Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/188

174 this to a friend. For this he was committed to prison, and at the instigation of Spottiswoode, archbishop of St. Andrews, it was resolved to prosecute him for high treason, and a verdict was procured against him.



But the people were so enraged, that they assembled in vast crowds, vowing to murder both the jurors who had given the verdict, and the judges who had accepted it. Government was alarmed, and the king was reluctantly induced to grant Balmerino a pardon. From that moment he became the champion of the people.

He and his colleagues the nobles, the gentry, the presbyterian clergy, and the inhabitants of the burghs, formed themselves into four "tables," or committees, each of four persons, and each table sent a representative to a fifth table, a committee of superintendence and government.

Thus in the capital there were sitting five tables, or committees, to receive all complaints and information from the people, and decide on all these matters. Throughout the country were speedily established similar tables, with whom they corresponded. Thus, instead of that mere representation of the petitioners which the king contemplated as an expedient for getting rid of the immediate pressure of the people, one of the most perfect and most powerful systems of popular agitation was organised that the world had ever seen. There was the most instant attention to the suggestions of the people by the provincial tables, and the most