Young as Montrose was, discerning eyes had already marked him for one likely to play a conspicuous part on whichever side he might engage. The news that he had joined their enemies filled the Episcopal party in Scotland with consternation. So highly, it is said, did the bishops esteem his talents, that they thought it time to prepare for a storm when he had declared against them. Nor did his allies show themselves less conscious of his worth. They at once appointed him to an important place in their councils. The movement had assumed such proportions that it was found necessary to devise some less unwieldy method of conducting business than a large and tumultuous body of men with no very clear notion of what they wanted or how to secure it. It was above all things necessary for Rothes and his friends to keep the controlling power in their own hands. A committee of sixteen, representing the four Estates of the kingdom, was framed for this purpose. It was known as the Tables, from the rule that all motions were to be formally tabled, or recorded, before discussion, and was authorised to act as the responsible agent and mouthpiece of the party. The four noblemen chosen were Rothes, Loudon, Lindsay of the Byres (one of Montrose's college friends), and Montrose himself. His nephew, by marriage with Napier's daughter, Sir George Stirling of Keir, was one of the four representatives of the lesser barons.

Meanwhile Charles had abated no jot of his arbitrary policy. He had been advised by the Treasurer, Lord Traquair, to withdraw the offending liturgy, and to content himself with enforcing his civil authority. The advice was good, but it may well be doubted whether Baillie was not right in holding that affairs had now gone too far for Charles to follow it. At all events it was not followed. A proclamation was issued announcing the King's entire approval of the new liturgy, his responsibility for it, and his determination to regard all further opposition to it as treasonable. This inflammatory document was read at the city-cross in Edinburgh amid frequent and open expressions of derision. So soon as the heralds had finished, and before, owing to the crowd, they could come down from the platform, a protest prepared for the occasion was read aloud by Warriston from a scaffold raised for that purpose by the side of the old cross. He was supported by a party of sixteen noblemen. Among them was Montrose, who, in the exuberance of his zeal, had mounted on a cask that stood upon the scaffold. Rothes, who was of course present, remarking the young enthusiast's elevated position, and remembering that the place where they were standing was also the place of public execution, said laughingly to him, "James, you will never be at rest till you be lifted up there above the rest in a rope." And this grim jest, its chronicler adds, "was afterwards accomplished in earnest in that same place; and some even say that the same supporters of the scaffold were made use of at Montrose's execution."

And now the work was done, and Scotland was ripe for the Covenant. Whatever may have been the motives of its originators, there can be no question of the feelings with which the bulk of the people regarded it. Never, even in the heat of the Reformation, had the stern Scottish nature been stirred to such a depth and fervour of passion. Its two strongest feelings had been artfully inflamed, national sentiment and religious enthusiasm. It would be difficult to separate the two, and to apportion to each its share in the general movement. But it is clear that love for the religion they had deliberately chosen and established with tears and blood was at this time strongly deepened by the thought that it was menaced by a king of the hated English.

