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1633-35

The spark came from a blundering king. Charles had been born and educated in Scotland, and, according to Clarendon, was "always an immoderate lover of the Scottish nation"; but he had not his father's knowledge of the national temperament, and he had for his advisers on Scottish affairs men altogether out of touch with the people. When he came to Scotland in the summer of 1633 to be crowned, he had already estranged the nobility by his perfectly just and reasonable treatment of the tithes question. The visit revealed the existence of an opposition even in the packed Scots Parliament, and, since Laud was in his company, the coronation ceremonies roused suspicion in Presbyterian breasts. In August of that year Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury, and entered upon the policy of reclaiming Scottish barbarism to his ideal of ecclesiastical decency. A year later the Court of High Commission was established by royal warrant, and the number of bishops in the Privy Council was increased to seven. In January 1635 Archbishop Spottiswoode was made Chancellor in succession to Kinnoull, the first time since the Reformation that the office had been given to a churchman.

The Scottish hierarchy of the time has been portrayed, perhaps, in darker colours than it deserves. Spottiswoode himself, and men like Forbes and Maxwell, Sydserf and Wedderburn, were liberal in doctrine and exemplary in private life, and saintliness was the prerogative of neither party. But the bishops for good and ill were out of tune with their countrymen; they represented a theological creed which was in advance of their age, and an ecclesiastical creed which lagged behind it, for they did not appreciate the passion for spiritual autonomy which had become part of the national mood.[64] They were impossible as mediators, since the best of them talked a language unintelligible to that age, and the worst of them shared in Laud's perilous hieratic dreams. They might be intellectually tolerant like their leader, but they were ecclesiastically dogmatic. Their sudden rise to political power roused the extreme suspicion of the Kirk, it offended the pride of the nobles, and it stirred the opposition of even the staunchest moderates. "That Churchmen have competency," wrote Montrose's guardian and brother-in-law, Lord Napier, "is agreeable to the law of God and man; but to invest them into great estates and principal offices of the State, is neither convenient for the Church, for the King, nor for the State. . . . Histories witness what troubles have been raised to kings, what tragedies amongst subjects, in all places where Churchmen were great. Our reformed Churches, having reduced religion to the ancient primitive truth and simplicity, ought to beware that corruption enter not into their Church in the same gate."[65]

1635-36

In the year 1635 the royal blunders multiplied. A temperate protest by Lord Balmerino against certain recent acts came into Spottiswoode's hand, and thence to the king's. It was construed as high treason, and in March 1635 the writer was put on trial, convicted by a majority of one, and condemned to death. He was presently pardoned, but the affair deeply impressed his countrymen; it was the bishops' doing, and it seemed as if the old liberty was now dead in the land. A crisis had been reached when a man like Drummond of Hawthornden, no lover of the Kirk, was forced into vigorous remonstrance, and could advise his sovereign to study Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos.[66] In May a royal warrant authorized a new book of canons to regulate the government of the Church of Scotland, and the book was published in January 1636, prepared by a committee of the Scottish bishops and revised by Laud and Juxon. It re-enacted in substance the Articles of Perth, which had become a dead letter, prohibited extempore prayer, allowed confession, and claimed for the king supreme authority in ecclesiastical causes. More ominous still, it promised a service book, or liturgy, and threatened in advance excommunication against all those who should not accept it. It would be hard to conceive of a more foolish provocation. The book had no authority except the royal ipse dixit, and yet many of the canons dealt with civil as well as with ecclesiastical law.[67] It challenged not only religious but political liberty.

1636-37 [71]

The promised liturgy appeared in an atmosphere already superheated. In November 1636 Charles wrote to the Privy Council, ordering that the new "Book of Public Service" be used, and that each parish provide itself with two copies before the following Easter. But it was not till 1637 that the book was published. It is probable that the Scottish bishops had little to do with it, for even the most sacerdotal among them hesitated before this monstrous innovation.[68] Laud and his English colleagues took the English Prayer-book, made a few changes which the Scottish hierarchy had suggested, and made many others in the direction of a more exacting ritual. "The book, with the canons which preceded it, had no ecclesiastical sanction, either of all the bishops, or of a General Assembly. The imposition was an act of sheer royal autocratic papacy; the book, being English, insulted Scottish national sentiment; the changes from the English version were deemed to imply a nearer approach to Rome. Protestantism was in danger. The landowners suspected that Charles meant to recover some of their old ecclesiastical estates for the rebuilding of cathedrals and cleaning of churches; and thus, from the 'rascal multitude' upwards, through every rank and condition of his subjects, he gave intolerable offence, and caused extreme apprehension. He lost three kingdoms and his head, not for a mass, but for a surplice."[69]

