The Start (so this adventure was called) proved, however, a warning to the committee of estates.  They prudently admitted the apology of the king, who attributed[d] his flight to information that he was that day to have been delivered to Cromwell; they allowed[e] him, for the first time, to preside at their deliberations; and they employed his authority to pacify the royalists in the Highlands, who had taken arms[f] in his name under Huntley, Athol, Seaforth, and Middleton.  These, after a long negotiation, accepted an act of indemnity, and disbanded their forces.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Balfour, iv. 109, 113, 114.  Baillie, ii. 356.  Whitelock, 476.  Miscellanea Aulica, 152.  It seems probable from some letters published in the correspondence of Mr. Secretary Nicholas, that Charles had planned his escape from the “villany and hypocrisy” of the party, as early as the day of the battle of Dunbar.—­Evelyn’s Mem. v. 181-186, octavo.]

[Footnote 2:  Balfour, iv. 118, 123, 129-135, 160.  Baillie, ii. 356.  A minister, James Guthrie, in defiance of the committee of estates, excommunicated Middleton; and such was the power of the kirk, that even when the king’s party was superior, Middleton was compelled to do penance in sackcloth in the church of Dundee, before he could obtain absolution preparatory to his taking a command in the army.—­Baillie, 357.  Balfour, 240.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 4.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 5.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 6.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 10.] [Sidenote e:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 12.] [Sidenote f:  A.D. 1650.  Nov. 4.]

In the mean while Cromwell in his quarters at Edinburgh laboured to unite the character of the saint with that of the conqueror; and, surrounded as he was with the splendour of victory, to surprise the world by a display of modesty and self-abasement.  To his friends and flatterers, who fed his vanity by warning him to be on his guard against its suggestions, he replied, that he “had been a dry bone, and was still an unprofitable servant,” a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty power; if God had risen in his wrath, if he had bared his arm and avenged his cause, to him, and to him alone, belonged the glory.[1] Assuming the office of a missionary, he exhorted his officers in daily sermons to love one another, to repent from dead works, and to pray and mourn for the blindness of their Scottish adversaries; and, pretending to avail himself of his present leisure, he provoked a theological controversy with the ministers in the castle of Edinburgh, reproaching them with pride in arrogating to themselves the right of expounding the true sense of the solemn league and covenant; vindicating the claim of laymen to preach the gospel and exhibit their spiritual gifts for the edification of their brethren; and maintaining that, after the solemn fasts observed by both nations, after their many and earnest appeals to the God of armies, the victory gained at Dunbar must be admitted an evident manifestation of the divine will in favour of the English commonwealth.  Finding that he made no proselytes of his opponents, he published his arguments for the instruction of the Scottish people; but his zeal did not