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In the inmost circle of Melville's friends were such men as Arbuthnot, Principal of Aberdeen, and Smeton, his own successor as Principal of Glasgow--both, like himself, eminent in learning; David Ferguson, minister of Dunfermline, the patriarch of the Assembly, and one of the six original members of the Reformed Church; and the four ministers of Edinburgh--all notable men--John Durie, James Lawson, James Balfour, and Walter Balcanquhal. At Assembly times he and his nephew met these brethren daily, for the most part, at John Durie's table. The group contained the very flower and chivalry of the Church. At their meals they discussed the incidents of the day's sittings, and their conversation was enlivened with many a pleasantry--it was always Melville's 'form' at table to 'interlase' discourse on serious subjects with 'merry interludes.' When the company rose from table they held lengthened devotional exercises: in the reading of Scripture each in his turn made his observations on the passage; and we can well believe the estimate of some of those who were present, that had everything been taken down they could not have wished a fuller and better commentary than fell at these times from this company of ripe and ready interpreters of the Word. When the exercises were over, the brethren entered into deliberation on the causes to be brought before the Assembly, and came to an understanding as to the course they would pursue in dealing with them. Those who would come to the secret of the noble part so often played by the ministers of the Scottish Church in crucial periods of its history, will fail to find it where they leave out of account the inward correspondence which these men, by such fellowship, sought to maintain with one another and with the Master of Assemblies.

THE 'BIGGING UP' OF THE BISHOPS UNDER LENNOX AND ARRAN--MELVILLE'S FLIGHT TO ENGLAND

'To deal with proud men is but pain, For either must ye fight or flee, Or else no answer make again, But play the beast and let them be.'

Lennox had come to Scotland as an emissary of the French Government and as an agent of the Guises, in order to induce James to break off his alliance with England in favour of the old alliance with France, and to restore the Roman Church in the country; but the ministers having become informed of his designs, raised such a storm against him that he was driven to make a public renunciation of Popery, and obliged to prosecute his mission by more cautious and circuitous methods than he intended to use. Lennox's evil influence on James in ecclesiastical affairs soon became apparent. On the See of Glasgow becoming vacant, the benefice was appropriated by himself and the title bestowed on Robert Montgomery, minister of Stirling. The Church at once rose up in arms against this flagrant violation of its authority, put Montgomery on his trial for contumacy, found him guilty, and sentenced him to deposition and excommunication. It was at the instance of Melville, who, in this as in many another crisis in the Church's history in his time, was called to the Moderator's chair, that the Assembly took action against Montgomery, and this was done in defiance of a royal inhibition. The inferior courts to which the judicial process at different stages was remitted showed the same determined spirit, so deep and widespread was the indignation that was roused against Lennox by his attempt to thrust bishops anew upon the Church, and against the minister of the Church who had so basely lent himself to it. When the case came before the Presbytery of Glasgow, Montgomery himself appeared, accompanied by the provost and bailies and an escort of soldiers, and produced an interdict under the King's hand against its proceeding. The Presbytery paid no heed to the intruders, and was going on with the business, when the Moderator was ejected from the chair, assaulted, and taken off to prison. Still the Presbytery proceeded till it finished the case and carried out the injunction of the Assembly. Among the crowd gathered at the Presbytery house was a band of students from the University, who in making a demonstration of their sympathy with the ministers were charged by the soldiery, and some blood was shed. The ministers of the East vied with those of the West in supporting the action of the Assembly. John Durie, the most powerful and popular among them, distinguished himself by the boldness with which he spoke against Lennox as the disturber of the peace of the Church. The sentence of excommunication, which had been transmitted to the Edinburgh Presbytery, was pronounced by John Davidson, minister of Liberton, and read in most of the pulpits in Edinburgh and Glasgow on the following Sabbath. A meeting of the Privy Council was immediately called, in which proceedings were taken against the ministers of Edinburgh, and John Durie was banished from the city.

