The Tables now demanded the removal of the bishops from the Privy Council (December 21, 1637).  The question was:  Who were to govern the country, the Council or the Tables?  The logic of the Presbyterians was not always consistent.  The king must not force the Liturgy on them, but later, their quarrel with him was that he would not, at their desire, force the absence of the Liturgy on England.  If the king had the right to inflict Presbyterianism on England, he had the right to thrust the Liturgy on Scotland:  of course he had neither one right nor the other.  On February 19, 1638, Charles’s proclamation, refusing the prayers of the supplication of December, was read at Stirling.  Nobles and people replied with protestations to every royal proclamation.  Foremost on the popular side was the young Earl of Montrose:  “you will not rest,” said Rothes, a more sober leader, “till you be lifted up above the lave in three fathoms of rope.”  Rothes was a true prophet; but Montrose did not die for the cause that did “his green unknowing youth engage.”

The Presbyterians now desired yearly General Assemblies (of which James VI. had unlawfully robbed the Kirk); the enforcement of an old brief-lived system of restrictions (caveats) on the bishops; the abolition of the Articles of Perth; and, as always, of the Liturgy.  If he granted all this Charles might have had trouble with the preachers, as James VI. had of old.  Yet the demands were constitutional; and in Charles’s position he would have done well to assent.  He was obstinate in refusal.

The Scots now “fell upon the consideration of a band of union to be made legally,” says Rothes, their leader, the chief of the House of Leslie (the family of Norman Leslie, the slayer of Cardinal Beaton).  Now a “band” of this kind could not, by old Scots law, be legally made; such bands, like those for the murder of Riccio and of Darnley, and for many other enterprises, were not smiled upon by the law.  But, in 1581, as we saw, James VI. had signed a covenant against popery; its tenor was imitated in that of 1638, and there was added “a general band for the maintenance of true religion” (Presbyterianism) “and of the King’s person.”  That part of the band was scarcely kept when the Covenanting army surrendered Charles to the English.  They had vowed, in their band, to “stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King’s Majesty, his person and authority.”  They kept this vow by hanging men who held the king’s commission.  The words as to defending the king’s authority were followed by “in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true religion.”  This appears to mean that only a presbyterian king is to be defended.  In any case the preachers assumed the right to interpret the Covenant, which finally led to the conquest of Scotland by Cromwell.  As the Covenant was made between God and the Covenanters, on ancient Hebrew precedent it was declared to be binding on all succeeding generations.  Had Scotland resisted tyranny without this would-be biblical pettifogging Covenant, her condition would have been the more gracious.  The signing of the band began at Edinburgh in Greyfriars’ Churchyard on February 28, 1638.