e of aid from the Catholics, who could not be expected to hazard
their lives in support of a prince sworn to extirpate their religion.[1]

While the question was yet in debate, an event happened to hasten the
departure of Charles from the Hague. Dr. Dorislaus, a native of Holland,
but formerly a professor of Gresham College, and recently employed to draw
the charge against the king, arrived as envoy from the parliament to the
States.[a] That very evening, while he sat at supper in the inn, six
gentlemen with drawn swords entered the room, dragged him from his chair,
and murdered him on the floor.[2] Though the assassins were suffered to
escape, it was soon known that they were Scotsmen, most of them followers
of Montrose; and Charles, anticipating the demand of justice from the
English parliament, gave his final answer to the commissioners, that he
was, and always had been, ready to provide for the security of their
religion, the union between the kingdoms, and the internal peace and
prosperity of Scotland; but that their other demands were irreconcilable
with his conscience, his liberty, and his honour.[b] They

[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 287-292. Baillie, ii. 333. Carte, Letters, i.
238-263. In addition to the covenant, the commissioners required the
banishment of Montrose, from which they were induced to recede, and the
limitation of the king's followers to one hundred persons.--Carte, Letters,
i. 264, 265, 266, 268, 271.]

[Footnote 2: Clarendon, iii. 293. Whitelock, 401. Journals, May 10. The
parliament settled two hundred pounds per annum on the son, and gave five
hundred pounds to each of the daughters of Dorislaus.--Ib. May 16. Two
hundred and fifty pounds was given towards his funeral.--Council Book, May
11.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 19.]

acknowledged that he was their king; it was, therefore, their duty to obey,
maintain, and defend him; and the performance of this duty he should expect
from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole
nation of Scotland. They departed with this unsatisfactory answer; and
Charles, leaving the United Provinces, hastened to St. Germain in France,
to visit the queen his mother, with the intention of repairing, after a
short stay, to the army of the royalists in Ireland.[1]

That the reader may understand the state of Ireland, he must look back to
the period when the despair or patriotism of Ormond surrendered to the
par