166 POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, 1649-58
whelming. They had been so confident of the righteousness
of their cause that its utter overthrow produced much heart-
searching. Many felt they could no longer withstand 'the
dreadful appearance of God against us at Dunbar after so many
public appeals to him'.1 About fifty or sixty ministers held an
open discussion of the reasons for the Lord's controversy with
Scotland, and certain of the Scots at least (like Jaffray) began
to realize that perhaps the intolerance of the kirk was a sinful
mistake.2 An English soldier noted that most Scots 'do idolize
and set up their ministers, believing what they say, though
never so contrary to religion and reason, and they stand more
in awe of them, than a schoole boy does of his master.93 After
Dunbar, however, the presbytery never recovered the position
it had enjoyed during its golden age from 1638 to 1650. More-
over Dunbar shattered at a blow the policy embodied in the
Solemn League and Covenant—the attempt to thrust upon
Englishmen an extreme form of presbyterianism. As Newburn
had been the Valmy, so was Dunbar the Waterloo, of the stricter
covenanters.
The immediate result of Dunbar was the creation of further
divisions among the Scots. The more rigid covenanters laid the
blame for that disaster upon ungodliness in high places. Some
even drew up a remonstrance in which they declared that they
would refuse to acknowledge Charles II until he hud given full
proofs of the sincerity of his adhesion to the covenant. This
was condemned in a resolution of the committee of estates, and
the two documents gave names to the opposing factions—
remonstrants (or protesters) and resolutioners. The former
were sufficiently strong in the south-west to make the latter
relax their hostility to the 'malignants*, so that an alliance was
formed between covenanter and royalist, Charles II was
crowned at Scone, the Act of Classes4 was repealed, and the
king shook himself free from the shackles Argyll had set upon
him. His enjoyment of the kingdom was short-lived, however,
for Cromwell, having overrun the lowlands, advanced to Perth
and threatened to cut off the royal army about Stirling from
its source of supplies. By this manoeuvre he had purposely left
1 Ja/ray £>iarj9 p. 44. a Ibid., pp, 40,38.
3 Charles the Second and Scotland in x6$ot ecL S. R. Gardiner (1894), P« *37«
4 Passed in 1649 to exclude all except sincere covenanters from all public offices
or military commands*