The people of Scotland, ignorant of the real character of Charles, and confiding in his professions of attachment to their religion, were overjoyed at the arrival of their prince. "In a special manner at Edinburgh," says Nicol, in his Diary, by setting furth of bailfyres, ringing of bells, sounding of trumpets, dancing all that night through the streets. The pure kaill-wyffes at the Trone sacrificed their creillis, and the very stooles they sat upon, to the fyre." These rejoicings were soon interrupted by the approach of Cromwell with an immense army, and the shameful defeat at Dunbar, when no less than three thousand of the Scots fell on the field of battle, among whom were several ministers, who, being viewed with an evil eye by the sectaries, found no mercy at their hands. If we may believe Sir Edward Walker, the English owed this victory as much to the lenity of the Scotch leaders as to their presumption. He tells us, that the committee of war would not allow the attack to be made on Cromwell when they might have routed him, "saying it were pity to destroy so many of their brethren; but seeing next day they were like to fall into their hands, it were better to get a dry victory, and send them back with shame for their breach of covenant."* The unfortunate Covenanters, who were sincere at least, however far they might be mistaken in their attempts to serve the monarch for whom they shed their blood, met with little sympathy; and it is with no ordinary feelings of disgust that we learn from Clarendon, that Charles rejoiced at their defeat. "Never," says that cold-hearted historian," was victory obtained with less lamentation; for, as Cromwell had great argument of triumph, so the King was glad of it, as the greatest happiness that could befall him, in the loss of so strong a body of his enemies!"

Charles, indeed, soon gave evidence that he looked on the Presbyterians as his "enemies." One Saturday morning, when at Perth, shortly after the battle of Dunbar, and while Cromwell lay in Edinburgh, his Majesty, on pretence of hawking, left the town on horseback, attended by a few domestics, and set off at full speed to the hills. Here he was met by the Earl of Buchan, not, as he expected, at the head of an army prepared to deliver him out of the hands of the Covenanters, but with a miserable escort of some sixty or seventy Highlanders. He was led to a wretched hovel, where, throwing himself on an old bolster and some rushes, he was found by a party sent in pursuit of him, and brought back next day to Perth in time to hear the afternoon sermon. This illtimed flight, which was called the start, filled the * Walker's Journal, Disc. p. 180.-Much misapprehension exists

as to the share which the ministers had in provoking David Lesley to engage. Some of them, no doubt, were too forward: their notion of purging the army even of private soldiers suspected of malignancy, was sufficiently absurd; and their expectation of supernatural success to their army, because thus purified, (the error of the age,) was equally unwarranted. But it was Lesley's own conceit to draw down the army from the bill at night, which proved its ruin; and none were more indignant at him than the Protesting ministers.-Pamphlets, Adv. Lib. AAA. 3. 22. Baillie, II. 350."Contempt of the enemy," is one of their causes of fasting after the defeat of Dunbar,

minds of all his friends with the deepest grief. "To my own heart," says Baillie, "it brought one of the most sensible sorrows that in all my life I had felt." Jealous as many of the stricter Presbyterians were of him before, when he “took the start" they lost all confidence in him. And, in October 1650, a long and pointed remonstrance was addressed to the Committee of Estates, signed by a number of gentlemen, officers, and ministers connected with the forces in the West country, complaining of their rashness in admitting the King to swear the covenant, and charging them, in very severe terms, with having "turned asyde, forgotten their late vows, and brought the cala-. mities of war upon the nation by their unfaithful conduct."

In the midst of all these disorders of Church and State, Charles was solemnly crowned at Scoon, on the 1st of January 1651. The sermon before the ceremony was preached by Mr Robert Douglas, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. He chose for his text those strikingly appropriate words, 2 Kings xi. 12, 17, "And he brought forth the king's son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony: and they made him king, and anointed him; and they clapped their hands, and said, God save the king! And Jehoiada made a covenant between the Lord and the king and the people, that they should be the Lord's people; between the king also and the people." This sermon has been printed, and it is considered an ingenious, able, and faithful discourse. "Many doubt of your reality in the Covenant, (said the preacher, addressing his majesty,) let your sincerity be evidenced by your stedfastness and constancy; for many, like your ancestor, have begua well, but have not been constant. Take warning from the example before you; let it be laid to heart; requite not men's faithful kindness with persecution; yea, requite not the Lord so, who has preserved you to this time, and is setting a crown upon your head." After sermon, the National Covenant and Solemn League were distinctly read, and the king solemnly swore them. Thereafter, the oath to defend and support the Church of Scotland was administered to the king, who, kneeling, and holding up his right hand, used these awfully impressive words,-"By the Eternal and Almighty God, who liveth and reigneth for ever, I shall observe and keep all that is contained in this oath." The whole ceremonial was gone about with as much splendour as the circumstances of the country admitted; but the dangers and suspicions with which they were environed threw a gloom over the scene, and the mournful forebodings of the more faithful party in the Church were speedily confirmed.

