476

MORE OF MR BRUCE.

ponement of the Assembly and the meeting in Holyrood Palace. Whatsoever should be done contrary to the constitutions of the Kirk would be null, he said, and of no effect. The preachers who had visited the converted earls, found that only Errol was at all satisfactory. Huntly could not go to his parish kirk, the parishioners were such mean men ! This denoted a lack of enthusiasm. Angus could not be got at, but was reported to entertain professed enemies to religion. The faithful of Fife complained that the land had been "defiled" by the saying of mass for the French ambassador. The General Assemblies, too, it was urged, were now unconstitutionally kept. They were told that the law of 1592, as to keeping of Assemblies, had been duly observed; so we understand the reply. The bishops were not objected to, at least under that name, but the "caveats had not, it was complained, been inspected or discussed. "Let the 'caveats' be looked to," was the answer. The endless affair of Mr Robert Bruce came up. On June 25 of this year (1602), at Perth, he had signed a statement of his belief in James's innocence and the guilt of the Ruthvens, and offered to divert "as far as lies in me, the people from their lewd opinion and uncharitable constructions. This was Bruce's plain duty, for the resolute scepticism of so notable a man of God naturally confirmed the people in their certainly "lewd opinion" that the king was a deliberate murderer, liar, and robber. The Assembly was asked,-If Mr Bruce thinks the king innocent, and is ready, as he avers, to do his best to persuade the people to that belief, ought he not to express it from the pulpit? The Assembly, "after voting, thought this not only reasonable, but also concluded that the said Mr Robert ought to do the same."

Mr Robert now-and this is very curious-retired, of all places, to Restalrig. This ought to answer such cavillers as John Carey, who, in 1598, spoke of the pious Logan of Restalrig as "a principal man of the Papist faction," merely because Logan had harboured George Ker, the bearer of the Spanish blanks, when on a secret mission.11 Mr Bruce was apparently a friend of Logan (under grave but then unawakened suspicion as to the plot), to whose house of Restalrig (unless we are to suppose that "Restalrig_toun" is meant) he betook himself on occasions demanding meditation and prayer. His difficulty now was, that he would not preach in favour of James's innocence (though he said that he believed in it) "by injunctions." So the endless war of words and of distinctions as

JAMES KING OF ENGLAND (1603).

477

to injunctions went on ceaselessly. We cannot pry into the intricate delicacies of a good man's conscience. Mr Bruce thought that James yielded to passion when he bade Ramsay to strike Ruthven. The next Assembly was fixed for July, in Aberdeen, 1604.

On January 5, 1603, Elizabeth wrote her last letter to James, ending "Your loving and friendly Sister." In March her health absolutely broke down. The horrors of her latest days are no part of our subject. She died at Richmond in the earliest morning of Thursday, April 1, and by Saturday night Robert Carey rode into the gates of Holyrood with the news. On the fourth day thereafter came the tidings that James had been proclaimed in London.

James left Edinburgh on April 5, and, after a festal progress, with stops at the houses of the nobles, entered London on May 6. After hundreds of years of war the two portions of the island were united under one king. It is natural to pause for a moment, and reflect on the nature and fortunes of the man whom events had made the link between the ancient enemies. James is a personage so grotesque, in many of his habits so repulsive; so treacherous, so wedded to ideas of absolute royal power-based on a reading of Scripture as fallacious as that of his great adversaries, the preachers -that we are apt to overlook his qualities. Qualities he must have possessed. He had a strong sense of the ludicrous. Thrown as a yearling child into the perfidy and anarchy of Scotland, his person a mere symbol of authority, like the great seal, at which any adventurer might clutch; imperilled by the plots of any party that was backed by the wealth and the intrigues of England; James had, in some way, survived every peril, and had floated over all the billows and cross-tides into the haven of the English monarchy. He had not tact; he had often endangered his claims by rudely and inopportunely pressing them. He had seldom application; most of his time was given to sport and to study. Of economy he was ignorant and careless. Yet the man who, while he rode so much, could read so much, who while apparently always in the saddle, had learning so considerable, must have possessed a certain rapidity of genius. As he said of himself, he had a turn of speed. Though devoted to favourites he could recognise loyalty, as in Mar, whom he trusted, he said, "like a brother," and he could defend. Mar resolutely and successfully against the intrigues of the queen, which were peculiarly active at the very hour of the departure for England. While nothing is more odious in James than his accept

ance of money from the hands of the slayer of his mother, yet, undoubtedly, a war of revenge would have been ruinous to Scotland, pernicious to England, and an endless cause of disunion.

A more sympathetic prince would have taken up arms; wisdom dictated peace. James, fond of favourites as he was, continued to repose on the sagacity of Cecil, despite his countless personal reasons for hating that statesman. Though of a petulant temper he was capable of self-restraint. He had contrived to dominate the two strongest opposing currents, the lawlessness of the nobles and the pretensions of the preachers. When he left Scotland there was no noble who dared to play the part of a Murray, a Morton, or of either Bothwell. He had reconciled the greater feuds, as of Argyll and Huntly; the smaller feuds and private wars died out slowly under the influence of contact with England. It cannot have been mere luck that brought James home after the perils of nearly forty years. His chief danger had ever been the Tudor policy of maintaining divisions and anarchy in Scotland, with the inevitable result of encouraging the tendency to turn to the Catholic powers of the Continent. From these perils the country henceforth was free. James's dim traffickings with Spain and the Pope had always been reluctant; they were forced on him by Elizabeth. Often warned that a few thousand pounds would make Scotland friendly and pacific, Elizabeth had preferred the dangers and ultimate expenses of hostile intrigue. This policy was ended. The Borders, that focus of war, ceased

technically to be the Borders.

