THE 'BIGGING UP' OF THE BISHOPS UNDER LENNOX AND ARRAN--MELVILLE'S
FLIGHT TO ENGLAND
'To deal with proud men is but pain,
For either must ye fight or flee,
Or else no answer make again,
But play the beast and let them be.'
_The Raid of the Reidswyre._
In March 1578, James, then in his twelfth year, assumed the government.
In Morton he had had an adviser who was not friendly to the Church, but
those who displaced Morton and brought him before long to the scaffold
were its determined and avowed enemies. During the few years with which
we have to deal in this chapter, the Government was directed by two men
whose character and policy were detested by the nation, and who filled
up their short tenure of power with as many exasperating acts of
despotism as it was possible to crowd into it. The more prominent of the
two, Esme Stewart, a kinsman of the King, cousin of his father Darnley,
was a foreigner and had been trained in the French Court. He had a brief
and inglorious career in Scotland. He had no sooner joined the King's
Council than he became the master of its policy, being the first of the
_gratæ personæ_ who in succession established themselves in the Court
of James and brought him under their control. There is little wonder
that the boy-king, who had passed through the stern hands of George
Buchanan and had spent his time for the most part with men of our
austere Scottish character, should have felt the seductiveness of the
gay foreigner 'with his French fasons and toyes.' Esme Stewart had not
been long in the country before James began to decorate him with honours
and enrich him with gifts of lands and money. He was created Duke of
Lennox and made Lord High Chancellor, in which latter capacity he had
the custody of the King's person--a pawn which in this reign was often
decisive in the contest for political supremacy. He soon filled the
Court with men of his own stamp. One of these, only second to himself in
influence with the King, was another Stewart--James, the infamous son of
Lord Ochiltree. Like his patron, James Stewart soon received high
promotion, being made Earl of Arran.
Lennox had come to Scotland as an emissary of the French Government and
as an agent of the Guises, in order to induce James to break off his
alliance with England in favour of the old alliance with France, and to
restore the Roman Church in the country; but the ministers having become
informed of his designs, raised such a storm against him that he was
driven to make a public renunciation of Popery, and obliged to prosecute
his mission by more cautious and circuitous methods than he intended to
use. Lennox's evil influence on James in ecclesiastical affairs soon
became apparent. On the See of Glasgow becoming vacant, the benefice
was appropriated by himself and the title bestowed on Robert Montgomery,
minister of Stirling. The Church at once rose up in arms against this
flagrant violation of its authority, put Montgomery on his trial for
contumacy, found him guilty, and sentenced him to deposition and
excommunication. It was at the instance of Melville, who, in this as in
many another crisis in the Church's history in his time, was called to
the Moderator's chair, that the Assembly took action against Montgomery,
and this was done in defiance of a royal inhibition. The inferior courts
to which the judicial process at different stages was remitted showed
the same determined spirit, so deep and widespread was the indignation
that was roused against Lennox by his attempt to thrust bishops anew
upon the Church, and against the minister of the Church who had so
basely lent himself to it. When the case came before the Presbytery of
Glasgow, Montgomery himself appeared, accompanied by the provost and
bailies and an escort of soldiers, and produced an interdict under the
King's hand against its proceeding. The Presbytery paid no heed to the
intruders, and was going on with the business, when the Moderator was
ejected from the chair, assaulted, and taken off to prison. Still the
Presbytery proceeded till it finished the case and carried out the
injunction of the Assembly. Among the crowd gathered at the Presbytery
house was a band of students from the University, who in making a
demonstration of their sympathy with the ministers were charged by the
soldiery, and some blood was shed. The ministers of the East vied with
those of the West in supporting the action of the Assembly. John Durie,
the most powerful and popular among them, distinguished himself by the
boldness with which he spoke against Lennox as the disturber of the
peace of the Church. The sentence of excommunication, which had been
transmitted to the Edinburgh Presbytery, was pronounced by John
Davidson, minister of Liberton, and read in most of the pulpits in
Edinburgh and Glasgow on the following Sabbath. A meeting of the Privy
Council was immediately called, in which proceedings were taken against
the ministers of Edinburgh, and John Durie was banished from the city.
