the English camp; the officers of the army presented[d] to the committee of estates a remonstrance and supplication expressive of their adhesion; and the ministers maintained from their pulpits that the king was the root of malignancy, and a hypocrite, who had taken the covenant without an intention of keeping it.  Charles, yielding to his own fears and the advice of his friends; at the end of three days subscribed,[e] with tears, the obnoxious instrument.  If it were folly in the Scots to propose to the young prince a declaration so repugnant to his feelings and opinions, it was greater folly still to believe that professions of repentance extorted

[Footnote 1:  Balfour, iv. 92.  Whitelock, 469.  “A declaration by the king’s majesty to his subjects of the kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland.”  Printed 1650.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  August 10.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1650.  August 13.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1650.  August 14.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1650.  August 15.] [Sidenote e:  A.D. 1650.  August 16.]

with so much violence could be sincere or satisfactory; yet his subscription was received with expressions of joy and gratitude; both the army and the city observed a solemn fast for the sins of the two kings, the father and the son; and the ministers, now that the anger of Heaven had been appeased, assured their hearers of an easy victory over a “blaspheming general and a sectarian army."[1]

If their predictions were not verified, the fault was undoubtedly their own.  The caution and vigilance of Leslie had triumphed over the skill and activity of “the blasphemer.”  Cromwell saw no alternative but victory or retreat:  of the first he had no doubt, if he could come in contact with the enemy; the second was a perilous attempt, when the passes before him were pre-occupied, and a more numerous force was hanging on his rear.  At Musselburg, having sent the sick on board the fleet (they suffered both from the “disease of the country,” and from fevers caused by exposure on the Pentland hills), he ordered[a] the army to march the next morning to Haddington, and thence to Dunbar; and the same night a meteor, which the imagination of the beholders likened to a sword of fire, was seen to pass over Edinburgh in a south-easterly direction, an evident presages in the opinion of the Scots, that the flames of war would be transferred

[Footnote 1:  Balfour, iv. 91, 92, 95.  The English parliament in their answer exclaim:  “What a blessed and hopeful change is wrought in a moment in this young king!  How hearty is he become to the cause of God and the work of reformation.  How readily doth he swallow down these bitter pills, which are prepared for and urged upon him, as necessary to effect that desperate care under which his affairs lie!  But who sees not the crass hypocrisy of this whole transaction, and the sandy and rotten foundation of all the resolutions flowing hereupon?”—­See Parliamentary History, xix. 359-386.]