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The general assembly was afterwards induced[v] to acknowledge the king’s authority in summoning ecclesiastical courts, and to submit to the jurisdiction and visitation of the bishops Even their favorite sentence of excommunication was declared invalid, unless confirmed by the ordinary. The king recommended to the inferior courts the members whom they should elect to this assembly; and every thing was conducted in it with little appearance of choice and liberty.[v*]
* Spotswood. ** Spotswood. *** July, 1604. **** Spotswood. V 6th June, 1610. v* Spotswood.
By his own prerogative, likewise, which he seems to have stretched on this occasion, the king erected a court of high commission,[*] in imitation of that which was established in England. The bishops and a few of the clergy, who had been summoned, willingly acknowledged this court; and it proceeded immediately upon business, as if its authority had been grounded on the full consent of the whole legislature.
But James reserved the final blow for the time when he should himself pay a visit to Scotland. He proposed to the parliament, which was then assembled, that they should enact, that “whatever his majesty should determine in the external government of the church, with the consent of the archbishops, bishops, and a competent number of the ministry, should have the force of law.”[**] What number should be deemed competent was not determined; and their nomination was left entirely to the king: so that his ecclesiastical authority, had this bill passed, would have been established in its full extent. Some of the clergy protested. They apprehended, they said, that the purity of their church would, by means of this new authority, be polluted with all the rites and liturgy of the church of England. James, dreading clamor and opposition dropped the bill, which had already passed the lords of articles; and asserted, that the inherent prerogative of the crown contained more power than was recognized by it. Some time after, he called, at St. Andrew’s, a meeting of the bishops and thirty-six of the most eminent clergy. He there declared his resolution of exerting his prerogative, and of establishing, by his own authority, the few ceremonies which he had recommended to them. They entreated him rather to summon a general assembly, and to gain their assent. An assembly was accordingly summoned to meet on the twenty-fifth of November ensuing.
* 15th Feb. 1610. ** Spotswood. Franklyn, p. 29.
Yet this assembly, which met after the king’s departure from Scotland, eluded all his applications; and it was not till the subsequent year, that he was able to procure a vote for receiving his ceremonies. And through every step in this affair, in the parliament as well as in all the general assemblies, the nation betrayed the utmost reluctance to all these innovations, and nothing but James’s importunity and authority had extorted a seeming consent, which was belied by the inward sentiments of all ranks of people. Even the few over whom religious prejudices were not prevalent, thought national honor sacrificed by a servile imitation of the modes worship practised in England. And every prudent man agreed in condemning the measures of the king, who, by an ill-timed zeal for insignificant ceremonies, had betrayed, though in an opposite manner, equal narrowness of mind with the persons whom he treated with such contempt. It was judged that, had not these dangerous humors been irritated by opposition; had they been allowed peaceably to evaporate; they would at last have subsided within the limits of law and civil authority; and that, as all fanatical religions naturally circumscribe to very narrow bounds the numbers and riches of the ecclesiastics, no sooner is their first fire spent, than they lose their credit over the people, and leave them under the natural and beneficent influence of their civil and moral obligations.
At the same time that James shocked, in so violent a manner, the religious principles of his Scottish subjects, he acted in opposition to those of his English. He had observed, in his progress through England, that a Judaical observance of the Sunday, chiefly by means of the Puritans, was every day gaining ground throughout the kingdom; and that the people, under color of religion, were, contrary to former practice debarred such sports, and recreations as contributed both to their health and their amusement.[*] Festivals, which, in other nations and ages, are partly dedicated to public worship, partly to mirth and society, were here totally appropriated to the offices of religion, and served to nourish those sullen and gloomy contemplations to which the people were, of themselves, so unfortunately subject. The king imagined, that it would be easy to infuse cheerfulness into this dark spirit of devotion. He issued a proclamation to allow and encourage, after divine service, all kinds of lawful games and exercises; and, by his authority, he endeavored to give sanction to a practice which his subjects regarded as the utmost instance of profaneness and impiety.[**]
* Kennet, p. 709. ** Franklyn, p. 31.
To show how rigid the English, chiefly the Puritans, were become in this particular, a bill was introduced into the house of commons, in the eighteenth of the king, for the more strict observance of the Sunday, which they affected to the Sabbath. One Shepherd opposed this bill, objected to the appellation of Sabbath as Puritanical, defended dancing by the example of David, and seems even to have justified sports on that day. For this profaneness he was expelled the house, by the suggestion of Mr. Pym the house of lords opposed so far this Puritanical spirit of the commons that they proposed that the appellation of Sabbath should be changed into that of the Lord’s day.[*]
* Journ. 15th, 16th, Feb. 1620. 28th May, 1621. In Shepherd’s sentence, his offence is said by the house to be great, exorbitant, unparalleled.
1618.
At the time when Sir Waller Raleigh was first confined in the Tower, his violent and haughty temper had rendered him the most unpopular man in England; and his condemnation was chiefly owing to that public odium under which he labored. During the thirteen years’ imprisonment which he suffered, the sentiments of the nation were much changed with regard to him. Men had leisure to reflect on the hardship, not to say injustice, of his sentence; they pitied his active and enterprising spirit, which languished in the rigors of confinement; they were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enterprises, had surpassed, in the pursuits of literature, even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age, and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work as his History of the World. To increase these favorable dispositions, on which he built the hopes of recovering his liberty, he spread the report of a golden mine which he had discovered in Guiana, and which was sufficient, according to his representation, not only to enrich all the adventurers, but to afford immense treasures to the nation. The king gave little credit to these mighty promises; both because he believed that no such mine as the one described was any where in nature, and because he considered Raleigh as a man of desperate fortunes, whose business it was, by any means, to procure his freedom, and to reinstate himself in credit and authority. Thinking, however, that he had already undergone sufficient punishment, he released him from the Tower; and when his vaunts of the golden mine had induced multitudes to engage with him, the king gave them permission to try the adventure, and, at their desire, he conferred on Raleigh authority over his fellow-adventurers. Though strongly solicited, he still refused to grant him a pardon, which he deemed a natural consequence, when he was intrusted with power and command. But James declared himself still diffident of Raleigh’s intentions; and he meant, he said, to reserve the former sentence, as a check upon his future behavior.
