FOOTNOTES:
[93] Spottiswood considers that it is most necessary to repress them by ‘taking order with the deprived and exiled ministers of Ireland, that have taken their refuge hither, and are the common incendiaries of rebellioun, preaching what and where they please.’ Letter to Hamilton: Baillie, App. i. 466.
[94] The letter is given in Balfour ii. 236; the proclamation in Rushworth ii. 402.
[95] Baillie to Spang: Letters and Journals i. 23. ‘I think God, to revenge the crying sins, is going to give us over unto madness, that we may every one shoot our swords in our neighbours hearts.’
[96] Supplication against the Service-book, with a complaint upon bishops: in Rothes 49.
[97] Rothes: ‘They might concur in the common way of supplicating against the Service-book.’
[98] I do not find any confirmation of the definite statements of Aiton, Life of Henderson 207, according to which four noblemen, three lairds from the counties, &c., were said to have constituted this small commission. Rothes names only Sutherland and Balmerino, with six barons and some citizens (p. 34). Immediately afterwards (p. 34) six or seven noblemen appear as commissioners. The nobility had certainly a great amount of independence in the commission.
[99] Rothes, p. 25; but it was intended that the King’s consent should be obtained.
[100] A. Correro, 5 Marzo, 1638: ‘Il regno di Scotia, rettosi per tanti secoli colle proprie leggi nel viver civile cosi bene come nel ecclesiastico soffirebbeio gia mai dichiararlo subordinato a questo, il che s’intenderebbe, quando quelle chiese ricevessero da questo arcivescovo di Canterbury le regole di laudar Dio.’
[101] ‘The least that can be asked to settle this Church and Kingdom in a solid and durable peace.’ Rothes 97. According to Balfour ii. 252 these demands are referred to the date of March 1638.
[102] The King in one of his declarations characterised the difference between the old and new Covenant: the old required ‘that they should mutually assist one another, as they should be commanded by the King or any entrusted persons’; but the new bond, which he repudiated, ‘was made without our consent, and by it they swear mutually to assist one another, not excepting the King.’ St. P. O.
CHAPTER VII.
ATTEMPTS AT AN ACCOMMODATION. INDEPENDENT ASSEMBLY OF THE CHURCH.
King Charles thought that the Scots wished to give him somewhat of the position of a Venetian Doge, but that he would not yet be reduced to the necessity of complying. He was confident that he still had a party of his own in Scotland.
The signature of the Scottish Covenant had run the natural course of a great political party movement. The universal bias of men’s minds, the esteem in which a few great names were held, the insistence of active leaders, made up for any lack of conviction. A number of copies on parchment, to which were appended the most influential names, were set in circulation in the provinces: noblemen and important landed proprietors canvassed for the signature of their friends: certain objections were silenced by assurances of loyal intentions: here and there recourse was had to threats, and even to active measures against recalcitrants. Yet there were still many who refused to sign. They felt themselves repelled by the violent character and method of the proceeding, by the absence of higher authority, and by the comparison of Anglican with Popish institutions; or else they had some regard for the King: many indeed thought that Episcopalianism would still gain the upper hand. The learned school of Aberdeen called attention to a statute of 1585, which forbade all associations of which the King had not been previously informed. One at least among the great nobles, George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, who had adopted the doctrines of the episcopal system at the court of James I, adhered A.D. 1638. to the side of the crown in spite of all incentives to the contrary. He said that his house had always been connected with the royal family, and that it should stand or fall with it[103]. And though the Privy Council had at first promoted the movement by its connivance, it immediately withdrew it, as soon as it was perceived that the centre of gravity of ecclesiastical and political life was to be placed in the General Assemblies independently of the government: from that time most official persons severed themselves from the leaders of the nobility. They thought that they would be able to resist the anti-monarchical alliance which had been formed between the aristocracy and the popular and religious elements, and to defeat it, if only the King would show discretion at the right moment. They acted consistently with their original position in asking him to do away with the two books in which his system had reached its culminating point, and to modify the Court of High Commission: as for the rest they only wished that he should promise himself to take the grievances of the country into consideration, and so remove them in accordance with the laws. Traquair and his friends by no means wished for a General Assembly with such extensive powers as the Covenanters demanded: they had reached a point beyond which they did not mean to go.
