t had been treated in the
Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly
to countenance it. Their leader was at first the Earl of Eglinton, a
staunch Covenanting lord; but as they gathered strength Argyle joined
them with his Highlanders, and the command soon passed into his hands.
The Protesters marched upon Edinburgh. In an attempt to take Stirling
Castle they were defeated by Sir George Monro with a division of
Hamilton's army which had not crossed the border; but Argyle had better
tools to work with than the claymores of his Highlanders. He opened
negotiations with Cromwell, who led an army in person into Scotland,
renewed the Covenant, laid before the Estates (the new Estates of Argyle
and his party) certain considerations, as he diplomatically called them,
demanding, among other things, that no person accessory to the
Engagement should be hereafter employed in any public place or trust.
The Committee were only too willing to have the support of Cromwell to
what they themselves so vehemently desired. Two Acts were quickly
passed: one reversing many of the acts of its predecessors and
confirming the considerations: the other, known in history as the Act of
Classes, defining the various misdemeanours which were to exclude men
from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office, for a period
measured by their offences, and practically to be determined by the
judicatories of the Kirk.

This Mauchline Convention was popularly known at the time as the
Whiggamores' Raid, a name memorable as the first introduction into
history of a word soon to become only too familiar, and still a part of
our political vocabulary.[8] Its immediate result was to throw the
direction of affairs still more exclusively into the hands of the
clergy: indirectly, but no less surely, it was the cause of the Pentland
Rising and the savage persecution which followed, of the murder of
Archbishop Sharp, of the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, and of
those terrible years still spoken of in Scotland as the "killing-time."
It was, in short, like the wrath of Achilles, the spring of unnumbered
woes.

Then followed the execution of Charles. Against this the whole body of
Presbyterians joined in protesting. The hereditary right of kings was,
indeed, as much a principle of the Covenant as their divine right was
opposed to it; and the execution at Whitehall on January 30th, 1649, was
regarded with as much horror by the