After the rumours of his plain juggling about the verbals of the stipulated conditions, and his arbitrary prorogation of the parliament at Edinburgh, a thing which the best and bravest of the Scottish monarchs had never before dared to do without the consent of the States then assembled, the thud and murmur of warlike preparation was renewed both on anvil and in hall. And when it was known that the King, fey and distempered with his own weak conceits and the instigations of cruel counsellors, had, as soon as he heard that the Covenanters were disbanded, renewed his purposes of punishment and oppression, a gurl of rage, like the first brush of the tempest on the waves, passed over the whole extent of Scotland, and those that had been in arms fiercely girded themselves again for battle. As the King's powers came again towards the borders, the Covenanters, for the second time, mustered under Lesley at Dunse; but far different was this new departure of our men from the solemnity of their first expedition. Their spirits were now harsh and angry, and their drums sounded hoarsely on the breeze. Godly Mr Swinton, as he headed them again, struck the ground with his staff, and, instead of praying, said, "It is the Lord's pleasure, and he will make the Aggressor fin' the weight of the arm of flesh. Honest folk are no ever to be thus obligated to leave their fields and families by the provocations of a prerogative that has so little regard for the people. In the name and strength of God, let us march." With six-and-twenty thousand horse and foot Lesley crossed the Tweed, and in the first onset the King's army was scattered like chaff before the wind. When the news of the victory arrived among us, every one was filled with awe and holy wonder; for it happened on the very day which was held as a universal fast throughout the land; on that day, likewise, even in the time of worship, the castle of Dumbarton was won, and the covenanted Earl of Haddington repelled a wasteful irruption from the garrison of Berwick. Such disasters smote the King with consternation; for the immediate fruit of the victory was the conquest of Newcastle, Tynemouth, Shields and Durham.