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which he appeared to great disadvantage compared with his brilliant rival, the Marquess of Montrose. Twice the chief of the Campbells had to fly before the head of the Grahams, though at Philiphaugh he saw his enemy routed.' Deeply religious, he formed a great friendship with the young English statesman, which lasted to the end, when both these eminent men showed that in a good cause they could firmly look on death. Charles tried to gain over the powerful earl. Neither of them trusted the other. The king wrote that he found him very civil and cunning. Argyll, however, was willing to go to London with a secret commission to arrange terms with some of the royalist noblemen, and on June 25, 1646, he delivered a speech to the committee of both Houses of Parliament in the Painted Chamber at Westminster. The fair-haired Scottish lord with "misplaced eyes soon gained upon his audience. While pleading for the Presbyterian form of government he disowned the intolerant claims which had already made it distasteful to the English. "Upon one part," he said, "we would take heed not to settle lawless liberty in religion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up a thousand heresies and schisms, which is directly contrary and destructive to our covenant. Upon the other part, we are to look that we persecute not piety and peaceful men, who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common rule."

1 See The Life and Times of Archibald, Marquess of Montrose (16071661), by John Willcock, B.D., Edinburgh, 1903. Mr Willcock is in many passages successful in clearing the memory of the Marquess from the calumnies and inventions of royalist romancists, historiographers, and ballad-mongers. He explains that at Inverlochy, Argyll was suffering from a dislocation of the arm, which he was unable to use for weeks, and persuaded by his friends to retire to his galley before the onset (p. 173).

S

Had the same moderation been shown by other advocates of the Presbyterian form of church government it had been received with less opposition. Presbyterianism, which granted so much voice to the laity, was well-fitted for a commonwealth. At this time it was popular with the citizens of London.

The Scots were sincerely anxious to promote a reconciliation between the king and the parliament, but although the commissioners entreated Charles on their knees to accept the conditions without which they could do nothing in his cause, he would not give way. He credited enough of the ceremonious speeches of his captors to think that his person was safe, and that by playing on their rivalries he would yet be in a position to gain back all he had lost, crush his enemies, and reward his friends. His last message to the peers made even those best affected to him to hang their heads, and they sent it down to the Commons without a word (Burnet). The Scots fully recognised that the disposing of Charles's person belonged jointly to the two kingdoms. The Scottish army was in the employment of the English parliament, who had thus a right to demand him to be delivered up as a prisoner taken in war. It is easy to repeat the senseless statement that the Scots gave up their king for a sum of money. Those who make it apparently believe that the Scottish army should have marched off to Scotland without their pay, which had remained in arrears for several months, taking the king with them. This meant to rekindle the Civil War in the northern as well as the southern kingdom, or that they should have changed sides and attempted to restore him with all his claims of prerogative and church government

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which they had come so far to fight against. The payments so grudgingly made to the Scots were simply what was due to them for their military services and promised by the treaty; the matter was arranged five months before the king was delivered to the English commissioners, on January 30, 1647.1 The Scottish auxiliaries then gave up the fortresses of Newcastle, Berwick, and Carlisle, and marched back to their own country. Before giving up the king it was stipulated that "he should be conducted to Holdenby House, there to remain till he gave satisfaction to both kingdoms in the propositions of peace, and that in the meantime there shall be no harm, prejudice, injury, or violence done to his royal person-that there shall be no change of government other than that has been for three years preceding—and that his posterity shall in no wise be prejudiced in their lawful succession to the throne and government of these kingdoms."

To the representations of the Scottish commissioners the parliament had retorted: "Let not your expressions obliquely infer that the parliament of England will not do what becometh them to the king, since all the world doth know that this kingdom hath in all times showed as great affection to their kings as any other nation." How could the Scots have foreseen that within three years a victorious faction would have brought the king to the block?

1 David Lesley, in reply to complaints against the Scottish soldiers. of plundering, states that sometimes for the space of seven or eight months together they had received no pay.-Letter dated Kelham, February 22, 1645, Parliamentary History, vol. xiv., p. 270. Holles, who was teller in almost every division about the settlement with the Scots, observes that "the question was how the soldiers would be disposed to march out who had not been paid for so many months."-Memoirs, pp.

CHAPTER XVI

Discord between the Presbyterians and the Independents. Growth of Republican Ideas. Vane on a Change of Government. Charles's Intrigues. Discontent in the Army. The King removed by Joyce. Views of Fairfax, Ireton, and Cromwell. The King escapes from Hampton Court. The New Civil War. Risings in England. Mutiny in the Fleet. Hamilton's Invasion of England. Cromwell's

visit to Edinburgh.

The Treaty of the Isle of Wight. Great Debate between the Monarchists and Republicans. Vane's Speech. The Vote. Pride's Purge. The King's Trial.

IN the debates and negotiations about the king, the parliament was divided into two parties. The peers and most of the Presbyterians in the Lower House, with the Scottish commissioners, were so anxious to have the king back that they were willing to accept guarantees and to make concessions, which the other party looked upon as an unworthy surrender to the vanquished. Having lost all faith in the honour of the Stuart, and seeing none to put in his place, it began to dawn upon the minds of some bold thinkers that a monarch might be dispensed with. Mr Hyde has recorded with abhorrence that in the early days. of the Long Parliament, conversing with Henry Marten, he pressed him to say what he desired. To which that heathen roundly answered: "I do not think one man wise enough to govern us all." Henry

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Marten, as already noticed, was imprisoned for some days for an outspoken remark about royalty in parliament. He had none of the austerity of the Puritans ; his private life caused scandal; but he was honest and kind-hearted, and gifted with a genial wit which sometimes served to soften the harshness of the zealous religionists with whom he took part. His republican sentiments were fostered by a study of the great historians and orators of antiquity. In England men had been so nursed in the traditional sentiment of loyalty, so wedded to inveterate precedent and custom, that they could scarcely conceive of a nation without a king. Eschylus, describing the triumph of the Athenians over the hosts of Asia, makes the Persian queen to ask: "What leader is over them and commands their army?" to which the chorus replies: "They are not called the slaves or the subjects of any man.' "How then," asks Atossa, "could they withstand the invasion of enemies?" a question which an Asiatic might well put, and a European could alone answer.

Even during the Dark Ages the tradition of liberty did not die out. Wherever feudal or monarchical tyranny was loosened, men revived the ideas of self-government; municipalities passed into republics in Italy and in the Hanse town. The United Provinces of the Netherlands, after vainly seeking a monarch in England and France, had flourished under a commonwealth, which in illustrious deeds already rivalled the republic of Venice, the oldest state in Europe, and Switzerland, whose valour had been admired for three hundred years.

1 Persai, 1. 241.