Series 2 > Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, 1650-1654

INTRODUCTION
XXXI
only got a word with him at night and that with difficulty,
because of the alarm of the men ‘ which maid them that
night to merch to Blaknesse.’1 From Cornet Baynes’
letter of 29th March, it is clear that some of the English
ships had already gone up the river to Blackness, and Monk
with some horse and foot by land.2 A letter from the
English headquarters in Scotland, also written on the
29th, explains that the enterprise was resolved upon at a
meeting of officers on the 26th, that ‘ four ships were put
forth with instructions ’ on the 27th and were by the 29th
‘ before Blackness, having given the enemy a terrible
alarme.’3 That Monk should have set out for Blackness
on the same day that Wariston arrived in Edinburgh was
a mere coincidence proving nothing.
In April, the Committee acknowledged his ‘ fidelity,
diligence, and caire anent the Registers,’ and that nothing
could be added to his reasons; and, in May, that
he ‘ had argued it as fully as any of them could haive
doune.’ He feared to cross the Forth. The Chancellor
who desired to speak with him ‘ beleived their was no such
daunger’ as he apprehended.4 The danger was less at
the hands of constituted authority than of irate soldiers
and lawless civilians. On the 6th of June, a letter, which
Thomas Henderson had written to him on the 25th of the
preceding December, was read in Parliament. Henderson
acknowledged that the letter was written by him. Parlia¬
ment was not satisfied with his ‘ verball explanationes,’ and
finding that it contained ‘ severall thingis expressing his
dissatisfactione to the Publict Resolutiones of the King and
Parliament aganis the commoune enemie,’ deprived him
1 Pp. 32, 33. 2 Letters from Roundhead Officers, p. 15.
3 Cromwelliana, 1816, p. 101.—So early as the 28th of February it was
surmised that the English intended ‘ to beseige the house of Blacknes and
thereafter the house of Calendar ’ (Ancram Correspondence, ii. 345).
4 Pp- 42, 43-