Cavaliers and Presbyterians for his new Privy Council. In Chancellor The office of Hyde the King possessed a Grand Vizier adept in statecraft and Hyde. capable of anticipating and executing unswervingly the royal will. Hyde had the gift of selecting trustworthy subordinates to carry out the meanest policy. In this uncompromising Episcopalian and Monarchist, Charles had an effective agent in executing the terms of the Declaration of Breda, so that soon the short-lived Convention Parliament set an example to successive legislatures of the way to dishonour the regicides, alive or dead, in their enactments and even

in their persons.

Considering his past career, Argyll would have appeared hypocritical had he been an early visitant to Court. Yet, anxious to stand well with his Sovereign, Argyll, much against the advice of Douglas and other friends, sought the King's presence in the hope that in a personal interview Charles would accept his explanations for his apparent discourtesy and his disloyalty under the Cromwellian régime. There are discrepant accounts of the origin of the visit. According to some he went of his own accord; to others that Charles invited him; to still others that Lorne, being well received, was used as a decoy to the trap, having informed his father that there was no danger.1 Sharp warned Douglas that the King would receive Argyll The arrest of badly. Lauderdale, now Secretary of State, was not averse to the extinction of his new rival, if he had not already determined on vengeance for his old enemy. Consequently, when Argyll appeared in the presence-chamber the King had him promptly arrested there in circumstances which betokened a public affront. From the Tower he was conveyed by ship, along with Judge Swinton, down to Scot

land to be tried for treason.

He arrived at Leith on 20th December

and was thrown into Edinburgh Castle. A similar warrant was sent to Major-General Morgan to seize Sir James Stewart, Provost of Edinburgh, Sir John Chiesley of Carsewell, and Lord Wariston. Wariston escaped to the Continent for a time. This was a foretaste

1 Fraser, Red Book of Grandtully, ii. 151; Argyll Papers, 17; Mackenzie, Memoirs, 13; Willcock, The Great Marquess, 302 note; Burnet, i. 193.

Argyll.

The King reconstitutes the

of the arbitrary government which the country was to experience for twenty-eight years.

The first care of Charles was to have a government reconstituted Government in for Scotland.1 The following appointments were made: Middleton, Scotland. Commissioner to Parliament and Generalissimo; Glencairn, Chan

cellor; Lauderdale, Secretary; Rothes, President of Council; Crawford, Treasurer; Sir William Fleming, then Primrose, Clerk-Register. Lauderdale chose Sharp's brother, William, to be his secretary—a fateful appointment. This Council was meant to be a domestic one, associated with Hyde and other English statesmen close to the person of the King. The Committee of Estates, nominated in 1651, which Monck swept away from Alyth, was indicted to meet in Edinburgh on 23rd August, and to form a provisional government till Parliament should assemble. This Committee had limitless powers.'

2

While all former attempts at effecting a reconciliation between the Resolutioners and Remonstrants and Protesters had failed, the sinister reports and intrigues of Sharp helping to widen the gulf between them, the Protesters, after a final effort to induce the Resolutioners to join them in presenting an address of welcome to the King, resolved to make it on their own account. On the requisition of five ministers, James Guthrie, Trail, and others, they met at Edinburgh in the house of Robert Simpson, on the same day (23rd Protesters met August) on which the Committee of Estates assembled. The Privy Council declared the meeting to be an unwarrantable and illegal conarrested, 23rd vocation tending to sedition and the rekindling of civil war, and three August 1660.

to petition

King are

times ordered them to disperse. On their refusal, soldiers were dispatched to seize them and their papers and lodge them in the Castle. They apprehended James Guthrie of Stirling; Robert Trail, Edinburgh; John Stirling, Edinburgh; Alexander Moncrieff, Scone; George Nairn, Burntisland; Gilbert Hall, Kirkliston; John Murray, Methven; John Scott, Oxnam; John Semple, Carsphairn ;

1 Mackenzie's History is valuable here. According to a letter of Mackenzie to Lauderdale of date 1678, the first part of the book was revised by Lauderdale: Wodrow MSS., xxxii. 212 Advocates' Library.

* Privy Council Register: Acta 1661-7, MSS, in Register House, Edinburgh.

Gilbert Ramsay, Mordington, ministers; and Kirko of Sandywell,
Dunscore, an elder. They were committed to close prison in
Edinburgh Castle. Robert Row, Abercorn, William Wishart,
Kinneil, left the meeting before the soldiers arrived, and Andrew
Hay of Craignethan escaped capture.1

