In October 1625, a Convention of Estates was held for the consideration of this interesting topic; but the proposition was rejected by nearly all the nobility and gentry, many of whom had profited from the plunder of the ecclesiastical patrimony; and Bishop Burnet[3] gives a very characteristic anecdote of the proceedings on the occasion. The Earl of Nithsdale, as Commissioner, had been instructed to exact an unconditional surrender; but the parties interested had previously conspired, and resolved that, if they could not otherwise deter him from prosecuting the measure, “they would fall upon him and all his party, in the old Scottish manner, and knock them on the head;” and so deadly was their purpose, that one of their number, who was blind, (Belhaven,) and was seated beside the Earl of Dumfries, had clutched hold of him with one hand, and was prepared, had any stir arisen, to plunge a dagger in his heart. Nithsdale, however, seeing the stormy aspect of the conclave, disguised his instructions, and returned to London disappointed in his mission.
A convocation of the clergy, however, whose views were directed to a complete restoration of its ancient patrimony to the Church, and a large body of the landed proprietors, who had suffered from the rapacity of the Lords of Erection, and titulars, who had obtained the Church property and tithes, were favourable to a revocation—animated by the hope that, in any new distribution of the revenues, a larger portion of these would fall to their lot from the royal favour than they could ever expect from the individual overlords and improprietors. These two classes, therefore, co-operated in supporting the views of the King, for a resumption of church property and tithes; and these movements resulted in the well known arbitration, by which his Majesty obtained a general surrender of the impropriated tithes and benefices, under which the law upon this subject was ultimately settled by the enactments in the Statute-book,[4] leaving unavoidably an extended spirit of discontent among the disappointed parties in the most influential classes of the community.
One of the main objects of Charles’ policy being thus partially accomplished, he proceeded to Scotland in the summer of 1633, for the purpose of being crowned in his native kingdom. His Majesty’s progress and inauguration were distinguished by unwonted splendour, and he received a cordial welcome from his northern subjects; but some parts of the ceremonial gave deep offence to the Scottish people, as savouring strongly of Popish mummeries; and the morning of his reign was speedily overcast in Scotland, by a most unwise and obstinate assertion of the royal prerogative in some matters of the most ludicrous insignificancy. In 1606, an act had passed in the Scottish Parliament, asserting the royal prerogative to an extravagant pitch; and another in 1609, by which King James VI. was empowered to prescribe apparel to the churchmen with the consent of the Church—a concession which had been made to gratify that monarch’s predilections for all priest-like intermeddling with ecclesiastical affairs, and all sorts of trifling details. But these concessions had lain dormant during the remainder of his reign, and had never been acted upon; nay, when, in 1617, an act had been prepared by the Lords of Articles, authorizing all things that should thereafter be determined in ecclesiastical affairs by his Majesty, with consent of a competent number of the clergy selected by himself, to be law, he ordered that act to be suppressed in the House, although it had passed the Lords of Articles.
Charles, however, not sufficiently acquainted with the latent spirit of his Scottish subjects, ordered an act to be framed, soon after his coronation, embodying the enactments of both the statutes above alluded to, asserting the unlimited prerogative of the King in all matters, civil and ecclesiastical, and giving him power to regulate the robes and raiment of ecclesiastics. This was strenuously opposed by Rothes, Balmerino, and a majority of the Estates, notwithstanding the personal presence of the King, and his domineering orders to them to vote and not to speak. By a juggle, however, the clerk-register (Primrose) reported the majority the other way—a falsity which could not be impugned without incurring the pains of treason; and so intent was Charles on coercing the Estates into this measure, that he marked on a list the names of all who had voted against his crotchet, and threatened them with his resentment.[5]
These extraordinary and indecorous stretches of authority, excited the greatest alarm. The freedom of speech in Parliament, its independence, and the integrity of its record, were violated in a manner the most outrageous and inconsistent with all liberty or safety. The nobility held various consultations as to what was to be done in this juncture, and a petition to the King was drawn up and shewn to some of them—amongst others to Batmerino; but the King having declared that he would receive no explanation or remonstrance from them, the purpose was dropped. A copy of it however, with some corrections on it in Balmerino’s handwriting, having been confided by him to a notary for transcription, it was treacherously conveyed to Charles, by Spottiswood, Archbishop of St Andrew’s, some months afterwards. For this innocent and, according to modern notions, this constitutional exercise of the right of petition, or rather this intent to exercise it, Balmerino was put on his trial,[6] before a packed court and a packed jury, for leasingmaking or an attempt to sow dissension betwixt the King and his subjects—an offence of the most arbitrary construction, and certainly not overtly committed by Balmerino in this case. Seven of the jury were for acquittal—but eight, being a majority, found him guilty—and he was sentenced to a capital punishment.
