Britain's First Citizen: Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum, accused Papist, and the Aberdeen Presbytery

Abstract

If Monarchy be gone, let the devil take Presbytery and the Covenant. It came from Hell, let it go back to it again. Alexander Irving ofDrum, December 1651 When Charles II led his ragtag, starving army on the south-bound road to Worcester in August 1651, no force remained to defend Scotland. Lord General Cromwell, of course, followed Charles with the bulk of the New Model, leaving the ex-mercenary George Monck in place with an army sufficient to finish the job begun at Dunbar. Through August and into September, Monck methodically reduced the holdout fortresses. Most fell without contest; the burgh of Dundee, however, overestimated its defenses and refused Monck's summons. On 1 September English troops stormed the city, killing the garrison, governor, and 'sevin score women and young children'—some 800 people in all. Meanwhile, Colonel Mathew Alured captured the Scottish Committee of Estates at Alyth on 27 August, effectively beheading what remained of the Scottish government. Alyth and Dundee softened further resistance. By October, the conquest of Scotland was complete.2 Government by the English army filled the vacuum created as Scottish civil authority evaporated. Neither English army officers nor the commissioners sent by Parliament harboured any tenderness for authority derived from Charles II or the Kirk Party government, and they acted accordingly. On 6 October Monck forbade the giving or taking of any oaths 'without order from the Commonwealth'. Parliament followed with a Declaration of 12 February 1652, in which the commissioners abrogated all 'power, jurisdiction or authority derived from, by, or under Charles Stuart ... or any otherwise than from the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England'.3 Scotland would be governed by an English army under the direction of an English Parliament, empowered by right of conquest to remake Scotland as they