Part 7

The death of the king made at first but little difference to the conduct of affairs. Bishop Kennedy continued to rule till his death, in 1465. No sooner did the statesman and patriot disappear from the scene than a coalition headed by Lord Boyd seized the young monarch, and carried him in triumph from Linlithgow to Edinburgh. A parliament was at once summoned to sanction their proceedings. The king was made to declare that he had gone willingly, and the Estates created Boyd James's governor, and somewhat illogically granted him a full pardon. Under the sway of the Boyds, Parliament met every year; but it was merely a tool in the hands of Lord Boyd, who combined in his own person the offices of governor of the royal family, justiciar, and lord chamberlain. In 1469 the Boyds fell. A strong rival party had formed an opposition of which we find traces all through the brief term of power enjoyed by Boyd. It is significant that this opposition is found everywhere except in Parliament, which unanimously agreed to measures against the malcontents. The parliamentary tactics of the Boyds were used against themselves. A meeting of the Estates was at once called by the king, now under the influence of Lord Hamilton, and the whole of the late ruling faction were condemned to the penalties of treason, on the ground of the king's seizure, for which the same body had, three years before, solemnly pardoned them. Their vast possessions were confiscated. The Hamiltons, who had gained the confidence of the young queen, continued to rule. So far the political history of the reign is clear, and the position of Parliament falls at once into line with it. But we dare not attempt to unravel the tale of intrigue which convulsed the country during the next twenty years. The reign of James III is an unsolved problem. But the constitutional feeling may be illustrated by a representative incident. The Parliament of 1482 was completely under the control of the Duke of Albany. The Estates passed acts which gave to him control of the property of the Crown, and power over the life and liberty of the lieges. One year later it rescinded all these acts and proscribed the duke. They may be right who have found great constitutional activity in the mysterious records of the reign. It may be that amid all the disorder and confusion the burgesses and some neutral prelates were able to exercise some influence. It is certain that there was as usual no lack of attention to judicial and police requirements. But until some intelligible and consistent account of the reign has been offered, the sceptic may be pardoned for refusing to believe that out of these unruly struggles of selfish and grasping lords came calm constitutional progress.[103]

The rebellion in which James III lost his life was, as usual, discussed in Parliament: that is to say, the first Parliament of the new reign declared that it was not a rebellion at all, and that, whatever it was, the new monarch and his advisers were not responsible for it. At first, James IV was in the hands of the nobles who had persuaded him to enter the field against his father. His second Parliament is memorable for a claim raised by the Lords of the Articles "that Compts and Rekyning be takin of all the king's officiaris, his thesaurars and comptrollers, auld and new of our soverane lord's tyme that now is and that auditors be chosen and named by the avise and autorite of this Parliament." This is not the tone in which we have been accustomed to hear the Parliament speak. It is coincident with the appointment in Parliament of "our Sovereign Lord's Secret Council," and with a resolution that the king has "humilit his highness," so far as to promise to act by its advice. The council was composed solely of prelates and great lords representing mainly the party in power, although including the patriotic bishop of Aberdeen,[104] who had been a faithful servant of James III. We have here a distinct constitutional advance. The king owed his power, not to a small clique such as had been frequently formed in the late reign, but to a large confederation of the greater nobles, who took the opportunity of legally defining the position of the sovereign. But within a few years we find James ruling alone. He was an able man and he ruled well. The Parliament met frequently and did what the king wished. We find in its records references to embassies to Spain, France, and England, and to the king's marriage. But we know, from the foreign correspondence of England and Spain, that the policy of Scotland depended upon the king, and on him alone. Parliament regulated in certain cases the incidence of taxation: at all events it passed acts for this purpose. Contemporaries did not imagine that the Estates alone had powers of taxation. John Major,[105] writing a few years after the strong hand of James IV had been removed, made this remark:

As to the levying of taxes, I will limit my opinion to this expression: that in no wise should the power be granted to kings save in cases of clear necessity. Further it belongs not to the king nor to his privy council to declare the emergence of any sudden necessity but only to the three estates.... I am aware that Aristotle in his second book of the _Politics_ says wisely that laws are not to be changed; yet, in the judgment of the wise, they may be modified in accordance with the demands of equity.

