THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN KNOX.
[Sidenote: Assassination of the Good Regent.]
The eighth decade of the sixteenth century was memorable in the history
of Protestantism in its Presbyterian or Calvinistic form, and the year
1572 has been termed its _annus mirabilis_. It marked a crisis in the
long and bloody struggle of the Protestants in the Netherlands with
their Spanish oppressors,--a struggle which issued in securing the
independence of the Dutch people, and settling on a Calvinistic basis
the Reformed Church of Holland. It formed the turning-point in the
tragic fortunes of the Reformed Church of France, at which, from being
able to claim as adherents a majority of the landed gentry and a large
minority of the more intelligent and wealthy _bourgeois_ in the
provincial towns, and being only weak among the citizens of the capital
and the peasantry of northern and central France, she was, by an act of
base treachery and fiendish cruelty, hurled from her promising
position, sadly crippled in numbers and influence, permanently weakened
and cast down, though not crushed or driven to despair.[220] This decade
was especially memorable in the history of the Reformed Church of
Scotland as having witnessed the removal of the ablest and best of the
lay defenders of the Reformation, the death of our great reformer
himself, and the return to Scotland of the intrepid and devoted man who
was to take up and complete the work, from which failing health and a
grieved spirit had obliged Knox to withdraw. The assassination of the
Good Regent (as the Earl of Moray was deservedly surnamed) was
unquestionably the most disgraceful of all the murders perpetrated in
Scotland in the interests of faction during those years of confusion and
strife.[221] It brought no permanent advantage to the party of reaction.
It wrought much woe to the country, which under his firm yet kindly rule
had begun to settle into order and to recover its prosperity.
[Sidenote: He leaves Edinburgh.]
This great national calamity preyed on the spirit and broke the already
waning strength of Knox. In the month of October in that year[222] he
had a stroke of paralysis or of apoplexy, which for a time laid him
aside altogether from work, and permanently enfeebled his constitution.
As in the case of Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, his opponents
exulted over his misfortune, and circulated maliciously exaggerated
accounts of his condition, on which probably their more malicious and
notoriously fictitious accounts of his last illness were founded. But
this first seizure was not so severe as to put a final arrest on his
activities. Before many weeks were over he had so far recovered as to be
able, in part at least, to resume his labours. He was able in a measure
to continue them through the anxious and unquiet months of the
succeeding winter and spring--bearing faithful testimony to the
principles, religious and political, which he had long professed;
standing up resolutely in defence of the authority of the young prince,
when many, who had formerly sworn allegiance to him, led by the
intriguing laird of Lethington and the "fause" house of Hamilton, went
over to the party of his popish mother. He exposed their sophistries,
and fearlessly rebuked their defection, even after they had gained for
the time the supremacy in Edinburgh. Others might truckle to them or
quail before them, but that palsied old man, with all his former
plainness and much of his former fire, persevered in denouncing their
treachery and discrediting their proposals. Threatenings were uttered
against his life if he persisted in his course; protection seems to have
been refused him by the party against the violence of their lawless
followers; and one evening (as had often happened to Calvin in his years
of conflict) a musket-ball was fired in at the window of his house, and
lodged in the roof of the apartment in which he was sitting. Again and
again faithful citizens, an attached kirk-session, and John Craig, then
his colleague in the ministry, entreated him to remove for a time to
some place where his life would be safe from violence, and whence he
could return to his loving and beloved flock as soon as the prevailing
faction should be put down, or should vacate the city. But he heard them
all unmoved, until at last they were constrained to tell him plainly
that if he was attacked they had made up their minds to peril their
lives in his defence, and if they were compelled to shed blood in the
contest it must lie on his head. Thus "sore against his will,"[223] as
one of the earliest historians of his declining years tells us, and
"almost thrust out by the authority of the church court,"[224] as
another of them has it, he, on the 5th May 1571, took farewell of
Edinburgh for a time, and crossing the Firth of Forth at Leith moved on
by short and easy stages through Fife to the city in which "God had
first opened his mouth" to proclaim His truth, and for which to the last
he, as well as the Good Regent, cherished a special affection. As Mr
John Davidson, then a teacher in one of the colleges, has expressed it
in homely Scotch:--
"Thou knawis he lude the by the lave,
For _first_ in the he gave the rout
Till Antechrist that Romische slave,
Preicheing that Christ did only save.
Bot _last_ of Edinburgh exprest,
Quhen he was not far fra his grave
He came to the by all the rest."[225]
[Sidenote: His preaching in St Andrews.]