This trial excited the deepest interest throughout the country, and its result produced consternation, and prompted to the most desperate counsels. It was proposed to force the prison and rescue Balmerino; or, if that failed, to kill the obnoxious judges and jurors, and burn their houses. But these perilous resolutions were obviated by Lord Traquair, one of the jury and a tool of the Court, representing to the King the consequences which were to be apprehended; and it was found expedient to grant Balmerino a pardon.[7]
These were the first false steps of Charles in Scotland. They shook irretrievably the confidence of his subjects in his personal integrity, and in his reverence for the law and the purity of its administration; and the whole of these proceedings are eminently instructive, as evincing to what trivial circumstances, in some respects, convulsions and revolutions, of an extended and sweeping character, may often be ascribed as the source. It is exceedingly difficult now to estimate fully the motives of either party in these transactions. The Scottish Estates were not averse to yield the point of royal supremacy exacted by James and Charles; but when the latter claimed as his prerogative the power to regulate the draperies of the priesthood, it was vehemently resisted by parliament and people as an encroachment on their religious liberties. And to this paltry subject, which was more appropriate to a college of tailors than to the cabinet of a monarch or the arena of a senate, we may trace the first beginnings of that succession of revolutions which, for upwards of half a century afterwards, overflowed the land with torrents of blood and of tears.[8]
The arbitrary principles in which Charles had been trained by his father, were so deeply impressed on his character, that, though in other respects an able and amiable man, they were never eradicated from his mind by all his experience of their consequences. Prompted by the bigoted intolerance of Laud, surrounded by court sycophants, who sought favour by subserviency to his prejudices, and betrayed in Scotland by a set of the most unprincipled knaves, both lay and clerical, that ever were destined to mislead a sovereign into disgrace and destruction, Charles took not warning in his government from the lessons that had been taught him in the transaction to which we have thus briefly alluded; and he must needs enforce by coercion in Scotland that uniformity in religious ceremonials with the Episcopal Church of England, on which his father had bestowed so much of his royal wisdom.[9] His enterprises in this respect led to consequences which he little anticipated, and which terminated most fatally for his own authority and honour. We allude to his attempt to introduce the Liturgy and canons, which were concocted for the Church in Scotland, under the auspices of Archbishop Laud—an attempt which, within a very brief space after Balmerino’s trial and sentence had excited universal alarm, rallied the whole population of Scotland under the banner of “The Covenant,” in open resistance to their throned monarch; presenting to our contemplation one of the most remarkable and sublime moral spectacles that is to be found in the history of ancient or modern times—an entire nation simultaneously banding themselves together, and leagued by solemn religious vows, for the vindication and maintenance of their liberties, civil and religious, yet cherishing and avowing their allegiance to their sovereign, except in so far as he exceeded his legitimate authority.
Before entering on the Proceedings and Acts of the General Assemblies of the Church from 1638 to 1649, which it is one of the objects of this work to preserve, it is necessary, for the elucidation of these, to detail the circumstances, political and ecclesiastical, (these being, in truth, identical,) which preceded that great demonstration of the national will and power, during the years 1636 and 1637; and, in doing so, the facts shall be as concisely stated as is practicable, amidst the great mass of materials which are supplied to the student of our history in the numerous works that treat of the period now referred to.[10]
Early in the progress of the Scottish Reformation, the Lords of the Congregation had directed the “Book of Common Order,” as it was called, which was used in the Protestant Church of Geneva, to be read in the religious service of the Scottish Reformers; and it was sanctioned by the Church in the “First Book of Discipline,” among the first of its acts after the abolition of Popery.[11] Under this sanction, the “Book of Common Prayer” was appointed to be used by the Readers as a part of the public worship in the churches; and, so far as we can discover, it continued to be used, either as an essential part or, at least, as the model for prayer in public worship, during the fluctuations in the frame of the Church in the time of James VI. The Assembly at Aberdeen,[12] indeed, had ordered the Geneva form to be revised; but the vehement opposition made in the subsequent Assembly at Perth to King James’ Articles, induced him to suspend his innovation.