A special meeting of Assembly was called to deal with this serious state
of affairs, Melville being still in the chair. In his opening sermon he
made a vehement attack on the Court for its renewed attempt to overthrow
the Church's order and restore Episcopacy, and spoke of the King's claim
to spiritual authority as a 'bludie gullie' thrust into the
Commonwealth--a description which the later history of Scotland has
sufficiently verified. The House, at one with the Moderator, drew up a
statement of the Church's recent grievances, and appointed Melville and
some other members to present it to the King at Perth, where he was
residing at the time. To Perth accordingly they went. This was a daring
step in the circumstances, when there was such exasperation in the
Court, and when its councils were led by two such men as Lennox and
Arran. 'News was sparpelet athort[7] the cuntry that the ministers war
all to be thair massacred.' Melville was warned by a friendly courtier,
his namesake Sir James Melville of Halhill, of the risk he ran in
carrying out the Assembly's commission. 'I thank God,' he answered, 'I
am nocht fleyed nor feible-spirited in the cause and message of Christ.
Come what God please to send, our commission sal be dischargit.' When he
and the other members of the deputation appeared before the King in
Council and read their remonstrance, Arran interfered, when there
occurred another of those historic scenes associated with Melville's
name, in which he displayed such splendid courage in the resistance of
tyranny. An arrogant assailant, like steel striking against flint,
always elicited a flash of his noblest manhood. 'Arran began to threttin
with thrawin[8] brow and bosting langage. "What," says he, "wha dar
subscryve thir treasanable Articles?" "We dar, and will subscryve
them,"' answered Melville, taking, as he spoke, the pen from the clerk
and putting his name to the document; and then, beckoning to his
fellow-deputies, he bade them follow his example, which they all did.
The boldness of the deed cowed even Lennox and Arran. They saw that day
that 'the Kirk had a bak,' and were glad to dismiss the deputies without
further debate.
[Footnote 7: Spread athwart.]
[Footnote 8: Frowning.]
The firmness with which the two Court favourites were handled by the
ministers inspirited the nobles to execute a plot that had been laid to
get the King out of their hands and end their intolerable supremacy. As
soon as the King's person had been secured by the Raid of Ruthven,
Lennox was banished from the realm, and Arran enjoined to confine
himself to his own estate.
For a while the Church had rest and breathed freely after the strain
that had been put upon it. A few days after the Raid of Ruthven a great
outburst of popular feeling in favour of Presbyterianism took place in
Edinburgh, the occasion being the return of John Durie from banishment.
'Ther was a grait concurs of the haill town, wha met him at the Nather
Bow; and, going upe the streit, with bear heads and loud voices, sang to
the praise of God, and testifeing of grait joy and consolation, the
124th Psalm, "Now Israel may say," etc., till heavin and erthe
resoundit. This noyes, when the Duc [of Lennox] being in the town, hard,
and ludgit in the Hie-gat, luiked out and saw, he rave his berde for
anger, and hasted him af the town.'
The peace of the Church was short-lived. In midsummer of 1583 the King
made his escape from the Ruthven lords and betook himself to the Castle
of St. Andrews. The old gang at once returned to Court. Lennox had died
in exile; but Arran was reinstalled at the Council-board, and
immediately renewed the old measures against the ministers, whose part
in causing his recent fall made him more than ever determined to crush
them. He began with Melville, who was summoned before the Council--it
was in February 1584--on a trumped-up charge of using treasonable
language in the course of one of his sermons. Melville declined the
jurisdiction of the Council on the ground that he was not accused of a
civil offence, but of doctrine uttered in the pulpit. His declinature
was taken so hotly by the King and Arran that all who were present felt
he was as good as a dead man; but 'Mr. Andro, never jarging[9] nor
daschit[10] a whit, with magnanimus courage, mightie force of sprit and
fouthe[11] of evidence of reason and langage, plainly tauld the King and
Council that they presumed ower bauldlie ... to tak upon them to judge
the doctrine and controll the ambassadors and messengers of a King and
Counsall graiter nor they, and far above tham! "And that," sayes he, "ye
may see weakness, owersight, and rashness in taking upon you that quhilk
yie nather aught nor can do" (lowsing a litle Hebrew Byble fra his belt
and clanking it down on the burd before King and Chancelar), "thair is,"
says he, "my instructiones and warrand."' A number of witnesses,
well-known enemies of Melville, who had been brought from St. Andrews to
support the accusation, gave their evidence, but to no purpose. Instead
of being discharged, however, he was condemned for the boldness of his
defence--which was construed as a new offence,--and sentenced to
imprisonment in the Castle of Edinburgh during his Majesty's pleasure.
