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The Reformed Kirk of
Scotland claimed the right to exercise absolute authority over conduct
down to the minutest details. While it abolished the confessional, it
none the less aspired to regulate not merely the outward acts, but even
the inmost sentiments and beliefs of every member of the community. It
assumed the entire moral charge of the nation individually and
collectively; and the only possible means of escape from the rigours of
its discipline was by the extreme expedient of committing a capital
crime. "Blasphemy, adultery, murder, perjury, and other crimes capital
worthy of death ought not says the First Book of Discipline, "properly
to fall tinder censure of the Church," and this for the very sufficient
reason that " all such open transgressors Of God's laws ought to be
taken away by the civil sword." The Kirk had done with them, and
therefore required of the State that they should be "taken away." Every
criminal—or rather sinner—who had not earned the right to be "taken away
by the civil sword " was primarily answerable for his conduct to the
Kirk authorities. The crimes specifically mentioned in the Book of
Discipline as " properly appertaining to the Church of God to punish the
same as God's Word commanded " were drunkenness, excess (be it in
upparel, or be it in eating or drinking), fornication, oppression of the
poor, by exaction, deceiving of them in selling or buying by wrong
weight or measures, wanton words, licentious living tending to slander."
The list is pretty comprehensive, but it is rather illustrative than
exhaustive. The Kirk had no complete and definite criminal code, as
regards either specific acts or their punishment, the distinguishing
characteristic of her criminal law being an extreme flexibility in the
direction of inclusiveness and severity. Practically any act, whether
public or private, of any individual, whether gentle or simple, became a
crime if the Kirk- session of his parish thought fit to make it so. A
similar flexibility also characterised her criminal procedure. Mere
suspicion was frequently sufficient to place a person under the
ecclesiastical ban for years, if not even for life. No strict laws of
evidence were adhered to, but almost no method of obtaining evidence was
too despicable to be rejected. Gradually the Kirk developed a system of
espionage, which while much more harassing than the old confessional was
quite as inquisitorial. Every form of transgression, no matter how
trivial, with every omission of religions duty, was searched out by
elders and reported to the Kirk-sessions. These detectives were told off
to attend fairs and races, and report on the conduct of those who
frequented them ; and, like the skeleton at the feast, their unbidden
presence clamped the spirits of the most Jovial at every wedding and
merrymaking. None
were permitted to claim exemption from surveillance. "To discipline,"
decreed the inexorable Book, "must all the estates within this realm be
subject if they offend, as well rulers as they that are ruled." The
inviolable preservation of God's religion," wrote Knox, in his
Exhortation to England, "requireth two principall thinges the one, that
power nor libertie be permitted to any, of what estate, degre, or
autoritie that ever they be, either to lyve without the yoke of
discipline by God's Worde coininaniided; either yet to alter, to change,
to disanull, or dissolve the least one jott in religion, which from
God's mouthe thow hast receyved."
"And," he furthur adds, "as touching
execution of Discipline, that must be done in everie citie and shire
where the magistrates and ministers are joyned together, with any
respect of; so that the ministers, albeit they lack the glorious titles
of Lordes, and the devehish pinpe which before appeared in proude
Prelates, yet must they be so stowte, and so bolde in God's cause, that
yf the King himself wolde usurpe any other autoritie in God's religion,
then becoineth a meinbre of Christ's body, that first he be admonished
according to God's Worde; and after yf he continue the same, be subject
to the yoke of discipline." The special aim of the Turk was to establish
in England and in Scotland a theocracy modelled after that of the
ancient Jews, with, however, this difference, besides others, that
sacrifices and ceremonies were to be superseded by catechisms and
confessions. The result was in Scotland—for England, notwithstanding-
Knox's prophetic warning that it would not "escape vengeance, which is
already prepared for the inobedient," could not be induced to make the
experiment— a wildly exaggerated travesty of a form of government in
itself entirely alien to the genius of Europeans. The Kirk's authority
was deemed to be coextensive with the nation. Her pretensions were quite
as arrogant as those of Rome, and they were much more rigidly insisted
on. To plead non-membership of the Kirk, and decline attendance on its
ordinances, was simply to incur its implacable attentions; and should
these prove ineffectual of repentance and submission, forth came the
dread edict of excommunication. The obdurate refractory was delivered
over to Satan, not iii the merely formal fashion of to-day, but in as
literal and practical a sense as mundane authority could achieve. He was
supposed to be actually given "into the hands and power of the devil";
he was declared to be ''accursed," and "all that favour the Lord Jesus"
were required so to "repute and hold him," The effect of this was a
system of ''boycotting" so indefatigable and relentless that no choice
was left but an unconditional surrender. If the impenitent were a
servant no master might employ him. If lie were a master no servant
durst minister, on any pretence whatsoever, to his direst necessities;
none might give him food, drink, or shelter ; his nearest and dearest
were debarred from offering him the offices of friendship or even
showing him common courtesy; lie became incapable of holding any form of
property; his enemies might do with him as they listed without lot or
hindrance. In
Scotland excommunication was much more terrible than mere outlawry.