A special meeting of Assembly was called to deal with this serious state of affairs, Melville being still in the chair. In his opening sermon he made a vehement attack on the Court for its renewed attempt to overthrow the Church's order and restore Episcopacy, and spoke of the King's claim to spiritual authority as a 'bludie gullie' thrust into the Commonwealth--a description which the later history of Scotland has sufficiently verified. The House, at one with the Moderator, drew up a statement of the Church's recent grievances, and appointed Melville and some other members to present it to the King at Perth, where he was residing at the time. To Perth accordingly they went. This was a daring step in the circumstances, when there was such exasperation in the Court, and when its councils were led by two such men as Lennox and Arran. 'News was sparpelet athort the cuntry that the ministers war all to be thair massacred.' Melville was warned by a friendly courtier, his namesake Sir James Melville of Halhill, of the risk he ran in carrying out the Assembly's commission. 'I thank God,' he answered, 'I am nocht fleyed nor feible-spirited in the cause and message of Christ. Come what God please to send, our commission sal be dischargit.' When he and the other members of the deputation appeared before the King in Council and read their remonstrance, Arran interfered, when there occurred another of those historic scenes associated with Melville's name, in which he displayed such splendid courage in the resistance of tyranny. An arrogant assailant, like steel striking against flint, always elicited a flash of his noblest manhood. 'Arran began to threttin with thrawin brow and bosting langage. "What," says he, "wha dar subscryve thir treasanable Articles?" "We dar, and will subscryve them,"' answered Melville, taking, as he spoke, the pen from the clerk and putting his name to the document; and then, beckoning to his fellow-deputies, he bade them follow his example, which they all did. The boldness of the deed cowed even Lennox and Arran. They saw that day that 'the Kirk had a bak,' and were glad to dismiss the deputies without further debate.

The firmness with which the two Court favourites were handled by the ministers inspirited the nobles to execute a plot that had been laid to get the King out of their hands and end their intolerable supremacy. As soon as the King's person had been secured by the Raid of Ruthven, Lennox was banished from the realm, and Arran enjoined to confine himself to his own estate.

For a while the Church had rest and breathed freely after the strain that had been put upon it. A few days after the Raid of Ruthven a great outburst of popular feeling in favour of Presbyterianism took place in Edinburgh, the occasion being the return of John Durie from banishment. 'Ther was a grait concurs of the haill town, wha met him at the Nather Bow; and, going upe the streit, with bear heads and loud voices, sang to the praise of God, and testifeing of grait joy and consolation, the 124th Psalm, "Now Israel may say," etc., till heavin and erthe resoundit. This noyes, when the Duc being in the town, hard, and ludgit in the Hie-gat, luiked out and saw, he rave his berde for anger, and hasted him af the town.'

The peace of the Church was short-lived. In midsummer of 1583 the King made his escape from the Ruthven lords and betook himself to the Castle of St. Andrews. The old gang at once returned to Court. Lennox had died in exile; but Arran was reinstalled at the Council-board, and immediately renewed the old measures against the ministers, whose part in causing his recent fall made him more than ever determined to crush them. He began with Melville, who was summoned before the Council--it was in February 1584--on a trumped-up charge of using treasonable language in the course of one of his sermons. Melville declined the jurisdiction of the Council on the ground that he was not accused of a civil offence, but of doctrine uttered in the pulpit. His declinature was taken so hotly by the King and Arran that all who were present felt he was as good as a dead man; but 'Mr. Andro, never jarging nor daschit a whit, with magnanimus courage, mightie force of sprit and fouthe of evidence of reason and langage, plainly tauld the King and Council that they presumed ower bauldlie ... to tak upon them to judge the doctrine and controll the ambassadors and messengers of a King and Counsall graiter nor they, and far above tham! "And that," sayes he, "ye may see weakness, owersight, and rashness in taking upon you that quhilk yie nather aught nor can do" , "thair is," says he, "my instructiones and warrand."' A number of witnesses, well-known enemies of Melville, who had been brought from St. Andrews to support the accusation, gave their evidence, but to no purpose. Instead of being discharged, however, he was condemned for the boldness of his defence--which was construed as a new offence,--and sentenced to imprisonment in the Castle of Edinburgh during his Majesty's pleasure.

Rulers who could so outrage justice as to deprive a subject of his liberty on such a ground were not to be trusted with his life. So all Melville's friends and Melville himself thought. They were persuaded that Arran, at least, was bent on silencing the man who was his most formidable opponent. His friends, quoting the proverb, 'lowes and leiving,' urged him to flight, and he himself resolved on it, having not only his personal safety but also the interests of the Church and the commonweal to consider and safeguard. During the few days he was still left free, he appeared as usual among his friends, and in the best of spirits. At dinner in James Lawson's manse, where many of his friends gathered to meet him, he seemed the only light-hearted man in the company. 'He ate and drank and crakked als merrelie and frie-myndit as at anie tyme and mair,' drinking to his gaoler and fellow-prisoners, and bidding his brethren make ready to follow. While seated at table, the macer of the Council appeared with a warrant charging him to enter the Castle of Blackness within twenty-four hours. When the macer had withdrawn, Melville left the manse, and, confiding his intention to only a few friends, made his escape from the city, accompanied by his brother Roger, and within the twenty-four hours was safely over the Border and lodged in Berwick.

