James committed him to the Tower for his contumacy (1606), where he kept him four years, and then banished him for life. He went to reside at Sedan, where he died in 1622. His nephew, James Melville, was shut up at Berwick, and died six years before his uncle; the rest of the preachers were banished to remote districts of Scotland, wide apart from each other.
To put the finish to this daring change, James determined to make a journey to Scotland himself in 1617. On leaving that country he had assured his Scottish subjects that he would visit his ancient capital at least once in three years: fourteen years had now elapsed without his redeeming his word, his poverty having hitherto presented an insurmountable obstacle. But he had now consented to yield up the cautionary towns, Brell, Flushing, and Rammekens, for 2,728,000 florins instead of 8,000,000, which were due to him. He had been induced to this by his necessities and the persuasions of Secretary Winwood, who was said to have received £29,000 from the Dutch for his services on the occasion. James now discharged some of his most pressing debts, and obtained a loan of £96,000, with which he set forward to Scotland in the spring of 1617.
On the 7th of June the Scottish Estates met, and James excluded such of the representatives as he knew were hostile to his object of establishing the English Church in all its forms and authority, as the State Church of Scotland for ever. But the Peers, alarmed lest he should restore to his pet church the lands of which they now were in possession, rejected the articles which he recommended. To win over these nobles, James invited them to a secret conference, in which he assured them that no revocation of these lands should be made. Reassured on this head, the Peers were ready to vote as he pleased, and he opened the Estates in one of his vaunting speeches about his power, in which he told his audience that "he had nothing more at heart than to reduce their barbarity to the sweet civility of their neighbours; and if the Scots would be as docible to learn the goodness of the English as they were teachable to limp after their ill, then he should not doubt of success; for they had already learnt of the English to drink healths, to wear coaches and gay clothes, to take tobacco, and to speak a language which was neither English nor Scottish."
In this insolent speech the king might have included himself both as to clothes and language; but these were small matters in comparison with those which he had in view. He brought in a Bill to enact that what the king might determine upon regarding the Church, with the concurrence of the bishops and a certain number of the clergy, should be good in law. At this proposition the ministers were instantly in arms, and presented so determined a remonstrance against it, that he became afraid and gave it up, saying it was unnecessary to give him that by statute which was already his by authority of the Crown. He managed, however, to carry a Bill adding chapters to the bishoprics, regulating the appointment of bishops, and also one for converting the hereditary offices of sheriffs into annual ones, which he would thus be able to influence. Never, surely, with a spirit so essentially cowardly, was there a monarch so ingrained with the bigotry of absolutism, or who so perseveringly laboured to annihilate every liberty of the subject, and leave the nation a base and soulless heritage of the Crown. But the nation was not thus to be trodden into a horde of serfs; and though James escaped to a quiet tomb, it took a terrible vengeance on his children, whom he had inoculated with his incorrigible lust of absolutism.
As nothing more was to be obtained from Parliament, the uncouth tyrant wended his way to St. Andrews, where he had planned a severe retribution for the remonstrant ministers, from a more obsequious tribunal. There the ministers having met at his summons, he singled out Simpson, Ewart, and Calderwood, who had signed the remonstrance which baulked him of his full intentions, and brought them before the High Commission Court, and condemned Simpson and Ewart to suspension and imprisonment. Calderwood, who by his influence and ability excited most of all his dread and resentment, he banished for life. Having thus given the ministers a sharp lesson, he now announced to them that it was his will that the whole ritual of the English Church should be adopted in Scotland in five articles, the name of which afterwards became famous, namely:—1st, That the Eucharist should be received in a kneeling, and not in a sitting, posture, as had been hitherto the mode in Scotland; 2nd, That the Sacrament should be given to the sick at their own houses when they were in danger of death; 3rd, That baptism should, in like cases, be administered in private houses; 4th, That the youth should be confirmed by the bishops; and 5th, That the festivals of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whit-Sunday, should be observed in Scotland just as in England. These commands were received with unequivocal marks of displeasure by the ministers, but the fate of the three remonstrants availed to keep them silent for a time, and James regarded his plans as fully accomplished; but presently the preachers fell on their knees and implored him to refer the Five Articles to the General Assembly of the Kirk. James for some time refused to listen to them, but on Patrick Galloway assuring him that matters should be so managed that all should go right, he consented.