Major remarks on the difficulty of collecting taxes in Scotland and on the folly of the kings in alienating confiscated estates, "since there is no regular taxation of the people." His remedy is, as we have seen, the regulation of taxation by Parliament. He was a scholar and a traveller, and it matters not how he came to think as he did; but it is clear that he advocated a change.

Nor did James regard the Estates as possessing "powers of peace and war." Pedro de Ayala[106] tells us of a conversation which he held with the king which gives us the royal views: "He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just and unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes, and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger." Boece, in his biography of Elphinstone,[107] tells us of councils which preceded Flodden: but they are meetings of the king's private advisers. It is instructive to note that one parliament was held with reference to the English war. About a fortnight before the battle, what is termed "Parliament" was held at Twiselhaugh. It was composed of "all his lords being there for the time in his host," and it secured that the heirs of all who were slain should be exempted by the king from certain feudal dues. The exemption can only have been the king's own act. It is an additional testimony to the purpose for which the Scots Parliament normally existed--to ratify what somebody else had done. If there are vestiges of constitutional claims at the opening of the reign, there are none at the end of it. But though the Parliament had not been free, neither had it been idle. It was a time of unusual prosperity and of great expansion of trade. The pages of the statute-books are full of useful acts, especially for the encouragement of shipping, in which the king was greatly interested.

While the "lilt of dule and woe" which followed the disaster at Flodden was still filling the land, the country was again plunged into the misery of feudal quarrels. The ambition of the lords, and the caprices of the queen-mother--a true sister of Henry VIII--fill up the minority of the king. Parliament met only to ratify appointments which it had no power to question, and to deal with official business. It is possible that the Estates chose the Duke of Albany as regent. But it is almost certain that the impulse must have come from some of the leading nobles or prelates; and when we recollect that the "Estates" meant the Lords of the Articles, it is scarcely necessary to discuss the matter as presenting even the remotest possibility of a parliamentary choice. James V was nominally declared of full age in 1524. But he was then only thirteen years of age, and the "erection of the king" was merely a pretext for the transference of the power from Albany to Queen Margaret, the Parliament of course approving, when it was told to do so. Until the king became personally responsible for the government, there was little done in Parliament. If we except a slight activity in 1526 (mainly relating to such incidental matters as the capture of ships and the furnishing of the royal residences), there is scarcely anything to record till we reach the year 1535. Parliament met; but its business was purely of an official nature. All that we know of the Parliament of May, 1527, for example, is that it issued two continuations of summons, one "reduction" of a process of forfeiture, eleven ratifications of charters, and received four protestations. A single official, appointed for the purpose, could have done all the work.

James V is known in history as the "Commons' King." We are therefore prepared to find during the five years of his personal government a considerable amount of social legislation of the ordinary type, dealing often with trivial details, which show that the burgesses were in co-operation with the king. But of parliamentary interference there is not a trace. The hostilities with the "auld enemy," a mischance in which broke the king's heart, seem not to have been referred to the Estates in any way. The reign of James V was contemporaneous with the English Reformation, and before the king died the new doctrines had gained considerable strength in Scotland. But James himself, after his alliance with the House of Guise, had become more rigidly orthodox, and his last Parliament passed acts enjoining obedience to the Pope, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and prohibiting any convention to discuss Scripture. The royal influence was supreme.