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THE shameful defeat of Dunbar, in September | 1650, proved, in its consequences, hardly less disastrous to the Church of Scotland, than to the Scottish army. The successes of Cromwell, who now threatened to overrun the whole country, emboldened Charles and his courtiers to press for the removal of those restraints which were laid on the royal party by the Act of Classes passed in 1649. This Act, so called from its dividing the malignants into different classes, according to the degrees in which they had shown their disaffection to the cause of the Covenant, excluded many of Charles' friends from the army and civil judicatories. To have some pretext for repealing this obnoxious statute, which guarded the privileges of the Church as well as the liberties of the nation, it was deemed of importance to obtain the approbation of the General Assembly. This, however, was not so easy to be obtained. A large party in the Church had, as we have already seen, become justly suspicious of the sincerity of Charles, and severely blamed their brethren of the royal or moderate party, for precipitance in exacting from him professions which were contradicted by all that they knew of his principles and conduct. As proofs of his insincerity, they referred to the facts, that while engaged in the treaty with the Scots Covenanters, he had secretly confirmed a peace with the Irish rebels, and sent a commission to Montrose to invade the kingdom of Scotland, which was found among the papers of Montrose after his defeat. And, in their Remonstrance, they protested against the Dunfermline declaration which the moderate party had drawn up, as "teaching his Majesty dissimulation and outward compliance, rather than any cordial conjunction with the cause and Covenant."* These remonstrances gave great offence to the ruling party in the Church, and the breach was widened by their subsequent procedure. A few members of the Commission of the Assembly, favourable to moderate Westla. Remonstrance, apud Sir J. Balfour's Work, iv. 143. No. 47, NOVEMBER 23, 1839.-1{d]

measures, having met at Perth in December 1650, the Parliament submitted to their judgment the following question: "What persons are to be admitted to rise in arms, and to join with the forces of the kingdom, and in what capacity, for defence thereof, against the armies of the sectaries, who, contrary to the Solemn League and Covenant and Treaties, have most unjustly invaded and are destroying the kingdom?" In answer to this ensnaring question, so plausibly worded, the Commission passed two resolutions, favourable, under certain limitations, to the admission of all fencible persons in the land. No sooner had these been obtained, than the Parliament, without paying any regard to the exceptions, rescinded the Act of Classes; and the consequence was, that the most notorious malignants, some of whom had served under Montrose, and all of whom were enemies to the Reformation since 1638, were nominated to the highest posts in the army, and to places of power and trust in the nation. In consequence of these resolutions, a sad division followed in the Assembly which met at St Andrews and Dundee, July 1651. Those who adhered to the resolutions, or answers given by the Commission, were called Resolutioners; those who joined in a protest against them, were denominated Protesters. The debates between the parties, as might be expected from the tumultuous times in which they occurred, were violent, tedious, and involved; each side professing to be actuated by regard to the cause of the Reformation, and mutually charging each other with obstructing its success. The Resolutioners, who formed the majority in this Assembly, went so far as to depose three of the most eminent and active of the Protesters, namely— James Guthrie, minister of Stirling (who afterwards suffered in the cause), Patrick Gillespie of Glasgow, and James Simpson of Airth. The Protesters, on the other hand, asserted the nullity of this Assembly, and protested against all their proceedings.

[SECOND SERIES, VOL. I.

Such was the commencement of the first schism that had taken place in the Church of Scotland since the time of the Reformation. The controversy involved a number of questions, casuistical and political, of which we can hardly afford room even for an abstract. Much may be said on both sides; and great allowances must be made for those who contended for the necessity of enrolling all who were capable of bearing arms. But it is easy for us, who have the light of subsequent history to guide us, to see that the Protesters, as their brethren were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, "had their eyes open, while the Resolutioners were blind." The perfidious conduct of Charles at the Restoration, and twenty-eight years of bloody persecution, furnish a melancholy commentary on the truth of this conclusion. "I must confess, madam," said Mr Dickson, to a lady who came to visit him on his death-bed, "that the Protesters have been much truer prophets than we were." It is needless to speculate on what might have been the result, had the Church acted otherwise it was the will of Providence, that she should be subjected to a long period of trial; and in a little time, as Wodrow expresses it, "the whole honest Presbyterian ministers were struck at, and sent to the furnace to unite them."

