King Charles, despite his problems in raising funds, gathers a poorly trained English force of around twenty thousand men in the early summer of 1639 and marches towards the border.

He is confronted at Berwick-upon-Tweed by a better organized force led by Leslie.

As neither side wants to fight, a settlement with no settlement, "the Pacification of Berwick", is reached in June under which the Covenanters agree to withdraw the decisions of the 'illegal' Glasgow Assembly and the king agrees that all disputed questions should be referred to another General Assembly that would meet in Edinburgh or to the Parliament of Scotland.

It is obvious to both sides that Edinburgh will simply confirm all the decisions taken at Glasgow.

Charles, however, does have one small success while at Berwick: he has won over Montrose, hitherto a leading Covenanter.

This is not entirely due to the royal charm.

At the time of the Glasgow Assembly Lord Lorne, now the eighth Earl of Argyll, had abandoned his place on the royal council and joined the Covenanter rebels.

As the leading Scot of his generation he had quickly acquired a commanding role, thus displacing men like Montrose.

Personal rivalry, as well as political hostility, are to lead to the first serious fracture in the whole movement.

The Scots have watched as England has slipped ever deeper into political quicksand in the weeks and months that followed the conclusion of the Second Bishops' War and the summoning of the Long Parliament.

What Charles gains with one hand he inevitably loses with the other.

It is sometimes argued that the Covenanters wished to recast the whole of Britain in their own Presbyterian image.

It is certainly true that they had been pressing for a full-scale reform in the English church since 1641, though this is not for the reasons usually given.

The Scots are as aware as the king that a political and religious settlement in one part of the realm cannot be maintained in perfect isolation from another.

It is a question, above all, of security.

In the hopes of winning Scottish support, Charles goes to Scotland in the autumn of 1641 where he gives titles to Leslie and Argyll, and accepts all the decisions of the General Assembly of 1638 and of the Scottish Parliament of 1641, including confirming the right of the Parliament to challenge the actions of his ministers.

He has now withdrawn all the causes of the original dispute, but within a year his disputes with the English Parliament will lead to civil war.

Charles hopes to make common cause against the English Long Parliament with Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll and the effective leader of the Presbyterian Covenanters, and creates him Marquess of Argyll.

The Marquis of Hamilton, while remaining a Royalist, seeks to develop a friendship with the Marquess of Argyll.

It is not clear how much Charles I approved of this liaison, but many in the Scottish Royalist faction feel threatened by this development.

Lord Henry Ker (the son of the Earl of Roxburgh), riding into Edinburgh at the head of an armed retinue on the evening of September 29, challenges Hamilton to a duel, calling him a traitor.

The episode ends without violence as Lord Ker backs down and apologizes.

It sets in motion among others, however, Royalist murmurs and whispers that lead to plotting.

The plot, directed against the Marquess of Argyll, the Marquess of Hamilton, and his brother the Earl of Lanark, is hatched by the Royalist, and rival of Argyll, the Earl of Montrose, who had already attempted to have Argyll charged with high treason.

The three are to be kidnapped and taken on board a ship at Leith, but on October 11, General Leslie, the leader of the Covenanter army, is informed of the plot by Sir John Hurry, a Scottish soldier who had been invited to join the conspiracy.

Argyll, Hamilton and Lanark are forced to flee from Edinburgh to Hamilton's property at Kinneil House, near Bo'ness.

The next day, Charles denies any involvement in the plot—or , as it is soon called, the Incident—and is soon forced to allow an investigation into the matter.

Charles is left with no option but to submit to the Covenanters' demands.

He assents to the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland, and appoints Covenanting nobles to the Privy Council of Scotland and other positions, before returning to England in November to face the increasing threat of civil war.

The Presbyterian Covenanter movement has defeated the Scottish Royalists, who favor unconditional loyalty to King Charles I, by the time of the second Battle of Stirling, fought on the 12th of September 1648 as part of the War of the Three Kingdoms.

The Covenanters had then split apart, however, over what conditions peace should be made with the King.

The more moderate Engager faction favors peace with the King and alliance against his enemies, the English Parliament, in the English Civil War.

This view is by 1648 predominant in the Scottish Parliament.

A more extreme faction, the "Kirk Party" favors alliance with the Parliamentarians, with an eventual view to imposing Presbyterianism on the Three Kingdoms.

The Earl of Lanark, younger brother of the Duke of Hamilton, had been left to defend Scotland against Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, a Covenanter who is now in open rebellion against the Scottish parliament, over their royalist sympathies.

The result is an Engager victory, with losses to the Covenanters of two hundred dead and four hundred captured.

Shortly after this battle, the army of the Earl of Lanark and the army of the Marquess of Argyll, which is commanded by David Leslie, make peace and join forces.

Montrose issues his orders to Hurry on April 9 at a conference on board his ship, the Herderinnan, anchored in Scapa Flow.

He is instructed to cross to Caithness that same evening with part of the little army and advance to Ord of Caithness, a high hill overhanging the sea just north of Kildonan.

Montrose crosses with the rest of his force a few days later.

He had heard that the local Highland Scottish Clans of Munro, Ross and MacKenzie were up in arms and are likely to join him, although as it turns out, they do not.

Montrose hopes to meet up with the Clan Munro and Clan Ross.

When none of the clans arrive, he presses on the Strathoikell and into the narrow valley of Carbisdale.

He waits for two days in the valley for the Munros and Rosses.

Waiting for them is his biggest mistake, as the clans have sided with the Scottish government, and Argyll has already set his counter plans in operation.

It is decided, with Cromwell's forces threatening Charles's position in Scotland, to mount an attack on England.

With many of the Scots (including Argyll and other leading Covenanters) refusing to participate, and with few English royalists joining the force as it moves south into England, the invasion ends in defeat on September 3, 1651, at the Battle of Worcester, following which Charles hides in the Royal Oak at Boscobel House.

This is the last major battle of the war.

Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, 8th Earl of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, had been the de facto head of government in Scotland during most of the conflict known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

He was the most influential figure in the Covenanter movement that fought for the Presbyterian religion and what they saw as Scottish interests during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s.

At the Restoration, Argyll had presented himself at Whitehall, but was at once arrested by order of Charles and placed in the Tower, being sent to Edinburgh to stand trial for high treason.

Argyll is acquitted of complicity in the death of Charles I, and his escape from the whole charge seems imminent, but the arrival of a packet of letters written by Argyll to Monck shows conclusively his collaboration with Cromwell's government, particularly in the suppression of Glencairn's royalist rising in 1652.

He is immediately sentenced to death, his execution by beheading taking place on May 27, 1661, before the death warrant had even been signed by the king.

His head is placed on the same spike upon the west end of the Tollbooth as that of Montrose had previously been exposed.