Powerful nobles frequently defied the king with comparative impunity,
but they could not so defy the Kirk. How prodigious was the force of her
anathema, and how vain even for the strongest to contend against it
might be illustrated by many examples but it may suffice to cite the
cases of the first Marquis of Huntly, the ninth Earl of Errol, and the
fifth Earl of Bothwell, all occurring during the rule of James VI., and
at a time when the Kirk was by no means at its meridian of power. Huntly,
a Catholic by conviction, to escape the terrible results of
excommunication, more than once came under solemn covenant to observe
the ordinances of the Kirk and even to communicate. Errol, less amenable
to menace or persuasion, incurred in 1608 the penalty of £1,000 for
absenting himself from communion; was enjoined to confine himself within
the bounds of the city of Perth for "the better resolution of his
doubts"; and being ultimately found "obstinate and obdured," was
excommunicated, and laid in close durance in Dumbarton Castle. As for
Bothwell, being long the special champion of the Kirk, he was able with
its countenance to defy the displeasure of King James, but having
mortally offended the clergy he carne under the ban of excommunication,
and had not only to put a final term to his alarums and incursions, but
to depart the country and to spend the closing years of his life in
penury and exile.
The secret of the Kirk's authority rested ill prerogative of
excommunication the curious blending of spiritual malediction with
temporal tyranny in her anathema enabling her virtually to usurp the
authority of the kingdom. With such a tremendous weapon ill too, she
could afford to be comparatively lenient in her other modes of enforcing
obedience; but the mildness of these subsidiary methods was more
apparent than real. Their seeming lenity was greatly qualified by
comprehensiveness of application, and by the Kirk's persistent
importunity. Even attendance on religious ordinances was made to assume
a disciplinary form, everything being excluded fitted to render the
services attractive to the natural man. While also regularity of
attendance was imperative, wakefulness during services, however
prolonged was enforced by a variety of devices more ingenious than
refined ; and this was supplemented by periodical examination of every
citizen, whether communicant or not, to test doctrinal soundness and
progress in religious and theological acquirements. No assumption of
dulness or stupidity exempted from censure; for while great patience and
forbearance were manifested towards weak-minded devotees, such persons
as manifested any intelligence and ability in the daily duties of life
were handled with the sternest severity if at all backward in the
acquirement of that know- ledge and those convictions essential to fit
them to take their Place as communicants. "Evei'ie maister of houshald,"
so was it decreed in the Book, "must be commandit eathir to instruct or
ellis cans be instructed his children, servandis and familie in the
principallis of the Christiane religioun" [as understood by the Kirk].
And again: ''Such as he ignorant in the Articulis of thair Faith;
understand not, nor can not rehearse the Commandmentis of God; knaw not
how to pray; neathui' whan'into thair richtuousnes consistis, aught not
to be admitted to the Lordis Tabill. And gif thay stulmrnhe continew,
and suffer thair children and servandis to continew in wilful ignorance,
the discipline of the Churche must proceide against them unto
excomnmunicatioun; and than must the mater be referred to the Civill
Magistrat. For seing that the just levith be his awin faith, and that
Christ Jesus justifieth be knawledge off himself, insufferable we judge
it that men shall be permitted to leave and continew in ignorance as
members of the Churche of God." Thus the Kirk virtually menaced death
against all who refused her yoke of intellectual and moral bondage. It
must also be remembered— though this may appear something of an
anticlimax—that at stated intervals, as well as on special occasions,
there were enjoined on all alike such 'fasts as did actually and
literally occasion the severest qualms; and that this torture was
ingeniously augmented by exposure to a prolonged series of exercises
austerely diversified with exhortation and rebuke.
