Even amongst his own friends, the wily old bishop of Lincoln, Williams, whom the king, in the absence of Laud, and the loss of Stratford, had taken into favour, and who was soon to be archbishop of York, advised Charles to keep away from the Scots. He assured him that they would ferret out any secret negotiations that might pass betwixt himself and the royal party, and make the English commons acquainted with it; and that he would do much better to remain, and employ himself in corrupting and winning over as many as he could of the parliamentary leaders. The commons insisted on his appointing a regency, if he should go, to act during his absence; but he consented only to the naming of a commission. It was not till the 10th of August that he got permission for his journey, and he was not destined to depart without having another proof of the animus of the house of commons. On the 4th, serjeant Wild presented to the lords a bill of impeachment against thirteen of the bishops—Laud's name being put among them—for their late manufacturing of canons and constitutions contrary to law. They made their grant of a benevolence to the king an offence under the name of a bribe, and by this means, though they had not been able to exclude all the bishops from the upper house for ever, they excluded these thirteen for a time.
At length Charles was enabled to set out. He had made the earl of Holland commander-in-chief of the forces, much to the disgust of the friends of Essex, who was appointed commander only of those south of the Trent. He was attended in his coach by his nephew, Charles Louis, the nominal elector palatine, the duke of Lennox, now duke of Richmond, and the marquis of Hamilton, rather ominous associates. The king had not been gone a week, however, when Holland having quarrelled with the queen, and the king having refused to make a baron at his suggestion, by which he would have got ten thousand pounds, sent a letter to the house of lords, obscurely intimating some new practices and designs against parliament. The lords communicated to the commons this letter, and the two houses immediately appointed a commission to proceed to Scotland, ostensibly to procure the ratification of the late treaty, but really to keep watch over the king and his partizans. To this duty were named the earl of Bedford, lord Edward Howard, Sir William Almayne, Sir Philip Stnpleton, Mr. Hampden, and Nathaniel Fiennes. The king endeavoured to gel rid of this unwelcome commission, declaring it needless, and refused to sign the commission when sent to him; but the parliament still pressing it, he allowed the commissioners to proceed to Scotland to attend him; all of whom did so except the earl of Bedford.
Charles had set out with the resolve to win over as many of his enemies as possible, and to please the Scots at large if possible, thereby to raise up a counter influence to that at home At the northern camp, which was not yet broken up, he did all that was possible to corrupt the officers, went to dine with old Leslie, the Scottish general, and soon after ennobled, him. At Edinburgh he flattered the covenanters by attaching their preachings, and went so far as to appoint Alexander Henderson, the stout champion of the covenant. his chaplain appearing to take especial delight in his conversation and having him constantly about him. In fact, when Charles had a motive for fawning on a particular party, he generally overdid it. He ratified all the acts of the last session of the Scottish parliament. As regarded the incendiaries, as they were called, that is, Charles's former ministers, who had been imprisoned for executing his commands, he promised on their release to give their offices to such persons as had pleased the parliament. He submitted to them a list of forty-two councillors, and nine great officers of state. The parliament conceded so far as to release all the incendiaries but five, and these were to be referred to a committee for trial, and their sentence to be pronounced by the king. So far, all promised well, but the covenanters were desirous to have the earl of Argyll, who had so openly espoused their cause in the general assembly, appointed to the chief post in the ministry, that of chancellor; but Charles conferred it on Loudon. Argyll strove for the next, that of treasurer, a post of great emolument, but Charles named to it lord Ormond; but the parliament would not consent, and the contest for this appointment had gone on ten days, when the feud thus commenced, spite of the condescension of the king, was rent still wider by the occurrence which is known in Scottish history by the name of the "Incident."
Since Charles had come to Edinburgh, he had continued to keep up his correspondence with the marquis of Montrose, who was still prisoner in the castle, and who, notwithstanding his known intrigue with the king, had by concert with him kept up a pretence of being a zealous covenanter. A letter from Montrose, revealing the progress of this correspondence, had been found by some traitorous person about the king, supposed, indeed, to have been taken from his pocket, and that by the marquis of Hamilton it was sent to the covenanters. Montrose found means to convey to the king his ideas about it, and to warn him especially of the treasonable proceedings and intentions of Hamilton and Argyll. Hamilton, since his having, at Charles's request, assumed the part of a favourer of the covenanters, had had the usual fate of such go-betweens, and became suspected of being more really of that party than he pretended. The king had grown cool in his manner to Hamilton: the letters of Montrose, conveyed through William Murray, a favourite groom of the bed-chamber, urged the king, as we are assured by Clarendon, to make away with the traitors Hamilton and Argyll. At this juncture, the young lord Kerr sent by the earl of Crawford a challenge of treason to Hamilton, who appealed to parliament in his justification, and Kerr was compelled to make an apology. But if we are to believe Hamilton himself, this did not prevent the prosecution of the plot to assassinate or carry them off to some place of concealment. He says, in a letter to his brother, lord Lanark, in the Hardwicke State Papers, that he was sent for suddenly by his brother and Argyll, as he was engaged with some company, desiring him to go to them on matters of the utmost consequence. When he went, he was informed by them that they had been desired to go to general Leslie, at his house, who informed there of a plot to kill or carry them away, which was thus to be accomplished;—The king was to summon them to his presence, as if to consult with them; but on entering the ante-chamber, they were to be surrounded by two or three hundred armed men, headed by the
