A Scottish deputation visited the younger Charles at the Hague. After a good deal of finessing it was agreed that Charles would be accepted as King of Scotland, conditionally,—on the side of the deputation, that he subscribed the Covenant; and on his side, that the Scots should furnish an army to help him in the assertion of his English rights. He signed the Covenant before landing at the mouth of the Spey, in June, 1650. Cromwell again proved himself the man of the hour. He had just stamped out with an iron heel a rebellion in Ireland; and, within a month from the landing of Charles, he and his Irish army had crossed the Tweed, and were marching on Edinburgh.

He had as his opponent the cautious old veteran, General Leslie. Leslie caused the country in the line of Cromwell’s march to be laid waste. The Ironsides had to contend with an enemy against which their indomitable charges in the field were of no avail,—famine. Leslie’s tactics were to avoid a battle; but he hovered menacingly round Cromwell, maintaining the more favourable positions. The Lord-General saw no way out of his difficulty, but either surrender or a fool-hardy attack on the strong, well-posted Scottish army. Hemmed in on the shore near Dunbar, but in communication with his ships, he was arranging to send off his camp baggage by sea, and then, by a sudden attack with his horse, to cut his way through the Scottish army, when the mis-timed zeal of the Presbyterian preachers solved the difficulty for him. “Go down and smite your enemies,” these preachers shouted, and Leslie’s safer generalship was borne down by the clamour. On a stormy morning—the 3rd of September, 1650—the Scots descended to the open plains. Cromwell at the sight exclaimed, “The Lord hath delivered them into our hands.” The wet and weary Scots, not allowed time to form in proper order of battle, were totally routed; thousands falling in the battle and the flight.

When the news of the defeat reached Edinburgh, the magistrates fled to the headquarters of the Scottish army at Stirling. Four days after the battle, Cromwell took possession of the city, but it was not till the end of December that the castle surrendered. Other fortresses, Glasgow, and all Scotland south of the Forth, submitted to Cromwell. But the Scottish army was so strongly posted at Stirling that he did not attempt to dislodge it. In the western shires, a party calling themselves Remonstrators, opposed to Charles, and also to Cromwell and his army of Independents, raised an army of about four thousand men, and attacked a body of English troops at Hamilton. They were at first successful, but through their very success they got into disorder, and were ultimately defeated.

The Scottish Parliament, having retired beyond the Forth, now ordered that Charles should be crowned at Scone. He was residing in Perth, and had been so preached at, prayed for, and pelted with good advice, that his patience became exhausted, and one day he made a bolt for the highlands. He reached Clova, a village amongst the Grampians, expecting to find there a large concourse of Royalists, pure and simple. But very few such met him, and he returned to Perth with a small party which had been sent after him.

On 1st January, 1651, the coronation took place. A sermon was preached, in which the insincerity of the Stuart family was a leading topic. Then Charles swore to the Covenants, and to the maintenance of the Presbyterian Kirk, and he was duly crowned and annointed King of Scotland. Thereafter, not being lacking in personal courage, he took a more prominent place in the field. He was sadly in want of money. The Edinburgh mint was in the hands of the English; a mint was established in Dundee—then well fortified—but there was a scanty supply for coinage of the precious metals.

The records of the Dundee Town Council give a letter from the king dated from Dunfermline, May 12th, 1651, asking the town to advance by way of a royal loan, one thousand pounds sterling; but the King’s personal security was then of doubtful value, and the Estates having passed an Act ordering all the lieges to contribute voluntarily for the necessities of the army, the cautious Dundonians at once entered into such a contribution.

Meanwhile, the northern passes being strictly guarded, Cromwell sent gunboats up the Forth. These were beaten off at Burntisland; but at Queensferry they effected a landing of Commonwealth troops, and Cromwell made his way through Fife, and took Perth. He thus gained a commanding position in the rear of the Scottish army. But his northerly movement left for the Royalists a clear way into England; and Charles expected to find many friends there. So with the Scottish army he entered England by Carlisle; and, by rapid marches, in three weeks from leaving Stirling he reached Worcester. In hot pursuit, to give no time for raising a Royalist army, Cromwell followed the king. He left General Monk with a small army to complete the subjugation of Scotland.

Six days after Charles arrived at Worcester, Cromwell was there, at the head of thirty thousand men. On the 3rd of September—being the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar—a desperate battle was fought on the banks of the Severn, and the inferior Scottish army—for comparatively few English Royalists had joined on the march—was utterly routed. Three thousand Scots were slain in the battle, and ten thousand were made prisoners; the majority of these were barbarously shipped off to the plantations, and sold into slavery. After many adventures and narrow escapes, Charles contrived to reach France. For eight years he was a hanger-on at various continental courts, and looked upon as a hopeless claimant to thrones which had vanished from the earth.

