<220>Much as the social and political system of Scotland differed from that of England, James appeared in the last months of 1618 to have been 1612.Episcopacy established by the Scottish Parliament.equally successful in imposing his will upon both his kingdoms. In 1612 he had easily obtained from the Scottish Parliament the ratification of the Acts by which the Assembly of Glasgow had established Episcopacy two years before, with the addition of alterations which would serve to render the power of the Bishops more unlimited than it had been before. By this Act of Parliament, which gave the King a legal mode of keeping the clergy in subjection, one chapter of Scottish ecclesiastical history was closed. James’s victory over the Presbyterian clergy.In accomplishing his object, James had had the effective strength of the nation on his side. The powerful aristocracy, the lawyers, and part at least of the growing middle classes had been alienated by the harsh and intolerant spirit of the clerical assemblies now silenced. It remained to be seen whether James, content with having provided some elasticity of speech and thought, would abstain from attempting to mould the belief and worship of his subjects according to his own ideal.
James, it is true, was far more prudent than his son was afterwards to be. He disliked extremes, and he shrank from the exertion needed to overcome serious opposition. But he was fond of theological speculation, and he had the highest confidence in his own conclusions. At the same time his residence in England threw the burden of maintaining the <221>ground which he took up on others rather than on himself, and thus rendered him less sensitive to the action of opinion in Scotland.
In the spring of 1614 James issued an order that all persons should partake of 1614.The Communion to be received at Easter.the Communion on April 24, the day which to the south of the Tweed was known as Easter Day. In 1615, a second order appeared, 1615.directing the administration of the Communion ‘on one day yearly, to wit, Pasch day.’[385]
Further changes were in contemplation. An Assembly was gathered at Aberdeen, and Aberdeen was the centre of a reaction which was 1616.The Assembly at Aberdeen.now growing up against Presbyterianism, even amongst the Scottish clergy. The few southern ministers who made their way to so distant a place of meeting found themselves in a scanty minority. The Bishops and their supporters mustered strongly, and many of the temporal Lords had come in to give their countenance to them. Most of those who came to protest returned in despair to their homes in Fife or the Lothians. As soon as they were gone, the real business of the meeting commenced. The Assembly authorised the preparation of a new Confession of Faith, and of a Liturgy which was intended to supersede Knox’s Book of Common Order. Children were to be examined by the Bishop or his deputy before they were admitted to the Communion, an administration of which was always to take place on Easter Day.[386]
Such a decision ran counter to the feelings of that energetic part of the clergy which had been thrust aside from the management of affairs. But Character of the Bishops.if the composition of the new Liturgy had been left to the Bishops, it is not likely that it would have caused any widespread dissatisfaction. They had not floated to the surface on the tide of ecclesiastical reaction. Their opinions, so far as they had pronounced opinions at all, were very much like those of <222>the clergy around them, though held with an increased sense of the value of quiet and of the duty of submitting to the Royal authority. The King’s five articles.James, however, was too impatient to await the slow process of discussion and preparation. In reply to the letter in which the bishops communicated to him the resolutions of the Assembly, he sent down five Articles of his own which he required them to adopt. These Articles directed that the Communion should always be received in a kneeling posture; that in case of sickness or necessity the Lord’s Supper should be administered in private houses; that Baptism should under similar circumstances be administered in the same way; that days of observance should be appointed for the commemoration of the Birth, Passion, and Resurrection of the Saviour, and of the descent of the Holy Ghost; and that children should be brought to the bishop for a blessing.
It was not much to ask, according to the notions which surrounded James in England. But the proposed changes would be Not called for in Scotland.a severe shock to the religion of Scotland. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the first Article, which was certain to be more violently opposed than the other four, had the support of any party whatever in the Scottish Church. In England the custom of kneeling, though sometimes neglected, was in possession of the field. It was in accordance with the law of the Church, the observance of which had never been interrupted. In Scotland it was a pure innovation.
To the Archbishop of St. Andrews, on whom would fall the brunt of the conflict, the news of the King’s resolution was most unwelcome. Archbishop Spottiswoode Spottiswoode’s dissatisfaction.knew his countrymen well enough to be aware that he would have no peace if the Articles were to be enforced, and he would have been glad to avoid a conflict in which his own sympathies were not enlisted. As, however, he did not think it wise to oppose the King’s peremptory command, he begged James not to issue the Articles by the Royal authority alone. It would be safer, he argued, to procure for them the sanction of an Assembly — an Assembly doubtless after the fashion of that of Aberdeen; and he <223>offered, if the question were postponed for another year, to do his best to procure the assent of such a body.[387]
It may be that the Archbishop was not entirely disinterested in wishing so unpopular a change to be discussed in the following year. James proposes to visit Scotland.James had given out that in that year he intended to visit the country of his birth, and Spottiswoode’s work would doubtless be easier if the King were at his side.
James, however, was not desirous of engaging once more in a personal dispute with the clergy. He wrote to the Scottish Council that, though The consideration of the Articles postponed.he should have been glad to see the proposed reforms carried out during his visit, he would not at such a time bring forward anything which was unlikely to meet with universal acceptance.[388]
It was not from any consideration for the feelings or prejudices of his subjects that James threw over the realisation of The organ at Holyrood.his hopes to another year. He had resolved at least to show them what English worship was. In October the citizens of Edinburgh were scandalized by the strange apparition of an organ which had just been landed at Leith for the King’s chapel at Holyrood. Two or three months later it was followed by some English carpenters, who 1617.The carvings for the chapel.brought with them figures of the patriarchs and apostles, carved in wood for the same chapel. All Edinburgh was immediately in an uproar. Popish images, it was confidently said, were to be set up at Holyrood, and the Popish mass would follow soon. So alarming were the symptoms of the public discontent, that the bishops begged the King to withdraw his order for the erection of the obnoxious carvings. James yielded, but, as usual, with no good grace. He told the bishops that he had not been in the slightest degree influenced by their arguments; but he had heard from his master of the works that it would be difficult to complete the proposed arrangements in time. “Do not, <224>therefore,” he proceeded to say, “deceive yourselves with a vain imagination of anything done therein for ease of your hearts, or ratifying your error in your judgment of that graven work, which is not of an idolatrous kind, like to images and painted pictures adored and worshipped by Papists, but merely intended for ornament and decoration of the place where we should sit, and might have been wrought as well with figures of lions, dragons, and devils, as with those of patriarchs and apostles. But as we must wonder at your ignorance and teach you thus to distinguish between the one and the other, so are we persuaded that none of you would have been scandalised or offended if the said figures of lions, dragons, or devils had been carved and put up in lieu of those of the patriarchs and apostles, resembling in this the Constable of Castile, who being sent here to swear the peace between us and Spain, when he understood that this behoved to be solemnly performed in our chapel, he foresaw likewise that then some anthems would be sung, and therefore protested before his entry of our chapel that whatever were sung, God’s name might not be used in it.”[389] It was all very shrewd. But if the Bishops needed to be reasoned with in this fashion, what hope was there of carrying conviction to the heart of the mass of Scotchmen?
On May 13 James crossed the border. On the 16th he entered Edinburgh, and for the first time since his mother’s dethronement James at Holyrood.the voice of choristers and the pealing notes of the organ were heard in the chapel of Holyrood.[390] But James was not satisfied with the display of the forms of Church worship which he had learned to admire in England. Kneeling enforced.He gave peremptory orders that all the noblemen, the Privy Councillors, and the Bishops who were in Edinburgh should receive the Communion on their knees in the chapel on Whitsunday. Of those who were thus summoned, many complied at once. But there were some who absented themselves from the service, and of those who appeared, some abstained from presenting themselves at <225>the table. A second mandate was then issued, commanding the recusants to appear on the following Sunday, and, in some cases at least, the King’s persistency was not without effect.[391]
James’s resolution was the more ill-judged as he had before him in Scotland a task which would require all the popular support The Scottish nobility.which he could contrive to rally round him. If the conflict which the Crown had waged with the clergy had ended as he had wished it to end, it was mainly because he had had the nobility on his side. For all that, a conflict with the nobility was looming in the future. Though the Scottish nobles were no longer the fierce rebels and murderers which they had been in the days of James’s infancy, they exercised powers which were ill-befitting to subjects in a well-ordered state, and they knew how to hold with a strong hand lands and goods which they had acquired by fraud or rapine. Old feudal rights long ago swept away in England Heritable jurisdictions.were still exercised in Scotland. On their own lands the nobles handed down from father to son their heritable jurisdictions, the right of judging criminals. Men were put to death, not by the sentence of a Royal judge, but by the sentence of the lord’s court. James, in his desire to put an end to such a system, had at heart the true interests of the Scottish nation.
