THE KING'S GREEK GIFT TO THE CHURCH
'The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was
in his heart.'
_The Psalms._
In 1596, at one of the many conferences which he held with the
Commissioners of the Church on the business with which our last chapter
was concerned, the King disclosed a new policy. For the double purpose
of diverting public attention from the Popish lords, and of starting a
new process for the overthrow of Presbytery, he cast off all disguise
and threw down the gauntlet to the ministers. He told the Commissioners
that the question of the redding of the marches between the two
jurisdictions must be reopened, and that there could be no peace between
him and the Church until it satisfied him on these four points:--that
ministers should make no reference in the pulpit to affairs of
government; that the Courts of the Church should take no cognisance of
offences against the law of the land; that the General Assembly should
only meet by the King's special command; and that the Acts of the
Assembly should, no more than the statutes of the realm, be held valid
till they received his sanction and ratification.
Had these demands been granted, the liberties of the Church would have
been placed under the King's feet, the ministers would have worn a Court
muzzle, and the Assembly would have sat only to register the King's
decrees. With the pulpits silenced in regard to affairs of government
and offences against the law, the country would have been deprived of
the only organ of public opinion that checked the arbitrary power of the
Crown and the prevailing laxity in the administration of justice. Had it
not been for words of 'venturesome edge' spoken from the pulpits on
necessary occasions, we cannot estimate how the liberties of Scotland
would have suffered. We are told by some dispassionate and carefully
balanced readers of Scottish History that the Presbyterian Reformers of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cared no more for liberty than
did their opponents, and that the controversy was between Presbyterian
tyranny on the one hand and Episcopal tyranny on the other; and, of
course, it is to be allowed that _individual_ liberty was neither
claimed nor admitted by any party in that age, as it is by all parties
in ours. But the Presbyterian Church was _the nation_ in a sense which
held true of no other organisation civil or ecclesiastical--certainly
not of the aristocratic Parliament,--and its courts and pulpits were the
voice of the nation--the only articulate voice it had; so that in
pleading for the rights and liberties of the Church, in demanding for
it free speech and effective influence in the nation's affairs, Melville
and the Presbyterians were, from first to last, fighting for the rights
and liberties of the people against the personal and injurious ambitions
of the King and his courtiers. There can be no really historical
understanding of the course of events in Scotland through the whole
Reforming period except in the light of this truth--that the interests
of Presbytery were dear to the best men in the country, from generation
to generation, because they were the interests both of national
righteousness and of national freedom. That the Church should be free to
reform the nation, meant, practically, and in the only way possible,
that the nation should be free to reform itself. Knox, Melville, and the
Covenanters were the nobler sons of Wallace and Bruce, and fought out
their battles. And this contest with James was a crucial illustration of
the principles involved in the whole long struggle.
On the very day the Commissioners were conferring with the King, it came
out that Mr. David Black, minister of St. Andrews, had been summoned
before the Council on a charge rising out of sermons he had preached.
Black was accused, in the first instance, of having used language
disrespectful to Queen Elizabeth. Bowes, the English Ambassador, had
been wrought upon by one of the courtiers to make a complaint against
Black on this score; and although the latter had made an explanation
with which the Ambassador professed himself satisfied, the charge was
persisted in. Black was further accused of having, on various
occasions, made offensive references to the King and the Queen, and to
others of high position in the land. The charges were based on sermons
spread over two or three years, a circumstance which of itself suggests
that the prosecution had been got up for ulterior government purposes;
that it was a 'forged cavillation,' as Bruce called it in his pulpit in
Edinburgh.
Black denied all the charges, and declared that they had been concocted
by well-known private enemies. When the Council resolved to go on with
the prosecution, Black, on the advice of the Commissioners of the
Church, declined its jurisdiction. The Council went on with the
trial--Black taking no part in it,--found the charges proven, and
sentenced him to go into ward beyond the North Water (the North Esk).
