Joined by ten others, they kept open the right of way.

James insisted that the Council should prosecute them: they, by fixing a new date for an Assembly, without royal consent; and James, by letting years pass without an Assembly, broke the charter of the Kirk of 1592.
The preachers, when summoned to the trial, declined the jurisdiction.
This was violently construed as treason, and a jury, threatened by the legal officers with secular, and by the preachers with future spiritual punishment, by a small majority condemned some of the ministers (January 1606).

This roused the wrath of all classes.

James wished for more prosecutions; the Council, in terror, prevailed on him to desist.

He continued to grant no Assemblies till 1608, and would not allow "caveats" (limiting the powers of Bishops) to be enforced.