The Duke of Argyll, Commander-in-Chief of the royal forces in Scotland, was despatched thither with all speed. He arrived at Stirling in the middle of September, and a camp was formed. At the beginning he had only about fifteen hundred men under his command, including the famous Scots Greys, and his prospect of getting more was not bright. He could not therefore attempt at first any forward movement. If Mar had then marched from Perth and surrounded Argyll at Stirling, the result might have been very different. But the whole of the history of the Stuart cause is a record of “ifs” and “might-have-beens.” The vigorous action of the Government crushed the rising in the bud in the greater part of England. However disaffected the Jacobites might be, and however numerous, they had no concerted plan of action, and their efforts to communicate with one another were checked by the vigilance of the Government. This was certainly the case in the south, but the mailed arm of the Government took longer to reach the north, and Lancashire and Northumberland contained many Roman Catholics who were Jacobites to a man, besides others who were lukewarm in the Hanoverian succession. When Forster, a wealthy Northumberland squire, and a member of the Church of England, and Lord Derwentwater, a young nobleman of great influence, and a zealous Roman Catholic, heard that the Government had issued orders for their arrest, they both determined to rise in arms rather than surrender, and on October 7th they proclaimed King James at Warkworth. They were soon joined by a number of Roman Catholic noblemen across the border, including Lord Kenmure and the Earls of Nithisdale, Wintoun and Carnwath. These reinforcements from the south-west of Scotland found that the Northumbrian Jacobites were more imposing in names than in numbers, and the combined forces did not amount to much more than five hundred horse. Forster was placed in command, and by Mar’s orders he marched to Kelso, where he was joined by Brigadier Macintosh with a large company of foot soldiers. Macintosh urged an advance upon Edinburgh, which, as it lay between the forces of Forster and Macintosh and those of Mar, would probably have capitulated; but Forster, a fox-hunting squire, who had no military knowledge, and little courage or ability, overruled him, and determined upon an invasion of Lancashire.