¹ _Burgh Records of Edinburgh_, Volume III., page 259;

Buchanan, Book XIX., chapters 51‒54; _Register of the Privy

Council_, Volume I., pages 644‒649, 654, _et seq._; Volume

II., pages 11, 20, 25, 37‒44, 51, _et seq._

For several years after the death of Moray, the factions of the King

and Queen kept the country in an incessant turmoil. The adherents of

the Queen still held the castle of Edinburgh; and in May, 1570, the

English Government sent a small force to Edinburgh, but instead of

restoring order, it intensified rather the general wretchedness. The

passion and hatred of the opposing parties went on increasing, but at

length the enthusiasm of the Queen’s followers spent itself. In July,

1570, the Earl of Lennox was elected Regent. His election was approved

by the English Government, and he received the unswerving support of

the reformed clergy.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 5th of July, and passed

an act commanding all the ministers throughout the kingdom to pray

publicly in their churches for the preservation of the King’s person

and authority, and to proclaim to the people that he should be

universally obeyed. The Assembly further unanimously agreed to appoint

a commission of their brethren to attend any conventions of the

nobility which might be held, and to assist and consent to everything

that should be treated, which tended to promote the glory of God, the

preaching and ministering of the true religion, the authority of the

King, and the common good of the nation. The Assembly also, having

regard to the troubled state of the kingdom, appointed a number of

their brethren to be sent to all the earls, barons, and gentlemen who

had fallen off from the King’s authority, and by every lawful means to

endeavour to win them back and to reconcile them to the government of

his majesty.¹

¹ Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages 23‒28; _Book of the Universal

Kirk_, pages 177‒178, 182; Tytler’s _History of Scotland_,

Volume VII., pages 327‒329.

In the midst of the strife in Edinburgh, about the middle of October,

1570, Knox sustained a shock of apoplexy, which impaired his speech;

but he recovered so far as to be able to preach on Sundays. In one of

his sermons in the month of December, he made some personal remarks on

the proceedings of the Laird of the Grange, the governor of the castle,

which led to a bitter quarrel between him and his old friend. Knox

defended himself and insisted on his freedom of speech in the pulpit,

but anonymous libels were circulated against him. He was accused of not

praying for the Queen, and for maligning her name and her adherents.

His brethren and friends prevailed upon him to leave Edinburgh for his

own safety, and he went to St. Andrews early in May, 1571. The bishop

of Galloway, Alexander Gordon, then filled his pulpit in Edinburgh,

and preached in a strain more acceptable to the Queen’s party. It was

reported that he prayed for the Queen on the ground of her extreme

wickedness, thus――“All sinners ought to be prayed for: If we should not

pray for sinners, for whom should we pray, seeing that God came not to

call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. St. David was a sinner,

and so was she: St. David was an adulterer, and so was she: St. David

committed murder in slaying Uriah for his wife, and so did she: but

what is this to the matter; the more wicked that she be, her subjects

should pray for her, to bring her to the spirit of repentance.”¹

¹ Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages 54, 70‒88, 107‒120, 139‒141,

144; Dr. M‘Crie’s _Life of Knox_, pages 250‒256; 1855.

The Castle of Dumbarton was taken from the Queen’s party in the

beginning of April, 1571; and Hamilton, the archbishop of St. Andrews,

was among the prisoners who surrendered. The Regent Lennox brought

him to Stirling, where he was tried, condemned, and hanged on the 9th

April. He was the last Roman Catholic Bishop ♦of St. Andrews. He had

never ceased to assert his rights, and was therefore obnoxious to the

reformed clergy and the King’s party. He was an active and able man in

public life; and Lennox was glad of the opportunity to put him out of

the way, but his execution was an act of cruelty and gross injustice.¹

♦ duplicate word “of” removed

¹ ♠Buchanan, Book XX., chapter 34; Dr. Grub’s _Ecclesiastical

History of Scotland_, Volume II., pages 168‒169.

♠ “Buchannan” replaced with “Buchanan”

Both parties issued proclamations and counter-manifestoes, and there

was much skirmishing about Edinburgh, which produced little result. The

Regent summoned a parliament to meet at Stirling in August, 1571. The

General Assembly met in the same town on the 6th of August. Knox, being

unable to attend the meeting, sent a letter to his brethren. In this he

referred to the graceless libels which had been circulated against him,

and called on the Assembly to judge the matter as they would answer

to God. As his natural strength was daily decaying, and he was looking

for a sudden departure to that land where the weary find rest, he

earnestly exhorted his brethren to be faithful to the flock over

whom God had placed them, and to resist all tyranny to the last. The

battle, he said, would be hard, “but they must withstand the merciless

devourers of the patrimony of the Church.... God give you wisdom and

stout courage in so just a cause, and me a happy end.”¹ This Assembly

repeated the injunctions that prayer should be offered up for the King,

and that the people should submit to his authority. Complaints were

made, touching the oppression of the ministers and the people in the

counties of Aberdeen and Banff, by the Earl of Huntly and his servants,

and of their neglect to pay the stipends of the ministers.²

¹ Knox’s Works, Volume VI., pages 604‒606; _Book of the

Universal Kirk_, pages 198‒199; Lord Lindsay’s _Lives of the

Lindsays_, Volume I., pages 260‒291.

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, page 201.

Parliament assembled at Stirling on the 25th of August. About the

same time the Queen’s party held their parliament in Edinburgh. In the

Queen’s parliament sentences of forfeiture were passed against the Earl

of Morton, and other chiefs of the King’s party; while in the King’s

parliament an act was passed which ratified all former acts in favour

of the liberty and freedom of the reformed Church. Acts were also

passed in favour of Morton and Lord Lindsay, as a reward for their

resistance to the open enemies of the King, and in favour of those

who had taken the castle of Dumbarton from the enemy. While the King’s

party were thus helping themselves and mutually congratulating each

other, a company of the Queen’s adherents, under the command of the

Earl of Huntly and Lord Hamilton, marched from Edinburgh upon Stirling,

and on the 4th of September, surprised them, and slew the Regent Lennox.

Ten days after the death of Lennox, the Earl of Mar was elected Regent;

but the Earl of Morton had by this time become the real leader of the

King’s party.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_ Volume III., pages 58,

61, 65‒78; Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages 247, 255‒258, 260;

Calderwood, Volume III., pages 136, 138‒141. Calderwood says

that the rebels in their parliament at Edinburgh forfeited

upwards of two hundred persons.

The regency of Mar was of short duration. He died on the 28th of

October, 1572. The Earl of Morton was then elected Regent; since the

death of Moray he had been the ruling spirit of his party. Morton had

been more or less deeply implicated in all the plots and political

murders of the past twenty years. He was an ambitious, greedy, crafty,

and unscrupulous man; but brave and determined like all his ancestors

of the Douglas tribe. He courted the friendship of the English

government; and in the spring of 1573, concluded an arrangement by

which fifteen hundred English troops and a train of artillery entered

Scotland, and assisted in the reduction of the castle of Edinburgh.

The Queen’s party throughout the country were broken up, and most of

the leaders submitted to the Regent. Her adherents in the castle held

out bravely, but were at last reduced to despair, and surrendered in

the end of May, 1573. The common soldiers were dismissed. Lethington,

who had served so many masters, and attempted to play so many parts,

died about the 7th of June, a week after the castle fell. The laird

of Grange, William Kirkaldy, the governor of the Castle, was tried,

condemned, and hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh.¹ Mary’s party in

Scotland never after raised their heads.

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., page 77,

_et seq._; Calderwood, Volume III., pages 281‒285; _Register

of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 213‒219, 236, 237.

Maitland of Lethington’s recent biographer, has with much ingenuity and

great literary power, attempted to prove that he was one of the very

greatest statesmen of the period. “In fine, Maitland’s was one of the

governing minds of the time in which he lived. The number of such men

at any particular period is as a rule extremely limited――much more so

than is commonly supposed. I am inclined to hold that, at the period

of which I am writing, there were not above three or four men of

distinctly original and creative force in the whole island, from John

o’ Groats to the Land’s End. In England they had Cecil; in Scotland,

John Knox and William Maitland. Cecil’s ‘brothers in Christ’――the

envoys and emissaries of the English Government――were men of a

specifically inferior order, who derived their inspiration from their

master, and who, when deprived of his guidance, of the habitual support

of his cautious but fertile brain, showed themselves, almost without

exception, extraordinarily helpless.... There are eminent writers who

would be prepared to place the Earl of Moray beside Knox and Maitland

and Cecil. It appears to me that Moray belongs to another class

altogether,――the class of men whose mutual processes are slow, involved,

and dependent. It was a common saying, when he came to be Regent,

that Moray was the hand and Morton the head; and during the earlier

and brighter years of Mary’s reign, it might have been said quite as

truly――with even greater truth indeed――that if Moray was the head,

Maitland was the heart.

“I have said that a statesman in Lethington’s position must be judged

less by his actions than by his aims. What were his aims? We shall

see that they involved the determination of political and religious

questions of the first importance:――How to diminish the power of an

anarchical nobility, how to promote the union of the nations, how to

secure the succession to a Scottish prince (to the throne of England),

how to establish a religious peace on tolerable conditions――these were

the problems to which, as a Scottish Protestant and a Scottish patriot,

Maitland addressed himself.... His field was comparatively narrow; but

the issues of the conflict in which he was engaged were momentous and

far reaching.”

The aims of Lethington as stated above by Skelton, invites comment:――1.

There is no evidence that Lethington ever made any real effort to

reduce the power of the nobles; but there is evidence that he used the

influence of his official position, and also exerted his talents and

wit, to enhance the power and the wealth of the nobles in connection

with the landed property of the old Church. In the face of such

evidence, it is surprising that his elegant panegyrist should have

ventured to advance this, as one of the leading aims of the great

statesman of the period. 2. It may be true that Maitland aimed to

promote the union of the Crowns of England and Scotland; yet it is

evident that some of his efforts in this direction were short-sighted,

impracticable, and inconsistent. 3. Touching his aim to establish

a religious peace in Scotland on tolerable conditions, it may be

fairly questioned whether he was capable of appreciating and realising

the real conditions of the problem. Most of Lethington’s efforts in

this department were imperfectly conceived, or unrealisable in the

circumstances, and consequently proved utter failures. It seems a

rather curious historic phenomenon that one of the three greatest

governing minds of the Reformation period in Britain, has somehow left

so few traces on the nation of the result of his faculties. The fact

is, that Lethington was a clever, glib, and scheming politician, but

in no sense a great and wise statesman; and his recent biographer has

glorified the Laird of Lethington by investing him with many virtues,

which are quite inconsistent with his public career.¹

¹ _Maitland of Lethington_, By J. Skelton, Volume I., pages

333‒336.

The polity of the Reformed Church so far as yet developed, tended

to leave a blank in the chief council of the nation. As the bishops,

abbots, and other orders of the Roman clergy died out, the spiritual

estate ceased to be represented in parliament. Knox was not decidedly

opposed to a gradation of rank among the ministers of the Church;

the democratic polity of presbyterianism was not matured in the First

Book of Discipline, nor in any work emanating from the Reformed Church

of Scotland in the reformer’s lifetime. At this stage, however, the

most interesting point centred around the territorial possessions and

the wealth of the ancient hierarchy. The nobles, the old orders of

clergy, and the reformed preachers, were all scrambling according to

the measure of their power and opportunity for what each imagined to

be their share of the endowments which the piety of bygone generations

had consecrated to religion. For all the preaching against idolatry and

the monuments thereof, there was one idol not as yet extinguished――the

golden calf. The aristocracy had recourse to various expedients to

reach the revenues of the great benefices, and it must be admitted that

in the end they succeeded.

For the settlement of this matter, an extraordinary meeting of the

barons, superintendents, and ministers, was held at Leith in January,

1572. They assumed the powers of a General Assembly, and resolved to

hand over the business to a committee of six, viz.:――John Erskine,

John Winram, David Lindsay, John Craig, Andrew Hay, and Robert Pont,

authorising any four of them to meet with those appointed by the Privy

Council, the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven, the Abbot of Dunfermline, Mr.

James M‘Gill, Sir John Bellenden, and Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, and

to ratify whatever they might determine agreeable to their instructions.

The joint committee met on the 16th of the same month, and agreed

upon a form of polity for the Church, known as the Leith Concordat. It

was agreed that the names and titles of archbishops and bishops, and

the bounds of the dioceses, should not be altered, at least until the

King’s majority or the parliament consented to another arrangement. The

document went on to state, that persons promoted to bishoprics should

as far as possible have the requisite scriptural qualifications; that

they should be elected by a chapter or assembly of learned ministers;

that archbishops and bishops should have no greater jurisdiction than

the superintendents already had, and that they should be subject to the

church and the General Assembly in spiritual matters, as they were to

the Crown in temporal; that in the admission of persons to spiritual

functions in the Church, they should at least take the advice of six

of the best learned of the chapter; that all the archbishoprics and

bishoprics then vacant or which hereafter became so, should within a

year and a day after the vacancy be filled up with qualified persons

not under thirty years of age; and that the dean, or failing him,

the next in dignity among the chapter, should be vicar-general during

the vacancy. Concerning the abbacies, priories, and nunneries, it was

concluded that no disposition of these benefices should be made, nor

any grants out of the funds of the same till it was ascertained what

portion of the rents consisted in churches and tithes, and what portion

of temporal lands, and until provision was made for the ministers

properly belonging thereto. Touching the person holding the title and

receiving the fruits of the benefice, it was agreed that he should

fill the place of one of the ecclesiastical Estate in parliament, and

have the style of abbot, prior, or commendator; that all such should

be learned and qualified for their office, and that to secure this end,

on the recommendation of the King, they should be tried and admitted

by the bishops. It was further agreed that when the present members of

the convents were all departed this life, the ministers of the churches

belonging to the abbey or priory should then act as the chapter of

the commendator in the administration of the property and rents of the

establishment, and that if these commendators should be found worthy,

they might be promoted to act as senators for the spiritual estate in

the Court of Session.