The tumult was instant and universal. The devout women of Edinburgh rose in their wrath, and the first attempt to read the new service-book in St. Giles's church was the signal for a riot.[70] The flame ran fast over Scotland, for the offence was grievous; to endure such interference with private worship was to stultify the whole Reformation principle, and to sit quiet under flagrant illegality was to sacrifice the ancient liberties of the realm. Every post to England carried a supplication or remonstrance to His Majesty.[71] The Privy Council, divided between the lay lords and the bishops, was helpless; it suggested deputations which Charles would not receive, and meantime it was being flooded with petitions from every part of the Lowlands. The king's proclamations only made matters worse, and by October public meetings were being held everywhere, bishops were being rabbled, and the pacific Mr. Robert Baillie was writing: "No man may speak anything in public for the king's part, except he could have himself marked for a sacrifice to be killed one day. I think our people possessed with a bloody devill."[72]

1637

On 15th November an important step was taken. With the sanction of the Lord Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope, the malcontents organized themselves into a body of commissioners—four committees of nobles, lairds, burgesses, and ministers, henceforth to be known as the Tables. It was in substance a provisional government, and behind it was all Scotland, except the remoter Highlands and Aberdeen. In opposition to the king stood the solid phalanx of the Kirk, led by Alexander Henderson of Leuchars, the ablest statesman among the ministers; the burgesses were unanimous on the same side, as were also the lawyers; the lairds were represented by such names as Stirling of Keir, Hume of Wedderburn, Douglas of Cavers, Fraser of Philorth, Mure of Rowallan, and Agnew of Lochnaw; among the nobles were Sutherland, Cromartie, Ruthven, Eglinton, Wemyss, Lothian, Home, Loudoun, Lindsay, and Yester. The peerage and the lesser baronage of Scotland were united as they had never been before and were never to be again. Even the Lords of the Council were inclining to the malcontents, and the bishops had withdrawn from that uneasy assembly.

At the meeting of petitioners on 15th November the young Montrose was present. In September leading ministers had been appointed to secure adherents for the opposition, and Mr. Robert Murray of Methven was nominated for Perth and Stirling. Montrose at a later date named Mr. Murray as "an instrument of bringing me to their cause."[73] Along with Rothes, Loudoun, and Lindsay of the Byres he was appointed to the Table of the nobility.

1638

The unrest could have only one consequence. Traquair, the Treasurer, got no comfort at the royal court; indeed, in a proclamation which he brought back in February 1638, Charles took complete responsibility for the new liturgy, and required all petitioners to disperse on pain of treason and not to reassemble without the Council's consent. On February 22, 1638, when that proclamation was made in Edinburgh, a public protestation was read by Wariston, and one act of war was met by another. On that day Montrose was among the protesting leaders, mounted in boyish enthusiasm on a barrel, so that the prophetic soul of Rothes was moved to observe: "James, you will never be at rest till you are lifted up above the rest in three fathoms of a rope."[74] The Tables decided to revive the Covenant of 1581 against popery, and to add their own grievances, and Alexander Henderson and Wariston drafted the new version. It was an old device, for when the Scottish nobles chose to walk in the path of rebellion it had been their fashion to enter into "ane band." This was, however, to be a legal act, and to make the Almighty a party; in Wariston's word it was "the glorious marriage day of the Kingdom with God."[75] The first part repeated the Covenant of 1581 against Rome; the second part recited the acts of Parliament passed since the Reformation in favour of the Kirk; the third part pledged its signatories to defend their religion against all innovations not sanctioned by Parliament and Assembly, and to "stand to the defence of our dread sovereign the King's Majesty, his person and authority, in the defence and preservation of the foresaid true religion, liberties, and laws of this Kingdom." It was a candid and straightforward document, temperately expressed and accurately directed to the grievances which it was designed to remedy. The claim was to both spiritual and civil freedom, and the formidable sanction behind it was at once ecclesiastical, feudal, and democratic. On the last day of February it was read in Greyfriars' church in Edinburgh, with its solemn appeal that "religion and righteousness may flourish in the land, to the glory of God, the honour of the King, and the peace and comfort of us all." On that and succeeding days it was signed amid scenes of deep popular emotion, and in subsequent months copies were carried far and wide through the land, and even overseas to Scots serving in foreign wars.

