We have noticed the popular jealousy and the rude censures to which James exposed himself in Scotland, partly by his ill- Ecclesiastical directed favouritism, and partly by his zeal in the cause of affairs in episcopacy. As the effect of much artifice and violence, Scotland. the monarch had succeeded in imposing a nominal order of bishops on his reluctant subjects in that kingdom. In 1606 the thirteen ancient bishoprics, which certain ministers had been selected to occupy, were all endowed from the old church lands; and, at the pleasure of the sovereign, two courts of high commission were instituted, which vested the new prelates with powers such as no popular legislature in England or Scotland would have conferred on them. But to this period the Scottish bishops owed their existence wholly to the civil power; nor did they receive their ordination as prelates until James had been seven years on the English throne. Two years later the Scottish parliament was induced to pass enactments which declared the bishops of the church of Scotland possessed of nearly the same powers with their brethren in the church of England, and which in form gave to the crown the same ecclesiastical supremacy in Scotland which it possessed in England.

But this progress of episcopalianism, and of encroachment on the liberties of the Scottish kirk, was more apparent than real. Small progress The measures which sanctioned these innovations had been of episcopacy in Scotland. carried on in the face of loud opposition, and by means of every sort of menace and intrigue. The conduct of some of the leading clergy in resisting them was such as to be pronounced treasonable, and several escaped the doom of traitors only by submitting to banishment. But what was branded by the law as treason, was lauded by the people as the virtue of the confessor and the martyr, and the preaching and public prayers of their ministers, which often contained pathetic allusions to the wrongs of their suffering brethren, served to augment the general feeling of discontent.

James's visit

to Scotland.

It was not until 1616 that James paid his first visit to his native land as king of England. Certain towns in Holland, which had been long in the power of English garrisons as a security for large sums of money due from the States to Elizabeth, were now given up,-a considerable payment, though much below the amount for which the towns were pledged, being made to the English monarch*. This seasonable aid enabled the king to satisfy some of the more urgent of his creditors, and to accomplish his long-meditated purpose of making a progress into Scotland. Hitherto the work of ecclesiastical innovation in that kingdom had been carried on by the influence and authority of the earl of Dunbar. James was not without hope that his presence would suffice to complete the reformation of the kirk, now so far advanced; and the arts usual on such occasions were employed to render the Scottish parliament subservient to his pleasure. But an

* Rymer, xiv. 783-787.

attempt to confer the power of legislating in ecclesiastical affairs on the king assisted by certain clerical commissioners, called forth so formidable a remonstrance, that James deemed it prudent to withdraw the proposal, under the pretext, that small importance was to be attached to an act of parliament in favour of a right which every one must know was inherent in his crown.

At a subsequent meeting of the clergy, the monarch directed his reforming zeal to some matters of detail. It was required that the festivals of the church of England should be observed in the church of Scotland; that the Eucharist should be received kneeling at an altar, and not sitting at a table; that this sacrament, together with that of baptism, should be administered, when death was expected, in private houses; and that the young should receive the benefit of confirmation from the hands of the bishops. The clergy petitioned that these matters should not be pressed until sanctioned by a general assembly; and James, having so referred them, with an understanding that they were not to be opposed, returned to England. But when that assembly met, the whole, with one partial exception only, were rejected. The king was not a little indignant on finding himself thus over-reached; but another assembly and another parliament were convened, and both were so managed as to force upon a turbulent people a number of trivial customs which they were almost unanimous in regarding as idolatrous or superstitious*.

Through every step of this affair, in the parliament as well as in all Impolicy of the general assemblies, says the apologist for the house of the king pro- Stuart, "the nation betrayed the utmost reluctance to all ceedings with these innovations, and nothing but James's importunity regard to religion in and authority had extorted a seeming consent, which was Scotland. belied by the inward sentiments of all ranks of people. Even the few over whom religious prejudices were not prevalent, thought national honour sacrificed by a servile imitation of the modes of worship practised in England; and every prudent man agreed in condemning the measures of the king, who, by an ill-timed zeal for insignificant ceremonies, had betrayed, though in an opposite manner, equal narrowness of mind with the persons whom he had treated with such contempt. It was judged, that had not these dangerous humours been irritated by opposition, had they been allowed peaceably to evaporate, they would at last have subsided within the limits of law and civil authority; and that, as all fanatical religions naturally circumscribe to very narrow bounds the numbers and riches of the ecclesiastics, no sooner is their fire spent, than they lose their credit over the people, and leave them under the natural and beneficent influence of their civil and moral obligations +."

