A history of England principally in the seventeenth century, Volume 2 (of 6)

by Leopold von Ranke

In the first years of his reign Charles I also allowed toleration to prevail. When the preachers who had been appointed before the introduction of the Articles of Perth neglected to obey them, he overlooked their omission. The affairs of the Scottish Church were left in the hands of Spottiswood, who, in spite of all counter-influences, conducted them peacefully, with foresight, and with a certain moderation. But when, after the conclusion of peace with France and Spain, the system of combining ecclesiastical with political authority began to prevail in England, affairs assumed another aspect in Scotland as well. The vacant bishoprics, which had hitherto been filled up according to the recommendation of the Scottish A.D. 1633. bishops, were now disposed of according to the wishes of William Laud, whom the King made his counsellor in the affairs of the Scottish Church as well as of the English. He, however, selected young men who concurred with him in his hierarchical and theological opinions. A new system, the Laudian, later indeed also called the Canterbury system, found acceptance in regard to the constitution and dogmas of the Church. General assemblies of the Church were as carefully avoided in Scotland, as Parliaments in England; and that with the definite object of concentrating ecclesiastical power entirely in the hands of the bishops, on which subject the testimony of the early Church was collected and put forward. At the same time favour was shown to those Arminian opinions which ran counter to the common feeling of the country in favour of Calvinism, that had been strengthened and advanced by the Synod of Dort. When Charles I came to Edinburgh in the year 1633, he was attended by Laud; and his design of introducing into Scotland the external forms of divine service in use in the Anglican Church was displayed without any disguise. In the royal chapel their introduction was attended with no difficulty; but elsewhere no one would hear of it. In Parliament the King met with opposition in his attempt to determine the most purely external matter of all,—the dress of the clergy. In proportion as the government favoured the introduction into Scotland of usages similar to those of the Anglican Church, zeal for Presbyterianism, which in contrast with these usages was identified with Puritanism, gained the upper hand. In May 1633 an address was presented to the King, in which the absence of binding force in the Articles of Perth was again pointed out, and a restoration of independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and of the old constitution in general, was demanded. It was urged that a General Assembly of the clergy ought to be held every year; that the prelates called to a seat in Parliament were bound by the instructions of the Assembly, and were responsible to it. What the petitioners desired to restore was the old independence of the Scottish Church as established on its first erection, free from all encroachments of the crown, and with a merely nominal episcopate such as that A.D. 1633. established by the statutes of 1592 and 1597, which the King was requested to restore.

Under the pressure of encroachments, which increased notwithstanding these manifestations of opinion, a peculiar form of opposition grew up in the Scottish Church, which at any rate went perceptibly beyond the bounds of passive obedience[83]. The ministers hit upon the institution of private meetings, which were held with the faithful who were in agreement with them. At the beginning of every quarter notice of these meetings was secretly given, and every member prepared himself for them beforehand by fasting. The assembled congregation then set itself to take into consideration the danger which threatened the true Church from the action of the bishops. Prayer was made to God that He would put an end to this danger by wholesome means[84]. At times there were even conflicts in those congregations whose ministers had submitted to the ordinances of the government. When meetings, instituted after the model of Geneva, were held before the Communion for putting an end to all mutual complaints, the ministers were called to account by some members of the congregation. People would no longer receive the Lord’s Supper at their hands, nor according to the prescribed ceremonies; but they sought for men who observed the old ritual, or else they abstained altogether from communicating. To the official church of the King and the bishops, almost as in former times, when the revolt from the Papacy took place, a secret worship was opposed which united men’s hearts in inward resistance to the attempts of the government.

And on this as well as on the former occasion the opposition spread to the highest circles in the country.

