Melville defies the king
Melville, grown ever bolder, called James to his face God's silly vassal, and in 1596 he threw the rule of the Gospel in the king's face, just as Pope Gregory VII had treated the German emperor five hundred years before. He told James: in Scotland there are two kings and two kingdoms. Christ Jesus is king, and his kingdom is the church, and of that kingdom James VI is a subject, not a king, nor a head, nor a lord, but a member. David Black, a minister of St. Andrews, told his hearers that all kings are children of the devil, that Elizabeth was an unbeliever and that James himself was the devil. The English ambassador protested, and the council summoned Black to trial, but he refused to appear, saying that a sin committed in the pulpit was for the church to judge, and besides that he spoke by God's inspiration. When James ordered him tried in his absence, a delegation of ministers came to court. James would not be reconciled. On the contrary, he declared that the acts of church councils, like the laws of parliament, must have his approval. The ministers called the people to a fast and said threateningly that whatever might happen they were clear of the shedding of his majesty's blood.
The riot of 1596 and an uneasy peace
When a crowd of troublemakers gathered around the king's lodging (17 December 1596), he fled to Holyrood, and the next day left Edinburgh with all his courtiers. He then had it proclaimed that Edinburgh was unworthy to be a capital and that he would not return except to punish the rebels, and he ordered all ministers and all persons who did not live in Edinburgh to leave it. The rioters, finding no one to attack, scattered. The merchants lamented the halt in their trade with the court, and people asked whether this quarrel was worth the damage to the economy. In any case James came back angrily on 1 January 1597. The General Assembly, meeting at Perth, declared that the church was submissive, and agreed that no minister should be appointed in the principal towns without the consent of the king and the people, and that preachers should not speak about acts of parliament or council. The ministers were allowed to return to the capital (1597), but rule by bishops was restored. A dull peace followed the old quarrel between state and church.
George Buchanan, scholar and rebel
In the Scottish literature of this age two figures stand out: the king himself, and George Buchanan, his best-known teacher, who led an astonishing life. He was born in 1506 in Stirlingshire, studied in Paris, served in the army in France and Scotland, and was inspired by the teaching of John Major with a zeal for learning and politics; he went back to Paris to study. Returning to Scotland as a satirist of the church, he was imprisoned by Cardinal Beaton. He escaped, went to Bordeaux, taught Latin there, wrote fairly good Latin verse and plays, and saw Montaigne, one of his pupils, acting in one of his plays. At Coimbra he became head of a college, but the Spanish Inquisition imprisoned him for his scorn of the friars. After a time he went to Scotland and France, came back again, became Mary Stuart's tutor (1562), was elected moderator of the General Assembly (1567), and vouched for the authenticity of the casket letters, though he was himself accused of forging some of them. He attacked Mary harshly in his Detectio Mariae Reginae, and in spite of her protests became tutor to her son. He died in 1582. In his History of Scotland he tried to clear his country's history of English constraints and Scottish pride.
In his treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos (the Persian title, 'The True Kingship Is with the Scots', is garbled, and we give the Latin title as we think it was), he reminded his pupil, who later ruled as a despot, of the medieval principle that the people, next to God, are the only source of power. He said that every society rests on an implied social contract between people and government, that is, on mutual duties and limits, and that the will of the majority may rule over all. The king, he held, is subject to the laws approved by the people's representatives, and the nation has the right to resist any tyrant or remove him from the throne. This is the very story of the social contract, told a century before Hobbes and two before Rousseau. The Scottish parliament condemned the book and Oxford University later burned it, yet its influence was very great. Samuel Johnson thought Buchanan the only genius Scotland had produced. Hume held Napier to be Scotland's greatest writer (so the Persian text, and we flag it), while Carlyle, who was himself a kind of living Knox, thought Knox greater than them all. James VI had views of his own about it.
The king as author
James was as proud of owning books as of wearing royal robes. In 1616 he published a large folio of his collected writings, dedicated, the book says, to Jesus Christ (the Persian title is garbled and we flag this). He wrote verse and advised poets. He translated the Psalms of David into English, wrote a commentary on the Revelation of St. John and a treatise on demons (his Demonology), and in 1598 wrote two short works defending absolute monarchy. One, Basilikon Doron ('the royal gift'), contained advice to his son Henry on the craft and duties of kingship and stressed that governing the church is among a king's chief duties. In the other, The True Law of Free Monarchies, he praised despotism with remarkable eloquence. Kings, he wrote, are chosen by God, since all great events happen by his will, and the appointment and anointing of kings by God is like a sacrament beyond description. Kings therefore have the right to be despots, and to resist them is both madness and crime, a crime more harmful than any tyranny. What Elizabeth had held as a useful fable became for James, a queen's son, a passionate principle. His son Charles inherited it from his father and paid for it.
The crown of England
The English government of 1598 could not foresee 1649. After James declared himself a Protestant, the leaders of the English council recognized him, as Mary's son, as heir to the English throne. Four days after Elizabeth's death (the book gives 5 April 1603, but she died on 24 March, a date we flag), James made the journey from Edinburgh to London amid public rejoicing, was entertained along the way by the English nobility, and reached London on 6 May, which was decked out for his coming. The people knelt before him and the nobles kissed his hand. After a thousand quarrels the two nations were at last united under a single king (though the two parliaments did not join until 1707). In this way Elizabeth's childlessness bore fruit.
James at thirty-seven
What sort of man had James become at thirty-seven? He was of middle height, with weak knees, a slightly protruding belly, chestnut hair, red cheeks, a curved nose and blue eyes. His look was a mixture of suspicion and sadness, as if he knew his faults. He wore thick quilted clothing to guard against the blows of assassins. A rather lazy king, he thought the measures of Elizabeth's time sufficient and set his hand to nothing new.
He used coarse words in his speech and took part in vulgar amusements. He stammered, was a despot, did not guard the dignity of his tongue, and in addition mispronounced words. He was vain but generous, and because his position was often in danger and he was often deceived, he had become timid and cunning. He was quickly hurt and quickly hurt others, quick to forgive and to apologize. They say that when John Gibb lost some valuable documents, James flew into a rage and kicked him; but after finding the papers he knelt before his wounded attendant and would not rise until Gibb had forgiven him. He was tolerant in an atmosphere full of bigotry, and though he was sometimes harsh, he was usually kind and gentle. He was suspicious of his son Henry, who was greatly admired by the people, but he loved his other son Charles to distraction. His treatment of women gave no cause for criticism, but he lavished fondness on handsome young men. Among his contradictions, he was superstitious and learned, light-minded and sly, believed in demons and witches yet favored Bacon and Jonson, and was jealous of scholars yet in love with books. One of his first acts as king of England was to allow Oxford and Cambridge to send representatives to parliament. When he saw the Bodleian Library he cried: if I were not a king I would be a professor, and if I were to be a prisoner and to work as I pleased I would wish no other prison than that library, chained among so many good authors and masters of the past. On the whole James was an unusual man, but of kindly and humorous nature. Clever people mocked him, yet the people forgave him, since until his sad end he gave them peace and security.