As a member of the old aristocracy he was but one among many, richer, indeed, and more powerful than most, but subject like the rest to the caprice of a king, and to the jealousy, the intrigues, and the violence of his peers. But with a national Parliament at his back, speaking and acting as the mouthpiece and agent of a people, he might rise in fact to that power his countrymen would no longer brook in name. Conscious of mental abilities and a genius for statecraft immeasurably superior to those around him, he felt confident of wielding to his own ends this new force that he saw rising on the ruins of the old. And Argyll carried the day, though not without a hard struggle. By a majority of only one it was determined that in future each Estate should choose its own Lords. Henceforth the nobles would be represented by eight votes, the lesser barons and burghers by sixteen; and thus at one stroke the voice of the sovereign was silenced in the Scottish Parliament. In the first direct struggle between Montrose and Argyll there could be no doubt with whom victory rested. Under their new constitution the Covenanting majority carried all before them. Episcopacy was abolished, not, as Charles would have had, as contrary to the usage of the Scottish Church, but as actually unlawful. A general tax was to be levied, to cover the expenses of the late war, on Royalists as well as on Covenanters. The castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton were to be entrusted to the charge of none but Scottish subjects, who, though chosen by the King, were to be approved by Parliament. No more drastic Reform Bill has, in short, been passed even in our own century. Charles at once sent orders to Traquair to prorogue a Parliament under which the very existence of the Crown was at stake. The Treasurer was at once met with the answer that Parliament could not be prorogued without its own consent. A short adjournment was therefore arranged, and two Covenanting lords, Loudon and Dunfermline, were despatched to plead their case in London.