God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [13]
James may therefore have had particular reasons for hostility to Presbyterianism, but he was not flying in the face of the reformed tradition in Scotland in seeking to preserve a role for bishops and the crown, and his views were not completely outside the mainstream of Scottish Protestant opinion. In fact, Melville’s outburst in 1596 more or less coincided with a reaction against the very clericalist view of Presbyterianism. Ironically, by emphasizing the separation of kirk and state matters, and arguing that authority in the kirk was a manifestation of divine will, Melville could appear to be raising up the clerical caste once more. Jure divino presbytery – Presbyterian organization justified as by the law of God – might seem little more than the old popery writ large, and was certainly not the only authentic view of authority in the reformed church. James had some support in resisting it. In 1600 ‘parliamentary bishops’ were appointed – they sat in parliament as representatives of the church but did not have any ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Within the kirk, commissioners had been appointed to oversee its discipline, and over the years these positions sometimes went to parliamentary bishops: clearly this pointed towards a revival of modified episcopacy.33
Following his accession to the English throne James also tried to make Scottish and English practice more alike, both in matters of church government and in forms of worship. He successfully manipulated a series of General Assemblies to establish the reality of his power to summon them and to secure meetings more amenable to his views. By 1610 he had intruded bishops first as permanent moderators of kirk sessions and then of synods, and the admission of ministers was made their responsibility rather than that of presbyteries. Estates and consistorial powers were restored. In the same year, normal episcopal succession was restored by the consecration of Scottish bishops, normal except that it was done in Westminster by English hands.34
All this was more offensive to the chattering classes than to the parishioner in the pew, for whom the daily functioning of the kirk was largely unchanged. In any case these constitutional questions were of secondary significance. Changes to forms of worship, however, were far more likely to evoke a reaction in the localities. It was in forms of worship that the signs of a true church were manifest – preaching and sacraments – and it was in worship that ordinary Christians encountered the visible church. In Scotland discipline was often seen as a mark of a true church, and the kirk sessions, which assumed responsibility for discipline, had planted deep roots in the religious and political life of local communities.35 The kirk had deep local roots and it was of course a formal presumption of Reformation thought that the laity should be well-informed. The radical potential of Reformation ideas was not socially restricted and the details of local religious practice were habitually invested with considerable, even apocalyptic, significance. Changing local religious practice ran the risk of arousing principled resistance from the whole Christian congregation. It is not perhaps surprising, therefore, that James met more significant resistance to proposed changes in worship after 1612 than he had to his reforms of church government.
Worship in the kirk had initially used the English Prayer Book of 1549, but this had given way in the early years of the Reformation to a more austere Book of Common Order, although there is some evidence that it was sometimes used alongside the English Book. Dissatisfied with the Book of Common Order, James promoted a new