Mr John Guthrie, the ousted Bishop of Moray, petitioned that Assembly that his benefice might be kept vacant for some time; but the Assembly disregarded his petition, and ordered his charge to be filled up, by the Presbytery of the bounds, without delay. They, however, reponed Mr Andrew Logie, who had been deposed by the Presbytery of Aberdeen; and overtures relative to the Universities (of which, to its credit, the Presbyterian Church never lost sight) were adopted, and ordered to be submitted to Parliament. The schism of the preceding year about private conventicles still continued; and their great patron, Mr Henry Guthrie, still fanned the flame, to quench which, it was necessary to “misken” or overlook the Aberdeen Act upon the subject, and frame a new one against impiety and schism. A case of Conscience, though for a political purpose, was submitted to the Assembly by a deputation from Parliament, relative to a Bond into which Montrose and others had entered, and which was thought inconsistent with the Covenant. The Assembly not only gave a deliverance suited to the views of the predominant party in Parliament, but volunteered their advice and assistance to it, which, however, was declined. In consequence, probably, of the brotherly communings which had recently taken place betwixt the Scotch and English nonconformists in London. A number of the latter wrote an Epistle to the Moderator touching Presbytery and Independency, and an answer was returned, intimating the unanimous adherence of the Scottish Church to Presbytery and its aversion to the other system; and a proposition was also mooted for framing a new Confession of Faith, Catechism, and Directory for public worship, &c., as a platform for an extension of Presbytery to England—a scheme which, ere long, was matured in the Westminster Assembly, and by the “Solemn League and Covenant,” of which we shall have to treat on a future occasion.
Of the minor concerns, we may mention the appointment of a committee to adjust the state of the churches in Orkney, Zetland, Lochaber, and the Isles; an application for erecting the Presbytery of Biggar; the rejection of applications from Aberdeen to translate George Gillespie and Edward Wright from Glasgow, and an Assistant at Scotscraig—but, to quiet the murmurs of the applicants, they got John Oswald from Pencaitland, which made room for David Calderwood, the well-known chronicler of the Kirk, from Crailing in Teviotdale. Among the other removes that took place at that Assembly, Mr Andrew Ker was transferred from Carriden to Linlithgow, William Bennet to Edinburgh, and John Colins to Glasgow; and Alexander Henderson sought and obtained leave to retire from Edinburgh to a rural parish, of which permission, however, he never availed himself. During the sitting of that Assembly, an awkward occurrence took place in the person of a Mr Thomas Lamb, a minister in Peebleshire, who, having killed a man on the road betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, was tried, condemned, and executed for the act. Many complaints by ministers for want of adequate stipends, were given in, and referred, as a matter of necessity, to the Parliament—the Church not having yet discovered any mode of accomplishing that object, otherwise than by the civil authority, although in these four last Assemblies it had assumed the prerogative of removing and transplanting ministers at its pleasure, without consulting either patrons or people, so far as we have been able to discover. Many matters were left over unfinished, and remitted to a Commission—the first, it has been alleged, (erroneously, we think,) in the history of the Church, on whom such powers were devolved. The Assembly terminated by appointing its next meeting at St Andrew’s, on the 27th of July, 1642.
As already noticed in a preceding chapter, the treaty of peace betwixt the two kingdoms was concluded on the 7th of August 1641.[278] Immediately after, on the 9th, his Majesty left London, and proceeded to Scotland. He arrived about the middle of that month at Edinburgh, having, in the course of his journey, interchanged courtesies with the chief of the Scottish army, which was still in the north of England. But his reception was far different in the Scottish capital from that which he had experienced in 1633 on the occasion of his coronation. The Covenanters were now triumphant in all their pretensions, not solely by moral, but visibly by the influence of overbearing physical force. By the terms of the treaty, and its inevitable sequences, the executive sceptre was wrenched from the hand of the King; the prerogatives of monarchy were one and all extinguished in Scotland and assumed by the Estates; and, as he had formerly meditated the assumption of undue authority, he now tasted a bitter retribution. Charles, the descendant of above a hundred Scottish Kings, virtually bowed his “discrowned head” in the palace of his fathers, beneath the victorious banner of “THE COVENANT.”
