LIBRARY University of California. Class -^!;W:' '^'';fW-' 'mM^ ''•^Vl:>^■•5r#n:^^^•^2'^^'^^' t^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/cromwellsscotchcOOdougrich CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS. CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS i65o-5i. W. S. DOUGLAS, AUTHOR OF TWO THREEQUARTERS. Infandu7n Regina jubes renovare dolorem.' LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 1898. 9^\ y V t-o i^e (glemor^ Of her who smiled indulgently at the enthusiasm of the author in reading: aloud some pages This Volume is 217932 PREFACE. NO one as yet seems to have thought it worth while to chronicle and describe all the essential moves in Crom- well's Scotch Campaigns of 1650-51. The battles of Dunbar and Worcester have not been neglected ; and he would be a bold man who should hope to give a more vivid picture of either, of the former especially, than Carlyle's. But the events leading up to ' Dunbar Drove,' and still more those which followed in the next twelvemonth's campaigning, have to this day been left unrecorded. For even the barest indication of the whole scope of Cromwell's strategy when he strove to circumvent the Scots in 1650, the modern reader had to wait for the publication, in 1895, of Dr. Gardiner's first volume of the ' History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate.' That book still left a great deal to be said as to the details of Leslie's * cautious, solid ' plan of campaign ; while as to the ill-success which at first attended the English endeavour to dislodge the same General in the ensuing year, Dr. Gardiner is as silent as any and every previous writer on the subject. So * here begins new matter,' which Carlyle, pre-occupied with the spiritual significance and true inwardness of the epoch in question, has passed over in the ' Letters and Speeches ;' which Robert Chambers, in his handy enough little compendium of the ' History of the Rebellions in viii PREFACE Scotland, 1638 to 1660,' has also ignored; of which scarcely any of the romance-writers ('Woodstock' one would gladly have bartered for a tale of Charles II/s adventures a year earlier) have made use. There are, in fine, forgotten points in the manoeuvres and ' general ideas' of these Campaigns to which even the amateur — and the writer claims to be nothing more — may be forgiven for seeking to draw attention. To restore those to their proper place, and thereby to supplement in some essential particulars the existing accounts of Cromwell's Scotch Wars, has been my primary aim in this book. W. S. D. *^* The references in this volume to the contemporary London newspapers of 1650-51 may be verified by consulting Vol. E of the catalogue of the collection of the ' King's Pamphlets ' preserved in the British Museum. CONTENTS. BOOK I. INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER PAGE 1. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL ...... 3 II. THE MUSTER ........ 15 III. THE SCOTS DEFENCES ....... 27 BOOK II. JULY TO SEPTEMBER, 1650: DUNBAR. I. CROMWELL'S ADVANCE TO EDINBURGH — HIS REPULSE BEFORE ITS WALLS — THE FIGHTING AT ST. LEONARD'S AND THE MUSSEL- BURGH NIGHT ATTACK . . . . . -37 II. * RECULER POUR MIEUX SAU TER '— CROMWELL'S MOVE TO THE BRAID HILLS— LESLIE OCCUPIES CORSTORPHINE . . -53 III. THE 'PASSES' OF THE WATER OF LEITH — REDHALL SIEGE— FOR- WARD TO THE FIRTH . . . . . -65 JV. FROM GOGAR TO DUNBAR— 'THE FLASHES '—FINAL OPERATIONS . ROUND ARTHUR'S SEAT ...... 79 V. * THE RACE OF DUNBAR '# . . . . . -95 BOOK III. SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER : HAMILTON FIGHT. I. EFFECTS OF THE KIRK's DEFEAT AT DUNBAR — CROMWELL OCCUPIES EDINBURGH — THE HEAD OF MONTROSE — RECONNAISSANCE BEFORE STIRLING — LINLITHGOW GARRISONED . . • "7 II. POLITICAL CLEAVAGE AMONG THE SCOTS— SOPS TO THE WESTLAND WHIGS — 'purging' THE ROYAL COURT — 'THE START' . . I29 JII. THE ENGLISH IN EDINBURGH— OPERATIONS AGAINST THE CASTLE — PROJECT OF A LANDING IN FIFE ABANDONED — ATTITUDE OF THE WESTERN ARMY — ENGLISH MARCH TO GLASGOW — A BROAD HINT BY WAY OF CARLISLE ..... I4O [# Cornet Grahame, chap, xiv., ' Old Mortality.'] X CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE IV. NORTH-COUNTRY ROYALISM IN ARMS— SKIRMISH IN ATHOLE— SIR JOHN BROWN SENT INTO FORFARSHIRE AND DEFEATED AT NEWTYLE — THE * NORTHERN BAND AND OATH ' — DAVID LESLIE * BOATS OVER ' THE TAY — ACT OF INDEMNITY AND PACIFICATION 154 V. CLEARING THE DECKS FOR ACTION IN THE WEST — STRACHAN NO MORE — THE MOSSTROOPER ABROAD— AN INVITATION TO BORTH- WICK — A THREE-CORNERED FIGHT THREATENED — KER AT PEEBLES ......,, 164 VI. 'FIRST BOTHWELL BRIG '—HAMILTON FIGHT . . .177 BOOK IV. THE KING OF FIFE. I. PROCESS OF CONSOLIDATION AMONG THE SCOTS — UNANIMITY OB- TAINED—CHARLES II. AND ARGYLE— A PARALLEL TO 'THE '45' I9I II. THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE ..... I99 III. STIRLING THE CAPITAL OF 'FIFE' — CROMWELL AGAIN AVOIDS A DIRECT ATTACK — DISPOSITION OF HIS TROOPS IN THE SOUTH- WESTERN COUNTIES— SCOTS ONFALL AT LINLITHGOW — ENGLISH REBUFF AT BURNTISLAND— ATTEMPT UPON THE FORDS ABOVE STIRLING . . . . . . .211 IV. CROMWELL AND ' g6n£RAL FfiVRIER '—INOPPORTUNE ATTACK OF ILLNESS— DISCUSSION OF THE CHANCES IT LOST THE ENGLISH — REDUCTION OF HUME CASTLE AND TANTALLON — SCOTS BLOCKADE-RUNNERS — ARRIVAL OF ADMIRAL DEANE, TREACHERY OF JOHNSTON OF WARISTON, AND SURRENDER OF BLACKNESS . 22^ V. CROMWELL'S SECOND EXPEDITION TO GLASGOW — PREVIOUS DOINGS IN THE WEST — CAPTURES OF LORD EGLINTON AND BIRKENHEAD, A ROYALIST AGENT— SCARCITY OF FORAGE BAULKS THE ENGLISH — FEINTS ON 'FIFE-SIDE' — RETURN OF CROMWELL's ILLNESS — ADMIRAL DEANE'S BLOCKADE OF THE COAST— DETAILS OF NAVAL WARFARE — INCREASE OF THE SCOTS ARMY— FORAY BY MONT- GOMERY AND ENGLISH EVACUATION OF THE SOUTH-WEST . 241- VI. THE scots' MOVE TO THE TORWOOD— CHARLES II. AS GUARDIAN OF SCOTLAND— THE AFFAIR OF LARBERT BRIDGE — CROMWELL RE-OCCUPIES GLASGOW — HIS VARIOUS IRONS IN THE FIRE— LAMBERT'S RAID TOWARDS LAKE OF MENTEITH — THE ENGLISH STORM CALENDAR HOUSE — REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE, AND CROMWELL INVADES FIFE ...... 258 VII. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING — CONCLUSION . ; . 274 INDEX ......... 291 CROMWELL'S Scotch Campaigns BOOK L INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER I. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL. FROM what point of view, it may be asked, does the writer propose to regard the period of which he treats ? In one aspect of it, the Scots opposition to Cromwell was only the last rally (for Rullion Green and Bothwell Brig were at- tempts towards the realization of another and a narrower ideal) in a long-continued, almost unanimously national struggle for Protestant ' uniformity ' or reunion on a Presbyterian basis. Are we, then, about to picture it exclusively as such, putting ourselves as nearly as may be in the place of the Covenanters of that time, and lamenting their having been defeated in an endeavour for which they could plead the by no means despicable* excuse just indicated ? In another view of it, again, the Scots resistance to the invasion was the last of our wars of independence. Are we, consequently, disposed to make the most of it in the spirit of a ' pure Scotchman,' whose patriotism, anachronism though it may be, is still perfervid ? Yet another phase of the events of 1650-51 was that element of dynastic interest which justifies one in terming them a scene (or act) in the two-century Stuart tragedy. Charles II. tasted, in at least the former year, of the woes of his great-grandmother. Mary ; during both he anticipated many passages in the career of his own grand- nephew and namesake. Shall we, then, write of him with the fatuous, and still more truly anachronistic, ' loyalty ' of a present-day ' Legiti- mist,' White Rose Leaguer, and IV/iirlwind subscriber? Our preface will perhaps have prepared the reader to learn that we are swayed by solicitude about no one in particular of these three interwoven issues. What we have to do with is primarily the military history of a twelvemonth. Yet, even so, one cannot plunge in medias res without such explanations as may fitly lead up to the subject proper. And, indeed, it would be asking too much of the reader to expect him to approach the history of these wars in Scotland without * Since it amounted to this, that Scotland sought, so far as in her lay, to counteract the solidarity of Romanism by bringing England also into line with the Reformed Continental schools of thought. I 2 4 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS some preliminary sketch of the relations between that kingdom and England during the previous decade. For the climax, the culmi- nation, the last agony of the British civil wars of the seventeenth century was only reached, in these very campaigns with which we propose to deal, after such a series of tentative efforts at combined action by the two peoples, and of mutually disappointing and disillu- sionizing results, as must be at least transiently surveyed in order to the right understanding of this their final upshot. The miUtary doings with which we are specially concerned were not entirely separable from the contemporary progress of civil affairs ; and this our history, frankly 'drum and trumpet' though it should for choice be made, has perforce to take account of the development of politico- religious movements in Court and camp and council-tent at the same time that it traces the progress of the armies in the field. For it was not now with Cromwell, in this twelvemonth's campaign- ing, as it had been during his immediately preceding invasion of Ireland. There, ' while reproof around him rings,' he had but to turn without a second thought * to the instant need of things ' : to strike, and strike home, at an enemy with whom he scorned to treat. But in Scotland he was let and hindered by his brotherly yearnings towards the ' honest party ' and the ' godly people ' of the land — whose godliness he in the end esteemed somewhat under proof; by the illusory hopes held out to him of an accommodation with that faction, through their defection from their compatriots ; by his reluctance to realize that men with whom he had made common cause not two years before — under circumstances presently to be explained in passing — should now be in earnest in offering oppo- sition to him on the very spot where he and they had so recently communed fraternally together. The scruples and hesitancy which these ^2/^^/-diplomatic considerations brought about had an important bearing upon his conduct of the Scotch war; and the full story of it must therefore, as we say, be prefaced by some account of the general trend of affairs between the two kingdoms up to this point. Such an investigation need, if we were in search of a short cut, lead us no farther back than to the date of that previous Scotch expedition of Cromwell's which has just been alluded to. For in 1648 we find most of the men and parties whose after-fortunes are to be our theme in these pages playing such parts in Scotland as contrast dramatically enough, in all conscience, with those they assumed in 1650-51. It was a year almost as memorable as that other which marked its exact bicentenary — the later '48 of our own century, whose revolutions, abortive or otherwise, men yet living can well remember. 1648 brought with it on the Continent the close of the great Thirty Years' War, and the beginning of the Fronde rebellion against Mazarin ; and in our own country, more particularly in Scotland, what a series of momentous events ! In it we see Cromwell himself hurrying North from Lancashire, after his THE CAUSE OF QUARREL 5 defeat of the Scottish ' Engagers ' at Preston, to confront the rear- guard of the force whose main body he had swept out of existence there, and to take order with the Scots Parliamentary majority, which had sanctioned the sending that expedition to the relief of the captive Charles I. VVe see him forestalled by the simultaneous action of the Scots minority, which, swayed by the Kirk and led by the Marquis of Argyle, had shut the door of retreat for the ' Engagers ' by raising the country behind them when they invaded England."^ We foresee an imminent triangular duel, while Cromwell crouches for a spring at Berwick, and ' Engagers ' and ' Whiggamores ' con- front each other with threats' and menaces by the banks of Forth; but we behold with wonder the emergence of something quite different when Argyle makes use of the terror of the English conqueror's name to overawe his own defeated rivals, and the Kirk all unexpectedly welcomes the Southron ' Sectaries ' in peace. Follows the meeting of Argyle and Cromwell, on which tradition has not failed to found sinister tales of the Campbell's denying the Royal master from whom he had had his marquisate, and callously leaving Charles to the doom that befell him three months thereafter. The only certain results of which history, however, can take account were the dispersal of the ' Engagers,' Argyle's usurpation — by Parliamentary methods which, according to Dr. Gardiner, gave his English guest the first hint for the employment of ' Pride's Purge ' — of the power which that party had enjoyed, the deposition of their leaders from all places of trust, and the flight of most of those leaders over sea. Out of such a succession of ' pantomimic changes,' then, it were easy to sketch a piquant prelude to the history of two years later. When Cromwell returned to Scotland after that interval, his mission was to overthrow and smite the very faction which he had thus helped to instal in power ; their enterprise, on the other hand, was little else than a repetition of the Royalist endeavours of the ' Engagers ' whom they had disowned and combated ; and these last, after watching with eager eyes the falling-out of the two parties which had but the other year combined for their destruction, were flocking back from exile, in hopes of a turn of fortune's wheel. The reader who ransacks history in search merely of 'strong situations' and melodramatic turns of plot could surely nowhere else find anything more to his mind. But * W^essex is not England,' as was once said with reference — not to the novels of Mr. Thomas Hardy, but — to the Battle of Hastings ; and in this instance ' VVhiggamores ' and ' Engagers ' were not Scotland. The action of the former party in the crisis after King Charles's execution was undoubtedly the determining cause of the war against the English Commonwealth ; but we shall have to deal * The student of this period of history need not be reminded that the very first appearance of the Westland Whigs was signalized by the opposition offered on Mauchline Moor, in the early summer of 1648, to the levies attempted thereaway by the * Engagers ' under Sir James Turner and others. 6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS with other matters also before we can hope to make clear the sequence of events which gave to the end of that struggle a complexion quite different from that of its beginning. For the purposes of such eluci- dation we must, in fine, sketch the mutual relations of Scotland and England during a period of rather longer duration than that just glanced at. Those relations hinged, then, upon two points — the question of * religion ' or ecclesiastical polity, and the question of loyalty to the throne. There was a time, in the very beginning of the troubles, when zeal for the former cause outweighed regard for the King's interest with nine-tenths of the Scots. Laud's ill-judged and im- politic innovations awakened the touchy jealousy of the nation, and Charles's simultaneous attempt to secure the restitution of some part of the Church lands, grasped by the nobility at the Reformation, roused the not altogether disinterested hostility of the aristocracy. It spoils the effect of Carlyle's account of the Scots peers' action at this time— -which constituted, according to him, their last heroic appearance on the stage of history — to know that their motives were thus selfish ; but such is the fact. In the ' Bishops' Wars ' to which this combination of grievances led, therefore, the Royal cause had the support of only a few courtiers. The Hamiltons — James, after- wards first Duke of Hamilton, and his brother William, soon to be Earl of Lanark — Huntly and his Gordons in the north, John Stewart, Earl of Traquair, and another comparatively newly- ennobled Borderer, the Earl of Roxburgh, in the south, alone stood by their King. All their compatriots were, from varied motives, at one in support of the National Covenant, with its denunciations of Popery and Prelacy, and perfervid reaffirmation of the sanctity of Presby- terianism. At the * Trot of Turriff' was fired the very ' first gun ' of our civil wars — as their first projectile had been Jenny Geddes's stool. In two successive years Charles found to his humiliation that Scottish resistance was too strong for him. The imposing demon- stration in force on Duns Law in 1639 was followed next year by the still more potent argument of a successful invasion of England ; and so at the sword's point Scotland extorted her King's approval of the form of Church government she had chosen. Thus far her own interest had alone been concerned, and she had had only the one as yet unquestioned authority south of the Border to deal with. But the time soon arrived when England in its turn rose in arms against the ' Divine Right,' and the Scots had to ask them- selves to what end they had set the example of opposition thereto. Had it been only in order to win for their native land the freedom of conscience which she claimed ; and. that attained, were they pre- pared to support Charles in resisting the demands of insurgent England? James Graham, for one, gave that question an affirmative answer ; and the action of the Great Marquis — as all men know that have ever heard of Tippermuir and Inverlochy and Kilsyth — now THE CAUSE OF QUARREL 7 made the resistance of the Scots minority rather more memorable than it had been in the years of Duns Law and Newburn. But even the defection of such a leader made for the time being — and in the long run too, for the matter of that — but little change in the practical unanimity of Scottish action in the opposite direction. The bulk of his fellow-countrymen took a different line in entering upon a course of continued opposition to the King. It can scarcely be said that they did so because of any fellow-feeling for the English which made them conscious that the Parhamentarians were resisting Charles on very much the same grounds as they themselves had so recently taken up. On the contrary, they seem rather to have discerned in Eng- land's difficulty Scotland's opportunity — for the extension of the Presbyterian system throughout Great Britain. An International Solemn League was now superadded to Scotland's National Cove- nant ; in September, 1643, the English Parliament bound themselves to carry out its stipulation for the reformation of religion south of the Tweed ' according to the Word of God and the example of the best reformed Churches '; and on the faith of this promise the Scots sent an invading army to assist the Roundheads in the field. For three years that army remained on English soil ; and while it is pertinent to note that it did not pull altogether well with its Eng- lish comrades in arms, it is still more to the point to remark the simultaneous disappointment of the politico-ecclesiastical aspira- tions of those who had sent it. The Parliamentarians' blunt state- ment that the prowess of the Scots did not come up to their expectations,"^ and the not unfounded rejoinder that the fault lay with themselves in not looking after their allies' necessities as care- fully as they attended to those of their own men, are points too interesting to be altogether left out of account. But the determining factor in the relations of the Scots and English as a whole certainly was the divergence on the point of religion. The former nation soon had reason to wish it had hearkened to the warning addressed to it as early as 1642 by the King— or by Edward Hyde on the King's behalf— to the effect that the bulk of their English allies cared as little for Presbytery as for Episcopacy, and that ' the abolition of the one would be no inlet to the other.' For the outcome of the first stage of the civil wars was, as everyone knows, the English Parlia- ment's finding itself embarrassed like another Frankenstein by the presence of a monster of its own creation. The army, in other words, proved intractable to the authority of the men who had in the first instance raised it ; and the temper of the Independents in that army promised little in the way of submissiveness to the exaction of ecclesiastical uniformity throughout the land. Thus, though the English House of Commons did its best to keep faith with the Scots It may appropriately enough be remarked here, however, that Cromwell's personal contempt for the soldiership of the Scots, which Clarendon vouches for, only dated, presumably, from the day of Dunbar Drove. 8 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS whose aid it had invoked, the miHtary would have none of the bargain that had been come to ; and in good earnest the Scots found that the ' abohtion ' of the system of Church government they abhorred was to be no 'inlet' to the other which they revered. Here, then, was the first of the disappointments alluded to in our opening sentences. Alarm at the rise of a purely military power in the State, and hatred of the ' tolerationist ' tenets of its leaders, now began to influence the Scots. It seemed they had, in ceasing to bear the ills of kingly abuse of power, been flying to others still less tolerable by opening the way for the rise of the ' Sectaries.' Therefore they set themselves — like their English Presbyterian friends, who had as little counted on that result — to seek an accom- modation with King Charles. The course of events was driving them into support of that cause which Montrose also had first op- posed and then adopted. One may almost liken the King to the master of the vineyard in the parable, in respect of his securing the services of these labourers by successive relays from time to time. Those who bore the burden and heat of the day for him were the courtiers already mentioned — or the consistent and steadfast ones among them, like Huntly. It was about the third hour, relatively to the rest, that he gained over the Marquis of Montrose. Now about the ninth hour, let us say, he was again to make a compact with yet another batch ; and there remained still to be effected at the eleventh hour an arrangement between his son and the last relay of all — who could not, however, say that no other man had hired them. But whereas the earlier recruits to the Royal standard had taken service freely and unconditionally, the later ones drove ever a harder and harder bargain with their new master. The fact is that they were still swayed rather by zeal for Presbyterianism than by loyalty proper, and could only be moved to support the King's interest by the hope of simultaneously furthering the cause of their Church. This does not imply that they were wholly regardless of the claims of their own native dynasty — of a King who, for that matter, had been born among them. One cannot but be struck by the many indications in the records of the time showing that the Scots of all classes cherished an instinctive, unreasoning, traditional loyalty for the Stuarts. Clarendon himself contends that their next move in the game of civil war was due to the general desire to make reparation for the surrender of the King's person at Newcastle. Another motive, doubtless, was the blending of class feeling, the ' instinct of caste,' with religious resentment. The Scots nobles found that ultra- Presbyterianism and Independency alike implied a more democratic rule than that of their order, and so ranged themselves henceforth on the side of the Royal authority which they had been the first to call in question. But certain it is that the next step was taken ostensibly in the name of Presbyterianism. Those who initiated and carried through the 'Engagement' of 1648 went about the THE CAUSE OF QUARREL 9 matter with professions of exclusive regard to the Presbyterian interest, and wrung from Charles the promise of a three years' trial of that system of Church government in England, as a preliminary concession without which Scotland could not be induced to support him. One would have thought that such an agreement would thoroughly serve its purpose — that the deepest-rooted prejudices against co- operation with ' Malignants ' would vanish in face of such a prospect — that Scotland would now unanimously throw itself into the move- ment for the King's release. But it was not so. Much had been done by the operation of the various motives just sketched, to reconcile the nation to this new — and, could they but have seen it, still more hopeless— alliance with the Cavaliers. But there remained one party still to be won over. The Kirk had boggled at the King's refusal to sign the Covenant even so early as when he was in the Scots' custody at Newcastle ; and for the exaction of that uttermost farthing it still stood out. With the Kirk was Argyle, who turned its scruples to account with characteristic finesse. This quasi-^oyd\\s\. expedition — this 'Engagement ' of 1648 — was being organized by the Hamiltons ; and between the Hamiltons and himself there was no love lost. He acted in defiance of the rest of his order, therefore, and threw the weight of his influence into the opposite scale. Let us record, in justice to the consistency which he succeeded in main- taining, that he had in the previous year proffered Charles the same terms to which he now adhered — had, indeed, been the first to approach the King, after his seizure by the English army, with an undertaking to help him if he would set his hand to the Covenant. Then, as now, the request was met with a refusal ; and in the interim Charles had agreed to the terms — less sweeping, if also uncongenial — that were proffered by the ' Engagers.' Therefore the latter body went to their doom unsupported by Argyle or the Church ; and the defeat of the Hamiltons at Preston left their rivals — aided as we have seen by Cromwell's intervention — sole masters of the field in Scotland. But this the last alliance between English and Scottish extremists, this temporary co-operation between the straitest sect of Presby- terians and the ' Sectaries' of the army, was speedily to lead to just such disillusioning results as had flowed from previous combinations of the same sort. Once more it was to be demonstrated that the high contracting parties had in reality little in common. We have seen how an apparent breach of the terms of the Solemn League had been resented but a few years before by the Scotch : now it was the Englishmen's turn to have occasion to complain of their allies' failure to keep faith. For it is certain that after the events of 1648 they must have considered the ' Whiggamores ' more closely bound to their interest than that body proved to be. Allusion has already been made to the traditional interpretation of Cromwell's commun- lo CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ings with Argyle in the October of that year, and the suspicions which, in default of any authentic account of the substance of those interviews, have been fastened upon the Scottish ' Dictator.' But in seeking to make clear the nature of the misunderstanding (if it was no more) between Argyle and Cromwell, it is not necessary to accuse the former of direct treachery to the Royal cause. He may or he may not have given the p]nglish Lieutenant-General to understand that the most extreme measures against Charles I. would call forth no opposition from Scotland. If he did, the counter-representations of the Scots Estates, which he dominated, very speedily gave the lie to those assurances. But whether or not he misled Cromwell by verbal promises given, he seemed by his whole line of action in that eventful autumn to commit himself and his party to thoroughgoing support of the English Republicans. There is no mistaking the sig- nificance of Clarendon's remark that Cromwell, on leaving Scotland thereafter, had reason to believe ' it would henceforward be as peace- able a kingdom as he could wish.' The words mean that he thought he had made sure of the compliance of the governing body there in all his after-deeds ; that he considered their acquiescence in his demand for the humiliation and overthrow of the ' Engagers ' — a demand as to which they were only too eager to oblige him — involved their repudiation of the Royalist interest henceforth and for ever ; and that whatever might be the issue of the now clamorous outcry for Charles Stuart's being called to account, the Scots portion of that monarch's subjects would lift no finger against it. He was mistaken ; but had he not very good reason to suppose himself right ? Let the reader turn to that letter by Cromwell which Dr. Gardiner has brought to light in his ' History,'* and say whether it does not prove that Oliver believed a thorough understanding had been come to with the faction now dominant among the Scots. How was he to know that they had been seeking only to further their own private ends in so promptly joining hands with him in Scotland for the suppression of the common enemy ? How was he to know that the hatred of the ' Sectaries,' which they prudently kept con- cealed whilst he was among them, would blaze forth as soon as his back was turned ? How was he to know that even such an event as the execution of the King would alienate them altogether — would, * * Great Civil War,' vol. iv , pp. 249, 250 : ' Our brothers of Scotland — really [" not merely politically "] Presbyterians — were our greatest enemies. God hath justified us in their sight — caused us to requite good for evil — caused them to acknowledge it publicly by acts of State, and privately, and the thing is true in the sight of the sun. It is a high conviction upon them. . . . We can say, through God, we have left such a witness amongst them as if it work not yet, by reason the poor souls are so wedded to their [" form of Church "] government, yet there is that conviction upon them that will undoubtedly have its fruit in due time.' It was the disappointment of such expectations ihat made the English spy Pudsey write (from ' Edinb., July 23, 1650') of 'Mrs. Wisdom^ (/. merks out of *' the clergy's " own purses.' § There is, to be sure, another fact to be taken into account in pondering this point. Strachan was a native of Musselburgh, 'a brewer's son ' there (Lamont's ' Diary,' p. 27 ; Balfour, iii. 412 ; ' Meraorie of the Somervilles,' ii. 437) ; and doubtless his local knowledge of the ground to be gone over in the night expedi- tion was a good excuse for his putting forward his claims. II Letter cxxxv. For the last time, Clemmy ! 11 Two thousand says Balfour— rather more than the fifteen troops named in all the English accounts (at seventy-five men to the troop, according to the com- putation of the period) : more also than Nicoll's ' 800.' Poor old Nicoll, with his one recurring phrase, the Scots * behaved themselves valiantly ' ! * * Especially the Lord General, if there was any better foundation than is usual for the on dit to which Sir Edward Walker gave ear, about * Cromwell himself in his Drawers ' being * forced to take his horse and pass over the River ' (p. 163). THE MUSSELBURGH CAMISADE 51 Edward Walker* and the English reports that, instead of advancing due east by the Figgat Burn and Medlin Bridge, Montgomery and btrachan's attacking party made a considerable detour; and one likes to think that James Grant was availing himself less of the novelist's license than of his expert's trained instinct in sketching, as he has sketched, the route taken, f He names an ascent by the brae at Edmonston, a dip down to some ford on the Esk about Smeaton, an approach — rather improbable historically, though effective from the point of view of romance — through the Howe Myre on the right bank of the river to the edge of the rising ground upon which Inveresk stands ; thence a circuit by VVallyford, and a final bend north-westward. Whether or not this was the actual line, the names cited in our footnote make it pretty certain that the attacking party did come at least as far eastward before wheeling for the dash on Musselburgh ; and their intention must have been just what Grant represents — to make straight for the Links (* Musleborough Fields ') on which the English must then, as afterwards, have encamped, avoiding Stonyhill (which the novelist correctly states to have been held in force as the English depot and magazine) and circumventing those entrench- ments at Inveresk which the invaders had, one might say, found ready to their hand. X * * Historical Discourses,' p. 163. The newspapers say sixteen miles. t It is a spirited enough chapter of ' Harry Ogilvie ' which tells of this ' onfall ' — albeit the author has taken a trifling liberty in making it occur prior to Cromwell's attempt on Leslie's lines ; and it was a happy thought to call Jock of Jock's Lodge into being that he might act as guide through the Howe Myre — Strachan's own qualifications for the post having evidently escaped the novelist's notice. But as to who really did show the road for the attacking party, we have more authentic authority to go by than James Grant's flight of fancy. An English despatch of a week or two later (E 610, 8, 'A True Relation,' August 23) speaks of a house in these parts, and its owner, ' Mr. Hamilton, who with his man were guides to that party that fell so desperately into our quarters in Musselburgh, and both kild on each side of the house.' The identification of this gentleman is a matter involving some trouble, and leading to no great certainty in the end. The editor of Hodgson's 'Memoirs' says he was 'Hamilton, proprietor of Stonyhill,' but incorrectly, as it would seem, if we are to go by the contemporary mention of one 'Robert Dobie of Staniehill' in Thomson's 'Acts' ('Act of Posture,' February, 1649, c. p. 190, vol. vi., part ii.). There was certainly, however, a John Hamilton ' of Easter Falsyde ' at that date, who may have led the party through his own property, and been slain afterwards in the pursuit, while seeking a hiding-place in his own house. There was, again. Sir Thomas Hamilton of Preston Tower, and as the context of the passage quoted speaks of the house as being 'near the waterside,' the latter place seems more likely to have been meant than Falsyde. If so, the writer makes two mistakes in regard to its owner. First, in not giving him his title ; secondly, in mentioning his death when, as a matter of fact, he lived to fight another day, and to some purpose. In any case, one or other of these East Lothian lairds may well have been the very man to conduct the night expedition by some such circuitous route as James Grant has mapped out for us. X For St. Michael's Churchyard, it is well known, had served the turn of an English invader ere now as a site for a battery to cover the approach over Mussel- ■ burgh Bridge, and Cromwell is said to have availed himself of the works thrown up there a century before by Protector Somerset. 4—2 52 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS But, in returning, the assailants had no time thus to choose their route; the biter was bit, and the English pressed them too close to leave them any option. Yet the sortie must be supposed fully to have served its purpose. No second visitation of the like kind was paid to the English camp, whereby its occupants might again have been 'robbed of their peace for a night,' and thereafter (ah, shades of Jakin and Lew and the Fore and Aft !) * scientifically " rushed " and laid out.' But enough had been done to give the invaders such a taste of the Scots quality as they did not readily forget. CHAPTER II. *RECULER POUR MIEUX SAUTER ' — CROMWELL'S MOVE TO THE BRAID HILLS — LESLIE OCCUPIES CORSTORPHINE. FOR nearly a week after these forty-eight hours' almost con- tinuous fighting the English did not stir out from the imme- diate neighbourhood of Eskmouth. One can well believe Balfour's statement that they spent the time in entrenching themselves in Musselburgh and Inveresk; they had no wish, naturally, to leave their quarters open to such another night-attack as they had just stalled-off. Cromwell himself, moreover, was busy with his pen.* He can hardly have considered that implement ' mightier than the sword,' but he knew its uses as an ally to the more lethal weapon. On the ensuing Monday (August 5), just a full week after his attempt on the east side of Edinburgh, he fell back to Dunbar for provisions. Carlylef explains that the weather was too bad to admit of his landing stores at Musselburgh ; but we may be forgiven for declining to admit that the sea was likely to be running higher off Eskmouth than off Dunbar. It seems quite possible that the Scots were bestirring themselves to interfere with the invaders' supplies by sea, and the story of their having ' seized upon four of our vessels ' about this time may, though it was pooh-poohed by the Council of State's ofificial newspaper,! throw some light upon the move which Carlyle attributed solely to the 'tempestuous state of the weather.' However that may have been, Cromwell retreated to the East Lothian port, hoping, it may be, to draw Leslie after him ; and the ministers in Edinburgh preached edifying sermons on the text ' The wicked flee when no man pursueth.'§ * See Carlyle throughout, of course, for his manifestoes, etc., and in this particular instance Dr. Gardiner (p. 307) for quotation of the famous adjuration to the Scots clergy, *I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken ' ! t But, indeed. Dr. Gardiner also, and the editor of Hodgson's * Memoirs ' — all three accepting without demur the implied explanation that Belhaven Bay was less exposed than Eskmouth. X Mercurius Politicusy Aug. \\ (vol. E 610 of the King's Pamphlets). § Whitelocke's * Memorials ' (under August ig). 54 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS There was indeed no pursuit. The Scots do not even seem to have taken any steps to prevent the English from re-occupying Musselburgh and Inveresk whenever they chose. They drew off the household drudges that could ' bake and brew ' in those places, but did not keep a force there to oppose the return of the invaders. We hear of their soldiers coming as far eastwards after the retreating enemy as ' Medlin Bridge and Thibet'* — the latter, of course (wherever it may have been), a point less remote in the Orient than its more widely-known namesake ; and they did for a time quarter in Musselburgh, but promptly abandoned it again.! Nor do the lurking inhabitants along the line of march seem to have courted such punishment as the Musselburgh folks had brought upon them- selves. On the contrary, the only glimpse we get of any of them at this time shows Cromwell heaping coals of fire on their heads by feeding the starving people about Dunbar out of his own stores. J So the one clause of the Scripture quoted was applicable enough ; but in respect of the other the preachers were soon enough after- wards ' ashamed of their [premature] thanksgiving ' — sorry, in fact, they had spoken. For ' the wicked ' returned, as they had probably not counted on his doing. 'On Saturday the loth, our souldiers having been refreshed with provisions, advanced again towards Edenburgh ;'§ by the following Monday they were once more ensconced in their old quarters at Musselburgh and Inveresk. Their retreat had been only a reculer pour mieux sauter movement, and they were about to try another presently. For next day, on Tuesday, August 13, they made a reconnaissance in force on the south side of Edinburgh to the Braid Hills ; on Thursday, the 15th, they fell back to Musselburgh in order to prepare for a return to those slopes, and a more prolonged sojourn thereaway. But here one finds one's self almost at fault. This advance of the invaders to the other side of Edinburgh, followed as it was by their retreat, after only a day's interval, to Eskmouth, is hard indeed to understand. We have advisedly called the first movement a recon- naissance, and such it did indeed prove to be. Nor is it difficult to find a reason for a tentative advance of that sort. Dominated as Cromwell knew the city to be on the west by the Castle, and covered by two protective sheets of water on its remaining sides — the Nor' Loch in the one airt, and the Burgh Loch in the other — it is still quite conceivable that he dreamt of effectually turning Leslie's position by creeping entirely round Edinburgh and coming * Johnston of Wariston to Argyle, 'August, 1650' — by internal evidence about ;the 9th or loth (' Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' 1874, vol. ii., p. 287). t Mercuriiis Politic us ^ August ^f, p. 175 (E 610). X Carlyle, Gardiner (original authority undiscoverable). If authenticated, the . deed was almost chivalrous, since these same people seem just previously to have been helping themselves to the English supplies ' from Northumberland ' (White- locke, under date August 5). § Mercurius Politicus^ August \% p. 166 (E 610). THE MOVE OF AUGUST THIRTEENTH 55 upon the Scots trenches and earthwork from the rear. And the guess at his having had that in view is by no means thrown out at a venture. It is founded upon a hint contained in a contemporary English broadsheet :* ' Our ships all this march attended the army with provisions, but the passes were too dangerous for the army to march near the sea.' Is it putting a forced construction upon those words to read them as indicating an attempt, or at least an intention, to march as close to the west side of Edinburgh as possible, on a line that would have enabled the invaders to resume touch with the fleet at about (say) Cramond ? The very wording of the letter just quoted helps to corroborate this view : the writer speaks of ' our being in sight of the city for two or three miles together,' and wonders that * we had not so much as a salute from the Castle.' On the supposition just stated, then, it can only have been after finding that progress in the direction indicated was indeed ' too dangerous ' for their purpose, that the invaders retired to ' Pencland Hills ' (the Braids, i.e., and presumably Blackford) to encamp theref for the night. Leslie had in the meantime been very prompt in changing his front so as to answer this fresh movement of the English. Balfour mentions the Scots army as 'drawing forth of their trenches,' and marching westwards as soon as it became apparent the English were taking that route; and the statement in 'the Lord General's Letter,' already quoted, that the defending army ' removed their guns from the further side of Leith [? Water] to this side,' probably means that their artillery were brought into position on the north-westward side of Edinburgh, I covering the ridge of the present New Town between the bank of the Nor' Loch and the deep defile of the Water of Leith. The destination of the party simultaneously sent by Leslie ' with two great guns to secure a pass towards the Queens Ferry ' may be as confidently guessed at also : it must have been Murrayfield and Coltbridge, if not (as Dr. Gardiner supposes) Corstorphine itself. There is therefore some reason to suppose that Cromwell was for the present merely feeling his way in order to see whether some other point in the Edinburgh defences might not be more open to attack than he had found those on the east and south-east. But it is ""possible that he marched to the Braids on a more direct line, * 'The Lord General's Letter ' (E 610, 4). + 'A little above a mile from Edenburgh Castle.' ^Mercurzus Politicus^ August \%, p. 186 (E 610). X A letter of the Chancellor's, Loudoun, written the very next day, gives a good clue to their whereabouts. (Another, by the way, is the Commission of the Jerk's meeting with the Committee of Estates at the West Kirk on the 13th.) He dates from ' Drumsheugh, the 14 of August' ('Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' vol. ii., p. 282). The Chancellor was not himself, of course, a 'gunner,' or combatant of any sort ; but he was always at headquarters just then, which Leslie may be supposed to have shifted westwards immediately after writing his lettei to Cromwell from 'Bruchton' on the 13th. 56 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS through Niddry and by Craigmillar, without any such reconnaissance northwards to Drumsheugh as has just been guessed at. For while it is very probable his horse did ' pickeer ' in the latter quarter, it falls to be said that there is more definite news of his having aimed by this march at something bolder and more decisive — no less, indeed, than the leaving Edinburgh far in his rear, marching to some point on the Firth not lower down than Queensferry, installing himself there in touch with his commissariat, and thus forcing on a battle by effectually cutting off Leslie's supplies, while he ensured the continuance of his own. The reader has noted the presence of those Enghsh ships 'attending' the army; and one has only the slenderest grounds for conjecturing that they were to co- operate in an attack on the rear of the Leith Walk trenches (had Leslie remained there), as they had previously taken part in the assault from the other side. On the contrary, the fleet was evidently entrusted with the more pacific mission of carrying the commissariat and supplies which (though each soldier took with him ' some days' provisions,' we note) the army itself could not transport. That fact, clearly enough indicated in another news-letter,* goes far to show that the intention was to forsake what had hitherto been the base of operations, at Eskmouth, and to seek, instead, another one farther up the Firth. Again, if we have found one indication of the line of march in the mention of the invaders' proximity to Edin- burgh Castle, we must not neglect to state that it is mentioned in the same sentence how ' Dalkeith, where the enemy had a garrison,' refrained from firing also. Nor do we hear any word (as there would have been, had he not meant to shift his base altogether) of Crom- well's having on this occasion guarded his line of communication to and from Musselburgh with the same care as he showed in doing so on a later occasion. And, finally, the news-letter already quoted! says in so many words that on this Tuesday, the 1 3th, the ' Lord General marcht west ' (late enough in the day, by-the-by — the army only left Musselburgh, seemingly, at 5 p.m.), ' intending that night to have gone to Queensferry.' But if there is this difficulty in determining what was the exact purpose I and direction of the forward move — and the point surely deserves to be investigated with some precision — it is still harder to say why it was not continued on the morrow. ' That night ' the English did encamp on what they called the Pentlands ; all next * Mercurius PoHticus, August ^, p. 175 (E 610). t Il>id., August p, p. 186 (E 610). t It is just possible — even though due allowance is made for the fact that the words just quoted were written by Rushworth, Cromwell's own secretary — that no definite line of action had been mapped out. Cromwell may have marched to the south of Edinburgh, meaning to strike north-west to Queensferry, or due north {between Edinburgh and the strong position at Corstorphine, which Leslie had not yet taken up), according as the lie of the ground and the counter-movements of the enemy permitted. ' HOPES OF A CCOMMODA TION ' $7 day they remained there; and on the following afternoon they retired to Musselburgh again. Why, instead of advancing, did they elect to fall back ? Rushworth, whose importance as a witness has just been men- tioned below, states that what * diverted the design for that time ' was that ' the passes were so difficult,' and that there were * other considerations.' The former deterrent may, with the exactitude of a precisian, be analyzed into three parts — the hilliness of the country for the passage of horse and guns ; the threatening look of the Water of Leith valley if the cavalry /taii been scouting anywhere between Drumsheugh and Coltbridge ; and the bad surface, in an inclement season, of such roads as there were. (On the latter point it may be noted that the Lammas floods, annually expected in Scotland at that season, were evidently ' out ' in full volume by now.) In like manner, the ' other considerations ' admit also of some sub- division. It is just possible that they are in part to be accounted for by Cromwell's having got wind of a Scots design to slip past him and carry the war into England. There was some talk"^ of such retaliation just then ; Loudoun held out the prospect of it to Charles, on the 14th or 15th, as an inducement for him to sign the Declaration mentioned in our next paragraph ;t and if Cromwell heard of it at this time it may have set him thinking that by advancing to Queensferry he would be giving his opponents a better start of him than he cared to risk. Another purely military reason for comparative inaction is to be found in the necessity there was for Cromwell's weighing the problem whether he could most effectually curtail the Scots com- missariat by staying on the Braids or advancing to the Ferry. The latter point will come up again ; something falls to be said later, by way of summarizing as fully as possible the pros and cons in regard to it. But meanwhile one cannot but concur with Dr. Gardiner in pronouncing the ' other considerations ' which occa- sioned the English army's temporary inaction to have been mainly poHtical. On the day that Cromwell marched to the Braids, Leslie wrote him a letter, enclosing a Resolution :[ of the Kirk and State to the effect that they did not feel called upon further to defend King * And, indeed, something more. The move had already been attempted — on a small scale. Some 2,000 Scots had been detached and sent to Berwick in the beginning of August, in order to intercept (but they were too late) some bullion that was being sent North for the pay of the English troops. — Mercurius Politicus, August \% (E 610). t ' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 131. X Termed by Baillie (iii., p. 114) 'that terrible act of disclaiming the King's interest.' Declaration (August 13, from the * West Kirk ') of the Commission of the General Assembly and Committee of Estates : * They will not own him ' (Charles) ' or his interest otherwise than with a subordination to God, and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of God, and disclaims his and his father's opposition to ( the work of God and to the Covenant. ' 58 CROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Charles's cause till he signed a Declaration* of his humiliation for his father's misdeeds (following evil counsels, opposition to the work of reformation, etc.) and his mother's 'idolatry,' as they called the ' fair, frail ' Henrietta Maria's Roman Catholicism. Nor was that all. Colonel Gilbert Ker either accompanied the bearer of Leslie's missive, or found his way independently across the Borough- muir, in order to hold a 'parley at our guards,' and unbosom himself to the readily-hearkening English of his scruples about the Chief Malignant. Now, Ker was only one of a knot of officers who for the time being were practically in a state of mutiny. Their insubordination! showed itself in a remonstrance presented to the Committee of Estates by Ker, Major-General Holburn, Sir John Brown, and Wemyss of the artillery (along with the now only nominally military Burleigh),! in which they let it be seen that unless ' the Malignant interest ' was expressly disowned by all concerned, they would quit their present service and take action on their own account. It is true that,' as Dr. Gardiner§ shows, the latter course did not necessarily involve their going over to the English. They were even now contemplating that fatuous line of isolated and inde- pendent resistance to the invaders which some of them did after- wards actually follow out — were, in fine, thinking of fighting for their own hands, 'merely upon the former grounds and principles,' as they put it, ' in defence of the Cause, Covenant, and Kingdom.' But these patent indications of dissensions in the Scotch camp evidently sufficed, as Dr. Gardiner surmises, to persuade Cromwell that his appeals to the consciences of the Scots were already taking effect. Ker's talk evidently warranted the expectation of his choosing (just as the Leslies themselves had chosen when last Cromwell had been in Scotland) rather to co operate with the invaders than to support the Royalist side. And the hopes thus engendered put Cromwell on a wrong scent for the time being.H * Text of it in Sir Edward Walker, pp. 170-176. The English summarized it as amounting to a promise by Charles ' to do nothing for the future but by the advice of the Kirk and State '; and he did expressly 'in the first place profess and declare that he would have no enemies but the enemies of the Covenant.' This from Charles, whose autocratic leanings at the outset of his career gave the cue (if we may mention thus incidentally almost the most far-reaching fact that these pages have to do with) to no less a person than his cousin Louis XIV. ! No wonder the English critics roundly said in so many words that ' men . . . with ease may see through the deceit and lameness ' of the document. t It is true that that imputation might have been met, by some of those con- cerned, with the rejoinder that they were acting rather in their civil than in their military capacity. Sir John Brown, for example, was, or had been, ' Commis- sioner ' (for Perthshire) in Parliament. But Holburn (though ' of Menstrie ') and Ker (supposed to have been Laird of Lochtour) could not say the same thing ; they were nothing if not officers, and should have set an example of discipline. X Balfour, iv. 94 ; ' Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. 286. § P. 311 ('Hist. Com. and Prot.,' i., as in all references here, unless otherwise stated). II The Lord General had yet to learn that, ' in the way of logical ratiocination,* THE ' PURGING ' ; CHA RLES'S DECLA RA TION 59 For some days he fancied that there must be a considerable seces- sion from the ranks of his opponents ; and during that time, accord- ingly, he abandoned his wholly- or half-formed projects, fell back from the Braids, instead of advancing beyond, and waited expect- antly at Musselburgh. Such is the gist of the account which Dr. Gardiner gives of the matter, amplifying with circumstantial and much-needed detail Carlyle's almost incidental mention of these ' hopes of accommoda- tion.' And on such authority it may unhesitatingly be accepted. Nay, more, it may be corroborated by quoting the account of an English council of war just a week later, when all the field-officers and captains were called together to consider ' whether"*^ anything could be offered further in an amicable way to prevent the misery of what must follow by force, or that we should doe our utmost endeavours to reduce them, using all meanes which an invading enemy will.' That shows conclusively enough, one may say, how the invaders* hand had been stayed during the intervening week by this illusory hope of a good result from the Scots' differences of opinion. But there is another point (again of almost purely military import) that falls to be mentioned as having most likely helped to induce the English to remain quiescent all this time. It can only have been when Croniwell reached Musselburgh on his return from Dunbar, on the 12th, that he learned to what lengths the process of ' purging ' was being pushed in the Scots army.f It is obvious that the news of it could not raise his hopes of detaching a Scots party as did the simultaneous action of Ker and his associates : the officers and soldiers thus expelled were the most bitter of his oppo- nents, the last whom he could expect to join him. But the mere fact of their being cashiered and dismissed in their thousands may well have persuaded him that by this other manifestation of their mutual animosities the Scots were playing into his hands almost equally well. The more opportunity he afforded them for giving free play to their internecine jealousies, the better for himself (Cromwell may quite reasonably have argued) in the long run. They had closed up their ranks in presence of the common enemy {as our Appendix shows) when he formerly appeared before Edin- burgh ' in a warhke manner ' ; it was natural to infer, from the news which now reached him, that his keeping quiet would embolden them to resume, and continue with fervour heightened by previous enforced suppression, their suicidal scrutiny. Nor did he count in vain upon this, if it indeed was, as seems these would-be seceders were as subtile as Dugald Dalgetty himself; and that the casus improvisus presented to the Major when asked to go to Mass by his Spanish paymasters was a flea-bite compared to the complexities that troubled Ker's conscience. * 'A True Relation' (E 610, 8). The original reads 'before,' and makes nonsense of the sentence. t See Appendix. 6o CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS most probable, a factor in determining his present line of policy. For the * purging ' went on during the whole of this month of August. The other rift in the lute was, however, more promptly caulked up. On August 1 6 Charles signed the Declaration required of him."*^ Thanks to the delays occasioned by the King's being then at Dun- fermHne,t Cromwell knew the fact only on the 20th; and Strachan,:}: who accompanied the party who then brought him the intimation, seems, in the course of a parley with Lambert, to have argued that * Carlyle speaks very scornfully of this concession ; Dr. Gardiner says the King ' chose the path of dishonour ' in subscribing the document. But (with submission) both writers seem to have yielded to the temptation to construe the deeds of Charles at this time in the light of his discreditable policy and character after the Restoration. They presuppose a continuity of unscrupulousness, a certain consistency in evil-doing, which cannot be held to be absolutely proved. The finessing that was forced upon the young King in his then circumstances cannot but have done a great deal towards warping his nature, destroying his ' illusions,' and undermining his youthful belief in human nature ; but one hesitates to say that it was of a piece with — marked, indeed, the beginning of — his after- policy of cynical and undeviating dissimulation. As to its having even been so much intentional finesse, there is in this instance room for doubt. On the matter of fact in regard to the signing of the Declaration, one is strongly tempted to pin one's faith to that copy of the document in the Clarendon MSS. (Gardiner, p. 313) which states that Charles never saw it ' till 'twas printed,' and then disavowed it. For his Scotch taskmasters were, undeniably, capable of issuing it thus sur- reptitiously, though ostensibly with his approval. Dr. Gardiner (whose mention of that Clarendon MS. is an instance of his fairness) relates that they had put forth another most important announcement in his name, but wholly without his know- ledge, a week or two before ; and elsewhere ('Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 130) we have the like testimony in Loudoun's wa//" statement how he had altered, to suit the taste of Parliament, the terms of a reply by Charles on the minor matter of the * purging ' of his Court. In any case, is it not common charity to point out that, supposing Charles did sign the declaration, he had no option in the matter? Once again he acted on sheer compulsion ; it was probably represented to him . that any straining at the gnat would be ludicrous punctilio after his having swallowed the camel ; and once more his Mentors set him a fine example of straightforwardness. Argyle, e.g., spoke to him in so many words of the necessity of humouring ' these madmen ' — Ker and the rest. t The comings and goings of the afterwards Merry Monarch do not as yet concern us. We last left him on the Castle Hill at Edinburgh, having previously mentioned, quite incidentally, his landing at Speymouth. For his itinerary between those two points see Balfour or, still better. Sir Edward Walker. (We would, by the way, we knew the particulars of that * strange affront ' offered him at Leith, which Baillie alone among the contemporary writers gives a hint of ; which Mr. Eyre Todd, among those of our own day, has rather persuasively ' written up' in ' Anne of Argyle.') He was withdrawn from Edinburgh ' by his Council and the general persons of the army ' (* sore against his own mind ' — one can fancy the frame of it) on August 2. The Kirk feared a monarchical reaction, a revulsion of popular feeling, at the sight of the undeniably gallant young Stuart — a boy, be it remembered, just out of his teens ; so he was ' purged ' like any other ' Malignant.' For the present, therefore, his movements have no bearing on the military history of the period. X It may have been noted that Strachan's name did not appear on the list of subscribers to the ' Remonstrance of the Officers.' This is his first reappearance since the Musselburgh camisade ; the presumption is that he had there been wounded — not of course fatally, as Cromwell for a while believed, but still some- what badly. THE CAMP ON THE BRAIDS 6i he and the other dissentients now had clear grounds for abiding by their compatriots in opposition to the invaders.* Thus, then, by the insertion of magnetic 'considerations,' rather civil than military in character, had the needle of Cromwell's strategic resolves been deflected. Thanks to them, the renewal of his effort to come to grips with the Scots had been postponed for the best part of a precious week. The scruples of Ker and Strachan had, evidently unwittingly, served Leslie's turn very neatly ; for the waste of time occasioned through their queasy switherings had done more to baffle Cromwell than any amount of active service against him in the field. The four days from 15 to 18 August, during which the English remained at Eskmouth, constituted so much clear gain of time to the defending army. On the latter date, again a Sunday, the invaders returned to the Braids;! yet the movement indicated no settled determination * Dr. Gardiner scarcely takes this view, but it seems the natural construction to put upon the statement (*A True Relation,' E 610, 8) that 'much was said to convince each other, but it amounted to nothing.' f The English news-letters all speak of this as a return to * our old quarters on the Pentland Hills.' As the invaders clearly were suffered to march without molestation and encamp anywhere they would on the Craiglockhart (then called Gorgie), Blackford, and Braid Hills proper, it is of little use to pretend to a pedantic accuracy, and say that at such and such a date Cromwell's men occupied exactly such and such an area of this rising ground. Yet so much can definitely be said — that only now, on this second march thither, did the English deliberately * prick for the softest plank,' or, in a lingo less nautical, seek out the best camping- ground to be had thereaway. On the following Tuesday (August 20), as we read, they * began to intrench on Pentland Hills' ('A True Relation,' E 610, 8) ; and the site they chose for their encampment must for many reasons be pointed out to the reader as clearly as possible. It was evidently not selected solely for the sake of shelter and comfort, as is implied in the phrase just used. It was the ' Galachlaw,' the southward sloping ridge stretching between Mortonhall on the east and Fairmilehead cross-roads on the west. Tradition has accurately pre- served the memory of the very place ; it is marked and properly labelled on the six inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map ; and Chancellor Loudoun (to call a witness who was a contemporary, and therefore very much more trustworthy than either of those two) evidently indicates the same spot when he twice mentions, in writing from Corstorphine in the third week of August, the enemy's lying ' betwixt Braid's Craigs and the Pentland Hills' ('Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. 276, 294). Now, it is unlikely the English chose this southerly ground because of its proximity to a relic of certain other invaders of Caledonia — their forerunners the Romans, who built the bridge with the ' skewed arch ' that to this day spans the burn hard by. A reason rather less dramatically pleasing suggests itself, namely, that they stood in wholesome dread of night sorties and * onfalls ' by the Scotch, and deliberately removed as far from Leslie's quarters as they could go without putting the real Pentlands between them and Edinburgh. Of course the comparatively sheltered aspect of the place may well have had something to do with their pitching their tents (for tents they had, ever since their second arrival at Musselburgh) where they did. Not that they found there the ' close, warm ' cover such as foxes love (the comparison is odorous) ; such shelter, we mean, as they would have found to-day in the modern plantations. There was no timber then ; they had to build a gallows for a sergeant who had looted ' a cloke ' ; ' there was no tree to hang him on.' But there was water near at hand ; it was * the beild of the hill' — of, indeed, the whole range, one might say ; and they lay 62 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS even now to resume the plans of advance already once formed only to be abandoned. For it was not till the Tuesday (August 20) that, as we have seen, Cromwell knew of the temporary smoothing over of the dissensions in the Scotch camp ; nor till the follow- ing day that he held the council of war, which may be regarded as having decided that all ' hopes of accommodation ' were now over. And even had the English been now inclined to take the route in good earnest for Queensferry, their chance of succeeding in pushing on there had in the meantime vanished. For Leshe was not the man to be caught napping. We have seen how he had made a counter-move on the first word of Cromwell's circumventing movement in the previous week ; and have gathered together all the scattered indications which go to prove that he then showed a formidable enough front between the West Kirk and the valley of the Water of Leith to dissuade the invader from making a move, had he intended it, in that direction. Now, some six or seven days later, he took up a position that barred the way to the sea on whichever line the English might endeavour to get there, whether immediately to the west of Edinburgh, or by a wider sweep round, sloping in the long run north-westward. Simultaneously with Crom- well's return to the Braids (say on Monday, the 19th), the Scots leader sent an advance guard of 3,000 cavalry to the west side of the Water of Leith, occupying the slopes above Murrayfield, as one may suppose, and so reinforcing the artillery already sent thither. The next day was that signalized by his ' trumpet ' to the English camp, announcing Charles's having signed the Declaration which for the present ensured unanimity of action amongst his own followers ; and the invaders were simultaneously treated to a demonstration of its practical effect as they watched the entire Scots army defiling west- wards* to take possession of the rising ground stretching in an un- broken line from Coltbridge to Corstorphine. well * forenent ' the sun, if it ever shone. Yet their case was less happy than that of the Exiled Duke ; they could not say they had ' no enemy but winter and rough weather.' We fancy, in fine, they aimed at securing immunity from attack as .well as ensuring what comfort they could. In their hopes of the latter they were dis- appointed, as we know from their oft grumblings and very real sufferings ; as to the former, well might NicoU write of Cromwell's ' having the advantage of the ground and hills about him for his defence.' * Let it not be thought that we are here betrayed for the nonce into a touch that is rather picturesque than exact. (We have ever in mind, be it noted, the late Dr. Skene's not unfounded grievance against the late John Richard Green, that he described events like the landing of Hengist and Horsa with as much exactitude as if he had been an eye-witness.) For it almost stands to reason that the Scotch marched along ' the lang gait ' (a name which Carlyle, by the way, misunderstood) from the bank of the Nor' Loch westwards as far, we take it, as the Coltbridge ; crossed the Water of Leith by that then ' new ' structure (so styled in a contemporary map) ; and thence continued their route by * the calsey between Corstorphin and the Colt Bridge ' that we read of in a post-Restoration Act of Parliament. If so, the English from their * Pentlands '. must have had continuous enough glimpses of the enemy to warrant our speaking as above. Unless, indeed, LESLIE'S MOVE TO CORSTORPHINE 63' The sight at once revived in the breasts of the English those hopes of * provoking the enemy to fight ' that had been steadily dwindling during the previous three weeks' marching and counter-marching and mere inaction. This month of August had so far been spent by them only in ' advancing and retiring ' (for all the world like a set of country dancers), in fruitlessly prowling round Edinburgh when they were not otherwise engaged in shifting their base of operations up and down the coast. The tedium had been relieved only by such grim incidents as the losing a few stragglers who had been cut off by the enemy when wandering too far afield in search of provender, the summary punishment of others whose inducement to go a-roam- ing had worn the less innocent form of loot,"*^ the trial, sentence, and punishment of a score or two of deserters who had been caught sneaking back to England by way of Berwick. Sometimes, it is true, those at headquarters found other relief from the monotony, thanks to their London friends who sat at home in ease. The time had not yet come for the latter to execute for them little commissions such as that requesting the despatch of 'three dozen of quart glass bottles of the best canary sack in London. 't The entertainment they in the meantime afforded was of quite another sort. For some inventive pamphleteer in the Fleet Street or Grub Street of the day — which seems to have been Cornhill — had concocted a plausible account^ of the capture of Leith ; and although, in the Leslie effected the change of position under cover of night. As touching which, it must be confessed that the English news-letter (this oft-quoted ' True Relation ' of August 23), which alone informs us of the date of the Scots march, rather puzzles one by the statement that ' when we expected an engagement they retreated back to Leith.' To a patiently-groping historian the statement suggests this possibility, that Leslie advanced to Corstorphine by a more northerly route than that just named, drew back some portion of his forces on arrival there (which gave the English vedettes within sight of the Coltbridge gap — if that was the point — the idea conveyed in the clause just quoted), and only completed the occupation of the southward face of the long hill with his 20,000 men between nightfall on the 20th and the morning of the 21st. * The fate of the sergeant who had plundered ' a cloke ' has already been alluded to. Three of the rank and file, his accomplices, were kept in expectation of capital punishment until the execution was over, and only then reprieved. The incident (to be found, like those bracketed with it above, in the ' True Relation ' aforesaid) is one of our promised illustrations of Cromwell's discipline in this campaign. An instance of conciliation was his sending back to the Scotch camp ('in his own coach . . . and wagons') the prisoners and wounded men taken at Musselburgh. Leslie's furtive reception of the soldiers thus returned (he mounted them on horseback, injured men and all, and carried them 'beside Edinburgh, that the people might not take notice of the wounded men and the courtesy of our noble general') gave the English some ground for complaint on the score of want of reciprocity in kindliness. Balfour mentions the incident as an ordinary ex- change. For Scots testimony to the strictness of Cromwellian discipline, see Nicoll's mention ('Diary,' p. 33) of the punishments of English soldiers for looting and drunkenness. t ' Letters from Roundhead Officers ' (Bannatyne Club publication), p. 22. % ' Under the name of one Mr. Brookes, at the Angel in Cornhill, No. 3,' says the ' True Relation ' (our authority for all the foregoing details). 64 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS measured language of that day, the better-informed correspondents 'at the front 'only remarked that 'we wonder to see such a false relation printed,' one can fancy the bitter laugh, half contemptuous, half amused, with which the queer, badly-printed little sheet was passed round among the officers. But now it must have seemed that they were on the eve of more congenial employment than the perusing that 'too previous' narrative ; the idle waiting-on within sight of the town, ' far set in fields and woods,' below them ; the lurking inactive (it must have seemed that Leslie's caution was infectious), in their own strong and well-guarded position. For here were the Scots at last openly, as it seemed, ' drawn out into the field to fight them ': the long-expected battle could surely not be long of coming now. Nor was it, though even yet there were delays and disappointments to be brooked. CHAPTER III. THE * PASSES ' OF THE WATER OF LEITH — REDHALL SIEGE — FORWARD TO THE FIRTH. IT is obvious enough — and has already been explained — why Leslie had chosen the new position which we have mentioned him as now occupying. It is not equally clear* what Crom- well had in view when he made the second move to the Braids, which had necessitated the Scots counter-move. Was he still contemplating the march to Queensferry which he had certainly had some idea of attempting a week earlier ? One can hardly suppose he had that project alone in view. Brilliantly decisive as its successful achievement might have been in the middle of the month, the risks involved in the attempt might well seem too great to be incurred, unless in sheer desperation, thus late in the day. If only the Scots commissariat held out better than the English were led to expect, the defending army was as independent of addi- tional supplies as it was of further reinforcement, and could therefore regard even the occupation of Queensferry with as much equanimity as it had regarded the invaders' almost uncontested occupation of Musselburgh. Then, again, there was the question — and a very grave question — whether the more westerly port could prove as useful a point d'appui with the fleet as the eastern one. If Cromwell knew (and he doubtless had been informed) of the strength of Inch- garvie, he must have had his doubts on that point. It might have been worth while to chance a repulse there on the 13th or 14th ; but if there was one thing more clear than another by now, it was that in the effort to cut off Leslie's supplies the English could afford to run no risks in regard to their own. Add to all these considerations the possibilityt of Leslie's breaking away, while the invaders marched * For the hint lately thrown out as to his taking a leaf out of his opponent's book does not lead us very far. j Which was at this very time being insistently brought under the vScots General's notice by some of his followers. Dr. Gardiner is inclined to suppose the suggestion was pressed on him mainly by a mere civilian — Lord Loudoun, the Chancellor ; but some words from his lordship's own pen (' Ancram and Lothian 5 66 CROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS westwards, towards the Borders and the undevastated harvest-fields of the northern English shires — a contingency which Cromwell, as already conjectured, must have been on his guard against ; and it will be allowed the invader had reason to think twice about pushing on north-westwards. Therefore it is easily understood why he should have been content to adopt that safer middle course with which alone he has been credited in history — until Dr. Gardiner came along. The bolder project of an attempt upon Queensferry (the existence of which was first brought to light by that historian) had not yet been wholly given up ; we shall have to cite at least one unquestionable fact showing it to have been entertained still later on. But everything goes to show ^at it alone cannot have been Cromwell's reason for again encamp^ ing on the Braids. Had that been so, he would not have stayed there so long as he did ; and — to cite a positive bit of evidence as well as that negative one — he would have severed his line of communica- tion with Musselburgh instead of (as he did)'^ retaining that base of operations, and further guarding it against attack. What, then, was the * safer middle course ' ? Why, to try the effect of threatening Leslie's lines of communication by this re- occupation of the Braids. He had some grounds for believing that, without any of the risks attending the Queensferry project, he might even from this half-way house operate so as to starve out the Scots, and drive them into the open through want of forage and provisions. There seemed reason to expect that a few days' waiting where he now was would have the same effect as he had hoped for from the move up the Firth, while it avoided the dangers of the latter course. Doubtless, indeed, Cromwell took with a grain of salt the stories of his spies in Edinburgh, whose inclination naturally must have been to encourage their friends outside by making the worst of the state of affairs within the walls of the city. But all their reports went to show that the defenders were 'reduced to extremity for want of provisions j*^ even a week before there had come tidings that the Scotch soldiery were allowed no more than a ration (and unlikely to last ' at that ') of Correspondence,' ii. 277) point rather to its having been the pet project of others. At all events, reference to that passage will show the reader that, if the Chancellor had at first favoured the idea, he had been argued out of his belief in its practicability. * For on this second inarch to the Braids the English took precautions which, as has previously been shown, they omitted when they first moved thither. They now garrisoned and fortified two houses in the neighbourhood of Musselburgh. One of these, * near the waterside,' was ' intended as a magazine for provisions for the army,' and may confidently enough (unless we were incorrect in our previous examination of the evidence, in a footnote to Chapter I., supra) be identified as Preston Tower. Its garrison numbered 200 men. The other was * a frontier to Dalkeith,' and was occupied (by 'a party commanded by Cap. PVedd of Col. Mallivere's regiment ') in order ' to secure the passages between the garrison and the army, it being in the midway betweene both ' {sic). Thanks to Nicoll, we know the latter post to have been Niddrie Marischal. THE HOSPITAL SHEETS 67 * a peny loaf for two men for twenty-four hours ' ;* and from time to time the English pickets caught hungry souls stealing out of Leith after nightfall in search of such scraps of food as they could glean in the country.! But there was another fact to be set against that encouraging posture of affairs. Even if Cromwell was, for the time being, sure of his own food-supply along that strengthened line of communication with Eskmouth, he had to lay his account with the ravages of disease in his camp. Exposure to the inclemency of what seems to have been an exceptionally wet seasoni was sending up the sick-list to an alarming figure ; already a number of invalids had been shipped home from Musselburgh; and there was only too good reason to fear that, as did come about ere long, the army would be literally deci- mated by dysentery. § It seems almost astonishing that the devastation thus wrought by the Lammas rainfall (which has already been named as a Scots ally comparable to those famed Russian commanders, Generals Janvier and Fevrier) should not have sufficed in itself to induce Cromwell to strike camp and take the route, coute que coute, towards Queensferry. But for the present it did not. Presumably for the reasons already guessed at in some detail, he remained about the Braids with his whole force (less the Stonyhill, Niddry, and Preston garrisons) for ten days. Let the precise date of his army's second arrival there be, for * • The Lord General's Letter ' (E 610, 4). t * A True Relation,' August 23. For evidence as to the real state of the case we may go by Nicoll's mention (p. 23) of the ' great skairshetie in Edinburgh ' in August. And if it be contended that the diarist speaks chiefly for the citizens in respect of the hardships they were put to in providing for the army, let it be shown that the soldiery also were in the same boat as regarded ' skairshetie,' from Chancellor Loudoun's letter of the loth of the month, about * victuals being so scarce as it will be very difficult to entertain our army in a body till the harvest ' (' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 134). There is also the evidence of Mercurius Politicus that ' notwithstanding . . . they seized above 2,0(X> boules of corn at Leith {sic), yet want of provender longer to subsist was that which drew them after ' the English when the latter finally retreated. Yet the date of that statement (the accuracy of which we do not question) must be carefully noted. It is from a copy oi Mercurius Politicus for the first week of June, 1651 (No. 52, contained in E 630), so that it throws no more light than do the citations from the Scots authorities upon the important but quite distinct question of CromiveWs knowledge of the state of the Scots commissariat. X In England as well as in Scotland, by the way. — St. John to Cromwell, * Milton State Papers,' p. 26. § ' Above 2,000 men useless ' — from sickness and casualties — was the figure officially stated {Mercurius Politicus, No. 15, E 613) a fortnight later, when the army had reached Dunbar. And the total of the force was under 17,000 ! No wonder the * Pentland ' foothills got a bad name among the English, whose oft repetition of their thankfulness at having more comfortable quarters round Edin- burgh in the following summer shows that the intervening twelvemonth had not dulled their recollection of the latrines and field-hospitals there in the year with which we are now dealing. Cromwell's own figures, by the way (in letter cxlv.) show this ' above 2,000 ' to have been rather an under-estimate than an exaggera- tion, though frankly we cannot account for his ' fourteen thousand ' to begin with. 5—2 68 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS exactitude, recalled to mind. It was Sunday, August i8. Not until t'uesday, the 27th, did they make a final move thence. ■ The earlier part of that intervening period— short enough in itself, but in the circumstances how critical ! — was spent by the English in ^pickeering ' before the Scots' new position, investigating the * avenues to ' it (only to find them, as the passage those words are quoted from goes on to say, ' fenced with rivers and defiles '), and endeavouring to intercept the defenders' convoys on the western roads. During the remainder of the time, there was the further preoccupation of preparing the way for a ' remove ' to Queensferry. The latter affair was, of course, the more momentous of the two^ the turning point, indeed, of this part of the campaign. Both, however, had one thing in common. The obstacles encountered by the English in setting about the former part of their operations were all of a piece with those that baffled them later. For these hindrances may all be accounted for in the one way, by reference, namely, to the configura- tion of the Water of Leith valley. In after-days these same English wrote of their opponents 'having a very good friend of the water,' and the phrase then applied to some Scottish successes at sea may not unsuitably be pressed into service here. * A very good friend ' David Leslie did indeed find that Water of Leith, which is in our own day Commercially useful, but otherwise insignificant. On its steep bank, just below the Dean village, he had once already rested the right wing of a line that stalled-off the English advance ; from across its level and now flooded haughs above Coltbridge he again, and just as successfully, defied the English to fight him yardarm to yardarm ; on a reach of it still farther up, where the sweet dingle of Colinton con- tracts into the narrow and rocky defile leading down to the Slate Ford, he had meanwhile secreted a garrison that was presently to give Cromwell no little trouble. Of the first of these unwonted 'passages in the history of the Water of Leith,' we have already given what account is possible."* Over the second there is every temptation for one's lingering some- what. It involved at least one rather stirring episode in the life of Oliver Cromwell himself ; and it has no small military importance to boot, revealing as it does that General's consciousness of his great mistake in having allowed the Scots to forestall him in occupying the Coltbridge — Corstorphine slopes. So one may be pardoned for trying to picture in some detail the salient points of the natural barrier that kept him from grappling with Leslie's army there ; and seeking thus to make it clear to the reader how the narrow strath of the Water of Leith — all firm ground in our own day, and intersected less by water-courses than by railways — proved to be not even a I * Antea, pp. 55-6, 62. Apropos, one would like to see it proved that the name 'Drumsheugh is really an abbreviation of * Meldrum's Heugh,' rather than a cor- ruption of * Drumselch'; for then we should have the Gaelic name for a precipitous chasm localized in a spot which it exactly suits. PHYSIOGRAPHY 69 ' debateable ' land, much less to afford a battle-ground, for the English. The one essential fact, of course, is that all this stretch of country between the Scots and English outposts, on the north and south respectively, was then quite undrained.* Dr. Gardiner has pointed out the most prominent sheets of surface water which it then con- tained — those two lochs, the one stretching westward towards the Gogar Burn, the other eastwards at least halfway to Coltbridge, that guarded Leslie's front where he lay with his headquarters in Cor- storphine Castle. Adair's map of 1680 shows those 'lakes'; but they are marked quite as plainly in Blaeu's still earlier chart of ' Lothian and Litquo ' (1654), conveniently reprinted in facsimile in our own day. And the enthusiastic reconstructor of the history of Corstorphinet has done other service to the investigators of this period of military history than by directing them, as his book directed Dr. Gardiner, to Adair's map. His statement that ' the land between Coltbridge and Redheughs ' (on Gogar Burn) . . . ' was full of bogs and marshes,' survivals from the time ' when the Lords Forrester encouraged the accumulation of water as a means of defence and for carriage of provisions by boat from Coltbridge,' has an important bearing upon the operations that now went on. One might add some quite relevant and interesting particulars ;J but we need only cite the fact (already parenthetically stated) that the Coltbridge,§ then as now, spanned the Water of Leith at the eastern- most edge of the hill which Leslie's army occupied, and add to this also— that the only other bridge leading across the stream anywhere below the Slate Ford was that of Sauchton. By naming these land- marks, we shall probably have stated enough for the reader's guidance just at present. For it was evidently at these two points — one of them the western, * Oddly enough, a matter of personal, one might say human, interest, crops up just here, by way of relief from the mere technicalities of military strategy. Matter- of-fact Oliver must constantly have reflected how suitable a spot was this valley for experiments in drainage, and how backward were the Scots in not having started even modest engineering works towards that end. It was simply as a farmer, to be sure, that he had in earlier years supported the project of the Bedford Level for his own Fenland, and helped to drive through that great work ; it was now as a soldier that he must mentally have rebuked the Scots' remissness about clearing the surface water off their ' haughs.' But if he already, thus early in the day, thought he had a sufficient grievance against the primitive and Noachian physiographical features of the locality, he had something yet to learn on that head ; and was — he, the ' Ix)rd of the Fens' — to experience the very irony of fate, before he was done with them, among these quite home-like quagmires. t Mr. Upton Selway, * A Midlothian Village ' (Edinburgh, 1890). X Such as the picturesque tradition about the lamp kept burning o' nights in Corstorphine Kirk, for the guidance of travellers belated among these quaking morasses. § There is some reason to suppose that, though marked conspicuously enough as the ' Newbridge ' in Blaeu's map, it was only a footbridge in those days. The ' Coudbridge ford ' would hardly have been spoken of in later Acts of Parliament had the structure been used by other than pedestrian passers-by. ^ CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the Other the southern point of approach to Corstorphine itself — that the skirmishing between the outposts of the two forces went on ; and the passage that has been quoted by way of description of the nature of the ground, serves to show why no great measure of success attended the EngHsh. There was no getting at the Scots across the aforesaid * bogs and marshes.' What their chances might have been at another time of year we have no means of knowing ; though the Scots would then, probably enough, have missed the full extent of the advantage* which the surface water of the district gave them in this season of Lammas floods. But, as things were, the undrained, swampy land told forcibly against their successfully conducting their operations, and one can see what an advantage the Scots must have had in being able rapidly to concentrate in large numbers at any threatened point by marching along the firm ' calsey ' already spoken of. It was in vain that the English Lord General himself led ' a forlorne 't up to Coltbridge (as we fancy) on the day when the * It is just possible that they fell back upon the Dutch plan — though they could liot adopt it to the same heroic extent as the Hollanders — of deliberately laying the land under water. A Scots Act of 1661 (Thomson, vol. vii., p. 290) orders the * tenants of Redheughs,' and those of ' Saughton, Saughtonhall and Dean,' respec- tively to ' make up a breach ' in the dyke of the Gogar Burn, and * to clear the foresaid ditches and watergang ' ; * whereby the low-lying lands in the barony of Corstorphin and meadow thereof may not be altogether overflowed.' May not the neglect of drainage therein indicated have been deliberately resorted to eleven years earlier, in order to embarrass the invaders ? t And thereby came in for the adventure which has in passing been spoken of above. It seems strange that Carlyle did not utilize the incident, affording as it does one of the few glimpses we get of Cromwell himself in the field at this time. Possibly the annotator of the ' Letters and Speeches ' skimmed through the King's Pamphlets, as through an important collection of documents about the French Revolution, while 'standing on a ladder in the British Museum.' For otherwise he would surely have found here a Cromwellian trait after his own heart. ' In the meanetime' (about, as we have already guessed, Monday, August 19) ' severall great bodies of the enemies horse, to the number of 2 or 3000, were drawn out on the west side of Edenburgh, betweene the river Leith and the sea ; and having an advantage of a passe over the river (which they supposed our designe was to take) severall parties of theirs came and pickered in the sight of our army ; but, upon the drawing up of our parties, retreated back. His Excellency in person drew out a forlorn, and went before them' (' made a gallant hazard of his own noble person in the head of that party,' says another account) ; ' when he came near them, one of them fired a carbine, upon which his Excellency called to him and said, If he had been one of his souldiers he would have cashiered him for firing at such a distance ; whereupon he that fired, having formerly served L. G. Lesley, coming up, told him he was Cromwell himself, and that he had seen him in Yorkshire with his master' ('A True Relation,' E 610, 8). The construction of that clause is no better than it might be ; the sense probably is, that he with the carbine boldly advanced and shouted these words to Cromwell. The exact interpretation is of no great moment ; it is of more importance to speculate as to where the little incident occurred. We have named Coltbridge in our text, and that does seem the likeliest place. For it was a point on the route by which we imagine the Scots to have advanced, whose possession they might well be loath to suffer the English to contest ; and the tradition that at about this time Cromwell slept a night in Rose- burn House, hard by there, may pardonably enough be cited as a ' document' REDHALL AND ITS LAIRD 71 advance guard of the Scots appeared in this quarter ; in vain, alsp, that two days later (just after the break-up of that important English council of war mentioned in the previous chapter) there was skirmish- ing near Colinton House.* Hazarding a guess, in the absence of any other details but those given below, one may suppose this other affair of outposts to have been brought on by Leslie's endeavouring not only to bring some ' provisions ' safely in, but simultaneously to strengthen still further his important garrison at Redhall. For thither the scene of operations was now being shifted, and attention was soon to be concentrated upon that dominant point of an upper reach of the Water of Leith, the importance of which has already been indicated. We must suppose the EngHsh were rapidly realizing that the Braids were not a commanding enough situation for the prosecution of their present intercepting tactics ; they do not seem now to have had even the satisfaction, as in the previous week, of knowing that their presence there had warded off the approach of some hundreds of Highlanders to the Scots camp. And it cannot have been merely for the sake of the beaux yeux of its garrison that the invaders set themselves to capture Redhall. We have already seen how contemptuously they marched past the infinitely stronger Castle of Dalkeith, and the shots fired at them a few days before, ' out of several houses on the way,'t do not even seem to have been returned. But here they had to set about a regular investment, and Redhall gave them some little trouble ere they could call it their own by right of conquest. No one will wonder at this who knows the situation of the place. That, rather than the defensive capacity of Redhall itself, is what has to be looked to. The building was, indeed, the old baronial castle of a family bearing the heroic name of Otterburn jj but NiqoU'S bearing on the subject. Nor let anyone wonder that the bridge is not named as such in the foregoing extract : the word ' pass' was very indiscriminately used in those days. But it is of course possible that here it rather meant ' ford.' If so, the crossing between Ball Green and Saughtonhall, or the other farther up at Stenhouse Mills (Saughton Bridge, just below the latter point, being on this hypo- thesis excluded), or even the Slate Ford itself, might be the place. And any one of those different localities may well be proud to have been the scene of Cromwell's only serious effort— for we fancy the ' designe ' was meant rather more in earnest than the writer wished the London people to think— to possess himself of this relatively most important strategic position of Murrayfield and Corstorphine. If there was any other attempt, no hint of it has come down to us. • ' ' There came an alarum that the enemy was drawne out severall waies towards Sterling, towards the provisions. There was pickering neere Collington-house with the dragoones, and the enemy had a captaine of theirs slaine, and two prisoners.' — ' A True Relation,' «/ «//ra. .