A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland Part 14

The Roman Catholic Church, although no longer conspicuous in the arena of politics, was by no means extinguished in Scotland. Its stronghold was in the North, among the Highlands, where it is estimated that out of the 14,000 Catholics in the kingdom, 12,000 were still clinging with unabated ardor to the {294} old religion. It was this minority, with many powerful chiefs for its leaders, which looked to Mary as the possible restorer of the faith; and this was the nursery and the hatching-ground for all the plots with France or Spain which for twenty years were leading Mary step by step toward Fotheringay. Whether the copies of the compromising letters which convicted her of complicity in these plots would have stood the test of an impartial investigation to-day we cannot say; but we know that Mary's tarnished name was restored almost to l.u.s.tre by the fort.i.tude and dignity with which she bore her long captivity, and met the moment of her tragic release (1587). There is something in this story which has touched the universal heart, and the world still weeps over it. But we do not hear that it ever cost her son one pang. James was twenty years old when Elizabeth signed the fatal paper, and if he ever made an effort to save his mother or shed a single tear over her fate, history does not mention it. Perhaps it was in recognition of this, or it may have been in reward for his championship of episcopacy, that Elizabeth made James her heir and successor. Whatever {295} was the impelling motive, the protracted struggle between the two nations came to a strange ending; not the supremacy of an English king in Scotland, as had been so often attempted, but the reign of a Scottish king in England. Elizabeth died in 1603, leaving to the son of Mary her crown, and a few days later James arrived in London, was greeted by the shouts of his English subjects, and crowned James I., King of England, upon the Stone of Destiny.

The limits of this sketch do not permit more than the briefest mention of the period between the union of the crowns, and the legislative union, a century later, when the two kingdoms became actually one. Its chief features were the resistance to encroachments upon the polity and organization of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, the cruelty and oppressions used by Charles I. to enforce the use of the liturgy of the Church of England, the formation of the "National Covenant," a sacred bond by which the Covenanters solemnly pledged an eternal fidelity to their Church, the alliance between the Scotch Covenanters and English Puritans, and the consequences to Scotland {296} of the overthrow of the monarchy by Cromwell. Still later (1689) came the rising of the Highland chiefs and clans, the Jacobites, as the adherents of the Stuarts are called, an attempt by the Catholics in the North to bring about the restoration of the exiled King or his son, the Pretender.

Statesmen in England, and some in Scotland, believed there would be no peace until the two countries were organically joined. In the face of great opposition a treaty of union was ratified by the Scottish Parliament in 1707. The country was given a representation of forty-five members in the English House of Commons, and sixteen peers in the House of Lords, and it was provided that the Presbyterian Church should remain unchanged in worship, doctrine, and government "to the people of the land in all succeeding generations." With this final Act the Scottish Parliament pa.s.sed out of existence.

The wisdom of this measure has been abundantly justified by the results--a growth in all that makes for material prosperity, a richer intellectual life, and peace. After centuries of anarchy and misrule and {297} aimless upheavals, Scotland had reached a haven. Her triumph has been a moral and an intellectual triumph, not political. In intellectual splendor her people may challenge the world, and in moral elevation and in righteousness they will find few peers. But candor compels the admission that Scotland has no more than Ireland proved herself capable of maintaining a separate nationality. Without the excuse of her sister island, never the victim of a foreign conquest, left to herself, with her own kings and government for nearly a thousand years, what do we see? A brave, spirited, warlike race with a pa.s.sion for liberty dominated and actually effaced by vicious kings, intriguing regents, and a corrupt n.o.bility; only once, under Wallace and Bruce, rising to heroic proportions, and then to throw off a foreign yoke and under leaders who were both of Norman extraction.

Never once were her native oppressors checked or awed; never once did an outraged people unite under a great political leader; and only one sovereign after Bruce (James I.) can be said to have had great kingly qualities. What are we to conclude? {298} Are we not compelled to believe that Scotland reached her highest destiny when she was joined to England, and when she bestowed her leaven of righteousness and her moral strength and the genius of her sons, and received in exchange the political protection of her great neighbor?