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King's subscryving and swearing the Covenant, but ane¹ obligation so to doe. But these other things were afterward granted that day; and because, ere we came out of Scotland, it had been desired that if the king could be moved to swear the Covenant in Holland, it should be so done, the commissioners resolved they would accept of his swearing and subscryving the same.

It was laid on me to preach the next Sabbath when he should swear it, and to read the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant, and to take his oath; the which day also we came to ane anchor at the mouth of Spey. I would gladly have put it off, desyring it might be delayed till we were in Scotland, or that some of the other two ministers might preach; but all the rest pressed me most earnestly, urgeing what ane great scandal it would be, and how far honest men would be unsatisfied, if, the king offering to swear the Covenant, he should be rejected. According to my softness and silliness of disposition, I was moved to agree. On the Sabbath morning before we mett for sermon, some told me² the king was minded to speak some words when he sware the Covenant, that what he did should not import any infringeing of the lawes of the kingdome of England, because he said that way he behooved to prevent the stumbling of his English subjects, because in the declaration annexed to the Covenant which he was to swear he bound himself to confirm acts, bills,³ ordinances of the Parliament of England, ratifying the Solemn League and Covenant; which acts or ordinances, they said, were expyred with the late king. I went to the rest of the commissioners and told them, and we all went to the king and told him we could not receive his oath if he added any one word to the words read, but would declare the oath no oath. He pressed much and long that he behooved to doe it, so that I began to be hopefull his swearing might be put off for that day. At last he said he would forbear to speak these words; yet I urged that seeing both he and we were in some heat and distempers⁴ by that dispute, that his swearing

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¹    "His."

²    "That."

³    "Or."

⁴    "Distemper."

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might be forborn till ane other day, but both he and the commissioners pressed that it should not be delayed. For the outward part of swearing and subscryving the Covenant, the king performed any thing that could have been required; but it seems to have been the guilt not of the commissioners only, but of the whole kingdome of the State, yea, and of the Church, who knew the terms wherupon the State was to admitt him to his government, yet¹ without any evidence of ane reall change in his heart, and without forsaking former principles, counsells, and company; yea when, as some say, letters found among James Graham's papers did evidence the contrary, yet they proceeded therupon to admitt him to the exercise of his government; wheras by the last instructions from the Parliament, which came to the commissioners' hands in Holland ere the king and² they came³ aboard, ten or twelve persons expressly named they should not have come home, yet all these persons, except two or three who were not present, did come along to Scotland. Neither did the commissioners of the State make any application to the king by subscryved papers anent that article of their instructions till two dayes after he was landed in Scotland at the Bogue of Gight, at which time they were all in the countrey; and in this point did Cassills, to my observation, give some evidence of declyning; for from the very time that these last instructions came, he did alwayes declare himself unsatisfied that the Parliament should have controlled any thing of their proceedings in the treatie till they had been present to answer for themselves.

After we had landed, I drew behinde and left the king and court, neither did I see him again,⁴ but one blink at Dundee as I was coming homeward. And after we were come to Edinburgh, the Generall Assembly being sitting, and Mr Hutchesone and I being desyred to make relation to the Assembly of the proceeding⁵ of that treaty, we first communicated what we had drawn up to some of the chief ministers privatly,⁶ and told them of the king's

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¹    "That."

²    "Or."

³    "Went."

⁴    "Any more."

⁵    "Proceedings."

⁶    "In private."