Andrew Melville Part 6

That even such a tame a.s.sembly was indisposed to yield up the liberties of the Church at the demand of the King was shown by the pa.s.sing of resolutions intended to clip the wings of the bishops. These resolutions declared, with the concurrence of the bishops themselves, that they were subject to the discipline of the Church and amenable to their own presbyteries.

The King was mightily displeased with his friends in the a.s.sembly because they had not 'proceedit frielyer'; he was enraged at the bishops for submitting themselves to the courts of the Church. The Moderator, Nicolson, Bishop of Dunkeld, at one time James Melville's bosom friend and a standard-bearer of the Kirk, took the King's displeasure so much to heart that he fell ill, and when it was proposed to send for a doctor, replied, 'Send for King James; it is the digesting of his Bishop.r.i.c.k that has wracked my stomack.'

The presbyteries rose up in arms against the Constant Moderators, as did all the synods except Angus; and many scenes of violence took place at the meetings, of these courts through the attempt made by the King's Commissioner to force the adoption of the Acts of the Linlithgow a.s.sembly. The King had still some hard work to do before he could accomplish his purposes. His next step was to propose a conference of ministers, chosen from both sides of the House, to confer on the questions at issue; and meanwhile all public discussion on these questions was to be suspended. The ministers accepted the proposal--another of these fatal concessions by which they were only drawn further into the King's net. Confer and discuss as they might, the King remained the final arbiter, and only one conclusion would be accepted by him. By the suspension of hostilities between the two parties in the Church, those who were opposed to the King gained nothing, and he gained much. While the ministers were silent and inactive, the bishops were as aggressive as ever; they openly avowed their intention of conforming the Church to Episcopacy; and they brought down from London the King's Commissioner and several dignitaries of the English Church to a.s.sist them in the task.

At the next meeting of Parliament, July 1609, the only measure now needed, so far as Parliament was concerned, to restore a full-blown Episcopacy, was pa.s.sed without opposition. There was no minister present; while Episcopal dignitaries were again brought from London to grace the proceedings and witness the surrender that was to be made to their own ecclesiastical polity. At that Parliament 'thai rayd royallie and Prelat lyk.' The measures that were pa.s.sed restored the judicial power of the bishops, their seats in the Court of Session, and their lands and revenues. Authority was given to them to fix stipends and to raise or lower them as they were minded, and so the ministers were made to a large extent their dependants. One of the measures, the setting up of a High Court of Commission, raised the bishops to a higher degree of authority than they had ever possessed before. It was virtually a bishop's court, and it was invested with extraordinary power; those who sat in it could call before them any person in the kingdom who had incurred their displeasure, and judge and punish him without law and without appeal.

The Acts of this Parliament were the King's penultimate stroke against Presbytery. They armed the bishops with such power, that the King felt he might at length summon an a.s.sembly which would make submission to Episcopacy. An a.s.sembly was accordingly held in Glasgow in June 1610; and there the King's resolutions were carried with only two dissentient voices. The House was again filled with the King's nominees; and bribes were distributed among the members to the tune of 40,000 merks. The bribes were paid in 'Angel' pieces, and so the a.s.sembly came to be known as the Angelical a.s.sembly. It was money that did the King's 'turn'; 'and sa at are stollen dint[28] in are day was overthrown are worke seventie yeiris in building, and above twenty-four yeiris s.p.a.cious and most profitabill standing.'

[Footnote 28: Stolen opportunity.]

CHAPTER XI

THE TOWER: SEDAN

'Here spirits that have run their race, and fought, And won the fight, and have not fear'd the frowns Nor lov'd the smiles of greatness, but have wrought Their Master's will, meet to receive their Crowns.'

HENRY VAUGHAN.

For the first year, Melville's imprisonment was of rigorous severity.

