t.

Montrose's last words to Charles (March 26, from Kirkwall) implored that
Prince "to be just to himself,"--not to perjure himself by signing the
Covenant. The voice of honour is not always that of worldly wisdom, but
events proved that Charles and Scotland could have lost nothing and must
have gained much had the king listened to Montrose. He submitted, we
saw, to commissioners sent to him from Scotland. Says one of these
gentlemen, "_He_ . . . sinfully complied with what _we_ most sinfully
pressed upon him, . . . _our_ sin was more than _his_."

While his subjects in Scotland were executing his loyal servants taken
prisoners in Montrose's last defeat, Charles crossed the sea, signing the
Covenants on board ship, and landed at the mouth of Spey. What he gained
by his dishonour was the guilt of perjury; and the consequent distrust of
the wilder but more honest Covenanters, who knew that he had perjured
himself, and deemed his reception a cause of divine wrath and disastrous
judgments. Next he was separated from most of his false friends, who had
urged him to his guilt, and from all Royalists; and he was not allowed to
be with his army, which the preachers kept "purging" of all who did not
come up to their standard of sanctity.

Their hopeful scheme was to propitiate the Deity and avert wrath by
purging out officers of experience, while filling up their places with
godly but incompetent novices in war, "ministers' sons, clerks, and such
other sanctified creatures." This final and fatal absurdity was the
result of playing at being the Israel described in the early historic
books of the Old Testament, a policy initiated by Knox in spite of the
humorous protests of Lethington.

For the surer purging of that Achan, Charles, and to conciliate the party
who deemed him the greatest cause of wrath of all, the king had to sign a
false and disgraceful declaration that he was "afflicted in spirit before
God because of the impieties of his father and mother"! He was helpless
in the hands of Argyll, David Leslie, and the rest: he knew they would
desert him if he did not sign, and he yielded (August 16). Meanwhile
Cromwell, with Lambert, Monk, 16,000 foot and horse, and a victualling
fleet, had reached Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, by July 28.

David Leslie very artfully evaded every attempt to force a fight, but
hung about him in all his movements. Cromwell was obliged to retreat for
lack of supplies in a devastated cou