In 1610 James established two Courts of High Commission (in 1615 united in one Court) to try offences in morals and religion.  The Archbishops presided, laity and clergy formed the body of the Court, and it was regarded as vexatious and tyrannical.  The same terms, to be sure, would now be applied to the interference of preachers and presbyteries with private life and opinion.  By 1612 the king had established Episcopacy, which, for one reason or another, became equally hateful to the nobles, the gentry, and the populace.  James’s motives were motives of police.  Long experience had taught him the inconveniences of presbyterial government as it then existed in Scotland.

To a Church organised in the presbyterian manner, as it has been practised since 1689, James had, originally at least, no objection.  But the combination of “presbyterian Hildebrandism” with factions of the turbulent noblesse; the alliance of the Power of the Keys with the sword and lance, was inconsistent with the freedom of the State and of the individual.  “The absolutism of James,” says Professor Hume Brown, “was forced upon him in large degree by the excessive claims of the Presbyterian clergy.”

Meanwhile the thievish Border clans, especially the Armstrongs, were assailed by hangings and banishments, and Ulster was planted by Scottish settlers, willing or reluctant, attracted by promise of lands, or planted out, that they might not give trouble on the Border.

Persecution of Catholics was violent, and in spring 1615 Father Ogilvie was hanged after very cruel treatment directed by Archbishop Spottiswoode.  In this year the two ecclesiastical Courts of High Commission were fused into one, and an Assembly was coerced into passing what James called “Hotch-potch resolutions” about changes in public worship.  James wanted greater changes, but deferred them till he visited Scotland in 1617, when he was attended by the luckless figure of Laud, who went to a funeral—­in a surplice!  James had many personal bickerings with preachers, but his five main points, “The Articles of Perth” (of these the most detested were:  (1) Communicants must kneel, not sit, at the Communion; (4) Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost must be observed; and (5) Confirmation must be introduced), were accepted by an Assembly in 1618.  They could not be enforced, but were sanctioned by Parliament in 1621.  The day was called Black Saturday, and omens were drawn by both parties from a thunderstorm which occurred at the time of the ratification of the Articles of Perth by Parliament in Edinburgh (August 4, 1621).

By enforcing these Articles James passed the limit of his subjects’ endurance.  In their opinion, as in Knox’s, to kneel at the celebration of the Holy Communion was an act of idolatry, was “Baal worship,” and no pressure could compel them to kneel.  The three great festivals of the Christian Church, whether Roman, Genevan, or Lutheran, had no certain warrant in Holy Scripture, but were rather repugnant to the Word of God.  The king did not live to see the bloodshed and misery caused by his reckless assault on the liberties and consciences of his subjects; he died on March 27, 1625, just before the Easter season in which it was intended to enforce his decrees.