hat
creed and perhaps that cultured world possible--the aristocratic revolt
under the last Tudors. It was, we might say, the story of a father and a
son dragging down the same golden image, but the younger really from
hatred of idolatry, and the older solely from love of gold. It is at
once the tragedy and the paradox of England that it was the eternal
passion that passed, and the transient or terrestrial passion that
remained. This was true of England; it was far less true of Scotland;
and that is the meaning of the Scotch and English war that ended at
Worcester. The first change had indeed been much the same materialist
matter in both countries--a mere brigandage of barons; and even John
Knox, though he has become a national hero, was an extremely
anti-national politician. The patriot party in Scotland was that of
Cardinal Beaton and Mary Stuart. Nevertheless, the new creed did become
popular in the Lowlands in a positive sense, not even yet known in our
own land. Hence in Scotland Puritanism was the main thing, and was mixed
with Parliamentary and other oligarchies. In England Parliamentary
oligarchy was the main thing, and was mixed with Puritanism. When the
storm began to rise against Charles I., after the more or less
transitional time of his father, the Scotch successor of Elizabeth, the
instances commonly cited mark all the difference between democratic
religion and aristocratic politics. The Scotch legend is that of Jenny
Geddes, the poor woman who threw a stool at the priest. The English
legend is that of John Hampden, the great squire who raised a county
against the King. The Parliamentary movement in England was, indeed,
almost wholly a thing of squires, with their new allies the merchants.
They were squires who may well have regarded themselves as the real and
natural leaders of the English; but they were leaders who allowed no
mutiny among their followers. There was certainly no Village Hampden in
Hampden Village.

The Stuarts, it may be suspected, brought from Scotland a more mediaeval
and therefore more logical view of their own function; for the note of
their nation was logic. It is a proverb that James I. was a Scot and a
pedant; it is hardly sufficiently noted that Charles I. also was not a
little of a pedant, being very much of a Scot. He had also the virtues
of a Scot, courage, and a quite natural dignity and an appetite for the
things of the mind. Being somewhat Scottish, he was very un-English, an