royal agents brought him the encouraging news of the people’s discontent with parliament’s army, which had grown overpowerful and abusive.
Pleased with what appeared to be a growing discord among his enemies, the king played his usual game of delay, behaving as if all of England were still firmly in his royal grasp and under his personal control. Winter came. The Scots sent envoys to Carisbrooke. Their army would rise in support of Charles Stuart if he would but guarantee the safety of their Presbyterian church and take some of the Scots nobility into his government. Parliament, suddenly realizing that the king was not bargaining fairly with them, feared a Scots alliance would renew the civil war. So the moderates in parliament appealed to the Scots Presbyterians to form an alliance with them. The king thereupon signed an ill-advised treaty with the Scots.
Parliament angrily voted to disenfranchise the king, refusing to offer him any more terms for compromise. Throughout England, however, the anger grew, and directed itself not toward the king, but toward parliament and its military, both of whom were ruling with too heavy an iron fist. Now it became parliament against the people. Many of the gentry who had originally supported reform grew hostile.
In April there was a revolt in Wales. The king, in the meantime, had managed to stitch together an alliance between his English supporters and the Scots, both of whom objected strenuously to the military’s involvement in the civil government. A second civil war began. It consisted of small local uprisings as in Wales and an invasion of the Scots into England.
The king and his adherents, however, had underestimated their opponents. In Scotland a separate confederation had to be worked out between royalists, Presbyterians, and the Convenanters, those Scots who supported the national covenant, which had been signed in 1643 with the English. By the time it had all been settled it was July. The Welsh uprising had been brutally quelled. Had the Scots moved faster, they could have obtained a great victory, for their forces outnumbered the English three to one. But disorganized and poorly provisioned, they gave the English time to regroup. A battle was finally fought at Preston in Lancashire, on August 17, 1648. The well-trained English troops decimated both the Scots foot soldiers and their cavalry. In a driving rain they doggedly chased after them until the Scots could run no farther. On that day General Oliver Cromwell took ten thousand prisoners, and many were killed.
Outraged by King Charles I’s behavior, the fanatics in the English government and the army now took total control of the parliament. They immediately removed those men believed to be moderate in their thoughts. They ousted the entire House of Lords. Then they boldly brought the king to trial for his alleged crimes against the English people. Charles Stuart was quickly found guilty on all charges. He was beheaded on the thirtieth day of January in the year 1649. The heir to England’s throne learned of his father’s execution several days later while at his sister’s court in Holland, when his chaplain came forward to address him as “Your Majesty.” The second Charles Stuart promptly burst into tears and could not be consoled for several days. The new king was just eighteen years of age.
Charles II was, however, almost immediately pronounced king of Scotland by the Scots parliament. While in sympathy with the English, the Scots Covenanters didn’t like the idea that a Scots king of England had been executed without their permission. They would take back their own Stuart king under certain conditions, none of which could be acceptable to the royalists. Almost eighteen months of haggling ensued. Charles II landed in Scotland on June 23, 1650, barely escaping the English fleet sent to capture him and bring him home to face his own execution.
The delay in his arrival had been caused by his reluctance to sign the National Covenant, a thing his father would not do. The Covenant called for, among other things, the imposition of the Presbyterian form of worship on all the king’s subjects in England, Ireland, and Scotland. It denied any other religious faiths, the Anglican and the Roman Catholic faiths in particular, legitimacy. It prohibited a church hierarchy, and enjoined the creation of all bishops, present or future. The king, an Anglican, signed with reluctance, having absolutely no intention of following through, something many suspected, but he needed a power base if he was to retake England.
Charles II needed firm control of an army. He would do what he had to in order to obtain his goals. The members of the Scots parliament were extremely obdurate, and very short-sighted, but they were not stupid. They kept a tight rein on the young Stuart king. They went so far as to banish his personal chaplains and his personal friends. They kept four ministers of the kirk sermonizing at him almost round the clock. Only when Oliver Cromwell was foolish enough to attempt an invasion of Scotland that autumn in an effort to regain control over that land and custody of its king; only then did the Scots parliament act to raise an army of defense. Only then did Charles Stuart, the second of that name, see a tiny ray of hope. He was, unfortunately, to be doomed to disappointment.
Part One
The Heiress of Brae
Chapter 1
Scotland, 1650
Late summer and autumn
She remembered the argument well as she sat by the early afternoon fire, assailed by her memories. “Have you lost your wits entirely, old man?” the Duchess of Glenkirk demanded of her husband of thirty-five years. Jasmine Leslie could not remember ever having been so angry. Her turquoise blue eyes flashed with her indignation as she confronted James Leslie. “What the hell have we to do with the royal Stuarts? I cannot believe you would even consider such a venture as you now tell me you are planning.”
“The young king needs the help of all loyal Scotsmen,” the duke replied stubbornly, but in truth she knew his conscience had troubled him over the matter.
“We do not even know this king,” Jasmine recalled saying in an attempt to regain a firm grip over her emotions. Drawing her husband to the settle by the fireplace, she had sat beside him and affectionately ruffled his snow-white hair fondly. “Jemmie, be reasonable. It has been over thirty years since we had anything to do with the royal Stuarts or their court. King James ruled us then. There was peace. Then he died, and ever since poor Charles Stuart has made one mistake after another. He has plunged not only England, but Scotland as well, into wasteful fighting. How many innocent lives have been sacrificed in this battle over religion? If it could be settled, then perhaps it would have been worth it, but it will never be resolved. The Anglicans want it all their way. The Presbyterians want it all their way, and God save us from the more fanatical Covenanters among them! No one will win in this matter! Is it not better to follow the cardinal rule of the Leslies of Glenkirk, to not get involved? The survival of this clan is paramount. You are responsible for your people.”
“But our parliament in Edinburgh has taken King Charles II as their own,” the duke told his wife.
“Hah!” Jasmine said. “Listen to me, Jemmie Leslie, we knew King James well, both of us. You, since your birth. He was well named the wisest fool in Christendom, for he was a canny, clever man who knew how to play the various factions around him against one another and thereby guarantee his own comfort and survival. His son, our late King Charles, we have not seen since he was a young and untried youth, but I remember him well as a boy, standing in his older brother Henry’s shadow. That Charles was stubborn, stiff-necked, impressed with his own importance, and absolutely certain of his own rightness. This is the man who brought us to civil war.”
“The Covenanters could nae compromise either,” James Leslie reminded his wife. “They were just as difficult as the king.”
“Agreed,” Jasmine replied, “but it was up to the king to show them a way to compromise, but no, he would not. The Divine Right of the royal Stuarts once again overshadowed all common sense of the common good.”
“But