He then kept his Whitsuntide in the English fashion, with all his crouching prelates and courtiers around him; and afterwards took his way homeward, in the full persuasion that he had succeeded in his object. Time told a very different tale; nor was he himself long in perceiving that, though he had overawed, he had not subdued the sturdy Scottish clergy. Scarcely had he reached England when he learned that the Scots, both clergy and laity, were loud in denouncing the administration of the Eucharist in private houses as a remnant of Popery; the revival of the festivals of Christmas as the return to the ancient Saturnalia; and of those of Easter and Whitsuntide as the renewal of the feasts of the Jews. And on the 24th of November the ministers, in their assembly at St. Andrews, confirmed none of the Five Articles except that of the administration of the Sacrament at the houses of the sick, provided that the sick person first took an oath that he or she did not expect to recover. James was highly enraged. He ordered the observance of the Five Articles to be commanded by proclamation, and withdrew the promised augmentations of stipend. Nor did the king give way in the slightest degree. The next year he managed the Assembly so far, through Lord Binning, as to carry the Articles by a majority of eighty-six against forty-one; and in 1621, three years later, he obtained an Act of Parliament enforcing these Articles on the repugnant spirit of the people. Dr. Laud, whose name we now meet for the first time, afterwards to become so notorious, even urged James to go further lengths; but his fatal advice was destined to act with more force on the next generation.
Whilst James's hand was in, however, he hit upon another mode of incensing the Puritans, and showing his dislike of them. He had been extremely annoyed by the severity of the Presbyterian manners during his visit; and when, on returning, the Catholics of Lancashire presented to him petitions complaining of the strictness of the Puritans, who forbade those sports and recreations to which they had been accustomed on Sundays after service, adding that it drove men to the ale-house, a bright idea occurred to him, and he determined to publish a Book of Sports, encouraging the people on Sundays, after church, to play at running, leaping, archery, morris-dances, and to enjoy their church-ales and festivities as aforetime. These sports, however, were not to be indulged in by the recusants, nor any who had not attended Church in the morning. He also prohibited on Sundays bull and bear-baitings, interludes, and bowls; the last, probably, because they led to gambling. He restored all the jollity of may-poles and rush-bearings.
Many of the established clergy were conscientiously opposed to this mode of spending the Sunday, which appeared to them to savour greatly of Papacy; but James persisted in his scheme, and not only published his Book of Sports, but ordered the bishops, each in his own diocese, to publish his ordinance regarding the Sunday amusements. Abbot, the Primate, is said to have steadfastly refused to read the book in his own church at Croydon, but the other bishops complied. Laud was zealous in its promulgation, and in after years roused the stern and undaunted spirit of the reformers by recommending the revival of the Book to Charles I.
In Ireland the same system had been pursued by James from the commencement of his reign, of endeavouring to force the consciences of his subjects into the mould of his own ideas. On the death of Elizabeth the Irish had openly resumed the Catholic worship in most of the South of Ireland. Mountjoy, the Lord-Deputy, issued a proclamation for its immediate suppression; but the fear of the old lioness of a queen being removed, they treated his orders with contempt and defiance. Mountjoy marched down upon them, and compelled submission at the point of the bayonet, and then passed over to England, having with him the two great chiefs, Tyrone and O'Donnell, with a number of their followers.
These chieftains being well received by James, Tyrone being restored to his honours and estates, and O'Donnell created Earl of Tyrconnel, the Irish conceived wonderful hopes of the clemency and liberality of James. They sent a deputation to join the two earls in petitioning for the full enjoyment of their religion, but they found themselves grievously deceived. James declared that he would never consent to anything of the kind, but so long as he had a hundred men left, he would fight to the death to put down so idolatrous a worship. In his anger he committed four of the delegates to the Tower, where he kept them three months; and this practice of committing Irish deputies to prison for daring to present petitions on such subjects, became his regular practice.