The day following Balmerino was chosen President in place of Burlie—and the King consented to defer his ratification of the Acts passed on 22d of June 1640, till the return of the Scotch Commissioners; meanwhile, all the incendiaries who were tangible were imprisoned in the castle, and a variety of preparatory steps taken for energetic legislation; and the Covenant, as a matter of course, was displayed. On the 24th of August, the Treaty betwixt the Commissioners of both Kingdoms, ratified in the Parliament of England, was read; and the same day another Act of the English Parliament for payment of £110,000, of the “brotherly assistance” at Midsummer 1642, and a similar sum in 1643, was produced. Orders for disbanding the army, and paying it off were also issued. On the 25th of August, the King signed the treaty with England in face of Parliament. Next day, it was ratified as an Act, by touching with the sceptre, and the royal sign manual—ordered to be exemplified under the great seal—and delivered to the English Commissioners; and on the 28th, his Majesty, with consent of the Estates, ordained the Acts, passed in June 1640, being in number thirty-nine, to be published in his Majesty’s name, in terms of the treaty.[284]
And thus Charles I., with all these formal solemnities, ratified a series of statutes, which, up to that hour, were utterly destitute of legal sanction—abandoned all his ill-advised schemes of ecclesiastical policy, and substantially, as will speedily appear, relinquished the most important prerogatives of the crown—devolving its functions entirely into the hands of an encroaching and tyrannical popular convocation, whose sole authority was derived from the power of the sword, and not from the constitutional law of the land.
The extent to which the Estates meant to carry their pretensions, was speedily exemplified; for, on 6th September, the demand made by the Commissioners in March preceding, as to the appointment of the Officers of State, Privy Counsellors, and Lords of Session, was read in the house; and, on the 16th, the King signified to the Estates that he would nominate the executive officers of his government above alluded to, with “the advice” of the Estates; thus transferring the undoubted and constitutional prerogative, which, except in those troublous times, has ever belonged to the Sovereign of these realms, into the hands of the Parliament, and combining, in one popularly constituted and self-created body, both the legislative and executive functions: a system of government which has ever been found alike injurious to the cause of genuine freedom, and mischievous in its consequences to society, wherever it has existed. As might be expected, when “the house had receaved this gratious ansswer from his Majesties owne mouthe, they all arrosse, and bowed themselves to the ground.”[285] The results of this most unwise act of the King was speedily manifested in the apponitments which followed.
On the 20th day of the same month, (vide Acts, vol. v., 406,) the King exhibited lists of privy-counsellors and officers of state, expressing a hope that the house would only state reasonable objections. Argyle, however, vehemently objected to Morton as chancellor. The latter retorted that for twenty years he had educated and protected Argyle, and had obtained for him the numerous beneficial possessions and honours which he enjoyed. The advice of the house was procrastinated; and on the 22d a proposal was made that the election of the officers of state and counsellors should take place “by billets or schedules,” on the ground that “men, for feares or houpes, might stand in awe to use the liberty of their consciences!” The King justly remarked that, in his opinion, “that man that feared to voice freelie was not worthy to sitt in the House.” There was much debate on the subject. Morton, to avoid dissension betwixt the King and the People, besought that his name as chancellor might be withdrawn; and subsequently his Majesty proposed Loudoun as chancellor, and urged the house to give its fiat upon his list; and, at length, after much delay and heart-burning, Loudoun was named Lord Chancellor, with the unanimous concurrence of the house, but to the disappontment of Argyle, who evidently aspired to the office. During this interval, the struggles and intrigues which prevailed for place and for power, were incessant; and bitter jealousies among the “covenanted” statesmen, sprung up as rife as among men of less spiritual pretension. The treasury was put in commission, to divide the power and emolument among the parties, when Glencairn, Lindsay, and Argyle were fitted with places. Orbiston was patronised by Hamilton for the office of Clerk-Register, (Hay being under process,) while Johnston was the elect of his adherents; but, ultimately, Gibson of Durie was appointed and Johnston was dubbed a knight, and, for his consolation, appointed a Lord of Session, and Orbiston made Justice-Clerk. The Marquis of Huntly and eight other Lords nominated by the King, were superseded, and an equal number of the covenanting Lords substituted in their place as Members of Council. And, to make room for their friends, Sir Robert Spottiswood, (President of the Session,) Sir William Elphingston, (Justice-Clerk,) Sir John Hay, and Sir Patrick Nisbit, were removed as judges, and Leslie of Newton, Sir Thomas Hope, (the Lord Advocate’s son,) Hepburn of Huntly, and Johnston appointed in their stead. Having now moulded the executive departments to their own satisfaction, and reduced the royal authority to a shadow, the Parliament proceeded in the work of reformation at a rapid pace. The conformation of the executive at that time being eminently illustrative of the spirit of the Scottish Estates, we subjoin, in a note, a list of the functionaries who were installed under the first reformed Parliament of Charles I.,[286] leaving all details of Parliamentary proceedings and squabbles among the jarring factions which then prevailed, to be gathered from the appropriate chronicles of the times.