His mode of setting to work was eminently characteristic. In his speech at the opening of Parliament he told his countrymen that June 17.The Scottish Parliament.they were a barbarous people. He only hoped that they would be as ready to adopt the good customs of their Southern neighbours as they had been eager to become their pupils in the arts of smoking tobacco, and of wearing gay clothes.[392] If he meant by this that the nobles were to strip themselves of their jurisdictions, he might as well have lectured a gang of smugglers on the propriety of respecting the interests of the revenue. All that was yielded to him was the appointment of a commission empowered to compound with any nobleman who might be inclined to <226>surrender voluntarily his authority to the Crown. It is needless to say that the office of the commissioners was all but a complete sinecure.[393] It was not till the next reign that the Earl of Huntly sold his jurisdictions in Aberdeen and Inverness. No other Scottish lord followed his example.
In carrying another point James was more successful. The Scottish clergy were miserably poor. Lands, and tithes, by which Maintenance of the clergy.the earlier Church had been supported, were held in the iron grip of the dominant nobility. A miserable stipend, irregularly paid, was all that was assigned to those whose work it was to uphold the standard of religion and morality in an age of chicanery and bloodshed. James now asked for some small increase of this stipend, and for its assignment upon local sources, instead of its being relegated, as had hitherto been the case, to the uncertainty of a general fund. With some difficulty he carried his point, and from the visit of James to Edinburgh dates the possession by the Scottish ministers of a modest competence.[394] But though the King had his way, there were symptoms, for the first time for many years, of resistance amongst the nobility.
Even with the support of the clergy and the middle class it would not be an easy task to reduce the nobles to surrender their special privileges Proposed Act on ecclesiastical affairs.on behalf of the general interests of the State. James, however, had not relinquished those proposals which were likely to offend the clergy and the middle classes most deeply. An Act was brought forward in Parliament decreeing that ‘whatever His Majesty should determine in the external government of the Church, with the advice of the Archbishops, Bishops, and a competent number of the ministry, should have the force of law.’ The more independent of the clergy at once took fright. <227>As many as could be got together at a moment’s notice protested warmly against the measure, and James shrank from encountering the opposition which he had raised.
The Act was withdrawn, but the manner in which James withdrew it was justly regarded as an aggravation of the offence. The right, he said, of making changes in the external government of the Church was already inherent in the Crown. It was therefore unnecessary to pass a new Act to give him what he possessed already. In these words he asserted in the baldest way his claim to regulate forms of worship as he chose, whilst renouncing his right to decide upon doctrine: as if it were possible to separate between the external observance which is the expression of the doctrinal opinion, and the belief which recommends the use of any given form to those who have attached themselves to it.
James vented his anger upon the protesters. Two of them were imprisoned. A third, David Calderwood, persisted in maintaining that Calderwood banished.he had been in the right, and was banished.[395] He took refuge in Holland, where he employed his pen in vindicating the cause to which he had sacrificed his worldly prospects. The History in which he embalmed the sufferings and the constancy of the Church of Scotland has become to those who revere the memory of Melville and Henderson all that Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was to the Elizabethan Protestant, and all that Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion became to the Tory of the reign of Anne.
That a rigorous Presbyterian like Calderwood should have fallen into disgrace was only to be expected. But it is significant of Hewat’s Liturgy.the state of opinion in Scotland that one of the two imprisoned protesters was Thomas Hewat, to whom had been committed by the Assembly of Aberdeen, the most episcopal of Scottish assemblies, the task of compiling a Liturgy for the Church. The Liturgy which he prepared is drawn upon the lines of Knox’s Book of Common Order, and differs from it chiefly in its greater fulness, and in the introduction of a considerable number of prayers for special <228>occasions.[396] There is nothing in it to give offence to the most zealous Presbyterian. If James was to make any change of importance in the service of the Church, it would be his own doing. No Scottish ecclesiastical party was likely of its own accord to go so far as he wished the whole Church to go.
James, however, persisted in his intention. On July 13 he convened at St. Andrews a special meeting, at which the Bishops and The King’s speech at St. Andrews.a select number of ministers were present. He told them that he merely wished to introduce a more decent order into the Church. If they had anything to say against his five Articles, he was ready to listen. But they must remember that his demands were just and religious, and that he was not to be resisted with impunity. In conclusion, he reminded them that it was the special prerogative of Christian kings to order the external polity of the Church, after taking the advice of the bishops. They might approve of his proceedings, or they might disapprove of them. But they must not imagine that anything they might choose to say would have the slightest influence with him unless they could support their opinions by arguments which he found himself unable to answer.[397]
It is not surprising that no one present thought it possible to find an argument which James would acknowledge himself to be unable to answer. Postponement of the difficulty was all that could be hoped for, and it was finally arranged that an Assembly should meet at St. Andrews in November to discuss the Articles. James returned to England, trusting that there would be no further difficulty on the subject.
Of the five Articles, three would probably have been accepted without difficulty, though the Assembly might perhaps have Two only of the Articles unpopular.wished to fence round with some precautions against abuse the permission to administer Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in private houses, and the introduction of the rite of Confirmation. The Article which related to Church festivals was more unpopular. Not only was there a disinclination to adopt customs which could not <229>plead the direct authority of the Scriptures, but there was a vague impression that the observance of these days was in some way or another Popish, and a belief that such holidays would serve to many as an excuse for riot and debauchery. But it was to the Article which prescribed kneeling at the reception of the Communion that the most decided opposition was to be expected. Special objection to kneeling at the Communion.It was absurd to speak of the question as a mere matter of external discipline. Such actions are intimately connected with the innermost beliefs and feelings of the heart, and it is impossible to interfere with them without intruding upon the sanctuary of the conscience. To one man, to kneel at the reception of the Communion is a simple act of self-humiliation in the presence of Him in whose worship he is engaged. To another the same action would carry with it an acknowledgment of the doctrine of transubstantiation, or at least of the Real Presence in the consecrated elements. No doubt rules of some kind are necessary in every place where men meet together, and when members of the same congregation differ on matters of importance, there will be considerable difficulty in keeping them on good terms with one another. But it was not even pretended that any single Scotchman had asked for the change, though Scotch Presbyterians were in those days in the habit of kneeling at the ordinary prayers. No doubt, when James had once declared his resolution, he would meet with plenty of support. But it would be support of that kind which is valueless in the end. He would have the assistance of those amongst the clergy who thought it dangerous to quarrel with him, and of those amongst the laity who bore a grudge against the clergy, and who would have come to his help with equal readiness if he had proclaimed that standing upright or reclining on a couch was the fitting posture for the reception of the Communion.
The Assembly at St. Andrews gave no satisfaction to James. It agreed to the administration of the Communion to the sick, but postponed the consideration of the other Articles to a more convenient season.
<230>To all who had ears to hear, the opposition of the Assembly conveyed a serious warning. Of all men living in Scotland, there was probably 1618.Jan.Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen.none whose advice was better worth taking on ecclesiastical matters than Patrick Forbes, of Corse. Sprung from an ancient Scottish family, and himself a landed proprietor in Aberdeenshire, he had attached himself in youth to the high Presbyterian party of Andrew Melville. Circumstances changed in Scotland, and the decline of the combative spirit which made James’s alterations possible was not without its effect upon him. Secluded in his Aberdeenshire home from the main current of ecclesiastical pretensions, he grew more earnest in his zeal for the spread of morality and piety, and less careful to keep up distinctions of outward ceremonies. The country around him was in a sad state of spiritual destitution. The great landowners, the Earls of Huntly and Errol, had remained faithful to the Church of Rome; and whilst priests and Jesuits were favoured by the landed aristocracy, the more vehement Presbyterian ministers had been hurried off to prison and banishment by the King. Though Patrick Forbes’s own brother, John Forbes of Alford, had been banished for his part in resisting the introduction of Episcopacy,[398] he himself took no share in these conflicts. At the request of the neighbouring clergy he consented to occupy the pulpit, layman as he was, in an empty church near his home, and though he was silenced by the King’s directions, he does not appear to have taken offence at the interruption. In 1612, in the forty-seventh year of his age, he received ordination, and when the see of Aberdeen was vacant in January 1618, he was appointed Bishop, at the unanimous request of the clergy.
The letter in which Forbes explained to Archbishop Spottiswoode the reasons of his reluctance to accept the office is most His letter to Spottiswoode.valuable as an expression of the opinion of one so high-minded and honest. His hesitation, he said, did not proceed from any ‘disallowing the office and degree of a bishop.’ Episcopacy, if bishops were <231>‘rightly elected and defined with such moderation of place and power, as’ might ‘put restraint to excessive usurpations, was not only a tolerable, but even a laudable and expedient policy in the Church, and very well consisting with God’s written word.’ Nor was he influenced by any fear of giving offence to others. He even thought it would be right for an honourable man who did not entirely approve of episcopal government, to accept the office of a bishop when it had once been determined that the chief authority in the Church should be entrusted to bishops, rather than run the chance of seeing their places filled ‘with the offscouring of the world, and the dregs of men.’