The same week, the Commissioners of Assembly who had come to Edinburgh
to watch the trial were ordered to quit the capital, along with many of
their leading supporters among the citizens, within twenty-four hours;
and a Proclamation was issued containing a vehement attack on the
ministers, and reviving one of the provisions of the Black Acts, which
prohibited all preachers from censuring the conduct of the Government or
any of 'the loveabill(!)' Acts of Parliament, required all magistrates
to take measures against any who should be found so doing, and made it a
crime to hear such speeches without reporting them to the authorities.
This Proclamation left the country in no doubt as to the character of
the King's policy towards the Church; for never had even James asserted
his claims to absolute authority, alike in civil and ecclesiastical
affairs, more arrogantly. It declared that the royal power was above all
the estates, spiritual as well as temporal; and that the King was judge
of speeches of whatever quality, uttered in the pulpit.
The citizens of Edinburgh were naturally thrown into violent commotion
by these events; and when their minds were in this inflammable
condition, an incident occurred which brought the public excitement to
its height, and which the Government turned to its own account in
prosecuting its quarrel with the Church with still greater vigour. This
incident is known as 'the Riot of 17th December' (1596). On that day a
number of the ministers and of the nobles who were in sympathy with
them, were assembled for consultation in one of the chapels of St.
Giles', known as the 'Little Church,' when they were startled by some
one near the door raising the shout, 'Fy! save yourselves,' or, as
another version gives it, 'The Papists are in arms to take the town and
cut all your throats.' The Assembly at once broke up, and all made for
the street. The alarm spread through the city, and soon brought the
people in crowds to the High Street, many of them armed; and it is said
that some of them surrounded the Tolbooth, where the King was sitting at
the time with the Council, crying to 'bring out Haman,' and shouting,
'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.' On hearing of the tumult, the
Provost and the ministers of the city made for the scene, and through
their exertions peace was restored within an hour, and without any one
being hurt.
The man who raised the panic in the 'Little Church' never came to be
known; but it was believed that he was one of the 'Cubiculars' (as they
were called), or gentlemen of the King's bedchamber, who were annoyed at
the Octavians, on account of the retrenchments made in the King's
household expenditure; and that this _ruse_ had been devised for the
purpose of fomenting the differences between the Octavians and the
ministers.
The action taken by the Court in connection with the riot would have
been ridiculous had its consequences for the Church not been so serious.
Next day the King removed the Court to Linlithgow, and a Proclamation
was made at the Cross of Edinburgh announcing that, owing to the
'treasonable' arming of the citizens, the Courts of Law would also be
removed from the city, and ordering the four ministers and several
prominent citizens of Edinburgh into ward in the Castle, and citing them
before the Council on a general charge. The ministers fled, as Melville
and others had done in like circumstances twelve years before.
In January 1597 the King returned to the capital, and the Estates were
called together to confirm the Acts passed by the Council for punishing
all whom it chose to hold in blame for the riot of the previous month.
In accordance with these Acts, all ministers were to be required, on
pain of losing their stipends, to subscribe a bond acknowledging the
King to be the only judge of those charged with using treasonable
language in the pulpit; authorising magistrates to apprehend any
preachers who might be found so doing, and declaring the King to have
the power of discharging ministers at his pleasure. Vindictive Acts
against the city of Edinburgh were also confirmed. Henceforth no General
Assembly was to be held within its walls; the seat of the Presbytery was
to be transferred to Musselburgh or Dalkeith; the manses of the city
ministers were to be forfeit to the Crown; these ministers were not to
be readmitted to their pulpits, nor any others chosen in their places
without his Majesty's consent; and no magistrates, any more than
ministers, were to be appointed without the royal approval.
At the same meeting of the Estates, arrangements were made for the
restoration of the Popish lords. The contrast between the King's
leniency towards them, and his rigorous and vindictive measures towards
the ministers, plainly advertised the disposition of the King to both.
