eng a gement

[From engage, v.] I. Ordinary Language : 1. The act of engaging, binding, or pledging to any act or liability. 2. That to which a person is bound or pledged; an obligation; a liability; a contract. [ΙΙ. 1.] "If the superior officers prevailed they would be able to make good their engagement ."-Ludlow: Memoirs , i. 186. 3. ( Specif .): Applied to a promise or pledge of marriage. *4. An obligation, motive, reason, or ground. "This is the greatest engagement not to forfeit an opportunity."-Hammond. 5. An occupation, employment, or affair of bus i ne ; work to be done. "To rise from timely sleep, and meet the day With no engagement." Words worth: Excursion, bk. vii. 6. Employment or occupation of time or attention; application to any work; exercise, practice. "Play, either by our too constant or too long engagement in it, becomes like an employment." -Rogers. 7. The act of engaging, hiring, or employing for any work or duty. 8. The state of being engaged, hired, or employed. 9. An enterprise embarked in. "All my engagements I will construe to thee." Shakesp.: Julius Cæsar, ii. 1. IMG:content-0992.png:[blocks in formation] 2. Scot . Hist .: A secret treaty made at Car is brook Castle on Dec. 27, 1647, between Charles I., then a prisoner there, and the Earls of Lanark and Lauderdale. These noblemen engaged to raise an army in Scotland to aid His Majesty in recovering the throne, and he promised to confirm Presbyterian Church government for three years, till an a embly of divines, a isted by twenty commi ioners of his nomination, should decide on a form of church government most agreeable to the Word of God. He also promised to sur pre all heresy and schism. The majority of the Church and people of Scotland, then strongly Presbyterian, were at the time Covenanters, and, with some exceptions, held aloof from the Engagement which was condemned by the General A embly of 1648. In the same year the Duke of Hamilton led an army of "Engagers," as they were called, into England, was defeated by Oliver Cromwell, and died on the scaffold. When the news of his discomfiture reached Scotland, some of the Covenanting party, led by the Marquis of Argyle, and the Earls of Ca ilis, Eglinton, and Loudon, took arms, overthrew the existing government in Edinburgh, and undertook the administration in its stead. This succe ful exploit was known as the Whig a mores' Raid. Afterward they took steps to convince Cromwell that they had not subscribed the Engagement, or had to do with the recent expedition into England, thus averting hostilities with the great English military leader for a time. For the difference between engagement and bat tle , see BATTLE; for that between engagement and busine , see BUSINESS; for that between engage ment and promise , see PROMISE.