Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.— As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again on duty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things from his beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle (Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show, so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it was worth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or other after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle at last by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; but that also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and the subsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South- West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of Pontefract Castle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finally that of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by the Countess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing. From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on the King's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering about in those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire of Parliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Leven pleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable to remain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, the Scots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, the English Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speaking them fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere in England while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.]
It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, to disgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottish nation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak of Royalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but had latterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connect itself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and so undo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that has read Scott'sLegend of Montrosebut must be curious as to the facts of real History on which that romance was founded? They are romantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode in the general history of the Civil War.
Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, when the King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that of his associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl had then been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had all his expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified, expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and of the establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocratic basis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed in the supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and the Presbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no country for Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of his estates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire, and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four little boys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself, hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, but finding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch's heroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:—
"An Alexander I will reign,And I will reign alone;My thoughts did evermore disdainA rival on my throne:He either fears his fate too much,Or his deserts are small,That dares not put it to the touchTo gain or lose it all."
Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun and Warriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black- coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thundering it collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there for any such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from which anyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifes in Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young Scottish Earl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand? [Footnote: Napier'sMontrose(1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol. I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from the original Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when the King raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there was again hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, and communications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; saw the Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642- 3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland might be roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a brave young enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened from Scotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and his brother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest without that open rising against the Argyle government which Montrose recommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose had thus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title of Duke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, and Montrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, as months had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise for Montrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How ill Hamilton and Lanark had succeeded intheirmilder undertaking we already know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy in Scotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able to prevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argyle thought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able to prevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the English Parliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of the Parliament on the terms of Henderson'sSolemn League and Covenant(August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had been trying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish nobles in an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near the Convention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had taken care to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget of advices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England in the cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt about that! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not the Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering to forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary enterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argyle government should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King, and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his power in England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide in him, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses and their policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds might be shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all their plausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better than traitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland for interests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, had Montrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to little purpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there had gathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugee Scottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the new League and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading army was actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal mind did somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, coming to Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested on charges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trial on these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle; whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county of Cornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for a time in London, was cordially received there by the Scottish Commissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence to Scotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalist and Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be at heart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384; Burnet'sHamiltons(edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the charges against the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates events anxiously in their behalf.]
The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission him as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford—that very Randal Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to send secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsed since then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of the great Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his Majesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction of the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England would be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might be surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643- 4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do with Montrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few of the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's son and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with himself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in- chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be conferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own work in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52; Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; and Napier, 385-388.]
Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]
"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]
There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence: "Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich,i.e.Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 215et seq.; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67; Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to Part I. pp. 3-6.]
This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as "Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irishafterhe had come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the 12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]
A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty- two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]
It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.
Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north- eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426- 469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]
Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult to find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that the fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that Argyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the commission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416et seq., where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesake and kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there to spend the rest of the winter.
It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major- general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders? Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: only what was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let us winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and other clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would have preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But how shall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know; how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?" Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "I know," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tight houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want." And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills and through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow—first through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then to Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the Breadalbane Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over Lorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and starving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shudders at the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262; Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.]
The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him; and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates had gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of the month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of Arglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly his own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part of Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander; but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 246et seq.; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier, 475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, in Baillie's Letters, II. 417t.]
Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have been his most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January he was at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence it was his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received news that Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle of Inverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. He saw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but to keep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should be engaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go on against Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first by himself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to prevent communication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had ever been before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed of the Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of the infant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over the mountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he began the march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February they were down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was a frosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; and Argyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him, went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance from the shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It was the greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. There were slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including brave Auchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's side the loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among his important followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argyle sailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior as well as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King. "Give me leave," he said, "after I have reduced this country to your Majesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your Majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called bymyname.'" [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his account of the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose's supposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, was first "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs, 1699;" but he adds an extract from theAnalectaof the Scottish antiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a person who had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated" one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr. Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony, thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a striking document; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it now stands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggesting posthumous alteration and concoction.]——The Battle of Inverlochy was much heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits had been for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated; and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mind by the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break off the Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly broken off just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5).
