466

POSITION OF THE PREACHERS.

and their places had to be filled up. He sent James Melville and two others of the Commissioners to consult on a delicate point with the "outed" preachers, and, in the absence of the three, got the remaining divines in to nominate three of the bishops already mentioned. Their sees were Aberdeen, Ross, and Caithness, because in these sees alone could a handful of the temporal wealth of the old Church be recovered. 42 The king, however, had not yet wedged "the horns of the mitre" securely into the fabric of the Kirk, and the situation of his three new bishops contained the seeds of long wars that were to be. It might be disputed whether the Commissioners who accepted the bishops had power to act for the Kirk; their concession needed ratification by a General Assembly. Mr Gardiner looks on the bishops as holding rank derived only by a civil appointment from the Crown, by prerogative and Act of Parliament. They were inevitably led to interfere with the affairs of the Kirk, which this odd kind of bishops had no legal right to do, being hampered by "caveats." They would be opposed by the preachers whose cause was the true cause of all spiritual and moral progress in Scotland, who in the highest sense were in the right, even when they were formally in the wrong." This is the usual judgment of historians. The precise ministers represented "progress spiritual and moral." Unlike the king, nobles, and bishops, the preachers did not follow "the uncertain guide of temporary expediency." 43

We are compelled to see matters in a different light. The preachers who sympathised with the anarchism of Bothwell, or sheltered with Logan of Restalrig,44 or approved of raids upon the royal person, followed expediency just as other politicians did. They were often the agents, sometimes the spies, of a foreign and unfriendly country-England. They were less often formally in the wrong than the king was. They were highly moral men, despite their festive free lances like Bothwell and Logan. But their morals did not prevent Bruce from calling for the death of Henderson merely as an experiment in evidence. Two despotisms, two claims to absolute power, were in conflict,-—the claim of inspired prophets, the claims of an anointed king. "Progress" was equally impossible under either claim. The two irreconcilable forces, each of them incompatible with the freedom of the State and of the individual, were obliged to destroy each other. Meanwhile James had bishops voting in Parliament. But the impossibility of en

SCOTLAND STILL ANARCHIC.

467

dowing the sees, and the attempts of the Crown to do so out of the alienated Church lands, combined with the horror of anything that looked like the services of the old faith, were to produce the Civil War.

An

During the stress of these affairs Charles I. was born at Falkland, on November 19. His mother had just passed through agitations only second to those of Mary before the birth of James VI. old anecdote avers that the child's nurse once found a spectral cloaked man rocking the cradle: this, of course, was the enemy of mankind, and James drew the darkest omens from the phenomenon.

The year 1600 ended, leaving James "a free king" as regarded the resistance of the Kirk, but still plagued by deadly feuds among the nobles. Huntly and Argyll were not yet reconciled; the Maxwells and Johnstones, the Ogilvies and Lindsays, the Clan Gregor and the rest of the world carried on their ancient vendettas, and in Ayrshire began the series of crimes connected with Mure of Auchendrane. Scotland was still anarchic.*

* Persons curious as to the Gowrie conspiracy will find the case against the king stated in Mr Louis Barbe's interesting volume, "The Tragedy of Gowrie House" (Gardiner, Paisley, 1887). The author has considered Mr Barbé's arguments carefully, but remains of the opinion that the plot was a Ruthven, not a royal conspiracy. He has made a full study of the case, and of the fresh manuscript materials in "James VI. and the Gowrie Mystery" (Longmans, 1902).

In writing this and the preceding chapter, I had not before me Major Martin Hume's interesting "Treason and Plot," based partly on uncalendared papers at Hatfield. Major Hume thinks that James at this period was deep in plot with Rome and Spain. He speaks of "the many letters now before us in which James does pretend his desire for reconciliation with Rome" (p. 419, note i. p. 420). I have no knowledge of any such letters later than the one of 1584. From the Pope's answer to the disputed letter sent by Elphinstone in 1598, it is clear that James, if he wrote this epistle, made no pretension of a desire to change his creedhis Holiness regrets the circumstance. "Lord Hume was sent to Paris and to Italy... to beg for recognition" (May 1599), says Major Hume (p. 380). Lord Hume went to Paris and to Brussels to meet Bothwell-much to James's annoyance to Italy he did not go. The "advertisements" of John Colville, a starving spy in exile (1599), are "sensational" rumours not worthy of consideration. His myths are recorded by Major Hume (p. 380), and long ago by Tytler (ix. 313, 314). If the wild tales were true, James rejected the Papal offers of 100,000 crowns down, and 2,000,000 to follow! That James had received abundance of Spanish or Roman gold is impossible. We know, from Nicholson, and from the reports of the financial Convention of June 29, 1600, that he was desperately needy. Compare Major Hume, "the encouragement and money he was getting from the Catholic powers. . ." (p. 395). It was Colville's business to send in what is now

called scare news," and he did so, but was so easily detected by his English employers that he turned Catholic "for a morsel of bread." For these and other reasons, I must venture to dissent from the conclusions of Major Hume, till evidence of a more satisfactory sort is produced. At most, I think, James wished to pose as a tolerant prince, despite his persecution of his Catholic subjects.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVII.

