May.
1609.
The severities called for by the General Assembly against the papist nobles and others, had been, to appearance, backed up by the royal power. The Marquis of Huntly was actually in prison at Stirling as an excommunicated rebel. The king probably felt this a high price for the soothing of Presbyterian scruples regarding episcopacy; but it had so far been paid. He contemplated having the observance of Christmas brought in at the end of the year; and it was therefore advisable to shew a little further earnestness in the right direction.
By the activity of Spottiswoode, archbishop of Glasgow, John Hamilton, a zealous trafficking priest, was apprehended—an act the more important that this culprit was uncle to the king’s advocate. Another priest, named Paterson, was taken with all his vestments, while celebrating mass in a house in the Canongate in Edinburgh before an audience of thirty persons. These must, of course, have been gratifying proofs of the royal zeal, albeit Calderwood cannot repress a bitter remark as to the ‘tolerable entertainment’ allowed to the prisoners (the allowance made in another case for an incarcerated priest, and probably in these also, was a merk—1s. 1-1/3d. sterling—per diem), while ministers incarcerated for opposition to the king’s episcopal innovations ‘were left to their shifts.’
About the same time, the archbishop went with a party to the town of New Abbey, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and there broke into the house of Mr Gilbert Brown, former abbot of New Abbey, ‘and having found a great number of popish books, copes, chalices, pictures, images, and such other popish trash, he most worthily and dutifully as became both a prelate and a councillor, on a mercat-day, at a great confluence of people in the hie street of the burgh of Dumfries, did burn all those copes, vestments, and chalices,’ delivering up the books to Maxwell of Kirkconnel, to be afterwards dealt with. The Privy Council (June 13, 1609) allowed this to be good service on the part of the archbishop, and granted him a gift of the books left unburnt.—P. C. R.
In the parliament held a few days after the last date, several acts were passed against popery—one ordaining that pedagogues sent abroad with the sons of noblemen and others, should be duly licensed by a bishop; another that the young persons so sent abroad should remain at places where ‘the religion’ is professed, and ‘where there is no cruel inquisition;’ a third for confiscating the property of papists to the king’s use; a fourth was meant to deprive Catholics of all benefit from the legal system of the country. The more severe class of Presbyterians looked on, with no inclination to object to these measures, but only with a disbelief in the sincerity of the government which had brought them forward. They had begun to see that it was ‘to grace the bishops, and procure them greater credit and authority in the country,’ that popery was thus dealt with.—Cal.
July.
1609.