The Melville party, or what remained of it, had now some reason to be alarmed ; for, if the Assembly did not meet on the day fixed, the right to summon such a court would pass wholly from the Church to the Crown. The Presbytery of St. Andrews had sent three ministers to Aberdeen in July, 1604; and nineteen ministers, followed by nine others who endorsed the proceedings in which they arrived too late to take part, convened there on July 22, 1605. John Forbes, one of the ministers, had an understanding with the Chancellor, Lord Dunfermline, that they would be allowed to meet, if they did no more in their Assembly than merely prorogue it to another day ; and the letter from the Council presented by Straiton of Lauriston, the King's Commissioner, being addressed, "To our Traist Friends, the Brethren of the Ministry convened at their Assembly in Aberdeen," they resolved to constitute themselves an Assembly before they opened it. The letter, however, proved to be an order to dissolve at once without appointing any new meeting ; and when the ministers insisted on adjourning to the first Tuesday of September, Straiton, who had hitherto made no opposition and had even suggested Forbes as Moderator, protested that he had never acknowledged them to be a lawful Assembly, and charged them to disperse on pain of treason. He and his friends realised too late that the holding of this Assembly might extinguish the Commission appointed by the last ; and the Council were easily persuaded to accept his story, contrary as it was to their own instructions, that he had prohibited the Assembly by open proclamation on the previous day.
