On August 10 the demands of the Scots were granted: as a sympathetic historian writes, they had lived for a year at free quarters, "and recrossed the Border with the handsome sum of 200,000 pounds to their credit." During the absence of the army the Kirk exhibited symptoms not favourable to its own peace.

Amateur theologians held private religious gatherings, which, it was feared, tended towards the heresy of the English Independents and to the "break up of the whole Kirk," some of whose representatives forbade these conventicles, while "the rigid sort" asserted that the conventiclers "were esteemed the godly of the land." An Act of the General Assembly was passed against the meetings; we observe that here are the beginnings of strife between the most godly and the rather moderately pious.
The secret of Montrose's Cumbernauld band had come to light after November 1640: nothing worse, at the moment, befell than the burning of the band by the Committee of Estates, to whom Argyll referred the matter.
On May 21, 1641, the Committee was disturbed, for Montrose was collecting evidence as to the words and deeds of Argyll when he used his commission of fire and sword at the Bonny House of Airlie and in other places.
Montrose had spoken of the matter to a preacher, he to another, and the news reached the Committee.

Montrose had learned from a prisoner of Argyll, Stewart the younger of Ladywell, that Argyll had held counsels to discuss the deposition of the king.

Ladywell produced to the Committee his written statement that Argyll had spoken before him of these consultations of lawyers and divines.

He was placed in the castle, and was so worked on that he "cleared" Argyll and confessed that, advised by Montrose, he had reported Argyll's remarks to the king.