7
 
 ANNALS OF 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 BY 
 SIR THOMAS RALEIGH, K.C.S.I. 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 HIS OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND SOME 
 
 REMINISCENCES BY 
 SIR HARRY R. REICHEL 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN 
 
 NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN 
 BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI PEKING 
 
 1921
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 
 AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY 1'REtfti 
 
 BY FREDERICK HALL
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY SIR THOMAS EALEIGH . vii 
 
 EEMINISCENCES OF SIR THOMAS EALEIGH, BY SIR HARRY 
 
 E. EEICHEL ....... xli 
 
 ANNALS OF THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 PREFACE ........ 8 
 
 NOTE ON THE AUTHORITIES . . . . . 5 
 
 CHAP. I. THE FIRST CENTURY . . . . 7 
 
 II. THE SECOND CENTURY .... 18 
 
 III. THE THIRD CENTURY . . . .15 
 
 IV. THE FOURTH CENTURY . . . .18 
 V. THE FIFTH CENTURY .... 23 
 
 VI. THE SIXTH CENTURY ... 26 
 
 VII. THE SEVENTH CENTURY . . 81 
 
 VIII. THE EIGHTH CENTURY . . . .36 
 
 IX. THE NINTH CENTURY . . .38 
 
 X. THE TENTH CENTURY .... 40 
 
 XI. THE ELEVENTH CENTURY .... 42 
 
 XII. THE TWELFTH CENTURY .... 48 
 
 XIII. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY ... 55 
 
 XIV. THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY . 62 
 XV. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ... 69 
 
 XVI. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ... 80 
 
 XVII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . . . 202 
 
 XVIII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . 285 
 
 XIX. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . . . 302 
 
 INDEX 333
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR THOMAS RALEIGH, K.C.S.I. 
 
 ALONG with the typescript of the Annals of the Church in 
 Scotland there was found among Sir Thomas Raleigh's papers 
 after his death a note-book in his own handwriting, marked 
 ' Autobiographical Notes ', and it is thought that the substance 
 of these Notes will make a suitable introduction to the present 
 volume. The first part of the Notes deals with the writer's 
 ancestry, and for the sake of brevity is omitted. It may be 
 stated, however, that the branch of the Raleigh family to which 
 Sir Thomas belonged came originally from England, but had 
 long been settled in Galloway. Sir Thomas Raleigh's father, 
 Samuel Raleigh, chose the law as his profession and started 
 business in Edinburgh. Having a great capacity for finance, 
 however, he became a Chartered Accountant, and finally 
 Manager of the Scottish Widows' Fund, which under his able 
 guidance developed into one of the best-known Insurance 
 Offices in the world. After the preliminary part of the Notes 
 the writer proceeds as follows : 
 
 From my ancestors I inherit a good constitution, very short 
 sight, a strong memory, a tongue quick when started, but slow to 
 start, and a kindly but solitary temper. What I have made, 
 or failed to make, of this inheritance, the following record will 
 show. 
 
 Childhood. I was born 2 December 1850, at Jordan Bank, 
 Morningside, in a small suburban house to which my parents 
 had removed for reasons of economy. Dr. Candlish baptized 
 me ; after the ceremony he spoke of me as Thomas, but my 
 mother decreed that I should be Tom, and so I am. I was born 
 tongue-tied ; the ligament was cut, to enable me to cry, but 
 my liberty was not abused. I was healthy and placid, the only 
 merits to which a small infant can pretend.
 
 viii SIR THOMAS ;RALEIGH 
 
 We moved to a house in Grange Road. There I remember 
 playing with my elder sister, Katie. She had a set of coffee- 
 cups, &c., made in wood, out of which we drank imaginary 
 coffee. She died 10 February 1854. The servants told me 
 the angels had come for her ; I stole away and went ups<;iiis 
 on hands and knees in the dark, to see them. Peeping in at 
 a door, I saw the little body on a bed, and something like wings 
 (no doubt the curtains, between me and the light). I descended 
 the stair very quickly, going backwards on hands and knees, 
 my heart beating loud, and was glad to find myself among the 
 living again. 
 
 At the Grange I learned to read : do not remember having 
 any difficulties. On my fifth birthday I received a Bible, and 
 was able to read a chapter in Isaiah. The Illustrated London 
 News gave us pictures of the Crimean War : we were deeply 
 interested, but did not know ' what it was about '. Some elder 
 people were in the same state of mind. 
 
 In 1856 we moved to a town house in Northumberland Street, 
 and I went to Mr. Henderson's school in India Street. Girls 
 and boys were taught together, but we sat on separate forms. 
 We regarded ' co-education ' as a badge of inferiority, and 
 looked forward to going to a real boys' school, where there 
 should be no girls. We learned the three R's, the Shorter 
 Catechism, and metrical Psalms, also dancing, which I abhorred. 
 Some attempt was made to teach me the piano, but my short 
 sight prevented me from reading the notes, and I was excused on 
 the ground of incapacity. 
 
 In the summer we were in the country Broughton F. C. 
 Manse, '67 ; Ratho, '58 ; Livingstone, '59 : Moffat, '60 (my 
 little sister Mary died there 28 September). 
 
 In the summer of '59 my mother and I went by way of 
 Carlisle and Bristol to Devonport to see Aunt Jane. Her 
 stepson, Charles Davey, junior, piloted me round the fortifica- 
 tions, &c. We went out to catch pilchard and mullet, and 
 I remember being very sick when" we got beyond the breakwat i . 
 Charles Davey, senior, took us on one of his business tours 
 through Cornwall. The children followed me in crowds at 
 Li-K- aid, &c., on account of my kilt. We saw copper mines
 
 AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL NOTES ix 
 
 and other new sights. At - - on the eve of May-day we saw 
 what some allege to be a survival of sun-worship the blazing 
 tar-barrel landed on the quay, and boys running to light their 
 torches of tarred rope at this central flame. 
 
 In 1860 I went to the Edinburgh Institution : Dr. Ferguson 
 and Mr. Bickerton were the chief masters : Mr. Maclachlan for 
 Latin, M. Kunz for French. It was a good school, but the 
 Edinburgh Academy was supposed to be of a higher social rank, 
 so I went there in '62, taking my seat at the bottom of a class 
 of 94. Our class-master, Henry Weir, a Berwickshire and 
 Cambridge man, was a vigorous teacher : he did little to 
 enliven our Latin and Greek, but his keen enjoyment of Burns 
 and Scott set us on reading for pleasure. In my fourteenth year 
 I read all the Waverley Novels. They were to be found in the 
 library of Eobert Dymock, Procurator Fiscal, a cousin of my 
 mother's and a kind friend of children. 
 
 Dr. Gloag, the mathematical master of the Academy, was 
 about eighty, and fell asleep in class. Maclean, the writing 
 master, was a good-natured man who put on the airs of a 
 ferocious tyrant. Macleod, otherwise ' Frenchie ', amused our 
 rough Scotch minds by his extreme politeness : he was given to 
 telling long stories, but a good teacher. From the first the 
 French language attracted me very much : I shocked my 
 schoolfellows by trying to pronounce it ' like Frenchie ', whereas 
 they preserved their dignity by pronouncing it like Scotch. 
 German was rather perfunctory, until we got a German master, 
 Meyerowicz, a Pole. He was always remarking on our want of 
 manners, and probably with much justice. Once, at my 
 instigation, the whole class attended Mr. Meyerowicz in white 
 gloves, borrowed from our mothers and sisters. This was 
 meant for sarcasm. 
 
 In 1864 I passed to the ' Eector's Class ', and came under the 
 immediate rule of Dr. Hodson, a brother of Major Hodson, and 
 in some points not unlike that celebrated officer : we all quailed 
 under the glance of his cold blue eye. He was a Balliol man, 
 a good scholar in the Oxford sense of the word, and a disci- 
 plinarian. 
 
 Three years more brought me to the end of my school days :
 
 x SIK THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 in July '67 I was ' Dux ' of the school, and carried home medals 
 and books. 
 
 Looking back, I feel how difficult it must be to teach more 
 than the rudiments of anything in a school. Where boys are 
 grouped in classes, the slow are discouraged, and the merely 
 clever boy is praised without deserving it. My good memory 
 brought me to the top of my class, but I was content with being 
 there and never had occasion to acquire the habit of hard work. 
 
 August '67 we were at Easter Duddingston, where my 
 sister Mabel was born. Geo. Thomson baptized her, and then 
 he and my father, my uncle Aleck and I went for a tour in the 
 Highlands. My father was attired in a rather ' kenspeckle ' 
 brown suit, and he insisted on my having one of the same 
 pattern, so we were easily known for father and son. 
 
 During my Academy days we lived at 30 George Square. The 
 old Square was then pretty much what it was when Walter Scott 
 was a boy at No. 25, going daily to the High School. The garden 
 was rather roughly kept with shrubberies, in which we could 
 remain concealed from the authorities. Among the residents 
 were Robert Dymock aforesaid ; his brother James, grocer and 
 elder of the Church ; Lawson, a seedsman, who had his year of 
 glory as Lord Provost of the City ; and George Barbour of 
 Bonskeid, a wealthy man, and a leader in all Evangelical 
 enterprises. His wife was the author of many little books 
 much feared by young people because of her habit of ' dealing 
 closely ' with us about our souls, but in reality a woman of true 
 human kindness, and much talent. 
 
 We lived a long way from the school, and I was thus led to 
 neglect cricket and football. My short sight was against me in 
 all such things, and at sixteen I was still small and not strong 
 for my age. 
 
 In '61 and '62 we were at Auchencairn, and made acquain- 
 tance with my father's beloved Galloway. '68 and '64 St. 
 Andrews and golf. 
 
 At this stage of my life I came more than once under religious 
 impressions, but they were of a passing and superficial kind. 
 My father was not fond of talking about such matters ; ho went 
 on the assumption that we knew what was right and might be
 
 AUTOBIOGKAPHICAL NOTES xi 
 
 left to do it. In point of fact I did not know ; I thought 
 that religion consisted in going through a prescribed series of 
 emotions, ending in Church membership, and assurance of 
 salvation ; and, as my moral nature was quite undeveloped, 
 I could not summon up the emotion. 
 
 University Life. At sixteen I entered the University of 
 Edinburgh and spent three winters in attending classes there. 
 The Latin (Sellar), Greek (Blackie), and Mathematics (Kelland) 
 were to me only a continuation of school, and I made no great 
 advance in these subjects. But Natural Philosophy (Tait) gave 
 me a h-sst of new ideas, in spite of my slipshod attention. 
 Eobertson Smith was Tait's assistant, and I remember his 
 exposition of the elements of Astronomy. Logic (Eraser) and 
 Moral Philosophy (Calderwood) interested me much, but I did 
 not appreciate the difficulties. Ehetoric and Belles Lettres 
 (Masson) was a class by which I profited much. Masson was an 
 enthusiast ; his Milton lectures gave one an insight into English 
 Literature, and in the Ehetoric part of his course he gave us 
 excellent advice, somewhat on the lines of Dr. Abbott's book, 
 How to Write Clearly. I never write anything of importance 
 without remembering some good rule of Masson's. In Logic 
 Eobt. Glasgow Brown and I were bracketed first : in Moral 
 Philosophy, Chas. Maclaren was first ; - - was second ; I was 
 third. E. Adamson, who came fourth, knew more than the 
 three of us put together. 
 
 My summers were spent thus 1868, Tubingen. John 
 Sutherland Black (since Editor of the Encyclopaedia Biblica) 
 was tutor in charge of Wm. Cunningham (subsequently an 
 Archdeacon) and me. We learned German by attending 
 lectures Michaelis in Greek, Vischer in Aesthetic, Dr. Milner 
 (an Englishman, father of Lord Milner that now is) in English. 
 Also, we took part in students' gatherings where much beer was 
 drunk, and we saw duels fought with the small sword and sabre. 
 The life suited me well, and I grew rapidly, both in length and 
 breadth. We returned home through Switzerland and France. 
 Summer of 1869. College Hall, St. Andrews ; the building is 
 now occupied by St. Leonard's School for Girls. We played 
 golf ; I wrote what I imagined to be poetry. The summer of '70
 
 xii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 I stayed at home, and went to Cosmo Innes's History lectures : 
 he taught us mostly about Constitutions and made them 
 interesting. 
 
 Among my fellow-students the best known was Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, with whom I have spent many idle hours. He got 
 me to write an article for the Edinburgh University Magazine. 
 I wrote occasional letters to the Scotsman and the Daily Review, 
 which were inserted, to my surprise and delight. 
 
 There were debating societies, two of which, the Diagnostic 
 and the Union, I joined. At the mature age of sixteen I had 
 joined the Literary Society of Free St. George's, t*iid made 
 a speech in defence of classical education, using the arguments 
 I should use now. At the Union I encountered senior men such 
 as Andrew Jameson and Charles Guthrie, who were already 
 Advocates, or reading for the Bar. 
 
 John S. Mackay, a fifth cousin of ours who had become 
 a master at the Academy, did something to improve my mathe- 
 matics, and in walks with him I learned a good deal of things in 
 general. 
 
 Of books which influenced me, I have cause to remember 
 Mill's Examination of Hamilton, which gave me a new idea of 
 the importance of philosophy. I read the New Testament, and 
 for the first time had some historical insight into the meaning of 
 it, but my historical reading, such as it was, gave me a bias 
 against the miraculous, and I lost hold on hereditary and 
 traditional views of religion. 
 
 Having no vocation for the ministry, I was destined for the 
 English Bar, and Oxford was the first stage on the way. In 
 November '70 I gained an open exhibition at Balliol and went 
 into residence in January '71. A year and a half were given to 
 ' Mods ' work, scholarship in the narnnvt-r sense, which I 
 ignorantly despised, and was rewarded for my ignorance by 
 a Second Class. My tutors were John Purves, Paravicini, and 
 R. Lewis Nettleship. I took essays pretty often to the Master, 
 usually as one of a mixed party : one term my companions were 
 H. Asquith (since Prime Minister), Gore (now a Bishop), 
 Waddell (a, Scotch exhibitioner who became an Inspector of 
 Schools), and Mullock (author <f the AY/r
 
 AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL NOTES xiii 
 
 I took eagerly to the river, but did not distinguish myself, 
 though I was in the winning Morison's Four. Also, old Maclaren 
 and his Gymnasium added a few inches to the girth of my chest, 
 and thereby made my whole future life more comfortable. 
 
 Our Master, Jowett, interested but did not attract me. His 
 lectures were not impressive ; his sermons seemed to breathe 
 mild scepticism ; in private life he was shy, and I was shy : there 
 was no getting on. It was only at a later time that I was able 
 to appreciate Jowett, and to understand his great influence in 
 Oxford. With all his odd little ways, he always had a clear 
 perception of what he wanted, and a tenacious purpose to get it. 
 He cultivated his personal relations with old pupils and friends 
 as if he were working at a business. His kindness was inex- 
 haustible, and, where money was wanted, his generosity was 
 unbounded. I am not sure if he was right in wishing to make 
 Balliol a large college, but that was his wish and he did it. 
 
 After my comparative failure in ' Mods ', I partly redeemed my- 
 self by gaining the Lothian Prize for an Essay on the University 
 of Paris. Tried for the Stanhope (' The Portuguese in the East ' 
 was the subject), but was beaten by Flanagan (afterwards on 
 The Times}. 
 
 These were holiday tasks ; my work was to read for ' Greats ', 
 the Final Classical School. Of the lecturers, T. H. Green had 
 most influence ; he brought what was sometimes called Hege- 
 lianism into fashion, but he was really an original thinker, with 
 some assistance from Kant ; his main object being to correct 
 the empiricism of the English philosophers (Locke, Berkeley, 
 Hume) and to make us independent of J. S. Mill and Spencer. 
 Green was a new Eadical in politics, and a public-spirited man ; 
 his pre-occupation was with moral questions, and he clung to 
 the Christian Faith as a complete version of the best for which 
 his spirit yearned. Unlike Oxford in some ways, he was an 
 Oxford man in his love of a good phrase or epigram, and he 
 made very good ones himself. 
 
 I never joined the Freemasons or any of the merely social 
 clubs ; and therefore had but few friends in other Colleges. 
 At the Oxford Union I began to make speeches of an elaborate 
 and ambitious kind. I was Treasurer and then President in '75.
 
 xiv SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 The senior men who spoke in those days included Copleston 
 (since Bishop of Calcutta, whom I was to hear again in India) ; 
 McClymont, a man of some genius, dreadfully pugnacious, who 
 had a career, but a chequered career, at the Bar ; James 
 Cotton ; Herbert Asquith, and his elder but less known brother 
 Willans ; Herbert Paul and Alfred Milner were among my own 
 contemporaries. The Union was mainly Tory, and was there- 
 fore a good school of speaking for Balliol Radicals. Ashmead 
 Bartlett beat H. Asquith in a Presidential election by 450 to 1 50. 
 We talked a good deal of nonsense, all except H. Asquith, who 
 spoke with the precocious infallibility of Mr. Pitt. 
 
 My name was in the First Class of June '75, and in the 
 following October I entered the chambers of Arthur (later Sir 
 Arthur) Kekewich. 
 
 Study of the Law. For eight years or so I lived in Mount 
 Street, over H. Asquith and under H. Paul. The little tumble- 
 down house has been turned into a block of flats : St. George's 
 Workhouse is removed, and the Jesuit Chapel in Farm Street, 
 which used to have a suitably mysterious approach, is now 
 discovered to the light. 
 
 I joined the Savile Club in Savile Row, a dingy but comfort- 
 able house. Among the regular diners were Thorold Rogers, who 
 was always roaring his opinions and claiming to be the inventor 
 of any Radical scheme that was talked about ; Saintsbury, then 
 an overworked journalist and writer ; Robert Louis Stevenson ; 
 Palmer, the Arabic scholar. Robertson Smith used to dine 
 and drink Vesuvio, which he liked ; it was too strong for me, 
 but the Aberdonian brain could stand it. 
 
 Before joining a Club I injured my health by dining at 
 inexpensive restaurants. 
 
 On Sundays I went to Kensington Chapel, where my uncle 
 Alexander was minister. The church life there was hearty and 
 sincere : the place did me good. Sunday afternoon I spent in 
 reading aloud to my aunt and cousins : I read in this way all 
 Milton and other writers worth knowing. 
 
 These were my occupations out of chambers. In the pupil 
 room my five companions and I drafted pleadings and opinions, 
 which our master tossed away or practically re-wrote. He
 
 AUTOBIOGEAPHICAL NOTES xv 
 
 explained things in a breezy way, but we had no systematic 
 introduction to law ; there were lectures, but it was the fashion 
 to make light of them. I wished to learn, and laid in books like 
 Fearne's Contingent Remainders to test my own capacity. But 
 case-law depressed me : I. found it so hard to attain to any 
 definite result. Like Bentham, I tried to codify the law without 
 knowing much about it. At twenty-five Grotius and Leibnitz 
 were learned jurists ; at the same age I doubted my ability to 
 argue the simplest case. 
 
 In October '76 Freshfields and Williams gave me a seat in 
 their office, then at 5 Bank Buildings. There I was very happy 
 to find that there was legal work of a subordinate nature which 
 I could do fairly well. Henry Freshfield, the senior partner, 
 gave me cases to analyse for him ; Medcalf , one of the managing 
 clerks, allowed me to prepare the briefs in heavy cases, and to 
 go with him to Watkin Williams or Bowen. In the City I saw 
 the raw material of litigation, the actual merchants and ship- 
 owners who brought their disputes into court. The junior 
 articled clerks in our own and other offices taught me the 
 resources of London in the way of luncheon-places, games, &c. 
 
 A few years in that office would not have been thrown away, 
 but I was twenty-six and thought it was time to be called to 
 the Bar. H. Cotton, Q. C. (afterwards Lord Justice) was to 
 move my call, and he insisted on my leaving Freshfields before 
 he would move. The examination for call was not serious ; 
 I knew very little law, but passed it easily, and was called from 
 Lincoln's Inn, 13 June '77. 
 
 All Souls. In October '75 I was a candidate for the All Souls 
 Fellowship, and was beaten by E. E. Prothero. Stood also at 
 Merton, where Mee and Wright were elected. In October '76 
 there was an examination for two Fellowships at All Souls : we 
 had to do law and history, papers, translation from five 
 languages, &c. My competitors were formidable, but in the end 
 I was elected, and the second Fellowship was not awarded. 
 With my usual want of savoir faire, I was too late in turning up 
 after the election ; the Warden, Dr. Leighton, had left the 
 College, and I was formally admitted by the Senior Fellow, 
 Lord Bathurst, a wonderful old gentleman of eighty-seven, who
 
 XVI 
 
 SIR THOMAS EALEIGH 
 
 had been a Fellow since 1810. He had been a dandy in George 
 the Fourth's time, and still wore a high-collared blue coat and 
 several waistcoats. His chief title to be remembered is the 
 reredos in the College Chapel, which he restored at his own 
 expense. He was courteous and good-natured, except at the 
 whist-table, where he exulted in winning and took his losses 
 
 badly. 
 
 I was elected on the old foundation, as modified in 1857, and 
 my tenure was till death or marriage. Buckle, since Editor of 
 The Times, was elected on the same terms in '78 : he vacated 
 on marrying Alice Payn. After that, the Statutes made by 
 Lord Salisbury's Commission took effect, and Fellows were 
 elected for seven years. The value of a Fellowship had been 
 rising rapidly, as the old beneficial leases fell in ; it stood in '77 
 at about 300, but agricultural depression soon reduced it 
 to 200. 
 
 I have always been opposed, in principle, to what are called 
 Prize Fellowships. Every Fellowship should have some definite 
 duties attached to it. For a year I was a probationary Fellow, 
 not even attending College Meetings, and after that I was 
 strange in a place where nothing was required of me beyond 
 moderately good behaviour. The Codrington Library was my 
 home in Oxford ; I read widely, perhaps too widely, and formed 
 literary plans, which came to very little. Montague Bernard 
 advised me to write a law-book, but my old dislike of case-law 
 revived ; I seemed never to master my subject. He also 
 advised me not to dabble in politics. ' A lawyer,' he said, 
 1 should not choose his party until he is ready to enter the 
 House of Commons, and he should not attempt the House until 
 he is ready to take the Solicitor-Generalship.' I now think 
 this was good advice. 
 
 In July '77 I joined the Northern Circuit at Appleby. Her- 
 schell proposed me as a member of the mess. At Carlisle 
 I addressed a British jury for the first time, and obtained the 
 conviction of two men who had gone into a lonely tavern and 
 oorn|M-ll,.,l the landlady to supply them with much drink. One 
 was defended by Arthur Elliot, the other by John Dickinson. 
 
 A man starting at the Bar should put some capital into the
 
 AUTOBIOGKAPHICAL NOTES xvii 
 
 business ; it pays him to have a good room, a clerk, and a library 
 of his own. These obvious reflections did not occur to me in '77. 
 I took a small room at 4 Brick Court : ' went thence to a garret 
 in 5 New Square, and had always a fractional share in somebody 
 else's clerk. Briefs did not arrive, and the long days in chambers 
 tried my health and spirits. My nature is such that I respond 
 readily to any demand upon me, but I have no power of aggres- 
 sion. An imprudent marriage, with the demands of a wife and 
 family, might have made me successful, but I may sum up that 
 chapter of my life by saying that I was unlucky, and could not 
 expect to be anything else. 
 
 26 December '77 my sister Ella became the wife of E. E. 
 Simpson, W.S. 
 
 In 1878 I helped to introduce a deputation of Scotch ministers 
 to Mr. Gladstone, and the great man asked me to breakfast. He 
 and Goldwin Smith were the talkers. Gladstone's speech, 
 delivered at the Westminster Palace Hotel, was very, very 
 bad. 
 
 I was a member of the Union Debating Society in the Adelphi, 
 and made some good speeches. In '79 Sir Henry Doulton 
 invited me to join the Verulam, a society which met at his 
 pleasant house in Tooting, and at the houses of other members. 
 Sir Henry was a remarkable man, born of a Liberal and Noncon- 
 formist stock, but born with a love of all that was beautiful and 
 dignified which carried him away from his hereditary limitations. 
 The art branch of his pottery work was largely his own creation, 
 his chief ally being John Sparkes, artist and teacher. They 
 discovered George Tinworth, and gave him the opportunity to 
 produce his strangely original presentments of scenes from the 
 Bible in terra-cotta. 
 
 Spital Square. In 1879 my kind friend Mrs. Greenhorn asked 
 me to take an interest in certain Homes for Working Boys. 
 They were not industrial homes, but places where lads working 
 in the City could have lodging and board at easy rates, with some 
 instruction and moral supervision. The home to which I was 
 assigned as a regular visitor was in Spital Square, Bishopsgate, 
 formerly a fashionable quarter the Home had once been the 
 town house of the Goldsmid family, a good old house with 
 
 b
 
 SIB THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 carved mantelpieces and so forth, but shabby, and besieged by 
 rats, which were kept out with difficulty. 
 
 For ten years or so I attended on Sunday evening and one 
 evening in the week : kept a Bank : taught whatever the boys 
 would learn : organized small treats, such as an evening of songs 
 or a visit to the Swimming Bath : knew what supper you get 
 for \d. or 2d. ; and what clean linen we could afford in the 
 dormitories. The boys were seldom rough, and a few gymnastic 
 bars in the basement helped them to work off their superfluous 
 
 energy. 
 
 This work was a turning-point in my history. My easy life 
 had made me indifferent about beliefs, but you can't bo indif- 
 ferent in East London if you are interested in a lot of boys. 
 fighting their way into the working world : priests and Salvation 
 captains and .Hall of Science competing for their souls : lust and 
 dishonesty lying in wait for them at every dark corner. To 
 teach these lads the elements of religion and morals is a serious 
 business. One has to know the Bible, and to know it well, for 
 Cockney wits are keen. And more than that, experience and 
 responsibility compelled me to think, and ultimately gave me 
 a hold on great truths which I had previously held or doubted 
 in an abstract way. 
 
 I had a vague idea of becoming a candidate in the election of 
 '80, but could not afford it. I was in request as a platform 
 speaker, and supported C. Sharp in South Lincolnshire, &c. 
 Joined the Eighty Club. 
 
 In 1880 my father's health gave way. Work never did him 
 any harm ; but strife or anxiety always told on him. There 
 was a party against him in his office ; and he had private 
 sorrows of which I cannot speak. His brain was gradually 
 softening. He went to Pau : I brought him home in April '80, 
 in time to attend the funeral of my uncle Alexander at Abney 
 Park a memorable scene. The summer of that year we were 
 at Craggan near Grantown. A noble nature may be noble even in 
 its decay. From time to time the cloud lifted, and my father 
 spoke as he had been wont to speak ; but the end was not far off. 
 
 26 July '82, my father died. I was examining at Tonbridge 
 at the time.
 
 AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL NOTES xix 
 
 In '83 and following years I held briefs in the Privy Council in 
 Canadian appeals : my leaders were Sir Horace Davey and Sir 
 Oliver Mowat. The work was interesting, and gave me some 
 knowledge of colonial constitutions. 
 
 In 1883 I took a house, 33 Gower Street, and my mother and 
 two then unmarried sisters came to stay with me. On Sundays 
 we went to Eegent Square, where Dr. Dykes was minister, one 
 of the two or three best preachers in England. When he gave 
 himself to College work, he was succeeded by John McNeill, 
 a popular evangelist who mingled jokes with his discourses, 
 to the horror of the Old Guard of English Presbyterianism. 
 
 In 1884 I was appointed Eeader in English Law at Oxford, 
 but kept on my chambers for a time, going to and fro several 
 times a week. My classes at first were small, but I had some 
 good men, who put me to my mettle. The drawback of modern 
 Oxford is. that teaching is too much subordinated to examina- 
 tion ; the men do not come to a lecture unless it pays ' for the 
 Schools '; even the best of them have no time to take an interest 
 in any subject for its own sake. 
 
 The Sorrows of a Candidate. Early in '85 Prof. Calderwood 
 wrote to ask whether I would stand for South Edinburgh. 
 There was some talk of inviting the Lord Provost, Sir George 
 Harrison, a friend of my father's, with whom I had no desire 
 to compete. But Sir George was 74 and had not been in 
 Parliament before ; he might not see his way to stand. Ulti- 
 mately I agreed to speak in Edinburgh as a possible candidate. 
 
 There was a strong Liberal Association in the Division, 
 composed, of course, of keen party men, and therefore not 
 quite representing the average elector. I went too far in 
 recognizing a kind of right in the Association to determine who 
 should be the candidate of the party. 
 
 My ' trial sermons ' (21 and 23 March) went off well : the 
 Press was hostile. The Radical Evening News thought me 
 ' hazy and shifty ' ; this was because I would not accept 
 Local Veto without compensation. The Scotsman was angry 
 because an unknown man was put up against Sir George. 
 
 The fact is, that both Sir George and I were in a false posit.ion. 
 He had to pose as a staunch old Liberal, whereas he was really 
 
 b2
 
 XX 
 
 SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 a Conservative. I had to make myself out a Radical, while 
 the crude plans of my Temperance and Home Rule friends 
 were arousing all the conservative instincts of my nature. 
 In the Eastern Division, Costello was preaching Social Demo- 
 cracy, and as we were both Balliol men, whatever he said was 
 cast up to me. 
 
 There were three great issues on which the Liberal Party 
 was divided, and my own declarations may be summed up 
 thus : (1) I accepted disestablishment in Scotland ; the dis- 
 endowment part of the scheme to be carried out with due 
 consideration, so that the measure might lead up to a compre- 
 hensive reunion of the Presbyterian Churches. (2) I seriously 
 considered the demand for Home Rule in Ireland ; pointed 
 out the risks ; and thought the safest form of self-government 
 would be a separate quasi-colonial system, with proper military 
 safeguards. I was opposed to federalism, and to Home Rule 
 for Scotland. (8) I did not exactly welcome Mr. Chamberlain's 
 ' unauthorized programme ', and told the electors I preferred 
 the old Liberal political economy. 
 
 I addressed more meetings about the end of June, and on 
 25 September the Association adopted me as their candidate 
 by 88 to 2. My best policy would have been, even then, to 
 retire in Sir George's favour ; he could not hold the seat long. 
 But this my supporters would not permit ; they had chosen 
 me, and would never accept Sir George : so the contest went on. 
 The Conservatives, who numbered about 1,500 in the Division, 
 were to decide the result. If they had put forward a candidate 
 I should probably have won. But they finally decided to vote 
 for Sir George. 
 
 On the 9th November Mr. Gladstone arrived on the scene, 
 and spoke in the Albert Hall, asking for a majority large 
 enough to make him independent of the Irish. On the IHh 
 he spoke in the Free Church Assembly Hall. I heard him 
 half a dozen times, with anything but approval. He had 
 really nothing to say on the great issues of the day ; treated 
 them all as questions of voting power, and never touched on 
 the merits. There was no enthusiasm as in 1880, but the 
 presence of the old man kept his party together.
 
 AUTOBIOGKAPHICAL NOTES xxi 
 
 25 November was the election day : Sir George polled 
 4,275 and I 2,874. We claimed to have polled a majority of 
 the Liberals in the division. Sir George was very good- 
 natured about it ; his friends were not. He died, much to my 
 sorrow, on 23 December before he had taken his seat in 
 Parliament. 
 
 During the contest I was struck with the fact that Scotch 
 electors argued particular points with great acuteness, but 
 often showed great want of wisdom and balance. They lacked 
 the English spirit of compromise, which has its origin in 
 history. To bring out the historical aspect of parties and 
 party questions, I wrote a little book, Elementary Politics. The 
 book was successful, and it still continues to circulate. 
 
 It was a piece of good fortune for me to be left out of the 
 new House of Commons. As a party man I might have been 
 drawn or driven over to Mr. G. and Home Rule. As a private 
 person I was free to form my own opinion of the dubious 
 tactics by which the Liberals obtained office, and the amazing 
 futility of the scheme which they presented to the country. 
 I had never been dogmatically opposed to an Irish legislature, but 
 my view was that Mr. Gladstone had made Home Rule impos- 
 sible : so I became an active and decided Liberal Unionist. 
 
 After contributing my small quota of effort to the downfall 
 of the Gladstone-Parnell combination, I went with my brother- 
 in-law R. Simpson and my friend G. R. Parkin to see the 
 United States and Canada : sailing from Liverpool 5 August, 
 in the City of Borne. Parkin took us to his home at Frederick- 
 ton, and our route was by St. John, N. B., Halifax in Nova 
 Scotia, thence by Intercolonial Railway to Quebec, Ottawa, 
 Montreal, Toronto, Niagara, London in Ontario, Chicago, 
 Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Princeton, New York, 
 Boston. An interesting journey, which led me to read rather 
 vigorously in Canadian History and the literature of the 
 American Constitution on my return. See my article ' Canadian 
 Confederation ', Times, 5 January '87. 
 
 Lord Gifford died January '87. I was one of his executors 
 and joined in carrying out his remarkable Will. I wrote 
 a notice of him in the Laiv Times.
 
 xxii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 Second Candidature. In November '85 T. E. Buehanan, 
 a Balliol and All Souls man like myself, was returned for West 
 Edinburgh as a Liberal. He was taken aback by the Home 
 Rule scheme, voted against the Bill, and July '86 was again 
 returned for West Edinburgh as a Liberal Unionist. It was 
 a nightly strain on his feelings to vote with the Conservatives ; 
 at an early stage he was marked as a man likely to go back 
 to Mr. G. In '87 the Crimes Act gave Mr. G. an excuse for 
 taking the side of anarchy, and it gave Buchanan the occasion 
 to change his party. He felt it right to give his electors an 
 opportunity to approve or disapprove ; accepted the Chiltern 
 Hundreds, and announced himself as a Home Rule candidate. 
 It was plain that the seat must be contested. I tried to bring 
 Milner into the field, and other names were suggested, but time 
 was wearing on ; the Unionists in the division had not found 
 a man ; some pressure was put on me, and I stepped into the 
 breach. I have not heard of any other case where two Fellows 
 of the same College stood as adversaries. 
 
 Some of my speeches in this campaign were really excellent. 
 Irish history and politics always had a special interest for me, 
 and, as Mr. G. was now veering to federalism, my study of the 
 American Constitution was of great use to me. Except on the 
 platform, I was a bad candidate. My taciturnity in private 
 life was set down to academic pride, though in fact it was due 
 to academic shyness. The division was really Unionist, and 
 my impression is that anybody but myself could have won 
 the seat. 
 
 The Unionist Party treated me well ; paid most of my 
 expenses, and sent speakers to support me. Lord Selborne and 
 Sir Edward Clarke spoke at a general muster of Unionists in 
 the Music Hall. Caine spoke for me in Stockbridge ; he was 
 very severe on Buchanan, whose example he followed not 
 long after. 
 
 28 January '88 I was admitted a ' Free Gardener '. That 
 Ancient Order was brought into Scotland by Protestants from 
 the Low Countries, in Alva's time ; and their politics turned 
 a good deal on dislike of Irish Romanism. 
 
 The poll was taken 18 February '88 : and the counting
 
 AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL NOTES xxiii 
 
 showed Buchanan 3,294, Ealeigh 3,248. At the next contest 
 in '92 Lord Walmer beat Buchanan by more than 500. 
 
 25 March to 6 April I gave myself a holiday abroad, and 
 saw Borne thoroughly. 
 
 Oxford Again. Having now proved my want of the gifts 
 which are necessary for success in law and politics, I fell back 
 on Oxford ; gave up my house and chambers in London ; 
 took over, in '89, the Balliol tutorial work from Dicey. In 
 a short time I had twenty-five pupils, and was giving two or 
 three courses of lectures every term, some for the Law School, 
 and some covering the field of Political Science, as prescribed 
 for the Indian Civil Service examinations. The life of a 
 College lecturer is a very laborious one ; but my London 
 friends, when they came to stay with me, professed to envy 
 my ' academic leisure ', and incited me to undertake some 
 important literary work. I did write : a little book, Irish 
 Politics, was written in '89 ; articles of sorts in various periodi- 
 cals (' Hero Worship ' and ' Quaker Biographies ' in Mac- 
 millaris Magazine, &c.), and a very large number of articles 
 for the new edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 
 
 One advantage of living in Oxford is that interesting people 
 from every quarter turn up as visitors to see the place and 
 enjoy themselves. I could make quite a brilliant list of my 
 guests in College Choate and Seth Low from New York ; 
 Comte de Frangaville and others from Paris ; Father Denifle ; 
 lawyers such as Leake, Arbuthnot, Cohen from London. 
 H. Asquith, H. Paul, Haldane kept me informed as to the 
 course of things in London. But one of these visits was so 
 memorable that it deserves a separate record. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone in Oxford. In February '90 Mr. Gladstone 
 was busying himself with the relations between the Homeric 
 Greeks and the East. He took up his abode in All Souls, 
 as the guest of the College, and did some reading. He lived 
 as one of ourselves, never missing chapel, breakfasting in 
 common room, lunching in the buttery, and dining in Hall. 
 His vigour was wonderful ; when he was late for anything he 
 ran across the quadrangle like a schoolboy, but sight and 
 hearing were beginning to fail him. The ladies of his family
 
 xxiv SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 gave us a number of instructions about his food and wine, but 
 the old man did not observe all their rules. 
 
 On Sunday morning, as I happened to be Dean, I asked him 
 whether, as an Honorary Fellow, he acknowledged my juris- 
 diction. ' I acknowledge all jurisdiction,' he said ; ' I am the 
 most conformable of men.' So I made Trench, the Junior 
 Fellow, read the First Lesson (Genesis i) and sent Mr. Gladstone 
 out to read the Second Lesson (last chapter of Revelation). 
 Both read well ; Mr. Gladstone's reverent manner and beautiful 
 articulation were most impressive. 
 
 Mrs. Gladstone was a little anxious about this Oxford 
 escapade ; she turned up one day unexpectedly, as the guest 
 of Sir Henry Acland. An Oxford lady, wishing to be agreeable, 
 spoke of this visit as a ' pleasant surprise '. ' Not at all,' 
 said the old man, solemnly. ' There are far too many ladies 
 in Oxford already.' 
 
 As often as he came to Oxford, Mr. Gladstone returned, as 
 if by instinct, to the Tory politics of his youth. He resented 
 all modern changes, and was shocked, not without reason, to 
 see young men parading the High Street in football ' shorts '. 
 He even objected to Liddell and Scott, saying that scholars 
 in these days had too many helps and appliances. * We had 
 to make our own lexicon, and the labour did us good.' He 
 regretted the disappearance of noblemen and gentlemen 
 commoners, much to the horror of an orthodox Liberal who 
 was sitting next him. 
 
 It was just the same with general politics. Thus on religious 
 education he said, ' As a denominationalist and a dogmatist, 
 I have always regarded the Board School as a most unsatis- 
 factory solution of the problem of popular education.' On 
 the programme of the Labour Party he said, * For me Socialism 
 has no attractions, and any influence I possess will be used to 
 discourage the exaggerated expectations formed in the minds 
 of working men by the teaching of the so-called Labour Party.' 
 On subjects of mere curiosity, such as the proper organization 
 of a nobleman's kitchen, he would deliver a set lecture, with 
 great wealth of detail. On questions of scholarship he was 
 always interesting, but sometimes wonderfully inaccurate.
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES xxv 
 
 Thus, he would start a theory as to the uses of a Homeric word 
 which a single reference to the despised Liddell and Scott 
 would have shown to be untenable. 
 
 One afternoon he walked round and round the great quad- 
 rangle with me, and spoke freely of politics and parties. What 
 struck me was, that he presented Liberalism, not as his own 
 political creed, but as a refuge to which he had been driven 
 because the Tory Party had failed him. 
 
 I wrote for the Oxford Magazine some verses, Meister Wilhelm 
 in Oxford, a parody of Browning's Master Hugues of Saxe- 
 Gotha. See also my article on ' American Opinion and Home 
 Eule ', Contemporary Review for 1892. 
 
 Hebdomadal Council. I had some idea of taking part in 
 University business, and some difficulty in finding an oppor- 
 tunity : stood for Council, and was beaten by E. Macan. 
 In '92 Jowett, who was retiring on account of age and deafness, 
 recommended me as his successor, and on 15 November I was 
 elected, defeating Henry Nettleship. 
 
 The Council is a body of some twenty-two persons ; it is 
 the executive of the University, and has the sole right to 
 initiate business in Congregation, which consists mainly of 
 resident Masters and Doctors, and Convocation, the larger 
 body which includes all Masters and Doctors who keep their 
 names on the books. 
 
 Besides this central Council, there are many, perhaps too 
 many, Boards and Delegacies, presiding over the different 
 branches of administration and finance. It would be easy to 
 organize an office which would take over most of the business, 
 but the existing constitution is popular, because it enables 
 a large number of resident Dons to have some share in the 
 management of University institutions. Much depends on 
 a handful of men who have established their reputation as 
 advisers and administrators ; they serve on many Boards, and 
 give unity to what is called the system. 
 
 When I entered Council the two men who were on^all the 
 most important Boards were Bartholomew (otherwise Bat) 
 Price and Alfred Eobinson. Each possessed much more than 
 the brains of the average Cabinet Minister, but they found full
 
 xxvi SIK THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 scope for their talents in the University. In character they 
 were contrasted. Price, an eager Welshman, was a fighter ; 
 when he had a point to carry he surveyed the ground, rallied 
 his supporters, and cut off straggling parties of the enemy. 
 Robinson was a reconciler ; before a critical division, both 
 sides usually went to him for advice. I learned much from 
 both, and was happy in being always on friendly terms with 
 both. 
 
 In the working of our complicated University machine, legal 
 questions often arise, many of them not important enough to 
 be referred to the Standing Counsel, and the framing of statutes 
 and decrees cannot be accomplished without the aid of a drafts- 
 man. In these matters I was of some use to the Council. 
 Happily for me, I was the only lawyer in Council, and my 
 opinions were accepted without challenge. Having thus made 
 a place for myself, I soon became a Curator of the Chest, and 
 a Delegate of the University Press. The work was, to me, 
 most interesting, but, when combined with my pupils and my 
 lectures, it was killing. I told Jowett how matters stood, and, 
 though he was nearly at the end of his strength, he was very 
 kind. (1 October '98 was the date of his death, 6 October the 
 funeral. I wrote the leader in the Pall Mall Gazette : 8 October, 
 I think.) I asked him whether he thought I could get a Scotch 
 Professorship. He said, ' No, that is not what you should 
 aim at ; you should be in the public service.' This pleased 
 me much, because it showed that my Balliol work had made 
 a good impression on him. He had, in fact, unknown to me, 
 asked some personage to offer me a Commissionership, but the 
 place was given away before my name was sent in. 
 
 The details of University business are not entertaining, but 
 I mention briefly some of the questions of my time in Council. 
 
 There was an important Statute passed, under which our 
 B.A.'s and Bachelors of other Universities were encouraged 
 to enter on a two years' course of advanced study, under the 
 general guidance of a Professor, and rewarded with the degree 
 of Bachelor in Science or Letters. I strongly approved of this, 
 but cannot claim much credit for the statute ; my draft was 
 ruthlessly amended in Congregation.
 
 AUTOBIOGKAPHICAL NOTES xxvii 
 
 3 February '94. A deputation from our Law Faculty con- 
 ferred with the Council of Legal Education : Westlake gave 
 us lunch at Lincoln's Inn. We wished them to accept our law 
 degrees in lieu of the book-part of the Bar Examination 
 adding thereto such tests in procedure, &c., as would be really 
 useful to our men. As might have been expected, they 
 refused. Lord D. said to me, ' How could they do what you 
 wanted ? If the Inns of Court admit that the Universities 
 can do what they are pretending to do, somebody will ask 
 a question in Parliament, and we shall have a Commission, 
 with the usual results.' I relieved my feelings by writing an 
 article, ' Legal Education in England ' in the Juridical Review, 
 an Edinburgh publication. 
 
 We tried to open degrees in Divinity to persons other than 
 clergymen of the Church of England, and a Committee of 
 Council held a solemn conference with the Theology Board. 
 It was not an easy question, for Canon Bright wanted some 
 safeguards for orthodoxy. He asked whether we, would admit 
 Renan to the degree of D.D. We fenced with this, until one 
 of our Committee said, ' Personally, I would.' ' That,' said 
 Bright, ' is a reductio ad impossibile.' He suggested that 
 candidates might be required to sign the Nicene Creed ; but 
 here we scored a point. One of our number asked whether 
 the Nicene Creed, as accepted by the Church of England, would 
 exclude those prelates of the Eastern Church on whom degrees 
 in Divinity had been conferred by acclamation. In the end, 
 nothing came of this conference. 
 
 Part of the ground on which the Bodleian Library is built 
 belonged to Magdalen College. The University bought it ; 
 the price was referred to arbitration and the arbitrators awarded 
 what certainly seemed an exorbitant sum. A decree for pay- 
 ment was presented to Convocation ; it was fiercely opposed ; 
 we were told that the University should simply hold possession, 
 and defy the College to evict. It looked as if a majority would 
 vote for this improper and undignified course. I spoke some 
 fifteen or twenty minutes in support of the decree, and may 
 almost claim to have carried it, though nobody felt the hardship 
 of the case more sincerely than myself.
 
 xxviii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 Quain Professorship. A chair had been founded in Univer- 
 sity College, London, in memory of Mr. Justice Quain. I was 
 not a candidate, not knowing exactly what the subject (Com- 
 parative Law) was meant to cover. But the College Council 
 offered me the appointment. I accepted, on ascertaining that 
 they would allow me to lecture on comparison of laws within 
 the British Empire. I prepared myself for this course by 
 reading through the Privy Council Reports, for the Judicial 
 Committee is really the greatest institute of comparative law 
 in the world. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn lent me a room (formerly Mr. Justice Fry's 
 court) to lecture in : I delivered my inaugural lecture 7 Novem- 
 ber '94 to a good audience, largely composed of friends. The 
 law students soon found out that my lectures did not bear on 
 any examination. They swiftly and suddenly vanished away, 
 and I was left with a small band of senior men, who took an 
 intelligent interest in the subject. 
 
 Some of my colleagues in Gower Street objected to my 
 appointment on a technical ground, and I heard that the sama 
 persons complained of my lecturing at Lincoln's Inn. I there- 
 fore announced a course of lectures on ' Law Studies ', meaning 
 to deal with Stair, Pothier, Mansfield, &c., as students and 
 exponents of different systems of law, and these lectures were 
 to be given at the College in Gower Street ; but at the appointed 
 time no students appeared : an object-lesson in the futility of 
 giving law lectures so far from the Inns of Court. 
 
 Albert Gray and I were Secretaries of the Society of Com- 
 parative Legislation. In the vacation of '95 I went to Detroit 
 to represent the Society at a Congress promoted by the American 
 Bar Association, leaving Liverpool 17 August by Campania. 
 We all enjoyed the Congress immensely, but the solid results 
 were not great. From Detroit I went to Toronto, where 
 Parkin was about to take up the Headmastership of the 
 Upper Canada College. I met him on his arrival, 2 September. 
 There was a dinner at the National Club : I made a speech, 
 but as my turn came after midnight, my remarks were brief. 
 Sailed from N. Y. with the Umbria 7 September. As we came 
 out into the open sea, we had a fine view of the Valkyrie and
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES xxix 
 
 the Defender preparing to race, and the noisy ring of excursion 
 steamers round them. 
 
 Privy Council Office. The Act of 1833 which constitutes the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, provided for the 
 appointment of a Registrar. Henry Reeve became Clerk of 
 Appeals in 1835 and held office, first as Clerk, then as Registrar, 
 till '87. His successor, G. D. Faber, came into a fortune, and 
 towards the end of '95 he resigned. Several London friends 
 wrote to me about this, and I wrote a letter which Selborne 
 kindly undertook to lay before the Duke of Devonshire. 
 Haldane, I believe, saw the Duke, and pointed out that my 
 work for the Quain chair would be a good preparation for the 
 Registrarship. The Duke submitted my name to the Queen, 
 and on 19 February '96 Sir Chas. Peel, Clerk of the Council, 
 introduced me to their Lordships. 
 
 The Committee sits in the Council Chamber, a quiet and 
 somewhat dingy room at the corner of Whitehall and Downing 
 Street. The Registrar is housed in an adjoining room, which 
 looks into Downing Street. I had occasional glimpses of Mr. 
 Balfour going out to golf, or Sir Michael' Hicks-Beach striding 
 home after a Cabinet meeting. Just behind my desk was 
 a complete set of the English Law Reports, and the colonial 
 books were close at hand in the Council Chamber. It was an 
 ideal place for work. During my Council Office time I wrote 
 many articles for the Encyclopaedia of English Law. 
 
 My staff consisted of George Wheeler, Chief Clerk, T. Preston, 
 Record Clerk (both of whom had been a long time in the 
 office), and Ledlie, an accomplished Oxford man, who has since 
 risen to be Chief Clerk. We were a harmonious family 
 Wheeler laying down the law to us all, Preston indexing every- 
 thing and everybody with great care, while Ledlie was most 
 useful in teaching me the details of bills of costs. 
 
 The Committee takes appeals from the Colonial and Indian 
 courts and from ecclesiastical courts ; it deals also with applica- 
 tions for prolongation of patents. The judgement of the 
 Committee is in the form of a report to the Sovereign. Their 
 Lordships humbly advised Her Majesty to allow or dismiss 
 an appeal, and effect was given to this advice by an Order in
 
 xxx SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 Council, drafted by the Registrar, and submitted for approval 
 by the Clerk of the Council. 
 
 The practice was not hard to learn, but for some time I stayed 
 late at the Office, trying to master all the forms of business. 
 Once or twice I had some difficulty in escaping from the 
 building, after the caretaker had locked up. The Acts and 
 Orders under which we worked were in some points not satis- 
 factory. I drew a consolidating Bill and a consolidating 
 Order, but the higher powers were apathetic on the subject 
 and nothing was done. I made large additions to the Library, 
 and had to fight the Treasury on the question of expense. 
 I called myself The Lords of the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council, and my correspondent called himself The Lords 
 Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, so that everything 
 was done in the most dignified way. 
 
 The Judges who attended regularly were the Lord Chancellor, 
 Lord Halsbury, whose courtesy and quickness of apprehension 
 made it a pleasure to work under him, in spite of the trouble 
 he gave to Registrars and others by postponing judgement ; 
 Lord Watson, senior 'Lord of Appeal, a truly great Judge ; 
 Lord Macnaghten, a fine scholar and keen lawyer, whose 
 judgements were always models of good English ; Lord Morris, 
 an astute Irishman, whose law was not his strongest point ; 
 Lord Davey, whom I had known at the Bar as an advocate 
 of the first rank ; India was represented by Lord Hobhouse, 
 who had been Law Member of Council, and Sir Richard Couch, 
 who had been Chief Justice at Bombay and Calcutta. Under 
 an Act of 1895 three colonial Chief Justices were added Sir 
 Henry de Villiers from the Cape, Sir Henry Strong from 
 Canada, and Sir Samuel Way from South Australia. All three 
 came to London in '97 for the Diamond Jubilee, and all three 
 attended the Board ; but the colonial governments took financial 
 and other objections to their sitting regularly. 
 
 The cases were argued at the Bar by such men as Arthur 
 Cohen, Sir Edward Clarke, Bigham, Cozens-Hardy, Asquith, 
 Haldane, &c. J. D. Mayne was in most of the Indian 
 appeals. Some of the Judges (notably Halsbury, Herschell, 
 Watson) were much addicted to interrupting and cross-
 
 AUTOBIOGEAPHICAL NOTES xxxi 
 
 examining Counsel a bad practice, to which the Bar too 
 readily submits. 
 
 The Lord Chancellor made me a member of the Committee 
 which was bringing out a New Series of State Trials. Lord 
 Thring was our despotic chairman ; he and Sir Henry Jenkyns 
 gave the Secretary (J. P. Wallis) a hard time. Wallis went to 
 Madras as Advocate-General, while I was in India. 
 
 On being appointed Eegistrar, I took a house, 35 Woburn 
 Square, and, with the aid of a capable housekeeper, made it 
 a fairly comfortable resort for my family and friends when 
 they came to London. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances, the Eegistrarship of the 
 Privy Council is a place to be held for life, and I should have 
 been content to occupy my citadel in Downing Street until the 
 time came to retire. But in the beginning of '99 my thoughts 
 were turned in a new direction. 
 
 Sir H. Jenkyns was retiring from the Parliamentary Counsel's 
 office ; Sir Courtenay Ilbert was to have his place, and the 
 post of Assistant Parliamentary Counsel was offered to M. D. 
 Chalmers, Law Member of Council in India. It was intimated 
 to me that I might send in my name for the Secretary of 
 State's consideration, and name two persons in authority who 
 could vouch for my qualifications. I named Lord Watson and 
 Sir Wm. Anson. Lord Watson, who was ill at the time, insisted 
 on getting out of bed to write a strong letter on my behalf : 
 a proof of his goodwill which I take great pleasure in recalling. 
 
 The one reason for hesitating was this, that my mother was 
 75. But she was then strong and active for her age, and she 
 wished me to go if the Government required my service. 
 
 On the advice of Lord George Hamilton, Her Majesty was 
 pleased to appoint me an Ordinary Member of Lord Curzon's 
 Council, and I began to prepare for departure. Ilbert told me 
 all about my duties ; Lady Ilbert gave good advice about 
 housekeeping. Lady Hobhouse terrified me with her description 
 of Anglo-Indian etiquette. My tailor gave a check to my pride 
 by informing me that my proper uniform was ' third class 
 civilian '. (Members of Council have since been raised to 
 the second class.) I took some riding lessons, but did not
 
 xxxii SIR THOMAS KALEIGH 
 
 distinguish myself as a horseman. All being ready, I loft London 
 8 March, '99 ; joined my colleague Dawkins and his party 
 at Marseilles, and came in sight of Bombay at dawn of the 
 24th. The Caledonia is a fast boat, and the voyage was 
 pleasant. r wo Miss Leiters (sisters of Lady Curzon) supplied 
 the ladies with materials for gossip. J. E. O'Connor, Director 
 of Statistics, and Horsfall, a Madras District Judge, gave me 
 useful information about the ways of Government in India. 
 The captain of the ship happened to be a friend of Sir Louis 
 Kershaw, who succumbed to his second hot season in India. 
 When I was sitting on deck, the captain would bear down and 
 begin about ' poor Kershaw ', and the folly of going to India 
 after the age of 45. 
 
 India. Captain Goodridge took us off the Caledonia in 
 a launch, and we went to Government House, where Lord and 
 Lady Sandhurst were kind to us all. The aspect of the town, 
 with its fine buildings and parti-coloured crowd, gave us a 
 favourable idea of India. 
 
 Dawkins went to Calcutta, and I, by Chalmers's advice, to 
 Simla, taking with me in my official carriage the Dawkins 
 family party. Through sheer ignorance, we made a long 
 journey without Indian servants, and were very uncomfortable. 
 
 My halting place was Aligarh. Theodore Beck, who married 
 my cousin Jessie in '89, had been Principal of the Muhammadan 
 College there since '83. Under his guidance I saw what an 
 ordinary Indian town is like, and thoroughly inspected the 
 College, which is a good example of its class, and far better than 
 most of the Colleges I have seen. It was only the end of March, 
 but the sun was very strong. I was astonished to see the 
 students playing football. The success of this College is due 
 to the friendship between the founder, Sir Syed Ahmed, and 
 Theodore Beck. They combined their forces in dealing with 
 a rather intractable body of Muhammadan Trustees. Sir Syed 
 was just dead, and his son Mahmud thought he inherited his 
 father's authority ; Beck had not his troubles to seek, and the 
 climate of Aligarh put a strain on his health. 
 
 On arriving at Simla I took over charge of my office under 
 the usual salute of thirteen guns.
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES xxxiii 
 
 Sir James Walker, who married my cousin Katie Davey, 
 was the owner of a fine house, Woodville, at one time the 
 residence of the Commander-in-Chief. He kindly offered to 
 take me as a tenant ; I had the place five years and became 
 very fond of it. Though the house was roomy and dignified, 
 the finest feature of the place was a goodly expanse of lawn, 
 so safely fenced that even small children could be turned in to 
 play. The garden showed mostly English flowers, under the 
 care of a mali, a quaint old hillman who favoured me with long 
 lectures in some tongue of his own. With the house I took 
 over Walker's servants, Ally-ud-deen the khansama, chowdri 
 bearer, &c. My own servants wore blue coats, and were under 
 the khansama ; the chaprasies supplied by Government wore 
 red coats, and were under the jemadar. They all lived in their 
 own little houses in the compound ; when there was nobody 
 staying with me, I slept in my big house alone. But I was 
 lucky in having company nearly all the time. 
 
 The Becks joined me in May. They moved after a time to 
 a house of their own ; there 11 July my god-daughter Rachel 
 was bom, and there 2 September Theodore died. 
 
 Jessie came to my house again with the baby. Bain arrived 
 from Poona with his wife and little girl. 
 
 The Council. Lord Curzon had been about three months in 
 India when I arrived. His Executive Council was composed 
 of five Ordinary Members : Sir A. Trevor (Public Works), 
 Sir E. Collen (Military), Clinton Dawkins (Finance), Rivaz 
 (Home and Revenue), and myself (Legislative). The Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, Sir Wm. Lockhart, was an Extraordinary 
 Member. At meetings for making laws and regulations we were 
 reinforced by the presence of the Additional members, number- 
 ing fifteen or sixteen. 
 
 In May the Viceroy arrived in Simla, and the Executive 
 Council began work, sitting regularly every Friday, and 
 specially when anything important happened. At Simla the 
 legislative business is not heavy, and only Additional Members 
 who are on the spot are summoned. 
 
 The Viceroy and the six members of his Government are 
 brought into close relations ; in the Indian climate, and under 
 
 c
 
 xxxiv SIR THOMAS EALEIGH 
 
 the stress of Indian work, differences may easily become too 
 acute. During my time there was happily no strife or bitter- 
 ness : we seldom went through the formality of a division : 
 the minority gave way, or the contested proposal was with- 
 drawn. 
 
 I sometimes feel that I have not seen the Government of 
 India under normal conditions, for Curzon's was an exceptional 
 time. He is a man of exceptional energy and Self-confidence ; 
 he had made a special study of Indian questions, and came out 
 with a programme already framed. His power of work is very 
 great. Rising about 9, he can read a pile of newspapers and 
 be at his desk by 10. Allowing an hour for lunch, and half an 
 hour for tea, he can go on till dinnertime, give the evening to 
 his social duties, and work again from midnight till 3 a.m. 
 Not a moment of this working time is lost ; he has his papers 
 in perfect order, and when he comes to write his Minute or 
 Dispatch, he turns off the paragraphs as fast as a J pen will 
 go. This he can do for some weeks together. But when he 
 goes on tour, his vitality seems unimpaired, and he is as keen 
 about shooting as he is about business. Physically, he suffers 
 from sciatica or neuritis, but he goes on with his office papers, 
 unless his doctor absolutely takes them away. 
 
 Though he adheres to the Conservative Party, Curzon is 
 a Radical by temperament. He expects to find abuses in old 
 institutions, and is fond of suggesting changes. He sweeps the 
 officials out of his way when they object to anything which is 
 for the good of the people. Lord Salisbury taught him to 
 dislike law and to distrust lawyers. In a case where he suspects 
 misconduct, his impulse is to descend on the accused person at 
 once, without giving him the benefit of any doubt. He is 
 sensitive to criticism, especially newspaper criticism ; an 
 article in the Pioneer headed ' Viceroy or Kaiser ? ' inspired 
 him with a settled dislike of that respectable print. But it 
 should in fairness be said that he risks his popularity without 
 hesitation when there is a public duty to be done. 
 
 Calcutta. In November '99 I went down from Simla to 
 Aligarh to start Jessie Beck and Rachel on their sad voyage 
 home. The students met me in a body at the station, at live
 
 AUTOBIOGKAPHICAL NOTES xxxv 
 
 in the morning. They were deeply interested in the departure 
 of Mrs. Beck, and their devotion to the memory of Theodore 
 Beck was touching to see. 
 
 After seeing mother and daughter and the Irish nurse on 
 board at Bombay, I spent a few days there with the Chief 
 Justice, and then turned in the direction of Calcutta. One 
 of the greatest privileges of a Member of Council is the right 
 to a railway carriage of his own. With my books and papers 
 in one compartment, my bed in another, my bath at one end 
 of the carriage, and my bearer, Ishitmatgar, jemadar, and one 
 chaprasi to look after me, I was furnished at all points, and 
 could make long journeys without serious fatigue. 
 
 At Calcutta I had taken the upper part of 8 Eussell Street, 
 said to have been the house of Chief Justice Eussell, from whom 
 the street is named : if the tradition is historical, it is the house 
 in which Eose Aylmer died. She was a niece of Lady Eussell, 
 and her aunt brought her to Bengal that she might marry 
 a member of the Board of Eevenue instead of wasting her time 
 on young Mr. Landor of Trinity. But the poor girl died in 
 her first season and Mr. Landor has made her name immortal. 
 
 Mr. Justice Wilkins and his wife shared the flat with me 
 this first winter : Sir Chas. Eivaz the second winter ; Donald 
 Smeaton and his wife the third. After that I shared a house, 
 first at 2 Short Street, then at 9 Camac Street, with the 
 Ibbetsons. My life at Calcutta was one of constant work and 
 worry, and it was a relief to have friends in the house who 
 could organize the necessary parties, &c. 
 
 Contested Bills are usually kept for Calcutta, and there is 
 a full muster of the Additional Members of Council. Legislative 
 meetings are open to the public, and reporters are present, but 
 there is not much debate ; speeches are nearly all written, 
 and one has to speak sitting at a long table. Occasionally an 
 Indian member finds that he cannot read his own (or his 
 secretary's) MS., and the Secretary reads it for him. Even in 
 the so-called cold weather, Calcutta is hot, and throughout 
 my first session the difficulty of keeping awake was a serious 
 trial to me. 
 
 After Simla. Calcutta is a big place, and a livelier place than 
 
 C2
 
 m 
 
 xxxvi SIB THOMAS KALEIGH 
 
 any Government station can be. There is, of course, a large 
 mercantile community, which expresses its opinions through 
 the Chamber of Commerce. The High Court maintains its 
 own traditions, and is always glad to pose as the defender of 
 the people against a powerful executive. The University does 
 not count for much socially. When Curzon took it in hand, 
 it was an examining University and nothing more, and the 
 Calcutta Colleges are not what one hopes they may become. 
 The big parties at Government House and Belvedere, where 
 these various elements met and mingled, were highly enter- 
 taining. 
 
 For me, the Calcutta day was something like this. At 
 5.45 the crows were already in full chorus, and sleep was out 
 of the question. I made good progress with my work between 
 6 and 9, then drove to my office. Committees sat usually from 
 11 to 2 ; as the Law Member is Chairman of all Committees, 
 draftsman, and sometimes Member in charge of the Bill, I 
 found this part of the work engrossing and exhausting. There 
 might be a second Committee from 3 to 5, but more often 
 I was free to go on with my writing. When the sun was low, 
 I sometimes took ladies for a drive along the river front ; 
 the sunset colours, blurred and clouded by the soft black 
 smoke from Howrah mills, made a grand picture. Other days 
 I walked slowly across the Maidan to the Bengal Club, and 
 stopped there to have tea and glance over the titles of the new 
 books. Then home, to find a small Stonehenge of office boxes 
 lying in wait for me, and a pile of letters demanding explana- 
 tions of this, that or the other. 
 
 Travels in India. The executive officer in India does not 
 rejoice in a long vacation that is a privilege reserved for 
 High Court Judges. Government work comes in pretty well 
 every day in the year, and a certain proportion of the work 
 is really urgent, though the red ' urgent ' and blue ' immediate ' 
 slips are too freely used by a zealous Secretariat. When one 
 is absent from head-quarters, cases accumulate rapidly, and 
 this makes it impossible for a Member of Council to take long 
 holidays or to see much of the country. It is part of the 
 Viceroy's regular duty to make extensive tours, and to cultivate
 
 AUTOBIOGEAPHICAL NOTES xxxvii 
 
 the acquaintance of the Princes and Chiefs, but the members 
 of Government are usually to be found at their desks. 
 
 In March 1900 I went to the Central Provinces, and Eraser 
 then acting as Chief Commissioner, took me a round of famine 
 camps. 
 
 In November of the same year (having been appointed 
 Vice- Chancellor of Calcutta University) I went to see some 
 of the Bengal Colleges, and then joined Sir Arthur Trevor and 
 Miss Trevor in an expedition to Burma. The British India 
 Company was using some of its large steamers to carry troops 
 to South Africa, so we crossed the Bay of Bengal in a smaller 
 boat. Some of the tinned provisions were bad ; Sir Arthur 
 and I were landed at Eangoon very ill ; Major Davis of the 
 Indian Medical Service diagnosed ptomaine poisoning. After 
 a weary fortnight at a hotel we recovered sufficiently to go to 
 Government House, where our blanched and exhausted appear- 
 ance secured us the compassionate sympathy of Lady Fryer. 
 After this unlucky beginning we were able to see something 
 of Burma, travelling to Mandalay and Maymyo, and then in 
 the direction of Lashio as far as the Gokteik Gorge. Eefcurning 
 to Mandalay, we joined a Eoyal Indian Marine boat which 
 had been placed at our disposal, and enjoyed a very idle, happy 
 time on the Irrawaddy : saw the ancient cities, and ran down 
 as far as the sculptured cliffs of Htonbu. 
 
 In March 1901 I spent a few days at Peshawur, and ascended 
 the Khyber Pass on a * caravan day ', camels and flocks of 
 sheep blocking the road at every corner. I had not time to 
 explore any other passes, but the Commissioner, Colonel Leigh, 
 and the General in command gave me information as to the 
 country which was soon to become the Frontier Province. 
 
 In October 1901 Sir John Woodburn kindly offered to take 
 me with him on his annual visit to Sikkim, but the Ameer died 
 at Kabul, and the Government of India was kept in session 
 at Simla until the new ruler Habibullah was safely installed. 
 I met Sir John at Darjeeling on his return, and spent a week 
 there. The weather was brilliantly clear, and from my window 
 at The Shrubbery the majestic form of Kanchanjunga was 
 visible at every hour of the day or night. In the daytime I rode 
 
 c3
 
 xxxviii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 about on a white Bhutia pony, ascending to various points from 
 which Mount Everest was said to be visible. One day I saw 
 something, but the Lieutenant-Governor's young men would 
 not admit that the something was really Everest. 
 
 In February 1902 I started from Calcutta with the Indian 
 Universities Commission. We visited Madras (Hewett and 
 I went to Bangalore), Poona, Bombay (Hewett and I went to 
 Ahmedabad), then went back to Calcutta via Nagpur. After 
 the Calcutta inquiry we went via Benares to Allahabad, 
 Lucknow, and Lahore. By 19 April we were in Simla. The 
 composition of the Report was a long business : it was signed 
 10 June. 
 
 August 1902 Curzon was at Mysore installing the young 
 Maharaja. During this absence I went with James Wilson to 
 the Kajan Valley. Our starting-npint was Abbottabad, and 
 there we inspected a large camp of Boer prisoners, and con- 
 versed with such of them as could speak English. Some were 
 intelligent and eager to argue ; others were sulky and declined 
 even the offer of a cigar. From Mansera we made our way up 
 the Valley on ponies. The object of Wilson's visit was to put 
 the final touches to a new land settlement for the Hazara 
 District. When we approached a village, the people came out 
 to meet us, led by one or more of the Saiyyids of Kugan, a class 
 who used to give trouble to Ranjit Singh ; they are quiet, 
 enough now, for their fighting men are drafted into the Army 
 or the Police, where they earn good pay and acquire habits of 
 discipline. If there was any outstanding question as to the 
 village settlement, our servants spread rugs, and we took our 
 seats on the ground, the people sitting in a semicircle over 
 against us ; in the space between, the tahsildar, the kanungo 
 and the patwari displayed the maps and pedigrees from which 
 the new record of rights was being made up. I admired 
 Wilson's easy impassive way of getting at the facts of each 
 case, and I am convinced that the people acquiesced in the 
 fairness of his decisions. On our return journey we had a 
 display of fireworks at Garri Habibulla (which will perhaps be 
 a station when the railway climbs into Kashmir) ; then we took 
 tongas and rattled down seventy-eight miles to Hasun Abdul.
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES xxxix 
 
 November 1902 I had no holiday, but went straight from 
 the small preliminary committee on the Code of Civil Procedure 
 to the Committee of Council which met at Calcutta. At 
 Christmas our labours were interrupted by the Coronation 
 Durbar, and the Council and Secretaries to Government took 
 train for Delhi. As senior member of Council I had a corner 
 tent in the middle of the Viceroy's Camp : Elles and Law to 
 my right, Arundel and Ibbetson to my left. Each of us took 
 a ' camp office ' to Delhi, and business went on, as far as the 
 public functions would permit. 
 
 The year 1903 was filled with work Code of Civil Procedure, 
 and legislation for the Session 1903-4 (Universities, Co-operative 
 Credit Societies, Ancient Monuments, to say nothing of the 
 fight over the Official Secrets Bill). The session January- 
 March 1904 was most exhausting : at the end of it I got my 
 K.C.S.I., and prepared for departure. I was sorry to leave 
 India, and very glad to get home. Eraser gave me a pleasant 
 holiday of a few days in Backerganj and the Sunderbans ; 
 then I turned West spent a few days with Bain at Poona : 
 sailed from Bombay 16 April, and arrived in London evening 
 of Sunday 1 May. The voyage home was pleasant, though 
 the Egypt was crowded : we had the Bishop of Lahore (Lefroy), 
 Chief Justice and Lady Jenkins, Eussells, Battys, Johnstones, 
 &c., and a number of subalterns who gave us a lively time. 
 
 Sir Thomas Raleigh did not continue these Notes beyond 
 his return from India. After he came home he settled in 
 London, became a K. C., and spoke of endeavouring to build 
 up a practice before the Judicial Committee of the Privy 
 Council. His ' invincible diffidence ' prevented him from 
 pressing his claims to a Government appointment, but his 
 friends justifiably hoped that, after his fine record of work 
 in India, he would be offered a post at home worthy of his 
 capacity and experience. For some years, however, he was 
 left without employment beyond being placed upon two 
 tribunals to inquire into University affairs the Treasury 
 Committee on the University of Wales and the Royal Com- 
 mission on Trinity College, Dublin. Sir Thomas was Chair- 
 man of the former. In 1909, on the invitation of Lord Morley,
 
 xl SIR THOMAS EALEIGH 
 
 then Secretary of State for India, Sir Thomas joined the Home 
 Council of India, and he had great pleasure in returning to 
 congenial work. About this time, however, his health began 
 to fail. As he remarks at the beginning of his Autobiography, 
 he had originally a good constitution, but he had gone to 
 India comparatively late in life, and the climate and the heavy 
 burden of work placed upon him seriously impaired his health. 
 For some time he struggled against increasing ill-health, and 
 in 1911 made an expedition to Egypt for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing treatment there. In 1918, however, he felt compelled to 
 resign his Membership of Council. 
 
 On his retirement from office Sir Thomas gave up his house 
 in London and returned to Oxford, where he felt that he would 
 be among old friends and where he lived until his death. The 
 Annals of the Church in Scotland were composed during these 
 last years at Oxford. During the first part of this period of 
 retirement Sir Thomas took an active interest in University 
 affairs, being appointed Deputy Steward of the University. 
 His advice was constantly sought on all manner of subjects 
 by a wide circle of friends, whose admiration for his character 
 and confidence in his judgment were unbounded. Three 
 years before his death Sir Thomas had a paralytic stroke from 
 which he never recovered, and he died on 8th February 1920.
 
 SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR HARRY R. REICHEL 
 
 WHEN I went up to Balliol in 1875, three names loomed 
 large and were mentioned with a certain awe Asquith, 
 Raleigh, and Milner. Milner was in the last year of his Final 
 School, and admittedly the dominating figure in the under- 
 graduate life of the University. Asquith and Raleigh had 
 recently gained their fellowships and passed out of the common 
 ken, surviving as great reputations. As a Fellow of Balliol 
 there were naturally more stories about Asquith. Of Raleigh 
 one heard comparatively little. ' A great speaker at the Union 
 and a tremendous Radical,' was the description of him given 
 me by a Conservative acquaintance. As I always shunned 
 Union debates and had an Irish Protestant's natural distrust 
 of contemporary Radicalism, there was nothing in this to 
 suggest that the subject of it was to become one of my closest 
 friends. He had won his fellowship at All Souls'. Thither in 
 1880 my good fortune took me also, and I found myself a 
 member of the same Common-room. This did not at first 
 mean much intimacy. To new-comers Thomas Raleigh pre- 
 sented a rather daunting exterior. There was about him a 
 power of silence and an inscrutable calm of features that when 
 in repose seemed carved in granite, which people who did not 
 know him well were apt to find disconcerting, and which 
 disposed a shy Junior Fellow to keep his distance. But this 
 feeling was short-lived. It was impossible to see Raleigh in 
 the free intimacy of the College Smoking-room, to listen to his 
 incisive and humorous talk, and to watch the delightful play 
 of expression in his face when he was really interested, all the 
 more attractive in a man of so much native reserve, without 
 seeing what a rich and racy humanity lay hidden beneath*
 
 xlii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 Later on came the experience of the College ' Gaudy ', at which 
 it was his duty, in the time-honoured role of Lord Mallard, 
 to sing the College song and to propose certain College toasts 
 (he was a perfect after-dinner speaker) : and no ' Gaudy ' was 
 considered complete without one or more humorous Scottish 
 songs from him. His rendering of these was unique. In 
 musical quality his voice was nothing out of the common ; 
 but it was full of character and had a range of expression from 
 grave to gay, from grimmest sarcasm to the most delicate 
 banter, that was wonderfully arresting. On the occasion of 
 a ' Gaudy ' when Lord Morley, an Honorary Fellow of the 
 College, was expected to dinner, some one expressed a doubt 
 whether Raleigh's songs would be quite en regie, with a dis- 
 tinguished guest present. ' Of course they would,' exclaimed 
 another : * It's a liberal education to hear Raleigh sing.' 
 
 Under these influences awe soon melted into genial admira- 
 tion, and before long I found myself on terms of easy intercourse, 
 and treated with the kindness and consideration he always 
 showed to the younger members of the College. In 1884 I left 
 Oxford for Bangor, and from that time for several years saw 
 him only at College reunions, but the stirring events which 
 were then transforming the political world quickened personal 
 relations between men whose thoughts on the question of the 
 day ran on the same lines. Raleigh was from the first a con- 
 vinced Unionist, and regarded Mr. Gladstone's volte face as 
 a desertion of true Liberal principles and fraught with all the 
 disastrous developments that recent history has revealed. This 
 brought us closer together. The weight which a man of open 
 mind like his would naturally give to the first-hand experiences 
 of a friend was in my case confirmed by a lucky forecast I made 
 at the time of the O'Shea divorce suit. The result had just 
 been announced, and Raleigh remarked to me as we sat talking 
 after dinner : ' Well, I suppose Parnell will have to retire from 
 the leadership now.' ' Why so ? ' I asked. ' Because a moral 
 nation like the Irish will never submit to be led by a co- 
 respondent.' ' You think so,' was my answer, 'and no doubt 
 so do most people on this side of the Channel ; but I venture 
 to predict that the Irish Party will not repudiate him, and that
 
 REMINISCENCES xliii 
 
 if any protest conies, it will be from the English Noncon- 
 formists.' Several years later he remarked to me : ' Do you 
 know, Eeichel, I have often since thought of the remarkable 
 accuracy of that forecast of yours about the effect of the 
 affaire O'Shea.' Thus he was soon, with the exception of 
 John Andrew Doyle, my closest friend in College, and when 
 I was married in 1894 became my Trustee for the marriage 
 settlement. In 1899 he went to India as Legal Member of the 
 Supreme Council for Lord Curzon's first Viceroyalty, and for 
 several years I heard nothing from him except an occasional 
 letter at distant intervals on personal or social topics. The 
 following humorous extract refers to a rumour discreditable 
 to his horsemanship, which had reached the All Souls' Common- 
 room from the Viceregal entourage, amongst other things 
 alleging that he had been thrown from the saddle and only 
 saved from injury by the strong arms of his syce : 
 
 ' The Viceroy and his staff seem to spend their time in 
 making stories about me and my horse. I do not profess to be 
 a great horseman : but I will take on the Viceroy or the 
 Metropolitan. As for tumbles, I have had exactly three, 
 two in my first week at Simla, and one since. It was the 
 Metropolitan, by the way, who was fielded by his syce a very- 
 serious thing for the syce, who was converted into a brown 
 pancake by his Lordship's superincumbent weight.' 
 
 During this official period he threw himself heart and soul 
 into the great scheme of Indian University reform which was 
 one of the chief measures in Lord Curzon's reconstruction 
 programme. From this time India and University develop- 
 ment were always present to him, and, along with the history 
 of the Scottish Kirk, filled his mind. In later years one could 
 not talk to him without feeling how the glamour of the great 
 Dependency with its rich, ancient civilization coloured his 
 thoughts, and to the end of his life it always seemed to me as 
 if he were listening subconsciously to the call of the East. 
 Though he was alive to the weak points in the Hindu character, 
 particularly in respect of veracity and moral courage, he was 
 entirely free from Anglo-Indian 'superiority '. Of prominent 
 Indians whom he had known he generally spoke with respect,
 
 xliv SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 and sometimes with warm personal regard. But the lot of the 
 reformer is never an easy one, and in India the normal diffi- 
 culties were greatly increased by religion and caste, under 
 which the worst abuses acquired a certain sanctity. In a letter 
 written in 1916, after giving his opinion about Hindu Univer- 
 sities, he adds : 
 
 ' Do not quote Curzon or me. For some years he and I were 
 the two best abused men in India, and the minds of our critics 
 have not quite settled down.' 
 
 In 1909 he came down to Bangor and gave the academic 
 address of the session, choosing as his subject ' The Universities 
 of British India '. It had the raciness and trenchant directness 
 of everything he said or wrote, and made a deep impression on 
 a public keenly interested in intellectual questions but some- 
 what confined in outlook. It was plainly a revelation to most 
 of his audience when he informed them that more languages 
 were spoken in India than in Europe, and that the deliberations 
 of the native Congress had to be conducted in English because 
 it was the only language which all the members understood. 
 The following extracts from private letters bear upon his 
 Indian experience : 
 
 8 November '09. 
 
 ' I used to tell my Bengali friends that if they wanted more 
 influence in their own country they should capture the scientific 
 services by turning out a supply of men (1) well-trained, and 
 (2) trustworthy.' 
 
 18 October '09. 
 (This refers to his Bangor address.) 
 
 Indian Congress. ' Some of the Congress papers note that 
 Sir T. R. made a long journey to breathe out his well-known 
 fear and dislike of the higher education. But they don't put 
 in so much cayenne as they did in the good old days, consule 
 Georgia.' 
 
 28 January '12. 
 
 (He had made a half offer of his Law Reports to the Library 
 of Bangor University College.) 
 
 * In regard to the books of which I spoke, I must put off 
 deciding for a bit. We are at present making great efforts 
 on behalf of Indian students in London. I have always wished
 
 EEMINISCENCES xlv 
 
 to provide them with a Library as a centre for their work, and 
 if this project comes to anything I should as an ex-Indian 
 V.-C. regard it as having a more direct claim on me than any 
 other institution. So, until I know what can and will be done, 
 the fate of my Law Reports will be in dubio.' 
 
 4 May '12. 
 
 ' The Indian students leaped at my lawbooks, so I'm afraid 
 Bangor will not see them.' 
 
 4 January '16. 
 (I had consulted him about a possible visit to India.) 
 
 ' I cannot give a decided opinion about the Hindu University. 
 
 ' My policy was to encourage Colleges which have a religious 
 basis. The Mahomedan College at Aligarh, of which my friend 
 Beck was Principal, was one of the best in India. 
 
 ' But I stood out for a limited number of big Universities 
 in which men of different religions could meet and learn to 
 keep the peace. 
 
 ' Harding has accepted the notion of a religious University. 
 Aligarh is now a University (and spoiled in the process, so 
 tells me).' 
 
 13 January '16. 
 
 ' In 1902 I spent two days in going through the Hindu 
 College in company with Sir Gooroodan Banerjee (a Brahmin 
 and a Judge). I won't quite describe it as it was then. Our 
 Act of 1904 was meant to bring Colleges up to a certain standard 
 of efficiency, and by this time they may be all much improved. 
 But in India the nature of things is a bit slippery. The pious 
 Hindu is like Newman as described by Kingsley. He thinks 
 lying is the weapon by means of which the saints hold their 
 own with the brute world.' 
 
 Soon after his return from India he rendered a great service 
 to higher education in Wales. In 1904 the three Welsh 
 University Colleges, whose growth in students had made their 
 financial position desperate, appealed to the Welsh M.P.'s, and 
 on their representations Mr. Asquith, then Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, appointed a small Committee of Inquiry, with 
 Raleigh as Chairman. The Chairman was the moving spirit. 
 Fresh from his Indian University experience, he took up the 
 work with keen interest and conducted an exhaustive inquiry 
 which resulted in 1909 in the doubling of the College grants,
 
 xlvi SIR THOMAS EALEIGH 
 
 the increase being ear-marked for raising salaries, establishing 
 a superannuation system, and increasing expenditure on books 
 and scientific apparatus. But Ealeigh's interest did not stop 
 here. Though no definite appeal had been made on behalf 
 of the University as distinct from its constituent Colleges, its 
 needs had been included in the Committee's reference. He 
 was determined that this should be no dead letter. One of the 
 most valuable sections of the Keport of his Committee was 
 that which recommended in addition to the increases to the 
 Colleges a separate increased grant to the University for the 
 promotion of post-graduate study and research. This pro- 
 vision, which has virtually transformed the higher work of the 
 Colleges, was due entirely to his foresight and initiative. The 
 following extracts refer respectively (1) to a rumour that had 
 reached him that in certain quarters it was intended to ignore 
 any recommendation for increases of salaries and use the new 
 grants for other purposes ; (2) to Mr. Lloyd George's Oxford 
 Degree after his promotion to the Treasury. 
 
 3 June '08. 
 
 ' For some time past we have been aware that some sup- 
 porters of the Colleges are not in sympathy with the demand 
 for higher salaries. They have made no formal representation, 
 and for this reason we shall probably not notice their arguments 
 in the Report. 
 
 ' We shall probably indicate the purposes to which public 
 funds may properly be applied ; of these purposes improve- 
 ment of salaries will be one. We shall also probably point out 
 (1) that your salaries are lower than the payment for the same 
 work elsewhere, and (2) that your best men are drawn away 
 to better-paid posts. 
 
 ' It is natural that democratic authorities should be a little 
 jealous of the professorial plutocrat. What proportion of your 
 Governors can count on a safe income of 800 a year ? ' 
 
 26 June '08. 
 
 ' I have met Lloyd George twice this last week, and found 
 him well-disposed. I presented him on Wednesday. A very 
 young undergraduate asked in a tone of anxiety, ' Sir, 
 please Sir, when am I to get my pension ? " I levelled my 
 MS. at him, and went on reading " Hominibus septua- 
 genariis " and the youth uttered a hollow groan.'
 
 BEMINISCENCES xlvii 
 
 Like most thoughtful men not engrossed in politics, he saw 
 from the first the growth and magnitude of the German peril. 
 The accident which knocked him over in 1913 was the beginning 
 of a period of increasing disablement that only ended with 
 his death ; thus during the war, though I saw a good deal of 
 him on business visits to town, I had only a few letters which 
 can be quoted as illustrating his opinions of contemporary 
 events : 
 
 7 May '15. 
 
 The German Peril. 'If " anti- German " is me, I don't 
 accept the description. In the year 1868 (Gad, .how old I am !) 
 another boy and I were sent with a tutor to Tubingen where, 
 by the way, the Stinkpreussen were as cordially hated as they 
 were in Belgium. I had good German friends, and when 1870 
 came I was on the German side. Even in those days one could 
 perceive the feeling in which the present trouble had its origin. 
 The Germans despised us, and they had the notion that our 
 prosperity was somehow a fraud on them. George Meredith 
 saw this, and if George Meredith could have written English, 
 he could have made the English see it. 
 
 ' I never had any sympathy with the later phases of pro- 
 Germanism. After Haldane had been to Berlin he made his 
 " Trust the Kaiser " speech, and about the same time Lord 
 Loreburn said that anybody who regarded Germany as an 
 aggressive power should be put under restraint.' 
 
 [The rest of the passage expresses his dissent from ' these 
 two eminent men ' with a humorous truculence not intended 
 for the public eye.] 
 
 18 January '17. 
 
 ' I have been reading Harold Begbie's Vindication of Great 
 Britain. There is of course much to be said for Haldane, but 
 H. B. omits a saying of the Kaiser, repeated to me by Haldane 
 himself " These English think "themselves great men of 
 business and they send me a War Minister who can't ride 
 and a Foreign Secretary who can't speak French ".' 
 
 13 October '15. 
 (Early disasters in the Levant.) 
 
 ' I see the Turks, inspired by the Germans, are going to 
 kill out the non-Moslem communities : after the Armenians 
 the Jews are next on the list. If William succeeds where 
 Hadrian & Co. failed, it will be interesting.'
 
 xlviii SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 21 January '16. 
 
 ' Is not Montenegro disgusting ? Of course it only means 
 that a blackguard old gentleman has taken a hatful of money 
 to betray his country. But the old gentleman would have 
 been comparatively respectable, if he had thought we could 
 protect him in the paths of respectability.' 
 
 I have mentioned his power of silence. It could be a very 
 ' companionable silence ', to quote a remark once applied to 
 another distinguished All Souls' Scot, but it could also be alarm- 
 ing enough. I remember when he was serving on the Royal 
 Commission on the Irish University question in 1905, meeting 
 a T. C. D. acquaintance who had dined in his company at the 
 Trinity High Table, and who spoke of his impenetrable reserve 
 with a dread that bordered on the ludicrous. Raleigh was 
 believed, and with some justice, to favour the policy of a joint 
 inter- denominational University on the principle he had tried 
 to carry out in India, embracing both Trinity and a Roman 
 Catholic College as constituent colleges. He hoped that in this 
 way the two sets of students would be drawn together on the 
 playing fields, and to a certain extent in the classrooms, and 
 that a common corporate feeling would in time be evolved. 
 Those who had closer knowledge than is perhaps possible to 
 any outside observer, however keen-sighted, of the gulf that 
 divides the two religions in Ireland and of the absolute control 
 which the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is determined to exercise 
 over the higher education of its own people, feared that such 
 a policy would mean the ultimate disappearance of all academic 
 freedom and the virtual extinction of the intellectual beacon- 
 light of Ireland. In such a situation Raleigh's natural reserve 
 was inevitably enhanced. As a member of the Commission 
 he felt he ought not to allow himself to be drawn, and the 
 result was a taciturnity which chilled the warm Irish expansive- 
 ness of the Trinity Common-room to the very marrow. The 
 other side of the same quality was also exhibited in Dublin on 
 another and a very different occasion, which he described to 
 me with much enjoyment. It was the time of the Parnell trial 
 in Dublin under the Beaconsfield Government. He resolved 
 to go over and see things for himself. For this purpose he
 
 REMINISCENCES xlix 
 
 selected the hotel which Parnell and his followers, then a small 
 band, had made their head-quarters (the Hibernian, in Dawson 
 Street, if my memory serves me), and for several days wore his 
 cloak of silence. He noticed that Parnell lived by himself 
 in a private room, and never mixed socially with his followers, 
 while they herded together in the coffee- and smoking-rooms, 
 and were as noisy as a pack of schoolboys when the Headmaster 
 is away. On the rare occasions when Parnell appeared, it was 
 just as if the Headmaster had walked into the room. There 
 was an instant and solemn hush ; the great man advanced 
 a step or two from the door, called up the particular member 
 he wished to speak to, and after exchanging a few words in 
 a low voice withdrew, ignoring altogether the presence of the 
 rest ; and no sooner was the door closed than all was once 
 more noise and racket. After dinner they kept it up in the 
 coffee-room to a late hour, dropping off bedwards one by one. 
 Each night of his stay Ealeigh made a point of sitting the 
 company out, and on each occasion the same thing happened. 
 The last man (it was a different man each night) came across 
 to where he was sitting, took the silent stranger into his con- 
 fidence, and informed him that all the rest were a set of scamps 
 and adventurers, and that he himself was the only honest man 
 of the party. 
 
 In 1913 he was knocked down by a taxi in Piccadilly, and 
 the rest of his life was a period of increasing disability and 
 helplessness, the tragedy of which is revealed in occasional 
 remarks in private letters : 
 
 (i) ' I am glad you have found military occupation. As 
 for me, I can neither do nor say anything, nor can I think to 
 any purpose about the War or any other topic.' 
 
 (ii) ' For myself, I am well when I am not ill. My life is 
 a dull one, for I cannot do any work. This, of course, does not 
 prevent cheerful friends from coming in every day to say there 
 is a heavy job to be done and I am obviously the man to do it.' 
 
 And, most poignant of all : 
 
 (iii) * I am quite well, and fit for nothing.' 
 
 In ability he stood out among a body of able colleagues. 
 All Souls' had the reputation of getting the pick of the clever
 
 I SIR THOMAS RALEIGH 
 
 young men fresh from the Schools, and certainly no Oxford 
 Common-room could boast a greater variety of distinguished 
 talent ; but for sheer intellectual power and insight I think 
 we all, or the great majority, regarded him as head a.nd shoulders 
 above the rest of us. It was strange that a mind of such 
 calibre should have been hampered through life by a certain 
 self-distrust, which sometimes seemed to arrest action at a 
 critical moment, and which concealed largely from the outside 
 world, and perhaps from himself, the real greatness of the man. 
 It gave an added charm to his personality, but at a serious cost 
 to his effectiveness. Great as were the services he rendered 
 both in India and at home, it was the general belief of those 
 who knew him well that they would have been much greater, 
 had he possessed a little more of the self-confidence that 
 enabled men of far inferior capacity to exerfc a wider influence 
 on their generation. 
 
 Along with this power went a catholicity of outlook and 
 a justness of thought that gave his considered opinion great 
 weight. He was pre-eminently fair-minded and incapable of 
 anything like partisanship. A Scot to the core, he could give it 
 against his native country, did the evidence incline that way. I 
 have always been an admirer of Scottish efficiency, and remember 
 one day expatiating to him on the well-known text ' England 
 is a country governed by Scotchmen ', which I was inclined to 
 extend to the Empire at large. To this he demurred. The Scot 
 made a splendid Governor and official, but the Englishman, 
 he thought, was stronger on the side of justice and considera- 
 tion for the rights of others, the quality above all that made for 
 the success of an imperial system. This view has been ex- 
 pressed by a brilliant namesake of his in words which I venture 
 to quote, because they seem to sum up exactly Thomas Raleigh's 
 thought on the subject : 
 
 4 1 mention England so much because I notice Englishmen 
 seldom do, and, being mostly Scottish in blood, I can correct 
 them. Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia all splendid, but 
 not one of them just enough or cool 'enough to supply the 
 cement of an Empire. So I like to keep on mentioning the 
 old house-keeper.'
 
 EEMINISCENCES li 
 
 I think I never saw him so moved as once in recalling the 
 passing of the iniquitous ' Trades Disputes Bill '. That a 
 civilized Government should have deliberately made a law 
 refusing citizens the protection of the Courts of Justice would 
 have shocked him in any case ; but that the outrage should 
 have been committed by the British Government and in the 
 name of liberty raised his indignation to white heat. His 
 heaviest censure was for his lawyer friends on the Liberal side. 
 Campbell-Bannerrnan, he said, was a layman and might not 
 have fully realized what he was doing ; but the acquiescence 
 of lawyers like Asquith, who perfectly understood what was 
 involved, was a betrayal of civic liberty that nothing could 
 excuse. 
 
 He had the faculty of withering an opponent with a single 
 caustic phrase that flashed out like a bolt from the blue, and 
 seemed to reveal a formidable reserve of hidden force on which 
 he did not usually draw. The contrast thus presented to his 
 normal quiet self-control was startling beyond words. Occa- 
 sionally this was used to sum up a personal impression. 
 ' Animated leg of mutton ' was his abrupt estimate of a speaker 
 at a public meeting of the prosperous, well-fed, self-satisfied 
 type. Asked whether a certain College contemporary was an 
 orthodox Jew : ' I can't say whether he is a good Jew, but at 
 all events he is free from any taint of Christianity.' 
 
 Next to this reserve and the sense of intense latent power 
 it produced, what struck one most in his face was, I think, 
 the union of strength and delicacy and the rare sweetness of 
 his smile, the index of a beautiful and singularly lovable nature. 
 This last quality could be fully appreciated only by the few 
 who were embraced in the inner circle of his personal friends. 
 To them his loss is irreparable.
 
 ANNALS OF THE 
 CHURCH IN SCOTLAND
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN the following pages I have tried to present a faithful 
 record of certain facts which illustrate the formation of the 
 Church ; the growth of Eoman ascendancy ; the revolt of 
 the Northern nations in the sixteenth century ; the attempts to 
 secure uniformity in religion under Protestant forms, and the 
 slow transition to what we describe as liberty of conscience. 
 
 Under the name of the Church in Scotland, I include any 
 society which honestly claims to connect itself with the Society 
 instituted by our Lord and organized by His Apostles. I have 
 not consciously endeavoured to make out a case either for or 
 against any particular society or school of opinion. Born in 
 the Free Church of Scotland, I have spent a great part of my 
 life in places where that society is not represented, and have 
 thus been led to find friends and teachers in other societies of 
 Christian people. 
 
 In a book intended for the general reader, I thought it better 
 not to encumber the page with references. An appended note 
 indicates the authorities on which my narrative is founded. 
 
 B2
 
 NOTE ON THE AUTHORITIES 
 
 FOR my brief account of the early Church, I rely on the New 
 Testament, as expounded by Lightfoot, Hort, and others ; 
 there is much interesting matter in Eainy's Ancient Catholic 
 Church. To understand our own history it is necessary to 
 study the growth of the Eoman system, of which our local 
 Church was once an outlying part. For the Church in Scotland 
 I have compared three general histories Dr. John Cunningham 
 (Church of Scotland), Dr. Grub (Episcopalian), and Dr. Belles- 
 heim (Eoman Catholic ; translated by Sir D. Hunter- Blair). 
 My book was completed before Dr. A. E. MacEwen published 
 the first volume of his History of the Church in Scotland. 
 Dr. MacEwen addresses himself, not only to the general public, 
 but to professed students ; my own work is for the ordinary 
 layman, if he cares to read it. In trying to compress a long 
 history into a limited space, one must often be content with 
 general statements. If any reader wishes to check and supple- 
 ment my narrative, he will do well to read a series of articles 
 in the Dictionary of National Biography Ninian, Kentigern, 
 Columba, and so on in chronological order. These articles are 
 written to give information, not to support the opinions of 
 any school or party. The lives of our Queen Margaret and her 
 sons bring us to the beginning of a period when a series of able 
 popes acquired a controlling influence in Europe ; Mr. A. L. 
 Smith's Church and State in the Middle Ages enables us to see 
 how their influence was used to improve the semi-barbarous 
 laws of the Northern nations. The theory of Innocent III, 
 which was, in substance, the theory of our Eeformers, may be 
 studied in Innocent's writings, as embodied in Migne's Patro- 
 logia. For the larger issues of the Eef ormation, see Dr. Lindsay's 
 and other general works ; Dr. M'Giffert has traced the history
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 of Protestant thought. For our own Reformation, the six 
 volumes of Knox's writings, edited by D. Laing, should be 
 used. Queen Mary is the subject of many books : her early 
 life has been well described by Miss Stoddart ; for her reign 
 Mr. D. Hay Fleming supplies a chronological record. Where 
 Knox leaves off, we take up the vast compilation of Calderwood. 
 Andrew Melville's Life by McCrie and James Melville's Diary 
 are both important ; see also the writings of Bruce, Spottiswood, 
 and Henderson. From the Covenant onward, Baillie's Letters 
 are of great value. Laud, of course, has several biographies ; 
 his own writings are a surprise to readers who have been taught 
 to regard him as a weak-minded man. The Civil War is fully 
 described by S. R. Gardiner, whose record is continued by 
 C. H. Firth ; see also Terry's Life of Alexander Leslie, and the 
 numerous books about Cromwell. For the Restoration period 
 the Laiiderdale Papers and the Lives of Robert Leighton and 
 Gilbert Burnet should be used. Popular books about the 
 Covenanters require to be supplemented by some study of 
 the documents ; many of these are given by J. C. Johnston in 
 his useful, though uncritical, Treasury of the Scottish Covenant. 
 For the settlement of 1690, and for the subsequent legal 
 adventures of our churches, A. Taylor Innes is a safe guide ; 
 it is interesting to compare the first and the second editions 
 of his excellent book on the Law of Creeds. For the eighteenth 
 and nineteenth centuries, books are too numerous to be cata- 
 logued ; every leader of opinion has an official biography, and 
 the indispensable Dictionary refers the reader to the best 
 sources of information.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FIKST CENTUEY 
 
 A COMMUNITY which calls itself a Church is expected to prove 
 its title, or, in other words, its connexion with the Society 
 instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ and organized by His 
 apostles. In its original form, the Society was a band of young 
 men, gathering round a religious Teacher in whom they believed. 
 Large numbers were attracted by the discourses of Jesus, 
 and many were pressing into the Kingdom of which He spoke. 
 Jesus needed help, and His chief helpers (those of them whose 
 lives are known to us) were men of His own age and social 
 position. They were raised above themselves by His presence 
 and friendship, but the Evangelists make no effort to present 
 them as perfect. Peter w r as the first exponent of error to whom 
 the name of ' Satan ' was applied. James and John were the 
 first who proposed to burn unbelievers. It was the beloved 
 disciple who dealt magisterially, and erroneously, with a man 
 who invoked the Lord's name without formal permission. 
 From this last incident we may perhaps infer that a Christian 
 teacher who claims to fix with precision the boundaries of the 
 Church, is claiming a power which St. John did not possess. 
 As the number of His followers increased, the period of con- 
 troversy began ; trouble and danger were not far off. The 
 moment had come to test the allegiance of His more intimate 
 friends ; at Caesarea Philippi the Lord puts the question on 
 which everything depends : ' Whom say ye that I am ? ' and 
 Peter answers, ' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' 
 After the solemn blessing pronounced on Simon, son of Jonas, 
 comes the personal address : ' Thou art Peter, and on this rock 
 I will build My Church.' One man, with a heart to understand 
 and a tongue to acknowledge the Truth, is and always must be 
 the foundation of a new community. In response to Peter's 
 declaration comes the promise of the Keys, ' I will give thee
 
 8 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ' : and the promise, 
 annexed to this gift, which defines the extent of Peter's authority : 
 * Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; 
 and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
 heaven.' The language here is borrowed from the rabbinical 
 schools. When the rabbis insisted on the literal observance 
 of a text, they ' bound ' that matter for those who accepted 
 their teaching ; when they allowed an excuse or exception, 
 they ' loosed ' the rule which they expounded. On His return 
 to Capernaum, the Lord intimated that all true disciples had 
 a share in the powers conferred on Peter. The gift of the Keys 
 was not repeated ; but the Church, as a body, was empowered 
 to compose disputes, and to this was added the power to bind 
 and to loose. It is hardly correct to say that the gift of the 
 Keys was a gift of jurisdiction. For jurisdiction, as lawyers 
 know, means the power to interpret and apply the law with 
 coercive effect ; and on this point the teaching of our Lord is 
 clear. We have His assurance that all power is entrusted to 
 Him, in heaven and earth ; but we have also to take account 
 of the fact that He never exercised any coercive power. So far 
 from forcing men to acknowledge His claim, He chose to 
 identify Himself with the suffering servant of God. With a few 
 simple words of explanation He disposed of the charge that He 
 was a rebel, an enemy of the State. ' My Kingdom is not of 
 this world.' Then as now the State claimed a monopoly of 
 coercive authority : from it, and from it alone, jurisdiction is 
 derived. But that was not the kind of authority exercised by 
 the Son of God. He came to save His countrymen, not by 
 driving out the Roman power, but by breaking the bonds of 
 ignorance and sin. 
 
