Short History of Scotland — 31 - Ch. 24: Charles I, pt 1

CHAPTER XXIV. CHARLES I.

The reign of Charles I. opened with every sign of the tempests which were to follow.

England and Scotland were both seething with religious fears and hatreds.

Both parties in England, Puritans and Anglicans, could be satisfied with nothing less than complete domination.

In England the extreme Puritans, with their yearning after the Genevan presbyterian discipline, had been threatening civil war even under Elizabeth.

James had treated them with a high hand and a proud heart.

Under Charles, wedded to a "Jezebel," a Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria, the Puritan hatred of such prelates as Laud expressed itself in threats of murder;

while heavy fines and cruel mutilations were inflicted by the party in power.

The Protestant panic, the fear of a violent restoration of Catholicism in Scotland, never slumbered.

In Scotland Catholics were at this time bitterly persecuted, and believed that a presbyterian general massacre of them all was being organised.

By the people the Anglican bishops and the prayer-book were as much detested as priests and the Mass.

When Charles placed six prelates on his Privy Council, and recognised the Archbishop of St Andrews, Spottiswoode, as first in precedence among his subjects, the nobles were angry and jealous.

Charles would not do away with the infatuated Articles of Perth.

James, as he used to say, had "governed Scotland by the pen" through his Privy Council.

Charles knew much less than James of the temper of the Scots, among whom he had never come since his infancy, and _his_ Privy Council with six bishops was apt to be even more than commonly subservient.

In Scotland as in England the expenses of national defence were a cause of anger; and the mismanagement of military affairs by the king's favourite, Buckingham, increased the irritation.

It was brought to a head in Scotland by the "Act of Revocation," under which all Church lands and Crown lands bestowed since 1542 were to be restored to the Crown.

This Act once more united in opposition the nobles and the preachers;

since 1596 they had not been in harmony.

In 1587, as we saw, James VI.

had annexed much of the old ecclesiastical property to the Crown; but he had granted most of it to nobles and barons as "temporal lordships."

Now, by Charles, the temporal lords who held such lands were menaced, the judges ("Lords of Session") who would have defended their interests were removed from the Privy Council (March 1626), and, in August, the temporal lords remonstrated with the king through deputations.

In fact, they took little harm--redeeming their holdings at the rate of ten years' purchase.

The main result was that landowners were empowered to buy the tithes on their own lands from the multitude of "titulars of tithes" (1629) who had rapaciously and oppressively extorted these tenths of the harvest every year.

The ministers had a safe provision at last, secured on the tithes, in Scotland styled "teinds," but this did not reconcile most of them to bishops and to the Articles of Perth.

Several of the bishops were, in fact, "latitudinarian" or "Arminian" in doctrine, wanderers from the severity of Knox and Calvin.

With them began, perhaps, the "Moderatism" which later invaded the Kirk; though their ideal slumbered during the civil war, to awaken again, with the teaching of Archbishop Leighton, under the Restoration.

Meanwhile the nobles and gentry had been alarmed and mulcted, and were ready to join hands with the Kirk in its day of resistance.

In June 1633 Charles at last visited his ancient kingdom, accompanied by Laud.

His subjects were alarmed and horrified by the sight of prelates in lawn sleeves, candles in chapel, and even a tapestry showing the crucifixion.

To this the bishops are said to have bowed,--plain idolatry.

In the Parliament of June 18 the eight representatives of each Estate, who were practically all-powerful as Lords of the Articles, were chosen, not from each Estate by its own members, but on a method instituted, or rather revived, by James VI.

in 1609. The nobles made the choice from the bishops, the bishops from the nobles, and the elected sixteen from the barons and burghers.

The twenty-four were all thus episcopally minded: they drew up the bills, and the bills were voted on without debate.

The grant of supply made in these circumstances was liberal, and James's ecclesiastical legislation, including the sanction of the "rags of Rome" worn by the bishops, was ratified.

Remonstrances from the ministers of the old Kirk party were disregarded; and--the thin end of the wedge--the English Liturgy was introduced in the Royal Chapel of Holyrood and in that of St Salvator's College, St Andrews, where it has been read once, on a funeral occasion, in recent years.

In 1634-35, on the information of Archbishop Spottiswoode, Lord Balmerino was tried for treason because he possessed a supplication or petition which the Lords of the minority, in the late Parliament, had drawn up but had not presented.

He was found guilty, but spared: the proceeding showed of what nature the bishops were, and alienated and alarmed the populace and the nobles and gentry.

A remonstrance in a manly spirit by Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet, was disregarded.

In 1635 Charles authorised a Book of Canons, heralding the imposition of a Liturgy, which scarcely varied, and when it varied was thought to differ for the worse, from that of the Church of England.

By these canons, the most nakedly despotic of innovations, the preachers could not use their sword of excommunication without the assent of the Bishops.

James VI.

had ever regarded with horror and dread the licence of "conceived prayers," spoken by the minister, and believed to be extemporary or directly inspired.

There is an old story that one minister prayed that James might break his leg: certainly prayers for "sanctified plagues" on that prince were publicly offered, at the will of the minister.

Even a very firm Presbyterian, the Laird of Brodie, when he had once heard the Anglican service in London, confided to his journal that he had suffered much from the nonsense of "conceived prayers."

They were a dangerous weapon, in Charles's opinion: he was determined to abolish them, rather that he might be free from the agitation of the pulpit than for reasons of ritual, and to proclaim his own headship of the Kirk of "King Christ."

This, in the opinion of the great majority of the preachers and populace, was flat blasphemy, an assumption of "the Crown Honours of Christ."

The Liturgy was "an ill-mumbled Mass," the Mass was idolatry, and idolatry was a capital offence.

However strange these convictions may appear, they were essential parts of the national belief.

Yet, with the most extreme folly, Charles, acting like Henry VIII.

as his own Pope, thrust the canons and this Liturgy upon the Kirk and country.

No sentimental arguments can palliate such open tyranny.

The Liturgy was to be used in St Giles' Church, the town kirk of Edinburgh (cleansed and restored by Charles himself), on July 23, 1637. The result was a furious brawl, begun by the women, of all presbyterians the fiercest, and, it was said, by men disguised as women.

A gentleman was struck on the ear by a woman for the offence of saying "Amen," and the famous Jenny Geddes is traditionally reported to have thrown her stool at the Dean's head.

The service was interrupted, the Bishop was the mark of stones, and "the Bishops' War," the Civil War, began in this brawl.

James VI.

, being on the spot, had thoroughly quieted Edinburgh after a more serious riot, on December 17, 1596. But Charles was far away; the city had not to fear the loss of the Court and its custom, as on the earlier occasion (the removal of the Council to Linlithgow in October 1637 was a trifle), and the Council had to face a storm of petitions from all classes of the community.

Their prayer was that the Liturgy should be withdrawn.

From the country, multitudes of all classes flocked into Edinburgh and formed themselves into a committee of public safety, "The Four Tables," containing sixteen persons.