I.—The ecclesiastical policy of James VI., which did not include the abolition of the lower church courts of the presbyterian system, was successful. He had grafted bishops on to a Presbyterian Church, and, if no other con siderations had intervened, his compromise might well have en dured. He once disturbed it himself when, in 1618, he got a general assembly at Perth to sanction some innovations in ritual known as the Five Articles of Perth. This was the last occasion upon which he summoned an assembly; he intended that its place should be taken by the bishops. Parliament in 1621 ratified the Perth articles, though after an unusual display of opposition, and while the articles were willingly observed in the north-east, they led elsewhere to irreverent wranglings in church and to the deprivation of ministers and imprisonment of both ministers and laymen. In spite of some explosions of temper there are indi cations that James realized the danger, and, in his last years, re fusals to conform to the Five Articles were frequently ignored. This cautious policy was at first maintained by Charles I. (1625– 49), but when the new king visited Scotland for his coronation in 1633, he got parliament to pass an act ordering the clergy to wear white surplices in place of the Genevan black gown. In 1635 a Book of Canons for the Church of Scotland was issued by royal authority. The canons were intended to destroy the Jacobean compromise by making new provision for the discharge of the duties hitherto assigned to the lower presbyterian courts, and by making the government and ritual of the Church uniform with those of the Church of England. A prayer-book designed to supersede an optional service book which had been drawn up by John Knox was published in 1637, and the public use of ex tempore prayer was forbidden to ministers under pain of de privation.
The challenge to Scottish custom
thus made was ignorantly believed to be part of a scheme for the introduction of popery, and a riot against the new prayer-book in St. Giles's cathedral, Edinburgh, on July 23, 1637, proved to be the beginning of a revolution. The ecclesiastical quarrel came at a time when Charles had roused the opposition of the Scottish nobility by the provision which he made for the sustentation of the clergy and by the confidence which he reposed in the bishops, and when unusually heavy taxation had provided the middle classes with a grievance specially felt in Edinburgh, the burgesses of which had been forced to contribute to the erection of a new parliament house and to the expenses incurred in the foundation of the Bishopric of Edinburgh in 1633. It is possible that an immediate withdrawal of the prayer-book might have saved the situation, but Charles, in spite of warnings from the Privy Coun cil, refused to give way, and his opponents formed an organization known as the Tables, which almost superseded the timorous Privy Council as the executive of the kingdom. In reply to a royal threat made in Feb. 1638, there was sent for signature throughout the country the National Covenant of 1638. It was the document to which James VI. had invited signatures in 1581, but it included an appended protest against recent innovations. Charles was at last alarmed and offered to withdraw the service book and to permit a free assembly and a free parliament to meet, but it was too late. The assembly was duly summoned, and it met at Glasgow in Dec. 1638. It proved to be a meeting of extreme Presbyterians—only Covenanters were admitted to its membership—and it defied the Royal Commissioner, pronounced sentence of deposition upon the bishops, and repealed all the legislation of former assemblies by which James VI. and Charles I. had established episcopacy.