THE TOWER: SEDAN
'Here spirits that have run their race, and fought,
And won the fight, and have not fear'd the frowns
Nor lov'd the smiles of greatness, but have wrought
Their Master's will, meet to receive their Crowns.'
HENRY VAUGHAN.
For the first year, Melville's imprisonment was of rigorous severity.
The King seemed incapable of any spark of chivalry towards one of the
very brightest spirits of his people. James, perhaps least of all the
Stuarts, illustrated the principle of _noblesse oblige_. Melville's
attendant was taken from him; no visitors were admitted; neither was the
use of writing materials allowed. After twelve months, however, some
relaxation was gained, through the good offices of Sir James Sempill of
Beltrees, the Balladist, who was a warm friend of Melville, and
sympathised with him in his struggle to maintain Presbyterianism,
although he himself had been brought up at Court--his mother having been
maid-in-honour to Queen Mary--and educated along with the King under
George Buchanan. He was transferred to a comfortable room in the Tower:
he was now permitted to see friends, and also to write. It was in
literary labour he occupied his time. He wrote at least one
controversial pamphlet, a reply to a Defence of Episcopacy written by a
dignitary of the English Church, and circulated _gratis_ in Scotland
among the ministers; he also translated many of the Psalms. It was in
poetical composition, however, that he found his chief recreation and
solace. When he quitted the apartment in which he was first confined,
the walls were found covered with verses written by him in finely formed
characters with the tongue of his shoe-buckle. Every letter he sent to
James Melville contained a number of verses 'warm from the anvil.' His
nephew, in one of his letters enclosing a remittance of money, had
remarked: 'I shall send you money, and you shall send me songs. I have
good hope that you will run short of verses for my use before I run
short of gold for yours,' to which he replied: 'So you have the
confidence to say that the fountain of the Muses from which I draw will
be exhausted sooner than the vein of that gold mine, whence you extract
the treasures with which you supply me so liberally. Hold, prithee! take
care what you say, especially to poets like me, who when I do sing, sing
at the invitation of the Muses and under their inspiration.' One of his
compositions did not owe its origin to 'the imperative breath of song';
it was an ode to the King, written on the advice of friends, in the hope
that such an appeal to his better nature might lead James to grant him
his liberty. The ode failed of its purpose; and Melville might have
applied to the King with curious fitness the words addressed by the
Border outlaw in the ballad to the King's grandfather, James V.:
'To seik het water beneith cauld ice,
Surelie it is a greit follie.
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me.
But had I kenn'd ere I cam frae hame
How thou unkind wadst been to me,
I wad have keepit the Border side
In spite of all thy force and thee.'
Melville did not expect any other result, although he had been told that
the King seemed favourably disposed towards him. He knew his man:
'_Fronti nulla fides_' was, he said, a proverb often in his mind at that
time. Soon after writing this ode to the King, he, for the same purpose,
submitted an apology to the Privy Council for any offence he had given
by the epigram which had cost him his liberty; but it also failed. In
this matter Archbishop Spotswood played a double part, advising Melville
to send the apology, while he and his brother-prelate, Archbishop
Gledstanes, were doing all they could to prevent the King restoring
Melville and the other exiled ministers to liberty. Melville was no more
disappointed with Spotswood's conduct than he had been with the King's:
'_Sed non ego credulus illis_.'
All his trials and long vexations did not dim his hopefulness; of no
man might it be said more truly that he
'Never doubted clouds would break.'
'Away with fear--I will cherish the hope of everything that is cheering
and joyous.... I betake myself to my sacred anchor--"Seek ye first the
Kingdom of God"'--so he wrote from the Tower.
For some time a son of James Melville who bore his uncle's name, and
another nephew, lodged with Melville in the Tower; and he had many
distinguished visitors, such as Isaac Casaubon and Bishop Hall of
Norwich, who were proud to be numbered among his friends. Another
illustrious victim of the King's treachery, one of the many of England's
noblest sons who stepped from the Tower into immortality, Sir Walter
Raleigh, was a fellow-prisoner of Melville. Did they ever meet? We would
give much to know that they did; it would be pleasant to think of so
rare a conjunction of spirits. Melville found his greatest solace,
however, in his nephew's devotion. There was no ministry of love which
James Melville failed to render to his uncle; and very touching in their
tenderness are the letters which passed between the two. He was also
much moved by the tokens of remembrance he received from old
friends--comrades in the battles of the Church--and from their children.