On the first day Montrose subscribed his name. According to Baillie he was brought in "by the canniness of Rothes." John Leslie, sixth Earl of Rothes, was an adroit diplomat, and had an old grievance against the Act of Revocation. He was disliked by Charles, and probably returned the dislike. He was little of a precisian in character, for he is described by Clarendon as "very free and amorous, and unrestrained in his discourse by any scruples of religion, which he only put on when the parts he had to act required it, and then no man could appear more conscientiously transported"; nor was he extreme in politics, and Clarendon believed that but for his early death he would have gone over to the king's side.[76] Doubtless Rothes desired to strengthen the movement by the adhesion of the representative of an historic house, who was still an attractive mystery to his countrymen; doubtless Montrose was not insensitive to the persuasive charm of one who was much his elder and was the most generally popular man in Scotland. Talks with Rothes and Mr. Robert Murray, and the fact that the Fife nobles with whom he had spent much of his time during his St. Andrews years were among the promoters of the new Covenant, may have predisposed him to the popular side.

But indeed Montrose required no "canniness" of noble or cleric to help him to a decision. There were those among the protagonists of the Covenant who may have been antipathetic to him—Loudoun, his colleague on the Tables, who had been a Campbell of Lawers and was trusted by no man; Wariston, that strange youth of twenty-seven, a devotee in a lawyer's gown, who would forget time in prayer and be on his knees for fourteen hours at a stretch, and often, as his nephew Burnet tells us, slept but three hours in the twenty-four. But all Scotland was in the bond, except a few Catholic nobles and Aberdeen doctors, and in it were the companions of his youth, and Napier, his most trusted counsellor. The Covenant was legal, pronounced to be so by the Lord Advocate and by the bulk of the judges, and Montrose from his youth was a lover of legality.[77] Further, the main issues were not yet confused. There was no attack upon the king's authority; indeed, the royal sovereignty was vehemently asserted. The bishops were unpopular, but there was as yet little of that morbid hatred of the very name of episcopacy which followed later, when dislike of the thing done became detestation of the suspected means. In 1637 Baillie could still write: "Bishops I love;"[78] and there must have been many in Edinburgh to relish the dialectical triumph of the Episcopalian vintner over the Presbyterian shoemaker, recorded by James Howell in his letter to Lord Clifford.[79] The true point of conflict was far greater than any squabble about niceties of church government. It was the right of Scotland to her ancestral liberties, the confinement of prerogative within its legal limits, the keeping of churchmen out of civil offices. To a young man nourished on Plutarch and Thucydides and familiar with the current political thought of Europe, to one who at no time in his life could tolerate the ecclesiastic in politics, to a Scotsman who had his full share of the national pride, the cause of the Covenant was the cause of the patriot, the philosopher, and the well-wisher to the king.

That February noon in Greyfriars was one of the most momentous in our history, for it was the first step in a conflict which did not end till the December day, half a century later, when a king of England became an exile. To Charles it may at first have seemed but another spasm of recalcitrance which would be presently forgotten—a matter less important than the impending judgment of the Exchequer Chamber in the ship-money case. But when the news out of Scotland came, after many days, to the ears of a certain middle-aged Huntingdonshire grazier, who had lately removed to Ely, it may have caused deeper reflections. For this grazier, in the intervals of examining the work of God in his soul, had a quick eye for public portents, and he had won so much prestige as the defender of the rights of the fen commoners, that he might hope to be sent to Westminster, should the king call another Parliament.