A Supplication, seized at their capture, testifies that their inten-
tions were harmless and praiseworthy. Loyally they congratulated
Charles on his restoration, totally banned the regicides and their acts,
including toleration, warned him of popery, prelacy, and prayer-books,
prayed him to preserve the Scottish Church, craved him to own and
make all others own the Covenant and the Westminster Standards.
They concluded by praying that his piety would make him ‘a king
with all the virtues of all the godly kings of Israel.' The innocents did
not know Charles, nor his abettors.2 Glencairn and his fellows read
treason into the document at once. The prisoners maintained that
the printing of their Supplication would convince the public that their
aims were laudable, and they petitioned to be relieved, promising to
fall away
from their Remonstrance of 1650. From his cell, Stirling
wrote to his kirk-session: Yet this is my comfort that whatever the
world
say or believe, the cause I suffer for is the Lord's, and no less
than the avowing of his marriage contract in a sworn covenant

betwixt the three kingdoms.'3 To prevent other contemplated Severities of assemblies the Committee of Estates issued another illegal proclama- Privy Council. tion, 24th August, prohibiting under highest pains all meetings, conventicles, and seditious papers unauthorised by the Crown. Victims were next singled out for punishment. During September, John Graham, Provost of Glasgow, John Spreul, town clerk there, Patrick Gillespie, Principal of Glasgow University, John Jaffray, Provost of Aberdeen, and William Wishart, minister of Kinneil, were thrown into jail. Gillespie and Guthrie were carried off to Stirling Castle into safest custody.

Lamont, 158; Row, Blair, 357; Nicoll, 298; Mackenzie, 16; Act. Privy Council, 23rd August 1660.

11th September 1660: Wodrow, i. 73 note.

2 Wodrow, i. 68-71,

Return of

Sharp.

of Lauderdale.

At this very juncture Sharp returned from his mission. Although we find him in December informing his clerical correspondent in London, Patrick Drummond, that he had pleaded for Guthrie and his fellows in misfortune, this boast is not in harmony with the implacable hatred he evinced towards the Remonstrants in his letters to Lauderdale, wherein he urged Lauderdale to take extreme measures against the 'hairbrain' rebels. He rendered Guthrie's petition inept by asserting that Guthrie not only justified the murder of the King, but proclaimed that Scotland's revulsion from the deed was a sin. A little later he practically recommended to Lauderdale the extinction of these 'leading impostors, Guthiree, Gillespy, Rutherford, which will daunt the rest of the hotheads who in time may be beat into sound minds and sober practises.'1 Sharp knew this was palatable counsel to his patron and master, to his peer in treachery and deceit. For years Lauderdale had disdained to look upon the extreme Covenanters as worthy to be reckoned Scotsmen.?

Lauderdale's regard for Presbyterianism, and the Covenants which he subscribed, was now merely the memory of the obsolete faith of his callow youth. Through dark days he had clung to his early love, but on the advent of regal splendour and pleasure, that affection sickened and died in a heart which had grown corrupt. He actually told Burnet that he had recommended Presbytery to the King, who replied, The volte face let that go, for it was not a religion for a gentleman. '3 Lauderdale would be a loyal gentleman; and, after that rebuff, Presbytery to him was a mere temporary political expedient to be cast out whenever it suited the King. Since no solitary fiat could in a trice obliterate the Free Scottish Constitution-Church and State-Charles needed complotters in his nefarious design. The vision of an archiepiscopal throne glamoured the Judas of the Covenant, and a greed for pelf, power, and the pleasures which these can procure entangled the vulgar Lauderdale. Charles had got both rogues in the hollow of his hand.

1 Laud. Pap., i. 41, 57, 59, App. lxx.
3 Hist., i. 195.

2 Add. MSS., 23114, fol. 84.

the treacherous

In the royal closet the trio completed a plan, the first detail of The plan of which was a letter to be borne to the King's Scottish lieges by Sharp. trio. This royal missive, dated 'At Whitehall, the 10th of August 1660,' signed 'Lauderdale,' was addressed to Robert Douglas and to the Presbytery of Edinburgh. The crafty document began by assuring the Presbyters that Sharp had loyally executed his mission, and fully explained the ecclesiastical situation. It animadverted on some disloyal brethren, of course hinting at the Protesters and extremists generally, without considering that Sharp too had, as already narrated, supported Cromwell and taken the Tender. No mention was made of the Covenant. With studied craft the royal intentions regarding the Church were expressed thus: 'We do also resolve to protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland, as it is settled by law, without violation,' as well as the ministry living peaceably, 'as becomes men of their calling.' The joyful receivers did not perceive the quirk which Sir George Mackenzie afterwards pointed out: 'When Episcopacy was restored and this letter objected by the Presbyterians, it was answered, that before the restoration of Episcopacy all the acts whereby Episcopacy was abrogated or presbyterial government asserted, were annulled by the Act Rescissory; so that Episcopacy being the only church government then established by law, his Majesty was by that letter obliged to own it.'1 The letter further owned the legislation of the Assembly (of St. Andrews and Dundee) in 1651, promised another Assembly, adjured the Church courts to attend to ecclesiastical business only (then, as if pointing directly to the Protesters and anti-Prelatists), while stamping out conventicles-the seedplots of disaffection—and invited the Church to pray God to give the King 'fresh and constant supplies of His grace. If the Devil ever appeared as an angel of light to the unsophisticated, he did so then in Charles. The jubilant Presbyters enshrined the letter in a silver casket. On 3rd September copies of it were transmitted to other Presbyteries. The rude, mercenary Middleton, who knew the intention of Charles to establish 1 Memoirs, 16. 2 Wodrow, i. 80-4.

2