Acknowledging a gift of money which had been partly contributed by a
family of a deceased brother in the ministry, he says: 'I received the
Spanish and British angels, equalling in number the Apostles, the
Graces, and the Elements, with a supernumerary one of the Seraphic
order.... I do not rejoice so much in them (although these commutable
pieces of money are at present very useful to me) as I do at the
renewing of the memory of my deceased friends, and the prospect of our
friendship being perpetuated in their posterity, who have given such a
favourable presage of future virtue and genuine piety; for what else
could have induced them to take such an interest in my affairs at this
time? Wherefore I congratulate them, and I rejoice that this favourable
opportunity of transmitting friendship inviolate from father to son and
grandson has been afforded.'
The only matter on which there was ever a hint of misunderstanding
between Melville and his nephew was the latter's second marriage, to
which the uncle was at first much opposed. Their correspondence on this
subject contains some passages of lively repartee, in which the elder
undoubtedly came off second best. 'The chaste father'--so the younger
writes--'who reposed in the embraces of Minerva was not to measure
others by himself; he was not ashamed to own he was in love; ay, and had
he not the highest precedents for the step he was taking--there were
Knox, and Craig, and Pont, and who not else of the venerable fathers of
the Church!' 'My sweet Melissa' soon won uncle Andro's affection, and
many a gift of garments, embroidered by her skilful hands, found its way
to the lonely prisoner in the Tower.
At the close of 1610, the English Ambassador at the French Court brought
a request from the Duke de Bouillon, a leading French Protestant, to the
King that he would give Melville his release, in order that he might go
to Sedan to fill the collegiate Chair of Divinity in the University.
After some negotiations, in which James showed his old grudging spirit
towards his prisoner, the request was granted. But it was not easy for
Melville to tear himself away from his native land. Writing to his
nephew, he says:--
'I am in a state of suspense as to the course which I ought to
take. There is no room for me in Britain on account of
pseudo-Episcopacy--no hope of my being allowed to revisit my
native country. Our bishops return home after being anointed
with the waters of the Thames. Alas, liberty is fled! religion
is banished! I have nothing new to write to you, except my
hesitation about my banishment. I reflect upon the active life
which I spent in my native country during the space of
thirty-six years, the idle life which I have been condemned to
spend in prison, the reward which I have received from men for
my labours, the inconveniences of old age, and other things of
a similar kind, taken in connection with the disgraceful
bondage of the Church and the base perfidy of men. But in vain:
I am still irresolute. Shall I desert my station? Shall I fly
from my native country, from my native Church, from my very
self? Or, shall I deliver myself up, like a bound quadruped, to
the will and pleasure of men? No: sooner than do this, I am
resolved, by the grace of God, to endure the greatest
extremity. Until my fate is fixed, I cannot be free from
anxiety.'
As Melville, however, continued to weigh the invitation to Sedan, it was
more and more borne in upon his mind that it was the call of Providence
and the fulfilment of a presage of which he had often spoken, that he
was destined to confess Christ on a larger theatre; so he decided to
accept it, and left for France on 19th April 1611.
There were six Protestant universities in France, and many of their
Chairs were held by Scotsmen who had been Melville's students in St.
Andrews. In Sedan, an Aberdonian was Principal, and another
fellow-countryman filled the Chair of Philosophy. In this retired
frontier town of France, the scene in our own day of the crowning
disaster to her army which gave the finishing stroke to the Napoleonic
dynasty, Melville spent the remainder of his days; and from it he passed
away to the land that was 'nativest' to him.
Some months after settling in Sedan, he received a letter from his
nephew with all the home news, which was very gloomy. The bishops were
now in their glory. 'If they get the Kingdom of Heaven,' so the
Chancellor Seaton said of them, 'they must be happy men, for they
already reign on earth.' The pulpits were silent: poor nephew James
himself was still in exile, sick, with his heart pierced with many
wounds, and longing that he had the wings of a dove that he might fly
away and be at rest. To this letter Melville replied in a strain of
exuberant cheerfulness:--
'Your letter, my dear James, gave me as much pleasure as it is
possible for one to receive in these gloomy and evil days. We
must not forget the apostolical injunction, "Rejoice always:
rejoice in hope." _Non si male nunc, et olim erit._ Providence
is often pleased to grant prosperity and long impunity to those
whom it intends to punish for their crimes, in order that they
may feel more severely from the reverse.... It is easy for a
wicked man to throw a commonwealth into disorder: God only can
restore it. Empires which have been procured by fraud cannot be
stable or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe,
though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the
Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses
comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future:
"In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert
our ingenuity and labour in adding to our vexation? Away with
fearful apprehensions!'
Turning his thoughts to his old friends and neighbours, the exile makes
playful inquiries for their welfare:--
'What is the _profound Dreamer_ (so I was accustomed to call
him when we travelled together in 1584)--what is our Corydon of
Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought
forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of
years? _Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos._ Let me
know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of
books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear,
constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all
the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friendships, as
too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute
him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend Dykes,
with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their
confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end."
... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon
turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise
the past days because we can take little pleasure in the
present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased
with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some
things which I could wish never to have seen. I try daily to
learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from
becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least
attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted
myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle
from a talkative old man. _Loqui senibus res est gratissima_,
says your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name
gives me new life; for the _regeneration_ forms almost the sole
topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that
I may have my conversation in heaven.'
How keenly Melville felt the cruelty of the Government in driving
himself and his nephew into exile appears in another part of the same
letter:--
'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to
dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph--_traxitque sub
astra furorem_? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also
(now approaching my seventieth year, and consequently
_emeritus_), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of
our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the
remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours
and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We
have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to
the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his
family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from
John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile,
shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of
heaven.'
In the following year Melville was greatly cheered by hearing that all
the exiled ministers had refused an offer which the Crown had made to
allow them to return to their country on condition of their making a
submission to Episcopacy; and he wrote expressing his admiration of
their heroism, and assuring them of his continual remembrance: 'I keep
all my friends in my eye; I carry them in my bosom; I commend them to
the God of mercy in my daily prayers.... I do not sink under adversity;
I reserve myself for better days.'
In April 1614 there fell on Melville the heaviest blow his affection
ever received--the tidings of his nephew's death. James Melville died
well-nigh broken-hearted; he had not been allowed to return to his own
country and resume his charge of his poor seafaring folk, nor to join in
France the exile who was so endeared to him. On his deathbed, and within
a few hours of the end, when one who was beside him asked if he had no
desire to recover, he replied, 'No, not for twenty worlds.' His friends
asked him to give them some sign that he was at peace, when he repeated
the dying words of the martyr Stephen, and so passed away to that
country of his own which all his life he had been seeking.
There is no one in the long line of great Scottish Churchmen whose
memory deserves more honour than James Melville, or inspires so much
affection, so gracious was his spirit, so pure his character, so
disinterested his aims. With the solitary exception which we need not
name, there was no one in his own day who rendered better or more varied
service to the Church and to the country. For many years he was his
uncle's right-hand man as a teacher in our two chief Universities; the
Church never had a pastor who had more of the true pastor's heart, nor
a leader of more wisdom in counsel, more persuasiveness in conference,
more decision in action; it never had a more vivid historian, nor one
whose writings are so great a treasure of our Scottish literature. When
James Melville came to his grave, how different the world would be to
his great kinsman, who could so truly have said, 'Very pleasant hast
thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of
women.' His uncle's grief found its only solace in the thought that he
was 'now out of all doubt and fashrie, enjoying the fruits of his
suffering here.'
Melville himself never lost his hopefulness and happy ardour. In 1612 he
wrote to Robert Durie, one of the banished brethren:--
'Am I not threescore and eight years old; unto the which age
none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank God, I eat,
I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone,
and better than when I was younger--_in ipso flore
adolescentiæ_. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth
with some little pain, which I have felt only since the
beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance
from prison. I feel, thank God, no abatement of the alacrity
and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither
use I spectacles now more than ever, yea, I use none at all,
nor ever did, and see now to read Hebrew without points, and in
the smallest characters. Why may I not live to see a changement
to the better, when the Prince shall be informed truly by
honest men, or God open His eyes and move His heart to see the
pride of stately prelates?'
The last production from Melville's pen was a pamphlet against the
Anglican ceremonies imposed by the King on the Church in _The Five
Articles of Perth_ in 1618. We know little of the last years of his
life. His health apparently gave way in 1620, and he died in Sedan in
1622, having reached his seventy-seventh year.
The only fault Melville's enemies could find with his personal character
was his impetuous and explosive temper. In regard to this, he was his
own best apologist when he said, 'If my anger is from below, trample
upon it; but if from above, let it rise!' If he was 'zealously
affected,' it was always 'in a good thing.' No one could ever charge him
with personal or narrow ambitions. It was always, as he once wrote, his
own desire 'to be concealed in the crowd even when the field of honour
appeared to ripen' before him; and his nephew says of him: 'Whowbeit he
was verie hat in all questiones, yet when it twitched his
particular,[29] no man could crab him, contrare to the common custome.'
No one of braver spirit or truer mould has been among us, and we need to
allow but little for the colouring of affection to accept James
Melville's judgment: 'Scottland never receavit a graitter benefit at the
hands of God than this man.' He is one of those great personalities of
our history who have left us an example of the moral daring which is the
greatest property of the human soul, and the spring of its noblest
achievements. The struggle for the advancement of human wellbeing is
carried on in ever-changing lines; the problems of the Church and the
nation alter; the battlegrounds of freedom and progress shift; but this
spiritual intrepidity and scorn of consequence ever remains the chief
and most indispensable factor in the highest service of mankind. It is
to men like Melville, who have a higher patriotism than that which is
bounded by any earthly territory, whose country is the realm of Truth,
whose loyalty transcends submission to any human sovereign, that every
people owes its noblest heritage. Such are the men who have been the
makers of Scotland. '_Sic fortis Etruria crevit_.'
