most important agencies affecting the state of affairs were involved in the opposition between the bishops who supported the crown, and the lay elders whose rights were bound up with the congregation and with the subordinate temporal authorities. We shall not, I think, go too far if we consider the Scottish General Assembly at Glasgow, notwithstanding its original ecclesiastical purpose, as nevertheless affording at the same time a type of subsequent national assemblies which had a purely political aim. In the conflict of opposite tendencies a party has here grown up which enjoys general sympathy to a wide extent, and aims at effecting a thorough transformation of the whole condition of Church and State: the supreme authority is compelled by it to assent to the meeting of an assembly able to bring about this result: this party controls the elections, and by a definite organisation brings to pass a result wholly in accordance with its wish: its leaders themselves are thus invested with a public character: they obtain a position in which they proclaim their intentions as the desire and will of the nation, above all of the national Church, and are able to force them upon the sovereign, whose ecclesiastical authority they repudiate. The moment at which Henderson refused to dissolve the Assembly at the demand of the King’s Commissary, however widely the circumstances may differ in other respects, may well be compared with the first steps by which, a century and a half later, the newly-created French National Assembly for the first time withstood the commands of its King. The Assembly of Glasgow held its sittings, carried on its deliberations, and drew up resolutions after it had been dissolved by the King, and its continued existence had been declared an act of treason. People realised quite well what this state of [A.D. 1638.] things meant[110]. Into the world, already filled with various fermenting elements, another was introduced which, not only from its inherent nature, but from the method in which it asserted itself, had, both here in Scotland and everywhere else, a boundless prospect open before it. FOOTNOTES: [103] Report of James Gordon, in Napier, Montrose and the Covenanters i. 153. ‘Some were threatened and beaten who durst refuse, especially in great citys, as likewise in other smaller towns: namely at Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Lanark.’ [104] Burnet: Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton 409. [105] ‘Statuentes ex pio eiga antiquum nostrum regnum affectu, ut omnia gratiose stabiliantur et instaurenter similiter adeo ac si nos in sacrosancta persona nostra ibidem adessemus.’ Letters of Authorisation of May 20. [106] Articles of Advise offered to His Majesty, August 1638. They were signed by Hamilton himself, Traquair, Roxburgh and Southesk. Rushworth ii. 758. [107] Narrative of proceedings, in Rothes 220.