< t Craigmillar for one, almost certainly, and Prestonfield. : ; • X From them it had come into the possession of a branch of the HamiltonS) through the marriage of Sir James Hamilton, a cadet of the Innerwick and Feilton family, with Anne, heiress of Sir Thomas Hamilton {cf., e.g., Anderson's ' House of Hamilton,' 1825). The cropping up of the ducal name once more (so soon after the frequent mention of it necessitated in our account of the Musselburgh night 72 C ROM IV ELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS description of it as * such a waik hous ' points to its having been in no great condition to resist attack. If not a powerful stronghold in itself, however, it was situated'-' in so commanding a spot as to be attack, footnote aufea, p. 51) seemed at one time to afford the writer a clue to an interesting, and even chivalrous, passage of family history. It must have meant something that first those East Lothian Hamiltons should have been so active in leading night parties on to attack the English, so 'desperate ' in dying sword in hand on their own doorsteps afterwards ; and then that these other namesakes (alone among the Midlothian feudal lords) should have been found defying all the might of the invaders in their ' waik ' house. What could at first sight seem clearer than that there must have been a conspiracy of honour among the gentlemen of unfor- tunate Duke William's name to do all in their power to avenge his brother and to further his own interest by a side-wind — to sacrifice themselves and their fortunes, i.e., in an attempt to show that others beside the Campbells might, even in these sad times, do a service to Charles II, and poor old Scotland ? But alas for the engaging theory ! These Hamiltons of the Lothians can have been actuated by no such loyalty to their distant ducal relative ; they seem rather to have been of the Axgyle faction. Indeed, they were less ' sib ' to, less under the influence of the Hamiltons of that ilk, than dependent upon another branch, the Earl of Hadding- ton's family, who had (as incidentally mentioned already, footnote to Chapter I. of this Book) been rigid Covenanters ever since the Bishops' Wars. Sir Thomas Hamilton, the East Lothian representative who was least dubiously concerned in the attack on Musselburgh, was not yet the loyalist J>ur sang that he afterwards became ; he had been on the * Committee of War ' both for Lanark and Hadding- ton in February, 1649, and evidently at that time, therefore, an anti- Engagement Whiggamore. Nor do the Redhall Hamiltons seem to have been of any other way of thinking. Their traces are less clearly marked, indeed, than those of Sir Thomas (who, to be sure, had Bishop Burnet as his brother-in-law and sacer vates). There was a ' L. of Reidhall yo'"' on the Committee of War for Midlothian before the Engagement, and therefore presumably one that took part in that Royalist attempt (Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., p. 31). Two years afterwards, on the other hand, either he or the father who had then (possibly on the ' warily distri- buting' principle) sent him 'out' with the Engagers, is mentioned in the Scots Acts (p. 606 of the same vol.) in a way that shows him by that time to have been a supporter of Argyle. For the date of the entry is July 5, 1650, the climax of the Whiggamores' triumph ; and it plainly indicates their using their good offices on behalf of this Hamilton, as they certainly were not minded to exercise them on account of any but their own men. It is a pity for all sakes that the ' particular ' therein mentioned * anent the 1/ Reidhall ' and his ' affectione ' or public spirit is now irrecoverable. For one thing, it might have enabled us to say for certain whether the Laird who held out against Cromwell was the Sir James who had married Anne Otterburn (as Miss Warrender states in her ' Walks near Edin- burgh '), or the son of those two. Sir James the younger (as Mr. Murray holds in the ' Annals of the Parish of Colinton '). In all likelihood it was not Sir James pere, but Sir James ^Is ; for in all the narratives the defender of Redhall is bracketed with ' Major Hamilton, his brother,' and the latter was probably the Andrew Hamilton who succeeded the younger Sir James and is said to have followed the profession of arms. His identity, if it could be conclusively established, should be a final ' document' bearing upon the interesting point above mentioned, //"he was the Major Hamilton of Strachans regiment, whom Cromwell mentioned as a prisoner at Musselburgh (and presumably released with the rest of the captives next day), we should know for certain that he and his were animated by no burning Jteal for the Duke's interest. * Not exactly, we gather, where the present Redhall stands, but, like it, near enough to the eastern bank of the Water of Leith to make it the key to the ravine above described. THE GARRISON: LESLIE CHALLENGED 73 not a little formidable. Briefly, it dominated the Slate Ford, and was a very ugly menace to the passage of any hostile force at that point on the VVater of Leith. Its garrison might be weak, its walls, likely enough, little other than a ' ruckle of auld stanes,' its artillery contemptible ; but it was no mere quantite negligeable, for all that. In the first place, there were stout hearts within, ready to defend the house to the last ; in the second place, it commanded a part of the Water of Leith valley which was another Cockburnspath in little — a ' strait pass where,' as Cromwell himself said of the Berwickshire ravine, ' ten men to hinder are better than forty to make their way.' The steep, rocky banks, in many places precipitous, that slope down to the water on both sides, form in our own day a defile picturesque enough to have suggested comparison with Killiecrankie, and to no less an authority than Sir William Fraser, as we gather. But at the time we treat of the romantic beauty of the scenery was lost on the English. They looked at it with the anxious eyes of tacticians ; and saw only in the bonny glen a prospective death-trap for many of themselves — in the house that overlooked it such ' ane impediment in their way,' as NicoU, perhaps, did not fully understand even when he described it in those words. For (summing up the matter in the contemporary phrase, as very often one very effectively may) Redhall was ' of great concernment in order to a pass towards Queensferry.'* There below was the Slate Ford, by which the English must march if the pinch of hunger, the ravages of disease, and a last hope of starving out the Scots, should ever drive them on to Queensferry. Above it wound the deep, narrow defile through which meandered the Water of Leith on its seaward way from Colinton, and boldly on the high eastern bank of the stream rose this garrisoned and defiant Redhall. Until they managed to capture that house, no forward movement towards the Firth for the English ! There was practically a certainty, if they left it behind them unreduced, of Leslie's detaching enough of his men from the neighbouring Corstorphine slopes to hold the ravine in unassailable strength. Their retreat would in that case be cut off, and it would then be child's play for the Scots so to place them between two fires as to make them surrender ignominiously. Bitterly Cromwell must have rued his oversight in not having made sure of the place on his first coming to the Braids. It had then, on August 13 or 14, offered some show of opposition, ' yet, there not being above twenty men in it, it was not held con- siderable to take it in.'f To be sure, Cromwell had not at that time known for certain that he should ever be taking the north-westerly route towards the Firth ; but he must have wished he had been on the safe side now. Whether or not the garrison had, in the interim, been to some slight extent reinforced by Leslie, we have no means * Merairins Politicus^ p. 206 (E 6l2), t • The Lord General's Letter,' E 610, 4. 74 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS of knowing ;* but certain it is that the English now found three or four times their ' twenty men ' in Redhall, and encountered such resistance as they had Httle looked for. Another and evidently stronger house in this locality — Colinton — had tamely submitted, and been taken possession of by a prize crew in the beginning of the week (say the i8th). Now, the Lord or Laird Hamilton,! as he * Unless we were to change our minds, and pronounce, as one is somewhat tempted to, that the ' party with two great guns ' came here instead of to Colt- bridge {anfea, pp. 55 and 62, Chapter II. of this book). They may or they may not : the unavoidable English vagueness about these ' passes ' leaves one un- certain as to the fact. But it is plain enough that the strengthening of the garrison spoken of in the text as coming about between its first and second defiance of the English cannot have been entirely due to refugees and volunteers flocking in ; for there seems a suggestion that regulars are meant when we read in one account of its • sixty soldiers,' in another of 'about fourscore foot.' A good deal might be said on the more important question whether Leslie should not have supported the defenders of Redhall better when they were being driven to surrender in the end of the week. It is the first case of the kind that we have to do with ; though not for the last time was the Scots leader blamed here by some of his own followers, and taunted by his opponents, for declining to relieve a hard-pressed garrison. But the strategical question in this individual instance was simple enough. The creating a diversion in favour of the Redhall garrison would have involved a wide departure from that ' cautious, solid ' plan of campaign which Leslie had so carefully mapped out and we have, perhaps, sufficiently dwelt upon. He could hardly set about it without either hazarding an attack upon the invaders where they lay with 'the advantage of the ground and hills about them,' or, in the other event, laying open his own quarters to their attack. In fact — though civilians like Nicoll (one of those whose censures of the Scots leader can still be listened to) foresaw no such thing, and though the taunting English critics gave no hint of its being on the cards — it is more than probable there was no option between leaving Redhall to do the best it could and fighting a pitched battle with Cromwell there and then. We know that while the artillery and infantry besieged the place ' there were two regiments of foot and one regiment of horse interposed between them and the enemy' {A/ercttrms Politicus^ p. 206, E 612). Now, it was an encounter with a force similarly composed, and not of very much greater strength, that began the Battle of Dunbar, less than a fortnight afterwards ; and it is quite possible that now, as on that later day, Cromwell had made his dispositions for a general engage- ment if Leslie was tempted into meeting him (literally) halfway. If the Scots could send a force, as large as the occasion required, by any route across the bogs and marshes (due south along the Saughton road for choice, one may guess), it would go hard but the English could use that route too — could encounter and beat back the relieving-party, chase them along the path they had come by, chivvy the rest of the army out of their stolid humour once their blood was up, and so pro- voke them to fight at last. None so remote a prospect that must have seemed (even after wellnigh a month's experience of Leslie's 'masterly inactivity'). The fighting only wanted a beginning, surely. But that was not to be had. Leslie was not to be drawn. Doubtless he recognised that the delay which Redhall was causing the English was doing their business quite effectively enough, even as things were. ' But for this stay,' they might have found a way to circumvent him even yet. t It has been mentioned in an earlier footnote that his proper title was Sir James. One could wish that there were the data for identifying him with that other Hamilton whose soldierly advice at the Battle of Preston (according to Burnet's account thereof in the ' Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton ') only failed of its effect because of the bungling orders and counter-orders that passed between Duke James and the Earl of Callendar. DETAILS OF THE STORMING 75 is indifferently called, set such an example to his neighbour Sir James Foulis* as the latter might well be ashamed not to have followed. Let it not be supposed that we are about to be teiiipted into giving a detailed account of the siege of the place, which the writer has elsewhere,! and rather too hastily, styled 'the Basing House of this Northern war.' The particulars are to be found in Nicoll,| and still more circumstantially in the English news-letters. § For our own part, when we have mentioned that it was an Otterburn of Redhall who, about a century before, had said ' our comen people, and the stones in the strete, would ryse and rebelle agenst ' just such English aggression in Scotland as was then (and again now) threatened, II we have shown what temptations to fine writing we can, on occasion, put away from us. So good an illustration of the continuity of Scottish patriotism, and its constant reappear- ance in the same place under varying circumstances, might well seduce one into attempting * appropriate reflexions ' and an impressive display of eloquence ; and we natheless refrain there- from. The truth is that, if the leading facts of the matter are to be duly and fittingly weighed, one has no time for such flights — or, indeed, for more strictly relevant matters. It is interesting, no doubt, to know that the besiegers had to bring up their field-guns from (as we fancy) Stonyhill ; that these made no great impression even when they arrived and were trained upon the walls of the house ; that only when the defenders' ammunition ran short did the attacking-party effect a breach by means of petards and pickaxes ; that quarter was then implored by the garrison, who ' hung out white sheets,' and * not denied ' by the English ; that the latter found much plunder. Laird Hamilton's neighbours having confided their valuables to his keeping ; that he and his people were ' tirred '^ naked, but after- wards treated well enough and set at liberty, Cromwell * commending much his valour '; and that the English duly garrisoned the place, as became its great concernment in order to that ' pass.' Interest- ing, also, to learn that the ' 200 commanded foot ' who took Redhall were part of the regiment led by the then Colonel Monk, and so the nucleus of the Coldstream Guards formed by him some ten years * To be sure, that 'Laird of Collingtoune ' was an 'Engager,' and presum- ably had his hands tied in the meantime. The • report of his losses ' at the hands of the ' usurpers ' fills a good deal of space in Thomson's ' Acts ' (vol. vii. , PP- 345. 346). + The Scottish Review^ October, 1895. X Pp. 24, 25. § Mercurius Politicus^ pp. 201, 206 (E 612); 'A Brief Relation,' No. 53 / August 20 ^•^^.^)^ \ September lo ' tl Sir Ralph Sadler's 'State Papers' (Edin., 1809), vol. ii. p. 560. If The word is still in use — applied, they say, to the stripping slates from a roof. 76 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS later — which corps, therefore, flaunts on its banners to this day,* one may reproachfully say, the name of a victory won over the land of its birth. But a little question of dates, which may at first blush seem trifling enough, is really the most essential matter here from the historical point of view. Dr. Gardinert is right enough, to a day or so, in indicating that the resistance of Redhall detained the whole English army for forty-eight hours ; but we have to join issue with him when it comes to his saying that Cromwell gave orders for an attack on the 24th, ' and it was not till the 26th that the place sur- rendered.' The only authority for the latter statement is the opening sentence of a letter written by an English officer, George Downing, J which runs : ' Having taken Redhall, Monday, the 26th instant, we advanced from Penckland Hills about two miles to the Water of Leith.' Now, Dr. Gardiner has evidently given due weight to the fact of Downing's holding an important command, even if he was not already (as in the ensuing summer) the English ' scout-master,' or chief of the Intelligence Department. But our historian seems to have failed to weigh with the same care the punctuation of this one bit of ' intelligence,' and has consequently read it as meaning that Redhall was taken on ' Monday, the 26th instant,' not that ' we advanced' on that date. Yet the latter seems obviously the right construction to put upon the sentence, especially as every other narrative of the storm and surrender of the place expressly mentions Saturday, the 24th, as the date. Yet, though wrong in this detail. Dr. Gardiner is in substance sufficiently accurate. Apart from the pluckiness of the defence, it is the fact of Redhall's having hindered the invaders' progress, even for two or three days, at this most critical juncture, that makes its siege worthy of remembrance ; and the historian of the * Commonwealth and Protectorate ' has no more overlooked that fact than he has over- looked what brought it about — the imperative necessity, to wit, for Cromwell's securing his line of retreat at this point. If, however, we observe greater exactitude in the matter of dates than Dr. Gardiner has in this instance attained to, we do so, not out of pedantry, but because important tactical considerations are involved, that have nowhere as yet been fully gone into. Let us once more, then, quote the ' True Relation ' of August 23. That despatch — dated, be it noted, on the very eve of the reduction of Redhall, and sent *from the front,' or Stonyhill Garrison — mentions that 'this * That is to say, a regimental tradition claiming the iudos of the storm of Redhall is 'mentioned,' James Grant states, 'in the records of the Coldstream Guards.' t The first writer, as we have already said, who has so much as mentioned this not unimportant part of Cromwell's operations round Edinburgh. t To be found in E 612 (item 8 of the volume — ' Severall Letters from Scot- land '), and initialled * G. D.' (from which we conclude it to have been George Downing's). LAST DELAYS AND A FINAL STEP 77 night' (evidently Wednesday, the 21st, as that is the last day accounted for in the * Relation ') 'a party of horse and foot are drawn out upon a considerable design, of which more by the next* The destination of the ' party ' can hardly have been any other than Redhall ; and we may suppose that they marched from the Galach- law camp to attempt a night attack upon Sir James Hamilton's house. In that assault they must have been foiled ; and we hear of no other until the successful one of the Saturday after. The inter- vening time may confidently enough be supposed to have been spent in sending back to ' Stonehill Garrison ' at Eskmouth for the field- guns with which it was found necessary to reinforce the attacks— not of * horse and foot ' (the part played by the former is sufficiently commented on at p. 74, footnote, supra) but — of infantry alone. For if the artillery was ready at hand on the Galachlaw, it is hard to under- stand why Cromwell let two whole days pass without bringing it to bear. But that purely technical detail is not the only point that calls for mention. Another, of greater importance, comes into view also, viz., what deterred Cromwell from advancing north-westwards imme- diately after he had reduced Redhall ? We have, at quite consider- able length, explained that it was only in order to admit of an advance to Queensferry that the possession of the place was im- portant to the English ; and Cromwell himself says that when he did at length attempt the move, ' one hour's advantage gained ' would have enabled him to bring on a general engagement. Why, then, did he at the earlier stage waste no less than forty-eight precious hours? Redhall was his by the Saturday night at latest ; the road lay open ; he had no ultra-Sabbatarian scruples to deter him. Yet he brought his whole force only as far as the Slate Ford on the Monday,* and advanced no step farther until the next day. The probability is that the explanation is to be sought in that necessity for sending backwards and forwards to Musselburgh which has just been mentioned. The capture of Redhall was one pre- liminary towards taking the route to Queensferry ; another that had to be looked after was the ensuring a supply of provisions when the English reached that objective — if they should succeed in doing so. A pretty prospect it would be if they reached the upper shores of the Firth only to find no fleet and no commissariat there; still worse if the ships were lying off the port, but could land no supplies under the guns of Inchgarvie !f Talk of starving out the Scots ! The tables would be turned — and uncommonly empty tables ' at that ' — * Downing's letter, u/fi stipra. Dare one add to the comment already offered upon Dr. Gardiner's interpretation of it, that the historian seems to have post-dated the surrender of Redhall because the right chronology leaves a mystifying hiatus in the doings from the 24th to the 27th ? t Let it not be supposed that we are over-rating the importance of that tiny garrison ; in the ensuing year it defied, for practically the whole summer, an infinitely stronger fleet than Cromwell now had at his command. 78 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS if the new base of operations should prove thus useless.* We can guess, then, what messages passed between the Braids camp and the Stonyhill garrison all that Sunday and Monday — orders from Crom- well as to the time of the fleet's sailing with its cargo ; remonstrances from the skippers, very possibly, if they for their part were hampered by the non-arrival of supplies expected from Newcastle, and could find no substitute in the already depleted 'mills, kilns, and barns' of the Musselburgh district ;t and then peremptory commands from headquarters when Cromwell had decided to put all to the touch, for them to sail at such and such an hour with whatever provender there was. These things, we say, we can guess at ; all we know for certain is that 'in a letter of the 28th instant, in the afternoon, Mr. J^us/i- worth writes that he was that dayt up the Firth with provisions, almost at Queensferry .% And, simultaneously with the secretary's sailing in that direction, the chief and his whole army had marched towards the same point. * Here again we would beg the reader not to suppose we are exaggerating the difficulties with which Cromwell had to reckon. For he was utterly dependent on his supplies by sea. It was just at this time that Whitelocke (* Memorials,' p. 235) jotted down in wonder the descriptions sent 'from the front' of the rich cornlands of Midlothian, and the wilful total destruction of all the crops ; and just before this time that the English had made one last haul (big enough, apparently ; but what was it among so many ?) by seizing ' the whole corns and other stock upon the mains of Colinton, then laboured and possessed' (ingathered, i.e.) by the owner (Report anent the Lord Colinton's losses, — Thomson's ' Acts,' ubi supra). In a word, there was no more forage or victual to be had in the district. Again, as to the obvious enough alternative plan, Cromwell had the best of reasons for not now burdening his army with suppUes (forwarded from the cargoes of his ship at Eskmouth) that should suffice to support it for some little time at Queensferry. The division of labour was inevitable : the troops were there to fight, the fleet to keep them going with food. No. better reason need be sought for the Lord General's not transporting his commissariat along with him as he went, overland. It had been advisable enough to take ' 7 or 8 dales provisions ' to the Galachlaw camp, as was done, according to Rush worth's letter of August 16 ; but it was out of the question to burden the troops with the like amount when on the march and expectant of a battle. t ' Great quantities of victual ' had, NicoU says, been requisitioned in those places earlier in the month ; apparently — for our diarist is all at sea in his dates just then — between the 14th and i8th. What, by the way, are kilns ('killis') in this connection ? X Sic in the original. But the date was unquestionably Tuesday, the 27th ; on the afternoon of the 28th Rushworth could certainly not have seen from his ship (as the context goes on to inform us of his seeing) * both armies eight miles beyond Edinburgh.' § Mercurius Politicus^ p. 207 (E 612). CHAPTER IV. FROM GOGAR TO DUNBAR — ' THE FLASHES ' — FINAL OPERATIONS ROUND ARTHUR'S SEAT. THE event immediately following upon all these prelimi- naries and preparations was so inconclusive as to give to our narrative, we foresee, an air of anticlimax. Two whole chapters have had to be spent mainly in leading up to an action that consisted of no more than a few hours' quite inde- cisive skirmishing, and a game at long bowls between the gunners of the two armies. Have we, then, no sense of proportion ? Could we not, since their sequel was so futile, have dismissed those roundabout operations in the vicinity of Edinburgh in fewer words ? If seriously challenged with such a query, we should know how to meet it. Has it not, from the first, been explained that our express purpose is to supplement the existing account of these cam- paigns as fully as may be, and have not a number of interesting and even important points connected with this passage of Cromwellian military history been brought to light for the first time in the fore- going pages ? Again, it becomes necessary to distinguish when we speak of the events of this 27th of August as indecisive. They led, it is true, to no great ' butcher's bill,' and they certainly did not settle there and then the fate of Scotland and its Kirk and King ; but they did for the moment seem to be fairly conclusive as to the future of the English Commonwealth. Never again, in its brief history, did that newly-founded body politic stand in such peril as during the few days with which this chapter has to do. For we may anticipate the actual narrative to the extent of saying that the upshot was Cromwell's withdrawing utterly baffled. He failed in carrying out the one intention of which his own despatches speak : ' having tried to engage the enemy,' he found that hopeless. In regard to the ulterior object he had in view, as to which he not unnaturally pre- served silence, he was equally unsuccessful : having tried to reach Queensferry, he found there was no getting there. • Here, then, is perhaps as appropriate a place as another for a general remark upon the manner (since the fact is indisputable) of So CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS his being out-generalled by Leslie. The subject is indeed suffi- ciently complex. We have seen how important a diversion was created, in the course of this part of Cromwell's Scotch campaign, by the intrusion of certain extraneous points of politico-ecclesiastical moment. From the purely military point of view, there are seen to be at least two underlying questions which involve matters too far- reaching to be handled adequately in anything less than a treatise. One is the moot point whether Cromwell had not at the outset made a huge mistake (though, to be sure, he did not know what the weather was to be) by invading Scotland so late in the year. The other is the equally open question whether Leslie had not all along been manoeuvring (as he certainly did manoeuvre in the ensuing summer) to get the benefit of that rising in England which (again anticipating 1651) was being plotted in this year of 1650. Upon those broader questions one cannot, of course, hope to touch properly. Yet a word or two upon the working out of the merely tactical problem in the stage it had now reached may, haply, serve to clinch the effect of the foregoing chapters. Cromwell's ' general idea ' had been to attack where and how he could ; Leslie's, to use all means to keep himself from being attacked. And well the latter com- mander had done his part. He had confronted the invader before Edinburgh itself with a line of entrenchments so cunningly contrived as to be impregnable, and had there supplemented the more mas- sive stolidity of heavy artillery and entrenched battalions with so nimble a ' flying squadron ' as the Lawers regiment. He had put away from him the temptation to pursue the English on their first retreat to Dunbar, and declined the challenge before Redhall as well; but had, on the other hand, suffered them all this while to make no single move round the outskirts of Edinburgh that was not at once answered by his own troops' appearance in an unassailable position. He had used with equal finesse the cavalry of Montgomery and the questionings of Ker and the rest ; both were means (however uncon- scious the latter) towards his end, and the one had his heartiest send- off if the other can have drawn from him nothing but a covert laugh or an impatient shrug. Resourceful indeed we must, after that res7i7?te, pronounce him to have been : tirelessly patient, using all arms of the service with equal knowledge of their capabilities, as skilled in profiting by the lie of the country as in turning to account a diplo- matic godsend like the intervention of his dissentient subordinates. Whereas Cromwell, for his part, had made one or two big mistakes (thanks largely, no doubt, to his being hoodwinked in the diplomatic affair just alluded to), and was now paying the penalty. If he had made a dash for Queensferry on the 13th! leaving Musselburgh earlier than at the inexplicable hour of 5 p.m., and so in due course finding himself 'that evening ' on the upper waters of the Firth, or, for that matter, anywhere on the farther side of Coltbridge. For THE MOVE TO 'GAWGER FIELD' 8i when ' a convenient and advantageous place was to be consulted of '* for the bivouac on that momentous evening, the westerly slopes about Murrayfield would have served the invader's turn, had he known it, much better than the more southerly range. This is the wisdom, to be sure, that comes after the event, and within a week Cromwell was to retrieve himself miraculously : the dawn, one may almost say, was even now breaking ' over St. Abb's Head * yonder. But for the present ' the deliberate valour ' seemed well-nigh to have overcome the (relatively) * desperate '; and let us not grudge to David Leslie his meed of praise therefor. The reward of the Scots General's ' masterly inactivity ' seemed, indeed, already in full view. Both armies were in motion within sight of each other : the English from their Slateford bivouac, and the Scots from their Corstorphine camp, simultaneously marched westwards. The former had, of the two, the farther to go, and were in the end to fare the worse. No more toilsome effort was required of the defending army than to move softly along the firm ground for a couple of miles, to the point where, then as now, the highroad crossed the Gogar Burn. There they halted and were massed ' in battalia ' in the fields — about Gogar Park, Kirk, and House, let us say — on the right bank of the stream. Towards that water, though naturally at a point farther up, the English had also been marching, with rather more difficulty. Up the slope west of the Slate Ford their artillery must have been dragged — though the brae would seem a bagatelle after some of the routes just previously traversed ; and it is curious to reflect that (after * tuckin' down the brow,' like Snar- leyow and the Driver) the gunners must have found the Murray Burn, though a mere rivulet in our own day, something of an obstacle to their progress. Just beyond that they had another water to ford — the Gogar Burn itself — and another little brae to face ; for (passing presumably through the then 'Hirdmanstoun') the army had reached ' the pitch of a rising ground,'! which cannot have been any other than the declivity sloping rather steeply southwards, and more gently northwards, from the present Gogar Bank and Over Gogar (both, by the way, names that surely speak for themselves). Here, in their turn, they halted, and were massed ' in battalia.' And now for the irony of Fate ! Cromwell, the man from the Fens, had even before this found plenty of ground (so diversified was the scenery of this county of Midlothian) that must have reminded him of his native county of Huntingdon. Had not he and Leslie long enough already contemplated each otherj from the * * The Lord General's Letter,' E 6io, 4 t Downing's letter, ubi supra. The 'Antiquarian Topographer,' to whom Carlyle long ago recommended the exploration of this battle-ground, can find no better landmark than that. X Perhaps actually done so. — Antea, p. 70, footnote. If only the tantalizingly vague wording of that extract warranted us in saying * His Excellency ' and the ' L. G. Lesley ' were there face to face ! 6 82 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS opposite sides of the ' bogs and marshes ' that filled up the little strath of the Water of Leith as it then was ? He must have grown accustomed to the position these last ten days or more, but was not forewarned, it seems, against the chance of its continuance — was, that is to say, unprepared to find this same ' fenny ' country stretching as far westwards and north-westwards as it did. Even his Intelli- gence Department must have been disorganized by the obstinate and well-timed defence of Redhall ; either the exigencies of that siege, or their enforced caution about sending out small parties that were liable to be cut off like the victims already alluded to, had kept the Enghsh from previously scouting in the direction they now took. The long-dreamt-of route to Queensferry had not even been recon- noitred ; and though the English started out in the fullest expecta- tion that their advance must compel the Scots to fight, "^ Cromwell reached the position he now took up only to find himself still, as before, stalled off by quagmires as impassable as the ' horse-fen,' or rather the ' deep fen,' of his own land. On the low ridge at Gogar Bank he was within the crookf which the burn still forms as it bends eastwards, meanders northwards, curves sharply westwards, and finally straightens due northwards again, on its way to join the Almond after another mile or so. No small part of its banks is to this day guarded in this part of its course by flood-dykes or retaining walls on both sides ; and one can well believe that this was one of the points at which, in the wet weather of August, 1650, it had partially overflowed. For the northward face of the ridge just named dips gently downwards, as has been said ; and the low-lying bottom between it and the rise on the other side, where the ground begins to slope almost imperceptibly upwards in long undulations to the bold ridge of Corstorphine, must then, * 'Divers cast away their biscuit, with their tents,' in their too hasty * con- fidence ' about a seemingly imminent battle. At first blush, by the way, it seems a moot point (in case any should be curious about it) which army had made the first move that morning — whether the march of the English from the Slate Ford had set the Scots in motion, or the advance of the latter to Gogar drawn the English westward. Vet a careful weighing of the explicit English accounts that have come down to us shows only Captain Hodgson mistaking the intentions of his chiefs, as explained by Cromwell himself, by Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, and by Downing. (The former of those two subordinates is, it is to be supposed, the author of the letter initialled 'C.F.,' in E 612, 8, * Severall Letters.') The despatches of all three commanders amply corroborate the view upon which our whole theory is based — that the English took the initiative. A kindred and at least equally important matter must at the same time be mentioned. Cromwell himself (letter cxxxviii.) speaks of the Scots' resentment of the taunts which the English levelled at their * cautious solid ' tactics ; and Downing's letter (corrobo- rated by Alerairius Politiais^ p. 207, E 612) names the 'bravadoes' of Sir John Brown on August 26, * by whom they sent us word they were resolved to give us a fair meeting,' It is this mention of an officer who has already been spoken of, rather than the fact of the Scots' touchiness, that we would have the reader bear in mind for a chapter or so. t See Blaeu's map as evidence that it ran in much the same channel then. THE PENMAN FOILED S3 thanks to the swollen burn, have been the ' bog,' the 'fenny ground,' the ' deepe passe very disadvantageous to ^h^ first Attempter,' of which the English narratives tell in varying tones of discomfiture and chagrin.* We get one of those vivid glimpses for which the groping chronicler cannot be too thankful in Fleetwood's statement that the armies were * within less than twice musket-shot of each other,' and that the English were ' all confident we should within a quarter of an hour have an engagement . . . the ground appearing equally good on both sides.' Obviously the intervening space was one of those * mosses ' so deceptive to the eye, that promise firm footing and yet treacherously engulf the unwary 'attempter.' The English cavalry on both wingSjt we gather, had doleful experience of the quagmire. Did they impetuously charge in and flounder back, like Dundee's men among the swamps of Drumclog ? or is it possible that the place where ' the Horse ' (as is plaintively related) ' fell in ' was drier ground, artfully honeycombed by Leslie with pits such as had once before been prepared for the reception of certain EngHsh cavalry at Milton . bog, on the Bannock Burn ? The details we do not know ; but the fact that the incomparable Ironsides recoiled there in confusion is evident enough. Cromwell's own reference to the affair, already turned to account somewhat rhetorically on an earlier page, is on the whole rather a dark saying. Is it so certain that 'one hour's advantage gained,' and so a few miles' advance ensured, would have brought him really ' forrarder ' ? There was then no far-visible top-hamper of a Forth Bridge, be it remembered, to guide him towards his objective. He 7night have succeeded in keeping along the higher ground, leaving ' Northtoun ' and ' Rathow ' behind him, fording the Almond at * ' The Water of Leith parted the armies,' says the editor of Hodgson. Well might Carlyle pronounce the statement (in a word of his own unmilled hut ringing coinage) 'unbelievable.' Our own comment would be that Mr. Ritson might as well, anachronism or no anachronism, have named the Union Canal. For Crom- well's army evidently were formed up on the crest of the slight slope now bounded on the south by the waters of that canal, and on the north by the railway line from Gogar Station to Ratho Junction. Their ' battalia ' may well have extended from Gogar Bank westwards to ' near ' what Nicoll names in this connection as ' Mortoun ' (meaning evidently Norton). Somewhere in that direction the cavalry manoeuvring of which Hodgson's narrative gives a hint must have taken place. ' Sir David Lesley did overwing us ' (on ' our ' left). But that detail— even if it were a new fact and not, as seems more likely, a merely slipshod summary of the gist of the day's operations — is of no essential moment. The Scots' cannon again seem, as mentioned in the text, to have been * planted ' in what are now the policies of Gogar Burn House. The rest of Leslie's forces must have taken up their stations at about the points we have named, and so rather to the east and north of the position marked on Dr. Gardiner's sketch-map, which it is advisable to supplement at other points as well by reference to such landmarks as we have given. t About Ashley policies on the left, and just short of Redheughs on the right (?). 6—2 84 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS * Kaerlaury,' and so pushing on by ' Dundee's House '* to Queens- ferry. But it seems more probable that, ' being ' culpably or perhaps unavoidably ' ignorant of the place,' his army would have blundered into yet other * bogs and ditches ' that there was no escape from. For this Gogar quagmire can have been only one in a chain of swamps thereaway ; the route by which Cromwell evidently hoped to make his way looks on the contemporary map a very Land of the Five Rivers ; the Catstane, at the junction of the Gogar and Almond waters, suggests itself as a moimment ready to hand for what might, had he had his wish, have been the finished irony of Fate trium- phant over the ' Fen-frog.' Over-sanguine he must have been as to that one lost hour's possibilities. Even had it ensured his arrival at Queensferry, the place (as already pointed out) would very possibly have proved more tantalizing than accommodating in the occupation ; while the chance of Leslie's being inevitably driven to give him battle thereby certainly seems to have been entirely problematical. But our business is rather with what actually came to pass, than what might have happened ; and the sum-total of the deeds of this 27th of August has already been foreshadowed above. It was the climax of what the English evidently deemed very unsportsman- like strategy on Leslie's part. There was nothing for it but the game of long bowls aforesaid. It opened with the battering down of some sheepfoldsf in the middle distance — peacefully pastoral cover from which some Scots sharpshooters were picking off the men of the English skirmishing line. ' OHver calls for a couple of guns,' and demolishes the poor ' sod walls,' ' at which our army set up an Eng- lish shout ' — the same that Carlyle, by a stretch of the imagination, fancied as reverberating and echoing again from ' their Castle rocks and Pentlands.' The dropping fire of musketry thus silenced, or rather drowned in acclamations, the ' great guns ' began to speak from their adamantine lips, and were duly replied to. Wemyss of the artillery had probably a total of thirty cannon in his batteries, and had placed them, it seems, on the site or in the policies of the modern ' villas of Gogar Burn and Hanley |' — evidently a little tongue of land round which the burn twines in its meandering course. He cannot have made very great practice, though he had * much the fairer mark '§ in the extended English line on its ' pitch of a rising ground ' : his shots ' flew over or short,' says Hodgson, speaking for the cavalry. The details, however, are of no moment. Those inquisitive as to the casualties may reconcile, as they can, Cromwell's evidently moderate! I computation of 'about eighty (Scots) killed' with NicoU's * As the name of Dundas Castle was rather curiously printed in a London newspaper of the following year. The other archaic spellings are from Blaeu's. map. t Hodgson's * Memoirs,' p. 140. X Netu Statistical Account, 1845. § Downing's letter. I! Seeing that Downing runs the total into three figures. BOTH ARMIES DRAW OFF 85 precise list (' xij of our army hurt, ane killed, and tvva horses ') ; and accept without reservation (since one could not check it if one would) the English statement that * we had only about four that died upon the place, and about eighteen or nineteen wounded.' Be it noted that the invaders had here none of the mortars and shells which in later months they were to bring into action. We long ago commented on Cromwell's hurrying north without a siege-train, which (including as it did those projectiles) might have worked enormous execution in this present action. After all, the one local memorial of the affair is the best that could be sought. It is only a place-name, but that suffices. Two hundred years after ' Gogar feight ' there still lingered among the older inhabi- tants of the district a recollection that the battle-field was called The Flashes ; and one can find a better derivation of the name than that given by the authority who informs us of the fact — the compiler, to wit, of a good paragraph about the action contained in the New Statistical Accoufit. He explains that The Flashes was accounted for through ' firearms being used in the fight of greater power and variety* than was usual at that time.' The truth, however, can only be that the dim tradition of the locality preserved the recollection of this most picturesque fact, that the cannonade went on into the dusk.t And all unwittingly (such is the luck of haphazard nomen- clature) the chance epithet has other than even that descriptive value. The passively-won victory of the Scots bade fair, for a brief while, to have lasting results in English history; and behold, it turned out instead to be as fleeting, as 'evanishing,' as the rainbow, the ' borealis race,' or those Flashes themselves.! And no one will be sorry to hear that the narrative relating how that came about can henceforth go forward at a much brisker pace than in the chapters just preceding. Remains now but small need for elaborate investigation of strategical possibilities : there was no road left open to the English but that of retreat, and even it was threatened. After a bivouac on some unnamed spot (draw- ing back 'to see if they [Scots] would advance'), they returned to ' Gawger field ' next morning, found all in statu quo, renewed the cannonade for an hour or two, and so finally drew off in the fore- noon. The Scots simultaneously fell back to Corstorphine ; and now, each General fearing that the other meant to cut off his retreat, it was for awhile a race between the two armies eastwards. But even had Cromwell seriously entertained the idea (which his despatch dis- claims§) of ' interposing between them and Edinburgh,' Leshe had every chance to out-march and so defeat him in the attempt. Not * Those patent cannon of Colonel James Wemyss, to wit. Antea, p. 23. t Cf. NicoU's ' till six at night ' ; and Fleetwood's ' that evening.' X But zuere the ' Flashes,' after all, cannon-shots momentarily visible in the gloam- ing : orWills-o'-the-wisp' § Letter cxxxviii. S6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS for the first time do we discern the advantage of that * calsey ' to Coltbridge ; and thence the Scots' route was by the direct line (not the roundabout road''') of the ' lang gait '; whereas Cromwell's 'take-off' for the march was the soft, southern verge of those heart-breaking morasses which the other securely skirted. So the skirmishing between the cavalry that led the van of each army can never for a moment have looked like bringing on a general engagement. One wonders, indeed, how the English horse ever got so nearly within striking distance, unless by a momentary dash across to Roseburn and Coltbridge, as to capture even those ' two or three horses 't (remounts, or others whose saddles had just been emptied). A brisk ' pickeering ' exploit of the kind (aimless though it seems to the * Carlyle's mistake, already alluded to — natural enough, but absurd none the less in the light of the fact that this was the ancient name for the road to and along the Nor' Loch's nor' bank. See Robert Chambers's quotation (a reference we have not verified, oral tradition being even yet, we fancy, available in Princes Street for the establishing the fact) from Baiinatyne's (not his own and his brother's) yoiirnal. —'Traditions of Edinburgh,' Edition 1825, vol. ii., footnote, p. 55. t Letter cxxxviii. again. The fact of Cromwell's alone mentioning that episode renders it likely that he led ' the van ' himself — he having, as the reader may remember, a fresh enough personal recollection of what we take to have been the scene of the incident. He may have hoped to find, at the Coltbridge gap which he had himself reconnoitred with that * forlorne ' ten days before, a passable neck of land broad enough to admit of his even yet attacking in force. Such an explanation is, at all events, in keeping with the dogged unwillingness which throughout marked this retreat of the English — with their still confident clutching at every chance of a battle, and their unremitting proffers to the Scots of a fair field and no favour. (To be sure, some of the Scotch writers — Nicoll, e.g. — would have us believe that their proffers were of a less heroic sort. The diarist says, and repeats, that they ' did offer great and large offers ' to be suffered to depart in safety — attributes to Cromwell, in fact, that very wish to ' have way made, though it were by a golden bridge,' of which he himself accuses, by impli- cation, the Leslies. — Letter cxlii. The fact of such trafficking seems indisputable ; but Cromwell is more trustworthy than Nicoll, and we rather fear some such huck- stering was tried by the Leslies on the eve of Dunbar.) But in the meantime what a fine spectacle must have been presented to the view of any patriotic onlooker sweeping the landscape with a ' perspective glass ' of the period from the upper windows (say) of what Blaeu's cartographer marks as the mansion of ' Cots ' ! Thence he would certainly have a glimpse of the progress of his fellow-countrymen as by squadrons and regiments they wound round the lower slopes of the now wooded Corstorphine Hill towards him ; may in the nearer foreground have beheld 'the most ridiculous and blasphemous' Noll himself, at the head of a squad of his Ironsides, exchanging shots (belike) with the troopers of Montgomery, Strachan, or Sir John Brown ; and would have in full view, almost broadside on, the long English columns, buff-coated and red-coated, retreating as closely as possible on the line of what is now the Old Glasgow Road, towards Stenhouse Mills and Sauchton. The ' bit of colour,' by the way, is too tempting to be left out, though we cannot guarantee it as an actual part of the picture. * 700 red coats,' destined for Puritan soldiers' wear, certainly were captured by the Scots early in the ensuing year (Balfour, iv., pp. 250, 251 ; Weekly Intelligencer, No. 13 — E 626). But they were being sent to Londonderry when intercepted, and we do not know for certain that uniforms as gay were worn in Scotland. By the way, the adjectives 'most ridiculous and blasphemous,' which we have just quoted, were not directly applied to Oliver himself, but were used as a description of the con- tents of his appeal from Musselburgh (letter cxxxvi.) by Ijalfour (' Annales,' iv. 89). THE SMALL HOURS OF THURSDAY 87 casual view) may for a moment have brought Cromwell in person even so nearly athwart the hawse of Leslie's advancing line as we conjecture in our footnote. But His Excellency did not for any length of time risk capture by thus again ' making hazard of his noble person ' thereaway. Nightfall found him and all his men once again encamped on their detested ' Pencland hils.' Those of them who returned to the Galachlaw drew off the Colinton and Redhall garrisons as they went ; the headquarters seem to have been on Blackford Hill — Cromwell evidently remaining anxiously on the watch (though for the present he could do no more than send guns- to reinforce his Niddrie garrison*) against any designs the Scots- ' might have in view. For they in the interim had in their turn com- pleted the move eastwards — had drawn 'between Edinburgh and Leith,' as our good friend Downing says— had 'slipped through their whole army,' as Cromwell's own graphic phrase puts it.f Disappear- ing thus from view along the ridge that led to their old ' flankered line ' a7id to Musselburgh, what might they not be up to ?i Lowering and dark the prospect must have been — cheerless as the look of the rapidly-shortening autumnal gloaming, and the clouds that helped to shut out from view all the fair landscape around. For the cannonade was, as usual, bringing down the rain ; the night was what NicoU calls ' drakie ' — squally, i.e., and wet ; and the full day- Hght of the following morning (August 29) was long of coming. But though darkness and tempest thus abetted him, Leslie left the way of retreat still open.§ Had Strachan, intent upon more ' beating up of quarters,' been at him to authorize such another night attack on the English camp as that at Musselburgh ? was the Scots Council of War divided in its collective mind whether to set about that enter- *■ ' Collections by a Private Hand,' in Maidment's ' Historical Fragments ' (Edinburgh, 1833): 'The English ... in the midnight planted some guns in Niddry.' t Letter cxl., which it is interesting, by the way, to collate carefully with cxxxviii. Both tell, in part, of the same events ; but in the one you have Philip drunk — with victory ; in the other Philip sober — in the contemplation of ' an engagement very difficult.' To put the matter more plainly and perhaps respect- fully, the hurried and almost despondent summary in the earlier letter contrasts significantly with the comparatively fuller details given in the later, when the con- queror almost lingers, on the morrow of his victory, over the manifold dangers that had just before beset him. Ij: As a matter of fact, we imagine Leslie to have been chiefly preoccupied about guarding (as we shall very soon have to show) against further English tarrying in that unassailable Galachlaw position of theirs; and that his 'slipping through' with such expedition was the first part of a plan right skilfully contrived to prevent their doing so. § Cromwell does not always (need we say?) stumble upon a phrase as pithy as the one last quoted. Plis reference to that night and morning may be read as meaning that he got through towards Musselburgh either because or in spite of the dimness of the daybreak. The former seems more probably the meaning intended ; yet the latter construction would tally better with the obvious fact that the darkness was so much in Leslie's favour. 88 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS prise, or to capture the Stonyhill garrison and magazine instead (so shutting the door of retreat upon the invaders), or simply to stand by, passively suffering theni to go on their way ? Did those differences of opinion at Leslie's headquarters, with which we shall all too soon have to deal, first show themselves in an acute form on this (fittingly) tempestuous night ? What the ' sough ' of the deliberations was we shall never know; but the result is, at all events, clear enough. The decision was to bar the way against the English in one direction, if not in the other ; to permit Cromwell's communicating with his ships, but to ensure his not doing so simply pour inieux sauier as before ; to head him off from the * landward ' side of Edinburgh, in fine, for ever and a day. This may seem to have been a plan rather foolish in its over- caution. But it is evident that Leslie did not know what amount of suppHes the English ships might not contain, and warily laid his •account even with the chance of their heartening up the invaders for yet another prowl round Edinburgh. He was, indeed, * upon this iock,' the very one that Cromwell wrote of (without any such hiatus in the sense as Carlyle very superfluously filled up*). Leslie was 'hoping' (as his antagonist clearly saw, and in so many words related) ' that the sickness of your Army would render their (his) task more easy;' and was, as one may add, so far-sighted about choosing his own ground for fighting when he thought fit that he was determined the invader should not in that hour ' have the advantage ' (as at the Braids, if he should be in the mood, and in any condition, to go there yet a third time) ' of the hills about him for his defence.' And artfully Leslie set himself, by manoeuvres which no one has in all these years troubled about investigating, to drive the English before him in the direction which everybody seems to have supposed they would take as a matter of course. On the morning of that Thursday, the 29th, he marched from the Calton Hill with the bulk, if not the whole, of his army,t and took post on just about Crom- well's old ground at Jock's Lodge and Craigentinny. The English had, on the first peep of daybreak, resumed their seaward march, drawn off severally from Blackford Hill and the Galachlaw to concen- trate (we imagine) about Nether Libberton, and, defiling thence in long columns, crossed the Figgat Burn at Cameron. X As the van- * For this is another expression (letter cxl.) of which one could wish the Editor of the ' Letters and Speeches ' had understood the meaning. He would have found it in common enough use elsewhere had he looked for it. To • hold them by this lock' was, e.g., another writer's summary of Cromwell's own intentions at an earlier period {Merairius Foliticus, \xr\dex date August 21 — E 610). The word seems to have come down to us in the corrupted form of * lay,' as still used in slang. f For it seems probable he would leave some portion in reserve within his old 'flankered line.' X Antea, p. 46. Fleetwood's statement, to be afterwards quoted, makes it certain this was the route. THE SCOTS 'CROWN THE HEIGHTS' 89 guard neared Niddrie Marischal, glad to find its garrison unmolested, they discerned round the shoulder of the hill the defender's army massed thus menacingly by the wayside that, led to Stonyhill and Eskmouth. More : they saw some detached party of Leslie's men unmistakably — because ostentatiously — moving seawards down the slope,"^ in a direction that portended a general advance through the Figgat Whins and such seizure of the Medlin Bridge 'pass' as must bar the road to Eskmouth, even on this its last short stage. Befooled for almost the last time by 'a confidence that they should then fight,' Cromwell threw his men hurriedly forward in the very direction that Leslie wanted. The vanguard, in which a certain Captain Hodgson must have been riding, pressed on to make sure of the ridge of Easter Duddingston (as we fancy), and forestall the Scots in the occupation of the dell scooped out by the Niddrie Burn. The main body and * rear forlorne ' — whose pace had been already some- what quickened, we fancy, by artillery fire from Craigmillar and Prestonfield as they passed through the level bottom between those houses — pushed forward all the harder to friendly Niddrie, and formed up close (huddled together, we should say, if the words were allowable — and in any case applicable to those magnificent legions). The artillery that had ' played ' so recently at Redhall and Gogar was once more got into position ; the Scots main body, in full view against the sky-fine that is now fringed with trees, was, in its turn, ' much the fairer mark.' So all was ready, and the hour seemed to have struck at last.f But, ah, for the most unkindest cut of all ! Leslie's every move- ment since leaving Gogar had been a feint — first his drawing off to the Calton almost before the English had reached the Braids ; then his showing the next morning a comparatively bold front on the slope about Piershill, where the enemy could ' view ' him, and train their guns upon the profile of the hill in readiness for him ; next, his throwing forward that party which stole through the Figgat Whins as if heralding an advance in force eastwards. All had been contrived * ' As though they designed to flank us on the r(i^>/if wing,' says Hodgson, though without the italics. A dark saying in the meantime — rather topsy-turvy in truth if the reader is thinking of the English as bearing directly eastward for Musselburgh. But we hope by the narrative in the text to make the thing plainer to him shortly. t This is the * first position ' in which we find the armies respectively placed on this not unimportant day. Our account of it is based on Downing's narration how * we possessed ourselves of the next ground to them, within cannon-shot, resolving there to have endeavoured to engage.' The reader now, perhaps, understands that ' pudding-headed Hodgson ' was quite right in talking of the menace on ' our' r4'7i/ wing. If Cromwell's troops had still been heading straight for Mussel- burgh, the left only could have been the flank exposed ; but they had had to face about. As to the ground occupied by the Scots, it will be recognised that we are not drawing on our imagination for our facts when we again quote the invaluable Downing — a man with a bump of locality most fitting in a scoutmaster elect, or already appointed, and most welcome to the groping historian. Downing's words, then, are that the Scots were drawn up ' from Arthur's Hill to the seaside.' 90 CROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS with really consummate skill for luring the English on from their ' strength ' on the Braids, and then interposing finally between them and that favourable position. Now that they had been drawn on thus far, and in their anxiety to resume touch with the fleet had abandoned their hold on the south side of Edinburgh, Leslie took them at their word. He, for once, was the first to make a move ; his troops wound round the gentle eastern slope under Dunsappie Craig, wheeled through Duddingston, and, skirting along under the very shadow of Samson's Ribs, debouched through Prestonfield and Cameron to ' the ground we (Enghsh) were last upon '"^ — the slopes of Libberton and Blackford, that is to say. '■" This is a full, true, and particular explanation of that sentence of Cromwell's letter cxl. from which these words are quoted ; and is based on contemporary authorities. There are more of these, had Carlyle but known (or cared), than the ' Historical Fragments ' from which alone he quotes at this point. That volume has its value, as we shall see ere long, and its ' Collections by a Private Hand ' have an interest of their own, as to which something may fall to be said later ; but in the present instance it adds nothing to our knowledge of what passed except the fact of those guns having been planted in Niddrie overnight — which is nothing so very new neither, since we know Cromwell had had a garrison there the last fort- night, and find Nicoll naming it as one of those which at this time he drew off. But for the present we ask nothing better than those letters of Fleetwobd and Downing, which stand us in good stead here. The latter officer, as we have seen, unmistakably indicates the first position the Scots had taken up ; then he mentions their * drawing away between Arthur's Hill and Craigmillar, a garrison of theirs ' (and Hodgson comes in to corroborate him with his account how they ' marched down a mountain end in view of us'). But Fleetwood, who at first look appears a simply maddening guide, puts all right when we come to know him (and his printers) better. He indeed explains quite definitely not only the Scots route, but the English one. He names the fears that were entertained (as above said) of Leslie's ' interposing betwixt us and our provisions,' and proceeds : ' We found them drawn up near Edenburgh by Arthur's Hill, and not at all interrupted (sic) our march ; but not long after we got over the passe. They instead of offering to advance upon us retreated behind one of their garrisons, and so marched on that side of the passe, we came over up towards those hills we left.' What would the reader make of that passage as it stands ? — and it is copied verbatim et literatim, we assure him, from the original. Mere nonsense, of course ; for the one thing certain is that the English did not 'come over up towards those hills ' again. But what good Fleetwood really wrote (only his printers in London blundered and mispunctuated — and, by the way, the version of his letter given in Slingsby's ' Memoirs ' as an appendix to them and to Hodgson's is still more bewilderingly dunderheaded) was that tJie Scots ' marched on that side of the pass (which) we came over (had just come over) towards those hills we (had) left.' Delete the last comma, in fact, and the sentence is plain (and most valuable) fact, instead of bewildering nonsense. And, rendered thus legible, the statement affords us one or two invaluable clues. First as to the 'pass' which ' we got over,' evidently with some difficulty, and ' they ' then marched on the other side of. Had the English route towards Niddrie lain in the only alternative direction — on the south side of Craigmillar— it is difficult to see what point thereaway could have had the strategic importance indicated in the words quoted — would, in fine, have been spoken of by the English as a ' pass ' they marched through and the Scots skirted on the other side. Very likely, indeed, Fleetwood included in that comprehensive word the loch of Duddingston. As to its fitness in the more restricted sense, we have seen that the English spoke of the quagmire at Gogar as a ' deep pass ' ; this other low-lying stretch along the north front of the Craigmillar eminence to the sedgy southern marge of Duddingston Loch was just a place to which they would, SOLDIERSHIP AND SPECTACULAR EFFECT 91 They were exposed as they went to a flanking fire from the enemy's artillery in Niddrie; and the English comforted themselves by hoping they had, in Downing's phrase, ' done notable execution/ The gunners 'had such fair play at them,' says Hodgson, that 'they were sore baffled with our shot' But even a very long ' butcher's bill ' could have been poor consolation to the Cromwellians in the circumstances. It was certainly not to this march of Leslie's round Arthur's Seat — a background how imposing for the demonstration of the Scots superiority in numbers ! — that they applied the variant of an old rhyme which we find somewhere in their newspapers of this or the next year's date : ' The King of France, with forty thousand men, Went up the hill and then came down again.' For they cannot but have recognised, even as they taunted the Scots for not * offering to advance upon us,'^ that the man who made the movement knew his own mind, and marched that way in pursuance of a settled and rather disquieting plan. Moreover, the moral effect of the spectacle must have been telling enough. Apart from the display of mere numbers, there was another aspect of it in the unchancy demonstration that these opponents whom the English had lately encountered only as fen-frogs could, Proteus-like, turn into mountain-cats on occasion. It is quite clear that the ably-planned manoeuvre helped to hasten the decision of Cromwell's Council of War next day. True, they had a variety of reasons to sway them. The army marched off to Stonyhill and Musselburgh as Leslie's men disappeared into the bowels of the earth below Samson's Ribs — winding among precipices and * passes,' where their foes knew better than to seek them out — and glad they were to ' refresh with provisions ' from their ships. The two days' supply which they relate they possessed on the evening of ' Gogar feight ' must have been far spent by now. Glad also were without the adjective, apply the same name. By the old Pefifermill and the then ' Kamron ' house, then, it is almost certain they must have crossed. On collating Downing's version with Fleetwood's again, one gets one's bearings all the more clearly. The Scots in ' drawing away between Arthur's Hill and Craigmillar ' must have hugged the skirts of the former much more closely than they approached to the latter ; for otherwise they must have come within striking distance of the foe in Niddrie, and it is incredible that the latter would not then have attacked. Therefore one may say as confidently as possible that the English passed by the southern side of Duddingston Loch and the Scots by the north. Pre- sumably, the latter followed the line of the King's Park Dyke ; as to the point where they diverged from it, Fleetwood again gives a valuable hint. For the garrison behind which he mentions their marching can scarcely (for the reason just given) have been Craigmillar itself, or the ' Wester Duddiston ' of that period ; it was most likely Prestonfield. Believe it or not, then, Leslie must have led his men down the slope below the Windy Goule and the Girnal Craig. ■*' Downing expresses the feeling best ; his words are of course * rote sarkastik ' when he says Leslie ' drew away very gallantly.' 92 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS they to send safely on board ship no less than 500 of their comrades"^ — those most sorely smitten with ' the flux ' and the agues and * old cramps ' that must also have been rife. Yet we hold that the last they had seen of Leslie and his army had more to do with their making up their minds to abandon Musselburgh and retreat east- wards than had even the commissariat question and the proportions of the sick-list. As to the food-supply, a statement in a newspaper of considerably later date — the sentence already quoted from Mercurius Politicus for the first week of the following June — states that the Scots at this time 'seized above 20,000 boules of corn' (and would have had nothing to live upon but for that haul). Leith is said to have been the place where it was effected; we may perhaps read Musselburgh instead, seeing that Leslie could not very well get hold of English supplies (and such are evidently meant) in a port that the English had not yet captured. If the story be true (and it dates from a time when the English were in case to know exactly), it proves that Crom- well had, on beginning his retreat, to leave behind him a great quantity of victual for want of transport. It was clearly, then, no scarcity of supplies (which, by - the - by, he did not himself allege as a reasont) that kept him from again facing up to his opponent. The effects of disease upon the force had to be much more seriously taken into consideration ; as to that we have already said enough, and need only repeat that (though we have very contradictory com- putations to go by, except as to the 500 worst cases just mentioned) exposure to the Lammas floods had plainly wrought only too ghastly havoc. But, above all and before all, in Fleetwood's authoritative account of the Council of War at Musselburgh that Friday, August 30, comes an almost pathetic lament over ' the impossibility in our forcing them to fight — the passes being so many and so great that as soon as we go on the one side, they go over on the other,' and, in fine, reduce us to a heart-broken condition by their alternate squatting on the fenny grounds and skipping like young goats on the mountains. No wonder * we ' are not eager to fight our way back to those inhospit- able and pestiferous ' Pentlands ' with what victual and sound men we have left ; no wonder that * the Council was very unanimous on this, that it was to no purpose further to march after ' the Scots. Yet it seems to have been assumed off-hand in all quarters that there never was any prospect — confident as Cromwell must now have been as to the shortness of Leslie's supplies, and the plentifulness of his own — of his effecting a third lodgment on the Braid Hills if they had been left accessible to him. Those who have gathered such an idea will be inclined to think that the Scots General's artful manoeuvres * Cromwell himself superintended the embarkation, * out of his * great humanity and pious care of the souldiers.' f Only * the uncertainty of weather for landing provisions.' — Letter cxl. THE LAST NIGHT OF AUGUST 93 for closing that road against the English were as superfluous and uncalled-for as (say) our own account of those manoeuvres. But it seems perfectly clear that Leslie must have had some reason to suppose the invaders were equal to the effort of lingering near Edinburgh for another week or two ; and knew the state of his own commissariat too well to be minded to abide such prolonging of their sojourn. His task may, in respect of the driving Cromwell off, have really been at an end before he quite knew it, as the view above stated impHes ; and the trouble which we have shown him taking to complete it may, accordingly, have been so much labour thrown away. Fleetwood's confession of failure indicates by its wording a more recent sense of having been baffled than altogether suits that view. He writes as who should say, This is the last straw ; if not in so many words that. The enemy's final move has cut the ground from under our feet. But, whichever be the way of it — whether or not the English had had no remotest intention of doing what Leslie evidently feared they might — it is indisputable that he had now left them no option, no choice of ground, no move open to them but a retreat. They tarried, then, but the one day in Musselburgh (Friday, August 30) ; got their invalids shipped off round the long East Lothian promontory, through the curious Fidra-to-the-Bass archi- pelago ; and on the morrow fell back* along the road by which they had, almost exactly a month before, advanced in rather different fettle. * In other pace than forth he yode, Returned Lord Marmion.' This time, too, there was a pursuit, persisted in to some purpose. Really a critical strait the English seem to have been reduced to on the Saturday evening at Haddington. They had evidently gained a fair start of the Scots (who were probably breaking their fast on those * 20,000 boules') when they left Musselburgh 'fields'; but had been caught up at nightfall, through that army's marching after them (and after that repast) with ' exceeding expedition.' The letter of Cromwell's from which those words are quoted (cxl.) tells all that one need know of the action which ensued — howi the rear- guard were attacked, but, sheltered by friendly clouds that hid the moon, escaped to join the main body ; and how (the moon having shone out in the interim, though the Lord General mentions it not) the Scots took their chance in the uncertain light, and charged and re-charged up to the gates, perhaps into the very streets, of Hadding- * Carlyle, in mentioning Cromwell's firing his huts when he left Musselburgh, should really have added, as does the authority from whom he learned the fact, (Sir E. Walker), that he burned also ' the minister's house.' But, indeed, the source from which that statement is taken is as interesting as the item of informa- tion in itself. The latter suggests comparison with a similar one gleaned from Balfour (end of chapter iii., book i., supra) ; and, like that other, lets us see by its very brevity how these aristocratic laymen rejoiced to chronicle the punishment of the ' aspyring ' clergy. 94 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ton. The only new point to be noted is that the wording of our narrative in Mercurius FoUHcus'*' points to the Cromwellians having been ignorant, till the first attack was made on their rear, that they were being pursued at all. Perhaps they had hoped for such immunity as they had enjoyed when last in retreat along that route. Repulsing the night attack ('after an hour's dispute,'! of which •' Coll. Fairfax his Regiment ' bore the brunt), the English drew out next morning, Sunday though it was, and offered battle 'on a fair and equal field ' to the east (Cromwell himself says the south) of Haddington. This must have been the challenge which the ministers, according to Sir Edward WalkerJ and others, dissuaded Leslie from accepting : it seems likely that little pressure would be needed to make him decline. Thus balked, for positively the last time, Cromwell resumed the retreat, and led his army safely, but, according to Hodgson, in ' a poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged ' condition§ into Dunbar that night. || Leslie 'bent southward to the hills that overlook Dunbar, and hemmed him in there.' * No. 15 (E 613) : * The enemy (unknown to us) attended upon our right wing,' a statement which hardly tallies with Carlyle's picture of Leslie's rushing forth in pursuit. There is, indeed, some word (in 'A Brief Relation,' E 612) of the Scots van coming ' to the Town's end of Preston while the Lord General was in the midst of it ;"but after that first 'rush' Leslie evidently gave the English a few hours' ' law ' — doubtless for the reason stated in the text. f Ibid. The reader will, of course, not confuse the Colonel with his namesake, the famed Sir Thomas. X P. 180. § An unintentional, but none the less misleading, exaggeration, thinks Dr. Ciardiner, on the strength of some psychological reasoning that does scant justice to the valiant Tyke's powers of memory. li Put not your trust in local tradition. An East Lothian legend relates that Cromwell in this march crossed what was then a deep morass at Danskin, south- east of Gifford — even that he left some of his guns (we believe the tale is as circumstantial as this) embedded at ' Cromwell's Steps ' there. Some of his troops may have passed there later ; but the place is miles off the route which any stragglers, even, can have taken that day. There is less reason to doubt the story that some of his army — evidently on the right wing — passed through Whittinge- hame then. CHAPTER V. *THE RACE OF DUNBAR.' 1. The Councils of War. '^ ^\ X-^ ^^^^ lately looked on at one march of the Scots \ A / army 'down by a mountain end ' ; and the writer has, \/ V^ perhaps pardonably, dwelt on that as it seems to • ^ deserve, in consideration of its never before having figured in any history, howsoever modest and merely local. We have now to do with another movement of the same kind, that has somehow attracted rather more notice. On Thursday, August 29, we saw Leslie ' shogging his whole line to the right,' round the flanks of Arthur's Seat ; on Monday, September 2, he set about doing the same thing from the crest of the Doon Hill above Dunbar. And we have now, without such minute topographical details'^ as have * For, indeed, an elaborate description of the positions of the two armies on the morning of Monday, September 2, would be rather superfluous after what has been done by Carlyle and Dr. Gardiner in explaining them. (Talk of * making up for Flodden,' by the way ! Thomas Carlyle more worthily avenged * the race of Dunbar' with his single pen by describing it two centuries later.) The salient points were that the Scots army occupied the crest of the Doon Hill, and had seized the ravines of Cockburnspath far to the east ; so that Cromwell was between the devil and the deep sea. In front of him were ' the heath continents ' of the Lammermuir, impassable even if left open to him ; on his left was ' Copperspath,' the one only road of egress, barred against him ; at his back was the Firth of Forth. The exact boundary line between him and Leslie was the deep ' den ' or ravine of the Brocksburn, a natural trench that guarded the Scots front (so long as they maintained a passively menacing posture) as effectually as formerly the artificial one from the Calton to Leith. A look at the lie of the ground on the right bank of the stream and in the lower part of its course lets one see in a moment why Leslie was loath to quit the upper slopes of the hill. For the Doon, Dun, or Down, is, in the Stevensonian phrase, a * seaward-drooping hill ;' in the one direction it falls away gently towards the shore, in the other more abruptly to the steep bank above the Brocksburn ; east and south of the ford above Broxmouth House there is, in fine, a ridge of upland on which the • big battalions ' could not at the best of times, just because of their numbers, operate very effectively. Look as best you can through the trees that shade the modern bridge to-day, and the sky-line marks as exactly as need be the confines of the ground that was to be so fatal for the Covenanting host. Such advantage as it would, if on the alert, have 96 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS just been entered upon in dealing with the less momentous but much less familiar change of position, to point out a contrast between the two movements that shows them to have been essen- tially as different as they were superficially similar. The gist of the matter of course is that the Scots were now at long and at last planning an attack in force. Four days before, on the Thursday just mentioned, their leader had merely been making the final move in his patient waiting game. Now he had been induced to take the offensive. Upon the combination of circum- stances and considerations that had driven him so to acquiesce, it is of the last importance to dwell. Imprimis^ then, Leslie reached the famed Doon Hill on Sunday evening, September i, with the full intention of pushing on next day to Cockburnspath, whither he had already despatched a strong party, and of lying in wait there in order to cut off" the English in detail, or accept their surrender, according as they ' took it fighting ' or ' lying down.' In either case, LesHe probably calculated, his army would cut a better figure than he could count on its doing at close quarters. We have the report of Cromwell's messenger"^ that such was the inten- tion j and it dovetails so well into every other item of evidence on the subject that it cannot be gainsaid. Not that we at the same time shrink from taking into account the possibility of Leslie's having kept in view a prospect rather less radiantly glorious but much more solidly lucrative. Cromwell (letter cxlii.) says that the chief officers — and those were Leven, David Leslie, and possibly Holburn of Menstrie — were willing 'that we might have way made, though it were by a golden bridge.' The existence of this sordid motive of desire of gain cannot, when deponed to by such a witness,t be derived from still occupying the higher ground was entirely nullified by its being huddled together— the word formerly rejected comes in aptly enough here— on the narrow ridge. That is the essential point that has to be remembered. It is perhaps to some extent plassed over in Dr. Gardiner's most useful account of the affair ; and so many gems of epic narration sparkle in the priceless setting of Carlyle's great battle-piece, that any but the most attentive reader might well enough overlook this topographical detail. Not that the great artist in words forgot to mention it in its right place, and describe the actual battle-ground as * rather narrow ground,' ' sloping harvest-fields.' * ' The General [and] Lieutenant-General of the Scots were of opinion to have let our army retreat till they came to their last pass, and so to fall upon their rear ; but the ministers did so importune them that they could not rest quiet until they had engaged.' — Statement of Major White to the Parliament, Cojimions Journals, vi. 464. f The statement of Major White quoted in our last footnote is evidently based, as Dr. Gardiner points out, on the information gleaned from Scottish captives after the battle, when the English had admittedly ample opportunities for investigating the matter. This of Cromwell's evidently brings to light an affair of which he alone can have had cognizance. One is tempted to quote an anecdote that shows David Leslie in a still worse light. After the Battle of Worcester, a twelvemonth later, he ' was brought before the Parliament of England, and declared he had several times offered to deliver up the King to Cromwell, but he refused. Crom. 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR' 97 passed over in silence. Therefore we may take it that the two Fifers who were at the head of the Scots army were minded to ' sell the race,' to * pull ' the horse they rode, to time their seizure of Cockburnspath with the main body so that it should be effected just too late to bar the way to Berwick. But, even so, we can find a well-nigh sufficient excuse for them. They stood to gain something for themselves, and to lose nothing whatsoever for the complicated cause of which they were the champions. Cromwell's retreat to ■England, howsoever effected, would immeasurably have damaged his prestige, and would quite likely enough have been a death-blow to the Commonwealth. It was certain no second army could be led over the Border into Scotland that season. And before the next spring what projects might not have been hatched and carried out simultaneously, by converging ways, to a successful conclusion ! With hope rekindled at once among the seething, maddened Royalism of England, and the political Presbyterianism that was only forcibly kept down in London, Lancashire, and elsewhere, what a hand of trumps would not the jubilant Kirk then have held ! Its unbeaten armies, led by men very different from the ill-starred Hamiltons, might another year have entered England on the basis of another and a much more promising ' Engagement ' ; insurrec- tions Hke those of 1648 might have been plotted to much better purpose than in the ineffectual ' Second Civil War ' of that date ; there was now, thanks to the displacements brought about by the Treaty of Miinster, an unlimited supply of foreign mercenaries that might ' sign on ' gladly in the auspicious Cavalier interest ; the Commonwealth, in short, ran its chance of fighting such a combina- tion of enemies as it never again had to fear. But once more we have to do with what happened, not with what might have been. And what did happen, we take it, is that Crom- well rejected the Leslies' overtures — verbally made, of course ; and that the Leslies, for their part, fell back on the plan of letting the invaders ' retreat till they came to their last pass and so to fall upon their rear.' This, then, was the affair, this the choice of alternatives well answered, That it was true he had offered to sell his King to him, but he did defy him, or any officer or soldier, English or Scotch, that could say he had slipped any opportunity of taking him in the fields ; but he scorned to buy any man with money. "And for thee, David Lesley," said he, "thou art a traitor;" at which words D. Lesley burst forth in tears, when said Cromwell, " Is that a man fit to lead and command an army ?" ' But this story rests only on the authority of the ' Private Hand,' whose ' Collections ' are in Maidment's * Historical Fragments ' {ut supra) — a writer who betrays in every page an implacable hatred of David Leslie, seems to have put together his jottings chiefly in order to blacken his reputation, and may be supposed to have been an old Cavalier jealous of my Lord Newark's promotion after the Restoration. The later offers of which the anecdote tells would — if they could by any chance be proved from any other source — betoken a venality in Leslie in comparison with which this on the eve of Dunbar was venial indeed. 98 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS offered and settled, that occupied the Sunday night or the subse- quent sma' (and appropriately dark) hours. But a continued pursuit presupposes a resumed retreat ; and Cromwell's retreat was not next day resumed. Therefore the Leslies waited on the Doon Hill on the Monday morning ; seized, early in the day and in face of only half-hearted opposition from the English, the * little house ' commanding ' the shelving path where the enemy might with greater facility than anywhere else come over ;'* and watched for the signs of an English advance eastwards that should be the signal for their own move to Cockburnspath. But they looked in vain. Cromwell clung like a barnacle to ' all the ground ' — the only ground — ' he was now lord of in Scotland.' That being so, it must have appeared that his intentions were to hold and fortify Dunbar, in the expectation of receiving reinforcements from England ; or merely to postpone his retreat till the morrow, when he might have shipped all his baggage, guns, and more or less invalided men, and so set himself to cut his way, at the head of all the cavalry and the pick of the foot, through to Berwick. It is to this day uncertain which plan, if either, had been defi- nitely fixed upon. Of the modern writers Carlylef ignores the point ; Dr. Gardiner believes Cromwell meant to hold his ground on the ' pinfold ' peninsula until he was attacked or until reinforcements came. The latter view receives corroboration from Fleetwood's account {udi supra) of the Council of War at Musselburgh, which ' inclined generally to fall upon garrisoning of Dunbar and other considerable places nearer Tweed ; and after one garrison completed (if we have no better compliance) to proceed to some more severe course than hath been yet taken.' But even that confirmation of the statement which Cromwell himself made after the event does not * The words are quoted from an English account of the affair ('A Brief Rela- tion,' No. 53, E 612), yet the transposition is warrantable. The statement cut both ways : if the spot was bound to be of great ' facility ' to the Scots in taking the offensive, it must also have been of some strategic importance to the English in the event of their trying a flanking movement on this side. The reader doubtless knows — too well to need to be reminded here at length — what happened in and about the ' little house ' there (which occupied the site of the present mill, we fancy), for it was the scene of the adventure of the wooden-armed private whom Carlyle has made famous. The point about the affair of outposts, to our thinking, is the fact that he of the wooden arm and his companions were ' not seconded by those appointed to bring them off.' Surely there is some corroboration of Hodgson's account of the * shattered and discouraged ' state of the English. + The contemporary authorities, other than those letters of Cromwell and Fleetwood, afford us little to go by. The rather vague consensus of Scottish opinion was that Cromwell meant to force a passage : Nicoll speaks generally of his * resolving to haif past into England,' Sir Edward Walker gives a rumour * that Cromwell . . . only designed the next day to have endeavoured to have broken through with his horse.' Balfour, alas, is almost wholly silent about the battle. But some, at least, of the English army themselves believed the desperate course had been taken, and that * in falling upon the enemy's right wing ' they were either 'to force a passage that way, or else to perish in the attempt.' — Mercurius JRoliiicuSy No. 15 (E 613). ' THE RACE OF DUNBAR ' finally convince one that the indefinite occupation of Dunbar had been quite resolved upon. Some of the officers clearly were against it. Hodgson's account shows us there was dissension ; Fleetwood's ' generally ' contrasts with the ' very unanimous ' of the already quoted context of the passage just cited ; and one cannot wonder that a minority should have been divided between recommending the desperate cutting-through expedient and advocating the mere surrender of all that could not escape by sea. How hopeless they were of reinforcements, Cromwell's letter to Hazelrig (cxxxix.) clearly shows ; and even if any should arrive, they could scarcely make up for the losses by daily increasing sickness ' beyond imagina- tion.'^ Therefore we take it that Leslie still hoped, on the Monday Tbrenoon, September 2, to see, by next day at latest, such an onward move by the English as would put them quite in his power at Cock- burnspath, amid ground where he could trust his own soldiers to give a good account of themselves. But there were others less patient than he — and less mindful of the shortcomings of the numerous but essentially ' scratch ' Scots army. As the day wore on, the clamour all about him for a decisive move, for ' stopping the enemy's retreat,' as Baillie says, for 'interposing between us and home,' as Cromwell put it, for* destroying the Sectaries,' as Wariston and the Committee get the credit of having phrased it — the clamour of those that would wait no longer, we say, found fatal outlet in the issue of an express command to Leslie. Somewhere early in the afternoon the Committee of the Scots Estates gave him his orders ' to stop the enemies' retreat, and for that end to storm Broxmouth House so soon as possible.'! And he obeyed. He had better have * There might have been one real gleam of hope for the English — had it been visible — in the fact that the Scots army was reduced to great want. Such a state of affairs might well have decided the invaders in adopting the more lingering policy ' which (if anything) would, we thought, provoke them to engage.' But they can scarcely have been informed of it as yet, though they learned it in after- days. t Baillie's 'Letters and Journals,' vol. iii., p. iii. The accepted and universally- received story : the one authority for the fact who lies under no suspicion at all, even though his statement was made (Letter to his Campvere correspondent, Spang, on January 2, 165 1) four months after the battle. For the fact that parties in Scotland were by that time in a transitional state — an ominously transitional state, perhaps, from the Principal's point of view — is of no account. Even six or eight months after Dunbar there was no serious risk of I^eslie's being ousted in favour of commanders at whom Baillie must have looked more askance ; and one gropes in vain for any reason that should account for his colouring the facts — if he had been given that way, and not an evidently just and upright man — in order to vindicate Leslie's professional reputation at the expense of his amateur advisers. Nor is Burnet's corroboration to be altogether disregarded. One would, indeed, have been loath to trust to the Bishop's sole and unsupported testimony. Even after Hill Burton's vindication of him in regard to dates, and his nearness to firsthand authority about the facts, there is this to be said : that the famous passage in the ' History of His Own Time ' (pp. 35, 36, edn. 1883) bears too many of the marks of the shoddy litterateur to pass muster unchallenged. And the 7 — 2 loo CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ' protested the laying down of his commission ' there and then — as we shall afterwards find him doing in a juncture scarcely more critical. But he did not. He obeyed; and began the 'shogging' movement seaward which the English observed with eager, Goorkha-like expectancy. Did he bethink him of the anecdote, possibly even then current and rather chestnut-flavoured, anent that journey ' a' doun hill ' which the Job's comforters round a death-bed foretold for the departing spirit of its occupant ? It was to such another that he was himself condemning many of his followers by this literal Doon Hill change of position. But even if this were at all a subject that might fittingly beguile one into jesting, we should have no need to resort to any such verbal jingle in order to furnish forth sport. The cue for merriment — of almost as grim a cast, no doubt — lies rather in the intervention and intermeddling just mentioned. For the first time in these pages the official Committee has had to be named — a body of which the reader probably wonders to hear, if he comes absolutely fresh to the subject in our company ; of which, we assure him, nobody ever would have known the existence but for this luckless decision at Dunbar. True, the name is familiar enough to any that have dipped even casually into the history of Montrose's campaigns. Official Committees of the Scots Estates had been the bugbear of every professional soldier that tried to make headway against the Great Marquis. One William Baillie of Letham, e.g., must have gone to his grave cursing the marplots who deprived him of a free hand, gave him orders which (as was said of the strategy of a French General of Division in the Sedan campaign) ' invariably produced disaster,' and then left him to bear the blame which they themselves had incurred. At Alford, in 1645, 'this Committee included such experienced commanders as Argyle, Balfour of Burleigh, and Elcho, and was unlikely, therefore, to inspire much confidence in any man who had heard of Inverlochy, Aberdeen, and Tippermuir.'"^ ^ But Leslie, it will be said, was a general of another calibre and rather . /^more assured position than the forgotten Baillie. Would any Committeef trail of the serpent in Burnet's individual case is unmistakable. There was a relative of his own to be brought in by name : the temptation was to him irresistible. It was indeed no very creditable participation that he claimed for ' my own uncle ' Johnston of Wariston — nothing else than the folly of having, as one of the Com- mittee of the Estates who ' thought that Leslie made not haste enough to destroy the Sectaries,' been * too hot ' in urging more haste (and less speed) upon him. But the raconteur was quite capable of telling a story against his kinsman, with or without any great foundation for it. And the Bishop's relatives and connections cannot really have made so much history as he says. The writer who drags his own great-grandmother on the stage as a personage of importance in her day is an authority obviously too atavistic. * Mr. Mowbray Morris's 'Montrose,' p. 167. t As to the personnel of the Committee, we have no information but from Burnet, and he names only Wariston. It is certain Argyle was not one of the number. By the way. Sir Edward Walker's account of the Committee's inten- 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR' loi dare to override his decisions, and, by hampering his action on the eve of the victory he deserved, nullify the effect of the resourceful strategy he had so long displayed ? The question is pertinent ; and we ourselves believe that not a little of the hitherto neglected truth in regard to Dunbar ' Drove ' depends upon the answer to it. The fact of the Committee's intervention is undeniable, but how did it come about ? What was it that drove the official bodies to upset the arrangements of their tried, trusted, and hitherto successful leader? What but the clamorous outcry in Leslie's camp, of which we have already, so to speak, heard the echo ? Tradition has not erred, we may be very sure, in fixing upon the ministers the responsibility for the disastrous move. We have some- thing more than tradition to go by, moreover ; Cromwell speaks of their interference (letter cxlii.), Major White of their 'importuning ' Leslie to take instant action ; and the very words used by the Com- mission of the Kirk after the rout may be read as indicating that the ministers were sensible of, and eager to deny, the part they had played in bringing it about. Hill Burton likened that body's pub- lished ' Causes for Humiliation ' to the report of a Board of Trade Inspector on the causes of a railway accident ; and, indeed, it shows such unconsciousness that the true inwardness of the downfall was not a matter capable of mathematical demonstration, as makes one appreciate the mordant remark. Yet the document is, as a matter of fact, rather too self-contradictory to have passed muster even among the contents of a Government pigeon-hole. It blames ' the exceeding great difffdence of some of the chief leaders of our army . . . who would not hazard to act anything, notwithstanding that God offered fair opportunities and advantages ' ; and goes on in the next breath to name ' the carnal confidence that was in many of the army to the despising of the enemy, and promising victory to them- tions is too curious to be overlooked. He represents them as deeming it ' pity to destroy so many of their brethren ; but, seeing the next day they were like to fall into their hands, it were better to get a dry (? bloodless) victory, and send them back with shame for their breach of covenant.' By no means bad counsel, either ! We have condoned the Leslies' wish to make gain out of a finish so disastrous to the Common- wealth ; and stoutly should we uphold the wisdom of the Committee in arranging for that dry but conclusive victory — if we could believe in any such thing. But the words quoted do not, alas, suffice to clear the Committee of the blame of having been much more rash and heedless than they are there represented as being. Sir Edward Walker is a witness, in some respects, of great value. He seems to have written up these ' Passages' in 1650 almost from hour to hour ; and so his volume gives us a series of well-nigh indispensable impressions of the shifting progress of events. But though thus abreast of the course of affairs, he is biassed in every sentence by his repulsion from ' the Scot, who sold his King for a groat ' ; and he is much more likely to have attributed this policy to the Committee at a venture (deeming it discreditable) than to have had the news of it from any admissible first-hand authority. Charles's personal followers were the very last to whom, just at that time, authentic intelligence would come ; one of the most important of them, Mr. Secretary Long, was even then lurking in poverty and seclusion at St. Andrews. I02 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS selves without eyeing of God.'