On October 4 Charles made “the Start”; he fled to the Royalists of Angus,—­Ogilvy and Airlie:  he was caught, brought back, and preached at.  Then came fighting between the Royalists and the Estates.  Middleton, a good soldier, Atholl, and others, declared that they must and would fight for Scotland, though they were purged out by the preachers.  The Estates (November 4) gave them an indemnity.  On this point the Kirk split into twain:  the wilder men, led by the Rev. James Guthrie, refused reconciliation (the Remonstrants); the less fanatical would consent to it, on terms (the Resolutioners).  The Committee of Estates dared to resist the Remonstrants:  even the Commissioners of the General Assembly “cannot be against the raising of all fencible persons,”—­and at last adopted the attitude of all sensible persons.  By May 21, 1651, the Estates rescinded the insane Act of Classes, but the strife between clerical Remonstrants and Resolutioners persisted till after the Restoration, the Remonstrants being later named Protesters.

Charles had been crowned at Scone on January 1, again signing the Covenants.  Leslie now occupied Stirling, avoiding an engagement.  In July, while a General Assembly saw the strife of the two sects, came news that Lambert had crossed the Forth at Queensferry, and defeated a Scots force at Inverkeithing, where the Macleans fell almost to a man; Monk captured a number of the General Assembly, and, as Cromwell, moving to Perth, could now assail Leslie and the main Scottish force at Stirling, they, by a desperate resolution, with 4000 horse and 9000 foot, invaded England by the west marches, “laughing,” says one of them, “at the ridiculousness of our own condition.”  On September 1 Monk stormed and sacked Dundee as Montrose sacked Aberdeen, but if he made a massacre like that by Edward I. at Berwick, history is lenient to the crime.

On August 22 Charles, with his army, reached Worcester, whither Cromwell marched with a force twice as great as that of the king.  Worcester was a Sedan:  Charles could neither hold it nor, though he charged gallantly, could he break through Cromwell’s lines.  Before nightfall on September 3 Charles was a fugitive:  he had no army; Hamilton was slain, Middleton and David Leslie with thousands more were prisoners.  Monk had already captured, at Alyth (August 28), the whole of the Government, the Committee of Estates, and had also caught some preachers, including James Sharp, later Archbishop of St Andrews.  England had conquered Scotland at last, after twelve years of government by preachers acting as interpreters of the Covenant between Scotland and Jehovah.

CHAPTER XXV.  CONQUERED SCOTLAND.