The citizens of Edinburgh were naturally thrown into violent commotion by these events; and when their minds were in this inflammable condition, an incident occurred which brought the public excitement to its height, and which the Government turned to its own account in prosecuting its quarrel with the Church with still greater vigour. This incident is known as 'the Riot of 17th December' (1596). On that day a number of the ministers and of the nobles who were in sympathy with them, were assembled for consultation in one of the chapels of St. Giles', known as the 'Little Church,' when they were startled by some one near the door raising the shout, 'Fy! save yourselves,' or, as another version gives it, 'The Papists are in arms to take the town and cut all your throats.' The Assembly at once broke up, and all made for the street. The alarm spread through the city, and soon brought the people in crowds to the High Street, many of them armed; and it is said that some of them surrounded the Tolbooth, where the King was sitting at the time with the Council, crying to 'bring out Haman,' and shouting, 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.' On hearing of the tumult, the Provost and the ministers of the city made for the scene, and through their exertions peace was restored within an hour, and without any one being hurt.
The man who raised the panic in the 'Little Church' never came to be known; but it was believed that he was one of the 'Cubiculars' (as they were called), or gentlemen of the King's bedchamber, who were annoyed at the Octavians, on account of the retrenchments made in the King's household expenditure; and that this ruse had been devised for the purpose of fomenting the differences between the Octavians and the ministers.
The action taken by the Court in connection with the riot would have been ridiculous had its consequences for the Church not been so serious. Next day the King removed the Court to Linlithgow, and a Proclamation was made at the Cross of Edinburgh announcing that, owing to the 'treasonable' arming of the citizens, the Courts of Law would also be removed from the city, and ordering the four ministers and several prominent citizens of Edinburgh into ward in the Castle, and citing them before the Council on a general charge. The ministers fled, as Melville and others had done in like circumstances twelve years before.
In January 1597 the King returned to the capital, and the Estates were called together to confirm the Acts passed by the Council for punishing all whom it chose to hold in blame for the riot of the previous month. In accordance with these Acts, all ministers were to be required, on pain of losing their stipends, to subscribe a bond acknowledging the King to be the only judge of those charged with using treasonable language in the pulpit; authorising magistrates to apprehend any preachers who might be found so doing, and declaring the King to have the power of discharging ministers at his pleasure. Vindictive Acts against the city of Edinburgh were also confirmed. Henceforth no General Assembly was to be held within its walls; the seat of the Presbytery was to be transferred to Musselburgh or Dalkeith; the manses of the city ministers were to be forfeit to the Crown; these ministers were not to be readmitted to their pulpits, nor any others chosen in their places without his Majesty's consent; and no magistrates, any more than ministers, were to be appointed without the royal approval.
At the same meeting of the Estates, arrangements were made for the restoration of the Popish lords. The contrast between the King's leniency towards them, and his rigorous and vindictive measures towards the ministers, plainly advertised the disposition of the King to both. Well might Robert Bruce ask in one of his sermons—'What sall the religius of both countries think of this? Is this the moyen to advance the Prince's grandeur and to turne the hearts of the people towards his Hienesse?' Spirited protests were made by the Commissioners of the Church; they did not mince their language—'We deteast that Act ... making the King head of the Kirk ... as High Treason and sacriledge against Christ the onlie King and Head of the Kirk.' The magistrates did not show the same mettle, but made submission on all the points required.
Emboldened by the effect of these measures, the King lost no time in pressing forward his designs against the Church. His next step was to issue a state paper containing a long series of questions which should reopen discussion on the established policy, and convening a meeting of the representatives of the Church and of the Estates for the purpose of debating and deciding on these questions. The ministers at once began preparations for the struggle; and it was Melville's Synod—always the Church's pilot in the storm—that once more took the lead. It appointed Commissioners to urge the King to abandon the proposed Convention, and to refer the business to a regular meeting of Assembly. Should the King refuse this request, the Commissioners were not to acknowledge the Convention as a lawful meeting of the Assembly, nor to admit its claim to enter on the Constitution of the Church. In any private discussion they were strenuously to oppose any movement on the part of the King to disturb the existing order.
The Convention met in Perth on the last day of February 1597. In anticipation, the King, knowing well the determined opposition he would encounter at the hands of those ministers who regularly attended the Assembly and took part in its business, had despatched one of his courtiers, Sir Patrick Murray, to do the part of 'Whip' among the ministers north of the Tay, and so to pack the Assembly with members who rarely attended it, who were unaccustomed to its business, and who were more likely to be facile for the King's purposes than their brethren in the south. Murray—'the Apostle of the North,' as he was sarcastically called—brought the Highland ministers down in droves, poisoned their minds with jealousy of the southern ministers, and flattered them with the assurance of the King's esteem.
After a debate, lasting for three days, the majority agreed to hold the Convention as a meeting of the Assembly. Thereafter the King's questions were entered upon, and so far discussed, when the business was adjourned to another meeting to be held in Dundee. In agreeing to recognise the Convention as an Assembly, and to open up the subject of its own constitution, the Church came down from its only safe position, and virtually delivered itself into the King's hands, thereby inflicting a wound on its own liberties, from which it took a whole century to recover. That surrender was the letting in of waters, and henceforth the Assemblies were the organ of the Crown rather than of the Church—'Whar Chryst gydit befor, the Court began then to govern all; whar pretching befor prevalit, then polecie tuk the place; and, finalie, whar devotioun and halie behaviour honoured the Minister, then began pranking at the chare, and prattling in the ear of the Prince, to mak the Minister to think him selff a man of estimatioun!... The end of the Assemblies of auld was, whow Chryst's Kingdome might stand in halines and friedome: now, it is whow Kirk and Relligioun may be framed to the polytic esteat of a frie Monarchie, and to advance and promot the grandour of man, and supream absolut authoritie in all causes, and over all persones, alsweill Ecclesiasticall as Civill.'
The Dundee Assembly met in May; again the northern ministers were present in force; and again every means the Court could contrive was used to win over the members, and especially those of mark among them. Melville came to attend the Assembly; and one evening before it met, Sir Patrick Murray sent for the younger Melville, and urged him to advise his uncle to go home, as, if he did not, the King would order him to be removed. On receiving the answer that it would be useless to give Melville such advice, since the threat of death would not turn him from his duty, Sir Patrick rejoined, 'Surely I fear he suffer the dint of the King's wrath.' James Melville told his uncle of the interview with the King's 'Whip.' What his uncle's answer was, 'I need not wraite,' he says. On the morning of the Assembly the Melvilles were summoned by the King. The interview went on smoothly till they entered on the business for which the Assembly was called, when 'Mr. Andro brak out with his wounted humor of fredome and zeall and ther they heeled on, till all the hous, and clos bathe, hard mikle of a large houre.' Melville was much too stormy a courtier for the King's purposes.
At the Dundee Assembly, the transactions at the Perth Convention were confirmed; and thereafter a new proposal was made by the King and carried, which was fraught with evil for the Church. This was the appointment of an extraordinary standing Commission to confer with the King on the Church's affairs—a Commission which came to be a kind of King's Council set up in the Assembly. Calderwood speaks of it as the King's 'led horse,' and James Melville calls it 'the very neidle to draw in the Episcopall threid.'