Well might Robert Bruce ask in one of his sermons--'What sall the
religius of both countries think of this? Is this the moyen to advance
the Prince's grandeur and to turne the hearts of the people towards his
Hienesse?' Spirited protests were made by the Commissioners of the
Church; they did not mince their language--'We deteast that Act ...
making the King head of the Kirk ... as High Treason and sacriledge
against Christ the onlie King and Head of the Kirk.' The magistrates
did not show the same mettle, but made submission on all the points
required.
Emboldened by the effect of these measures, the King lost no time in
pressing forward his designs against the Church. His next step was to
issue a state paper containing a long series of questions which should
reopen discussion on the established policy, and convening a meeting of
the representatives of the Church and of the Estates for the purpose of
debating and deciding on these questions. The ministers at once began
preparations for the struggle; and it was Melville's Synod--always the
Church's pilot in the storm--that once more took the lead. It appointed
Commissioners to urge the King to abandon the proposed Convention, and
to refer the business to a regular meeting of Assembly. Should the King
refuse this request, the Commissioners were not to acknowledge the
Convention as a lawful meeting of the Assembly, nor to admit its claim
to enter on the Constitution of the Church. In any private discussion
they were strenuously to oppose any movement on the part of the King to
disturb the existing order.
The Convention met in Perth on the last day of February 1597. In
anticipation, the King, knowing well the determined opposition he would
encounter at the hands of those ministers who regularly attended the
Assembly and took part in its business, had despatched one of his
courtiers, Sir Patrick Murray, to do the part of 'Whip' among the
ministers north of the Tay, and so to pack the Assembly with members
who rarely attended it, who were unaccustomed to its business, and who
were more likely to be facile for the King's purposes than their
brethren in the south. Murray--'the Apostle of the North,' as he was
sarcastically called--brought the Highland ministers down in droves,
poisoned their minds with jealousy of the southern ministers, and
flattered them with the assurance of the King's esteem.
After a debate, lasting for three days, the majority agreed to hold the
Convention as a meeting of the Assembly. Thereafter the King's questions
were entered upon, and so far discussed, when the business was adjourned
to another meeting to be held in Dundee. In agreeing to recognise the
Convention as an Assembly, and to open up the subject of its own
constitution, the Church came down from its only safe position, and
virtually delivered itself into the King's hands, thereby inflicting a
wound on its own liberties, from which it took a whole century to
recover. That surrender was the letting in of waters, and henceforth the
Assemblies were the organ of the Crown rather than of the Church--'Whar
Chryst gydit befor, the Court began then to govern all; whar pretching
befor prevalit, then polecie tuk the place; and, finalie, whar devotioun
and halie behaviour honoured the Minister, then began pranking at the
chare, and prattling in the ear of the Prince, to mak the Minister to
think him selff a man of estimatioun!... The end of the Assemblies of
auld was, whow Chryst's Kingdome might stand in halines and friedome:
now, it is whow Kirk and Relligioun may be framed to the polytic esteat
of a frie Monarchie, and to advance and promot the grandour of man, and
supream absolut authoritie in all causes, and over all persones,
alsweill Ecclesiasticall as Civill.'
The Dundee Assembly met in May; again the northern ministers were
present in force; and again every means the Court could contrive was
used to win over the members, and especially those of mark among them.
Melville came to attend the Assembly; and one evening before it met, Sir
Patrick Murray sent for the younger Melville, and urged him to advise
his uncle to go home, as, if he did not, the King would order him to be
removed. On receiving the answer that it would be useless to give
Melville such advice, since the threat of death would not turn him from
his duty, Sir Patrick rejoined, 'Surely I fear he suffer the dint of the
King's wrath.' James Melville told his uncle of the interview with the
King's 'Whip.' What his uncle's answer was, 'I need not wraite,' he
says. On the morning of the Assembly the Melvilles were summoned by the
King. The interview went on smoothly till they entered on the business
for which the Assembly was called, when 'Mr. Andro brak out with his
wounted humor of fredome and zeall and ther they heeled on, till all the
hous, and clos bathe, hard mikle of a large houre.' Melville was much
too stormy a courtier for the King's purposes.
