enderson's "Supplication"; its supporters drew up a second petition
boldly asking that the bishops should be tried as the real authors of
the disturbances, and, in November, 1637, they chose a body of
commissioners to represent them. These commissioners, and some
sub-committees of them, are known in Scottish history as The Tables, the
name being applied to several different bodies. Charles replied to the
second petition in wrathful terms, and it was decided to revive the
National Covenant of 1581, to renounce popery. It had been drawn up
under fear of a popish plot, and was itself an expansion of the Covenant
of 1557. To it was now added a declaration suited to immediate
necessities. On the 1st and 2nd March, 1638, it was signed by vast
multitudes in the churchyard of Greyfriars, in Edinburgh, and it
continued to be signed, sometimes under pressure, throughout the land.
Hamilton, Charles's agent in Scotland, was quite unable to meet the
situation. In the end Charles had to agree to the meeting of a General
Assembly in Glasgow, in November, 1638. Hamilton, the High Commissioner,
attempted to obtain the ejection of laymen and to create a division
among his opponents. When he failed in this, he dissolved the Assembly
in the king's name. At the instance of Henderson, supported by Argyll,
the Assembly refused to acknowledge itself dissolved, and proceeded to
abolish Episcopacy and re-establish the Presbyterian form of Church
government.

The king, on his part, began to concert measures with his Privy Council
for the subjugation of Scotland. The "Committee on Scotch affairs" of
the English Privy Council was obviously unconstitutional, but matters
were fast drifting towards civil war, and it was no time to consider
constitutional niceties. It is much more important that the committee
was divided and useless. Wentworth, writing from Ireland, advised the
king to maintain a firm attitude, but not to provoke an outbreak of war
at so inconvenient a moment. Charles again attempted a compromise. He
offered to withdraw Laud's unlucky service-book, the new canons, and
even the Articles of Perth, and to limit the power of the bishops; and
he asked the people to sign the Covenant of 1580-81, on which the new
Covenant was based, but which, of course, contained no reference to
immediate difficulties. But it was too late; the sentiment of religious
independence had become united to the old feeling of national
independence, and war was inevi