The Stuart kings of Scotland had striven from the beginning to break down the importance of the great vassals, which was due to the old clan relationship, but especially to wrest A.D. 1633. from them the administration of justice. King James on his last visit had instituted public discussions about questions of this sort, and with an air of triumph had announced to the chieftains the joy he felt when he vindicated his claims on these occasions. But Charles I now assailed the position which the nobles at that time occupied with regard to property. The collection of tithes had given the nobles great authority over the proprietors themselves and over the clergy who were interested in them, although only to a small extent: these he now made redeemable. He attempted to take back, either in the interests of the crown or for the endowment of bishoprics, a part of the property of the Church which had passed into the possession of the nobles during the tumultuous times of the Reformation. Even this occasioned great agitation, especially as it was intended to carry out the measure without giving compensation. Lord Nithisdale, who attempted to enforce it in the name of the King, ran a risk of losing his life in consequence. The violence of feeling was still further increased by the favours granted in political matters to the Protestant hierarchy[85]. Controversies about precedence arose between the temporal dignitaries of the state and the bishops, who were reinstated and, arrayed in silk and velvet, rode to Parliament in the midst of the nobility with all the old ecclesiastical pomp. At the coronation of 1633 the King wished that the Archbishop and Primate should take precedence of the Chancellor for that one day only. The Chancellor Hay, Earl of Kinnoul, answered that, so long as the King left his office in his hands, he would retain it with all its privileges, and that no man in a stole should walk before him. But not rank and honour alone, but very substantial elements of power, were at stake in this dispute. Among the thirty-two Lords of Articles, upon whom in Scotland the previous discussion of all resolutions to be laid before Parliament devolved, the eight bishops were the chief: they nominated the eight noblemen, and these latter the sixteen other members. It is plain that by this means they exercised a very active influence upon the A.D. 1635. deliberations of Parliament. But the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which was set up was still more burdensome to the Lords. In Scotland, as well as in England, a High Commission based upon this supreme jurisdiction of the King was instituted, in order to bring before the tribunal all transgressions of ecclesiastical ordinances, and even those persons who were only suspected of transgressing them. The Privy Council, which exercised the power of the King in Scotland, was commissioned to enforce its sentence. The clergy and the men of learning first felt the pressure of this authority, but neither birth nor rank were a defence against its proceedings. The Scots affirmed[86] that the tribunal outdid even the Spanish Inquisition in harshness and cruelty. While in this way bitter feelings were raised by the collision between the high nobility and the bishops, the most disagreeable impression of all was made on the former when King Charles introduced a number of bishops into the Treasury-board, into the temporal courts of justice, and into the Privy Council. In old times the seals of the kingdom had been for the most part in the hands of learned clergymen, because from their experience in canon as well as in civil law they could best advise the King: following this practice, Charles I in the year 1635, after the death of Kinnoul, nominated an ecclesiastic, no other than Archbishop Spottiswood himself, to the Chancellorship of the kingdom[87]. This dignity had been latterly an object of emulation and ambition among the temporal lords; and they felt themselves aggrieved when a clergyman, who thereby combined the supreme spiritual with the supreme temporal authority, was preferred to them. The person most mortified was Archibald Lord Lorne, afterwards Marquess of Argyle, a man who thought that he had A.D. 1636. a definite claim to the office, and who indisputably possessed all the capacity required for it. The aspiring Bishop Maxwell roused the jealousy of the treasurer, Lord Traquair, who suspected an intention of dispossessing him of his place, and investing the bishop with it.

In this way the advancement of the ecclesiastical element had already roused various antipathies of a political and religious nature. The nobles feared for their possessions and for their jurisdiction, especially as some well-grounded objections might be made to the latter; principally however for their share in the authority of the state, which seemed doomed to pass into the hands of the clergy. The country clergy cherished anxiety for their independence, and the people for the accepted ecclesiastical usages with which religion itself appeared to them to be bound up. Yet all this would hardly have led to an open outbreak of discontent. Meanwhile, however, the King and Archbishop Laud again took up an old plan which had been formed by James I, had been long ready for execution, and had only been postponed on account of the difficulties into which the King had feared to fall in consequence,—the plan of fortifying the episcopal power in the Scottish Church by issuing a new book of canon law, and at the same time of binding Scotland more closely to England by bringing the Church service of that country into conformity with the English. A similar attempt on the part of the Lord Deputy had just succeeded in Ireland: why should not such a measure be forced through in Scotland? The majority of the Scottish bishops held out hopes of success.

