les, according
to their different counties. In the hands of the four tables the whole
authority of the kingdom was placed. Orders were issued by them, and
every where obeyed with the utmost regularity.[**] And among the first
acts of their government was the production of the "Covenant."

This famous covenant consisted first of a renunciation of Popery,
formerly signed by James in his youth, and composed of many invectives,
fitted to inflame the minds of men against their fellow-creatures, whom
Heaven has enjoined them to cherish and to love. There followed a
bond of union, by which the subscribers obliged themselves to resist
religious innovations, and to defend each other against all opposition
whatsoever: and all this, for the greater glory of God, and the greater
honor and advantage of their king and country.[***] The people,
without distinction of rank or condition, of age or sex, flocked to the
subscription of this covenant: few in their judgment disapproved of
it; and still fewer durst openly condemn it. The king's ministers
and counsellors themselves were most of them seized by the general
contagion. And none but rebels to God, and traitors to their country, it
was thought, would withdraw themselves from so salutary and so pious a
combination.

* King's Decl. p. 47, 48, etc. Guthry, p. 28. May, p. 37.

** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 111. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734.

*** King's Decl. p. 57, 58. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734. May, p.
38.

The treacherous, the cruel, the unrelenting Philip, accompanied with all
the terrors of a Spanish inquisition, was scarcely, during the preceding
century, opposed in the Low Countries with more determined fury, than
was now, by the Scots, the mild, the humane Charles, attended with his
inoffensive liturgy.

The king began to apprehend the consequences. He sent the marquis of
Hamilton, as commissioner, with authority to treat with the Covenanters.
He required the covenant to be renounced and recalled: and he thought,
that on his part he had made very satisfactory concessions, when he
offered to suspend the canons and the liturgy, till in a fair and legal
way they could be received; and so to model the high commission, that
it should no longer give offence to his subjects.[*] Such general
declarations could not well give content to any, much less to those
who carried so much higher their pretensions. The Covenanters found
themselves seconded by the zeal of the whole nation.