* That last little clause, however, throws a powerfully illuminating light upon the subject. It gives consistency to the apparent contradiction just preceding it. For the meaning is that merely human caution and merely human confidence were alike vain ; that only the general diffusion of the ministers' own ' confidence,' derived as they deemed it to be from the God of Sabaoth, could to their thinking have been the saving of Scotland in the day of disaster. A laudable contention too, if it were not that in practice it amounted to this — that an army is best guided in the field when it is filled with ecstatic disregard of mundane lessons of mihtary experience. If the ministers thus stuck to their guns on September 12, how must they have thundered from them on the 2nd ! How they must have insisted, e.g., that Leslie and his men should ' eye God ' by reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Judges iii. 26-29 ! ' And Ehud . . . blew a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mount, and he before them. And he said unto them. Follow after me, for the Lord hath delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. And they went down after him, and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men.' There was the prototype whom the Kirk would have had Leslie emulate ; there the example which, Leslie or no Leslie, they were determined to follow. That fancied Scriptural precedent, so exact even to the minutest topo- graphical detail, may well have been dwelt upon and expounded ' at lairge ' in the Scots camp. On the Doon Hill they were in the mountain of Ephraim ; that they were the children of Israel was demonstrable fact ; there below were the fords of Jordan, or the Brocksburn, inviting to be taken ; there the ten thousand of Moab (almost to a man the very number !) whom the Lord had delivered into their hand. . . . We will go to the stake for it that that one Old Testament passage had more to do with the battle of Dunbar than anybody has hitherto guessed. But putting aside all conjecture on that point, one has to take account of another set of facts, better authenticated but scarcely more important than the citation of the very chapter and verse which must, as we honestly believe, have been the text of scores of plausible and inflammatory harangues up and down the ranks. Along with the clerical rhetoric and the resounding of the possibly extemporized ' drum ecclesiastic,' there has to be considered the state of the Scots Council of War proper. We know to a man who were the officers by whom *the army was ordered to be disposed of: they were ' both the Leslys (that is, the Earl of Leven and General David Leslie), Colonell Lumsdain (that was Sir James Lumsdain of Innergelly), Colonell Holburn, Colonell Robt. Montgomery, Sir John Brown, * Balfour's 'Annals,' vol. iv., p. lo^ et seqm'tur. * THE RACE OF DUNBAR 103 Colonell Strachan, and Colonell Kerr.'* The reader knows all but one of those names already, and knows little about most of their owners that would predispose him to find them backing up the counsels of prudence on this occasion. Strachan and Ker were the Kirk's men ; were ' at the devotion ' of the influential clergy for whom they had done good service in the field, to whose favour alone they looked for their advancement ; and mast therefore quite certainly have been minded to look for guidance rather to those inflated zealots thai> to the leader into whose shoes at least one of the pair seems to have hoped to step. Of Sir John Brown, again, we last had a glimpse as he threw down his cartel of defiance to the English — acted, that is to say, as the mouthpiece of the Scots who writhed under Cromwellian taunts at their leader's stedfastly declining a battle. Who but he, then, should lend an eager ear to the ill-timed advice that promised him a chance of at length making good his word ?l And Holburn ! His antecedents, so far as known, are colourless by comparison ; but his after-record stamps him as anything but good and faithful. We see him once and for all at Dunbar itself, as he furtively steals through the Scots ranks to order the extinguishing the soldiers' matches an hour or two before the English attack ;|. and, if that were not enough, we shall another year learn that about him which heightens the effect of the culpably blundering, or still more culpably treacherous, act. In the ensuing summer he was dismissed the Governorship of Stirling Castle as a patriot too dubious to be entrusted with such a respon- sible position ; a few weeks later he disappears from our ken, amid universal suspicion of having sold his country at Pitreavie fight. His say in the matter may, then, be readily guessed at : he was the Ethelred Evil-counsel of the camp. Montgomery and Lumsden we should be loath to rank with him as such. Of the one§ we know that he afterwards held Dundee as reso- * ' Memoirs of James Burns,' in Maidment's ' Historical Fragments.' The entry seems well worth transcribing ; it appears rather surprising indeed that no previous writer should' have taken into account the significance, in the light of former and after events, of several of these commanders' participation in the deliberations before Dunbar. t We have one little glimpse of Sir John Brown in his Parliamentary capacity that lets us see the hot-headed manner of man he was. When Johnston of War- iston 'confessed publicly in open Parliament,' in 1649, that the Whiggamores had been consenting parties to Cromwell's entering Scotland the year before, it was Sir John who ' desired the Clerk to mark that as an essential point now con- fessed in public parliament.' So runs the entry in Balfour (vol. iii.) ; and, brief as it is, it gives one a notion of the valiant, impetuous man, eager about a political * score ' as about a passage at arms. The story has been accepted by Carlyle and Dr. Gardiner on the authority of Sir Edward Walker. It was, perhaps, for issuing this order — passed off, haply, as a mistake in judgment— that Holburn was ' exonerated and approved ' by the Scots Parliament three months later, at the same time as the Earl of Leven. § Lumsden. Dr. Gardiner adds the fact that he was in command of the three new regiments which (not unmarked of Cromwell) had within the last two or three days joined Leslie. 104 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS lutely as Holburn evidently would not have held Stirling ; of the other that, abiding equally faithfully by the national cause, he was within a few months to be sent to rally to him, if possible, the then independent command of Ker and Strachan. Both, therefore, were probably the only trustworthy subordinates upon whom David Leslie could count. And so our brief survey may serve to show more fully than has elsewhere been demonstrated the nature of the influences that brought about the disastrous resolve of that Monday afternoon. As to the more generally recognised factor in the case, Leslie was no stranger to the presence of amateur Committees of the Estates in his camps, or to the exhortations of interloping and impatient ministers.* Such functionaries had between them been veritable Old Men of the Sea to every Covenanting General of the period. By contrast to a poor over-ridden Baillie, Leslie himself had hitherto been ' able ' (as the English newspapers said of Cromwell's London doctors) ' with more majesty to overcome ' the behests of advisers of that kidney. But here they found potent backing among the very men who should have stood by their leader ; and one cannot rightly understand the notorious Councils of War on the Doon Hill, we are persuaded, without taking into account the insubordination, issuing in ' Remon- strances,' of Ker and Holburn ; the hot-headedness of Sir John Brown (another signatory of that document so subversive of disci- pline) ; and the frowardness of Strachan to thwart and undermine the influence of Leslie. But how, it may be asked^ did all these humours and vapours come to a head thus simultaneously and spontaneously ? Is it not a plausible rather than a convincing statement of the facts to repre- sent the notorious order of the Committee as their joint result, the crystallized precipitate of these several deposits ? If the hand of David Leslie was indeed thus forced on Monday, September 2, why had he not been driven to act on the like compulsion any time in the preceding month ? We might, by way of reply, refer any doubters to what has already been said as to the mollifying of the restive subordinates in the matter of their Remonstrance, and the wholesome eflect upon the ministers (cf. Appendix) of Cromwell's menacing presence before Edinburgh. But, indeed, our point can better be brought out by the general reminder that there was a perennial difference between your Covenanter at bay and your * Do but consider his little speech to the Rev. John Nevoy, in Kintyre, four years before, when he and Argyle and that mild Christian had waded literally ' red-wat-shod ' to the ankles, after the slaughter of Colkitto's followers : * JVoxa^ Mr. Johtiy have you not once gotten your fill of blood f (Guthry's ' Memoirs,' p. 243). The moving spirit in that wholesale massacre of prisoners of war had not been Leslie himself ; not even Argyle, burning though he was to avenge the wast- ing of his lands by McDonald's Irish ; but rather the Inverary chaplain, with his appeals to Old Testament precedent as sanctioning a deed from which the leader's own soldierly instinct revolted. Pity that the memory had not stiffened Leslie's back against interference on this second occasion ! ^THE RACE OF DUNBAR' 105 Covenanter holding cards which he had not the skill or the patience to play. A reference to a familiar and by no means remote historical parallel" ought, indeed, to clinch the point. The tumultuary state of affairs on the Doon Hill was, we take it, exactly reproduced in the West of Scotland a generation later; and these earlier Cove- nanters of the Cromwell wars were only the forerunners of the * grotesque' warriors of the 'killing times.' Well might Mr. Steven- son contrast the ' tincture of soldierly resolution, and even of military common-sense,' that was in Hackston of Rathillet, with the want of those qualities shown by the men around him at Bothwell Brig or Aird's Moss. And well may we lament that the dictates of miHtary common-sense were in this earlier instance similarly overborne and set at naught by fanatical interlopers. True, this Scots leaguer was the green tree, the other by comparison the dry. There was such a gathering of trained military experts at its head as the poor folk of the Conventicles never could (if they would) have been guided by. But the same causes brought about the same effects in both cases : the veteran counsels of the Leslies were evidently brushed aside just like the remonstrances, thirty years later, of Hackston, Balfour of Burleigh, and (in Sir Walter's brave old tale) the gallant Morton. A parallel sufficiently exact and by no means uninstructive could, indeed, be drawn between the month of August, 1650, and the month of June, 1679, The military history of the former we have just written, and we are now about to see how it came to nothing in the end. That of the latter was, on a smaller scale, sufficiently like unto it. There again there was the triumph of a Covenanting army standing on the defensive ; a retreat of the enemy that set its leaders and men alike by the ears, in frantically clamorous and untimely dis- sensions ; the consequent abandonment, or rather misuse, of a strong '^ Not having the gift of prophecy, the Scots thought themselves on the eve of re-enacting a bit of recent English military history, not of anticipating the later Scottish one spoken of in the text. They ' reckoned,' says Hodgson, they had * got us in a pound ' — which is more explicitly named as * Essex his pound,' in one of the contemporary newsletters. Six years before (to a day) the Earl of Essex had been hemmed in by Charles I. on the Cornish coast at Fowey, just as Cromwell was now hemmed in by the shore of the Firth of Forth ; and had had to escape by sea himself, while his infantry capitulated and his cavalry by mere good luck broke through. ' Reproaching us,' as Cromwell put it, * with that condition the Parlia- ment's army was in ' then, and looked again like being reduced to, the Scots were (once more to quote His Excellency) filled with 'insolency and contempt . . . beyond apprehension.' They would have done better to take warning by another precedent, much farther off in time but nearer in point of distance to where they now found themselves. It dated back to before Bannockburn, but might have been borne in mind none the less. On April 28, 1296, 'the whole forces of Scotland appeared in order of battle on the heights ' [this very Doon Hill] ' above Dunbar. Warenne marched against them. The impatient Scots abandoned the advantage of the ground, and poured down tumultuously on the English. They were dispersed, broken, dissipated.' Lord Hailes, the Tacitus from whom we quote ('Annals,' i. 289), did not fail to point out how history repeated itself three and a half centuries afterwards in the same place — on September 3, 1650. io6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS position, and resultant shivering of the Cause and Covenant into ruins. The very topography of the two campaigns is aHke — Drum- clog was another Gogar, and far-famed Bothwell Brig a defensible strength at least comparable to Leslie's ground. But how much more really essential is the relationship, in point of unbridled spiritual excitation, between the two forces which, each in its own time, gained ground to begin with, and then irretrievably lost it ! Here was no such possibly chivalrous impulse as had, on this very field of Dunbar, given De Warenne a fair encounter and the victory ; but rather another and totally different manifestation of the perferviduvi ifi- genium — that same ecstatic frenzy which was to make the soldiership of the later Covenanters a mere derision. Little it availed David Leslie, then, that for four weary weeks he had simultaneously baffled Oliver Cromwell and kept his own men in hand. It was in vain that he had pacified the queasy authors of the ' Remonstrance of the Officers '; in vain that he had put up with the ministers' ' purging ' activity as the price of his own freedom in taking the needed defensive measures before Edinburgh. Sufficient unto the day had been the evil thereof; but now it was the morrow, now the EngHsh had, in their turn, become the defenders, and now — as on the first occasion when Cromwell had retreated to Dunbar — the ministers broke forth into triumphant jubilations, which, though they were to prove just as premature as their earlier pseans of that sort, must for the time have seemed much better grounded, and so have carried far more weight. Of the evils brought about by the only too characteristic exhibition enough has been said already. One was the blindly insistent continuance of the ' purging ' treatment — to which one might as well give the still uglier name of castrating, in respect of its depriving the army of the services of the best men avail- able, and leaving Leslie with 23,000 indeed, but 23,000 only *of sorts.' Yet more disastrous was this other imbecility — this appeal (one may roundly call it) to the example of Ehud. The trumpet was l)lown in the mountain of Ephraim to only too good purpose. It bore down opposition before it like the walls of Jericho. Thus had Leslie, by his very success, compassed his own downfall in the long- run. If he had not given the Kirk such good reason to suppose their enemy already vanquished, the Kirk might even yet have hearkened to military common - sense. Leslie missed the best chance that ever man had of beating Oliver Cromwell because he had just before beaten Oliver Cromwell so thoroughly.* * There is less presumption than might appear in one's thus practically reverting, even after Carlyle and Dr. Gardiner have spoken, to what used to be the accepted reading of the facts connected with the abandonment of the Doon Hill position. Both of the writers named are inclined to saddle Leslie with more of the respon- sibility than the traditional view assigns to him, but neither succeeds (for once) in making good his point. Carlyle indeed, dubious about Leslie's being at all * hard to advise,' committed himself to a statement at which one can afford to smile. ' It was likeliest to be Royalist Civil Dignitaries ' who overcame such reluctance as 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR' 107 2. T/ie Rout That last statement has, of course, in some degree to be qualified. Paradox seldom contains the whole truth ; and while ours embodies a very large part of it, there is a rider to be added. For it is evident enough that Leslie was only half-hearted in his preparations for the attack — as he had certainly never once shown himself while standing on the defensive. His dispositions seem to have been made with all care: he brou ght do wn the thirty guns in his batteries to a spot where they not only~covered the ford by which the Berwick road crossed the Brocksburn, but could have bombarded the House itself if the Committee's scheme had proved feasible ; and he drew up his horse and foot in an oblique line, of which, roughly speaking, the artillery must have been the centre. But if he was dreaming of rout- ing the English as he had routed 'James Graham at Philipshauch,'^ Leslie had to 'come down and fight.' As there certainly was no Royalist Civil Dignitary within twenty miles of the Doon Hill between the ist and 3rd of September, the suggestion has hardly the value that attaches (shall we say?) to * the Shakespearian, the Dantesque ' traits in this very bit of Carlyle's work, to those touches of description that are (in consonance with Meredithian prescription) contained 'in a line, two at most.' Your 'poets who spring imagination with a word or phrase ' are not your surest guides in matters of dry detail. Dr. Gardiner again thinks that Leslie — at first driven to act against his better judgment by the counsel of ' the Committee of Estates, and especially those members of it who were most under clerical influence ' — must have gathered confidence, and grown if anything rather ashamed of his doubts, as the Monday wore on. But he bases that opinion chiefly upon some very curious weighing of evidence. He seems to have made the mistake of regarding a question put in process of cross-examination as an index of what really is in the questioner's mind. Because Leslie asked a captive, on the eve of the battle, how the English could fight ' when they had shipped half of their men and all their great guns,' the historian of the ' Common- wealth and Protectorate ' supposes the Scots leader actually believed such embark- ation to have taken place. It seems evident on the face of it, rather, that the question was a feeler, designed to ' draw ' the prisoner and make him blurt out information that a point-blank query would have put him on his guard against affording. And if so, Leslie got just what he wanted in the reply he did elicit — 'You will find both men and great guns too !' So that Dr. Gardiner's psychology once again looks rather questionable. Nor does it succeed any the better in con- vincing the reader when we find the historian quoting, by way of further evidence, the story of Leslie's boast, ' That he would have all the English alive or dead by seven next day ' (' A Brief Relation,' No. 53, E 612). That was obviously mere hearsay. * An unwarrantable inference, yet one which Dr. Gardiner's theory of Leslie's confidence almost seems to imply. Whether or not the historian believes the Scots leader to have been looking forward to such another feather in his cap, the reader will probably agree with us that the mention of Philiphaugh in Leslie's own letter of September 5 was only brought in as a natural enough reminder of the now defeated General's past services. The full text, by the way, is worth quoting, and no one will make the further mistake of supposing, from the fact of the writer's not directly mentioning the intervention of the Committee and ministers, that no such thing had ever come about. P'or one would scarcely expect to find the General stultifying himself by admitting that he had given way on a vital point. Here then is the letter from the ' Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' vol. ii., I08 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS he went the wrong way to work. The explanation of his victory five years before had been that he effected a surprise : here he permitted himself to be surprised. Looking that undeniable fact in the face, are we to suppose the worst of him, and picture him as having deli- berately ' sold the race '? He ' was much suspected,' wrote that good hater, the ' Private Hand '; was then the suspicion justified ? We should say it was not. Here was something very different from the prospect of his being able to enrich himself at the expense of no one but his King's and Kirk's and country's enemies. It was one thing to incline towards letting Cromwell pass unmolested, but lastingly discredited — another to make himself a consenting party to Cromwell's triumph. Of such deliberate treachery he was, we are persuaded, blameless ; where he did err was in not seeing to it that his men stood to their arms on the Monday night as vigilantly as the EngHsh. Instead of doing so, the infantry crouched under the corn- stooks for protection from the rain, and went to sleep ; those that at first fought against their own weariness probably followed the example when Holburn came round with his insane order to them to desist from, rather than persevere in, the effort to keep their matches alight. The cavalry again 'went to forage, and many unsaddled.'* This was scarcely the state of matters that Leslie could have wished to see on finding himself now compelled to take the offensive. Broxmouth House being his objective in the first instance, he should have ensured his army's getting within storming distance of it by 'skreigh of day.' He gave orders, he says, which were neglected; the laziness of the rank and file, the slackness — if not worse — of the officers, were his undoing. The excuse, to be sure, is scarcely one of those which ' give away ' him that offers them ; in so excusing, Leslie did not accuse, himself. We have ourselves written to little purpose above if we have not shown that discipline had been given the go- by in the Scots army ; and the tempestuous weather naturally militated against its being enforced. But it remains evident that Leslie did not do all that man could to keep his men in a proper posture. His authority must have been flouted and discredited to an extent that even we can scarcely credit if he could not still, by personal exertion and much jogging the elbows of his subordinates, have managed to keep all on the alert for that one night. He did, it is true, begin the attack before daybreak on the Tuesday (September 3) ; but, far from taking the enemy unawares, the party p. 298 : 'Stirling, the 5° September, 1650. — Concerning the misfortun of our army I shall say nothing ; but it wes the visible hand of God, with our owen lacines, and not of man, that defeat them, notwithstanding of orders giuen to stand to theire armes that night. I know I get my owen share of the fait by many for drawing them so neer the enemie, and must suffer in this as many tyms formerly, though I tak God to witness wee might haue as easily beaten them, as wee did James Graham at Philipshauch, if the officers had stayed by theire troops and regiments ' (David Leslie to Argyle). * Sir Edward Walker, 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR' 109 which he despatched to cross the burn at the ford on the Berwick road encountered a powerful English brigade advancing with the like intention towards themselves. "*■ For the fire of a new resolve had kindled in the English Council of War (once, as we have seen, rather troubled by misgivings of its own) so soon as the Scots' intentions became evident ; and for the last twelve hours such a spirit of grim resolution had been displayed at their head-quarters as contrasted ominously with the divided counsels of the Scots. The historical conference between Cromwell, Lambert,! and Monk, in the grounds of the Earl of Roxburgh's house, need not be dwelt upon ; here was the fruit of it, and the ' grabble ' for the possession of the ford of the Brocksburn on the Berwick road is the chief ganglion of one of the decisive battles of history. Not that it outweighs in interest the currents of the heady fight elsewhere. Dr. Gardiner, for instance, deserves all credit for having restored to its proper place in the general tactical scheme a bit of strategy which Carlyle overlooked — the despatch of a brigade of three foot regiments and one of cavalry to the seaward edge of the Brocksmouth policies, and the flanking movement which they thence effected under Cromwell's own lead. With the help of that new light on the subject-^struck out of Hodgson by dint of more patient study of the * pudding-headed captain ' than Carlyle^ devoted to him * This, perhaps, seems a new ' opening ' to the reader who has studied his Carlyle and Gardiner, but really it is a moot-point which side actually took the initiative. We follow the 'True Relation of the Routing' (E 612, 9), 'A party of ours advancing to gain the wind of them '* (to get the weather-gauge, we take .it — a pleasingly nautical expression) ' were discovered by a party of theirs who came to alarm us.' The difference is slight between that statement and the modern or contemporary accounts which represent the English as attacking a totally unprepared enemy ; for however early this Scots party may have been in taking the field in order to 'storm Broxmouth House so soon as possible,' it is evident their vigils had not been shared by the bulk of their comrades. Our own state- ment, in fact, brings out in bold relief the most lamentable point in the whole case, so strongly does the early activity of this one ' party ' contrast with the lethargy of their comrades. One is scarcely prepared to believe that any part of the Scots can, after the din of an hour's ' hot dispute ' at the ford hard by them, have been caught sleeping ' in their hutts ' (as the ' Private Hand ' says) lay the now trium- phant English, and so 'shot sitting.' But the (fancied) 'security' of the Scots is spoken of in all quarters ; and it is a well-established fact that a majority of the army had scarcely time to shake themselves after slumber, much less to relight their matchlocks and look to their other equipment, ere the Philistines were upon them to slaughter and make them captive. t The reader of Hodgson's ' Memoirs ' rises from a perusal of them convinced that John Lambert was the hero of Dunbar — that the idea of attacking the Scots originated with him, and that he planned unaided all the details of the scheme so successfully carried out. But Dr. Gardiner is doubtless right in discounting the enthusiasm of the loyal captain, and remarking that it must ' surely have been at Cromwell's instigation ' that he combated in the Council the project of shipping the foot and breaking through with the horse ; and that the flanking movement was arranged * no doubt m accordance with instructions from Cromwell.' X For, though it goes against the grain to point out the spots on the sun, Carlyle does look a little foolish when lie pictures Cromwell and Hodgson at the Berwick road ford of the burn, and Lambert far to the right from that point. no CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS — one realizes almost for the first time how the rout was effected so suddenly and completely. The fight for the ford, to be sure, still remains in the foreground of the picture. It was a * hot dispute ' of about an hour's duration, say all the narratives — fill in the details who can ! It was fought out 'at the sword's point,' says Cromwell himself, but also by help of villainous saltpetre, according to another account, the combatants * firing hard one at another.'* The state- ments are not, of course, contradictory ; were not the Scots artillery and infantry in the ' very good posture ' We have seen, on the brink of the disputed * pass,' and had not the English ' great guns ' been brought down yester-eve from ' the churchyard of Dunbar ' to the * little, poor Scotch farmhouse ' (the ' Brief Relation,' No. 53) within range of the burn, whence they might bellow back defiance ? And for a hand-to-hand melee, was there not Archibald Strachanf on the one side, and John Lambert on the other, each of them a swordsman bound to press into the thick of it ? I think Tiber, or the Brocks- burn, ' trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of " their " sounds, Made in her concave shores !' For a while the issue really was in doubt ; just as it seemed that Lambert — or Whalley, or Fleetwood, or which of them you will — had made good his footing on the right bank of the stream, there was a rush of ' the enemy's horse, being most lanceers,' and 'coming down the hill, our horse' (un- grammatically and excitedly says the ' Brief Narration ') 'gave way a little.' It was then, I think, that Strachan struck his swashing blow ; then, belike, that he received his wound — if ever hurt he had in that fight. Nor were those lances with which the Scots horse had la tely b een reiafmed~wea pons~toT>e despised^^^e y had ' two iron pe gs~"dh €ac h side be sides^ihe pike at the endj-thlJTm case the one should "Sreak they might do execution with the other.'l A kind of Lochaber axe of a lance ! Yet it skilled not. Pikes of another sort came into action soon. ' Our first foot ' (so styled by a writer who knew not Hogmanay) served apparently only to check the ' lanceers' ' rush ; those held in reserve did more. For ' my own regiment' (continues His Excellency) 'did come seasonably in, and at the push of pike did repel the stoutest regiment' (of infantry) 'the enemy had there.' And with ' my own ' a certain Colonel Pride's men must have been brigaded for this service (as we know they were) to some purpose ; for only * The ' Brief Narration ' (E 612, 7). t Let us do him justice : if he had been foolhardy in urging the forward move- ment, he wrought like a man to see it through. ' Straughan was in this fight and charged desperately,' — ' A True Relation of the Routing' (E 612). * Some of the horse charged, especially those commanded by Col. Strachan, and he was wounded.' — * Collections by a Private Hand ' in Maidment. t * The Lord General's Letter,' E 610, 4. By the way, we owe another bit of information about the Scots equipment to a newsletter ('True Relation of the Routing') : • We took from all their foot short skeans and long knives (such as the Irish use) to stab a man when they come within him.' 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR' iii the day before they had, you may say, ' seen their dead,' like the Black Tyrone — had borne single-handed the brunt of the skirmish at the shepherd's ' little house,' had lost several men to the enemy, and had heard tales afterwards of the Scots man-handling their captives."^ There was revenge, then, reinforcing despair — not to speak of x^PMi the lust of battle, whetting the vindictive impulse. For the Scots were not as yet (though they became so) ' stubble to our swords ;' one fancies it was here that ' two regiments of foot fought it out manfully, for they were all killed as they stood (as the enemy confessed).'! Who were they, these unhonoured and unsung gamecocks of the debacle I Lawers' regiment, setting an example of Highland doggedness, which (however subversive of preconceived notions) was to be followed heroically by the Clan Gillian ere another twelvemonth ? Or some of Lumsden's new blood out of the North, making a despairing stand under a leader who fought till he was himself disarmed and captured ? At a guess, it was more likely the latter ; though, indeed, no one can pretend to say. But while the pass was thus being lost and won, where were the rest of the Scots? Ah, that is the question which most writers would have been puzzled to answer before the real meaning of Hodgson's artless narrative was brought to light. For the bulk of the army could scarcely be deemed so lacking in two- or six-o'clock- in-the-morning-courage as to be wavering and breaking already, while themselves unattacked, and while their comrades were ' disputing ' the ford so toughly. And you could not picture them all as still asleep ' in their huts ' or under the corn-stooks, with the thunder of ^artillery, jnusketry, and charging squadrons pealing so close at hand. iCay, one would rather expect to have heard of them as being hurried forward to the support of their comrades. But it was, after all, little time that was given the remainder of the army in which to bestir themselves. For, even as the struggle at the ford reached its climax — even while the left wing of the Scots, stretching westerly from that point to about the shelving path already noted, was getting the decks cleared for action — the flanking movement under Cromwell himself! took effect. And as his troopers and three regiments of foot came on at the charge, the centre and right flank of the Scots were caught between two fires. All the pent-up energies of five weeks' waiting were in that charge; all the vigou ^ of the most seasoned _body_of troops then anywhere "mTlTe'world^o be~found. Ihe Scots reeled bef0re"rt7"'br5lce and fled ; hampered their ' main-battle ' as they confusedly ran ; and communicated the contagion of panic to those only as yet threatened. Sauve qui peut ! ' They run ! — I profess they run !' What a meaning emphasis in those words that broke * * A True Relation of the Routing.' + ' Collections by a Private Hand.' X Dr. Gardiner will keep anyone right that fails to understand Oliver's not having been at the head of his own foot regiment. 112 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS from the victor's lips as he saw more than he can have hoped for incredibly coming to pass ! What a clinching fitness in the un- wittingly Parsee symbolism of the companion saying, ' at the first gleam of the level Sun over St. Abb's Head and the German Ocean ' — * Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered '! The left wing never came into action at all. Can it have been that LesHe posted them as high on the hillside, with as wide an interval between them and the centre, as he dared, hoping, even if things turned out as badly below as he may have feared, that this might still act as a reserve, be drawn off ere Cromwell could engage it also, and so serve even yet to dog and embarrass his after-progress ? If that was the plan, small chance remained of carrying it through. For the troops that might have turned the fortunes of the day fled helter-skelter in their turn also ; of the whole force, few rallied on this side of Stirling. The Leslies' own headlong flight has not escaped Carlyle's notice ; Sir Edward Walker unkindly remarks that the ministers in a body were among the first to run for it. The English had the pursuit for about eight miles or farther — to 'neere Muscleburgh,' says one writer ; ' the spoyle of the field, which was much, the seamen stole whilst the soldiers pursued.'* But the trophies of war must speedily enough have been put under proper guards — those 'two thousand colours ' which were to hang in Westminster Hall, the thirty cannon which the Scots were another year to rue the want of,'"fhe stands of arms which Cromwell roughly estimated at iq,ooo. As to the casualties, let us accept the computation of near^ "three thousand' killed, note the conqueror's proclamation giving leave to the neigh- bours to carry off and succour what wounded they could, and so pass on. Of the 10,000 prisoners, one-half were set free on the spot, the other sent over the Border under escort — of whom some escaped by night, some were shot through the head because they could or would march no farther, some reached Morpeth to die there of famine-fever accelerated by raw cabbages, some were told off to 'the salt-pans at Sheels,' others (who were weaversf) were kept, at Newcastle apparently, to ' begin the trade of linen cloth like unto the Scotch cloth.' In sum, 3,000 reached Durham, and were 'told into the Cathedral' by Hazelrig's officers]: ; and the last state of most of them was transportation over-sea to America, where Dr. * Mercurius Politicus^ No. 15 (E 613). + Yes, even siclike mechanical persons. Probably the Highlanders in the gang of prisoners, whom Hazelrig picked out by their being ' hardier than the rest,' scorned these strange bed-fellows, just as Rob Roy scorned his worthy cousin the Bailie. X. Sir Arthur Hazelrig's report, October 31. Sir Edward Walker, by the way, mentions the curious circumstance that Cromwell * in a gallantry,' sent 1,000 of the prisoners * as a present ' to the Countess of Winton. It was not for the last time that extremes met, there at Seaton ; since this Catholic lady was the only person who came in for a respectful word of mention in the scathing account of the Scots nation to be found in ' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 134. 'THE RACE OF DUNBAR* 113 Gardiner assures us a moiety throve and lived happily ever after. Among the more eminent captives were Lumsden of Innergellie; Winram of Libberton, Senator of the College of J ustice ; Jaffray, Provost of Aberdeen. Winram died of his wounds* (upon which Sir Edward Walker remarked that Jaffray could have been better spared) ; Lumsden must have been exchanged (though we have no record of the fact), since a capable antiquary! identifies him with Lumsden of ' Monquhaney ' who defended Dundee next year. There is a dramatic story in one of the later English newsletters setting forth how the news of Dunbar reached some at least of the inhabitants of Edinburgh — how a certain Mr. ' Hagoe,' or Haig, was haranguing a congregation at the daily service that Tuesday, and paint- ing in glowing colours the defeat of the 'Sectaries' which had already, he rashly promised his people, taken place, when the door of the church burst open and a soldier, fresh from the scene of slaughter and reeling with fatigue, stood at the portal as a living witness of the actual truth. The revulsion of feeling among the hearers need not be dwelt upon, nor yet the humiliating contrast between the proud imaginings of the Kirk and the hard fact which it had to set itself to face. Yet the anecdote is apposite enough to bear repro- duction, and may well serve to emphasize and foreshadow these facts respectively — that ' Dunbar Drove,' before and above all else, put an end to the arrogant pretensions of the Kirk ; and that in the opposition which Cromwell was yet for a twelvemonth to encounter, the Kirk, sadly divided against itself, played a secondary part alto- gether. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II., BOOK II. This ' purging ' of the Scots army turns out to have been even more despicable a business than it has hitherto been considered. It grew out of the fact that • the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans ' — the Covenanting Kirk leaders, i.e., with the ' Malignants ' who (in a sense different of course from the modern Anglo- Indian use of the word) were z^wcovenanted. But the former party at all events waited to avail themselves of the services of some of the outcasts before cutting the connection. It was not until their General's defence of Edinburgh had, as related in Chapter I., Book II., stood the test of attack — not until they began to entertain confident hopes of the ' Sectaries ' being already baffled and beaten — that the Kirk dared to insist on * removing,' as Nicoll puts it, ' such as did not please the leaders of this kingdom for the time. ' * There were black sheep even among the Puritan soldiery. Take this story from Mercurius PoliticuSy No. 26, under date December 2nd : — ' This night a trooper wias sentenced at Whitehall to be shot. He had been (it seems) a Cornet of the late King's, but took pay and was in the late expedition into Scotland, and in the fight at Dunbarr was the man that so sorely wounded the Lord Libberton, whose horse he got and 40 pounds out of his pocket ; whereupon, bestowing a curse or two for a farewell to the Roundheads^ he said he had got what he came for (as was proved) and so forsook his colours and for a time obscured himself in London.' t Mr. A. H. Millar, 'Fife : Pictorial and Historical.' 8 114 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Dr. Gardiner indeed states — and states quite accurately — that there had been a Commission for Purging six weeks previously, on June 21, before the new levies were raised. But he seems to have missed the significance of an earlier entry in the Scots records, which goes to show that this was only the formal renewal of an undertaking now become annual. An Act for purging the army (see Thomson, vol. vi., pt. ii., pp. 446, 447) had been passed on exactly the same date of the preceding year, so the ' report from the Conference anent purging ' on this second midsummer anniversary (fit season for such midsummer madness) was, along with the accompanying Commission to a Parliamentary Committee charged with the affair, only a routine and periodical ' reference,' in the modern term. Against the supposition that the intention had been to act upon it strictly and severely from June onwards, there is to be set the fact already adduced of a number of Cavaliers pure and simple having taken part in the fighting on the last days of July. How came * Morris his men ' in that galley, e.^:, if the clergy had from the outset been resolved to trust to none but their own ' Holie army'? No : the Kirk's sudden access of zeal for purging only came on after they had witnessed Cromwell's repulse before Edinburgh. Was it due to the • leaders of the kingdom' taking alarm at the common soldiers manifesting more purely Royalist inclinations than they liked to see ? Sir Edward Walker, who says so (p. 164), cites the fact that the ' soldiers in the late action ' (at the (Quarrel! Holes and Musselburgh) ' made an R. with chalk under the crown upon their arms ' ; and he might have corroborated that by telling, as credulous Nicoll tells (p. 21), of the private captured by the English who had his eyes 'holkit out of his heid,' 'because upon his back there was drawn with white chalk these words, I am for King Charles.'' Was it, again, on religious rather than political grounds (though the distinction was scarcely recognised by men who * termed the sin of Malignancy a sin against the Holy Ghost' — Walker, p. 165) that the purging was gone about? Balfour says as much, and leads one to infer that the ministers did not relish the life and conversation of some of their allies for the time being — whose bad language in battle the Cromwellians noted down with such care, by-the-bye, that some specimens filtered through even to the pages of that painstaking /r/^r/j- writer,. Bulstrode Whitelocke. Both of these explanations, no doubt, contain a great part of the truth. But neither of them suffers by its also being noted that the Kirk's renewed activity for * purging ' was simultaneous with the ecstatic jubilation over Cromwell's retreat to which, as we have seen, it gave vent in the beginning of August. To be sure, we have seen all along that the more prominent Engagers, and Royalists of still older standing, had never been given a chance to take up arms in this present quarrel. But a good many that were less notoriously of that way of thinking, and yet are not to be confounded with the English Cavaliers aforesaid, evidently were suffered, like the latter, to remain in the army so long as the dominant party were in some fears for their own safety. So soon as the latter were emboldened, however, by Cromwell's repulse and the hopes of a speedy victory that they thereupon formed, the boycott was extended. Thus from the very day of the ministers' first rash boasting over Cromwell's ' flight ' dates the initiation of their more sweeping and indiscriminate measures against * Malignants ' in their own army. Balfour names the 1st and 2nd of August — the morrow of Cromwell's repulse— and again the 5th, the day of his temporary retreat to Dunbar, as the dates when the Committee of Parliament devoted itself at the Kirk's instigation to purging some 80 officers, and soldiers whose number Dr. Gardiner puts at 3,000, out of the army. What the totals were before a month was out, we have no means of knowing — for NicoH's 20,000 is obviously exaggerated. But it is clear the process went on unremittingly during the whole of the time when — as Chapters III. and IV., Book II., have, we hope, shown — the governing Scotch faction deemed they had the enemy at advantage, and might therefore dispense with some of the most experienced soldiers at their disposal. BOOK III. SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER : HAMILTON FIGHT. 8—2 CHAPTER I. EFFECTS OF THE KIRK's DEFEAT AT DUNBAR — CROMWELL OCCUPIES EDINBURGH — THE HEAD OF MONTROSE — RECONNAISSANCE BEFORE STIRLING — LINLITHGOW GARRISONED. THE leading feature of Scottish history during the short period of time covered by this present Book was the effort of the Kirk to maintain the war of resistance to the Commonwealth on the old footing. Unconvinced by the result of Dunbar battle, its leaders still hoped to effect the triumph of Presbyterianism over Independency, while keeping the claims of Royalism, which they ostensibly supported, in strict subordination to their own hierarchical pretensions. A desperate enough enterprise in any case, one cannot but pronounce. Even if Scotland had still been as unanimously at one with the ministers as in the Bishops' Wars of ten years before, success in opposing the victors of Dunbar must have been hard to come by. As things were, the chance of attaining it on the line which the Kirk persisted in taking was yet more remote. The prestige of the clergy had departed with the non- fultilment of their promises of assured victory at Dunbar. More than one English newspaper notes, in these months, the resentment and disappointment of the Scottish vulgar on that score* ; and the fact shows that the influence of the ministers was on the wane in those quarters where it had hitherto been supreme. The earlier alienation of the more influential compatriots of these clerical * Balaams ' has long ago been noted, in our introductory account of the steps by which the bulk of the Scottish nobility had come to prefer the Royal cause to that of Presbyterianism pure and simple. * Cromwell's own statement in letter cxlix. that ' many of their soldiers, since our victory, are offended at their ministers,' may be supplemented by a delightful remark in 'A Brief Relation' (E 613) as to the Scots' belief 'that,' at Dunbar, * by the Balaamism of that same thing (no man knows what) called the Kirk of Scotland, they were armed capapee, as shot-free and stick-free as if they had purchased those arms from the witches of Lapland.' As to the feelings of the populace it has to be said, however, that what Mercurius Politiais remarked in October about ' the Kirkmen ' being ' down the wind,' and their ' power of the keys' signifying very little without the power of the sword, is contradicted in November by its mention of ' the poor people ' as still * charmed by the Kirk. ' Ii8 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS It was to those nobles, and the King whom they supported, that the Kirk had in the long-run to transfer a large share of the authority it would rather have exercised alone. The process of reversal spoken of in the opening chapter of this volume — the development of affairs which led, as Dr. Gardiner puts it, to ' the substitution of the national for the Covenanting cause' — begins here. It was by no means peaceful, least of all at the outset. Friction would have been inevit- able (though the phraseology of modern journalism is inappropriate enough here) had there been nothing else at work than the mutual jealousies of a practically Cavalier aristocracy and a rigidly Covenant- ing Kirk. Matters were complicated, however, by the presence of yet another set of men aspiring to rule the roast. These were the dissentients who had boggled at an alliance with Charles II. all along* — a party that may be said to have regarded the young King as •a Jonah long before the ' woefuU rout at Dunbar.' Their leaders may be named here : they were, among the laity, the undermentioned Johnston of Wariston, and Chiesly of Kerswall, with the Provost of Edinburgh, Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield ; among the clergy, Mr. James Guthrie, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie; among the military. Colonels Strachan and Ker. So sinister did the intentions of this Westlandf faction appear ere many months were out, that the shrewd Dugald Dalgetty, or Sir James Turner, believed their success would have led to the King's being 'just as safe at St. Johnston,' or Perth, * as his father was at Westminster.'^ Here, then, were all the elements of a very pretty quarrel, which presently involved the Kirk in active hostilities with the Northern * Maligriants,' and brought it within an ace of drawing the sword also upon its own Whiggamore extremists. Small wonder that circum- stantial stories should soon have reached the English as to there being ' so many divisions ' in the Scottish court and camp ' that they will suddenly break in pieces.' § Yet with it all there was sufficient anti-English obduracy among the Scots to shake Cromwell's own hopes of winning over ' the better sort of them ' to acquiescence in * Aniea, p. 21 (Chapter II., Book I.). Swinton; whose name is there associated with those of Johnston and Chiesly, seems to have taken no further part in the political doings of the time until he definitely went over to the English in the following December. t The action of this party signalized in effect, as Carlyle pointed out, the reappearance of the • Whiggamores ' of 1648; their strength lay in the 'fervid Celtic west ' and south-west of Scotland among the uplands and moorlands that were, a generation later, the habitat of the * martyrs ' of the ' killing times.' Not all of their leaders, it will be observed, hailed from those parts ; but Chiesly, one of the most active, was a Clydeside man (descended, we suppose, from those ' fewars in the towne of Carnwath,' of whom the ' Memorie of the Soraervilles ' makes occasional mention), and Stewart's property was the Kirkfield near Lanark, we take it. Gillespie was a Glasgow, and Guthrie a Stirling,' divine. + * Memoirs,' p. 93. § Report of six English Cavaliers {c/. the statement of Cromwell's three Irish informants — letter cxlix.) who came into Edinburgh from the north on Septem- ber 23 (• The Lord Generall Cromwell his March to Sterling,' E 613). SCOTS DISSENSIONS AND BOND OF UNION 119 his occupation of their country, and to evoke (going to the other extreme) the grudging praises of that carpingly critical stranger within their gates, Sir Edward Walker.* Scots patriotism, in a word, was aroused. That jealousy of the ' auld enemies,' which is in our own day rightly styled particularism and even parochialism, operated at that time, one may say, as a saving virtue. It restrained the vehemence of the Scots Royalists against the interloping ministry — whom they would have fought to the death, one fancies, but for the presence of the common enemy ; it gave a yet keener edge to the Kirk's appetite for vengeance upon the triumphant Sectaries ; it fired the resolution of the Westland Whigs even in the crisis of their fever of vacillation and indecision. The manifestation of it may, in one at least of those cases, be deemed unbecoming, because un-Christian ; and the effects, upon the matter, proved in the end disastrous rather than gratifying. But, whether commend- able and politic or blameworthy and unwise, this dour, unshakable love of country has none the less to be taken into account as a fact of history. It was a factor in the case, however, of which the English were slow to realize the import. Not many days of this month of September had passed ere Cromwell's own line of action was, as we believe, determined by his expectation that the Scots must soon be reduced to inaction and impotence by their own disagreements and bickerings. The reader has already witnessed some of the effects arising from his hopes of gaining a party among the more ' honest ' and ' godly ' of the nation ; and must be prepared now to find history repeating itself, for some short while, in that respect. Indeed, the remarks on that point contained in our introductory chapter anent ' The Cause of Quarrel ' — which explained what grounds the invader had for anticipating that some portion of the Scots might not be unwilling to make common cause with him — apply still more directly to this present Book than to the previous one ; and it may roundly be said that the period of three months now about to be dealt with would have been marked by more speedily decisive action on Crom- well's part but for his misunderstanding (and no wonder) the inten- tions of the rather fast and loose Westland forces. In the meantime, we shall not need to go very far into the story of the invader's pro- ceedings after Dunbar ere we find a sufficiently instructive instance of just such politic forbearance as had characterized them earlier. Within easy striking distance of their opponents' headquarters, you may say, they paused in order to await farther developments, and see what should come of the 'many dissensions' in the Scottish court and camp. * On September 25 (letter cxlix.) Cromwell wrote that 'hitherto they continue obstinate'; and Sir E. Walker, about the same time, 'must needs say, to the honour of the nation, few or none of them, though under his power, have yet taken arms or complyed with him, otherwise than as people do under the sword of a conqueror. ' 120 ROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS So Utter was the overthrow of the Scots at Dunbar, that there seems ahnost unnecessary haste in Cromwell's having sent Lambert on towards Edinburgh, with a large body of cavalry, the very day after the battle. There was some word, indeed, of the Scots having rallied in the vicinity of the capital ; but they were ' said to have rendezvoused' there 'not above i,ioo horse."'' Whatever their numbers, the English were not going to give them time, if they had the power, to organize further resistance within the walls of Edinburgh and its seaport, and behind the strong entrenchments that now con- nected the two places. We do not know whether Lambert and his nine regiments, acting independently of the main body, entered the capital in advance of it in order to occupy till it came ; but on the fourth day after the battle (Saturday, September 7) Cromwell and the whole of the rest of his troops marched in and took possession unopposed. He seems to have made his entrance by way of Leith,i where no less than thirty-seven guns were found in position on the ramparts ; and thence, leaving four regiments behind him, to have marched to the Canongate of Edinburgh, and so up its High Street, via the Easter Road and the Water Gate. It was presumably at the Nether Bow that he was met by a trio of the citizens, deputed by their fellow-burgesses to treat with him as best they could for the safety of the city.j One can scarcely claim Cromwell's reassuring * Mcrcurius Politicus^ No. 15 (E 613). t So much may be inferred, at all events, from a letter initialled * R. O.' (and presumably, therefore, written by Colonel Robert Overton) in Mercuritis Folitiais, No. 16 (E 613). + It is of interest to note that one of these spokesmen was a medical man — ' Dr. Purves, Physician ' — and another a lawyer, ' Mr. Robert Trotter, advocat ' ('Collections by a Private Hand'). Their companion was 'John Poke, cordiner,' whom we may take to have been a cordwainer pr soutar, and the representative of the famed trades. Their Blue Blanket, one can confidently assume, was not unfurled for the occasion. Where, it will naturally be asked, was the Provost, or any other civic dignitary ? Of the then Bailies we know nothing ; but Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield, the Chief Magistrate, had presumably been at Dunbar, like so many of the other headmen of the Scots burghs, and escaped by this time to Stirling, or perhaps Lanarkshire. He had for several years, and until within the last two or three months, been Commissary General or ' Thesaurer ' of the army (Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii,, passim; for his 'supplication to demitt his place' in June, 1650, ibid.^ p. 571). We do not find him in Edinburgh again till January of the following year, and then he was in disgrace with his fellow- countrymen for his part in the Kirk v. Cavalier, Patriot v. ' Sectary-complyer ' politics of the period. His anti monarchical tendencies cost him dear in the end ; he favoured the luckless Ker-Strachan faction of extremists, and was mulcted ' in a great fine ' therefor, ' notwithstanding the Committee of Estates ow(ed) him 25,ocx> sterling borrowed formerly by them. ' Thus he stood to lose the fortune of which he had laid the foundation, while still little more than a ' merchant 'prentice,' by *a rich marriage, one Anna Hope, that keeped the principall, if not the only worset chope (worsted shop) in Edenburgh,' and had continued the amassing while in the lucrative position of Commissary General. {Cf. Mercurius Politicus^ Nos. 33 — E 622— and 54 — E 632 ; and the ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' vol. ii., pp. 380 and 394, 395. The author of that book had a hereditary feud, about a burial lair and some parochial matters, with this Stewart and his brother, both of them neat THE HEAD OF MONTROSE I2f proclamation of that day week as the result of the palaver ; for with or without representations from the inhabitants the conqueror would doubtless have continued his conciliatory policy by his invitation to the townsfolk to resume the holding their markets and the carrying- on of their wonted workaday affairs. Apart from the appearance on the scene of this deputation, and the jail-delivery which the con- querors, according to Sir Edward Walker, effected soon after their arrival,* the only notable incident of the triumphal entry was that one English soldier had his arm ' shot off by a cannon bullet from the Castle. 't The sole rejoinder by the invaders of which we hear in the meantime was Cromwell's paper polemic against the refugee ministers in the Castle, entered upon with vigour on both sides during the ensuing week. Carlyle has preserved all the documents that passed in the course of the controversy ; but for our purpose the rough-and-ready amputation of that soldier's arm is of more con- sequence, as a reminder that the English had to win the grim old fortress on its rock above the town before they could reckon their possession of the Scots capital complete. In the meantime, however, the victorious Commonwealth army was free to leave the Castle in its rear what time it marched westward to reconnoitre Stirling. Sickness still wrought havock in the English ranks ;| but a reinforcement of fifteen hundred infantry and a thou- sand cavalry next week§ brought up the fighting-line to somewhere neighbours of the Somervilles in Lanarkshire. 'Indignation is a good thing when ' it affords us, as in this instance, instructive and not too scandalous personal tittle- tattle.) * To which we only refer here because one cannot refrain from expressing a hope that an ' honest man ' of Glasgow ' callit Johnne Bryson ' got his liberty with the rest. He had, Nicoll tells us, been ' cassin into the theves hoill ' in Edin- burgh, and kept there ' in great miserie by the space of many weekis,' for having pronounced James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, ' als honest a nobleman as was, in this kingdome.' Whether or not the English set Bryson free with the others, the mortal remains of the great Captain for whom he had ventured thus publicly to speak up ' at the Mercat Croce ' of Glasgow were treated for the first time with any respect and decency by the English leader ; for, according to a rumour which Sir Edward Walker heard and eagerly printed, Cromwell ' caused the head of the: Marquess of Montrose to be taken down ' (from the summit of Edinburgh Tolbooth), 'and buried.' It is curious to reflect that Charles II. had already looked upon this sad relic of his too devoted champion (as also on others — 'one of the hands of the most incomparable Montrose,^ e.g., mentioned by Walker as displayed on Aberdeen Tolbooth over against the * merchant's house ' in that city which Charles had occupied for a night in the preceding July), and had been powerless to grant it even the homage of that sepulture which was now accorded as an act of grace by an enemy. t Overton's letter, ubi supra. X Overton's letter again, September 9 : * Our officers and soldiers daily sicken, and some die.' % The Moderne Intelligencer^ No. 2 (E 613)— under date September 21. The original letter conveying that piece of news must therefore have been despatched from Edinburgh about the 12th or 13th. In later months (but it can hardly have been in working order yet) "the English had a systematic and fairly speedy mail 122 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS near its original strength. So, breaking off his remonstrances with the clerical inmates of the Castle, and leaving only two or three regiments to keep watch upon it and guard over Edinburgh and Leith, Cromwell led nearly his whole army into West Lothian on Saturday, September 14. This was not the first that that county had seen of his men : Overton's letter, already quoted, mentions the capture at Queensferry, in the beginning of the week, of ' a prize of 4,000//. value ' by the cavalry, and their just missing ' another worth 20,000//.' It always is the biggest fish, everyone knows, that breaks the angler's tackle ; perhaps these ' nine troops ' that made the one haul — horse-marines, may we call them ? — were guilty of the usual sportsman's exaggeration in regard to the other catch they missed. That point is of no moment at all ; but' the history of this subse- quent Cromwellian advance in force across the Almond presents features of great interest. In the first place, why did the Lord- General return to Leith "'^ that Saturday evening, after seeing his men safely encamped or bivouacked at Niddryf in Linlithgowshire? His own despatch (letter cxlix.) only speaks of the army's being forced, ' by reason of the badness of the ways, to send back two pieces of our greatest artillery.' But more than that happened ; for he rode back to Leith himself, and not, we can see, from any mere wish to give those guns and gunners the honour of his personal escort. The fact evidently was that he hoped to find newly arrived in the seaport an officer whose services he needed in this westward move, and was to be not a little indebted to another year. This was General or ' Sea-General ' Deane, who had shared with the renowned Blake the command of the fleet that co-operated with Cromwell's troops in the Irish campaigns ; who seems to have been still more versatile than his more famous colleague (in that he was not only, like him, an amphibian equal to the command of navies or armies, ships or land-forces, but had some skill in engineering to boot); and was, both now and later on, to distinguish himself in Scottish waters yet more than in Irish. Deane, however, did not arrive in Leith roads till the day after, | and Cromwell pushed on without him. It will be allowed, when we mention the position of affairs within and before Stirling, that we have not been misleading the reader as to the importance of his move thither — even apart from its bringing us acquainted with an service between that city and London : we shall find the * intelligence from the headquarters ' regularly published in the latter place just a week after its despatch from the Scots capital. * Official bulletin ('The Lord Generall Cromwell his March to Sterling,' a budget covering from September 14 to September 25 — E 613). t Netherish in the original. That seemingly simple place-name appears to have given the English as much trouble (r/! Hodgson's spelling of Niddrie Marischal, antea) as Lincoln, according to Charles Kingsley, gave the Normans. X ' The Lord Generall Cromwell his March,' tU suprq. RECONNAISSANCE TO STIRLING 123 officer who really played a great part later in these campaigns. For, marching to Linlithgow on the Sunday, to Falkirk on the Monday, and right up to St. Ninian's on the Tuesday,* Cromwell was vis-a-vis next day, had he known it, with ' none hot green new levied sojours,' a 'town and pass ' (the key to the Highlands, no less) ' not yet forti- fied as it should be,' and a Council of War in which the unmartial Chancellor of Scotland represents himself as having been the moving spirit. To be sure, David Leslie was also in Stirling, though there is no hint of his presence in the rather amusing letter by Chancellor Loudoun from which the words just quoted are taken.t But granting that the latter was more of a supernumerary than he considered him- self, and allowing for Leslie as a commander of whose skill in defen- sive tactics Cromwell knew something by now, one may doubt whether the force at the disposal of the latter could on this occasion have sufficed to repel the English attack. Sir Edward Walker informs us that Leslie ' was with about 3,000 foot and 2,000 horse on the north side of the Bridge, having burnt some of the suburbs and drawn a line between the Walls and the Bridge ' ; and doubtless he patrolled the left bank of the Links with all the vigilance of which his men were capable. But, even so, the English must have * "The Lord Generall Cromwell his March to Sterling," the itinerary in which corresponds to that given in Cromwell's own letter. St. Ninian's kirk seems clearly indicated in the statement of the official bulletin that ' we marched from Falkirk within a mile of Stirling, where, the weather being extraordinary wet and stormy, the General was necessitated to quarter in the church, there being no house or accommodation for him.' There is only one other building for which we need in the meantime bespeak the reader's attention in connection with this march. It also preserves its anonymity in the original document ; for we have on this occasion no George Downing to ferret out names of houses and passes for us. Nor, for the matter of that, have we a Rushworth either— a ' useful John,' of whom Carlyle took leave a month or so too soon (as the diligent student haply has remarked) by bidding farewell to him at the outset of the * elucidations ' of this part of the * Letters and Speeches.' The vagueness of Rush worth's successor as secretary (apparently one Owens — Balfour, iv. 174) is such as he of the 'Historical "Collections ' would not have been guilty of ; but as ' useful John ' had returned to England after Dunbar there is no use crying over spilt milk. Here then is what the official bulletin says, that (^ Munday, Sept. 16') 'the Army marched towards Falkirk, and being informed by the way that there was a garison kept, a Trumpet was sent to summon it : Answer was returned, that they were all Gentlemen in the house, and were resolved all to die rather than yield it : but if Stirling were taken or yielded that should be given up ; that they would offer no violence to any of our army in their passing to and again, but such as carried themselves disorderly.' To the perfunctory reader it might seem that it was Falkirk itself that thus stood out ; but the phrase ' in the house ' shows that the * garison ' was rather somewhere ' by the way ' (in the sense of ' off the direct route ') and there- fore presumably in Callander House. If so, the scene of the parley is one of which we shall hear again, though not for some time, and find confronting the English with a defiance rather more desperate than that conditional one. t * Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. 306 — Loudoun to Lothian, Stirling, September 16, The context runs : ' All our noblemen and most of the Committee are gone from hence ; but I stay to encouradge and asist the fortifying and keeping it.' 124 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS outnumbered the defending force by about two to one ;"^ and it would have gone hard but they could carry the position if they had set themselves to do so. As a matter of fact, Cromwell did for a moment threaten the town with an attack in force ; and that ' encouradging ' overseer, Loudoun, must have shaken in his shoes on September i8 still worse than on the 1 6th. We read, indeed, of no attempt to 'overwing Sir David Leslie,' in his turn, at any point on ' the Windings ' above or below Cambuskenneth ; and it is here, accordingly, that Cromwell may be supposed to have rued the want of a tressel bridge of some sort.f But if he had neither that means of transport nor the artillery! for a bombardment, he was otherwise provided with 'ladders and all things that we could possibly expect' (says the official bulletin) * in order to a storm ' ; and with these he made some show of an attempt upon the town. The conciliatory overtures of his Council of War had been rejected that Wednesday forenoon (September i8) — or rather, the trumpeter conveying them had been denied admittance to Stirling by the Scots spokesman, ' a gentleman on foot with a pike in his hand ;' so, later in the day, the whole army but three regiments of horse (were they ' pickeering ' about the Links, by the way ?) confronted the ancient burgh as if about to assault its walls en masse. But the threat was not carried out. A second Council of War seems to have been called, and ' for many considera- * Cromwell himself had evidently the same information as had reached Sir E. Walker when he wrote (letter cxlix.) of the Scots 'having in the Town Two- thousand horse and more foot.' t Antea, p. 37 (Chapter I. of the preceding Book). + It will be remembered he had had to send back two of his largest guns to- Leith. In that connection, cf. the important fact stated in Mercurius Politiais, No. 17 (E 613), * that his Excellency at the return of Mr. Cadwell (the messenfrer that brought the news) asked him among other things for great guns, but receiving no satisfactory answer he seemed displeased and intimated a great impatience for them.' It is not indeed to be inferred that this 'impatience' was manifested v;ithin sight of Stirling ; Cromwell seems to have put his question, and received the unsatisfactory reply, either before he left Edinburgh on this expedition or after he returned there ; and may thus be supposed to have had the general needs of the service in his mind when he spoke, rather than the desiderata for that one part of it. But he himself must have been among those 'greatest and wisest of the commanders ' who, according to this account, ' were of opinion that (had they had great guns) they might in probability have mastered ' Stirling. The letter, dated Edinburgh, September 25, from which these extracts are taken, is initialled * J. H.,' by-the-bye : Mr. C. H. Firth ought to take note that it was very possibly written, therefore, by Joachim Hane ; and the general reader, when he is informed that that personage was a ' gunner ' and engineer of repute, will agree that the internal evidence goes far to warrant the supposition. At all events, this was the first instance (unless we include Gogar) where the English want of a siege-train was felt as really pressing. Before Edinburgh Castle itself it was not to be supplied for another couple of months. Mr. Cadwell, by the way, was 'the messenger that brought the news ' of Dunbar to London ; if his interview with Cromwell took place before the Stirling expedition set out (but it is more likely to have been after the return), he must have been despatched thence back to Scotland almost as quickly as he had come. COMMONWEALTH ARMY AT BANNOCKBURN 125 tions it was thought fit to retreat, and draw off the army to quarter on the same ground they had done before.'* As to those considerations, one is strongly tempted to be guided by Sir Edward Walker's opinion for the nonce, and consider that Cromwell had Stirhng pretty much at his mercy, but held his hand in order to give the Scots rope enough to hang themselves. 'Some are of opinion he did the best not too much to irritate those who are not absolutely his enemies and so necessitate them to join with Malignants and Engagers for their common defence ; but to suffer their differences to increase among them.' And certainly Cromwell must have had his own shrewd guess as to whither those differences were tending. He had already put on record his belief that the Kirk had * done its do,' and that, to ' our great advantage,' ' the King will set up upon his own score now ; wherein he will find many friends, taking opportunity offered.'! That is to say, he as good as foresaw the civil war which was within a few weeks to flame forth among the Scots themselves ; and was not to know that it would be trampled under by the Kirk's veering round to open Royalism in- stead of being kept ablaze by the Kirk's preferring alliance with himself. That he was thus looking ahead is almost conclusively shown by his treatment of that other part of the Scots army to which in this connection Sir Edward Walker makes a somewhat ambiguous reference. Cromwell did indeed for a long while negotiate with Ker and Strachan in a manner which points to his having had as good reason to hope, as Sir Edward Walker to fear, that ' time would show them to be his friends.' Therefore it is quite a plausible conjecture that for political reasons the Commonwealth leader bestirred himself less than he otherwise might about capturing Stirling. He was no judge of the fervour of Scots national feeling, to know that the bulk of his opponents would hold out all the more dourly against the conqueror rather than sub- mit to him ; no sharer of those intense jealousies which in our own day we call denominational, to discern that most of the ministers would treat with their well-hated political compatriots before they treated with him, the Sectary ; no prophet, in a word, to foresee that * This was *by reason of severall disadvantages,' adds the official bulletin (from which, ut supra, we quote). We can scarcely fancy the English counted as one of these the fact that they were camping on the battlefield of Bannockburn. They were probably as oblivious of the earlier military history of the place as of the Roman invader's memorial hard by their Galachlaw camp. Yet it is interesting to note that Cromwell did in the ensuing winter receive a warning anent a certain 'stricken field ' of earlier date ; he must have perused, in the February or March following, a memorandum to be found in the * Milton State Papers ' (p. 62) which — among other contents that we shall have to do with later — quoted one * of the English records ' telling of * the death and rooting of 100,000 Englishmen ... by 30,000 Scots . . . about Stirling.' Was the reminder, perchance, superfluous; and was the memory of Wallace's still earlier victory at Kildean Bridge a deterrent to Cromwell over and above those catalogued in the text ? t Punctuation not unwarrantably altered from Carlyle's version (letter cxli.). 126 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the trend of affairs was in the direction of solidifying rather than breaking up the Scots resistance to him. Therefore he fell into the same mistake as in an earlier stage of this Campaign — a mistake which, like that he had made in August, was to cost him only a short period of waiting for its rectification by the arbitrament of a successful engagement. In the West of Scotland he resumed (as we shall soon see) the negotiations with Ker and Strachan that had ended in smoke a month before ; and here before Stirling he threw away a good chance of decisive action rather than drive the Kirk into the arms of the Cavaliers by setting about it. Yet that alliance was to be effected, had he but known it, with or without his planting a scaling-ladder against Stirling ; and Ker and Strachan were, in the issue of those renewed transactions which he again hoped would lead to their seceding with the whole of their now independent com- mand, to prove just as broken reeds as he had formerly found them. There are other points to be taken into account, of course, in con- sidering this matter of the Cromwellian demonstration in force before Stirling, and subsequent retreat therefrom. The mere common- sense of the thing may be that the occupation of the town would, in Cromwell's view, have put him in possession of ' a bigger chunk than he could chew ' (as the very homely Americanism runs). With Edinburgh and Stirling both in his power, but the Castle of neither place reduced, or anyways reducible till that siege-train arrived, he would have more garrisons to maintain, and longer lines of com- munication to look after, than he probably cared to think about. And though the possession of Stirling would have enabled him easily enough to overrun Fife, there was an obvious enough set-off to that advantage. The proximity of the Highlands to this their ' Key ' had to be seriously taken into consideration. Even now Cromwell may have been laying his account with a contingency such as was pre- sented to the view of his council of war in the ensuing spring. * If we had got over ' (say the old bridge of Stirling, though the Firth of Forth is meant in the passage we quote from) ' the Scots would not have fought, being not then ready, but have fled in parties to the northern mountains, and so have made the war very long.' The extract embodies the gist of the consolation offered to the invaders, by * a religious, knowing Scot/ for their failure to gain a footing in Fife in the following spring : it will be allowed that it applies equally well to the other case now under review. For the Scots were only ready to the tune of 5,000 ' green new levied sojours,' that might have been the very first to fly to the northern mountains ; all the English knew of the Highlands was that some of the most wonderful warfare the world ever saw had been carried on there not so long ago by the late ' James Graham ';* Cromwell can scarcely, there- * There was, to be sure, much virtue, from their point of view, in that little word 'late.' One cannot refrain from setting down the rather curious reflection that a distant kinsman of the Great Marquis— one John Graham of Clayerhouse— was then only a boy of eight (or, as some hold, a child in leading-strings) in his native Angus. RETURN MARCH : LINLITHGOW GARRISONED 127 fore, have cared to face the prospect of having the war indefinitely protracted there. To do so might have been to saddle the Common- wealth with a second Ireland — an endless war, that is to say, in a country as wild as, and potentially still more formidable than, the sister-island where his son-in-law and his own son had still a good deal of work cut out before them. Good enough reason may thus be found, even though we leave minor points out of account, for Cromwell's having abandoned any serious thoughts of taking Stirhng. The chief reason that he him- self gave for not having persisted (since his estimate of the forces opposed to him cannot be ranked as a very convincing one) is part and parcel, so to speak, of what we have just said on our own account. For the lines of communication problem need scarcely have cost him a thought if the Forth had, in those ante-steam-and- cheap-excursion days, been navigable by his fleet up to Stirling. It was the difficulty of transport by water that gave him pause, he says ; in other words, the question how to hold the town troubled him much more than any fears about failing to capture it. As to other reasons that may have helped to deter him. Sir Edward Walker specifies (with almost a sneer of incredulity) the ' want of provisions, weakness of his army, and the Strength of Place ' ; the English accounts with one consent speak of what one of them calls 'the rottenness of the ways,' brought about by the rainy weather and the lie of the land in that Bannockburn region. Yet if the wet was ' so great that we cannot march with our train,' how came it that an Edinburgh correspondent of the invaluable Mercurius Politicus wrote on October 3, that ' we have had very good and fair weather ever since the engagement at Dunbar until now ' — so good that ' we ' think it * the more remarkable in regard we understand there hath been very bad weather in England '?* One rather suspects the shortcomings of the Train, not the difficulty of getting it about, were the real obstacle ; and that if that hiatus in Cromwell's own explana- tory letter could be filled in, it would be found to have conveyed energetic representations to the council of State as to the urgent need of great guns being sent north. By this and that, at all events, Cromwell was dissuaded from making anything more than a reconnaissance in force of his expedi- tion to Stirling ; and was driven to the conclusion that it would serve his turn better to gain a half-way house between that burgh and the capital than to possess the * Bulwark of the North ' itself. There can have been no great difficulty about adopting that alter- native ; still less about pitching upon the very place. Linlithgow was an important stage upon the high-road ; it lay within easier reach of Edinburgh than its possible rival Falkirk — within hail of the Firth too, if the then considerable port of Bo'ness could be used, and the then formidable stronghold of Blackness subdued ; Lin- * Mercurius Politicus^ No. 18 (E 614). •128 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS lithgow therefore was chosen. And though we have no details as to the fortifications by which the English made good their hold upon the ancient and royal burgh, we are given an inkling as to the care they used in taking thought for the morrow there. The aforesaid Deane had left his ship, the Faithfull Speaker^ at Leith ; now, on Friday (September 20) he met Cromwell at Dundas Castle -* and next day (after returning in company to Linlithgow, where the army had quartered on the Thursday evening) the two commanders • viewed the place round about Lithingoe^^ and, with the help of ■* other officers and an engineer,'t * gave orders for severall works to bee made for security of the place.' It is not ours to say — if we knew — what sconces and such-like they set about constructing ; but we take due note of the fact that so many heads were laid together, as an indication of the importance attached to the possession of the place. Nor was the pains thus bestowed either superfluous or ineffectual ; its result was that the garrison now left in Linlithgow (under one Colonel Sanderson) proved for well-nigh a twelvemonth to be an ever-ready and wakeful ' sentinel on the ramparts ' — the -extreme advanced post of the Commonwealth's army, in other words, which time and again baffled the Scots efforts to surprise and annihi- late it. * 'The Lord Generall his March.' It was not only in this 'longshore affair that Deane made himself useful : he must have been actively at work (though his name nowhere appears) in connection with the Adventure of the Boats to be mentioned later. t Very possibly Joachim Hane {supra, footnote to p. 124). CHAPTER II. POLITICAL CLEAVAGE AMONG THE SCOTS SOPS TO THE WESTLAND WHIGS — 'purging' the ROYAL COURT — ' THE START.' LEAVING Cromwell to return quietly to Edinburgh that Saturday evening with his whole army, minus the 'very considerable frontier garrison' thus installed in Linlith- gow, we may seasonably turn aside in order to take more particular notice of the doings at the Scots headquarters. For, just a week after the invaders' demonstration in force before the walls of Stirling, a meeting of the Committee of the Estates and Commission of the Kirk was held in that ancient burgh ; and we shall best get an idea of what was in agitation in the councils of the Scots by piecing together all that is known of the business then transacted. We know from Baillie* that the question of David Leslie's continu- ance in the command of the army was rather acrimoniously discussed ; from the same authority,t that the granting a free hand to the organizers and commanders of the Western Army was agreed to ; from Balfour, that an important representation from the Synod of Fife was taken into consideration, only to be quashed ; from Balfour and Walker, that the ' purging ' the Royal Court was gone about with renewed vehemence. All of these affairs were more or less closely inter-connected ; for the lay Committee and the ecclesiastical Commission now found that they had to reckon at every turn with the action of two diametrically opposed parties. There were on the one hand, as has already been indicated, the Royalists — the men who, whether from personal or more disinterested motives, resented the Kirk's per- sistence in ranking its own ambitious claims first, and the King's * Presumably, at all events, this of September 25-26 was ' the first meeting after the woefull rout' spoken of in the extract already cited from p. iii, vol. iii., of the * Letters and Journals.' f Who, however, fails to specify a date for this transaction either. Yet, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, in Baillie's ' eager, earnest, headlong ' narrative or elsewhere, it may be assumed that the ' Act of State ' he names as authorizing this arrangement dated from this same meeting. 9 I30 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS just rights second. To these Mahgnants the news of ' the race of Dunbar ' had been good hearing."^ They did not, we may fancy, waste a thought upon the nice point whether the bargain that the Kirk had driven with Charles ere it permitted him to land in Scot- land was or was not nullified by the Kirk's now evident inability to bring about his Restoration by its own efforts. It was enough for them that the chosen army of ' sanctified creatures ' was scattered to the winds, and that better men had a chance to take their places in support of something other than T/ie Covenant pure and simple. We shall soon hear, therefore, of musters and roll-calls in the jealously-garrisoned district of Atholef and the Great Marquis's own shire of Angus ; and find a curious congeries of Engagers, Montrose men, and thick-and-thin Cavaliers rallying round the Royal Standard in the North. On the other side, the executive was confronted with the possi- bility that the Western men might take action on their own account in the contrary direction. For this also was a party whose deeds had spoken for themselves in previous years ; and, though quite in sympathy with its members' antecedents, the Kirk might well be doubt- ful as to the intentions they now entertained. In 1648 the fighting men of the Western shires had been the mainstay of the ministers in opposing the Engagers. They had shed their blood on Mauchline Moor rather than contribute their tale of levies to the army which left Scotland to attempt the rescue of Charles I. ; they had sent forth the bulk of the forces which (helped by the terror of Cromwell's own coming) had quelled the relics of that army a month or two later. Now that the Kirk was itself in alliance with a King, it stood in jeopardy of losing the services of its once staunchest supporters. There is even some reason for believing that the Western levies had * There is no need to expatiate upon the bad example which Charles is said to have set them, in private, by throwing up his cap and huzzaing (you may say) for the Scots defeat. Sir Edward Walker only relates that he ' comforted ' Argyle and the rest, and 'gave them assurance of his comtancy'; but the other story, of his falling on his knees and thanking God for the disaster to the Kirk, seems quite authentic {Mercurius Politicus, No. 15, or the 'Brief Relation,' p. 842 — both contained in E 613). There is nothing whatever to wonder at in the outburst ; the really noteworthy fact is that the English had the news of it by a ' trumpet ' from Strachan. That commander had already acquainted the invaders with his belief that Charles hated his Kirk monitors still more implacably than he hated the leaders of the Commonwealth (see the conclusion of the letter by Downing — so often referred to in the preceding Book — E 612, 8) ; and had none the less fought, as we have seen, ostensibly in his cause. The ' pull-Devil, pull- Baker ' struggle in Strachan's conscience was to land him on the other side ere long. f The sequel to Sir Edward Walker's report of Charles's interview with Argyle on the night which brought the news of Dunbar Drove is worth quoting in this connection. The Kirk leaders 'presently sent to secure the Castle of Blair in Athole, lest the men of that country (solely devoted to his Majesty) should have taken hold of this opportunity.' To * secure ' must have meant to strengthen the garrison, for we have seen that Blair Athole was already held by the Kirk's troops. THE SEPARATE WESTERN ARMY 131 held aloof en 7;iasse from taking any part in this present campaign against Cromwell.* Whether or not that was literally true (as it surely must have been partially), it is certain that a body of troops was now being got together, in Clydesdale, Ayrshire, and Nithsdale, from amongst the men who regarded the cause of the Covenant as betrayed, and deemed almost any course of action preferable to the further support, however qualified, of Charles II. It may be that we shall find in the history of these Western forces another illustration, to set beside the Dunbar and later examples, of the incompatibility of Covenanting zeal and military effectiveness ; or, on the other hand, that we shall have to praise in them 'a certain tincture of soldierly resolution and even of military common- sense.' But for the present we have only to note that their appear- ance on the scene forced the hand of the executive at Stirling. Placed thus between the * two extremes ' just described (and so named by Carlyle), the Centre — as we may ourselves call the official representatives of the Estates and Church — decided to do all they could to humour the Left, or Western faction, rather than attempt to conciliate the Right, or Northern. Thus we find the Stirling meeting being hurried into more aggressively anti-Royalist courses than it might otherwise have adopted. Its aggressiveness, to be sure, was shown rather in regard to the civil and political business it had to transact, than in the military arrangements upon which it decided; yet in the latter department a decidedly anti-Malignant temper was manifested. It may or may not be true that the Com- mittee and Commission brushed aside Charles's request for the appointment of the Earl of Brentford as General ;t but it is certain * Sir E. Walker, at all events, talks of ' the Western Forces of the Counties {sic) of Kile Karrick and Cunningham, with the parts about Glasgow, who, either by design or pretence to secure the country in case of an invasion by the way of Carlisle, were not at the battle ' (of Dunbar). Baillie, it should be said, gives particulars about the raising of these troops, from which it appears that Carrick should be deleted from the above list— my Lord Cassilis having 'keeped it off,' apparently from the same motive of economy as made the ' Committee of Baren- frew ' loath to support the levies. With the latter county also (at that rate) struck off, the parts about Glasgow would appear to resolve themselves into Clydesdale, whose committee, says Baillie, was 'very forward.' t The mere fact of the request being made is doubtful. No Scottish writer mentions it ; and those of the English newspapers which do are not (except perhaps the ' Brief Relation'— E 613) amongst the best-informed 'intelligencers ' of the day. Yet one cannot but take notice of even a rumour that Charles sought to confer the command upon the man who had for years been generalissimo of his father's armies. Ruthven was, to be sure, too deep in the bad books of his com- patriots to be altogether a likely candidate for the post. Three months had yet to elapse before he was restored by Parliament to his full rights and status in his native country (Balfour, iv., under date December 7, 1650 ; Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii., p. 616). Some account of him, as Patrick Ruthven, has already been given in the chapter on ' The Muster ;' but his position illustrates the politics of the time too well to be passed over without further remark. He had been on the lisc of those forbidden by the Kirk to come to Scotland with Charles II. ; had crossed over to his native land from the Low Countries none the less ; and was now for 9—2 132 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS that the re-election of David Leslie to the post of acting commander of the army was only carried in the teeth of strong opposition,* and at the cost of a compromise that cast rather a stigma upon him. For, simultaneously (as it would seem) with his reappointment as virtual leader of the army, it was decreed that the Western forces should be a separate and independent command; that Strachan should lead them, with Ker, it would seem, under him ; and that Leslie * should never trouble them with any of his orders.'t the second time a suppliant for the good offices of the Covenanting leaders. When they patched up a truce with Charles I. in 1641, they had perforce forgiven my Lord Ettrick (as he then was) his defence of Edinburgh Castle against them ; yea, his • petition to be confyned to his housse of the Zaire and haue libertie to goe to the churche ther ' (Balfour, iii. 118) had been granted. Now that his sins of malignancy had become as scarlet by his services in the field to Charles I. during the intervening period — from 1642 to 1644, when he was ' forfaulted,' and had his arms * riuen by Lyone King of Armes in the face of Parliament ' — he had been fain to petition through ' one of those High Priests, ' as Walker says, to be * reconciled ' to the Kirk ; and had got the surly answer ' that as he behaved himself they would in time take his desires into consideration.' In the expecta- tion of that favour he was presumably \y\v\g perdu in Perthshire — which was, the old Peerages say, his native county ; having now, by reason of the presence of the English, no access to the ' housse of the Zaire ' (which we take to have been Yair on Tweedside). * One can only suppose that Leslie had lost favour with the ultra-Covenanting faction which he had helped to lead in 1648. There is no other possible explana- tion of his having been opposed by the men named in Baillie's account of the proceedings — the only one (p. iii, vol. iii., as before) that we have to guide us. One can understand that he was objected to on military grounds by Strachan, who offered to lay down his commission rather than serve under him again, and by ' some more ' (officers) who * inclined to do so.' Johnston of Wariston too, whom Baillie names as one of the dissentients, doubtless associated himself with these in taking exception to a leader whose over-caution he had himself— valiant man and wise of counsel that he was — helped to overcome. But what ailed Chiesly of Kerswall at Leslie — or Mr. James Guthrie, for that matter — unless they suspected him of harbouring Royalist leanings that they did not like ? t Baillie, iii. 112. That writer's further statement— ' that David Lesley should gladly permit the forces of the West to act apart ' — needs some slight qualification. The temper of the Lieutenant-General can scarcely be regarded as having been so cheerfully acquiescent if we accept Sir Edward Walker's story (p. 189) that he * protested the laying down of his commission ' about this time because he could not 'have justice against a Captain of Straughan's taken with letters from his Colonel to Cromwell, implying that if Cromwell would quit the kingdom he would so use the matter as that he should not fear any prejudice from this nation.' According to Balfour, moreover, a fortnight or so later there was ' a letter from the L. General from Stirling, 12 Octobris, desiring the Committee of Estates to recall him from his charge rather than to command him to correspond with them that would keep none with him, viz., the Western forces' (vol. iv., p. 122). But neither of these bits of evidence, of course, disproves the fact that Leslie had waived his claim to be chief in command over Strachan : the earlier protest was only a very natural ebullition of resentment against Strachan's conduct in setting about negotiations such as neither he nor his late chief had any authority to begin, and the later complaint points to nothing further than the Western commanders' refusing to send to Stirling information that might have been for the common good of the service. As to the general features of the arrangement recorded in the text, enough has been said about the antecedents of both men to show what congenial leaders Ker and Strachan must have been in the eyes of the Western THE KIRK'S EXPECTATIONS OF THE WESTERN ARMY 133 Baillie expressly says that this arrangement was an * expedient ' framed for the satisfaction of all parties of Presbyterians, and lays stress, one may almost add, upon the fact that it was in the nature of a bargain. The wishes of the Western troops were consulted, and the personal feelings of their leaders gratified, by its being provided that they were to act entirely apart from the main army of the Scots. In return for this favour, the executive obtained promises that Strachan and Ker should set about active operations against the English. The fact that such a stipulation needed to be named showed that the Kirk had its fears lest the Western forces should go over openly to Cromwell. Baillie's language is clear enough proof that the undertaking was asked and given ; ' An Act of State was obtained,' he says, 'for all their desires,' on their 'promises of pre- sent acting,' and he goes on to speak of the general ' expectation of ready and happy acting by infalls on the enemies quarters.' We should be unduly anticipating if at this stage we mentioned how those anticipations were disappointed ; or referred (though there had been symptoms of it already) to Strachan's conducting himself as if entrusted with rather higher powers than were ever intended. But we would have the reader bear in mind what the arrangement implied at its first inception ; and take note that the Kirk humoured the Western faction to the best of its ability, in the hope that it would con- sent to regard the war of resistance to the English as in statu quo ante Dunbar — as aimed, that is to say, firstly at the promotion of the Presbyterian model, and secondly at the furthering the Royal cause. The event was to prove how the tail may, on occasion, wag the dog. A set of extremists had taken the lead in organizing the Western Army — even though ' all of us in pulpit, myself,' the Rev. Robert Baillie, ' als much as others, did promove the work '; and we shall see how futile in the long-run was the deference thus shown to them. But in the meantime the political decrees of the Kirk and Estates were more momentous than these new military dispositions. It may shrewdly be guessed that here also they were acting with an eye to the conciliatory effect upon the Whiggamores proper. Yet there is no need to inquire how far they were animated by that motive, or to what degree they were consulting their own predi- lections. Suffice it that, for one thing, they ' altogether denied '* Army. Unless we have been maligning them all along, moreover, their pro- fessional jealousy of Leslie may well have had a good deal to do with their appointment. So that both parties, the Western soldiery and their East-country leaders, may be regarded as having been satisfied — a pleasing circumstance to reflect upon, considering how much good came of it. For the more prudent dignitaries at Stirling, however, it must have been a still more consoling thought that Ker and Strachan were thus safely out of the way in the event of trouble breaking out with the ' Malignants ' of the North. For the prestige of the con- querors of the Mackenzies and Montrose might rather have been of dis-service than otherwise to the Kirk, if anything milder than a commission of fire and sword was called for there. * Balfour, iv., p. 108. 