Transcript for HoS 66

 

On the 4th October 1648 the Committee of Estates, dominated now by the Anti Engagers, renewed its Act of classes. This Act, excluded all those naughty, naughty Engagers from exercising any office or any part in the direction of the state before parliament could meet to discuss further. There are broadly two reasons for this. Firstly, no state could last long in Scotland if it was seen to rest on a bed of the hateful English, and the English military at that. So they had to go, and of course the army had been disbanded, so force was really not an option. So, just like Aesop’s competition between wind and son, the warm words of persuasion, of honeyed words and noble protestations was the only game in town. Along with Solatire of course. The Engagement had caught English attention – because it appeared that Scotland was now a threat to its security. So Argyll and the Kirk party needed to convince Crommers that the Geese that were the Engagers were very comprehensively cooked and squished; that he could leave with happy confidence that England’s security was no longer at risk. Nothing to see here, smile, smile and wave. Argyll doesn’t look like the smiling ad waving sort from his portraits it must be said. But indeed it was with happy confidence that Cromwell did leave 3 days later after a chat with Argyll; John Lambert stayed for another month before legging it south too. Cromwell had other fish to fry, kings to put on trial, people to shorten, that sort of thing.

The second reason was that the Radical Covenanters were thoroughly convinced of the threat the Engagers posed to everything that had been achieved in the Covenanting movement; they saw through Hamilton’s pretence that they had been fighting for both king and Covenant, they recognised they fought for the King, and anyway this was an uncovenanted king, why should Covenanters fight for him – until he was, of course properly Covenanted, since a king was a central part of the Covenant afterall. So, for the moment, despite the pain of division and faction, the Engagers were to be punished and excluded.

At the heart also of many of the more religious radicals was a conviction that these shoals had been met at least partly because Scottish society needed further reformation before it could really be the true successors to the Israelites.

There is a general theme here that will last through the Kirk regime that was now established. It was once supposed that throughout the Revolutionary period, Scotland was a sort of Theocracy, driven by religious objectives and radical presbyterians. As we’ve seen I think, this isn’t really totally true so far; policy had as much been driven by the need for Scottish security – from an overmighty neighbour in England, whether that power was reflected in the person on an uncovenanted king, or in the English Independents. Thus the search had been for either:

  1. A union based on federation, with Scots in positions of power representing a Scottish parliament and Kirk, working together with a suitably Presbyterian England to manage a British state; or
  2. an independent Scottish state, protected from the English, and possibly Irish, by a Covenanted king.

The Covenant was in fact for many Scots, though not all, deeply unifying and engaging; it was very inclusive, embedded with a hope and expectation that through the Covenant, all could be saved, all could be elect. By 1650 though, the elect nation had met a number of very rocky and disconcerting obstacles, and that confidence had somewhat evaporated. It is worth talking here, as I should have done earlier, of talking about Providence – the idea that God intervenes actively in the affairs of man. Now this is nothing new; remember, at random, the scourge of the Vikings, and the belief that this was God’s punishment for the sins of the persecuted. But it was a strong, strong theme amongst the Godly, whether in Scotland, England or Ireland. So – these rocky bits – they said something about the worthiness of the Scots. To understand the period you need to try and feel this. It’s hard. Not sure I can every manage it.

So there was something wrong, Scots needed to look deeper inside themselves, reform their behaviours before they could be worthy. So consider the Engagers; they now could only be re-admitted, not by simply signing up to the Covenant, that was no longer enough too easy pal; they needed to convince ministers that they had truly repented, they needed to do penance. The Covenant was now becoming what it had never been before – increasingly exclusive where it had once been inclusive.

So maybe now, from 1650, maybe we now are in a theocracy. It might just be me drawing false parallels, but some of the activities of the Scottish state seem increasingly like the history of communism; a policy of never-ending purification, of constant series of purges, some of them utterly disastrous, to winnow out those insufficiently committed to the cause. These carry on until external forces make it clear that the choice would be between survival and inclusion, or purity and eradication of the state. Although Argyll would once more reign supreme, after the Hamiltonian aberration, he was now constantly looking over the other shoulder – to Radical covenanters even more radical than he was in their religious policies. At this stage for example, the Western Association is first formed – to coordinate the military organisation of the strongly radical and covenanted south west, Ayrshire, Galloway, Clydesdale.

