can be given to the phrase "supremity of Parliament." It meant only that the king knew that he could use the Parliament as he liked, while the Assembly was as yet beyond his control. We do not intend to enter into the complicated story of the conflict between the king and the Church. But from 1584 the Parliament was generally at the disposal of the king. Still more is this the case after the year 1603. The Parliament became the mere shadow of the royal power. It declared in 1606--the year after the defiance of the king by the Aberdeen assembly--"our soverane monarche, absolute prince, Judge, and governor over all persones, Estaittis, and causis, baith spirituall and temporall, within his said realme." Only twelve years had elapsed since Andrew Melville's speech. The union with England meant that the king had power to coerce Scotland. The same obsequious Parliament outraged the national sentiment by the first establishment of episcopacy, although the assembly was still so strong that the bishops protested that there was no design to alter the discipline of the Kirk, "and submitted themselves in all time comeing to the judgement of the General Assemblie." Parliament was governed by the Lords of the Articles, and they were the creatures of the king. James did not exaggerate when he said:[122] "Here I sit and governe it [Scotland] with my pen, I write and it is done, and by a Clearke of the Councell I governe Scotland now, which others could not do by the sword." The satirist who accompanied King James on his visit to Scotland in 1617 gave vent to a merited sneer at the three Estates. "Their parliaments," he wrote, "hold but three days; their statutes are but three lines."[123] The anonymous apologist who replied made no effort to meet the accusation. It might have been King James himself that wrote: "For the brevitie of your parliaments ye are beholden to your wisdom, for the brevitie of your statutes to your justice."[124]