Although he was unable to show the same sure-footedness when it came to effecting liturgical changes,15 as far as his remolding of the Kirk’s polity was concerned, James had cause to be satisfied with those ecclesiastical ambitions which had been realized by the time of his death in 1625. His son Charles’s diplomatic failings were to do spectacular damage to all James had built up, but it must be admitted that there had been signs that James’ authority was not invulnerable. His insistence on pushing the Five Articles of Perth through the Assembly in 1618, and Parliament in 1621, won him little favor. At all levels of Scottish society, the Articles, or at least some of them, bore for many the savor of popery.16 Again, although James’s large financial demands upon Parliament in 1621 were voted through, there is no doubt that these contributed to a souring of attitudes towards him on the part of both merchants and landowners during the final years of his reign. By the time of his death in 1625, there were ample signs that Scotland’s quiescence could not be taken for granted: “The convergence of fiscal demands and religious change was an explosive mix, and one that would return to destroy Charles I.”17
Charles I (1625–1649)
One important ingredient in the fateful mix was teind reform. Charles would have known that this was an issue of particular sensitivity to patrons, yet it did not prevent his alienating many. The reform was part of the package which came to be known as Charles’s Revocation Scheme. The background to the scheme was a principle that had emerged out of the minorities which had plagued the Stewart monarchy in previous centuries. The idea was that a new king, provided he acted before his twenty–fifth birthday, could annul grants of property (and heritable offices and pensions) made during his minority. In a declaration made within four months of his accession, Charles twisted this concession in order to suggest he was entitled to a revocation of all royal grants since 1540. It is probable that the king’s basic goal was to make a timely demonstration of his overarching supremacy, and that he had, in fact, no intention of undertaking a wholesale annexation.18 Be that as it may, the arrogant presentation of the announcement, and Charles’s continuing lack of diplomatic savoir faire, ensured that a sense of hostility and distrust was ineradicably sown amongst the nobility.
Although a key aim of the project (ratified by Parliament in 1633) was the boosting of crown income, the king’s desire was also to redistribute the teinds so as to put the funding of poor relief, schools, colleges and ministers on a sound footing. For both ministers and heritors, this part of the scheme was something of a breakthrough, in that the situation that had evolved under James VI, had often bred confusion over who owned the teinds as well as contention over the amount due to minister or titular. Now, in a way that reiterated the vision of the first Book of Discipline, each landowner or heritor would have his own teinds,19 subject to a proportion going to the parish minister as stipend. Teind redistribution was a slow and complex business, not least because, in every locality, a revaluation to a fixed amount, was first required. However, the machinery for establishing adequate stipends was at least in place, and it is clear that, by the late 1630s, most ministers were receiving a settled and satisfactory maintenance.20 However, King James had been sufficiently astute to know that any implementation of the Reformers’ ideal for ministerial funding could only be achieved at a high price in terms of goodwill among the landed interest, which was why, as a compromise, he had established a commission to review and upgrade inadequate stipends.21 When Charles rejected that piecemeal approach in favor of sweeping reform, he was moving onto dangerous ground.
It should be said that the teind structure was in need of revision, and the financing of Church, education and poor relief was, moreover, greatly advantaged by the plan, but the winning of even grudging acceptance for it from those who were most affected, was simply beyond the skills of Charles to achieve. Even the ministers, disappointed at the slow progress of the revaluation, showed scant appreciation.22 Indeed, notwithstanding their augmented stipends, any enthusiasm by churchmen for the new funding scheme was undermined by the knowledge that acceptance also meant abandonment of their cherished hope of having all the teinds restored to the Church’s use.23
Another cause of anger among the nobility was what Charles proposed to do about the ownership of former church lands. Many great families had made substantial gains, and, while they were to be allowed to hold on to their acquisitions (at a cost), it was the fate of the properties they had since sold off, which was to give particular affront. The king had seen that the lords continued to exert enormous influence throughout their localities, by the fact that they still remained the feudal superior of any alienated estate. Accordingly, Charles set about “liberating” these feuars, by stripping the nobles of their superiority and vesting it in the Crown instead. The king’s ostensible motive was to free the gentry/heritors from the dominance of the aristocracy, however, the latter saw it as a slight on their social position, as well as an attempt to lessen their power.
As for the gentry, if the king had hoped for gratitude in response to his policy, little was forthcoming. Not only did it become obvious to them that the king was more concerned to curtail the nobility than to promote their participation in government,24 but also it had become clear that the process of buying out their teinds from the titulars was fraught with difficulty and frustration.25 As a result, many became disenchanted.
The final element in the mix was in the ecclesiastical sphere. Here Charles’s actions attracted opprobrium at almost every level, including, yet again, the nobility. When he used his visit to Scotland in 1633 to push forward his wish for greater conformity with Anglican practices and apparel, the resultant petitions showed that a deep dislike for these and the (now reactivated) Five Articles of Perth was not lacking among the higher social ranks26. The same men of substance were also experiencing a mounting anger against the episcopate, not only at local level, where patrons complained their candidates were obstructed by the arbitrary imposition of an oath of obedience,27 but also in national government. There, the king had more and more been using the bishops as a means of imposing his wishes, and in this regard, their dominant role in the Committee of Articles (which controlled all legislation and parliamentary agenda) had been especially useful. Resentment increased when the bishops were perceived to have been instrumental in pushing on an unsupportable prosecution of Lord Balmerino for treason (1634–6). It mounted again when the archbishop of St Andrews, John Spottiswood, was made high chancellor in 1635, and even further when rumors abounded that abbeys and priories were to be retrieved from lay hands and restored to the clergy.28
The Revolution of 1637
When, in 1636, Charles published a code of canons for the Kirk to use, not only did it confirm high church practices, but appeared to give scant recognition to the authority of presbyterial courts. It also enjoined the use of a prayer book, which appeared the following year. Even though the book had not been sanctioned by Parliament or General Assembly, its use