Meanwhile Charles had abated no jot of his arbitrary policy. He had been advised by the Treasurer, Lord Traquair, to withdraw the offending liturgy, and to content himself with enforcing his civil authority. The advice was good, but it may well be doubted whether Baillie was not right in holding that affairs had now gone too far for Charles to follow it. At all events it was not followed. A proclamation was issued announcing the King's entire approval of the new liturgy, his responsibility for it, and his determination to regard all further opposition to it as treasonable. This inflammatory document was read at the city-cross in Edinburgh amid frequent and open expressions of derision. So soon as the heralds had finished, and before, owing to the crowd, they could come down from the platform, a protest prepared for the occasion was read aloud by Warriston from a scaffold raised for that purpose by the side of the old cross. He was supported by a party of sixteen noblemen. Among them was Montrose, who, in the exuberance of his zeal, had mounted on a cask that stood upon the scaffold. Rothes, who was of course present, remarking the young enthusiast's elevated position, and remembering that the place where they were standing was also the place of public execution, said laughingly to him, "James, you will never be at rest till you be lifted up there above the rest in a rope." And this grim jest, its chronicler adds, "was afterwards accomplished in earnest in that same place; and some even say that the same supporters of the scaffold were made use of at Montrose's execution." And now the work was done, and Scotland was ripe for the Covenant. Whatever may have been the motives of its originators, there can be no question of the feelings with which the bulk of the people regarded it. Never, even in the heat of the Reformation, had the stern Scottish nature been stirred to such a depth and fervour of passion. Its two strongest feelings had been artfully inflamed, national sentiment and religious enthusiasm. It would be difficult to separate the two, and to apportion to each its share in the general movement. But it is clear that love for the religion they had deliberately chosen and established with tears and blood was at this time strongly deepened by the thought that it was menaced by a king of the hated English.