Charles I at that time, to use an expression current even in England, had formed a Junta to deliberate on the affairs of Scotland. It consisted of Arundel, Cottington, the Secretaries Coke and Vane, and a few Scots of high rank, the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Morton and the Marquess of Hamilton. Archbishop Laud was only now and then admitted to take part in it, for the embarrassment of affairs in Scotland had already entered on a stage in which principles at once episcopal and monarchical were no longer a safe guide. Even in this Junta the views of the Scottish statesmen asserted themselves: one of their number, the A.D. 1638. Marquess of Hamilton, was selected, and undertook to go to Scotland as Lord High Commissioner representing the King, and to make an attempt to compose the disturbances on the basis of concessions to be made by the King in accordance with the views of the Scottish Privy Council.
Hamilton had lived at the English court from his youth. Early in life he had married a niece of Buckingham, and, supported by this connexion, in consequence of which his wife filled an important office at court, had been brought into the closest relations with the royal family. The King bestowed on him his unreserved confidence. He had once been warned against Hamilton, who had an hereditary claim to the crown of Scotland: the effect of this warning was that, the very next time he saw him, he invited him to share the same sleeping apartment with himself on the following night. Hamilton had given no special attention to study, but he possessed natural gifts; a keen and solid understanding, sound judgment, and imperturbable calmness in discussion: his counsels had the greatest influence upon the King. In his political and even in his personal attitude, he as well as the King was dependent upon the change of circumstances. His mind had a natural tendency to conciliation and compromise, in consequence of which he had supported John Dury, who travelled about promoting with unwearied zeal the union of the Protestant confessions. Devoted to the King, popular with the Scots, averse from all extremes, he appeared to be the man best fitted to stem the further progress of the quarrel that was every day becoming more dangerous[104].
In May 1638 James Marquess of Hamilton set out for Scotland. The royal declaration seemed very well calculated to further his design. He communicated it privately in the first instance, in order to found his negotiations on it; and in the beginning of July he made it known publicly. In it the King reasserted in the strongest terms that he would adhere to Protestantism, and would not attempt to introduce any innovation in Church and State in Scotland; that he A.D. 1638. would no longer insist upon the reception of the Liturgy and of the Book of Canons; that he would bring the High Commission into harmony with the laws of Scotland, and would summon a General Assembly and a Parliament at his earliest convenience[105]. The Scottish government expressed its thanks to the King for his assurances, and the hope that his subjects would as was proper show themselves well satisfied with these concessions.
In fact these concessions corresponded to the original intentions which still prevailed in many quarters. Had the King’s instructions appeared on the memorable 17th of October, things might have taken another turn. But they could not satisfy those who on that day had revived their complaint against the bishops with fresh vehemence, and had thereupon signed the Covenant. They observed that the two books and the High Commission were not actually abolished by the King’s concessions, still less the Articles of Perth; that moreover no mention of their petition was made by the King; that no notice was taken of the guilt of the bishops, and that the time of summoning a General Assembly was left unsettled.
Hamilton offered the malcontents to call an Assembly and a Parliament at once, if they would renounce their Covenant and would deliver up the original document. But how was it likely that that condition should be secured? The zealous Scots declared that they would rather forswear their baptismal obligations than the Covenant, the best document that had been drawn up in Scotland since the fabulous days of Fergus. They affirmed that it was a mistake on the King’s part to think that it threatened his authority. They said that they acknowledged that their weal depended on the weal of the King, who was set over them as God’s vicegerent, to uphold religion and to administer justice.
In order to satisfy the religious zeal which was still coupled with loyalty to the King, the Scottish Council hit upon the plan of setting up in opposition to the Covenant of February A.D. 1638. another which should emanate from the King himself. In this the clauses referring to the latest measures of the government and to the hostile feeling they had aroused, or implying the possibility of offering resistance to the King himself, were to be left out, but the anti-Catholic tone of the first was to be retained, and to be as prominent as ever. The Scottish statesmen affirmed that if the two books and the Articles of Perth were then recalled, the High Commission dissolved, and the General Assembly acknowledged, there was ground for entertaining not merely a hope but a confident expectation that general contentment would revive in the nation, and that all opposition would be put down at home: for that the movement in the nation had been caused by anxiety about innovations opposed to Protestantism, not by any feeling of disloyalty.
