[Footnote 16: Raising of the Host.]

[Footnote 17: Calderwood's History, v. 109.]

The entente cordiale between the King and the ministers was not of long duration. His promises of amended government were soon forgotten; the lawlessness of the nobles continued unchecked; agents of Rome were again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his shadow than had been shown since his return to his person. The outrages perpetrated by the King's illegitimate cousin, the madcap Bothwell, were largely laid to James's door, as the doings of a spoiled favourite of the Court: and the unpunished murder of the popular Earl of Moray, the 'Bonnie Earl,' by Huntly—one of the worst crimes even of that lawless time, and of complicity in which the King himself was suspected—aggravated the discontent of the nation.

It was at such a time of disorder and irritation in the country that the measure was passed by Parliament—the Act of 1592—by which all previous legislation in favour of Episcopacy was swept off the statute-book and the Church re-established on the basis of the Second Book of Discipline. Had this Act been passed two years earlier, it might have been ascribed to the goodwill of the King; but in the circumstances in which it was brought forward, it was regarded as a piece of policy, adopted on the recommendation of the Chancellor for the purpose of recovering for the King the popularity he had lost during that interval, by the causes we have mentioned.



CHAPTER VII

THE POPISH LORDS—MELVILLE AND THE KING AT FALKLAND PALACE

'The king he movit his bonnet to him, He ween'd he was a king as weel as he.'

Johnie Armstrong.

The end of the Church's troubles in Scotland was still far off. No sooner had the constitution of 1592, which promised to secure her peace and liberty, been set down in the statute-book, than the forces of reaction, headed by the Crown, began to work for the undoing of it; and the Church was to pass through a century of almost continuous struggle and of many and bitter disappointments—a century which had great part in the making of Scotland—before that constitution was finally ratified.

The slackness of James towards the Popish agents, who had resumed their intrigues in the country, has been referred to. Those best informed in public affairs both in England and Scotland shared the indignation and alarm in the matter which were expressed by the ministers. One day, in the very year after the Armada, as James was in the Tolbooth with the Lords of Session, a packet was put into his hands from the English Queen containing intercepted treasonable letters from the Popish lords in Scotland to the King of Spain and the Duke of Parma, and accompanied by the following letter in Elizabeth's own hand, in which she rates him for his fatuous lenity towards subjects who had joined hands with the enemies of his kingdom:—

'MY DEERE BROTHER,—I have ere now assured you, that als long as I found you constant in amitie towards me, I would be your faithfull watche, to shunne all mishappes or dangers that, by assured intelligence, I might compasse to give you. And according to my good devotioun and affectioun, it hath pleased God to make me, of late, so fortunat as to have intercepted a messinger (whom I keepe safe for you), that carried letters of high treasoun to your persone and kingdome; and can doe no lesse, than with most gladenesse, send you the discovered treasoun, suche as you may see, as in a glasse, the true portrature of my late wairning letters; which, if then it had pleased you follow, als weill as read, you might have taiken their persons, receaved their treasoun, and shunned their further strenthening, which hath growne daylie by your too great neglecting and suffering of so manie practises which, at the beginning, might easilie have been prevented.

'Permitt me, I pray you, my deere brother, to use als muche plainnesse as I beare you sinceritie, your supposing to deale moderatlie and indifferentlie to both factions, and not to take nor punishe, at the first, so notorious offenders, as suche as durst send to a forrane king for forces to land in your land under what pretence soever, without your special directioun, the same never punished; but rather, holde foote deere and neere, with a parentage of neare allya. Good Lord! me thinke I doe but dreame: no king a weeke would beare this! Their forces assembled, and held neere your persoun, held plotts to take your persoun neere the seaside; and that all this wrapped up with giving them offices, that they mighte the better accomplishe their treasoun! These be not the formes of governments that my yeeres have experimented: I would yours had noucht, for I sweare unto you myne sould never in like sort.

'I exhort you be not subject to such weaknesse, as to suffer such lewdnesse so long to roote, as all your strenth sall not plucke up (which God forbid!), which to shunne, after you have perused this great packet that I sent you, take speedie order lest you linger too long; and take counsell of few, but of wise and trustie. For if they suspect your knowledge they will shunne your apprehensioun. Therefore of a suddantie they must be clapped up in safer custodie than some others have been, which hath bred their laughter. You see my follie when I am entered to matter that toucheth you so neere. I know not how to ende but with my prayers to God to guide you for your best. My agent with you sall tell you the rest.

'Your most aproved loving sister and consignesse,

'ELIZABETH R.'[18]

[Footnote 18: Calderwood's History, v. 9.]

An incident which occurred at the close of 1592, and which is known in our history as 'The Spanish Blanks,' brought to an acute crisis the suspicion and discontent of the country, and especially of the ministers. A Papist of the name of Kerr was about to embark on his ship, which was lying off Fairlie Roads on the Ayrshire coast, when he was arrested by a posse of Glasgow students and local gentry, with Knox the minister of Paisley at their head. In conversation with some of the people, Kerr had led them to suspect that he was bound for Spain as the agent of some plot, and information to this effect was immediately communicated to the authorities in the neighbourhood, and among others to Knox. Only a month before, at the instance of Melville, the ministers had formed a vigilance committee to gather reports from every parish in the country of any sinister movements on the part of the Papists, and to lay these before the Council, that steps might be taken at once to defeat them. Kerr's apprehension was a proof of the efficiency of this organisation. A search having been made, there were found in his possession, along with many treasonable letters, several sheets of paper containing no writing. They were addressed to the King of Spain, however, and bore the signatures and seals of the three chief Popish lords—Huntly, Angus, and Errol. Attached to these documents was a commission to a Jesuit named Crichton, to fill up the blanks, and in such a way—so it transpired afterwards—as to invite Philip to invade the country, and to pledge to him the support of these nobles. Kerr and an accomplice, Graham of Fintry, were brought before the Council and confessed the plot; and a few days after the arrest of Kerr, before the report of it had spread through the country, the Earl of Angus, having occasion to come to Edinburgh, was seized by the magistrates and confined in the Castle.

The King was absent from the city at the time attending the marriage festivities of the Earl of Mar, and an urgent request was sent to him by the ministers of Edinburgh and his own Council to return and take steps to bring the conspirators to justice. James, instead of thanking the ministers and councillors for their diligence in the matter, blamed them for their super-serviceableness, and so gave the impression that he was in sympathy with the plot. Kerr himself, in a letter to the King, went the length of saying that he and his friends had no doubt that they would have his countenance in their enterprise; and Calderwood says:—'It appeareth the chief conspirators have had his [the King's] expresse or tacite consent, or at least have perceaved him inclyned that way, whereupon they have presumed.' Events confirmed the suspicion, if it wanted confirmation, of James's secret leanings to the party that had been guilty of treason. Only one of them—Graham, the most insignificant of their number—paid the penalty of his crime; Kerr and the Earl of Angus escaped from prison with the connivance of the authorities; Huntly, who had been summoned to stand trial before the Privy Council, retired to his own territory and defied the Government, and it was only when he could no longer resist the popular will that the King took action against him. At the head of a considerable force, James set out to seize him; but when the army reached Aberdeen it was found that the Earl had retired further north to the Caithness moors. The subsequent treatment of the rebel lords showed that the King had no heart in their prosecution—indeed, in an unguarded moment, while conversing with one of the few nobles who were reckoned friends of the Protestant cause, Lord Hamilton, he let out this fact. Had it not been for the pressure of the ministers, nothing would have been done. James trifled with the business: he scolded and coaxed the ministers in turn; he threatened them, and then gave way and promised to bring the offenders to trial, but still made no move; he allowed the conspirators to appear in public and to have interviews with himself in which he made it apparent that they had little to fear at his hands; he tampered with his own law officers in the traitors' interest; and through his influence with Parliament they were virtually absolved and their forfeitures cancelled. But the ministers were stronger and far more really representative of the nation than the Parliament—a fact which markedly characterises this long crucial period of Scottish history, and which must always be borne in mind for a right understanding of events.

The two Melvilles took the lead in the Church's action. At the Synod of Fife, September 1593, excommunication was pronounced on the Popish lords; and steps were taken to hold an early meeting in Edinburgh of commissioners from the counties to adopt such measures as would secure the ends of justice. At this convention, delegates were appointed to meet with the King and represent to him the necessity of taking vigorous action against the lords. The interview took place at Jedburgh, where the King had gone to repress some Border tumult. 'We war bot bauchlie[19] lukit upon,' says James Melville, who was one of the delegates.—'Our Assembly of Fife was bitterly inveyit against, namlie my uncle Mr. Andro and Mr. David Black.' Before the interview closed, the King became more gracious, and he dismissed the delegates with fair promises; but his real answer was the subsequent passing through Parliament of an Act of Oblivion in favour of the lords, which he urged on the unkingly ground that, if severe measures were taken against them, they would go 'to armes and get forean assistance quhilk might wrack King, Country, and Relligion.'

