On 3 July 1634, Laud was at his desk in Lambeth Palace, writing one of his regular letters to Thomas Wentworth, Lord Deputy of Ireland. He was accustomed to penning lengthy missives to Wentworth, but this particular letter was uncharacteristically short, for which Laud apologised. He explained that he could not immediately attend to Irish business because ‘I was fain to write nine letters yesterday into Scotland.’ The archbishop then added, ‘I think you have a plot to see whether I will be universalis episcopus, that you and your brethren may take occasion to call me Antichrist.’ One of Laud's frequent attempts at humour, this comment nevertheless confirms his active engagement in the religious affairs of Scotland, which will be the topic of this chapter. Historians of Caroline Britain have shown that a policy of religious ‘uniformity’ or ‘congruity’ was pursued across the Stuart multiple kingdoms and that Laud was a constant source of ecclesiastical advice for the king in English and Irish church affairs. Still, the role of Laud in Scotland remains relatively under-explored. This chapter seeks to redress the balance by exploring the archbishop's interactions with the Scottish episcopate, the men tasked with the practical implementation of royal policy, without whose assistance and co-operation nothing would have been possible. The discussion will be broken into four key themes. The chapter will begin with an assessment of the Caroline episcopate in Scotland to identify the calibre of the men appointed to the episcopal bench under Charles I and what, if any, were their associations with Laud. The second section will consider episcopal agency in affairs beyond the church, to establish how and why the Scottish bishops’ powers were enhanced during the 1630s. The third section will consider, in brief, the key aspects of ecclesiastical policy in which Laud and the Scottish bishops were deeply involved, prior to the development of the prayer book and canons, which will be discussed in detail in chapter 3. A final section will discuss the measures deployed to enhance the material and financial position of the Scottish church.

Produced in Britain from the early fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries, and on the Continent during the later fifteenth century, the surviving corpus of more than fifty Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts clearly served a variety of audiences, both before and after its Long Version was translated into English. Extant manuscripts range widely in script, context, and size: the smallest, Add. 35092, a nicely produced later fourteenth century copy of the Oldest Version, could fit in a pocket, while the largest, Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (hereafter BSG) 935, a lavish fifteenth-century Continental text with a program of illustrations, would require a support of some sort to be read. Some manuscripts are the work of many hands; some seem likely to have been written entirely by one person, in some haste, perhaps for personal use. It would do violence to the tradition to try to identify one kind of Anglo- Norman prose Brut, or one course of production, as normative.

The manuscripts themselves provide little information as to their origin and early provenance – another factor that may have contributed to neglect of the corpus, since manuscripts with identifiable origins often attract more scholarly attention. When present at all, the earliest inscriptions of ownership tend to begin with very late fifteenth century and sixteenth century owners. Especially in the earlier manuscripts, less formal, more documentary scripts are common: the Anglo-Norman prose Brut bears witness to the rise of highly current scripts, as well as other economizing measures, in fourteenth-century bookwriting. How, by whom, where, and in how organized a way the Anglo- Norman texts were produced remains an open question.

Mooney and Matheson have found evidence for the existence of a fifteenthcentury secular work-group responsible for the production of multiple copies of the Middle English prose Brut from a single exemplar, possibly mass-producing an extremely popular text on spec rather than awaiting a commission. Although their findings so far apply to only a handful of the extant manuscripts of the English Brut, they are a reminder of just how much stands to be learned through deeper study of the corpus.

“It's a fine country you're coming to, Sir; just too many of these damned nigras! If only we had one Dutchman of your blond kind for ten of these black devils, it would be paradise. It's a blessed country, Sir, this Georgia, the jewel of the South, and so the jewel of the world!”

The blond, blue-eyed gentleman—despite his impeccable elegance, even at a hundred paces, one could spot him as a European “greenhorn”— listened in bemusement to his fellow traveler. He enjoyed the boundless self-satisfaction of Americans, who, no matter whether they came from New York, Illinois, California, or in this case Georgia, praised their native state as paradise on earth. At the same time, the tirades against blacks— which became increasingly harsh and brutal for every degree of latitude he traveled further south—irritated him. Brushing his hair off his forehead with his stubby fingers, he said with a shrug: “Just what do you all want from these poor Negroes? I've gotten to know them as barbers, shoeshine boys, servants, conductors, and deckhands, and I find them quite handy, considerably more polite than the hired help of our own skin color, and they are always in a good mood and jocular. I actually quite like them.”

