1640 NORTHUMBERLAND'S DOUBTS. 163 How, he asked, could discipline be maintained on such conditions? A soldier was then in prison charged with a brutal murder. "If he be not executed by martial law, but that we turn him over to the law, it will utterly lose all respect and power. If martial law may be executed, let me know it; if it be not, and that the King cannot find a remedy for it, it will not be possible to keep the troops together." 1 Charles, as Strafford would have said, was lost by halting between Saul and David. He had neither the advantage of Newcastle fied. June 30. berland's popular support nor of self-reliant dictatorship. In left unforti vain Conway pointed out the absolute necessity of fortifying Newcastle, and begged to be allowed to lay an imposition on the townsmen for the purpose. Northumberland hesitated in face of the obvious illegality of the proposal. It was, he said, a good work, but he doubted whether these distempered times' were 'proper for such a business.' "When all levies that have formerly been paid," he Northum- wrote to Conway, "are now generally refused, what prognostica- hope is there of raising money by any such way till tions. there come a fitter season? I will keep your proposition by me, and make use of it as I see occasion." The occasion never came till it was too late. To Northumberland, all the efforts made by his more warlike colleagues were hopeless from the first. "To your lordship," he went on to say, I must confess that our wants and disorders are so great that I cannot devise how we should go on with our designs for this year. Most of the ways that we relied on for supplies of money have hitherto failed us, and for aught I know we are likely to become the most despised nation of Europe. To the regiments that are now rising we have, for want of money, been able to advance but fourteen days' pay, the rest must meet them on their march towards Selby, and for both horse and foot already in the North we can for the present send them but seven days' pay. We are gallant men, for this doth not at all discourage We yet make full account of conquering Scotland before many months pass." 66 us. "2 1 Conway to Strafford, June 28, S. P. Dom. ccccli. 58. Amongst these gallant men who were not to be discouraged was Windebank. To him all the disorder amongst the troops was but the work of a few evil-disposed persons in the higher ranks of society. "Some restiveness appears in some July 6. Windebank's counties," he wrote, "in raising the forces, and sundry satisfaction. insolences are committed by the forces when they are levied, most of which have been redressed upon repair of the Lords Lieutenants in person to the counties, so that the people are not in themselves refractory, but when the Lords Lieutenants are well-affected and diligent the service succeeds without difficulty."1 July 9. Astley's The Secretary's optimism was not shared by Sir Jacob Astley, the veteran to whom was entrusted the task of receiving the recruits as they arrived at Selby. On July 9, he reported that 4,000 had then arrived, 'the arch report. knaves of the country.' He had only money enough to pay them for a week. Large numbers of them straggled over the country, beating their officers and the peasants. On the 11th, 2,000 more came in. UnJuly 11. less he had more money soon, he declared, the whole force would break up. The men came ill-clothed from their homes. Many had neither shoes nor stockings. The captains were constantly going to York to ask for money to pay their men, when they ought to have been drilling them, if they were ever to convert them into soldiers. 1 Windebank to Conway, July 6; Astley to Conway, July 9, 11, S. P. Dom. cccclix. 41, 64, 84. 1640. June. The Scots CHAPTER XCIII. THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR. WHILST the English army was falling into a state of dissolution, the Scots were taking advantage of the time afforded them to master all resistance in the rear. This time the hand of the Committee of Estates was to fall heavily on determine to the North. With them, as with Strafford, there was a firm resolve that all should be done that power would permit. If the North could not be conciliated it must be coerced. Montrose's visionary notion that gentle treatment would avail must be laid aside. coerce the North. May 28. Monro in Aberdeen; This time the command of the force destined for the North was assigned to Monro, a rough soldier fresh from the school of violence which had been set up in Germany. On May 28 he joined the Earl Marischal June 10. at Aberdeen. The inhabitants were driven by military compulsion to sign the Covenant, those who refused being sent to Edinburgh as prisoners. A hundred and fifty of the stoutest men in the place were pressed into the army. The country around was subjected to visitation. The doors were broken open, the horses carried off, and the furniture burnt. The turn of