Melville's exile at this juncture, when he was so much needed at home to meet the tyranny of the Court, was a severe blow to his brethren in the ministry and to all the friends of the Church. They were entering a heavy battle when they were deprived of their trusted captain. More than James Melville could have said at that time that they felt a 'cauld heavie lumpe' lying on their hearts. The ministers of Edinburgh showed their characteristic spirit in this crisis, and raised such a storm against the King and Council on account of their treatment of Melville that the Court had to defend itself by an apologetic proclamation.

Within a few months after Melville's flight measures were passed through Parliament which upset all that the Church had done during the previous decade to extricate itself from the confusion of the Tulchan Episcopacy. They were devised by Arran and by Archbishop Adamson, who persistently used his influence at Court for the subversion of Presbytery. These measures--'The Black Acts'--declared the supremacy of the King in all matters--ecclesiastical and civil--and made all rejection of his authority a treasonable act: they deprived the Church of the rights of free assembly, free speech, and independent legislation; and they empowered the bishops to reestablish their order in every part of the kingdom. A clause was added requiring all ministers to sign an act of submission to the bishops on penalty of losing their offices and their livings.

On these Acts being proclaimed at the Cross of Edinburgh, the ministers of the city--James Lawson, Walter Balcanquhal, and Robert Pont--appeared and made protest against them, when Arran was so incensed by their conduct that he at once ordered their arrest, and swore he would make Lawson's head 'leap from its halse though it was as big as a haystack.' More than they were in jeopardy of their lives; every man in the country who had been a pronounced friend of liberty had cause to fear. Lawson, Balcanquhal, and Pont fled, with many others. A warrant had been procured by Archbishop Adamson for the apprehension of James Melville, when he made his escape by open boat to Berwick.

The course of events showed that the ministers had reason for their flight. Some of the most zealous of those left in the country were thrown into prison for refusing to conform to the Acts, or for remembering their banished brethren in public prayer. One minister was tried and sentenced to death on a charge that a letter from one of these brethren had been found in possession of his wife; and though the sentence was not executed, the scaffold was put up, and kept up for some time, before his prison window. Nor were the ministers the only sufferers. Glasgow University, which Melville's teaching and influence had leavened with the principles of liberty, was made to feel the heavy hand of the Government: its professors were imprisoned, its rector was banished, and its gates were closed.

Popular indignation began to break forth in many quarters. In St. Andrews the students went in a body to the Archbishop's palace and warned him that he was courting the fate of Hamilton and Beaton; while visiting Edinburgh, Adamson had to be protected by the police; Montgomery was mobbed at Ayr; and wherever the bishops appeared there were hostile demonstrations on the part of the people.

The Court, however, defied public opinion, and went on with its coercive policy, rigidly enforcing submission to the authority of the bishops. At first the great majority of the ministers refused; but on a clause being added to the deed of submission, to the effect that it required them only to conform 'according to the Word of God,' most of them gave way. The clause was suggested by Adamson, and it reflects his character. It was one of those shrewd devices for causing division among the ministers, and providing a middle way for men distracted by the desire to be faithful to their consciences on the one hand, and the wish to escape persecution on the other, which were often resorted to by the Court throughout the entire course of the struggle against prelacy. Some of the stalwarts of the Church fell into the trap which Adamson had set for them in this shallow compromise, and their example led many others to yield. One of the banished brethren, in a letter written at the time, states that all the ministers in the Lothians and the Merse, with only ten exceptions, had subscribed; that John Erskine of Dun had not only subscribed, but was making himself a pest to the ministers in the North by importuning them to follow his example; that John Craig, so long Knox's colleague, had given in and was speaking hotly against those who held out; that even the redoubtable John Durie had 'cracked his curple' at last; and that the pulpits of Edinburgh were silent, except a very few 'who sigh and sob under the Cross.'

