_Scots troubles, and distress of the government._--It is difficult to pronounce how much longer the nation's signal forbearance would have held out, if the Scots had not precipitated themselves into rebellion. There was still a confident hope that parliament must soon or late be assembled; and it seemed equally impolitic and unconstitutional to seek redress by any violent means. The patriots, too, had just cause to lament the ambition of some whom the court's favour subdued, and the levity of many more whom its vanities allured. But the unexpected success of the tumultuous rising at Edinburgh against the service-book revealed the impotence of the English government. Destitute of money, and neither daring to ask it from a parliament nor to extort it by any fresh demand from the people, they hesitated whether to employ force or to submit to the insurgents. In the exchequer, as Lord Northumberland wrote to Strafford, there was but the sum of £200; with all the means that could be devised, not above £110,000 could be raised; the magazines were all unfurnished, and the people were so discontented by reason of the multitude of projects daily imposed upon them, that he saw reason to fear a great part of them would be readier to join with the Scots than to draw their swords in the king's service.[137] "The discontents at home," he observes some months afterwards, "do rather increase than lessen, there being no course taken to give any kind of satisfaction. The king's coffers were never emptier than at this time; and to us that have the honour to be near about him, no way is yet known how he will find means either to maintain or begin a war without the help of his people."[138] Strafford himself dissuaded a war in such circumstances, though hardly knowing what other course to advise.[139] He had now awaked from the dreams of infatuated arrogance, to stand appalled at the perils of his sovereign, and his own. In the letters that passed between him and Laud after the Scots troubles had broken out, we read their hardly concealed dismay, and glimpses of "the two-handed engine at the door." Yet pride forbade them to perceive or confess the real causes of this portentous state of affairs. They fondly laid the miscarriage of the business of Scotland on failure in the execution, and an "over-great desire to do all quietly."[140]