Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/93

 opinion, but you strengthen it not with reasons. Therefore, I will hold my resolution, and do as I first spoke to you.' To which, with Christian and subject-like reverence, Bruce returned this reply, 'Well, Sir, you may do as you list; but choose you, you shall not have me and the Earl of Huntly both for you.'" Though this tale is told by an enemy, it bears too many characteristic marks to be altogether false; and certainly it presents a most expressive picture of the comparative importance of the leader of the Scottish church and the leader of the Scottish state. Maxwell insinuates interested and unworthy motives for Bruce's conduct on this occasion; but the whole tenor of the man's life disproves their reality. There can be no doubt that he was actuated solely by a fear for the effect which Huntlys great territorial influence might have upon the Scottish church. To show that his conduct on this occasion was by no means of an uncommon kind, we may relate another anecdote. On the 6th of June, 1592, the king came to the Little Kirk, to hear Bruce's sermon. In his discourse, Bruce moved the question, "What could the great disobedience of the land mean now, while the king was present? seeing some reverence was borne to his shadow while absent." To this he himself answered, that it was the universal contempt of his subjects. He therefore exhorted the king "to call to God, before he either ate or drank, that the Lord would give him a resolution to execute justice on malefactors, although it should be with the hazard of his life: which, if he would enterprise courageously, the Lord would raise enough to assist, and all his impediments would vanish away. Otherwise," said he, in conclusion, "you will not be suffered to enjoy your crown alone, but every man will have one." When we find the king obliged to submit to such rebukes as this before his subjects, can we wonder at his finding it a difficult task to exact obedience from those subjects, either to himself or the laws.

The extraordinary power of the Scottish church came at length to a period. During a violent contention between the church and court in 1596, the partizans of the former were betrayed by their zeal into a kind of riot, which was construed by the king into an attack upon his person. The re-action occasioned by this event, and the increased power which he now possessed in virtue of his near approach to the English tin-one, enabled him to take full advantage of their imprudence, in imposing certain restrictions upon the church, of an episcopal tendency. Bruce, who preached the sermon which preceded the riot, found it necessary, though not otherwise concerned, to fly to England. He did not procure permission to return for some months, and even then he was not allowed to resume his functions as a parish minister. For some time, he officiated privately in the houses of his friends. Nor was it till after a long course of disagreeable contentions with the court, that he was received back into one of the parochial pulpits of Edinburgh.

This was but the beginning of a series of troubles which descended upon the latter half of Bruce's life. In August, 1600, the king met with the strange adventure known by the name of the Gowrie Conspiracy. When he afterwards requested the ministers of Edinburgh to give an account of this affair to their congregations, and offer up thanks for his deliverance, Bruce happened to be one of a considerable party who could not bring themselves to believe that James had been conspired against by the two young Ruthvens, but rather were of opinion that the whole affair was a conspiracy of his own to rid himself of two men whom he had reason to hate. A strange incoherent notion as to the attachment of these young men to the presbyterian system, and the passion which one of them had entertained for the queen, took possession of this party, though there is not the slightest evidence to support either proposition. To king James, who was full of his wonderful deliverance, this scepticism was exceedingly