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

by Leopold von Ranke

This assembly had a different character from the preceding. All tumult was carefully avoided: those who were present were hardly noticed in the street. Conferences about the petition and the acceptance of the complaint were held with Traquair, who had come with two of his colleagues from Linlithgow to the town for this object; but the importance of the day was derived from another feature.

Those who were assembled set up a claim to be allowed to leave behind in Edinburgh representatives invested with full powers, assigning the very plausible reason that this would conduce to the general tranquillity, as they would then not be obliged to return frequently and in great numbers. It did not escape the Privy Council how obnoxious these representatives in their turn might also become: but another learned lawyer, none other than Thomas Hope, the King’s Advocate, declared himself in favour of the scheme. It is affirmed that he had been in the secret of the whole movement, and had directed the steps taken from the beginning, and especially those of the nobility. He gave it as his judgment that it was lawful to choose representatives not only for Parliament, and extraordinary assemblies of the Estates, but also for every other public matter. On this the Privy Council could offer no opposition. It was determined that two members of the gentry from each county, a minister from every presbytery, and a deputy from every borough, with as many nobles as might choose to come, should constitute the representative body, but that besides these a smaller committee also, presided A.D. 1637. over by some nobleman, should sit in Edinburgh, and have the immediate management of affairs[98].

And into this great league the town of Edinburgh also was now admitted. For it was said that what the common people there had been guilty of in the days of the excitement amounted to nothing more than such outcry and resistance as suppliants might oppose to the intended alteration in religion. The committee was charged to be on the watch lest anything should be done to injure them, and to take care that no attempt was made to introduce the Liturgy into the town by a surprise.

Thus the party which took the name of petitioners, came forward united in an organisation embracing the whole country. From the general body went forth the elected representatives, and from these the committee, in which the most enterprising magnates and the most zealous ministers were united. They formed a league to repel every movement on the part of the authority of the State, which might be made towards carrying out the King’s policy. The most experienced lawyers, among whom was the King’s Advocate himself, were on their side.

Matters had gone thus far, when in the beginning of December the Earl of Roxburgh entered Scotland with a reply from the King. Properly speaking it did not contain a formal answer to the earlier petition. The delay was excused on the score of the disturbances in the capital, by which the honour of the King was declared to have been insulted: but, while Charles I reserved to himself the right of punishing these offences, he sought to quiet men’s feelings in the matter of religion. He declared in express terms that he loathed the superstition of the Papacy from his very soul, and that he would never do anything which ran counter to the religious confession or the laws of his kingdom of A.D. 1637. Scotland. The Privy Council did not delay for a moment to have this declaration everywhere proclaimed to the sound of trumpets, and as it produced a very soothing impression, it led them to hope that they might effect an adjustment of affairs on this basis. They said that the King manifestly gave up the introduction of the Liturgy: what more, they asked, could be expected from so kind and gentle a sovereign? Traquair said that a symptom of submission on the part of the capital, a single prostration on the part of its representatives, the deliverance of their charter into the King’s hands, would content the King, for that he was most interested in preventing foreigners from believing that his authority was despised by his own people.

But the united petitioners were not to be satisfied so easily. They wished to be assured of the withdrawal of the Liturgy not by equivocal expressions, but in distinct and final terms. Above all, moreover, they wished to uphold the view that theirs was the truly legal mode of proceeding. They had taken counsel afresh with the most eminent advocates—the names of five of them are given—how the movements that had been begun, on the part of the town as well as on their own, might be justified by their aim, which was the restoration of the laws; and how on the other hand, the illegality of the spiritual tribunals might be proved. They showed signs of an intention to institute legal proceedings against those who calumniously asserted that their behaviour had been seditious. They upheld the complaint against the bishops with unabated zeal. Traquair had already at the meeting in November held out to them a prospect of reaching their end, if they would take their stand on the rejection of the two books alone. They answered that so much damage had been done to the constitution of Church and State, and to the freedom of the subject in regard to person and property by the bishops and the High Commission, that they could not be tolerated: that if the Privy Council would not receive the complaints against them, it might at least allow an information to be laid before it in regard to these questions. The Privy Council at any rate did entirely reject this proposal: it declared itself disposed A.D. 1637. to receive both petition and information, in case the King’s answer, when it came, should fail to satisfy the petitioners. But this had now actually happened. The confederate Scots demanded with impetuosity the acceptance of the petition and complaint. The Privy Council long refused to accede to the demand; it required that at least some violent and offensive expressions should be moderated; but as these affected the gist of the matter, the petitioners remained immovable. On their threat that if their demands were refused they would betake themselves immediately to the King with their petition, the magistrates, who did not wish to be passed over, resolved to receive the petition as it stood (December 21, 1637[99]). Lord Loudon, after the fashion which prevailed in the courts in Scotland, appended to it (in the name of all) a ‘declinatory,’ that is, a repudiation of every judicial sentence, which the bishops might take part in drawing up, on the ground that they were the accused, and that they would, if they sat, be judges of their own cause.

Thus what was clearly in itself a struggle against the will and intention of the King acquired the appearance of a legal controversy with the holders of episcopal power: the resistance in both cases was based on the same principle. For both attacks aimed at setting up again the old Kirk, so bound up with the independence of the country, as the only legitimate Church.

But all was not yet complete till the King had accepted the complaint against the bishops. Traquair set out for the court with the petition in which the complaint was embodied, with the declinatory of the petitioners and all other documents. He hoped, by giving thorough information about the state of affairs in Scotland, to induce the King to grant yet further indulgence beyond that of which Roxburgh had held out hopes.

King Charles did not really require new information about the particulars of what had occurred in Scotland; he was only too well informed of each and every circumstance by his A.D. 1638. adherents, especially by the bishops. The petitions and complaints had been given him to read before they had yet been addressed to him: he knew who had drawn them up, what exceptions had been taken to them, how they had at last been adopted: he knew the behaviour of each individual, and liked or disliked him accordingly. Traquair set before him, most of all, the power of the opposition, which he thought it was no longer possible to break down; he said that the King would require an army to procure acceptance for the book of the Liturgy: that in Scotland, now at all events, people would not allow the national Church to be governed by any one in England: that they would not submit to the influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury: that they demanded a parliament in order to bring controversial questions to a decision in the country itself; and that people would give way to such a body alone[100]. At least he himself affirmed that he had expressed these views. But Traquair was not a man whose statements could be accepted without reserve. He was himself one of the opponents of the bishops: he, as little as the other Scottish statesmen, wished to see them politically powerful: but at the same time, while he was aiming at acquiring importance in the estimation of the people, in order to increase his importance in the eyes of the sovereign, he fell into an equivocal position: no one trusted his assurances entirely. Other representations had also been made, according to which nothing but resolution and quiet perseverance were needed to revive the wonted obedience of the people. What a demand, it was said, was made when the King was asked to receive a complaint against the bishops who had been leagued with him in the same enterprise! He would by compliance have declared his own conduct illegal, and have broken up the constitution, which had been founded in Scotland at the cost of so much trouble by himself and his father.

A.D. 1638.