THE UNION OF THE CROWNS
1568-1625
When Mary fled to England, Elizabeth refused to see her, on the ground
that she ought first to clear herself from the suspicion of guilt in
connection with the murder of Darnley. In the end, Mary agreed that the
case should be submitted to the judgment of a commission appointed by
Elizabeth, and she appeared as prosecuting Moray and his friends as
rebels and traitors. They defended themselves by bringing accusations
against Mary, and produced the Casket Letters and other documents in
support of their assertions. Mary asked to be brought face to face with
her accusers; Elizabeth thought the claim "very reasonable", and refused
it. Mary then asked for copies of the letters produced as evidence
against her, and when her request was pressed upon Elizabeth's notice by
La Mothe Fénélon, the French ambassador, he was informed that
Elizabeth's feelings had been hurt by Mary's accusing her of
partiality.[80] Mary's commissioners then withdrew, and Elizabeth closed
the case, with the oracular decision that, "nothing has been adduced
against the Earl of Moray and his adherents, as yet, that may impair
their honour or allegiances; and, on the other part, there has been
nothing sufficiently produced nor shown by them against the queen, their
sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil
opinion of the queen, her good sister, for anything yet seen". So
Elizabeth's "good sister" was subjected to a rigorous imprisonment, and
the Earl of Moray returned to Scotland, with an increased allowance of
English gold. Henceforth the successive regents of Scotland had to guide
their policy in accordance with Elizabeth's wishes. If they rebelled,
she could always threaten to release her prisoner, and, once or twice in
the course of those long, weary years, Mary, whose nature was buoyant,
actually dared to hope that Elizabeth would replace her on her throne.
While Mary was plotting, and hope deferred was being succeeded by hope
deferred and vain illusion by vain illusion, events moved fast. In
November, 1569, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland raised a
rebellion in her favour, which was easily suppressed. In January, 1570,
Moray was assassinated at Linlithgow, and the Earl of Lennox, the father
of Darnley, and the traitor of Mary's minority, succeeded to the
regency, while Mary's Scottish supporters, who had continued to fight
for her desperate cause, were strengthened by the accession of Maitland
of Lethington, who, with Kirkaldy of Grange, also a recruit from the
king's party, held Edinburgh Castle for the queen. Mary's hopes were
further raised by the rebellion of the Duke of Norfolk, whose marriage
with the Scottish queen had been suggested in 1569. Letters from the
papal agent, Rudolfi, were discovered, and, in June, 1572, Norfolk was
put to death. Lennox had been killed in September, 1571, and his
successor, the Earl of Mar, was approached on the subject of taking
Mary's life. Elizabeth was unwilling to accept the responsibility for
the deed, and proposed to deliver up Mary to Mar, on the understanding
that she should be immediately killed. Mar, who was an honourable man,
declined to listen to the proposal. But, after his death, which occurred
in October, 1572, the new regent, the Earl of Morton, professed his
willingness to undertake the accomplishment of the deed, if Elizabeth
would openly acknowledge it. This she refused to do, and the plot
failed. It is characteristic that the last Douglas to play an important
part in Scottish history should be the leading actor in such a plot as
this.
The castle of Edinburgh fell in June, 1573, and with its surrender
passed away Mary's last chance in Scotland. Morton held the regency till
1578, when he was forced to resign, and the young king, now twelve years
old, became the nominal ruler. In 1581, Morton was condemned to death as
"airt and pairt" in Darnley's murder, and Elizabeth failed in her
efforts to save him. Mary entered into negotiations with Elizabeth for
her release and return to Scotland as joint-sovereign with James VI, and
the English queen played with her prisoner, while, all the time, she was
discussing projects for her death. The key to the policy of James is his
desire to secure the succession to the English crown. To that end he was
willing to sacrifice all other considerations; nor had he, on other
grounds, any desire to share his throne with his mother. In 1585, he
negotiated a league with England, which, however, contained a provision
that "the said league be without prejudice in any sort to any former
league or alliance betwixt this realm and any other auld friends and
confederates thereof, except only in matters of religion, wheranent we
do fully consent the league be defensive and offensive". As we are at
the era of religious wars, the latter section of the clause goes far to
neutralize the former. Scotland was at last at the disposal of the
sovereign of England. Even the tragedy of Fotheringay scarcely produced
a passing coldness. On the 8th February, 1587, Elizabeth's warrant was
carried out, and Mary's head fell on the block. She was accused of
plotting for her own escape and against Elizabeth's life. It is probable
that she had so plotted, and it would be childish to express surprise or
indignation. The English queen, on her part, had injured her kinswoman
too deeply to render it possible to be generous now. Mary had sent her,
on her arrival in England, "a diamond jewel, which", as she afterwards
reminded her, "I received as a token from you, and with assurance to be
succoured against my rebels, and even that, on my retiring towards you,
you would come to the very frontiers in order to assist me, which had
been confirmed to me by divers messengers".[81] Had the protection thus
promised been vouchsafed, it might have spared Elizabeth many years of
trouble. But it was now too late, and the relentless logic of events
forced her to complete the tale of her treachery and injustice by a deed
which she herself could not but regard as a crime. But while this excuse
may be made for the deed itself, there can be no apology for the manner
of it. The Queen of England stooped to urge her servants to murder her
kinswoman; when they refused, she was mean enough to contrive so as to
throw the responsibility upon her secretary, Davison. After Mary's
death, she wrote to King James and expressed her sincere regret at
having cut off the head of his mother by accident. James accepted the
apology, and, in the following year, made preparations against the
Armada. Had the son of Mary Stuart been otherwise constituted, it would
scarcely have been safe for Elizabeth to persevere in the execution of
his mother; an alliance between Scotland and Spain might have proved
dangerous for England. But Elizabeth knew well the type of man with whom
she had to deal, and events proved that she was wise in her generation.