[Footnote 19: Sorrily.]

Parliament had given way to the King: but the ministers kept their ground. The Assembly of May 1594 ratified the deed of the Synod of Fife in excommunicating the Popish lords, and appointed another commission to meet with the King and urge him in the matter, James Melville being again one of the delegates and their spokesman. The manner in which the King received them was very different from that in which he had received the deputation at Jedburgh, and surprised them by its friendliness. He expressed his regret at the misunderstandings that had arisen between himself and the Church, heard the statements of the delegates with apparent favour, and promised to summon Parliament for the earliest convenient day to take measures for the punishment of the excommunicated lords. At the close of the conference the King detained James Melville for a private interview, and sent through him a friendly message to his uncle, acknowledging both to be most faithful and trusty subjects. From this time, for the space of two years, James Melville by the King's command went a great deal about the Court. 'Courting' did not go with his heart, but he was reconciled to it by the hope that he might be of service in bringing the King into better relations with the Church. The King's motive in inviting him to Court may be inferred from an incident which occurred one day when he had been conferring with the King on Church affairs. As Melville left the room the King was overheard saying to a courtier, 'I have streaked his mouth with cream.' James little knew the man, than whom there was not among his subjects one less likely to be seduced from his convictions by a king's flattery or favours. When the King found after a two years' trial that he was untamable, James Melville's 'Courting' days ceased.

The King's change of policy in the business concerned and his adoption of a more conciliatory attitude to the ministers are not difficult to explain. He had come to realise that they were too strong for him: they had the country with them, while towards himself there was a universal feeling of suspicion and discontent. Moreover, the ministers had a strong ally in Queen Elizabeth, who continued to make angry remonstrances with James on his treatment of the rebel lords. In one stinging letter she said 'she could only pray for him, and leave him to himself. She did not know whether sorrow or shame had the upper hand, when she had learned that he had let those escape against whom he had such evident proof. Lord! what wonder grew in her that he should correct them with benefits and simply banished them to those they loved. She more than smiled to read their childish, foolish, witless excuses, turning their treasons' bills to artificers' reckonings, one billet lacking only, item, so much for the cord they best merited.'[20]

[Footnote 20: Cunningham's History, i. 424.]

James dared not longer defy the feeling of the country, and accordingly Parliament was summoned in June 1594 and the trial of the Popish lords proceeded with, the King professing the greatest zeal in it, and declaring that, as he had found 'plaister and medicine' unavailing in dealing with the traitors, he would now 'use fire as the last remedie.' It fell to Parliament to choose those who composed the court in trials for treason—the Lords of the Articles they were called,—and some of those who were chosen on this occasion were notoriously tainted with treason themselves. Melville, who was present in the Parliament as a commissioner of the Church, attended the opening of the court, and, addressing the King and the judges, admonished them to deal with the cause as the laws of the realm and the safety of the country required. 'It is true,' he said, 'manie thinke it a mater of great weight to overthrow the estate of three so great men. I grant it is so: yitt it is a greater mater to overthrow and expell out of this countrie three farre greater; to witt, true religioun, the quietnesse of the commoun weale, and the King's prosperous estat.' He then challenged the composition of the court: '"There come some heere to reasoun who have no interest, but ought to be excluded by all law,"—meaning of the Pryour of Pluscardie, brother to the Lord Setoun, who was after made chanceller. Some answered, that he was a man of honorable place, President of the Sessioun. Mr. Andrew answered, more honorable were debarred from place among the Lords of the Articles. The King confessed it was true, and promised it sould be amended. "Nixt," said Mr. Andrew, "there are some on the Articles justlie suspected partiall, and almost als guiltie as the persons that are to be tryed." The Abbot of Inchaffrey and Mr. Edward Bruce sitting together laughed. The King asked at Mr. Andrew who it was that was suspected? Mr. Andrew said, "One laughing there." Mr. Edward asked if he meant of him. Mr. Andrew answered, "If yee confesse your self guiltie, I will not purge you: but I meant of Inchaffrey there, beside you." The King sayeth to Mr. Edward, "That is Judas' questioun, 'Is it I, Maister?'"—whereat was muche laughter.'

The forfeiture of the lords was agreed to, all but unanimously. But it was easier to pronounce this sentence than to execute it. Huntly, the chief traitor, defied the Government from his stronghold in the North, where he was all-powerful. The Crown had no standing army, and depended in military undertakings on the great feudal lords, one of the greatest of whom, Argyle, the potentate of the West Highlands, was ready to take the field against his rival, Huntly, in the North. He invaded the Gordon district with a strong force, but was beaten by Huntly at Glenlivet. The Crown then raised an army of its own, by proclamation, and the King marched north with the force, accompanied on his own command by the two Melvilles, that their presence might be a pledge to the country of his sincerity and zeal in the business. On the army reaching Aberdeen, it was found that Huntly and his friends had again fled to Caithness, and it was resolved to go on to the district of the rebels and demolish their strongholds. The weather was so severe, however, that the army could not move out of Aberdeen for a whole month; and by that time all the money the King had in hand for the expense of the war was exhausted, and it became necessary to raise more. The means he took to do this showed his estimate of the ministers' hold on the country. He sent James Melville south to enlist their services in procuring the money, and with him a letter in his own hand to the ministers of Edinburgh, whom he addressed as his 'trusty friends,' in which he made a fervent appeal to them to rouse the burgesses to do their duty in the matter, and declared that, rather than that there should be any miscarriage of justice, he would 'give crown, life, and all else God had put into his hands.'

The King's message had been no sooner despatched than a difference of opinion arose among his advisers as to the course to be pursued with the rebels. A majority was in favour of taking no further action, while Melville vehemently urged that the army should advance into Huntly's territory and overthrow his chief stronghold, the castle of Strathbogie. The King could better afford to differ from the Council than from Melville, whose advice he adopted and at once put into execution; and when the rebels heard of the destruction of Strathbogie, they believed that at last the King was serious in the business, and Huntly and his friends fled from the country in despair.

This expedition took place in the fall of 1594. Before another year was over the King's attitude towards the Church was again hostile, or rather, his latent hostility began to be again evident and active. The removal from the Court of the Chancellor about this time, through an illness of which he soon died, so far accounts for the King's relapse in his relations with the ministers, as for some time Maitland's influence had been used in encouraging him to cultivate their friendship.

In 1595, the King incurred one of those periodic explosions of Melville's indignation, which were provoked by his own incurable distrust of the ministers, and his persistent effort to deprive them of liberty of speech in the pulpit. Mr. David Black of St. Andrews, one of the most zealous and honoured ministers of the Church, had made an enemy of Balfour of Burley, who has already been referred to in connection with outrages on citizens of St. Andrews. In revenge, Balfour raised calumnious charges against Black of disloyal utterances in the pulpit, and got them conveyed, through acquaintances among the courtiers, to the King's ears; Melville, as his friend, and as having been the means of bringing him to the city, being also reported to the King as involved in his offences. The two were summoned to appear before the King and Council at Falkland to answer the accusations that had been made against them. While Black and his accusers were being heard, Melville, who had not been called, and who was determined that he would see justice done to his friend, knocking at the door, burst into the Council Chamber, 'and efter humble reverence done to the King, he braks out with grait libertie of speitche, letting the King planlie to knaw, that quhilk dyvers tymes befor, with small lyking, he haid tooned in his ear, "Thait thair was twa Kings in Scotland, twa Kingdomes, and twa Jurisdictiones: Thir was Chryst Jesus, etc.: And gif the King of Scotland, civill King James the Saxt, haid anie judicator or cause thair, presentlie, it sould nocht be to judge the fathfull messanger of Jesus Chryst, the King, etc., bot (turning him to the Lard of Burley, standing there) this trator, wha hes committed divers poinets of his treasone against his Majestie's civill lawes, to his grait dishonour and offence of his guid subjects, namlie, taking of his peacable subjects on the night out of thair housses, ravishing of weimen, and receating within his hous of the King's rebels and forfault enemies!"

'With this, Burley falles down on his knees to the King, and craves justice. "Justice!" sayes Mr. Andro, "wald to God yow haid it! Yow wald nocht be heir to bring a judgment from Chryst upon the King, and thus falslie and unjustlie to vex and accuse the fathfull servants of God!" The King began, with sum countenances and speitches, to command silence and dashe him; bot he, insurging with graitter bauldnes and force of langage, buir out the mater sa, that the King was fean to tak it upe betwix tham with gentill termes and mirrie talk; saying, "They war bathe litle men, and thair hart was at thair mouthe!"' Melville's boldness stopped the proceedings, and there and then the trial took end.