 The powers of the Church were not enlarged by the farewell 
 promises of her Lord. There is the promise of the Holy Spirit, 
 by whom we are to be guided into all truth ; and there is the 
 promise to remain with His Church : ' Lo, I am with you 
 alway.' These texts have often been quoted by those who 
 would vest an absolute authority in the men to whom the 
 government of the Church is entrusted ; but this theory is 
 contradicted by every page of history. The Church will be
 
 THE FIEST CENTUEY 9 
 
 guided into all truth, but she is allowed to make many mistakes 
 by the way. Our Lord is and always has been with His people ; 
 but even in His presence the disciples go on arguing which of 
 them is to be greatest, as they did in Galilee long ago. 
 
 So long as the Lord was visibly present, all matters of im- 
 portance were referred to Him, and the Church needed little 
 organization ; the only ' church-officer ' He appointed was the 
 apostle or missionary. The full commission of the apostles is 
 given in Matt, xxviii, where they are directed to make disciples, 
 to baptize, arid to teach ; nothing as yet is said of government. 
 But when the company of believers resolved to continue their 
 common life, the apostles had to take the lead in making rules 
 and deciding disputes ; on occasion they even inflicted punish- 
 ment on the unfaithful, as when Ananias and Sapphira were 
 struck dead. In the Church as in the State, government has 
 its origin, not in any express command or convention, but in 
 the necessities of the people governed. To say this is not to 
 deny the divine origin of authority, for necessity is only 
 another name for divine providence. All legitimate authority 
 is in its origin divine, but it is vested in fallible men, who need 
 to be criticized, and sometimes to be restrained. Peter himself 
 was criticized and resisted by Paul. 
 
 The episkope or general oversight belonged at first to the 
 Twelve. One attempt was made to keep up the number, as 
 fixed by the Lord ; but the attempt was not repeated. When 
 signs and wonders had ceased to appear, when the companions 
 of the Lord had died out, the title of apostle fell into disuse. 
 It has not been resumed in any considerable branch of the 
 Church. 
 
 In the Church as in the Synagogue there were elders (presby- 
 ters), invested with powers of discipline and management. 
 They shared the general oversight with the apostles, and 
 St. Paul's address to the elders of Ephesus shows clearly that 
 the same persons were styled presbyters and bishops. But 
 certain of the duties connected with the general oversight were 
 special in their nature. Where the presiding elder was recog- 
 nized as chief pastor, these duties naturally fell to him. He 
 guided the deacons in the administration of Church funds ;
 
 10 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 he corresponded with other 'Churches ; he tested candidates 
 for baptism. We pass thus, by an easy and natural process, 
 from the college of presbyters (dominated by apostolic influence) 
 to the paternal bishpp of the first or second century. 
 
 If we cannot say that the paternal bishop is the legal successor 
 of the apostles, the historical succession is plain enough. There 
 was urgent need for an order of men, qualified to do for the 
 rapidly multiplying churches what St. Paul had done for 
 Thessalonica and Corinth. We must bear in mind that each 
 local Church was a little missionary institute, set down in the 
 midst of a heathen population : the best safeguard of its faith 
 would often be the fidelity and wisdom of its chief pastor. 
 
 Was the Church guided by the Holy Spirit when she accepted 
 the paternal bishop as the type of her polity ? The experience 
 of the first three centuries seems to suggest an affirmative 
 answer to this question. The cause of Christ is deeply indebted 
 to those pioneer bishops who founded churches, maintained 
 discipline, and in time of danger gave their lives for the flock. 
 
 Even at this early stage, we must distinguish carefully 
 between episcopacy and prelacy. Episcopacy, as we have 
 seen, is a form of government, possessing a strong claim on 
 our respect and gratitude. Prelacy is a vice, and a vico which 
 is not peculiar to the episcopal churches. It makes its appear- 
 ance wherever a minister of the Word imagines that his office 
 entitles him to exercise lordship over his brethren. It was in 
 the Church from the first ; for we remember how the companions 
 of Christ disputed, which of them should be greatest ; and how 
 Salome asked that her sons should have the chief places in 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 For us who are Gentiles, a special interest attaches to the 
 letters addressed by St. Paul to the Churches of his own founda- 
 tion. From these invaluable documents we can form a picture 
 of the apostolic age ; but we can mention here only three 
 characteristic features of this apostle's teaching. The first is, 
 the simplicity of the faith, as defined for purposes of member- 
 ship and office. When his disciples ask for a test, to distinguish 
 the true teacher from the false, he gives them a confession of 
 faith which goes into a few lines. The form of sound words
 
 THE FIKST CENTUKY 11 
 
 which Timothy was to hold fast, was probably a short catena 
 of the sayings of Jesus, as transmitted by oral tradition. 
 
 The second note of St. Paul's teaching is, his preoccupation 
 with the moral and spiritual elements in religion. He gives 
 few precise rules ; he says comparatively little of government. 
 We learn from him that there ought to be presbyters in every 
 Church ; that the whole Church is the tribunal for serious 
 cases ; that offenders are punished by expulsion from 
 fellowship ; obstinate offenders may be delivered over to 
 Satan a solemn form of condemnation which seems to have 
 been followed by physical suffering. The germ of a distinction 
 between clergy and laity appears in the plea that those who 
 preach the gospel have a right to live by the gospel : but we 
 must remember that Paul himself did not give up his handi- 
 craft ; he lived by that if he saw any risk of compromising his 
 independence, or of laying a burden on his disciples. 
 
 The third point to notice is, that among religious duties 
 a paramount place is given to brotherly love, and that the 
 apostle is emphatic in censuring those who make parties or 
 factions in the Church. When you make parties, he says, 
 when you call yourselves after this or that leader, are you not 
 carnal? are you not living like unregenerate men? The 
 question goes straight to the root of the evil ; for those who 
 make sects and schisms almost always do so on the plea that 
 they are too spiritually minded to remain in communion with 
 their brethren. ' Fidelity to Catholic truth ' or ' zeal for a pure 
 testimony ' compels them to form a Church of their own. At 
 the same time, their actions usually prove that they are influ- 
 enced by carnal motives the love of pre-eminence, the deep- 
 seated combative instinct of unregenerate man. 
 
 The seventh decade of the first century was crowded with 
 events which profoundly affected the Church. By the year 67 
 Peter and Paul were dead ; the Jews were in full revolt against 
 Borne ; the Christians of Jerusalem hacl removed to Pella ; 
 in 70 Jerusalem itself was destroyed. 
 
 In face of these changes the Church clung more closely to 
 her written records the best safeguard for the permanence 
 of her teaching. Apostolic letters were preserved and studied ;
 
 12 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the Apocalypse helped the victims of persecution to believe 
 that the powers of evil would not triumph in the end. We are 
 permitted by good scholars to hold that the three synoptic 
 Gospels were published between 70 and 80 : towards the end 
 of those ten years we have the uninspired but interesting 
 document known as the Epistle of Barnabas ; and we observe 
 that the unknown Barnabas quotes Matthew with the preface 
 ' It is written '. The Church already contemplated a new cycle 
 of sacred writings, which would take rank with the scriptures of 
 the Old Testament. Finally, we have the writings of St. John, 
 which were probably composed or revised in the last decade 
 of this century. 
 
 These new scriptures did not supersede the old, but we begin 
 to perceive that the Church's reverence for the Old Testament 
 (in itself right and laudable) was a source of danger when 
 combined with faulty methods of interpretation. The Bible 
 was treated as a sacred book, in the oriental sense of the term ; 
 spiritualizing allegory was pushed far beyond the bounds of 
 reason. St. Paul was the first to warn his fellow-Christians 
 that the Old Testament is a dangerous book. The letter of it 
 kills ; only the spirit gives life. How then shall we escape from 
 the letter, and how can we attain to the spirit ? The early 
 Church could not always cope with this problem, and in the 
 course of time the Old Testament, wrongly expounded, became 
 a storehouse of misleading precedents, the favourite manual 
 of those who set themselves (often in perfectly good faith) to 
 destroy the liberties of the Church.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE SECOND CENTUEY 
 
 THE Apostolic Church had no regular relations with the 
 State. Her ministers were banished, or driven from place to 
 place, because their preaching led to disturbances, or because 
 they were suspected of forming branches of a secret society. 
 It was some time before the Eoman authorities learned to 
 distinguish between the Christian and the Jew ; but by the 
 end of the first century the Christians were recognized as 
 a danger to the State : they were ' public enemies ' or even 
 ' enemies of the human race '. Some of them thought it wrong 
 to serve in the army ; they were all obstinate in refusing to 
 pay any respect to the gods of the State, and especially to 
 the deified Emperor. The common people spoke darkly of 
 secret meetings, at which joyful reference was made to the end 
 of the world some terrible catastrophe from which only the 
 Christians would escape. 
 
 Educated men may not have believed these rumours, but 
 they could not ignore them. Keligion was a necessary element 
 in political allegiance and military discipline. Already a 
 thousand superstitions were lurking in the dark corners of 
 the Eoman world ; it was not at all desirable that this new 
 foreign superstition should be added to the number. What 
 government required of their people was only a formal com- 
 pliance. To make a sign of respect, to burn a few grains of 
 incense if a man refused so easy a test, he must be a fanatic, 
 and therefore dangerous to law and order. 
 
 The Church was entering on the era of great controversies, 
 and the questions at issue were fundamental in their nature. 
 If the Church was carried safely through the dangers of this 
 age, we owe that result to the pastoral activity of the bishops. 
 By the end of the second century, the paternal bishop was 
 universally accepted as the guardian of the Faith. He 
 might be an eminent scholar or a humble pastor, but in either case 
 his chief duty was to his own flock. For their use he composed
 
 14 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 or adopted a Rule of Faith, a short statement to be recited by 
 adult candidates for baptism. In a later age the Rule of Faith, 
 enlarged and to some extent systematized, was generally 
 received under the name of the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 As between bishops, there was a kind of parity, but special 
 importance was attached to the opinions of metropolitan 
 churches, especially when a church of that rank claimed to 
 have been founded by an apostle. There is some warrant in 
 the New Testament for this usage ; the Church at Antioch, 
 as we know, consulted the Church at Jerusalem, and St. James 
 in his reply wrote as one having authority : ' it seemed good 
 to the Holy Ghost, and to us.' Wherever the spirit of 
 prelacy found entrance, this kind of authority was pressed 
 beyond the reasonable necessities of the Church. Metropolitan 
 bishops assumed high titles, and promulgated decisions for 
 which they claimed general obedience. This change must have 
 begun in the second century ; quite early in the third century 
 we have Tertullian complaining that the Bishop of Rome called 
 himself episcopus episcoporum. Even Tertullian did not 
 question the tradition which connected the foundation of that 
 see with St. Peter a tradition very possibly historical, but 
 mixed with legendary matter. 
 
 Amid all differences of opinion, there was a general disposi- 
 tion to accept the written Word of God as the supreme standard 
 of belief and practice. But here the early Church had to face 
 many difficulties. There was as yet no canon or authorized 
 list of sacred writings, and the text of any particular book was 
 liable to be altered, accidentally, or for a controversial purpose. 
 Thus there begins the long process of deliberation, which 
 resulted in the formation of a canon and an authorized text. 
 The process involved an immense number of decisions on 
 points of detail, and we have no sufficient warrant for assuming 
 that all these decisions were so plainly dictated by the Spirit 
 of God that they cannot be reviewed by the Church in the light 
 of improved knowledge. The Spirit, one may hold, guided the 
 early Church to attempt the formation of a canon ; the same 
 Spirit may guide the Church to revise some of her decisions 
 in the light of that improved knowledge of history which was 
 God's gift to the nineteenth century of our era.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE THIED CENTUEY 
 
 WHEREVER the Christians were tolerated, they added to 
 their numbers, and began to provide themselves with institu- 
 tions. In the latter half of the third century, some churches 
 were built, and some local communities had burial places of 
 their own. The provision of fixed places of worship led natur- 
 ally to some development of ritual, and this again must have 
 emphasized the distinction between clergy and laity. The 
 distinction was less visible then than it is now, for the clergy 
 had no distinctive dress. They wore such garments as were 
 worn by officials, or by men of the learned class. 
 
 When we review the history of the third century, two men 
 stand out above the rest, and in their lives we may discern 
 and try the spirit of the age. Origen, the unwearied student 
 who began the scientific study of the Bible, was ' first among 
 the Greeks ' ; but we need not scruple to admit that he carried 
 speculation and allegory to a very dangerous extreme. Ter- 
 tullian, first of the Latin fathers, was the victim of an impatient 
 temper : he is the typical nonconformist, withdrawing into 
 a small sect because he cannot endure the wickedness of the 
 world and the worldliness of the Church. The uncontrolled 
 activity of such men might be as dangerous to peace and unity 
 as the hostile arguments of the Gnostics. This was the thought 
 always present to the mind of Cyprian an admiring student 
 of Tertullian, inferior to his master in point of genius, equal in 
 point of courage and sincerity. For the maintenance of order 
 and unity Cyprian relied on the authority of the bishops. As 
 a strict episcopalian, free from the suspicion of papalism, he 
 has always been a favourite with Anglican divines. 
 
 Papalism, as yet, was only in the germ. The Bishop of Eome 
 claimed to be the successor of St. Peter ; but so did the Bishop 
 of Antioch. The Church at Eome stood as high as any metro-
 
 16 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 politan church, but when Victor, Bishop of Eome (185-97), 
 excommunicated certain eastern bishops, he was reproved by 
 the orthodox Irenaeus. When Cyprian wrote to Bishop 
 Stephen, he wrote as to an equal, without the submissive 
 respect which a modern Bishop of Carthage would be expected 
 to display in addressing the pope. 
 
 The third century witnessed the first conspicuous advances 
 of a movement which was destined to change the aspect, and 
 to some extent the spirit, of Christendom. 
 
 Monastic ideas had received their full development in the 
 East and especially in India, long before the Christian era. 
 The ancient religion of India was imbued with the belief that 
 the world of sense is an illusion : man attains to wisdom only 
 by renouncing the pleasures of life. Thus the East has long 
 been familiar with various types of holy men the solitary 
 hermit, the wandering mendicant, and the companies of men 
 living under ascetic rules. 
 
 The weakness of the system is, that it makes holiness to 
 depend on separation from humanity. Eeligion proves its 
 power by hallowing the toils, the sorrows, and the pleasures 
 which make up the lives of ordinary men. Periods of solitude 
 are needed for the cultivation of personal religion, but a life 
 wholly separate from others is useless and probably selfish. 
 
 Our Lord taught self-denial, by precept and example ; it 
 may be that the Churches, and especially the Protestant 
 Churches, have not realized the full scope of His teaching in 
 this regard. His commands were addressed, not to any order 
 of men, but to all His disciples, and they must be read along 
 with the general doctrine, expounded in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, that prayer, almsgiving, and ascetic restraint must be 
 alike free from ostentation. When you fast, He says, wash 
 your face and appear cheerfully among your neighbours ; they 
 will not know of your self-denial, but God, who sees in secret, 
 will reward you. 
 
 This injunction was forgotten when men and women went out 
 in large numbers to desert places, where they took vows 
 binding them to give their whole lives to austerities and holy 
 exercises. They were constrained by the love of Christ, and
 
 THE THIED CENTUEY 17 
 
 eager to obey Him, but they were misled by the example of 
 Antony and others, whose self-inflicted sufferings were the 
 theme of countless legends and sermons. When the first ardour 
 of their devotion cooled, as it must often have done, the life of 
 monk or nun became a painful routine ; the younger monks 
 were tempted to enter on a wandering life, and to draw the alms 
 of the faithful by various forms of imposture. These statements 
 are not taken from enemies of the Church ; St. Augustine, 
 a believer in the monastic principle, has left us a picture of the 
 bad monk which might almost have been drawn by George 
 Buchanan. 
 
 We know that in the third century this island must have 
 witnessed the establishment of Christian communities. Con- 
 stantius Chlorus, who took over the government of Gaul and 
 Britain in its closing decade, was friendly to the Christians; 
 his son Constantino was to follow him in the same path. 
 Southern Britain claims to have been the home of some who 
 gave their lives for Christ during the persecution of Diocletian.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FOURTH CENTUEY 
 
 THE Church hoped that persecution was at an end when 
 Constantine, proclaimed by the legions at York in 306, began 
 to realize that repressive legislation was out of date. By the 
 Edict of Milan in 311 the penal laws were abrogated, and liberty 
 of worship was allowed. 
 
 The Church herself was torn asunder by differences of opinion, 
 and Constantine set himself to devise forms of procedure 
 which would bring disputed questions to a settlement. He 
 began with the Donatist bishops in North Africa, who held 
 stringent views as to the treatment of heretics, and of those 
 who had given up their Christian profession under stress of 
 persecution. At Constantine's request, the matter was referred 
 to the Bishop of Eome, assisted by other bishops, and the 
 Donatists were condemned. They were still unwilling to sub- 
 mit, and the case was taken to a larger Council, which met at 
 Aries the Roman decision was affirmed, but the Church in 
 Africa was still unconvinced. This Council at Aries was 
 attended by the Bishops of London, York, and Caerleon. There 
 was no bishop from northern Britain ; very possibly there were 
 no Christians in this part of our island. 
 
 Constantine, sole ruler of the Roman world, soon found an 
 occasion for the exercise of his power over the Church. Arius, 
 a presbyter of Alexandria, was delivering addresses and com- 
 posing songs which gave deep offence to those who understood 
 how far he was departing from the apostolic tradition. Parties 
 were formed, and once more the Church was threatened with 
 disintegration. The Emperor made up his mind to summon 
 a council of bishops, numerous enough to impose its authority 
 on both parties. He seems to have imagined that a compromise 
 was still possible. 
 
 The Council met at Nicaea ; about 300 bishops were present ;
 
 THE POUBTH CENTUEY 19 
 
 all but eight were eastern bishops ; the language of debate was 
 Greek. Sylvester, Bishop of Eome, was too old to attempt the 
 journey, but he sent two presbyters to represent him. The 
 laity had no place in this or any subsequent council, but they 
 were not wholly unrepresented, for laymen still took part in 
 electing the bishop of each local church. 
 
 Of the 300 only twenty-two sided with Arius ; the rest were 
 quite resolved to reaffirm the doctrine of the apostles, and to 
 exclude the Arians from fellowship. The difficulty was, that 
 the Arians readily agreed to repeat the ample formula used in 
 the churches of Palestine ; they were also ready to accept and 
 repeat all the scriptural titles of Christ. It was ascertained 
 that the Greek word Homoousios, the word which asserts that 
 the Son is of one substance with the Father, would be accepted, 
 by the majority, and that it would be rejected by the minority ; 
 it was therefore inserted in the Creed, as prepared and sanc- 
 tioned by the Council. The bishops were probably not well 
 inspired when they made this addition to the standard of 
 doctrine. The disputed word is not scriptural, and there were 
 some who contended that it savoured of the heresy of Sabellius. 
 But the main objection to it is, that it is a highly technical word, 
 only to be understood by students of philosophy. It is there- 
 fore out of place in a formula, repeated or subscribed by the 
 ordinary ministers and members of the Church. 
 
 Hardly anything was settled by the decision of the Council. 
 Arius was defeated ; but the most striking victories of Arianism 
 were gained after the council had framed its formula. An 
 earnest endeavour was made to close an old controversy by 
 prescribing how the date of Easter should be fixed, but the 
 dispute smouldered on for centuries. If we ask why it was that 
 on these and other points there could be no lasting peace, the 
 answer is, that all parties were too keen to ' bite and devour ' 
 their opponents : they pressed for immediate success where 
 humility and brotherly love might have suggested further 
 deliberation. 
 
 An impartial statesman, surveying the controversies of the 
 second and third centuries, might have predicted that, if any 
 of the contending bishops and teachers could obtain political 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE CHUKGH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 power, they would use it to suppress their opponents. When 
 Constantine accepted the decrees of Nicaea, he placed his 
 coercive powers at the disposal of those bishops with whom, for 
 the moment, he agreed. If they had thought of purity as much 
 as they thought of orthodoxy, they would have declined the 
 imperial offer. They would have remembered that the Lord 
 Himself never exercised coercive power, and that He had 
 instructed them to follow His example in this respect. But the 
 bishops of the fourth century were only men ; they seized the 
 opportunity to establish their own doctrines, and to suppress 
 erroneous opinions. Thus they became courtiers and politicians, 
 flattering the monarch, bribing his servants, using the means 
 whereby success in politics may be attained. They told the 
 .Christian emperors that it was their duty to defend the truth 
 and to root out heresy. This principle involved consequences 
 injurious, and indeed almost fatal, to the Church. If the State 
 is guardian of the faith, the State must decide what punishments 
 are necessary to secure conformity. Until the eighteenth 
 century of our era, nearly all statesmen, schoolmasters, and 
 parents acted on the erroneous theory that obedience is best 
 secured by harsh and frequent punishments. In the course of 
 this narrative we shall have occasion to see how it was that this 
 theory struck root in the mind of Christendom, and how, after 
 many generations, it was shaken by the humanitarian move- 
 ment of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Ecclesiastical historians usually attempt to fix the discredit 
 of persecution on the State. The attempt must always be 
 a failure ; the original guilt of persecution lies at the door of the 
 early Church. And the result of this blunder was not, as we 
 sometimes express it, an alliance between Church and State : 
 the proper term is not alliance but identification. On the one 
 hand, the Church becomes an important branch of the civil 
 administration ; the bishop is, in name and fact, praelatus, 
 exalted over his fellow-men, and invested with political power. 
 The bishops of the West rendered services of the utmost value 
 to the modern State, but the Church had to pay a heavy price 
 for their absorption in secular affairs. On the other hand, the 
 State becomes the supreme authority in the Church, defining
 
 THE FOUETH CENTURY 21 
 
 her doctrines and fixing her rules of practice. On the first page 
 of the Code the doctrine of the Trinity is stated, and those who 
 deny it are warned that the Emperor will treat them as ' crimi- 
 nals and madmen '. Heresy thus became a kind of treason, and 
 in 385 Priscillian (whose teaching, so far as we can judge, was 
 both false and dangerous) and some of his adherents were put 
 to death by the Emperor Maximus at Treves. Ambrose and 
 Augustine disapproved, but the death sentence was merely the 
 logical application of principles which those great writers had 
 themselves laid down. Augustine, as we all know, found the 
 theory of persecution in the text, ' Compel them to come in '. 
 He takes a sentence out of the middle of a parable ; lays 
 a didactic stress on language which is merely narrative ; and 
 deduces from it the practical lesson that kings may, and indeed 
 must, use force to turn pagans into Christians, and heretics into 
 orthodox Catholics. 
 
 Liberius, Bishop of Rome, was possibly orthodox in intention, 
 but he lived in trying times, and incurred suspicion of heresy. 
 Damasus (366-84) did something to restore the ' indefectible 
 orthodoxy ' of the Apostolic See. 
 
 Damasus was at least an active and capable administrator. 
 He invited the learned Jerome to be his secretary, and in this 
 way he helped to forward a very important undertaking, the 
 provision of a good authorized version of the Scriptures in Latin. 
 His reputation for orthodoxy was so well established that when 
 lawyers had to define the Catholic faith they spoke of it as the 
 faith held by Damasus the pontiff. 
 
 At almost every stage of her history, the Church at Rome 
 has been active in missionary work. Even when her central 
 government has been least satisfactory, her devoted ministers 
 have been carrying the Gospel to distant nations, jeoparding 
 their lives in the high places of the field. The heathen peoples, 
 our own among the number, owe her a great debt of gratitude. 
 
 Towards the end of the pontificate of Damasus, a young man 
 from Britain arrived in Rome and paid his respects to the 
 bishop. His name was Ninian ; his father was a chief among 
 the British Celts ; he wished to obtain the instruction and the 
 official recognition which would enable him to evangelize the
 
 22 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 people of northern Britain. He remained at Rome long enough 
 to take orders, and in 393 Siricius consecrated him a missionary 
 bishop. Scotland was thus brought into connexion with 
 a bishop who has a place of his own in the history of the papal 
 claims : Siricius is usually named as the first pope who intimated 
 that when a local Church consulted the Bishop of Rome the 
 answer must be accepted as a decree. Hence the importance 
 attached to the Decretals, both genuine and forged, of which 
 we shall have more to say in the sequel. 
 
 Tradition, rightly or wrongly, brings Ninian into relations 
 with Martin, the famous Bishop of Tours. It is not unlikely 
 that Northern Gaul may have furnished the intending mission- 
 aries with the ship which took them to Scotland, and with 
 workmen who could build them a church. About the end of the 
 fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth, they set forth on 
 their voyage. 
 
 At the point where a ship ascending the Solway would turn 
 to enter Wigtown Bay, there is a small peninsula, known to us 
 as the Isle of Whithorn. This was probably the spot chosen by 
 Ninian for his settlement, and the traces of building, still visible 
 there, may indicate the site of Candida Casa, the great white 
 church erected to the glory of God and in memory of St. Martin, 
 who died in 397. Round this new centre of their religious life, 
 the members of the community could build humbler dwellings 
 for themselves. 
 
 Of Ninian's evangelizing work we know -very little : the 
 charming stories told of him are taken from a book written in 
 the twelfth century, at a time when the monkish biographer 
 studied edification rather than accuracy. If any converts were 
 made among the Southern Picts they were likely enough to 
 relapse into paganism, and if they did, they may have been the 
 4 apostate Picts ' of whom St. Patrick wrote. The heathen 
 tribes were in an aggressive mood ; for the bulk of the Roman 
 legions had already been withdrawn ; the Picts and the Irish 
 Scots were beginning to attack the northern frontier of Roman 
 civilization.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FIFTH CENTUKY 
 
 ST. AUGUSTINE was baptized at Easter 387, and, since the 
 conversion of St. Paul, there is no more important event in the 
 history of the Church. For more than forty years he was the 
 champion and the teacher of Western Christendom, and his 
 authority remained unshaken until it was to some extent 
 undermined by the humanitarian movement. His theology, 
 codified, so to speak, by Calvin, has dominated the religious 
 mind of Scotland. 
 
 We cannot here attempt to give any general account of 
 Augustine's contribution to Christian thought, but one point 
 of his doctrine is so important that no student of history can 
 afford to leave it out of sight. He taught that the nature we 
 inherit is depraved : man is so turned away from holiness that 
 nothing but the grace of God can save him and turn him into 
 the right way. This is a truth which the Christian conscience 
 accepts ; it is, indeed, the beginning of all faithful preaching. 
 But with a certain rigorous exaggeration (the characteristic 
 note of the African Church) Augustine went on to teach that 
 human nature is totally corrupt : the natural man has no good 
 impulses or aspirations, and can perform no good act. 
 
 As to the truth of this doctrine, it is not for me to speak ; it 
 certainly was attended by practical consequences of the most 
 serious kind. If the ordinary man is wholly corrupt, it seemed 
 obviously better not to consult his wishes in any way ; he will 
 not conform to goodness unless he is placed under absolute 
 authority in Church and State. The coercive power of the State 
 was given to be used for men's highest good. Compel them to 
 come in : Augustine's comment on these words may be said to 
 have opened the era of deliberate and systematic persecution. 
 
 Augustine's doctrine of human nature was not established 
 without opposition, and his most conspicuous opponent came
 
 24 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 from our part of the world. Pelagius-was undoubtedly a Celt- 
 Irish Scot, or Welsh Briton, for the place of his birth is not 
 known. He was a layman, living under some monastic rule, 
 diligent in the study of Scripture, and especially of the writings 
 of St. Paul. In middle life he visited Home, and, like many who 
 have made the same journey, he was grieved and shocked by 
 the wojldliness of the Roman clergy. He found them using the 
 dominant theology in an antinomian spirit. We are sinful men, 
 they said ; we inherit a corrupt nature ; we cannot live as we 
 ought. ' If I ought I can,' said Pelagius, and there is a savour 
 of truth in the saying, whatever importance may attach to the 
 fact that a number of Eastern bishops, after long debate, 
 acquitted Pelagius of heresy. Innocent, Bishop of Eome, 
 condemned him ; Zosimus, the immediate successor of Innocent, 
 hesitated ; Augustine joined with his African brethren in an 
 application to the imperial government, and a decree was 
 obtained from Eavenna which put an end to the controversy, 
 so far at least as the Western Church was concerned. It is at 
 first sight surprising to find these ecclesiastical persons inviting 
 the State to define the doctrine of the Church, but they were 
 passionately eager for conformity ; they relied on the civil 
 sword to make a way for the true faith. 
 
 If the commanding figure of Augustine dwarfs all other 
 churchmen in the first half of this century, Leo the Great is the 
 foremost figure in the second half ; he was the first Bishop of 
 Rome whose authority was generally recognized in the East 
 and in the West. He was not a temporal prince, but a high 
 place among the powers of Europe must be assigned to the 
 bishop who turned the march of Attila and made terms with 
 Genseric. 
 
 The invasions which alarmed the successive bishops of Rome 
 were not without importance in the history of Celtic Christianity. 
 Cut off from the centres of European civilization by inrolling 
 waves of barbarism, the Scots and Britons continued to cultivate 
 sacred learning and to develop their own institutions. What 
 Ninian did for Scotland Patrick tried to do for Ireland ; a well- 
 known letter of the evangelist of Ireland is addressed to Ceretic 
 or Coroticus, King of the British Celts who lived in the western
 
 THE FIFTH CENTUKY 25 
 
 country between the Clyde and the Derwent. Like other early 
 missionaries, Patrick found it easier to make conquests than 
 to keep them ; he is especially vehement in denouncing the 
 ' apostate Picts '. 
 
 Wherever the gospel was preached, the monastic idea took 
 possession of the Celtic mind. Large numbers of men and 
 women gave themselves to the religious life. The Irish abbeys 
 of- which we read were merely rows of humble cabins ; the 
 abbot lived among his monks like a chief among his tribesmen. 
 There were, apparently, bishops in Ireland ; the legends present 
 us with bishops in embarrassing profusion ; but the chief powers 
 of government were vested in the abbot, who was usually 
 a presbyter ; in communities of women the abbess was chief. 
 When the Irish spoke with reverence of the distant Patriarch 
 of the West, thej called him the Abbot of Borne. 
 
 The time came when the independence of the Celtic churches 
 exposed them to the suspicion of heresy ; it is not unlikely that 
 opinions of Pelagian or other local origin may have obtained 
 some currency. In 429 St. Germanus came from Gaul to stamp 
 out heresy in Wales ; his success was possibly less complete 
 than the orthodox annalist supposed. 
 
 During the fifth century the lamp which Ninian kindled at 
 Whithorn was not allowed to go out. Many young Irishmen 
 made the short sea-voyage, and became scholars there : the 
 saints from whom Columba derived the monastic tradition had 
 received at least some part of their training in Scotland.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SIXTH CENTURY 
 
 IN tracing the general history of the Church we have already 
 had occasion to note the widening schism between East and 
 West. This disastrous difference was largely the result of 
 difference of language, for, while the eastern half of Christendom 
 retained the early Fathers and the Greek text of the Bible, 
 Rome and Africa found expression for their thoughts in Latin, 
 and were content with the Vulgate. Many eastern bishops had 
 adopted Monophysite opinions ; they held that Christ has but 
 one nature, in which the divine and the human are united, 
 whereas it is orthodox to say that our Lord has two natures. 
 On this point controversy was keen ; before the end of the 
 fifth century the bishops of Rome had broken off all communion 
 with the bishops of Constantinople. But successive invasions 
 had impoverished Italy ; the authority of Rome was less than 
 it had been in Leo's time ; the centre of the Empire was now 
 the new capital on the Bosphorus. 
 
 Justin, a plain soldier whom the army had placed on the 
 throne, was prepared to make an effort to restore the unity of 
 the Church ; for the disorderly Councils of the fourth and fifth 
 centuries had shown that the usefulness of bishops and presby- 
 ters was much impaired by their pejpetual disputations. In 
 framing his plan of reunion, Justin had the valuable assistance 
 of his nephew Justinian, a ' staid, passionless bureaucrat ', 
 imbued with the idea that the Emperor was the final judge to 
 whom all disputed questions ought to be referred. In his turn 
 he became Emperor himself, and throughout his reign (528-65) 
 he laboured to reconcile his subjects by bringing them all into 
 obedience to himself. 
 
 The chief monument of his reign is the Corpus luris, and in 
 that huge compilation we may study the features of a Christian 
 polity in which the Church was definitely subordinated to the 
 State. Justinian compelled his pagan subjects to receive
 
 THE SIXTH CENTUEY 27 
 
 baptism ; heretics were required to profess the orthodox faith. 
 When the Bishop of Eome in his turn became the centre of 
 a polity in which the State was definitely made subject to the 
 Church, the princes of Europe turned to the Corpus luris for 
 arguments against him. In due time we shall find the Scottish 
 Eeformers asking the State to give them the benefit of the 
 ' godly approved laws of Justinian '. 
 
 When we turn from the court of Justinian and Theodora to 
 the north-western verge of civilization, we have little exact 
 information to guide us, but amid the confused warfare of 
 tribes and kingdoms we can discern the servants of God, going 
 on steadily with their work. During the early years of the 
 sixth century the monastic movement made rapid progress in 
 Ireland ; and there were new ties of connexion between the 
 sister island and our own. Scots from Ulster were carving out 
 a kingdom for themselves on the west coast of Scotland 
 a kingdom which had a future before it. 
 
 About the middle of the century, Kentigern left the monastic 
 school at Culross and set out to evangelize the British Celts of 
 Strathclyde. He met with some success, but there came a time 
 when paganism again had the upper hand ; Kentigern went 
 south into Cumbria, then into Wales, where he founded a large 
 community at Llanelwy. When his friends had the upper hand, 
 Kentigern came north, to settle for a time at Hoddam in 
 Annandale, and before his death he was back beside the Molen- 
 dinar (the millburn), living perhaps on the site of the cathedral 
 afterwards dedicated to his memory. Through all the west 
 country he was remembered as St. Mungo (the darling saint). 
 Of his miracles little need be said here, though four of them still 
 figure in the city arms of Glasgow. His mother, Thenog, is 
 commemorated under the masculine appellation of St. Enoch. 
 
 Jocelyn, writing the life of Kentigern some five centuries 
 after his death, states that the older biographies contained 
 a few things contrary to the Catholic faith. The bounds of 
 orthodoxy were more precisely laid down in Jocelyn's time 
 than they were by our Celtic evangelists, but we may hope that 
 there was nothing in the doctrine of St. Mungo to make a breach 
 of communion between him and us.
 
 28 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 On May 12, 563, being Whit Sunday, Columba came, with 
 twelve companions, and landed on the small island of lona, his 
 home for the remaining thirty-four years of his life. He was at 
 this time a man over forty, connected by birth with the best 
 people in Ulster, already known as the founder of many religious 
 communities, chief of which were Derry in the north and Durrow 
 in Meath. His noble presence and musical voice cast a spell 
 over the people who listened to him. Columba left his own 
 country, partly perhaps because of quarrels which do not 
 concern us now, but chiefly because he was a missionary, eager 
 to advance his Master's Kingdom. At lona he was near his 
 kinsmen, the Scots in Argyll ; King Conal protected the little 
 company of monks, and King Aidan went to lona to receive his 
 crown. But the main object of Columba's missionary life was 
 the conversion of the northern Picts. The true history of this 
 achievement is known to us only in outline ; the miracles freely 
 attributed to this Irish saint only obscure the human interest of 
 the story. In simple reliance on the power of God, Columba. 
 made his way to the stronghold on Loch Ness, where King Brude 
 had his capital ; the champions of paganism were worsted or 
 won over, and the gospel was preached to the Picts. Within 
 their own island Columba and his monks lived a life of rigid 
 self-denial and constant industry. Their dwellings were of the 
 humblest kind ; if there was any attempt at ornament it must 
 have been in the chapel, where the brethren met for prayer at 
 all the stated hours, or at any moment during the day or night, 
 if the Abbot called them. Every brother took part in the work 
 of the field or the sheep-cotes, and the good penmen were kept 
 busy making copies of the Psalms and the Gospels ; Columba 
 himself is said to have made 300 copies of the Gospels. All 
 powers of government were exercised by the abbot ; but, if 
 a bishop visited lona, Columba received him with honour, and 
 gave him the chief place in celebrating the divine mysteries. 
 The Rule under which the brethren lived and worked was one 
 of great simplicity ; it does not rank with the elaborate code of 
 discipline which the genius of St. Benedict had imposed on the 
 monasteries of Italy and Gaul. 
 
 In the thirtieth year of his residence at lona, Columba began
 
 THE SIXTH CENTUKY 29 
 
 to feel that the end of his work was near ; he was spared to his 
 ' family ' four years longer, but when the summer of 597 came 
 in, he knew that the parting must be soon. He was making yet 
 another copy of the Psalms, and he had written as far as the 
 words, ' They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.' 
 ' Here,' he said, ' I make an end ; the rest let Baithen write.' 
 The 8th June was the Sabbath (Saturday) ; he spent it in 
 saying a kind farewell to the scene of his long labours ; and on 
 the morning of the Lord's day he entered into rest. 
 
 Of his companions several are remembered for good service 
 of their own. Cormac the Navigator carried the Gospel to 
 many distant islands ; and Machar fared on foot from one 
 strath to another until he came to a ' winding river ' the Dee ; 
 beside that river he built a famous church which still bears his 
 name. 
 
 Some years before Columba's death, Ethelbert, King of the 
 Kentishmen, had made himself the chief power in England 
 south of the Humber. His queen, Bertha, was a Frank by 
 birth, and a Christian ; she brought the Bishop of Senlis with 
 her to be her chaplain. They formed plans for the evangeliza- 
 tion of Britain, and any such plan was sure to be welcomed by 
 the great bishop who sat in the chair of Leo. 
 
 Gregory was a man of good family who had given up wealth 
 and high office to become a monk in the Benedictine Monastery 
 of St. Andrew at Eome. He was still a simple monk when he 
 saw the fair-haired captives from Anglia put up for sale in the 
 slave-market : .' Not Angles but angels ', said Gregory, and he 
 would have started at once for Britain ; but his life was other- 
 wise ordered by his superiors. In 590 the clergy, senate, and 
 people unanimously chose him to be their bishop ; he was 
 unwilling to accept, but his resistance was. overcome, and during 
 the fourteen years of his pontificate he gave the people no 
 reason to repent of their choice. He used the prerogatives 
 of his office with energy, and, on the whole, with good effect. 
 He was grieved to hear that his rival at Constantinople was 
 assuming the title of universal bishop, and pointed out that 
 such assumption was very unlike the behaviour of St. Peter. 
 On the vexed question of patronage his policy was decided and;
 
 30 THE OHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 I think, wise : he held that a wealthy landowner who built 
 a church retained no right over that church, except the right 
 of attending the services. If Gregory's opinion had prevailed, 
 we should have been spared many troublesome arguments. 
 
 Like many eminent administrators, this vigorous pontiff was 
 a man of rather narrow intellectual interests. Though a 
 diligent student and a voluminous writer, he always regarded 
 the Bible, not as the historical record of an ever-widening 
 revelation, but rather as a store-house of proof-texts : he could 
 find all the points of the Koman system in the book of Job, 
 or indeed in any book whatever. He was extremely credulous, 
 and fond of stories about apparitions and so forth ; the mind 
 of Christendom was dwelling more and more on unfounded 
 notions about the next world. 
 
 In the year of Columba's death (597) Gregory was able to 
 carry out his long-cherished design. For the leader of his 
 mission he chose Augustine, the prior of his own convent, 
 a good man, too formal for a missionary, and too eager to 
 assert the Roman claims ; he offended the Welsh bishops by 
 remaining seated when they came to see him. Any defects 
 in his work were soon made good by the arrival of another band 
 of missionaries, who brought with them vestments, relics of the 
 apostles and martyrs, and many books. St. Paul's, London, and 
 St. Andrew's, Eochester, were the base of operations for the 
 campaign against heathenism. Gregory wished London to 
 be the seat of the chief bishop, but the Kentishmen were 
 determined to keep the metropolitan see in their own country, 
 and they have kept it at Canterbury to this day.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SEVENTH CENTUEY 
 
 IF the Celtic Churches lost something of their heroic simplicity 
 by the arrival of Koman ecclesiastics among them, they also 
 gained in efficiency. The newcomers represented a Church 
 not wholly given over to monastic influences, but strongly 
 organized on diocesan and parochial lines. The new bishops 
 and clergy were all imbued with the idea that a Church which 
 differed from Eome on any point of doctrine or practice must 
 be outside the pale of Catholic order. Ever since the time of 
 Pelagius, the Irish and Welsh were suspected of laxity in 
 doctrine, but of this little was heard in the debates which 
 now began : the controversy turned on two points of 
 practice. 
 
 In the first place there was a question about the tonsure of 
 the clergy. In the Eastern Church the practice was to shave 
 or close crop the whole head ; the Eoman clergy, then as now, 
 shaved a circle on the top of the head. Columba and his 
 ' family ' shaved the front of the head ; this they called the 
 tonsure of St. John ; their adversaries called it the tonsure of 
 Simon Magus. 
 
 A second point of difference related to the proper time for 
 celebrating Easter. In some Christian Churches the fourteenth 
 day of the month corresponding to the Hebrew Nisan was 
 observed as the day of the Crucifixion, and the sixteenth as the 
 day of the Eesurrection. The Scots and Britons were not 
 Quartodecimans ; they always kept the Easter festival on 
 a Sunday ; but they had not adopted the new rule, promulgated 
 at Eome, by which the calendar was reformed. The Eoman 
 missionaries naturally wished to see their own calendar adopted ; 
 they regarded it, not without reason, as a valuable element 
 in church life. For, if the chief events in the lives of our Lord 
 and His apostles are commemorated by the whole Church on
 
 32 . THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 certain days, the instruction of the people will be all the more 
 thorough and well-grounded. 
 
 During the seventh century, the leading churches of Ireland 
 and Wales conformed, one after another, to the Roman rules ; 
 the movement may have been accelerated by Honorius, Bishop 
 of Rome (625-638), who threatened the non-conforming party 
 with excommunication : a high-handed act, which came with 
 an ill grace from a pope who was himself so far from orthodox 
 that his doctrine was condemned by his successors. But the 
 more scholarly of the Irish teachers began to find arguments 
 for accepting the ' Catholic ' system ; one proof of this is the 
 Apology of Cummian, written in 634. Ireland conformed ; 
 Wales followed rather slowly ; lona continued to follow the 
 tradition of Columba. 
 
 The process by which these islands were brought into 
 line with their continental neighbours may best be understood 
 if we endeavour to trace the fortunes of Northumbria 
 the middle kingdom which included Bernicia (the Lothians 
 and Berwickshire) and Deira (England, as far south as the 
 Tees). 
 
 In 617, Ethelfrith, King of Northumbria, was slain in battle. 
 His sons, Eanfrith, Oswald, and Oswy, found a home with the 
 monks at lona ; there, it seems, they were baptized, and there 
 they were kindly brought up. 
 
 Their absence left the field clear for Edwin, who made 
 himself a great power, and ruled from Edwin's Burgh on the 
 Forth even to the south of England. His wife Ethelburga 
 was a Kentish princess, a Christian who prayed for the con- 
 version of her husband. Long and anxious were the discussions 
 between the King and his chief men ; and one evening as they 
 talked a chief uttered words which have not been forgotten. 
 He compared the brief life of man to a bird, flying in at the 
 window of the lighted hall, and flying out into the dark. If 
 the new teachers could tell anything of what was dark to 
 Edwin and his men, were it not well to listen ? The King 
 listened and believed ; in 627 he was baptized in the wooden 
 church of St. Peter at York. Six years later he was killed, 
 fighting against the heathen Fenda.
 
 THE SEVENTH CENTUEY 33 
 
 The sons of Ethelfrith claimed their father's kingdom ; when 
 Eanfrith fell by treachery, Oswald led their army across what 
 we call the Border, and at his camp near Hexham he set up 
 a cross, the first Christian symbol erected in that region. 
 Accepted as King of Northumbria, he set himself to evangelize 
 his pagan subjects, and he turned to his old friends at lona 
 for help. After one unsuccessful experiment, he obtained the 
 man whom Northumbria needed Aidan, first Bishop of 
 Lindisfarne. Aidan, it appears, knew no English, but the 
 King himself acted as interpreter ; the people were won, not 
 only by the word spoken, but by the humble and holy life 
 of the preacher. In 642 Oswald in his turn was killed in 
 battle, and the kingdom passed to his brother Oswy, who 
 extended the power of Northumbria, so that even the Picts 
 and Scots yielded him some kind of obedience. 
 
 In 651 Cuthbert, a shepherd lad, watching his flock beside 
 the Leader, saw St. Aidan borne to heaven by angels : he went 
 at once to the monks at Melrose, was kindly received by the 
 prior Boisil (St. Boswell), and entered at once on his novitiate. 
 The place of his training was the old Abbey of Melrose, a 
 monastery of the simple Columban type, far less imposing than 
 the Cistercian abbey of a later age. Cuthbert was a true 
 monk, who spent no small portion of his time in fasting and 
 prayer ; but he was also a preacher of the Word, and he 
 wandered many days among the upland villages, where the 
 people listened gladly to his message. 
 
 In 655 Oswy and his son Alchfrith defeated their enemies in 
 a great battle ; the redoubtable Penda was killed. King and 
 prince were apparently still content with the customs of lona ; 
 Alchfrith brought the monks of Melrose to Kipon, so as to 
 strengthen the Columban party in southern Northumbria. 
 The Queen, Eanfled, was a daughter of Edwin and Ethelburga ; 
 she held to the Eoman calendar ; and her chaplains pointed 
 out how irregular it was that the King should be keeping the 
 Easter feast while they were still observing the rigours of 
 Lent. Wilfrid, the son of a Northumbrian thane, was studying 
 under the bishop at Lindisfarne ; he was encouraged to go to 
 Kent, and finally to Eome, for the completion of his training, 
 
 D
 
 34 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 and he came back a devoted champion of conformity. Alchfrith 
 was won over, and proved his Catholic zeal by turning out 'the 
 monks of Ripon to make a place for Wilfrid. The King probably 
 began to see that his advantage lay in an alliance with the 
 prevailing party ; but before deciding he thought it righ't to 
 summon a meeting of his clergy. 
 
 In 664 the parties met at the Synod of Whitby. Colman, 
 Bishop of Lindisfarne, defended the Columban tradition ; 
 Wilfrid argued for the Roman rules. lona, he said, might 
 rely on St. John, a great apostle, but not so great as St. Peter. 
 Columba might have been a saint, but who could compare him 
 with the saint to whom our Lord gave the Keys of His Kingdom ? 
 Oswy, turning to the Scots, asked them whether it was true 
 that Peter had the Keys. This they could not deny ; and 
 the King declared that he would side with Peter, lest there 
 should be none to let him into heaven. Colman and some of 
 his companions were not convinced ; with heavy hearts they 
 began to sever the ties which bound them to Northumbria ; 
 they would go to lona, where their brethren still walked in the 
 old paths. Cuthbert, with many others, remained in England 
 and conformed. 
 
 Wilfrid lived more than forty years after his triumph at 
 Whitby ; his career was interesting and eventful, but it 
 belongs to the history of England. He was the first English 
 bishop who carried an appeal to Rome when his immediate 
 superiors decided against him. He may have had good reason 
 for contending that the King and the metropolitan were not 
 doing him justice, but his appeal was one step in the process 
 of over-centralization which ultimately caused the northern 
 nations to withdraw their obedience from the Apostolic See. 
 Wilfrid was at Rome in 679, during the preparations for the 
 sixth General Council, held at Constantinople in the following 
 year the Council which condemned Honorius. 
 
 Even at lona there were signs of a coming change. Adamnan, 
 the biographer of Columba, was abbot from 679 to 704. As 
 a man of wisdom and piety, he was often summoned to assist 
 in mitigating the ferocity of the constant tribal wars, or in 
 settling disputes between the churches. In 688 he visited
 
 THE SEVENTH CENTURY 85 
 
 Northumbria, and on his return he began to prepare the 
 minds of his brethren for a gradual abandonment of the Irish 
 customs which separated them from Eipon, and now from 
 Lindisfarne. The small community was divided, but Adamnan's 
 methods were gentle and considerate ; he retained his authority 
 until his death.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE EIGHTH CENTUEY 
 
 WHEN Adamnan died, Columbans and conformists drew 
 apart, and the schism resulted in the election of rival abbots : 
 this unhappy state of things lasted till 772 ; the efforts of 
 Egbert, a Saxon monk who laboured to reconcile the parties, 
 produced only a temporary truce. 
 
 The emissaries of Eoman authority were not content with 
 their success in Northumbria ; they pushed far to the north, 
 and obtained a favourable hearing from Nechtan, King of the 
 Picts. In 717 that king ' drove out the family of Columba ', 
 and conformed to Catholic rules. Some of the vacant places 
 were filled by conforming Scots from Ireland. 
 
 During the first half of the eighth century, the Angles of 
 Northumbria extended their rule over the Gaels or Picts of 
 Galloway. They restored the see of Whithorn, and Pecthelin 
 was the first of a line of English bishops. 
 
 At this point contemporary evidence begins to fail us ; the 
 Venerable Bede laid down his pen in 785, and there was none 
 to continue his invaluable work. We must try to imagine the 
 Church hi Scotland as she then was, upholding the Faith as 
 she had opportunity, but lacking in organization and discipline. 
 In England, Wilfrid had begun the introduction of a ' secular ' 
 clergy, living in the world and charged with the care of parishes, 
 but Scotland had not arrived at that stage of development. 
 Opposition to Rome died out, or was crushed out, but there 
 were many who retained an affectionate memory of the old 
 tradition. In other countries the wandering Scot came to be 
 regarded as an irregular person ; his orders were doubted, and 
 his orthodoxy was open to question. 
 
 The simple buildings in which the great missionaries had 
 dispensed the sacraments were still sufficient for their successors. 
 It may be that Scotland was not, at the moment, much con-
 
 THE EIGHTH CENTUKY 37 
 
 cerned with the controversy about images, which was agitating 
 the East and the West ; but historians have noted that one 
 sign of advancing Koman influence was the increasing reverence 
 paid to relics of the saints. This dubious form of piety was 
 connected with primitive notions about property ; for, if the 
 reputed bones of a holy person were kept above ground in 
 a jewelled shrine, there was something tangible and striking 
 to remind the unlearned that the church belonged to the saint, 
 and that those who molested his representatives would incur 
 his resentment. 
 
 The Church of Eome has rendered noble service in the 
 evangelization of the world ; but, like other missionary churches, 
 she has been tempted to think too much of visible success. To 
 attract the pagan tribes, she made large concessions to popular 
 sentiment and popular credulity. Saints were multiplied out 
 of all reason, until every church had its tutelary sub- divinity. 
 But God left not Himself without a witness, and the Church 
 at her worst was never so lax in point of morals as the old 
 polytheistic religions had been. 
 
 Before the eighth century closed, the monks of lona had 
 to face a new invasion, which threatened the total destruction 
 of the Church in this part of the world. The Vikings the 
 Bay Men who launched their ships from the bays and fiords 
 of the north began their marauding voyages. The Irish 
 saints had lived by preference on islands, where they were not 
 in close contact with the fighting men of their own kin : but 
 the isles lay right in the track of enemies who came by sea.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE NINTH CENTURY 
 
 FOR a time we hear of nothing but havoc and dismay. lona 
 was plundered again and again ; the Abbot Blathmac was 
 killed at the altar, because he would not say where the treasure 
 of his monastery was concealed. The sea-rovers came and 
 went as they pleased ; they settled at places which took their 
 fancy, so that the harbours of Ireland became the chief maritime 
 stations of a Danish province, and the princess Otta delivered 
 heathen prophecies from the high altar at Clonmacnoise. 
 Every place on the seaboard of Scotland was now unsafe, and 
 the powers of the country drew towards the central region 
 which we call Perthshire and Fife. Constantine, King of the 
 Picts, built or enlarged a church at Dunkeld, which became 
 the head-quarters of the Columban clergy. But by this time 
 the Columban tradition was to some extent corrupted. The 
 perpetual wars gave opportunity to laymen, calling themselves 
 ' heirs of Columba ' and the like, to take over the defence, and 
 the revenues, of abbeys and churches. 
 
 It was in the ninth century that the partisans of the old 
 Irish monastic system began to be known as Culdees (com- 
 panions or servants of God), a revered name round which some 
 legends have gathered. They have been regarded as early 
 Protestants, preserving a pure gospel, and objecting to the 
 superstitions of Rome. They were in fact conservative Celts, 
 who disliked the ecclesiasticism of which Canterbury was now 
 the type and model ; but their own practice was not such as 
 any of our modern churches would care to copy. During 
 several centuries we shall find small bodies of Culdees holding 
 their own in some monasteries and cathedral chapters ; but the 
 suspicions of their Roman opponents were not altogether 
 unreasonable. We may notice that in 818 a Council at Chalons 
 refused recognition to the Scots clergy, and that in 816 the 
 Council of Chelsea forbade them to officiate in English dioceses.
 
 THE NINTH CENTURY 39 
 
 So far as Scotland is concerned, the striking event of the 
 ninth century is the success of Kenneth MacAlpin. His father 
 was King of Scots, but when Kenneth came to his inheritance 
 in 884 he was at first only Lord of Galloway. Ten years of 
 effort made him King of Scots, and two years later he com- 
 pelled the submission of the Picts a judgment on them, 
 some said, for Nechtan's cruelty to the family of Columba. 
 When Kenneth's power was at its height, he ruled from Caith- 
 ness to the Forth : the places where he fixed his court or camp 
 were Forteviot and Scone. He brought the relics of Columba 
 to Dunkeld, which thus acquired a kind of primacy. Indrecht, 
 Abbot of lona, was killed ' by Saxons ' on his way to Rome 
 in 854 ; he is described as the last abbot who had the primacy. 
 
 Constantine, son of Kenneth, removed the seat of the 
 bishopric from Dunkeld to Abernethy, and thence it was again 
 removed to Kilrymont, which we call St. Andrews. After 
 Constantino's death there was a period during which power 
 passed into the hands of Eocha and of Grig or Gregory, the 
 first king who ' gave liberty to the Scottish Church ', a phrase 
 which probably indicates that he exempted the clergy from 
 rendering tribute or military service in respect of their lands. 
 
 There is one stage in the development of the papacy which 
 ought to be briefly mentioned here. About the middle of the 
 ninth century began the publication of a series of forged 
 documents, which afterwards served as the basis of the canon 
 law. Without the forged Decretals the papal autocracy of the 
 Middle Ages could hardly have been founded, and when the 
 fraud was exposed the revolt against Roman authority became 
 inevitable.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE TENTH CENTUEY 
 
 THE tenth century was a very important period for those 
 Scots who lived in it, but it furnishes little material for ecclesi- 
 astical history. There was a political question to be settled 
 before the churches could make any progress. Britain and 
 Ireland were parcelled out among petty princes and chiefs, 
 and it cost much hard fighting to draw the tribes together into 
 larger and more durable forms of union. 
 
 Constantine II, grandson of Kenneth MacAlpin, became 
 King of Alban in 904. Five years later he met Kellach, Bishop 
 of the Scots, at Scone, and there on the ' hill of belief ' the 
 King swore to observe ' the laws and discipline of the faith 
 and the rights of the churches and the gospels ' meaning 
 probably the rights confirmed by an oath on the gospels, or by 
 placing a sod of the dedicated land on the holy book. 
 
 Constantine's policy brought him into conflict with Athelstan, 
 and when the English king moved northward in 937 the Scots 
 of Alban were among the allied armies which fled in confusion 
 from the bloody field of Brunanburh. In 943 Constantine laid 
 down the burden of sovereignty to become a monk at St 
 Andrews : he was succeeded by Malcolm I. 
 
 In 970 Kenneth, son of Malcolm, ' gave the great city of 
 Brechin to the Lord ' ; he may have built the round tower 
 there. The Church of the Scots retained some of its Celtic 
 peculiarities ; at the Synod of Calne in 977 there was one 
 bishop from the north who stood out against the authority of 
 Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 If we extend "our survey to the Churches of the continent, 
 we perceive that the tenth century was a period of depression 
 and recovery. The growing worldliness of the papal court and 
 the religious orders weighed on the consciences of many good 
 men, and led them to work and pray for a reformation. In
 
 THE TENTH CENTUEY 41 
 
 Gaul and Germany the best monastic houses (beginning with 
 Cluny, which was founded in 912) were labouring to make the 
 Eule of St. Benedict a reality, and not merely an excuse for 
 idleness ; and the Cluniac movement was supported by the 
 more earnest of the laity. 
 
 Some students of prophecy had fixed the year 1000 as 
 a suitable date for the end of the world ; but it is not for us 
 to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in 
 His own power.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE ELEVENTH CENTURY 
 
 WHEN the eleventh century opened, Kenneth III was reigning 
 in Alban, but his reign came to an end in 1005, when he was 
 defeated and slain by Malcolm, son of Kenneth II. This 
 Malcolm is the last male representative of Kenneth MacAlpin, 
 and the first to whom the territorial title ' King of Scotland ' 
 was applied. His most formidable neighbour was the earldom 
 of Northumbria, but when he attempted a raid in that direction 
 he was repulsed with great slaughter by Uchtred, son of 
 Waltheof. Taught by adversity, Malcolm made alliances with 
 the Danish earls in the north, and with the Britons of Strath- 
 clyde ; in 1018 he defeated Uchtred's brother in a great battle, 
 fought at Carham on the Tweed. When the battle was over, 
 the King of Scotland made many oblations to the churches : 
 he had reason to rejoice, for his victory went far to secure the 
 independence of his country. If the line of the Border had 
 been drawn from Forth to Clyde, the Highlands might have 
 become another Ireland, a loose aggregate of Celtic tribes, 
 imperfectly governed by the English. But the line, as ulti- 
 mately fixed, ran from Tweed to Solway, and the Lothians 
 thus became the lowland province from which English institu- 
 tions, ecclesiastical and civil, were extended in time over the 
 north and west. Yet, though Malcolm had made a con- 
 siderable kingdom, he was not the paramount power even in 
 northern Britain. When Canute, the Danish conqueror of 
 England, visited Scotland in 1031, all the native rulers- 
 including Malcolm and Macbeth had to give in their sub- 
 mission. 
 
 When Malcolm died, in 1034, he left no son to take up the 
 succession. His daughter Bethoc was married to Crinan, 
 lay abbot of Dunkeld, and her son Lnncan wore the crown for 
 a few uneasy years ; a younger daughter was the wife of
 
 THE ELEVENTH CENTUKY 43 
 
 Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, a Danish warrior recently converted to 
 the Christian faith ; her younger son Thorfinn was Earl of 
 Caithness and Sutherland. 
 
 We are all familiar with Shakespeare's Duncan ; of the real 
 Duncan little is known. His northern rivals combined against 
 him ; in 1040 he was slain, and Scotland was divided between 
 Macbeth and Thorfinn. It is not certain that Macbeth was 
 guilty of treachery ; on the other hand it is possible that 
 remorse was the motive which induced him, ten years after 
 Duncan's death, to make a pilgrimage to Eome. He went the 
 round of the holy places ; gave large sums to the poor ; and 
 returned safely to his distant kingdom. 
 
 If Macbeth knew enough to discuss the current politics of 
 Kome, he must have realized that important events -were in 
 progress. In 1033 the papacy had fallen so low that the 
 leaders of a local faction were able to place a boy of twelve in 
 the papal chair. This and other scandals' led to the inter- 
 vention of the good Emperor Henry III, a steady patron of 
 the Cluniac reform. We may note in passing that this emperor's 
 niece Agatha became the wife of an English prince and the 
 mother of our own Queen Margaret. 
 
 Not long before Macbeth's visit, the reforming party in 
 Rome was notably strengthened when Bruno, Bishop of Toul, 
 was chosen Pope and assumed the title of Leo IX. During 
 this and three succeeding reigns, the most powerful individual 
 in the Church was the cardinal-subdeacon Hildebrand, who 
 shaped the policy of the papal court. Hildebrand -also was 
 a reformer ; he was determined to hold the monastic orders 
 to a strict observance of their vows ; the parochial clergy were 
 to be brought under discipline by the rigid enforcement of 
 sacerdotal celibacy. The injunctions of authority met with 
 a good deal of passive opposition ; and from the first it was 
 evident that the rigour of ecclesiastical theory would involve 
 much laxity in practice. The lay members of the Church were 
 for the most part in favour of imposing a strict rule on the 
 clergy ; it seemed right that the men who dispensed the divine 
 mysteries should be men set apart, holy in the technical sense 
 of the word.
 
 44 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Macbeth's pilgrimage may have lightened his conscience, 
 but it did not secure him a long reign. Malcolm, son of Duncan, 
 had found a home with Siward, Earl of Northumbria, the 
 toughest fighting man of his time. In 1057 the earl and his 
 guest invaded Scotland, Macbeth was slain, and Malcolm took 
 his father's throne ; in the same year he strengthened his 
 power in the north by marrying Ingibrorg, the widow of his 
 kinsman Thorfinn. 
 
 The Northmen who had wrought so much havoc in the earth 
 were by this time civilized ; they had carved out kingdoms 
 and duchies in the more desirable parts of Europe ; they 
 accepted the Christian faith in its Catholic and Eoman form. 
 
 In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, came to England with 
 the Pope's benediction, to prosecute his claim to the crown of 
 Edward the Confessor. His rapid success revealed the weak- 
 ness of the English polity ; his subsequent measures showed 
 how strong the English constitution might be made, when it 
 was held together by an efficient central government. But, 
 strong as he was, the Conqueror was not strong enough to bring 
 this island under one government. He left the ' Celtic fringe ', 
 and he gave very little of his time to Scotland. 
 
 When Harold fell at Senlac, Edgar the Atheling was chosen 
 King of the English, but the election was only a form. Unable 
 to resist the invader, Edgar made his way to Dunfermline, 
 where Malcolm held his court ; he was accompanied by his 
 mother Agatha, and by his sisters, Margaret and Christina. 
 Ingibrorg was dead, and it soon became evident that the King 
 of Scots had fixed his affections on the princess Margaret ; they 
 were married at Dunfermline, and in memory of this happy 
 event a church was built, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. 
 
 In 1072 William marched north, as far as Abernethy, to 
 receive the submission of Scotland. He had Normandy and 
 England on his hands ; he did not purpose to a*dd the highland 
 clans to his responsibilities ; so Malcolm swore what was 
 required of him, and things in Scotland went on much as 
 before. 
 
 Margaret was a good wife and a good mother ; skilled in all 
 womanly arts ; a kind friend to the poor. She was also
 
 THE ELEVENTH CENTUEY 45 
 
 learned, at least as compared with Scottish ladies of that 
 period ; the King who could not read handled with reverence 
 the manuscript books which lay on his wife's table. It grieved 
 her to know that her husband and his people were still standing 
 out against Catholic rules, and she longed to bring them to 
 a better mind. She applied to Lanfranc, the able Italian 
 prelate whom the Conqueror had placed in the see of Canter- 
 bury, and English monks were sent to her aid. A conference 
 was held to discuss the points of difference; the King, who 
 spoke English and Gaelic, acted as interpreter. There is 
 nothing unreasonable in the changes which the Queen proposed 
 to the Scots clergy. She wished them : 
 
 (1) To begin Lent at the same time as other Churches. 
 
 (2) To receive the Communion at Easter. The Scots spoke 
 of their sins ; doubted their worthiness to receive ; the Queen 
 reminded them that, because we are sinners, the Lord invites 
 us to His table. 
 
 (8) To give up ' barbarous rites '. The phrase probably 
 indicates old-fashioned Gaelic or Latin forms of service, 
 associated, perhaps, with the traditional heresies of the Celtic 
 Churches. 
 
 (4) To abstain from work on the Lord's day. 
 
 (5) To adopt a stricter rule as to the marriage of persons 
 related by affinity. It appears that the Celtic Churches would 
 even permit a man to marry his stepmother, or his brother's 
 widow. 
 
 At the conference the Queen was no doubt able to carry her 
 proposals, but it was long before the Gaelic Churches were 
 brought into line with their neighbours. Malcolm had much 
 hard fighting to do, and Margaret's life must have been full of 
 anxieties and dangers. We have an excellent biography of 
 her, written probably by her favourite adviser Turgot, Prior of 
 Durham, a solid Lincolnshire man, whose efforts on behalf 
 of the Church in Scotland brought but little comfort to himself. 
 His book is not free from the element of pious fiction which 
 so often impairs the human interest of ecclesiastical histories, 
 but in the main his narrative is a true picture of what this 
 Christian princess was.
 
 46 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In the year 1098 Malcolm was present at the consecration 
 of the new cathedral at Durham ; he also went to Gloucester 
 to speak with William Rufus, but, on finding that he was 
 expected to do homage and fealty for his northern kingdom, 
 he left without seeing the English king. Returning to his 
 own country, he was induced to undertake a raid into North- 
 umbria ; in this unhappy expedition he and his son Edward 
 lost their lives. Margaret was lying ill in the castle at Edin- 
 burgh ; when she heard that her husband was dead, she bowed 
 to the will of God and yielded her soul to Him. Malcolm's 
 enemies were not far away, but under cover of the November 
 mist the Queen's body was conveyed to the Queen's Ferry 
 (where she had built rest-houses for pilgrims going to St. 
 Andrews) and laid in the great church at Dunfermline. The 
 relics of Margaret and Malcolm were moved from one place to 
 another, until at last Philip of Spain lost them, as he lost many 
 other things. They may be in the Escurial, but they have not 
 been found. 
 
 While Malcolm and Margaret were labouring in their voca- 
 tion, the nations were moved this way and that by the two 
 authorities which contested and shared supreme power the 
 papacy and the national State. Nationalism proved itself 
 de facto the stronger principle of the two. 
 
 Hildebrand became Pope (Gregory VII) in 1073 ; during the 
 twelve years of his reign he pressed the claims of his office with 
 unwavering confidence. He claimed the obedience of kings, 
 expressly on the ground that, as head of the Church, he was 
 infallible. He said, and believed, that neither he nor any of 
 his predecessors had ever made a mistake. When the Pope 
 in our day makes a similar statement, he makes it with quali- 
 fications, because he has to consider the ' small but well-armed 
 tribe ' of historical experts. But in Gregory's time history 
 was not critically studied ; he needed no saving clauses. He 
 had his moments of triumph ; in the cold January of 1077 
 he kept the Emperor waiting barefoot in the snow at Canossa. 
 A few years later, the Emperor was in possession of Rome, and 
 the aged pontiff was driven into exile. 
 
 For an illustration of the strength of nationalism we may
 
 THE ELEVENTH CENTUEY 47 
 
 look to England, and we ought to note carefully the rules by 
 which the Conqueror guided himself in his relations with Rome. 
 As a Norman he was willing to fight for the papacy ; but he 
 made the Church of England a national church, &nd protected 
 it against papal interference. No Pope was to be acknowledged 
 without his command ; no bull or brief was to be received 
 unless it had been shown to the King ; no synod might enact 
 anything without his previous sanction ; no censure could be 
 pronounced on any of his barons or officers without his consent. 
 These rules were not in accordance with Hildebrand's theory, 
 but they were fundamental rules of the English constitution.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE TWELFTH CENTUKY 
 
 THE first half of this century belongs to the three sons of 
 Queen Margaret Edgar, Alexander, and David who came 
 successively to the throne. With them the Scottish monarchy 
 puts on a new aspect. Malcolm their father had been King 
 of Scots, a highlander trying to get south ; but from this time 
 forth our kings were Anglo-Norman nobles, holding estates 
 in the south, doing homage for them at the English court, 
 joining with the other barons in the struggle to limit the powers 
 of the English kings. In Scotland they were absolute, or as 
 absolute as their own people would allow. 
 
 Edgar was a quiet, peaceable man ; Alexander's temper was 
 more active : it was he who began to restore and complete 
 the episcopal organization of the national church. The see 
 of St. Andrews had been long vacant ; Alexander chose his 
 mother's friend Turgot to be the new bishop. The good monk 
 left his cell at Durham to face the east wind in Fife ; and he 
 did some good work there, though the Culdees evidently gave 
 him some trouble. As an Englishman he would probably have 
 acknowledged the primacy of York ; but here the King became 
 restive : to acknowledge York or even Canterbury was to 
 compromise the independence of Scotland. Turgot went back 
 to Durham and died there. After an interval of some years 
 Alexander sent a deputation to Ralph, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, to ask that his monk Eadmer, a man of solid judgment 
 and earnest piety, should be allowed to accept the bishopric. 
 Having obtained the consent of his own King, the Archbishop 
 sent Eadmer to St. Andrews, but with strict orders not to agree 
 to anything which might compromise the claims of Canterbury. 
 "Alexander would not allow his bishop to be consecrated either 
 by Canterbury or by York, and in the end Eadmer, like his 
 predecessor, went back to his cell. He was probably happier
 
 THE TWELFTH CENTUKY 49 
 
 at Canterbury, where he was precentor, teacher, and spiritual 
 director to the Archbishop himself. 
 
 Besides these efforts on behalf of St. Andrews, Alexander 
 founded two new bishoprics Dunkeld, always a centre of 
 Church life, and Moray, an outpost of civilization in the 
 north. 
 
 When David came to the throne in 1124 he was already 
 known as the founder or restorer of the see of Glasgow. The 
 first bishop of the new line was the King's old tutor, John, 
 whose career proves clearly that the popes were doing their 
 best to maintain discipline in Scotland and elsewhere. For 
 John found his westland flock so intractable that he tried to 
 escape from his duties ; a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or a cell at 
 Tiron was more to his liking than the business of government. 
 Paschal II consecrated him, rather against his will ; Calixtus II 
 sent him back to Glasgow ; finally in 1188 a synod held at 
 Carlisle dealt seriously with John, and from that time 'forth he 
 was more constant to his episcopal city. The synod of Carlisle 
 was presided over by the Cardinal Alberic, a friend and disciple 
 of St. Bernard and an ardent champion of Catholic reform. 
 
 Besides Glasgow, five bishoprics were founded by King David. 
 Caithness and Sutherland had their cathedral church at 
 Dornoch ; the Bishop of Eoss was placed on the Moray Firth 
 at Chanonry ; Aberdeen, Dunblane, and Brechin were raised 
 to the higher ecclesiastical rank. The chief duty of the new 
 bishops was to see that the ordinances of religion were provided 
 throughout their dioceses, and they had the chief share in the 
 gradual formation of parishes. Their work was hard, and at 
 first they were not highly paid. When Scottish bishops were 
 summoned to synods and councils, they made rather a poor 
 show among the wealthier prelates of other countries. 
 
 During the reigns of Alexander and David, large additions 
 were made to the monastic institutions of the country. The 
 movement of reform, inspired by Bernard of Clairvaux, affected 
 both Benedictine and Augustinian houses, and gave mobility, 
 so to speak, to all the forces of the Church. If the cloister 
 tempted men to be idle, surely the best cure for that was to 
 move on to new conquests. New companies and sub-orders 
 
 E
 
 50 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 arose, each in turn asking the Pope's leave to wear some 
 distinctive dress and obey some improved rule. As soon as 
 each company had made a home for itself, some of its members 
 were eager to go out and make a new settlement. A few of the 
 more important facts may here be summarized, to show how 
 this movement affected Scotland. 
 
 In 1114 Alexander brought Augustinian canons from 
 Pontefract ; this was the beginning of the great Abbey of 
 Scone. The same order had a house at St. Andrews, where 
 they superseded the Culdees. From St. Andrews David 
 brought canons to Edinburgh ; at first they were in the castle, 
 until a home was found for them at the foot of the hill, where 
 the Abbey of Holyrood still stands. 
 
 Prince David brought reformed Benedictines from Tiron 
 in Burgundy, and settled them at Selkirk ; when he became 
 King he moved them to Kelso, and there a great Tironensian 
 abbey arose. Another abbey of the same order was placed 
 at Kilwinning. The reform of Fleury was represented by the 
 Benedictines whom the King placed at Dunfermline. 
 
 Of all the monastic reforms the best known was that begun 
 by St. Robert and carried out by Stephen Harding at Citeaux 
 (Cistercium), a bare marshy spot in the Duchy of Burgundy. 
 St. Bernard's house at Clairvaux was an early offshoot from 
 the parent house. The- rule of the Cistercian order was very 
 austere ; even in their chapels there was no display ; a plain 
 altar, with one candle on an iron stand, sufficed. Their abbeys 
 multiplied fast. Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, brought them 
 to England and settled them at Waverley in Surrey. They 
 also had a house at Rivaulx in Yorkshire, and there one Ailred 
 was master of the novices. He had spent part of his youth at 
 David's court ; he may have been at work on his Life of St. 
 Ninian ; and it was probably at his suggestion that a company 
 of the ' white monks ' set out for Scotland. Melrose, Newbattle, 
 and Dundrennan were all founded in the course of the next 
 few years. 
 
 The monks of Premontr6 in Picardy were reformed Augus- 
 tinians. In 1148 Fergus, Lord of Galloway, gave them a place 
 at Soulseat, beside the little green loch which lies half-way
 
 THE TWELFTH CENTUEY 51 
 
 between Loch Eyan and Wigtown Bay. This order was very 
 successful in Scotland ; the Premonstratensian houses extended 
 from Withorn to Fearn on the east coast of Eoss. 
 
 All the houses I have named began very simply ; all attained 
 to wealth ; and all declined, more or less grievously, from the 
 purpose of their founders. It is only fair to remember that the 
 wealth of the monks was largely of their own creation. In 
 part it arose from their skill in annexing parishes, where they 
 drew the tithes and fees, and put in a vicar (that is, a substitute) 
 to do the work. But the monks were also the leaders of our 
 people in all the practical arts. They taught us how to drain 
 the wet land ; how to vary the crops ; how to improve the 
 breed of cattle and sheep. They had a share in the beginnings 
 of our seaborne trade ; and the monks of Newbattle were the 
 first to win coal out of Scottish ground. They did something 
 for education ; but books were still copied by hand, and were 
 therefore few and expensive ; the notion that an ordinary 
 layman might learn to read was still far off in the future. 
 
 David died in 1153 ; his later years were clouded by sorrow 
 for the death of his son Henry. Malcolm, son of Henry, suc- 
 ceeded to the throne and reigned twelve years. In the month 
 of December 1165 he died at Jedburgh ; a fortnight later, his 
 brother, William the Lion, was crowned at Scone. 
 
 As an English noble, William did suit and service at the court 
 of Henry II ; and there he followed with admiration the career 
 of the new Archbishop, Thomas Becket. In the days of his 
 diaconate, Becket had been a brilliant soldier and an able 
 administrator, but even then he was a man of pure and pious 
 life, not unworthy to hold high office in the Church. On almost 
 all the points of the controversy which ensued, the Archbishop 
 was in the right ; he stood for the customs of the English 
 Church and realm against the self-will and rapacity of the 
 King. We may criticize the use he made of his powers of 
 excommunication and suspension, but he caught at the only 
 weapons by which a churchman could defend his order. William 
 the Lion, like Becket, was standing out against Henry ; looking 
 round him for help, he sent an embassy to Louis VII of France. 
 This was the definite beginning of that ' auld alliance ' which 
 
 E2
 
 52 
 
 influenced in many ways the political and religious develop- 
 ment of Scotland. 
 
 After Becket had been done to death, William joined the 
 King of France and the rebel princes of England in a league 
 against the ' tyrant '. He rode the usual raid into Northumber- 
 land, but the Yorkshire barons rose against him ; he was taken 
 prisoner, and before he regained his freedom he had signed 
 away the independence of his kingdom and his national Church. 
 This was only for a time ; the Pope, Alexander III, was a power 
 in Europe ; and the Pope sided with Scotland. France and 
 Rome agreed in thinking that a king like Henry would be more 
 easily dealt with if he had an enterprising neighbour, free to 
 attack his northern frontier. At the Council held by Cardinal 
 Petreleonis at Northampton in January 1176, the Scottish 
 bishops declined all submission to York, and Canterbury, 
 anxious to keep his brother primate within bounds, came to 
 their assistance. In the following July the Pope wrote to the 
 Scottish bishops, forbidding them to acknowledge any metro- 
 politan but himself. 
 
 William, though an enemy of Henry's ' tyranny ', did not 
 give way to clergymen where the rights of his own crown were 
 concerned. In 1177 the chapter of St. Andrews elected John 
 the Scot (an Englishman, in spite of his name) to be their 
 bishop ; the King forced his chaplain Hugh into the see ; 
 this dispute lasted twelve years. 
 
 In August 1177 Cardinal Vivian crossed over from Ireland, 
 where he had been holding a council, and met the Scottish 
 bishops at Edinburgh. He did not settle the larger questions 
 under discussion, but some decrees were made. The bishops 
 wished to restrict the immunities claimed By Cistercian monks, 
 and the Cardinal agreed to this ; wherefore the chronicler 
 at Melrose wrote him down as a legate ' quick to seize, and not 
 slow to rob men of their own '. 
 
 The year 1178 witnessed the most important of this King's 
 religious foundations, when monks came from Kelso to begin 
 the Abbey of Arbroath. When the abbey church was finished, 
 it was dedicated to the King's deceased friend, now St. Thomas 
 of Canterbury, and the sacred banner of Columba was placed
 
 THE TWELFTH CENTURY 53 
 
 in the keeping of the monks. It was also in 1178 that William 
 chose an English clergyman, Eoger de Beaumont, to be his 
 chancellor. 
 
 In March 1179 the Pope held a Council at the Lateran ; 
 about 300 bishops were present, and some useful ordinances 
 were made. Some limit was imposed on the luxury of prelates 
 and on the irregularities too common among the clergy. This 
 was the first great Council to which bishops from Scotland 
 were summoned ; Gregory, Bishop of Ross, signed the decrees. 
 Two bishops-designate had made the long journey to receive 
 consecration from the Pope ; one came on horseback alone, and 
 one on foot with a companion. Their poverty must have been 
 contrasted with the display made by some of their brethren ; 
 for the Council thought it necessary to enact that a bishop 
 should not have more than twenty or thirty horses, an arch- 
 bishop not more than forty or fifty. 
 
 When Pope Alexander died, another deputation went to 
 Rome ; the new Pope, Lucius III, received them well, and 
 sent William the Golden Rose as a token of his good- will ; the 
 dispute about St. Andrews lingered on. In 1186 the King of 
 Scotland was married at Woodstock to Ermengarde de Beau- 
 mont, who did her best to maintain friendly relations between 
 the two kingdoms to which she belonged. During the years 
 which followed his marriage, William saw himself set free from 
 subjection to England. For, in 1188, Clement III issued the 
 bull Cum universi, by which the Scottish Church was made 
 directly dependent on the Roman See. In 1 1 89 the old ' tyrant ' 
 died ; his son Richard needed money for the fifth crusade ; 
 for the reasonable sum of 10,000 merks William was freed from 
 the treaty extorted by Henry II. 
 
 Before we leave the twelfth century, we may glance for a 
 moment at one of its least conspicuous and most significant 
 preachers. The Abbot Joachim of Flora (1145-1202) spent his 
 life in the cloister ; his only ambition was to write faithful com- 
 mentaries on his favourite books of the Bible. His works were 
 approved by successive popes, but he left behind him certain 
 apocalyptic studies which caused a whole crop of strange 
 opinions to spring up in the Western Church. He divided
 
 54 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the history of mankind into three ages or dispensations, 
 corresponding to the Persons of the Trinity. The first age 
 ended with the birth of Christ ; the second, Joachim thought, 
 would soon draw to a close ; then would begin the age of the 
 Holy Spirit, when the Church would be purged of selfishness 
 and corruption ; all men would give themselves to religious 
 contemplation ; even the Jews would accept the truth. This 
 doctrine appealed to those, and they were many, who were 
 deeply dissatisfied with the Church as they knew her. And 
 when, centuries later, dissatisfaction had ripened into revolt, 
 there were still some who turned back to the works of Abbot 
 Joachim.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE THIETEENTH CENTUEY 
 
 THE closing years of William the Lion's reign were fairly 
 prosperous. He gave way to John of England, to avoid war ; 
 he was on good terms with his own barons at home ; he culti- 
 vated the friendship of his royal burghs, and encouraged their 
 trade. This wise policy was continued by his son, Alexander II, 
 and by his grandson, Alexander III. In Scotland as in other 
 countries the thirteenth was a century of steady advance ; 
 law, government, and society began to take on the aspect which 
 they still wear. 
 
 Each nation clung to its independence ; but there were still 
 institutions in which the unity of Western Christendom was 
 embodied. The orders of chivalry and the Universities were 
 international in their influence, but the chief bond of union 
 was the papacy, and the Pope who led Europe in the early years 
 of the thirteenth century was worthy of his position. Inno- 
 cent III had meditated profoundly on the duties of his office ; 
 he was guided by a clear conception of his own authority. His 
 theory was that of Hildebrand, and it was so expressed as to 
 place the Church above the State. If the Pope commanded 
 a secular prince to draw his sword against heresy, the prince 
 was not entitled to form an opinion on the question of policy. 
 If he disobeyed, the Pope could absolve his Christian subjects ' 
 from their allegiance, and hand over his dominions to some 
 more loyal son of the Church. 
 
 The efforts of this able Pope were directed to the promotion 
 of three great causes ; and in each of the three Scotland had 
 a direct interest. In the first place, Innocent longed to bring 
 the Eastern Church into visible union with Eome, and to make 
 the Holy Land the seat of a Catholic prince. But the old 
 enthusiasm had died out ; the men who led the armies of the 
 Church aimed only at carving out kingdoms for themselves.
 
 56 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 The Pope's appeals drew forth only a faint response ; in Scot- 
 land, very few volunteered, and ' none of the great men '. 
 
 Again, Innocent was deeply distressed by the scandals which 
 her growing wealth had brought upon the Church ; he laboured 
 hard to make rules of discipline for the clergy, and to secure 
 bishops who could be trusted to enforce them. It was at his 
 persuasion or command that William Malvoisin, a clerk of 
 Normandy, was invited to be bishop, first of Glasgow and soon 
 afterwards of St. Andrews. William was a good bishop, but 
 he was also a good chancellor of the kingdom, and his diplo- 
 matic duties often kept him absent from his diocese. There 
 is a story that he took away two livings from the monks of 
 Dunfermline, because his supply of wine ran short when he 
 stayed there ; but this may be only the gossip of the monastery. 
 
 Finally, Innocent was determined to mark out the bounds 
 of orthodoxy so clearly that error would be left without excuse, 
 and to secure the aid of Christian princes in suppressing every 
 form of heresy. The twelfth century had witnessed the long 
 struggle between Abelard and St. Bernard, and the results 
 of much disputation were recorded in two books of authority, 
 Gratian's Concordance of the Canon Laiv, and Master Peter 
 Lombard's Book of the Sentences. Of the system expounded 
 in these books, Pope Innocent was a devoted adherent. 
 
 The three main purposes of his life were all present to the 
 Pope's mind when in November 1215 (just eight months before 
 his death) he opened another great Council in the Lateran. 
 The bishops who attended were 412 in number ; Scotland was 
 represented by Malvoisin and others. Innocent had drawn up 
 a kind of code in seventy chapters, and this was laid before 
 the council. Some of the bishops thought the Pope's rules 
 too burdensome ; there was, apparently, no opposition, but as 
 the new articles were not discussed conciliariter it may be correct 
 to say that they were not received as part of the canon law. 
 The first article contains an expression which was often bandied 
 to and fro in the controversies of a later age. In the sacrament 
 of the altar, said Pope Innocent, the bread and wine are 
 transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. It is 
 important to bear in mind that the word ' substance ', as used
 
 THE THIETEENTH CENTUBY 57 
 
 by students of philosophy, is not equivalent to ' material 
 substance ' ; it means rather the real existence of a thing the 
 thing itself, as distinguished from its qualities. The doctrine 
 ol; transubstantiation, as denned by Innocent, is in fact a 
 scholastic theory an attempt to give precise form to a truth 
 which every devout Christian acknowledges to be a mystery. 
 
 In subsequent chapters the Abbot Joachim was censured for 
 his erroneous views in regard to the Blessed Trinity ; the Greeks 
 were invited to conform to Eome ; uniformity of worship was 
 enjoined, and bishops were directed to provide capable preach- 
 ers ; they were forbidden to ordain illiterate persons. Fees for 
 burials, marriages, &c., were disallowed, but without prejudice 
 to existing customs. The faithful of both sexes were ordered 
 to confess at least once a year to their proper priest. 
 
 The labours of Pope Innocent were followed by a harvest 
 of good work in the countries under his authority, and in 
 Scotland among the rest. His successor, Honorius III, strength- 
 ened the hands of the Scottish bishops by conferring upon them 
 the right of synodical deliberation. York protested, and the 
 King of England complained, but the bishops began at once to 
 exercise their rights, and to hold regular provincial councils. 
 The statutes made by these episcopal meetings are of great 
 interest ; they prove that there were many abuses and corrup- 
 tions in the national church ; but they prove also that the 
 bishops knew their duty and were trying to do it. 
 
 David de Bernham, Bishop of St. Andrews, may stand as 
 the type of the reforming prelacy of this period. In the space 
 of ten years he is said to have consecrated 140 churches. 
 In 1242 he assembled the clergy of his diocese at Musselburgh ; 
 some useful rules were made for the care of church buildings, 
 the administration of the sacraments and other important 
 matters. 
 
 Like his predecessors, Alexander II was a good friend to 
 the ' religious '. In his time the Cluniacs found a home at 
 Crossraguel ; the Cistercians had a new abbey at Balmerino, 
 on the Fife coast of the Frith of Tay ; the reformed Cistercians 
 of Val des Choux began the beautiful Abbey of Pluscardine in 
 Moray. The King extended a welcome to the two new orders
 
 58 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 of mendicant friars ; the Dominicans or Black Friars soon had 
 eight houses ; the Franciscans or Grey Friars had houses at 
 Berwick and Koxburgh. Each of these orders had a character 
 of its own, impressed upon it by its founder. The Black Friars 
 gave themselves to the ministry of preaching ; they became 
 the authoritative teachers of the Western Church ; in the first 
 half-century of their existence they could boast of two very 
 notable philosophers Albertus Magnus, the most learned man 
 of the age, and his pupil, Thomas Aquinas. If we admit that 
 St. Thomas often had to build with untrustworthy material 
 misapplied texts and mistaken analogies this detracts little 
 from our admiration of the power, the acuteness, and the 
 essential fairness of his mind. 
 
 The Grey Friars were pledged by their founder St. Francis 
 to the service of humanity ; they were to tend the sick, and, 
 out of their own poverty, to help the poor. These duties they 
 never wholly forgot, but in time they also got learning, and 
 began to take part in the perpetual disputation of the Uni- 
 versities. In speculation they were bolder than the Dominicans, 
 bolder than some popes were disposed to allow. Even the Third 
 Order of St. Francis, to which lay persons, men and women, 
 were admitted, was so subversive in spirit that its influence 
 must be mentioned among the predisposing causes of the 
 Keformation. 
 
 When they came to Scotland, the friars, black and grey, 
 were bound by a very strict vow of poverty ; their houses 
 were small and plain : the head of a house would not take the 
 proud title of Abbot ; he was Prior if he wore the black robe, 
 Warden if he wore the grey habit of St. Francis. As preachers 
 they were indefatigable, and they preached in the vernacular 
 of their hearers ; their lively sermons were more attractive 
 than the mumbled Latin of the church service. 
 
 Though a loyal Catholic, Alexander II stood firmly on the 
 rights of his crown. In 1237 the legate Otho, who was visiting 
 England, wished to include Scotland in his mission ; but the 
 King objected. Matthew Paris, monk of St. Albans, records 
 with evident enjoyment that the King tried to frighten the 
 legate by giving him a disquieting account of the unruly temper
 
 THE THIETEENTH CENTUEY 59 
 
 of the Scots. Two years later, in 1247, a grey friar was allowed 
 to collect money for the war against the Emperor Frederick, 
 but the King again pointed out that this was not in accordance 
 with the bull of Clement III. These recurring demands for 
 money are significant ; in them we see another predisposing 
 cause of the Eeformation. The people of Scotland were just 
 beginning to prosper in a quiet way under their own kings, 
 and it grieved them to see good money carried out of the 
 kingdom by Italian ecclesiastics. During the age of Innocent III 
 the papacy, whatever its faults may have been, was the greatest 
 power for good in Europe ; half a century later it was beginning 
 to be a grievance and a burden. 
 
 Alexander II died in the island of Kerrera, 8th July 1249 ; 
 five days later his son, a child of eight, was placed on the 
 coronation stone at Scone : Alexander III reigned thirty-six 
 years, and walked in the ways of his father. The king was 
 only nine when he took part in an impressive service at Dun- 
 fermline, where the bones of Queen Margaret and her husband 
 were transferred to a shrine in the newly-built choir of the abbey. 
 During the years which followed this event, two more societies 
 of mendicant friars obtained a footing in the country : the 
 Trinitarians (Eed Friars) had a house at Fail in Ayrshire ; 
 and the Bishop of Dunkeld brought in the Carmelites (White 
 Friars) and settled them at Tullimull near Perth. No order 
 evolved a more imposing legend than the Carmelites. They 
 claimed Elijah as their founder, Jonah and Obadiah as members 
 of the order ; even our Lord and the Blessed Virgin were brought 
 into the story as professed Carmelites. Not without reason, 
 the Koman authorities began to discuss the expediency of 
 putting some limit to the multiplication of mendicants. 
 
 In the spring of 1265, Ottoboni de Fieschi was appointed 
 the Pope's legate for England, Scotland, and Ireland. From 
 the Scottish bishops he demanded a subsidy of four merks 
 for every parish church and six for each cathedral. Alexander 
 would not allow his clergy to pay, and forbade the legate to 
 enter Scotland. In 1268 this legate held a synod in London ; 
 two Scottish bishops attended, but when the legate produced 
 some new canons for their acceptance they ' utterly refused '
 
 60 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 to observe them. In the course of the same year Clement IV 
 granted a tenth of every Scottish benefice in aid of the crusade 
 undertaken by Prince Edward of England ; but again Alexander 
 and his clergy refused. 
 
 In 1273 Gregory X summoned a Council, which met at 
 Lyons in the following year. All the Scottish bishops were 
 present, except Dunkeld and Moray, who were left to keep good 
 order at home. The topics discussed at the Council were, 
 once more, the recovery of the Holy Land, and the maintenance 
 of discipline among the clergy. 
 
 The year 1275 was remembered in Scotland as the year when 
 Boiamund de Vesci came to collect the Pope's tithe on all 
 benefices, in preparation for the intended crusade. Under the 
 antiqua taxatio the livings had been assessed below their actual 
 value, and the papal treasury wished to have a stricter valua- 
 tion. After some resistance, the legate carried his point, and 
 ' Bagimond's Roll ', as altered from time to time, was the 
 standard of taxation, so long as the Roman clergy had anything 
 to tax. 
 
 In the same year, 1275, Dervorguilla, daughter of Alan, 
 Lord of Galloway, and widow of John Baliol, founded the 
 beautiful Cistercian Abbey near the estuary of the Nith ; 
 she called it Dulce .Cor, because her husband's heart was 
 deposited there, until it could be placed in her coffin and buried 
 with her. This was the last abbey founded in Scotland. 
 
 The steady progress achieved by a succession of good kings 
 was checked in 1285 when Alexander III met his death at 
 Kinghorn. His little granddaughter was brought from Norway 
 to be Queen ; but she died at Kirkwall ; and before long there 
 were thirteen competitors for the vacant throne. There was 
 a general disposition to abide by the judgment of the King of 
 England ; and Edward acted justly when he gave the crown 
 to John Baliol, the eldest surviving son of Dervorguilla. But 
 it was soon evident that the English king meant to be lord 
 paramount of Scotland, and more. Nobles, commons, and 
 clergy were all unwilling to submit ; and before the century was 
 out Wallace had proved that it w*as possible to beat an English 
 army : the national pride of his countrymen struck root
 
 THE THIETEENTH CENTUEY 61 
 
 between the Abbey Craig and the Forth. Both sides were 
 fighting for the legal right, as they understood it ; both 
 appealed to the God of battles. At Falkirk Edward called on 
 his men to charge in the name of the Father, the Son, and 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In these pages we can name Wallace without misgiving ; 
 he broke no promise when he took arms against the English, 
 and his behaviour was worthy of a Christian knight. The 
 plundering of the great church at Hexham was the act of his 
 soldiers, which the general would have prevented if he had 
 been warned in time. Beside the heroic figure of Sir William 
 we keep a place for his schoolfellow John Blair, Benedictine 
 monk of Dunfermline, chaplain and historiographer to the 
 Warden of Scotland. 
 
 A difficult problem is presented by the conduct of those men 
 who took up the cause of independence and carried it to success. 
 What are we to make of the fact that Eobert Bruce, and the 
 bishops of his party, repeatedly swore fealty to Edward, and 
 broke their solemn promises when they were strong enough 
 to defy him ? The only answer we can make is, that the 
 question at issue between the two nations was one which could 
 only be settled by war. Until the Scots knew they were 
 beaten, their oaths and promises were merely expedients' to 
 ' drive the time ' and to get a chance of beginning again. 
 
 In the critical year 1297 there was another disputed election 
 at St. Andrews. Lamberton, who had the support of Wallace, 
 received the votes of the chapter ; the Culdees the remnant 
 of the old Gaelic-speaking clergy insisted that William 
 Corny n should be bishop. The Culdee candidate went all the 
 way to Eome to establish his claim ; but the Pope decided 
 in favour of Lamberton.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE FOUETEENTH CENTUEY 
 
 AT Christmas 1294 Benedict Cajetan, a noted canonist, was 
 elected Pope, and took the name of Boniface VIII ; and he 
 reigned nearly nine years. No pope has been more explicit in 
 asserting the claims of the Holy See. In the early days of his 
 reign he issued the bull Clericis laicos, by which secular princes 
 were forbidden to tax the revenues of the Church ; and in the 
 last year of his life he followed it up with the bull Unam 
 sanctam ecclesiam, in which the sovereigns of Europe were told 
 that they bore the civil sword only by the assent and sufferance 
 of the Pope. 
 
 The Scottish party of independence had made efforts to 
 obtain the spiritual assistance of Boniface ; there is some 
 reason to think that Wallace himself went to Eome for this 
 purpose. In the year 1800, which was kept by Boniface as 
 a jubilee, the Pope wrote to Edward, claiming Scotland as a 
 papal fief, and commanding him to leave the country. This 
 letter was entrusted to Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 a convinced partisan of ecclesiastical authority. After a trying 
 journey (for Winchelsea was a stout elderly man, and the 
 Scots were hovering about) the Archbishop found the King at 
 Sweetheart Abbey, and delivered his message. Edward said 
 he would consult his barons before replying. In 1801 the 
 English Parliament sent a polite but stiff reply : they declined 
 to admit the Pope's right to interfere in temporal affairs. On 
 this might have followed the thunders of the Church ; but 
 Boniface had to consider his position. Edward of England 
 and Philip of France were both strong men ; both were con- 
 vinced that the royal power extended over the national Church ; 
 both had the support of powerful bishops. Philip was the nearer 
 and more formidable enemy of the two. Boniface listened to 
 Edward's arguments, and in 1802 he wrote to the Scottish
 
 THE FOUETEENTH CENTUEY 63 
 
 bishops, denouncing in the strongest language those wicked 
 men who would not submit to the King of England. His 
 quarrel with the King of France went on until at last Philip 
 sent a French lawyer to Anagni to put the Pope under arrest ; 
 in the dispute which ensued Colonna struck the aged pontiff 
 in the face. 
 
 In 1305 Edward gained a conspicuous victory, for in August 
 of that year Wallace was brought, a prisoner, to London, tried, 
 after a fashion, in Westminster Hall, and hanged at Smithfield. 
 It remained to be seen whether Bruce or Comyn could lead the 
 party of independence. Neither was quite trustworthy ; 
 neither trusted the other. 
 
 By this time the unlucky Boniface was dead ; the short 
 reign of Benedict XI had run its course ; Bertrand de Goth, 
 a French vassal of King Edward, had been elected pope, and 
 had taken the name of Clement V. 
 
 In February 1306 Bruce and Comyn met at the church of 
 the grey friars in Dumfries. As they talked in the cloister 
 Bruce suddenly drew his sword and struck his rival down. 
 The friars carried the wounded man to a place where they 
 could tend him and hear his confession ; Bruce's men dragged 
 him back to the church and killed him on the altar steps. 
 His uncle, Sir Eobert Comyn, was killed at the same time. 
 
 There was no escape for Bruce unless in a bold and apparently 
 hopeless revolt. In April he was proclaimed King at Scone ; 
 Lamberton of St. Andrews placed the crown on his head, and 
 Wishart of Glasgow lent some of his episcopal robes that the 
 new King might make a good appearance. 
 