And James, on his part, had his reward. Elizabeth died in March, 1603,
and her successor was the King of Scots, who entered upon a heritage,
which had been bought, in the view of his Catholic subjects, by the
blood of his mother, and which was to claim as its next victim his
second son. Within eighty-five years of his accession, his House had
lost not only their new kingdom, but their ancestral throne as well. In
all James's references to the Union, it is clear that he regarded that
event from the point of view of the monarch; had it proved of as little
value to his subjects as to the Stuart line there would have been small
reason for remembering it to-day. The Union of England and Scotland was
one of the events most clearly fore-ordained by a benignant fate: but it
is difficult to feel much sympathy for the son who would not risk its
postponement, when, by the possible sacrifice of his personal ambition,
he might have saved the life of his mother.
There are certain aspects of James's life in Scotland that explain his
future policy, and they are, therefore, important for our purpose. In
the first place, he spent his days in one long struggle with the
theocratic Church system which had been brought to Scotland by Knox and
developed by his great successor, Andrew Melville. The Church Courts,
local and central, had maintained the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
and they dealt out justice with impartial hand. In all questions of
morality, religion, education, and marriage the Kirk Session or the
Presbytery or the General Assembly was all-powerful. The Church was by
far the most important factor in the national life. It interfered in
numberless ways with legislative and executive functions: on one
occasion King James consulted the Presbytery of Edinburgh about the
raising of a force to suppress a rebellion,[82] and, as late as 1596, he
approached the General Assembly with reference to a tax, and promised
that "his chamber doors sould be made patent to the meanest minister in
Scotland; there sould not be anie meane gentleman in Scotland more
subject to the good order and discipline of the Kirk than he would
be".[83] Andrew Melville had told him that "there is twa kings and twa
kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Chryst Jesus the King and his Kingdom
the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is: and of whase Kingdom
nocht a King, nor a lord, nor a heid, bot a member."[84] James had done
his utmost to assert his authority over the Church. He had tried to
establish Episcopacy in Scotland to replace the Presbyterian system, and
had succeeded only to a very limited extent. "Presbytery", he said,
"agreeth as well with a king as God with the Devil." So he went to
England, not only prepared to welcome the episcopal form of
church-government and to graciously receive the episcopal adulation so
freely showered upon him, but also determined to suppress, at all
hazards, "the proud Puritanes, who, claining to their Paritie, and
crying, 'We are all but vile wormes', yet will judge and give Law to
their king, but will be judged nor controlled by none".[85] "God's
sillie vassal" was Melville's summing-up of the royal character in
James's own presence. "God hath given us a Solomon", exulted the Bishop
of Winchester, and he recorded the fact in print, that all the world
might know. James was wrong in mistaking the English Puritans for the
Scottish Presbyterians. Alike in number, in influence, and in aim, his
new subjects differed from his old enemies. English Puritanism had
already proved unsuited to the genius of the nation, and it had given up
all hope of the abolition of Episcopacy. The Millenary Petition asked
only some changes in the ritual of the Church and certain moderate
reforms. Had James received their requests in a more reasonable spirit,
he might have succeeded in reconciling, at all events, the more moderate
section of them to the Church, and at the very first it seemed as if he
were likely to win for himself the blessing of the peace-maker, which
he was so eager to obtain. But just at this crisis he found the first
symptoms of Parliamentary opposition, and here again his training in
Scotland interfered. The Church and the Church alone had opposed him in
Scotland; he had never discovered that a Parliament could be other than
subservient.[86] It was, therefore, natural for him to connect the
Parliamentary discontent with Puritan dissatisfaction. Scottish Puritans
had employed the General Assembly as their main weapon of offence; their
English fellows evidently desired to use the House of Commons as an
engine for similar purposes. Therefore said King James, "I shall make
them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or else
do worse". So he "did worse", and prepared the way for the Puritan
revolution. If the English succession enabled the king to suppress the
Scottish Assembly, the Assembly had its revenge, for the fear of it
brought a snare, and James may justly be considered one of the founders
of English dissent.
