they could be binding upon any one; and we find the Scotch ministers declaring warmly that the vote of the Kirk needed no confirmation by King or assembly to bind every man in Scotland. To the English Puritan, the use of the penalties of excommunication for contumacy by the ecclesiastical courts, was contrary to the law of God, according to whose Word no such penalty could be countenanced; yet their Scotch brethren were declaring as firmly, in even more strident and insistent tones, that the God-given weapon of the clergy over the laity was the right of excommunication. Where the English disciplinarians were eager to relegate certain ecclesiastical offenses to the temporal courts, and insisted that no minister could be deprived of his right of appeal to them, the Scotch Presbyterians hotly contended, in the face of the King and all the powers of State, that the civil authority had no right to try a clergyman for any offence, until he had been convicted and degraded by the Kirk.

While the complete accuracy of these parallels is somewhat marred by the difference in attitude of the English and the Scotch toward the ordinary legal tribunals, the English respecting their authority, while the Scotch ordinarily despised it, the comparison is not without its value, and shows that circumstances do alter

cases.

As their books amply demonstrate. both Bancroft and James were much influenced in their attitude toward the English Puritans, by the deeds of the latter's Scotch cousins. The history of Calvinism in Geneva and Scotland was sufficiently similar to lead any one, familiar with its course, to believe that in England the same ideas and doctrines were trying to express themselves in the same characteristic ways. The history of the Classis movement furnished English Churchmen with what they considered to be more than a foreboding of this development. Indeed, no one can hope to understand the attitude of the English Churchmen toward the English Disciplinarians without bearing in mind their experiences with Presbyterianism and its advocates north of the Tweed.

The quarrel between the King and the Kirk was of long standing, of great depth, and of nearly commensurate bitterness.1 Under

1 The chief authorities for this chapter are (a) The Autobiography and Diary of Mr. James Melvill, as

edited from manuscripts in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates and the University of Edinburgh, by

the minor points of dispute, about which the debate had raged, lay that most fundamental of all questions-who should rule in Scotland, the King or the ministers? The issue did not lie between a Kirk wholly independent of the State and a Kirk wholly dominated by the State. Neither James nor his clergy could conceive of a separation of theology and politics. The real question was, which of the two should hold the preponderating influence over the combined forces of Church and State. And each party started from the unassailable premise (in its own eyes) that, in its own ascendancy was enshrined the future hope of Scotland. What counsels could be better for a state to follow, demanded the ministers, than the commands of God? Who was so fit to interpret and deliver His Commands as the chosen ministers of His Word? James, on the other hand, considered that a theological training was not the best preparation for a negotiation with France or Spain, or for the quelling of a border feud. To his mind, the ministers, as men unskilled in worldly things, should accept the guidance of the King, whose business it was to understand such matters.

The clash was irreconcilable: neither would yield. There are suggestive resemblances between the Emperor, barefooted in the snow at Canossa, and James humbled by the Edinburgh ministers in 1596; between the claims of the preachers to immunity from the civil tribunals and the pretensions of Thomas à Becket. Both parties were in the grip of forces they did not comprehend which had been gathering strength for centuries. Neither was at fault. There is something noble to us, in the staunchness with which each side maintained its position, but baseness, brutality, and bigotry are also plainly visible in their methods.

The issue, which Melvill and Bancroft were about to argue, was

Robert Pitcairn, for the Wodrow Society (1842), 2 volumes. James Melvill was the nephew of the more famous Andrew, and the two were witnesses and participators in most of the events described. While undoubtedly biased and full of prejudice against episcopacy, it must be admitted that Melvil made a determined effort to be impartial, and has done justice to his enemies with a rare magnanimity. (b) The History of the Kirk of Scotland, by Mr. David

Calderwood, edited from the original Manuscript by Rev. Thomas Thomson, for the Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1842-1849. Calderwood wrote shortly after 1620, was aided in collecting documents and letters by the General Assembly and by many influential individuals, and made a most valuable collection. His Own comments are seldom of much value or authority. The best modern account is A. Lang's History of Scotland, II.

clearly outlined in 1596. The Second Book of Discipline declared: "The ministers exercise not the civil jurisdiction but teach the magistrate how it should be exercised according to the word;" and to the discipline of the Kirk, the magistrate shall "submit himself, if he transgresses in matters of conscience and religion." This might have been well enough, had not the preachers allowed themselves a very wide latitude indeed in deciding what fell within the catagory of "conscience and religion." Besides the right of instructing the magistrate in the duties of his office, and the privilege of punishing him "as a Christian and not as a King," if he should fail in their performance, the ministers declared themselves the ambassadors of our Blessed Lord, asserted that their sole instructions were found in the Scriptures, and that only for a breach of those commands could they be called to account under the civil laws. Of that breach of interpretation, only "the prophets," (the other ministers) could judge. The self-constituted Committee of Public Safety, composed of Commissioners of the Kirk, declared in 1596, that the preachers were "answerable" only to Christ, and were "not to be controlled or discharged by any other." Some few weeks previous to this declaration, Andrew Melvill, in an audience with James, had grasped the royal sleeve, very likely with no small vigour, and had told the angry King that he was "God's silly vassal." Two Kings reigned in Scotland, declared he, Christ and James, and Christ's deputies were the ministers of His Word, whose advice the King must follow far oftener than that of his "devilish and most pernicious" lay advisers. James never forgot that moment when he was rudely shaken by the stalwart professor,' as he also remembered for many a day the time when another preacher termed him "an irresolute

ass.

