yed where they were; while the Long
Parliament met in November, and in April 1641 condemned the great
Strafford: Laud soon shared his doom. On August 10 the demands of the
Scots were granted: as a sympathetic historian writes, they had lived for
a year at free quarters, "and recrossed the Border with the handsome sum
of 200,000 pounds to their credit."

During the absence of the army the Kirk exhibited symptoms not favourable
to its own peace. Amateur theologians held private religious gatherings,
which, it was feared, tended towards the heresy of the English
Independents and to the "break up of the whole Kirk," some of whose
representatives forbade these conventicles, while "the rigid sort"
asserted that the conventiclers "were esteemed the godly of the land." An
Act of the General Assembly was passed against the meetings; we observe
that here are the beginnings of strife between the most godly and the
rather moderately pious.

The secret of Montrose's Cumbernauld band had come to light after
November 1640: nothing worse, at the moment, befell than the burning of
the band by the Committee of Estates, to whom Argyll referred the matter.
On May 21, 1641, the Committee was disturbed, for Montrose was collecting
evidence as to the words and deeds of Argyll when he used his commission
of fire and sword at the Bonny House of Airlie and in other places.
Montrose had spoken of the matter to a preacher, he to another, and the
news reached the Committee. Montrose had learned from a prisoner of
Argyll, Stewart the younger of Ladywell, that Argyll had held counsels to
discuss the deposition of the king. Ladywell produced to the Committee
his written statement that Argyll had spoken before him of these
consultations of lawyers and divines. He was placed in the castle, and
was so worked on that he "cleared" Argyll and confessed that, advised by
Montrose, he had reported Argyll's remarks to the king. Papers with
hints and names in cypher were found in possession of the messenger.

The whole affair is enigmatic; in any case Ladywell was hanged for
"leasing-making" (spreading false reports), an offence not previously
capital, and Montrose with his friends was imprisoned in the castle.
Doubtless he had meant to accuse Argyll before Parliament of treason. On
July 27, 1641, being arraigned before Parliament, he said, "My resolution
is to carry with me fidelity and honour to the grave." He lay in prison
when the king, vainly hop