Still, I am getting ahead of myself a bit. The new government made sure of its control by appointing 80 new members to the committee of Estate. Only 8 of them were nobles. From the start, the new state had little support from the great nobility and magnates, partly because so many of them had supported the Engagement and were therefore excluded, but also because the Kirk party actively looked to give lesser nobility of the lairds a greater and controlling stake in state office. At the first parliament from January to March 1649, a punitive act of classes divided malignants, those guilty of some level of offence against the covenant by supporting engagement or the uncovenanted king, into four groups, some of whom were debarred from office for life.

As a result this parliament has only 16 nobles in it – compared to 56 during the engagement. The army was purged of Engagers, and a new moral crusade initiated. Some of this had positive objectives and outcomes; there was a visible focus of providing better support to the poor for example, with new poor laws providing better administration and poor relief. Others tried to improve the independence of the clergy, removing much lay patronage of ministers – entirely sensible probably, but unlikely to endear the regime to the lairds and greater nobles who had held that local authority for so long, and which was so much part of the weft and warp of Scottish society. Nor was the committee which was set up to consider ways of alleviating the sufferings of tenants oppressed by their landowners popular with the nobility of any shade either, a nobility that was used to pretty total local power and control.

Other acts look much less attractive to the modern eye, particularly the February 1649 Act against, here goes –

  • Witches and Consulters
  • Fornication
  • Swearing
  • Scolding
  • clandestine marriages and

scandalous persons. This last seems quite non specific but hey, I am no fan of scandalous persons, Mr Compliant that’s me, born at the age of 45 wearing brogues, so fine, go for it –and also, crucially – no more fishing on the sabbath day

All things that I can imagine would indeed annoy any vengeful deity. Especially the fishing thing. Scandalous.

The general panic about society’s sinfulness led to another round of witchcraze; it is a feature of Scottish 17th century politics that spikes in witch hunting activity, were driven in a more top down fashion than in England, and tend to focus around times of political crisis – there will be another in 1661 for example.

The drive for moral rectitude and the search for divine approval may well have done nothing to enhance the Kirk Party’s popularity in the minds of ordinary Scots; but it should not be assumed that the regime was shallowly based or necessarily insecure. There were a few royalist rebellions in 1649, the Pluscardine rising for example in the highlands – but all four risings were pretty easily suppressed, and presented no great existential challenge to the Kirk State.

 

 

 

Argyll was well aware of the potentially dramatic events going on in England – the events which would lead to the greatest challenge to the new government. It looked as though England had decided that the gordian knot that was the king’s intransigence, unreliability and double, was best dealt with by cutting through it – both metaphorically and very much in the actualite.

Now, an uncovenanted king was one thing; a theoretical, absent king theoretically at the head of a covenanted state, but in practice you know, not there, was another. They could shimmy their way intellectually around those. Killing the rightfully and divinely appointed king quite another, and killing a Stewart king to boot, protector of the Scottish nation and culture, from an unbroken line of kings of Scotland for hundreds of years, supposedly, was unthinkable. A completely different proposition. Let us be clear, republicanism was not a thing, whatever the Scottish Revolution looks like. The Scottish commissioners in London protested against the trial, made it quite clear that the king must remain safe, declared that both kingdoms had an ‘unquestionable and undeniable interest in his person as king of both’. They were roundly ignored.

So when, in January 1649, Charles I went to the block, there was utter outrage in Scotland. Parliament adjourned for two days, public opinion was relentlessly and universally hostile to the act  – both for what had been done to their king, and the complete carelessness of the English towards Scottish feelings.

Two days later the Scottish parliament, fatefully, declared Charles’s son the Prince of Wales, king of Scots, as Charles II. More than a little boldly and with a certain level of in-yer-face-sassenchs-ness, they declared him to be king of Britain not simply king of Scotland. By so doing they had abandoned the informal alliance they had with the English Independents – they could quite rightly claim that they had due cause after all. It is interesting that however, they made Charles II king of Britain – that meant, quite specifically, king of England as well as king of Scotland – and Ireland and oh, of course don’t let me forget – France. By so doing, they effectively declared war – implicitly announcing that the new king would be imposed on England.