Events took such a course that the ministers who subscribed might, after all, have held out with a whole skin. They capitulated to their enemies on the very eve of their enemies' fall; for the exasperation of the nation under such insolent tyranny as Arran's could no longer be held in. Davison, the English Ambassador, writing to the Court at this time, says: 'It is incredible how universally the man is hated by all men of all degrees, and what a jealousy is sunken into the heads of some of the wisest here of his ambitious and immoderate thoughts.... His usurp power and disposition of all things, both in Courts, Parliaments, and Sessions, at the appetite of himself and his good lady, with many other things do bewray matter enough to suspect the fruits of ambition and inordinate thirst for rule'; and he adds, 'I find infinite appearances that the young King's course ... doth carry him headlong to his own danger and hazard of his estate. He hath, since the change at St. Andrews, continually followed forth implacable hatred and pursuit against all such as in defence of his life and crown have hazarded their own lives, living, fortunes in all that they have, and now throws himself into the arms of those that have heretofore preferred his mother's satisfaction to his own surety, and do yet aim at that mark, with the apparent danger of religion which hath already received a greater wound by the late confusions and alterations than can be easily repaired.' Other satellites of the Court helped to make the country restive. Adamson especially provoked the people by many petty acts of tyranny, such as the ejection from the manses of the wives of the banished ministers on account of a spirited defence of their husbands, which they had published in reply to charges made against them by the Archbishop.

At the same time the country was visited by two great calamities which were interpreted as divine judgments on the misdeeds of the Government. The harvest was destroyed by heavy rains, and there was an outbreak of the plague of such virulence as to spread terror in all the larger cities. Edinburgh was so desolated, that when James Melville and others of the banished ministers passed through the streets on their return home, they found them empty,--'About alleavin hours he cam rydding in at the watergett of the Abbay, upe throw the Canow-gett, and red in at the Nether Bow, throw the graitt street of Edinbruche to the Wast Port, in all the quhilk way we saw nocht three persons, so that I miskend Edinbruche, and almost forgot that ever I had seen sic a toun.' The people felt that 'the Lord's hand wald nocht stay unto the tyme the Ministers of God and Noble-men war brought hame again.' The banished lords, emboldened by the dissatisfaction of the people and the support of the English Government, and joining with several Border chiefs who had old scores of their own against Arran, invaded the country, marched to Stirling, where the King and Court had retired on hearing of their approach, and took possession of the town. Arran fled, and James was glad to come to terms with the lords.

THE KING'S SURRENDER TO THE CHURCH

'The love of kings is like the blowing of winds ... or the sea which makes Men hoist their sails in a flattering calm, And to cut their masts in a rough storm.'

JOHNSON.

The other ministers who had fled to England had likewise been fully occupied; they had preached in Berwick, in Newcastle, in London, and wherever they found an open door. James Melville had, for a while, most of the banished Ruthven lords in his congregation at Newcastle, and he had sought to invigorate them as the supporters of the liberties of the Church in the event of their returning home to take part again in political life; but, as it proved, with little effect.

The Church soon found that it had gained little by the change of Government. If Arran and his set were its bitter enemies, the new Councillors, the Ruthven lords, were, at the best, indifferent friends. Though they owed their restored power largely to the courageous resistance of the ministers to the Arran administration, and though they had pledged themselves during their exile to use their influence, when opportunity should come, to undo the evils of that administration as they had affected the Church, they were content to secure their own interest and left the Church to look after itself.

Parliament having been summoned to meet in Linlithgow in December 1585, for the purpose of reponing the nobles in their estates and giving its sanction to their administration, the ministers resolved to hold a meeting of Assembly beforehand in Dunfermline to prepare a representation of the Church's interests for the Parliament. When the members of Assembly reached that city they found that the Provost had closed the gates against them, by order, it was said, of the Court. The meeting was held, but adjourned, after resolving that it should be resumed at Linlithgow. James Melville, fresh from his journey from England, arrived in Linlithgow on the eve of the Assembly, and found his brethren much dispirited. They had almost come to a rupture among themselves, high words having passed between those of them who had subscribed the deed of submission to the bishops and those who had refused. This dispute had caused much trouble to Andrew Melville. In a letter of James Melville written at the time to a friend, he says: 'Mr. Andro hath been a traicked man since he cam hame, ryding up and doun all the countrie to see if he might move the brethren to repent and joyne together.' The Assembly had little hope of Parliament doing anything towards the repeal of the Black Acts. If the nobles now in power would not press the King to redress the Church's grievances, it was certain that he would do nothing in that direction of his own accord. James was not in a mood to oblige the Church. He could not conceal his revengeful feelings towards the ministers who had fled with the Ruthven lords, and especially towards Melville. The Assembly, however, did its duty. It sent a deputation to the nobles to urge them to put the Church's claims before the King. The nobles refused, and the deputation went to the King himself. Melville was its spokesman, and many sharp and hot words passed between him and James. At length the King ordered the Assembly to lay before him a statement of its objections to the Black Acts. This was done, and within twenty-four hours James issued a reply from his own pen, in which he showed a conciliatory spirit, and made explanations to take the edge off the harshness with which the Acts had been framed, but made no alteration in their substance.