At the Dundee Assembly, the transactions at the Perth Convention were
confirmed; and thereafter a new proposal was made by the King and
carried, which was fraught with evil for the Church. This was the
appointment of an extraordinary standing Commission to confer with the
King on the Church's affairs--a Commission which came to be a kind of
King's Council set up in the Assembly. Calderwood speaks of it as the
King's 'led horse,' and James Melville calls it 'the very neidle to draw
in the Episcopall threid.'
Armed with his new provisions, the King immediately began to use them
with energy. Edinburgh and St. Andrews were the strongholds of the
Church, where the Invincibles in its ministry were chiefly found. The
ministers of the former had already been disposed of, and the King's
next move was directed against those of the latter--above all, against
Melville, the chief Invincible. The two leading ministers of St.
Andrews, Black and Wallace, were discharged; George Gledstanes, who
afterwards became a Bishop, being appointed in Black's place; and
Melville was deprived of the Rectorship of the University. At the same
time, a law was enacted depriving professors of their seats in Church
Courts, the object being, of course, to exclude Melville, whose
influence in the Courts was so commanding.
At the end of this year another step was taken towards the re-erection
of Episcopacy. The Commissioners of Assembly, who were now mere
creatures of the King, appeared before Parliament, petitioning it to
give the Church the right of representation, so as to restore it to its
former position as the Third Estate of the realm; proposing also, that
for this end the prelatic order should be revived, and the Bishops
chosen as the Church's representatives. The jurisdiction of the prelates
within the Church was to be left over for future consideration, in
accordance with James's policy, which was not to filch so much of the
Church's liberty at any one time as might frustrate his hope of taking
it all away in the end. The petition of the Commissioners was granted by
the Parliament.
In February of the following year, 1598, the Synod of Fife met, Sir
Patrick Murray being present as the King's Commissioner; and the Court
at once entered on the question of the hour, Should the Church agree to
send representatives to Parliament? James Melville, who was the first to
rise and address the House, protested against their falling to work to
'big up' bishops, whom all their days they had been 'dinging doun.'
Andrew Melville followed, and supported his nephew's counsel in his own
vehement manner. David Ferguson, the oldest minister of the Church, who
had been at its planting in 1560, rose and warned the House of the fatal
gift that was offered by the King. John Davidson, another venerable and
influential member of the Synod, made a powerful speech, concluding with
the same warning: 'Busk, busk, busk him as bonnilie as ye can, and
fetche him in als fearlie as yie will, we sie him weill aneuche, we sie
the horns of his mytre.' When the Synod met, the majority were inclined
to favour the proposal; but these speeches, greatly to the chagrin of
the Royal Commissioner, turned the feeling of the House.
The same business occupied the next Assembly, which met in Dundee in
March. Melville having come to the Assembly in defiance of the recent
Act depriving him of his seat, the King challenged his commission in the
Court. Melville replied with great spirit; and before he was discharged,
delivered his views on the King's policy. John Davidson boldly defended
his leader's right to sit in the Assembly, and, turning to the King,
told him that he had his seat there as a Christian man, and not as
President of the Court. Next day Davidson complained again of the
treatment Melville had received, openly ascribing it to the King's fear
of his opposition. 'I will not hear a word on that head,' James burst
forth.--'Then,' said Davidson, 'we must crave help of Him that will hear
us.' Not only was Melville excluded from the Assembly, but its business
was not allowed to proceed till he left the town, lest he should stiffen
the brethren who resorted to him for advice against the King's
proposals. The royal measures were, after all, only carried by ten
votes; and even that majority would not have been secured had the King
not declared, with his usual disingenuousness, that he had no intention
of restoring the bishops as a spiritual order, but only as
representatives of the Church in Parliament.
It was decided that the number of representatives should correspond with
that of the old prelates, and that they should be chosen conjointly by
the King and the Assembly. When, however, the House proceeded to
details, so much difference of opinion arose, that the King thought it
prudent to adjourn. The questions were referred to the inferior Courts
for their consideration, and thereafter each Synod was to appoint three
commissioners to confer on the subject before the King along with all
the theological professors.
