covenant; and of all the royal fortresses, only Carlaverock, the least important, remained in the hands of the crown. The marquis of Huntly, who had undertaken to hold the Highlands for the king, was overpowered or entrapped by Leslie and Montrose, who at the head of seven thousand men compelled the reluctant professors of Aberdeen to accept the covenant, when Leslie returned to Edinburgh, carrying Huntly with him. The earl of Antrim, who was to have invaded the domains of Argyll from Ireland, was unable to fulfil his engagement, and thus every day brought the news of rapid disasters to Charles on his march towards York. Hamilton, who had been despatched with a fleet, appeared in the Forth on the 13th of April. He had five thousand troops on board, and was expected to secure Leith, the port of Edinburgh, and overawe if he could not take the capital; but he found the place strongly fortified, and twenty thousand men were posted on the shores to prevent his landing. All classes, from the noble to the peasant, had been labouring industriously to repair fortifications and throw up batteries, and ladies had carried materials for them. The marquis saw no chance of effecting a landing, and therefore disembarked his men on the islands in the Forth, to prevent them perishing in he ships, for they were raw landsmen, and had been hastily pressed into the service, and were both very sickly and very mutinous. No prospect was ever more discouraging; even Wentworth could not send him the small aid of five hundred musketeers in time, and strongly advised Charles to avoid coming to an engagement with his raw levies against the enthusiastic Scots and their practical generals, but to garrison Berwick and Carlisle to prevent incursions, and wait till the next year if necessary.
Charles arrived at York on the 19th of April, and proceeded to administer to the lords who there awaited him with their followers, an oath of allegiance, binding them to oppose all conspiracies and seditions even if they were veiled under the pretence of religion. The lords Say and Brooke declined to take the oath, saying they were willing to accompany their sovereign from loyalty and affection, but that as they were ignorant of the laws and customs of Scotland, they could not undertake to say that the Scots were Bebels, or the war was just. Charles with indignation ordered them to be arrested, but the attorney and solicitor generals on being consulted, declaring that there was no ground for their prosecution, they were dismissed with the royal displeasure, and desired to return home. Nor had the king much more satisfaction with the lords who had taken the oath, for they qualified it by signing a paper, stating in what sense they took it. To perform an act calculated to please the people whom he was leaving behind, at York he issued a proclamation, revoking no less than thirty-one monopolies and patents, pretending that he had not discovered before how grievous they were to his subjects; but the real fact was, that most of them had been granted to Scotchmen who had now forfeited his favour.
On leaving York he complimented the recorder, who had paid him the most fulsome flattery, and the municipal authorities, by telling them that he had there experienced more love than he ever had in London, on which he had showered so many benefits. At Durham by the bishop and clergy, and at Newcastle by the corporation, he was magnificently entertained, and at every halting-place fresh quotas of horse and foot came in. "But," remarks Clarendon, "if there had been none in the march but soldiers, it is most probable that a noble peace would have quickly ensued, even without fighting; but the progress was more illustrious than the march, and the soldiers were the least part of the army, and the least consulted with. For," he adds, "the king more intended the pomp of his preparations than the strength of them." The certain proof, he might have added, of a very foolish king, as Charles was. But the its which Clarendon summons up on this occasion to explain the want of success are amusing. "If the war had been vigorously pursued, it had been as soon ended as begun."
"If he had been duly informed of what was going on in Scotland," of course he would have known. "If the whole nation of Scotchmen had been entirely united in the rebellion, and all who stayed in the court had marched in their army, the king or kingdom could have sustained no damage by them; but the monument of their presumption and their shame would have been razed together, and no other memory preserved of their rebellion but in their memorable and infamous defeat." That is, there would have been no Scotch traitors about him to keep him misinformed. This is just as true as the treasury being well furnished, "for we know that Hamilton and Traquair kept the king admirably and punctually informed of everything the whole time. "If," however, Charles had more wisely chosen his generals, but Arundel, his general, was a man, says this veracious historian, " who had nothing martial about him but his presence and his looks, and therefore was thought to be made choice of for his negative qualities. He did not love the Scots; he did not love the puritans; which good qualities were allayed by another negative—he did love nobody else." The lieutenant-general, the earl of Essex, was too proud and uncompromising, and the earl of Holland, general of the horse, was just no general at all, "a man fitter for a show than a field." Yet, says Clarendon, "If the king himself had stayed at London, or, which had been the next best, kept his court and resided at York, and sent the army on its proper errand, and left the matter of the war solely to them, in all human reason his enemies had been speedily subdued." With such generals as Arundel and Holland,—for Essex was a brave commander, though, as afterwards shown, no great tactician,—it is not so easy to see that. But Clarendon might have safely reduced all his ifs into one—if Charles had been a wise king he would not have got into a quarrel with his subjects at all.
With such generals, and an army of raw levies, hastily dragged reluctantly from the plough and the mattock, to fight in a cause with which they had no sympathy, and encumbered by heaps of useless nobles and gentry, Charles marched on to Berwick, and encamped his forces on an open field called the Birks. He had besides the garrison of Berwick, three thousand two hundred and sixty horse, and nineteen thousand six hundred and fourteen foot. But on the other hand Leslie, says Clarendon, had drawn up his forces on the side of a hill at Dunse, so as to make a great show, "The front only could be seen; but it was reported
