The cause of Presbyterianism in Scotland was also the cause of the Presbyterians in Ireland and England. We hear of violent pamphlets which arrived from England and poured oil upon the flame. The greatest activity was displayed by the ministers who had been banished from the Scottish colonies in Ireland. Unable to offer further resistance in that country to the ordinances of Wentworth and of the Irish bishops, they sought refuge in Scotland: and as they found there a spirit like their own ready to meet them, they threw themselves with ardent and unbounded zeal into opposition to the progress of that episcopal authority which had compelled them to retire from Ireland. That discipline and subordination which had hitherto been maintained in Scotland had been broken up by the course of affairs above mentioned. All obstacles had thus been removed from their path in that country: the injustice which they had suffered doubled their hatred of the system of Charles I and his ministers; and they exercised an incalculable influence upon the excitement of Puritan and Calvinist feelings prevailing in Scotland.

But the cause of the Scots appeared to be at the same time the cause of Protestantism in general, which had been everywhere placed at a disadvantage in consequence of the defeat of Nordlingen. In the year 1637 the arms of the Catholics asserted their supremacy on the Rhine and in the Netherlands.