The Scottish Estates, which had been continued from time to time, reassembled on the 15th of July 1641, before the treaty was yet completed. The convention at first consisted of one hundred and forty-five members, of whom thirty-nine were of the nobility, forty-nine barons, and fifty-seven burgesses.[279] Lord Burlie was chosen President; and it was agreed on that the Estates should sit till the 17th of August, when the King or his Commissioner was expected to be present, and should prepare business, but not determine anything except the most urgent affairs for the public service. This Parliament was new-modelled, arbitrarily, (as indeed were all its proceedings from the first,) by the exclusion of the eldest sons of Peers, who previously had access to it—an exclusion which excited no little discontent among the rising aristocracy—and the Clergy, the Lords of Session, the Lord Advocate, and “all disaffected members,” were debarred from taking any part in its deliberations; and, among other stretches of its assumed intrinsic power, it ordered Traquair’s Declaration, as already noticed,[280] at the close of the Assembly 1639, to be delete from the register of Privy Council; as if such a proceeding could extinguish the document, which still stands on record, though partially obliterated. In short, it was a packed and arbitrary convention, having no legal authority, according to the ancient constitution of Scotland, until after the King had sanctioned its past and pending proceedings by an ex post facto concurrence, in terms of the concessions which had been extorted from him by the joint coercion of the House of Commons in England, and the Scotch Commissioners in London.
On the 17th of July, Among their preparatory measures, proceedings against the incendiaries were commenced. These were John Earl of Traquair, Sir Robert Spottiswood of Dunipace,[281] Sir John Hay, Clerk-Register, Dr Walter Balcanquell, and John Maxwell, late Bishop of Ross; and in the list of the proscribed were James Earl of Montrose, Archibald Lord Napier, Sir George Stirling of Keir, and Sir Lewis Stewart of Blackball.
It would be foreign to our task were we to enter on the grounds of imputation against these parties; and it belongs rather to the biography of the individuals, or the political history of the times, than to our humble track, to elucidate the nature and extent of their alleged offences against the compulsory unity prescribed by the Covenant and its rigid interpreters—armed with supreme and irresistible power. But we may be permitted to remark, that it is no ways surprising that good and honourable men, who, either as avowed friends of the King, or as honest Covenanters, in 1637, had voluntarily adopted, or from compulsion yielded to a predominant power, discovered good and sufficient grounds, in the interval of four years of intestine commotion, intrigue, and factious procedure—more especially after the invasion of England and the treaty in London—to shrink from following in the courses of the “Root and Branch” combination which had sprung up in both kingdoms during the past year. Without at all entering on the minutiæ, we are not prepared to concur with some enthusiastic admirers of the Covenanters in condemning those proscribed individuals, because they deprecated or dissented from the radicalism (a modern term, but sufficiently intelligible) of the seventeenth century, being satisfied perhaps, as we believe they were, that it was not identical either with reform or religion, and that its spirit and its tendency were inevitably, as they proved to be at no distant period, subversive alike of a constitutional monarchy, and of the civil and religious liberties of the land. Betwixt the conclusion of the treaty of Berwick and that of London, the cause of the Covenant had entirely changed its character; and if men of the present day will study with calmness and impartiality the whole progress of these troubles, and examine carefully the acts of the Scotch Convention, and those of its negotiators, he cannot fail, we think, to discern, in the authentic records of Parliament and otherwise, the most conclusive proofs that that convention exercised an unlawful and despotical authority, and employed it for the most vindictive and selfish purposes. Let one of its decrees suffice as a test of the ruling power. The convention declared, that in the proceedings against the proscribed individuals, members of the house might be witnesses as well as judges!
But we proceed with the narrative of events. The King arrived at Holyrood about six o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday the 14th of August, having but a small attendance. The Palatine, however, with the Duke of Lennox, the Marquis of Hamilton, and Lord Willoughby, were in his train. On the Sunday following, he attended divine service in the Chapel-Royal, where Alexander Henderson officiated. The King, however, did not return in the afternoon; “but,” says Balfour, “being wearie, reposed himself in privat;” and Baillie tells us, with his wonted simplicity, that “being advertised by Mr Alexander, he promised not to do so again. Mr Alexander in the morning, and evening before supper, daily says prayers, reads a chapter and sings a psalm, and says prayers again. The King hears all duly; and we hear none of his complaints for want of a liturgy or any ceremonies. On Monday, the King came not abroad.”
Balfour, however, with all the minuteness and circumstance befitting a “Lord Lion King-at-Arms,” narrates a number of particulars. The King held a council, where it was discussed, whether there should be a “ryding” of the Parliament next day; but, as may easily be conceived, the King had no spirit, in his present humiliating circumstances, to take part in a hollow-hearted pageant; and it was resolved that he should hear sermon in the Abbey Church, and then proceed in his coach to the Parliament. “After Mr Andrew Ramsay’s long sermon,”[282] this course was adopted; and we cannot better paint the scene than we find it in Balfour’s Annals:[283]—
“The Marques Hamilton ves ordained to beare the croune, the Earle Argyle the scepter, and the Earle of Sutherland the suord.
“The Kinges Maᵗⁱᵉ came to the hous about 11 houres, the heraulds preceiding the honors, and the trumpets them.