ABSTRACT
A series of court-martials and show trials resulted in a number of royalist commanders captured in the second Civil War being brought either before a firing squad or to the scaffold, the most prominent victims being Hamilton and Holland. The men who made clandestine journeys into England during earliest and possibly bleakest years of the Cavalier winter had in a number of cases significantly different backgrounds from those of Murray, O'Neill, Cochrane, Firebrace, Seymour and most of the other persons who have so far featured prominently in this study of the activities of royalist agents. William Fleming, an old friend of Montrose to whom he was related, had, as we have seen already, plenty of experience as an envoy and messenger in the complex and violent world of Scottish politics. Finally, no foreign state seemed willing to provide any significant aid to what appeared to be an increasingly desperate and forlorn Stuart cause.
