And into this great league the town of Edinburgh also was now admitted. For it was said that what the common people there had been guilty of in the days of the excitement amounted to nothing more than such outcry and resistance as suppliants might oppose to the intended alteration in religion. The committee was charged to be on the watch lest anything should be done to injure them, and to take care that no attempt was made to introduce the Liturgy into the town by a surprise. Thus the party which took the name of petitioners, came forward united in an organisation embracing the whole country. From the general body went forth the elected representatives, and from these the committee, in which the most enterprising magnates and the most zealous ministers were united. They formed a league to repel every movement on the part of the authority of the State, which might be made towards carrying out the King’s policy. The most experienced lawyers, among whom was the King’s Advocate himself, were on their side. Matters had gone thus far, when in the beginning of December the Earl of Roxburgh entered Scotland with a reply from the King. Properly speaking it did not contain a formal answer to the earlier petition. The delay was excused on the score of the disturbances in the capital, by which the honour of the King was declared to have been insulted: but, while Charles I reserved to himself the right of punishing these offences, he sought to quiet men’s feelings in the matter of religion. He declared in express terms that he loathed the superstition of the Papacy from his very soul, and that he would never do anything which ran counter to the religious confession or the laws of his [A.D. 1637.] kingdom of Scotland. The Privy Council did not delay for a moment to have this declaration everywhere proclaimed to the sound of trumpets, and as it produced a very soothing impression, it led them to hope that they might effect an adjustment of affairs on this basis. They said that the King manifestly gave up the introduction of the Liturgy: what more, they asked, could be expected from so kind and gentle a sovereign? Traquair said that a symptom of submission on the part of the capital, a single prostration on the part of its representatives, the deliverance of their charter into the King’s hands, would content the King, for that he was most interested in preventing foreigners from believing that his authority was despised by his own people.