 Edward swore by God and the swan that he would punish 
 the crime of Dumfries ; the war against the heathen Scot 
 assumed the aspect of a crusade. On Passion Sunday 1307, 
 Bruce and his adherents were excommunicated by a cardinal 
 in the cathedral church of Carlisle. But in July of that year 
 the English king lay dying, and his work passed into the 
 incapable hands of his son. 
 
 Every Scotsman knows how hard was the school in which 
 Bruce learned discipline, and how well he mastered his lesson. 
 
 The French king had induced Clement to fix his residence at
 
 64 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Avignon, and there the papal court remained for about seventy 
 years. Clement was needed to sit in judgment on the enor- 
 mities of the Knights of the Temple. Whether and how far the 
 charges against them were proved is a question open to debate ; 
 but it was the wealth of the Templars which caused Philip to 
 take action against them. In Scotland they had owned, at 
 one time or another, about fifteen houses. Lamberton, who 
 had a strange talent for standing in with all parties, was com- 
 missioned by the Pope to hold an inquiry, and the property 
 of the Templars was given to the Knights of St. John. 
 
 After Bannockburn (1814) the papal court made some 
 attempt to secure peace. In 1816 there was a new Pope, 
 John XXII, a busy little man, not loved by all his flock. Two 
 of his cardinals, Gaucelin and Luke, were deputed to make 
 peace on the Scottish border. They came as far as Durham 
 and there they paused ; for in the letters they bore Edward II 
 was described as king, while Bruce was only ' a noble person, 
 presently governing Scotland '. It was known that King 
 Robert would not receive a letter so addressed ; the Bishop 
 of Corbeil made the experiment, and the letter was declined. 
 Adam Newton, Warden of the Franciscan house at Berwick, 
 went to Bruce's camp and proclaimed a two years' truce ; but 
 this was a waste of words ; Bruce could not disarm until his 
 right was acknowledged. Once more King Robert and his men 
 were excommunicated, but they only set themselves to explain 
 matters to the Holy See. In 1320 the King and Parliament 
 set forth in moving terms their grievance against England and 
 their desire to be independent. This letter was carried to 
 Avignon by Sir Adam Gordon, and it produced some effect. 
 For his many services to King Robert, Sir Adam was rewarded 
 with the lordship of Strathbogie ; . thus the house of Gordon 
 was transplanted from the border to the north. 
 
 In 1828 Sir Thomas Randolph persuaded Pope John to give 
 the King his title. We cannot suppose that the Pope had much 
 time to bestow on Scotland : he was already in the thick of his 
 famous battle with the grey friars. The keenest brain of 
 Europe was that of the English Franciscan, William of Occam, 
 and William was pressing home an argument which would,
 
 THE FOUBTEENTH CENTUEY 65 
 
 as John shrewdly perceived, bring a great part of the papal 
 system to the ground. 
 
 In 1328 there was peace with England, sealed by the marriage 
 of David Bruce with Joan, sister of Edward III : the bride- 
 groom was four, and the bride about the same age. King 
 Eobert was not present at the ceremony, for he was a leper ; 
 he met the wedded pair at Edinburgh, and then went away 
 to Cardross, to linger out a few more months of suffering. He 
 had never been able to join the crusade, as he hoped to do ; 
 he asked Sir James Douglas to carry his heart to the Holy 
 Land. Douglas did his best, but he died fighting against the 
 Moors in Spain ; the king's heart was brought back and buried 
 at Melrose. 
 
 David II began to reign at the age of five, and he reigned 
 more than forty years, but he did very little. During his 
 boyhood he was an exile in France ; eleven years of his man- 
 hood were spent in captivity in England. On Joan's death 
 David married Margaret Drummond, widow of Sir John Logie, 
 but the marriage ended in a divorce. The lady went to Avignon, 
 and the Pope was ready to decide in her favour, but she died 
 before returning to Scotland : of the merits of this dispute we 
 have no certain information. On David's death he was succeeded 
 by Eobert, son of Walter the Steward and Marjory Bruce : he 
 again was succeeded by his son John, who dropped his unlucky 
 Christian name and became Eobert III. This last Eobert was 
 a sincerely religious man, but not a strong king, and his brothers 
 set the example of contempt for the royal authority. The 
 Duke of Albany was the type of the lawless nobility ; the 
 Earl of Buchan, known as the Wolf of Badenoch, was the 
 terror of the north : his most notable exploit was the burning 
 of Elgin Cathedral, but for this he did penance and received 
 absolution. At the close of the fourteenth century a patriotic 
 Scotsman might have doubted whether independence had been, 
 on the whole, a blessing or a curse : but no patriotic Scotsman 
 wanted to give in. 
 
 During the latter half of the fourteenth century the English 
 Parliament was engaged in the endeavour to curb the royal 
 power, to check the extravagance of the court, to assert the 
 
 F
 
 66 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 supremacy of the law : their success is proved by the tragic 
 failure of Richard II. They were also bent on excluding papal 
 interference, and they had good reason for acting as they did. 
 The Avignon popes were not conspicuously worse than their 
 predecessors ; even the unpopular John, though a bad ruler, 
 was not a bad man. But the system which they administered 
 was going from bad to worse ; the extortions of papal officials 
 were more than any nation could bear, and the temporary 
 capital of the papacy became notorious as a centre of luxury 
 and vice. It was time for the Parliament to say, and they said 
 with emphasis, that England was not a papal fief ; that they 
 would pay no feudal tribute ; that cases which could be tried 
 in English courts were not to be withdrawn elsewhither by 
 papal orders. 
 
 The debates of Parliament drew into the field of politics 
 a man whose influence was deeply felt, both in England and in 
 Scotland. John Wyclif, a Yorkshireman, had found a sub- 
 sistence and a career at Oxford ; was Master of John Baliol's 
 college there, well known in the University as a teacher and 
 disputant. He had studied the writings of William of Occam, 
 and had meditated earnestly on the theory of government in 
 Church and State. His conclusions were those of his Franciscan 
 masters : he found the root of all existing abuses in the wealth 
 and political power of the clergy. Strong measures of reform 
 were needed, and for these he looked first to the royal govern- 
 ment, which could punish the delinquent clergy by taking 
 away their revenues. At the same time he laboured to build 
 up a purer Church by bringing the gospel to the common 
 people in their own language. Like many reformers Wyclif 
 did not foresee the application that would be made of his 
 teaching. His doctrine of poverty was welcome to greedy 
 nobles, already quite willing to plunder the Church ; and his 
 strictures on the misuse of wealth, expounded to peasants in 
 the vernacular, stirred up a vague socialistic movement and 
 ultimately led to acts of violence. 
 
 In the year 1877 Wyclif was twice summoned by the 
 authorities to answer for his opinions. He had powerful 
 friends, and might have escaped further notice, but at this
 
 THE FOUETEENTH CENTURY 67 
 
 juncture the Western Church was rent by a schism which gave 
 a new significance to the antipapal theories of the friars. 
 
 There had always been many good Catholics who lamented 
 the transfer of St. Peter's chair to Avignon ; the popes them- 
 selves cherished the hope of returning to Rome. Moved by 
 the passionate pleading of Catherine of Siena, Gregory XI 
 went to Rome, to fix his residence there, and at Rome he died 
 in 1378. The town guard was turned out to prevent the cardinals 
 from leaving the city, and the people demanded a Roman pope. 
 The cardinals chose, not a Roman, but still an Italian, the 
 Archbishop of Bari, supposed to be a quiet inoffensive man ; 
 he took the name of Urban VI. Once installed in power, the 
 new Pope became so overbearing that the cardinals revolted ; 
 they slipped away from Rome to safer towns, and at last 
 announced that the election of Urban had been made under 
 compulsion, and that they had freely chosen one of their 
 number, Robert of Geneva, who was proclaimed by the name 
 of Clement VII. There were now two popes in the field, Urban 
 at Rome, and Clement at Avignon, both claiming the obedience 
 and the money of the faithful, and both prepared to excom- 
 municate those who refused. 
 
 Wyclif was not deeply interested in the schism ; he compared 
 the rival pontiffs to dogs quarrelling over a bone ; but the 
 miserable results of disunion gave him an impulse in the anti- 
 papal direction. He had long been studying the doctrine of 
 the Eucharist, and he saw reason to think that the simple 
 Communion Service on which the Mass was founded had been 
 overlaid with superstitions, and that the forms of speech used 
 by ignorant laymen and equally ignorant priests gave expres- 
 sion to a crudely materialist view of the sacrament. In 1380 
 Wyclif published his own theory of the Eucharist, which was 
 intended to preserve the belief in the real presence of Christ 
 in the sacrament, and at the same time to exclude superstition. 
 In 1382 he completed the greatest undertaking of his life ; to 
 him, and to his company of scholars, the English people are 
 indebted for the first translation of the whole Bible into their 
 own tongue. The rapid multiplication of manuscript copies 
 showed how wisely Wyclif had discerned the needs of his time. 
 
 F2
 
 68 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 This book exercised a very important influence on the history 
 of Scotland. If the two kingdoms were ever to be one, it 
 was necessary, first of all, that they should understand one 
 another ; but if any Edward or Henry had forced us to speak 
 his language, we should have hated it, and our colleges might 
 even now be standing out for ' compulsory Scots '. We took 
 a long step forward when Scotsmen began to read and speak 
 English, because they wished to study the Word of God. 
 
 When Wyclif died, in 1884, his work was done. He had 
 made a deep impression on many minds, and his ' poor priests ' 
 with their simple sermons had revived religion among the 
 people. In quiet corners men came together to pray and read 
 without the elaborate forms of the established Church. Their 
 enemies called them Lollards the name is probably connected 
 with the ' lolling ' or singing of psalms and hymns . Their opinions 
 combined fidelity to the Evangel as they knew it with the 
 abstract radicalism often associated, in later times, with non- 
 conformity. They objected to war, and petitioned for the 
 suppression of armourers, who made weapons of destruction, 
 and goldsmiths, who lent money to belligerent princes. They 
 believed the worst that was said of monks and nuns, and they 
 advocated sweeping measures of disendowment. From the 
 episcopal point of view they were plainly heretics and dis- 
 orderly persons, to be visited with all the rigour of the law. 
 
 In the great affair of the schism, the nations took sides in 
 strict pursuance of their own interests. Italy and Germany 
 adhered to Rome ; France naturally preferred Avignon. 
 England went against France ; Scotland went with her old 
 ally and against her old neighbour and enemy. At the close 
 of the century, the Eoman pope was Boniface IX ; the Avignon 
 pope was Benedict XIII, an accomplished old Spaniard, who 
 met every suggestion of compromise with endless resource and 
 inflexible obstinacy. Our adherence to Avignon was not 
 wholly unrewarded ; the first cardinal's hat that came to 
 Scotland was sent by Clement VII to Walter Wardlaw, Bishop 
 of Glasgow, in 1385. We have never had a pope, or even an 
 antipope, of our own ; but the list is not yet closed.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY 
 
 HENRY WARDLAW, nephew of the cardinal, may be taken 
 as a good type of the more cultured prelates of this age. He 
 became a prebendary while he was still a schoolboy : if we 
 cannot approve the lax rules which made this possible, we must 
 admit that this early preferment enabled a promising scholar 
 to complete his studies at Oxford and Paris, and to commend 
 himself to the papal court at Avignon. In 1403 Benedict XIII 
 made him Bishop of St. Andrews : his episcopate was a long 
 one, and during the whole of it he served his country well, by 
 helping to maintain law and order, and still more by turning 
 the mind of Scotland to ideals higher than those of the feudal 
 nobility. 
 
 The declining years of Eobert III were full of sorrow. His 
 elder son, the Duke of Kothesay, was done to death ; the 
 younger, James, was in danger of the same fate. For his 
 safety and good upbringing the King placed him with the new 
 Bishop at St. Andrews, and there the Prince James made some 
 progress in the studies which were the foundation of his literary 
 fame. For his further education the boy was sent to France ; 
 but a ship put out from Cley in Norfolk, and the prince was 
 carried captive to England, where he was detained during 
 nineteen long years. When King Robert heard that his son 
 was a prisoner, he turned his face to the wall and died. 
 
 Albany, who assumed the regency, professed himself a 
 constant Catholic, and the clergy relied on his support against 
 all heretics. For some time past, the states of Europe had 
 been enacting penalties against those who disturbed the unity 
 of Christendom by teaching new doctrines. Catholic historians 
 are careful to point out that it was the State, not the 
 Church, which prescribed death by fire as the punishment of 
 error ; but if the argument is meant to relieve the clergy of
 
 70 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 responsibility, it is obviously insufficient. The laws under 
 which heretics were burned were passed at the instance of 
 the bishops. 
 
 John Eesby, an English priest, was found in Scotland, 
 disseminating Lollard opinions ; he was taken before a council 
 of the clergy, and Lawrence, Abbot of Lindores, presented no 
 less than forty charges against him. The two articles which 
 Bower thinks worthy of mention are these : Resby denied that 
 the Pope was Vicar of Christ ; considering that Innocent III 
 had been the first to claim this title, a Christian man should 
 not have been counted worthy of death for hesitating to assent 
 to it. Again, Resby said that no man was truly pope unless 
 he was holy. This is one of the dangerous points in Wyclif's 
 teaching : dangerous because it raises a practical question of 
 great difficulty. Who is to decide whether a person in authority 
 is or is not in a state of grace ? Lollards and Protestants 
 undertook to decide such questions for themselves, and we 
 cannot be sure that they always decided rightly. 
 
 Sir D. Hunter Blair blames Resby for his ' obstinacy in 
 refusing to be convinced '. This poor man believed that he 
 had attained to some knowledge of the truth ; he could not give 
 up his convictions merely because an eloquent abbot told him 
 he was wrong. He was burned, he and his writings, at Perth 
 in 1407. 
 
 In 1410 Henry Wardlaw began to carry out his admirable 
 scheme for the formation of a studium generate at St. Andrews. 
 Teachers were appointed in philosophy, theology, and canon law, 
 and students were not wanting ; but the University needed 
 papal confirmation. Our Pope, Benedict XIII, was so beset 
 by his enemies that he had retired to his castle of Peniscola 
 in Aragon. Henry Ogilvie was the bearer of Wardlaw's 
 petition ; and he returned in 1414 with the necessary bulls. 
 They were received with great rejoicings, and our first national 
 university was now fully armed for the conflict with ignorance 
 and heresy. In 1416 all Masters of Arts were required to 
 swear that they would oppose Lollards and other adversaries 
 of the truth.* 
 
 The first half of the fifteenth century is called the conciliar
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY 71 
 
 period, because it witnessed several honest but not wholly 
 successful attempts to reform the Western Church by the aid 
 of general councils. In 1409 a number of cardinals met at Pisa, 
 deposed the rival pontiffs, and elected a pope of their own, 
 who is known as Alexander V ; when he died he was succeeded 
 by John XXIII. The only immediate result of this Council 
 was, that there were three popes in the field instead of two. 
 There was a general desire for another Council, so strong in 
 the support of temporal princes that the three competitors 
 would be constrained to accept its decisions : and Sigismund, 
 the new head of the Holy Roman Empire, was more than 
 willing to be the peacemaker of Europe. In November 1414 
 the roads leading to Constance were thronged with parties of 
 churchmen and laymen, hastening to assist, as combatants or 
 spectators, in settling the momentous questions at issue. 
 
 The proceedings of the Council hardty belong to our present 
 subject, and the results may be briefly described. The Council 
 asserted its position as a body representing the Universal 
 Church, a body to which even the Pope must submit : but 
 good papalists prefer to read this as meaning only that the 
 existing popes, to put an end to the existing schism, agreed to 
 vest full powers in this particular council. 
 
 Something was done to safeguard the doctrine of the Church. 
 Wyclif was condemned ; by order of the assembled fathers 
 his remains were exhumed and thrown into the Eiver Swift. 
 John Hus, the Bohemian reformer, had come to Constance with 
 a safeguard from Sigismund ; he was tried, condemned, and 
 burned ; the Emperor refusing to intervene. Innocent III 
 had laid it down for law that ' no faith is to be kept with those 
 who keep not faith with God '. 
 
 Attention was called to certain abuses : in particular it was 
 agreed that religious houses in Germany where the Scots had 
 offices and bursaries should be visited. In the event, some of 
 these houses were suppressed and some were handed over to 
 Germans. 
 
 After much argument and negotiation, the Council deposed 
 the three claimants, and elected Otto Colonna ; this was on 
 Martinmas day 1417, and the new Pope took the name of
 
 72 
 
 Martin V. A deputation was sent to bring the Scottish Church 
 into line ; the University of St. Andrews accepted the decision 
 of Constance ; and in a Provincial Council held at Perth in 
 1418 the University champions (John Eldow, the rector, and 
 John Fogo, monk of Melrose) were entirely successful. Benedict 
 still had many adherents in Scotland, but his claim died with 
 himself in 1424, and the nation acquiesced in the settlement, 
 although the same pope was now to be acknowledged on both 
 sides of the Border. 
 
 The years spent by King James as a prisoner in England 
 were not wasted. He was kindly treated, and he had the oppor- 
 tunity to perfect himself in knightly exercises, to acquire a fine 
 sense of what was best in English poetry, and to take lessons 
 in statesmanship from two popular kings. In the spring of 
 1424 he obtained his liberty ; he kept Easter at Edinburgh, 
 and in May he and his English consort were crowned at Scone. 
 
 Of all our kings none had a stronger claim to the respect of 
 his people. In dealing with wrong-doers, or with men dangerous 
 to the commonwealth, James was firm and even ruthless ; but 
 his worst severities were meted out to those who made a bad 
 use of power. As a Catholic prince, he defended orthodoxy ; 
 in his first Parliament the bishops were directed to make 
 inquisition for Lollards and heretics. But he would not tolerate 
 abuses ; he wrote to the superiors of the Benedictine and 
 Augustinian orders, advising and commanding the religious to 
 be more strict in observing their rules. In 1427 the Parliament 
 and the Provincial Council sat concurrently at Perth. The 
 Parliament directed that measures should be taken to expedite 
 the trial of cases in the ecclesiastical courts. This was regarded 
 as an attack on spiritual independence, and John Cameron, 
 Bishop of Glasgow, was cited to Home, to answer for his failure 
 to assert the rights of the Church. Croyser, Archdeacon of 
 Teviotdale, served the citation, and hurried back to Rome ; 
 he was tried, in his absence, by a special court, and deprived 
 of his oenefices. The king forbade Cameron to leave the country, 
 but he was evidently unwilling to risk an open conflict with 
 the Pope. 
 
 Another General Council should have been summoned in
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY 73 
 
 1423, but there were various reasons for postponements ; 
 it was only in 1431 that the Council was proclaimed ; before 
 it met, Martin V died and was succeeded by Eugenius IV. 
 Among the fathers assembled at Basel, our Scottish deputies 
 had their own place ; there were present the Bishops of Glasgow 
 and Brechin ; our most active debater was Thomas Livingstone, 
 Abbot of Dundrennan. The bishops of the northern nations 
 were bent on correcting the abuses of Eoman officialism, but 
 in this matter they were not supported by the Pope. Eugenius 
 had set his heart on persuading the Churches of the East to 
 acknowledge the primacy of Eome ; he wanted an Italian 
 Council, under his own influence ; he was not eager to accept 
 reforms which would make him intensely unpopular with his 
 own secretariat. 
 
 While the Council debated, the authorities in Scotland were 
 upholding the law of their Church, as they understood it. 
 Paul Crawar, a Bohemian, was brought to trial, charged with 
 disseminating the doctrines of Hus. The indictment was long 
 and varied ; how much of it was proved we do not know. 
 The procedure in criminal trials was at that time harsh and 
 unfair, and in Church courts the prevailing fear of being thought 
 unorthodox prevented the judges from giving the accused any 
 chance of escape. Crawar was burned at Perth in July 1433. 
 In 1435 Scotland received a distinguished guest. Aeneas 
 Sylvius Piccolomini was at this time a layman ; his mission 
 was diplomatic, and his visit would hardly have been mentioned 
 here but for the fact that he took orders and rose to be pope 
 under the name of Pius II. 
 
 The Pope annulled, or tried to annul, the proceedings 
 against his emissary Croyser ; the dispute lingered on for some 
 years, but before a final compromise was effected the King 
 was beyond the reach of papal citations. In 1437 he went to 
 keep Christmas in the Dominican convent at Perth ; on the 
 20th February following, his enemies broke in and slew him. 
 None of our kings has left a more kingly record ; he was, we 
 may truly say, a Christian prince, and he gave the best proof 
 of his faith by living a clean and honourable life. 
 
 The heir-apparent, a child of six, was at Edinburgh, and it
 
 74 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 was not safe to take him to Scone ; so James II was crowned 
 at Holyrood. During his boyish years the young king had to 
 rely on his mother, Jane Beaufort, and on Kennedy, Bishop of 
 Dunkeld, a grandson of Robert III, and a faithful servant of 
 the Church and State in which his lot was cast. 
 
 In the autumn of 1437 Pope Eugenius intimated that the 
 Council, still sitting at Basel, was removed to Ferrara. The 
 reforming party sat on where they were ; after a time they 
 even elected an anti-pope ; but the election they made was not 
 a good one, and even in their own countries they began to lose 
 authority. 
 
 In 1439 the Council was moved to Florence, and there it 
 remained about three years. The chief subject of discussion 
 was the proposed terms of reunion with the Eastern Church 
 The Greek bishops were compliant, so long as they were in 
 Italy ; the Emperor needed the help of Western Europe 
 against the Turk ; when they returned to their homes they 
 put on their old opinions and declined to make any concession 
 to Rome. With the Armenians Eugenius had some success ; 
 he drew up for their benefit an instruction, explaining and 
 defending the Seven Sacraments of the Roman Church. 
 
 Kennedy, Bishop of Dunkeld, was attending the Council 
 when, in the spring of 1440, he heard that the good Wardlaw 
 was dead, and that he was himself designated for the see of 
 St. Andrews. He hoped Eugenius would empower him to 
 undertake substantial reforms ; but the Pope, though his own 
 life was blameless, was not a reformer. England, France, and 
 Germany were eager to deal with flagrant abuses, but those 
 were just the countries in which the national principle had 
 prevailed over papalism ; also they were inhabited by men 
 who had plenty of fighting at home, and did not wish to go 
 hundreds of miles to fight the Turk. Eugenius was a man of 
 many disappointments. 
 
 Bishop Kennedy was installed at St. Andrews in 1441 ; in 
 1447 he received a coadjutor, and a not unworthy rival, 
 when William Turnbull became Bishop of Glasgow. A few 
 years later, Turnbull obtained from Nicholas V the bull for 
 a new university, in which teachers and students were to enjoy
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 75 
 
 privileges equal to those of Bologna. It was long before our 
 places of learning could claim full equality with tire wealthier 
 foundations of England and the continent ; but, rough as they 
 sometimes were, they brought us the promise of a better time. 
 
 James II was a less brilliant king than his father, but he 
 was a well-meaning king ; the Parliaments of his reign did 
 something to improve the government of the country ; neither 
 King nor Parliament was strong enough to stop the perpetual 
 fighting among nobles and chiefs. The Queen, Mary of 
 Gueldres, was a pious lady who brought us nothing but good 
 when she adopted Scotland for her home. 
 
 In the Parliament of 1450 eight bishops knelt before the 
 King to ask him to surrender his claim to seize the whole 
 movable property of a bishop on his death. The King granted 
 the request, but he retained the right to draw the revenues of 
 a vacant see ; and this prerogative was the source of many 
 disorders ; it gave the King a pretext for leaving one diocese 
 after another without a head, and for obstructing the chapters 
 when they tried to exercise their right of election. 
 
 Among the important events of this reign must be mentioned 
 the arrival of the Dutch friars, as they were called : small 
 companies of the Observant Franciscans, who followed the 
 strict rule of their founder, without any of the relaxations 
 permitted by successive popes and accepted by the conventual 
 members of the order. James I had heard a good account of 
 the Observants, and had invited them to Scotland, but it was 
 only in 1447 that Cornelius of Zieriksee and six of his brethren 
 arrived in Edinburgh. Funds had been raised to provide 
 them with a handsome dwelling, but Cornelius refused to 
 occupy it, and the brethren found a humbler habitaculum else- 
 where, until Bishop Kennedy overcame their scruples by 
 obtaining a direct order from the Pope. They secured a con- 
 venient piece of land on the south side of the town, beyond 
 the old city wall ; there the Greyfriars' church was built, and 
 the adjoining churchyard laid out. 
 
 In 1460 James II was killed, accidentally, when besieging 
 Roxburgh ; a few days later, Mary of Gueldres brought her 
 little boy into the royal camp, and James III was crowned
 
 76 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 
 
 in the abbey church of Kelso. For a few years longer Kennedy 
 continued to guide the affairs of Scotland ; in 1*465 he died, 
 and his bishopric passed to his half-brother Patrick Graham, 
 but almost immediately the new bishop retired to the papal 
 court for safety ; he was not on good terms with the great 
 house of Boyd. Returning for a time to Scotland, he took 
 up the duties of his see, and presided at a Council held at 
 Perth in 1470 ; in the following year his friend Cardinal Delia 
 Rovere was elected Pope, and took the title of Sixtus IV. 
 Once more Bishop Graham went to Rome, and in 1472 he 
 obtained the necessary bulls for making St. Andrews a metro- 
 politan see, with jurisdiction over twelve dioceses, including 
 three taken from other metropolitans ; for Galloway was still 
 a suffragan of York ; while the Isles and Orkney were supposed 
 to be subject to Trondhjem in Norway. 
 
 The Archbishop may have thought that every Scotsman 
 would be glad to see the national church consolidated, and the 
 claim of York thus finally excluded. But the bishops were 
 dissatisfied and jealous ; the King said he had not been con-, 
 suited ; the new primate found himself surrounded with 
 enemies. His most active opponent was the Archdeacon of 
 St. Andrews, William Scheves, an Aberdonian cleric, skilled 
 in astrology, who had obtained an ascendancy over the unstable 
 mind of the King. Before long the Archbishop was assailed 
 with serious charges heresy, simony, maladministration : so 
 varied is the list of his imputed crimes that some writers have 
 suggested that he was mad. while others regard him as a 
 precursor of the Reformation. The simplest theory is that all 
 these accusations proceeded from the fertile brain of Scheves, 
 archdeacon and astrologer, who wanted to be primate. In 
 1478 Patrick Graham died in prison at Lochleven, and Scheves 
 had the pallium and the cross. Graham had been condemned 
 twice by the Pope, but in the last quarter of the fifteenth 
 century the judgment of the Holy See was usually an affair 
 of money. Sixtus IV had begun life as a Franciscan friar, and 
 he retained the virtues of his order, but his policy was directed 
 to worldly ends. 
 
 We may trace the influence of Scheves, or of some equally
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUEY 77 
 
 unsafe adviser, in the events of 1479. The King's brothers 
 were in league with those who opposed his government, and 
 James thought it necessary to put his brother Mar under arrest. 
 Eebellion was the substance of the charge, but Mar and his 
 confederates were also charged with witchcraft ; they were 
 said to have melted a wax image of the King. There was about 
 this time a revival of an old superstition. Innocent VIII issued 
 a bull against witches in 1484. For two centuries and more the 
 mind of Scotland was darkened by this miserable superstition. 
 
 So far as we can credit James III with a consistent policy, 
 we perceive that he was trying to follow in the steps of his 
 father and grandfather. His preference for the society of 
 low-born men indicates only that his tastes were artistic ; he 
 did not care to live with gentlemen who could only talk of hunt- 
 ing and war. The Queen, Margaret of Denmark, is to be remem- 
 bered, not only because she brought us Orkney and Shetland, 
 but also because her piety commanded the reverence of her 
 people. On her death in 1486 the Pope appointed a commission 
 to investigate her claims to canonization ; but the matter 
 went no further ; it is likely enough that our agents at Eome 
 were not furnished with an adequate supply of money ; for 
 the King was hard pressed by disobedient subjects, and the 
 heir-apparent was in the rebel camp. On a June day in 1488 
 the King rode off the fatal field of Sauchie ; he was or thought 
 himself dying and asked for a priest. A rebel soldier promised 
 him a ' short shrift ' and drove a sword through his body ; 
 so James III died, and James IV reigne'd in his stead. The 
 new king, a boy of fifteen, entered at once on his royal duties 
 and performed them with a fair measure of success. His life 
 was careless and selfish, and he thought to set himself right 
 with heaven by visiting the shrines of his favourite saints. 
 With a touch of ostentation, he wore an iron belt, to remind 
 him of his share in the guilt of his father's death. 
 
 Of the prelates who served both father and son the most 
 notable was William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, an 
 eminent anon lawyer and a good administrator, who repaired 
 and beautified his cathedral church, and gave it a famous peal 
 of bells.
 
 78 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Blackader, Bishop of Glasgow, was an acthie, energetic man, 
 bent on raising his see to an equality with St. Andrews. In 
 1489 he obtained the approval of Parliament, but Scheves, 
 who was both primate and legatus natus, was able to delay the 
 project for a time. In 1492 Innocent VIII issued the necessary 
 bull ; Blackader had his cross carried before him ; but he was 
 still without the pallium, the woollen scarf which was the 
 symbol of jurisdiction ; the two archbishops continued to 
 quarrel, and the matter was again referred to the Pope. The 
 sees made subject to the new Archbishop were those of Dunkeld, 
 Dunblane, Argyle, and Galloway. 
 
 In 1494 Blackader was alarmed to find that Lollard opinions 
 were making progress in Kyle ; he sent forward some thirty 
 of the worst offenders to be dealt with by the King in Council. 
 They were accused of disparaging the worship of images and 
 relics ; of denying that Christ ordained priests to consecrate ; 
 of asserting that every faithful man and woman is a priest. 
 To these and other heresies, they seem to have added some 
 odd political notions, derived from the writings of Wyclif or 
 his disciples ; they thought it wrong to fight in defence of the 
 faith, and they held that Christ at His coming abrogated the 
 power of secular princes. The Council gave them a fair hearing, 
 and they were duly admonished, but the matter was carried no 
 further. It is likely that some of the thirty were friendly with 
 the King, and it may be that the Archbishop did not press for 
 punishment. 
 
 In the year of this trial Elphinstone obtained from Alex- 
 ander VI (an unedifying Pope, but a very capable man) a bull 
 empowering him to found a university at Aberdeen ; the 
 bull was followed by a royal charter ; hence the name of 
 King's College. Taught by the experience of the older univer- 
 sities, Elphinstone made careful provision for the main- 
 tenance, of teachers and scholars ; from the outset his founda- 
 tion acquired a potent influence in the north country. His 
 first principal was Hector Boece, one of a notable band of young 
 Scotsmen who completed their studies at Paris, about the time 
 when Erasmus was a student there. According to his own 
 account, Erasmus brought away from the College de Montaigu
 
 THE FIFTEENTH CENTUBY 79 
 
 only the ailments due to bad food and a plentiful supply of 
 vermin. Boece and his friends no doubt endured the parasitic 
 and other inconveniences of the place, but they brought home 
 a stock of sound scholarship, and enough theology and canon 
 law to furnish them with the weapons which they wielded with 
 effect in the momentous conflicts of the sixteenth century. 
 History was not then a subject taught in universities ; but 
 Boece spent much of his time in turning over the manuscript 
 collections of Bishop Elphinstone ; from these materials he 
 compiled his history of Scotland. The book contains a good 
 many fables and absurdities, but it is of great value, because 
 it gives us a glimpse into the mind of educated Scotland, in 
 the period just preceding the Eeformation. 
 
 Archbishop Scheves died in 1497 ; the King gave the title 
 and revenues of St. Andrews to his brother the Duke of Boss, 
 a young man of twenty-one ; Alexander VI kindly dispensed 
 with the requirements of the canon law. So far as we can 
 ascertain, the new primate was never consecrated ; he held 
 his titular office only a few years.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 AT the opening of the sixteenth century, the Western Church 
 was greatly in need of reform. Her wisest teachers and her 
 most loyal members acknowledged that plainly enough. But 
 the Reformation, when it came, was a disappointment ; instead 
 of a combined effort we see only a series of local revolutions, 
 and the reformed Churches quarrelled fiercely, not only with 
 Rome, but with one another. 
 
 Before the fifteenth century closed, King James had made 
 peace with England ; Blackader, Forman, and other clerical 
 diplomatists were making arrangements for a marriage between 
 the King of Scots and Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. 
 About midsummer 1508 the young princess (she was only 
 fourteen) set out for Scotland with a splendid cavalcade ; 
 the King met her on the Border, and the marriage was duly 
 solemnized at Holyrood. The wedding ode was written by 
 William Dunbar, who had worn the grey gown of St. Francis, 
 and had preached with acceptance through England, and as 
 far south as Picardy. He was now the King's poet, with 
 a pension and the hope of a benefice ; he even dreamed that 
 he might go comfortably to heaven in a bishop's weed ; but 
 the King liked to have his laureate near him, and the Queen 
 found that Dunbar's poetry and wit lightened the tedium of 
 her exile. 
 
 In the year of this auspicious marriage, the King's brother 
 died : James gave the archbishopric of St. Andrews to his 
 illegitimate son, Alexander Stewart, a lad of sixteen whose 
 early promise gained him the kindly praise of Erasmus. 
 
 In 1507 Bishop Elphinstone added to the long list of his 
 public services by obtaining privileges for Chapman and 
 My liar, the first printers who came to Edinburgh. A volume 
 of Dunbar's poems was issued from their press, and in 1509
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 81 
 
 they published the Aberdeen Breviary, compiled and revised 
 by the Bishop himself. Until the Council of Trent, every 
 bishop was permitted to provide his clergy with their breviary 
 the book which contains the prayers, passages of Scripture, and 
 incidents from lives of the saints which were to be read on 
 each day of the ecclesiastical year. Thus on St. Serf's day 
 (2nd July) Elphinstone gives us the affecting story of a thief 
 who killed and ate a sheep belonging to the monks. This evil 
 man went to the saint and denied his guilt with an oath : 
 whereupon the sheep baaed loudly in his stomach ; the robber 
 fell prostrate and confessed his crime. All this, and more of 
 the same kind, the good Bishop believed ; but when we read 
 the devotional parts of his book, and compare them with his 
 life, we cannot doubt that he was a true follower of Christ. 
 The ' sweet name of Jesus ' was never absent from his thoughts ; 
 he lived plainly, that he might set an example and help good 
 causes ; he did his best to guide his royal master into the path 
 of peace. 
 
 On the 21st April 1509 Henry VII died ; Queen Margaret's 
 brother became Henry VIII. He was just eighteen, handsome, 
 accomplished, and popular. A few weeks after his accession 
 he married the Princess Katherine of Aragon, a pious, high- 
 minded lady, a well-instructed Catholic, and a devoted student 
 of the Bible. 
 
 England's new king was determined to play a great part in 
 the politics of Europe. Henry was drawn into the schemes 
 of his father-in-law King Ferdinand, and he soon began to 
 think of war "with France. He would have carried his brother 
 of Scotland with him, but our ' auld alliance ' with France 
 stood the strain ; Forman, now Bishop of Moray, was arranging 
 the terms of a working agreement with Louis XII ; he received 
 the archbishopric of Bourges as his reward. There are few 
 serious charges against Forman, but his success in accumulating 
 preferments was watched with envious eyes by nobles and 
 churchmen in his own country. 
 
 When Henry went to France, James made his rash and 
 fatal attack on England. The Earl of Surrey was in his 
 seventieth year, but his experience and judgment made him 
 
 a
 
 82 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 more than a match for his enemy ; the disastrous rout at 
 Flodden proved that the King of England could pursue his 
 continental plans, and yet leave an army at home, strong 
 enough to keep the Scots in check. When the good news 
 arrived, Henry wrote to the Pope, asking that the privileges 
 of St. Andrews might be withdrawn, and the Church of Scot- 
 land subjected to the Church of England. Leo X did not 
 comply with this request ; he distrusted the antipapal legisla- 
 tion of England : he recognized that he might at any time 
 need the help of the more orthodox Scots. 
 
 The young Archbishop of St. Andrews fell fighting by his 
 father's side. Shortly before his death he had taken the chief 
 part in founding St. Leonard's College, and this is still the best 
 monument of his short career. 
 
 At his father's death James V was an infant ; once more 
 the country had to go through the trying experience of a long 
 minority. The Queen-Mother Margaret Tudor made haste to 
 marry the Earl of Angus ; Douglases and Hamiltons were 
 constantly at feud ; Albany, who governed in the King's 
 name, found the country beyond his control, and went to 
 France, to wait for better times. For the vacant archbishopric 
 three candidates appeared ; Gawain Douglas, whose works 
 have given him a high place in our literary annals ; Hepburn, 
 Prior of St. Andrews ; and the indispensable Forman ; Leo X 
 decided in favour of Forman, and the new primate began, 
 with good intentions but with little effect, to reform his 
 clergy and to introduce order where* everything was lapsing 
 into chaos. Hepburn was consoled with the bishopric of 
 Moray. 
 
 Scotland was still in a state of division and disorder when 
 Luther gave the signal for revolt against Rome. The date 
 emblazoned on many Protestant banners is 1517, but when 
 Dr. Martin published his ninety-five theses in that year his 
 attitude was that of a reforming Catholic, and in 1518 he 
 addressed Leo X as the Vicar of Christ. Very soon it was 
 evident that the German monk would not be left to stand 
 alone against the papal powers. The Pope, ill-informed and 
 unwise, made the mistake of trying to frighten his adversaries.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 83 
 
 He excommunicated Luther, and in December 1520 Luther 
 burned the Pope's bull, together with some volumes of the 
 Decretals : the forgeries and absurdities of that compilation 
 had been ruthlessly exposed by the scholars of the fifteenth 
 century. The bonfire at Wittenberg was lighted in December 
 1520 ; in the same year Zwingli began his memorable ministry 
 in Ziirich. 
 
 The character and scope of the movement in Germany were 
 determined by the gifts of the man who began it. Luther was, 
 as we know, a man of courage and sincerity, a great popular 
 leader, and a competent theologian : he called Occam his 
 ' dear master ', and knew the works of the Gallican divines 
 by heart. His mode of handling the Bible was in some ways 
 peculiar to himself ; he exercised the freedom of a scholar, 
 while rejecting or disparaging what did not square with his 
 version of the truth ; but he retained the scholastic notion that 
 it was possible to frame a system of doctrine and practice founded 
 on texts. The dangers of this method had been masked for 
 a long time by the imposing unity of the Western Church, but 
 wherever the authority of the Holy See was set aside it became 
 plain that its place would be occupied, not by one scriptural 
 Church, but by many rival Churches. Luther and Zwingli 
 were equally able to read the New Testament ; yet they could 
 not agree as to the meaning of the Eucharist ; the difference 
 between them was, and is, fundamental. 
 
 Luther's hostility to Eome was a deep-seated feeling expressed 
 in unguarded language. At the outset of his quarrel he 
 adhered to the opinion of those who identified the Pope with 
 Antichrist : an identification which modern commentators do 
 not encourage us to accept. And again, founding himself on 
 the scholastic exposition of the Decalogue, he held that false 
 worship, even if addressed to the true God, was idolatry. 
 The Koman Mass was idolatrous, and a Protestant prince who 
 hesitated to suppress it would bring down plagues on himself 
 and his country. This characteristic tenet seems to me both un- 
 necessary and erroneous. It was unnecessary ; for Luther and 
 his friends were in no way commissioned to sit in judgment 
 on the Church of Eome ; they were, of course, bound to 
 
 G2
 
 84 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 withdraw from fellowship with the Koman brother, if they 
 saw that he was ' walking disorderly '. It was erroneous, 
 because it deals in a confident and unqualified manner with 
 a question of real difficulty. The Mass, contains a good deal 
 which Protestants would like to see removed, but it contains 
 also the essentials of a true Communion Service. The denial 
 of the cup to the laity is a fatal mistake ; but the erring 
 Church half acknowledges this tries, at least, to explain 
 it away. It is not our duty to decide how far they are 
 wrong ; to their own Master (who is our Master) they stand 
 or fall. 
 
 The challenge from Wittenberg brought the young King of 
 England into the field with an ably written defence of the 
 Seven Sacraments. Luther said that Henry was an ass and 
 a liar : the controversial manners of the age were bad, and 
 Doctor Martin certainly did nothing to improve them. 
 
 In Scotland there was . as yet little sign of change. The 
 Queen-Mother was not happy with Angus ; a few years after 
 her second marriage she began to think of a divorce. There 
 was constant fighting between Douglases and Hamiltons ; 
 in 1520 they met at Edinburgh in the ignoble battle called 
 Cleanse-the-causeway. James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 
 was there that day, but until the fighting began he disclaimed 
 all knowledge of warlike preparations. To emphasize his 
 denial he struck the breast of his rochet, and the armour 
 beneath gave a tell-tale sound. ' My lord, your conscience 
 clatters,' said Gawain Douglas. The Douglas faction won the 
 day ; Beaton fled to Greyfriars for safety ; he would have 
 been dragged from the altar, but for the intercession of the 
 same Gawain. 
 
 Forman's primacy was uneventful, but he was able, with the 
 aid of his provincial synod, to publish a new body of con- 
 stitutions, reforming the administration of the marriage laws, 
 and repressing he scandals of non-residence and concubinage 
 among the clergy. It is curious to find a council of bachelor! 
 gravely enacting that babies ought to be laid in cradles, lest 
 they should be overlaid by their parents in bed. As a Franco- 
 Scottish prelate, Forraan was rather independent in his rela-
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 85 
 
 tions with the Pope ; this may be one cause of his failure to 
 obtain a cardinal's hat : he is said to have got together 5,000 
 ducats to place his claim properly before the Holy See. 
 
 When Forman died, in 1522, he was succeeded by James 
 Beaton, who brought with him from Glasgow some of the best 
 teachers in the university there, especially John Major, who 
 was at that time an oracle in academic circles. Major was the 
 first critical historian of Scotland, and one of the first to 
 perceive the advantages of a closer union with England : in 
 point of doctrine he was always an orthodox Catholic. George 
 Buchanan, already known as a scholar, came to hear Major, 
 wrote satirical verses about his master, and soon drifted back 
 to Paris. About the same time, Patrick Hamilton, titular 
 Abbot of Fearn, completed his studies abroad, and was admitted 
 at St. Andrews as a Master of Arts. Mr. Patrick was a student 
 of philosophy, eager to be done with the sophistry of the 
 schoolmen and return to Aristotle and Plato. He was also 
 proficient in music, and in every way a valuable recruit : but 
 his tendency to the new opinions caused some anxiety to his 
 seniors. The movement in Germany was beginning to affect 
 our Universities, and our seaborne trade afforded oppor- 
 tunities for the importation of Lutheran books. 
 
 In 1524 the King, now twelve years old, assumed the govern- 
 ment ; but this made little difference ; the Queen-Mother and 
 the nobles went on as before. An English embassy arrived, 
 with instructions to effect a reconciliation between Margaret 
 and Angus, and to make a match between James and Mary 
 Tudor. The schemes of the English party were much hampered 
 by the primate, who kept himself safe in his castle at St. 
 Andrews, and took care not to attend conferences anywhere 
 near the Border. At Yuletide arrived the primate's nephew 
 ' Mr. Davy Beaton ', a capable man of thirty, well qualified 
 to carry on his uncle's work. 
 
 In July of the next year, the King opened Parliament in 
 state. Angus was recognized as his adviser and protector. 
 The spiritual estate was placated with an Act forbidding all 
 persons who arrived in ships to import the works of Luther 
 and his disciples : the penalty was to be forfeiture of ship
 
 86 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 and goods. The Act was easily evaded, and seems to have 
 produced but little effect. 
 
 Queen Margaret's agent at Koine had informed her that 
 ' all would not be contented with 600 ducats ', if her divorce 
 was to be granted. The ducats, or a sufficient number of them, 
 were found ; for the Pope referred the matter to the Cardinal 
 of Ancona, and in March 1527 she was free from Angus : 
 the reasons, if given, are not on record, but the papal courts 
 had long ceased to regard justice or decency in such matters. 
 Henry of England, a strict moralist, admonished his sister most 
 severely, and Wolsey was directed to protest against the 
 ' shameless sentence ' of his brother cardinal. But his sister's 
 divorce may have affected Henry's mind, may have given him 
 an .impulse in the direction of independence. He had already 
 ceased to live with Katherine as his wife, and he was cultivating 
 scruples of conscience. 
 
 At Lent 1527 the authorities at St. Andrews were beginning 
 to be alarmed about heresy. Patrick Hamilton was in some 
 danger ; it was perhaps on a hint from the authorities that he 
 resolved to go abroad again. He went first to Wittenberg, 
 where he saw Luther and Melanchthon ; then to Marburg, 
 where he fell under the influence of Lambert, a well-known 
 evangelical divine. With Lambert's advice, Mr.- Patrick put 
 together a small collection of Places, i. e. commonplaces, short 
 statements of doctrine, such as a student may enter in his 
 notebook. On his return to Scotland, he preached in the 
 neighbourhood of his brother's house at Kincavel ; he married 
 a lady whose name has not been preserved. 
 
 In January 1528 Hamilton was summoned to St. Andrews 
 to answer for his opinions. His first examination passed off 
 well ; for a time he was allowed to expound his views ; his 
 opponents admitted that reforms were urgently needed ; Mr. 
 Patrick himself insisted on his doctrinal positions, but he 
 acknowledged that his practical conclusions were arguable. 
 Unfortunately he followed Luther and the rest in maintaining 
 that the Pope was Antichrist ; this was, no doubt, a point of 
 difficulty. He was put on trial before the primate and his 
 Council on thirteen charges, and on the 29th February all the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 87 
 
 charges were found proven, and the heretic was handed over 
 to the secular arm. The young King was visiting the shrine 
 of St. Duthac at Tain, and in his absence Angus was not likely 
 to intervene on behalf of a Hamilton. As soon as the Council 
 had decided, the warrant for his execution was ready ; being 
 an impenitent heretic, he was burned alive. His youth, his 
 quiet courage, and his attractive personality made a deep 
 impression on the popular mind. A shrewd observer said that 
 the Archbishop should burn his heretics in cellars, for the reek 
 of Mr. Patrick had infected all it blew on. 
 
 In the summer of 1528 James V emancipated himself from 
 the tutelage of Angus, and took the government into his own 
 hands. He asserted his authority against Argyle and other 
 great nobles, and made himself enemies in the process. Henry 
 of England heard with joy that his nephew was in trouble; 
 and expected soon to be crowned in Edinburgh. Time and 
 again his armies had swept the border counties of Scotland, 
 wrecking churches and burning castles ; but perhaps the 
 prize might be won by intrigue. Angus, on his fall from power, 
 went to England and became King Henry's man ; others of 
 the nobility were ready to follow his example. Ministers and 
 laymen who were ' put at ' for reading the Scriptures in English 
 slipped southward across the border, and were safe in England. 
 This does not indicate that Henry had any sympathy with the 
 new opinions ; to the end of his life he insisted rigidly on the 
 distinctive points of Catholic doctrine. But his efforts to be 
 freed from his Spanish wife had involved him in a quarrel 
 with the Pope, and his powerful brain marked out at once the 
 lines of a new policy. Founding himself on the old anti-papal 
 statutes, he declared that the Bishop of Eome had no juris- 
 diction in England ; brought his clergy into direct submission 
 to himself ; made himself, in name and in fact, head of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 The plunder of the old Church had already begun. In 
 Germany the reforming princes had made the religious move- 
 ment an excuse for seizing the revenues of bishoprics and 
 abbeys. They must have watched with sympathy and envy 
 the ruthless campaign of spoliation which now began in England.
 
 88 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 It was in 1529 that the German reformers received the 
 party name by which they have long been known. At the 
 Diet of Spires the Catholic majority did not attempt to undo 
 what had been effected by the evangelical princes, but they 
 wished to stop the further progress of reform. Against this 
 decision the minority protested : hence the name of Protestant. 
 In course of time the word was used, with a certain laxity, to 
 include all the local churches which rejected the papal system. 
 The protest is a very remarkable document, but it has no 
 bearing on the controversy just beginning in Scotland. 
 
 James V condemned his uncle's disobedience to the Pope ; 
 but their political relations were not greatly disturbed. In 
 1581 James received an English embassy ; Lord William 
 Howard was the negotiator, and with him came William 
 Barlow, a pamphleteering clergyman, whose opinions kept 
 pace with those of his king. The project of a marriage between 
 James and the Princess Mary was discussed ; it was not 
 favoured by the Scottish Council might not the princess be 
 tainted with her father's anti-papal errors ? If our statesmen 
 had known of Mary Tudor's loyalty to her mother, Queen 
 Katherine, and to the old Church, the discussion might have 
 taken a different turn. Barlow reported that the Council 
 was ' nothing but the papistical clergy ' : there is truth in the 
 remark, but James had no great choice of advisers. His 
 nobles were in English pay, and his personal favourites were 
 men of inferior abilities. He relied therefore mainly on the 
 Beatons, except where the rights of his crown were concerned. 
 
 The King was planning to centralize the administration of 
 the law, and in 1532 the plan of his new College of Justice was 
 drawn by his old tutor Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow. 
 Of the fourteen judges, seven were to be clergymen, and the 
 Lord President was also to be an ecclesiastic. This preponder- 
 ance was given because the King was determined to charge 
 the expense of the Court on the revenues of the national 
 Church ; the bishops objected to this, but after a lively con- 
 troversy they conceded the demand in a modified form. 
 
 In 1584 there was a kind of peace with England, and in the 
 following year James recognized Anne Boleyn, and was made
 
 89 
 
 a Knight of the Garter. In Scotland the law of the Church 
 took its regular course. Henry Forrest was burned for agreeing 
 with Patrick Hamilton. David Straton, a recalcitrant laird, 
 and Ninian Gourlay, a priest, were also handed over to the 
 secular arm. They were hanged, near the well at Greenside, 
 and their bodies were burned. 
 
 The King resolved to strengthen himself against England by 
 taking a wife from France. David Beaton undertook the 
 mission, performed it with his usual skill, and was rewarded 
 with the French bishopric of Mirepoix ; but James rejected the 
 lady first proposed to him ; he was captivated by the fragile 
 beauty of the Princess Magdalene. The marriage was solemnized 
 in Notre Dame, and in the spring of 1537 the King and his 
 bride set sail for Scotland. As they passed along the coast 
 of Yorkshire, parties of gentlemen put out to make their 
 compliments to the King of Scots. They spoke bitterly of 
 Henry's tyranny, and James declared that he would bend 
 spears with England, if he lived. The incident is important, 
 because it shows us why neither Henry nor Elizabeth succeeded 
 in making good the claim to paramount authority in Scotland. 
 The sturdy Catholics of northern England did not mean to be 
 put out of their own Church merely because their King had 
 quarrelled with the Pope. They stood fast in the old paths, 
 until their resistance was extinguished in blood. 
 
 Queen Magdalene gained the hearts of the people at once, 
 but the year of her coming was a year of sorrows. Angus was 
 still plotting against his country, and his kindred in Scotland 
 had to bear the blame. The Master of Forbes was the first 
 victim ; and in July the beautiful Lady Glammis was burned 
 on the Castle Hill at Edinburgh for ' conspiring the death of 
 the King '. A heavier blow fell when the young Queen died 
 of a rapid decline, and was laid to rest in Holyrood. 
 
 The Pope, Paul III, was not himself a reformer, but he was 
 surrounded by reforming Catholics, men of power arid wisdom, 
 who urged him to summon a general Council, and so put an 
 end to the confusion of Western Christendom. Efforts were 
 made to comply with this demand, but nothing was done ; 
 the Pope was not in earnest, and the state of European politics
 
 90 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 was not favourable to calm deliberation. From the papal 
 point of view, England was the enemy to be feared, and Scotland 
 therefore was worth conciliating. So the Count Campeggio 
 brought King James a cap and sword blessed by the Holy 
 Father, and addressed him as defender of the faith ; a direct 
 insult to King Henry, who had been given that title for his 
 Defence of the Sacraments. 
 
 In Henry's life this was a year of joy and grief ; his son 
 Edward, Prince of Wales, was born in October ; a few days 
 later the Queen, Jane Seymour, died. The King of England 
 felt it his duty to marry again ; he had to think of the public 
 interest ; and he began to fix his thoughts upon a lady not 
 unworthy to take Jane Seymour's place. Mary of Guise was 
 the eldest of a distinguished group of brothers and sisters. 
 Her brother Francis, who became Duke of Guise, was a soldier ; 
 her brother Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was an accom- 
 plished diplomatist. Mary herself had been married very 
 young to the Duke of Longueville ; she was now a widow. 
 She had borne the Duke two sons, one of whom died in 
 infancy. 
 
 Henry's hopes were disappointed ; for David Beaton was 
 again in France, to arrange a marriage between his master 
 and Mary of Guise. King Francis could not but see the 
 advantage he gained by adhering to the old alliance with 
 Scotland. In the summer of 1538 Mary landed at Crail and 
 was honourably conveyed to St. Andrews, where Beaton 
 performed the marriage ceremony. The King wrote repeatedly 
 to the Pope, asking that David Beaton might be a cardinal ; 
 when the request was supported by the King of France, it was 
 granted without delay. 
 
 In 1539 the old Archbishop died ; his nephew had for some 
 time been recognized as his successor. David Beaton was able 
 and accomplished ; a devoted champion of Scottish inde- 
 pendence ; a believer in the ecclesiastical system which he 
 represented. The popular tradition of his immorality, though 
 often denied by Catholic authors, has now been proved by 
 documentary evidence which leaves no room for any difference 
 of opinion ; his children were made legitimate by Acts of the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 91 
 
 Scottish Parliament, and well endowed at the expense of the 
 national Church. 
 
 Four heretics had suffered death, and heresy continued to 
 spread. Beaton became primate in January and proceeded 
 to justify his promotion by increased severity. On the 1st 
 March, five men were burned at Edinburgh : Thomas Forret, 
 vicar of Dollar, a good parish priest who expounded the Scrip- 
 tures to the people ; Duncan Simson, a priest ; Henry Forrester, 
 who was in minor orders ; there were also two friars, Beveridge 
 and Keillor ; the latter was accused of writing a play in which 
 the prelates and clergy were satirized. Later in the year two 
 more were given to the flames at Glasgow : Jerome Kussell, 
 a friar, and Ninian Kennedy, a young lad, said to be skilled in 
 Scottish poetry. Scotland became an unsafe residence for 
 scholars. Teachers and preachers who spoke their minds too 
 freely now found it safer to live abroad. Alane or Aless 
 (Alesius), Me Alpine (Machabaeus), Gavin Logie, Principal of 
 St. Leonard's, George Buchanan, all went into exile. Even 
 good churchmen had to leave if their sermons gave offence to 
 the higher clergy. Alexander Seaton, the king's confessor, 
 was driven to England, apparently because he denounced the 
 exorbitant power of the prelacy ; he was protected by Bishop 
 Gardiner, and cannot therefore have been an extreme Pro- 
 testant. Friar Airth, described by Knox as a preacher who 
 jested at the tricks of the priests, also went to England, where 
 he was put in prison by King Henry for defending the authority 
 of the Pope. 
 
 In January 1540 James kept the feast of the Epiphany at 
 Linlithgow : an ' interlude ' was presented probably some 
 portions of Sir David Lindsay's Satire of the Three Estates, 
 in which the vices of the clergy gave an excuse for a liberal 
 allowance of indecency. Lindsay was hard on priests and 
 monks, but it is worth noting that he spoke well of the friars. 
 ' Devotion is fled into the Freris ' is a phrase often quoted. 
 The old Church was full of gross evils, but it was not a ' syna- 
 gogue of Satan ', as the Eeformers too hastily concluded. 
 When the play was over, the King spoke sharply to Dunbar 
 and other bishops present ; if they did not mend their ways,
 
 92 
 
 he would send six of the proudest to his uncle in England. 
 If James had begun by mending his own ways, his rebuke 
 would have been more impressive ; the Church was not likely 
 to be reformed under a king who provided for his bastard sons 
 by giving them the richest abbeys and priories. 
 
 The King's words were duly reported to King Henry ; once 
 more there seemed to be some hope that James would follow 
 his uncle's example. In his more important communications 
 with Scotland, Henry employed Kalph Sadler, a sensible 
 young man recommended to him by Thomas Cromwell. Once 
 more this trusty agent took the northern road, to point out 
 that plundering abbeys was a more kingly way of getting 
 money than keeping cattle and sheep ; he was also to make 
 another attempt to arrange a meeting at York. The Scottish 
 Council never would allow their king to go further than New- 
 castle : they suspected Henry of wishing to kidnap his guest, 
 and we know now that their suspicions were well founded. 
 
 In March 1541 James held his last Parliament. The spiritual 
 estate was strongly represented ; an Act was passed for the 
 punishment of those who withheld the worship due to the 
 Blessed Virgin ; to deny the authority of the Pope was made 
 a capital offence. At the same time, the anti-papal spirit of 
 the nation was displayed in two Acts, one forbidding clerks 
 to carry appeals to Rome, the other, providing that no legate 
 should be received in Scotland. This blow was aimed at 
 Beaton, who was in Rome, trying to obtain legatine powers. 
 
 When Mary of Guise came to Scotland she was pleased with 
 her new country, and the people were pleased with the queen 
 a tall, handsome lady of gracious manners. Her life with the 
 King was not all happiness ; she bore him two sons ; but the 
 younger died, and the elder soon followed him to the grave. 
 Mary was a woman of many sorrows ; she had learned from 
 her mother to find comfort in the exercises of her religion. 
 Her devotion would not command our sympathy if we accepted 
 Knox's account of her private life ; but his tales are not 
 supported by evidence. 
 
 In 1542 the Queen was expecting to be again a mother ; 
 the King, broken in health, hampered by faction and treachery,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 93 
 
 was girding himself to make a stand against the encroaching 
 tyranny of England. The 24th November witnessed the 
 shameful rout of Solway Moss. God fought against Scotland 
 that day, says Mr. Knox, but it needs no miracle to account 
 for the defeat of men who quarrelled fiercely in presence of 
 the enemy. 
 
 From Lochmaben the King drifted northwards to Edinburgh 
 and Fife ; in the early days of December he lay dying at 
 Falkland. On the 8th came a messenger galloping from 
 Linlithgow with news that a daughter was born ; a few days 
 later, the King breathed his last. The infant Mary was Queen ; 
 but who was to govern in her name ? There was a notarial 
 instrument, naming a council of regency, of whom Beaton 
 was to be one ; but this paper was not acted on. Arran told 
 Sadler that the Cardinal had used the dying hand of the King 
 to sign a blank paper ; but when he told this tale Arran was 
 Beaton's enemy. There was another story of a scroll found in 
 the King's pocket, containing 360 names of persons marked 
 out by the Cardinal for persecution ; but this also lacks con- 
 firmation. Before the end of the year, Arran was installed as 
 Governor of the realm. He claimed to be next heir to the 
 Crown after Mary Stewart. He was a vain, rather timid man, 
 who had ' five purposes in three minutes ' : at this time he 
 was veering toward the new opinions ; he listened to two 
 Protestant preachers, Gwilliam and Eough, both of whom 
 had worn the black gown of St. Dominic. It was from Gwilliam 
 that John Knox had his ' first taste of the truth '. Beaton 
 was now in danger ; he was arrested and placed in the friendly 
 custody of Lord Seton ; this perhaps was to prevent the 
 Governor from handing his rival over to King Henry. 
 
 When the Estates met in March 1543, the Protestants 
 mustered strong and secured the conduct of business. An Act 
 was passed, permitting all people to read the Scriptures in 
 English or Scots ; the bishops protesting, on the ground that 
 the matter should first have been referred to a council of the 
 Church. In England persons of substance had been permitted 
 to rea^ any version of the Bible except Tyndale's ; the Scots 
 Act was wider in its terms. Commissioners were appointed to
 
 94 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 arrange a marriage between the Queen, three months old, and 
 Prince Edward, who was entering his sixth year. This was 
 a good project, but it was also a tactical blunder ; the English 
 alliance was intensely unpopular : the merchants feared to 
 lose their trade with France, and the common people hated the 
 tyrant who had slain so many of their sons. The Cardinal 
 saw his opportunity ; he drew together a sufficient force ; 
 carried the Queen and her mother safely to Stirling ; and 
 resumed his ascendancy over the weaker mind of Arran. .On 
 the 25th August the Governor signed the treaties with England ; 
 a few days later he slipped away to Callander House, met 
 Beaton by appointment, and rode with him to Stirling ; there, 
 in the church of the Greyfriars, he renounced his Protestant 
 errors, and there he was present when the Cardinal placed the 
 crown on the baby head of Mary Stewart. The treaties were 
 repudiated. When the Estates met again in December, the 
 Governor and the Cardinal obtained the full approval of 
 parliament ; King Henry promised himself an ample revenge. 
 It? was probably in 1543 that George Wishart returned to 
 Scotland. He was at this time about thirty years of age, and 
 he belonged to a well-known family of officials and lairds. 
 In 1534 Erskine of Dun had brought a Frenchman, Marsilier, 
 to teach Greek in the burgh school of Montrose, and the young 
 Wishart appears to have been an assistant teacher there. 
 He may have been in trouble as a heretic, and may even have 
 ' borne his fagot ' as a recanting heretic at Bristol ; but there 
 were several Wisharts taking part in the controversies of the 
 time, and it is difficult to be precise. George Wishart certainly 
 visited several foreign universities ; he resided for a time in 
 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he took pupils, one 
 of whom, Emery Tylney, has left us a faithful account of 
 Wishart's holy life and methodical charities. In Scotland he 
 found that Protestant opinions had been gaining ground in his 
 absence ; a large proportion of the lairds in the Lothians, 
 Fife, and the Mearns were hostile to the Cardinal ; in Ayrshire 
 also there was a strong contingent of sympathizers. Some of 
 the East Lothian men were discussing plans for the murder 
 of their chief enemy ; and King Henry allowed his agents to
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 95 
 
 intimate quietly that the man who delivered him from David 
 Beaton would earn his gratitude and favour. 
 
 In January 1544 the Cardinal visited Perth, where heresy 
 was rife ; the Governor attended to represent the secular arm. 
 Five men were hanged, apparently for disputing in the Scrip- 
 tures and interrupting the authorized preachers. One woman 
 was drowned ; it was said that she was condemned for refusing 
 to invoke the assistance of the Blessed Virgin in childbirth. 
 
 In April a Scottish man named Wishart had an interview 
 with Henry VIII ; the subject of conversation was the removal 
 of the Cardinal. There were, as I said before, several Wisharts : 
 Mr. George, being a Cambridge man, was not unlikely to be 
 entrusted with a mission to England ; but the point is not clear. 
 
 On the 3rd May the English fleet appeared in the Frith of 
 Forth. The chosen instrument of Henry's purpose was the Earl 
 of Hertford, Jane Seymour's eldest brother ; his instructions 
 were to destroy Leith and Edinburgh, so that they might 
 remain as a monument of God's vengeance on Scottish perfidy ; 
 he was also to attack St. Andrews. He came in such force that 
 resistance was impossible ; the. Cardinal and the Governor kept 
 out of his way, and the little Queen was taken to Dunkeld. Leith 
 was destroyed ; great part of Edinburgh was burned ; the 
 invaders went within sight of Stirling ; then they turned home- 
 ward, and there was another purposeless raid through the border 
 counties ; the great abbeys suffered much damage. In 1545 
 the unsuccessful invasion of Lord Evers made it necessary for 
 Hertford to appear on the scene ; pillage and fire were again 
 the order of the day. The English soldiers refused to burn the 
 crops, and Irish troops were employed for this purpose. Another 
 incident of 1545 indicates that the great churchmen were not, 
 on occasion, less disorderly than the nobles. The Governor, the 
 Queen-dowager, and the Cardinal visited Glasgow, and Beaton 
 insisted that his cross should be carried before him ; this was 
 the privilege of his legatine rank. Dunbar probably thought 
 that the Act of 1541 took away the privilege ; he, or his men, 
 resolved that the Archbishop's cross should go first in his own 
 cathedral. There was a lively scuffle, and Knox had the 
 materials for an amusing passage of picturesque reporting.
 
 96 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 During this year of trouble Wishart was gaining steadily in 
 the esteem of his countrymen. He preached at Dundee and 
 went west to Ayr, where he preached to a large congregation at 
 the market-cross, while Archbishop Dunbar, if we may accept 
 Knox's account, made a feeble appeal to a small audience in the 
 neighbouring church. In August,Wishart was back in Dundee ; 
 the plague was in the town, and the preacher spoke with power 
 from a text, good for sick men or whole, He sent His Word and 
 healed them. He went on tending the sick and instructing the 
 ignorant, and for a time he escaped the snares of his enemies. 
 A priest who came to hear him was found to have a dagger with 
 him, and was disarmed by the preacher himself ; on another 
 occasion an ambush was laid for him on the road to Montrose. 
 Later in the year, Wishart crossed over to Leith and preached 
 there. He visited Haddington, but there the authority of the 
 Earl of Bothwell, sheriff of Lothian, deterred the people from 
 hearing the new doctrine ; Wishart spoke solemnly of the 
 punishment which might fall on those who refused to hear the 
 messenger of God. Among his own disciples he was regarded 
 as a prophet, and the saying was remembered. 
 
 During his journey in Lothian, Wishart was attended by 
 a disciple,, a man about his own age, who carried a sword before 
 him ; in this characteristic guise John Knox makes his entry 
 on the public stage. Wishart was a gentleman by birth, an 
 important matter in those days ; Knox was descended from 
 peasant farmers, holding their land under the Hepburns, Earls 
 of Bothwell. His family may have been well-to-do, for William 
 Knox was a successful merchant, and John was sent to "the 
 University, where he acquired a competent knowledge of Latin, 
 logic, and divinity. He received priest's orders, but obtained no 
 preferment ; he acted as a notary, and resided in the families 
 of several East Lothian lairds as tutor and chaplain. Of his 
 religious life in the old Church we know nothing ; when he 
 accepted the new opinions he entered at once on a course of 
 vehement opposition to the old system. The Pope was Anti- 
 christ ; the Mass was idolatry ; the Church of Rome had not 
 one of the marks of a true Church ; from these conclusions 
 Knox never varied for a moment.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 97 
 
 Before we leave the year 1545 we note that on the 1 3th Decem- 
 ber, while Wishart was in Lothian, the General Council which 
 was to reunite the Western Church held its first meeting at 
 Trent. In this momentous assembly Scotland had no share. 
 
 When the year 1546 came in, Wishart was going on with his 
 work, but he felt that his end was near. He sent Knox back to 
 his pupils and went himself to Ormiston ; Cockburn, the laird, 
 was one of his supporters. In the middle of the night, the Earl 
 of Bothwell was at the door to arrest the heretical preacher ; 
 it is said that he promised not to hand his prisoner over to the 
 Cardinal ; but the Privy Council were perhaps not bound by 
 the sheriff's promise. Wishart was sent to St. Andrews, and 
 placed on trial there at the end of February. Knox gives 
 a graphic account of the trial, embellished or disfigured by some 
 touches of his usual burlesque. He makes it plain that the 
 ecclesiastical judges had no choice ; they could not acquit the 
 accused without declaring themselves heretics. Arran took no 
 conspicuous part in the proceedings ; he probably gave the 
 warrant for execution ; he may have mitigated the penalty, 
 for Wishart was not burned alive. He was strangled, and his 
 body was burned, on an open space in front of the castle. The 
 Cardinal witnessed the execution : the tradition that Wishart 
 prophesied his persecutor's death is very possibly true ; but we 
 have to remember that the Protestant Ada Sanctorum were now 
 being compiled, and that a mixture of legend was admitted. 
 
 The Cardinal had many enemies besides those whom he 
 persecuted for their religion. He had a feud with the Leslies of 
 Fife, arising out of some quarrel about land. John Leslie 
 declared that his right hand and his dagger should be priests to 
 the Cardinal. Beaton had appointed the gentlemen of Fife to 
 meet him on Monday the 31st May, and he probably meant to 
 take order with his adversaries then ; but this ' treasonable 
 purpose ' he did not live to carry out. On Friday, the 28th, 
 there was a meeting at St. Andrews. John Leslie was there, his 
 nephew Norman, a laird named Stevenson, and others. In the 
 course of the following night, the conspirators seized the castle 
 and 'murdered the Cardinal. Kirkaldy the younger, of Grange, 
 kept the postern gate, lest their victim should escape that way.
 
 98 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Knox tells the story with triumphant glee, not pleasant to 
 contemplate. 
 
 Stevenson had attempted to give the murder the air of a 
 solemn retribution ; it was, in fact, a brutal and cowardly crime, 
 and, like many crimes, it failed of the intended effect. The 
 immediate result of Beaton's deafch was an accession of strength 
 to the French and Catholic party. Arran gave up the idea of 
 marrying his son to the infant Queen, and agreed that she 
 should marry a French prince ; the Estates declared the murder 
 to be treason ; a proper letter was written to the Pope. From 
 September to December the Governor was busy besieging the 
 castle, where the conspirators held out, relying on the strength 
 of the place, and the help of England ; but Henry was old and 
 ill, and had many troubles. In December there was a truce, 
 a treacherous truce Knox calls it, but then he was one of those 
 good party men who see treachery wherever their cause is not 
 successful. The castle men stipulated that they should receive 
 papal absolution for the death of the Cardinal ; they then wrote 
 to their friends in England, suggesting that the Emperor might 
 be induced to put pressure on the Pope to delay the absolution. 
 When at last it arrived, they said they would rather have 
 a boll of meal. 
 
 In the opening months of 1547 two well-graced actors left 
 the stage of European politics. King Henry died on the 
 28th January ; Edward VI, just nine years old, reigned in his 
 stead ; the substance of power was seized by our familiar 
 Hertford, who made himself Duke of Somerset and Protector 
 of the Realm ; he was an intelligent Protestant, but vain, 
 rapacious, and in time unpopular. On the 31st March Francis I 
 died, and Henry II became King of France a man of some 
 talent and some good impulses, demoralized by the splendid 
 selfish life of the French court. His Queen, Catherine de' Medici, 
 was not yet a power in politics ; the most important lady in 
 France was the King's chief mistress, Madame de Valentinois, 
 an orthodox formal personage, twenty years older than her 
 royal pupil and lover. 
 
 At Easter the conspirators at St. Andrews received a notable 
 recruit. John Knox, who had probably been in trouble with
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 99 
 
 the ecclesiastical authorities, ' lap into the castle,' and brought 
 some of his pupils with him. The castle men came and went 
 freely in the town, and they had already earned an extremely 
 bad reputation ; Knox boldly denounced their wicked lives, 
 but he probably effected no improvement in their conduct. 
 Having access to the town churches, he catechized his pupils in 
 Holy Trinity, South Street, and engaged in co'ntroversy with 
 certain priests and friars ; he had, according to his own narra- 
 tive, a series of easy victories ; but I hesitate to believe that 
 the Catholic clergy were as stupid as Knox would have us 
 believe. They were average men, embarrassed by the feeling 
 that their Church was lapsing into discredit, unwilling perhaps 
 to face an opponent who had the castle men at his back. In 
 May or June John Eough, Arran's former chaplain, summoned 
 Knox to undertake the ministry of preaching. Knox wept, and 
 ran out of the church ; but he had found his vocation, and 
 began at once to denounce the Church of Eome. John Major, 
 who was spending his declining years at St. Andrews, went to 
 hear the new doctrine ; but the old scholar was not convinced 
 by the vehement discourses of his pupil. 
 
 Henry of France had not forgotten the Catholic party in 
 Scotland. In June a squadron of French galleys appeared off 
 St. Andrews ; the commander, Leo Strozzi, was an Italian in 
 French service ; he had been a priest, and he was still known 
 as the Prior of Capua. The siege was now pressed, and before the 
 end of July terms of surrender were arranged. Again Knox 
 suggests that the agreement was broken ; but the castle men 
 were beaten and could not expect better terms than they got. 
 Their leaders were carried to France ; the gentlemen, such as 
 Kirkaldy and Balnaves, were sent to various prisons ; the 
 lowborn or less important men, of whom Knox was one, were 
 chained to the oar and became galley-slaves. When the galleys 
 were at sea, their sufferings were terrible ; there were intervals 
 of inaction on shore during which they enjoyed some liberty. 
 Balnaves wrote his treatise on Justification in prison at Eouen ; 
 he was able to send it to Knox, who supplied a recommendatory 
 epistle. 
 
 Somerset on his side had not forgotten the perfidy of the 
 
 H2
 
 100 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Scots, and in the autumn he made another of his purposeless 
 raids. Angus, now redeeming his character as a Scots patriot, 
 led the army of defence. At Pinkie we had the advantage in 
 numbers and in choice of ground ; the Scots camp was full of 
 priests and friars, promising victory over the heretics, but the 
 day ended in a defeat more disgraceful than Solway Moss. 
 While Somerset was in Scotland the- little Queen was taken to 
 Inchmahone, the island in Loch Menteith. Eight days after 
 his victory, Somerset was hurrying back to London, where his 
 enemies were already plotting against him. * His most dangerous 
 rival was Lord Lisle, soon to be Earl of Warwick and Duke of 
 Northumberland, a capable, brave, good-natured man, who 
 sought the support of Catholics and Protestants, and broke his 
 promises to both. 
 
 In January 1548 it was definitely agreed that Mary should 
 marry the Dauphin ; Arran was rewarded with the Dukedom 
 of Chatelherault, and undertook to hand over the Queen of 
 Scots and her fortresses to the French. This was almost 
 annexation ; but Scotland, divided by faction-fighting, could 
 not stand alone ; and many thought it better to submit to the 
 ' old ally ' than to the nearer and therefore less tolerable 
 supremacy of England. 
 
 During one of their raids the English had thrown a garrison 
 into Haddington, and an effort must be made to turn them out. 
 In June a force of 6,000 French landed at Leith and sat down 
 before Haddington. The townsfolk suffered much, as one may 
 suppose ; many good men thought this was the fulfilment of 
 Wishart's prophecy. 
 
 On the 7th July a Parliament was held in the abbey just 
 outside the town ; the old alliance and the new marriage treaty 
 were confirmed, and the Queen-dowager began to prepare for 
 her daughter's departure. While the French were fighting on 
 land, their ships prowled along the coast ; once more the 
 galleys appeared off St. Andrews. A Scottish man named 
 Knox told his neighbour on one of the rowing-benches the name 
 of the town, and prophesied that he would himself live to glorify 
 God again in that place. 
 
 It was not safe to send the Queen by the east coast ; the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 101 
 
 French ships went right round Scotland, and the royal party 
 embarked at Dumbarton. Early in August, Mary landed at 
 Boscoff in Brittany, and was taken to St. Germain-en-Laye, 
 where the royal children were. In that nursery she must have 
 taken the lead, for she was some weeks older than the Dauphin, 
 tw r o years older than her constant companion the Princess 
 Elizabeth, and much cleverer than either. 
 
 Knox's prophecy came true ; he was released, early in 1549, 
 at the instance of Edward VI, went at once to England, and 
 was settled as a preacher at Berwick. He enjoyed the protec- 
 tion of Lord Lisle, now Earl of Warwick, the most powerful 
 person on the English border ; his nominal chief pastor was 
 Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, a scholarly conservative, who was 
 holding back against the current of reform. At this time both 
 clergy and laity in the Church of England inclined to Tunstall 
 rather than to Knox ; they were fairly satisfied with the first 
 prayer-book of King Edward. If Knox ever used that book in 
 his ministrations, he must have used it with a grudge, for it 
 prescribes vestments and other things which he regarded with 
 indiscriminating contempt. 
 
 When Cardinal Beaton was slain, the Governor had secured 
 the primacy for his illegitimate brother, John Hamilton, 
 a prelate who occupies a small and inglorious place in the 
 history of the Church. Like a true Hamilton, he put the 
 interests of his own family before all other considerations. 
 Circumstances compelled him to preside at Councils and to join 
 in the movement of reform, but he was embarrassed by the 
 notoriety of his own offences against the canon law. Grizel 
 Sempill occupies in his life the place which was occupied by 
 Marion Ogilvy in the life of Beaton. 
 
 In August a Provincial Council was held at Linlithgow, and 
 in November the Council met again in the Blackfriars church at 
 Edinburgh. There was a good muster of bishops and heads of 
 religious houses, and the Lord James Stewart came also among 
 them : a lad of eighteen, son of James V and Margaret Erskine, 
 titular prior of the Augustinian house at St. Andrews since he 
 was six years old. His opinions were still undecided, and some- 
 thing depended on his decision.
 
 102 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 The main object of this Provincial Council was to adopt the 
 substance of the reforming decrees already passed by the 
 Council of Trent. Our Protestant forefathers paid no attention 
 to the General Council, and contented themselves with a com- 
 pendious repudiation of its ' devilish decrees '. Those decrees 
 must be studied with a little sympathy before their full impor- 
 tance is apparent. No student who compares the Church of 
 Eome, as she was in 1545 and as she has been in subsequent 
 ages, can fail to perceive that the Council of Trent did much to 
 improve the learning and lives of her clergy. At a later stage 
 I shall attempt to show how it was that the Council of Trent 
 succeeded where so many previous Councils had failed. 
 
 It is not necessary to give the laws made by our Scottish 
 Council in detail. They are often quoted to prove that what 
 the Protestants said of the unreforrned clergy was, in substance, 
 true. It is difficult to obtain any light on the further question, 
 how many good clergymen there were ; we know that there 
 were bishops like Reid and priests like Winzet, and for every 
 such man who put himself on record by managing a diocese or 
 writing a book there must have been many who lived and died 
 obscure. 
 
 On the 4th April 1550 Knox was summoned to argue before 
 Bishop Tunstall and the Council of the North in support of his 
 favourite thesis, that the Mass is idolatry. This argument has 
 been preserved, and we turn to it in the hope of finding a 
 reasoned justification of this popular opinion. But Knox's 
 address is little more than a series of strong assertions ; I do not 
 think any modern scholar would maintain that it proves the 
 proposition laid down. Tunstall made no reply ; he and his 
 diocese were much in danger of being ' visited ' by active 
 politicians who would adopt Knox's opinion, or any opinion, if 
 it gave them an excuse for plunder. 
 
 In Scotland the Catholic party was now almost free from 
 anxiety ; the Queen-dowager resolved to spend a year with her 
 daughter in France ; in September the Prior of Capua came 
 again with his galleys, and before the end of the month she met 
 Mary and the King of France at Rouen. The English agents in 
 France watched her proceedings narrowly, and soon they were
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 103 
 
 able to note with satisfaction that Henry was not eager to make 
 any great sacrifice for Scotland. 
 
 We may be sure that Mary of Guise made careful inquiry as 
 to the progress of her daughter's education. The French court 
 was full of dangers for young people brought up within the 
 range of its influence ; and some of those who accompanied the 
 Queen of Scots had shown themselves untrustworthy. While 
 she was still a child, the Queen would naturally spend most of 
 her days with her teachers ; she became in time exceptionally 
 skilful with needle and pen, and her exercises, though not 
 remarkable, show that the solid part of her education was not 
 neglected. She acquired French without losing her Scots ; she 
 learned also a modicum of Latin, but could not speak it fluently, 
 as churchmen and diplomatists then did. In regard to her 
 religious instruction the Queen-dowager consulted her brother, 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine. The youth of this eminent man had 
 not been wholly exempt from scandal, but when he became 
 a bishop he threw himself with ardour into the duties of his 
 office. He was a student of the Bible, and he found in Holy 
 Scripture as he believed full warranty for all the rules of his 
 Church. As for the irregular worship which the Protestants 
 had introduced into the great towns of France, it was not 
 commanded by God ; therefore it was in the nature of idolatry ; 
 therefore the most Christian king was bound to suppress and 
 punish it. In principle the Cardinal agreed with Mr. Knox, 
 but they differed in the application. 
 
 In the autumn of 1551 the Queen-dowager parted, for the last 
 time, from her daughter, and took ship for Portsmouth. She 
 visited the English Court, and was duly astonished by the 
 wisdom of the young King. Perhaps the old marriage-project 
 was cautiously mentioned, but that plan was not to be revived. 
 By the end of November the Queen-dowager was in Edinburgh. 
 
 Knox's ministry in the Church of England lasted about five 
 years, and was attended by considerable success. At Berwick 
 he found disciples and friends, among whom we ought to name 
 Mrs. Eichard Bowes, a Yorkshire heiress, married to the third 
 son of a notable English family. She was a pious woman, full 
 of doubts and fears which caused much ' fashery of body ' and
 
 104 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 disquiet of mind to her spiritual adviser. In his letters to her 
 we have glimpses of Knox's own inner life ; we can watch the 
 growth of that earnest and ruthless temper which was coming 
 to be known as Puritanism. 
 
 From Berwick he was moved to Newcastle. Scots Protes- 
 tants, who wished to escape their own government, settled there 
 to attend his ministry ; there was more traffic between them 
 and their friends at home than Warwick altogether approved. 
 At the end of 1551 Knox was appointed one of King Edward's 
 chaplains, with a salary of 40, then equivalent to a modest 
 competence. It may have been at this point that Mrs. Bowes 
 began to think of marrying her minister to one of her daughters. 
 
 In the history of the Church of England the year 1552 is an 
 important era, because it witnessed the composition and 
 publication of the second prayer-book of King Edward. A 
 majority of the bishops and clergy would have been content 
 with minor changes, but the reforming party was strong at 
 Court, and they pressed their advantage. The Communion 
 Service was so altered that many churchmen feared they were 
 being committed to Zwinglian doctrine. Vestments were 
 forbidden, and only the surplice (which is not a sacerdotal 
 garment) was retained ; the Puritans objected to it simply 
 because it reminded them of Rome ; and thus began the 
 prolonged controversy which turned on the difference between 
 a black gown and a white one. The last question for settlement 
 related to the practice of kneeling at the communion. As this 
 was, in later years, a burning question in Scotland, a few words 
 jof explanation may not be out of place. 
 
 At the first institution of the Eucharist, our Lord and His 
 disciples sat or reclined on couches ; the attitude is one which 
 we Western people cannot with any comfort adopt. In the 
 early days of the Church, many congregations stood up, in 
 token of joy and confidence, when they received the com- 
 munion. For twelve centuries and more all members of the 
 Western Church had received kneeling. This attitude implies 
 adoration> and the vital question now at issue was, To Whom, 
 or to what, is this adoration addressed ? There were, no doubt, 
 superstitious Catholics who worshipped before the wafer and
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 105 
 
 the chalice ; in such cases there was a colour of reason in the 
 contention that the Mass was idolatry ; but every instructed 
 Catholic knows that his worship is addressed to Christ present 
 in the sacrament. If we seek to determine the exact mode of 
 Christ's presence, we find ourselves at once in the region of 
 metaphysical theory. There is nothing to exclude the hope 
 that Christian men holding different theories may be willing 
 to receive the same communion. 
 
 Knox, of course, maintained that our Lord's action was done 
 ' sitting not kneeling ' ; he attached perhaps too little impor- 
 tance to the fact that the actual position of -our Lord was one 
 which no Western Church can retain. As one of the King's 
 Chaplains, he was summoned to London to take part in the 
 final discussion. In the result, the rule as to kneeling was 
 allowed to stand, but an explanation was added, to the effect 
 that worship of the bread and wine was not intended. This 
 decision gave some offence to both parties. 
 
 While this debate was in progress, Warwick, now Duke of 
 Northumberland, was writing to recommend Knox for the 
 Bishopric of Kochester. Eemoved to the safer latitude of 
 Kent, Knox, he said, would be a ' whetstone ' for Archbishop 
 Cranmer, and a great confounder of Anabaptists ; also the 
 ' family of Scots ' at Newcastle would be broken up, and their 
 friends would not slip over the Border to see them, ' which is 
 not requisite.' Knox declined the bishopric : he took no 
 objection to episcopacy, and, indeed, he never attained to the 
 abstract presbytery, introduced into Scotland by Andrew 
 Melville ; but he had ' foresight of trouble '. A little later he 
 had the offer of a living in the city of London, but this, too, he 
 declined, explaining that in his view the Church of England was 
 not perfectly reformed ; he repeated his argument against 
 kneeling at the communion. 
 
 The year which provided England with the prayer-book 
 witnessed the last attempt of Catholics in Scotland to place 
 their system in a favourable light before the people. A council 
 which met in January had directed the preparation of a Cate- 
 chism, not a series of questions and answers, but a brief state- 
 ment of doctrine, from which the less learned of the clergy
 
 106 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 could read extracts to their people on Sundays and holy days. 
 The book, which was published in the autumn, goes by the 
 name of Archbishop Hamilton's ; it was probably written by Sub- 
 prior Winram. No careful reader can fail to see that it was 
 written with a conciliatory purpose ; the Pope is not once 
 mentioned, and the distinctive Catholic doctrines are explained 
 and vindicated with undeniable skill and good feeling. Great 
 part of the book is devoted to an exposition of the ten command- 
 ments ; this we might with advantage have retained. 
 
 At the Lent season of 1558, the Puritan party at the English 
 Court made a concerted effort to accelerate the process of 
 reformation, and the young King listened to a series of stringent 
 sermons. Knox had his turn with the rest, and this gave him 
 an opportunity to compare the King's worldly advisers with 
 Shebna the scribe, and other undesirable Old Testament 
 characters. In summer he was moved to the county of Bucks, 
 but he kept his hold on the north of England, and it was pro- 
 bably at this time that he was betrothed to Marjory Bowes. 
 The men of her family disliked the alliance, but Mrs. Bowes 
 persevered and had her way. 
 
 On the 6th July Edward VI died. Northumberland tried, 
 and failed, to bring the English crown into his own family by 
 setting up his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey or Dudley ; he 
 could not prevail against the evident right of the Princess Mary. 
 There was some reason to hope that the new reign would be 
 peaceful ; Mary was, in many ways, the best of the Tudors ; in 
 every crisis of her life she displayed high courage, and earnest 
 devotion to duty. But she chose for her intimate advisers two 
 bishops, Gardiner and Bonner, who thought only of reversing 
 all that had been done in King Edward's time. Catholics raised 
 their heads, and Protestants were full of fears. When the 
 winter drew in, Knox went to his friends in Newcastle ; early 
 in 1 554 he sought safety on the continent : he blamed himself 
 for not staying to face persecution, but he blamed himself 
 unjustly : a Christian preacher must accept martyrdom if it 
 comes in the course of his duty ; he is not bound to throw 
 himself upon his enemy's sword. 
 
 In January 1554 Knox was at Dieppe, already a centre of
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 107 
 
 Protestant preaching ; in March he set out again on his travels. 
 His mind was working constantly on the practical issue, as it 
 now presented itself to his disciples in England. Could a woman 
 rule by divine right ? Were subjects bound to obey a prince 
 who permitted idolatry ? To obtain an answer to these ques- 
 tions he went to Geneva, the capital of militant Protestantism. 
 
 Calvin was then at the height of his power. The recent 
 execution of Servetus had gained him the warm approval of 
 Protestant divines ; he was known to scholars as the author 
 of the Institutes, probably the greatest book of the Keformation 
 period. In the city of his adoption he was now supreme, and 
 the polity he established there was one in which, as in the 
 christianized Empire, Church and State were not merely 
 united but identified. Calvin was a statesman ; he gave Knox 
 only a guarded reply to his questions, and sent him on to 
 Bullinger, who was equally vague. To say that Knox was 
 satisfied with the answers he received is not quite accurate. 
 He was satisfied that his own principles were sound ; but his 
 principles, when they appeared in print, were not well received 
 by Calvin. 
 
 While Knox was thus undermining her daughter's authority, 
 Mary of Guise obtained the position she had long wished to 
 occupy. The Duke of Chatelherault ceased to be Governor, 
 and in April the Queen-dowager was made Queen Kegent. 
 To place a crown on the head of a woman was, Mr. Knox 
 declared, like placing a saddle on the back of an unruly cow. 
 While the Scottish Parliament was taking this important step, 
 Mary Stewart, at Meudon, was receiving her first communion, 
 and praying that she might ' make a good beginning '. 
 
 In July Knox was back in Dieppe, to learn the state of 
 England. He had written letter after letter to his friends 'there, 
 and at last he poured out all the vials of his wrath in a pamphlet, 
 known as the Faithful Admonition : he inveighed against the 
 English bishops ' wicked Winchester, dreaming Durham, and 
 butcherly Bonner ' ; he denounced Mary Tudor, her husband 
 Philip of Spain, and Philip's father the Emperor. Returning 
 to Geneva, he received an invitation which, with some hesita- 
 tion, he accepted. Some English exiles, fleeing from the Marian
 
 108 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 persecution, had settled at Frankfort, and secured the use of 
 the French church for their services ; then they began to 
 dispute rather hotly what their service was to be. One party 
 wanted King Edward's book ; the other party preferred the 
 Genevan ideal, a service purged of everything that savoured of 
 the old Church. Knox arrived among them in November ; he 
 took, of course, the Genevan side, but he made some concessions 
 to the other side. It was agreed that the objections to the 
 English book should be referred to Calvin, and as that great 
 scholar did not read English, a description (not quite a fair 
 description) of the prayer-book was drawn up in Latin. Calvin's 
 opinion, when it came, was not of great value ; the book, he 
 thought, contained ' follies, but such as may be borne with '. 
 He added some strictures on those who quarrel about cere- 
 monies ; each party probably thought this was just the advice 
 the other party needed. 
 
 This dispute does not belong to Scottish history, but it helps 
 us to understand the reasons which Scotland thought sufficient 
 to justify her in rejecting the forms of worship used by her 
 English neighbours. The first objection taken to the prayer- 
 book turned on the responses ; the Puritans were especially 
 hard on the Litany, a beautiful composition, imbued with 
 a true devotional spirit. There is something strangely perverse 
 in this contention. All Protestants should have aimed at 
 making their worship congregational, but the Calvinist congre- 
 gation was to have no share in any service but that of praise. 
 Rome had conceived public worship as a ritual, understood 
 only by the priest ; Geneva went far to turn it into a monologue 
 by the minister. 
 
 Other points in dispute were the surplice, and the practice of 
 kneeling at the communion ; of these we have already had 
 occasion to speak. There were also objections to the cross in 
 baptism and the ring in marriage. On the question of the ring 
 the Puritans were ultimately defeated by the obstinacy of the 
 Puritan ladies, who- would not dispense with the visible symbol 
 of their status as married women. 
 
 In March 1555 the congregation at Frankfort was reinforced 
 by the arrival of another party of exiles, headed by Dr. Cox,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 109 
 
 a person of some importance, who had been tutor to King 
 Edward and to the Princess Elizabeth. The newcomers at 
 once refused to be bound by the compromise as to worship. 
 Not content with saying their own responses in church, they 
 represented to the chief magistrate that Knox was a dangerous 
 man, who had described the Emperor himself as being ' no less 
 an enemy to Christ than was Nero '. The authorities decided 
 that Knox must leave the town ; he preached a farewell sermon 
 in his own lodgings, and returned to Geneva. 
 
 Later in the year he was summoned by Mrs. Bowes to the aid 
 of his friends in England ; he spent some time at Berwick, and 
 went on to Edinburgh ; he wrote thence to his ' mother ', 
 Mrs. Bowes, expressing his delight with the ' fervency ' he saw 
 around him. It is plain that the Eegent was allowing a con- 
 siderable measure of religious liberty ; she was good-natured, 
 eager to win all hearts for her daughter's throne, and not under 
 clerical influence. It was noted of her that she ' did not love 
 the priors ', and she was writing to the Pope, Paul IV, to obtain 
 his sanction for heavier taxation of the clergy. Her request 
 was supported by Cardinal Sermoneta, who visited Scotland, 
 and sent a very unfavourable report of the country to Eome. 
 The nunneries, he wrote, were in a bad state, especially those of 
 the Cistercian order. The secular clergy were alienating their 
 lands, and engaging in secular trades. 
 
 Knox was passed on from one friend to another ; at many 
 great houses he preached and administered the sacraments. 
 Among those who listened to him were two young men destined 
 for high positions Lord Lorn, heir to the immense power of 
 Argyle, and the Lord James Stewart. At the house of Erskine 
 of Dun, Knox met William Maitland of Lethington, ' the flower 
 of the wits of Scotland,' then serving the Eegent. He consulted 
 the preacher on the question whether a Christian man might 
 attend Mass as part of his official duty ; Knox, of course, 
 answered with a decided negative. Maitland quoted the words 
 of St. James when he directed St. Paul to purify himself in the 
 temple. ' I greatly doubt,' said Knox, ' whether either James's 
 commandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy 
 Ghost.'
 
 110 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Knox's friends wished him to write a letter to the Queen 
 Regent, and he complied with their request. He addressed her 
 as a princess ' endowed with wisdom and graces singular ', and 
 there is nothing in his appeal to offend her dignity. How much 
 of it she read we cannot say ; she handed the letter to James 
 Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, with the words, ' Please you, 
 my lord, to read a pasquil.' Knox made her pay dearly for this 
 careless pleasantry. 
 
 The cumbrous machine of authority began to move ; in May 
 1556 Knox was cited to appear before the Council ; but his 
 friends appeared in large numbers, and the citation was post- 
 poned. But the country was becoming unsafe for him, and he 
 had the assurance of safety at Geneva. In July he sent forward 
 his wife and his mother-in-law (for by this time he was married 
 to Marjory Bowes) ; he joined them as soon as he could slip 
 away. In November, when the day came round to choose 
 office-bearers for the English congregation at Geneva, John 
 Knox and Christopher Goodman, an Englishman, were elected 
 joint ministers. Knox was burned in effigy in his absence. 
 
 The Regent's position was one of great anxiety ; she said once 
 that since she entered Scotland she had not had one day of 
 repose. In January 1557 she wrote to her brother the Cardinal ; 
 she meant nothing but good to her subjects ; ' but they do not 
 want justice.' This is a shrewd remark ; Scotland was given 
 over to faction-fighting, and therefore exposed to foreign 
 interference. Mary's French friends swaggered as if they were 
 in a conquered country, and grasped at offices which should 
 have gone to good Scotsmen. As for the Protestant lords, they 
 only waited till their friends in England had the upper hand. 
 
 As joint minister at Geneva, Knox was happily situated. 
 His congregation was small ; his colleague was of one mind 
 with him ; he had time for study. It was with him a period of 
 literary activity ; he wrote his Appellation to the Scots nobles, 
 and his Letter to the commonalty. These, I should say, are the 
 best of Knox's writings ; they are full of genuine patriotism 
 and faithful advice. His reasoning is vitiated throughout by 
 his political theory, which is, in substance, the same as that of 
 Innocent III. At the command of God's messenger (and Knox,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 111 
 
 like Innocent, believed that he had a direct and unlimited 
 commission from the Almighty) the civil authority was bound 
 to undertake the ' ordering and reformation ' of religion. In 
 other words, Mary of Guise was to suppress Popery, and pursue 
 ' idolaters ' even to the death. If she declined this duty, she 
 forfeited her claim to obedience ; the congregation of Christ, or 
 any member thereof, was free to attack her. All this pointed 
 to vigorous measures in Scotland ; and Knox may have thought 
 the signal for action had been given when the Protestant nobles 
 invited him to return. When he arrived at Dieppe, towards 
 the end of October, letters were handed to him which he read 
 with resentment and grief ; the nobles had changed their 
 minds ; the time for action was not yet. Knox wrote a series 
 of pungent letters in reply ; he probably preached at Dieppe, 
 and the probability is not lessened by the fact that the Protes- 
 tants there began to display a somewhat subversive temper. 
 
 In Scotland the Protestant preachers were taking a bolder 
 tone, and the Kegent found it hard to deal with them. She 
 sent for some of them, and tried to propitiate them, in her 
 broken Scots, but she produced no effect. It was reported that 
 Paul Methven, formerly a baker, had founded a schismatical 
 congregation in Dundee. A party of Protestants forced their 
 way into the Kegent's presence, and Chalmers of Gadgirth 
 made a boisterous speech about the idleness of the prelacy. 
 
 When Knox's letters arrived, his friends resolved to do some- 
 thing ; on the 3rd December they entered into a ' band ' for 
 mutual protection ; this was the first of the written covenants 
 which mark the successive stages of the Eeformation. Their 
 demands were moderate ; they wanted King Edward's Prayer- 
 book of 1552 ; and they agreed to continue the exposition of 
 Scripture in private houses, until the public authority allowed 
 liberty of preaching. 
 
 In the same month of December, Mary Stewart attained her 
 fifteenth birthday ; the King of France informed the Estates 
 of Scotland that her marriage with the Dauphin was fixed for 
 the following year. Nine commissioners were appointed to 
 attend, and their expenses were voted. 
 
 Early in 1558 Knox was back in Geneva ; he had to put the
 
 112 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Appellation and the Letter through the press ; he also had to 
 finish and print the first part of a book to which he had given 
 much labour ; the part published in this year is entitled The 
 First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment 
 (government) of Women. For reasons which we do not fully 
 understand, Knox had formed a very low estimate of the 
 female sex. ' The most part of women is wicked ' ; to vest 
 authority in a woman, or even to allow her any measure of 
 personal independence, is to disobey the express commandment 
 of God, and to bring ruin on Church and State. His argument 
 in support of this thesis appears to me entirely worthless ; the 
 author himself thought it unanswerable. His admirers say as 
 little of the book as they can, but it was written in deadly 
 earnest, and it was never withdrawn. The further instalments 
 did not appear ; we have only the First Blast and a few pre- 
 liminary notes of the second. 
 
 While Knox was thus undermining her throne, Mary Stewart 
 was looking forward to her wedding ; the proceedings may here 
 be briefly noted. On the 4th April she signed secret deeds under 
 which, in case of her death without issue, the crown of Scotland, 
 and her claim as next in succession to Mary Tudor, would pass 
 to the King of France. It was probably not hard to persuade 
 a girl of fifteen that, in case of her death, it was better to put 
 Scotland at the disposition of her old ally ; the alternative was 
 a fight for the succession between Chatelherault, a weak, 
 inconsistent man, and Lennox, who was now a ' good English- 
 man '. On the 15th April Mary bound herself to defend the 
 rights and privileges of Scotland. On the 19th was the ' hand- 
 fasting ' ; and finally on Sunday, the 24th, the marriage was 
 celebrated with unusual splendour. 
 