while the King was resident in Scotland during these transactions, and harrassed by the unceasing turmoils among the leading men in his northern parliament, and tortured with the rising flame of faction in England, the natural effects of those commotions, and the total disruption of society in Britain, were fearfully developed in Ireland. On the 1st of November 1641, his Majesty received, by express, accounts of a rebellion and widely extended massacre by the Papists of Ireland, of his Protestant subjects in that portion of his empire. Of that rebellion we shall extract an account from the pages of Hume, whose liberality will scarcely be called in question by the most liberal parties of the present day, in regard to religious sects of all sorts;[287] and this we prefer to any attempt of our own, lest our Presbyterian leanings might subject us to misconstruction in exhibiting the characteristics of that atrocious occurrence. It is an episode, doubtless, in the annals of the Church of Scotland, but an episode, closely connected with that history, and full of instruction at the present day—and not the less so that the conflagration which overspread Ireland with horrors, was kindled by the fires which were first lighted up on Dunse Law and at Newburn. The moral of that sad tale may be practically applied with important benefit in the passing hour, when disruption in our constitutional establishments is imminent, when democracy is stalking abroad with its torch and its dagger, and when incendiarism and murder are perpetrated in Ireland to an appalling extent with impunity, and seemingly beyond the reach of repression in that devoted land.
“After Strafford fell a victim to popular rage, the humors excited in Ireland by that great event could not be suddenly composed, but continued to produce the greatest innovations in the government.
“The British Protestants, transplanted in Ireland, having every moment before their eyes all the horrors of Popery, had naturally been carried into the opposite extreme, and had universally adopted the highest principles and practices of the Puritans: monarchy, as well as the hierarchy, was become odious to them; and every method of limiting the authority of the Crown, and detaching themselves from the King of England, was greedily adopted and pursued. They considered not, that as they scarcely formed the sixth part of the people, and were secretly obnoxious to the ancient inhabitants, their only method of supporting themselves was by maintaining royal authority, and preserving a great dependence on their mother-country. The English Commons, likewise, in their furious persecution of Strafford, had overlooked the most obvious consequences; and, while they imputed to him, as a crime, every discretionary act of authority, they despoiled all succeeding governors of that power, by which alone the Irish could be retained in subjection: and so strong was the current for popular government in all the three kingdoms, that the most established maxims of policy were everywhere abandoned, in order to gratify this ruling passion.
“Charles, unable to resist, had been obliged to yield to the Irish, as to the Scottish and English Parliaments; and found, too, that their encroachments still rose in proportion to his concessions. Those subsidies, which themselves had voted, they reduced by a subsequent vote to a fourth part: the court of high commission was determined to be a grievance; martial law abolished; the jurisdiction of the council annihilated; proclamations and acts of state declared of no authority; every order or institution, which depended on monarchy, was invaded; and the prince was despoiled of all his prerogative, without the least pretext of any violence or illegality in his administration.
“The old Irish remarked all these false steps of the English, and resolved to take advantage of them. Though their animosity against that nation, for want of an occasion to exert itself, seemed to be extinguished, it was only composed into a temporary and deceitful tranquillity: their interests, both with regard to property and religion, secretly stimulated them to a revolt. No individual of any sept, according to the ancient customs, had the property of any particular estate; but as the whole sept had a title to a whole territory, they ignorantly preferred this barbarous community before the more secure and narrower possessions assigned them by the English. An indulgence, amounting almost to a toleration, had been given to the Catholic religion: but so long as the churches and the ecclesiastical revenues were kept from the priests, and they were obliged to endure the neighbourhood of profane heretics, being themselves discontented, they continually endeavoured to retard any cordial reconciliations between the English and the Irish nations.
“There was a gentleman called Roger More, who, though of a narrow fortune, was descended from an ancient Irish family, and was much celebrated among his countrymen for valour and capacity: this man first formed the project of expelling the English, and asserting the independency of his native country. He secretly went from chieftain to chieftain, and roused up every latent principle of discontent: he maintained a close correspondence with Lord Maguire and Sir Phelim O’Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish: by conversation, by letters, by his emissaries, he represented to his countrymen the motives of a revolt. He observed to them, that by the rebellion of the Scots, and factions of the English, the King’s authority in Britain was reduced to so low a condition, that he never could exert himself with any vigour in maintaining the English dominion over Ireland; that the Catholics in the Irish House of Commons, assisted by the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative and the power of the lieutenant, as would much facilitate the conducting, to its desired effect, any conspiracy or combination which could be formed; that the Scots, having so successfully thrown off dependence on the crown of England, and assumed the government into their own hands, had set an example to the Irish, who had so much greater oppressions to complain of; that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions, suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties, were but a handful in comparison of the natives; that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions throughout the whole kingdom; that a great body of men, disciplined by the government, were now thrown loose, and were ready for any daring or desperate enterprise; that though the Catholics had hitherto enjoyed, in some tolerable measure, the exercise of their religion from the moderation of their indulgent prince, they must henceforth expect that the government will be conducted by other maxims and other principles; that the puritanical parliament, having at length subdued their sovereign, would, no doubt, as soon as they had consolidated their authority, extend their ambitious enterprises to Ireland, and make the Catholics in that Kingdom, feel the same furious persecution to which their brethren in England were at present exposed; and that a revolt in the Irish, tending only to vindicate their native liberty against the violence of foreign invaders, could never, at any time, be deemed rebellion; much less during the present confusion, when their prince was, in a manner, a prisoner; and obedience must be paid, not to him, but to those who had traitorously usurped his lawful authority.