The system of public discipline introduced
by the Kirk for actual transgression was to some extent a revival of an
old Catholic custom which had fallen into desuetude ; but it was
characterised by the same bald and bare austerity that distinguished the
Presbyterian ceremonials. Whatever be said of certain modes of Catholic
discipline there are few, if any, that verge on the ridiculous, while
there are some (as that of pilgrimage) that are touched with a certain
beauty and romance. By her contempt for ceremonial, her dread of what
she deemed to be idolatry, and her rejection of art, the Scottish Kirk
necessarily deprived herself of a powerful means of kindling the
imagination of her penitents. Nearly all her modes of discipline were
informed with a certain grotesque and awkward strain which tended to
provoke the laughter of far other than the mere ribald. The small
delinquencies were commonly visited with admonition, and the formal
admonition of adults in a public assembly is apt to seem more or less
childish and pedantic. But the chief disciplinary instrument was what
Burns calls the "creepy chair." There were two varieties—a high and a
low; promotion to the more conspicuous depending upon the flagrancy of
the offence. The professed penitent remained on the stool all through
divine service, the presence of the congregation at worship being
supposed to lend solemnity and severity to the chastisement. Usually the
offender was clad in a "harn gown" (the San Benito of the Presbyterian
Inquisition), and various other signs of opprobrium might be attached at
discretion. Thus the discomfort of special offenders was further
enhanced by the application of the branks—a vile contrivance in iron
plates, whose chief function was to serve as a gag; and in the case of
males the head was sometimes shaved. For minor trespasses—as scolding,
quarrelling, abstinence from church, violation of the Sabbath, playing
at cards, and so forth—the usual punishment was confinement in the joug,
an iron collar attached to the outer walls of the church. This
discipline was administered only on Sundays, but might be continued from
week to week in succession. A not uncommon alternative was fining.
Sometimes the defaulter was held in bondage for long periods in the kirk
steeple; or the specially obdurate might be banished the parish, or
delivered over to the magistrate to be scourged or burned on the cheek.
In extreme cases ducking in pools notoriously foul and rancid was also
practised, some of the more enterprising Kirk-sessions equipping
themselves with a special apparatus for the purpose.
During Knox's supremacy the ideal system of
Kirk authority expounded in "The First Book of Discipline" was
undoubtedly in full sway. The principal members of the nobility
subscribed the book; the Privy Council of Scotland gave it their
sanction previous to Mary's arrival from France; and although the Queen
herself naturally declined to ratify it, the absence of her imprimatur
rendered it no whit less operative. The Regent Morton was the first to
take a decided stand against the clerical claim to absolute rule, one of
the main aims of his policy being the subordination of Kirk to State. As
a flagrant instance of the Regent's opposition to the execution of
discipline, the Kirk historian, Calderwood, narrates that "Robert
Gourley, an elder of the kirk of Edinburgh, was condemned to make his
public repentance in the kirk of Edinburgh upon Friday, the 28th May,
for transporting wheat out of the country. The Regent being advertised,
answered for him when he was called upon to utter his confession, and
said openly to the. minister, Mr. James Lowsone, I have given him
license, and it pertameth not to you to judge of that matter." This
example, of course, rather illustrates the comprehensiveness of the
spiritual prerogative claimed by the Kirk than the pretensions of Morton
; but if all tales be true, Morton once gave much more startling
evidence of the scant respect in which he held her discipline, for he is
said to have actually caused one of her clergy to he first tortured and
then hanged for daring to rebuke him for adultery. This was taking the
bull by the horns; for had the charge of adultery been sustained,
himself, according to the "Book of Discipline," had been liable to the
extreme penalty of death. But while as a private individual he had
incurred the Kirk's severest condemnation in more ways than one, it was
as a ruler that he had contrived to give her especial offence. He
seriously crippled her pecuniary resources, and he studiously refrained
from carrying out her special behests. Though "often required," says
Calderwood, to give his presence to the assembly and further the cause
of God, he not only refused but threatened some of the more zealous with
hanging, alleging that otherwise there could be no peace or order in the
country." But in the end the Kirk was victor; for it was chiefly owing
to his rash defiance of her that Morton was driven from power and was
visited by the doom with which he had menaced her froward
representatives.
