ur refusal, we will be obliged to settle religion and peace
without you, which will ruin your majesty and your posterity. We own,
the propositions are higher in some things than we approve of, but the
only way to establish your majesty is to consent to them at present.
Your majesty may recover, in a time of peace, all that you have lost in
a time of tempest and trouble." Whether or not the king found him a true
prophet in all this, must be left to the history of these times.

He was again employed in the like errand to the king, _anno_ 1648, but
with no better success, as appears from two excellent speeches to the
Scots parliament at his return, concerning these proceedings[118]. And
in the same year, in the month of June, he was with a handful of
covenanters at a communion at Mauchline muir, where they were set upon
by Calender and Middleton's forces, after they had given their promise
to his lordship of the contrary.

Although this noble earl (through the influence of the earl of Lanerk)
had given his consent at first to the king, who was setting on foot an
army for his own rescue, yet he came to be among those who protested
against the duke of Hamilton's unlawful engagement. To account some way
for this,--He had before received a promise of a gift of the teinds, and
a gift sometimes blindeth the eyes, and much more of a nobleman whose
estate was at that time somewhat burdened; but by converting with some
of the protesting side, and some ministers, who discovered to him his
mistake (when his foot was well nigh slipt), he was so convinced that
this was contrary to his trust, that he subscribed an admonition to more
stedfastness for the commission of the church, in the high church of
Edinburgh.

But at last Charles I, being executed, and his son Charles II. called
home by the Scots, a new scene begins to appear _anno_ 1650, for
malignants being then again brought into places of power and trust, it
behoved the lord chancellor (who never was a friend to malignants) to
demit. He had now for near the space of ten years presided in
parliament, and had been highly instrumental in the hand of the Lord, to
establish in this nation, both in church and state, the purest
reformation that ever was established in any particular nation, under
the new Testament dispensation; but now he was turned out, and lord
Burleigh substituted in his place.

In what manner he was mostly employed during the time of Cromwel's
usurpation, there i