which took away from it the substance of its authority. The Parliament authorised the Committee of the Estates, which was already appointed, to carry on the government. This committee was so composed that the resolutions always conformed to the wishes and proposals of the leading men, especially of Argyle, who was considered even then as the most important person of all, though he was not himself one of the members. We should mistake the feelings of the Scots, if we assumed that these arrangements had been approved by every one. Even Thomas Hope, the King’s Advocate, who had at first so entirely concurred in the movement, warned the Earl of Rothes not to go so far as to give the King good ground [A.D. 1640.] for saying to other sovereigns that people in Scotland had an eye, not so much to religion, as to the abolition of the monarchy. Hope told the Earl that they ought to strengthen their religion, that they should then see what he would do or suffer in its behalf, but that in matters of civil government they must not reckon on his going with them. The same views were entertained by many other of the more reflecting spirits among the clergy and scholars. The government had thought it necessary to appoint as Professors in the Universities men who shared its tendencies, and knew how to gain acceptance for them in the minds of the young. These regulations did not enjoy entire popularity. While in the English Parliament the boroughs returned a majority, in Scotland the gentry had an ascendancy by which the commons, at first at all events, felt themselves oppressed[182]. And meanwhile the Covenant was not yet by any means everywhere accepted. Those counties that repudiated it even made attacks upon others which had submitted: the old Scottish lawlessness and desire for plunder now availed itself of religious pretexts. A small army was required to be permanently in the field in order to extinguish the flames of revolt which kept flickering here and there. In the minds of many of the great men who concurred in the religious demands of their countrymen, their political demands awakened all the more opposition because their rivals were just the people who derived advantage from the new constitution; or else in fact feelings of loyal devotion to the King awoke in them; they did not wish to allow the crown to be robbed of all its splendour and all its power. One might almost wonder that the dominant party was still in such good spirits.