1 Nicholson to Robert Cecil, January 12, 1600; Thorpe, ii. 780.

2 Reprinted by Mr T. G. Law, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, vol. i.

3 Pitcairn, ii. 330.

4 State Papers Scotland, MS. Elizabeth, vol. Ixvi., No. 52.

Thorpe, ii. 762.

6 Hatfield Calendar.

7 Winwood Memorials, pp. 37, 146; Border Calendar, ii. 645. For Bruce's mission to a person whom in 1624 he calls "The Master of Gowrie," see Wodrow's "Life of Bruce," p. 10, 1842.

8 Winwood Memorials, p. 156.

9 Thorpe, ii. 782.

10 Nicholson to Robert Cecil, April 20, 1600.

11 Thorpe, ii. 782, 783.

12 Arnot's "Criminal Trials," p. 373.

13 Border Calendar, ii. 659.

14 Thorpe, ii. 782.

15 Thorpe, ii. 783.

16 Colville's life is traced in the preface to "Letters of John Colville," Banna. tyne Club.

17 Hatfield Calendar, viii. 147.

18 Hatfield Calendar, viii. 399.

19 This appears to be the sense of Craigingelt's statement in Pitcairn, ii. 157.

20 State Papers, Scotland, Eliz., vol. lxvi., No. 50, published for the Roxburghe Club in "Gowrie Conspiracy, Confessions of George Sprot" by myself.

21 Pitcairn, ii. 157.

22 Border Calendar, ii. 677.

23 Evidence of Henry Balnaves: "Was in the lodging before the tumult. Past forth, at the request of Sir Thomas Erskine, to buy him a pair green silken shanks."-Pitcairn, ii. 199.

24 Pitcairn, ii. 249.

25 Pitcairn, ii. 156.

26 Pitcairn, ii. 173.

27 Spottiswoode gives this version, as does: "The True Discourse of the Late Treason," State Papers, Scotland, Eliz. vol. Ivi. No. 50, MS.

28 Act Parl. Scot., iv. 83, 84.

29 Calderwood, vi. 73, 74.

30 Privy Council Register, vi. 149, 150.

31 Pitcairn, ii. 250, 251.

32 Pitcairn, ii. 215, 222.

33 Pitcairn, ii. 218.

34 Pitcairn, ii. 174-179.

35 State Papers Scot., Eliz., MS. vol. lxvi., No. 78.

36 S. P. Scot., Eliz., MS. vol. lxvi., No. 107.

37 Privy Council Register, 1600, 1608, 1609, s.v. Robert Oliphant.

38 S. P. Scot., MS. vol. lxvi., No. 66.

39 Tytler, ix. 365, 367; Letters of Elizabeth and James (1849), pp. 132, 133. 40 Thorpe, ii. 788 (83).

41 Calderwood, vi. 99, 100.

42 James Melville, p. 489; Register Privy Council, vi. 164, 166, and Note.

43 Gardiner, i. 522, 523.

44 Had Bruce stayed not in Logan's house, but in the village of Restalrig, Calderwood would probably have written "Restalrig toun.'

CHAPTER XVIII.

JAMES SUCCEEDS TO ELIZABETH.

1601-1610.

THE new year (1601) was marked by the despatch of ambassadors to sound England and Elizabeth, and by almost unusually dark and hostile intrigues of Cecil. Before the end of the year, however, he had abandoned these efforts in favour of a secret understanding with James. The court was rife with quarrels and intrigues, and James Melville kept alive the "griefs" of the Kirk, with the vehemence of his brother, while the king summoned the General Assembly in secular fashion by proclamations at market crosses. The ambassadors who set out for London in February 1601 were the Earl of Mar and the lay Abbot of Kinloss. They left Scotland in the middle of February, and made their way to town at the pace of a funeral procession. In a sense it was a funeral procession. Essex lay in prison for his famed "one day's rebellion," an attempt, in the Scottish manner, at a raid on the person of Elizabeth. Essex, before he was taken, managed to burn most of his papers, especially one which he wore in a bag about his neck, and which only contained six or seven lines. Now, about Yuletide 1600, Essex, Southampton and others had attempted to establish a cryptic correspondence with James. They worked through Norton, the publisher, whose office was in St. Paul's Churchyard, but who had a branch establishment in Edinburgh. He carried Essex's document, recommending that Mar should be sent as ambassador to London by February 1, 1601. James was to reply by a letter "in disguised words of three books," whether a book cypher, or by using book-titles as cant names of the plotters. James's answer may have been the tiny paper which Essex wore in a bag, and