MARY DE MEDICIS IN LONDON.

369 though the corporation had been fined £70,000 by the Star-chamber, upon a complaint that the conditions by which they held lands in Ulster had been infringed. The city offered, by way of compensation, to build the king a palace in St. James's park. The courtiers wanted the money to squander in masques and banquets, and the offer was refused. Charles had employed Inigo Jones to prepare plans for a magnificent Whitehall. The Banqueting-house is the only architectural monument of the taste of the two first Stuarts. VOL. III.-24

NOTE ON THE PORTRAITS OF CHARLES I.

In the Manchester Exhibition of Art Treasures an opportunity was afforded of comparing the portrait of Charles by each of the painters, Vandyck and Mytens, almost in juxtaposition. There, was a family group by Mytens, and a family group by Vandyck. In that of Mytens the king and queen are preparing to ride; and there is Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf, holding a small dog in a leash, the favourite spaniels, and a larger dog with a monkey. In the group by Vandyck the king is sitting by the side of his queen, with an infant on her lap. The Charles of Mytens' group is younger than in that of Vandyck. There are no decided markings of character in his face. The expression is gentle, almost feeble. The Charles of Vandyck's group has the almost invariable countenance which this painter gives to him-the well-known composed and reflective character, with a tinge of foreboding melancholy, as some imagine. Near these groups hung a whole length of the king by Mytens. The technical art of Mytens was little inferior to that of Vandyck; and he was more faithful in portraiture, if amongst the requirements of fidelity we ask that portraits of the same person at different periods of life, and in different situations, should have some variety. The portraits of Charles by Mytens show how much of the general expression of the character of the king is due to the ideal of Vandyck. The features are the same in both artists, but the contemplative and tender expression is wholly due to Vandyck. Mytens gives us a sober and apathetic face, more remarkable for the want of sentiment than for its excess-a face not wholly pleasant. The grace also belongs to the more poetical painter. In Mytens we can see how Charles would have grown into a likeness of his father. In the head of the king by Vandyck, in the same collection, painted in 1637, there is more animation than in his other portraits. But in all of them, not to yield too much to the historical evidences of character, there are the indications, however faint, of suspicion and mental reservation, and an especial want of those physiognomical traits which indicate self-reliance. Compare the Charles of Vandyck with the Strafford of Vandyck. Strafford has the care-worn expression, and the imagined presentiment of evil, to a far greater extent than his master. But it is the weight of responsibility pressing upon a powerful mind. What decision, what keenness of observation, what inflexibility, wholly wanting in the portraits of Charles.

Scotland.-Visit of the king in 1633-A Service-book commanded to be used in 1637.— The National Covenant.-Progress of the troubles in Scotland.-The General Assembly. The king and the Scots levy forces.-The king at Berwick.-Camp of the Covenanters.-An English Parliament.—Suddenly dissolved.-Convocation continues to sit.-The Scottish war resumed.-Rout of Newburn.-Council of Peers.-Cessation of arms.-An English Parliament summoned.-Character of the House of Com→ mons-Strafford.-Laud.

In the summer of 1633 Charles had paid a visit to Scotland, and was there crowned. Not only were the two nations as distinct in their civil and ecclesiastical systems of government as if they had been still ruled by two sovereigns, but the Scottish affairs were separately managed by Charles himself, without any reference to the English Council. One English adviser he, however, had, whose notions upon church government wholly over-rode the prudential considerations of civil polity. Laud, then bishop of London, accompanied the king on this Scottish journey. Although the bishop enters in his Diary, "King Charles crowned at Holyrood church in Edinburgh;—I never saw more expressions of joy than after it; " Laud himself gave great offence by the introduction of rites at the coronation which the people considered as part of the system which the Reformation had overthrown. His temper was violent; and the Scottish historians say that he thrust the arch. bishop of Glasgow from the king's side, because he refused to offi ciate in embroidered robes. Some of the Scottish prelates were not imbued with this love of simplicity; and they united with the powerful English bishop in the promotion of a plan for introducing a Service-book in Scotland, which should supersede the extemporaneous prayers of the presbyterian form of worship. The design was not then carried into effect. But in 1637, when Laud had become archbishop, and all moderate measures for producing conformity in England had been laid aside, the Scottish Church was suddenly called upon to receive a book of Canons approved at Lambeth; and a Service-book was directed to be used in all places of divine worship. This Prayer Book varied from the English

