Acts,
putting the bodies and souls of the Scotch under the yoke of the king,
who was now pope as well. In 1587 the whole property of the
pre-Reformation church, with some trifling exceptions, was confiscated
and put at the king's disposition. As in England, so here, the lands
of abbeys and of prelates was thrown to new men of the pushing,
commercial type. Thus was founded a landed aristocracy with interests
distinct from the old barons and strong in supporting both king and
Reformation.

[Sidenote: Reaction in the kirk, 1592]

It is true that this condition was but temporary. Just as in England
later the Parliament and the Puritans called the crown to account, so
in Scotland the kirk continued to administer drastic advice to the
monarch and finally to put direct legal pressure upon him. The Black
Acts were abrogated by Parliament in 1592 and from that time forth
ensued a struggle between the {370} king and the presbyteries which, in
the opinion of the former, agreed as well together as God and the
devil. Still more after his accession to the English throne James came
to prefer the episcopal form of church government as more subservient,
and to act on the maxim, "no bishop, no king."

[1] Could he have been David Borthwick or David Lyndsay? See Luther's
letters and _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[2] Such a piece of embroidery has been kept in my mother's family from
that day to this.

{371}

CHAPTER VIII

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

SECTION 1. ITALY

It is sometimes so easy to see, after the event, why things should have
taken just the course they did take, that it may seem remarkable that
political foresight is so rare. It is probable, however, that the
study of history not only illumines many things, and places them in
their true perspective, but also tends to simplify too much,
overemphasizing, to our minds, the elements that finally triumphed and
casting those that succumbed into the shadow.

[Sidenote: Italy]

However this may be, Italy of the sixteenth century appears to offer an
unusually clear case of a logical sequence of effects due to previously
ascertainable causes. That Italy should toy with the Reformation
without accepting it, that she should finally suppress it and along
with it much of her own spiritual life, seems to be entirely due to her
geographical, political and cultural condition at the time when she
felt the impact of the new ideas.

In all these respects