inces; while three of the
prelates were sent to receive consecration in England, and on their
return communicated it to their fellow-bishops. With such a measure of
success James was fairly content. The prelacy he had revived fell far
short of English episcopacy; to the eyes of religious dogmatists such as
Laud indeed it seemed little better than the presbyterianism it
superseded. But the aim of James was political rather than religious. He
had no dislike for presbyterianism as a system of Church-government;
what he dreaded was the popular force to which it gave form in its
synods and assemblies, and which, in the guise of ecclesiastical
independence, was lifting the nation into equality with the Crown. In
seizing on the control of the Church through his organized prelacy James
held himself to have seized the control of the forces which acted
through the Church, and to have won back that mastery of his realm which
the Reformation had reft from the Scottish kings.

[Sidenote: England and the Prerogative.]

What he had really done was to commit the Scotch Crown to a lasting
struggle with the religious impulses of the Scottish people. The cause
of episcopacy was ruined by his triumph. Belief in bishops ceased to be
possible for a Scotchman when bishops were forced on Scotland as mere
tools of the royal will. Presbyterianism on the other hand became
identified with patriotism. It was no longer an ecclesiastical system;
it was the guise under which national freedom and even national
existence were to struggle against an arbitrary rule,--against a rule
which grew more and more the rule of a foreign king. Nor was the sight
of the royal triumph lost on the southern realm. England had no love for
presbyters or hatred for bishops; but as she saw the last check on the
royal authority broken down over the border she looked the more
jealously at the effort which James was making to break down such checks
at home. Under Elizabeth proclamations had been sparingly used, and for
the most part only to enforce what was already the law. Not only was
their number multiplied under James, but their character was changed.
They created new offences, imposed new penalties, and directed offenders
to be brought before courts which had no legal jurisdiction over them.
To narrow indeed the sphere of the common law seemed the special aim of
the royal policy; the four counties of the western border had been
severed from the rest of England and placed