There were proposals also for dealing with the rights of lay patrons,

with benefices in the patronage of the Crown, and for the disposal

of the smaller benefices throughout the kingdom. The latter were to

be conferred only on duly qualified ministers, and churches were to

be planted throughout the realm, residence secured, and pluralities

prevented. The revenues of provostries, prebendaries, and chaplainries

in college churches, if founded upon lands or annual rents, it was

proposed to apply to the maintenance of bursars at the grammar schools

and universities; and a form was drawn up for the election and

appointment of bishops.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 203‒205, 207‒232. It

is very justly observed by Dr. Grub, that the scheme agreed

on at Leith bore a remarkable resemblance to the external

polity of the church as it existed before the Reformation

in Scotland. _Ecclesiastic History of Scotland_, Volume II.,

page 179. Regarding the confused and anomalous points of the

system as then proposed from the Episcopalian standpoint,

see Russel’s _History of the Church in Scotland_, Volume I.

page 300, and for a strictly Presbyterian view of the matter,

compare Dr. M‘Crie’s _Life of Melville_, Volume I., pages

145‒151.

The proposals of the Committee, were immediately confirmed by the

Regent and the Council, and an attempt was forthwith made by the

government to carry out the scheme they embodied. On the 6th of

February, 1572, the chapter of St. Andrews met and elected John Douglas

to be archbishop of that ancient see. Douglas was also rector of the

university and provost of St. Mary’s College, and besides, he was a man

advanced in years. Knox merely protested against the accumulation of

offices in the person of one man. Some of the other sees were filled

up, but the new bishops were simply the tools of their patrons. They

had consented to assume the title with only a very small portion of

the episcopal revenues, the greater part being retained in the hands

of their masters――the nobles.¹ To secure the richest portion of the

benefices to the court, the nobles, and their friends and dependents,

was the motive in which the whole scheme originated; and if the

Reformed Church had yielded it would have destroyed its usefulness,

and ended in a despotism of a degrading character. But a strong party

of the clergy were thoroughly opposed to the scheme, and although the

struggle between them and the Crown was protracted and severe, the

liberties of the Church and the freedom of the nation eventually

triumphed.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, page 241; Calderwood, Volume

III., pages 205‒207; Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages 269‒285,

286, 323, 324.

When the Articles came before the General Assembly, which met at

Perth in August, 1572, that body unanimously agreed that such names

as archbishop, dean, archdeacon, chancellor, and chapter sounded

scandalous to the ears of many of the brethren, and recalled the ring

of popery, and protested that while recognising the names, it did

not mean to ratify, consent, or agree to any kind of superstition,

but wished rather that the titles should be changed for others less

offensive. The Assembly protested also that the articles and heads of

the Leith Concordat were only to be received as interim, till a more

perfect order could be obtained at the hands of the King, the Regent,

and the nobility, for which they were to press whenever an opportunity

occurred.

Knox addressed a letter to the Assembly containing a number of

suggestions. He exhorted them to contend earnestly for the truth and

for the liberty to express it, to endeavour to recover the patrimony

of the Church, to petition the Regent to have all the vacant bishoprics

filled up according to the order agreed on at Leith, but especially to

complain that the bishopric of Ross was given to Lord Methven. He urged

also that the Assembly should pass an act, ordering all the bishops

admitted under the new articles to give an account of the whole rents

of their sees and their intromissions therewith once every year; and

that the present Assembly should determine the jurisdiction of the

Church, as that part of the polity had long been postponed.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 244, 246, 247‒250; Knox’s

_Works_, Volume VI., pages 619‒622.

For some time Knox had been in feeble health, but his spirit continued

vigorous to the last. When the strife between the two contending

parties was at its height, he had retired to St. Andrews, as we have

seen, but by the end of August, 1572, he had returned once more to

Edinburgh and resumed his preaching in St. Giles. When the intelligence

of the massacre of the Protestants in Paris on the 25th of August

arrived, he was deeply moved. A proclamation was immediately issued

in the Regent’s name, calling on the Protestants to meet at Edinburgh

on the 20th of October. Every congregation in the kingdom was directed

to send one or more commissioners to consult and deliberate upon such

matters and overtures as might be proposed, tending to protect and

mutually to defend the professors of the Gospel within the kingdom,

“from the furious rage and lawless cruelty of the bloodstained and

treasonable Catholics, the executors of the decrees of that devilish

and terrible Council of Trent.”¹ On the appointed day a number of the

ministers and barons assembled. Among other things, they proposed that

a national fast should be held, to begin on the 23rd of November and

continue to the end of the month, that thereby the wrath of God might

be mitigated. They desired that all the Catholics without exception

should be summoned before the Council and the commissioners of the

Church, to give confession of their faith, and that all who did not

conform to the reformed religion, should be punished according to the

acts of parliament. For resisting the Catholics in and without the

country, they proposed that a league should be made with England and

other reformed kingdoms, for their mutual defence, and the maintenance

of the true religion against all its enemies; as it was only by banding

themselves together that they could hope to thwart and frustrate the

endless machinations which were constantly forming against them. “At

this time the ministers then in Edinburgh did most vehemently inveigh

against this most beastly and more than treasonable fact; whereat

the French ambassador, called La Crocke, was not a little displeased,

because that his master the King of France should be called a traitor,

and a murderer of his own subjects, under promise and trust; but

especially against John Knox, who had pronounced in his sermon, and

had declared the same to the ambassador to tell his master, that the

sentence is pronounced in Scotland, against that murderer the King of

France, that God’s vengeance shall never depart from him nor his house,

but that his name shall remain an execration unto the posterity to come,

and that none that shall come of his loins, shall enjoy that kingdom in

peace and quietness, unless repentance prevent God’s judgments.”²

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 168‒169.

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 252‒254; Calderwood,

Volume III., pages 227‒230; Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages

401‒402.

On Sunday the 9th of November, 1572, Knox officiated at the induction

of James Lawson as his colleague and successor. His voice was weak,

and he never again appeared in public. On the 11th of the month he was

seized with a severe cough, but continued cheerful. Richard Bannatyne,

his faithful servant, attended him. He was surrounded by his family,

and visited by many warm friends. He died in peace and full of hope on

the 24th of November, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. On the 26th

of the month his body was laid in the grave in the churchyard of St.

Giles.¹

¹ Bannatyne’s _Journal_, pages 262‒254; Knox’s _Works_, Volume

VI., pages 634‒560. In these full details of the last days

of the Reformer’s life are given.

The character of Knox is manifested in his work, although the manner

of performing it is a fair subject for criticism. But there is a

prior point which must be noticed. In that and in all ages of recorded

history, when a revolution is preparing and even after it is carried

through, those who oppose it with all their power and still strive

to resist its outcome, and those who struggle with all their energy

to hasten and accomplish it, cannot both be animated by identical

ideas, principles, and sentiments. The two contending parties must

be influenced and swayed in varying degrees according to the strength

or the feebleness of their sentiments, the firmness of their belief,

the clearness of their ideas, and the grasp which they have of their

principles; or their course of action may be partly controlled by the

object and ends towards which they look, as these may be conceived from

different points of view: as when one party regards the commemoration

of the saints as an essential article of religion while the other does

not, and so on through many other articles of belief. If then the God

of the one party is exactly the God of the other, they at least desire

to take different ways of approaching Him. It is the distinctive and

characteristic glory of Roman Catholicism to proclaim that it has never

changed its creed nor its principles; both are constantly assumed to

be infallible. But Protestantism admits of change, and recognises the

laws of development and progress, of corruption and decay, in religious

systems as in everything else; and endeavours by a process of gradual

elimination to advance towards the conception of a supreme moral ideal

to which all theology should eventually subordinate itself.

Those who looked upon the Reformation as an evil, and on Protestantism

as a heresy which deserved to be condemned and stamped out, could

see in Knox only an embodiment of wickedness. For this reason their

libels on his character may be justly disregarded. It is a fashionable

thing to talk in modern phrases about toleration, and then proceed to

stigmatise the Reformers of the sixteenth century for their bigotry,

dogmatism, narrowness, and ignorance; but this is neither just nor

in accordance with true historical ideas. In the great religious

revolutions of the world toleration has had little place; and for

ages the expression of difference of religious opinion has been

punished as a crime. There is only one way of fairly appreciating the

character of all great religious Reformers. To form a true estimate

of their character, a thorough knowledge of the state of society

in which they lived, and of all the associated circumstances, is a

preliminary requisite. It is in the degree which the Reformer’s ideas

and sentiments rise above those of his own age that his character must

be measured, not by the standard of a later age. That Knox’s ideas were

higher and purer than those current among the ruling class of Scotland

is a fact, which any one who desires may verify for himself. That he

was animated by a firm belief in a righteous and just God who rules the

universe, cannot be doubted. His moral ideas were in some respects in

advance of those of his age, but some of them were crude, erroneous,

and even savage, and as a thinker he takes no rank. Owing, however, to

his natural sagacity and shrewd common sense, and to his deep feeling

of the realities and the responsibilities of human life, some of his

practical views were singularly clear, far-reaching, and well developed.

In common with all great men and religious reformers, Knox exercised a

wonderful sway over his followers, and inspired them with confidence in

the hour of danger and of battle. He always avowed his opinions openly,

and acted on them with a bold and fearless independence; yet in matters

of doctrine he was not rigidly dogmatic. The Reformation Confession of

Scotland is remarkable for the acknowledgment of its own fallibility.¹

It was only what he emphatically believed to be the inspired word of

God, and necessary for the Church and the good of the nation, that he

insisted on being adopted by others. To blame him for not embracing

a tolerant policy is simply to forget the state of society and the

circumstances of the times; and if he had followed such a course,

the Reformation in Scotland would never have been accomplished, while

he himself would certainly have been crushed. He was greedy of power

and impatient of the least opposition. But he believed that he had a

message from God, and that it was his imperative duty to proclaim and

enforce it, and in this he toiled with untiring industry and energy.

There are some of the lighter shades and graces of life which he seems

to have been incapable of appreciating, and he certainly showed a

disposition to limit the amusements and the enjoyments of others;

but this arose from his deep sense of the realities of human life

and the gravity of its manifold duties. Among his friends, and in the

family circle, he could on occasion unbend and disport himself in an

exceedingly social and agreeable manner; he had indeed a humourous and

peculiar comic side which comes out in many forms in his writings.

¹ See under page 104.

John Knox, in conjunction with his contemporaries, brought blessings

to the people of Scotland which they have never forgotten. Although he

was extremely strong in assertion and firm in his own convictions, it

should be remembered that he was still stronger in denial and negation.

He swept off at once the accumulated mass of legends, traditions, and

ceremonies which had enslaved the mind and obscured the glory, purity,

and truth of Christianity.

Much of the energy of the leading men among the clergy was still

devoted to the improvement of the polity of the Church, and to the

planting and the organisation of congregations throughout the country.

As yet the practical establishment of the reformed worship was in many

places only imperfectly accomplished. The disorder which accompanied

the revolution itself, and the internal struggle of the contending

factions of the King and the Queen which followed it, had all

contributed to leave the Church in a state of disorganisation. The new

clergy, with all the power and means at their command, were ardently

and incessantly labouring to remedy these evils; but they were met at

every turn with the inexorable fact, that it is a much easier matter

to destroy the forms and institutions of a religious system than to

construct others to replace them. The history of mankind has shown that

the genius of destruction is more common than the genius of appropriate

construction; hence the curious spectacle presented in the history

of Scotland, the constantly recurring tendency and the efforts of

the party at the head of the government to return to the forms and

modes of the old system of church polity. As the practical solution

of the problem involved great secular as well as religious issues,

it was hotly contested between the Crown and the clergy for many

generations. There was an element of democracy inherent in the very

heart of the Reformation; but the Reformers in Scotland went beyond

their contemporaries in the admission of democratic principles.

Knox maintained that the King and the ruling political powers were

responsible to the people, and that if they abused the trust committed

to them, the people might lawfully depose them and appoint others

in their place. Similar principles were taught by Buchanan. Thus it

was that the Reformation in Scotland assumed an intensely political

importance, but always in connection with religion and the polity of

the Church.

The rarity of original construction among the leaders of the

revolutionary movement is very remarkable. Even by Calvin, the greatest

master of dogmatic form that the Reformation produced, religion,

secular government, and morality were all mixed up and regarded as

integral parts of one and the same system. In fact, it could hardly

have been otherwise, for philosophy had no separate and independent

existence. A Church distinct from and independent of the State was a

conception quite alien to the modes of thinking which prevailed among

the Reformers. On the other side, a government distinct and independent

of the Church was an idea scarcely entertained by the statesmen of the

sixteenth century. They all seemed to be more or less possessed with

the notions common to theocracies, that the Church and the State as

being both under the direction of God, should be associated together.

The idea of a theocracy is grand and inspiring in contemplation, but

in practical operation it turns out that the Church and the State

both claim a supremacy; and they often come to hold very different

views as to what is, or is not, the will of God. For the intelligent

apprehension of the history of Scotland during the next one hundred

years, it is necessary to have a clear conception of this theocratic

principle. The struggle of the Crown to establish Episcopacy, and the

opposition of the Presbyterian clergy; the Covenants, the Solemn League

and Covenant, with many of their attendant tragedies, had their origin

in the theocratic notions which were gathered out of the Old Testament,

and attempted on both sides to be applied to forms of society and

circumstances which were beyond their scope.