We have now reached a period, 1596, just midway between the Reformation and the Covenant, when the Crown resumed its openly hostile policy towards the Church, laying upon her once more the heavy hand of oppression. From this date it pursued its object—the introduction of Episcopacy—more energetically than before. For the first decade of the renewed struggle it was strenuously opposed by the leaders of the Assembly; but thereafter, when the leaders had been silenced or banished, there was a free course for tyranny, and during the next fifty years the fortunes of the Church suffered an eclipse. To see the emergence we have to look ahead to 1632-1638, the period of the Covenant and the Glasgow Assembly, when there came that revival of the spirit of the Church which prepared her for her ultimate conflict and hard-won victory in 1688.

The cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, had already appeared on the horizon in the changed attitude of the King, which we have just noted; but there was no one able to foresee the storm it portended, which was to rage so long and so cruelly before the sky cleared again.

James Melville speaks of 1596 as to be 'markitt for a special perriodic and fatall yeir to the Kirk of Scotland,' and he enters on his narrative of it 'with a sorrowful heart and drouping eyes,' so 'doolful' was the decay it ushered in. The declension is not to be wondered at; for where has a Church been found in which such prolonged oppression as the Scottish Church had been subjected to, did not weary the patience and damp the zeal of all but the most resolved members of its Communion? Had we been present at one of the diets of the Assembly, held in March of this 'fatall' year, we should have witnessed a scene which might have been taken as an augury of good to the Church, rather than of evil. It was a day set apart for humiliation and the renewal of the Covenant, and no day had been seen like it, since the Reformation, in the spiritual fervour which was evoked. The exhortations of the preacher drew forth such sighs and sobs and weeping, that the House was turned into a Bochim; and when those present were asked to signify their entrance into a new covenant with God, the congregation rose en masse and held up their hands. Similar scenes took place in the Synods and Presbyteries to which the movement extended. 'I am certaine,' says James Melville, 'by the experience found in my selff and maney others present in these meittinges, that the Assemblies of the saintes in Scotland wes nevir more beautiful and gloriouse by the manifold and mightie graces of the presence of the Holy Spirit.'

This devotional diet of the Assembly was held as the prelude to a work of reformation in religion and morals on which the Church had set its heart, and which, beginning with the ministry, was to be sought also in the Parliament, in the Court, in the seats of justice, in every household, in all ranks and classes, from the King to the meanest of his subjects, to those who were in the highways and hedges, to the 'pypers, fidlers, songsters, sorners, peasants, and beggars.' It was an exhaustive programme; and the ministers gave undeniable proofs of their sincerity by setting themselves to put their own house in order, and drawing up ordinances for sifting their own ranks and 'rypping' out their own ways. The scheme, as it applied to others, was too much of the nature of a magisterial inquisition for sin to do credit to its promoters' wisdom, if the ends they sought did honour to their hearts. No doubt, the condition of the country was such as to distress every good citizen and to make any remedy welcome. There was clamant need for reform in every department of the State. The administration of justice was, by its corruption and its ineffectiveness in the punishment of crime, a disgrace to the country. These were matters of public scandal, calling clearly for public agitation and reform; but in matters of private and domestic life the ministers should have been content with exhortation and example as their means of reformation. A moral police proved then as intolerable and ineffectual as it must always be. Our concern is to vindicate, not the absolute wisdom of Melville and the other ministers of that day, but their thoroughgoing and disinterested zeal for the purity and godliness of their nation, of which this scheme of reform is a signal proof.

The movement of the Assembly was soon checked by fresh troubles in the State. It was well known that Philip had never ceased to chafe at the humiliation inflicted on him by the disastrous end of the Armada, and that he was burning for revenge. In January of this year James had issued a Proclamation in which he declared that the ambition of the King of Spain to make conquest of the Crown and Kingdom of England was manifest to all who had the least 'spunk of understanding'; that to have such a neighbour settled on the borders of Scotland would be attended with the eminent hazard of civil and spiritual thraldom; and that it was therefore necessary to unite all their force and concur with England in the defence of their ancient liberties and in preserving the isle from the tyranny of strangers. At the Assembly last held the King had been present, and had urged that contributions should be made from the whole realm for this purpose, when Melville rose and told him, with his usual plainness of speech, that if the estates of the Popish lords were applied, as they should be, to the defence of the country, no contributions would be needed from the people.

We can imagine the shock of alarm with which in these circumstances the nation heard that the Earl of Huntly and his associates had returned to Scotland, and the rising exasperation as it became evident that the King was disposed to let them settle down peaceably. Who could fathom the mind or trust the intentions of a King who roused the nation to resist Philip, while he at the same time harboured the faction that was prepared, when Philip appeared, to give him welcome?

A change had recently taken place in the personnel of the Government that did not tend to allay the apprehensions which the return of the rebel lords awakened in the country. A Commission of eight had been appointed to manage the King's private property and the Crown estates; but though nominally only a Finance Committee, 'the Octavians,' as they were called, soon got the reins of government into their hands; and of this new Cabinet, 'one-half ... war suspecte Papists, and the rest little better.'

In August 1596 the Estates were summoned to meet in Falkland and consult what was to be done with the Popish lords. From the manner in which the meeting was called, it was evident that the King and his ministers had resolved to condone the crimes of Huntly and his allies, and to restore them to their honours and estates. The summons was confined to those members who were friendly to the lords, and to such of the ministers of the Church as might be expected to yield to the wishes of the Court. Melville, however, appeared with a commission from the Church which gave him authority to watch over its interests on all occasions on which they might be in danger. When the King, before the sitting had begun, demanded the reason of his presence, and bade him go home, Melville answered that he must first discharge the commission intrusted to him by God and the Church. The session having opened, the King ordered that the members should take their seats as their names were called from the list. Melville, without his name being called, was among the first to enter, when the King's challenge gave him the opportunity he sought of delivering his soul: 'Sir, I have a calling to com heir be Chryst Jesus the King, and his Kirk, wha hes speciall entres in this tourn,[21] and against quhilks directlie this Conventioun is mett; charging yow and your Esteattes in his nam, and of his Kirk, that yie favour nocht his enemies whom he hattes, nor go nocht about to call hame and mak citiciners, these that has traterouslie sought to betrey thair citie and native countrey to the crewall Spainyard, with the overthrow of Chryst's Kingdome, fra the quhilk they have bein thairfor maist justlie cutt of as rotten members; certifeing, if they sould do in the contrair, they sould feill the dint of the wrathe of that King and his Esteattes!' On the King interrupting him and commanding him to go out, Melville obeyed, thanking God that 'they haid knawin his mynd and gottin his message dischargit.'

[Footnote 21: Interest in this business.]

The business at this meeting of the Estates was all 'chewed meit.' The Resolutions were prepared by the King for a House packed with his nominees, and it was agreed to license the return of the lords and to receive their submission.

In September the Commission of Assembly met at Cupar and appointed a deputation, consisting of the two Melvilles and other two ministers, to lay before the King their complaint regarding the decision of the Parliament, and to crave him to prevent it being carried into effect. The interview between Andrew Melville, the spokesman of the deputation, and King James at Falkland Palace is an event of which the memory will live in Scotland as long as it is a nation, and which ranks in moral dignity and dramatic interest with the greatest scenes in history. When did a subject ever use a manlier freedom with his Sovereign? When did mere titular kingship more plainly shrink into insignificance in presence of the moral majesty vested in the spirit of a true man? No writer can afford to describe the scene in other words than those of James Melville:—

'Mr. Andro Melvill, Patrik Galloway, James Nicolsone, and I, cam to Falkland, whar we fand the King verie quyet. The rest leyed upon me to be speaker, alleaging I could propone the mater substantiuslie, and in a myld and smothe maner, quhilk the King lyked best of. And, entering in the Cabinet with the King alan, I schew his Majestie, That the Commissionars of the Generall Assemblie, with certean uther breithring ordeanit to watche for the weill of the Kirk in sa dangerous a tym, haid convenit at Cowper. At the quhilk word the King interrupts me and crabbotlie quarrels our meitting, alleaging it was without warrand and seditius, making our selves and the countrey to conceave feir whar was na cause. To the quhilk, I beginning to reply, in my maner, Mr. Andro doucht nocht abyd it, bot brak af upon the King in sa zealus, powerfull, and unresistable a maner, that whowbeit the King used his authoritie in maist crabbit and colerik maner, yit Mr. Andro bure him down, and outtered the Commission as from the mightie God, calling the King bot "God's sillie vassall"; and, taking him be the sleive, sayes this in effect, throw mikle hat reasoning and manie interruptiones: "Sir, we will humblie reverence your Majestie alwayes, namlie in publick, but sen we have this occasioun to be with your Majestie in privat, and the treuthe is yie ar brought in extream danger bathe of your lyff and croun, and with yow the countrey and Kirk of Chryst is lyk to wrak, for nocht telling yow the treuthe, and giffen of yow a fathfull counsall, we mon discharge our dewtie thairin, or els be trators bathe to Chryst and yow! And, thairfor, sir, as divers tymes befor, sa now again, I mon tell yow, thair is twa Kings and twa kingdomes in Scotland. Thair is Chryst Jesus the King, and his kingdome the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is, and of whase kingdome nocht a king nor a lord, nor a heid, bot a member!... And, Sir, when yie war in your swadling-cloutes, Chryst Jesus' rang[22] friely in this land in spyt of all his enemies."'

