Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/79

1617.] life. He went to reside at Sedan, and died abroad in 1620. His nephew, James Melville, was shut up at Berwick, and died six years before his uncle; the rest of the preachers were banished to remote districts of Scotland, wide apart from each other.

Soon after the completion of this disgraceful suppression of religious liberty in Scotland, the earl of Dunbar, James's instrument in these proceedings, died, and his different offices were occupied by relatives of Carr, then the favourite, who ruled, so long as Carr was in power, with a rigour more infamous than that of Dunbar himself. Nor was the condition of the catholics one whit better than that of the presbyterians; indeed, the French ambassador, Broderic, declared that it was worse than that of the English catholics. In 1616 a Jesuit of the name of Ogilvie was put to death; the prisons were filled with recusants: every catholic nobleman was compelled to receive a protestant minister into his house, and was informed that unless he conformed to the Anglican church, he must suffer forfeiture of his estates. The persecutions of the earls of Huntley, Angus, Errol, and many others, are related at length by Balfour.

To put the finish to this great and daring change, James determined to make a journey to Scotland himself. On leaving that country he assured his Scottish subjects that he would visit his ancient capital at least once in three years: fourteen years had now elapsed without his redeeming his word, his poverty having hitherto presented an insurmountable obstacle. But he had now consented to yield up the cautionary towns, Brill, Flushing, and Rammekens, for 2,728,000 florins instead of 8,000,000, which were due to him. He had been induced to this by his necessities and the persuasions of secretary Winwood, who was said to have received £29,000 from the Dutch for his services on the occasion. James now discharged some of his most pressing debts, and obtained a loan of £96,000, with which he set forward to Scotland in the spring of 1617.

On the 7th of June parliament assembled, and James, by his sole authority, excluded such of the representatives as he knew were hostile to his great object of establishing the English church in all its forms and in all its authority, as the state church of Scotland for ever. But the peers, alarmed lest he should restore to his pet church all the lands of which they now were in possession, rejected the lords of the articles whom he recommended. To win over these nobles, James invited them to a secret conference, in which he assured them that no revocation of these lands should be made. Reassured on this head, the peers were ready to vote as he pleased, and he opened parliament in one of his vaunting speeches about his power, in which he told them that "he had nothing more at heart than to reduce their barbarity to the sweet civility of their neighbours; and if the Scots would be as docible to learn the goodness of the English as they were teachable to limp after their ill, then he should not doubt of success; for they had already learnt of the English to drink healths, to wear coaches and gay clothes, to take tobacco, and to speak a language which was neither English nor Scottish."

In this insulting speech the king might have included himself both as to clothes and language; but these were small matters in comparison with those which he had in view. He brought in a bill to enact that what the king might determine upon regarding the church, with the concurrence of the bishops and a certain number of the clergy, should be good in Law. At this proposition the clergy were instantly in arms, and presented so determined a remonstrance against it, that he became afraid, and gave it up, saying, it was unnecessary to give him that by statute which was already his by authority of the crown. He managed, however, to carry a bill adding chapters to the bishoprics, regulating the appointment of bishops, and also one for converting the hereditary offices of sheriffs into annual ones, which he would thus be able to influence. Never, surely, with a spirit so cautiously cowardly, was there a monarch so ingrained with the bigotry of absolutism, or who so perseveringly laboured to annihilate every liberty of the subject, and leave the nation a base and soulless heritage of the crown. But the nation had a soul which was not thus to be satrappedstrapped [sic] and trodden into a horde of serfs; and though James escaped to a quiet tomb, it took a terrible vengeance on his children, whom he had inoculate with his incorrigible lust of absolutism.

As nothing more was to be obtained from parliament, the uncouth tyrant wended his way to St. Andrews, where he had planned a severe retribution for the remonstrant clergy, from a more obsequious tribunal. There the clergy having assembled at his summons, he singled out Simpson, Ewart, and Calderwood, who had signed the remonstrance which baulked him of his full intentions, and brought them before the High Commission Court, and condemned Simpson and Ewart to suspension and imprisonment. Calderwood, who by his influence and ability excited most of all his dread and resentment, he banished for life. Having thus given the clergy a sharp lesson, he now announced to them that it was his will that the whole ritual of the English church should be adopted in Scotland in five articles, the name of which afterwards became famous, namely:—1st, That the eucharist should be received in a kneeling and not in a sitting posture, as had been hitherto the mode in Scotland. 2nd, That the sacrament should be given to the sick at their own houses when they were in danger of death. 3rd, That baptism should, in like cases, be administered in private houses. 4th, That the youth should be confirmed by the bishop. 5th, That the festivals of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whit Sunday, should be observed in Scotland just as in England. These commands were received with unequivocal marks of displeasure by the clergy, but the fate of the three remonstrants availed to keep them silent for a time, and James regarded his plans as fully accomplished; but anon the clergy fell on their knees and implored him to refer the five articles to the general assembly of the kirk. James for some time refused to listen to them, but on Patrick Galloway assuring him that matters should be so managed that all should go right, he consented.

He then kept his Whitsuntide in the English fashion, with all his crouching prelates and courtiers around him, and afterwards took his way homeward, in the full persuasion that he had succeeded in his object. Time told a very different tale; nor was he himself long in perceiving that though he had overawed, he had not subdued the sturdy Scottish clergy. Scarcely had he reached England when he