2 heads in all," besides coming badly from those who called themselves the rulers or guardians of the commonwealth of England, refutes itself when amid much weak and irrelevant verbiage its author, in reference to Lilburne's argument that the law required two witnesses, can do no more than reiterate the misstatements of the Attorney-General and the Judges. But with all their talk about liberty this rump of the Long Parliament and their Council of State appear to have become as great enemies to constitutional liberty as the Stuart whose tyranny they had overthrown. So difficult has it always been, as I have before said, to get rid of one tyrant without the substitution of another in his place. For there seems to be considerable truth in the saying that the most violent "liberty boys" are often the greatest tyrants when they have the power. But this being an imperfection incident to human nature can only be guarded against or remedied by those safeguards which good constitutional laws interpose between the subject and the will of any man or any body of men. The Long Parliament may in this way furnish a warning to their successors. And fortunately they were neither the first nor the last who fought for English constitutional liberty. The great barons had fought before them, and had left to England the germs at least of much of what distinguished her from all the nations of the earth. It is worthy of observation that such an acquittal as this of Lilburne could not have taken place in Scotland, in France, or anywhere else but in England. It proved that some spark of the old constitutional liberty still lived under the iron heel of the parliamentary armies, though they had marched from victory to victory till their masters had 1 Answer to the Account of Lilburne's Trial. State Trials, vol. iv. p. 1469. 2 State Trials, vol. iv. p. 1449. almost forgot that an English Court of Justice was a field where even they might sustain a defeat that would be equal to the loss of a battle. Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne, soon after his acquittal on the charge of high treason, having been elected a common-council-man of London, a petition was presented to the House on the 26th of December, 1649, from several aldermen and the sheriffs of London against him; on which the Parliament resolved, "That Lieut.-Col. Lilburne was, by the late Act 'For disabling the election of divers persons to any office or place of trust within the city of London,' disabled to be chosen a common-council-man; and his election was void." Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1344. CHAPTER V. WE must now direct our attention to the state of affairs in Scotland, where the Presbyterian oligarchy was preparing to give effect to the indignation and hatred entertained by them against that party which now ruled England, and which they designated by the contemptuous appellation of the "English Sectaries." The state of parties had undergone a great change since the times when the predecessor of the "Council of State" had been the "Committee of both Kingdoms," in which together with several members of the present Council of State had sat as the representatives of Scotland, the Earl of Loudon, the Lord Maitland, the Lord Wariston, Sir Charles Erskine, Mr. Robert Barclay, Mr. Kennedy.' the earlier part of the struggle between King Charles and his Parliament the English and the Scottish Parliaments had a common interest, namely the interest of securing themselves against the King's attempt to make himself absolute. In this earlier period the Presbyterians were the 1 Journal of the resolutions and proceedings of the Committee of both kingdoms, commencing February 1642. MS. State Paper Office. "Orders for the manner of proceeding. 1. A chairman to be chosen to continue a fortnight. 2. The Earl of Northumberland the first fortnight. 3. That the chairman be instructed to provide some minister of the Assembly In to pray daily at the meeting and rising of the Committee." The Committee met first at Essex House; then Feb. 19, 164, at Yorke House; Feb. 20, at Warwick House; Feb. 21, at Arundell House; Feb. 22, at Worcester House; Feb. 23, at Derby House; and there they continued to meet. Journal, ibid. dominant party in the English Parliament, and during this period the English Parliament and Scottish Parliament agreed in the main; inasmuch as they both held and acted upon the principle that all the higher offices and commands belonged of right, that is by right of birth, to the nobility. But when the Independents, who held on the other hand and acted on the principle that at least military and naval commands were to be conferred, not on men of large rent-rolls or long pedigrees, but on men who knew how to win battles, turned the Presbyterians out of the English Parliament, the Scottish Parliament prepared for war against them. This was the real point on which they were at issue. The question however was complicated by many other considerations that entered into it, some of which I will endeavour to explain. Some of these considerations, particularly the Scottish Parliament's professions of zeal to avenge the King's blood, were introduced to attempt to wash out some portion of the infamy of selling their king to the English Parliament. There is perhaps no part of modern history where the truth has been more systematically kept out of sight than the history of Scotland. The explanation of the transaction of the sale of King Charles the First to the English Parliament for a sum of money under the name of arrears of pay, given by Sir Walter Scott, is one among a hundred examples of this. Sir Walter Scott says that "this sordid and base transaction, though the work exclusively of a mercenary army, stamped the whole nation of Scotland with infamy."1 Now I believe the army and the people of Scotland had no more voice or part in the transaction than the people of Germany have or had in the sale of their bodies and blood by their princes and 1 History of Scotland, contained in Tales of a Grandfather, vol. i. p. 464. potentates. The Scottish army was not an army of mercenaries at all, but an army levied partly on the feudal, partly on the Celtic clan principle carried into operation with an unrelenting severity. Such men did not serve for pay, but their service was the condition on which they held, some their estates, some their farms, some their kailyards of their feudal superiors. Arrears of pay were claimed and paid. Paid to whom? To the covenanted oligarchy for the time being, who paid perhaps some part of the money to the colonels of regiments. Now who were at that time the colonels of regiments in the army of the Covenanted Oligarchy and Kirk of Scotland? This is a subject somewhat dark; but after much digging in the rubbish heaps and fossil remains of Scotch records and Scotch peerages and baronages, we obtain some glimpses of light. Thus in 1644 we find a certain individual styled the Laird of Lawers petitioning the Scotch Parliament that his troop of horse may be mustered and paid.' Again, we find that the body of horse under Strahan that defeated and captured Montrose in Ross-shire was partly composed of 36 musquetaires of Lawers' regiment. Again, we are told that, at the battle of Dunbar, Lawers' regiment of Highlanders "stood to the push of pike and were all cut in pieces." Now the first impression naturally is that this Laird of Lawers must have been some long tried and very distinguished officer; probably some hardy old veteran of Gustavus Adolphus. Some small misgiving is indeed con 1 Balfour, vol. iii. p. 176. 2 Balfour, vol. iv. p. 9. It is observable that the word 66 musquetaires" is here used in the sense of the French " 'mousquetaires " " who corresponded to the English or Scottish regiments of Life or Horse Guards. At the same time, as the infantry regi- |