The Book of Canon Law was first brought out. It was drawn up by three English bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of London and Norwich, who belonged to the prevailing school of opinion. It was sent to Edinburgh, there amended, ratified in this shape by the King, in May 1635, and promulgated in the year 1636.

It stands in sharply-defined contradiction to the ecclesiastical customs and to the opinions of the Scots.

The Scottish Church had always opposed the royal supremacy: but in the new law-book this was laid down and enforced on pain of excommunication against all who should A.D. 1636. resist it, on the ground that it had been exercised by the Christian emperors of the first age. The Scots had originally claimed an independent legislative authority for their Church assemblies: the new law not only ordained that they must be summoned by the King, but also that even the bishops should not be authorised to introduce any alteration without the previous consent of the King. Single ordinances, as for instance those which prescribed the form of prayer in the Church, or the consequences of divorce, ran directly counter to Scottish usage. But the authority of the bishops, which all the measures aimed at securing, gave the greatest offence. The bishops alone were to have the right of expounding the Scriptures; private meetings of ministers for this purpose were to be forbidden; no one was to be allowed to controvert the opinion of another minister of the same diocese from the pulpit without permission of the bishop; without this permission no one was to give instruction either in public or in private; the bishops were to inflict punishment at their discretion when any publication appeared in print without the approval of the censor[88]. It is plain that these provisions put the whole internal life of the Church in regard to opinion and doctrine into the hands of the bishops. And was not the constitution of the Scottish Church virtually abolished when canons which made so thorough a change were to be introduced without the participation of the General Assembly? This was an affront to the national feeling of the Scots. ‘Supposing it were true,’ they said, ‘that the Scottish Kirk belonged to the province of York (as was formerly pretended), yet more than the bare warrant of the King would be required to introduce ordinances which affected the life of the Church collectively.’ The laws enforced beforehand, and that under threat of the severest penalties, the acceptance of a liturgy which had not yet appeared.

In October 1636 this liturgy was proclaimed by the King, and the order to conform to it was promulgated amid the sound of trumpets. No one had yet seen it. But a rumour A.D. 1637. circulated to the effect that to the English ritual, which already retained too much of Roman Catholicism, it added still further ceremonies of a decidedly Popish tendency. It was to be introduced at Easter 1637: at last it made its appearance, at any rate in single copies.

The introduction into the Scottish Church of the English Prayer-book in its entirety had been originally contemplated, and in no other way can the arguments be explained which are given in the preface. The union of Christian churches in one system of doctrine and under one ritual was therein stated to be the most desirable end possible, which, as the authors lamented, could not be universally attained, but must be striven for in those countries which obeyed the same sovereign. The Scottish bishops, however, had thought that the book would meet with a better reception in their country, if it were not simply the English Prayer-book. Draughts of alterations were more than once forwarded from England to Scotland, and sent back again from the latter country: the King himself had a personal share in them. For the most part they were attempts to return to ancient rituals that had existed before those ages which could properly be called hierarchical. If the choice lay between Protestant forms of expression, the older were accordingly preferred to the more recent. The greatest stir was made by the formula which was prescribed for the administration of the Lord’s Supper. The selection of this was connected with the differences between the first Book of Common Prayer of the year 1549, and the second of 1552, which was drawn up at a time when Swiss doctrinal conceptions exercised a stronger influence. The first form clings to the doctrine of the Real Presence: the second corresponds more nearly to the idea of a commemorative meal. Under Queen Elizabeth, who believed in the Real Presence, both formulae had been combined; in the Scottish Liturgy Laud returned to the first. Nothing is there said about Transubstantiation: the formula could not be called Catholic but Lutheran. But it was at any rate a departure from Calvinistic conceptions, which regarded Lutheran views as far too nearly allied to Roman Catholic: popular comprehension interchanged A.D. 1637. the one with the other. But nothing more was wanting to give prevalence to the opinion, for which the way had already been sufficiently prepared, that the Liturgy was to pave the way for the re-introduction of Catholicism.