Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

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RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
cryed,“Crucify, crucify”.This people hath changed countenance and toone to
your majestic because ye are bringing in novelties uppon them; they are a peo¬
ple that can bide no inovations.’
Sundrie80 of our prime nobles and lords did put their hands to a supplicatione81
to be presented to the king’s majestic after his corronatione, wherein the matter
of there greatest complaint was, so farr as ever wee could learne, there challenginge
of the bishopps for what they had done and were like to doe.The double of this
supplication beinge conveyed by an unffeind a long space after, privily out of my
Lord Balmirinoch’s chamber, was a ditty whilke broght him uppon pannells,
being a verie sicke man in the tyme [17] and his life in great hazard for example
to all noblemen to beware of the like rashness, especialy his fellow supliants who
are declared by that fault to have deserved that same sentence of death. A Large
Declaration,82 a manifestio, and the king whose name is stollen to that manifestio,
is brought in, sayinge, p. 14:‘nor could they have found the least blemish in Our
justice, ifWee should have given warrant both for his sentence and execution,
whose life was now legally devolved into Our hands;’ p. 13: ‘Wee, out of our
innate and usuall clemencie, were graciously pleased (that the feare and example
might reach to all, but the punishment onely to one of them) to passe by many,
who undoubtedly had beene concluded and involved by Our Lawes in the same
sentence, ifWee had proceeded against them’.There is heard dealeing that the
greatest nobles of the land ought to forefault there life and estate if they be so
bould, as to put their hands to a supplicatione to their gratious prince, against
the abhominable practises of these proud prelates.
Now, after the king’s majestic his returne into England, the most of the preach¬
ing that was alowed in all the whole three kingdoms was raileinge against non¬
conformists, puritanes, and parliments had their wype83 by the way. Ane unhapie
correspondencie was kept amongst all the bishopps of the three kingdomes to
hould downe the heades of all faithfull preachers and advance such headie peices
as would promote poprie and Arminianisme. Bishopp Ladd found old Bishopp
Abbotts84 a mott in his way; he beare him so downe that two yeares before Abbott’s
80 This paragraph, up to the final sentence, has been plagiarised from Baillie, Ladensium Autokatakrisis,
108n.
81 See M. Lee,Jr., The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles 1,1625-1637 (Urbana, 111., 1985), 157-
62.
A Large Declaration concerning the late Tumults in Scotland (London, 1639) .The title page says:‘By the
King’, and the opposing page bears the king’s portrait.The editor is generally taken to have been
Walter Balcanquhall.
83 reproof.
84 Perhaps ‘Abbot is’? George Abbott, archbishop of Canterbury in 1611. He was long an antagonist
ofWilliam Laud who succeeded him in 1633.