THE KING'S SURRENDER TO THE CHURCH
'The love of kings is like the blowing of winds
... or the sea which makes
Men hoist their sails in a flattering calm,
And to cut their masts in a rough storm.'
JOHNSON.
This _coup d'etat_ left Melville and the other exiled brethren free to
return to Scotland, as they did in November 1585. During his stay of
nearly two years in England Melville had not been idle. He carried on a
correspondence with Protestant ministers in France and Switzerland for
the purpose of correcting misrepresentations which Archbishop Adamson
had been industriously circulating among them in regard to the conduct
of the ministers in Scotland. In all its struggles, from the Reformation
to the time of Renwick, the Scottish Church sought to keep the churches
of the Continent informed of its affairs and to secure their sympathy.
When in London Melville diligently used his influence with leading
English statesmen in favour of the cause which he represented. He also
took advantage of his proximity to Oxford and Cambridge to visit those
Universities, where he was received with the greatest courtesy and
respect.
The other ministers who had fled to England had likewise been fully
occupied; they had preached in Berwick, in Newcastle, in London, and
wherever they found an open door. James Melville had, for a while, most
of the banished Ruthven lords in his congregation at Newcastle, and he
had sought to invigorate them as the supporters of the liberties of the
Church in the event of their returning home to take part again in
political life; but, as it proved, with little effect.
The Church soon found that it had gained little by the change of
Government. If Arran and his set were its bitter enemies, the new
Councillors, the Ruthven lords, were, at the best, indifferent friends.
Though they owed their restored power largely to the courageous
resistance of the ministers to the Arran administration, and though they
had pledged themselves during their exile to use their influence, when
opportunity should come, to undo the evils of that administration as
they had affected the Church, they were content to secure their own
interest and left the Church to look after itself.
Parliament having been summoned to meet in Linlithgow in December 1585,
for the purpose of reponing the nobles in their estates and giving its
sanction to their administration, the ministers resolved to hold a
meeting of Assembly beforehand in Dunfermline to prepare a
representation of the Church's interests for the Parliament. When the
members of Assembly reached that city they found that the Provost had
closed the gates against them, by order, it was said, of the Court. The
meeting was held, but adjourned, after resolving that it should be
resumed at Linlithgow. James Melville, fresh from his journey from
England, arrived in Linlithgow on the eve of the Assembly, and found his
brethren much dispirited. They had almost come to a rupture among
themselves, high words having passed between those of them who had
subscribed the deed of submission to the bishops and those who had
refused. This dispute had caused much trouble to Andrew Melville. In a
letter of James Melville written at the time to a friend, he says: 'Mr.
Andro hath been a traicked[14] man since he cam hame, ryding up and doun
all the countrie to see if he might move the brethren to repent and
joyne together.' The Assembly had little hope of Parliament doing
anything towards the repeal of the Black Acts. If the nobles now in
power would not press the King to redress the Church's grievances, it
was certain that he would do nothing in that direction of his own
accord. James was not in a mood to oblige the Church. He could not
conceal his revengeful feelings towards the ministers who had fled with
the Ruthven lords, and especially towards Melville. The Assembly,
however, did its duty. It sent a deputation to the nobles to urge them
to put the Church's claims before the King. The nobles refused, and the
deputation went to the King himself. Melville was its spokesman, and
many sharp and hot words passed between him and James. At length the
King ordered the Assembly to lay before him a statement of its
objections to the Black Acts. This was done, and within twenty-four
hours James issued a reply from his own pen, in which he showed a
conciliatory spirit, and made explanations to take the edge off the
harshness with which the Acts had been framed, but made no alteration in
their substance.
[Footnote 14: Overtoiled.]
If Parliament did not know when to take occasion by the hand to win
concessions from the King in the interests of liberty, he knew how to
use his opportunity for strengthening his own prerogatives. He brought
forward a measure which the Parliament passed, constituting it a capital
offence to criticise the King's conduct or government, and making it
unlawful for his subjects to enter into any association for political
ends without the consent of the throne.
At this time a fresh _casus belli_ between the Church and the Crown
arose through the Church's severe but well-merited handling of
Archbishop Adamson. No man in the kingdom was more responsible for the
recent troubles than Adamson, except Arran, whom he encouraged and
supported in all his arbitrary measures. The minister of the Church who
first opened fire on the Archbishop was James Melville. He had consulted
beforehand with his uncle; but those who think he was too amiable to
have any fight in him, or that on this or any other occasion he was only
doing his uncle's bidding, do not know the man. His courage was as great
as his uncle's, if he had a milder manner and a calmer temper; and his
action on this occasion was the irrepressible outburst of his honest
indignation at Adamson's treachery in the affairs of the Church ever
since his elevation to the See of St. Andrews.
