lieved from subscribing the Oath of Assurance; but the Privy Council, instead of granting their request, recommended his Majesty to insist upon every minister taking the oath before he took his seat in the Assembly. His Majesty accordingly instructed his Commissioner, Lord Carmichael, to impose the oath, and if the ministers refused to take it, to dissolve the Assembly.

When Lord Carmichael arrived in Edinburgh, he found that the ministers were firm in their resolution not to comply. In fact, a new objection had been added to their old ones: it was Erastian in an earthly monarch to fence the door of the Assembly with such an oath. The Commissioner felt that, with men in such a mood, to dissolve the Assembly might be equally fatal to the Church and the king. He therefore despatched a messenger to London, representing the state of matters, and asking for instructions. At the same time, the ministers sent up a memorial to Carstares, begging his friendly offices in this critical posture of affairs.

Carstares had been from home, and happened to return to Kensington on the evening of the very day on which the flying packet had arrived. But the king, under the advice of Lord Stair and Lord Tarbet, who represented the refusal of the clergy as rebellious, had already drawn up instructions to his Commissioner, making the Assurance imperative, and had delivered them to the messenger. Carstares read his letters; and having learned the nature of the despatches the king had sent off, he saw that no time was to be lost, if the Church was to be saved. He managed to get hold of the messenger just as he was ready to start, and required him, in the king's name, to deliver his despatches to him. In possession of these, he went directly to the king's apartment. The lord-inwaiting told him that his Majesty was gone to bed; but Carstares said that he was come on business of the greatest moment, and must get admittance. On entering the room, he found his Majesty asleep. He drew aside the curtain, went down upon his knees at the bedside, and then wakened the king. Amazed to see his chaplain at such an hour and in such a posture, he asked what was the matter. "I am come," said Carstares, "to beg my life." "Is it possible," said William, you have done anything deserving of death?" Carstares told him he had detained the royal messenger, and produced the despatches he had taken from him. William was not a man easily to brook such an interference, and sharply asked Carstares how he had dared to countermand his orders.

Carstares

begged to be heard in his defence. William listened attentively while he urged that the Episcopalians were already his enemies, that this oath would make the Presbyterians his enemies too; that oaths were of little avail to a prince if he lost the hearts of his subjects; but that, if he yielded this to them, he would bind them for ever to his throne. The frown gradually left William's countenance as Carstares proceeded; and in the end, he told him to throw the despatches into the fire, and write such instructions as he thought best, and that he would sign them. It was done, and the messenger was soon upon the road travelling post-haste to Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, both the Commissioner and the ministers were in the utmost perplexity. On the very next day the Assembly was to meet, and still the messenger had not returned. Lord Carmichael, by the instructions he had, was bound to dissolve the Assembly; the ministers were determined to assert their authority, and meet notwithstanding. Both alike dreaded the result. Happily the messenger arrived on the morning of the eventful day, and, when his packet was opened, it was found, to the joy of all, that it was his Majesty's pleasure to dispense with the oaths. When the Assembly met, every minister was more hearty than another in praise of the king. From that day to this there has been no collision between the Church and the sovereign in regard to the calling of Assemblies. The Moderator dissolves the Assembly as if all the power were with him; the Commissioner dissolves it as if all the power were with him. Either, in like manner, nominates a day for a new one. Thus the old question is still kept alive, but the perfect understanding and inviolate faith of both the parties have prevented it from assuming a troublesome shape.

The Assembly, on proceeding to business, showed its gratitude to the king, by appointing a commission to receive the Episcopal ministers, who qualified themselves according to the terms of the recent act of parliament. It ordained the Lowland synods to furnish sixteen ministers, who should proceed to the north and labour for three months in the parishes which had been deprived of their Episcopal incumbents, and, at the end of the three months, to send sixteen others in their stead, and so on continuously till the Assembly again met. It arranged that presbyteries should send commissioners to the

1 This interesting episode in the history M'Cormick's Life of Carstares, pp. 57-61.

the Church is well told in

Assembly in proportion to their numerical strength, and thus the representative character of that high Court was perfected. Regulations were also made about appeals, translations, probationers, forms of process, and modes of preaching.1 Thus these fathers of the Revolution Church began to build up their broken walls.

1

CHAPTER XXII.

IN traversing the period subsequent to the Revolution, we feel that we have no longer our old guides to conduct us on our way. John Knox and James Melville are no more. Calderwood has been forty years in his grave, and we have him no more to lead us, not only along the highroad, but into all the quiet bypaths of history. Baillie also is gone, and we miss his pleasant talk about the men and affairs of his time. Wodrow has indeed sprung up to supply their place. He was a boy of ten when William landed at Torbay; but the history which he afterwards wrote goes back into the past, and stops when the Church was emancipated from her sufferings; and his "Correspondence" gives us only some cursory glimpses of the period which followed.

