resumed, while Argyle and his friends laboured on the opposite side to mollify the obstinacy of the fanatics.  But reasoning was found useless; the parliament condemned[e] the remonstrance as a scandalous and seditious libel; and, since Strachan had resigned[f] his commission, ordered Montgomery with three new regiments to take the command of the whole force.  Kerr, however, before his arrival, had led[g] the western levy to attack Lambert in his

[Footnote 1:  Baillie, ii. 350-352.  Strachan was willing to give assurance not to molest England in the king’s quarrel.  Cromwell insisted that Charles should be banished by act of parliament, or imprisoned for life.—­Ib. 352.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 4.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 17.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 22.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1650.  Oct. 30.] [Sidenote e:  A.D. 1650.  Nov. 25.] [Sidenote f:  A.D. 1650.  Nov. 28.] [Sidenote g:  A.D. 1650.  Dec. 1.]

quarters at Hamilton; he was taken prisoner, designedly if we may believe report, and his whole army was dispersed.  Soon afterwards Strachan, with sixty troopers, passed over to Lambert, and the associated counties, left without defence, submitted to the enemy.  Still the framers and advocates of the remonstrance, though they knew that it had been condemned by the state and the kirk, though they had no longer an army to draw the sword in its support, adhered pertinaciously to its principles; the unity of the Scottish church was rent in twain, and the separation was afterwards widened by a resolution of the assembly,[a] that in such a crisis all Scotsmen might be employed in the service of the country.[1] Even their common misfortunes failed to reconcile these exasperated spirits; and after the subjugation of their country, and under the yoke of civil servitude, the two parties still continued to persecute each other with all the obstinacy and bitterness of religious warfare.  The royalists obtained the name of public resolutioners; their opponents, of protestors or remonstrants.[2]

Though it cost the young prince many an internal struggle, yet experience had taught him that he must soothe the religious prejudices of the kirk, if he hoped ever to acquire the preponderance in the state.  On the first day of the new year,[b] he rode in procession to the church of Scone, where his ancestors had been accustomed to receive the Scottish crown:  there on his knees, with his arm upraised, he swore by the Eternal

[Footnote 1:  With the exception of persons “excommunicated, notoriously profane, or flagitious, and professed enemies and opposers of the covenant and cause of God.”—­Wodrow, Introd. iii.]

[Footnote 2:  Baillie, ii. 348, 354-364.  Balfour, iv. 136, 141-160, 173-178, 187, 189.  Whitelock, 475, 476, 477, 484.  Sydney Papers, ii. 679.  Burnet’s Hamiltons, 425.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  Dec. 14.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1651.  Jan. 1.]