1625

TITHES IN KIND.

277

have gone far to strengthen the power of the nobles against the Government, and which would stand in the way of that distribution of equal justice which it was the business of the King's Government to enforce.

Oct. 12. Charles's Act of Revocation.

If, however, Charles was in the right in desiring to change ́ an arrangement so fraught with mischief, his mode of interference was at once harsh and impolitic. Acting, as he usually did, on the supposition that his legal rights were identical with his moral rights, he issued an Act of Revocation by which the mass of Church property in the hands of laymen was re-annexed to the Crown, on the ground of technical flaws in the original concession. Not only was the extreme form in which the Act was couched certain to raise up enemies of no despicable kind, but it sinned against the principle that long possession is entitled to consideration for the sake of persons totally innocent of the original wrong, whose interests have grown up around it.

1625.

Explanatory

A proclamation issued to explain the King's intentions did nothing to remove this fundamental objection. The nobility, with the greater part of the Privy Council, were up Feb. 9. in arms. The Earl of Nithsdale, a Roman Catholic proclama- peer, who had married one of Buckingham's many kinswomen, and was occasionally employed on delicate negotiations, had been sent to Scotland to carry the revocation into effect. He was met by a storm of opposition. If later report spoke truly, the leading tithe-owners resolved, if nothing else would serve, to 'fall upon him and all his party in the old

tion.

This is no rare thing on their stowks that's seen,
Snow-covered tops, below their grass grown green."

Scotland entreats Charles not to farm the tithes to the Lords :

"Then let my tithes be brought to money rent,
For thee, from landlord and the poor tenant;
So may they shear, and lead and stack their corn,

At midnight, midday, afternoon or morn,

Which shall be their advantage and my gain,

When barns and yards are filled with timely grain.

Acta Parl. Scot. v. 23.

2 Proclamation, Feb. 9, 1626. Connell's Treatise on Tithes, iii. 58.

Scottish fashion and knock him on the head.' Another account charges the interested lords with exciting the people by spreading rumours that Nithsdale was coming to revoke, not the grants of tithes, but the laws establishing the Protestant religion, whilst they frightened Nithsdale by informing him, before he had completed his journey, that the people of Edinburgh had cut in pieces the coach which he had prepared for his entry into the city, had killed his horses, and were quite ready to do the same to himself.2

It was not often that worldly wisdom entered into the counsels of Charles; but the decision which he now took upon July 11. hearing of the difficulties raised was admirably suited Charles to meet the danger. On the one hand, whilst laying offers compensation. stress on his intention to relieve the burdens of the land-owners, he offered such of the tithe-owners as would make voluntary submission a reasonable compensation for their loss. On the other hand, he suspended the operation of the July 12. The Articles Articles of Perth, so far as those ministers were conof Perth par. tially suscerned who had been ordained before the new rules pended. had been admitted, on the understanding that they would refrain from arguing against the existing system. At the same time there was to be a general amnesty for the ministers who had been arrested and imprisoned. In this way, whilst the attack upon the high nobility was softened, Charles Aug. 26. Legal action might hope to rally round him the mass of the nation in begun. support of a wise and justifiable policy. On August 26 the King's Advocate took the first steps to bring the legal

' Mr. Burton (Hist. of Scotland, vi. 358) expressed doubts, in which I fully share, of the 'savage story' told by Burnet of the blind Lord Belhaven intending to murder the Earl of Dumfries. It may be added that the date of the third year of the King, given by Burnet, becomes 1628 in Mr. Burton's history, which is too late, and that the names Belhaven and Dumfries point to the late origin of the story. There were no such titles till 1633. Burnet's statement that the King purchased lands for the archbishoprics from Hamilton and Lennox ought to have been referred to a later date, as is shown by the English Exchequer Books, though there is a Privy Seal for 2,000l. for the purpose in 1625. 2 Heylyn, 237.

The King to the Council, July 11, Connell, iii. 64. Balfour's Hist. Works, ii. 142.

1626

TITHE COMMUTATION.

279

question to trial. The blow was followed up by an order to Sir George Hay, who had succeeded Dunfermline as September. Chancellor a testy and stubborn old man, who had

made himself the centre of resistance-to come to London to justify his conduct.2

1627. Jan. 17: Commission

1629. Sept 2.

effected.

