danger was blown over, expressly contrary to the fifth article1." The king was well aware of the duplicity of the Covenanters, but was willing to overlook it, in the fallacious hope that the people would return to their loyalty and obedience, when they saw his rigid adherence to the terms of the treaty of Birks. Traquair had accompanied the king to London, and was the bearer of a letter from the king to the Scottish bishops, who were then at Newcastle, and from whence the primate had written to the king offering their humble advice to prorogue the Assembly and parliament. The king approved of their advice; but in the present posture of his affairs he was obliged to decline to act upon it; for he says, "we are resolved (rather, necessitated) to hold the Assembly and parliament at the time and place appointed, and for that end we have nominated the earl of Traquair our commissioner; to whom we have given instructions not only how to carry himself at the same, but a charge also to have special care of your lordships, and those of the inferior clergy, who have suffered for their duty to God and obedience to our commands. And we do hereby assure you, that it shall be one of our chiefest studies how to rectify and establish the government of that church aright, and to repair your losses, which we desire you to be most confident of. As for your meeting to treat of the affairs of the church, we do not see at this time how that can be done; for within our kingdom of Scotland we cannot promise you any place of safety; and in any other of our dominions we cannot hold it convenient, all things considered. Wherefore we conceive that the best way would be for your lordships to give in, by way of protestation or remonstrance, your exceptions against this Assembly and parliament to our commissioner, which may be sent by any mean man, so he be trusty, and deliver it at his entering into the church. But we would not have it to be either read or argued in this meeting, where nothing but partiality is to be expected, but to be represented to us by him, which we promise to take so into consideration as becometh a prince sensible of his own interest and honour, joined with the equity of your desires. We must likewise intimate unto you, that we are so far from conceiving it expedient for you, or any of my lords of the clergy, to be present at this meeting, as we do absolutely discharge your going thither; and for absence, this shall be to you, and to every one of you, a sufficient warrant. Thus you have our pleasure briefly signified unto you, which we doubt not but you will take in good part: you can 1 Collections, i. 247. not but know that what we do in this, we are necessitated to: so we bid you farewell 1. CHARLES R. "Whitehall, 6th of August, 1639." By this letter it may be easily seen how much the king was distressed and embarrassed in the conduct of public affairs, and to what difficulties he was reduced in struggling between his own inward sentiments and the exigencies of state. Upon the receipt of the king's letter, the primate assembled those bishops which were then in Newcastle, and they agreed to the following declinature, which they put into the commissioner's hands: "WHEREAS his majesty, out of his surpassing goodness, was pleased to indict another General Assembly for rectifying the present disorders in the church, and repealing the acts concluded in the late pretended assembly at Glasgow, against all right and reason, charging and commanding us, the archbishops and bishops of the church of Scotland, and others that have place therein, to meet at Edinburgh the twelfth of August instant, in hopes that by a peaceable treaty and conference, matters should have been brought to a wished peace and unity and that now we perceive all these hopes disappointed, the authors of the present schism and division proceeding in their wonted courses of wrong and violence, as hath appeared in their presumptuous protestation against the said indiction; and in the business they have made throughout the country, for electing ministers and laics of their faction to make up the said Assembly; whereby it is evident that the same or worse effects must needs ensue upon the present meeting, than were seen to follow the former: WE, therefore, the underscribers, for the discharge of our duty to God, and to the church committed to our government under our sovereign lord the king's majesty, PROTEST, as in our former declinature, as well for ourselves as in the name of the church of Scotland, and so many as shall adhere to this our protestation, That the present pretended Assembly be holden and reputed null in law, as consisting and made up partly of laical persons that have no office in the church of God, partly of refractory, schismatical, and perjured ministers, that, contrary to their oaths and subscriptions, from which no human power could absolve them, have filthily resiled, and so made themselves to the present and future ages most infamous, and that no churchman be bound to appear before them, nor 1 Nalson's Collections, i. 248, 349. any citation, admonition, certification, or act whatsoever, proceeding from the said pretended meeting, be prejudicial to the jurisdiction, liberties, privileges, rents, possessions, and benefices, belonging to the church, nor to any acts of former General Assemblies, acts of council, or parliament, made in favour thereof; but to the contrary, that all such acts and deeds, and every one of them, are and shall be reputed unjust, partial, and illegal, with all that may follow therefrom. "And this our protestation we humbly desire may be presented to his majesty, whom we do humbly supplicate, according to the practice of christian emperors in ancient times, to convene the clergy of his whole dominions, for remedying the present schism and division, unto whose judgment aud determination we promise to submit ourselves and all our proceedings. "Given under our hands at Morpeth, Berwick, and Holy Island, the 10th and 11th of August, 1639. ST. ANDREWS. (Signed) WALL. BRECHinen. AD. ABERDON. 1" The Covenanters had been busily employed in dispersing pamphlets and tracts to the disparagement of his majesty's government and the implication of his sincerity, for the purpose of confirming their own friends, and drawing the wavering and unreflecting off from their allegiance and duty. One of these disloyal papers fell into the king's hands, and he laid it before the English privy council, and such of the members as were therein implicated declared it to be utterly false and calumnious. The privy council, therefore, declared it highly scandalous to his majesty's person, honour, and government, full of gross mistakes, perverting the sense of his majesty's declaration, and of most pernicious consequence upon the peace of the kingdoms. An act of state was therefore published "against the Scots concerning a scandalous paper lately dispersed by them." In conclusion, the act says, "all which considered, the whole board, unanimously, became humble petitioners to his majesty, that this false and scandalous paper might be publicly burnt by the hangman2;" and which was done accordingly. The Covenanters attempted in an equivocal manner to disavow this scandalous pamphlet; but their actions proclaimed their adherence to the system recommended in it of misrepre Nalson's Collections, i. 249-50. 2 Ibid. i. 251-2. senting and calumniating the king. The earl of Dalhousie published a protest at the cross of Edinburgh, intimating that the new combination "would maintain the late Assembly at Glasgow as most lawful, free, and general, and would adhere to their solemn covenant with God, whereby the office of bishops, who yet usurp the title, is declared to have been abjured: and that, therefore, if they return to this kingdom, they shall be used as accursed, and given over to the devil, and out of Christ's body, as ethnicks and publicans; and that all who harbour them shall be prosecuted to excommunication likewise 1." On the 12th of August the broad seal was put to lord Traquair's commission; and the ministers, nobility, and gentry, went in procession from Holyrood House to the high church, where Mr. Henderson, the moderator of the Glasgow Assembly, preached from Acts v. 33, to the end; in which he exhorted the commissioner "to employ all his parts and endowments for building up the church of God in this land;" and he exhorted the members to go on zealously, for true zeal, he said, never cooled, but the longer it burns the more fervent it grows. "Let it be seen to the world that presbytery, the government we contend for in the church, can consist very well with monarchy in the state, and thereby we shall gain the favour of our king, and God shall get the glory 2." Balfour says, there were sermons in all the churches of Edinburgh, with public humiliation and fasting for the happy success of the Assembly. None of the covenanting lords, he adds, attended the commissioner in his triumphal procession, except such as were privy councillors 3. After the sermon, and the Assembly had been constituted, Mr. Henderson required the members to produce their commissions. The earl of Traquair produced his from his ma jesty, as high commissioner, which was ordered to be recorded in the books of the Assembly; after which Traquair made a speech, wherein he cautioned the Assembly against suspecting his royal master's sincerest love to religion and the good of the Scottish church, and against heart-burning among themselves on account of their former different sentiments about matters of discipline. Mr. David Dickson, minister of Irvine, was, by a large majority, chosen moderator. The commissioner made a shew of insisting that Mr. Henderson should be continued as the moderator; but this was indignantly resisted by 1 Skinner's Ecclesiastical Hist. ii. 343. 3 Annals, ii. 352. the Assembly, as they charitably ascribed the proposal to a trick of his majesty to make the office perpetual, and so prevent the removal of the episcopacy1. Dickson, it appears, was not the sort of man fitted for presiding in such an Assembly, and therefore Henderson was appointed to sit beside him, and act as an assessor. Guthry says, that Dickson betrayed such weakness in his office, that every one said minuit presentia famam; yea, it had been worse with him, were it not that Mr. Henderson sat at his elbow as his coadjutor2. After some pretences by the commissioner for objecting to irregular commissions, the moderator insisted that such minute inquiries would only divert the Assembly from their proper work, and therefore this motion was overruled. On account of the shortness of the time betwixt the meeting of the Assembly and that of the parliament, it was agreed that there should be two sessions each day. Among the first transactions were the transportation (as it is called) of several of the leading Covenanters, from obscure country parishes, to the metropolis, and other large towns; viz. Robert Blair and SAMUEL RUTHERFORD, from Ayr to St. Andrews; David Dickson, the moderator, from Irvine to Glasgow; Mr. John Fergushill, from Ochiltree to Ayr; Mr. James Sharp, from Govan to Leith; ROBERT Douglass, from Kircaldy to Edinburgh; Robert Baillie, from Kilwinning to Glasgow, and Andrew Cant, from Newbottle to Aberdeen3. This first step was an interference with the civil rights of the patrons of these several churches, and a direct dispensation with the powers of the crown and the parliament. In the eighth session, on the 17th of August, George Graham, some time bishop of Orkney, gave in his written abjuration of his episcopal office, subscribed in the presence of witnesses, and which was read by the clerk, and ordered to be registered in the Assembly's books" ad perpetuam rei memoriam :" and for the same reason the abjuration of this fallen star is inserted here:-" I, master George Graham, some time pretended bishop of Orkney, being sorry and grieved at my heart that I should ever, for any worldly respect, have embraced the order of episcopacy, the same having no warrant from the Word of God, and being such an order as hath had sensibly many fearful and evil consequences in many parts of Christendom, and particularly within the kirk of Scotland, as by doleful and deplorable experience this day is manifest, to have disclaimed, like as I, by the tenor hereof, do altogether 1 Stevenson's Church and State, 390. 2 Guthry's Memoirs, 53. 3 Stevenson's Church and State, 391. |