These commissioners, and some sub-committees of them, are known in Scottish history as The Tables, the name being applied to several different bodies.  Charles replied to the second petition in wrathful terms, and it was decided to revive the National Covenant of 1581, to renounce popery.  It had been drawn up under fear of a popish plot, and was itself an expansion of the Covenant of 1557.  To it was now added a declaration suited to immediate necessities.  On the 1st and 2nd March, 1638, it was signed by vast multitudes in the churchyard of Greyfriars, in Edinburgh, and it continued to be signed, sometimes under pressure, throughout the land.  Hamilton, Charles’s agent in Scotland, was quite unable to meet the situation.  In the end Charles had to agree to the meeting of a General Assembly in Glasgow, in November, 1638.  Hamilton, the High Commissioner, attempted to obtain the ejection of laymen and to create a division among his opponents.  When he failed in this, he dissolved the Assembly in the king’s name.  At the instance of Henderson, supported by Argyll, the Assembly refused to acknowledge itself dissolved, and proceeded to abolish Episcopacy and re-establish the Presbyterian form of Church government.

The king, on his part, began to concert measures with his Privy Council for the subjugation of Scotland.  The “Committee on Scotch affairs” of the English Privy Council was obviously unconstitutional, but matters were fast drifting towards civil war, and it was no time to consider constitutional niceties.  It is much more important that the committee was divided and useless.  Wentworth, writing from Ireland, advised the king to maintain a firm attitude, but not to provoke an outbreak of war at so inconvenient a moment.  Charles again attempted a compromise.  He offered to withdraw Laud’s unlucky service-book, the new canons, and even the Articles of Perth, and to limit the power of the bishops; and he asked the people to sign the Covenant of 1580-81, on which the new Covenant was based, but which, of course, contained no reference to immediate difficulties.  But it was too late; the sentiment of religious independence had become united to the old feeling of national independence, and war was inevitable.  The Scots were fortunate in their leaders.  In the end of 1638 there returned to Scotland from Germany, Alexander Leslie, the great soldier who had fought for Protestantism under Gustavus Adolphus.  In February, 1639, he took command of the army of the Covenant, which had been largely reinforced by veterans from the Thirty Years’ War.  A more attractive personality than Leslie’s was that of the young Earl of Montrose, who had attached himself with enthusiasm to the national cause, and had attempted to convert the people of Aberdeen to covenanting principles.  Charles, on his part, asserted that his throne was in danger, and that the Scottish preparations constituted a menace to the kingdom of England, and so attempted to rouse enthusiasm for himself.