In March 1586 the Synod of Fife met at St. Andrews, and James Melville
as the retiring Moderator had to preach the opening sermon. It was a
full meeting. The Archbishop with a 'grait pontificalite and big
countenance' was seated by the preacher's side. The subject of discourse
was the evil that had been done to the Church from the time of its
planting by the ambitious spirit and corrupt lives of men holding its
highest offices. On reaching his application, the preacher, turning to
the Archbishop and directing his speech to him personally, recalled his
long course of disloyalty to the Church and his persistent efforts to
overthrow its discipline, as well as all the injuries he had done to
religion by his avarice and ambition: he spoke of him as a dangerous
member who needed to be courageously cut off in order to save the body;
and then, addressing himself to the Assembly, exhorted it to 'play the
chirurgeon!' This bold and unexpected attack unmanned the
Archbishop--'he was sa dashit and strucken with terror and trembling
that he could skarse sitt, to let be stand on his feet.' It was manifest
that the Moderator had the whole House at his back, and it at once
entered on a process against Adamson. At first he declined its
jurisdiction, boasting that it was rather his place to judge the
Assembly. At length, however, he condescended to defend himself; and
the process ended in his excommunication. A day or two after he
retaliated by excommunicating, on his own authority, within his own
church, Andrew Melville and other brethren. He also despatched to the
King an appeal against the Synod's sentence, defying the sentence at the
same time by appearing in his own pulpit on the following Sabbath. On
the same Sabbath Melville was preaching in his own college chapel to a
crowded congregation; and a neighbouring laird, with a number of his
friends, having come to the city on that Sabbath to hear Melville, there
was an unusual stir which drew most of the townsfolk to the chapel. When
the last bell was ringing, and Adamson was about to enter the pulpit, a
_canard_ reached him to the effect that a body of local gentry and the
citizens gathered within the college gates had formed a conspiracy to
seize him and hang him on the spot. Calling to his servants to guard
him, he ran out of the church and sought refuge in the steeple, and it
took the magistrates all their skill to persuade him to leave his
hiding-place and accept their convoy to the palace--'he was halff
against his will ruggit[15] out, and halff borne and careit away' amid
the derision of the onlookers.
[Footnote 15: Pulled.]
Adamson had appealed to the Assembly which was to meet in May. The King,
being indignant at the treatment the Archbishop had received, was
resolved to get the sentence annulled, and he set himself to tune the
Assembly to his mind. He called a meeting by royal proclamation, and
gave it out that he would attend it himself. The temper of the Assembly
was such that the resolutions that were to effect the King's object had
to be cautiously framed, and were carried by a bare majority of votes.
The Court, without judging the Synod's proceedings and sentence, and
only after Adamson had made an apology for his pretentions to authority
in the Church, and had given a promise to drop them for the future,
resolved to restore him. The case had been no sooner disposed of than
Melville was summoned before the King and commanded to go into ward
north of the Tay, that the Archbishop might have a better chance of
recovering his lost prestige--a restriction which, however, was soon
removed on a strong representation being made to the King of the loss
which the University was suffering by the banishment of Melville.
From this time the Archbishop fell into disgrace, both for his shameful
public career and for the offences of his private life, especially his
extravagance and consequent debts. Two years later he was deposed by the
Assembly, when the King cast him off, and gave the temporalities of his
see to one of the Court favourites. After that Adamson never lifted his
head. When he had fallen into poverty and sickness he made a pitiful
appeal to Melville, which was most generously met. His old opponent
visited him, and for months provided for him out of his own purse; and
it was through the good offices of both the Melvilles that he was able
to make his peace with the Church before he died. Perhaps it is this
last act of humbleness, when he had lost all repute with the world,
that gives him his best claim on our respect.
For some months previous to the Assembly in which Adamson's case was
disposed of, the King had been exerting himself so to manage the members
amenable to his influence, that he should not only secure his object in
this particular business, but at the same time prevail with the Assembly
to take a step backward in its general polity. He dared not propose much
more than titular precedence for the bishops--a concession only wrung
from the Assembly; and for a _quid pro quo_ he had to give his consent
to a measure for carrying out the provisions of the Second Book of
Discipline by organising presbyteries and synods throughout the country.