This conference was held, and was packed with the King's men. In many
cases the delegates were not the choice of those they represented. The
trick by which this was effected was in keeping with the rest of the
King's conduct in the business. In many of the presbyteries the
Invincibles were placed upon the leets from which the commissioners were
to be elected; they thus lost their votes, and those who remained to
make the choice chose the delegates desired by the King.
Melville attended the conference, and opposed the King at every point.
On the question of the duration of the office of the representatives,
there was a very lively piece of repartee between the two. Melville had
been contending that the King's proposal to appoint the representatives
for life would establish lordship over the brethren, 'tyme strynthning
opinioun and custome confirming conceat,' when the King broke in upon
his speech with the remark that 'there was na thing sa guid bot might be
bathe ill suspected and abbusit, and sa we suld be content with na
thing.' Melville retorted that they 'doubted of the guidness, and had
ower just cause to suspect the evill of it.' The King's next thrust
was: 'There was na fault bot we [the ministers] war all trew aneuche to
the craft,' which Melville turned with the remark, 'But God make us all
trew aneuche to Christ say we.'--'The ministers,' said the King, 'sould
ly in contempt and povertie [if their status was not raised as he
proposed].--'It was their Maister's case before them,' rejoined
Melville; 'it may serve them weill aneuche to be as he was, and better
povertie with sinceritie nor promotioun with corruptioun.'--'Uthers
would be promovit to that room in Parliament,' said the King [his
Majesty could not want his three estates], 'wha wald opres and wrak his
Kirk.'--Melville answered: 'Let Chryst the King and advenger of the
wrangs done to his Kirk and them deal togidder as he hes done before;
let see wha gettes the warst.'--Once more the King argued: 'Men wald be
that way [by a temporary appointment] disgraced, now sett upe and now
sett by and cast down and sa discouragit from doing guid,' when Melville
concluded: 'He that thinks it disgrace to be employed in what God's Kirk
thinks guid, hes lytle grace in him; for grace is given to the lowlie.'
Another point was the name to be given to the representatives. Arguing
against the King's proposal to style them bishops, Melville used great
freedom of speech: 'The nam [Greek: episkopos] being a Scripture nam,
might be giffen tham, provyding, that because ther was sum thing mair
put to the mater of a Bischope's office then the Word of God could
permit, it sould have a lytle eik[23] put to the nam quhilk the Word of
God joyned to it, and sa it war best to baptize tham with the nam that
Peter i. cap. iv. giffes to sic lyk officers, calling tham [Greek:
allotrioepiskopous], war nocht they wald think scham to be merschallit
with sic as Peter speakes of ther, viz., murderers, theiffs, and
malefactors?' Melville was much pleased with his own wit: 'Verilie that
gossop [this was Andro] at the baptisme (gif sa that I dar play with
that word) was no a little vokie[24] for getting of the bern's name,' We
hardly understand Melville unless we take into account the spirit almost
of glee with which he fought 'the good fight'; he was 'always a
fighter,' not purely from stress of circumstances, but because he had it
in him; he was never quarrelsome, and he needed a high issue to rouse
him--but that given, he sniffed the battle from far, and dearly loved to
be in the thick of it.
[Footnote 23: Addition.]
[Footnote 24: Vain.]
The questions were then left to be disposed of by the General Assembly,
the King warning the members of the conference before it broke up that,
whatever the Assembly might do, he would have his Third Estate restored.
By this time the country had learned, by the publication of the King's
two books--_The True Law of Free Monarchy_ and the _Basilicon
Doron_--that James's practice in the government of the nation and in his
policy towards the Church was in accordance with his theory of kingship.
By a 'Free Monarchy' he meant, not a monarchy in which the people are
free, but in which the King is free from all control of the people. He
claimed that the King was above the law; and that 'as it is atheism and
blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is presumption and a high
contempt in a subject to dispute what a King can do, or to say that a
King cannot do this or that.'
