With Montrose in prison, and Argyll probably in the secret of the whole conspiracy, Charles found the outlook in Scotland completely altered. On receipt of the news that the scheme had miscarried, he wrote on 12 June a letter to Argyll repudiating the rumour that his journey to Scotland was ‘only desired and procured by Montrose and Traquair,’ and asserting that, so far from intending division, his aim was ‘to establish peace in state and religion in the church’ (Letter in Letters to the Argyll Family, p. 36, and in Memorials of Montrose, i. 282). Argyll grasped the situation at once as regards both Scotland and England, and resolved to make the most of a golden opportunity. As the king, before setting out for Scotland, had on 12 Aug. given his sanction to an act confirming the treaty with the Scots, he was received on his arrival with the warmest manifestations of good-will. On 30 Aug., when he was entertained at a banquet in the parliament house, the rejoicings in Edinburgh resembled, it is said, the celebration of a jubilee. The king yielded, almost without a murmur, to the demands of Argyll that no political or judicial office should be filled up without the approval of parliament, and during six weeks' discussion of questions bristling with controversial difficulties the prevailing harmony between him and the estates was scarcely broken, when suddenly on 12 Oct. the city was roused to feverish excitement by the news that Hamilton, Lanark, and Argyll had on the previous night left the city and fled to Kenneil House. Gradually the rumour spread that a plot had been formed to arrest them by armed men under the Earl of Crawford in the king's bedchamber. Of the existence of a plot of some kind the depositions of the witnesses leave no room for doubt (see copies of depositions relating to the ‘Incident’ in Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 163–70), but probably Argyll's flight was chiefly a subtle stroke of policy to unmask his enemies. In any case the ‘Incident,’ as it afterwards came to be called, had rendered Argyll so completely master of the situation that he did not think it worth while to institute a prosecution against the authors of the plot. After a private examination of witnesses the result of the inquiry was stated in vague terms to be that Crawford had been plotting something desperate, and that ‘nothing was found that touched the king.’ Shortly afterwards Montrose and other ‘incendiaries’ were liberated, all outstanding difficulties were arranged, and the king, in token of his complete reconciliation with the covenanters, made a liberal distribution of honours among their leaders, the greatest being reserved for Argyll, who on 15 Nov. was raised to the dignity of marquis.
The result of the king's journey to Scotland had been, in the words of Clarendon, ‘only to make a perfect deed of gift of that kingdom’ to the covenanting party. Argyll had been able by subtle and dexterous manœuvring to transfer the whole administrative power in Scotland from the king to the parliament. The king had been completely outwitted. To obtain the aid of the Scots against the English parliament, he had granted to the Scottish parliament concessions with which the English parliament would have been perfectly satisfied. They were thus encouraged to be only the more importunate in their demands, while Argyll saw clearly that to pay Charles the price he desired for his concessions would be suicidal, and that the fruits of the great constitutional victory won in Scotland could only be secured by a similar victory of the parliament in England. In order to smooth the way towards a peaceful arrangement of the dispute, the Scottish privy council in January 1641–2 offered themselves as mediators, but their offers were rejected by Charles. Finding that his policy of concession had been a total failure, Charles endeavoured to win the support of the Scots against the English parliament by stratagem and force. On 25 May a special meeting of the privy council was fixed to be held, at which an effort was to be made to overawe a decision for the king. Kinnoul, Roxburghe, and other noblemen brought with them to Edinburgh a large body of armed retainers, but the rumour having spread that the life or liberty of Argyll was in danger, large crowds flocked into Edinburgh from Fife and the Lothians, and thus any intentions of violence were necessarily abandoned.
For some time after the outbreak of the civil war in England the Scots remained inactive, and it was only after the subscription by the English houses of parliament and the Westminster Assembly of the solemn league and covenant that in January 1643–4 a Scotch army, under the Earl of Leven, entered England by Berwick, Argyll accompanying it as representative of the committee of estates. This procedure roused into activity the ultra-royalists in Scotland, and seemed to give to Montrose the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Hostilities were begun in the north by the Marquis of Huntly, who, after making prisoner the provost and magistrates of Aberdeen and plundering the town of its arms and ammunition, began his march southward. Argyll, who had lately returned from England, was in April