The place and time for the great ceremony were chosen. The time was the last day of February, 1638. The place was the church but lately raised beneath the shadow of the great castle whence had issued but a few short years previously, with all the pomp of a monarch moving amid a rejoicing people to assume the crown of his fathers, the King whose authority they were now met to renounce. Of all the historical spots in that beautiful city there is none that an Englishman surveys with more mingled feelings than the churchyard of the Greyfriars. There at the appointed hour came the leading members of the Tables, with Warriston to read the sacred document and Henderson to explain it for any who still wavered. Loudon and Rothes spoke with all their artful eloquence, reiterating their professions of love for their religion and loyalty to their King. Then Warriston read aloud the Covenant from a parchment of an ell square. There were few doubters, and they were soon and easily satisfied. The Earl of Sutherland, the highest nobleman present, was the first to sign his name. One after another, all within the church followed him. Then, as the shadows of the winter evening deepened over the solemn scene, the parchment was carried outside and read once more to the eager crowd which thronged every corner of the churchyard. As the last words were spoken—"that religion and righteousness may nourish in the land, to the glory of God, the honour of our King, and peace and comfort of us all"—all hands were raised to heaven in token of assent, while old men, in whose ears the fiery tones of Knox might have rung, wept tears of joy to see that the spirit of the great Reformer still lived among his countrymen. The parchment was then spread upon a tombstone, and all who could get near pressed forward in turn to sign it. During the next two days it was carried round the city, accompanied by a sobbing, praying multitude. Signatures came in apace from citizens of all classes and every age. Even serving-women and little children, who could neither write nor read, pledged themselves to the good cause with the assistance of a notary. It is said that many in the ecstasy of the moment wrote their names in blood drawn from their own veins. Copies were made of it, bearing the names of the chief subscribers, and entrusted to all who would undertake the office of recruiting for this holy war. Nobles and gentlemen galloped about the country with these copies in their pockets. Agents were sent round to all the principal towns and to the Universities. Ministers read aloud the call to arms from their pulpits, and exhorted their congregations to sign. Those who refused were threatened, and even violence was sometimes employed. Names are of course easily collected, if only trouble enough be taken to collect them. Many signed the Covenant, as many have always signed and will always sign whatever is laid before them, without any clear understanding to what they were pledging themselves, simply because others had done so. Many signed through fear of the consequences of a refusal. But when allowance has been made for all the arts commonly employed to foment a popular disturbance, and for all the motives which have power to influence the popular mind at such times, it is impossible to doubt that, so far as the Covenant was understood to be taken in defence of the national religion, it reflected the current of the national thought.

Scotland was now practically in a state of rebellion, and the Tables began to assume the airs of a sovereign. Munitions of war were collected and moneys levied. Several of the leaders had already come forward with voluntary subscriptions, Montrose heading the list with a contribution of twenty-five dollars. It was determined to supplement this with a more certain source of supply. A general tax was levied of a dollar on every thousand marks of rent. Though delicately called a contribution, it was in effect a tax, and a tax, moreover, levied with a strictness to which Scotsmen had hitherto been strangers. A committee was appointed for the purpose, soon to be known by the appropriate title of the War Committee. It was clear that some more serious effort must be made to maintain the royal authority than the issue of proclamations that were only laughed at. Hamilton was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Covenanters. He was empowered to make certain concessions, such as the King fondly conceived, or pretended to conceive, should be sufficient to assure all loyal Scotsmen that he had no design on either their religion or their laws. He might promise, for example, that the new Canons and the new Liturgy should not be pressed except in what Charles was pleased to call a fair and legal way. Some modifications also might be made in the Court of High Commission, a harmless invention of the previous reign with nothing but the name in common with that tribunal so odious to Englishmen, but which nevertheless was equally odious to Scotsmen, as relegating to bishops that moral supervision of the Church previously vested in the Presbyteries. But on one point the King was firm. No concession was to be made, nothing was to be promised, until the Covenant had been rescinded. In vain did all his advisers, Scots and English, clerics and laymen, assure him that negotiation on these terms was hopeless. It mattered not. The Covenant, he answered, was a standard of rebellion, and until it was taken down he had no more power in Scotland than a Doge of Venice.

On this bootless errand Hamilton arrived in Edinburgh early in June, and took up his quarters in Holyrood. An immense concourse assembled to see him enter the city. The road between Leith and Musselburgh was lined with nearly sixty thousand people. At the most conspicuous spot five hundred ministers were congregated in their black gowns. The Commissioner, according to Baillie, was moved to tears at such a sign of the national feeling. Hamilton's powers of dissimulation were indeed remarkable; but it may be doubted whether on this occasion the good Covenanter's emotion, and the pride he felt at the noble display made by his own cloth, did not a little overcome his usual acuteness. It is certain, however, that the Commissioner was extremely gracious, bowing and smiling on every side, though he skilfully managed to evade a speech which had been prepared in welcome by Mr. William Livingstone, "the strongest in voice," as Baillie naÏvely remarks, "and austerest in countenance of us all." This, Hamilton suggested, might be more properly appreciated at a private audience.