[Footnote 22: Reigned.]

The King bent before the tempest of Melville's indignation, and the storm ended in calm: the deputation was dismissed with the promise that the Popish lords would 'get no grace at his hands till they satisfied the Kirk.'

The ministers had learned what value to attach to the royal word, so that they cannot have been greatly surprised when soon afterwards James showed his intention not only to indemnify the excommunicated lords, but to restore them to favour at Court. At this time Huntly's Countess received a special mark of the King's favour in being invited to the baptismal ceremony of his daughter Elizabeth, and at the same time another Popish lady was put in custody of the Princess at the Court.

The ultimate issue of this matter, which was soon involved in another and greater controversy between the Crown and the Church, was that the Popish lords, after a formal submission to the Courts of the Church, were absolved from their excommunication and restored to their former positions. No one believed that there was any sincerity in the transaction either on the part of Huntly and his friends, or of the King and Council, or of the majority of the Assembly: the whole business was concocted and pushed through by the Crown for its own ends, with as much of the semblance of concession to the Church as possible, and as little of the reality. The action of the Court throughout the whole case was such as to breed the greatest suspicion of the King's honesty in professing zeal for the defence of the country from the dangers threatened by Popish intrigues at home and abroad. Even Burton, whom no one will suspect of partiality to the Church, and whose animus against the ministers often overcomes his historic judgment, in writing of what he calls the 'edifying ceremony' of the absolution of the lords, says: 'It must be conceded to their enemies that it was a solemn farce; and whatever there might be in words or the surface of things, there would be, when these Earls were restored, a power in the North ready to co-operate with any Spanish invader.'



CHAPTER VIII

THE KING'S GREEK GIFT TO THE CHURCH

'The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.'

The Psalms.

In 1596, at one of the many conferences which he held with the Commissioners of the Church on the business with which our last chapter was concerned, the King disclosed a new policy. For the double purpose of diverting public attention from the Popish lords, and of starting a new process for the overthrow of Presbytery, he cast off all disguise and threw down the gauntlet to the ministers. He told the Commissioners that the question of the redding of the marches between the two jurisdictions must be reopened, and that there could be no peace between him and the Church until it satisfied him on these four points:—that ministers should make no reference in the pulpit to affairs of government; that the Courts of the Church should take no cognisance of offences against the law of the land; that the General Assembly should only meet by the King's special command; and that the Acts of the Assembly should, no more than the statutes of the realm, be held valid till they received his sanction and ratification.

Had these demands been granted, the liberties of the Church would have been placed under the King's feet, the ministers would have worn a Court muzzle, and the Assembly would have sat only to register the King's decrees. With the pulpits silenced in regard to affairs of government and offences against the law, the country would have been deprived of the only organ of public opinion that checked the arbitrary power of the Crown and the prevailing laxity in the administration of justice. Had it not been for words of 'venturesome edge' spoken from the pulpits on necessary occasions, we cannot estimate how the liberties of Scotland would have suffered. We are told by some dispassionate and carefully balanced readers of Scottish History that the Presbyterian Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cared no more for liberty than did their opponents, and that the controversy was between Presbyterian tyranny on the one hand and Episcopal tyranny on the other; and, of course, it is to be allowed that individual liberty was neither claimed nor admitted by any party in that age, as it is by all parties in ours. But the Presbyterian Church was the nation in a sense which held true of no other organisation civil or ecclesiastical—certainly not of the aristocratic Parliament,—and its courts and pulpits were the voice of the nation—the only articulate voice it had; so that in pleading for the rights and liberties of the Church, in demanding for it free speech and effective influence in the nation's affairs, Melville and the Presbyterians were, from first to last, fighting for the rights and liberties of the people against the personal and injurious ambitions of the King and his courtiers. There can be no really historical understanding of the course of events in Scotland through the whole Reforming period except in the light of this truth—that the interests of Presbytery were dear to the best men in the country, from generation to generation, because they were the interests both of national righteousness and of national freedom. That the Church should be free to reform the nation, meant, practically, and in the only way possible, that the nation should be free to reform itself. Knox, Melville, and the Covenanters were the nobler sons of Wallace and Bruce, and fought out their battles. And this contest with James was a crucial illustration of the principles involved in the whole long struggle.

On the very day the Commissioners were conferring with the King, it came out that Mr. David Black, minister of St. Andrews, had been summoned before the Council on a charge rising out of sermons he had preached. Black was accused, in the first instance, of having used language disrespectful to Queen Elizabeth. Bowes, the English Ambassador, had been wrought upon by one of the courtiers to make a complaint against Black on this score; and although the latter had made an explanation with which the Ambassador professed himself satisfied, the charge was persisted in. Black was further accused of having, on various occasions, made offensive references to the King and the Queen, and to others of high position in the land. The charges were based on sermons spread over two or three years, a circumstance which of itself suggests that the prosecution had been got up for ulterior government purposes; that it was a 'forged cavillation,' as Bruce called it in his pulpit in Edinburgh.

Black denied all the charges, and declared that they had been concocted by well-known private enemies. When the Council resolved to go on with the prosecution, Black, on the advice of the Commissioners of the Church, declined its jurisdiction. The Council went on with the trial—Black taking no part in it,—found the charges proven, and sentenced him to go into ward beyond the North Water (the North Esk). The same week, the Commissioners of Assembly who had come to Edinburgh to watch the trial were ordered to quit the capital, along with many of their leading supporters among the citizens, within twenty-four hours; and a Proclamation was issued containing a vehement attack on the ministers, and reviving one of the provisions of the Black Acts, which prohibited all preachers from censuring the conduct of the Government or any of 'the loveabill(!)' Acts of Parliament, required all magistrates to take measures against any who should be found so doing, and made it a crime to hear such speeches without reporting them to the authorities. This Proclamation left the country in no doubt as to the character of the King's policy towards the Church; for never had even James asserted his claims to absolute authority, alike in civil and ecclesiastical affairs, more arrogantly. It declared that the royal power was above all the estates, spiritual as well as temporal; and that the King was judge of speeches of whatever quality, uttered in the pulpit.

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.'

Armed with his new provisions, the King immediately began to use them with energy. Edinburgh and St. Andrews were the strongholds of the Church, where the Invincibles in its ministry were chiefly found. The ministers of the former had already been disposed of, and the King's next move was directed against those of the latter—above all, against Melville, the chief Invincible. The two leading ministers of St. Andrews, Black and Wallace, were discharged; George Gledstanes, who afterwards became a Bishop, being appointed in Black's place; and Melville was deprived of the Rectorship of the University. At the same time, a law was enacted depriving professors of their seats in Church Courts, the object being, of course, to exclude Melville, whose influence in the Courts was so commanding.

At the end of this year another step was taken towards the re-erection of Episcopacy. The Commissioners of Assembly, who were now mere creatures of the King, appeared before Parliament, petitioning it to give the Church the right of representation, so as to restore it to its former position as the Third Estate of the realm; proposing also, that for this end the prelatic order should be revived, and the Bishops chosen as the Church's representatives. The jurisdiction of the prelates within the Church was to be left over for future consideration, in accordance with James's policy, which was not to filch so much of the Church's liberty at any one time as might frustrate his hope of taking it all away in the end. The petition of the Commissioners was granted by the Parliament.

In February of the following year, 1598, the Synod of Fife met, Sir Patrick Murray being present as the King's Commissioner; and the Court at once entered on the question of the hour, Should the Church agree to send representatives to Parliament? James Melville, who was the first to rise and address the House, protested against their falling to work to 'big up' bishops, whom all their days they had been 'dinging doun.' Andrew Melville followed, and supported his nephew's counsel in his own vehement manner. David Ferguson, the oldest minister of the Church, who had been at its planting in 1560, rose and warned the House of the fatal gift that was offered by the King. John Davidson, another venerable and influential member of the Synod, made a powerful speech, concluding with the same warning: 'Busk, busk, busk him as bonnilie as ye can, and fetche him in als fearlie as yie will, we sie him weill aneuche, we sie the horns of his mytre.' When the Synod met, the majority were inclined to favour the proposal; but these speeches, greatly to the chagrin of the Royal Commissioner, turned the feeling of the House.

