did. But it is not unreasonable in the circumstances to suppose that

his advice may have been given that way, and given in vain. At no time of his life was Montrose easy to persuade against his own feelings. Confident in his own abilities, conscious of his own integrity, why may he not have thought that in him the Covenant would find a leader able to counteract the selfish view of those who were merely troubling the waters to better their own fortune, persuasive enough to guide it into the way it should go, and strong enough to keep it there? And perhaps Napier too believed him to be such a leader.

There remains then only to consider what share, if any, his alleged resentment at the King's behaviour may have had in determining his action. That he joined the Covenant to revenge himself on the King no one who has studied his character will believe, any more than they will believe that he joined the King to revenge himself on the Covenant. But is there anything unreasonable in believing that his resentment at behaviour for which he was conscious of having given no cause, and so much the reverse of what he had every right and reason to expect, may have rendered an ambitious and impulsive young man more amenable to the plausible arguments and misrepresentations of artful and interested counsellors? If the story of Hamilton's intrigue be true--and it is hard to believe there can have been no truth in it--Montrose had been instructed that the King was ill disposed to Scotland, and the Scots had received what he could not but consider a convincing proof of it. With his own eyes he had seen what the King's disposition was to the religion he had been bred in. Everything that had happened since his return to Scotland had unfortunately tended to confirm the original impression of his own reception and Hamilton's explanation of it. A young man of Montrose's disposition would in such a frame of mind be easy game for such cunning hunters as Rothes and his crew. There was nothing in the letter of the Covenant he signed incompatible with the peculiar nature of Scottish loyalty, which had never been of that patient, unquestioning, one might almost say unreasoning, nature which has sometimes marked the English loyalist. To save the country meant to save the King in spite of himself, in spite of those evil counsellors who stood ever at his ear to poison him against his Scottish subjects. It was an enchanting prospect for an ardent, aspiring young man who had fired his imagination with the romantic pages of Plutarch. "As Philip's noble son," he had written,

As Philip's noble son did still disdain All but the dear applause of merited fame, And nothing harboured in that lofty brain But how to conquer an eternal name; So great attempts, heroic ventures, shall Advance my fortune, or renown my fall.

What greater or more heroic venture could there be than to preserve the religion, laws, and liberties of his country! Hamilton and the unconscious King between them had provided the hour; Rothes found the man.

It is true, therefore, to say that Montrose signed the Covenant deliberately and on reflection, and with the assurance that in so doing he was pledging himself only to a constitutional resistance against an illegal attempt to subvert the religion and liberties of his country, and in nowise combining to undermine and overthrow the lawful authority and prerogative of the Crown. But it is not therefore illogical to believe that various causes conspired to give him that assurance; and that among those causes the jealousy of Hamilton and the cunning of Rothes had their place together with the fanaticism of Laud and the folly of the King.