with his Scottish brethren. He was again summoned to the privy council at Whitehall on 26 April, and once more taxed with his epigram. He broke forth into personal and unsparing invective directed against members of the council, lay and clerical. He was sent by water to the Tower. A royal commission on 16 June declared the principalship of St. Mary's College vacant. His confinement was solitary; pen, ink, and paper were forbidden him; he covered the walls of his chamber with Latin verses, scratched with the tongue of his shoe-buckle.
Not till April 1608 was some relaxation allowed, through the good offices of Sir James Sempill. He was indulged with the company of a young nephew and great-nephew, to whom he gave tuition. Meanwhile the authorities of La Rochelle had applied to James for his removal thither as professor of divinity in their college, but the French court had interfered. Melvill at the end of 1608 addressed a copy of conciliatory verses to James, and an apologetic letter to the privy council, on the advice of Archbishop Spotiswood. Among his friendly visitors were Isaac Casaubon [q. v.] and Joseph Hall [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Norwich. He kept up a correspondence with Scotland and with foreign protestants. At length his release was obtained, after several months' negotiation, by Henri de la Tour, duc de Bouillon (d. 1623, aged 67), who sought his services for the university of Sédan within his principality. Just before his removal he was seized with fever, and permitted to recruit his health in the neighbourhood of London. He embarked for France from the Tower on 19 April 1611.
By Rouen and Paris Melvill travelled to Sédan, and was installed in the chair of biblical theology, the department of systematic divinity being retained by Daniel Tilenus (1563–1633), who had previously taught both branches. Tilenus was unpopular, and many students had withdrawn to Saumur. Melvill did not find his prospects inviting. In November 1612 he visited Grenoble, on the invitation of De Barsac, treasurer of the parlement of Dauphiné, who offered him a salary to educate his sons, either privately or at the university of Dié. He soon, however, returned to Sédan; but the situation was not made happier by a theological difference with Tilenus, who, compelled to resign, came to England in 1620, and gratified James by writing against the presbyterianism of Scotland.
Melvill, who appears to have been of small stature, had excellent health till 1612, excepting occasional attacks of gravel; he had never used spectacles. In 1616 he speaks of his gout; by 1620 his health was broken. He died at Sédan in 1622; the exact date has not been ascertained. He was unmarried. His faults lay on the surface, but they disqualified him from being a good leader. His ideas were patriotic and statesmanlike, but his action was too little under restraint. Spotiswood spoke of him as ‘a blast;’ he roused his nation to great issues, heedless of immediate consequences. King James was right in saying that his heart was in his mouth. Unprovoked he was generous, and could be sympathising and even gentle, yet to his closest intimates he was always the candid friend. His letters to his nephew in 1608 on the subject of a second marriage are exceedingly sensible, but there is a touch of asperity in the manner which robs the advice of all suasiveness. In controversy he could never conciliate; his impetuous eloquence was soon roused, when he poured forth without calculation a fierce stream of mordant invective. His polemical epigrams, always exquisite in their form, were corrosive in matter. Yet his spirit was never wanting in dignity, and under reverses he was ‘patient, constant, and courageous’ (Grub). Of self-seeking he was entirely free.
As a reformer of the Scottish universities Melvill showed real constructive power, and his work was permanent. Foreigners were for the first time attracted to St. Andrews as a seat of liberal learning, others were drawn to Glasgow and Edinburgh. The European repute of the Scottish universities begins with Melvill.
The part which he played in the development of the framework of presbyterianism exhibits similar qualities. Both by helping to perfect its machinery and by inspiring enthusiasm for its polity, he did much to mould that Scottish type of presbyterianism which is often taken as synonymous with presbyterianism itself. But with Melvill the triumph of one form of church government over another was not the main business. His prime object was to make religion, as he understood it, a matter of popular concern, and he judged forms as they appeared to him to help or hinder that result. Theologian as he was, his conception of religion was, in the broad sense, ethical, Christianity being to him a divine guide of conduct for individuals and for nations. Of religious sentimentalism there is no trace (as McCrie has noticed) even in his most confidential correspondence; his life was the outcome of solid and virile conviction, but as regards his personal experiences in religion he observes a manly reticence.
Isaac Walton ranks Melvill as a Latin