With great virtuosity, the American spit right past the German into the spittoon.

“First of all, sir, my compliments on your excellent English. More refined English than us here stateside. By God, these Germans can do anything, and whatever they can do, they do right well.—However, with all due respect, you just do not understand the situation with the Negroes; you're talking rubbish there. One Negro is good as a barber, a shoeshine boy, or waiter, very good even, but in bunches they are bad, very bad. When they live in bunches, they are worse than beasts! And they are beasts, and it is unfortunate that those damned Yankees—may they go to hell, even though they are hardworking fellas—have gotten them to thinking that they are not brutes but human beings, just as good or even better than the evil white man who doesn't even grant they are human. Well, that might work in the North where they can be waiters or barbers or house servants, but here in the South it is a different story.

End of August. The Hamburg sun has ceased burning, though it still affords warmth and comfort. And the tanned ladies and gentleman sitting at the Alsterpavillon or promenading over to it via the Jungfernstieg take pleasure in this last gift of summer rendering more tolerable the transition from seashore or mountain stronghold to big city life.

Carlo Zeller is lounging casually in a wicker chair observing with interest the lively prospect surrounding him. How completely different from Vienna, where East and West first blend, is this blond German world, he muses: Large, broad-shouldered men, hair bleached almost white from the sun, deeply tanned faces from which friendly blue eyes good-naturedly shine. The women, too, almost without exception, are blond, big, and solid, at thirty already strongly displaying their matronly bearing, for Viennese tastes a little too down to earth, solid and plain. But the girls! Slim and slender with flashing blue eyes that display with every flirtatious glance a hot-temperedness held in check. And do they know how to flirt, these Hamburg girls! “Sonofagun!” escaped Carlo's lips, when he became aware that a considerable number of girlish glances were aimed his way, while here and there, and with increasing frequency, some slim, young thing came slowly strolling by turning her blond head in his direction. How nice to be among blond people and, when all is said and done, that fool in Vienna who published a magazine pitting the blondes against the ravenhaired beauties might not be so wrong after all. Carlo's thoughts zigzag first to Vienna and then across the ocean. A warm feeling rose up in him. Lisl, you dear blond girl, soon I will join you where you live and breathe! How devotedly and tenderly she had kissed him good-bye, while the longing of her youthful feelings urged her toward him. If he had wanted, he would have taken her and savored her like a mature, ripe fruit. But no, that would have been forbidden, that would have been a crime! Lisl had to be won honorably, kept safe and happy. Now it was a matter of fighting and struggling over there until he could make something of himself and make Lisl his bride.

Illustration is another kind of supplementation that is difficult to appreciate outside the physical context of the manuscript. Like apparatus and annotation, it resists simple definition. Illustrations may provide decoration, ways of demonstrating the status of the work – iconographically and/or economically – and pointers towards interpretation. They may do as much to test or question the text they accompany as they do to repeat its content in another form, as a variety of apparatus that helps guide readers through the work in question and assigns extra significance to particular moments by singling them out for attention. They are limited to manuscripts with some space to spare and, for the most part, commissioners with money to spare. In addition to serving the function of apparatus, they of course constitute works in their own right: such study as Anglo-Norman prose Brut illustrations have received has generally been in isolation from the textual context. They are found rarely throughout the prose Brut tradition, and among Anglo- Norman prose Brut manuscripts only in a very few insular manuscripts and the three late luxury manuscripts produced on the Continent. Although, as Martha Driver and Michael Orr note, there appears to have been a drive towards standardization of illustrative matter in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the surviving illuminations in Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts do not suggest much in the way of a iconographic tradition.