The same business occupied the next Assembly, which met in Dundee in March. Melville having come to the Assembly in defiance of the recent Act depriving him of his seat, the King challenged his commission in the Court. Melville replied with great spirit; and before he was discharged, delivered his views on the King's policy. John Davidson boldly defended his leader's right to sit in the Assembly, and, turning to the King, told him that he had his seat there as a Christian man, and not as President of the Court. Next day Davidson complained again of the treatment Melville had received, openly ascribing it to the King's fear of his opposition. 'I will not hear a word on that head,' James burst forth.—'Then,' said Davidson, 'we must crave help of Him that will hear us.' Not only was Melville excluded from the Assembly, but its business was not allowed to proceed till he left the town, lest he should stiffen the brethren who resorted to him for advice against the King's proposals. The royal measures were, after all, only carried by ten votes; and even that majority would not have been secured had the King not declared, with his usual disingenuousness, that he had no intention of restoring the bishops as a spiritual order, but only as representatives of the Church in Parliament.

It was decided that the number of representatives should correspond with that of the old prelates, and that they should be chosen conjointly by the King and the Assembly. When, however, the House proceeded to details, so much difference of opinion arose, that the King thought it prudent to adjourn. The questions were referred to the inferior Courts for their consideration, and thereafter each Synod was to appoint three commissioners to confer on the subject before the King along with all the theological professors.

This conference was held, and was packed with the King's men. In many cases the delegates were not the choice of those they represented. The trick by which this was effected was in keeping with the rest of the King's conduct in the business. In many of the presbyteries the Invincibles were placed upon the leets from which the commissioners were to be elected; they thus lost their votes, and those who remained to make the choice chose the delegates desired by the King.

Melville attended the conference, and opposed the King at every point. On the question of the duration of the office of the representatives, there was a very lively piece of repartee between the two. Melville had been contending that the King's proposal to appoint the representatives for life would establish lordship over the brethren, 'tyme strynthning opinioun and custome confirming conceat,' when the King broke in upon his speech with the remark that 'there was na thing sa guid bot might be bathe ill suspected and abbusit, and sa we suld be content with na thing.' Melville retorted that they 'doubted of the guidness, and had ower just cause to suspect the evill of it.' The King's next thrust was: 'There was na fault bot we [the ministers] war all trew aneuche to the craft,' which Melville turned with the remark, 'But God make us all trew aneuche to Christ say we.'—'The ministers,' said the King, 'sould ly in contempt and povertie [if their status was not raised as he proposed].—'It was their Maister's case before them,' rejoined Melville; 'it may serve them weill aneuche to be as he was, and better povertie with sinceritie nor promotioun with corruptioun.'—'Uthers would be promovit to that room in Parliament,' said the King [his Majesty could not want his three estates], 'wha wald opres and wrak his Kirk.'—Melville answered: 'Let Chryst the King and advenger of the wrangs done to his Kirk and them deal togidder as he hes done before; let see wha gettes the warst.'—Once more the King argued: 'Men wald be that way [by a temporary appointment] disgraced, now sett upe and now sett by and cast down and sa discouragit from doing guid,' when Melville concluded: 'He that thinks it disgrace to be employed in what God's Kirk thinks guid, hes lytle grace in him; for grace is given to the lowlie.'

Another point was the name to be given to the representatives. Arguing against the King's proposal to style them bishops, Melville used great freedom of speech: 'The nam [Greek: episkopos] being a Scripture nam, might be giffen tham, provyding, that because ther was sum thing mair put to the mater of a Bischope's office then the Word of God could permit, it sould have a lytle eik[23] put to the nam quhilk the Word of God joyned to it, and sa it war best to baptize tham with the nam that Peter i. cap. iv. giffes to sic lyk officers, calling tham [Greek: allotrioepiskopous], war nocht they wald think scham to be merschallit with sic as Peter speakes of ther, viz., murderers, theiffs, and malefactors?' Melville was much pleased with his own wit: 'Verilie that gossop [this was Andro] at the baptisme (gif sa that I dar play with that word) was no a little vokie[24] for getting of the bern's name,' We hardly understand Melville unless we take into account the spirit almost of glee with which he fought 'the good fight'; he was 'always a fighter,' not purely from stress of circumstances, but because he had it in him; he was never quarrelsome, and he needed a high issue to rouse him—but that given, he sniffed the battle from far, and dearly loved to be in the thick of it.

[Footnote 23: Addition.]

[Footnote 24: Vain.]

The questions were then left to be disposed of by the General Assembly, the King warning the members of the conference before it broke up that, whatever the Assembly might do, he would have his Third Estate restored.

By this time the country had learned, by the publication of the King's two books—The True Law of Free Monarchy and the Basilicon Doron—that James's practice in the government of the nation and in his policy towards the Church was in accordance with his theory of kingship. By a 'Free Monarchy' he meant, not a monarchy in which the people are free, but in which the King is free from all control of the people. He claimed that the King was above the law; and that 'as it is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is presumption and a high contempt in a subject to dispute what a King can do, or to say that a King cannot do this or that.'

In the Basilicon Doron he unveiled his real feelings and designs with regard to Presbytery, which, at the very time he was writing, he was professing to respect—declaring that the ruling of the Kirk was no small part of the King's office; that parity among the ministers could not agree with a monarchy; that Puritans were pests in the Kirk and commonwealth of Scotland, and that bishops must be set up.

The General Assembly met in Montrose in March 1600; and Melville, who had come to the town to attend it, was commanded by the King to keep to his room. Summoned to his Majesty's presence, he was asked why he was giving trouble in attending the Assembly after the Act depriving him of his seat; when he replied: 'He had a calling in his Kirk of God and of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, quhilk he behovit to dischairge at all occasiounes, being orderlie callit thereto, as he wes at this time; and that for feir of a grytter punischment then could any earthly king inflict.' The King in anger uttered a threat, when Melville, putting his hand to his head, said: 'Sir, it is this that ye would haiff. Ye sall haiff it: Tak it! Tak it! or ye bereave us of the liberties of Jesus Christ and His kingdome.'

Excluded from the Assembly, Melville remained in Montrose during the sittings, to assist his brethren with his counsel. The King was present at every sitting, and was busy from early morning till late at night canvassing the members of the House; and though there were many who stood honestly by their principles, his authority and diplomacy carried the day. The House was so far from being favourable to the King's scheme, that it would have thrown it out, but for his arbitrary closure of the debate; it did throw out the proposal of life representatives; and it safeguarded the other clauses of the measure with so many caveats, that had they been observed, it could not have served for the restoration of the bishops. These caveats, however, were not observed; then, as many a time before and since in Scotland, the Church got the worst of the bargain in seeking a compromise with the civil power, and found too late that she had sold her birthright. In less than a month after the Assembly rose, three of the ministers had been appointed to bishoprics, and these ministers took their seats in the next Parliament. We have seen that James, whenever he felt that the tide of hostile opinion in the country was becoming too strong for him, sought to turn it by some popular act. The General Assembly held in Burntisland in May 1601 witnessed one of those periodic fits of apparent yielding, on the King's part, to the will of the nation. He was in peculiar disfavour at the time, owing to the mysterious tragedy which took place at Gowrie House in August 1600. There was a widespread, deep-rooted suspicion that the Earl of that name, who was a favourite of the people, and the head of a Protestant house, had been the victim rather than the author of the conspiracy; and the public irritation was increased by the new quarrel which James forced on Bruce and the other ministers of Edinburgh for refusing to repeat, in the thanksgiving service appointed to be held for his preservation, his own version of the story. At the Burntisland Assembly the King appeared and made humble confession of the shortcomings of his Government, especially in respect of his indulgence of the Papists, and gave lavish promises of amendment.

Two years afterwards, before leaving Scotland to ascend the English throne, these promises were renewed; but, as usual with James, they were only the prelude of greater oppression. His threat to the Puritan ministers at Hampton Court conference—that he would 'harry them out of the country'—left their brethren of the Scottish Church in no doubt as to the course he would pursue towards themselves, now that he had attained to a position of so much greater authority.

The Assembly was the palladium of the Church's liberty; and the policy which the King had begun before leaving Scotland, of usurping the government of the Church by gaining the control of the Assembly, was vigorously prosecuted after his accession to the throne of England. The meetings were prorogued again and again by royal authority, but always under protest from the most independent of the ministers. For their zeal in promoting a petition to him on the subject, the King ordered the two Melvilles to be imprisoned; but the Scottish Council dared not lay hands on them in view of the unpopularity of the Government. In the year 1605 the quarrel between the King and the ministers over the right of free Assembly came to a head. A meeting appointed to be held in Aberdeen had been prorogued by the King's authority for a second time, and prorogued sine die. The ministers felt that if they acquiesced in so grave a violation of the law of the Church, her liberty would be irrecoverably lost; several of the Presbyteries accordingly resolved to send representatives to Aberdeen to hold the Assembly in defiance of the King's prohibition. This was done, and the House had no sooner been constituted than a King's messenger appeared and commanded the members to disperse; whereupon the Moderator dissolved the Assembly and fixed a day for its next meeting. The law-officers of the Crown were immediately instructed to prosecute the ministers who had attended, and fourteen of them were tried and sentenced to imprisonment—two of them, Forbes the Moderator and John Welch, Knox's son-in-law, being sent to Blackness. Six of them having declined the jurisdiction of the Council, were tried for high treason by a packed jury, and found guilty by a majority. So great was the indignation felt throughout the country at the prosecution and the manner in which it had been conducted, that the Council had to inform the King that the Court could not go on with the trial of the others. Eight of the condemned ministers were banished to the Highlands and Islands; and the six who had been found guilty of treason were sent to Blackness and then banished to France. In all the proceedings against those who had made such a manly stand in defence of the Church's liberties, Melville identified himself with his brethren, did all that was in his power to procure their acquittal, and after their sentence visited them in prison.

