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Portraits of Charles I from the 1630s

Since 1603, when James VI had succeeded to the English throne and moved to London, the Scots had grappled with life under an absentee monarch. This became a more serious problem under Charles, who was brought up in England and had not visited Scotland before 1633. He had a poor feel for Scottish affairs, and his personal style accentuated the problem. Notoriously, Charles launched a ‘Revocation’ scheme which aroused deep suspicion. Passed only months after his accession it reclaimed titles to lands sold or granted (alienated) from the crown since 1540. This was a variation on an established practice allowing kings when they came of age to recover lands alienated during their minority. In this case, however, the variations on this more or less clearly established practice all favoured the crown. Charles had not ruled as a minor, for example. There were problems of presentation too: Charles almost certainly intended to impose fines on these alienated lands, rather than to dispossess people, but he did not feel it necessary to offer this reassurance publicly. It was associated with an attempt to recover church lands alienated at the Reformation in order to re-endow the church, but here the vested interests of those who held those lands cut across their commitment to the well-being of the church. The Revocation raised almost no money, as the local commissioners fought trench warfare over the legal technicalities, and without particularly wanting to win. But the political cost in suspicion of the absentee king was significant. It may be that a fair-minded observer would see the problems as lying with Scottish perceptions as much as Charles’s intentions; but it was certainly the case that Charles was regarded with suspicion after this initiative.53

Charles was not just absent and distant in the more political sense – he was anglicized. This, of course, was a related problem and became all too evident on his coronation visit to Scotland – made eight years after his coronation in England. His journey through England lasted as long as his stay in Edinburgh, and his conduct in Scotland was altogether more stately and remote than was comfortable for his Scottish subjects. English manners were sufficiently widespread amongst the Scottish nobility to attract criticism but not so widespread as to secure approval.54 So too the religious ceremonies. Revealingly, however, Charles seems to have taken the absence of open hostility to this ceremonial as evidence that Scotland would stomach pressure to conform more closely to the English liturgy.55

His impatience with dissenting views was also manifest during his coronation visit, when he had received petitions calling for further reformation of one kind or another. A supplication was drawn up for presentation to Parliament concerning a mixture of religious and secular grievances, but was not presented to Charles since he had made it clear that he would disapprove. The following year, James Elphinstone, Lord Balmerino, was found to have a copy in his possession and was arrested for ‘lease-making’, that is, slandering the King or his council. This was perhaps an over-reaction, but even more startling was the sentence of death handed down on Balmerino. Worse still, it was only passed on the casting vote of the foreman of the jury, John Stewart, the Earl of Traquair, a close adviser of the King. Balmerino was pardoned in November 1636 but what was intended to terrify opposition into silence probably had a counter-productive effect: encouraging the thought that if possession of a copy of a supplication was treasonous then only more forceful expressions of dissent would suffice.56

Against the backdrop of these larger concerns, and of the reaction to the new canons of 1636, it is easier to understand the hostility aroused by the new Prayer Book ordered in October that year. This was to be the guide to worship in every parish of the kirk, the standard against which local practice should be held.