mended by the Convention of Leith. But he had already sown the seeds of that religious strife which divided Scotland for nearly two hundred years. The novel and most unprimitive type of service which he had introduced prejudiced the people against anything resembling the English Prayer Book which had been for some years employed in Scotland and in 1560 was used even in Glasgow. His coarse gibes at the bishops, the laying on of whose hands in ordination had been contemptuously rejected, had done their work. The new attempt to change the government of the Church merely resulted first in the institution of nominal bishops, unconsecrated, and the tools of the nobility, and then in the establishment of a strict Presbyterian polity in 1592. That was the work of Andrew Melville, one of the ablest men of the time, who destroyed the old educational routine of the Scottish universities and made them the handmaids of the new ecclesiastical system.

James VI of Scotland and I of England (1566-1625) was an astute and ingenious monarch. Though he was vain, he loved peace, and before he became king of England he had displayed considerable wisdom in establishing constitutional relations between the Scottish Crown and the ministers of religion. He had set his heart on effecting a closer spiritual union between the two countries, and for that end he determined that the titular episcopate which already existed in the north of Scotland should be made into a genuine episcopate for the whole country. He secured, not altogether by honourable means, the almost unanimous assent of the General Assembly held at Glasgow in 1610, and three ministers from Scotland were then consecrated bishops in London. It was wisely arranged that no part in the consecration was taken by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and in this way any suggestion of subjecting the Church of Scotland to the Church of England was avoided. The king afterwards bought back with his

own money alienated Church lands to support the bishops. Some of the new bishops were men of real piety and learning, and they promoted the parish school system which proved so great a benefit to the country.

Charles I (1600-1649) was more sincerely religious than his father, but he was less clever. He secured for the Scottish clergy the teinds or tithes which are still enjoyed by the ministers of the Established Church. But he alienated the nobility by an attempt to make them restore their ill-gotten lands to the Church, and this, no less than his unwise attempts to regulate the ritual of the Church on his own authority, led to the downfall of episcopacy in southern Scotland. The introduction of a new Book of Common Prayer for the use of the Church of Scotland, July the 23rd, 1637, was the occasion of that downfall.

With regard to this Prayer Book grave misconceptions are still prevalent. It is still supposed that it was primarily intended to supplant extempore prayers, and it is still described as 'Laud's liturgy' and, because Laud's, 'Romish'. It was intended to replace existing books, that of Knox and a book mixing the English service with that of Knox. To call it' Romish' is to pay the Church of Rome an undeserved compliment which that Church would be the first to repel. And though Laud gave the book his help and his approval, he had not originally wished for it, because he desired that the English book itself should be used in Scotland. And he says explicitly, 'I would have nothing at all to do with the manner of introducing it '.1 It was prepared on the basis of English books by two Scottish bishops, John Maxwell of Ross, and a gentle scholar, James Wedderburn of Dunblane, and apart from the royal declaration which precedes it, it is a book of which Scotland may be justly proud.

Mythology has supplemented 'alliteration's artful aid' in blackening' Laud's liturgy'. It is more than doubtful 1 Works, vol. iii, p. 336 (Parker, Oxford, 1849).

that Jenny Geddes hurled a stool at the Dean of Edinburgh when he began to read the collect, and the tablet erected to her honour in St. Giles's Church is only a monument of modern credulity. The historical facts are that serious riots, apparently planned four months earlier, took place in the churches of Edinburgh, and the bishop was brutally assaulted in the streets. The populace became frantic, and the nobility, determined to keep what they had got, fomented the opposition to the king and the bishops. A National League and Covenant' was craftily drafted in the form of a protest against Popery, a protest which many dared not refuse to sign though they knew that it was really intended to inflame the people against the Scottish episcopate. Large numbers of all classes did sign, often under serious threats of violence. The university of St. Andrews refused the covenant, and at Aberdeen, which for generations was a stronghold of episcopacy, the commissioners were politely offered a collation but not signatures. As we know that even a century later no language but the Gaelic was spoken over at least half of Scotland, we may reasonably conclude that in 1638 there were comparatively few who understood the relation between the Pope and the Prayer Book, a book which not one person in a hundred could possibly have seen.

After the Edinburgh riots the Covenanters proceeded to make preparations for a General Assembly at Glasgow. It met in the cathedral church November the 21st, 1638. At first the disorder was so great that a contemporary Presbyterian wrote, 'we might learn from Canterbury, yea from the Pope, yea from the Turks or pagans, modesty and manners'. A series of charges of the most abominable kind, including adultery and incest, had been drawn up by the presbytery of Edinburgh to libel the bishops. These disgusting calumnies having been read and approved by the 1 Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, vol. i, p. 123 (Edinburgh, 1841).

Assembly, all the fourteen bishops were deposed, and eight suffered the sentence of excommunication, which carried with it the loss of every civil right. It so happened that the reader had opened the Bible at the words, They shall put you out of the synagogues, yea the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service'. He was told to choose another lesson, and after a virulent discourse from the Moderator, the Assembly sang a psalm and departed, we are told,' with humble joy casting ourself and our poor church in the arms of our good God '.

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) strove to replace the Church of England by an efficient Calvinistic organization meant to include Presbyterians, Baptists, and Independents. He believed in his cause. And his extraordinary capacity for dealing with events and opponents is shown in every line of his face. Sometimes he resembles Mohammed and sometimes he resembles Mazarin. His ferocity in Ireland is revolting, and in his dealings with France and Spain the salesman is as conspicuous as the saint. His small kindness to the Jews and the Socinians, who were too weak to hurt him, gratified his conscience as much as his persecution of the Church that he feared. The use of the Prayer Book was prohibited under heavy penalties, churches were desecrated, the clergy ejected from their livings, forbidden to keep schools, preach, or administer the sacraments. The story of the manner in which Cromwell's Puritan spirit came to make room for secular enterprise forms part of the history of Great Britain. To the history of the Universities belongs the fact that he protected them from the assaults of the more extreme fanatics, while Heads of Colleges and Fellows were expelled by the score.

It was when Cromwell was Serenissimus Dominus Protector that Dr. Brian Walton, the great Orientalist, produced the Polyglot Bible, for which nine languages were employed.

Deprived of his preferments by the Government and forbidden to officiate publicly, he was allowed to have the necessary paper free of duty, and toiled in Oxford and London till the work was done. He had reason to believe that his great book would be suppressed if it were not dedicated to the usurper who, in spite of all, was a friend of learning. He therefore composed two different endings to the preface. In one of these the Protector and his Council are courteously mentioned. In the other the book is dedicated to King Charles II who was still 'over the water', and the Protector and his Council are not explicitly mentioned but included under the simple description of those by whose favour we have received the paper duty-free '.1

The Spectator of September the 26th, 1712, has preserved a diverting story in which there figures the good Puritan divine who attended Cromwell on his death-bed, Dr. Thomas Goodwin, President of Magdalen College.2 'A young adventurer in the republic of letters with a good cargo of Latin and Greek' waited on the President in order to be examined. He hoped to be admitted as an undergraduate of the college. A gloomy servant conducted him to a long gallery, darkened at noonday and illuminated by a single candle. After a time he was led into a chamber hung with black, until the Head of the College came out to him from an inner room with half a dozen night-caps upon his head, and religious horror in his countenance. The young man trembled, but his fears increased when instead of being asked about his Latin and Greek he was examined how he abounded in grace-' Whether he was of the number of the elect; what was the occasion of the conversion; upon

1 H. J. Todd, Life of Brian Walton, vol. i, p. 84 (Rivington, London, 1821).

He has been wrongly supposed to have originated the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. See app. note 17, p. 270.