were not themselves subject to feudal dependence on the Crown. It was maintained that, from the great power thus wielded by them, the lay titulars of the tithes were more rapacious and unreasonable in the exaction of their rights than the Romish clergy had been. It is ever so with grievances that which men are enduring exceeds the traditional sufferings of prior generations. But the increased stringency in the exaction of the tithes since they had fallen into lay hands, was asserted in a very distinct manner by the king as a vindication of his conduct. He explained how the lay titulars "did use and practise the uttermost of that severity which the law alloweth them; how they would not gather their tithes when the owners of the corn desired them, but when it pleased themselves; by which means the owners, by the unseasonableness of the weather, were many times damnified to the loss of their whole stock, or most part of it."1 And in a proclamation about the revocation, he explains that " his majesty's desire is to free the gentry of this kingdom from all those bonds which may force them to depend upon any other than his majesty; that the said teinds may no longer be, as they have been heretofore, the cause of bloody oppressions, enmities, and of forced dependencies."2 The king's advisers thus found a class whose interests and influence already weighed, or might be made to weigh, against the great owners of the ecclesiastical estates. The position of the king's servants in Scotland was at this point difficult and delicate. They had to advise them a lawyer of great skill, and full of resources professional and political-the same Thomas Hope who defended the Presbyterian members of the Aberdeen Assembly, and afterwards became a champion of the Covenant. The policy adopted by him was to threaten boldly, and act moderately against those who begged for terms. We have already seen it as a peculiarity in Scotland, that the forms of law applicable to small private transactions between 1 Large Declaration concerning the late Tumults. man and man were applied for the accomplishment of great public objects. At this day, if the son finds himself deprived of his inheritance by a settlement which his father had no right to make, or which has been made with flaws or defects, he brings "an action of reduction” to have it denounced as waste paper. Sir Thomas Hope drew the "summons" or initial writ of an Action of Reduction against all the lay holders of ecclesiastical property; and the student of existing practice might be surprised to find how modern an air it has, and how closely it resembles in tenor its representative in the style-book of the nineteenth century. The position to be made good was formidable and comprehensive. It was the assertion of the sovereign, "having good and undoubted right to all Kirk lands within this kingdom, by Act of Annexation, as being universal patron of all abbacies, priories, and all other ecclesiastical benefices by the right of our crown, and being obliged by our oath to be given by us at our coronation in Parliament, &c., to maintain the hail lands and rents pertaining to the Crown and Kirk within the said kingdom, and so having just and necessary interest to pursue the action of reduction and improbation after specified, to the effect the patrimony of the Crown may be restored, the kirks sufficiently planted, colleges, schools, and hospitals sufficiently maintained, and the gentry of our kingdom relieved of the heavy burthens used against them in leading of their teinds."1 There was some stormy discussion about this hostile step. A deputation of the great men interested in resistance to it set off to lay their case before the king, but were stopped by his order when they had reached Stamford. They forwarded to the Court a memorial, which the king denounced as "of a strain too high for subjects and petitioners," and they were only permitted at last to appear before him as penitents and supplicants.2 It was now understood that against all who absolutely resisted a resolute battle would be fought. A commission 1 Connell on Tithes, iii. 68. 2 Forbes's Treatise of Church Lands and Tithes, 261. was appointed to "deal" with those concerned-to sound them as to the compromise which they would accept as a final settlement of all claims and disputes. The policy of this device was, that through and through the whole mass of entangled titles and claims, each should give up something of that which was precarious for a secure and recognised title to the remainder. Again there was recourse to one of the remedies applicable to private disputes. If two dealers differ about the tenor of a transaction, and agree to submit it to the arbitration of a third party, they do so in Scotland by executing what is called a "submission." After much dealing, the various groups of persons who had each an interest in the mixed dispute about the revenues that had belonged to the Church, each agreed to a "submission" of their claims to the arbitration of the king. The whole affair now, of course, naturally dispersed itself into a collection of voluminous discussions resembling so many litigations. These discussions resolved themselves by degrees into certain prevalent principles. A proportion from the property in dispute was taken as a tax