present work. Of the date of the birth of Archibald Johnston, and the circumstances of his education, no memorial has been preserved: he entered as advocate in 1633. In the great national disturbances which commenced in 1637, Johnston took an early and distinguished part; acting, apparently, as only second to Sir Thomas Hope in giving legal advice to the covenanters. The second or general supplication of the nation to Charles I. for relief from his episcopal innovations was prepared by the earl of Rothes and Archibald Johnston, the former being preferred on account of his distinction as an active and influential partisan, and the latter from the general character given of him by his friends, as singularly well acquainted with the history and constitution of the genuine presbyterian church of Scotland. This document, which was presented to the privy council on the 24th of September, 1637, in the presence of a band of the supporters of its principles, which made the act more solemn than a regal pageant, leaves for the politicians of all ages a fine specimen of that calmness in reasoning and statement which men of judgment and principle know to be necessary for the preservation of order in a state, when they are representing grievances, however deep, to a governor, however unreasonable; and of that firmness of position, which, when supported by a hold of popular opinion, must either be allowed to prevail, or leave to him who obstructs it the odium of the confusion which may follow. After the supplicants, who had increased to a vast body of men, spreading over the whole of the southern part of Scotland, had united themselves under a representative constitution, termed "the Tables," a renewal of the national covenant was judged a useful measure for a combination of effort, and the insurance of a general union and purpose. Johnston and the celebrated Alexander Henderson were employed to suit the revered obligation to which their ancestors had sworn, to the new purpose for which it was applied, by including the protestations against the liturgy of the episcopal church, under the general declarations which it previously bore against the doctrine of the church of Rome, and adducing authorities in support of the new application. The obligation was signed in March, 1638, under circumstances too well known to be recapitulated.[1]
Johnston, although, from his secondary rank, he did not then assume the authority of a leader, was, from his knowledge and perseverance, more trusted to in the labours of the opposition than any other man, and his name continually recurs as the agent in every active measure. To the unyielding and exasperating proclamation, which was read at the market-cross of Edinburgh on the 22nd of February, 1638, he prepared and read aloud, on a scaffold erected for the purpose, the celebrated protestation in name of the Tables, while the dense crowd who stood around prevented the issuers of the proclamation from departing before they heard the answer to their challenge. On the 8th of July, the king issued another proclamation, which, though termed "A proclamation of favour and grace," and though it promised a maintenance of the religion presently professed within the kingdom without innovation, an interim suspension of the service book, a rectification of the high commission, and the loudly called for general assembly and parliament, was, with reason, deemed more dangerous than a defiance. Johnston had a protestation prepared for the delicacy of this trying occasion, which, with the decorum from which he seems on no occasion to have departed, he, "in all humility, with submissive reverence," presented in presence of the multitude.[2] When, on the 22nd of September, the parliament and
