In Scotland as in England the expenses of national defence were a cause
of anger; and the mismanagement of military affairs by the king's
favourite, Buckingham, increased the irritation. It was brought to a
head in Scotland by the "Act of Revocation," under which all Church lands
and Crown lands bestowed since 1542 were to be restored to the Crown.
This Act once more united in opposition the nobles and the preachers;
since 1596 they had not been in harmony. In 1587, as we saw, James VI.
had annexed much of the old ecclesiastical property to the Crown; but he
had granted most of it to nobles and barons as "temporal lordships." Now,
by Charles, the temporal lords who held such lands were menaced, the
judges ("Lords of Session") who would have defended their interests were
removed from the Privy Council (March 1626), and, in August, the temporal
lords remonstrated with the king through deputations.
In fact, they took little harm--redeeming their holdings at the rate of
ten years' purchase. The main result was that landowners were empowered
to buy the tithes on their own lands from the multitude of "titulars of
tithes" (1629) who had rapaciously and oppressively extorted these tenths
of the harvest every year. The ministers had a safe provision at last,
secured on the tithes, in Scotland styled "teinds," but this did not
reconcile most of them to bishops and to the Articles of Perth. Several
of the bishops were, in fact, "latitudinarian" or "Arminian" in doctrine,
wanderers from the severity of Knox and Calvin. With them began,
perhaps, the "Moderatism" which later invaded the Kirk; though their
ideal slumbered during the civil war, to awaken again, with the teaching
of Archbishop Leighton, under the Restoration. Meanwhile the nobles and
gentry had been alarmed and mulcted, and were ready to join hands with
the Kirk in its day of resistance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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