The King now took another step in his campaign against Presbytery. He ordered all the synods of the Church to meet, in order to have articles submitted to them which provided that the bishops should have full jurisdiction over the ministers, under his Majesty, and that the King should be acknowledged supreme ruler of the Church under Christ. These articles were rejected by Melville's synod, and referred to the Assembly by the others. A meeting of Parliament was summoned to pass the articles into law, and to this Parliament Melville was sent by his presbytery to watch over the interests of the Church. It having been ascertained that it was the King's intention to propose that the statute of the year 1587, annexing the temporalities of the prelates to the Crown, should be repealed, and that the bishops should be restored to their ancient prerogatives and dignities, the ministers lodged a protest beforehand, with Melville's name at the head of the signatories; and when the measure came to be adopted by Parliament, and Melville rose up to renew his protest, he was commanded to leave the House, 'quhilk nevertheless he did not, till he had maid all that saw and heard him understand his purpose.' Melville seldom failed in any circumstances to make those who saw and heard him understand his purpose, and when that was done his end was served.

Among the writings issued at this time against the King's measure, there was one in which it was said of bishops in general, that 'for one preaching made to the people [they] ryde fourtie posts to court; and for a thought or word bestowed for the weal of anie soule care an hundreth for their apparrill, their train ... and goucked gloriosity.'[25] The part taken by the bishops at the opening of this Parliament showed that the new Scottish prelates were likely to verify this indictment against their order. 'The first day of the Ryding in Parliament betwix the Erles and the Lords raid the Bischopes, all in silk and velvet fuit-mantelles, by paires, tuo and tuo, and Saint Androis, the great Metropolitanne, alone by him selff, and are of the Ministeres of no small quantitie, named Arthur Futhey, with his capp at his knie, walkit at his stirrope alongst the streit. But the second day, for not haiffing their awen place as the Papist Bisschoppis of auld had, unto quhois place and dignitie they wer now restorit fully in judgment, quhilk wes befoir the Erles, nixt eftir the Marquesses, thai would not ryde at all, but went to the House of Parliament quyetlie on fuit. This maid the Nobillmen to take up thair presumeing honour, and detest thame, as soon as they had maid thame and sett thame up, perceiving that thair upelyfting wes thair awin douncasting.'

[Footnote 25: Foolish pomp.]

The Parliament had restored Episcopacy, but the Assembly had not yet wholly succumbed. To secure this end, and so to give to what was entirely his own despotic act the appearance of a change desired by the Church itself, was the King's next aim. And this opens up one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of James's relations with the Scottish Church.



CHAPTER IX

MELVILLE AT HAMPTON COURT

'But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, Is happy as a lover.'

The Happy Warrior.

A month before the meeting of the Perth Parliament, viz. in May 1606, Melville and his nephew, together with other six ministers, received a letter from the King, commanding them to go to London to confer with him on the affairs of the Church. The letter was very vaguely worded; but it was apparent that James's purpose was either to secure their capitulation to Episcopacy, or to deprive them of all further opportunity of resisting it. The ministers were much perplexed as to whether they should go or stay, but at last they decided to face all risks and obey the King's summons.

On reaching London at the end of August (1606), they got a warm welcome from many ministers in the city who were friendly to their cause. They were offered hospitality by their Graces of Canterbury and York, but they declined a meeting with these prelates till they had seen the King. They soon learned that the King's object in bringing them to London was that they might be set to the public discussion of the affairs of the Church. This the ministers, for many good reasons, were resolved not to do: they could be no parties to any proceedings which brought into question the Church's discipline, and they had no warrant for taking part in such proceedings. With whom were they to hold debate? The English prelates could find within their own Church those who would take them up in regard to the merits of their ecclesiastical system: and the two Scottish archbishops who had come to London to be present at the conference between the King and the eight brethren, could not open their mouths against Presbytery, as the ministers had brought with them documents, in which these prelates had bound themselves to maintain the established constitution of the Presbyterian Church.

The ministers were nearly a month in London before they met the King, who had been making a tour in England. The first interview between them took place at Hampton Court on 20th September. The King was in good humour, and very familiar; he bantered James Balfour on the length to which his beard had grown since they last met in Edinburgh, and was gracious all round.

Next day was the Sabbath, when they were all enjoined by the King to attend a service in the Royal Chapel, to be conducted by Dr. Barlow, Bishop of Rochester. They had been brought to London to be schooled into conformity; and as part of the process, the English bishops had been commanded to prepare a series of sermons for their benefit. These were such a travesty on the texts of Scripture they were supposed to expound, that if they had been addressed to the ministers' own congregations in Scotland, the humblest of their hearers would have resented them. Whatever these bishops could do, they certainly could not preach. They belonged to that section of the clergy who disparage the preacher's function in comparison with the priest's, and who in their own practice do a great deal to bring the former into something like contempt. If the sermons preached before the eight brethren did not convince or edify them, they at least amused them, and gave them practice in the Christian virtue of patience. Dr. Barlow's was not the worst, though his hearers regarded it as an admirable 'confutation' of the text. The preacher, among the four, who reached the climax of absurdity was Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester. He was one of the extreme High Churchmen of his time: no man urged the doctrine of passive obedience to a more abject degree, or did more to support with the sanction of religion the most extravagant pretensions of the Crown. It was Andrewes who at the Hampton Court Conference declared that James was inspired by God—the same man who made it his nightly prayer, as he tells us himself, that he might be preserved from adulating the King! Of all the sermons preached to, or rather at, the eight brethren, his, as we have said, was the most preposterous, consisting as it did of a deduction of the King's right to call Assemblies of the Church, from the passage in Numbers which describes the blowing of the trumpets by the sons of Aaron to summon the congregation to the tabernacle! Well might a Scottish lord, who heard Andrewes preach before the Court on the occasion of James's visit to Scotland in 1617, say of him as he did, when asked his opinion by the King, that he played with his text rather than preached upon it. The last of the series of the discourses was the most candid, and pointed most directly to the object at which they were all aiming; for the preacher reached the close of the attack upon the Presbyterians by turning round to the King and exclaiming, 'Downe, downe with them all!'

On Monday, 22nd September, the ministers were brought to confer with the King in presence of the Scottish Council. Two points for discussion came up: First, the proceedings of the Aberdeen Assembly; and, second, the proposed holding of an Assembly in which order and peace might be restored to the Church. James Melville spoke for the brethren with great courtesy, and at the same time with great decision. He declined, in name of all, to discuss these questions till they had had an opportunity for consultation among themselves. Other matters were brought forward by the King, but not formally discussed. One of these was a letter that had been addressed by James Melville, from his sick-bed, to the Synod of Fife, in regard to the articles in which the King claimed supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. '"I hard, Mr. James Melvill," said the King, "that ye wreitt a Lettre to the Synod of Fyff at Cowper, quhairin was meikle of Chryst, but lytle guid of the King. Be God I trow ye wes reavand or mad (for he spak so) ye speek utherwayis now. Now, wes that a charitabill judgment of me?"—"Sir," says Mr. James, with a low courtessie, "I wes baith seik and sair in bodie quhan I wreit that Lettre, bot sober and sound in mind. I wreit of your Majestie all guid, assureing my selff and the Bretherine that thais Articles quhairoff a copy cam in my handis could not be from your Majestie, they wer so strange; and quhom sould I think, speik, or wryt guid of, if not of your Majestie, quho is the man under Chryst quhom I wisch most guid and honour unto."'

At the consultation held among the brethren in regard to the points raised, they decided that when the conference was resumed they would give their answer through one of their number; and that, as to the first question before them, they would decline, for reasons which we need not rehearse, to give any judgment on the Aberdeen Assembly. Meanwhile, however, the King had resolved that each of the ministers should answer the questions for himself, in the hope that their answers would prove conflicting, and so give him an advantage.