For the Scots it was not just a matter of injured pride; they resolutely continued to believe that a covenanted king was the only long term security against English dominance, and so the concept of a union of crowns and of Britain could not be allowed to die. Besides, it is by no means clear that if they had declared Charles II only king of Scotland that war would have been any further away; the English would surely have known that Scotland would be a centre of royal intrigue and they would never be safe; and magnificent though Scotland is, it is unlikely that the merrie monarch would have said ‘oh yes, whatevs, Scotland’s perfectly good enough, who needs two or three kingdoms. England Schmengland, Ireland Pireland’

In Brussels, by the way, the news of Charles’s execution was received by one man in a thoroughly proper and romantic idiom -James Graham, the Marquess of Montrose fell down as if dead – though turned out just to be a swoon. Not a faint please note – Montrose could only swoon with shock. He then, quite rightly, wrote a rather rubbish poem. And then, like the Scottish commissioners, he beat a path to the Hague, where he kissed the hand of the 18 year old Charles, and was instantly confirmed as Lieutenant Governor of Scotland.

The Scots around Charles were bemused; many Engagers such as Lanark, Hamilton’s brother, had fled to the king’s side – and now the kirk commissioners arrived and were supposed to be on the same side again. All of them tried to talk Charles out of having Montrose as the horse on whom he would place his bets – remember Montrose was remembered as the killer of thousands through his rebellion, and the man who released the savage Highlander on the civilised lowland Scot. But Charles had, for the moment, made up his mind, and anyway he had high hopes that he could do without the Scots, because there were other options.

Principal option among them was alliance with the Irish Confederates. By October 1649, Ormonde had arrived back in Ireland. Following the defeat of Rinuccini’s separatist and pro papal policy, O’Neil had been sidelined and held himself aloof in Ulster, Rinuccini left Ireland in disgust in February 1649, Charles was probably planning to go to Ireland and launch his bid for the crown of Three Kingdoms from there.

And anyway, the offer from the Scots was not to his liking. There’s a lovely woodcut called ‘the Scots holding their young king’s nose to the Grindstone’ which rather epitomised the Kirk party’s attitude to Charles II. I have put a copy on the episode post. Utterly convinced of a royal role in a proper, Godly government the Commissioners might be, but it had to be on the right terms, otherwise they would not get God’s support anyway. So, the King must disclaim his agreement with Irish Confederate Catholics, and swear never to tolerate Catholicism. He must acknowledge the lawfulness of Scottish parliaments since 1641, and accept the separation of the two kingdoms – as represented by parliament and secular lordship over temporal matters, and the General Assembly of the kirk over religious. He would have to sign the covenant and a declaration promising to work to implement them, and impose Presbyterianism and the Westminster standards in all three kingdoms. If he did all that then yeah, sure! Come on over and we’ll put you back on the throne of England, no worries.

Charles preferred the much more amenable Irish Confederates, rather than these terms which he found frankly insulting to his status and dignity. Kings were bog on status and dignity. But Events were to put paid to Charles’ resistance to the Covenanters’ demands. In August 1649, Ormonde advanced on Dublin with a combined army of Catholics and Royalist protestants; O’Neill continued to stand apart, which he would later regret. But Ormonde had waited too long. Michael Jones had already been reinforced by troops from the NMA, and at Rathmines the Irish were heavily defeated. This left the way clear for Cromwell, and by 15th August 1649 he had landed in Ireland. Owen Roe O’neill was not to face him in battle or siege; had died of a gout related disease in November 1649.

Cromwell moved first to secure the ports of Drogheda, Wexford and Duncannon; at Drogheda, infamously, Cromwell ordered that no quarter be given and while there are no reliable numbers, it could be that as many as 7-800 civilians were killed. At Wexford, soldiers broke into the town while negotiations were on going and another round of civilian murder took place. At many towns like Waterford and Ducannon Cromwell then met determined resistance, and failed to take them before the following year; despite determined resistance, town after town fell to Cromwell in 1650.

In May 1650 Charles abandoned the Irish and had repudiated the agreement with the Irish royalists; it cut the legs off Ormonde’s legitimacy, but anyway, he’d already lost all credibility from constant defeats and failure; he’d also been blindsided by a mutiny of Protestant Royalists, and Irish began to question why they should be following him anyway. As part of that conquest it might be noted, the Irish Covenanting army under Munro, or such that remained, had joined forces with the royalist protestants, only to be defeated by Venables and Coote at the battle of Lisnagarvey in December 1649.

