[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1645.  Sept. 10.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1645.  Sept. 14.]

Whilst the king thus mourned over the loss of Bristol, he received still more disastrous intelligence from Scotland.  The victory of Kilsyth had dissolved the royal army.  The Gordons with their followers had returned to their homes; Colkitto. had led back the Highlanders to their mountains; and with the remnants not more than six hundred repaired to the borders to await the arrival of an English force which had been promised, but not provided, by Charles.  In the mean while David Leslie had been detached with four thousand cavalry from the Scottish army in England.  He crossed the Tweed,[a] proceeded northward, as if he meant to interpose himself between the enemy and the Highlands; and then returned suddenly to surprise them in their encampment at Philiphaugh.  Montrose spent the night at Selkirk in preparing despatches for the king; Leslie, who was concealed at no great distance, crossing the Etrick at dawn, under cover of a dense fog, charged[b] unexpectedly into the camp of the royalists, who lay in heedless security on the Haugh.  Their leader, with his guard of horse, flew to their succour; but, after a chivalrous but fruitless effort was compelled to retire and abandon them to their fate.  The greater part had formed themselves into a compact body, and kept the enemy at bay till their offer of surrender upon terms had been accepted.  But then the ministers loudly demanded their lives; they pronounced the capitulation sinful, and therefore void; and had the satisfaction to behold the whole body of captives massacred in

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1645.  Sept. 6.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1645.  Sept. 13.]

cold blood, not the men only, but also every woman and child found upon the Haugh.  Nor was this sacrifice sufficient.  Forty females, who had made their escape, and had been secured by the country people, were a few days later delivered up to the victors, who, in obedience to the decision of the kirk, put them to death by throwing them from the bridge near Linlithgow into the river Avon.  Afterwards the Scottish parliament approved of their barbarities, on the pretence that the victims were papists from Ireland; and passed an ordinance that the “Irische prisoners taken at and after Philiphaughe, in all the prisons in the kingdom, should be execut without any assaye or processes conform to the treatey betwixt both kingdoms."[1] Of the noblemen and gentlemen who fled with Montrose, many were also taken; and of these few escaped the hands of the executioner:  Montrose himself threaded back his way to the Highlands, where he once more raised the royal standard, and, with a small force and diminished reputation, continued to bid defiance to his enemies.  At length, in obedience to repeated messages from the king, he dismissed his followers, and reluctantly withdrew to the continent.[2] With the defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh vanished those brilliant hopes with which the king had consoled himself for his former losses; but the activity of his enemies allowed him no leisure to indulge his grief; they had already formed a lodgment within the