In St Andrews the reformer was sure to be free from personal danger, and
on the whole to have the sympathy of the citizens; though it was not to
be supposed that--in the city and university where the late Archbishop
Hamilton had been long supreme, and had recently been claiming to
exercise the authority of Chancellor of the University, and new founder
of St Mary's College,[226] and where he had left behind several
relations and dependents more compliant with the new order of things
than himself--there were not to be found in this crisis several
influential persons who had more sympathy with their late chief and
with the selfish and crooked policy of the Hamiltons than with the
straightforward course and steadfast fidelity of the dauntless reformer,
and who would have little relish for his earnest warnings and stern
reproofs. The notices preserved to us regarding this last and, so far as
is yet known, longest visit of Knox to St Andrews are both detailed and
interesting. From the simple and loving Memorials of his attendant,
Richard Bannatyne, we learn that all the time he was there--_i.e._, from
the beginning of July 1571 to the 17th of August 1572--he preached every
Sunday, and expounded the prophecies of Daniel to the middle of the
ninth chapter, applying the words of the prophet to the circumstances of
Scotland at the time, and inveighing in the strongest terms against "the
bloody house of Hamilton" and its abettors for their deceit, treachery,
and turbulence, their base murder of the Good Regent, and cunning plot
to restore a popish queen.[227] These themes, to which in the
applications of his sermons he ever and anon returned, woke up all the
fire and fervour of the old man eloquent; and if it might not be said,
as in earlier days, that every sermon was of more value to the cause he
defended than five hundred armed men, yet the report of his untiring
zeal and unswerving fidelity would still contribute greatly to animate
and cheer the adherents of the young prince and of the new regent in all
parts of the land.
As I have hinted, there were some in the city to whom such discourses
could not fail to be distasteful--some who refused to attend on his
ministry, and were perhaps so stung by what was reported of his sharp
but not undeserved reproofs that they were compelled to throw off the
mask they had hitherto worn, and soon after openly to apostatise from
the faith which for several years they had professed and taught. But the
effect on many of the young men in attendance on the university, or
acting as regents in its colleges, was salutary and enduring; and
perhaps it was not without special intention that, when the door was
shut against him in Edinburgh and the ears of the men in power there
were closed against his counsels, he betook himself to what was still
the principal university in the realm, and made his last appeals to the
rising hopes of the church and country there. Such discourses as he then
delivered, coming from one they had already learned to venerate, could
not fail to form or foster in their ingenuous minds that fidelity to the
reformed faith, that jealousy of popery, and that hatred of its cruelty
and tyranny, which distinguished them to the last.
[Sidenote: Melville's sketch of Knox.]
James Melville, whose plastic nature and gentle spirit retained through
life the impressions then made, supplements in his Diary the notices in
Bannatyne's Memorials, and, in a passage which has been often quoted,
gives a very fresh and vivid sketch of the old reformer. "Bot of all the
benefites I haid that yeir"--the first year he was a student in St
Andrews, and had "drunk of St Leonard's well"--"the greatest," he tells
us, "was the coming of that maist notable profet and apostle of our
nation, Mr Jhone Knox, to St Androis; wha be the faction of the Quein
occupeing the castell and town of Edinbruche was compellit to remove
thairfra with a number of the best, and chusit to com to St Androis. I
hard him teatche ther the prophecie of Daniel that simmer and the wintar
following. I haid my pen and my litle book, and tuk away sic things as I
could comprehend. In the opening upe of his text he was moderat the
space of an halff houre; bot when he enterit to application he maid me
sa to grew and tremble that I could nocht hald a pen to wryt. I hard him
oftymes utter these thretenings [against the faction then] in the hicht
of their pryde, quhilk the eis [_i.e._, eyes] of monie saw cleirlie
brought to pass within few yeirs upon the captean of that castle, the
Hamiltones, and the Quein hirselff. He ludgit down in the Abbay besyde
our Collage."[228] So far was it from being true, as is commonly
asserted, that he had caused the destruction of the abbey and of the
abbey church or cathedral in 1559, that in 1571 he found a habitable
building there, in which he, a frail old man, with his wife and
children, could pass the winter in comfort. It, we know from a letter of
his antagonist, Archibald Hamilton, was "the new ludgene of the
abbey,"[229] or _novum hospitium_, built for the reception of Mary of
Guise, the queen of James V.[230] It was in the immediate vicinity of St
Leonard's College, and our diarist further tells us: "Our regents, Mr
Nicol Dalgleise, Mr Wilyeam Colace, and Mr Jhone Davidsone, went in
ordinarilie to his grace [or devotional exercises] efter denner and
soupper.... Mr Knox wald sum tymes com in and repose him in our Collage
yeard [that is the gardens immediately to the west of the _novum
hospitium_, adjoining St Leonard's College], and call us schollars unto
him and bless us, and exhort us to knaw God and His wark in our contrey,
and stand be the guid cause, to use our tyme weill, and lern the guid
instructiones, and follow the guid exemple of our maisters."[231] No
wonder, in these circumstances, that he is able to add, "Our haill
collage, maisters and schollars, war sound and zelus for the guid
cause," or that we can now still further add that thence proceeded
several of the men who were to uphold it most resolutely in the evil
days which followed.
