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Montrose,
whose handsome features had been growing more and more set, turned
to Napier. 'They will never hear him now,' he jerked. 'We must get
Balfour away. We cannot have the Lyon mobbled - the King's
spokesman. Henderson, and the other ministers, swore that they could
control the crowd. This is damnable... !'

'What
did you expect?' That was Rothes, at his other side. The temper o'
this realm will not suffer talk the likes o' that, now. Not this
day.'

'We
must demonstrate the authority, the moderation, of the Tables,' the
younger man insisted. 'If I could get up there ...' He gestured
towards the Cross platform. But it was closely surrounded by the
thick cordon of the Town Guard, who were most obviously under orders
to let no one through.

'Thank
God - Balfour is getting out!' Napier exclaimed. 'See, he is folding
up his papers.
^'

Clearly,
the Lord Lyon saw the uselessness of continuing -and he was not the
man to provoke any more trouble than he must. He signed to his
trumpeters, and they blew a final and somewhat ragged flourish. He
turned and pushed his way down the stairway.

The
triumphant
cheers
of
the
crowd swelled and maintained. So soon as the trumpets sounded
for the last time, there was a stir fairly close to the Cross,
upstreet - nearer to Montrose's own stance, indeed. Here there was
another sort of platform, semi-permanent, of timber, on which die
scaffold was erected for executions. It had been brought out today,
but its top kept clear. Up on to this now clambered four men, the
Ear! of Loudoun, Sir George Stirling of Keir, Master Alexander
Henderson and Archibald Johnston
of
Warriston,
lawyer - the conveners of
the
Tables.
The latter was waving a large paper.

Gradually
the noise subsided.

'Thank
God
!'
James Graham murmured. 'Now - let us hope Warriston keeps his head.
And tongue! He is scarce the wisest choice... !'

Archibald
Johnston, laird of the small property of Warriston, north of
Edinburgh, looked indeed an unlikely choice to be spokesman of the
combined Tables of Scotland's Convention. Young - exactly
Montrose's own age of 25 - he was slight, painfully thin, stooping,
pale, with long, lank black hair and burning eyes, a born fanatic if
ever there was one. His was a strange character, nervously intense,
utterly unconcerned with time - he was said to remain on his
knees in prayer all many a night, for as long as fourteen hours at a
stretch - immoderate, uncaring of the opinions of others. Yet he had
a brilliant mind, a great legal knowledge, and a phenomenal grasp of
detail, together with a fiery eloquence which tended to spare others
no more than himself. An advocate, already he was renowned at the
bar - though little liked. He had been chosen spokesman today as
representing the city of Edinburgh on the Table of the Burghs, and
as one of the actual compilers of the wording of the new Covenant -
which Covenant indeed he was here to declare. Montrose had been
almost the least certain as to the wisdom of his appointment.

Warriston
raised his hand for silence - and strangely enough got it quite
quickly. Despite his meagre frame he had a commanding presence of a
sort, and a deep, resonant voice which carried mfinitely better than
either the Lyon's or the Provost's.

'My
friends,' he cried, 'good folk - you have heard the voice of power
and majesty. Aye, and the voice of error and shame, likewise! Even
though it be in the King's name. I say to you, that yon was not in
truth the voice of Charles Stewart, the King's Grace, that you
heard. But the voice of the man Laud, and his minion Juxon, English
apostate clerks, knaves, reprobates who..'

A
great roar of approval drowned his words.

When
he could, he went on, drawn features working. ‘Not only Laud
and his English jackals mislead the King. For their own shameless
ends, Scots prelatical dogs do likewise. Spottiswoode, Wedderburn,
Maxwell, Sydscrf! Renegade Papists, idolators, chamberlains of
Satan, the worse in that they are of our own nation, betraying their
fellows and the blessed reformed faith, worshippers of Baal...'

'I
feared it!' Montrose groaned. The man cannot contain himself.
He is drunken on his own words! I told them.
I
told
him
...
!' He raised his arm high. 'If I could but catch his eye. Calm him..

But
in the press no man's hand was going to be seen by any other.
Montrose started to push his way nearer to the scaffold-platform.

'You'll
no' get near him,' Rothes declared.

He
was right. The younger man made but little headway, But, of all
things to be there in the middle of the High Street, was an upended
barrel. How and why it came to be there was a mystery. But,
stumbling over it, and cursing it as so many another had done,
Montrose perceived that it might serve his turn. He climbed up on to
its less than stable top — while Rothes, at his back, held it,
and him, steady.

'Man,
James,' he chuckled, 'who'd ha' thought to see
Greumach
Mor
hoisted
on a barrel
1
Watch
you — or you'll no' be at rest till you are lifted up above
the rest o' us on three fathoms o' a rope!'

