. Fresh from its
victory, the New Model pushed over the Border, while the peasants of
Ayrshire and the West rose in a "Whiggamore raid" (notable as the first
event in which we find the name "Whig," which is possibly the same as
our "Whey," and conveys a taunt against the "sour-milk" faces of the
fanatical Ayrshiremen), and, marching upon Edinburgh, in September,
dispersed the Royalist party and again installed Argyle in power.

[Sidenote: Demand of justice on the king.]

Argyle welcomed Cromwell as a deliverer, but the victorious general had
hardly entered Edinburgh when he was recalled by pressing news from the
South. The temper with which the Parliament had met the Royalist revolt
was, as we have seen, widely different from that of the Army. It had
recalled the eleven members, and had passed the Ordinance against
heresy. At the moment of the victory at Preston the Lords were
discussing charges of treason against Cromwell, while in September
commissioners were again sent to the Isle of Wight, in spite of the
resistance of the Independents, to conclude peace with the king.
Royalists and Presbyterians alike pressed Charles to grasp the easy
terms which were now offered him. But if his hopes from Scotland had
utterly broken down, they had given place to hopes of a new war with the
aid of an army from Ireland; and the negotiators of the Houses saw forty
days wasted in useless chicanery. "Nothing," Charles wrote to his
friends, "is changed in my designs." With Ireland and Scotland on his
side, with Royalists still in arms in the eastern counties, with the
Houses at issue with the Army, and as it seemed on the point of yielding
unconditionally to the king in their dread of organic changes, he
believed that the hour of his triumph was at last at hand. But the
surrender of Colchester to Fairfax in August and Cromwell's convention
with Argyle had now set free the Army, and it at once struck fiercely at
its foes. Petitions from its regiments demanded "justice on the king." A
fresh "Remonstrance" from the Council of Officers called for the
election of a new Parliament; for electoral reform; for the recognition
of the supremacy of the Houses "in all things"; for the change of
kingship, should it be retained, into a magistracy elected by the
Parliament, and without veto on its proceedings. Above all they demanded
"that the capital and grand author of our troubles, by whose
commissions, commands, and procurements, and in whose beha