[Sidenote: Opposition in St Andrews.]
In the New College we are told, "whowbeit Mr Jhone Dowglass, then Rector
[and Principal] was guid aneuche," yet the "uther maisters and sum of
the regentes war evill-myndit," and "hated Mr Knox and the guid
cause";[232] and two of them, Archibald and John Hamilton, soon after
apostatised, betook themselves to the Continent, and rose to high office
in the Universities of Louvain and Paris, where the one in not inelegant
Latin, and the other in courtly Scotch, sought to vindicate their
conduct, and to traduce and refute their former co-religionists. Some
of the masters of the Old College also, as Bannatyne has recorded, hated
the plain-speaking reformer, though "be outward gesture and befoir his
face thei wald seime and apeir to favore and love him above the
rest."[233] The Hamiltons especially seem to have given him considerable
occasion to complain of their bitter and unguarded criticisms, and one
of them, stung by his denunciations, challenged him to defend his
doctrine in the schools of the university. This he at first refused,
maintaining that the pulpit was not to be controlled by the university
schools, nor the church put into subjection to the academy.
[Sidenote: Patrick Adamson.]
St Andrews at that time was the _rendezvous_ of others of the adherents
of the young prince, who did not feel themselves safe under the faction
then in possession of the castle and city of Edinburgh. One of these, Mr
John Durie of Leith, was "for stoutness and zeall in the guid cause
mikle renouned and talked of." He was an enthusiastic leader of the
volunteers of his day. "The gown was na sooner af and the Byble out of
hand fra the kirk, when on ged the corslet, and fangit was the hagbot,
and to the fields."[234] Another was Robert Leckprevick, the famous
printer, who brought his types and printing-press with him, and so did
notable service to the cause. "He haid then in hand," Melville tells
us, "Mr Patrik Constant's [or Adamson's[235]] Catechisme of Calvin,
converted in Latin heroic vers, quhilk with the author was mikle estimed
of";[236] and deservedly so, for Adamson was an accomplished scholar,
was using his scholarship for the church's good, was eulogised by
Lawson, Knox's colleague and successor, and had not yet developed that
spirit of subserviency to the powers that be which afterwards proved his
ruin.
The printer had also the honour of publishing in St Andrews the last
work which engaged the thoughts of the reformer. This was his 'Answer to
a letter of a Jesuit named Tyrie.' It had been drawn up some years
before, but was now carefully revised and enlarged, and exhibited his
matured views respecting several of the most notable subjects of
controversy between the reformed and unreformed churches. Possibly it
may have been because he had detected through all their disguises the
secret leaning of the two Hamiltons to Romanist or semi-Romanist views
regarding the apostolical succession, the nature of the sacraments, and
the unfailing visibility and perpetuity of the church, that he now so
fully entered into a controversy which previously he had been inclined
to shun. Perhaps this is what is hinted at in the preface, in which he
says: "Wonder not, gentill reidar, that sic ane argument suld proceid
fra me in thir dolorous days after that I have taken gude-night at the
warld and at all the fasherie of the same.... There ar sevin yeares past
sen a scrole send from a Jesuite to his brother was presented unto me be
a faithfull brother requyring sum answer to be maid to the same....
Amongs my other caires I scriblit that which followis, and that in few
dayis; which being finished I repented of my laubour, and purposed
fullie to have suppressed it. Which, na dout I had done, if that the
devil had not steirit up the Jesuites of purpois to trouble godlie
harts, with the same argumentis which Tyrie usis, amplifyed and set
furth with all the dog eloquence that Sathan can devyse for suppressing
of the free progres of the Evangell of Jesus Christ." Then, after a
touching reference to the hard lot of his dispersed flock "suffering
lytill les calamitie than did the faithfull efter the persecutioun of
Steaphen," and an earnest petition that God would grant them one day to
meet in glory, he entreats the brethren to pray for _him_, that God "in
His mercy will pleis to put end to my long and panefull battell," as he
was unable to fight as erewhile he had done, and longed for release,
though still resigned to bear patiently whatsoever God saw meet to lay
upon this, his "wicked carkase."[237]
[Sidenote: The St Andrews Assembly.]
