with Leslie
as commander of his army. Cromwell outmanoeuvred Leslie and seized
Perth, and the royal forces retaliated by the invasion of England, which
ended in the defeat of Worcester on September 3rd, 1651, exactly one
year after Dunbar. The king escaped and fled to France.

Scotland was now unable to resist Monk, whom Cromwell had left behind
him when he went southwards to defeat Charles at Worcester. On the 14th
August he captured Stirling, and on the 28th the Committee of Estates
was seized at Alyth and carried off to London. There was no further
attempt at opposition, and all Scotland, for the first time since the
reign of Edward I, was in military occupation by English troops. The
property of the leading supporters of Charles II was confiscated. In
1653 the General Assembly was reduced to pleading that "we were an
ecclesiastical synod, a spiritual court of Jesus Christ, which meddled
not with anything civil"; but their unwonted humility was of no avail to
save them. An earlier victim than the Assembly was the Scottish
Parliament. It was decided in 1652 that Scotland should be incorporated
with England, and from February of that year till the Restoration, the
kingdom of Scotland ceased to exist. The "Instrument" of Government of
1653 gave Scotland thirty members in the British Parliament. Twenty were
allotted to the shires--one to each of the larger shires and one to each
of nine groups of less important shires. There were also eight groups of
burghs, each group electing one member, and two members were returned by
the city of Edinburgh. Between 1653 and 1655 Scotland was governed by
parliamentary commissioners, and, from 1655 onwards, by a special
council. The Court of Session was abolished, and its place taken by a
Commission of Justice.[90] The actual union dates from 1654, when it was
ratified by the Supreme Council of the Commonwealth of England, but
Scotland was under English rule from the battle of Worcester. The wise
policy of allowing freedom of trade, like the improvement in the
administration of justice, failed to reconcile the Scots to the union,
and, to the end, it required a military force to maintain the new
government.

As Scotland had no share in the execution of Charles I, so it had none
in the restoration of his son. The "Committee of Estates", which met
after the 29th of May, was not lacking in loyalty. All traces of the
union were swept away, and the pressure of the new Navigation Act was
s