On the advice of the highest officials in Scotland and of his friend Hamilton, the King conceded all these points. He consented to the proposal for renewing the old Covenant of his father’s time: he wished this to be signed at his own injunction, and a proclamation making new concessions was published in Edinburgh on the 20th of September[106]. The Privy Council expressed its agreement with this proclamation, which it characterised as the only thoroughly sufficient means of securing Church and State. They thought that the King’s subjects should prove their gratitude to him by hearty obedience, and that whoever henceforth should venture to disturb the peace of the realm ought to be chastised with all severity. The old Covenant was signed by the members of the Privy Council, and was then transmitted to the King in proof of re-established harmony. Proclamation was made with his sanction that a free General Assembly should be held on the 21st of November following at Glasgow, and a Parliament at Edinburgh in the May of the next year.
And in the nation these measures were received with hearty approval in many quarters.
The provost, baillies and town council of Glasgow voted A.D. 1638. the Lord High Commissioner an address of thanks for his exertions, with which the clergy expressed their concurrence in glowing terms. The University of Aberdeen had always condemned the Covenant of the Lords, because it had been entered into without the consent of the King. Its members signed the old Covenant without scruple; certain restrictions were attached it is true, but such as betrayed a leaning to episcopal government, and an aversion from the claims of the national assemblies of the Church. Of the fifteen Judges of Session who had been brought back again to Edinburgh by Hamilton’s means, nine affixed their signature to the old Covenant. Even the Lord Advocate, who had at first assisted the opposition by his advice, now affirmed that the King’s declaration was the greatest piece of good fortune which had befallen the Church of God since the Reformation.
And certainly from the point of view of religious controversy this appeared to be the case. The King’s concessions only needed to be maintained and to be confirmed in the popular assemblies appointed to be held, in order to constitute a firm foundation for the freedom of the Church and for that of the State, which was closely connected with it. Charles I in these negotiations cannot be accused of obstinate adherence to a foregone system. He granted everything which the Scots had originally demanded.
This compliance however did not content them; and we cannot be very much surprised that it did not. It is ever the rule that when political parties are repelling an injury done them, peculiar tendencies of more general application grow up in them. The development of strength, which was necessary for obtaining some end, feels capable of asserting itself in a yet wider sphere. Individual positions, which the holders will not surrender, obligations to which those who undertook them will not prove false, contribute to the same result. In Scotland at that time, Lord Rothes, a man of easily excited popular and enterprising nature, found himself, to his infinite satisfaction, at the head of a powerful and constantly increasing party whose reverence he enjoyed. Lord Loudon, who had not long left the schools, felt a natural satisfaction at the scholastic element in the controversy, at A.D. 1638. the opposition of ideas, and the subtle distinctions and syllogisms which it presented. The conflict which had been opened offered the widest scope to his ambition, which had been repressed by his feelings of loyalty[107]. Hamilton represented to these noblemen that, after the King had done so much for them, they also were bound to do something for him. He thought that he might arrange with them what should be brought forward and decided in the assemblies appointed to be held. He demanded from them, if they would not go so far as to sign the old Covenant, at least such a modification of the new Covenant as the King could accept. But they declared that they would thus be themselves condemning the oaths which they had taken, and induced others to take: they did not deny that it would have been desirable for them to have had the King’s authorisations for those signatures and oaths; but they added that the less authority they had had, so much the less hypocrisy, and so much the more truthfulness and freedom there had been. Extensive alterations had followed from the acceptance of the Covenant: in the presbyteries the moderators appointed under the influence of the bishops had been again ejected: in an assembly of burghs the resolution had been taken to retain no magistrate who had not signed the new Covenant. They asked whether they were again to destroy what they themselves had founded, and to break up the alliance which made them powerful, and which gave them a better security than all the proclamations of the King? For his concessions appeared only to have been extorted by circumstances; they expected that when circumstances altered, they would again be withdrawn.
And, moreover, the Scottish Covenanters had not yet reached their ultimate aim. The design of abolishing episcopacy, of which they had always been accused, but which they had hitherto, perhaps with truth, disclaimed, was now become their conscious intention. The main reason of their protest against the King’s proclamation was, that they might not appear pledged to maintain the institution of episcopacy. A.D. 1638. They now applied their whole influence to prevent the signature of the royal Covenant.
