claim to infallibility (a claim implied, if not explicitly uttered), their appeal to inspiration, in "the preaching place," meant nothing less than that the State was to be governed by the pulpit. No pretensions could be more dangerous; and kings were really engaged for a century in a contest for human freedom, freedom from the political interference of inspired and irresponsible pulpit orators. The royal methods alienate our sympathies; their actual aim is lost sight of in our disgust with their measures-imprisonment, exile, dragoonings, and the imposition of Episcopacy upon a nation which detested "the horns of the mitre." But in these rude and unseemly ways the warfare was waged till, after the Revolution of 1688, the power of 66 new presbyter" was broken, as the power of "old priest" had already been overthrown. : James, as a victor in the bloodless war of Brig o' Dee, and as a married man, began to take himself seriously. He had a project for establishing peace and unity among Protestant Powers: he even sent two ambassadors through Germany. He would expel Jesuits, reconcile feuds, and make the royal presence more sacred and less easy of access. By the last idea he managed to offend Lord Hamilton the other schemes of reform remained unfulfilled, like all the Acts of similar tendency which crowd our records. The confederates of the Brig o' Dee continued to intrigue at home and abroad. A feud broke out between Huntly and "the bonny Earl Moray," which had fatal consequences. The Earl did not inherit by direct descent the old Moray-Huntly blood-feud of 1562. He was a Stewart who had married the daughter of the Regent Murray, and his neighbourhood to Huntly would have provoked a quarrel in any case, a quarrel involving Gordons, Campbells, Forbeses, Stewarts, and the adjacent Celtic-speaking clans. The causes and complexities of the feud must be explained later. James also busied himself much in examining and persecuting witches and warlocks who had raised inconvenient storms, or intrigued to ascertain his future, or to slay by art magic himself (as Bothwell was accused of trying to do) and his Ministers. The usual plan was that of "sympathetic magic"; an image of the victim, in clay or wax, was melted in water or fire. The idea is familiar to most savages, and was current in ancient Greece. It is possible enough that when the victims knew that the rite was being performed they fell ill by dint of "suggestion" or "imagination." Montaigne at this time was giving proofs of the power of "suggestion" upon the fancy, and so upon the body. Reginald Scot had recently published his large and entertaining work on the folly of current beliefs, "The Discovery of Witchcraft.' In Scotland not much is heard of punishment for witchcraft before the Reformation, when Knox, the preachers, and the Regent Murray conceived it to be their duty to denounce and burn witches." There can be little doubt that many witches were in intention malevolent enough. They believed in their own powers, and probably dealt in poison on occasion, very clumsily, as in Bothwell's attempt on the king. At the least, their pretensions inspired terror and the physical maladies which terror can cause. But James's action, his earnest pedantic curiosity, and the unspeakable tortures which he caused to be inflicted, strengthened in this unhappy matter the hands of the preachers, and reinforced a superstition which Reginald Scot and others attempted to laugh away. For more than a hundred years the poorest and most pitiable of mankind, destitute old women, were at the mercy of every prying preacher, every hysterical child, every unfriendly neighbour. In the next century we have a melancholy narrative by a minister. A woman was accused, the parishioners were violently inflamed against her, the laird was anxious to save her. The examinations by the minister yielded no grounds of suspicion, but not to condemn her was to offend the populace, alternately the tyrants and slaves of the preachers. Happily the minister, after leaving her in her cell, returned and listened at the door. His eavesdropping was rewarded. He heard the old woman mumbling to herself, and he could nearly swear that he heard another voice replying. That voice must be the devil's. So the woman was burned, and the minister retained his popularity. The disturbances, noises, knockings, movements of objects, which are still common enough in newspaper reports, were always associated with a hysterical boy or girl who used to "see" the witch. Possibly the child had been alarmed by the witch, and herself caused the unexplained disturbances. But the so-called "spectral evidence" was good enough: the witch was arrested and tortured. She implicated others: she told fables of the Sabbat, the league with Satan, and other fragments of folk-lore, tales about Fairyland, mortals enchanted there, and the fairy queen. The parish fell * This is insisted on in the record of the Regent's Parliament of December 1567 (Act. Parl. Scot., iii. 44). BEGINNING OF BOTHWELL TROUBLES (1591). 353 under a reign of terror: even matrons of noble family were not safe. The cruel absurdity raged in England as in Scotland, under Episcopacy as under Presbyterianism. Much of the fault lies at the door of James, who could not, indeed, have controlled the preachers, but who went out of his way to encourage beliefs that ensanguine the courts of African kings and the camps of wandering Australian tribes.45 Bothwell was most unfortunately involved in alleged dealings with witches, and was actually imprisoned in April 1591, though some thought that the preachers had him incarcerated for a flirtation with one of the daughters of the late Earl of Gowrie. He was confronted with Graham the wizard, who confessed to a scheme for poisoning the king in a magical manner. A fast was held on this important occasion.46 Bothwell broke prison and betook himself to his Border fastness (June 21). He was not taken: he now was, and remained, a wandering torment and a probable source of revolution.47 He had carried off a witness from the Tolbooth in January while the king was in session there, and only a few days before his majesty is said to have fled and hidden in a skinner's shop during a street brawl between Lennox and the "wanton laird