Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

your lordship at the Council (July 24) spake very worthily against the interdicting of the service for that were in effect as much as to disclaim the work, or to give way to the insolency of the baser multitude; and his majesty hath commanded me to thank you for it in his name. But the disclaiming of the book as any act of theirs, but as it was his majesty's command, was most unworthily. "Tis most true the king commanded a liturgy, and it was time they had one. They did not like to admit of ours, but thought it more reputation for them—as indeed it was— to compile one of their own, yet as near as might be ; and they have done it well. Will they now cast down the milk they have given because a few milkmaids have scolded at them? I hope they will be better advised." 1

The king issued a brief stern order that the Council bring "the rude and base people" guilty of the tumult to punishment, and at the same time give fitting support to the clergy.2 The Council directed that the proper steps should be taken to bring the offenders to punishment; but although some persons were apprehended and examined, from whatever cause it might be, no one was punished for the affair. There also reached the disturbed and wavering Council an order under the king's hand for enforcing the absolute use of the Service-book throughout the country. Its tone is that of a master rebuking servants for negligence or remissness in their duty.3

These rebukes and commands from the Court in London reveal a total unconsciousness of there being any difficulty beyond what proper attention to official duty can at once remove. In their lazy journey to Scotland, however, they were crossed by sinister intimations that the acts of the rabble were receiving support and countenance from men of position and power.

An outbreak, even though it be by a paltry rabble, is often the occasion that brings men of gravity and responsibility forward on the political stage. The machinery of government is set in motion, and they have to choose

1 Hidden Works, 165, 166.

2 Privy Council Record, Peterkin, 52.

3 Ibid., 54

what part they will take in the events to come. There is something wrong; and the question now comes practically forward, Who is fundamentally responsible for it? The long-pent-up wrath that had been accumulating through the country came forth in all its power and fulness. A variety of petitions, or "supplications," as they were termed, poured in upon the Council; and the everincreasing body who signed them became a sort of power in the State under the humble name of "The Supplicants.' They were of all ranks. Thus we have "the petition of the men, women, children, and servants of Edinburgh,” and likewise "the petition of the noblemen, gentry, ministers, burgesses, and commons, to the Council, against the Service-book and Book of Canons."1

[ocr errors]

There was an organisation for the preparation and signing of these petitions; and the zeal of the Supplicants was amply fed by a body of practical politicians who had now taken their resolution to fight a keen political battle with the Court. The petitions were so multifarious, and kept pouring in so continuous a stream of varied remonstrance into the council-chamber, that to analyse them, either according to their several purports, or the classes of persons from whom they came, would fill a tedious and not very instructive narrative. It may suffice to say, that although the strength of the opposition was still in its political element, yet common cause was made between the politicians and the clergy; and there was always enough about the grievances to the consciences of the serious to secure their co-operation. That the innovations, resting on the sole authority of the Crown, without any sanction from the Estates or a General Assembly, were an invasion of the constitution and the national liberties, was the main position held by the Supplicants; but this position was strengthened and the clergy propitiated by the statement that the innovations in their substance were offensive to the people, as savouring of English interference or of Popery.2 The Five

1 Privy Council Record, Peterkin, 56.

2 Specimens of the supplications will be found in Rushworth, ii.

Articles of Perth and some other ecclesiastical laws were doubtless offensive to many persons; but in their adoption the forms at least of the constitution were observed; and however much those whose consciences repelled them might struggle personally against their enforcement, there was in them no warrant for a national stand against the encroachments of the prerogative upon the powers and privileges of the Estates of the realm. The general tone of these documents is briefly expressed in the following passage from the "Supplication of the Town of Glasgow:" "We have been unwilling to oppose the beginnings of alterations from the uniform practice of public worship in this realm since the first Reformation, but gave way to what was concluded by the Acts of a General Assembly and Parliament, being put in hopes. from time to time that the alterations should proceed no further; but now are appalled with fears to see ourselves brevi manu deprived of that liberty in serving God which both State and Church approved by public authority, and constrained to embrace another, never so much as agitate in any General Assembly, or authorised by Parliament."1

The Supplicants treated the king's person with great reverence, if that may be called reverence which implies a charge of incompetency for government, and a weak. compliance with the will of designing men. Their vehement protestations of loyalty, indeed, have a tone slightly grotesque in the face of the work in which they were employed. Among the reasons which they say specially moved them in one of these gatherings was, "to complain of a number of bishops, ministers, and other their followers, who, grieving at their opposing of them, scandalously and wrongfully called the petitioners mutinous and rebellious subjects; the imputation whereof was intolerable unto them, who had God to be their witness that they will rather undergo death itself than

394 et seq.; Rothes's Relation, 48 et seq.; and Peterkin's Records, 49 et seq.

1 Rothes's Relation, 48.

VOL. VI.

L

be guilty of that sin; that never any such word or motion had been heard among them that tended further than humbly to supplicate as the most submiss way allowed to the meanest of the subjects." "' 1 They showed very distinctly, however, that they would not have the king indorse over to his bishops or anybody else the reverence which they admitted to be due to himself.2 He had ordered his Council not to receive any supplications censuring the bishops, or dealing disrespectfully with them; and as a sort of commentary on this prohibition, the Supplicants charged the bishops as the prime stirrers-up of all the mischief, and demanded that they should be removed from the council-board, where their complaints were to be considered, being parties accused, and therefore incapacitated from acting as judges-and all with the usual reverence for the king himself, thus: "We

1 Rothes's Relation, 24.

In

2 To understand how the spirit of loyalty could live along with hostility to the king's Government, it is necessary to shut the mind against a natural popular delusion which treats the Conservative statesman of the present day as the political representative of the Cavalier of old. The conditions of this identity have to be almost inverted. In England the Parliamentary party were the Conservatives; the courtiers were the innovators. Events, no doubt, leading to war, led also to the consequences of war-the breaking up of old institutions. But ere events came to that alternative, the efforts of all the leading men-of Elliot, Pym, Hampden, and their brethren --were for the preservation of the Constitution. If the business done in the Long Parliament be compared with that performed by the Tiers Etat and the Directory, the antithesis is at once visible. the one, all is order, precedent, and ancient usage; in the other, even in its innocent moments, there are but idle visions of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The men most dreaded and hated by the Court in England were of the class with whom revolution and anarchy are least apt to be associated—men like Cotton, Prynne, and Selden, who spent their hours in learned privacy, and drew wisdom from ancient parchments. When they spoke honestly, they were the most dangerous enemies of the Court; if they treacherously hid or distorted their knowledge, they could become its most valued and powerful friends. Tampering with the religion of the people was the shape which innovation had in some measure taken in England. In Scotland it took this shape more amply. But in both nations the original cause of all the mischief was the encroachment of the Court on the established constitution of the country.

being persuaded that these their proceedings are contrary to our gracious sovereign his pious intention, who, out of his zeal and princely care for the preservation of true religion established in this his ancient kingdom, has ratified the same in his highness's Parliament 1633, and so his majesty to be highly wronged by the said prelates, who have so far abused their credit with so good a king as thus to ensnare his subjects, peril our Kirk, undermine religion in doctrine, sacraments, and discipline, move discontent between the king and his subjects, and discord between subject and subject, contrary to several Acts of Parliament-do, out of our bounden duty to God, our king, and native country, complain of the foresaid prelates, humbly craving that this matter may be put to a trial, and these our parties taken order with, according to the laws of this realm, and that they be not suffered to sit any more as our judges, until this cause be tried and decided according to justice."1

Getting no ready answer to their appeals, the Supplicants tried to rouse the attention of the Council by repeating their remonstrances in varied terms of urgency, and so they fell upon the bishops again, thus: "We noblemen, barons, burrows, ministers, appointed to attend his majesty's answer to our humble petitions, and to do what else may conduce lawfully to our humble desires, do crave that all archbishops and bishops may be declined and not permitted to sit as our judges, nor to vote or judge in the answer or answers to be made or given by your lordships to our supplication and matter of our complaint therein contained, because the said archbishops and bishops are, by the said supplication and whole strain thereof, made out direct parties, as contrivers, devisers, introducers, and maintainers, and urgers upon us and others, his majesty's good and lawful subjects, of the book called the Book of Common Prayer, and the other called the Book of Canons and Constitutions for the Government of the Kirk of Scotland, both altogether unlawful." 2

1 Rothes's Relation, 50.

2 Ibid., 51.

« AnteriorContinuar »