An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 218 pages of information about An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707).

An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 218 pages of information about An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707).
of the Kirk than he would be".[83] Andrew Melville had told him that “there is twa kings and twa kingdomes in Scotland.  Thair is Chryst Jesus the King and his Kingdom the Kirk, whase subject King James the Saxt is:  and of whase Kingdom nocht a King, nor a lord, nor a heid, bot a member."[84] James had done his utmost to assert his authority over the Church.  He had tried to establish Episcopacy in Scotland to replace the Presbyterian system, and had succeeded only to a very limited extent.  “Presbytery”, he said, “agreeth as well with a king as God with the Devil.”  So he went to England, not only prepared to welcome the episcopal form of church-government and to graciously receive the episcopal adulation so freely showered upon him, but also determined to suppress, at all hazards, “the proud Puritanes, who, claining to their Paritie, and crying, ‘We are all but vile wormes’, yet will judge and give Law to their king, but will be judged nor controlled by none".[85] “God’s sillie vassal” was Melville’s summing-up of the royal character in James’s own presence.  “God hath given us a Solomon”, exulted the Bishop of Winchester, and he recorded the fact in print, that all the world might know.  James was wrong in mistaking the English Puritans for the Scottish Presbyterians.  Alike in number, in influence, and in aim, his new subjects differed from his old enemies.  English Puritanism had already proved unsuited to the genius of the nation, and it had given up all hope of the abolition of Episcopacy.  The Millenary Petition asked only some changes in the ritual of the Church and certain moderate reforms.  Had James received their requests in a more reasonable spirit, he might have succeeded in reconciling, at all events, the more moderate section of them to the Church, and at the very first it seemed as if he were likely to win for himself the blessing of the peace-maker, which he was so eager to obtain.  But just at this crisis he found the first symptoms of Parliamentary opposition, and here again his training in Scotland interfered.  The Church and the Church alone had opposed him in Scotland; he had never discovered that a Parliament could be other than subservient.[86] It was, therefore, natural for him to connect the Parliamentary discontent with Puritan dissatisfaction.  Scottish Puritans had employed the General Assembly as their main weapon of offence; their English fellows evidently desired to use the House of Commons as an engine for similar purposes.  Therefore said King James, “I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse”.  So he “did worse”, and prepared the way for the Puritan revolution.  If the English succession enabled the king to suppress the Scottish Assembly, the Assembly had its revenge, for the fear of it brought a snare, and James may justly be considered one of the founders of English dissent.

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An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.