The King seemed incapable of any spark of chivalry towards one of the very brightest spirits of his people. James, perhaps least of all the Stuarts, ill.u.s.trated the principle of _n.o.blesse oblige_. Melville's attendant was taken from him; no visitors were admitted; neither was the use of writing materials allowed. After twelve months, however, some relaxation was gained, through the good offices of Sir James Sempill of Beltrees, the Balladist, who was a warm friend of Melville, and sympathised with him in his struggle to maintain Presbyterianism, although he himself had been brought up at Court--his mother having been maid-in-honour to Queen Mary--and educated along with the King under George Buchanan. He was transferred to a comfortable room in the Tower: he was now permitted to see friends, and also to write. It was in literary labour he occupied his time. He wrote at least one controversial pamphlet, a reply to a Defence of Episcopacy written by a dignitary of the English Church, and circulated _gratis_ in Scotland among the ministers; he also translated many of the Psalms. It was in poetical composition, however, that he found his chief recreation and solace. When he quitted the apartment in which he was first confined, the walls were found covered with verses written by him in finely formed characters with the tongue of his shoe-buckle. Every letter he sent to James Melville contained a number of verses 'warm from the anvil.' His nephew, in one of his letters enclosing a remittance of money, had remarked: 'I shall send you money, and you shall send me songs. I have good hope that you will run short of verses for my use before I run short of gold for yours,' to which he replied: 'So you have the confidence to say that the fountain of the Muses from which I draw will be exhausted sooner than the vein of that gold mine, whence you extract the treasures with which you supply me so liberally. Hold, prithee! take care what you say, especially to poets like me, who when I do sing, sing at the invitation of the Muses and under their inspiration.' One of his compositions did not owe its origin to 'the imperative breath of song'; it was an ode to the King, written on the advice of friends, in the hope that such an appeal to his better nature might lead James to grant him his liberty. The ode failed of its purpose; and Melville might have applied to the King with curious fitness the words addressed by the Border outlaw in the ballad to the King's grandfather, James V.:

'To seik het water beneith cauld ice, Surelie it is a greit follie.

I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men and me.

But had I kenn'd ere I cam frae hame How thou unkind wadst been to me, I wad have keepit the Border side In spite of all thy force and thee.'

Melville did not expect any other result, although he had been told that the King seemed favourably disposed towards him. He knew his man: '_Fronti nulla fides_' was, he said, a proverb often in his mind at that time. Soon after writing this ode to the King, he, for the same purpose, submitted an apology to the Privy Council for any offence he had given by the epigram which had cost him his liberty; but it also failed. In this matter Archbishop Spotswood played a double part, advising Melville to send the apology, while he and his brother-prelate, Archbishop Gledstanes, were doing all they could to prevent the King restoring Melville and the other exiled ministers to liberty. Melville was no more disappointed with Spotswood's conduct than he had been with the King's: '_Sed non ego credulus illis_.'

All his trials and long vexations did not dim his hopefulness; of no man might it be said more truly that he

'Never doubted clouds would break.'

'Away with fear--I will cherish the hope of everything that is cheering and joyous.... I betake myself to my sacred anchor--"Seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d"'--so he wrote from the Tower.

For some time a son of James Melville who bore his uncle's name, and another nephew, lodged with Melville in the Tower; and he had many distinguished visitors, such as Isaac Casaubon and Bishop Hall of Norwich, who were proud to be numbered among his friends. Another ill.u.s.trious victim of the King's treachery, one of the many of England's n.o.blest sons who stepped from the Tower into immortality, Sir Walter Raleigh, was a fellow-prisoner of Melville. Did they ever meet? We would give much to know that they did; it would be pleasant to think of so rare a conjunction of spirits. Melville found his greatest solace, however, in his nephew's devotion. There was no ministry of love which James Melville failed to render to his uncle; and very touching in their tenderness are the letters which pa.s.sed between the two. He was also much moved by the tokens of remembrance he received from old friends--comrades in the battles of the Church--and from their children.

Acknowledging a gift of money which had been partly contributed by a family of a deceased brother in the ministry, he says: 'I received the Spanish and British angels, equalling in number the Apostles, the Graces, and the Elements, with a supernumerary one of the Seraphic order.... I do not rejoice so much in them (although these commutable pieces of money are at present very useful to me) as I do at the renewing of the memory of my deceased friends, and the prospect of our friends.h.i.+p being perpetuated in their posterity, who have given such a favourable presage of future virtue and genuine piety; for what else could have induced them to take such an interest in my affairs at this time? Wherefore I congratulate them, and I rejoice that this favourable opportunity of transmitting friends.h.i.+p inviolate from father to son and grandson has been afforded.'