Insular Illustrations

The manuscripts with illustrations are among the most highly decorated of the insular Anglo-Norman prose Bruts, although not themselves particularly fine or lavish productions. Unsurprisingly, their illustrations appear at the beginning of the chronicle and are the manuscripts’ most extravagant feature. In the two manuscripts with the Latin poem encapsulating the post- Conquest kings’ reigns, one (RD329) has a completed, colorful set of king portraits and genealogies and the other (P511/19) space for such portraits; after this emphatic triple gesture directing the reader – via words, images, and diagrams – to think of British history as a series of genealogically linked portraits, an approach much akin to that of the Oldest Version's narrative, the Albine prologue and Brut chronicle are marked only with nicely made large initials.

When on the very last page of Hugo Bettauer's 1922 novel The Blue Stain: A Novel of a Racial Outcast (originally in German Das blaue Mal: Der Roman eines Ausgestoßenen), the novel's protagonist, Carlo, decides to fight for the civil rights of African Americans in Atlanta by joining The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), it is impossible for the reader not to be moved by his late but daring decision. Right up until Carlo makes this choice, the reader is ready to accompany this young man on his return to Europe, where he believed he could leave behind the appalling racism that he had encountered, first in New York City, later in the forests of North Alabama, and finally in Atlanta, Georgia. He longs to shed the role of the outcast, as the subtitle of the novel brands him. Instead, Carlo desires to thrive in Vienna, Austria as he once did, albeit no longer in a reckless and immature manner. He appears poised for a homecoming to a society that had treated him as one of its own, as a somewhat exotic white man.

In this final turn of events, the novel strikes a bracing and stunning chord: Carlo, who was conceived by his white European father and his mulatto mother in Atlanta during the post-Reconstruction period and was raised by his father in Vienna after his mother's death, had for so long insisted on his whiteness and resisted his blackness, but now finally and fully accepts his dual, mixed-race identity. The “blue stain” under his fingernails, a condition alleged to provide evidence of black heritage, remains a visible sign of his parents’ miscegenation. Even as Carlo's vicissitudes amaze us, his life story simultaneously reveals its shaping not only of his, but also of our identities: we are born first as human beings, and it is the dominant society that then sees or does not see the color, gender, or other biological characteristics of a person, that determine whether this person is treated by social convention as “normal” or is stigmatized as “other.” Should one succumb to the societal norms and values of the majority, or should one resist with all one's might those overbearing pressures and forces?

On 18 December 1640, the Painted Chamber in Westminster Palace was the scene of a dramatic event in Laud's career. William, Lord Paget, stood to read the ‘Charge of the Scottish Commissioners against the Archbishop of Canterbury’ before a joint committee of both houses. The charges were read in the House of Lords the following day, and shortly afterwards, a message was delivered by Denzil Holles that Laud was accused of high treason by the Commons. The archbishop was immediately placed under house arrest in Charing Cross, in the custody of James Maxwell, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. This was the first stage in the process of impeachment against the archbishop that resulted in his committal to the Tower on 1 March 1641, where he remained until his execution on 10 January 1645. Despite being central to Laud's downfall, the Scottish dimension has, bizarrely, scarcely featured in relevant secondary literature. Departing from existing accounts and drawing on underexplored Scottish sources, this chapter argues that Laud's downfall can only be properly understood in the context of Anglo-Scottish political relations. It offers an alternative perspective by examining first how the king's defeat in the Second Bishops’ War enabled the Scottish commissioners to secure the archbishop's removal from power in the early Long Parliament; and secondly, it shows the significance of Scottish pressure in bringing Laud to trial and, eventually, execution.

The Decision to Launch the Second Bishops’ War, Spring 1640

As we saw in the previous chapter, in late 1639 the king was forced by pure financial necessity to summon an English parliament to supply him with funding for a second war against Scotland. Charles expected a peremptory session to grant him the necessary supply, with few questions asked. Strafford's influence here is unmistakeable: Charles’ experience with his English parliaments in the late 1620s must surely have prepared him for some redress of grievances, prior to supply. He could not expect the English parliament to behave like its Irish counterpart. The Short Parliament inevitably failed to live up to his expectations, since members were keen to maximise on their first opportunity in eleven years to air their grievances, particularly surrounding ship money and religious innovations.