*

Spotswood's Hist. 337, et scq. Dalrymple, i. 84-93. † Hume, vi. 90, 91.

In England, the three religious parties into which the' kingdom was divided under Elizabeth continued, the court and the hier- Ecclesiastical archy forming the most powerful, but often perplexed to affairs in the utmost as to the best mode of dealing with the Ca- England. tholics on the one hand and the Puritans on the other.

Catholics.

6.

The hostility with regard to the professors of the Catholic faith, which the occurrences of the two last reigns had served to produce, was constantly manifesting itself in the commons; and had the laws which obtained the sanction of that assembly been generally and rigidly acted upon, persons professing any sort of allegiance to the bishop of Rome must have ceased to be known in the country. Instances of capital punishment were not wanting in the case of priests, and many of the laity were justified in complaining of hard treatment. But it is certain that a strict enforcement of these cautionary regulations formed the exceptions rather than the rule. When the alarm produced by Catesby's conspiracy had somewhat subsided, the disposition which prevailed in the administration of these laws, not only in the court but through the land, was to restrict them to such instances of recusancy as were the most notorious, and considered the most dangerous. James confessed to his first parliament that his own practice in this respect had been to "lay on the reins," or to use the spur," as occasion required; and so general was this policy, that to his second parliament the king observed, "A lieutenant of mine in one county hath informed me he could not procure three justices of the peace, except some of his own friends and servants, that would assist him in due execution of these laws." Towards the close of this reign the projected Spanish match, and the disasters which attended the efforts of the Protestant states in favour of the palatinate, gave new strength to the popular apprehension with regard to Popery, and occasioned its being frequently demanded that the hopes and boldness of the English Catholics might be checked by more vigorous conduct on the part of the government. But these complaints were so much matters of course as to be little regarded. The king heeded them not, expecting that his good brother of Spain would be thereby rendered the more favourable to the proposed matrimonial connexion; and the people, on the other hand, uttered their discontent the more vehemently, meaning that the sovereign should thereby perceive how far his subjects were from sympathizing with him in regard to the intended alliance.

The controversy between the Puritans and the hierarchy not only continued to exist, but became more formidable, the topics Progress of of complaint being multiplied, as well as the number of the controthose who either secretly or openly were disposed to adopt the Puritans versy between them. The conduct of James in appointing Bancroft, the and the court most intolerant and secular churchman of the age, to the clergy.

Parl. Hist. i. 1150, 1375.

see of Canterbury, tended to this result. The history and the writings of that prelate had shown him to be a Protestant purely from circumstances, and in relation to a few almost unimportant particulars, while his political creed embraced some of the most servile doctrines ever broached by a partisan of arbitrary power. The motives of James in this instance of preferment are thus touched upon by Sir John Harring ton:-"His majesty had long since understood of his writing against the Genevising and Scottising ministers; and though some imagined he had therein given the king some distaste, yet finding him, in the disputations at Hampton Court, both learned and stout, he did more and more increase his liking to him; so that, although in the common rumour, Toby Matthews, then bishop of Durham, was likest to have carried that, yet his majesty in his learning knowing, and in his wisdom weighing, that this same strict charge, pasce oves mei, feed my sheep, requires as well a pastoral courage of driving in the stray sheep and driving out the infectious, as of feeding the sound, made especial choice of the bishop of London, as a man more exercised in affairs of the state. I will add also my own conjecture out of some of his majesty's own speeches, that in respect he was a single man, he supposed him the fitter, according to Queen Elizabeth's principles of state *."