In March 1572 the General Assembly was held at St Andrews in the schools
of St Leonard's College.[238] This place was no doubt chosen in part at
least for the convenience of the aged reformer, whose counsel in that
time of trouble was specially needed. It was the last Assembly at which
he was able to be present, and probably the first witnessed by Davidson
and Melville. "Thair," the latter narrates, "was motioned the making of
bischopes, to the quhilk Mr Knox opponit himselff directlie and
zealuslie";[239] and thus probably were implanted in the youthful
student's mind the germs of those presbyterian principles which were
nurtured by intercourse with his uncle Andrew Melville, and were
retained by him to the last with heroic tenacity.
[Sidenote: Three Kinds of Bishops.]
Two months before this a convention at Leith had given its sanction to
a sort of mongrel episcopacy, nominally to secure the tithes more
completely to the church, but really to secure the bulk of them by a
more regular title to certain covetous noblemen who sought in this way
to reimburse themselves for their services in the cause of the
Reformation.[240] Chief among these noblemen was the Earl of Morton,
then one of the chief supporters of the young prince, and soon after
regent of the kingdom. Having secured a presentation to the
Archbishopric of St Andrews for Mr John Douglas before mentioned, he
came over to the city, had him elected by the chapter in terms of the
convention, and on the 10th of February inaugurated into his office.
This function was performed by Wynram, Superintendent of Fife, according
to the Order followed in the admission of Superintendents, save that the
Bishop of Caithness, the Superintendent of Lothian, and Mr David
Lindsay, who sat beside Douglas, laid their hands on his head. Knox had
preached that day as usual; but, as Bannatyne is careful to tell us, had
"refuised to inaugurat the said bischope";[241] and as others add had
"denounced anathema to the giver, anathema to the receaver,"[242] who
as rector and principal had already far more to do than such an aged man
could hope to overtake.[243] It was in reference to the same appointment
that Adamson, as yet uncorrupted by Court influences, had a few days
before in a sermon from the same pulpit given utterance to his famous
distinction of three kinds of bishops, my lord bishop, my lord's bishop,
and the Lord's bishop, the first of whom had been in time of popery, the
second was now brought in merely to enable my lord to draw the kirk
rents, and the third was the evangelical pastor as he should be in times
of thorough reformation.[244]
One more brief sketch from the Diary of the quaint but graphic
chronicler on whom I have repeatedly drawn may conclude our notice of
these last labours of the reformer, and bring us to his last illness and
death. "The town of Edinbruche recovered againe [out of the hands of the
queen's faction] and the guid and honest men therof retourned to thair
housses,[245] Mr Knox with his familie past hame to Edinbruche." During
the time of his residence in St Andrews he was very weak. "I saw him
everie day of his doctrine," says Melville, "go hulie and fear with a
furring of martriks about his neck, a staff in the an hand, and guid
godlie Richart Ballanden, his servand, halding upe the uther oxtar, from
the abbey to the paroche kirk; and be the said Richart and another
servant lifted upe to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean at his first
entrie; bot or he haid done with his sermont he was sa active and
vigorus that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads, and fly out of
it."[246]
[Sidenote: His Message to Charles IX.]
