The ungainliness of James’s person, his lack of courage on certain occasions (he was by no means a constant coward), and the feebleness of his limbs might be attributed to pre-natal influences; he was injured before he was born by the sufferings of his mother at the time of Riccio’s murder. His deep dissimulation he learnt in his bitter childhood and harassed youth. His ingenious mind was trained to pedantry; he did nothing worse, and nothing more congenial to the cruel superstitions of his age, than in his encouragement of witch trials and witch burnings promoted by the Scottish clergy down to the early part of the eighteenth century.
His plantation of Ulster by Scottish settlers has greatly affected history down to our own times, while the most permanent result of the awards by which he stimulated the colonisation of Nova Scotia has been the creation of hereditary knighthoods or baronetcies.
His encouragement of learning left its mark in the foundation of the Town’s College of Edinburgh, on the site of Kirk-o’-Field, the scene of his father’s murder.
The south-western Highlands, from Lochaber to Islay and Cantyre, were, in his reign, the scene of constant clan feuds and repressions, resulting in the fall of the Macdonalds, and the rise of the Campbell chief, Argyll, to the perilous power later wielded by the Marquis against Charles I. Many of the sons of the dispossessed Macdonalds, driven into Ireland, were to constitute the nucleus of the army of Montrose. In the Orkneys and Shetlands the constant turbulence of Earl Patrick and his family ended in the annexation of the islands to the Crown (1612), and the Earl’s execution (1615).
CHAPTER XXIV. CHARLES I.
The reign of Charles I. opened with every sign of the tempests which were to follow. England and Scotland were both seething with religious fears and hatreds. Both parties in England, Puritans and Anglicans, could be satisfied with nothing less than complete domination. In England the extreme Puritans, with their yearning after the Genevan presbyterian discipline, had been threatening civil war even under Elizabeth. James had treated them with a high hand and a proud heart. Under Charles, wedded to a “Jezebel,” a Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria, the Puritan hatred of such prelates as Laud expressed itself in threats of murder; while heavy fines and cruel mutilations were inflicted by the party in power. The Protestant panic, the fear of a violent restoration of Catholicism in Scotland, never slumbered. In Scotland Catholics were at this time bitterly persecuted, and believed that a presbyterian general massacre of them all was being organised. By the people the Anglican bishops and the prayer-book were as much detested as priests and the Mass. When Charles placed six prelates on his Privy Council, and recognised the Archbishop of St Andrews, Spottiswoode, as first in precedence among his subjects, the nobles were angry and jealous. Charles would not do away with the infatuated Articles of Perth. James, as he used to say, had “governed Scotland by the pen” through his Privy Council. Charles knew much less than James of the temper of the Scots, among whom he had never come since his infancy, and his Privy Council with six bishops was apt to be even more than commonly subservient.
In Scotland as in England the expenses of national defence were a cause of anger; and the mismanagement of military affairs by the king’s favourite, Buckingham, increased the irritation. It was brought to a head in Scotland by the “Act of Revocation,” under which all Church lands and Crown lands bestowed since 1542 were to be restored to the Crown. This Act once more united in opposition the nobles and the preachers; since 1596 they had not been in harmony. In 1587, as we saw, James VI. had annexed much of the old ecclesiastical property to the Crown; but he had granted most of it to nobles and barons as “temporal lordships.” Now, by Charles, the temporal lords who held such lands were menaced, the judges (“Lords of Session”) who would have defended their interests were removed from the Privy Council (March 1626), and, in August, the temporal lords remonstrated with the king through deputations.
In fact, they took little harm—redeeming their holdings at the rate of ten years’ purchase. The main result was that landowners were empowered to buy the tithes on their own lands from the multitude of “titulars of tithes” (1629) who had rapaciously and oppressively extorted these tenths of the harvest every year. The ministers had a safe provision at last, secured on the tithes, in Scotland styled “teinds,” but this did not reconcile most of them to bishops and to the Articles of Perth. Several of the bishops were, in fact, “latitudinarian” or “Arminian” in doctrine, wanderers from the severity of Knox and Calvin. With them began, perhaps, the “Moderatism” which later invaded the Kirk; though their ideal slumbered during the civil war, to awaken again, with the teaching of Archbishop Leighton, under the Restoration. Meanwhile the nobles and gentry had been alarmed and mulcted, and were ready to join hands with the Kirk in its day of resistance.
In June 1633 Charles at last visited his ancient kingdom, accompanied by Laud. His subjects were alarmed and horrified by the sight of prelates in lawn sleeves, candles in chapel, and even a tapestry showing the crucifixion. To this the bishops are said to have bowed,—plain idolatry. In the Parliament of June 18 the eight representatives of each Estate, who were practically all-powerful as Lords of the Articles, were chosen, not from each Estate by its own members, but on a method instituted, or rather revived, by James VI. in 1609. The nobles made the choice from the bishops, the bishops from the nobles, and the elected sixteen from the barons and burghers. The twenty-four were all thus episcopally minded: they drew up the bills, and the bills were voted on without debate. The grant of supply made in these circumstances was liberal, and James’s ecclesiastical legislation, including the sanction of the “rags of Rome” worn by the bishops, was ratified. Remonstrances from the ministers of the old Kirk party were disregarded; and—the thin end of the wedge—the English Liturgy was introduced in the Royal Chapel of Holyrood and in that of St Salvator’s College, St Andrews, where it has been read once, on a funeral occasion, in recent years.
In 1634-35, on the information of Archbishop Spottiswoode, Lord Balmerino was tried for treason because he possessed a supplication or petition which the Lords of the minority, in the late Parliament, had drawn up but had not presented. He was found guilty, but spared: the proceeding showed of what nature the bishops were, and alienated and alarmed the populace and the nobles and gentry. A remonstrance in a manly spirit by Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet, was disregarded.