While Knox and his generation survived, the tendencies of the new establishment were prevented from fully showing themselves. The great Reformer was at bottom moderate; he had a real reverence for the powers that be, however he abhorred Mary Stuart. The lay lords had sufficient influence to control the ministry throughout the country; and the presence of a common danger compelled the Scottish Protestants to uphold the Government. But, when the Kirk had become settled, and the Reformation was completely secure, dissensions rapidly grew up between the spiritual and civil powers, and the Presbyterian clergy began to assume that attitude in the affairs of Scotland, which led, afterwards, to such momentous consequences. The leader of the new school of divines was the celebrated Melville, thus described by Mr. Burton:—
'Knox had a respect for hereditary rank which only yielded to a higher duty, when, as the successor of the prophets of old, he had to announce the law of God even to the highest. Melville, though born to a higher position, was more of the leveller. He was the type of a class who, to as much of the fierce fanaticism of the Huguenots as the Scottish character could receive, added the stern classical republicanism of Buchanan.'—(Vol. v. 404.)
An organization of this kind, supported by such spiritual leaders, ere long displayed its natural tendencies. The Kirk, with its powerful local ministry, connected with each other by numerous links, attempted to revive in Scotland the pretensions of the old dominant Church, and it succeeded in creating a vast spiritual power, often in conflict with the authority of the State. The principal fact in Scottish history, during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, was the opposition given, by the Presbyterian clergy, to the acts and even the rights of the Crown; and though the conduct of James I. was, as usual, arrogant and unwise, he was subjected to extreme provocation. The enthusiasm which followed the defeat of the Armada, the supposed inclination of the king to High Church, and even Romanist doctrines, and the open favour he showed to several of the old Catholic Scottish houses, gave strength to the champions of the Kirk; and for some time, as he ruefully exclaimed, he was not a ruler in his own dominions. The formal abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland—the institution had existed in name even after the iconoclasm of Knox—marks the highest point of Presbyterian ascendancy; and, more than once, the king and his council were compelled to yield to the demands put forward by those whom he called the 'Popes of Edinburgh.' Undoubtedly, however, if James had been a really able and popular ruler, he could have vindicated his supreme authority, and the national estates, which even at this juncture often showed jealousy of the heads of the Kirk, would have upheld the prerogatives of the Crown. As it was, Scotland was divided by a contest between the Church and the State, and the Presbyterian Hildebrands assumed an attitude which contributed afterwards to many troubles. We quote a passage that gives an idea of the bickerings between the king and the clergy:—
'Entering in the cabinet with the king alone, I show his Majesty that the Commissioners of the General Assembly, with certain other brethren ordained to watch for the well of the Kirk in so dangerous a time, had convened at Cupar. At the which word the king interrupts me, and angrily quarrels our meeting, alleging it was without warrant and seditious, making ourselves and the country to conceive fear where there was no cause. To the which I, beginning to reply in my manner, Mr. Andrew could not abide it, but brake off upon the king in so zealous, powerful, and unresistible a manner, that, howbeit the king used his authority in most crabbed and choleric manner, Mr. Andrew bore him down, and uttered the commission as from the mighty God, calling the king but "God's silly vassal," and, taking him by the sleeve, says this in effect, through much hot reasoning and many interruptions, "Sir, we will humbly reverence your Majesty, always, namely, in public. But, since we have this occasion to be with your Majesty in private, and the truth is, you are brought in extreme danger, both of your life and crown, and, with you, the country and Kirk of Christ is like to wreck for not telling you the truth, and giving of you a faithful counsel—we must discharge our duty therein, or else be traitors, both to Christ and you! And therefore, Sir, as divers times before, so now again, I must tell you, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King, and His Kingdom the Kirk, whose subject King James the Sixth is—and of his kingdom, not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member!"'—(Vol. vi. 81.)
While seeds of trouble were thus growing up in the contests between the Kirk and the Crown, the great Tudor queen had passed away, and James became monarch of the three kingdoms. Both England and Scotland recognised in him the principle of hereditary right, for there was little in his character or antecedents to recommend him as a national sovereign. In his own country he had become unpopular, and in England he was chiefly known as one who had basely betrayed his mother, who had intrigued with Elizabeth to obtain her throne, and who had no sympathy with the great alliance with France and the United Provinces in the war with Spain. James, however, encountered no opposition in assuming the sceptre of these realms; and his progress to London from the North—described graphically by Mr. Burton—was a scene of continuous joy and festivity. The king, at least, had ample reason to feel delight at the happy change which had come over his life and prospects. He left a poor and distracted country—where his reign had long been a long scene of trouble, and where he was being continually reviled by those who, in his phrase, 'agreed as well with monarchy as the devil with Christ'—for rich, peaceful, and well-ordered England; and he might well expect a season of repose amidst the blandishments of a Tudor hierarchy, and the submissive acts of Tudor courtiers. For some time he was not disappointed, and what between the unctuous flattery of prelates, who said that 'he spake like the Spirit,' and of nobles who vied with each other in adulation, James must have thought himself translated to a sphere not unworthy even of his own estimate of himself. Before long, however, he was destined to find out that in England, as well as Scotland, he was to earn the contempt and dislike of his subjects. Essentially timid and short-sighted, he abandoned the foreign policy of Elizabeth; he disgusted Englishmen by his open preference for worthless and needy Scottish favourites; and in a few years he found himself in antagonism with the House of Commons, now becoming a real image of the nation, and with the tremendous force of Puritanism already growing into ascendancy in England. Mr. Burton gives us, from a contemporary chronicler, this sketch of the ignoble monarch:—
'He was of a middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes than in his body, yet fat enough; his clothes ever being made large and easy, the doublets quilted for stiletto proof; his breeches in great plaits and full stuffed. He was naturally of a timid disposition, which was the greatest reason of his quilted doublets. His eyes large, ever rolling after any stranger came in his presence, inasmuch as many for shame have left the room, being out of countenance. His beard was very thin; his tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup on each side of his mouth. His skin was as soft as taffeta sarcenet, which felt so because he never washed his hands—only rubbed his finger-ends slightly with the wet end of a napkin. His legs were very weak, having had, it was thought, some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age—that weakness made him ever leaning on other men's shoulders.'—(Vol. vi. 162.)
As is well known, the dislike entertained for James in England was in part owing to the favour he showed to Scotch favourites. The nation, too, abounding in keen adventurers—poor, hardy, and pushing—came in for a share of this feeling; and the wits and satirists of the day indulged in sarcasms on the greedy race who crossed the border in hungry swarms to feed on the wealth of of the well-fed Southron. We quote from one of these pasquinades:—
'Bonny Scot, we all witness can,
That England hath made thee a gentleman.
Thy blue bonnet, when thou came hither,