By the advice of his new councillors, Charles undertook an expedition into England, the result of which is matter of well-known history. His defeat at Worcester, in September 1651, which Cromwell in his despatches called "a crowning mercy," was not such matter of congratulation to the king as that at Dunbar; it completely ruined his hopes, and, after many narrow escapes, he effected a passage to France, leaving the whole country at the mercy of Cromwell. It is hard to say, whether the good people of Scotland were more alarmed at the arms of Cromwell's soldiers, or their ministers at the deluge of heresies which they brought along with them. The latter beheld, with dismay, an army of sectaries, impregnated with all the errors of the times, and quite as ready to combat them in the pulpit, as they were to meet their army in the battle-field. Cromwell himself, who delighted in nothing so much as a theological debate, entered into a curious controversy with the ministers who had taken refuge in the Castle of Edinburgh, which held out after the city was captured. While his soldiers battered the walls of the castle with their cannon, the General attempted to storm the minds of the besieged theologians with his Independent missives, which were met by regular and firm replies on the part of the ministers. Meanwhile their pulpits were usurped by the gifted lay-preachers of the army, holding forth in their regimentals to crowded and astonished auditories. "General Lambert," says Nicoll, "having urgit the toun of Edinburgh Councel to appropriate to him the Eist Kirk, being the best kirk in the toun for his exercise at sermound, the samein was renderit to him for that use; quhairin there wes divers and sundrie sermonds preached, asweill by captanes, and lievtenants, and troupers

of his army, as by ordinar pastors and English ministers; quhilks captanes, commanders, and troupers, when they enterit the pulpits, did not observe our Scots formes, bot when they ascended, they enterit the pulpits with their swords hung at their sides, and sum carrying pistolls up with thame; and after their entrie, laid asyde within the pulpits their swords till they had ended their sermonds. It was thocht," adds our simple annalist, "that these men war weill giftit, yet were not ordourlie callit according to the discipline observit within this kingdom of Scotland.”

In various places throughout the country Cromwell's soldiers behaved very rudely. They would come into the churches during the time of service, take up their seat, by way of showing their contempt, on the stool of repentance, and after sermon publicly challenge the minister to dispute with them on the doctrine which he had been preaching. The ministers, however, generally got the advantage of the soldiery, and even before Cromwell himself, they showed a becoming spirit. Though a proclamation had been issued, prohibiting any to pray for King Charles, many of them continued to do so, in spite of the prohibition, and even in the face of the soldiers who threatened to fire on them if they attempted it. When Cromwell came to Glasgow, the magistrates and some of the ministers fled at the first news of his approach. But among those who remained was Mr Zachary Boyd, famous for his translation of the Bible into metre. This divine, nothing daunted by the presence of Cromwell and his soldiers, who came to hear him, "railed on them all to their very face in the High Church." Mr Durham also preached before him, and had the boldness to call Oliver an usurper to his face. The Protector (for so was he now called), so far from resenting this liberty, invited Mr Durham to visit him in the evening, when they supped together in great harmony. Cromwell, it would appear, could stand a sermon levelled at his civil authority with better temper than a reflection on his powers as a theological disputant. Coming into the General Assembly on one occasion, he made a harangue to them, nearly an hour in length, in his usual style of unintelligible rhodomontade, and copiously interlarded with quotations from Scripture. The members looked at each other in bewildered amazement, till at length an old minister, Mr John Semple of Carsphairn, rose up and said:

Moderator, I hardly know what the gentleman wald be at in this lang discourse, but one thing! am sure of, he was perverting the Scripture." For this speech, the honest minister was punished by six months' imprisonment.

The General Assembly, however, was a court too free in its constitution to suit the despotic temper of Cromwell, any more than that of James VI. The successful usurper, who had dissolved the Long Parliament, and openly scoffed at the mention of Magna Charta, was not likely to suffer the continuance of an Assembly, the mem

Lamont's Diary, p. 58.