Forbes’s real difficulty lay elsewhere. “This is that, my good Lord,” he writes, “which maketh all my scruple, the February.present condition and course of things — and we cannot tell how far a farther novation in our Church is intended — so peremptorily and impetuously urged on the one part, and so hardly received on the other; as betwixt these extremities, and the undertaking of a bishopric, I see no option left to me, but either to incur his Majesty’s displeasure, which is the rock under Christ I am loathest to strike on; or then to drive both myself and my ministry in such common distaste, as I see not how henceforth it can be any more fruitful. I dispute not here of the points themselves; but I am persuaded if so wise, so learned, and so religious a king as God hath blessed us with, were fully and freely informed, or did thoroughly conceive the sad sequel of enforcing our Church, that neither in the points already proposed, nor in any which we fear yet to ensue for this intended conformity, would his Majesty esteem any of such fruit or effect as therefore the state of a quiet Kirk should be marred, the minds of brethren, who for any bygone distraction were beginning again to warm in mutual love, should be of anew again and almost desperately distracted, the hearts of many good Christians discouraged, the resolution of many weak ones brangled,[399] matter of insulting ministered to Romanists, and to profane epicureans of a <232>disdainful deriding of our whole profession. … If wherein our Kirk seemeth defective, his Majesty would so far pity our weakness, and tender our peace, as to enforce nothing but which first in a fair and national Council were determined, wherein his Highness would neither make any man afraid by terror, nor pervert the judgment of any with hope of favour, then men may adventure to do service. But if things be so violently carried as no end may appear of bitter contention, neither any place left to men placed in rooms, but, instead of procuring peace, and reuniting the hearts of the brethren, to stir the coals of detestable debate — for me, I have no courage to be a partner in that work. I wish my heart-blood might extinguish the ungracious rising flame in our Kirk. But if I can do nothing for the quenching of it, then I would be heartily sorry to add fuel thereto.”[400]
Forbes’s objections were not insuperable. He became Bishop of Aberdeen. He was one of those bishops who His conduct in his diocese.justify episcopacy in the eyes of men. There was no man in the diocese who was not the better for his acceptance of the office. He was a true overseer of the Church. Parishes were filled under his direction with pious and earnest ministers. Learning was encouraged at the Universities of Aberdeen. The Bishop’s justice and gentleness gave him the highest place in the estimation of his fellow-citizens, and he was frequently employed as an arbitrator in disputes which a generation before would have lead to deadly feuds, to be extinguished only in blood. If, when the day of trouble came, there was a Royalist party in Scotland at all, it was mainly owing to the impression produced by the life and labours of Patrick Forbes.
If his advice had been taken by James and by his son, there would have been 1617.Dec.Spottiswoode’s character.no civil war in Scotland. But James was resolved to force on the Articles, and in Spottiswoode he found an instrument fitted for the work; for Spottiswoode, who, like Forbes, was a lover of peace, and an opponent of the absolute assertions <233>of the Presbyterians in matters which he believed to be indifferent, was ready, for the sake of peace, to stoop to work with which Forbes would never have defiled his fingers. James, when he heard of the resolution taken by the Assembly which had met at St. Andrews, told its members that they should now James threatens the ministers.know what it was to draw upon themselves the anger of a king, and, to give point to his denunciation, threatened those who refused to accept the Articles[401] with the loss of their stipends. Spottiswoode prevented the immediate execution of the threat, but he made use of the King’s letter to overawe the reluctant ministers into submission.[402]
Such were the disgraceful means by which the new religious observances were to be forced upon the Church. Many a man who 1618.Preparations for an Assembly at Perth.conscientiously believed the Articles to be Popish and antichristian drew back from an opposition which threatened to reduce to beggary himself and those who were dearer to him than himself. When the bishops met in Edinburgh in May they were able to May.inform the King that he might summon an Assembly with every prospect of success.[403] The observance of the festivals had already been enjoined by Act of Council.[404] But for the other Articles it was thought advisable to obtain at least the semblance of ecclesiastical authority. Attempts had been made by the bishops to enforce kneeling at the Communion, which had met with but indifferent success. It was accordingly resolved that on August 25 an Assembly should meet at Perth.
The King was to be represented at Perth by three <234>commissioners, of whom Lord Binning was the most prominent. Lord Binning.As Sir Thomas Hamilton, he had been noted for the violence with which he had upheld the Royal authority against all clerical claims to independence. He was now Secretary of State, and his presence at Perth would bring with it the certainty that no unnecessary scruples would be allowed to stand in the way of the King’s wishes.
Even Binning, however, was disconcerted as he rode into the streets of Perth. His practised eye told him that many of Aug.The opposition at Perth.the black gowns he saw were worn by his old enemies the ministers of the thoroughly Presbyterian districts of Fife and the Lothians. Hurrying to the Archbishop, he confided to him his fears. Spottiswoode quickly reassured him. In the early days of the Reformation, Knox, full of confidence in his country, and wishing to make the General Assembly the ecclesiastical Parliament of the nation, had welcomed the presence of the nobility as well as that of the elected representatives of the clergy and laity. The noblemen were now flocking to Perth in large numbers, and were ready, almost to a man, to vote for the King. If only thirty clerical votes were cast for the Articles, failure was impossible; and it would be strange if, with all the means at his disposal, the Archbishop could not secure thirty clerical votes for the King.
The sermons at the opening of the Assembly were preached by Forbes and Spottiswoode. Forbes seems to have contented himself with Aug. 25.Forbes’s sermon.recommending the members of the Assembly to act according to their consciences, at the same time that he pointed out that if the Articles were themselves indifferent, the effect of the anger of the King upon the Church was an element of the situation which might well be taken into consideration.[405]
Spottiswoode’s sermon disclosed more naïvely still Spottiswoode’s sermon.the only ground on which the Articles seemed worthy of recommendation to anyone in Scotland. “Had it been in our power,” he said, “to have dissuaded or declined them, we certainly would.” But they were matters <235>of indifference, and in such matters the danger of disobedience was greater than the danger from innovation. All that he could adduce in support of the Articles was that they were neither impious nor unlawful. “And surely,” he continued, “if it cannot be shewed that they are repugnant to the written word, I see not with what conscience we can refuse them, being urged as they are by our Sovereign Lord and King; a King who is not a stranger to divinity, but hath such acquaintance with it, as Rome never found, in the confession of all men, a more potent adversary; a King neither superstitious nor inclinable that way, but one that seeks to have God rightly and truly worshipped by all his subjects. His person, were he not our Sovereign, gives them sufficient authority, being recommended by him; for he knows the nature of things and the consequences of them, what is fit for a Church to have, and what not, better than we do all.”
It is easy to imagine what must have been the effect of so absolute a self-surrender on the minds of such of the ministers present Order of the Assembly.as retained a spark of independence. But a glance at the Assembly would have been sufficient to show that the hour of the independent ministers was not yet come. By accident or design the place in which it was convened was too small to afford decent accommodation to all who were present. Seats were provided for the nobility, for the bishops, and even for the representatives of the boroughs. The ministers were left to stand huddled together in a crowd behind the backs of those who were seated at the table. As soon as order was established the proceedings were commenced by the reading of a letter from the King.
James’s missive was couched in his usual style. He hoped, he said, that the Assembly would not allow the unruly and ignorant multitude to The King’s letter.bear down the better and more judicious. They must, however, understand that nothing that they could do would be of any real importance. It would do them no good to reject the Articles, as they would be imposed at once by the Royal authority, which was all that was really needed. Those who denied this called in question that power which Christian kings had received from God.
<236>As soon as the letter had been read, the Archbishop enforced its advice by a recital of the various miseries which would Aug. 25.befall those who were unwise enough to brave the King’s displeasure.
A conference was then held, in which a number of ministers, selected by Spottiswoode, took part. The Archbishop had taken care that Aug. 26.Preliminary conference.the majority of these should be on the side of the King. There was a sharp debate on the form in which the question should be put to the Assembly. The independent ministers thought it should be, “Whether kneeling or sitting at the Communion were the fitter gesture?” Spottiswoode was too good a tactician to allow this, and he carried a motion that the question should be, “His Majesty desires our gesture of sitting at the Communion to be changed into kneeling. Why ought not the same to be done?” The burden of proof was thus thrown upon his opponents.