After the fall of the castle of Edinburgh, the Regent Morton succeeded

in restoring comparative quietness in the kingdom. He was known to

be inclined towards the hierarchy of bishops; not from principle but

from ambition and greed. The management of the thirds of benefices he

took out of the hands of the collectors appointed by the Church, and

then united a number of parishes under one minister, who was assisted

by readers to whom a trifling stipend was paid. When the Church

complained of these abuses, he accused the ministers of seditious and

treasonable speeches, refrained from attending their assemblies, and

began to question their right to meet and pass acts without his express

permission.¹ But crafty and astute as Morton was, he miscalculated his

power, and utterly failed to comprehend the intense earnestness and

honesty of purpose by which the reformed clergy was animated.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 292‒293, 296‒305;

Calderwood, Volume III., pages 304‒306.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in March, 1574, and concluded

that the bishops should be subject to the discipline of the Assembly,

the same as the superintendents in all points. Among the evils which

this Assembly enumerated and desired the assistance of the government

to remedy, were specified some books issued by the Jesuits and others

which contained manifest blasphemies against God and His revealed truth,

and were daily brought into the country by Poles and others to the

offence of the Church. The Assembly passed an act against simony in the

Church, and unanimously declared――“That all such persons as either buy

or sell benefices, or use any other kind of bargaining thereon, either

directly or indirectly, should be deprived of all function in the

Church; and the discipline of the Church to be laid upon them with the

utmost rigour and severity; and the buyers and sellers, or otherwise

coupers of the benefices to lose the same for evermore.”¹ This act was

much required. It is reported and recorded in many forms that Morton

and the nobles carried the traffic in benefices to an enormous length.²

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 294, 306, 310‒311.

² _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 445,

585‒587; 184‒185, _et seq._

It was daily becoming more manifest that the clergy would throw off

what remained of the forms of Episcopacy. The existing state of the

Church was extremely confused and unsatisfactory. A convention of the

Estates in the beginning of March, 1575, voted that inconveniences

had arisen, and were likely to increase, from the want of a proper

government in the Church; and a committee was appointed to draw up a

form of polity agreeable to the Word of God, and adapted to the state

of the kingdom.¹ The General Assembly met on the 7th of March the

same year, and appointed a committee of their number to meet with the

Regent’s commissioners, and to reason and confer on the jurisdiction

and polity of the Church. The draft of whatever scheme was proposed the

committee were directed to lay before the Assembly. Andrew Melville was

a member of this committee, which was reappointed from time to time,

and at last produced the Second Book of Discipline.²

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

89, 90.

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 326‒332; Dr. M‘Crie’s

_Life of Melville_, Volume I., pages 158, 159; 1819.

The Assembly met again at Edinburgh in August, 1575, and according to

custom the trial of the bishops and superintendents was begun, when

John Dury, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, rose and protested that

the trial of the bishops should not prejudge what he and others had

to propose against the name and office of a bishop. At a subsequent

sederunt Andrew Melville addressed the Assembly in support of Dury’s

proposition; his speech was attentively listened to, and it produced a

marked impression. The question was next proposed, Whether the bishops

as then placed in the Church of Scotland had their function in the Word

of God or not; and whether the chapters appointed for electing them

should be tolerated in a Reformed Church? For the better discussion

of the questions, the Assembly appointed John Craig, minister of

Aberdeen, James Lawson, minister at Edinburgh, and Andrew Melville,

principal of the University of Glasgow, on the one side; and George

Hay, commissioner of Caithness, John Row, minister of Perth, and

David Lindsay, minister of Leith, on the affirmative side of the

subject. In two days the committee reported that they did not think it

expedient at present to answer the first part of the question directly;

but they were of opinion that if any bishop was chosen without the

qualifications which the Word of God required, he should be tried by

the Assembly anew and so deposed. Touching the office of a bishop or

superintendent, they reported that the name of bishop is common to all

who are appointed to have the charge of a particular flock in preaching

the word and administering the sacraments, and exercising discipline

with the consent of the elders; and that this is the chief function

of bishops according to the Word of God. But out of this number some

might be chosen to visit and oversee, besides their own congregation,

within such reasonable bounds as the General Assembly might appoint to

them; and in these districts to admit ministers, with the consent of

the other ministers, and the approval of the congregations concerned:

and also to admit elders and deacons when necessary, with the consent

of the people; and to suspend ministers for reasonable causes, with

the consent of their brethren of the province. A full discussion of

the report was deferred to the next Assembly.¹ There were six bishops

present in the Assembly, none of whom seems to have offered any defence

of Episcopacy.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 331, 340, 342‒343;

Spottiswood, Volume II., 200‒201.

When the Assembly again met at Edinburgh in April, 1576, the

question of the bishops was discussed anew. After a long debate the

propositions laid by the committee before the last Assembly were

affirmed; and the bishops who had not as yet received the charge of

a particular congregation were ordered to make choice of one. There

was much reasoning touching the districts of the various bishops,

superintendents, and commissioners. It was agreed that the existing

districts were too large for them to overtake, and it was arranged to

allot only such a district to each as he could duly oversee, and with

this aim a new distribution of districts was proposed. The persons who

visited such districts whether called bishops, superintendents, or by

other names, were interrogated at every General Assembly, and required

to render an account of their proceedings.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 352‒356, 358‒359.

Questions and points concerning the patrimony of the Church came before

almost every Assembly. At this time it was asked, whether the Assembly

should proceed against those who unjustly possessed the patrimony of

the Church and the poor, and if so, how far? The Assembly unanimously

concluded that they might be proceeded against, first by way of

doctrine and admonition, and if in this way no remedy was obtained,

then to try the censures of the Church against them. The Assembly

reappointed the committee on the polity of the Church, and enjoined its

members to hold meetings at St. Andrews, Montrose, Glasgow, Edinburgh,

and Stirling, and to invite all ranks of the people to attend and give

their opinion on the proposed polity.¹

¹ _Ibid._ pages 360‒362.

The French Protestants who had taken refuge in England from persecution,

addressed a letter to their brethren in Scotland, bewailing their

sad condition, and desiring that the money which had been collected

for them among the Scots should be sent to them. The Assembly had

delayed sending it, because much of what had been promised, was not yet

collected; but it was resolved to forward at once the sum in hand to

the persecuted Frenchmen.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, page 356.

In 1577 the General Assembly met twice at Edinburgh, and on both

occasions the book on the polity and jurisdiction of the Church was

discussed. The various heads of the subject were put into form and read

in the Assembly, and sanctioned by the majority; but the book itself

was still reserved for further reasoning. The Regent was asked to

attend the Assembly, but he excused himself on the ground that he was

otherwise occupied. The Assembly, however, resolved to lay the proposed

polity before him. Morton, however, who had never been very popular,

was now tottering towards his fall. Early in 1578 he resigned the

regency; and the government was committed to a Council of twelve men

and the young King, then in his twelfth year.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

115‒117, 120; _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II.,

pages 677‒679; _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 383‒385,

391, 393, 394.

The popular party of the clergy were very active. In 1578 they held

three General Assemblies. These enacted that the bishops in the

Reformed Church of Scotland should henceforward be called by their own

names, and the chapters were prohibited from making any new elections

of bishops, under the penalty of deprivation of their offices. All

the bishops were ordered to submit themselves to the General Assembly

for reformation, and if they refused after admonition, they were

to be excommunicated; indeed the ruling party in the Church pursued

the bishops with astonishing energy. In the General Assembly which

met at Dundee in July, 1580, the subject of bishops was proposed for

discussion, and full liberty given to all the members to reason on the

matter and express their opinion. After this the Assembly unanimously

found that the office of a bishop, as then used and commonly understood,

had no warrant nor ground in the word of God. It was therefore declared

that this pretended office should be terminated, as being unlawful

in itself――a corruption and an invention of men. All the bishops were

charged to demit their office at once, to cease from preaching or

administering the sacraments or in any way exercising the functions of

pastors, until they received admission anew from the General Assembly,

under the penalty of excommunication. So energetic were the measures

of the Church that within a year all the bishops had submitted except

five;¹ the democratic spirit had become so strong and determined

that the Episcopal party had no longer any chance of retaining their

position in the Church.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 408, 409, 413, 423‒425,

432, 433, 453; Dr. Grub’s _Ecclesiastical History of

Scotland_, Volume II., pages 210, 211; Dr. M‘Crie’s _Life of

Melville_, Volume I., pages 162, 163.

In 1579 the General Assembly had presented a long address to King James

VI., putting him in remembrance of things pertaining to the advancement

of God’s glory, the welfare of the Church, and the common good of the

nation. In this they pointed out to him his duties to the Church, and

warned him of his perils. Referring to the translation of the Bible,

which under the direction of the Assembly, had been newly printed and

dedicated to his highness, they went on to say:――“This holy book of God

should be set forth, and printed within your own realm, to the end that

in every parish church there should be kept at least one, to be called

the common book of the Church, as a most meet ornament for such a place,

and a perpetual register of the Word of God, the fountain of all true

doctrine, to be made patent to all the people of each congregation, as

the only rule to direct and govern them in matters of religion, as also

to confirm them in the truth, and to reform and to redress corruptions

wherever they may creep in; certainly we have great occasion both to

glorify the goodness of God towards this country, and highly to extol

and commend your highness’s most godly purpose and enterprise. Oh!

what a difference may be seen between these days of light, when almost

in every private house the book of God’s law is read and understood in

the Vulgar language, and the age of darkness, when scarcely in a whole

city, without the cloisters of monks and friars, could the book of God

ever be found, and that in a strange tongue of Latin, not good, but

mixed with barbarisms, used and read by few and almost understood and

expounded by none; and when the false named clergy of this realm abused

the gentle nature of your highness’s grandfather of worthy memory, made

it a capital crime to be punished with the fire to have read the New

Testament in the Vulgar tongue; yea, and to make them more odious to

all men, as if it had been the detestable name of a pernicious sect,

they were called New Testamenters.... Call for the wisdom of Solomon to

endue your grace with a spiritual spirit, as well in the civil policy

as in advancing the spiritual policy of the Church; imitate the fervent

faith of Jehosaphat putting his whole trust in the Lord and believing

his prophets; imitate the diligence of Jehoash, in repairing the

house of the Lord; follow godly Ezekias in rooting out all monuments

of idolatry, making the book of the law of God, a long time ignored

and left in silence, yea, utterly forgotten, to be publicly read and

accepted by the people and recommended to their posterity. To such

diligence as this did the prophets of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi

exhort the princes of the Jews.... This is a matter most worthy of your

royal heart, a purpose proper for the exercise of the vivacity of your

divine and high genius.... All other glory at last shall decay, and

all commendations that result from other princely acts, are either not

of long duration, or commonly mixed up with such things as are also

deserving of blame; but the honour of this act shall endure for ever,

and shall be fully approved by Him whose judgment must be equal and

right, who is the eternal Lord of lords and King of kings; whom with

most humble hearts and instant prayers we beseech to bless your majesty

with continual and daily increase of His abundant blessings both

spiritual and temporal; and to maintain in wealth and prosperity your

princely estate to the praise and glory of His holy name, your assured

salvation, the comfort and quietness of this country, the overthrow of

the power of Satan and the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Amen.”¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 441‒448.

While the clergy were busy abolishing the remaining fragments of

Episcopacy, they were, as we have seen, intently engaged in maturing

their own scheme of church polity. It had been laid before several

Assemblies, and its various chapters and heads had been discussed,

altered, amended, and rendered as perfect as possible. It was adopted

by the Assembly which met at Edinburgh in April, 1578. This polity,

which then became the authorised form of church government in Scotland,

is known by the title of the Second Book of Discipline; it was placed

before the King, but it was not ratified by the Privy Council nor by

Parliament. The Reformed Church, however, acted upon it, and inserted

it in the Register of the Acts of the General Assembly in 1581.¹

¹ _Ibid._ pages 408, 409, 432, 487‒512; Calderwood, Volume

III., pages 414‒418; Melville’s _Diary_, pages 87‒116.

This book of polity is a comparatively short but logical and compact

treatise. It contains thirteen chapters, each of which is again divided

into a number of short expository statements of the different points of

the general heading or doctrines to be established. It is essentially

a deductive work, and presents an admirable example of that method of

exposition. In the general scope and spirit of the book there are many

points of difference between it and the First Book of Discipline: the

earlier book was a meritorious and comprehensive production, but some

parts of it were ill arranged and not fully developed, and several

other matters were simply introduced to meet the exigencies of the time.

There is a notable difference in the view taken of the authority of

the civil power in the two books, touching ecclesiastical matters; in

the latter the distinction between the Church and the State is far more

fully worked out than in the earlier work. The first book, as we have

seen, gave a large share of power to the people in the election and

control of their ministers; the second book also gave a share of power

to the people, but divided it between the judgment of the eldership and

the consent of the congregation. It deals less with doctrine and more

with the external form and order of the Church than the first book.

But according to the second scheme, the Church would be altogether

independent of the civil government, and the civil government would in

things spiritual be subject to the orders of the Church. “This power

and ecclesiastical polity is different and distinct in its own nature,

from that power and policy which is called the civil power, and belongs

to the civil government of the Commonwealth; albeit they are both

of God, and tend to the same end, if they be rightly used, namely,

to advance the glory of God, and to have godly and good subjects.

This power ecclesiastical flows immediately from God and the Mediator,

Christ Jesus, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth,

but only Christ, the only spiritual King and Governor of His Church.

