ENDEAVOUR OF KING JAMES TO RECONCILE THE CATHOLIC BARONS AND THE KIRK—THE KING TRYING WITCHES—HE DEALS SEVERELY WITH BORDER OFFENDERS—COMPLAINS OF THE WRONGS RECEIVED FROM ENGLAND IN THE MURDER OF HIS ROYAL MOTHER, THE WITHHOLDING OF HIS ANNUITY AS HEIR APPARENT TO THE ENGLISH CROWN, ETC.—HE APPOINTS 50 BISHOPS WITH SEATS IN PARLIAMENT—THE KIRK THUS DIVERTED FROM PERSECUTING CATHOLICS—THE KING WRITES A BOOK, IN WHICH HE ASCRIBES THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND TO TUMULT AND REBELLION—THE MINISTERS OFFENDED—THE BOOK MUCH ADMIRED IN ENGLAND AND BY THE POPE—THE KING MAKES LITTLE ACCOUNT OF THE KIRKS ENMITY—PROPOSES A TREATY WITH SPAIN-SENDS AN ENVOY TO ROMESTRIVES TO PUT AN END TO FEUDS—RECONCILES HUNTLY AND ARGYLE—GREAT REJOICING THEREAT—DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—DEATH OF JAMES BETHUNE, ARCHBISHOP OF GLASGOW, AND EXTINCTION OF THE HIERARCHY—UNDISPUTED ACCESSION OF JAMES TO THE ENGLISH THRONE—THE CATHOLICS FULL OF HOPE—THE MARQUESS OF HUNTLY AND OTHERS ALLOWED THE EXERCISE OF THEIR RELIGION—A JESUIT EXECUTED FOR AN ALLEGED CRIME AGAINST THE STATE—PERSECUTION IN 1628.

The King having overcome the popular tumult and returned to his capital, was now all-powerful, and prepared to inflict a new mortification on the refractory Kirk. This was nothing less than to reconcile to it the Catholic Earls, whose lives the ministers sought, in punishment of their “idolatry.” The Earls were willing to be politically reconciled; and they were so. The story of their conforming to the Kirk so completely as to sign the Confession of Faith and take what the ministers were pleased to call the sacrament, has all the appearance of being apocryphal. If, indeed, they signed, it was under coercion and in obedience to irresistible political emergency. The King had addressed a very peremptory letter to Huntly intimating to him that “the time was come when he must either embrace the Protestant faith, remain in Scotland, and be restored to his honors and estates, or leave his country forever, if his conscience were so kittle (tender) as to refuse these conditions; in which case he must never look to be a Scotchman again.” The letter thus concludes: “Deceive not yourself to think that by lingering of time your wife or your allies shall ever get you better conditions. I must love myself and my own estate better than all the world; and think not that I will suffer any professing a contrary religion, to dwell in this land.” James must have had a very kittle conscience himself, since, being a decided Episcopalian, and besides, a really great philosopher, whose wisdom commanded the admiration of Europe, he could do so much for Presbyterianism. But, then he was a believer in political exigencies; and in this he required his Catholic Barons to be like himself. Why should not Catholicism, as well as Episcopalianism, fraternise with their antipodes, the Presbyterian system? If the Barons did so fraternise to the extent of signing the absurd Confession of Faith, they could not but do so, as many a Kirk probationerer has done since, “with a smile or a sigh.”

King James was now, 1597, too busy with the trial of witches to grieve over his recent troubles. The border districts required also to be pacified; and this he speedily effected by dealing more severely than he was wont with offenders. But they were no ordinary offenders, and fourteen of them were taken and hanged, while thirty-six of the principal Barons, by whom the robbers had been encouraged, were seized and conveyed prisoners to Edinburgh. Parliament now assembled, and the Monarch being now so powerful, shewed that he had some new cause of alienation from England. In an address to his nobility, he complained of the wrongs which he had received in the execution of his Royal mother; the interruption in the payment of his annuity as heir apparent to the English Crown; the scornful answers to his temperate remonstrances; the injustice of Elizabeth in accusing him of exciting Poland and Denmark against her, and fostering rebellion in Ireland. Most of all, he was offended by the attempt recently made in the English Parliament to defeat his title to the throne of that kingdom. He was the more keenly sensitive on this point in consequence of the reports which daily reached him of the shattered health of the Queen. He could only take care to be on his guard against all possible occurrences. He now also resorted to his favourite purpose of introducing Bishops, and after much stormy controversy with the ministers, who contended that the project with its inherent evils, the dangers which it carried within its bowels, would be as fatal as was the wooden horse to the unwary Trojans, some fifty Bishops were appointed with seats in Parliament. The politic Monarch was far from foreseeing the bitter contests and bloody struggles “Prelacy” was destined to occasion in the days of his successors. In the meantime, it diverted, so far, the attention of the Kirk from its cruel work of persecuting Catholics.

