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As military preparations in England faltered, the Covenanters, untroubled by such divisions, seemed to be in the superior position. At the English court the preference seemed to be to postpone war for a year, or to limit it to a defensive war. But the Covenanters forced the issue, perhaps in the knowledge that this was their moment.76 The Scottish parliament reassembled, ignoring Charles’s desire for a further prorogation, and carried through further dramatic constitutional changes. In England two years later, when Parliament seemed to be moving in a similar direction, it generated a strong royalist party; but not in Scotland in 1640, although there was some division. The Earl of Argyll had emerged as a dominant figure, and there was some suspicion about his motives and plans, but the Covenanters faced little organized opposition. A General Assembly called in Aberdeen, territory friendly to the King’s cause, was actually free of external pressure to moderate its policies – even there the Covenanters” military and political position was unchallenged.77

Nonetheless, the Covenanters invaded England with some reluctance. They had been unsure of their reception and had maintained correspondence with the English peers. The question of whether to invade was also divisive in Scotland, and seems to have precipitated the first sign of serious division in Covenanter ranks. The Earl of Montrose had organized the Cumbernauld band, which claimed that the purposes of the Covenant were being subverted by a minority, and promised to pursue the original aims by another means. This was perhaps the first sign of his move towards support of the King, and was certainly evidence of a growing suspicion of Argyll. In the end, the Covenanters probably invaded because of the difficulty of maintaining an army off the land north of the border.78

As in the first war, we cannot be certain how disabling English foot-dragging was, because at Newburn, the only significant engagement of the war, the crucial problem for the English was not the quality of their men or arms, but that they chose the wrong ground. The Covenanting army may not have been easy to sustain for a long period, so the outcome of a single battle exaggerates the relative importance of the problems on the English side.79 Against this, however, it is a poor army, or one with very limited political capital behind it, that collapses in the face of relatively small casualties. Exact figures are lacking, but it is unlikely that either side lost more than several hundred men: significant for a day, but hardly the destruction of an army said to have numbered 25,000 overall. In the end, the dismal military performance reflected a lack of political will, a product of divisions felt at all levels of English society from the peerage to the beggar turned away by Alexander Powell.

On the same day that the two armies clashed at Newburn, twelve peers petitioned the King to call a parliament and from that point there is clear evidence of co-ordination between the Covenanters and those anxious to secure the meeting of another English parliament – Nathaniel Fiennes, son of Saye and Sele, was certainly in correspondence designed to secure a treaty and a parliament. Charles bowed to this pressure, summoning a Great Council at York on 24 September. He opened proceedings by announcing his intention to call another parliament, although he took some persuasion that defeat at Newburn necessitated recognition of the Covenanters” political victory.80

These twelve peers were the most confident of a wider circle of aristocrats opposed to the policies of the Personal Rule: the Earls of Essex, Hertford, Bedford, Warwick, Exeter and Rutland and Lords Saye and Sele, Brooke, Mandeville, Howard of Escrick, Mulgrave and Boling-broke. The Earl of Manchester, a future parliamentarian general, also urged the calling of a parliament. The Earl of Northumberland, another prominent parliamentarian during the civil war, had been in charge of the