consisted, was not discipline, nor, perhaps, loyalty, but rather that constant spirit of enterprise, which even victory would have relaxed; his object was, not immediate partial conflict, but, by rousing the loyal districts of Scotland with a sight of the king's standard, and the war-cry of a known leader, to prepare the way for shaking off from his country the whole incubus of rebellion. Once, but once only, he avoided battle. Macdonald had been detached, with a division of his Kerns, on a separate expedition to the western highlands, when Montrose fell in with the army of the Estates, augmented, by the recent junction of the northern covenanters, to 15,000 foot and above 1,000 horse. To engage, in a general attack, an army whose strength in cavalry alone nearly equalled that of his own entire force, was impossible. He therefore availed himself of the shelter of a wood, on the skirts of which some skirmishes took place, for several successive days, with no advantage to the more numerous party. At length Argyle adopted a mode of warfare more suited to his genius; he succeeded, by means of bribes and persuasions, in detaching the majority of his enemy's lowland followers, who were mostly, indeed, unequal to the tremendous hardships of a winter campaign in those inhospitable regions. But the defection made no change in the purposes of Graham. He now, in turn, at the end of November, became the pursuer. Learning that Argyle had dismissed his horse to winterquarters, and was marching southward with his infantry, he again traversed the mountains, now clothed in all their wintry horrors, with the purpose of forcing him to fight; but the wary covenanter, getting timely notice, left his army to shift for itself, hastened to Perth, and thence to Edinburgh; where, moved by his own shame, or by the dissatisfaction of his employers, he resigned his commission.

At Blair-Athol, their original place of rendezvous, Alaster Macdonald rejoined the expedition with a reinforcement of 500 royalists. Montrose now resolved to retaliate upon his foe the severities which Argyle had inflicted on those districts called "malignant," by carrying the war into the heart of that chieftain's country. Advancing through Breadalbane, and along the borders of Loch Tay, he marched right upon the Campbell's strong hold of Inverary, deemed by himself inaccessible to an enemy. The great Mac Cailinmore, who stretched the despotism of rebellion over all Scotland, fled affrighted before the leader of a little tumultuary band, on whose head he had so lately set a price. Throwing himself into a fishing-boat, he made his escape to Dumbarton, leaving his broad inheritance to be wasted by fire and rapine. Nor was the work of destruction negligently done. "From Inverary to Lorn and Glenco, and thence through Lochaber to Glengarry and Lochness," the flocks and herds were all swept away, every thing combustible committed to the flames, and the whole country reduced to "a howling wilderness." No blood, however, flowed in this fierce fray; "in regard," drily remarks the contemporary historian, "that all the people also, following their lord's example, had delivered themselves by flight."

Argyle's staff was given to General Baillie, under whom the renegade Hurry was appointed second in command. Marching westward from Perth, Baillie found Argyle at Dumbarton, and proceeded under his guidance to encounter Montrose, who was now pursuing the work of devastation in Lochaber. "And the marquess, knowing well that

the enemy was gone, went home with pomp and convened all his friends from their lurking-places to follow upon Montrose's rear. And, to make his power the more formidable, he called over from Ireland Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbrech, a colonel in the Scotch army there, and divers other commanders of his name. The project was, that when Baillie's army did charge Montrose in the front, Argyle and his men (who were till then to march slowly, and keep at a distance) should come up and fall upon his rear, whereby he might inevitably be swallowed up."