Soon after his return to Edinburgh he found himself quite unable to
preach in the large church which he had formerly occupied, and a smaller
one was fitted up for him in the western part of the nave of St
Giles.[247] But not even so were his services to be long available. On
one occasion only after his return may it be said that the old fire
burst out with all its former fierceness and brilliancy. This was in
September, when tidings reached him of the bloody massacre of St
Bartholomew's day in France. "Being conveyed to the pulpit," Dr M'Crie
tells us, "and summoning up his remaining strength, he thundered the
vengeance of God against 'that cruel murderer and false traitor, the
King of France,' and [borrowing the language of the Old Testament
prophets] desired Le Croc, the French ambassador, to tell his master
that sentence was pronounced against him in Scotland, that the divine
vengeance would never depart from him nor from his house, if repentance
did not ensue; but his name would remain an execration to posterity, and
none proceeding from his loins should enjoy his kingdom in peace."[248]
The only further notice of his work is by Melville, who simply informs
us that after "instituting in his roum, be the ordinar calling of the
kirk and congregation, Mr James Lawsone, a man of singular learning,
zeal, and eloquence, ... he tuk him to his chamber and most happelie and
comfortablie departed this lyff."[249]
With this kindly notice by his youthful admirer this lecture would have
ended, had I not promised to the late Dean Stanley several years ago
that, when a suitable opportunity occurred, I would not fail publicly to
advert to a shameless misrepresentation of the closing scene to which he
had directed my attention. This originated with Archibald Hamilton,
already referred to as one of the two masters of the New College, who
apostatised from the Protestant faith, and after his flight to the
Continent published the most barefaced lies of his old antagonist and
the noble men who were associated with him in his hard battle and
well-earned triumph. These lies were exposed and refuted at the time by
Principal Smeton of Glasgow, himself a convert from that Society of
Jesus which Hamilton ultimately joined. But as they have been revived in
our own day, and distributed in the form of a tract by Popish emissaries
at the doors of Protestant churches in London, and as one of a series
bearing the sensational title of "Death-bed Scenes," I shall, in
fulfilment of my promise, subjoin a brief account of the reformer's last
illness and death, taken almost exclusively from the contemporary
narratives of Bannatyne and Smeton, the former of whom was an
eye-witness, and the latter of whom had full information from
Lawson,[250] who also was an eye-witness of all. This, I feel assured,
is all that is required to set matters in their true light.
[Sidenote: Popish Calumny.]
The vague charges of immorality brought against the reformer by those
calumniators, ancient and modern, may be dismissed at once as nothing
more than the stock-in-trade of hard-pressed controversialists in the
sixteenth century. Had there been the slightest foundation for them,
some of Knox's many opponents in Scotland--Ninian Winzet, or the Abbot
of Crossraguel, or Tyrie the Jesuit, or Hamilton himself before he left
the country--would not have scrupled openly to upbraid him with them.
Neither would the culprits among the Protestant clergy and laity, whom
at various times he subjected to so rigorous a discipline, have borne
this patiently at his hands had he himself been a known offender. It was
his character which gave him his influence both at home and abroad, both
with friends and with foes, and could it have been successfully
assailed, it would not have been left to two Jesuits in a foreign land
to lead the assault after he was silenced in death.
Such, however, I hardly need to assure you was not the end of the
restorer of a really holy church in Scotland, if aught of credit is to
be given to the unanimous testimony of those who attended him during his
last illness and witnessed its closing scene, though it may have been
the end which Popish controversialists in the sixteenth century deemed
meet for him--as well as for Luther and Calvin and many more of whom the
world was not worthy--as it is in one of the foulest legends with which
their successors in the nineteenth century think it fair to supplement
the legends of their predecessors in the sixteenth. According to them
Luther was the child of a demon, not figuratively but literally; Calvin
was eaten up of worms, like Herod who slew the children of Bethlehem and
was smitten by the judgment of God, because (though apparently in this
they confound him with a later Herod) he affected divine honours. To
mention such slanders, as the sceptical Bayle has said with special
reference to the case of Knox, is all that is needed to refute them.
They are the product of malignity so evident that it defeats itself. I
know but one parallel to them in our literature, and it has the excuse
that it has come down to us from the dark ages.[251] Some would
persuade us that the time has come when we might afford to forget old
controversies and to shake hands with our former antagonists, but such
occurrences as these tend to show that such forgetfulness and
affectation of cordiality is likely to be all on one side.
And now let me simply set over against these fables, in as abridged form
as I can, the unvarnished statements of Bannatyne and Smeton, the latter
of which was published in reply to Hamilton who first gave shape to
these charges, and which hitherto has been deemed a conclusive
refutation of them.[252]
[Sidenote: His last Illness.]
[Sidenote: His Dying Exhortations.]