 A few days before this magnificent ceremony a poor priest 
 named Walter. Mylne was brought to trial for heresy at 
 St. Andrews. He had picked up some dangerous opinions in 
 Germany as a student, and had been punished or warned by 
 Cardinal Beaton ; also, he was married, and therefore a rebel 
 against the established system. He was arrested at Dysart in 
 a poor woman's house, where he was warming himself at the 
 fire, and teaching her the commandments of God. At his trial
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 113 
 
 he went into the pulpit and defended himself vigorously ; but 
 his defence only made his case worse ; he was left to the secular 
 arm, and burned in due course. Mylne was the last who 
 suffered for Protestant opinions in Scotland. The total number 
 of victims is usually given as nineteen ; this, of course, is a very 
 small number when compared with the wholesale executions 
 instigated by the bishops of some other Catholic countries. 
 
 The Scots commissioners had attended the ceremony in Notre 
 Dame ; they remained some time in France, enjoying the 
 hospitality of the King. Their stay was marked by a strange 
 succession of fatalities. In September, Bishop Reid of Orkney 
 died at Calais. Knox has one of his amusing tales about the 
 Bishop on his death-bed, with his money-boxes close beside him. 
 If Reid had any large sum with him it was, in all probability, 
 the money voted by the Estates, for which he would have to 
 render an account. We know, to be sure, that he guided his 
 own affairs carefully ; but his savings were not for himself ; he 
 was a generous benefactor to his own diocese, and he left 
 a legacy which almost entitles him to rank as the founder of our 
 town's college, now the University of Edinburgh. In November, 
 Cassilis and Rothes died at Dieppe ; in December, Lord Fleming 
 died at Paris. At that period unexpected deaths were always 
 attributed to poison, as they are in the East at this day. 
 
 As the winter drew on, it became plain that Mary Tudor was 
 near her end ; she was only forty-two, but her strength was 
 exhausted by toil, anxiety, and disappointment. Guided by 
 her Church, she had put to death about three hundred of her 
 subjects ; and heresy was spreading faster than ever. In the 
 early days of November, the Queen lay dying ; the London mob 
 began to pull down images, and to insult all who wore the 
 religious habit. On the 17th May Mary Tudor died ; her chief 
 adviser, Cardinal Pole, survived her only a few hours. To the 
 dismay of the papal party, Elizabeth came quietly to the 
 throne, and Sir William Cecil was appointed her secretary. In 
 the matter of religion, the new Queen's policy was prudently 
 ambiguous. She and Cecil had both attended Mass in Mary 
 Tudor's time ; a fact of which Mr. Knox did not fail to remind 
 them, when he had the opportunity. She had to keep the peace
 
 114 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 with the Catholic powers ; she tried to give them the impression 
 that she would resume the policy of her father, who was Catholic, 
 not Papist. Partly to meet the scruples of King Philip, she 
 ceased to call herself head of the Church of England, and con- 
 tented herself with the title of supreme governor. At the same 
 time, she knew that the tide of Protestant sentiment was rising ; 
 there was, in many quarters, an intense eagerness to destroy 
 every vestige of the old system. Whether she yielded to this 
 feeling or repressed it, her policy in Church matters was her own ; 
 Cecil, left to himself, would have gone further in the Puritan 
 direction ; Elizabeth was the architect of the via media, in 
 which the Church of England still remains. In the eyes of all 
 strict Catholics, she was merely the daughter of Anne Boleyn, 
 and Mary Stewart was next in the succession. By the advice 
 of the King of France, Mary asserted her claim to be de iure 
 Queen of England, and quartered the English arms with those 
 which she had previously borne. 
 
 Elizabeth's accession must have been known in Edinburgh 
 when the Estates met at the end of November. The object of 
 this Parliament was to obtain the crown matrimonial of 
 Scotland for the Dauphin ; this was- agreed to, but the crown 
 was never sent. The Protestant party tried to obtain a hearing, 
 but the Kegent gave them little satisfaction. They petitioned 
 for liberty to meet ; for baptism in the vulgar tongue (they 
 called it ' the lavacre of spiritual regeneration ') ; for reforma- 
 tion of the lives of the prelates. They wished all matters to be 
 tried by the New Testament, the ancient Fathers, and the 
 ' godly approved laws of Justinian '. There was also a letter 
 to the Estates, asking that the laws against heresy should be 
 suspended, until a General Council should decide all contro- 
 versies. The bishops, it was argued, should not be judges ; 
 they should appear as accusers before a temporal judge. When 
 they found that Parliament would not be allowed to do anything 
 for them, the petitioners protested, and claimed freedom ' to 
 use themselves in matters of religion and conscience as they 
 must answer to God '. 
 
 The eventful year 1559 opens with a warning to the monks 
 and friars ; a paper was posted on the doors of many monas-
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 115 
 
 teries, intimating that the poor, the maimed, and the blind 
 were about to resume their inheritance. This is one of the 
 vague appeals to socialism, not uncommon in that period ; but 
 the Eeformation was not a socialist movement ; it was carried 
 through by nobles and great men who kept the plunder of the 
 old Church for themselves. When the poor lost the easy-going 
 charity of the monks, they sometimes got in exchange a Protes- 
 tant laird who rackrented them without mercy. Knox com- 
 plained of this, but he had no power to check the rapacity of his 
 friends. 
 
 The Chapter of Aberdeen began the year by attempting some 
 reform of the clergy ; they made provision for regular sermons, 
 and warned those who did not attend Mass. The Bishop 
 (William Gordon, fourth son of the Earl of Huntly) was ad- 
 monished to put away ' the gentlewoman ' and to keep better 
 company. 
 
 The Eegent issued proclamations, commanding the observance 
 of Lent, and forbidding irregular administration of the sacra- 
 ments, under pain of death. On the 1st March the Councils of 
 St. Andrews and Glasgow met at Edinburgh, but little could 
 be expected from a synod presided over by John Hamilton. The 
 usual rules were made as to clerical concubinage, &c. A little 
 book called the Godly Exhortation, but popularly known as the 
 ' Twapenny Faith ', received the imprimatur of the Council. 
 Articles of reformation were presented, evidently drawn up by 
 loyal Catholics, but to these the Council answered with a non 
 possumus. They could not, for example, institute services in 
 the vernacular ; in all such matters they were bound by the 
 canon law. This was the last council of the old Church. 
 
 Easter was always a trying season at this period ; the 
 Catholic ceremonies excited the opposition of the preachers. 
 This year the sermons were vehement, and some disturbances 
 followed. Four preachers (Methven, Harlaw, Christison, 
 Willock) were summoned to appear before the Eegent at 
 Stirling on the 10th May. It may be well to note that the 
 preachers were ' put at ', not merely because they preached the 
 evangel, but also because their preaching was followed by 
 destruction of church furniture and molestation of peaceable 
 
 12
 
 116 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Catholics. It was common in Scotland, when a leading man 
 was in trouble with the law, for his friends to assemble in large 
 numbers ; they came armed, to make sure that justice was 
 done. The friends of the preachers now began to assemble in 
 large numbers at Dundee ; Knox says they were without 
 armour, but he means only that they were not fully equipped ; 
 all Scotsmen then carried swords or whingers. 
 
 At the opening of the year, Knox had been in Geneva, but in 
 January he had left that city for the last time and set his face 
 toward Scotland. His plan was to pass through England, and 
 to encourage his brethren by the way, but now he learned what 
 price he was to pay for writing the First Blast. Elizabeth had 
 seen or at least heard of the book, and she joined the author in 
 one condemnation with his colleague Goodman, who had written 
 a subversive work on the authority of princes ; these two names 
 were ' of all the most odious ' at the English court. Forbidden 
 to enter England, Knox made his way to Leith ; he landed there 
 on the 2nd May, and pressed on at once to Dundee, and then to 
 Perth, now becoming the centre of disturbance. Erskine of 
 Dun had been to Stirling and reported that the Regent was not 
 in a yielding mood. On the 10th May the preachers did not 
 appear ; they were outlawed and their sureties were forfeited. 
 Knox also was outlawed. At once a cry of ' treachery ' was 
 raised in the Protestant camp. It is not certain that the Regent 
 had promised to discharge or postpone her summons, and the 
 disorderly gathering at Perth gave her a strong reason for 
 enforcing it. But the charge of perfidy, assiduously repeated, 
 has become part of the popular history of Scotland. 
 
 On the llth May Knox preached at Perth, in the church of 
 St. John Baptist, and was vehement against ' idolatry '. His 
 sermon was followed by an orgy of destruction, which lasted 
 two days ; three religious houses were utterly wrecked ; tin- 
 rioters even cut down the fruit-trees in the garden. It appears 
 that little or no violence was offered to the monks and friars ; 
 the abbot of the Carthusian house was even allowed to carry 
 off what Knox calls an ass-load of gold and silver meaning 
 probably the communion plate of the chapel. 
 
 Writing soon after to a friend, Knox attributes these acts of
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY .117 
 
 savagery to ' the brethren ' ; writing at a later date he says the 
 riots were started by the casual imprudence of a priest ; 
 describes the ' whole multitude ' as taking part in them ; and 
 protests that no honest man was richer for the plunder. 
 
 The Protestants kept their hold on Perth ; they informed 
 the Eegent of their intention to appeal to the King of France, 
 to the Queen of Scots and her husband, and to all Christian 
 princes. They also addressed a letter to the nobles, and there 
 was a third letter, which we must attribute to Knox : nobody 
 but Knox could have written the opening words, ' To the 
 Generation of Antichrist, the pestilent prelates and their 
 shavelings witnin Scotland, the Congregation of Christ Jesus 
 within the same sayeth.' 
 
 The marching and counter-marching which ensued only 
 made it evident that neither party was strong enough to crush 
 its opponents. In the early days of June, Knox made a hasty 
 tour in East Fife, and his preaching led to some wrecking of 
 churches ; at St. Andrews the magistrates joined in the work 
 of destruction, and the Lord James looked on. The Protestant 
 leaders took the field against the Kegeht, but the affair of 
 Cupar Muir was again indecisive. For a time it had ' rained 
 men ' in the camp of the Congregation, but their friends were 
 provisioned only for a few days, and their force soon melted 
 away ; by the middle of June they saw that they could not 
 succeed without help from England. Elizabeth knew that it 
 was her interest to ' nourish and entertain the garboil in 
 Scotland ', but she could not move openly in the matter. Only 
 a few months had elapsed since the conclusion of a ' lasting 
 peace ' between the Western powers ; if she interfered in 
 Scotland, she gave the French a valid excuse for siding against 
 her. The Kegent also desired peace ; she looked with despon- 
 dency on the state of Scotland. From Dunbar she wrote to the 
 Pope ; she had been kept in ignorance of the spread of heresy, 
 and she feared the true Church could not be restored without 
 bloodshed. If Paul IV read this letter, it may have deepened 
 his distress ; he lay on his deathbed, sadly complaining that no 
 pontificate had been so unlucky as his own. 
 
 The Eegent's hope was in France, and it seemed for a moment
 
 118 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 as if her prospects were brightening. In the spring of this year 
 Mary Stewart had been ill ; ' God take her to Himself so soon 
 as may please Him ' was the kindly wish of the English agent 
 in France, Sir John Mason. Philip of Spain bethought himself 
 that his plans would be hampered if a young Queen, French in 
 her sympathies, came to the government of Scotland. If Mary 
 were to die, he wrote, his task would be easier. Such was the 
 genial atmosphere in which this young lady began her political 
 career. But Mary recovered her health and courage, and 
 a sudden turn of events gave her the power she needed. At the 
 end of June her friend Elizabeth of France became the third 
 wife of King Philip. A tournament was held in' honour of this 
 marriage, and the King of France, pressing into the lists, 
 received the broken shaft of Montgomery's lance in his eye. He 
 lingered in agony for some days ; on the 8th July he died. To 
 the invalid boy who thus became Francis II the crown was only 
 a burden, but Mary, now Queen of France, was ' a great doer ', 
 more active in politics than the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' 
 Medici, could have wished. It was now thought certain that 
 the Kegent would receive fresh succour from France. 
 
 During the month of July the contending factions in Scotland 
 issued their respective manifestoes, without any decisive result. 
 No agreement was possible, for the Protestants were not 
 asking merely for liberty of worship ; what they now claimed 
 was the liberty and establishment of their religion. Establish- 
 ment, as they understood the term, included the right to 
 suppress any religion of which they did not approve. Their 
 only hope was in England, but the English were hampered by 
 treaties and afraid to move. On the 20th July Knox wrote to 
 Elizabeth, sharply reminding her that she had conformed to 
 popery in Mary Tudor's time, demanding permission to visit 
 England, and threatening her with the judgment of God if she 
 neglected the advice of His faithful servant. He wrote at the 
 same time to Cecil, who sent him a civil reply, and referred him 
 to Galatians iii. 28 for an answer to the First Blast. At the end 
 of July Knox ventured into England to ask for a force which 
 would enable the Congregation to take Broughty Castle from 
 the Regent. He sailed from Pittenweem ; at Holy Island
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 119 
 
 Sir, James Croft met him and took him to Berwick. Knox gave 
 some assurance that the Congregation would meet Elizabeth's 
 views as to the ' Authority ' in other words, they would 
 withdraw the subversive opinions associated with his name 
 and Goodman's ; but his friends would not let him stay in 
 Berwick long. 
 
 The Eegent's French troops gave her a visible advantage ; 
 the Protestant lords could not take Leith, and were obliged to 
 come to terms. It was agreed that the main question should 
 be reserved for Parliament ; in the meantime the Congregation 
 must abstain from violence, and the people of Edinburgh 
 should be free to choose their own form of religion. When the 
 preachers heard of this convention they refused to be bound 
 by it ; they objected to the clause which restrained them from 
 wrecking churches ; they objected also to the proposal that 
 Edinburgh should choose between the Mass and the Order of 
 Geneva. Writing to Cecil, Knox admitted that ' the greater 
 part ' would allow the Mass. Where ' idolatry ' was concerned, 
 he cared just as little for a popular vote as for a royal command. 
 The treaty came to nothing, and the lords, after publishing 
 a garbled version of it, were constrained to leave the town. 
 
 In August, Elizabeth moved cautiously to the aid of her 
 confederates. She wrote to the Eegent, expressing surprise 
 that her English officers were charged with interfering in 
 Scotland ; at the same moment she was sending Sadler to the 
 Border, to make mischief between the French and the Scots. 
 He was to lend money to the Congregation, taking bonds for 
 repayment, but the name of the Queen of England was not to 
 be used. 
 
 On the 18th August the unlucky Paul IV breathed his last ; 
 when his death was made known, the Eoman mob broke out in 
 disorder, and the doors of the papal prisons were thrown open. 
 Among those who escaped was a Scots friar, John Craig, who 
 lived to play a conspicuous part in the politics of his own 
 country. On Christmas Day John de' Medici became Pope, and 
 took the title of Pius IV. He was an intelligent, industrious 
 man, and he earned himself a place in history by bringing the 
 Council of Trent to a close.
 
 120 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In September came another instalment of help from France, 
 and at the same time Pelleve, Bishop of Amiens, and three 
 doctors of divinity arrived, all fully prepared to argue the 
 questions at issue between the Kegent and the Protestant 
 divines. The Bishop no doubt did his best to support the 
 authority of the Crown against the rebels ; as George Buchanan 
 expressed it, the Frenchman came to plan the slaughter of 
 Protestants. Leslie, on the other hand, says that the Bishop 
 proclaimed liberty of conscience. Projects of compromise were 
 eagerly discussed in France about this time, and Pelleve may 
 well have skirmished with the proposal to allow some liberty 
 to Protestants in Scotland. Cockburn of Ormiston went to the 
 Border and received 3,000 crowns of English money for the 
 Congregation, but, as he was returning, the young Earl of 
 Bothwell, son of the earl who arrested Wishart, pounced upon 
 him and captured the money. The lords of the Congregation 
 were in a strait, but they were far from being crushed. In the 
 middle of October they held a meeting in Edinburgh, to discuss 
 the expediency of deposing the Kegent. Could they, being 
 subjects, depose the person in whom the royal power was 
 lawfully vested ? In those days a question of this nature was 
 referred to theologians, and the preachers attended to give 
 their opinions. Willock held that the nobles, being born 
 counsellors of the realm, could depose Mary of Guise. Knox 
 followed on the same side, but he exhorted his hearers not to 
 withdraw their hearts from their true sovereigns. In Knox's 
 heart neither Francis nor Mary had any place ; but the Congre- 
 gation had hit on the notion of displacing the Regent by 
 governing in the name of the King and Queen. They might have 
 carried out their plan, if they could have taken Leith, but their 
 attacks were ingloriously beaten off, and the English sent them 
 no help. Knox wrote to Croft, suggesting that Elizabeth might 
 allow 1 ,000 men to cross the Border ; she could then accuse 
 them of crossing without orders, and proclaim them rebels to 
 her crown ; this is quite in the spirit of Elizabeth's diplomacy. 
 
 Maitland the younger of Lethington had been with the 
 Regent in Leith as her secretary ; but his sympathies were with 
 the English party, and he laboured to promote a closer union
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 121 
 
 between the two kingdoms. He now threw in his lot with the 
 Congregation. He had no belief in the Mass ; he never was 
 a fervent professor of the Evangel, as understood by Mr. Knox. 
 The Duke of Chatelherault, ' the second person in the realm/ 
 was veering in the same direction. Both in England and in 
 Scotland, statesmen had been discussing a projected marriage 
 between Arran, the Duke's eldest son, and Elizabeth. To place 
 the crown of Great Britain on the head of a Hamilton, the Duke 
 was likely to support the Protestant interest. 
 
 In every reforming party there is an inevitable schism, sooner 
 or later, between the moderates and the extreme men ; a 
 division of this kind was already apparent in the ranks of the 
 Congregation. In January Mr. Knox told a friend that he was 
 laid aside from public affairs ' because among ourselves I am 
 judged too extreme '. His retirement was merely nominal ; he 
 was still active in opposing all compromise in religion. 
 
 A fleet, commanded by the Eegent's brother, d'Elbceuf, was 
 on its way to Scotland, and an English fleet was keeping the 
 French in sight. A terrible storm arose ; the English found 
 shelter in their own harbours, but the French were caught in 
 the open sea ; d'Elboeuf put back to Dieppe ; most of his ships 
 were lost. Elizabeth heard that 1,000 Frenchmen were drowned, 
 and her policy in Scotland became more decided. By the end 
 of February she had concluded an agreement with the Duke of 
 Chatelherault and the leaders of the Congregation. In the first 
 draft of this convention there was a reference to religion, but 
 this passage was struck out. Elizabeth knew her own position 
 too well to make common cause with men who took their 
 principles from Geneva. 
 
 In the middle of March the French court was at Amboise 
 beside the Loire, and small parties of Huguenots were approach- 
 ing the castle there from various quarters ; they hoped to kill 
 or capture the Duke of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine. Calvin had warned them against all such enterprises, 
 but their leader, La Eenaudie, declared that the Spirit did not 
 dwell only at Geneva. His followers were cut down or made 
 prisoners, and when the rising was over there were wholesale 
 executions at Amboise. The Queen of Scots was there with the
 
 122 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 other ladies ; Protestant writers describe her as gloating over 
 the deaths of the heretics, but this is an imaginative statement ; 
 Mary had no distinctive part of her own in the tragedy of 
 Amboise. 
 
 Before the end of March, an English army invaded Scotland ; 
 the commander, Lord Grey de Wilton, was a hardy veteran who 
 had led the decisive charge at Pinkie. The castle at Edinburgh 
 was held by Lord Erskine, afterwards the Eegent Mar, a good 
 Scotsman who loved neither English nor French. His wife, an 
 excellent lady, is described by Knox as a ' very Jezebel ', 
 probably because she prevented her husband from joining the 
 extreme Protestants. When Grey crossed the Border, Erskine 
 allowed the Kegent to seek safety in the castle. Mary of Guise 
 was a dying woman ; those who wish to have the unpleasant 
 details of her illness may be referred to the graphic pages of 
 Mr. Knox. In the early days of June she lay on her deathbed ; 
 Willock was hovering near to engage her in an argument about 
 the Mass, but the poor lady was past argument. She said she 
 had no hope save in the merits of her Redeemer, and so she 
 died. The preachers would not allow her body to be buried 
 with a Catholic service ; it was placed in a lead coffin, and after 
 months of wandering it found a resting-place in the Convent 
 at Eheims, where Renee of Guise was abbess. 
 
 Preparations were already made for a conference at Edin- 
 burgh, to put an end to the troubles caused by the interference 
 of France and England. Cecil himself, rather against his will, 
 and his colleague Dr. Wotton represented Elizabeth ; the 
 French negotiators were the Sieur de Randan and Monluc, 
 Bishop of Valence. ' More by brag than by eloquence,' Cecil 
 obtained a treaty very favourable to England. It was in fact 
 so favourable that the Queen of Scots was not likely to ratify 
 it ; but the Protestant leaders hoped that means might be 
 found to persuade or compel Mary to remain in France. Cecil 
 went home, well pleased with his success ; Elizabeth received 
 him coldly, and refused to pay the expenses of his journey. 
 She was making a foolish display of her affection for Lord 
 Robert Dudley (a younger son of Knox's old patron Northum- 
 berland) and Cecil's advice was at a discount.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 123 
 
 The Estates of Scotland met in July, and in August they 
 proceeded to their main business. The Protestant party was 
 visibly the stronger ; the nobles had solid reasons for sup- 
 porting it ; the lesser barons and burgesses were eager for 
 reform. Archbishop Hamilton and some of the bishops were 
 present, but their resistance was feeble ; they relied on the 
 Queen to refuse her assent to the Acts of this convention. 
 A petition was presented, setting forth that among the Eoman 
 clergy there was not one lawful minister : they were all thieves, 
 murderers, adulterers, and rebels. After this outburst of 
 Christian feeling the petitioners asked that the Estates should 
 express their adherence to the true religion in an authoritative 
 form. Some barons and ministers were directed to prepare 
 the necessary document ; on the 17th August the Confession 
 of Faith was read .and accepted. The Archbishop said that 
 the Confession was a thing he was ' not accustomed with ' ; 
 he did not condemn it and would not accept it. On the 18th 
 he wrote to James Beaton at Paris, warning him that the time 
 was coming when no man could have life in Scotland without 
 believing the new articles, ' which I will not '. 
 
 The Confession is a summary, in homely but impressive 
 Scots, of the Confessions adopted by those Churches in which 
 the influence of Calvin prevailed. It opens with an offer to 
 prove or withdraw any statement which may be found contrary 
 to the Word of God : how much or how little this means we 
 shall see when we come to the case of Ninian Winzet. The 
 cardinal virtues are plainly set forth ; the true Church and her 
 sacraments are clearly described. The Estates ' utterly damn ' 
 the vanity of those who say that the sacraments are only 
 bare and naked signs ; on this point Scotland ranged herself 
 with Calvin and against what is known as the Zwinglian 
 position. 
 
 The Confession was followed up by Acts abolishing the papal 
 jurisdiction, repealing all laws which allowed any worship 
 contrary to the Confession and the Word of God, and imposing 
 penalties on all who said or heard Mass ; for the first offence 
 confiscation of goods and corporal punishment ; for the second, 
 banishment ; for the third, death. Some Protestant writers
 
 124 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 contend that we need not attribute this last Act to the Re- 
 formers, but Mr. Knox would not have thanked them for 
 this half-hearted apology. 
 
 The Queen refused her assent, as the Archbishop expected ; 
 but the validity of an Act depends on the force behind it ; the 
 Protestants maintained their position ; by a great effort the 
 nation shook itself free from the authority of the Pope, and from 
 the Roman system of belief and worship. The Word of God, 
 as interpreted by Calvin, became the standard to which all 
 opinions and institutions must be conformed. 
 
 The Reformers were devoted believers in the verbal inspira- 
 tion of the Bible, and they brought with them out of Rome the 
 scholastic habit of relying on proof-texts. Following in the 
 track of the great schoolmen and canon lawyers they used the 
 Bible, and especially the Old Testament, as a manual of perse- 
 cution. Their minds were full of the primitive but erroneous 
 belief that God acknowledges His people by giving them victory 
 and political power. We must also remember that in 1560 
 natural science was still in its infancy. Protestant communities 
 retained, in all its crudity, the Catholic belief in witchcraft 
 and demoniac possession ; they misread the events of their 
 own time, because they were always looking for special judg- 
 ments, forgetting that the sun rises on the evil and the good, 
 the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Not content with 
 separating from Rome, they insulted and derided the old 
 Church and all her members. From that "day to the present 
 time, our Protestant Churches have revelled in censorious 
 reflections on their opponents, and they have insisted unduly 
 on their own imperfect attainments. 
 
 The Confession, as we have seen, was the Confession of the 
 Estates ; there was as yet no organized Protestant Church. 
 Meetings were held to distribute the small band of preachers ; 
 Knox became minister of Edinburgh ; for a time he was sole 
 minister in a town of 20,000 inhabitants, and his parochial 
 duties were combined with a good deal of secretarial work. 
 Paul Methven, a mild and persuasive preacher, went to Jed- 
 burgh ; the subversive Goodman found a home at St. Andrews. 
 
 Elizabeth may have given Cecil some reason to complain,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 125 
 
 but she was quite aware of the advantage he gained her by the 
 treaty of Edinburgh ; to obtain the ratification of that agree- 
 ment from the King and Queen of Scots became an object of 
 her policy. Throckmorton, her agent in France, went from 
 castle to castle ; he was met with dilatory arguments and civil 
 excuses. On the 15th November he was admitted to a formal 
 audience, but without result. A few days later the young King 
 was taken ill ; Mary proved herself a devoted nurse, but the 
 poor lad grew daily worse ; on the 5th December he died. 
 Knox thought this ' a wonderful and most joyful deliverance ' ; 
 Calvin reproved those who exulted on such an occasion ; he 
 added demurely that ' nothing could be more timely '. It is 
 strange that a man of Calvin's intellect should have taken 
 comfort in the fact tbat the Crown of France had passed from 
 Francis II to Charles IX. The new King of France was only 
 ten years old ; a substantial share of power fell naturally to 
 the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' M&dici. This enigmatic lady 
 was considered ' rather a Protestant than otherwise ' ; she had 
 long been in favour of some compromise which would stop 
 the wars of religion ; she joined in requesting the Pope to 
 concede all the more important reforms demanded by the 
 Huguenots. 
 
 Mary and her most formidable subject were passing through 
 the same heavy trial ; the winter which carried off King Francis 
 witnessed also the death of Marjorie Knox : ' the most delight- 
 ful of wives ' Calvin called her, and he may have known her 
 fairly well during her stay at Geneva. Absorbed in public 
 work, the Keformer was left with two little boys to care for, 
 but Mrs. Bowes took her daughter's place and guided the house, 
 so far at least as Knox's principles would permit. 
 
 While Mary sat in darkened rooms, completing her prescribed 
 period of strict mourning, her Protestant subjects were labouring 
 to organize the reformed Church of Scotland. The old Church 
 was in ruins, and they now had to provide religious ordinances 
 for the whole of Scotland. With the approval of the Privy 
 Council they had begun to appoint superintendents, whose 
 duty it was to plant churches and to settle ministers : where 
 no minister could be had, a reader was employed to undertake
 
 126 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the ordinary services, the order followed being that of Knox's 
 Genevan book. There is a certain resemblance between the 
 duties of a superintendent and those of a bishop, but no 
 attempt was jnade to link on the new officers to the historic 
 episcopate. Erskine of Dun, one of the first appointed, was 
 and remained a layman. 
 
 On the 20th December a meeting was held in the chapel 
 of St. Mary Magdalen in the Cowgate of Edinburgh ; forty-two 
 persons were present, of whom six were ministers. It is not 
 known by whom this meeting was summoned or how its members 
 were chosen, but from the outset the Assembly spoke as a body 
 having authority, claiming legislative and judicial power in 
 Church matters, formulating the demand of the Church upon 
 the State. This first Assembly requested that none might be 
 magistrates except professors of the evangel, and that sharp 
 punishment should be inflicted on all who caused Mass to be 
 said or were present thereat. 
 
 In January the Estates met in Convention at Edinburgh : 
 some Protestant divines attended to give their advice, and 
 a few Catholic doctors from Aberdeen appeared in defence of 
 the old system. There was an argument about the Mass ; 
 Knox as usual represents the Catholics as giving away their 
 own case ; Leslie, on the other hand, thought his party had the 
 best of the controversy. 
 
 Early in the previous year the Council had directed the 
 preparation of a book of polity for the reformed Church ; 
 the work was entrusted to six Johns Knox, Winram, Spottis- 
 wood, Douglas, Willock, and Row. The completed book 
 (we know it as the First Book of Discipline) was now laid 
 before the Convention. It was not formally sanctioned ; 
 a good many noblemen signed it on the understanding that 
 those prelates who joined the Congregation should retain their 
 revenues for life, subject to the burden of providing for the 
 reformed ministry. This was only a temporary expedient ; 
 for some time nothing was don to secure an adequate provision 
 for the ministry of the new Church. The Reformers drew their 
 plan of endowment with wisdom and moderation, and they 
 indicated clearly what might be done for education, from the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 127 
 
 parish schools to the Universities ; but Lethington told them, 
 truly enough, that their plan was only a ' devout imagination '. 
 Nobles and lairds were determined to keep the spoils of the 
 old Church for themselves ; they certainly did their best to 
 protect the ministers against the temptations of excessive 
 wealth. Knox was bitterly sarcastic, but the 'abuses of which 
 he complained were the direct result of his own political action. 
 He was eager to provide for gospel preaching, but first he had 
 to pull down the ' synagogue of Satan ' ; he needed political 
 power to enforce the penalties recently enacted against the 
 Mass. He could only have power by standing in with the 
 Protestant nobles, and he might have known that they would 
 make him pay for their support. 
 
 As organized under the First Book, the Church of Scotland 
 was essentially Presbyterian ; our Eeformers took up the 
 problem of Church government just where Calvin left it. It is 
 worth noting that Calvin was not eager to declare a final break 
 with the historic episcopate ; if the bishops would ' obey 
 Christ ', he was ready to pronounce an anathema on those who 
 did not obey them. But the bishops of the Eoman Church, 
 with a few exceptions, adhered to the old system, and Calvin 
 proceeded to constitute the model Church of Geneva on another 
 basis. His view was, that the Church must have jurisdiction, 
 i. e. power to declare the law with coercive effect ; he was 
 precise and absolute in his definition of the authority which 
 belongs to the Church, and to the State as advised and guided 
 by the Church. If we may use the term invented or borrowed 
 by Josephus to describe the Jewish polity, we may say that 
 Calvin attempted to found a theocracy. The term is to some 
 extent misleading, because it suggests that God Himself is the 
 Author of institutions which are in fact framed by men. All 
 human lawgivers are fallible ; they must be placed under 
 limitations ; there must be a compromise between authority 
 and liberty. The Eeformation led on to the wars of religion, 
 because the leading men on both sides were convinced that 
 compromise was sinful. Knox, founding himself on Old Testa- 
 ment texts, would have compelled every papist to choose 
 between death, banishment, and (worse than either) forced
 
 128 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 conformity to Protestant rules. At the same moment, Lainez 
 the Jesuit, founding himself on the same texts, was warning the 
 King of France that no terms must be made with the Huguenots. 
 
 Laying possibly an undue stress on 1 Timothy v. 17, Calvin 
 divided the eldership of his model Church into two sharply 
 distinguished orders the ministers (pastors and doctors) who 
 had the exclusive right to preach, to administer the sacraments, 
 and to ordain ; and the lay elders, who assisted in government. 
 He wished the lay elders to be elected by the congregation ; 
 the republic of Geneva preferred election by and from the 
 municipal council of the city. In Scotland the more democratic 
 rule was followed from the first, and in the early days of the 
 reformed Church the elders chosen had to be annually re-elected. 
 Calvin's constitution was framed for a small homogeneous 
 community ; it remained to be seen how the Presbyterian 
 system would work when applied to a nation, divided and 
 agitated by conflicting opinions. 
 
 Mary was beginning to prepare for her return to Scotland ; 
 in February she was at Fontainebleau, and there she received 
 the young Earl of Bedford, who brought Elizabeth's message of 
 condolence. He and Throckmorton plied her with arguments 
 about the treaty of Edinburgh ; her constant answer was, 
 that she must advise with her Scots nobles before giving her 
 assent. Throckmorton was greatly pleased with the ' modesty 
 and discretion ' of the Queen of Scots. After spending Easter 
 with her aunt Renee at Rheims, Mary left for Nancy. At 
 Vitry on the 14th April she granted an interview to John 
 Leslie, an accomplished clergyman from Aberdeen, who brought 
 her a message from her Catholic subjects. Huntly and his 
 friends were arming ; if the Queen would land in the north, 
 they would place her at the head of a considerable army. 
 Mary had already thought out for herself a different policy. 
 She was a convinced though not a very strict Catholic ; she 
 hoped to see something done towards restoring the old Church. 
 This feeling was natural and right, for who would care to see 
 a girl of eighteen eager to turn against the Church of her baptism 
 and early training ? But Mary had learned from her mother 
 that the Protestants in Scotland were too strong to be sup-
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 129 
 
 pressed without much bloodshed. At the French court the 
 party of compromise was in the ascendant ; Catherine de' 
 Medici had just promoted Michel de 1'Hopital, the most 
 powerful advocate of that party, to be Chancellor of France. 
 Mary believed that she could disarm the hostility of her 
 Protestant subjects by giving them liberty of worship : this 
 was the offer she meant to make them. Her plan was fore- 
 doomed to failure, for Knox and his friends were fighting, 
 not for liberty, but for power ; they would accept nothing short 
 of the total suppression of the religion which they disapproved. 
 But Mary was still confident of success, and Leslie took home 
 a discouraging message to the Catholics of the north. 
 
 Next day, as Mary rode by St. Dizier, she was overtaken by 
 her brother the Lord James ; with him she discussed the state 
 of affairs in Scotland, and the discussion seems to have been 
 friendly. As a leader of his party, James was committed to 
 the English interest ; he could not support his sister if she 
 challenged Elizabeth's title, but he hoped Elizabeth would 
 solve the difficulty by naming the Queen of Scots as her 
 successor. Throckmorton feared that the Guises would tempt 
 the Lord James with the offer of a cardinal's hat, but he soon 
 came to understand that the Scots Protestant leader could 
 be trusted. 
 
 In May the Estates met in Edinburgh, and the Assembly 
 also met again ; during this critical period there were two 
 Assemblies in each year. A deputation of ministers went to 
 the Council to ask that the laws against the Mass might be 
 enforced. Modern writers take pride in the almost bloodless 
 record of the Scottish Eeformation, but the ministers contri- 
 buted little to this satisfactory state of things ; they lost no 
 opportunity of calling for sharp execution of penal laws. We 
 have to remember that Knox, though he had immense influence, 
 was not in power, as Beaton, for example, had been ; the affairs 
 of Scotland were now in the hands of the nobles, who thought 
 first of their own interest, and kept the sword in their own 
 hands. 
 
 In June the Queen of Scots was at Paris, and on the 18th she 
 had an important conversation with Throckmorton ; once
 
 130 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 more she made her own position perfectly clear. She would 
 not accept the treaty of Edinburgh without further advice, 
 but she hoped to live in concord with her sister of England ; 
 she knew that many of her own subjects were contrary to her 
 in religion ; she would not constrain them and hoped Elizabeth 
 would not help them to constrain her. She was ' young and 
 not well learned ', but she had heard Church matters debated 
 by her uncle the Cardinal, and had heard him say that a reforma- 
 tion was necessary. When Elizabeth read Throckmorton's 
 report, she indited a high and mighty letter to the Council 
 in Scotland, and the Council sent her a submissive reply. The 
 Queen of England stood out for her treaty ; if Mary would not 
 ratify, she could not expect to have a safe-conduct for her 
 journey to Scotland. On the 14th August Mary sailed from 
 Calais ; she was accompanied by three of her Guise uncles, 
 and by other friends ; Brantome the essayist and the poet 
 Chastelard were of the number. The safe-conduct had not 
 arrived, and nobody knew what might happen ; but the English 
 ships did not attack, and as Mary entered the Frith of Forth 
 a friendly fog came down, cutting off any possible pursuit. 
 Leslie thought the fog was an interposition of divine providence 
 in Mary's favour ; to Mr. Knox's mind it portended the ' dark- 
 ness, dolour, and all impiety ' which entered Scotland with 
 a popish queen. Oil taking up her residence at Holyrood, 
 Mary indicated that her chief object was to conciliate the 
 Protestant party. Lethington continued to be her secretary, 
 and her brother became her chief adviser. The Lord James 
 was not unworthy of the place to which his sister advanced him. 
 He was now a man of thirty, able and ambitious ; an intelligent 
 Protestant, not yet committed to the extreme party. He was 
 free from the vices which brought discredit on the religious 
 professions of men like Morton. Where property or power was 
 in question, the Lord James did what his interest required ; 
 he conformed to the moral standard of his period and his class. 
 On Sunday the 24th the Queen attended Mass ; some of the 
 Protestants who hung about the court declared that the 
 idolatrous priest should die the death. But behold ! the Lord 
 James stood on guard before the chapel door ; after service
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 131 
 
 his brothers, Lord Robert and Lord John, saw the priest safe 
 home. Knox groaned to hear that men who had sat at the 
 Lord's table were protecting a Catholic service. Just at first 
 the Reformer had dissuaded his friends from violence ; he 
 soon became convinced that he had ' done most wickedly ' 
 in restraining the fervency of the brethren. 
 
 On Monday, the 25th May, Mary issued a proclamation 
 defining her religious policy. Her subjects were forbidden, 
 on pain of death, to make alterations in the order ' publict 
 and universally standing ' at her arrival. It would be easy 
 to raise an argument on the meaning of this expression, but the 
 substance is plain enough. Mary promised not to withdraw the 
 liberties enjoyed by the Protestants throughout a considerable 
 part of Scotland. She also forbade her subjects to molest 
 her servants ; against this part of the proclamation poor 
 Arran entered what Knox calls a stout and godly protestation. 
 If the Queen's servants said or heard Mass, he claimed to be 
 as free to deal with them as if they had committed murder. 
 
 Even in France, Mary had heard of Knox as a dangerous 
 man ; she now resolved to come to an understanding with the 
 leader of the extreme Protestants. On Tuesday the 26th Knox 
 went to Holyrood, and the Lord James brought him into the 
 royal presence. Mary at once attacked him about his unlucky 
 book ; Knox complacently assured her that the book was 
 unanswerable ; but, he said, learned men were allowed to have 
 their own opinions ; if the Queen was accepted, and if she kept 
 her hands from the blood of the saints, he was as content to 
 live under her ' as Paul under Nero '. The Queen said she 
 must defend the Church of Rome, which she believed to be the 
 true Church ; Knox did not argue the point, but told her that 
 her own Church was a ' horrible harlot '. Mary tried to ascer- 
 tain whether he was teaching her people the lawfulness of 
 resisting princes ; he did not deny that princes have paternal 
 authority, but pointed out that when a father is mad his children 
 may bind him and take away his sword. When he compared 
 himself to St. Paul, Knox might perhaps have remembered 
 that the apostle was ' all things to all men ' that he might win 
 some. Anything less likely to win an intelligent Catholic than 
 
 K2
 
 132 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 his address to Mary it would be hard to imagine. On leaving 
 her presence he was ready with his final judgement on the 
 Queen ' a proud mind, a crafty wit, and a heart indurate 
 against God and His truth '. 
 
 On the following Sunday he preached as usual about idolatry, 
 and declared that one Mass was more fearful to him than ten 
 thousand armed enemies. Knox, of course, believed that the 
 Mass was idolatry ; his view was that idolatry, if permitted 
 and practised in any part of Scotland, would bring down 
 plagues on the whole country. The same day the magistrates 
 of Edinburgh entertained the Queen at a banquet, and on the 
 following Tuesday she entered her capital in state. A Bible 
 and Psalm-book were presented to her ; Knox says she frowned 
 at the Bible, but this is probably a bit of picturesque reporting : 
 Mary was too clever to insult the people whom she was most 
 anxious to please. Some of the godly wished to burn the effigy 
 of a priest in his sacramental dress ; Huntly was able to stop 
 this performance, but Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were burned 
 in good style at the Salt Tron. 
 
 While the good town was rejoicing, Lethington was preparing 
 to ride to England. He was to open the question of Mary's 
 right to succeed Elizabeth, and he was sure to hear some 
 discussion as to Mary's marriage. Her own dream was that she 
 might marry Don Carlos ; like all statesmen at that time, sho 
 overrated the power of Spain. To marry Philip's heir would 
 enable her to withstand England and the English party in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Having named her new councillors and started her govern- 
 ment, Mary left Holyrood for a short progress through her 
 kingdom. At Stirling the curtains of her bed caught fire ; this, 
 according to Mr. Knox, was another judgment on idolatry. 
 By the end of September the Queen was back in Edinburgh ; 
 the magistrates took the opportunity to reissue a proclamation 
 they had framed, requiring ' monks, friars, priests, nuns, 
 adulterers, fornicators, and all sic filthy persons ' to leave the 
 town. This was more than Mary could bear ; she sent a macer 
 to intimate that the town must choose a new provost and 
 bailies, and this was done, though the persons suggested by
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 133 
 
 the Queen were not chosen. She issued a proclamation of her 
 own, declaring that the town was open to all her lieges ; 
 Mr. Knox regarded this as an invitation to ' all evil doers ' to 
 come in under the Queen's wings. He watched with deepening 
 disgust the partial success. of the Queen's conciliatory policy. 
 
 On the 1st November (All Saints) there was high Mass at 
 Holyrood ; one of the priests was beaten, and a meeting was 
 held at the house of Makgill, the clerk register, to discuss the 
 question whether subjects may lawfully suppress the idolatry 
 of their princes. 
 
 Eandolph, the English agent at Holyrood, was the channel 
 through which gossip about the Protestant leaders was trans- 
 mitted to Cecil. Writing in December, he reported that Knox 
 was too hard on the Queen ; the preacher spoke of her ' as if 
 he were of God's privy council ' ; he was certain she would 
 never come to God. No Christian minister has a right to say 
 this of anybody. 
 
 Brought up abroad, Mary had begun to introduce the dances 
 and other amusements to which she was accustomed ; she 
 even spoke of teaching her subjects to appreciate the joyeusete 
 of her beloved France. It may be that she was sometimes 
 imprudent ; if it be true that she put on male attire to see 
 what the streets were like after dark, we must regret that she 
 so far forgot her dignity. Knox regarded the court as a school 
 of profligacy ; but we must remember that accusations of 
 immorality were at that time the common weapons of party 
 politicians. The Eeformer himself was accused of the vilest 
 offences, and Catholic writers think the evidence against him 
 good enough to be produced in footnotes. If we disregard 
 that evidence, as I think we may, we should also disregard the 
 tales which Knox has recorded against the Queen and her ladies. 
 
 In December the Council began to cope with the question 
 of making some provision for the ministers ; the Assembly 
 was about to meet, and the question was urgent ; but an 
 unhappy incident led to further trouble between the Puritans 
 and the court. The Queen's uncle d'Elboeuf went out with 
 Bothwell and others on some nocturnal expedition ; he and 
 his companions broke into the house of an Edinburgh Burgess,
 
 134 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 in the hope of obtaining an interview with one Alison Craik, 
 supposed to be the mistress of the godly Arran. When the 
 Assembly met, the fathers and brethren set to work on a petition 
 professing ' unfeigned love ' for the Queen, promising obedience 
 in all things lawful, and demanding justice on the offenders. 
 So far as we can see, they had no excuse for interfering, more 
 especially as the case was one which threw an unfavourable 
 light on the morals of their own party. 
 
 The Queen's councillors did not attend at the Assembly, 
 but they sat to receive a deputation. Ministers and laymen 
 came to ask for the recognition of the Book of Discipline. 
 Lethington met them with the previous question, whether 
 they met with the Queen's permission ? Knox was indignant ; 
 if they required permission to meet, they might be told that 
 they required permission to preach. ' Take from us the 
 freedom of assemblies, and take from us the Evangel.' There 
 was more in Lethington's question than the Keformer would 
 allow ; the Queen and her Council were responsible for peace 
 and order ; their task was not rendered easier by an Assembly, 
 meeting twice in the year, and dictating to Government in 
 the name of God. As for the Book, the Secretary wished to 
 know how many of them would be bound by it : would the 
 Duke ? Lord Ochiltree, a rough westland man, said that if 
 the Duke refused he might be ' scrapped out ' of their number 
 and company, but Knox knew well enough that this was no 
 answer. ' Stand content,' said Lethington, ' the Book will not 
 be obtained.' 
 
 The scheme for endowing the ministry took the form of an 
 arrangement by which two-thirds of the old benefices went to 
 the existing titular incumbents, mostly laymen ; the remaining 
 third was to provide for the ministers, and any surplus was to 
 go to the Queen. Lethington said the Queen would not have 
 a pair of new shoes out of the scheme. The details were worked 
 out by Wishart of Pitarrow, the comptroller ; the Kirk-men 
 said that the laird of Pitarrow was a good man, but the devil 
 fly away with the comptroller. According to Mr. Knox, two- 
 thirds were given freely to the devil, and the third divided 
 between God and the devil.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 135 
 
 For the success of her policy of compromise Mary still relied 
 on her brother. If the Lord James was to take the lead in 
 politics, he needed money to make himself a party, and lands 
 from which he could summon tenants to his standard. By 
 this time the Lord James was affianced to Agnes Keith, daughter 
 of the Earl Marischal : they were married on the 8th February, 
 and the splendour of the wedding feast gave some offence to 
 the godly. For a short time the bridegroom was known as 
 Earl of Mar, but that title was claimed by the respectable 
 Erskine. The Earldom of Moray was reserved for the Pro- 
 testant leader, but Huntly still claimed to be Earl of Moray, 
 and the ' goodman of the North ' would not yield without 
 a struggle. 
 
 The same month of February witnessed the opening of a 
 significant episode in the history of our Eeformation. Ninian 
 Winzet, priest and schoolmaster, was Provost of the collegiate 
 church at Linlithgow. He was a reforming Catholic, faithful 
 and even stern in reminding prelates and nobles of their duty ; 
 but his studies had not prepared him to welcome the new 
 teaching. He refused to accept the Confession, and was at 
 once deprived of his work and banished from his ' kindly 
 town ' ; he came to Edinburgh, and began to use his pen in 
 defence of the truth as he understood it. First appeared his 
 Tractate, in which the points of the controversy were handled 
 at some length. This was followed up by Fourscore and Three 
 Questions addressed to John Knox, and by a dropping fire of 
 pamphlets. Winzet was a formidable critic, all the more 
 formidable because his language was moderate and reasonable. 
 When we remark on the violence of Knox, we are usually told 
 that the Eeformer was much in earnest, and that he lived in 
 a plainspoken age. Winzet was contemporary with Knox ; 
 he was much in earnest, and he was smarting under a sense of 
 injustice, but he wrote little or nothing unworthy of his position 
 as a Christian minister. Considering how eager the Eeformers 
 were to argue, their treatment of this worthy, man is hard 
 to justify. Knox defended himself from the pulpit, and 
 announced that his commission was ' extraordinary ' like that 
 of John the Baptist ; but some years elapsed before Winzet
 
 186 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 was answered, and the answer when it came was not conclusive. 
 A great part of Winzet's argument was in fact unanswerable. 
 The Reformers were proceeding on the assumption that all 
 the rules of a modern Church may be proved by the letter 
 of Scripture. Winzet had no difficulty in showing that they 
 retained many rules of the Catholic Church for which no such 
 authority can be found : there is, for example, no explicit 
 warrant hi the New Testament for the baptism of infants, or 
 for the strict observance of the Lord's Day. He charged them 
 also with rejecting rules which the old Church found, or believed 
 she found, in the Word of God ; confirmation, for example, is 
 an ordinance which aims at perpetuating the practice of the 
 apostles as described in Acts viii. To these .arguments the 
 Eeformers made no adequate reply ; it was hardly necessary 
 to argue with a man whom they could, and did, drive out of 
 the country. 
 
 The incident of Alison Craik had an interesting sequel ; 
 Bothwell and Arran were at feud, and Mr. Knox was called 
 in to act as peacemaker. Of Bothwell's religious opinions, if 
 he had any, little is known, but he was an ambitious man, and 
 he could see that the Protestants had the upper hand in a great 
 part of Scotland. He obtained an introduction to Knox and 
 was well received ; the Reformer took pleasure in reminding 
 the Earl of the old feudal tie between Knoxes and Hepburns. 
 By his exertions the two young men were reconciled, and 
 attended sermon together. A few days later, Arran came to 
 Knox with an alarming story ; Bothwell was trying to engage 
 him in a plot for killing the Lord James and carrying off the 
 Queen. It is not unlikely that Bothwell may have talked of 
 some such enterprise ; but the excitement under which Arran 
 laboured soon developed into insanity ; he was placed under 
 restraint, and his ' stout and godly ' proceedings were of no 
 further benefit to his party. 
 
 The great Council at Trent had resumed its labours ; the 
 Eucharist was under discussion, and it was known that France 
 and Germany would demand the communion cup for the laity. 
 Scotland was not represented at the Council, and Mary's 
 friends on the Continent were anxious to remind her of her
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 137 
 
 duty in this matter. They chose as their envoy a pious Jesuit, 
 Nicholas of Gouda, a person ' altogether spiritual ' but not 
 lacking in diplomatic ability. In June the nuncio sailed for 
 Scotland ; he was accompanied by Edmund Hay, a young 
 Scottish priest. The ecclesiastics of the party were disguised 
 as merchants, but they did not escape the suspicion of some 
 who sailed with them ; when they landed at Leith, Hay took 
 his venerable friend to his own home at Megginch, and kept 
 him there until the Assembly should be over. 
 
 It was a somewhat critical Assembly, for the ministers were 
 bent on presenting a supplication to the Queen, demanding the 
 suppression of her private Mass. She was not to make religion 
 an excuse ; her religion, as the ministers wished to assure her, 
 was ' nothing but abomination and vanity '. They added 
 some requests of a general nature ; adultery and blasphemy 
 should be punished with death, and some provision should be 
 made for the ministry and the poor. Lethington was sincerely 
 alarmed ; he brought his persuasive power to bear on the lay 
 members of the house, and drafted another petition, framed 
 in accordance with the ordinary rules of courtesy. Knox 
 preferred the supplication, but the lords were with Lethington, 
 and their opinion prevailed. 
 
 When the Assembly was over, a small escort of Hays brought 
 the nuncio to Edinburgh, and found him a lodging near the 
 palace. On a July day, when the Lord James had gone to 
 sermon, Nicholas was brought to Holyrood for an interview 
 with the Queen. He addressed her in Latin, and Edmund Hay 
 was called in to assist the Queen in making her reply. The 
 nuncio was accredited to the Scottish bishops, but from them 
 he received little encouragement. Henry Sinclair, Bishop of 
 Boss and afterwards President of the Court of Session, would 
 receive no papal envoy ; he said his house would be destroyed 
 within twenty-four hours if he did. Crichton, Bishop of 
 Dunkeld, was more compliant, but he insisted that Nicholas 
 should come disguised as a banker's clerk ; nothing but money 
 was to be discussed while the servants were in the room. 
 After a few weeks of this anxious life, the nuncio took ship and 
 returned to his own country. With him went the unlucky
 
 138 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Winzet. He had brought his series of pamphlets to a close 
 with his Last Blast of the Trumpet against Mr. Knox ; the 
 Edinburgh magistrates had refuted him by breaking into the 
 house where his works were printed, and seizing all the copies 
 they could find. One is glad to know that Winzet found 
 friends in his exile ; Catholic Universities employed and 
 promoted him, and he died Abbot of St. James's at Eatisbon. 
 
 Nicholas and his friends escaped alive about the beginning 
 of September ; a few weeks earlier the Queen had passed to 
 the north, to try conclusions with Huntly. The plan of her 
 campaign was approved by her brother and Lethington, both 
 of whom accompanied her ; her decisive success was won at 
 the skirmish or battle of Corrichie ; where old Huntly, stricken 
 by mortal illness, fell from his horse and died before the fighting 
 began. His son, John Gordon, was cruelly put to death after 
 the battle, and Moray (we may call him Moray now that his 
 rival was dead) compelled his sister to be present at the execu- 
 tion. The Gordons would have it that they were marching 
 to free Mary from the tyranny of her brother ; but this was not 
 Mary's own view of the situation. She clung to Moray as 
 the chief agent of her policy, and she deliberately helped him 
 to ruin her most powerful Catholic subject. 
 
 On her way south, at Montrose, Mary met her poetic friend 
 Chastelard, who was paying his second visit to Scotland. 
 Chastelard was a Huguenot, and it was rumoured that a great 
 lady of that party had incited him to compromise the reputation 
 of the Catholic Queen of Scots. In any case the poet was ready 
 to pour out amorous verse after the fashion of the time, and 
 to commit follies in proof of his passion. 
 
 While Mary was in the north, Knox was in Galloway and 
 Kyle, where he comforted the hearts of his brethren, and drew 
 up a new ' bond ' for them to sign. Towards the end of 
 September he went to Maybole, to engage in a set argument 
 about the Mass ; his antagonist was Quintin Kennedy, Abbot 
 of Crossraguel, a good priest who was labouring to obtain 
 a hearing for the old faith. Neither disputant added anything 
 of value to the controversy ; they spent some time in arguing 
 about Melchizedek, King of Salem, and the bread and wine
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 139 
 
 which that priestly ruler offered to Abraham. After three days 
 of argument the town of Maybole intimated that provisions 
 were running short, and the conference came to an end. 
 
 In Edinburgh the parties maintained their usual attitude ; 
 Lethington and the Queen prevented actual hostilities. The 
 Duke of Chatelherault was in town, and efforts were made to 
 draw him into the Protestant and English party. On a Sunday 
 evening in November Mr. Knox gave a supper party ; his 
 guests were the Duke and Mr. Eandolph, the English agent. 
 Pressed by his genial host, the Duke promised to be a professor 
 of Christ's word ; to be a good subject (so far as in duty and 
 conscience he was bound) ; and to promote friendship with 
 England. 
 
 Knox continued to testify against the gaieties of the court, 
 and in the Protestant mind these pastimes were connected 
 with the miserable civil strife in France. In March of the 
 current year the Duke of Guise and his men had entered the 
 little town of Vassy while the Huguenots were assembled for 
 worship. The soldiers tried to stop the service ; the Huguenots 
 resisted ; the Duke, who was perhaps trying to restore order, 
 was struck by a stone. On seeing their leader wounded, the 
 soldiers threw off all control, and some sixty Huguenots were 
 killed. We may be sure that Protestant comments on the 
 incident would be sent to the brethren in Scotland ; when 
 Mary gave a dance at Holyrood, Knox and his friends thought 
 she was dancing for joy because God's people were being 
 slaughtered. In December Knox became so emphatic that the 
 Queen sent for him again. Prom his account of the interview 
 we gather that she might as well have left him alone. He 
 would not condemn dancing in general terms, but referred to 
 the wickedness of dancing because God's people were slain. 
 It is quite possible that Mary did not understand him ; the 
 incident at Vassy was not recent, and she never accepted any 
 responsibility for what her uncles were doing. 
 
 When the Assembly met in December, the most difficult case 
 for consideration was that of Paul Methven, now minister of 
 Jedburgh. The servant in his house had borne a child, of 
 which he was alleged to be the father. He offered to clear
 
 140 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 himself on oath, but his accusers were prepared to call witnesses, 
 and Knox was commissioned to hold an inquiry. The charge 
 was proved, and Methven had to take refuge in England. He 
 returned after a time and applied for reinstatement in the 
 ministry, but the forms of penance imposed by the brethren 
 were so humiliating that he could not go through the ordeal, 
 and again retired to England. 
 
 Mary still cherished the hope of marrying a Catholic prince, 
 and Lethington was to visit England and France, in order to 
 discuss this important question ; he had his instructions from 
 the Council in February. Soon after his departure came the 
 melancholy end of the follies of M. Chastelard. He made two 
 attempts to conceal himself in the Queen's bedroom ; on the 
 second occasion she wished her servants to kill him, but he 
 was reserved for a formal trial, and on the 22nd February he 
 was executed at St. Andrews. The facts of the case do not 
 indicate any guilty understanding between Chastelard and the 
 Queen ; Knox's version of the story was probably derived 
 from Moray, and when Moray was friendly with Knox, we may 
 infer that he was plotting against the Queen. The hostility 
 of the preachers never relaxed ; about this time Randolph 
 reports them as praying daily that God would either turn the 
 Queen's heart or grant her a short life. 
 
 This February brought Mary the news of a bereavement 
 which cost her and her ladies many tears. Her uncle the 
 Duke of Guise gained a victory over his Protestant enemies at 
 Dreux, but after the battle he was shot and fatally wounded 
 by a Protestant youth named Poltrot. The murderer was 
 seized and hurried into the presence of his victim. ' See now ', 
 said the Duke, ' the difference between your religion and mine. 
 Yours has induced you to kill me, and mine commands me to 
 forgive you.' So he died, and the Counter-Reformation lost 
 a brilliant and popular leader. 
 
 The approach of Easter was always a critical season in the 
 Scotch Christian year ; in the west country the Catholics, still 
 numerous, were meeting for worship on the hillside, like the 
 Convenanters of a later age. The Protestants declared that 
 idolaters should die the death. Mary, who was at Lochleven,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 141 
 
 sent for Mr. Knox, in the hope that he might help her to keep 
 the peace. Knox boldly justified the action of his friends in 
 Kyle ; he paraded once more his list of Old Testament 
 homicides Phinehas killing Zimri and the Midianite woman ; 
 Samuel hewing Agag in pieces ; Elijah destroying the priests 
 of Baal. After two hours of this, the Queen broke off and 
 went to supper, but next day she was out hawking, and ap- 
 pointed the Keformer to meet her on the hill. They held a long 
 and not unfriendly conference, Mary trying to obtain some 
 information about Euthven, whom she suspected of dealing 
 in magic ; Lethington, of whom Knox would say nothing ; 
 Gordon, the titular Archbishop of Athens, who was seeking 
 office in the reformed kirk. With her usual skill, she endeavoured 
 to propitiate the preacher by asking his aid in a difficulty. 
 Her sister, the Countess of Argyle, was neglected by the Earl ; 
 husband and wife were living apart ; would Mr. Knox remind 
 the Earl of his duty ? Knox promised, and kept his word ; 
 he wrote Argyle a letter which ought to be read by those who 
 wish to understand Knox's conception of ministerial duty. 
 Argyle was angry, not without reason, but he did not venture 
 to quarrel with the minister of Edinburgh. 
 
 Knox had assured Mary that there was an Act of Parliament 
 against the Mass ; the Acts of 1560, though not regularly 
 passed, were regarded by one party as forming part of the law 
 of the land. Mary, bent on conciliating the dominant party, 
 now began to persecute the members of her own Church. In 
 May about fifty Catholics were brought to trial ; some were 
 put in prison, and some found security not to offend again. 
 
 Parliament met in May, and the Acts passed show that 
 the Protestant party was in power. In particular, an Act 
 was passed against the horrid crime of witchcraft. We may 
 console ourselves with the reflection that in this matter Scotland 
 was not worse than some other Christian countries ; but the 
 cruelties inflicted under this Eeformation statute make up 
 a very bad chapter of our national history. 
 
 Knox was a discontented spectator of these proceedings ; 
 he thought the Queen's speech ' a painted oration ', and the 
 ' targets ' or tassels which adorned her robe moved him to
 
 142 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 melancholy reflections on the ' stinking pride of women '. 
 Before the Estates rose he dealt publicly with the question of 
 the Queen's marriage. He warned the nobles that if they 
 allowed an infidel (and all papists, he said, are infidels) to 
 become head to the Sovereign, they did what in them lay to 
 banish Christ Jesus from the realm. Mary was deeply offended, 
 and sent for the preacher ; his description of the interview is 
 not without a touch of Knox's usual burlesque, but we may 
 trust his report of what was said. What, she asked, had he 
 to do with her marriage ; what was he in the commonwealth ? 
 ' A subject, madam, born within the same.' It was a good 
 answer, though Knox must needs go on to spoil it by boasting 
 that, though he was neither earl nor baron, God had made him 
 a ' profitable member ' : he might have allowed the Queen to 
 discover that for herself. Mary, finding that she made no 
 impression on this man, was dissolved in tears, and the worthy 
 Erskine of Dun was unable to console her. Knox. told her 
 that he took no delight in her weeping ; he could not even 
 bear the crying of his own boys when his hands corrected them. 
 The interview was, as might have been expected, without 
 result. When the Reformer left Holyrood, nobody would 
 speak to him but the rough Lord Ochiltree. Moray began to 
 feel that he must choose between Mary and Knox, and, for 
 the moment, he chose Mary ; during many months no com- 
 munication passed between the minister of Edinburgh and the 
 official leaders of his party. 
 
 On the 25th June the Assembly met at Perth. There was 
 some useful conference as to the planting of kirks. Winzet's 
 case had called attention to the dangers of a free press ; it 
 was now enacted that no work on religion should be published 
 without leave of the superintendent ; doubtful cases might be 
 referred to the Assembly. 
 
 Mary's prosecution of Catholics did nothing to abate the 
 ill-feeling between the parties. In August some of her servants, 
 in her absence, were hearing Mass at Holyrood ; this led to 
 disturbances. Some twenty-two persons, of whom eight were 
 women, were put on trial for the Mass ; at the same time 
 proceedings were taken against Protestants charged with acts
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 143 
 
 of violence. On the 8th October Knox sent out a letter requiring 
 the brethren to give their ' presence, comfort, and assistance ' 
 to the accused Protestants. The Queen was advised that this 
 letter was a breach of the law which forbade the convocation 
 of her lieges without her permission. Mary was keen to take 
 the matter up, and in December Knox was brought before the 
 council. The Queen was present, and there was a good 
 attendance. If Mary had been less confident, she might 
 hove seen at a glance that she could not hope for a conviction. 
 Her Protestant lords were in full force, and Euthven at once 
 began objecting to the form of the charge. The Catholics were 
 well represented by the Lord President, Sinclair, still meditating 
 on the probability that his house would be sacked if he opposed 
 the dominant party. Outside the council-room the stairs and 
 passages were crowded with sturdy partisans of the accused. 
 The nobles refused to find Knox guilty, and this deliverance 
 must have strengthened his hold on the Assembly, which met 
 soon after the trial. There was no business of the first impor- 
 tance. Goodman spoke of the inadequate provision for 
 ministers, and Lethington reminded him that an Englishman 
 ought not to meddle with Scots affairs. Eobert Pont agreed 
 to be superintendent at Inverness, provided that he was not 
 to be burdened with Gaelic-speaking churches. Eobert Eamsay 
 was suspended for suggesting that there was a middle way 
 between Papists and Protestants. 
 
 Eandolph was resuming his duties as English agent at the 
 Scottish court. On his way north he came upon Lethington, 
 just taking possession of abbey lands near Haddington, granted 
 him by the Queen in acknowledgment of his able service : 
 this grant brought the Secretary into hostile relations with 
 the Earl of Bothwell. 
 
 The main object of Eandolph's mission was the marriage of 
 the Queen of Scots. It was to the English interest that she 
 should marry a person, not of sovereign rank, and, if possible, 
 a Protestant. Nerving herself for a great effort, Elizabeth 
 offered her own Eobert Dudley, whom she meant to raise to 
 the English peerage ; Mr. Knox would have welcomed this 
 proposal ; he was friendly with Dudley, as he was with Morton,
 
 144 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 or with any man who supported the Protestant cause. Mary 
 was quietly sarcastic, and put the offer on one side. 
 
 Another marriage caused a momentary flutter in Edinburgh ; 
 Mr. Knox, a hardened campaigner of fifty, took to wife Margaret 
 Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a girl of sixteen. The 
 Queen stormed, because a lady of her name was marrying 
 a low-born man, and the Eeformer's enemies thought he must 
 have used necromancy to obtain the consent of so young 
 a bride. Mrs. Bowes retired to her own estate in Yorkshire, 
 taking with her the two little sons of her daughter Marjorie. 
 
 The Assembly met again on the 25th June, and again there 
 was a formal conference between the Queen's advisers and the 
 representatives of the Kirk, Knox, as usual, taking the most 
 prominent part. He justified his rebellious attitude by con- 
 tending that Mary was a rebel against God : this was proved 
 by her attendance at Mass, and her absence from Protestant 
 worship. When would she give her presence to the public 
 preaching ? ' I think never ', said Lethington, ' so long as 
 she is thus treated.' It was, indeed, unfair to expect a high- 
 spirited young lady to attend a preacher who was constantly 
 comparing her with the less reputable queens in Hebrew 
 history. Lethington plied his opponent with passages from 
 Luther, Calvin, and others who had taught obedience to 
 princes as a Christian duty ; Knox fell back, as usual, on the 
 Old Testament, and the conference was without result. 
 
 The debate on the Queen's marriage was about to take 
 a dangerous turn. Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, was one 
 of the nobles who had gone farthest in supporting the designs 
 of Henry VIII. Forfeited in Scotland, he took refuge in 
 England, where Henry received him kindly, gave him lands 
 in Yorkshire, and married him to Margaret Douglas, daughter 
 of Margaret Tudor by her marriage with Angus. Their eldest 
 son, Lord Darnley, was now a long lad of nineteen ; his temper 
 was insolent, and his habits were low ; the Countess had more 
 than once suggested that her son would make a good husband 
 for the Queen of Scots. All the family were Catholics. Lennox 
 was now scheming to return to Scotland ; Cecil had some 
 misgivings, but Lethington assured him that the Protestant
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 145 
 
 settlement was too firmly established to be undermined. 
 Moray wrote in the same sense, and added that under Mary 
 the Protestants had liberty in such abundance as their hearts 
 could wish. Elizabeth allowed Lennox to leave England, and 
 on Michaelmas Day, when Dudley was created Earl of Leicester, 
 she made a passing reference to Darnley's matrimonial prospects. 
 
 Pius IV was spending this year of his reign in gathering up 
 the results of the Council of Trent. He sent the decrees to 
 Mary, admonishing her to observe them, and to dismiss 
 heretics from her service. So far as doctrines were concerned, 
 the Council had been a disappointment. There had been 
 a time when bishops and doctors thought it easy to embody 
 the Faith in a precise form so buttressed with texts from 
 Scripture and the Fathers that no Christian man could impugn 
 it. In the course of debate, differences arose and parties were 
 formed ; some important questions were postponed, and some 
 were settled by compromise. In practical matters the Council 
 was more successful ; there can be no doubt that it marks 
 the beginning of a great improvement in the morals and 
 learning of the Catholic clergy. This improvement was now 
 rendered possible bcause the Roman authorities had to face 
 the competition of many Protestant Churches, all of them 
 eager to point out the defects of the Roman system. 
 
 The Assembly met in December. The question whether 
 a minister might be a judge of the Supreme Court was raised 
 but not decided. Every minister, exhorter, and reader was 
 directed to procure the authorized psalm-book, and to use the 
 order therein contained. The regular prayers of the Kirk 
 were read out of the book ; they were supplemented, as we have 
 seen, by extempore petitions, which were often political and 
 fiercely personal in their application. 
 
 Before the end of the year, the Queen's French secretary 
 returned to his former master, the Cardinal of Lorraine. His 
 place was taken by an Italian, David Rizzio, whose cleverness 
 and musical talent gave him admission to the inner circle of 
 Mary's friends. Like all who served her, he was kindly treated ; 
 he had fine clothes and good horses, and his duties gave him 
 access to the Queen at moments when her nobles were kept 
 
 L
 
 146 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 waiting. There is no evidence to indicate that Rizzio was more 
 to Mary than an obliging servant, but, at a court such as 
 Holyrood then was, scandal is always busy. 
 
 Parliament met the Queen's wish by restoring Lennox to 
 his estates ; in February Darnley and the Queen met at 
 Castle Wemyss, and it was easily seen that Mary had chosen 
 him for her husband. She wanted, naturally, to marry a man 
 of her own religion ; Elizabeth had sanctioned the match by 
 allowing Darnley to go to Scotland ; and the Scots nobles 
 were inclined to acquiesce. But the fact that Elizabeth helped 
 to make the marriage did not prevent her from perceiving that 
 she was bringing together two Catholic pretenders to the English 
 crown. She tried to recall Darnley and his father to England, 
 and she sent one messenger after another to frighten Mary 
 into submission. 
 
 Easter was always a trying season for the guardians of the 
 public peace ; at Edinburgh there was a slight revival of 
 disorder. A priest named Carvet was caught returning from 
 a house where he had said Mass ; after some kind of trial he 
 was placed in the pillory, his chalice in his hand, and pelted 
 with rotten eggs. Knox's History gives this man a bad character, 
 but it would hardly be safe to condemn any Papist on this 
 testimony. 
 
 When the Assembly met in June the political situation was 
 already denned, and the venerable house at once took its share 
 in the impending conflict by demanding the suppression of the 
 Queen's Mass. This Assembly also formulated the demand 
 that all teachers in schools, colleges, and universities should be 
 approved by the Kirk. 
 
 Moray, like all the leaders of the Protestant party, was in 
 Elizabeth's pay, and was bound to take his instructions from 
 her. For some time past Cecil had regarded Mary's brother 
 as a possible Protestant King of Scots ; but Moray himself 
 never grasped at the crown, and Elizabeth would not have- 
 supported him in doing so. He had, however, strong reasons 
 for objecting to his sister's choice. He said that Darnley 
 would not be a setter-forth of Christ's religion, and this was 
 unhappily true. Nor was this the young man's only fault.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 147 
 
 Lord Robert Stewart had shown Darnley a map of Scotland, 
 and had pointed out the extent of Moray's possessions ; 
 Darnley said it was ' too much '. He may have sealed his 
 own death-warrant when he made this petulant remark. For 
 the Protestant lords lived in constant fear of a Parliament, 
 controlled by the Queen's partisans, and bent on revoking the 
 titles to their ill-gotten lands. 
 
 After divers adventures, Mary and her bridegroom arrived 
 at Holyrood, and there, on the 29th July, they were married 
 with a Catholic service. Being cousins, they needed a dis- 
 pensation from the Pope ; the dispensation had not yet been 
 drawn up, but Mary was justified in assuming that her petition 
 was merely a matter of form. Darnley left the church before 
 the wedding Mass ; this probably indicates that he was trying 
 to make friends among the Protestant lords. Soon after his 
 arrival in Scotland he had gone to hear Knox, and on Sunday, 
 the 19th August, he sat again in the royal chair at St. Giles to 
 hear him. This is the only sermon by Mr. Knox which has 
 been preserved ; we read it now with distress and disappoint- 
 ment. There is not a word of the Evangel in this discourse ; 
 it is 'a tedious harangue on the wicked princes of the Old 
 Testament. A sustained attack on Ahab and Jezebel was 
 obviously aimed at the King and Queen. Darnley was much 
 upset ; Mr. Knox was summoned to appear before the Council, 
 and forbidden to preach while the King and Queen were in 
 Edinburgh. The inhibition did not keep him silent very long ; 
 the rebels were arming, and the Queen had to take the field 
 against them. Her short campaign was a brilliant success ; 
 friends gathered round her banner, and Moray was so out- 
 numbered that he had to retreat in a southerly direction. 
 From Dumfries he and his friends issued a somewhat uncon- 
 vincing statement of their grievances ; when the royal army 
 approached, they crossed the Border, and were safe at Carlisle. 
 Elizabeth had sent them money, enough to encourage the 
 rebellion, but not enough to make it successful ; she had sent 
 no troops. Moray resented her behaviour, and, as soon as his 
 friends had found shelter in England, he pressed on alone to 
 remonstrate with Elizabeth. On the 22nd October he had an 
 
 L2
 
 148 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 interview with Elizabeth and Cecil ; next day a Council was 
 summoned ; the French ambassador was invited to be present ; 
 Moray knelt at the table while Elizabeth read him a homily 
 on the sin of rebellion, and compelled him to say that he had 
 received no help from her. We should wrong all the actors in 
 this admirable comedy if we supposed that Elizabeth was 
 trying to deceive M. de Foix ; she only wished him to under- 
 stand that this was her version of the facts. 
 
 When Mary and her husband returned to Edinburgh it was 
 noticed that there was some coldness between them. Darnley 
 had set his foolish heart on the crown matrimonial, which the 
 Queen would not give him without consent of Parliament. 
 Deserted by Moray and Lethington, Mary was in effect her own 
 secretary of state ; Eizzio was not a good French scholar, 
 and his political importance has probably been exaggerated. For 
 the moment, Mary had beaten her rebels in policy and in arms. 
 It is just at this juncture that Randolph, a faithful echo of 
 Protestant rumour, begins to hint that the Queen of Scots has 
 lost her good name ; for the honour of a queen he will give no 
 details, but the reference is to the Italian secretary. 
 
 On Christmas Day, being a holy day in the old Church, 
 the Assembly met for business, and the Queen's answer to 
 the demand presented in June was communicated to the house. 
 She was ' no wise persuaded ' to give up the Mass ; she might 
 forfeit the old alliance with France by doing so. She would 
 retain her patronage in the Kirk. John Row drew up a cautious 
 reply, asserting once more that the religion of the Assembly 
 was the religion of Christ ; as to patronage, there was no 
 intention that the Queen or others should be defrauded of 
 their rights, but presentees ought to be tried by ' learned men '. 
 A fast was ordered, to begin at the end of February, for the 
 Queen's Mass and other offences. Mr. Knox was to write to 
 ministers, exhorters, and readers to continue in their vocation, 
 which they were like to leave for lack of payment of their 
 stipends. This Assembly also decided that children baptized 
 by a Catholic priest should not be re-baptized. On this point 
 the Protestant leaders were in a difficulty : they had them- 
 selves been baptized in Catholic times, and they were unwilling
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 149 
 
 to repeat the ordinance, lest they should be taken for Ana- 
 baptists. 
 
 When the Assembly met, the papal chair was vacant. The 
 busy life of Pius IV had ended on the 9th December ; his 
 successor, Cardinal Chislieri, was elected in January ; in 
 compliment to his predecessor (with whom he had not always 
 agreed) he took the name of Pius V. The new pope was a 
 Dominican friar, an active moralist and disciplinarian, wholly 
 imbued with the visionary politics of the Holy See. His 
 accession was welcomed by the men who were working for 
 a combination of the Catholic Powers, to stamp out heresy 
 and to restore the papal system. But the Catholic League 
 was never an effective reality ; France and Spain were not of 
 one mind in this matter. From time to time there was also 
 some talk of combination among the Protestant Powers, but 
 for various reasons, political and religious, these projects came 
 to be abandoned. 
 
 As a Catholic, Mary of course wished to see her own Church 
 restored ; she corresponded with the Pope and the King of 
 Spain as one who sympathized with their schemes. In our 
 Protestant books Mary embodies the reactionary policy of 
 Home, while Knox is presented as the chief author of the 
 liberties we now enjoy. This view of the case is very far from 
 accurate. Mary's French training had enabled her to under- 
 stand the principle of ' compromise in religion ' the principle 
 on which our liberties are founded. Her liberalism may not 
 have been a reasoned conviction, but she was the first to 
 suggest that Catholics and Protestants might live peaceably 
 side by side in Scotland. She failed, because Knox was fighting, 
 not for liberty, but for political power to suppress the Mass. 
 His excuse is this, that in the sixteenth century no religion 
 was quite safe unless it was dominant. When it was dominant, 
 the current interpretation of the Bible made persecution a 
 sacred duty. 
 
 On the 24th February, Mary's friend Jean Gordon was 
 married to the Earl of Bothwell ; the Queen wished them to 
 be married with the Mass, but to this Bothwell would not 
 agree. As to religion he was probably indifferent, but he had
 
 150 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 seen the solid advantages of standing in with the Protestant 
 lords. Huntly, the bride's brother, was in the same position. 
 Mary took him out of prison, and began to restore the lands 
 which had been forfeited since the skirmish at Corrichie ; but 
 from this time forth he also must be reckoned among the 
 enemies of the Mass. 
 
 A few days after this wedding the fast ordered by the 
 Assembly began ; day after day men went in crowds to hear 
 sermons ; the subject was always or usually some sanguinary 
 passage of the Old Testament. It was known that some 
 ' great attempt ' was in hand ; there was constant communica- 
 tion between Moray and his exiled friends at Berwick and 
 Morton, who took care of their interests in Edinburgh. Morton 
 or one of his confederates had secured the assistance of Darnley 
 by persuading him that Rizzio and the Queen were lovers ; 
 the luckless youth was drinking heavily, and was, no doubt, 
 an easy victim. As was usual in Scottish politics, legal instru- 
 ments were drawn, to keep the Queen's enemies together. The 
 substance of the agreement was, that Moray, Argyle, and their 
 faction were to support the King of Scotland in all his actions, 
 causes, and quarrels (Rizzio was not mentioned by name), and 
 to procure him the crown matrimonial. Darnley undertook 
 to maintain the establishment of their religion. Of all the 
 ' bands ' in Scottish history, this is the most entirely disgraceful 
 to all who signed. 
 
 On Saturday, 2nd March, the bond was signed at Berwick 
 by Moray, Rothes, Ochiltree, Kirkaldy of Grange, and others. 
 On the following Thursday, Parliament met in Edinburgh, and 
 Mary had the satisfaction of seeing that her prelates were 
 placed ' in the ancient manner '. The Lords of the Articles 
 were chosen, but this was the only business transacted in this 
 Parliament. On Saturday evening, while Rizzio was at supper 
 with the Queen and the Countess of Argyle, Morton quietly 
 posted his men on the passages and stairs of Holyrood. The 
 conspirators had thought of holding some kind of trial, but as 
 soon as a blow was struck the Italian was hurried out of the 
 Queen's presence, butchered on the landing at the head of the 
 stairs, and hastily interred in front of the abbey. Morton had
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 151 
 
 carried his point ; on Sunday morning the Parliament was 
 dissolved. 
 
 Cecil, of course, was fully informed as to the ' great attempt ' 
 and its authors. In one of the lists furnished to him, the names 
 of Knox and Craig were added at the end. It is not likely that 
 the ministers had any active share in the crime, but Knox 
 probably knew of it beforehand, and approved of what was 
 done. Cecil circulated the report that Eizzio was killed in 
 the act of adultery with the Queen. 
 
 Mary was within a short time of her ' downlying ', and 
 some hoped that she and her unborn child would share the 
 fate of the Papist secretary. Her fortitude at this crisis has 
 few parallels in the history of her sex. After a night of suffer- 
 ing, she resumed her ascendancy over her worthless and now 
 terrified husband. When Moray and his company arrived on 
 Sunday evening, she received her brother kindly, and he, in 
 his bluff honest way, swore he knew nothing of the crime. 
 The Queen had still some untitled servants on whom she could 
 rely ; with their aid she prepared for flight. In a few days 
 she was safe in Dunbar ; Huntly and Bothwell (professing 
 Protestants, but enemies of Moray) were bringing men to her 
 standard ; as in the previous autumn, it appeared that the 
 Queen's party was the nation, minus the extreme Protestants. 
 When she advanced on Edinburgh, Morton and the rest found 
 it safer to take the road to England. That road was closed 
 to the author of the First Blast ; Mr. Knox slipped westward 
 to his friends in Kyle. 
 
 Having yielded to the Queen's influence, Darnley soon 
 babbled out all he knew of the plots against her. She heard 
 now what her brother had done, but her one anxiety was 
 to keep the peace. She feared she might die when her child 
 was born ; she would fain have reconciled her nobles, so that 
 the child, if it survived, might not be without friends. She 
 began to pardon even those who had a hand in Eizzio's death. 
 Morton, the chief offender, remained in exile, and Elizabeth 
 took no action against him. Lord Euthven, who had risen 
 from a bed of sickness to witness the slaughter of Signer Davie, 
 died at Newcastle, and we are told that he made a Christian end.
 
 152 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In May there was another fast, and on this occasion prayers 
 were offered for the Queen's safe delivery. On the 19th June 
 her son was born. ' He is only too much your son,' she said 
 to Darnley, and we may remember that the evil habits of his 
 father, and the shock of that terrible evening at Holyrood, 
 account for some of the physical and mental peculiarities which 
 this infant was to display. 
 
 On the 25th June the Assembly met and went on with 
 business as usual. One of its decisions is to be noted : the 
 Lords of Council and Session were to be asked to see that 
 excommunicated persons should not have ' the liberty of any 
 process '. Those whom the Church condemned were to be put 
 outside the protection of the State. About this time Knox 
 boasted that the Kirk had nothing which flowed from ' that 
 Man of Sin '. Nothing, perhaps, except the political theory 
 of Innocent III. 
 
 During the autumn of this year the Queen was kept in alarm 
 by the intolerable conduct of her husband. Excluded, by his 
 own faults, from any share in government, Darnley formed wild 
 plans, and changed them from day to day. He would join the 
 English Catholics in seizing Scarborough, or he would become 
 a pirate-prince in the Scilly Isles. He wrote to the Pope, and 
 to the kings of France and Spain, accusing his wife of in- 
 difference to the interests of religion. Darnley had just sense 
 enough to see where the Queen's policy was vulnerable. Sooner 
 or later, the Jesuits would discover that she could not be relied 
 on to take a decided part in the campaign against heresy. 
 
 Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, had spent the summer at 
 Eome, congratulating Pius V on his accession, and reassuring 
 him as to the fidelity of the Queen of Scots. Before he left, 
 the Scots bishop supped with the Pope ; Pius called his 
 attention to the modest scale of the papal household, and 
 hinted that he was saving money for Mary. But before the 
 Queen could have the aid she needed, her sincerity must be 
 tested. For this purpose one Laureo, Bishop of Mondovi, was 
 sent to Paris with a wide commission, in which Scotland was 
 included. Laureo went to Paris, conversed with those who 
 were supposed to know best, and drew his plan of campaign.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 158 
 
 He had taken up the notion that Darnley was the leader of 
 Mary's opponents. But Darnley's power depended on the 
 support of six evil men Moray, Morton, Argyle, Lethington, 
 Bellenden the justice-clerk, and Makgill the clerk-register. If 
 Mary would have the six arrested and put to death, she would 
 do something signal for the service of God, and earn all the 
 assistance the Holy Father could give her. 
 
 Some time had to elapse before Mary could give a definite 
 answer to this proposal. At the end of September she made 
 an unsuccessful effort to bring Darnley to a better state of 
 mind. She had the sympathy of her nobles, and it was about 
 this time that Du - Croc, the French ambassador, sent home 
 a favourable report of the results of her policy. Never, he 
 wrote, had he seen the Queen so beloved, esteemed, and 
 honoured ; never had there been such a harmony among her 
 subjects as there was by her wise conduct. The worthy 
 gentleman mistook the lull before the storm for a settled calm. 
 Darnley had betrayed his Protestant allies ; he was under 
 Mary's influence ; at any moment he might join her in holding 
 a Parliament to forfeit Moray and the exiled Morton. It was 
 likely that Darnley would be murdered ; the usual bonds were 
 already being prepared. 
 
 In October Mary held an assize at Jedburgh. Bothwell, her 
 chief officer on the Border, was laid up at Hermitage, danger- 
 ously wounded in the performance of his duty. When the 
 assize was over, the Queen rode twenty miles to Hermitage ; 
 stayed two hours, to the great contentment of the invalid, 
 and rode home the same day. This imprudence brought on 
 a fever, so acute that at one moment the Queen was supposed 
 to be dead. She recovered, and, after a short progress along 
 the Border, she turned homeward. At Craigmillar her principal 
 men met to consider the urgent question, what was to be done 
 with the King. Divorce was a possible remedy, but Mary 
 would not endanger the hereditary rights of her son. The 
 speech attributed to Lethington is in his best manner. He 
 invited the Queen to trust her nobles ; she should see nothing 
 but what was good and approved by Parliament. (The lords 
 would have disposed of Darnley without difficulty, if they
 
 154 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 had been allowed to put him on his trial for treason, but to 
 this the Queen would not agree.) If anything irregular were 
 done, Lethington undertook that Moray, ' though he be not 
 less precise for a Protestant than your grace is for a papist,' 
 would ' look through his fingers '. The phrase is happily 
 descriptive ; it appears to have been taken from Luther's 
 Bible, Leviticus xx. 4. 
 
 In December the Queen was due at Stirling, where a brilliant 
 company assembled to witness the baptism of her son. He 
 was to be called Charles James ; his godfathers were the King 
 of France and the Duke of Savoy ; Elizabeth was godmother, 
 and sent a handsome gold font for the ceremony. Archbishop 
 Hamilton and several other prelates were there in their robes ; 
 the English envoys and the Protestant lords did not enter the 
 chapel, but the Countess of Argyle walked in the procession, 
 and held the baby at the font. Darnley was in Stirling, but he 
 absented himself from the baptism of his child, probably 
 because he feared that the English envoys would decline to 
 give him even the courtesy title of king. Sullenly he flung 
 away and went to his father's house at Glasgow. He was 
 sickening for smallpox, and for some weeks he lay ill, utterly 
 depressed, unable to enter into the schemes in which Lennox 
 was always engaged. Mary now completed the acts of grace 
 by which the murderers of Rizzio had been absolved ; Morton 
 was free to come out from under Elizabeth's wing. 
 
 On Christmas Day the Assembly met at Edinburgh. The 
 Helvetic Confession was approved, in general terms, but the 
 house could not agree to the observance of holy days such as 
 Christmas and Easter. A protest was entered against a com- 
 mission of jurisdiction which the Queen had granted to the 
 Archbishop ; to restore any of the old Church courts was, as 
 they expressed it, to cure the head of the Venomous Beast. 
 Mr. Knox was probably not present ; the Assembly gave him 
 six months' leave that he might visit his sons in England. 
 He carried with him a letter, penned by himself, in which the 
 Anglican bishops were asked to deal gently with those Puritans 
 who declined to wear the surplice. ' Ye cannot be ignorant,' 
 says the letter, ' how tender a thing the conscience of man is.'
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 155 
 
 This might be taken as a reflection on certain acts of the 
 Assembly, but we ought perhaps to hold that a Papist has no 
 conscience. Many learned men are convinced that Mary, 
 during the later months of 1566, was in guilty relations with 
 Bothwell, and that she became an active party to the murder 
 of her husband. The names of those who find her guilty" are 
 more weighty than the names of her defenders. I do not find 
 their arguments wholly convincing ; but I cannot set my 
 opinion against that of the received authorities. 
 
 When Mary's guests had departed from Stirling, she returned 
 to Holyrood, and on the 14th January she received the two 
 envoys who were to invite her acceptance of Laureo's pro- 
 posals. One was the Bishop of Dunblane ; the other was that 
 Edmund Hay whom we have seen guiding the steps of his 
 venerable friend, Nicholas of Gouda. They pressed her with 
 the usual arguments of their party ; her answer was unmis- 
 takably clear. She could not, she said, stain her hands with 
 the blood of her subjects. As for the Queen of England, 
 Elizabeth was her friend, and had recognized her claim to the 
 English succession. It should be noted that this answer was 
 given, not for public effect, but in a private conference with two 
 adherents of her own religion. It was a deep disappointment 
 to Hay, an ardent Jesuit, and to the whole party of which the 
 Jesuits were the ubiquitous agents. 
 
 Morton was now residing at Whittingehame, and on the 
 18th January Bothwell rode out to see him ; with Bothwell 
 was Lethington, just married to Mary Fleming, but willing to 
 spare a day for public affairs. Their object was to suggest 
 that Morton should take the lead in the plot against Darnley. 
 Bothwell, of course, said confidently that the Queen was in 
 sympathy with the plot ; but Morton had suffered for his share 
 in the ' great attempt ' of the previous March ; he asked to 
 see the Queen's handwriting, but this was not produced. All 
 that could be learned was, that the Queen would have no 
 speech of the plot now in hand. On or about the 20th, Mary 
 went to Glasgow to see her husband. A report had reached 
 her that Lennox and Darnley were scheming to put the Queen 
 in prison, that they might govern in the name of the infant
 
 156 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 prince. When she entered the sickroom, she attacked her 
 husband on this point ; Darnley was penitent and submissive, 
 and Mary finally suggested that he should finish his cure at 
 Craigmillar. When they reached Edinburgh, the King refused 
 to go on to Craigmillar ; perhaps he thought he would be taken 
 to Holyrood, but Mary naturally shrank from living with a man 
 hardly recovered from smallpox. A lodging was found for 
 the King in a house attached to the collegiate church of St. 
 Mary-in-the-Fields. 
 
 Lord Robert Stewart warned Darnley that his enemies were 
 seeking his life, and the King repeated this, as he repeated 
 everything, to his wife. When Mary appealed to Moray, the 
 Lord Robert gave Darnley the lie, and said he had spoken no 
 such thing. Lord Robert was standing in with the Protestant 
 lords ; he had his reward at a later time, when he was allowed 
 to plunder the diocese once governed by the worthy Reid. 
 He could not afford to have it known that he was trying to 
 save a traitor from the vengeance of the Protestant party. 
 
 When the conspirators came to discuss their plans, Bothwell 
 proposed to settle the matter by blowing up the house where 
 the King lay. Captain Cullen, the husband of Morton's mis- 
 tress, pointed out that the effects of gunpowder were uncertain ; 
 we may be sure that the hint was not lost, either on Morton 
 or on his intelligent cousin Archibald Douglas. 
 
 Sunday the 9th February was the day fixed for the second 
 ' great attempt '. On the morning of that day Moray rode 
 quietly out of Edinburgh ; his Countess was opportunely ill in 
 Fife. In the evening Mary spent some time with her husband, 
 and left him to be present at a wedding party in Holyrood. 
 After she had gone Darnley and his servant read the 55th 
 Psalm ; in his book it may have been one of the psalms for the 
 morning of the 10th, the morning whose light he did not live 
 to see. No passage of Scripture could be more appropriate 
 to -the situation of those two men. The King composed himself 
 to rest, but before long he was roused, probably by some 
 professing friend who warned him of his danger and urged him 
 to fly. Seizing their clothes the two young men may have 
 been guided down the outside stair, and perhaps across the
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 157 
 
 Thieves' Bow into a larger garden beyond. At some point of 
 their flight they were seized by a small party, probably a party 
 of Douglases ; damp towels were drawn over their faces, and 
 held fast until they ceased to breathe. Their bodies, bearing 
 no mark of injury, were laid out in the larger garden. Later 
 in the night came Bothwell and his men ; the house where the 
 King had lain was blown up, and two more of his attendants 
 were killed. I do not pretend that this brief narrative is 
 proved ; it is only an attempt to piece the evidence together. 
 
 Presuming on his achievement at Kirk o' Field, Bothwell 
 resumed the plan which had frightened the weak mind of 
 Arran. He would carry off the Queen and marry her, with 
 or against her will. The men who knew him for an enemy 
 left Scotland ; Moray and Lennox slipped away. Mary could 
 not leave her post, and her relation to Bothwell, whether 
 innocent or guilty, was desperately difficult. She had pro- 
 moted and enriched him, perhaps with the idea of making him 
 a counterpoise to Moray ; she was now at the mercy of the 
 reckless borderer ; if she lost her life by opposing his will, 
 he could tell what story he pleased about her after her death. 
 And Bothwell, for the moment, was co-operating with the 
 Protestant lords. 
 
 By the beginning of April, Morton and the rest were ready 
 to gather in the fruits of the King's death. Moray was going 
 abroad ; there was business in hand which he preferred not to 
 touch. Before leaving he made his will, appointing guardians 
 for his only child, a daughter, and naming Mary as ' overs- 
 woman ' to see that the guardians did their duty. He probably 
 did not foresee that in a very short time his colleagues would 
 drag his sister from her throne. After his departure there 
 was a mock trial, at which Argyle presided, and Bothwell was 
 cleansed of the guilt of the King's death. On the 14th April 
 the Estates met. An Act was passed concerning religion 
 a curiously short Act, simply reciting the promise Mary had 
 made on landing in Scotland, and acknowledging solemnly that 
 she had kept that promise. Then came the real business of 
 this Parliament : a series of Acts confirming the leaders of the 
 dominant party in their estates : Moray, Morton, and Lethington ;
 
 158 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Huntly and Bothwell and Lord Eobert Stewart were all now 
 as safe as a Scots Parliament could make them. On the 
 19th the Estates rose ; in the afternoon the Lords went to 
 supper at Ainslie's tavern. After supper a bond was produced, 
 recommending Bothwell, a married man, as a husband for the 
 Queen. It was signed by the Lords present, except Eglinton 
 (a Catholic), who slipped away. On the 21st Mary went to 
 Stirling to see her son ; party feeling ran so high that some 
 thought she had gone to poison her only child : she offered 
 him, so they said, an apple and a ' sugarloaf ' (he was ten 
 months old) which the infant Solomon declined. As she 
 returned to Edinburgh, Bothwell met her with 800 spearmen, 
 and carried her to Dunbar. With her went Huntly, Lethington, 
 and Sir James Melville. As they rode along, one of Bothwell's 
 men told Melville that the Queen consented to her abduction : 
 this, of course, is what Bothwell would tell his men to say. 
 
 What happened at Dunbar we cannot say with confidence ; 
 but some urgent motive is required to account for Mary's 
 acquiescence in the proceedings which followed proceedings 
 which brought discredit on both the contending religions. 
 On the 26th April the Catholic Lady Bothwell applied to the 
 Protestant commissaries for a divorce, alleging her husband's 
 misconduct with one of her attendants ; on the 3rd May 
 divorce was granted, and the Countess was free to marry 
 ' in the Lord ' where she pleased. Concurrently a commission 
 was directed to the Archbishop to inquire whether a dispensa- 
 tion had been necessary for Bothwell's marriage with Jean 
 Gordon, and whether the dispensation had been procured. 
 The Archbishop had himself granted this dispensation, and 
 Lady Bothwell had kept it carefully, but her brother Huntly 
 forced or persuaded her not to produce it, and the marriage 
 was annulled. Finally, on the 15th May Bothwell and Mary 
 were married at Holyrood ; the marriage was solemnized in 
 the great hall with preaching, but without the Mass. Adam 
 Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, officiated ; in his sermon he 
 praised the bridegroom for having embraced the reformed 
 religion and for having resolved to amend his life. Mary's 
 demeanour was not at any moment that of a woman united to
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 159 
 
 her chosen lover. She was deeply depressed ; shortly after 
 the wedding she called for a knife to kill herself. 
 
 John Cairns, reader, had refused to publish the banns, and 
 John Craig (the ex-Dominican whom we saw escaping from 
 Home eight years before) did what one minister could to 
 protest against the marriage ; he published the banns unwill- 
 ingly, and he rebuked Bothwell to his face for having used 
 force to the Queen. While Mary was bearing her evil fortune 
 as she could, the Kirk was holding another fast. We have 
 the list of lessons from Scripture, read on this occasion. They 
 were all taken from the Old Testament ; once more the minds 
 of the faithful were turned to the death of Korah and his 
 company, and the slaughter of the Amalekites. The corona- 
 tions of Saul and Uzziah were also thought suitable ; the reason 
 for this will presently appear. 
 
 The Lords had performed the letter of their agreement with 
 Bothwell, but they knew that his power could not long con- 
 tinue. Ever since he had captured good English money on 
 its way to the Congregation, Elizabeth had noted him as an 
 enemy ; her Scots confederates knew tha she ' would not 
 allow of Bothwell '. His accomplices deserted him at once, 
 but they had to consider how to form a government which 
 Elizabeth could recognize and support. They turned to the 
 device which Lennox and Darnley had thought feasible ; 
 they might imprison the Queen, and govern in the name of 
 her son. If they were turning this over early in May, we 
 should have an explanation of the references to Saul and 
 Uzziah at the fast. Their party was not wholly Protestant ; 
 Athole, for example, was a Catholic, but hostile to Bothwell, 
 and much under Lethington's influence. They took arms, 
 nominally, to avenge the King's death, and to free the Queen 
 from Bothwell ; but after Carberry Hill they deliberately 
 allowed Bothwell to ride home unmolested, while Mary was 
 brought a prisoner to Edinburgh. The Protestant mob 
 received her with execrations or with ominous silence ; but 
 she had many friends in the town ; with the least possible 
 delay she was hurried over to Fife and immured in Lochleven. 
 As yet the darker accusations against her had not taken
 
 160 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 shape ; she was imprisoned because she ' fortified and main- 
 tained ' Bothwell, whom the Lords had themselves allowed to 
 go free. 
 
 Relieved of her presence the Lords went on with their work. 
 They began an inquiry regarding the King's death, the object 
 being to obtain such evidence as would justify them in putting 
 to death the subordinate agents in the crime. Documents 
 had fallen into their hands, and they began to put together 
 papers which they could use against the Queen. On the 
 25th June the Assemblies met ; Mr. George Buchanan was 
 chosen Moderator. By this time Mr. Knox had visited his 
 boys, and was back in Scotland. He and his colleague thought 
 the moment had come for Protestant reunion ; they drew up 
 their policy in the form of Articles, and they spent some weeks 
 in attempting to secure the support of those Protestants who 
 were still hostile to Moray's faction. Their efforts were not 
 successful ; Knox himself could not bring in the westland 
 men ; they were not faithful to the Queen, but they preferred 
 her to her brother. When the Assembly met again for business 
 in July, the Articles were signed only by Morton and others 
 of the same party. 
 
 Elizabeth had watched the revolution in Scotland with some 
 anxiety, and in July she sent Throckmorton, Mary's old 
 acquaintance, to tell the Lords that, as subjects, they had no 
 power to try or punish their Queen. On a Sunday the envoy 
 heard Knox himself, who took a text out of the Kings and 
 * persuaded extremities ' against the Queen. The English 
 envoy went also to Morton, who was not free at the" moment 
 to discuss politics. It was a communion day, he said, and he 
 must attend first to the matters of God. Morton had not sat 
 under Mr. Knox without learning the proper language to use. 
 The Lords did not put the Queen to death ; as Knox expressed 
 it, ' foolish Scotland would not obey the mouth of God.' 
 They were satisfied with compelling her to sign instruments, 
 demitting the crown, directing the coronation of her son, and 
 recognizing Moray as Regent. On the 29th the infant ' King ' 
 was crowned at Stirling.; Knox preached. The Reformer 
 objected to the ceremony of anointing, but the Lords over-
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 161 
 
 ruled him ; they probably thought it safer not to omit any 
 customary detail. 
 
 Moray, in France, had been kept well informed as to events 
 in Scotland. He had been furnished with at least one paper 
 which was to be used against the Queen apparently a draft 
 or incorrect copy of the long letter she was said to have written 
 to Bothwell, from the house at Glasgow where Darnley was 
 laid up. When Moray passed through London, about the end 
 of July, he gave the Spanish ambassador the substance of this 
 document, evidently hoping that it would deter King Philip 
 from taking any action on Mary's behalf. By the llth August 
 Moray was in Edinburgh, but he would not accept the regency 
 until he had seen the Queen. He went to Lochleven, and 
 spent a long evening in pointing out the dangers of her situation ; 
 he left her that night ' in hope of nothing but God's mercy '. 
 Next day he was more sympathetic, and in the end he brought 
 her to such a frame of mind that she besought him to accept 
 the regency. At this moment Moray had behind him about 
 one-third of the nation. Another third were probably still 
 Catholic ; the rest were Hamiltons, Campbells, and the like, 
 mainly Protestants, but uncertain in their politics. Moray's 
 reflections, if we can read his mind, had brought him to the 
 point at which his friend Cecil had already arrived. If the 
 two nations were to be made consistently Protestant neither 
 could accept a Catholic sovereign. Elizabeth was a latitu- 
 dinarian, who conformed to Protestantism, so far as was 
 necessary to secure her own position. Mary was a Catholic, 
 too proud to give up her religion at the bidding of her subjects. 
 In one way or other, she must be set aside. 
 
 While these issues were slowly taking shape, the current of 
 opinion in other countries was running against Mary. Darnley 
 had been on bad terms with his wife, and he had been suddenly 
 killed ; to the sixteenth-century mind the case was plain. 
 Mary's ill-fated attempt at compromise in religion had dis- 
 pleased both the extreme parties ; militant Catholics thought 
 it natural that a princess who refused to take the lives of 
 heretics should lapse into crime ; while Knox was calling for 
 her blood, the Jesuits were praying for her as ' this sinful 
 
 M
 
 162 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 woman '. The Pope said he would have no communication 
 with her until she gave better proof of her life and religion. 
 Charles IX and his mother gave Mary to understand that she 
 would not be helped merely because she was a Catholic. 
 
 Moray began his short spell of power with vigour, but he 
 had one obstacle to remove before his party was safe. The 
 bond against Darnley was still in existence ; it was in the 
 possession of Sir James Balfour, nominally a clergyman, 
 better known as a lawyer, whom Bothwell had made governor 
 of the castle at Edinburgh. Balfour was willing to part with 
 the document and to give up the castle, but his terms were 
 high ; Moray had to give him 5,000, the priory of Pittenweem, 
 a remission for the King's murder, and a pension for his son. 
 The bond was handed over, and put into the fire. This expen- 
 sive transaction was completed about the end of November, 
 and on the 4th December Moray and his confederates recorded 
 their belief in the Queen's guilt. 
 
 On the 15th December the Estates met in Parliament ; 
 five bishops and fourteen titular abbots represented the 
 spiritual Estate. The Lords of Articles (of whom the new 
 Prior of Pittenweem was one) sent in a series of Acts, which 
 were sanctioned in a short time. First, Bothwell's treason 
 was condemned ; it was not possible to take action against 
 him, for by this time Bothwell had drifted into prison at 
 Copenhagen, and he did not recover his liberty. The demission 
 of the crown, the title of the new*King, and Moray's regency 
 were confirmed. Parliament ratified the anti-papal legislation 
 of 1560, including the Confession of Faith. The ministers and 
 members of the Kirk were declared to be the only true and 
 holy Kirk in the kingdom. As to benefices, the right of pre- 
 sentation was reserved to the ancient patrons ; examination 
 and admission were to be in the power of the Kirk ; if a qualified 
 presentee were rejected, the patron might appeal to the suger- 
 intendent and ministers of the province, and from them to the 
 Assembly, where the cause should take end. Provision was 
 made for enabling the ministers to obtain payment of the 
 ' thirds ' assigned to them. Teachers were to be approved 
 by the Kirk. The jurisdiction of the Kirk as ' declared and
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 163 
 
 granted ' by Parliament was defined as including the preaching 
 of the Word, correction of manners, and administration of 
 sacraments. Acts were also passed to justify the detention 
 of the Queen in Lochleven ; these Acts are worded with some 
 ambiguity, but the Estates declared that Mary had deserved 
 all that had been or might be done to her. 
 
 When-the Assembly met on Christmas Day, these Acts were 
 mentioned with general satisfaction. A letter was sent to 
 Willock, assuring him that religion was now established, and 
 asking him to return. Willock was settled at Loughborough ; 
 he paid only a short visit to Scotland, and went back to his 
 parochial duties. The Bishop of Orkney's irregularities were 
 noticed, and Craig explained his action in regard to the Queen's 
 marriage. The Earl of Argyle was censured for living apart 
 from his wife, and the Countess for taking part in the prince's 
 baptism. She was ordered to do public penance. 
 
 In the sixteenth century it was easy to get into prison, but 
 on the other hand it was sometimes easy to get out. On the 
 2nd May, Mary escaped from Lochleven. The friends who 
 gathered round her were mainly Protestants, and Argyle, as 
 the most important person on the ground, took the chief 
 command. Moray had the advantage of being advised by 
 Kirkaldy of Grange. At the battle of Langside Moray was 
 victorious, and the Queen committed the fatal blunder of 
 aking refuge in England. 
 
 Elizabeth's management of the charges against the Queen 
 of Scots was extremely adroit. She could not try a foreign 
 sovereign ; nor would she admit that subject persons could 
 try their own Queen. She used the charges as an excuse for 
 declining to see Mary, and she held a kind of inquiry, at York 
 and Westminster. She was, as she firmly believed, lady 
 paramount in Scotland, and her Scots confederates had much 
 ado to avoid a definite acceptance of this claim. The details 
 of the investigation do not concern us here ; the Scots com- 
 missioners did their best, and their worst, but by the end of 
 the year even Cecil, who was fiercely hostile to Mary, saw that 
 the case could go no further ; on the 10th January 1569 it was 
 his unpleasing duty to read out a statement informing the 
 
 M2
 
 164 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 commissioners that nothing had been proved whereby Elizabeth 
 could conceive any ill opinion of the Queen of Scots. Moray 
 was free to go home ; he had a 'loan', 5,000 pf English money, 
 and a second loan of the same amount. He had not distin- 
 guished himself, but he had done his best for his confederates. 
 On his return the Kegent resumed his difficult task ; he now 
 had the advantage of working in full accord with Mr. Knox. 
 
 On the 25th February the Assembly met ; David Lindsay 
 of Leith, not an extreme man, was in the Moderator's chair. 
 Spottiswood, superintendent of Lothian, was dealt with for 
 slackness, and excused himself by saying that he had not 
 been paid for three years. A letter, written by Knox and 
 signed by Spottiswood, was sent to professors of religion in 
 Lothian ; it was a bitter attack on the Queen, pointing out 
 that Mary could have done nothing without the assistance of 
 Protestants ; offenders were warned that the Kirk had the 
 power of excommunication. 
 
 During the following months the Regent was busy getting 
 his enemies into prison, hanging thieves, burning witches, and 
 establishing order. With the aid of Erskine of Dun he purged 
 the University of Aberdeen ; the principal and the four regent 
 masters were expelled as Catholics. Huntly had to give 
 security for good behaviour ; he was accused of ' collecting ' 
 the revenues of the Kirk. On the 5th July the Assembly met 
 again ; on the 25th there was a convention at Perth. Elizabeth 
 made proposals for restoring Mary to power, or to a share of 
 power ; but this, of course, was not feasible ; to restore the 
 Queen would be to upset the distribution of property and 
 power effected by two Parliaments. Mary herself suggested 
 an inquiry, with a view to the annulment of her marriage with 
 Bothwell, but this also was refused. The Duke of Norfolk, 
 who had presided over the inquiry at York, was a widower 
 for the third time, and had some notion of trying to obtain 
 the hand of the Queen of Scots. Mary had entered into the 
 scheme ; she was naturally eager to enter into any plan or plot 
 which offered her a chance of liberty. 
 
 Among the Catholics of northern England Mary had an 
 army of friends ; their leader was the Earl of Northumberland,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 165 
 
 who acted in concert with his neighbour, the young Earl of 
 Westmorland. In the middle of November they took arms 
 to restore the old religion, and to release the captive Queen. 
 But they kept the field only for a month ; on the 16th December 
 their forces were disbanded. After the rising was over Eliza- 
 beth's revenge was ample and ruthless ; she took, in cold 
 blood, more than twice as many lives as Mary Tudor had taken 
 during the whole of her ' bloody ' reign. Many insurgents 
 escaped into Scotland ; Northumberland himself took shelter 
 with Armstrong of Harelaw, who sold him to the Kegent. 
 At the end of December Moray was in Edinburgh arranging 
 for the detention of Northumberland in Lochleven. On the 
 2nd January the Eegent wrote to Cecil, and with the same 
 messenger went a note exhorting Cecil to ' strike at the root ', 
 that is, to put the Queen of Scots to death. This note was 
 signed ' Yours to command in God, John Knox, with his one 
 foot in the grave '. 
 
 On the 23rd January, as Moray rode along the street in 
 Linlithgow, he was shot, from a window, by Hamilton of 
 Bothwellhaugh. On the 14th February he was buried in 
 Edinburgh, and Knox preached to a very large congregation. 
 In his prayer the Eeformer acknowledged the great fault of 
 which the good Eegent had been guilty, the ' foolish pity ' 
 which prevented him from putting the Queen and her accom- 
 plices to death. For the moment there was a truce between 
 the factions ; Kirkaldy of Grange, now Governor of Edinburgh 
 Castle, mourned his old leader sincerely, and carried the 
 standard before the coffin. Grange had now become a cham- 
 pion of the Queen whom he had helped to dethrone ; his 
 generous temper resented the injustice of the successful party, 
 and Lethington, now his constant adviser, may have shown 
 him that the case against Mary was not so plain as many 
 thought it. Mary herself heard of her brother's death with 
 satisfaction ; she asked that Bothwellhaugh should have 
 a pension out of her French revenues, and she hinted that there 
 was another ' wicked creature ' who might well be put out of 
 the world. Who this other creature was, it is not easy to 
 make out, but Coligny has been suggested.
 
 166 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 A new Eegent had to be chosen, and from the outset the 
 claims of Lennox were thought to be the best ; his record, in 
 religion and politics, was dubious, but he was the King's 
 grandfather, and Elizabeth agreed to the appointment. He 
 took office in unquiet times ; in this year English armies 
 crossed the border more than once, to punish those who had 
 harboured the Queen of England's rebels. While the choice 
 of Moray's successor was still under discussion, every Pro- 
 testant in both kingdoms was roused to anger by the publica- 
 tion of the bull in which Pius V undertook to depose Elizabeth 
 and to release her subjects from their allegiance. 
 
 On the 5th July the Assembly met, and gave its opinion on 
 the political issue before the country. Ministers were directed 
 to pray for the King, and the sword of authority was brandished 
 over those who did not recognize his title. On the 25th July 
 Lennox was proclaimed Eegent. 
 
 In October Mr. Knox had a stroke of apoplexy ; the attack 
 was slight, but one effect of it was to make him even less 
 guarded in his language than he had been in earlier days. 
 His thoughts dwelt much on the wicked men who held the 
 castle for the Queen. In December Grange sent a party from 
 the castle to beat a man with whom he had some hereditary 
 cause of quarrel ; there was a scuffle and the man was left 
 dead. On the ensuing Sunday Knox enlarged on this ' fearful 
 and tyrannous fact ' ; Grange was led to believe that the 
 preacher had called him a murderer and a throat-cutter. After 
 a vain appeal to Craig, the captain of the castle sent a first 
 and then a second complaint against Knox to the Kirk-session ; 
 the indomitable old man went slowly and feebly up the High 
 Street to make his defence. The westland men heard that 
 their preacher was in danger, and banded themselves together 
 to protect him. 
 
 The Assembly met again on the 5th March, and went through 
 a good deal of business ; the fathers and brethren sat in the 
 Tolbooth, in the lower council-room, and some Lords were 
 meeting in the room overhead. One day a paper, written in 
 a disguised hand, was dropped from the upper room into the 
 lower ; it was a sarcastic attack on Mr. Knox, and it was
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 167 
 
 followed up by other papers, making a number of charges 
 against him ; in one or more of these he thought he discerned 
 the legal hand of Sir James Balfour. His effective reply was 
 made from the pulpit, where he recounted, with a touch of 
 pardonable egotism, his own services to his country. He also 
 ornamented the papers of his accusers with contemptuous 
 notes ; in one of these his claim, as a minister of the evangel, 
 is clearly expressed : ' My commission ' (one can almost hear 
 the pen as he writes it down) ' man cannot limitate.' In 
 a sense this is correct ; the preacher must declare the truth, 
 whether men welcome it or no. But a preacher who flings 
 about charges of murder must expect to be ' limitated ' by 
 any means that may be at hand. 
 
 At the beginning of April the fortress of Dumbarton, sup- 
 posed to be impregnable, was taken by a party of the Kegent's 
 men. Among the prisoners was the Archbishop of St. Andrews, 
 who was hurried off to Stirling, put through some kind of trial, 
 and hanged ; he is said to have admitted that he was a party 
 to the plot against Moray. John Hamilton was not in any 
 way a credit to his Church, but he had kept his promise not 
 to make terms with her enemies. 
 
 On the 18th April Morton returned from an important 
 mission to England ; his services to his party were rewarded 
 by an assignment of the revenues of the vacant archbishopric 
 of St. Andrews, John Douglas undertaking such spiritual 
 duties as the holder of the office might still have to perform. 
 Knox blamed Douglas, but not too severely, because he loved 
 the man. Morton himself was one of the nobles whom Knox 
 denounced in general terms as caring nothing for religion if 
 they could have the Church lands, but he did not attack 
 Morton individually. The politics of this period can only be 
 understood if we bear in mind that every great noble was 
 surrounded by armed retainers, eager to put sword or dagger 
 into any person who stood in their master's way. We must 
 also bear in mind that Morton had consistently supported 
 Knox's party. 
 
 In May the Eegent held a Parliament at the head of the 
 Canongate, but the business was adjourned ; in June the
 
 168 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Queen's party followed suit with a parliament in the Tolbooth. 
 Grange was master of Edinburgh, and within the limits of his 
 power ministers were required to pray for the Queen. The 
 Bishop of Galloway preached on her behalf ; if the report of 
 his sermon can be trusted he argued that Mary, even if her 
 enemies spoke the truth, was no worse than King David. 
 
 A committee of Assembly had been appointed in March to 
 confer with the Regent as to ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; at the 
 time of the Regent's Parliament it was agreed that a deputation 
 of ministers should go to the castle, to bring the Queen's lords 
 to a sense of their duty. They found Lethington, now a para- 
 lysed invalid, sitting in a chair with his little dog in his lap ; 
 to him they stated their case, in the presence of Grange and 
 others. Craig, Winram, and Spottiswood were present ; the 
 ' Mr. John ' of the reported conference may be Craig or Spottis- 
 wood ; Knox was in Fife and probably too feeble to attend. 
 Lethington declined to admit that the infant, crowned by 
 a parcel of politicians in a difficulty, was a power ordained 
 of God. 
 
 The two Parliaments met again hi August ; each party had 
 the satisfaction of forfeiting its opponents in the customary 
 manner. Lennox held his Parliament at Stirling ; the King, 
 now five years old, graced the occasion with his presence. 
 Pushing his tiny finger into a hole in the table-cloth, his majesty 
 remarked that there was ' ane hole in this Parliament ' : these 
 words were afterwards taken as a prophecy of what was soon 
 to happen. The ministers presented petitions which the 
 Regent said were reasonable ; the Lords objected, and Morton 
 said the ministers were ' proud knaves '. A few days later, 
 Grange despatched a force to attack Stirling ; in the confusion 
 which ensued Lennox was killed ; Mar was at once elected 
 his successor. 
 
 Knox was at St. Andrews during some part of the summer. 
 His position at Edinburgh was now untenable ; he resolved 
 to spend the winter where he was, and took up his abode in 
 the new hospice of the abbey. He preached as occasion 
 offered, and in his usual manner. Archibald Hamilton, then 
 a teacher in the University, was dealt with for not going to
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 169 
 
 sermon ; he excused himself by charging Mr. Knox with 
 having said that all Hamiltons were murderers. With the 
 students the old man liked to be friendly ; when he sat 
 down to rest in the yard at St. Leonard's, he called the lads 
 round him and exhorted them to be faithful to the good cause. 
 James Melville, the diarist, was a student or a young B.A. at 
 the time ; he has left us a vivid description of Mr. Knox, 
 coming slowly along in his furred gown, helped up the pulpit 
 stairs, and leaning there like one outworn ; but before the 
 sermon was over, ' he was like to ding that pulpit in blads, 
 and fly out of it '. One day he gave a terrible discourse on 
 the crimes of a witch, who was set up at a pillar before him. 
 After sermon the poor creature was burned, the students 
 looking on. 
 
 Knox and his friends had been organizing their church on 
 Presbyterian lines ; they had not, as yet, taught the unlawful- 
 ness of episcopacy, or the parity of ministers. The constitu- 
 tional difficulty was thought serious ; Parliament had always 
 included three Estates, and the spiritual Estate had always 
 been represented by prelates. Morton, the most powerful 
 man in Scotland, regarded the matter from the political point 
 of view. He looked forward to union with England, and he 
 saw that the difference in Church principles was, as indeed it 
 still is, an obstacle to complete unity. He was not greatly 
 concerned about episcopacy, but he needed prelates, to keep 
 the ' proud knaves ' of the ministry in order, and to concur 
 in those arrangements by which the revenues of the old Church 
 were being transferred to the King and the great landowners. 
 
 In November Erskine of Dun wrote two letters, in which the 
 conditions of appointment to Church offices were wisely 
 discussed ; he took no abstract objection to the office of 
 a bishop, but treated it as identical with that of a super- 
 intendent. A preliminary meeting at Leith prepared for a more 
 formal conference at the same place on the 12th January. 
 A committee of ministers met a committee of the Council, 
 and an agreement was dra\vn up, which was received by the 
 nation with apparent indifference. The titles of the old 
 Church were to remain ; the bounds of the dioceses were to be
 
 170 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 as before ; the bishops were to be subject to the Assembly in 
 matters spiritual, and to the King in matters temporal. The 
 titular abbots and priors were to continue in Parliament. 
 As to the appointment of bishops, the convention followed the 
 rule imposed by Henry VIII on the Church of England. 
 Chapters of ministers were annexed to the cathedral churches ; 
 the chapter was to elect the bishop, in terms of a royal missive 
 4 recommending ' the person to be chosen. The first bishop 
 appointed under the new rules was John Douglas, who was 
 ' elected ' in February at St. Andrews ; Mr. Knox preached, 
 but took no part in the ceremony of inauguration. In March 
 the Assembly met at St. Andrews ; the superintendent of 
 Fife was ordered to go on acting ; a committee was appointed 
 to consider the convention of Leith. Knox had a letter from 
 Beza about bishops, but he was too old to enter on a new 
 campaign. On the 6th August the Assembly met again at 
 Perth, and a letter from Mr. Knox was read ; the old leader 
 pointed out various dangers of the time, and laid special 
 emphasis on the necessity of preserving the Kirk from the 
 bondage of the Universities, but there is a marked absence 
 of the arguments against episcopacy which would have flowed 
 from the pen of Andrew Melville on any similar occasion. 
 By this time there was an abstinence or truce betw r een the men 
 in Edinburgh Castle and the Kegent Mar ; the interval was 
 prolonged until the end of the year. Knox was free to return 
 to his parish ; he did so, as he explained, on the understanding 
 that he was not to be desired or pressed to temper hii 
 tongue. 
 
 Pius V had died in May; Gregory XIII sat in the papal 
 chair, and the new Pope was about to gather in the crop sown 
 by his predecessor. The date of Knox's return to Edinburgh 
 coincides with that of the hideous outbreak on the eve of 
 St. Bartholomew in France. Catherine de' Medici had begun 
 her term of power by trying to conciliate the Protestants, and 
 she had never wholly abandoned that policy. But the Hugue- 
 nots were a party, militant and sometimes threatening, however 
 small their numbers might be. They had to be checked, and 
 the Queen-Mother was willing to act. Catherine herself said
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 171 
 
 that she was only responsible for the deaths of five or six ; 
 she may perhaps have accepted some such plan as that which 
 Bishop Laureo had pressed on the Queen of Scots. When the 
 killing began no human power could stop it ; Prance was full 
 of ardent Catholics, looking and longing for the day when 
 heresy would be extinguished ; in a few days the victims were 
 counted by thousands. We can only imagine what was said 
 in Scotland when the news first arrived. On the 20th October 
 the Council conferred with a number of ministers and others. 
 Their first care was to set apart days for public humiliation, 
 with fasting and prayer. As to Papists in Scotland, it was 
 resolved that they should be summoned to recant ; those 
 refusing should suffer confiscation of all their goods, and 
 banishment. If any of the banished should return, it should 
 be lawful ' to all subjects in this realm to invade them and. 
 every one of them to the death '. These words indicate that, 
 our Protestants were not wholly free from the spirit of anarchic 
 violence, which had produced the appalling outbreak in Prance. 
 Happily for the nation, the powers of the State were just 
 passing into the hands of Morton, whose homicidal impulses 
 were controlled by his robust practical judgment. 
 
 During the month of November, Knox lay on his death-bed, 
 the passages read to him were mainly from the New Testament ; 
 he indicated John xvii as the place where he ' cast his first 
 anchor ' ; once in repeating the Lord's Prayer he stopped, 
 saying ' Who can pronounce so holy words ? ' For himself 
 he claimed only the mercy of God in Christ. He owned that 
 there were some with whom he had dealt hardly, but said he 
 did it only to beat down the wickedness in them. He still had 
 to give a passing thought to Lethington, who was indignant 
 because the preacher had called him an atheist. With his own 
 friends he was cheerful as usual ; when two of them came to 
 see him on a Saturday, he insisted on piercing a hogshead of 
 wine, and took them bound to drink it out after he was gone. 
 On the 24th November he died. 
 
 No man has left his sign manual more legibly inscribed in 
 our history. Mainly to him we owe it that our Eeformation 
 was not a gradual process, but a revolution, pulling down one
 
 172 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 system and erecting another, not less rigid, in its place. The 
 faults of his ministry were due to his acceptance of the principle 
 of persecution, to his constant misapplication of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and to his use of the pulpit as a political platform. 
 These roots of bitterness remained in the soil of Scotland, and 
 they yielded an abundant harvest ; mainly to Knox we are 
 indebted for 130 years of strife, confusion, and proof-texts. 
 
 Margaret Stewart was still a young woman when her husband 
 died ; she married Ker of Paldonside, a sturdy Protestant 
 who had been in at the deaths of Rizzio and Darnley. The two 
 sons of Marjorie Bowes, Eleazar and Nathanael Knox, went to 
 Cambridge, where they were entered, sad to say, as Yorkshire- 
 men. Both became Fellows of St. John's and clergymen of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 On the day of Knox's death Morton became Regent. How 
 he made his way to supreme power, we have seen ; in exercising 
 power he displayed sense and courage, "and a close regard for 
 his own interest and the King's. He was a terror to evil-doers ; 
 in his time ' the name of a papist durst not be heard of '. He 
 stood aloof from the ministers, and did not allow them to 
 influence his policy. He was not afraid of their censures ; in 
 the course of this very year the minister of Dunglass, having 
 publicly rebuked the Earl of Morton for living with Captain 
 Cullen's wife, was placed in the boots, and hanged. 
 
 In January the Regent's title was confirmed in Parliament. 
 He had failed to come to terms with the Queen's party, and had 
 asked for an English army to reduce the castle. In March 
 the Assembly met, David Ferguson Moderator. Business was 
 conducted as usual, but the procedure of the house was con- 
 sidered, ' that the weighty matters of the Kirk be not concluded 
 by a few ' : this is not an uncommon complaint with regard 
 to our Assemblies. In April came Sir William Drury, with 
 English troops and a heavy train of artillery. Drury, by the 
 way, was an excellent man, who had encountered many risks 
 in his dealings with our ' inconstant and ingrate ' nation. At 
 the end of May, after a week's bombardment, Grange surren- 
 dered to Drury ; he and Lethington claimed Elizabeth's 
 protection, but they were left to their fate. Early in July
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 173 
 
 Lethington died ; his disappearance from the stage was so 
 timely that his enemies hinted he had taken poison, but this 
 is merely surmise. Morton half thought of sparing Grange ; 
 the preachers insisted that he must die, that it might be ful- 
 filled which was spoken by the prophet Knox. On the 3rd 
 August he was hanged at the market cross, and, as his body 
 swung round to face the declining sun, awestruck voices 
 repeated the preacher's threat that the captain of the castle 
 should ' hang before the sun '. On the 6th August the Assembly 
 met again. The Clerk of the Privy Council brought in a state- 
 ment of the provision for the Kirk which the Eegent was 
 making. Morton took into his own hands the collection of 
 the- thirds about which there had been so much controversy, 
 and it was likely that the King would get more than a pair 6f 
 shoes out of the arrangement. Morton began to economize 
 by appointing ' one minister to four kirks ', the unprovided 
 parishes being served by readers. John Davidson, a regent 
 master at St. Andrews, wrote a pamphlet about this, and the 
 University was divided in factions. 
 
 The Assembly met in March ; five of the new bishops were 
 present, and complaints of their conduct were rife. A minister 
 accepting a bishopric might mean no harm, but each appoint- 
 ment involved some indefensible arrangement about the 
 revenues of the see ; the bishop was only a tulchan, a stuffed 
 calf-skin set up to induce the cow to give her milk. Thus 
 James Boyd, now Archbishop of Glasgow, was only a tulchan 
 for the benefit of Lord Boyd. It is not wonderful that many 
 good men thought they did God service by resisting the 
 episcopal authority. The Eegent was invited to attend the 
 Assembly ; but he met the invitation with Mary's old question, 
 Who gave them the right to convocate the King's lieges ? 
 This they thought a hard answer. John Davidson was in trouble 
 about his book, and hoped the Assembly would help him, 
 but the brethren appointed to try it would ' neither damn 
 nor allow ' the work, lest the Eegent should be offended. 
 On the 28th May Eobert Gourlay, an elder, had been ordered 
 to make repentance in the kirk at Edinburgh for export- 
 ing wheat ; it does not appear what reason was given for
 
 174 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 considering this an ecclesiastical offence. Morton curtly 
 intimated that the wheat was exported with his licence. 
 
 In July the party of strict Presbyterianism received a notable 
 recruit. Andrew Melville, the youngest child of a Forfarshire 
 laird, had prepared himself at St. Andrews for a course of study 
 in France ; at the age of twenty-three he was chosen Professor 
 of Latin in the Academy of Geneva, then at the height of its 
 reputation ; after five years of successful teaching he had 
 resigned his chair, to play his part in the controversies of his 
 native country. Wisely refusing to be Morton's chaplain, he 
 waited for some more suitable preferment ; in November he 
 became Principal of the University at Glasgow. As the head 
 of a teaching institution Melville was in his right place ; he 
 laboured hard to make Glasgow a ' good cheap market ' of 
 science and learning ; he showed both firmness and tact in 
 dealing with insubordinate students and unreasonable colleagues. 
 He began at once to argue in favour of the precise notions 
 which he had brought with him from Geneva. Starting from 
 the fact that in the New Testament the names of bishop and 
 presbyter are used interchangeably, Melville inferred that it 
 was ' unlawful ' to create any permanent office in the Church 
 higher than that of the ordinary minister. The weakness of 
 his argument lies in the assumption that the problems of 
 a modern church can be solved by reference to the letter of 
 Scripture. If we find in the New Testament no explicit mention 
 of a bishop ruling over presbyters, it is also true to say that we 
 find no mention of a presbytery governing more than one local 
 church. 
 
 The campaign against Morton's bishops was at once begun ; 
 there was some preliminary conference between the representa- 
 tives of Church and State. In the Assembly which met at 
 Edinburgh on the 6th August 1575, complaints against bishops 
 were called for as usual; John Durie, one of the Edinburgh 
 ministers, reserved his right to protest against the office of 
 a bishop ; Melville argued at some length ; a committee was 
 appointed to consider, ' Whether bishops, as they are now in 
 the Kirk of Scotland, have their function grounded upon the 
 Word of God, or not ? ' By putting the question in this form,
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 175 
 
 Melville secured a tactical advantage ; no competent divine 
 would undertake to find scriptural authority for the kind of 
 episcopacy established by the convention of Leith. General 
 principles were not sufficiently considered, and this was a mis- 
 fortune for the Church ; an admixture of genuine episcopacy 
 was just what presbytery needed, to make it a good system of 
 government. The obvious weakness of the Melvinian Church 
 was that it had no permanent- executive and no impartial 
 judicature. All powers were vested in bodies of untrained 
 men, meeting only for a short time, and numerous enough to 
 be swayed by parliamentary arts. 
 
 In April of the following year, the report of the committee 
 was adopted, and bishops were required to accept the status 
 of parish ministers by choosing particular flocks. Morton 
 offered Melville the good living of Govan, on condition that 
 he would cease to agitate against bishops. Melville refused, 
 but suggested that the living might be given to his college, 
 which was very poorly endowed. Morton kept the parish 
 vacant ; he said Mr. Andrew was defrauding his college and 
 himself for the sake of ' new opinions and oversea dreams '. 
 
 In October the Assembly met again ; the Eegent was asked 
 to attend or send a commissioner, but he excused himself. 
 Some churchmen had proposed to make Morton an elder, but 
 this he had very properly declined. The Archbishop of Glasgow 
 had agreed to ' haunt to a particular kirk ' ; he now made 
 explanations as to the exact meaning of his promise. He relied 
 on the convention of Leith, in which it had been agreed that 
 bishops should remain during the King's minority. As to the 
 validity of such an agreement, it would be vain to argue. In 
 Scotland between 1560 and 1690 there was no consistent body 
 of ecclesiastical law. Each party was oppressive when in power, 
 and each thought itself entitled to disregard any rule or agree- 
 ment of which it disapproved. 
 
 At the spring Assembly, it was announced that Mr. Patrick 
 Adamson, the Kegent's chaplain, had accepted the archbishopric 
 of St. Andrews. He was an eloquent, scholarly person, and 
 there were no serious charges against his moral character, but 
 his acceptance of a bishopric made him a mark for all the light
 
 176 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 artillery of the Presbyterian party. At the Assembly in October 
 Morton sent in forty-two questions, probably drafted by 
 Adamson, relating to the power and patrimony of the Kirk. 
 There is nothing unbecoming or irrelevant in the questions 
 themselves, but the Assembly gave no formal reply. Mr. Andrew 
 was engaged in the composition of a Book of Policy (we know it 
 as the Second Book of Discipline) in which it was hoped that 
 all such questions would receive a final answer. The new 
 formula was founded on the Discipline adopted by French 
 Protestants in 1559 ; its main objects were to exclude episco- 
 pacy and to define the relations between Church and State. 
 Following the canonists of the Papal Church, Melville regarded 
 Church and State as co-ordinate and independent powers. 
 There were in Scotland, as he often said, the kingdom of Christ 
 and the kingdom of James ; the ambassadors of either power 
 might forbid the agents of the other to invade its exclusive 
 domain. This doctrine is not in accordance with the facts of 
 which any sound political theory must take account. Church 
 and State are working in the same field (the field is the world) 
 and to the same end (the salvation of men). The State claims 
 the whole man, to make him a good citizen ; the Church, to 
 make him a child of God ; thus the same matters and persons 
 are secular in one aspect, spiritual in another. Co-operation 
 between the two powers is secured, not by precise definitions, 
 but by the exercise of common sense and right feeling. This 
 general statement is true, whether it be applied to an established 
 or to a non-established Church. 
 
 Morton had been the State for five years and more, but there 
 were signs of a coming change. In March his enemies, Athole 
 and Argyle, held a convention at Stirling, and the year was 
 occupied by conferences importing an alteration in ' the author- 
 ity '. The Regent spoke at times of retiring to serve God and 
 the King at home, but the old wolf could still turn fiercely on 
 the pursuing jackals. It was not a favourable moment for 
 a new settlement in Church and State. The Assembly met in 
 April, and the Book of Policy was discussed ; it had been well 
 received in the Kirk, but all approaches to the Council or the 
 Parliament ended in disappointment. To this day the Books
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 177 
 
 of Discipline are quoted by churchmen as forming part of the 
 law of the Kirk, while the judges continue to hold that they 
 form no part of her compact with the State. During this year 
 there was constant danger of civil war. The new English 
 ambassador, Mr. Bowes (a brother of Knox's first wife), was 
 watching the situation with great anxiety. 
 
 The political unrest continued into the next year. The 
 Assembly met in July, and addressed a long supplication to 
 the young King, whom they would fain have regarded as 
 a promising champion of the Kirk. Though just thirteen, 
 James was a person of importance ; his tutors had made him 
 a good scholar ; experience had made him a politician, and he 
 was soon to obtain an adviser after his own mind. On the 
 8th September arrived his cousin, Esme Stewart, Lord of 
 Aubigny in France. There were ' vehement presumptions ' 
 that this accomplished courtier had been furnished with money 
 to promote the interests of the Pope, the Guises, and the King 
 of France. On the 17th October the young King entered 
 Edinburgh in state ; he stopped at St. Giles to hear James 
 Lawson, the successor of Mr. Knox ; on his way to Holyrood 
 he passed Bacchus sitting on a puncheon at the Salt Tron, and 
 other emblems of festivity. A Parliament was held, and the 
 Confession was duly ratified, but care was taken not to go beyond 
 the legislation of 1567. The King announced that his kinsman 
 was not to be troubled about religion for a year, and Mr. Lindsay 
 was chosen to instruct d'Aubigny in the elements of the 
 reformed religion. The efforts of his instructor and the powerful 
 reasoning of the King were attended with complete success. 
 D'Aubigny, or Lennox, as we are now to call him, abjured his 
 errors in -the great kirk at Edinburgh, and signed the Confession 
 at Stirling. When the Assembly met at Dundee in July, he sent 
 a letter, intimating that God had called him to the knowledge 
 of salvation ; the Moderator (James Lawson) wrote to the 
 French church in London, asking for a Protestant chaplain. 
 This Assembly resolved that the office of a bishop ' as it is 
 now used and commonly taken in this realm 'has no warrant 
 in Scripture. The proposition, as stated, is undeniably true. 
 Some Frenchmen had come to Scotland, to share in the 
 
 N
 
 178 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 good fortune of Lennox ; a little knot of them were lodging 
 in the Canongate, and the Edinburgh ministers (Lawson, 
 Durie, Balcanquhal) were preaching against them. There was 
 a general belief among Protestants that the Pope would grant 
 a dispensation to any Catholic who was compelled by persecu- 
 tion to conform to the Kirk, and there was nothing improbable 
 in the surmise that Lennox's conversion was a case in point. 
 To quiet the public mind, the King induced his minister, 
 Mr. Craig, to draw up a negative Confession, in which Popery 
 was condemned, root and branch. This document is not, in 
 itself, of great interest ; the errors of Eome are huddled together 
 in one prolix paragraph ; the language is violent, and in some 
 places vague. Among the abuses mentioned, the Pope's 
 ' worldly monarchy and wicked hierarchy ' was one. Strict 
 Presbyterians took this as a condemnation of episcopacy in 
 general terms, but, if that had been the meaning, the King 
 would probably not have signed. The Confession was treated 
 as a badge of loyalty, and it was extensively signed. Even the 
 Catholic Lord Seton's name is appended to it ; I should 
 conjecture that he signed in the interest of his son Alexander, 
 who was a candidate for the royal protection at the moment. 
 
 Before the Confession was signed, proceedings had been 
 taken for the destruction of Morton ; Lennox was bent on 
 removing his rival, and had found the instrument he needed- 
 Captain James Stewart, a son of the rough Lord Ochiltree, and 
 a brother of Knox's second wife. This able and unprincipled 
 man was in charge of the insane Earl of Arran, now head of 
 the house of Hamilton ; the Duke of Chatelherault had been 
 dead some time, and his dukedom had been resumed by the 
 King of France. The Hamiltons had suffered severely in the 
 faction-fighting of Morton's time, and the active members of 
 the family, Lord John and Lord Claud, were in exile. It was 
 therefore easy to arrange that, if James Stewart took the risks of 
 Lennox's plan, he should himself be Earl of Arran. On the 
 last day of December Stewart appeared before the Council, 
 and accused Morton of being a party to the death of Darnley. 
 The charge was in substance true, but Morton was being 
 removed not for killing the King's father, but in order to
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 179 
 
 make a clear stage for Lennox. For a time the ex-Eegent was 
 detained a prisoner at Dumbarton. He had never been much 
 given to reading, but he now devoted himself to the study of 
 the Bible ; he began at Genesis, and had time to read as far 
 as the book of Judges. While he lay in prison, the Assembly 
 met in April at Glasgow. There was some discussion as to 
 the formation of local presbyteries, an important stage in the 
 constitution of the Kirk. There were still places where the 
 presbytery was not recognized as a judicial authority ; in 
 such places it subsisted only in the form of the Exercise, a 
 periodical meeting of ministers at which passages of Scripture 
 were expounded. 
 
 In the last week of May the new Earl of Arran brought his 
 prisoner from Dumbarton to Edinburgh, and on the 2nd June 
 Morton was beheaded at the Market Cross. The ministers 
 who were with him at the last dealt cautiously with this 
 powerful friend and enemy of the Kirk ; they brought a paper 
 of questions which he was pressed to answer. Morton behaved 
 with courage and dignity ; he spoke freely of the great transac- 
 tions in which he had been engaged, and left the ministers 
 under the impression that, whatever he had been before, he 
 had gone to be with God in glory. His confession, written out 
 after his death, is a document of great value ; though misleading 
 on certain points, it gives us a vivid picture of the times. 
 
 When the Assembly met again in October, the most trouble- 
 some question was that relating to the archbishopric of Glasgow. 
 The much-enduring Boyd was dead ; the King, in defiance of 
 law and decency, had given the presentation to Lennox, and 
 the see had been conferred on Eobert Montgomerie, minister 
 of Stirling. As soon as he became a bishop, this man was 
 charged with maintaining erroneous aiid unbecoming opinions ; 
 we have no trustworthy report of his discourses, and it is 
 hardly necessary to examine the particular charges. In April 
 the Assembly met at St. Andrews ; Melville, now Principal 
 of the New College there, was Moderator. When the Glasgow 
 case was mentioned, a King's messenger inhibited the pro- 
 ceedings, but no notice was taken of the interruption. Mont- 
 gomerie, who seems to have displayed great weakness, was 
 
 N2
 
 180 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 remitted to the presbytery of Glasgow, who were to report 
 him to the presbytery of Edinburgh if he meddled with the 
 bishopric. When the Glasgow presbytery took up the case, 
 the Provost of the city tried to prevent them ; some students 
 came out to fight the Provost's men. On a report to Edinburgh, 
 the presbytery there authorized John Davidson to excom- 
 municate Montgomerie, which he did in the church at Liberton 
 on Sunday the 10th June. A sentence of excommunication 
 involved, not only civil consequences of a serious nature, but 
 all the penalties of what we should now call a strict boycott. 
 Even the Earl of Gowrie was dealt with for receiving the offender 
 in his house, and had to make his peace with the Kirk. The 
 sentence was annulled by a royal proclamation, but no adherent 
 of Melvinian principles would admit that this made any 
 difference ; any individual who offended the Kirk was liable 
 to be deprived of his civil rights. The unlucky Archbishop 
 showed himself publicly in Edinburgh ; he was set upon and 
 pelted with stones and rotten eggs. When the young King 
 heard of this at Perth, he found the tale so amusing that he 
 lay down on the Inch to have his laugh out. 
 
 Before the Archbishop's woes had reached their climax, the 
 adjourned Assembly met in Edinburgh at the end of June. 
 The grievances of the Kirk were drawn out under heads in 
 precise language, and commissioners were directed to present 
 them to the King at Perth ; they were presented on the 
 6th July. Lennox was evidently hostile, and Arran, in his 
 bullying way, asked who would dare to subscribe the ' treason- 
 able articles '. ' We dare,' said Melville ; he signed his name, 
 and the rest followed. The King said little, but it may be 
 that he was not wholly in sympathy with Lennox. He did not 
 wish to be mixed up with Catholic plots, and he may have 
 disliked the correspondence between Lennox and the imprisoned 
 Queen of Scots. From the moment when he felt himself an 
 independent king, James had not favoured any plan which 
 would bring Mary back as a candidate for power. 
 
 The movements in the Kirk coincided with a well-organized 
 political movement to get rid of the King's evil counsellors. 
 Once more the Protestant Lords were acting in concert, and
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 181 
 
 once more they looked for help to England. Elizabeth had 
 kept her agents in Scotland busy ; she had written severe 
 letters to James, and her expenditure must have tried the 
 patience of Cecil, now Lord Burghley and Lord Treasurer. With 
 her aid, arrangements were made for ' altering the possession 
 of the King '. On the 22nd August, James went to Castle 
 Euthven, as the guest of the Earl of Gowrie ; next morning, 
 when he looked out of the window, the place was beset with 
 armed men. The people were assured by proclamation that the 
 King was not a prisoner, but for nearly a year he was under 
 tutelage, and did what Gowrie and his friends required. At 
 once a new face of things was seen. John Durie, who had 
 been driven from Edinburgh for preaching against Lennox 
 and Arran, now preached before the King ; when he returned 
 to Ids own parish, a crowd of friends met him at the Netherbow 
 and marched up the street singing the 124th Psalm. They 
 sang in four parts, which is more than a similar crowd could 
 do at the present day. On the 9th October the Assembly met 
 in Edinburgh ; the raid of Euthven was approved, on the 
 ground that the Kirk and the King had been in danger, and 
 ministers were directed to explain the matter to their people. 
 Lennox held his ground as long as he could, but before the 
 year was out, he went to London, where he assured Elizabeth 
 that the King and he were both good Protestants, and so to 
 France. The raid was technically treason, but when we compare 
 it with the bloody enterprises of Morton we see that it marks 
 a stage in the political development of Scotland. 
 
 At this Assembly Francis Stewart, afterwards Earl of Both- 
 well, appeared and stated that he would live and die in the 
 reformed religion. Like his uncle, the hero of Kirk-o'-Field, 
 the new Bothwell was only a reckless adventurer, but his 
 escapades were varied by fits of penitence ; the ministers 
 were never sure of him, but some said he had the form of 
 repentance, while the King had not even the form. 
 
 At the court of France the raid had caused some perturbation; 
 in January M. de la Mothe-Fenelon came as an ambassador 
 from Henri III ; by Mary's permission he was to address 
 James as king. A few weeks later came M. de Menainville,
 
 182 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 who brought some fine horses, a present from the Duke of 
 Guise. Lawson and Durie told the king he was not to accept 
 the horses, and when James asked the town of Edinburgh to 
 give a banquet to Fenelon, the ministers appointed a fast for 
 the same day ; a great congregation sat from nine till two, 
 while Lawson preached on the sin of being unequally yoked 
 with unbelievers, Durie on the danger of alliances with Perizzites 
 and Jebusites, and Balcanquhal on the mourning of Mordecai. 
 The King was very willing to entertain friendship with France, 
 but he had his own interests to consider. Fenelon only stayed 
 a short time, and Menainville, who remained till April, does 
 not seem to have effected much. On the 28th March, being 
 Maundy Thursday, Menainville brought thirteen poor men into 
 his lodging and washed their feet, to the annoyance of the godly. 
 
 Towards the end of May, Lennox died at Paris. It was 
 carefully given out that he died a Protestant, and refused the 
 last sacrament of the Roman Church. The story may or may 
 not be true, but it was evidently published in the interest of 
 the young Duke of Lennox, who was coming to Scotland in 
 the hope of a friendly reception at court. 
 
 When the Protestant Lords ' altered the possession of the 
 King ', they might have taken steps to bring him under some 
 regular control, but they were not really united ; in June 
 James went to St. Andrews, where he resumed his independence. 
 In July he had a meeting with some ministers at Falkland, and 
 John Davidson told him that no man in chief authority had 
 prospered, after the ministers had begun to threaten him. 
 In October the Assembly met ; Thomas Smeaton was Modera- 
 tor. Melville, a keen partisan of what was called the new 
 learning, opened an attack on the philosophy of Aristotle. 
 The unlucky Adamson was in trouble about various matters ; 
 the presbytery of St. Andrews and the synod of Fife were both 
 under the influence of Melville and his nephew James. The 
 Archbishop went to London, where he consulted English bishops 
 and French pastors as to the defects of the Melvinian system. 
 Unpleasant stories -were told of the Archbishop's behaviour in 
 London, but this was the staple of party controversy in those 
 days.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 183 
 
 Early in January a small company of English people landed 
 at Dundee ; their leader, Eobert Brown, thought he had a 
 message for Scotland ; to understand his position, it is necessary 
 to recount, very briefly, the recent history of the Church in 
 England. Cartwright of Cambridge and some others had made 
 a strenuous effort to presbyterianize their own Church ; they 
 were defeated by the persistence of Catholic tradition in that 
 Church, and by the inflexible purpose of Elizabeth. Cartwright 
 was a nonconformist, but not a separatist ; he remained a 
 loyal minister of his Church ; but controversy had called into 
 activity other teachers of a more disintegrating temper. 
 Brown himself was a Cambridge man ; he had been a candidate 
 for orders, but he came to believe that his vocation, acknow- 
 ledged by his flock, was more important than episcopal 
 authority. Wherever a few Christians met together, they were 
 free, as he taught, to form a separate Church, and every such 
 local community was free to exercise all the powers which any 
 Church could rightfully claim. The bishops had, of course, 
 dealt stringently with this doctrine, and Lord Burghley had 
 intervened more than once to save Brown, who was his kinsman, 
 from punishment. It was difficult for the separatists to make 
 progress in England ; many of them went over to Holland, 
 where they formed Churches, and disputed eagerly about 
 infant baptism and other points. Brown had visited Middel- 
 burg ; after breaking up a local Church there, he came now to 
 Scotland with a few disciples. Melville, who knew him as an 
 enemy of bishops, gave him an introduction to James Lawson 
 of Edinburgh, and the English preacher addressed the kirk- 
 session and presbytery, pointing out to them that the Scottish 
 discipline was altogether amiss. The ministers took him quite 
 seriously ; they even had him thrown into prison while two 
 brethren collected materials for a refutation of his opinions. 
 Most probably Brown used the name of his powerful kinsman, 
 and in the end he was allowed to return to England. He 
 returned with an unfavourable opinion of the Kirk, which 
 he expressed with his usual freedom. 
 
 In February Melville was summoned to defend himself 
 before the King and the Chancellor Arran ; he was accused
 
 184 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 of preaching a subversive sermon on the history of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar and Belshazzar. The accusation was probably not 
 unfounded, but the preacher met it by declining the King's 
 jurisdiction ; he told James that he presumed too far in 
 assuming to control the ambassadors of a higher power than 
 his own. Taking his Hebrew Bible from his belt, he flung it 
 on the table as a proof of his commission. Arran opened the 
 book, but, though a man of some education, the Chancellor 
 was probably not a Hebraist. Melville was threatened with 
 imprisonment, and he would have been sent to the dungeon 
 at Blackness, a 'foul hole' kept by Arran's men; he escaped 
 to the Border, and was soon safe at Berwick. Having thus 
 removed their most formidable critic, the King and the 
 Chancellor proceeded to deal with the authors of the raid of 
 Ruthven. Gowrie was thrown into prison, and when the 
 Lords of his party attacked Stirling the King drove them from 
 the field, and their leaders had to make for England. Gowrie 
 was brought to trial and executed. There was another exodus 
 of preachers ; even the valorous Davidson had to quit his post. 
 On the 18th May a sitting of Parliament began, and the 
 King determined to curtail the liberties claimed by the 
 Melvinian Kirk. He made on the whole a moderate use of 
 his power, but the King was recognized as head of the Church, 
 and it was enacted that it should be treason to decline the 
 King's jurisdiction, and that assemblies of the Kirk should 
 meet only as allowed by Parliament and the King : this was the 
 substance of the ' black acts ' against which the Kirk continued 
 to protest. On Sunday, the 24th, Lawson and Balcanquhal 
 preached against the Parliament, and immediately went south 
 to join the brethren in exile. Lawson died in London, but 
 Balcanquhal lived to fight another day. Both wrote at length 
 to their flocks, and a letter was circulated, full of Latin quota- 
 tions, and written, or purporting to be written, by the wivfcs 
 of the oppressed ministers. On the other side, Adamson's 
 industrious pen furnished a defence of the King's policy which 
 obtained currency in England. Melville wrote a fierce attack 
 on the Archbishop, and sent it to Geneva and Zurich ; in his 
 account of the sufferings of the Kirk one notices that Morton
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 185 
 
 is by this time included in the roll of her martyrs. Adamson 
 described his opponent as an ambitious man, of a fiery and salt 
 humour ; but for this language he paid a penalty later on. 
 
 On the 10th July William of Orange had been shot dead 
 by an agent of the Counter-reformation ; this event gave an 
 impulse to increased activity among Protestants. In England, 
 Burghley and Walsingham drew up an Instrument of Associa- 
 tion for the protection of the Queen ; Elizabeth was con- 
 stantly in danger from the foolish and wicked plots in which 
 the Papal Court was engaged. Mary saw the Instrument, and 
 offered to sign it ; unhappily her only chance of liberty 
 depended on the success of some plot against her good sister's 
 throne. When the Instrument was turned into an Act of the 
 English Parliament, Elizabeth had a weapon in her hand 
 which would rid her of her enemy. 
 
 In Scotland attempts were made to induce the ministers to 
 sign a declaration, accepting the supremacy of the King and 
 the jurisdiction of the Bishop. Craig and others signed ' accord- 
 ing to the Word of God ', but the saving clause did not satisfy 
 the Melvilles and their party ; James Melville, who was 
 preaching to the exiled Lords at Berwick, wrote a prolix 
 remonstrance to the subscribing brethren. In February a 
 synodal assembly was held, Adamson presiding, and articles 
 for the guidance of ministers were drawn up by John Maitland, 
 a younger brother of Queen Mary's Lethington, and an adviser 
 on whom the King greatly relied. There is no lack of ability 
 in the manifestoes of this period, but these voluminous papers 
 do not really explain the question at issue. Eichard Baxter 
 writes that in most wars and contentions there are faults on 
 both sides, and so it was with the King and the Kirk. Both 
 argued, sincerely but erroneously, that an authority, divine in 
 its origin, must be unlimited in its exercise. The fact remains 
 that authority, however high its origin, is vested in fallible 
 men, who must be restrained by good laws and usages. No 
 King should be free to govern like James, and no minister 
 to preach like Melville. 
 
 The plague was in Scotland this year, and many blamed 
 Arran for the visitation ; but the power of this man was not
 
 186 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 to continue long. His heartless behaviour to Gowrie's widow 
 had given general offence, and no Hamilton could sit quiet 
 while an Ochiltree Stewart kept house at Kinneil and wore the 
 title which belonged to the head of that ambitious tribe. Some 
 of the exiled Lords had a close understanding with the English 
 Government ; Elizabeth had sent Sir Philip Sidney to assure 
 them of her friendly interest. Late in October they held 
 a religious meeting at Westminister, and began to move north- 
 ward ; once in Scotland, they were joined by many friends. 
 As they advanced on Stirling, the King gave way without 
 a struggle, and Arran fled ; he lost even the title which had 
 made him so many enemies ; for the rest of his life he was 
 only Captain James. The ministers expected now to witness 
 the triumph of the Kirk, but alas ! the Lords were, as usual, 
 4 every one for his own particular ' : only the Earl of Angus 
 remembered the principles he had learned from James Melville. 
 Balcanquhal returned with the rest ; in January he preached 
 before the King at St. Giles, and the King answered him from 
 the royal gallery. The old compromises about bishops were 
 treated as still subsisting, and the Melvilles lost patience. 
 When the synod of Fife resumed its meetings, James Melville 
 made a vehement attack on Adamson, who was present. The 
 Archbishop was excommunicated, and consoled himself by 
 excommunicating his opponents : at this period the Church 
 courts of either party used the extreme penalty of Church 
 law very much as a Scots Parliament would use the penalty 
 of forfeiture. Adamson was in bad health, and the unpleasant 
 details of his illness were described with a zest which reminds 
 us of Knox's treatment of Mary of Guise. Among the tales 
 circulated against the Archbishop some were tales of witch- 
 craft ; he was said to have gone to ' wise women ' to cure him, 
 and one of these advisers was said to have given him a mixture 
 of ewes' milk and claret a less noxious prescription than some 
 that were signed by great doctors in those days. 
 
 On the 10th May an Assembly was held in Edinburgh ; 
 the King used every effort to influence the proceedings. The 
 irregular sentence against the Archbishop was set aside ; the 
 place of bishops in the Kirk was, as far as possible, retained.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 187 
 
 After the Assembly, the King dealt with the two Melvilles ; 
 Mr. Andrew was sent to ' confer with Jesuits ' in the north, and 
 Mr. James was ordered to limit himself to his professorial 
 duties. In England the temper of the Association was kept at 
 fever heat by constant rumours of plots. The Babington con- 
 spiracy was brought to light, and before the end of September 
 the authors of that attempt were put to death. Elizabeth 
 had, as she thought, a case against the Queen of Scots ; in 
 the middle of October a special commission was assembled at 
 Fotheringay, and the verdict was a foregone conclusion ; the 
 commissioners met again at Westminster, to pronounce 
 sentence of death. English Protestants were almost unanimous 
 in desiring to see the sentence carried out ; Elizabeth was in an 
 agony of indecision. At the last moment she tried to induce 
 the officers in charge of Mary to put their captive quietly out 
 of the way, but Sir Amyas Paulet, a stiff Puritan, declined to 
 shed blood without legal warrant. After long delay, the 
 warrant was signed on the 1st February. 
 
 James had done what decency required in the way of 
 attempting to save his mother. A King of Scots of the old 
 days would have taken the road to England, but James was 
 now bound to the old enemy by a league of friendship ; he 
 meant to be himself King of England. He vpished the ministers 
 to pray for Mary, but the leaders of the Kirk were in sympathy 
 with the brethren in England ; their prayers might be such as 
 the King would not care to hear. On the 3rd February James 
 went to St. Giles, taking with him Adamson, who could be 
 trusted to use language which would not offend the King. 
 They found the pulpit occupied by John Cowper, minister of 
 Perth. At the King's command Mr. John gave way, after 
 warning James that he would have to answer to the Great 
 Judge of the earth for disturbing His minister. While this 
 scene was being enacted, the workmen were preparing the 
 hall at Fotheringay for the last scene of Mary's troubled life ; 
 the 8th February was the day of her death. The Dean of 
 Peterborough, a typical Elizabethan churchman, read some 
 Protestant prayers while the dying woman was engaged in her 
 own devotions. We need not dwell on Elizabeth's wild attempts
 
 188 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 to disclaim responsibility for her enemy's death. In Scotland 
 the routine of the King's business and amusements went on 
 much as before. 
 
 The Assembly met again in June ; Melville was Moderator, 
 and he brought with him a disciple who was at once accepted 
 as a leader of the Kirk. Eobert Bruce, the younger son of 
 a good landed family, had been trained for the bar; after 
 a severe struggle with himself he had given up his secular 
 career and begun to preach. He now became, without ordina- 
 tion, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. At a later time he 
 was ordained, unwillingly ; he did not wish to admit any 
 doubt as to the validity of his original call to the ministry. 
 We have a volume of his sermons, and can appreciate the 
 qualities which made him, for a time, the chief man in Edin- 
 burgh. In language he was more moderate and dignified than 
 Knox or Melville ; in his politics and in the type of his church- 
 manship Bruce was a man of his age ; his main anxiety was, 
 to keep the King faithful to the godly policy of persecuting 
 Papists. In July the Estates met ; the King was now of age, 
 and the liberties of the Kirk were confirmed. The temporalities 
 of the old Church (what remained of them) were annexed to 
 the Crown ; a decently endowed episcopate, such as the 
 English had retained, was thus rendered impossible. 
 
 In February an extraordinary meeting of the Assembly 
 was held ; Bruce was Moderator. It was a time of peril ; the 
 death of the Queen of Scots had startled King Philip out of 
 his dilatory habits ; for some months his resources had been 
 used in preparing the mighty fleet which was to do justice 
 on the heretical Queen of England. There was much con- 
 ference in Edinburgh as to the treatment of Papists and the 
 enforcement of the penal laws. James was ready with explana- 
 tions, but his difficulties were greater than his critics would 
 admit. Huntly, the son of that Huntly who had professed 
 himself a Protestant, was an obstinate Catholic ; but the King 
 was not yet strong enough to defy the ' goodman of the North '. 
 Jesuits were active in various quarters, and, when they were 
 caught, the King smuggled them out of the country to save 
 their lives. This laxity gave much offence ; at this Assembly
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 189 
 
 James Gibson was deprived for saying, in the pulpit, that if 
 the King did not amend, he might, like Jeroboam, be the last 
 of his race. Bruce was warned in a dream because of Gibson, 
 and was not present when sentence was pronounced. 
 
 In the defeat of the armada Scotland took no active share. 
 The English seamen did as they pleased with the unwieldy 
 foreign ships, and the Spanish commanders thought it safer 
 to work round through the Pentland Firth than to face the 
 English Channel again. They were scattered, whelmed in the 
 sea, and thrown upon our inhospitable coast ; of the men who 
 sailed from Spain only one-third returned to their homes. 
 One incident may be recorded here. James Melville was now 
 minister of Anstruther Wester ; on an autumn morning early 
 a bailie of the town came to report that a Spanish ship was in 
 the harbour, not to give but to ask mercy. The minister went 
 down and held some talk with a dignified person, Don Juan 
 Gomez de Medina, once captain over twenty hulks, now 
 a fugitive asking help for his crew. His ship, the Gran Gri/on, 
 had gone ashore on the Fair Isle, but he had secured the use 
 of a local ship to take him back to some port in the Netherlands. 
 Help was not wanting ; the Spanish captain was courteously 
 entertained, and his men were revived with pottage and kail. 
 Don Juan was not ungrateful ; long afterwards he came to the 
 aid of a Scottish crew, detained by the authorities of a foreign 
 port, and did his best to obtain their release. 
 
 While the fate of the armada was being decided, affairs in 
 the Kirk went their usual course. In July Adamson got into 
 fresh trouble by marrying Huntly to Henrietta Stuart (a 
 daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox) without making him sign 
 the Confession. After a time, Huntly signed ' entirely against 
 his wish '. In August the Assembly met again. It was reported 
 that the poor were living without religion or discipline ; it was 
 resolved that they should not be relieved unless they resorted 
 to the Kirk and participated in the sacraments. 
 
 In February a sermon was preached at St. Paul's Cross in 
 London which caused some commotion in Scotland. Dr. Ban- 
 croft, a solid Cambridge divine, discoursed on the verse in 
 which St. John advises us to ' try the spirits ' ; he spoke
 
 190 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 severely of the spirit of innovation, which had led the Scots 
 to reject episcopal authority, and to adopt the Genevan 
 discipline. At a later time Bancroft asked an Edinburgh book- 
 seller to obtain answers to some questions relating to the 
 polity of the Kirk ; ultimately he wrote a book, in which the 
 faults of the Presbyterian system were traced from their 
 source in Geneva through Scotland to the Puritan party in 
 the Church of England. His quotations were from Knox, 
 Goodman, and John Davidson, and he relied to some extent 
 on the evidence of Brown, who, as we have seen, had reasons 
 of his own for disliking our discipline. When Bancroft rose to 
 the highest place in his own Church, we shall find him again 
 in hostile relations with the Melvinian Kirk. 
 
 In June the Assembly met ; John Udall, an English Puritan, 
 preached before the King. Udall was a very learned man ; 
 James, who knew something of these matters, thought him 
 the greatest scholar in Europe. On his return to England, 
 he was hurried from one Church court to another ; after a few 
 years he died in prison. 
 
 Late in October the King sailed for Norway, to bring homo 
 his affianced wife, the Princess Anne of Denmark. He relied 
 on the ministers to keep order in his absence, and Mr. Bruce 
 was made a privy councillor. The young Duke of Lennox and 
 Bothwell were governors of the realm, but Bothwell was always 
 a centre of unrest. He confessed his sins publicly in November, 
 and continued to add to the list. It was said that he consulted 
 witches as to the prospects of the King's return. James was 
 married at Opslo (Christiania) on the 23rd November, and spent 
 the winter with his Scandinavian friends, ' drinking and 
 1 1 riving ower '. Scotland was peaceful and orderly, in spite 
 of the alarms about Papists. In March the Assembly met ; 
 Lord John Hamilton, now the recognized head of his house, 
 professed his devotion to the Kirk, and Lennox gave a similar 
 assurance. On the 1st May the King and his bride landed in 
 state. The new Queen of Scots was a girl of sixteen, fond of 
 amusement and admiration ; her Lutheran training had hardly 
 prepared her to profit by the long sermons to which she now 
 had to listen.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 191 
 
 In August the Assembly met ; James Melville, the retiring 
 Moderator, discoursed at length on the Discipline ; he spoke 
 bitterly of the ' belly-god bishops ' of England, and made another 
 fierce attack on Adamson. Patrick Galloway, now the King's 
 favourite preacher, was placed in the chair. The King himself 
 made a speech, boasting that his Kirk was the ' sincerest ' in 
 Christendom. Even Geneva, he said, kept Christmas and 
 Easter, for which there was ' no institution ' ; as for the Church 
 of England her service was only ' an evil-said mass in English '. 
 After this harangue there was nothing but loud praising of 
 God and praying for the King ; but the venerable house was 
 perhaps too easily pleased. 
 
 Entering into the spirit of the part he was playing, James 
 threw off the unfortunate Adamson. Even the life-rent which 
 the Archbishop had out of the revenues of his see was given 
 to Lennox. Reduced to absolute want, the beaten man applied 
 to his most formidable adversary, and not in vain ; Mr. Andrew 
 subscribed himself and secured help from others. Adamson 
 was tearfully anxious to be released from the sentence of ex- 
 communication, but absolution could not be granted without 
 confession. The required document was written in Latin ; the 
 synod of Fife insisted on a more ample recantation in the 
 vulgar tongue. The titular primate was at the mercy of his 
 enemies ; he apologized for his public acts, and accepted the 
 great principle of the parity of ministers. It is a relief to 
 know that the poor man's misery was not prolonged ; he 
 fell into a state of lethargy and died ' senseless as he had 
 lived '. 
 
 The sixth James is not a heroic figure in our history, but it 
 is fair to remember the almost hopeless difficulty of his task. 
 He was so ill furnished with men and money that he could only 
 act with the aid of his feudatory nobles, some of whom were 
 Catholics, and, as was only natural, in correspondence with the 
 King of Spain. John Maitland, now Chancellor, advised his 
 master to make terms with the preachers, but what terms can 
 be made with men who claim to speak by direct inspiration ? 
 All the leaders of the Kirk believed that, being God's ambassa- 
 dors, they were entitled to dictate to the State, and to decide
 
 192 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 questions of law and policy. Bruce and Balcanquhal lectured 
 the King from the pulpit ; even the wary Pont told him that 
 the judgment of God was in the hand of the ministry. It was 
 more than once suggested that the King should be excommuni- 
 cated if he failed to satisfy the Kirk. Considering what the 
 civil effects of excommunication were, this was nearly equiva- 
 lent to the Pope's assertion of the deposing power vested in the 
 Vicar of Christ. 
 
 Huntly was at feud with Moray a young Stewart who had 
 married the Eegent Moray's daughter and so come to his 
 father-in-law's title. Huntly had obtained ' letters of fire 
 and sword ', nominally to suppress Bothwell ; the result was 
 that Moray was beset at his mother's house on a dark February 
 night, and killed. The presbytery of Edinburgh wished 
 Huntly and his friends to be excommunicated ; the King asked 
 why they had not excommunicated Bothwell, when he beset 
 Holyrood and put the sovereign in fear for his life. He added 
 that things would not be well until noblemen had a licence to 
 break ministers' heads. This, however, was not his permanent 
 mood ; when the Estates met in May, the King had promised 
 to recognize the liberties of the Kirk. In fulfilment of this 
 promise, the Acts of 1584 were repealed ; the constitution of 
 the Kirk was sanctioned, and the duties of presbyteries, synods, 
 and assemblies were defined. Lay patrons were to present 
 their candidates to the presbytery, and the presbytery was 
 ' astricted and bound ' to admit a qualified presentee. Sayers 
 of Mass, Jesuits, &c., and those who received them were made 
 liable to the penalties of treason. The civil titles of the prelacy 
 were allowed to remain ; the King still hoped, by a judicious 
 use of his prerogative, to bring the independence of the ministry 
 within what he considered reasonable limits. 
 
 Another Puritan visitor had been spending a quiet time in 
 Scotland, beyond the reach of the Anglican bishops. John 
 Penry, an ardent Welshman, held the dignitaries of his own 
 Church responsible for the backward state of religion among 
 the people ; he had taken a considerable share in the publica- 
 tion of the Marprelate Tracts. The English authorities com- 
 plained of the protection afforded him in Scotland, and Penry
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 198 
 
 had to leave. Like Udall, he was marked down for punishment, 
 and in the end he was hanged. 
 
 By recognizing the Church courts, the Estates had encouraged 
 the ministers to assume general powers of regulation. In 
 October there was trouble at Edinburgh ; the ministers wished 
 to prevent the merchants from trading with Spain. They also 
 objected to the Monday market, because the upland men had 
 to start on Sunday to attend it. Those who resisted this 
 extension of the Kirk's authority were told from the pulpit 
 that they were enemies of religion. 
 
 In December there was a fast, and the fruit of this solemn 
 exercise was the discovery of a Papist plot. George Kerr, 
 a brother of Lord Newbattle, was lurking in the Cumbraes, 
 waiting for a ship to take him to Spain ; Andrew Knox, 
 minister at Paisley, got together a party of Glasgow students 
 and other friends ; Kerr was arrested, and in his possession 
 were found blank papers, signed by the Popish Earls ; the 
 blanks were to be filled up with some assurance of willingness 
 to co-operate with King Philip. There was a demand for strong 
 measures against the Catholics, and King James, hastily 
 summoned to Edinburgh, assured the ministers that he would 
 persevere in the ' persecution of that cause ' ; but nothing was 
 done to satisfy Protestant opinion. In April the Assembly 
 met, and asked that Papists should be excluded from o'ffice ; 
 they partly pacified the King by condemning ' rash and 
 unreverent ' speeches in the pulpit. In June Kerr escaped from 
 prison. Some said the Queen had interceded for him ; it is 
 certain that Anne was under Catholic influence, and we ought 
 probably to include her among the numerous converts made by 
 the Jesuits. In July, when the Estates met, Bothwell was 
 forfeited ; the Popish Earls were to have another chance. 
 
 These delays raised the temper of the Melvilles to boiling 
 point ; in September the synod of Fife excommunicated Huntly, 
 Errol, and Angus, and a number of their adherents. (The 
 Angus who had listened so carefully to James Melville was dead, 
 and the new Earl was a Catholic.) ' Sundry reasons ' were 
 given for this irregular action ; the only reason recorded is, 
 that some of the offenders had been students at St. Andrews,
 
 194 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 or had gone through the marriage ceremony in Fife. The King 
 was so indignant that he even asked Lord Hamilton's advice 
 on the question, whether some liberty of conscience might not 
 be allowed to Papists ? ' Then are we all gone, then are we all 
 gone, then are we all gone,' was Hamilton's reply. He was not 
 a religious enthusiast, but he had solid reasons for objecting 
 to any measure which would reopen questions relating to 
 the property of the old Church. James had to content himself 
 with republishing the decision of Parliament in a document 
 known as the Act of Abolition. Bruce told the King publicly 
 that his reign would be troublesome and short,- unless he with- 
 drew the Act. 
 
 Elizabeth sent Lord Zouche (in Scotland he was written 
 down Lord Sough) to protest against the lenity shown to 
 Papists, but the envoy was thought to speak too dictatorially ; 
 the Act of Abolition was withdrawn, and things went on as 
 before. In May the Assembly met, and the irregular action 
 of the synod of Fife was ratified. Lord Hume's excommunica- 
 tion was annulled, but the sentence was read by David Lindsay, 
 the Moderator (Andrew Melville) taking no part. On the 
 30th May the King opened Parliament, and promised strong 
 measures against the rebellious Earls. Commissioners of the 
 Kirk were present, and when the Lords of Articles were chosen 
 Mr. Andrew offered some remarks on the names put forward. 
 The King and the commissioners wrote to the presbytery of 
 Edinburgh, bidding them praise God for the King's good 
 proceedings. John Davidson was not in a praising mood. 
 ' One dead,' he said, ' if it were but to execute Mr. Walter 
 Lindsay for his idolatry, would do more good than all the King's 
 letters, and the commissioners both.' 
 
 It was evident that the Catholic party would not submit 
 without a struggle ; at the earnest solicitation of the ministers, 
 the young Earl of Argyle was invited to take the field against 
 them. He was beaten at Glenlivet, but when the King himself 
 went north the rebels gave way. James took the Melvilles and 
 other ministers with him, just as Jehu took the Kenite chief 
 Jehonadab into his chariot on a similar occasion. For the 
 moment Huntly and Errol gave up the game, and in the spring
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 195 
 
 they went into exile. There was some premature exultation 
 in the Kirk over this, but in June, when the Assembly met 
 at Montrose, there was evidently no complete understanding 
 between the King and the ministers, and in August David 
 Black of St. Andrews was summoned to Falkland, to answer 
 for an attack on the memory of the King's mother ; there 
 was the usual wrangle about jurisdiction, and Mr. Andrew 
 once more expounded his theory of the two kingdoms. 
 
 In October the Chancellor Maitland died. The King took 
 a survey of his financial position, which was far from satis- 
 factory. In January he appointed a committee of eight, known 
 as the Octavians, to assist him in the task of making both ends 
 meet. Of this new body the leading member was Alexander 
 Seton, now Lord President of the Court of Session. This very 
 competent lawyer was a son of Mary's Lord Seton ; in his 
 boyhood he had been sent to Eome, to study for the priesthood, 
 but had not taken orders. On his return to Scotland, Seton 
 conformed to the established religion ; when challenged, he 
 would take the sacrament ' to the satisfaction of the ministers ' ; 
 he was always suspected of Catholic sympathies. 
 
 Calderwood fixes the beginning of 1596 as the time when the 
 Kirk came to her perfection in doctrine and discipline, so that 
 her beauty was admirable to foreign kirks. The leading men 
 of the Kirk were not under any illusion of this kind. When 
 the Assembly met in March, John Davidson, now minister of 
 Prestonpans, brought up the advice of the presbytery at 
 Haddington a long paper, probably penned by himself, 
 setting forth the urgent necessity of a general confession. 
 Much time was occupied in setting down the offences of all 
 classes, from the King, who was justly blamed for ' banning 
 and swearing ', to the ordinary subject ; the sins of the ministry 
 were specially emphasized. In May the synod of Fife repeated 
 this penitential exercise. These large confessions are quoted 
 by hostile critics to prove that, after thirty-six years of the 
 reformed religion, the nation w'as quite demoralized ; but 
 there were, as we can see now, political issues to be decided 
 before the nation could settle down. Scotland was making 
 her way, very slowly, to religious liberty and constitutional 
 
 02
 
 196 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 government, and these blessings can only be secured by 
 compromise ; Protestants and Catholics, Whigs and believers 
 in prerogative, must learn to live peaceably side by side. But 
 the Scottish intellect, always keen for abstract victory, took 
 a long time to master this lesson. 
 
 From the King's point of view the expulsion of the Popish 
 Earls was only an expedient ; he meant to have them back, 
 and in August a convention was held at Falkland with that 
 object. Some ministers were in attendance, and Mr. Andrew, 
 after knocking boldly at the door of the council-chamber, 
 addressed the Convention in his accustomed style. As a minister 
 of the Word, he forbade the King to recall the Earls. A few 
 weeks later, commissioners of the Kirk and some 4 good 
 brethren ' met at Cupar ; the Melvilles and two others were 
 deputed to go to Falkland, and it was arranged that their case 
 should be stated by Mr. James, a more politic man than his 
 irrepressible uncle. At the very outset Mr. Andrew took the 
 argument out of his nephew's mouth, and spoke in his usual 
 manner. Holding the King by the sleeve, he reminded him that 
 he was ' God's silly [feeble] vassal ', and made him listen once 
 more to the doctrine that there were two crowns and two 
 kingdoms in Scotland. Even if we assume that the doctrine 
 was sound, it is plain that neither the King nor Mr. Andrew 
 could be trusted to delimit the frontiers ; James thought 
 himself divinely commissioned to dictate the religion of his 
 subjects, and Mr. Andrew was attempting to dictate the action 
 of government in a matter which any modern community 
 would leave to statesmen and judges. It soon became known 
 that Huntly and Errol were in Scotland ; the ministers were 
 determined not to let them remain unless they signed the 
 Confession. 
 
 The dispute about the Papist Lords was complicated by 
 fresh troubles about David Black and his sermons. During 
 November, commissioners of the Kirk sat frequently in Edin- 
 burgh, drawing up able minutes which led to no result. On 
 Thursday, the 9th December, the King in Council ordered 
 Mr. Black to remove north of the Tay, and remain there ; on 
 the following Sunday the Kirk held a fast, but the King would
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 197 
 
 not observe it, because it was the Queen's birthday. Sir George 
 Home and other courtiers, being jealous of the Octavians, 
 fomented the quarrel. On the 17th the King sat with the Lords 
 of Session at the Tolbooth, while a congregation gathered in 
 the Little Kirk, to hear Mr. Bruce and others on the dangers 
 of the times. A deputation was sent to the King ; until they 
 could bring his reply the people waited, and Mr. Cranston 
 read the history of Haman and Mordecai. The citizens were 
 much excited ; many put on their steel bonnets and ran to 
 the Tolbooth or the Little Kirk. The King had a rough time 
 on his way back to Holyrood. Next day he rode to Linlithgow, 
 and took steps to withdraw the courts of law from Edinburgh. 
 This threat brought the authorities of the town to a submissive 
 frame of mind ; Bruce and Balcanquhal retired to England, 
 and the fruits of victory remained with the King. James had 
 for some time been preparing lists of questions on which he 
 wished to come to an understanding with the Kirk. An 
 Assembly was called, to meet at Perth in February ; David 
 Lindsay was placed in the chair by Court influence ; there was 
 a large attendance of the northern ministers, many of whom 
 were not in sympathy with the ' popes of Edinburgh '. The 
 King had also secured the support of some ministers who wished 
 to see an end of strife, and were not devoted to the Melvinian 
 ideal ; of these the most important was Eobert Bollock, first 
 Principal of our Town's College at Edinburgh, and the first 
 Scots divine who distinguished himself as a commentator on 
 Scripture. High Presbyterians thought they disposed of 
 Mr. Bollock by hinting that he would soon be a bishop ; his 
 early death put an end to any such hope or fear. In May there 
 was an Assembly at Dundee ; Bollock was placed in the chair, 
 and the King's policy of compromise was carried a stage further. 
 The zealous Black was removed from St. Andrews to a country 
 parish. Mr. Andrew appeared, eager for the fray, but, after 
 a heated altercation with the King, he had to leave the town. 
 Some good brethren had been empowered to ' insist in confer- 
 ence ' with the Popish Earls ; at the end of June Huntly and 
 Errol were reconciled to the Kirk at Aberdeen. To celebrate 
 this painful display the city of Bon Accord provided wine and
 
 198 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 sweetmeats, apparently on a too lavish scale. In July peace 
 was so far restored that the Edinburgh ministers were allowed 
 to return to their pulpits. 
 
 In December there was a Parliament, and the King addressed 
 himself to the second branch of his scheme the representation 
 of the spiritual Estate. Some wished the Kirk to be represented 
 in Parliament by commissioners, ministers, or laymen, elected 
 by herself. The nobles proposed that the spiritual lords should 
 be those on whom the King should bestow the title of bishop, 
 abbot, or prior. They wanted the titles, and what remained 
 of the revenues, for their younger sons. The King at first 
 inclined to the Presbyterian solution of the question, but the 
 Melvinian ministers were critical and captious. Even a com- 
 missioner, they thought, would soon become a bishop ; at 
 the synod of Fife in February this was the prevailing opinion, 
 and John Davidson, who was present, though not a member of 
 the court, spoke in that sense. The controversy was renewed 
 at the Assembly in March ; there was some argument on 
 2 Chronicles xix, a chapter which was supposed to have an 
 important bearing on the question in hand. A minister 
 described by the high Presbyterians as a ' drunken Orkwy 
 ass ', moved that a vote be taken ; it was carried by a majority 
 that the Kirk should have a voice in parliament. Davidson 
 protested as usual ; the King called him an Anabaptist, and said 
 he had too much acquaintance with Penry, the Puritan whom 
 the Queen of England had hanged. 
 
 Fretted by these disputes, the King went back to the notion 
 that prelates were needed to keep order in the Kirk ; he began 
 to think that a parity among ministers was not consistent with 
 monarchical government. This view appears in the two books 
 which James was preparing for the press. The heir-apparent, 
 Prince Henry', was four years old, and would soon be able to 
 assimilate the profound lessons in statecraft which the King 
 felt himself qualified to impart. In September the True Law 
 of Free Monarchies was anonymously published ; the Basilicon 
 Doron was ready in manuscript, but the Melvilles were whetting 
 their knives to fall on it, and the royal author had to exercise 
 caution. In this latter work James applied some strong
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 199 
 
 language 'to the English Puritans, but it may have occurred to 
 him that he ought not to make enemies in a country over 
 which he hoped to rule. He explained that when he condemned 
 Puritans he was thinking of the Family of Love a small sect, 
 rightly or wrongly suspected of laxity in morals. 
 
 During these troubled years, Robert Bruce was brought 
 more than once into collision with the King. He had a pension 
 out of the rents of the old abbey at Arbroath, but after the 
 rising in Edinburgh James took steps to withdraw this allow- 
 ance. Mr. Bruce went to the Court of Session, and the judges 
 upheld his claim, though the King himself was present to 
 overawe the court. The judges admitted that the King, by 
 his absolute power, could forbid them to give judgement, 
 but if they were free to do their duty, the case must go on. 
 It is worth noting that Seton and Lord Newbattle, though 
 probably Catholics, withstood the King and insisted that the 
 Protestant preacher should have his legal rights. 
 
 Elizabeth was nearing the end of her long reign ; her minister 
 Lord Burghley and her enemy King Philip had both been 
 carried to the grave. It was becoming almost certain that 
 James would succeed, but small incidents acquired importance 
 in view of the great question to be decided. Scots Catholics 
 suggested that the King should have an agent at Rome, and 
 that Chisholm, Bishop of Vaison in France (a nephew of Mary's 
 Chisholm), might be created a cardinal for this purpose. James 
 was willing to write to some of the cardinals ; he hesitated to 
 address Clement VIII as Holy Father, but a letter in that form 
 was sent in the King's name. It may be that Elphinstone 
 obtained the sign manual by a trick ; this at least was the 
 official version of the incident. 
 
 The last year of the century opened peacefully, but there 
 were signs of trouble. In February the young Earl of Gowrie 
 returned to Scotland, accompanied by his brother, Alexander 
 Ruthven. The Earl had studied at foreign Universities ; Beza 
 had a high opinion of him ; many would fain have regarded 
 him as the coming champion of the Kirk. Like his father and 
 grandfather, he was supposed to have paid some attention to 
 ^he occult arts ; he was said to have claimed that he could make
 
 200 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 an adder stand still by pronouncing the Hebrew word for 
 holines's. 
 
 In March an Assembly met at Montrose. Elaborate reasons 
 were given for holding that this was not a ' sincere ' Assembly 
 of the Kirk, and there is an element of truth in these protests. 
 In earlier days, the Kirk had sometimes acted unwisely, but 
 always with a genuine belief in the formula she was trying to 
 force on the nation ; King James was only a politician, using 
 the formula when it suited his own policy to do so. So far as 
 their use of Scripture was concerned, there was a close resem- 
 blance between the argument of the strict Presbyterians and 
 that of their Papist adversaries. Much importance was attached 
 to those passages of the Old Testament in which the privileges of 
 priests and Levites are described. Founding on these texts, 
 the Komanist divines had argued for a Levitical priesthood in 
 the old Church; the same texts were now used in making 
 a case for a Levitical ministry. 
 
 Tuesday, 5th August, was the day when the King discovered, 
 or said he discovered, that the Kuthven brothers were con- 
 spiring against him. Some historians have tried to prove that 
 James himself was plotting to ruin a possible rival, but the 
 evidence makes it probable that these two young men were 
 vaguely discussing plans which might have involved them 
 in a repetition of the raid of Ruthven. There was apparently 
 no thought of murder, but the Earl may have dreamed of exact- 
 ing some reparation for the death of his father and the ill- 
 treatment of his mother. The plot (if there was a plot) was 
 carried out in a hesitating, unpractical way ; at the critical 
 moment the King was able to call for help, and in the scuffle 
 which ensued both Gowrie and his brother were killed. A few. 
 days later, when the King returned to Edinburgh, the court 
 ministers preached the appropriate sermons, complimenting 
 the King on the courage he had displayed, and accepting his 
 report of what happened at Gowrie House. The Edinburgh 
 ministers were unconvinced ; many strict Presbyterians 
 believed that James had invented the conspiracy, in order to 
 ruin the godly house of Ruthven. After a trying interview with 
 the council, the ministers were forbidden to preach and ordered
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 201 
 
 to leave the town ; Mr. Bruce took ship at Queensferry and 
 went to Prance. James was apt to be fretful when contra- 
 dicted, and on this occasion his impatience was natural. At 
 any moment Bruce might have been inspired to state publicly 
 that the Euthvens were martyrs, and thereupon half Edinburgh 
 would have believed the King to be a murderer. 
 
 Parliament met in November ; the Euthven brothers were 
 duly forfeited, and it was enacted that all of that name should 
 choose other surnames. Four ministers voted as bishops : 
 David Lindsay became Bishop of Eoss, Gledstanes of Caithness, 
 Blackburn of Aberdeen, Alexander Douglas of Moray. Accord- 
 ing to John Davidson, the century was closing in gloom ; he 
 sat at Prestonpans, bewailing ' the horrible crimes and breaches 
 of the walls of our Jerusalem that daily rusheth to the ground 
 so fast '.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 IT is not easy to keep any continuous record of the King's 
 Popish subjects during this period. There were still many 
 Catholics in Scotland, and Huntly's domains afforded shelter 
 to many ' trafficking Jesuits ' and the like. The synod of 
 Fife, always on the battlements of Jerusalem, excommunicated 
 two active emissaries of the old Church Father Abercromby, 
 who is said to have converted the Queen, and John Hamilton, 
 sometime Vicar of St. Come at Paris, one of the most fervid 
 of the militant clergy in France. In his quieter moments, 
 Hamilton wrote devotional books, which were valued by the 
 members of his own Church. 
 
 The difference between the King and the ministers of Edin- 
 burgh was composed, but the Gowrie affair unhappily put an 
 end to Bruce's career as a parish minister. In June 1602 he 
 had an interview with the King at Perth. Mr. Bruce had not 
 accepted the King's narrative ; assuming that narrative to 
 be true, he still had to satisfy himself as to the motives of the 
 actors in that unhappy scuffle. Could the King say that he 
 had God before his eyes when he grappled with Alexander 
 Ruthven ? ' Neither God nor the devil, but my own defence/ 
 was the King's reply. If, as some historians think possible, 
 the King was speaking the truth, he must have found it hard 
 to bear with Mr. Robert's inquisition. For the rest of his life, 
 Bruce was a minister without a charge, a ' general bishop ', 
 as his enemies expressed it, preaching where and when he 
 found it safe to do so, and keeping alive the great tradition of 
 the Melvinian Kirk. 
 
 Elizabeth died early in the morning of Thursday, 24th 
 March 1608 ; by midnight on Saturday Robert Carey rode up 
 to the gate of Holyrood with the news. The political arrange- 
 ments for James's accession had been completed by Seton,
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 203 
 
 in conference with Sir Robert Cecil, younger son of the deceased 
 Burghley. Glad to witness a peaceful solution of a long-standing 
 dispute, the English welcomed their new King with acclamation. 
 
 When James went to England, he intended that the union 
 of the crowns should be followed by an incorporating union 
 of the kingdoms, but there were jealousies on both sides, 
 and his plans were postponed. He intended also to bring the 
 two national Churches into a closer agreement. Whatever 
 we may think of James's methods, we must admit that the 
 object he had in view was both legitimate and timely. The 
 Churches of England and Scotland have never been so near 
 to each other as they were at this moment. Both were firmly 
 Protestant, and mainly Calvinist in their doctrine, and both had 
 simplified their forms of worship. Each had a service-book 
 of her own, though our Genevan book is by no means equal 
 to the Book of Common Prayer, and the Scots ministers had 
 assumed a liberty in extempore prayer which Elizabeth would 
 never have allowed. Whitgift, the embodiment of strict 
 discipline, lived long enough to crown the King ; he died in 
 1604 and was succeeded by the less rigid Bancroft. On the 
 day before his coronation, the King conferred the archbishopric 
 of Glasgow on John Spottiswood the younger, son of that 
 superintendent of Lothian whom Knox had installed in office. 
 The prelatic Spottiswood was an accomplished, well-meaning 
 man, who thought it useless and wrong to oppose the King's 
 policy. To use a term which was not yet in fashion, he was or 
 was accused of being an Erastian. Erastus was not an Eras- 
 tian, in the English or Scotch meaning of the term, but he 
 was a convinced opponent of ' the Discipline ' the instrument 
 on which Presbyterians relied to bring all classes of the com- 
 munity under the coercive authority of the Church. 
 
 The point on which the King and the Melvinian ministers 
 were always at variance was what Knox called the freedom of 
 assemblies. The King thought the Kirk should meet only 
 with his permission ; the preachers claimed the right, derived 
 from the Lord Jesus Christ, to meet as often as the interests 
 of His Church required. This claim would be quite reasonable, 
 if put forward by a Church of the New Testament type
 
 204 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 a society of quiet people, making no demand on the State, 
 except the demand for protection against violence: it is less 
 obviously just when presented by a Kirk, maintained out of 
 public funds, and convinced of her own competence to dictate 
 the domestic and even the foreign policy of government. 
 
 The constitutional question was brought to an issue in 
 July 1605. An Assembly, which had already been post- 
 poned, was summoned to meet at Aberdeen, but again it was 
 postponed. A small company of ministers attended ; when 
 Straiton of Lauriston, who represented the King, intimated 
 the postponement, his statement of fact was roughly denied ; 
 John Forbes, a learned and pious man, a brother of the Bishop 
 of Aberdeen, was placed in the chair ; the Assembly sat -for 
 a little time, discussing its own right to meet, and the house 
 was prorogued to September. According to the King's view 
 of the law, the ministers had incurred the guilt of high treason ; 
 Forbes was conveyed to Blackness, and with him went John 
 Welch, minister of Ayr, a militant preacher who had married 
 the youngest daughter of Mr. Knox. In the following January 
 these two, and four other ministers, were put on their trial ; 
 James had sent the Earl of Mar, and Sir George Home, now 
 Earl of Dunbar, to manage the case, and every effort was used 
 to obtain a conviction. The counsel retained for the defence 
 were induced to desert their clients, but their place was taken 
 by two younger men, one of whom, Thomas Hope, was just 
 beginning his remarkably successful career at the bar. A 
 majority of the jury found the ministers guilty, and their lives 
 were in the King's mercy ; James graciously commuted the 
 sentence to banishment from his dominions : once more a party 
 of exiles took ship for France. The ministers found employ- 
 ment as preachers or as teachers of theology in the Protestant 
 academies ; Forbes ultimately settled at Delft, and Mr. Welch 
 is recorded to have preached with acceptance in French. The 
 six traitors thus disposed of, eight other preachers were relegated 
 to outlying places, such as Ireland and Kintyre. 
 
 Before the great process had reached its final stage, the two 
 Melvilles and six other ministers were invited or commanded 
 to visit the King in England. In the middle of August they
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 205 
 
 sailed from Anstruther, and the third week in September 
 found them at Hampton Court. The King had planned an 
 improving course of Anglican sermons for the benefit of his 
 northern guests. Barlow, Bishop of Eochester, discoursed on 
 the antiquity of his order in the Church, and Mr. Andrew 
 wrote a mordant Latin epigram on his argument. Buckeridge, 
 who had been ' brandishing the sword of the Spirit ' against 
 Papists and Puritans at Oxford, expounded the royal supremacy 
 as understood in England. The good Andrews preached on 
 the silver trumpets of Numbers x, from which he drew the 
 lesson that the King ought to convene assemblies of the Church. 
 Dr. King, Dean of Christ Church, attacked the lay eldership in 
 a sermon which started from Solomon's vineyard at Baalhamon. 
 All this produced no effect on the Scottish divines ; they were 
 themselves highly skilled in these methods of exposition, and 
 Mr. Andrew could have dug up the divine right of presbytery at 
 Baalhamon or any other biblical site. On Michaelmas Day there 
 was service in the chapel royal, and Melville wrote another of 
 his epigrams on the furniture of the communion-table. 
 
 In Scotland the trial of Forbes and his friends came to its 
 prearranged conclusion ; in England the ministers stayed on, 
 enduring the discomforts of a London winter, but nothing 
 came of the King's ingenious plan. An unhappy attempt was 
 made to quarter the ministers individually on high dignitaries 
 of the Church of England, from whose conversation they might 
 learn wisdom. At a meeting with the English Council, James 
 and his faithful Bancroft being the chief persons present, 
 Mr. Andrew delivered a vehement oration ; carried away by 
 his own eloquence he seized the Archbishop by his lawn sleeves 
 (' Eomish rags ', as he called them) and told his Grace that, 
 if he was the author of the book attributed to him, he was 
 a ' capital enemy of the reformed Churches '. After this 
 display, Melville was sent to live with Dr. Overall, the Dean 
 of St. Paul's, but it was not to be expected that this kind of 
 hospitality, unwillingly offered and as unwillingly accepted, 
 would produce any good result. In March the King attempted 
 to revive this characteristic scheme for promoting unity. 
 James Melville and Scott went to Lambeth to complain to
 
 206 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Bancroft ; they were courteously received, and the Arch- 
 bishop admitted that he shared their dislike of the King's plan. 
 Scott wished to begin an argument, on which the hospitable 
 prelate suggested a cup of sack, and held the napkin while 
 his visitors drank. After this the Scots divines were not urged 
 to go to bishops' houses. 
 
 Before the end of April the King could not but see that his 
 experiment had failed ; he began to think that Mr. Andrew, 
 with his epigrams and his fiery speeches, ought not to be at 
 large. The Presbyterian leader, with his nephew and other 
 friends, was living at the village of Bow, when a messenger 
 arrived from Robert Cecil, now Earl of Salisbury. Mr. Andrew 
 mounted and rode off to Whitehall, while Mr. James, with 
 Scott and Wallace, followed by the river. For the last time 
 Melville spoke his mind to the Council ; the King, who was 
 concealed in some place at hand, heard every word that was 
 said. Mr. Andrew was sent to the Tower, and at first his 
 imprisonment was strict ; after a time some concessions were 
 made, and friends were allowed to visit him. It is interesting 
 to read that Isaac Casaubon was one of those who took advan- 
 tage of- the opportunity. This distinguished foreign scholar 
 had been brought up in Genevan principles ; his own studies 
 had led him to the conclusion that episcopacy was the form of 
 Church government having the best scriptural warrant. As 
 a Protestant and an episcopalian he found a congenial home 
 in the Church of England ; he sympathized warmly with the 
 King's efforts to bring Scotland into line. Of the other 
 ministers some returned to their homes, but James Melville 
 was sent to Newcastle ; he was free to preach, but was never 
 allowed to re-enter Scotland. 
 
 At the Scots Parliament of 1606, the King was declared 
 supreme over all persons and in all causes. This declaration 
 was regarded as a flat contradiction of Melvinian theory, but 
 it may be presented as a simple statement of facts. To say 
 that the King is over all persons is only to say that churchmen 
 as well as laymen must obey the law. And in all causes, that 
 is to say in all disputed matters, the King is de facto supreme. 
 Disputes, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are not always settled
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 207 
 
 by peaceful deliberation : they must, if necessary, be referred 
 to an authority which can enforce its judgment : the King 
 has force at his command, and the Church has not. At this 
 Parliament the bishops rode in their proper place in the pro- 
 cession ; an Act was passed, restoring them to their lands and 
 privileges. This apparently adequate provision for the prelacy 
 was in fact illusory ; the lands of the old Church were in lay 
 hands ; the unlucky bishops had to fight for a bare sustenance 
 with great landowners and highland chiefs, while the Presby- 
 terians denounced them for sitting in silks and satins and 
 imitating the ' belly-god bishops ' of England. Gledstanes, 
 though an archbishop, died in debt, and Spottiswood who 
 succeeded him in the primacy was never a rich man. A con- 
 vention, held for the purpose, started another of the King's 
 experiments ; ' constant moderators ' of the Presbyteries were 
 appointed ; the scheme was completed by enabling the bishops 
 to sit as constant moderators of the provincial synods. They 
 also visited in a general way, assuming to act as commissioners 
 of the Assembly. Mr. David Calderwood, minister of Crailing 
 in Teviotdale, was visited by the Bishop of Orkney, but did not 
 submit to authority. Mr. David was busy collecting materials 
 for vast controversial works, which in our day are more often 
 praised than read ; at a later time he established a strong 
 claim on our gratitude by collecting and arranging the 
 documents of the Melvinian Kirk. 
 
 In 1608 there was an Assembly at Linlithgow ; Dunbar 
 came to manage it, and brought with him two Anglican chap- 
 lains, one of whom, Dr. George Abbot, preached before the 
 Assembly, dwelling emphatically on the substantial unity of 
 the two kingdoms in .religion. Abbot was indeed a man with 
 whom Scots divines might have found points of agreement : 
 a rigid Calvinist, and a strong opponent of Popery. During 
 his stay in Scotland Dr. George attended the last moments of 
 a notary named Sprot, who was executed at Edinburgh. The 
 dying man made confessions, true or false, which confirmed the 
 King's account of the Gowrie conspiracy, and Abbot spent 
 some time in preparing this valuable material for the press. 
 James did not forget the service thus rendered.
 
 208 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In 1610 the Council set up Courts of High Commission, on 
 the English model, for St. Andrews and Glasgow ; the two 
 courts were afterwards thrown into one. There was an 
 Assembly at Glasgow, and again Dunbar, a quiet, able man, 
 represented the King. A sum of 5,000 pounds (Scots) was 
 distributed among the ministers ; among Presbyterians this 
 was known as the bribed Assembly. The bishops were still 
 under the Assembly in spiritual matters, as they had been since 
 the convention of Leith, but the King meditated a change in 
 their status. In October Spottiswood and two of his colleagues 
 were in London, and were consecrated bishops. To avoid 
 reopening old questions, neither Canterbury nor York took 
 part in this important ceremony. Andrewes thought the 
 Scots prelates should first be ordained priests, but Bancroft 
 thought this was not necessary. This decision was almost the 
 latest act of Bancroft's primacy ; he died on All Souls' Day, 
 and there was much anxiety as to the choice of his successor. 
 Many hoped for Andrewes, and some for Overall, but the 
 King's choice fell on Abbot. James probably thought that by 
 turning his Scots prelates into real bishops he raised them 
 above the Assembly. When the real Assembly was revived, 
 it took "its stand on the Convention of Leith. We may note 
 in passing that Andrew Melville, after four years of imprison- 
 ment, was released from the Tower. The Protestant Academy 
 at Sedan had offered him a chair, and his declining years were 
 spent in teaching. He was probably warned not to take part 
 in Scottish controversies. 
 
 Adherents of the old Church were still fairly numerous in 
 Scotland, but they had to work out of sight, to evade the 
 penal laws. They had some little help in money from Rome, 
 where Cardinal Barberini was protector of Scots Catholics ; 
 a succession of devoted missionaries Jesuits, monks, or 
 friars moved ceaselessly about. The Kirk had as yet done 
 
 / / 
 
 very little for the Gaelic-speaking population, and it is not 
 surprising to learn that in distant glens or islands the people 
 came by hundreds to hear the Word of Life in the form to 
 which their fathers had been accustomed. Many names are 
 mentioned in Catholic books ; we may select those of William
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 209 
 
 Forbes and his brother John, who were kept in the old Church 
 by the influence of their mother, a Gordon. Both became 
 Capuchins (reformed Franciscans) and both were known ' in 
 religion ' as Father Archangel. There was a ^third Father 
 Archangel, George Leslie, born a Protestant, and converted 
 in his student days at Paris. St. Vincent de Paul allowed 
 some of his Lazarist missionaries to go to Scotland. As for 
 the lay Catholics, those who were nobles either went into exile 
 or, if they stayed at home, submitted to a life of expedients, 
 signing the Confession when required, and hearing Mass when 
 they could. Papists in humble station were boycotted, so that 
 they could neither buy nor sell. In the south-west of Scotland 
 there was a remarkable Catholic reaction, led by Gilbert 
 Brown, the aged head of New Abbey. When their abbot was 
 arrested, the country people rose in his defence ; he was 
 brought to Edinburgh for trial, but the King smuggled him out 
 of the country, and he spent the brief remainder of his days 
 in exile. 
 
 James professed to be keen for the execution of the law, 
 but he disliked the death penalty ; as he said to Huntly, he 
 did not wish to see bloody heads round his bed. In one case 
 he insisted on the extreme sentence, evidently because his 
 own title to the crown was, as he imagined, in danger. A Jesuit 
 named John Ogilvie was arrested in Glasgow, brought through 
 to Edinburgh, and subjected to the dreadful torture which 
 consists in depriving the victim of sleep ; under this regimen 
 he ' remitted much of his obstinacy '. In his formal inter- 
 rogation he held his ground boldly. He declined the King's 
 jurisdiction, in religious matters, and pointed out that the 
 * best ministers ' of the Kirk had done the same. He held that 
 the Pope could depose a ruling sovereign, but could not say 
 what would happen if Paul V were to depose King James. 
 The jury found him guilty ; he was taken back to Glasgow, 
 and hanged. Next to the King, Spottiswood must bear the 
 blame of these proceedings. 
 