It was Montrose's first intention, with a view to avoid the obvious danger of being enclosed between two armies, to advance eastward, and at once give battle to the general. Suddenly, however, he learned that Argyle, pursuing his accustomed caution, had posted his army securely under the walls of Inverlochy, there to wait the issue of the expected conflict. By a rapid and secret march across the mountains of Lochaber, exceeding in difficulty all that had gone before, he brought his little army, at sunset on the second day, within sight of the frowning towers of that ancient castle. On the first alarm, that a division of the royalists had appeared in the vicinity of Inverlochy, the chief of the Campbells, taking with him his most intimate friends (and among them, says Bishop Guthry, "Mr. Mungo Law, minister of Edinburgh, whom he had invited to go along with him to bear witness to the wonders he meant to perform,") embarked in his galley on the loch. The sun had just risen, when, springing from the foot of Ben Nevis, where, "wet and weary, in frost and snow," they had passed the night in arms, Montrose's rude battalions poured down upon Inverlochy. His right consisted of an Irish regiment led by Alaster Macdonald; his left, of a similar corps commanded by a gallant Hibernian gentleman, named O'Kyan; in the centre advanced the noble Graham himself, accompanied by a few horse, and supported by the highlanders of Athol and Glenco. From the boat, whence he issued his orders, Argyle beheld, in the very first charge, his standard captured, and his whole army thrown into irretrievable confusion. Numbers of the Campbells, though deserted by their chief, fell bravely fighting, claymore in hand, where they stood; but the greater part, cut down in the pursuit, strewed the banks or stained the waters of the loch, for the space of many miles. It would appear hardly credible, did not the records of that decisive day agree in the statement, that while the slain on the Campbell's side amounted to full fifteen hundred, on the part of the loyalists no more than four individuals perished; of whom, however, one was Sir Thomas Ogilvy, the dearest friend of Montrose, whose prowess had greatly contributed to the result.

The battle of Inverlochy was fought on the 2nd day of February. On the 12th Argyle appeared before the parliament at Edinburgh, "having," writes Guthry, "his left arm tied up in a scarf, as if he had been at a bones-breaking;" and there, with a degree of veracity proportioned to his courage, narrated the disastrous close of his expedition. Meanwhile the victor transmitted to Oxford a manly and soldier-like despatch, in which, after giving an account of his successes, he encourages Charles's hopes of a triumphant issue to the great contest in which he was engaged, and implored him not to make peace with the rebel parliament till they had laid down their arms. This letter reached the

king just before the expiration of the treaty at Uxbridge, and may have helped to encourage him in that steadfast adherence to the great principles he had laid down for his guidance, which some writers have branded as "infatuated obstinacy;" but it can scarcely have had anything to do with the breaking up of the negotiations. That Charles had become a thorough convert to Montrose's views with regard to Scotland, and expected his lieutenant's brilliant exploits to have the effect of ultimately turning the scale of fortune in his favour, is evident from his letters written about this time. We may blame the sanguine temper and ready confidence which betrayed the king; for in the main object of rousing Scotland to a sense of loyal duty to her sovereign, little or no progress had been made; while all that had been achieved besides was likely to prove worthless, if not injurious, to the royal cause. The motives of Montrose himself were not believed free from the stimulus of private hatred: the names of Antrim and his popish Caterans excited the most virulent abhorrence throughout the whole covenanting community; the mode of carrying on the war was both barbarous in itself and futile in its results. Flaming villages, and devastated fields, and towns plundered, or choked with the carcases of helpless burghers; but neither affections conciliated, nor military positions established: these were trophies worse than useless to a monarch engaged in a contest with his subjects. In short, the wars of Montrose, even while victory followed without a check the standard he so bravely bore, could afford no solid benefits to compensate the facilities presented by them, for the malicious comments of the king's enemies, or the regrets they occasioned to the judicious among his friends. It is for this reason that we have passed so hastily over a history, the romantic details of which might have been expected to be found in a work which professes to bring into prominence the heroic features of the history of the civil wars. Montrose's ardour did not, however, in the least betray his judgment, when, in the despatch referred to, he thus spoke of the parliament: "The more your majesty grants, the more will be asked, and I have too much reason to know that they will not rest satisfied with less than making your majesty a king of straw."

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CHAPTER XVIII.

OXFORD SUFFERINGS OF THE COUNTRY,

CHARLES had quickly occasion to perceive, notwithstanding the comparatively favourable issue of the late campaign, the fitful lustre thrown upon his arms by the actions of Montrose, and the divided state of the enemy, that the cause of monarchy, in his view so sacred, (and, because sacred, therefore ultimately sure,) had, since the failure of the Uxbridge treaty, grievously sunk in the estimation even of his own court. The antiparliament, which, on the occasion of their first sitting at Oxford, in the winter of 1643-4, advocated peace, but in a tone of respect and moderation, was now, at its re-assembling, disturbed by a faction resolved to force the king to continue his attempts to procure an accommodation on any terms. "Base and mutinous motions," as Charles himself characterized them, were brought forward by this party, to effect their object: among others, one for the impeachment of Digby, the strenuous opponent of dishonourable compromise, on whose advice the king, at this time, placed much dependence. He therefore prorogued the untractable assembly, and deprived the leaders of the faction of their power to obstruct his measures, by sending them into honourable exile in attendance on the queen. It was with reference to these occurrences that, in a letter to Henrietta, he let fall the expression "mongrel parliament," so frequently harped upon by those who themselves vehemently denied the right of that "junto," as they styled it, to be regarded as legitimate. His use of that contemptuous epithet is reasonably enough explained by the king. "The truth is," he writes to secretary Nicholas, in August, 1645, "that Sussex's factiousness at that time put me somewhat out of patience, which made me freely vent my displeasure against those of his party, to my wife; and the intention of that phrase was, that his faction did what they could to make it come to that, by their raising and fomenting of base propositions."