This was of course another compromise, but the Church's concessions were
reduced to a minimum. James could only secure a footing for the bishops,
and bide his time for restoring their supremacy.
In the Parliament of 1587, when Melville was present as a commissioner
from the Assembly, a measure was passed, which, though it originated
with the Court and was not so intended, dealt a serious blow to the
hopes of the promoters of Episcopacy. The King had just attained his
twenty-first year, and there was a law in the statute-book providing
that all heirs of estates which had been forfeited through any cause
should, on reaching their majority, have the opportunity of reclaiming
them. Advantage was taken of this law to revoke grants of Crown lands
made during the King's minority; and all the Church lands were annexed
to the Crown. This measure stripped the bishops of their benefices and
abolished their legal status, and so cancelled the chief ground on which
the Court had contended for the maintenance of their order. By this
measure the King, in his need or greed, or both, played for once into
the hands of the Church.
In the following year, 1588, the prodigious attempt of Philip to invade
England and overthrow the Protestant power in the two kingdoms very
greatly strengthened the Presbyterian cause in Scotland, and made
Episcopacy more than ever repugnant to the people, as having in it so
much of the leaven of the Old Church. Whatever roused the Protestant
spirit of the country gave Presbytery a firmer hold as the Church system
most antagonistic to Popery, and also to arbitrary government which
seeks in Popery its natural ally. At every crisis such as that which now
arose, it made a fresh appeal to the deepest feelings of the nation.
At the time when the Armada was approaching our shores the country had
no confidence in the patriotism of the King. There were sinister
suspicions of his attitude to Romanism, caused by the favours shown at
Court to nobles of that faith; by his retention of many of its adherents
in his service, and his reluctance to take action against the Romish
priests, the Jesuits, and the rest of the army of Papal emissaries who
were sowing treason throughout the land. All through his life James was
characterised by a singular unseasonableness in his activity. 'There is
a time,' says the preacher, 'to every purpose under the heaven,' but
with James there was always an incongruity between the time and the
purpose. The year before, he had scandalised the Court by dancing and
giggling at a levee held immediately after his mother's death; and now,
when he should have been arming the country against the Spanish
invasion, he was engaged in writing an academic treatise against the
Pope. Perhaps his conduct was due to a deeper fault in his
character--his ingrained duplicity. As, after his accession to the
English throne, he sought to thwart the anti-Papal policy of his own
Government when Spain was threatening the Protestant power in Germany,
so now he may have been dissembling his real sympathies in writing
against the Papacy. At all events, he never showed by any act of his
reign that he dreaded the Papal power as much as he dreaded that of the
Scottish Presbyterians or the English Puritans.
The Armada brought Melville once more to the front. It was his voice
that roused the nation to a sense of its danger, and his energy that
organised the nation to meet it. He summoned the Assembly, being
Moderator at the time: the Assembly stirred up the nobles and the
burgesses, and the whole nation joined to offer resistance to the
invasion.
From this time the favourable tide for the fortunes of Presbytery which
had set in previous to the Armada flowed with a rush, which within a few
years carried it to undisputed ascendency in the land. The people's
attachment to it was too strong for James, and even within his own
Council it had come to be recognised that acquiescence in it was
inevitable. Maitland, Lethington's brother, the Chancellor of the
kingdom, who was the strongest man in the Council, and for long a
supporter of the King's policy in ecclesiastical affairs, was now won
over, by the logic of events, to its support. He had the sense to
perceive that the kingdom could never prosper till the Church was
satisfied, and that the Church could never be satisfied with any other
than its own freely chosen economy. He also saw that if the King was to
maintain friendship with the English Government, he must sever himself
from those forces in the country that were opposed to the Church, as
they were all under the suspicion of working in the interests of the
power which had made so determined an attempt at the overthrow of the
neighbouring kingdom. 'He helde the King upon twa groundes sure, nather
to cast out with the Kirk nor with England.' Prelacy, he knew, was but
the King's choice for the nation: Presbytery was the nation's choice for
itself. Maitland's influence was great with the King, and from this time
it was used steadily in favour of a new departure in his Church policy.
