" They denounced religious
toleration, and asked for the establishment of Presbytery in England, and
the filling of all offices with Covenanters. They were all arrested and
accused of attempting to "rekindle civil war," which would assuredly have
followed had their prayer been accepted. Next year Guthrie was hanged.
But ten days after his arrest Sharp had brought down a letter of Charles
to the Edinburgh Presbytery, promising to "protect and preserve the
government of the Church of Scotland as it is established by law." Had
the words run "as it may be established by law" (in Parliament) it would
not have been a dishonourable quibble--as it was.

Parliament opened on New Year's Day 1661, with Middleton as Commissioner.
In the words of Sir George Mackenzie, then a very young advocate and man
of letters, "never was Parliament so obsequious." The king was declared
"supreme Governor over all persons and in all causes" (a blow at Kirk
judicature), and all Acts between 1633 and 1661 were rescinded, just as
thirty years of ecclesiastical legislation had been rescinded by the
Covenanters. A sum of 40,000 pounds yearly was settled on the king.
Argyll was tried, was defended by young George Mackenzie, and, when he
seemed safe, his doom was fixed by the arrival of a Campbell from London
bearing some of his letters to Lilburne and Monk (1653-1655) which the
Indemnity of 1651 did not cover. He died, by the axe (not the rope, like
Montrose), with dignity and courage.

The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his
advisers. The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by
the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually
suppose. The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and
Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with
the existence of the State. In the southern and western shires,--such as
those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,--the forces which
attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan
and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and
the less violent clergy, after Dunbar. But without Argyll, and with no
probable noble leaders, they could do little harm; they had done none
under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly. To
have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies--that of the
Protesters and that of the Resolutionis