66

interval of some six or seven years the Scots bishops had become more tractable through the influence of their brethren in England, is open to conjecture. It appears that there was a separate intermediate draft of a liturgy, signed by the king on the 28th of September 1634, and that after being in part printed it was suppressed. It appears to have been prepared in Scotland, and could it be recovered it might throw some additional light on the position and views of the unhappy men whose fate it was to be a hierarchy in Scotland. There is still another intermediate incident whence something may be inferred. A command was issued by the king to the Scots bishops, "To cause read the English Service-book in their cathedrals, and to use it morning and evening in their own houses and colleges, as it had been used in his majesty's chapel-royal in the year of God 1617." The Scots bishops humbly remonstrated against this injunction, and "that seeing their own was shortly to come forth, desired that all should be continued till their own were printed and fully authorised; to which his majesty graciously accorded." "Their own" appears to have been the intermediate liturgy partly printed and suppressed. We may feel assured that their objections to the use of the English Prayer-book did not arise from the sole reason that it was deficient in the emendations afterwards made on it by Laud and his brethren for their special benefit.

"12

We may now return to the actual "Service-book" that created a real crisis in history. It was to be issued by royal authority, and it is observable that this authority not

and, singularly enough, through that channel a few of its suggestions found their way into the English Prayer-book at the revision of 1661-62. "In the special services no great change is made upon Knox's Liturgy, but, as was suggested in 1615, they are 'in some points helped.

"It is not of great value as a liturgy, and one can understand Charles and his advisers, when they resolved to change the worship of the Church, wishing for something better; but their overdoing ended in undoing."-Sprott, Introduction, lxxi, lxxii.

1 Sprott, Introduction, lxiii.

2 Instructions to Balcanqual for the preparation of the Larger Declaration, MS., cited Sprott, Introduction, xl.

VOL. VI.

I

only imparts the king's approval of the work as completed; but takes responsibility for giving directions as to the new matter it was to contain. When Prynne performed the congenial task of searching Laud's chambers in the Tower, he found a document in these terms :

"CHARLES R.-I gave the Archbishop of Canterbury command to make the alterations expressed in this book, and to fit a liturgy for the Church of Scotland; and wheresoever they shall differ from another book signed by us at Hampton Court, September 28, 1634, our pleasure is to have these followed rather than the former, unless the Archbishop of St Andrews and his brethren who are upon the place shall see apparent reason for the contrary.—At Whitehall, April 19th, 1636."

Prynne, who was taking vengeance for the loss of his ears, was suspicious, and not only suspected this document to have been written long after the date it bore, but to be "counterfeited Charles R. being not the king's own hand, though somewhat like it." He found at the same time a copy of the book, "with all the additions and alterations wherein it varies from the English, written, made, and inserted by the archbishop's own hand, as it was afterwards printed and published in Scotland."1

1 Hidden Works, 156. This account of the corrected Servicebook exactly fits itself to the casual correspondence of the time, and especially to a letter by Laud to Wedderburn, the freshly-consecrated and eager Bishop of Dunblane, who had been trained in the principles of Laud's own school, and sent to Scotland to give effect to them. It will be seen that the English primate addresses the Scots bishop in a tone of a public officer instructing his subordinate, and intimating to him that some suggestions he has sent have been accepted, others have been rejected: I received likewise from you at the same time certain notes to be considered of, that all of them, or at least so many as his majesty should approve, might be made use of in your liturgy which is now printed. And though my business hath of late lain very heavy upon me, yet I presently acquainted his majesty with what you have written. After this, I and Bishop Wren (my Lord Treasurer being now otherwise busied), by his majesty's appointment, sat down seriously and considered of them all; and then I tendered them again to the king without any animadversions upon them, and his majesty had the patience to weigh and consider them all again. This done, so many of them as his majesty approved I

But in his account of this copy of the book, Prynne lapses from his usual exactness; for he speaks afterwards of "this Service-book printed in Scotland, with these and sundry other alterations and additions, wherein it differed from the English." And indeed, as we shall have to see, the differences as they may be seen in the printed book