Therefore this power and polity of the Church should lean upon the Word

of God immediately as the only ground thereof, and should be taken from

the pure fountains of the Scriptures, hearing the voice of Christ, the

only spiritual King, and being ruled by His laws.... Notwithstanding,

as the ministers, and others of the ecclesiastical estate, are subject

to the civil magistrate, so ought the person of the magistrate in

spiritual matters to be subject to the Church, and in ecclesiastical

government.

“The Civil power should command the Spiritual to exercise and perform

their office according to the Word of God. The spiritual rulers should

require the Christian magistrate to administer justice and punish

vice, and to maintain the liberty and quietness of the Church within

their bounds.... The magistrate ought neither to preach, minister the

sacraments, nor execute the censures of the Church, nor yet prescribe

any rule how it should be done, but command the ministers to observe

the rule commanded in the Word of God, and punish the transgressors

by civil means. The ministers do not exercise civil jurisdiction, but

teach the magistrate how it should be exercised according to the Word.”

This style of illustration by contrast is much employed in the Second

Book of Discipline. “The magistrate ought to assist, maintain, and

fortify the jurisdiction of the Church. The ministers to assist their

princes in all things agreeable to the word, provided they do not

neglect their own charge, by involving themselves in civil affairs.

“So it appertains to the office of the Christian magistrate to assist

and fortify the godly proceedings of the Church in all behalfs, and to

see that the public estate of the ministry be maintained and sustained,

according to the Word of God. To see that the Church be not invaded nor

hurt by false teachers or hirelings, nor their places occupied by dumb

dogs and idle bellies. To assist and maintain the discipline of the

Church, and to punish them civilly that will not obey the censures of

the Church. To make laws and constitutions agreeable to the Word, for

the advancement of the Church and her polity, without usurping anything

that does not belong to the civil sword, but belongs to the offices

that are ecclesiastical.... And although kings and princes who are

godly, sometimes by their own authority, when the Church is corrupted

and all things out of order, may place ministers and restore the true

service of the Lord, after the example of some of the godly kings

of Judah, and divers godly kings and emperors also in the light of

the Gospel; yet where the ministry of the Church is once lawfully

constituted, and those that are placed in offices perform their duties

faithfully, all godly princes and magistrates ought to hear and obey

their voice, and reverence the majesty of the Son of God speaking by

them.”¹

¹ The _Second Book of Discipline_ is printed in the _Book of

the Universal Kirk_; in James Melville’s _Diary_; and in the

third volume of Calderwood’s _History of the Church of

Scotland_.

This treatise laid down the lines of Presbyterianism, that form of

church government and organisation which has taken the firmest hold

upon the national mind. For some time the Assemblies had been taking

steps and labouring incessantly to complete this organisation, but

much still remained to be done and various obstacles had yet to be

overcome. The most pressing difficulty was the want of a sufficient

number of qualified ministers. In 1567 there were upwards of a thousand

parishes and churches in Scotland under the charge of two hundred and

fifty-seven ministers, one hundred and fifty-one exhorters, and four

hundred and fifty-five readers. Thus a number of parishes had neither

ministers nor readers. There were only 868 persons, including the

superintendents, for all the churches of the country. In 1574 there

were two hundred and eighty-nine ministers and seven hundred and

fifteen readers engaged in the religious instruction of the people,

but there were many complaints that a number of those who had charge

of churches were not qualified for the office. To meet the aim of

the Presbyterian polity in 1581 a rearrangement of the parishes

was proposed. Excepting the Diocese of Argyle and the Isles, it was

resolved to reduce the number of parish churches to six hundred, and

to divide these into fifty presbyteries――“twelve churches to every

presbytery, or thereabout.” But for some time it was found to be

impracticable to carry this scheme fully out, although the unwearying

perseverance of the leading ministers was rewarded with a considerable

measure of success. It was agreed to abolish the office of reader, and

gradually to replace it by regularly ordained ministers. The General

Assembly of 1580 concluded that all the readers who had been two years

in office should be tried and examined by the superintendents and

commissioners, and if they were found unqualified to be pastors and

to preach the word, to depose them; and in 1581 it was resolved that

no new readers should hereafter be admitted in the Church. We find,

however, that there were still readers in the Church at the end of the

century. Many of the readers had belonged to the Roman Catholic Church,

but they were not allowed to administer the sacraments or to solemnise

marriage. Still there was a lack of qualified ministers. This was owing

partly to the small and uncertain provision assigned to the ministry,

and partly to the disturbing circumstances of the times. Even in 1596

there were four hundred churches destitute of ministers. In Argyle

and other parts of the Highlands the doctrines of the Reformation were

only very imperfectly introduced, and in some of these portions of the

kingdom the people long remained Catholics. “Besides the Diocese of

Argyle and the Isles, of which no rentals were ever given up, there

are in Scotland nine hundred and twenty-four churches.” But several

of them were very small, and many of the churches were demolished. The

Diocese of Argyle and the Isles seems to have stood in a rather distant

attitude towards the Reformed Assemblies of the Church. In 1586, one

of the petitions presented by the Assembly to the King ran――“That the

bishops and commissioners of Argyle and the Isles may be subject to

attend upon the General Assemblies, and to keep their synodial meetings

as in other parts of the realm, which is a furtherance of the King’s

majesty’s obedience, since otherwise they appear to be exempted out of

his dominions.” Since the Reformation, however, the means of diffusing

religious instruction had been immensely increased; and the facilities

for acquiring information were steadily widening.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume II., pages 6‒7,

261‒264, 351‒352; _Miscellany of the Wodrow Society_, Volume

I., pages 325‒328; _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages

455‒457, 479, 480‒487, 523, 530‒533, 549, 513, 535, ♦627,

661.

♦ “927” replaced with “627”

Although Morton had resigned the regency, he was still greedy of power

and struggled to regain it; but his enemies were closing in around him

and plotting his ruin. The young King naturally had his favourites.

They were constantly with him, and aroused the suspicion of the

Protestants and the clergy. In the year 1579 Eme Stewart, a cousin

of the king, arrived from France. He was kindly received by his royal

kinsman, with whom he soon became a great favourite. The two were

always together, and whatever interested the King and engaged his

attention was sure to interest his cousin. The result was that Eme

Stewart speedily rose to greatness. First, he was made an Earl, and

shortly after, Duke of Lennox. Then he was appointed High Chamberlain;

and in order that his wealth might be commensurate with his rank, the

once rich Abbey of Arbroath was freely granted to him. To complete

his influence in the councils of the kingdom he was made governor of

the Castle of Dumbarton. About the same time a Captain James Stewart,

another of the King’s favourites, came upon the scene. In the spring

of 1581 he was elevated to the rank of Earl of Arran, and put in

possession of a portion of the estates of the house of Hamilton.

As long as Morton was at liberty, however, these two upstarts were

insecure; they therefore contrived to compass his destruction.¹ The new

Duke of Lennox was known to be a Roman Catholic, and it was whispered

that he had come to Scotland as a secret emissary of the Pope. To allay

the suspicion of the clergy he professed that he was converted and

joined the Reformed Church. But the popular mind was not satisfied. It

was still feared that a scheme was being formed among those about the

court to bring back the old religion; and to calm this apprehension, at

the request of the King, a document was prepared, and signed by himself,

the Duke of Lennox, and the other members of the royal household in

March, 1581. Hence this paper has sometimes been called the King’s

Confession, the First Covenant, and in later times the Negative

Confession, from its extremely condemnatory character. It was a most

vehement protest and denunciation of many of the tenets of the Roman

Church, and it concluded with these words, “And because we perceive

that the peace and stability of our religion and Church depends

upon the safety and good behaviour of the King’s majesty, as upon a

comfortable instrument of God’s mercy granted to this country, for the

maintenance of His Church, and the administration of justice among us:

we protest and promise solemnly with our hearts, under the same oath,

hand write, and pains, that we shall defend his person and authority

with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the defence of Christ’s Gospel,

the liberty of our country, the administration of justice, and the

punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within and without this

realm, as we desire our God to be a strong and merciful defender to

us in the day of our death, and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: to

whom with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory

eternally. Amen.”²

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

237, 248‒254; Spottiswood, Volume II., page 266, _et seq._

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 515, _et seq._;

Calderwood, Volume III., pages 501‒505; _Collection of

Confessions_, pages 101‒107. 1722. This confession was drawn

up by John Craig, one of the ministers of Edinburgh.

About the beginning of the year 1581 the Duke of Lennox accused

Morton of complicity in the murder of Darnley, the King’s father; and

the fallen regent was taken and imprisoned, first in the Castle of

Edinburgh, and afterwards in Dumbarton Castle. He was brought to trial

on the 1st of June; and on his own confession that he was privy to

the plot for the murder of Darnley, was condemned and beheaded on the

2nd of June. Morton faced death as he had faced life, and died with

characteristic firmness.¹

¹ Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_, Volume II.; Melville’s _Diary_,

pages 116‒118.

Lennox and Arran were now supreme in the court and in the government.

But, as usual in the history of Scotland, a party of the nobles entered

into a bond against the favourites to crush them, take the King into

their own hands, and hold the reins of government themselves.¹ Some

time, however, elapsed before the project was matured. This interval

afforded Lennox an opportunity of trying his skill in the affairs

of the Church. On the death of Boyd, the Archbishop of Glasgow, the

disposal of the see was given to Lennox; and although the regulations

which recognised Episcopacy had been abrogated by the General Assembly,

and virtually abandoned by the court, they were revived by an act of

the Privy Council. The Duke offered the see to various ministers upon

the condition of their giving over to him the revenues, and agreeing to

accept an annual pension; and at last the offer was accepted by Robert

Montgomery, the minister of Stirling. To the reformed clergy this

simoniacal paction was extremely odious. The matter came before the

Assembly in October, 1581, and in spite of Lennox, the court party,

and the King, Montgomery was subjected by the Church to a form of

treatment which made him glad to submit, and in the end to supplicate

for permission to take the charge of a congregation, instead of the

Archbishopric of Glasgow. The King’s favourites and the court party had

not reckoned on the determined stand which the clergy made against them;

and were greatly enraged at being defeated.²

¹ The bond contained the names of the Earls of Gowrie, Mar, and

Glencairn, Lord Lindsay, the Master of Glamis, and a number

of others.

² _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., pages 474‒477;

_Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 524, 525, 529, 532, 539,

541‒547, 557‒566, 569, 571, 575, 578, 580, 583, 590, 599,

607, 609, 691, 700‒701, 709.

The feeling of uneasiness amongst the people, springing out of a fear

that the Catholics were preparing plots, continued. The adherents of

the old faith were very active; some of the most ardent of those who

had fled to the Continent after the Reformation were then returning;

and the court was showing a decided leaning towards Episcopacy. The

reformed ministers were not silent. They frequently expressed their

sentiments and opinions in the pulpit with irritating plainness. Walter

♦Balcanquhal, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, in a sermon which he

preached in October, 1581, said,――“That within these few years Popery

had entered into the country, not only in the court, but in the King’s

hall, and was maintained by the tyranny of a great champion, who was

called Grace; and if his grace would oppose himself to God’s Word, he

should have little grace.” For this sermon he was called before the

King’s Council, but he declined to recognise their right to try him for

anything which he had spoken in the pulpit, and offered to submit the

matter to the General Assembly. His case came before the Assembly, and

his brethren, after inquiry among the preacher’s session, unanimously

found that there was nothing wrong in his sermon; “but that it was

solid, good, and true doctrine.”¹

♦ “Balcanquhall” replaced with “Balcanquhal”

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 527‒529, 540, 542‒543.

By the freedom which they took in the pulpit the ministers of Edinburgh

were extremely annoying to the dominant faction, who had the King’s ear.

John Dury charged the King himself to his face for exchanging presents

with the Duke of Guise, “that cruel murderer of the saints.” When he

ascended the pulpit, he made the church resound with his denunciations

of the bishops, the King, and his favourites, who ruled the kingdom.

Dury was at first an exhorter in Leith, and though not a learned man,

he had much energy and intense earnestness of purpose. He could wield

a weapon on the field of battle, as well as preach a sermon in the

pulpit. It was on the evening of Wednesday, the 23rd of May, 1582, in

the Cathedral Church of Edinburgh, that he made his great attack upon

the court faction. “I pray you,” he said, “what should move Guise,

that bloody persecutor, that enemy unto all truth, that pillar of the

Pope, to send this present by one of his trustiest servants to our

King? not for any love, no, no, his pretence is known.... What amity

or friendship can we look for at his hands who has been the bloodiest

persecutor of the professors of the truth in all France, neither was

there any notable murder or havoc of God’s people, but what he was at

in person. And yet for all this, the Duke and Arran will needs have

our King to take a present from him. If God did threaten the captivity

and spoil of Jerusalem because their King Hezekia did receive a lure

and present from the King of Babylon, shall we think to be free when

committing the like or rather worse?” In his prayers, he prayed that

the Lord would either convert or confound the Duke. For his sermon

he was called before the Privy Council, and banished from Edinburgh

by an Act of Council. When the General Assembly met in June, 1582, he

placed the whole process against him before it, and the members of the

Assembly found nothing amiss in what he had spoken. “The whole Assembly

found nothing in him but sound, true, and wholesome doctrine; and

that he was upright and honest in his life and conversation.” As the

King had banished him from the capital, the Assembly gave him liberty

to preach wherever providence might cast his lot, until he should be

restored to his own flock.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 576, 578, 580;

Calderwood, Volume III., pages 620, 622‒625; _Register of

the Privy Council_, Volume III., pages 335, 489. Dury was

called before the King and Council at Dalkeith――“Where he

narrowly escaped being slain by the duke’s cooks, who came

out of the kitchen, with spits and great knives to take his

life, as he often told me.”――Melville’s _Diary_, page 129.

