malice’ (ib. i. 73). Clarendon states that the old earl, then in London, advised the king to retain him a prisoner at court, but he was permitted to depart, arriving at Edinburgh 20 May. The only motive Baillie could discover to ‘make that man’ to side with the covenanters ‘in that necessary time, to the extreme hazard of his head,’ was ‘the equity of the cause,’ and so far as this implies that Lorne was incapable of acting from mere headstrong impulse, no objection can be taken to it. As yet the king had not come to an open and irreconcilable breach with Lorne when he left London, but he gave a secret commission to the Earl of Antrim, the patron of the outlawed Clandonalds, to invade Argyllshire ostensibly on his own account. Lorne at once divined whom he had to thank for it, as is evident from his letter to Strafford of 25 July (Strafford, Letters, ii. 187). To a hint of Strafford's that ‘it behoves persons of your lordship's blood and abilities actively and avowedly to serve the crown,’ he replies in a second letter, 9 Oct., containing much skilful parrying and dexterous home-thrusts, but winding up with the confident expectation ‘of, God willing, a fair and happy conclusion very shortly’ (ib. ii. 220). Possibly the only result of the insinuations and hints of Strafford was to increase Lorne's distrust of the policy of the king, and the death of the old Earl of Argyll, which happened shortly before the meeting of the assembly of the kirk at Glasgow in November, left him greater freedom of action. But though he attended the assembly he seemed more desirous to discover what its temper really was than to influence its opinion one way or another. So far from being the sour bigot he is sometimes represented, Argyll, as he states in ‘Instructions to a Son,’ had no preference for presbyterianism and extempore prayers over episcopacy and service books, except that the former was what the great bulk of his countrymen had adopted. He saw that the policy of the king was doing violence to the deepest convictions of the nation, and that the only chance of preventing a catastrophe was to present a firm front of resistance to his unreasonable demands. When advice and soft words proved of no avail in altering the bent of the king's purpose, he resolved to stake his all with the covenanters. Argyll was the only member of the privy council who did not retire with the Marquis of Hamilton when the assembly was dissolved from sitting any longer. Though not a member of the assembly he, at the request of the moderator, agreed to attend the subsequent meetings, at which episcopacy was abolished, and to ‘bear witness to the righteousness of their proceedings.’ On the arrival of the king's proclamation, declaring the procedure of the assembly to be the act of traitors, the covenanters placed their forces under Alexander Leslie [q. v.] On 20 Feb. 1639 Argyll sent a letter to Laud in defence of the Scots, containing a statement which rested the position they had taken up on unassailable constitutional principles (Melbourne MSS., quoted in Gardiner's Hist. of England, viii. 392). Meanwhile he took the precaution of raising a force of nine hundred men, a portion of whom he left in Kintyre to watch the Irish, another portion in Lorne to hold the Clandonalds in check, while with the remainder he passed over into Arran, where he seized the castle of Brodick, belonging to the Marquis of Hamilton. On learning that the king had decided on an invasion of Scotland, Argyll sent him a letter, ‘which’ Rossingham, writing under date 16 April, says ‘his majesty does tear all to pieces as resolving to have his head’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1639, p. 52). The mood of Charles, however, underwent a rapid alteration after his arrival at Berwick, where he found Leslie encamped on Dunse Law barring his further progress with a superior force. As the Scots would ‘not think to treat’ without Argyll, he was sent for to conduct the negotiation. He had been lying with a considerable army round Stirling, in the heart of the country, to be ready in case of ‘unexpected accidents’ (Baillie, Letters, i. 211), and leaving the bulk of his followers there, he, in a few days, joined the main army and set up his tent on the hill, where, according to Baillie, the highlanders who accompanied him aroused the wonder of the English visiting the camp (ib. i. 212). The pacification of Berwick, 18 June 1639, substantially promised all that the covenanters asked, but its terms were not sufficiently clear. The substantial fruits of the victory Argyll therefore resolved to gather as quickly as possible. Episcopacy having been abolished, it was necessary that successors should be chosen for the bishops as lords of the articles. Montrose [see Graham, James, first Marquis], who here first indicated a divergence in opinion from Argyll, proposed that their place should be taken by fourteen laymen appointed by the king; but Argyll was too astute to let slip the magnificent chance of striking a fatal blow at the irresponsible influence of the king, and moved that each estate should in future choose its own lord of the articles, which was carried by a bare majority of one, the barons and burgesses being thenceforth represented by sixteen votes, the nobility by eight, and the king by none. The change was momentous, for the result was, in the words of S. R. Gardiner (Hist. of