It is worth noticing how completely aristocratic and religious interests were blended on this occasion. In counties in which the great lords were most powerful the Covenant of the King did not receive a single signature. A prophetess arose who declared this Covenant to be made by Satan, the people’s Covenant to be given from Heaven: and her utterances found credit. The latter Covenant was indeed a logical result of the great commotion, and conducted to further extremes the enthusiasm out of which this commotion had arisen: the former was a resource taken up under the pressure of circumstances, and gained no confidence.
These influences had their effect on the elections to the General Assembly which now came on. The committee of the Covenanters which sat in Edinburgh exercised the greatest influence over them. Their instructions to the presbyteries are extant, in which they caution them to elect no one who had shared in the institution of bishops or in the proceedings of the High Commission, or had acquiesced in the imposition of the Liturgy: but on the other hand, to make provision in the proper place for the election of members of the nobility and gentry belonging to their party[108]; and generally to prepare carefully for the elections, in order that the votes might not be split up. Even before this time a dominant influence had often been exerted in the election of representatives, for instance, in France, in the constitution of the Assemblies of the League; but this was perhaps the first occasion on which popular elections had been conducted by a committee with such precise instructions. In the elections the adherents of the Covenant of the nobles were completely victorious.
The Assembly of the Church which was opened on November 21, 1638, in St. Mungo’s Cathedral, at Glasgow, A.D. 1638. presented a very extraordinary spectacle. On the floor of the church the lords and gentlemen were seen sitting at a long table as the elected elders of the Church; but their spiritual capacity did not prevent them from wearing swords at their sides and daggers in their belts. Behind them on benches, which rose as in an amphitheatre, sat the preachers: separate galleries were erected for the public, for the nobility, and the commons.
Hamilton had hoped to sever the interests of the ministers from those of the lay elders, and to enlist the former body on the side of the King. This sight was enough to teach him how greatly he had deceived himself. He still thought that the elections most obnoxious to him, which had not unfrequently been conducted in a disorderly manner, might be set aside on a scrutiny. In fact, some elections were declared invalid: but these were only cases in which men not partisans of the Covenant had been chosen. The Assembly constituted itself entirely in accordance with the views of the Covenanters. Henderson was nominated moderator: Johnston who, as secretary of the Edinburgh Committee, had had the greatest share in conducting the elections, was nominated secretary of the Assembly.
Charles I had hoped that the General Assembly would be constituted according to the forms in use when it had last met under his father, when hardly anything had been heard of the lay elders. In that case it might have been expected that episcopacy would be maintained, even if it were made subject to the general representative body of the clergy. But without applying to him for permission, an elder had been elected to represent every presbytery, and that without regarding whether the elder so elected was resident in the presbytery or not. The leaders of the movement, who were the original promoters and subscribers of the Covenant rejected by the King, and declared by him irreconcilable with the duty of a subject, now confronted him as the most prominent members of an Assembly invested with undefined right.
Everything had been already prepared beforehand in the Assembly for taking the decisive step against the bishops. Just at the time of the elections it had been recommended A.D. 1638. that proofs of their guilt should be collected, and preparations made for an abstract discussion on the nature of their office. The bishops now handed in a declinatory on their part also, in which they especially insisted on the point that an assembly composed for the most part of laymen, had no longer an ecclesiastical character, and by the ancient usages of the Church was incapable of sitting in judgment on bishops. But in the prevailing state of opinion, how could any regard be paid to this objection? The Moderator put the question to the Assembly, whether they did not consider themselves nevertheless as the legally-constituted tribunal for judging the bishops. The Lord Commissioner would have allowed judicial proceedings to be taken against the bishops, but only in a General Assembly summoned according to the forms usually adopted of late, not in this Assembly, against which he had protested from the beginning, and which every one knew to be contemplating the entire abolition of episcopacy. He thought that he could not await the issue of the voting. He once more explained why he was obliged to declare the composition as well as the claim of the Assembly to be illegal; and he then pronounced its dissolution in the name of the King. But the Assembly was now in a humour which mocked at the exercise of any authority on the part of the crown. Henderson said that the Lord Commissioner might uphold the prerogative of his master as much as he pleased; but that there was yet another prerogative, that of the Church of God, and the General Assembly must take care of this. He first put the question to the Assembly whether, in spite of the declaration which they had heard from the Commissioner, they thought of proceeding with their deliberations. Only some ten votes were given in the negative. Then he returned to his former question, whether the Assembly regarded itself as the tribunal which had jurisdiction over the bishops; and this was answered unanimously in the affirmative[109].