On the question of religion James was fated to sow the wind. His own private opinion is given in one of his secret letters to Cecil, containing "the inward temper of his mind," as Sir Robert said. James had complained of the increased confidence of the English Catholics, who boasted, "that none shall enter to be king there but by their permission." Cecil replied that, as to the Catholic priests, "I shrink to see them die by dozens, when, at the last gasp, they come so near loyalty." He had only voted for the penal laws because he regarded the priests as "persuaders to rebellion." he had no mercy for Jesuits. James had wished to see the latest edict against Catholic priests put in force: the king explains, “I will never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions in religion," but the temporal results, in rebellion, "the arch-priest with his twelve apostles, keeping their terms in London, and judging all questions as well civil as

But

GOVERNS SCOTLAND BY THE PEN.

479

spiritual amongst all Catholics," these things he could not endure. "I am so far from any intention of persecution, as I protest to God I reverence their Church as our mother Church, although clogged with many infirmities and corruptions, besides that I did ever hold persecution as one of the infallible notes of a false church." He wished, not the deaths of priests, but their expulsion.12 In England, as in Scotland, James had to bear ecclesiastical meddling with temporal affairs. His own personal attitude towards belief was modern; but he had to do with another condition of affairs, in which all political questions were made religious questions. When he became king of England, persecution of Catholics, for secular reasons, was to cause the Gunpowder Plot. In Scotland, practically in the interests of the freedom of the secular State, James was to intrigue and break the law to keep down the preachers; and the pursuance of this policy, trenching on convictions narrow but sincere, was to be one of the causes of the great Civil War. That war we may deem inevitable irreconcilable forces, impossible claims by either party, caused the strife. The real history of Scotland henceforth is more than ever ecclesiastical.

did

When he crossed the border James left behind him a number of the Privy Council to rule Scotland. They were the working administration directed by his majesty's letters. He governed Scotland, he said, by the pen. There was this disadvantage that, remote from the scene, he not know, and was not often told, the temper of the country. When at home every day occurrences, usually uncomfortable, kept him informed. Safe, at a distance, out of hearing, he ventured on measures which, had he lived among his subjects, he would not have dared to attempt. One useful reform he made (August 11)-he established a small force of mounted constabulary. A body of forty horse was raised to deal with disorder, to hunt down "horners," that is, proclaimed outlaws.13 Scotland had hitherto been practically destitute of police. In the matter of deadly feuds it had been usual for the parties engaged merely to put forward "cautioners,"-guarantors that they would keep the peace, which they were already required by law to do. Persons engaged in feuds were henceforth to be imprisoned and heavily fined. There were also proclamations against needy Scots who flocked into England without license, and made their country to stink in the nostrils of the Southrons. James took measures, too, for settling a scheme of the complete union of "Great Britain," as

480

HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE (1604).

he called it, but the time was not ripe, and the negotiations dragged on for years to no purpose.

The chiefs of the Scottish Government were, first, that notable octavian of 1596, Alexander Seton, the President of the Court of Session, created Lord Fyvie, and, later, Lord Dunfermline. Sir George Hume was presently created Earl of Dunbar, and was an active and unscrupulous minister. The Secretary was Elphinstone, now Balmerino, who soon fell under the consequences of the feeble and obscure traffickings with Rome, while still James was king of Scotland only. Sir Thomas Hamilton (later Earl of Haddington), known as Tam of the Cowgate, remained King's Advocate. He was accomplished and learned, a notable antiquary, and collector of the manuscript materials of history. He, too (as we see in the account of the trials of Sprot and Logan),14 was not the most immaculate of legal officials. Straiton of Lauriston became undesirably notable for his dealings, as Royal Commissioner, with the Kirk and the General Assembly. Gledstanes, Archbishop of St Andrews, and Spottiswoode, the historian, who had succeeded Mary's old ambassador in France, the aged Beaton, as Archbishop of Glasgow, with other bishops, were also of the Privy Council. 15 There were many other members, especially among the nobles, including Mar, but the most active and prominent have been named. They took their orders from James, and executed them to the best of their power.

The affairs of the Kirk continued to be of most importance. In England James had to take up the tangled ecclesiastical problems bequeathed by Elizabeth. While the instincts of England remained attached to such relics of vestments, order, and ritual as the Reformation had spared, -the cap, the surplice, kneeling at the Holy Communion, the use of the cross in baptism, of the ring in marriage, the preciser sort regarded all these things as rags and remnants of Rome. Men have fought and will brawl about such trifles as these, and the temper of Christianity has been and will be wasted over matters hardly apt to breed a quarrel in a nursery. "Greatly to find quarrel in a straw" of this kind, however, was, on both sides, a matter of conscience and a point of honour. "They fight for great causes, but on small occasions," says Aristotle, and the Hampton Court Conference of January 1604 showed what part James was to take in the struggle. In every corporate body there must be some rulers. Perhaps human wisdom might have