INTRODUCTION

Summary

In a sense quite different from that in which James I thought to achieve the union of the two crowns and kingdoms, was that union destined to be accomplished; and already everything was smoothing the way thereto. The special object of the first two Stuart kings was to complete, on Tudor principles, the institutions of Church and State in England, and to extend the same to Scotland. But they had thereby awakened in the land of their birth a spirit of resistance at once aristocratic and religious. In direct opposition to the King, the Scots took up an attitude of ecclesiastical and political independence, which never was paralleled in any other monarchy. The King hoped to crush the Scottish movement by the strength of royal influence in England; but the consequences were the very opposite, for the movement spread into England also.

When the Scots entered England their first and chief demand was that the King should settle the home affairs of Scotland; but they added two other demands which concerned England as much as Scotland. They pressed for the punishment of those who had caused the troubles, that is to say, of the chosen counsellors of the King in matters both spiritual and temporal, and also for the summoning of an English Parliament, in which peace might be arranged.

They thus fully expressed the wishes of all the domestic opponents of Charles I: no further extension of them was necessary to imply the overthrow in England also of the political system that had hitherto prevailed.