resulted in their subjugation. His father, before openly adopting the catholic religion and entering the service of Philip of Spain, had taken the precaution to convey to him the fee of his estates (letter of council to the king, 2 Feb. 1619: manuscript in Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, quoted in Gregory's Western Highlands, ed. 1881, p. 401), and from this time he continued, while only lord of Lorne, to wield the vast territorial influence of the family. Clarendon affirms that the old earl afterwards, provoked by his son's disobedience and insolence, resolved to bequeath his estates away from him, but was compelled by the king ‘to make over all his estates to his son’ (History, ii. 58), and partial confirmation of the statement is to be found in the ‘Acts of the Scottish Parliament,’ v. 80 (1633), which contain a ratification to him of a charter to his father in life-rent and himself in fee of the earldom of Argyll, and of a renunciation to him by his father of his life-rent. In an act of 1660 (Acts of the Scottish Parliament, vii. 340) it is also asserted that after he obtained the life-rent he ‘put his father to intolerable straits,’ which gives a colour of credibility to the further statement of Clarendon that the old earl prophesied the king would live to repent having bestowed favours on him, for he was ‘a man of craft, subtilty, and falsehood, and can love no man’ (History, ii. 58). But while undoubtedly the father and son were thus not on the best of terms with each other, it is not so certain that the whole blame of this rested with the son. In common with the children of the earl's first wife, Lorne had been educated in the protestant religion, for it was not the son, as S. R. Gardiner states, but the father who ‘threw off his religion,’ and the religious feuds between the two families were so insuperable a barrier to confidence and trust as to render strict precautions on the part of Lorne absolutely necessary. The possessions of the Argylls had under the old earl been greatly extended by the suppression of the Clangregors, Clandonalds, and other outlawed races, and when Lorne entered on the life-rent of his father's estates he ‘was by far the most powerful subject in the kingdom’ (Baillie, Letters and Journals, i. 145). In a proclamation issued in 1639 in the king's name to free those who held their lands in certain tenures, to hold the same immediately of the king under easier conditions, it was estimated that the Earl of Argyll, by virtue of those tenures, held command of twenty thousand men (Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1639, p. 5). Within his own territory he was, by virtue of his special office of justiciary, a potentate exercising almost royal power, and if dreaded rather than loved by many who had been compelled to bear the name of the clan, he exercised over them a more thorough discipline and had welded their rival interests into more complete unity than prevailed elsewhere in the highlands.
In the great Scottish ecclesiastical dispute with the sovereign, which had reached a crisis in 1638, the side which Lorne should take was thus a matter of prime importance to both parties. He had not as yet committed himself to the covenanting party. For many years he had basked in the smiles of royal favour. On the occasion of the king's visit to Scotland in 1633 for coronation he was confirmed in his office of justiciary and the possession of the life-rent of the estates of his father. In 1634 he was chosen an extraordinary lord of session. From the time that in 1626 he was chosen a privy councillor he had acted, until 1637, with great caution in regard to ecclesiastical matters. The first indication of his decided opposition to episcopacy was when in the latter year he had a dispute with the Bishop of Galloway regarding the imprisonment of a tutor of Viscount Kenmure, who on the occasion of the communion being dispensed to the people kneeling had ‘cryit out saying it wes plane idolatrie’ (Spalding, Memorials of the Trubles, i. 78). Lorne offered the bishop 500 merks of fine to free him, expecting that the offer would itself sufficiently heal the bishop's wounded amour propre. When the bishop took the money ‘without ceremony,’ Lorne was deeply offended, and at a private meeting which he convened he and other influential noblemen began ‘to regrait their dangerous estait with the pryd and avarice of the prelatis, seiking to overrule the haill kingdome’ (ib. i. 79). After the renewal of the covenant in 1638, in opposition to the attempt of the king to introduce the Book of Common Prayer and other ‘innovations,’ Lorne, along with Traquair and Roxburgh, was summoned to London to advise the king, Lorne being ‘sent for by a privy missive, not by a letter to the council as the other two’ (Baillie, Letters, i. 69). Indeed, the main purpose of the king was to secure the support of Lorne to his schemes, and well might Baillie write, ‘We tremble for Lorne that the king either persuade him to go his way or find him errands at court for a long time.’ Courage of the highest kind was required to enable him to conduct himself with credit, and he displayed a straightforward honesty and resolution at least as remarkable as his wariness. He was, Baillie mentions, ‘very plain with the king,’ and, having been brought into controversy with Laud, ‘did publicly avow his contempt of his