On the 10th of November, the day after he inducted Lawson as his
colleague, he was seized with a violent cough and began to breathe with
difficulty. Many, who desired ardently, if it were possible, to detain
him a little longer here, advised him to call in the assistance of
skilful physicians. He readily complied with their advice, though he
felt that the end of his warfare was now nigh at hand. Next day he
caused the wages of all his servants to be paid, and earnestly exhorted
them all to be careful to lead holy and Christian lives. On the 13th,
being obliged by the increase of his malady to leave off his ordinary
course of reading in the Scriptures (for every day he had been wont to
read some chapters of the Old and New Testaments, especially some of the
Psalms and Gospels), he directed his wife and servant to read to him
each day the 17th chapter of St John's Gospel, one or other of the
chapters of St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, and the 53rd chapter of
Isaiah. On the 14th he rose early, apparently supposing it had been the
Lord's day, and being asked why he did so when he was so ill, he replied
that he had been meditating all night on the resurrection of the Lord
(the subject which would have fallen to be treated next in order by him
in his ministry), and that he was now prepared to ascend the pulpit to
communicate to his brethren the consolation he had enjoyed in his own
soul. Next day, though very sick, he prevailed on Durie, already
mentioned, and another friend, Steward by name, to remain to dinner with
him, ordered a hogshead of wine in his cellar to be pierced for them,
and desired Steward to send for some of it as long as it lasted, for he
should not tarry till it was done. Little is recorded of him for several
days after this, but it was probably in this interval that he was
visited by many of the chief of the nobility, including the Earl of
Morton, so soon to be created regent,[253] and by many members of his
congregation. All of these he "solidly exhorted" and comforted. On the
20th or 21st he gave orders that his coffin should be prepared. On the
22nd he sent for the ministers, elders, and deacons of the church, that
he might give them his last counsels and take final farewell of them. In
the brief but solemn address which he delivered to them he called God to
witness, whom he served in the Gospel of His Son, that he had taught
nothing but the pure and solid doctrine of the Gospel of the Son of God,
and had never indulged his own private passions, or spoken from any
hatred of the persons of those against whom he had denounced the heavy
judgments of God. He exhorted them to persevere in the truth of the
Gospel and in their allegiance to their young sovereign, and dismissed
them with his solemn blessing. To Lawson and Lindsay, whom he asked to
remain behind, he gave a last earnest message for his old friend
Kirkaldy of Grange, the commandant of the castle, who had gone over to
the party of the queen,[254] and whose soul, notwithstanding, he said,
was dear to him--as being one of his congregation in the castle of St
Andrews, and a sharer in his hard lot in France--so that he would not
have it perish if by any means he could save it. "Go and tell him," he
said, "that neither the craggy rock in which he miserably trusts, nor
the carnal prudence of that man whom he regards as a demigod, nor the
assistance of foreigners, as he falsely flatters himself, shall deliver
them, but he shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment
and hung on a gallows in the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend
his life and betake himself to the mercy of God."
[Sidenote: His Consolation.]
On the 23rd the difficulty of his breathing had greatly increased, and
he seems to have thought that his end was near at hand. To one of his
most intimate friends who asked him if he felt great pain, he replied
that that was not reckoned as pain by him which would be the end of many
miseries and the beginning of perpetual joy. And soon after, apparently
supposing his end was come, he repeated the Lord's Prayer and the
Apostles' Creed, adding certain paraphrases of his own on each petition
of the prayer and article of the creed to the great comfort of those who
stood by; and then lifting up his hands to heaven he once more said,
"Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." During the succeeding night
he caused the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians to be read and re-read to
him, and repeatedly said to himself, "O! how sweet and salutary
consolation does the Lord provide for me in this chapter." The following
day, about noon, he once more sat up in bed, but owing to his extreme
weakness was not able to remain long in that posture. About three in the
afternoon one of his eyes failed, and his tongue performed its office
less readily than before. About six in the evening he again said to his
wife, "Go, read where I cast my first anchor," referring to the
instructions he had given on the 13th.[255]
When this had been done, he continued for some hours in troubled
slumber. It is in this occurrence alone that there can be got the
slightest foundation for the slanders which his traducers have
circulated. And it is only necessary to quote the account given of it by
those who witnessed it to show that it was as honourable to the dying
confessor as the gross misrepresentation of it was dishonourable to his
opponents. During these hours he uttered frequent sighs and groans, so
that those who stood by could not doubt that he was contending with some
grievous temptation. When he awoke they asked him what was the cause of
his distress. He answered that in the course of his life he had had many
contests with his spiritual adversary. Often he had been tempted to
despair of God's mercy because of the greatness of his sins, often also
tempted by the allurements of the world to forget his calling to endure
hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. But now the cunning
adversary had assailed him in another form, and endeavoured to persuade
him that he had merited heaven itself and a blessed immortality by the
faithful discharge of the duties of his high office. "But blessed be
God," exclaimed the dying reformer, "who hath brought seasonably to my
mind those passages of Scripture by which I was enabled to quench the
fiery dart, 'What hast thou, that thou hast not received?' 'By the grace
of God I am what I am,' and 'Not I, but the grace of God in me' ...
wherefore I give thanks to my God by Jesus Christ who has been pleased
to grant me the victory. And I am firmly persuaded that ... in a short
time, without any great bodily pain, and without any distress of mind, I
shall exchange this mortal and miserable life for an immortal and
blessed life through Jesus Christ."
