In this way the efficient power of Parliament was completely monopolized, and none dared to dispute the king’s will.  Even the Church was reduced to an unwilling submission, which, from its very nature, could only be temporary.  He forbade the meeting of a General Assembly; and the convening of an Assembly at Aberdeen, in defiance of his command, in 1605, served to give him an opportunity of imprisoning or banishing the Presbyterian leaders.  He had to give up his scheme of abolishing the Presbyterian Church courts, and contented himself with engrafting on to the existing system the institution of Episcopacy, which had practically been in abeyance since 1560, although Scotland was never without its titular prelates.  Bishops were appointed in 1606; presbyteries and synods were ordered to elect perpetual moderators, and the scheme was devised so that the moderator of almost every synod should be a bishop.  The members of the Linlithgow Convention, which accepted this scheme, were specially summoned by the king, and it was in no sense a free Assembly of the Church.  But the royal power was, for the present, irresistible; in 1610 an Assembly which met at Glasgow established Episcopacy, and its action was, in 1612, ratified by the Scots Parliament.  Three of the Scottish bishops[88] received English orders, to ensure the succession; but, to prevent any claim of superiority, neither English primate took any part in the ceremony.  In 1616, the Assembly met at Aberdeen, and the king made five proposals, which are known as the Five Articles of Perth, from their adoption there in 1618.  The Five Articles included:—­(1) The Eucharist to be received kneeling; (2) the administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to sick persons in private houses; (3) the administration of Baptism in private houses in cases of necessity; (4) the recognition of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost; and (5) the episcopal benediction.  Scottish opposition centred round the first article, which was not welcomed even by the Episcopalian party, and it required the king’s personal interference to enforce it in Holyrood Chapel, during his stay in Edinburgh in 1616-17.  His proposal to erect in the chapel representations of patriarchs and saints shocked even the bishops, on whose remonstrances he withdrew his orders, incidentally administering a severe rebuke to the recalcitrant prelates, “at whose ignorance he could not but wonder”.  Not till the following year were the articles accepted at Perth, under fear of the royal displeasure, and considerable difficulty was experienced in enforcing them.

The only other Scottish measures of James’s reign that demand mention are his attempts to carry out his policy of plantations in the Highlands.  As a whole, the scheme failed, and was productive of considerable misery, but here and there it succeeded, and it tended to increase the power of the government.  The end of the reign is also remarkable for attempts at Scottish colonization, resulting in the foundation of Nova Scotia, and in the Plantation of Ulster.