spirit rather than tlie letter will best insure the object of their enactment." But some good sprang also from the Hampton Court Conference ; results which none , probably had anticipated. " Reynolds, the Puritan, had I suggested a new translation of the Bible by his majes- ty's special sanction and authority. The vanity of the king was touched, and the great work was ordered to be executed." See English Versions. But what, perhaps, decided him in his course, if decision could ever become manifest in the actions of James I, to iden- tify himself wholly with the Episcopalians, was the f/unjiorrder plot (q. v.), which was maturing about this time (1604-5). It exterminated m James the last ves- tiges of favor for Komanism when he found that from Komc he never could expect anything but a death-war- rant unless the English Church changed to a Roman Catholic State Church. And if James had declared in Parliament in IGO-i "that he had never any intention of granting toleration to the Catholics," he could now be justitied in adding "that he would drive every one of them fnim tlie land," as he did threaten to do towards all Nonconformists. As if the conspiracy, which had fortunately failed, was not worthy the censure even of Rome, but deserved commendation, one of the principal leaders, the Jesuit Garnet, was even canonized by the Roman court, of course not openly on the strength of his assistance in the diabolical project, but " on the faith of a. pi-etended miracle, his face having, it was said, been seen in a straw sprinkled with his blood." Thus Rome "did its very best to identify, or at least to confound, one of the most diabolical projects ever conceived, with the evidences of transcendent sanctity" (Baxter, p. 565), and for Rome's treachery the honest Puritans of Eng- land were made to suffer. The policy of the king (who by this time had assumed the title of king of Great Britain) was, however, not to be confined to England. In Scotland also the power of the Puritr.ns was to be utterly broken, and the episcopate to be re-established. In August, 1606, a Parliament was held at Perth which had this object in view, and the decision arrived at, by a union of the nobility and tl.e prelatical faction, to erect seventeen bishoprics, and to bestow on these new- ly-created prelates the benefices, honors, and privileges heretofore awarded to those of the Roman Catholic Church. After having properly disposed of the leaders of the Scottish Church, a General Assembly was uncon- stitutionally convened at Linlithgow on Dec. 10, 1606. As most of the synods opposed its acts, new persecutions were the issue. Feb. 16, 1610, the king established two ecclesiastical tribunals, to be presided over by the two archbishops, and designated these tribunals as " Courts of High Commission,"' uniting the two shortly after their establishment. This ecclesiastical tribunal, a sort of Inquisition, combined the attributes of a temporal and sjiiritual tribunal ; but it was boimd to no definite laws, and was armed with the united terrors of civil and ecclesiastical despotism. On June 8, 1610, a meeting was finally held at (ilasgow, and there, by means of bribes, which are said to have reached the not inconsid- erable sum of £300,000 sterling, the prelatical measures were carried, and all opposition nominally overcome. But the people by no means seemed ready to coincide with the opinion of the king, and many were the dis- turbances that prevailed throughout the land. What- ever work had to be done to further the royal schemes was done quietly, and no General Assembly met until August, 1616, this time held at Aberdeen, and especial- ly celebrated in the history of Scotland by the issue of a new confession of faith projected by the prelatical party, and which, although tolerably orthodox, was re- markablv at variance with the disciiJine of the Estab- lished Church, Affairs assumed another and more seri- ous turn in the summer of 1617, when James, on a visit which he paid to Scotland, succeeded, though not with- out great difficidty, in securing from Parliament, which he had newly summoned, as well as from the General Assembly, the approbation of such regidations as, along
with other innovations previously made since liis acces- sion to the throne of England, brought the Scottis'i Church — in government, in ceremonies, and in its posi- tion in relation to the civil power — very nearly to the model of the ecclesiastical establishment of England. Change, however, as the king might, the constitution and ordinances, almost without number, published again and again, public opinion by no means altered even for a moment, and the 19th century still finds Scotland true to her Puritanic notions of the 16th centurj'. The king had succeeded in securing the adoption of llie " five arti ■ clcs of Perth" (q. v.); he had succeeded in suppressing the Scotch I'resbyterian Church, but he failed to con- quer it.
In England, also, the shortsighted policy of James now bniught distrust and discredit. The execution of Raleigh and the denial of assistance to the Protestant Bohemians, both sacrifices to the court of Spain, the latter even at the expense of his son-in-law, whom the Bohemians had chosen for their king, hardh' justify Baxter in the statement that king James's object was the consolidation of the Protestant interests, and that " his treatment of the Puritans was marked by a lenien- cy strongly contrasting with the more vigorous course adopted Ijy his predecessors, and naturally occasioning a difference of opinion as to its wisdom and propriety" (p. 568). If toleration was the policy of James I, it did not manifest itself against the Independents, who, " after repeated and fruitless applications for toleration" (Bax- ter, p. 572), were obliged to go to distant lands to find a place wdiere they could follow the, dictates of their con- science. Certainly the state did not pay the expenses of these pilgrim fathers in 1619 because they were Pu- ritans, but simply because they were likely to settle and to cultivate laud otherwise almost worthless. In IG'H James was finally driven, both by the opposition of Par- liament to his poliey in seeking a closer alliance with Spain and by tlie clamor of the people for a war with that country, to dispatch an army into Germany to re- cover his son-in-law's possessions. But, as if his meas- ure of tribulation was not yet full, this enterprise proved a total failure, and brought discredit upon the English name. The king also assumed a ridiculous attitude on the question of the observance of the Sabbath. Roman Catholicism is wont to look upon Sunday as a holiday; the Puritans, however, desired it observed as a Christian day of rest. To counteract these efforts, James publish- ed a " Book of Sports," advising the people that Sunday was not to be a day mainly for religious rest and wor- ship, but of games and revels (Skeats, p. 47). See Sar- iJyiTAUiAN CoNTUovERSY. This rcigu, so detrimental to the interests of the English and Scottish State and the Church of Christ, were finally brought to a termina" tion by the death of James, March 27. 1625. Severe as may have been some of the historians who have written the fate of this king, none can be said to have exagger- ated the many despicable features of his character; and we need not wonder that his vacillating course towards his subjects, favoring first the Puritans, then the Epis- copalians ; tightening first the reins, and then loosening them against the Romanists — all inspired, not by the true spirit of toleration, but by artful designs, well ena- ble us to repeat of him Macaulay's judgment, that James I was "made up of two men — a wittj', well-read scholar, who wrote, disputed, and harangued, and a iter\-ous, drivelling idiot who acted."