One effect of intrusting power to such men in such circumstances is

of Bancroft.

to exasperate rather than convince the obnoxious parties; The primacy and another, which as commonly follows, is to produce a sympathy with the sufferers in many dispassionate minds that would otherwise have felt little interested about them. In this manner Bancroft increased the spirit of Puritanism, while he seemed to have been in a great degree successful in opposing it, and taught many who were not Puritans to look with favour on any course of affairs which promised such persons a reasonable exemption from the injuries of which they complained.

Harrington's Nuga Antiquæ, i. 11, 12. The works of Bancroft which thus favoured his promotion, were his "Dangerous Positions and Proceedings published and practiced within this Island of Britaine under Pretence of Reformation, and for the Presbyterall Discipline," and his "Survey of the pretended Holy Discipline, containing the beginnings, success, parts, proceedings, authority, and doctrine of it, with some of the manifold and materiel repugnances, varieties, and uncertainties in that behalf; faithfully gathered by way of Historical Narration out of the books and writings of the principal favourers of that Platform." In the judgment of this arbitrary primate the Scottish Reformers did more harm to their country within thirty years than had been done to it by Popery for five hundred. Dangerous Positions, p. 30. Queen Mary is described as "of nature aud disposition very mild and pitiful; and yet because she suffered such cruelty and superstition to be practised and maintained in her days, you have heard what was resolved by Goodman, Whitingham, Gilby, and the rest of the Genevans, against her; which fact is a matter that should be well considered of, and in time provided for accordingly, considering that these our home-bred sycophants, men of the Geneva mould, as proud and presumptuous as any that ever lived, do charge the present state under her majesty (Elizabeth) with such great impiety, corruption, idolatry, superstition, and barbarous persecution, which may touch her highness as nearly (by their doc trine) for maintaining her present state, as Queen Mary was for defending of Popery." Ibid. 63, 64. This passage presents a fair specimen of the mildness, candour, and Protestant zeal of the new primate.

sion Court.

Some judgment of the spirit which animated this favoured prelate may be formed from his conduct towards a clergyman and Attack on the a merchant of Yarmouth, and particularly towards the High Commisperson who appeared as their advocate. It was ascertained that the clergyman and the merchant adverted to, had been present, after attending morning service at church, at a private service conducted by a minister who had submitted to the loss of his living as a nonconformist. Both were summoned to appear before the Court of High Commission, by whose authority, after enduring much studied annoyance, they were committed to prison, and denied the privilege of bail. The prisoners, by securing their writ of habeas corpus, extorted the justice of an open trial, when Nicholas Fuller, a bencher of Gray's Inn, presented himself as their counsel. In his address, Fuller did not hesitate to demand that the accused should be immediately discharged, urging that the usage of the High Commission Court in fining and im prisoning his majesty's subjects, and in administering the oath ex officio, was chargeable with usurpation, and with acting contrary to the good laws of the realm. Bancroft, who, according to an honest historian of these times, was "driving on conformity very fiercely throughout all his province," was not a little indignant at the boldness of this "unexpected rub," and spared no pains in magnifying the importance of inflicting a signal punishment on the man who had dared thus openly to impugn the authority of a tribunal constituting the only means by which the cause of the church could be sustained against the perverseness and malignity of its enemies. James concurred in these views, and Fuller was imprisoned. Much effort was made to procure his enlargement, but care was taken that the noble-hearted sufferer should make no second attack on the strong hold of the oppressor. The confinement of Fuller ended only with his life t.

A. D. 1610.

But the primate lived to find the question which Fuller had the boldness to move, discussed with equal freedom in the English parliament. In the closing session of the first parliament under the present monarch it was matter of loud complaint that the prelates should have " deprived, disgraced, silenced, and imprisoned" so many of the Puritan clergy, who were described as "God's messengers," and as eminent benefactors to their country. These measures were particularly censured as taking place in contempt of the efforts made in the lower house to prevent them, and as having respect to a conformity which the legislature had never enjoined, and which could not in consequence be legally enforced. It was further stated, that much had been done to limit and define the authority of the ecclesiastical commissionèrs; to put an end to the use of the oath ex officio; to prevent the intrusion of the churchman on the province of the magistrate; to provide especially that the canons made in the late convocation, or in any

Fuller's Church Hist, 56. † Neal, ii 39.