James
Graham did not heed that sally. He was only about twenty yards from
Warriston now; and, raised above his fellows thus, the other could
not fail to see him - or the warning, minatory finger. The orator
faltered just a little in his diatribe.

Warriston's
hesitation and glance drew the attention of others to Montrose, of
course. But, strangely enough, the crowd misconstrued, assuming that
the great Earl of Montrose was so carried away with enthusiasm
for all this eloquence that he must needs show it thus. He earned a
cheer for himself, in consequence, and popular approval as the first
of the high nobility to make plain his position.

His
gesture, however, was not ineffectual. Warriston recollected,
and thereafter applied himself to his brief. This was to summarise
in digestible form the contents of the National Covenant which they
had prepared, to use it as a counterblast to the royal proclamation,
and to intimate that it would be set out on parchments and ready for
comprehensive signature in a day or two's time.

In
great, ringing tones he proclaimed the kernel of the Negative
Confession against Popery, of 1581, heady, denunciatory stuff
which, since it had been signed by Charles's own father, James the
Sixth, made it a safe basis for this new manifesto, declaring that,
as a confession of faith, they and all true Christian men did
condemn the monuments of bygone idolatry.

That
went down well.

The
second part of the Covenant listed all the Acts of the Scots
Parliament passed since the Reformation to protect and support the
true faith and Presbyterian form of worship — all again signed
by King James and even one or two, reluctantly, by Charles himself
in his first years on the throne. These would have made but dull
reciting to a crowd; but Warriston managed to summarise some of them
effectively, and to emphasise that these, and only these, were
in fact the law of the land, and as such must be upheld by all loyal
and law-abiding subjects.

It
was skilfully done, and had the effect of leaving the hearers in no
doubt, not only that their course was right and lawful, but that by
setting at naught and controverting the expressed provisions of
parliament, the King was in fact breaking the law as well as his own
coronation oaths, and betraying his father's memory equally with his
realm's integrity. Even Montrose was moved to applaud.

The
third and final section of the Covenant was an affirmation of
loyalty.

'We,
noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers and commons,' he
intoned slowly, distinctly, 'considering the dangers to the true
religion, to the King's honour, and to the public peace, by the
manifold innovations and evils contained in our late
supplications, complaints and protestations, do hereby profess
before God, His holy angels and the whole world, that we shall
constantly adhere to and defend the aforesaid true religion, and
forebear from the practice of all innovations introduced into the
worship of the Lord God. Aye, and to labour by all means in our
power lawfully to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel as it
was established. Also, to stand to the defence of our dread
sovereign, die King's Majesty, his person and authority, as we do
the laws of his kingdom. This we, the undersubscribing, promise and
swear by the great name of the Lord God, that religion and
righteousness may flourish in the land, to the glory of God, the
honour of the King, and the peace and comfort of us all.'

Warriston
paused, looked over at Montrose, and in a different and much less
dramatic voice added, almost expressionlessly, 'God save the King's
Grace.'

Considering
the turgid nature of his material, and the fact that it was written
to be read, not spoken, even the speaker must have been surprised by
the enthusiasm of its reception. Men cheered, waved and capered,
women skirled and clasped each other, bonnets were thrown into the
air. Perhaps only the Scots, with their love of metaphysics,
rhetoric and wordy debate, could have worked themselves up to such
pitch over the like. With even Montrose cheering, Warriston stood
back, trembling.

The
Earl of Loudoun took his place, briefly, to announce that the said
National Covenant would be transcribed on parchment and brought for
signature to the kirkyard of the Greyfriars, here in Edinburgh, in
four days' time, when this great step forward would be taken in the
work of God and of the King's realm of Scotiand.

‘ ‘
‘

So,
the following Wednesday, the
a8th,
since
no hall or building was large enough to contain all the people
who must assemble for the occasion, the National Covenant of 1638
was subscribed and signed in the extensive graveyard of Greyfriars
Church, which crowned the hill above die valley of the Cowgate to
the south. The crowd was not quite so dense as that at the Cross,
for guards at the gate could here keep out the mere spectators and
gapers, indeed the ordinary citizens who could contribute nothing to
this
day's
work, being in the main unable anyway to read or write. For all
that, there were fully a thousand present, come to subscribe this
dread bond and affirmation, signature of which might indeed place a
noose around their necks - for none could fail to recognise that
this document and declaration ran directly counter to the recent
royal proclamation, with its explicit threats of treason. Whoever
signed this Covenant, at least would not do so lightly.
Nevertheless, not a few children had been brought to Greyfriars that
day, to see the making of what could not fail to be history.