had got possession of the Church lands, and tithes, and who had before made a great outcry against the exactions of the Romish Church, " are now more rigorous in exacting tithes and other duties paid before to the Church, than ever the papists were, and so the tyranny of priests is turned into the tyranny of lords and lairds. For this we require that the gentlemen, barons, lords, earls, and others be content to live upon their own rents, and suffer the Church to be restored to her right and liberty, that by her restitution the poor that heretofore have been oppressed may now receive some comfort and relaxation." But the lairds, lords, and earls turned, as might have been expected, a deaf ear to the requisition of John Knox and his clerical brethren.

There was an essential difference between the English and Scottish feudal aristocracies. The English feudal aristocracy consisted of the leaders of a conquering caste; and, though they might inspire fear and perhaps admiration not unmixed with hatred, could call up none of that other class of emotions which were associated in the mind of a Greek with Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, in that of a Roman with Camillus and the Scipios, in that of a Scotchman with Wallace, Bruce, and Douglas. There are, or at least were, no names that an English poet could invoke with such effect as a Greek poet or orator could invoke the names of those who fought at Marathon, at Salamis, at Platæa, or as

over the commonalty that they can lead them what way they please." his is however an exaggerated statement, since, as we shall see, they often could not lead them to serve in these wars. They were obliged to use force, to drive not lead.

1 Spottiswood, p. 164. The extract

in the text is from a form of Church policy framed by John Knox, partly in imitation of the reformed churches of Germany, partly of that which he had seen in Geneva, and presented in the Convention held at Edinburgh in January 1559-60.

Scott invoked the to a Scotchman talismanic names in these

lines

"What vails the vain knight-errant's brand?

O Douglas, for thy leading wand!

Fierce Randolph for thy speed!

O for one hour of Wallace wight,

Or well-skill'd Bruce to rule the fight !"

While the English feudal aristocracy owed their lands to their conquest of those who tilled those lands, the Scottish feudal aristocracy, or the best portion of them, held or were understood to hold lands which had been granted to their ancestors for services done with their swords in the defence of Scotland against foreign invaders, Danish or English. This at least was the theory. But this theory did not apply to that large extent of lands which had belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and were seized by the nobility at the Reformation. The root of the title to the other lands remained however undisturbed, and entwined with many heroic memories. The names of those who had once held those lands are linked indissolubly with many an old but well-remembered battle-field, with many a mountain, with many a grey rock, with many a wild glen and mountain-stream, which, though there now only the solitary angler throws his fly, and the as solitary water-ouzel seeks its food, rolls on haunted for ever by the spirits of those who in times long gone by fought and bled and died for religion and liberty. It is this historic renown that gives a tenfold charm to scenes wild and rugged indeed but of great natural beauty. The stream clear as crystal pursues its course at the bottom of a deep glen, the sides of which are crags of stupendous height and fantastic shape, hoary with the storms of innumerable ages, and rugged and bare, save where some solitary birch-tree, or oak, or wych-elm, or

mountain-ash has twined its roots amid the rocky crevices. But the wild ravine is associated with memories not its own. Rock, cave, tree, torrent speak still of the deeds and sufferings of those who bled and died for the independence of Scotland, who "fell devoted, but undying." And though those men have been dead near 600 years, the eye of the dullest peasant in Scotland will still brighten at the very sound of their names. The heaths, the mountains, the crumbling ruins of the rock-built castles are all consecrated by the same memories: and form the imperishable monument of those who have no other sepulchre, to whom the barbarous policy of the English invader refused even a grave; affording a striking illustration of the truth of the words in the funeral oration of Pericles, in Thucydides, that "of illustrious men all their native land is the sepulchre.

" 1

2

In Scotland, the whole of the property which had belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, and which has been estimated as amounting at the time of the Reformation to "little less than one-half of the property in the nation," " was seized by the nobility and gentry. This seizure, in all cases an act of public robbery, was in some instances attended with the most savage cruelty. Nor was it likely that those, who had thus gotten possession of all this property, would give up their prey at the solicitation of the reformed clergy. When the latter proposed a plan for the

1 ἀνδρῶν ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος Thucyd. II. 43. Hobbes translates these words "to famous men all the earth is a sepulchre," which, though the word y is ambiguous, was not what was here meant; the meaning, as is apparent from the context, being not the whole earth absolutely, but only the whole earth or territory of Attica. 2 "The Scottish Clergy paid onehalf of every tax imposed on land;

and as there is no reason to think that, in that age, they would be loaded with any unequal share of the burden, we may conclude that, by the time of the Reformation, little less than one-half of the property in the nation had fallen into the hands of a society which is always acquiring and can never lose."-Robertson's Hist. of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 141, 142, 4th edn., London, 1761.

maintenance of a national Church out of this national property, and also of hospitals, schools, and universities, though they did not go farther than Henry the Eighth so liberal in promises had done, the lords who had seized the Church property said the plan of John Knox was a "devout imagination," but visionary and impracticable; and they retained by force the whole of the church property for their own use. Hence not only the poverty of the church, but of the universities in Scotland, and the consequent discouragement and decay of sound learning, together with many consequences of this, tending to a slavish subjugation on one side and an exorbitant insolence on the other. And hence those revenues of a few individuals in Scotland; revenues which at the present day by the enormous increase of rent within the last century, if devoted to their legitimate purpose, would not only educate the great bulk of the people well, and give to those who evinced superior abilities a superior education, but would relieve all classes nearly altogether from taxation.

The passage which I have quoted in a note a page or two back from a contemporary historian describes the Presbyterian form of Church government as supported by two classes of men, the one consisting of the powerful laymen who looked to the plunder of the old Church, the other of the clergy who hoped to attain power and popularity by popular eloquence. Besides these two classes, there was a third class consisting of the great body of the people who, having been kept in a state of very dense ignorance by the Romish priesthood, were in a condition to receive any impressions which their new teachers and preachers sought to stamp on their dark and uncultured minds.

For convenience these two last classes, the clergy 1 Johnston, Rer. Brit. Hist. Lib. I. p. 16, 1655.

and the people, may be treated as one, as they both partook largely of the popular or democratical element. We have thus two classes of Scottish Presbyterians, the one oligarchical, the other democratical.

It is a remarkable feature in the history of the Scottish Presbyterian Church that, though in the scramble at the overthrow of the power of the Church of Rome in Scotland, the nobility contrived to appropriate to themselves even more of the wealth of that church than the nobility in England had done, leaving in fact nothing at all to the Reformed Church, while in England a good deal had been left to the church and universities, yet in Scotland the reformed clergy, unlike the reformed clergy in England, arrogated to themselves all, if not more than all, the power which the pope of Rome had formerly claimed. In the second declinature of Black, of the King and Council, God, it is said, has given the keys of the kingdom of heaven to the church; and the clergy-(the clergy being "they whom Christ hath called-Christ's servants ")" are empowered to admonish, rebuke, convince, exhort, and threaten, to deliver unto Satan, to lock out and debar from the kingdom heaven." 2 And Mr. Black further says, "the discharge and form of delivery of my commission should not nor cannot be lawfully judged by them to whom I am sent, they being as both judge and party, sheep and not pastors to be judged by this word, and not to be judges thereof." 3

of

The Scottish Presbyterians being composed of several distinct parts, we must be careful to assign to each part what belonged to it. Such care is the more needed inasmuch as the clerical part has come in for a larger share of blame than belongs to it. Nevertheless with all the care we can

1 Calderwood, pp. 329, 330.

Calderwood, p. 347. 3 Calderwood, p. 348.