A circumstance occurred this year, 1599, which greatly raised the hopes of the Catholics. The King wrote a book. This was the celebrated Basilicon Doron, which excited the admiration of all Europe, and was highly esteemed by the Pope. The Holy Father pronounced its author the most learned Prince of the time, and he also expressed the hope that, as he had written so much sound philosophy and so much truth, he would finally embrace the whole truth. The Catholics of Scotland also entertained this hope and were jubilant over the Royal learning. One of the King’s secretaries, who had been employed to copy the book, imprudently showed it to the minister, Andrew Melville, who took copies of certain passages, laid them before the Presbytery of St. Andrews, and accused the author, whose name he did not reveal, of having bitterly defamed the Kirk. The passages presented were probably those which contained an attack upon the Presbyterian form of Church government, and that the Prince of Wales, for whose teaching the work was written, was instructed to hold none for his friends but such as had been faithful to the late Queen of Scots. It was clear, the ministers argued, that no person entertaining such sentiments as were expressed in the book, could endure for any length of time the salutary discipline of the Kirk; and that the severe and sweeping censure pronounced upon the Scottish reformation, as the offspring of popular tumult and rebellion, very plainly indicated the author’s leaning to “Prelacy” and “Popery.” What could be expected, said they, of a writer who described the leaders of that glorious work as “fiery and seditious spirits,” who delighted to rule as “Tribuni plebis;” and, having found the gust of government sweet, had brought about the wreck of two Queens; and during a long minority had invariably placed themselves at the head of every faction which weakened and distracted the country! What was to be hoped for if those men, who had been ever the champions of the Truth, were to be held up to scorn and avoidance, in terms such as these: “Take heed, therefore, my son, to such Puritans, very pests in the Church and common weal, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oaths or promises bind; breathing nothing but seditions and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason; and making their own imaginations (without any warrant of the word) the square of their conscience. I protest before the Great God, and, since I am here as upon my Testament, it is no place for me to lie in—that ye shall never find, with any Highland or Border thieves, greater ingratitude, and more lies, and vile perjuries, than with these fanatical spirits.”

A rumour had spread through the country that King James was the author of the obnoxious passages, and that he had given instructions to the Prince which shewed inveterate enmity to the Kirk. It was thought that the best that could be done, in order to silence the clamour, was to publish the work. It was published accordingly; and it did more, Archbishop Spottiswood believed, in favour of James’ title, by the admiration it caused in England for the piety and wisdom of its Royal author, than all the discourses on the succession that were circulated at the time. In Scotland, as was to be expected, it produced quite an opposite feeling. The wrath of the ministers was extreme. It was perfect phrensy.

The favour in which the Catholics of Scotland now stood was shewn on occasion of the arrival of a French ambassador. The English Queen and the ministers of the Kirk were dissatisfied because they suspected that this ambassador’s mission was connected with the King’s intrigues with Catholics abroad. The ambassador was of the House of Bethune, and a younger brother of the great Sully. He was much caressed at the Scottish Court. He had brought with him a Jesuit, and this priest was frequently closeted with the King. Sully was, of course, allowed the full exercise of his religion; and this caused the ministers to grieve over the contrast of the present times of liberality and indifference to the Kirk, with the glorious days when it was death to celebrate mass in Scotland. But the wrath of the ministers was impotent and the Monarch all powerful. He was too well informed to heed their censures, and too strong to dread their waning influence. When the ambassador of a Catholic Power was cordially received at the Court of Scotland, it was fitting and opportune that the King should send an envoy to Catholic Powers and to the chief of those Powers. Pourie Ogilvy, a Catholic Baron, was sent to Italy and Spain. At Venice and Rome, this diplomatist represented, and, as he alleged, by authority of the King, that this Monarch was prepared to receive instruction in the Catholic Faith and favourably hear its expounders. In pain he assumed a still bolder tone. His Royal Master, he said, had resolved to punish the insults heaped upon him by Queen Elizabeth, and for this purpose was anxious to form an alliance with King Philip. Let them, therefore, conclude a treaty. The King of Scots, on his part, would become a Catholic, establish the true Faith in his kingdom, and, as a pledge of his sincerity, send his son to be educated at the Court of Spain. He would require, on the other hand, that Philip should renounce all claim, to the English crown, advance to King James 500,000 ducats and send to his aid a force of 12,000 men. Philip was distrustful. He doubted the envoy’s credentials; and although he treated him with courtesy, gave him no encouragement.