The plot against the King’s favourites was at length ripe for

execution. The King was very fond of hunting, and on August 22, 1582,

his Majesty, by invitation, proceeded to the grounds of Ruthven Castle,

in the neighbourhood of Perth, to enjoy his favourite amusement. When

the sport was concluded for the day, he went to Ruthven Castle as

the welcome guest of its noble lord. Everything passed off in the

most agreeable fashion, and his Majesty at last retired to rest. The

following morning, when he arose and looked abroad, he was alarmed by

the throng of armed men around the place, and when he wished to depart,

discovered that he was a captive. The Earl of Arran was seized and

imprisoned; and the Duke of Lennox was warned to leave the country

without delay. This affair is known in history as “The Raid of Ruthven.”

The King was permitted to step about, but he was attended by a body

of well-armed followers to preserve his royal person from danger. In

a few days he was removed to Stirling, and in October was conveyed to

Holyrood House. A Parliament was then held at Edinburgh on the 19th

of October, and an act of indemnity, or rather a vote of thanks to the

chief actors in the enterprise, was passed. This was a farce which the

aristocracy often played. They proclaimed that, under the providence of

God, they were moved to attempt the reform of many abuses in the State,

which threatened to subvert the established religion, and were equally

perilous to his Majesty and the crown.¹ By the most ardent Protestants

and the clergy, “The Raid of Ruthven” was regarded as a deliverance

for the Church, and the ministers declared their satisfaction from the

pulpits. When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 9th October,

1582, the members heartily approved of the proceedings of the Earl

of Gowrie and his adherents, and passed an act declaring “that the

prosecution and following out of the said good and godly cause, all

particulars put aside, is and shall be most acceptable to all that

fear the majesty of God aright; and to all who tender the preservation

of the King’s Majesty, most noble person, and estate, and loves the

prosperous and happy success of this troubled nation.” The members of

the Assembly were therefore recommended to explain the affair, and the

proceedings of the noblemen connected with it, to the people throughout

the country.²

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

326‒331.

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 591‒592, 594‒596;

Melville’s _Diary_, page 134; Sir James Melville’s _Memoirs_,

pages 282‒283.

During the time that the King was in the hands of Gowrie and the barons

who joined him, the government was carried on pretty much in accordance

with the views of the Church. When ambassadors arrived from France

in January, 1583, the Presbytery of Edinburgh appointed some of the

ministers to go to the King and admonish him to beware of them. The

King thanked the preachers for their friendly admonition, but said that

he must show the common courtesies to the ambassadors of his old ally,

the King of France; but promised, however, to use no great familiarity

with them. The ♦distinguished strangers were permitted to celebrate the

mass, and their celebration of it excited the popular displeasure; the

ministers of the capital declaimed bitterly against them, especially

against La Motte, a knight who wore a white cross on his shoulder,

which they called the badge of Antichrist. Indeed, such was the feeling

aroused against them that the representatives of the King of France

could scarcely appear on the streets without being followed by the

jeers and hooting of the mob. The King desired the magistrates to

entertain them at a banquet before they departed; but the ministers

were extremely opposed to it, and immediately proclaimed a fast to

be kept on the day of the banquet. On that day the preachers in St.

Giles made the walls resound with their denunciations. Three ministers,

in succession, mounted the pulpit, and, without intermission for

four hours, thundered out maledictions against the nobles and the

magistrates who waited on the ambassadors, and took part in the

banquet.¹

♦ “distintinguished” replaced with “distinguished”

¹ Calderwood, Volume III., pages 694, 697, 698, 699, 700;

Spottiswood, Volume II., page 298.

Despite the vigilance of his keepers, the young King contrived to

escape in the end of June, 1583, and to throw himself into the Castle

of St. Andrews. The power of the Ruthven party was shortly after

terminated. The King issued a proclamation on the 30th of July,

touching the Raid of Ruthven, and announcing that he had resumed

his independent authority. Referring to the Raid, he expressed

his willingness to forget the offence and grant forgiveness to all

concerned in it, if they should timeously profess their penitence; and

for some time several of the nobles implicated in the Raid continued

members of the Privy Council. But on the 23rd of August the Earl

of Arran reappeared in the Council, and shortly resumed his power

and influence in the government; and he seems to have instigated the

young prince to prosecute to the utmost those concerned in the Raid of

Ruthven, and at last, on the 31st of March, 1584, it was denounced as

high treason. By this time, a number of those implicated in the Raid

had been tried one by one or collectively, and sentenced to banishment

or imprisonment, and disgraced. But the hatred of the Earl of Arran’s

rule had become general, and a new plot, sanctioned by a bond, was

formed against him, in which the Earls of Mar, Angus, and Gowrie, the

Lords Lindsay, John Hamilton and Claud Hamilton, the Master of Glamis,

and others, were associated. They resolved to seize Stirling Castle,

and then to raise a general insurrection. On the 10th of April, Mar

and Glamis, with a body of their followers, captured Stirling Castle;

but on the 15th of April, the Earl of Gowrie was arrested by Colonel

Stewart at Dundee, and immediately conveyed to Edinburgh. The capture

of Gowrie somewhat disconcerted the insurgent nobles. Arran, with a

strong force, advanced against them, and on the 24th of April, they

fled from Stirling, leaving only a garrison of twenty-four men in the

Castle. The following day, a proclamation was issued for the pursuit

and capture, dead or alive, of the Earls of Mar and Angus, the Master

of Glamis, and other rebels; but they escaped by Lanark to Kelso,

and crossed the border into England. The King and his army appeared

before Stirling, the small garrison left by the insurgents surrendered

the Castle, and on the 28th of April, their captain and other three

men were hanged. On the 2nd of May, the Earl of Gowrie was tried for

treason at Stirling by a jury of his peers, including ♦Argyle, Arran,

Crawford, and others; he was convicted, and beheaded the same day

beneath the castle wall. The same month an Act of Parliament was passed

for disinheriting his posterity, and in August an act of forfeiture was

passed against the Countess of Gowrie. From May 1584, till Midsummer

1585, Arran was the supreme ruler of Scotland, and his policy was

clearly manifested in the two short sessions of what is known as the

“running” Parliament, and in the proceedings of the Privy Council

during the brief period of his sway.¹

♦ “Argyll” replaced with “Argyle” for consistency

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

301‒304; _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., pages

574, 585, 590, 602, 608, 611, 614, 644, 651‒662.

Meanwhile the apprehensions of the clergy had risen to an unusual

height. They had applauded the Raid of Ruthven, and some of them still

continued to reiterate their former sentiments on that enterprise. John

Dury, who had returned to Edinburgh, was ordered to retire beyond the

Tay, and to abide in Montrose. In the middle of February, 1584, Andrew

Melville, one of the chief leaders of the clergy, was cited to appear

before the Privy Council, touching seditious language which he had

uttered in his sermons. When he came before the Council, he at once

offered to give an account of the sermon upon which he was accused, and

after he had done this, the Council resolved to proceed with the trial.

Melville then protested and declined to answer, on the ground that

the case ought in the first instance to be tried by the Presbytery.

The reading of his protest seems to have greatly irritated Arran and

the King. On the second day of the trial Melville lost his temper, and

told the King and Council that they had taken too much on themselves to

control the servants of a Master far higher than they were. That they

might see their rashness, he took a Hebrew Bible from his girdle, and

throwing it down on the table challenged his judges to try conclusions

on that and then they would see their folly. The record states that

he “proudly, irreverently, and contemptuously declared that the laws

of God and the practices observed within the country were perverted

and not observed in this case.” The court ordered him to enter as

a prisoner into the Castle of Blackness within ten hours, under

the penalty of being proclaimed a rebel and an outlaw; but Melville

preferred to choose his own place of imprisonment, and immediately fled

to Berwick, which in those days was the city of refuge.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., page 631;

Melville’s _Diary_, pages 141‒144; Scott’s _Narrative_,

page 51.

The contest between the Crown and the clergy had now reached a

crisis. Archbishop Adamson, acting in concert with the King and Arran,

was busy concocting a plan for the reintroduction of Episcopacy and

the destruction of the Presbyterian polity, which had been rapidly

completing its organisation. Adamson drew up a series of articles for

the constitution of the Church and the acceptance of the Government.

According to this scheme, which recognised in emphatic terms that the

King was head of the Church, and that it was therefore his prerogative

to appoint the order of her polity, the government of the Church

consisted, subject to the headship of the King, in the power and

authority of the bishops, whose office is of apostolic institution

and in accordance with the primitive purity of the Church of God. On

the other hand, it was pointed out that presbyteries in which laymen

associated with the ministers, were in fact a continual source of

sedition. No General Assembly was to be allowed to meet without a

license from the King.¹ These ideas were instilled into the mind of the

young King at this impressionable period of his life, and throughout

the rest of his career he never ceased to hold and enforce them to the

utmost of his power.

¹ Calderwood, Volume IV., pages 53‒55; Dr. Grub’s

_Ecclesiastical History of Scotland_, Volume II., pages

232‒234; Melville’s _Diary_, pages 151‒153.

Rumours of impending calamities to the Church and the nation filled the

land. In the beginning of May several of the most energetic preachers

fled to Berwick, and joined Melville and the banished lords. When

Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 19th of May, 1584, these gloomy

forebodings were fully realised. A series of acts were passed which

placed in the hands of the King powers quite unprecedented in Scotland.

One act declared that the King had an absolute power and authority over

all ranks in the kingdom, and that he was supreme judge in all matters

civil and religious. Another enacted that to speak against any of the

proceedings of Parliament should be accounted treason; a third, that

all the acts and judgments of the church courts, if unsanctioned by

Parliament, were to be held as unlawful, and all meetings of the people

to consult and deliberate on any matter, either civil or ecclesiastical,

without the King’s special licence, were declared criminal and

deserving the severest punishment. A fourth act placed the chief

ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the hands of the bishops. A fifth

commanded that no person whatever should dare to comment upon the

proceedings of the King and Council, either in sermons or declamations,

in public, in private, or in familiar conversation; nor at all presume

to utter any false and slanderous statements to the reproach, the

disdain, or the contempt of His Majesty, or to the prejudice and

dishonour of his highness and his parents and worthy progenitors, under

the penalty of the laws against the makers and tellers of lies. And

that these royal prerogatives which by the gift of heaven belonged to

his highness and to all his heirs and successors on the throne should

continue unimpaired, it was deemed absolutely necessary to condemn

Buchanan’s _History of Scotland_ and his _Jure Regni apud Scotos_;

and therefore all persons who possessed any copies of these books

were ordered to deliver them to the royal officers within forty days,

“that they might be purified of the extraordinary matters which they

contained.”¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

292‒296; Calderwood, Volume IV., page 38, _et seq._

The clergy had become aware that these acts were preparing, and some

of them went to the Parliament House, with the intention of protesting

for the rights of the Church, but the doors were closed against them.

When the Acts were proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh, three of the

ministers, Lawson, Pont, and Balcanquhal, protested publicly against

them as injurious to the former liberties of the Church. These acts had

been passed in great haste, the parliament having sat but two days, and

passed forty-nine acts; and the King and Arran made a bold attempt to

carry them into effect. For some time nothing was heard of but arrests,

trials, hornings and forfeitures. These measures unquestionably

expressed the intentions of the party in power. Orders were issued to

apprehend the preachers who had protested against the acts, but they

had saved themselves by flight. Soon after more than twenty ministers

took refuge in England; and there was then a pretty large party of

Scots in Berwick, Newcastle, and other parts of that kingdom.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., page 668;

_Miscellany of the Wodrow Society_, Volume I., pages 411‒419;

Calderwood, Volume IV., pages 64‒65, 72; Melville’s _Diary_,

pages 167‒172.

The King and his party having now asserted their supremacy, resolved

to crush the rebellious nobles and the bold preachers. Parliament

again met in August, 1584, and passed thirty-eight acts to strengthen

the hands of the government. A process of treason against the banished

lords and others associated with them was carried through, and their

property was forfeited to the Crown. An act was passed which commanded

all beneficed men, ministers, readers, masters of colleges and

schools, to subscribe and faithfully promise that they would humbly and

dutifully submit to the King, and obey the acts of the last parliament;

and to show their submissive spirit, they were ordered at once to obey

the bishops and the commissioners appointed by the King to rule over

them in all religious matters, under the penalty of forfeiting their

stipends.¹ All the ministers between Stirling and Berwick were summoned

to appear at Edinburgh, on the 16th of November, 1584, there to attest

their submission to the will of the King. This was a very hard measure,

and many of the ministers refused to comply with it. When Craig and

other leading preachers were before the court, Arran asked them, how

they durst venture to be so bold as to find fault with the acts of

parliament; Craig answered that they durst find fault with anything

which was repugnant to God’s Word. Upon this Arran started to his feet

and threatened that, “he would shave their heads, pare their nails, cut

their toes, and make them an example to all rebels.” After some further

debate, Craig and the most of his brethren signed the deed, with a

clause which was added――“agreeable to the Word of God.” Erskine of Dun,

the venerable superintendent, also signed it, and used his influence

in persuading others to conform. On the 2nd of January, 1585, it was

proclaimed that all those who had not subscribed the acts of parliament

were then offered the last opportunity of doing so; and that in the

event of their declining, their stipends would be withheld, and their

persons punished for contempt of the laws.²

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

331‒333, 336‒346, 347.

² _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., pages 701‒704,

712, _et seq._; Calderwood, Volume IV., pages 198‒200,

209‒211, 246‒247; Fifth Report of the Commissioners on

Historical manuscripts, page 636.