have written into a service-book of ours, and sent you the book with his majesty's hand to it to warrant all your alterations made therein. So in the printing of your liturgy you are to follow the book which my Lord Ross brought, and the additions made to the book I now send. But if you find the book of my Lord Ross's and this to differ in anything that is material, then you are to follow this latter book I now send, as expressing some things more fully. And now that your lordship sees all of your animadversions which the king approved written into this book, I shall not need to write largely to you what the reasons were why all of yours were not admitted, for your judgment and modesty is such that you will easily conceive some reason was apprehended for it.”—Ibid., 153. In Wharton's preface to the history of his Troubles and Trials,' prepared by Laud, there is notice of some incidents which curiously show how both Laud and his editor looked on the Service-book as his doing. Of the history of the Troubles and Trials' it is said: "The archbishop earnestly desired-which desire is thrice in this work expressed-that it might be carefully and exactly translated into Latin and printed, that he might thereby appeal to the judgment of the learned in all parts of Christendom. To this end himself had procured the Liturgy which he had composed for the Church of Scotland to be turned into Latin, that it might be published with it. 'To the end,' said he, 'that the book may be extant, and come to the view of the Christian world, and their judgment of it be known, I have caused it to be exactly translated into Latin; and if right be done me, it shall be printed with this history.' This, in itself a trifling item in literary history, is significant as a revelation of the man's nature-of the selfassurance of being right, maintained amidst the wreck of all his projects. While he was cringing, whining, and apologising to his accusers, he was to leave a testimony that would vindicate him to the world at large. And when all Scotland was furious because he, or if not he, yet some English stranger, was forcing on them a foreign service, he was preparing a testimony to let all Europe know that he was the author of that righteous deed.

The translation of the Service-book was to be one of the unsup. plied items in the large scheme for the publication of ecclesiastical records which Wharton but partially fulfilled. He says: "This Latin translation of the Scotch Liturgy, as also the English original copy of the first draft of it, are now in my hands, and shall, one or both of them, be hereafter, God willing, published in the collection of memorials."-Preface to History of Troubles and Trials.

are not the same in all instances as those noted down by Prynne from the copy of the English Prayer-book in which they were inserted by Laud's hand. But these differences are generally trifling, and so far as they were important, what was put down in Laud's hand goes further in the offensive direction than what was printed. In short, whoever may be responsible for this or that suggestion, the hand which perfected the offence was Laud's.

The history of Scotland will not be truly understood by any one who fails to see that to force any English institution upon the people would be accepted as a gross national insult. This stage of political infatuation had been reached by the Book of Canons, of which Clarendon said: "It was thought no other than a subjection to England, by receiving laws from thence, of which they were most jealous, and most passionately abhorred.” 1

The fatal ingenuity which distinguished the promoters of the Service-book carried them a step farther, and taught them how to aggravate the offence in its repetition. As the whole project revealed itself to the infuriated imaginations of the Scots, it took the following shape. Laud and his party were plotting the gradual restoration of Popery in England. Afraid to go straight on with this project, they determined to try a sample of it first on the Scots, in obedience to the old Latin precept to try experiments on the more worthless subject. The consequence was, that Scotland was to be coerced into the use of the English Prayer-book, decorated with some touches of Popery, that they might afterwards be transferred to England, if found endurable and serviceable.2

1 History, i. 106.

2 The case is thus put in the articles against Laud by the Scots commissioners: "By this their doing they did not aim to make us conform to England, but to make Scotland first (whose weakness in resisting they had before experienced in novations of government and of some points of worship), and therefore England, conform to Rome, and even in those matters wherein England had separated from Rome ever since the time of Reformation." He little understood the temper of the Scots Presbyterian party when he vindicated himself in such terms as these: "I would be contented to lay down my life to-morrow, upon condition the Pope and Church of Rome would

If Laud did not intend to go farther in the direction taken by the Service-book, all appearances much belied him. It is perceptible in his correspondence, and still more decisively in the variations noted by Prynne on Laud's own copy of the book. And even without the other evidence to be presently noticed as to the substance of these variations, we may hold that although Prynne was at that time the bitter enemy of his old persecutor, he would not have dared, in the face of the world, to invent these variations. 1

How far there was justice in the charge, that the passages in which the Service-book varied from the Book of Common Prayer tended towards Popery, or rather towards the ritualistic usages of the Church of Rome, is among the many questions which have been much and keenly debated, and might be debated for ever. The following is a specimen of these variations at a very critical point-the consecration of the elements :

admit and confirm that Service-book which hath been so eagerly charged against me; for were that done, it would give a greater blow to Popery, which is but the corruption of the Church of Rome, than any hath yet been given; and that they know full well."-Troubles and Trials, 135-138. The mere idea that there was common ground on which the Kirk and Rome could meet and agree together was a horrible imagination. Immutable enmity was the only temper in which Antichrist could be received.

1 That Laud considered the Scots Service-book not as a completion, but merely a step in the right direction, is, for instance, shown by a passage in his letter to Bishop Wedderburn already cited: "And whereas you write that much more might have been done if the times would have borne it, I make no doubt but there might have been a fuller addition. But, God be thanked, this will do very well, and I hope breed up a great deal of devout and religious piety in that kingdom. Yet I pray, for my farther satisfaction, at your best leisure draw up all those particulars which you think might make the Liturgy perfect, whether the times will bear them or not; and send them safe to me, and I will not fail to give you my judgment of them, and perhaps put some of them to further use, at least in my own particular.”—Prynne's Hidden Works, 154.