Scarcely, even during the darkest night of Papal superstition, are there found such instances of priestly encroachments, as the annals of Scotland present to us during that period.
By these extravagant stretches of power, and by the patient conduct of James, the church began to lose ground, even before the king's accession to the throne of England; but no sooner had that event taken place, than he made the Scottish clergy sensible that he was become the sovereign of a great kingdom, which he governed with great, authority.

Though formerly he would have thought himself happy to have made a fair partition with them of the civil and ecclesiastical authority, he was now resolved to exert a supreme jurisdiction in church as well as state, and to put an end to their seditious practices.

An assembly had been summoned at Aberdeen;[***] but, on account of his journey to London, he prorogued it to the year following.

Some of the clergy, disavowing his ecclesiastical supremacy, met at the time first appointed, notwithstanding his prohibition.

He threw them into prison.