134 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the claim of the least heinous ' class ' of ' Malignants ' — those who had participated in the Engagement and now offered to give ' satis- faction ' — to be readmitted to political power and military service. This was brought forward in a representation from the Synod of Fife,"*^ and, as we read it, unanimously rejected. Secondly, and more important still, the Commission and Committee decreed the instant expulsion from the Court and kingdom of practically the whole of Charles's little band of faithful English followers. Steps in that direction had already been taken from time to time within the last three months. The Kirk leaders seem to have modelled their conduct towards the King upon the example of those groups of conspiring nobles who had time and again, in the history of Charles's House, kept successive monarchs as close prisoners in their own hands. Such predecessors would probably, in an exactly parallel case, have resented the presence of English courtiers as an infringement of their own hereditary privileges and appointments about the Household; and there are not wanting indications that jealousy on that score was at work here. But the Kirk's main object in seeking to dispense with the stranger nobles' attendance upon Charles is to be traced to their determination to surround him with none but men of their own sect, and in particular with those clergy- men whose incessant preachings and prayings bored the young King, as everyone knows, most insufferably. Accordingly, they had been insisting on what was called the ' purging ' of ' the King's house ' since the moment of Charles's arrival in Scotland. The records and memoirs of the time give us, in the months of June, July, and August, lists and revised lists of those whom they decided to expel altogether ; those whom they were determined to forbid the Court ; those towards whom, on second thoughts, they relented ; and those who must, as they settled upon still further consideration, go willy- nilly. Nothing decisive, it is true, had as yet come of all their spas- modic activity in the matter. The net result so far seems to have been the removal from Court of Charles's secretary, Mr. Long, and a compatriot, Mr. Oudert, the former of whom has already been mentioned as dwelling in penury at St. Andrews. Now, however, the authorities returned to the charge in good earnest. One may guess that precautionary motives had something to do with their issuing the more comprehensive decree already mentioned. In saying so we do not imply that they had been fore- warned of the possibility of Charles's seeking refuge in flight — as he was about to do, and that so immediately after the official intimation of the Court-' purging ' decree that one must suppose he read it as a notice to quit for himself. The secret of the scheme which was * Balfour, udi supra. See a rather instructive letter by Lord Balcarres, as to his pulling the wires among his clerical neighbours on that occasion, in the ' Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. 300. THE EVE OF 'THE START' 135 afoot for enabling the young monarch to throw himself upon tfee support of his better-affected Scottish subjects had, as Sir Edward Walker shows, been well kept until the very day that the decrees of banishment were promulgated in Perth. But it is not necessary to suppose that the executive at Stirling had been led to entertain fears of the King's taking such action. Without dreaming of anything of the sort, they had none the less sufficient reason for being on the alert if — as is likely — it had come to their ears that the aforesaid Messrs. Long and Oudert were busy at Dundee, writing and circu- lating among the Cavaliers letters, subscribed by the King, which authorized a rising in arms."^ The merest hint that two of the courtiers were so employed must have been ample for them. It gave them a motive for taking final action against the whole body. Too long a period of grace had already been given, it may have been argued, to a set of men, some of whom were thus abetting a con- spiracy against those in authority, while others, as active and ex- perienced commanders, might at a later stage render to its promoters invaluable service in the field. The intention probably was, therefore, to nip in the bud the schemes of the ' Malignants ' ; and the result certainly was to pre- cipitate matters. The determination to banish the English courtiers was come to on September 27 ; the conclusive formality, with its attendant threats of forcible expulsion, was reserved for October 3. The interval of delay may in some measure be explained by the fact that the list drawn up on the first-mentioned date was (presumably after Sunday, the 29th) submitted to Charles's notice ; and that he wrote to Chancellor Loudoun (not, we may suppose, without putting off a day or two in doing so) requesting that nine of those sentenced to be expelled from the Court and country might be allowed to re- main for a time. What other employment the King found for his pen in those few days, it is easy to guess but difficult to learn exactly. Sir Edward Walker writes of it as a mere coincidence that the day when the courtiers were served with their notices to quit was also the day fixed upon for Charles's flying for refuge to his more con- genial supporters in the North. If that was so, the arrangements for the King's making the attempt must have been well advanced even before it was known that the officials at Stirling meant to carry out their long-threatened 'purging'; and little would remain to be done at this time in the way of preparing his Cavalier friends for his coming to them. But it has to be confessed that the natural infer- ence from Balfour's account of the affair— z//2?., that Charles fled from Court because an ' absolute refusal ' was returned to his request for the retention of a few of his courtiers — affords an explanation more in keeping with what actually occurred. On that supposition he must, while pleading with Loudoun for the favour of a respite for * Balfour, iv., p. 122. 136 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS tlMse nine, have been simultaneously laying his plans for an escape in the event of the favour not being granted."^ A delicate question of the choice of Ladies of the Royal Bed- chamber has in our own time been known to bring about a Ministerial crisis : from this kindred affair, two and a half centuries ago, consequences not entirely dissimilar, though for the moment ludicrous enough, were to ensue. On Thursday, October 3, our old friend Sir James Balfour, Lyon King-at-Arms, received at his house of Kinnaird the official notices to quit, and, posting off straightway to Perth, punctually delivered by nightfall all these 'intimations either by word or writ.' Some of them were in due course acted upon by the recipients ;t Charles himself, who had not been of that number, took the hint to leave. Whether or not he believed that for him there was the worse fate in store of being handed over to Cromwell, J it is impossible to say : the excuse has certainly less of the air of a 'poetic figment,' as Carlyle called it, than that writer considered. In any case, the young King made use of the accus- tomed pretext of a sporting excursion ; rode carelessly out of Perth * The difficulty one finds in going by Walker's account (apart from the suspicious suddenness of Charles's departure so soon as he knew how firmly the Stirling execu- tive were set upon evicting his courtiers) lies in the fact that it assigns no sufficient reason for the abandonment of the programme which it states to have been made out beforehand. Walker relates how it had been intended that Charles should make his way into Fife and rally the loyal gentry there, whilst Perth was simul- taneously seized by i,cxx) of the Karl of Athole's Highlanders ; but that the King incautiously told the secret to Buckingham, and was induced by the Duke to give up his plans. (Buckingham, by the way, had been ' caressing ' the official Scots to such purpose that he was not included in the list of those to be banished.) If so, it is curious that Charles should have taken his flight by way of the very county into which he had told Buckingham he meant to go — the last direction in which he would have proceeded, surely, if he had feared lest he might be balked through his Grace's agency. Every circumstance, however, helps to discredit the story that long deliberation and preparation had preceded the escape ; above all, that the day of it had been fixed in advance, without reference to such other circumstances as the * purging ' of the Court. One may conclude, therefore, that Sir Edward Walker's informants gave him a more circumstantial account of what had been intended than they could have made good ; that the gist of the matter is to be found in Clarendon's mention of this ' very empty and unprepared design, con- triveyi and conducted by Doctor Frazier, without any foundation to build upon ' ('History,' vol. iii., pt. ii., Oxford Edition, 1807 — p. 596); and that pique, or genuine fright about the sinister clearance of his Court, hurried Charles into trying his luck by a desperate dash for liberty. t Sir Edward Walker, e.^.y went to Dundee next day ; tarried awhile to see how things fared with the Scottish Royalists ; but finally took himself off from Aberdeen in the end of the month without awaiting the upshot. Ij: He declared he had been assured of that fact by his physician, Dr. Frazer, who was, by universal consent, his chief 'confident' in the transaction, the go-between who should have ensured his reaching the Northern Royalists. Few readers of the stately page of Clarendon will have forgotten its mention of Frazer in connection with this affair, as the typical busybody blessed with more zeal than circumspection. Baillie, by the way (iii. 117), rather oddly associates ' Henry (Jermyn) ' with Frazer as the chief actor in the affair behind the scenes. It was surely a far cry from Paris to St. John's Town on Tay. CHARLES'S ESCAPADE 137 on October 4, ' as if going on hawking '; and only halted for the night when he had put forty-two miles of road and hill-track between him and the Fair City. It is a pity that Carlyle, the epic narrator of the 'Night of Spurs/ did not 'enlarge himself on the subject, when it also came in his way, of this other Royal flight, pursuit, discovery, and return. For the escapade of Charles II., if not as essential to 'world-history ' as the temporarily successful escape of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, was just as * fearfully thrilling ' for the moment. The one affair was very much like the other — with the important differ- ence that Charles considerably improved his position and prospects by the adventure, whereas those of Louis were, we know, ' frightfully worsened.' This one of the Stuarts did not, like his forbears the Jameses, succeed in effecting a junction with the friends he sought. They were not expecting him ; they had not been prepared for his coming ; the Court-' purging ' affair either had not been understood as the signal, or had been too hastily acted upon by the runaway. He rode through the very country "'^ which was, a fortnight or so after- wards, swarming with Royalist cavalry, and found there scarcely a soul to welcome him. Halting only at Dundee and Auchterhouse and Cortachy, he passed on yet farther to the strath of the South Esk, and found a resting-place for the night in a clachan somewhere in Clova.f To him, ' overwearied and very fearful, in a nasty room on an old bolster above a mat of sedge and rushes,' J^ entered at day- break next morning two officers of the Kirk's army. Their chief. Sir Robert Montgomery, followed hard on their heels ; he had been ' advertised by way of Fife,' and Scotscraig,§ in the course of the night, ' of his Majesty's sudden departure '; his ' two regiments of * We have said that he went by way of Fife ; and indeed he kept his route in the direction originally spoken of by galloping into that county as far as ' Inch Shyra' or Inchrye — 'to the back of that house, says its neighbour, Sir James Balfour, 'where he passed' (was ferried, i.e., over the Tay, presumably about Newburgh) ' and [so], in an hour and a half from Perth, to Didope by Dundee. ' That is to say, he went about a dozen miles along the road which any hint from Buckingham would have secured against his passage. t Sir Edward Walker (at p. 199) says that Charles only pushed on to ' Clover ' on the Saturday morning, after staying overnight 'at the Earl of Erlye's.' But Balfour's is the account to follow : one would not willingly resign that vignette of the disjaskit Royal awakening ! And, seriously, the Lyon King was better in- formed than his heraldic colleague and contemporary — we shall afterwards find Sir Edward very hazy about another matter with which the * Erlye ' family had to do. (Foot-note, p. 160, infra.) X Balfour, iv. 114. § That is to say, through the promptitude of ' Arthur Erskine of Scotscraig, brother to the Earl of Mar ' — and brother or uncle, we suppose, of the Earl of Buchan who figured on the other side in this affair. From Balfour's precise state- ment it appears that he had sent word to Montgomery at Forfar, by way of Tay- port, of the news that had reached him from Perth — and had taken the precaution of sending on to Charles 'one of his Majesty's hawks,' that the game might be played out with spirit. 138- CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS horse, some 600 horse,' summoned from the void — or, more pro- saically, from their quarters hard by in Angus — presently attended him. And what though the two noblemen* who constituted Charles's suite could promise him, or make believe to promise him, the backing of 7,000 men somewhere up among the mountains ?t The larger force was not, for the time being, visible and tangible ; the smaller was, and Charles yielded himself up to its guidance. * So they conducted his Majesty to Huntly Castle in the Carse of Cowrie ' for that Saturday night ; ' and from thence on Sunday in the afternoon he came to Perth on October 6, and heard sermon in his own chamber of presence, the afternoon's sermon in the town being ended before he entered the town.'l Poor Majesty, stiff from his hard gallop ! But is it not to be re- gretted that Carlyle dismissed the subject with only a contemptuous line or two of ' elucidation '? There were plenty of piquant enough side-lights about the adventure to have tempted him away for a moment from his subject proper. The beginning of it, one may say, was in that vegetating existence which an English newspaper not unsuccessfully pictured when it wrote of Charles II. (or ' the thing it selfe ' — Royalism, i.e., in the concrete) as being ' rowed up and downe Saint Johnstons in a Cock Boate.' Then there were the terrors with which ' sair hauden doun ' Royalty was environed — the residence at Perth in ' a house of David Lesley's, formerly Earl Gowry's, and wherein the Murther was designed to be acted on King James ';§ the constant presence of that body-guard, formed of Scotch * One was Viscount Dudhope, his loyal host at * Didope by Dundee ' and escort from that place ; the other the Earl of Buchan (similarly picked up en route, at ' Aughter Housse ' apparently). The latter we take to have been the noble- man that the Somerville family bore a grudge against (' Memorie,' vol. ii., footnote to p. 78), because his father the Earl of Mar had found him another bride than * Mistres Maria.' We speak, however, under correction from the annotators of peerages. + This army of 7,000 was not as purely mythical as might be supposed, though the number was of course an exaggeration. It is possible that Buchan and Dud- hope aimed at conveying the King over into Glen Tilt, towards the Athole men who had risen under their Earl ; but more likely that their designs were for Aber- deenshire. In default of a more precise account of the doings of the Northern ' Malignants ' one is glad to have the guidance of the Dutch Mercurius Scoticus reprinted copiously in E 623 of the King's Pamphlets. Its narrative, though lamentably dateless, permits of one's inferring that John Middleton of Fettercairn was already employed in ' taking in the garrisons of Straboggy and Bogge of Gicht ' (Strathbogie and what is now Gordon Castle at Fochabers), ' thereby much increasing his army ; with which now grown to a considerable body he advanceth southwards resolving to fight David Leslie. ' Both of those ' very strong houses belonging to Marquesse Huntly' had hitherto been occupied, by thirty and twenty men respectively, of a Col. Innes's regiment. Had Middleton by this time found his way to the other side of the Grampians, as he certainly did before the month was out, Buchan and Dudhope's promises would in some shape have been made good. X Balfour, iv., pp. 1 14- 15. § Sir Edward Walker, p. 169. POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE EVENT 139 soldiers from Ireland who ' refused,' when all their compatriots in Ulster had ' declared against the murtherers of the late King,' and ' came home ' instead ;* and finally the preparations for the military funeral of one of these, which the King construed as portending something more sinister. t And as to the conduct of accessories and accomplices, was there not fine raw material of drama in Buck- ingham's turning informer, or at the least proving a very ill-chosen Royal confidant ? Add to these points the ' racing and chasing ' all that Friday and Saturday throughout the North of Fife, the Carse of Gowrie and the Braes of Angus — the fruitless comings and goings there must have been over and above Erskine of Scotscraig's effectual errand-speeding — the sad return, when all was said and done, to three fasts a week and * sermon in the chamber of presence ' ! Surely Charles's ' going on hawking ' is of the stuff of which much history is made, as truly as ' The New Berline.' For all its ludicrous aspects, this attempt on the part of Charles — to which historians, following, as it would seem, the lead of Baillie, have given the name of T/^e Start — was not without some significant results. It frightened the executive into consenting to the King's being present henceforth at the sittings of the Committee of Estates — a political footing such as he was not. slack in profiting by; and the news of it put the Cavaliers of the North on their mettle, as blaming themselves that they had not lent a hand to make the coup effective. The trend of affairs lay, as it proved, in the direction of the ruling party's having to coalesce with the faction which they were accus- tomed pleasingly to style * Malignant '; we may be sure the current set none the less steadily towards that point because of Charles's endeavour to throw in his lot with the latter. * Sir Edward Walker, p. 165. f That circumstance is mentioned by Baillie (iii., p. 117), who gladly gave cre- dence to the story, we fancy, as affording some sort of excuse for the * ill-advised start.' CHAPTER III. THE ENGLISH IN EDINBURGH OPERATIONS AGAINST THE CASTLE — PROJECT OF A LANDING IN FIFE ABANDONED — ATTITUDE OF THE WESTERN ARMY ENGLISH MARCH TO GLASGOW — A BROAD HINT BY WAY OF CARLISLE. IT is not to be wondered at that Cromwell's next active measure, some three weeks after his return to Edinburgh on September 21, should have been to march to Glasgow. The order of precedence as between the two cities'*^ was determined by other considerations than it would in our own day rest upon. His westward expedition was not occasioned by any such military necessity for seizing the coal- and iron-field of the Scottish ' Black Country 't as might weigh with a more modern invader. The chief reason of it was diplomatic. Simultaneously with the events of which the upshot has been related in the fore- going chapter, the attitude of the left wing of the Scots in 'the parts about Glasco,' had become such as to encourage the English leader in his hopes of finding the Western Army well disposed towards him, if not indeed quite pacifically inclined. He had already taken the measure of Ker and Strachan pretty shrewdly, it is true — from past experience of them on the Borough muir of Edinburgh and elsewhere. Mercurius FoliticusX mentions, about this time, how 'some of the principal commanders have moved my Lord to hearken to some treaty ' with them \ ' but he wisely answers, They are people he cannot trust.' ' Yet as for any papers ' * Glasgow struck the English as ' a very clean and well-formed town ' {Mer- curius Politicus, No. 21 — E 615) — 'a much sweeter and more delightful place than Edinburgh, though not so big nor so rich ' (' Cromwelliana,' p. 92). t As touching the then condition of which district, two scraps of information from the contemporary documents may be appended here — one, the Somerville * Memorie '-writer's mention, as from his own recollection, of the time when * the muirs came to be riven out and inhabited ' ; the other, a remark in Mercurius Politicus (p. 259, No. 15 — E 613), viz., ' A Scotchman was taken not far from the Doivnes laden with iron, steel and other good commodities, whereof there is no plenty in Scotland.' + No. 19 (E 614). EDINBURGH CASTLE SIEGE BEGUN 141 (adds its report) ' or means to save the effusion of blood, he is wiUing to it.' At the nature of those ' papers ' — for which Barkiss also was willing to an extent that brought the aforesaid expectations once more into play as an appreciable factor in the great game — we shall have to glance presently. But meantime there is a hiatus to be filled up in the story of the invaders' doings at Edinburgh. For their stay there, in the interval between their return from Linlithgow and the march to Glasgow, was not idly spent. In the first place, they then opened their first parallel against Edinburgh Castle. Carlyle has quoted an account* of the actual beginning of the siege which is to be found in that letter of October 3 we have already drawn upon ; and he has bridged over the interval of a full week between Cromwell's return to Edinburgh and the opening of these hostilities by the rather hap- hazard suggestion that it may in part have been occupied with the firing 'a few responsive shots ' at the Castle ' from the Calton Hillf or elsewhere.' We should rather for our own part be inclined to surmise that the intervening period witnessed some renewed attempt at treat- ing — if not with the ministers with whom Cromwell had already been in correspondence, yet — with the Governor ' William Dundas, younger of the same.'l But it boots not to inquire, since the sterner method had now been definitely begun ; and only passing notice need be taken of the occasional defiances (mentioned by Cromwell himself, in letter cxlix.) to which the fortress had been treating — and, as we see, continued to treat — the English. Another affair which had occupied the English had been a project for a landing in Fife. Colonel or Major-General Robert Overton * )M[ercurius Politicus^ No. 18 (E 614) relating, under date 'Sunday, Sept. 29,' how ' resolution being taken for the springing of mines in order to the reducing of Edenburgh Castle, and our men beginning their galleries in the night, the enemy fired five pieces of ordnance with several volleys of shot from the Castle ; but did no execution.' (And no wonder, one may say, so far as the ' pieces of ordnance ' were concerned ; for it would puzzle anybody to say how the muzzles could be depressed so as to bear upon the mouth of the galleries in the situation where we shall afterwards find them to have been. ) Later on the news-letter proceeds : 'Oct. I. — This night the enemy with granado's fired two or three houses near the Castle ; notwithstanding which our men entered one of the outmost houses next the Castle and found therein great store of arms and ammunition." These must have been the endmost buildings on Castle Hill, as to which we may have some- thing to say at a later stage of the siege. There was another find of arms next day • in the High Church ' — * a great iron gun, 200 new musquets,Si6 double barrells of powder, dd bundles of bandileers, 200 swords, 200 new halberts, 300 pikes and two loads of match.' On their first entry into Y.^\vi)a\xx^ {The Moderne Intel- ligencer^ E 613) the English had seized * 3,000 foot arms that were new,' which the Scots had not had time to transport to the Castle. t In naming that eminence Carlyle seems to have been borrowing without acknowledgment from Robert Chambers's ' Walks in Edinburgh ' (p. 55, edition 1825). He might as well have lent ear to the legend, half-believingly recorded on the same page by Chambers, of Cromwell's having built the half-moon battery. % Balfour, vol. iv., p. 271. In this and other instances the Lyon King seems purposely to eschew the more familiar Scots expression, 'of that Ilk.' 142 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS (whose previous history is sufficiently told in Carlyle's elucidation of letter xlviii. and its footnote) had been left in command at Edinburgh during the army's expedition to Stirling; and had evidently been engaged during Cromwell's absence in finding out at what point on the north side of the Forth estuary he could best co-operate, if need were, with his Excellency at ' Starling ' as he spelt it. For that purpose he recommended Elie, rather oddly, to his chief ;'*^ and after the return of the main body we hear some word of a nautical expedition which may be supposed to have had that place as its objective. But the idea was entertained only to be abandoned. Some ' general reasons ' — the chief of which we take to have been the difficulty of transport! — led to the countermanding of the orders for the attempt almost as soon as issued. The time had not yet come for the English to effect an invasion of Fife. Ten weary months were to pass ere they gained a footing — which they then, to be sure, made good very speedily — upon the ' populous ' shore that, in those days as now, ' smoked with a score of towns.' If there be anything in the tradition that names the very 'bartizan or flat roof off the Luckenbooths from which Cromwell used to * view his navy in the Forth,' | the thought upper- most in his mind when there must have been the inaccessibihty of * the (sister) kingdom ' that lay so near and yet so far. The events of a certain summer Sabbath which were to invest some part of that shore with memories really more fundamentally important in British history than has yet been shown, still lay far ahead. And thus, though boats§ were collected all along the Lothian seaboard, and the * Memorandum dated September 21, ' Milton State Papers,' p. 24. The notes contained in it regarding the navigability of the Forth are interesting, though not relevant to our purpose ; we must, however, remark upon the accompanying recommendation to Cromwell to seize and garrison Ayr if possible, as ' lying over- against the north of Ireland.' We shall later on have to take account of some other indications showing that the landing reinforcements from Carrickfergus or Derry was a project which Cromwell had in view more than once during these campaigns. Incidental mention has already, indeed, been made of that point (p. 28, aniea, chap, iii., book i.). The possibility of such a junction of the Commonwealth forces evidently struck a good many people at the time ; c/. a wild rumour in Cary's 'Memorials of the Great Civil War' (London, 1842: vol. ii., p. 228) of Cromwell's endeavouring to effect it at the ver>' outset of this campaign. And the ' Milton State Papers ' yield us another document on the subject besides Overton's ; a letter written by Deputy Ireton from Ireland in August, 1650, to wit (p. 14), which seriously discusses with the President of the Council of State the sending reinforcements to Cromwell from Ulster. t Antea, p. 37 (chap, i., book ii.). The Cromwellians had in the end to build boats for this special service on the Thames and Tyne. :|: Robert Chambers, 'Traditions of Edinburgh,' vol. ii., p. 178 (edition 1825). § That useful news-letter of October 3 {Mercurius Politiais, No. 18) states that •on Friday, September 27, according to order the Scottish boats, and all other boats that could be had in the Frith ' (surely they did not requisition the dinghies of foreign merchantmen ?) ' were sent for and brought into Leith ... in order to a design then intended ;' and Nicoll usefully supplements the statement by his entry of ' 28 of September,' anent the seizure of all Scots ' boittis ' about ' Mussel- burgh, Cokkeny, Prestoun Panes, and Dumbare ' (pp. 33, 34). NEW BLOOD IN CROMWELL'S ARMY 143 best part of 2,500 men at one time actually embarked in them* for the expedition, the occurrence only interests us (like the opening of those afterwards abandoned galleries under Edinburgh Castle Rock) as a preliminary trial in what was to prove a long undertaking. One more detail concerning the matters with which the English were at this time kept busy, and we shall be free to proceed to the first of those ' visits to Glasgow ' in which Carlyle took rather a dis- proportionate interest. This was an alteration in the constitution of the invaders' army which evidently was in progress from about the middle of September; which about then, indeed, must have involved the comings and goings, arrivals and departures, of whole brigades. One is scarcely in a position to say whether the net result was any very appreciable addition to the strength of the force at Cromwell's disposal. If he indeed received from Newcastle a reinforcement of 'the greatest part of the 8,000 men to be raisd by Sir Arthur Hazelrigj't he must, to counterbalance that, have parted with some of the regiments which had marched under his own command into Scotland. For if he had ever mustered 20,000 men together at one time in Edinburgh, we should certainly have heard of the fact. We are on surer ground when it comes to inquiring what localities furnished him with the new regiments which certainly were now brigaded with a moiety of his original rank and file. 'Colonel Tomlinson's troops '| that 'have been quartered here' (says our obliging Edinburgh correspondent of October 3 — udi supra) ' ever since Friday last,' were clearly some part of the Newcastle reinforce- ments. The other side of Northern England sent comrades for these Tyneside tail-twisters: the 'recruit' of 1,500 men mentioned in the first chapter of this Book seems to have been mainly made up of ' the Lancashire regiment under Colonel Worsley ' and ' another raised in those parts. '§ From time to time, too, we hear of the northward progress of a force numerically insignificant enough but interesting otherwise—' Colonel Barkstead's gallant regiment,' from London all the way, ' to the number of 500.' These seem to have been the Marseillais of this war — men that ' knew how to die ' if it came to another life and death struggle, as at Dunbar — enthusiasts hastily enrolled in the city just before (as it almost appears) the news of that battle arrived.ll It is hidden from us whether they kept up the * Sequel, from the same news-letter: ^ Oct. i . . . 2,500 of our souldiers, intended for some design on Fife side, and many of them shipt at Leith, were called back for some generall reasons.' t An ephemeral newspaper called Mercurius Anglicus said so on September 24 (E613). X Cf. Cromwell's own letter of September 4 (cxli.), naming that Colonel as the officer under whom he wished Hazelrig to send northwards ' the forces you have ready. ' § The Modern Intelligencer (E 613) under dates September 18 and 21 ; and the letter of October 3 in Mercurius Politicus, No. 18. II At all events, Merc. Pol. (No. 15, p. 257) mentions their marching 'out of London toward Scotland ' on September 16 ; within a week, that is to say, of the 144 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS reputation of those 'prentice boys and train-bands who, by their discipHned and steady valour, had done not a Httle to change the current of English history at First Newbury Battle seven years before. But we know that a marked diminution of their numbers as they marched north ^vas due to military exigencies,^ not to any loss of heart in their ranks ; and we rather gather from all we know of them that here was a convincing proof of devotion to the Commonwealth ideal and (possibly) the person of his Excellency. There then, from Northumbria, from the County Palatine, from farthest London, came new blood to be infused into Cromwell's veteran army. Other parts of England might be named ; and indeed, to obviate the necessity of referring to the subject again, it may be said that there was news, a couple of months after, of the coming of Colonel Sexby, with a regiment hailing from one knows not where, and of the complement (' three Yorkshire companies ') of Colonel Alured's regiment ;t while ' 900 men out of Lincolnshire ' seem also to have been new arrivals some time in the autumn or winter. | It was, in part, a wish to keep the south-west of Scotland clear for the passage of such ' recruits ' from England by way of Carlisle, that led to Cromwell's Glasgow march in the beginning of October. Such, at all events, was the gist of one of the explanations of that move sent from headquarters to London. § No great stress need, however, be laid upon it. We shall soon find that the English took a more direct way of securing that Hne of communication; and the chief motives that impelled Cromwell westward were quite sufficient without any subsidiary reasons, [j The military advantages of such an expedi- receipt of the news of Dunbar (on Saturday the loth). A short enough period, surely, in which to equip and get ready 500 men for a march of nearly as many miles (since they do not seem to have sailed any part of the way). Presumably, therefore, they had been mustering and preparing before they heard that Cromwell was victorious. Sufficient allowance is not perhaps made in the text for the fact that Mercurius Politicus (from which alone we hear of this regiment) was the * official organ ' of the Council of State. * They ' moldered away ' from 500 to 400 en route ; but it was explained that the missing fivescore had been drafted into Colonel Monk's regiment at New- castle, Berwick, and Tynemouth {Mercurius Politicus^ No. 23 — E 616). They reached Edinburgh about the end of October. + Letter from Berwick, November 20 {Mercurius Politicus^ No. 25 — E 6r8). Ij: Judging, at all events, by the enthusiastic ' new broom ' tone in which their Colonel wrote of them in the following February {Ibid., No. 38 — E 625). For further officially-recorded displays of popular enthusiasm about the Scotch war, see the same newspaper's * little tast of affairs in the county of Oxon ' — ' ten soldiers striving for one horse and ready to fight who should go ' to the front there (No. 24 — E 616). § Recording the resolve ' to make a running march into those parts,' the Weekly Intelligencer ("No. 5 — E 615) explained that 'in this particular it may seem to be the more effectual, because the rest of the forces that are coming to us are appointed to march by the way of Carlisle, which we look upon as a seasonable providence of God to cause the Council of State to order ' that route. II A full investigation of all those that were alleged in the English news-letters •would involve our racking our brains over such transmogrified and altogether STRACHAN'S PROPOSITION TO CROMWELL 145 tion — in the way of increasing his knowledge of the country he was in and enabhng him to interpose, for however brief a time, between the two armies north and south of the Forth — do not need to be pointed out. But it is almost equally evident that Cromwell set about it in order to put to the proof the reality of the professions and protestations which had reached him from the Western faction. Despite the disparaging estimate of its leaders, enunciated by Cromwell at this time and quoted at the beginning of the chapter, there is no doubt he must have had great hopes of what Strachan, in particular, might do as commander of an independent force. As every fresh instance of the King's hatred of the Kirk leaders came to light, that Colonel seems to have posted off to the English an expos- tulation indicating that he for one could stand such conduct no longer. We have seen that even before Dunbar he had communi- cated to them his belief that Charles cherished the bitterest resent- ment against his monitors and custodians ; shortly after the rout he had acquainted them with the royal jubilation thereat ; and one gathers that afterwards he sent a special express to them, in the heat of his anger at the ' Start,' containing the news of that event.* More : he had taken it upon himself to enter into independent and entirely unauthorized negotiations with the leaders of the Commonwealth army. Allusion has already been made, in connection with the per- sonal relations between Leslie and his late subordinates, to Strachan's having sent to Cromwell, in the end of September, an offer which is thus interpreted by Dr. Gardinerf — that ' if the English army would leave Scotland ' he * would undertake that England should suffer no harm.' The statement as to his proffering that undertaking is corroborated by the words of Baillie, that Strachan ' would receive no satisfaction, so far as to act anything against the enemy, except there might be a treaty. And it did appear therein that Cromwell was not willing to retire, upon our assurance not to molest England upon the King's quarrel. 'J The original missive by which the Western Colonel sounded the English leader upon this point was, we know, intercepted by his fellow-countrymen. But if it did not reach its destination for the time being, we shall find some reason to hopeless place-names as ' Gudson and Canock ' (which it was said Cromwell meant to prevent the Scots from fortifying) or ' Galloway auc^ Euseafe ' — ? Ewes- dale— (which he designed, as it was given out, to ' alarme ') ; and further taking account of the statement that, on starting out westwards, 'my Lord was not resolved whether for Glasgow or Fife.'' The latter fact, mentioned in Merciirius Politicus, No. 21 — E 615— from an ' express of the i8th instant,' is no doubt in- teresting, especially in view of the meaning we shall find the English to have attached to ' Fife ' ; but one can scarcely think His Excellency had any very serious thoughts of adventuring on the upper waters of the Firth so soon after he had given up the idea of a boat expedition from his safe base at Leith. "-^ Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 5 (E 615). t Vol. i., p. 371. {Cf. antea, p. 132, note.) X ' Letters and Journals,' vol. iii., p. 113. ' Our ' is unintelligible. TO 146 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS suppose, ere this chapter is out, that a second venture of the same sort was more fortunate. In any case,. the opening direct communi- cations with men whom Cromwell knew of old, and could now take official cognizance of as the leaders of a separate force, was evidently an experiment worth trying.* Strachan apart, it has of course to be remembered that, along with political views which must have made them appear almost as kindred spirits in a 'Malignantly '-inclined land, the bulk of the Western faction held such ecclesiastical opinions as gave little hope of their fraterniz- ing with the English. If, in other words, their inclination to renounce Charles Stuart and all his works seemed to bring them almost into line with the Regicides of the Commonwealth, their position as sticklers for the purity of Presbyterianism sharply marked them off from the heretical ' Sectaries' ' Independency. Therefore the ques- tion was whether political prejudice or denominational scruple was to be the guiding sentiment among the Westland party. Would Pres- byterian zeal gain the day, and lead to their defying the sacrilegious and iconoclastic invader, even to the death ? Or would they have the courage of their convictions anent the heinous conduct of Charles in putting forward his claim to the throne of these realms ; and on that score disband and hold aloof, if they could not come over openly to the English ? That is the point, we take it, which Cromwell wanted to see cleared up, and in true forthright English fashion did his best to come to an understanding about. One means of doing so was to issue an appeal to all the leading men in Scotland, conjuring them to take thought seriously whether it was worth while, for all the Stuarts that ever lived, to risk the repe- tition of such disaster and humiliation as had just befallen them.f We say advisedly 'all,' for this letter was addressed not only to ' the Right Honourable the Committee of Estates ' but to the Westland leaders (by a separate copy) as well. Another means, which may have seemed to promise better as regarded the latter party, was to march in person to the West of Scotland and give them an oppor- tunity of parleying with him by word of mouth if they so desired. For that purpose the expedition was so well-timed that one wonders whether chance or good judgment determined the season of it. The news of the ' Start ' can scarcely have reached Cromwell by the time * As to contemporary journalistic statements of the position in which matters stood, we need not attach too much importance to the rumour printed in the Weekly Intelligencer (No. 2 — E 614) of ' Car and Straughan's' intention to declare against the King. A sentence in the Mercuriiis Politicus letter of October 3 goes to show that (presumably becau.se of the non-arrival of that 'Captain of Straughan's taken with letters from his Colonel to Cromwell ') the English com- manders were in the suspicious mood attributed by the same authority to Cromwell himself, in the extract given on an earlier page. It runs as follows : * We hear nothing from Col. Straughan and Carr since my last, so that probably their discourses were only colourable and not real . . . and, notwithstanding plausible discourses, they will prove as false as Scots.'' (Italics in original.) t Letter cl., ' Linlithgow, 9th October.' THE ENGLISH AT GLASGOW 147 he left Edinburgh on the 8th, or at latest the 9th, of October ; it must surely have penetrated to the Western army (even though they were then at Dumfries*) before or during his stay at Glasgow (from the 1 2th to the T4th). It seems almost a wonder that such tidings did not bring them hot-foot out of Dumfriesshire to join forces in amity with the invader. The indignation of the Ker and Strachan party did not thus vent itself, however. Instead of coming out of their fastnesses to ' attend * the English either in peaceful or hostile guise — and, whichever they had chosen, it is clear the invaders were ready for them — they stayed where they were, busy about completing that Reinoiistrance with which they were soon to ' fill all Scotland with a fresh figure of dis- sension.' It does not greatly concern us to know whether they replied immediately, or a little later on, to Cromwell's representa- tions : in any case their answer was ' in such equivocal Scotch that we know not how to make English of it.'f Therefore Cromwell had the trouble of his first visit to Glasgow for nothing. The fear of his coming drove the Reverend Robert Baillie off to the Great Cumbrae for refuge ; the Reverend Zachary Boyd, less easily put to flight, stood his ground and preached true-blue Presbyterianism to the invaders' very faces in the Cathedral ; the conduct of the English throughout their stay was such as must have made the more timid| * One cannot wonder that the Scots of the ' Centre ' or official party resented that army's taking up its headquarters at a place so remote. Baillie (iii. 118) scornfully said that * the pretence was to attend the motion of the enemy coming from Carlisle '; and wrote of ' their lying still at Dumfries while Cromwell took up Glasgow ' as something very like a breach of trust. Possibly it was the prophetic soul of the Westland faction that made them choose Nithsdale — the centre round which revolved, in a later generation, the movements of the poor ' hill-folk ' to north and south — as a place to be made * famous by their pen ' if not ' glorious by their sword.' In one detail the after-course of history was exactly anticipated : just as Hackstoun of Rathillet and the rest escaped from their own shire to the south-west of Scotland in '79, so now it was related that ' some have fled out of Fife into the western parts towards Straughan . . . and have had meetings about Nidesdale at Solway and other places' {^Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 5 — E 615), There is at least one bit of proof, by the way, that Baillie's censure (p. 118 still) of the bearing of the Western forces in the districts they chose for their headquarters, was not ill-founded. An 'Act in favours of the then Earl of Queensberry (Thomson, vii., 95, 96) makes mention of an award of damages granted him for •losses in 1650' at the hands of these brother-Scots. Colonel Gilbert Ker, 'the aires of Colonel Strachan,' Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollock, and Sir John Chiesly, were amongst the fifty or sixty scheduled as responsible * for their violently invading of the lands ' of Lords Queensberry and Drumlanrig, ' and by force of arms entering into their houses, seizing upon their goods and cattell, destroying of their cornes, possessing themselves of every thing they could be master of belonging to them and their tenants, and thereafter setting fire to the yets of Drumlanrig.' f Mercurius Politicus, No. 21, 'from Edenburgh of the 20' October. Pre- sumably this uncomplimentary remark applied to the ' private letter of acknow- ledgment,' not the 'Six Queries' (Carlyle, elucidation of letter cli.). X Some of the Glaswegians gave a better excuse than want of courage for imitating Baillie's example and that of 'all the Magistrates': they went, it was 10 — 2 148 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS divine ashamed of his timidity and encouraged the bolder in his boldness. All these particulars, sufficiently indicated in Carlyle's excerpt from Baillie's contemporary letter,"^ were not much to the purpose when the main object of the expedition is remembered. Cromwell had gone forth for to parley with Ker and Strachan, or to fight them, as they preferred ; and ' here much ' Ker and Strachan ! The only thing to be done, then, was to return to Edinburgh,! said, * not so much for fear of the enemy . . . but because they feared to be branded with the name of complyers with Sectaries.' The statement is Nicoll's ('Diary,' p. 30); elsewhere (p. 41) he mentions his having been 'skarrit and chaist fra my awin familie in Edinburgh,' some time or another, by the presence of the English ; it is therefore possible (since he was a Glasgow man by birth) that this was his apology for having been chivvied out of his quarters by the terror of them a second time. At all events, the English knew of no such politic reasons for absence of body : they grumbled at the Glasgow folks for ingratitude, and for failing to come up to expectations. They had been led to believe they would ' find some friends ' in Glasgow, ' in regard the people there and thereabouts are accounted more conscientious than in other parts of the nation ;' and therefore * my Lord Generall took more than ordinary care in preserving the town from the violence of the soldiery, so as at our coming from thence I heard not of the com- plaint of sixpence loss to the town by any violence. But we find the people there as much embittered against us as in any other parts. Many of them at Glasgow were so much out of charity with us, that they held it unlawful to show so much kindness to any of our officers or soldiers as to dress our meat or to go of an errand for them' (letter 'of the 19th ' October in Mercurius Politicus, No. 21 — E 615). See Nicoll also (p. 31), by the way, for a letter sent by Cromwell from Kilsyth to Glasgow, intimating the despatch of ' Quhalie ' (his Commissary General, Whalley) to arrange for the army's accommodation there. If the invaders' forbearance had no immediate result, it was at all events generally commented on : Balfour re- marked that Cromwell had behaved ' resonable descritly at Glasgow.' * Vol. iii., p. 119. t * We returned not from Glasgow the same way we went, and by reason thereof have got a pretty understanding of that part of the country ' {Mercurius Politicus letter of the 19th). The route westwards, we know, had been by Linlithgow and Kilsyth (which was ' upon the ' then usual ' roadway betwixt Edinburgh and Glasgow' — Thomson's 'Acts,' vii., 315) ; the return journey was, Nicoll tells us, *by the Mureway ' (the Somerville 'Memorie' writer's now 'riven out and in- habited muirs') 'and the Kirk of the Schottis ' (p. 31). Two other points about the homeward stage of the circular tour may be noted in addition to the resultant ' pretty understanding ' of the more southerly line of country — namely, that it let the English in for * the worst march we ever yet had, over mountains and bogs, such as no army ever passed ; the weather very wet ' {Mercurius Politicus letter of the i8th) ; and that it enabled them to occupy 'some six great houses' within ten miles of Edinburgh on the south or south-west. The reason given for that proceeding (' to prevent the Scotch Tories') will demand our attention by- and-by. It is possible, by-the-by, that the pretty story of Cromwell and the ' Captain of Allertoun,' appended by Carlyle to his account of Cromwell's second visit to Glasgow, ought by rights to be assigned to the time of the homeward march from this first one. For the route on the earlier occasion lay quite as near the Auchtermuir region as on the later — more directly across it, indeed, than when Cromwell was marching ' by Carnwath.' The exact date, and the story itself, are of course quite immaterial for our purpose : one need only remark that (whether Carlyle or his Maitland Club authority was at fault) the name Allertoun ought to have been printed Allenton, and that the Royalism of its Laird, Sir Walter Stewart, was not above suspicion, judging by the ' Memorie of the Somervilles.' WH ALLEY DESPATCHED TO CARLISLE 149 hasting back there the more quickly because there were rumours of the Scots intending to attack its garrison and reheve the Castle, in his absence. According to one account, this hostile visit was to be expected from Ker and Strachan ; according to another, ' in my Lord's absence at Glasgow, David Leslie hastened to come on with eight regiments of horse and foot for the relief of Edenburgh Castle ; of which my Lord having intelligence, prevented it by a quick return.'^ That last expression was not unwarranted, for, ' mountains and bogs ' or no mountains and bogs, the English troops marched the forty odd miles back to Edinburgh in a couple of days (Monday, October 14 to 16). If they really did hasten because of reports of the Scots threatening Edinburgh — though they had left a fairly strong garrison there, t and one that was not likely to be caught napping — they were more probably on their guard against a raid by the Westland forces than a cutting-out expedition from the enemy's quarters north of the Forth. The direction of their return march shows as much, crossing as it did the Hne of advance or retreat of any hostile force from the south-west ; and the nature of Cromwell's next move helps to prove that he had his suspicions of the intentions of the so far ' honest ' Ker and Strachan. For he had no sooner, by his return, put the safety of Edinburgh beyond question, than he despatched into ' the sphere of influence ' of the Westland army (so to speak) an expedition much more directly minatory than his own pacifically-heralded advance to Glasgow. In other words, he sent his cousin and Commissary-General Whalley towards Carlisle, at the head of a couple of regiments, charged with something in the nature of an ultimatum to Ker and Strachan, if not, indeed, with explicit instructions to gather what force he could in Cumberland, and march against them from that side as speedily as possible. J * Letter of October 20 in Mercurius Politicus^ No. 21 (E 615). On the other hand, the 'letter of the i8th instant,' in the same paper, expresses some apprehen- sions lest ' Straughan and that party ' might have ' disordered our affairs and forces in ' Edinburgh. t Besides the cavalry, * only six regiments of foot ' had accompanied Cromwell to Glasgow. One dozen seems to have formed the normal strength of his infantry during the whole term of his occupation of Edinburgh ; and the half left behind there on this occasion must have comprised some 5,000 or 6,000 men. X The fullest particulars that we have about this expedition are contained in an official bulletin initialled * T. F.,' dated ' Carlisle, October 30,' and printed in Vol. E 615 of the ' King's Pamphlets.' It is accompanied by a copy of a letter sent to Ker and Strachan on October 26, the pacific terms of which may suggest to any reader who cares to consult these documents that we have rather misrepre- sented in this passage the tenour of Whalley's commission. But it must be noted that the correspondence thus opened with the Western leaders only began after Whalley had received the revised instructions from headquarters mentioned in the text. And it is evident, from the very first mention we find of this errand from Edinburgh, that the original intention was to take short and sharp measures with Ker and Strachan, in order to compel them to declare themselves one way or another. The letter- writer ' of the 18 instant ' implies as much when he speaks of the English ' tenderness towards them that are honest, to pray for them, to pity 150 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS All that has to be related about this ' party volant ' (if one may give it a contemporary name) is that it left Edinburgh two days after Cromwell had returned there — on Wednesday, October i8 ; that Colonel Francis Hacker, the umquhile official representative of the army on the scaffold of Charles I. in Old Palace Yard, was Whalley's colleague in charge of it ; and that by the end of the next week it was in good trim at Carlisle for a march into Annandale and Nithsdale, had that been required of it."^ But circumstances had in the meantime altered Cromwell's intentions towards the party against whom this expedition had been meant to operate ; ' orders were sent to Commissary- General Whalley, in favour of Straughan, etc., not to fall upon that party ';t and thus the worthy commander found himself restricted to an interchange of unessential communications with the Scots at Dumfries;!: instead of heading the advance in that direction which his first orders had (as the sentence just quoted indicates) authorized him to set about. His presence at Carlisle served the subsidiary purpose of ensuring an unmolested passage for some new troops out of England— we note, e.g.^ that Hacker brought back to Edinburgh them that sit in darkness,' but goes on immediately to state that this sentiment was not to be allowed 'to retard the work a moment.' 'Therefore,' he straight- way adds [Mercurius Folitiacs, No. 21) ' My Lord hath sent Commissary-General [Whalley] away with his own and Colonel Hacker's regiment, upon such a design as I hope will be profitable, the three great ones only here acquainted with it ; but we may guess it and so may you . . . and I hope we shall hear accordingly.' The purport of the which disjointed sentence was, we take it, that the English meant business — a final pacific understanding with Ker and Strachan, or a battle, according as those two chose. * * Our soldiers (not long since drooping and sickly) are now most lively, well, and cheerful, desirous of nothing more than action : Of such vigour is a little English refreshment,' — The aforesaid ' T. F.'s' letter from ' Carlisle, October 30 ' (E615). t Undated letter at the end oi Mercunus Pclilicu.^ , No. 22 (E 615) — 'several expresses to private hands from Edinburgh.' X He sent a trumpeter to Ker and Strachan, whom the Scots ' blinded for many miles up and down the country' near 'Dumfreeze,' rather than let him into the secret of the passes into Nithsdale. That fact alone is of interest : the importance of the messages which the trumpeter bore is quite secondary to that of the com- munications noticed in the text as proceeding between the Western Army and the English headquarters. It is also of some interest, by the way, to know that the Provost of Dumfries came in to Carlisle * to renew his parole ' : he had been * a Major at Dunbar fight, there taken,' and dismissed, evidently, on promise not to serve against the English again. And another noteworthy little item is the letter given by Whalley ' to the Shiriff of Cumberland to be speeded away to M. Jo/m Scot, Bailiff and B. brother {sic) to the Lord of Buccliew,' 'demanding restitution upon his tenants the moss-troopers, for the horses by them stolen the night we quartered in their country ; since which, promises have been made of restitution.' This entry is not set down here by way of reminiscence of what Mark Napier, in his anger about Philiphaugh, called the ' degenerate prickers ' of the Borders, but rather as strictly relevant to our subject. For it surely points to Whalley's having inarched Carlisleward by way of Teviotdale and Eskdale ; and constitutes the second indication in this current chapter of the presence of those ' nimble Mosses ' against whom the English soon had to take vigorous action. THE WESTERN REMONSTRANCE 151 ' another regiment of our Western forces,' besides his own.-^ Apart from that detail, the expedition is of no further moment from our point of view. for the scene now shifts again to Edinburgh, and we must note the nature of those communications which, coming from the Western army to the English headquarters, had served inter alia to alter the complexion of Whalley's mission. One was a copy of the Reni07i- stra?ice\ of the Western Army, a document of which we need only remark that it must have tended to increase rather than lessen the perplexity of the English in contemplation of that army's attitude. It renounced indeed — and with emphasis — the cause of Charles II. Its authors could not away with the ' guilt of the King and his house, both old and late.' The iniquities which fell under the latter head — comprising every act of Charles since he had been at Breda, whether ' extorted ' from him (as the Declaration of August) or wilfully set about (as ' the late deserting of the public counsels ') — were, when all is said and done, only the last straw. The Roman Catholicism of Henrietta Maria and the stubbornness of Charles I. against the Covenant were, that is to say, still remembered against the son who had been more complaisant than his father, and was not yet — by a long while — of the same communion as his mother. The blame of the merely anomalous reasons for war against the Commonwealth was — impartially and clear-sightedly enough — laid at the door of Kirk as well as King; and even the Royalists who feared the deeds :|: by which the framers of the Remonstrance should logically make good their utterances, must have echoed their protestations against the badly-matched endeavours and incompatible aspirations of the Centre party. But — if not for the King, yet on a quarrel of their own — the Western party would still fight the English. Nothing less than ' the necessity of the lamenting people of God ' called them ' to the utter- most adventuring against the enemy.' The gist of their Remonstrance, then, considered as a statement bearing directly upon the progress and prospects of the campaigns we have to do with, was that they regarded both parties to the quarrel — their compatriots at Stirling and the English at Edinburgh — with equal dislike. Along with the Remonstrance, however, there came a document which must have had much more to do with the re-shaping of Cromwell's plans in the way that has been explained. ' On the 22nd ' of October ' a letter came from Straughan and Carr, brought to the Generall by a trumpeter, intimating some offertures for a speedy * Mercurms Politicus, No. 24 (E 616) — 'from Edenburgh of the 9th inst.' (November). t Balfour, iv., pp. 141-60. X These, it should be said, were expressly disavowed : there was not * the least design,' it was proclaimed, 'to follow the footsteps of the sectarian party and change the fundamental government of this kingdom by King and Parliament.' IS2 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS accommodation.'* This, we take it, was a renewal of the important offer spoken of earlier in this chapter; a reiteration, probably on behalf of the whole Western party, of the proposal which Strachan had already once before, at the beginning of the month, or even in the end of September, sent on his own responsibility to the English leader ; a guarantee, to wit, that on condition of Cromwell's withdrawing his army from Scotland, the English Commonwealth need henceforth fear no molestation from north of the Border, on the King's behalf or that of anyone else. The contents, at all events, were evidently something different from previous professions and non-committal * discourses,' since it is plain they induced Cromwellf to suspend the active hostilities by the menace of which he seems to have been dis- posed to quicken the Western army's decisions. The missive reached Edinburgh while Whalley, we may suppose, was nearing the end of his march to Carlisle ; and orders were at once sped away to him not to attack the Westland party. What could have served to work that marked change in the English intentions, save the interposition of the definitely pacific proposal which the Western leaders are known to have made at one stage or another of the history of these weeks? We have no farther indication of the nature of the communication, it is true, than is to be found in the fact that the news-letter which reported the ' offertures ' and the sending to Whalley the orders just mentioned added in its next sentence the significant words — ' If he [Strachan] supersede ' (meaning evidently ' secede ') 'it will be a good leading card to the rest, and the game will soon be at an end between England and Scotland.' We shall find also that the tenour of later communications shows the action of the Western army to have been determined by resentment of the English refusal to with- draw from the country. In mentioning that we are not unduly anticipating what will fall to be related subsequently ; for none will be surprised to learn that the invitation to retire was declined by the English in the long-run. But it evidently served the purpose of diverting Cromwell for some little time from the execution of the * Merairius Politicus, No. 22 (E 615) under date November 2. The statement is repeated in a later express farther on in the same issue of the paper ; and the context there names the countermanding despatch to Whalley, not to fall upon Strachan, that has already been quoted. t Frankly, we are rather at a loss to account for Cromweirs not having taken any notice, in his letter (cli.) from * Edinburgh, 25th October,' of the definite pro- position which we believe he had just received from Strachan. It names a letter from that quarter (presumably the one which Carlyle, following Balfour, supposed to have been of ' mere private acknowledgment '), and the accompanying ' Queries ' — which last, as that writer says, certainly did ' not much look like real despatch of business.' But nowhere in Cromwell's correspondence is there any reference to that other Westland document which (unless Walker and Baillie have misled the historians) certainly would in some sort have answered the description. Failing such allusion — and in default, which is worse, of the original documents themselves — one gropes as best one can among such scattered notices of the negotiations as are to be found. STRACHAN'S SCHEME 153 designs he had formed. In the light of that fact, then, one may safely say that this 'letter of the 22nd ' contained the one definite proposal which Strachan is known to have made ; since nothing short of such an advance upon anything that we hear of the Western leaders having previously committed themselves to could have wrought the effects we have seen. Reserving the sequel for a later chapter, we must meanwhile proceed to tell of some new develop- ments, north of the Forth, in which the EngHsh had no hand, deeply concerned though they were in the upshot. CHAPTER IV. NORTH-COUNTRY ROYALISM IN ARMS SKIRMISH IN ATHOLE SIR JOHN BROWN SENT INTO FORFARSHIRE AND DEFEATED AT NEWTYLE — THE ' NORTHERN BAND AND OATH ' — DAVID LESLIE 'boats over' THE TAY — ACT OF INDEMNITY AND PACIFICATION. WE have already noted the effects wrought by King Charles's escapade — the 'Start' — in one quarter of Scotland. For it is plain enough that the tidings of that event hurried on the publication of the Remon- strance of the Western Army, if indeed it was not the ' only begetter ' of the document ; and that it brought Ker and Strachan, so to speak, up to the scratch, by inducing them to lay before Cromwell the heads of those ' oifertures ' dealt with at the close of the last chapter. The simultaneous results elsewhere were widely different in kind. If Charles's attempt to escape from' his clerical custodians had brought to a head the already-manifested discontents of the Westland faction, it had put on the alert against the occurrence of such another oppor- tunity the zeal of the Northern Royalists. And while the sentiments of the shocked and aggrieved party found utterance in Re??wnstrance and parley with the English, those of the men who may best perhaps be classed as asserters of the King's rights took shape in deeds. An open encounter between the Kirk's troops and the Cavaliers of Forfarshire — an actual spark of renewed civil war in that unhappy kingdom of Scotland whose richest shires were now under the sway of an invader — dates from just about a fortnight after Charles's dolorous return to Perth. It is convenient, then, to revert at this point to the story of the events which were tending, though after this unlikely fashion, towards ' the substitution of the national for the covenanting cause.' One detail of the Royalist doings which now fall to be narrated has already, indeed, been referred to. The spark of civil war just spoken of was not the very first that had been kindled at this time : the conflict in Forfarshire had been preceded by a skirmish between the same parties somewhere by the banks of Tay, Tummel, or Garry. We have given our reasons for thinking that Sir Edward Walker's A HIGHLAND ANSWER 155 narrative of the * Start ' was based on the reports of men who for their own credit sought to represent the affair as better-concerted than it had the air of being. That account of the plot, however, is in some degree corroborated as to one of its particulars by the fact that the Highlanders of Athole certainly took the field immediately afterwards. We hear nothing of their trying to seize Perth — the piece of service for which they are said to have been told off; but some time in the first week of October they were * out' in sufficient force to enable them to repulse a detachment of the Kirk's army sent to keep a watch upon their movements.* One can fancy what vengeance the Kirk would have exacted for this trifling defeat had it still, as at the date of the Pluscardine rising and Montrose's invasion, been in the heyday of its supremacy. But reprisals, such as Mr. John Nevoy (for instance) would have delighted to direct against the reprobate Highlanders, were now out of the power of him and his like. Circumstances made it impossible, even had it been expedient, to carry fire and sword through the glens, as Argyle had done in those of Forfarshire, if not in this very district of Athole, ten years before. For almost simultaneously with the tidings of this check received somewhere in the river valleys north of Perth,! there came rumours that foreboded similar humiliation for the Scots executive, unless it took speedy action, in the north-east. Therefore the Committee of Estates so far smothered down its feelings as to withdraw the name of ' rebels ' that it had applied to the Athole men ; and, while denying the Earl the right of re-occupying his ' house of Blair,' and withholding pardon from all that had a hand in the slaughter of the officers in command of the detachment, it passed a general act of indemnity for the others who had taken part in the rising, t This conciliatory step was taken on October 14 ; and it is not to be wondered at when one reads next day's entry — * Instructions to Sir John Brown who is commanded by the Committee of Estates to go against those in the North which are in arms.'§ For that com- -'' From Scotch sources we have only some scattered references to this affair as *the murder of Sir John Brown's Lieutenant,' and the ' killingof Vnqvhill Mac- keartyne,' otherwise * L{ieut.) Mackartie,' 'and Capitane Sherrow, English- man ' (Balfour, vol. iv., report of the Committee of Estates meeting on October 10 and 16: c/. also pp. 134 and 207). A London newspaper's account of it sounds more imposing, however : ' There is in the North another generation risen up. , . . They are the ancient families of the Stewards and other Highlanders formerly of Montrosses party. ... To them Lesley sent a Major with a party of horse to know the grounds of their rising in arms ; but they gave no other answer than that they fell upon the Major and his party and killed him and his Lieutenant and routed the rest' (Mercurius Politicus, No. 21 [E 615] — letter of October 19). t The Committee of Estates now met in that city, having shifted the venue thither from Stirling after the King's being brought back from Clova, and continued their sittings there since — sometimes, as Balfour records, in the Royal privy chamber. X Balfour, iv. 123. § Ibid., 125. IS6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS mander's route was not towards the place where his lieutenant had met his death : other districts of the rebellious North demanded a visitation, and Athole was left alone. The muster of the Cavaliers which had signally failed as a preliminary to Charles's escape (if indeed it had so been planned at all) was now very much of a reality ten days later. The news which had led to Sir John Brown's being despatched from Perth must have told of John Middleton's being on the march southwards from Aberdeenshire at the head of a consider- able force. For, if there be anything in the narrative of the contem- porary Royalist newspaper already quoted from,* that bold 'Engager' and ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Covenanting armies in Scotland must by now have ' made sure of leaving no enemies behind his back 't in the strongholds of Bog of Gicht and Strathbogie, and so begun confidently his advance southwards. The reports which reached the English later spoke of his being at the head of some 1,500 men : that number was at least doubled:]: by the muster of Cavaliers who presently flocked to his banners. It would have been odd if the imposing gathering of nobles and chiefs and veterans, who had appointed him their General and were soon to re-assert their claim to have a say in the affairs of their native land, had not been good for a ' tail ' of at least 3,000. As to the strength of the forces with which these north- country Royalists would have to reckon when they reached the Lowlands, we are best informed from the English news-letters. Their estimate was (and the spies they employed were so well ' posted ' on other points that there is no reason to doubt their accuracy about this one) that the total army which the Committee of Estates had at their disposal in the end of October amounted to 7,000 horse and foot.§ They had been levying men as best they could during that month|| — * Antea, footnote to p. 138. The Dutch Merciirius Scotictts merits atten- tion, not only because it is the one fragment of Cavalier journalism in 1650-51 which seems to have come down to us, but because of the intrinsic probability of its narrative. It ought perhaps to have been related before that Middleton of Fettercairn had been on the point of making a similar appearance on the scene in the spring of this year. Montrose, had he succeeded in his invasion, would pro- bably have effected a junction with the whilom comrade to whom he had surren- dered his sword in 1646. See Dr. Gardiner's ' History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,' vol. i., p. 233. The opportunity lost to the latter through Mont- rose's defeat had now come round again through the success of the English. f This is the explanation of Middleton's movements given in Mercurius Scoticus, ubi supra. X Such, at all events, is the construction we put on the rather confusedly arranged statement in a letter evidently written from Scotland on October 31 {Mercurius Politicus, No. 24 — E 616 — ' from Hull of the i6th ' November), It runs thus : ' The Malignants that routed Sir John Brown's regiment of horse, being 1,500, were commanded by Middleton ; the Malignants were at their rendezvous about some 1,200 horse and foot. There were 3,000 horse and foot together at Northwater Bridges' (over the Forfarshire North Esk), '44 miles from St. Johnston.' § Ibid. II Lament's * Diary,' p. 28. KIRK DETACHMENT ROUTED AT NEWTYLE 157 dragging recruits ' out of their very beds,'"^ said the English news- papers, and driving poor Fifers to seek refuge 'about Nidesdale at Sohvay,' as we have seen, there to ' exclaim very highly against David Leshly ' {sic — ' hie ') their brother- Fifer. The net result seems, according to these apparently trustworthy figures, to have been an increase of some 2,000 men as compared with the force which had confronted Cromwell at Stirling. What proportion of these Sir John Brown had under his command in Forfarshire we are not informed. The 600 horse under Sir Robert Montgomery that we lately saw on the march in that county were evidently not available for service there : their leader had been summoned to headquarters * to command a party out ' at the same time that Brown was getting his orders for the north. The destina- tion of this other expedition we rather fancy to have been in the same quarter whither Montgomery had at a later date to proceed — towards the West,t namely, where the local influence of a scion of the Eglinton family was evidently expected to work a good effect upon the recalcitrant troops of Ker and Strachan. But whether or not Montgomery took any steps before being recalled (as he must have been), towards the execution of the delicate mission with which he was afterwards to be entrusted again, it is certain that his old comrade straightway carried out his orders — in rather a characteristic fashion — and fared badly. Sir John Brown seems to have quartered his troops for a day or two in Dundee,! and afterwards to have marched, by about October 19, to Newtyle. Thence, finding an enemy in his front, he sent them notice that if they sought to entice him into negotiations designed to put off time, he would hang any messenger that came to him.§ Rather a characteristic intimation, as we say, recalling how hot- headed this Sir John had in some former cases shown himself to be. The Royalists sent him never a herald that we know of; took action, instead, which proved that a temporizing policy was the very last they had in contemplation ; fell upon him in the night-time, that is * Mercurius Politicus^ No. 17. t This conjecture, formed independently of the ' special express from Edinburgh ' (October 27 bound up with 'T. F.'s), is so far confirmed by it, viz. — 'From St. John- stons we understand . . . that Major-Gen. Montgomery was gone with 800 horse to reduce Straughan and that party to the obedience of the Kirk.' Sir E. Walker (pp. 201-2) says that leader was thus sent, but with ' no forces nor any other but a verbal direction.' Further research (Thurloe State Papers, I. 166) puts it out of doubt that the south-west was Montgomery's destination. X Balfour relates that his soldiery plundered the baggage and stole the moneys of a Mr. Twiss, one of the English courtiers who on taking leave of the Court had sent his servant on to Dundee with his moveables. § Sir Edward Walker (p. 203) mentions this truculent announcement ; and is correct enough here, undoubtedly — though we have seen, and shall again find, that the details of his chiefly second-hand narrative of the events of October require watching. For Middleton stated in the after-mentioned letter to Leslie, that ' it was Sir John Brown's brisk expressions that did occasion ' the on -fall. 158 CROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS to say, in his quarters at Newtyle, and drove his troopers in headlong stampede back by the way they had come. There was no pursuit, as indeed it was Hkely enough there would have been no coming to blows but for Brown's peremptory and ill-timed message. The successful party had reason to abstain from embittering the quarrel. By pushing home their advantage (as they must have had chances to) they might have been jeopardizing Charles's liberty, if not his personal safety, powerless as he was in the hands of men whom many of these Northern Royalists believed capable of handing him over to the English ; and they would certainly have been court- ing a struggle a outrance with the more numerous army that the Kirk could still put in the field — a struggle which, whatever its upshot, could not but be suicidal from a patriotic point of view. Therefore they made no further move for the present — not even by advancing on Dundee, though we shall find the Scots executive entertained some fears lest that seaport, so ill to be spared since Leith had been occupied by the English, should also pass out of its keeping. Middleton and his men, then, held their ground in the landward parts of Angus, with their headquarters, evidently, in Forfar itself. It was from that town that they presently sent to Leslie, enclosed in an explanatory letter from Middleton himself, a copy of the * Northern Band and Oath of Engagement.'* This was a brief manifesto, but of no little significance in the then position of affairs. The signatories lamented the condition to which Scotland was reduced by Cromwell's triumph, and urged the necessity of sinking all differences for the sake of opposing a united front to the enemy. Middleton's letter stated the personal claims of the Northern party still more clearly than the document itself : * ^\'e only aim at union,' he wrote ; ' we are Scottishmen, we desire to fight for our country.'! Montrose, with his motto oi Nil Medium, might very probably have scorned the conciliatory diplomacy which led the sub- scribers to avow their fidelity to 'covenant, league and covenant ' in the same breath with — or even before, according to the order of clauses — their loyalty to the King. But it was no time for Nil Medium now. The names appended to the Band and Oath demand at least as much attention as the contents of the manifesto. There was Huntly, son of that Marquis whose life had been taken on the scaffold eighteen months before ; bearer of the title which would have gone to his brother, Lord Gordon, but for the young heir's gallant death on the field at Alford, and had been borne only for a few months by the second son, Aboyne, ere he drooped and died abroad after the executions of his father and his King. A sad inheritance, that Marquisate ! Yet here was a Lewis Gordon, as ready for what might chance as when he had, though only a boy of thirteen, led a thousand of his father's retainers to take the field a dozen years before. And there was Athole, following the example set by his predecessor of * Balfour, iv., 129-30. t Ibid.^ 131. SIGNATORIES OF 'THE NORTHERN BAND' 159 constant loyalty to the throne ; and Seaforth, who had waited to see Aberdeen sacked and the Campbell power broken ere he came in to Montrose in 1645, but had thenceforward adhered to the side he chose with fidelity unshaken by after-reverses. With his name was associated that of his brother, ' Th. Mackenzie ' of Pluscardine, whose rising* in the Highlands immediately after Charles I.'s execu- tion has been referred to more than once already. ' St. Clare ' signed also — a nobleman who has come under the lash of Mark Napier for his earlier dealings with Montrose, but had in more recent years given frequent proofs of his whole-heartedness in the Royal cause.t Be- side Middleton's own signature, again, appeared that of Sir George Munro, the ex-Commander of the Scots armies in Ireland, the last man who endeavoured to make headway for the Engagers' cause in Scotland after the defeat at Preston. And how one delights to see that amongst these champions of the Royal cause reappeared ' Pat. Graham ' ! The name shall be retained here as it stands in Balfour : the contraction recalls the form in which it was most familiar to the Highland followers of the Great Marquis — ' Black Pate.' For here surely was none other than Inchbrakie, Montrose's dearest cousin and most useful follower, one that had come through the thousand hardships and perils of his extraordinary campaigns and survived to strike a blow yet for the old cause. | Nor does this enumeration of the signatories of the Band and Oath exhaust the list of the leaders who are known to have rallied round Middleton at this time. One whose name compels attention for old sake's sake, like those of most of the others just told over, was Sir David Ogilvy, to whom belonged the chief credit of the camisade or night attack§ that had brought Sir John Brown's northward errand * Undeterred by the failure of that rebellion, Seaforth seems to have been run- ning munitions of war into the country in the previous summer. — Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., p. 390 t By his intercepted and risky correspondence with Montrose, e.g: , in February, 1650 (Balfour, iv., p. 33) ; and, one might almost add, by the duel which he was to have fought with David Leslie in the heat of the controversies about the Engage- ment (Baillie, iii. 36). + Patrick Graham had apparently been kept safely out of the way of rejoining his renowned kinsman in the north of Scotland at the beginning of this year : only on June 7, at all events, had there been ' ordouris givin to putt Inchbrachie and Gorthie to libertie' (Thomson's ' Acts,' vi. pt. ii., p. 575). Of the remaining signatures to the ' Band and Oath,' * Jo : Gordon ' may be a reminiscence of another of Montrose's stoutest followers — Gordon of Buckie ; ' W. Horrie ' is, we suppose, unknown to anyone. Can it be that some confusion has arisen between the famous Sir John Hurry and this forgotten namesake ; and that the former changed sides during the civil wars less often than he is said to ? The last on the list is ' Wanderrosse ' — a name less cryptic than it might seem. The English newspapers already knew (see Whitelocke, p. 476, or Merctirius Politictis, No. 22) that * Van Rusk the Dutchman ' was back among the Scots, with whom he had sided, as already mentioned, off and on for the last six or seven years. § The exact time of the Newtyle rout would seem to have been the small hours of Monday morning, October 21. Balfour, under that date, enters it as occurring ' this day' — and adds in the next paragraph that * they were beset in the night.' i6o CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS to an abrupt end. It was not the first affair of the sort in which that Ogilvy had taken part, whether on the winning side or the losing. It had been his lot to join in the memorable surprise and rout of the Campbells at Inverlochy, where his brother Sir Thomas got his death- wound ; his too, as we suppose, to cut his way out of the betrayed ranks at Philiphaugh, where another brother, Lord Ogilvy, fell into the Covenanters' hands. The whirligig of time had brought over to the same side as the Ogilvies one of the commanders who had stolen a march upon their great leader on the latter occasion ; so that now it was in concert with Middleton — though we know not whether by his direct orders or by a move of his own at the head of the Cortachy and Clova men — that Sir David had effected the rout of Sir John Brown's squadrons."^ His father, the gallant old Earl of Airlie, was also * out ' once againt in support of the Royal cause for which he had struck many a good blow before, under Montrose ; of the other son. Lord Ogilvy, who had broke prison in 1645 or 1646 by the help of a brave sister, we shall see something under another character presently. This defeat at Newtyle, the second check within a fortnight or so received by the ' Centre ' party of the Scots from the Northern Cavaliers, wrung from the Committee of Estates another and more comprehensive Act of Indemnity. | Even before it had come about, the anger of the extreme Presbyterians has led to their excommuni- cating Middle ton§ for his presumption in taking arms. ' The sin of Malignancy ' was indeed, as we have already quoted from Sir Edward Walker, regarded as equivalent to sinning ' against the Holy Ghost.' But the more sober heads among those who ruled the affairs of the State saw the folly of trying to inflict upon the Northern Cavaliers any penalties of a temporal sort. Therefore a general pardon was * Middleton, in the aforesaid letter to Leslie, ' did not think there was any blood shed ' on that occasion ; but Balfour names ' four killed and 20 prisoners,' and Sir Edward Walker and the English news-letters {'an express from Edin- burgh' of October 27, e.g., bound up with *T. F.'s' letters from Carlisle in E 615) quite agree that there were casualties as well as captures and — says the former — desertions to what Mercurius Scoticus calls ' the right side. ' By the way, though, Walker had certainly no very good information about this affair : he speaks (p. 203) of Brown's defeat as entirely due to Middleton, and refers separately (p. 201) to 'some other slain by one Captain Ogleby in Angus' in a way which shows he was ignorant of the real circumstances. Balfour mentions that Mr. Oudert, for one, met his death at Newtyle, having followed Brown thither for recovery of the money stolen from Mr. Twiss, and been knocked on the head in the confused ineUe. t Sir E. Walker (p. 197) names him as one who was to have been at the ren- dezvous before the ' Start. ' + Balfour, iv., 132-35. § • At St. Johnston on a Lord's day, being the 20 of October ' according to the letter ' from Hull of the i6th ' November that has already been quoted {Mercurius Politicus, No. 24). The Rev. James Guthrie took the lead in insisting upon his excommunication : readers of Burnet will not have forgotten how that was remembered against him by the King's Commissioner after the Restoration. CHARLES'S MESSAGE TO THE CAVALIERS i6i granted, by an Act passed on the same day as the Northern Band and Oath was issued (October 26), to all who would disband within fifteen or twenty days, according to the remoteness of the localities in which they lived, and would thereafter 'behave themselves as faithful and loyal subjects.' But it would obviously not have been policy to give that concession without a show of force that might lend it the air of an act of grace — and, for the matter of that, ensure at the same time a genuine dispersal of the assembled Malignants to their homes. So, before the week was out that had been ushered in with the news of Sir John Brown's defeat, the Lieutenant-General had drawn together a large force* for a march into the North under his own command. While his men were mustering, Leslie had an interview at Perth with the King,t who, we may safely guess, urged upon him the necessity for avoiding a colHsion and a conflict at all hazards, and treating with his whilom colleague, Middleton, in a conciliatory temper. To a representative of the other party Charles spoke at the same time in a way which shows that his injunctions to the departing General must have been in this strain. Lord Ogilvy had been summoned from Forfarshire to wait upon the King, and through him Charles sent an urgent message to the Royalists to dis- band, as they loved him, according to the Act of Indemnity, repre- senting * that if they laid not down presently arms, it would only ruin him and them without recovery.':]: That the King gave that command in good earnest, it is impossible to doubt ; there is no reason to suppose he departed from it one jot, even though he afterwards had a more private talk with Ogilvy 'in the summer-house on the water.' His sole hope lay in keeping the one Scots party from flying at the throat of the other. Leslie evidently carried out his commission with more tact and circumspection than Sir John Brown had shown. His orders, as summarized by Balfour, ' wer first to marche to Dundie and then to discipat thesse forces rissen in Angus. '§ The former military detail is of some passing interest ; as to the latter clause, something less drastic than the words might suggest was, as we know, intended. Apart from the injunctions pressed upon him by Charles, Leslie had in his pocket a copy of the Act of Indemnity, to be proclaimed in due course. He did not start until it had been officially drafted and * ' His 20 regiments of horse,' says Balfour ; otherwise (according to the letter from Hull) ' ten troops of horse and two of dragoons, in all about 2,500.' There remained, by the latter authority's computation, some 3,000 foot, including Charles's bodyguard, and 1,600 cavalry, at Stirling, Perth, and in Fife. f Balfour under date October 24. Do we not already note something gained by the King through ' The Start '? He would certainly have been allowed no such say in the matter a month before. Another circumstance advantageous to him, though undesignedly, was the action of the Western party : their renunciation of him in the ' Remonstrance ' must have gained him more supporters than it lost him. + Balfour. § C/. Thurloe, i., 165. II 1 62 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS put into shape, on October 25 or 26 ; and therefore the order to * dissipate ' the Royalists may be construed as only having meant the disbanding them, without an appeal to arms. But why, in particular, was Leshe enjoined to ' march first to Dundee ' ? One can under- stand that there had been some apprehensions lest the Cavaliers might attack and seize that town, thereby depriving the Committee of Estates of one of the best seaports remaining in its hands — which seems to have ranked before Aberdeen, indeed, as a landing-place for supplies from the Continent. There is a hint that the place might (evidently on that account) have been a convenient rallying-point for the Northern party, in Sir Edward Walker's half-expressed regret that Charles in his flight did not stop there for a day or two instead of pushing on to Cortachy and Clova. But if we are to suppose there still lingered some fears of Dundee's being seized and held as a centre of Royalist activity, why did Leslie choose the least speedy and most risky way of entering it when he went there ? The Royalists had not, as it proved, forestalled him by occupying the town ; we do not suppose he dreaded their falling upon him in flank if he marched through the Carse of Gowrie ; and yet he seems expressly to have elected to make his first stage northwards by way of the ferry from Tayport or Woodhaven. Only by so explaining the beginning of his march, can we under- stand the occasionally mystified tone of such references to it as are to be found. Balfour's mention of Leslie's ' passing over the water, thir two days, his twenty regiments,' evidently points to something other than the riding over a bridge, as at Perth ; the letter from Hull, by allotting four whole days* to the performance, instead of ' thir two,' heightens our curiosity and guides us, so to speak, farther down stream ; and when it' comes to another news-letter's telling how * Lieut.-Gen. Lesley boated his horse over the Tay ... it being a large passage over into the North and very dangerous to ferry over,'t one gathers that the place must have been on the estuary and not the river itself. Charles himself, we have seen, had crossed some- where about Mugdrum Island not long before; but there is no reason assignable for Leslie's having chosen the same spot. One must con- clude, therefore, that he had got together the bulk of his force in Fife, I mustered them somewhere in the north-east of that promontory, * ' Thursday was eight days, Friday, Saturday and Monday following ' (the 24th to 28th) according to the letter from Hull (seemingly written in Scotland about October 31) in Mercurius Politiais, No. 24. t Mercurius Politicus^ No. 23 (E 616). X Balfour does not exactly specify at what time there were seven other regiments quartered in Fife, ' formerly in effect undone ' in the same way : it may have been after Leslie's return from this expedition. But it is plain, from that complaint by the Lyon King-at-Arms, from occasional remarks in the English news-letters, and from the entry in Lamont's ' Diary ' already referred to, that the county had ever since Dunbar been the chief recruiting-ground of the Scots and the place where most of their regiments were stationed. A STEP TOWARDS NATIONAL UNION 163 and embarked them in ferry-boats, squadron by squadron, for the truly ' dangerous ' passage through the currents and shifting banks now spanned by the Tay Bridge. Once arrived in Dundee, LesHe did not stay there for any length of time. He must have pushed on northwards almost at once ; and as Middleton's force fell back before his advance, the ' dissipation ' did not take place ' in Angus.' Putting strong constraint upon their followers, the leaders of the two little rival armies succeeded in avoiding hostilities, and at Strathbogie on November 4, as Balfour relates, ' the northern rebels laid down arms and accepted of the act of indemnity by a treaty with L. General David Leslie.'"^ But in submitting themselves and consenting to disband, the Royalists by no means renounced the purposes in pursuance of which they had assembled. Their surrender is not to be regarded as unconditional. For peace' sake they laid by their weapons, but not until they knew that a resort to them had paved the way for what would nowadays be called constitutional methods. The next session of the Scots Parliament, opened some three or four weeks afterwards, was about to show the first-fruits of their action. It is true that the rather grudging advances then made by the ruling faction to their ' Malignant ' compatriots were also in part due to the events which fall to be narrated in the next chapter. But even before the extinction of the independent Western command, which has next to be related — ere yet an after-piece to Dunbar had put an end to the hopes of those extreme Presbyterians who would fain have triumphed, if they could, by the aid of a ' holie armie ' alone— the firm but tiemperate action of the Royalists had done much to bring the governing party to a sense of what was due to them and their country. Note. — On further investigation it appears that in those days there was no bridge over the Tay at Perth ; and therefore it is possible that David Leslie ' boated over ' his troops via Moncreiffe Island. If so, the river must have been in heavy spate, to account for the time he took and the wonderment of the narrators of the feat. On the whole, our conjecture as to his possibly having crossed by the wider ferry over the estuary may still stand. * The text of the Act is given in vol. E 620 of the * King's Pamphlets ' along with some documents relating to the "Western Remonstrance ; and from that copy it appears that Sir Robert Montgomery and Sir John Brown signed it along with Leslie. CHAPTER V. CLEARING THE DECKS FOR ACTION IN THE WEST — STRACHAN NO MORE — THE MOSSTROOPER ABROAD — AN INVITATION TO BORTH- WICK A THREE-CORNERED FIGHT THREATENED KER AT PEEBLES. THE Stage at which we took leave of the negotiations between Cromwell and the Western Army in the last chapter but one, was evidently their final and culminat- ing phase. Those ' offertures ' which we conceive to have amounted to a renewal of Strachan's once intercepted proposal for the withdrawal of the English, were the turning-point in a rather obscure aifair. Our own reading of the facts is that Cromwell's re- jection of the proposal terminated the active career of Strachan, and led his colleague Ker into that separate and not over clear-headed course which ended in the outskirts of Hamilton at daybreak ' of an ancient Winter morning.' It was inevitable, on the most cursory glance into the matter, that the EngHsh should decline the bargain offered them. Its acceptance would have involved their leaving their task in Scotland half done ; and though Strachan's language might be interpreted as an under- taking to complete it for them, they could not but be sceptical as to his power to make good his words. * He would so use the matter as that Cromwell should not fear any prejudice from this nation.' But of what worth was the guarantee? Who was Strachan that he should undertake that no Scotch invasion of England on the King's behalf should ever again ensue? or what was the Western Army that it should engage thus confidently to- settle the destinies of the King and his friends and the whole country ? It is tantalizing that we do not know who were the men associated with Strachan in what Baillie speaks of as 'our assurance not to molest England upon the King's quarrel.' We hear of ministers here and there, it is true, who urged Charles's contenting himself with reigning in Scotland and renouncing all claim to the English throne. It may be doubted whether the 'strange words if true' of 'the CHAN'S ISOLATION AND DEPOSITION 165 minister of Kirkcaldy'* went any farther than this: the perfervid Mr. Cant of Aberdeen, at all events, would have been satisfied with Charles's ruling over the original realm of the Stuarts and yielding up England and Ireland without further struggle.! One is oddly re- minded of Sir R. Grenville's proposal to the then Prince of Wales in 1645, that he should draw his revenues as Duke of Cornwall, aspire to rule no farther than over a kingdom of Yvetot at the Land's End, * and in plain English sit still a neuter between King and Parliament'! — compounding, in fact, ' for half of his cloak before he lost the whole,' just as the three sons of Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall presently advised him to.