fatal to the prince. Never was this more fully exemplified than in the
history of Charles I. His zeal for religion, his family affection, the
spirit with which he defended his supposed rights, while they do honour
to the man, were the fatal shelves upon which the monarchy was wrecked.
Impatient to accomplish the total revolution, which his father's
cautious timidity had left incomplete, Charles endeavoured at once to
introduce into Scotland the church-government, and to renew, in England,
the temporal domination, of his predecessor, Henry VIII. The furious
temper of the Scottish nation first took fire; and the brandished
footstool of a prostitute[A] gave the signal for civil dissension,
which ceased not till the church was buried under the ruins of the
constitution; till the nation had stooped to a military despotism; and
the monarch to the block of the executioner.

[Footnote A: "_Out, false loon! wilt thou say the mass at my lug
(ear)_," was the well known exclamation of Margaret Geddes, as she
discharged her missile tripod against the bishop of Edinburgh, who,
in obedience to the orders of the privy-council, was endeavouring to
rehearse the common prayer. Upon a seat more elevated, the said Margaret
had shortly before done penance, before the congregation, for the sin of
fornication: such, at least, is the tory tradition.]

The consequence of Charles' hasty and arbitrary measures were soon
evident. The united nobility, gentry, and clergy of Scotland, entered
into the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, by which memorable deed, they
subscribed and swore a national renunciation of the hierarchy. The walls
of the prelatic Jericho (to use the language of the times) were thus
levelled with the ground, and the curse of Hiel, the Bethelite,
denounced against those who should rebuild them. While the clergy
thundered, from the pulpits, against the prelatists and malignants (by