Cromwell left Ireland in May 1650. The war continued in there; O’Neill’s old army in Ulster was defeated in June 1650 at Scarrifholis. Limerick fell in 1651, Galway in 1652. Throughout a struggle of brutal guerilla warfare combatted by scorched earth tactics by the Parliamentarians generated a period of vicious famine, and plague which inflicted huge suffering on the civilian population and was probably where the largest number of deaths occurred in the ten year conflict; estimates vary wildly, from 200,000 to 600,000 but none make happy reading. The last Confederate army surrendered in April 1653. Ormonde and Inchiquin had left in December 1650. Ormonde would return on the Restoration and once more become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

By the time he left the Dutch town of Breda, Charles had therefore realised that pretty or not the Covenanters were the only game in town. By April he had agreed to the conditions verbally, and was invited to Scotland by the commissioners. This was rather exceeding their instructions as it happens; there’s a feeling that back at home that Argyll was indecently keen to get a king back in the saddle, with the hope that a king would re-establish the rightful social order; Argyll might have been a radical covenanter, but he was also a thorough going believer in the role of the great nobility and magnate to rule their region,  and in full possession of an understanding of which side lay the butter, breadwise. Later on, he will try to persuade Charles to marry his daughter. Charles roundly detested Argyll, but was polite enough to say ‘ooh, I’ll just have to write to Mum for advice first’. He duly received his answer when hearing the small crump of Henrietta Maria’s head exploding in the Louvre as she read his letter, so it was a ‘no’ then. The commissioners also had their doubts about Charles’ commitment to the covenant – in their honest moments they ruefully accepted that he was acting ‘rather as a politician than a convert’. Sherlock Holmes may have been a Covenanter. The giveaway appears to have been his continued attendance of Anglican services and by his ‘balling and dancing till near day’, which is not one of the Godly activities mentioned in the Covenant. I have checked, quite carefully, nowhere does it appear, but it was very much part of the Carolingian cannon.

 

 

By April Charles had also acceded to Covenanter demands that he repudiate his Lieutenant General of Scotland – Montrose. Which was unfortunate and indeed rather harsh to a loyal subject. Montrose would not find out til later, because in March he landed in Orkney, before crossing over to Sutherland with a little more than 1,000 men. There Montrose was tricked by his lack of military intelligence and an ambush by the advance commander of David Leslie’s force, Archibald Strachan. His army was decimated, and a week later he was captured and handed over the Leslie.

His treatment was not gentle. Initially thrown into a cart, he eventually recovered his strength enough to be tied onto a pony, led by a herald shouting ‘here comes James Graham, traitor to his country’. As you would expect, Montrose kept his cool and dignity throughout, winning him some friends on the way. When he arrived at Edinburgh he learned of his fate – to be hanged from the mercat cross, then to be cut down, cut into handy chunks and re-distributed. He was mounted on a cart and dragged through the crowds in Edinburgh – a crowd, though, that had fallen strangely silent. When he arrived at the Tollbooth he thanked the hangman for ‘driving the triumphal car’. Classic sang froid, no upper lip has ever been stiffer. Within three days, indecent haste you might say, Montrose had ascended the scaffold in front of the crowds, said a few words, and died with as much dignity as you can. Argyll remarked that he knew

How to go out of this world but nothing at all about how to enter another, not so much as humbling himself to prayer at all on the Scaffold.

Several of Montrose’s companions soon followed him to the scaffold, and the adventures of the great Montrose had finally come to an end. But his reputation was just starting, all the way to Loughborough in the 70’s and even beyond that shrine to the love of history.

Charles heard about the death of his most faithful servant before he sailed. He held out from signing the Covenant to the last moment on board ship when the commissioners pressed him again. He struggled and writhed and kicked and scream in his net, but his closest advisers persuaded him that expediency was all; the trick was to get his knees under the table and then he could start to work on things – and exact his revenge later for the humiliations being poured on him now. The Covenanters weren’t stupid; many of them feared this was precisely what was going on

The king strokes them til he can get into the saddle and then he will make them feel his spurs

It was said. But the Covenanters had little choice too; their vision of society, as described in the Covenant, demanded a covenanted king. Before he landed then, Charles signed the Covenant, and the Scots at last had what they had been waiting and praying for so long – a Covenanted king. Still they worried that they had nothing of real value here

