The Scots of the army were in a quandary.  The preachers, their masters, would not permit them to bring to Scotland an uncovenanted king.  They could not stay penniless in England.  For 200,000 pounds down and a promise, never kept, of a similar sum later, they left Charles in English hands, with some assurances for his safety, and early in February 1647 crossed Tweed with their thirty-six cartloads of money.  The act was hateful to very many Scots, but the Estates, under the command of the preachers, had refused to let the king, while uncovenanted, cross into his native kingdom, and to bring him meant war with England.  But that must ensue in any case.  The hope of making England presbyterian, as under the Solemn League and Covenant, had already perished.

Leslie, with the part of the army still kept up, chased Colkitto, and, at Dunavertie, under the influence of Nevoy, a preacher, put 300 Irish prisoners to the sword.

The parties in Scotland were now:  (1) the Kirk, Argyll, the two Leslies, and most of the Commons; (2) Hamilton, Lanark, and Lauderdale, who had no longer anything to fear, as regards their estates, from Charles or from bishops, and who were ashamed of his surrender to the English; (3) Royalists in general.  With Charles (December 27, 1647) in his prison at Carisbrooke, Lauderdale, Loudoun, and Lanark made a secret treaty, The Engagement, which they buried in the garden, for if it were discovered the Independents of the army would have attacked Scotland.

An Assembly of the Scots Estates on March 3, 1648, had a large majority of nobles, gentry, and many burgesses in favour of aiding the captive king; on the other side Argyll was backed by the omnipotent Commission of the General Assembly, and by the full force of prayers and sermons.  The letter-writer, Baillie, now deemed “that it were for the good of the world that churchmen did meddle with ecclesiastical affairs only.”  The Engagers insisted on establishing presbytery in England, which neither satisfied the Kirk nor the Cavaliers and Independents.  Nothing more futile could have been devised.

The Estates, in May, began to raise an army; the preachers denounced them:  there was a battle between armed communicants of the preachers’ party and the soldiers of the State at Mauchline.  Invading England on July 8, Hamilton had Lambert and Cromwell to face him, and left Argyll, the preachers, and their “slashing communicants” in his rear.  Lanark had vainly urged that the west country fanatics should be crushed before the Border was crossed.  By a march worthy of Montrose across the fells into Lanarkshire, Cromwell reached Preston; cut in between the northern parts of Hamilton’s army; defeated the English Royalists and Langdale, and cut to pieces or captured the Scots, disunited as their generals were, at Wigan and Warrington (August 17-19).  Hamilton was taken and was decapitated later.  The force that recrossed the Border consisted of such mounted men as escaped, with the detachment of Monro which had not joined Hamilton.