THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, AT EDINBURGH, 1643.

The proceedings of the Assembly in 1642, us the reader must have perceived, from the nature of some of its Acts, were of a very important character and tendency; and, having given the authenticated record, it now becomes requisite, with reference to the current of events, to recur to these in connection with the political occurrences with which they were combined, as forerunners of the proceedings in the Assembly of 1643.

It will be recollected that, some months previous to the Assembly of 1642, a complete rupture had taken place betwixt the King and the English Parliament—that both parties were busied in preparations for an appeal to arms—that the Commissioners for the Scotch Covenanters had tendered their mediation, and obtruded their unseasonable project for establishing Presbytery in England as the means of allaying all animosities betwixt the King and his English subjects—(a proposition which was reproved by the King, but encouraged by the parliamentary leaders)—and that, notwithstanding the King’s reasonable objections to the Scotch intermeddling with the affairs of England, a popular petition was presented to him, through the Scotch Council, persisting in these hostile intervenes respecting the Church of England. This took place on the very eve of the meeting of that Assembly on the 27th of July.

The King’s letter to the Assembly gave assurances of the most friendly kind with respect to the Kirk as now restored to its Presbyterian form and privileges, and called upon it to promote peace and obedience to the laws by precept and example. Soon after it met, a “Declaration of the Parliament of England” was also laid before it; but neither the date of that document, nor of its receipt, nor of the answer to it which is subjoined in the printed Acts, appears from thence. To the King’s letter, it will be observed there is, in the answer, an exuberant declaration of “great joy and gladnesse” on hearing it read, and assurances of promoting loyalty, peace, and religion. But this is followed by a pressing demand for “unity in religion and uniformity of church government, as a meane of a firme and durable union betwixt the two kingdomes, and without which, former experiences put us out of hope long to enjoy the puritie of the Gospel with peace,” &c.; and all this is wound up with a high rhetorical flourish. In the Declaration from the Parliament, the cunning malcontents, by whom it was sent, adopted a language suited to the taste of their Scottish confederates, ascribing all the troubles to “the plots and practises of a malignant party of Papists and ill-affected persons, especially of the corrupt and dissolute Clergy;” the “instigation of Bishops and others,” actuated by “avarice and ambition, being not able to bear the reformation endeavoured by the Parliament.” And they express great concern for the King’s honour and state, “the glory of God, by the advancement of the true religion, and such a reformation of the Church as shall be most agreeable to God’s Word.”

To this vague and guarded communication, the Assembly made an elaborate answer, intimating “their serious thoughts and earnest desires for unity of Religion; that in all His Majesties dominions there might be one Confession of Faith—one Directory of Worship—one publike Catechisme—and one forme of Kirk Government;” and for “suppressing the names of heresies and sects, Puritans, Conformists, Separatists, Anabaptists,” &c. In conclusion, the Assembly plainly suggests, to the English Parliament, that “the Prelaticall Hierarchie being put out of the way, the work will be easie, without forcing of any conscience, to settle in England the government of the Reformed Kirks by Assemblies; for although the Reformed Kirks do hold, without doubting, their kirk officers and kirk government by Assemblies higher and lower, in their strong and beautiful subordination, to be jure divino, and perpetuall; yet Prelacie, as it differeth from the office of a pastor, is almost universally acknowledged by the Prelates themselves, and their adherents, to be but an humane ordinance,” &c., which, “without wronging any man’s conscience, may be altered and abolished.”

Besides the letter from the Parliament, the Assembly were favoured with a similar one from “some Ministers of England,” whose names, however, are not given in the copy of it, but much more in accordance with the views of the Assembly, inasmuch as they avow their preference of the Presbyterian system. To this a cordial response was given, concluding with a proposal for a united Assembly of the divines of both kingdoms to settle all points of faith, catechisms, and directory for public worship.

These several communications, from the Assembly of 1642, were accompanied with applications to the Lords of Privy Council and Conservators of the Peace for their concurrence in support of these views and objects, by pressing them on the King and Parliament of England. Lord Maitland was authorized to proceed thither with the answers to the King and Parliament; and they gave instructions to their Commissioners in London to enforce these preconcerted measures. But the crowning act of this scheme was the appointment of a “Commission for publike affairs of this Kirk, and for prosecuting the desires of this Assembly, to his Majestie and the Parliament of England.” Of the proceedings of this formidable Commission, we shall have occasion to treat in the sequel. It comprised fifty ministers, ten noblemen, and fifteen barons and burgesses, being in all seventy-five members, who henceforward formed, as it were, a second House of Parliament in Scotland, exercising functions that embraced both the civil and ecclesiastical concerns of Scotland, as well as trenching upon those of England. Its members were the leaders of the Covenant throughout its career; and the laymen amongst them were those whose ardent zeal had been rather quickened then quenched by the spoliation of the Episcopal revenues, in the Scottish Parliament of November, 1641—an exemplar which, doubtless, awakened the cupidity of many among the English Puritans, who now panted for a similar and even more extended change; for a large portion of these were Independents, and contemplated the adoption of a more comprehensive appropriation in their legislation, which might extinguish the Episcopal without rearing a Presbyterian Church, and thus leave the wealthier endowments of the English Church to the rapacious hands of the most potent among them.

