He landed in Orkney with a little band of followers, hoping that the clansmen would rally round him; but he had no success, and after wandering destitute among the hills, he was sold to his enemies by M'Leod of Assynt, a connection of the Campbells.

He was attainted as a traitor, and was condemned to be hanged at the market-cross in Edinburgh, with his book and his declaration round his neck. One of the bards of his own land has well told the tale of that gallant death, and no words could better give Montrose's high-souled view of the ghastly punishment he was to suffer than those put into his mouth by Aytoun.

"Now, by my faith as belted knight,
And by the name I bear,

And by the bright Saint Andrew's Cross,
That waves above us there-

I have not sought in battlefield
A wreath of such renown,
Nor dared I hope on my dying day

To win the martyr's crown!

There is a chamber far away

Where sleep the good and brave,

But a better place ye have named for me
Than by my father's grave.

For truth and right, 'gainst treason's might,
This hand hath always striven,

And ye raise it up for a witness still

In the eye of earth and heaven.

Then nail my head on yonder tower-
Give every town a limb-

And God who made shall gather them:
I go from you to Him!"

Lofty words, which might form the farewell to earth of many a gallant Cavalier spirit!

He was subjected to every possible hardship and indignity by his captors, and was borne through Edinburgh in a cart, with his hands tied behind him, in the vain hope that the common folk would stone him.

He was refused the ministrations of his own clergy at the end, and declined those of the "grim Geneva doctors," knowing too well what would be the style of their commendatory prayer: "Lord, vouchsafe yet to touch the obdurate heart of this proud, incorrigible sinner, this wicked, perjured, traitorous and profane person, who refuses to hearken to the voice of Thy Kirk." "It was a day of wrath," says Mr. Morley, "and the gospel of charity was for the moment sealed." So,

"Alone he bent the knee;

And veiled his face for Christ's dear grace

Beneath the gallows-tree."

Then, in his brave array of scarlet cassock, silk stockings, and ribboned shoes-a Cavalier to the

end, even in outward show-with light step and serene face,

"He climbed the lofty ladder

As it were the path to heaven,"

and to the sound of a long and angry thunderblast there went back to God the soul of one of the noblest of the Cavaliers who ever served King Charles.

CHAPTER IV

THE PURITANS: HAMPDEN AND HUTCHINSON

THE word Cavalier carries its own meaning, but that of Puritan has been made to cover a wide significance.

There is the moderate Puritan, in the religious sense of the word, he who sought with honest if harsh energy to bring back to primitive faith and purity the Christian Church in England; there is the stricter Puritan who would go still further in what he considered religious reform, and would sweep away all outward forms and historic ceremonies, and let each man be guided by his individual conscience alone: and besides these two classes, the name Puritan has also been applied to the vast mass of men who fought under the banners of Essex and of Cromwell, against the Royal party and King Charles.

The translation of the Bible into English by Tyndale, and its consequent study throughout the kingdom, was the chief cause of the new religious spirit which gradually demanded a remedy for the

abuses which had grown up in the Church; the ideal of Puritanism was a grand one, but one not easy to realise, especially in England. Social equality was preached, and to a certain extent practised, by the leaders; and it was during the time when Cromwell's "plain russet-coated gentlemen" saved the side for which they fought that many of the old class prejudices began to be swept away. "The meanest peasant" among the Puritans, says J. R. Green, "felt himself ennobled as a child of God. The proudest noble recognised a spiritual equality in the poorest saint." Men learned to think and to act more on their own responsibility, and though in their actions much that was good was broken and destroyed, so also vanished much that was evil and corrupt.

It is not in the extreme figures of a movement that its course should be traced, or by their actions that it should be judged; but in the moderate men who grasp the new principle, and try to rule their lives and those of others by it with wisdom and with moderation,

Essex and Fairfax, the two early leaders of the Parliamentary army, were neither men of extreme Puritan views. Essex was appointed general chiefly on account of his rank, but he was too

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