In 1635 Charles authorised a Book of Canons, heralding the imposition of a Liturgy, which scarcely varied, and when it varied was thought to differ for the worse, from that of the Church of England. By these canons, the most nakedly despotic of innovations, the preachers could not use their sword of excommunication without the assent of the Bishops. James VI. had ever regarded with horror and dread the licence of “conceived prayers,” spoken by the minister, and believed to be extemporary or directly inspired. There is an old story that one minister prayed that James might break his leg: certainly prayers for “sanctified plagues” on that prince were publicly offered, at the will of the minister. Even a very firm Presbyterian, the Laird of Brodie, when he had once heard the Anglican service in London, confided to his journal that he had suffered much from the nonsense of “conceived prayers.” They were a dangerous weapon, in Charles’s opinion: he was determined to abolish them, rather that he might be free from the agitation of the pulpit than for reasons of ritual, and to proclaim his own headship of the Kirk of “King Christ.”
This, in the opinion of the great majority of the preachers and populace, was flat blasphemy, an assumption of “the Crown Honours of Christ.” The Liturgy was “an ill-mumbled Mass,” the Mass was idolatry, and idolatry was a capital offence. However strange these convictions may appear, they were essential parts of the national belief. Yet, with the most extreme folly, Charles, acting like Henry VIII. as his own Pope, thrust the canons and this Liturgy upon the Kirk and country. No sentimental arguments can palliate such open tyranny.
The Liturgy was to be used in St Giles’ Church, the town kirk of Edinburgh (cleansed and restored by Charles himself), on July 23, 1637. The result was a furious brawl, begun by the women, of all presbyterians the fiercest, and, it was said, by men disguised as women. A gentleman was struck on the ear by a woman for the offence of saying “Amen,” and the famous Jenny Geddes is traditionally reported to have thrown her stool at the Dean’s head. The service was interrupted, the Bishop was the mark of stones, and “the Bishops’ War,” the Civil War, began in this brawl. James VI., being on the spot, had thoroughly quieted Edinburgh after a more serious riot, on December 17, 1596. But Charles was far away; the city had not to fear the loss of the Court and its custom, as on the earlier occasion (the removal of the Council to Linlithgow in October 1637 was a trifle), and the Council had to face a storm of petitions from all classes of the community. Their prayer was that the Liturgy should be withdrawn. From the country, multitudes of all classes flocked into Edinburgh and formed themselves into a committee of public safety, “The Four Tables,” containing sixteen persons.
The Tables now demanded the removal of the bishops from the Privy Council (December 21, 1637). The question was: Who were to govern the country, the Council or the Tables? The logic of the Presbyterians was not always consistent. The king must not force the Liturgy on them, but later, their quarrel with him was that he would not, at their desire, force the absence of the Liturgy on England. If the king had the right to inflict Presbyterianism on England, he had the right to thrust the Liturgy on Scotland: of course he had neither one right nor the other. On February 19, 1638, Charles’s proclamation, refusing the prayers of the supplication of December, was read at Stirling. Nobles and people replied with protestations to every royal proclamation. Foremost on the popular side was the young Earl of Montrose: “you will not rest,” said Rothes, a more sober leader, “till you be lifted up above the lave in three fathoms of rope.” Rothes was a true prophet; but Montrose did not die for the cause that did “his green unknowing youth engage.”
The Presbyterians now desired yearly General Assemblies (of which James VI. had unlawfully robbed the Kirk); the enforcement of an old brief-lived system of restrictions (caveats) on the bishops; the abolition of the Articles of Perth; and, as always, of the Liturgy. If he granted all this Charles might have had trouble with the preachers, as James VI. had of old. Yet the demands were constitutional; and in Charles’s position he would have done well to assent. He was obstinate in refusal.
The Scots now “fell upon the consideration of a band of union to be made legally,” says Rothes, their leader, the chief of the House of Leslie (the family of Norman Leslie, the slayer of Cardinal Beaton). Now a “band” of this kind could not, by old Scots law, be legally made; such bands, like those for the murder of Riccio and of Darnley, and for many other enterprises, were not smiled upon by the law. But, in 1581, as we saw, James VI. had signed a covenant against popery; its tenor was imitated in that of 1638, and there was added “a general band for the maintenance of true religion” (Presbyterianism) “and of the King’s person.” That part of the band was scarcely kept when the Covenanting army surrendered Charles to the English. They had vowed, in their band, to “stand to the defence of our dread Sovereign the King’s Majesty, his person and authority.” They kept this vow by hanging men who held the king’s commission. The words as to defending the king’s authority were followed by “in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true religion.” This appears to mean that only a presbyterian king is to be defended. In any case the preachers assumed the right to interpret the Covenant, which finally led to the conquest of Scotland by Cromwell. As the Covenant was made between God and the Covenanters, on ancient Hebrew precedent it was declared to be binding on all succeeding generations. Had Scotland resisted tyranny without this would-be biblical pettifogging Covenant, her condition would have been the more gracious. The signing of the band began at Edinburgh in Greyfriars’ Churchyard on February 28, 1638.
This Covenant was a most potent instrument for the day, but the fruits thereof were blood and tears and desolation: for fifty-one years common-sense did not come to her own again. In 1689 the Covenant was silently dropped, when the Kirk was restored.
This two-edged insatiable sword was drawn: great multitudes signed with enthusiasm, and they who would not sign were, of course, persecuted. As they said, “it looked not like a thing approved of God, which was begun and carried on with fury and madness, and obtruded on people with threatenings, tearing of clothes, and drawing of blood.” Resistance to the king—if need were, armed resistance—was necessary, was laudable, but the terms of the Covenant were, in the highest degree impolitic and unstatesmanlike. The country was handed over to the preachers; the Scots, as their great leader Argyll was to discover, were “distracted men in distracted times.”
Charles wavered and sent down the Marquis of Hamilton to represent his waverings. The Marquis was as unsettled as his predecessor, Arran, in the minority of Queen Mary. He dared not promulgate the proclamations; he dared not risk civil war; he knew that Charles, who said he was ready, was unprepared in his mutinous English kingdom. He granted, at last, a General Assembly and a free Parliament, and produced another Covenant, “the King’s Covenant,” which of course failed to thwart that of the country.
The Assembly, at Glasgow (November 21, 1638), including noblemen and gentlemen as elders, was necessarily revolutionary, and needlessly riotous and profane. It arraigned and condemned the bishops in their absence. Hamilton, as Royal Commissioner, dissolved the Assembly, which continued to sit. The meeting was in the Cathedral, where, says a sincere Covenanter, Baillie, whose letters are a valuable source, “our rascals, without shame, in great numbers, made din and clamour.” All the unconstitutional ecclesiastical legislation of the last forty years was rescinded,—as all the new presbyterian legislation was to be rescinded at the Restoration. Some bishops were excommunicated, the rest were deposed. The press was put under the censorship of the fanatical lawyer, Johnston of Waristoun, clerk of the Assembly.