Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/78

64 endeavouring to plant episcopacy as firmly in Scotland as in England. He looked on the spirit and form of the Scotch church bat as one remove from republicanism in the state; and his first step, taken in 1605, was a bold one, being no less than to assume the right to prorogue the general assembly at will. This was at once annihilating the theocratic constitution of the assembly, and placing the king at its head. This measure was carried out by Sir George Home, the lord treasurer of Scotland, afterwards earl of Dunbar. The ministers, though prorogued, met again in defiance of the royal fiat, but were dissolved again and again. The ministers from nine presbyteries still boldly met in assertion of the paramount right of the church, at Aberdeen, called themselves "an assembly," appointed a moderator, and before dissolving at the command of the council, adjourned their sitting to a fixed time that year.

Thirteen of the most prominent clergymen were immediately arrested on the charge of having violated the act of 1584, "for maintenance of the royal power over all estates." The jury was packed by Dunbar, and six of the most refractory were condemned as guilty of high treason, and banished for life. They retired into Holland and France, and were followed thither by numbers of their admirers. Meantime, at home, undaunted by this lawless exercise of power, the clergy offered up prayers for their exiled brethren, whom they boldly proclaimed from their pulpits as martyrs to the freedom of the faith; and unsilenced by the menaces of the court, loudly warned the people of the impending danger to the church.

But James, with the true blind hardihood of a Stuart, went on, and appointed thirteen clergymen to the ancient abolished bishoprics, and gave them precedency in the synods and assembly. The clergy refused to submit to their authority, and as they were unsupported by the ancient reverence, treated their assumed dignity with contempt. But James went on to repeal the act which had confiscated the episcopal estates, endowed the bishops, and made them moderators of both synods and presbyteries within their own districts. He erected two courts of high commission, and, indeed, gave them a power such as their predecessors had never possessed. In 1610 three of these bishops went to England, and received episcopal ordination from the English prelates, and on their return conferred it on their colleagues. And finally in 1612, it was enacted by parliament that all general assemblies should only be appointed by the crown; that the bishops only should present to livings; that they should admit no one who would not first take the oath of supremacy to the king, and of canonical obedience to the bishop; that they should possess the power of deprivation and the right of visitation, each in his own diocese.

Thus James had suppressed the constitution of the church which he had formerly blessed God that he belonged to, declaring it "the sincerest kirk in the world," and placed over the groaning people that episcopacy which they abhorred, and had destroyed with so much blood and trouble; and as in all such cases, he carried the new rigour far beyond the old. He placed the archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow at the head of his tyrannical high commission courts, and either of these prelates, with four colleagues, were to constitute a quorum, from whose decisions there was no appeal. All schools and colleges were subjected, as well as the clergy, to their visitation. The despotism was complete; James thought he had crushed presbyterianism, and fixed episcopacy on a rock for ever. He was never more deceived: he had only closed down the safety valve, ere long to produce an explosion which should hurl his family to destruction.

Yet these changes had not been effected without symptoms of resistance, which would have made a wiser monarch pause. At one time he had summoned to London five prelates and eight ministers, as it appeared, to convince them of the reasonableness of his proposed changes by his presumed invincible eloquence. The ministers refused their consent to any of his proposals, declaring that they were delegated to hear and report, not to decide. He demanded of them that they should ask pardon for praying for the banished ministers; and asked them whether he had not the right, by his royal authority, to appoint, suspend, and prevent their meetings. Whether, in fact, he did not possess absolute power, as king, over their persons and proceedings, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as the right to summon them at will and punish them.

Andrew Melville, the successor of Knox, boldly though respectfully denied these propositions, asserting the freedom of conscience, and its immunity from the power of any earthly potentate. When pressed by some slavish Scottish lords to conform, he said, "My lords, I am a free subject of Scotland, a free kingdom, that has laws and privileges of its own. By these I stand. No legal citation has been issued against me; nor are you and I in our own country, where such an inquisition, so oppressive as the present, is condemned by parliament. I am bound by no law to criminate or to furnish accusations against myself. My lords, remember what you are; mean as I am, remember that I am a free-born Scotsman, to be dealt with as you would be dealt with yourselves, according to the laws of the Scottish nation."

This was noble and patriotic language; but Melville had to deal with a vain despot, who declared himself above all laws. He insisted on their attending the royal chapel to hear the preaching of his bishops. The plain presbyterian Scots were scandalised at both what they saw and heard there: at the ceremonies, the gilded altar, the chalices, and tapers; but above all, at the slavish doctrines of those courtly preachers. The Scotch ministers did not hesitate to express their contempt and indignation at the whole spectacle, and Melville ridiculed the entire service in a Latin epigram. For this audacity James summoned Melville before his privy council; but the preacher's blood was now chafed beyond restraint, for he and his colleagues, though they were impatient to get away from what they considered this idolatrous scene, where the conduct of the bishops and clergy was by no means edifying, were compelled by him to stay. So far from expressing any regret for his satire on the royal mode of worship, he denounced in the strongest terms the whole system of the Anglican church, and in his excitement seized the surplice of the primate, and shook angrily what he called the Romish rags of the arch, bishop of Canterbury.

James committed him to the Tower for his contumacy, where he kept him four years, and then banished him for