command already assigned him in Holland (Letters, i. 212). In 1640 he returned to Scotland at the invitation of his countrymen, to take part in the resumption of the war with England, and was appointed lieutenant-general in Leslie's army. Thereupon Charles induced the States-General to cancel the commission he held from them as colonel of a regiment.
But, while accepting office from the covenanters, Livingstone secretly signed Montrose's band, which was drawn up at Cumbernauld in August 1640, just before the army marched for England. The fact was soon discovered, and Montrose was compelled to hand over the original deed to the parliament, who ordered it to be burnt. Meanwhile, Livingstone led the van of the Scottish army across the Tweed, and at the engagement of Newburn on the Tyne he was reported killed (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. iv. p. 393). After the Scottish army took possession of Newcastle he returned to Scotland, where he discharged military duties and attended parliament, refusing an offer of continental service on behalf of the queen of Bohemia. When peace with the king was arranged, Lord Almond met Charles I at Gladsmuir, near Haddington, and convoyed him to Holyrood. He was afterwards sent to lead home the army from the Tweed (Balfour, Annals, iii. 34, 47).
Charles knew Livingstone's secret leaning towards the royalist claims, and recommended him to the parliament of Scotland for the office of lord high treasurer. Argyll, notwithstanding, as he said, his private friendship for the king's nominee, objected on the ground of his connection with the Cumbernauld band. Almond angrily refused to ‘quit the king's honor done him as long as he had any blood in [his] veynes’ (Nicholas Papers, Camden Soc., i. 51, 54; Baillie, Letters, &c. i. 391). But Argyll carried the parliament with him, and Livingstone was rejected.
The ‘incident’ plot, hatched about the same time by the royalists, for the abduction of the covenanting leaders, Hamilton, Argyll, and Lanark, was arranged, according to one of the conspirators, in Almond's house, and Almond was to have taken a leading part in its execution. Almond, however, protested his innocence and requested the fullest investigation, and the charge was afterwards withdrawn (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. pp. 163–170). The parliament, on Almond's own petition, passed a vote (1 Oct. 1641) approving of his services as lieutenant-general in the late campaign, and relieved him of his commission (Balfour, Annals, iii. 87). He declined the offer of a pension, and on 16 Oct. was created by the king Earl of Callander, Baron Livingstone and Almond. In the following year he refused Charles's offer of a high command in the royalist army.
In 1643 the Scots resolved, at the request of the English parliament, to send an army into England under the Earl of Leven. Callander declined an offer of his former post, or of any subordinate commission. But he accepted, as lieutenant-general, the command of the army subsequently raised for the purpose of suppressing Huntly's rising in the north, with the proviso that, in respect of authority, no one should come between him and Leven. He and his forces, however, instead of marching against Huntly, were sent across the border to assist Leven in England, the parliament voting him the sum of 40,000l. Scots (3,333l. 6s. 8d. sterling) in recompense of his services in the former expedition (ib. iii. 172–88, 255). Sir James Turner in his ‘Memoirs’ (pp. 36–8) denounced Callander for taking up arms against the king, on the ground that he had already sworn the ‘deepest oathes in his oune house of Callander, and upon a Lord's day, too, that he would faithfullie serve the king.’ Even after assuming his command, Turner asserts that he ‘did not give over to give me all imagineable assurances that he wold act for the king, and that the greater pouer he was invested with, the more vigourouslie and vigilantlie would he show himselfe active and loyall for his Majestie.’ There can be little doubt that it was only fear of the risk incurred by any other course that led him to support the parliament. But he played the part that he had assumed thoroughly. At Berwick he wrote to the parliament of Scotland to send him some printed covenants (Balfour, Annals, iii. 190), and at Penrith he contended that none ought to bear command in the army who had not first taken the covenant (State Papers, Dom. 1644–5, p. 559).
Callander with his army of ten thousand men reduced Morpeth, Hartlepool, and other places, and assisted Leven in the recapture of Newcastle. After Montrose had seized Perth, Callander was sent to Scotland to arrest his progress, but returned to England in 1645, and took part with Leven in that year's campaign (Whitelocke, Memorials, pp. 92, 98, 100; Baillie, Letters, ii. 226). Late in 1645 he again returned to Scotland, and left the army apparently on some personal grievance. In December it was stated in parliament that as a condition of his future service he desired the rank of commander-in-chief of all the forces within the country. By invitation of the house he addressed it personally, but his claim was voted exorbitant. Next