The stories of the minorities of James II, James III, and James V read almost like repetitions of each other. The names and dates vary; the essential facts are the same. The minority of Queen Mary is widely different. The difficulties no longer arise from petty squabbles and contemptible personal intrigues. There is a deeper significance in every movement. It is a conflict, not of men, but of principles. On the one hand was the ancient French alliance, associated with the ancient faith. On the other hand stood the possibility of new relations with England and the acceptance of the Reformed doctrines. At first the revolutionary party held the power. The Scottish nobles had observed the English king's dealings with the lands of the Church. In Scotland there was no masterful Tudor to enrich himself. We find accordingly the acceptance of the marriage proposals of Henry VIII, and, significantly enough, among the domestic legislation of the time is an act making it lawful "to haif the haly write, baith the new testament and the auld in the vulgar toung in Englis or Scottis of ane gude and trew translation."[108] The "English wooing," which passed into a proverb in Scotland, did not merely put an end to the suggestion of a marriage between Queen Mary and Edward VI; it altered the situation in Scotland, and deprived the reforming section of their hopes of success, by forcing the nation into a French alliance. In 1545, Parliament, always obedient, inveighed against "heretiks and thair dampnable opinionis incontrar the fayth and lawis of halykirk." But it was not till the regency was transferred from the Earl of Arran (now Duke of Chatelhérault) to the queen-dowager (in 1554) that the success of the conservative section in the realm was complete. "Thus," wrote Knox, in reference to the event, "did light and darkness stryve within the realm of Scotland; the darkness ever befoir the world suppressing the light." The reservation, "befoir the world," is significant. Knox knew that every year since the death of James V had added converts, ever increasing in number, to the new faith. But all the time Parliament became more and more rigidly orthodox.

The struggle between the two parties found an issue in open warfare. The Protestants formed themselves into "the Congregation of the Lord." But they did not look upon Parliament[109] as the proper field for their contest with "the Synagogue of Satan." The insurgents and their English allies gained no success on the field; but the death of Mary of Guise and the absence of her daughter in France procured for them the results of victory. Scotland was definitely in the hands of the Protestant nobles.

Parliament met in 1560, and abolished the Roman Catholic faith within the realm. But, as we know from Knox's _History_, Parliament merely ratified what was otherwise settled. Behind it were the nobles and the Protestant clergy. The ministers petitioned the Estates to establish the Protestant faith. They were told[110] "to draw in playne and severall heidis, the summe of that Doctrine, quhilk they wald menteyne, and wald desyre that present Parliament to establische, as hailsome, trew, and onlie necessarie to be beleivit and resaivit." Within four days Knox and his colleagues presented the very comprehensive Confession of Faith which continued for nearly a century to be one of the Standards of the Church. It

was redd, everie article by itself ... and the vottis of everie man war requyred accordinglie. Of the Temporall Estate onlie voted in the contrair, the Earl of Atholl, the Lordis Somervaill and Borthwik; and yit for thair disassenting thei produced ne better reassone, but "We will beleve as oure fatheris beleved."

Acts were passed against the mass, and against papal supremacy.[111] But the whole of the desire of the ministers was not accorded. The First Book of Discipline did not receive parliamentary sanction, because it contradicted the views of the nobles as to the disposal of Church property.

While, then, the Parliament of 1560 was in some sense the creature of the Assembly, and though its resolutions were conditioned by the wishes of the nobility, it occupies a very important position in Scottish constitutional history. We do not lay much stress on its opposition to the sovereigns. That, in itself, was neither novel nor remarkable in any way. It was obedient to the powers of the day. But it is the first Parliament where the burgesses and the smaller barons attended and voted in accordance with their own feeling. They were Protestants and they were in complete agreement with those who were guiding the meeting of Estates. It is also the first Parliament which had the consciousness of power. They and their leaders were making a great national change. The people were beginning to learn what possibilities they possessed. The Parliament of 1560 was the first step towards a constitutional theory for Scotland.

