Page 51 - Scottish Alchemists

said to have exclaimed with reference to the people of Edinburgh, whom he
had not found sufficiently submissive, “The devill ryve their soules and
bodies all in collops and cast them in hell!” Calderwood, who was at this
time concealed at Cranstoun, at last sailed for Holland, where he visited
Leyden, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, and Campvere. During his absence, and
while rumours of his death were general, a most extraordinary attempt was
made by Scot to impose upon his countrymen by publishing in the name of
Calderwood a recantation of his Presbyterian views. This singular work
bears the following title, Calderwood’s Recantation: or, A Tripartite
Discourse directed to such of the Ministerie and others in Scotland that
refuse conformitie to the Ordinances of the Church; wherein the causes
and bad effects of such separation, the legall proceedings against the
refractorie, and nullitie of their cause are softly Jaunced, and they louingly
invited to the uniformitie of the Church., London, 1622. In this work
Calderwood was made to abandon his Presbyterian predilections, to
condemn the writings of Knox, Beza, and other Reformers, to demonstrate
the divine origin of Episcopacy, and to laud the wisdom, goodness, and
clemency of King James.

What renders this extraordinary step of Scot still more remarkable, is the
statement of Calderwood, that it was generally believed that King James
himself supplied the materials to Scot for this unscrupulous pamphlet.
Calderwood was not idle, and soon showed his enemies that he was alive
and as active as ever. He printed in Holland several controversial tracts, and
his best known work, The Altar of Damascus, published in 1623, was one of
the most formidable attacks on the polity of the Church of England, of which
it has been, remarked that “the patrons of Episcopacy have never yet
answered it, how much soever their cause requires it.”

The publication of this able work, and other pamphlets on the same
subject, seem to have caused so much annoyance to the king, that Scot was
selected for the important task of proceeding to Holland and silencing
Calderwood, either by getting him put in prison or even by taking his life.
That this singular mission was sanctioned by the king is abundantly evident
from a letter of Sir Dudley Carleton, afterwards Viscount Dorchester, the
English Ambassador at The Hague, addressed to James himself; while Scot
has left an account of the manner in which he discharged the matters
committed to his care in a document still extant, - “The accompt of my
diligens in the seruice committed to mee, with a motion commended to His
Majestie from his embassadoure at the Hague.” In this paper Scot states that
he searched for Calderwood at the Hague, Delft, and Amsterdam
successively, and endeavoured to find his residence by pretending that he

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