In the latter part of 1637, the Service-book not being withdrawn, four committees, called _Tables_, respectively representing the nobles, gentry, clergy, and burgesses, met in Edinburgh to concert measures for giving it an effective resistance. When it became evident, in the ensuing February, that the king was obdurate, the Tables framed a NATIONAL COVENANT, binding all who should sign it to spare nothing which might save their religion. It was signed by a large majority of the people, in a paroxysm of enthusiasm beyond all example in our history. The king, at length alarmed, sent the Marquis of Hamilton (June 1638) as a commissioner to treat with the Covenanters; and he soon after was induced to offer concessions far beyond what would have been grasped at a twelvemonth before--namely, to withdraw the Service-book and an equally unpopular Book of Canons, to abrogate the Court of High Commission, and place the Perth articles on a footing of indifferency. But while the people at large were at first disposed to be at peace on these terms, the leaders were by this time influenced with higher views. Feeling their power, they now hoped by perseverance to obtain a complete abolition of Episcopacy. Accordingly, when the matter came to be debated in a General Assembly of the Church, which sat at Glasgow in November, the royal commissioner proved unable to keep them within moderate bounds. On his formally dissolving the Assembly, they sat still under a clerical president, until they had deposed the bishops and declared Episcopacy wholly at an end.