They had not long to wait. In the summer of 1633 Charles came to Scotland to be crowned, and Laud came with him. He entered Edinburgh on June 15th, and on the 18th the mischief began. The ceremonies of the coronation confirmed the worst suspicions. A table decked in the fashion of an altar was set up in the chapel of Holyrood; behind it was hung a curtain of tapestry enwrought with a crucifix; the bishops engaged in the service wore white rochets and copes embroidered with gold, and each time they passed before the crucifix they bowed their heads. Even the most loyal whispered to each other that it all smelled sadly of Popery. The Tithes Bill was of course passed, but not without an unseemly wrangle between Charles and his Parliament, over which the Scottish law allowed the sovereign to preside in person. Through the year following the King's return to England affairs grew steadily worse. The creation of a see of Edinburgh, the appointment of Archbishop Spottiswoode to the Chancellorship, and of many of his bishops to the Privy Council,--a step odious to all the aristocracy alike, to the tolerant and loyal Napier no less than to the mutinous Loudon,--the Book of Ecclesiastical Canons, the foolish prosecution of Lord Balmerino, all inflamed the rising temper of a nation jealous above all other nations of established customs, and that had ever shown itself quick to dispute the divine right of its kings to do wrong. Last of all, as a torch to this fatal pyre, came Laud's new prayer-book.
Everything, then, was ready for the explosion when Montrose returned to Scotland in 1636. Which side was a young man of his rank, position, and temper likely to take in the approaching conflict? That question has been variously answered, and is still, if no longer the object of controversy, at least a stumbling-block to many who regard him as the Abdiel of that faithless time. That his character should have in some degree suffered from a contrast which all can discern, and few have been at the pains to examine, was inevitable. Between the champion of the Throne who sealed his loyalty with his life and the leader of men in arms against their sovereign, there must surely be a gulf which no explanation or apology can bridge.