Had Charles been content to stop here, Scotland at least could have had no quarrel with him. Even the nobles, when the first heat of their discontent had cooled, must have recognised that their property, though slightly diminished, was now secured to them by an inalienable title, and would be no longer a source of danger to themselves or to the kingdom. The tithe-payers were freed from an unjust and oppressive burden. The clergy were secured both in the receipt of their income and in what the most tolerant of them at any rate considered the reasonable exercise of their conscience. Could the King go on as he had begun, he was likely to prove the strongest and most popular ruler Scotland had known since his ancestor fell at Flodden. But when any part of the body politic is sick it needs a wise and vigorous physician to keep the infection from spreading. There was a dangerous sickness rife in England, and it was not in the interests of those who had determined on the cure to see it wrought by other means. If one-half of the kingdom were sound, it could be used as an effectual cure for the unsound half. The discontent in Scotland was therefore assiduously fomented from England; and the unfortunate King, neither wise nor vigorous himself, had in Laud an adviser whose vigour was rarely on the side of wisdom.
Meanwhile the nobles waited. Though they could harass and delay the Tithes Commission, they were powerless to resist it seriously. The constitution of the Scottish Parliament rendered all opposition to the Crown practically useless unless it was unanimous; and they knew well that the general sympathies of the nation, lay and cleric alike, were in this case on the side of the King. But they knew also that if he made one step more along the dangerous path of religious innovation their time would come. The concession in the matter of the Articles of Perth, and the relief to be obtained from the resettlement of the tithes, had not laid the suspicions of the clergy to sleep. They, too, like the nobles, were waiting, and, unlike the nobles, their religion was more to them than lands, and houses, and goods. The Protestantism of the Presbyterian was sensitive above that of all other Protestants, and there went along with it a deep-rooted national jealousy of English interference. Even those who had no aversion to a moderate form of Episcopacy, and were heartily disgusted with the intolerance and pugnacity of the extreme Presbyterians, thought that it would be best to let well alone, and that any further innovation would be impolitic and dangerous. But all parties had a very shrewd suspicion, which the English malcontents took care to keep alive, that the King would not be content to leave well alone, and that there would soon be further innovations. Then would come the time of the nobles. When dissatisfied men gather together they do not pause to ask the nature of each other's dissatisfaction. The cave of Adullam was the rallying-ground of every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented.