the strongest and most popular ruler Scotland had known since his ancestor fell at Flodden. But when any part of the body politic is sick it needs a wise and vigorous physician to keep the infection from spreading. There was a dangerous sickness rife in England, and it was not in the interests of those who had determined on the cure to see it wrought by other means. If one-half of the kingdom were sound, it could be used as an effectual cure for the unsound half. The discontent in Scotland was therefore assiduously fomented from England; and the unfortunate King, neither wise nor vigorous himself, had in Laud an adviser whose vigour was rarely on the side of wisdom.
Meanwhile the nobles waited. Though they could harass and delay the Tithes Commission, they were powerless to resist it seriously. The constitution of the Scottish Parliament rendered all opposition to the Crown practically useless unless it was unanimous; and they knew well that the general sympathies of the nation, lay and cleric alike, were in this case on the side of the King. But they knew also that if he made one step more along the dangerous path of religious innovation their time would come. The concession in the matter of the Articles of Perth, and the relief to be obtained from the resettlement of the tithes, had not laid the suspicions of the clergy to sleep. They, too, like the nobles, were waiting, and, unlike the nobles, their religion was more to them than lands, and houses, and goods. The Protestantism of the Presbyterian was sensitive above that of all other Protestants, and there went along with it a deep-rooted national jealousy of English interference. Even those who had no aversion to a moderate form of Episcopacy, and were heartily disgusted with the intolerance and pugnacity of the extreme Presbyterians, thought that it would be best to let well alone, and that any further innovation would be impolitic and dangerous. But all parties had a very shrewd suspicion, which the English malcontents took care to keep alive, that the King would not be content to leave well alone, and that there would soon be further innovations. Then would come the time of the nobles. When dissatisfied men gather together they do not pause to ask the nature of each other's dissatisfaction. The cave of Adullam was the rallying-ground of every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented.
They had not long to wait. In the summer of 1633 Charles came to Scotland to be crowned, and Laud came with him. He entered Edinburgh on June 15th, and on the 18th the mischief began. The ceremonies of the coronation confirmed the worst suspicions. A table decked in the fashion of an altar was set up in the chapel of Holyrood; behind it was hung a curtain of tapestry enwrought with a crucifix; the bishops engaged in the service wore white rochets and copes embroidered with gold, and each time they passed before the crucifix they bowed their heads. Even the most loyal whispered to each other that it all smelled sadly of Popery. The Tithes Bill was of course passed, but not without an unseemly wrangle between Charles and his Parliament, over which the Scottish law allowed the sovereign to preside in person. Through the year following the King's return to England affairs grew steadily worse. The creation of a see of Edinburgh, the appointment of Archbishop Spottiswoode to the Chancellorship, and of many of his bishops to the Privy Council—a step odious to all the aristocracy alike, to the tolerant and loyal Napier no less than to the mutinous Loudon—the Book of Ecclesiastical Canons, the foolish prosecution of Lord Balmerino, all inflamed the rising temper of a nation jealous above all other nations of established customs, and that had ever shown itself quick to dispute the divine right of its kings to do wrong. Last of all, as a torch to this fatal pyre, came Laud's new prayer-book.
Everything, then, was ready for the explosion when Montrose returned to Scotland in 1636. Which side was a young man of his rank, position, and temper likely to take in the approaching conflict? That question has been variously answered, and is still, if no longer the object of controversy, at least a stumbling-block to many who regard him as the Abdiel of that faithless time. That his character should have in some degree suffered from a contrast which all can discern, and few have been at the pains to examine, was inevitable. Between the champion of the Throne who sealed his loyalty with his life and the leader of men in arms against their sovereign, there must surely be a gulf which no explanation or apology can bridge.
Both in joining and leaving the party of the Covenant Montrose has been represented as influenced solely by wounded vanity. Disappointed by the coldness of his first reception at court, he flung himself into the arms of the Covenanters; disappointed by the ascendency of Argyll in their councils, he flung himself into the arms of the Cavaliers. On the other hand, his action has in both cases been represented as the result of one uniform policy. After long and careful deliberation he formed the conclusion, which was sanctioned if not actually recommended by the most trusted of his friends, the wise and impartial Napier, that the Covenant of 1638 was, in the spirit in which he interpreted it and believed it to have been framed, the one and only plan for redressing the grievances of the Scottish nation without violating the lawful prerogative of the Crown. So long as he believed this to be the true purpose and scope of the movement, so long did he honestly endeavour to advance it. When he found that other counsels were prevailing, and that the constitutional authority of the Crown was to give place to the self-appointed authority of a handful of its subjects—when he found, in short, that the Covenant of 1638 was ripening into the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643—he at once transferred his allegiance to the King, whose best interests as the appointed and hereditary ruler of his country he had always desired to serve, and had hitherto believed himself to be serving. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere between the two extremes; and this can surely be allowed without casting any stain upon the good faith of Montrose.
Peter Heylin, the chaplain and biographer of Laud, has told a story which was certainly believed in his time and has been generally accepted down to our own. According to this story, Montrose on his return from his travels had hastened to pay his respects to the King. Charles was never slow to welcome to his court young gentlemen of good position and repute; Montrose especially, the head of one powerful family and allied by marriage with two others on which the royal favour had already been signally bestowed, young, gifted, eager for distinction, was surely justified in anticipating a gracious reception. To his surprise and chagrin the King received him with marked coldness, spoke a few formal words, gave his hand to be kissed, and then turned away to converse with his courtiers.
This rebuff is attributed by Heylin to the intrigues of Hamilton. James, Marquis of Hamilton, was then some six years older than Montrose. From boyhood he had been about the person of Charles, and was now in his most intimate confidence. Few liked him, and fewer still trusted him; but with the unfortunate King he was all-powerful, especially in matters of Scottish policy, on which at this time he alone was consulted. He had done nothing, that any one could discover, to merit this position. A few years before this date he had led a body of troops to the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus, but had reaped no laurels in that service, though on his return he discoursed so learnedly on the art of war that he persuaded some people to take him for a great soldier, just as by his grave look and reserved manner he persuaded some to take him for a great statesman. He was not without parts and knowledge of affairs, but incurably shifty; and though never convicted of downright treachery, was perhaps only saved from it by his inability to be downright in anything. None of all Charles's evil counsellors, not even the Queen herself, wrought more mischief; and of him, if of any man, it may be said that nothing in his life became him so well as his leaving it.
To this dangerous man Montrose had been advised to pay his court. Hamilton received him with every appearance of cordiality, but had no mind to introduce so likely a rival into his master's good graces. He therefore warned Montrose that the King was at that time much prejudiced against Scotsmen, adding that only his love for his country and his hopes to serve her enabled him to endure the indignities to which he was daily subjected. At the same time he warned the King that Montrose was a dangerous young man, very ambitious, very powerful and popular in Scotland, and not unlikely in the event of any national rising to be set up as king by virtue of an old strain of royal blood in his family. This last insinuation would not fall on deaf ears. Hamilton, indeed, had himself been accused of a similar design, for which his descent from a daughter of James the Second, who had married the first Lord Hamilton, gave at least as much colour as any that Montrose's pedigree could supply; and though Charles had refused to listen to the accusation, and was probably right in refusing, many people still
