Chapter XVII · (continued 2)

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.