Note 292 — Chapter III

M'Crie's Life of Melville, vol. ii. pp. 207, 208. Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. p. 504. In connexion with these transactions, a letter is preserved in the Winwood Papers, which is much too curious to be passed over in silence. It is addressed by the Earl of Salisbury to Sir Charles Cornwallis, and is dated 12th September 1605. Salisbury, who was then at the head of affairs, writes, ‘True it is that his Majestie seeking to adorne that kingdome of Scotland with Prelates as they are in England, some of the Ministers have spurned against it; and althouge his Majestie had ever warranted their calling of General Assemblies upon no other condition, then that they should make him acquainted, receive his warrant, and a commissioner for his Majestie resident in their councells, yet have they (followed with some poor plebecall numbers) presumed to hold their General Assemblies in some parte of the Realme contrarie to his commandement. Whereupon his Majestie hath shewed himself displeased, and cyted divers of them before his councell,’ &c. Memorials of Affairs of State, from the Papers of Sir Ralph Winwood, London, 1725, folio, vol. ii. p. 132. And yet the man who could write such nonsense as this, and who could only see, in the great democratic movement of the Scotch mind, a disinclination to the adornment of episcopacy, was deemed one of the most eminent statesmen of his time, and his reputation has survived him. If great statesmen discern so little of what is before them and around them, we are tempted to inquire, how much confidence ought to be placed in the opinions of those average statesmen by whom countries are ruled. For my own part, I can only say, that I have had occasion to read many thousand letters written by diplomatists and politicians, and I have hardly ever found an instance of one of them who understood the spirit and tendency of the age in which he lived.