Applying these principles, the clergy claimed the right to summon the Kirk Session and Assemblies, pass laws and promulgate them without the assent of the King, and even in the face of his commands. Likewise, they arrogated the right to enforce those laws themselves, for "the power of excommunication," wrote Melvill, to Beza in 1578,2 "rested with the ministers alone; and civil penalties, according to the custom of our country, accompany the sentence." Their claims extended even to the right of call1 Melvill, Diary, 370-371. 2 M'Crie, Life of Melvill. I, 202.

ing upon the civil arm of the State to enforce the decision of the Kirk against the King himself. Bruce of Edinburgh even went so far, in an assembly convoked by the clergy in open opposition to the King's commands, as to order those present "to hold up their hands, vow and swear to defend the present state of religion against all opponents whatsoever.” 1

The King's platform was also promulgated in 1596.2 The preachers were not to treat of state affairs in their sermons; nor convoke the General Assembly of the Kirk without royal assent; nor attempt to enforce the acts of the Kirk until they had received his ratification. Further, they were not to try in Kirk Session cases properly assigned to the civil and criminal courts by the law of the land. James was fond of dialectics, and would have greatly liked to win the theological battle against the ministers, but even he appreciated the necessity of securing, somehow or other, the administrative control of the Kirk.

Two years after his accession to the English throne, occurred an incident which opened the way for a new attempt to introduce Episcopacy into Scotland. The "golden law" of 1592, on which Presbyterianism in Scotland then rested, had declared that the Kirk Assembly had a right to meet yearly, provided the King or his Commissioners were present just before its dissolution, to appoint a day for its next session.3 An Assembly had been duly appointed to meet in the summer of 1605 at Aberdeen, but, shortly before the day set, James had forbidden its meeting; and, hearing that some nineteen ministers were assembling despite his commands, sent Straiton of Laureston to disperse them. The preachers were determined to hold the Assembly in order to preserve the chain of continuity; but the moderator of the last Assembly was not present, as he should have been, to open the new session, and the Royal Commissioner declared (and the preachers denied) that, the day before the meeting, he had commanded them by public proclamation to renounce their contemplated action. They did meet, however, chose a moderator, and then setting a day for the next session, quietly left Aberdeen. James was furiously angry and ordered them tried by the Council; and so raised the real issue between himself and the Kirk, which was by no means

1 Calderwood, History, V, 512.

2 Melvill, Diary, 383-4; 412.

3 Acta Parliamentorum Scotorum,

III, 541.

4 Calderwood, VI, 278-284.

the royal powers connected with the prorogation of general assemblies.

James was determined to obtain an influence in the affairs of the Kirk, and to this end, he desired to introduce bishops into Scotland. The idea of bishops was evidently not a discovery of his, nor yet of Richard Bancroft, nor of William Laud. Bishops were first established in Scotland, after the Reformation, in 1572 when James was seven years old, and while Bancroft was still tutoring lads at Cambridge for fellowship examinations. These "Tulchan Bishops," with incomes but with little power, had lasted till 1581, when they gave way before the rising power of the Kirk during the minority of James; had been restored to power in 1584; and were finally abolished in 1592 when Presbyterianism was firmly established. Then, after the stormy events of 1596 and the King's ultimate victory, he harked back to the old idea, and succeeded in 1599 in securing the appointment of a few bishops who were to be Lords of Parliament with full privileges, but who possessed not one penny of income and no jurisdiction. To the ministers, the King's attempts to prorogue assemblies and to secure power over them, were only preliminary steps to the introduction of the devilish seed" of bishops. This was the situation when Bancroft approached the Scotch problem in 1608. Bishops there were, but without income or power; the Kirk and the King were at swords' points, nominally over the rights of assemblies, but in reality over the concealed issue of the attempt of the King to secure a controlling legal influence in the Kirk.

The attempt to punish the ministers for their conduct at Aberdeen produced another issue, which was also old and of grave importance. When summoned before the Privy Council for Scotland, they one and all denied that the Council possessed any jurisdiction over them or had any right to convict them of an ecclesiastical offence. Melvill had practically raised the same point in 1584; Black had declined the Council's jurisdiction in 1596 in precisely the same manner and for much the same reasons. James saw that the opposition must be crushed: if the ministers were not amenable to the Privy Council, they were freed from all restraint whatever and might do as they pleased. Of course, he failed to see that they refused to be tried by the Privy Council because they did not believe that their trial could possibly be im