humour, scores of fine old songs are in evidence. Allan Ramsay’s _Gentle
Shepherd_, a pastoral drama of the loves and lives of the Scottish
peasantry in the beginning of the last century, is the best lengthy
example we have of every-day folk-speech. Burns never hesitated, when it
seemed to better suit his verse or his meaning, to introduce modern
English words; Ramsay rarely does this. With Burns the Scottish dialect
as the expression of high-class poetry, might well have ended; but it
yet lingers on, chiefly in humorous songs and descriptions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Reformation in England and in Scotland.
In the progress of civilization, the middle of the sixteenth century may
be taken as the turning point between the old past, with its feudalism,
its authoritative church, its restricted culture, its antiquated
science,—and the newer order of things from which has sprung the ever-
expanding present. Since Guttenberg first used moveable types, a century
had so far perfected his invention that books were becoming plentiful;
and the one which is morally and socially, as well as religiously, the
chief book in the world, had been translated into the mother-tongue of
England. Towns were asserting their chartered privileges. The telescope
was ransacking the heavens, and, for the first time, Magellan had
circumnavigated the globe. Cannon were used in warfare, and iron had
been smelted in England. The newspaper had been born; and Law was
gradually gaining the ascendancy over disorder and old prerogative.
The Reformation of religion had established itself in Central and
Northern Europe, and was now fighting its way in England and Scotland.
But the battle with Papal authority and its dogmatic creeds was begun
under very different circumstances, was carried on by very different
methods, and had very different results in the two neighbouring
countries.
How did the English Reformation come about? During nearly forty years in
the first half of the sixteenth century (1509 to 1547) England was ruled
by the last of her really despotic kings, Henry VIII. As everybody
knows, Henry had a peculiar domestic experience,—he married in
succession six wives. As fresh fancies took him, he rid himself of four
of these—two by divorce, and two by the headsman’s axe. One wife, Jane
Seymour, died in childbirth of his only son, who succeeded him as Edward
VI. Wife No. 6, by her extraordinary prudence contrived to escape
destruction, and survived the kingly monster. _This_ is a harsh term for
the historical father of the English church, and some modern historians
of ability and repute have done their best—as has been done in the cases
of Macbeth and Richard III., as these kings are portrayed by
Shakespeare—to partially whitewash Henry. That he was, in common
parlance, a great king, and a man of ability, of energy and decision,
and that under him England prospered, and held an advanced position
amongst the nations, few will dispute; but that he was a cruel, lustful,
selfish tyrant seems equally undeniable. He made use of men and women as
subservient to his will or his pleasure, and when his ends were so
served, he ruthlessly destroyed them. His great minister, Wolsey, would
not bend to his wishes in the matter of divorcing his first wife, so
Wolsey was degraded, and in his old age sent into seclusion, to die of a
broken heart. And in succession Thomas Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, and
the Earl of Surrey, suffered the fate of Anne Boleyn and Catherine
Howard.
Henry, when a young man, opposed the Reformation. He wrote a book
against Luther and his heresies, which so pleased the Pope that he
granted Henry the title of _Defender of the Faith_. This papal title has
passed down by inheritance through all succeeding English sovereigns;
every coin from the mintage of Queen Victoria bears its initial letters.
Henry first married, under the Pope’s dispensation, the widow of his
elder brother Arthur, Catherine of Arragon, by whom he had a daughter,
afterwards Queen Mary. But the King fell in love—if, in the passions of
such a man, the noble word _love_ can be rightly used—with Anne Boleyn,
one of Catherine’s lady attendants. To gain Anne, Henry, after a number
of years of wedded life with Catherine, all at once became conscience-
stricken that his marriage with her was an unlawful one; and he asked
the Pope to recall his dispensation and annul the marriage. Now,
Catherine was sister to the Emperor of Germany, Charles the Fifth, one
of the Pope’s best supporters in these sad Reformation times. And,
moreover, to have rescinded the dispensation would have been an
admission of papal fallibility; so the Pope gave Henry a refusal.
Henry threw off his allegiance to the Pope, and had himself acknowledged
by Parliament as the supreme head of the English Church. Powerful,
unscrupulous, and popular, he confiscated church revenues, broke up
monasteries, and by Act of Parliament, in 1537, completed politically
the English Reformation. It was, so far as the King was concerned, a
reformation only in name, for as to liberty of conscience, and the right
of private judgment, he was as arrogant a bigot as any pope who ever
wore the tiara. He vacillated in his own opinions, but enforced those he
held at the time by such severe enactments, that many persons of both
religions were burned as heretics.
And from the Anglican Church, so founded on despotism and intolerance,
can we wonder that the shadow of Rome has never been thoroughly lifted?