The next morning Spottiswoode confronted the full Assembly. Everything was done to harass the opponents of the Court. Aug. 27.The full Assembly.They were not allowed to discuss the ecclesiastical question on its own merits. They were told that the only question before them was, “Is the King to be obeyed or not?” They were repeatedly warned of the penalties awaiting their obstinacy. When at last the vote was taken, Spottiswoode reminded each man of the consequences of his decision. “Have the King in your mind,” he said; The Articles accepted.“Remember the King,” “Look to the King.” Under this pressure eighty-six votes were given for the Articles, only forty being secured to the Opposition.[406]
<237>The majority thus obtained was, if the twelve bishops’ votes be set aside as already acquired for the King, almost entirely Composition of the majority.derived from the laity. Of the ministers present there was a bare majority of seven in favour of the Articles, a majority which, under the circumstances in which the vote was taken, indicates a very large preponderance of clerical opinion against the change. On the other hand, out of thirty lay votes only two were given in opposition.[407] If indeed the divergence between lay and clerical opinion had indicated a real desire on the part of the laity to alter the ceremonies of the Church, it might have been said that James had only given effect in a hasty and indecorous manner to the voice of the country. In truth there is everything to show that this was not the case. The laity of Scotland, and especially the nobility, gave no signs of any ardour on behalf of the new ceremonies. They were glad enough to worry the ministers — still more glad, if it were possible, to plunder them of their scanty revenues. But there were no strong convictions behind the votes which they had recorded.
The moral weight of high purpose and fixed resolve was on the other side. The bishops had enough to do in sentencing those who The Articles enforced.refused to conform, and who declared that the meeting at Perth was no lawful Assembly. In Fife and the Lothians, at least, the recalcitrant ministers had their congregations at their backs. In Edinburgh large numbers of the inhabitants poured out of the city to the country churches, where the new orders were less strictly enforced. That a fitting example might be set, the officers of state and the nobles of the land were marshalled to church like unwilling recruits, whilst the poor who lived upon the charity dispensed by the clergy were threatened with starvation if they <238>refused to conform. Ministers were cited before the bishops, and the examination usually ended in an unseemly wrangle. A man like Spottiswoode could only fall back upon the orders of the King.[408] Even Forbes was the worse for the unhappy contest in which he was engaged. “Will you,” he said, when some of the bishops were induced to forward to the King a petition for a dispensation to the recalcitrant ministers — “will you justify the doctrine of these men, who have called the reverent gesture which we use idolatry, and raised such a schism in our Church? Till they be brought publicly to confess their error, or heresy rather, I shall never be yielding, for my part. It was before indifferent; now I esteem it necessary, in regard to the false opinions they have dispersed, to retain constantly the form we have received.”[409]
Whatever explanation may be given of the acceptance of the five Articles by Scotland, there can be no doubt that there had been 1617.The courtiers and politicians.a lull in the Presbyterian enthusiasm of the seventeenth century. Something of the same kind might be said of English religion. The struggle against Spain had been successful. The idea for which Burghley and Walsingham had contended through good repute and evil repute had been realised. The councillors of James had no need to be anxiously taking precautions against invasion. Their sleep was never disturbed by dreams of a Spanish fleet at Cadiz, or a Spanish army in Flanders. With security had come corruption. Men, who were living without a purpose, and whose activity was limited to the regular fulfilment of the ordinary routine of duty, soon found the vacancy in their minds filled up by the consideration of their own personal interests. The absence of political enthusiasm was only equalled by the absence of religious enthusiasm. Protestantism was never thought of by them as a rule of life. It was a mere state contrivance, to be supported and encouraged for political reasons, or, at the most, a standard round <239>which they might gather to fling defiance at their enemies. The one truth which admitted of no doubt whatever was that money was worth having.[410]
Among men of this character the missionaries of Rome found their converts most easily. That great Church which had once Converts to Rome.led the van in the progress of the world, — which had lit the lamp of self-denial in the midst of bloodshed and riot, had educed order out of anarchy, and had given hope to those who had no hope in this world or the next, — was now, as far as England was concerned, little better than a hospital for the wounded in the spiritual and moral conflict which was still, as ever, being waged. It could point to the difficulties and dangers of the way, and could lure to its arms those who were frightened at the errors and mistakes of the combatants. It could give rest, but it could not give victory.
It is no wonder that the better minds in England turned fiercely upon those who would have dragged them back into the past, and that Protestantism in England.with unwise mistrust of themselves they sought to bar out the dreaded evil with penal and restrictive legislation. Yet, in reality, it was with English Protestantism as with the prince in the Arabian tale, who could only obtain the object of his desires by pressing forwards up the hill, whilst he was turned into stone if he looked round for a moment to combat the mocking voice which pealed in his ears from behind. If it had not been for James’s encouragement to Spanish intrigue, there would have been less harshness displayed towards the Catholics, and less bitter intolerance cherished, than was possible as matters stood. Yet, even as it was, there was a great change for the better. The old Puritanism which had busied itself with caps and surplices, and with energetic protests against <240>everything which bore the slightest resemblance to the practices of the Roman Church, was gradually dropping out of sight, and a movement was taking place which careless and prejudiced writers have attributed to the strictness of James and Bancroft, but which was in reality derived from a far higher source. The fact was, that thoughtful Englishmen were less occupied in combating Spain and the Pope, and more occupied in combating immorality and sin than they had been in the days of Elizabeth.
There was one great danger to which the men of this day were exposed. They were under a strong temptation to put their Systems in politics and theology.trust in systems. Systems of theology, systems of law, systems of politics, would each, from time to time, seem to be the one thing needful. As far as they were builders of systems, indeed, the men of the seventeenth century failed. The government of England has not shaped itself in accordance with the theories of Bacon or of Vane. The Church of England has not become what it would have been under the guidance of Laud or of Baxter. Yet it would be wrong to pour upon these systems the contempt with which they sometimes meet. They were raised unconsciously as barriers against the flood of immorality which was setting in; against unscrupulous falsehood, such as that of Raleigh; against thoughtless vanity, such as that of Buckingham; against mean wickedness, such as that of Lady Roos. There was that in them which would live — the belief in the paramount claims of duty; the faith in a Divine order in political, in social, and in domestic life, which has stamped itself indelibly on the English mind. It is this which has never been effaced even in the worst of times, and which shines forth with strange vitality whenever the heart of the nation recovers its ancient vigour.
Sooner or later, no doubt, the time arrives when such systems must be cast away at any cost. When it is discovered that they exclude as much as they include; when they cease to strengthen the life, and become nothing better than fetters to the mind, their day is past. But until that secret is learnt, they are the safeguards against anarchy. They form the <241>barriers against which self-will and self-confidence dash themselves in vain. They are less than truth, but they are more than passion. In the years that were coming, England would learn surely enough what their tyranny was. But she had also to learn that it is by enlarging them, not by casting them aside, that progress alone is possible.[411]
Happily for England, the life and vigour of the Elizabethan age had not been thrown away. The fear that the children of The Puritan conformists.the generation which had watched with Burghley and fought with Drake would crouch under the yoke of the Jesuits, was a mere chimera. That there would be a reaction against the indefinite aims and the moral weaknesses of the past was certain; but in whatever form it came, it would be sure, in the very midst of the order which it established, to leave wide room for the freedom of the individual mind.
Already it seemed as if Puritanism was fitting itself for its high mission. It was outgrowing the stern limits within which it had wasted its energies in earlier times. A generation was arising of Puritan conformists,[412] who had ceased to trouble <242>themselves about many questions which had seemed all-important to their fathers. They were not anxious to see the now customary forms of the Church of England give way to those of Scotland or Geneva, and they were ready to accept the Prayer Book as a whole, even if they disliked some of its expressions. What they lost in logic they gained in breadth. They desired that under the teaching of the Bible, interpreted as it was by them through the medium of the Calvinist theology, every Englishman should devote himself to the fulfilment of those duties in which they saw the worthy preparation for the life to come. They preached self-restraint, not in the spirit of the mediæval ascetic, because they despised the world, but because they looked upon the world as the kingdom of God, in which, as far as in them lay, they would do their Master’s will. In the ideal England which rose before their eyes, the riotous festivities of Whitehall, and the drunken revelries of the village alehouse, were to be alike unknown. Soberness, temperance, and chastity were to be the results of a reverent submission to the commands of God.
It was by its demand for a purer morality that Puritanism retained its hold upon the laity. There was springing up amongst men a consciousness that there was work to be done in England very different from that in which their fathers had been engaged. They saw around them the mass of men living a life of practical heathenism, regardless of everything beyond their immediate wants; and they sought to rouse the idle and the profligate by evoking in their hearts a sense of personal responsibility to their Maker. It was in this proclamation of the closeness of the connection between the individual soul and its God that the strength of that Puritanism was to be found which was sending forth those armies of Christian warriors who were already silently working their way beneath the surface of that society in the high places of which James and Buckmgham were playing their pranks. Yet the loftiness of the standard which they had set before them was not without its own peculiar dangers. They were not seldom narrow-minded and egotistical. In their <243>hatred of vice, they were apt to become intolerant of pleasure, and to look down with contempt upon those who disregarded the barriers which they had erected for the preservation of their own virtue. If ever they succeeded in acquiring political power, they would find it hard to avoid using it for the purpose of coercing the world into morality.
