God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [25]
What gave the Covenant its power was widespread acceptance. This owed much to the organizational powers of the presbyteries and Tables, and probably much also to positive commitment to this vision of Scotland’s past. There was also a degree of coercion, however, in that admission to communion was made conditional on subscription.79 Although the Covenant was a religious document, the movement clearly drew on other currents in Scottish society, and almost certainly other sources of discontent. Significant among these other issues was the difficulty many people found in trusting Charles. At the very least, it cannot be explained simply as a response to what the new Prayer Book actually contained or how it had been introduced.
Much as he might have disliked it, Charles faced a nationally effective mobilization based around something like Calvinist ideas of lawful resistance to an ungodly monarch. It was far more than a rebuttal to a potential treason charge and the Scottish Privy Council was clearly surprised by this escalation, something made obvious at meetings on 1 and 3 March. Attempts to enforce use of the book were suspended and the Privy Council agreed that it could do nothing since the firm royal proclamation of 19 February was being widely ignored.80
This finally persuaded the King to take more direct control. Arrangements were made for a visit by James Hamilton, Marquess of Hamilton, the most prominent Scot at Charles’s court. He was a veteran of the Thirty Years War, having led a British force under Gustavus Adolphus in 1631-2. His politics were firmly anti-Spanish and he had good Protestant credentials. But he was not ‘rigid’; that is, he did not pursue policies which were not viable when to pursue them threatened the health of the kingdom. This made him appear to some as pliable and untrustworthy, and he ‘changed sides’ several times in the coming years. In the late 1630s, however, he had influence with the King and yet was free of association with the popish religious policies; in fact he held deeply anti-episcopal views. He also had some credit in Scotland: he had lived abroad for much of his life without ever relinquishing his contacts and political influence there.81 As the King’s commissioner, armed with the trust of his king, he had broader powers to deal with the problems in Scotland although he was still limited in his freedom of action.82
Even now, though, with the stakes very obviously high, it took Hamilton three months to arrive. A Privy Council meeting was arranged for 6 June 1638, by which time the Covenant had gathered signatures widely and in every part of the country except Aberdeen. Hamilton was carrying two proclamations demanding obedience, although one was slightly more conciliatory in that it did not demand surrender of all signed copies of the National Covenant. Moreover, the fact that the King had also begun military preparations suggests that Hamilton was not being sent primarily to listen. The Covenanters clearly had word of this and were also planning firm responses. When Hamilton became aware of these tensions, by the time he had got to Berwick, he wrote to the King advising him to accelerate military preparations.83
When Hamilton stepped off the boat at Leith he must have lost any lingering illusions about the possibility of overawing the Covenanters. Thirty nobles were waiting for him at the end of the sands between Leith and Musselburgh and the gentry were standing in ranks all along the sands for a distance of a mile and a half. At the end of Leith links stood 600 ministers and between Leith and Edinburgh another 20,000 people were said to be waiting.84 If accurate, these estimates reflect an astonishing level of mobilization: there were 105 Scottish nobles in 1641, and between 900 and 1,000 parishes: one third of the nobility were present and up to two thirds of Scottish parishes were physically represented. The total population of Edinburgh and its suburbs was probably between 25,000 and 30,000 at this time.85 It was a demonstration of the whole community