Liturgy in points which indicated a nearer approach to the Romish ritual. The consequences of this most ignorant rashness-ignorant, because of its utter blindness to the course of Scottish history during the previous hundred years, and to the character of the Scottish people-were wholly unforeseen. All political prudence was swallowed up in the one dominant passion of the king and of his prime adviser for an unvarying ecclesiastical uniformity, in and through which the minutest ceremonial observances should be rigidly enforced, as the test of orthodoxy, and therefore of loyalty. From the date of this violent defiance of the principles and habits of the Scottish people, the reign of Charles becomes the turningpoint of English history. Perhaps no great public event has been without its ultimate effects upon the fortunes of a nation, although centuries may have passed away. The stirring action that commenced in Scotland in 1637 not only influenced all her own afterdestinies; it preserved the liberties and overthrew the monarchy of England."*

Robert Baillie, Principal of the University of Glasgow, has, in his Letters and Journals, left some of the most interesting memorials of these times. † We find in the good man's narrative the ominous beginning of these Scottish disturbances. By sound of trumpet it is proclaimed that all subjects, ecclesiastical and civil, conform themselves to the Liturgy by the next Pasch [Easter]. The books were not ready till May, and then every minister was commanded to buy two copies. The book is lent about from hand to hand; its "popish points" are shown; it is imposed without any meeting of church or state, say the dissatisfied. A letter comes down from the king commanding its use without farther delay. "The whole body of the town murmurs and grudges all the week exceedingly; and, who can marvel, discourses, declamations, pamphlets, everywhere." Sunday, the 23rd of June, arrives; and thus Principal Baillie tells us what happened: "When the bishop and his dean, in the great church, and the bishop of Argyle, in the Grayfriars, began to officiate, as they speak, incontinent the serving-maids began such a tumult as was never heard of since the Reformation in our nation." History has preserved the name of one turbulent heroine, who may have sat for the "Trulla " of Hudibras: "Jane or Janet Geddes (yet living at the writing of this rela

* Hallam, chap. xvii.

3 vols.

"Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, A. M., edited by David Laing, Esq.”

THE NATIONAL COVENANT.

373

tion) flung a little folding-stool, whereon she sat, at the dean's head, saying Out, thou false thief! dost thou say the mass at my lug ?'”* A threatening outburst of popular fury followed this exhibition, but no wounds were given. The chancellor writes to the king, and there is "great fear for the king's wrath." The country is getting hot, as well as Edinburgh. Preachers who defend the Liturgy are - maltreated, and mostly by "enraged women of all qualities." Gradually the nobles, the gentry, and "burrows" [members for boroughs] take up the supplications against the Service-book. By December, some of the most influential agree together to oppose its use, and resist the further intrusion of Prelacy. They become organised. The king, who at first had threatened the Scottish authorities, now endeavours to moderate the people by proclamations that declare his abhorrence of Popery, and his resolution to maintain the religion then professed. But there are symptoms that these professions are delusive. The idea of submission to the authority of the Scottish prelates is utterly rejected. The whole community enters into a National Covenant to abjure the doctrines, rites, and ceremonies of the Romish Church, and to resist the innovations which the prelates had introduced. In the High Church of Edinburgh, on the 1st of March, 1638, this Covenant was read, and the whole congregation rose and swore to maintain what is set forth. Copies of the deed were sent throughout the land, and with tears and protestations the Covenant was sworn to and signed by hundreds of thousands.

The ecclesiastical government was an anomaly, which Clarendon describes in few words: " Though there were bishops in name, the whole jurisdiction, and they themselves were, upon the matter, subject to an assembly which was purely presbyterian." But when Clarendon adds "no form of religion in practice, no liturgy, nor the least appearance of the beauty of holiness," he speaks with a very imperfect knowledge of the Scottish earnestness in religion, in which the strength as well as the beauty of holiness was manifest. The "enraged women" of Edinburgh were not very favourable specimens of the national spirit. But in the history of the nations there is no grander spectacle than a whole people, for the assertion of a principle, assembled in separate congregations, large or small, in the crowded city and in the mountain solitude, to defend the doctrine and discipline which their fathers had established; and to declare, "before God, his angels, and the world," their resolution • "Continuation of Baker's Chronicle," edit. of 1670; quoted by Mr. Carlyle.