[1596-1600 A.D.]

polity which James himself had recognised; and as for the blunt mode in which his attention had been solicited, it was too much in accordance with the simple fashions of a Scottish court to excite either wonder or alarm. While Elizabeth, therefore, would have called for her guards, or Henry VIII shouted for the executioner, James only listened quietly, as to an expected lesson, although this was but a part of the harangue, and "demitted them pleasantly," declaring his ignorance of the return of the popish lords. All this courtesy, however, on the part of the king was but an empty show."

Although James, frightened by this vehement language, made promises that he would do nothing for the Catholic lords till they had made terms with the church, it was impossible that a quarrel whose roots were so deep as to the limits of the royal authority and jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical could be appeased. Neither party to it could see how far each overstepped the bounds of reason. The king was blind to the right of freedom of conscience which Protestantism had established as one of its first principles. Melville and the ministers were equally blind to the impossibility of any form of monarchy yielding to the claim that the members of an ecclesiastical assembly should use the name of Christ and the theory of his headship over the church to give themselves absolute power to define its relations to the state.

Other occasions quickly arose for renewing the controversy. A violent sermon by Black at St. Andrews gave a favourable opportunity to James of invoking the jurisdiction of the privy council, and the preacher was banished north of the Tay. Soon afterwards a demand made on the king in consequence of a sermon of another minister, Balcanquhal, and a speech of Bruce's -the king's former favourite-that he should dismiss the Octavians, led to a tumult in Edinburgh, December 17th, 1596, which gave James a pretext for leaving the town and removing the courts of justice to Linlithgow.' Supported by the nobles, he returned on New Year's Day, 1597, received the submission of the town, levying a severe fine before he would restore its privileges as a corporation, and withholding from it the right of electing its own magistrates or ministers without the royal consent.

Emboldened by this success, James now addressed himself to the difficult problem of church and state. He did not yet feel strong enough to restore Episcopacy-perhaps had not quite determined on that course. The ingenious scheme-due to Lindsay of Balcarres-was invented of the introducing representatives of the church into parliament without naming them bishops. This would have the twofold effect of diminishing the authority of the general assemblies and of conferring on parliament a competency to deal with matters ecclesiastical.

Parliament in 1597 passed an act that all ministers promoted to prelacies (i.e., bishoprics or abbacies) should have seats in parliament, and remitted to the king with the general assembly to determine as to the office of such persons in the spiritual policy and government of the kirk. Accordingly James summoned successive assemblies at Perth and Dundee, where there were two sessions in 1597, and finally at Montrose, in 1600, selecting those towns in order to procure a good attendance from the north, always more favourable to royalty and Episcopacy and less under the influence of the Edinburgh clergy. By this and other manoeuvres he obtained some concessions, but not all that he desired. It was the Gowrie conspiracy (the 5th

['Hume Brown calls this "a turning point in the reign of James VI. By his astuteness and pertinacity he turned the tumult of the day to so good account that he gradually attained to a degree of authority over all classes of his subjects, such as had been acquired by no previous ruler of Scotland."]

[1600 A.D.]

of August, 1600) whose failure gave him the courage and the ground for finally abandoning the Presbyterians and casting in his lot with the bishops. Repeated investigations at the time and since cannot be said to have completely cleared up the mystery of this outrage."

THE PUZZLE OF THE GOWRIE CONSPIRACY (1600 A.D.)

The correspondence of Essex with King James VI was certainly amongst the causes which prevented his restoration to the favour of Elizabeth. The harshness with which he was treated in the autumn of 1600 was a natural consequence of the indignation of the English government at the proceedings of James. At a convention of the Scottish estates, in June of that year, the king proposed that a tax should be levied for the purpose of asserting his claim to the succession to the crown of England. This demand met with the most strenuous resistance. Amongst those who led the opposition was the young earl of Gowrie, who had recently returned from the court of Elizabeth. The king was furious against his parliament. They had laughed at his notion of raising money to make a conquest of England; and altogether refused to give him more than 40,000 pounds Scots. After this Essex was informed that James had a party in England, and intended not to wait for the queen's death. The mutual ill-will that subsisted at this time between James and Elizabeth has led to the belief, resting upon very insufficient foundation, that what is called the Gowrie plot may be traced to the contrivance of the English queen.

The facts which are commonly related are briefly these: On the morning of the 5th of August, 1600, James was going forth from his palace at Falkland to hunt, when Alexander Ruthven, the younger brother of Gowrie, desired to speak with him privately. He whispered something about an unknown man having found a pot of gold; and the treasure, which was in Gowrie House, at Perth, might be seen by the king if he would come thither without his attendants. The scent of gold was irresistible to James. After the chase he rode off to Perth with young Ruthven; but he was ultimately joined by his attendants. James dined alone [the dinner seems to have been poor and late, indicating lack of preparation]. After dinner Gowrie, with James' suite, went into the pleasure garden.

