James died in March, 1625, and a few days thereafter his son Charles was proclaimed at the Edinburgh Cross, King of Scotland; but it was eight years later before he visited the land of his fathers, and was crowned as its King in Holyrood. The then finest poet in Scotland was William Drummond of Hawthornden, and to him was confided the address of welcome to Charles. The address was not in verse, but only in prose—run mad! “If nature,” it began, “could suffer rocks to move and abandon their natural places, this town—founded on the strength of rocks—had, with her castle, temples, and houses, moved towards you, and besought you to acknowledge her yours; her indwellers, your most humble and affectionate subjects; and to believe how many souls are within her circuits, so many lives are devoted to your sacred person and crown;” and so on. When the subjects’ flattery was so obsequious, we can hardly wonder at the amount of royal arrogance and assumption. The people were a good deal disturbed about the ceremonial of Charles’s coronation; an altar was introduced, and some of the rites seemed to savour of popery. He had Laud and some other English bishops in his retinue, and the King soon gave evidence of his intention to carry out the later attempts of his father, to introduce prelacy, with its subordination to the crown, into Scotland. Now the old bishoprics of the Catholic Church had never been formally abolished, but the titles had been held by laymen of mean rank,—whilst the bulk of the emoluments had gone to certain of the nobles. The nominal bishops were nicknamed _Tulchans_; a tulchan being a calf-skin stuffed with straw, which was set up alongside of the mother-cow, to induce her to yield her milk more freely. The bishop had the title, but my lord had the milk. There was thus a framework of episcopacy in Scotland, and James had in the last year of his reign, ordered its re-establishment in full authority; archbishops and bishops to have under himself the headship of the Scottish Church.