| Copyright | ||
|
Home Charles I and Domestic Affairs, 1625-42 1629-1640 1629-1640; Part 5 |
1629-1640; Part 5James, in his policy in Scotland, showed a good deal of tenacity, and by 1612 he had fully established Episcopacy in that country. He then wished to improve the forms of worship in Scotland. In 1618, by a mixture of bribes and intimidation, the General Assembly was induced to pass what were called, from the place of its meeting, the five Articles of Perth. Of these Articles perhaps the most unpopular was the enforcement of kneeling at Communion, which savoured to the Scottish mind of idolatry.Charles came to the throne in 1625, and in twelve years had succeeded in uniting the whole nation against him. To begin with, his marriage with a Roman Catholic met with much unfavourable comment. Then he proceeded to frighten the nobles by an attempt to recover some of the Church-lands which they had obtained at the Reformation. Finally he aroused the anger of the whole people by imposing a new Service Book upon them. In the first place, the Scots did not want a Prayer Book at all; they preferred the individual prayers of their own ministers. In the second place, the new Service Book came from England and was similar to the English Prayer Book; that was quite enough in itself to make it highly unacceptable. Lastly, the particulars in which it differed from the English Prayer Book were universally held to be due to the influence of Archbishop Laud, and to be in a Popish direction. Scotland, even more than England, was fanatically anti-Popish, and Laud was regarded as a Papist in disguise. The objections to the book were summed up by a contemporary: "It was," he said, "a Popish-English-Scottish-Mass-Service-Book." In 1637 the Service Book was introduced, and at once there was an uproar. At St. Giles', Edinburgh, occurred the famous scene when a woman—tradition says her name was Jenny Geddes — struck a gentleman in the face with a Bible for saying "Amen" to one of the prayers, and subsequently hurled a stool at the head of the Dean who was conducting the service (It is said that these acts were really due to men dressed in women's clothes; but it has been plausibly argued that, if such was the case, the stool would have hit, instead of missing; the Dean's head). All Scotland was in a ferment. And then came the idea of forming a "Band" or "Covenant" for mutual defence. Such bands had been frequent in olden time amongst the nobles. But now all classes—nobles, ministers, and people — signed a National League and Covenant for the preservation of their Protestant religion (1638). In this crisis Charles played the part that might have been expected of him. He tried intimidation and he tried conciliation, but with an illadvised persistency he would not withdraw the Service Book. He authorized a General Assembly to meet to consider the situation, and then withdrew his leave. Nevertheless the Assembly met in Glasgow Cathedral during the autumn of 1638, and within a month had annulled the new Service Book, renounced the five Articles of Perth, and not only deposed the bishops, but excommunicated a certain number of them into the bargain. |
Chronology |
| copyright by uuo-ununoctium.info |