a circular letter to the noblemen and gentlemen who had hitherto held aloof, urging them to take a firm stand on behalf of the liberties of the kirk. Along with Loudoun and Balmerino he also undertook the revision of the new version of the covenant drawn up by Johnstone of Warriston and Alexander Henderson (Rothes, Relation, p. 69). He was one of the deputation appointed to meet the Marquis of Hamilton, the king's commissioner to the assembly, on his arrival to the assembly, and gave him warning of the attitude of the covenanters towards the king's proposals (Gordon, Scots Affairs, i. 68; Spalding, Memorialls, i. 89). At the assembly he is said to have 'spoken more than all the ministers, except the moderator' (Gordon,ii. 38), and when the assembly was dissolved by the commissioner he presented a protest against its dissociation. In case of the rejection of the king's demands, Hamilton had threatened that Charles would march north to Scotland with forty thousand men (Short Relation, p. 135), and Rothes straightway joined his kinsman, Alexander Leslie, afterwards Earl of Leven, in preparing for armed resistance. Leslie drilled Rothes's dependents and followers in Fife. Rothes advised the purchase of arms and accoutrements in Holland, and the recall of experienced Scottish officers serving in foreign countries (Spalding, i. 130). On 22 March Rothes and other nobles, with one thousand musketeers, went to the palace of Lord-treasurer Traquair at Dalkieth, seized much ammunition and arms, and brought the royal ensigns of the kingdom—the crown, sword and sceptre—to the castle of Edinburgh (Balfour, Annals, ii. 322; cf. 323). On 7 April the king issued a proclamation excepting nineteen leaders of the covenanters, including Rothes, from pardon. Rothes accompanied the army of General Leslie in June to Dunse Lew, and was one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the king. When the king's declaration was read by the herald on 24 June at Edinburgh, Rothes and other covenanting noblemen gave notice that they adhered to the assembly of Glasgow, but the herald refused to accept their protestation (ib. ii. 333). The covenanters were slow to disband their forces, and their leaders were again summoned to confer with Charles at Berwick. Rothes was the principal spokesman of the opposition, and his high tone led the king to denounce him angrily as an equivocator and liar. (Hamilton Papers, Camden Soc., p. 98). At the parliament held in Edinburgh in the following September Rothes was chosen a lord of the articles (Balfour, Annals, II. 360). Rothes and the coventanting noblemen sent a letter to the king of France, asking his aid against England, but it was intercepted in April, and was sent to the king (letter printed in Spalding's Memorialls, i. 266). Thereupon Charles summoned the Short parliament, in order to raise supplies for an invasion of Scotland. The House of Commons proving refractory was soon dissolved, and the Scots anticipated Charles by invading England. On 27 Aug. 1640 Rothes, in command of a regiment, and as one of the committee of the estates, accompanied Leslie's army across the Tweed (Balfour, Annals, ii. 382). According to Burnet, the Scots were induced to take this bold step by a band of the principal English nobility sent by Savile, and confided to three persons, Rothes, Argyll, and Johnstone of Warrington (Own Time, ed. 1839, p. 15). After the occupation of Newcastle, Rothes was one of the commissioners sent to London in November to conclude the negotiations for a treaty which had been begun at Ripon, and after the pacification was arranged he remained in England at the court of Charles.
Rothes had never been a fanatical puritan; he was a politician and a patriot rather than a kirkman. Burnet states that 'there was much levity in his temper, and too much liberty in his course of life' (ib. p. 15); and Clarendon describes him as 'pleasant in conversation, very free and amorous, and unrestrained in his discourse by any strain of religion, which he only put on when the part he was to act required it, and then no man could appear more conscientiously transported' (History, i, 378). The gaiety of the English court was congenial to him. His 'affairs were low,' and he hoped through the king's mediation to obtain office in the royal household, and the hand of the Countess of Devonshire, with an income of 4,000l. a year (Burnet, Own Time, p. 15). He was in August 1641 to have accompanied Charles into Scotland, the king, according to Clarendon, 'expecting by his help and interest to have gained such a party in scotland as would have been more tender of his honour than they after expressed themselves' (History, i. 394); but he was seized with a rapid consumption, and died at Richmond, Surrey, on the 23rd of the same month. He was buried at Leslie, Fifeshire, on 31 Nov. (Diary of Sir Thomas Hope, p. 155).
Rothes was the author of a 'Short Relation of Proceedings concerning the affairs of Scotland from August 1637 to July 1638,' printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1830. Prefixed to the volume is an engraving by Lizare of a portrait of the earl by G. Jamesone. By his wife Lady Anne Erskine, second daughter of John, earl of Mar, he
