ed quietly, and did not
show contempt towards himself and the State. The Catholics reminded
him that their absence from the service of the Church might be
interpreted as contempt. He assured them that he would not regard it
in this light. The fines, which in late years had amounted to more
than L10,000, decreased in the year 1603 to L300, and in 1604 to L200.
The King, like his predecessor, would not tolerate Jesuits and
Seminarists, but he was content with their banishment; it would have
been contrary to his temper to have had them executed. He sought to
avoid all the consequences that must have been provoked by the
hostility of this element which was still so powerful in the world at
large and among his own subjects.

But even within the domain of Protestantism he was now encountered by
a similar problem.

The investigation of the influence which the Scots and English have
exercised on one another in the last few centuries would be a task of
essential importance for the history of intellectual life; for in the
development of the prevailing spirit of the nation the Scots as well
as the English have had a large share. Even under Elizabeth these
relations had begun to exist. The growth of English Puritanism
especially, which had already given the Queen much trouble, must be
regarded as but the dissemination of the forms and ideas that had
arisen in the Church of Scotland. But how much stronger must the
action of this cause have become now that a Scottish king had ascended
the English throne! The union between two populations which so nearly
resembled one another in their original composition, and in the
direction taken by their religious development, could not be a merely
territorial union: it must lead to the closest relation between the
spirit of the two peoples.

It was natural from the state of the case, that on the accession of a
Scottish king in England the English clergy who leaned to the Scottish
system should embrace the hope of being emancipated to some extent
from that strict subordination to their bishops which they endured
with reluctance. On the first arrival of James, whilst he was still on
his way to London, they laid before him an address signed by eight
hundred of the clergy, in which they besought him, in accordance with
God's word, to lighten the rigour of this jurisdiction and of their
condition in general, and in the first place to allow them to set
before him the feasibility of the alteration.