Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the West, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the Committee of Estates, by Colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigtown, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the Clerk Register of Parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the Kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the Kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough Malignant. They drew up a Remonstrance of the Western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing his old veneration for the Covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the Reverend Zachary Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their Remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by Parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, agreeing with neither one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The Western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the Covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the Remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.