adopted, by sending into England a large army to the assistance of
the Parliament, were determined on their part to embrace the earliest
opportunity of declaring for the King, and making such a diversion
as should at least compel the recall of General Leslie's army out of
England, if it did not recover a great part of Scotland to the King's
allegiance. This plan was chiefly adopted by the northern nobility, who
had resisted with great obstinacy the adoption of the Solemn League and
Covenant, and by many of the chiefs of the Highland clans, who conceived
their interest and authority to be connected with royalty, who had,
besides, a decided aversion to the Presbyterian form of religion, and
who, finally, were in that half savage state of society, in which war is
always more welcome than peace.

Great commotions were generally expected to arise from these concurrent
causes; and the trade of incursion and depredation, which the Scotch
Highlanders at all times exercised upon the Lowlands, began to assume a
more steady, avowed, and systematic form, as part of a general military
system.

Those at the head of affairs were not insensible to the peril of the
moment, and anxiously made preparations to meet and to repel it. They
considered, however, with satisfaction, that no leader or name of
consequence had as yet appeared to assemble an army of royalists,
or even to direct the efforts of those desultory bands, whom love of
plunder, perhaps, as much as political principle, had hurried into
measures of hostility. It was generally hoped that the quartering a
sufficient number of troops in the Lowlands adjacent to the Highland
line, would have the effect of restraining the mountain chieftains;
while the power of various barons in the north, who had espoused the
Covenant, as, for example, the Earl Mareschal, the great families of