[Sidenote: His Peaceful Death.]
This persuasion of his speedy and happy departure was soon to be
justified by the event. After evening prayers Dr Preston, his physician,
asked him whether he had heard them, when he replied, "I would to God
that ye and all men heard them as I have heard them, and I praise God
for that heavenly sound." Shortly after the signs of immediate
dissolution appeared, his friends gathered round his bed, and his
faithful servant addressed him: "Now, sir, the time that you have long
called to God for, to wit an end of your battle, is come. And seeing all
natural power now fails, remember those comfortable promises, which
often times ye have shown to us, of our Saviour Jesus Christ. And that
we may understand and know that ye hear us, make us some sign." And so
he lifted up one of his hands, and incontinent thereafter rendered up
his spirit apparently without pain or movement, so that he seemed rather
to fall asleep than to die.
Such was the account of his last illness and death transmitted by those
who attended on him and witnessed it, a death worthy of his noble life,
and fully justifying the brief comment of Smeton, "Surely, whatever
opprobrious things profane men may utter, God hath in him given us an
example of the right way as well of dying as of living." It is true, as
his heartless traducer takes care to remind us, no dirge was chanted
over his remains, no mass of requiem was celebrated for his soul. He and
his countrymen had long ceased to believe in the worth of such priestly
ceremonies, or to imagine that their eternal state could be affected by
them, or by aught save Christ's finished work and their own faith and
repentance while God's day of grace was prolonged to them here. The
brief eulogy pronounced over his grave by the stern and reserved
regent[256] was a truer and more impressive testimony to his worth than
the most gorgeous celebration of Romish rites which he could but have
shared with a Borgia or a Betoun. The stern simplicity of his grave,
which, like his master Calvin's, was till lately preserved in the memory
of men without stone or bronze to mark it out, tells a tale very
different from that his traducer hints at; and if his bitter taunts
shall lead the reformer's countrymen now to erect a material monument to
him in some measure corresponding to the benefits he has been honoured
to confer on them, this attack on his fair fame will have been overruled
for good.
[Sidenote: The Scottish Nation his Monument.]
But his real monument will never be one graven by art or man's device.
It is one more noble, more lasting far. It is to be found in the life
God enabled him to live, and the work God honoured him to do. It is to
be seen in the plans he devised, in the institutions he founded, in the
people he moulded anew, when the old church had confessedly failed in
its mission. And while the Scottish nation continues to retain these
institutions, and to bear this impress, it will continue the grandest,
as it is the most telling, monument to the memory of its noble-hearted
and single-minded reformer.
FOOTNOTES:
[220] Dr Lorimer in British and Foreign Evangelical Review for 1872, p.
758.
[221] [The Good Regent was assassinated on the 23rd of January 1569-70.]
[222] [1570.]
[223] Bannatyne's Memoriales, Ban. Club, p. 118.
[224] See Laing's Knox, vi. 651.
[225] M'Crie's Knox, 1855, p. 459; Rogers' Three Scottish Reformers, p.
97.
[226] [Archbishop Hamilton was hanged at the market cross of Stirling on
the 7th of April 1571.]
[227] Bannatyne's Memoriales, Ban. Club, p. 255.
[228] Melville's Diary, Wodrow Society, p. 26.
[229] [Archibald Hamilton's letter or protestation is in Bannatyne's
Memoriales, pp. 262, 263.]
[230] [According to Martine, it was built, not for the reception of Mary
of Guise, but when James V. was married to Magdalene, the fair daughter
of Francis I., in 1537, the tradition being that the physicians chose
this place as peculiarly suitable for such a delicate creature; and that
"so many artificers were conveened and employed, and the materials so
quicklie prepared, that the house was begun and finished in a month"
(Reliquiæ Divi Andreæ, p. 190). There is better evidence to show that
Mary of Guise spent her honeymoon within its substantial walls in the
summer of 1538 (Lesley's History, pp. 155, 156; Pitscottie's History,
1778, pp. 250, 251).]
[231] Melville's Diary, p. 26.
[232] Ibid.
[233] Bannatyne's Memoriales, p. 256.
[234] Melville's Diary, p. 32.
[235] [In the rather scurrilous Legend of the Bischop of St Androis, it
is said:--
"Ane baxters sone, are beggar borne,
That twyse his surnaime hes mensworne;
To be called Constene he thocht shame,
He tuke up Constantine to name.