If Parliament did not know when to take occasion by the hand to win concessions from the King in the interests of liberty, he knew how to use his opportunity for strengthening his own prerogatives. He brought forward a measure which the Parliament passed, constituting it a capital offence to criticise the King's conduct or government, and making it unlawful for his subjects to enter into any association for political ends without the consent of the throne.

Adamson had appealed to the Assembly which was to meet in May. The King, being indignant at the treatment the Archbishop had received, was resolved to get the sentence annulled, and he set himself to tune the Assembly to his mind. He called a meeting by royal proclamation, and gave it out that he would attend it himself. The temper of the Assembly was such that the resolutions that were to effect the King's object had to be cautiously framed, and were carried by a bare majority of votes. The Court, without judging the Synod's proceedings and sentence, and only after Adamson had made an apology for his pretentions to authority in the Church, and had given a promise to drop them for the future, resolved to restore him. The case had been no sooner disposed of than Melville was summoned before the King and commanded to go into ward north of the Tay, that the Archbishop might have a better chance of recovering his lost prestige--a restriction which, however, was soon removed on a strong representation being made to the King of the loss which the University was suffering by the banishment of Melville.

From this time the Archbishop fell into disgrace, both for his shameful public career and for the offences of his private life, especially his extravagance and consequent debts. Two years later he was deposed by the Assembly, when the King cast him off, and gave the temporalities of his see to one of the Court favourites. After that Adamson never lifted his head. When he had fallen into poverty and sickness he made a pitiful appeal to Melville, which was most generously met. His old opponent visited him, and for months provided for him out of his own purse; and it was through the good offices of both the Melvilles that he was able to make his peace with the Church before he died. Perhaps it is this last act of humbleness, when he had lost all repute with the world, that gives him his best claim on our respect.

In the following year, 1588, the prodigious attempt of Philip to invade England and overthrow the Protestant power in the two kingdoms very greatly strengthened the Presbyterian cause in Scotland, and made Episcopacy more than ever repugnant to the people, as having in it so much of the leaven of the Old Church. Whatever roused the Protestant spirit of the country gave Presbytery a firmer hold as the Church system most antagonistic to Popery, and also to arbitrary government which seeks in Popery its natural ally. At every crisis such as that which now arose, it made a fresh appeal to the deepest feelings of the nation.

At the time when the Armada was approaching our shores the country had no confidence in the patriotism of the King. There were sinister suspicions of his attitude to Romanism, caused by the favours shown at Court to nobles of that faith; by his retention of many of its adherents in his service, and his reluctance to take action against the Romish priests, the Jesuits, and the rest of the army of Papal emissaries who were sowing treason throughout the land. All through his life James was characterised by a singular unseasonableness in his activity. 'There is a time,' says the preacher, 'to every purpose under the heaven,' but with James there was always an incongruity between the time and the purpose. The year before, he had scandalised the Court by dancing and giggling at a levee held immediately after his mother's death; and now, when he should have been arming the country against the Spanish invasion, he was engaged in writing an academic treatise against the Pope. Perhaps his conduct was due to a deeper fault in his character--his ingrained duplicity. As, after his accession to the English throne, he sought to thwart the anti-Papal policy of his own Government when Spain was threatening the Protestant power in Germany, so now he may have been dissembling his real sympathies in writing against the Papacy. At all events, he never showed by any act of his reign that he dreaded the Papal power as much as he dreaded that of the Scottish Presbyterians or the English Puritans.

The Armada brought Melville once more to the front. It was his voice that roused the nation to a sense of its danger, and his energy that organised the nation to meet it. He summoned the Assembly, being Moderator at the time: the Assembly stirred up the nobles and the burgesses, and the whole nation joined to offer resistance to the invasion.

