bly. He threatened war; but the threat proved fruitless, and even
the Scotch Council pressed Charles to give fuller satisfaction to the
people. "I will rather die," the king wrote to Hamilton, "than yield to
these impertinent and damnable demands"; but it was needful to gain
time. "The discontents at home," wrote Lord Northumberland to Wentworth,
"do rather increase than lessen"; and Charles was without money or men.
It was in vain that he begged for a loan from Spain on promise of
declaring war against Holland, or that he tried to procure two thousand
troops from Flanders, with which to occupy Edinburgh. The loan and
troops were both refused, and some contributions offered by the English
Catholics did little to recruit the Exchequer.

[Sidenote: The Scotch Revolution.]

Charles had directed the Marquis to delay any decisive breach till the
royal fleet appeared in the Forth; but it was hard to equip a fleet at
all. Scotland in fact was sooner ready for war than the king. The Scotch
volunteers who had been serving in the Thirty Years War streamed home
at the call of their brethren; and General Leslie, a veteran trained
under Gustavus, came from Sweden to take the command of the new forces.
A voluntary war tax was levied in every shire. Charles was so utterly
taken by surprise that he saw no choice but to yield, if but for the
moment, to the Scottish demands. Hamilton announced that the king
allowed the Covenant, the service book was revoked; a pledge was given
that the power of the bishops should be lessened; a Parliament was
promised for the coming year; and a General Assembly summoned at once.
The Assembly met at Glasgow in November 1638; it had been chosen
according to the old form which James had annulled, and its 144
ministers were backed by 96 lay elders amongst whom all the leading
Covenanters found a place. They had hardly met when, at the news of
their design to attack the Bishops, Hamilton declared the Assembly
dissolved. But the Church claimed its old freedom of meeting apart from
any licence from kings; and by an almost unanimous vote the Assembly
resolved to continue its session. Its acts were an undoing of all that
the Stuarts had done. The two books of Canons and Common Prayer, the
High Commission, the Articles of Perth, were all set aside as invalid.
Episcopacy was abjured, the bishops were deposed from their office, and
the system of Presbyterianism re-established in its fullest extent.

[Sidenote: The