Whatever may be thought of the conduct of the Scots in entering into the Solemn League and Covenant, and sending troops against a sovereign who had so thoroughly redressed their own national grievances, there can be no reasonable doubt that they were prompted on that occasion by a pure zeal for their church establishment, and a sympathy with those of the neighbouring nation who desired to be equally free from the rule of bishops. But it cannot be denied that in engaging themselves to ‘endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be contrary to sound doctrine’--for such are the terms of the League--they had wholly changed the nature of their policy. From a laudable defence of cherished institutions of their own, menaced with danger, they passed into a very questionable system of propagandism and aggression. It might be said that they were committing the same mistake as King Charles had done in his original policy towards themselves, going against the religious traditions and prepossessions of a people; for, while Puritans and Independents had an apparent ascendency in England, ‘the church,’ nursed by the blood of martyrs, and endeared by long habit, had still a great hold on the bulk of the English nation. Success in such a movement, if it could by any be considered as deserved, was scarcely by common sense to be expected. As if in natural punishment for a great error, nothing had gone well with the Scots ever since. An Assembly of Divines, including commissioners from Scotland, had sat at Westminster for two years, in deliberation on the proper ecclesiastical system and articles of faith to be adopted by both nations; and its decision was substantially for the Presbyterian forms and Calvinistic doctrines so much beloved in the north. But the English House of Commons could never be induced to take any active measures for imposing this decision on the nation, doubtless feeling that it was not generally acceptable. Pure presbytery never came into true operation except in London and in Lancashire. To the Scottish leaders, who had been accustomed to impose and enforce doctrine upon all recusants in their own country, this slackness seemed inexcusable, and occasioned the deepest disappointment. They also found that their army, after the first useful service at Marston Moor, was comparatively neglected in England, and its pay allowed to fall into arrear. Themselves courted at first as allies, they had latterly been little inquired for or consulted; their advices and their remonstrances were alike overlooked. Sternest punishment of all, while their best troops were kept idle and half mendicant in England, Montrose avenged the king’s sense of injury by sweeping their defenceless provinces with the besom of destruction, and putting thousands of hastily armed citizens to the sword. It was a most melancholy result of a movement entered on, as they in all