[Footnote 9: Swerving.]
[Footnote 10: Abashed.]
[Footnote 11: Abundance.]
Rulers who could so outrage justice as to deprive a subject of his
liberty on such a ground were not to be trusted with his life. So all
Melville's friends and Melville himself thought. They were persuaded
that Arran, at least, was bent on silencing the man who was his most
formidable opponent. His friends, quoting the proverb, 'lowes and
leiving,'[12] urged him to flight, and he himself resolved on it, having
not only his personal safety but also the interests of the Church and
the commonweal to consider and safeguard. During the few days he was
still left free, he appeared as usual among his friends, and in the best
of spirits. At dinner in James Lawson's manse, where many of his friends
gathered to meet him, he seemed the only light-hearted man in the
company. 'He ate and drank and crakked als merrelie and frie-myndit as
at anie tyme and mair,' drinking to his gaoler and fellow-prisoners, and
bidding his brethren make ready to follow. While seated at table, the
macer of the Council appeared with a warrant charging him to enter the
Castle of Blackness within twenty-four hours. When the macer had
withdrawn, Melville left the manse, and, confiding his intention to only
a few friends, made his escape from the city, accompanied by his brother
Roger, and within the twenty-four hours was safely over the Border and
lodged in Berwick.
[Footnote 12: Loose and living.]
Melville's exile at this juncture, when he was so much needed at home to
meet the tyranny of the Court, was a severe blow to his brethren in the
ministry and to all the friends of the Church. They were entering a
heavy battle when they were deprived of their trusted captain. More
than James Melville could have said at that time that they felt a 'cauld
heavie lumpe' lying on their hearts. The ministers of Edinburgh showed
their characteristic spirit in this crisis, and raised such a storm
against the King and Council on account of their treatment of Melville
that the Court had to defend itself by an apologetic proclamation.
Within a few months after Melville's flight measures were passed through
Parliament which upset all that the Church had done during the previous
decade to extricate itself from the confusion of the Tulchan Episcopacy.
They were devised by Arran and by Archbishop Adamson, who persistently
used his influence at Court for the subversion of Presbytery. These
measures--'The Black Acts'--declared the supremacy of the King in all
matters--ecclesiastical and civil--and made all rejection of his
authority a treasonable act: they deprived the Church of the rights of
free assembly, free speech, and independent legislation; and they
empowered the bishops to reestablish their order in every part of the
kingdom. A clause was added requiring all ministers to sign an act of
submission to the bishops on penalty of losing their offices and their
livings.
On these Acts being proclaimed at the Cross of Edinburgh, the ministers
of the city--James Lawson, Walter Balcanquhal, and Robert Pont--appeared
and made protest against them, when Arran was so incensed by their
conduct that he at once ordered their arrest, and swore he would make
Lawson's head 'leap from its halse though it was as big as a haystack.'
More than they were in jeopardy of their lives; every man in the country
who had been a pronounced friend of liberty had cause to fear. Lawson,
Balcanquhal, and Pont fled, with many others. A warrant had been
procured by Archbishop Adamson for the apprehension of James Melville,
when he made his escape by open boat to Berwick.
The course of events showed that the ministers had reason for their
flight. Some of the most zealous of those left in the country were
thrown into prison for refusing to conform to the Acts, or for
remembering their banished brethren in public prayer. One minister was
tried and sentenced to death on a charge that a letter from one of these
brethren had been found in possession of his wife; and though the
sentence was not executed, the scaffold was put up, and kept up for some
time, before his prison window. Nor were the ministers the only
sufferers. Glasgow University, which Melville's teaching and influence
had leavened with the principles of liberty, was made to feel the heavy
hand of the Government: its professors were imprisoned, its rector was
banished, and its gates were closed.