At the same time there arose, in the person of Robert Bruce, minister of
Edinburgh, one who rendered powerful service to the Presbyterian cause,
and who, in the whole history of the struggle, was singular in this
respect, that while possessing the entire confidence of his brethren he
also carried great weight in the Council of the King. Of good family,
second son of the Laird of Airth, he had studied for the Bar and then
abandoned it for the Church. For many years of his life he had been
conscious of striving against the work of grace in his heart, and
against the conviction that he ought to devote himself to the ministry,
and had thereby suffered sore trouble of conscience. At last a crisis
came, which he describes as 'a court of justice holden on his soul,'
which 'chased' him to his grace. Immediately thereafter he sought the
counsel of Melville, to whom he had been greatly attracted, who
encouraged him to enter the ministry, and under whom he was trained for
it. Bruce commanded respect from all classes and on all hands; 'the
godlie for his puissant and maist moving doctrine lovit him; the
wardlings for his parentage and place reverenced him; and the enemies
for bath stude in awe of him.' Bruce was a special friend of Chancellor
Maitland, through whom he was received with favour at the Court; and he
brought Maitland and Melville together and made them friends.
His marriage, which took place in 1589, was used by James as an occasion
for a public demonstration of his reconciliation to the Church. Before
leaving for Denmark to fetch his bride, he made Bruce an extraordinary
member of his Council, professing at the same time such confidence in
him as he might have given to a viceroy, which indeed Bruce virtually
became. During the King's absence the nation enjoyed a tranquillity
unknown before in his reign, chiefly due to the influence of Bruce and
his brethren. James Melville had good ground for what he said at the
Assembly in August 1590: 'We, and the graittest and best number of our
flockes, halff bein, ar, and mon be his [the King's] best subjects, his
strynthe, his honour. A guid minister (I speak it nocht arrogantlie, but
according to the treuthe!) may do him mair guid service in a houre nor
manie of his sacrilegious courteours in a yeir.' At the Queen's
coronation the ministers took the chief part in the ceremony. It was
Bruce who anointed her, and, with David Lindsay, minister of Leith,
placed the crown on her head. Melville was chosen by the King to prepare
and recite the Stephaniskion, as the coronation ode was called, and the
King was so pleased with it that he gave him effusive thanks. On the
following Sabbath James was present in St. Giles', and in the presence
of the congregation acknowledged the services rendered by Bruce and the
ministers to the country and the crown during his absence, and promised
to turn a new leaf in the government of the kingdom. He was also present
at the next General Assembly, when he broke forth in such fervent
laudation of the Church that he might have made the oldest and
staunchest adherents of Presbytery reproach themselves for the coldness
of their own attachment to it: 'He fell furth in praising God, that he
was borne in suche a tyme as the tyme of the light of the Gospell, to
suche a place as to be king in suche a Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in the
world. "The Kirk of Geneva," said he, "keepeth Pasche and Yule; what
have they for them?--they have no institutioun. As for our nighbour
Kirk in England, it is an evill said masse in English, wanting nothing
but the liftings.[16] I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors,
elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your puritie, and to
exhort the people to doe the same; and I forsuith, so long as I bruike
my life and crowne, sall mainteane the same against all deidlie," etc.
The Assemblie so rejoiced, that there was nothing but loud praising of
God, and praying for the King for a quarter of an houre.'[17]
[Footnote 16: Raising of the Host.]
[Footnote 17: Calderwood's _History_, v. 109.]
The _entente cordiale_ between the King and the ministers was not of
long duration. His promises of amended government were soon forgotten;
the lawlessness of the nobles continued unchecked; agents of Rome were
again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and
nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the
ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly
against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King
had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the
fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his
shadow than had been shown since his return to his person. The outrages
perpetrated by the King's illegitimate cousin, the madcap Bothwell, were
largely laid to James's door, as the doings of a spoiled favourite of
the Court: and the unpunished murder of the popular Earl of Moray, the
'Bonnie Earl,' by Huntly--one of the worst crimes even of that
lawless time, and of complicity in which the King himself was
suspected--aggravated the discontent of the nation.
It was at such a time of disorder and irritation in the country that the
measure was passed by Parliament--the Act of 1592--by which all
previous legislation in favour of Episcopacy was swept off the
statute-book and the Church re-established on the basis of the Second
Book of Discipline. Had this Act been passed two years earlier, it might
have been ascribed to the goodwill of the King; but in the circumstances
in which it was brought forward, it was regarded as a piece of policy,
adopted on the recommendation of the Chancellor for the purpose of
recovering for the King the popularity he had lost during that interval,
by the causes we have mentioned.