Alexander Ruthven then told the king it was now time to go and look at the gold. They went together through various apartments, Ruthven locking the doors as they passed along. At length they reached a small round room; and then Ruthven, removing a curtain, disclosed a portrait of his father, and asked James who murdered him. [He seized a dagger from Henderson, a mysterious stranger found in the room.] He held the dagger to the king's breast and said that if he made any attempt to open the window or to cry out the dagger should be in his heart. Young Ruthven left the king alone with Henderson. James appealed to Henderson for protection. Ruthven, soon returning, ran upon the king and attempted to bind him.

A desperate struggle ensued, in which James managed to reach the window and cry out for help. Lennox and the other courtiers in the garden saw the king's flushed face at the window, as he uttered the cry of "Treason!" Some rushed up the great staircase, but found the door locked. Ramsay, one of the suite, remembered a back stair; and reaching the door of the round chamber dashed it open, and found the king still struggling with Ruthven. Ramsay stabbed the youth, who was quickly despatched by others who came up the turnpike-stair. Gowrie himself, with his servants, having seen the

[1600 A.D.]

dead body of his brother, rushed frantically to the gallery where some of the attendants of James were assembled, and was quickly slain. The populace in the streets of Perth were roused to madness when they heard of the deaths of the two Ruthvens; and they cried to the king as he looked out, "Come down, thou son of Signor Davie; thou hast slain a better man than thyself." Some of the preachers of the kirk maintained that the king conspired against the Gowries, and not the Gowries against the king; and this belief was by no means confined to the Presbyterian ministers."

Three friends and servants of the earl of Gowrie who had assisted him in his battles with the king's retinue and were afterwards officious and active in the tumult, were tried, condemned, and executed, protesting with their last breath they knew nothing about the transactions of the day further than that they took part with their master. Viewed in every light, the conspiracy seemed to the public one of the darkest and most extraordinary which ever agitated the general mind; and it cannot be wondered that very different conclusions were formed concerning it. The king was particularly touched in point of honour in making good his own story, but experienced no small difficulty from the mystery which hung over the bloody incident. Faction and religious prejudice lent their aid to disturb men's comprehension of what was in itself so mystical.

Many doubted the king's report altogether, and conceived it more likely that the brothers should have fallen by some deceit on the part of the king and court, than that they should have attempted treason against the life or liberty of the sovereign in circumstances so very improbable. Many of the clergymen particularly continued to retain most absolute incredulity upon the subject; and he was thought no bad politician who found an evasion by saying that he believed the story because the king told it, but that he would not have given credit to his own eyes had he seen it.

The ministers of Edinburgh were peculiarly resolute in refusing to give avowed credit to the king's account of the conspiracy, and took the most public measures to show their incredulity. The council having required them to return solemn thanks from their pulpits for the deliverance of James, they excused themselves, saying that they had no acquaintance with the particulars of the danger which the king was said to have escaped. An order for a solemn and public thanksgiving on a day fixed was then sent forth, and the divines who should scruple to perform the duty of the day were threatened with banishment. Most of the recusants submitted after some altercation. All the clergy at length submitted to the king's pleasure, except the reverend Robert Bruce. He was banished for his incredulity and repaired to France.

The parliament, by giving the fullest credit to the king's account of the accident, may be supposed to have designed to console him for the incredulity of the clergy. They heard the witnesses upon the trial, and not only pronounced sentence of forfeiture against the deceased brothers, but disinherited their whole posterity and proscribed the very name of Ruthven. Honourable rewards and titles were bestowed on Sir Thomas Erskine, Sir John Ramsay, and Sir Hugh Harris, who had been the instrument of James' preservation. Alms were dispersed, and every other means adopted which could impress upon the people the reality of the king's danger and the sincerity of his gratitude to Heaven for a providential deliverance. But it is an observation of Tacitus that one of the misfortunes of princes is that conspiracies against them are not believed until they are carried into fatal effect. A considerable party in James' kingdom, thinking, perhaps, better of his audacity and worse of his morals than either the one or the other deserved, still refused to

[1600-1693 A.D.] believe that the king's danger had been real, or the death of Gowrie and his brother on the memorable 5th of August excusable.

Their arguments rested upon the string of improbabilities of which it is impossible to divest the story, and which, indeed, can be refuted only by opposing to them the greater difficulties which attend the embracing a different solution. Like the mystery of Mary Stuart's complicity in Darnley's murder, it becomes the more puzzling the more it is studied, and every theory is confronted with objections based on common sense and human nature. James was a notorious liar, and his own evidence is of little value uncorroborated. On the other hand, the motives for so elaborate and bloodthirsty a falsehood are hard to explain. Yet Louis A. Barbé," who made a recent special study of the affair, declared the story to have been almost wholly a fabrication of the king's."

