James, in reducing the Kirk, relied as much on his cunning and
"kingcraft" as on his prerogative. He summoned a Convention of preachers
and of the Estates to Perth at the end of February 1597, and thither he
brought many ministers from the north, men unlike the zealots of Lothian
and the Lowlands. He persuaded them to vote themselves a General
Assembly; and they admitted his right to propose modifications in Church
government, to forbid unusual convocations (as in Edinburgh during the
autumn of 1596); they were not to preach against Acts of Parliament or of
Council, nor appoint preachers in the great towns without the Royal
assent, and were not to attack individuals from the pulpit. An attempt
was to be made to convert the Catholic lords. A General Assembly at
Dundee in May ratified these decisions, to the wrath of Andrew Melville,
and the Catholic earls were more or less reconciled to the Kirk, which at
this period had not one supporter among the nobility. James had made
large grants of Church lands among the noblesse, and they abstained from
their wonted conspiracies for a while. The king occupied himself much in
encouraging the persecution of witches, but even that did not endear him
to the preachers.
In the Assembly of March 1598 certain ministers were allowed to sit and
vote in Parliament. In 1598-1599 a privately printed book by James, the
'Basilicon Doron,' came to the knowledge of the clergy: it revealed his
opinions on the right of kings to rule the Church, and on the tendency of
the preachers to introduce a democracy "with themselves as Tribunes of
the People," a very fair definition of their policy. It was to stop them
that he gradually introduced a bastard kind of bishops, police to keep
the pulpiteers in order. They were refusing, in face of the king's
licence, to permit a company of English players to act in Edinburgh, for
they took various powers into their hands.
Meanwhile James's relations with England, where Elizabeth saw with dismay
his victory over her allies, his clergy, were unfriendly. Plots were
encouraged against him, but it is not probable that England was aware of
the famous and mysterious conspiracy of the young Earl of Gowrie, who was
warmly welcomed by Elizabeth on his return from Padua, by way of Paris.
He had been summoned by Bruce, James's chief clerical adversary, and the
Kirk had high hopes of the son of the man of the Raid of Ruthven. He led
the opposition to taxation for national defence in a convention of June-
July 1600. On August 5, in his own house at Perth, where James, summoned
thither by Gowrie's younger brother, had dined with him, Gowrie and his
brother were slain by John Ramsay, a page to the king.
This affair was mysterious. The preachers, and especially Bruce, refused
to accept James's own account of the events, at first, and this was not
surprising. Gowrie was their one hope among the peers, and the story
which James told is so strange that nothing could be stranger or less
credible except the various and manifestly mendacious versions of the
Gowrie party. {156}
James's version of the occurrences must be as much as possible condensed,
and there is no room for the corroborating evidence of Lennox and others.
As the king was leaving Falkland to hunt a buck early on August 5, the
Master of Ruthven, who had ridden over from his brother's house in Perth,
accosted him. The Master declared that he had on the previous evening
arrested a man carrying a pot of gold; had said nothing to Gowrie; had
locked up the man and his gold in a room, and now wished James to come
instantly and examine the fellow. The king's curiosity and cupidity were
less powerful than his love of sport: he would first kill his buck.
During the chase James told the story to Lennox, who corroborated.
Ruthven sent a companion to inform his brother; none the less, when the
king, with a considerable following, did appear at Gowrie's house, no
preparation for his reception had been made.
The Master was now in a quandary: he had no prisoner and no pot of gold.
