In spring (1639) war began.  Charles was to move in force on the Border; the fleet was to watch the coasts; Hamilton, with some 5000 men, was to join hands with Huntly (both men were wavering and incompetent); Antrim, from north Ireland, was to attack and contain Argyll; Ruthven was to hold Edinburgh Castle.  But Alexander Leslie took that castle for the Covenanters; they took Dumbarton; they fortified Leith; Argyll ravaged Huntly’s lands; Montrose and Leslie occupied Aberdeen; and their party, in circumstances supposed to be discreditable to Montrose, carried Huntly to Edinburgh. (The evidence is confused.  Was Huntly unwilling to go?  Charles (York, April 23, 1639) calls him “feeble and false.”  Mr Gardiner says that, in this case, and in this alone, Montrose stooped to a mean action.) Hamilton merely dawdled and did nothing:  Montrose had entered Aberdeen (June 19), and then came news of negotiations between the king and the Covenanters.

As Charles approached from the south, Alexander Leslie, a Continental veteran (very many of the Covenant’s officers were Dugald Dalgettys from the foreign wars), occupied Dunse Law, with a numerous army in great difficulties as to supplies.  “A natural mind might despair,” wrote Waristoun, who “was brought low before God indeed.”  Leslie was in a strait; but, on the other side, so was Charles, for a reconnaissance of Leslie’s position was repulsed; the king lacked money and supplies; neither side was of a high fighting heart; and offers to negotiate came from the king, informally.  The Scots sent in “a supplication,” and on June 18 signed a treaty which was a mere futile truce.  There were to be a new Assembly, and a new Parliament in August and September.

Charles should have fought:  if he fell he would fall with honour; and if he survived defeat “all England behoved to have risen in revenge,” says the Covenanting letter-writer, Baillie, later Principal of Glasgow University.  The Covenanters at this time could not have invaded England, could not have supported themselves if they did, and were far from being harmonious among themselves.  The defeat of Charles at this moment would have aroused English pride and united the country.  Charles set out from Berwick for London on July 29, leaving many fresh causes of quarrel behind him.

Charles supposed that he was merely “giving way for the present” when he accepted the ratification by the new Assembly of all the Acts of that of 1638.  He never had a later chance to recover his ground.  The new Assembly made the Privy Council pass an Act rendering signature of the Covenant compulsory on all men:  “the new freedom is worse than the old slavery,” a looker-on remarked.  The Parliament discussed the method of electing the Lords of the Articles—­a method which, in fact, though of prime importance, had varied and continued to vary in practice.  Argyll protested that the constitutional course was for each Estate to elect its own members.  Montrose was already suspected of being influenced by Charles.  Charles refused to call Episcopacy unlawful, or to rescind the old Acts establishing it.  Traquair, as Commissioner, dissolved the Parliament; later Charles refused to meet envoys sent from Scotland, who were actually trying, as their party also tried, to gain French mediation or assistance,—­help from “idolaters”!