In the first years of his reign Charles I also allowed toleration to prevail. When the preachers who had been appointed before the introduction of the Articles of Perth neglected to obey them, he overlooked their omission. The affairs of the Scottish Church were left in the hands of Spottiswood, who, in spite of all counter-influences, conducted them peacefully, with foresight, and with a certain moderation. But when, after the conclusion of peace with France and Spain, the system of combining ecclesiastical with political authority began to prevail in England, affairs assumed another aspect in Scotland as well. The vacant bishoprics, which had hitherto been filled up according to the recommendation of the Scottish [A.D. 1633.] bishops, were now disposed of according to the wishes of William Laud, whom the King made his counsellor in the affairs of the Scottish Church as well as of the English. He, however, selected young men who concurred with him in his hierarchical and theological opinions. A new system, the Laudian, later indeed also called the Canterbury system, found acceptance in regard to the constitution and dogmas of the Church. General assemblies of the Church were as carefully avoided in Scotland, as Parliaments in England; and that with the definite object of concentrating ecclesiastical power entirely in the hands of the bishops, on which subject the testimony of the early Church was collected and put forward. At the same time favour was shown to those Arminian opinions which ran counter to the common feeling of the country in favour of Calvinism, that had been strengthened and advanced by the Synod of Dort. When Charles I came to Edinburgh in the year 1633, he was attended by Laud; and his design of introducing into Scotland the external forms of divine service in use in the Anglican Church was displayed without any disguise. In the royal chapel their introduction was attended with no difficulty; but elsewhere no one would hear of it. In Parliament the King met with opposition in his attempt to determine the most purely external matter of all,--the dress of the clergy. In proportion as the government favoured the introduction into Scotland of usages similar to those of the Anglican Church, zeal for Presbyterianism, which in contrast with these usages was identified with Puritanism, gained the upper hand. In May 1633 an address was presented to the King, in which the absence of binding force in the Articles of Perth was again pointed out, and a restoration of independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and of the old constitution in general, was demanded. It was urged that a General Assembly of the clergy ought to be held every year; that the prelates called to a seat in Parliament were bound by the instructions of the Assembly, and were responsible to it. What the petitioners desired to restore was the old independence of the Scottish Church as established on its first erection, free from all encroachments