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few weeks they had possessed themselves of unlimited authority throughout Scotland. An easy way was thus laid open to introduce the confederacy, so well remembered under the name of the "Solemn League and Covenant." The subscribers to this great national vow, after abjuring the superstitions of popery, in the language of a former covenant adopted in the reign of King James, and citing the several acts of parliament for the maintenance of the kirk, bound themselves, according to the laudable example of their worthy and free progenitors, by the great name of the Lord their God," to defend their religion against all novations, and to stand by each other in resistance to the contrary errors and corruptions, to the uttermost, against all persons without exception. A solemn fast was observed, preparatory to subscribing. On the day appointed, multitudes of every rank, age, and sex, thronged the great church of St. Giles's and its precincts. The force, the freedom, and the extravagance of the republican model of devotion, rose, on this occasion, to the highest pitch. Lifting their out-stretched hands toward heaven, the vast assembly swore to the national bond, amid shouts, and tears, and mutual embracements. The enthusiasm flew through the country; and all Scotland, with the exception of the immediate servants of the government, a few Roman Catholics, and the solitary town of Aberdeen, was bound together in this vast confederacy, by the strongest tie of human associations, a burning religious zeal.

Three months longer the government continued

wavering and irresolute. It then sent down the Marquess of Hamilton, Charles's principal minister for Scotch affairs, with a commission "to conclude and determine all things respecting the peace of the kingdom." To impress the commissioner with a high notion of their union and strength, the Covenanters, to the number of twenty thousand, on foot and on horseback, met and conducted him into the city; and seven hundred robed ministers are said to have placed themselves on an eminence by the roadside, and with one voice intonated a psalm as he passed by.

Hamilton had undertaken a difficult task. The demands of the confederates grew bolder as the negotiations advanced. Twice he journeyed to London, and twice returned to his increasingly excited countrymen with modified powers; bringing, on his second reappearance, a surrender of every thing demanded the abolition of the Liturgy, Canons, and High Commission Court; on the single condition, that for the new Covenant should be substituted that of King James. At the same time, a national assembly and a parliament were fixed, to discuss freely all questions in dispute.

With these concessions the clergy and the people were disposed to be content. Not so the secular leaders. The king, they said, could not mean to grant all he had promised; his object was to gain time to reduce them by force. In a large body, headed by several noblemen, they mounted a scaffold at the Market Cross of Edinburgh; where, sword in hand,

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they delivered a formal protest, asserting their determination to persist in adherence to the Covenant.

The assembly met at Glasgow; but the members having been almost all returned by the overpowering influence of " the tables," the commissioner found himself wholly powerless before a majority resolved to carry forward the plans of the confederates. At the end of seven days, therefore, he dissolved the unmanageable convention, quitting it in the midst of a burst of real or affected grief; and departed for England. But the assembly refused to separate. Under the auspices of the Marquess of Argyle, who from this time became the acknowledged head of the Covenanters, the dissolution was annulled, and Episcopacy abolished, with every other existing institution which could interfere with the joyful deliverance of Scotland from the absorbing terror of " popish and prelatic tyranny."

Naturally concluding that the king would seek by force to suppress the rebellion, the Covenanters now began to make warlike preparations. Troops were levied, arms purchased, the Scottish soldiers of fortune serving on the Continent invited home. Encouragement was not wanting from the discontented party in England; from France came the not less important aid of money. Lesley, a veteran from the wars of Germany, was appointed to the chief command; and forthwith began hostilities by seizing the castles of Edinburgh and Dunbarton. The king, on his part, proceeded with as much alacrity as his want of resources permitted. At York, in which point the royal forces were concen

tred, he was met by a brilliant feudal gathering of the nobility and chief gentry of the realm; from thence he advanced to the vicinity of Berwick. Thither Lesley drew his Covenanters-twenty thousand men, indifferently equipped, but inspired with zeal which was kept constantly at a boiling temperature by the unwearied vehemence of pulpit oratory. Charles's troops were equal in number, and far better provided; but without heart for the quarrel. Conscious of the unpopularity of his cause, and reluctant to shed his subjects' blood, he readily admitted commissioners from the Scottish camp; with whom was presently concluded, on the basis of the conditions before proposed at Edinburgh by Hamilton, the miserable armistice known in the history of the time as the Pacification of Berwick.

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It was a fatal hour for England, when — whoever might be its true author- the attempt was made to force religious uniformity on the associated kingdom. The temper in which that measure was long pursued, was plainly contempt - contempt for the independence of the kirk, and for the spirit of Scotchmen. But it is a dangerous thing to despise a nation even for a great nation to despise a mean one. Scotland became powerful, less in her own deep sense of wrong endured, than in England's consciousness of wrong inflicted; unnerved by a sympathy half magnanimous, half traitorous, England became the dupe and the victim of her wily sister, in requital for having treated her in a delicate point as her vassal.

CHAPTER II.

STRAFFORD.

WHILE that hapless arrangement, the Pacification of Berwick, was looked upon as dishonourable in England, by the Scots its stipulations were disregarded. Instead of disbanding their army, which they had engaged to do, the Covenanters dismissed a part only of the troops, and kept in pay all the officers; nor were the lawless proceedings of the unarmed revolters abated.

Already, in Scotland, Wentworth's was a name of hatred and of terror. A report, that he intended to cross the Channel at the head of a body of troops, was among the earliest pretexts of the Covenanters for flying to arms. This report had no foundation in fact; yet the energy of his government awed into stillness. and inaction their numerous countrymen settled in Ireland, who had begun to take the Covenant, and had shewn an eager disposition to join the insurgents. Wentworth, however, was not blinded, either by the boldness of his temper or by the readiness of his resources, to the delicacy of the king's position; he well knew the financial difficulties of the government, and its want of support in public opinion; and justly apprehended the odium that would attach to the side which should be the foremost to shed blood in civil