We did sinfully both entangle and engage both the nation and ourselves, and that poor prince to whom we were sent; making him sign and swear a covenant which we knew, from clear and demonstrable reasons, that he hated in his heart

There was also a further note of warning to the Kirk Party as news of Charles’ landing spread – most people were wildly excited, there were bonfires burning all night in Edinburgh. The Kirk party were suspicious; was everyone so happy because they were pleased a covenanted king was finally here – or because they hoped Charles would overthrow the kirk party? It was a worry. So they passed a resolution removing all the Scottish advisers he’d brought with him, on the basis that they were royalists and malignants – so Lanark was banned from his presence. And in practice, Charles was kept away from any decision-making bodies like the Committee of estates – he was king in name only. He was also presented with a declaration he was supposed to sign expressing regret for the idolatry of his mother, for the faults of his father and for his own sins. Charles was seriously beginning to feel the edge of that grindstone. Charles had heard enough, point blank refused to sign, though now urged to by Argyll, and in a paddy, did a bunk to Perth, where eventually after being tracked down, he was forced once more to purge his household. It was a nightmare of a situation for him. ‘Ever since I came here I have been so narrowly watched’ he wrote.

Meanwhile parliament put out orders for a levy of 36,000 men to join the few thousand that were already with David Leslie. However, it became pretty clear that Cromwell was not going to allow them a happy period to prepare the invasion in support of the king – instead, Cromwell was on his way north. He met a strategy that had him on the ropes – Leslie withdrew, understanding the problems Cromwell had of resupply, despite the large fleet that accompanied the English. So although Cromwell reached Musselburgh, he was forced to withdraw to Dunbar. At Musselburgh he appealed to the Kirk Party to re-consider their alliance with the king – with the famous words ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken’. He received short shift in response

‘would you have us to be skeptics in our religion

By the end of August, Cromwell was in trouble; his retreat to Dunbar had been hard, and he arrived there with a ‘poor, shattered, hungry, discouraged army’, according to one of his captains, riddled with disease. Once there. He found that Leslie had moved to cover his retreat to Berwick – he was trapped, unable to resupply. Things looked black.

The kirk had meanwhile been doing their part to win the war, as they saw it, by making sure there were no malignants in the army to upset God or fight less than passionately; so they’d been spooked by the enthusiasm of the reception the troops gave Charles II when he briefly appeared before some of them at Leith. So the kirk party hurried Charles away, and ordered a purge of malignants – so, just before one of the most important battles in Scotland’s history, their religious and political leaders helpfully removed thousands of their most experienced and competent officers. Way to go.

They also stand accused of interfering with Leslie’s command, but although Leslie would later complain of this, he probably felt content to carry out a manoeuvre to move off Dun’s hill and capture a strongpoint; and indeed his army of 20,000, 5,000 more than Cromwell’s army, was surely strong enough to win this battle, and anyway, Leslie would have faced problems of his own in supply and disease and could not wait long. But the manoeuvre gave Cromwell an opportunity and he was military genius enough to seize it; on 3rd September he attacked across the Brox Burn, Leslie’s formation was turned. The Scottish cavalry broke and fled. 4000 Scots were killed, 10,000 captured.

It appears that the news of the defeat at Dunbar did not upset the Scottish king as much as you might think it ought. In fact, it was reported that he was delighted at the defeat of his enemies there. He was thoroughly in the unhappy bunny camp at the Kirk party and the way he had been treated. He wrote to the Netherlands writing that

Nothing could have confirmed me more to the Church of England than being here, seeing their hypocrisy

And asked the Prince of Orange to arrange to send a boat so that if necessary he could leg it from the shores of Scotland

So unhappy was he that he decided now was the time to mount a coup. Sadly, decisiveness was not his strongest suit, and he dithered, his supporters stood down, disappointed, went back to their pints – and suddenly – oh, he’s off, on what became known as the Start. He legged it north to Glen Cova and spent the night of 3rd October with some highland followers, while the royalists tried to put on their kit and follow him. The earl of Athol seems to have managed to raise 1000 men which sounds like game on if they could have reached their Prince.

