completed; and his followers had found prompt and coherent expression in Scotland through an ecclesiastical system formed strictly upon the Calvinistic model, with kirk sessions, presbyteries, and provincial synods, subject to the supreme control of a general assembly composed of elected delegates. Thus alongside of the Scotch parliament, composed of prelates and nobles whose resolutions were influenced largely by the crown, there grew up a really representative national assembly, that soon learned how to extend its deliberations beyond mere religious to political questions. In 1580 this new Christian democracy, in 1580 which had arisen without legal sanction, abolished in its gen- abolished bishops eral assembly the office of bishop, as having "no sure warrant, and presauthority, or good ground out of the word of God;" and in system the next year, by the adoption of a second Book of Discipline, it organized upon a purely Calvinistic basis those presbyterian institutions which, with slight modifications, have survived to the present day. In order to bridle this new national force. that threatened to take from the nobles the lands of which they had despoiled the church, and to make the crown a mere instrument for the establishment of the religious system which it embodied, James, in 1584, obtained from the Scotch parlia- in 1584 ment an act that restored the entire government of the church undone by to the bishops, while it denounced both the legislative and hostile legislation; judicial authority which the general assembly had assumed. Although the ministers of the kirk yielded for the moment to the blow thus inflicted, a struggle for the reëstablishment of the presbyterian system soon began, whose pressure finally compelled James to consent in 1592 to an act which repealed in 1592 the legislation of 1584, formally abolished episcopacy, and fixed organiza the Calvinistic organization of the church upon a legal basis.2 tion reesJames was permitted to retain only the right of being present on a legal in the general assembly, and of fixing the time and place of its annual meeting. Four years later, when he attempted to Melville question the right of the assembly to meet without his war- James' rant, Melville, who had come to him as one of a deputation relation to from that body, took him by the sleeve, and, after calling him system; 1 See Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iii. p. 49; Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 47. Some years before, the bishops had been reduced to the state of "Tulchans," or dummies, whose only function was to hand over the greater the work Calvinistic tablished basis; defined the new James espoused the cause of the bishops; "God's silly vassal," told him there were two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. "There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the church, whose subject James VI. is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they whom Christ has called and commanded to watch over his church, and govern his spiritual kingdom, have sufficient power of him and authority so to do, both together and severally; the which no Christian king nor prince should control and discharge, but fortify and assist." In order to put an end to this condition of things, which threatened to subvert the power of the monarch as it had subverted that of the bishops, James resolved to make their cause his own. Το restore the episcopate became with him a matter of settled policy; "No bishop, no king" became an axiom in his political philosophy. And at the same time, in order to prevent the collisions which constantly occurred between two national assemblies legislating independently of each other, often upon the same subject-matter, it was deemed wise to devise some scheme through which representatives of the church could be admitted to a share in the deliberations of the parliament. As a concession to that demand, the estates, at the close of 1597, passed an act authorizing such persons to sit in their midst as the their right king might appoint to the office of bishop or abbot, or to any other prelacy. The settlement thus attempted proved, however, equally unsatisfactory to both parties: to the kirk, because it had demanded the admission not of royal nominees, but of representatives of the clergy chosen by themselves; to the king, because the new bishops whom he finally appointed under the act in the fall of 1600 were not acknowledged by the church as having any spiritual status or jurisdiction. Thus the failure did James fail to put in practice the ideas embodied in his of this "Basilicon Doron," in which he had only a short time before attempted settlement announced the hope of reëstablishing his authority over the James Scotch kirk by the restoration of the bishops as the agents "Basilicon through whom his absolute and divine right could be asserted over every class within the realm. Such was the mental temper and such the political experience of the man who, on the in 1597 the estates conceded to sit with them; in the midst of wrote the Doron." 1 J. Melville's Diary, pp. 368–371. 15, 1600, State Papers, Scotl., vol. lxvi. p. 96; Gardiner, vol. i. p. 77, and note I. 24th of March, 1603, assumed the task of governing a people with whose political institutions and habits of thought he never became thoroughly familiar. iar system passed to unim conciliar Tudor 3. In order to estimate clearly the extent to which James The conciland Charles were able to put in force their personal ideas of of the government, the fact must be kept steadily in view that the Tudors highly centralized system of "government by councils," which the Stuarts the Tudors had organized and employed for more than a cen- paired: tury, passed into their hands with all of its organs unimpaired. In the account heretofore given of the growth of that system the statement was made that, owing to the decline which had taken place in the constitution of the national assembly at the end of the civil war, Henry VII. and his successors were able to transfer the centre of gravity of the state from the king in parliament to the king in council. Out of that new condition of things grew the necessity for a subdivision of the labors of the council among a number of committees, to each of which was assigned a definite class of official duties. In that way the council gradually became a body of trained administrators, scope of whose duty it was to direct and supervise the entire state jurisdiction machinery, from the parliament itself down to the local self- in the governing bodies, and to mark out for punishment, in special