first felt the pressure of this authority, but neither birth nor rank were a defence against its proceedings. The Scots affirmed[86] that the tribunal outdid even the Spanish Inquisition in harshness and cruelty. While in this way bitter feelings were raised by the collision between the high nobility and the bishops, the most disagreeable impression of all was made on the former when King Charles introduced a number of bishops into the Treasury-board, into the temporal courts of justice, and into the Privy Council. In old times the seals of the kingdom had been for the most part in the hands of learned clergymen, because from their experience in canon as well as in civil law they could best advise the King: following this practice, Charles I in the year 1635, after the death of Kinnoul, nominated an ecclesiastic, no other than Archbishop Spottiswood himself, to the Chancellorship of the kingdom[87]. This dignity had been latterly an object of emulation and ambition among the temporal lords; and they felt themselves aggrieved when a clergyman, who thereby combined the supreme spiritual with the supreme temporal authority, was preferred to them. The person most mortified was Archibald Lord Lorne, afterwards Marquess of Argyle, [A.D. 1636.] a man who thought that he had a definite claim to the office, and who indisputably possessed all the capacity required for it. The aspiring Bishop Maxwell roused the jealousy of the treasurer, Lord Traquair, who suspected an intention of dispossessing him of his place, and investing the bishop with it. In this way the advancement of the ecclesiastical element had already roused various antipathies of a political and religious nature. The nobles feared for their possessions and for their jurisdiction, especially as some well-grounded objections might be made to the latter; principally however for their share in the authority of the state, which seemed doomed to pass into the hands of the clergy. The country clergy cherished anxiety for their independence, and the people for the accepted ecclesiastical usages with which religion itself appeared to them to be bound up. Yet all this would hardly have led to an open outbreak of discontent. Meanwhile, however, the King and Archbishop Laud again took up an old plan which had been formed by James I, had been long ready for execution, and had only been postponed on account of the difficulties into which the King had feared to fall in consequence,--the plan of fortifying the episcopal power in the Scottish Church by issuing a new book of canon law, and at the same time of binding Scotland more closely to England by bringing the Church service of that country into conformity with the English. A similar attempt on the part of the Lord Deputy had just succeeded in Ireland: why should not such a measure be forced through in Scotland? The majority of the Scottish bishops held out hopes of success.