“The Moderatour answered—That punishment is not in the hands of Kirkmen.
“The Shireff of Teviotdaill [Douglas of Cavers], being asked his judgment, said—Ye were offendit with a churchmans hard sentence alreadie; but, truelie, I could execute that sentence with all my heart, becaus it is more propper to me, and I am better acquainted with hanging.
“My Lord Kirkcudbright said—It is a great pittie that many honest men in Christendome, for writing little bookes called pamphlets, should want eares; and false knaves, for writing such volumes, should brooke heads.”
These “random ebullitions” require no commentary; but in such manifestations of character we discover that spirit of fanatical intolerance, which at no distant period, involved the two British kingdoms in all the horrors of civil war—consigned their Sovereign to the block—rent the Church of Scotland into two ferocious factions, and finally subjected it to contumely and extinction at the hands of a canting usurper.
There is another point in these proceedings which must ever excite regret and reprehension—we mean that act by which they sought and obtained the Commissioner’s sanction, and that of the Privy Council, to a compulsory subscription to the Covenant. “This ordinance,” says Dr Cook, in his History of the Church of Scotland,[240] “so popular throughout the kingdom, was, in fact, an engine of severe persecution. It required, by authority, from all ranks of men, and particularly from those whose opinions were suspected, subscription to a number of propositions, about which multitudes must have been totally ignorant, and to maxims respecting ecclesiastical polity, which it is impossible to suppose were not condemned by numbers, who, having for many years lived in communion with an Episcopal Church, could not be persuaded that such a Church was unlawful. So long as signing the Covenant was a voluntary expression of attachment to a particular cause, much might have been said in its justification. But now, when it was required by an Act of Council and the Church, which it was dangerous to disobey—now that it could be forced by the zealots of a sect upon all whom they chose to harass—it must be abhorred as occasioning, to the conscientious part of the community, much wretchedness, and as calculated to diffuse that relaxation of principle which is the bitter fruit of every deviation from the tolerant spirit of pure religion.”
Concurring as we do most cordially in these just and enlightened views, we need only add, that no man will defend this blot in the escutcheon of the Covenanters, who would not, if he had the power, imitate their example.
Before finally taking leave of the Assembly of 1639, we cannot overlook the fact, that, in all the proceedings, either in it or in that of the preceding year, or in the voluminous details of grievances of which they complained, we can find no trace whatever of lay patronage being regarded or even mentioned as one of the number. It is equally remarkable, too, that both Henderson and Dickson repeatedly state the doctrine of the lawfulness of civil interference in matters ecclesiastical; and that the notions which, at a subsequent period, sprung up and distracted and divided the Church, as to the anti-scriptural nature of lay patronage, and about the independence and inherent power of an established Church, (established too on certain precise and definite terms), do not appear at that time to have been either agitated or even mooted. We merely note the circumstance as an historical fact, without at all entering on a controversy in the matter. But certainly the eager desire, manifested incessantly, for a ratification of the ecclesiastical constitutions by the civil authority, emphatically implied, that, without such sanction, these applicants did not regard their own Acts as sufficient to clothe them with complete authority.
The day after the Assembly dissolved, being the 30th of August 1639, the Parliament—which had been prorogued, from time to time, to the 31st of that month—convened, and was opened with all the state of the ancient “Ryding of Parliament.” A preliminary difficulty, however, occurred to its constitution, in consequence of the absence of the Prelates, who, by the subsisting laws and usages of Parliament, formed a component part of it. Prelacy had been abolished by an Act of Assembly, but that was not yet ratified by Parliament; and, in order to supply the place of the Bishops as one of the Estates, it was agreed that, for the present, the Commissioner should, in their stead, select eight of the Nobles to be among the Lords of the Articles; being a committee to digest all business for the consideration, and adoption, or rejection of the whole house. The Earl of Argyle entered a protestation that the present mode of choosing the Lords of the Articles should be no precedent for the future; and intimated in it an innovation on the future constitution of Parliament, by introducing a different mode of naming the Lords of the Articles from that which had heretofore obtained—namely, by excluding the nomination of the Crown or its Commissioner, and giving to the Lords, Barons, and Burgesses the nomination from their several bodies. This initial difficulty being overcome, the Commissioner, on the 6th of September, signed the Covenant—not as Commissioner, but as Treasurer; and on the same day a Bill for the ratification of the Act of Assembly 17th August, anent the bygone evils of the Church, and the Supplication against Dr Balcanquel, were passed in the Articles; while a Petition, presented by the Commissioner, in favour of the ousted Ministers, was refused; and a Bill for rescinding the Acts in favour of Episcopacy was handed to the Lord Advocate, to be revised: and all this passed amidst a profusion of protestations, which it is unnecessary to notice.
On the 11th of September, there was a warm debate on the proposal to bring down the vengeance of Parliament on Balcanquel and his “Large Declaration,” in which Traquair resisted it as offensive to the King, while Argyle and Rothes supported the vindictive Petition from the Assembly; but the Acts as to the constitution of Parliament, &c., made some advance; and Baillie, in a letter dated October 12, gives a very striking picture of the condition to which the contending parties had reduced themselves. “The affairs of our Parliament,” (says he, vol. i, p. 188,) “goes but this and that way, if we look to men; our estate is but yet wavering up and down in the scales of a very dubious event. Our main Acts are but scarce past the Articles. The Commissioner either threatens to rise, or to protest in the day of the riding, or to make declarations equivalent to protestations, or to deny the sceptre to our most substantial desires. To preveen this, we have been content to sit still, half-idle, thrice so long time as ever any Parliament in our land did continue, waiting till posts upon posts, running up and down, for carrying to us the Kings pleasure. It seems our enemies credit is not yet extinguished at Court. The Castle of Edinburgh is daily made stronger. From London, the other week, arrived at Dumbarton a great ship, with cannon and other munition, with an English captain, and divers English soldiers. Division is much laboured for in all our estate. They speak of too great prevailing with our Nobles. Hume evidently fallen off; Montrose not unlike to be ensnared with the fair promises of advancement; Marischal, Sutherland, and others, somewhat doubted; Sheriff of Teviotdale, and some of the Barons, inclining the Court-way. Divisions betwixt the merchants and Crafts of Edinburgh; and so, by consequence, of all the Burghs in Scotland, carefully fostered by our Commissioner; our prime Clergy like to fall foul upon the question of our new private meetings.”
In this state of distraction and doubt, matters continued—the views and sentiments of the King having been sufficiently indicated in his letters to Traquair, whose policy was, of course, guided by his Master’s orders. On the 24th of September, an Act for rescinding all the Acts in favour of Episcopacy was voted and passed in the Articles, under a protestation by the Commissioner against that or any others prejudicial to his Majesty’s authority; and the Act as to the constitution of the Parliament was also passed. While matters were thus agitated and protracted; the Parliament was continued on the 24th October till the 14th of November, when the Lord Advocate presented a royal warrant for proroguing it till the 2d of June 1640, the Covenanters entering their protestation.[241] Thus the King baffled all the hopes of the Covenanting party, of obtaining a ratification of their favourite ecclesiastical degrees—a result attributable, no doubt, in a great measure, to the extreme violence of some of their propositions, of which the King availed himself by stating, as the ground of adjournment, that various things had been propounded which trenched on his civil authority and government.[242]