time; cases, all persons, whether in or out of parliament, who undertook to defy or obstruct royal mandates. An enumeration has already been made of the agencies employed by the council as agencies through it existed in the days of Elizabeth in order to make its influ- which the ence all-pervading, chief among which were the inquisitorial powers of high commission and the dreaded star chamber.1 The mo- were tive power, the guiding force of this great central machine, was the king himself, under whose eye everything was supposed to the king's personal pass, and who was all in all. If such an abnormal centraliza- influence; tion of power was necessary in the days of Henry VII. in order to bring peace and law out of the anarchy which the civil war had left behind it, if it was necessary in the days of his son to bear England safely through the crisis of the Reformation, if during those days it gave birth to much administrative organization invaluable to later times, certain it is that the peaceful and prosperous conditions which existed at the accession of the house of Stuart made it imperative that the 1 See above, pp. 176–183. the council exercised; of the conflict between conciliar mentary systems; abnormal powers of the king in council should once more be beginning restored to the king in parliament. With the new life that entered into the national assembly as Elizabeth's reign drew to a close came the conviction that the two systems of govand parlia- ernment were incompatible; that the Tudor system was fast becoming unequal to the task of governing a nation which had already entered upon a career of marvellous development. Although the first move was made, before the end of the great queen's reign, by the prosperous middle class, who had long administered the local affairs of the country, and who were fast becoming independent by reason of wealth acquired in commerce, manufactures, and daring adventure, the feeling seems to have been general that no real change of system should be enforced until after the installation of Elizabeth's successor. James and Charles, so far from accepting the mission of change and reform which thus naturally arose out of it by resist changed conditions, not only continued the system of governing reforms demanded ment by councils which the Tudors had bequeathed to them, by changed conditions; but attempted to intensify its absolutism both in theory and James and Charles intensified not until after two revolutions was the conflict finally solved in favor of practice. What the constitution of the council was in the days of Elizabeth it remained down to the meeting of the Long Parliament, and during that period its powers were stretched to a greater extent than had ever before been known. Between the parliamentary system, animated by the new spirit of liberty which had entered into the commons, and the system. of government by councils, animated by the new spirit of absolutism derived from James, a conflict was inevitable. That conflict was a long and bitter one. Not until after the comple tion of two revolutions was the English nation able finally to subject the conciliar system as organized by the Tudors and enforced by the Stuarts to the parliamentary system as it exists in modern times. The result of the transition was not to parliament; abolish the council, but to so reform, reorganize, and readjust it in its relations to the parliament as to make the national will substitution instead of the royal will its driving and directing force. The national immediate task before us is to draw out the details of the royal will. constitutional conflict thus inaugurated from the accession of of the for the 1 "The Stuarts might have ruled with more skill. They might have been the leaders of a reform, instead of the victims of a revolution. No policy, however, could have long averted some alteration in the government.". Dicey, The Privy Council, p. 120. James I. down to the beginning of the civil war, a period during which its battles were fought out in parliament and in the courts of common law. his way to and 4. After confirming Cecil and his fellow councillors in office James on until his arrival in England, James set out from Edinburgh on London April 5, 1603, holding court on the way at Berwick, Newcastle, was conand York successively. While thus engaged in the northern with the religious counties, the new king was brought face to face with the domi- question; nant ecclesiastical question then pressing for solution by the presentation of what is called the "Millenary Petition," be- the "Millenary cause it purported to have been signed by one thousand of Petition," the clergy of the Church of England, which then numbered its scope about ten thousand.1 The Puritans who thus came forward purpose; to ask a modification of the religious settlement that Elizabeth had made, and to which they were then outwardly conforming, did not demand the abolition of episcopacy and a reorganization of the church upon a presbyterian basis, but only a removal from the prayer-book of some usages which they considered superstitious, the amendment of the Thirtynine Articles by the addition of nine Calvinistic "assertions," the reformation of the church courts, a more rigorous observation of the Puritan Sabbath, and a provision for the training of a preaching clergy.2 Despite the fact that the petition, James' upon which no action was taken for the moment, was met by the protest warm and contemptuous protests from the two universities, of the unithe king informed them that he intended to accept the suggestion for the maintenance of a preaching clergy, and urged them to follow his example. Thus encouraged, the Puritan party attempted to strengthen their views during the summer by obtaining signatures to petitions among the laity, an attempt that led to a proclamation forbidding all such demonstrations. In order to settle the pending questions in the forum of debate, the king ordered that a conference should be held in his presence between certain learned advocates, of the two parties 1 It is said to have been signed in fact by only seven hundred and fifty persons. See Fuller's Ch. Hist., vol. iii. p. 172, ed. 1837; Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. p. 465; Neal's Hist. Puritans, vol. ii. 5th ed. 1733. 2 For the full text, see Fuller's Ch. Hist., vol. iii. p. 193; Collier's Ch. Hist., 8 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 369; 4 The king admitted that " time may have brought in some corruptions which may deserve a review and amendment." Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 371. response to versities; |