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 COVENANTERS

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COVENANTERS

sion when he seized his sovereign by the sleeve and called him " God's silly vassal ". In the Church, king and beggar were on an equal footing and of equal im- portance; king or beggar might equally and without distinction be excommunicated, and be submitted to a degrading ceremonial if he wished to be released from the censure; in this system the preacher was supreme. The civil power was to be the secular arm, the instru- ment, of the Kirk, and was required to inflict the pen- alties which the preachers imposed upon such as con- temned the censure and discipline of the Church. The Kirk, therefore, believing that the Presbj'terian sys- tem, with its preachers, lay elders, and deacons, kirk sessions, synods, and general assemblies, was the one. Divinely appointed means to salvation, claimed to be absolute and supreme. Such a theory of the Divine right of Presbytery was not likely to meet vyfith the ap- proval of the kings of the Stuart line with their exag- gerated ideas of their own right Divine and preroga- tive. Nor could a CTaurch where the ministers and elders in their kirk sessions and assemblies judged, censured, and punished all offenders high or low, craftsman or nobleman, be pleasing to an aristocracy that looked with feudal contempt on all forms of la- bour. Both noble and king were therefore anxious to humble the ministers and deprive them of some of their influence. James VI was soon taught the spirit of the Presbj'terian clergy; in 1592 he was compelled formally to sanction the establishment of Presbytery; he was threatened with rebellion if he failed to rule ac- cording to the Gospel as interpreted by the ministers. If his kingly authority was to endure, James saw that he must seek for some means by which he could check their excessive claims. He first tried to draw together the two separate representative institutions in Scotland — the Parliament, representing the king and the no- bility, and the General Assembly, representing the Kirk and the majority of the nation — by granting to the clergy a vote in Parliament. Owing, however, to the hostility of clergy and nobiUty, the scheme fell through. James now adopted that policy which was to be so fruitful of disaster; he determined to re-intro- duce episcopacy in Scotland as the only possible means of bringing the clergy to submit to his own authority. He had already gone some way towards accomplishing his object when his accession to the English throne still further strengthened his resolve. For he consid- ered the assimilation of the two Churches both in their form of government and in doctrine essential to the furtherance of his great design, the union of the two kingdoms.

By 1612 James had succeeded in carrying out the first part of his policy, the re-establishment of diocesan episcopacy. Before his death he had also gone a long way towards effecting changes in the ritual and doc- trine of Presbyterianism. On Black Saturday, 4 Aug., 1621, the Five Articles of Perth were ratified by the Estates. Imposed as these were upon an unwill- ing nation by means of a packed Assembly and Parlia- ment, they were to be the source of much trouble and bloodshed in Scotland. Distrust of their rulers, hatred of bishops, and hatred of all ecclesiastical changes was the legacy bequeathed by James to his son. James had sowed the wind and Charles I was soon to reap the whirlwind. Charles' verj' first action, his "matching himself with the daughter of Heth", i. e. France (see Leighton, "Sion's Plea against Prelacy", quoted by Gardiner, "Hist, of England, ed. 1884, VII, 146), aroused siispicion a.s to his orthodoxy, and in the light of that suspicion every act of his religious policy was interpreted, wrongly we know, as some subtle means of favouring |iopery. His wisest course would have been to aimul the liated Five Articles of Perth, which to Scotchmen were but so many injunctions to com- mit idolatry. In spite of concessions, however, he let it be known that the .Articles were to remain (Row, Historic of the Kirk of Scotland, p. 340; Balfour, An-

nals, II, 142; Pri%-}- Coimcil Register, N. S., I, 91-93). Fiu-ther, he took the unwise step of increasing the powers of the bishops; five were given a place in the Privy Council; and Archbishop Spottiswoode was made President of the Exchequer and ordered as pri- mate to take precedence of every other subject. This proceeding not merely roused the indignation of Prot- estants, who m the words of Row considered bishops " bellie-gods ", but it further offended the aristocracy, who felt themselves thus slighted. But a persecution of the Kirk and the preachers would not have brought about a rebellion. Charles could always coimt on his subservient bishops, and on the nobles ever willing to himible the ministers. But he now took a step which alienated his only allies. James had always been care- ful to keep the nobles on his side by lavish grants of the old church lands. By the Act of Revocation, which passed the Privy Seal, 12 October, 1025 (Pri\7 Council Register, I, 193), Charles I touched the pockets of the nobility, raised at once a serious opposition, and led the barons to form an alliance with the Kirk against the common enemy, the king. It was a fatal step and proved " the ground-stone of all the mischief that fol- lowed after, both to this king's government and fam- ily" (Balfour, Annals, II, 128). Thus, before he had set foot in Scotland, Charles had offended every class of his people. His visit to Scotland made matters worse ; .Scotchmen were horrified to see at the corona- tion service such "popish rags" as "white rochets and white sleeves and copes of gold having blue sUk to their foot" worn by the officiating bishops, which "bred great fear of inbringing of popery" (Spalding, Hist, of the Troubles in England and Scotland, 1624-45, I, 36). Acts, too, were passed through Parliament which plainly showed the king's determination to change the ecclesiastical system of Scotland. Scot- lantl was therefore ready for an explosion.

The spark was the New Service Book. Both Charles and Laud had been shocked at the bare walls and pillars of the churches, all clad with dust, sweep- ings, and cobwebs; at the trafficking that went on in the Scottish churches; at the lengthy "conceived prayers ' ' often spoken by ignorant men and not infre- quently as seditious as the sermons (Baillie, O. S. B., writing in 1627, cited by Wra. Kintoch, "Studies in Scottish Ecclesiastical History", pp. 23, 24; also, "Large Declaration", p. 16). 'The king desired to have decency, orderliness, uniformity. Hence he or- dered a new service book, prepared by himself and Laud, to be adopted by Scotland. The imposition of the New Service Book was a piece of sheer despotism on the part of the king; it had no ecclesiastical sanc- tion whatever, for the General Assembly, and even the bishops as a body, had not been consulted; neither had it any lay authority, for it had not the approval of Parliament ; it went counter to all the religious feelmg of the majority of the Scottish people; it offended their national sentiment, for it was English. Row svmimed up the objections to it by calling it a " Pop- ish-English-Scottish-Mass-Service-Book" (op. cit., p. 398). There could, therefore, be very little doubt as to how Scotland would receive the new liturgy. The famous riot in St. Giles', Edinburgh, 23 July, 1637 (accoimt of it in the King's " Lar^e Declaration" and Gordon's "Hist, of Scots Affairs, I, 7), when at the solemn inauguration of the new service somebody, probably some woman, threw the stool at the dean's head, was but an indication of the general feeling of the country. From all classes anil ranks and from every Jiart of the country except the north-east, the petitions came pouring into the Council for the with- drawal of the lilurgy. Every attempt to enforce the j)rayer book led to a riot. In a word, the resistance was general. The Coimcil was powerless. It was suggested therefore, that each of the four orders — nobles, lairds, burghers, and ministers — should, choose four commissioners to represent them and transact