Under King James the Kirk was shorn of much of her ascendancy, alike in
matters temporal and matters spiritual; but on one important point of
discipline the harmony between Kirk and king was without jar or discord.
Both were equally exercised by and alarmed at the extraordinary
manifestations of Satanic enterprise revealed in the presence of sorcery
and witchcraft: James, because personally he greatly dreaded the
application of witchcraft against himself; the Kirk, because it
discerned in it a special attempt on the part of Satan to overthrow its
own dominion. Thus the chief result of time interest aroused in the
community by the wonders recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, joined with
the indefatigable attention the Kirk had seen fit to consecrate to the
politics of the nether world, had been a sort of apotheosis of perhaps
the most gruesome and repulsive of all superstitions. Of its astounding
influence in depraving the popular imagination, the grave narrative of
the Kirk historian, Calder\vood, supplies a characteristic example. "In
the moneths of November and December" [1590, "manie witches were taikin:
Richard Grahame, Johne Sibbet, alias Cunninghanme, Annie Sainpsone,
middewife, Jonet Duncan in Edinburgh, Eufame Mnkealzeane, daughter to
urnquhile Mr. Thomas Makaizean, Barbara Naper, spous to Archibald
Dowglas of Pergill, Jonet Drummond, a Hieland wife, Katherine Wallace.
They conspired the overthrow of the king and queen's fleete, at their
returne out of Denniarke, by raising of stormes upon the seas. Sindrie
of the witches confessed they had sindrie times companie with the devill,
at the kirk of Northberwick, where he appeared to them in the likenesse
of a man with a redde cappe, and a rtunpe at his taill, [and] made a
harangue in maner of a sennoun to them his text ' Manie goe to the
mercat, but all buy not.' He found fault with sindrie that had not done
their part in ill. Those that had been bussie in their craft, he said,
were his beloved, and promised they sould want nothing they needed.
Playing to them upon a truinpe, he said, 'Cummer goe yee before; ciunmer
goe yee,' and so they daunced. When they had done, he caused everie one,
to the number of threescore, kisse his buttocks. Johne Gordoun, alias
called G-raymeale, stood behind the doore, to eshew, yitt it behoved him
also to kisse at last. John Feane, schoolemaister of Saltprestoun,
confessed he was clerk to their assemblies." Thus it would seem that the
weird conventions of the wicked were closely modelled after the
assemblies of the Kirk down even to the preparation of an authoritative
record of their desperate purposes and pactions. The craze had indeed
achieved a rankness of growth and a virulence of habit without parallel
in the world's history and the zeal displayed by the king in seconding
the Kirk in her attempt to sup- press the traffic with Satan and shield
the prey of Satan's minions from calamity, went far to reconcile her to
his lukewarm support in other fields of activity.
The breach between the Kirk and king did not
become irreparable till the time of Charles I. The policy of Charles can
scarce be defended, but it is at least as defensible as the policy of
time Kirk. His aims were not one whit more tyrannical than hers
intrinsically they were less so, for they had to do merely with "tithes
of mint and anise and cumin," while she concerned herself chiefly with
the " weightier matters of the law." If the king endeavoured to
interfere unduly with her forms and ceremonies, her persistent ambition
was to subdue both king and people to her authority. Thus she would have
the covenant not only tolerated but subscribed by the king; and in the
heyday of her supremacy she endeavoured to impose it on England as well
as Scotland. In a sense her design was frustrated by Cromwell even in
respect of Scotland; but although that great and masterful ruler
debarred her from direct and active interference with the civil arm he
permitted her while he reigned the exercise of almost unlimited control
over manners and morals. The session and the presbytery records, in
every district of the country, during the time of the Protectorate, teem
with astounding instances of her interference with even the minutest
details of domestic and social life. Elders were appointed each in his
own quarter for trying the manners of the People; and the Presbytery of
Aberdeen went so far as to order every master of a house to provide
himself with a "palmar," or birch, for the chastisement of frivolity in
his family or among his maids.