The only matter on which there was ever a hint of misunderstanding between Melville and his nephew was the latter's second marriage, to which the uncle was at first much opposed. Their correspondence on this subject contains some pa.s.sages of lively repartee, in which the elder undoubtedly came off second best. 'The chaste father'--so the younger writes--'who reposed in the embraces of Minerva was not to measure others by himself; he was not ashamed to own he was in love; ay, and had he not the highest precedents for the step he was taking--there were Knox, and Craig, and Pont, and who not else of the venerable fathers of the Church!' 'My sweet Melissa' soon won uncle Andro's affection, and many a gift of garments, embroidered by her skilful hands, found its way to the lonely prisoner in the Tower.

At the close of 1610, the English Amba.s.sador at the French Court brought a request from the Duke de Bouillon, a leading French Protestant, to the King that he would give Melville his release, in order that he might go to Sedan to fill the collegiate Chair of Divinity in the University.

After some negotiations, in which James showed his old grudging spirit towards his prisoner, the request was granted. But it was not easy for Melville to tear himself away from his native land. Writing to his nephew, he says:--

'I am in a state of suspense as to the course which I ought to take. There is no room for me in Britain on account of pseudo-Episcopacy--no hope of my being allowed to revisit my native country. Our bishops return home after being anointed with the waters of the Thames. Alas, liberty is fled! religion is banished! I have nothing new to write to you, except my hesitation about my banishment. I reflect upon the active life which I spent in my native country during the s.p.a.ce of thirty-six years, the idle life which I have been condemned to spend in prison, the reward which I have received from men for my labours, the inconveniences of old age, and other things of a similar kind, taken in connection with the disgraceful bondage of the Church and the base perfidy of men. But in vain: I am still irresolute. Shall I desert my station? Shall I fly from my native country, from my native Church, from my very self? Or, shall I deliver myself up, like a bound quadruped, to the will and pleasure of men? No: sooner than do this, I am resolved, by the grace of G.o.d, to endure the greatest extremity. Until my fate is fixed, I cannot be free from anxiety.'

As Melville, however, continued to weigh the invitation to Sedan, it was more and more borne in upon his mind that it was the call of Providence and the fulfilment of a presage of which he had often spoken, that he was destined to confess Christ on a larger theatre; so he decided to accept it, and left for France on 19th April 1611.

There were six Protestant universities in France, and many of their Chairs were held by Scotsmen who had been Melville's students in St.

Andrews. In Sedan, an Aberdonian was Princ.i.p.al, and another fellow-countryman filled the Chair of Philosophy. In this retired frontier town of France, the scene in our own day of the crowning disaster to her army which gave the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to the Napoleonic dynasty, Melville spent the remainder of his days; and from it he pa.s.sed away to the land that was 'nativest' to him.

Some months after settling in Sedan, he received a letter from his nephew with all the home news, which was very gloomy. The bishops were now in their glory. 'If they get the Kingdom of Heaven,' so the Chancellor Seaton said of them, 'they must be happy men, for they already reign on earth.' The pulpits were silent: poor nephew James himself was still in exile, sick, with his heart pierced with many wounds, and longing that he had the wings of a dove that he might fly away and be at rest. To this letter Melville replied in a strain of exuberant cheerfulness:--

'Your letter, my dear James, gave me as much pleasure as it is possible for one to receive in these gloomy and evil days. We must not forget the apostolical injunction, "Rejoice always: rejoice in hope." _Non si male nunc, et olim erit._ Providence is often pleased to grant prosperity and long impunity to those whom it intends to punish for their crimes, in order that they may feel more severely from the reverse.... It is easy for a wicked man to throw a commonwealth into disorder: G.o.d only can restore it. Empires which have been procured by fraud cannot be stable or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe, though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future: "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert our ingenuity and labour in adding to our vexation? Away with fearful apprehensions!'

Turning his thoughts to his old friends and neighbours, the exile makes playful inquiries for their welfare:--

'What is the _profound Dreamer_ (so I was accustomed to call him when we travelled together in 1584)--what is our Corydon of Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of years? _Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos._ Let me know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear, constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friends.h.i.+ps, as too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend d.y.k.es, with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end."

... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise the past days because we can take little pleasure in the present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some things which I could wish never to have seen. I try daily to learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle from a talkative old man. _Loqui senibus res est gratissima_, says your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name gives me new life; for the _regeneration_ forms almost the sole topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that I may have my conversation in heaven.'

How keenly Melville felt the cruelty of the Government in driving himself and his nephew into exile appears in another part of the same letter:--

'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph--_traxitque sub astra furorem_? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also (now approaching my seventieth year, and consequently _emeritus_), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile, shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of heaven.'