The Tables had selected six of their number as commissioners on their part, three noblemen and three ministers. Among the former were that inseparable pair Rothes and Loudon; the third was Montrose. To Henderson and Dickson was added a colleague rejoicing in the ominous name of Cant. They presented their demands: the withdrawal of the new Liturgy, the Book of Canons, and the Court of High Commission, and the summons first of a free General Assembly, instead of a packed body of subservient courtiers such as had restored Episcopacy at the will of the late King, and then of a Parliament to finally settle all matters concerning religion. Hamilton demanded as an inevitable preliminary to all concessions the renunciation of the Covenant and their return to their lawful allegiance. They professed themselves to be still as always loyal subjects, and declared that they would as soon renounce their baptism as the Covenant. All through June the controversy dragged its fruitless length along. Hamilton by turns argued, pleaded, warned, and threatened. The King, he said, was ready to grant all that honour would permit him, and all that was necessary to establish their religion and liberties; beyond that they should not press him. By so doing they would forfeit the sympathies of those in England who wished well to sufferers, but would never wish well to rebels. If they still persisted in their unreasonable and seditious course, the King would come in person to settle the matter with forty thousand men at his back. Unfortunately for Hamilton's argument, Rothes and Loudon were as well informed on the state of affairs in England as himself. They had sharp spies at Court, even in the King's own household. They knew exactly what were the Commissioner's instructions, and had no fear of forfeiting the sympathy of their English partisans by persisting in their demands. There is no doubt that the firm front of the Covenanters was now greatly strengthened by assurances from the English Opposition. As usual, too, Hamilton played a double part. For this indeed he had some excuse. He had received permission from Charles to employ all means to gain time, short of giving any promise that would have afterwards to be revoked or of recognising the lawfulness of the Covenant. Time was of the utmost importance now, for it soon became clear to Hamilton, and he made it clear to the King, that an appeal to force was the inevitable end of the negotiations, and that all that remained for him to do was to prolong the time till force was ready. But it is doubtful whether Charles would have understood this permission to include an assurance to his rebellious subjects that to stand firm was the only and the certain way of gaining their ends. Yet a very circumstantial story seems to fix this treachery on the King's Commissioner. He had brought with him to Scotland two forms of the royal declaration against the Covenant; in the first it was plainly denounced as an act of rebellion and its immediate surrender demanded; in the second somewhat more general and conciliatory language was employed. In one of his earliest letters Hamilton had assured the King that it would be impossible to publish the more outspoken document; he now wished to leave even the gentler one unread. But on that point Charles was firm. Hamilton might return to England for further counsel and instruction, but the declaration in its milder form must be published. The Commissioner had recourse to one of those ignoble artifices which were his idea of diplomacy. Pretending that he had resolved not to publish either declaration (of whose existence the Covenanters were very well aware) he left Edinburgh, but returning suddenly at noon of the next day the second and milder declaration was read at the cross. But he had to do with men as cunning as himself. A few had been deceived by his pretended departure, but only a few. Before the herald had finished a crowd had assembled, and among them was the inevitable Warriston with his protest and a trusty band of supporters. The document was longer, less respectful, and more explicit than the one hitherto used, leaving indeed no further doubt, had any previously existed, of the nature and extent of the Covenanters' demands, and of their resolution to be satisfied with no compromise. The Liturgy, the Book of Canons, the Court of High Commission must go; a free General Assembly and a free Parliament must be summoned; the Covenant must be maintained. The applauding crowd, excited by Hamilton's foolish attempt to overreach them, were with difficulty restrained from putting to the sword the few who had the courage to raise their voices for the King. So strong was the popular feeling against the declaration that those members of the Council who had given a grudging assent to it now wished to retract, and threatened that, if not allowed to do so, they would themselves take the Covenant. While Hamilton was arguing with them a deputation from the Covenanters was announced. They came to protest against the declaration. When they had been heard, Hamilton, excusing himself to his colleagues, withdrew with them into another room where he addressed them in these remarkable words: "My Lords and Gentlemen, I spoke to you before those Lords of the Council as the King's Commissioner; now there being none present but yourselves, I speak to you as a kindly Scotsman. If you go on with courage and resolution you will carry what you please, but if you faint and give ground in the least you are undone—a word is enough to wise men." The authority for this monstrous speech rests on two of the deputation, who heard it and repeated it in identical terms within four-and-twenty hours of its being spoken. One of these was Montrose himself, the other was his colleague, the minister Cant. They told it separately to Bishop Guthrie, then a minister at Stirling, in whose Memoirs it may be read. The Bishop adds that the incident created an uneasy feeling in Montrose's mind that Hamilton was playing both sides false in order to advance those designs on the crown of Scotland of which he had been, it will be remembered, already accused, and which many at least of his own countrymen still believed him to entertain. He told Guthrie that he should form no rash conclusions, but that meantime he should keep his eyes open and look carefully to his own steps.

