Part 9

Prior to the Reformation, a loose practice in the relationship of the sexes, called _hand-fasting_, existed in Scotland. At the statutory fairs, young men and women made mutual selection as partners for a year; at the end of the year, they were free to marry, to live singly, or to enter into other partnerships! It was the duty of the itinerant friars to persuade the handfasts to marry, and by the end of the sixteenth century the Reformers had effectually rooted out the custom. At the Dundee Burgh Court on May 21st 1560, “Compearit John Ray, and oblist him to marry his wife on Sunday next. At the same time James Rollock has become surety that Robert Man sall complete the band of matrimony with Jonet Myln, or else incur the danger conteinit in the acts.”

Ceasing to be considered a sacrament, marriage in Scotland came to be looked upon as little other than a civil contract, hardly requiring clerical agency, or religious formalities. A man and woman going before a bailie or sheriff, and declaring themselves husband and wife, constituted a legal although an irregular marriage. And the celebrant—if so he could be called, who was really only a witness to the parties having _married themselves_—need not even be a civil official. Gretna Green had no special privilege in lay-marrying over any other portion of Scotland.

It appears from Burgh records that in the sixteenth century, a women holding property under a trusteeship, was not at any age free in her choice of a husband. Marrying without the consent of her procurators entailed the forfeiture of her property. A mother would retain her daughter’s tocher unless she married with the mother’s approval.

And apprentices were not allowed to marry without the official permission of their craft. We find from the Dundee Burgh records, that in 1534, David Ogilvy, an apprentice baker, did so marry, and he was expelled from his craft, and “tynt his freedom.” But David took the decree fighting! He appealed to the King, James the Fifth, for reinstatement, and the King gave an order, confirmed by the Lords of Council, charging the Provost and Bailies of Dundee to re-admit him to his freedom, and “cause the baxters receive him to their fellowship, notwithstanding that he be marryit within his prenticeship,” and decerning that he will suffer sufficient punishment if his term of apprenticeship be prolonged for the space of one month.

A bride was expected—even in such circumstances of life as made her a “tocherless lass”—to have ready against her marriage many articles of domestic economy. In his song “Woo’d and Married and a’,”—written a century and a half ago—Alexander Ross gives a graphic description of a family conference over the ways and means of an “ill-provided” bride:—

“The bride cam’ out o’ the byre, And O as she dichted her cheeks! Sirs, I’m to be married the night, An’ have neither blankets nor sheets; Have neither blankets nor sheets, Nor scarce a coverlet too; The bride that has a’ thing to borrow, Has e’en richt mickle ado.

Woo’d and married and a’, Kissed and carried awa’! And was nae she very well off That was woo’d and married and a’?

Out spake the bride’s father As he cam’ in frae the pleugh; O haud your tongue, my dochter, And ye’se get gear eneugh; The stirk that stands i’ th’ tether, And our braw bawsint yade, Will carry ye hame your corn— What would ye be at, ye jade?

Out spake the bride’s mither, What deil needs a’ this pride? I had nae a plack in my pouch That night I was a bride;

My gown was linsey woolsey, And ne’er a sark ava; And ye hae ribbons and buskins Mae than ane or twa.

Out spake the bride’s brither, As he cam’ in wi’ the kye; Poor Willie wad ne’er hae ta’en ye Had he kent ye as weel as I; For ye’r baith proud and saucy, And no for a poor man’s wife; Gin I canna get a better I’se ne’er tak ane i’ my life.

Out spake the bride’s sister, As she came in frae the byre; O gin I were but married, It’s a’ that I desire; But we poor fouk maun live single, And do the best we can: I dinna care what I should want; If I could get a man.

Woo’d and married and a’,” etc.

Scotland under Charles the First.

James died in March, 1625, and a few days thereafter his son Charles was proclaimed at the Edinburgh Cross, King of Scotland; but it was eight years later before he visited the land of his fathers, and was crowned as its King in Holyrood. The then finest poet in Scotland was William Drummond of Hawthornden, and to him was confided the address of welcome to Charles. The address was not in verse, but only in prose—run mad! “If nature,” it began, “could suffer rocks to move and abandon their natural places, this town—founded on the strength of rocks—had, with her castle, temples, and houses, moved towards you, and besought you to acknowledge her yours; her indwellers, your most humble and affectionate subjects; and to believe how many souls are within her circuits, so many lives are devoted to your sacred person and crown;” and so on. When the subjects’ flattery was so obsequious, we can hardly wonder at the amount of royal arrogance and assumption.

