It remained to make some arrangement with the Scots. For this purpose the most favourably disposed of the lords, especially the signers of the address, were despatched to Ripon. Men like Strafford could desire nothing more than that the affair should reach this stage: they were always hoping that a complete knowledge of the intentions and demands of the Scots would induce all old-fashioned Englishmen to combine against them. All actual negotiation was however stopped by the question of money: the Scots required that their army should be maintained at the cost [A.D. 1640.] of England. On this account they asked so large a sum, £40,000 a month, that the lords who had been deputed to meet them thought it necessary to refer the matter back to the great council of peers at York. By this council the subject was debated at length on October 6. Among others, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the historian of Henry VIII, declared himself emphatically against the demand, saying that he had read now and then of buying treaties of peace, but never of buying negotiations, the result of which was still as it were in the air. Others declared it to be an inevitable necessity: they must either drive the Scots back, or grant their demands in full. The first course Strafford himself deemed impossible; he pledged himself to defend Yorkshire against them, but not Westmoreland and Cumberland[204]. Could they abandon these two counties to be occupied by the Scots, and probably plundered as well, together with those already in their hands? It had been said that the Scottish army might be reduced, and then supplied out of Scotland: but in order to attain this they must first defeat it, and for this must before all things be unanimous. It was determined at last to guarantee to the Scots for the future the sum (£850) which they exacted daily from the occupied districts, this money to be raised at once from the neighbouring counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, with the promise that Parliament would make good to them whatever they might do for the safety of the kingdom. On these terms a truce was signed with the Scots. They stayed in England, and thus the very extraordinary result followed, that two armies which had been intended to fight each other, remained facing each other with their swords sheathed, both at the cost of the same authority. That both armies thus depended on the grants of Parliament rendered that body absolutely indispensable, and gave it a necessary strength sufficient to overrule the King’s will.