A violent hatred of the temporal claims of the Church also affected
James's attitude to Roman Catholicism. His Catholic subjects in Scotland
had not been in a position to do him any harm, and the son of Mary
Stuart could not but have some sympathy for his mother's
fellow-sufferers. Accordingly, we find him telling his first Parliament:
"I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our Mother Church, although
defiled with some infirmities and corruption". But, after the Gunpowder
Plot, and when he was engaged in a controversy with Cardinal Perron
about the right of the pope to depose kings, he came to prove that the
pope is Antichrist and "our Mother Church" none other than the Scarlet
Woman. His Scottish experience revealed clearly enough that the claims
of Rome and Geneva were identical in their essence. There is on record
an incident that will serve to illustrate his position. In 1615, the
Scottish Privy Council reported to him the case of a Jesuit, John
Ogilvie. He bade them examine Ogilvie: if he proved to be but a priest
who had said mass, he was to go into banishment; but if he was a
practiser of sedition, let him die. The unfortunate priest showed in his
reply that he held the same view of the royal supremacy as did the
Presbyterian clergy. It was enough: they hanged him.
Once more, James's Irish policy seems to have been influenced by his
experience of the Scottish Highlands. He had conceived the plan which
was afterwards carried out in the Plantation of Ulster--"planting
colonies among them of answerable inland subjects, that within short
time may reforme and civilize the best-inclined among them; rooting out
or transporting the barbarous or stubborne sort, and planting civilitie
in their roomes".[87] Although James continued to carry on his efforts
in this direction after 1603, yet it may be said that the English
succession prevented his giving effect to his scheme, and that it also
interfered with his intentions regarding the abolition of hereditary
jurisdictions, which remained to "wracke the whole land" till after the
Rising of 1745.
On the 5th April, 1603, King James set out from Edinburgh to enter upon
the inheritance which had fallen to him "by right divine". His departure
made considerable changes in the condition of Scotland. The absence of
any fear of an outbreak of hostilities with the "auld enemy" was a great
boon to the borders, but there was little love lost between the two
countries. The union of the crowns did not, of course, affect the
position of Scotland to England in matters of trade, and beyond some
thirty years of peace, James's ancient kingdom gained but little. King
James, who possessed considerable powers of statesmanship, if not much
practical wisdom, devised the impossible project of a union of the
kingdoms in 1604. "What God hathe conjoyned", he said, "let no man
separate. I am the Husband, and all the whole Isle is my lawful wife....
I hope, therefore, that no man will be so unreasonable as to think that
I, that am a Christian King under the Gospel, should be a Polygamist
and husband to two wives." He desired to see a complete union--one king,
one law, one Church. Scotland would, he trusted, "with time, become but
as Cumberland and Northumberland and those other remote and northern
shires". Commissioners were appointed, and in 1606 they produced a
scheme which involved commercial equality except with regard to cloth
and meat, the exception being made by mutual consent. The discussion on
the Union question raised the subject of naturalization, and the rights
of the _post-nati_, _i.e._ Scots born after James's accession to the
throne. The royal prerogative became involved in the discussion and a
test case was prepared. Some land in England was bought for the infant
grandson of Lord Colvill, or Colvin, of Culross. An action was raised
against two defendants who refused him possession of the land, and they
defended themselves on the ground that the child, as an alien, could not
possess land in England. It was decided that he, as a natural-born
subject of the King of Scotland, was also a subject of the King of
England. This decision, and the repeal of the laws treating Scotland as
a hostile country, proved the only result of the negotiations for union.
The English Parliament would not listen to any proposal for commercial
equality, and the king had to abandon his cherished project.
