They therefore exerted themselves vigorously to consolidate and animate their party.

They assured the rigid royalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked by an usurper, that the rightful King particularly wished no friend of hereditary monarchy to be absent.

More than one waverer was kept steady by being assured in confident terms that a speedy restoration was inevitable.

Gordon had determined to surrender the castle, and had begun to remove his furniture: but Dundee and Balcarras prevailed on him to hold out some time longer.

They informed him that they had received from Saint Germains full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that, if things went ill at Edinburgh, those powers would be used, [288] At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the Estates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded.