asures James continued to depress the Kirk. A General Assembly,
proclaimed by James for July 1604 in Aberdeen, was prorogued; again,
unconstitutionally, it was prorogued in July 1605. Nineteen ministers,
disobeying a royal order, appeared and constituted the Assembly. Joined
by ten others, they kept open the right of way. James insisted that the
Council should prosecute them: they, by fixing a new date for an
Assembly, without royal consent; and James, by letting years pass without
an Assembly, broke the charter of the Kirk of 1592.

The preachers, when summoned to the trial, declined the jurisdiction.
This was violently construed as treason, and a jury, threatened by the
legal officers with secular, and by the preachers with future spiritual
punishment, by a small majority condemned some of the ministers (January
1606). This roused the wrath of all classes. James wished for more
prosecutions; the Council, in terror, prevailed on him to desist. He
continued to grant no Assemblies till 1608, and would not allow "caveats"
(limiting the powers of Bishops) to be enforced. He summoned (1606) the
two Melvilles, Andrew and his nephew James, to London, where Andrew
bullied in his own violent style, and was, quite illegally, first
imprisoned and then banished to France.

In December 1606 a convention of preachers was persuaded to allow the
appointment of "constant Moderators" to keep the presbyteries in order;
and then James recognised the convention as a General Assembly. Suspected
ministers were confined to their parishes or locked up in Blackness
Castle. In 1608 a General Assembly was permitted the pleasure of
excommunicating Huntly. In 1610 an Assembly established Episcopacy, and
no excommunications not ratified by the Bishop were allowed: the only
comfort of the godly was the violent persecution of Catholics, who were
nosed out by the "constant Moderators," excommunicated if they refused to
conform, confiscated, and banished.

James could succeed in these measures, but his plan for uniting the two
kingdoms into one, Great Britain, though supported by the wisdom and
eloquence of Bacon, was frustrated by the jealousies of both peoples.
Persons born after James's accession (the _post nati_) were, however,
admitted to equal privileges in either kingdom (1608). In 1610 James had
two of his bishops, and Spottiswoode, consecrated by three English
bishops, but he did not yet venture to interfere with the forms of
Pres