long as I bruike
my life and crowne, sall mainteane the same against all deidlie," etc.
The Assemblie so rejoiced, that there was nothing but loud praising of
God, and praying for the King for a quarter of an houre.'[17]

[Footnote 16: Raising of the Host.]

[Footnote 17: Calderwood's _History_, v. 109.]

The _entente cordiale_ between the King and the ministers was not of
long duration. His promises of amended government were soon forgotten;
the lawlessness of the nobles continued unchecked; agents of Rome were
again busy in the country in collusion with the Popish nobles, and
nothing was done to counteract them. In these circumstances the
ministers could not keep silence, and none of them spoke more strongly
against the laxity of the Government than Robert Bruce, the man the King
had so recently and so specially honoured, who reproached James with the
fact that during his absence in Denmark more reverence was paid to his
shadow than had been shown since his return to his person. The outrages
perpetrated by the King's illegitimate cousin, the madcap Bothwell, were
largely laid to James's door, as the doings of a spoiled favourite of
the Court: and the unpunished murder of the popular Earl of Moray, the
'Bonnie Earl,' by Huntly--one of the worst crimes even of that
lawless time, and of complicity in which the King himself was
suspected--aggravated the discontent of the nation.

It was at such a time of disorder and irritation in the country that the
measure was passed by Parliament--the Act of 1592--by which all
previous legislation in favour of Episcopacy was swept off the
statute-book and the Church re-established on the basis of the Second
Book of Discipline. Had this Act been passed two years earlier, it might
have been ascribed to the goodwill of the King; but in the circumstances
in which it was brought forward, it was regarded as a piece of policy,
adopted on the recommendation of the Chancellor for the purpose of
recovering for the King the popularity he had lost during that interval,
by the causes we have mentioned.

CHAPTER VII

THE POPISH LORDS--MELVILLE AND THE KING AT FALKLAND PALACE

'The king he movit his bonnet to him,
He ween'd he was a king as weel as he.'

_Johnie Armstrong._

The end of the Church's troubles in Scotland was still far off. No
sooner had the constitution of 1592, which promised to secure her peace
and liberty, been set down i