The clamour for peace, to be purchased by whatever sacrifice, nevertheless continued loud in Oxford. In the pleasant, but somewhat anomalous head-quarters of the belligerent monarch, were assembled nearly all those who, from motives of fear or self-interest, most dreaded a disastrous termination, or even a longer continuance, of the war. Courtiers, whose large hereditary rentals were now unequal to supply the demands of fashionable luxury, or even of modest need, while their princely mansions and "immemorial woods," yielding their ancient honours to the destroying hand of sequestration, swelled the rebel treasury at Goldsmith's Hall, and strung the sinews of that war which consumed themselves ladies, who looked forward with terror to another campaign, when the necessities of the king would oblige him at once to reduce the garrison, and to leave Oxford exposed to inroads from the advanced posts of the enemy, or even from fresh armies which

they might pour westward out of the capital: the unwarlike tribe of university doctors and professors, at this time numerously reinforced by loyal country clergymen, who had sought security from military violence and agrarian insult beneath the ægis of the Christian Athena :—such, mingled with the men of diplomacy, the gallant cavaliers, and the coarser soldiery, constituted the multifarious and thronging population of those fanes consecrated to learning, those "awful cells," the dim retreats raised for piety and meditation. Of necessity, the ordinary calm pursuits of the university were interrupted, or wholly suspended. The progress of the great contest-the news of every hour-presented a subject too exciting, not to take precedence of, or to exclude, every ordinary topic. The unwonted and incongruous multitude required extraordinary supplies of provision, which had often to be brought from a distance; and, many times, waggons laden with flour and country produce were intercepted, herds of cattle, collected with no gentle hand by the royalists, were swept off by bolder or more numerous bands, within the parliamentarian lines, to fatten the London citizens, or to supply Fairfax's sturdy troopers with that vigour which they displayed equally in devotion and in fighting. No marvel, that in the university and city, as thus circumstanced, were found those who anxiously joined the common cry for peace. In their united petition for it, in 1644, they represent to the king "the study of good literature, for so many ages famously extant in this ancient university, neglected—our city reduced to great distresses ;" and crave a termination to the cruel contest between himself and his parliament, "that the schools of good learning in the kingdom, especially this famous university, may again flourish, and bring forth painful labourers and pious instructors into the Lord's vineyard." The terrors and uneasiness of the more numerous, and less informed, were at the same time encouraged by the desertion to the parliament of several peers and other eminent persons, whose selfishness took alarm at the growing difficulties of the king. Dering led the way; Savile, Andover, Mowbray, followed. "What a running disease," sneered the scurrilous London mercuries, "possesses these Oxford lords! It is a sign the building is ready to fall, when the pillars slip away."

Oxford, however, notwithstanding its inconveniencies and its fears, both of which were immeasurably augmented when the dreaded departure of the king became the signal for the approach of the parliamentarian army to within musket-shot of its walls, was among the few places in the kingdom that enjoyed an exemption from the more formidable evils attendant on a state of civil warfare. Every county, and a large proportion of the towns, of England, had been the scene of bloodshed and rapine. The occasional barbarities, and habitual licence and oppression, of which the troops, and even the officers of the royalist army, were guilty, are confessed and deplored on many occasions by the noble historian on the other hand, the entries in the ruder but not less honest record of Whitelocke, frequently relate, about this time in particular, to the criminal atrocities of the parliamentarian soldiers. On this painful subject a distinction has been drawn. It is alleged that the disorders in the rebel armies were attributable only to the coarse passions of the common soldiers, and were perpetrated in spite of the exertions of their officers to preserve strict discipline; that in the king's armies, on the contrary, the brutal