In the following year Melville was greatly cheered by hearing that all the exiled ministers had refused an offer which the Crown had made to allow them to return to their country on condition of their making a submission to Episcopacy; and he wrote expressing his admiration of their heroism, and a.s.suring them of his continual remembrance: 'I keep all my friends in my eye; I carry them in my bosom; I commend them to the G.o.d of mercy in my daily prayers.... I do not sink under adversity; I reserve myself for better days.'

In April 1614 there fell on Melville the heaviest blow his affection ever received--the tidings of his nephew's death. James Melville died well-nigh broken-hearted; he had not been allowed to return to his own country and resume his charge of his poor seafaring folk, nor to join in France the exile who was so endeared to him. On his deathbed, and within a few hours of the end, when one who was beside him asked if he had no desire to recover, he replied, 'No, not for twenty worlds.' His friends asked him to give them some sign that he was at peace, when he repeated the dying words of the martyr Stephen, and so pa.s.sed away to that country of his own which all his life he had been seeking.

There is no one in the long line of great Scottish Churchmen whose memory deserves more honour than James Melville, or inspires so much affection, so gracious was his spirit, so pure his character, so disinterested his aims. With the solitary exception which we need not name, there was no one in his own day who rendered better or more varied service to the Church and to the country. For many years he was his uncle's right-hand man as a teacher in our two chief Universities; the Church never had a pastor who had more of the true pastor's heart, nor a leader of more wisdom in counsel, more persuasiveness in conference, more decision in action; it never had a more vivid historian, nor one whose writings are so great a treasure of our Scottish literature. When James Melville came to his grave, how different the world would be to his great kinsman, who could so truly have said, 'Very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, pa.s.sing the love of women.' His uncle's grief found its only solace in the thought that he was 'now out of all doubt and fashrie, enjoying the fruits of his suffering here.'

Melville himself never lost his hopefulness and happy ardour. In 1612 he wrote to Robert Durie, one of the banished brethren:--

'Am I not threescore and eight years old; unto the which age none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank G.o.d, I eat, I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone, and better than when I was younger--_in ipso flore adolescentiae_. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth with some little pain, which I have felt only since the beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance from prison. I feel, thank G.o.d, no abatement of the alacrity and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither use I spectacles now more than ever, yea, I use none at all, nor ever did, and see now to read Hebrew without points, and in the smallest characters. Why may I not live to see a changement to the better, when the Prince shall be informed truly by honest men, or G.o.d open His eyes and move His heart to see the pride of stately prelates?'

The last production from Melville's pen was a pamphlet against the Anglican ceremonies imposed by the King on the Church in _The Five Articles of Perth_ in 1618. We know little of the last years of his life. His health apparently gave way in 1620, and he died in Sedan in 1622, having reached his seventy-seventh year.

The only fault Melville's enemies could find with his personal character was his impetuous and explosive temper. In regard to this, he was his own best apologist when he said, 'If my anger is from below, trample upon it; but if from above, let it rise!' If he was 'zealously affected,' it was always 'in a good thing.' No one could ever charge him with personal or narrow ambitions. It was always, as he once wrote, his own desire 'to be concealed in the crowd even when the field of honour appeared to ripen' before him; and his nephew says of him: 'Whowbeit he was verie hat in all questiones, yet when it twitched his particular,[29] no man could crab him, contrare to the common custome.'

No one of braver spirit or truer mould has been among us, and we need to allow but little for the colouring of affection to accept James Melville's judgment: 'Scottland never receavit a graitter benefit at the hands of G.o.d than this man.' He is one of those great personalities of our history who have left us an example of the moral daring which is the greatest property of the human soul, and the spring of its n.o.blest achievements. The struggle for the advancement of human wellbeing is carried on in ever-changing lines; the problems of the Church and the nation alter; the battlegrounds of freedom and progress s.h.i.+ft; but this spiritual intrepidity and scorn of consequence ever remains the chief and most indispensable factor in the highest service of mankind. It is to men like Melville, who have a higher patriotism than that which is bounded by any earthly territory, whose country is the realm of Truth, whose loyalty transcends submission to any human sovereign, that every people owes its n.o.blest heritage. Such are the men who have been the makers of Scotland. '_Sic fortis Etruria crevit_.'

[Footnote 29: When it concerned his private interest.]