the Gordons came in July. On the 5th Monro was in Strathbogie. Huntly had sought refuge in England, and his tenants paid the penalty. Their sheep and cattle were driven away, or restored only on payment of July 5. and in Strathbogie. money, and heavy fines were imposed upon themselves. The unpaid soldiers lived at their ease at the expense of the inhabitants of the district.1 Further south, Argyle had his interests as a Highland chieftain to serve as well as his interests as a Covenanter. At Edinburgh he was the wily statesman directing every Argyle in the Southern move of the game, whilst keeping himself studiously Highlands. in the background, and not even taking a place in the Committee of Estates. In the Western Highlands he was the head of the Campbells, eager to push the authority of his family over an ever-widening circle of once independent clans. The character borne by the Campbells in the Highlands was not a good one. Their favourite tactics, it was said, had been to urge their neighbours to resistance against the king of the day, and then to obtain powers from the king to suppress the rebellion to their own profit. Each of the subdued clans was forced to forsake its own organisation, and to merge its very name in that of the Campbells. The opportunity had now come for carrying out this process in the name not of the King but of the Covenant. Very few, if any, of the dwellers in those rugged glens cared for either King or Covenant; but where the influences of Argyle and Huntly met in the very centre of the Highlands, those who feared and detested Argyle were necessarily the partisans of Huntly and, in some sort, of the King. The first act of the new Committee of Estates had been to issue to Argyle a commission of fire and sword against the Earl of Athol, the Earl of Airlie, and various Highland clans whom it was determined to reduce to submission. Argyle set out from Inverary on June 18, with a following of 4,000 Highlanders. Athol had but 1,200 to oppose to him. The two forces met near the spot on which Taymouth Castle now stands. Athol was inveigled by a promise of safe return into an interview with Argyle. Argyle tried to win him over by considerations of personal interest. He told him significantly that he had himself claims upon his lands, and that there had been a talk at the late Parliament of deposing the King, from which Athol was probably intended to infer that he might have a difficulty in making out his title to the satisfaction of a new and hostile June 12. Argyle's commission. June 18. Argyle's raid. Skene, The Highlanders of Scotland, i. 138. 1640 ARGYLE'S RAVAGES. 167 Government. As Athol did not take the hint, he was seized, as Huntly had been seized the year before, and sent a prisoner to Edinburgh, in defiance of the pledge given by his host.1 capitulates Argyle pushed on into Angus, the Forfarshire of modern geography. The Earl of Airlie was away with the King, but he July. had fortified his house, leaving it in the keeping of Airlie House Lord Ogilvy, his eldest son. The news that Argyle to Montrose. and his dreaded Highlanders were on the march for the uplands which swell towards the Grampians from broad Strathmore struck terror into the hearts of Covenanter and antiCovenanter. The gentry of Angus and Perthshire called on Montrose to provide a remedy. Montrose, it is true, had been one of those who had signed the terrible commission to Argyle ; 2 but it was well understood that his heart was not with Argyle. He soon gathered the forces of the neighbourhood, obtained from Lord Ogilvy the surrender of the house, and placed in it a small garrison, to hold it for the Committee of Estates. When Argyle arrived it seemed as if nothing remained to be done. The intervention of Montrose, however, goaded him Argyle's into savage exasperation. He was too shrewd not ravages. to perceive that Montrose's policy of reconciling the King with the nation was thoroughly impracticable, and he had none of those generous instincts which lay at the root of Montrose's error. As Montrose was beyond his reach, he wreaked his vengeance on the property and tenants of the owner of the lands of Airlie. The 'bonnie house' was burnt to the ground. Another house belonging to the Earl of Airlie at Forthar shared the same fate. Plunder went hand in hand with destruction. The wild Highlanders stripped the fields of sheep and cattle, and drove them off to stock the valleys of the Campbells in the West.3 Sir T. Stewart's deposition. Answers to J. Stewart's deposition. Exoneration of Argyle. Napier's Memorials of Montrose, i. 257, 266, ii. 475. 2 Commission, June 12, Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv. 491. 3 Gordon, iii. 165. Spalding, i. 291. Memorials of Montrose, i. 256, 264, 330, 358. In a letter to Dugald Campbell, of Inverawe (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 364), Argyle gave the following instructions :-" See |