The government, on the other hand, was equally resolute.247 The Privy Council called several of the ministers before them; and Dury, one of the most active, they banished from Edinburgh.248 Measures still more violent were about to be taken, when they were interrupted by one of those singular events which not unfrequently occurred in Scotland, and which strikingly evince the inherent weakness of the Crown, notwithstanding the inordinate pretensions it commonly assumed.
This was the Raid of Ruthven, which happened in 1582, and in consequence of which the person of James VI. was held in durance for ten months.249 The clergy, true to the policy which now governed them, loudly approved of the captivity of the king, and pronounced it to be a godly act.250 Dury, who had been driven from his pulpit, was brought back to the capital in triumph;251 and the General Assembly, meeting at Edinburgh, ordered that the imprisonment of James should be justified by every minister to his own congregation.252
In 1583, the king recovered his liberty, and the struggle became more deadly than ever; the passions of both parties being exasperated by the injuries each had inflicted on the other. The Ruthven conspiracy, having been declared treason, as it undoubtedly was, Dury preached in its favour, and openly defended it; and although, under the influence of momentary fear, he afterwards withdrew what he had said,253 it was evident, from other circumstances, that his feelings were shared by his brethren.254 A number of them being summoned before the king for their seditious language, bad him take heed what he was about, and reminded him that no occupant of the throne had ever prospered after the ministers had begun to threaten him.255 Melville, who exercised immense influence over both clergy and people, bearded the king to his face, refused to account for what he had delivered in the pulpit, and told James that he perverted the laws both of God and of man.256 Simpson likened him to Cain, and warned him to beware of the wrath of God.257 Indeed, the spirit now displayed by the Church was so implacable, that it seemed to delight in venting itself in the most repulsive manner. In 1585, a clergyman, named Gibson, in a sermon which he preached in Edinburgh, denounced against the king the curse of Jeroboam, that he should die childless, and that his race should end with him.258 The year after this happened, James, finding that Elizabeth was evidently determined to take his mother's life, bethought him of what was valued in that age as an unfailing resource, and desired the clergy to offer up prayers on behalf of Mary. This, they almost unanimously refused.259 And not only did they abstain from supplication themselves, but they resolved that no one else should do what they had declined. The archbishop of Saint Andrews being about to officiate before the king, they induced a certain John Cowper to station himself in the pulpit beforehand, so as to exclude the prelate. Nor was it until the captain of the guard threatened to pull Cowper from the place he had usurped, that the service could go on, and the king be allowed to hear his own mother prayed for, in this sad crisis of her fate, when it was still uncertain whether she would be publicly executed, or whether, as was more generally believed, she would be secretly poisoned.260
In 1594, John Ross stated in the pulpit, that the advisers of the king were all traitors, and that the king himself was likewise a traitor. He was also a rebel and a reprobate. That such should be the case, was not surprising, considering the parentage of James. For, his mother was a Guise, and a persecutor of the saints. He avoided open persecution, and spoke them fair; but his deeds did not correspond to his words; and, so great was his dissimulation, that he was the most arrant hypocrite then living in Scotland.261
In 1596, David Black, one of the most influential of the Protestant ministers, delivered a sermon, which made much noise. He said, in his discourse, that all kings were children of the devil; but that in Scotland the head of the court was Satan himself. The members of the council, he added, were cormorants, and the lords of the session miscreants. The nobility had degenerated: they were godless; they were dissemblers; they were the enemies of the Church. As to the queen of England, she was nothing but an atheist. And as to the queen of Scotland, all he would say was, that they might pray for her if they list, and because it was the fashion to do so; but that there was no reason for it, inasmuch as no good would ever come from her to them.262
For preaching this sermon, Black was summoned by the privy-council. He refused to attend, because it was for a spiritual tribunal, and not for a temporal one, to take notice of what was uttered in the pulpit. The Church, to be sure, he would obey; but, having received his message from God, he was bound to deliver it, and it would be a dereliction of duty, if he were to allow the civil power to judge such matters.263 The king, greatly enraged, ordered Black to be cast into prison; and it is difficult to see what other course was open to him; though it was certain that neither this, nor any measure he could adopt, would tame the indomitable spirit of the Scotch Church.264
In December the same year, the Church proclaimed a fast; and Welsh preached in Edinburgh a sermon, with the view of rousing the people against their rulers. The king, he told his audience, had formerly been possessed by a devil, and that devil being put out, seven worse ones had come in its place. It was, therefore, evident that James was demented, and it became lawful to take the sword of justice from his hands; just as it would be lawful for servants or children to seize the head of their family, if it had pleased heaven to afflict him with madness. In such case, the preacher observed, it would be right to lay hold of the madman, and to tie him hand and foot, that he might do no further harm.265
The hatred felt by the clergy was at this period so bitter, and the democratic spirit in them so strong,266 that they seemed unable to restrain themselves; and Andrew Melville, in an audience with the king, in 1596, proceeded to personal insults, and, seizing him by the sleeve, called him God's silly vassal.267 The large amount of truth contained in this bitter taunt, increased its pungency. But the ministers did not always confine themselves to words.268 Their participation in the Ruthven conspiracy is unquestionable; and it is probable that they were privy to the last great peril to which James was exposed, before he escaped from that turbulent land, which he was believed to govern. Certain it is, that the Earl of Gowrie, who, in 1600, entrapped the king into his castle in order to murder him, was the hope and the mainstay of the Presbyterian clergy, and was intimately associated with their ambitious schemes.269 Such, indeed, was their infatuation on behalf of the assassin, that, when his conspiracy was defeated, and he himself slain, several of the ministers propagated a report that Gowrie had fallen a victim to the royal perfidy, and that, in point of fact, the only plot which ever existed was one concocted by the king, with fatal art, against his mild and innocent host.270
An absurdity of this sort271 was easily believed in an ignorant, and, therefore, a credulous, age.