It will but anticipate the course of events by a few months to wind up at once the tangled skein of these negotiations. Twice again in 1638 did Hamilton visit Scotland. Each time he came with fresh concessions, too late to be of any real service, yet enough to convince the Covenanters of the truth of the Commissioner's ill-omened words that everything would be gained by standing firm. Once again a royal proclamation was heard from the city-cross; once again it was followed by a protest, more defiant than any of its predecessors. The King had proposed a Covenant on his own account, made up of those of 1580 and 1590, the latter binding all who signed it to stand by the King in "suppressing of the Papists, promotion of true religion, and settling of his Highness's estate, and obedience in all the countries and corners of the realm." To sign this, said the indignant protesters, would be to make themselves guilty of mocking God, inasmuch as they of all men needed no adjuration to suppress Popery. On another point their language was still more emphatic. Charles had granted the demand for a General Assembly, and had promised that the obnoxious Liturgy should be absolutely revoked, together with the Book of Canons and the Court of High Commission, that the practice of the Articles of Perth should be for the present suspended till Parliament should pronounce its final decision on them, and that the authority of the bishops should be made subject to the authority of the Assembly. In a word, all that they asked was conceded; but the hour for concessions had passed. Episcopacy must go root and branch. All that the King made by his submission was to hear that he had no power to make or withhold it. Matters of religion were not in his hands, but in the divinely appointed hands of the Assembly, and in theirs only. Thus the Covenanters cast to the winds the last shred of their professed loyalty, and practically declared war against the King's authority.

These things were done at the end of September. On November 21st the General Assembly was to meet at Glasgow. The intervening time was spent by Hamilton in vain attempts to influence the elections and to procure signatures for the new or King's Covenant, as it was called. In both he was equally unsuccessful. The Assembly was constituted after a fashion which left no doubt what its temper was likely to be. Going back to an Act of 1587, it was resolved to elect lay as well as ecclesiastical members. This was what Hamilton wished to prevent. The ministers alone he thought he might still be able to persuade to show some respect for the prerogative of a King who was ready to grant so much, and who had already shown himself both willing and able to make their position easier and more secure. Nor were the ministers themselves well pleased to see the office that was rightly theirs shared among men who, as they knew well, were for the most part influenced by no real love for religion, and whose lives were in too many instances at direct variance with its teaching. But the nobles, in Baillie's expressive phrase, had now got their feet in the stirrup, and were not to be stopped from the game they had started. Moreover, it was in them that the real strength of the Covenant as a national movement against an arbitrary king still lay. The people knew this, and the ministers were not strong enough to dictate to the people. The Tables were the controlling power of the elections, and of that body no member was now busier or more resolute than Montrose. The King's Covenant proved a lamentable failure. Few could be found to sign it compared with the crowds that still thronged daily to subscribe its rival, and of these nearly one-half came from Aberdeen and the neighbourhood, which through all the trouble had stood stoutly by the Throne; while a mad woman named Margaret Nicholson, who went about the country proclaiming herself empowered to declare the National Covenant a direct gift from heaven, and the King's from another place, was generally accepted as an inspired prophetess.

