An altar was erected in Holyrood Chapel, and behind
it was a crucifix, before which the clergy made genuflexions. He erected
Edinburgh into a bishopric, with the Collegiate Church of St. Giles for
a cathedral, and the Bishops of Edinburgh, as they followed in rapid
succession, gained the reputation of innovators and supporters of Laud
and the English. Even more dangerous in its effect was a general order
for the clergy to wear surplices. It was widely disobeyed, but it
created very great alarm.
In 1635, canons were issued for the Church of Scotland, which owed their
existence to the dangerous meddling of Laud, now Archbishop of
Canterbury. James, who loved Episcopacy, had dreaded the influence of
Laud in Scotland; his fear was justified, for it was given to Laud to
make an Episcopal Church impossible north of the Tweed. Although certain
of the Scottish bishops had expressed approval of these canons, they
were enjoined in the Church by royal authority, and the Scots, whose
theory of the rights of the Church was much more "high" than that of
Laud, would, on this account alone, have met them with resistance. But
the canons used words and phrases which were intolerable to Scottish
ears. They spoke of a "chancel" and they commended auricular confession;
they gave the Scottish bishops something like the authority of their
English brethren, to the detriment of minister and kirk-session, and
they made the use of a new prayer-book compulsory, and forbade any
objection to it.
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