In the English army the officers prayed and preached: they "sanctified the
camp," and exhorted the men to unity of mind and godliness of life. Among
the Scots this duty was discharged by the ministers; and so fervent was
their piety, so merciless their zeal, that, in addition to their prayers,
they occasionally compelled the young king to listen to six long sermons
on the same day, during which he assumed an air of gravity, and displayed
feelings of devotion, which ill-accorded with his real disposition. But
the English had no national crime to deplore; by punishing the late king,
_they_ had atoned for the evils of the civil war; the Scots, on the
contrary, had adopted his son without any real proof of his conversion, and
therefore feared that they might draw down on the country the punishment
due to his sins and those of his family. It happened[a] that Charles, by
the advice of the earl of Eglington, presumed to visit the army on the
Links of

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 87, 88, 90. Whitelock, 467, 468.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. July 29.]

Leith. He was received with shouts of enthusiasm by the soldiers, who, on
their knees, pledged the health of their young sovereign; but the committee
of the kirk complained[a] that his presence led to ebriety and profaneness,
and he received a request,[b] equivalent to a command, to quit the camp.
The next day a declaration was made, that the company of malignants,
engagers, and enemies to the covenant, could not fail of multiplying
the judgments of God upon the land; an inquiry was instituted into the
characters of numerous individuals; and eighty officers, with many of their
men, were cashiered,[c] that they might not contaminate by their presence
the army of the saints.[1] Still it was for Charles Stuart, the chief of
the malignants, that they were to fight, and therefore from him, to appease