Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/386

372 exercises and virtuous occupation amongst her maids, nor having occasionally godly ministers to instruct them. One David Black, a minister of St. Andrews, from his pulpit declared that all kings were devil's bairns; that the devil was in the court, and the guardian of it; that the queen would never do them any good; that the nobilty were godless dissemblers and enemies to the church; and the members of the king's council hourglasses (that is, buffoons), cormorants, and men of no religion. When James summoned him for this gross language before the privy council, the kirk took it up, and declared no clergyman was amenable to any power but the kirk itself. Copied from Authentic Sources.

It is no wonder that with this claim to independence of and indeed superiority to the state, and a disposition to make so free a use of its censures, James should feel no particular fondness for such a church, and should labour to restore episcopacy, which was always more respectful to royalty. In fact, though James in 1590 made the speech, so constantly recalled to his memory when he was doing his utmost to give the supremacy to episcopalism both in Scotland and England, declaring in the general assembly that "it was the purest kirk in the world," presbyterianism, though by far the most generally accepted religion in Scotland, was not acknowledged as the established church there till 1592; and in December, 1596, episcopacy was fully restored again both in church and state, so that it was only four years the legal establishment previous to James's accession to the English throne.

When James arrived in England, he found a very different state of things. Though dissent from the forms and ceremonies of the church was very extensive, it had been restrained with a high hand, and there was no other visible church which had risen face to face with the state church, so as directly to menace it or the monarch. Both in Scotland and England the doctrines of all believers were mainly the same; the difference was as to outward forms. The puritans, as they were called, still occupied established pulpits, for conventicles, as they were called—that is, dissenting chapels—were strictly restrained. What the non-conformists sought was freedom in the church for their more simple tastes in ceremonials. The celebrated Millenary Petition, presented to James on his way into England, signed by eight hundred ministers, demanded but a few and apparently unimportant concessions to preserve the unity of the church. They objected to the cross in baptism, the interrogatories to infants, baptism by women, the ring in marriage, confirmation, and a few other minor particulars; and these granted in the churches to those who had a conscience on such points, would have preserved the integrity of the church. The demands of the ministers at