wise with the defeat of his fanatic friends at Dunbar. He was grown most thoroughly tired of imperious dictation and morose religion, and he took the opportunity to steal away to join Murray, Huntley, Athol, and the royalists in the highlands. On the afternoon of the 4th of October, on pretence of hawking, he rode out of Perth, and dashed away for the braes of Angus. After galloping forty miles he came to a wretched hovel of a place called Clova, where he had nothing but a turf pillow to sleep on. There he was overtaken by colonel Montgomery—for Argyll was speedily apprised of the flight of his royal prisoner, and finding two regiments of horse at hand, he knew escape was hopeless, and returned. But "the Start," which Charles's elopement was called, had opened the eyes of the covenanters to the danger of pressing him too far. They now considerably relaxed their vigour towards him, admitted him to their deliberations in council, and they thus induced him to prevail on Athol, Middleton, and the highland forces to disband.
Boscobel House.
Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the west, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the committee of estates, by colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigton, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the clerk register of parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough malignant. They drew up a remonstrance of the western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing all his old veneration for the covenant, opened a communication with thorn, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the reverend Zachery Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, ho returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, thus neither agreeing with one party nor another. and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.
On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or