* * * * *
Thinking that poore professione vaine,
He changed his surname ower agane;
Now Doctor Adamsone at last,
Whairthrow he ower to Paris past."
--Dalyell's Scotish Poems, 1801, ii. 309, 310.
He inherited both names from his ancestors, who were called Constantine
or Adamson (M'Crie's Melville, 1856, p. 461).]
[236] Melville's Diary, p. 32.
[237] Laing's Knox, vi. 481, 482.
[238] [This Assembly met on the 6th of March 1571-72.]
[239] Melville's Diary, p. 31.
[240] [This convention was held in January 1571-72. See Booke of the
Universall Kirk, i. 203-236; Calderwood's History, iii. 168-196.]
[241] Bannatyne's Memorials, p. 223.
[242] Calderwood's History, iii. 206.
[243] [Dr Laing has not only indicated that there has long been much
uncertainty and speculation as to the parentage and social status of
John Douglas, but has stated that he "was descended from the Douglasses
of Pettendreich" (Laing's Knox, i. 286 n.) Principal Lee has said: "All
the accounts of Douglas which I have ever seen in modern books abound
with errors. He is represented as having been an obscure Carmelite friar
whom the Earl of Argyle chose to employ as his chaplain, and for whom
the Archbishop of St Andrews expressed the strongest aversion. He was
quite a different man--a man of family undoubtedly, and most probably
related to James Douglas the Earl of Morton, son of Sir George Douglas
of Pinky, and, like him, a branch of the great family of Angus" (Lee's
Lectures, ii. 3). When working in the Register House, I found
unimpeachable evidence concerning his parentage. On the 2nd of January
1563-64, letters of legitimation were granted in favour of Mr John
Douglas, Rector of the University of St Andrews, bastard son natural of
quondam Robert Douglas in Langnewtoune (Register of Privy Seal, xxxii.
23).]
[244] Melville's Diary, p. 32; Calderwood's History, iii. 206.
[245] These honest men earnestly implored their pastor to return also to
Edinburgh, if he could do so without serious injury to his health.
[246] Melville's Diary, p. 33.
[247] [Dr Cameron Lees says that the Tolbooth, in which Knox preached
for some little time and where he delivered his last sermon, was "the
portion of St Giles which had been cut off the western part of the nave,
and was used for meetings of the Council" (St Giles', 1889, p. 157).]
[248] M'Crie's Knox, 1855, p. 269.
[249] Melville's Diary, p. 33.
[250] [In the opinion of Dr David Laing, Lawson was the author of the
Vera Historia extremae vitae et obitus eximii viri Joannis Knoxii,
appended to Smeton's Responsio ad Hamiltonii Dialogum, in 1579 (Laing's
Knox, vi. 646).]
[251] Walsingham's abuse of Wycliffe. [Thomae Walsingham, Historia
Anglicana, ii. 119, 120; and Ypodigma Neustriae a Thoma Walsingham, p.
340; Rolls series. Translations will be found in Vaughan's John de
Wycliffe, 1853, pp. 468, 469; and in Lechler's Wycliffe, Relig. Tract
Soc., p. 423.]
[252] [For the substance of Archibald Hamilton's account, see M'Crie's
Knox, 1855, p. 405. Bannatyne's account is in both editions of his work
(Journal of Transactions, 1806, and Memoriales of Transactions, 1836).
It is likewise in Laing's Knox, vi. 634-645; and there (pp. 649-660) is
also given a translation of Smeton's (or Lawson's) account. The accounts
of Bannatyne and Smeton do not always agree as to the exact day on which
certain events happened.]
[253] [Morton was elected regent on the 24th of November 1572, the day
on which Knox died (Acts of Parliament, iii. 78; Bannatyne's Memoriales,
p. 280). Bannatyne places Morton's visit on the 19th; Smeton leaves the
day uncertain.]
[254] For a defence of Kirkaldy see Barbé's Kirkaldy of Grange, Famous
Scots Series, pp. 108-124.
[255] For a different interpretation see Taylor Innes's John Knox,
Famous Scots Series, pp. 30, 31.
[256] [Morton's testimony to Knox, as recorded by Melville, was: "That
he nather fearit nor flatterit anie fleche" (Diary, p. 60). As recorded
by Calderwood: "Here lyeth a man who in his life never feared the face
of man; who hath beene often threatned with dag and dager, but yitt hath
ended his dayes in peace and honour. For he had God's providence
watching over him in a speciall maner, when his verie life was sought"
(History, iii. 242).]