The King ordered the Commissioners of the Church, who made demands so distasteful to him, to leave the capital. The preachers then turned to the people. From the pulpit Robert Bruce set before an already excited congregation the danger into which the ecclesiastical commonwealth had fallen owing to the return of the Catholic lords and the indulgence vouchsafed to them; and invited those present to pledge themselves by holding up their hands to the defence of their religion on its present footing. They not only gave him their assent, but went so far as to make a tumultuous rush for the council-house in which the King was sitting with some members of the Privy Council and the Lords of Session. With difficulty was the tumult so far quieted as to allow James to retire to Holyrood.[306] Here a demand was laid before him to remove his councillors, to allow the commissioners to resume their functions, and to banish the lords again from the country. It was intended that religious profession should supply a rule for the guidance of the State.
But in political conflicts nothing is more dangerous than to overstep the law by any act of violence. It was the violence attempted by the leaders of the Presbyterians against the King, their attack on the rights of his crown, that procured him the means of resistance. He betook himself with his court to Linlithgow and there collected the nobles, who for the most part stood by him, the borderers, whose leaders the Humes and Kerrs took up arms for him, and bodies of Highlanders, a force to which the magistrates succumbed, not wishing their city to be destroyed; so that even the ministers thought it advisable to leave. On New-Year's Day 1597 James made his entry with a warlike retinue into Edinburgh, where a convention of the Estates met and passed decisive resolutions in his favour. Both the provost and baillies of the town were obliged to take a new oath of fealty by which they bound themselves to suffer no insults to the King and his councillors from the pulpit: and it was resolved that the citizens should henceforth submit the magistrates of their choice to the King for his approval. The right of deposing the ministers was assigned to the King, who was acknowledged sole judge of all offences, even of those committed in sermons and public worship.[307]
The King had now the Temporal Estates on his side; for however popular the footing on which the Presbyterian Church might be constituted, no one wished to give it uncontrolled sway. King James was able to form plans for transforming its constitution in such a manner as to make it consistent with the authority of the crown.
A series of questions which he dedicated to the consideration of the public was well calculated to further his end. He asked whether the external regimen of the Church might not be controlled both by King and clergy, and the legislative power be vested in them in common. Might not the King, as a religious and pious magistrate, have the power of summoning General Assemblies? Might he not annul unjust sentences of excommunication? Might he not interfere if the clergy neglected their duties, or if the bounds of the two jurisdictions became doubtful.
At the next assembly of the Church at Perth (Feb. 1597) the current set in the opposite direction. 'Mine eyes,' so says one of the most zealous adherents of the Church, 'witnessed a new sight, preachers going into the King's palace sometimes by night, sometimes in the morning,—mine ears heard new sounds.' The greatest pains had been taken to secure the presence of a number of ministers from the northern provinces, who were still more anxious about the spread of their doctrines than about controversies touching the constitution of the Church; and who rather reproached the clergy of the southern counties with having taken on themselves the government of the Church. But even among the latter the King, who spared neither threats nor flatteries, won adherents. Moreover an opinion gained ground that concessions must be made to him, as far as conscience allowed, in order not to alienate him entirely from the Church or drive him to take the opposite side. The answers to his questions contained admissions. The right of taking the initiative in everything relating to the external government of the Church was conceded to him, together with a share in the nomination of ministers in the principal towns; properly speaking the patronage of the Church in these towns was made over to him. The Church itself made a most important concession in renouncing its right of using the pulpit to attack the crown. Henceforward no one was to venture to impugn the measures of the King, until an officer of the Church had made a remonstrance to him on the subject. And the same ideas prevailed also in the subsequent assemblies at Dundee and Perth. The former of these conceded to the King a share in all the business which the Church took in hand; it allowed him to stay the proceedings of the Presbyteries when they ran counter to the royal jurisdiction or to recognised rights. In Dundee the excommunicated lords were admitted to a reconciliation and acknowledged as true vassals of the King, after making a declaration by which they acknowledged the Scottish to be the true Church; although the stricter party would not even then forgive them. But the point of chief importance was that the King succeeded in getting a Commission formed to co-operate with him in maintaining peace and obedience in the kingdom. Invested with full powers by the Church but dependent on the King, this Commission procured him a preponderating influence in all ecclesiastical affairs. For the most part it consisted of men of moderate views.
There is a contemporary narrative of the decay of the Church in Scotland which begins from this date. For here, it was thought, ended the period during which the word revealed from Sinai and Zion to the apostles and prophets was the only rule of doctrine and Church discipline without any mixture of Babylon or the City of the Seven Hills, or of policy of man's devising; when the Church was 'Beautiful as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners.'
James, who regarded all this as due merely to the opposition of enemies, went on his way without bestowing further consideration on the depth, strength, and inward significance of this spirit which was destined once more to agitate the world. He again took up in serious earnest the design of erecting a Protestant episcopacy which had been entertained by Mar and Morton. Not only was this necessary for the constitution but for the sake of the clergy also: as George Gladstaine explained before a large assembly at Dundee, it was desirable that they should take part in the exercise of the legislative power. A small majority, but still a majority, in this assembly decided in favour of the proposal. The King assured them that he wished neither for a Papistical nor for an English prelacy; he wished only that the best clergy should take cognizance of the affairs of the Church in the council of the nation. In order to unite both interests he desired that the General Assembly should propose to the King six candidates for each vacancy and should have the right of giving instructions to the King's nominee for his Parliamentary action, and of demanding an account from him of his execution of the same. The King esteemed it a great triumph when in the Parliament of 1600 he was able actually to introduce two bishops whom he had nominated with the concurrence of a Commission of the Synods.
It appears a general result worth noticing that he had again brought both parties in the country into subjection to the crown, the one however by open battle, the other by compliance which had somewhat the air of inclination towards it.
Preparations for the Succession to the English Throne.
That the former of these parties was properly speaking Protestant, and the latter in its sentiment Catholic, created a certain feeling of surprise. Queen Elizabeth, who had been attacked and insulted by the Presbyterians sometimes even from the pulpit, could not find fault with the crown for liberating itself from the ascendancy of the new Church as it had done from that of the old: on the contrary she had expressly approved of this policy; but she warned the King not to allow himself to be so blinded by personal preference as again to put confidence in any traitor, and not to separate himself from the flock which must fight for him if he wished to stand. In the case of Scotland, as well as in the case of her own dominions, she always kept before her eyes the contrast between the Catholic and the Protestant principle, in comparison with which all other differences appeared to her subordinate.