During dinner Gowrie was very nervous; after it James and the Master
slipped upstairs together while Gowrie took the gentlemen into the garden
to eat cherries. Ruthven finally led James into a turret off the long
gallery; he locked the door, and pointing to a man in armour with a
dagger, said that he "had the king at his will." The man, however, fell
a-trembling, James made a speech, and the Master went to seek Gowrie,
locking the door behind him. At or about this moment, as was fully
attested, Cranstoun, a retainer of Gowrie, reported to him and the
gentlemen that the king had ridden away. They all rushed to the gate,
where the porter, to whom Gowrie gave the lie, swore that the king had
not left the place. The gentlemen going to the stables passed under the
turret-window, whence appeared the king, red in the face, bellowing
"treason!" The gentlemen, with Lennox, rushed upstairs, and through the
gallery, but could not force open the door giving on the turret. But
young Ramsay had run up a narrow stair in the tower, burst open the
turret-door opening on the stair, found James struggling with the Master,
wounded the Master, and pushed him downstairs. In the confusion, while
the king's falcon flew wildly about the turret till James set his foot on
its chain, the man with the dagger vanished. The Master was slain by two
of James's attendants; the Earl, rushing with four or five men up the
turret-stair, fell in fight by Ramsay's rapier.
Lennox and his company now broke through the door between the gallery and
the turret, and all was over except a riotous assemblage of the town's
folk. The man with the dagger had fled: he later came in and gave
himself up; he was Gowrie's steward; his name was Henderson; it was he
who rode with the Master to Falkland and back to Perth to warn Gowrie of
James's approach. He confessed that Gowrie had then bidden him put on
armour, on a false pretence, and the Master had stationed him in the
turret. The fact that Henderson had arrived (from Falkland) at Gowrie's
house by half-past ten was amply proved, yet Gowrie had made no
preparations for the royal visit. If Henderson was not the man in the
turret, his sudden and secret flight from Perth is unexplained. Moreover,
Robert Oliphant, M.A., said, in private talk, that the part of the man in
the turret had, some time earlier, been offered to him by Gowrie; he
refused and left the Earl's service. It is manifest that James could not
have arranged this set of circumstances: the thing is impossible.
Therefore the two Ruthvens plotted to get him into their hands early in
the day; and, when he arrived late, with a considerable train, they
endeavoured to send these gentlemen after the king, by averring that he
had ridden homewards. The dead Ruthvens with their house were forfeited.
Among the preachers who refused publicly to accept James's account of the
events in Gowrie's house on August 5, Mr Bruce was the most eminent and
the most obstinate. He had, on the day after the famous riot of December
1596, written to Hamilton asking him to countenance, as a chief nobleman,
"the godly barons and others who had convened themselves," at that time,
in the cause of the Kirk. Bruce admitted that he knew Hamilton to be
ambitious, but Hamilton's ambition did not induce him to appear as
captain of a new congregation. The chief need of the ministers' party
was a leader among the great nobles. Now, in 1593, the young Earl of
Gowrie had leagued himself with the madcap Bothwell. In April 1594,
Gowrie, Bothwell, and Atholl had addressed the Kirk, asking her to favour
and direct their enterprise. Bothwell made an armed demonstration and
failed; Gowrie then went abroad, to Padua and Rome, and, apparently in
1600, Mr Bruce sailed to France, "for the calling," he says, "of the
Master of Gowrie"--he clearly means "the Earl of Gowrie." The Earl came,
wove his plot, and perished. Mr Bruce, therefore, was averse to
accepting James's account of the affair at Gowrie House. After a long
series of negotiations Bruce was exiled north of Tay.
UNION OF THE CROWNS.
In 1600 James imposed three bishops on the Kirk. Early in 1601 broke out
Essex's rebellion of one day against Elizabeth, a futile attempt to
imitate Scottish methods as exhibited in the many raids against James.
Essex had been intriguing with the Scottish king, but to what extent
James knew of and encouraged his enterprise is unknown. He was on ill
terms with Cecil, who, in 1601, was dealing with several men that
intended no good to James. Cecil is said to have received a sufficient
warning as to how James, on ascending the English throne, would treat
him; and he came to terms, secretly, with Mar and Kinloss, the king's
envoys to Elizabeth. Their correspondence is extant, and proves that
Cecil, at last, was "running the Scottish course," and making smooth the
way for James's accession. (The correspondence begins in June 1601.)