Popular indignation began to break forth in many quarters. In St.
Andrews the students went in a body to the Archbishop's palace and
warned him that he was courting the fate of Hamilton and Beaton; while
visiting Edinburgh, Adamson had to be protected by the police;
Montgomery was mobbed at Ayr; and wherever the bishops appeared there
were hostile demonstrations on the part of the people.
The Court, however, defied public opinion, and went on with its coercive
policy, rigidly enforcing submission to the authority of the bishops. At
first the great majority of the ministers refused; but on a clause being
added to the deed of submission, to the effect that it required them
only to conform 'according to the Word of God,' most of them gave way.
The clause was suggested by Adamson, and it reflects his character. It
was one of those shrewd devices for causing division among the
ministers, and providing a middle way for men distracted by the desire
to be faithful to their consciences on the one hand, and the wish to
escape persecution on the other, which were often resorted to by the
Court throughout the entire course of the struggle against prelacy. Some
of the stalwarts of the Church fell into the trap which Adamson had set
for them in this shallow compromise, and their example led many others
to yield. One of the banished brethren, in a letter written at the time,
states that all the ministers in the Lothians and the Merse, with only
ten exceptions, had subscribed; that John Erskine of Dun had not only
subscribed, but was making himself a pest to the ministers in the North
by importuning them to follow his example; that John Craig, so long
Knox's colleague, had given in and was speaking hotly against those who
held out; that even the redoubtable John Durie had 'cracked his
curple'[13] at last; and that the pulpits of Edinburgh were silent,
except a very few 'who sigh and sob under the Cross.'
[Footnote 13: Crupper.]
Events took such a course that the ministers who subscribed might, after
all, have held out with a whole skin. They capitulated to their enemies
on the very eve of their enemies' fall; for the exasperation of the
nation under such insolent tyranny as Arran's could no longer be held
in. Davison, the English Ambassador, writing to the Court at this time,
says: 'It is incredible how universally the man is hated by all men of
all degrees, and what a jealousy is sunken into the heads of some of the
wisest here of his ambitious and immoderate thoughts.... His usurp power
and disposition of all things, both in Courts, Parliaments, and
Sessions, at the appetite of himself and his good lady, with many other
things do bewray matter enough to suspect the fruits of ambition and
inordinate thirst for rule'; and he adds, 'I find infinite appearances
that the young King's course ... doth carry him headlong to his own
danger and hazard of his estate. He hath, since the change at St.
Andrews, continually followed forth implacable hatred and pursuit
against all such as in defence of his life and crown have hazarded their
own lives, living, fortunes in all that they have, and now throws
himself into the arms of those that have heretofore preferred his
mother's satisfaction to his own surety, and do yet aim at that mark,
with the apparent danger of religion which hath already received a
greater wound by the late confusions and alterations than can be easily
repaired.' Other satellites of the Court helped to make the country
restive. Adamson especially provoked the people by many petty acts of
tyranny, such as the ejection from the manses of the wives of the
banished ministers on account of a spirited defence of their husbands,
which they had published in reply to charges made against them by the
Archbishop.
At the same time the country was visited by two great calamities which
were interpreted as divine judgments on the misdeeds of the Government.
The harvest was destroyed by heavy rains, and there was an outbreak of
the plague of such virulence as to spread terror in all the larger
cities. Edinburgh was so desolated, that when James Melville and others
of the banished ministers passed through the streets on their return
home, they found them empty,--'About alleavin hours he cam rydding in at
the watergett of the Abbay, upe throw the Canow-gett, and red in at the
Nether Bow, throw the graitt street of Edinbruche to the Wast Port, in
all the quhilk way we saw nocht three persons, so that I miskend
Edinbruche, and almost forgot that ever I had seen sic a toun.' The
people felt that 'the Lord's hand wald nocht stay unto the tyme the
Ministers of God and Noble-men war brought hame again.' The banished
lords, emboldened by the dissatisfaction of the people and the support
of the English Government, and joining with several Border chiefs who
had old scores of their own against Arran, invaded the country, marched
to Stirling, where the King and Court had retired on hearing of their
approach, and took possession of the town. Arran fled, and James was
glad to come to terms with the lords.