But neither the rage of Arran, nor the kingcraft of James, could

stifle thought and feeling. The ministers, however, were extremely

hard pressed. The laws against them were rigorously enforced; and even

the wives of the refractory preachers were turned out of their houses,

and commanded to leave the country.¹ By such means the King and his

associates fondly imagined that they would crush the spirit of the

clergy and the people; and an onlooker might well have thought that the

clergy were completely subdued; but the inner springs of the movement

the King with all his craft and acts was unable to touch. It was here

that he failed. He could enforce compliance with certain things; but

it was beyond his power to control the motives, the ideas, and the

convictions; and it is these which ultimately prevail.

¹ _Miscellany of the Wodrow Society_, Volume I., pages 432‒437.

One of the inner political peculiarities of the history of Scotland

appears in the rapid rise and fall of the factions of the nobles who

ruled the country, or rather the king. This process of action and

reaction was always at short intervals producing sudden and unexpected

changes at the centre of authority. Looking merely at the external

features of these manifestations, they seem to be capricious, irregular,

and extremely confused; but when we extend our view over a series

of centuries, and learn to appreciate the position and the power of

the aristocracy, these surprising changes in the government become

intelligible and full of sequence. In this light, the long series of

unforeseen changes in the government, the seizures, the imprisonments,

the depositions, and the murders, of the kings are seen to be the

results of a movement springing out of the social and political

organisation of the nation. In other words, the aggregates of society

in Scotland had for ages circled round the nobles, but often in

separate and conflicting groups; hence the comparative weakness of the

Crown arose partly from its having to contend with the freaks of these

natural and traditional centres of power.

Lord Maxwell had been for many generations the leading local noble

in Dumfries and its neighbourhood, and had frequently held the office

of Warden of the Western March. On the 29th of April, 1581, John,

Lord Maxwell, was appointed to that office by the King and Council. A

supporter of Lennox and Arran, immediately after the execution of the

Regent, he was created Earl of Morton, and on the 5th of June, 1581,

he obtained a charter granting the Earldom to him. The new Earl was

at feud with John Johnstone of Johnstone, a powerful border laird,

and formerly a Warden of the Western March; and on the 26th of May,

1582, a royal proclamation ordered them not to appear with their

armed followers in Edinburgh――“to a day of law appointed to be held

on the last day of May.” On the 19th of November the Earl of Morton

was deprived of the Wardenship of the Western March, and his rival,

Johnstone of Johnstone, was appointed to the office. The Earl of Morton

was subsequently charged with many misdemeanours, and denounced as

a rebel. In the winter of 1585 he appears as the leader of a border

revolt against Arran’s government; and in April a muster of the loyal

vassals of the Crown was ordered, and then to proceed against him,

while the gift to Maxwell of the Earldom of Morton was revoked; and

therefore he was at war with the King and his government. Maxwell

had a thousand armed men in the field, and the banished Lords at once

saw their opportunity, and joined him. In the beginning of November,

1585, they returned, and having collected their adherents, met Maxwell

at Selkirk. Thence they marched on Stirling with a force of eight

thousand men. The King and Arran were at Stirling when the rebels

appeared before it. Arran fled towards the Highlands; while the King,

notwithstanding all his craft and the astuteness of his favourites, had

no alternative but to receive the proffered homage of his rebellious

nobles, and pardon them.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume III., pages 376, 487,

531, 534, 540, 739; Bannatyne _Miscellany_, Volume I., page

119; Melville’s _Diary_, pages 223‒225; Sir James Melville’s

_Memoirs_, pages 384‒385.

With the nobles most of the exiled preachers had returned, and the

hopes of the Protestant clergy were somewhat brightened. But if they

expected much aid from the party whom they had befriended, they were

quickly disabused. The nobles told them that first of all their own

estates must be restored, and that when they were, they would work

intently for the Church. This was the characteristic form of the policy

of the aristocracy towards the reformed clergy, when a party of the

clergy had interests of their own at stake, they were ready to promise

assistance to the clergy; but, excepting a few individual nobles who

appeared from time to time, there was no real religious principle or

living conviction amongst them from the beginning to the end of the

conflict. The clergy themselves, however, continued to struggle on,

and fought manfully for the redress of their grievances. The Parliament

met in the beginning of December, 1585, and restored the estates of the

nobles who had been disinherited for their rebellion. But the despotic

acts of 1584 were left untouched. The only act in favour of the Church

was one which restored all the ministers and masters of colleges to

their offices and possessions.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

383‒387, 395.

It has become apparent that the King had an enormous amount of

self-conceit; and that he was filled with a passion for polemics. He

had been so flattered and puffed up by those who had lately associated

with him, that he verily thought he could settle theological questions,

make a commentary, or handle a text better than all the preachers and

professors in the kingdom. About the beginning of the year 1586 he

attended worship in the High Church of Edinburgh, when Balcanquhal the

minister made some derogatory remarks touching the authority of bishops.

James immediately rose from his seat and asked him what Scripture he

had for his assertions. The preacher said he could adduce sufficient

proofs from Scripture for what he had stated. The King vehemently

denied this, and offered to pledge his kingdom that he would prove the

contrary, and he added that it was the practice of preachers to busy

themselves with such matters in the pulpit, but he was aware of their

intentions, and would look after them. The interlude continued for a

quarter of an hour, after which the King resumed his seat and heard the

sermon to the end. Balcanquhal was subsequently sent for, and in the

palace his Majesty had the satisfaction of engaging him for more than

an hour.¹ It should be stated, however, that the preachers sometimes

provoked the King. A short time before this incident, James Gibson, the

minister of Pencaitland, preached a sermon in Edinburgh, and uttered

the following statement――“I thought that Captain James Stewart, Lady

Isabel his wife, and William Stewart, had persecuted the Church, but

now I have found the truth, that it was the King himself. As Jeroboam

and his posterity were rooted out for staying of the true worship of

God, so I fear that if our King continue in his present course, he

shall be the last of his race.” For this, Gibson was brought before

the Privy Council and imprisoned. He was afterwards liberated, and for

a time suspended by order of the General Assembly.²

¹ M‘Crie’s _Life of Melville_, Volume I., pages 340‒345.

² _Register of the Privy Council_, December, 1585; _Book of the

Universal Kirk_, pages 688, 690, 699, 709‒712.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in May, 1586. The King attended

at the election of the moderator, and gave his vote in favour of

David Lindsay, the minister of Leith, who was in consequence chosen.

There had been no General Assembly for a long time, and there was much

business to transact; but the proceedings ended in a compromise which

was satisfactory to neither party. Discussions were held concerning

the office of a bishop, the discipline of the Church, the limits of

the jurisdiction of the Synods and Presbyteries, and a scheme for

the division of the whole country into Synods and Presbyteries was

adopted. The King’s Commissioners and the members of the Assembly

held long communings; the King had one chief object always in view――to

keep the Episcopal element in the Church. Bishop Adamson, who had been

irregularly excommunicated by the Synod of Fife, appeared before the

Assembly and submitted. He promised to behave himself for the future,

and to submit his life and doctrine to the trial, the judgment and

censure of the General Assembly, and upon which, and no other condition,

were bishops to be recognised in the Church.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 645‒684. “In this

Assembly was first seen what fear and flattery of the Court

could work among weak and inconstant ministers.” Calderwood,

Volume IV., page 583. Compare Melville’s _Diary_, page 249.

But the nation was not as yet fully under the discipline of the

Reformed Church. A considerable section of the people still adhered

to the Roman Catholic religion in the remote districts of the West and

North. There was also, as we have seen, a lack of qualified ministers

to overtake the work throughout the country. Besides, the reformed

system of organisation had scarcely come into full operation when the

diverging views of the King and his government began to obstruct its

development.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 658‒661.

At this time a number of French Protestant ministers had taken refuge

in Scotland from the severe persecution which was raging in their

own country. The General Assembly employed Andrew Melville to write

a letter assuring the exiled preachers that the Assembly would do

everything in its power to assist them and to render their sojourn

agreeable. The magistrates of Edinburgh allowed the French refugees

to meet for worship in the common hall of the College, and allotted

stipends to their ministers. Collections also for them and their

brethren in England were made in the parishes throughout the kingdom.¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 655‒657.

When it became known in Scotland that Queen Mary was to be executed,

the King issued an act of council ordering the ministers at all their

preachings and meetings to pray for his mother in this form, “The

Lord illuminate and enlighten her spirit, that she may attain to the

knowledge of His truth, for the safety of soul and body, and preserve

her from the present peril.” Some of the ministers, especially those of

Edinburgh, refused to pray but as the spirit moved them. The King seems

to have been disappointed at this, and on the 3rd of February, 1587,

he appointed Archbishop Adamson to preach in St. Giles, and after a

little scene, the bishop was allowed to go on with his prayer and his

sermon. The truth is, that James was far more concerned and interested

about his own succession to the English throne than about his mother’s

death.¹

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, Volume IV.; Calderwood,

Volume IV., pages 606‒607; Moysie’s _Memoirs of the Affairs

of Scotland_.

The unfortunate queen herself was endowed with a courage and a

spirit which, in the final scene of her chequered career, astonished

and dismayed all her enemies. Never had martyr exhibited a grander

spectacle of fortitude than did Mary Stuart in the closing act of her

fitful life. And she has had her reward. Her bearing upon the scaffold

shed a glory around her which has been transmitted and worshipped by

her admirers down to the present. But amongst the people of Scotland

she was at the time of her execution but little regarded.

The parliament which met at Holyrood House in July, 1587, ratified all

the acts passed in favour of the reformed religion during the minority

of the King. An act was passed against seminary priests and Jesuits,

and all the enemies of the reformed religion. The temporal lands of the

bishoprics, abbacies, and priories, which then remained unappropriated,

were annexed to the crown; but the chief gainers by this act were the

nobility, as it secured to them the lands which they had obtained since

the Reformation. By this measure, whether the King perceived it or

not, a severe blow was given to Episcopacy, as it really divested the

bishops of the right to sit in parliament by their landed titles, and

thus cut from beneath them the strongest ground for their continuance.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

429‒437.

Meanwhile the Presbyterian clergy were persevering in their attacks

on the bishops, and were fast becoming masters of the field. They

were making incessant efforts also for the utter suppression of the

adherents of Catholicism. An extraordinary meeting of the General

Assembly was convened at Edinburgh in February, 1588, for the purpose

of arousing the nation to a sense of its danger from the threatened

Spanish Armada. Andrew Melville, as moderator of the last Assembly,

opened the proceedings with an address, in which he explained the

reasons for their meeting. The alarming nature of the crisis had

attracted a great concourse of members who were all animated with one

spirit. They drew up an extremely dark picture of the state of the

kingdom: “It was an exceedingly great grief to all such,” they said,

“as have any spunk of the love of God and his Christ, to see Jesuits,

seminary priests, and other teachers of popery and error, to be so long

suffered to pollute this land with idolatry, corrupt and seduce the

people, and spread abroad their poisonable doctrine; to see practisers

and traffickers against the true religion, and the present liberty

of this realm, to be received, maintained, and entertained; to bring

to pass their most dangerous devices and plots, and the receivers,

the entertainers, and the maintainers, and the professed favourers of

both the one and the other, so to abound everywhere; and not only to be

tolerated with impunity, without executing of the laws of the country

against them, but also to have special credit, favour, and furtherance,

at the court, in the session, in the burghs, and throughout the realm,

in all their affairs. And, on the other hand, to behold the true

Word of God contemptuously despised by the great multitude; His

holy sacraments horribly profaned by private, corrupt, and unlawful

persons; the discipline of the Church disregarded, the persons of the

ministers and the office-bearers within the same stricken, menaced, and

shamefully abused, themselves beggared, and their families shamefully

hungered. And yet, notwithstanding, neither the laws against idolatry

nor vice were put into execution, neither sufficient laws made for the

liberty and welfare of the Church, nor such as are made put into effect

for removing of these fearful enormities.” The records then enumerate a

number of Catholics by name who were spread throughout the country. In

the north, where the Earl of Huntly was supreme, the reformed religion

had as yet taken comparatively little hold upon the people. Many of

the parishes in this region had no ministers, and even where there were

readers and pastors, they found it extremely difficult to perform their

functions. In Lennox, at this time, there were twenty-four churches,

and not four ministers amongst them all.¹ The Assembly appointed a

commission to visit the north, south, and west, to introduce order and

discipline, plant qualified ministers, and establish the authority of

the Church.

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 703, 715‒724.

The Scots made every preparation which their limited means afforded to

defend themselves, if the Spaniards should attempt to land in Scotland.

For some time great uneasiness was felt among all ranks of the nation.

Time passed on, and the Spaniards at last landed in Scotland, but

not in the character of a conquering army. Early one morning, before

the fate of the Armada was known, James Melville, the minister of

Anstruther, was informed that a ship filled with Spaniards had entered

the harbour and were imploring aid, and the authorities requested

his advice as to how they should act towards them. The principal

inhabitants of the town were at once assembled, and when the real

condition of the Spaniards was ascertained, the Scots treated them

with all the kindness and hospitality in their power. Afterwards they

obtained a license and safe conduct from the King to return to Spain.¹

¹ Melville’s _Diary_, pages 260‒264.

But the reformed clergy continued their endeavours to put down the

Jesuits and seminary priests, who were protected by some of the local

nobles. A convention of the chief ministers was held at Edinburgh in

January, 1589, to devise and recommend measures to the government.

Andrew Melville was chosen chairman of the meeting, and his nephew

James acted as clerk. The meeting petitioned the government to purge

the land of all Jesuits and priests; and before separating they

appointed a number of their brethren as commissioners to meet every

week in Edinburgh, and consult upon matters relating to the Church.