Very early on Thursday, March 24, 1603, Elizabeth went to her account,
and James received the news from Sir Robert Carey, who reached Holyrood
on the Saturday night, March 26. James entered London on May 6, and
England was free from the fear of many years concerning a war for the
succession. The Catholics hoped for lenient usage: disappointment led
some desperate men to engage in the Gunpowder Plot. James was not more
satisfactory to the Puritans.
Encouraged by the fulsome adulation which grew up under the Tudor
dynasty, and free from dread of personal danger, James henceforth
governed Scotland "with the pen," as he said, through the Privy Council.
This method of ruling the ancient kingdom endured till the Union of 1707,
and was fraught with many dangers. The king was no longer in touch with
his subjects. His best action was the establishment of a small force of
mounted constabulary which did more to put down the eternal homicides,
robberies, and family feuds than all the sermons could achieve.
The persons most notable in the Privy Council were Seton (later Lord
Dunfermline), Hume, created Earl of Dunbar, and the king's advocate,
Thomas Hamilton, later Earl of Haddington. Bishops, with Spottiswoode,
the historian, Archbishop of Glasgow, sat in the Privy Council, and their
progressive elevation, as hateful to the nobles as to the Kirk, was among
the causes of the civil war under Charles I. By craft and by illegal
measures James continued to depress the Kirk. A General Assembly,
proclaimed by James for July 1604 in Aberdeen, was prorogued; again,
unconstitutionally, it was prorogued in July 1605. Nineteen ministers,
disobeying a royal order, appeared and constituted the Assembly. Joined
by ten others, they kept open the right of way. James insisted that the
Council should prosecute them: they, by fixing a new date for an
Assembly, without royal consent; and James, by letting years pass without
an Assembly, broke the charter of the Kirk of 1592.
The preachers, when summoned to the trial, declined the jurisdiction.
This was violently construed as treason, and a jury, threatened by the
legal officers with secular, and by the preachers with future spiritual
punishment, by a small majority condemned some of the ministers (January
1606). This roused the wrath of all classes. James wished for more
prosecutions; the Council, in terror, prevailed on him to desist. He
continued to grant no Assemblies till 1608, and would not allow "caveats"
(limiting the powers of Bishops) to be enforced. He summoned (1606) the
two Melvilles, Andrew and his nephew James, to London, where Andrew
bullied in his own violent style, and was, quite illegally, first
imprisoned and then banished to France.
In December 1606 a convention of preachers was persuaded to allow the
appointment of "constant Moderators" to keep the presbyteries in order;
and then James recognised the convention as a General Assembly. Suspected
ministers were confined to their parishes or locked up in Blackness
Castle. In 1608 a General Assembly was permitted the pleasure of
excommunicating Huntly. In 1610 an Assembly established Episcopacy, and
no excommunications not ratified by the Bishop were allowed: the only
comfort of the godly was the violent persecution of Catholics, who were
nosed out by the "constant Moderators," excommunicated if they refused to
conform, confiscated, and banished.
James could succeed in these measures, but his plan for uniting the two
kingdoms into one, Great Britain, though supported by the wisdom and
eloquence of Bacon, was frustrated by the jealousies of both peoples.
Persons born after James's accession (the _post nati_) were, however,
admitted to equal privileges in either kingdom (1608). In 1610 James had
two of his bishops, and Spottiswoode, consecrated by three English
bishops, but he did not yet venture to interfere with the forms of
Presbyterian public worship.
In 1610 James established two Courts of High Commission (in 1615 united
in one Court) to try offences in morals and religion. The Archbishops
presided, laity and clergy formed the body of the Court, and it was
regarded as vexatious and tyrannical. The same terms, to be sure, would
now be applied to the interference of preachers and presbyteries with
private life and opinion. By 1612 the king had established Episcopacy,
which, for one reason or another, became equally hateful to the nobles,
the gentry, and the populace. James's motives were motives of police.