In order to carry out the principles of this scheme, the Assembly thought it fitting to keep up popular excitement throughout the country; and, for this purpose, a fast was appointed, and the clergy were enjoined to forward the “great work of unity of religion, and uniformity of kirk-government,” by preaching and praying with their flocks on the subject.

It is not necessary to notice all the subordinate Acts of that Assembly, many of which were competent and laudable; but there was one by which, without imputing any sinfulness to church patronage, or proposing to abolish it, they merely sought to appropriate the exercise of it to the Assembly itself. The King, in the great abundance of his concessions, had agreed to exercise the royal church-patronage, by bestowing presentations on some one in a leet of six to be named by the Presbyteries within whose bounds vacancies should occur; and, founding on this concession, the Assembly 1642 issued instructions to all the Presbyteries, in the first instance, to transmit these leets through the Synods to the Assembly, in order that its fiat might be given in the selection of presentees. Such were the views of the covenanted Assemblies on this subject. Yet much as they desired to possess this troublesome privilege, they did not prize it so highly as to sacrifice their clerical interests in its acquisition; for when Argyle offered to renounce all his patronages into the hands of the Church, provided they would relinquish all claims to augmentations of stipends in his parishes, the proposal was rejected.

It is impossible to doubt that, in all these unexampled proceedings, the Covenanters meant to intimate to the King their intentions to make common cause with their fellow-sympathizers in England; for they knew full well—and, if we are to give them credit for sincerity, they had declared their acquiescence in the stipulation—that the King had conceded Presbytery in Scotland upon the clear understanding that his doing so should not imply any intermeddling with Episcopacy in England; and his well known principles on that score, and uniform adherence to them, left no reason to expect that he would ever consent to this, save on the compulsitor of sheer force. Their proposals to that effect, therefore, were tantamount to a declaration that they would co-operate with the English agitators in forcing their favourite form of Church Government upon him and England; and it is to be regretted that an interference with the internal affairs of England—which was so entirely beyond the legitimate sphere of the Scottish Estates, and which ultimately led to the most calamitous consequences—was pressed with such inflexible pertinacity.296

Amidst all these longings after “unity and uniformity in both kingdoms,” however, in which these zealous men indulged, it is important to ascertain the state of feeling among themselves, after the time that they had obtained the ratification by the King and Estates in Scotland of all their Acts of Assembly, &c. We shall not take the accounts of Guthrie, Burnet, or other hostile chroniclers, nor the statements of more modern writers, whether Whig or Tory—for we cannot quite adopt all the views either of Mr Hume or Mr Malcolm Laing, the latter of whom informs us that the “pure and unmixed flame of liberty” which burned in the hearts of the Covenanters, “was fed and, at length, gradually contaminated by the spirit of religion,” and that “the limits of moderation and prudence were overstept by intolerant zeal—the distinguished attribute of an Established Church.”297 We prefer the homely testimony of Baillie; and to those who, in our own times, talk of the period immediately subsequent to 1638, as “the golden age” of the Kirk, we commend the following passages for study:—

In one of his letters to his cousin Spang, referring to the doings of the Parliament 1641, he says—

“Good Mr Henderson all the time was very silent, and under misconstruction with the chief of his old friends, as if he had been too sparing of his Majesty in these dangerous occasions, and that in his sermons some sentences did fall from him prejudicial to the States proceedings.”—(Vol. i., p. 334.) “There was a committee of our Estates appointed to attend the Parliament of England, not so much for the perfecting of our treaty, as to keep good correspondence in so needful a tyme. None of the former Commissioners were employed but Sir Arch. Johnston and Sir John Smith; for the most of all the rest were fallen in the countrys dislike, complying too much with the King. Certainly Dumfermline, Waughton, Sheriff of Teviotdale, Riccarton, Clerk of Dundee, tint all credit with the States.”—(P. 335.) He gives a sketch of the state of England thus:—“That country is in a most pitiful condition; no corner of it free from the evils of a civil war. Every shire, every city, many families divided in this quarrel; much blood and unusual spoil made by both where they prevail.”—(P. 355) “Our heartburnings increase, and with them our dangers.”—“We fear the two part of our nobility, and many of our gentry.”—(P. 355.) “The affairs of this Isle go as a ship exceedingly tossed in a dangerous sea.”—(P. 364.) And, referring to ecclesiastic matters, (p. 362,) he says—“The matter of our novations is worse than before.”—“The letter I procured to some of our Presbyteries was made use of, as I wrote to you, in our Provincial at Irvine. This did much exasperate the brethren who were patrons of that way, so that immediately Mr Gabriel Maxwell, by the consent of some others, did write, in five sheets of paper, a full treatise, in a very bitter and arrogant strain, against the three nocent ceremonies—Pater Noster, Gloria Patriæ, and kneeling in the pulpit—by a great rabble of arguments, both particular and general, which go far beyond these three particulars questioned, the unlawfulness of our church practice;” and then he proceeds with details of those polemics, which he winds up (p. 363) by saying, “I am doing all I can to set all instruments on work for the quenching of that fire.”

