rom the pulpit and bade him "to his knees" to
seek pardon for his vanity; while the Assembly chided him for his
"banning and swearing" and sent a deputation to confer with his Queen
touching the "want of godly exercise among her maids."

[Sidenote: James and Presbyterianism.]

The bitter memory of these years of humiliation dwelt with James to the
last. They were fiercely recalled, when he mounted the English throne.
"A Scottish Presbytery," he exclaimed at the Hampton Court Conference,
"as well fitteth with monarchy as God and the Devil." Year after year he
watched for the hour of deliverance, and every year brought it nearer.
His mother's death gave fresh strength to his throne. The alliance with
England, Elizabeth's pledge not to oppose his succession, left him
practically heir of the English Crown. Freed from the dread of a
Catholic reaction, the Queen was at liberty to indulge in her dread of
Calvinism, and to sympathize with the fresh struggle which James was
preparing to make against it. Her attitude, as well as the growing
certainty of his coming greatness as sovereign of both realms, had no
doubt their influence in again strengthening the king's position; and
his new power was seen in his renewed mastery over the Scottish lords.
But this triumph over feudalism was only the opening of a decisive
struggle with Calvinism. If he had defeated Huntly and his
fellow-plotters, he refused to keep them in exile or to comply with the
demand of the Church that he should refuse their services on the ground
of religion. He would be king of a nation, he contended, and not of a
part of it. The protest was a fair one; but the real secret of the
king's policy towards the Catholics, as of his son's after him, was a
"king-craft" which aimed at playing off one part of the nation against
another to the profit of the Crown. "The wisdom of the Council," said a
defiant preacher, "is this, that ye must be served with all sorts of men
to serve your purpose and grandeur, Jew and Gentile, Papist and
Protestant. And because the ministers and Protestants in Scotland are
over strong and control the King, they must be weakened and brought
low."

[Sidenote: The struggle with the Church.]

It was with this end before him that James set finally to work in 1597.
Cool, adroit, firm in his purpose, the young king seized on some wild
outbreaks of the pulpit to assert a control over its utterances; a riot
in Edinburgh in defence of the ministers e