In the spring of this year the Earl of Huntly and other Catholic lords

broke out into rebellion. They collected their followers and met at

Aberdeen in April, but the King marched in person against them, and the

insurrection was for a time suppressed.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 740‒744; Pitcairn’s

_Criminal Trials_, Volume II., page 171, _et seq._;

Calderwood, Volume V., pages 54‒55.

The Presbyterian party was now almost masters of the position. The

Synods and Assemblies were enforcing the discipline of the Church

with a firm hand. They demanded conformity of polity and doctrine, and

the discipline was brought to bear upon the highest as well as upon

the humblest in the land.¹ In the pulpit the ministers were extremely

outspoken and freely rebuked the King and the chief officials of the

government. Mr. Robert Bruce, when preaching a sermon in Edinburgh

in the presence of the King said――“What could the great disobedience

of this land mean now while the King was at home, seeing that some

reverence was borne to his shadow when he was absent? He answered, it

meant a universal contempt of the subjects; therefore he willed the

King to call to God, before he either ate or drank, that the Lord would

give him a resolution to execute justice upon malefactors, although it

should be with the hazard of his life. Which if he would courageously

attempt, the Lord would raise anew to assist him, and all these

obstacles would vanish away, otherwise he would not be suffered to

brook his crown, but every man will have one.” Others of the ministers

were equally explicit in warning the King of his sins.²

¹ _Book of Universal Kirk_, pages 771, 773, 777, 781.

² Calderwood, Volume V., pages 129‒130, 139.

The King himself was in a state of almost utter poverty. During the

revolutionary period the revenue of the Crown had decreased; and the

unseemly squabbles in the court, together with the King’s inability

to punish notorious criminals, and his leniency towards the Catholic

Earls, had all tended to lower him in the eyes of the people. Harassed

by these circumstances and uncertain which way to turn, the idea seems

to have crossed his mind that he might regain the esteem of the people

by cultivating the friendship of the Church. The leaders of the clergy

were only too eager to let such an opportunity slip. When the General

Assembly met in May, 1592, it was resolved to petition Parliament to

pass an Act which should recognise the polity and the liberties of the

Church.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 786‒787; Calderwood,

Volume V., pages 140‒162.

Parliament met at Edinburgh in June 1592, when the petition of the

General Assembly was laid before it. The Assembly craved that the acts

passed against the discipline and the liberty of the Church in the year

1584, should be repealed, that the discipline which had been in use

should be ratified, and that the act of annexation should be reduced,

and the patrimony of the Church restored. An act was accordingly passed

which confirmed all the liberties and privileges granted by the King

and the regents in his name to the Reformed Church as then established

in the kingdom. The act recognised and sanctioned the general

assemblies, synods, presbyteries, and particular sessions of the Church.

The General Assembly was to be allowed to meet once a-year, or oftener,

if necessary, the time and place of the next meeting to be fixed by the

King or his Commissioner, or if neither of them should be present, by

the Assembly itself. Then followed a special abrogation of acts passed

in bygone ages in favour of the Roman Catholic Church, which were

prejudicial to the Reformed Church and her discipline within the realm.

Acts of the Parliaments of James II. and James III. were specially

pointed out as recognising the authority of the Pope and holy days, but

these and all other acts authorising the interference of the Pope were

declared to be for ever annulled. It was distinctly stated that the

act passed in the Parliament of 1584, concerning the royal supremacy,

should be in no way derogatory to the privileges of the office-bearers

of the Church, touching the heads of religion, points of heresy,

excommunication, appointment or deprivation of ministers, or any

censures warranted by the Word of God. The act of 1584 relating

to the bishops was also repealed.¹ Thus the legal establishment of

Presbyterianism, for which the leading men among the clergy had so

long fought, was at last obtained. Although the settlement was far

from complete, it has always been regarded by the Presbyterian body

of Christians as an important step in national reformation. But the

Reformed Church of Scotland did not consider either this, or any other

Parliamentary sanction as the basis of her religious constitution.

This had already been laid down and so far fixed in her Confession

and in her Books of Discipline; but all her internal regulations she

considered to be founded upon higher grounds than any earthly authority.

Still in that age, when the traditions of the old system were by no

means extinct in the country, and while the energy of Roman Catholicism

was successfully recovering its lost ground in other parts of Europe,

it will be seen that it was no small advantage for the Reformed Church

of Scotland to obtain a firmer and more public establishment of the

principles of Protestantism.

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III., pages

541‒543.

CHAPTER XVIII.

_Continuation of the History of Protestantism._

THOUGH the clergy had obtained the sanction of the government to their

form of Church polity, the public mind was still agitated. The air

was filled with rumours of plots and conspiracies on the part of the

Jesuits, and of projected invasions for the overthrow of the Reformed

religion and the massacre of the Protestants. The zeal of the clergy

against the Catholics was intense and implacable. They were much

annoyed at the lenity of the King towards the Catholic Earls of Huntly,

Errol, and Angus, and were constantly on the outlook for their enemies.

In the month of November, 1592, they appointed a committee to sit in

Edinburgh during the emergency in order to watch over the Church. To

sharpen the feeling of the people, they proclaimed a fast to begin on

Sunday, the 17th of December, “That by true humiliation and unfeigned

repentance, the fearful judgments of God that hang over this land may

be prevented.” During the fast the pulpits resounded with denunciations

of the Catholics, the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the

remissness of the King and the government in not executing justice

upon malefactors and murderers. According to Calderwood, the effect of

the fast was immediately manifested in the apprehension of George Ker,

a doctor of laws, who was connected with a strange conspiracy. On the

27th of December, Andrew Knox, the minister of Paisley, having learned

that Ker was ready to proceed to Spain, traced him to Glasgow, thence

to the Island of Cumbrae, and apprehended him on the ship in which

he was about to sail. Ker’s baggage was searched, and some packets

of letters of a suspicious character being found, he was conveyed a

prisoner to Edinburgh. Among the letters, several signatures of the

♦Earls of Huntly, Errol, and Angus, were found at the bottom of blank

slips of paper. Graham of Fintry, an associate of Ker’s, was shortly

after apprehended. Ker was tortured, and on the first stroke of the

boots confessed the conspiracy. This mode of extracting information

destroys any degree of credit which might otherwise attach to the

statements of the accused individual, but it was enough in the heated

temper of the clergy and the people, to arouse their passions and

feelings to a pitch of great excitement. The Privy Council, after

examining the letters, had no doubt of their authenticity. The King,

then at Stirling, was requested to return to Edinburgh. The people

clamoured for the trial and execution of Ker; and the authorities

issued a proclamation ordering all Jesuits and excommunicated persons

to depart from Edinburgh within three hours, under the penalty of

death. Upon Sunday the 7th of January, 1583, the King attended church,

and Robert Bruce, the preacher, exhorted him “that now was the time

to execute justice,” or else, said he, “the chronicles will keep in

remembrance King James VI. to his shame.” A meeting of the Protestant

barons and ministers was held, and they called upon the King to

prosecute and punish the traitors. Ker escaped; but Graham was

convicted of conspiracy, and on the 10th of February, he was executed

to appease the rage of the people, but in vain. On the night after his

execution, a bill was posted up in a conspicuous part of the capital,

which asserted that all the preparations against the Catholics would

end in nothing, for the greatest criminals had been allowed to escape

by the connivance of the Court.¹

♦ “Early” replaced with “Earls”

¹ Calderwood, Volume V., pages 167, 168, 171‒193, 214‒230;

Melville’s _Diary_, pages 306‒307.

Towards the end of February, 1593, the King, at the head of an army

made a demonstration against the Catholic Earls, but it resulted

merely in the Earls of Huntly and Errol withdrawing to Caithness. Many

circumstances indicated that the King intended to treat them leniently,

and there were obvious reasons for this policy in the existing state of

things. The Crown of Scotland was never strong, and the craft of James

VI. was little fitted to enhance its importance. The nobles, on the

other hand, were unusually distracted by feuds and factions, springing

out of a variety of causes, social and political, as well as religious.

Since the Reformation their landed possessions had frequently changed

hands. The national records of the time are full of forfeitures,

revocations, and confirmations, of landed estates; and naturally

the plots of those who had been defeated and ruined were incessant.

About one-third of the nobles were still more or less firmly

attached to the Roman Catholic religion.¹ From these circumstances

a mass of difficulties arose which reduced the Crown to the most

miserable straits, and placed the King in the most ridiculous plights.

Unfortunately, James had neither the sagacity to appreciate the

tendency of his age, and to follow and moderate it, nor grasp of

principle and firmness of character to turn it aside. His thin narrow

mind was filled with little conceits and possessed with the most

childish notion of his own power and prerogatives; while the moral

side of his character was even worse than the intellectual, indeed, he

had little regard either for truth or honesty. Yet, he was continually

tampering with the Church, and in his own underhand and crafty fashion

endeavoured to impress his notions upon her, and to install the bishops

as executors of his will.

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume III.

throughout; _Register of the Privy Council_; Tytler’s

_History of Scotland_, Volume IX., pages 65‒111, 376‒382.

The reformed clergy boldly insisted on the complete submission of

the Catholics, and the entire extirpation of their faith. The General

Assembly which met at Dundee in April, 1593, called upon the King and

the government to punish all the Catholics in the country, according

to the laws of God and the laws of the realm. They insisted “That

Parliament should declare all the Jesuits and trafficking Catholics to

be guilty of treason, and that the same penalties should be enforced

against all persons who harboured them, not for three days, as the law

then stood, but for any time, however short. That all those whom the

Church found to be Catholics, although not excommunicated, should be

debarred from holding any office in the kingdom; and also debarred from

all access to his Majesty, and from the protection of the laws; and

that the consequences of horning and all other social penalties should

follow upon such a declaration, as upon the sentence of excommunication:

that an act of council should be immediately made thereon, till the

next Parliament, when it should be passed into a law.”¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, 798‒799, 802‒803.

When the petition in which these demands were embodied came before the

King, he refused to grant it. In his answer he reminded the petitioners

of his right to appoint the day and the place of the Assembly, and

desired them to pass an act prohibiting every minister from declaiming

in their pulpits against himself or the proceedings of his council. He

also wished the ministers to name six of the wisest of their number,

that from these he might select two to serve in his own household.

Nothing, he said, would afford him more pleasure than to hear through

the clergy what was doing in all parts of the country, for whoever

were their enemies, were his enemies; he would be highly delighted,

not only to hear from time to time about the practices of the Catholics

and the Spanish faction, but also about Bothwell, whenever they

had any information of him, because his whole course of action was

directed against his Majesty’s person, and the total subversion of all

religion.¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 805‒806.

Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, was a near relative of the King. But

he was restless, daring, and unscrupulous; and had repeatedly thrown

the King into fits of terror for his life, by sudden and unexpected

attempts to make him a prisoner. Bothwell was known to have entered

into plots with the Catholic party, the Protestant party, and

with Queen Elizabeth; but he lacked the strength of character and

intelligence to carry out any great enterprise; while his exploits

with the King, although extremely annoying and fearful to the royal

personage himself, often assumed a rather ridiculous and comic form,

and had no effect whatever on the main current of history.¹

¹ Sir James Melville’s _Memoirs_, pages 414‒416; Calderwood,

Volume V., pages 117‒132, 138, 140, 134, 177, 258;

Melville’s _Diary_, pages 277, 294‒326.

Parliament met in July 1593, but the process against the Catholic

lords failed. The King’s advocate informed the commissioners of the

Church that the summons was informal, and the evidence against them

insufficient, and that it was impossible then to forfeit them. An act

was passed against the mass, and a searching inquisition was ordered

to be made for all Catholics. But this did not satisfy the clergy; and

they freely expressed their sentiments in the pulpits to the people.

On the Sunday after the close of the parliament, John Davidson said in

his sermon, “It was a black parliament, for iniquity was seated in the

high court of justice: the arch traitors having not only escaped, but

in a manner were absolved, as it was alleged that no evidence could

be adduced against them. The absolving of the wicked, imported the

persecution of the righteous, except God restrained the adversaries.

Let us pray, that the King by some sanctified plagues, may be turned

again to God.”¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume IV.;

Calderwood, Volume V., pages 255‒256.

The King was still averse to proceed to extremities against the

Catholic Earls. But the more ardent Protestants and the clergy had

come to the conclusion, that it was impossible for the old and the

new religion to exist together in Scotland. They therefore deemed it

necessary to employ the power of the Church against the Catholics. The

Synod of Fife met at St. Andrews on the 25th of September 1593, and

agreed to a resolution to excommunicate the Earls of Huntly, Errol,

Angus, Lord Home, and others of their adherents. This sentence was

ordered to be intimated in all the congregations throughout the kingdom.

The Synod concluded its proceedings by exhorting the pastors to prepare

themselves by prayer and diligent study of the word, for the solemn

fast which was to be observed in every parish of the realm.¹

¹ Calderwood, Volume V., pages 259‒265; Melville’s _Diary_,

pages 309‒310.

The excommunication of the Earls highly displeased the King, and there

was much contention between him and the clergy concerning it. The

Earls themselves then supplicated the King to put them on their trial

for conspiracy, and complained that they had been excommunicated and

were treated as traitors, without having been offered an opportunity

of vindicating themselves. When everything is taken into account, it

certainly was hard that they should be compelled either to renounce

their own religion and sign the Protestant confession, or submit to

banishment and utter ruin. These, however, were the alternatives which

the clergy were determined to exact. From the standpoint of modern

ideas, the proceedings and the demands of the Protestants would be

pronounced wholly wrong; but at the time the prevailing ideas, and

the religious notions of truth and error, were far more influenced by

the pressure of circumstances than they are in the present. With their

aim, and from their point of view, the single line of policy which they

followed was thoroughly logical and honest according to their light.