Such was the state of excitement in Scotland during the year 1642, while the civil war was raging in England. The Parliament of the latter having passed an ordinance for settling the militia in such hands as they should think fit, the King, on the 11th of June, issued his commissions of array; and, after hostilities had actually commenced, set up the royal standard at Nottingham, on the 22d of August, with great pomp and circumstance. We have already noticed the brotherly correspondence betwixt the Assembly of 1642 and the English Parliament; and the letter communicated a response through Maitland to the Commission of Assembly, on the 21st of September, for which it was “glad and blessed God.” Its purport was to the effect that they purposed calling an Assembly of learned and godly divines; and to insure co-operation in the war both of the pen and of swords, that reply intimated that Prelacy “is evil, and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdome—a great impediment to reformation and the growth of religion—very prejudicial to the state and government of the kingdom—and that the same should be taken away.” But, with wary caution, they abstained from pledging themselves to the establishment of Presbytery.

The King, knowing full well that the Parliamentary leaders desired only the assistance of the Scotch to demolish the English hierarchy, wrote a letter to the Scotch Council (26th August) expressive of his anxiety to adopt all necessary reformation in the English Church, but assuring it that the Parliament had no intention to adopt Presbytery.

The Scotch Conservators, whom the Chancellor had appointed to meet, assembled on the 22d of September; and efforts were made, by Hamilton and others, to awaken a feeling of loyalty to the King, whose arms in various conflicts had been successful. An answer was sent, in which it was requested that the Queen, who was on the Continent, should return to Britain and exert her good offices as a mediatrix; and they pledged themselves that, should that mediation fail of success, they would support the throne. This declaration was signed by the most popular leaders—among others by Alexander Henderson. This favourable disposition was, however, soon counteracted; for the great body of the clergy, who had a morbid antipathy to Prelacy and a horror of Popery, (even in soldiers, whom the King had employed,) took the alarm, and the pulpits resounded with declamations on “the Kirk in danger,” which once more filled the populace with alarms. The English Parliament, whose military operations had hitherto been unpropitious in this conjuncture, sent down a Declaration to the people of Scotland, expatiating on the dangers to which religion was exposed, and entreating cordial support—(7th November;) and the King, apprehensive of the effects which might follow, sent a counter Declaration to the Council, which was convened on the 20th of December, to consider both Declarations. A struggle ensued. Argyle, who, for some time past, had been on amicable terms with Hamilton, broke off to the alarmists and joined the clerical party, insisting that both declarations should be published, or neither. This was resisted, on the ground that it was putting the English Parliament on a level with their own King, whose address it was their duty, as his Council, to communicate to his Scotch subjects; while, as regarded the Parliament’s Declaration, it was beyond their province to recognise or act upon it. From that moment, the chief men in the kingdom were openly divided into two parties in Scotland—the one for the King, and the other for the Parliament of England.

Whenever it was known that the Council had resolved to publish only the King’s Declaration, a new agitation arose, headed and excited by the clergy; and great multitudes of the alarmists resorted to Edinburgh in the beginning of January 1643. On the 6th of that month, a petition was got up, thus enforced, and presented to the Council, craving that the Parliament’s Declaration should also be published, and that the publication of the King’s should not be held to imply approval; and similar petitions were sent in from all quarters of the country. In order to counteract these movements, Traquair, and many of the most eminent nobility, and others, put in a “Cross Petition,” requesting the Council to take no steps prejudicial to the rights and privileges of the Crown, to keep in view the distinction betwixt civil and ecclesiastical power, and to avoid giving any pledges to the English Parliament, which might put the peace and religion of Scotland in jeopardy. This Cross Petition, though apparently most unexceptionable, and founded on sound constitutional principles, was not to the taste of the excited clergy, who not only refused to join in it, but exclaimed against “detestable neutrality,” and threatened all who signed it with eternal damnation. The Commission of the former Assembly, directing the popular torrent and swelling its force by their authority, transmitted a declaration against the Cross Petition to all Presbyteries, ordering it to be read from all pulpits, and enforced by the ministers. Overborne by these wide-spread clamours, the Council at length yielded, gave an evasive answer to the Cross Petition, and appointed Commissioners to mediate betwixt the King and his English Parliament—including in the number Mr Henderson and other clergymen. These Commissioners were instructed to desire from the King, uniformity of religion—that all Papists should be removed from his service—that he himself should renounce Episcopacy—and that a Parliament in Scotland should be called.

