Archibald Campbell: How Red Argyll saved his skin – but in the long run not his head

Charles had been driven into exile after he came to claim the Scottish throne of his dead father in 1651. Argyll crowned him at the traditional site of Scone. A loyalist army prepared to invade England on his behalf. Oliver Cromwell met it and defeated it at the Battle of Worcester. Then Cromwell over-ran Scotland and absorbed the northern kingdom into his Commonwealth or British republic.

Red Argyll, as his 20,000 clansmen called their chief for his auburn locks, had avoided this quest over the Border. Striking a sly deal with Cromwell, he stayed on his own lands. Scots often suspected his squint eye gave his true nature away, and now they seemed to be right.

When in the summer of 1660 the marquess sped off to the re-instated royal court in London, many thought he was again trying to expunge his previous cowardice. In July, he appeared in an outer chamber of Whitehall Palace. He asked permission to see King Charles and kiss hands, “thinking that he had been in no worse favour than the other noblemen who had been engag’d in the same party”.

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But Charles sent out a high official of the court to arrest the marquess on charges of treason. Despite his indignant demand to be led at once to see His Majesty, he was taken to the Tower of London. There he stayed till in December he was sent by sea to Leith, before being locked up in Edinburgh Castle.

Argyll’s trial in Parliament House began on February 13, 1661. He had two main defences. The first was that, following some legislation of 1651, he could not be convicted for actions before that date. The second was that, in complying with the English during their occupation of Scotland, he was acting under duress, like almost all Scots.

The excuses were not enough. Contrary evidence appeared in letters the marquess had sent to Cromwell’s commanders in Scotland in 1653-4. Dug up from the records, they showed he offered help to control the country. On May 25, 1661, the judges sentenced him to be executed two days later.

He gave a brave answer: he had put the crown on the king’s head in 1651 and hoped God would now give him a crown of glory. From the scaffold, in his last speech, he observed, again in cool defiance: “I resolve to disappoint many; for I came here not to justify myself, but the Lord who is holy.” He added: “I entered not upon the work of reformation with any design of advantage for myself, or prejudice to the king and his government.”

The marquess said he knew of many Scots worse than him. Three sorts made up most of the population: “I hear assuredly that drinking, whoring and swearing were never more common and never more countenanced than now.” Others “not openly profane” cared little if the Church sank or swam. Only a remnant was truly godly.

Charles II was crowned in 1651

“That I am look’d on as a friend of reformation, it is my glory”, Argyll concluded. For now, sinners might not suffer as he was about to do – he gestured at the Maiden or guillotine beside him. But in eternity “when I shall be singing, they shall be howling”. His body was taken for burial to Kilmun on the Holy Loch, traditional burial place of the chiefs of Clan Campbell. His head, after being put on public display, followed in 1664.

The fate of Argyll was typical of the foremost Scots, of every persuasion, in the quarter-century of revolution and war that King Charles I had provoked from 1637. Men might try to follow a path of conviction and courage, but few managed to keep to it. By the end of the epoch, many leaders were dead and even survivors could seldom boast of personal success. Scotland’s future looked lamentable, so much so as to awaken fears for its independence.

Argyll was indeed typical. Charles had sought his support as civil war broke out, yet could not win him over. In the religious matters originally at stake he remained flexible, but he stuck by the signatories of the National Covenant and continued to attend the meetings of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638.

It seems to have been a political judgment that pressed Argyll to a decisive move against the king. When Charles tried to prorogue Parliament in May 1640, the marquess moved in the chamber that it should continue its sittings.

Soon he was being authorised to suppress rebellious royalists in Angus and Atholl, which he did completely and cruelly.

After Charles came to Scotland in 1641 seeking a fresh alliance against Westminster, Argyll was one making sure it would exact a cost of the king too. Control of judicial and political appointments shifted to the Scottish Parliament, which he, now with his marquessate, did much to hold to a common cause.

In January 1644, he accompanied the Scottish army into England, but was forced in March to return and face the largely Irish invasion led by the royalist Marquess of Montrose, which was winning a series of stunning victories.

Argyll retired to Inveraray. Montrose followed in December, forcing him to flee into the mountains and devastating his territories. On February 2, 1645, he launched a shattering assault at Inverlochy. Argyll witnessed from his barge on the nearby loch the fearful slaughter of his troops but left them to it and sailed away.

Scotland had never fully trusted him, and now saw in him only a coward. He was not delivered from Montrose before the latter’s final defeat on September 12 at Philiphaugh in the Borders.

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Until this year of catastrophe, Argyll’s statesmanship had been largely successful. He balanced Scottish factions and activated English alliances at the right moments. He defended and guaranteed Scotland’s national liberties and religion, while reducing the king’s power to a mere shadow. Charles himself became a prisoner of the Scots at Newcastle, till they handed him over to the English and so sent him (against their will) to his death on the scaffold in Whitehall on January 31, 1649.

Yet this complex of circumstances would only work for Argyll and for Scotland so long as his influence held it all together. And it fell apart once the king died. That horrified Scotland, which was not a regicide nation.

In 1651, King Charles II was invited back from his exile, if he would sign the Covenant. Argyll crowned him. But he could not bring himself to agree that his Scots should now invade England again.

As a result, those who could and would agree to this move marched behind Charles to their defeat at Worcester, leaving their own country to occupation by Cromwell. At that point, as recounted above, Argyll saved his own skin – but in the long run not his own head. Scotland was all but wrecked.