The same tide which had swept the Puritans into conformity, was carrying on the original conformists to a further development of their creed. School of Andrewes and Laud.What Baxter was to Cartwright, that Andrewes and Laud were to Hooker. That which may be termed the right wing of the body which had accepted the Elizabethan compromise, was becoming more distinctive in its doctrines, and more systematic in its thought. It was no longer sufficient to defend the rites of the Church of England upon grounds of expediency, or to magnify the duty of obedience to the civil power. The rites must be declared to be good in themselves, and, as such, entitled to the submission of all honest Christians. The leading idea round which these men gathered was antagonistic to the purely individual religion of the Genevan doctor. They had faith in a Divine operation upon men’s souls from without, in a work of God running through past ages, acting upon the conscience by means of ecclesiastical organization, and making use of the senses and imagination to reach the heart. Such a system had its charm for many minds, and was readily adopted by the most promising students at the Universities. It found its support in the increasing study of patristic theology, and in those portions of the liturgy and ritual of the English Church which had been retained, with more or less alteration, from the practices of the times preceding the Reformation. Relinquishing the attempt to raise by a sudden impulse the vain and frivolous to a standard which it was impossible for them, except under extraordinary circumstances, to reach at a bound, it aimed at sapping the evil, by the formation of habits, and by surrounding the heart with the softening influences of external example. That the view of human nature upon which such a system was based was in many respects larger and truer than that from which the Puritan looked upon <244>the world, it is impossible to deny. But it was exposed to especial danger from its shrinking from rash and violent remedies. Those who thought it impossible to tear up evil by the root, and who refused to include in one common denunciation the well-meaning man of the world with the hardened and abandoned sinner, might easily be led into a state of mind in which the boundary line between good and evil was almost obliterated; or, what was still worse, might grow blind to sin in high places where its denunciation might seem to be injurious to the cause which they had at heart. Nor was the danger less that, as the Puritan too often made an idol of the system by which his faith was supported, so these men might become idolaters of the organization in which they trusted, and might succumb to the temptation of using political power for the purpose of forcing upon an unwilling population ecclesiastical arrangements which were foreign to their feelings and habits.
Already in the school which was opposed to Puritanism a twofold tendency was to be discerned. The mind of Andrewes was Contrast between Andrewes and Laud.cast in a devotional and imaginative mould, and he preferred to attract men by preaching and example rather than to repel them by compulsion. Laud was above all things a disciplinarian. For asceticism or mysticism there was no room in his thoughts; yet, as far as the intellect was concerned, he was more truly Protestant than any Puritan in England. His objection to the Church of Rome, and to the Church of Geneva, was not so much that their respective creeds were false, as that they both insisted upon the adoption of articles of faith which he believed to be disputable, or at least unnecessary to be enforced. But the liberty which he claimed for men’s minds, he denied to their actions. Here, at least, order must prevail. No interference could be too petty, no disregard of the feelings of others too great, for the sake of establishing uniformity of practice.
How dangerous authority might become in his hands had recently been shown. Towards the end of 1616, Laud Dean of Gloucester.he had been appointed to the Deanery of Gloucester. The bishop of the see, Miles Smith, was well known as one of the most distinguished for Hebrew scholarship <245>amongst the translators of the Bible; and he had owed his bishopric to the services which he had rendered in that capacity. It was not long before James looked back upon the appointment with regret. Smith’s theology was Calvinist; and in his dislike of ceremonial observance, he shared the opinions of the extreme Puritans. Under his influence, the fabric of the cathedral was allowed to fall into decay, and the communion-table, which in the majority of the cathedrals, had been placed at the east end of the chancel had, at Gloucester, maintained its position in the middle of the choir.
It is probable that Laud owed his promotion to the King’s dislike of these irregularities. As he was about to visit his deanery, Alteration in the position of the communion-table.James sent for him, and told him that he expected him to set in order whatever he found amiss. The errand upon which he was thus sent was one after his own heart. He looked upon the question of the communion-table as one of vital importance. To his mind it was not so much the symbol of the presence of the invisible God, as it was the throne of the invisible King. But however strongly he might have felt, it would have been wise to set about his work with some consideration for the feelings of those who conscientiously differed from himself. The change which he proposed was certain to arouse opposition. It would have been worth while to have taken the congregation into his confidence, and, if he could not hope to persuade them to adopt his views, he might have deigned to give some explanation of what he was doing. If he could not bring himself to this, it would at least have been a graceful act to enter, if possible, into friendly communication with the bishop, and to acquaint him with the commission which he had received from the King.
Nothing of this sort appears to have occurred to Laud for an instant.[413] On his arrival at Gloucester he went straight to the <246>chapter-house, and laying before the canons the King’s commands, persuaded them to give the necessary orders for the repair of the cathedral, and for the change in the position of the communion-table. As if this were not enough, he informed the cathedral officials that it was expected that they would bow towards the now elevated table, whenever they entered the church.
Of course all Gloucester was furious at this sudden blow. The bishop declared that he would never again enter the doors of the cathedral Opposition in Gloucester.till the cause of offence had been removed. The townsmen cried out loudly against the stranger who had come to set up popery in their midst. In the excitement of the moment, one of the bishop’s chaplains wrote a letter, in which the members of the chapter were sharply taken to task for gross neglect of duty in shrinking from resistance to the dean’s innovations. The letter quickly obtained publicity, and copies of it were passed about from hand to hand. For some time all efforts to stop the turmoil were unavailing. It was in vain that one of the aldermen was persuaded to summon before him as libellers those who had taken part in the circulation of the letter, and that threats were freely uttered that the chapter would appeal to the High Commission for redress.
Meanwhile Laud, who had quietly gone back to Oxford as soon as he had done the mischief, was apprized of the commotion which he had left behind him. All that could be extracted from him by the news, was a cold dry letter to the bishop, calling upon him for assistance in repressing the turbulence of the Puritans, and threatening him, in no obscure terms, with the vengeance of the King.
By degrees the tumult subsided. The townsmen found <247>that remonstrances were of no avail, and withdrew from a hopeless conflict. They did not know that with his high-handed disregard of the feelings and prejudices of his countrymen, Laud was preparing the way for the success of their cause. Many of those who had taken part in the outcry against the dean, would live to see the forces of Charles I. recoil in discomfiture from before the walls of Gloucester.[414]
Not less worthy of notice is another scene on which men’s eyes were directed a few months after Laud’s visit to Gloucester. It had become an article of belief amongst the Puritans, that the first day of the week was the true representative of the Jewish Sabbath, and as such was to be observed with complete abstention, not only from all work, but from every kind of amusement. Such a doctrine was peculiarly fitted to commend itself to their minds. It afforded them an opportunity for the practice of that self-restraint and self-denial which their creed demanded, and at the same time it presented itself to them under the semblance of a Divine command, which it would be sheer impiety to disobey. The doctrine was, perhaps, more readily accepted because it appealed to another side of the Puritan character. The observance was a duty lying upon Christians as individuals, not as members of a congregation, nor of any ecclesiastical body whatever. It demanded no co-operation with other men. However desirable it might be to go to church upon the Sabbath, the Puritan could do all that was necessary for the observance of the day without crossing his own threshold. The main thing lay in his own devotional thoughts, and in his careful abstinence from all merely secular labours and pleasures.
It was but too probable that such men would soon be brought into collision with their neighbours. To ordinary Englishmen, Sunday was Resistance to the Puritan opinions on the subject.a very different day from that which the Puritan wished it to become. From the privy councillor, who made a habit of attending the meeting of the Council upon Sunday, to the villager who <248>spent the afternoon in dancing upon the green, all England had been accustomed from time immemorial to consider that at the close of the service the religious duties of the day were at an end. It was natural, therefore, that the Puritans should find themselves greeted with a storm of obloquy. Ordinary men of the world joined with the profligate and the drunkard in the outcry against the sour fanatics, who were doing their best to impose intolerable burdens upon their neighbours.
If the controversy had been left to itself, nothing but good could have come of it. The example of self-denial would have told in the end. Englishmen would not, indeed, have been unanimous in adopting the doctrine that the Christian festival was the direct representative of the Jewish Sabbath; but there would have been not a few who would have learned what to them was the new lesson, that man has higher objects in life than dancing round a May-pole, or carousing at a tavern; and they would, before long, have become thoroughly ashamed of the scenes by which a day thus set apart was too often desecrated.
