The king, notwithstanding that a respect for his person and rule was still professed, could not acquiesce in a movement so contrary to the policy he had so long maintained, and which interfered so violently with his own religious convictions. He began to prepare an army for the subjugation of the Covenanters. They on their part made ready for an armed resistance, not professedly to their sovereign, but to the statesmen who guided his counsels. By a great effort, he got together twenty thousand men, and (May 1639) led them towards the Border. A fleet, having a few thousand troops on board, at the same time entered the Firth of Forth, under the command of the Marquis of Hamilton. Under their nobles, gentry, and clergy, the Scots mustered forces to defend their shores from the fleet, to meet the anti-Covenanting party in the north, and to oppose the king at the Border. To the number of about twenty thousand men, commanded by Sir Alexander Leslie, an experienced officer from the German wars, they took post on Dunse Law, while the king advanced with his army towards the Tweed. What with constant praying, preaching, and fasting, it was such a camp as perhaps never existed before or since. The king, seeing their resolution and discipline, and feeling that he had but slack support from his own army, was induced to offer a pacification. He could not sanction the acts of a General Assembly which had defied his authority; but he proposed that everything should Be submitted to another such body sitting under his representative, and to a subsequent parliament. His hope was that time and his personal influence with the leaders might bring things to some passable issue. At the worst, he should meanwhile prepare a greater army for enforcing subjection. The new General Assembly and the parliament met in the course of summer (1639) under royal commissioners, but with only the effect of formally affirming the abolition of Episcopacy. The king accordingly resolved on a second expedition against the Scots. After trying in vain to induce an English parliament to grant supplies, he obtained some assistance from a convocation of the English clergy, and from a number of friends among the gentry. He calculated much on the public fortresses of Scotland being now in his hands, and on the zeal of a small loyal party. All his hopes were frustrated. In the early part of 1640, the Scots mustered a second army as good as his own. They succeeded in seizing the most of the fortresses. His expectations of co-operation from the loyalists in Aberdeenshire proved fallacious. The attention of a patriotic party in England was now hopefully fixed on the proceedings of the Scots. The truth is, Charles was leading the army of a party of his English subjects through a country generally disaffected to his policy, against a country altogether hostile. In such circumstances, a great blow to his authority was inevitable.