In the abstract it is essentially a close corporation of ecclesiastics,
the mere people hardly counting as a necessary factor. Its sacraments
have still miraculous or supernatural properties attached to them; no
one must officiate therein who has not been _ordained_, and the assumed
powers of ordination came through the Romish Church. From the older
Church it adopted certain creeds, as dogmatic in their assertions, and
intolerant in their fulminations, as were ever Papal Bulls or Decrees of
Councils. Of course the mellowing influence of time, the broadening
thoughts of later years, and the rivalship of Nonconformity, have done
much to take out old stings and deaden old intolerance; whilst a cloud
of witnesses for righteousness and progress in the Church itself, have
raised it above its old self, and brought it in nearer touch with the
spirit of the present age.
* * * * *
The history of the Scottish Reformation is an entirely different one.
Instead of being originated and fostered by State authority, it was a
fierce and obstinate battle with such authority. Scotland was then under
one of its disastrous regencies, that of Mary of Guise, the widow of
King James V., acting for her infant daughter Mary, known afterwards in
history as the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots. The Reformation
in England had sent a wave of agitation into Scotland, and this wave
advanced strongly as refugees from the cruel persecutions of Mary Tudor
flocked into the Northern Kingdom; and as the Regent, with her
coadjutor, the bigoted and relentless Cardinal Beaton, also began to
persecute the new faith, and send its adherents to the stake; for it has
ever been found to be a true saying, “The blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church.” In revenge for the burning, in 1545, of one of the
saintliest of men, George Wishart, a party of the Reformers murdered the
Cardinal in his own castle of St. Andrews, from one of the windows of
which he had gloated over the martyr’s cruel death.
In 1557, a number of the Reformers, including several noblemen, and
styling themselves the Lords of the Congregation, entered into a mutual
bond or covenant, “To defend the whole congregation of Christ against
Satan and all his powers; to have prayers made and the sacraments
administered in the vulgar tongue; in worship to use only the Bible, and
the Prayer-book of Edward VI.” In 1559, the Regent, who was entirely
under French influence, and had been gradually filling high offices with
Frenchmen, and accumulating French troops, issued a proclamation,
forbidding any one to preach or administer the sacraments without the
authority of the bishops.
And at this period a sterling man fitted to be a leader in such
turbulent times, John Knox, appears in the forefront of the conflict. He
had been college-bred, and became a priest, but adopted the Reformation
in its Calvinistic phase, and, as he had opportunity, disseminated the
new tenets with eloquence and zeal. After Beaton’s death, his slayers,
with others, and Knox amongst these, held out the castle of St. Andrews
for fourteen months, but had to yield at last to their French besiegers,
and were sent prisoners to France. Knox had to work in the galleys on
the river Loire. But again he is in Scotland, preaching from place to
place. After a powerful sermon against idolatry in a church in Perth, a
priest began to celebrate mass. Heated by the glowing words of Knox, the
people broke the images in the church. The Regent was very wroth, she
deposed the Protestant provost of the city, and threatened it with
French troops. The Congregation raised troops and appealed to Elizabeth,
now on the English throne, for aid. Elizabeth sent some troops, and
there was fighting with varied successes, until, by a treaty made in
Edinburgh, the French agreed to abandon Scotland, and the Protestants
were to be allowed the free exercise of their religion. In the Scottish
Parliament of 1560 there was a solemn abjuration of the Pope and the
mass. And the Geneva Confession of Faith was constituted the theological
standard of the kingdom.
[Illustration: JOHN KNOX.]
Differing from the English Church with its orders, its episcopacy, and
its sovereign headship, the Scottish Reformers denied the authority of
the sovereign, or secular government, to interfere in the affairs of the
Church; determining that these affairs should be under the direction of
a Court of Delegates, the greater number being chosen from the
ministers, all of whom were of the same standing and dignity, and the
remainder—with equal authority in the deliberations—of a certain number
of the laity, called Elders, thus forming what is called “The General
Assembly of the Church.” The sacraments were to be simple observances,
spiritual only as they were spiritually received. Church edifices were
regarded as merely stone and lime structures, having no claims to
special regard, except during divine service. So to these Reformers,
defacing in the churches what had been considered sacred statuary and
ornamentation, even to the sign of the cross, was deemed a ready mode of
testifying against Popish superstitions. As to the abbeys and
monasteries—“Pull down the nests,” said stern John Knox, “and the rooks
will fly away.”
Thus the Kirk of Scotland was essentially democratic in its origin, and,
although always rigid and often intolerant, it has in the main so
continued. Its theological tenets, although wordy and abstruse, were a
whetstone to the intellect, and helped to develope a serious and
thoughtful, a reading, and an argumentative people. Shepherds meeting
each other on the hillsides, weavers with their yarn at the village
beetling-stone, would, like Milton’s angels:—
“Reason high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.”