The people were a good deal disturbed about the ceremonial of Charles’s coronation; an altar was introduced, and some of the rites seemed to savour of popery. He had Laud and some other English bishops in his retinue, and the King soon gave evidence of his intention to carry out the later attempts of his father, to introduce prelacy, with its subordination to the crown, into Scotland. Now the old bishoprics of the Catholic Church had never been formally abolished, but the titles had been held by laymen of mean rank,—whilst the bulk of the emoluments had gone to certain of the nobles. The nominal bishops were nicknamed _Tulchans_; a tulchan being a calf-skin stuffed with straw, which was set up alongside of the mother-cow, to induce her to yield her milk more freely. The bishop had the title, but my lord had the milk. There was thus a framework of episcopacy in Scotland, and James had in the last year of his reign, ordered its re-establishment in full authority; archbishops and bishops to have under himself the headship of the Scottish Church.

Charles now confirmed the division of Scotland into dioceses, that of Edinburgh to include all the country south of the Forth; St. Giles to be the Cathedral church,—a wall which had been built to partition off the church into two separate places of worship, to be removed. Four years later, in 1637, the Kings projects had so far advanced, that a liturgy, moulded on that of the English church—but where it differed, with a stronger flavour of Rome—was ordered to be used in St. Giles’s. On the first Sunday of the innovation, the church was crowded; two archbishops, several bishops, lords of the privy council, the judges and city magistrates, being in the congregation. When the dean, in his surplice, began the service, an old woman—Jenny Geddes,—started up and exclaimed,— “You false loon, will you rout your black mass in my lugg?” and threw her stool at the dean’s head. This was a signal for a general uproar, in the midst of which the dean had his surplice torn off by excited women. Stones and other missiles were thrown at the bishops: the magistrates called in the Town Guard to drive the malcontents out of the church; but these by breaking the windows, battering at the doors, and wild clamour, drowned the dean’s voice, as he again ventured on his ungracious task. In the Greyfriars’ church the new liturgy was stopped by popular clamour.

With the obstinancy of his race, Charles persisted in his designs. He issued proclamations denouncing as rebellion all obstruction to his remodelled church, and transferred the seat of government and the courts of law to Linlithgow. These proclamations were replied to by strong protests from nearly every Corporation in the Kingdom, and the _Solemn League and Covenant_, which had in the previous reign been instituted against popery, was enthusiastically renewed, and subscribed by men and women in all grades of society.

Charles sent down the Marquis of Hamilton as his High Commissioner, empowered to treat with the Covenanters. Hamilton took with him to Edinburgh a retinue of nobility and gentry, who were supposed to be friendly to the royal cause. He was met by a great concourse of people, amongst whom were six thousand ministers in their black Geneva gowns. He opened his commission, but the presbyterian leaders would hear of no terms being made, as they said, with Antichrist. So Hamilton went back to London, and reported his non-success to his master. Again he came to Edinburgh, this time with some concessions, the king offering to subscribe to the original form of the Covenant, which contained no mention of prelacy.

Under the Kings sanction, a General Assembly met in Glasgow, in November 1638. The royal commissioner protested against certain proceedings, and he formally dissolved and retired from the Assembly: but under its moderator it continued its sittings, condemning the king’s liturgy and the imposition of an episcopacy. The reply of Charles was the pouring of two armies into Scotland, one being under his own command. The Covenanters, with whose cause Parliament had identified itself, were not slack in taking up the challenge. They appointed General Leslie, a veteran from the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, to the command of a hastily raised army. He seized on all the fortified places; and he fortified Leith, to defend Edinburgh from the king’s fleet. In view of these warlike preparations, Charles temporized, and a vague kind of treaty was negotiated. Another General Assembly met next year in Edinburgh; and here the Royal Commissioner gave formal sanction to the decisions of the Glasgow Assembly. This sanction was received with an outburst of enthusiastic gratitude; and loyalty—never far from a Scotchman’s heart— was again in the ascendant. But it was a delusion and a snare. The king repudiated the concessions of his own commissioner, prorogued the Parliament which met to sanction the proceedings of the assembly, and prepared for a fresh invasion of Scotland. The Scots anticipated his purpose by sending their army into England—where many were friendly to their cause. There was a battle at Newburn, on the Tyne, in which the royal troops were defeated. The Scots occupied Newcastle—and negotiations were again opened for peace.