But unfortunately the Puritans were unwilling to leave the controversy to itself. When James passed through Lancashire, Enforcement of the observance of the Sabbath in Lancashire.on his return from Scotland, he found the subject forced upon his attention. Of all counties, Lancashire was the one in which such questions required the most delicate handling. A large part of the population, headed by some of the principal landowners, still clung to the Church of Rome. On the other hand, those who had adopted the Protestant opinions had imbibed them in their most extreme form. The preachers who had been sent down by Elizabeth, with a special mission to withdraw the people from the influence of the priests, had brought with them all those feelings and opinions which were most opposed to the doctrines of that Church which they were engaged in combating.
Shortly before the King’s arrival, an attempt had been made by some of the magistrates to suppress the usual Sunday amusements. The Catholic gentry were not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity of gaining a little popularity. Putting <249>themselves at the head of the angry villagers, they lost no time in denouncing the tyranny of a morose and gloomy fanaticism. The quarrel was becoming serious just as James was passing through the county. He listened to the complaints which were brought to him against the magistrates, gave a hasty decision in favour of the remonstrants, and went on his way, thinking no more about the matter.
He had not gone far before news was brought to him which obliged him to give more serious attention to the subject. Advantage had been taken of his hasty words. The country people, who had been deprived of the archery and the dancing to which they had been accustomed, had given vent to their satisfaction at his decision in their favour, by doing their best to annoy those who had placed the restriction upon them. Instead of contenting themselves, as heretofore, with their afternoon amusements, they gathered in groups near the doors of the churches in the morning, and at the time when the service was commencing within, did their best to distract the attention of the worshippers, by the sharpest notes of their music, and by the loud shouts of laughter with which they took care to increase the din.
Upon the receipt of this intelligence, James applied for advice to the bishop of the diocese. He could not have appealed to He applies for advice to Morton.a better man. Bishop Morton had, indeed, distinguished himself by the part which he had taken in the controversy against the Puritans; but it was a distinction which he had earned as much by a rare absence of acrimony as by the arguments upon which he relied. He was no mere courtier, like Neile. He had nothing of the domineering spirit of Laud. Almost alone amongst the controversialists of his day, he knew how to treat an adversary with respect. Above all, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a good man. In early life he had shown what stuff he was made of, by the unremitting persistence of his visits to the pesthouse, when the plague was raging at York. On these occasions he forbade his servants to follow him amidst the infection, and carried on the crupper of his own horse the food which was to solace the wants of the sufferers. What he was <250>in his youth he continued to be till his death. Through a long and chequered career no poverty was borne so cheerfully, no wealth distributed so wisely and so bountifully, as that which fell to the lot of Thomas Morton.
It was but natural that Morton should be far from shaming the opinions of the Puritans on the subject now brought before him. Morton’s opinion on the subject.He and those who thought with him were sure to deny the Sabbatical character of the Lord’s Day. Their reverence for Church authority led them to shrink from tracing its institution higher than to the earliest Christian times, and their whole tone of mind was such as made them lay stress rather upon the due attendance upon public worship, in which Christians met together as an organized congregation, than upon the restraints which they might place upon themselves during the remainder of the day. When, not many years later, the poet whose verses are the mirror of the feelings and the sentiments of the school of divines to which Morton belonged, celebrated the joys and duties of the great Christian festival, it was in this key that all his thoughts were pitched.
“Sundays observe: think, when the bells do chime,’Tis angels’ music:”—
is the commencement of his exhortation. Through two whole pages he continues in a similar strain. Of behaviour out of church he has not a single word to say.[415]
Holding these views, Morton had little difficulty in perceiving what was best to be done. On the one hand, nothing should be permitted His advice.which might disturb the congregation during the hours of service. On the other hand, it must be left to every man’s conscience to decide whether or no he would take part in the accustomed amusements after the service was at an end. No compulsion was to be used. If the Puritans could persuade their neighbours that the practices in question were sinful, they should have perfect liberty to do so. But further than that they were not to be allowed to go.[416]
<251>With the exception of a clause by which the benefit of the liberty accorded was refused to all who had absented themselves from the service — The Declaration of Sports published in Lancashire.a clause by which it was intended to strike a blow at recusancy, but which in reality bribed men to worship God by the alluring prospect of a dance in the afternoon — little objection would be taken to the general scope of the declaration which James founded upon Morton’s recommendations.[417] If he had contented himself with leaving it behind him for the use of the Lancashire magistrates, it is probable that little more would have been heard about the matter.
But this would hardly have contented James. He had not been many months in London before he determined to publish, for the 1618.Its extension to the rest of England.benefit of the whole kingdom, the declaration which had been called forth by the peculiar circumstances of Lancashire. In doing this, he hit upon a plan which was calculated to rouse the greatest possible amount of opposition. Instead of issuing a proclamation, or directing the Council to send round a circular letter to the Justices of the Peace, warning them not to allow themselves to be carried away by religious zeal to exceed their legal powers, he transmitted orders to the clergy to read the declaration from the pulpit. No doubt, in those days, the clergy were regarded far more than they are at present in the light of ministers of the Crown. Still James might have remembered that, by a large number amongst them, his declaration would be regarded <252>as sheer impiety, and that there was that in their position which made it impossible to treat them as mere official dependents, bound to carry out, without a murmur, every order issued by superior authority.
As might have been expected, symptoms of resistance showed themselves on every hand. Not a few amongst the Calvinist clergy, Resistance of the clergy.amongst whom, it is said, was the Archbishop of Canterbury himself,[418] made up their minds to refuse compliance, at any cost; and of those who consented to obey, there were some who determined to preach against the very declaration which they did not refuse to read, while a still greater number were sure to declaim in their private conversation against the principles of the document which, as a matter of public duty, they had brought before the notice of their congregations. James who, unlike his son and successor, was prudent enough to give way before so wide an expression of feeling, withdrew his order for the reading of the declaration.[419]
It was of good augury for the Church of England that during the first ten or twelve years of Abbot’s primacy the Prospects of the Church of England.ecclesiastical history of the country was almost totally barren of events. The proceedings of Laud at Gloucester, and of the Puritan magistrates in Lancashire, were sufficient to indicate the quarter from which danger might arise, but the very rareness of such occurrences gave reason to suppose that the terrible evil of an internecine quarrel between the two great Church parties might yet be averted. For the first time since the early days of the Reformation the Nonconformists were reduced to insignificance. There were no longer any voices raised loud enough to make themselves heard in favour of a change in the ritual of the Church. There were, for the first time, two parties opposed indeed in theology and in practice, but both declaring themselves to be ready to take their stand upon the Book of Common Prayer. What was of still more importance, there was no strong line of demarcation between them. Each party shaded off into the <253>other. Amongst the laity especially, there was a large and increasing body which took no part with the fanatics on either side, but which was growing in piety and in moral progress under the influence of both. In their zeal for religion, these men had no intention of placing England under the yoke of a few clerical firebrands of any shade of opinion whatever.
If there had been any doubt as to the direction in which the current of public opinion was setting, it would have been cleared up by John Selden.the reception which was accorded to the History of Tithes, a book which was published at the time when James was considering the propriety of giving a general circulation to the Declaration of Sports. The author of this book, which was distinguished by its thorough opposition to all ecclesiastical claims to civil authority, was John Selden, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, who, at the early age of thirty-four, had established the reputation of being the most learned man of the day. To a knowledge of the constitution and antiquities of his country, which even Coke could not venture to despise, he added a marvellous familiarity with the most recondite studies. He was as completely at home in the writings of the Jewish Rabbis and the capitularies of Charlemagne as he was in the works of the Fathers of the Church, or the classical masterpieces of Greece and Rome. The very names of the books which he had already published testified to the multifariousness of his knowledge. He had written on the early laws of England, on duels, on titles of honour, and on the religion of the ancient Syrians. But of these various subjects, there was none so thoroughly to his taste as that which he had now taken in hand. Of all men living, there was no one so completely imbued with the spirit which had animated the political leaders of the English Reformation. The supremacy of the civil power over all ecclesiastical causes and all ecclesiastical persons, was the cardinal point of his doctrine; and yet that supremacy was to him something very different from what it had been to Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. They had wished the State to be supreme, in order that they might enforce their own compromise upon opposing and irreconcileable parties. Selden knew that times were changed, and that <254>the parties into which the Church of England was in his day divided were no longer irreconcileable. He, therefore, wished to see the Royal Supremacy put forth with vigour, in order that it might allow liberty to all, whilst it kept in check every attempt at persecution from whatever quarter it might arise.
The form into which he threw his work was a curious one. He professed, with a modesty which deceived no one, that the question 1618.His History of Tithes.whether or not tithes were due by Divine right was above his comprehension. He left such high matters to churchmen and canonists. As for himself, he was a mere student of the common law, and he could not venture to express an opinion on questions so far above his sphere. All he wished to do was to state what the practice had actually been, not what it ought to have been. In spite of this modest commencement, he showed pretty well what his opinion was. He argued that there was no proof whatever that tithes had ever been claimed as of right during the first four hundred years of the Christian era; and in treating of their subsequent history, he showed that the practices had been so various, and had been so completely subjected to local customs, and to the laws of the various European nations, that the payment had in reality been accepted by the clergy from the State with whatever limitations the civil authorities had chosen to impose.
