Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

COURT OF UK III COMJUS.SION, 16G4. ccxli
sioncr of the ceittautie of the bussincs. I liavc also wrytte to liiiu and Sir
William Crucc concerning a prcceptt for ray troupii? pay." ^
After the rising of ICGG was suppressed at TiuUiou Green, the privy
council had a great deal of work iu couueclion with the continued opposition
by the presbyteriaus to the episcopial form of government. The Earl of
Annandale and Hartfell, as a privy councillor, had to take au active part iu
the successive attempts of the presbyteriaus against conforming to the
established form of church-government. He was also named in several royal
commissions in connection witli the ecclesiastical troubles, and for executing
the laws iu church affairs. He Avas a member of the large commission
granted by King Charles the Second on IGth January 1664. At the head of
that commission was James (Sharpe), archbishop of St. Andrews, who had
precedence of the lord chancellor and the lord treasurer. The fourth com-
missioner named was tlie archbishop of Glasgow (Burnett), and after him,
the Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Montrose, the Earl of Argyll, and
other carls, includiug the Earl of Annandale. ^
Tliis high commission had precedents in the similar courts established by
King James the Sixth and King Charles the First. All those commissions
had for their avowed purpose the enforcing of the episcopal religion on Scot-
land. The latest of these ecclesiastical courts, however, was even less
popular than those which preceded it, and in two j'cars it had to be aban-
doned. The proceedings of the high commission court during the two years
of its existence, from 16G4 to 1CG6, have been recorded by Wodrow at
considerable length.^ For the purpose of his History he had made a careful
examination of the Eecords of tlie Privy Council. He explains that the
fines and other exactions laid upon the presbytcrians led to the rising in the
year 1666, already described. The council took alarm at the rising, and,
' Ori^'inal letter in Annamlale Charter-chest.
- History of the Siifleringa of the Church of Scotland, by Wodrow, 1721, vol. i. p. 192.
' Wodrow's Iliotory, vol. i. pp. 197-2-iO.
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