When a man has committed such an act, probably the least thing he can do next is to go and hang himself like Judas Iscariot. A portion of these Scottish Iscariots composed of what was called the more moderate part of the Presbyterians, led by the Duke of Hamilton, his brother the Earl of Lanark, the Lord Chancellor Loudoun, and the Earl of Lauderdale, when they saw all the consequences of their act of treachery, repented themselves; and, though they did not follow the example of their Hebrew prototype, and bring again to the English Parliament the pieces of gold which were the price of blood, they entered into an Engagement to restore the King by force of arms-whence they were called Engagers. The attempt failed and Hamilton was taken and beheaded; the English Parliament regarding their repentance pretty much as the chief priests and elders of the Jews regarded that of Iscariot, when they said "What is that to us? See thou to that." But Loudoun and Lauderdale lived and flourished to commit new treacheries, cruelties, and crimes. The base transaction to which I have referred had indeed the sanction of what was called the Scottish Parliament. But it is to be borne in mind that the body of persons so called no more represented the Scottish nation than the Thirty Tyrants represented the Athenian people, or the Decemviri represented the Roman people. The Scottish people were no more responsible for the acts of that oligarchical assembly than the Roman people were responsible for the crimes of the Decemviri, or the Athenian people for the crimes of the Thirty Tyrants, or the French peasants for the crimes of the French nobility.' The Scottish Par 1 Barrington quotes an old French and an old Scotch proverb to show that the peasants or villeins were regarded in the same light in France and in Scotland : “Oignez vilain, il vous poindra; liament was an assembly in which there was no freedom of debate and no freedom of vote. The representatives of the counties and of the boroughs sat in the same house1 or chamber with the peers and "ran in a string," to use the words of Baillie," now "after the vote" of Hamilton, now after that of Argyle, according as the faction of one or other of these "great men " might happen to be uppermost : and on the heads of the members of that wretched oligarchy rest the guilt and the shame of the treachery, rapacity, hypocrisy, of the misgovernment, disaster, and defeat, which have long stamped with infamy a whole nation of brave, high-spirited, and honourable men. Between the fall of the old nobility and the rise of the new to political power in England there was a long interval, extending from the accession of the Tudors to the expulsion of the Stuarts, during which the new nobility constituted neither an aristocracy nor an oligarchy in the proper sense of those terms, but were the mere creatures and satellites of the Court. In Scotland the old feudal or military aristocracy may be considered to have existed for about a century longer than in England. The successful armed opposition of the nobility to the misgovernment of Queen Mary is a proof of this. And, though on the accession of James to the throne of England, such of the nobility as were adherents of the Court became thoroughly servile, and ready to follow the king to whatever extent he pleased in all sent. Thus likewise the Scotch pro that's the way to tine a carle, Knock a carle, and ding a carle, and that's the way to win a carle." Barrington on the Statutes, p. 310, note, 5th ed. 4to, London 1796. The French nobility reaped the fruit of this at the French Revolution. The Scotch nobility escaped reaping similar fruit by the union of Scotland with England. 1 House anciently meant room or chamber. 2 Letters and Journals, vol. iii. p. 35, Edinburgh 1842. matters, either of Church or State; during a great part of the 17th century, the power which the Scottish nobility still retained over their vassals, the strength of their fastnesses, and their distance from the seat of Government, gave them when banded together so much power of a not ineffectual armed resistance, that they might still be considered as retaining some of the features of a military aristocracy. But the Parliament of England and its General Cromwell showed them that neither their feudal power, nor the military habits of their vassals, nor the rugged and mountainous nature of their country could resist a military aristocracy, compared to the valour, skill, and resources of which their pretensions to military aristocracy were but a shadow and an empty name. For this, among other reasons, I will in these pages generally designate them as an oligarchy rather than an aristocracy. The Reformation or religious revolution in England and Scotland in the sixteenth century, and the political revolution in the seventeenth century stand to each other in the relation not only of antecedent and consequent, but of cause and effect. May,' as it appears to me, makes a great mistake in saying that mixing up religion in the dispute about laws and liberties rather injured the cause of the Parliament. On the contrary the forces of the Parliament had the worst of it till Cromwell beat up his drum for the ardent and energetic souls lodged in strong bodies, who had long been groaning under a most grievous spiritual thraldom, and were burning to do battle against the Powers of Darkness, which in their vocabulary meant the Powers 1 Lord Fleming in a letter to King James expresses his zealous desire to follow his master in all matters, either of Church or State, declaring that different conduct was inexcusable in a subject.-Lord Hailes's Letters of the Time of James I. Letter 2nd. 2 History of the Parliament, lib. i. p. 115. 1649.] THE CAUSE OF THE POVERTY OF THE CHURCH. 261 Spiritual and Temporal that then ruled in England. M. Guizot1 endeavours to account for the important part which the religious revolution played in the political revolution by saying that in England the religious revolution had been brought about by the king and nobility, not, as in Germany, by the people; that consequently, while royalty, nobility and episcopacy divided among them the rich spoils of the papal church, the religious revolution left many of the popular wants unsatisfied. The case of Scotland might appear at first sight to bear more resemblance to the case of Germany than to that of England, inasmuch as in Scotland the religious revolution presented some popular features which it did not in England, and the form of church government which the Reformation established in Scotland was democratical. But I much doubt whether the popular will had more to do with the Reformation in Scotland than it had in England. There were moreover many amusements and not a few things of a more substantial kind, (when the church lands passed into the hands of laymen), which the people lost by the change, and the loss of which was grievous to them at the time. For instance, the exhibition of Robin Hood and his band was a favourite amusement in Scotland as well as in England. And though in 1555 it was ordered by a statute of the Parliament of Scotland that "na manner of person be chosen Robert Hude, nor Little John, Abbot of Unreason, Queen of May, nor otherwise," we find six years after, in 1561, John Knox complaining that "the rascal multitude were stirred up to make a Robin Hude, whilk enormity was of many years left and damned by statute and Act of Parliament; yet would they not be forbidden." They raised a 1 Histoire de la Civilization en Europe, Leçon 13. serious tumult, and made prisoners the magistrates who endeavoured to suppress it. They continued these festivities down to 1592. It is evident that the furious presbyterian zeal of the Jenny Geddeses and Manse Headriggs was the growth of a later period-was the product in fact of the teaching of a church rendered democratical (at least as far as democratical implied poverty) by the aristocracy or oligarchy who brought about the reformation in Scotland. For, though it may appear somewhat paradoxical, the popular or democratical form which the Church government assumed in Scotland was really owing to the intensely aristocratical nature of the religious revolution in that country.' And the aristocratical nature of that religious revolution was owing to the power of the aristocracy in Scotland. This power, though it was in part, in great part no doubt, a consequence of the low state of manufactures and commerce, of the comparatively small power of the Crown, and of the physical character of the country itself, was also connected with moral causes which had exercised for many ages a deep and strong influence on the minds of the people of Scotland, an influence which it required many ages of misgovernment, of injustice, of oppression, and cruelty to destroy.2 The reformed clergy complain that those who |