No chronicler arose to chronicle the Revolution in the Church. Nor did any leading Churchman arise to leave the impress of his mind upon the age. The history of Knox is the history of the Reformation. The influence of Melville is to be traced everywhere in the first struggle of Presbytery with Episcopacy. The period of the Covenant without Henderson is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But the Revolution has no such man, around whose name all the incidents of the period cluster. The Kennedies, Simsons, and Crichtons, who were raised to the Moderator's chair, are names unknown. William Carstares, was undoubtedly the ablest Scotch minister of his time, but he was more a statesman than a Churchman. He rendered great services to the Church; but he did it not from his influence with his fellowministers, but simply from his influence with the king. The Church was firmly founded before his voice was once heard in in any of its pulpits, or in any of its courts.

In truth, the ecclesiastical Revolution was not fitted to bring out great talents. The Church was revolutionised from

1 See Acts of the Assembly, 1694.

without, not from within. The king and the parliament deter mined that it was to be Presbyterian, and not Episcopal; they determined who were to exercise its government, and who were to occupy its pulpits. The pattern of the new tabernacle was prescribed in the parliament-house. When the Courts of the Church met, they had little to do but to walk in the footsteps of those who had gone before them. There were no new truths to be published-no new polity to be built up. The ancient tracks and the ancient landmarks still remained.

It is difficult to form a correct conception of the state of the Church in the period succeeding the Revolution. Episcopacy was thrown down, but still it was not quite levelled with the ground. Some parts of the ruin remained almost entire. The bishops were no longer admitted to the parliament or the Privy Council; their factors no longer drew the Episcopal revenues; their voice was no longer heard in the cathedral churches; but most of them still lingered in the country, and received from the Episcopal clergy an homage, which, perhaps, was all the more sincere that it was given to misfortune. In secret they bestowed their apostolic benediction, and still communicated by the imposition of their hands the apostolic gift.

A multitude of the Episcopal ministers still occupied the parish manses, and preached in the parish pulpits. It was the earnest desire of the monarch that they should all acknowledge the Presbyterian discipline, and be received into the bosom of the Presbyterian Church. His tolerant principles led him to wish this. Policy dictated the same thing. If these men became the recipients of his bounty, they would become the supporters of his government; if they were driven to dissent and reduced to starvation, they would continue to plot for the return of the Stewarts. The majority of the Episcopal clergy refused to take the Oath of Allegiance; some of them continued to pray for King James; the whole body were disaffected; yet William winked at this, and importuned Assembly after Assembly to receive into the Church as many as made their submission.

At first the commissions and presbyteries of the Church looked as if they were resolved to root out every Episcopal incumbent as a cumberer of the ground, and thus completely clear the field. But in time they grew weary of ecclesiastical slaughter, and showed a disposition to comply with the merciful intentions of the king. A considerable number of the

Episcopal clergy were recognised by the Revolution Church. According to act of parliament, those who took the oaths to government, signed the Confession of Faith according to a prescribed formula, and submitted to the Presbyterian polity, were not only protected in their livings, but admitted to the judicatories of the Church. Many who refused to do this were still allowed to continue in their manses and pulpits.

The truth is, in some districts of the country it was no easy matter to dispossess the Episcopal incumbents. The people had become attached to them, and would not allow them to be turned out of their churches to make way for an intruder; or powerful patrons threw over them the broad shield of their authority, and defied the presbyteries. There were cases of ministers who had been expelled from their churches returning; and other cases in which serious riots took place when the presbyteries attempted to force Presbyterian pastors upon reluctant and reclaiming Episcopal congregations. The Assembly thought it right to represent these things to the government, and new acts of parliament were the result.1

Some districts of the country were almost entirely Presbyterian; others almost entirely Episcopalian. In some places there was a division of sentiment, and in these not unfrequently a compromise was made. Thus, in the Collegiate Church of Dunfermline, an Episcopal minister conducted the services during one part of the day, a Presbyterian during the other, and either had his own congregation. It was the same in the Collegiate Church of Haddington. In Muthill the Episcopal curate maintained his place for nearly twenty years after the Revolution; and the first Presbyterian minister, who is reputed, according to the tradition of the country, to have been chosen as much for his physical strength as his spiritual graces, that so he might hold his own, was compelled for a time to preach in the churchyard, while the Episcopal divine occupied the church.2 In other parishes, so strong was Episcopacy that the Presbyterians were obliged to assemble in meeting-houses, and leave the Episcopalians in possession of the churches. At the time of the union, eighteen years after the Revolution, there were a hundred and sixty-five Episcopal ministers still within the pale of the Establishment, living in

1 See Acts of Assembly, p. 243-Act anent Intrusion upon Kirks. Also Acts of Parliament, Will. III., parl. i. sect. v. chapters xxii. and xxvii. 2 The Minutes of the Presbytery of Auchterarder, Nov. 9, 1703, and Feb. 1, 1704.