This took place in the seventh session of the Assembly, on November 28, 1638. On the 29th a proclamation from the King was read in the Market-place of Glasgow, by which all A.D. 1638. further meetings of the members of the illegal Assembly were forbidden, and all resolutions which it might draw up were declared null and void. The Assembly made answer on the same spot by means of a protestation, in which they refused to allow this dissolution to take effect. One of their reasons was the necessity in which they found themselves of rejecting the Royal Covenant and of maintaining their own. The members of the Privy Council had all of them signed the King’s proclamation: only one name was missing, that of Lord Lorne, now Earl of Argyle, one of those ambitious and capable men, who with sure instinct attach themselves to the power which is strongest. He had chosen this moment for passing over from the side of the royal Covenant to that of the Covenant of the nobles and the people.
Thus these elements, whose previous struggles had still left a hope of reconciliation, now opposed one another face to face in open and irreconcilable hostility.
The intention originally professed was only that of abolishing the arbitrary innovations of King Charles, and of returning to the ordinances which James I had carried out in the General Assemblies and Parliaments after his accession to the throne of England. But it had always been the opinion of the staunch presbyterians, who dated the decay of the Church from the rise of the royal influence, that even this course should be opposed: and the ruling thought of the Assembly at Glasgow was directed to the same end. Everything was there declared invalid, which had been enacted in the Assembly of Linlithgow in the year 1606 and in subsequent Assemblies. The two Books, the High Commission, and with them also the Articles of Perth were not merely rejected: it was declared a crime to have taken part in their composition or introduction. Episcopacy was not only abolished on the ground that it had no warrant in God’s Word, but it was abjured. Upon the Bishops who had taken part in the ecclesiastical enactments of the last ten years, sentence of excommunication and deposition was pronounced; upon the others sentence of deposition alone. And how could bishops and lay elders even exist side by side? The former exhibit the authority of the Church as A.D. 1638. hierarchical; the latter exhibit it as democratic in principle. The chief obstacle that prevented the Kings from establishing the authority of the bishops was in truth the independent origin of the Scottish national Church, and the correspondence which existed in consequence between its fundamental arrangements and this origin. The institution which they had wished to make the basis of their influence over the Church was now shattered and annihilated. The most important agencies affecting the state of affairs were involved in the opposition between the bishops who supported the crown, and the lay elders whose rights were bound up with the congregation and with the subordinate temporal authorities.
We shall not, I think, go too far if we consider the Scottish General Assembly at Glasgow, notwithstanding its original ecclesiastical purpose, as nevertheless affording at the same time a type of subsequent national assemblies which had a purely political aim. In the conflict of opposite tendencies a party has here grown up which enjoys general sympathy to a wide extent, and aims at effecting a thorough transformation of the whole condition of Church and State: the supreme authority is compelled by it to assent to the meeting of an assembly able to bring about this result: this party controls the elections, and by a definite organisation brings to pass a result wholly in accordance with its wish: its leaders themselves are thus invested with a public character: they obtain a position in which they proclaim their intentions as the desire and will of the nation, above all of the national Church, and are able to force them upon the sovereign, whose ecclesiastical authority they repudiate. The moment at which Henderson refused to dissolve the Assembly at the demand of the King’s Commissary, however widely the circumstances may differ in other respects, may well be compared with the first steps by which, a century and a half later, the newly-created French National Assembly for the first time withstood the commands of its King. The Assembly of Glasgow held its sittings, carried on its deliberations, and drew up resolutions after it had been dissolved by the King, and its continued existence had been declared an act of treason. People realised quite well what this state of A.D. 1638. things meant[110]. Into the world, already filled with various fermenting elements, another was introduced which, not only from its inherent nature, but from the method in which it asserted itself, had, both here in Scotland and everywhere else, a boundless prospect open before it.