Long experience had taught him the inconveniences of presbyterial
government as it then existed in Scotland.
To a Church organised in the presbyterian manner, as it has been
practised since 1689, James had, originally at least, no objection. But
the combination of "presbyterian Hildebrandism" with factions of the
turbulent _noblesse_; the alliance of the Power of the Keys with the
sword and lance, was inconsistent with the freedom of the State and of
the individual. "The absolutism of James," says Professor Hume Brown,
"was forced upon him in large degree by the excessive claims of the
Presbyterian clergy."
Meanwhile the thievish Border clans, especially the Armstrongs, were
assailed by hangings and banishments, and Ulster was planted by Scottish
settlers, willing or reluctant, attracted by promise of lands, or planted
out, that they might not give trouble on the Border.
Persecution of Catholics was violent, and in spring 1615 Father Ogilvie
was hanged after very cruel treatment directed by Archbishop
Spottiswoode. In this year the two ecclesiastical Courts of High
Commission were fused into one, and an Assembly was coerced into passing
what James called "Hotch-potch resolutions" about changes in public
worship. James wanted greater changes, but deferred them till he visited
Scotland in 1617, when he was attended by the luckless figure of Laud,
who went to a funeral--in a surplice! James had many personal bickerings
with preachers, but his five main points, "The Articles of Perth" (of
these the most detested were: (1) Communicants must kneel, not sit, at
the Communion; (4) Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost must be observed; and
(5) Confirmation must be introduced), were accepted by an Assembly in
1618. They could not be enforced, but were sanctioned by Parliament in
1621. The day was called Black Saturday, and omens were drawn by both
parties from a thunderstorm which occurred at the time of the
ratification of the Articles of Perth by Parliament in Edinburgh (August
4, 1621).
By enforcing these Articles James passed the limit of his subjects'
endurance. In their opinion, as in Knox's, to kneel at the celebration
of the Holy Communion was an act of idolatry, was "Baal worship," and no
pressure could compel them to kneel. The three great festivals of the
Christian Church, whether Roman, Genevan, or Lutheran, had no certain
warrant in Holy Scripture, but were rather repugnant to the Word of God.
The king did not live to see the bloodshed and misery caused by his
reckless assault on the liberties and consciences of his subjects; he
died on March 27, 1625, just before the Easter season in which it was
intended to enforce his decrees.
The ungainliness of James's person, his lack of courage on certain
occasions (he was by no means a constant coward), and the feebleness of
his limbs might be attributed to pre-natal influences; he was injured
before he was born by the sufferings of his mother at the time of
Riccio's murder. His deep dissimulation he learnt in his bitter
childhood and harassed youth. His ingenious mind was trained to
pedantry; he did nothing worse, and nothing more congenial to the cruel
superstitions of his age, than in his encouragement of witch trials and
witch burnings promoted by the Scottish clergy down to the early part of
the eighteenth century.
His plantation of Ulster by Scottish settlers has greatly affected
history down to our own times, while the most permanent result of the
awards by which he stimulated the colonisation of Nova Scotia has been
the creation of hereditary knighthoods or baronetcies.
His encouragement of learning left its mark in the foundation of the
Town's College of Edinburgh, on the site of Kirk-o'-Field, the scene of
his father's murder.
The south-western Highlands, from Lochaber to Islay and Cantyre, were, in
his reign, the scene of constant clan feuds and repressions, resulting in
the fall of the Macdonalds, and the rise of the Campbell chief, Argyll,
to the perilous power later wielded by the Marquis against Charles I.
Many of the sons of the dispossessed Macdonalds, driven into Ireland,
were to constitute the nucleus of the army of Montrose. In the Orkneys
and Shetlands the constant turbulence of Earl Patrick and his family
ended in the annexation of the islands to the Crown (1612), and the
Earl's execution (1615).