During the progress of these agitations in England, the spirit which guided them extended to Scotland; and the multitude, who, once excited by popular movements, are ever liable to sudden impulses from incendiary excitement elsewhere, joined in the clamours of the English malcontents, threatening to carry another crusade into England, and to aid in the subversion of its Church, and against the King—a project in which they were countenanced by too many of the Scotch clergy and politicians of the day. Even Henderson, the best, and, perhaps, the brightest man of which Scotland could then boast, incurred unpopularity for opposing this piece of extravagance. Balmerino, Lothian, Lindsay, Archibald Johnston, and Hope the younger, having been sent up by the Scotch Committee of Estates, to negotiate with the English Parliament about sending troops to Ireland, were not contented to restrict themselves within the limits of their commission, but renewed their intrigues (as during the progress of the treaty of peace,) with the wildest of the English incendiaries; and, on the 15th of January, 1642, had the audacity, under a pretext of mediating betwixt the King and his English Parliament, to make written communications to both, embodying the sentiments which they cherished, for the destruction of Episcopacy in England and the planting of Presbytery in its stead. A theory was then prevalent, which has been revived even in more recent times, that Presbytery is clothed with a jus divinum—that it alone and exclusively is the form of church-government sanctioned by Scripture—and that it was the bounden duty of its professors, like the Propaganda of Rome, to exert themselves in its extension to all the nations of the earth. This phantasy was evidently not merely inconsistent, but irreconcilable with the maxims on which they themselves had avowedly acted in resisting the imposition of the Service Book and Episcopal Canons on Scotland: but no incongruity of principle or conduct is too gross for fanatics of any sort; and, as remarked by Dr Cook, “their vehement complaints against the Church of England are entitled to as little attention as the contemptuous aspersions which the zealots for prelacy, even at the present day, cast upon every form of ecclesiastical polity different from their own.” The King indignantly prohibited such officious interferences, and, on the 26th of the same month, wrote to the Chancellor of Scotland, requesting that the Council would prohibit these mischievous meddlers from indulging in such practices.[291] The Parliament, however, received this intervention most graciously, encouraged their sympathizing testimonies, and opened correspondence with the most bustling Covenanters in Scotland, to secure co-operation and support in their destructive projects.[292]
The differences betwixt the King and his English Parliament had now assumed a very decisive character; and for some time, it had been evident that no accommodation could be effected otherwise than by the ultima ratio—the sword. The King proceeded to York on the 10th of March; and, on the 23d day of April, went to Hull, with an attendance of 300 cavalry, his usual guard; but Sir John Hotham, the Governor, refused him admission within its walls with more than twelve attendants, assigning as his warrant an order from the Parliament.[293] The King pronounced him a traitor; and thus the civil war in England may be said to have commenced.
A very unprofitable question has often been agitated with regard to who began the civil war. In this particular stage of it, however, there seems to be no room for doubt: by the pretensions of the Parliament, or rather of the House of Commons, to the entire control over the militia and army, which the King refused to concede, but more especially by this mandate to the governor of Hull, to refuse admission to their sovereign, with such a military attendance as he might deem fitting—that body usurped a prerogative inherent in the crown from the earliest times of the monarchy, and inseparable from the supreme executive authority in every country.
Whatever may be said by partisan advocates as to the King’s intentions—of his procuring military munitions, pledging the crown jewels for these and such like pretexts—all these apologies for the Commons are utterly irrelevant; and the logic by which they are enforced, is akin to that by which the same faction, in a decree of constructive treason, converted a cluster of insufficient facts into an offence, for which they shed Stratford’s blood. That the command of the army—that military occupation of every place within his dominions—are essential elements in the prerogatives of a British monarch, (subject only to the constitutional control of the Commons, in withholding supplies for its maintenance, if they see cause,)—is a proposition that cannot be soundly questioned. And, independently of every other consideration, this single overt act of usurpation of supreme executive functions, was unconstitutional, and an undeniable act of rebellion on the part of the English Parliament.
While these high points of controversy were in dependence betwixt the King and the Commons, (for from the commencement of the troubles, the House of Lords unfortunately relinquished its independent jurisdiction, instead of operating as a check on the two other conflicting branches of the legislature,) the King was intent on raising forces not merely for the maintenance of his authority at home, but for the suppression of the Irish rebellion, and he purposed heading the forces to be supplied from England and Scotland for this latter purpose. The republicans of that day, however, in both kingdoms, were averse to this, fearing lest the King might win the attachment of the army, and thereby quash their projects. In Scotland, Loudoun the chancellor, by his Majesty’s command, convened the Council; and the work of agitation having preceded its meeting, multitudes thronged to Edinburgh, and petitioned the Council that nothing should be done “prejudicial to the work of reformation, and the treaty of union betwixt the kingdoms.” The most malign surmises as to the King’s intentions, were propagated and believed by the vulgar, while the real incendiaries in both kingdoms were scattering their firebrands far and wide, and by the most approved modes of open and clandestine excitement.
While the political affairs of the three kingdoms were in this unsettled and perilous state, and all the elements of social disorganization let loose in every quarter of these islands, the General Assembly of the church convened at St Andrews on the 27th of July 1642. We now proceed to record its Acts, and give in our supplement of documents, a detailed account of its proceedings by Baillie, which presents a very lively picture of the feverish state of the public mind at the period now referred to.