In spring 1640 the Scots, by an instrument called “The Blind Band,” imposed taxation for military purposes; while Charles in England called The Short Parliament to provide Supply.  The Parliament refused and was prorogued; words used by Strafford about the use of the army in Ireland to suppress Scotland were hoarded up against him.  The Scots Parliament, though the king had prorogued it, met in June, despite the opposition of Montrose.  The Parliament, when it ceased to meet, appointed a Standing Committee of some forty members of all ranks, including Montrose and his friends Lord Napier and Stirling of Keir.  Argyll refused to be a member, but acted on a commission of fire and sword “to root out of the country” the northern recusants against the Covenant.  It was now that Argyll burned Lord Ogilvy’s Bonny House of Airlie and Forthes; the cattle were driven into his own country; all this against, and perhaps in consequence of, the intercession of Ogilvy’s friend and neighbour, Montrose.

Meanwhile the Scots were intriguing with discontented English peers, who could only give sympathy; Saville, however, forged a letter from six of them inviting a Scottish invasion.  There was a movement for making Argyll practically Dictator in the North; Montrose thwarted it, and in August, while Charles with a reluctant and disorderly force was marching on York Montrose at Cumbernauld, the house of the Earl of Wigtoun made a secret band with the Earls Marischal, Wigtoun, Home, Atholl, Mar, Perth, Boyd, Galloway, and others, for their mutual defence against the scheme of dictatorship for Argyll.  On August 20 Montrose, the foremost, forded Tweed, and led his regiment into England.  On August 30, almost unopposed, the Scots entered Newcastle, having routed a force which met them at Newburn-on-Tyne.

They again pressed their demands on the king; simultaneously twelve English peers petitioned for a parliament and the trial of the king’s Ministers.  Charles gave way.  At Ripon Scottish and English commissioners met; the Scots received “brotherly assistance” in money and supplies (a daily 850 pounds), and stayed where they were; while the Long Parliament met in November, and in April 1641 condemned the great Strafford:  Laud soon shared his doom.  On August 10 the demands of the Scots were granted:  as a sympathetic historian writes, they had lived for a year at free quarters, “and recrossed the Border with the handsome sum of 200,000 pounds to their credit.”

During the absence of the army the Kirk exhibited symptoms not favourable to its own peace.  Amateur theologians held private religious gatherings, which, it was feared, tended towards the heresy of the English Independents and to the “break up of the whole Kirk,” some of whose representatives forbade these conventicles, while “the rigid sort” asserted that the conventiclers “were esteemed the godly of the land.”  An Act of the General Assembly was passed against the meetings; we observe that here are the beginnings of strife between the most godly and the rather moderately pious.