It is sometimes said that national character reveals itself in the national religion. This is true to some extent, but it is still more important to say that a nation's history reveals itself in its forms of faith. From religious statistics of the present day one could {353} deduce with considerable accuracy much of the history of any people. The contrast between the churches of England and Scotland is the more remarkable when it is considered that the North of England was the stronghold of Catholicism, and that the Lowland Scot, next door to the counties of the Northern Earls who rose against Elizabeth, flew to the opposite extreme and embraced Protestantism in its most pronounced form. To say that Calvinism, uncompromising and bare of adornment, appealed particularly to the dour, dry, rationalistic Scot, is at best but a half truth and at worst a begging of the question. The reasons why England became Anglican and Scotland Presbyterian are found immediately not in the diversity of national character but in the circumstances of their respective polities and history. England cast loose from Rome at a time when the conservative influence of Luther was predominant; Scotland was swept into the current of revolution under the fiercer star of Calvin. The English reformation was started by the crown and supported by the new noblesse of commerce. The Scotch revolution was markedly baronial in tone. It began with the humanists, continued and flourished in the junior branches of great families, among the burgesses of the towns and among the more vigorous of the clergy, both regular and secular. The crown was consistently against the new movement, but the Scottish monarch was too weak to impose his will, or even to have a will of his own. Neither James V nor his daughter could afford to break with Rome and with France. James V, especially, was thrown into the arms of his clergy by the hostility of his nobles. Moreover, after the death of many nobles at the battle of Flodden, the clergy became, for a time, [Sidenote: 1513] the strongest estate in the kingdom. {354} Like the other estates the clergy were still in the Middle Ages when the Reformation [Sidenote: Reformation] came on them like a thief in the night. In no country was the corruption greater. The bishops and priests took concubines and ate and drank and were drunken and buffeted their fellow men. They exacted their fees to the last farthing, an especially odious one being the claim of the priest to the best cow on the death of a parishioner. As a consequence the parsons and monks were hated by the laity.