Though the Remonstrants had won the upper hand for a time, the bulk of the Scottish nation had been all along on the side of the Resolutioners.  Much as the character and religious views of Charles were to their distaste, the principle of the Covenant was for a king, and it was by the principle of the Covenant that the Scottish nation stood.  The stern and narrow bigotry of the Remonstrants, whom their short taste of power had made of course more fanatical and more quarrelsome than ever, had almost succeeded in forcing the more moderate Presbyterians into the arms of the Royalists.  A little tolerance, a little tact on the English side would probably have cemented the alliance.  But it was not to be.

It is important to remember this.  The extreme party with which Claverhouse had to deal no more represented the Scottish nation than the Irishmen who follow Mr. Parnell’s call in the House of Commons represent their nation now, or than men like Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone represented it a century ago.  It seems still a common belief that Claverhouse and his troopers were sent to force upon a sober, patient, God-fearing nation a religion and a king that they abhorred.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The large majority of the Scottish nation was as eager to welcome Charles as the old squires who had lost their fortunes for his father, or the young bloods who hoped to find fortunes under the son.  The narrow and blatant form of religion professed by the extreme party was as repulsive to the bulk of their countrymen as to the King himself.

These men were a remnant of the old Remonstrants of the Mauchline Convention.  They had originally, as we have seen, looked to Argyle as their leader; but when Argyle ranged himself on the side of the young King there were some among them who would not follow him.  These maintained, and so far they were unquestionably right, that the “young man Charles Stuart” was, for all his protestations and oaths, as much at heart a Malignant as his father; and that those who pretended to believe him were playing the Kirk and the Covenant false.  When Cromwell marched into Scotland to win the battle of Dunbar these men had formed themselves into a separate party under Colonel Archibald Strachan, an able soldier who commanded that division of Leslie’s army which had defeated Montrose in Rossshire.  Strachan’s design seems to have been to stand aloof for the present from either side; but from some not very intelligible cause he fell into disgrace with his party, and this is said to have so preyed upon his mind as to have caused his death.  From that time the Wild Westland Whigs, as they began now to be called, had no ostensible leader.  They withdrew sullenly to their own homes, contenting themselves during the remaining years of the Commonwealth with protesting against everybody and everything outside their own narrow circle.  They must not be confounded with the general body of the Remonstrants, between whom and the Resolutioners