ntry, and on September 1 reached
Dunbar by the coast road. Leslie, marching parallel along the
hill-ridges, occupied Doonhill and secured a long, deep, and steep
ravine, "the Peaths," near Cockburnspath, barring Cromwell's line of
march. On September 2 the controlling clerical Committee was still
busily purging and depleting the Scottish army. The night of September 2-
3 was very wet, the officers deserted their regiments to take shelter.
Says Leslie himself, "We might as easily have beaten them as we did James
Graham at Philiphaugh, if the officers had stayed by their own troops and
regiments." Several witnesses, and Cromwell himself, asserted that,
owing to the insistence of the preachers, Leslie moved his men to the
lower slopes on the afternoon of September 2. "The Lord hath delivered
them into our hands," Cromwell is reported to have said. They now
occupied a position where the banks of the lower Broxburn were flat and
assailable, not steep and forming a strong natural moat, as on the higher
level. All night Cromwell rode along and among his regiments of horse,
biting his lip till the blood ran down his chin. Leslie thought to
surprise Cromwell; Cromwell surprised Leslie, crossed the Broxburn on the
low level, before dawn, and drove into the Scots who were all unready,
the matches of their muskets being wet and unlighted. The centre made a
good stand, but a flank charge by English cavalry cut up the Scots foot,
and Leslie fled with the nobles, gentry, and mounted men. In killed,
wounded, and prisoners the Scots are said to have lost 14,000 men, a
manifest exaggeration. It was an utter defeat.

"Surely," wrote Cromwell, "it is probable the Kirk has done her do." The
Kirk thought not; purging must go on, "nobody must blame the Covenant."
Neglect of family prayers was selected as one cause of the defeat!
Strachan and Ker, two extreme whigamores of the left wing of the godly,
went to raise a western force that would neither acknowledge Charles nor
join Cromwell, who now took Edinburgh Castle. Charles was reduced by
Argyll to make to him the most slavish promises, including the payment of
40,000 pounds, the part of the price of Charles I. which Argyll had not
yet touched.

On October 4 Charles made "the Start"; he fled to the Royalists of
Angus,--Ogilvy and Airlie: he was caught, brought back, and preached at.
Then came fighting between the Royalists and the Estates. Middleton, a
good soldier, Atholl, and