h Parliaments might be regarded as an
independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament
that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish
Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted
and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of
Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all
those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the
strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted
in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the
opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every
expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession
had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly
applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.

He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had
condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes.
His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he
favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident
that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any
court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the
sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry
the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices
and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had
opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and
a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his
employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of
the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.
[146] As the representatives of the towns had been found the most
unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a
revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had
recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland
a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of
magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed
to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices. [147] In
a formal letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit
up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave orders
that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists
as