§ But whoever may have been the parties to ' our assurance ' aforesaid, Strachan was almost the only one who refused to accept its declinature as a signal for renewing the war. He had considered even the Remonstrance of the Western Army 'too low for his meridian ' jil and the first result with which we have to do of the numerous synods, conferences, and meetings reported by Baillie at this time, was his ceasing to be in command of that force. The bulk of the Western party thought they had done all that could be expected in Remonstrating against the anomaly of Charles's posi- tion as a Covenanted King, and offering the compromise to Cromwell of which we may suppose their leading men to have had cognisance. The two things hung together : the Remonstrance was a forcible ex- pression of their feelings in the matter in which they differed from the rest of their fellow-countrymen, Cromwell's rejection of their overtures a sign that they were just as markedly at variance with the English. They determined, then, to break finally with the latter, in hopes that by * ready and happy acting ' and * infalls on the enemies quarters ' such as Baillie had long waited to see them setting about, they might yet gain their point with their compatriots and lead a triumphant Whiggamore army into Stirling to counteract the now declared ' Malignancy ' of the North. Such, it must be supposed, * Carlyle, elucidation prefixed to letter cliii. t Balfour mentions David Leslie's bringing back the news of that proposal on his return from Strathbogie by way of Aberdeen. X Clarendon, 1849 edition, book ix., § 104. § Balfour, vol. iv. — examination of Sir James Hope of Hopetoun, Sir John Hope of Craighall, and Sir Alexander Hope by the Committee of Estates, January 10, II, and 17, 1651. The identity of the Lord Roxburgh who made a similar suggestion to Charles in the following month seems, as remarked in a prefatory chapter of this volume, to have been mistaken by Dr. Gardiner (p. 387). He was not the first Earl, Charles I.'s more or less constant adherent, but his grandson and successor in the title, who had only come into it in the beginning of this year of 1650, and cannot previously have been known as an adviser in affairs of the State, since he had till then been in the service of the States of Holland as Colonel of one of the Scots regiments, Cf. Balfour, iv., p. 7, and Thomson's 'Acts,' vii., pp. 264-66. The latter authority is somewhat interesting for its mention of the Earl's * houses, yeards, and dyks in Broxmouth r wined by the English armie the yeer 1650.' The national loss on that spot, to be sure, is rather more memorable than the in- dividual. II Baillie, iii., 120. i66 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS was their programme — which may or may not have been framed for the eventual accomplishment of as darkling designs as the Royalists, according to the remark of Sir James Turner already quoted, were disposed to believe. On that point it is idle to speculate, seeing that ruin overtook the projectors in their very first venture. As a preliminary step, they got rid of Strachan. The strenuous Mr. Patrick Gillespie summoned a meeting at Glasgow,"^ in the end of October or beginning of November (for Baillie gives no date). The ministers who ' did sit apart in the Tolbuith and called them- selves the Presbytery of the Western Army,' must have been of one mind with the laymen who presumably sat elsewhere ; for here it was where * Strachan . . . was commanded to go no more to the regiment.'! He seems to have declined to be shaken off all at once ; * he told them expressly he could not obey.' But he never did command again. Accordingly Ker's name alone appears in such correspondence as afterwards passed between the English and the Western Army ; and they were not long without a communication from him that plainly expressed the resolve which the latter body had taken. 'Our expectations of any agreement from Carr and Straughan's party are now dying,' wrote a correspondent of Mercurius PoliticusX from Edinburgh on November 15. 'This afternoon a trumpet with a letter from Carr to Commissary General Whalley came hither, wherein he advises him to stand on his guard and not to expect any further overtures tending to an accommodation.' It is plain enough from the text of the missive — given in the next issue of the paper and dated from ' Eiblechester,' wherever that may be — that the English refusal to accede to a former request to withdraw from the country was the reason assigned for this brusque intima- tion.§ The defiance thus sent by the Western Army to the English could not have come at a more seasonable moment if they had been minded loyally to back up their brother-Scots as occasion served, instead of fighting only for their own hand. For the mosstrooper * The Western Army had been drawn down from Dumfries to Clydesdale * in the latter end of October,' says the ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' ii., 429. According to Baillie (iii., 120) they were impelled to this move by the hope of turning Leslie's absence in the north to their own advantage, and getting possession of ' the Stirling's nest ' after plucking ' the Stirling's feathers.' t Baillie, iii., 122. t No. 25 (E 618). § Mercurius Politicus, No. 26 (E 619) : ' I think you should not name a Cessa- tion to aggravate your wrongs, and mock God and man in such a case. Sir, I desire this may be communicated to your Generall, that he may know how desirous wee are to preserve the worke of God in our hands from reproach, when ; you have done your worst to us, as we doe our lawful duty against you. . . . Only this one worde I shall make bold to adde, that your departure out of this kingdom, and then desiring a Christian treaty or Conference with us, I daresay it would be a mercy and favour equally as great to yourselves as unto us.' — Gilbert Carr to Com- missary-Gen. Whalley, from ' Eiblechester, Novemb. 1650.' 'TORIES AND MOSSTROOPERS' 167 was abroad, and the English were somewhat seriously harassed by a guerilla warfare waged against them in the Lothians. To be thoroughly effective, the raids and onfalls of which it consisted would have had to be supplemented by privateering activity in the Firth of Forth, since the English received most of their supplies of provisions and money, and many of their reinforcements or ' recruits,' by sea. But so little interference was as yet attempted on the water, that it was remarked as quite a noteworthy incident when a Scots vessel managed to elude the English 'by hanging out the Parliament colours in the sight of our ships'"*^ and so slipping into Burntisland. Still, there were ' convoys ' by land — chiefly, of course, by the Ber- wick road ;t and chances, consequently, of cutting them off and otherwise hampering the movements of the English. The broken men| and adventurers who devoted themselves to this retaliatory raiding were gladly harboured, when they needed refuge, in many an old baronial stronghold ; this necessitated the reduction of several such places by the English ; and to the succour of one of these Ker was presently besought to advance. This was almost the last of a group of castles which had given Cromwell's men some little, trouble. Dalhousie,§ the first that we * Mercurius Foltticus, No. 23 (E 616). The blockade-runner was * an old ship with 26 pieces of ordnance which had been two or three years at sea.' Burntis- land, by the way, was printed ' Burcott Island '—a place not marked on any chart. f Weekly Intelligencer, No. 5 (E 615), To secure these, two garrisons were maintained between Edinburgh and Berwick — one of them, as shown in the letter of October 3 in Mercurius Foliticus, No. 18, being at Dunbar. |. Carlyle has quoted Balfour's account (iv., pp. 165-66) of the two men who made themselves most formidable in this predatory skirmishing — Augustin the German, whose ' chief abode was about the mountains of Pentland and Soutra,' and ' one Walt,' a native pricker and ' tenant of the Earl of Tweeddale's.' There is nothing left to be added about the deeds of these ' Tories ' and mosstroopers, as the English called them indifferently (though more often by the native title than the Irish one) ; unless indeed by recording the name of one of them which is surely worth preserving for its own sake. ' Patrick Gordon callit steill-hand * (who had, judging by his company — Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., p. 390 and ' Extracts from Elgin Kirksession Records,' by Dr. William Cramond, pub- lished in the Elgin Courant on August 24, 1897, and since, we think, reprinted — been erstwhile a follower of Montrose) evidently became known as ' Steelhand the Mosser ' to the English ('Scotland and the Commonwealth '—Scottish History Society publication — p. 28). It is just possible we get a glimpse of him in the ' Milton State Papers ' (p. 8)— though he is there ' Peter Gourdon ' — as roving the seas in a ship carried off from Aberdeen harbour. One circumstantial tale of the deeds either of Watt or Augustin (apparently) may be worth quoting from Mer- curius Politicus, No. 21 (E 615) : it mentions an ''encounter with 16 of ours ' — ' eight they killed and eight they threw off a Craig, I think, into the water. Captain Pitsom^ marching with three between this and Leithgow, was also taken by them, stripp'd, and like to be kil'd, but that a Laird heard of it (it being near his house) and rescued him, hoping to make an exchange for his brother who is upon his parole. He was sent into Fife whe're he is yet deteined.' § ' Major Browne hath with a party of horse possessed a strong house not far from Dalkeith called Dalhouz. . . . They found in it 50 muskets, 50 pikes, four barrels of powder and some store of provisions and provender ' (' A special express 1 68 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS meet with by name, had been occupied by them unopposed towards the end of October — possibly just after the return of the English from Glasgow, when, as we have seen, some 'great houses within lo miles of Edinburgh ' were seized in order to * prevent the Scotch Tories ' or mosstroopers. Dirleton had surrendered on November 8."^ The newspaper story of its being besieged and demolished may be taken as illustrating the measures the English had to adopt by way of checking the depredations of the Scots irregulars. * Those cut- throat Scots called mosstroopers, ranging abroad in a body of 80 horse, were met with by a party of ours, who pursued them home to their lurking-hole called Darlington {sic) Castle, 't and were evidently numerous enough to blockade them there till artillery could be brought up. Cannon made little impression on the walls, but a * mortar-piece ' — one of a couple that had lately been sent to Edin- burgh from the great arsenal at HullJ — was of more avail. Its ' granadoes ' or shells§ ' tore the inner gate, beat down the draw- bridge into the moat, and killed the Lieutenant of the mosstroopers, so that they called for quarter.' || Commanders no less renowned than Major-General John Lambert and the then Colonel Monk had directed the siege : both are named in Whitelocke's account. They seem to have divided their forces next day in order to march severally to two Midlothian castles which were garrisoned and held against them. Or it may have been that Monk waited to see the work of dismantHng Dirleton completed ere leading his * 600 foot besides horse ' to Roslin,1I which surrendered to him some time in from Edenburgh' bound up with T. F.'s letter from Carlisle in E 615 and dated October 27). * Date given in 'Collections by a Private Hand' (' Maidment's Historical Fragments '). t Mercurhis Politictis, No. 25 (E 618). + Special express from Edinburgh, October 27, ut supra. § One identifies these missiles by the mention of the more modern name in an English newspaper of the following year. The passage is of interest as supplement- ing what has been mentioned by the biographers of Montrose in regard to the effect of cannon upon the Highlanders during his campaigns — the dread of ' the musket's mother ' which they experienced when they first heard and saw artillery. For there were Highlanders in the garrison of Blackness when it was besieged in the spring of 1651, and, the English 'shooting granadoes which did execution upon some of them, they swear they will never fight more against guns that shoot twice, meaning the two cracks, the mortar and the shell' ('A Perfect Account,' No. 14, E 626). II Whitelocke's 'Memorials,' p. 478. It is added there 'that two of the most notorious of them and the Captain were shot to death upon the place ' (' ^ council of war being called ' explains the Mercurius Politicus account). Some have sup- posed ' the Captain ' was Watt himself — or so we read an old Gazetteer's mention- ing the leader taken and killed here as ' one Waite.' Whitelocke's summary of the narrative which had reached him about Dirleton adds : ' They took in it many arms, sixty horses which they had taken from the English, released ten English prisoners and demolished the House. ' IT ' Rosclane ' in Mercurius Politictis^ No. 25 : * Roslin-house ' and ' Rastlin ' in its next issue (letters from Edinburgh of Nov. 20 and 22 respectively). It is in BORTHWICK CASTLE— KERS INERTIA 169 the course of the next week. Lambert had meanwhile marched up the other branch of the Esk immediately after the capitulation of Dirleton : there is news in a letter from Edinburgh of November 9, of his ' marching this day to Borthwick Castle ' with ' two mortar- pieces and I take it two great guns.'* It is not known whether he was delayed in carrying out this piece of service by having first to grant Monk the use of the mortars for the subjugation of Roslin — a suggestion which may seriously enough be entertained, since artillery of that sort evidently played the same part in overcoming the patriotic Scots lairds as does the Maxim of to-day in * thrashing ■a cannibal.' But we have Cromwell's own ultimatum of the iSthf to show that Borthwick still held out nearly ten days later, and that the English had not till then been constrained — or, as just guessed, had not had a chance — to ' bend their cannon ' against it. Whether the mortars and ' great guns ' were brought into play here also — whether the pock-marked appearance of the outer wall of the castle that faces HalflinkeeU brae was really caused, as local tradition would have us believe, by their shot — it is impossible to say.§ But the point is of altogether secondary importance in com- parison with this other — that Ker was ' commanded from Stirling to relieve the castle of Borthwick ' and respectfully declined to do so. Dr. Gardiner says that his reply, from Glasgow on November 22, was *an uncompromising refusal': an interpretation, be it said with submission, that is hardly borne out by the wording. ' I am,' Ker wrote, ' forced by inevitable necessity to declare I cannot ;' but ' should not have needed much provocation to have gone about that ■duty if I had seen any possibility with the force that for the present I have here.' 11 But even that refusal — reluctant, as we should our- selves call it, rather than uncompromising — was not inconsistent with the account which Ker gave later on of his being at daggers drawn with his fellow-countrymen. Personal motives — amongst which we suppose we must not reckon mere carnal vanity about his promotion to be of His Majesty's Bedchamber — had told even upon his ' unsubduable stiffness of neck.' Indeed, it may be guessed that Ker ' called cousin with ' the nobleman who had undertaken to try to induce him to set about this bit of service ; and would have the latter notices that we find the numbers of Monk's force mentioned ; and read how ' when he plaid some granado's they surrendered at mercy,' and that ' Mr. Sinclare ' was ' the Governor ' and * there were not above 5 or 6 and twenty men ' in the garrison. The Rev. Dr. H. J. Lawlor, St. Mary's Cathedral Church, Edin- burgh, has lately made the interesting statement that the valuable library at the •Castle was then looted. * Mercurius Politiais^ No. 24 (E 616). t Letter clii. X Name orally transmitted : orthography not guaranteed. § Since the original authority for Carlyle's statement — that the Lord Borthwick made his submission without more ado 'and had "fifteen days" allowed him to pack ' — is irrecoverable. II * Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii., 319. 170 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS undertaken it if possible, for the sake of his kinsman more or less distant. But his excuse on the score of inability did not pass muster with his compatriots. They evidently deemed that a leader whose force comprised, according to the ' Memorie of the Somervilles,'"^ ' by far the best horse that had been in the army at Dunbar,' had no suffi- cient cause for standing idly by. Accordingly the Scots Parliament, which was now sitting, authorized the despatch of Sir Robert Mont- gomery on the errand which, as we have seen, had been foreshadowed a month or so earlier. That officer was commissioned, as the Somer- ville ' Memorie ' writer put it, ' to reduce that dissenting party to his obedience, either by fair means or foul '; or, as another non-official writer accurately stated, ' either to fetch ' the Western forces, ' or fall upon them as comply ers with the enemy. 'f Only the former course of action is spoken of in the Parliamentary minutes :| that resort to the latter was probable rather than merely possible, is only too evident. For we have the after-statements of Ker himself — that * he should probably in a short while have fought with Montgomery ':^ and of ' many of his followers professing they did believe , . . they were marching against ' that commander.il The position, it will be allowed, was remarkable enough. It re- calls what we have styled the imminent triangular duel of 1648 : it recalls still more.pointedly that sentence of Kingsley's which remarks how, when Hereward Leofricsson met Waltheof Siwardsson, both being at the head of armies mustered to oppose the Norman Con- queror in Anglo-Danish England, ' if the two champions had flown at each other's throats, and their armies had followed their example simply as dogs fly at each other they know not why, no man would have been astonished in those unhappy times.' Still less need any have been astonished here. Had not the Scots Centre or main body come to blows, a bare six weeks before, with one set of its compatriots that were overzealous for King Charles ; and was there not now a reason for its similarly fafling out with another that were overzealous against him? Montgomery's errand was the first symptom Of what constitutional historians would call ' the temper of the new Parliament ' at Perth ; and as an indication of the attitude of the Commission of the Kirk and Committee of Estates towards the JRemonstrance^'w. was significant enough to enable us to forbear mention of their dehberations thereanent.^ It meant that the show * Vol. ii., p. 429. t ' Collections by a Private Hand ' (in ' Maidment's Historical Fragments '). X Balfour, iv. (proceedings of this Parliament under dates November 28 and 3c :: * Orders that the forces in the West be joined with Robert Montgomery's '). § Mercurius Polilicus, No. 31 (E 621) — letter of December 26. II Jhid., No. 29 (E 620) — 'from Edenburgh of the i6th Deer.' IF See Balfour for the politicians' discussions, under dates November 23 and 25 ;. BailJie (iii., pp. 121-24) for the ecclesiastics'. One extract from the latter authority may suffice us as a sign-post for any further clerical dissensions we may have to da THE REMONSTRANCE AND ITS SUPPORTERS 171 of force by the Scots Right, and the paper protestations of the Scots Left, had between them effected a marked displacement in the Scots Centre of gravity : that the executive at Perth had, in other words, been partly frightened, partly huffed into taking action with a high hand''' against the Western Army, instead of ' caressing ' it and its organizers as they had two months before. And the temper of the Westland party must not be misconstrued because we have just seen them breaking off all negotiations with the English. Their intimation that the latter were to expect hostihties did not imply a reconciliation with their own compatriots. They were fighting for their own hand, not for King Charles ; for the Pres- byterian ideal, not for a Kirk that was yoked with unbelievers and Malignants. That they were fighting for Scotland also, is not to be forgotten ; even though they represented only one district of the kingdom. The ethnological basis of this their independent action — if any there was — may be left to antiquaries more profound than we profess ourselves: we do not claim to find, in the presence of 'the Lord Kirkcudbright's' regiment among the troops of Ker,t a remin- iscence of the days when the Galwegians vaunted their right to lead with : it names * many high words betwixt Warrestone and Mr. Robert Douglas • Mr. Robert Ramsay and Mr. Patrick Gillespie, Mr. James Wood and Mr. James Guthrie.' Carlyle, by the way, talks of Ker and Strachan as having 'perfected and signed their Remonstrance ' ; but there are no names appended to it in any copy we have seen. Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollock belled the cat by pre- senting it to the Committee of Estates ; Sir James Hope of Hopetoun evidently spoke up for it there, judging by Argyle's vehement denunciation of him ; Sir John Chiesly of Kerswall, Sir James Stewart of Kirkfield and his brother-Provost of Glasgow— one George Porterfield — were among its other supporters. Johnston of Wariston, by the way, had journeyed all the way to Dumfries to advise as to the framing of the Remonstrance : ' lynx-eyed redactor of the Covenant ' that he was, what occupation could have been more congenial ? Whether or not it was true that the two Clydeside representatives had hurried from Perth to the West about this time [Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 — E 620— letter of December 10) to incite Ker to follow up the Remonstrance by doughty deeds, it is certain the pair of them were afterwards made the chief scapegoats of their party. For the Scots ' on the other side of the water,' wrote the English, 'having apprehended several West-country gentlemen and not laid hold upon Sir Ja. Stuart and Sir Jo. Chiesly,' ' sent another party from Sterlin who in the night forcibly entered the houses of Sir J allies and Sir John ; which the knights themselves having notice of escaped, but they ransacked their houses, stabbed every bed with their tucks, ' even those upon which Sir John's lady and his boy both lay sick ' — Mercuritis Folitiais, No. 44 (E 626), ' from Edenburgh, March 29,' 165 1. Was that boy the future John Chiesly of Dairy (we have not, we confessed, gone into the family history) who shot the President of the Court of Session in 1689 ? * From the proceedings in the Scots Parliament on Monday, December 2 (by which date, unknown to the Perth people, the Western army was utterly routed) it is clear that conciliation was even then talked of; for at that day's sitting, according to Balfour, Lord Balcarres was for ordering, not being ' smooth in giving reasons to,' the Western forces. But ' Robin ' Montgomery had started out, four if not five days before, charged with something very like a warrant to coerce them, ^or at the least overawe them, into submission. t ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' ii., p. 441 (corroborated hy Mercurius Politicus^ No. 28— E 620— letter of December 10). 172 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the van of Scottish armies, nor in the constitution of the whole force a survival of the once-separate Kingdom of Strathclyde. But the political and religious and personal considerations involved were such as we have endeavoured to represent. Those last, in particular, do not belie what was written in a preliminary chapter of this volume. With the present Book ends the career of both the men whose profes- sional jealousy of David Leslie we have tried to take into account as it seemed to require. But for the pretensions of Ker and Strachan, it is possible that a Western army might never have been heard of, that 'the withholding of so many gallant men from acting in his majesties behalf, with the rest of his forces then in the fields '* might * ' Memorie,' p. 442. These increasingly frequent references to that volume may prepare the reader for our presently drawing upon it yet more copiously. It is almost one's best authority, indeed, for the curious passage in Scots military history presently to be dealt with ; and we thank our stars it has been reserved for us to utilize the Idyll of Young Cambusnethen as a document of the period. Dearly would one like to persuade one's self that the Cornet who shortly before this time came into Perth from the West with his twenty-four men (as more than one of the news-letters of the period bears witness) was none other than that young gentleman, bound thither on an errand of love rather than war. The thing is im- possible, we suppose : ' young Cambusnethen's ' complement of *men and horses according to his quality,' wherewith he was furnished on going to join the retinue of his ' cussing ' the Earl of Eglinton and become one of Charles II.'s Lifeguard of horse under that nobleman's command, evidently did not run to the two dozen — or indeed, as we gather, exceed the two units. (That circumstance, as well as the names by which the author of the ' Memorie ' always designates himself and his father, bears witness to the fallen fortunes of his family : ' old Cambusnethen ' and 'young Cambusnethen' stand always for the titular tenth and eleventh Lords Somerville, respectively twentieth and twenty-first 'in descent from Sir Gualter de Somervill, Lord of Whichenour in England'; and here was the 'sole representative of the Houses of Lintoune, Cowdaylie, and Drum ' followed by a train of only 'two servants on horseback.') But even if we cannot identify him with the Cornet aforesaid, it is certain the young Somerville took the same road about the same time as he ; and on what errand, does the reader think ? Why, to ' ask papa ' ! ' Yes ; Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor little Emmy Sedley's happiness forms, somehow, part of it.' That is to say, Oliver Cromwell is work- ing his wicked will in Scotland, and the loves of Young Cambusnethen and Mistress Martha Bannatyne of Corhouse are first engendered and then endangered thereby. But for Oliver Cromwell would there ever have been a Scots camp at Corstorphine ; and a foregathering of Clydeside neighbours there ; and the invitation to Young Cambusnethen to share ' Young Corhouse's ' father's tent (the same that was * cut down by the enemy ' at Dunbar about the ears of its occupants — who may or may not have included a former sharer of its shelter, since he gives us only a most tantalizingly vague hint of his having seen anything of The Race) ? And but for the same Usurper — to be more particular, but for the considerate conduct of the English in ' sending non of ther troups to the west untill near Martinmas'— could there have been any renewal of that ' liegger acquaintance ' ; and any return visit by Young Cambusnethen to Young Corhouse ; and any experience of reciprocal love at first sight between the former and the sister of the latter ; and any plump and plain proposal there and then ' eftir supper ' on the first evening of the be- mused visitor's sojourn in the old house above Cora Linn ? Such was the love- story (narrated with the most engaging artlessness) of the young Somerville, ' being then in the eighteenth year of his age ' ; such the reason for his going back to his quasi-military duties at the Scots headquarters — though less from any .concern about them than in order to ask of * old Corhouse ' a favour rather greater than the THE BASER SIDE OF THE WEST LAND PARTY 173 never have come about. The Dunbar disaster, and the inevitable cry of betrayal after it, had given Leslie's aspiring rivals their oppor- tunity ; the delegation of the separate command had been at least as much of a sop to them as a concession to the Westland extremists ; their own men must have followed them out of personal loyalty rather than from ' steekin' ' rigidity about this or that point of Kirk and State polity. And what Strachan had made of it all, we have lately seen.* He had certainly not sought a chance of eclipsing David Leslie by feats of arms : he had appeared to seek distinction rather sharing his tent another time ; and such (to come to the matter with which we have more immediately to concern ourselves) the occasion for his returning Clyde- wards again, having the father's consent and therewith ' a greater desire to be with his daughter than all the ladies about the Court.' Was not that a pretty saying — nay, a genuine cj-i dti cceur? I think a later fellow-countryman of this Somerville — even Robert Louis Stevenson — should have written a supplementary chapter of the 'Memorie,' or at least added a 'bibliographical appendix ' such as rounds off the tale of the not dissimilar * Prince Otto.' But we shall never come to the sub- ject-matter proper of this note if we dwell upon the little romance — or upon the irony of fate which has left the recording the doom of the rigid Whiggamores to this their antipodean neighbour, this kindly country gentleman with his oft-quoted dislike of the Puritan 'turning up of the white of the eyes,' and his preference for field sports and 'manly exercise' ('halkeing and hunting,' 'the having of bowling-greenes, buttes for archerie, tinnes-courts, and buUziart tables ') or ' that innocent recreation of music and dancing,' over the diversions 'wherein those holy brethren of the Presbyterean [persuasion] for the most part imployed them- selves ' — ' drinking and smoaking of tobacco.' In brief, our only real business with Young Cambusnethen is that he returned to his home, and Corhouse, in company for the greater part of the way with Montgomery's force ; and so had a chance to give us an account of Hamilton fight which will presently, let us hope, stand us in good stead. * One would really not be surprised if it should come to light that Strachan's end was hastened by religions mania. The author of the ' Memorie of the Somer- villes ' — the one writer who ' condescends upon particulars ' — informs us that, after he had 'treacherously fallen off to the English,' 'he retires to his father's house in Musselburgh, contracts a frenacie, and in it dies, thereby eviting a halter ' (ii., 437). Still more engrossing, however, than any speculation as to the diagnosis of the 'frenzy' in the course of which Strachan perished — 'a victim,' shall we say, ' to the violence of his own contending passions ' of ambition and Presbyterian zeal, dashed with patriotic remorse and hankerings after the fellow- ship of his erstwhile sectarian comrades ? — is the mysterious problem what became of him between the time when he ceased to command in the West and the date of his coming in to the English. Was he all the while 'flying^ as those onlookers said Chiesly did, ' to find out some secure corner where he might hide his hated head ' ; or was he really imprisoned during some of the time by his compatriots, as Young Cambusnethen declared and the English for a while believed ? Both the 'Memorie of the Somervilles ' and Mercurius Foliticus (No. 27 — E 619 — ' expresse from Berwick') name Dumbarton as one place where he was incar- cerated ; and though the former goes on to say he was removed to — and escaped from — ' Caithnes Castle,' that name was probably set down in mistake for the more likely place mentioned in another issue of the newspaper (No. 28 — E 620) — Blackness, to wit. But whether he really broke prison or never was in one — and another paragraph in Mercurius Foliticus (No. 27 — from Edinburgh, December 2) discredited the report of his being incarcerated — is not now any- where to be learnt. It is only certain that he came over to the English in the beginning of December, and ' shortly afterwards died.' 174 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS in the field of diplomacy — possibly as a preliminary to enforcing his own will upon Scotland after bowing the English out of the country. That task he had now left to his comrade, and perhaps supplanter,* Ker — who had however to reckon with the invader in rather a dif- ferent way, before finding open to him that problematical course of action against his compatriots which was destined never to be begun. It is lucky that the attitude of the English requires no such eluci- dation. ' Those that were not with were against ' them. They had no option now but to regard the Western Army as all of a piece with the rest of the Scots ; and its remaining in existence as an outlying body could henceforth only be a temptation to the invaders to take in detail that part of the joint force. It is just possible — though con- sideration of dates makes it seem unlikely, without one's being able to prove such direct treachery as went on later — that early intelli- gence of Montgomery's errand was what led to Cromwell's advancing westwards when he did. Was Johnston of Wariston already playing the informer ; and had he, from his position behind the scenes, foretold to the English the probability that Sir Robert Montgomery was to be •despatched to the West with ' the greatest part of the cavalry and -dragoons ' from Perth ? If so, ignorant as the English yet were — not of the * strained relations ' among the Scots, but — of the total breach which Ker declared to exist between his party and the main body,t the news can only have seemed to Cromwell to portend a junction of the enemy's forces, to be prevented if possible while time permitted. The exact dating! of divers marches which were soon to be made * Baillie certainly hints that Ker, far from sanctioning severe measures against Strachan, would himself have gone off at a tangent had a proposal to imprison the latter been carried out ; but the newspaper cited above as mentioning Strachan's being confined in Dumbarton, adds that he ' was committed thither ' — a darkly unintelligible intimation — ' by Car's F .' C/. ' Cromwelliana," p. 94. t So incredulous were the English on that point that they lent ear to a story that Montgomery and Ker intended together to have 'marched Carlisleward.' — Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 (E 620). Cromwell's own letter (cliii.) says nothing in the sentence about ' Robin ' Montgomery's errand, to show he may not himself have believed that. % Cromwell marched from Edinburgh either on the very day when Mont- gomery led his men out of Perth, or on the preceding evening. The uncertainty is as to the time of the Scotchman's start, not the Englishman's : the dates were Wednesday and Thursday, November 27 and 28. Either way, it was a coin- cidence which surely may excuse one's suspicions. But we have no clue to Cromwell's having acted upon a hint of the Scots' purpose, other than that mentioned later in the text. When Johnston of Wariston was minded to betray an important secret of his compatriots to the English later on — a deed to which we may have occasion to refer at the proper time — he did so by coming into Edin- burgh in person ; and upon such a step he did not as yet venture. Therefore there remains only an obvious likelihood that Cromwell knew by some secret means how brief a time remained to him for dealing with the Western Army as ;an outlying body of his foes. Of course, if Johnston could be supposed to have KER'S WATCH ON THE PASSES 75 is, then, of some interest ; as is also, we shall find, the later question why Montgomery did not employ ' the greatest part of the cavalry ' to more effect. But in mentioning either, we are somewhat antici- pating ; and, without looking so far ahead, we may still find a reason of a sort, explanatory of the English resolve to advance against Ker, though not conclusive as to their choice of the time for carrying it out. He had, as we have seen, sent his defiance to Commissary- General Whalley. As a matter of fact, he was about to draw down upon himself a visitation from commanders rather more formidable than that functionary.* But it was only after events that must be assigned to the time of the return of the Carlisle expedition under the latter, that the former got in motion ; and the measures taken by Ker to guard against an incursion by that force, would appear to have brought greater men than Whalley against him. Simultaneously in fact with the despatch of his letter which reached Edinburgh on November 15, Ker seems to have made a move which was interpreted by the English as his first step towards following it up by action — and may also, probably enough, be in part the expla- nation of the order sent by his fellow-countrymen to advance to the relief of Borthwick. Wherever ' Eiblechester ' may have been, Peebles is unmistakable ; and about the time of his writing to Whalley from the former place, Ker was reported to have ' come up near ' the latter, f With what intention he did so is not readily been the informant, his intention must have been to put the English on Mont- gomery's track : but we quite grant the possibility (though it makes us blush for our country) of some Royalist intriguer's having foreseen that speedy action on their part might save Sir Robert some trouble. * Who, by the way, captured about this time the last of the Midlothian castles that we hear of as resisting the English — Dalkeith, to wit, ' summoned by Com- missary-General Whalley, who appeared before it with a party of horse. They withm gave an absolute denyall ; whereupon the Commissary-General sent them word that if they did not surrender he would storm the Castle with foot and give them no quarter ; whereupon the Governor ' (unnamed) * desired a treaty, and it was concluded that the enemy should march out and be permitted to live quietly at their several habitations. The wall of this castle was 13 feet broad at the very top ; we took in it good store of ordnance, arms, and powder, with bullet and match proportionable.' — Mercurius Politicus, No. 27 (E 619). f Mercurius PoHticus, No. 26 — 'from Barwick of the 27th November.' 'The Major-Genetal with 2 or 3,000 horse is marched up towards Dumfrize ; I con- ceive to attend Carr^ who was come up near Peebles, but when our horse came up he marched up to the hills.' Assuming the report to have been well-founded, it is difficult to fix the exact time of the move by Ker of which it speaks. The quota- tion would seem to suggest that it was made immediately before Lambert's advance ; but that supposition is incompatible with the fact already noted, that Ker was at Glasgow on the 22nd, refusing to budge a step in the direction of Borthwick. If not Lambert's then, what was the force before which Ker fell back ? Hacker, with some part of the troops which had been under Whalley's command at Carlisle, was in Peebles on his way back to Edinburgh by November 9 — a letter of that date in Mercurius Politicus, No. 24, mentions the fact. It may be that these regiments were ordered from headquarters to occupy that place, and thus, instead of completing their journey to the capital, remained stationed on 176 CROMWELUS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS apparent ; the explanation (if the conjecture in our footnote be correct) is probably to be sought for in the movements of some part of Whalley's force on its return towards Edinburgh from Carlisle. We may suppose Ker to have taken alarm, from what he heard of their march, lest the English should find their way into Clydesdale from Tweedside ; and to have despatched some of his troops — if he did not, as the rumour went, advance in person — in order to watch the passes by Biggar. If so, it is a pity he could not have carried out this purpose ; for in so doing he would have checked the advance of the very force that was destined to bring about his over- throw. But his men, as we see^ were withdrawn ' up to the hills ' — over towards the Manor or merely away up-river out of ken of the English at Peebles ; and the way was left open for the approach of the brigade which was to scatter the Western Army to the winds. One could wish that there were more documents than can actually be cited in support of this conjecture about Ker's manoeuvring. But we may be excused for catching at even a rumour of his having attempted such a precaution for securing the Western district in which he now commanded. That scheme of defence may not compensate for his declining to lead his men into the part of Scotland where their services must just then have been specially useful ; but at all events it fits well into the narrative of what Ker achieved elsewhere. For if the Western Army did nothing else, it held Bothwell Brig against Oliver Cromwell, as its lineal successors the Covenanters might a generation later have held it against Monmouth. Not till John Lambert ' comes me cranking in ' on the near side of the river, do the Western forces shiver into ruin. Tweedside long enough to occasion the advance and withdrawal by Ker, or some portion of his force, spoken of in the text. Matters would be simplified if one knew the exact day and address of Ker's letter to Whalley (which must have pre- ceded anything in the way of a demonstration against that part of the English army). But it is only dated November : and the cryptic place-name ' Eible- chester ' might stand for anywhere or nowhere, {Could it have been ' Eccle- fechan ' ; and if so why — oh why— did not Carlyle come across it ?) All we know is that the missive came into the hands of Whalley at Edinburgh on the 15th : that was the Friday of the week in which the leader of the Carlisle expedition returned to headquarters [Mercurius Politicus, No. 26 — 'from Edinburgh of the 22nd' — • the Commisary-General came hither last week '). Whether Whalley had followed the same route as Hacker we do not know ; but it may fairly be inferred that, about the time of his sending his ' trumpet ' to that commander — on or before the 15th, that is to say, and not after the 22nd, when he was in Glasgow— Ker made the reconnaissance towards Peebles of which the English got wind. It is not un- likely that I^rd Lothian's letter to Ker, desiring him to march to the relief of Borthwick, was called forth by the tidings of his thus having advanced half-way towards that Castle already. CHAPTER VI. * FIRST BOTHWELL BRIG ' HAMILTON FIGHT. IT will have been gathered from what has been said in the fore- going chapter that the English did not want for reasons leading them to devote their attention to the Western Army in rather a different fashion from that of some six weeks before. They were, for one thing, at liberty to do so, since the partisan warfare in the Lothians was practically stamped out for the present ; they may have thought that now or never was their chance, if they had got wind of Montgomery's movements ; and they certainly had received Ker's own defiance, and heard rumours of his taking what seem to have been not unsoldierlike measures of defence. Therefore the bulk of the English cavalry were out in quest of him and his men in the end of November. The circumstance of Cromwell's having begun his own westward march from Edinburgh late on in the afternoon at that season of year, points to its having been hurriedly resolved upon. If so, the possibility that he had got wind of Montgomery's mission, and entertained such doubts about its upshot as we have pictured, becomes wellnigh a certainty. But whatever be the truth about that matter, Cromwell led eight regiments of cavalry,* or 3,000 horse as he himself says in Letter cliii., out of Edinburgh, on Wednesday, November 27 — ' in the evening 'f as is expressly men- tioned. Probably he 'quartered at Levestonj. that night, and the body of the army thereabouts and at Blackburn,' as we shall find him and them doing on a later occasion ; for the route must have been on the line which we have seen the English traversing once before, by Kirk of Sbotts. Somewhere near there — about Holytown, let us say, towards noon on the Thursday — he came in sight of some of the * Narrative of a 'Captain who was at the action,' in Mercurius Politictis, No. 28 (E 620). + Ibid. Cf. Merctiritis Politicus, No. 27 (Edinburgh, December 2) — ' Sir, My last told you that we were then upon a sudden march.' t ' Levistoun Peel,' as Blaeu's cartographer calls it, by Midcalder. It had pro- bably been one of the houses garrisoned by Cromwell on his return from Glasgow six weeks before. 178 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS army which he had gone forth for to seek. But these ' retired to a bridge ; and the water not being fordable, and night coming on ' (the dusk of, say, 3 or 4 p.m. of a dismal late-November afternoon) ' there was no pursuit, only Colonel Tomlinson was sent with a party to discover them, but in vain.'*^ That the bridge just mentioned was none other than Bothwell Brig, may be very easily ascertained by any who will take the trouble to glance at Blaeu's contemporary map of Scotland.! For every other account of the operations than that just quoted names the ' water ' in question as the river of Clyde, or ' Cloid ' (as the newspaper copies of Cromwell's own letter spell it) ; and the * Captain who was at the action ' is agreeably precise in stating that * the Lord General came near to the town of Hamilton, which is situate on the south side of the river Cluyd, himself being on the north side.' Even in our own day we should know, from a report observing such exactitude about the points of the compass, that the approach to Hamilton spoken of was no other than that by Bothwell Brig ; for the only other bridge leading out of it over the Clyde is towards Motherwell in an easterly direction. But in Cromwell's time there was no possibility of the one being mistaken for the other : the latter structure had not yet — by a century and a half or more, we believe — been built, and the famed Bothwell Bridge was the only one that spanned the Clyde thereabouts, or indeed anywhere above Glasgow, t Thus, for the first time in its history (the second is more famous) the Brig was the only means of a hostile army's getting at the armed defenders of the pure Covenant. The passage of it was not forced on this occasion, as on the later day of that * barbarous hecatomb of victims ' when, according to the rapt bard — ' Clyde's shining silver with their blood was stained ; His paradise with corpses red profaned.'§ But Cromwell must certainly have * pickeered ' for a few hoursH along the ' margins steep ' of the north bank, and surveyed with some chagrin the current ' silent, strong, and deep.' That last is the only actual obstacle to which he makes any allusion in his own despatch : he had been expecting the arrival of Lambert, he says, and thought he * Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 (' by a letter of the 3rd inst.'). This is the one account which mentions the bridge. t The volume is dated 1662 ; but the cartographers had been at work on its several sheets for years before. The Fife map, e.g., is dated 1645. X We shall presently have to dispute the claim of Lanark Bridge to be con- sidered as having in that very year htcom^ pukka. § ' Clyde : A Poem,' by John Wilson. Pity that a noble enthusiasm produced so unequal a piece. II Cromwell's Letter (cliii.) states that he retreated about * seven o'clock the next morning ' (Friday), so that it was Gogar over again for his own troopers — an afternoon's standing at gaze vis-a-vis to an inaccessible (but here less visible) enemy, a renewed reconnaissance of his position next morning, and then the right about. CROMWELL'S REBUFF AT BOTH WELL BRIG 179 could not be coming * by reason of the waters.' The elements were evidently doing their best to further the success of the native armies — as so often during these Campaigns, though they had played the Scots one sorry trick at Dunbar, and were just now preparing another for them. There was the usual story * of a sad cold and tedious march ' for Cromwell's own men, ' the ways and weather being extreme ill '; and the Clyde, to baulk them, was coming down in spate. But it is also clear enough that during his Thursday afternoon's reconnoitring, Cromwell did not like the look of the long, narrow, steep roadway over the bridge, fortified as it even then was (we suppose) by that gate over the central arch of which the annals of 1679 have a tale to tell, and screened as it certainly was (earlier authorities than 'Old Mortality' can testify to that*) by copsewood and park timber at the far end. Nay, it is as good as established, moreover, that his opponents had anticipated the defences of the later Covenanters by throwing up a barricade at that southern extremity of the bridge. The proof of the fact comes to us in a roundabout way, but is none the less unmistakable. For when the English, entering the town from another point, were at last in Hamilton, they found that the Scots ' had by cutting down of trees so barricaded the ways towards Edinburgh as must have hindered our retreat 't — if ' we ' had been driven out again. Those ' ways,' we have shown, had only one possible starting-point — Bothwell Brig itself, to wit : what then can the sentence quoted point to except (in a topsy-turvy way) the Scots' having taken a precaution for defending the bridge against an advance from the one side which was misunder- stood as an attempt to obstruct the access to it from the other ? But one must not expatiate unduly upon Cromwell's having drawn back from before Bothwell Brig,| and retired to Edinburgh (by the Saturday morning or afternoon) as he had come. The laugh was on the other side presently, if Ker's men had been minded to raise one at sight of his retreat ; and though the junction of forces had failed on which he relied for effectually * taking order with ' that party, the event was to prove that no such combination had really been needed§ * One sees, at all events, by Blaeu's almost bird's-eye view of the policies of * Bormichelwood,' ' Birlokmo,' and other houses that have since been swept away through (as we suppose) the extension of Hamilton Low Parks, that trees for cover were no more a-wanting then than they would be now. + The ' Captain who was at the action,' uf supra. X The * Captain who was at the action ' is frank enough as to the Lord General's * finding no way to come at the enemy '; but corroborates him fully as to the other very pressingly determining circumstance that the English had, as it was, 'marched three thousand horse to death.' § Cromwell must have been overrating the strength of the Western Army if he really believed between five and six thousand cavalry were needed to crush them. To be sure, there had long ago been a report that they were 4,000 strong in horse and dragoons alone [Mercurius Politicus, No. 21 — E 615); Baillie tells us they at one time comprised 3,500 ('with hopes, by volunteers, to make them above five 12 2 i8o CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS for their utter overthrow. The commander to whom Cromwell had sent orders ' to get beyond the enemy '* had succeeded, though later than was expected, in doing so ; and even as Cromwell was with- drawing from the inaccessible northern approach to Hamilton, John Lambert was advancing on that town from the southern side. Let us be precisian enough to note (on the authority of Blaeu's carto- grapher) that the stream flowing by the burgh in that quarter cannot have offered to him any obstacle ' by reason of the waters.' There was a bridge over the Avon, that is to say, if there was then none crossing the Clyde towards Motherwell ; and it was evidently not defended as Bothwell Brig had been. The question where Lambert had crossed the Clyde is a nicer point to decide. He had been in Peebles, as we have seen — and may again more particularly notef — when Cromwell decided on the joint- advance against Ker's troops. Thence, taking the very line of country across which the latter had made some show of trying to prevent English encroachment, he had marched to Lanark ;j and one would fain think, if one could, that he crossed the Clyde by the auld-farrant bridge to Kirkfieldbank. But he either missed that, or found it less * open for traffic ' than it ought by some accounts§ to have been ; since it is expressly mentioned how ' with some difficulty ' he ' found a ford over.'ll At what point that was, one has no means of know- ing : in the absence of any more certain claimant, let us say it was at Crossford, the shallow (not by that time spanned by a bridge) * neer midway betwext the Corhouse and Cambusnethan ' (and as such the scene of the betrothal of the heir of the Somervilles and the daughter of the Bannatynes ten months later.) In spite of the 'river up and brimmin',' at all events, John Lambert evidently entered thousand ' — iii. , p. in); and even so late as in the first reports of the fight now about to be recounted ' 3,000 horse and one thousand dragoons ' were spoken of. But even so, the joint-force that Cromwell aimed at bringing against them looks disproportionately formidable. Can it be that we have here another indication of his anxiety to guard against their possible fusion with Montgomery's men ? * Opening sentence of the narrative of the Captain, uf stipra. t Ibid. The passage may be quoted, if only to supplement the footnote on p. 175 supra— '■'Wv^ 27th of November, in the evening, the Lord General marched from Edinburgh with 8 regiments of horse, having given order to the Major-General, who then lay at Peebles with four regiments of horse and one of dragoons, to get beyond the enemy.' X ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' ii., p. 440. Cf. Lanark Presbytery Records for mention of that stage on Lambert's route. § Only to be frank, those contained in local guide-books, which assign the precise date of 1649-50 for the building of that bridge. But Blaeu's cartographer knows nothing of it ; and Hamilton of Wishaw (* Description of Lanark and Renfrew,' 17 10, p. 53) speaks of * one bridge lately built at Clydesholme a little below Lanark.' There is mention, to be sure, of the raising funds for the bridge, to be found in Thomson's Acts for 1649 o"^ 1650. II Mercurius PoliticuSy No. 27 ('expresses from Berwick of the 4th December'). The context says ' over Hamhleton river ' — evidently the Clyde, not the Avon. LAMBERT IN HAMILTON i8l Hamilton unopposed on Saturday, November 30, the unhonoured and unsung defenders of the place, who had yet held the Bothwell Brig approach to it against Cromwell, having (as we must suppose) evacuated it in haste, when thus taken in rear by the Major-General. Leaving him there for the moment, we cannot do better than put ourselves under the guidance of the Young Cambusnethen just mentioned. We have proceeded thus far, it may have been observed, without invoking the assistance from that quarter bespoken in a recent foot- note. For indeed the young gentleman knew nothing of the earlier operations just glanced at. One could wish he had, for then we should have known who,* precisely, directed those operations on the left bank of the Clyde which stalled-off the advance of Cromwell's own division, and have heard more particulars about them than the English narratives give us.t It is when we come to the sequel that the young Somerville is an invaluable eye-witness. He has to tell of his parting company with Montgomery's force 'near the head of Campsie Fells upon Friday about twelve o'clock';! of his own ride to Renfrew next day, to foregather with ' a dear and intimate comerad, one James Baillzie, second son to the Laird of Carphin, then cornet to Gilbert Kerr's oune troupe ' ; and of that youth's getting the route * For it was evidently not Ker himself — as to whose whereabouts, by the way, Carlyle would have found Young Cambusnethen a better informant than Baillie, had he come across the ' Memorie ' earlier than 1857. But indeed the ' elucida- tion ' of Letter cliii. is very haphazard history-annotation. Carlyle seriously sup- posed that when Cromwell wrote from ' Edinburgh, 4th December,' of 'the results of some Treaties among the enemy which came to my hand this day,' he meant thereby the defeat of the Western Army. Noll's * satiric touch ' was scarcely thus subtle ! The ' treaties among the enemy ' must, in reality, have been copies of the Act of Indemnity proclaimed at Strathbogie, and perhaps the Northern Band and Oath. The former at least was published in London between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth issues of Mercurius Politicus — i.e., in the middle of December ; and the sentence which Carlyle misinterpreted (' I have now sent you the results ') means that Cromwell himself had forwarded it. Far from ' coming to hand ' on the 4th, moreover, tidings of Hamilton fight had reached the English headquarters at least two days before the date of Letter cliii. t But for the significant sentence already quoted, e.g.^ about the Scots who * retired to a bridge,' we should have no direct proof that any defence of it was attempted. The ' Captain who was at the action ' only speaks of these * bodies of the enemy ' withdrawing ' into the town ' of Hamilton, and, so far from mention- ing their showing a front in opposition to the English passage of the river, even says they quitted the place altogether. If so, it is incredible that Cromwell would not have advanced. But indeed his report as to how Cromwell failed to come to grips with the Western men, and Lambert (by their own act) managed to do so, irresistibly reminds one of the despatch of Captain O'Brien, of H.M.S. Rattle- snake., glozing over the failure of his boats' crews in a cutting-out expedition and judiciously jumbling up with it the story of their capture of an armed merchant- man. X His presence * in that meinie ' has been already explained (footnote to p. 173 antea). This is the one definite intimation we have of the time, and route, of Montgomery's march. He must have left Perth at latest on the morning of the preceding day (Thursday, November 28). i82 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS for Rutherglen even whilst his visitor was with him."*" On hearing the nature of the order thus brought by ' ane ordinance,' what was more natural than that Young Cambusnethen should join the Cornet in marching as directed, since he was under promise to Montgomery to send word of the doings of the Western men ? His situation might be regarded as equivocal, if it were not that one shrewdly suspects the youngster to have been less preoccupied about keeping faith with Sir Robertf than anxious to see whatever fun was going on his own account. At all events, off the pair of lads rode, and were in good time for the last muster of the Western Army in the ancient burgh of Rutherglen. It was, to be quite honest, a ' puir turn-out for Kirkintilloch.' At first blush it seems almost ludicrous that the party which was credited with aiming at the deposition of Charles II., if not his execution, should have had ' at its devotion ' no more than (striking an average) 2,000 men ;J that, to put it in another way, the Westland forces were just about a third of the total number which Cromwell had aimed at bringing into the field against them. And yet the pother that had been made about their recalcitrant Re7nonstrating and ' unsubduable stiffness of neck ' was none so disproportionate all the same. We have seen that 2,000 cavalry could play a not insignificant part in that epoch of ' quick change ' in Scottish affairs — that no such fraction of the ballast (to change the metaphor, perhaps abruptly) could be suffered to shift in the hold of the labouring barque of State, without * We have said probably enough already of Young Cambusnethen's courtship, and must not ' enlarge ourselves ' on the kindred subject of his hearty meeting with this youth. But how the shadow of division and sundering and strife falls across the path even of these two boys, soldiers as they were in avowedly rival armies ! Almost they might have quoted (barring the slight anachronism) the Maker who has already been mentioned as the right man to have treated the story of Young Cambusnethen ; and said that ' . . . time and tears. The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings, Dispart us ; and the river of events Has, for a " brace of months," to east and west More widely borne our cradles.' The necessarily prosaic emendation is not to be read as parody. t We may afterwards find occasion to remark, however, that our author makes the very most of that duty incumbent upon him, by way of excuse. X Young Cambusnethen has the defects of his qualities, and one would have thanked him for being more exact as to whether ' twelve hundereth horse,' and 'dragounes four hundereth strong,' constituted the whole force, or only (the word- ing bears that construction equally well) two regiments of it. Our estimate is framed on the former supposition, taken into account along with the statement made by the English when they had every chance to know exactly that * they were in all about 2,200 {Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 — ' from Edinburgh of the loth '). The names of the regiments given there are the same as in the ' Memorie's ' list, except that * the Earl of Cassiles' ' has crept into the former catalogue — wrongly, we must suppose, if Baillie's statement, quoted in the foot- note to p. 131 supra, was correct. That leaves both agreeing on 'the Lord Kirkudbright's, Colonell Strauchan's, Kerr's, and Hackett's ; non of the two first [officers] was present.' THE RIDE OF THE WESTERN ARMY 183 consequences ensuing. Was it on scuttling the ship and shooting the captain (if we may, equally abruptly, change them from contents into crew) that these men were bent ? None really knows. For in acting on the instinctive impulse that made them rally to the cry of ' boarders repel boarders ' they lost (a many of them) the number of their mess, and were no more heard of. A recent reminiscence of Captain Marryatt has perhaps led us rather far .in the use of nautical imagery ; and yet we have stumbled thereby on a permissible parallel case to that of the Western Army. The English had invaded them : they would beat up the quarters of the English. The failure of the intended Cromwellian junction of forces was, no doubt, the chief factor in deciding the course of action resolved on that Saturday afternoon ' in the tolbuithe of Rugline ' — though Young Cambusnethen knew not of it in recording the decision come to. He only mentions that there was talk of retreating into Carrick or Galloway instead ; but that it was determined rather to attack Lambert in Hamilton, and so ' at least take off much of the odium under which they lay, because of their separating of themselves from the King's army.'* Forward then to the attack ; hurrah for the ten-mile ride that will bring us to Hamilton ! Yet stay : it is a camisade or night-surprise that is intended ; and men must feed if they would fight. So * the barnyairds within the toune and adjoyneing villages payed for that daye's and a part of the night's quarters ' ; it is ' near ten ' ere we fall in for the advance. And what is this ? The moon has risen as we supped ; she has quartered fine, traitress that she is ; yon white line of rime, by the river verge as we skirt it, shows that a frost has suc- ceeded to the spell of blustering weather in the mid-week and week- end. Cranreuch or black ice, it is all one to us : on we go ! But what evil luck that the moon should be shining so clear ! I ken her horn : I would I had seen it at any other time. For, between her light overhead and the hardening ground under the horses' hoofs, there is no hiding the sight or muffling the sound of our advance. We are * heard t a mile off any place before we come to it.' And here is the moor, I where sentries should be if the English are on the alert : and yonder the town-port where his guard should be watching. Yet never a vedette do we encounter, never a man is on sentry-go by the gateway ! What does it mean ? Is Lambert there at all ? Is he * This was also the explanation of the ' Private Hand,' whose Collections are in ' Maidment's Historical Fragments ' — that Ker was minded to ' vindicate ' himself and his men ' from that aspersion ' of being ' complyers with sectaries.' t Printed by Young Cambusnethen's Editor as ' hardly' (instead of ' hard '), and so turned into a beautiful bull. + The open country towards Blantyre, now very completely ' riuen out and in- habited,' as our author remarked of the 'muirs' generally. There is on Blaeu's map the Salt-Lake-sounding name of ' Mooremonis,' about the head of ' Kegyow B ' (urn) — if that is anything to the purpose. i84 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS laying a trap for us, or sleeping careless in fancied security ' efter his march ' ? Halt ! But Ralston"^ does not halt. Ralston leads our vanguard, and scorns precaution. The way is left open ? Then he will enter. And enter he does. ' Man to challenge him,' or no man to challenge him ; ' guard upon the muir,' or no guard upon the muir — onward he will hold. In he goes then, like a man, straight at his man ; finds the English in scarcely completed formation, drawn up in ' the broad street that leads from the tolbuith to the palace yett '; charges them home ; ' breaks and houses most of them in less than quarter of an hour.' Cut-and-thrust does it ; picture the melee in the broad street which one can only reconstruct now in fancy ! Up with the flags, and score hit number one for the Scots.! But that is only the first, and there are others — not figurative — to be dealt and taken before the night's work, or small hours'I work, is out. Street-fighting may yet help a revolution or two in the world some day ; but it will not win this battle. What though some of the English are penned in houses, chivvied down closes and wynds, nay, seen desperately firing into each other at random in the confusion ? That is not^ I think, John Lambert whom you have prisoner in your hands for a while, but lose afterwards by his escaping ' out at the back entrie of Sarah Jean's Close, then the greatest inn in Hamilton.' Or if it be, he acts a leader's part in rallying his men ' in twenties and therties upon horseback, ready for service so soon as they should distinctly know their enemies.' He and Whalley — for Noll's cousin, if not Noll himself, is by his side. And with them Gilbert Ker in person presently has to reckon. The lying tidings has reached him, as he waits chafing with the main body ' upon the crafts without,' that the town is cleared of the English. . On he comes, then, in the wan December dawn ; finds them not dispersed and fugitive, but drawn up ' in a great and close body '; and attacks as best he may. The ground is unfavourable ; Cadzow Burn runs ' somewhat laigh,' has scooped out a little den for itself ' very disadvantageous to the first attempter,' as somebody wrote of another action ; yet down the * The Laird of Rallstoune, according to our author's nomenclature ; * Lieutenant- Colonell Ralstone' according to Baillie's ; which suggests his being 'of that Ilk.' Whatever his rightful style and title, he was a determined man ; and showed him- self such again in 1654 (if it was he who then reappeared — Baillie, iii., p. 250— and held a castle of ' Lochheid ' somewhere ' in Kintyre ' against certain Scots Lords who attempted a rising for Charles II.; and only surrendered it when there came no * assistance from Aire ' nor from Argyle, who seems then to have been co- operating with the English against his own son). t It must be confessed the forlorn hope wrought a gallant deed when it is stated that Ralston had only 140 men with him (of whom * near sixtie fell ') and that Lambert must have had at least 2,000. One can understand the mistake Ker made, according to our author, in not giving Ralston any 'dragoons,' when it is remembered that these were mounted infantry trained to fight on foot. % It was now Sunday morning, December i. The better the day the better the deed — for the English. Ralston attacked about 2 a.m., Ker about 6. THE FIGHT BY CADZOW BURN 185 near slope and up the far one brave Gibby leads his men to the charge. As he crosses though, his line (' being in a large front ') is broken. Some say* he had drawn back Jfour mieux sauter — to find a better 'take off' for the dash at the English, that is to say; but our author, that merely through the inequality of the ground his men lost their dressing. In any case Ker would scarce, we may think, have borne down Lambert before him. The English are on the east bank of the hollow that is bridged by an imposing viaduct to-day ; and have the advantage of the ground at the top of the little slope. They *come to a grabble,' as Cromwell would have said ; each side, as usual, claims to have out-flanked the other ; but the end is that Ker beats a sullen retreat ('desputeing every rig lenth for near two mylles '), till wounded and taken prisoner. And Halkett,! that should have supported him with half a ' braggad,' flies like a poltroon ; and Ralston is beaten out of the town as the broadening daylight shows the Enghsh what a handful they have to deal with there ; and the Western Army is ' discipat ' for good and all. Young Cambusnethen's main concern, we gather, was about the rescuing and hiding! Cornet Baillie. But another matter with which he had to occupy himself connects us more closely than that with the general history of the time. He sent off word of the rout to his * This is the one touch that BailHe adds, to Young Cambusnethen's description. f We ought perhaps to have mentioned that officer earlier, since Sir Edward Walker (p. 189) had long ago named ' CoUonel Robert Hacket (brother to that valiant Sir James Hacket who was the first man foyled by Cromwell before Leith and likewise the first that fled at the Battel ' of Dunbar), as ' gone without orders to join himself with those in the west. ' He would appear to have shared his brother's failing. If so, there was the less excuse for him, because he was a fairly experienced officer — had served along with Ker and Strachan in suppressing the Mackenzie rising and Montrose's invasion ^.^. (<:/. Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 398). He was one of fourteen * pryme remonstrators ' who were proceeded against and proclaimed in the ensuing summer — see Balfour, vol. iv., under date July 5. We may guess from Baillie {cf. Mercurizis Polittcus, No. 28, ' from Berwick of the I ith ') that the other commander whose name Young Cambusnethen forgot was a Sir Robert Adair. i For fear of his comrade's being captured by the English, of course. But it is curious to reflect that danger from their own compatriots afterwards awaited some of the men that composed this very force. The fate of one of these, indeed, forms a curious link between those earlier Covenanters and their post- Restoration successors. Govan, who had been Strachan's ' Captain-Lieutenant,' was amongst the martyrs glorified by Wodrow (I., 70) ; and a count in the indictment against him was, laying down his arms at Hamilton fight. The narratives of both Baillie (iii., 113 and 124) and Burnet ('Hist. Own Times,' p. 85) would seem to imply that he had a good deal to answer for. But indeed the circumstances rendered it rather unsafe for anyone to boast of having been in that battle, either to Scot or Englishman ; and Young Cambusnethen's discreet silence as to his own share in it gives a certain piquancy to his narrative. It was for fear of consequences, no doubt, that he made it so plain he had a recognised official reason for being with the Western Army at all, through the commission given him by Montgomery. An occasional circumlocution in his narrative recalls the similarly non-committal statement of Patrick Walker in the matter of the slaying of Francis Gordon, as commented on by Sir Walter in the notes to the ' Heart of Midlothian.' i86 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS * cussing ' Sir Robert Montgomery * before eight o'clock ' that Sunday evening. Bad news flies apace ; and this — though only bad in a qualified sense, from Montgomery's point of view — might possibly have reached that- commander early enough, even without Young Cambusnethen's good offices. But take it that he had received the intelligence at the hour stated (and the ' Memorie ' writer says he did, not merely that the news was posted off by then). What does that imply ? In the first place, that he was probably nearer Glasgow than all the way down the Firth at Dumbarton — which was given out to be his destination when he parted from his ' cussing.' In the second place, that since he was (whether at Dumbarton or not) within twelve hours' hail by messenger, he was also within a day's march of a scattered, pursuing-practising enemy. The relics of Ker's force were chased ' as far as Paisley and Kilmarnock that day,' says Baillie,* and immediately thereafterf followed up as far as Ayr. Did not that give a chance to an active cavalry leader to have stepped in and reaped some of the laurels which the Western Army had vainly clutched at? Montgomery must have had at least 3,000 men, if Young Cambusnethen's mention of ' the greatest part of the cavalry and dragoons ' was correct — a force strong enough, surely, to have warranted his trying to disperse Lambert's rear-guard, if not even to engage the Major-General himself, as he returned from Ayr, before the reinforcements mentioned in Cromwell's own letter came up. But the chance which prompt action might have improved was not seized ; Montgomery ' next day martches his forces back to Stirling,' instead, ' there to attend his majestie's farder orders '; and on arrival gave in a report which rather strongly contrasted with what might have been — ' showing that he forced his way by Kilsyth, killed seven of the enemy and took four prisoners.' J Possibly, however, dis- cretion really was the better policy ; and at all events Montgomery was saving his men for the truly national struggle against the English. There are several good reasons for one's merely abridging and paraphrasing, as above, the narrative of Hamilton fight given in the ' Memorie of the Somervilles.'§ For it was written by an eye-witness ; it is corroborated in every essential particular, contradicted in none, * III., 125. t This is plainly shown both by letters of December 4 and 10 in Mercurius Politicus^ No. 28 (E 620), which speak of Lambert's not finding * an hundred in a body together in a place' till he reached Ayr and dispersed 160 of them in or out- side of the town. It was there that Strachan * came in to the Major-General ' (Ibid.). By this advance to the western seaboard the English got ih^ point cTapptii with Ulster of which Overton had recommended the gaining two and a half months before (footnote p. 142 supra) ; and though they do not seem to have made any use of the place as such, Ayr had a garrison under Whalley put in it for the pre- sent, of five cavalry regiments and over a thousand foot (Mercurius Politicus, No. 29 — E 620 — ' from Lanerick the 10 inst.'). X Balfour under date December 3. § II., pp. 438-450. TOPOGRAPHY OF HAMILTON TOWN 187 and added to scarcely at all by the English newspapers and the other accounts that have come down to us. And, finally, local changes have put us, as it were, pretty much at the mercy of Young Cambusnethen, even if we suspected any of his topographical details. Hamilton is an entirely changed place since that scene ' of an ancient Winter morning.' The landward part of the actual battle-ground has been encroached on by buildings, the then civic part reclaimed by rusticity, during the intervening two and a half centuries. The * tolbuith ' is still there, but no longer the same landmark as in Young Cambusnethen's time. No street now leads from it 'to the palace yett '; on the contrary, the modern town stops short at its heavy pile and the park-walls flanking it ; and nothing breaks the privacy of the ducal policies on the site where Ralston's troopers fought. ' The Crafts/ too, are known no more, unless in ' Eppie's Croft' — also within the Park — we have a survival of the name; and the vicinity of the ' little burne antiently called Keagoe,' is transmogrified, as has been said, since the day when Gilbert Ker vainly hurtled there against John Lambert BOOK IV. 1651.: THE KING OP FIFE. CHAPTER I. PROCESS OF CONSOLIDATION AMONG THE SCOTS — UNANIMITY Om-AINED — CHARLES II. AND ARGYLE — A PARALLEL TO * THE '45.' THE military history of the period we deal with need take no further account of divisions and factions among the Scots. These did not cease ; but they told no longer upon the progress of the war against the English. After Hamilton, the Remonstrant party was powerless to hinder, or divert for its own ends, the general movement of resistance to Cromwell. Its voice was still heard in the land — especially in the Commission of the Kirk ; but it no longer drew away from the national warfare of opposition the services of a single man. Baillie indeed speaks of * a seed of Hyper-Brownisme which had been secretly sowen in the minds of sundry of the sojours, that it wes unlawfull to join in armes with such and such ' of their compatriots* ; and makes mention laterf of the fruits of it as visible in the army. But these seem for all practical purposes to have been infinitesimal. By the dismissal and secession of Strachan and the failure of Ker, the extreme Presby- terians had been deprived of the ability to do more than raise a protest against the consolidation of all their brother Scots into one united body, pledged to attempt the defeat of the English and the restoration of Charles to the throne of England. And with the endeavours made towards that end, this last Book of ours may now concern itself, uninterrupted as aforetime by episodes of negotiation and would-be compromise with the invader. It will be allowed that from our special point of view this is a good riddance. And we may further remark how great a relief it is to feel that the theme of this volume does not necessitate our taking account of the vexed questions of the interdependence of Church and State, the conflicting claims of the Civil Magistrate and the spiritual Head of the Church, and the relationship of the Church Courts to the civil power, which were then in agitation among the ecclesiastics of the day| — as of many a generation later. The Remonstrants were, as just indicated, a minority in Church and * III., 126. t ^bid., p. 160. X Cf., inter alia, Baillie, iii., 133. 192 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Parliament ; and they stood out unavailingly for the Kirk's insisting on its supremacy over the laity with the same rigour as during the two preceding years. The gist of their contention was that none who had ever been under the ban of the Church should be readmitted to the service of the State. The majority had better learned the lessons of the time. More reasonably, therefore, if also with a remainder straitlaced insistence that occasioned a good deal of hard swearing and compulsory hypocrisy,* they were brought to content themselves with making all the tapu'd persons ' satisfy the Kirk ' before readmis- sion. The Royalists, for their part, were ready to submit to the exertion of ecclesiastical authority to that extent. We have already seen them professing their willingness to support ' covenant, league and covenant*; and they were relying, as we have said, upon the ' constitutional methods ' from which something was now to be hoped. Thus the matter was arranged with such ' proper ceremonials ' as may presently be mentioned. The details of the recriminations that ensued between the two parties of Churchmen concern us no more than they concerned Carlyle. We need attempt nothing further, indeed, than to indicate in out- line the various steps by which was brought about the cohesion of the more comprehensive array of the Scots for defence and offence, f These were spread over the greater part of the period embraced by this fourth Book ; but may conveniently enough be brought under one general survey in its first chapter. For the process that began in the early days of December with the admission of the Earl of Dunfermline to his seat in Parliament, and the issue of formal per- mission to Lauderdale to remain in the country where he was not officially supposed to be residing, went on as continuously and steadily as was anticipated in the rumour which Cromwell J eagerly waited to see verified — * that the Malignants will be almost all received.' And though it was some months before his soldiers hit upon the exact Scriptural precedent of which they were reminded by the change in 'the condition of the enemy they have now to encounter, '§ the * Canaanites ' were practically amalgamated into one body long before then. In a word, the Scots Parliament lost no time in setting about securing the coalition of all parties in the common cause. It had met on November 25 ; on the loth of the following month — Hamil- * Sir James Turner's ' Memoirs,' p. 94. t By which, in fact, they became 'all ae man's bairns,' as the Rev. Robert Douglas advised them to ; and agreed to use their dirty as well as their clean water to put out the fire in their neighbour's house, as the homely rhetoric of the Rev. Mr. Waugh counselled them {Mercurius Politicus^ Nos. 42 — E 626 — p. 673 ; and 37— E 625— p. 595). % Letter cliii. § Mercumis Politicus, No. 53 (E 632) — 'another letter of the 3rd' June, 1651. • Our army ... say that when they came in first (to Scotland) it was Israel against Benjamin ; now it is Josua against the Canaanites.' SCOTS AMALGAMATION 193 ton fight having in the interim helped, no doubt, to clear the air very appreciably — it approached the Commission of the General Assembly with a ' query 'as to ' how far incapacities that disables men may be takin aff, and men admitted for defence of the cuntrie aganes the comon enemy.'* 'The answer was favourable for the employment of those persons who had been incapacitated by the Act of Classes but were able to aid in defence of the country, with the exception of such as were excommunicated and forfeited, or professed enemies to the Covenant and the cause of God.'f The ecclesiastical sanction thus obtained was speedily acted upon, and the work of removing ' disabilities ' gone about without loss of time. In some cases it was very simple. Lord Dunfermline, whose immunity from the pains and penalties of the Kirk had long ago been noted by Sir Edward Walker, had already been allowed, as we have said, to take his seat in ParHament,| and so was free for that embassy to the States of Holland with which Charles presently entrusted him.§ The two brothers of ' Robin ' Montgomery — Sir James and the heir of Eglinton, Lord Montgomery — were in like manner declared capable of public employment without more ado.|| More important men had to go through stricter formalities. The Duke of Hamilton, and the Earl of Lauderdale ; Patrick Ruthven, Lord Brentford ; the Earls of Seaforth and Callendar, had all to be released, as a preliminary, from the decree of banishment under which they lay.*i The ' ever- loyal' Chief of the Mackays, too — Lord 'Rae' — had to be absolved** from his share in the rising during the spring of the preceding year. Whether or not he also ' satisfied the Kirk ' like others, we do not know ; but certain it is that in order further to qualify for their restoration to favour, Hamilton and Lauderdale and Middleton and Huntly — the latter pair were not on the former listff because they had not been forbidden the country — were obliged to do penance in church at one time or another. 1: J * Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii, p. 618. t David Laing, ' Memoir of Robert Baillie,' prefixed to the ' Letters and Journals' (vol. i., p. Ixvii). X Balfour, vol. iv., under date November 29. § Weekly Intelligencer, No. 12, p. 93 (E 626). II Balfour, under date December 17. IF Each of the five was granted that favour before Parliament rose in the end of December, See Balfour under dates 5th, 7th, 14th, and 27th ; or Thomson's * Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., pp. 616 and 619. Ruthven did not live long to profit by it: he died in the following month 'at Dundee' (Lamont's 'Diary,' p. 27), and was buried in ' Grange Durham's ile in the paroch kirk of Monefeithe (Balfour, iv. 256). There is a portrait of him, if anyone cares to know, at Newbattle Abbey. ** Or so we may interpret the ' act in favours ' of him minuted in Thomson's 'Acts' (619). For the end of his participation in Pluscardine's 'Rebellion' see that same authority, p. 380. +t Huntly, by the way, was only * restored to his honours ' and recognised as Marquis in the following March. See Balfour under dates 20th and 21st. XX Lauderdale did penance — on the stool of repentance, we suppose — at Largo 13 194 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS All these proceedings were in strict conformity with the counsel of the clerics ; but in straightway appointing other * Malignants ' to military commands Parliament interpreted the permit of the Kirk, one may say, rather more freely than literally. It issued its decree for raising all the fencible men of the shires north of Forth on December 4 ;* and the formal ' Act of Levy ' promulgated on the 23rd included as leaders not only ' the heads and captains of the Clans ' — ' a thing not to have been mentioned in Duke Hamilton's year,' said the Englishf — but also a good many non-Highland Cavaliers. Loudoun, the President of the Parliament, took exception thereto,! presumably for the reason just indicated ; and the lists were scrutinized in a way that showed his scruples to be shared by others. Yet none was struck off — not even Mackenzie of Pluscardine. Here, in fact, we begin to see the effect of the understanding arrived at when the Northern party laid down arms in the previous month : Athole and Pluscardine and Lord Ogilvy were allowed now, if not then, to take command at the head of their men. In the names of others about whom there was some demur, we have further reminis- cences of the state of matters now passing away ; ' the Lord Erskine ' had crowned his long association with Montrose by escaping with him over Minchmoor after Philiphaugh, ' the Lord Drummond ' had been one of the captives taken in that action. From the fact that one ' Harey Maule ' was looked upon rather doubtfully, we may conclude that in loyalty to the Stuarts, as well as in name, he was the predecessor and forbear of ' the famous Harry Maule of Kellie ' of the '15. The news-letters' inclusion of Rothes among the ' Malignants,' by the way, shows the English to have foreseen thus early that * the young Earl,' as Sir Edward Walker called him, would depart from the footsteps of his famous Covenanting predecessor. Already by the end of the year, therefore, the national cause, as contrasted with the Covenanting, had made good headway. It pro- gressed during the next session of the Scots Parliament, in March, 1 65 1, by methods supplementary, and precisely similar, to those just sketched. There was again a 'query' for the Commission of the in December (Lamont's ' Diary,' p. 25). Middleton was received back into communion with the Kirk, and did penance in sackcloth ' in Dundee Church ' on January 12 — simultaneously with Strachan's being 'excommunicated and delivered to the Devil ' in ' the church of Perth' (Balfour, iv. 240). Huntly was bracketed with Hamilton as having * mounted from the stool of repentance to the new levies of the King' in the Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 8 (E 624) ; and the same paper (No. 12 — E 626) gave elaborate particulars of the ceremony ' at Dundee ' by which the latter nobleman * in a most stately garb, more like a prince than a penitent, made a formal confession before the congregation of the sin of the Engagement as tinlawful against the sense of the Kirk of Scotland.' * Balfour, under that date. t MercuHus Politicus, No. 33 (E 622). X For his protest and the resultant discussions, see Balfour under dates 21st and 23rd December. THE RALLY ROUND THE THRONE 195 Kirk — this time as to the admission to be members of the Committee of Estates of ' persons who are now debarred from public trust ' •* and again such action in Parliament as rather ignored the claim of the Assembly to have a say in arranging military matters. For, without consultation of the Commission of the Kirk, King and Parliament decided to have a Committee for managing the affairs of the army, ' independent from the Committee of Estates ' and includ- ing men as yet ineligible for membership of the latter, f Seeing that this ' secret Council,' as the English called it, included Hamilton and Lauderdale, Rothes and Athole, the Romanist Marquis of Douglas and the ' Engager ' Earl of Crawford-Lindsay, the restoration to full political status, a month or two later, of those noblemen and others like-minded, does not greatly concern us.+ Their 'white- washing ' was complete, from our point of view, when they were thus admitted to participation in the direction of the army's doings. This stage, the last for our purpose, of the ' process of reversal in Scottish affairs ' — of the reaction in the course of which the nobility asserted, almost unquestioned, their right to resume the place from which a too ' aspiring ' Kirk had ousted them — was marked by oppo- sition from the same quarter as in an earlier month. The King had * insisted very far for taking in the other quarter — all spoke(n) in so plain terms, to the understanding of the whole house, that the Campbells' faction and the Hamiltons' was clearly understood of all. And the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary, Lothian, did check the King much for his inconstancy (as they called it) in deserting his best friends that brought him to this country and put the crown on his head, and now, as it seemed, adher(ing) to those that had done his father the worst offices that subjects could do to a prince, contrary to his' (Charles IL's) 'own words, promises, written oaths and declarations, both private and public. '§ Now, Loudoun and Lothian were only the mouthpieces of a greater man — Argyle. He it was who complained of this perfidy, and did his best to prevent the con- * Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., p. 647. The General Assembly's answer * desired the King and Parliament to admit upon their councils all but some few as have been prime actors against the State, etc' (Balfour, iv. 270, 271). This and the reply to the ' query ' of December were the pronouncements which gave a name to one party in the Kirk — the Resolutioners — as contrasted with the Remonstrants. t Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., pp. 651, 652, 654. Ij: It was brought about on June 2, 165 1, by Parliament's rescinding the Act of Classes, which Argyle's party had passed, in January, 1649, for the exclusion of all Engagers and still more open Royalists from places of trust. The Kirk had still further paved the way for that by its pronouncement in May (Thomson's ' Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii., p. 674) 'that nothing doth hinder but that persons formerly debarred from places of power and trust for their offences may be admitted to be members of the Committee of Estates . . . providing they be men who have satisfied the Church for their former offences.' § Balfour, iv. 275. 13—2 196 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS stitution of the separate Army Committee. His own name was ork it, indeed ; but Hamilton's was the first there. Charles, as it seems to us, was in no way to blame in this matter of the rival 'factions.' That of Argyle — including the Kirk leaders — had indeed brought him to Scotland ; and had then signally failed to implement the hard bargain they drove with him at the time. Dunbar had put an end to their pretensions to guide and direct his course single-handed ; and he was fully entitled to rally round him all others that could assist in the task to which they had proved unequal. All through the winter and spring he was trying to coax Argyle to fall into his proper place as one of the subjects of the Crown, not pose as the arbiter of its destinies — an attempt which seems to have been misunderstood"*^ as an endeavour to cajole that nobleman with fine promises whilst others were being brought in to supplant him. If Charles failed to drive the two rivals, Argyle and Hamilton, in double harness, and was deserted by the former out of jealousy towards the latter, it seems unjust to upbraid him for having tried to act as common-sense directed. For his conduct in another particular the King has been less equi- vocally censured. He proclaimed in almost every speech that he made his acquiescence in the position marked out for him as a Covenanted King ; he rather paraded the fact of his having signed, and signed over again, the Covenant and the League and Covenant. Now, it is certain that he never could have acted up to the letter of either document — that if restored there and then to the throne of England he would not have * endeavoured the extirpation of Prelacy (that is, church government by archbishops, bishops ' etc.) in order to please his Northern subjects. But is it so certain that he would not have kept his word to the full as faithfully as he was in honour bound to ? Would he have been repudiating shamelessly if he had granted the Scots their own Kirk and kept Episcopacy in its own place ? All speculation as to the possibility of his having done so — or surely rather the probability — is idle enough. But wherein, exactly, lay the perjury by force of which Charles ' lied himself (says Dr. Gardiner) ' into the commanding position ' to which none had a better right than he ? The clergy must have been more innocent of * Dr. Gardiner certainly writes (p. 393) as if the success of the policy which culminated in the Act rescissory of the Act of Classes was a personal triumph, deliberately planned by Charles, over his once absolute counsellor. It seems rather to have been a course of action which only a very misplaced Quixotry could have kept the King from taking. Who was even McCallum More, that he should shut Charles out from the support of others, freely tendered ? A matrimonial project already alluded to was, by the way, involved ; and Dr. Gardiner thinks it possible ' that Charles merely counted on securing the continuance of Argyle's support ' (pp. 388, 389) when he sent an emissary to his mother asking for her consent to his union with Argyle's daughter, the Lady Anne Campbell. A more romantic explanation suggests itself — that Charles ' sighed as a lover,' but (when the maternal Nay arrived) ' obeyed as a son.' It certainly is the fact that Henrietta Maria's disapproval put an end to the scheme. —Gardiner, p. 391. MERE JUSTICE TO CHARLES IL 197 the nature of a ' mental reservation ' than they are nowadays, if they supposed he was committing himself again to such a general extension of Presbyterianism as they had extorted the promise of before Dunbar. And short of his leading the Scots to expect any such thing, one fails to see that the King was guilty of wilful imposition. He paid homage to the Covenant as the genius loci in Scotland, without binding himself so to bow down before it elsewhere. One cannot but think, then, that here again the critics of Charles have been biassed against him by knowing what action he took at a later date. Nine intervening years of exile that seemed hopeless until it was just on the point of ending — nine years' waiting upon the pleasure of sovereigns who were much more anxious to conciliate Oliver Cromwell than to succour their brother-monarch — may have told worse upon the disposition of Charles II. than has been generally allowed. What a chapter of Scottish history shogiild we not have been spared had the Restoration been effected in 1651 instead of 1660 ! For the present, however, here was one that had interest enough of its own. Brought into the northern kingdom in a manner very different, Charles stepped eventually into a position not dissimilar from that of his namesake and kinsman of the second generation after. The King of 1651 was, after all, the forerunner and ancestral proto- type of the Prince of 1745 ; and his ' march to Derby' might have been remembered with the same half-wistful interest as the ' Young Pretender's,' so-called, had he too supported to the end of the chapter no other character than that of aspirant. The earlier Charlie was still more boyish* than the later — a circumstance not always remem- bered as it might be ; and if he took rank before the other as a crowned King,t he could not boast of having kept Court at Holyrood like his grand-nephew. For the Commonwealth's army shut him * He came of age on May 29, 1651; and 'the King's Maj. maioritie' was duly 'declaired in parliament,' as Lament's 'Diary' says, on June 2 (Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vi., pt. ii. , p. 676). Also on the evening of the birthday, the Scots * made several bonfires on Fife side and discharged their ordnance from Burnt Island and other places' ('A Perfect Account,' No. 22 — E 632). t At Scone, on New Year's Day, 1651. The details of the ceremony do not call for description here ; one is really more interested in the report brought by a female spy to the English, unauthentic though it seems to be, that the Scots had already ' choosed their King General ... by crossing a pike a musket a carabine and a sword over his head ' {Mercurius Politiciis, No. 28, ' from Edinburgh of the 4th' December). As a matter of fact, it was only on March 31 that Charles 'takes upon him the conduct of the army,' as Balfour puts it in his report of the Parliament's sitting on that day. The Lyon King's summary of the royal speech on the occasion is interesting, by the way, on account of the characteristic touch of roguish humour that seems to lurk in the passage expressing Charles's natural anxiety about ' the preservatione of his kingdome, frinds, and his auen persone too — -cvich ivas a naturall bonde lykwayes.' Dr. Gardiner (p. 385) has rescued from the limbo of seventeenth-century newspapers {Mercurius Politicus^ No. 31 — E 621) another lifelike trait of the young King — his remarking, in a season of officially ordained repentance for contempt of the Gospel and the sins of his house, that * I think I must repent, too, that ever I was born.' 198 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS out from Lothian and the Lowlands : it was only in Perth and north of the Forth that his subjects could rally round him, as a good many of their descendants rallied round Prince Charlie in Edinburgh. But, even so, there was all the difference between his ' royal progresses ' after his coronation — one of them northwards as far as Aberdeen — and the removals hither and thither that the Kirk had compelled him to before Dunbar. The latter peregrinations were intended to keep him as little in touch as might be with the army and the nation ; the former seem to have shown how ready were both to devote them- selves to his cause. Indeed, we shall find something of a new and more resolute spirit pervading the national war of resistance to the English from the time of Charles's putting himself at the head of it. Even before the close of the year 1650 — within two or three weeks of Hamilton fight, that is to say — there were some clear enough indications that the Scots had gained as much in solidarity and single- ness of purpose through that defeat, as they had lost at it in actual numbers. The closing up of the ranks, in fact, more than made good the gaps ; and if Cromwell* ' found more satisfaction in having to deal with men of this [Malignant] stamp than with others ' less irreconcilable, they at all events gave him rather more trouble than the latter. It would be making too much of a small event to claim the first capture of an English shipf authentically recorded in the annals of the war as an augury of increased Scots activity against the enemy. In a more important affair, however — the relieving Edin- burgh Castle — there was such a timely display of energy as at least enables one to say that that great citadel was reduced through no fault of the King and Parliament. But for a legacy from the Remonstrants in the feeble resistance which the stronghold offered, Cromwell might thus early have had a plain enough foretaste of the enhanced intensity of purpose against him that animated the Scots. The particulars of the affair had better be reserved for our next chapter. * Letter cliii. t Balfour, iv. 204, under date December 13 — ' The King's Majesty and Parlia- ment gives warrant to the General of the Artillery to pass to the Wymees and to seize upon such arms and ammunition as are in the English ship taken from the enemy.' CHAPTER II. THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE. ^ w "N HE siege of the Castrum PueUarum has not, it may have I been observed, called for notice since we recorded the I beginnings of it."