The Church of Scotland, as established by Knox and his contemporaries, was, like Switzerland (from which they brought the idea), a republic. It acknowledged no head but Christ, nor any concern which the State had with it, except to furnish the support of the ministers whose lives were devoted to the civilisation and religious improvement of the community. The minister and the lay elders of a parish constituted the parochial assembly, which governed all the spiritual affairs of that little circle; a certain number of these assemblies constituted a presbytery, which heard all appeals from the parochial assemblies, and sanctioned the appointment, suspension, or dismissal of their ministers. Beyond the presbytery extended the provincial synod, and the General Assembly claimed the supreme management of the affairs of the Church under God.
This free form of the Scottish Church had always been extremely repugnant to James's despotic notions. Even when he professed to admire its constitution as the purest and most perfect on earth, he was writhing under its authority; and no sooner did he ascend the English throne than he avowed his real opinion of its inconsistency with monarchy. The hierarchy of England delighted him; he regarded it as the surest bulwark of the Throne, and bishops he seemed to regard as the guarantees of royal security. "No bishop no king," was his favourite motto; and the hatred of presbytery which he expressed at Hampton Court led him to seek its utter overthrow in Scotland. He knew the sturdy materials that he had to deal with in the Scottish ministry and people, who had driven out his mother in their hatred of Catholicism; yet this did not deter him from endeavouring to plant episcopacy as firmly in Scotland as in England. He looked on the spirit and form of the Scottish Church but as one remove from republicanism in the State; and his first step, taken in 1605, was a bold one, being no less than to assume the right to prorogue the General Assembly at will. This was at once annihilating the theocratic constitution of the Assembly, and placing the king at its head. This measure was carried out by Sir George Home the Lord Treasurer of Scotland, afterwards Earl of Dunbar. The ministers, though prorogued, met again in defiance of the royal fiat, but were dissolved again and again. The ministers from nine presbyteries still boldly met in assertion of the paramount right of the Church, at Aberdeen, called themselves "an Assembly," appointed a moderator, and before dissolving at the command of the Council, adjourned their sitting to a fixed time that year.
ANDREW MELVILLE BEFORE THE SCOTTISH PRIVY COUNCIL. (See p. 462.)
Thirteen of the most prominent ministers were immediately arrested on the charge of having violated the Act of 1584, "for maintenance of the royal power over all estates." The jury was packed by Dunbar, and six of the most refractory clergy were condemned as guilty of high treason, and banished for life. They retired into Holland and France, and were followed thither by numbers of their admirers. Meanwhile, at home, undaunted by this lawless exercise of power, the ministers offered up prayers for their exiled brethren, whom they boldly proclaimed from their pulpits as martyrs to the freedom of the faith; and unsilenced by the menaces of the Court, loudly warned the people of the impending danger to the Church.
But James, with the blind hardihood of a true Stuart, went on, and in 1606 appointed thirteen clergymen to the ancient abolished bishoprics, and gave them precedency in the synods and Assembly. The ministers refused to submit to their authority, and, as they were unsupported by the old reverence, treated their assumed dignity with contempt. But James went on to repeal the Act which had confiscated the episcopal estates, endowed the bishops, and made them moderators of both synods and presbyteries within their own districts. He erected two courts of High Commission, and indeed gave them a power such as their predecessors had never possessed. In 1610 three of these bishops went to England, and received episcopal ordination from the English prelates, and on their return conferred it on their colleagues. And finally, in 1612, it was enacted by the Scottish Parliament that all General Assemblies should only be appointed by the Crown; that the bishops only should present to livings; that they should admit no one who would not first take the Oath of Supremacy to the king, and of canonical obedience to the bishop; that they should possess the power of deprivation and the right of visitation, each in his own diocese.
Andrew Melville, the successor of Knox, boldly though respectfully denied these innovations, asserting the freedom of conscience, and its immunity from the power of any earthly potentate. When pressed by some slavish Scottish lords to conform, he said: "My lords, I am a free subject of Scotland, a free kingdom, that has laws and privileges of its own. By these I stand. No legal citation has been issued against me; nor are you and I in our own country, where such an inquisition, so oppressive as the present, is condemned by Parliament. I am bound by no law to criminate or to furnish accusations against myself. My lords, remember what you are; mean as I am, remember that I am a free-born Scotsman, to be dealt with as you would be dealt with yourselves, according to the laws of the Scottish nation."
This was noble and patriotic language; but Melville had to deal with a vain despot, who declared himself above all laws. He insisted on their attending the royal chapel to hear the preaching of his bishops. The plain presbyterian Scots were scandalised at both what they saw and heard there: at the ceremonies, the gilded altar, the chalices, and tapers, but above all, at the slavish doctrines of those courtly preachers. The Scottish ministers did not hesitate to express their contempt and indignation at the whole spectacle, and Melville ridiculed the entire service in a Latin epigram. For this audacity James summoned him before his Privy Council; but the preacher's blood was now chafed beyond restraint, for he and his colleagues, though they were impatient to get away from what they considered this idolatrous scene, where the conduct of the bishops and clergy was by no means edifying, had been compelled to stay. So far from expressing any regret for his satire on the royal mode of worship, he denounced in the strongest terms the whole system of the Anglican Church, and in his excitement seized the surplice of the primate, and shook angrily what he called the Romish rags of the Archbishop of Canterbury.