d
taken place. The situation of the episcopalian Protestants of Scotland
differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the
south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of
the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength
derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were
far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken
together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small
minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to
the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body
of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign
institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the
abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud
of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns
had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name
only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public
mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and
cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a
narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by
the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became
serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament
were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any
direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an Act passed in the time
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at
the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian
conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open
air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil
test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or
could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under
the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest
terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters. [123]

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to
the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall.
William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had,
during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly
conne