It is evident that the book was of greater importance than its actual subject would indicate. It struck at all claims on the part of the clergy Tendency of the book.to fix limits to the power of the Legislature. It seemed to say to them:— “We, the laity of England, will not limit our powers at your demand. If you can persuade us that such and such things are in accordance with the will of God, you are at liberty to do so. As soon as we admit the force of your reasoning, we shall be ready to give effect to your arguments. If you claim a Divine right to money or obedience, irrespective of the laws of England, you must obtain what you ask from the voluntary consent of those from whom you require it. If you wish to have the assistance of pursuivants and judicial processes, you <255>must acknowledge that whatever you get by these means proceeds from that authority by which such rough methods of compulsion are put in force.”
Selden’s work was sure to be received by the clergy with a storm of indignation. They had never once doubted the Divine right Its reception by the clergy.which Selden had so quietly ignored; and they may well be excused if they saw in it the guarantee, not only of their own incomes, but of the very existence of the Church of England. They had good reason to put little faith in the tender mercies of statesmen. They remembered but too well how Raleigh had become possessed of the Manor of Sherborne, and how Hatton House They appeal to the King.had been lost to the see of Ely. It was no wonder, then, that James was besieged with supplications to come to the rescue of the Church. He does not seem, at first, to have taken any very great interest in the matter. After all, it was not his prerogative that was attacked. The book was published in April 1618. It was not till December that the author was summoned before the King. Nor was there anything alarming in the interview itself. James was always pleased to have a chat with a man of learning, and Buckingham, who was present, treated Selden with the utmost courtesy.[420] The King had something to talk about far more interesting than the Divine Right of Tithes. He wanted to hear Selden’s opinion on the number of the Beast in the Revelation; and he was afraid, lest a passage in the book might be understood to countenance the opinion that the nativity of Christ did not occur upon December 25, an opinion which might be used with terrible effect by those who held that Christmas Day ought not to be observed at all. Selden promised to satisfy him on both these points, and went away well pleased with the impression which he had made.[421]
The clergy were not so easily pacified, and James began to <256>think that, whether Selden were right or wrong, it would conduce 1619.Selden’s submission.to his own ease to stop their mouths. Without troubling himself any further about the merits of the case, he allowed the Court of High Commission to call upon Selden to sign a form of submission, in which he was to acknowledge his regret for having furnished any argument against the Divine Right of Tithes. Such a regret was, of course, wholely imaginary, and it is sad that a man like Selden should have set his hand to any allegation of the kind. Yet it was one which he was at least able to sign without any breach of consistency, as he had always declared that he had no intention of touching upon the question of Divine right at all. The prohibition by the Court of the sale of his book was probably felt by him as a severer blow.
Worse than this, however, was in store for Selden. One after another his antagonists came forward with their answers to his book, He is forbidden to reply.claiming, in tones of defiance, the victory over the man whom they had silenced. Yet one thing was wanting to give them security. If Selden was prohibited from selling his original production, it was always possible that he might publish a new work in reply to their criticisms. It was not difficult to induce James to come forward in their defence. Selden was summoned once more before the King, and was told that whatever might be written against him, he must not presume to reply.[422]
Selden’s last word upon the subject was contained in a letter addressed to Buckingham. The favourite had been simple enough 1620.Selden’s letter to Buckingham.to ask him why he had so carefully abstained from pronouncing an opinion on the Divine right. His reply was a masterpiece of irony. In it he once more expressed his inability to cope with such intricate questions. Whatever conclusion he came to, he was sure to be in the wrong. If, after profound study, he were to convince himself that no such right existed, what sort of treatment must he expect from the King? If, on the other hand, he convinced himself that the right did exist, he <257>would be placing himself in direct opposition to the law, which exacted payment only in so far as was in accordance with its own rules, as well as in opposition to books formerly set forth by public authority, in which the doctrine was denounced amongst the errors of the Papists.[423]
Whether the repose of the English Church would be broken by any disputes more serious than those which had lately engaged the attention, Dangers of the future.without exciting the animosities, of the nation, was the secret of the future. The history of human progress is closely connected with the history of human misery. It is in contact with the evils of the time that knowledge expands, and a new sensitiveness is acquired by the moral feelings. The course of morality, like the course of a river, is profoundly modified by the obstacles which bar its way. Like a mighty stream, after its escape from the iron portals of the hills, the current of English religious thought was now meandering at its own sweet will, forgetful of the fierce struggles in the midst of which it had been tortured into fanaticism, or cowed into subservience. Yet as the stream does not change its nature, but is as ready as ever to leap up into foam or to plunge into the abyss as soon as some other rocky barrier stretches across its path, so was it with English religion. Ten years of government in the hands of men like Laud would make nine-tenths of the earnest thinkers of the nation as fierce as were the men who had concocted the Marprelate libels. Ten years of government in the hands of men like the Puritan magistrates of Lancashire would drive the great majority of the English people into the warmest admiration for the system of Laud. Of such violent changes there was not much danger as long as James was alive. There was, however, a risk that the growth of that spirit of mutual toleration, which had been steadily on the increase, might receive a check, if any events upon the Continent should intervene to threaten a renewal of the strife with the Catholic powers, or above all, if James should, in an evil hour, refuse to abandon his wretched scheme of a Spanish marriage for his son, and should thereby implant more deeply in the hearts of his <258>Protestant subjects that distrust and suspicion of their Catholic neighbours which it should have been the object of a far-sighted ruler to allay.
Already an example had been given, in the Dutch Republic, of the violence with which the flames of religious faction may rage, when they are fanned by the well-meant but injudicious attempts of a Government to interfere with the natural current of opinion. It was not long since a protest had been raised by Arminius and his followers against the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In the province of Holland, the new teaching had been eagerly welcomed by Barneveld and by the commercial oligarchy which had learned to look with jealousy upon the popularity of the clergy. Undoubtedly Barneveld’s wish was to be tolerant; but he thought that he had done enough for religious liberty in obtaining from the States of Holland an order that the rival theologians should abstain from controversy, and should live in mutual charity with one another. The compromise was joyfully accepted by the Arminians, who were the weaker party. By the Calvinists it was utterly rejected. Strong in popular sympathy, they thundered from a thousand pulpits against the new heresy, and refused to partake of the Eucharistic bread and wine in communion with its followers. The magistrates, ignorant that toleration, if it is worthy of its name, must give free scope even to folly and uncharitableness, retaliated by expelling these firebrands from their pulpits. The result was that, in many places, the supporters of a system which had taken root in the soil together with the Reformation itself, and which was still cherished with excessive devotion by the vast majority of the population, were either reduced to silence, or were driven to hold their assemblies by stealth in barns and farmhouses outside the walls of the towns.
All eyes were turned upon Maurice. To him the proceedings of Barneveld were thoroughly distasteful; yet he was in no hurry to interfere. For theology, indeed, he cared little;[424] <259>but he saw that the unwise course which Barneveld was pursuing was Maurice at the head of the Calvinists.weakening the military strength of the Republic. At the same time he was not ignorant that a revolution, however successful, would be followed by injurious results. If Barneveld could have been brought to grant a real toleration, instead of one which was essentially one-sided and unjust, the catastrophe which followed would probably have been averted. It was only when the States of Holland ordered their contingent in the federal army to transfer its allegiance from the common government to themselves, and began to raise new levies in their own name, that Maurice overcame his reluctance to interfere. If such a course was permitted, it was plain that the unity of the Republic was at an end, and that it was a mere question of time when Leyden and Amsterdam would open their gates to receive a Spanish garrison.
The overthrow of Barneveld’s power was easy, — easier, probably, than 1618.The Revolution.Maurice had expected. In a few days the leaders of the Arminians were in prison and their places were occupied by the devoted followers of the House of Nassau.
Thus far the revolution had been directed to justifiable objects. If Maurice’s powers had been equal to the task before him, his name would have gone down to posterity surrounded by a glory as pure as that by which his father had been honoured. He was now, by his elder brother’s death, Prince of Orange; and the name which he inherited should have reminded him that there are higher duties than those which can be performed in the field. He might have reorganized the Republic. He might have become the founder of true religious liberty. But Maurice was utterly deficient in the qualities needed for such a task. He had done a soldier’s work in a rough soldier’s way. He could do no more; and he stood aside, whilst, under the shadow of his great name, violent and unscrupulous partisans committed acts by which his memory has been blackened for ever.