The English Church, on the other hand, did not encourage doctrinal
discussion, but simple faith in its articles, and obedience to its
rubric.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: JOHN KNOX’S HOUSE.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
But—which we would hardly have expected from its complex system of
faith, and its niceties in phraseology—the Presbyterian Kirk produced
zeal and earnest devotedness in the Scottish people. Without ordination
by a bishop, whose orders were presumed to have come in direct
succession from the Apostles, the ministers were held in high reverence
and esteem; without printed prayers its common members learned to pray.
It had its army of martyrs; except amongst Puritan Nonconformists, the
Scottish Covenanters have hardly their English representatives.
John Knox largely impressed the Reformed Church with his own
individuality. No doubt he was rigid, and, to our modern ideas, narrow-
minded and intolerant. He would not have accomplished the work he did if
he had not himself thoroughly believed in it, as the greatest work which
then needed to be done. He has been blamed for speaking harsh words to
Queen Mary; but he had to speak what he felt to be stern truths, for
which honied words could hardly fit themselves. Mary, accustomed to
fascinate the eyes and sway the wills of all who approached her,
demanded of Knox:—“Who are you who dare dictate to the sovereign and
nobles of this realm?” “I am, Madam,” answered Knox, “a subject of this
realm.” A subject, and therefore a co-partner in the realm; to the
fullest extent of his knowledge and his capabilities responsible for its
right government; just as the Hebrew prophets claimed a right to stand
before their kings, and, not always in smooth words, to denounce sin and
hypocrisy, oppression, and backslidings from the law of God.
[Illustration:
JOHN KNOX’S PULPIT, ST. GILES’S.
(_From the Scottish Antiquarian Museum._)
]
For supporting the introduction of bishops into the Presbyterian Church,
as impairing the republican equality of its ministers, Knox had bitterly
rebuked the Regent Morton. But when, in November, 1572, the Regent stood
by the grave of the Reformer, it was in a choking voice that he
pronounced the grand eulogium:—“There lies he, who never feared the face
of man.”
At the era of the Reformation no translation of the Scriptures had yet
been printed in Scotland; what copies in the vernacular had been brought
from England, were in the hands of the wealthy; indeed few of the common
people could then have read them. The parish school as yet was not. The
old church had not encouraged inquiry into the rationale of its dogmas,
and although theological discussion was in the air, it had not
penetrated into the lower strata of Scottish society. And thus the
popular outburst against the old church was hardly founded on conscience
and conviction; in its beginnings at least, it was more a revolution
against priestly domination.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF JOHN KNOX.]
But the cry of _idolatry_ was raised. In the destruction of images in
the churches, the leading reformers found the populace only too willing
agents. Even architectural ornamentation—without religious significance—
was removed or destroyed, the capitals of pillars were covered with
plaster, the very tombs were rifled and defaced. The parish church had
been the nucleus around which, for centuries, the veneration and the
spiritual thought of past times had revolved, and now the idea of its
“consecration” was to be banished from the popular mind. The reformers
encouraged male worshippers to enter churches with their hats on—
uncovering during prayer, psalm-singing, and scripture reading, and
resuming their hats when the minister gave out the text for his sermon.
When the discourse touched a popular chord, there was applause by
clapping of hands and stamping of feet. Rome had demanded unquestioning
submission to its authority,—an unreserved veneration for its ritual;
and in breaking away from this bondage, the spirit of reverence was
largely impaired.
Thus to other religionists, the form of worship in a Scottish church
appeared bald and careless, hardly decorous. There was no private prayer
on sitting down; in the public prayers, the stubborn presbyterian knee
did not bend,—all stood upright, and the eyes would roam all over the
church. In singing the psalms, there was no assistance from the swelling
tones of an organ; gloves were put on during the benediction, and all
were prepared for a hurried exit at its _Amen_. Funeral sermons, and
even tomb-stones, were proscribed by the early reformers. One in King
James’s English retinue, accompanying him in a visit to Scotland,
remarked,—“The Scots christen without the sign of the cross; they marry
without the ring; and bury without any funeral service.”
Although the old psalmist said,—“O sing unto the Lord a new song,”—the
Presbyterians did not seem to think that anything had occurred in the
following two thousand years, to incite to new songs of praise and
thanksgiving: so they continued to sing only the Hebrew psalms. It was
not until 1745 that the General Assembly authorized the use of
Paraphrases,—that is, metrical versions of other portions of Scripture,
but many congregations refused them. Now, there are authorized hymnals—
the organ is again finding its place in the churches—and other changes
have come about, bringing the form of service in nearer consonance with
that of other churches, and with the more ornate tendency of the present
times.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Rival Queens—Mary and Elizabeth.