On the 17th of October the leading ministers and their adherents met

at Edinburgh to consult and prepare to face the threatened danger. They

appointed six of their number to request the King to take order with

the excommunicated Earls, and they freely expressed their regret that

he had permitted those cast-off persons to come into his presence. The

King gave them no thanks. He upbraided the members of the Synod of Fife

for excommunicating the Earls. But the representatives of the clergy

told him, that if their enemies took up arms, they had resolved to meet

them face to face. “This,” they said, “we are minded to do, although it

should be with the loss of all our lives in one day; for certainly we

are determined that the country shall not brook us and them both, so

long as they are God’s professed enemies.”¹

¹ Calderwood, Volume V., pages 270, _et seq._; Melville’s

_Diary_, pages 110, 111; _Acts of the Parliaments of

Scotland_, Volume IV., page 44.

Matters were rapidly running to a crisis. Both parties were mustering

their followers in all parts of the country. To the religious elements

of the struggle, there were added the bitter and revengeful feelings

springing out of long-standing family feuds, and if once the swords

were drawn, the results would prove disastrous in the extreme to all

alike. This was well known to the government; and a committee of the

Three Estates, along with six of the leading clergy, met to deliberate

on the state of affairs. After some animated debates, the King, on the

26th of November, pronounced what was called “The Act of Abolition,”

touching the accused Earls. This act stated that the true religion,

which was established in the first year of his Majesty’s reign, should

be the only one professed in Scotland; and that those who had never

embraced it, and those who had declined from it, should either conform

to it, before the 11th of February, 1594, or depart from the country

to such places as the King should direct, and there to remain till they

professed the truth and satisfied the Church. During their banishment,

they were to retain the full possession of their estates. All

accusations against them were annulled. The Catholic Earls were ordered

to inform the King and the Church, before the 11th of January, which of

the alternatives they meant to accept.¹

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume IV., pages

46‒48; Spottiswood.

This act pleased neither party. The Earls were not disposed to renounce

their religion, nor to retain it only at the cost of exile: while the

clergy and their adherents were extremely annoyed at this temporising

line of action, and immediately expressed their disapproval of it from

their pulpits. On the 30th of November, 1593, Mr. Balcanquhal touched

upon the practices of the court, in his sermon, and recalled the

judgments of God that had fallen upon some of the chief actors――“as

upon Bothwell who had died like a dog; and upon the Queen who was

beheaded that day twenty years, after she had caused her husband to be

murdered.” On the 4th of December, the ministers of the Presbytery of

Edinburgh met to consult upon the Act, and many faults were found in it.

Some proposed to amend it, but Pont thought it should be disannulled,

for the reason that if they amended it, it would be called their work.

Upon Sunday, the 16th of December, Mr. Robert Bruce in his sermon, in

the presence of the officers of State and the Justice-Clerk, said “The

King’s reign would be troublesome and short if he did not abolish the

Act of Abolition.”¹

¹ Calderwood, Volume I., pages 288‒290; Melville’s _Diary_,

pages 312, 313.

The clergy stood constantly on their watch-towers, ready to descry

the enemy. When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh in May, 1594,

Andrew Melville was chosen moderator, and the Assembly immediately

proceeded to deal with the case of the Catholic Earls. Some persons

in Perth, who had resetted them, were sharply called to account for

their conduct; but they confessed their offence, and satisfied the

Church. The Assembly unanimously avowed and ratified the sentence of

excommunication passed by the Synod of Fife against the Catholic Lords,

and ordered this to be intimated to every congregation in the kingdom.

As the Catholic Earls had disregarded the Act of Abolition, and

were persisting in their unholy and unlawful courses, the Assembly

petitioned the King to confiscate all their lands, and annex them to

the Crown; and then to muster the feudal array of the realm for the

purpose of pursuing and defeating them.¹

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 819‒821, 828‒834.

Parliament met in June 1594, and though the Catholic nobles were then

in open rebellion, they had friends in Parliament. Andrew Melville

appeared for the Church before the Lords of the Articles, and insisted

upon strong measures being taken. He told the King to his face, “That

many thought it a matter of great weight to overthrow the estate of

three so great men. I grant that it is so; but yet it is a greater

matter to overthrow and expel out of the country three far greater,

to wit, true religion, the quietness of the commonwealth, and the

prosperous state of the King.” Addressing the Lords, he said――“If ye

can get us a better commonwealth than our own, and a better King, we

are content that the treacherous lords be spared; otherwise we desire

you to do your duty.” The majority of the Lords of the Articles voted

for the forfeiture of the Earls, Parliament passed the act, and they

were proclaimed traitors and rebels. The Earl of ♦Argyle was commanded

to assemble his vassals and to wage war against them. But the Earls of

Huntly and Errol attacked the hastily collected and undisciplined army

of ♦Argyle in Glenlivet, on the 13th of October, and after a severe

struggle, ♦Argyle was completely defeated, and his followers fled in

confusion.¹

♦ “Argyll” replaced with “Argyle” for consistency

¹ _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume IV., pages

56‒61; Tytler’s _History of Scotland_, Volume IX., pages

168‒172; Dr. M‘Crie’s _Life of Melville_, Volume II., pages

48‒50.

The King had advanced to Dundee when tidings of ♦Argyle’s defeat

reached him, and he at once pushed forward with his army to Aberdeen.

There some of the local chiefs, who were at feud with Huntly, joined

him. On this occasion, Andrew Melville and a number of the most ardent

preachers accompanied the army, and by their exertions and example

contributed to bring the expedition to a successful issue. Huntly

found himself unable to face the royal army and fled to Caithness. His

stronghold, the Castle of Strathbogie, was dismantled; the Castle of

Slaines, the seat of the Earl of Errol, and other mansions were also

defaced. On returning to Aberdeen, the King caused a number of the Earl

of Huntly’s adherents to be executed, and proclaimed a general pardon

to all who had been with him at the Battle of Glenlivet, providing they

paid the fines imposed by the Council. After making arrangements with

the view of securing peace in the north, the army was disbanded, and

the King returned to Stirling on the 14th of November, 1594.¹

¹ _Register of Privy Council_; Melville’s _Diary_, pages

318‒322; Calderwood, Volume V., pages 348‒357.

The Catholic Earls were reduced to despair, and they quitted the

country in the month of March, 1595. The Protestants, however, did not

relax their efforts. They knew that the Catholics would renew their

plots. When the General Assembly met at Montrose in June, 1595, an

order was issued to the presbyteries throughout the country to proceed

against the Catholics within their bounds and excommunicate them, and

to enforce the penalties of the law upon all who had offended, and

on any who held intercourse with those who were absenting themselves

from the sacraments on the plea that they were at deadly feud with

their neighbours; indeed there was still a considerable amount of

social anarchy in the country which seemed to defy all restraints

and remedies.¹ Owing to the enormous iniquity and sins of the nation,

the Assembly ordered a general fast to be held in all the churches

throughout the kingdom on the first two Sundays of August. The

ministers were enjoined to put the causes of the fast fully before

the people. They were chiefly――“The great and present danger that

the Church, the commonwealth, and the King standeth in through the

wrath of God, not only kindled against us, but also justly burning and

devouring us up already by sundry fearful plagues and punishments ...

the deep conspiracies and daily confederacies of the faction of the

known adversaries to religion, to the King, and to the country, and

threatening to root us out from being any more a nation, and the

breaking and removing of our two estates of Church and Commonwealth.”

The Assembly also resolved that it was their duty to sympathise with

the Protestants of other Churches.²

¹ _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 846‒848.

² _Book of the Universal Kirk_, pages 853‒854.

The clergy were in continual fear of the return of the Catholic nobles

and the renewal of their intrigues. When the General Assembly met at

Edinburgh in March 1596, the King attended in person, and is reported

to have delivered a speech in which he regretted that the ministers

were so poorly paid. A list of the crimes, the sins, and the iniquities,

of all ranks in the nation was drawn up by this Assembly. It presents a

frightful state of society, and will be more fully examined elsewhere.

The King, we learn, was in the habit of swearing, and set a bad

example to all around him. He had also a habit of conversing with those

beside him in the church during the time of sermon, and was therefore

earnestly recommended to hold private meditation with God in spirit

and conscience. The offences in the court and judgment seat were:――“a

universal neglect of justice both in civil and criminal causes――by

a system of granting remissions and respites for slaughter and other

hideous crimes; and no execution of the laws against vice, nor in

favour of the Church. Most of the judges in civil matters were declared

unqualified for their office, either in respect of knowledge or

conscience, or both; and when any office became vacant, the worst

men were advanced to it both in high and low positions. The Court of

Session was charged with buying pleas, delaying justice, and bribery,

which was palpably to be seen by sudden conquests――by the extraordinary

quickness in obtaining property which had become so common.”¹

¹ _Ibid._, pages 859, 872‒878.

In the summer of 1596, the Catholic Earls had secretly returned, and

there were indications that the government would restore them. Huntly

had forwarded overtures to the King offering submission and praying to

be absolved from the sentence of excommunication. At a meeting of the

nobles and some of the clergy it was agreed that Huntly might, under

certain conditions to be drawn up by the King and the Privy Council,

be received. But the majority of the clergy were opposed to this

resolution; and the commissioners of the last General Assembly met at

Cupar in Fife, and sent a deputation to remonstrate with the King on

the evil consequences which were likely to result from the measures

which his Council were pursuing. The King assured the ministers that

the Catholic Earls should obtain no favour, until they had satisfied

the Church. The ministers, however, had no faith in the King’s promises;

and sixteen of their number from different parts of the country were

selected to sit in Edinburgh, and along with the ministers of the

capital, to watch over the reformed religion. This body immediately

proceeded to action, and summoned Seaton, the President of the Court

of Session, to appear before the Synod of Lothian to answer for his

conduct, touching the recall of the Earl of Huntly. The President

offered some resistance, but found it necessary to come forward and

satisfy the Church.¹

¹ Melville’s _Diary_, pages 368‒371; Calderwood, Volume V.,

pages 439‒450.

The King quickly saw an invasion of his royal prerogatives in these

proceedings. He endeavoured to convince the clergy of the justice and

mercy implied in his proposals to restore the Catholic Earls, but in

vain. The clergy were inexorable; and their firmness strengthened him

in his intention to remodel the government of the Church, whenever

an opportunity occurred. While the feelings of both parties were

running high, and recriminations were passing from mouth to mouth, Mr.

Black, one of the ministers of St. Andrews, delivered a sermon on the

threatened triumph of idolatry in Scotland. Alluding to the prelacy

established in the adjoining kingdom, he said: “The Queen of England

was an atheist; the religion professed in that kingdom was nothing

better than an empty show, gilded by the injunctions of the bishops;

and not content with this pageant at home, they were persuading the

King to set it up in Scotland. As for his highness, none knew better

than he did of the meditated return of the Catholic Earls, and therein

he was guilty of manifest treachery. But what could they look for? Was

not Satan at the head of both court and council? Were not all kings

devil’s bairns? Were not the Lords of Session miscreants and bribers,

the nobility cormorants, and the Queen of Scotland a woman whom for

fashion’s sake they might pray for, but in whose time it was vain to

hope for any good.”¹

¹ Moysie’s _Memoirs_, page 128; Calderwood, Volume V., pages

453‒454.

For this Black was summoned to appear before the Privy Council. But

the ministers knew that a blow was aimed against the liberties of the

Church, that the King was bent on limiting freedom of speech in the

pulpit; and they therefore advised him to decline the authority of the

Council, in the first instance, on the ground that it was a spiritual

subject. On the 10th of November, 1696, he obeyed the summons and

appeared before the Council; but he denied that the court had any right

to try him. “He was ready,” he said, “to give a confession and stand to

the defence of every point of the truth of God which he had uttered ...

yet seeing I am not at this time brought to stand before your Majesty

and council, as a judge set to cognise and discern upon my doctrine;

and though my answering to the said pretended accusation might import

with the manifest prejudices of the liberties of the Church, and

acknowledging also of your Majesty’s jurisdiction in matters that are

merely spiritual, which might move your Majesty to attempt further

in the spiritual government of the Church”; and so on. Afterwards he

gave his reasons at length for declining the jurisdiction of the court.

Enraged at this refusal of the preacher to recognise his supremacy, the

King issued a proclamation commanding the commissioners of the Church

to leave the capital and return to their flocks within twenty-four

hours, under the penalty of rebellion. At so critical a time the

ministers were not disposed to obey this royal order, as it was deemed

rather arbitrary. They resolved therefore to remain and watch over the

safety of the Church. Some of them went to the King to try the effect

of a personal interview, but he insisted stoutly that they should

allow his claim of supreme jurisdiction, as the condition of stopping

the process against Black. The ministers could not agree to this,

which would have been almost equivalent to a renunciation of their

Protestantism; so the charge against Black was recast, and his trial

proceeded. He was found guilty, and the measure of his punishment

referred to the King; meanwhile he was ordered to be confined beyond

the North Water.¹ The ministers then proclaimed a fast to avert

the impending danger and judgments, “When the doctrine was sounded

powerfully, and stirred up a mighty motion amongst the people of God.”

The King seems to have considered this as a personal affront, and

issued an order commanding the commissioners to depart from the capital;

and announced that the ministers must subscribe a bond to obey the King

and the Privy Council, before they received their stipends. At the same

time Black was ordered to enter into ward.²

¹ _Register of the Privy Council_, November and December;

Calderwood, Volume V., pages 454‒498.

² _Register of the Privy Council_; Calderwood, Volume V., pages

498‒502; Melville’s _Diary_, pages 510‒515.