ent on with its coercive
policy, rigidly enforcing submission to the authority of the bishops. At
first the great majority of the ministers refused; but on a clause being
added to the deed of submission, to the effect that it required them
only to conform 'according to the Word of God,' most of them gave way.
The clause was suggested by Adamson, and it reflects his character. It
was one of those shrewd devices for causing division among the
ministers, and providing a middle way for men distracted by the desire
to be faithful to their consciences on the one hand, and the wish to
escape persecution on the other, which were often resorted to by the
Court throughout the entire course of the struggle against prelacy. Some
of the stalwarts of the Church fell into the trap which Adamson had set
for them in this shallow compromise, and their example led many others
to yield. One of the banished brethren, in a letter written at the time,
states that all the ministers in the Lothians and the Merse, with only
ten exceptions, had subscribed; that John Erskine of Dun had not only
subscribed, but was making himself a pest to the ministers in the North
by importuning them to follow his example; that John Craig, so long
Knox's colleague, had given in and was speaking hotly against those who
held out; that even the redoubtable John Durie had 'cracked his
curple'[13] at last; and that the pulpits of Edinburgh were silent,
except a very few 'who sigh and sob under the Cross.'

[Footnote 13: Crupper.]

Events took such a course that the ministers who subscribed might, after
all, have held out with a whole skin. They capitulated to their enemies
on the very eve of their enemies' fall; for the exasperation of the
nation under such insolent tyranny as Arran's could no longer be held
in. Davison, the English Ambassador, writing to the Court at this time,
says: 'It is incredible how universally the man is hated by all men of
all degrees, and what a jealousy is sunken into the heads of some of the
wisest here of his ambitious and immoderate thoughts.... His usurp power
and disposition of all things, both in Courts, Parliaments, and
Sessions, at the appetite of himself and his good lady, with many other
things do bewray matter enough to suspect the fruits of ambition and
inordinate thirst for rule'; and he adds, 'I find infinite appearances
that the young King's course ... doth carry him headlong to his own
danger and hazard of his estate. He ha