James had boasted to his English Parliament that, if they agreed to
commercial equality, the Scottish estates would, in three days, adopt
English law. It is doubtful if the acquiescence even of the Scottish
Parliament would have gone so far; but there can be no doubt that the
English succession had made James more powerful in Scotland than any of
his predecessors had been. "Here I sit", he said, "and governe Scotland
with my pen. I write and it is done, and by a clearke of the councell I
governe Scotland now, which others could not doe by the sword." The
boast was justified by the facts. The king's instructions to his Privy
Council, which formed the Scottish executive, are of the most
dictatorial description. James gives his orders in the tone of a man who
is accustomed to unswerving obedience, and he does not hesitate to
reprove his erring ministers in the severest terms of censure. The whole
business of Parliament was conducted by the Lords of the Articles, who
represented the spiritual and temporal lords, and the Commons. All the
bishops were the king's creatures, and by virtue of their position,
entirely dependent on him. It was therefore arranged that the prelates
should choose representatives of the temporal lords, and they took care
to select men who supported the king's policy. The peers were allowed to
choose representatives of the bishops, and could not avoid electing the
king's friends, while the representatives of the spiritual and temporal
lords choose men to appear for the small barons and the burgesses. In
this way the efficient power of Parliament was completely monopolized,
and none dared to dispute the king's will. Even the Church was reduced
to an unwilling submission, which, from its very nature, could only be
temporary. He forbade the meeting of a General Assembly; and the
convening of an Assembly at Aberdeen, in defiance of his command, in
1605, served to give him an opportunity of imprisoning or banishing the
Presbyterian leaders. He had to give up his scheme of abolishing the
Presbyterian Church courts, and contented himself with engrafting on to
the existing system the institution of Episcopacy, which had practically
been in abeyance since 1560, although Scotland was never without its
titular prelates. Bishops were appointed in 1606; presbyteries and
synods were ordered to elect perpetual moderators, and the scheme was
devised so that the moderator of almost every synod should be a bishop.
The members of the Linlithgow Convention, which accepted this scheme,
were specially summoned by the king, and it was in no sense a free
Assembly of the Church. But the royal power was, for the present,
irresistible; in 1610 an Assembly which met at Glasgow established
Episcopacy, and its action was, in 1612, ratified by the Scots
Parliament. Three of the Scottish bishops[88] received English orders,
to ensure the succession; but, to prevent any claim of superiority,
neither English primate took any part in the ceremony. In 1616, the
Assembly met at Aberdeen, and the king made five proposals, which are
known as the Five Articles of Perth, from their adoption there in 1618.
The Five Articles included:--(1) The Eucharist to be received kneeling;
(2) the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to sick
persons in private houses; (3) the administration of Baptism in private
houses in cases of necessity; (4) the recognition of Christmas, Good
Friday, Easter, and Pentecost; and (5) the episcopal benediction.
Scottish opposition centred round the first article, which was not
welcomed even by the Episcopalian party, and it required the king's
personal interference to enforce it in Holyrood Chapel, during his stay
in Edinburgh in 1616-17. His proposal to erect in the chapel
representations of patriarchs and saints shocked even the bishops, on
whose remonstrances he withdrew his orders, incidentally administering a
severe rebuke to the recalcitrant prelates, "at whose ignorance he could
not but wonder". Not till the following year were the articles accepted
at Perth, under fear of the royal displeasure, and considerable
difficulty was experienced in enforcing them.
The only other Scottish measures of James's reign that demand mention
are his attempts to carry out his policy of plantations in the
Highlands. As a whole, the scheme failed, and was productive of
considerable misery, but here and there it succeeded, and it tended to
increase the power of the government. The end of the reign is also
remarkable for attempts at Scottish colonization, resulting in the
foundation of Nova Scotia, and in the Plantation of Ulster.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 80: Fénélon, i, 133 and 162.]
[Footnote 81: Mary to Elizabeth, 8th Nov., 1582. Strickland's _Letters
of Mary Stuart_, i, p. 294.]
[Footnote 82: Calderwood, _History of the Kirk of Scotland_, v, 341-42.]
[Footnote 83: _Ibid_, pp. 396-97.]
[Footnote 84: James Melville's _Autobiography and Diary_, p. 370.]
[Footnote 85: _Basilikon Doron_.]
[Footnote 86: Cf. the present writer's _Scottish Parliament before the
Union of the Crowns_.]
[Footnote 87: _Basilikon Doron_.]
[Footnote 88: The old controversy about the relation of the Church of
Scotland to the sees of York and Canterbury had been finally settled, in
1474, by the erection of St. Andrews into a metropolitan see. Glasgow
was made an archbishopric in 1492.]