On the appointed day the Assembly met, a day not less momentous in the history of Scotland than that on which two years later the Long Parliament met in the old chapel of St. Stephen was destined to prove in the history of England. The place appointed was the venerable cathedral, one of the few triumphs of Gothic art which had been preserved by the affectionate pride of the citizens from the furious zeal of Knox's Vandals. On a high chair of state sat Hamilton in all the pomp, the barren pomp as he was now conscious, of the representative of the Crown. The Privy Council were ranged below him. Directly opposite were placed seats for the Moderator and his clerk. At a long table in the body of the church sat the Lords of the Covenant, while the representatives of the Presbyteries had to be content with humbler places on either side behind them. Beyond these again was a stage for the accommodation of the sons of the Covenanting nobility and other distinguished spectators, while every unoccupied part of the building was thronged with a vast and miscellaneous crowd, including many gentlewomen. Not a single bishop was present. Only two indeed, the Bishops of Ross and Argyll, had ventured to enter the city; they had come under the protection of Hamilton and his friends, and were now lodged safely in the castle. Swords and daggers were to be seen on all sides. The regularly elected members numbered two hundred and forty in all, of whom one hundred were laymen. But besides these there were almost as many again who had no vote nor lawful place in the Assembly and professed to be there only in the capacity of friends, amici curiÆ as it were, to impart confidence by their presence, and perhaps aid by their counsels. Many of them could neither read nor write, but they were strong in numbers and loud of voice. Great care had been taken to exclude all who had not subscribed the Covenant. The provost had issued a number of leaden tickets stamped with his arms, without which no spectator was admitted into the building, and the distribution of these was solely in the hands of the Covenanters. To add to Hamilton's discomfiture, he was aware that he could no longer trust even the members of his own council so far as any vote on Episcopacy was concerned. "What then," he wrote to the King on the day after this Assembly had met, "what then can be expected but a total disobedience to authority, if not a present rebellion?"

It was soon made clear that nothing else was to be expected, for that nothing else was intended. After Hamilton had read his commission, and a protestation on behalf of the bishops had been refused a hearing, Henderson was chosen for Moderator and Warriston for his clerk. Then began a dreary week of disputing and protesting on all sides on every conceivable subject, to the utter weariness of everybody but the clerk, who received a piece of gold with each fresh protest. Few appear to have contributed more to this waste of time than Montrose himself, who was, moreover, responsible for a general wrangle in which the Moderator did not display the quality to be expected from his title, and which the Commissioner found some difficulty in quelling. It arose on a disputed election in which the Tables had overridden the authority of the Presbyteries. Montrose was of course on the side of the former, the dispute having indeed arisen on a rather high-handed exercise of his power as a member of the Tables, which the more wary of the party were desirous of concealing, and Montrose of course, through all his life the sworn foe of all compromise, insisted on justifying. It was doubly unfortunate for him that the candidate he opposed should have been his brother-in-law young Carnegie, and that his opposition should have led to an unseemly display of temper between him and his father-in-law Southesk. The dispute did Montrose no good with either party. The Covenanters were annoyed to find so young a man disposed to take too much upon himself against the wiser counsels of his elders; and Hamilton was, as will be seen, enabled to speak another bad word for him in the King's ear.

It was not till the 28th that the real business began. The unfortunate bishops were as usual the cause of war. They had declined to accept the jurisdiction of the Assembly as at present constituted, and the Moderator now put the question to the vote. Hamilton then rose. He read again the King's offer to abolish all grievances, and to make bishops for the future subject to the authority of the Assemblies; but he refused to acknowledge the authority of an Assembly in which laymen were allowed to speak and vote. A warm debate ensued. The Moderator declined to reopen a question which the Assembly had already decided in its own favour. "If the bishops," said Loudon, "decline the judgment of a National Assembly, I know not a competent judgment-seat for them but the King of Heaven." "I stand to the King's prerogative," replied Hamilton, "as supreme judge over all causes, civil and ecclesiastical, to whom I think they may appeal, and not let the causes be reasoned here." It was all in vain. The Assembly were determined to have no bishops on any terms, and no king save on their own terms. Nothing remained for Hamilton, as representing the Crown, but to declare the Assembly an illegal body and to dissolve it. This he accordingly did, with tears in his eyes as some said, and left the cathedral while the inevitable protest against his action was being read. Returning to Edinburgh he made such preparations as time and means allowed for garrisoning the castle, and then left the country, not to return to it again but as leader of the King's forces against rebels in arms.

