with his descendants, alternately gave us anarchy and despotism, till it ended in the total overthrow of the main line of the House of Stuart. Such were the natural fruits of the earnestness, beautiful but terrible, with which men then seized and worked out principles which they found, or thought they found, in the Bible--arguing on the religion of peace and good-will to men, with swords in their hands, and laws as cruel as swords, till a sense of the inconsequentiality of such reasoning for any good at length came over most of them with the sickening effect of a wind from a field of battle, and disposed them to rest content with the sulky mutual protest in which they have since lived. Notwithstanding a strenuous opposition from Elizabeth and the Presbyterian clergy, D’Aubigné, whom James made Earl, and finally Duke of Lennox, succeeded in greatly advancing the French interest. It was in vain that the ministers railed at him as a papist: he coolly came before them and abjured popery. A confession of faith, condemning the pope and all his pretensions and works, was brought forward: James and his councillors, including the Earl of Lennox, unhesitatingly signed it (January 28, 1580-1). Morton, who alone possessed the personal character that could effectually stand for the English interest and the kirk, had, by his cruel and avaricious conduct, lost the support of all classes, the clergy included. It was even found possible to effect the ruin of this great man. On the last of December 1580, the adventurer Stuart came into the council-chamber, and, falling on his knees, accused the ex-Regent of being concerned in the murder of his majesty’s father. To the general surprise, he fell without a struggle, and after a few months’ confinement, he perished on the scaffold (June 2, 1581). Under Lennox and Stuart--the latter now created Earl of Arran--a movement was made for bringing an episcopate into the church. Arran is said to have put the idea of absolute power into the king’s mind, and a French alliance was threatened. The clergy, in general assembly, shewed their usual courage in protesting against the court proceedings. The conduct of their moderator, Andrew Melville, was specially remarkable. When he and his fellow-commissioners came before the council with their _grieves_, Arran, according to a contemporary narration, ‘begins to threaten, with thrawn brow and boasting language. “What!” says he, “wha dar subscryve thir treasonable articles?” Mr Andrew answers: “We dar, and will subscryve them, and give our lives in the cause!” And withal starts to, and taks the pen fra the clerk and subscryves, and calls to the rest of his brethren with courageous speeches; wha all cam and subscryvit.’ Such were the men who faced the king in behalf of an independent rule for the kirk of Scotland.