This decided step was at once successful. Envoys were sent from Scotland to treat with the King, and, after considerable discussion, commissioners were apers to treat. pointed to examine the whole subject. After a long and minute investigation, a compromise was effected. Compromise The Church lands were to remain in the hands of those who held them, upon payment of certain rents to the King. Tithes, on the other hand, were dealt with in a more complicated fashion. The landowner was to be at liberty to extinguish the right of levying tithes on his property by payment of a sum calculated at nine years' purchase. If he did not choose to exercise this option, the tithe in kind was to be commuted into a rentcharge, from which was to be deducted the stipend payable to the ministers, and an annuity reserved for the King. Special regard was paid to the circumstances of the minister, who in many instances received an augmentation of his stipend. In its final shape the arrangement thus made is worthy of memory as the one successful action of Charles's reign. In money value it did not bring anything to the Scottish exchequer, as the King disposed of his annuity in perpetuity in payment of a debt of 10,000l. ; but it weakened the power of the nobility, and strengthened the prerogative in the only way in which the prerogative deserved to be strengthenedby the popularity it gained through carrying into effect a wise and beneficent reform. Every landowner who was freed from the perpetual annoyance of the tithe-gatherer, every minister Connell, iii. 68.

Nature of the compromise.

6

4

2 Contarini to the Doge, Oct. Ven. Transcripts, R. O.

16'

3 Commission, Jan. 7, 1627, Connell, iii. 71.

Connell, Book iii.-iv. Forbes, A Treatise on Church Lands and Tithes, 258. See also the observations of Mr. Burton (vi. 353–368).

5 Forbes, 264.

whose income had been increased and rendered more certain than by James's arrangement, knew well to whom the change was owing.

The Crown against the aristocracy.

To object to the change thus effected because it favoured the growth of the prerogative is mere constitutional pedantry. The stage of civilisation at which Scotland had arrived was one in which it was still desirable that the prerogative should be extended. - The nobility were still, with some brilliant exceptions, self-seeking and unruly,' and the time for the development of a full Parliamentary system only arrives when all members of a State are equally submissive to the laws of the State.

In Scotland therefore Charles had but to persevere in the course upon which he had already entered. If he could satisfy the temporal requirements of the mass of the nation, and if he could avoid irritating their religious sentiments or their religious prejudices, he might still grasp firmly the nettle of aristocratic discontent.

Aristocratic discontent there was sure to be. It is hard to say that the nobility had any real ground for dissatisfaction. They had exchanged an income irregularly gained, and obtained by oppressive means, for one which was indeed less in amount, but which was to be secured not only by an indefeasible title, but by the cessation of the irritation caused by their former proceedings. Large bodies of men, however, are never very reasonable in their view of changes which cause them apparent damage, and the circumstances under which the original confiscatory Act of Revocation had been issued were such as to make them suspicious of Charles's future action. The withdrawal of the means of indirectly influencing the conduct of the landowners, which was a pure gain to the community, naturally left the Scottish nobles sore, just as, in later times, English landowners were left sore by the destruction of the rotten boroughs.

Nor were the nobles without apprehension that Charles would take a further step in the same direction. The question

'The beginning of Spalding's History of the Troubles, and the latter part of Mr. Burton's sixty-fourth chapter, headed Sufferings of the Bishops' (vi. 246) should be studied by all who doubt this.

1629

THE SCOTTISH NOBILITY.

281

of the heritable jurisdictions had been again mooted in the course of the controversy, and though the King had Question of the heritable restricted himself to the expression of a wish to buy jurisdictions. them up whenever he was rich enough to do so,1 it was always possible that a blow might be struck against them as sudden and unexpected as the Act of Revocation.

Charles invited to Scotland.

It was therefore certain that for some time to come Charles would have to confront the tacit hostility of the Scottish nobility. For the present it was certain to be no more than a tacit hostility. Now that the legality of the Act of Revocation had been acknowledged, the nobles were anxious that the compromise to which they had consented should receive a Parliamentary sanction, which would save them from a more extreme danger in the future. Charles was therefore entreated to visit Scotland to be crowned, and to hold a Parliament in which the sanction of law might be given to the late arrangements.

June 18.

coronation at

Various circumstances delayed the Royal visit, The King's and it was not till 1633 that Charles crossed the Edinburgh. border. On June 15 he entered Edinburgh amidst a storm of loyal welcome. On the 18th he was crowned at Holyrood.

As a political ceremony there can be little doubt that Charles's coronation was greeted with genuine enthusiasm. It was, however, a religious ceremony as well, and the form which it took would therefore go far to indicate whether Charles meant to make the ideas of his letter for the suspension of the Perth Articles the leading principle of his ecclesiastical policy, or whether that suspension was only extorted from him by the immediate necessities of the situation, to be revoked as soon as the danger appeared to be at an end. It was a momentous question for Charles, for the decision of it in the wrong way would throw the whole force of popular religious enthusiasm on the side of the nobles, if they should at any time find it advisable to renew the struggle which they had for the moment renounced as hopeless.