In the _Basilicon Doron_ he unveiled his real feelings and designs with
regard to Presbytery, which, at the very time he was writing, he was
professing to respect--declaring that the ruling of the Kirk was no
small part of the King's office; that parity among the ministers could
not agree with a monarchy; that Puritans were pests in the Kirk and
commonwealth of Scotland, and that bishops must be set up.
The General Assembly met in Montrose in March 1600; and Melville, who
had come to the town to attend it, was commanded by the King to keep to
his room. Summoned to his Majesty's presence, he was asked why he was
giving trouble in attending the Assembly after the Act depriving him of
his seat; when he replied: 'He had a calling in his Kirk of God and of
Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, quhilk he behovit to dischairge at all
occasiounes, being orderlie callit thereto, as he wes at this time; and
that for feir of a grytter punischment then could any earthly king
inflict.' The King in anger uttered a threat, when Melville, putting his
hand to his head, said: 'Sir, it is this that ye would haiff. Ye sall
haiff it: Tak it! Tak it! or ye bereave us of the liberties of Jesus
Christ and His kingdome.'
Excluded from the Assembly, Melville remained in Montrose during the
sittings, to assist his brethren with his counsel. The King was present
at every sitting, and was busy from early morning till late at night
canvassing the members of the House; and though there were many who
stood honestly by their principles, his authority and diplomacy carried
the day. The House was so far from being favourable to the King's
scheme, that it would have thrown it out, but for his arbitrary closure
of the debate; it did throw out the proposal of life representatives;
and it safeguarded the other clauses of the measure with so many
_caveats_, that had they been observed, it could not have served for the
restoration of the bishops. These _caveats_, however, were not observed;
then, as many a time before and since in Scotland, the Church got the
worst of the bargain in seeking a compromise with the civil power, and
found too late that she had sold her birthright. In less than a month
after the Assembly rose, three of the ministers had been appointed to
bishoprics, and these ministers took their seats in the next Parliament.
We have seen that James, whenever he felt that the tide of hostile
opinion in the country was becoming too strong for him, sought to turn
it by some popular act. The General Assembly held in Burntisland in May
1601 witnessed one of those periodic fits of apparent yielding, on the
King's part, to the will of the nation. He was in peculiar disfavour at
the time, owing to the mysterious tragedy which took place at Gowrie
House in August 1600. There was a widespread, deep-rooted suspicion that
the Earl of that name, who was a favourite of the people, and the head
of a Protestant house, had been the victim rather than the author of the
conspiracy; and the public irritation was increased by the new quarrel
which James forced on Bruce and the other ministers of Edinburgh for
refusing to repeat, in the thanksgiving service appointed to be held for
his preservation, his own version of the story. At the Burntisland
Assembly the King appeared and made humble confession of the
shortcomings of his Government, especially in respect of his indulgence
of the Papists, and gave lavish promises of amendment.
Two years afterwards, before leaving Scotland to ascend the English
throne, these promises were renewed; but, as usual with James, they were
only the prelude of greater oppression. His threat to the Puritan
ministers at Hampton Court conference--that he would 'harry them out of
the country'--left their brethren of the Scottish Church in no doubt as
to the course he would pursue towards themselves, now that he had
attained to a position of so much greater authority.