Another envoy was despatched to Rome. He claimed that he was commissioned by King James. This envoy, Mr. Drummond, carried with him to the Papal Court a letter from his King to Clement VIII. in which it was suggested that the residence of a Scotch ambassador at Rome would be attended with the best effects, and he proposed that Drummond, Bishop of Vaison, a native of Scotland, should be appointed to this office. The ambassador proposed, moreover, and in the King’s name, that His Majesty’s son should be brought up in the Catholic Faith, and that King James would place his castle of Edinburgh in the hands of the Catholics. Ogilvy had acted a double part. He was a spy of Cecil as well as an envoy of the King of Scots. It was otherwise as regarded Drummond. The letter which he bore to Pope Clement, when challenged by Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador, was shown to be genuine, bearing the signature of King James. This the King denied. But the letter was produced and published by Cardinal Bellarmine, when it was proved to bear the King’s signature. On investigation being made, the Scotch Secretary of State, Lord Balmerino, who was a Catholic and nearly related to the Bishop of Vaison, confessed that he had presented the letter along with a mass of other papers, and that the King signed it without looking at its contents, This the wary Monarch was not likely to do; nor was it believed that he did. The light punishment inflicted on Balmerino showed that he had made himself a scapegoat to screen his Royal Master. However all this may be, it is certain that there was intercourse with Rome which produced a most favourable impression in the minds of all the Catholics, as regarded the Scottish Monarch. All parties in England now favoured him. In the summer of 1602 the English Lord Henry Howard wrote to the Earl of Mar, that “all men spoke as freely and certainly of the succession of the King of Scots, as if they were about to take the Oath of Allegiance to him in his own capital.”

It remained only for the politic Monarch, after so many triumphs, the fruit of his “King-craft” and diplomacy, to put an end to the feuds which distracted his kingdom. The families of Argyle and Huntly were reconciled and a marriage arranged between the former nobleman’s daughter and the son of the latter. The Duke of Lennox and a party headed by the Queen renounced their deadly variance with the Earl of Mar. The powerful Houses of Moray and Huntly, whose inveterate feud of forty years had so often spread havoc and terror over the finest portions of the country, came under the judicious and firm arbitration of King James and was at an end forever. This was great success. The English resident wrote to his Court: “Nothing was now heard but the voice of festivity and gratulation; the nobility feasting each other, consorting like brethren, and all’s united in one loving bond for the surety and service of the King.”

The year 1603 was a year of great events. It saw the bitter end of that most cruel enemy of all Catholics, Queen Elizabeth. It beheld also the undisputed accession of Scotland’s King to the throne of England, and the death of James Bethune, Archbishop of Glasgow, with whom perished the ancient Hierarchy of Scotland, which had subsisted without interruption ever since the second century.

The Catholics of Scotland, although deprived of their usual government, which they prized so highly, now enjoyed peace, and, encouraged by the recent conduct of the Monarch towards them, entertained the hope that there would be a long continuance of tranquillity. We shall now see to what extent this hope was realized.

The more influential Catholics of Scotland continued to be favoured by the politic King James after he succeeded to the English crown. The Earl of Huntly, now a marquess, received the Royal sanction for the private exercise of his religion. The same favour was extended to Gordon of Craig, and it does not appear that for some time any serious persecution was attempted. The Catholics of Scotland were allowed to maintain an agent at London who negotiated for them, and so saved them from the interference of the established Church. The severe laws against them were still, however, on the Statute Book, and there wanted not, in those dark days, the spirit of persecution which, ere long, caused them to be put in force. Several Jesuits who had returned from exile, were tried and once more sentenced to banishment. This was, as yet, the utmost penalty; for, although John O’gilvie, a Jesuit, was executed at Glasgow, in 1615, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, it was for an allege crime against the State, the crime of treason. No other priest was put to death under the cruel statutes that still existed.

We learn from a letter of Father William Lesly, who died Dean of St. Quintin’s in France, that in 1628, Charles I. had addressed a proclamation to the Bishops and Ministers, requiring them to send to the Privy Council, twice in the year, a list of all Roman Catholics who refused to attend the service of the established Church. When convicted they were to be excommunicated and their goods confiscated. In another letter of date 1st September, 1630, he states that the Catholics who had appeared before the Council, in the previous month of July, had all been sentenced to banishment, Seven weeks were allowed for their departure and one-third of their rents was granted for the maintenance of their families, which would be forfeited if they returned to their country and, besides, there was a penalty of fine and imprisonment. Father Lesly, soon after 1636, was appointed Superior of the Scotch College at Douay. His brother, Father Andrew Lesly, was a Missionary in Buchan. In May, 1647, this priest was arrested and committed to prison at Aberdeen. In March,. 1648, he was in Edinburgh gaol, from which, through the influence of the Count de Montreal, the French ambassador, he was released in July of the same year, and ordered to quit the realm under penalty of death if he ventured to return.