It is impossible to arrive at any other
conclusion than that the ancient disciplinary system of the Kirk was a
huge and dreadful mistake ; that while her enforcement of it was the
usurpation of functions properly belonging to the State, her manner of
exercising these functions was insufferably tyrannical. Granted that she
had to contend with a certain laxity of manners created by a peculiar
religious crisis, the cures she prescribed were in effect little bettor
than the disease. if her ideal was noble—and it was so only in the sense
in which the monastic ideal is noble, for it represented but an
incomplete and bastard monasticism—her methods were intolerable. Small
wonder, then, that at the Restoration she should have been hoist with
her own petard. The Covenanting persecution, cruel though it was was not
unprovoked, nor did it essentially differ from the Kirk's own method of
behaviour towards heretics. Moreover, its victims were possibly not so
numerous as those immolated by the Kirk on the altar of witchcraft. Much
has been made of the pitiful fate of the two Covenanting women exposed
to drowning by the gradual influx of the waters-of the Solway but the
odium attaching to this isolated act is slight indeed compared with that
pertaining to the torturing, "wirrying," and burning, at the direct
instance of the Kirk, of whole multitudes of women, many of whom died
protesting in all sincerity that they were wholly "innocent of the
crimes laid to their charge," and none of whom could have been actually
guilty in the sense supposed. Besides, the Covenanters did not object to
religious persecution on principle, but only as exercised against
themselves. They knew nothing of toleration. With a free hand they would
have concussed both nations into Presbyterian Calvinism; and now an
attempt was made to concuss them into Episcopacy. It was inexpedient and
wrong, no doubt, and it proved a complete failure. But it at least
taught the Kirk the salutary lesson that two could play her game of
religions tyranny; and from the furnace a large part of the nation came
forth wiser if sadder than when it went in. The old pretensions of the
Kirk were never revived in all their pristine intemperance and self-
sufficiency. From henceforth she ceased from exercising absolute sway in
matters civil; and in 1090 her old form of discipline was knocked on the
head by the repeal of "all Acts enjoining civil pains upon sentences of
excommunication." With this tremendous weapon all but innocuous in her
grasp, she gradually discovered that her subsidiary methods of
punishment were coining to be regarded with other than the old emotions.
The sanction of custom enabled her to retain them in position for some
considerable time; but they had lost much of their impressiveness. In
this there was hardly matter for regret on any account for her
discipline, however unpleasant and discomforting, had never been
strikingly effectual— indeed, could pretend to a victory in connection
with but a single sort of transgressions. It was claimed that
witch-craft did actually succumb to the vigilance of the Kirk-sessions,
and when in 1743 further persecution of witches was forbidden by the
civil authority, the Kirk protested against such enlightened legislation
as "contrary to the express law of God; by which a holy God may be
provoked to permit Satan to tempt and seduce others to the same wicked
and dangerous snares." But in truth witchcraft was chiefly a ghost of
the Kirk's own raising, and the cruelties exercised in laying it form,
perhaps, the darkest blot on her escutcheon. It was far otherwise with
her efforts to cope with the vice of drunkenness, the increase in which
may be partly explained by a desire to find a refuge from the gloomy
dogmatism of the Kirk and the joyless social atmosphere of Puritanism.
It was also far other with her championship of the seventh commandment.
As for the "cutty stool" as a moral influence, "A frail victim," says
Hill Burton, "was sometimes compelled to appear on nine or ten
successive Sundays exposed to the congregation in the seat of shame";
but "the most noticeable effect often produced by the exhibition was in
the gibes and indecorous talk of the young peasants, who, after a few
significant glances during the admonition, and a few words at the church
door, adjourned the general question for discussion in the change-
house." Within
recent years the competition between the various denominations has
tended in the direction of moderation. In any case, the more formidable
paraphernalia of punishment have nearly if not utterly disappeared. The
joug still hangs by the outer wall of Duddingston Kirk—it may be as a
warning to the youth of adjacent Edinburgh against Sunday skating on the
neighbouring loch; but not within recent years have news been brought to
the Scottish capital of any actual application of the discipline. The
stool of repentance has also ceased to vary the monotony of Presbyterian
ceremonial and—a Samson shorn and captive—may now be contemplated
without peculiar perturbation in antiquarian museums. No fetid
ecclesiastical pool now reminds the philosophic traveller that ''justice
shall haunt" the loose-tongued woman as well as the "violent man." After
years of degenerate and spurious observance, the Fast Day is now
avowedly consecrated to recreation and frivolity. As to the services,
even in those sections of the Kirk which specially claim to represent "
the distinctive principles of the Reformation," it is now almost
recognised that the proper means of ecclesiastical influence is not
compulsion and mortification but persuasion and charm. |
