and his estate forfeited. In November 1641, when Strafford was dead and the Ulster rebellion begun, Charles, at the unanimous request of the Scottish Parliament, reversed the sentence passed upon Adair for having 'adjoined himself to his own native country,' and he recovered his Irish property.[210] [Sidenote: The Black Oath, 1639.] [Sidenote: The King procures a petition against the Covenant.] [Sidenote: Wentworth's threats.] Before the end of 1638 the Scotch Covenanters were thoroughly aware that Wentworth was their most important enemy. He sent a clever young officer to Edinburgh to report upon the doings there, 'and this gentleman,' he wrote, 'tells me that the whole nation universally hates me most extremely, and threaten some personal mischief unto me.' Ensign Willoughby pretended to Rothes that he was a Dutchman, and the Earl answered that Holland was well governed and that Scotland also could do very well without a king. Next day Alexander Leslie was present and said Ireland would certainly be invaded if the King came to blows with his Scottish subjects--a threat which Leslie himself carried out, but not while Strafford lived. Wentworth proposed, and Charles agreed with alacrity, if, indeed, he did not himself make the first suggestion, that the Covenant should be met by a new and very stringent oath binding the Scots of Ulster not only to obey the King, but not even to protest against any command of his, and to renounce all covenants or associations not ordered by him. This is still remembered in Ulster as the Black Oath, and it is evidently inconsistent with all modern ideas of liberty. The manner of imposing it matched the matter, and we know the details from the evidence of an unwilling witness who proved in after life that he was as strong a royalist as even Scotland has produced. Charles himself proposed that means should be taken to procure a petition repudiating the Covenant and in favour of the new oath, and his plan was strictly carried out. Wentworth summoned such of the leading Northern Scots as he thought could be trusted to meet him in Dublin on April 27. Lord Montgomery, who was the chief of them, caught cold on the journey and desired to be excused; but the Lord Deputy, whether he believed in the cold or not, would not be so put off, and adjourned the meeting to his lordship's lodgings. The two Leslies, Bishops of Raphoe and of Down, took the lead, and the former drew up a petition which some of the laymen thought hasty. In the words of the oath Wentworth would allow no alteration, saying that it had been well considered; but in the petition offering the subscribers' services to the King he admitted the qualification 'in equal manner and measure with other his Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects of this kingdom.' For the rest, the petitioners declared their belief that the Covenant had been imposed upon great numbers of their nation by the tyranny of the dominant faction. The fiery bishop who drafted