The Assembly, thus freed from all control, made short work of the bishops. Six out of the fourteen were simply deposed; the rest were deposed and excommunicated on charges sometimes of the most heinous nature, which the most trivial evidence, when any was offered at all, was considered amply sufficient to establish. Baillie owns, for instance, that certain acts of gross immorality brought against the Bishop of Galloway were not in his opinion conclusively proved; but he adds, as though to make up for this injustice, that the unfortunate prelate had at least "all the ordinary faults of a bishop," besides the capital one of being the first who had dared to flaunt the robes of his office in Edinburgh. The new Liturgy, the Book of Canons, the Court of High Commission, and the Articles of Perth all followed the bishops one after another into the limbo of unholy things. Sentence of excommunication was also pronounced against many clergymen who had shown, or were suspected of, a leaning to Episcopacy: the six General Assemblies which had sat under Episcopal government were declared to have been illegal; and the Scottish Church was thus restored to the pure Presbyterianism established by the Act of 1592. Thus, when on December 20th this memorable body dissolved itself, it had accomplished in longer time, but with equal thoroughness, a revolution not less momentous than that which seventy-eight years earlier had in a single day transferred the national faith from Rome to Geneva.

Nor was this the Covenanters' only triumph. The departure of Hamilton was the signal for the appearance of an invaluable convert. Archibald, Earl of Argyll, then in his fortieth year, and but lately succeeded to the title and vast estates of his father, was reckoned the most powerful subject in the kingdom. His only rival in the Highlands was Huntly, and his revenues were larger and he could bring a larger following into the field than the chief of the Gordons. In intellect there was no comparison between them. Argyll, according to Clarendon, wanted nothing but courage and honesty to make him a very great man. The want of honesty was too common a want in the politicians of those days to mark a man among his peers, but cowardice was indeed rare among all classes; and though he was destined to show that, like so many men whose nerves are uncertain, he could face inevitable death with calmness and dignity, in the presence of danger it is indisputable that Argyll's physical courage was, to say the least, not conspicuous. Cool, cunning, and sagacious, he had, though at once a Privy Councillor and a rigid Presbyterian, been hitherto careful to identify himself prominently with neither party. But Hamilton had gauged him truly when he warned Charles to beware of him as the most dangerous man in the State. The same warning had indeed been previously conveyed to the infatuate King by one who had still better cause to know the truth than Hamilton. There had been trouble between father and son, and Charles, with whom the latter had been always a favourite, had ordered the Earl, who in his old age had turned Catholic at the bidding of a young wife, to leave the kingdom. The father obeyed without remonstrance, but before he went he warned the King to beware of his son. "Sir," he said, "I must know this young man better than you can do. You may raise him, which I doubt you will live to repent, for he is a man of craft, subtlety, and falsehood, and can love no man, and if ever he finds it in his power to do you a mischief, he will be sure to do it." So powerful an ally was received of course with open arms by the Covenanters. Hitherto they had been doubtful whether they should regard him as friend or foe. His conduct, said Baillie, had been ambiguous. This was now explained by Argyll's assurance that he had always secretly been on their side and had only delayed declaring himself for them while he conceived that this ambiguity might best serve their interests; matters had now come, he said, to such a height that no honest man could hold back. His speech was long, pious, and profuse in good advice. The Moderator and the rest of the ministers professed themselves enraptured, and all parted on the best terms with each other.

Two days before Hamilton dissolved the Assembly, but when it had already clearly shown him what he was to expect from it, he despatched a long letter to the King, warning him what the issue was almost certain to be, pointing out the precautions to be taken, and taken at once if his warnings were proved true, and commenting on the character of the movement and of its leaders with a frankness unusual in him. In this letter Montrose is mentioned in a way which tends still further to confirm the truth of Heylin's story. "Now for the Covenanters," the passage runs, "I shall only say this, in general they may all be placed in one roll, as they now stand. But certainly, sir, those that have both broached the business, and still hold it aloft, are Rothes, Balmerino, Lindsay, Lothian, Loudon, Yester, Cranston. There are many others as forward in show, amongst whom none more vainly foolish than Montrose." This is precisely the language of a man anxious to remind his correspondent what he had predicted of a third party, and to point out how exactly his prediction had been proved true.