g in the Highlands, to
lead which Charles had, in 1652, promised to send Middleton, who had
escaped from an English prison, as general. It was always hard to find
any one under whom the great chiefs would serve, and Glencairn, with
Kenmure, was unable to check their jealousies.

Charles heard that Argyll would appear in arms for the Crown, when he
deemed the occasion good; meanwhile his heir, Lord Lorne, would join the
rising. He did so in July 1653, under the curse of Argyll, who, by
letters to Lilburne and Monk, and by giving useful information to the
English, fatally committed himself as treasonable to the Royal cause.
Examples of his conduct were known to Glencairn, who communicated them to
Charles.

At the end of February 1654 Middleton arrived in Sutherland to head the
insurrection: but Monk chased the small and disunited force from county
to county, and in July Morgan defeated and scattered its remnants at Loch
Garry, just south of Dalnaspidal. The Armstrongs and other Border clans,
who had been moss-trooping in their ancient way, were also reduced, and
new fortresses and garrisons bridled the fighting clans of the west. With
Cromwell as protector in 1654, Free Trade with England was offered to the
Scots with reduced taxation: an attempt to legislate for the Union
failed. In 1655-1656 a Council of State and a Commission of Justice
included two or three Scottish members, and burghs were allowed to elect
magistrates who would swear loyalty to Cromwell. Cromwell died on the
day of his fortunate star (September 3, 1658), and twenty-one members for
Scotland sat in Richard Cromwell's Parliament. When that was dissolved,
and when the Rump was reinstated, a new Bill of Union was introduced,
and, by reason of the provisions for religious toleration (a thing
absolutely impious in Presbyterian eyes), was delayed till (October 1659)
the Rump was sent to its account. Conventions of Burghs and Shires were
now held by Monk, who, leading his army of occupation south in January
1660, left the Resolutioners and Protesters standing at gaze, as hostile
as ever, awaiting what thing should befall. Both parties still cherished
the Covenants, and so long as these documents were held to be for ever
binding on all generations, so long as the king's authority was to be
resisted in defence of these treaties with Omnipotence, it was plain that
in Scotland there could neither be content nor peace. For twenty-eight
years, during a g