At the second conference there were present the members of the English Council, the most eminent of the prelates, and the most illustrious of the nobles. On the King's right hand sat the Primate, with many of England's proudest earls and all the great ministers of state; on his left the young Prince Henry, with the Scottish nobles and councillors; behind the arras several other nobles and bishops were gathered. In the midst of the assemblage stood the eight Scottish ministers, unabashed by the glitter of rank and royalty—plain men decorated with no honours, but in intellect and dignity of character the peers of the best in that company; and to the crowd of courtiers gathered that day in the Council Hall of England they taught a lesson in one of the duties owing to a sovereign which few courtiers have practised—the duty of telling him the truth.

The subject of conference was, as we have said, the conduct of the ministers who had held the Assembly in Aberdeen. The first to be asked their opinion by the King were the Scottish bishops and councillors, who answered promptly and unanimously that 'they had ever damnit that Assembly.' Turning from them to the eight brethren, and addressing their chief—the man above all others whom James sought to entrap: '"Now, Siris," sayis the King, "quhat say ye, and first Mr. Andro Melvill?" Quho, with meikle low courtessie, talkit all his mynd in his awin maner, roundly, soundly, fully, freely, and fervently, almaist the space of ane hour, not omitting any poynt he could remember.' James Balfour was the next called on, and the King, by the time he was done with Melville and him, evidently realised that he was getting the worst of the encounter—'smelling how the matter went, he seemit weary.' Balfour was followed by James Melville, who at the close of his examination had the courage to hand to the King a supplication addressed to him by the condemned ministers, which James received with an angry smile. Next came Scott, whose speech was 'ane prettie piece of logicall and legal reasouneing, quhilk delighted and moved the judicious audiens.' The rest followed 'all most reverently on kneis, but thairwith most friely, statly, and plainely, to the admiration of the English auditorie, quho wer not accustomit to heir the King so talkit to and reassounit with.' When all had been examined, Melville craved to be heard again, and had the last word: he 'spake out in his awin maner, and friely and plainely affirmit the innocence of thais guid, faithfull, and honest Britherin, in all thair proceidingis at Abirdein; and thairfoir he recomptit the wrongis done unto thame at Linlithgow, as ane that wes present as an eye and ear witness; and taking him in direct termes to the Advocat, Mr. Thomas Hammiltoune, he invyit scharpely againes him, telling him planely and pathetically, of his favouring and spaireing the Papistis, and craftie, cruell, and malicious dealing againes the Ministeres of Jesus Chryst; so that he could have done no moir againes the saints of God then he had at Linlithgow! At the quhilk words the King luiking to the Archbisschoppes, sayis, "Quhat? Me thinkis he makes him the Antichryst!" And, suddentlie, again with ane oath, "Be God! It is the divelis name in the Revelatioune! He hes maid the divel of him, welbelovit Bretherine, brother Johne!" And so, cuttitly ryseing, and turneing his back, he sayes, "God be with yow, Siris!"' As the King was moving out of the Presence Chamber he turned round and asked what remedy the Eight proposed for the jars of the Church, when they all as with one voice replied, 'A free Assembly!'

While on their way from Hampton Court to their lodgings in Kingston, the Eight were recalled and charged not to return to Scotland, or to come near the King or Court until they were sent for. After this they enjoyed a short holiday—'we had three dayis to refresche us and relax our myndis dureing the quhilk we wer visiting the fieldis about, namely, Nonsuche and Richmont.'

Monday, 29th September, being Michaelmas Day, an elaborate service was held in the King's Chapel, the two Melvilles being present by the King's command. The younger suspected, rightly as it proved, that the King's object was to try their patience and provoke his uncle to an outburst of indignation which might bring him into trouble. The service was so high that a German visitor at the English Court declared it was not a whit behind the solemnity of the Mass but for the absence of the adoration of the Host. The snare set for Melville on this occasion succeeded, for it was a satirical verse on this service that was afterwards made the pretext for sending him to prison.

After the service, the Eight were summoned before the Scottish Council, convened in the house of the Earl of Dunbar. They were called in, one by one, and once more questioned as to their approval of the Aberdeen Assembly. James Melville, who was the first called, made a patriotic speech, protesting warmly against the trial of Scotsmen on English soil and by English law; the others followed him in the same strain. His uncle was the last to be called, and he 'gaiff thame enought of it, alse plainely and scharplie as he wes accustomit, namely, telling thame flattly, that they knew not quhat they did; and wer degenerat from the antiant nobilitie of Scotland, quho wer wont to give thair landis and lyffes for the fridom of the Kingdome and Gospel, and they wer bewraying and ovirturneing the same! Till it became laite, and eftir sune-sett, that they were faine to dimitt us to the nixt calling for.'

On the 2nd of October, the Eight were called again before the Scottish Council, and questions put to them bearing still on the same subject, to which they gave the same answers. The King, in fact, was only marking time to detain Melville and his colleagues in London till he had 'effecuate matteres at home' according to his mind.

For a month the ministers were not asked to appear again in Court; the session of Parliament had begun, and the King was engaged with the business of the Legislature. During this time they all lived together, and their lodging was the resort of many of their Puritan brethren in the city and neighbourhood. They had much 'guid exercise' in the Word and in prayer. But the King and the Bishops having set spies on them who reported the way in which they were spending their time, they were all commanded to go into ward—each with a separate bishop. Andrew Melville's gaoler-in-lawn was to be the Bishop of Winchester, and his nephew's the Bishop of Durham; but the two made such a spirited protest to the King, that his command was not meanwhile enforced.

On the last day of November—it was a Sabbath—Melville, with his nephew and Wallace, was summoned to Whitehall to answer for certain Latin verses which had come into the King's hand. These were the lampoon which Melville had made on the Michaelmas service in the Royal Chapel, and he at once acknowledged the authorship. Interrupted in his apology by the Primate, Bancroft, who presided in the absence of the King, and who denounced his offence as treason, he turned upon him the torrent of his invective. 'My lords,' exclaimed he, 'Andrew Melville was never a traitor. But, my lords, there was one Richard Bancroft (let him be sought for) who, during the life of the late Queen, wrote a treatise against his Majesty's title to the Crown of England; and here' (pulling the corpus delicti from his pocket) 'is the book which was answered by my brother, John Davidson.' While Bancroft was stunned and silenced by the impetuosity of the attack, Melville went on to charge him with the chief responsibility for the Romish ritual that had been introduced into the English Church, and for the silencing of the Puritan ministers; and then taking him by the white sleeves of his rochet, he shook them 'in his maner frielie and roundlie, and called them Romish rags and the mark of the Beast.' The Primate was the reputed author of a book attacking Presbytery, and entitled The English Scottizing for Genevan Discipline. Melville denounced him as having proved himself in that work 'the Capital Enemy of all the Reformed Churches of Europe, whom he would oppose to the effusion of the last drop of blood in his body, and whom it was a constant grief to him to see at the head of the King's Council in England.' He next turned his invective on another prelate present—Barlow—who in writing on the Hampton Court Conference had spoken of the King as in the Kirk of Scotland, but not of it: he marvelled that the Bishop had been left unpunished 'for making the King of no religion.' He was just beginning to put the rapier of his satire into the four sermons preached in the Royal Chapel against Presbytery, when he was interrupted by a Scottish nobleman present. 'Remember,' said he, 'where you are and to whom you are speaking.'—'I remember it very well, my lord,' retorted Melville, 'and am only sorry that your lordship, by sitting here and countenancing such proceedings against me, should furnish a precedent which may yet be used against yourself or your posterity.'

An hour after the close of this memorable scene, the Eight were recalled, and Melville was admonished by the Lord Chancellor and ordered to go into ward, at his Majesty's pleasure, with the Dean of St. Paul's; the others were 'commandit to the custodie of their ain wyse and discreit cariage.' A warrant was at the same time issued by the Council to the Dean, enjoining him to give no one access to his prisoner, and to do his utmost to convert him to Episcopacy. To the Dean's house, accordingly, Melville went, and he remained there till the following March.

In that month the King renewed his order to the other ministers to take up their lodgings, each in a bishop's house. James Melville again sent a protest to the clerk of the Council; he also saw both the Bishop of Durham and the Primate on the business; and his accounts of the interviews are very piquant. In his visit to the Primate he was accompanied by Scott. Bancroft received them with great deference, and sought to impress them with the King's courtesy in desiring that they should be entertained by the highest of the clergy. James Melville answered, with much dignity, that compulsory courtesy was agreeable to no man; that the Scottish ministers were more acustomed to bestowing hospitality than receiving it; and that with such contrary opinions as they held on matters of Church and State, the bishops would not be pleasant hosts, and as little would the ministers be pleasant guests. Bancroft was frank enough to admit, that it was more to meet the wishes of the King than to please themselves that he and the other prelates offered entertainment to the ministers: he was, in truth, afraid that the latter, with their scrupulous notions, would prove dull guests and be offended at the games of cards and other diversions with which the lords of the Anglican Church were in the habit of passing their social hours. The conversation then turned to the pet project of the King—the conforming of the Scottish Church to Episcopacy. James Melville, speaking in his own mild way, was listened to with patience by the Primate; but when Scott began to enter into the subject in a characteristically Scottish fashion, with great seriousness and elaboration, Bancroft's patience failed him; and interrupting his discourse, smiling and laying his hand on his shoulder, the Primate said, 'Tush, man! Tak heir a coupe of guid seck.' And therewith filling the cup, he made them both drink, and after a little mild conviviality the two ministers left the Palace.