The exasperation thus created was increased by a feud betwixt Hamilton and Loudoun, about certain leases of teinds enjoyed by the latter; and the ferment excited by all these means was extreme.

These Commissioners went to Oxford immediately afterwards, (February,) when the first proposition submitted to the King was contained in a petition from the Commission of Assembly against Prelacy and Popery. Though enforced by the private advice of Loudoun, that the King’s acquiescence on this point would insure him the support of the Scotch nation, he refused to yield, and soon after published a formal answer to the application. Failing in this, the Commissioners urged their mediation, and that a Parliament in Scotland should be called, although, by an express act in 1641, the meeting of that Parliament was, with consent of all parties, postponed till 1644. The King declined to accede to either of these demands; and the Commissioners, after being refused permission to go to London, returned to Scotland, chagrined with the failure of their mission, and the coldness of their reception at the King’s Court.

The Scotch agitators, however, were not to be thus baulked in their designs. Having a complete ascendancy in all the executive departments—in the Council—in the Committee of Conservators—in the Commission for public burdens—a meeting of these three bodies was convened on the 10th of May 1643, at the instigation of the Assembly’s Standing Commission. It was then proposed that, in consequence of the warlike position on the English frontier, it was necessary to put the Border in a state of defence, and that for this purpose a Convention of the Estates should be called without the King’s previous sanction. This was opposed by Hamilton, the Lord Advocate, and others; but all legal objections were overborne, and the convention was summoned by the Chancellor for the 22d of June; an apology having, in the meantime, been sent to the King for this unwonted proceeding.

The meeting of the Convention was heralded through the country by a fast and political sermons. In order to quiet the scruples of many honest and loyal Presbyterians, a scheme was devised for this purpose, by getting up a Remonstrance from the Assembly’s Commission, setting forth the danger of the Church and nation. This Remonstrance pressed the Convention to make common cause with their English brethren; and although it did not expressly mention the employment of an armed force for the purpose, it was clearly implied that this, as on former occasions, should be the mode of supporting religion; with this difference, however, that, in 1639 and 1640, this had been done in their own national quarrel, whereas now it would be an intervention in the affairs of a foreign country. The Convention thus prompted and cheered on to the crusade by multitudes who had thronged to Edinburgh, resolved to arm the nation, and ordered troops forthwith to be levied. Before the deliberations of the Convention terminated, a messenger from the English Parliament arrived, and, with the characteristic policy of the times, intimated from it, that, in conformity with the communications to and from the last General Assembly, an Assembly of Divines was about to be convened at Westminster, for regulating the worship and polity to be introduced into the Church of England, and uniformity to be established in these matters in both Kingdoms.298

These were the preliminaries to the meeting of the General Assembly on the 2d of August 1643; and to the Acts of that Assembly we now refer for a full developement of the spirit which emanated from that body. The incidents of a political nature, and the sequences which followed it, will form the subject of our next introductory chapter.

In the foregoing pages, we have endeavoured to trace, with an unbiassed hand, a faithful picture of the ecclesiastical state of Scotland during a period of six eventful years. In the progress of the scenes which we have attempted feebly to delineate, we have marked the career of the Covenanters from the earlier virtuous and patriotic resistance which they made to lawless and arbitrary power on the part of the monarch, in which our honest judgment and our cordial sympathies were completely on their side.

We have now reached a new epoch in their history, which is of a more equivocal character, and which has been the subject of much controversy. On this ground, therefore, we deem it our duty to abstain from all remark or reflection, as altogether unsuited to the nature of our undertaking—leaving the documentary evidence which we present to make its own impressions on the reader’s mind. We shall thus avoid entangling ourselves in the mazes of party prejudice and contention in reference to “The Solemne League and Covenant,”299 without compromising our own views of the history of that period; and for this course we see abundant reason, when we consider some recent events in the movements of our Northern Church, which have produced a degree of excitement that is but little calculated to ensure a dispassionate consideration of the troubles in other times. Henceforward, therefore, our Introductory Notes shall be limited to a Chronological Index of events connected with the proceedings of the Church, in which it shall be our study to avoid everything that can by possibility disturb the nerves of the most fastidious partisans of any class of opinions.