and Warning," they
announced[a] to their countrymen the thirteen causes of this national
calamity, the reasons why "God had veiled for a time his face from the sons
of Jacob." It was by the general profaneness of the land, by the manifest
provocations of the king and the king's house, by the crooked and
precipitant ways of statesmen in the treaty of Breda, by the toleration of
malignants in the king's household, by suffering his guard to join in the
battle without a previous purgation, by the diffidence of some officers
who refused to profit by advantages furnished to them by God, by the
presumption of others who promised victory to themselves without eyeing of
God, by the rapacity and oppression exercised by the soldiery, and by the
carnal self-seeking of men in power, that God had been provoked to visit
his people with so direful and yet so merited a chastisement.[1]

To the young king the defeat at Dunbar was a subject of real and
ill-dissembled joy. Hitherto he had been a mere puppet in the hands of
Argyle and his party; now their power was broken, and it was not impossible
for him to gain the ascendancy. He entered into a negotiation with Murray,
Huntley, Athol, and the numerous royalists in the Highlands; but the
secret, without the particulars, was betrayed to Argyle,[b] probably by
Buckingham, who disapproved of the project; and all the cavaliers but three
received an order to leave the court in twenty-four hours--the

[Footnote 1: Balfour, iv. 98-107.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Sept. 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Sept. 27.]

kingdom in twenty days. The vigilance of the guards prevented the execution
of the plan which had been laid; but one afternoon, under pretence of
hawking, Charles escaped[a] from Perth, and riding forty-two miles, passed
the night in a miserable hovel, called Clova, la the braes of Angus. At
break of day he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery, who advised him[b] to
return, while the Viscount Dudhope urged him to proceed to the mountains,
where he would be joined by seven thousand armed men. Charles wavered; but
Montgomery directed his attention to two regiments of horse that waited at
a distance to intercept his progress, and the royal fugitive consented[c]
to return to his former residence in Perth.[1]

The Start (so this adventure was called) proved, however, a warning to the
committee of estates. They prudently admitted the apology of the king, who
attributed[d] his flight to informat