As they said, "it looked not like a thing approved of God, which was begun and carried on with fury and madness, and obtruded on people with threatenings, tearing of clothes, and drawing of blood." Resistance to the king--if need were, armed resistance--was necessary, was laudable, but the terms of the Covenant were, in the highest degree impolitic and unstatesmanlike.

The country was handed over to the preachers; the Scots, as their great leader Argyll was to discover, were "distracted men in distracted times." Charles wavered and sent down the Marquis of Hamilton to represent his waverings.

The Marquis was as unsettled as his predecessor, Arran, in the minority of Queen Mary.

He dared not promulgate the proclamations; he dared not risk civil war; he knew that Charles, who said he was ready, was unprepared in his mutinous English kingdom.

He granted, at last, a General Assembly and a free Parliament, and produced another Covenant, "the King's Covenant," which of course failed to thwart that of the country.
The Assembly, at Glasgow (November 21, 1638), including noblemen and gentlemen as elders, was necessarily revolutionary, and needlessly riotous and profane.