The consequence of Charles’ hasty and arbitrary measures were soon evident.  The united nobility, gentry, and clergy of Scotland, entered into the solemn League and covenant, by which memorable deed, they subscribed and swore a national renunciation of the hierarchy.  The walls of the prelatic Jericho (to use the language of the times) were thus levelled with the ground, and the curse of Hiel, the Bethelite, denounced against those who should rebuild them.  While the clergy thundered, from the pulpits, against the prelatists and malignants (by which names were distinguished the scattered and heartless adherents of Charles), the nobility and gentry, in arms, hurried to oppose the march of the English army, which now advanced towards their borders.  At the head of their defensive forces they placed Alexander Lesley, who, with many of his best officers, had been trained to war under the great Gustavus Adolphus.  They soon assembled an army of 26,000 men, whose camp, upon Dunse-law, is thus described by an eye-witness.

“Mr Baillie acknowledges, that it was an agreeable feast to his eyes, to survey the place:  it is a round hill, about a Scots mile in circle, rising, with very little declivity, to the height of a bow-shot, and the head somewhat plain, and near a quarter of a mile in length and breadth; on the top it was garnished with near forty field pieces, pointed towards the east and south.  The colonels, who were mostly noblemen, as Rothes, Cassilis, Eglinton, Dalhousie, Lindsay, Lowdon, Boyd, Sinclair, Balcarras, Flemyng, Kirkcudbright, Erskine, Montgomery, Yester, &c. lay in large tents at the head of their respective regiments; their captains, who generally were barons, or chief gentlemen, lay around them:  next to these were the lieutenants, who were generally old veterans, and had served in that, or a higher station, over sea; and the common soldiers lay outmost, all in huts of timber, covered with divot, or straw.  Every company, which, according to the first plan, did consist of two hundred men, had their colours flying at the captain’s tent door, with the Scots arms upon them, and this motto, in golden letters, “For CHRIST’S crown and covenant.”  Against this army, so well arrayed and disciplined, and whose natural hardihood was edged and exalted by a high opinion of their sacred cause, Charles marched at the head of a large force, but divided, by the emulation of the commanders, and enervated, by disuse of arms.  A faintness of spirit pervaded the royal army, and the king stooped to a treaty with his Scottish subjects.  The treaty was soon broken; and, in the following year, Dunse-law again presented the same edifying spectacle of a presbyterian army.  But the Scots were not contented with remaining there.  They passed the Tweed; and the English troops, in a skirmish at Newburn, shewed either more disaffection, or cowardice, than had at any former period disgraced their national character.  This war was concluded by the treaty of Rippon; in consequence of which, and of Charles’s concessions, made during his subsequent visit to his native country, the Scottish parliament congratulated him on departing “a contented king, from a contented people.”  If such content ever existed, it was of short duration.