hom he had sprung, and among
whom he had been educated. The loyalty of the Scots to the Stuarts is
proverbial, but though ready to die for their king, to acknowledge him
as lord of the conscience they could not be persuaded. A spirit of
opposition stronger than that which had before existed was developed
against any liturgy in Church worship, and the seeds were sown which
were afterwards to bear fruit in the harvest of the Revolution of 1688.
This opposition, it may be argued, was not the outcome of a calm
consideration of the questions involved, but was an indirect result of
the national anger at the attempt of the King to coerce the consciences
of his subjects. In any event, so strong was the opposition to any
change in the religious worship of the land, that James ceased his
active endeavors to carry out his will, and in a message to his
Scottish subjects in 1624 assured them of his desire "by gentle and
fair means rather to reclaim them from their unsettled and
evil-grounded opinions, nor by severity and rigor of justice to inflict
that punishment which their misbehavior and contempt merits."

We now come to a period marked by a still more vigorous assault upon
the liberties of the Church of Scotland, and by a correspondingly
vigorous opposition thereto on the part of the Scottish people.
William Laud, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, began to
exert his influence upon the religious life of both England and
Scotland during the closing years of James's reign, but it was in the
reign of Charles the First, who succeeded his father in 1625, that he
came before the world in his sudden and so unfortunate greatness.
History has left but little doubt in the mind of the careful student
that Laud's deliberate purpose and persistent influence, both in
England and in Scotland, were towards a revival of Romanism within the
Church of which he was a prelate, or at least towards the creation of a
high Anglicanism which would differ but little from the Romish system.
Adroitly, and frequently concealing his real purpose, he labored to
this end, and it is not too much to say that the vigorous and, at last,
successful opposition to his plans in Scotland, saved the English
Church from radical changes which it is clear he was prepared to
introduce in the southern Kingdom when his desires for Scotland had
been effected. England owes to Scotland the preservation of her
Protestantism on two occasions: first, in the days of