own responsibility; it was further observed that, although nominal proceedings were taken against him, yet he was treated with a leniency which was totally inconsistent with his This treaty, however, came to light in a very unexpected manner, and very inopportunely for the king's interests. The ces-guilt, and that he continued to enjoy the sation with the Irish made by the king in king's confidence as much as ever. the year preceding, had never been accepted by the parliament, and their troops, with the Scottish troops in Ulster, continued the war against the catholics with activity. In the course of the year 1645, they penetrated into Connaught, which was the stronghold of the catholics, and took Sligo. The Irish were resolved to recover this town at all costs, and in the month of October it was besieged by a considerable force; but the English and Scots unexpectedly defeated the besiegers with great slaughter, pursued them for five miles, and captured their tents, baggage, arms, and ammunition. Among the slain was the archbishop of Tuam, one of the prime leaders of the rebels, who held among them the high office of president of Connaught, and who was a member of the supreme council. He had accompanied the army for the purpose of visiting his diocese, and with the assistance of an armed force to exact the arrears of his bishopric. Many important papers were found in his carriage, and some which laid open the whole transaction relating to Glamorgan's treaty. The king immediately sent a message to the two houses of parliament, disavowing any share in the transaction, and Glamorgan was placed under arrest on the charge of high treason, for concluding a treaty without power to that effect from the king. In his message to parliament, the At the time of this unlucky disclosure, the king, still confident in his talents at intrigue, was again attempting to enter into negotiations with the parliament. He began by soliciting passports for his commissioners to carry propositions for peace. As the parliament was rather slow in r lying to this communication, the king peated it, and in a third he proposed to go in person to London, if the parliament, the commissioners for Scotland, the lord mayor of London, and the generals of the English and Scottish armies, would unite in guarantee for his safety for forty days. Within this time, he said, a treaty might be concluded, and he offered to give up the militia for a limited period, to re-establish the church as it was in the time of queen Elizabeth, with liberty of conscience to dissenters, and to submit the affairs of Ireland to the two houses. The houses were little inclined now to listen to such proposals; they knew that he wanted to come to London merely because he thought it would be a better place for carrying on his intrigues with the different parties; and alluding to his recently-discovered intrigues in Ireland, they answered him coldly, "that there had been a great deal of innocent blood of his subjects shed in the war by his majesty's commands and commissions; that there had been Irish rebels brought over into both kingdoms, and endeavours to bring over more, as also forces from foreign parts; that his majesty was in arms himself against the parliament of England, while there were forces also in Scotland in opposition to the parliament of that kingdom; and that the troubles of Ireland were fomented and prolonged by his majesty." In these circumstances, they could not perceive how it would conduce to peace, for his majesty to come to his parliament for a few days, with any intent of leaving it, especially of returning to hostility against it; but they added that they were drawing up propositions which would be transmitted to him, and that his assent to these would be the only way to obtain a happy and wellgrounded peace. The arrangement of these propositions was itself a matter of some difficulty. secret promises to the independents, all his attention was now turned to the Scots, and he was the more anxicus to come to a speedy arrangement with them, as the parliamentary forces were gradually advancing to surround him in Oxford. He had entrusted the negotiations with the Scots to Montreuil, the French ambassador, or agent, whose proposals were at first favourably received by their commissioners. The latter had been instructed to insist absolutely on all their demands relating to religion, but to consider the question of civil liberty as a secondary one, on which they might yield a good deal without offence to their consciences. But Charles had in reality no intention of giving up episcopacy, and he was unwilling to do anything more than give promises which might be evaded, and Montreuil soon found that without something more substantial, he would make little progress in gaining over the officers of the Scottish army. Disappointed in this, he paid a visit to Scotland, where he was equally unsuccessful. He then returned to the army, and, after some further negotiations, he professed to have concluded an arrangement, the real character of which seems to be still a mystery. It appears, however, that the king, anxious on any terms to obtain personal security at a moment when he was on the point of falling into the hands of the parliamentary forces, professed his willingness to be convinced by arguments of the truth of the presbyterian form of faith, and it was pretended by him that Montreuil had assured him that the Scots had undertaken on this condition to receive him into their protection, and to employ their men and forces in the recovery of his crown. An arrangement of this kind was an extremely improbable one, and our belief in it is not justified by any known circumstance in the conduct of the Scots. On the 13th of April, 1645, the king being still at Oxford, wrote the following letter to the marquis of Ormond :-"Right trusty and entirely beloved cousin and councillor, Meanwhile the king was now addressing himself privately to each of the two great factions, and he did not hesitate to write to lord Digby and others of his confidential friends, that his design was to draw either the independents or presbyterians to side with him "for extirpating each other," and that when that was done he "should be really king again." To the independents, who were not absolutely intolerant of episcopacy, he promised full toleration for themselves and exemption from ecclesiastical supremacy; while he encouraged the presbyterians to expect from him the full establishment of their form of religion, and the suppression of all sectarians. The independents looked chiefly to the securing of civil liberty, while the presbyterians, who were fanatically attached to their kirk, would have allowed the king, in civil matters, a large amount of arbitrary power in exchange for the assurance of their favourite object. As arbitrary power was all at which the king really aimed, and as he had already shown that he cared little for the means by which he obtained it, it did not cost him much to make promises, or even to enter into engagements, from which he could subsequently withdraw, and he gradually we greet you well. Having used all possible fixed his hopes more and more upon the presbyterians. He imagined that, taking advantage of the present jealousies between the Scots and the English parliament and independent leaders, he might unite the former in his own cause, and revive the war with better hopes of success. Although he still kept up an appearance of negotiation with the parliament, and continued his and honourable means, by sending many gracious messages to the two houses of parliament, wherein we have offered them all they have hitherto desired, and desired from them nothing but what they themselves (since these unhappy wars) have offered, to procure our personal treaty with them for a safe and well-grounded peace; and having instead of a dutiful and peaceful return to |