This meeting of the Estates has still another aspect. It was significant that an assembly of ecclesiastics drew up the acts by which the Parliament became famous, for we have here the first appearance in constitutional history of a greater than the Parliament. Into the General Assembly of the Church there soon drifted those principles and aspirations that might have given life to the Estates. We shall have occasion to notice the part taken by the Assembly in the coming struggles; but it may be well here to indicate its claims. These claims were not formulated in 1560. They were of gradual growth. We find them implicit in the writings of Knox; but they were first definitely advanced by a man of no less intellect than the rugged reformer--Andrew Melville, the antagonist of James VI. Melville, in his frequent interviews with the king, "talkit all his mynd in his awin manner, roundly, soundly, fully, freely, and fervently." But he never stated his view in more explicit terms than on the memorable day when, after calling King James "God's sillie vassal," he addressed him thus:

And thairfor, Sir, as divers tymes befor, sa now again, I mon tell yow, thair 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.[112]

Knox, in his interviews with James's mother, had taken lower ground. But Melville was not using idle words. There was no power in the land that could cope with the Church. From 1567 the Assembly met some days before the opening of Parliament, and prepared Church business, which was generally the principal item on the parliamentary list of _agenda_.[113] As early as 1565 it sent Queen Mary an overture against "the papisticall and blasphemous masse ... not only in the subjects, but also in the Queen's Majestie's awin person," and Mary's reply was couched in sufficiently humble terms.[114] Two years later it issued instructions to the Parliament about the ratification of the Acts of 1560, the question of the Darnley murder, and the treatment of the young prince.[115] It claimed the old ecclesiastical jurisdiction in all questions of morality, religion, education, and marriage.[116] It imprisoned offenders, and it informed magistrates how they were to act and threatened them with the censure of the Kirk. Its sentence of the Greater Excommunication involved the cessation of human intercourse[117] and the forfeiture of legal rights. The presbyterian system of Church government, with its careful distribution of authority, was able to make such a sentence a terrible reality. Not only the General Assembly, but the Synod or the Presbytery or the Kirk Session, was a court of justice. The records which have been published show with what vigour their power was used. Men of position and influence quailed before those stern judges. The old Church had often been powerful, under a strong bishop. But the secular forces gained strength while a see was vacant, and sometimes secured the appointment of a lay figure. A Presbytery never died: its members might change, but it continued its work, calmly and relentlessly, "grinding exceeding small."

Nor was the power of the Church confined to criminal jurisdiction. Two instances will serve to show the extent of its influence. In 1594, King James asked the presbytery of Edinburgh to "procure the leveing of six hundreth footmen, and four hundreth horsemen" to suppress a rebellion; and the presbytery complied with his request.[118] At the meeting of the General Assembly in March, 1596, King James was present. "He urged a contribution of the whole realme, not to be lifted presentlie, but when need sould require," and, to gain the sympathetic consideration of the Assembly, he promised that "his chamber doors sould be made patent to the meanest minister of Scotland, there sould not be anie meane gentleman in Scotland more subject to the good order and discipline of the Kirk than he would be."[119] It would be easy to multiply examples.

It was no case of ecclesiastical tyranny. The leaders of the Church might well apply to themselves the promise, "a willing people in the day of thy power." Modern democrats have denounced the Assembly as the oppressors of a priest-ridden populace. But the Assembly had made possible the existence of a public opinion in Scotland, and the public opinion of Scotland was with the Assembly. It is true that the documents to which assent was required appear to us crowded with metaphysical subtleties, to some of which no man who valued his freedom of thought could subscribe; but it must be remembered that these cast-iron theories registered the results to which that generation had attained. Moreover, it was in the Church courts, first of all, that Scotsmen learned the value and the power of debate. The Church did for Scotland what the Parliament accomplished for England. The Assembly was not a meeting of ecclesiastics alone. The strength of the Church lay in the presence of lay members in her courts,[120] to which there came earls, lords, and barons, and commissioners from provinces and universities. Each member, be he lord or peasant, the minister of St. Giles, or a Glasgow baillie, had equal right to speak, and no man's vote counted for more than that of his neighbour. The history of Scotland from the Reformation to the Revolution is the history of the General Assembly. The motto which it shared with other reformed churches is the story of the seventeenth century. _Nec tamen consumebatur._ Yet the flames burned fiercely enough.