 In 1616 there was an Assembly at Aberdeen, Spottiswood 
 taking the chair without election. A confession, drawn up by 
 John Hall and John Adamson (nephew of the unlucky Patrick
 
 210 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Adamson), was presented and approved. This document was 
 strictly. Calvinist, but the angry expressions about Rome which 
 had appeared in previous Confessions were left out, and for 
 this reason it did not satisfy the Presbyterian mind. It was 
 ordained that a uniform order of liturgy or divine service be 
 set down to be read in all kirks ; Patrick Galloway and three 
 others were appointed to revise the prayers in Knox's book, 
 which were printed in the psalm-book. It was also resolved 
 that a book of canons (laws of the Church) should be compiled, 
 and a large commission was to meet in December, to receive 
 and revise these important drafts. So far as we know, this 
 larger body never met. It was plain from the outset that the 
 Melvinian party would obstruct the work in hand. They 
 feared that the union of the crowns might be followed by 
 measures which would make Scotland a province of England ; 
 and they still spoke of ' purity ' when they meant unlikeness 
 to Rome. Tacitus remarks that it is natural to hate a man 
 when you have done him an injury, and the Protestants had 
 done so many injuries to their Popish neighbours that they 
 lived in constant fear of a reaction. 
 
 After fourteen years of comparative wealth and comfort in 
 England, the King revisited his native land. In the middle of 
 May he crossed the Tweed with a vast array of followers. 
 Andrewes was among the bishops who rode with James that 
 day, and somewhere in the procession there was a small figure 
 in clerical garb Dr. Laud, the new Dean of Gloucester. There 
 is some reason to think that James had noted Laud as a rather 
 dangerous man, likely to press novelties too far. A Parliament 
 was held during the King's stay, and he was allowed to have 
 his own way, except in one point. James wished to have an 
 Act, empowering him to give orders as to the external govern- 
 ment of the Church, with the advice of the archbishops and 
 bishops, and a ' competent number ' of the ministry. This 
 proposal was stopped by the Lords of the Articles ; the King 
 acquiesced ; all that he meant to do for the Church of Scotland 
 could be done, as he thought, by exercising his prerogative. 
 The royal visit was not a long one, but James was present at 
 a great variety of functions ; he even sat with his Court of
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 211 
 
 High Commission and helped them to dispose of the persistent 
 Calderwood. The conversation between King and culprit is 
 amusing to read, but the poor minister was deprived of his 
 living and sent to prison. During this visit the Communion 
 was celebrated in the Chapel Koyal as in Anglican churches ; 
 the King's habitual caution led him to cancel an order he had 
 given for wooden images of apostles and prophets ; but the 
 communion-table was placed at the end of the chapel, and on 
 the tapestry behind it the Crucifixion was represented. 
 
 What the King wished to do for the Church of Scotland 
 was to secure the adoption of five articles, with a view of 
 further assimilating the practice of the Kirk to that of the 
 Church of England. The five were : (1) Kneeling at the 
 Communion : as to this we have seen that the Presbyterian 
 argument was an inference from a mistaken view of the example 
 set by our Lord and His apostles., (2) Private Communion 
 for the sick : this has never been Presbyterian practice, but 
 is not now regarded as wrong in principle.- (3) Private baptism : 
 this in time became a common practice among members of the 
 Presbyterian Church. (4) Confirmation : this valuable ordi- 
 nance had been rejected chiefly because the children to be 
 confirmed were presented to the bishop. (5) The observance 
 of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whit- 
 Sunday : the common objection to this was, that these holy days 
 had ' no institution ' : no text of Scripture commands us to 
 observe them. James himself had parroted this argument 
 when he was trying to capture the goodwill of the Kirk. 
 
 The scheme was skilfully drawn, and the next step was to 
 have it accepted by the Church. In 1618 an Assembly was 
 summoned to meet at Perth, and ministers were warned that, 
 if they did not comply with the King, their stipends, which 
 had recently been improved, might again be curtailed. When 
 the Assembly met, noblemen and officials attended in con- 
 siderable number"; they took the seats at the table, and the 
 ministers had to stand behind. The Articles were put to the 
 vote together, and carried by 86 to 41. Scott, the same Scott 
 who had failed to draw Bancroft into argument, now opposed 
 the whole scheme ; he was powerfully assisted by a younger 
 
 P2
 
 212 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 minister, Alexander Henderson of Leuchars. This very able 
 man had been a student at St. Andrews, and had taught philo- 
 sophy there ; he had been known as a defender of episcopacy, 
 insomuch that, when he was settled at Leuchars, the Presby- 
 terians barred the church door against him, and he had to 
 enter by a window. By what path we do not exactly know, 
 he had found his way into the Presbyterian camp, and from 
 the date of the Perth Assembly we may regard him as a leader 
 of his party. The arguments used in debate were repeated as 
 usual in pamphlets, and even in books. Calderwood had been 
 compelled to retire to Holland, where he occupied himself in 
 writing a ponderous Latin treatise on the altar of Damascus 
 (see 2 Kings xvi). The King was always sensitive to criticism, 
 and Cathkin, an Edinburgh bookseller, was taken all the way 
 to Greenwich, where he was cross-examined by the King and 
 Dr. Williams. He was even thrown into prison, until Spottis- 
 wood intervened to obtain his release. 
 
 In February 1619 the Earl of Argyle was declared a traitor, 
 for defection from the true religion. He had married, for his 
 second wife, an English lady, who persuaded him not only to 
 join the old Church, but to offer his services to the King of 
 Spain. After a time he was again declared King James's free 
 liege, but his estates remained in the hands of his son Lord 
 Lome, a cool but consistent Protestant. At Easter the 
 Edinburgh churches were agitated by opponents of the Articles 
 who refused to kneel at the Communion. In the following 
 year there was trouble about private meetings for prayer and 
 exposition ; the trouble was connected with the presence of 
 an English preacher. In England the Puritans were inclining 
 to the principle of Brownism, the sufficiency of the local con- 
 gregation. Brownism meant diversity, and the Presbyterian 
 ideal was national uniformity, to be imposed by a powerful 
 Kirk on the King and all his subjects. 
 
 At Easier 1621 the disputes about the Communion were 
 renewed ; many protested that they would receive the sacra- 
 ment ' sitting or not at all '. The Estates met in June, and 
 the meeting was continued as usual ; on the 4th August, 
 ' Black Saturday ', a vote was taken, and the Articles were
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 213 
 
 ratified by 78 to 51. There was a fire in the Cowgate in the 
 morning, and a thunderstorm in the afternoon : these were 
 regarded as tokens of Divine displeasure. Some ministers were 
 deprived or banished to Orkney for opposing the Articles ; 
 one conspicuous victim was Boyd of Trochrig, Principal of 
 Glasgow University ; the King probably got rid of him to 
 make a place for John Cameron, whose teaching was in harmony 
 with his majesty's political writings. Cameron made many 
 enemies, and held the place only a short time. Eobert Blair 
 could not get on with the Principal, and went to Ireland. 
 Eobert Baillie, a promising young man, learned from Cameron 
 that all resistance to the supreme magistrate is unlawful, but 
 he modified this opinion, as the sequel proves. 
 
 The bishops of James's creation were, on the whole, a respect- 
 able body ; some of them established strong claims on the 
 gratitude of the Church. Perhaps the best of them was 
 Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen. During the nineteen 
 years of his episcopate his wise and kindly influence was felt 
 in every corner of his diocese. Under his guidance the Univer- 
 sity of Elphinstone's foundation and the college which the 
 Earl Marischal had placed beside it became a nursery of 
 learned divines and faithful pastors. He was the elder brother 
 of that John Forbes who was condemned and banished for his 
 fidelity to the Melvinian ideal. 
 
 Having carried his most important proposals, James was 
 content to let the Church of Scotland have a rest. The draft 
 of a revised prayer-book was sent to the King for revision, and 
 James made a good many improvements, but he did not press 
 the matter. He had promised not to go beyond the Articles, 
 and his critics had often warned him that his grandmother, 
 Mary of Guise, ' never saw good day after she broke her word 
 to the preachers.' 
 
 On Sunday, the 27th March 1625, the long reign of King 
 James came to an end, and his son Charles reigned in his 
 stead. The new King was in some ways unlike his father : 
 grave in his manner, irreproachable in his conduct, a devout 
 man, seriously interested in the establishment of religion. 
 He was on the point of marrying Henrietta Maria, a French
 
 214 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 princess, and, of course, a Catholic : this union would raise the 
 difficult question, what liberty of worship should be enjoyed by 
 the Queen, her servants, and the Catholics generally ? For the 
 King, no dignified answer was possible ; he had already acted, 
 more than once, in total disregard of his promises. He was not 
 more deceitful than some of his opponents, but he had no gift 
 of leadership, either military or political ; he neither knew, nor 
 cared to know, what was going on in other men's minds. 
 
 Like many students of the Reformation, Charles was pain- 
 fully impressed by the enormous waste of property which that 
 movement had involved. The wealth of the old Church had 
 been used up in enriching a limited number of families, while 
 the churches, the schools, and the public services were all 
 suffering for want of funds. The King set to work in Scotland 
 without delay ; in the October after his accession he launched 
 an Act of Revocation, by which Church property in the hands 
 of laymen was re-annexed to his crown. Teinds (tithes) were 
 included in the terms of the Act, and this attracted some 
 popular support, for the lay tithe-owners were notoriously 
 oppressive in exacting their dues. After three years of inquiry, 
 litigation, and compromise, the King was able to carry through 
 a substantial measure of reform. Lay owners retained the 
 lands in their possession on payment of certain rents to the 
 crown. Tithes were commuted at nine years' purchase, or 
 they were turned into a rent-charge, burdened with the 
 minister's stipend and an annuity to the crown ; the King 
 afterwards parted with his annuity for a lump sum of moderate 
 amount. In this complicated transaction Charles had the 
 benefit of good legal advice. Oliphant, the Lord Advocate, 
 was an old man, past his work, but Thomas Hope, who had 
 defended John Forbes and the other ministers in 1606, was 
 now associated with Oliphant as colleague and successor ; he 
 remained King's advocate for twenty years, though he lived 
 to see two of his sons on the bench. Hope was a pious Presby- 
 terian ; during the troubles now impending he was the con- 
 fidential adviser of both parties. 
 
 The arrangement about land and tithes is described by 
 Gardiner as the one successful action of Charles's reign ; it was
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 215 
 
 also the beginning of the King's difficulties. Some obvious 
 dangers had been avoided, but the territorial interest was 
 seriously alarmed. Among the names which now become 
 prominent in Scottish politics are those of the Earl of Rothes, 
 head of the great family of Leslie ; Balmerino, who took his 
 lands and his title from the old Cistercian abbey in Fife ; and 
 Loudon, a young Campbell who had married an heiress. When 
 Charles's troubles came to a head these three names were still 
 prominent, and still closely connected. 
 
 In matters relating to his two national Churches, Charles 
 relied mainly on the advice of Laud ; in 1628 this active prelate 
 became Bishop of London. Laud had learned from Hooker to 
 value the Catholic usages which the Church of England had 
 retained at the Reformation. His opponents described him as 
 an Arminian and a Papist ; but these epithets were used in 
 a somewhat misleading way. There was, indeed, a reaction 
 against Calvinism in England, and this movement was stimu- 
 lated rather than checked by the Synod of Dort in 1619 ; the 
 practical English mind was not attracted by the rigid precision 
 of the Dutch divines, or by their cruel persecution of the 
 Arminians. As for Laud and his party, they wished to keep 
 out of current controversies, to get back beyond Arminius and 
 Calvin, to take their theology from the early fathers of the 
 Church. They held the doctrine of predestination, as denned 
 by Augustine. They regarded the Church of Rome as a true 
 Church, but so defaced by error and superstition that reunion 
 wa not possible, until Rome should be other than she was. It 
 is unfair to say that Laud made religion to consist in the 
 externals of worship. Ceremonies, as he said, are ' things weak 
 enough in themselves ', but, as he believed, they add strength 
 to religion ; they help in the formation of devout habits. Apart 
 from his ornate services, Laud's life was plain and simple ; his 
 great revenues were strictly husbanded, and generously used. 
 With all his virtues, this bishop was a martinet, fond of making 
 rules, and of enforcing them by penalties which startle and 
 disgust the modern student of his proceedings. He was a little 
 man, with a fussy manner, and this partly accounts for the 
 impression he made on his contemporaries.
 
 216 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Charles was in full sympathy with his father's desire to make 
 the Church of Scotland conform to the Anglican model. He 
 considered the draft of a revised Book of Common Order, but 
 apparently found it inadequate and laid it aside. John Maxwell, 
 an Edinburgh minister, an earnest, scholarly man, went several 
 times to London, to discuss the preparation of a new service- 
 book ; in 1680 James Wedderburn, a Scotsman in Anglican 
 orders, became Bishop of Dunblane and gave what help he 
 could. These younger men were pressing beyond what Spottis- 
 wood and the older bishops would have thought prudent. 'On 
 the Presbyterian side we notice that some of the rising men 
 were, as we should say now, revivalists ; Dickson and Blair 
 believed that an outpouring of the Spirit might be indicated by 
 physical manifestations. In 1680 the Communion at Kirk 
 o' Shotts was attended by a great display of emotion. 
 
 A contemporary incident in London may serve to illustrate 
 Laud's pastoral methods. Alexander Leighton, M.D., a Scots- 
 man from the Montrose district, was practising his profession in 
 London, and had married an English wife. After much inquiry 
 he was convinced that bishops were to blame for everything 
 that was wrong in the Church or the community at large. He 
 had written a book, the sub-title of which is Sion's Plea against 
 Die Prelacy. For this crime he was brought into the Star 
 Chamber, and sentenced to an impossibly heavy fine, and 
 degradation from his orders (he had been ordained at Utrecht), 
 to be followed by branding, mutilation, and imprisonment for 
 life. When the savage sentence was read, Laud pulled off his 
 cap, and thanked God Who had given him the victory over his 
 enemies. So at least Alexander says, and there is nothing 
 improbable in his statement. 
 
 With some want of tact, Charles had suggested that he might 
 receive the Scottish crown in England, but in June 1688 he 
 came to receive it at Holyrood. The observances in the Chapel 
 Royal were as in the time of King James. John Guthrie, 
 Bishop of Moray, gave offence by wearing a rochet when he 
 preached before the King. The rochet is a surplice with close- 
 fitting sleeves ; if it be lawful to wear a white gown, this 
 garment is not open to serious objection. At the coronation,
 
 217 
 
 some of the bishops wore copes of cloth of gold ; these may or 
 may not have been in keeping with the simplicity of Christian 
 worship, but they had no sacerdotal importance : a cope is 
 only a kind of cloak. Laud preached on ceremonies ; we have 
 seen that his doctrine on that subject was not far wrong, but his 
 arguments did not reassure the minds of those who were accus- 
 tomed to the Book of Common Order. 
 
 The Estates met, and the King, who presided in person, 
 pressed forward an Act in which a general recognition of his 
 prerogative was combined with a particular provision as to the 
 apparel of churchmen. For the first time in Scottish history 
 there was something like opposition in open Parliament, but 
 the opposition was not formidable, and the Act was passed. An 
 incidental result of the King's visit was that Edinburgh became 
 a city, with a bishop of her own. The first occupant of the see 
 was William Forbes, a good man, whose sermons rivalled those 
 of his Puritan contemporaries in solidity. He was suspected of 
 semi-popery, because he held that the Pope is not Antichrist, 
 and that a Papist may be saved. He died soon after his prefer- 
 ment, and was succeeded by David Lindsay, the aged Bishop 
 of Brechin, who had preached at the coronation. On his return 
 to London the King heard that Dr. Abbot was dead, and Laud 
 became Archbishop of Canterbury. The new primate was 
 approached, probably by some ecclesiastic of the Queen's 
 household, with the offer of a cardinal's hat. But the Catholics, 
 like the Puritans, never understood Laud's position ; he was 
 always, in his own sense of the term, a Protestant, and the offer 
 was declined. 
 
 Some of the criticisms on the King's action were embodied in 
 a supplication, drawn up by William Haig. Charles spoke 
 strongly about the supplication, and Haig slipped over to 
 Holland ; the King's wrath fell on Balmerino, who possessed 
 a copy of the document, and had shown it to one or two persons. 
 There was a long trial, and a great display of legal learning ; 
 by eight to seven the jury found Balmerino guilty of treason, 
 but Traquair, a politic nobleman, went to the King and obtained 
 a pardon. This ill-judged prosecution was followed by blunders 
 of a more serious nature. The King now began to prepare
 
 218 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 a series of rules and forms, under which the Kirk of Scotland 
 was to be rapidly and steadily assimilated to the English model. 
 His bishops were bound to obey him, and the ministers were 
 bound to obey them ; that was all he sought to know. First 
 came the Book of Canons, in preparing which the King consulted 
 those bishops whom he knew to be in sympathy with himself ; 
 the final revision was by Laud, and the book does credit to 
 his abilities; it is an excellent summary of Church practice. 
 Though it contains nothing that is Popish, some provisions were 
 considered oppressive. Extempore prayer was not to be 
 allowed in public worship. Diocesan synods of the clergy were 
 to be held regularly ; the National Assembly and the lay 
 eldership were ignored. As to the proposed Book of Ordination 
 we can speak only in general terms ; it soon disappeared from 
 view, and no copy has survived. On the whole we may say that 
 Laud had done his part well, but the King took no account of 
 the fact that many of his Scottish subjects were fervidly 
 attached to usages of a different kind. 
 
 In January 1635, on the death of Lord Kinnoul, Spottiswood 
 became Chancellor ; as opportunity offered, other bishops were 
 added to the Council and promoted to high office. These 
 appointments excited the jealousy of the nobles, without doing 
 any good to the Church. In May the King formally sanctioned 
 the Canons, but in December they were still being printed in 
 Scotland ; Laud wrote to suggest an additional rule, forbidding 
 Scottish Christians to fast on the Lord's day. Concurrently 
 with this important body of rules, the King had been preparing 
 a service-book, to take the place of the Book of Common Order. 
 Both Charles and Laud would have introduced the Elizabethan 
 book without alteration, but Maxwell had suggested that the 
 book should contain something distinctively Scottish ; on this 
 hint some alterations were made, such as the substitution of 
 4 presbyter ' for the shorter form ' priest '. Finally the King 
 gave Laud a general warrant to ' fit a liturgy ' for the Scots. 
 The draft passed through a number of hands ; it is not always 
 possible to say when and by whom particular changes were 
 made. The King's own contribution was not large ; in appoint- 
 ing saints' days he desired that Scottish saints should be
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 219 
 
 remembered, especially those of the blood royal ; and in the 
 table of lessons he inserted six chapters of 'the Book of Wisdom 
 and six of Ecclesiasticus. As for Laud, he was freely charged 
 with making 'popish' alterations, but the charge was pressed 
 against him by Puritans who never understood either the man 
 or his opinions. One illustration may be given. At the Eliza- 
 bethan revision of the Communion Service the Church of 
 England retained the words in which the communicant is 
 invited to receive the bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's 
 death. These words had been used to support the assertion 
 that the Church of England accepted the ' Zwinglian ' view of 
 the sacrament. Anxious to exclude this inference, Laud 
 suggested or sanctioned the omission of the words from the 
 Scottish book. The reformed Church of Scotland had begun 
 her career by doing practically the same thing. In the Confes- 
 sion of 1560 we ' utterly damn ' the vanity of those who say that 
 the sacrament is a commemoration and nothing more. Laud 
 was pleased with the book, and had it put into Latin, that he 
 might take the opinion of foreign divines upon it. 
 
 At the beginning of the service-book was printed the King's 
 order, commanding his Scottish subjects to receive it ; this is 
 dated in December 1636, and it was intended to begin the new 
 order at Easter following. Maxwell, now Bishop of Eoss, 
 Whitford of Brechin and Wedderburn of Dunblane complied ; 
 all three found themselves in trouble, and, before the year was 
 out, the trouble was serious. At Edinburgh there was some 
 delay ; Spottiswood and the older bishops thought the King's 
 policy rash ; the members of the Privy Council were slow to act, 
 but in June they published a monitory order, to which the 
 penalty of horning (the Scottish form of outlawry) was attached. 
 It is not known how far the disturbances which ensued were 
 planned and organized beforehand, but the men in authority 
 must have known fairly well what was going to happen. On 
 Sunday, 23rd July, the momentous experiment was tried at 
 Edinburgh. In the great kirk of St. Giles, Patrick Henderson 
 read the service from the Book of Common Order. At ten o'clock 
 the handsome folio in which the new book was enshrined was 
 brought to the desk ; Dean Hannay stood up to read ; a small
 
 220 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 clergyman, not named, stood by to take part in the service. 
 At once a riot arose, in which women took the most active part ; 
 stools were thrown, and the small clergyman was buffeted. 
 Spottiswood appealed to the magistrates, and the church was 
 cleared, but the mob broke the windows from outside, and the 
 women waited for David Lindsay, the Bishop of Edinburgh ; 
 the old man regained his house with difficulty. A sympathetic 
 bystander observed that the women were moved, not by malice 
 against the Bishop, but by zeal for the glory of God. In the 
 afternoon soldiers were placed on guard, and the new service 
 was not interrupted. 
 
 The Council, and the bishops, dealt with the rioters in an 
 ineffective way ; Laud and the King enjoined firmness, but in 
 the city there was a deadlock ; on one Sunday there was sermon, 
 but no service at all. On the 10th August the bishops ordered 
 their clergy to buy the book ; on the 23rd Henderson and two 
 other Fife ministers asked the Council to suspend the order ; 
 the lay councillors would have suspended it wholly, but at the 
 request of the bishops they held that the ministers were bound 
 to buy the book, not to use it. Encouraged by this success, 
 a multitude of persons came to Edinburgh ; they were known 
 collectively as the supplicants. Petitions were put in hand ; 
 on the 20th September a great petition was presented to the 
 Council ; the King's answer was expected on the 17th October ; 
 when it came it was uncompromising. The supplicants were to 
 leave Edinburgh ; the courts of law were removed to Linliih- 
 gow. George Gillespie, a young minister living in the house of 
 the Earl of Cassillis, had written a book, printed abroad, against 
 the English ' popish ' ceremonies ; all copies of this work were 
 to be collected and burned as good an advertisement as the 
 author could desire. On the 18th the opponents of the English 
 book considered their position, and Henderson indicated that 
 the time had come to attack the bishops. There was some 
 hesitation, but Kothes spoke facetiously and Loudon forcibly 
 on the same side. The nobles, as a class, detested the bishops ; 
 the prelates were occupying lands and offices which ought to 
 go to men of good family. As to the form of their remonstrance, 
 Henderson was conciliatory ; the form drawn up by himself
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 221 
 
 and Balmerino was laid aside ; the form adopted was the work 
 of Loudon and Dickson. The ' westerns ' were the men to be 
 kept in line, if possible ; Loudon, for example, and his friend 
 Baillie had complied with episcopacy and had submitted to the 
 Perth articles ; they had now discovered that they could not 
 put up with what they called Arminianism and Popery. 
 
 On this decisive day numbers of women were gathered to see 
 what would be done. Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway, was seen 
 making his way to the Tolbooth ; he was reported to be wearing 
 a ' crucifix ' (probably a pectoral cross) under his coat, and some 
 of the women wished to make sure ; the bishop was hustled and 
 put in fear of his life. Traquair, who had been Sydserf's pupil, 
 went to the rescue of his instructor ; he also was rolled on the 
 pavement, and his white wand of office was taken away. The 
 women went to visit the Provost, Sir John Hay, a moderate 
 Provost, who might be in need of their advice. Hay was not to 
 be found, and the mob was dispersed by the discharge of a gun, 
 loaded only with powder. Many supplicants remained in town ; 
 the Council could not or would not get rid of them, until, in the 
 middle of November, some timid councillors made an epoch in 
 our history by suggesting that the supplicants might safely go 
 away, if they elected commissioners to protect their interests 
 at head-quarters. The suggestion was accepted ; commissioners 
 were chosen, and from the general body were formed four com- 
 mittees, composed of nobles, gentlemen, ministers, and bur- 
 gesses. Each committee had its own table in the Parliament 
 Chamber, and collectively they were known as the Tables. 
 Baillie, at the request of his patron, Lord Montgomery, took 
 a seat at the ministers' table, but he found that he and his 
 brethren had nothing to do ; all business of importance went 
 to a Table of last resort, the permanent members of which were 
 Rothes, Loudon, Balmerino, and the ' two archbishops ', 
 Henderson and Dickson. The formation of this provisional 
 cabinet is a remarkable event. In earlier days our country had 
 seen much faction-fighting ; now, for the first time, we see 
 a party, in the modern sense of the word, a party organized for 
 the purpose of taking over the government of the country. 
 They combined this purpose with a sincere respect for the King's
 
 222 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 authority ; Henderson was a steady royalist, and there was no 
 republican element in the party. 
 
 When we read of the ' westerns ', able, well-meaning men, 
 who were unwilling to turn against episcopacy, we ask naturally, 
 whether any compromise was still possible. Archbishop Ussher, 
 the most learned man of that age, thought it possible to combine 
 episcopacy with presbytery ; there was nothing in the nature 
 of things ecclesiastical to exclude such an idea. If the bishop 
 had been required to act with the advice of the ministry, as 
 Jerome says the primitive bishop did ; if bishops had been 
 disqualified for civil offices ; if a place had been found for 
 laymen in the management of Church affairs the advantages 
 of the English and Scottish systems might have been combined, 
 and the two Churches might have been one communion. The 
 opportunity was missed, and it has not yet returned. 
 
 Traquair, who did not like the service-book, went south to 
 the King, but could obtain no concession ; he was sent north 
 again with a stringent proclamation. On the 14th February 
 he arrived at Dalkeith ; next morning Rothes went out to give 
 a confident report of the success of the Tables. The service- 
 book would have to go ; as for the bishops, his friends would 
 set upon them and hang them ; this he spoke, as we may hope, 
 facetiously. Rothes was a man of ambition, and a man of 
 pleasure, but he now used the current religious phrases fluently. 
 To avoid a public protestation, Traquair thought of reading the 
 proclamation at Stirling ; he and Roxburgh started at 2 a.m. 
 on Monday the 19th ; the opposition had timely warning of 
 this move ; two opposition Lords set off at once for Stirling ; 
 the proclamation was read in presence of a crowd of protesters, 
 a crowd which before nightfall numbered 2,000 men. On 
 Thursday there were similar demonstrations at Edinburgh ; 
 on the following day began a series of meetings and interviews : 
 Henderson was proposing that the party should frame a national 
 Covenant ; the work was entrusted to him and to Archibald 
 Johnston of Warriston, a young advocate who was taking a very 
 active part in the controversy. Warriston's private diary, 
 which has been published, presents us with an interesting type 
 of Calvinistic piety. In early life he had accepted the offer of
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 223 
 
 salvation, as he found it in the Bible ; he lived in familiar 
 relations with the Almighty, ever hopeful, ' aye blithe of bad 
 news ' because he thought the moment had come for his God to 
 intervene. Like many of his contemporaries, he would pray, in 
 solitude or in his family, for hours at a time ; when he rose from 
 his knees, he was a ruthless partisan, and not always a safe 
 adviser. 
 
 By Wednesday, the 28th, the Covenant had been copied on 
 a sheet of parchment ; at 2 p.m. the nobles and gentlemen met 
 in the church of Greyfriars ; two hours were spent in conference 
 and devotion ; at 4 the Earl of Sutherland was the first to 
 sign ; he was a young man, but the holder of a very ancient 
 earldom. Others of the great men followed ; Montrose put his 
 handsome signature in a conspicuous place. When all or many 
 in the church had added their names, the parchment was placed 
 on a flat tombstone outside, until the sheet was filled up. Such, 
 at least, is the tradition handed down through the ages. The 
 display of emotion was so impressive that it reminded John 
 Livingstone of the Communion at Kirk o' Shotts. Copies were 
 at once carried into all parts of the country ; the demonstration 
 at Greyfriars was repeated in many places, and some roughness 
 was used in dealing with dissentients. Ministers who would 
 not sign were buffeted by women, and compelled to stay at home. 
 The Covenant was used as a test, and no trader or professional 
 man could -prudently omit to take it. The bishops and some 
 of their supporters found it safer to live out of Scotland ; once 
 more the road to England had irresistible attractions for the 
 minority. 
 
 When we turn to the Covenant itself, we are tempted to call it 
 a disappointing document. It begins with the negative Con- 
 fession of 1580, and goes on to enumerate, with tedious accuracy, 
 the penal Acts passed for the suppression of Popery and popish 
 practices. In the concluding passage the covenanters bind 
 themselves to maintain the true religion, and to show themselves 
 worthy of the same in their life and conversation. This part of 
 the document is carefully general in its terms ; the various 
 sections of the party had to be kept together. Charles thought 
 the Covenant illegal, but he was not in a position to act. He
 
 224 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 was nearing the end of his disastrous attempt to govern England 
 without a Parliament ; he was short of money, and such troops 
 as he had were leavened with the prevailing discontent. He 
 had to negotiate, and for this purpose he chose his intimate 
 friend James, Marquis of Hamilton, great-grandson of the 
 Duke who had taken supper with Mr. Knox. On the 6th June 
 the King's commissioner met the Council at Dalkeith. He 
 brought with him as his chaplain Dr. Balcanquhal, Dean of 
 Rochester, a son of the Presbyterian preacher who had held his 
 own with King James. On the 9th June Hamilton entered 
 Edinburgh, passing through vast crowds of spectators ; on 
 a rising ground stood some hundreds of ministers in their black 
 cloaks ; some speeches were to be made, but the commissioner 
 politely intimated that such honours were ' above his place ', 
 and rode on to Holyrood. It was feared that Balcanquhal 
 would use the service-book in the Chapel Royal ; but the Dean's 
 early training may have enabled him to avoid giving offence. 
 On Sunday Henderson preached before the King's representa- 
 tive, and was admitted to a private conference : he stated the 
 demands of his party, and did his best to excuse the utterances 
 of extreme men, such as Cant and Rutherford. Cant was 
 minister of Pitsligo, where his temper was likely to be chafed by 
 contact with the Aberdeen divines. Samuel Rutherford had 
 begun his ministry at Anwoth in Galloway ; for writing a book 
 about Arminians ho had been sent to the Court of High Commis- 
 sion and relegated to Aberdeen, where he lived in his own 
 lodging, went on with his studies, and wrote many of those 
 letters which are still read in some Scottish households. The 
 admirers of his letters do not usually go on to his polemical 
 writings, and it is better so, for this ' fair little man ' preached 
 the loveliness of Christ for thirty years without ever perceiving 
 the unloveliness of intolerance. 
 
 Hamilton saw at once that the covenanters were strongly 
 organized ; he was a great landowner, and as such hostile to the 
 bishops. After publishing a somewhat evasive proclamation 
 he went back to the King for instructions. The covenanters 
 took advantage of his absence to send a strong deputation to 
 the north. Aberdeen was the strongest school of divinity in
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 225 
 
 Scotland, and the able men who held office there were hostile 
 to the Covenant. The expedition led by Henderson, Dickson, 
 and Cant was attended with some success ; the written 
 questions which the Aberdeen doctors had ready for them 
 were answered in due scholastic form ; a covenanting party 
 was formed in the enemy's country, and the Presbyterian 
 leaders were back in Edinburgh to receive Hamilton, who came 
 again from London with the promise of an Assembly. There 
 was much debate as to the exact terms of the concession now 
 to be made. One of the points on which the King wished to 
 insist was, that laymen were not to vote in choosing ministers 
 to sit in the Assembly ; many of the ministers welcomed the 
 proposal, but Henderson held them back ; for the nobles were 
 determined to have a ' free ' Assembly, that is to say, a meeting 
 of their own partisans who would make short work of the 
 bishops : to this end Kothes and his friends were about to take all 
 elections very firmly in hand. Once more the much-enduring 
 Hamilton had to go south for instructions ; he must have been 
 familiar with every mile of the long road to London, a road not 
 yet macadamized. In his absence the Tables sent instructions 
 to local presbyteries, showing how covenanters were to be 
 returned, and how non-covenanters were to be defeated or 
 prevented from seeking election. When Hamilton came north, 
 in the middle of September, he announced an Assembly, to 
 meet at Glasgow in November, and a Parliament at Edinburgh 
 in the following summer. The electoral machine was imme- 
 diately set in motion ; except in the Universities it was hardly 
 possible for any non-covenanter to obtain election. Hamilton 
 asked the Aberdeen doctors to send some of their number to his 
 aid ; they answered truly enough, that if an angel from heaven 
 came to speak for episcopacy he would not be heard. 
 
 The next piece of work was, to prepare the charges on which 
 the bishops were to be condemned. There were, first, the 
 ecclesiastical charges holding an unlawful office, introducing 
 innovations, and the like ; in a covenanting Assembly these 
 would be easy to prove. There were also charges of misconduct, 
 ranging from incest to Sunday travelling ; these were thrown in 
 to make the bishops odious and to produce the impression that 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the covenanters were rising in revolt against an intolerable 
 state of things. If such a device were attempted in our day, 
 well-informed persons would come forward to challenge it ; but 
 in the seventeenth century nobody was well informed, in the 
 modern sense of the word. The charges were laid before some 
 presbyteries ; all were included in one comprehensive bill of 
 accusation, which was sent to the presbytery of Edinburgh, and 
 referred to the Assembly. The unproved charges were read 
 from many pulpits. The bishops were scattered, and could not 
 make arrangements for their defence ; some of them prepared 
 reasons for declining the jurisdiction of the Assembly, and this 
 paper was revised by the King. 
 
 At an earlier stage of this narrative it was pointed out that 
 the Presbyterian Kirk had no impartial judicature; of this 
 weakness a striking illustration was now to be given. The 
 Assembly which met in Glasgow on the 21st November was not 
 in any sense a court of justice ; it was a somewhat disorderly 
 party-meeting. On the floor of the great church of St. Mungo 
 was placed a table for the nobles ; on either side were tiers of 
 benches, occupied by the 140 ministers and 95 elders who 
 constituted the Assembly : of the elders, 17 were nobles, 
 9 knights, 25 lairds, and 42 burgesses ; two professors repre- 
 sented the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The lay 
 members had been invited to bring with them ' assessors ' 
 interested in the great question to be decided ; Baillie. though 
 quite a good party man, was much annoyed by the disorder 
 which prevailed. The early sittings were occupied with ques- 
 tions of procedure. Henderson became Moderator, and Warris- 
 ton, who was in his element, became clerk. When the cases of 
 the bishops were reached, Dr. Robert Hamilton, the minister 
 of Glassford, appeared as procurator for the accused, and gave 
 in the declinature, signed by six of their number. The objec- 
 tions taken to the Assembly were not frivolous ; in a court 
 of law they would have been patiently considered, but the 
 Assembly meant to override them. On the morning of the 
 28th the Marquis told his colleagues of the Council that he meant 
 to dissolve the house. For a time the debate went on, until at 
 last Henderson proposed to put the question, whether the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 227 
 
 members of Assembly found themselves competent to try the 
 bishops. Hamilton explained his own position in an able 
 speech ; before he could leave, Lome, now Earl of Argyle, asked 
 leave to speak. He was not a member of the house, but he could 
 put some thousands of claymores into the field, and men 
 listened to hear what he would say. Argyle went with his 
 order ; he approved the proceedings of the Assembly, and 
 accepted the Covenanters as honest countrymen. When the 
 royal commissioner had withdrawn, the darkness of a winter 
 afternoon was gathering among the pillars of the great church ; 
 candles were brought in, and the Assembly continued to sit. 
 
 Like other revolutionary bodies, this Assembly had to make 
 its own law as it went along. Not content with setting aside 
 the service-book and other innovations, Henderson and his 
 colleagues ' annulled ' the acts of the six Assemblies held from 
 1606 to 1618. The bishops had accepted an office recognized by 
 Parliament and by the Church courts of their own time. To 
 deprive them of this defence, they were now to be tried under 
 the law of the Melvinian Kirk. As to the mode of trial, there 
 was a committee on charges ; Baillie's admiring narrative makes 
 it plain that no time was wasted in sifting evidence or arguing 
 doubtful points ; any man or woman who had a tale against 
 a bishop was eagerly heard, and instantly believed. In less 
 than a fortnight all the cases were disposed of ; the two arch- 
 bishops and the twelve bishops were all found guilty. On the 
 13th December, when the Assembly met, the proceedings were 
 opened, as usual, with prayer and reading of Scripture. The 
 reader chose John xvi, but when he came to the words in which 
 our Lord warns His apostles that they will be put out of the 
 synagogues, he was stopped, and a safer passage was chosen. 
 Henderson preached from Psalm ex, ' The Lord said unto my 
 Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy 
 footstool.' After sermon he read the sentences. All the bishops 
 were deposed ; the six who signed the declinature were also 
 excommunicated : we must recollect that this, the extreme 
 sentence of the Church, carried with it civil consequences of 
 a serious, not to say atrocious, nature. Aberdeen and Dunblane 
 were joined in the same condemnation as the six ; the rest had 
 
 Q2
 
 228 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 one more chance of submitting to the Kirk ; they were to be 
 excommunicated if they refused 
 
 Most of the bishops had already retired to England ; it may be 
 convenient to note here the effects of the Assembly's action, so 
 far as they were concerned. Spottiswood soon died, and was 
 buried in Westminster Abbey. Patrick Lindsay of Glasgow, 
 a man of high character for whom Baillie had expressed the 
 liveliest affection, spent a few troubled years in exile ; he died 
 at York, and was buried at the expense of the governor. Wed- 
 derburn died at Canterbury, and was buried in the cathedral 
 there. Sydserf was an exile until the Restoration brought him 
 back to his own country. Whitford obtained a living in 
 England ; Maxwell was sent to Ireland, where he rose to be 
 Archbishop of Tuam, but his life was one of many sorrows. 
 Baillie found some of these refugees living in London ' in great 
 misery and poverty '. John Guthrie of Moray (he who wore 
 the rochet) would neither go nor conform ; he found his way into 
 prison at Edinburgh ; in time he was released, but forbidden 
 to revisit his diocese. Four bishops conformed to presbytery. 
 Our Caroline bishops were, on the whole, a highly creditable 
 body of men ; no serious importance attaches to the farrago 
 of charges dished up at Glasgow. 
 
 In some Presbyterian books the work of this Assembly is 
 described as the restoration of the Church to her former 
 purity. It is also, more correctly, described as the second 
 Reformation. As in 1560, the movement was carried through 
 by an alliance between nobles and preachers. This alliance did 
 nothing to enrich the religious life of Scotland, but it helped 
 to determine the course of political events. Englishmen and 
 Scotsmen had grown out of the paternal form of government, 
 of which the Basilicon Doron is the manual ; the time had 
 come for changes which would compel the King to govern with 
 the advice of his Parliament. In both kingdoms the leaders 
 of opposition relied on the prevailing dislike and fear of Popery. 
 In Scotland the leaders knew that the King would not accept 
 the results of the Glasgow Assembly, but, ever since the signing 
 of the Covenant they had been preparing for civil war. They 
 were at no loss for military advice ; the long agony of the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 229 
 
 Thirty Years' War was now in its final stage ; the great 
 Gustavus was dead, and many of the Scotsmen who had served 
 under him were attracted by the prospect of employment in 
 their own country. Of these the most notable was Alexander 
 Leslie, field-marshal, who had already invested his pay and 
 prize-money in a comfortable bit of land, not far from his 
 chief, the Earl of Eothes ; a marriage between the General's son 
 and one of the Earl's daughters followed on this acquisition. 
 Alexander, though not a supremely great commander, had 
 learned the business of war in a good school ; he was in sym- 
 pathy with the Covenant, and "had signed it even before he 
 took his final leave of Queen Christina. 
 
 Charles meant to suppress his rebels in the spring, but before 
 he could move the Covenanters took aggressive action. Aber- 
 deen was a stronghold of episcopalian opinions, and it was not 
 certain what part Huntly would take in the struggle. Leslie 
 and Montrose were sent to the north with a considerable force. 
 By a breach of faith, Montrose took Huntly and his eldest son, 
 and carried them prisoners to Edinburgh ; he then returned 
 to the north, and by the end of May he was master of Aberdeen. 
 In the not very important engagements of this campaign, 
 the first blood of the civil war was drawn. Meantime the King 
 had left London : at the beginning of June his army lay on 
 the English side of the Tweed, while Leslie faced him with 
 a well-appointed Covenanting army, strongly encamped on 
 Dunse Law. For the moment war was averted ; negotiators 
 met in Lord Arundel's tent to settle terms of peace ; Eothes 
 and Henderson were among those who stated the Presbyterian 
 demand ; the King himself came in quietly and took a seat 
 at the table. The Scots commissioners were pleased with the 
 King's dignity and moderation ; Charles disliked Eothes, 
 a talkative man, and formed a good opinion of Henderson. 
 Yet Eothes was looking forward to high office under the King ; 
 Henderson stood for uniformity in religion, the principle which 
 ultimately brought Charles to the block, and made Scotland 
 a province of republican England. For the moment the 
 Covenanters were satisfied ; Leslie's army was disbanded, but 
 he knew where to find his men if they should be needed again.
 
 230 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Parliament met, as the King had promised, in May ; this 
 was the first meeting in the hall still known as the Parliament 
 House ; the spiritual Estate was not represented. After 
 adjourning many times, the Parliament stood over till the 
 following year. The Assembly met at Edinburgh in August ; 
 Traquair, who represented the King, wished Henderson to 
 preside, but the disputation about ' constant moderators ' 
 was fresh in Presbyterian memory ; Dickson was placed in 
 the chair, and Henderson sat beside him. The decrees of 
 Glasgow were confirmed as a matter of course ; Henderson 
 spoke bitterly against the bishops, and assumed that the 
 moral charges against them had been proved. The Assembly 
 also ratified the action of certain committees, which had been 
 busy in getting rid of ministers who opposed the Covenant. 
 Since the Glasgow Assembly more ministers had been deprived 
 than during the whole of Spottiswood's long primacy. These 
 changes were received with solemn joy by the surviving 
 exponents of Melvinian principles ; one aged minister spoke 
 with tears of the time when the Kirk ' had a beautiful face ' ; 
 the austere beauty of the Melvinian system was now restored. 
 Just at this moment we have to notice the first outbreak of 
 a controversy which divided and ultimately thwarted the 
 Puritan movement. This Assembly was divided, in the moment 
 of victory, by the question of private meetings. Religious 
 people were beginning to find edification in small gatherings, 
 at which the Word was expounded by gifted persons, not always 
 trained ministers. Dickson and Blair would have let the work 
 alone, but Henderson spoke earnestly against it. Meetings, 
 he thought, had been useful in the time of the bishops ; now 
 that the Church was blessed with ' peace and purity ' thoy were 
 superfluous. For the moment he carried his point, but the 
 struggle between Presbyterianism and Brownism was not over. 
 
 When Charles marched north to meet the Covenanters he 
 had published a declaration containing the substance of liis 
 charges against them. This had now been expanded into 
 a volume, known as the Large Declaration, compiled by the 
 worthy Balcanquhal. From the historian's point of view, the 
 book is of some importance ; it is a careful statement of the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 231 
 
 King's case, founded throughout on documents which are 
 quoted in full. The Assembly now discussed it, with the resent- 
 ment which good party men display when anything effective 
 is written by an opponent. Mr. Cant suggested that the author 
 should be hanged, but Dickson reminded him that this punish- 
 ment did not belong to kirkmen. 
 
 When the Assembly was over, and the Parliament postponed, 
 Loudon and Dunfermline went to London, but the King refused 
 to see them. Loudon went south again in the spring ; the King 
 was just about to meet his English Parliament ; he hoped 
 that the conduct of the Scots would induce his more obedient 
 subjects to grant him a supply of money, and there was one 
 item of evidence on which he confidently relied. In February 
 1639 the covenanting nobles had addressed a letter to the King 
 of France, asking him to mediate between their own King 
 and themselves. Cardinal Eichelieu, bent on restricting the 
 power of the Catholic house of Austria, had allied himself 
 with Swedish and German Protestants ; he might be willing 
 to revive the old alliance with Scotland. The King had a copy 
 of the letter which had been signed by all the leaders of the 
 movement ; when Loudon appeared in London he was sent to 
 the Tower ; the King threatened to behead him without trial 
 as a manifest traitor. Loudon remained in prison till near the 
 end of June. Before his release the English Parliament had 
 met and been dissolved. The Estates of Scotland met in June ; 
 Kobert Balfour, Lord Burleigh, an adherent of Argyll's, was 
 placed in the chair ; the old problem of the three Estates was 
 roughly solved by allowing the lesser barons (lairds) to rank as 
 a branch of the Legislature; there was no spiritual Estate. 
 The main object of this Parliament was to legalize the measures 
 which Kothes and his friends had taken to impose the Covenant 
 as a test upon all and sundry. These measures had to be 
 completed by a special session of the Assembly at Aberdeen 
 in July, for the Covenanting divines were eager to destroy 
 the best-equipped school of theology in Scotland. One by one 
 the men who had held their own in argument with Henderson 
 and Cant were stringently dealt with. A special interest 
 attaches to the case of Dr. John Forbes, a son of the good bishop
 
 232 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 who had gone to his rest not long before. Dr. John was found 
 free of Popery and Arrninianism, but he declined the Covenant ; 
 he was ordered to confer with Eutherford at St. Andrews ; 
 if he failed to give satisfaction, he was to be deposed. The 
 same day, being alone in the field, he fell on his face and thanked 
 God for having delivered his soul in peace. At this Assembly 
 the question of private meetings was pressed by Henry Guthrie, 
 minister of Stirling : he was an enemy of meetings, and thought 
 the magistrates should deal with them. This divine- was 
 ultimately a bishop ; he probably perceived that the question 
 was one which divided the Presbyterian party. 
 
 While Loudon was in the Tower he had done his best to 
 persuade the King of his loyalty ; he had also given some help 
 in maintaining a close correspondence between the Puritan 
 malcontents in England and the Covenanters in Scotland. 
 Leslie's army was the most efficient body of troops in the three 
 kingdoms, and the English parliamentary leaders wished to 
 have the use of it. Scotland was too poor to engage in military 
 adventures, but some Englishmen were willing to pay for the 
 assistance they required. Financial details are beyond the 
 scope of this narrative, but it is necessary to note that for some 
 years the English Commons were unwillingly voting large sums 
 for the Scots. Royalists very soon began to point out that the 
 King's taxation, if irregular, had been comparatively moderate ; 
 now they were to be heavily taxed to persuade a ' foreign 
 contemned nation ' to invade their country. As for the 
 religious question, there was no certainty that English and 
 Scots would be able to pull the same way. Pym was still 
 anxiously explaining that he and his friends did not wish to 
 dispense with episcopacy, or to lay aside the Book of Common 
 Prayer. Still, there were many Englishmen who did propose 
 to make an end of bishops and ceremonies, and the presence 
 of a Scots army might enable them to have their way. The 
 Puritan stream was running strong in England, but, as we can 
 see now, it was running in two 'channels. Cartwright of 
 Cambridge and his successors had imbued the minds of many 
 thoughtful men with notions which had their source in Geneva. 
 They wished to remain in the national Church, and to reform
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY . 233 
 
 it on Presbyterian lines. Brown and his successors had taught 
 that the Church of England was of the world, and lay in the 
 Wicked One ; their aim was to gather true believers into small 
 communities, independent of all established authority. Neither 
 section had any reasoned belief in liberty of conscience, as we 
 now understand it. Here and there an independent minister 
 had argued for a liberty which even Papists and Jews might 
 share ; but the average independent thought the State should 
 encourage gospel preaching, and suppress those forms of error 
 which were obviously dangerous. 
 
 Before the end of August Leslie invaded England ; Montrose 
 was the first man to cross the Tweed. A small success at 
 Newburn raised the hopes of the Scots army, and gave Zachary 
 Boyd an excuse for one of his absurd poems. Leslie was soon 
 quartered at Newcastle, and Henderson preached before the 
 general there ; some critics said he ' boasted too much ', and 
 indeed, if Henderson could have foreseen what the next ten 
 years were to bring, he would not have been in an exultant 
 mood. 
 
 The King was hard pressed on all sides ; he had promised 
 to meet his English Parliament in November ; he had to make 
 terms with the Scots. Commissioners met at Eipon in October, 
 and the King, very unwisely, transferred the negotiations to 
 London. Early in November the Scots commissioners took 
 the road ; with them went a party of ministers, carefully 
 chosen to deal with any form of error which they might encounter 
 in the south. Henderson, of course, was one ; Blair was an 
 expert on the divine right of presbytery ; George Gillespie 
 would cry down ceremonies. Baillie, now a professor of divinity, 
 was good at answering Arminians, and his outspoken letters 
 enable us to follow the experiences of the Scots visitors from 
 day to day. On their arrival the commissioners went into 
 rather narrow lodgings, but the city of London, more Pres- 
 byterian than any other part of England, insisted on receiving 
 them as guests ; they were lodged in the house attached to 
 St. Antholin's (Anthony's) Church. Sunday or week-day, the 
 citizens and their wives came in crowds to hear the preachers 
 from the north ; gentlemen from court looked in, and took home
 
 234 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 accounts of the ' barbarous discourses ' they had heard, but 
 the presence of the Scots divines did something to strengthen 
 the Presbyterian eause. Both London and Westminster were 
 in a state of unrest ; the Parliament which came to be known 
 as the Long Parliament was sitting, and the Commons were 
 determined to execute ' justice ' on the King's chief advisers. 
 Strafford was impeached and sent, to the Tower; the Scots 
 commissioners helped to draw up the charges against him, and 
 Baillie indicates that they believed all the stories, true or false, 
 which were being passed round among his enemies. ' When 
 we get his head ', the good professor wrote, ' all things will run 
 smooth.' Strafford's mistakes, however serious we think them, 
 were political, not criminal, in their nature ; in modern practice 
 they would be punished by exclusion from office, or possibly 
 by a new term of power. But the impeachment had to take its 
 course, and when it failed, the Commons, like the Glasgow 
 Assembly, brought the legislative to the aid of the judicial 
 power. A bill of attainder was introduced and passed ; the 
 King accepted it, and sealed his own fate by doing so. Laud's 
 case could wait, but in December he too had been impeached, 
 and in March he too was sent to the Tower. On the 12th May 
 the Archbishop stood at his prison window to see Strafford 
 pass on his way to the scaffold. Laud lifted his hands to bless 
 his friend, and fell back fainting into the arms of his attendants. 
 While these events were in progress the negotiations begun 
 at Ripon were dragging slowly along. To the seven demands 
 presented by the Scots an eighth had been added ; uniformity 
 in religion was now put forward as a necessary feature of any 
 permanent settlement between the King and his subject <. 
 In February Mr. Cromwell, the member for Cambridge town, 
 wrote for a copy of the Reasons advanced by the Scots com- 
 missioners in support of this article. His inquiry was apparently 
 not dictated by suspicion ; at this stage men like Cromwell 
 and Milton were disposed to think that a Presbyterian settle- 
 ment might be the best solution of the ecclesiastical problem : 
 they did not remain very long in that opinion. In June the 
 Scots divines returned to their own country ; Baillie went liy 
 sea, was nearly wrecked at Holy Island, and resolved that, if
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 285 
 
 he could go by land, he would not sail that coast again. In 
 July the General Assembly sat at St. Andrews ; the meeting 
 was transferred to Edinburgh, where the Estates were also 
 in session. Henderson carried a proposal for a revision of the 
 standards : if they had a new Confession, suitable Catechisms, 
 and a Directory of public worship, their system would be before 
 the world in a form which England might adopt. (Ireland, of 
 course, would have to adopt what the other kingdoms thought 
 right.) 
 
 Charles in his turn was going to make a bid for the use of 
 the Scots army. He arrived on Saturday, the 14th August ; 
 next day he heard sermon in the morning, and played golf in 
 the afternoon, but, on a word from Henderson, he promised 
 to observe the Lord's day more strictly. When he met the 
 Estates he made no attempt to control their action ; he 
 accepted the Covenant and the Glasgow Assembly, and every- 
 thing that was proposed to him. This complete surrender was 
 the occasion for a lavish distribution of honours among the 
 Covenanting leaders. Argyle became a Marquis ; Loudon was 
 Lord Chancellor, with a pension ; Alexander Leslie was Earl 
 of Leven ; Warriston a knight and a lord of session. Henderson 
 had the rents of the Chapel Eoyal, ' a morsel for a bishop '. 
 Eothes did not live to share the triumph of his friends ; a sharp 
 attack of fever carried him off, just when he had planned to 
 marry a great lady and to secure a high appointment at court. 
 Soon after the middle of November the King went south again, 
 but before he left he had to inform the Estates of a terrible 
 event : the Irish tribes had ' leapen out ' in rebellion ; many 
 Papists had joined the movement ; post after post brought 
 news of the atrocities committed by the rebels. These horrors 
 were the natural result of a long period of misgovernment. 
 For centuries the kings of England and Scotland had prided 
 themselves on including the Celtic inhabitants of these islands 
 within the ambit of their power, but no persevering effort had 
 been made to bring them within the pale of civilized law. In 
 the civil war both sides made what use they could of the tribes 
 and clans. Argyle's highlanders, with their plaids and sheaves 
 of arrows, had excited the wonder of English visitors to the
 
 236 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 cainp at Dunse Law, and when Leslie invaded England, Argyle 
 himself was raiding about among the enemies of the Covenant ; 
 it was then that he burned the bonny house of Airlie. On the 
 other side the King had embodied an Irish army to make him 
 master of Great Britain. 
 
 During the early months of the next year Scots troops in 
 English pay were engaged in restoring order among the Irish. 
 War between the King and his English Parliament was not 
 far off. When the Assembly met at St. Andrews in July, 
 Dunfermline represented the King ; Robert Douglas, a notable 
 preacher, was placed in the chair. A letter was read from the 
 two houses of the English Parliament ; they indicated that they 
 were proceeding steadily towards uniformity on the Scots 
 model. The Assembly's answer was entrusted to Lord Maitland, 
 eldest son of the Earl of Lauderdale, a scholarly young man of 
 whom Baillie expected great things. This Assembly discussed 
 the thorny question of patronage, and Argyle gave his opinion 
 on that point. He thought the demands of the ministers were 
 a disproportionate burden on land, and offered to give up his 
 rights of patronage, if the ministers would seek no further 
 augmentation of their stipends. As at previous Assemblies, 
 Henderson was the guide and spokesman of his party, but his 
 leadership was not unquestioned ; his caution had offended 
 the extreme men, and his influence over the King was regarded 
 with jealousy. The impending troubles brought him forward 
 again as the most important man in Scotland. 
 
 In the last week of August, war between the King and his 
 English Parliament was formally declared ; both belligerents 
 had an eye on the Scottish army ; the Covenanters were inclined 
 to side with the Lords and Commons, but only if the English 
 Puritans would accept uniformity on the Melvinian model. 
 Henderson, an ardent royalist, was still working for peace. 
 He suggested that Henrietta Maria, who was abroad, should 
 return by way of Scotland and mediate between Charles and 
 his subjects; she was even to be guaranteed in the exercise 
 of her religion ; but nothing came of this proposal. At the 
 end of February the Council and the Commission of Assembly 
 sent Henderson to treat with the King at Oxford ; a Parliament
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 237 
 
 in Scotland might, it was thought, do something to restore the 
 peace, but the King would not listen. During his stay at 
 Oxford, Henderson was invited to take part in an academic 
 disputation, but he declined. Clarendon charges him with 
 discourtesy, but the Scots divine probably felt that he could 
 not expect a friendly hearing in Laud's University. In May 
 he was back in Scotland, and was almost immediately entrusted 
 with another difficult mission. The Covenanters were bent on 
 securing the services of Montrose ; they were ready to pay his 
 debts, and to offer him a high command. He agreed to meet 
 Henderson at Stirling; the Earl and the minister walked up 
 and down beside the Forth, and discussed the matter at some 
 length, but in the end they parted, and each went his own way. 
 Montrose was a Presbyterian ; he did not repent having acted 
 against the bishops, but he saw that Henderson and his friends 
 were joining hands with an English faction who would ultimately 
 bring the King to ruin if they could. 
 
 The Parliamentary leaders in England were not of one mind 
 in religion, but they were losing steadily in their struggle with 
 the King, and they were prepared % to pay the price for a Scots 
 army. In June the Lords and Commons passed an ordinance 
 convening an Assembly at Westminster, to consist of 30 laymen 
 and 120 divines. In drawing up the list of names they took 
 care to give the Presbyterians an irresistible voting majority. 
 A few episcopalians were included, but these were mostly got 
 rid of before the Assembly had been long in session. Inde- 
 pendency not yet an organized denomination, but a form of 
 opinion to which many adhered was fairly well represented. 
 Of the brethren who held that opinion there were five who sat 
 and acted together ; their speeches made it evident that 
 uniformity was not to be regarded as a foregone conclusion. 
 Ussher was asked to be a member, but the Archbishop replied 
 by preaching against the Assembly. His plan of a modified 
 episcopacy had been definitely refused by the contending 
 divines of all parties, but the articles he had drawn up for the 
 Church of Ireland were the basis of the Confession adopted 
 at Westminster. When Ussher was asked to join the West- 
 minster Assembly, Selden said it was like asking Inigo Jones
 
 238 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 to join the company of mouse-trap makers but Selden was 
 not an admirer of the Scots discipline. 
 
 Our own Assembly met at Edinburgh in the beginning of 
 August ; the aged Hope was high commissioner, the only 
 commoner who has occupied that position. Henderson was 
 the only possible Moderator, for an English deputation had 
 come to settle the terms of the armed alliance between the 
 Scottish Estates, now sitting concurrently with the Assembly, 
 and the two houses in England. Of the members of the southern 
 Parliament, the best known was Sir Henry Vane, a young man 
 who had served the State with distinction, in America and at 
 home. Both in politics and in religion he was a bold speculative 
 reasoner ; he was certainly not a Presbyterian. With the 
 Parliament-men came two ministers Stephen Marshall, an 
 eloquent Presbyterian, and Philip Nye, one of the five dissenting 
 brethren in the Westminster Asseirfbly. Vane's object was to 
 obtain the services of Leven and his army by entering into 
 a civil league ; he soon found that such a league would not be 
 accepted unless in conjunction with a religious covenant. 
 Henderson drafted the Solemn League and Covenant, a better 
 example of his style than the polemical covenant of 1638. 
 There was some fencing with the English as to the terms of 
 the document ; in its final form it contains all that the Scots 
 could fairly claim. The Scottish ecclesiastical system was to 
 be preserved ; the English system was to b*e reformed ' accord- 
 ing to the Word of God and the example of the best reformed 
 Churches '. These preliminaries being achieved, the Church 
 of Scotland hoped that the three kingdoms would live in peace 
 and amity, each under her own reformed Church, while condign 
 punishment should be meted out to incendiaries, malignants, 
 and all enemies of the ' true religion '. Under the term ' malig- 
 nants ' Papists and episcopalians were now included : these 
 evil men were supposed to be the ecclesia malignantium of 
 Psalm xxvi. 5. The Kirk of Scotland received the new covenant 
 with tears of joy, and proceeded to choose those of her members 
 who were to represent her at Westminster : to name only 
 those who were able to go, the ministers chosen were Henderson, 
 Baillie, Rutherford, and George Gillespie ; the lay elders,
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 239 
 
 Lord Maitland and Lord Warriston. At the convention of 
 the Estates, the civil league with the English Parliament was 
 duly accepted, and the pecuniary part of the bargain was made 
 definite and binding. Leven had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that he would not have to start until his military chest was 
 filled with English money. 
 
 Henderson, Gillespie, and Maitland went south at once, 
 and on the 25th September the Solemn League and Covenant 
 was signed by many members of Parliament in the Church of 
 St. Margaret at Westminster. Mr. White prayed for an hour ; 
 Nye delivered a long exhortation, and pointed out that ' the 
 example of the best reformed Churches' might, or might not, 
 turn out to be the example of Scotland ; Henderson made an 
 impressive speech. There was less emotion than there had been 
 at the Scottish Assembly ; many English Puritans were not 
 at all enamoured of uniformity on the Scots model. The 
 Westminster divines were sitting daily, and they had begun 
 to revise the Thirty-nine Articles, but in October they were 
 ordered to lay this task aside, and to begin preparing the forms 
 of Church government and worship which were to take the 
 place of the episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer. 
 In November Baillie and Rutherford joined their colleagues ; 
 the Lords and Commons gave permission for the Scottish 
 delegates to attend at Westminster. They were courteously 
 received by Dr. Twiss, who sat in the chair as prolocutor, but 
 in joining the Assembly they took care to preserve their status 
 as delegates of a self-governing Church. They sat on committees, 
 and they had their full share of authority and consideration. 
 Baillie perceived at once that the English divines, though 
 individually worthy of respect, were, as he expressed it, ' no 
 proper Assembly ' ; they were, in fact, a committee of experts, 
 chosen by the Lords and Commons, empowered to discuss the 
 matters referred to them ' and no other ', and sharply checked 
 when they went beyond their commission. The increasing 
 activity of sects and sectaries out of doors was another sign 
 of the times. In January things began to look a little brighter. 
 Leven crossed the Tweed, on the ice ; the advance of his army 
 would, as Baillie hoped, ' much assist our arguments '.
 
 240 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In the long debates about Church government, the five 
 dissenting brethren found their opportunity. They were not 
 divided from their colleagues in point of doctrine, nor were 
 they, as we should say, voluntaries ; they assumed that the 
 State should support gospel preaching and suppress error. 
 But they were not attracted by the Presbyterian system as 
 developed in Scotland. Some of them doubted the lawfulness 
 of the lay eldership : was it right to take the power of admission 
 and excommunication out of the hands of the congregation, 
 and to give it over to office-bearers ? In February Nye spoke 
 powerfully, on two consecutive days, against the Scottish 
 notion that a powerful Assembly is the crown and safeguard 
 of an evangelical Church. A Church court of national impor- 
 tance would, as he contended, ' set State against State ' ; it 
 would involve the Church in the competition for political power. 
 Henderson was so perturbed by this attack that he compared 
 the speaker to Sanballat and Tobiah. 
 
 While the divines went on arguing, the armies of the Parlia- 
 ment were converging on York, the King's head-quarters in 
 the North. Leven and Fairfax joined forces there ; Manchester 
 was coming up from the eastern counties, and in the body of 
 troops he commanded the questions debated at Westminster 
 were being argued by men under arms ; Manchester himself, 
 'a sweet meek man', could not keep the peace between his 
 two cliief officers, Lawrence Crawford, of the Jordanhill family, 
 a rigid Presbyterian, and Oliver Cromwell, now the hope 
 and stay of all such as wished to obtain toleration for the 
 Protestant sects. When Crawford dismissed an Anabaptist 
 colonel, Cromwell protested ; why, he asked, should an 
 Anabaptist be debarred from serving the public ? He did not 
 love the Scots, and said he would draw his sword against them 
 as readily as against any in the King's army. Even the 
 Westminster divines did not command his approval ; he 
 thought they were trying to persecute better men than them- 
 selves. 
 
 On the 2nd July a great battle was fought on Marston Moor, 
 and the King's forces were defeated. The chief commanders 
 of the victorious army had little of the glory ; old Leven
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 241 
 
 galloped all the way to Leeds before he found out that his own 
 side had won. Harrison was sent to London to explain that 
 Cromwell and his Independents had saved the day ; the Scots 
 divines were sceptical ; they thought David Leslie should have 
 credit for the victory. The army, soon to be remodelled by 
 Cromwell and his partisans, was becoming a school of extreme 
 opinions. Vane had visited the camp, to sound the military 
 leaders as to his political schemes, which now included the 
 deposition of the King. In London there were private confer- 
 ences, to discuss the expediency of impeaching Cromwell as 
 an incendiary : he was perhaps an incendiary, within the 
 meaning of the Solemn League. Henderson, quite consistently, 
 supported the proposal ; Baillie had his doubts : he thought 
 a rupture with the 1 Independents would be dangerous. After 
 deliberation the project was not carried out ; when it was 
 dropped the movement towards uniformity was practically 
 at an end. 
 
 In spite of these perplexities the Westminster Assembly 
 passed a laborious and partially successful year. The Directory 
 of Public Worship, drafted by Henderson, was finished and 
 accepted. To understand this document we must bear in 
 mind that most English Puritans were hostile to rules and set 
 forms ; they would not even be tied to any particular version 
 of the Psalms. So far as Scotland was concerned, the Directory 
 was only a stage in the process by which the Kirk was com- 
 mitted to the somewhat inadequate form of service with which 
 we are familiar. It is a form which leaves perhaps too much 
 to the discretion of the minister ; he chooses the psalms to be 
 sung and the passages to be read ; prays in his own words ; 
 and expounds any text or passage which he thinks appropriate. 
 One has to live under both systems to perceive how the Anglican 
 lectionary and Psalter enable the congregation to travel over 
 the great facts and doctrines of their creed in a regular order. 
 No Scots Presbyterian would be content with a system which 
 forbids extempore prayer ; on this point it would still be 
 difficult to arrive at agreement. 
 
 The Form of Church Government is another compromise. 
 The powers of assemblies, congregational, synodical, and
 
 242 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 national, were amply indicated ; but in agreeing to this part 
 of the form the English divines must have felt that they 
 were proposing a system which their own Parliament would 
 probably not sanction. 
 
 In the autumn of the year Montrose began his astonishing 
 series of victories. At every crisis of the civil war both sides 
 appealed with confidence to the God of battles ; thus, if we 
 listen to the Rev. Mr. Wishart, he will tell us how. after the 
 defeat on Marston Moor, Montrose made his way into Scotland, 
 guided by the angel of the Lord. Wandering and praying in 
 Methven woods, the royalist hero learned that Alaster Mac- 
 donald or Macdonell had arrived from Ireland with a small 
 force of Gaelic-speaking men ; under the hand of a man of 
 genius this little army became irresistible* On Sunday the 
 1st September, one Carmichael preached to the covenanting 
 army and promised them a certain victory ; the same afternoon 
 it was reported that a man might have walked on their dead 
 bodies from Tippermuir to the gates of Perth. For about 
 a year Montrose carried all before him ; the ' horrid butcheries ' 
 attributed to him were simply the heavy losses inflicted on 
 lowland armies by an enemy who neither gave nor expected 
 quarter. 
 
 Since the death of Strafford, Laud had lain prisoner in the 
 Tower, but when the Westminster Assembly began to sit the 
 charges against the Archbishop were revived ; he was brought 
 to trial in March, and the impeachment was pressed without any 
 regard to the ordinary rules of justice and decorum. In his 
 day of power Laud had often been oppressive and overbearing, 
 but we cannot refuse our sympathy to the obstinate old man, 
 kept standing at the bar through the long hours of every day, 
 and meeting with composure the resources of Puritan oppression 
 and chicane. In his case, as in Strafford's, tin impeachment 
 broke down ; the Commons brought in an ordinance of 
 attainder, and used the London mob to frighten the Lords 
 into agreement. The end came with the opening of the i>r\v 
 year ; on the 4th January the ordinance was passed, and on 
 the 10th the Archbishop was beheaded on Tower-hill. A 
 Puritan member of Parliament was on the scaffold, ready to
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 243 
 
 pose the dying man with questions as to his hope of salvation ; 
 Laud died, as he had lived, in the ' Protestant Church of 
 England '. 
 
 At the end of January Henderson went to Uxbridge, where 
 there was another fruitless endeavour to come to terms with 
 the King ; the ecclesiastical question being inevitably and 
 inextricably entangled with the political issue. It was assumed 
 on both sides that either episcopacy or presbytery must have 
 an explicit divine command to justify its claims. Lord Hertford, 
 a thoughtful, scholarly man, suggested that no system of 
 Church government was divini iuris ; this is an opinion to 
 which many Englishmen have inclined. The arguments of the 
 negotiators were of less immediate interest than the efforts of 
 Cromwell and his friends to remodel the army of the English 
 Parliament. On the 14th June the new-model army inflicted 
 a crushing defeat on the King at Naseby, and Cromwell, under 
 whatever title, became the first man in England. He was 
 not as yet committed to extreme courses, but the English 
 Presbyterians clung to the notion that their system was 
 dominant ; they ' abhorred and detested ' toleration of the 
 sects ; in this course of action they were supported by the 
 Scots divines, and especially by Eutherford, whose pen, during 
 these critical years, was constantly busy. He had been one of 
 those who deprecated severity in dealing with ' private meet- 
 ings ' ; if the sectaries had all been steady Calvinists he might 
 have let them alone ; but the English sects were numerous 
 and various ; every pious trooper carried a Bible in his boot, 
 and interpreted it for himself. Uniformity was still the 
 Presbyterian ideal, and Cromwell was driven back on his 
 military supporters, who waxed bold when they saw that they 
 were no longer dependent on their Scots mercenaries. 
 
 A month after Naseby the Westminster divines went 
 resolutely to work on the Confession of Faith. In a com- 
 pendious narrative it is not possible even to enumerate the 
 questions which had to be taken up and solemnly debated. 
 Suffice it to say that the divines prepared a summary, in 
 admirable language, of the doctrine of the reformed Churches ; 
 avoiding the pedantry of Dort, they presented that doctrine in 
 
 R2
 
 244 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 its classic form ; experts tell us that every statement in our 
 Confession can be traced either to Calvin or to Peter Martyr, 
 the able Florentine whom Cranmer brought to Oxford in the 
 first year of Edward VI. This great task occupied the West- 
 minister Assembly for about a year and a half. 
 
 In August Montrose won the last of an unbroken series of 
 victories at Kilsyth ; his aim was to occupy the lowlands for 
 the King, but his little army was melting away ; on the 
 5th September, when he lay encamped at Philiphaugh, his 
 position was one of great danger. David Leslie, detached from 
 the Scots army in England, attacked at daybreak, and the 
 royalists were scattered before him. Montrose himself escaped, 
 but failure and sorrow were his portion ; he could not raise 
 forces for the King ; he lost his wife and his brother-in-law, 
 Lord Napier. The Covenanters followed up their victory with 
 a series of massacres. Men who had been granted quarter were 
 put to death ; a large body of Irish were slaughtered in the 
 courtyard of Newark Castle in Yarrow ; the women and 
 children shared the fate of the men. David Leslie must bear 
 his own share of the infamy, but it is hardly fair to discriminate ; 
 these atrocities were the fruit of a principle held by politicians 
 and divines of all parties the principle that the civil authorities 
 should use the sword to remove enemies of the religion which 
 they accepted as true. Now that the King was almost out of 
 the field the Estates were in authority ; the Assembly had 
 stimulated them to action by demanding execution on malig- 
 nants ; Cant and Blair were preaching in the same sense. 
 After the general massacres the malignant leaders were dealt 
 with as individuals ; of these the best known was Sir Robert 
 Spottiswood, who suffered in January. 
 
 Charles at Oxford spent a doleful winter, turning to Papists, 
 Presbyterians, and Independents, and finding no help in any 
 of the factions. In the last week of April he rode out of Oxford, 
 and, after some undecided movements, made straight for the 
 Scots camp before Newark-upon-Trent. Leven held up his 
 hands in real or affected dismay when he heard the King was 
 in camp, but he posted a guard of honour in proper form. 
 When Newark surrendered the King was brought north to
 
 245 
 
 JNewcastle. Cant preached before him there, and caused some 
 flutter by addressing his majesty as ' Thou piece of clay '. 
 Cant was a fervid royalist, but he was the ambassador of a 
 higher kingdom than that of Charles, and spoke, as he con- 
 ceived, accordingly. The nobles in camp were eager to place 
 the Scots army at the King's disposal, but he must first accept 
 the Covenant ; in other words, he could have his royal power 
 again, if he would use it to further the movement for Presby- 
 terian uniformity. To gain time Charles professed his willing- 
 ness to hear argument ; he would like to discuss the matter 
 with Henderson. The Presbyterian leader left the long debate 
 on the Confession of Faith ; he was probably not sorry to 
 leave, for his health was breaking up, and a man of his ability 
 must have seen that uniformity was as far off as ever. Between 
 May and August the King and the divine were in close corre- 
 spondence. Presbyterian writers copy from one another the 
 statement that Henderson relied mainly on the Bible, the King 
 mainly on tradition and the Fathers, but this is not a fair descrip- 
 tion of the argument. Charles clearly declared his belief in 
 Scripture as the supreme standard of faith and practice ; when 
 the New Testament was not explicit (and nobody can say that 
 it is an explicit manual of Church government) he referred, 
 quite rightly, to the early history of the Church. In his first 
 paper Henderson quotes from a medley of ancient authors ; 
 this, of course, was expected of a learned man admitted to the 
 honour of arguing with his prince. Neither disputant succeeded 
 in convincing his opponent. Henderson went on to Edinburgh, 
 and died soon after his return ; the King was left to solve the 
 Church problem for himself. Lord Maitland, now Earl of 
 Lauderdale, and Lanark, Hamilton's younger brother, were 
 among those who pressed him to make terms with the Scots ; 
 the commissioners who came from the English Parliament 
 would possibly have saved Presbyterianism if the King had 
 given way. They brought with them Stephen Marshall, who 
 preached a sermon ' peaceable not personal ', as Charles grate- 
 fully remarked. Loudon warned the King that, if he did not put 
 down the sectaries, they would ' process and depose ' him, 
 and set up another government. One result of the negotiations
 
 246 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 at Newcastle was that Montrose had an order from the King 
 to disband and quit the field. In Scotland the cause was hope- 
 less, and at the end of August the victor of Kilsyth took ship 
 for the continent ; he went on board disguised as a servant. 
 
 By the end of the year the draft of the new Confession had 
 been settled and revised : the divines presented their Humble 
 Advice to the two houses of Parliament. The Commons asked 
 for the scripture-proofs, and the matter was delayed until 
 April by this demand. There was, as Baillie complained, 
 a ' retarding party ', of which Selden and others were active 
 members. Though a layman, Selden was probably the most 
 learned person who took part in the debates of the Westminster 
 Assembly. Baxter thought him an earnest Christian, but his 
 public life was a long campaign against ' divine right ' ; kings, 
 bishops, and presbyters, he thought, were fallible men, and must 
 be kept within the bounds of the common law. When the 
 divines asked for time to find their proof-texts, Selden compared 
 them to a man who boasts of his wealth, and cannot put down 
 sixpence on demand. There were Englishmen out of doors 
 who sympathized with the retarding party : Milton, for example, 
 was writing his angry verses on the ' forcers of conscience ' 
 who were trying to impose a system ' taught them by mere 
 A. S. and Rutherford ' A. S. was Adam Stewart, a Presby- 
 terian pamphleteer. Milton, for one, would have nothing 
 to do with a party represented by ' shallow Edwards and 
 Scotch What-d'ye-call '. Edwards was an English supporter 
 of the Westminster Assembly ; Masson identifies What-d'ye- 
 call with our worthy friend Baillie. At the opening of the new 
 year the Estates of Scotland agreed that the Scots army should 
 leave England, the King to be handed over to the custody of 
 persons empowered by the English Parliament to receive him. 
 Such was the inglorious sequel of the invasion which Baillie 
 and the rest had welcomed so eagerly. 
 
 Alaster Macdonald, who had shared the brief glory of 
 Montrose, still held out in the west ; in the spring of the year 
 Argyle and David Leslie undertook to deal with him. The 
 minister who accompanied the covenanting army was John 
 Nevay, a nephew of the faithful Cant. Alaster escaped to
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 247 
 
 Ireland, perhaps in the hope of bringing reinforcements ; his 
 men were penned into the stronghold of Dunavertie ; after 
 enduring many hardships, they surrendered ; Leslie seems to 
 have been unwilling to order another massacre, but Mr. Nevay, 
 instigated by Argyle, pressed the Old Testament texts which 
 had so often been cited before, and some 400 men were 
 slaughtered in cold blood. 
 
 When the Scottish Assembly met in August the Westminster 
 Confession was accepted ; explanations were appended to 
 chapters 30 (Church censures) and 31 (synods and councils). 
 The English Parliament rejected these chapters altogether, 
 Baillie and Gillespie reported on the labours of the Westminster 
 Assembly, and on the obstructive tactics of Erastians, Inde- 
 pendents, and other enemies of uniformity. There was some 
 sharp criticism; -Calderwood, in particular, was almost as 
 discontented as he had been under the bishops. On one point 
 there was general agreement ; it was more than ever necessary 
 to testify against liberty of conscience. In this connexion 
 reference was made to Dr. Jeremy Taylor's book on Liberty 
 of Prophesying. Dr. Jeremy was, of course, a ' malignant ' ; 
 his book, though admirably written, is not very conclusive 
 as a piece of reasoning. It proves mainly this, that good men 
 under oppression will always plead for liberty, until they come 
 into power. Mr. Nevay, whom we have seen at work in Kintyre, 
 was appointed to take part in the revision of our metrical 
 psalms : from the 121st Psalm to the end of the book. The 
 draft on which the revisers worked was the edition of Francis 
 Kous, a Cornish member of Parliament. 
 
 In England the new-model army, mainly Independent, was 
 falling out with the Parliament, in which Presbyterians still 
 took the lead. Each side wished to have the custody and 
 control of the King. Lauderdale and others were in England 
 trying to make separate terms for the Scots, and by the end 
 of the year Charles, a prisoner in Carisbrooke, had signed 
 another of his futile compromises : Loudon, Lauderdale, and 
 Lanark represented the Estates of Scotland. The Covenant 
 was to be accepted, but not forced on any ; presbytery was to 
 have a trial, for three years, and the sectaries were to be
 
 248 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 suppressed. The Estates met in March and voted an army 
 to liberate and restore the covenanted King ; but the Com- 
 mission of Assembly opposed ; Loudon broke away from the 
 royalist combination, and did penance in the high church at 
 Edinburgh for his share in the Engagement. The Commission 
 sent John Livingstone to persuade the army not to obey the 
 Estates, but his mission was not successful. Both Leven and 
 David Leslie stood aloof ; they thought religion had not been 
 adequately secured, and the army was placed under the com- 
 mand of our old acquaintance Hamilton, a soldier, but not 
 a soldier who could cope with Cromwell. The westland men 
 were fiercely hostile to the proposed adventure ; in June 
 a tumultuous body of them appeared on Mauchline Moor ; 
 with them was Mr. Nevay, still questing for fresh branches of 
 the tribe of Amalek. This rising was known as the Whigamore 
 raid, and the armed insurgents are the first Whigs of whom 
 our history bears record. In July, when the Assembly met, 
 Loudon and Argyle were absent ; Warriston also stayed away ; 
 he was now Lord Advocate, and might be expected to take 
 action against the westland men, with whom he too was in 
 sympathy. This Assembly approved the two Catechisms made 
 at Westminster. The Shorter Catechism has been used in our 
 schools ever since ; the Larger Catechism is less generally 
 known ; the burden of it was greater than we or our fathers 
 have been able to bear. It was ordered that the Covenant 
 should be taken by students entering college, and by young 
 communicants. 
 
 George Gillespie sat in the chair as Moderator : the highest 
 and, as it proved, the last distinction to which he attained. 
 Though perhaps the youngest member of the Westminster 
 Assembly, he had been one of its most powerful debaters. But 
 his health was broken, and he retired to Kirkcaldy, his native 
 town, where he occupied himself in writing yet one more 
 pamphlet ; when his dying hand refused to hold the pen he 
 still went on dictating arguments against ' peace with malig- 
 nants '. From George Gillespie's point of view, Jeremy Taylor 
 was a malignant, with whom religious converse and political 
 co-operation were equally impossible.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 249 
 
 While Scotland was busy with her own problems, the nations 
 of Europe were taking an important step towards peace and 
 order. The Thirty Years' War came to an end, and the peace of 
 Westphalia established the principle that difference of religion 
 was no longer to be considered a sufficient cause of war : the 
 ' three religions ', Catholic, Lutheran, and Beformed, were to 
 live peaceably side by side. Each State still identified itself 
 with one of the contending creeds, and each retained the power 
 to punish and suppress those who did not conform to the 
 national Church. 
 
 In spite of opposition, the effort to rescue the King went 
 forward ; Hamilton marched south with a great force ; but, 
 at the critical moment, Cromwell joined Lambert among the 
 hills of Yorkshire ; the attack was delivered at Preston, and, 
 after three days of confused fighting, the Scots army was no 
 more. Before long Hamilton was a prisoner in London. He 
 was Duke of Hamilton and Earl of Cambridge ; it was fairly 
 certain that the English Parliament would deal stringently with 
 the Earl. This crushing defeat was a source of gloomy satis- 
 faction to the party in Scotland who called themselves the 
 godly or the well affected. Argyle and Loudon became the 
 heads of a new administration. They were in friendly corrre- 
 spondence with Cromwell ; he was a sectary, but he had been 
 the instrument of God to punish the men who had disobeyed 
 the Kirk. In the beginning of October the English general 
 paid a flying visit to Edinburgh, where he was lodged in Moray 
 House and hospitably entertained. He came to an under- 
 standing with Argyle, the nature of which it is not difficult 
 to surmise. The new government of Scotland would not 
 interfere in England, and would make itself and its neighbours 
 safe by excluding from power all who had connected them- 
 selves with the Engagement. It is not likely that anything 
 definite was said about the King ; if Cromwell foresaw the 
 immediate future he knew that the Scots were all royalists, 
 and he could be as fluent and as ambiguous as the occasion 
 required. Before Cromwell took his seat again in the English 
 Parliament his army had moved on London ; the Presbyterians 
 had been purged out of the House of Commons ; the trial of the
 
 250 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 ' chief delinquent ' was a thing almost settled. In yielding 
 to the movement Cromwell felt that the ' mercies ' bestowed 
 on him pointed him out as the chosen servant of God ; the 
 duty now before him was laid upon him and could not be 
 evaded. His friends in Scotland lost no time in performing 
 their part of the Moray house bargain. Early in January 
 Argyle addressed the Estates, dividing the Engagers and 
 enemies of government into five classes, according to the 
 degree of their guilt ; Warriston read a speech of two hours in 
 length, expounding the Act of Classes, by which all these men 
 were rendered incapable of any public trust. This Act did not 
 remain very long on our statute-book, but it contributed, as 
 we shall see, to Cromwell's conquest of Scotland. Argyle and 
 his friends had kept their promises, but the English party 
 with which they were allied was hurrying on to an act which 
 destroyed the whole basis of the Solemn League. A revolu- 
 tionary tribunal, called the High Court of Justice, undertook 
 to try the King, and before the end of the month Charles was 
 beheaded at Whitehall. As soon as the King's death was 
 known in Edinburgh, Charles the Second was proclaimed King 
 of Scotland ; this was virtually a declaration of war against 
 the regicide republic in England. 
 
 The Estates of Scotland, a body now representing only 
 Argyle and his friends, remained in session ; those ministers 
 who had condemned the Engagement were now the indispensable 
 supporters of government, and legislation conformed to their 
 wishes. Patronage, an institution which the Assembly under 
 Knox had hesitated to touch, was now abolished. Both the 
 governing parties tried to consolidate their power by removing 
 their conspicuous opponents ; Hamilton was put to death in 
 London, and Huntly in Edinburgh. Before the end of March 
 a Scottish deputation set sail for the Hague, to interview the 
 new king : Baillie was the chief spokesman of the Kirk on this 
 occasion. Baillie, as we know, was a shrewd and humorous 
 observer, but he was also a good party man ; he had no clear 
 vision of facts when they interfered with his theories. What he 
 saw of the young prince convinced him, that if Charles accepted 
 the position of a covenanted king, Scotland might take the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 251 
 
 lead in restoring the monarchy and imposing Presbyterian 
 uniformity on the factions. Charles's personal position was as 
 yet so precarious that nothing definite was done. 
 
 When the Assembly met in July the disappearance of 
 patronage made it necessary for the Church to frame rules 
 for the election of ministers. After some debate the rule 
 adopted was that laid down in the Second Book of Discipline : 
 the elders should elect ; the congregation should have a veto 
 on the election, unless the presbytery found that their opposition 
 was due to ' causeless prejudice '. Where the congregation were 
 ' malignants ' the presbytery should intrude a faithful minister 
 upon them. Rutherford had argued for popular election ; 
 he was dissatisfied with the decision, but at this period the 
 good man had little satisfaction in his life. His fondness for 
 scholastic argument made it difficult for him to co-operate 
 with others. 
 
 It was plain that the Council of State in England could not 
 safely permit the monarchy to be set up in Scotland ; but 
 the Irish problem was the most urgent of their difficulties. 
 In August Cromwell landed at Dublin, to take an ample revenge 
 for the outbreak of 1641, and to lay, as it was hoped, the founda- 
 tions of order and true religion in the sister kingdom. During 
 his absence the King's advisers were not agreed as to the course 
 they were to take. Montrose pressed for an immediate descent 
 on Scotland ; he felt sure that the tragedy of Whitehall would 
 bring loyal men to his standard in overwhelming numbers. 
 He made his attempt, and it ended in utter failure ; his foreign 
 troops were scattered by Colonel Strachan, a hard-bitten 
 Covenanter ; in a few days Montrose himself was a prisoner on 
 his way to Edinburgh. On a Sunday his guards rested and 
 attended service at Keith ; once more the story of Samuel and 
 Agag was expounded from the pulpit. On Saturday, 18th May, 
 the party reached Edinburgh ; they entered by the Watergate, 
 where the hangman waited with his cart, and the prisoner 
 began the ascent of the long street. As he passed Moray House 
 a bridal party stood at the windows ; Argyle himself, the 
 father of the bridegroom, looked out through a half-closed 
 shutter. At the Tolbooth Major Weir, commanding the town
 
 252 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 guard, received the prisoner into his custody. This officer 
 was afterwards burned for sorcery and other crimes ; at the 
 moment of Montrose's fall the Major was still the chief ornament 
 of a pious coterie known as the Bowhead saints. During 
 Saturday evening and Sunday many visitors had access to 
 the prisoner. Ministers had been appointed to deal with him ; 
 the venerable Dickson and the youthful Durham (joint authors 
 of the Sum of Saving Knowledge) were of the number, and 
 James Guthrie lent his aid : among the Covenanters this 
 Guthrie was known as Sickerfoot ; the epithet must refer to 
 his deliberate way of arguing, for in action he was often 
 impulsive and rash. In his conversations with the divines 
 Montrose was thought to be too airy and flighty ; thus, when 
 they charged him with having employed Irish Papists, he asked 
 them to remember what a company David had with him in 
 the cave at Adullam. . On Monday morning the ministers came 
 for a farewell conference ; James Guthrie gave the prisoner 
 a stringent but hardly accurate catalogue of his offences. 
 There remained only the final interview with the Estates, at 
 which Loudon laid down the law, and Warriston, who again 
 was in his element, read the sentence. It was carried out at 
 the market cross ; the ministers who attended there were 
 empowered to reconcile the dying man with the Kirk, if he 
 expressed his repentance ; but, so far as the Kirk and the 
 Estates were concerned, Montrose had no apology to make. 
 He was a Presbyterian ; he cared nothing for bishops ; he had 
 left his party because, after accepting concessions from the 
 King, they were joining hands with an English faction whose 
 leaders were hurrying the King to a violent death. 
 
 Some time before Montrose ' fired his ringing shot, and 
 passed ', the young King had made terms with Argyle and 
 the dominant Presbyterians. A month after Montrose's 
 execution Charles lay off Speymouth ; he signed both the 
 Covenants before he was allowed to land. John Livingstone, 
 who administered the test, did not believe in the King's 
 sincerity, and the Provost of Aberdeen, who had helped to 
 arrange terms at Breda, afterwards admitted that he and his 
 party acted most sinfully when they entangled their prince
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 253 
 
 in an engagement which, as they well knew, he detested. 
 There were fierce differences among Covenanters ; many west- 
 land Whigs were strongly opposed to Argyle's policy. When 
 the Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 10th July nothing of 
 importance was done : some ministers were deposed for sub- 
 mitting to Montrose ; the Commission of Assembly was left 
 to draw a suitable declaration for the King to sign. After 
 a show of resistance the King expressed his sorrow for the 
 ' idolatry ' of his mother and the ' blood-guiltiness ' of his 
 father. There was no time to settle the questions at issue. 
 Earlier in the year Cromwell had finished the punitive part 
 of his work in Ireland ; on his return to London he found his 
 friends discussing the prospect of another Scots invasion ; he 
 saw clearly that the best plan of defence was to attack without 
 delay. By the end of June he had his commission as Captain- 
 general : he ' went on roundly ' with his business ; but his 
 thoughts were much stayed on Psalm ex, The Lord said unto 
 my Lord surely this is the psalm from which Henderson dis- 
 coursed so impressively at Glasgow : it now inspired the great 
 sectary who was about to lay Henderson's tabernacle in the dust. 
 Cromwell entered Scotland on the 22nd July : on Sunday, 
 the 28th, he was pushing for the high ground at Gladsmuir, 
 from which he hoped to see the English ships coming into the 
 Frith of Forth. Leven was too old to take the field ; David 
 Leslie lay at Broughton, close to Edinburgh ; his army was 
 numerous and well appointed, but many soldiers had been 
 purged out under the Act of Classes and the officers were 
 largely ' ministers' sons, clerks, and other sanctified creatures '. 
 The Committee of Estates and the Commission of Assembly 
 controlled their general at every turn. As the English advanced 
 they scattered Declarations, defending themselves against the 
 preachers who were denouncing them as sectaries and blasphe- 
 mers ; the Commission of Assembly made their reply, and 
 from his quarters at Musselburgh Cromwell sent his rejoinder ; 
 in this and other letters he dwells indignantly on the folly of 
 men who agreed with English Puritans ' in fundamentals ', 
 and yet were so blind to the lessons of God's providence that 
 they had taken the ' chief malignant ' to their hearts, and
 
 254 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 made a ' covenant with death and hell '. A month after the 
 date of his letter to the Kirk, Cromwell drove the lesson home 
 by winning the decisive battle of Dunbar. He was now master 
 of the south-eastern counties of Scotland, but at the moment 
 of our humiliation we can see that some pious men began to 
 think there was truth in what Cromwell wrote. Jaffray, 
 Provost of Aberdeen, had joined in the invitation to King 
 Charles ; as a prisoner after Dunbar he talked matters over with 
 the victorious general and with his chaplain John Owen ; 
 ' in fundamentals ' he did agree with them rather than with 
 Charles Stewart. In Edinburgh the ministers who took refuge 
 in the castle wished to argue against the lawfulness of lay 
 preaching ; Cromwell made nothing of their proof-texts and 
 told them bluntly not to be envious ' though Eldad and Medad 
 prophesy.' Robert Stapleton preached before his Excellency 
 at the high kirk, while the English engineers were mining the 
 castle ; the Scots present testified much affection for t he 
 doctrine preached, ' in their usual way of groans.' 
 
 The King had already discovered that the position of a 
 covenanted king was not suited to his ideas. He was helpless 
 in the hands of Argyle ; Hamilton and Lauderdale were not 
 allowed to be with him. Buckingham had leave to stay with 
 his master ; he was a notorious libertine, but he was strongly 
 of opinion that the King's best chance of success lay in an 
 alliance with the Presbyterians. In the west the Whigs 
 accepted the event of Dunbar as an indication that God had 
 rejected the house of Stewart ; on the 17th October they 
 issued a Remonstrance to that effect from Dumfries ; among 
 the laymen who joined the movement was Colonel Strachan, 
 who had defeated Montrose ; among the ministers were 
 Patrick Gillespie, younger brother of the deceased George, and 
 James Guthrie. Before the Remonstrance was drawn up 
 Cromwell had come with the main body of his army to Glasgow ; 
 Baillie and his friends fled away to the Cumbraes ; Zachary 
 Boyd would not leave his pulpit, and railed against the sectaries 
 in his best manner. On a similar provocation King James 
 would have sent the preacher to Blackness ; Cromwell asked 
 him to dinner, and detained him for family worship, which
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 255 
 
 lasted three hours. Some royalists were trying to take advan- 
 tage of the division among their Presbyterian tyrants. General 
 Middleton, a capable officer, whom Baillie credits with ' wisdom, 
 sobriety, and moderation ', went to the north to raise troops 
 for the King, without insisting on more than a nominal com- 
 pliance with the Covenants. James Guthrie went to the 
 Commission of Assembly, and proposed that Middleton should 
 be excommunicated ; many ministers opposed, but the motion 
 was carried ; the Committee of Estates asked for delay, but 
 Guthrie was beyond control ; he published the sentence, and 
 Middleton had to do penance before he was again recognized 
 as a member of the Church. He did not forget the affront. 
 
 Parliament met at Perth in the end of November, and it was 
 plain that moderate Presbyterians would endeavour to relax 
 the Act of Classes. A Eesolution was passed condemning the 
 Kemonstrance ; the Commission of Assembly agreed unani- 
 mously with the Estates ; Guthrie and Eutherford continued 
 to protest. 
 
 On the 1st January Charles was crowned at Scone ; Eobert 
 Douglas preached, and Argyle placed the crown on the head 
 of his sovereign. Young Eothes, son of the covenanting 
 champion, carried the sword of state. The schism went on 
 until the Assembly met on the 16th July at St. Andrews ; 
 Eobert Douglas was Moderator. Menzies, a protester, moved 
 to exclude the members of commission as ' scandalous persons '. 
 At this juncture the English were just landing in Fife ; at 
 midnight on Sunday the Assembly was hastily adjourned to 
 Dundee ; Eutherford thought this a suitable time to send in 
 a protest against the ' lawfulness ' of the Assembly, signed by 
 himself and twenty-one others ; the majority deposed Euther- 
 ford and Guthrie. At Dundee nothing of importance was 
 done, but for the next ten years the Presbyterian party was 
 divided into resolutioners and protesters, and the strife was 
 very keen. Blair, with some hesitation, acquiesced in the 
 Eesolution ; he and Eutherford were joint ministers of the 
 great kirk of St. Andrews. For six years there was no com- 
 munion in that kirk because these two saints of the Covenant 
 could not officiate at the Lord's Table together.
 
 256 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 The royalists had their head-quarters at Stirling ; by 
 marching on Perth, Cromwell left the road to England open. 
 Once more the King of Scots was on the march for Carlisle ; 
 Lambert, who had been preaching regularly in Edinburgh, 
 followed him without delay ; Cromwell himself was not far 
 behind. Scotland was left in charge of General Monk, who 
 met with no serious opposition ; Colonel Alured captured the 
 remnant of the Committee of Estates at Alyth ; a few days 
 later Monk took Dundee by storm. Many important prisoners 
 were sent to London ; among them Robert Douglas, Moderator, 
 and James Sharp, minister of Crail. If a hasty man-at-arms 
 had shot Mr. Sharp he would have had his niche among the 
 Men of the Covenant, but the minister was reserved for a more 
 conspicuous fate. 
 
 The royalist army had thrown itself into Worcester city, 
 and there, on the anniversary of Dunbar, it was utterly 
 defeated. This ' crowning mercy ' made Cromwell the ruler 
 of three kingdoms, subject only to the wishes and scruples 
 of the military party which had placed him where he was. 
 His fighting days were over ; in the seven remaining years 
 of his life he had to cope with the enormous task of recon- 
 structing the whole civil administration. Scotland was a con- 
 quered country, but it was treated, fairly and considerately, 
 as a part of Great Britain. In the year that followed Worcester 
 much progress was made. On the 20th July the Assembly met 
 at Edinburgh ; Cant, Rutherford, and some sixty others 
 protested as before ; there was some talk of holding a separate 
 Assembly. 
 
 One matter which concerned the Kirk was to obtain the 
 release of those ministers who were now prisoners in England. 
 The synod of Lothian were unanimous in selecting Mr. Robert 
 Leighton for this difficult duty. He was a son of that Dr. 
 Leighton whom we have seen crushed, but not conquered, 
 by the paternal hand of Dr. Laud. For the last ten years 
 Mr. Robert had been minister of Newbattle ; his sermons were 
 admitted to be good, but some complained that he was intro- 
 ducing a ' new guise ' of preaching. The favourite Scotch 
 divines were accustomed to discourse at great length ; they
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 257 
 
 ysed a multiplicity of heads, and they spoke with a cadence 
 which some Scotsmen still associate with piety. Leighton 
 wrote sermons of moderate length, in admirable English, 
 committed them to memory, and delivered them in a low voice, 
 with a certain vivacity of manner which younger men were 
 trying to imitate. In the matter of Church government he 
 was a ' latitudinarian ' : he did not believe that either epis- 
 copacy or presbytery was plainly commanded in scripture ; 
 his experience of our Church courts had not led him to form 
 a high opinion of presbytery. As the representative of his 
 synod in England he acquitted himself well, and made a good 
 impression on the Puritan government. 
 
 In the following summer the Assembly met once more at 
 Edinburgh ; a fast day was observed ; Dickson and Douglas 
 preached very graciously. Separated by a partition from these 
 ' unfaithful ' brethren, the protesters lay in wait to assert their 
 principles. Before the house was constituted Colonel Cotterel 
 demanded to know by what authority they met. It was the 
 old question of Lethington and King James ; Dickson made 
 the old reply, but the colonel intimated that the Assembly was 
 dissolved. Foot-soldiers conducted the members as far as the 
 West Port ; from that point a party of horse escorted them to 
 Bruntsfield Links ; their names were called over, and they 
 were ordered to disperse. Baillie went home, to write down 
 his sad reflections on this act of power. Leighton also was 
 present ; he had just been relieved of his parish, and was now 
 Principal of Edinburgh University : of him as of Andrew 
 Melville we may say that he was now evidently in his right 
 place. Mr. Nye, who was very busy in London, must have 
 heard with some satisfaction that his argument, rejected by the 
 Westminster divines, was now receiving a practical application. 
 
 Kirk-sessions, presbyteries, and synods were allowed to go 
 on as before. In later and darker days, Presbyterians looked 
 back to the Commonwealth as a period when their system 
 was not suppressed ; according to some, Scotland at this 
 time became a kind of paradise. These retrospective pictures 
 are exaggerated", but they, may present one aspect of the 
 case. Many of the ministers were good earnest men, and 
 
 s
 
 258 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 their exclusion from politics gave them more time for their 
 spiritual duties.. 
 
 It was, as Cromwell thought, part of the business of govern- 
 ment to see that every part of the country was provided with 
 a gospel ministry. He would gladly have made peace between 
 resolutioners and protesters, but this was impossible. War- 
 riston, who became a judge under the new government, was 
 a protester ; he and Guthrie could usually defeat any proposal 
 in the nature of a compromise. From time to time the Pro- 
 tector summoned leading ministers to advise him in London ; 
 some went, and some declined to go, but the Kirk remained 
 unsettled. The protesters, perhaps because they were in 
 a minority, were more disposed to co-operate with government ; 
 when they could obtain the support of English officials, they 
 could intrude ' faithful ' ministers into vacant parishes. In 
 1655 they favoured the proposal of a commission to settle the 
 Church : they hoped, no doubt, to obtain a commission which 
 would eject and intrude until the balance of power was altered 
 in their favour. But next year, when 'they went south, the 
 resolutioners sent Sharp of Crail to state the objections to 
 the scheme, and his argument prevailed. Cromwell thought 
 ' Sharp of that ilk ', as he called him, a clever man. 
 
