the preachers were the
more grievously disappointed.

A General Assembly of July-August 1642 was, as usual, concerned with
politics, for politics and religion were inextricably intermixed. The
Assembly appointed a Standing Commission to represent it, and the powers
of the Commission were of so high a strain that "to some it is terrible
already," says the Covenanting letter-writer Baillie. A letter from the
Kirk was carried to the English Parliament which acquiesced in the
abolition of Episcopacy. In November 1642 the English Parliament,
unsuccessful in war, appealed to Scotland for armed aid; in December
Charles took the same course.

The Commission of the General Assembly, and the body of administrators
called Conservators of the Peace, overpowered the Privy Council, put down
a petition of Montrose's party (who declared that they were bound by the
Covenant to defend the king), and would obviously arm on the side of the
English Parliament if England would adopt Presbyterian government. They
held a Convention of the Estates (June 22, 1643); they discovered a
Popish plot for an attack on Argyll's country by the Macdonalds in
Ireland, once driven from Kintyre by the Campbells, and now to be led by
young Colkitto. While thus excited, they received in the General
Assembly (August 7) a deputation from the English Parliament; and now was
framed a new band between the English Parliament and Scotland. It was an
alliance, "The Solemn League and Covenant," by which Episcopacy was to be
abolished and religion established "according to the Word of God." To
the Covenanters this phrase meant that England would establish
Presbyterianism, but they were disappointed. The ideas of the
Independents, such as Cromwell, were almost as much opposed to presbytery
as to episcopacy, and though the Covenanters took the pay and fought the
battles of the Parliament against their king, they never received what
they had meant to stipulate for,--the establishment of presbytery in
England. Far from that, Cromwell, like James VI., was to deprive them of
their ecclesiastical palladium, the General Assembly.

Foreseeing nothing, the Scots were delighted when the English accepted
the new band. Their army, under Alexander Leslie (Earl of Leven), now
too old for his post, crossed Tweed in January 1644. They might never
have crossed had Charles, in the autumn of 1643, listened to Montrose and
allowed him to attack the Covenanters in Scotland. In