conceive of no Presbyterianism which was not rigid, in the manner of Andrew Melville, to whom his king was “Christ’s silly vassal.”  Sharp warned them early that in face of the irreconcilable Protesters, “moderate Episcopacy” would be preferred; and Douglas himself assured Sharp that the new generation in Scotland “bore a heart-hatred to the Covenant,” and are “wearied of the yoke of presbyterial government.”

This was true:  the ruling classes had seen too much of presbyterial government, and would prefer bishops as long as they were not pampered and all-powerful.  On the other hand the lesser gentry, still more their godly wives, the farmers and burgesses, and the preachers, regarded the very shadow of Episcopacy as a breach of the Covenant and an insult to the Almighty.  The Covenanters had forced the Covenant on the consciences of thousands, from the king downwards, who in soul and conscience loathed it.  They were to drink of the same cup—­Episcopacy was to be forced on them by fines and imprisonments.  Scotland, her people and rulers were moving in a vicious circle.  The Resolutioners admitted that to allow the Protesters to have any hand in affairs was “to breed continual distemper and disorders,” and Baillie was for banishing the leaders of the Protesters, irreconcilables like the Rev. James Guthrie, to the Orkney islands.  But the Resolutioners, on the other hand, were no less eager to stop the use of the liturgy in Charles’s own household, and to persecute every sort of Catholic, Dissenter, Sectary, and Quaker in Scotland.  Meanwhile Argyll, in debt, despised on all sides, and yet dreaded, was holding a great open-air Communion meeting of Protesters at Paisley, in the heart of the wildest Covenanting region (May 27, 1660).  He was still dangerous; he was trying to make himself trusted by the Protesters, who were opposed to Charles.  It may be doubted if any great potentate in Scotland except the Marquis wished to revive the constitutional triumphs of Argyll’s party in the last Parliament of Charles I. Charles now named his Privy Council and Ministers without waiting for parliamentary assent—­though his first Parliament would have assented to anything.  He chose only his late supporters:  Glencairn who raised his standard in 1653; Rothes, a humorous and not a cruel voluptuary; and, as Secretary for Scotland in London, Lauderdale, who had urged him to take the Covenant, and who for twenty years was to be his buffoon, his favourite, and his wavering and unscrupulous adviser.  Among these greedy and treacherous profligates there would, had he survived, have been no place for Montrose.

In defiance of warnings from omens, second-sighted men, and sensible men, Argyll left the safe sanctuary of his mountains and sea-straits, and betook himself to London, “a fey man.”  Most of his past was covered by an Act of Indemnity, but not his doings in 1653.  He was arrested before he saw the king’s face (July 8, 1660), and lay in the Tower till, in December, he was taken to be tried for treason in Scotland.