'With great contentment': the Aberdeen Doctors, Bishop Forbes, and the prosaic attractions of a national episcopal church

As Alexander Scrogie, one the Aberdeen Doctors, lamented the death of Patrick Forbes, Bishop of Aberdeen (1618-35), his description of Forbes' episcopal ministry pointed to how the episcopally ordered Jacobean Church of Scotland, inherited by Charles, was becoming what James had intended - a national episcopal church alongside those of England and Ireland. This was so not only in terms of the Royal Supremacy and episcopal order but also in more prosaic, local ways. Consider what Scrogie in his sermon states to be Bishop Forbes' "first and foremost care": 

His first and foremost care, was for the House of GOD; and especiallie of the Cathedrall Church where hee did reside; aedifying, and reparing the ruines thereof, and furnishing it with ornamentes convenient; 

This brings to mind one of the Elizabethan Homilies that 'godly' opinion particularly disliked, that 'For Repairing and Keeping Clean and Comely Adorning of Churches':

It is sin and shame to see so many Churches, so ruinous, and so foully decayed, almost in every corner ... The second point which appertaineth to the maintenance of Gods House, is to have it well adorned, and comely and clean kept. Which things may be the more easily reformed, when the Church is well repaired. For like as men are well refreshed and comforted, when they find their Houses having all things in good Order, and all corners clean and sweet: so when Gods House, the Church, is well adorned, with places convenient to sit in, with the Pulpit for the Preacher, with the Lords Table for the Ministration of his Holy Supper, with the Font to Christen in, and also is kept clean, comely, and sweetly, the People are more desirous, and the more comforted to resort thither, and to tarry there the whole time appointed them.

Having a decent parish church with convenient ornaments is indeed prosaic, but it is precisely such concerns which pointed to how the presence and ministry of the parish church embodied the vocation of a national episcopal church. That Scrogie used language very similar to that of the Homily suggests how an ethos was emerging in the Church of Scotland reflecting that in the other national churches of the Three Kingdoms.

Likewise with the reference to Forbes' concern with his "Cathedrall Church". The particular dignity of cathedrals reflected, of course, the episcopal order. We can also compare Forbes' concern for his cathedral with, for example, how Parker's Advertisements, early in the Elizabethan Settlement, recognised the particular status of cathedrals. 

Scrogie also significantly emphasises how Forbes was restoring the ministry of his cathedral, abandoned since the Reformation:

and which had lyen waste and desolate since the Reformation, wanting a Preacher ... because they who sacrilegiouslie had impropriated the Tithes, wanted conscience to provyde a Minister, and mayntaynance for him. And, that there might alwayes bee an able and Godlie Ministerie, hee caused found a Profession of Divinitie, and a Rent for the entertaynment thereof, in all tymes comming. 

This critique of the impropriation of tithes reflected a well-established Conformist discourse of 'sacrilege' regarding such acts. Likewise, the provision of learned divines for preaching in cathedrals was also characteristic of the Jacobean and Caroline Church of England. James' 1622 Directions Concerning Preachers indicated something of this, with its recognition that those preaching in cathedrals were "learned men":

That no preacher of what title soever under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation or of the universality, efficacity, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace; but leave those themes to be handled by learned men ...

In Forbes episcopate, therefore, we see how, across the Three Kingdoms, the maintenance of the dignity and ministry of cathedrals was part of a shared fabric of the national churches. We also see how such seemingly prosaic concerns were succeeding in ensuring that the Jacobean and Caroline Church of Scotland - albeit with its own characteristics, as had the Church of Ireland - was one of the national episcopal churches of the realms of James and Charles. 

Scrogie ends this particular section of his sermon by noting of Forbes restoring the dignity and ministry of his cathedral church:

The Benefit whereof, the Countrey hath alreadie, with great contentment, beholden.

It is an insightful phrase. The majority of laity were won over not by ideological diatribes or destabilising theological zeal, but by providing a decent, ordered national church, with its cathedrals and parish churches, contributing to the peace and contentment of the realm. It was the wisdom of James, who had appointed Forbes to the episcopacy, which secured such contentment - and it was the foolishness of Charles and his advisors under the Personal Rule to squander this contentment in the Church and Kingdom of Scotland.