On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquis of Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament, "having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliament had unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis not recognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and Patrick Graham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason," and had forfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also ordering the Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of the traitors out of his registers and books of honour." The General Assembly of the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season (Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical business arising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillie and Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, the rebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in a document penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb. 12), there was this passage:—"In the meantime, the hellish crew, under the conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and of Alaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous, unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression." But, though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the General Assembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to account rested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there was coming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general of horse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had deserted from the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion of Hampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had made him a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour's Annals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126.]
After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along the chain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been cured of any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose; and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time, issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whom were Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforth himself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was more slippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away as soon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, who had been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness. Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when his father, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 foot and 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire, "as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was at Aberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar in Kincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns of Earl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry kept zig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horse and tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time. Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south through Forfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay at Dunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of Lord Lewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him to desist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillie and Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forth country, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee, and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to him for his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight, April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and set fire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irish were ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most of them madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, who had not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose got his drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is an inexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them, by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himself in the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, past Arbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among the protecting Grampians. "Truly," says his biographer Wishart, "I have often heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most celebrated victories." [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth, VI. 2.8; Napier, 490-497.]
Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. There were to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn in Nairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's mad bravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by the Earls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506.] The second was the Battle of Alford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Baillie himself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders in which, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie was assisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was trifling in comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon [Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the Covenanting Government the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, which had adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh for two short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24- Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the consideration of ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307.]. Baillie, chagrined at the loss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame of his disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly on the great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither and thither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to his interests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him, persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a new Committee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advise him (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th of August he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted, with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow time for the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) from Ireland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedly he did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day of his anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received from Montrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle of Kilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had been great exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were, according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000 horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose. Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that the recruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. In various posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief of Clanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or, as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle, the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and Balcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle, Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, both foot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts (which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and in this style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans and Clanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the old Earl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171; Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructive vindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousin Baillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over the whole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meeting with Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle of Kilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had never been allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted and overridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individual nobles.]
The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He entered Clydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up his head-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide. Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in their submissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gathered obsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had been arrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during his enterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrose were his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion—the veteran Lord Napier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; Sir George Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; and several other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. In fact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montrose at Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great day at this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victory of Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army; a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir Robert Spotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant and Captain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had till then been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowing speech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially his Major-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first act of Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On the following day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliament at Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, to obey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were that he should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with the Earls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of those parts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging from England, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digby should be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had been reported all through England and had altered the state and prospects of the war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensation even for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model. The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea, and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, it would be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of England for the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569.]
In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to the Border. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for the expected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of the Border lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10th of September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; and thence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575.] While he is at this last place, let us pause a little to ask an important question.
What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under the meteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make of Scotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose was not, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, a political theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist our guesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictation at that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. The document is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law and closest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, in Napier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writing materials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in all probability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it was that vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrose meant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliament at Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October.
The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleading addressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been an enthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. His defence is that it was nothethat had swerved from the original Scottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant, and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps "giving way to more than was warrantable," till their deviation from the true purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seen this to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusion of the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or rather they had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone on in perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, in their pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad to worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and their committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of the loyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction" overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes in—an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patent fact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism to Independency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probably a little behind-hand in their knowledge of English Ecclesiastical History, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase of reproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamations against Parliament.] So much for a review of his past acts; but what were hispresentgrounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his "grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinary and repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained his hatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration in Scotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England, inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did not desire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of the Scottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, and it was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, that he had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of that original Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland. "It cannot be denied," says the document, "neither ever shall be by us, that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by the perverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abused lawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance, but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government, and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to the prejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery was publicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away by enforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the Whore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old Scottish Presbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the first should draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented, and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of the caterpillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that had been set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes, "resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of our Reformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour to maintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be no less dear to us than our own souls."—Allowing for the fact that Montrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic to conciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe these passages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, in fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the substitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted from in the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to have deciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.- liii.), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to be commended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about his hero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as a champion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's document must be unwelcome news.]
Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remain in Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and the Parliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet.
In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose's triumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fast and prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that had befallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London to and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eight days" (i.e.Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had gone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking with him 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done. David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far than Lieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, and better even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bring from Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315.]
Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his 4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had added from the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore, in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, but Leslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watched Leslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength, and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediate encounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days, when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to their hills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose, his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a proper period at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it is believed, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-general of the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, had projected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the private satisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells. Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords had come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter- negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the King himself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. It was, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland foot and a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends— Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, and Hartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir William Rollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others—found himself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but to return north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow his vigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning of Saturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fog covering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at early breakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one brief hour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others, cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and the places where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, and the tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are now among the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in the possession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shaped bottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of the same sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in a place where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, I am told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles had contained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of the neighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, on the morning when he was surprised by Leslie.]
Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favourite Athole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerable Napier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, he died in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the same time in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present at her funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant grief caused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government upon those of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir William Rollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose in his disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, and others, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Captain Andrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, the young brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed at St. Andrews—Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, having contrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co- operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general in Scotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked on perseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize another rising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every other likely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and his fickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose's Captaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy was reestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large in the Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the Argyle Government could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leave him, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his own lyrics:—
"The misty mounts, the smoking lake,The rock's resounding echo,The whistling winds, the woods that shake,Shall all with me singHeigho!The tossing seas, the tumbling boats,Tears dripping from each oar,Shall tune with me their turtle notes:'I'll never love thee more!'"[Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 232; Wishart, 208-258; Napier, 581-630, withMontrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I.]
Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved the English Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising in Scotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and the storming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added as a most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war in England had reached its fag-end.
The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre of action for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax in the recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, was detached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplished the surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House, the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of that Marchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now again married (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had been completely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in the extreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales had retired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge.]
Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands and throughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he given up all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northward movement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the news of that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far as Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back, only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale to make their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by the Parliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as the Scottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left their men to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digby went to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the eastern border of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned for him; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to his head-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter, holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, and observing the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces. The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then become of considerable importance to him.—We have seen (antè, p. 339) how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and had sulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention of leaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the state of Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Government had failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were the English Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had been interchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military and political leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament that the Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and other northern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having been suppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been made by the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between the two nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake a duty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as a substitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege of Newark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the King had left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down before Newark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newark is about a hundred miles.—Through the winter, though the New Model had not quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chief business of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the now inevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it would be best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actually opened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come to London for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliament over these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms, the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it was the general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, he remained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from the South-west.
No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed there by the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of the Parliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), the storming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb. 16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14) Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, and following the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in the Scilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael's Mount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, found himself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and of Barnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in the whole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over far Pendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge]
The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and being free for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and a body of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in the field) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west, and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the example of surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longer possible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes for retrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He had been intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with the Irish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000 Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch and his Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France for the landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he had fallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid of the Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion in England on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholics would "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment" of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now in the dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance of Irish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects, victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closer for that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What was he to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for some time the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there had been negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil, both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of the Scottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuil had reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditions very different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative, though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to London somehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on the chances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensions between the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve on an escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless. Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travelling some seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage to Scotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-two Letters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, the first dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37 of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce for the Camden Society (1856) under the title of "Charles I. in1646." See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curious facts and indications of Charles's character.]
It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that, on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of the bedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for his sole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant and carrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford; and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined to ride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors of the Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind had changed, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's; thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards to Downham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is on record that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, who found much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who had last cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that his Majesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in the city; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding the harbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, he ended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer at Newark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in England and that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the English Parliament.—It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The English Parliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commons did vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and, though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protested against its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution of the Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should be clearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliament should try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to the Royalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and, the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge, withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13). [Footnote: IterCarolinumin Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l), Vol. II. pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II. 374-5.]
On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all the commanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name, anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24th of June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before, was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir Thomas Glenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that of Wallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19. Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. The defender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustain the King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges.]