As that time drew nigh, the King tried again to postpone or prorogue it; but it nevertheless met, and in the space of a few days effected a revolution unexampled in the previous history of Scotland. It set bounds to the power of the monarch. It ratified the Covenant, enjoining its subscription “under all civill paines”; it ratified the Act of the General Assembly of 1639, rejecting the service-book, Prelacy, etc.; it renewed the Act of Parliament of 1592 in favour of Presbytery, and annulled the Act of 1612 by which the Act of 1592 had been rescinded. [Sidenote: Parliament of 1640] The King had been preparing for the Second Bishops’ War, and the Covenanters marched into England, Montrose being the first to cross the Tweed. Again there were negotiations, and an agreement was at length come to at Westminster in August 1641. Charles now set out for Holyrood, and in the Scottish Parliament ratified the Westminster Treaty; and so explicitly, if not cordially, approved of the proceedings of the Parliament of 1640. The Scots had now got all that they wanted from their King, although many of them must have doubted his sincerity, and feared a future revocation should that ever be in his power. This fear, coupled with a fellow-feeling for the Puritans, and gratitude for the seasonable assistance of the English in 1560, accounts for the readiness of the compliance with the proposal of the Commissioners of the Long Parliament who arrived in Edinburgh in August 1643. [Sidenote: The English ask Help] These Commissioners desired help from the Convention of Estates and from the General Assembly, and proposed that the two nations should enter into “a strict union and league,” with the object of bringing them closer in church government, and eventually extirpating Popery and Prelacy from the island. [Sidenote: Solemn League and Covenant] The suggestion that the league should be religious as well as civil having been accepted, Henderson drafted the famous Solemn League and Covenant.[3] It was approved by the Convention of Estates and by the General Assembly on the 17th of August; and (after several alterations) by the Westminster Assembly and both Houses of the English Parliament. ----- Footnote 3: