actual law at the present day; but, according to the practice of Scotland, it passed into oblivion, and thus ceased to be law. It is another peculiarity of Scots legislation, that although the Act "statutes and ordains" the Articles "to be obeyed and observed by all his majesty's subjects as law in time coming," there is no punishment or penalty laid on those who disobey the injunction.

During the progress of these affairs, and thence until his death, the king kept up a harassing contest to compel people in Scotland, and especially in Edinburgh, to conform-to adopt and practise all his innovations with cheerful alacrity, as became the subjects of a sovereign who not only represented the Deity on earth, but represented Him with more than the usual amount of wisdom allotted to others in a like sacred position. It was evidently with much satisfaction that he required rigorous conformity from all whom he could command as holding office under the Crown. They were directed to show their conformity in an active and conspicuous shape by attending the Church services on the holidays. Some of them were believed to be tainted with scrupulosity about these observances; and the king took a slightly malicious satisfaction in hunting them through all their excuses for absence arising out of health, business, or whatever other cause. The "Youle vacance," equivalent to the Christmas holidays in England, was that which roused the strongest opposition. It joined into the festivities of the New Year, believed to be not only Popish, but a continuation of the saturnalia of heathen times. The name Yule, it is said, was the Jol of the old Scandinavians before their conversion. A contest for the active and visible observance of these days by attendance at church could not last long. But when the question resolves itself into the mere withdrawal from work or business, the positive side has all the advantage of the situation which usually falls to the negative. The numerous class whose interest it is to have a day of idle enjoyment generally gain in the end; and in the present day the zealous Presbyterian overseer or

1 Act. Parl., iv. 596.

clerk does not feel his conscience afflicted by relief from duty even on Good Friday. For all this weight in its favour, however, the "Yule vacance" remained a great test of orthodoxy and an object of contest far down into the eighteenth century.

It was considered as revealing the other half of the scheme, when it became known that the king, while enforcing holidays in Scotland, was relaxing the observance of the Lord's Day in the north of England. A proclamation was issued in Lancashire, the chief injunction of which was, "that after the end of divine service, our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreation, nor from having of May games, Whitsun ales, and moris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or neglect of divine service." Two reasons were given for this-the one, that Popish priests may not have it in their power to assure their dupes "that no honest mirth or recreation is lawful or tolerable in our religion;" the other, briefly expressive of an argument often used in the present day, that the suppression of healthy exercise, "in place thereof sets up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their alehouses." "" 1

Any one familiar with what may be called the literature of the Court of Scotland over this and a few of the preceding reigns, becomes conscious at this period that a great, though gradual, change has been effected in its character. Terms of servile adulation to the sovereign, unknown in earlier days, have gradually crept into it, having passed through the hands of priests and civilians from the expressions of adoration applied to the later Roman emperors. However pleasantly his servants had discharged this superficial duty, the king was not content with their zeal in exacting compliance with his religious

1 Calderwood, vii. 298.

demands. In one instance, where they had failed to bring a recusant clergyman to reason, he rates them in this petulant manner, casting up to them the more efficient services of his English Conncil, and referring to some lucrative scheme for one of themselves, in which they were more prompt than in the enforcement of his royal will:

"By your letter of the 10th instant you do certify your proceedings against Mr John Murray, minister, wherein we, expecting to have heard of his punishment inflicted by you, did find nothing in it but ane idle relation of his equivocating prattling, and do now perceive that you are loath to falsify our prophecy of you uttered by us in that letter sent unto you concerning that precipitate Act passed against us in favour of our advocate anent the silver minewherein, howsoever, our private interest, notour to every one of you, did carry some reason that we should have been acquainted before you proceeded, yet in that there was no stop nor delay. But in the punishing of any Puritan preacher, howsoever manifest his offence be, we did foretell-that which we now find true by experience— that our pleasure in that matter must be at least some half-dozen several times sought, and the same signified to you, before we can have any of our directions in these matters executed; wherein how far in duty and discharge of your place you come short of our Council here, I leave it to your own consideration, and therefore in our directions hereafter, you must either do what is commanded, or then excuse yourselves upon your insufficiency to discharge your places." 1

When even the bishops gently deprecated the too eager pressure of the Five Articles upon tender consciences, he wrote to the two archbishops, saying, among other expressions of anger, which show that he had not submitted his despatch to official revisal: "We will have you know that we have come to that age as we will not be content to be fed with broth, as one of your coat was wont to speak; and think this your doing a disgrace no less than

1 Original Letters (Bannatyne Club), 391, 392*.

the protestation itself." And on some proposal for modifying the article on the communion, he blurts forth: "As to that other act ordaining the minister himself to give the elements in the celebration out of his own hand to every one of the communicants, and that he may perform this the more commodiously by the advice of the magistrates and honest men of his session, to prepare a table at which the same may be conveniently ministered; truly in this we must say that the minister's ease and commodious sitting on his tail hath been more looked to than that kneeling which for reverence we directly required to be enjoined to the receivers of so divine a sacrament." 1

The opposition to the innovations became formidable in tacit strength, especially in Edinburgh. The king's advisers on the spot felt how difficult a task it was to coerce into the attitude of kneeling a community not that way inclined. The king kept a restless correspondence with his servants in Scotland, requiring of them minute reports on the conduct of the citizens of Edinburgh about the Articles. He received in return such meagre encouragement as might be found in these notices by his sagacious and unscrupulous supporter Thomas Hamilton, who, having done hard and unpleasant work as Lord Advocate, had got his reward in the rich lordship of Melrose. He writes, on 16th April 1623, "an account of the order observed in this town at Easter." It was "not so gracious" as he could have wished. The clergy, he says, had done their duty, "all of them very worthily, according to the time and holy subjects whereof they had to entreat. The number of communicants was small; no strangers-few of the town's people of good sort. greater part received kneeling, following the example given by the ministers, and by your majesty's treasurer, depute - advocate, and me. Master Patric discreetly moved some to kneel who offered to have done otherwise; but sundry of the base sort, and some women not of the best, did sit. In the College Church I hear by them whom I caused attend, that the number of communi

1 Original Letters (Bannatyne Club), 524, 525.

The

cants far exceeding that of the High Church, very few of them kneeled." He ventures to suggest that "time and convenience shall prevail more to reduce them to conformity than sudden or vehement instance;" and he fears "lest the scandal and difficulty of the remede be more hurtful than the toleration for a short space-the trouble of a rascally multitude for a subject which is pretexed with conscience not seeming seasonable."1

The opposition became more than tacit. Some citizens united together to co-operate on the common understanding, not only to abstain from kneeling, but to hold aloof from those who knelt.2 The king poured in angry letters on his perplexed advisers, and repeated his favourite threat of depriving the capital of every spark of light from the royal countenance, by removing the establishments of the Government and the courts of law elsewhere. A pamphlet denouncing the Five Articles passed from hand to hand, and was greedily read. The result of a close inquisition was the assurance that it could not have been printed in Edinburgh; and in fact it was published at Middelburg, whence copies of it were brought to Scotland.

A certain William Rigg, an affluent citizen, was believed to have helped in the importation of the pamphlets, and to have otherwise actively assisted in opposition to the Five Articles. Of him the king determined to make a victim, by charging on him a fine so large as to be virtual confiscation. This spread a lively alarm, as a precedent full of danger. Other punishments stood as questions between the executive and the individual sufferer; but confiscation was apt to be measured more by the necessity or avarice of the Crown than by the misconduct of the sufferer. It was, in fact, taxation by the executive without the consent of Parliament; and the English constitutional party were becoming alarmed by devices to accomplish that object.

Those to whom the king imparted his design thought

1 Melros Papers, *637; Letters (Bannatyne Club), 712.

2 Letters (Bannatyne Club), 757.