The hour of the Calvinist ministers was come. In the <260>spring of 1619 a national Synod met at Dort, to stamp with its authority 1619.The Synod of Dort.the foregone conclusions of its members. Divines from all the Calvinist churches of the Continent took part in its deliberations. Even James sent deputies from England to sit upon its benches. The Arminians were summoned as culprits to the bar. Browbeaten and insulted, they were finally deprived of their offices. The States-General then came to the aid of the divines, and banished from the territory of the Republic those of the deprived ministers who refused to engage to abstain from preaching for the future.
Even with this triumph the Calvinists were not content. Barneveld was dragged before a tribunal specially appointed for the purpose of trying him, and May 3⁄13.Execution of Barneveld.was accused of a treason of which he was as innocent as the wildest fanatic who had voted down Arminianism at Dort. Yet the temper of the dominant faction left him no hope of a fair hearing. Maurice, who had been led to believe that his antagonist was too dangerous to be spared, refused to interfere in his behalf; and, in his seventy-third year, the aged statesman was hurried to the scaffold, as a traitor to the Republic which he had done so much to save.
James had not been an unconcerned spectator of these events. For some time he had been profuse of advice; but Attitude of James.not a word of the slightest practical use to either party had crossed his lips. He had declared strongly in favour of moderation, but he had recommended the convocation of the Synod which made moderation impossible. His theological sympathies were on the side of the Calvinists. If his political sympathies were on the side of Barneveld and the supporters of the claim of the civil government to control the clergy, they were neutralised by the recollection of frequent collisions with that statesman. He little thought that, before many years were passed, his son would be copying Barneveld’s abortive scheme of seeking peace by the imposition of silence. Still less did he imagine that the revolution in Holland was but the precursor of a greater revolution in England.
[385] Calderwood, vii. 191, 196. Act of Scottish Privy Council, March 3, 1614. Botfield’s Original Letters, i. 448.
[386] Calderwood, vii. 222. Compare a paper by Spottiswoode in Botfield’s Original Letters, iii. 445.
[387] Spottiswoode, iii. 236.
[388] The King to the Scottish Privy Council, Dec. 15, 1616. Printed with a wrong date in the Abbotsford Club edition of Letters and State Papers of the reign of James VI., 202.
[389] The King to the Bishops, March 13, Botfield’s Original Letters, ii. 496.
[390] Calderwood, vii. 246.
[391] Calderwood, vii. 247, 249.
[392] ——— to Bacon, June 28, Bacon’s Works, ed. Montagu, xii. 320; Spottiswoode, iii. 240.
[393] Acts of the Parl. of Scotland, iv. 549.
[394] The minimum was to be 27l. 15s. 6¾d., the maximum 44l. 9s. 0d. This in England would imply in modern value an income varying between about 110l. to 180l. at least. But I suppose that on the scale of living in Scotland it would imply much more than such an income would imply in England now. See Connell, A Treatise on the Law of Scotland respecting Tithes, i. 180.
[395] Calderwood, vii. 257.
[396] Hewat’s Liturgy is printed in Sprott’s Scottish Liturgies of the reign of James VI.
[397] Spottiswoode, iii. 246.
[398] See vol. i. 315.
[399] i.e. ‘shaken’.
[400] P. Forbes to Spottiswoode, Feb. 13 (?), Calderwood, vii. 291. For date, see Funeral Sermons on P. Forbes (Spot. Soc.) lx.
[401] The King to the Archbishops, Dec. 6. Botfield’s Original Letters, ii. 522.
[402] “Which letters being shewed to the ministers of Edinburgh and others that happened to repair to that city for augmentation of stipends, did cast them into great fear; and, repenting their wilfulness, as they had reason, became requesters to the Archbishop of St. Andrews to preach, as he was commanded, upon Christmas Day.” — Spottiswoode, iii. 250.
[403] Lindsay, The Proceedings of the Assembly at Perth, 19.
[404] Botfield’s Original Letters, ii. 540.
[405] Calderwood, vii. 305. Binning to the King, Botfield’s Original Letters, ii. 573.
[406] Calderwood, Perth Assembly, and History, vii. 304. Lindsay, A true narrative of all the passages at Perth. Binning to the King. Botfield’s Original Letters, ii. 573. Calderwood and Lindsay do not differ more than might be expected from men taking opposite sides. Lindsay admits quite enough against his own party, and Binning’s letter, written a few hours after the occurrence, agrees substantially with Calderwood as to the form in which the vote was taken. Calderwood gives the words thus: “Whether will ye consent to these articles, or disobey the King?” Lindsay positively denies that this form was used. It is possible that in the formal question the King’s name was omitted, but that Spottiswoode’s language left no doubt what was intended.
[407] The following calculation is founded on Lindsay’s statements:—
Bishops | Ministers | Laity | Total | |
Affirmative | 12 | 46 | 28 | 86 |
Negative | 0 | 39 | 2 | 41 |
12 | 85 | 30 | 127 |
[408] Calderwood, vii. 370.
[409] Spottiswoode to Dr. John Forbes, April 2, 1635, Funeral Sermons on P. Forbes, 218.
[410] “Vede [sua Maestà] li principali Signori dai quali è continuamente cinto, pronti con l’assistenza corporale al rito della Maestà sua, ma con el pensiero interiore divisi in molte opinioni, non soddisfatti di se medesimi, mal contenti della volontà di chi comanda, poco uniti con Dio, ed interessati nel proprio comodo, il quale solo pare che come idolo adorino.” Relazione di M. A. Correr, 1611, Relazioni Venete, Inghilterra, 114.
[411] “Such views,” writes Professor Max Müller on a very different subject, “may be right or wrong. Too hasty comparisons, or too narrow distinctions, may have prevented the eye of the observer from discovering the broad outline of nature’s plan. Yet every system, however insufficient it may prove hereafter, is a step in advance. If the mind of man is once impressed with the conviction that there must be order and law everywhere, it never rests again until all that seems irregular has been eliminated, until the full beauty and harmony of nature has been perceived, and the eye of man has caught the eye of God beaming out from the midst of His works. The failures of the past prepare the triumphs of the future.” Lectures on the Science of Language, 16.
[412] The phrase “Doctrinal Puritans” is generally used for these men in ecclesiastical histories; but it has the great demerit of expressing the point of agreement with other Puritans, rather than the point of difference. Indeed, the name Puritan itself is a constant source of trouble to the historian. It sometimes means men who objected to certain ceremonies, who were non-conformists, or who would have been so if they could. Sometimes it includes all who held to the Calvinist theology. It is even used of those who were opposed to the Court. Thus Doncaster, of all men in the world, is sometimes called a Puritan, and, in the same way, Prince Charles is <242>said by Valaresso in 1624 to be “troppo Puritano,” a phrase which it is difficult to read without a smile.
[413] Laud might have profitably studied the writings of a man inferior to him in firmness and consistency, but far his superior in discretion. “As concerning the ringing of bells upon Allhallow Day at night,” wrote Cranmer, “and covering of images in Lent, and creeping to the Cross, he” (i.e., the Bishop of Worcester) “thought it necessary that a letter of your <246>Majesty’s pleasure therein should be sent by your Grace unto the two archbishops; and we to send the same to all other prelates within your Grace’s realm. … Nevertheless, in my opinion, when such things be altered or taken away, there would be set forth some doctrine therewith which should declare the cause of the abolishing or alteration, for to satisfy the conscience of the people.” Cranmer to Henry VIII., Jan. 24, 1546, Remains, i. 318.
[414] Laud to Smith, Feb. 27; Laud to Neile, March 3, 1617, Works, vi. 239. Heylin’s Life of Laud, 69, 75. Prynne’s Canterbury’s Doom, 76.
[415] Herbert’s Church Porch.
[416] Barwick’s Life of Morton, 80.
[417] Wilkins’s Concilia, iv. 483. The most striking clause is the following:— “And as for our good people’s lawful recreation, our pleasure likewise is that, after the end of Divine service, our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation, nor for having of May-games, Whitsun-ales and morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time without impediment or neglect of Divine service, and that women shall have leave to carry rushes to church for the decoring of it, according to their old custom. But withal we do here account still as prohibited all unlawful games to be used on Sundays only, as bear and bull baitings, interludes and (at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited) bowling.”
[418] Wilson in Kennet, ii. 709.
[419] Fuller’s Church History, v. 452.
[420] Selden to Sir E. Herbert, Feb. 3, 1619. This letter has recently been acquired by the British Museum, and is not yet catalogued; but it will eventually be found in one of the volumes of the Add. MSS., between 32,091 and 32,096.
[421] Preface to Three Tracts, Selden’s Works, iii. 1401.
[422] Extract from the Register of the High Commission Court. — Biog. Brit. Article, Selden; note K.
[423] Selden to Buckingham, May 5, 1620, Works, iii. 1394.
[424] The story, however, that he did not know whether the Calvinists or the Arminians held the doctrine of predestination, is evidently a pure invention.