of Logie." While he was accused of favouring Jesuits, and of suppressing a book written by John Davidson against Bancroft's celebrated sermon, he was also assuring the General Assembly that the Kirk was the purest of Kirks. "The Kirk of Geneva keepeth Pasche and Yule" (Easter and Christmas), "what have they for them? They have no institution. As for our neighbour Kirk in England, it is an evilsaid mass in English, wanting nothing but the liftings" (Elevation of the Host).48 From this opinion James was to advance very far. The Assembly was greatly delighted by James's adherence to the Kirk. In April 1591 shame fell upon the unhappy Archbishop of St Andrews. The preachers gave James no rest about the most hated of their enemies. We mainly know Adamson from his mortal foes, who added witchcraft to the charges which they heaped upon him. Though a scholar, he appears to have been a time-server. We have no reason to suppose that he was the martyr of an earnest belief in the order of bishops, or apostolic succession, but rather the kind of man out of whom tulchans were made. He had served his king rather than his Kirk, and his king found it at this time convenient to desert him. Maitland was hostile to him, and that proved fatal. 354 PREACHERS CLAIM JURISDICTION. He was reduced to lying in the Castle of St Andrews "like a fox in a hole," and is accused of inducing Henry Hamilton, M.A., to attack Professor Welwood on his way to a lecture in St Mary's. The rector deprived Hamilton of his master's degree, the judges "gave out compulsitors to " the rector's decision; Hamilton was presented with the freedom of the city. Professor Welwood was going to lecture, a book in one hand and an hour-glass in the other, when Hamilton attacked him with his sword. Town and Gown flew to arms, Adamson's brother-in-law was slain in a duel at rapier and dagger in the end the town secured the exile of two of the Welwood faction. All this went down to the discredit of the Archbishop.49 In 1591 he offered a general recantation of his offences. He had subjected the Kirk men to the king's ordinances, and (proh pudor!) had taught that presbyteries were "a foolish invention," though really they are "an ordinance of Christ." He had intrigued with bishops of the Church of England. Divers other offences he had committed, he was dying in poverty, and, crowning humiliation, he owed his daily bread to his old enemy, Andrew Melville. The central question between James and the preachers was that of jurisdiction. James told them that he thought he "had sovereign judgment on all things within this realm.” The reply, by Mr Robert Pont, was typical. "There is a judgment above yours, and that is God's, put in the hand of the ministers; for we shall judge the angels, saith the apostle." The king replied that the judgment in the text "pertained to every shoemaker and tailor, as well as to the Kirk." Mr Pont answered, "Christ sayeth, 'Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones and judge,' which is chiefly referred to the apostles" (indeed, given only twelve thrones, there were no seats for more), "and consequently to ministers." There is the claim, frankly stated, and supported by what reasoning! "A sect of perilous consequence, such as would have no kings but a presbytery"! The preachers, how selected we have seen, pretend, in fact, to apostolical succession without using that phrase, and claim for themselves on earth the privileges of the apostles in heaven. Thus there was civil and ecclesiastical anarchy. The preachers besought James to reinforce law and order, but James was helpless. As he said, jurisdictions were often inherited, and the officers regarded only their private and family interests. He could not BOTHWELL ATTACKS HOLYROOD. 355 take Bothwell, though Bothwell aimed at his life. Bothwell was here and there, always in mischief. On December 27, 1591, he and his retainers broke into Holyrood, he tried to burn down the door of the king's chamber, and beat with hammers on the queen's. He had entered through Lennox's stables, and Lennox was not free from suspicion. The town turned out, rescued James, and captured a few assailants of no note, who were hanged. The names of the ruffians prove them of the Border: Hepburns, Douglases, Humes, Ormistons, Leirmonths (mainly of Ercildoune, the Rhymer's family), Pringles, and, what looks ill for Lennox, Stewarts. John Colville, with Douglas of Spot, of Morton's brood, also thought it for his interest to take part with Bothwell.50 Craig, the preacher, publicly informed James that, to punish his laxity, "God had made a noise of crying and forehammers come to his own doors." 51 Presently the character of the king himself was blemished by a deed which for years influenced the politics of Scotland. This was the murder, by Huntly and his retainers, of the bonny Earl Moray, commemorated in the familiar ballad. Before describing the circumstances and consequences of this deed, it is necessary to explore its causes, which were remote and complicated. Colin, sixth Earl of Argyll, died in September 1584. His heir and eldest son, Archibald, was then a child of eight years of age. His mother was left with a council of six Campbells, including Campbell of Glenurchy, Campbell of Calder, Campbell of Ardkinglas (an estate on the southern side of Lochfyne, opposite Inverary), and Campbell of Lochnell. Of these Lochnell was, as the Lochnell of to-day still is, the first cadet of the House of Argyll, while the heir-presumptive is, maternally, of the House of Ardkinglas. In 1584 Ardkinglas received the wardship and marriage of the child earl, and he, with Calder and the Bishop of Argyll, had most power in the clan council of six. Lochnell, as first cadet and next in succession, failing the issue of the sixth Earl of Argyll, was jealous of Ardkinglas, and was backed by Glenurchy. Ardkinglas died (1591), and his son was practically subordinated to Calder. A partisan of Calder's was the bonny Earl Moray, a Stewart by family, who had married the daughter and heiress of the Regent Murray, the foe, and for a while the destroyer (1562), of the House of Huntly. In the feuds about the earldom of Moray, once held by the Huntlys, the Argylls had supported the House of Moray. In 1590 Huntly had reasons |