favour at the Court; and he
brought Maitland and Melville together and made them friends.

His marriage, which took place in 1589, was used by James as an occasion
for a public demonstration of his reconciliation to the Church. Before
leaving for Denmark to fetch his bride, he made Bruce an extraordinary
member of his Council, professing at the same time such confidence in
him as he might have given to a viceroy, which indeed Bruce virtually
became. During the King's absence the nation enjoyed a tranquillity
unknown before in his reign, chiefly due to the influence of Bruce and
his brethren. James Melville had good ground for what he said at the
Assembly in August 1590: 'We, and the graittest and best number of our
flockes, halff bein, ar, and mon be his [the King's] best subjects, his
strynthe, his honour. A guid minister (I speak it nocht arrogantlie, but
according to the treuthe!) may do him mair guid service in a houre nor
manie of his sacrilegious courteours in a yeir.' At the Queen's
coronation the ministers took the chief part in the ceremony. It was
Bruce who anointed her, and, with David Lindsay, minister of Leith,
placed the crown on her head. Melville was chosen by the King to prepare
and recite the Stephaniskion, as the coronation ode was called, and the
King was so pleased with it that he gave him effusive thanks. On the
following Sabbath James was present in St. Giles', and in the presence
of the congregation acknowledged the services rendered by Bruce and the
ministers to the country and the crown during his absence, and promised
to turn a new leaf in the government of the kingdom. He was also present
at the next General Assembly, when he broke forth in such fervent
laudation of the Church that he might have made the oldest and
staunchest adherents of Presbytery reproach themselves for the coldness
of their own attachment to it: 'He fell furth in praising God, that he
was borne in suche a tyme as the tyme of the light of the Gospell, to
suche a place as to be king in suche a Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in the
world. "The Kirk of Geneva," said he, "keepeth Pasche and Yule; what
have they for them?--they have no institutioun. As for our nighbour
Kirk in England, it is an evill said masse in English, wanting nothing
but the liftings.[16] I charge you, my good people, ministers, doctors,
elders, nobles, gentlemen, and barons, to stand to your puritie, and to
exhort the people to doe the same; and I forsuith, so