* It went on uninterrupted by any of -^^ the other bits of service which between September and December called away from the capital now one and now another portion of the English army of occupation. But its progress was rather ineffectual all that time. A strict blockade was kept up, and it was hoped that the mine which we have seen the besiegers going to work upon would effect a breach by which the place might be stormed. For that purpose a good many Scotch colHersf were pressed into service, as well as the Derbyshire miners mentioned by Carlyle. Long before the latter arrived in the end of November, % indeed, some sixty yards' length of galleries, according to one account,§ had been excavated — piercing ' to the hard rock ' — by the compulsory work of native hands. In vain had the besieged hurled ' hand-gronadoes ' {sic) that 'fired our blind '|| or covering shield, and at a later stage thrown into the mine itself ' pitch and flax and other combustible matter to smoak our men out. '51 The tunnelling must have advanced far to admit of the defenders thus getting at the works from within ; and indeed it is mentioned immediately after the words last quoted that * their counter-mining occasions us to counter-mine them.' The south side of the rock was, as Nicoll has already informed us, * Antea, p. 141. t NicollV ' Diary ' (p. 34) mentions that * all the Scottis coilzearis in the east cuntrie ' were ' brocht in to Edinburgh ... to wirk in a mynd foundit upone the south syde of the Castell ': and the letter of October 3 {Mercurius Politicus, No. 18 — E 614) that ' 17 Scotch miners came from Leithing to work at Leith, and others from about Glasgow, and were employed about springing the mines before Edin- burgh Castle.' Leithing was probably ' Lithingoe ' or Linlithgow. X Mercurius Foliticus, No. 25 (E 618), 'from Berwick the 20th' November; and No. 27 (E 619) ' expresses from Berwick of the 4th ' December. § ' Express from Edinburgh,' October 27, bound up with T. F.'s Carlisle letter in E 615. II The letter of October 3, ut supra. IT Merairius Politicus, No. 26. 20O CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the one chosen for the English galleries ; and the scar left by Oliver Cromwell's engineers is, indeed, very plainly visible there* to this day. From their having selected that spot, it is probable the English knew how futile had been the efforts of the Covenanters in another quarter when they tried, ten years before, to penetrate the defences of the Castle by mining. The plan then adopted had been to burrow under the * Spur,' the large ' outmost fortification ' which stood at the east or city end of what is now the Esplanade, to breach its walls by springing a mine, and thus to gain entrance for a forlorn hope. How that failed, even though the south-east wall of the Spur was duly blown up ; how Somerville of Drum entered the breach with a handful of men, hoping to reach ' the second gate ' (somewhere near the present entrance) as soon as the retreating defenders of the Spur ; how he was foiled, and his party ' felled ' with an incessant rain of musketry ' from all the fore-quarters of the Castle, but mostly from the gate-house '—of these things let anyone who will read in the narrative of Somerville's pious son, Young Cambusnethen.f (* There is always something pleasant, I think, in stupid family stories : they are good-hearted people who tell them.') Suffice it for our purpose that the Cromwellians, warned doubtless by what they heard in Edin- burgh of that baffled assault, turned the flank of the Spur| by mining at a point beyond it. But they seem to have found there was as little hope from the galleries they opened on the steeply sloping southward face below the Half Moon, as from the shorter excavation that the Covenanters had driven westwards along the line of the present Castle Hill in 1640. Neither the forced labour of the Scotch ' coilzearis ' nor the efforts of the Peak-land miners — who, it was mentioned, 'have done very good service '§ — availed to carry * A walled-up cavity on the right-hand side as one goes westward down John- ston Terrace. C/. James Grant's ' Old and New Edinburgh,' vol. i., p. 55. + See pp. 228, 229 and 247 et sequitur of the ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' vol. ii. Its author himself saw something of that siege, as a child of eight. X Former writers have supposed that the Spur had been razed in the very year before Cromwell's invasion. But the Act of Parliament ordering its demolition in the summer of 1649 (Thomson, vol. vi,, pt. ii., p. 484 — cf. also 517) cannot have been carried into effect by the time when the English entered Edinburgh; for 'the Spur without the Castle' is distinctly mentioned in one of the news-letters telling of the siege {Mercurius Politicus, No. 30— E 621 — letter of Christmas Day, 1650). Authorities differ, it is true; for when the ' Memorie of the Somervilles ' (p. 229) writes of Cromwell's having 'battered down the now outermost wall,' that seems to imply some such change, in the interval between the 1640 siege and this later one, as would have been effected by the razing of the Spur. But that rather vague allusion can scarcely be held to contradict the Christmas Day letter-writer just quoted, and we must suppose the Spur still existed in 1650, very much as it was pictured in an 'old Dutch print, A.D. 1646,' that is reproduced in James Grant's * Memorials of the Castle of Edinburgh' (Blackwood: 1850). It looks there, to be sure, more like a full moon than the ' half-moon ' that Young Cambusnethen calls it (p. 229 of the 'Memorie'); but its identity is conclusively enough estab- lished by its being indeed ' within sixty paces,' as the same writer says, of the then endmost houses of the city itself. § Mercurius Politicus, No. 27 (E 619)— letter from Edinburgh of December 4. THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE 201 their tunnels deep enough. A correspondent of Mercurius Politicus confessed on December 4 that ' Battry . . . will be a probabler course than mining, in regard of the rock.''* It must always remain a moot point whether resort to that alter- native means of subjugation would of itself have served the purpose of the English. The Covenanters of 1640 had, according to Young Cambusnethen, ' found by ane expensive experience that there was no prevailing by battery 'f against Ruthven and his Royalist garrison in Edinburgh Castle : Oliver Cromwell might possibly have had to <:onfess a similar failure, had he had to cope with as resolute a defence as was then encountered. True, he had advantages such as those previous assailants of the place did not enjoy. He had either learned by their experience (as in the matter of the mine), or had been advised by his own ' gunners,'^ that it was useless to divide up his artillery and fire on the Castle from different points of the com- pass. The Covenanters, who eventually reduced the place only by blockade, had had three or four batteries ;§ he grouped all his ' great guns and mortars ' in but one,|| and concentrated them on the very * Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 (E 620) — * another from Edenburgh of the 4th.' f ' Memorie of the Somervilles,' ii. 236. X Mr. C. H. Firth, in his introduction to the ' Journal of Joachim Hane ' •{Oxford : Blackwell, 1896), has mentioned how much both sides, Cavalier and Roundhead, were indebted during the Civil Wars to the skilled services of ex- pert Continental engineers. Joachim Hane was himself in Scotland at this time ; we lighted not long since [aiitea, footnote to p. 124) upon what may have been a letter of his, and it is moie than likely he helped to train the English guns upon the walls of Edinburgh Castle, as later upon those of Stirling. But at least one native ' gunner ' superintended the operations of that battery, too : Cromwell had summoned ' Mr. Brown, our chief gunner,' from Berwick to Edinburgh in the end of November {Mercurius Politicus, No. 27 — E 619— by 'expresses from' the former place). § The 'Memorie of the Somervilles' (p. 225) names four: at Greyfriars, the West Kirk, ' upon the long gaitt ' (about Hanover Street, conjectures its editor), and 'upon the north side of the street in the Castle Hill.' Balfour (ii. 379, 380) specifies only three, omitting that on ' the long gaitt ;' and more precisely men- tions the Castle Hill one as 'at Robert Dauison's house ' there. The difference is not very material ; nor yet the question (upon which Balfour throws no light) whether Young Cambusnethen may not filially have exaggerated in stating that his father's Castle Hill or Robert Davidson battery ' was only to purpose' — was, i.e.^ the only one of any use. II ' That fort erected by the Englisches upone the north syde of the Castell Hill, bewest the new-foundit Kirk' — 'Nicoll's Diary,' p. 34. Young Cambusnethen (p. 225 of the ' Memorie') says the Castle Hill battery of the Covenanters of 1640 was ' a little above that yaird where Oliver Cromwell eftirward planted his only batterie.' And in Thomson's 'Acts '(vol. vi.,part ii.,p. 660) we read that 'the enemie brocht vpe thair cannon to Robert Davieson's hous ' — see the Balfour extract in the foregoing footnote. We do not profess to know the exact site of the dwelling thus twice specified by name ; but one comes near enough to it by a glance at Gordon of Rothiemay's map, which marks what was evidently Nicoll's 'new- foundit Kirk,' and so affords as good a landmark as the most inveterate precisian can want. Expressed in terms of the modern street directory, the place where the English bombardiers worked their guns must have been a little below those in- congruous Ramsay Gardens that affront the eye to-day with their gilt top- hamper. 202 CROMWELVS SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS place whence the fire of the assailants in 1640 is said to have been most effective. And then the presence of those mortars with their shells,* and of experienced ' engineers ' that knew how to work them with effect, was an advance upon anything previously brought against the Castle.t We have already seen that two mortars had arrived from Hull towards the end of October, and been used for three or four weeks thereafter in reducing divers garrisons up and down the countryside — in the deep defiles through which the two Esks run, and elsewhere. By the beginning of December they were available for service against Edinburgh Castle ; and others from London]: were added to their number about that time. Yet though Cromwell thus brought to bear probably the most deadly park of artillery that had ever been seen in Scotland, and poured in a heavy fire for some two or three (iays,g the result seems to have been far from conclusive. The bombardment was of course intended (the mine having failed) as a preliminary to an assault by storm ;|| and an English writer who formed his opinion ' upon view ^ — after an investigation, that is to say, of the defences from within — expressed himself as extremely doubtful whether that could have * Evidetitly there was ample store of the deadly ammunition of which we have already watched the effects, let us say, at Dirleton. Whole * carts of granadoes '' came from Berwick in the end of November, ' and many others ' (single shells of course— not other cartloads) were 'sent by sea' to Leith. Mercuriiis PolitiaiSy No. 27 — 'expresses from Berwick' ubi supra. t Of the size and number of the English ' great guns ' which reinforced the mortars, we have no such precise account as is preserved of the Covenanters' 'pieces of batrie ' in 1640. The latter were 'from Holland,' says Balfour (ii., 380), and some 'shote 36 and 24 pound ball.' Young Cambusnethen ('Memorie,' ii., 226) will have it that the missiles were 'between fourtieth and threttieth and six pund ball ' fired from eight ' Dernie {sic) cannon ' in his father's battery alone. We may be sure the calibre of the Cromwellian artillery was good for at least ' fourtieth pund ;' and may gather from the later accounts of Tantallon siege how effective it was even against enormously solid masonry. X Mercuritis Politicus, No. 28 (E 620)—* from Kdenburgh of the 4th December';, and No. 29 (z'^zV/.)— news-letter ' of the nth.' The number is not stated ; but in the earlier newspaper we twice read of mortar^pieces in the plural. § For some hours on Saturday, December 14, and apparently the whole of Monday and Wednesday, December 17 and 18. Cf. later footnotes and text. Ii What one could scarcely have believed from the report of Young Cambus- nethen alone, is as good as proved from English sources {cf. next footnote infra). For the ' Memorie ' (p. 229) speaks of ' that only part of the rock that is ascend- able upon that side where the late usurper resolved to have stormed when he had battered down the now outermost wall, and made a large breach in that part of the high half-moon close by the craig, which may be climbed up with some pains ;' and again refers to 'this ascent of the rock (whereby Cromwell thought to have entered by force, if traitors had not given him a more safe and easy passage).' Now, though there is not even punctuation to help one in exactly interpreting the former passage, it evidently conveys that Cromwell had it in view to plant scaling-ladders against the north-westward curve of the Half-Moon ; for other- wise the ' craig ' could only mean the sheer precipice below its south front and the ' Royal Lodging ' — which is absurd. And as to the English intention to try that perilous storm, the authority next to be quoted amply corroborates ^'oung Cambusnethen. THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE 205 succeeded.* And if not, what was the alternative? Further bom- bardment ? All that the English could hope for by that means had already been done to open the way for a storming-party ; and any other effect of it was apparently not to be looked for. A long blockade, then, and gradual reduction of the place by starvation ? The garrison was provisioned for fully three or four months longer ;t * We read in the letter of Christmas Day, 1650 (which is not so named there, of course), in Mercurius Foliticus, No. 30 (E 621), that * our guns had . . . done very good execution in battering down the wall of the Spur without the Castle, and making good impression also upon the wall of the half-moon ; but it was of formed earth within side, and indeed to me (upon view) it seems very ridiculous to think the place attemptable by storm if the defendants have anything of courage in them.' Cf. Cromwell's own words (letter clxi.) about 'the strength of the place ; which, if it had not come in as it did, would have cost very much blood to be attained, if at all to be attained.' f Merctirius Politicus^ No 30 ubi supra — the immediately succeeding context, indeed, of the passage last quoted. ' They had within the castle provisions for at least two or three months longer, and water abundance in both their wells ; and those who understand how far the havermeale {sic) will reach, say there was enough for four month.' Cf. p. 494 of the same issue oi Merairius Politicus ; and an ' Eden borough ' letter of January 12 in No. 33 — E 622. The writer of the latter says he ' saw a piece of very good oatbread ' (no doubt made out of ' havermeale') ' which M. Mongo Law sent to L-Gen. David Lesley by his secretary, and bad him tell his master, That was the worst bread that any in the castle needed to have eaten this twelvemonth.' (Injustice to Governor Dundas let it be said that this ' Monsieur ' was one of his clerical critics who — very suitably, of course, as non- combatants — were 'at prayer in a low vault ' during the bombardment. — ' Collec- tions by a Private Hand,' p. 32 in Maidment's 'Historical Fragments.') Most of the Scottish writers were too angry with Dundas to condescend upon particulars of the circumstances which made his surrender so flagrant a sin of omission ; but at least Lamont's ' Diary ' (p. 25) confirms these accounts of the abundance of provender in the Castle. It is important to notice that the English had not suc- ceeded in cutting off the water-supply of the garrison. In that refspect Dundas had had a really heroic example set him by my Lord Brentford ; for the men com- manded by the latter had, according to Balfour (ii., 403), ' hed no freche watter at all ' for over three months before their surrender, and Ruthven himself was only in the end carried out on a litter half-dead with scurvy. The English had, it seems, been put up to the best means of reducing Dundas to the like extremity by a 'spie'; but 'shee' gave them a very inaccurate account of the position of matters elsewhere— as to Leslie's having finally laid down his commission, e.g.^ and Lord Lothian's being Major-General, and Ker's intending to join Montgomery — and may, therefore, have been just as ill-informed about the internal economy of the Castle. {Mercurius Politicus, No. 28 — 'another from Edenburgh,' Decem- ber 4. ) As to the ' two wells,' we suppose the supply from the Wellhouse Tower counted in along with that of 'the ancient well' on the rock itself. (Chambers's ' Walks in Edinburgh,' pp. 55 and 63 ; ' Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,' vol. ii., pp. 469 et seq.) Some {^'fi details as to the storing up of pro- visions in the Castle beforehand are to be gleaned from Balfour's 'Annals' and Thomson's ' Acts ': the former (iv. 45) schedules ' 800 bolls of meal and 200 bols malt ' (ominous conjunction !) ' with 500 merkes to buy bedding for the soldiers ' as 'to [be] layed vpe with all expedition' there ; and the latter (vol. vi., part ii., pp. 581, 590) has almost picturesque entries about 'fourtie horsses wt souks and seeks to carie meall from Leith to the castell,' and again ' six scoir horss for carieing of meall from Leith and Crawmond ' thither. The later of those two passages in Thomson's ' Acts,' read along with Balfour ubi supra, shows also that the garrison were not to be suffered to starve with cold : ' the 1/sinklar's factors and greeves * were ordered to furnish ' 1000 lades of colles out of the Lord St. Clairs coleheuch,' and the 'bailyeis of Dysert to caus transport them to leith.' 204 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS and a resolute defender would at least have trusted in his own forti- tude and the chapter of accidents for that length of time. Where would the English have been, then, had they had to deal with such another commander of the garrison as ' old Ruthven ' ? My Lord Brentford, as he now was, would doubtless have double- shotted his guns again, as in 1640, 'to show that the King did not want for ammunition'; and would likely enough, indeed, have, laid Edinburgh in ruins rather than suffer an English army to harbour there. "^ Nor should even a less resolute defender than ' General Rivane ' have failed to pluck up heart when he received such relief as the Scots managed to put into the citadel in the very nick of time.t But Governor William Dundas, younger of that Ilk, was not a Ruthven ; and was far from being awakened to a sense of his duty| * See llie chapter on the siege of 1640 in James Grant's 'Memorials.' But that writer's account of Ruthven's having frequently opened fire on the town is hardly corroborated by Young Cambusnethen. t The irruption of Captain Augustin, the German leader of irregulars, who added what ought to have been a very welcome reinforcement to the garrison in the early morning of Saturday, December 14. Meixurius FoHHczis, the only English authority that contains any reference to that affair, mentions in its first Scotch letter in No. 31 (E 621) 'those twenty [soldiers] which came into the Castle that very morning that we began to baiter ' ; and a passage of Balfour (iv., 209, 210) which Carlyle in due course quoted, relates how ' Augustin departed from Fife with a party of six-score horse; crossed at Blackness on Friday i3th December ; forced Cromwell's guards ; killed eighty men to the enemy ; put in thirty-six men to Edinburgh Castle, with all sorts of spices and some other things ; took thirty-five horses and five prisoners which he sent to Perth the 19th of this . instant, December.' James Grant has reconstructed the history of the raid in Chapter xliii. of ' Harry Ogilvie,' but with rather more latitude than we believe him to have permitted himself in regard to earlier passages of the military history of Edinburgh during these campaigns. The dash in by the Bristo Port and out by the Netherbow is incredible from the point of view of the sober chronicler, how- ever effective as romance. Augustin is more likely to have put in his relief party by a western access to the Castle than an approach from the side of the city : let us suppose he clomb the rock like another Randolph or Black Douglas or Bonny Dundee, say to the Postern Gate where the last named had his famed conference with the Duke of Gordon. That Augustin 'forced Cromwell's guards ' might on this supposition be none the less true : the advantage of so creating a diversion while he went about his real business is obvious enough. (The alleged amount of his 'kill,' to put it brutally, was probably a patriotic exaggeration.) But, how- ever effected, the timely relief ought to have stiffened Dundas's back, one would think, if not convinced him out-and-out that the ' Malignancy ' which could inspire its coming was worfh fighting for after all. X The reader who attentively scans the dates of the correspondence with which we are about to deal, and considers the nature of the interruptions that certainly occurred in the intervals of it, will scarcely, we fancy, credit that its even tenor can have been maintained after the fashion pointed out in the text — with, that is to say, scarcely a perceptible break occasioned by the intervening interchange of sabre-cuts and artillery volleys. One would have expected to find that Dundas's letter of the 14th (labelled by Carlyle 'Governor's Reply, No. 3') had been written a day earlier, before hostilities began. But if there is any such lurking mistake in the dates of the series of letters as printed by Carlyle, no one is now THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE . 205 even by the gallant succour which reached him on the very eve of the English bombardment. Of course there was no lack of dis- paraging and contemptuous explanations of his conduct after it had put Cromwell in possession of the Castle. Some three months before that time, Sir Edward Walker had written of him (' Dis- courses,' p. 181) as 'one Dundas, son-in-law to the old General Levin, a young man of no experience.' Something more heinous than the ' atrocious crime ' of youth was laid to his charge ere all was said and done. Balfour"^ named him a * traitorous villain ' for having ' basely and couardly randred ' the Castle ; the Private Hand put on record the inevitable story of his having been seduced by English gold ;t the Estates of the Realm found him guilty of treason in having abandoned his trust. % in a position to correct it. He accurately followed his authority, ' Cromwelliana ;' and zV had copied exactly from the contemporary pamphlet in E 621 of the King's Pamphlets. * Vol. iv., p. 250. t * Collections,' p. 32. ' It was alleged Dundas took a sum of money for the Castle. However that was, he was printed at London as drawing a bagg with the one hand and putting away the Castle with the other.' We have not our- selves seen the picture, but can quite imagine it, X See the formal indictment and verdict in Thomson's ' Acts,' vol. vi., part ii., pp. 659, 660. There certainly was good reason for the ' forfeiture ' of Dundas and Major Abernethy, the second in command, if it was really proved — and evidence to that effect seems to have been forthcoming from men who heard the words — that they had declared they would ' act ' no more against the enemy, nor • awin the Malignant interest.' For the rest, the accusation against Dundas depended mainly upon his alleged bearing towards two of his subordinates — Binning, his ' master gunner,' and one Home, his own body-servant. The latter had been suffered to go out of the Castle in order to convey Dundas's children to a place of safety, and before his return was stated to have been entangled in talk by an Englishman, ' Mr.' (evidently no other than our old friend George) * Down- ing.' When once more within the Castle, Home was said to have kept up a traitorous correspondence with the scout-master, by missives cast over the walls * to the mouth of the enemy's mines.' Detected in the act, the servant was saved from punishment by his master — certainly very injudiciously, if he had really been giving as precise and useful information to the Enghsh as was alleged. The appearance of suspicious complicity there certainly tells worse against Dundas than the evidence of the master gunner. The latter functionary seems to have gone first to the English {Mercurius Politicus, No. 33— E 622— p. 547) and then to the Scots with a tale of his own desperately resolute attempts at defence ; but, after all, Dundas apparently did nothmg more than keep him in his proper place. The express command to Binning not to fire without orders may have been the merest prudence and good husbandry, since by his own account that artilleryman was given to wasting ammunition on ' pot-shots ' at the head of my Lord Mon- trose {cf. a curious extract from a book written by him, in this chapter of Grant's ' Memorials of Edinburgh Castle '). Still, it was carrying the sparing of powder and shot rather too far if Dundas declined to sanction an attempt to hinder the mounting of the English artillery in their battery ; and Binning's evidence on that point is corroborated by at least one entry in Mercurkis Politicus which speaks of guns and mortars being ' planted ' there, apparently without molestation from the Castle (No. 28— E 620— 'from Edenburgh,' December 4). If so, it was a sign that the Governor had by then either lost heart or been convinced as to the predominance of ' Malignancy ' among his compatriots ; since he had not long 2o6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS That Dundas attempted far less in the way of defence than it was in his power to offer is as certain as anything well can be. As to his motives, he seems scarcely entitled even to the benefit of the doubt that must exist at this distance of time. For surely no man of spirit would have sheltered himself under the excuse which he advanced — that the cause which the bulk of his compatriots had now embraced was not that in which he and they had taken up arms five or six months before. Why, even the Western Army, while throwing over Charles II. with uncompromising fervour, had still held the * necessity of the lamenting people of God ' a sufficient warrant for ' adventuring to the uttermost ' against the English. Strachan, we know, had been the one dissentient on the latter point ; it is at all events curious that the only other Scotchman in an important command who was of his way of thinking should have been the Governor of Edinburgh Castle. The fact almost lends colour to Baillie's story "^ that the ex-Colonel of the West made it his first business, on coming in to Edinburgh along with Lambert, to ' agent the rendering of the Castle with his dear comrade young Dundas.' Suspicion may have carried the reverend divine too far in that allegation ; but one cannot get over the fact that, even before a gun was fired, Dundas had given Cromwell very good reason to think the place might fall into his hands without the expenditure of a grain of powder. And so to all appearance it might have, but for — oddly enough — the irruption of that relief party which has already been mentioned. On Thursday, December 12, Cromwell had summoned the Castle in form.f Dundas had replied by the curious request that time might be given him to consult the Estates as to what he was to do — curious, we say, because one can hardly understand it unless by supposing the Governor to have been seeking an excuse for shuffling out of his responsibilities. The authorities at Perth, he before been sufficiently ' inraged,' at sight of the beginning of the construction of the English battery, to 'let fly from the Castle in abundance.' — Mercurius Politicns, No. 27 (E 619) — letter of December i. * III. 125. Baillie associated Swinton with Strachan as having helped him to 'agent the rendering' with ' their dear comrade.' It is certain at least that both men were in Edinburgh at the time {Mercitrius Politicus, Nos. 28 — ' from Edin- burgh of the loth ' December — and 29 — ditto of the i6th); and therefore possible that Cromwell had one or other or both of them in mind when he wrote the last sentence of letter civ. A good enough reason for Strachan's not appearing in the matter may well have been this — that he * dared not stir abroad ' in Edinburgh {Mercurius Politicus, No. 29, in the letter last referred to ; cf. also No. 33 — E 622 — as to the ' wives in the street ' ' abusing ' him). But it should also be said that Baillie seems to have made more than was necessary of Dundas's alleged dependence upon the counsel and help of the Remonstrant party. The fact of his being Leven's son-in-law, e.g., was probably quite a sufficient explanation of his having been given the Governorship of the Castle, without anyone's needing to believe he had further required the good offices of 'Warriston, Sir John Chieslie, and the Provost of Edinburgh ' to ensure him the appointment. t Carlyle prints the whole of the correspondence quoted from and commented on in the text. Letters cliv. to clxi. THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE 207 must have known, could send him no other commands than to hold out to the last ; but it was possible that the cloven hoof of Malignancy might so peep out in their injunctions as to justify him in his own eyes in declining the task. Whether or not he detected any such lurking intention, Cromwell certainly knew of the strain of anti- Malignant scrupulosity — if it even was that — in the man he had to deal with. Accordingly he offered him first-hand information, * by them you dare trust, at a nearer distance than vSt. Johnston,' as to the action of Dundas's compatriots in espousing 'another Interest than they have formerly pretended to.' The Governor jumped, as they say, at the chance. He once more ' pressed the liberty of acquainting the Estates,' but was ' in the meantime willing to hear in- formation of late proceedings from such as he "dare trust.'" As if the one thing did not nullify the other — as if he did not waive his claim to consult his superiors in letting it be seen that he proposed also to be guided by his own eager private judgment. Cromwell replied by further representations as to the changed position of matters among the Scots at Perth, the iniquity of the 'Interest destructive and contrary to what they professed when they com- mitted that charge to you,' and consequent desirability of a parley for ' information of judgment and satisfaction of Conscience.' He even seems to have hoped to induce Dundas to come out of the Castle for the purpose of such a ' Conference.'"^ At all events, the evening and the morning were the second day — Friday, December 13 — of this correspondence : not a shot having as yet been fired. But both shot and shell had been somewhat liberally expended before the interchange of letters was resumed next day. Under cover of darkness, Augustin had put in his relief party during the small hours of Saturday morning : at daybreak therefore — and just as surely propter hoc as post hoc — the English gunners were hard at work.f Such ' knocking without ' was indispensable, if this was how * So much seems, at all events, to be implied in what Carlyle prints as the last paragraph of letter clvj.: * I am willing to cease hostility for some hours, or con- venient time, to so good an end.' Actual hostilities had not begun — all the autho- rities are agreed that the English battery only opened fire the morning after that letter was written. All that was meant, therefore, probably was, that Cromwell was willing to order his guards to give an amicable reception to any party issuing forth from the Castle — at whose head he doubtless looked to see the Governor in person. It is rather a change to come upon his brusque intimation, next day, of his consent to send in anyone whom Dundas cared to receive. + * Saturday morning our guns and mortar-pieces began to play, and at the first or second shot dismounted the chief of their cannon that were planted against ours with most advantage ' (? on the ' high round ' or Half Moon, where Young Cambus- nethen says the Greyfriars battery 'dismounted a few ' of Ruthven's guns in '40); * and so shattered the platform that they have not yet recovered the use of them. Nor have they above two to play with, which do little prejudice, and we hope may be shortly disabled. We believe the mortar pieces have done some considerable execution within the Castle, having fallen according to design and set on fire some parts of the building, as is demonstrated to us by some burning timber which they have thrown over the walls '—Letter of December 17, given in ' Cromwelliana,* 2o8 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the Scots inside understood mutual cessation of hostilities ! Yet Governor Dundas took up his pen and wrote quickly, with as much placidity as if never a man had in the interim risked his life in order to encourage him to resist. Here indeed was conscientiousness, in his preferring to return to his communications with the English at the point where they had been left off the previous evening, rather than associate himself with these interloping compatriots who ap- parently had an exaggerated idea of the importance of retaining Edinburgh Castle. One may even discern a certain tone of injured innocence in his next missive. Cromwell had hinted that his asking for the delay needed in order to refer the matter to headquarters might be only strategical temporizing : circumstances made it more than ever necessary to disclaim any such thought. And therefore ' What I pressed in my last proceeded from conscience and not from policy.' (' I was not,' i.e., 'merely trying to keep the door open for the unexpected Augustin ; it was through no connivance of mine that those " thirty-six men " and " spices and other things " were run in ; I assure you there was no collusion !') And is this what your ' desired expressions of professed affection ' amount to — showers of granadoes and thunder of battering-pieces, i.e. ? It was all very well to dissemble one's love, but . . . ! If then ' you will needs persist in denial ' — of my request to send to Perth, whence I have just had the broadest possible hint as to what is expected of me — let us clinch matters before there comes further unwelcome interposition. Send 'alongst at the first convenience,' that is to say, the go-between who is to furnish me with an excuse for hauling down my colours. Well might Cromwell himself be struck with the ' unusualness ' of this correspondence, punctuated as it was with irruptions of light cavalry and interludes of artillery fire. But he was still, for his own part, ' in a coming-on disposition ' also. One can trace some temper, indeed, in the opening words of his reply : ' You will give me leave to be sensible of delays out of conscience of duty ' reads to us rather like a Teazle-ish ' Damn your sentiments !' than the soft answer that Carlyle twisted it into. But resentment about the desperate doings p. 95. As to the Saturday's having been the very first day of the bombardment, c/. the Christmas Day letter in Mercurhis Politiciis, No. 30, ' the time they played . . . was from Saturday sennight to Wednesday night last '; or the sentence already quoted from No. 31 about ' those 20 [soldiers] which came into the Castle' (certainly not long after midnight on Friday, 13th) ' that very morning we began to batter'; or 'Collections by a Private Hand' (p. 32), which expressly nsmes Saturday, December 14, as the opening day. By the way, the feeble artillery reply from * not above two guns ' says little for Dundas's use of the resources of the Castle. * Cromwelliana's ' list of its ordnance (pp. 98, 99) reads not a little formidable. ' Muckle Megge ' was included, as everyone knows— or ought to know from Carlyle ; and we confess to feeling some concern about those other ladies of uncertain age, '6 brass guns called the Six Sisters,' which seem to have been haled oft" to the Tower of London. ( Weekly Jntelligeiicer, No. 4 — E 622 — and Mercurius Foliticus^ No. 44, p. 712— E 626.) THE FATE OF EDINBURGH CASTLE 209 of the intruders of the early morning was not to be allowed to stand in the way of his gaining the citadel as easily as possible ; and there- fore, calling off the dogs of war for a space, Cromwell stood to his offer to send intermediaries. But there came a hitch. Not a Scot could be found willing to undertake the responsibility of * satisfying ' the queasy conscience of Governor Dundas.* Truly an awkward pause for him, just when he was pining to be released from his Siege Perilous ! And though the intervention of a Sunday gave him a respite, and a snowstorm on the succeeding dayf a prolonga- tion of it, there was none on the Tuesday and Wednesday. The English had come to an end of their diplomatic resources : the ultima ratio alone remained to be tried. During those two days, therefore, the bombardment was resumed. On the evening of the second, Dundas talked weakly of the besiegers granting him, according to the old chivalrous etiquette, a specified time of waiting for relief; Cromwell, not condescending even to notice the proposal, offered him terms there and then ; Dundas straightway consented, and the capitulation was arranged. | It was a curious story, ' inexplicable, save as an instance ' (if one may quote Kingsley again) 'of that fascination which the strong sometimes exercise over the weak,' but open also to those less dis- criminatingly charitable interpretations which Dundas's fellow-country- men freely put upon it. Their language implies that the terror of the name of Drogheda's awful assailant had a good deal to do with the matter. Dundas himself, we have seen, pleaded political affinities ; and on that supposition — the most favourable possible — Cromwell's easy capture of the place was the one solid benefit that accrued to him from the anti-Royalist predilections of which he had had high hopes from Scotland. The prize was of sufficient value, no doubt, to make up for dis- * Very possibly their reluctance to enter the Castle was heightened by doubts as to the reception of any such emissary by those twenty men (Balfour says thirty-five) whom Augustin had added to the garrison. These were said, in the passage about them already twice drawn upon, to be the only soldiers who intended after the surrender to avail themselves of their option to return to their fellow-countrymen; and may be supposed to have been desperate enough patriots to ' loose a pistol ' upon any suspicious envoy coming into the citadel from the English. One ought in fairness to quote a Whitelocke entry (p. 486) — ' That divers of the soldiers who were in Edinburgh Castle were imprisoned after the surrender of it for mutiny and forcing their Governor to yield it up.' But there is no mention of the fact any- where else. t 'Cromwelliana,' ubi supra. 'Yesterday ' (Monday the i6th, i.e.^ 'the snow that fell hid the Castle from us.' There is another glimpse ' of an ancient Winter morning ' fitter for the pen of a Carlyle than for ours. X On Thursday, December 19. The garrison marched out en Christmas Eve. They were allowed all the honours, as ' colours flying, matches lit, bullet in mouth,' and so on : to which their brother Scots can hardly have thought them entitled. Dundas supped that night with Cromwell; and remained in Edinburgh, along with the bulk of his men, rather than place himself * within the danger ' of his compatriots. 14 2IO CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS appointments elsewhere. If he had not won over the Western Army, e.g., by ' papers and other means to save the effusion of blood,' he had at all events snapped up an unconsidered trifle of an Edinburgh Castle by the help of his pen rather than m et arniis; and its posses- sion rid him, as he put the matter himself, of the constraint which * did tie up your Army to that inconvenience, that little or nothing could have been attempted [elsewhere] whilst this was in design.' CHAPTER III. STIRLING THE CAPITAL OF 'FIFE'— CROMWELL AGAIN AVOIDS A DIRECT ATTACK — DISPOSITION OF HIS TROOPS IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN COUNTIES — SCOTS ONFALL AT LINLITHGOW — ENGLISH REBUFF AT BURNTISLAND — ATTEMPT UPON THE FORDS ABOVE STIRLING. BY the end of the year 1650, then, the Scots and Enghsh were ready for each other in good earnest — the latter having their hands free now that the Western Army was extinct and the great citadel of Edinburgh in their posses- sion, while the former were at last ' shut of ' the internal divisions and dissensions that had so lately threatened to lay their whole country open to the common enemy ."^ But they had still to make up for Dunbar as best they could by gathering together a new army. It may have been true that there ' did not appear such a general willingness to rise as was {sic) expected the King's coronation would produce 't — though the Republican critics who said so felt bound also to take note of the Scots' ' pride ' in tracing ' the succession of no kings from Fergus his family.':}: And it may also have been true * It must have occurred to the reader, e.g., that, whatever Cromwell's chance of seizing Stirling had been in September, the place was his almost * for the asking ' a month or six weeks later. There had even been a rumour that, as the result of * the Start ' in the beginning of October, * all the forces except 500 were drawn from Stirling' {Weekly Intelligencer, No. 5, E 615). That was wrong, of course ; yet when Leslie marched north in the end of that month he left, as we have seen, little over 4,000 men at headquarters. Surely there was Cromwell's chance, shortly after he had returned from Glasgow for the first time, even though he had then begun to blockade Edinburgh Castle and to tell off parties for the subjugation of moss-troopers and their shellerers. The fact that he made no second move westward at that date helps to some extent to corroborate our previous conjecture that he was content to let Stirling alone while awaiting the upshot of the Scots rivalries. t Mercurius PoUtims, No. 34, p. 566 (E 622). X Ibid., No. 50, p. 813 (E 629). A propos, one can hardly refrain from mention- ing Sir James Balfour's Christmas present to King Charles— his producing, in presence of the Estates of Parliament on December 25, a ' great charter con- taining the tailzie of the crown.' This • Old Monument,' as the Act in Thomson styles it — 'ane evident,' as the Lyon King himself called it — * concerning the en- tailment of the crown of this kiogdom by King Robert de Bruce to the race of Stewarts, his Majesty's ancient predecessors, of the date at Cambuskenncth the 14—2 212 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS that the exhaustion consequent upon ten years' almost incessant levy- ings and warfare had told upon the kingdom's ability to ' get up an army in a month or six weeks,' as ' the Scots heretofore were wont.'"^ But at all events the nobles had gone down into their several shires to raise, where they could, their tenants and vassals ;t Middleton and Huntly were busy about the new levy that had been sanctioned in the Northern counties ; and Cromwell was not going to give them time to come up, if he knew it. Before six weeks of the new year were out, he had tried to effect a landing in Fife, and been beaten off ; and tried also to circumvent the Scots by crossing the Forth above Stirling, only to be foiled by the rigours of the season. The fact that simultaneously he merely ' gave a strong alarm ' to that town, instead of striking direct at it with his whole force, may partly have been due to the increased strength of the place, which the Scots had had ample time to bring about in three or four months. But it is, possibly, also to be explained by reference to some of those strategical con- siderations which have already been gone into in the first chapter of the preceding Book, and others which were put before Cromwell at the time in a memorandum to be found in the ' Milton State Papers.'^ And his endeavours to turn the flank of the Scots' central position, interesting in themselves and in the light of the passage quoted below, have this further element of importance — that they foreshadowed thus early the whole course of the next half-year's campaigning. In setting about them, Cromwell was hampered by no regard for those formalities about winter quarters and what might be called a close time, that were so punctiliously observed by the professional soldiers of the Continent. Just a twelvemonth before, as he himself wrote, the English Parliament had ' supposed your army ' to be thus fifteenth day of the month of July in the year of our Redemption one thousand three hundred twenty-six, which the said Lyon King of Arms by his care and diligence did find out, he being abroad many years since, and hath faithfully preserved till now,' may really have had a good deal to do with reawakening the national sentiment in favour of Charles. It invoked names that were names to conjure with. * Mercurius Politicus, No. 43, p. 692 (E 626). + Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii., p. 629. + P. 64. The memorandum, which is anonymous and seems to have been brought under Cromwell's notice in a letter from a Mr. Chidley in February, says — ' As to besieging Stirling, it will be to little purpose until ye have also a special strength on the other side of the river as well as on this, that you may both hinder them of intelligence as well as provisions ; otherwise they will weary you out, having no shelter, and they well accommodated, as first ye had proof of such wants at Edinburgh and Leith before the battle of Dunbar : But once getting on, both sides of Stirling, and hindering their passage and gathering from the north, ye may speedily get Stirling.' After six months' experience of the difficulties of the position, Cromwell arrived at the same conclusion as his nameless adviser: the sentence in the very last 4€tter he wrote from Scotland, as to the impossibility of coming to grips with the Scots ' unless we had had a commanding army on both sides of the River of Forth,' fully endorsed the other's warning about the need of * a special strength ' on the far side of the estuary. THE MARRIAGE-RATE GOES UP 213 hibernating and resting in the County Cork ; and had been rather surprised, apparently, to find ' your forces have been in action ever since the 29th of January.'* In the bleak climate of the East of Scotland, at the season * When Phcebus gies a short-lived glow'r, Far south the lift, Dim-darkening thro' the flaky shower Or whirling drift,' Cromwell ' refreshed his men ' for no longer a period of time than on the mild, humid seaboard of South-west Ireland. How did he 'keep his Yule' in Edinburgh, one would like to know ? There was that supper on Christmas Eve, for one thing, * to meet ex-Governor Dundas '; and probably next morning the Colonel * sat under ' Mr. Stapyltonf with his captors. Meantime Cromwell's men, we know, had during the last month or two been taking unto themselves wives from among ' divers of the Scots women '| — who were all in due course, let us hope, put * on the strength ' before the Ironsides and their comrades got the route for England. Perhaps the marriage-rate went up to an abnormal figure about Hogmanay, and the skirling of the pipes — which music would appear not to have been forbidden by the Puritan sumptuary ordinances — was heard more constantly than ever around the Tolbooth and the High Church. But to revert to matters more strictly pertinent. Cromwell's mind was at all events pretty well at ease for the present about one aspect of the military outlook. He held the * passes ' in sufficient force, that is to say, to guard against a possible Scots inroad across the Border. Even before the suppression of the Western Army some small body of his forces had found its way into Nithsdale;§ and whether those ' dragouns ' remained at Sanquhar or not, the district was under the sway of a large detachment that had afterwards advanced from Carlisle and occupied Dumfries.il That these over- ran the country thoroughly may be gathered from their having captured and garrisoned Kenmure Castle,1I in the remote New Gal- * Letter cxxx. in Carlyle. t Cf. elucidation of Letter cxlix. ::: Carlyle : Gardiner : Sir Walter Scott. The grandmother of Reuben Butler in the novel was a young woman of the burgh of Dalkeith, if we remember rightly. The historians' authority is Mercurius Politicus, No. 27 (E 619) — ' from Edin- burgh of the 1st' December. 'Now let me give you an observation that our English lads and Scotch lasses begin to mingle gear very orderly, so that there is scarce a day but the bagpipes are heard at a marriage.' § Thomson's 'Acts,' vol. vii., p. 285 — report anent the Earl of Queensberrie's losses through ' the English in November, 1650 years, having put ane garison of dragouns in the castle of Sanquhar.' II • By Letters from Carlile, Decemb. 25 ' (bound up with the articles of tht ' rendition ' of Edinburgh Castle in E 620), which put the strength of the detach- ment at 'about i,ooo horse.' ^ Ibid. The letters mention that the • Cavalier lords and gentlemen ' of the district dispersed and ' went to their homes ' ; and « Robert, Lord Kenmore ' 214 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS loway region, and occupied Kirkcudbright also. At the latter place they rejoiced to find themselves in possession of 'a good haven within six hours' sail of Ireland.'"*^ Let it be recalled that the English leaders had pretty constantly in mind the possibiHty of their finding it expedient to summon assistance from Derry or Carrickfergus : one of the last letters that we know of Cromwell's having written from Scotland, indeed, named some scheme of bringing over supplies from Ulster. We have seen that Ayr was a place they had had in view as one link in that chain of connection with their comrades over sea ; but none can say whether the garrison that was certainly put into the seaport in December remained theref permanently, or was withdrawn some months before Cromwell himself left Scotland. Apart from outlying garrisons, |: however, it is certain that a large force was maintained in Hamilton as the headquarters of the Crom- wellians in the west of Scotland. All, therefore, was fairly secure against the Scots marching for England by way of Carlisle. Rumours of their intending to do so were already rife among the English : two consecutive documents in the ' Milton State Papers ' may be taken as specimens of the intelligence on that point which reached Crom- certainly put his name to the ' articles concluded and agreed upon ' at the sur- render of his Castle. But that did not prevent his brother's leading some 150 'great-hearted gentlemen' northwards to Stirling a week or two afterwards {'Milton State Papers,' p. 48). Which of these two Lochinvars it was that joined Glencairn's rising in the Highlands four years afterwards, we have not made it our business to find out ; but he and his ' runlet of strong waters ' across his saddle, ' which they call Kenmore's drum,' cuts a sufficiently entertaining figure. (See a quotation from Mercurius Politicus contained in the 'Military Memories of John Gwynnc ; and an Account of the Earl of Glencairn's Expedi- tion ' — Edinburgh, 1822 — p. 209 of the volume ; and see also the 'Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' vol. ii., p. 378, for the old Earl of Ancram's chuckling over the description.) * Mercurius Politicus, No. 31, p. 513, E 621. Cf. also No. 32 (p. 528) for Hacker's capture of a ship at * Kilcowbrey ' — in reference to which the II eekly Intelligencer^ No. 4, p. 32 (E 622), uses a frequent and very odd phrase of those days by mentioning how she was ' laden with provision both for life and death.' t It is well known, indeed, that Ayr was one of the places where Cromwell built a fort and maintained a garrison during the whole of his ' usurpation.' But whether or not his men occupied the place continuously from the morrow of Hamilton fight, is uncertain. Some of them certainly were there in the end of February or beginning of March {Mercurius Politicus, No. 41 — E 626) ; but very probably they v/ere drawn off when the rest of the west country garrisons were evacuated two or three months later. X 'At this time ' (evidently the beginning of 1651) 'the English had garrisons,' according to one James Burns, ' at Douglas, Evendale Castle in Strathern ' (meaning Strathavon, no doubt) and ' Kilmarnock.' (' Memoirs,' pp. 18, 19, con- tained in Maidment's ' Historical Fragments relative to Scottish Affairs, 1635- 1664' — Edinburgh, 1833.) Of their occupation of the first and last of these places we shall hear again ; as also of others where we know them to have had detached parties — Eglinton ' near Yrwin ' e.g., and Carnwath, and Boghall over against Biggar. We may take it, in fact, that in the early months of 165 1 the Cromwellians had almost as secure a hold upon the counties of Renfrew, Lanark, Ayr, Dumfries, and the south-west — scattered though their garrisons were — as upon the more easterly shires south of the Forth. PLUCKY DEFENCE OF LINLITHGOW 21S well in the very beginning of the year. One was a letter from a spy^ giving details as to a Royalist rising that was being plotted in England, in order to co-operate with an invading expedition detached from the main body of the Scots army and sent southwards via Carlisle ;* the other a despatch! from his commander at Hamilton, Colonel Robert Lilburn — as to whose antecedents and private affairs the reader may satisfy his curiosity, if he will, from CarlyleJ — men- tioning this same invasion project, but giving it as his belief that the Scots would first sweep the Hamilton garrison out of their way if they could. We shall see what came, in the long-run, of the contem- plated Cavalier rising against the Commonwealth in England itself ; and may as well state, here and now, that the English eventually realized * the vanity of that report which hath been so often noised, that the Scots had two armies, the one to attend the motion of my Lord General, the other to march for England.'§ But it is evident that memories of 1644, when the blue bonnets || had come over the Border in ' a deep storm of snow ' which, says Young Cambusnethen, ' made them march to the bran of the legs'H — and of 1648, 'when England was much more unsteady than now,'"^* and the Hamiltons' invasion threatened it with the release of Charles I. — kept the English on the qui vive, as we see, throughout the South-west of Scotland. Whatever Cromwell's own views may have been as to the tidings which reached him from these different sources, it is probable that the activity of his opponents in quite another quarter gave him the hint to take the offensive again. Not for another four or five months were they in a condition to menace Hamilton in force ; but Linlithgow lay more nearly ' within their danger,' and Old Hansel Monday was barely past ere the first of their attempts upon its garrison was made. In the small hours of Saturday, January 11, a party from Stirling, variously stated to have numbered 800 and 2, 000, ft beat up the English quarters in that town, but were repulsed by its alert and valiant garrison. 'It was,' says the contemporary news- paper writer's account of the affair, ' the most tempestuous night that ever I think I knew in my life for snow and wind ;' but even those well-chosen weather conditions did not bring about the surprise and capture of the place. Cromwell retaliated by getting ready for the * ' Milton State Papers,' pp. 49, 51. Cf. Whitelocke's 'Memorials,' pp. 486, 490, 491, 493, etc. t Ibid., p. 48. Ij: Elucidations of Letters xxxix., Ixi., and clxviii. § Weekly Intelligencer, No. 29 (E 637), under July 19, 1651. li For the seventeenth-century use of that name, see Mercurius Politicus, Nos. 7 (E 608), p. Ill ; or 12 (E 610), p. 178. We may come across the variant ' blew- caps' presently. H 'Memorie of the Somervilles,' ii., p. 278. ** Letter clxxx. in Carlyle. ft Mercurius Politicus (No. 33 — E 622 — 'from Edinburgh of the 14th ') names the smaller number; 'Letters from Roundhead OfHcers,' p. 5 (Bannatyne Club publication), the larger. 2i6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS expeditions to east and west of Stirling mentioned already. Just a fortnight afterwards, 120 waggons* of provisions were forwarded to Linlithgow, which were certainly not intended merely for the refresh- ment and entertainment of the garrison after its plucky defence. They contained sustenance for the whole army — eight days' rations for the infantry and ten for the cavalry, horse and man. But they were not drawn upon so soon as had been originally intended. The inclemency of what was pronounced to be a ' very stormy snowy season,'! led to the postponement of the general advance at the time first fixed for it — Monday, January 27.I Some sort of an 'alarm ' was, indeed, given to Stirling at that time ;§ but it can have been no more than a reconnaissance by a large forage-party — even if it did keep the defenders of the town ' up in arms all night ' || — and the westward march of the bulk of Cromwell's army was reserved for the following Tuesday, February 4. In the meantime there had been a ' design on Fi/e-side,' the secret history of which would be worth writing if one had all the materials for it. That the objective was Burntisland ;1I that some 1,500 men, or over, were embarked for its capture ; that no less a person than one George Monk was the military head of the expedition ; and that he and his armament sailed back the way they had come after ' much ado to get clear of the shore ' — these are points well ascertained, and perhaps worthy to be enlarged upon by-and-by. But what of the inner history of the prospect? What of English expectations from the help of friends within the town, who might silence its guns and give them possession of the ' Key of Fife '** unmolested ? That * Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 6 (E 622) under Monday, February 3 ; A Perfect Account, No. 4, p. 27 (E 623). t Mer. Pol., No. 35, p. 570 (E 623). % Perfect Account, p. 27. § Mer. Pol., No. 36—' Edenb. Feb. i.' |i Ibid., No. 35, ubi supra. IT There is no sign, for the present, of Cromwell's having been guided by the counsel of his anonymous strategical adviser (' Milton State Papers,' p. 62) as to the most vulnerable points along the Fife coast. The memorandum scheduled ' Inverkething, Aberdour, Pettyturre (or Kinghorne Harbour) and Anstruther (or Craill neare adjoyning) because there are iles in the sea, or river mouth of Forth, foregoing all these.' Quite a Sphacteria-archipelago, when one does think of it, all along — from west to east Inch Garvie, Inch Colme, Inch Keith, and the May. But the first was not available for a landing, as the memorandum -writer seems to have supposed ; and the two last lay perhaps rather too far off-shore for the pur- pose of the English. Yet they can scarcely have held Inch Colme in the same awe as did those piratical compatriots who, according to the Rev. William Ross, once re-named its saint ' St. Qualm ' for the terrors he had brought upon them. ** So Burntisland was called somewhere in the English news-letters ; and Charles II. as good as endorsed the compliment if it was true that he wrote enjoining on its defenders ' a vigilant care of that place, saying that if my Lord General's forces should but once get on that side of the water he feared his whole kingdom was utterly lost.' — A Perfect Account^ No. 23 (E 632) by 'letters dated the 4th ' June. The same issue of that paper, by the way, dubbed Charles ' the King of Fife, for he hath not any county so considerable.' ENGLISH REBUFF AT BURNTISLAND 217 there had been some such treachery afoot is almost certain. Other- wise the affairs of the ' Bailyeis of Bruntyland ' would hardly have cut the figure that we find them do in the records of the time. Almost every contemporary Scottish writer mentions them in a way that tends to corroborate the assertion of one* — that, on this occasion, ' it was thought the chief men in Burntisland were corrupted ' by the English and ready to betray the town. Nicoll,t to be sure, only mentions the Bailies' being suspected — like Dundas — after the place had been surrendered to Cromwell six months later, and tells of their imprison- ment therefor. But in the interim suspicious circumstances had been accumulating — colloguings with the already compromised Johnston of Wariston, altercations with the military commandant of the placej • — which certainly lend colour to the other writer's story. According to the latter authority, indeed, the English desisted from their attempt in part because they found their hopes of the co- operation of furtive auxiliaries within the town were not going to be realized. The narratives about the expedition which have come down to us from the attacking side§ do not throw any hght upon that point at all. If any secret understanding had been come to with the civic authorities of the burgh, the English accounts say nothing of it. Neither ' Lieutenant-Colonel Mason and Lieutenant- Colonel White . . . from aboard the Prosperous Mary,' nor 'Captain Anthony Young ... on board the President,'' mentions any such thing ; and the deprecatory tone of their several despatches — if that be anything to go by— rather suggests that the expedition had relied solely on its own efforts and the effect of a surprise. They tell how those two vessels || and some other ships, convoying a big * ' Collections by a Private Hand,' p. 33. + 'Diary,' p. 48. X Balfour, iv., pp. 250 and 264. There is a ' report anent ' these * Bailyeis ' minuted in Thomson's ' Acts ' (vi., pt. ii., p. 643) which would have thrown some light on the facts if the text of it had been preserved. § Three or four lines in Merctirms Politicus (No. 36 — E 623) comprise all that the London news-letters deigned to tell of this abortive affair ; but luckily for us, the reports of the three naval and military officers named in the text have been preserved in the ' Milton State Papers ' (pp. 57, 58). The Private Hand is our sole Scotch authority— his brief entry may as well be quoted in full. It is wrong, by the way, as to the date : Merciiriiis Politicus, if it does nothing else, fully corro- borates Captain Young and the others on that point. On pp. 32, 33, of the ' Col- lections ' then, we read: — 'Tuesday, Jan. 18, the English embarlced, at Leith, 1,500 men in boats to take Burntisland ; Monk had the charge. It was thought that the chief men in Burntisland were corrupted. As soon as the boats were per- ceived, they fired the beacons in Fife and gathered the country. The seamen in Burntisland went to the guns, and fired them against the boats and some ships. They, feaHng all was not right, returned ; meanwhile a great storm rose, which put them in hazard.' The italics are ours. I! One contains with difficulty from cracking patriotic but ungallant jokes about the name of the President's not-so-prosperous consort. The President herself — •called after the ' arch -regicide ' Bradshaw — was the vessel that had brought Cromwell over from Ireland early in the preceding year. We may hear of her Again, but meantime should remark that she was back ' on the Irish station ' — as 2i8 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS flotilla of boats,* stood across the Firth from Leith late in the after- noon of Wednesday, January 29 ; and how the Fi-esident frigate bore up for Burntisland Harbour and gave both broadsides to the batteries that were evidently in position on the quays ; and how — she having thus drawn the fire of the lumbering ordnance of those days, which took whole quarter- if not half-hours to re-load — all was in trim for her consorts' successfully covering the landing of the ' commanded parties ' in the boats, but the leading ship ' bore round and stood off again,' when 'just upon the harbour within shot— and less — of any guns they had fired ' from within it ; and therefore lost the chance to rake the batteries once more ; and seems to have failed to answer her helm, and come parlous near fouling the hawse of ' the rest ' that were ' fairly following her.'t And the breeze freshened to half a gale:]: at least; and night fell, and the beacons§ of the Scots, blazing ruddy through the darkness, showed that a surprise was out of the question, even had wind and tide permitted of a second venture. So the ships weathered Kinghorn Ness as best they could^ one would put it nowadays — by July of this year ( Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 27 — E 633). One would like to think she had been at the blockading of the valiant rover, Prince Rupert, in Kinsale Harbour, and was destined to play her part in Blake's great sea-fight at Vera Cruz afterwards ; but the information requisite for rounding a period with such flourishes is a-wanting. ^ The reader may remember the requisitioning of .Scots fishing boats for the same service, four months before. In the interim the English had improved upon such means of transport ; for now we read of ' many shallops and flat-boats ' as having been provided ' to carry the war over the Fife ' {sic). — Weekly Intelligencer, No. 5 (E 622), under Monday, January 27. Cf. also a letter from Loudoun to King Charles, in the 'Ancram and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. 345. But even these craft — evidently just such as are sung of in the fine old stave of * Hearts of Oak,' a propos de Boulogne — were not the final ones ; and the English ' intelligencers ' were presently sighing for the arrival of ' our boats . . . which are making at London and Newcastle ' [Mercurius Politicus, No. 38 — February). t We follow Captain Anthony Young mainly, and have been forced to adopt a purely conjectural reading of our own in one of the sentences quoted above — printed in the original as ' within shott, and lose {sic) of any the gunes they feired.' A student of the characteristics of the two Services might find worse sport than in collating Young's narrative with that of the military officers. The latter corroborate the Captain, indeed, as to the unhandy behaviour of ' the ship that sailed in the van '; but seem partly inclined also to explain the whole misadventure by the fact that ' Coll. Monck being in a smale boate could by no means come aboard to us.' Evidently the afterwards Duke of Albemarle did not as yet trust himself ultra crepida7n, but left the arrangements for the actual landing to others while pro- posing to head it himself. By the way, 1,500 must have been a moderate com- putation of the total force, since the ships alone, apart from ' all the small vessels,*" carried 1,200. X ' Much wind,' says Captain Young : ' a great storm,' according to the land- lubber of a Private Hand. § Lieutenant- Colonel Mason's report ; * Roundhead Officers,' p. 6 ; the Private Hand, ubi supra; the Weekly Intelligencer, No. 7 (E 623), under date Monday, February 10. ATTEMPT UPON THE FORDS ABOVE STIRLING 219 and rode out the night under the lee of it,* while the boats parted company and pulled for the Lothian shore! /e plus tot possible. Fife was not to be entered in that fashion, it appeared — as indeed this was not the last time that a would-be landing party has found it similarly inaccessible. Paul Jones, we know, would have assailed Kirkcaldy, a century and a half afterwards, 'had not the wind suddenly shifted ' and the red cloaks of the Rev. Mr. Shirra's veteran irregulars looked somewhat formidable to tackle. The case we have just been dealing with, to be sure, may have been no more than a fresh illustration of the usual luck of combined naval and military attempts. The one consolation remaining to the English was that the patriotic gunners in Burntisland had made bad practice : Captain Young says only one shot hit his own ship. But a boat-load or so of 'jollies ' may have been sent to the bottom without our hearing of it. There remained to be tried another way of access into Fife, if we may for the nonce give to the name the more extended significance with which — meaning thereby the country on the left bank of the river, as well as of the Firth of Forth — the EngHsh constantly used it. I The invaders had, in fact, just the same choice of routes as lay before Alan Breck Stewart and David Balfour in the romance. Like that engaging brace of comrades, they could not get over Stirling Bridge, and therefore had the option of crossing the Firth, where and how they could, or creeping round by the head-waters of the river, through ' Kippen and Balfron.' The former plan they had tried without avail; and therefore, just reversing the experience of Mr. Stevenson's fugitives, they fell back on the latter. On February 4, ' about eight regiments of foot and nine of horse ' marched from Edinburgh with this intention, under Cromwell's own command. 'With them,' it was written in a London news-letter, 'we shall attempt going over the river above Stirling, that we may make our passage into Fife.'§ The point aimed at was almost exactly that selected by Mr. Stevenson for his heroes' crossing, as an alternative to the easterly route down-river; for, if not at Kippen itself, the English were ' thinking to have got over at Cardross,' according to * So we may interpret Captain Young's statement that ' we had much ado to get clear of the shore,' and the military officers' mentioning how * we were forced to take to an anker' (not, let us hope, of brandy— though the spelling suggests it). Both despatches are dated January 30— apparently from Leith Roads. t 'We suppose to Preston pands or Musselbrugh,' write Lieutenant-Colonels Mason and White. % In addition to the passage quoted in the text, two or three sentences in different ' Letters from Roundhead Officers ' — pp. 6 and 9 — may be referred to for the present as illustrating this rather confusing nomenclature. § Mercurius Politicus, No. 36 (E 623) from ' Edenburgh Feb. 4.' Cf. the same newspaper's narrative after the army's return — 'our march was directed to- wards the fords over the river ' (No. 37 — E 625). If only for the sake of the crisp place-name, let us suppose the English scout-masters were already aware of that Ford of Frew by which Monk, we believe, led his men to Stirling in the following August {Scottish Review^ July, 1896).' 220 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the Private Hand.* They might probably enough have blundered into Flanders Moss, therefore, had they managed to strike the river — just as they had got bogged among the swamps of Gogar, five or six months before, in trying to make for another crossing of the Forth farther down its course. But they did not, for the present, succeed in penetrating to the country 'back of the Campsie Fells. They reached Linlithgow the first day out, Falkirk — an easy stage — on the second, and Kilsyth on the third, which was Thursday, February 6.t There they stopped to consider further of the adventure, and — having considered it — decided to beat a retreat. It was not that they feared such disaster might befall them as, in that very place, Montrose had inflicted upon the armies of the Covenant at the climax of his amazing career. No : the absence of an enemy was the very circumstance which the English most bemoaned — or so the rhodomontade of one of their war-correspondents gave the London public to understand. According to him, the invaders ' wondered they could hear no news of the enemy, who wondered more at the courage of our army, whom not all the tyranny of winter could keep within their quarters. . . . The afternoon was foul. ... A council of war was called, at which, the difficulties of the design being more fully discovered and the waters found unpassable (which either the extremity of the weather or the coldness of the fear of the inhabitants had turned into ice) it was resolved '| to march for Edinburgh again. But that last ' agreeable pleasantry ' (probably inserted by the letter-writer's editor in Cornhill) might as a matter of fact have suggested a telling fu quoque to the Scots. For it is evident that the inclemency of the season was the chief deterrent of the English. Small shame to them, to be sure, if it was so. It was ' a very cold frosty night,' that Thursday at Kilsyth, when 'many of the horse, especially of the Major-General's [Lambert] regiment, were forced to lie in the fields ' ; and next morning's forecast of the weather said ' worse expected '§ — which probably means that the ' greasy, fat ' snow-clouds were lowering over the Campsie Fells and Kilsyth Hills. Had the elements been more kindly, one may question whether we should have heard of Cromwell's withdrawing as he did. What though his ' scout-masters ' had ascertained that the Scots were on the alert on the other side of the river ' passes,' and that ' the way to '^ ' Collections,' p. 33. t Itinerary in Weekly Intelligencer, No. 8 (E 624), under February 17 ; or Mer- curius Folitiais, No. 37, p. 595 ; or ' Cromwelliana,' p. 100 ; or ' Letters from Roundhead Officers,' p. 9. The headquarters in Kilsyth are mentioned as having been ' at the late garrisoned house ' — the now ruined Kilsyth Castle, to wit (at that time the property of one Sir James Livingstone) which was so named because Cromwell had quartered in it in October and evidently left a party there ( 796-) And they exacted vengeance for his execution, too, according to the newspapers — which fact, if authentic, may be counted as one of the first illustrations of Oliver Cromwell's right Imperialist activity on behalf of any man that appealed to him in the name of England. For the Weekly Intelligencer (No. 21 — E 629 — p. 166) roundly said that Hamilton's fate ' hath provoked us' to burn Kilsyth House. That, indeed, we don't quite believe ; imprimis, because other news-letters of the time said ' Lady Kelsith ' had courted such destruction of her property— and of '6000I. worth of goods,' cf her own and her neighbours, therein contained — by trying to inveigle Cromwell's soldiers to come over to Charles II. (Whitelocke, p. 493 ; cf Mercurius Politicus, ubi supra. For * Lady Kelsith's' right title, cf Thomson's ' Acts,' vii. 315). Secondly, because Kilsyth or any other of the ' frontier garrisons ' thereaway might very naturally have been destroyed by Cromwell in order to prevent the Scots from 'encroaching' in a district which was now held by one, now by another, of the contending armies. But in another and much more likely way the English do seem to have shown their resentment of the 'affront to the Commonwealth.' The detention of the registers of Scotland for a couple of months is expressly explained by Mercurius Politicus (No. 49, pp. 797, 798) as an act of retaliation for Hamilton's death ; and the seeming threat of a permanent retention of those nationally vital documents 16 —2 244 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS as did not escape* — to captivity, eventually, at Hull. And, whatever the exact scope of the plans nipped in the bud by his Lordship's seizure, Cromwell had just been finding the presence of his Westland garrisons an invaluable check upon designs still farther-reaching. The capture of a ship ' by tempest lately driven into Air and there secured by a party of Col. Lilburn's troopers ' had revealed to him the Earl of Derby's intrigues in Lancashire on behalf of Charles IL; and a week or two later Colonel Lilburne himself, by just such another forced march as had enabled ' Captain Crook of Sir Arthur Hazelrig's regiment of horse ' to seize Lord Eglinton, had reached ' Grenock near Dumbarton ' in time to make captive of ' one Mr. Birkinhead an agent of the royal designers,' and therewith intercept a whole mass of correspondence relating to Cavalier and Presbyterian plots for a rising south of the Border.t must have made the Scots quake lest they paid too dear for what appears to have been only an act of justice. Thus does the chain of circumstances lead us on from the fate of Lord Eglinton to that of the registers — as to which latter affair, he who wants later particulars should consult the letters of June 3 in Mercurius Politicus, No. 53 — E 632; Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., p. 686 (June 6) ; and ' Collections by a Private Hand,' p. 38. * The story goes (in the ' Memoirs of James Burns,' p. 18) that the eldest son, Lord Montgomer}', escaped being made prisoner at the same time as his father and his brother, Sir James ; and so did not go to prison with them at Hull (Balfour, iv. 298, 299). We are only interested in the statement because the author of it names one ' Holburn ' as having been another member of the party surprised. Less lucky than Lord Montgomery, he was taken ; but — more lucky than Lord Eglinton — he broke prison at Leith. He turns out to have been really a Colonel Cockburn [cf.^ e.g., Nicoll's 'Diary,' p. 51 ; or * Roundhead Officers,' p. 17) ; but how one wishes the misprinted version of the name had been the correct one, and that its bearer had not escaped ! The reason for that remark may become apparent later on, when we show how well out of the road the real Holburn would have been. Of Charles II. it was dryly said at the time that ' it is thought that he could have rather been contented to have spared Argyle ' than Eglinton {Weekly Intelligencer, No. 17, p. 133); and patriotic Scots must similarly have reflected, a few months afterwards, that they would rather have made the English a present of Major-General Holburn than of any nameless Colonel of them all. By the way, the family affair mentioned just above had an interesting and, so to speak, filial sequel. For it was said that the Eglinton episode entailed other consequences than those dwelt upon in our last footnote — that, in fine, the last and most determined of the Scots attacks upon Linlithgow was due to Colonel ' Robin ' Montgomery's desire to avenge his father's and brother's captivity. {Weekly Intelligencer, No. 17, under April 21.) Whether that was true or not, the on-fall was certainly the most resolute and best-planned which the English garrison had had to cope with. How the attacking party chose a very thick, foggy morning (on April 14) ; how they surprised the English ' scouts ' or vedettes ; how they penetrated right into the town, dangerously wounded the Commandant, Major Sydenham, and gave as good as they got before riding off — of these things anyone may read in ' Cromwelliana,' p. 102 ; * Letters from Roundhead Officers,' p. 18 ; Whitelocke, p. 491 ; and the above cited newspaper. t For the results of these two seaboard captures— effected about the beginning of March and reported respectively in Nos. 41 (' from Edenburgh of the 8th ') and 42 (• another of the nth') of Mercurius Politicus — the reader may be referred to Dr. Gardiner's ' History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate,' vol. i. (at, e.g.. ENGLISH WANT OF FORAGE 245 Therefore it is evident that Cromwell had the best of strategic reasons for crossing to this side of what might be called the loins of Scotland, in order to cover and reinforce the garrisons which had been doing such excellent service, and guard against any further attempt from Stirling to raise that part of the country against him. But it is at least equally clear that he had also had in view a north- easterly advance from Glasgow comparable to his marches through Munster. Indeed, the bruit of his intention to set about that ran, you may say, from mouth to mouth. ' It is thought that our attempt will be to ford over to the enemy,' said a newspaper quoted in ' CromweUiana.'"^ * By the next you may hear we are in Fife,' wrote a correspondent of Mercurius Politicus^ which newspapert was thus led to expect ' our thorough march, even into the heart of the enemy's country.' And the Weekly Intelligencer \ elaborately explained how the troops left behind in Edinburgh were to make feints ' upon Fife- side,' that would * serve to keep the Scots army in those parts, whilst we take the advantage by land to gain the Passe, to which purpose my Lord General is marched forward towards Glasco or beyond it, towards the enemy.' But with almost as marked unanimity the newspapers went on to speak of the great hindrance to the execution of the plan. ' Nothing but provisions for horse was wanting to ' such * a thorough march ' as the one spoke of; the other 'feared,' in explaining the Lo^d General's programme,§ that 'horse meat will be the greatest difficulty.' There can be little doubt, too, that shortness of forage really was an insuper- able obstacle, though the Reverend Robert Baillie denied it,|| Over- against his opinion we have to set that of another writer who must p. 406). We are not concerned, of course, with one tragic episode of the history of the year — the trial and execution of the Rev. Mr. Love — which was led up to by the disclosures thus aiighted upon. It must suffice for our purpose to quote a letter from Lancashire of May 19, saying: ' Major General Harrison hath put this county into a peaceable condition (the Lord keep it so )' — A Perfect Account^ No. 20 (E 629). That meant that there was scant hope henceforth, from English Cavalier or Presbyterian, of co-operation with an invading Royalist army from Scotland. * P. 102. t Nos. 47 (from ' Hamilton April 19 ') and 48 (letter of April 28 from Glasgow) —both in E 628. X No. 18 {ibid.), under Saturday, April 26. § One cannot but think, by the way, that even two and a half centuries ago a man in Cromwell's position may have owed the press a grudge for its indiscreet frankness about his intentions, and chances, against the enemy. He was pur- posely guarded and reticent in his own despatches to the Speaker, even though he knew each was edited before being made public — cf. Letter cxvi. , ' if the enemy did not know it, I should have held it impolitic to have writ this.' Such caution was not observed by the pressmen of the period. 11 Letter of ' May 3rd Saturnday.' * The enemies' motion from us was on no want, for contrary to all expectation they found provisions hereabout both for foot and horse which we and they conceived might have lasted them longer.' — * Letters and Journals,^ iii. 166. 246 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS have known much better what were the needs of the Army. Cornet John Baynes wrote from Glasgow"'' that * want of provision both for horse and man will very shortly urge us to a remove. . . . Little action can be thought of this month yet, for there is not anything on the ground to enable and encourage either army to the field.' Now, that Roundhead officer had, when keeping up a private correspondence with his brother, no such reason to invent excuses for inaction! as there might have been in the case of the newspapers, supposing them (though they really deserve a good word for their veracity) to have been 'as false as a bulletin,' or an American ' ink-slinger' of our own day. The Cornet's witness, therefore, quite satisfies one upon this point. Instead of pushing on for the Fords of Frew, then, Cromwell and his men may be supposed to have spent their time, while at Glasgow, in ransacking Clydeside for forage. How they employed themselves otherwise, on the day devoted to a conference 'at Cromwell's lodging 'J between him and his staff, of the one part, and some ' eight ministers' of the other, Carlyle§ may be left to tell. That authority, by the way, gave a too perfunctory glance at another incident of the English sojourn in the city. He writes of 'some foolish town riot,' 'some quarrel of their own among the Glasgow Bailies ... at the very time of Cromwell's removal.' The facts of the matter were that the citizens had, for peace' sake, appointed a ' Committee of the Com- monalitie' to collect and hand over the cess which the English periodically levied in Glasgow— from their Hamilton headquarters, we suppose — and that the magistrates objected to the burgesses thus tamely bowing the knee to the alien and invader.|| Cromwell's troops therefore acted less disinterestedly and im- partially than Carlyle supposed in putting down the disturbances that had come about. But these are matters of subsidiary interest : one's main concern is with the scarcity of forage which stood in the way of * April 25 ('Letters from Roundhead Officers,' p. 19). f Complaints about the Army's not taking vigorous measures seem to have been rife in London, if we may judge by the rejoinder of a writer in Mercurius Politicus, No. 47 (E 628) — dated as of April 9, but probably the 19th, from Hamilton. 'We are as willing as you that the work were done here; I wish there were not too much unbelief and an over-hasty spirit appearing both in you and us. The Lord accomplishes all things in His own time.' • % Which was presumably 'at Minto's,' as on a later occasion, three months after- wards. By the way, an agreeable Glasgow place-name must not be overlooked, occurring as it does in NicoU's statement that, when an English detachment requisitioned supplies in Glasgow after Hamilton fight, they had ' thair mayne gaird in the Gorballis beyond the brig ' ('Diary,' p. 37). § ' Second Visit to Glasgow.' The quotations there may be supplemented by Balfour, iv., p. 298; 'Collections by a Private Hand,' p. 34; and Me r cur t'us Politicus^ No. 48; Perfect Account, No. 17; and Weekly Intelligencer, No. 19 — all contained in E 628. According to Balfour, Cromwell hurried away from Glasgow for fear lest his whole army might be charmed away from him by the voice of those subtle Presbyterian charmers. II Baillie, iii., pp. 161, 162. THE DESIGN SPOILT BY THE SCARCITY 247 Cromwell's trying a bold move ' even into the heart of the enemy's country.' As we formerly lamented (always from the point of view of my Uncle Toby) the illness which kept him from achieving such a march a month or two before, so we may grieve over this later deterrent. For we trow he would not have given up the idea simply because it was said the Scots had told off part of their forces (supplementing the Gregara irregulars, we suppose) to guard the fords of the Forth,* Nor is it likely that he paused because there had come premature tidings! of Middleton's already being at Stirling — or Perth, at the farthest — with the whole of his reinforcements for the Scots main body. Later and apparently more accurate news reached Cromwell ere he left Glasgow, to the effect that the troops which had marched in to the Scots headquarters from the North were only the avant- coureurs of the rest, and not 2,000 strong. So Charles's army was not by then augmented to the same extent as when Cromwell was next able to take the field : there was still time to have tried such bold interposition between the main body and the northern levies as would have saved the English what they experienced later in loss of ground gained and weeks of monotonous manoeuvring. It is in- credible that Cromwell would have thrown away the opportunity, had he seen his way to supporting the necessary force of cavalry in the open country for the time requisite. It argues powerfully that he was hard put to it in that way {pace Baillie) when we find him hurrying back to Edinburgh;!: to receive supplies from his fleet. The authority just referred to was correct enough in the context of a passage previously quoted. Cromwell's departure from Glasgow this time was ' hastie,'§ and ' it was packets from Edinburgh or England the day before that ' occasioned it. But the contents thereof were unknown to the minister ; they evidently only told ihat a fleet of transports and commissariat ships were enter- * In the beginning of March, it had been rumoured that Massey was given a ' charge to impead the Lo. Generall's forces coming over the fords above Stirling ' {A Perfect Account^ No. 9). A later report was that the Scots ' had a rendezvous of their southern forces upon Monday [April 21] and did send a party to the fords above Stirling ' {Mercurius PoHHcus, No. 48 — ' from headquarters at Glasgow of the 23 of April'). t Weekly Intelligencer, No. 16, under April 14 ; or Mercurius FoliticMS, Nos. 45 (p- 730) and 47 (p. 758). These rumours were corrected later as mentioned in the text — by the letter ' from headquarters at Glasgow of the 23rd of April ' in No. 48 oi Mercurius Foliticus, e.g. — Middleton 'is not yet come up, though our former intelligence said he was ; but there are about 1,500 men lately come from the North.' In its earlier reports (at p. 730, e.g.) this last newspaper was evidently going by the very information that had been laid before the Scots Parliament, re 'a roll of 8500 foot which Middleton writes he is sure of from the north ' (Balfour, iv. 272— the one bit of news we have from Scottish sources about that all-important augmentation of Charles's army). + Where he arrived on May 2 (Perfect Account, No. 18, p. 140). § Even though he does seem to have drawn off along a comparatively round- about route, * by Carnwath ' (Baillie, i., p. cviii). 248 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ing the Firth of Forth with much needed supplies.* Explain the fact as one may, it is evident that the cargoes borne into Leith Roads by Deane's large fleetf a month before had not sufficed for the require- ments of the troops — a further proof of the urgency of which is to be found in a letter from Leith of May 20, mentioning how * for horse provisions there hath also already arrived since the 5^^ forty odd sail of ships with hay, oats, beans, etc. 'J It is quite possible that, when thus furnished once more with necessaries, the English would after no long delay have taken the weary westward road again, and struck off at Kilsyth to try the venture so often referred to. Since it is expressly mentioned in the letter last quoted from that they were then already storing spare pro- visions in Blackness Castle and Linlithgow, they might have anti- cipated the arrangements of a later time when 'all things were preparing § to carry a month's provisions, having our magazine at ' the former place. Moreover, the show of an imminent landing in Fife had, it would appear, been serving their turn well enough to warrant * Weekly Intelligencer, No. 20, under date May ii — 'By letters from Scotland it is certified, That our army was no sooner returned but the London fleet with provisions came safely to Leith conducted by the Lilly frigate ; so that now new supplies are come in for our horse. ' Another item bearing on this really very material point is Whitelocke's entry under May lo (p. 493) — ' that if it were not for the provisions that come out of England, the army could not subsist, either man or horse.' Even thciburning of ' a reek or two ' (some ' fifty load ') of hay — cf. Weekly Intelligencer^ ubi supra, and in No. 19 under May 6 ; and collate * Collections by a Private Hand,' p. 34 — seems to have been felt as a serious loss by the commissariat department. The ' small sea-surprisals ' of the period, too, involved some intercepting of English supplies. * The Scots,' said our useful Weekly Intelligencer, No. 19, 'have seized upon one of our new boats being laden with oats ; but our men who were in her with a file of musketeers did run the boat on ground and so escape.' This was very possibly (the dates agreeing so far as one can make them out) the ' floyte ' of which the Scots made mention as having been captured ' on the coast of England ' with a cargo of provisions and brought into Pittenweem by 'one Causton that had a letter of mark' (Balfour, iv. 296). f Whether our old friend the President frigate had left the Firth of Forth after the Burntisland fiasco, and returned again when Admiral Deane came, we know not. But in this month of April she had been distinguishing herself by capturing Scots vessels — one *a prize laden with wines, tobacco, and strong waters, etc., which was bound for the north of Scotland,' the other * called the Fortune of Leith ^ worth about 8 or 9000 1. ' which ' came from Rotterdam and had in her about twenty officers, English and Dutch ' {Mercurius Politicus, Nos. 45 and 46, letters respectively of April 5 and 12). According to the Weekly Intelligencer the taking of this latter ship involved a personal loss for Charles II. not unlike that sustained by Cromwell through the capture of the John ; for the Fortune was said to have been bringing over ' a new suit for the Scots King.' In the matter of smaller prizes, Scots and English seem to have had about equal luck ; now * three or four Scotts and Danes vessels ' would be brought in ('Roundhead Officers,' p. 17), and anon * three north sea Barks ' and ' a bark of Yernmuth ' would be bemoaned as * taken by the Scots and other pyrats' ( Weekly Intelligencer, No. 17, under April 16). There was evidently more variety of cargo than Carlyle's * infinite biscuit ' betokened. X Mercurius Politicus, No. 51 — E 629. § Mercurius Politicus^ No. 53 (E 632), * another of the 3rd ' June. CROMWELL'S RELAPSE 249 the Commonwealth's army in repeating that plan of drawing off the attention of the Scots while operating to more purpose elsewhere. Doubtless because he knew that a feint upon Inch Garvie and the North Queensferry ' sconce ' would be more easily seen through than one delivered where the Firth was wider, Cromwell made no pretence of assailing the Scots in that position,"^ but set his boats to work somewhere lower down the Firth, with results I which, as we see, must have given him good hopes of drawing off a large proportion of the defending army towards that quarter, what time he outflanked the remainder by a swift march upon a far distant point to the west- ward. But again at a critical moment the General's health failed him. All through the month of May he was as ill as he had been in March.:}: And in that interval of his enforced idleness the Scots * A Perfect Account, No. 15 (E 628), by letters of April 12 and 13— ' The design against that fort went not on,' apparently to the disappointment of the letter-writer. But though the English had forced ' the pass ' and captured the Ferry guardship, as recorded antea, they doubtless had good reason to avoid making an attack on the north shore there. For though their ' long-expected boats' had all arrived by now {cf. Mercnrms Foliticus, No. 46, letters of April 12 and 15 ; and Weekly Jntelligencer, No. 16, under April 8, and No. 20, under May II — from which entries one can enumerate the flotilla up to at least 55) ; and though these were formidable ' double shallops ' or gunboats indeed — ' long flat- bottom boats that . . , will carry two pieces of ordnance apiece and 60 men,' said the Perfect Account (No. 10, p. 80) ; yet it is evident there were no crews for them while the bulk of the troops were drawn off" to Glasgow. t ' There aye is watter whaur the stirkie droons,' and the Weekly Intelligencer must have had some grounds for telling the same tale twice, of the Scots ' drawing all the forces they could into a body, amounting to about 6,000 horse and foot ' to oppose a landing. (Nos. 19 and 20 — E 628— pp. 149 and 156.) One day when that happened was apparently about the time when Cromwell had reached Glasgow, the other a week later, on April 27 ; and for the locality Whitelocke and ' Crom- welliana ' speak of ' Burntisland and that way.' One's suspicions are aroused by the latter authority's speaking of ' our men in the boats having made two attempts upon ' that place ; but Whitelocke's summary, to the effect that they only ' made shew,' is amply corroborated by the fact that the total force embarked was much smaller than that employed in January. The Captain Reynolds who was in com- mand seems to have had less than 1,000 men with him, either time ; and the fact that they evidently did ' divert and amuse ' a much larger Scots force showed that these tactics served the purpose of the English on the east well enough to have enabled them — had circumstances permitted — to work round northwards from the west. The ships' names of the period may interest the curious ; under Reynolds's command were the Signet and the Dolphin (the latter of which had bombarde d Leith nine months before, while the former probably answered, in reality, to Cygnet) ; among the vessels that had convoyed the gun-boats were the Peregrine, the Harepink, and the Lily ; and among others riding in Leith Roads ' the Pros- perous Mary ' (which also we know), ' the Pose of Ipswich, the Abraham of Yarmouth, the Prosperous of London.' The Weekly Intelligencer, by the way, had a tale of Scots solicitude about Charles's safety in the event of a landing. Hamilton was said to have commanded their party of 6,000 'who immediately ^ent a message to the King, to desire his Majesty to withdraw farther northward by reason of the sudden approach of the enemy's army. Yet the Marq. Huntly and others would have him to appear personally in the field with the army. This latter he wholly inclines unto.' X The record of his sickness is best preserved, naturally, in * Cromwelliana,' pp. 102, 103. On May 4, only two days after his return from Glasgow, he was 250 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS drew together so large a force* that the complexion of the Campaign was sensibly altered. What would have happened if they had been further reinforced by a contingent of 6,000 Swedes, one need not attempt to guess ; for the rumour of the coming of those latter seems to have been only rumour, and mainly interests us because we owe to it a glimpse of the blockade which Admiral Deane was vigilantly main- taining even in waters so remote as those of the Moray Firth, f But reported 'ill of the stone'; on May 20 tortured by ' five fits of ague,' but ' not sensible that he is grown an old man.' On the last day of the month, he was convalescent enough to be able to vv^alk ' in the garden at his own quarters,' and four days later he ' rode abroad in his coach, but by reason of the ill vapours proceeding from a Scotch mist, soon returned to Edinburgh again.' In the interval between those two bulletins he had written Letter clxxiv. thanking the Council of State for permission to retire to England to recruit, if he thought fit ; and for their sending him Doctors Bates and Wright. We fear it is not in human nature to contain from quoting the contemporary remark that these medical men 'found my Lord General in a good temper' — even though the phrase probably only meant 'favourable condition' [Mercurins Politicus, No. 53 — E 632 — p, 849. The pagination of the newspaper in that and other issues is, by the way, most erratic). The fine flavour of another paragraph in the same Mercurms Politictis has already been tasted in this chapter ; here it is in full: ' I am glad your Doctors are come down, because, though Dr. Goddard is a very able and honest man, yet they will be able with more majesty to overcome my Lord for his health, and will be some stay to the over-workings of his affection to go out to the army too soon.' The garden in which Cromwell took the air was, of course, that of the Earl of Moray's house — one of the southward-sloping pleasaunces of the Canongate. One does not see what sort of garden Cromwell could have had ' at his own quarters,' if, as is said in an Edinburgh legend adopted by Mr. A. P. Melville, he had been dwelling ' in Little's Land, Lawnmarket ' (sketch of ' The Last Scots Parliament,' p. 20 — Perth : Cowan and Co.). * In default of Scots authorities, whose silence on the point has been men- tioned in an earlier footnote to this chapter, we can only go by the English news- letters. One gathers from the information they vouchsafed that Middleton had by about the middle of May brought up a good proportion of his ' roll of 8500 foot ' and a big division of cavalry. For from ten thousand in March the enemy ' on the other side of the water ' were reported to have grown to double that number on May 17 ; and by the beginning of June all the English spies agreed in estimating their opponents' force at 24,000 — exactly two-thirds being infantry, according to what seems one's best informant, the Weekly Intelligencer. (See that newspaper, No. 21, p. 167 — in E 629; and No. 24 — E 632 — under June 9;. and Mercurius Politictis, No. 54 — E 632 — by an Edinburgh letter of June 7.) t ' Some say there be 6,000 Swedes landed at Gormouth, and that Middleton is gone with a party to fetch them up ; but General Deane doth not believe it because he hath three ships riding near that harbour and hath heard of no such thing.' — Mercurius Politicus, No. 52 — E 630 — 'another' of May 24. Gormouth, more correctly spelt Garmouth by Sir Edward Walker when recording Charles II. 