and it was by the tithes that his son's offence was to come. However much, therefore, he might exasperate the Presbyterian clergy by his Episcopalian proclivities, so long as he left the nobles' property alone he was safe. They had no particular dislike either to the office or style of bishop. With modified powers and under another name bishops had indeed formed a part of Knox's original polity; and so far as they tended to keep the clergy in order and confine them to their proper business, their restoration was not unwelcome to a considerable body outside the Church, and even to some of the less pugnacious spirits within it. All the nobles took thought for was to prevent the creation of a new spiritual aristocracy, that might come in time to be as rich and powerful as the old Catholic hierarchy they had crushed and despoiled. And of that, so long as they retained the mastery of the funds which alone could make such an aristocracy possible, they had little fear. Probably at no period since the accession of James the First had there been such peace between a Scottish king and his nobles as there was while James the Sixth sat on the English throne. By the Act of Revocation the scene was changed in a moment. The purpose of the Act was indeed both just and politic. Those writers who will allow no virtue in Charles may claim that his real design was but to increase the revenue and the prerogative of the Crown, and to provide funds for the complete restoration of Episcopacy in Scotland, without any thought for the interests of his oppressed subjects. But his own revenues were not increased; the prerogative of the Crown was strengthened only against an unruly and grasping aristocracy; the oppressed were relieved from a grinding tyranny equal to the worst exercise of the old feudal lordship. The right of tithe, where tithe was levied in kind, gave those who held it absolute power over those who had to pay it. It placed the small landowners and farmers, who were now gradually forming in Scotland a middle class analogous to the English yeomen, at the mercy of men who were, to say the least, not famous for exercising it. The Catholic clergy, it was declared, had been hard masters, but the little fingers of the Protestant nobles were thicker than the loins of the Catholic clergy. The tenant could not gather his harvest until the landlord had taken his tithe; and the landlord took his tithe when it pleased him, regardless of the interest or convenience of the tenant. It is not to be supposed that all landlords pushed their rights to extremities, but it is certain that there was much harsh dealing and much distress. The bare existence of such rights, moreover, was subversive of the very essence of the Constitution. They gave one class of the community despotic authority over another class, and both Crown and Parliament were as powerless to protect the latter as it was to protect itself. The