JAMES VI BECOMES JAMES I OF ENGLAND

James had to assume the English crown before Episcopacy could really be restored. This crisis of his career was not long delayed. Already Elizabeth's death was being calculated on, and her courtiers from Cecil downwards were contending for the favour of her heir. She died on March 24th, 1603, and James was at once proclaimed her successor in accordance with her own declaration that no minor person should ascend her throne but her cousin, the king of Scots. Leaving Edinburgh on the 5th of April, James reached London on the 6th of May, being everywhere received with acclamation by the people.

Thus peacefully at a memorable epoch in the history of Europe was accomplished the union of south and north Britain. Often attempted in vain by conquest, it was now attained in a manner soothing the pride of the smaller country, without at first exciting the jealousy of the larger, whose interest was, as Henry VII prophesied, sure to predominate. To James it was a welcome change from nobles who had threatened his liberty and life, and from ministers who withstood his will and showed little respect for his person or office, to the courtier statesmen of England trained by the Tudors to reverence the monarch as all but absolute, and a clergy bound to recognise him as their head.

To Scotland, a poor country, and its inhabitants, poor also but enterprising and eager for new careers, it opened prospects of national prosperity which, though not at once, were ultimately realised. It was an immediate gain that border wars and English and French intrigues were at an end. This more than counterbalanced the loss of the court, a loss which probably favoured the independent development of the nation. For the present no change was made in its constitution, its church, or its laws. The Reformation had continued the work of the War of Independence. Scotland no longer consisted only of the prelates, the nobles, and the landed gentry. The commons, imperfectly represented in parliament by the burghs, not yet wealthy enough to be powerful, had found a voice in the assemblies of the church and leaders in its ministers and elders.

At this point in the treatment of some historians the history of Scotland ends. Juster views now prevail. Neither the union of crowns nor of parliaments really closes the separate record of a nation which retained separate laws, a separate church, a separate system of education, and a well-marked diversity of character. But a great part of the subsequent history of Scotland is necessarily included in that of Great Britain, and has been treated under

[1550-1617 A.D.]

England. Considerations of space and proportion make it necessary that what remains should be told even more rapidly than that narrative of what preceded the accession of James to the English throne."

CULTURE OF THE PERIOD; DRUMMOND AND NAPIER

In learning the nation had rather retrograded than advanced, owing to that struggle in defence of its beloved church by which its whole time and energies were fully occupied. The distinguished Scottish characters of this period were therefore men of action rather than contemplation; and they are to be found in the public arena where great events were at issue, rather than the closet or the college. From this general criterion, however, two illustrious exceptions occurred in the cases of Drummond of Hawthornden and Napier of Merchiston.

Sir William Drummond was born on the 13th of December, 1585. His family seat of Hawthornden, now a place of pilgrimage to admiring tourists, was a fitting birthplace and home for a poet; while his studies, which were chiefly devoted to the writings of the great authors of Greece and Rome, elevated his taste and refined his language beyond those of his contemporaries, not merely in Scotland but of England also. His sonnets, especially, were the admiration of the age on account of their purity of style and melody of versification, so that he has been justly compared to the best of his Italian models. His reputation as a poet, by the publication of several of his verses, and especially of A Cypress Grove, which was printed at Edinburgh in 1616, so widely diffused his poetical reputation that, only two or three years after, Ben Jonson resolved to pay a visit to their author; and this he accomplished in his own rough, bold fashion by a journey on foot of four hundred miles over moor and mountain, and among a people still dreaded as barbarians. The chief poetical works of Drummond were sonnets, madrigals, and religious poems, which during his lifetime were printed upon loose sheets and were not collected until 1650, six years after his death, when they were published in one volume.

The other distinguished Scot of this period-John Napier of Merchiston, inventor of the logarithms-has secured for himself a name as imperishable as the invention upon which it is founded. He was born in 1550, and although aggrandised with the title of baron, which in England was one of nobility, in Scotland it indicated nothing more than a laird, whose ancestors had held the power of fossa et furca within their own small domain. Little is known of the earlier part of his life, except that he studied in the university of St. Andrews and afterwards travelled on the Continent. On returning to Scotland his life was so studious and recluse, and his evening walks so lonely, that the country people eyed him at a distance and with fear, as a magician, or at least as something "not canny"; and to this he afforded some grounds by the nature of his studies, several of which bordered on the miraculous. The chief of these were the discovery of concealed treasures by the divining rod, and the invention of a warlike machine for the defence of Christendom that would destroy thirty thousand Turks by a single volley. The same love of the wonderful incited him to the study of the future, but in this he confined himself to the Revelations of St. John, upon which he published a Commentary in 1593. It was not, however, till 1614 that he burst upon the world in his true scientific character, by the publication of his Book of Logarithms; and in a short time this useful discovery, by which the most laborious and abstruse calculations were simplified into short, easy processes, was hailed

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