's landing there eleven months before, was of- course the little port on the estuary of the Spey. We would we could tell exactly to what other points on the eastern seaboard Deane had told off the vessels of his squadron ; but such other incidents of the blockade as we do come across involve at all events a change of scene from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Tay, or ' Dundee river.' (Mr. Morley Roberts is our authority for saying that sailors to this day speak of the Thames, e.g., as London River : here is a seventeenth-century illustration of that fashion of nomen- clature.) In those waters Deane seems to have kept up with some vigour a nautical war of reprisals upon the Scots. Their seizure of ' a small ketch of ours REPRISALS IN 'DUNDEE RIVER' 251 the increase in the strength of the native"^ armies was in itself a serious consideration for the Enghsh, with or without foreign importations and such accessions of strength as could be brought to Perth and laden with wheat . . . lately surprised by two boats of the Scots and carried to Dundee ' ( Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 28 — E 633 — under June 27 ; and Whitelocke, under June 26) was, we fear, no great set-off to their losses. For, firstly (if we may venture on an amended reading of a vague enough paragraph in Mercurius Poliiicus), ' a small ketch of ours re-took at sea a ship of ours from the bleiv-caps ; and espying another coming (from Holland) with a convoy toward Dundee river, she made in before her. The ship was no sooner entered into the mouth of the river but the convoy left her and hastened back for his own country ; whereupon our men boarded the ship and have brought her into Leith. There were found in her arms, papers and commissions, and some other things' (Letters from ' Carlile, nth June,' in No. 54 — E 632). Under which of the bluffs of what is now the Newport shore shall we picture those bold Southrons as lurking until the cat was away and the coast clear for their swoop upon their quarry ? Still more ruses than they, however, were the crew of a sister-gunboat or ketch whom we know from the Pet-feet Account (No. 25, p. 196 — E 633) to have been ' hovering about Dundee' also. These, according to Whitelocke (p. 495), 'went to seize some boats of the Scots laden with meal. But a Scots frigat coming in to rescue them, fell upon the ketch, who sailed purposely over a shallow place ' (many such off Taymouth !) ; ' and the Scots frigat pursuing her stuck upon the sand. In the meanwhile the English ketch fell upon the Scots boats and sunk them all ' — ' was enforced to drown ' them, says another narrative, ' and only brought away 45 sacks of meal ' {Mercurius Politicus, No. 56, p. 89[). We may perhaps conveniently com- plete the tale of ' small sea-surprisals ' of the period, at all events on the eastern sea- board of Scotland, by referring to ' the Assistance frigot ' bringing in Dutch men-of-war and Flemish merchantmen as prizes {Mercurius Politicus, No. 49, p. 795 — E 628) — exploits which must rather have embarrassed Oliver St. John in liis negotiations with the States General at that time. Balfour has two brief entries in May (iv. 299) re an English ship with biscuit taken by ' a Scotts frigatt' (Murray, master), which was brought 'to the Elie,' and a 'little English prysse ' captured by ' thesse of Kingorne.' The former of these may have been the prize whose unsportsmanlike capture the English rather amusingly related. ' It is certified that a Scotch frigate bearing the English colours made up to a vessel of Yernmuth upon the Frith laden with provisions for the aSrmy, and in the way of pretended friendship did salute her with a piece of ordnance ; which the Willing Mind (for so the English ship was called) was so ready to acknowledge, and so courteous to return the favour, that she too liberally did re-salute her with three great guns at once, having in her but four in all ; whereupon the dissembling Scot taking his advantage did immediately clap her a-board and carried her away ' ( IVeekly Intelligencer, No. 24 — E 632 — under June 5). One would like to think the hero of this exploit was one ' William Simpson of Dysart,' sole representative of the ' Carles' of that burgh, who had letters of reprisal (Balfour, iv. 273) that might have sanctioned the stratagem. But it was more likely a Captain White, whose seizure the English rejoiced in a month later (' Several Letters from Scot- land ' in E 637) because it rid them of ' a great robber on the seas,' and gave them a ship (quite ' a cruiser won from an ancient foe ') that ' had done very much mischief but now may be serviceable to us.' * The proportion of Highlanders among the Scots troops cannot be exactly ascertained from any source ; but one ought, if only as a reminder of Dugald Dalgetty, to remark how the English chuckled at the idea of over a thousand of their foemen taking the field against them armed 'with their more natural weapons . . . bills, bows and arrows and two-handed swords' ('They don't understand thrusting, but they're devils to slice,' evidently. The less modern quotation is from Mercurius Pragmaticus, p. 8 in E 632 ; cf. Mercurius Politicus^ 252 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Stirling by desperate Cavalier refugees* from within the four seas. Good cause had Cromwell and his staff, indeed, to feel thankful that while in unopposed occupation of the western and south-western counties of Scotland that winter and spring, they had improved the time by effecting the captures mentioned earlier in this chapter. For that important strategical advantage was passing away from them ; they were presently in no condition to march bodies of cavalry where they listed throughout Ayrshire and along both shores of the Firth of Clyde; the tables were, you may say, in process of being turned upon them thereaway. All that Cromwell can have done, while so recently at Glasgow, in the way of ensuring that his scattered Western garrisons were as strong and as closely in touch with each other as he could make them, was presently undone by this augmentation of the numbers of the Scots and their 'drawing more and more by Nos. 46, p. 737, and 55, p. 882). Yet one remembers from Clarendon (Book vi., § 73) that in the first army which Charles I. raised against the Parliament there had been ' three or four hundred who marched without any weapon but a cudgel '; and at Carrick-on-Suir the Cromwellians themselves had been glad enough to resort to the Viking artillery of stones (Cromwell's Letter cxvi.). A point equally curious in another way is brought out in this comment from Mercurius Politicus, No. 54 : ' Many regiments of Highlanders were never baptized, and they very fitly confide in these men to carry on their uncircumcised designs.' Not less characteristic of some modes of thought which are scarcely yet, it may be, extinct, was the contrast between the pious thanksgiving that ' the Lord fills his own (the true Christian English) with plenty of good things,' and the fine scorn felt in the same quarter for the Highlanders as ' a people very rude but hardy, living in their own country much on roots such as hogs dig after in England ' {A Perfect Account^ Nos. 18, p. 141, and 22, p. 174). We are not of those who shrink from adopting a classification even so ruthless as that of Mr, Stevenson, when he wrote of the aboriginal clansmen as 'our savages': this was perhaps a 'document' on the subject that he would have welcomed. But at all events these seventeenth century Highlanders had the martial virtues of fidelity and courage — as we have already given the reader to understand he may soon see for himself ; and if ' the running away of the Highlanders ' from Stirling was a fact, as the smug Peifect Account proceeded to relate in its next news-letter in No. 22, the explanation was not the cowardice which that authority no doubt inferred. Everyone knows the Great Marquis's incessant difficulty had been the keeping his clansmen together, when not actually on the scent of slaughter and plunder. Enough, then, of seeing ourselves as others saw us. * This is a point on which there are few sidelights to be had, even from the news-letters. The English ' intelligencers ' told an anecdote or two about the Scots' jealousy of aliens and Southrons, and a ' casuall expression they bear to an Englishman quatenus an Englishman ' — a comment which may serve to illustrate the * ryotte ' about this time at ' Balegarno in the Carsse of Gourey,' where * the common people of the toune woundit and hurt diuersse English commanders ' (Balfour, iv. 270 and 274 ; and Thomson, vi., pt. ii., p. 650). But apart from such ' good copy ' as that — and the ' casuall ' affair reported in Mercurius Politicus^ No. 33 is, when we look into it, the one specimen — the newspapers only specified by name from time to time, some imigri cavalier who had found his way north ; and made such general remarks as that ' the Scottish Court is become now the common receptacle for all (such) fugitives.' Probably the curious student could not get a better idea of the state of matters than by reading a circumstantial pamphlet in E 612 — 'Mutatus Polemo,' the narrative of a turn -coat who had mixed with Scottish Royalists in Edinburgh in the Engagement year. ENGLISH LOSS OF GROUND 253 degrees on this side Stirling.'* The English in their turn were forced to concentrate into one large body at headquarters ; they had to recall to Edinburgh in the beginning of June the bulk of their outlying troops in the Border country, the Merse, and East Lothian ;t and simul- taneously they evacuated Hamilton and Dumfries, even at the cost of throwing open to the Scots Clydesdale and the southern river valleys that converge towards the Solway and Carlisle. It is interesting to trace the successive steps by which this trans- formation was brought about. Even while the English had been at Glasgow in April, they had been warned that a vigilant look-out had to be kept against an enemy not now disposed to let them have things all their own way ; for an affair of outposts somewhere on Clydeside, I and a bit of rearguard skirmishing§ as Cromwell marched back to Edinburgh, indicated the Scots' intention to harass them as opportunity oifered. And a renewal of hostilities soon afterwards in the debateable land about Linlithgow || — with the Scots, this time, as undoubtedly the attacking party — was another manifestation of the temper of Charles and his army. A special leaflet in Vol. E 629 of the King's Pamphlets, telling of ' A Bloudy Fight in Scotland . . . upon the advance of Lieu. General David Lesly and Col. Massie * ' Letters from Roundhead Officers,' p. 24. f Mercurius Politicus, No. 53 (E 632) — letters of June 3 ; Weekly Intelligencer, No. 28 (E 637), p. 221 ; and a leaflet of * Several Letters from Scotland ' in E 637 — from ' Leith 12 of July.' These two last authorities show us how the inhabitants of the countryside set about 'taking the advantage on the removing of our quarters." In one case, ' at a place called Coldingham,' 'they murdered seven or eight people some three or four miles from Alton (? Ayton) as they were travelling towards Edinburgh.' In another case the chief sufferer was the 'captain con- ductor ' of two small drafts of cavalry and infantry marching to the same city — whether Captain Freckleton or his better-complexioned comrade, Captain Blanch, we do not know. ' Near Haddington about 60 horse of the enemy, well accoutred, much endangered, by a sudden falling-upon, the Foot, till the Horse came on which rescued them and slew two or three of the enemy. By that sudden action they got the Captain's sumpter-horse with his clothes and money.' X Letter of April 28 from Glasgow in Meixurius Politicus, No. 48 (E 628). ' The last night 300 of the enemy fell upon a house, one of our out-quarters, and made a sharp storm, but were beaten off.' No local particulars are given there, or anywhere else ; but one rather inclines to think that, in mentioning how * ther wer some skirmishes betwixt the armies at Bothwell Bank ' at the time of Crom- well's July expedition to Glasgow, the Private Hand ('Collections,' pp. 35, 36) was confusing the one occasion with the other. At all events, it is more likely that this ' sharp storm ' was attempted during the earlier visit, than that anything of the kind occurred in the locality the Private Hand mentions at the date which he assigns. For all the encounters that happened betwixt the armies in July were considerably to the north and east of Bothwell. § ' Upon the drawing back of our army from Glasco, a party of the Scots horse scouted forth from Stirling ; against whom a party of ours being drawn out, there were some conflicts.' — Weekly Intelligencer, No. 20 (E 628), under May 11. II ibid.,y^o. 21, p. 168 (by letters dated evidently about May 12). For other martial episodes in the Linlithgow region about this time and a little later, cf. the same newspaper. No. 27 (E 633), under June 30, and the exploit of one ' Corasse Ballantyne,' entered in Balfour, iv. 307. 254 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS towards Glasco ' may or may not have been an amplification* of the newspaper accounts of the latter affair — most likely it was only that, judging by the silence of other authorities. But in any case its pub- lication forms a good landmark for a reader going chronologically into the history of the Scots' * encroachments ' about that time ; since such a ' march westward ' as it perhaps imaginatively described did as a matter of fact come to pass not long afterwards. A body of Scots cavalry presently marched south-westwards from Stirling under ' Robin ' Montgomery, without any such check at a perhaps mythical ' pass called Spaw ' as the ' Bloudy Fight ' broadside nar- rated. And the result of that move was to make the south-western counties too hot to hold any Englishmen. Montgomery achieved, in fact, just what his father had got the credit of meaning to attempt a month or so earlier. To him was entrusted, in a politician's phrase of our own day, the Wakening of the West ;t and he accomplished it thoroughly enough to render Cromwell's Hamilton garrison unten- able and threaten that at Dumfries with annihilation. The English supposed at first he was merely leading a foraging raid ;| and when he quartered in the Lennox § — apparently after a brief dash into Ayrshire II that may be explained by the presence of an already men- tioned English garrison in his ancestral halls — they flattered them- selves no further visitation was to be expected from him. But they were not quit of him then, at the cost of a handful of ' between 40 and 50 of our dragoons ' whom he ' surprised and took as they were in the country gathering their assessment.'H For presently he was on the south side of the Clyde again ; left traces of his passage in a feat accompHshed (as it would seem) by one of his officers on May 19, ' neire Pasley 'f* and a few days later was known to be at Kilmar- nock ' within 30 miles ' of ' Dumfrize,' putting the English Com- * The canards of the press are not a modern invention. Of. Merairins Politicus, No. 35, p. 582, wherein it is written that a contemporary's (the Per- fect Account) circumstantial story of a Scots defeat ' amounts to just nothing.' f It is interesting to note the Cromwellians' disappointment on finding that the Remonstrant Westland party had, from a military point of view, lived in vain, and that the countryside, from Solway to the Firth of Clyde, was ' resolved to rise unanimously' against them. — Merctirius Politicus^ No. 51 (E 629), p. 830; and Alured's letter zibi infra. X Mercurhis Politicus, No. 50, by a letter of May 10. The English accounts of Montgomery's cruelty in carrying off all the provender of the districts he traversed are corroborated in Bailhe (letter to Lauderdale, iii. 170). Military necessity, we suppose, knows no law ; and the Scots at headquarters were not over well -stocked with provisions. § Mercuriiis Politicus^ No. 51 — letter of May 20 from Edinburgh. It Ibid., ' Lithgow ' letter dated May 7, but probably of the 17th. ^ Mercurius Politicus, No. 51, letter of May 20, ubi supra ; Whitelocke under May 26. We have already noted that the Hamilton garrison levied cess through- out the West, or at all events in Glasgow itself ; but cannot name the scene of this surprise. ** Where one ' Lieutenant Bunteine . . . defait a troupe of 60 horse and killed or took prisoner the most of them.' — Balfour, iv. 307, 308. Cf. Weekly Intelli- gencer, No. 24 (E 630), p. 192. MONTGOMERY RE-OPENS THE SOUTH-WEST 255 mandant in the latter town — Colonel Alured — in fear of having to beat a retreat.* But that Montgomery availed himself of the ' open passage through Galloway unto ' Dumfries, through which Alured looked uncomfortably for his coming, seems doubtful : we should rather suppose he kept in touch with Sir Thomas Hamilton of Preston what time that officer, raising the ducal tenantry as best he could, raided! Carnwath j and Douglas and Boghall by Biggar. And * Letter of May 24 from ' Dumfrize in Scotland,' contained in Mercurius Politicus, No. 52 (E 630), and evidently written by Alured, whom that news- paper and others name as having been in command in Galloway. It puts Mont- gomery's force at ' 2 or 3,000 horse.' The English garrison in Kilmarnock {antea, footnote to p. 214) must have drawn off after that Paisley exploit. Alured, like the Okeys and Sexbys and Overtons, was one of the old comrades who fell away from Cromwell in later years. — Carlyle, Letter cxciv. In addition to what has been said about those other recalcitrants in our chapter on The Muster, let us note the Roundhead officers' entries, in June, about 'the great and daily change of officers in the Army' (' Letters,' pp. 27, 28, 31). Heterodoxy, political or ecclesi- astical, was not always the offence : a charge of ' tippling ' was brought home to at least a couple of Cromwell's subordinates. t Burnet's 'Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton,' p. 425 (Edition of 1677); Balfour, iv. 307 ; A Perfect Account, No. 22, * by letters of the 1st June'; Mer- curius Foliticus, No. 53, letters of May 31 and June 5, and No. 56, 'one of the 24 June.' The newspaper narratives usefully supplement the Scottish accounts, which are in general terms : they inform us, e.g., that in one case a militia officer from Cumberland — surely an interesting fact from a technical point of view — was to blame for having 'happened very unadvisedly to turn out his horses to grass, not sending out any scouts ' (or, as it is oddly misprinted, ' Scots '). Likewise the reflection with which they consoled themselves— that ' we shall regain Scotch Gal- lawayes enow for dragoons' recruits,' or remounts — shows how those hardy nags were appreciated even then. The Perfect Account states that the Scots were just too late to intercept '60 wagons we had sent with provisions to Boghall' — a staternent possibly more accurate than the same newspaper's mention of Whalley's expedition to Hamilton as a defiant challenge to the Scots to come on. It might, by the way, have been mentioned earlier that this Sir Thomas Hamilton had had his 'tour ' of Preston — which {cf footnote to Chapter iii.. Book ii. sztpra) stood on the site, we suppose, of the shapely fortalice between Prestonpans village and station — burnt by the English after the battle of Dunbar instead of (curiously enough) before their retreat thither. — Thomson's 'Acts,' vii., p. 98, and appendix, p. 69. X One passage of Mercurius Posticus, uhi supra, we cannot contain from quoting. The Scots ' fell into Cornwarth where a troop of our dragoons were ; they killed 12 and took about 16 prisoners whom they found straggling about in the town ; but those that were in the house gave them a repulse and secured themselves.' The fine old baronial mansion of Carnwath had not then come into the hands of the Lockharts ; but was, we suppose, part of the property which had with the title been made over to Gavin Dalzell on the forfeiture of his father the first Earl of Carnwath. (Balfour, iii. 282; Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 117, 118. 'That valiant Amazon, Mrs. Peirsons,' alias Captain Frances Dalzell, was, we fancy, Gavin's step-sister ' of sorts ' — Mr. Mowbray Morris's Montrose. ) Of the first Earl we have already said something in our preliminary chapter on The Muster ; the reader ought really to follow the after-history of that noteworthy Naseby warrior to the extent of reading Sir E. Walker's account of the treatment vouch- safed him in the Presence by Chiesly and Wariston and the ministers (' " Sir, God I hope will forgive me ; will not you ?" Mr. Wood turned from him in disdain, giving him never a word.' — 'Historical Discourses,' p. 161). It would appear — to return to the subject which has reminded us of that grim seventeenth-century personality — that Carnwath pere was in these months of 165 1 in process of 256 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS though it is expressly mentioned by Burnet how * the enemy kept so good guards and was so strong at Hamilton that he could not fall in there,' the upshot of these recurring losses to the English through captures and casualties in combat was the evacuation of that town. On June i Whalley marched thither from Edinburgh and drew off the garrison under escort of a force large enough to give us an idea of the wholesome respect which Cromwell entertained for Mont- gomery's division.* Alured's apprehensions were realized, too ; just in the nick of time, f as we gather, he abandoned Dumfries; and in the first days of June ' Col. Robert Montgomery, Augustin, and the Laird of Langston Court ' (whoever he may have been) occupied the town. J Their errand was accomplished; and though Montgomery himself, and the German leader of irregulars, certainly were back at Stirling by the end of the month, the expedition had ensured the certainty — which came to be very important strategically — of Crom- well's no longer being able to close the Clydesdale and Annandale route to Carlisle. To be sure, Cromwell had it in his power to ' counter ' by calling up his reserves, under Harrison, to guard Carlisle from the English side.§ But there begins new matter : the movements of that Major- General will concern us in a later chapter. And, to conclude this present one, it only remains to note that simultaneously with their evacuation of the south-west, the English had been hammering in vain at divers points on the Fife coast. A Colonel Lydcot and a boat-party had under cover of night been attempting a garrison there which seems to have been Rosyth ; || Deane had been bombarding enjoying his own again, thanks largely to Charles II. 's personally interesting him- self in his behalf. See an Act ' betuix the E/Carnewath and his sone ' in Thomson, vi., pt. ii. 676 ; and 664 and 678 idi'd. ; and Balfour, iv. 281. * Whalley led eight cavalry regiments out of Edinburgh for this service — ' the General's, the Major General's, Col. Tomlinson's, Twisleton's, Lydcott's, Grosvenor's, Okey's, Alured's.' — Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 25 (E 632), p. 198. The date is given in Mercurius Politicus, No. 54 {ibid.) — letter of June 7. Hamilton 'House' vi^as 'slighted,' by-the-by — the Palace, i.e., dismantled so that it might not hold a Scots garrison. — Whitelocke, p. 495. t ' Most of Col. Alured's regiment and the dragoons with him might have been lost, so lying in the mouth of the enemy.' — Mercurius Politicus, No. 53, letter of June 5. His withdrawal is mentioned in the same number of that newspaper, p. 858. X Carlisle letters of June 1 1 in Mercurius Politicus, No. 54 ; Weekly Intelli- gencer, No. 26. An interesting echo of the rumours which this advance set ring- ing through England is preserved in a Mercurius Scommaticus (for what it is worth — E 633): ' Massy and Montgomery with 8000 men are gone down westward to attempt to break over into the discontented plat of Lancashire. . . . Sneaking ordinaries in London are crowded, and, good Lord, what swearing and whispering is there ! — as if their majestical bird were just at Highgate.' § Cf. Whitelocke, p. 496, under June 23. II ' A strong castle in Fife right opposite to Blackness.' — Mercurius Politicus, No. 52, 'of the 27th May from Edenburgh.' That newspaper allowed in its next issue that it had been ' too previous ' in recording the capture of the place. Of course the weather was too stormy for a landing ; the Fife coast was ' very subject EFFECTIVE FIFE DEFENCES 257 * the Royal Sconce ' — which we take to mean the North Queensferry fort — and ' made about 100 shot for three days together ' to no purpose ;* and ' several alarms ' at Burntislandf may have been mere repetitions of the fiasco of January — since they are only incidentally mentioned, and we know how little we should have heard of the earlier affair but for the fortunate preservation of two ' Milton State Papers.' The one thing the English could congratulate themselves upon in the Firth was that they had found a way to set the Inch Garvie garrison at defiance in forwarding their supplies to their magazine at Blackness. ' Our boats serve to pass our provisions by Inchgarvey. The great ships go next the island and shoot all the while; the boats pass under their wing and receive no harm.'| to' storms at such moments. Apart from weather conditions, the assailants perhaps received such a salute — ' only more so ' — as Lord Lindsay of the Byres, in the novel, was welcomed with at the same place. * Broadside about a ' Bloudy Fight in Ireland ' (E 632), which contains letters from Edinburgh dated June. t Ibid. ; and Weekly Intelligencer, No. 23 (E 629), p. 184 ; and A Perfect Accotmt, No. 22, ' by letters of first June.' The defence of Burntisland had, by the way, been looked to with redoubled care in the interval. During October 4,813 merks had been paid by the denizens of Fife for its ' workes' ; in February a sum by a third as much again was raised from among them for the same purpose, and * a month's maintenance in meal ' for the garrison forms a later item in Balfour's formidable schedule of expenses to which the ' Kingdom ' was put in 1650-51. Special contingents were added to the garrison from Dundee and Perth in the beginning of June ; and Ravens-heuch, or -craig, furnished ' meall ' for them, even as the Dysart collieries had formerly supplied Edinburgh Castle with fuel. See Balfour, iv. 337-343, and Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 675 and 676 ; and cf. Lamont's ' Diary,' p. 23. Some cannon, it may be noted, were mounted at Kinghorn — where the i8-tonners now are on the Ness, we suppose. — Thomson's ■* Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 669. % Mercurius Politicus^ No. 53, in one of its letters of June 3. 17 CHAPTER VI. THE scots' move TO THE TORWOOD CHARLES II. AS GUARDIAN OF scotland — the affair of larbert bridge — cromwell re- occupies glasgow his various irons in the fire Lambert's raid towards lake of menteith — the English STORM calendar HOUSE — REINFORCEMENTS ARRIVE, AND CROM- WELL INVADES FIFE. DURING the remainder of the month of June the Scots and EngHsh armies remained parted by the same ' silver streak' as had separated them, one might say, since the morrow of Dunbar Battle — the river and Firth of Forth, to wit ; and the news-letters freely expressed the chagrin felt by the Commonwealth's men as they contemplated the inaccessibility of their opponents' position. 'The beauty of the summer is passing away very fast, and yet we are not upon any action,' said the writer of perhaps the most striking passage on the subject which one finds."^ ' The enemy lieth so that we cannot engage them ; and unless they do come forth we may yet be a long time in this posture.' The Scots infantry were reported to be ' quietly consuming their meal in Stirling Park,' their cavalry ' much dispersed for grass 't ; the Lothians and south-eastern Lowlands had been nicknamed 'New England,'! and a sea — certainly not as braid as that which roars * Edinburgh letter of June lO in Mercurius Politicus, No. 54 (E632). Cf. also letters of May 12 {ibid.. No 50) ; May 24 {ibid., No. 52) ; and ' the last that came of the loth June ' {ibid., No. 54). Still earlier letters, by-the-by — of May i and 6 in No. 49 — contain thanksgivings for that ' they have us not now at the lock they had last summer . . . blessed be God we have now other shelter and footing than Pencland hills.' f Mercurius Politicus, ' the last of the loth June ' again. The King's Park position had lately been strengthened with new entrenchments. — Ibid., No. 45, ' Edenburgh 8th April ' ; and No. 52, letter of May 27. In a report anent the Laird of Polmais' losses in Thomson's ' Acts ' (vii., p. 346) we read how ' in the year 1650-51 his whole estate was laid waste and destroyed, partly by his Majesty's army in Stirling and Park thereof, and partly by the usurper's army after his Majesty marched into England.' ' He had all his wood cutted and destroyed by his Majesty's army at Stirling to the value of ;i^6o6 13 4.' X Mercurius Politicus — still 'the last of the loth of June.' HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF 259 between this and America — did roll between that district and the dominions in which Charles II. was de facto King. But a change came, or seemed for a while to be promised, when the barrier parting the armies was narrowed down to the valley of the little river of Carron. In the first days of July, Charles II. and Oliver Cromwell confronted one another across that strath, each at the head of his own troops. One likes to think that memories of even three and a half centuries earlier had something to do with the movement by the Scots which brought about this change. It is true they had been culpably forgetful of the traditions of older Wars of Independence * on the field of red Dunbar '; but it is possible that the lesson taught them there, taken along with the reminder anent Robert the Bruce which has been referred to earlier in this Book, had set them planning to retrieve their country's fortunes as in an earlier age. It is at all events noteworthy that the locality in which they elected to make a stand in the year after David Leshe's Dunbar was the same place where the Guardians of Scotland had established a highly successful Camp of Refuge in the year following William Wallace's Falkirk. Often enough has such a general description as Lord Hailes gives of those far-off and old campaigns been applicable to the strategy of the Scots. ' Taught by fell experience how to maintain a defensive war, they chose their posts with skill and avoided a general action.'* But never had their history in that respect repeated itself so strikingly as during the two or three weeks with which this chapter has to do. To be sure, the earlier struggles which Lord Hailes thus summed up had a somewhat different issue from that of which we shall have to tell. The pious Vestal assiduity of the Guardians of Scotland had so kept the spark of national liberties aglow that it blazed up into the ' light lowe ' of Bannockburn even after its almost total quenching, in intervening years, at the hands of Edward Longshanks. The patriotic endeavour of the seventeenth century was more speedily crushed down, and suggests no such picturesque metaphors as that of the fourteenth. On the other hand, the coincidence of place — if it was only coincidence — did form one notable point of resemblance between the two wars of resistance. Shall we deem it a curiosity of history that Charles II. should have defied Oliver Cromwell in a scene already ' glorious to the recollections of the Scottish peasant for the feats of Wallace '+ — the Torwood, to wit ? At all events, there is better warrant than might be supposed for one's expressly naming the young Stuart King as the head, and not * Lord Hailes's * Annals,' vol. i., pp. 323, 324. f That quotation from Sir Walter (in * Waverley ') serves our purpose neatly enough for the suggestion of an antithesis ; but we are bound to add, on the authority of Lord Hailes, that Wallace was not one of the Guardians who showed a front in opposition to Edward L in the Torwood in 1299. The hunted and fugitive part of the hero's career had by then begun. 17—2 26o CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS the mere figure-head, of the Scots army. He seems to have won the grudging respect even of the EngHsh because of what they heard about his energy in exercising that command* which Balfour has already told us of his ' taking upon him.' He was ' very absolute ' in ' following his own private counsels,' they said.f He was ' higher than his people as much in stature as authority,'! this lang lad of an un-Hebraic Saul. He thought nothing of riding to and fro, two and three times a week, between Stirling and Perth, ' to show himself in the head of his forces . . . and the next day in the Parliament.'^ He rode up and down the lines of the Scots encampment, ' in a soldier's dress '|| — ' all in buff (which sets off the Blue Ribbon and George)' — and, with what we know to have been unfeigned boyish pluck, told his soldiers, as he had told his Parliament, that he had * but a life to lose. 'IF What is still more to the purpose is the fact that he seems to have thought out the plan of campaign for himself.** * Another and a better-known and less creditable trait in Charles's character does not — pace Carlyle with his hints here and there, and David Hume with his unauthenticated anecdotes, and Sir Walter with his ' Woodstock ' dialogue — seem to have been in evidence at all at this time. Otherwise we should certainly have heard of those propensities in him which afterwards became so notorious — just as we do, in these months, hear of Buckingham's — through the news-letters (White- locke, 495). f Mercicrius PolitiaiSy No. 59 (E 637), letter of July 14. X Weekly Intelligencer, No. 27 (E 633) under June 24. § A Perfect Account, No. 23 (E632), p. 184. II Mercurius Politicus, No. 52 (E 630) — letter of May 27 ; and A Perfect Account, ubi supra. 1[ A Perfect Account, No. 17— (E 628) under May 6. ** Charles had, to be sure, a veteran etat tnajor. The Earl of Leven had a month or two before been re-appointed General, in name (Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 651) ; and was, as we know from Lament's 'Diary' (p. 31), 'up at Stirling with the army ' at this time. Then or about then, too, Charles deliberately chose David Leslie to be his acting Commander-in-Chief (Clarendon, vol. iii., pt. ii., Oxford edition of 1807). Probably there was some truth in a most interesting reminiscence of 1648, given (by way of explanation of the Leslies' continuing in favour) in Mercurius Politicus, No. 52 (E 630), p. 826 — ' that when news was brought to our King at Carisbrooke Castle that the Scots had raised an army of 26000 for his service, he asked who commanded and if it were Leslie ? And when they told him it was not he, nor David Leslie, he said he was a dead man.' It is also most interesting, by the way, to note what hopes the English evidently had of the personal rivalry between Middleton and the younger Leslie — hopes which died out when it was known that the two had been seen riding amicably side by side through the camp at Stirling {Mercurius Politicus^ No. 52 again — a letter of May 27. Perhaps the disappointment had something to do with their calling names: 'black Middleton,' e.g., in the Weekly Intelligencer, No. 24, p. 192). What they reported regarding ' the great contests about command and guidance of their (Scots) army ' must have had its foundation in the intrigues of the Earl of Callendar — the umquhile Lord Almond of our chapter on 'The Muster.' That officer had found his way back from Holland some time in the beginning of the year, but sold his hen on a rainy day by trusting to the good offices of Argyle. ' The 6 of Maij, there was a grate meeting of the Committee of Estaits at Stirling, quherin the electing of the Erie of Calender to be Felte Marishall of the Armey, that had now ioyned himselue to the Campbells, was waved and putt offe ; and THE KING'S SOLDIERLY LEADERSHIP 26% It is expressly mentioned how he and Middleton had reconnoitred the Torvvood position, in order to judge of its suitability, three or four weeks before it was actually occupied ; and a raid which he headed in person towards Kinneil and Linlithgow served the purpose of bringing the English out in quest of him and his army."^ It is a nice question whether Charles had for the present anything else in view than the one aim upon which the hopes of the Guardians of Scotland had been concentrated so many years before. Ulti- mately, of course, he looked for something beyond what they had striven to bring about. Their task had been, simply and solely, the securing the liberties of their country by the expulsion of the foe : before Charles there lay a similar endeavour and — over and above — the attempt to bring back England to its allegiance. But was he seriously thinking of his prospects in the latter quarter at this time of day, after Cromwell had got all the threads of the Cavalier and Presbyterian plots in his hands and proceeded ruthlessly to snap two Generall Maiors of Footte chosen viz Col, Pitscottey and Dalzell of Binns ' (Balfour, iv. 297). A broken reed it was that my Lord Callendar had trusted to ; for Argyle was ' down the wind ' so completely that ' private soldiers jostle him sometimes almost off his horse' {Merctcrius Politicus, No. 58 [E 637], p. 923), Dalzell of Binns was, of course, 'Tom Dalyell ' of RuUion Green and Bothwell Brig ; and it was characteristic of him (if a story told by the English was true) that he should have declined to 'gang to the stool of repentance' {Ibid., No. 38, 'another from Edinburgh of the 18th ' February). But they were wrong, as we see, about his thereby forfeiting his chance of getting a command ; and the comrade whom the intelligencers bracketed with him as in the like case — one John Hamil- ton — suffered for his honesty no more than he {cf. Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., ii. 685, under June 6, and ' Ancram and Lothian. Correspondence,' ii. 324). As to other subordinate officers, one is sorry (chiefly because of his territorial title) that 'General King, Lord Ythan,' did not come by any promotion in spite of the 'Act in his favors ' of March (Thomson, p. 666). For the English contingent, the news- letters must have been well informed enough about Massey's activity in the anti- Commonwealth cause, if not quite accurate about his every movement ; since he was first given command of a regiment (Balfour, under December 27, 1650), and then of a division of horse (ibid., iv. 299-301). His compatriot, Sir Philip Mus- grave — an active North of England promoter of the Engagement three years before — was said to have had a narrow escape when Birkenhead was made prisoner (* Roundhead Officers,' p. 12). Wilmot and Cleveland (to name the two most conspicuous military men among Charles's personal following of courtiers) had remained at Court unmolested since the ' Start ' (Balfour, iv., under December 7 and 27). The latter was reported to have been desperately wounded in some skirmish at or near Linlithgow in March {Weekly Intelligencer, No. 13). * Mercuritis Politiais, No. 57 (E 636), by two letters of July i, one naming ' Canneil,' the other mentioning that ' parties of their horse appear near us about Lithgow ' ; and Mercurius Scommaticus (in E 636 also). The paragraph in the latter paper is picturesque, if rather contradictory : ' his little Kingship having drawn the numerous brigades of his naked redshanks to Kynneil ... the advance was high Cavalier, full of aery ostentation.' The fact of Charles's personal inspec- tion of the Torwood is reported in Mercurius Politicus, No. 53 (letter of May 31), which also mentions his having Middleton with him on that occasion. If such was the case, the Perfect Account may have been right in saying the King trusted to Middleton as 'his right hand ' ('No. 9, in E 626). But that preference must have been manifested ' without prejudice ' to the Leslies. 262 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS them ? One may well doubt it. Nay, it was believed by the English that such of their fellow-countrymen as were at Stirling strongly opposed the project of a break-away for the Border and across it, and that it was the Scots who were in favour of trying to elude Cromwell and transfer the scene of operations thither."^ Assuming that report of ' a great consultation about their affairs ' to be true, one is strongly tempted to believe that Charles took to the Torwood in very much the same spirit as the Guardians of the Wallace epoch — that he relied (as they soon came to suspect)! upon wearying the English out, and, knowing time to be on his side, hoped by detaining Cromwell in Scotland to rock the cradle of the infant Commonwealth to some purpose. However that may have been, in the last days of June his army * Mercurius Politicus, No. 55 (E 632) 'of the 14th instant from Edinburgh' (June). This is one of many entries which go to show the English to have been laying their account with the chance of the Scots marching for England ever since the marked augmentation of the latter army in May. t Ibid.^ No. 58 (E 637), by a letter of July 5 from 'Lithgow' which explains * the game they mean to play ' as — ' they intend to drill out time and keep their Royal army in places inaccessible by us, as they did last year, thinking to drive us out for want of horse provisions in winter, the corn being all eaten up this summer, and that within many miles of our quarters.' That alleged confidence of the defending army in their own resources as compared with those of the English, sounds oddly beside another opinion expressed by Major General Lambert only a month later — that ' we verily believe the want of victual hath forced them ' to march away from Stirling. — Gary's ' Memorials of the Givil War' (1842), vol. ii., p. 296. In the interval, to be sure, the great granary of ' the Scots King's ' circumscribed dominions — the county of P'ife — had passed out of his keeping into that of the Enghsh. One cannot say to what extent the fortunes of this campaign might have depended upon the bulk of the hay and corn crops in Scotland that year ; for even if the war had been prolonged into the autumn and winter there was an unknown quantity — the continuance of English supplies by sea — to be reckoned with. But an account of the fecundity of Fife, given in Mercurius Foliticus, is worth quoting, if only because it recalls the surprise of the Norman Gonquerors when they found Hereward the Wake's ransomed prisoners coming out of the Isle of Ely fatter than they went in. ' Richer land, they say, is none in these realms, and I believe it,' quoth Sir Dade to Duke William ; and even so the English newspaper (No. 60 — E 638 — by 'a letter from North Ferry, July 22'), viz. — ' Fife is a richer land for corn than ever I saw any in England, and now we see it was a very dream that they would want provision. I am confident no part of England affords equal stores to that country, and there is corn enough to keep a reasonable army in that county alone.' As to that ' very dream,' cf. a letter of June 4 in .^ Perfect Acccnint, No. 22 — ' the chiefest part of the country for corn is in our possession ... so that we hope hunger will force them out of their holds.' Two most significant entries in Mercurius Folitictis, as to the straits to which the Scots population in the Lothians and south country were reduced, must not be omitted — the one (No. 51, letter of May 20) remarking that *if merchants or others do not bring that which may supply the poor inhabitants of the country, they will be in danger to be destroyed by famine ' ; the other (No. 55, p. 883) describing how 'poverty and famine come upon them like an armed man,' how the ' poor women boil the sheal- ings and dust of oats in water to make food for their children, and the country people come with 60 horses in a company to buy food at Leith.' Well might the writer go on to ' consider the goodness of God unto us [English] that after 9 years' wars we should still have wherewith to supply ourselves.' THE TORWOOD—LETHAM POSITION 263 made the move which at first blush filled the English with hopes of a speedy general action. It marched southward out of Stirling across the Bannockburn, and took up a position on the slopes of the hill that is still crowned by the remains of the once stately Torwood- head Castle. There the Scots entrenched themselves, not only with redoubts on the hill-side itself, but with ' a line,'' or ' trench about their foot,' eastwards on the level ground north of the Carron, which was pronounced to be 'almost as regular as most I ever saw.'"^ From the mention of ' Lieutenant-General Baillie's house 'f in many of the English narratives, it is plain that the latter fortification terminated somewhere near to Letham, a little to the south of Airth ; and that fact — together with the garrisoning and strengthening of Letham House with a number of cannon — shows that the Scots were on their guard against a flanking movement by way of the flat ' Carron shore ' and the low-lying ground known to this day as ' Letham Moss.'l That precaution — the necessity for which points to the latter tract of land having been more accessible, at all events for infantry, than one would from the name suppose — evidently served its purpose ; for all such attempts at coming to close quarters as the English set about trying, were made at points higher up the water. Once fairly installed in this vantage-ground, bodies of the Scots advanced south-eastwards, occupied Falkirk and replaced the English garrison in Calendar House § with one of their own, and threatened * ' Cromwelliana,' p. 106 ; A Perfect Account, No. 27 (E 637), p. 213. t The luckless Covenanting General and old opponent of Montrose, named as 'William Baillie of Lethem in Stirlingshire' in a footnote to p. 417, vol. ii., ' Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie.' X The authorities for the occupation in force of Lieut.-Gen. Baylie's ' or 'Bayles' house ' are the last-quoted Perfect Account, ubi supra, and ' Cromwelliana,' p. 104. It is a letter quoted in the latter (at p. 106) which names this ' regular line ' at 'about a mile and a half further east ' than the Torwood camp, and so indicates, indisputably, such a prolongation of the Scots entrenchments along their left front as is described in the text. There is hardly one stone left upon another to-day of this once important garrison of the Scots ; but we believe we are right in thinking that all that remains of ' Lathamm,' as Blaeu's map of the county names it, is to be seen in a fragment of wall on the right-hand side of the by-road that leads from Airth to the two modern steadings called Letham, and a little north of the more northerly of those two. For that site corresponds to the position of Letham as roughly marked by the seventeenth-century cartographer — between ' Kenard ' and • Airth ' and south of the burn which still divides it from the latter. And the situation shows why the house was thus strategically important. It dominated the Moss to which it either gave or owed its name — a tract of country whose features, we take it, are still clearly enough marked in the stretch of heath-covered muir north of Kinnaird House ; and the line of Scots entrenchments which guarded that place (we have ourselves sought for traces of them, to little purpose, in a belt of planting 'back of Kinnaird policies) would be very effectively flanked and rounded-off by cannon mounted on Letham battlements. The flatter ground — now all drained, tilled, and arable — which skirts on the east what i-till remains of that unreclaimed Moss, must at that time have been part of the boggy ground which helped to stall-off" the English. § The evacuation of that place by the English {cf Chapter IV. of this Book is nowhere mentioned, but must certainly have come about at this time, after some three months* occupation. 264 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Linlithgow and Kinneil"^ with a raid which Charles II., as already said, seems himself to have headed. The tidings brought the whole English army westwards from Edinburgh hot-foot. They had been waiting in readiness for some dayst— ever since Cromwell had become fairly convalescent, one may suppose^ ; and camping once more in their old Galachlaw quarters§ — evidently for convenience of forage. Now they drew out in full force, 'fourteen regiments of horse, twelve regiments of foot, and sixteen pieces of ordnance '|j ; marched by way of ' Newbridge ' over the Almond (the name is worth preserving); quartered at LinlithgowH on the evening of Tuesday, July i — the Scots retreating before them from all their * The reference to Kinneil already given from Mercurius Folitiais, No. 57, names it as a place *m which we have good store of biscuit and cheese.' t Since June 24 (letter of that date in Mercurius Folitiais, No. 56 (E 633). + Carlyle, by the way, missed the interesting fact that Cromwell returned for a day to Leith, a month afterwards — in the interval between his writing Letters clxxvi. and clxxvii. — in order to 'take physic and refresh ' preparatory to his three or four hundred miles' march in quest of the enemy {Mercurius Foliticus, No. 60 or 61, E 640 — reference mislaid). § 'On Penclan hills (our old quarters'). — Letter of June 28 in 'Roundhead Officers,' p. 30. Of. Mercurius Foliticus, No. 57 (E 636) — ' On Wednesday our army drew out to Pencland hills ' (Letter of June 28, which was a Saturday). As to Cromwell's own quarters, he had a fortnight before had his tent ' pitched in Edinburgh fields' — {Mercurius Foliticus, No. 54, 'the last that came of the loth inst.') — which might be the Borough muir, but might also be the Bruntsfield Links, whither one of his officers in a later year politely escorted the General Assembly ' out of the town ' (The ' Private Hand,' sub anno 1653). A passage in the Weekly Intelligencer, by the way, contains some topographical details which the antiquarian would not willingly let die. It mentions (No. 28 — E 6y] — under July 10) a Colonel West's summoning some 'companies of his regiment that quartered at Barton ' (which is evidently Barnton, once the property of Sir Robert of that Ilk, the famous Admiral of the James III. — IV. period) in order 'to possess himself of the Lord Balmerinoes house near Clamam (? Cramond) Bridge.' The puzzle is as to whether another property of Lord ' Ba'mernie's,' mentioi ed immediately afterwards, was or was not situated in Leith. For the paragraph goes on : ' His Excellency not long since dined with the officers in the field in his own tent. There were present all the chief officers, and some of their ladies, who after dinner did return to Leith ' (one of these mess-guests was no doubt Lambert's wife — cf. 31 and 36 of ' Letters from Roundhead Officers '). ' His Excellency hath lately regulated some quarters : some tents were pitched in the Lord Balmerinoe's garden.' That must surely have been (judging by the context) the ground round the old house off the Kirkgate of Leith which Charles H. had (Balfour, iv. 86) occupied during his brief visit to the capital in the previous summer. II Whitelocke, p. 497. There is a full list of the regiments by name in the Weekly Intelligencer, No. 28 (E 637), p. 222 — which newspaper mentions the same num- bers, giving by our computation a total of some 19,000 men. The Scots, as already stated in a footnote to the preceding chapter, were probably about 24,000 — a total which might be arrived at independently, even without the authorities previously cited, by splitting the difference between 29,000 (which * they gave out their army to be ') and 20,000 (which ' 'tis supposed they are '). — Whitelocke, 498, under July ii. H For that fact see the Weekly Intelligencer, No. 28, pp. 221, 222 ; or the Mer- curius Foliticus letters of July i, tihi supra. The latter authority is the better for the route. From Linlithgow ' Castle ' or Palace, say both accounts, the English could see the Scots tents. Cromwell himself quartered in the Palace on the Tuesday night. THE AFFAIR OF LARBERT BRIDGE 265 outlying posts except Calendar"^ ; and on the following day were vis-a-vis with Charles's army on the banks of the Carron. But almost aj: the first glance Cromwell must have formed the opinion upon which he only acted after three or four days' inconclu- sive ' pickeering ' and skirmishing — that the Scots' position was too well chosen to be attacked with any hopes of success. They lay so that * they could not be attempted with less danger than storming a garrison.'! The Carron river | wound round the foot of the Torwood hill ; the only direct access was by the bridge at Larbert, which figures rather prominently in the Scots' accounts of the affair ; the combination of hill-side and river defile and swampy ground (about Carron Shore) must have seemed to Cromwell an epitome of all the natural obstacles he had previously encountered at points so far dis- tant as Corstorphine and Hamilton. While he and his staff were reconnoitring,§ some of his men did manage to cross the river some- where in the course of that Wednesday, July 2 ; and some ground on the lower slopes on the north side was gained for a while, but as quickly retaken by the defenders.|| That the place of which the pos- session was thus contested lay immediately beyond Larbert Bridge is evident from its being mentioned that the Scots afterwards brought down their cannon there, and rudely disturbed the English in the small hours of the Thursday morning by pitching round shot and shell into their camp therewith.^ That Cromwell's array was put in * Weekly Intelligencer, No. 28, p. 222 ; ' Cromwelliana,' p. 104. + Whitelocke under July 11. % Named as 'a little water' by Cornet John Baynes ('Roundhead Officers,' p. 32), and * a brook ' by the Weekly Intelligencer (No. 28, p. 224 — E 637) ; but by the more dignified title in all the other narratives. One of these, by the way — the letter of a Captain Walker — is surely wrongly dated July 14, instead of 4th, in ' Roundhead Officers,' p. 33. A ' Lithgow ' letter of July i in Mercurius Politicus^ No. 57, mentions that * a bridge there is by which only we can pass to them.' Blaeu's map, by the way, does not mark it. § Letter of ' 5th instant from Lithgow ' in Mercurius Foliticus, No. 58 (E 637) —July. II Ibid. ; Whitelocke under July 1 1 ; Weekly Intelligencer, No. 28, pp. 222, 223. We do not know whether the story told by the latter (and the Perfect Account, No. 27) about Cromwell's refusing to exchange the son of the inn-keeper of ' the Crown at Ware ' is meant as an instance of His Excellency's clemency, or an illustration of his sternnes.s towards a * trooper of Massies own troop,' who 'had been heretofore in the King'5 army.' It is in connection with the fate of that prisoner, if we remember rightly, that the latter newspaper mentions the interesting fact how Massey ' dare not dissemble by writing himself your humble servant ' to Cromwell. It is more important to observe that the valiant Okey headed the party which brought off the temporarily successful English skirmishers in safety. — Whitelocke, u In supra ; ' CromweUiana,' p. 104. IT ' From a hill near Larber water ' (* Collections by a Private Hand,' p. 35). Cf. the various ' Acts ' in Thomson's collection about Colonel Wemyss's patents for inventions in artillery. — Vol. vii., p. 47, e.g., which schedules ' morter-pieces,' inter alia, and says ' sufficient experience whairof wes seen at Gogar feight, Lerberbridge and elswher.' The total number of the Scots artillery at this time, by the way, was said to be ' in all 14 guns, great and small ' — {Mercurius PoliticuSy No. 52, p. 833) — and one must not overlook the interesting fact that oxen were 266 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS some confusion is evident enough — not indeed from the boasting of the Private Hand,"^ but from the language of Cornet John Baynes.f First getting a couple of guns into position within range of the Scots, Cromwell drew off his main body to what the newspapers of the time called Kalender Heath,; by Falkirk, and formed them up there, pre- sumably ' in battaha.'§ The sight of his withdrawal evidently was a great temptation to the Scots ; but it is probably fortunate there were cooler heads among them than the Private Hand, who rates Leslie for having, as he alleges, forbidden Middleton to attack the retreating English. II For some hours he awaited the oncoming of his oppo- nents, in vain ; and then — evidently not caring to take up his head- quarters so near them as he had on the previous nights — fell back upon Linlithgow. We rather fancy ■^''' that next day (Friday, July 4) he made a recon- naissance towards the Scots left front at Letham, hoping to find the low ground more negotiable than Larbert Bridge and the glen of the river above it. If so, disappointment awaited him there also, and we do not even hear of any ' pickeering ' by the Carron shore. Thereupon he took his resolve ; marched his army out of Linlithgow on Saturday, ' at night to Shotts, on Sunday at eleven to Shet(l)s- toun';tt and so established himself in Glasgow:!: | for another stay of yoked to their field batteries (Thomson's 'Acts,'vi., pt. ii., p. 668; Mercurius Politicus, No. 56, p. 898). The English authorities for this peppering on the Thursday morning are ' Roundhead Officers,' p. 32 ; Weekly Intelligencer and W'hitelocke, «<5'z j-?//ra; ; 'Cromwelliana,' p. 105. * ' After some few were shot they retired with a great slaughter of their men, and left behind them some of their baggage.' — ' Collections,' tibi supra. t ' We then took an alarum and drew a little back.' — * Roundhead Officers,' ubi supra. X Weekly Intelligencer^ 1^0. 21, p. 168. § English authorities as in footnote last but three. II ' Collections,' p. 35. Nicoll, too (' Diary,' p. 54), complains of the Scots having been * stay it and not sufferit to go on.' IT ' At Moorcar, a poor inconsiderable town ' — evidently Carmuirs, close by Larbert ('Cromwelliana,' p. 104). ** If, as is possible, Whitelocke's entries under July 14 are a mere repetition of previous accounts of the doings of Wednesday and Thursday, there is a hiatus valde deflendtis in the English narratives, not quite satisfactorily filled up by a brief line in 'Several Letters from Scotland' (E 637), which mentions 'a dayes stay at Lithgo for taking in provisions.' But we take Whitclocke at his word when he says ' Cromwell marched up again to the Scots' ; and interpret his special mention of the * bogs ' as a precise topographical detail warranting the supposition in the text. +t Page cix of Introduction (vol. i.) to Baillie's ' Letters and Journals,' That authority is of more use for the itinerary than the news-letters, with their un- recognisable * Debaths ' and ' Pickmots ' as the names of stages on the route. On the other hand, the latter preserve a detail that Baillie knew not of when they mention how the army * marched out of Lithgow on the way that doth lead into Edinburgh, to prevent the enemy's notice, and not long after they wheeled west- ward and had their quarters that night three miles from Glasgow.' — Weekly Intelligencer, No. 29, p. 240 (E 637). XX One reason for his proceeding thither, over and above those dealt with in the CROMWELL AT GLASGOW: HIS DESIGNS 267 a week. We do not now read of his holding disputatious conferences with the city ministers : he had other eggs upon the spit. That is to say, he had to make trial of divers methods of luring the Scots out of their position, upon which he knew an attack to be hopeless. One such method, which had, we quite believe, commended itself to him, was the idea of affrighting his antagonists by the prospect of his per- manently occupying the West. He held practically all that he needed of the Lothians by his garrisons at Edinburgh Castle and Leith — which seaport his engineers now reckoned to be impregnable against any Scots assault ^^ and by holding Glasgow and patrolling the whole of * the loins of Scotland ' with his matchless cavalry, he could at least make it certain that the enemy must fight him — if fight they would — on their native soil, and not across the Border. We quite recognise the importance of that brief parenthetical clause; and admit that Cromwell saw as clearly as could Charles or any of his other opponents that for State reasons he himself must not waste time over a prolonged war in Scotland. Indeed, he was already laying his account with the possibility of his having again to throw open to them the road into England, and therefore taking his measures for coping with them if they went thitherf while he advanced northward to circumvent them. But it is at the same time impossible to over- look the significant fact that he exerted himself to get possession of a good harbour on the Firth of Clyde, and simultaneously wrote to Sir text, was of course the obvious enough wish to prevent further accessions of strength to the Scots from those pans, ' The King and Montgomery was to be here within few days ' if ' we ' had not forestalled them, say the ' Several Letters,' tihi supra; and had been expecting reinforcements variously stated at 3,ocx) and 5,000. — Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 29 again, p. 241 ; Mercurius Politicus letters of July I. The entry in the latter makes it clear that it was no new news to the English to hear of these Scots expectations when they got to Glasgow ; and this obstructive motive on Cromwell's part goes far to explain the harsh dealings in •the city complained of by Baillie, tibi supra. The rnilitary necessity that led to his having ' distroyit barbarously comes and yeardes ' was bluntly explained by a letter in Mercurius Politicus, which stated that the visitors had ' eaten up all their provision to prevent any entertainment for any party of the King's '; and the plundering which Cromwell ' oversau ' was probably only the search for arms — in ' the Hall ' (PTolbooth) and even ihe 'almhouses ' of the city — which is mentioned in all the English narratives. Cf.^ e.g., Weekly Intelligencer, tibi supra ; A Per- fect Account, No. 28, p. 220. * A Perfect Account, No. 28 (E 637), by letter 'from Leith 12 July.' t That is to say, he had ordered Major General Harrison, commanding the forces in England, to join him with a body of troops in Scotland. Mercurius Politicus, after elaborately explaining how Harrison's coming would enable His Excellency both to march round the rear of the Scots' position and to dog them, or ' attend their motion,' when they were dislodged, mentioned that that Major General was on his march northwards. — No. 58 (E 637) in the last lines of that issue and a few pages earlier, by a letter of July 5. The passage under the latter date is, of course, another proof showing how the English were laying their plans for guarding against that move of the Scots which did in the end come about, and has been considered in some quarters as having taken Cromwell by surprise. 268 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Henry Vane^ urging him to have supplies for the army shipped over thither from Ulster. He took Dunglass Castle above Dumbarton^ but abandoned it as neither a very suitable haven nor a port very easily retained,! and fixed instead upon Newark,! at Port Glasgow, as his desiderated inlet for provisions. The fact goes far to show that he was laying his plans with a view to installing himself in Glasgow, backed by a base for supplies which Admiral Deane's ships § could make good for him, and resting there in order to watch the Scots — if he could do no better. But there were alternatives which he did not at the same time neglect ; and of course the old plan of trying a wide flanking detour by the upper waters of the Forth came prominently into view once more. A fine feat of marching John Lambert achieved, too, in * The letter has not been preserved, but Vane's reply shows clearly what the tenour of it was. ' We think the garrison of Newark which you have taken in to be of very great importance, and have had our thoughts of supplies from Ireland already and have writ about them.' — ' Milton State Papers,' p. 84. t IVeekly Intelligencer, No. 29, under July 21 ; Perfect Account, No. 28, p. 221 ; Mercuriiis Politictis, No. 59, by one of its letters from Glasgow of July ii — all contained in E 637. It may conveniently perhaps be recorded here that the only actual comings and goings between Ireland and Scotland of which there is any mention were those of divers moss-troopers and 'Tories' who impartially crossed from the one country to the other according as they had made each too hot to hold them. — IVeekly Jntelligejicer, No. 5 (E 622), under January 27 ; Perfect Account, No. 20 (E 629), ' from Berwick i8th May.' The exploit of some patriotic Scots in Ulster is a more pleasing reminiscence. These seized an English ship at 'Craig'- or Carrick-fergus, and sailed her over to Bute in triumph. We have mentioned one interesting part of her cargo long before : the entire contents com- prised broad-cloth, 700 suits of made clothes and as many red coats, carabines, muskets, and ammunition (Balfour, iv. 250, 251 ; cf. i'Veekly Intelligencer, No. 13. — E 626 — under Saturday, March 22, and Whitelocke, p. 490). + Cf Sir Henry Vane's letter in the last footnote but one. Newark was de- scribed as ' a very considerable place which was thought fit to be manned with a party of horse and 60 commanded foot' — {Weekly Intelligencer, No. 29, p. 242) — and as 'a place of great consequence being situated upon Dunbrittoun frith, and having as much command of ships and vessels that pass as Dunbarton Castle ' {A Perfect Account, No. 28, p. 221). But Cromwell had no sooner left Glasgow than Newark was re-taken about July 13 or 14 by the Scots— under Massey's command, according to Cornet Baynes (' Roundhead Officers,' p. 34, and the Weekly Intel- ligencer, No. 30, p. 242) — who had 'the help of a ship with her cannon' ('A Great Victory God hath vouchsafed ' — E 638, § 2). The prisoners, including one ' Cornelius Van Behmen, engineer,' were sent to Stirling Castle (Gary's * Memo- rials,' ii. 330). § One cannot make head or tail of the mystic announcement in Mercurius Politicns, No. 56 (E 632), that in the course of the preceding month 'what vessels we can spare here ' (on the east coast) were ' sent northward to prevent the coming of provisions from St. Johnston's to ' the Scots. But on the other hand one can quite see why Admiral Deane should have been sending ships all the way ' about Scotland' — through the Pentland Firth, i.e. — if it is allowable to suppose that Cromwell had in view this project of drawing upon the Commonwealth's forces in the north of Ireland. One's authority for that fact is the context of the 'Great Victory ' broadside quoted in the last footnote above : ' General Dean having ordered two men of war to go from Leith about Scotland thither, our men [in Newark] had good quarter.' LAMBERT AT THE FORDS OF FORTH 269 reconnoitring the route thither at the head of three cavalry regi- ments.* The interest of the discovery he made — that the approaches to the head-waters of the river were not ' flockt up ' with defensive works — has already, we dare say, been somewhat discounted ;t but the expedition demands at least this amount of bare mention : that Lambert marched out of Glasgow at noon on Tuesday, July 8, led his men up Strathblane and across Strathendrick| to the Lake of Menteith vicinity, reconnoitred the fords of Forth and actually crossed them ' at Newbridge about midnight,'§ and by Thursday or Friday was back in Glasgow to announce that the route was practic- able and even easy except 'for the carriages. '|| It was even yet possible that Cromwell might have availed himself of that north-east passage for circumventing the Scots. But it seems^ he did not wish to let them have a start of him in breaking away for England before those reinforcements under Harrison had come up to co-operate with him in the way recently described ; while the news that Massey had been leading a cavalry raid into the Lothians,** and * His own, Lilburne's, and Alured's, — Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 29, p. 241, which newspaper, by the way, contained an interesting specimen of the use of the name Fife in the sense already spoken of, viz. — 'They did adventure over into Fife at New"bridge. ' t By quotation in footnote at p. 221, supra. X We know that must have been the route, because he left a trace of his passing that way in his capture — -presumably on the return march — of ' a Laird's house, which refused to yield upon summons, in Kithern parish,' or ' Kilheam ' — which is evidently Killearn. — Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 29, p. 241 ; Perfect Account,Yio. 28, p. 220 ; ' Several Letters from Scotland ' — E 637 — which last names ' the person ' (or minister) ' of Kilheam ' as one of the prisoners captured there. What country house this was we have no means of ascertaining ; but it might have been either Duntreath or Craigbarnet, both of which are in the Strathblane district, and are known to have been garrisoned by the Scots (Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 686, 687). — Duntreath, under the shadow of Dumgoyn, is the more likely. § Mercurius Folitictts, No. 59 (E 637) ' another from Glasgow of the 11 ' July. Its correspondent wrote, quite like the representative of a modern news-agency at the front, that ' I went with them ' ; and named time and place as given in the text. His ' Newbridge ' may have been Newburn opposite Cardross : perhaps others can identify it from his description, viz. — ' the water is not knee deep, the banks of the river not high, and of sand.' II Ibid., letter of July 9. The messenger who brought back that report so early must have been sent forward by Lambert while he and his cavalry tarried at the Laird's house. IT The Merairius Politicus letter of July ii, ubi supra : ' Were it not in refer- ence to England (lest when we attempted over with the body of the army, they should march for England) we should presently go over.' ** 'As far as Levistoun House/ says the Perfect Account (No. 28, p. 221) — which was evidently the Peel, near Midcalder. The Weekly Intelligencer i^o. 29, p. 242) gives some details of the march and a speedy ' counter ' by the English ; ' M.-G. Massey advanced southward towards Edinburgh with 600 horse and came within 10 miles of it; in his return he took at Linlithgow 12 of our horse and killed 8 of our men. But a small party fell lately upon a whole troop of theirs, and having killed some and taken more, they put the whole remainder to flight.' As the Perfect Account adds that this party was 'going from Leith,' it is likely they were a party of the reinforcements which Cromwell had ordered to be added to his important Linlithgow garrison ( Weekly Intelligencer — No. 29 again — p. 240). 270 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS that the main army of the Scots had advanced to Kilsyth,* simul- taneously gave him hopes of the enemy's having abandoned the Torwood position. Therefore he threw forward a part of his forces to reconnoitre in the direction of the ' late garrisoned house ' that we wot of, and, on their reporting that — like the Scots' main position — this post of observation was * so fenced with bogs and so rugged by the rocky ascent of hills ' as to be ' almost inaccessible,'! he marched the whole of his troops out of Glasgow on Saturday, July i2,| to cross the loins of Scotland again. Estabhshing himself between Polmont and Linlithgow, he advanced in person on the Monday to within sight of the Scots tents beyond ' Larber water,' driving out as he went a small scouting party of theirs that had occupied Falkirk. On returning in the evenmg towards his Linlithgow quarters, he was shot at by the way from the battlements of Calendar House — a fact which very probably had something to do with his ordering the bom- bardment and storm of that place on the morrow (Tuesday, July 15). That affair reminds one in many of its particulars of the capture of Redhall some eleven months before. Here was again a ' frontier garrison,' midway between the armies, which the English dared the Scots to relieve and the Scots left to its fate ; and here again a brave handful of men, commanded by a valiant Governor who scorned to accept quarter in return for an unconditional surrender, and defied the overwhelming numbers brought against him till — more luckless than Sir James Hamilton — he died sword in hand.§ But his manful * Baillie (i. , p. cix of Introduction) ; and newspapers, 7^di infra. t Weekly Intelligencer, No. 29, p. 242 ; A Perfect Account^ No. 28, p. 221 ; Mercurms Politicus, No. 59, p. 946. The last does not bring out so clearly as the others the fact that there was a reconnaissance by a detached party before the whole army quitted Glasgow. X Baillie, ubi supra. The English newspapers are rather confusing as to the exact date of this move — the Weekly Intelligencer and Perfect Accotint, e.g., by mentioning how 'we marched' from Glasgow on Thursday the loth, the day before the Roundhead officer's (p. 32 of the collection) and the bulk of the other letters from headquarters and the camp are dated from that city. The discrepancy ought, however, to be readily intelligible in the light of our last footnote. And Baillie is substantially corroborated by 'Cromwelliana,' which (omitting all mention of the Glasgow expedition) takes up its parable again with the army at 'Monkesland' on the 13th, and goes on to give (at p. 105) the details used in our text. It is a better guide than the newspapers, whose narratives give no particulars as to the route, and read as if Cromwell had marched westwards under the very guns of the Scots at Kilsyth or Torwood. As a matter of fact, the 'Crom- welliana' itinerary ('July 13. The army marched from Monkesland to St, Laurence parish, three or four miles from Linlithgoe, and three miles from Fal- kirke, a very boggy and almost unpassable way ') shows that he must have gone by Slamannan and the numerous 'mosses' of those parts. 'St. Laurence,' to be precise, was, we suppose, Laurence Park, not Laurieston. § All honour to the brave; and ' Governour Lieut. Gebath' — more properly, Galbraith, it is likely — played the man. The English bombarded Calendar all that Tuesday — with their great ' battery pieces,' too, not such field-guns as had been used at Redhall ; and then, after the fruitless negotiations summarized in the text, stormed it, * about sunset,' as Cornet Baynes says, with a party of ' 10 files out of every regiment,' which we take to have been some 260. men. More THE FINAL TURNING MOVEMENT 271 resistance had not in other ways the same interest as that of the Red- hall siege ; for it was of no strategical moment. The leaguer and assault gave Cromwell and his men — to put it brutally — a chance of keeping their hand in ; but that the possession of the house was of any particular importance to one side or the other can scarcely be thought likely. Cromwell himself was probably less taken up about the ending of the brief agony of that siege or the fate of any ' Robert Hargreave of your troop,'"*^ or other dead man of them all, than intent on receiving the news, which he must have been hourly expecting, of Harrison's advent. For that welcome intelligence he had not very long to wait. On the Friday following, the Major-General with his reinforcements from England — 'sixteen companies of foot and 1,500 horse and dragoons,' or about 3,000 men in all — was in Leith ;t and it is evident that the certainty of his being thus near at hand emboldened Cromwell to take measures such as we have just seen him postponing elsewhere till the new arrivals should be in touch with his own force. Had it not been ' in reference to England ' (' lest when we attempt over with the body of the army they — the Scots — should march ' thither), he would very likely have advanced northwards by the road which Lambert had thrown open in his recent scouting expedition from Glasgow. As things now were, the other Major-General's coming set his mind pretty well at rest in regard to the contingency so often taken into account. In 'attempting over' he could, when thus strengthened, tell off an adequate force to dog the steps of the Scots if they should make for the Borders. Therefore the tidings that Harrison was nearing the capital had no sooner reached him| — on the very day after Calendar had fallen — than he planned the most famous of all his ' designs on Fifeside.' Colonel Overton, with some than four-fifths of the garrison kept up the contest to the last, and died fighting. ' They had no quarter that resisted,' says ' Cromwelliana ' (p. 105). ' There was 62 killed; and 13 souldiers and 17 countrymen and women who came in for shelter (as they said) were taken prisoners, but afterwards all — except the souldiers — released, and a list of the souldiers sent to the enemy for exchange. The Governour Lieut. Gebath was killed.' Calendar was pronounced * very strong, being moted round,' and having 'a great wood by it,' adds the ' Great Victory' pamphlet in E 638. The Scots seem to have attempted to revenge Galbraith and his men, at all events, by beating up the English quarters in some force ' at noon ' next day and causing them some loss. {A Perfect Account, No. 29 — E 638 — by letters of July 17; and 'Cromwelliana,' p. 106. There are possibilities of con- fusion in the latter authority's speaking of 'His Excellency quartering about Sir James Leviston's house,' or Livingstone's. That name also belonged to Kilsyth House, as vv'e know — footnote, p. 220, supra — and Calendar belonged to my Lord of that Ilk, whose family name the English news-writer preferred to use.) * That is quoted from a letter of Cornet Baynes to his ])rother ('Roundhead Officers,' p. 34) telling of the siege and the English losses there ; and is one of those laconic entries that do bring home to the mind the realities of war. t * More Letters from Scotland ' in E 638 — one of July 19 from Leith. X A * drumhead ' letter of the 14th in Mercuritis Politicus (No. 59) shows that he was practically certain of the 'very speedy' advent of Harrison even by the beginning of the week. 272 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS 1, 600 men — a regiment of foot and a few dragoons from ' the camp near Lithgow,' and some four or five hundred infantry more from Leith"* — was ordered to cross the Queen's Ferry and assail the ' sconce ' on its north bank ; and did so with entire success just after daybreak on the morning of Thursdayt (July 17). From that small beginning followed the whole series of operations which were destined to settle the fortunes of Charles 11. and the kingdom of Scotland for the next ten years. To be sure, this invasion under Overton was only an experiment, and would not have been followed up if it had realized the expecta- tions which Cromwell based upon it for some few hours. He hoped the bruit of the successful landing would draw back his opponents' whole army pell-mell to Stirling, in their fear of being outflanked from the side towards Dunfermline ; and that as they drew off he might engage their rear — if not break their whole line, after the manner of Admiral Rodney, by a dash through the Letham position which he hoped to * Cromwell's own despatch (Letter clxxv.) ; one written by Lambert and con- tained in Whitelocke's Memorials, 499, 500, or Mercurhis Folittcus, No. 60 (E 638) ; and 'Cromwelliana,' p. 106. t The despatches both of Cromwell and Lambert [tchi stiprd) mention this result, of course ; but supplementary details from other sources are interesting and even important. Any one of the several narratives, though, might have saved Dr. Gardiner the mistake (p. 422, 'Hist. Commonwealth and Protectorate,' vol. i.) of mentioning the despatch of this expedition as an incident of July 15 — a slight error which one only points out because it makes the Scots seem blameworthy in having given their opponents twenty-four hours' ' law ' more than they really had. The Private Hand, then (p. 36 of the ' Collections '), makes it certain that Overton's landing party took ihe North Ferry 'sconce' in rear. {Its date, by the way, is • Wednesday July i6th '—which does not wholly contradict our statement in the text, because it is evident that Overton's ships and boats were already stealing across the Firth in the last hours of that night.) ' The English landed a party of horse and foot at Inverkeithing, who with much ado and loss of men landed and entrenched themselves on a little hill between the North Ferry and Inver- keithing.' The tradition of the place seems to be, if one may trust to James Grant, that the invaders came ashore at 'the Cruicks' above Jamestown, and a chance acquaintance of ours, familiar with the locality and its traditions, informs us that the very stakes to which they moored their boats are visible to this day hard by Port Laing. Hbwever that may be, one bears in mind the extract given at the close of our last chapter, and therefore pictures the ships of the English fleet as engaging the batteries of North Queensferry, the Ferry Hills, and Inch Garvie, while the boats with their 'two pieces of ordnance and 60 men apiece' pulled round into what cartographers mark as the Inner Bay. Once there, it seems Overton's infantry rushed the Ferry Hills, captured the guns both of the 'sconce' itself and the batteries that engirdled the other edges of the peninsula, and ' drew a line across the isthmus ' or * fell to intrenching of themselves,' as Lambert puts it. The contradiction between the Private Hand's story of 'much loss of men ' and the Major-General's estimate of ' only about six ' killed is determined in favour of the latter authority by Balfour's stating (iv. 313) that the English ' landit with- out any opposition at all, in effect.' It is a letter in the ' Great Victory ' broadside (E 638, § 2) that contains the passage previously quoted about the ' 5 great guns ' in the sconce and round dozen of others in the adjoining batteries. It adds that ' 4 ships laden with coals and salt ' were captured, evidently in the Inner Bay ; that two hours sufficed to give the English the possession of the whole peninsula ; And that the crossing was effected from Blackness as well as South Queensferry. CROMWELL FAILS TO DISLODGE THE SCOTS 273 find abandoned. But he marched up again to Larbert Bridge and the Carron Shore, that Thursday forenoon,* only to find the entrench- ments held against him, as before, in full force. The Scots had detached some sort of * party ' indeed for service in Fife,t but the vast majority of their troops remained where they were. Thereupon Cromwell judged it prudent to make good his hold upon the Ferry Hills isthmus and peninsula, if he could make no impression else- where ; told off John Lambert, accordingly, to see to that ; and, in a word, began in good earnest the movement which was to succeed in dislodging the Scots. * Letter clxxv. and Lambert's despatch, as before. t The latter authority, paragraph 4. One hears no word of the despatch of that party in any other narrative ; and it is very evident they attempted nothing against Overton there and then. \ 18 CHAPTER VII. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING — CONCLUSION. ONE must not set about making excuses for the Scots on the eve of what proved almost the most desperate and not the least decisive"^ battle of these Campaigns. But it does look as if they had been lulled into a false sense of security through some previous cries of ' Wolf !' on the shores of Fife ; and did not — like their prototypes of the fable— believe in the coming of the real animal when he was actually upon them. If that was not the explanation (and we grant that the difference be- tween an actual landing and the threat of it should have been quickly enough discernedt) their councils must have been swayed by some strange infatuation. Their defence was not indeed open to the cen- sure implied in Dr. Gardiner's casual and merely careless statement that the English began crossing the Firth on the Tuesday and con- tinued it ' day after day ' until the Sunday morning. They did not * Inverkeithing was a much more terrible defeat than Dunbar, if one takes as a criterion the proportion of killed to the total of the force engaged ; and infinitely more important as a turning-point of history than the foregone conclusion of Worcester. f Though it may at the same time be pointed out how the conformation of the Ferry Hills peninsula told against the Scots' chances of being able to realize the full import of the new move. Well might George Downing, in a letter which forms the substance of the ' Great Victory ' pamphlet (E 638, § 2) offer thanks- givings for that * the Lord should direct His poor servants to pitch upon a spot of such fitness for its end in every kind '; and well may we in our less pious modern fashion remark on the shrewdness of the English choice of a landing-place. For the Ferry Hills are an excellent spot for hide-and-seek ; we shall in this chapter see how the English availed themselves of those ' heughs and howes ' in order to conceal their numbers ; and the ' decision ' that characterized Overton's landing (according to Lambert) was probably in part manifested by his makmg it certain that no denizen of the isolated peninsula got away to speed to the Scots head- quarters the tidings that 1,600 men had debarked there. Lambert's despatch also informs us, no doubt, that the Scots at the Torwood had some news of that event by ten o'clock the same morning (Thursday). The speediness of the intelligence ought to have put them on their guard : the panic exaggerations of the good burgesses of Inverkeithing, of which it no doubt consisted, probably helped not to. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 275 thus give the English five clear days' ' law.' But they committed a mistake which was the same in kind if not in degree. For, though the invasion as a matter of fact began on the Thursday and was only resumed on the Saturday, their measures for repelling it had the look of being inadequate to the point of futility. They made no effort whatsoever against the first detachment, under Overton, that took possession of the Ferry Hills peninsula. They told off an insuffi- cient force to engage Lambert when the reality of the invasion of Fife become too patent to be ignored.* Worst of all, they entrusted a notorious ' suspect ' with the command of that party,! and brigaded with his infantry a cavalry division officered by the ' old gang ' of dis- credited Kirk champions.! * For though the ' surprise party ' of the Thursday morning might — as already conjectured— succeed very easily in blinding the Scots as to its numbers, there could be no concealing the strength of the forces which John Lambert was ' boating over ' the Ferry from daybreak till dusk the following Saturday ; and the authentic reports that must have been sped away to the Scots headquarters from the numerous view-points to east and west along the Fife coast, account for the comparative promptitude — though not for the inadequacy — of their counter-move. t Balfour is, one may say, a better authority than either Cromwell or Lambert for informing us as to who commanded in chief on the Scots side. The latter in naming Sir John Brown (as Cromwell does in Letter clxxv., and Lambert in his despatch) had evidently the same information as reached Mercurius Politicus {No. 60 — E 638), which says, ' Lieut.-Gen. Holborn commanded their foot.' But Balfour (iv. 313) expressly says that ' L.-Gen. Holburn' 'commandet in chieflfe'; and is corroborated (p. 36 of the ' Collections ') by the Private Hand, nevi. (else) £Oft. Brown, as we assume, was the leader of tfie cavalry. One cannot go by the circumstance, which appears to tell in favour of our view, of Holburn's having been twice (as we see) named Lieutenant-General, while Sir John Brown, according to an official document in Balfour, presently to be referred to, was only Major-General. The two ranks seem to have been equal, or interchangeable, in those days ; or the names for them very loosely employed. Lambert, e.g.y was really Lieutenant-General of the English army now {A Perfect Accomit, No. 22, p. 172); but continued to be known as Major-General, while Monk sometimes got the higher title ( Weekly Intelligencer^ No. 28) in virtue of an artillery appointment. + Sir John Brown, Lord Balcarres, Lord Brechin. We single out the cavalry for scrutiny, only because nothing is known of the composition of the infantry brigade — except as to its including some Highlanders of whom we shall hear again. It rather goes against the grain even to seem to disparage the leader. Sir John Brown, on the eve of his last and best fight. But it will be allowed that his antecedents were not a very favourable augury for his success in this momentous conflict. Nor were those of Balcarres — who, however, was an absentee, and probably did well in preferring just at this time to go as King's Commissioner at the General Assembly of the Kirk (Lamont's 'Diary,' p. 33; Sir John Scot's ' Staggering State,' p. 58). The territorial interest of both those leaders must have had something to do with their selection ; and, indeed, the confidence of the Scots Council of War in their parochial-patriotic determination to resist the in- vader seems not to have been misplaced — speaking at all events for one of the commanders and both of the regiments. Both these men's lands lay in the very district which, on the morrow of the fight, the English were about to invade and lay waste — see Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii., p. 638, for Brown's ' infeftment of the haronie of woodlsbie, easter fordell, with the niylne blairstrowie and cottoun.' •Carlyle's mistaking him for Richard Brown, ex-Governor of Abingdon, is to be explained by reference to the indices of Clarendon's ' History.' And Balcarres' men, with or without Balcarres himself, may be supposed to have fought as should 18—2 476 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS The first of those mistakes is intelligible enough (though none the less rueful) when one bears in mind the probability that the Scots Council of War was misinformed about the strength of the first batch of invaders.* The second is quite explicable also on the supposition that Charles and his advisers trusted merely to holding Lambert in check upon the Ferry Hills, and — naturally enough — deemed the steep ridges immediately north of that position to be impenetrable even by his superior numbers. But the third baffles one altogether ; and indeed imports the element of fatality, as distinguished from bad generalship, into the business.! Otherwise the Scots scheme of defence was sensible enough, and even promised well — if it had been rightly carried out. It was evidently based upon a sound knowledge of the lie of the land in the country- side adjoining Inverkeithing. Trusting to the natural barriers that shut off the little Ferry Hills peninsula from the mainland (so to their lineal descendants, the Fife Light, in the like case. We may suppose that ' Randerstoun, younger,' and ' young Balcomey, Sir James Lermont's eldest sone,' whom their neighbours Balfour and Lamont named among the killed and wounded, were Cornets in his squadrons. But there was no such special reason for the presence of * Lord Brechen's regiment.' These were part of the old * standing forces ' of the ante-Engagement epoch, 1648-50 — see the report of a Committee on June 19 in the latter year in Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii. ; and an infusion of Cavalier officers into it since Dunbar {Mercurius Foliticus, No. 31, letter ' of the 31st December') had probably had the effect of new wine upon old bottles. A contrast to Brechin's — and possibly enough the one representative of the Royalists proper — was ' Sir Walter Scott's regiment,' made up probably of Border prickers such as the Kirk ' would not suffer to embody ' a twelvemonth before. One regrets for his namesake's sake to have to mention this commander's bar sinister : for the Sir Walter of that day was a natural son of the then Earl off Buccleuch (Balfour, iv. 256). He can scarcely have been the ' Colonel Scotte ' whose cowardice in action the year before has been referred to in Book ii. of this volume ; for he lost the number of his mess (' Roundhead Officers,' p. 35), and so may be supposed to have been in the thick of the fight. How to class Augustin we know not ; but here he was again with his volunteers and others, 200 strong, for the last time in our history {Mercurius Politiais^ No. 60, E 638 ; Whitelocke,^ under August i). The authorities for the constitution of Sir John Brown's brigade are Lamont's ' Diary ' (p. 32), and Balfour, iv. 299-301. Of the ' Charles Arnott' whom Lamont omits and Balfour names we only know that his regiment was said to be ' about 200 horse ' months before {Mercurius Politicus^ No. 24, ' from Hull the 16 ' November). * A large enough force, be it remembered, to make the naturally strong posi- tion on the Ferry Hills more formidable still by throwing up entrenchments — as we know they did — and turning the Scots' guns upon them — as they must have — by dragging the captured artillery from the south to the north slopes of those hills. f Or, if not a fatality, the disastrous choice was determined by a circumstance none the less to be deplored for its consequences though not in itself blameworthy — namely, that Charles was preoccupied about his chances of success in warfare over the Border when it came (as he saw it soon must) to that ; and therefore declined to spare the best of his army and subordinates for this present piece of service. Though at variance with what has already been said at p. 262 supra, this view is not unwarrantably based on Mercurius Foliticus, No. 60, p. 964 : ' Their King and all the English . . . would have had them march directly for Glasgow and so for England.' It is greatly to be regretted that we have not a single Scots account of the discussions in Charles's Council of War at this time. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 277 speak) of Fife, Charles and his Council of War ordered Hoi burn to bar the northward road against the English. And let us not deem it over-caution on their part that they did not instead enjoin and enable him to drive back the English to their ships."