When Cromwell left Scotland, Dundee was almost the only fortified town which held for the king. Many Royalists, with their valuables, had taken refuge therein. In anticipation of an attack by the English gunboats, heavy guns were placed on the river frontage, and other means of defence were hurriedly adopted. A committee of the Estates sat in the town; and when, in the middle of August, General Monk, with four thousand horse and foot, appeared before it and demanded its surrender, this committee issued a defiant proclamation, and then decamped to Alyth, a little town about eighteen miles to the north of Dundee, carrying with them a considerable amount of public money. Monk, by a sudden swoop, captured the committee; some, and amongst them the veteran General Leslie, were killed; the others were sent to the Tower of London, and the troopers enriched themselves by their plunder.

On 1st September, after a fortnight’s bombardment, Dundee was taken by assault. Monk had had a training in military savagery under Cromwell in Ireland, and he now beat the record of his master. Not only was the brave governor Lumsden—after quarter had been given him—with eight hundred of the garrison, put to death in cold blood, but it is said that two hundred women and children shared the same fate. Carlyle, without any note of disapproval, says: “Governor Lumsden would not yield on summons; General Monk stormed him; the town took fire in the business; there was once more a grim scene, of flame and blood, and rage and despair, transacted on this earth.” It is said that the plunder of the town exceeded two-and-a-half million pounds, Scots (£125,000 sterling.) There were sixty vessels in the harbour. After the fall of Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews surrendered, and Monk was, for Cromwell, master of Scotland.

And Cromwell was now virtually sovereign of England and Ireland also. After disbanding, with taunts and insults, the Long Parliament,—as a servant of which he had risen to power,—and playing for a little while with a mock parliament, composed of his own adherents, he found himself strong enough to govern without a parliament. At an assembly of notables—1653—General Lambert, in the name of the army and the three kingdoms, asked him to accept the office of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. With real or assumed reluctance he gave his consent; he took the oath of office, put on his hat, sat down in a chair of state, and Lambert, on his knees, presented to him the great seal. With more ample authority than had ever been possessed by their legitimate monarchs, he governed these islands till his death. This event occurred in 1658, on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of his Dunbar and Worcester victories.

And so this great personality departed. He was only in his sixtieth year, and up to his last year he had appeared strong and healthy. But as Carlyle says,—“Incessant toil, inconceivable labour of head, and heart, and hand; toil, peril, and sorrow manifold, continued for near twenty years now, had done their part; those robust life-energies had been gradually eaten out. Like a tower strong to the eye, but with its foundations undermined, the fall of which on any shock may be sudden.” We might add to the above causes for what seemed premature decline, his knowledge that he had a host of bitter and deadly enemies, ever plotting against his life. To live in constant dread of assassination, will eat as a canker into the bravest of hearts.

His character has been diversely estimated, according to the standpoint of the critic. To a strong believer in force of will and energy of purpose, like the writer quoted above, he is England’s greatest soldier, statesman, and ruler. Others have called him hypocrite,—dogmatic, vindictive, cruel to ferocity. Of his administrative abilities, his unswerving resolution, and his military genius, there can hardly be two opinions. Under his government there was peace and order, social progress, and comparative freedom at home; abroad, the Commonwealth achieved high honour and respect. As a victorious soldier, Cromwell shewed little magnanimity towards the vanquished. Retaliation and revenge were common faults of the times—say his apologists; yes, but a truly noble character will rise above the sins and shortcomings of his times; he will be the prophet and pioneer of better times.

As to Cromwell’s religious professions, they were doubtless sincere, but men make their gods after their own hearts, and his god was the Jehovah of the old Hebrews; a god of war and of vengeance, rather than the All-Merciful Father of the Sermon on the Mount. Macaulay has said of the theologically-flavoured political writings of the Puritans, that one might think their authors had never read the New Testament at all, so full were they of “smiting the Amalekites,” of “hewing Agag to pieces,” and of the hard and bitter spirit of the older times. Can we wonder that the mind of the Prince of the Puritans had, unconsciously perhaps, run in the same narrow groove?

Of the Scottish rule of “His Highness, the Lord Protector,” it may be said that after a long period of conflict and general unsettledness, it was a time of peace. The laws were administered, even amongst highland hills and border wastelands. Monk, with a small army, and a few forts garrisoned by English troops, managed, after their several defeats, to keep a brave, and naturally a patriotic and freedom-loving people, in thorough subjection. They did not love the man; but, although he would not allow the General Assembly to sit, their church had that freedom of worship which under a Covenanted king they had failed to accomplish. There were two leading Presbyterian parties, the Resolutionists, who had placed the Scottish crown on the head of Charles, and still called themselves king’s men, praying for him in the public devotions; and the Remonstrators, who had never, in spite of all his oaths and promises, adopted or believed in Charles, and studiously kept him out of their prayers. (One might have thought that the worse a man he was, the more he needed praying for). Cromwell favoured the latter party, making a certificate from three or four of its ministers the condition of a minister, although he might be called to a church, being paid his stipend. Cromwell taxed the Scots very heavily, but perhaps, all considered, they got fair value for their money. On the whole, so far as Scotland was concerned, we may indorse what, in his History of his own Time, Bishop Burnet says of the Protectorate generally:—“There was good justice done, and vice was suppressed and punished. So that we always reckon those eight years of Usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity.”