The exasperation thus created was increased by a feud betwixt Hamilton and Loudoun, about certain leases of teinds enjoyed by the latter; and the ferment excited by all these means was extreme.
These Commissioners went to Oxford immediately afterwards, (February,) when the first proposition submitted to the King was contained in a petition from the Commission of Assembly against Prelacy and Popery. Though enforced by the private advice of Loudoun, that the King’s acquiescence on this point would insure him the support of the Scotch nation, he refused to yield, and soon after published a formal answer to the application. Failing in this, the Commissioners urged their mediation, and that a Parliament in Scotland should be called, although, by an express act in 1641, the meeting of that Parliament was, with consent of all parties, postponed till 1644. The King declined to accede to either of these demands; and the Commissioners, after being refused permission to go to London, returned to Scotland, chagrined with the failure of their mission, and the coldness of their reception at the King’s Court.
The Scotch agitators, however, were not to be thus baulked in their designs. Having a complete ascendancy in all the executive departments—in the Council—in the Committee of Conservators—in the Commission for public burdens—a meeting of these three bodies was convened on the 10th of May 1643, at the instigation of the Assembly’s Standing Commission. It was then proposed that, in consequence of the warlike position on the English frontier, it was necessary to put the Border in a state of defence, and that for this purpose a Convention of the Estates should be called without the King’s previous sanction. This was opposed by Hamilton, the Lord Advocate, and others; but all legal objections were overborne, and the convention was summoned by the Chancellor for the 22d of June; an apology having, in the meantime, been sent to the King for this unwonted proceeding.
The meeting of the Convention was heralded through the country by a fast and political sermons. In order to quiet the scruples of many honest and loyal Presbyterians, a scheme was devised for this purpose, by getting up a Remonstrance from the Assembly’s Commission, setting forth the danger of the Church and nation. This Remonstrance pressed the Convention to make common cause with their English brethren; and although it did not expressly mention the employment of an armed force for the purpose, it was clearly implied that this, as on former occasions, should be the mode of supporting religion; with this difference, however, that, in 1639 and 1640, this had been done in their own national quarrel, whereas now it would be an intervention in the affairs of a foreign country. The Convention thus prompted and cheered on to the crusade by multitudes who had thronged to Edinburgh, resolved to arm the nation, and ordered troops forthwith to be levied. Before the deliberations of the Convention terminated, a messenger from the English Parliament arrived, and, with the characteristic policy of the times, intimated from it, that, in conformity with the communications to and from the last General Assembly, an Assembly of Divines was about to be convened at Westminster, for regulating the worship and polity to be introduced into the Church of England, and uniformity to be established in these matters in both Kingdoms.[298]
These were the preliminaries to the meeting of the General Assembly on the 2d of August 1643; and to the Acts of that Assembly we now refer for a full developement of the spirit which emanated from that body. The incidents of a political nature, and the sequences which followed it, will form the subject of our next introductory chapter.
In the foregoing pages, we have endeavoured to trace, with an unbiassed hand, a faithful picture of the ecclesiastical state of Scotland during a period of six eventful years. In the progress of the scenes which we have attempted feebly to delineate, we have marked the career of the Covenanters from the earlier virtuous and patriotic resistance which they made to lawless and arbitrary power on the part of the monarch, in which our honest judgment and our cordial sympathies were completely on their side.
We have now reached a new epoch in their history, which is of a more equivocal character, and which has been the subject of much controversy. On this ground, therefore, we deem it our duty to abstain from all remark or reflection, as altogether unsuited to the nature of our undertaking—leaving the documentary evidence which we present to make its own impressions on the reader’s mind. We shall thus avoid entangling ourselves in the mazes of party prejudice and contention in reference to “The Solemne League and Covenant,”[299] without compromising our own views of the history of that period; and for this course we see abundant reason, when we consider some recent events in the movements of our Northern Church, which have produced a degree of excitement that is but little calculated to ensure a dispassionate consideration of the troubles in other times. Henceforward, therefore, our Introductory Notes shall be limited to a Chronological Index of events connected with the proceedings of the Church, in which it shall be our study to avoid everything that can by possibility disturb the nerves of the most fastidious partisans of any class of opinions.