At the end of March the chief prisoner received an order from the Council to transfer himself to the custody of the Bishop of Winchester. He left the Dean's, but forgot to go to the Bishop's, and for two months his evasion of the Council's instruction was winked at, and he lodged with the other brethren. The last act in this prolonged drama was now to be performed, and the King's part in it was characteristically base. Early in the morning of Sabbath, 26th April, one of the Earl of Salisbury's servants came to Melville at his lodging in Bow with an urgent message to him to meet the Earl at Whitehall early on the same day. Melville had no suspicion that the Premier had summoned him for any unfriendly purpose, and at once, borrowing his landlord's horse, posted off to Court. He took a moment to look in on his nephew, who suspected that he was to be called again before the Council, and who, as soon as his uncle left, followed on foot to the Palace with other two of the ministers. The Premier did not keep his appointment; and Melville, tired of waiting, came to the inn at Westminster, where he knew that his nephew and other two brethren were to dine, and joined them in their meal: 'And quhill our buird coverit,[26] and the meitt put thairon, he uttirit to us ane excellent meditatioun, quhilk he had walking in the gallerie, on the second Psalme, joyneing thairwith prayer; quhairby we wer all muche movit; accounting the same in place of our Sabbath foirnoone's exercise, endit, and, sitting doun to dinner, he rehersit his St. Georgis Verses, with vehement invectioun againes the corruptiounes and superstitiounes of England. Thairfoir, his cousine, Mr. James, sayes to him, "Remember Ovidis verses—

'Si saperem, doctas odissem jure sorores Numina cultori perniciosa suo!'"

[Footnote 26: While our table was being spread.]

His answer was in the verses following:—

"Sed nunc (tanta meo comes est insania morbo) Saxa (malum!) refero rursus ad icta pedem."

"Weill," sayis his cousine, "eit your dinner, and be of good courage, for I sall warrand yow ye sal be befoir the Council for your Verses."—"Weill," sayis he, "my heart is full and burdened, and I will be glaid to haif ane occasioun to disburdein it, and speik all my mynd plainely to thame for the dishonouring of Chryst, and wraik of sua many soulis for their doeings; be the beiring doun the sinceritie and fridom of the Gospel, stoping that healthsome breath of Godis mouth, and maintaining of the Papistis' corruptiounes and superstitiounes."—"I warrand you," sayis Mr. James, "they know you will speik your mynd friely; and thairfoir, hes concludit to make that a meines to keip yow from going home to Scotland."—He answered, "Iff God hes ony thing to doe with me in Scotland more, He will bring me home to Scotland again iff He haiff any service for me: giff not, let me glorifie Him, quhidder or quhairever I be; and as I haif said often to yow, cousine, I think God hes sume pairt to play with us on this theatre!" We had not half dyneit quhen one comes to him from Lord Salisberie; to quhom he said, "Sir, I waitted longe upon my Lordis dinner till I waxed verie hungrie, and could not stay longer. I pray my Lord to suffir me to tak a lytle of my awin dinner!" That messenger wes not weill gone quhill againe comes another; soone eftir that, Mr. Alexander Hay, the Scottish Secretar, telling him that the Counsel was long sett attending him. At the heiring quhairoff, with great motioun, raysing, he prayit; and, leiving us at diner (for we wer expressely chairgit that we come not within the Police), went with Mr. Alexander Hay, with great commotioun of mynd.' Within an hour of Melville's leaving them, a messenger whom they had sent to ascertain the result of the Council meeting returned with tears in his eyes to announce that their Chief had been conveyed to the Tower.

The proceedings at the Council we learn from the French Ambassador at the English Court. The King did not appear in the Council Chamber, but was in close attendance at the keyhole of the next apartment. 'The Earl of Salisbury took up the subject, and began to reprove him for his obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge the Primacy, and for the verses which he had made in derision of the Royal Chapel. Melville was so severe in his reply both in what related to the King and to the Earl personally, that his lordship was completely put to silence. To his assistance came the Archbishop of Canterbury, then the Earl of Northampton, then the Lord Treasurer; all of whom he rated in such a manner, sparing none of the vices, public or private, with which they are respectively taxed (and none of them are angels), that they would have been glad that he had been in Scotland. In the end, not being able to induce him to swear to the Primacy, and not knowing any other way to revenge themselves on him, they agreed to send him prisoner to the Tower. When the sentence was pronounced, he exclaimed: "To this comes the boasted pride of England! A month ago you put to death a priest, and to-morrow you will do the same to a minister." Then addressing the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar, who were in the Council, he said, "I am a Scotchman, my lords, a true Scotchman; and if you are such, take heed that they do not end with you as they have begun with me."'[27] The King was more disconcerted by this parting shot of Melville's than by anything that had happened at the interview.

[Footnote 27: Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, quoted by M'Crie, p. 271.]

On 6th May, Melville's colleagues learned the fate the King had decreed for them. James Melville was commanded to leave London and go into ward at Newcastle-on-Tyne; the other six were to return to Scotland to be confined in districts named in the King's warrant, and they were excluded from any share in the business of the Church courts.

When the others took their journey northwards, James Melville and William Scott remained in London for a fortnight to make arrangements, if possible, to mitigate the imprisonment of their Chief. James Melville, through the indulgence of one of the warders, saw his uncle at the window of his prison for a short time each day during this interval, and permission was obtained for Melville's servant to wait upon him in the Tower; but no other favour was granted. James Melville used every means to gain permission to stay in London and attend to his uncle's comfort, but in vain; and with a sore heart he had to make up his mind to leave him. On the day he and Scott were setting out for the north, two or three of their acquaintances in London visited them; and one of these, a Mr. Corsbie, 'a guid brother, apothecarie of calling,' brought with him 'a great bag of monie alse meikle as he could weill carie in his oxter.' The money had been raised by friends in the city who had been touched by the noble bearing of the ministers before the King and Council, to defray the expenses of their journey as well as the outlay incurred during their residence in London, which the King, with unspeakable meanness, had failed to discharge. This gift the two brethren courteously and gratefully declined. Since James's accession to the English Throne there had been a great outcry against the Scots on account of the beggarly rabble who crossed the Tweed and came to Court to importune the King for 'auld debts' due to them by his Majesty; and Melville and his colleague were resolved that they would furnish the English people with another and a truer version of the character of their countrymen by leaving London poorer than when they came to it. Besides, there were many among the Puritan clergy in the English Church who had been cast out of their livings, and had more need of the money: instead of taking the help offered, the two brethren would rather endeavour to raise money in their own country, poor as it was, to relieve the necessities of these ministers. Their friends gave warm expression to their sense of the honourable motives which led Melville and Scott to decline the gift; and accompanying them to the Tower steps, where the boat was lying that was to convey them to their ship, they bade them affectionate farewell. As the two were rowed down the Thames, they cast many a wistful look back to the prison where they were leaving their beloved friend and Chief at the mercy of a graceless tyrant. And so ended one of the most picturesque and honourable passages in the history of the Scottish Church.



CHAPTER X

THE KING'S ASSEMBLIES

'Gold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ha, you gods! . . . Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides.'

Timon of Athens.

Before we go on to the closing chapter of Melville's personal history, we must glance at the course of events in Scotland from the time he and his brethren were called to London, up to the Glasgow Assembly in 1610, when the Church made a total surrender to the King, and 'Jericho was buildit up againe in Scotland.'

The Invincibles of the Church having been put out of the way by imprisonment or banishment, the King felt that he might safely call an Assembly to execute his wishes, and to ratify in the Church's name the restoration of Episcopacy as it had been decreed by the Parliament. So in the beginning of December 1606, the Assembly was summoned to meet in Linlithgow. Letters were sent by the King to every presbytery; and they not only intimated the meeting, but named the representatives to be sent. In the event of the presbyteries refusing to return the King's nominees, these were instructed to appear without any presbyterial mandate. The business was stated to be the suppression of Popery and the healing of the jars of the Church. In this programme the former item was the gilt on the pill of the latter. James Balfour—who was in London at the time—exposed the real character of the Assembly's business when he was told of it by Bishop Law of Orkney, who had come to Court to report the proceedings to the King: '"In nomine Domini incipit omne malum! This is pretendit bot the dint will lycht on the Kirk ..."—"They sall call me a false knave," replied the Bishop, "and never to be believit again, if the Papists be not sa handleit as they wer never in Scotland."—"That may weill be,"' was Balfour's rejoinder.