cession of James to the
English throne, directed his main attention for a time to other matters,
and gave occasion to a temporary pause in his violations of all the laws
which he had repeatedly sworn to maintain. The pause was brief. The
flattering servility of the English bishops inflated his vanity to an
extravagant degree, and rendered him the more determined to subvert wholly
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and to erect Prelacy on its ruins. He
had already presumed more than once to postpone meetings of the General
Assembly, by his own arbitrary authority; he resumed this course,
postponed the Assembly for one year, naming another,--then prorogued it
again, without naming another day of meeting, which was nearly equivalent
to an intimation, that it should entirely depend upon his pleasure whether
it should ever meet again,--directly contrary to the act, 1592, in which it
was expressly stipulated that the Assembly should meet at least once a
year. The most zealous and faithful of the ministers were now fully aware
of the imminent peril to which spiritual liberty was exposed. On the 2d of
July, 1605, the day on which the General Assembly had been appointed to
meet at Aberdeen, nineteen ministers met, constituted the Assembly in the
usual form, and while engaged in reading a letter presented by the King's
Commissioner, a messenger-at-arms entered, and in the King's name, charged
them to dismiss, on pain of being held guilty of rebellion. The moderator
appointed another day of meeting, and dissolved the Assembly in the usual
manner. This bold and independent, though perfectly legal and
constitutional conduct, roused the wrath of the King to fury. Six of the
most eminent of the ministers, one of whom was John Welsh of Ayr,
son-in-law of Knox, were confined in a miserable dungeon in the castle of
Blackness, for a period of fourteen months, and then banished to France.
Eight others were imprisoned for a time, and banished to the remotest
parts of Scotland. The severity of Robert Bruce's treatment was increased;
and six other ministers, who had not been directly involved in the
resistance to the King's authority, by the suppressed Assembly of
Aberdeen, were called to London, and engaged in captious disputations by
the crafty monarch, and his sycophantic prelates, in order to find
occasion against them also. The result was, the confinement in the Tower
of Andrew Melville, and his subsequent banishment to France; and the
p