ABSTRACT
Argyll had been able to make statesmanlike demands for unity and co-operation when addressing the English, but he had no intention of compromise within Scotland. Montrose was still in the Highlands trying to raise another army. The king was persuaded to call on him to lay down his arms and go overseas, but the wayward Huntly remained in arms. It would not be possible, in the social opinion of the day, to guard the king so closely that he could not intrigue with persons outside his prison: if he was going to do this he had better do it in England. So they sold him and went home. Charles did not remain long in the hands of Parliament. The removal of the Scottish army from England shifted the balance of power in politics and religion. As Baillie had noticed with dismay it was ‘neither reason nor religion that stayes some men’s rage, but a strong armie bridleing them with fear’. This realistic assessment was beyond the power of the English Parliamentary party, who tried to disband their own army without paying for it. Financial and religious protest combined and was effective. To the alarm of the Scots, the English army seized the king in June 1647, and in July it dealt with a Presbyterian demand from London by marching on the city. But Charles was no more cowed by this than by defeat. At the end of the year he made the Engagement-an alliance with envoys from Scotland, Loudoun, the young Lauderdale, and Lanark. The king would not take the Covenant, but he was to declare for Presbyterianism as the settlement in England for the next three years, and the Scots were to back him up by fighting for the vestiges of his prerogative there, the veto, and the control of appointments to office and the army. The Engagers had committed their country to fighting the trained army of England for a religious settlement there that would be without political guarantees.
