After a two-day artillery bombardment, a Covenanter garrison under Robert Lumsden surrendered to Commonwealth of England forces commanded by George Monck.

Shortly afterwards, Aberdeen also surrendered, effectively ending resistance in Scotland, while Oliver Cromwell's victory at Worcester concluded the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

After several months of fruitless negotiations, the Scots handed him over to Parliament in exchange for a financial settlement, and their troops returned home on 3 February 1647.

[5] Exasperated by Charles's intransigence and renewed outbreak of fighting in the 1648 Second English Civil War, leaders of the New Model Army decided to have the king tried for treason.

These included an undertaking to restore him to the English throne, and the Scots began recruiting an army to achieve this, led by the experienced David Leslie.

[12] Cromwell manoeuvred around Edinburgh, attempting to bring the Scots to battle, but Leslie refused to be drawn out,[13] and on 31 August the English withdrew to Dunbar.

After six months of manoeuvring an English force of 1,600 men under Colonel Robert Overton succeeded in crossing the Firth of Forth and established a beachhead near Inverkeithing on 17 July.

[29] After the battle, Lambert marched 6 miles (10 km) east and occupied the deep-water port of Burntisland[30] and Cromwell shipped most of the English army there.

[30][32] In desperation Charles and Leslie decided that their only chance was to invade England in the hope that the populace would rise to support the King and so took their army south.

Monck detached 1,400 men under Colonel John Okey to subdue western Scotland and marched back through Perth towards Dundee, one of the last three significant Scottish fortifications holding out; the others were Aberdeen and St Andrews.

On 28 August a regiment of English cavalry commanded by Colonel Matthew Alured surprised 5,000 Scots at Alyth, 15 miles (24 km) north of Dundee, scattered them and took prisoner all of the members of the Committee of Estates.

[37] Two days after their artillery opened fire, the English stormed the west and east ports (gates) on the morning of 1 September.

[40][34] As the town had refused an offer to surrender peacefully and consequently been taken by assault these actions were not breaches of the rules of war at the time, although they were considered unusually fierce.

[46] Shortly after the capture of Dundee, Aberdeen, whose council saw no benefit in resisting an inevitable and costly defeat, surrendered to a party of Monck's cavalry.

[56][57] Negotiations between commissioners of the English Parliament and the deputies of Scotland's shires and burghs began to formalise the incorporation of Scottish legal and political structures into the new British state.