In Scotland as in England the expenses of national defence were a cause of anger; and the mismanagement of military affairs by the king’s favourite, Buckingham, increased the irritation.  It was brought to a head in Scotland by the “Act of Revocation,” under which all Church lands and Crown lands bestowed since 1542 were to be restored to the Crown.  This Act once more united in opposition the nobles and the preachers; since 1596 they had not been in harmony.  In 1587, as we saw, James VI. had annexed much of the old ecclesiastical property to the Crown; but he had granted most of it to nobles and barons as “temporal lordships.”  Now, by Charles, the temporal lords who held such lands were menaced, the judges ("Lords of Session”) who would have defended their interests were removed from the Privy Council (March 1626), and, in August, the temporal lords remonstrated with the king through deputations.

In fact, they took little harm—­redeeming their holdings at the rate of ten years’ purchase.  The main result was that landowners were empowered to buy the tithes on their own lands from the multitude of “titulars of tithes” (1629) who had rapaciously and oppressively extorted these tenths of the harvest every year.  The ministers had a safe provision at last, secured on the tithes, in Scotland styled “teinds,” but this did not reconcile most of them to bishops and to the Articles of Perth.  Several of the bishops were, in fact, “latitudinarian” or “Arminian” in doctrine, wanderers from the severity of Knox and Calvin.  With them began, perhaps, the “Moderatism” which later invaded the Kirk; though their ideal slumbered during the civil war, to awaken again, with the teaching of Archbishop Leighton, under the Restoration.  Meanwhile the nobles and gentry had been alarmed and mulcted, and were ready to join hands with the Kirk in its day of resistance.

In June 1633 Charles at last visited his ancient kingdom, accompanied by Laud.  His subjects were alarmed and horrified by the sight of prelates in lawn sleeves, candles in chapel, and even a tapestry showing the crucifixion.  To this the bishops are said to have bowed,—­plain idolatry.  In the Parliament of June 18 the eight representatives of each Estate, who were practically all-powerful as Lords of the Articles, were chosen, not from each Estate by its own members, but on a method instituted, or rather revived, by James VI. in 1609.  The nobles made the choice from the bishops, the bishops from the nobles, and the elected sixteen from the barons and burghers.  The twenty-four were all thus episcopally minded:  they drew up the bills, and the bills were voted on without debate.  The grant of supply made in these circumstances was liberal, and James’s ecclesiastical legislation, including the sanction of the “rags of Rome” worn by the bishops, was ratified.  Remonstrances from the ministers of the old Kirk party were disregarded; and—­the thin end of the wedge—­the English Liturgy was introduced in the Royal Chapel of Holyrood and in that of St Salvator’s College, St Andrews, where it has been read once, on a funeral occasion, in recent years.