day the Marquis of Argyll and the Earls of Lothian and Lanark, by order of the parliament, induced him by adroit flattery to undertake the command of the forces for the suppression of the rebellion of Montrose. The clerk-register was ordered to draw up his commission in general terms, and without derogation from the commission granted to the Earl of Leven as lord general of all the forces within and without the kingdom. But Callander declined to accept the qualification, and the commission was finally handed to Middleton (Balfour, Annals, iii. 348, 354, 367, 370). Middleton, however, fell ill after setting out on the expedition, and Callander raised the hopes of his friends by temporarily taking his place as lieutenant-general. But he declined to retain it, and the expedition came to nothing. ‘Callander,’ Baillie writes (6 March), ‘after all could be done to him, hes refuissed that all pressed him to. He would be at a greater sovereignty than could be granted, thinking he could not miss it in any termes he pleased’ (Letters, &c. ii. 345, 357, 417).
Later in the same year (1646) Callander visited Charles in the Scottish camp at Newcastle, and obtained from him a patent, dated 22 July, empowering him, in the event of his having no heirs male, to nominate some other successor in his lands and dignities. He returned to Scotland with a letter, in which the king informed the committee of estates of his intention to comply with the desires of the Scottish parliament. On the withdrawal of the Scottish army from England Callander received sixty thousand merks out of the 200,000l. paid by the English parliament for the brotherly assistance. An act of approbation and exoneration acknowledged at the same time his services as lieutenant-general in the two expeditions in which he had been engaged.
Callander was in England when the ‘Engagement’ between the king and the Scots was first suggested, and he entered into communication with Charles, and actively promoted the movement. On 24 Dec. 1647 Charles signed a commission making Callander sheriff of Stirling and keeper of Stirling Castle. A few months later the parliament confirmed his custody of the castle. Of the army, raised in pursuance of the engagement to proceed into England and attempt the liberation of the king, Callander became lieutenant-general. His superior in command was the Duke of Hamilton, with whom he was on bad terms. Baillie says that his supporters in parliament were powerful enough to have made him general, ‘but his inflexibility to serve against Montrose upon the sense of private injuries, whereby indelible marks of disgrace were printed on the face of Scotland, and his very ambiguous proceedings in England, at Hereford, and elsewhere, make us that we dare not put our lives and religion in his hand’ (Letters, &c. iii. 40).
In carrying out the ‘Engagement’ Callander was soon involved in misfortune. He had difficulty in obtaining his levies, owing to the opposition of the church. An armed demonstration made against him at Mauchline in Ayrshire he suppressed after a severe struggle, and at a later date those whom he injured there sought and obtained damages against his estate. When his army had taken Carlisle, he was (9 July 1648) appointed governor of the city, but he accompanied the troops southwards until their progress was arrested by Cromwell at Preston. Sir James Turner, who was with the expedition, attributes that defeat chiefly to a want of harmony between Hamilton and Callander. After the battle high words passed between the two commanders. ‘Callander,’ says Turner, ‘was doubly to be blamed, first for his conduct, for that was inexcusable, and next for reproaching the duke for that whereof himself was guilty.’ To add to their difficulties a mutiny broke out in the camp, and the troopers made prisoners of both Hamilton and Callander. Turner himself persuaded the mutineers to withdraw their guards, whereupon Callander, disregarding the entreaties of the duke and his brother officers that they should stand together, sought his own safety in flight. He reached London in disguise, and succeeded in escaping to Holland. Hamilton and the rest of the officers surrendered to the governor of Stafford, and Hamilton was executed at London, 9 March 1648 (Turner, Memoirs, pp. 56–72).
The overthrow of the ‘Engagement’ brought about a revolution in the government in Scotland, and Callander was forbidden to return. He accompanied Charles II, however, from Holland to Scotland in June 1650, but was immediately ordered to leave, and not to return without express permission of the parliament, under a penalty of 100,000l. Scots (Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 458). After the defeat of the Scots at Dunbar in September 1650, Callander wrote from Rotterdam to the Earl of Lothian, requesting him to procure the king's permission for him to go to some more remote place. He could be of no use, he said, to king or country, and was ashamed to be seen in Holland while such actions were taking place at home (Correspondence of the Earls of Ancrum and Lothian, p. 308).
After offering to submit to the parliament and to the church, he received permission