And Charles had by this time embroiled himself with his English subjects. He had tried to raise money by other means than through Parliament. A Parliament sitting in 1628, had refused him supplies for carrying on a war with Spain; it had also challenged his assumed right to imprison his subjects on his own warrant; and they presented to him what was called a _Petition of Right_, claiming exemption from arbitrary taxation and imprisonment. Charles found it expedient for the moment to sanction this Bill; but soon thereafter he dissolved Parliament, and obstinately refused to call another. For eleven years, under the influence and with the aid of Archbishop Laud, and Wentworth, Earl of Stratford, he played at the dangerous game of _Thorough_. He governed as an irresponsible autocrat, arbitrarily levying taxes, and imprisoning obnoxious opponents, in defiance of the Petition of Right. The _Puritans_, or church reformers, suffered severely. Many were dragged before a court, unknown to the constitution or common law, called the Star Chamber, which professed to take cognisance of offences against religion and the royal prerogative. Men of piety, of learning and worth, were imprisoned, were scourged through the streets, had their noses slit, or their ears cropped, for expressing differences of opinion on even minor matters in the policy of the church or the state.

Who were the Puritans? For answer we must go back to the English reign of James. There had been considerable intercourse between the Reformers of the two kingdoms, and the more democratic and anti-Romish constitution of the Scottish Church, had had many sympathisers in England. From these a party was formed, which came to be called Puritans; they were not dissenters,—none such being then recognised in the country; but were chiefly English clergymen. A petition, signed by nearly a thousand clergymen, was presented to the King, praying for a revision of the Book of Common Prayer,—the disuse of the surplice in reading, of the sign of the cross in baptism, and of bowing at the name of Jesus; also for a reform in the distribution of patronage, and the abolition of pluralities. James, in full court, and with a number of church dignitaries present, received the four professors of divinity in the universities, who represented the petitioners. The King prided himself on his polemical powers; he argued dogmatically, browbeat the professors—asserting his superior knowledge of divinity, and declared that uniformity should be enforced under severe pains and penalties. And the lay and ecclesiastical dignitaries present vied with each other in fulsome adulation. One bishop went on his knees, and thanked God for having given them a king with such divine inspiration as the world had not witnessed since Christ! The discomfited Puritans withdrew amidst the jeers and laughter of the servile court.

But through the later years of James’s reign, and throughout the whole of his son’s reign, puritanism grew, and threatened to either modify or to disintegrate the English Church. A calvinistic divine, George Abbot, was even appointed Archbishop of Canterbury;[3] and many holding church livings were virtually nonconformists. A system of doctrines, which denied the divine right of kings to govern as above the law, was hateful to Charles Stuart. And the Queen, Henrietta Maria of France, was a rigid Catholic; she detested the Puritans, and had inherited from her father high notions of absolute rule; and all through Charles’s life she goaded him on in the dangerous path which issued in his destruction. And Laud, almost a Catholic in opinion, and as intolerant as any Spanish inquisitor, directed the affairs of the Church; whilst Strafford was scheming for royal despotism, and to undermine the privileges of Parliament. Clergymen preaching absolute obedience were sure of preferment; the more zealous advocates of _Thorough_ were made bishops.

Footnote 3:

Refusing to licence the publication of some especially slavish sermons, on the royal prerogatives, Abbot was suspended from office, and confined to his country-house.

An old levy on the maritime towns and counties, to equip vessels for the protection of the coasts in time of war, was, in time of peace, and on the Kings sole authority, extended under the name of ship-money to inland counties, and applied—not to the equipment of a fleet, but to the support of a standing army; and, before this army, all constitutional privileges were to be swept away. In 1637, a Buckinghamshire gentleman, John Hampden, refused to pay the guinea-and-a-half levied on his estate; but the Court of Exchequer upheld the tax.

And, hunted and persecuted, dragged before Laud’s High Commission on the most paltry charges, and by it subjected to fines, to personal injuries and imprisonment, many Puritans emigrated; some went to Holland, but the greater number to America: and these became a considerable factor in shaping the social, political, and religious history of the Greater Britain beyond the Atlantic. Three men who came to be of special note in our home history—John Hampden, John Pym, and Oliver Cromwell, were on board, bound for New England, when a government order came to stop the sailing of the vessel.

When the Scots were threatening Northumberland, the King was at his wit’s end to raise money to pay his troops, and, as a last resource, he summoned a parliament. The objects were declared in the opening speech to be, to put down the Scots by the sword, and to raise money to pay the costs which had already been incurred in the war. To rouse their patriotism, the King read an intercepted letter from the Lords of the Covenant to the French King, asking for assistance, in the name of the old alliance between the two countries. But the appeal fell flat, the English Commons looked upon the Scottish insurgents more as allies than as enemies, and with kindred grievances to be redressed. So they would grant the King no money until they had settled other matters with him; and after eighteen days spent in wrangling, he called them to the bar of the House of Lords, and haughtily dismissed them.