Mary’s evil fortunes began with her birth. Her dying father, heart-
broken over a disastrous battle, lived only a week after his “poor
lass,” as he called her, was born. Then Henry VIII. of England saw in
this infant niece of his a means of uniting the two crowns, much in the
way by which a wolf unites itself with the lamb it devours, by having a
marriage contracted between her and his only son, Prince Edward. He sent
negotiators to enforce, under threats, his project. There was much
opposition amongst the Scottish nobility. It looked like surrendering
their country to England. They said to Henry’s negotiators, “If your lad
were a lass, and our lass were a lad, would you then be so earnest in
this matter; and could you be content that our lad should, by marrying
your lass, become King of England? No! your nation would never agree to
have a Scot for King; and we will not have an Englishman as our King.
And tho’ the whole nobility of the realm should consent thereto, yet the
common people would rebel against it; the very boys would hurl stones,
and the wives handle their distaffs against it.”
Henry was wroth exceedingly, threatened war, and demanded the custody of
the child-Queen. To have him for an ally against the Queen-Regent and
her minister, the persecutor Beaton, the Reformers temporized, and the
Scottish Parliament consented to the match; Mary to be sent to Henry
when she was ten years old.
In the meantime Henry got embroiled with France; and Scotland, under the
influence of the Queen-Regent, allied itself with that country. Henry
sent an army into Scotland. There were some Scottish successes; but at
Pinkie, in 1547, the English general Somerset gained a complete victory.
Before this event Henry had died; but his long cherished object, the
possession of the child of Scotland, was still pressed, and now seemed
on the point of attainment. But the Scottish people were irritated and
alarmed to such a degree that they resolved to make the projected
marriage impossible, by marrying their young mistress to the Dauphin of
France, and sending her to be brought up at the French court. To this
resolve Parliament gave a hasty assent; and in July 1548, the poor
child, now in her sixth year, accompanied by her four Maries—girls her
own age, of noble birth, her present play-fellows and future companions—
was shipped off to France.
Prince Edward, who succeeded Henry as Edward VI., was twelve years of
age when his father died, and he reigned only four years. Then there was
the painful incident of Lady Jane Grey being pushed forward by her
ambitious kindred as a claimant to the throne; the venture being death
to her and to them. And then Henry’s daughter by his first wife became
Queen. A rigid Catholic, she at once took steps, intolerant, relentless,
and cruel, to re-establish the old faith. The savage persecutions of her
reign have rendered it for ever infamous. She goes down through all time
as the _Bloody_ Mary. Smithfield blazed with the fires of martyrdom;
five Protestant bishops were amongst the sufferers. Happily her reign
was a brief one, lasting only five years; and they were for her years of
domestic misery, her marriage with the Spanish King, Philip II., being
an unhappy and unfruitful one.
Her half-sister Elizabeth, the issue of Henry’s marriage with Anne
Boleyn, succeeded to the throne in 1558. Elizabeth had been brought up
as a Protestant, had been kept a close prisoner during Mary’s reign,—
narrowly escaping being herself a martyr. And now to maintain her claims
to the throne, she had to depend upon her Protestant subjects; for the
Catholics denied the validity of her father and mother’s marriage, and
consequently denied her legitimacy and right to reign. They asserted
that Mary Stuart of Scotland was the rightful heir, and as such entitled
to their allegiance.
A brief explanation will show on what foundation the Stuart claim—
afterwards allowed at the death of Elizabeth in favour of Mary’s son
James—was based. At Bosworth Field, Richard III., of the house of York,
was defeated and slain. The victor was Richmond of Lancaster, who thus
became King Henry VII.; his son was Henry VIII., and his daughter
Margaret married James IV., King of Scotland. The neighbouring Kings,
James and Henry VIII., were thus brothers-in-law; none the less did they
quarrel and go to war with each other, their hostilities ending, so far
as James was concerned, with the battle of Flodden. Henry was then
engaged in a war with France, and James was killed in the battle which
his vanity had provoked, and which he generalled so badly. His son,
James V., was Henry’s nephew, and full cousin to Henry’s children,
Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Thus, failing direct legitimate heirs to
the English throne, James’s daughter Mary was, in virtue of her descent
as the grand-daughter of Henry VII., the nearest heir.
At Elizabeth’s accession, in 1558, Mary was sixteen years of age. As the
wife of the Dauphin of France, the French monarchy put forward her
claims as the rightful sovereign of England, and even had a coinage
struck with her effigy thus designated. So Elizabeth feared and hated
Mary as her rival; hated her yet more, with a woman’s spite, for her
beauty and accomplishments. Soon Mary, by his early death, lost her
husband, then King of France, and at nineteen years of age, in the
splendour of her queenly beauty, she—regretfully for the land of her
youth—returned to her native Scotland.
[Illustration:
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND.
(_From a painting by Zucchero._)
]