to the Crown, and a farther portion was assigned to the support of the clergy. The Crown insisted on establishing a feudal superiority over the whole property at issue, such as it had over all the lay property in the land; and this assertion, by the incidental feudal dues which would follow upon it, made a further addition to the revenue. It would be wrong to omit one conclusion of these tedious transactions, which, whether by accident or sagacious design, accomplished an end in harmony with a cherished principle of the existing school of political economy. That an old permanent rent-charge on land does not participate in the nature of a tax, is a principle now current in so clear and decisive a form as to make us wonder how there ever should have been doubt or confusion about it. On the other hand, it is equally clear, that if the charge be not a fixed sum out of the rent, but a proportion of the produce, there is then a tax. If Agricola has a hundred acres of land for which he receives a hundred pounds a-year; and from time immemorial VOL. VI. F probably long before the earliest traces of his own title— Clericus has been entitled to ten of the hundred pounds, -the pecuniary situation is the same as if Agricola owned ninety of the acres and Clericus the other ten. But if the demand of Clericus be a tenth part of the produce, he taxes industry and capital. If Agricola, for instance, out of his gains by merchandise or professional industry, expend a thousand pounds in the drainage of the land, he has virtually to give a hundred pounds to the man who can take a tenth of the produce. If this claim on a tenth of the produce be arrested at any point of time, and commuted into a fixed charge equivalent to its value at this point of time, such a charge will gradually, as years pass, lose the character of a tax, until at last this character is extinguished. 66 One of the leading conclusions of this long process was, that the tithe was commuted." It was thereafter to be a fifth part of the rent; so that a tenth part of the produce was held to be on an average twice the amount of a tenth part of the rent. The owners of tithable property were empowered to compel the titular to sell his right of tithe, or of a fifth part of the rent, as it now stood. The price to be paid for it was adjusted at nine years' purchase. At the present day this would be considerably less than half the value of a rent-charge; but out of the commuted tithe had to be paid the stipend or salary of the minister of the parish. Thus, just before the commencement of the great troubles of the seventeenth century, Scotland was relieved of a difficulty which infested the rest of the United Kingdom with discontents and squabbles down to the present generation. The results of these multifarious proceedings were swept up into general conclusions, and ratified by the Estates at their meeting in 1633, at which, as we shall see, the king was present. This ratification resembles the general treaty that winds up a confusing series of diversified diplomatic communications and conferences. Among all parties to the arrangement-the king included-there was, up to the point of recognition by the Estates, only an understanding to further the arrangement. Many members of the Estates were interested in the affair in one or other of the different relations in which the parties stood to each other, and as a body they considered themselves bound to give it that sanction which, whatever the king might think of the amplitude of his prerogative, was absolutely necessary to give the power of law to the adjustment.1 An invidious question here forces itself into notice by the vehement discussion it has caused, Was the adjustment final in the minds of the king and his advisers? From attempts, made at considerable intervals, to reach distinct conclusions through the bewildering mazes of the "Commission of Teinds" and "the submissions," the impression reached by me is, that the king and his advisers considered the settlement final as to the matters comprehended in it. The vast extent of hard work in detail, accomplished by a large and promiscuous body of men earnestly engaged, could scarcely have been encouraged as it was unless for the accomplishment of a practical and valuable object. The collection, arrangement, and recording of the minute details were all so many obstructions to any revocation of the settlement, by creating innumerable rights and claims which had been examined and admitted by those having authority to adjust them. It was the accomplishment, though not in his own way, of what the king afterwards said he intended—his prerogative act of revocation once acknowledged and duti fully obeyed, he was to deal forth magnanimous justice, flavoured with generosity, and to respect whatever partook of the nature of an equitable claim. But over such secondary considerations must prevail the predominant force, that Charles was a fanatic who set certain objects before him to be accomplished at whatever cost and by whatever means; and if lulling suspicion were one of these means, however much it cost in labour and breach of faith, it was to be employed. True; but the question remains, whether all that he threatened in his proclamation came within the designs of his fanati 1 Act. Parl., v. 23-39. |