But the Committee’s officers found him on 5th October well before any such followers managed to assemble. So on the morning of 5th October they found him

Laying in a nasty room…over wearied and very fearful

A palace fit for a king it was not, and Charles duly submitted and was forced to apologise. But actually despite the humiliation, and I imagine the pain of being found sitting in a run down little hovel is unlikely to have left a 20 year old very well aware of his own dignity, only recently having spent his days in glittering halls dancing and balling as princes are wont to do, the Start turned out just fine for him. This was a time of crisis; the Committee realised national unity was now essential if they were to survive the Cromwellian tempest, there was an enemy in the land who needed to be fought; and maybe they’d been too hard on the lad; and so at last Charles was permitted to attend the Committee of estates, and start to be a real king.

And meanwhile anyway the poor Committee of estates were facing a challenge from another very different direction; from the west, and not from Cromwell, who was focussing on the south east, but from the Western Association.

Ayrshire and Clydesdale lay at the very heart of the Covenanting movement, the most extreme of the extreme radicals. The Western Association was in the forefront of fervour of the Kirk and Covenant, and had as we have heard already formed an army for its defence. These extremists, I think it is fair to call them, in the famous comparison, made Atilla the Hun look like a flower pressing, lumberjack shirt wearing member of the let’s be nice to every one hold hands and sing cum by arr party. They were scandalised by the King anyway, unconvinced by his covenanting claims, and the Start just confirmed all their fears that they had been right all along. It pushed them over the edge from outrage to action. On 17th October 1650, they issued a Remonstrance detailing their outrage. The signing of the treaty with Charles, a man who did not accept the Covenant in his heart, was a great sin committed by Argyll and the Committee of estates; the army was full of malignants, and now the king had run away and tried to raise rebellion. The committee of estates was guilty of a great sin anyway, of intending to invade England and impose a king on the English – an act which had not even been approved in parliament, and they denied the Scots had any right to do that anyway without English consent.

It’s difficult to know how much support the Western Association had; but the committee of estates and the Kirk commission debated it, and although they rejected the Remonstrance, they did so with most moderate words – showing impressive restraint given the pretty pass the country was in foreign army wise. None the less, the western Association members of the committees, were livid, Protested and left. At heart of this was a difference on strategy too; the Remonstrants of the Western Association, for so they would be called, thought the very idea of the King sticking to his word was moonshine, cloud cuckoo land, the dreams of children, all of the above with brass knobs on. Even if they did manage to defeat England, and put their king on the throne, the fire after that would be a revenging king using the resources of England to sit on their heads and burn the covenant from the highest mountain. They did not want the English invader on their soil – but believed the Independents were a better bet than the King. The mainstream kirk party felt they had no choice but to take their chances with the Stewart line which was such a core part of Scottish identity.

Both of them had a point. Because this war now was no longer just a matter of politics and policy, or even a matter of religion; it was a matter of pride, a matter of the heart. This was now for most Scots a national struggle, for king and country against the English invaders. What followed therefore at this time was an attack of common sense; and the Parliament  therefore on 14th December issued public Resolutions. The Resolutioners, for by such name they were to be known, declared that they were satisfied with the repentance of the Engagers and Royalists. This was not time for division – the Engagers must be re-admitted to public office, all able men, whether royalist or not, were to be admitted to the army so that the Stewart king could be put in his rightful place at the as king of the three kingdoms.

This gives us another title for a group. So we’ve had Engagers and Anti Engagers, Remonstrants, Resolutioners – welcome now to the Protesters, who continued to object to this new spirit of unity on support of the young king. Many of them were the old Remonstrants of the Western Association, but they were now much less powerful; ironically, the Western Association had disbanded, after being defeated by an English army under John Lambert. Still, the deflation felt by the Remonstrants and Protesters gave Cromwell a specific advantage, when on 24th December Walter Dundas, demoralised by the deep divisions in the Kirk, surrendered Edinburgh castle to him. The Scots were infuriated

It was always before called the Maiden Castle but henceforth termed it the Prostitute Whore

Parliament had been sitting at Stirling. The military situation was dire; Cromwell was in complete command of the South East, and there was a danger that he would cross the Forth, move north of Stirling and cut the Scots from the north and North East. On the plus side, the south West was unoccupied by English troops; an army was gathering; and as luck would have in Cromwell fell ill early in 1651, and the invasion stalled, until June. So the Kirk had time to prepare, to build a new army around the core which had survived under David Leslie. And on 30th December, they resolved that the way to revive their fortunes was finally to bring the country together, but crowning the king at the heart of the royal tradition, at Scone.

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