The young king, poor and neglected, living sometimes in Holland, sometimes in France, sometimes in Jersey, comforted himself amidst his present distresses with the hopes of better fortune.

The situation alone of Scotland and Ireland gave any immediate inquietude to the new republic.
After the successive defeats of Montrose and Hamilton, and the ruin of their parties, the whole authority in Scotland fell into the hands of Argyle and the rigid churchmen, that party which was most averse to the interests of the royal family.

Their enmity, however, against the Independents, who had prevented the settlement of Presbyterian discipline in England, carried them to embrace opposite maxims in their political conduct.

Though invited by the English parliament to model their government into a republican form, they resolved still to adhere to monarchy, which had ever prevailed in their country, and which, by the express terms of their covenant they had engaged to defend.

They considered, besides, that as the property of the kingdom lay mostly in the hands of great families, it would be difficult to establish a common wealth; or without some chief magistrate, invested with royal authority, to preserve peace or justice in the community.