From this time the favourable tide for the fortunes of Presbytery which had set in previous to the Armada flowed with a rush, which within a few years carried it to undisputed ascendency in the land. The people's attachment to it was too strong for James, and even within his own Council it had come to be recognised that acquiescence in it was inevitable. Maitland, Lethington's brother, the Chancellor of the kingdom, who was the strongest man in the Council, and for long a supporter of the King's policy in ecclesiastical affairs, was now won over, by the logic of events, to its support. He had the sense to perceive that the kingdom could never prosper till the Church was satisfied, and that the Church could never be satisfied with any other than its own freely chosen economy. He also saw that if the King was to maintain friendship with the English Government, he must sever himself from those forces in the country that were opposed to the Church, as they were all under the suspicion of working in the interests of the power which had made so determined an attempt at the overthrow of the neighbouring kingdom. 'He helde the King upon twa groundes sure, nather to cast out with the Kirk nor with England.' Prelacy, he knew, was but the King's choice for the nation: Presbytery was the nation's choice for itself. Maitland's influence was great with the King, and from this time it was used steadily in favour of a new departure in his Church policy.

At the same time there arose, in the person of Robert Bruce, minister of Edinburgh, one who rendered powerful service to the Presbyterian cause, and who, in the whole history of the struggle, was singular in this respect, that while possessing the entire confidence of his brethren he also carried great weight in the Council of the King. Of good family, second son of the Laird of Airth, he had studied for the Bar and then abandoned it for the Church. For many years of his life he had been conscious of striving against the work of grace in his heart, and against the conviction that he ought to devote himself to the ministry, and had thereby suffered sore trouble of conscience. At last a crisis came, which he describes as 'a court of justice holden on his soul,' which 'chased' him to his grace. Immediately thereafter he sought the counsel of Melville, to whom he had been greatly attracted, who encouraged him to enter the ministry, and under whom he was trained for it. Bruce commanded respect from all classes and on all hands; 'the godlie for his puissant and maist moving doctrine lovit him; the wardlings for his parentage and place reverenced him; and the enemies for bath stude in awe of him.' Bruce was a special friend of Chancellor Maitland, through whom he was received with favour at the Court; and he brought Maitland and Melville together and made them friends.

His marriage, which took place in 1589, was used by James as an occasion for a public demonstration of his reconciliation to the Church. Before leaving for Denmark to fetch his bride, he made Bruce an extraordinary member of his Council, professing at the same time such confidence in him as he might have given to a viceroy, which indeed Bruce virtually became. During the King's absence the nation enjoyed a tranquillity unknown before in his reign, chiefly due to the influence of Bruce and his brethren. James Melville had good ground for what he said at the Assembly in August 1590: 'We, and the graittest and best number of our flockes, halff bein, ar, and mon be his best subjects, his strynthe, his honour. A guid minister may do him mair guid service in a houre nor manie of his sacrilegious courteours in a yeir.' At the Queen's coronation the ministers took the chief part in the ceremony. It was Bruce who anointed her, and, with David Lindsay, minister of Leith, placed the crown on her head. Melville was chosen by the King to prepare and recite the Stephaniskion, as the coronation ode was called, and the King was so pleased with it that he gave him effusive thanks. On the following Sabbath James was present in St. Giles', and in the presence of the congregation acknowledged the services rendered by Bruce and the ministers to the country and the crown during his absence, and promised to turn a new leaf in the government of the kingdom. He was also present at the next General Assembly, when he broke forth in such fervent laudation of the Church that he might have made the oldest and staunchest adherents of Presbytery reproach themselves for the coldness of their own attachment to it: 'He fell furth in praising God, that he was borne in suche a tyme as the tyme of the light of the Gospell, to suche a place as to be king in suche a Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in the world. "The Kirk of Geneva," said he, "keepeth Pasche and Yule; what have they for them?--they have no institutioun. As for our nighbour Kirk in England, it is an evill said masse in English, wanting nothing but the liftings. I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors, elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your puritie, and to exhort the people to doe the same; and I forsuith, so long as I bruike my life and crowne, sall mainteane the same against all deidlie," etc. The Assemblie so rejoiced, that there was nothing but loud praising of God, and praying for the King for a quarter of an houre.'

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

THE POPISH LORDS--MELVILLE AND THE KING AT FALKLAND PALACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Your most aproved loving sister and consignesse,

'ELIZABETH R.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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