 On the seventh anniversary of Worcester Cromwell breathed 
 his last, and his son Eichard was proclaimed. For a time ' no 
 dog wagged his tongue ', but it was evident the army was 
 restless and divided. The most trustworthy body of troops 
 in the country was the army of occupation in Scotland, com- 
 manded by General Monk ; by dint of holding his tongue this 
 capable officer became master of the situation. As soon as 
 the new Protector was proclaimed Monk wrote him a friendly 
 letter, lamenting the decay of vital godliness, and suggesting 
 another Assembly of divines. He did not name any Scots 
 divine : a curious proof of the insignificance to which resolu- 
 tioners and protesters had reduced the Kirk. Kichard Crom- 
 well, a good and amiable man, had neither the genius nor the 
 ambition of his father. In April 1659 the protesters wished to 
 petition the government in London ' against toleration ' ; 
 Baillie, who had some eommon sense, pointed out the futility
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY 259 
 
 of this proceeding ; the men to whom the protesters would 
 appeal were themselves Independents, Anabaptists, and 
 Erastians. Almost all Englishmen are, in a sense, Erastians ; 
 they hold that the main lines of ecclesiastical policy should be 
 fixed by laymen, and that no minister of religion should be 
 allowed to dictate to the State. Monk was considering the 
 signs of the time, and his own policy gradually took shape. 
 On the 2nd January 1660 he marched into England ; a month 
 later Dickson and Douglas were in conference with Sharp, 
 who was to represent the resolutioners in England. Sharp, 
 as Cromwell had discerned, was an intelligent man ; his visits 
 to London and Breda enabled him to see how the land lay. 
 He told his friends at once that there was no hope of presbytery 
 in England ; this was in fact the state of affairs. As for 
 Scotland, opinions were much divided ; in the north the 
 Covenant had never been popular ; even in the lowlands 
 Douglas saw that the younger men had no love for presbyterial 
 discipline. On the 25th May, when Charles landed at Dover, 
 Monk, soon to be a Duke, received him with fervour ; the 
 Mayor presented a Bible, which the King said he loved above 
 all things. On the '29th, the King's birthday, there were great 
 rejoicings in Scotland, but Donald Cargill, minister of the 
 Barony at Glasgow, denounced the King for his wicked life, 
 and prophesied disaster. For this and other offences he was 
 ' outed ' in due time, and became one of the wandering preachers 
 who kept alive the notion that the Covenants were still binding. 
 
 When Sharp returned to Scotland he brought a letter from 
 the King to the presbytery of Edinburgh, promising to 
 maintain the government of the Church, as settled by law. 
 This was accepted as a promise of a Presbyterian settlement ; 
 the letter was placed in a silver casket, and copies were sent to 
 other presbyteries. But the King, like the Glasgow Assembly, 
 was now in a position to make his own law. 
 
 Parliament sat at the beginning of January ; the session 
 lasted till July, and a great many Acts were passed. Middleton, 
 now an Earl, represented the king ; in earlier days he had been 
 credited with ' sobriety and moderation ' ; but the Eestoration 
 brought in a great recoil from Puritanism ; Middleton and 
 
 S2
 
 260 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Bothes wero both hard drinkers, and Lauderdale, in London, 
 was giving way to profligate habits. Before the end of March, 
 Parliament had agreed to the Act Rescissory, which annulled 
 all Acts passed since 1640 ; the legal basis of the Kirk was 
 removed, as neatly as Henderson and his noble friends had 
 removed the legal basis of episcopacy. The King was em- 
 powered to settle the government of the Church ; until this 
 was done, sessions, presbyteries and synods might continue to 
 meet. These legislative acts were varied by judicial proceed- 
 ings of some importance. Argyle was tried and, of course, 
 condemned ; at the end of May he paid the penalty of his 
 offences. He had more than once shown himself deficient in 
 military courage, but the quiet dignity of the closing scene 
 was remembered in his favour, and he became a saint of the 
 Covenant. Among the counsel who appeared for him we note 
 the name of George Mackenzie, of whom we shall see more 
 in the sequel. Some days later James Guthrie was hanged. 
 In his day of power he had shown no mercy, and in his turn he 
 received none. When his principles were not in issue, Guthrie 
 was a man of considerable ability and not unkindly disposition. 
 When Parliament rose, the King was left to settle the Church. 
 It was the current belief (not, in itself, an ignoble belief) that 
 a great State could only be based on a faith held in common. 
 Charles could not reign in England unless as a member of the 
 English Church ; he attempted, like his grandfather before 
 him, to bring Scotland into line. Lauderdale put in a plea 
 for Prcsbyterianism, but the King said that was not a religion 
 for gentlemen : if he was thinking of the men who made him 
 sign canting reflections on his father and mother, he had some 
 excuse for this petulant remark. If the King's decision to 
 restore episcopacy had been inspired by any high purpose, 
 the event might have been different, but his conduct throughout 
 was evasive and contemptuous. He disliked Scotland, and 
 did not mean to live there. Charles was a much more skilful 
 politician than his father ; his reign was, on the whole, success- 
 ful, and he died in his bed, reconciled at the last to the only 
 Church for which he had any respect ; the blame of his mis- 
 government was visited on his agents.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 261 
 
 As in 1610 the Scottish episcopate was to derive its conse- 
 cration from England ; in December a small but distinguished 
 company met at Westminster. Sharp was to be Archbishop 
 of St. Andrews ; Fairfoul, a totally unsuitable person, had 
 somehow captured Glasgow ; Hamilton, a respectable man, 
 who had been a Covenanter, was to have Galloway, Sydserf, 
 the only survivor of 1638, having been translated to Orkney. 
 Sir Elisha Leighton, a Eoman Catholic, had influence at court ; 
 he had suggested the name of his brother. Eobert Leighton 
 had accepted ; he was, in principle, an episcopalian, and he 
 saw, what nobody in Scotland could or would see, that there 
 is no necessary connexion between episcopacy and prelacy. 
 He hoped to reconcile some of his countrymen to the institu- 
 tion by living among them as a true pastor, not as a lordly 
 prelate. For this reason he had chosen Dunblane, the poorest 
 bishopric in Scotland. As on the previous occasion, Canterbury 
 and York stayed at home ; four bishops officiated. Sharp and 
 Leighton, having no episcopal ordination, were made deacons 
 and priests before they were consecrated bishops. Sharp 
 objected, and submitted ; Leighton made no difficulty ; as 
 he understood the matter, his Anglican ordination was ' cumu- 
 lative, not privative '. The new prelates came home with 
 some pomp, but Leighton slipped away and took no part in 
 the demonstration. The bishops now in office proceeded to 
 fill up the Scottish sees ; the men selected were men of respect- 
 able character and competent learning : they were all resolu- 
 tioners. Sharp, now free to act on his own opinion, did not 
 require them to be re-ordained. In the north, ministers and 
 people settled down under the form of government which most 
 of them preferred ; in the south and west a strong Presbyterian 
 party, including all the protesters, held out against the King's 
 policy. These worthy men figure in our popular books as 
 champions of liberty ; but a man's love of liberty should be 
 measured by what he concedes to others, not by what he 
 claims for himself. They held, as firmly as their opponents, 
 to the principle of uniformity ; they looked forward to a happy 
 time when neither Papist nor sectary should be allowed to 
 breathe the air of Scotland.
 
 262 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 When Parliament met, the spiritual Estate was invited to 
 take its customary place ; both archbishops and seven bishops 
 responded to the invitation. Episcopacy was revived, and 
 patronage along with it. Ministers admitted since 1649 were 
 required to obtain presentation from the patron and collation 
 from the bishop. Many refused to comply with this law ; 
 once more the Church was ' purged ' by a series of expulsions 
 and intrusions. Parliament rose in September ; the bishops 
 were free to meet their clergy in the diocesan synods, and to do, 
 each in his own way, what the State expected of them. Fair- 
 foul was prepared to use all the powers of the law, and in 
 October Middleton went through to Glasgow to help him ; 
 the King's commissioner and the councillors who sat with him 
 were frequently drunk. We turn with relief to Dunblane, 
 where Leighton was beginning his earnest effort to work up to 
 Ussher's ideal, and to combine the advantages of episcopacy 
 and presbytery. His success was only partial ; many Presby- 
 terians refused to be conciliated. They had often denounced 
 the pride of the prelacy, but the complaint against Leighton 
 was that he was too humble. Obviously he was a Jesuitical 
 person ; he was ' straking their mouths with cream ', only in 
 order to hand them over to Sharp. As for Sharp himself, he 
 was an official and nothing more ; his business, as he under- 
 stood it, was to keep the episcopal system visibly in power, 
 and so to satisfy the King. He was shocked by Fairfoul's 
 excesses ; he regarded Leighton with sour disapproval. Under 
 his management, the Church of Scotland became an affair of 
 compromises which satisfied neither of the contending parties. 
 No attempt was made to introduce either a service-book or 
 a new standard of doctrine. Presbyteries continued to meet, 
 and to transact routine business ; above them were the episcopal 
 synods ; there was even in time a national synod, which never 
 met. Some individuals were prosecuted and punished for 
 opposition to the authorities. John Livingstone took advan- 
 tage of his Communion season at Ancrum to denounce the 
 bishops ; he had to retire to Holland. Brown of Wamphray, 
 a learned man and a good minister, was dealt with for calling 
 the ministers who attended synods ' false knaves ' ; he also
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 263 
 
 went into exile, and had time to write a Latin treatise in 
 support of the Sabbatarian theory. 
 
 Middleton was so pleased with the success of his measures 
 that he expected to be the King's chief man in Scotland ; he 
 might perhaps endow his dignity by annexing the great domain 
 of Argyle. These projects were easily defeated by Lauderdale ; 
 Middleton was disgraced, and when the Estates met Eothes 
 was high commissioner. An Act was passed to compel the 
 King's subjects to attend their parish kirks. One more rebel 
 had to pay the extreme penalty of the law. When Argyle and 
 James Guthrie were arrested, Warriston had escaped to France ; 
 he was now brought to the bar and duly condemned. He was 
 in a pitiable state of weakness, attributable partly to mistaken 
 medical treatment. Both in London and in Edinburgh, 
 Warriston was attended by his nephew Gilbert Burnet, who 
 had just completed his course at Aberdeen, and was entering 
 on his long and eminently useful career as a minister of the 
 gospel. This young man's father, Eobert Burnet, advocate, an 
 earnest godly man, had twice been driven into exile for refusing 
 to sign the Covenants ; his wife, Eachel Johnston, was a fierce 
 Covenanter. Their son Gilbert, born in 1643, was a man 
 capable of indiscretions (' a bee-headed fool ' was his mother's 
 expression), but in the main honest and kindly. He had 
 chosen Leighton as his guide and model, and his choice does 
 credit to his youthful judgment. 
 
 In January a Court of High Commission was established, 
 but this, like the rest of Sharp's arrangements, was a matter 
 of form only. During this troubled period the Privy Council 
 was the government of Scotland ; the Archbishop was, of 
 course, a member, with precedence over all the King's subjects. 
 It was the Council which saw to the enforcement of the law 
 in regard to presentation and collation. Those ministers who 
 would not comply were flung out as ruthlessly as Henderson 
 and his friends had flung out those who opposed the Covenant. 
 They were silenced unless they could evade the law by address- 
 ing meetings in houses or in the open air. These conventicles, 
 as they were called, were now to be suppressed, just as the Pres- 
 byterians, when in power, had suppressed ' private meetings '.
 
 264 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 In this year Patrick Scougal, a scholar and a rnan of genuine 
 piety, became Bishop of Aberdeen, and Gilbert Burnet was 
 chosen to succeed him as minister of Saltoun. Even his 
 enemies admit that his parish profited much by his devotion 
 to his pastoral duties ; his excellent memory enabled him to 
 use the Book of Common Prayer without unduly alarming the 
 congregation. Following the example of Leighton, he entered 
 on a course of severe study, and lived an ascetic life ; when his 
 health broke down, his covenanting mother came to sit by the 
 bed of her episcopalian son. The invalid's mind wandered ; 
 he imagined that the primate had come to see him, and called 
 out, ' Where shall we find a place for him ? ' His mother 
 assured him that a place would be found for the Archbishop 
 4 in the hottest corner of hell '. At all stages of his active life 
 Burnet was a predestined pamphleteer. He had protested 
 formally against the Court of High Commission ; he now 
 composed a memorial for the guidance of the bishops, pointing 
 out the mistakes in their policy. Sharp would have deposed 
 or even excommunicated the author of this paper, but Scougal 
 persuaded his episcopal colleagues to content themselves witli 
 a censure. 
 
 Scotland was then a rough country, in every sense of the 
 term, and there was no adequate police ; if ministers or laymen 
 disobeyed the law, the government could only rely on military 
 force. Sir James Turner, graduate of Glasgow, a veteran of 
 the German wars, maintained order in Galloway and Nithsdale ; 
 he billeted soldiers on covenanting households, and extorted 
 fines for non-attendance at church. In the middle of November 
 some of his men got into trouble. at Dairy ; some lairds took 
 part with the insurgents ; they marched to Dumfries, captured 
 Sir James, and carried him with them through the country : 
 the extreme men among them attributed their subsequent 
 misfortunes to the sinful moderation which withheld them from 
 taking Turner's life. At Lanark the Covenants were renewed 
 by 1 a considerable body of armed men. They marched on 
 Edinburgh, but were obliged to retreat. Hugh McKail, 
 a preacher residing in the family of Sir James Stewart, accom- 
 panied them as far as his strength would permit. At Eullion
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 265 
 
 Green in the Pentlands they were utterly defeated, and the 
 insurrection was over. The forces of government were com- 
 manded by Thomas Dalzell of Binns, a conspicuous figure in 
 the field by reason of his long white beard, which he had 
 allowed to grow since the murder of King Charles. This 
 ineffective rising was followed by the usual severities ; McKail 
 was punished with the rest ; in December he was tortured and 
 hanged. Many hapless prisoners were detained in Edinburgh ; 
 George Wishart, once the faithful companion of Montrose, was 
 now bishop of that see ; he sent food from his own kitchen to 
 the prisoners. Wodrow repays his kindness by alleging that 
 Wishart swore, drank, and wrote improper poems ; but no 
 evidence has been found in support of these accusations, and it 
 is safer not to believe what Wodrow says about any bishop. 
 
 The bitterness of the defeated party found expression in 
 a pamphlet called Naphtali, written by a minister named 
 Stirling, assisted by James Stewart, an advocate without 
 business, son of that Sir James who had employed Hugh 
 McKail as his chaplain. In this manifesto the deaths of 
 Warriston and James Guthrie were recounted ; the laws of 
 which the Kirk complained were stringently examined, and 
 a vague hope was held out of the extirpation of prelacy when 
 the nation came to a right mind. Honeyman, Bishop of 
 Orkney, published an indignant reply, and Stewart rejoined 
 in a further pamphlet entitled lus Populi Vindication ; he 
 then retired into the background of our politics, until the 
 changes of a later time brought him to the front again. Lauder- 
 dale was now the master of Scotland ; he could not venture 
 to oppose the King, but he was a man of sense and knowledge, 
 and his own opinions were Presbyterian. Many leading 
 Scotsmen submitted to his ascendancy and helped him to 
 maintain what was called order. The young Earl of Argyle, 
 for instance, was deeply indebted to Lauderdale and supported 
 his measures ; he had some hereditary sympathy with the 
 Covenanters, but would not encourage rebellion ; he would cut 
 the throats of rebels. There was a general expectation that 
 the penal laws would, be relaxed, so far as Protestants were 
 concerned. The emissaries of Eome were doing, in the high-
 
 266 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 lands, just what the Covenanters were doing in the south. 
 They held their services in private houses or on the hillside ; 
 they sent students to the Scots college at Rome ; they exerted 
 themselves to provide proper instruction for Catholic children. 
 These details we learn from a report which Alexander Winster, 
 prefect of the Scots mission, sent to Rome in 1668. Bishops 
 and Covenanters were agreed in demanding strict execution of 
 the laws against Papists. 
 
 The advent of indulgence was delayed by an untoward 
 incident. James Mitchell, a minister who had studied under 
 Leighton, was moved, as he said, by the Spirit of God to 
 assassinate Sharp. He fired a pistol at the primate's coach, 
 missed his intended victim, and wounded Honeyman, the 
 bishop who had answered Naphtali. Mitchell escaped for the 
 moment, and Sharp, having been in danger, was more powerful 
 than before. 
 
 The interval of comparative toleration, known as the ' Blink,' 
 was due to several causes. King Charles was lazily hostile to 
 penal laws in religion ; if he could bring in toleration he might 
 in time be able to do something for his Catholic friends. 
 Lauderdale disliked the bishops, and especially the two arch- 
 bishops Sharp, because he had too much power ; Alexander 
 Burnet, now Archbishop of Glasgow, because he was an 
 honest Anglican, not likely to join in political compromises. 
 Whatever his ecclesiastical views may have been, Lauderdale 
 was an absolutist in his politics. By his advice the King 
 issued a Letter of Indulgence, directing that outed ministers 
 who had lived peaceably might be appointed to vacant churches. 
 The bishops objected ; they were, of course, intolerant in prin- 
 ciple, as their covenanting opponents were, and they would 
 not allow Church questions to be decided by the royal preroga- 
 tive. Robert Douglas and George Hutcheson, the supposed 
 leaders of the Presbyterians, accepted the Indulgence, but 
 only some forty ministers followed their example ; the rank 
 and file of the party were virtually in rebellion against the 
 King whom they had invited to reign over them and the 
 English. Alexander Burnet induced his synod to concur in 
 asserting their spiritual independence. When Parliament met
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 267 
 
 in October, Sharp declared that neither the Pope, the King, 
 nor the Assembly was the rightful head of the Church of 
 Scotland. Lauderdale met these demonstrations by dictating 
 an Assertory Act in which the King's prerogative was defined 
 in ample terms. Archbishop Burnet had to resign ; he went 
 into retirement, and Leighton, who clung to the hope of com- 
 prehension, agreed to hold the archbishopric of Glasgow in 
 commendam : he was to have a fraction of the income of the 
 see, and liberty to press his own scheme on the Church. Gilbert 
 Burnet was transferred from Saltoun to a Glasgow chair. 
 
 For a year or more Leighton's plan (it came to be known as 
 the Accommodation) was the chief topic of discussion. Lauder- 
 dale thought the Presbyterians ' rude and crafty ' in their 
 reception of it, and there was some truth in the gibe. The 
 divines of each party assumed that the system which they 
 preferred was explicitly commanded in the New Testament. 
 The historical method of inquiry has brought many of us to 
 the conclusion that neither diocesan episcopacy nor Melvinian 
 presbytery has any express warrant in Scripture. Their notions 
 of Church history prevented the Presbyterians from admitting 
 that they had anything to learn from the Church of the second 
 century. After Leighton had done his best, six of his friends 
 Nairne, Charteris, Cook, Paterson, Aird, and Gilbert Burnet 
 preached in a number of parishes ; when they could get 
 a hearing, they found their congregations primed with proof- 
 texts and not open to argument ; they were followed up by 
 ' hot preachers ', who turned their doctrine into ridicule. As 
 a sample of the proof -texts we may note that the words ' Touch 
 not, taste not, handle not ' were wrenched from their context 
 and applied to' episcopal government. In the meantime 
 conventicles were becoming more frequent ; men were attending 
 them armed, and in one case a King's officer had been deforced. 
 When the Bass Eock was purchased for the King, it became 
 a fortress and also a state-prison. 
 
 As regarded the conventicles, Lauderdale relied entirely 
 on coercion. An Act of 1670 made it a capital offence to preach 
 at a conventicle attended by more people than a house would 
 hold. The King thought this too harsh ; the Earl of Tweeddale
 
 268 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 explained that the Act was not to be executed : this is often 
 the case with penal statutes which go beyond what decent people 
 think necessary. Such was the state of affairs when, in June 
 1672, Lauderdale, now a Duke, came again to open Parliament ; 
 he was accompanied by the Duchess (his second wife), a 
 brilliant lady who played her own mischievous part in politics. 
 The Conventicle Act was prolonged ; irregular ordinations and 
 marriages were forbidden. It happened that the King was 
 trying the effect of an Indulgence in England ;. another 
 instalment of the same policy was bestowed on Scotland. In 
 September the Council made an order under which a certain 
 number of the outed ministers were to be assigned to vacant 
 parishes. Before the end of the year Leighton was archbishop 
 in name as well as in fact ; but the good man was near the end 
 of his course. He had more than once asked leave to retire ; 
 he had even expressed the opinion that all the bishops would 
 do well to retire ; and Sharp might have lived longer if he had 
 taken this advice. Leighton was asked to go on for another 
 year ; when the time came he laid down his burden with 
 a thankful heart, apologized for any fault he had committed, 
 found no fault with his brethren, and was free at last to live 
 a life of devotion, charity, and study. Before Leighton went 
 away, to make his home in England, Sharp had a warning of 
 what was working in the minds of his enemies. He was mobbed 
 by covenanting ladies in Edinburgh, and one of these Christian 
 matrons, laying her hand on the Archbishop's neck, said, 
 ' This shall pay for all.' In the following year, letters of inter- 
 communing were issued against a number of recalcitrant 
 persons : we may note, among others, the name of John 
 Balfour of Kinloch, known as ' Burley '. He and his rd;ili\i- 
 Hackston of Rathillet, a converted episcopalian, wore sworn 
 enemies of the primate. 
 
 The Presbyterian party was far from being united ; those 
 who had been resolutioners laboured to find some basis of 
 agreement with the King ; others again were militant, and this 
 section had the sympathy of the ladies of the Johnston family, 
 as we have seen. Others thought they were called to testify 
 by suffering, but their advice was <lt rim (I ' quakcrish ' by some.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 269 
 
 The Friends had taken no conspicuous part in the religious 
 life of the country, but George Fox and his disciples had visited 
 Scotland, and had made some notable converts, especially 
 in Aberdeen. They were treated as other unlicensed preachers 
 were treated at the time. When it was represented to the 
 Provost that a number of these harmless people had been shut 
 up in a narrow and noisome prison, he answered that he would 
 ' pack them like salmon in a barrel '. 
 
 Lauderdale took such steps as he could to strengthen the 
 system he administered. Gilbert Burnet had not been sub- 
 missive enough ; he found it safer to go to London, where he 
 began the long career of clerical and political activity which 
 brought him at last to a bishopric. George Mackenzie, a bold 
 critic of government, was muzzled when he became King's 
 Advocate. Mackenzie was an enlightened man, who did. much 
 to remove the more barbarous features of our law. He was also 
 a religious man, or at least interested in religion ; his sympathy 
 with the Quakers indicates the line which a thoughtful layman 
 might be disposed to take in that age of controversy. While 
 rising to the head of his profession, he had known great sorrows ; 
 after he had lost his wife and two children he wrote of himself 
 as one who lived on, more from duty than from inclination. 
 Lauderdale did not rely mainly on lawyers ; coercion was his 
 remedy for all the ills of Scotland ; in the end of 1677 the army, 
 the militia, and the ' highland host ' were all called out to 
 maintain order. In the autumn of 1678 John Graham of 
 Claverhouse received his first important command. He was 
 a capable officer, and a man of some character : even Covenan- 
 ters admitted that Claverhouse ' hated to spend his time with 
 wine and women ' ; he discouraged licence and profanity among 
 his men. He was a church-going householder, inquiring no 
 further in the laws than the orders of his superiors. He was not 
 indiscriminately cruel ; he was sorry to see a man die, even 
 a Whig, but if he could hang or shoot a leading man, and so 
 save many others from getting into trouble, he had no scruple. 
 He soon found that his chief difficulty would be want of 
 information ; most of the peasantry sympathized with the 
 conventiclers.
 
 270 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 While Scotland was kept in unrest, English politics began to 
 turn on the Church questions now at issue. The King conformed 
 to the Church of England ; the Duke of York, his brother and 
 heir-presumptive, was an avowed Catholic. He had consulted 
 a Jesuit as to the lawfulness of concealing his religion, and had 
 been told that no such deception would be sanctioned by his 
 Church. Was it safe to allow a Papist to wear the crown ? 
 Some of those who answered in the negative were casting their 
 eyes on James, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, a young 
 man who inherited the good looks and the pleasant manners of 
 his mother, Lucy Walters. Charles, though loyal to his brother, 
 was pushing the young Duke forward, and had already made 
 him Chancellor of Cambridge. In writing, from Newmarket, 
 to the authorities of that University, Monmouth told them 
 that the King did not approve of the ' supine and slothful ' 
 habit of reading their sermons. 
 
 On Thursday, the 1st May 1679. Archbishop Sharp attended 
 a meeting of Council in Edinburgh. He went homeward in 
 his coach ; stopped at Ceres on Saturday to smoke a pipe with 
 the minister, and left in time to be in St. Andrews for Sunday. 
 At Magus Moor a company of armed men were waiting for him ; 
 Hackston and John Balfour were the leaders. They had, 
 perhaps, come together to take some action against Carmichael, 
 the sheriff-depute ; but when they heard that the Archbishop's 
 coach was on the road they felt sure that the Spirit of God had 
 indicated the path of duty. They beset the coach, fired shots 
 into it, dragged the old man out, and dispatched him with 
 their swords ; his daughter, who threw herself between the 
 assassins and their victim, was wounded. A touch of super- 
 stition completes the picture of the crime. To amuse himself 
 or his daughter, Sharp had captured a bee, and was carrying 
 it in a little box ; the insect was evidently a ' familiar spirit ', 
 imprisoned there to buzz wickedness into the dead man's 
 ear. Having killed their enemy, the Covenanters went to 
 a house where they remained in prayer for sonn- hours ; after 
 this they rode off to Perth and Dunblane ; their object was to 
 work round to their friends in Lanarkshire. The news of 
 Sharp's death, and the arrival of the murderers, caused a com-
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUBY 271 
 
 motion which ultimately took the form of a manifesto. On 
 Friday, the 29th May, the day of the King's birth and of his 
 restoration, a band of about eighty men, led by Thomas 
 Douglas, minister, and Eobert Hamilton, brother to the laird 
 of Preston, went to Eutherglen (now a suburb of Glasgow), 
 burned the Act Eescissory and other laws and orders to which 
 they objected, and fixed to the market cross a short declaration 
 of their testimony. Claverhouse went to confer with Lord 
 Boss in Glasgow ; he then made a tour, in the hope of falling 
 in with a conventicle, announced for the following Sunday. 
 He did fall in with it, little to his .advantage. A large body of 
 men, armed some with guns and some with pitchforks, took up 
 a strong position on the farm of Drumclog ; they had no chief 
 commander, but Hackston and Balfour were both among 
 the leaders ; all were in a mood for attack rather than defence. 
 The sorrel horse on which Claverhouse rode was horribly 
 wounded with a scythe, and carried his master off the field. 
 In the end victory remained with the Covenanters, but the 
 King's officers carried off their standards. This victory was 
 a great misfortune for the Covenanters ; they kept the field 
 for a few weeks, expecting to see the forces of government 
 scattered before them, arguing and quarrelling among them- 
 selves. The views of the less extreme party were expressed in 
 the Hamilton declaration, published on the 13th June ; the 
 extreme men disliked this document because it ' took in the 
 King's interest ', from which they considered themselves free. 
 English troops were sent, under the command of Monmouth 
 and Dalzell ; at Bothwell Bridge, on Sunday, the 22nd June, 
 the Covenanters were utterly defeated. Monmouth stopped 
 the slaughter as soon as he could, and only a few ringleaders 
 were put to death, but droves of prisoners were sent to Edin- 
 burgh ; some 1,500 men were pent into the kirkyard of Grey- 
 friars, where the Covenant had been signed. Some of these 
 unfortunate men were transported to Virginia, and in their case 
 the order of Government took effect. A short time before the 
 prophetic Peden, after spending some years on the Bass, had 
 been sent, with a number of others, to America ; but the 
 captain of their ship discovered that they were not criminals,
 
 272 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 but only people in trouble about religion, and they had been 
 allowed to land at Gravesend. 
 
 During these eventful years the story of a Popish Plot had 
 occasioned a panic in England ; Protestant zeal was so fervent 
 that the Duke of York's position became dangerous. The 
 King thought it necessary to support his brother's rights and 
 to withdraw his favour from Monmouth. Scotland, with her 
 undeveloped Parliament and all-powerful Council, was regarded 
 by Government as a safer country than England ; after spending 
 a short time in Holland, the Duke of York came to Edinburgh. 
 His behaviour was conciliatory, but his presence in the country 
 excited the Covenanters to fury. On the 3rd June 1680 an 
 attempt was made to arrest Cargill and Hall of Haughhead, 
 a laird who had fought at Drumclog. Cargill escaped ; Hall was 
 killed, and in his pocket was found a paper, evidently the draft 
 of a new declaration, and probably composed by Cargill. In 
 this manifesto, which resembles a covenanting sermon, ilie 
 King and the Duke are utterly disowned ; the nation is called 
 upon to choose its governors ; the persons chosen are to be 
 engaged to govern by that civil and judicial law given by God 
 to His people of Israel. Malignants will raise an ignorant 
 clamour upon this, that it is a fifth monarchy and the Covenan- 
 ters fifth-monarchy men : the allusion here is to a wild English 
 sect, sternly put to silence by Cromwell ; ' but if this be their 
 fifth monarchy, we both are and ought to be such '. AY lien 
 Cargill wrote these words, he was a man of seventy, driven to 
 desperation, and full of the idea that the historical books of 
 the Old Testament are a safe guide for Christian statesmen. 
 Of the younger leaders the most popular was Richard Cameron, 
 a preacher of great emotional power. On the 22nd .June 
 Cameron and some twenty others rode into Sanquhar and pub- 
 lished a declaration ; the King and the Duke were disowned : 
 war was declared against the King and all who acknowledged 
 him ; the Rutherglen declaration was confirmed ; the Hamilton 
 declaration was disclaimed. To conclude, they claimed the 
 right to reward those who were against them ' as they have 
 done to us, as the Lord gives opportunity '. This is not 
 Christian language, but again we may note the influence of
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 273 
 
 Old Testament ideas. A month after the demonstration at 
 Sanquhar a small party of Covenanters were surprised at 
 Airdsmoss. Hackston, who was in command, resolved to stand 
 his ground ; Cameron prayed that God would ' spare the green 
 and take the ripe.' He and his brother were killed ; Hackston 
 was taken prisoner, carried to Edinburgh, and put to death. 
 In September there was a conventicle in the forest of Torwood, 
 at which Cargill excommunicated the King, the Dukes of 
 York, Monmouth, Lauderdale, and Eothes, George Mackenzie, 
 and Thomas Dalzell. In October the Duke of York came again 
 to Edinburgh, and at Christmas the students burned. the Pope 
 in effigy. 
 
 At the present day few of us would hesitate to admit that 
 allegiance has its limits ; there are forms of misgovernment 
 which decent men will regard as justifying rebellion. To say 
 that the extreme Presbyterians were now a rebel party is not 
 therefore to condemn all their proceedings. The movement 
 was general in the south and west ; in the north the people 
 lived quietly under their own bishops and clergy ; even in 
 the lowlands there were many who disliked the excesses of the 
 Covenanters, and hoped against hope that Government would 
 do something to restore order. The Covenanters were forming 
 societies which maintained correspondence among themselves 
 and with the exiled brethren in Holland ; they were known 
 collectively as the Society-men. The law was enforced from 
 time to time in the accustomed way ; in January two women 
 were executed ' for treason ' ; in July old Cargill was caught 
 at last. He died on the 27th July, and on the following day the 
 Duke of York opened Parliament ; his carriage was beset 
 by the Sweet Singers, a band of women who were wandering 
 about under the leadership of John Gib, a seafaring man with 
 a turn for mystery. Those who controlled the business of 
 this Parliament had two objects in view to protect the suc- 
 cession of the Papist heir-presumptive, and to reassure the 
 minds of anxious Protestants. After ratifying the Confession 
 of 1560, as enacted in 1567, Parliament once more asserted 
 the royal supremacy in language which was meant to be 
 unqualified ; the Duke's hereditary right was included in 
 
 T
 
 274 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 a test, to be taken by all who held civil or military office. 
 James Dalrymple, the great jurist who presided in the Court 
 of Session, tried to take the test with a qualification, safe- 
 guarding the Protestant religion ; he had to resign his place, 
 went into retirement, and in due time found his way to Holland. 
 Argyle had concurred in all measures of government ; he had 
 even voted for Cargill's death, but he also attempted qualifica- 
 tion ; he was thrown into prison, escaped, probably with the 
 connivance of Government, and joined his friends in exile. 
 After Parliament rose the Society-men met for deliberation ; 
 James Renwick, a student of nineteen, came forward to take 
 the place of Cargill and Cameron. Their declaration, published 
 at Lanark in January, ratified and approved the declarations 
 of Rutherglen and Sanquhar, the latter of which was now 
 stated to have been authorized by a convention of the shires 
 and Estates of Scotland. They avowed their intention to 
 extricate themselves from a tyrannous yoke, ' and to reduce 
 our Church and State to what they were in 1648 and 1649 ' 
 that is, in the interval between Preston and Dunbar, when the 
 State was too weak to resent the dictation of the Church. After 
 helping to publish this declaration, Renwick went to Groningen, 
 to complete his course of theological study. 
 
 A better reasoned protest against the legislation of 1681 
 came from the Episcopalian side. Bishop Scougal led the 
 movement of protest in the north, and the Council tried to 
 meet his objections by mitigating the form of the test. The 
 worthy man was looking forward to the end of his labours ; 
 a few years before his own death he had lost his son, Henr t y 
 Scougal, author of a book (The Life of God in the Soul of J\Inji) 
 which has had a remarkable history. At Edinburgh Lawrence 
 Charteris, one of Leighton's preachers, resigned his professorial 
 chair ; about eighty clergymen followed his example and gave 
 up their livings ; many of these victims went to England. 
 In the absence of Renwick, 1682 was not an eventful year, 
 but we may note that in the autumn Lauderdale shuffled off 
 the burden of his dishonoured life. 
 
 In the early months 0f 1688 the Whigs of England and Scot- 
 land, and the exiles in Holland, were discussing various plans :
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUBY 275 
 
 Argyle spoke of a general rising against the Government ; Mon- 
 mouth was still a possible candidate for the throne ; and there 
 were darker schemes for the murder of the King and the Duke. 
 In Scotland one Spence, an adherent of Argyle's, was tortured ; 
 he gave up the name of William Carstares, an able man, 
 educated for the ministry, but now employed in the secret 
 affairs of the opposition ; he was the ' Mr. Eed ' of their cipher 
 correspondence. Carstares was tortured, and gave evidence, 
 on the condition that his testimony was not to be used against 
 others. He had this assurance from James Drummond, soon 
 to be Lord Melfort, one of the two brothers who were making 
 their way to a high place among the King's advisers. Later in 
 the year, when it came to the trial of Eobert Baillie, a man 
 whose high character and Whig sympathies rendered him 
 obnoxious to Government, a summary of the evidence obtained 
 by torture was used against him. Torture was no novelty 
 in Scotland ; the covenanting Parliament of 1649 had made 
 rules implying that it was part of the regular procedure in 
 certain criminal cases. In his legal writings George Mackenzie 
 indicated some objections to the practice ; as King's Advocate 
 he used it freely ; possibly the Council, the only tribunal 
 which could direct and regulate the use of torture, would not 
 have allowed him to refrain from using it. Nobody was likely 
 to object on humanitarian grounds ; most Scottish Christians 
 approved the application of torture to Jesuits and reputed 
 witches. The assertion that the Duke of York took pleasure 
 in witnessing the infliction of torture is not supported by 
 evidence, and is probably untrue. 
 
 Early in September Eenwick was back among his friends. 
 He had studied for a time at Groningen, and had obtained 
 ordination there, the Dutch divines allowing him to sign the 
 Westminster standards instead of their own formula. Against 
 this ordination the Scottish ministers at Eotterdam felt bound 
 to protest ; during his brief career Eenwick's difficulties were 
 as often with his own people as with the enemies of presbytery. 
 He found the Society-men eager to issue another declaration ; 
 at first he hung back, but, like all revolutionary leaders, he 
 was constantly in danger of being set aside by men more 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 extreme than himself ; he drew up the Apologetical Declaration 
 and Admonitory Vindication against Intelligencers and Informers, 
 which was published in November 1684. In this manifesto 
 the rebel party adhered to their declaration of war against 
 the King, and claimed the right to try and punish all who 
 assisted in the execution of the law ; judges, soldiers, and 
 informers were all to be treated as beasts of prey. Some 
 Covenanters were prepared to act on these principles : shortly 
 after the Declaration two lifeguardsmen who came too near 
 a conventicle were barbarously murdered. The Council con- 
 sulted the judges, who advised that any subject person might be 
 summoned to abjure the Declaration, in so far as it justified 
 war against the King or the murder of his officers. No rational 
 man could refuse to take an oath so limited ; but the Covenan- 
 ters were not in a rational frame of mind ; they still looked 
 for a victory .which would enable them to make an end of 
 malignants and sectaries. 
 
 In December, Peter Pierson, a conforming minister, suspected 
 of assisting the King's officers, was murdered by a small party 
 of Covenanters. On Christmas Eve Baillie of Jerviswood 
 suffered for his principles at Edinburgh. 
 
 Among those who welcomed the Apologetical Declaration we 
 may note the name of Alexander Shields, a ruddy little student, 
 not much older than Renwick. He was in London, .where he 
 preached, and was employed as John Owen's amanuensis. 
 Having dabbled in Whig politics, he was sent north for examina- 
 tion. Before his case was disposed of, King Charles died, 
 reconciled at the last to the Church of Rome, and was buried 
 with a pompous Anglican service ; King James was duly 
 proclaimed. Shields, under the threat of torture, gave way 
 and disowned all Declarations, in so far as they declared war 
 against the King ; he spent the rest of his life in trying to atone 
 for this ' fatal fall '. He afterwards wrote many pages of 
 sophistry to prove that no Christian could take the abjuration 
 oath. 
 
 Of the military men employed by Government, Claverhouse 
 was the most active and efficient. He was an intelligent 
 Protestant : but he had accepted favours from the crown, and
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 277 
 
 he persuaded himself that James would respect the religion 
 established in Scotland. The south and west were almost in 
 a state of war ; it is Claverhouse himself who uses the word 
 ' almost '. Even on his wedding day, when he carried off Jean 
 Cochrane from her covenanting relatives, Claverhouse had been 
 obliged to hurry away from the ceremony, in search of conven- 
 ticlers. On the 1st May 1685 he was riding from Lesmahagow in 
 Lanarkshire to Muirkirk in Ayrshire with three troops of horse ; 
 at Priesthill, near the end of his journey, he came upon two men 
 who made off across the moor. They were captured, and the 
 elder of the two, John Brown, was questioned ; ' he said he 
 knew no king ' ; in his house were found bullets, match, and 
 ' treasonable papers '. Claverhouse ordered him to be shot, 
 ' which he suffered very unconcernedly '. A hole or cave was 
 found, near the house, in which swords and pistols were con- 
 cealed. The younger man, Brown's nephew, was handed over 
 to military authority. On the following day two women were 
 drowned at Wigton. On what charge they were tried, and how 
 the recorded proceedings in the case are to be explained, cannot 
 now be known. Apparently John Brown, Margaret Lauchlison, 
 and Margaret Wilson all suffered for refusing to disown Ken- 
 wick's Declaration, in so far as it justified rebellion and murder. 
 But they gave their lives, as they believed, for Christ ; their 
 courage and self-sacrifice helped to carry Scotland through, not 
 to the victory of the saints which they expected, but at least to 
 a form of government under which a Christian man could live 
 peaceably, without swallowing either the Test or the Declaration. 
 The unsuccessful invasions led by Argyle and Monmouth 
 helped to strengthen the position of King James. His first 
 Parliament in Scotland had re-enacted the Test, and declared 
 the Covenants illegal, and the King began to press forward the 
 policy he inherited from his brother ; he would announce 
 a toleration, in which Catholics could have a share, and in this 
 way he would secure the support of the persecuted sections ; 
 Presbyterians and even Quakers might be brought to support 
 the prerogative. The Scottish bishops were not unwilling to 
 consider the abolition of sanguinary laws, but they were 
 Protestants, easily alarmed by a popish king. In February
 
 278 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 1686 Dr. Canaries, minister of Selkirk, a converted Papist, was 
 brought to Edinburgh to preach a sermon against the errors of 
 Rome. The King was angry, and insisted that Archbishop 
 Cairncross of Glasgow should deal with the preacher. In March 
 the primate (Ross) and Bishop Paterson went south to the 
 King ; they were ready to support his policy, on condition 
 that the Protestant religion should be safeguarded ; they 
 suggested that the Act of 1669, asserting the royal prerogative, 
 should be repealed. At the end of April, when Parliament met, 
 the most important spokesmen of the King were the brothers 
 Drummond ; James, Earl of Perth, was Chancellor ; John, 
 Earl of Melfort, had secured the forfeited estate of Cessnock, 
 and his titles were to be settled on the Catholic children of his 
 second marriage. Both brothers had found reasons for adopting 
 their royal master's religion. An Act was presented, embodying 
 the King's idea of a toleration, but the bishops spoke against it, 
 and it was withdrawn. The King took the line which had been 
 taken by his grandfather in regard to the Articles of Perth ; 
 the Act was not necessary ; he would do what was required by 
 exercising his prerogative. Bishop Bruce of Dunkeld was 
 deprived : this arbitrary act was undone at a later time, when 
 Bruce was transferred to the bishopric of Orkney. 
 
 In January 1687 Cairncross was deprived for his conduct in 
 the case of Dr. Canaries. In February the King issued a 
 proclamation by which Presbyterians, Quakers, and Catholics 
 were relieved from the penal laws ; this was followed up by 
 a proclamation, suspending all such laws. Many PresbyU rinns 
 who had scrupled at the first proclamation came in and took 
 advantage of the second ; in the end of July the complying 
 ministers met in Edinburgh and voted a loyal address, which 
 they afterwards explained away. Renwick and the Society-men 
 were not reconciled ; they justified their resistance by argu- 
 ments which would not now be thought valid, but they were, 
 unconsciously, helping to secure the essentials of good govern- 
 ment for their country. In December the abbey church at 
 Holyrood was fitted up for some of the King's Jesuits ; it was 
 reported that they were teaching- young people, printing 
 books, and committing other offences.
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 279 
 
 Kenwick did not live to be reconciled ; he ventured into 
 Edinburgh in January, was arrested on the 1st February, and 
 hanged on the 17th. He was the last to suffer for covenanting 
 principles ; the ' killing time ' was over, or almost over. On 
 the 10th June a son was born to the King at St. James. This 
 child, who lived to be known as the Old Pretender, was certainly 
 the son of James and Mary of Modena, but for many years it was 
 an article of Whig belief that the papist king had added to his 
 many offences by palming off a fictitious heir to the crown. The 
 story was circulated in time to help the Prince of Orange, who 
 was about to repeat the adventure of Argyle and Monmouth, 
 but this time with a reasonable hope of success. On the 
 5th November he landed at Torbay, and Carstares prayed for 
 a blessing on his army. 
 
 The Kevolution of 1688 was merely a change of dynasty, but 
 the change marks a turning-point in our national history not 
 less important than the Eeformation. William of Orange, 
 when he became King, was firm in asserting his prerogative, 
 but he did not imagine that his prerogative entitled him to 
 disregard the law, or to break his word. He was magnanimous, 
 and could pass over offences personal to himself. He was 
 a hereditary Calvinist and Presbyterian, but not a deeply 
 religious man. He had learned from the example of the Great 
 Elector, Frederick- William of Brandenburg, that subjects of 
 different religions will be equally loyal to a government which 
 respects their beliefs and usages. In the matter of Church 
 government he was a latitudinarian ; he knew how strong the 
 Episcopalians were in Scotland ; at this moment more than 
 half the people, and most of the gentry, adhered to what had 
 been for a quarter of a century the Established Church. As 
 a statesman William saw the advantages of a closer union 
 between the two kingdoms, in Church and State. If circum- 
 stances had permitted, he would have tried some plan of compre- 
 hension. The Scottish bishops prevented any such experiment 
 by throwing in their lot with King James. Their decision was 
 certainly not dictated by worldly wisdom, but it was consistent 
 with the principles which they (and others) had professed. 
 
 Before the year was out, it was known that King James had
 
 280 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 fled away to France. The chapel at Holyrood was wrecked, and 
 on Christmas Day the earnest Presbyterians (often called 
 Cameronians) rose in the west country, and a considerable 
 number of the conforming clergy were turned out, with their 
 wives and children. No lives were taken, but bands of rough 
 men and ill-behaved women went about, insulting and ill- 
 treating the unfortunate curates. These excesses were reported 
 in England, and the clergy there were invited to consider what 
 would happen to them if they united with Presbyterians. 
 
 In the opening of 1689 the Presbyterian ministers who 
 accepted the new order of things held a meeting in Edinburgh ; 
 they now explained that their address to King James did not 
 bind them to any relaxation of the penal laws against Papists. 
 On the 14th March the Estates met in convention ; Claverhouse, 
 now Viscount Dundee, came also among them, but left when 
 he found that his own party was outnumbered. The proceedings 
 followed closely on the lines already laid down in England ; the 
 crown was offered to William and Mary ; a Claim of Right was 
 presented. The points of this Claim were voted unanimously, 
 with one exception ; the article which declared that ' Prelacy 
 and superiority of any office in the Church above Presbyters ' 
 had been an insupportable grievance ' ever since the Reforma- 
 tion ', was carried by a majority. Ministers were directed to 
 pray for the new King and Queen ; among those who were 
 deprived for non-compliance we note the name of Andrew Cant, 
 a grandson of him who had dictated to Charles I ; this Cant 
 ultimately became a bishop. William and Mary accepted the 
 crown, but, in taking the coronation oath, the King scrupled 
 at the words which bound him to root out all heretics and 
 enemies to the true worship of God ; he did not wish to be 
 a persecutor. He was assured that the words were only matter 
 of form ; when Morton took the oath on behalf of the infant 
 James, Knox had not been of that opinion. 
 
 When the Estates met again as a Parliament in June, an Act 
 was presented, abolishing prelacy, and empowering their 
 majesties ' to settle the Presbyterian government in the way 
 most agreeable to the inclinations of the people and the Word of 
 God ', but before the Act was passed the word ' Presbyterian '
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 281 
 
 and the reference to the Word of God were omitted. William 
 was bound by English law to be a member of the Church of 
 England ; he could not tell his fellow-members that their 
 government was contrary to the Word of God. In the arrange- 
 ments for the re-establishment of Presbytery, much assistance 
 was given by the Earl of Crawford, a Presbyterian whose zeal 
 was not weakened by the fact that his own revenues had been 
 compiled by his predecessors out of the spoils of five bishoprics. 
 
 While Parliament debated, Dundee won Killiecrankie on the 
 27th July ; he was mortally wounded in the moment of victory. 
 
 When Parliament met again, in April 1690, Lord Melville 
 represented the King ; the Assertory Act of 1669 was repealed, 
 and on the following day the Westminster Confession of Faith 
 was recorded as the faith of the restored Church ; on the 
 7th June Presbyterian government was established, as in 1592. 
 The thorny question of patronage was considered once more ; 
 Carstares, who knew what his party owed to the nobility, wished 
 to retain the institution, but Lord Melville was against it. On 
 the 19th July the rights of patrons were taken away ; a small 
 compensation was to be paid them ; the heritors (landowners), 
 being Protestants, and the elders were to present a minister to 
 the congregation ; if the people disapproved, the case might be 
 taken to the presbytery, and on appeal "to the Synod and 
 Assembly. An Assembly was to meet in October ; the ministers 
 outed in 1661, now some sixty in number, were to be members, 
 together with such ministers and elders as they might choose. 
 The judges were forbidden to take a holiday at Christmas. The 
 King hoped that Episcopalians in Scotland might be treated 
 as indulgently as nonconformists had been treated in England ; 
 but Melville probably saw that this would raise a storm, and 
 the proposal was not put forward. On comparing these pro- 
 visions with previous legislation, we see that the significance of 
 the new settlement turned chiefly on what was not included. 
 Both Covenants were ignored ; nothing was said of the period 
 which began with the Glasgow Assembly and ended with 
 Dunbar ; no reference was made to the Word of God. We may 
 be sure that the final decision, what to say and what not to say, 
 rested with the King, and the result does great credit to his
 
 282 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 political skill. He had to solve his Church problems in the midst 
 of political cares and dangers ; this very year witnessed the 
 formation of a Jacobite plot, so dangerous that it tempted 
 William into an unfortunate decision. An English Catholic 
 named Payne, an agent of the plot, came or was lured across 
 the border ; he was carried to Edinburgh and tortured, but 
 revealed nothing. He was tortured a second time, more 
 severely, under an order signed by the King and countersigned 
 by Lord Melville. Lord Crawford's embarrassed narrative 
 shows that the practice of torture was falling into discredit. 
 Payne was kept ten years in prison without trial. 
 
 In October the Assembly met as directed ; over 160 ministers 
 and elders were present. Many of the members had" been 
 protesters ; there was some simmering dissatisfaction with the 
 new settlement ; but nothing was said of the Covenants. 
 Some of the ministers (Kirkton the historian, for example, and 
 Fraser of Brea) must have found this unsatisfactory, but the 
 impending Jacobite danger prevented open controversy. 
 Private communion and baptism were forbidden ; so far as 
 baptism was concerned this rule has been a good deal disregarded. 
 Shields and two others, licensed to preach by the Society-men, 
 were accepted as licentiates of the Established Church, and 
 enjoined to walk orderly in time coming. Most Cameronians 
 had no intention to walk orderly ; they thought the Covenants 
 were still binding on the nation, but they were now only 
 a remnant. To fill up Ken wick's place they had sent a young 
 man to obtain ordination at Emden ; they had been told that 
 the authorities there were neither Erastians nor Cocceians. Of 
 Erastus (Lieber) we have had occasion to speak ; Cocceius 
 (Johann Koch) was a learned orientalist at Leyden who held 
 that Hebrew texts ought to be interpreted according to their 
 context, not according to the rules of any dogmatic system. 
 
 William's policy (for he, too, was something of an Erastian) 
 brought him at once into conflict with the old claim of the 
 Assembly. When the venerable house rose in 1690, the High 
 Commissioner adjourned to a day which he named ; the 
 Moderator, taking no notice of Lord Carmichael's intimation, 
 adjourned to the same day ; this has been the practice in the
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 283 
 
 Established Church ever since. The Assembly of 1692 proved 
 a little unmanageable, and was dissolved, the Moderator pro- 
 testing on behalf of the ' spiritual intrinsic power ' of the 
 Church, and naming a day to which the house was adjourned. 
 There was no Assembly in 1693, but Parliament passed an Act 
 for settling the quiet and peace of the Church : no person was 
 to be admitted or continued as a minister unless, having 
 subscribed the oath of allegiance and the assurance (a declara- 
 tion that William was king, not only in fact but of right), he 
 accepted also the Confession of Faith and the Presbyterian 
 settlement. This was not what the King intended ; but to 
 insist on a civil oath as a qualification for sitting in a Church 
 court would have been imprudent ; the King, yielding to his 
 own imperious temper, or to the advice of others, sent off 
 a peremptory dispatch, but Carstares arrived just in time to 
 stop the King's messenger ; he took the dispatch to William, and 
 persuaded him to withhold it ; the Assembly of 1694 passed 
 without misadventure. In 1695 the Presbyterians obtained an 
 Act of Parliament forbidding deprived ministers to baptize or 
 marry. The usual expulsions and intrusions went on, but only 
 at a moderate pace ; in the north, in places where the Episco- 
 palian minister was of one mind with his flock, the thunderbolts 
 of the Kirk fell harmless. In 1700 George Garden, a friend of 
 Henry Scougal, was dealt with by the Assembly for writing an 
 Apology for Madame Bourignon, a French mystic whose 
 writings obtained some currency in Scotland. After 1711 
 Bourignonism was among the errors which candidates for the 
 ministry were required to disown ; they went on disowning it 
 long after most people had forgotten what it was. 
 
 The Assembly which met in December 1695 took note of the 
 prevalence of infidel opinions, and in the following year a case 
 arose which seemed to call for action. Thomas Aikenhead, 
 a well-conducted student of nineteen, was uttering dangerous 
 opinions among his friends ; he thought the Old Testament was 
 invented by Ezra, and he used sacred names in an offensively 
 irreverent way. James Stewart, joint-author of Naphtali, was 
 now Lord Advocate ; he was a man of great legal ability, but 
 his conduct of this case does not add to his reputation for
 
 284 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 common sense. Aikenhead was tried, condemned, and hanged. 
 There was some attempt to obtain a reprieve, but the ministers, 
 perhaps with one or two exceptions, ' spoke and preached for 
 cutting him off.' 
 
 In 1697 the Assembly passed the Barrier Act, under which an 
 ' overture ' was to be sent down and discussed by presbyteries 
 before it could be turned into an Act. The immediate object 
 of the Barrier Act was to prevent the King from making use of 
 a compliant Assembly to pass an Act admitting Episcopalians 
 to the benefit of the Revolution settlement. Kirk-sessions were 
 not included, as they had been in the Barrier Act of 1639.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 
 
 ON the 8th March 1702 King William died, and the Princess 
 Anne came to the throne. She was a devoted member ^of the 
 Church of England, attached to the prayer-book on which the 
 Scottish book of Charles I was founded. The English book 
 was being introduced in Episcopalian meeting-houses in 
 Scotland ; the Assembly thought this inconsistent with 
 uniformity of worship ; a chapel in Glasgow was attacked 
 by a mob. Except on this point the Queen was out of sympathy 
 with her co-religionists in the north ; the bishops there were 
 Jacobites, and they were now drawing together, planning to 
 continue the episcopal succession, and emphasizing thehigher 
 points of their doctrine, much as the Non-jurors did in England. 
 As to Papists, Anne was content that they should remain as 
 they were ; she renewed the offer of 500 merks for the capture 
 of a priest or Jesuit, and allowed the penal laws to have their 
 course. The Catholics now had a bishop in partibus infidelium, 
 Thomas Nicholson. He found communities of his own faith 
 in the highlands and islands ; the priests who ministered to 
 these outlying congregations lived very much as Peden and 
 Cargill had lived in Galloway. 
 
 In 1703 Scotland was electing the representative members 
 of her last national Parliament ; the Presbyterians were so far 
 successful that the position of the Established Church was for 
 the moment safe. There were some doubts about the future, 
 for it was Anne's intention to carry through King William's 
 project of a closer union between England and Scotland. We 
 may admit now that the Union was inevitable, but it was 
 very unpopular at the time. In trying to remove objections 
 to this measure Anne was greatly assisted by Carstares, now 
 the Principal of Edinburgh University, and as important as 
 any man in Scotland. Every effort was used to conciliate the
 
 286 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Presbyterians ; the Act of Security provided that the existing 
 constitution of the Church of Scotland should continue ' without 
 any alteration in time to come ' ; every sovereign on accession 
 was to swear that he would maintain and preserve it. An 
 unalterable constitution would be regarded by any modern 
 Church or State as an intolerable grievance, but in the kingdom 
 of Great Britain the sovereign authority is the King in 
 Parliament ; both judges and statesmen refuse to set limits 
 to the power of Parliament to alter anything it thinks wrong. 
 In the year of the Union the Assembly noted that innovations 
 were being introduced, ' contrary to our known principle, 
 which is, that nothing is to be admitted in the worship of God 
 but what is prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.' In spite of 
 this warning, James Greenshields, a Scotsman who had been 
 a curate in Ireland, opened a chapel at Edinburgh and used 
 the English book. The presbytery forbade him to preach ; 
 the magistrates put him into prison, until he should give 
 security to desist from his ministry ; the Court of Session 
 upheld the magistrates. On appeal to the House of Lords 
 that tribunal gave judgment for Greenshields, with expenses. 
 Soon after this decision Carstares and another minister were 
 in London, to protest against two Bills which' threatened the 
 unalterable constitution of the Presbyterian Church. In the 
 Toleration Bill it was proposed to repeal the Act of 1695, and 
 to grant toleration to episcopal ministers who took the oaths 
 to Government. Gilbert Burnet, now a bishop, argued against 
 this in the House of Lords ; he maintained that the Presby- 
 terians had been promised uniformity as an essential condition 
 of the Union. In the Patronage Bill it was proposed to restore 
 the rights of patrons, on the allegation that the mode of 
 appointing ministers introduced in 1690 had led to heats and 
 disturbances. This very unwise alteration of the law was 
 promoted by Jacobites and Tories, who wished to make 
 mischief ; five Anglican bishops voted against it, but both 
 Bills were passed. The Christmas holiday of the law-courts 
 was restored ; the first Parliament of King George once more 
 abolished the ' popish festival ', but it seems to have come back 
 without the leave of the Kirk.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 287 
 
 At the end of July 1714 Queen Anne lay dying ; early on 
 Sunday the 1st August the Bishop of Salisbury (Gilbert Burnet) 
 went to Kensington to inquire. In Smithfield he met his 
 friend Mr. Bradbury, Independent minister, who was ruefully 
 considering the possibility of a Stewart succession ; Burnet 
 promised to send him news. On his arrival at the palace the 
 Bishop found that the Queen had passed away. Politically 
 speaking, all had gone well for the Whigs ; King George was 
 to be proclaimed at once. When Bradbury announced this 
 from the pulpit the congregation burst into thanksgiving and 
 praise. Deputations came from Scotland to congratulate the 
 new King. The ministers who attended had the opportunity 
 of calling on the Bishop, who discussed religious matters, 
 spoke highly of William Guthrie of Fenwick, and gave a gilt 
 copy of The Christian's Great Interest to each member of the 
 deputation. On a subsequent Sunday some Scottish lords took 
 supper with Burnet ; we remember how, long ago, ' the 
 Duke ' had supped on Sunday with Mr. Knox. Burnet spoke 
 of points in the Anglican system which he would fain see 
 altered ; but the work, he said, was hindered because the 
 Church of England was divided. The High Churchmen wished 
 to ruin the dissenters, the Low Churchmen wished to retain 
 them ; ' and there it stands.' 
 
 Before the end of Anne's reign, Webster of Edinburgh, 
 a fervid Calvinist, called attention to the teaching of John 
 Simson, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. So far as we can 
 make out, Simson was a well-meaning man, easily influenced 
 by the books he read. The chief error of which he was accused 
 at this stage was that he ' attributed too much to nature '. 
 In the year of Webster's attack a son was born to one Bousseau, 
 watchmaker at Geneva ; this son, Jean Jacques, was destined 
 to carry the gospel of nature to conclusions not dreamed of in 
 the philosophy of any Scottish Whig. The case against Simson 
 hung on till 1717, when the Assembly recorded a cautious 
 deliverance ; the Professor had vented some unnecessary 
 opinions, used some unfamiliar expressions ; he was prohibited 
 from teaching or preaching such opinions. At the same 
 Assembly the presbytery of Auchterarder was dealt with for
 
 288 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 requiring a candidate to sign the proposition that ' it is not 
 sound or orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order 
 to our coming to Christ '. This is perhaps not a happy way of 
 expressing the Christian doctrine of grace, and, in making 
 a new test, the presbytery exceeded its powers. The mild 
 censure on Simson did not satisfy the orthodox, and a group 
 of ministers drew together in defence of the faith as they 
 understood it. Of this group the oldest member was Thomas 
 Boston, who had spent his life in the pastoral parishes of 
 Simprin and Ettrick. Overcoming difficulties such as the 
 modern student can hardly realize, Boston had made himself 
 a scholar and a theologian ; he was also a noted preacher. 
 One day at Simprin he went into the cottage of a parishioner 
 who had been in the English wars, and saw there two little 
 brown volumes, one of which turned out to be the Marrow of 
 Modern Divinity, a treatise written by some English Independent 
 in the days before Independency had come into power. It is 
 not easy for a layman to be sure, but I am disposed to say that 
 the Marrow is neither Antinomian nor otherwise heretical. 
 The book expressed the beliefs of extreme Calvinists, and it 
 came to light at a time when those beliefs were being under- 
 mined. With Boston of Ettrick were Hog of Carnock, Ebenezer 
 Erskine of Stirling, Ralph Erskine of Dunfermline, and others. 
 In 1718 Hog reprinted Part First of the Marrow ; in 1720 the 
 Commission of Assembly, Principal Hadow of St. Andrews in 
 the chair, found six ' Antinomian paradoxes ' in the work ; 
 a Representation was drawn up by twelve ministers (the 
 apostles, as they were called) ; the Commission of Assembly 
 posed the twelve with twelve questions, and the Marrow-men 
 went on preaching as before. In 1722, when the Assembly 
 refused to receive a protest, there was a thunderstorm in the 
 afternoon ; as in 1621 this was deemed to be a token of Divine 
 displeasure. 
 
 Before the Marrow question was out of the way Professor 
 Simson was again in trouble. He had studied Samuel Clarke's 
 Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, a work of an Arian tendency. 
 These party names are used by divines in a somewhat elusive 
 way, but we may take it that in the eighteenth century the
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 289 
 
 name of Arian indicated one who believed in the divinity, but 
 not in the deity, of our Lord. Simson thought, rightly or 
 wrongly, that in Scotland Arianism was not dangerous ; the 
 tendency seemed rather towards Sabellianism, and he had 
 framed his teaching accordingly. Whatever he said was 
 twisted against him in argument ; his students were encouraged 
 to give their possibly inaccurate versions of his lectures. He 
 had lectured, as the custom then was, in Latin ; this was 
 found so embarrassing that after Simson's time the lectures 
 were in English. Finally, the poor man lapsed into ill health ; 
 his mind was affected, and he babbled of the Fathers and the 
 Councils. 
 
 In 1726 the Glasgow presbytery was busy with Simson ; 
 James Erskine (Lord Grange) was one of the committee who 
 sat on the case. The career of this eminent man indicates 
 that Hadow's anxiety about Antinomianism was not unreason- 
 able. Grange was an evangelical, and used the current phrases 
 of emotional piety ; in private life he was a profligate ; he 
 carried through at least one crime of some magnitude, when 
 he arranged to have his wife abducted, carried to the north, 
 and ultimately lodged in St. Kilda. His library was rich in 
 books on demonology ; he heard with alarm that many in 
 England were prepared to abolish the laws against witchcraft. 
 In 1728 Simson abjured the errors imputed to him, but his 
 opponents did not relax their efforts ; in 1729 he was finally 
 suspended from teaching : the Marrow-men thought he should 
 be deposed and deprived of his salary. For eleven years he 
 continued to draw his salary, and no arrangement was made 
 to supply his place. It may be doubted whether any Church 
 has devised a satisfactory mode of trying heresy cases ; the 
 Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century was certainly 
 not successful. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the prevailing unrest was 
 not limited to the Established Church. The Church of 
 Eome found opportunity to condemn Jansen and Quesnel. 
 Among Episcopalians there was a difference of opinion as to 
 certain usages introduced into the Communion Service : of 
 these the most important was ' commemoration of the faithful 
 
 u
 
 290 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 departed '. The College of Bishops opposed the usages, and 
 parties were formed. Aberdeen, usually fortunate in her 
 bishops, was for twelve years under the pastoral oversight 
 of James Gadderar, who did much to compose the strife 
 between collegers and usagers. This good man and his brother 
 had been among the curates ' rabbled out ' at the Revolution. 
 
 Ever since its enactment the Patronage Act had been a 
 cause of difficulty, and after 1730 the difficulty was serious. 
 In a parish threatened with an unpopular presentee, a crowd 
 would turn out to prevent his induction ; civil and even 
 military force had to be displayed. When the ministers of 
 a presbytery were of the popular party they refused to carry 
 out the settlement. In 1729 the Assembly appointed a com- 
 mittee to ' concur ' with a recalcitrant presbytery in effecting 
 a settlement ; these riding committees, as they were called, 
 were in use for twenty years. The enemies of patronage 
 embarrassed their argument by objecting to a number of things 
 which they had no power to alter. They objected to toleration, 
 the only feasible basis of a modern State ; they regarded 
 the union with England as a national sin ; they were solemnly 
 convinced that the laws against witchcraft must be retained. 
 
 In 1732 the Assembly enacted that, where the patron failed 
 to present, and the right of presentation devolved on the 
 presbytery, the procedure of 1690 should be followed. There 
 was some disputation as to the use made of the Barrier Act 
 on this occasion ; what was more important was, that the 
 minority asserted the ' right ' of the congregation to elect their 
 minister. In October Ebenezer Erskine preached to the synod 
 of Perth and Stirling on toleration and patronage ; the synod, 
 by a majority, censured the sermon. In May 1733, Ebenezer 
 was formally rebuked at the bar of the Assembly ; he wished 
 to read a protest, signed by himself and three others ; the 
 Assembly refused, but the paper was left lying about ; an 
 untimely minister called attention to its language, and the four 
 were ordered to retract ; on .refusing to do this they were, 
 in August, suspended, and in November ' loosed from their 
 charges '. On the 6th December they met at Gairney Bridge 
 near Kinross, and constituted themselves into an ' associate
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 291 
 
 presbytery '. Ealph Erskine was present, but did not join in 
 this act ; the Seceders issued a Testimony containing some 
 fanciful history and some impracticable politics. The spring 
 communion of 1734 was made the occasion of an assemblage 
 of their supporters ; the Assembly was alarmed, and en- 
 deavoured to undo what it had done : the inconveniences of 
 patronage were now so obvious that in 1735 a deputation went 
 to London asking for its abolition ; but the great landowners 
 persuaded Government that their patronage enabled them to 
 influence the Church in favour of law and order. 
 
 In 1735 Parliament, now mainly an English body, abolished 
 the laws against witchcraft. Lord Grange was so eager to 
 prevent this ' national sin ' that he resigned his place on the 
 bench in order to enter the House of Commons ; but his 
 argument, when he addressed the house, was received with 
 laughter, and he effected nothing. 1736 was the year of the 
 Porteous riot at Edinburgh ; the incident had nothing directly 
 to do with religion, but some ministers seem to have preached 
 imprudent sermons. When Parliament meted out what was 
 thought an appropriate punishment, parish ministers were 
 required to read the Act from the pulpit ; this was resented as 
 an attempt to dictate in spiritual matters, and a few ministers 
 joined the seceders. The Assembly had not given up the 
 hope of bringing the dissenters back, but in 1739 they appeared 
 at the bar as a presbytery, and declined the jurisdiction, as the 
 bishops had done in 1638. In 1740 they were deposed. 
 
 On reviewing the results of their action we can see now that 
 by leaving a Church whose standards and form of government 
 they approved, they did no great service to the cause which 
 they had at heart. It is partly to the Seceders that we owe 
 the long ascendancy of ' moderatism ' in the national Church. 
 In the Assembly parties were often evenly balanced ; when 
 we read of keen debates and close divisions, we cannot but 
 reflect that the Seceders, if they had been there, might have 
 turned the scale. In parishes throughout the country, where- 
 ever a group of evangelicals were dissatisfied with the teaching 
 of a moderate minister, they could write to Mr. Ebenezer for 
 ' supply of sermon ' ; a preacher would be sent ; a grey stone 
 
 U2
 
 292 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 building would be erected to hold him ; in this way the move- 
 ment spread rapidly. In 1741 the Seceders were brought 
 into contact with Whitefield, who spent part of the year in 
 Scotland. They wished him to preach to their people only, 
 and Kalph Erskine (who was by this time a Seceder) told him 
 that they were ' the Lord's people in Scotland '. Whitefield 
 intimated that he had come to preach to the devil's people ; 
 he would preach in St. Peter's at Home if the Pope would give 
 him leave. The doubts implanted in their minds were strength- 
 ened when the English preacher came again in 1742, to take 
 part in revival work at Cambuslang. Some thought this work 
 an outpouring of the Spirit ; the Seceders denounced it as 
 a delusion of Satan ; Whitefield, they said, was an ' idolater ' 
 and the minister of an idolatrous Church. By 1744 the Secession 
 was a synod of three presbyteries ; but at the first meeting 
 of synod two presbyteries asked for inquiry as to the terms 
 of the burgess-oath which was taken by office-holders in 
 Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Perth. Could a Christian man 
 ' profess and allow the true religion presently professed within 
 this realm ' ; was not the religion of the realm merely an 
 Erastian compromise ? Before the question could be answered, 
 the friends of the Protestant succession had to stop fighting 
 among themselves ; on the 10th August 1745 Charles Edward 
 unfurled the standard of King James at Glenfinnan. The 
 Seceders volunteered in such numbers that there was some 
 talk of forming them into a regiment ; even Mr. Ebenezer 
 appeared in uniform. At the same moment William Robertson 
 was carrying a musket in the Edinburgh Volunteers : thus 
 the house of Hanover brought together men whom religion 
 had failed to reconcile. In April 1746, after Culloden, the 
 danger of a Jacobite restoration was over, and the Government 
 troops were free to march about destroying Catholic and 
 Episcopalian chapels. It would have been difficult to make 
 the legal position of Catholics worse than it was ; their priests 
 could be hunted down and imprisoned or banished under the 
 penal laws. The Episcopalians were also treated as enemies of 
 Government ; Acts were passed under which they could not 
 legally officiate unless they obtained English or Irish orders.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 293 
 
 These Acts were largely successful in their operation ; under 
 the system now introduced the Episcopal Church became 
 ' the shadow of a shade '. 
 
 When the country was settling down the Seceders went on 
 with their controversy about the burgess-oath. In April 1747 
 the Associate Synod met at Edinburgh ; it is impossible to 
 give a short account of the proceedings, but in the end the 
 opponents of the oath retired ; they resolved that they (the 
 Antiburghers) were the Associate Synod ; no presbytery was 
 lawful unless it was in subordination to them : they regardecf 
 the Erskines as rebels against the true Church, and ' handed 
 them over to Satan'. These transactions were carried through 
 at the house of Adam Gib, a formidable debater who led the 
 Antiburghers, so far as these conscientious men could see their 
 way to let anybody lead. The contest which ensued was 
 extremely bitter. Families were broken up : John Erskine 
 conducted the devotions of the Antiburghers when his father, 
 Ealph Erskine, was deposed and excommunicated. Ebenezer's 
 daughter Ailie was the wife of a minister who became an 
 Antiburgher ; she ' lifted her Bible ', and rode fourteen miles 
 on Sunday to the nearest church of her father's persuasion. 
 Where a congregation was divided, the minority refused to 
 give up the meeting-house ; at this point begins the long 
 course of litigation which has rendered it necessary for civil 
 courts to define the principles of our non- established Churches, 
 sometimes with startling results. As for the literature of the 
 question, it is not easy in a short compass to give any notion 
 of its volume or its misdirected vigour. I am disposed to 
 say that the Antiburghers excelled in logic, the Burghers in 
 common sense. The two branches of the Secession were not 
 the only dissenting Presbyterians. In 1743 John Macmillan, 
 after a long career of ecclesiastical adventures, found there 
 was one minister in Scotland with whom he could unite ; he 
 and Thomas Nairn became a ' reformed presbytery ', but they 
 separated on a point of doctrine. In 1752 six ministers of the 
 presbytery of Dunfermline were dealt with for refusing to 
 settle an unpopular presentee ; the Assembly resolved to 
 depose one of the six ; the one selected was Thomas Gillespie ;
 
 294 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 after a time he joined with Thomas Boston, son of the old 
 Boston ; they founded a ' presbytery of relief '. Outside the 
 Presbyterian pale were the followers of John Glas ; when this 
 worthy man was joined by his son-in-law Eobert Sandeman, 
 a number of small communities were formed, each trying to 
 guide itself by the letter of the New Testament. One of their 
 institutions was a common meal, the Agape of the early Church 
 under Scottish conditions ; the common people called them 
 ' Kailites '. The continuous existence of these bodies is enough 
 to prove that toleration had, in practice, made some progress ; 
 but in 1753 John Skinner, author of A Preservation against 
 Presbytery (and of Tullochgorum), was sent to prison for preach- 
 ing to an audience of more than four in his own house. John 
 Wesley visited Scotland in 1751 and subsequent years, but 
 made no marked impression on the people. He was an 
 Arminian : worse than that, he was an Oxford graduate 
 who spoke of the Scottish reformers as ' sour, overbearing, 
 passionate men '. 
 
 In view of these divisive tendencies the supporters of the 
 Established Church drew together ; at a critical time they 
 obtained a leader in whom they could have entire confidence. 
 In 1762 William Robertson became Principal of Edinburgh 
 University ; in the following year he was Moderator of the 
 Assembly. His fame as a historian reflected credit on his 
 Church ; his practical ability proved him the successor of 
 Henderson and Carstares. He was strictly orthodox, and 
 disliked the lax theology expounded from some ' moderate * 
 pulpits. In estimating his work we must beware of those 
 modern books which disparage Robertson as a kind of nominal 
 Christian. If respect for the beliefs of others be a Christian 
 virtue, he deserves a high place in our religious history. In 
 regard to patronage, he stood by the law of the Church. He 
 would protect any congregation against a heretical or immoral 
 presentee ; but the ' evangelical ' claim could only have been 
 met by giving the people either the right of election or at the 
 least the ' veto without reasons ' which was claimed at a later 
 stage of the controversy, and Robertson encouraged no such 
 aspiration. Where a local presbytery was recalcitrant, he
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 295 
 
 brought the matter to a simple issue; if a presbytery may 
 disobey the Assembly, what becomes of Presbyterianism ? 
 The evangelicals pleaded that they should not be punished for 
 disobeying ' an Assembly of fallible men '. 
 
 Under Eobertson's guidance the Church coasted round 
 certain issues which might have been dangerous. In 1755 
 Hume's Essay on Miracles was discussed, and there was some 
 talk of dealing with that placid sceptic ; the Assembly con- 
 tented itself with a general deliverance on infidelity, and 
 declined to exercise discipline : Hume was left sitting peaceably 
 outside the fold, and cultivating friendship with those within. 
 In 1756 the tragedy of Douglas was performed at an Edinburgh 
 theatre ; some Established Church ministers asserted their 
 right to attend. There was much disputation about this, the 
 champions on the side of ' liberty ' being John Home of 
 Athelstaneford, the author of the play, and Alexander Carlyle 
 of Inveresk, a fine type of Scottish manhood, often selected as 
 a typical ' moderate ', because of the wholly secular tone of 
 his amusing autobiography. Feeling ran so high that Eobert- 
 son himself was accused of having taken part in the rehearsal ; 
 he never even saw the play, having promised his dead father 
 that he would not go to theatres. Again the Assembly gave 
 a general deliverance, and the chief culprits were protected 
 against punishment. These two cases are significant ; they 
 show that wise men were beginning to see that the discipline 
 of the Church is for her own members, and that, even in the 
 case of. ministers, it should not be pressed too far. Among 
 dissenters also there were movements towards liberty. The 
 Burghers were never a subversive people ; but John Brown, 
 their minister at Haddington, published an easy explanation 
 of the Confession of Faith, in which Antiburgher critics detected 
 some error. But the Antiburghers themselves were moving. 
 They knew of course that George II was not a covenanted king, 
 but in 1759, when Moncrieff proposed to remind the King of 
 his duty, Adam Gib interposed an objection. Modern writers 
 say he explained the Covenants in a ' voluntary ' sense. In 
 1763 they voted 50 in aid of a mission to Eed Indians ; this 
 was movement in the right direction, for the Protestant Churches
 
 296 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 had been too busy figbting to do much for foreign missions. 
 Antiburghers would not co-operate with Burghers, even so far 
 away as the colony of New York. 
 
 In 1766 the Assembly considered the report of a committee 
 appointed to consider the growth and the causes of dissent ; 
 there were now 120 meeting-houses, attended by 100,000 
 persons : the abuse of patronage was named among the causes 
 of secession. The reference to patronage was struck out by 
 a vote of 99 to 85. Robertson had great influence with patrons 
 and ministers ; he was satisfied with the working of patronage 
 as an institution ; he knew that any proposal to innovate 
 would be defeated in London. He may have thought the 
 Secession useful as an outlet for the less tractable Presbyterians. 
 His leadership secured a period of comparative peace and 
 quiet. 
 
 There were at this time some twenty to thirty thousand 
 Roman Catholics in Scotland, and the penal laws were still 
 in force, tempered only by some laxity in administration. 
 Besides being excluded from the franchise and public office, 
 Catholics were under rules which prevented them from exer- 
 cising ordinary civil rights. Thus, the heir to an estate, on 
 attaining the age of fifteen, might be required to profess him- 
 self a Protestant ; if he refused, his inheritance went to the 
 nearest Protestant heir who would claim it. Fathers were fined 
 for sending their children to be educated abroad ; a father 
 whose son went abroad and became a Catholic was forbidden 
 to send him money, except for the purpose of returning to 
 Scotland. To harbour a Catholic, to refuse attendance at 
 a Protestant service, to argue in favour of Roman doctrines 
 these were offences involving confiscation of goods. The 
 avowed object of this merciless code was to keep the adherents 
 of the old Church in poverty, ignorance and subjection. In 
 England eloquent voices were raised on behalf of Catholics, 
 and in 1778 an Act was passed, relieving them of some of their 
 disabilities ; an Association was formed in London to procure 
 the repeal of this Act ; the chairman w r as Lord George Gordon, 
 an eccentric young man who had left the Navy because he 
 could not get the command of a ship. In Scotland the Assembly
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY 297 
 
 took notice of the alarming progress of popery ; the synod 
 of Glasgow and Ayr appointed a fast ; Protestant zeal was 
 roused to fury by the announcement that a Bill for the relief 
 of Scottish Catholics would be introduced by the Lord Advocate. 
 On the Sunday after the synod meeting a private house where 
 Glasgow Catholics were meeting for worship was wrecked and 
 rifled. An Englishman named Bagnall, a manufacturer in the 
 city, allowed the expelled congregation to meet in his house. 
 At the opening of February 1779 the Edinburgh mob attacked 
 and burned a new chapel. George Hay, the Catholic Bishop, 
 was out of town at the moment ; he returned to find his 
 chapel surrounded by crowds of people. When he asked what 
 was going on, an old woman told him that they were burning 
 the popish chapel; they only wished they had the Bishop, 
 to throw him into the fire. Robertson had used all his influence 
 to stem the tide of intolerance ; he was charged with being 
 a pensioner of the Pope and a tool of the Government in 
 London. His house was attacked ; his evangelical and anti- 
 popish colleague, Dr. John Erskine, tried to persuade the mob 
 to retire ; the dragoons rode up just in time. A week later 
 the house and warehouse of Mr. Bagnall were burned at 
 Glasgow. These demonstrations were successful for the moment ; 
 the threatened Bill was dropped ; it was not revived for fourteen 
 years. The Assembly of 1779 recorded a resolution asserting 
 the inexpediency and the danger of repealing the penal laws. 
 Eobertson re'signed his position as leader of the dominant 
 party ; at this crisis he found himself out of sympathy with 
 many earnest Protestants. He disliked the theology expounded 
 by some members of his party, and feared that they would 
 move to abolish subscription to the Confession of Faith. His 
 firm stand against intolerance is the last and the most memor- 
 able incident of his leadership. He was succeeded by Dr. George 
 Hill of St. Andrews. 
 
 A new voice was beginning to be heard in the west ; Eobert 
 Burns was writing verses, sentimental or satirical, which 
 ultimately made him a power in the land. It is well known 
 that Bums championed ' liberal ' ideas in Church matters ; 
 it mav be useful to note how these ideas found entrance to his
 
 298 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 mind. In 1730, just after Simson was suspended, Francis 
 Hutcheson came from Ireland to teach philosophy at Glasgow. 
 His eloquent lectures attracted many disciples, but they 
 suggested a more hopeful view of society and human nature 
 than the current Calvinism could accept. There were also 
 Englishmen who exercised freedom in discussing ' orthodox ' 
 beliefs ; of these we may name John Taylor, a Presbyterian 
 minister at Norwich Presbyterian in the English sense of the 
 word. In 1740 Taylor published an essay on the Scripture 
 Doctrine of Original Sin, in which the proof-texts of our Shorter 
 Catechism are handled in a manner which the Westminster 
 divines would have condemned. He also published a catechism 
 of his own, which obtained a wide circulation. William Burnes 
 or Burns, a gardener near Alloway Kirk, wrote out a manual 
 for his children in which notions derived from Taylor and 
 Hutcheson were stated in simple language. In his early man- 
 hood Eobert Burns came upon a volume of sermons by Taylor's 
 colleague, Samuel Bourn ; he admired the book so much that 
 he almost had it by heart. 
 
 At this time the town church of Ayr was occupied by two 
 preachers of the ' new light ' : Dalrymple, a man of simple and 
 amiable character, and McGill, who was also much respected 
 by his flock. In 1786 McGill published a Practical Essay on 
 the Death of Christ, to which the orthodox took objection ; 
 Dalrymple followed with a History of Christ : both writers 
 were evidently influenced by the men who were leading the 
 English Presbyterians in the direction of Unitarianism. McGill 
 was accused of heresy ; Burns plunged into the fray ; his 
 reckless satires, to which the Rev. Hugh Blair contributed 
 a friendly criticism or so, are now the most conspicuous 
 memorial of the controversy. 
 
 In 1788 the centenary of our decorous Revolution was duly 
 honoured ; Robertson, a liberal-minded man, was full of hope 
 for the world, and especially for France. There was some 
 unrest among the people ; in the west especially it became 
 plain that no adequate spiritual provision had been made for 
 the large population called into existence by new industries. 
 The popular party had failed in two attempts to raise the
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 299 
 
 patronage question in the Assembly. As the movement in 
 France went on there was a division of opinion among Scottish 
 sympathizers, some clinging to the hope that a new era of 
 peace and justice was coming in, others settling down into 
 hopeless distrust of anything that savoured of democracy. 
 At this juncture it was very desirable that laws which belonged 
 to the old days of persecution should disappear from the 
 statute-book. In 1792 the disabilities of the Episcopalians 
 were removed. Their Jacobitism was now only a sentiment ; 
 Charles Edward was dead, and ' Henry IX ' was a Cardinal at 
 Eome. In 1793 Principal Eobertson passed away ; before his 
 death he had the .satisfaction of knowing that a bill for the 
 relief of Catholics was on the point of being passed. The 
 Catholics had lost their college at Paris during the Eevolution ; 
 they were a poor community, quite unable to provide for 
 their clergy. Dundas arranged that they should have some 
 assistance from Government funds ; this transaction was so 
 secret that even lay Catholics knew nothing of it. The 
 subsidy was paid till 1805. 
 
 Eobert Haldane, a country gentleman of good family, had 
 been excited, and then disappointed, by the course of affairs 
 in France ; he fell back on the evangelistic work to which the 
 rest of his life was devoted. He and his brother James were 
 much indebted to David Bogue, a Berwickshire man and an 
 Independent minister, settled in England, one of the founders 
 of the London Missionary Society (1795), the Eeligious Tract 
 Society (1799), and the Bible Society (1804). Both the 
 Haldanes were eager to carry the gospel to the heathen, at home 
 and abroad. Eobert would have sunk his fortune in a mission to 
 India, but this project was stopped by the East India Company ; 
 the directors doubted, and had reason to doubt, their power 
 to protect Christian missionaries, if they settled in Bengal. 
 In their work at home the brothers took little account of 
 organized religious bodies ; they went up and down the 
 country preaching, and building meeting-houses ; they dis- 
 tributed tracts, and this at first was a cause of trouble ; the 
 people had come to associate that form of appeal with the name 
 of Thomas Paine, deist and democrat. In 1796 associations
 
 800 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 were being formed in aid of foreign missions ; Dr. John 
 Erskine took part in the work ; he now had the powerful 
 assistance of a younger minister, Sir Henry Moncreiff. When 
 the Assembly met, there were overtures asking the Established 
 Church to co-operate ; Dr. Hill was cold and critical ; the 
 overtures were rejected by 58 to 44, and a colourless resolution 
 was passed. 
 
 The Seceders were not quite prepared to make common 
 cause with the Haldanes ; the Antiburghers testified against 
 lay preaching, which in their opinion had no warrant from the 
 Word of God. Even as to foreign missions there were diffi- 
 culties : was it ' lawful ' to sit on the same platform with Baptists, 
 Independents, and the like ? In the last few years of the 
 century both branches of the Secession were rent asunder by 
 a controversy about Church and State. Good men in both 
 had a ' new light ', not of the McGill variety. They began to 
 think that those passages of the Confession of Faith which 
 invite the civil magistrate to put down heresy were ' Erastian ' 
 in their tendency. This criticism was well founded ; Knox 
 and Henderson were both Erastians ; both used the civil 
 sword to make a way for the truth, as they understood it ; 
 both paid the price which the Church must always pay when 
 she aims at political power. In both synods the ' new light ' 
 party outnumbered their opponents : the result was seen in 
 a series of schisms and recombinations. Where a congregation 
 was divided, both parties laid claim to the building in which 
 they met ; litigation arose, and the successful party used civil 
 and sometimes military force in making good its rights. The 
 details of these proceedings may be reserved for the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In their evangelistic work the Haldanes were assisted by 
 English friends : they brought Rowland Hill from the Surrey 
 Chapel to help them, but this eccentric preacher was not very 
 successful in Scotland ; he formed an unfavourable opinion 
 of all our contending Churches. In 1796 James Haldane made 
 one of his tours in company with Charles Simeon, a quiet 
 Cambridge don who exercised a remarkable influence over the 
 evangelical party in the Church of England. The Episcopalians
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 301 
 
 were a little shy of him, and he was not wholly in agreement 
 with his Presbyterian friends. Like all English churchmen, 
 Simeon was greatly attached to the Book of Common Prayer ; 
 ' if all men could pray always as some men pray sometimes ', 
 he might have been content with the Scottish way ; men and 
 ministers being what they were, he preferred his own. These 
 invasions led the Established Church to look more narrowly 
 to her defences. The Assembly of 1799 enacted that only 
 preachers licensed by a presbytery should be qualified to 
 accept a call or presentation : ministers were forbidden to 
 employ or hold communion with unqualified persons. 
 
 Before leaving the eighteenth century we may note some 
 figures which illustrate the progress of the non-established 
 religious bodies. Burghers and Antiburghers now numbered 
 55,000 each ; the Belief 36,000 ; the Reformed Presbyterians 
 about 4,000. Sectaries (Methodist, Independent, and Baptist) 
 were also about 4,000.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 AT the opening of the new century the Haldanes were 
 standing forward as the heads of an Independent community. 
 Eobert built the tabernacle in Leith Walk, and James was 
 ordained the first minister. Two ministers left the establish- 
 ment to join them ; they also secured the adherence of Ralph 
 Wardlaw, a Burgher student, converted to Congregationalist 
 principles by Dr. George Campbell's able defence of Presby- 
 terianism. In 1804 the Episcopalians emphasized their con- 
 nexion with the Church of England by adopting the Thirty- 
 nine Articles. Some thought the new formula inadequate as 
 regarded the sacraments, but Alexander Jolly, Bishop of 
 Moray, defended the work of the English reformers, pointing 
 out that they had guarded against the ' corrupt sacrifice of 
 the Mass ' without committing themselves to the Zwinglian 
 doctrine. In the same year the Antiburghers began to revise 
 their Testimony, in accordance with the ' new light '. A few 
 ministers held back, and the dissentients were soon numerous 
 enough to set up tlie Constitutional Associate Synod : of this 
 group the most eminent member was Thomas M'Crie, already 
 deep in the studies which enabled him to write his biographies 
 of Knox and Melville. M'Crie was not a ' voluntary ' ; he 
 thought there was a valid argument for Church establishments, 
 and for the ' Protestant constitution of the country '. His own 
 congregation was evenly divided ; the Antiburgher synod 
 resolved to turn the ' constitutional ' party out. After pro- 
 longed litigation they succeeded ; in the last stage of the 
 dispute, police and military assistance was invoked. M'Crie 
 was deposed, excommunicated, and forcibly evicted by men 
 who agreed with him, except on one point. The Burghers were 
 passing through difficulties of the same kind. Their chapel at 
 Perth had been built for W. Wilson, one of the four who kept
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 303 
 
 the pass at Gairney Bridge, and it remained in possession of the 
 Burghers, until the ' new light ' dawned. Jarvie, the senior 
 minister, took the same line as M'Crie was taking among the 
 Antiburghers ; his colleague Aikman and a majority of mem- 
 bers accepted the ' new light '. Craigdallie, one of the trustees, 
 resisted Aikman's claim to possession. This case lasted more 
 than twenty years, and went more than once to the House of 
 Lords, then governed, in all judicial matters, by Lord Eldon. 
 In the Scottish courts divers opinions were expressed ; some 
 thought the majority of the congregation should decide as to 
 the building they occupied ; others held that the party remain- 
 ing in communion with the Burgher synod had a valid claim ; 
 Lord Eldon suggested a new ground of decision. If the Burgher 
 society had been based on a clearly expressed contract, the 
 courts, he thought, would have been guided by its terms. 
 If, for example, the synod had been empowered to alter the 
 Burgher formula, in case new light should be vouchsafed them, 
 the case would have presented little difficulty. But the 
 contract was obscure ; it was not certain that the synod could 
 alter the testimony of the Church. This being so, a court of 
 justice had to ask : (1) What were the original principles of the 
 society ? (2) Was it proved that Aikman had departed from 
 these principles, and so forfeited his interest in the property ? 
 After prolonged inquiry the Court of Session found nothing to 
 show that either new lights or old had departed from their 
 original principles. Lord Eldon accepted this finding ; at the 
 close of the case, he was not certain that it had been thoroughly 
 understood, either in the Scottish courts or in the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 The principle of Craigdallie v. Aikman was applied in sub- 
 sequent cases ; it was applied in 1904 on a scale which would 
 have astonished the simple Burghers of 1800. Apart from the 
 legal problem, the practical lesson of the case may be shortly 
 stated. When good people set up a new Church in Scotland 
 they are not usually in a mood to make the legal position quite 
 safe. They write able manifestoes, putting themselves in the 
 right, and their opponents in the wrong ; but they leave the 
 powers of their governing body undefined ; they take no
 
 304 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 account of the probability, one might almost say the certainty, 
 that in time they will change their opinions. When the time 
 comes, their synod or assembly assumes that it has power 
 to do what it thinks right : the civil courts do not always 
 agree. 
 
 In 1805 the old lights formed the synod of Original Burghers, 
 with fifteen ministers. In 1808 the Haldanes became Baptists, 
 and there was some confusion in that quarter. In 1811 M'Crie 
 .published his life of Knox ; it was followeH, eight years later, 
 by his biography of Andrew Melville. The appearance of these 
 books must be noted as an event in our ecclesiastical history ; 
 they gave form and content to the aspirations of those Presby- 
 terians who cherished high notions of the independence of the 
 Church. Melville's theory of the ' two kingdoms ' took 
 possession of many minds. 
 
 Since their failure to raise the question of patronage, the 
 evangelical or popular party in the Assembly had been of little 
 account. They now showed signs of reviving energy ; their 
 coming leader was a man who might give them the victory 
 over the moderates who ruled the Established Church. Thomas 
 Chalmers, an alumnus of St. Andrews, had been settled in 1803 
 as minister of Kilmany, a rural parish in Fife. He gave most 
 of his time to mathematics, physics, and political economy ; 
 his calculation was that he could get through his ministerial 
 duties in two days of the week. But in 1810 he underwent 
 a change of mind, which was also a change of heart. The 
 gospel which he preached, eloquently but unimpressively, 
 became the centre of his thinking and the heart of his efforts : 
 almost at a bound he became the first preacher in Scotland. 
 In 1815 he left Kilmany for Glasgow ; he now had full scope 
 for ideas of social reform which had taken shape in his mind. 
 As an economist, Chalmers disliked the English plan of making 
 a legal provision for the poor ; the causes of poverty, he 
 thought, were moral, not merely economical ; in the parochial 
 system of his own Church he discovered an agency which 
 might be used to elevate the depressed classes by personal 
 influence and help. His success was so remarkable that we 
 cannot but regret his withdrawal from the scene of action, but
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 305 
 
 after eight y.ears he found his work too heavy, and went to be 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews ; in 1828 he 
 became Professor of Theology at Edinburgh. 
 
 While Chalmers was in the middle of his Glasgow labours, 
 the new lights in both sections of the Secession were discovering 
 that the testimonies of 1747 were now out of date. A basis 
 of union was found, and in 1820 Burghers and Antiburghers 
 came together and formed the United Secession. At the time 
 of union the Burghers had 139 ministers, the Antiburghers 123. 
 Some recalcitrant Burghers joined the ' constitutional ' group 
 and became the United Original Seceders. John Brown, 
 a Burgher minister (grandson of the author of the Self-inter- 
 preting Bible, and father of him who wrote Edb and his Friends), 
 tried unsuccessfully to obtain a modification of Sme phrases 
 in the Westminster standards ; he objected, for instance, to the 
 statement that presbytery is the only form of Church government 
 sanctioned by the Word of God. 
 
 During the first quarter of the nineteenth century the 
 number of Catholics in Scotland was rapidly increased by the 
 immigration of Irish labourers. Whig-Liberals had long been 
 agitating for the removal of Catholic disabilities ; in 1829 
 a Tory Government was constrained to grant this demand. 
 Though a Tory in his general politics, Chalmers came forward 
 as an advocate of emancipation. His speech on the subject, 
 delivered at a meeting in Edinburgh, was one of his most 
 triumphant efforts ; the kindling excitement of the speaker 
 laid hold of his audience, until men rose to their feet, as if 
 impatient to follow him into action. His main argument was, 
 that the removal of disabilities would set Protestants free to 
 combat the claims of the Pope with the ' plain, printed Bible ' 
 for their weapon. 
 
 In 1828 Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, a cultured country 
 gentleman, published a book on the Freeness of the Gospel ; 
 Chalmers read it with delight, but shook his head over some 
 of its doctrinal statements. About the same time the stricter 
 Calvinists of the parish of Row complained that their minister, 
 John McLeod Campbell, was teaching the ' universality ' of 
 the Atonement ; a younger man, A. J. Scott, was involved in 
 
 x
 
 806 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the same suspicion. These movements connected themselves 
 vaguely with the career of Edward Irving, who passed through 
 a phase of unbounded popularity in London, and then plunged 
 into speculations which carried him beyond the limits of what 
 most people in Scotland thought permissible : he was ulti- 
 mately deposed by the presbytery of Annan, and the Assembly 
 upheld the judgment. In his own country Irving was known 
 as an occasional preacher, so eloquent that business men would 
 come out at five on a summer morning to hear him. Campbell's 
 case came to its final stage at the Assembly of 1831 ; his 
 friends complained that the case was being hurried, and that 
 the law of the Church was strained against him. Chalmers has 
 been blamed for not coming to his aid, but Chalmers was to be 
 the Moderator of the next year ; he was overwhelmed with 
 work, and had not time to master the voluminous evidence 
 laid before the Church courts. Before Campbell met his fate, 
 his friend A. J. Scott had been deposed by the presbytery of 
 Paisley, but his English flock at Woolwich disregarded the 
 authority of that court ; Scott remained a minister among them 
 until he began his distinguished career as a University teacher. 
 
 Among the new-light Seceders the ' voluntary ' principle 
 was developed in a series of books and pamphlets. Dr. Heugh, 
 the leader of the United Secession, championed the cause, and 
 in 1829 Andrew Marshall of Kirkintilloch preached a sermon 
 which started a controversy ; he was answered by Dr. Andrew 
 Thomson of Edinburgh, a powerful preacher whose contro- 
 versial style cannot be recommended for imitation. Chalmers 
 took part in the fray ; he recognized that the Seceders were 
 doing something to supplement the efforts of his own Church, 
 but to the end of his life he maintained that only a national 
 establishment could cope with the needs of a great and growing 
 population. 
 
 The unrest among orthodox Calvinists is one of the notes 
 of the reviving Evangelical party in the Church, but it was 
 evident that their energies would soon find an outlet in an 
 attack on the abuses of patronage. Many of the party were 
 ardent Whig-Liberals, convinced that the Reform Act of 1832 
 was the beginning of an era of progress ; those who belonged
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 307 
 
 to this section would have welcomed the proposal to sweep 
 away the system of which they complained, and to make 
 popular election the rule of the Church. But some of the 
 indispensable leaders of the party were of a different way of 
 thinking. Chalmers, for example, was a Tory ; he feared that 
 the Keform Act would take public affairs away from the men 
 of leisure and education, and give power to the men ' whose 
 talk is of bullocks '. He spoke, on occasion, of the ' gulli- 
 bility ' of popular electorates, and of the influence of ' village 
 demagogues ' : theSe phrases made him enemies among the 
 Seceders, who were Whigs or even Eadicals. 
 
 Throughout their long conflict with the courts of law, the 
 Evangelicals argued about patronage as if it had been an 
 institution forced on the Church by the State ; they took no 
 account of the fact that the Church had accepted the system. 
 In 1560, when the reformed Church began her career, nobody 
 thought it possible to maintain a national establishment by 
 private effort. The reformers claimed the ' patrimony ' of the 
 old Church ; the nobles gave them a fraction of what they 
 claimed, and insisted on retaining their own rights of patronage ; 
 the Assembly acquiesced, and disclaimed the intention to 
 deprive the Queen and her nobles of their rights. In 1712, , 
 when the Patronage Act was passed, the Church protested, and 
 continued to protest, but for 120 years she allowed her ministers 
 to accept presentations and to draw their stipends. On the 
 settlement of a minister, the procedure included a ' call ' from 
 the congregation ; by the deliberate policy of the Church this 
 call had been reduced to a mere formality. These things had 
 been done in the days of ' moderate ' ascendancy ; but a binding 
 law or usage is not disposed of by showing that it was introduced 
 when this or that party was in power. 
 