The Assembly was the _palladium_ of the Church's liberty; and the policy
which the King had begun before leaving Scotland, of usurping the
government of the Church by gaining the control of the Assembly, was
vigorously prosecuted after his accession to the throne of England. The
meetings were prorogued again and again by royal authority, but always
under protest from the most independent of the ministers. For their zeal
in promoting a petition to him on the subject, the King ordered the two
Melvilles to be imprisoned; but the Scottish Council dared not lay
hands on them in view of the unpopularity of the Government. In the year
1605 the quarrel between the King and the ministers over the right of
free Assembly came to a head. A meeting appointed to be held in Aberdeen
had been prorogued by the King's authority for a second time, and
prorogued _sine die_. The ministers felt that if they acquiesced in so
grave a violation of the law of the Church, her liberty would be
irrecoverably lost; several of the Presbyteries accordingly resolved to
send representatives to Aberdeen to hold the Assembly in defiance of the
King's prohibition. This was done, and the House had no sooner been
constituted than a King's messenger appeared and commanded the members
to disperse; whereupon the Moderator dissolved the Assembly and fixed a
day for its next meeting. The law-officers of the Crown were immediately
instructed to prosecute the ministers who had attended, and fourteen of
them were tried and sentenced to imprisonment--two of them, Forbes the
Moderator and John Welch, Knox's son-in-law, being sent to Blackness.
Six of them having declined the jurisdiction of the Council, were tried
for high treason by a packed jury, and found guilty by a majority. So
great was the indignation felt throughout the country at the prosecution
and the manner in which it had been conducted, that the Council had to
inform the King that the Court could not go on with the trial of the
others. Eight of the condemned ministers were banished to the Highlands
and Islands; and the six who had been found guilty of treason were sent
to Blackness and then banished to France. In all the proceedings against
those who had made such a manly stand in defence of the Church's
liberties, Melville identified himself with his brethren, did all that
was in his power to procure their acquittal, and after their sentence
visited them in prison.
The King now took another step in his campaign against Presbytery. He
ordered all the synods of the Church to meet, in order to have articles
submitted to them which provided that the bishops should have full
jurisdiction over the ministers, under his Majesty, and that the King
should be acknowledged supreme ruler of the Church under Christ. These
articles were rejected by Melville's synod, and referred to the Assembly
by the others. A meeting of Parliament was summoned to pass the articles
into law, and to this Parliament Melville was sent by his presbytery to
watch over the interests of the Church. It having been ascertained that
it was the King's intention to propose that the statute of the year
1587, annexing the temporalities of the prelates to the Crown, should be
repealed, and that the bishops should be restored to their ancient
prerogatives and dignities, the ministers lodged a protest beforehand,
with Melville's name at the head of the signatories; and when the
measure came to be adopted by Parliament, and Melville rose up to renew
his protest, he was commanded to leave the House, 'quhilk nevertheless
he did not, till he had maid all that saw and heard him understand his
purpose.' Melville seldom failed in any circumstances to make those who
saw and heard him understand his purpose, and when that was done his end
was served.
Among the writings issued at this time against the King's measure, there
was one in which it was said of bishops in general, that 'for one
preaching made to the people [they] ryde fourtie posts to court; and for
a thought or word bestowed for the weal of anie soule care an hundreth
for their apparrill, their train ... and goucked gloriosity.'[25] The
part taken by the bishops at the opening of this Parliament showed that
the new Scottish prelates were likely to verify this indictment against
their order. 'The first day of the Ryding in Parliament betwix the Erles
and the Lords raid the Bischopes, all in silk and velvet fuit-mantelles,
by paires, tuo and tuo, and Saint Androis, the great Metropolitanne,
alone by him selff, and are of the Ministeres of no small quantitie,
named Arthur Futhey, with his capp at his knie, walkit at his stirrope
alongst the streit. But the second day, for not haiffing their awen
place as the Papist Bisschoppis of auld had, unto quhois place and
dignitie they wer now restorit fully in judgment, quhilk wes befoir the
Erles, nixt eftir the Marquesses, thai would not ryde at all, but went
to the House of Parliament quyetlie on fuit. This maid the Nobillmen to
take up thair presumeing honour, and detest thame, as soon as they had
maid thame and sett thame up, perceiving that thair upelyfting wes thair
awin douncasting.'
[Footnote 25: Foolish pomp.]
The Parliament had restored Episcopacy, but the Assembly had not yet
wholly succumbed. To secure this end, and so to give to what was
entirely his own despotic act the appearance of a change desired by the
Church itself, was the King's next aim. And this opens up one of the
most disgraceful chapters in the history of James's relations with the
Scottish Church.