Meanwhile, the Scots holding Newcastle, commanded the coal supply of London; and they took possession of Durham, Darlington, and Northallerton. Every town in which the Blue Bonnets appeared, received them kindly, and they kept strict discipline, occupying a good deal of their time in psalm singing and hearing sermons. They professed loyalty to the king, declaring that they had come only as humble petitioners to be allowed to retain their Presbyterian Kirk. Against such meek and harmless invaders, Charles could not raise an effective war-cry; he found that his troops were lukewarm in his cause; he was strongly urged to come to terms with them, and he appointed commissioners to arrange a treaty. The Scots were meantime, from a loan raised by the citizens of London, to have £40,000 a month for their maintenance.

And for the second time in this year (1640) Charles was obliged to call a Parliament. It met in November, and—existing for nineteen years—is known in history as the Long Parliament. Its first session was marked by the imprisonment of Laud, and the impeachment of Strafford for treason against the liberties of the people. Strafford defended himself with great ability, and Pym, who conducted the impeachment, fearing his prey would escape him, got the Commons to pass a Bill of Attainder—a measure for the destruction of those for whose real or imputed offences the law had provided no penalties. Under clamour and tumult the Bill was also passed by the peers, and waited only confirmation by the king. Charles hesitated—what conscience he had was pricked at the thought of sacrificing one whose chief fault had been over-zealous loyalty to himself, and helping him in his designs. But a letter from Strafford, asking the king to leave him to his fate, was enough for Charles; he signed the warrant, and Strafford was, in May 1641, beheaded on Tower Hill. Laud was for four years detained in prison, and was then executed.

THE CIVIL WAR.

In the early part of 1642, matters between the king and Parliament had become so strained, that both sides began to make preparations for war. On January 4th, Charles had in person obtruded into the House of Commons, and made an abortive attempt to arrest six members, who were especially obnoxious to him. This overt act of the kings roused the cry of “privilege,” and in Parliamentary circles excited general alarm and resentment. Upon a demand made by Parliament for the command of the army, the king broke off all amicable intercourse, and leaving the capital, raised his standard at Nottingham, having under him an army of ten thousand men.

The Parliament raised a larger, but a less disciplined and less ably officered, army. On October 23rd, at Edgehill, in Warwickshire, for the first time since the overthrow, by Henry of Lancaster, of Richard the Third at Bosworth, in 1485, a battle was fought between Englishmen. The advantage was with the King; and so, generally, was the campaign of the following year, 1643. He defeated a Parliamentary army at Newbury in Berkshire, and his dashing nephew, Prince Rupert, took Bristol by assault; but he failed to take Gloucester, and lost a second battle at Newbury. Meantime, Cromwell was beginning to take a foremost place as a military disciplinarian and strategist—holding the rank of general of cavalry; his will and purpose came to dominate the entire Parliamentary army.

Charles came to Scotland to try to win over the Covenanters to help him against his Parliament. He would almost go the length of renouncing episcopacy, and he ratified the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly. But the Scots were on good terms with the English Parliament, and were even sanguine of extending the presbyterian covenant into England, where an anti-prelatical spirit was, under the now assertive puritanism, rapidly rising.

On the 1st of July, 1643, an assembly of divines from both countries, convoked by Parliament, met in Westminster Abbey. It was composed of men of learning, of zealous piety and strong purpose; but they were also men of their own time, sharing in its prejudices, its intolerance, and its admixture of dogmatic theology with the politics and the partizanship of the day. The grand truths, that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and that it is as vain to try to fix and arrest opinions as it is to fix the direction of the winds, or to arrest the tides, had not then come to be rooted in the minds of men. For four years the Assembly sat, arguing and discussing all the points in orthodox theology, and the various forms of church government. The fruits of the “great consult,” are in the form of documents which are still the recognised standards of presbyterian faith and worship throughout the world. In August, 1647, the Scottish commissioners reported the results to the Edinburgh General Assembly, and these results were received as the basis of uniformity in faith, to be established throughout the three kingdoms.

In England, the principle of Presbyterian church government was endorsed by Parliament, and a General Assembly and provincial synods were nominally appointed. But, on the one hand, the Anglican Church had many influential supporters; it had now been established for over a century, and had struck its roots deeply in the land; its supporters were by their opponents called _Erastians_, from a German doctor Erastus, who had advocated the subjection of the church to the state. On the other hand were the Independents, who stood out against enforced uniformity, and against any established creed or ritual. To allow of unrestrained latitudinarianism in religious opinions, seemed to the rigid presbyterians disloyalty to the faith,—servility to antichrist. Loudly and rancorously did this controversy rage; the more that the principle of uniformity was pressed, the more did independency branch out into protests against this principle, in new sects—each one more self- assertive than its neighbours. The political destinies of England were now under the arbitrament of the sword, and religious dominancy would be with supremacy in arms.