 At the Assembly of 1832, Dr. Chalmers in the chair, eleven 
 overtures were presented, calling attention to the question of 
 the call, but the house decided that it was inexpedient to 
 proceed further in that direction. At the Assembly of 1833 
 Chalmers brought forward a motion embodying the policy of 
 his party. It was now asserted as. a ' fixed principle ' of the 
 Church that no minister should be intruded on a parish against 
 
 X2
 
 308 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 the will of the congregation. (If this had been, in fact, the 
 rule of the Church, the north of Scotland might have been 
 Episcopalian to this day.) It was proposed that a majority of 
 male heads of households, being communicants, should be 
 empowered to veto a presentation. The objectors were not 
 to be required to make any definite charge against the doctrine 
 or character of the presentee ; Chalmers spoke "forcibly, but 
 perhaps not convincingly, in favour of the ' veto without 
 reasons '. Lord Moncreiff, a good lawyer, held that the 
 proposed legislation was within the powers of the Assembly ; 
 he relied on the Act of Assembly, passed in the unhappy year 
 1649. David Boyle, Lord Justice Clerk, a lawyer of the first 
 rank, did not accept his colleague's reading of that Act ; his 
 advice was disregarded by the non-intrusion party. Good 
 party men are always too ready to take their law from persons 
 whom they believe to be in sympathy with their aims. Dr. 
 M'Crie, a dissenter, but a strong supporter of Church establish- 
 ments, pressed the evangelical leaders to petition Parliament 
 for the abolition of patronage ; his advice also went for nothing. 
 Chalmers and his friends were sure that the abuses of patronage 
 were only occasional ; they argued that the appointments 
 made by patrons had been ' generally good '. The motion 
 demanding the veto was rejected by a narrow majority. 
 
 Besides the question of the call, this Assembly took up the 
 case of chapels of ease Buildings erected in the more populous 
 parts of the country, served by ministers of the Established 
 Church, but supported by voluntary effort. Ministers of such 
 chapels were not parish ministers, and for this reason they did 
 not sit in Church courts. It was now suggested that the Church, 
 without consulting Parliament, might alter her legal constitu- 
 tion. Dr. Brown of Aberdeen moved that chapel ministers 
 should be admitted to all the privileges of the regular clergy. 
 Dr. Cook of St. Andrews, the leader of the ' moderate ' party, 
 expressed approval of the idea, and moved for a committee to 
 consider how it could best be carried out ; his motion v,;i> 
 carried by only four votes. With a little care in the selection 
 of members of Assembly, the Evangelicals might count on 
 being in a majority the next year.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 309 
 
 When the Assembly of 1834, met the Veto Act, founded on 
 the proposals of the previous year, was passed by a substantial 
 majority. Kirk-sessions were directed to keep a roll of persons 
 entitled to vote. The Chapel Act was also passed, admitting 
 chapel ministers to sit in presbyteries, synods, and assemblies. 
 Dr. Chalmers was not a member of this Assembly ; his position, 
 as the Conservative leader of a party of abstract politicians, 
 was becoming difficult. At this moment his best energies were 
 devoted to the problem of Church extension. He was opposed 
 to the Chapel Act ; he hoped to see the parochial system 
 made co-extensive with the spiritual needs of the population. 
 This was possible, if Parliament would agree to endow new 
 parishes, but much was possible, if a right-minded Government 
 came into power. Nothing good was to be expected of the 
 Whig Government now in office ; they would not help the 
 Church because the Eadicals would vote against them if they 
 did. Dr. Chalmers had a ' moral loathing ' for the Whigs. 
 The Seceders were taking care that their Kadical friends in 
 London should be warned to oppose any further endowment 
 of the Established Church. 
 
 The Veto Act remained an Act of Assembly for ten years ; 
 it worked, as a rule, quite peaceably. In the first five years of 
 its existence, 150 livings fell vacant ; ten presentees were 
 vetoed ; these, for the most part, took their defeat quietly. From 
 the outset, however, it was certain that the Assembly's decision 
 would be challenged in a court of law. In August 1834 the 
 living of Auchterarder became vacant ; Lord Kinnoul presented 
 Mr. Robert Young, a blameless man, and ultimately a successful 
 parish minister. But the congregation was keen to exercise 
 its new privilege ; of 330 persons on the roll 287 objected to 
 Mr. Young ; the presbytery postponed the matter until the 
 next Assembly should direct them what to do. 
 
 At the Assembly of 1835 Chalmers made a noble appeal on 
 behalf of Church extension ; in burning words he made plain 
 the greatness of the need, and showed what had already been 
 done by voluntary effort, and what remained to be done. 
 Alexander Duff, the apostle of Bengal, gave impassioned 
 utterance to his plans and hopes for India. The Auchterarder
 
 810 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 presbytery were directed to deal with Mr. Young in terms of 
 the Veto Act ; they refused accordingly to take the presentee 
 * on trial '. After entering a protest, Young, for himself and 
 Lord Kinnoul, raised an action, claiming a declaration that the 
 presbytery were legally bound to make trial of his qualifica- 
 tions. His chief legal adviser was John Hope, Dean of the 
 Faculty of Advocates, a descendant of the Lord Advocate who 
 had advised Charles I how not to get the better of the Covenan- 
 ters. As a member of Assembly the Dean had committed 
 himself to the opinion that the Veto Act was beyond the legal 
 powers of the Established Church. After the usual delays, 
 the point of law was argued before the full Court of Session in 
 November 1887 ; at the end of the ensuing February, judg- 
 ment was given. The Lord President (Charles Hope, father 
 of the learned Dean) and seven of his colleagues upheld that 
 view of the law for which John Hope had contended ; five 
 judges upheld the Veto Act. The report of the case extends to 
 two volumes, and cannot well be summarized : almost every 
 page contains something which students may read with interest 
 and profit. While the existing rights of the Established 
 Church were in debate, Dr. Heugh, the eminent Seceder, went 
 to London with a deputation, to protest against any further 
 endowment, such as Chalmers was trying to obtain. The 
 deputation had an interview with Tom Duncombe, the ' dandy 
 demagogue ' who sat for Finsbury. They found him ' sound 
 on the principle, but ignorant of the facts.' 
 
 When the Assembly met in May, overtures were presented 
 calling attention to the question of ' spiritual independence ' ; 
 the Evangelicals put forward Robert Buchanan, an accomplished 
 minister and a notable debater in Church courts, to move 
 a resolution, asserting the ' exclusive jurisdiction ' of the 
 Church courts in matters relating to doctrine, government, and 
 discipline : this power was ' derived from God and the Mediator 
 Jesus Christ ' ; the Church was now asked to assert ' and at all 
 hazards to defend ' her independence ; her office-bearers and 
 members were warned that her law might be ' enforced ' : in 
 other words, a minister who obeyed the civil courts might be 
 deposed and thrown out for breaking the law of the Church.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 311 
 
 This motion was adopted by 183 votes to 142. The Headship 
 of Christ was referred to as the ground of the Church's claim ; 
 by using this expression the Evangelicals gave currency to 
 the notion that their opponents were not loyal to Christ. 
 It is to be noted that Mr. Buchanan used the word 'juris- 
 diction ' as if it were equivalent to ' authority ' ; there is, in 
 fact, a distinction to be observed. The authority of the 
 Church is derived from her Lord, and no civil court can define 
 it. In the modern State jurisdiction (the right to declare the 
 law with coercive effect) can only be derived from the State. 
 A Church, whether established or ' free ', is, among other 
 things, an association, formed for a lawful purpose. Like 
 other associate bodies, she can make rules for her members, 
 and may enforce them by suitable penalties, such as deprivation 
 of office. The Scottish judges had virtually decided that, by 
 accepting patronage, the Church had precluded herself from 
 making the rule embodied in the Veto Act. 
 
 After the Assembly Dr. Chalmers went to London, where he 
 delivered a course of lectures on Church Establishments. His 
 fame drew many distinguished persons to hear him ; the old 
 Duke of Cambridge sat, nodding his head at every reference 
 to the Protestant religion, and seven or more Anglican bishops 
 were among the audience. Young Mr. Gladstone, who was 
 just finishing his treatise on The State in its Relation with the 
 Church, was also present: He had a profound respect for the 
 lecturer, but his training had not prepared him to follow the 
 argument : in a letter to Manning he described it as ' a jumble 
 of Church, un-Church, and anti-Church principles '. 
 
 In December some well-meaning people went to Glasgow, to 
 celebrate the bicentenary of Henderson's Assembly ; the 
 meeting was not skilfully managed, and did nothing to bring 
 parties and Churches together. 
 
 In March 1839 the appeal in the Auchterarder case was heard 
 in the House of Lords ; only two law-lords were present 
 the Chancellor (Lord Cottenham) and the ex-Chancellor Lord 
 Brougham. On the 2nd May judgment was given. Before 
 Cottenham could begin, Brougham was on his feet ; his speech 
 was long and discursive. He poured contempt on the notion
 
 812 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 that a popular call could be of any importance whatever ; 
 assumed that the Church courts would take orders from the 
 civil courts, and lamented that the Church of Scotland was 
 straying from the safe path in which she had been guided by 
 his grand-uncle, Principal Robertson. The only good result 
 of this harangue was that it gave Hugh Miller a subject for his 
 admirably written ' Letter to Lord Brougham '. When the 
 ex-Chancellor was at last silent, Cottenham read a closely 
 reasoned opinion, agreeing with the majority of judges in the 
 court below. A fortnight later, the Assembly met ; the chief 
 question for debate was, what to do in face of the judgment of 
 the civil courts ? Dr. Cook proposed that the Church should 
 return to the practice which prevailed before the Veto Act. 
 Dr. Muir tried his hand at conciliation, but his motion was 
 knocked to pieces by Mr. Candlish, the Edinburgh minister 
 who in time succeeded Chalmers in the leadership of the 
 Evangelical party. On a division the motion which stood in 
 Chalmers' name was carried by 204 votes against 155 for 
 Dr. Cook. In speaking to his motion, Chalmers accepted the 
 civil judgment, in so far as it applied to the emoluments of 
 the benefice ; he still held that the Veto Act was a legitimate 
 exercise of spiritual authority ; he still argued vehemently 
 in defence of the ' veto without reasons '. He referred to the 
 practice of the Church of England, but he took no account of 
 a difference between the Churches which is really important. 
 In England a patron may present a layman to be rector or 
 vicar of a parish, in the hope that the bishop will ordain the 
 presentee ; the question, whether to ordain or not, is decided 
 by the bishop, and no civil court will interfere with his discre- 
 tion. In Scotland a patron could only present a minister or 
 probationer of the Church, that is to say, a person whose 
 fitness had been certified by a presbytery. There was at least 
 an apparent difficulty in holding that a person, certified by 
 a Church court, might be rejected, and discredited, by the 
 unexplained vote of one congregation. 
 
 Chalmers moved for a Committee, empowered to confer with 
 Government ; among the names he selected was that of -the 
 Earl of Dall.ousie, a young elder who was beginning to take
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 813 
 
 a high place in public life. But Dalhousie would neither serve 
 on the Committee nor sit any longer in the Assembly. To his 
 mind the doctrine laid down by his leader was not compatible 
 with any peaceable solution of the problem ; the Church, as 
 he said, had ' rung out her knell as the Established Church of 
 Scotland '. 
 
 The non-intrusion struggle had brought the national Church 
 within sight of the position occupied by the Original Burghers. 
 A portion of that body returned to the Church from which 
 they had been separated for a century and more. 
 
 Soon after the Assembly rose, the presbytery of Dunkeld 
 appeared at the bar of the Supreme Court, to answer for having 
 inducted a minister at Lethendy, in defiance of an interdict. 
 In this case the special circumstances were held by Evangelicals 
 to justify any irregularity in the procedure. When the Court 
 of Session met in private it appeared that five judges were for 
 sending the members of presbytery to prison ; six thought 
 a reprimand would be sufficient ; the Lord President Hope 
 did not vote. The reprimand was duly administered. Later 
 in the year John Hope wrote a ' Letter ' of 290 printed pages to 
 Lord Cottenham ; in Scotland this manifesto had little success, 
 but in London it was accepted as an authoritative statement 
 of the case against the non-intrusion party. 
 
 Of sixty-three newspapers published in Scotland, only eight 
 were friendly to the non-intrusion party. Hugh Miller was 
 brought from Cromarty to Edinburgh to edit the Witness, 
 a bi-weekly paper : until his melancholy death in 1856 he 
 remained the chief literary champion of non-intrusion principles. 
 It was now plain that only Parliament could make a way out 
 of the difficulty, and Lord Aberdeen was prepared to do what 
 he could. He introduced a Bill in the House of Lords, but the 
 ensuing Assembly rejected the Bill by a great majority : the 
 substance of the objection to it was that it fell short of the 
 ' veto without reasons '. Chalmers was so tired of the long 
 wrangle that he wrote a pamphlet, suggesting that the whole 
 matter should be left to Parliament : let the people go straight 
 to their representatives and ask for the veto, the call or the 
 abolition of patronage ; and in the meantime, let the Veto Act
 
 814 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 be repealed. This pamphlet was apparently withdrawn before 
 it went into general circulation. His colleagues in the leader- 
 ship probably saw, or thought they saw, a tactical difficulty, 
 not obvious to the simple mind of Chalmers. To repeal the 
 Veto Act would be to haul down the flag, and to incur the deep 
 distrust of their own followers. 
 
 January 1841 witnessed the most impressive episode in 
 a struggle which made the northern parish of Marnoch as famous 
 as Auchterarder. In 1887 the living of Marnoch had been 
 vacant ; Lord Fife's trustees had presented John Edwards ; 
 as to the merits of the presentee we can say only this, that his 
 friends spoke well of him, while his enemies made no definite 
 charge against him. Of 300 persons on the roll 261 voted 
 against him. Marnoch is in the presbytery of Strathbogie, and 
 the ministers of that presbytery were divided in opinion ; 
 the non-intrusion minority were prepared to exclude Mr. Ed- 
 wards ; the majority argued that obedience to magistrates 
 was a duty enjoined in the New Testament, and that, when the 
 Assembly ordered resistance to a judgment of the civil courts, 
 it went beyond its province, and ought not to be obeyed. By 
 a majority of seven to three the presbytery took Mr. Edwards 
 on trial ; the Commission of Assembly set aside the seven, 
 and erected the minority into a presbytery ; the civil court 
 forbade the minority presbytery to provide ordinances for the 
 parishes within its bounds. In defiance of this interdict, 
 Evangelical ministers from the south went to preach in Strath- 
 bogie ; the churches of the seven ministers were closed to the 
 non-intrusion preachers, but they held services in the open 
 air, even in the depth of winter. Now, in January 1841, the 
 majority-presbytery met in the Church at Marnoch to induct 
 Mr. Edwards. The parishioners of the veto party attended in 
 force ; after arguing the point of law with the presbytery, 
 they collected the Bibles in their pews, and left the building ; 
 a mob of strangers rushed in, and the subsequent proceedings 
 were a good deal interrupted. Both parties claimed to be 
 acting in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Before the Assembly met, the Duke of Argyle, an aged 
 nobleman who had recently succeeded his brother as head of
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 315 
 
 that historic family, introduced a Bill to legalize the popular 
 veto. In framing this measure, his Grace had the assistance of 
 divers leaders of opinion in Scotland. His eldest surviving son, 
 the Marquis of Lome, was keenly interested in the question at 
 issue, and was making his own contribution to the voluminous 
 literature of the subject. When the Assembly met, Candlish 
 put forth all his powers in the endeavour to persuade both 
 parties to accept the Duke's Bill ; he carried his motion by 
 a large majority, but the debate made it plain that the com- 
 promise effected could not be permanent. Some voted for the 
 Duke because they thought he was staving off the abolition of 
 patronage, and some because they thought the Bill was a step 
 towards abolition. Conspicuous in the anti-patronage group 
 was the dignified figure of William Cunningham, a scholar of 
 some note, and a pillar of the non-intrusion party. In this 
 very Assembly Cunningham had almost carried a motion to 
 the effect that patronage was ' an evil and a grievance '. On 
 considering these various proceedings, the Duke withdrew 
 his Bill. The Strathbogie contest was carried as far as a Church 
 court could carry it ; the seven obstinate ministers were 
 deposed ; Edwards was deprived of his licence to preach, and 
 declared never to have been a minister. From time to time 
 an interdict, launched by the Supreme Court, hurtled through 
 the air. 
 
 The United Secession was also divided on a question of 
 great importance. James Morison, a young minister at 
 Kilmarnock, was found to be teaching that Christ died for 
 all men, not for the elect only. Morison explained that he did 
 not teach ' universalism ', but he was suspended, on the 
 motion of Dr. Heugh. His own congregation, most of whom 
 had joined the Church during his ministry, supported him 
 warmly. Dr. John Brown declared that the Morisonian 
 doctrine could not be proved unscriptural. 
 
 There was a general election in July ; by the end of August 
 Lord Melbourne was out of office, and Sir Eobert Peel was 
 forming a strong Conservative administration. Sir Eobert 
 was himself a religious man, but he had no sympathy with 
 ministers who advocated resistance to the civil courts ; his
 
 316 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, was of the same way of 
 thinking. In Strathbogie the fire still smouldered ; discipline 
 was brought to bear on ministers who assisted the deposed 
 brethren in holding services or in administering the sacraments. 
 There were other local eases in which the non-intrusion party 
 came into collision with orders of the Supreme Court ; each of 
 these ease* turns on its own local facts, and it is better not to 
 attempt any summary description : Auchterarder and Marnoch 
 were the two stricken fields on which the contending armies met 
 in full force. At this time of day it is also better to omit the 
 numerous charges of discourtesy and bad faith which are 
 to be found in the partisan histories of this period. A word 
 must be said as to the language which the Evangelicals thought 
 themselves entitled to employ. Believing as they did that the 
 Headship of Christ was at stake, they used the name of our 
 Lord with a freedom which we, who live in less exciting times, 
 may be allowed to regret. The right to veto a presentee was 
 described as one of the rights ' purchased by the Redeemer 
 with His Blood '. Lord Aberdeen's BUI was an attempt to 
 * hurl the Redeemer from His throne '. A parcel of ministers 
 who disobeyed the Assembly were told by an eminent lawyer 
 that they were ' in contempt of the authority of the Lord 
 
 In March 1842 the troubles in Scotland were discussed in 
 the House of Commons ; Mr. Campbell of Monzie, a Conserva- 
 tive member, did his best to revive the Duke of Argyle's Bill 
 of the previous year. Peel and Graham were guarded in their 
 utterance* : they would stand by the law of the land ; if they 
 legislated at all. their Bill would be on the tines of that intro- 
 duced in 1840 by Lord Aberdeen (now Foreign Secretary). 
 When the Assembly met the Marquis of Bute represented the 
 Queen; the Moderator was Dr. David Welsh, Professor of 
 Church History at Edinburgh. Representatives of the minority- 
 pnsbyterj of Strsthhogie took their scats ; the lay representa- 
 tive, Major Stewart, had been interdicted by the civil court ; 
 he held up the interdict in one hand and a Bible in the other, 
 and said he would obey the latter. Cunningham brought 
 forward his motion, declaring patronage to be a grievance, and
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 317 
 
 carried it by a large majority. Even at this late stage Chalmers 
 could not bring himself to say that patronage was 'unserip- 
 tural ' ; he agreed that the time had come for its abolition. 
 Overtures were presented, eaffing attention to tin encroach- 
 ments of the civil courts ; the Assembly adopted the * claim 
 declaration and protest ' usually known as the Cfaim of Right. 
 This document was drawn up by Alexander Dunlop ; it 
 remains an impressive monument of his knowledge and ability. 
 No legal argument could be better put, but the problem now 
 to be solved was a problem, not for lawyers but for statesmen. 
 Fed saw no occasion for offering better terms to the party of 
 resistance ; he was going to stand by the law, as the courts 
 had expounded it. The Claim of Right and the petition 
 against patronage were sent to the Queen : Sir James Graham 
 would have to frame her Majesty's reply. 
 
 In August the House of Lords gave judgment in what is 
 known as the second Auchterarder case ; it was decided that 
 Mr. Young was entitled to damages, as against the presbytery 
 which had refused to take him on trial. The amount most be 
 fixed in the ordinary course by subsequent proceedings, but the 
 principle alarmed the non-intrusion leaders into action, for 
 this decision would enable the civil courts to impose heaTy 
 pecuniary penalties on any Church court which refused com- 
 pliance with their decrees. Sooner than submit to this, the 
 non-intrusion party would leave the Established Church. 
 
 Before they had come to a decision another movement of 
 reunion has to be chronicled. The new-lights had joined to 
 form the United Secession ; those of the old-light Burghers 
 who had refused to join the established Church now made 
 common cause with the old-light Antiburghers ; the resulting 
 community were to be known as Original Seceders. Two 
 Aiitiburgher ministers. Wright of Lauriston and Lammie of 
 Pit cairn Green, would not come in unless the Burghers would 
 submit to discipline for the * sin ' of 1747. For a time those 
 two individuals constituted the true Church of Scotland ; when 
 Lammie escaped from the fold, Wright remained alone. He 
 was a solid preacher of the Word, and his discourses on apoca- 
 lyptic subjects commanded some attention.
 
 318 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Chalmers and his friends had now to face a very searching 
 question. They were leading a large party, but how many 
 would follow them out of the Establishment ? The ministers 
 of the party were, for the most part, family men, and in 
 many manses a cloud of anxiety overshadowed the heads of 
 the household. In November a meeting of ministers (it was 
 known as the Convocation) was held in Edinburgh ; a small 
 church was chosen, that the discussion might be more or less 
 informal. Macdonald of Ferintosh prayed ; Chalmers preached 
 a great sermon, and took the leading part in the subsequent 
 conference. He had thought out the problems of a self-sup- 
 porting Church, and the machinery was almost in working 
 order before it was actually needed. Of the 465 ministers who 
 attended, 428 accepted the first body of resolutions proposed, 
 and 354 stayed to vote for a second body ; the leaders felt 
 bound to go on. 
 
 The year 1843 opened badly for the non-intrusionists. On 
 the 4th January Sir James Graham sent a dispatch ; he met 
 the demands of the non-intrusion party with a simple negative. 
 He defended patronage as a system which conduced to the 
 welfare and stability of the Church ; he dwelt on the point (the 
 strongest point to be made on his side) that in Scotland a patron 
 could only present a minister or licentiate a person whose 
 fitness was certified by a Church court. He thought the Claim 
 of Eight ' unreasonable '. On the 20th January the Court of 
 Session gave judgment in the Stewarton case ; it was decided, 
 by a majority of eight to five, that the Church had no power 
 to divide that parish in order to assign a district to a quoad 
 sacra minister. Good party men were content to say that 
 the eight judges were mistaken, but the division of opinion 
 shows that the question in debate was, as a. lawyer would say, 
 ' very arguable '. On the 7th March Fox Maule, then member 
 for Perth, called attention to the Church question in the House 
 of Commons, and asked for a Committee to inquire ; his motion 
 was defeated by 211 votes to 76. 
 
 On the 18th May the Assembly was to meet in Edinburgh. 
 The High Commissioner (Lord Bute) w 5 ent in state to St. Giles ; 
 Dr. Welsh preached a dignified sermon. At 2.30 members of
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 319 
 
 Assembly were in their places at St. Andrew's Church, but, 
 before the Court was constituted, Dr. Welsh rose and read 
 a solemn protest. Laying the paper on the table he moved to 
 the door, followed by Chalmers, Candlish, and a long line of 
 ministers and elders. The ' residuaries ' (this was the name 
 bestowed on them by the protesters) looked round in dismay, 
 to see how many of their best men had gone. They turned, 
 with admirable constancy, to the business which now claimed 
 their attention. Their first duty, as they conceived, was to 
 restore the balance of the Church, as it was before the non- 
 intrusion party came into power. The Veto Act was disposed 
 of by directing presbyteries to proceed according to the practice 
 which prevailed before the passing of that Act ; the Acts 
 admitting Parliamentary ministers, Chapel ministers, and 
 returned Seceders were rescinded ' as having been incompletely 
 passed ' ; the Strathbogie ministers and other victims of 
 Evangelical ascendancy were restored. In the day of their 
 power the Evangelicals had repealed the Act of Assembly of 
 1799 which forbade co-operation with ministers of other 
 Churches. This Act was now revived ; it might soon be needed. 
 When the protesters left St. Andrew's Church the streets 
 were so crowded that they fell into line ; as they passed along 
 there was a general movement of sympathy ; men of all parties 
 felt that the protesters were showing a spirit not unworthy of 
 the high principles they had asserted. Marching down the 
 long slope to Canonmills they took possession of a large hall 
 there ; Dr. Chalmers was placed in the chair as Moderator of 
 the first Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. The 
 necessities of the new Church were provided for by the institu- 
 tion of a Sustentation Fund, out of which every settled minister 
 was to receive an equal dividend. A deed was prepared, by 
 which the protesters and those who adhered to them resigned 
 their places and emoluments in the Established Church. 
 Taking round figures, we may say that of 1,200 ministers less 
 than 500 went out ; of more than 1 ,000 parish ministers less 
 than 300 went out ; of 233 quoad sacra ministers 162 went out. 
 These figures were deeply disappointing to both the contending 
 parties. Moderates had prophesied that not twenty-five
 
 320 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 ministers would go out ; the non-intrusion leaders had counted 
 on carrying out so strong a contingent that the Established 
 Church would be reduced to a ' moral nullity '. In the course 
 of our history more than one body of Seceders had claimed to 
 be the true Church of Scotland ; the Free Church now attempted 
 to make good that claim by providing religious ordinances in 
 every parish. This involved a severe strain on her lay sup- 
 porters, but they were equal to the strain. English observers 
 .were amazed to hear of the sums raised for parochial work 
 and foreign missions ; they were greatly impressed by the 
 fact that the men who gave up the material advantages of 
 Establishment placed the Establishment principle in the fore- 
 front of their testimony. Chalmers thought their testimony on 
 this point the chief glory of his Church. There came a day when 
 his speeches had to be explained away, but during his lifetime 
 he was neither opposed nor criticized. Like the Burghers of 
 1747, the Free Churchmen of 1843 did not foresee the changes 
 of opinion through which they would have to pass, though 
 symptoms of change were perceptible very early : thus in 1845 
 we find Mr. Dunlop arguing that his adherence to the Establish- 
 ment principle did not commit him to the establishment of 
 error ; if he had to choose between the existing Establishment 
 and none at all, he would prefer to have none. The pride of 
 Free Churchmen in their own Church was unhappily combined 
 with a profound contempt for the brethren whom they had left 
 behind. The ' bond Establishment ' was constantly disparaged ; 
 its leaders were spoken of as men whose loyalty to Christ was 
 at the best doubtful ; in some parts of the country the parish 
 minister was boycotted. A special hostility was reserved for 
 ministers who had voted with the non-intrusion party, and then 
 declined to leave their manses. One minister had spoken of 
 laying his head on the block for spiritual independence, but 
 when the day of trial came he remained in his manse. On 
 leaving home one morning, he found, in front of his door, 
 a butcher's block, with an axe laid across. 
 
 Chalmers himself did not change his opinions ; within a few 
 days of his death in 1847 he told a Parliamentary Committee 
 that voluntaryism could hardly be expected to solve the problem
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 321 
 
 of Church extension in Scotland. The year of Chalmers's 
 death witnessed another instalment of reunion. The Seceders 
 and the Eelief met in the hall where the Free Church had begun 
 her career, and formed the United Presbyterian Church. At 
 the time of their union, the Secession numbered 400 congrega- 
 tions, the Eelief 100. The basis of union is an ably drawn 
 document, but some found it unsatisfactory ; Andrew Marshall, 
 who had begun the ' voluntary controversy ' in 1829, stood on 
 the same ground as before, but for the rest of his life he stood 
 alone. At the general election of 1847, Hugh Miller declared 
 that the time had come to return men of ' avowed Christian 
 principle ' to the House of Commons ; this meant, unfortunately, 
 that ecclesiastical questions were mixed up with politics. 
 Macaulay, for instance, lost his seat at Edinburgh ; his oppo- 
 nents included the advocates of cheap whisky and the patrons 
 of Musselburgh races, but the chief complaint against him was 
 that he had voted for an increased grant to the Eoman Catholic 
 College at Maynooth ; Cunningham and others regarded this 
 grant as a ' national sin '. For a considerable period the 
 petition against Maynooth was laid out from time to time at 
 street-corners in Edinburgh ; students and schoolboys amused 
 themselves by appending fantastic signatures. 
 
 During the years which followed the Disruption the parochial 
 system, on which Chalmers had based his plan of social reform, 
 was largely secularized. The Poor Law of 1845 put an end to 
 the old rules as to church-door collections. Candlish tried 
 to commit the Free Church to an ambitious education scheme ; 
 schools as well as churches were to be duplicated in a thousand 
 parishes. Hugh Miller opposed the scheme ; he argued forcibly 
 that the education of the future must be national, not sectarian : 
 the embers of this controversy were extinguished in 1872, when 
 Parliament took over the whole business of elementary educa- 
 tion. In 1847 the Free Church adopted a Catechism of her own 
 principles, drawn up by Andrew Gray of Perth ; this document 
 was so fiercely polemical that it soon dropped out of use ; 
 it was revived, for the benefit of the House of Lords, in 1904. 
 To note what was passing in another* quarter of the field, we 
 may observe that in this year Mr. Gladstone and others brought 
 
 Y
 
 822 THE CHUKCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Dr. Charles Wordsworth to be warden of the new school at 
 Glenalmond. During the forty-five years of his residence in 
 Scotland this learned divine, who became in 1852 Bishop of 
 St. Andrews, took part in many controversies. Within his 
 own Church he defended what he thought the sounder tradition 
 as to her Communion Service ; on this point his chief antagonist 
 was Alexander Forbes, Bishop of Brechin. Wordsworth was 
 anxious to bring Episcopalians and Presbyterians together, 
 but in this enterprise he had little success. The claim of 
 Episcopacy cannot be fairly considered by our Churches until 
 the history of Presbyterianism has been critically studied. 
 
 In 1852 the Synod of Original Seceders resolved, by a majority 
 of one, to join the Free. Church ; the union took effect, but ten 
 of their congregations refused to come into it. The problem 
 of union between the two large non-established Presbyterian 
 Churches was mooted ; for some time the leaders of the Free 
 Church thought it impossible to unite with ' voluntaries ', but 
 that Church had in fact given a demonstration of the success of 
 voluntary effort on an unexampled scale, and the sentiment 
 of her members was steadily changing. When her ministers 
 gave up all the worldly advantages of establishment, they made 
 sure that the civil courts would leave them free in all matters 
 relating to doctrine and discipline. But it is property, not 
 establishment, which brings a religious body under the control 
 of the State ; this was the hard lesson which the Free Church 
 had still to learn. A case which emerged in 1859 put a severe 
 strain on her theory of discipline. Alexander Macmillan, Free 
 Church minister of Cardross, was tried on charges affecting his 
 moral character ; in the Presbytery and the Synod he was 
 found not guilty, but the case was appealed to the supreme 
 court of the Church ; the Assembly undertook to re-try the 
 whole case, and found Macmillan guilty ; there was some 
 difference of opinidn as to the regularity of the Assembly's 
 procedure. Macmillan went to the Court of Session, and applied 
 for an interdict ; this was refused, but he went on with an 
 action claiming ' reduction ' (revision or annulment) of his 
 sentence ; this was the preliminary to a claim for damages 
 against the Assembly. Macmillan was cited to the bar of the
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 323 
 
 Assembly, and asked to say whether he was the person in whose 
 name these proceedings had been taken ; he answered in the 
 affirmative ; Candlish immediately moved that he should be 
 deposed from the ministry ; the motion was unanimously 
 passed. At a later time Cunningham held that Candlish ought 
 to have acted more deliberately, and Candlish's official bio- 
 grapher gives a curiously guarded account of the incident. 
 In the long run, Macmillan failed to obtain any legal redress ; 
 his friends always regarded him as an ill-used man. The doubts 
 raised as to the regularity of the Assembly's action did not 
 prevent Candlish from lecturing the judges on their ignorance 
 of Church law. 
 
 During the sixties of last century the question of reunion 
 was constantly under discussion in the non-established sections 
 of Presbyterianism. In 1863 the Eeformed Presbyterians, still 
 popularly known as Cameronians, resolved that their members 
 might hold public office, or vote in elections, without incurring 
 any ecclesiastical penalty ; their Synod ' recommended ' 
 abstention, but this was rather a counsel of perfection. In 
 the Free Church Assembly a ' constitutional ' party was formed, 
 of men who could not see their way to union with Voluntaries ; 
 the leaders were Begg of Edinburgh, a slashing popular speaker, 
 and Nixon of Montrose, a persistent exponent of principles 
 which were losing their hold on younger men. Candlish 
 advocated union, but even in 1869 he explained that he had 
 not given up the Establishment principle ; he had not even 
 agreed to make it an open question. In the Established Church 
 this was a decade of continuous advance. Eobertson of Ellon, 
 who succeeded David Welsh in the chair of Church History, 
 raised a very large voluntary endowment, to be used for 
 Church extension ; by 1869 the Established Church claimed 
 to have more communicants than the rival Churches put 
 together. Norman Macleod of Glasgow did much to bring his 
 Church into friendly relations with working people ; he was 
 also ever ready to maintain that the Lord's day is not- the 
 same institution as the Jewish sabbath. T. J. Crawford was 
 a theologian who could cross swords, on occasion, with Candlish 
 or with Bishop Wordsworth. John Cairn, Professor of Theology 
 
 Y2
 
 324 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 at Glasgow, was a pulpit orator of almost unrivalled power ; 
 in 1868, when he proposed an honorary degree for John McLeod 
 Campbell, it was plain that Scotland had moved since 1831. 
 Dr. Robert Lee made the Greyfriars Church at Edinburgh 
 a centre for those who wished to alter and improve the forms 
 of public worship ; in 1864 he introduced the first organ that 
 was heard in a Presbyterian Church ; he went on to print 
 a prayer book for the use of his congregation. Many leading 
 men of the old ' moderate ' party had been conscious of the 
 objections which may be taken to patronage ; they now began 
 to think that their Church was strong enough to dispense with 
 the system. In 1869 the Church of Scotland Assembly peti- 
 tioned Parliament to abolish patronage. A deputation went 
 to see Mr. Gladstone in London ; the leader of the Liberal 
 party listened to their argument, and asked how their proposal 
 would affect those non-established bodies whose founders had 
 protested against patronage as a grievance. Macleod and his 
 friends were not unprepared for this question, but a full 
 answer to it might have involved them in danger ; Mr. Glad- 
 stone and his party were just in the act of disestablishing the 
 Church of Ireland ; the matter had to stand over. 
 
 In 1870 three Scottish bishops went to Rome, to join in 
 proclaiming the doctrine of papal infallibility : in the same year 
 the Pope lost his temporal power. These events did not greatly 
 affect the interests of Roman Catholics in Scotland. While 
 asserting the principle of ' spiritual independence ' even more 
 definitely than the Free Church, and asserting from time to 
 time her own version of the ' establishment principle ', the 
 Church of Rome has never brought herself into conflict with the 
 civil courts in Scotland ; she needs no assistance in governing her 
 own people. Occasional troubles had arisen between the Scotch 
 and Irish members of her community. Archbishop Manning 
 had been sent in 1867 to the Western district, to compose the 
 strife which had arisen in that quarter ; he advocated the 
 restoration of the Roman episcopate, and this project was carried 
 out by Leo XIII in 1878. Eminent lawyers advised that the 
 new titles conferred were not permitted by statute-law ; they 
 added that no penalty could be exacted from the offenders.
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 825 
 
 Before the end of 1873 Candlish passed away ; as leader of 
 the Free Church he was succeeded by Eobert Eainy, a scholarly 
 man who had distinguished himself by his writings. In the 
 lists of controversy Eainy had proved his mettle by delivering, 
 at short notice, an effective reply to Dean Stanley's Lectures on 
 the Church of Scotland. His leadership was soon to be tested ; 
 in February 1874 Disraeli formed a strong Conservative 
 administration ; the first session of the new Parliament was 
 largely devoted to two ecclesiastical measures, a Bill to put 
 down ritualism in the Church of England, and a Bill to abolish 
 patronage in Scotland. Gladstone, who had vaguely intimated 
 his retirement from public life, returned to the scene of his 
 former triumphs ; he subjected both measures to searching 
 criticism. The Duke of Argyle, who had, in his younger days, 
 supported Dr. Chalmers, was now the most conspicuous 
 advocate of the Anti-patronage Bill. He admitted that the 
 Government might have taken this opportunity to come to an 
 understanding with the Free Church ; he justified the Govern- 
 ment for declining to do so. The Free Church was committed 
 to union with Voluntaries ; she had, as the Duke contended, 
 changed her principles. The Act as passed took away the rights 
 of all patrons, and provided that the minister of each parish 
 was to be chosen by the congregation, i. e. by communicant 
 members and adherents. Some purists objected to the adher- 
 ents, but it was thought wiser to include them. There are 
 parishes in which the danger of ' eating and drinking unworthily ' 
 has been so faithfully preached that a populous parish may 
 furnish only a handful of communicants. Before the Bill 
 became an Act, the Free Church Assembly resolved that the 
 problem could only be solved by ' the termination of the 
 present connexion of Church and State in Scotland ' ; the word 
 ' disestablishment ' was not used. The ' constitutional ' party 
 declared that they could not agree to union with Voluntaries; 
 they took legal opinions on the question, What would happen 
 to the funds of the Church in case of a schism ? 
 
 In 1876 the Eeformed Presbyterians joined the Free Church. 
 They had never ' explained ' the Covenants, like Adam Gib, 
 and the union raised no fundamental question. Some thirteen
 
 826 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 of their congregations held aloof, and their sympathizers in 
 Ireland and elsewhere were unwilling to comply with the 
 uncovenanted State. When this union took effect the Free 
 Church was just entering on a controversy of the first import- 
 ance. In 1863 Andrew B. Davidson had become her Professor 
 of Hebrew at Edinburgh, in succession to the erratic man of 
 genius known as Rabbi Duncan. Davidson believed that the 
 religious significance of the Old Testament was best understood 
 by studying the history of the sacred books and their authors. 
 For nearly forty years he went on forming the mind of his own 
 Church, filling her chairs and pulpits with men who were 
 imbued with his methods and deeply impressed by his example. 
 He took no conspicuous part in controversy, and in Church 
 courts he sat silent, even when all parties were eager to hear 
 him. His most famous pupil was William Robertson Smith, 
 4 beat student ' of Aberdeen, mathematician, orientalist, and 
 critic. In 1869 Smith, who was just twenty-three (one thinks 
 of Andrew Melville at Geneva), was expounding astronomy 
 and physics at Edinburgh ; in the following year his own 
 Assembly chose him to be Professor of Hebrew at Aberdeen. 
 He was one of the scholars who were bringing out the ninth 
 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the opening 
 volumes of that publication the articles ' Angel ' and ' Bible ' 
 attracted much attention ; they proved that Smith had mas- 
 tered and accepted the version of Hebrew history which we owe 
 to Wellhausen and other German critics. Many good men 
 found that they could not reconcile the new doctrine with tln> 
 ' inerrancy ' of Scripture, as declared at Westminster ; they 
 demanded urgently that Smith's teaching should be stopped. 
 Smith himself claimed to be an Evangelical Protestant and 
 a loyal Presbyterian ; his opponents regarded him as a sad 
 example of ' unsanctified learning '. Rainy's position was one 
 of extreme difficulty. He was himself a scholar, and he had 
 persuaded himself that the questions at issue were not ' con- 
 fessionally settled '. But he saw clearly that, if Robertson 
 Smith were not condemned, there would be ' ruinous confusion ' 
 in the Free Church. Smith more than once used bitter language 
 about Rainy, but the two men, both of whom were unselfish
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 327 
 
 and high-minded, looked at the matter from different points 
 of view. 
 
 At the Assembly of 1877 Smith demanded a formal trial, 
 and his own presbytery began to prepare the ' libel ' (bill of 
 accusation). In the autumn the first Panpresbyterian Council 
 met at Edinburgh ; when its eloquence had fallen silent, the 
 great case went on ; in the end the Assembly forbade Smith to 
 teach ; he was not unwilling to go, if his departure would 
 bring peace to the Church. He became an independent scholar, 
 and the short remainder of his life was devoted to literary work. 
 His methods remained in the Church of his origin and training ; 
 the teaching of her professors and the preaching of her ministers 
 have undergone a change. 
 
 While the Free Church was shaking off her persistent son, 
 the United Presbyterians made an important change in their 
 ' subordinate standards '. In this matter, and indeed in all 
 their difficulties, speculative or practical, their best adviser 
 was John Cairns of Berwick, a scholar who ranked with 
 Eobertson Smith, and a preacher whose massive power recalled 
 the memory of Chalmers. His task in 1879 was to provide some 
 satisfaction for those whose minds were influenced by the 
 teaching which we associate with the names of John Brown 
 and James Morison. The Declaratory Act was an attempt to 
 preserve the substance of Calvinism and to restate some main 
 doctrines of the system in the light of modern thought. 
 
 In 1885 a general election was expected in November, and 
 the advocates of disestablishment had fixed their hopes on 
 Mr. Gladstone ; it was expected that he would either give the 
 question a place in his programme, or put forward some new 
 plan of reunion and reconstruction. But Mr. Gladstone was 
 close on seventy-six, and in Church matters had never been in 
 complete sympathy with his supporters in Scotland ; he never 
 quite understood how a religious nation could be so generally 
 indifferent to what he thought most important in Church life. 
 In his first speech to the electors of Midlothian, which was 
 delivered in the Assembly Hall of the Free Church, he played 
 with the question of disestablishment, and said nothing of 
 the merits. It was evident that his duty to the Liberal party
 
 828 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 would not permit him to run the risk involved in an attack 
 on the most powerful and popular of the Presbyterian Churches. 
 Where Mr. Gladstone left the question, his successors have been 
 content to leave it. After the first defeat of his Irish policy 
 in 1886 the Liberal leader could only argue that, if his friends 
 in Scotland would send a stronger contingent of Home Rulers 
 to the House of Commons, any special Scottish demand would 
 be dealt with at some vaguely indicated future time. 
 
 In 1892 the Free Church passed a Declaratory Act, resembling 
 that which had been passed by the United Presbyterians in 
 1879. A small body of protesters left the Church ; they called 
 themselves Free Presbyterians. They identified themselves 
 with the Church of 1843, but no steps were taken to establish 
 the legal validity of this claim. Before the century closed, 
 the long negotiations between the non-established Churches 
 led them to an incorporating union ; at the end of October 
 1900 the Free Church Assembly and the United Presbyterian 
 Synod met at Edinburgh, and Dr. Rainy became the first 
 Moderator of the United Free Church. The United Presby- 
 terians w r ere unanimous ; in the other Church a small body 
 of dissentients held aloof ; they met separately, described 
 themselves as the Assembly of the Free Church, and raised 
 actions in which they claimed the vast accumulated funds of 
 that society. In July 1901 Lord Low decided against their 
 claim, and his judgment was upheld by four judges in the Inner 
 House. The Scottish judges who heard the argument were 
 unanimous in holding that the ' Establishment principle ' 
 was not an essential and fundamental part of the constitution 
 of 1843 ; they also held that any modification of Free Church 
 principles effected in 1892 or in 1900 was within the legal 
 powers of the Assembly. It seemed now that the protesting 
 minority would be thrown out, but Rainy and his coadjutors 
 did not wish to take any inconsiderate advantage of their 
 success. They offered to raise a sum which would have been 
 a provision for the small Free Church ; the offer was declined, 
 and the case was taken on appeal to the House of Lords. In 
 1903 it was argued at length, and the House was prepared to 
 give judgment, when the death of Lord Shand made it neces-
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 329 
 
 sary to order a re-hearing. The second argument began in 
 June 1904, and on the 1st August the seven lords who had heard 
 the case delivered their opinions. 
 
 The Lord Chancellor (Lord Halsbury) moved that the 
 judgments in the courts below should be reversed. Founding 
 himself on Lord Eldon's opinion in Craigdallie's case, he declared 
 that the identity of a religious community must consist in its 
 distinctive doctrines. If the question arises, which of these 
 doctrines are essential, its original documents must be examined, 
 in order to ascertain what its founders thought essential. His 
 own reading of the documents of 1843 had brought him to 
 the conclusion that Chalmers and his colleagues made the 
 ' Establishment principle ' an essential doctrine of the Free 
 Church ; he was also convinced that they had identified their 
 Church with the Calvinism of the Confession of Faith. The 
 small Church, holding all the principles of 1843, was therefore 
 the true Free Church, entitled to claim the property of that 
 body. The majority of the Free Church had in his opinion 
 gone out to form a new community, in which they were 
 united with Voluntaries and opponents of strict Calvinism. He 
 could not find that the Assembly had ever been empowered 
 to change the doctrines of the Church, or to turn out a minority 
 who adhered to the doctrines of 1843. 
 
 Lord Macnaghten was of a contrary opinion ; while accepting 
 the principle on which Craigdallie's case had been decided, he 
 gave eloquent expression to the idea that the Free Church 
 was a living body, capable of growth and development ; she 
 had made great sacrifices to obtain complete self-government, 
 and must therefore have power to relax the stringency of her 
 formulae. He was followed by Lord Davey, who, while sym- 
 pathizing with the effort of enlightened men to escape from the 
 fetters forged by an earlier generation, could not find that the 
 Assembly was empowered to alter the basis of the Free Church, 
 or to divert the trusts on which her property was held. Of the 
 four judges who spoke later, three agreed with the Lord 
 Chancellor ; only Lord Lindley held that the Assembly had 
 acted within its legal powers. 
 
 In the history of a Christian community any question
 
 830 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 relating to property is of secondary importance, but the 
 disaster which had befallen the United Free Church was one of 
 no ordinary magnitude. The greater part of her resources, 
 including even recent benefactions given by ardent supporters 
 of Rainy's policy, had been assigned to the small .Free Church ; 
 her own existence, as a powerful society carrying on many 
 branches of religious work, had become in a moment precarious 
 and problematical. There was a general feeling that the 
 Legislature must do something to obviate the consequences of 
 the judgment. A Royal Commission reported that the small 
 Church (numbering at this stage only some twenty-five ministers) 
 was unable to administer the vast property assigned to her by 
 the House of Lords, and in 1905 an Act of Parliament set up 
 an Executive Commission to allocate the property in dispute. 
 The larger portion of the buildings and funds was now assigned 
 to the United Church ; the small Free Church retained an 
 endowment, amply sufficient to answer all the claims she could 
 fairly put forward. The Church of Scotland had watched the 
 misfortunes of her ' sister Church ' with genuine sympathy, and 
 with a touch of amusement ; her leaders now took advantage 
 of Mr. Balfour's Bill to obtain a concession for themselves. 
 Like the other Presbyterian bodies, they began to find that 
 some ministers and office-bearers were chafing against th rigid 
 theology of the Confession of Faith ; they had even contem- 
 plated a Declaratory Act of their own, but had been advised 
 that such an Act was beyond the Parliamentary powers of their 
 Assembly. A clause in the Bill, which was passed without 
 difficulty, gave them the right to deal with their formula of 
 subscription. As for the small Church, her spokesmen de- 
 precated the interference of Parliament. Even if they found 
 themselves unable to use the property assigned to them, the 
 question remained, whether it should be used at all. One 
 enthusiast argued that it would be better to throw all (In- 
 disputed property into the sea than to use it in supporting 
 higher critics and lax theologians. 
 
 The United Free Assembly of 1905 declared its own legislative 
 authority in the simplest terms ; but, in view of the opinions 
 expressed by Lord Halsbury and his colleagues, it is not quite
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 831 
 
 certain what the legal effect of such a declaration will prove to 
 be. Besides the material hardships which they had endured, 
 Eainy and his friends had to reconsider some of their most 
 cherished principles. They had done their best to construct 
 and endow a religious body, wholly independent of the State. 
 After sixty years of prosperity, the State, as represented by the 
 Supreme Court of Appeal, had taken away all their property, 
 and again, the State, as represented by the two Houses of 
 Parliament, had given them back what statesmen regarded 
 as their appropriate share of the property in dispute. Some 
 time must elapse before the lesson of these events can be fully 
 understood. 
 
 It is with some regret that I bring my narrative to a close at 
 this point ; but the movements to be recorded since 1905, and 
 especially the movement towards reunion among Presbyterians, 
 are still in progress, and the annalist is unwilling to enter on 
 important problems which are still under discussion.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbot, George, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, 207, 208, 217. 
 Abelard, 56. 
 
 Abercromby, Robert, 202. 
 Aberdeen, 49, 77, 115, 
 Aberdeen Breviary, 81. 
 Aberdeen, University of, 78, 164. 
 Abernethy, 39. 
 Abolition, Act of, 194, 255. 
 Act of Classes, 250, 253. 
 Act Rescissory, 260, 271. 
 Adamnan, 34, 36. 
 Adamson, John, 209. 
 Adamson, Patrick, Archbishop of 
 
 St. Andrews, 175, 182, 184-6, 
 
 189, 191. 
 Aidan, 33. 
 
 Aikenhead, Thomas, 283. 
 Aikman, 303. 
 Airdsmoss, 273. 
 Airth, Friar, 91. 
 Alane, 91. 
 Alban, 40, 42. 
 Alberic, Cardinal, 49. 
 Albertus Magnus, 58. 
 Alexander I, King of Scotland, 48, 
 
 49. 
 
 Alexander II, 57-9. 
 Alexander III, 59. 
 Alexander III, Pope, 52. 
 Alexander VI, Pope, 78, 79. 
 Amboise, 121. 
 Ambrose, 21. 
 
 Andrewes, Lancelot, 205, 208, 210. 
 Angus, Archibald Douglas, sixth 
 
 Earl of, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 100. 
 Angus, Archibald Douglas, eighth 
 
 Earl of, 186, 193. 
 Angus, William Douglas, tenth Earl 
 
 of, 193. 
 
 Anne, Queen, 285, 287. 
 Anstruther Wester, 189. 
 Antiburghers, 293, 295, 300, 301, 
 
 302, 305, 317. 
 Antioch, 15. 
 Antony, St., 17. 
 
 Apologetical Declaration (Renwick), 
 276. 
 
 Apology (Cummian), 32. 
 
 Appellation, 110, 111. 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 58. 
 
 Arbroath, 52. 
 
 Argyle, Archibald Campbell, fifth 
 Earl of, 109, 141, 150, 153, 157, 
 163. 
 
 Argyle, Archibald Campbell, 
 seventh Earl, 194, 212. 
 
 Argyle, Archibald Campbell, 
 eighth Earl, 227, 235, 248, 249, 
 251, 252, 255, 260. 
 
 Argyle, Archibald Campbell, 
 ninth Earl, 265, 274, 277. 
 
 Argyle, Colin Campbell, sixth Earl 
 of, 176. 
 
 Argyle, George Douglas, eighth 
 Duke, 314, 325. 
 
 Argyle, See of, 78. 
 
 Arianism, 18, 288-9. 
 
 Aristotle, 182. 
 
 Aries, Council of, 18. 
 
 Armstrong, Hector, of Harelaw, 
 165. 
 
 Arran, James Hamilton, second 
 Earl of, Duke of Chatelherault, 
 93, 94, 100, 107, 112, 121, 139, 
 178. 
 
 Arran, James Hamilton, third Earl 
 of, 131, 134, 136, 178, 186. 
 
 Assembly, first held, 126 ; early 
 meetings, 129, 142-3, 145, 146, 
 148 ; freedom of, 203 ; consti- 
 tution, 225 ; dissolved, 257. 
 
 Associate Synod, 290, 293. 
 
 Athole, John Stewart, fourth Earl 
 of, 159, 176. 
 
 Attila, 24. 
 
 Auchterarder case, 309-10, 311, 
 317. 
 
 Augustine, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 30. 
 
 Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 17, 21, 
 23-4.
 
 334 
 
 THE CHUECH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Augustinians, 50, 72. 
 Avignon, 64, 67. 
 
 Bagimond's Roll, 60. 
 
 Baillie, Robert, 213, 221, 226, 233, 
 238, 241, 246, 247, 250, 254, 257, 
 258. 
 
 Baillie, Robert, of Jerviswood, 275, 
 276. 
 
 Balcanquhal, Dr., Dean of Roches- 
 ter, 224, 230. 
 
 Balcanquhal, Walter, 178, 184, 186, 
 192, 197. 
 
 Balfour, John, of Kinloch (' Bur- 
 ley'), 268, 270. 
 
 Balfour, Robert, Lord Burleigh, 
 231. 
 
 Balfour, Sir James, 162, 167. 
 
 Baliol, John, 60. 
 
 Balmerino, 57. 
 
 Balmerino, John Elphinstone, 
 second Baron, 215, 217, 221. 
 
 Balnaves, Henry, 99. 
 
 Bancroft, Dr., 189-90, 203, 205-6. 
 
 Barlow, William, 88. 
 
 Barlow, William, Bishop of Roches- 
 ter, 205. 
 
 Barrier Act, 284, 290. 
 
 Basel, Council of, 73, 74. 
 
 Basilicon Dor on, 198, 228. 
 
 Beaton, David, 85, 89, 95; Car- 
 dinal, 90 ; Primate, 91, 92, 93 ; 
 crowns Mary Stewart, 94 ; assas- 
 sinated, 97, 101. 
 
 Beaton, James, 84, 85. 
 
 Becket, Thomas, 51, 52. 
 
 Bede, Yen., 36. 
 
 Begg, James, 323. 
 
 Bellenden, Sir John, 153. 
 
 Benedict, St., 28, 41. 
 
 Benedict XIII, 68, 69, 70. 
 
 Benedictines, 49, 50, 72. 
 
 Bernard, St., 49, 56. 
 
 Beveridge, a Dominican, 91. 
 
 Bible Society, 299. 
 
 Bible, Tyndale's, 93. 
 
 Bishops, in the constitution of the 
 Church, 9-10, 13-15, 73, 169-70, 
 173, 174, 177, 186, 198, 222, 243, 
 257, 267 ; at Councils, 60, 97, 324 ; 
 and Protestants, 93, 127j in the 
 Kirk, 201, 207, 225 ; trial, 226-8 ; 
 restored, 261 ; abolition, 280 ; 
 Roman episcopate introduced, 
 324. 
 
 Black, David, 195-7. 
 
 Blackader, Robert, 78, 80. 
 
 Blair, Hugh, 298. 
 
 Blair, John, 61. 
 
 Blair, Robert, 213, 216, 230, 233, 
 
 244, 255. 
 
 Boece, Hector, 78-9. 
 Bogue, David, 299. 
 Boniface VIII, 62. 
 Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of Lon- 
 don, 106, 107. 
 Book of Canons, 218. 
 Book of Common Prayer. See 
 
 Prayer Book. 
 
 Book of Common Order, 216, 218. 
 Book of Discipline, First, 126, 134, 
 
 177. 
 Book of Discipline, Second, 176, 
 
 177. 
 
 Book of the Sentences, 56. 
 Boston, Thomas, 288, 294. 
 Bothwell, Adam, Bishop of Orkn<-\ , 
 
 158 
 
 Bothwell Bridge, 271. 
 Bothwell, James Hepburn, fourth 
 Earl of, 120, 133, 136, 143, 151, 
 153, 155 ; marriage, 149 ; and 
 the Queen, 157 ; abduction of and 
 marriage with Mary, 158, 164 ; 
 defeat and flight, 159, 162. 
 Bothwell, Patrick Hepburn, third 
 
 Earl of, 96, 97. 
 Bourges, 81. 
 Bourignonism, 283. 
 Bourn, Samuel, 298. 
 Bowes, Marjorie, 106, 110, 125, 144, 
 
 172. 
 Bowes, Mrs. Richard, 103, 106, 109, 
 
 125, 144. 
 
 Bowes, Robert, 177. 
 Bowhead saints, 252. 
 Boyd, James, Archbishop of Glas- 
 gow, 173, 175, 179. 
 Boyd, Robert, of Trochrig, 213. 
 Boyd, Zachary, 233, 254. 
 Boyle, David, 308. 
 Brantome, 130. 
 Brechin, 40. 49, 73. 
 Brougham, Lord, 311. 
 Broughty Castlo, 118. 
 Brown, Gilbert, 209. 
 Brown, Dr. John, 308, 315, 327. 
 Brown, John (martyr), 277. 
 Brown, John, of Edinburgh, 305. 
 Brown, John, of Haddington, 295.
 
 INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 Brown, Robert, 183, 190, 212, 230, 
 
 233. 
 
 Bruce, Bishop, 278. 
 Bruce, Robert, 61, 63, 64, 65. 
 Bruce, Robert, divine, 188, 190, 
 
 192, 197, 199, 201, 202. 
 Buchan, Earl of, 65. 
 Buchanan, George, 17, 85, 91, 160. 
 Buchanan, Robert, 310. 
 Buckeridge, John, 205. 
 Bullinger, 107. 
 Burgess-oath, 293. 
 Burghers, 293, 295, 301, 302, 305, 
 
 313, 317, 320. 
 Burnes, William, 298. 
 Burnet, Alexander, 266, 267. 
 Burnet, Gilbert, 263-4, 286, 287. 
 Burns, Robert, 297. 
 
 Cairn, John, 323, 327. 
 Cairncross, Archbishop, 278. 
 Cairns, John, 159. 
 Caithness and Sutherland, 49. 
 Calderwood, David, 195, 207, 211, 
 
 212, 247. 
 Calixtus II, 49. 
 Calne, Synod of, 40. 
 Calvin, John, 23, 107, 108, 121, 
 
 123, 124, 125, 127-8, 144, 244, 
 
 306, 327, 329. 
 Campbell, Dr. George, 302. 
 Campbell, John McLeod, 305-6, 324. 
 Cameron, John, 72, 213. 
 Cameron, Richard, 272, 273. 
 Cameronians, 280, 282, 323, 325. 
 Canaries, Dr., 278. 
 Candlish, Dr., 312, 315,319,321, 323, 
 
 325 
 
 Cant, Andrew, 224, 231, 244-5, 256. 
 Canterbury, See of, 30, 38, 48, 52, 
 
 208. 
 
 Carberry Hill, 159. 
 Carey, Robert, 202. 
 Cargill, Donald, 259, 272, 273. 
 Carlisle, 49. 
 
 Carlyle, Alexander, 295. 
 Carstares, William, 275, 279, 283, 
 
 285, 286. 
 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 183. 
 Carvet, a priest, 146. 
 Casaubon, Isaac, 206. 
 Cassilis, Gilbert Kennedy, third 
 
 Earl of, 113. 
 Catherine de' Medici, 98, 118, 125, 
 
 129, 170. 
 
 Cathkin, a bookseller, 212. 
 Catholic League, 149. 
 Cecil, Sir Robert, 203. 
 Cecil, William, Lord Burchley, 113, 
 114, 118, 122, 144, 151, 161, 163, 
 181, 183, 185, 199. 
 Ceretic (Coroticus), 24. 
 Chalmers of Gadgirth, 111. 
 Chalmers, Thomas, 304-14, 317-21. 
 Chalons, Council of, 38. 
 Chanonry, 49. 
 Chapman, Walter, 80. 
 Charles I, 213; and Revocation, 
 214 ; and the Kirk, 216-22 ; 
 meets the Covenanters, 229 ; at 
 Edinburgh, 235 ; civil war, 236 ; 
 a prisoner, 244, 247 ; accepts the 
 Covenant, 247-8; execution, 250. 
 Charles II, 250 ; signs the Covenant, 
 252 ; crowned, 255 ; return, 259 ; 
 and the Kirk, 260; toleration, 
 266, 268 ; and Popish plot, 272 ; 
 death, 276. 
 
 Charles Edward, Prince, 292. 
 Chastelard, 130, 138, 140. 
 Chatelherault, Duke of. See Arran. 
 Chelsea, Council of, 38. 
 Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, 152, 
 
 155. 
 
 Chisholm, Bishop of Vaison, 199. 
 Christian's Great Interest, The, 287. 
 Christison, the preacher, 115. 
 Church and State, 9, 20, 23, 26, 176, 
 185, 196, 203, 206, 240, 260, 300, 
 331. 
 
 Cistercians, 50, 52, 57, 109. 
 Clarke, Samuel, 288. 
 Clement III, 53, 59. 
 Clement IV, 60. 
 Clement VII, 67, 68. 
 Clement VIII, 199. 
 Cluny, 41,43, 57. 
 Cocceians, 282. 
 Cockburn of Ornuston, 120. 
 Colman, 34. 
 Columba, 25, 28, 31, 32, 36, 39, 
 
 52. 
 Communion, Holy, 56, 67, 83, 104, 
 
 136, 212, 302. See Mass, The. 
 Concordance of the Canon Law, 56. 
 Confession (Craig), 178. 
 Confession (Hall and Adamson), 
 
 209-10. 
 
 Confession of Faith, 123, 135, 162, 
 177, 329.
 
 336 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Confession of Faith (Westminster), 
 243, 246 ; in Scotland, 247, 300. 
 Confessions of sin, 195. 
 Congregation, Lords of the, 120 ; 
 and the Regent, 118, 120; divi- 
 sion among, 121. 
 Congregationalism. See Brown, 
 
 Robert. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 71. 
 Constantine, 17, 18. 
 Constantino I, King of Alban, 39. 
 Constantine it, 40. 
 Constantinople, Council of, 34. 
 Constantius Chlorus, 17. 
 Constitutional Associate Synod, 302 
 Conventicles, 263 ; Act against, 
 
 267-8. 
 
 Cook, Dr. George, 308, 312. 
 Cormac, 29. 
 
 Cornelius of Zieriksee, 75. 
 Corrichie, 138. 
 
 Cottenham, Lord, 311, 312,313. 
 Covenant, Solemn League and, 238. 
 Covenant of 1638, 223, 231, 238. 
 Covenanters, 229, 246. 
 Cowper, John, 187. 
 
 Cox, Dr. Richard, 108. 
 
 Craig, John, 119, 151, 159, 163, 166, 
 168, 178, 185. 
 
 Craigdallie, 303, 329. 
 
 Craigmillar, 153, 156. 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 105. 
 
 Crawar, Paul, 73. 
 
 Crawford, Earl of, 281, 282. 
 
 Crawford, Lawrence, 240. 
 
 Crawford, T. J., 323. 
 
 Crichton, Bishop of Dunkeld, 137. 
 
 Croft, Sir James, 119, 120. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 234, 240-1, 243, 
 248, 253-4, 256, 258 ; in Ireland, 
 251, 253. 
 
 Cromwell, Richard, 258. 
 
 Crossraguel, 57. 
 
 Croyser, Archdeacon, 72. 
 
 Culdees, 38. 
 
 Cullen, Captain, 156, 172. 
 
 Cummian, 32. 
 
 Cunningham, William, 315, 316, 321, 
 323. 
 
 Cupar Muir, 117. 
 
 Cuthbert, 33, 34. 
 
 Cyprian, 15. 
 
 Dalhousie, Earl of, 312-13. 
 Dalrymple, James, 274. 
 
 Dalrymple, William, 298. 
 Damasus, Bishop of Rome, 21. 
 Darnley, Henry Stewart, Lord, 
 144-5, 146, 147, 150, 152, 154; 
 plot against, 155 ; murder, 156-7. 
 D'Aubigny, Esme Stewart, Lord, 
 177, 179, 189. See Lennox, Duke 
 of, or Stewart. 
 Davey, Lord, 329. 
 David, King, 49. 
 David II, 65. 
 
 Davidson, Andrew B., 326. 
 Davidson, John, 173, 180, 182, 184, 
 
 190. 194, 195, 198, 201. 
 Declaratory Act, 327, 328, 330. 
 Decretals, Forged, 39, 83. 
 Dee, River, 29. 
 D'Elbceuf, 121, 133. 
 Deny, 28. 
 Dickson, David, 216, 221, 230, 252, 
 
 257, 259. 
 Diocletian, 17. 
 Directory of Public Worship, 
 
 241. 
 
 Disestablishment, 325, 327. 
 Disruption, 318-20, 321. 
 
 Dollar, 91. 
 
 Dominicans, 58. 
 
 Donatiste, 18. 
 
 Dornoch, 49. 
 
 Douglas, 295. 
 
 Douglas, Alexander, 201. 
 
 Douglas, Archibald, 156. 
 
 Douglas, Gawain, 82, 84. 
 
 Douglas, John, 126, 167, 170. 
 
 Douglas, Robert, 236, 255, 256, 257, 
 259, 266. 
 
 Douglas, Sir James, 65. 
 
 Drumclog, 271. 
 
 Drummond, James, 275, 278. 
 
 Drury, Sir William, 172. 
 
 Duff, Alexander, 309. 
 
 Dulco Cor, Abbey of, 60. 
 
 Dumbarton, 167. 
 
 Dunavertie, 247. 
 
 Dunbar, 158, 254. 
 
 Dunbar, Gavin, 88, 91, 95, 96. 
 
 Dunbar, William, 80. 
 
 Dunblane, 49, 78, 152, 155. 
 
 Duncan, King. 43. 
 
 Duncan, Rabbi, 326. 
 
 Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville, 
 299. 
 
 Dundee, 96, 111. 116. 
 
 Dundrennan, 50, 73.
 
 INDEX 
 
 837 
 
 Dunfermline, 50, 59, 61. 
 Dunfermline, Charles Seton, second 
 
 Earl of, 231, 236. 
 Dunkeld, 38, 39, 49, 59, 60, 74, 78, 
 
 95, 313. 
 
 Dunlop, Alexander, 317, 320. 
 Durham, James, 252. 
 Durie, John, 174, 178, 181. 
 Durrow, 28. 
 Dutch Friars, 75. 
 
 Eadmer, 48. 
 
 Easter, date of, 19, 31, 45. 
 
 Edgar, King of Scotland, 48. 
 
 Edinburgh, 50, 75, 95, 101, 113, 124. 
 
 Edinburgh, Treaty of, 122, 125, 
 128, 130. 
 
 Edward VI, 94, 98, 101, 103, 104, 
 106, 109. 
 
 Edwards, John, 314. 
 
 Edwards, Thomas, 246. 
 
 Edwin of Northumbria, 32. 
 
 Eglinton, Hugh Montgomerie, Earl 
 of, 158. 
 
 Eldon, Lord, 303, 329. 
 
 Eldow, John, 72. 
 
 Elgin Cathedral, 65. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 109, 113, 114, 
 116, 120; interference in Scot- 
 land, 119, 146, 147, 160, 194; 
 proposed marriage, 121 ; and the 
 Congregation, 121 ; and Mary 
 Stewart, 130, 143, 146, 155, 160, 
 163-5, 187-8; and James VI, 
 154, 181, 194, 199 ; plots against, 
 185 ; death, 202. 
 
 Elphinstone, William, 77, 78, 80, 81. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 326. 
 
 Engagement, 247-50. 
 
 England, Church of, 183, 188, 191, 
 203, 211, 216, 232, 238. 
 
 Enoch, St., 27. 
 
 Episcopalians, 292-3. 
 
 Erasmus, 78, 80. 
 
 Erastus and Erastianism, 203, 259, 
 282, 300. 
 
 Errol, Francis Hay, Earl of, 193, 
 194, 196, 197. 
 
 Erskine, Ebenezer, 288, 290, 292. 
 
 Erskine, James, Lord Grange, 289, 
 291. 
 
 Erskine, John, 297, 300. 
 
 Erskine, John, Earl of Mar, 122, 
 135. 
 
 Erskine, John, of Dun, 94, 109, 116, 
 
 126, 142, 164, 169. 
 Erskine, Ralph, 288, 292, 293. 
 Erskine, Thomas, 305. 
 Essay on Miracles, 295. 
 Establishment principle, 329. 
 Ethelbert, Conversion of, 29. 
 Ethelfrith, King of Northumbria, 
 
 32 
 
 Eugenius IV, 73, 74. 
 Evers, Lord, 95. 
 Excommunication, 180. 
 Exercise, the, 179. 
 
 Fail, 59. 
 
 Fairfoul, Andrew, 261, 262. 
 
 Faithful Admonition, 107. 
 
 Fearn, 51, 85. 
 
 Ferguson, David, 172. 
 
 Ferrara, 74. 
 
 First Blast of the Trumpet against 
 the Monstrous Regiment of Women , 
 112, 116, 118, 131. 
 
 Fleming, James, Baron, 113. 
 
 Fleming, Mary, 155. 
 
 Flodden, 82. ' 
 
 Florence, 74. 
 
 Fogo, John, 72. 
 
 Forbes, Alexander, Bishop of Bre- 
 chin, 322. 
 
 Forbes, John, 204, 213. 
 
 Forbes, John, 232. 
 
 Forbes, John, a Roman Catholic, 
 209. 
 
 Forbes, Patrick, Bishop of Aber- 
 deen, 213, 232. 
 
 Forbes, William, 209. 
 
 Forbes, William, Bishop of Edin- 
 burgh, 217. 
 
 Forman, Andrew, 80, 81, 82, 84-5. 
 
 Forrest, Henry, 89. 
 
 Forrester, Henry, 91. 
 
 Forret, Thomas, 91. 
 
 Forteviot, 39. 
 
 Fourscore and Three Questions, 135. 
 
 Fox, George, 269. 
 
 France, alliance with, 51, 81, 90, 
 99, 112, 148,231. 
 
 Francis II, of France, 118, 120, 125. 
 
 Franciscans, 58, 75. 
 
 Fraser of Brea, 282. 
 
 Free Church of Scotland, 319. 
 
 Free Presbyterians, 328, 330. 
 
 Freeness of the Gospel, 305. 
 
 Friends, the, 269.
 
 838 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Gadderar, James, 290. 
 
 Galloway, 76, 78. 
 
 Galloway, Patrick, 191, 210. 
 
 Garden, George, 283. 
 
 Gardiner, Bishop, 91, 106, 107. 
 
 Geneva, 107, 109, 110, 191. 
 
 Genseric, 24. 
 
 Germanus, 25. 
 
 Gib, Adam, 293, 295, 325. 
 
 Gib, John, 273. 
 
 Gibson, James, 189. 
 
 Gillespie, George, 220, 233, 238, 
 
 247, 248. 
 
 Gillespie, Patrick, 254. 
 Gillespie, Thomas, 293. 
 Gladstone, W. E., 311, 321, 324, 
 
 325, 327-8. 
 Glammis, Lady, 89. 
 Glas, John, 294. 
 Glasgow, 27. 
 
 Glasgow Assembly, 225-8. 
 Glasgow, University of, 74, 174. 
 Gledstanes, Archbishop of St. An- 
 drews, 201, 207. 
 Glenlivet, 194. 
 Godly Exhortation, 1 15. 
 Goodman, Christopher, 110, 116, 
 
 124, 143, 190. 
 Gordon, Alexander, Archbishop of 
 
 Athens, 141. 
 Gordon, Jean, 149. 
 Gordon, Sir Adam, 64. 
 Gordon, William, 115. 
 Gourlay, Ninian, 89. 
 Gourlay, Robert, 173-4. 
 Gowrie Conspiracy, 200, 207. 
 Gowrie, John Ruthven, Earl of, 
 
 199-201. 
 Gowrie, William Ruthven, Earl of, 
 
 181, 184. 
 Graham, James, Marquis of Mon- 
 
 trose, 223, 229, 233, 237, 241, 
 
 244, 246 ; execution, 251-2. 
 Graham of Claverhouse, John, 269, 
 
 276-7,280,281. 
 Graham, Patrick, 76. 
 Gratian, 56. 
 Gray, Andrew, 321. 
 Greenshields, James, 286. 
 Gregory I, the Great, Pope, 29, 
 
 30. 
 
 Gregory VII. See Hildebrand. 
 Gregory X, 60. 
 Gregory XIII, 170. 
 Grey de Wilton, Lord, 122. 
 
 Guthrie, Henry, 232. 
 
 Guthrie, James, 252, 254-5, 258, 
 
 260. 
 Guthrie, John, Bishop of Moray, 
 
 216, 228. 
 
 Guthrie, William, of Fenwick, 287. 
 Qwilliam, 93. 
 
 Hackston of Rathillet, 268, 270, 
 273. 
 
 Haddington, 96, 100. 
 
 Haig, William, 217. 
 
 Haldane, James, 299, 300, 302, 304. 
 
 Haldane, Robert, 299, 300, 302, 304. 
 
 Hall, John, 209. 
 
 Hall of Haughhoad, 272. 
 
 Halsbury, Lord, 329. 
 
 Hamilton, Bishop, 261. 
 
 Hamilton, Dr. Robert, 226-7. 
 
 Hamilton, James, third Marquis of, 
 224, 248-50. 
 
 Hamilton, John, 202. 
 
 Hamilton, John, Archbishop, 101, 
 106, 115, 123, 154, 158, 167. 
 
 Hamilton, Lord John, 178, 190. 
 
 Hamilton of Bothwcllhaugh, James, 
 165. 
 
 Hamilton, Patrick, 85, 86, 89. 
 
 Hamilton, Robert, 271. 
 
 Hamilton, William, Earl of Lanark 
 and second Duko of, 247, 254. 
 
 Harlaw, 115. 
 
 Hay, Edmund, 137, 155. 
 
 Hay, George, 297. 
 
 Hay, Sir John, 221. 
 
 Helvetic Confession, 154. 
 
 Henderson, Alexander, 212, 220-6, 
 233, 236-41, 243, 253 ; Modera- 
 tor, 226, 230, 238 ; and Charles I, 
 229, 245 ; bicentenary, 311. 
 
 Henderson, Patrick, 219. 
 
 Henry VIII, of England, 81, 84, 
 86-95, 98, 170. 
 
 Hepburn, Patrick, 82. 
 
 Heresy, 69, 73, 78, 85, 86, 113. - 
 
 Hermitage, 153. 
 
 Hertford, Earl of. See Somerset. 
 
 Hertford, Lord, 243. 
 
 Hough, Hugh, 306, 310, 315. 
 
 High Commission, Courts of, 208. 
 
 Hildebrand, 43, 46-7, 55. 
 
 Hill, Dr. George, 297, 300. 
 
 Hill, Rowland, 300. 
 
 History of Christ, 298. 
 
 Hoddam, 27.
 
 INDEX 
 
 839 
 
 Hog, James, 288. 
 
 Holyrood, 50. 
 
 Home, John, 295. 
 
 Home, Sir George, Earl of Dunbar, 
 197, 204, 207. 
 
 Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, 265, 
 266. 
 
 Honorius, Bishop of Rome, 32, 34. 
 
 Honorius III, 57. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 215. 
 
 Hope, Charles, 310, 313. 
 
 Hope, John, 310, 313. 
 
 Hope, Sir Thomas, 238. 
 
 Hope, Thomas, 204, 214. 
 
 Howard, Lord William, 88. 
 
 Hume, David, 295. 
 
 Huntly, George Gordon, fourth 
 Earl of, 128, 132, 135, 138. 
 
 Huntly, George Gordon, fifth Earl 
 of, 150, 151, 158, 164. 
 
 Huntly, George Gordon, first Mar- 
 quis of, 188, 189, 192, 193, 194, 
 196, 197, 202, 209. 
 
 Hutcheson, Francis, 298. 
 
 Hutcheson, George, 266. 
 
 Inchmahone, 100. 
 
 Independents, 247, 302. 
 
 Innocent I, 24. 
 
 Innocent III, 55, 59, 71, 110, 152. 
 
 Innocent VIII, 77, 78. 
 
 Institute, 107. 
 
 Instrument of Association, 185, 187. 
 
 lona, 28, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39. 
 
 Ireland, 24, 27, 28, 32, 34, 38, 235, 
 
 251. 
 
 Irving, Edward, 306. 
 Isles, the, 76. 
 
 Jaffray, Provost of Aberdeen, 254. 
 
 James I, 72. 
 
 James II, 74-5. 
 
 James III, 75-7. 
 
 James IV, 77. 
 
 James V, 82, 85, 87-93. 
 
 James VI, 152, 160, 177 ; seized by 
 Gowrie, 181 ; and the Kirk, 184, 
 191, 192, 196-7, 200, 203-13; 
 marriage, 190 ; and the Ruth- 
 vens, 200 ; King of England, 203. 
 
 James VII (II of England), 270, 
 272, 273, 275; accession, 276, 
 277 ; flight, 280. 
 
 James, the Old Pretender, 279. 
 
 Jedburgh, 153. 
 
 Jerome, St., 21. 
 
 Jesuits, 188, 192-3, 202, 208, 278. 
 
 Joachim of Flora, 53, 57. 
 
 Jocelyn, 27. 
 
 John XXII, 64. 
 
 Johnston of Warriston, Archibald 
 
 See Warriston. 
 Jolly, Alexander, Bishop of Morav, 
 
 302. 
 
 Jus Populi Vindicatum, 265. 
 Justice, College of, 88. 
 Justin, 26. 
 Justinian, 26, 114. 
 
 Kailites, 294. 
 
 Keillor, 91. 
 
 Kelso, 50, 52, 76. 
 
 Kennedy, Bishop, 74, 75. 
 
 Kennedy, Ninian, 91. 
 
 Kennedy, Quintin, 138. 
 
 Kenneth MacAlpin, 39, 42. 
 
 Kenneth II, 40, 42. 
 
 Kenneth III, 42. 
 
 Kentigern, 27. 
 
 Ker of Faldonside, 172. 
 
 Kerr, George, 193. 
 
 Kilwinning, 50. 
 
 King, John, Dean of Christ Church, 
 205. 
 
 Kirk, the, 152, 162, 184, 191, 192 ; 
 her perfection, 195; 198, 200, 
 208, 211. 
 
 Kirkaldy of Grange, 97, 99, 150, 
 163, 165, 166, 168, 172-3. 
 
 Kirk o' Field, 156. 
 
 Kirkton, James, 282. 
 
 Knox, Andrew, 193. 
 
 Knox, John, 91, 93, 95-6, 98, 109- 
 10, 113, 115, 116, 118, 121, 144, 
 160, 167, 168-9, 190, 280, 300 ; 
 birth, 96 ; preaching, 99, 147 ; 
 galley-slave, 99, 100; in England, 
 101, 154 ; on the Continent, 
 106-9,110-16; marriage, 110; in 
 Scotland, 116; and Elizabeth, 
 116, 118, 120 ; minister of Edin- 
 burgh, 124, 126-7, 168, 170; 
 interviews with Queen Mary, 131, 
 139, 141, 142; and Bothwell, 
 1S6 ; and England, 139 ; activi- 
 ties, 140, 141 ; before the Council, 
 143, 147 ; second marriage, 144 ; 
 and Rizzio, 151 ; and the queen, 
 160; before the Kirk, 166; 
 death, 171 ; children, 172, 204.
 
 340 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Lambert, John, 86. 
 
 Lammie of Pitcairn Green, 317. 
 
 Lanark. See Hamilton, William. 
 
 Lanfranc, 45. 
 
 Langside, 163. 
 
 Last Blast of the Trumpet (Winzet), 
 
 138. 
 Lateran, Councils of, 53 (Third), 
 
 56 (Fourth). 
 
 Lauchlison, Margaret, 277. 
 Laud, William, 210; Bishop of 
 
 London, 215 ; Archbishop, 217 ; 
 
 dealings with Scots, 215-20; 
 
 fall and death, 234, 242. 
 Lauderdale, John Maitland, Duke 
 
 of, 236, 239, 245, 247, 254, 260, 
 
 263, 265, 267, 269, 274. 
 Laureo, Bishop of Mondovi, 152. 
 Lawson, James, 177, 178, 183, 184. 
 Lectures on the Church of Scotland, 
 
 325. 
 
 Lee, Robert, 324. 
 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 
 
 122, 143, 145. 
 Leigh ton, Alexander, 216. 
 Leighton, Robert, 256, 257 ; Bishop 
 
 of Dunblane, 261-2 ; at Glasgow, 
 
 267, 268. 
 
 Leith, 95, 96, 119, 120. 
 Leith, Convention of, 169, 175, 208. 
 Lennox, Esmd, first Duke of, 177, 
 
 178, 179, 181, 182, 189. 
 Lennox, Ludovick, second Duke of, 
 
 182, 190. 
 Lennox, Matthew Stewart, Earl of, 
 
 112, 144, 146, 155; Regent, 166, 
 
 167 ; killed, 168. 
 Leo the Great, Pope St., 24, 25. 
 Leo X, 82. 
 Leo XIII, 324. 
 Leslie, Alexander, Earl of Leven, 
 
 229, 232, 233, 235, 238, 239, 240, 
 
 248 ; and Charles I, 244. 
 Leslie, David, 241, 244, 248, 253. 
 Leslie, George, 209. 
 Leslie, John, 126, 128. 
 Letter of Indulgence, 266. 
 Letter to the Commonalty, 1 10, 1 12. 
 Liberius, Bishop of Rome, 21. 
 Life of God in the Soul of Man, The, 
 
 274. 
 
 Lindisfarne, 33. 34, 35. 
 Lindley, Lord, 329. 
 Lindores, 70. 
 Lindsay, David, 164, 194, 197, 201. 
 
 Lindsay, David, Bishop of Edin- 
 burgh, 217, 220. 
 
 Lindsay, Patrick, Bishop of Glas- 
 gow, 228. 
 
 Lindsay, Sir David, 91. 
 
 Linlithgow, 101, 135. 
 
 Livingstone, John, 248, 252, 262. 
 
 Livingstone, Thomas, 73. 
 
 Llanelwy, 27. 
 
 Lochleven, 159. 
 
 Logic, Gavin, 91. 
 
 Lollards, 68, 70, 72, 78. 
 
 Lombard, Peter, 56. 
 
 London, 30. 
 
 London Missionary Society, 299. 
 
 Lords of the Articles, 150, 162. 
 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 103, 121, 145. 
 
 Lothian, 164. 
 
 Loudon, John Campbell, Earl of, 
 215, 220-1, 231, 232, 235, 245, 
 247-8, 249, 252. 
 
 Lucius III, 53. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 82, 85, 144. 
 
 Lyons, Council of. 60. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., 321. 
 
 Macbeth, 43-4. 
 
 Macdonald, Alaster, 242, 246. 
 
 Machar, 29. 
 
 Mackenzie, George, 260, 269, 275. 
 
 Macmillan, Alexander, 322. 
 
 Macmillan, John, 293. 
 
 Macnaghten, Lord, 329. 
 
 Maitland, John, 185, 191, 195. 
 
 Maitland, William, of Lethington, 
 109, 127, 171 ; and England, 
 120-1. 132, 143, 144-5; and 
 Mary, 130, 137, 141, 153, 158; 
 and Darnley, 154 ; in Edinburgh 
 Castle, 165, 168, 172 ; death, 173. 
 
 Major, John, 85, 99. 
 
 Makgill, James, 133, 153. 
 
 Malcolm, 40. 
 
 Malcolm, son of Duncan, 44, 45, 46. 
 
 Malcolm, son of Kenneth II, 42. 
 
 Manning, Archbishop, 324. 
 
 Mar, John Erskine, first Earl of, 
 168, 170. 
 
 Mar, John Erskine, second Earl of, 
 204. 
 
 Margaret Tudor, Queen of James IV, 
 80, 82, 84, 85, 86. 
 
 Margaret, Queen, 43, 44-6. 
 
 Marnoch, 314. 
 
 Marrow of Modern Divinity, 288.
 
 INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Marshall, Andrew, 306, 321. 
 
 Marshall, Stephen, 238, 245. 
 
 Marston Moor, 240. 
 
 Martin, Bishop of Tours, 22. 
 
 Martyr, Peter, 244. 
 
 Mary of Guise, 90, 92, 102-3, 107, 
 109, 110, 115-22, 213. 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 93, 107 ; 
 crowned, 94 ; and Francis II, 
 100, 102, 111, 112, 125 ; claim to 
 England, 114, 129, 132 ; in Scot- 
 land, 130; religious policy, 131; 
 and Knox, 131, 139, 141, 142; 
 and th3 Nuncio, 137, 155; mar- 
 riage, 143 ; and Darnlev, 146, 
 151, 155-6 ; and Rizzio, 150-1 ; 
 and Bothwell, 153, 155, 157, 158; 
 marriage, 158 ; imprisonment, 
 160; abdication, 160; in Eng- 
 land, 163 ; and Moray, 165 ; 
 plots to free, 180, 185, 187 ; exe- 
 cution, 187-8. 
 
 Mass, the, 83-4, 102, 115, 123, 126, 
 129-32, 137, 142, 146, 148, 
 149-50, 302. 
 
 Maximus, 21. 
 
 Maxwell, John, Bishop of Ross, 216, 
 218, 219, 228. 
 
 Maybole, 138-9. 
 
 McAlpine, 91. 
 
 McGill, William, 298. 
 
 Macleod, Norman, 323, 324. 
 
 M'Crie, Thomas, 302, 304. 
 
 Megginch, 137. 
 
 Melrose, 50, 65. 
 
 Melville, Andrew, 170, 174, 182, 
 183, 184, 193, 197, 304 ; Book of 
 Policy, 176; Moderator, 179, 
 194 ; before the King, 183, 187 ; 
 doctrine of jurisdiction, 196 ; in 
 England, 205-6, 208 ; principles 
 adopted, 230. 
 
 Melville, James, 169, 185-6, 193, 
 196, 205, 206. 
 
 Melville, Lord, 281. 
 
 Melville, Sir James, 158. 
 
 Menteith, Loch, 100. 
 
 Methven, Paul, 111, 115, 124, 
 139-40. 
 
 Middleton, General, 255, 259, 262, 
 
 263. 
 
 Milan, Edict of, 18. 
 Miller, Hugh, 312, 313, 321. 
 Milton, John, 234, 246. 
 Ministers, election of, 251. 
 
 Missions, 295, 299, 
 Mitchell, James, 266. 
 Monasticism, 16, 25, 49. 
 Moncreiff, Lord, 308. 
 Moncreiff, Sir Henry, 300. 
 Moncrieff, Alexander, 295. 
 Monk, General, 256, 258, 259. 
 Monmouth, James, Duke of, 270, 
 
 271, 277. 
 
 Monophysitism, 26. 
 Montgomerie, Robert, 179-80. 
 Moray, 49, 60, 81, 82. 
 Morison, James, 315, 327. 
 Morton, James Douglas, fourth 
 
 Earl of, 144, 150, 153, 155, 
 
 157, 160, 167 ; and bishops, 169 ; 
 
 Regent, 172 ; and the Kirk. 176 ; 
 
 execution, 179. 
 Mungo, St., 27. 
 Musselburgh, 57. 
 Myllar, Andrew, 80. 
 Mylne, Walter, 112. 
 
 Nairn, Thomas, 293. 
 
 Naphtali, 265, 283. 
 
 Naseby, 243. 
 
 Nevay, John, 246. 
 
 ' New Light,' 298, 300, 302-3, 306. 
 
 Newbattle, 50. 
 
 Newbattle, Lord, 193, 199. 
 
 Newburn, 233. 
 
 Nicaea, Council of, 18, 20. 
 
 Nicholas of Gouda, 137, 155. 
 
 Nicholson, Thomas, 285. 
 
 Ninian, 21, 25. 
 
 Nixon, 323. 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 164. 
 
 Northampton, Council of, 52. 
 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 164. 
 
 Northumbria, 32. 
 
 Nye, Philip, 238, 239, 240, 257. 
 
 Occam, William of, 64, 66, 83. 
 
 Ochiltree, Lord, 142, 144, 150, 178. 
 
 Octavians, the, 195. 
 
 Ogilvie, John, 209. 
 
 Ogilvy, Marion, 101. 
 
 Origen, 15. 
 
 Original Burghers, 304. 
 
 Original Seceders, 317, 322. 
 
 Orkney, 76. 
 
 Ormiston, Cockburn, Laird of, 97. 
 
 Oswald of Northumbria, 33. 
 
 Oswy, 33.
 
 342 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Overall, John, Dean of St. Paul's, 
 205, 208. 
 
 Paine, Thomas, 299. 
 Panpresbyterian Council, 327. 
 Papacy, and Scotland, 52, 53, 57, 
 
 59, 72, 82, 124, 152 ; claims and 
 
 status of, 14, 15-16, 18,39,43,62, 
 
 83, 86, 92 ; and England, 34, 66, 
 
 87. 
 
 Paschal II, 49. 
 Patrick, St., 22, 24. 
 Patronage, 250, 262, 281, 286, 290, 
 
 294, 307, 324, 325. 
 Paul III, 89. 
 Paul IV, 109, 117, 119. 
 Payne, Henry Neville, 282. 
 Peden, Alexander, 271, 285. 
 Pelagius, 24, 25, 31. 
 Pelleve, Bishop of Amiens, 120. 
 Penry, John, 192, 198. 
 Perth, 59, 70, 72, 73, 76, 116. 
 Philip II of Spain, 118, 132, 161, 
 
 188, 193, 199. 
 Philiphaugh, 244. 
 Picta, 22, 28, 33, 34, 38, 39. 
 Pierson, Peter, 276. 
 Pinkie, 100. 
 Pisa, 71. 
 
 Pittenweem, Prior of, 162. 
 Pius II, 73. 
 Pius IV, 119, 145. 
 Pius V, 149, 152, 162, 170. 
 Pluscardine, 57. 
 Pont, Robert, 143, 192. 
 Porteous riot, 291. 
 Practical Essay on the Death of 
 
 Christ, 298. 
 Prayer Book, 101, 104, 108, 111, 
 
 203, 232, 239, 301. 
 Presbyterian system, 127-8, 169, 
 
 174, 190, 211, 257. 
 Presbyteries, 179. 
 Presentation, right of, 162, 192, 
 
 262, 290. 
 Preservation against Presbytery, A, 
 
 294. 
 
 Priscillian, 21. 
 Protestant, name of, 88. 
 Protesters, 255, 257-8, 261. 
 Pym, John, 232. 
 
 Rainy, Robert, 325, 326-7, 328, 
 
 330, 331. 
 Ramsay, Robert, 143. 
 
 Randolph, Thomas, 133, 139, 140, 
 
 143, 148. 
 Ratisbon, 138. 
 Reformation, 27, 58, 79, 80, 83, 
 
 115, 124, 129, 136, 171-2, 214. 
 Reformed Presbyterians. See Cam- 
 
 oronians. 
 Reid, Robert, Bishop of Orkney, 
 
 102, 113, 156. 
 
 Religious Tract Society. 299. 
 Renwick, James, 274, 275, 278-9. 
 Resby, John, 70. 
 Resolutioners, 255, 258, 261, 268. 
 Ro-union, 322, 323, 325, 328. 
 Richelieu, Cardinal, 231. 
 Ripon, 35. 
 
 Rizzio, David, 145, 148, 150. 
 Robert III, 65, 69. 
 Robertson, James, 323. 
 Robertson, William, 294-7, 298-9, 
 
 312. 
 
 Rochester, 30. 
 Rollock, Robert, 197. 
 Rome, Church of, 21, 37, 145, 171, 
 
 193, 194, 202, 208-9, 215, 265, 
 
 285, 289, 292, 296-7, 299, 30o ,324. 
 Ross, Bishop of, 53, 201. 
 Ross, Lord, 271. 
 Ross, Duke of, 79. 
 Rothes, Andrew, fifth Earl of, 150. 
 Rothes, George Leslie, fourth Earl 
 
 of, 113. 
 Rothes, John Leslie, sixth Earl of, 
 
 215, 220, 225, 229, 231. 
 Rothes, John Leslie, seventh Earl 
 
 of, 255, 260, 263. 
 Rough, John, 93, 99. 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 287. 
 Row, John, 126, 148. 
 Roxburgh, 58. 
 Russell, Jerome, 91. 
 Rutherford, Samuel, 224, 238, 243, 
 
 246, 251, 255, 256. 
 Ruthven, Alexander, 199, 200, 202. 
 Ruthvon, Patrick, Lord Kutlivcu. 
 
 141, 143, 151. 
 Ruthven, Raid of, 181, 184. 
 
 Sabellius, 19, 289. 
 
 Sadler, Sir Ralph, 92, 119. 
 
 St. Andrews, 39, 40, 48, 117. liU. 
 
 255 ; metropolitan see, 76, 82 ; 
 
 siege of, 98-9. 
 St. Andrews, University of, 72 ; 
 
 founded, 70.
 
 INDEX 
 
 843 
 
 St. Bartholomew, massacre of, 
 
 170-1. 
 
 St. Leonard's College, 82. 
 Sandeman, Robert, 294. 
 Scheves, William, 76, 78-9. 
 Schism, Great, 67, 68. 
 Scone, 39, 40, 50, 51. 
 Scott, A. J., 305, 306. 
 Scott, 205-6, 211. 
 Scougal, Patrick, 264, 274. 
 Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, 
 
 298. 
 Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, 
 
 288. 
 
 Seaton, Alexander, 91. 
 Seceders (1733), 291, 300. 
 Secular clergy, 36. 
 Selden, John!; 237, 246. 
 Selkirk, 50. 
 Sempill, Grizel, 101. 
 Sermoneta, 109. 
 Seton, Alexander, 175, 195. 
 Seton, Lord, 93, 178, 195, 199. 
 Sharp, James, 256, 258, 259, 261, 
 
 262, 266, 267, 268 ; attempt to 
 
 assassinate, 266, 270. 
 Shields, Alexander, 276, 282. 
 Shorter Catechism, 248. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 186. 
 Simeon, Charles, 300. 
 Simson, Duncan, 91. 
 Simson, John, 287, 288-9, 298. 
 Sinclair, Henrv, Bishop of Ross, 
 
 137, 143. 
 
 Sion's Plea against Prelacy, 216. 
 Siricius, 22. 
 Skinner, John, 294. 
 Smeaton, Thomas, 182. 
 Smith, William Robertson, 326-7. 
 Society-men, 273, 275, 278, 282. 
 Solway Moss, 93, 100. 
 Somerset, Duke of, 95, 98, 99-100. 
 Soulseat, 50. 
 Spottiswood, John, 126, 164, 168, 
 
 203, 207, 208, 209, 212, 218, 219, 
 
 228. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, 325. 
 Sfcapleton, Robert, 254. 
 Stewart, Adam, 246. 
 Stewart, Alexander, 80, 82. 
 Stewart, Francis, Earl of Both well, 
 
 181, 190, 192, 193. 
 Stewart, James, Earl of Arran, 178, 
 
 183-4, 185-6. 
 Stewart, James, Earl of Moray, 101, 
 
 117, 129, 130, 142, 145, 146; 
 marriage, 135 ; Earl of Moray, 
 135; in England, 147, 150; 
 return, 151, 153 ; and Darnley, 
 147, 154, 156; leaves Scotland, 
 157; Regent, 160, 161, 164; 
 death, 165; daughter, 192. 
 
 Stewart, James, second Earl of 
 Moray, 192. 
 
 Stewart, James, 265, 283. 
 
 Stewart, Lord Robert, 147, 156. 
 
 Stewart, Margaret, 144, 172, 178. 
 
 Stewart, Sir James, 264, 265. 
 
 Stirling, 95, 154. 
 
 Straiton of Lauriston, 204. 
 
 Straton, David, 89. 
 
 Sum of Saving Knowledge, 252. 
 
 Sutherland, Earl of, 223. 
 
 Sweet Singers, 273. 
 
 Sydserf, Thomas, Bishop of Gallo- 
 way, 221, 228 ; of Orkney, 261. 
 
 Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, 19. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 247, 248. 
 
 Taylor, John, 298. 
 
 Tertullian, 14, 15. 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles, 302. 
 
 Thomson, Andrew, 306. 
 
 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 125, 
 128-9, 160. 
 
 Tithes, 214. 
 
 Tonsure, 31. 
 
 Tractate (Winzet), 135. 
 
 Transubstantiation, 56. 
 
 Traquair, Sir John Stewart, Earl of, 
 217 221 222. 
 
 Trent,' Council of, 97, 102, 136, 145. 
 
 Trinitarians, 59. 
 
 Trondhjem, 76. 
 
 True Law of Free Monarchies, 198. 
 
 Tullimull, 59. 
 
 Tullochgorum, 294. 
 
 Tunstall, Cuthbert, Bishop of Dur- 
 ham, 101, 102, 107. 
 
 Turgot, Prior of Durham, 45, 48. 
 
 Turner, Sir James, 264. 
 
 Turnbull, William, 74. 
 
 ' Twapenny Faith,' 115. 
 
 Twiss, Dr. William, 239. 
 
 Tylney, Emery, 94. 
 
 Udall, John, 190. 
 Ulster. See Ireland. 
 Union of England and Scotland, 
 285.
 
 844 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 
 
 Unitarianism, 298. 
 
 United Free Church, 328, 330. 
 
 United Original Seceders, 305, 315, 
 
 317. 
 United Presbyterian Church, 321, 
 
 327, 328. 
 Urban VI, 67. 
 Usaher, Archbishop, 222, 237, 262. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 238, 241. 
 ' Veto without reasons,' 308, 309. 
 Villiers, George, Duke of Bucking- 
 ham, 254. 
 
 Vincent de Paul, St., 209. 
 Vivian, Cardinal, 52. 
 
 Wallace, 60-3. 
 
 Wardlaw, Henry, 69, 70, 74. 
 
 Wardlaw, Ralph, 302. 
 
 Wardlaw, Walter, 68. 
 
 Warriston, Archibald Johnston of, 
 
 222-3, 226, 235, 239, 248, 250, 
 
 252, 258, 263, 265. 
 Webster, James, 287. 
 Wedderburn, James, Bishop of 
 
 Dunblane, 216, 219, 228. 
 Weir, Major, 251-2. 
 Welch, John, 204. 
 Welsh, Dr. David, 316, 318, 323. 
 Wesley, John, 294. 
 Westminster Assembly, 237, 239, 
 
 241, 246. 
 
 Westmorland, Earl of, 165. 
 Westphalia, Peace of, 249. 
 Whigamore Raid, 248. 
 Whigs, 248. 
 
 Whitby, 34. 
 
 Whitefield, George, 292. 
 
 Whitford, Walter, Bishop of Brc- 
 chin, 219, 228. 
 
 Whitgift, Archbishop, 203. 
 
 Whithorn, Isle of, 22, 25, 36. 
 
 Wigtown Bay, 51. 
 
 Wilfrid, 33, 34, 36. 
 
 William the Conqueror, 44, 47. 
 
 William the Lion, 51. 
 
 William III, 279. 
 
 Willock, John, 115, 122, 126, 163. 
 
 Wilson, Margaret, 277. 
 
 Winram, John, 106, 126, 168. 
 
 Winster, Alexander, 266. 
 
 Winzet, Ninian, 102, 123, 135, 138, 
 142. 
 
 Wishart, George, 94, 96-7, 100. 
 
 Wishart, George, Bishop of Edin- 
 burgh, 242, 265. 
 
 Wishart, of Pitarrow, 134. 
 
 Witchcraft, 77, 141. 
 
 Withorn, 51. 
 
 Witness, The, 313. 
 
 Worcester, Battle of, 256. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dr. Charles, 322, 323. 
 
 Wright, of Lauriston, 317. 
 
 Wyclif, John, 66-8, 70, 71. 
 
 York, See of, 48, 52, 57, 76, 208. 
 Young, Robert, 309, 317. 
 
 Zosimus, 24. 
 Zouche, Lord, 194. 
 Zurich, 83. 
 Zwingli, 83, 123, 302.
 
 A 000 085 421 6