Sharp’s friends were anxious to interfere in favour of establishing Presbyterianism in England; he told them that the hope was vain; he repeatedly asked for leave to return home, and, while an English preacher assured Charles that the rout of Worcester had been God’s vengeance for his taking of the Covenant, Sharp (June 25) told his Resolutioners that “the Protesters’ doom is dight.”

Administration in Scotland was intrusted to the Committee of Estates whom Monk (1650) had captured at Alyth, and with them Glencairn, as Chancellor, entered Edinburgh on August 22.  Next day, while the Committee was busy, James Guthrie and some Protester preachers met, and, in the old way, drew up a “supplication.”  They denounced religious toleration, and asked for the establishment of Presbytery in England, and the filling of all offices with Covenanters.  They were all arrested and accused of attempting to “rekindle civil war,” which would assuredly have followed had their prayer been accepted.  Next year Guthrie was hanged.  But ten days after his arrest Sharp had brought down a letter of Charles to the Edinburgh Presbytery, promising to “protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland as it is established by law.”  Had the words run “as it may be established by law” (in Parliament) it would not have been a dishonourable quibble—­as it was.

Parliament opened on New Year’s Day 1661, with Middleton as Commissioner.  In the words of Sir George Mackenzie, then a very young advocate and man of letters, “never was Parliament so obsequious.”  The king was declared “supreme Governor over all persons and in all causes” (a blow at Kirk judicature), and all Acts between 1633 and 1661 were rescinded, just as thirty years of ecclesiastical legislation had been rescinded by the Covenanters.  A sum of 40,000 pounds yearly was settled on the king.  Argyll was tried, was defended by young George Mackenzie, and, when he seemed safe, his doom was fixed by the arrival of a Campbell from London bearing some of his letters to Lilburne and Monk (1653-1655) which the Indemnity of 1651 did not cover.  He died, by the axe (not the rope, like Montrose), with dignity and courage.

The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his advisers.  The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually suppose.  The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with the existence of the State.  In the southern and western shires,—­such as those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,—­the forces which attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and the less violent clergy, after Dunbar.  But without Argyll, and with no probable noble leaders, they could