^ For it must be remembered that they could not take liberties, in the way of detaching a force large enough for that other bit of service and so weakening the main body which Cromwell was momently threaten- ing to attack at the Torwood position, t Rather than run that risk they quite wisely deemed it better that their operations in Fife also should be defensive rather than offensive. And observe. Success in that plan would have entailed upon Cromwell either a further (and very perilous) division of his forces or an ignominious retreat both from Fife and Falkirk. Indeed, the state of matters which the Scots hoped to bring about was at one time within an ace of coming to pass — if that is any consolation. On the forenoon of Sunday, July 20, Cromwell was, for about the fourth time, withdrawing from before the Scots main position, and so leaving them ' at liberty to send more forces ' to reinforce Holburn. | Had that General played his part, then (and had he not encountered the magnificent audacity of a John Lambert), nightfall of that Sabbath should have left the English impotently holding the Ferry Hills and expecting a Scots assault in force after dark ; and found Cromv/ell himself s withering on the other shore as to whether to cross the ferry and rescue his Major-General or hurl himself against the main body of the Scots army at the Torwood — or Stirling.§ All those fair possibilities, however, remained no more than might- * At this point we deliberately break away from the one authority of any kind who gives us a glimpse of the Scots' intentions. The Private Hand (' Collections,' p. 36) says that Holburn ' was sent to fall on.' If that had been the case, Holburn's disobedience to orders was his one saving virtue. For in trying to ' rush ' the English position on the Ferry Hills he would have been merely courting destruc- tion ; while by stalling-off the English advance he would have done excellent service. But, ' it was not in the poor man !' t Cromwell ' had some thoughts ' we know of assailing it even on the first rumour of the despatch of a party to encounter Overton ; and must again have ' marched close up ' to ' Larbert water ' on the Saturday to screen Lambert's departure and fall upon the Scots if he found their numbers lessened so as to give him a chance. It is almost remarkable that he did not venture to, since he had then between 17,000 and 18,000 men as against their (say) 20,000. Lambert's curt mention of his withdrawal — which Cromwell nowhere mentions himself— reads almost as if the Major-General felt ' My Lord ' was not doing his part properly in keeping the enemy in play (Paragraph 12 of his Despatch in Whitelocke). The totals given above are arrived at by deducting Lambert and Overton's 4,500 from Cromwell's original 19,000, and adding Harrison's 3,000, who were within easy reach (* More Letters from Scotland,' u/>i supra) ; and by subtracting from the Torwood force the troops of Holburn and Brown, which may be safely put at 4,000. X Lambert's Despatch, udi supra. § For a retreat to the King's Park position would probably have been part of the Scots manoeuvring in any case : that position being as strong as that of the Torwood, and its situation more convenient for the despatch of bodies of men east- wards along the Clackmannan and Fife shore. 278 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS have-beens ; and what actually happened was this. During the whole of that Saturday, July 19, Lambert the Major-General hastened over horse and foot — both from South Queensferry and Blackness as before, we suppose — to the Ferry Hills ; superintend- ing their landing, one may fancy, now at Port Laing or the Inner Bay and now on the south-western shores of the little peninsula. The service was urgent ; but, after all, their (say) sixty ' double shallops ' would amply serve for the easy passage of the 2,500 men whom we understand Lambert to say he managed to ferry over by nightfall. The wind was fair for them, too — another 'observable' blessing for which ihe pious scoutmaster duly returned thanks.* Yet it must have been anxious work when, as the afternoon sped by, the Enghsh vedettes reported the Scots to be * at Dunfermline within five miles of us ' in numbers just about the same as those which Lambert himself then had.t He probably feared their attack, how- ever, very little. For the essential fact of the matter is contained in a sentence which has already been quoted as to the breastwork or ' line ' that Overton's men had drawn ' across the isthmus. '| Backed as it doubtless was, somewhere on the brae-side above Jamestown,^ by the Scots' own guns haled thither from the points they had recently defended in the ' sconce ' and its flanking batteries, that entrenchment could easily have been held against a bigger force than there was to fear. For its artillery, and the musketry of the men occupying it, must have swept the narrow stretch of flat ground that forms the isthmus connecting the Ferry Hills with the two almost parallel ridges of rising ground to the north. Behind the Enghsh rose the uneven plateau which ' almost on three sides the sea encompasseth ';Ii in front of them, as we say, stretched the level isthmus which is the fourth side ; beyond that their horizon was bounded directly ahead by those two other low hills. The latter lie, roughly, north-east and south-west, and run, as just said, very nearly side by side, sloping at the seaward end almost down to the beach. Along the narrow gut between them runs nowadays the direct road between the North Ferry and Dun- * Downing's Letter in the * Great Victory ' broadside (E 638, § 2). f Four thousand, that is to say : almost to a man the total of the English on the Saturday night. For we take it that the remainder of the cavalry which were ferried across, continuously after dark and on into the following morning, just turned the scale — by his 'five or six hundred ' — in Lambert's favour. There are the usual contradictions to annoy one; but Balfour's statement (iv. 313) and the Private Hand's (p. 36) — both representing that the Scots were outnumbered by four to one — must have been big exaggerations. On the other hand, Lambert must have minimized his own losses in the battle quite flagrantly. t ' A Great Victory God hath vouchsafed ' (E 638, § 2). § One remembers the Private Hand's ' on a little hill between North Ferry and Inverkeithing.' Cf. Balfour (iv., p. 313) — 'Cromwell (sic) fortified himself on the hill betwixt the Ferry and Inverkelhen.' Jamestown is a steading on the south- west shore of the Inner Bay. II Lambert's Despatch, paragraph 2. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 279 fermline ; the upward gradient on it, a third of a mile or more inland, is noticeable, as showing how the two hills converge at the north- ward end in a ridge which crosses them at right angles. The narrow valley that they form as they jut southwards thence towards the sea may be likened to the fork between a pair of one's fingers, spread ever so slightly apart with the fist half clenched ; the ridge on which they meet is just like that of the flap of skin at the base of the fingers, though no knuckles protrude ; the sloping back of the hand is exactly reproduced in the gradual dip in which that ridge falls away northwards, having at its foot St. Margaret's Stone and the Pinicerton Burn."^ On the east side of the more easterly of the two hills — on the leftmost of our two Brobdingnagian fingers, and about half-way between the joint and the knuckle when it is bent as we have directed — nestles the liitle burgh of Inverkeithing. One rather wonders to find that the English had not possessed themselves of that town. But Lambert's description of the locality of the battle, coupled with the Private Hand's precise account of the position of his entrenchments, shows that that had not been done. And indeed it is evident that the English leader's original intention had been to stand on the defensive! on the excellent vantage ground of the Ferry Hills. For that purpose he had indeed taken another precaution over and above manning the breastwork that Overton's division had cast up : on the morning of the fight, says Downing, he * placed his foot obscure on the side of a hill.' One cannot profess to identify this very 'hidie-hole' of his ambushed infantry; but certainly the most likely place was just round the corner from the isthmus on the west, in the * beild ' of the hillside which is now a precipice, thanks to the quarrying of its excellent building-stone, and is altered in another way, as to its interior, by the railway cutting below the first tunnel leading down from the Forth Bridge. Well : early on the Sunday morning the enemy had left their over- night quarters in Dunfermline, and advanced, says Lambert, ' very near us.' And he in person lured them on yet farther towards the English lines, explains Scoutmaster Downing, by advancing with a few of his cavalry and withdrawing again ' to his foot, using that only as a means to draw them forward.']: It is probable that in thus fall- * By laying the two bent fingers (the index and second of the left hand, for choice) lightly on the right wrist, and clenching the right hand, one gets a rough but serviceable natural model of the battleground. The back of the right hand (or the hillside above Jamestown which the English occupied) is now seamed by the deep railway cutting below the tunnel that northward -bound trains enter on passing the P'orth Bridge. The wrist (or isthmus across which the two armies faced each other) is bridged by the viaduct carrying the line on to the Inverkeithing tunnel. The fork of the fingers is the gut or pass so often spoken of : the rest of the half-shut hand accurately enough represents the surroundings of the battle- ground, and the edge of the second finger gives an idea of the slope up which Lambert led his main body. t Paragraphs 4, 8, and 12 of his despatch in Whitelocke.- X Downing's letter in the * Great Victory ' broadside. 28o CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ing back he suffered them to get possession, unmolested, of the town of Inverkeithing. But indeed we are given no clue as to the route by which they had come — they might have marched on a bee-line across the gentle slope that rises southwards from St. Margaret's Stone, or have skirted hard by Rosyth round the more westerly of our two digital hill ridges, or have marched eastwards round the bend of the second brae and so into Inverkeithing. By whichever road they chose, the Scots must have scouted warily as they came on, the ground being naturally laid out as for purposes of ambuscade. But one can certainly best construe Lambert's despatch on the sup- position that they 'took the floor ' on the narrow but fairly level ground immediately south of Inverkeithing and, deploying thence, set them- selves to occupy in force the more easterly of the two ridges. For by so picturing the movement to oneself it is readily understood how, when ' he began to wheel,' the enemy seemed ' as if he meant either to march away or to take the advantage of a steep mountain.'! That last con- spicuous object was doubtless the hillside south-westwards of Inver- keithing — which is between two and three hundred feet high and very imposing to Southron eyes ; the road by which ' he ' might have marched off was the one already referred to, which runs through the gut separating that hill from the next ; the gut or little valley itself was doubtless ' the pass ' afterwards ' lined by the enemy's mus- keteers ' which Lambert found a great impediment to his left wing of horse. The English offered apparently only a show of resistance to Holburn while making these dispositions : the sally by Colonel Okey and engagement with ' their rear ' of which the Major-General's despatch makes mention is not to be confused (by such as give themselves the trouble of consulting the original authorities) with the more desperate action in which that famous * Dragoon Colonel and zealous Anabaptist ' presently bore his part. For it is to be repeated that up till that time and for a little longer Lambert had avowedly been standing on the defensive, inter- preting his mission into Fife as only intended, in his own words, ' in order to the preservation of the forces ' there. And so he contented himself with facing the Scots, as he says, for above an hour and a half, and exchanging shots with them — though it was probably a one- sided! artillery duel — across the little isthmian plain. But a boat was even then on its way across the Ferry ' fraught with a dear cargo ' — bringing, that is to say, a messenger charged with evil tidings. Cromwell had retreated to Linlithgow from before the face of those other Scots at the Torwood ; and a big augmentation of the numbers opposing Lambert might be expected before nightfall. There linger in the Major-General's despatch, as we have already surmised, some traces of the impression made upon him by that intelligence. Almost * Paragraph 8 of Lambert's despatch. + For one fancies the Scots had no cannon at all — a grave overlook on Holburn's part, or his superiors'. THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 281 it seems as if he felt himself singled out (though Caesar's wife was above suspicion, and doubtless also the marital fidelity of Mrs. Lambert in Edinburgh*) to be the Uriah of this campaign. At all events he acted as such — with all the courage of that other devoted subordinate, more than his soldiership (so far as one knows), and three times his luck. Mark, indeed, 'the craft, strategy, wisdom, and foresight of the Brigadier ' — of, that is to say, John Lambert. He had let his foe get placed in as strong a position as his own — a fact for which no want of foresight in him was really, as we know, to blame. It did not daunt him ; he took the offensive boldly. He had the option of trying to rush in full force the pass between the two lateral hill-slopes that the enemy had 'lined with musketeers,' or charging them up the face of the eastmost ridge whose heights they crowned. He chose the latter method while not leaving the former place out of account in his calculations. He concentrated three parts of his total force upon his right wing, leaving the fourth to hold the mouth of that pass on the left and prevent his being out-flankedf in his charge across the level ground. And nobly the well-planned battle was fought — by the whole of one side and the bulk of the other. ' The hottest service was between the left wing of ours and the right wing of theirs. 't That is to say, the seaward end of the narrow gut so often referred to — whose surface was then as now corn -land, we sup- pose, in all but the more sterile and rocky patches of it — was for a while the scene of a desperate conflict. We can name some of the English actors in it, if not the Scots : six troops ' of Okey's and Lid- cot's '§ bore the brunt of the fight there. These were mounted infantry : there must have been hot interchanges of musketry before the corresponding Scots arm of the service and regular cavalry — probably along with some Highlanders Ij— closed with them, drove them back, wheeled at the mouth of the pass to assail Lambert's main body in flank, but found themselves ' brought up all standing,' instead, by ' Captain Bramston's dragoons ' and that reserve of in- * She writes with a most charming air of devotion to her ' dearest friend ' and husband. — 'Roundhead Officers,' pp. 31 and 36. t Why he was not attacked on the other flank — by a charge out from the town's end of Inverkeithing — is the puzzle of the battle. The non-delivery of any onslaught thence probably should form one count in the indictment of Holburn, presently to be entered upon. Ij: Downing's letter. § Lambert's despatch. In naming Lidcot as commanding that party, the Major-General was probably confusing the two ' Dragoon ' officers in his hurry ; for Downing's letter makes it clear enough that Okey had the whole responsibility of the operations on the left. !| For one rather fancies that certain Buchanans from Strathyre awa' were engaged there. Cf. the ' Seneachie,' whom we are about to quote with regard to the doings of anotlier Clan ; and Lambert's and the Private Hand's mention of an officer whom the latter calls * the Laird of Buchanan ' — footnote, p. 221, supra — as among the prisoners. 282 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS fantry which Lambert had cunningly posted long since over against the gut.* And the hot-blood valour there displayed should have done something to turn the fortunes of the day if not timely checked and diverted in that manner. All the English accounts, except perhaps Lambert's own, testify how critical a struggle it was for a while ; and one fancies those furious defenders of the pass, ' with their lances and stoutness of their men,' must have fastened on the flank of Lambert's main body next moment but for the reserve's engaging them. For in the meanwhile the Major-General had been developing the main attack elsewhere. ' It was resolved we should climb the hill to them,' he says ; 'which accordingly we did.' That is to say, the bulk of his force charged up the slope of the hill— a miniature Majuba which one cannot now picture as it then was because the viaduct and permanent way of the railway line leading down from the Forth Bridge have altered it. But it is clear how doubtful must have been the success of the assailants if, while their first line contested the posses- sion of the crown of the brae with the Scots, the right wing of the latter had poured down upon the flank of the reserves doubling across the isthmus to their comrades' support. The reinforced assault must have been delivered without such hindrance, however ; and its success was largely ensured by the flight of the Scots General at the critical moment.! That the defending force were (in a rather * Downing's account, as quoted in the text, is strikingly supplemented by a letter in Mercurius Politicus, No. 60 (E 638— 'from North Ferry, July 22'), viz.^ 'the Scots with their lances and stoutness of their men gave our horse such charges as did disorder them, and charged quite through the first body ; to which our gallant Major General Lambert, coming up with a reserve, in one quarter of an hour put them to the rout which were of the left wing.' One gives that last half of the sentence for what it is worth. The 'quarter of an hour' clause, indeed, corresponds to Cornet Baynes's statement that fortune declared for the English 'on a sudden' (p. 35, 'Roundhead Officers') ; but the hurried newspaper story leaves one to find out elsewhere the fate of the Scots' right wing. It is Downing who mentions 'Captain Bramston's dragoons'; but the bulk of the reserve spoken of by Mercurius Politicus must have been those infantry. t 'An Historical and Genealogical Account of the Clan Maclean.' By A Seneachie (London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1838). ' Holburn made some exhibi- tion or a seeming show of determination to fight ; but scarcely a shot was fired by Lambert's cavalry, who commenced the attack, before the poltroon turned his rein west and scampered off the field.' Doubtless the reader is somewhat surprised by our citing so out-of-the-way and comparatively recent an authority as this nine- teenth-century 'Seneachie.' But we ' chuse ' him (as Sir Walter would have spelt it) because his story is the only credible version of the persistent tradition of the locality, and probably therefore indicates the real grounds for the holding a court- martial (as Balfour tells us there was one) upon Holburn's conduct. We shall later on have to sift out the grains of fact which are to be found in the Seneachie's verbose and somewhat magniloquent account of the battle : our affair in the mean- time is with the corroborative authorities just referred to. Tradition, then, has evidently taken a curious form in this as in other cases : according to James Grant (footnote to chapter Ivi. of * Harry Ogilvie ') the people of Inverkeithing still asserted, half a century or so ago, that Holburn ' stood on the East Ness and con- ferred with Lambert through a speaking trumpet.' Our own ' oldest inhabitant * THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 283 trite phrase) * disheartened by the defection of their leader ' we shall not assert ; any more than that he led off with him (as the Seneachie declares) a thousand men of that arm of the service to which he did not belong. But it is at least probable that the sight of his stampede scared into flight the rearward portion of the Scots foot soldiers wait- did not mention that circumstance when he offered to show us the scenes of ' Cromwell's check ' by Port Laing and of the battle of Pinkerton Burn, and the * Hedges of Death ' (though that was not his name for them) on Pitreavie Estate. But ihe mere fact of such a legend's having survived is a document, 'of sorts.' Balfour's contemporary entry is of course much better evidence : ' Holburn that day by all honest men was thought to have played the traitor, but he was formally cleared at Stirling thereafter and quit his charge in the army ; for the whole army exclaimed against him' ('Annals,' iv. 313). Evidently his was just such another case as that of ' S^' James Hackett and Colonell Scotte ' a twelvemonth before. Them we know to have been runaways, in the Queen's Park of Edinburgh, and ' cleared by the Committee; yet that did little salve their honour amongst honest men and soldiers of worth and reputation' {Ibid., p. 88 or 89). These circumstances then — the exist- ence of a popular tradition, however grotesque, and the inquiry by a court-martial (surely not summoned merely /^«r encourage?- les autres) — do justify one in think- ing the ' Seneachie ' has preserved at least one solid fact from amongst the legends of the Clan Gillian. Even the two words on the subject contributed by the Private Hand tell in the same direction : don't they seem, when the context is considered, to imply some censure on Holburn for having lived to fight another day? 'Sir John Brown of Fordall and the Laird of Buchanan [were] taken and many of the soldiers an* I officers ill wounded. Sir J. Brown died of his wounds. Holburn escaped.' Which last two sentences are an intended antithesis, unless we mistake. It is interesting by the way to know that Holburn's regiment (for though 'cleared ' he was deprived of his command) was given to Duga Sir James Turner (' Memoirs,' p. 94). Our earlier reference to Holburn as a notorious suspect is based on the fact that he had been dismissed from the Governorship of Stirling Castle, apparently because he lay under suspicion of being wanting in fidelity to the cause. Balfour mentions him on that earlier occasion as having reassured King Charles when 'suspected of underhand dealing' (iv. 250) somewhere in the end of December — a fact which one must evidently connect with the same writer's report, under December 27, how the English ' bragged ' that they had ' the same keys ' to open Stirling Castle gates as those that had unlocked Edinburgh Castle's ; and with an English newspaper's mentioning in February how the Scots had 'lately intercepted a letter of his [Holburn's] which doth not well please them ' {Mercurius Politicus, No. 36 — 'Edenb., Feb. 4'). The same paper definitely enough says that 'Holborn with his company is put out of Stirling : he is not one that they can con- fide in for so considerable a trust, yet he continues still in the army ' (No. 55, letter of June 17). Cf. the ' Memoirs of James Burns ' (in Maidment), p. 19— a passage which possibly relates truthfully how the vacancy was filled up, and is certainly right as to what became of the dismissed Governor : ' Robert Montgomery Sir John Brown and the Lord Drammond threw the dice for the command of the Castle of Stirling, which fell to the Lord Drummond ; and Holburn, Pitscottie and Dalziell were made Generall Majors of Foot.' If a circumstantial story told by the English was true, Holburn was a bit of a dissembler. Argyle having told the King ' that his Majesty's bringing in' of Malignants would cause a defection of the army by men of eminency, the King desired him to name one. Argyle urged Major Gen. Holborne who being sent for answered before Argyle's face that he was so far from what was objected that he desired Ruthen might be General, and Middleton Lieut. General, and would be rather content to trail a pike than that it should be otherwise. Sir John Brown likewise being sent for answered the like ' (Mercurius Politicus^ No. 33, ' Edenborough 12 January'). Whether of these twain made good his profession of zeal ? 284 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS ing in reserve just above Inverkeithing town. However that may have been, the masses of English infantry got possession of the ridge of hill adjoining that place ; and some of them must have descended into the pass* on the west side of the ridge, to help to settle the fate of the Scots right wing there, while the rest pushed on in pursuit of the broken defenders of the ' brae-face.' The battle was won, though its best-known episode had not yet come to pass. This was the desperate stand made, at the cost of most of their lives, by the men of a Highland clan. The English knew them only as part ' of Marquis Huntly's army 'f : they were in reality Macleans from Mull. Most likely they were the very ' recruit of five hundred ' which Lambert believed to have reached Holburn before the battle began, but had really only finished their march from Stirling in time to meet the first of the fugitives from the field. J If that was the * The descent is easy, except in one or two rocky and almost precipitous places; and — caught as the defenders were between the 'reserve' and these comrades coming to its support — the little valley must have witnessed a combat as of 'Silver's Theatre.' The bulk of Lambert's force were infantry— four regi- ments ; but there were at least the survivors of his own cavalry regiment and of four troops of Okey's and Lydcot's (the rest of the latter having, we know, been en^'aged elsewhere) to be let loose in pursuit. t ' More Letters from Scotland ' ( E 638). It would be interesting to know whether (as Nicoll declared in his 'Diary,' p. 49) the scapegrace Marquis had been ' poking up in his pockets ' the money for the soldiers' pay. + We have not even the authority of the Seneachie for that conjecture, but rely this time solely on local tradition. For it is currently said to this day that the slaughter of the Macleans came about in or near what is now (to the best of our knowledge) ' Pitreavie South Planting,' a mile or so from the battle-ground proper. (By the way, the ordnance maps mark the former locality as the ' sup- posed site ' of the battle, and therein probably follow the contemporary Kirk- session record of Dunfermline which speaks of the ' battell beside Pitreavie.' The slipshod entry in the latter authority is easily intelligible, considering that the fell slaughter of the pursuit took place on that spot ; but Dr. Gardiner is — shall we say ? — more to blame in specifying * a hillside north of Inverkeithing ' as the scene of the conflict. Lambert's mention of that ' steep mountain ' is inex- plicable if his own position had been in and beyond Inverkeithing.) And local legend is a sure enough guide to a spot distinguished by an event so striking — more trustworthy, we take it, than the clan tradition which the Seneachie has worked up from in his book. Not that one would disparage that writer. It is true that he puts speeches in the mouths of the commanders quite in the manner of Thucydides ; and does his bardic office after the style of the O'Mahony's hereditary minstrel with his ' Dermid of the Bucking Horses, and Conn of the Army Mules, and Fin of the Wall-eyed Pikes.' But one rises from his narrative, none the less, with a heightened wonder at the fidelity of oral tradition. Alone among all the accounts of the battle, e.g., it speaks of the use of artillery by the English — who must certainly (we know) have had guns, and used them, and yet are not mentioned as doing so in any printed narrative to which the Seneachie can have had access. On the other hand the Macleans and other Highlanders, telling the ancestral story in after generations 'around the island peat-fires,' can hardly have preserved the exact /ocal details as would the descendants of the dwellers beside the very spot; and therefore one can scarcely accept the Seneachie's authority for it that the Macleans made their desperate rally, and delivered their furious charges ' on Lambert's left,' below his ' battery planted on the brow of the hill,' ' immediately south of Inverkeithing.' It is extremely likely that there were some Highlanders in the valley of death in that quarter— probably, THE BATTLE OF INVERKEITHING 285 way of it, the disheartening scene made no difference to the vaHant clansmen. They showed that the Celt (crossed with Norseman) can on occasion stand fire like a phlegmatic Turk ; and proved them- selves equal to something else than the headlong attacking work in which their race shines best. Waterloo was anticipated (though we hope we have learned the lesson taught in Thackeray's little lecture about that signboard) in the stubborn defence of this hard-bitten band of Scots. For one may take the Seneachie's word for it that their Chief, Sir Hector Maclean of Duart, 'formed his undaunted band into a solid body '; that they stood up, though in ever-diminish- ing numbers, to repeated charges of the English ; and that the con- test only ended when their leader and nineteen-twentieths of the clansmen had given up their Uves under the sabres of Lambert's troopers.^ What has made the occurrence as famous as the courage of the actors in it entitled it to become,! is the preservation of a phrase. ' Another for Hector !' was the cry with which ' no less than eight gentlemen of the name of Maclean ' rushed upon their death ; and the heroic catch-word has passed into a proverb. J as already conjectured, those Buchanans whom the Seneachie only mentions (exaggerating their numbers as he does so) quite incidentally. But if there had really been 800 Macleans on the Scots' right wing (and the compliment will we trust avert the wrath of any of the Clan who resent our doubts about their Seneachie's accuracy), that division must surely have carried all before them and crippled Lambert effectually ere he carried the rest of the position. * Our fractions are right, we think — if arithmetical precision were the first desideratum there. The Seneachie is probably right in stating the relative numbers of those killed and those who escaped, though not in saying 40 Macleans escaped ouf of 800. ' Divers were Highlanders and had very ill quarter.' So runs the grim epitaph in Lambert's own despatch. But in explaining that that fact accounted for the large proportion of slain to prisoners, Lambert was probably suppressing another part of the truth — the carnage elsewhere and the cutting-off of the Scots cavalry in that pass, who should have been some hundreds, and must have suffered fearfully before surrendering. For the Major- General cannot both have his cake and eat it : if we accept his statistics as even approximately correct, there is no getting away from the ugly facts they disclose. And Balfour confesses to 800 killed. His account of the battle is at p. 313 of vol. iv. of the * Annals.' f It may be well to add that Nicoll and Lamont and Balfour all record the death of the brave Sir Hector, though not giving him so large a ' tail ' as the Seneachie. X Thanks largely to Sir Walter Scott, no doubt, who entered the anecdote as a reminiscence of Sheriffmuir in his 'Journal' (ii. 52), and made characteristic use of it in *The Fair Maid of Perth.' The foster-father who figures in both of those writings was either a myth or an importation from some other clan legend. Sheriff Mackay knows not of him (' Sketch of the History' of Fife and Kinross, 116) ; but says that 'as seven of his sons came to his rescue and met the same fate (the chief) saluted them with the cry '* Another for Hector." ' This, again, does not tally with the narrative of the official historiographer of the Clan — if by so cold a name one may describe the Seneachie ; for he represents the Chief as quite a young man, and is corroborated on that point by Balfour, ubi supra. We might ourselves, we believe, further complicate matters by referring to the facts that a 'Tutor of Mackleane, Colonel of Clan ' and 'Laird of Mack- leane, Colonel of Foote,' were named in the Scots official lists of commanders (Balfour under December 20, 1650); and that there certainly were a Hector 286 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS That episode occurred in all likelihood, we say, on the Pitreavie estate. For the pursuit began at the crest of the broad stretch of sloping ground dipping northwards from the ' seaward-drooping ' ridges (and forming the back of the hand in our natural model of the batde-field, if we may revert to that). The Macleans, hurrying thither lo reinforce their hard-pressed countrymen, were just in time, as we conjecture, to 'sell their lives at a deire rait,' as Balfour said"*" of the whole force. And all across the sides of that gentle valley fugitives must have been cut down, and desperately rallying parties massacred — a fact which goes far to explain how the name of the Pinkerton burn has ever since been associated with the memories of the battle which linger in the countryside. That its waters ran red with blood for days afterwards, is easily believed That St. Margaret's Stone was bespattered with gore, may also very well be supposed. And, whether or no, the almost sacred monument connects itself some- what incongruously, as the central point of the open ground across which the pursuit was urged, with the advent of strangers from England rather later than — and how different from ! — the ' fair and holy maiden who was destined to become, if all had their just dues, the true patron Saint of Scotland.' Yet each of the scenes of which the Stone forms thus a memorial was of God's arranging ; and He teaches both by the noble lives of such as Malcolm Canmore's Queen and the rude visitations of the ' red-coat bully in his boots.' It is with the latter alone that we are concerned — to our sorrow. For, whatever zest one has in tracing out a great Captain's schemes and combinations and achievements, one's gorge rises at the gruesome details they involve ; and however the eloquence of a Carlylef may ring in one's ears, there is no shutting them to the awfulness of a vce vidis ! Poor Sir John Brown, for instance ! He fell, desperately hurt, into the hands of the English ; and died of his wounds a few days after in captivity at Leith.I: Shorter shrift, we know, had Sir Hector Maclean and a compatriot from the very oppo- site end of Scotland — the Borderer Sir Walter Scott. § With another Highland Chief taken prisoner too (he of Buchanan) the casualties IMcLean of ' Torlosse,' and Sir Lauchlan McLean of Dowart only two years before (Thomson's ' Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 96 and 167, 168). But far be it from us to investigate a remote and apparently intricate detail of a Highland genealogy. * And the Private Hand : 'The Scots fought as valiantly as ever men.' t In quite another work than his ' Cromwell,' but about a scene not altogether different from that which we have just mentioned— the slaughter of Louis XVL's Swiss Guards at the Tuileries. * May the old Deutsch ' (or, in this case, Celto- Scandinavian) ' Biederkeit and Tapferkeit, and Valour which is Worth and Truth, fail in no age ! ' ::: Lamont's ' Diary ' (p. 34), which adds : * His corps were {sic) brought over to Rossee in Fyfe.' Balfour mentions that Sir John was 'buried among his ancestors at Arngoscke.' § Antea, p. 276, footnote. Cornet John Baynes shows that he knew the tidings of ' Collo. Scott's ' death to be true, by carefully mentioning the reported death of Holbum as only a rumour. CONCLUSION 287 and captures at Inverkeithing among officers of high rank seem to have been absolutely as many as at Dunbar — a fact which pre- pares one for finding that the mortahty among the rank and file was relatively much greater than on that other stricken field. One in seven {roughly speaking) fell at Dunbar : every other one at Inverkeithing.* And here ends our narrative of Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns. For the ' battell beside Pitreavie ' was their climax and decisive moment : the scene of operations in which Cromwell was personally engaged was speedily transferred to a far distant locality ; six weeks after Lambert's victory on the shore of Fife his Chief was vouchsafed the ' Crowning Mercy ' by the banks of the Severn at Worcester. A few pages may serve to join together all the connecting links between the two battles that are needed. Immediately on receipt of the tidings of Holburn's overthrow, the Scots evacuated the Torwood and retreated in haste to Stirling,! with some confused notion of advancing into Fife to encounter Lambert and a very clear intention to prevent his coming upon the King's Park position from the rear. For a while they seemed between two fires ; for Cromwell shipped over between two and three thousand reinforcements to Lambert on the two days following his victory, | and on the first of those days — Monday, July 21 — advanced in person across the field of Bannockburn to reconnoitre the King's Park entrenchments.§ Finding them held against him by the entire remaining strength of Charles's army, he told off Harrison's division of about three thousand, along with the Leith garrison, to keep watch south of the Forth ;|1 and himself crossed the Queensferry with prac- tically the whole of the rest of his own forces. In the course of the week that it took to ferry over those (say) twelve thousand horse and foot, he paid the health-seeking visit to Leith mentioned in a foot- note to the previous chapter ; and had the plucky little Castle of Inchgarvie rendered to him,1I you may say, in person. Once in Fife, * Lambert's * 2,000 killed and 1,400 prisoners ' leaves about 600 that may have escaped. Those figures have to be accepted, too, in view of Balfour's admission that the Scots lost about 800. And ' I think we lost not above eight men, but divers wounded'! Oh John Lambert, John Lambert! But did they perhaps score out a cipher — there can scarcely have been two noughts after that 8— in your MS. ? You were too brave to be a liar : you yourself had a horse shot under you and a brace of bullets lodged between your cuirass and under-coat ('Roundhead Officers,' p. 36 ; Whitelocke, 500). t ' Roundhead Officers ' (letter by Cornet Baynes of July 22) ; Mercurius Politicus, No. 60 (E 638), etc. X Lambert's despatch in Whitelocke, closing paragraph. § ' Cromwelliana,' p. 106 ; Letter clxxvi. ; etc. II Letter clxxx. ; The Army's Intelligencer^ No. i in E 638 ; * Milton State Papers,' p. 71. It On Thursday, July 24. The want of fresh water seems to have been a potent reason for the ' rendition ' (The • Great Victory ' pamphlet, E 638, § 2). For the supplies of other kinds furnished earlier to its (Governor, William Stewart, and garrison of * 2 rait of men ' or '20 musketeers ' — supplies varying from * a 288 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS he had Burntisland* also surrendered to him ; and leaving Whalley to ' take order with ' the remainder of the coast burghs, t marched next day upon Perth. Striking through Glen Farg, he and Lambert ' lay one night at Fordell,' Sir John Brown's place, ' and drove their horses among the General's standing corn.'; The country folk tried to break down the Bridge of Earn to hinder his farther passage, ' one arch whereof they had almost demolished,' when, 'our army approach- ing, they ran away and left their tools behind. '§ On August i Crom- well summoned the civic authorities of Perth to yield the city ; found that, contrary to expectation, there w^as a military garrison to be reckoned with ; set his bombardiers to work, with their cannon, therefore, and employed his sappers and miners in 'breaking down the sluices to empty the graffes of the water '; and received the sur- render of the city next day in return for these polite attentions. || "While he was at Perthll tidings arrived that summoned him very far away from that Fair City. The Scots had made off for England, as he had so long since foreseen** that they might. Charles had dis- cerned the hopelessness of the position from the moment when the English had made good their foothold in Fife and declared for marching southwards there and then, ft hoping against hope that his surgein and a preacher' to 'beds potts and panes,' and from 'bolls of meal ' to 'coles out of Duck Hamilton's coleheugh ' — see Thomson's 'Acts,' vi., pt. ii., 582, 583, and 647, and Balfour, iv. 54. There were ' fourteen pieces of ordnance ' on the rock (Whitelocke, p. 500). * On July 29. — Letter clxxvii. ; ' Collections ' by a Private Hand, p. 37. There were five hundred soldiers in the garrison — Whitelocke, p. 500. Massey was not the Governor, of course, but one Major-General John Leslie (Balfour, iv. 264). f Amongst which * Enster was very ill-spoyled ' by him (Lamont's ' Diary,' p. 32). The answer returned to Whalley 's summons by the municipal authorities of St. Andrews was only given to the world a few years since by the Historical MSS. Commission. X Tradition kindly communicated by Miss Simpson, of Blairstruie, and contained in * The Browns of Fordell,' by R. R. Stodart : Constable's (privately printed), 1887. § IVeekly Jntelligencer, No. 32 (E 640). The anonymous Bridge must of course have been the one we name. II Ibid. For Master Andrew Reid's bold speech to Cromwell at Perth see Napier's * Memorials of Montrose and his Times,' ii., p. 317. IT Letter clxxx. : Whitelocke, p. 501, under August 8. ** Really the only bit of evidence that seems to point to his having expected a prolongation of the war in Scotland is the passage in his own letter (clxxvii.) touch- ing the supply of ' spades,' etc., for his forces ; and that probably was only written because he knew he would have to maintain an army of occupation in any case. +t Footnote, p. 276, antea. A letter of the Duke of Hamilton put the Scots' difficulties tellingly enough. ' We have a thousand men (I fear twice that number) run away from our army. Since the enemy shuns fighting us except upon advantage, we must either starve, disband, or go with a handful of men into England. This last seems to be the least ill, yet it appears very desperate to me ' (Burnet's ' Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton,' 1677 edition, p. 426). Those desertions from the Scots are frequently referred to in the English news-letters, and Nicoll and the Private Hand both mention and explain them — the latter as due to the soldiers' suspicions of treachery at the Torwood and Inverkeithing, the other as owing to impatience at the frequent shifts of position to and fro between Stirling and Dunfermline. CONCLUSION 289 friends south of the Border might after all be in case to rally to his support. His view was not at once adopted ; and the army hovered between the west of Fife and Stirling"*^ in rather an undignified way until they had let Cromwell slip past by Dunfermline and Glen Farg. Obviously that move cut them off from the only quarter whence they could expect supplies and reinforcements ; so they made a bolt for it, and marched southwards out of the King's Park on the last day of July. Dr. Gardiner believes Sir James Turner under-estimated their force in putting it at 14,000 : we do not take it upon ourselves to say as to that. For this was the earlier Charles Stuart's 'march to Derby,' as we have said before ; and a still more hopeless expedition than his grandnephew's, we take it, thanks to the Commonwealth leaders' promptitude in pursuit and previous suppression of all the elements favourable to Charles's cause south of the Border. Harrison started off ' to get into the van ' of the Scots as soon as news of their departure reached Leith.f Cromwell marched instantly back from Perth — leaving Overton in charge of a garrison there, and Monk, in command of five or six thousand men, to move upon Stirling. |; By Monday evening, August 4, the bulk of his army was back in Leith — good marching and quick shipment ! — and the next afternoon Lambert set off with 3,000 cavalry to reinforce Harrison. § Cornet John Baynes camped ' within four miles of Kelso ' on Satur- day, the 9th :|| we take it he was with Cromwell's own force, which began its march from Leith on the Wednesday. Southward^! in the meantime the doomed Scots army had been toil- ing. It is not ours to tell how it fared with them ; nor to trace the routes by which the three bodies of English followed. Those became but * Nicoll, p. 54. f Letter signed by him and Colonels Fenwick and Twisleton in the * Milton State Papers,' p. 71 (see Dr. Gardiner — p. 428 — as to its correct date ; it was undoubtedly August 2). The phrase in the text is from a letter by Downing, presently to be referred to. Harrison's gives us a better idea of the anxieties of the moment — even for the 'stern black-bearded kings' of Cromwell's Council of War — than almost any other ; and we do love that touch about the ' foot-post * they had intercepted, 'a subtile old knave.' X Letter clxxx. Overton is named in the Weekly Intelligencer, No. 32 (E 640), under August 9. § Letter by Downing from Newcastle, August 7, in E 640 (§ 5 of the volume) ; and cf. Letter clxxx. II ' Roundhead Officers ' — letter of that date. i[ The place ' near Falkirk ' whence ' the King, Buckingham, Middleton, and the rest ' marched on August i (according to the 'subtile knave' aforesaid) must have been Cumbernauld. Nicoll ('Diary,' p. 55) names that first stage on their route ; and adds that thence they went to ' the Earl of Wigton's place ' — probably Boghall, which we know from the ' Memorie of the Somervilles ' to have been the property of that nobleman, and from Whitelocke (501), or, better, the Perfect Account (No. 31 — E 640 — p. 240), to have been summoned by Charles. But ' the Governor returned a resolute answer, That he kept it for the Commonwealth of England.' That must have been the time when, as they say in the neighbour- hood, Charles stayed a night in Carnwath House. A Lady Margaret Bellenden was reported to have been fond of telling where he breakfasted that morning. 19 290 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS two when Harrison and Lambert joined forces in a half-serious effort to check the invading army's entrance into Cheshire ; and presently were all one — but how hugely reinforced and reduplicated and mul- tiplied ! — when it was hemmed in at Worcester. For the salient fact is that all England rose eagerly to help in quelling the Scots invasion, not to co-operate with it — so strict had been the process of curbing the Malignants — for the King's restoration. When they came to fight, the end as we say was inevitable. Outnumbered by two to one, the Scots made a ' stiff contest ' of it, but without avail — the fact that the day was the anniversary of Dunbar perhaps stimulating them, as it certainly must have stimulated their assailants. The description quoted is, as most readers will know, part of Cromwell's own : let us supplement it with Young Cambusnethen's. ' At W^ouster a handful of gallant men, truly noble and generous and purged ■' from phanatick rebels, acted more against a numerous army of Sectarians there con- vened for their destruction, which they effectuate to their own great loss, than all our great armies did in Scotland while in conjunction with the disaffected party amongst ourselves.' Even Dr. Gardiner has to allow that Charles showed noteworthy gallantry in the action : Hamilton got his death-wound in trying to rally his men under his cousin Sir Thomas of Preston : and of other commanders and noblemen with whom we have more or less transiently scraped acquaintance, David Leslie and Middleton and Robin Montgomery; Rothes and Carnwath and Kenmure ; the Earl of Lauderdale and Lords Montgomery and Sinclair ; Wemyss the gunner, Vanruske the Dutchman, Sir James de Dalgetty and we suppose Tom Dalzellf — all were captives and (mostly) prisoners in the Tower afterwards. As to how some of them escaped — Middleton, e.g., and Kenmure, and Robin Montgomery — that is another story. And as to how Alured swooped upon old Leven and the rest of the Scots executive at Alyth in August ; and Monk reduced Stirling and afterwards sacked Dundee — are not these things written in ' Scotland and the Commonwealth '| as fully as need be? * Of. a. letter by Duke Hamilton in Gary's * Memorials of the Great Givil War,' ii. 305. * All the rogues have left us. I shall not say whether for fear or dis- loyalty.' That refers chiefly, of course, to the defection of Argyle, whose failure to raise a single man had long since been noted by the English newspapers {Mer- €urius Politicus, No. 53, letter of June 3 ; Perfect Account, No. 25, from ' Eden- burgh, 20 June '). The rest of that letter of Hamilton's is still more despondent than the earlier one lately quoted, though the writer seems to have joined in the general laugh at 'the ridiculousness of our condition.' * We have one stout argu- ment — despair.' Lauderdale, writing at the same time from near Penrith, August 8 {ibid., 307, 308) got some comfort out of the fact that their army was ' I dare- say near double the number that the King of Sweden entered Germany with.' t List in Nicoll's ' Diary,' « Cromwelliana,' Lamont's ' Diary.' X Scottish History Society. INDEX. Aberdeen, 19, 24, 100, 113, 136 n., 159, 162, 165 and n., 167 n., 198, 223, 227 n., 231 n. shire, 30, 138 n., 156 Tolbooth, 121 n. Aberdour, 216 n. Aberfoyle, 221 n. Abernethy, Major, 205 n. Aboyne, Lord, 16, 158 Abraham^ the, 249 n. Act of Classes, the, 11, 30 n., 31, 193, 195 n., 196 n. Indemnity, 160, 161, 163 and n., 181 n. Adair (cartographer), 69 Sir R., 185 n. Aird's Moss, 105 Airlie family, 17 Earl of, 137 n., 160 and n. estate, 19 Airth, 234, 263 and n. Alford, 16, 19, 100, 158 AUenton, Stewart of, [120 n.], 148 n. ' Allerton, Captain of,' 148 n. Almond, Lord, 24, 260 n. river, 82, 83, 84, 122 Alnwick, 38 n. Alured, Col., 144, 254 n., 255 and n., 256 and ns., 269 n., 290 Alyth, 290 Anabaptists, 25 n. Ancram, Earl of, 214 n. Angel in Cornhill, the, 63 n. 'Angus' county, 130, 138, 139, 161, 163 Earls of, 233 n. Annandale, 150, 224, 256 ' Another for Hector !' 285 and n. Anstruther, 216 n., 231 n,, 288 n. Ardnamurchan, 221 n. ' Arguile,' 20 and n. Argyle, Marquis of, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 19-20, 27, 29, 43, 49, 60 n., 72 n,, 100 and n., 104 n., 130 n., 155, 171 n., 184 n., 195-6, 195 n., T96 n., 244 n., 260 n., 261 n., 283 n,, 290 n. Army, the Y.xi^\%\i— Changes among the officers^ 255 n. Coimnissariat^ 38, 53, 54 n., 56, 78 n., 91, 92,216, 245 and n., 246, 247, 248 and n., 252 n., 255 P., 262 n. Discipline in, 63 and n. Equipment inter- cepted, 268 n. Fast in, 243 n. Footgear intercepted, 231-2 n. Lines of communication, 228. Marriages with Scotchwomen, 213 and n. Mutiny in, 225-6 and n. Reconstituted in Edinburgh, 143-4. Reinforcements, 121, 144 and n. Sickness in, 67 and n. , 92, 1 2 1 . Stip- p lied with tents, 61 n. Total and composition, 37, 67n., 143, 149 n., 264 n., 277 n. Uniforms, 87 n., 268 n. the Scots — ^ Standing forces and first levies, 29, 31 ; the latter leavened with veterans, 30 ; in- tended total, 3 1 and n. ; how made up, 32 ; cavalry co7nputation, 50 n.; ^purging; 59, 106, wyA,', con- dition 071 September ird (1650), 99, 102, 105, 108, 109 n.. Ill ; 19 — 2 292 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS after Dunbar^ 120, 123; raising a new one, 21 1-12. Commissariat, 65, 66-7, 67 n., 92, 93, 99 and n., 226 n., 25411., 262 n. Committee of Manageinent, 195. Intrigues about the command^ 260 n. Mu- tinies in^ lid n. Strength of its positio7i {sum7ner of 1651), 258, 26211., 263, 265. Totals : at Stir- ling, 123, 124 n. ; in Fife, etc., 156-7, 161 n. ; in March (1651), 224 ; increased in spring (1651), 226 n., 247 and n., 250 and n., 250-1 ; nu7nbers in July (165 1), 264 n. ; lessened by desertions, 288-9 n. Arngask, 286 n. Arnot, Sir Charles, 276 n. Arran, 16 andn. Arthur's Seat, 40, 41, 42 n., 43 and ns., 45 and n., 46, 47 n., 89 n., 90 n., 91 and n., 95. Dunsappie, 90- Girnal Craig, 91 n. ; Salis- bury Craigs, 40, 42, 46 ; Samsons Ribs, 46, 90, 91 ; The Windy Goule, 91 n. Artillery, English, 37, 42, 44 and n., 47, 75, 84, 89, 91, 107 n., no, 122, 124 n., 127, 202 n., 207 n., 230-1, 233, 270 n., 284 n. Scots. 45 n., 55, 84, 107, 1 10, 112, 265 and n., 272 n., 276 n., 278, 280 n. Ashley House, 83 n. Assistance frigate, the, 251 n. Assynt, 19 Athole, district of, 130, 138 n., 155, 156 Earl of, 17, 136 n., 155, 158-9, 194, 195, 221 n. Auchinvole, 242 n. Auchterhouse, 137 Auchtermuir, 148 n. Augustine, Captain, 25, 167 n., 204 n., 207, 208, 209 n., 234, 235, 239, 256, 276 n. Auldearn, 46 n. Avon, River, 180 and n. Ayr, 142 n., 184 n., 186 and n., 214 and n., 244 and n. shire, 29 n., 131, 2i4n., 243 n., 252, 254 Ayton, [33], 253 n. B. ' Backs and headpieces,' 38 n. ; Badinheath, 242 n. Baillie, Cornet, 181, 182 and n., 185 of Letham, 100, 104, 263 and n. Rev. Robert, 21, 147 Balcarres, Lord, 19, 134 n., 171^., 275-6 n. I Balcomie, heir of, 276 n. i ' Balegarno ' [.? Balgarnie], 252 n. Balfour, Sir James, 19, 136, 211- 12 n. of Burleigh, 105 Balfron, 219, 228 Ballantyne, * Corass,' 253 n. Ball Green, 71 n. Balmerino, Lord, 264 n. Banffshire, 30 Bannatyne, Martha, 172 n., 180 Bannockburn, 125 n., 127,263, 287 — Battle of, 83, 105 n. 259 Barkstead's regiment, 143-4 and n. Barnton, 264 n. Barrow, River, 225 Barton, Admiral, 264 n. Bass Rock, 93, 231 n., 232 and n. Bates, Dr., 241 n., 250 n. Baynes, Cornet, 289 Beacons, Scots, 197 n., 217 n., 218 Belhaven Bay, 38, 53 n. Belmore [? Balmore], 242 n. Bergen, 237 n. Berwick, 5, 38, 57 n., 63, 97, 98, 107, 109 and n., 144 n., 167 n., 201 n.» 202 n., 229 n., 231 Biggar, 176, 214 n., 255 Binning, Gunner, 205 n. Birkenhead, Mr., 244, 261 n. ' Birlokmo,' 179 n. Bishops' Wars, the, 6, 16 Blackburn, 177, 242 and n. Black Country of Scotland, 140 and n. Blackford Hill, 55, 61 n., 86, 88, 90 Blackness, 127, 168 n., 173 n., 204 n., 228, 234-40 and ns., 248, 256 n., 257, 272 n., 278 Blair Athole, 29, 130 n., 155 ' Blairstrowie,' 275 n. Blake, Admiral, 122, 218 n., 235 n. Blanch, Captain, 253 n. Blantyre, 183 n. INDEX 293 Blockade-runners, 237 n. Blue Blanket, the, 120 n. Blue-bonnets and Blue-caps, 215 and n., 251 n. Boat expeditions, 128 n., 142 n., 217- 8, 218 n., 235-6, 236 n. Boghall (Lanarkshire), 214 n., 255 and n., 289 n. Bog of Gicht, 29, 138 n., 156 Bo'ness, 127 Boom (of the period) at Leith, 28 n., 41 Borders, the, 229 n., 253 ' Bormichelwood,' 179 n. Boroughmuir, the, 58, 140, 264 n. Borthwick Castle, 169, 175, 176 n, Lord, 169 n. Bothwell Bank, 253 n. Brig, 3, 105, 106, 176, 178 andn., 179, 180, 181 andn., 242 n., 261 n. Bows and arrows, 251 n. Boyd, Rev. Zachary, 147 Boynton, Col., 232 n. Bradshaw, President, 217 r. Brahan Castle, 29 Braid Hills, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61 andn., 62, 66 and n., 67, 71, 73, 78, 88, 89, 90, 92 Bramston, Capt., 281, 282 n. Brechin, Lord, 275-6 n. Breda, 21, 151 Brentford, Lord, 23 ; see Ruthven, Patrick Bribery, allegations of, 86 n., 96-7 and n. Bridge of Earn, 288 Brocksburn, the, 95 n., 102, 107, 109, no ; z'^s ^passes,' 98 and n. Brookes, Mr., 63 n. Broughton, suburb of Edinburgh, 40, 55 n. Brown, master-gunner, 201 n. Major, 167 n. Richard, 22 and 275 n. Sir John, of Fordell, 22, 58 and n., 82 n., 87 n., 102, 103 and n., 104, 155-8 and ns., 159, 160 and n,, 161, 275-6 n., 277 n., 283n., 286 and n., 288 Broxmouth House, 95 n., 99, 107, 108, 109 and n., 165 n. Bruntsfield Links, 264 n. Bryson, John, 121 n. Buccleuch, Earl of, 150 n., 276 n. Buchan, Earl of, 137 n., 138 n. Buchanan, Clan, 281 n., 285 n. ' Laird of,' 221 n., 281 n., 283 n., 287 Buckie, Gordon of, 17, 159 n. Buckingham, Duke of, 136 n., 137 n., 139, 260 n., 289 n. ' Bunteine,' Lieut., 254 n. Burgh Loch, of Edinburgh, 54 Burleigh, Lord, 19, 58, 100 Burntisland, 28, 167 and n., 197 n., 216 andn., 217 and n., 218 and n., 219, 225, 227 n., 232 n., 236 n., 237 n., 249 n., 257 and n., 288 and n. Bailies 0/^2.17 and n. Bute, 268 n. Byng, Capt., 231 n. c. Cadwell the messenger, 124 n. Cadzow Burn, 183 n., 184, 187 Caithness-shire, 30 'Castle,' 173 n. Callendar, Earl of, 24, 74 n., 193, 260-1 n., 271 n. Heath, 266 House, 123 n., 234, 263 and n., 265, 270-1 and ns. Cambuskenneth, 124, 211 n. Cambusnethen, Young, 172-3 n., 180, 181 and n., 182 and n., 185 and n., 186, 200 and n. Somerville of, 172 n. [200, 201 n., 202 n.] House, 180 Cameron, House or Bridge, 46 and n., 88, 90, 91 n. Campbells, the, 42 n., 46 and n., 72 n. versus Hamiltons, 195 {cf. 260 n.] versus McLeans, 221 n. Campbell, Lady Anne, 20 n., 196 n. Mungo, of Lawers, 46 n. Campsie Fells, 181, 220 Canaanites, Scots as, 192 and n. Canary sack, 63 wine, 232 n. Cant, Rev. Mr., 165 and n. Canty Bay, 232 Cardross (Stirhngshire), 219, 221 n., 269 n. Carlo wry, 84 294 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Carlisle, 131 n., 144 n., 147 n., 149 and n., 150 and n., 152, 175 n., 176, 213, 214, 215, 230 n., 253, 256 Carlyle, Thomas, 6, 22, 25 and n., 26, 38 n., 53 and ns., 59, 60 n., 62 n., 70 n., 83 n., 84, 86 n., 88 n.; 90 n., 94 n., 95-6 n., 98 and n., 106-7 n., 109 and ns., 121, 123 n., 125 n., 131. 136, 137, 138, 141 and n., 142, 143, 148 and n., 152 n., 169 n., 171 n., 176 n., 181 n., 192, 204 n., 206 n., 207 n., 208 and n., 215, 229 n., 230, 236 n., 240 n., 246, 248 n., 260 n., 264 n., 275 n., 286 and n. Carnvvath (Earl of), 17, 255-6 n., 290 village or House, 118 n., 148 n., 214 n., 247 n., 255 and ns., 289 n. Carphin, Laird of, 181 Carrick, 131 n., 183 on Suir, 222, 252 n. Carrickfergus, 142 n., 214, 268 n. Carrisbrooke, 260 n. Carron River, 225, 259, 263, 265 and n., 266, 273 Cassilis, Earl of, 20, 131 n., 182 n. Catstane, the, 84 ' Causes of Humiliation,' 101-2 Causton, a privateer, 248 n. Cavaliers, North-country Scots, 13, 16, 17, 118, 125, 126, 129-30, 131, 133 n., 135, 139, 151, 154-63, 192, 194 English, 47,48 n., 118 n., 244, 245 n., 248 n., 252 and n., 261 n. Charles I., 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 21,23, 24, 48 and n., [57 n., 58, 131 n.,] 132 n., 150, 151, 159, 215, 232 n., 233 n., 252 n., 260 n. Charles II., 3, 16, 18, 20, 21, 27, 29, 48 and n., 60 and ns., 96-7 n., loi n., 118, 121 n., 125, 130, 131 and n., 145, 146, 151, 155 n., 156, 158, 162, 165 andn., 170, 171, 182, 184 n., 191, 193, 197, 206, 211, 216 n., 218 n., 224 and n., 227 n., 237 n., 238, 243 n., 244 and n., 247, 249 n., 250 n., 253, 256 n., 259, 260 n., 261 n., 264 and n., 265, 267, 272, 283 n., 287, 289 and n. Charles II. proclaimed King in Scotland, 11 ; negotiatiofis with ^Argyle and the Kirk, 11, 12, 130; ' Campbell marriage project, 20 n., 196 n. ; voyage to Scotland, 28 ; at Leith, 31, 60 n., 264 n. ; at Stirling, 31 and n. ; Declaration of August i6th, 58 andn., 60 and n., 62, 151 ; autocratic disposition, 58 n., 260 ; 7-eception of the news of Dunbar, 130 n. ; the ''Start' escapade, 134-9, 154, 161 n., 211 n. ; residence at Perth, 138 ; body- guard, 138-9, 161 n., 172 n. ; message to the Cavaliers, 161 and n. ; rupture with Argyle, 195 -6 [cf 283 n.] [its result, 290 n.] ; acceptance of the Cove?tant, 196- 7 ; forerunner of Priiice Charlie, 197-8 ; characteristic sayings, 197 n. ; coming of age, 197 n. ; chosen as General of the Scots, 197 n. ; royal progresses, 198, 227 Xi. ; as heir of Robert Bruce, 211 -12; '•the King of Fife^ 216 n., or the Scots King, 231 n.; his soldiership, 111 n., 227, 239, 242, 249 n., 260-1, 276 and n., 277, 288-9, 290 ; a golfer, 227 n. ; ^running at the glove,' 227 n., 228 ; help from the Northern Powers, 237 n. ; his intercepted new clothes, 248 n. ; as Guardia?i of Scotla?id, 259-62 ; contrasted with Bucking- ham, 260 XV.; at Lord Balmerind's, 264 n.; ' his little Kingship,^ 261 n. Charles V., 32 n. Chidley, Mr., 212 n. Chiesley, Sir John of Kerswall, 21, 118 and n., 132 n., 147 n., 171 n., 173 n., 206 n., 255 n. Lady, 171 n. of Dairy, 171 n. Church and State, etc., 19 [-2 Clackmannanshire, 277 n. Cleveland, Earl of, 23, 261 n. Clova, Glen, 137 and n., 155 n., 160, 162 Clyde, Firth of, 252, 254 n., 267 [268 ns.] River, 178, 179, 180 and n., 181,254 Clydesdale, 131 and n., 176, 224, 246, 253, 256 166 INDEX 295 Clydesholm, i8o n. Coalpits, Scots shelter in, 49 Coates House, 86 n. Cockburn, Col., 244 n. John, 230 and ns. Mrs., 230 n. Cockburnspath, 38, 73, 95 n., 96, 97, 98, 99 Cockenzie, 142 n. Coldingham Abbey, 228-9 ^' village, 253 n. Coldstream Guards, 75-6 Colinton, 68, 71 andn., 73, 74, 78 n., 86 Foulis of, 75 and n. Colkitto, 104 n. Coltbridge, 55, 57, 62 and n., 63 n., 68, 69, 70 and 70-1 n., 74 n., 80, 86 and n. — Ford, 69 n. Commonwealth, the, 11, 27,79, 215, 243 n., 262, 290 n, Cora Linn, 172 n. Corhouse, 172 n., 173 n., 180 Cork city, 223 county, 213, 225 Cornelius, Captain, 236 n. Cornhill, 63 Cornwall, 105 n. Duchy of, 165 Corstorphine, 55, 61 n., 62 and n., 63 n., 68, 70 n., 71 n., 73, 81, 85, 87 n., 172 n., 265 Castle, 69 Kirk, 69 n. Cortachy, castle or district, 137 and n., 160, 162 Councils of war and strategical designs — English, 59, 62, 91-3, 98-9, 109, 124-5,214-15, 220, 242, 245, 248-9, 253, 256, 266, 267-8, 267 n., 271-3, 277 n,, 287, 288 n. Scots, 87-8, 102-4, 123, 195, 242, 252-3, 259-62, 274-7, 288-9 Courts martial, 168 n., 283 n. Cowdaily Castle, 172 n. Craigentinny meadows, 43, 88 Craighall, Sir Thos. of, 21, 165 Sir John of, 21, 165 and n. Craigbarnet, 269 n. Craiglockhart hills, 61 n. Craigmillar, 56, 71 n., 89, 90 n., 91 n. Crail, 216 n. Cramond, 55, 203 n. Cramond Bridge [?], 264 n. Crawford-Lindsay, Earl of, 18, 20, 195 Creighton of St. Leonard s, 40 n. Cromwell, Oliver, 3, 4, 5, 7 n., 9, 11, 21,25,27, 28,32 n., 33, 2,7, 38 n., 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 and n., 47, 48, 49, 50 and ns., 51 n., 53 and r., 54, 55, 56 and n., 57, 58, 59, 60 and n., 61, 62, 63 n.,65, 66, 67, 68, 72 n., 73, 74 n., 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 and n., 87 and ns., 88, 89, 90 n., 92 and n., 93 and n., 94, 95 n., 96, 97, 98, 99, loi, 103 n., 104, 105 n., 106, 108, 109 and n., no, in and r., 112 and n., 113, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121 and n., 122, 123 and n., 124 andn., 125 and n.. 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132 n., 133, 136, 140, 141, 142 and n., 143 and n., 144, 145 and n., 146, 147, 148 and ns., 149 andn., 150, 151, I52andn.,i54, 157, 158, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172 n., 174 andn., 176, 177 and n., 178 andn., 179 and n., 180 and n., 181 and n., 182, 185 n., 186, 191, 192, 197, 198, 200 and n., 201 and ns., 202 and n., 206 and n., 207 and n., 208, 209 and n., 211 n., 212 and n., 213, 214 and n,, 215, 216 and n., 217, 219, 220 and n., 222, 223 and n., 226 n., 231 n., 233 n., 236, 241, 242 and n., 243 n., 244, 245, 246 and ns., 247 and n., 248 n., 249 and n., 252, 253, 254, 255 n , 256, 259, 261, 262, 264 and ns., 266-7 and ns., 268 and ns., 269 and n., 270 and n., 271, 272 and n., 273, 275 n., 277 and n., 280, 283 n., 287, 288 and n., 289 andn., 290 I7t Ireland, 4, n, 33, 213, 217 n., 222, 223-7; re- lations with Argyle, 5, 9, 10 ; ^ Mrs. Wisdom^ ion. ; estijuateoj mob applause, 26 ; wild rumours of his cruelty, 33-4 ; Bedford Level work, 69 n. ; adventure at (?) Coltbridge, 70-1 n., 86 n. ; how out-generalled by Leslie, 80- 1 , 106 ; misunderstaftding with the Western Army, 119, 126; ill- nesses in Edinburgh, 223 and n., 239, 241 and n., 249, 250 and n. ; 296 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS rumoured suicide^ 223 n.; his ''two tru7iks^ 232 n. ; an example of caution to war correspondents,, 245 n. ; his Edinburgh quarters,, 250 n. ; intentions at Glasgow iit July,, 267-8 Cropredy Bridge, 23, 24 Crops, destruction of the Scots, 32-3 Crook, Captain, 244 Crossford, 180 Cumberland, 149, 255 n. Sheriff of, 150 n. Cumbernauld House, 242 n., 289 n. Cumbrae islands, 147, 243 n. Cunningham, district of, 131 n. Currie, parish, 240 n. D. Dalhousie Castle, yj,, 167 and n. Dalkeith, 56, 66 n., 71, 167 n., 175 n., 213 n. Dairy, Chiesley of, 171 n. Da'rymples, the, 232 n. Dalzell, 'Captain Frances,' 255 n. Gavin, 255-6 n. 'Tom,' 261 n., 283 n., 290 Danskin, East Lothian, 94 n. Dawson, Capt, 229 n. Deane, Admiral, 122, 128 and n., 235 and n., 236, 236-7 n., 237, 248 and n., 250 and n., 268 and n. Dean village, 68, 70 n. ' Dear Sandy,' 23, 41, [46 n.] Derby, Earl of, 244 Derbyshire miners, 199, 200 Derry, 87 n., 142 n., 214 Dirleton, 168 and ns., 169, 202 n., 231 Dobie of Stonyhill, 51 n. Dolphin,, the, 44, 249 n. Donnington House, 24 Doon' Hill, 38, 95 and n., 96, 98, 102, 104, 105 and n., 106 n. Dorislaus, 11 Douglas [Sir James], 204 n. in Lanarkshire, 214 n., 229 n., 255 Marquis of, 195 Rev. Robert, 21, 171 192 n. Downing, ' Scoutmaster' George, 76, 82 n., 87, 89 n., 90-1 n., 123 n., 205 n., 274 n., 278, 279, 281 n. Downs, the, 140 n. Dragoons of the period, 184 n., 235 n., 254, 255 n., 272, 281 and n. Drogheda, y:^, 209 Drum, Somerville of, 200 ' House of,' 172 n. DrumcloJ, 83, 106 Drumlanrig Castle, 147 n. Lord, 147 n. Drummond, Lord, 194, 283 n. Drumsheugh, 55 n., 57, 68 n. Duart, Sir Hector McLean of, 221 n., 28t; and n., 286 Sir Lauchlan of, 286 n. Castle, 29 Dublin, 223 Duchray, Graham of, 221 n. Duddingston, 89, 90 and n , 91 n. Dudhope, 137 n., 138 n. Viscount, 138 r. Dumbarton, 23, 28, i']}, n., 174 n., 186, 243-4, 268 n. ' Firth.' 268 n. Dumbartonshire, 29 n. Dumbiedykes, 46 n. Dumfries, 147 and n., 150 and n., 166 n., 175 n., 213, 253, 254, 255, 256 and n. Dumfriesshire, 214 n. Dumgoyn Hill, 269 n. Dunbar, 38, 53, 54 and n., ^9, 67 n., 74 n., 80, 86 n., 94, 95-ii3 English garrison in, 167 n.. 231, 241 n. Kirkyard of, no Duntreath House, 269 n. Dundas Castle [84], 128 Col. Wm., 141, 203 n., 204 and n., 209 and n., 213, 217. Indictment of,, 205 and n., 206 ; Correspo7idence with Cromwell,, 204-5 "•» 206-9 Dundee, 103, 135, 136 n., 137 andn., 157 and n., 158, 161, 162, 163, 193 n., 194 n., 227 n., 237 n., 251 n., 257 n., 290 Church, 194 n. ' River,' 250-1 n. Viscount, 83, 126 n., 204 n. Dunfermline, Earl of, 18, 192, 193 town, 60, 272, 278, 279, 284 n., 289 and n. Dunglass (East Lothian), 38 and n., 228-9 n- (Dumbartonshire), 268 INDEX 297 Duns, 6, 7, 24 Durham, 112 Dysart, 24, 203 n., 251 n., 257 n. E. Ecclefechan, 176 n. Edgehill, 18, Z7 Edinburgh, 120-1, 129, 140, 141 and n., 142, 149, 151, 152, 168, 174 n., 175 n., 176, 177, 179, 198, 209 n., 212 n., 219, 222, 226 n., 234, 238, 240 n., 242, 243 n., 245, 247 and n., 253 and n., 256 and n., 264 and n., 266 n., 269 n., 281. Abbey/till^ 40, 41. Bristo Port, 204 n. Gallon Hill, 40, 88, 89, 141 and n. ; trenches there, 40, 41, 42, 44, 95 n. Canon gate of, 38, 40, 41, 45 n., 46 n., 120, 250 n. Castlehill, 48, 60 n., 141 n., 201 ns. Cowgateof, 40 ; Port, 40 and 45 n. Easter Road, 44, 120. '■Fields^ 264 n. Greenside, 40. Grey friars, 201 n., 207 n. High Church of, 141 n., 213. High Street, 19, 40. ^Jokis Ludge^' 44. King's Park and dyke, 40 n., 41, 42, 43, 46, 47 n., 91 n. Law7zinarket, 250 n. Lucken- booths, 141. Netherbow, 45 n., 120, 204 n. New Town {site), 55 and n. [68]. Nor' Loch, 54, 55, 62 n., 86 n. Pleasatice suburb, 45 n. Pier skill, 43, 89. Peffer- inill, 91 n. Quarrell Holes, the, 40, 44 and n., 45 n., 114. Queen^s Park, 44, 283 n. ' Robert Daui- son^s house, ^ 201 ns. St. Anthonys Chapel, 45 n. St. Johns Hill, 45 n. St. Leo7tard^s Craigs and Hill, 40, 41,42, 46, 47; operatio7is at, 42 n., 44-5 and n., 46, 47 ; Chapel, 44 n., 45 n. St. Marfs Wynd, 40, 45 n. ; Port, 45 n. Tolbooth of, 121 and n., 213. Watergate, 40, 120. West Kirk of J SS n-, 62, 201 n. Castle, 23, 28, 37, 38, 54, 55, 121, 122, 124 n., 126, 132 n., 141 and n., 149, 198, 199-210, 211 n., 233, 238, 239, 257 n., 267, 283 n. Artillery i7i, 208 n. Bo77i- bard77ient of, 201-3 and ns., 207, and n., 207-8, 209 n. Garrison of 209 ns. Halfmoo7t of 141 n., 200, 202 n., 203 n., 207 n. Mine at, 141 n., 199 and n., 200, 201. Projected stor7n, 202 and n., 203 n. Provender and water-supply, 203 n. Relief of 204 n., 207, 209 n. ' Spur' of, 200 and n. Defences of, 39-42, 80 English entry into, 120 Edmonston (Midlothian), 51 Edward I., 259 and n. Ehud, the judge of Israel, 102, 106 ' Eiblechester,' 166, 175, 176 n. Elcho, Lord, 100 Elginshire, 30, 221 n. Elizabeth, the, 28 Elie, 142, 237 n., 251 n. Ely, Isle of, 262 n. ' Engagement,' the, 8, 9, 18, 30 n., 97, 252 n., etc. 'Engagers,' the, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 27, 29, 42, T14, 125, etc. England, possibility of Scots' counter-move into (1650), 57, 65 andn. ; (1651) 213, 214,215,226-7, 226 n., 262 and n., 267 n., 269 and n., 271, 276 n. Effected, 289-90 projected Royalist risings in, 80, 97, 2T5, 244, 245 n., 261-2 'Eppie's Croft,' 187 Erskine family, 17 ; Lord, 194 of Scotscraig, 137 n., 139 Eglinton, Earl of, 18, 19, 172 n., 243-4 and n. Castle, 214 n., 243 n., [254] Eskdale, 150 n. Esk River (Forfarshire), 29 n., 137, 156 n. (Lothian), 43, 50 n., 51, 169, 202 Essex, Earl of, 24, 105 n. Estates, Committee of the, 55 n., 58, 99, 100 and n., loi and n., 129, 134, 139, 146, 155 and n., 156, 160, 165 n., 170, 171 n., 195 Ettrick, Lord, 23, 132 n. See Ruth- ven, Patrick River, 29 n. Evandale Castle, 214 n. Ewesdale [.'*] , 145 n. F. Fairfax, Col., 94 and n. Sir Thomas, 27, 94 n. Fairmilehead, 61 n. 298 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Faithfull Speaker^ the, 128 Falkirk, 123 and n., 127, 220, 263, 266, 270 and n., 277 ; battle of^ 259 Fallousdaill, Janet, 243 n. Falsyde, Hamilton of, 51 n. P'ast Castle, 228 n., 234 and n. Fenton, 51 n. Fenwick, Col., 229 n., 230, 289 n. ' Fergus his Family,' 211 Ferry Hills, the, 227 n., 236, 272 n., 273, 274 n., 275, 276 and n., 277 and n., 278 and n., 279 and n. Fettercairn, Middleton of, 23 - 4, 138 n., 156 and ns., 157 n., 158, 159, 160 and ns., 161, 163, 193, 194 n., 212, 224, 227, 228, 247 and n., 250 ns., 260 n., 261 and n., 266, 283 n., 289 n., 290, 291 Fidra, 93 Fife, 29 n., 31 and n., 126, 136 n., 137 and n., 139, 141 -2, 143 "-, 145 n., 147 n., 162 and n., 167 n., 204 n., 212 and n., 216 and n., 217 n., 224, 227 and n., 228, 232, 245, 248, 249 n., 256 and n., 257 n., 271-3, 274-287 and ns., 288, 289. Agricultural richness of, 262 n. Extended meaning of the name, 219 and n., 221 n., 269 n. Sy?iod of, 129, 134 and n. ' The^ 218 n., 219 and n. Fifers, 97, [i47n.], 157 Figgat Burn, the, 43, 46, 51, 88; Whins, 89 Fisherrow, 39 Fishing-boats, English, 237 n. Scots, 142 n.,2i8 n. Flanders Moss, 220 ' Flashes,' the, 85 Flat-bottomed boats, 218 n., 224, 248 n., 249 ns., 278 Fleet, English, 28, 32, 38 n., 55, 56, 'jZ, 217-9, 236, 247-8, 248 n., 268 n. Off Blackness, lyj^ 238 and n. Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen., 82 n., 83, 90- 1 n-, 92, 93, 98, 99» no, 241 n. 'Flux,' the, [67], 92, 223 n. Fochabers, 138 n. Footpost, a Scots, 289 n. Fordell, Sir John Brown of, 22, 58 and n., 82 n., 87 n., 102, 103 and n., 104, 155-8 and ns., 159, 160 and n., 161, 275-6 n., 277 n., 283 n., 286 and n., 288 Forfar, 137 n., 158 shire, 29 n., 154, 155, 157, 161 Forrester, the Lords, 69 Forth Bridge, 83, 227 n., 279 and n., 282 Earl of, 23. See Ruthven, Patrick Firth of, 28, 126, 142 and ns., 145 n., 167, 218, 219, 225, 227 and n., 236 and n., 237 n., 238, 248 and ns., 249 and n.,25on., 257, 258, 274 Fords of, 219 and n., 220, 221 and n., 224 and n., 242, [245], 247 and n., 268, 269 and ns. Guardship, 236and n.,249n. Links of, 123, 124 Riv^er, 127, 212 and n., 220,. 225, 226, 235 n., 258 Fortune, the, 248 n. Foulis of Colinton, 75 andn., 78 n. Fowey, 105 n. Eraser, Clan, 30 of Philorthe, 237 n. the late Sir William, "j^ Fraserburgh, 237 n. Frazer, Dr., 136 ns. Freckleton, Capt., 253 n. 219 n., 246 Galachlaw camp, 61-2 n., 'j']^ 78 n. 86, 87 n., 88, 125 n., 264 and n. Gallovidians, the, 171 Galloway, 145 n., 183, 255 and n. nags, 255 n. New, 213-4 Garla?id, the, 44 Garmouth, 250 n. Garry River, 154 Gebath [? Galbraith], ' Governor,^ 270-1 n. Geddes, Jenny, 6 Gifford, East Lothian, 94 n. Gillespie (Rev. P.), 21, 118 and n.,. 166, 171 n. Gillian, the Clan, iii, 283 n. Gladsmuir, 39 Glasgow, 131 n., 140 and n., 143, 145 n., 147, 147-8 n., 149, 168, 171 n., 177 n., 178, 186, 199 n., 211 n , 235 n., 242 and n.,245 and n., 246 and ns., 247, 249 n., 255 INDEX 299 and n., 254 and n., 266 and n., 267-70 and ns., 271, 276 n. Alms- houses, 267 n. Bridge, 178,246 n. Cathedral, 147. Cross, 121 n. Gorbals, the, 246 n. ^ Mintd's^ 246 n. Provost of, 171 n. Riot iji, 246. Tolbooth, 166, [267 n.]. Surprising amenity of, 140 n. Projected visits by Charles 11. , 267 n., 276 n. Glebes, parish, 33 n., 34 n. Glencairn, Earl of, 214 n. Glen Farg, 288 Gloucester, 24, 232 n. Goddard, Dr., 241 n., 250 n. Gogar 'Feight,' 84-5, 89, 90 n., 91, 106, 124 n., 178 n., 220, 234, 265 n. Bank, 8i,82,83n.;^2^r;2,69,8i, 82, 84; Bum House, 83 n., 84 ; House, 81 ; Kirk, 81 ; Over, 81 ; Park, 81 ; statio?i, 83 n. Gordon Castle, 29, 138 n. Duke of, 204 n. Francis, 185 n. Lord, 16, 158 — • of Buckie, 17, [159 n.] of Rothiemay, 40 Patrick, 167 n. 'Gorgie' hills, 61 n. Gorthie, Laird of, 159 n. Gothenburg, 237 n. Govan, Capt., 185 n. Gowrie, Carse of, 138, 139, 162, 252 n. Earl, 138 Graham of Duchray, 221 n. of Inchbrakie, 17, 159 and n. ' Granados,' 141 n., 168 and n., 237 ; hand-grenades, [75], 199 ' Greenhorns,' Scots, 48 Greenock, 28, 244 and n. Granville, Sir R., 165 Grosvenor, Col., 256 n. Guardians of Scotland, 259 and n., 261, 262 ' Gudson and Canock,' 145 n. Gustavus Adolphus, 37, 39, [290 n.] Guthrie (Rev. James), 21, 118 and n., 132 n., 160 n., 171 n. H. Hacker, Col. Francis, 150 and n., 175 n., 176 n., 214 n. Hackston of Rathillet, 105, 147 n. Haddington, 39, 93-4, 253 n. Earl of, 38 n., 72 n. Haig (Rev. Mr.), 113 Hailes Castle, 228-9 ^^ ' Halfinkeel ' Brae, 169 and n. Halkett, Sir James, 48 n., 185 n., 283 n. Col., 182 n., 185 and n. Hall, Capt. Robert, 28 n. Admiral, 38 n. Hamburg, a hoy of, 237 n. Hamilton, battle of, 173 n., 181 n., 183-7, 191, 198, 214 n., 246 n. burgh, 164, 178, 179, 180, 181 and n., 183, 184, 187, 242 and n., 265 Col. John, 261 n. Duke James, 6, 9, 15-16, 18,27, 74n.,97, 194,215 DukeWilliam,6,9, 16, 18, 20 and n., 72 n., 97, 193, 194 n., 195, 196, 215, 249 n., 288 ns., 290 and n. English garrison in, 214, 215, 229 n., 246, 253, 254 and n., 255 n., 256 and n. Low Parks, 179 n. Major [.? Andrew], 72 n. Marchioness of, 18 of Easter Falsyde, 51 n. of Milburne, 243 n. of Stonyhill, 51 n. Palace, 256 n. ' River,' 180 n. Sir Alexander, 23, 46 n. Sir James, of Redhall, 71-2 n., 74 and n., 75, 77, 270 Sir T., of Redhall, 71 n. Sir Thomas, of Preston, 51 n., 72 n., 255 and n., 290 the traitor, 243 n. Tolbooth of, 184, 187 Hane, Joachim, 124 n., 128 n., 201 n. Hanley ' Villa,' 84 Harepink, the, 249 n. Hargreave, Trooper, 271 Harrison, Major-General, 25, 245 n., 256, 267 n., 269, 271 and n., 277 n., 287, 289 and n., 290 Harvest, Scots, in 1650 and 1651,32, 33 n. ' Havermeal,' 203 n. Havre, 237 n. 300 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Hazelrig, Sir A., 99, 112 ns., 143 and n., 244 Hearty the, 44 ' Hector, another for,' 285 and n. Heligoland, 12 Henderson (Rev. Alex.), 20, 21 Henrietta Maria, 58, 151, 196 n. Henri Quatre, 12, 239 Hereford, 24 Hermiston, 81 Herring fishing in Scots waters, 28 Highgate, 256 n. Highlanders, 155 n., 221 and n., 251- 252 n. ; 'about 700,' 31, 71 ; at St. Leonard's^ 42 n., 46 and n. ; among Dunbar captives^ 112 n. ; and the shells^ 168 n., 238 n. ; '' rude^ but hardy ^^ 252 n. ; at Inverkeithing, 275 n., 281 and n., 284-6 Highlands as a Scots refuge, 126-7, 226, 227 Hind, a guerilla, 25 Hodgson, Captain, 89 Hogmanay (1650), 213 Holburn of Menstrie, 22, 58 and n., 96, 102, 103 and n., 104, 108, 244 n., 275-6 n., 277 and n., 280 and n., 281 n., 282-3 and n., 284, 287 and n. Holland, 24, 27, 28, 202 n., 237 n., 251 n., 260 n. States of, 165 n., 251 n. Holyrood, 40,41,43, 197 Holy town, 177 Home, a servant, 205 n. Hope, Sir Alexander, 165 and n. Sir James, of Hopetoun, 21, 165 and n., 171 n. Sir John, of Craighall, 21, 165 and n. Sir Thomas, of Craighall, 21, 165 Hopetoun, Sir Jas. Hope of, 21, 165 and n., 171 n. ' Horrie,' W., 159 n. Howemyre, the, 51 and n. Hume Castle, 228-30 and ns., 234 ' Hyper Brownism,' 191 Hull, 168, 244 and n. Huntingdon, 81 Huntly Castle, 29 ; ditto, Carse of Gowrie^ 138 George, Marquis of, 6, 1 3 n., 1 5 Huntly, Lewis, Marquis of, 16, 17, 138 n., 158, 193 and n., 194 n., 212, 249 n., 284 and n. Hurry, Sir John, 159 n. I. Inchbrakie, Graham of, 17, 159 and n. Inchcolme, 216 n. Inchgarvie, 28, 65,77 and n., 2i6n., 227 n., 235, 236, 249, 257, 272 n., 288 and n. Inchkeith, 28, 216 n. Inchnock, 242 n. Inchrye, 137 n. Ingoldsby, Col., 26 Innergellie, Lumsden of, 102, 103-4, 103 n.. Ill, 113 Innerwick, 51 n. Innes, Col., 138 n. Inverary, 104 n. Invercarron, 22 Inveresk, 51 and n., 53, 54 Inverkeithing, battle 'of,' 281-7, 289 n. ; corrections regarding, 272 n., 274-5, 275 n., 282-3 n., 284 n. burgesses of, 274 n., 282 n. ; burgh^ 216 n., 276, 279, 280, 284 and n. ; Cruicks of i']i n. ; East Ness, 1Z1 n. ; English land- mgs near, 272 n., 274-5, 278 ; Inner Bay of 2J2 n., 278 ; isthmus breastwork south of, 272 n., 278, 279 ; Jamestown, farm near, 272 n., 278 and n., 279 n. ; Pinkerton burn near, 279, 283 n., 286 ; Pitreavie, adjoini?tg estate, 283 n., 284 n., 286, 287 ; Port Laing, 272 n., 278, 283 n. Inverlochy, 6, 19, 20, 100, 160 ; Castle, 29 Inverness-shire, 30 Ipswich, 249 n. Ireton, Deputy, 33 n., 142 n. Ironsides, the, 83, 87 n. Irvine, 214 n., 243 n. Isle of May, 216 n. ' Israel v. Benjamin,' 192 n. Jaffray, Provost, 113 ; his Diary, 12 n. James, the, 28 and n. INDEX 3or James VI., 138 Jedburgh, 229 and ns. Jermyn, Henry, 136 n. Johnston of Wariston, 21, 54 n.,99, 100 n., 103 n., 118 and n., 132 n., 171 n., 174 and n., 206 n., 217, 255 n. ; treachery of, 238-40 and ns. Lady, 240 n. Major, 239-40 Mrs., 240 John, the, 231-2 n., 233 n., 248 n. Jones, Paul, 219 Josua V. the Canaanites, 192 n. Journalism of the period, 63-4, 220, 230 and ns., 245 n., 246, 254 n. K. Katrine, Loch, 221 n. Kelso, 229 and n., 289 Kenmore's Drum, 214 n. Kenmure Castle, 213, 229 n. Lord, 213-4 n., 290 Kerbester, 22 Ker, Col. Gilbert, 22, 29, 58 and n., 59 and n., 60 n., 61, 80, 103, 104, 118, 125, 126, 132 n., 133 and n., 140, 146 n., 147 n., 148, 149 and n., 150 ns., 151, 154, 157, 164, 166 and n., 167, 169, 170, 171 and n., 172, 174 and n., 175 and n., 176 and n., 177, 179, 180, 181 and n., 182 n., 183 n., 184 andn., 185 and n., 186, 187, 191, 203 n. Kerswall, Chiesley of, 21, 118 and n., 132 n., 147 n., 171 n., 173 n., 206 n., 255 n. Kildean Bridge, 125 n. Killearn, 269 n. Killiecrankie, 73 Kilkenny, 225 Kilmarnock, 186, 214 n., 254, 255 n. Kilsyth, 6, 18, 19, 148 ns., 186, 220 and n., 225, 242 n., 243 n., 248, 270 and n., 271 n. Kincardineshire, 30 King, Gen. ; see Ythan, Lord Kinghorn, 216 n., 218, 251 n., 257 n. King Robert Bruce, 211-12 n., 259 Kinnaird (Fife), 136 (Stirlingshire), 263 n. Kinneil, 261 and n., 264 and n. Kinsale, 218 n. Kintail, 17, 221 n. Kintyre, 104 n., 184 n. Kippen, 219, 228 Kirkcaldy, 28, 165, 219 Kirkcudbright, 214 and n. Lord, 171, 182 n. Kirkcudbrightshire, 30 Kirkfield, Stewart of, 118 and n., 120 n., 171 n., [206 n.] Kirkfieldbank, 180 Kirkintilloch, 242 n. Kirk of Scotland, /rti-jzVz Commission of^ 55 n-, loi, 129, 134, 170, 191, 193, 194-5, 195 n- Kirk of Shotts, 148 n., 177, 242 n., 266 Kyle, 131 n. L. ' Lady Hume's Lodging,' 45 n. Lambert, John, 25 and n., 26, 48, 60, 109 and ns., no, 120, 168, 169, 175 n., 176, 178, 180 and n., 181 and n., 183, 184 and n., 185, 186 and n., 187, 206, 220, 239 and n., 241 and n., [256 n.], 262 n., 268, 269 and ns., 271, 273, 274 n., 275 and ns., 276, 277 and ns., 278 and n., 279 and n., 280, 281 and ns.» 282 and n., 284 and n., 285 and n., 287 and n., 288, 289, 290 Lammas floods, 32, 57, 67, 92 Lammermuir, 38, 95 n. Lanark, 118 n., 180 and n. Bridge, 178 n., 180 n. Earl of, 6, 42. 6"^^ Hamil- ton, Duke William Lanarkshire, 29 n., 214 n. Lancashire, 97, 143, 144, 244,245 n., 256 n. Lancers, Scots, no *Lang gait,' the, 62 n., 86 and n., 201 n. Langston Court, 256 Lapland witches, 117 n. Larbert Bridge, 265 and ns., 273 ; engagement at, 265-6 ; ' Water,' 265 n., 270, 277 n. Largo, 193-4 n. ; sands, 228 Laud, Archbishop, 6 Lauderdale, 29 n. : — Earl of, 18, 24, 192, 193 and n., 195, 290 and n. 302 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Laurence Park, 270 n. Lauriston, 270 n. Lawers regiment, 44 n., 46 n., 80, 1 1 1 Campbell of, 46 n. Law (Rev. Mungo), 22, 203 n. Learmont, Sir James, 276 n. Leather ordnance, 23 Leith, 28, 40, 41, 42, 60 n., 63 and n., 67 and n., 87, 92, 120, 122, 128, 142 n., 143 n., 145 n., 158, 185 n., 199 n., 202 n., 203 n., 212 n., 217 n., 218, 237 n., 244 n., 248 and n., 251 n., 262 n., 264 ns., 267, 268 n., 269 n., 271, 272, 286, 287, 289. Bombarded^ 44, 47 ; Kirkgate ofy 264 n. ; Links ^ 31 ; St. Anthony'' s Port, 41 ; Walk, 40 Water of, [55], 57, 62 and n., 68, 69, 70 n., 71, 72 n., 72,, 76, 82, 83 n. Lennox, the, 254 Leslie, David, 21, 22, 23, 24, [30], 32, 33, 39, 40 and n., 41, 42, 43, 44, 49, 55, 56 and n., 57, 58, 61 and n., 62, 63 ns., 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70 n., 71 J 72)-> 74 n., 80-1, 81 n., 83 and n., 84, 85, 86 and n., 87 and n., 88 and n., 89, 90, 9 f, 92, 93, 94, 95 and n., 96 and n., 97 and n., 98, 99 and n., 100, loi and n., 102, 104 and n., 105, 106 and n., 107 and n., 108 and n., 112, 123, 124, 129, 132 and ns., 133 n., 138 and n., 145, 149, 155 n-, 157, 159"., 160 n., 161 andn., 162, 163, 166 n., 172, 173, 203 n., 211 n., 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 253, 259, 260 n., 261 n., 266, 290 Major-General John, 288 n. Letham (Stirlingshire), 263 and n., 266 and n., 272 Moss, 263 and n., 266 and n. Baillie of, 100, 104, 263 and n. Lethington, Maitland of, 18 Leven, Earl of, 21, 22, 24, 38 n., 58, 96 and n., 97,98, 102, 103 n., 105, 112, 206 n., 260 n., 261 n., 291 Libberton, 88, 90 Winram of, 113 and n. Liberty, the, 44 Liddesdale, 229 n. Lilburne, Col., 215, 229 n,, 244, 269 n. Lilly frigate, 248 n., 249 n. Lincoln, 122 n. Lincolnshire, 144 and n. Linlithgow, 123, 127, 128, 129, 148 n., 167 n., [199 n.], 215, 216, 220, 234 and ns., 235 and n,, 236, 237, 238, 244 n., 248, 253 and n., 261 and n., 264, 266 and ns., 269 n., 270 and n., 272, 280 ' Castle,' 264 n. Linton, House of, 172 n. Livingstone, Lady, 243 n. Sir James, 220 n. See also Callendar, Earl of 'Peel,' 177 and n., 242 and n., 271 n. Lochend, 43 ' Lochheid' in Kintyre, 184 n. Lochtour, 58 n. London, 97, 143 and n., 144, 181 n. 202, 205 n., 224, 256 n. Beer, 231- 2 n. ; Tower of, 290 ' River,' 250 n. Long, Secretary, loi n., 134, 135 Lords of the Congregation, 41 Lorn, district of, 221 n. Lothian, Earl of, 20, 24, 123 n., 176 n., 195, 203 n. East, 253 Mid, 81 West, 122, 234, 236 Lothians, the, 29 n., 167, 177, 198, 228, 229, 231, 258, 262 n , 269 Love (Rev. Mr.), 245 n. Loudoun, Chancellor, 18, 55 n., 57, 60 n., 61 n., 65-6 n., 67 n., 123 and n., 124, 135, 194, 195, 218 n., 224 n., 240 Louis XIV., 58 n. XVL, 137 Lovat, Lord, 30 Lumsden of Innergellie, 102, 103-4, 103 n.. Ill, 113 Lydcot, Col., 256 and n., 281 and n., 284 n. M. Mackartie, Lieut., 155 n. McGregors, 221 and n., 247 McKay, Clan, 11 McKenzie of Pluscardine, 159, 194 McKenzies, the, 11, 30, 133 n., 185 n. McLean, Hector, of Duart, 221 n., 285 and n., 286 INDEX 303 McLean, Hector, of Torluisk, 286 n. Lauchlan, 286 n. Tutor of, 286 n. McLeans, the, in, 221 n., 284-6 and ns. Maitland of Lethington, 18 Malignants and Sectaries, a choice of evils, 12 Mallivere, Col., 66 n. Man-of-war, an Irish, 237 n. of the period, 236 n. Manor Water, 176 Marches, East and West, 229 n. Mar, Earl of, 138 n. family, 17 Marie Antoinette, 137 Marshall Meadows, 38 Marston Moor, 21 Mary Stuart, 3 Mason, Lieut.-Col., 217 Massey, 24, 25, 231 n., 232 n., 236 n., 247 n., 253, 256 n., 261 n., 265 n., 268 n., 269 and n. Mauchline, 5 n., 24, 130 Maule, Harry, 194 Maxwell of Nether Pollock, 147 n., 171 n. Mazarin, Cardinal, 4 Medlin I3ridge, 39 and n., 43, 51, 54,89 Menstrie, Holburn of, 22, 58 and n., 96, 102, 103 and n., 104, 108, 244 n., 275-6 n., 277 and n,, 280 and n., 281 n., 282-3 and n., 284, 287 and n. Menteith, Lake of, 269 Menzies, 221 n. Merse, the, 228, 253 Midcalder, 177 n., 242 n., 269 n. Middleton, of Fettercairn, 23-24, 138 n., 156 and ns., 157 n., 158, 159, 160 and ns., 161, 163, 193, 194 n., 212, 224, 227, 228, 247 and n., 250 ns., 260 n., 261 and n., 266, 283 n., 289 n., 290 Milburne, Hamilton of, 243 n. Militia officer of the period, 255 n. Milton Bog, 83 Minchmoor, 194 Ministers at Dunbar, 96 n., 101-2, 104, 106, 107 n., 112 in Edinburgh Castle, 121, 203 n. Moncreifife Island, 163 n. Monifieth, 193 n. Monk, 25, 75, 109, 144 n., 168, 169 and n., 216, 217 n., 218 n., 219 n., 221 n., 233-4, 233 n., 237, 239 and ns., 275 n., 289, 290 Monkland, 270 n. Monmouth, Duke of, 176 ' Monquhaney,' 113 Mons Meg, 208 n. ' Mooremonis,' 183 n. Montgomery, Lord, 19, 193, 243-4 and n., 290 Robert, 19, 22, 49, 51, 80, 87 n., 102, 103-104, 137 and n., 157 and n., 170 and n., 171 n., 173 n., 174 and n., 175 and n., 177, 180 n., 181 and n., 182, 185 n., 186, 193, 203 n., 220 n., 244 n., 254 and n., 255 and n., 256 and n., 267 n., 283 p., 290 Sir James, 19, 193, 243-4 and n. Montmorency, Constable, 32 n. Montrose, Marquis of, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 19, 22, 24, 28 n., 46 n., 100, 107 and n., 108 n., 121 n., 126 and n., 130, 133 n., 155 and n., 156 n., 158, 159 and n., 160, 167 n., 168 n., 185 n., 194, 205 n., 220, 237 n., 252 n., 263 n. Moray's, Lord, house, 37-8, 250 n. Firth, 250 Mordington, 38 and n. Morpeth, 112 Morrice, Col., 47-8 — ' his men,' 47, 1 14 Mortars, 85, 168 and n., 169, 202 and n., 207 n., 230, 265 n. Mortonhall, 61 n. Moss-troopers, 150 n., 167 n., 168, 228, 229 n., 231, 268 n. Motherwell, 178, 180 Mugdrum Island, 162 Mull, 284 Munro, Sir G., 42, 159 Munster, 224, 225, 245 Miinster, Treaty of, 97 ' Mureway,' the, 148 n. Murray, a skipper, 25 1 n. Burn, 81 Field, 55, 62, 71 n., 81 Musgrave, Sir Philip, 261 n. Musselburgh, 39, 46, 47, 49-51 and ns., 53, 54, 56, 59, 60 n., 61 n., 304 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS 63 n., 65, 66 and n., 67, 71 n., 72 n., 77, 78 and n., 80, 87 and n., 89 n., 91, 92, 93 and n., 98, 112, 114, 142 n., 173 n., 219 n., 239. Bridge y 51 n. ; Links ^ 20, 51, 93, 241 N. Navy, non-existent Scots (1650), 27- 8 ; said to comprise eighteen men- of-war (1651), 237n.; English in 1648, 231 n. ; naval stratagems, 167, 237 n., 251 n. Neidpeth, 234 Nevoy (Rev. John), 104 n., 155 Newark, Renfrewshire, 268 and ns. Newbattle, 193 n. Newbridge, Midlothian, 264 Newbridge-on-Forth, 269 and ns. Newburgh-on-Tay, 137 n. Newburn-on-Tyne, 7, 18 Newburn-on-Forth, 269 n. Newbury, 144 Newcastle, 32 n., 38, 78, 112, 143, 144 n., 224 Marquis of, 24 ' New England ' in Scotland, 258 Newport, 251 n. Newtyle, 157, 158, 159 n., 160 and n. Nicoll, John, 148 n. Niddry Burn, 39, 89 Marischall, 46, 66 n., 67, 87, 89, 90 n., 91 and n., 122 n. Midlothian village, 47 n., 56 (West Lothian), 122 and n. Nith River, 29 n. Nithsdale, 29 n., 131, 147 n., 150 and n., 157, 213 and n. Nore River, 225 Northern Band and Oath, 158, 161, 181 n. Northwater Bridge, I56n. Norton, [83 and n.] o. Ogilvies of Airlie, 17, 160 Ogilvy, Lord, 160, 161, 194 Sir David, 159-60 Sir Thomas, 160 Okey, Col., 25, 235 n., 255 n., 256 n., 265 n., 280, 281 and n., 284 n. Old Palace Yard, 150 Orange, Prince of, 28 ; Princess, 237 n. 'Orkney Island,' 25, 30 Otterburn, Anne, 71 n., 72 n. Otterburns of Redhall, 71 n., 75 Oudert, Mr., 134, 135, 160 n. I Overton, Col. Robert, 25, 120 n., 122, I 141-2, 186 n., 255 n., 271, 272 I and n., 273 n., 274 n., 275, 277 n., ! 278, 279, 289 and n. i Owen Roe O'Neill, 225 ; Owens, Secretary, 123 n. Oxen for the Scots Artillery train, 265-6 n. Oxfordshire, 144 n. P. Paisley, 186, 254 and n., 255 n. Paris, 136 n. I Parliament, Scots, 170, 171 n., 192, 193, 194, 195 Passage Fort, 225 Peebles, 175 n., 176 and n., 180 and n., 234 Peeblesshire, 29 n. Penrith, 290 n. 'Pentland' Hills, 55, 56, 61-2 n., 67 n., 76, 84, 86, 92, 167 n., 258 n., 264 n. Firth, 268 n. Peregrine^ the, 249 n. Perth, 135, 136 n., 137 n. 138, 154, 155 and n., 161, 162, 163 n., 170, 171 and n., 172 n., 174 and n., 181 n., 198, 204 n., 206, 207, 208, 227 n., 228, 247, 257 n., 260, 288 and n., 289 Perthshire, 29 n., 58 n., 132 n., 227 Pettycur, 216 n. Philiphaugh, 16, 24, 107 and n., io8 n., 150 n., 160, 194 Philorthe, 237 n. Physicians of the period, 120 n., 136 n., 239 n., 241 n., 250 n. Piersons, Mrs., 255 n. Pitscottie, Col., 261 n., 283 n. Pitsom, Capt., 167 n. Pittenweem, 248 n. Pluscardine rebellion, 11, 155, 159 and n., 185 n., 193 n. Mackenzie of, 159, 194 Poke, John, 120 n. Pollock, Maxwell of Nether-, 147 n., 171 n. Polmais, Laird of, 258 n. Polmont, 270 INDEX 305 Pontefract Castle, 47 Porterfield, Provost, 171 n. Port Glasgow, 268 Portobello, 39 Presbyterianism in England, 97, 244, 245 n. * Presbytery and King,' 26 President, frigate, 217 and n., 218 and n., 248 n. Preston Battle, 5, 9, 42, etc. Field (Midlothian), 46 n., 71 n., 89, 90, 91 n. Pans, 94 n., 142 n., 219 n., :55n. Tower, 51 n., 66 n.,67, 255 n. Red coats, 87 n., 268 n. Redhall, 71, and n. 71-2, 72-77, 80, 82, 86, 89, 230 n., 270 and n., 271 ; garrison, 74 n. Redheiighs, 69, 70 n., 83 n. Registers, the captured Scots, 236 n., 238, 240 n., 243-4 n. Reid, Andrew, 288 n. Remonstrance of the Officers, 58, 104, 106 of the Western Army, 147, 151, 154, 161 n., 165, 170, 171 n. Remonstrant Party, 191, 195 n., 198, 254 n. Renfrew, 131 n., 181 Renfrewshire, 29 n., 214 n. Pride, Col., 25, iio-ii Pride's Purge, 5, 25 Prisoners, exchange of, 63 n., 113 ; | Resolutioners, [192], 195 n. the Dunbar, 112-3, and n. 112 ; | Resolution of August 13 (1650), 57 one-handed English, 98 n., 107 n. ; ! and n. release from Edinburgh Tolbooth, Restalrig, 43, 44, 48 121 and n. Reynolds, Capt., 249 n. Prizes at sea — English captures from Richardson, a moss-trooper, 229 n. Scots, 122, 140 n., 248 n., 251 n., I Rose, the, 249 n. 272 n. : vice versa, 231, andn. 231-2, 248 ns., 250-1 n. 268 n., {supposed, 53) Prosperous Mary, the, 217, 249 n. Prosperous, the, 249 n. Provence, 32 n. Pudsey the spy, 10 n., 31 n. Purves, Dr., 120 n. Q- and n., Roseburn House, 70 n., 86 Roslin, 168 and n., 169 and n. Ross-shire, 30 Rosyth Castle, 256 and n., 280. 286 n. Rothes, Earl of, 194, 195, 290 Rothiemay, Gordon of, 40 Rotterdam, 248 n. Roundway Down, 23 Roxburgh, ist Earl, 6, 17,20, 165 n. nd Earl, 17, 109, 165 n. Queensberry, Earl of, 147 n., 213 Queensferry (Burgh and passage), I Rowe, William, 32 n. 55, 56 and n., 57, 62, 65, 66, 67, i Rullion Green, 3, 261 n. 68, T% 77^ 78, 79. 80, 82, 84, 122, j Rupert, Prince, 218 n. 221 n., 272 and n., 275 n., 278 and n., 280, 287 North, fort at, 227 n., 235,249and n., 257, 272 andn., 278 R. *Rae,' Lord, 17, 193 and n. Ralston of that Ilk, 184 and n., 185, 187 Ramsay (Rev. R.), 171 n. Gardens, 201 n. Randerston, heir of, 276 n. Randolph, Earl, 204 n. Rathillet, Hackston of, 105, 147 n. Ratho, 83 and n. Ravenscraig, 257 n. Rushworth, John, 56 n., 57, 78 and n., 123 n. Rutherglen, 182, 183 Ruthven, Patrick, 23, 131-2 n., 193 and n., 201, 203 n., 204 and n., 207 n., 283 n. S' St. Abb's Head, 81, 112 — Andrews, loi n., 134, 227 n., 288 n. — Clair, Lord, 1 59 and n., 203 n., 290 — John, Oliver, 67 n., 251 n. — Johnston [Perth], 118, 156 n., 160 n., 207, 268 n. 20 3o6 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS St. Laurence, 270 n. — Margaret's Stone, 279, 280, 286 — Michael's, Inveresk, 51 n. — Ninian's, 123 and n. — * Qualm,' 216 n. Sanderson, Major, 128, 234 n. Sanquhar, 213 and n. ' Sarah Jean's Close,' 184 Sauchton, 69, 70 n., 71 n., 74 n., 87 n. ; Bridge^ 69, 71 n.; Hall^ 70 n., 71 n. Scarborough, 232 n. Scarcity in Scotland (1651), 262 n. Scone, 197 n. Scot, Sir John, 19 Scotscraig, 137 ; Erskine of, 137 n., 139 Scott, Col., 48 n., 276 n., 283 n. Mr. John, 150 n. Sir Walter, 221 n., [16, 105, 213 n., 259 n., etc.] Sir Walter of the period, 276 n., 287 and n. Seaforth, Earl of, [17], 30, 159 and n., 193, 221 n. Seaton House, 112 n. Sir Alexander, 233 and n., 234 Selkirkshire, 29 n. Severn valley, 23 Sexby, Col., 25 and n., 144, 255 n. Shells of the period, 85, 168 n., 202 n. Sheriffmuir, 285 n. Sherrovv, Capt., 155 n. Sheitleston, 266 Shield?, 112 Shirra (Rev. Mr.), 219 Sigtiety the, 249 n. Simpson, a skipper, 251 n. Sinclair, Mr., 169 n. ' Six Sisters,' the, 208 n. ' Skeans,' no n. Skirmishes, 234-5 n., 235, 253 and ns., 255 ns., 265, 271 n. Slatefora, 68, 69, 71 n., 73, 77,81, 82 n. Smeaton by Dalkeith, 51 Smythe, Commissary-General, 23 1 n. Solway, 147 n., I57, 253, 254 n. Somerset, Protector, 51 n. Somerville family, 121 n., 138 n., 172 n. Soutra, 167 n. I Spang (correspondent of Baillie), I 30 n., 99 n. I ' Spaw,' ' pass called,' 254 Speymouth, 12, 27, 60 n., 250 n. Spies, 66, 240 n., {cf. 10 n., 31 n.] Stapylton, Rev. Mr., 213 State, Council of, 144 n., 250 n. ' Steelhand the Mosser,' 167 n. Stenhouse Mills, 71 n., 87 n. Stevenson, R. L., 95 n., 105, 173 n.^ 182 n., 219, 232 n., 252 n. Stewart, Capt. James, 239 n. of Allenton [i2on.], I48n. of Kirkfield, 118 and n.,^ 120 n., 171 n., [206 n.] William, Governoroflnch- garvie, 288 n. Stirling, 31, 71 n., 112, 121, 122, 123 and ns., 124 and n., 125 and n., 126, 127, 129, 131, 132 n., 133 n., 135, 142, 155 n., 165, 166 n., 186,. 211 n., 212 and n,, 215, 216, 219 I and n., 224, 225, 226 n., 227 and n., 228, 234 n., 238, 239, 240 n., 242 n., 243 n., 245, 247 and n., 252 n., 253 and n., 254, 256, 258 n., 260 and n., 263, 272, 277 and n., 283 n., 284, 287, 289 and n., 290. Bridge^ 123, 219, 235 n. ; Kings Park of, 258 and 277 n., 287, 289 Castle, 28, 103, 104, 126, 268 n., 283 n. Stirlingshire, 29, 234 Stonyhill, 51 and n., 67, 75, 76, y^y 78, ZZ, 89, 91 Dobie of, 51 n. Strachan, Col. Archibald, 22, 29, 49, 50 and n,, 51, 60 and n., 61, 72 n., 87 and n., 103, 104, no and r., n8, 125, 126, 130 n., 132 and ns., 133 and n., 140, 145, 146 and n.> 147 n., 148, 149 and ns., 150 and n., 151, 152 and n., 153, 154, 157 and n., 164, 165, 166, 171 n., 172, 173 and n., 174 and n., 182 n.» 185 ns., 186 n., 191, 194 n., 206 and n. Straihavon, 214 n. Strathblane, 269 and n. Strathbogie, 29, 138 n., 156, 163^ 165 n., 181 n, Strathclyde, 172 Straihearn, 46 n., [214 n.], 228 Strathendrick, 269 INDEX 307 Struthers House, 18, 227 n. Stuarts, the, 155 n. ; [165 J, 211 n. Suir River, 225 Sutherlandshire, 30 Swede soldiers, 250 and n. Swinton, ' near Berwick,' 229 n. Sir Alex., 21 Sir John yr. of that Ilk, 21, 118 n., 206 n. Sydenham, Major, 234 n., 244 n. Syler, Col., 230 Tantallon, 202 n., 228, 229, 230-4 and ns. Tay River, 137 n., 154, 162, 163 and n., 226, 237 n., 250-1 n. port, 137 n., 162 Teith River, 225 Teviotdale, 150 n., 228, 229 n. Thames, 142 n., 250 n. ' Thibet' (Lothian), 54 Thirlestane, 18 Tilt, Glen, 138 n. Tipperary, 225 Tippermuir, 6, 100 Tomlinson, Col., 143 and n., 178, 256 n. ' Tongues,' 232 n. ' Tories,' 148 n., 167 n., 168, 268 n. Torluisk, McLean of, 286 n. Torwood, the, 259 and n., 261 and n., 263 and n., 265, 270 and n., 274 n., 277 and n., 280, 287, 289 n. Torwoodhead Castle, 263 Traquair, Earl of, 6, 17 Tressel bridge (Gustavus'), 37, 124 Trotter, an advocate, 120 n. Tummel River, 154 Turner, Sir James, 5 n., 24, 39 n., 118, 166, 283 n., 289, [290] Turriff, 6 Tweed River, 229 n. Twiss, Mr., 157 n., 160 n. Twisleton, Col., 256 n., 289 n. Tyne, 142 n. ; -side, 143 ; -mouth, 144 n. U. Ulster, 139, 142 n., and ns. Van Behmen, 268 n. Vane, Sir Henry, 268 and n. Van Ruske, 25, 159 n., 290 Vera Cruz, 218 n. Vlotho, 24 W. *W., Earlof,'48n. Walker, Sir Edward, 100 -i n., 136 n. Patrick, 185 n. Wallace, William, 125 n., 259 and n. Waller, Sir W., 23, 50 Wallyford, 5 1 Ware (Herts), 265 n. Warenne, de, 105 n., 106 Wariston, Johnston of, 21, 54 n., 99, 100 n., 103 n., 118 and n., 132 n., 171 n., 174 and n., 206 n.,' 217, 238-40 and ns., 255 estate, 240 n. Waterford, 225 Watt, a moss-trooper, 167 n.,[i68 n.] Waugh (Rev. Mr.), 192 n., 240 n. Waughton, Laird of, 232 n. Webb, Capt., 66 n. Wemyss, Fife, 198 n. Col. James, 23, 58, 84, 85 n., 265 n., 290 West, Col., 264 n. Westfield, Dunbar yr. of, 221 n. Western Army, the, 129, 130-1, 132 and n., 133, 140, 146, 147 and n., 149, 150 and n., 152, 163, 165, 166 and n., 170, 171 and n., 172, 174, 176, 177, 179 and n., 181 n., 182 and n., 183 and n., 183-7, 206, 210, 213 Westminster Hall, 112 Wexford, 2>3y 225 ; ' pirrats,' 28 Whalley, Commissary Gen., no, 148 n., 149-50 and ns., 151, 152 and n., 166 and n., 175 and n., 176 and n., 184, 186 n., 255 n., 256 and n., 288 and n. ' Whichenour in England,* 172 Whitehall, 113 n., 234 White, Lieut.-Col., 217 Capt., 251 n. Major, 96 ns., loi n., 214, 268 1 Whittingehame, 94 n. Wigton, Earl of, 289 n. I Wigtonshire, 30 3o8 CROMWELL'S SCOTCH CAMPAIGNS Wight, Isle of, 21 ' Willie Wastle,' 230 and n. Willing Mind, the, 251 n. Wilmot, Lord, 23, 261 n. Winram of Libberton, 113 and n. Winton, Countess of, 112 n., 233 n. Earl of, 233 n. ' Wisdom, Mrs.,' 10 n. Worcester battle, 96 n., 274 n., 287, 290 Woodhaven, 162 * Woodlsbie,' 275n. Wood (Rev. Mr.), 171 n., 255 n. Worsley, Col., 143 Wright, Dr., 241 n., 250 n. Y. Yair House, 132 n. Yarmouth, 248 n., 249 n., 251 n. York, Duke of, 231 n. Yorkshire, 70 n., 144 Young, Capt., 217 and n., 218 n., 219 and n. Ythan, Lord, 24, 261 n. ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. Page 73, line 14, read 'the late Sir William Fraser.' Page 171, line ig,/or ' Galwegians ' read ' Gallovidians. ' Page 232, t footnote. For further information regarding the ownership of the Bass Rock the reader may be referred to Mrs. Stewart Smith's lately published work, ' The Grange of St. Giles,' and be commended specially to the tradition therein set down as to how Maggie Lauder, anno 1650, beat off with a flail a party of Cromwell's men at North Berwick. Page 285. An interesting reference to the conduct of the Macleans at Inverkeithing is to be found in 'The Highlands in 1750' (Blackwood, 1898). Mr. Bruce's notes on the Clans, therein contained, state that ' it was a maxim with the Macleans never to turn their backs upon an enemy though ever so unequal in numbers,' and that 'it was owing to this madness that they stood to be slaughtered by Lambert.' *^* The citations in this volume from Whitelocke's ' Memorials of the English Affairs ' are taken from both the folio edition of 1732, and the third volume of the Oxford edition of 1853. The writer desires to express his regret that in every case it has not been made plain which of these editions is the authority ; but with one excep- tion the citations in Books L and IL are from the 1853 edition, and the bulk of those in Books IIL and IV. are from the earlier. The pagination in the writer's notes turns out in some instances to have been inexact : the allusion to the Duke of Buckingham, e.g. (* note on p. 260), is really founded on p. 496 of Whitelocke. Elh'oi Stock, Paternoster Row, London 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. RENEWALS ONLY—TEL NO. 642-3405 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or oa the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. IIPiai9708a .