[Footnote 29: When it concerned his private interest.]
INDEX
Aberdeen, the Assembly at, 112.
Act of 1592, 70.
Adamson, Patrick, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 38, 51-53, 59, 61.
Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester, 118.
Armada, the Spanish, 64, 65.
Assembly times in Melville's day, 41.
Balcanquhal, Walter, minister in Edinburgh, 42.
Balfour of Burley, 38, 82-84.
---- James, minister in Edinburgh, 117, 135.
Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, 125, 127, 128, 131.
Barlow, Bishop of Rochester, 117, 126.
_Basilicon Doron_, 108.
Beza, 21, 22.
Black Acts, 51.
Black, David, minister in St. Andrews, 77, 82, 95, 103.
'Bonnie Earl' of Moray, 69.
Bouillon, Duke de, 145.
Bruce, Robert, minister in Edinburgh, 66, 67, 69, 111.
Buchanan, George, 24, 25, 44.
Burton, John Hill, 12, 92.
Casaubon, Isaac, 143.
Covenant, renewal of, 85.
Craig, John, minister in Edinburgh, 53, 144.
Davidson, John, minister of Liberton and Prestonpans, 46, 104, 105.
Davison, the English Ambassador, 54.
Dunbar, Earl of, King's Commissioner for Scotland, 124, 135.
Durie, John, minister in Edinburgh, 36, 46, 48, 53.
---- Robert, minister of Anstruther, 150.
Edinburgh, the plague in, 55.
---- Vindictive Acts against the city of, 99.
Episcopacy, Scotland's dread of, 10.
Erskine, John, of Dun, 15, 16, 53.
Falkland, 83, 89, 90.
Fife, Synod of, 60, 76, 100.
Foreign students at the Scottish Universities, 12, 30.
Geneva, 21.
Glasgow, Assembly of, 84, 138.
---- University of, 24, 26.
Gledstanes, Archbishop of St. Andrews, 103, 142.
Gowrie Conspiracy, 110.
Hall, Bishop of Norwich, 143.
Intimates of Melville, 41.
James VI., precocity of, as a child, 24.
assumes the government, 43.
his Court favourites, 43.
his seizure by the Ruthven lords, 48.
his escape, 48.
described by Davison, the English Ambassador, 54.
his surrender to the Ruthven lords, 55.
_in re_ Archbishop Adamson, 61.
his Popish sympathies, 64, 75.
unseasonableness in the activity of, 65.
his marriage, 67.
his laudation of the Scottish Church, 68.
rated by Elizabeth, 72, 78.
his attempt to bribe James Melville, 78.
his expedition against Huntly, 81.
removes his Court to Linlithgow, 98.
and Melville at Hampton Court (chap. ix.), 116-133.
his petty vindictiveness, 140, 141, 144.
Knox, John, 13, 144.
Lawson, James, minister in Edinburgh, 42, 50, 51, 52.
Maitland, Chancellor of Scotland, 66, 67, 70.
Melville, birth of, 15.
educated at Montrose, 16.
student of St. Andrews, 17.
goes abroad, 17.
at Paris, 17.
Melville at Poitiers, 18.
at Geneva, 21.
returns to Scotland, 22.
declines Morton's patronage, 23.
is offered the Principalships of Glasgow and St. Andrews, 24.
Principal of Glasgow, 26.
Principal of St. Andrews, 27.
attracts students from the Continent, 30.
his first Assembly, 35.
encounter of, with Morton, 37.
his intimates, 41.
_in re_ Archbishop Montgomery, 45, 46.
encounter of, with Arran, 47.
before the King and Council, 48, 49.
his flight to England, 50.
returns to Scotland, 56.
_in re_ Archbishop Adamson, 61.
his kindness to Adamson, 62.
and the Armada, 65.
_in re_ Popish lords, 76.
admonishes the King and the Lords of the Articles, 79.
with the expedition against Huntly, 81.
at Falkland Palace, 83, 89, 90.
at the Dundee Assembly, 102.
at the Second Dundee Assembly, 105.
at the Holyrood Conference, 106-108.
at the Montrose Assembly, 109.
Melville attends the Parliament,
summoned to London by the King, 116.
before the King and Council of England, 121.
attends Michaelmas Day service In Royal Chapel, 123.
his satiric verses on the service, 123.
before the Scottish Council in London, 124.
at Whitehall, 125.
his attack on Archbishop Bancroft, 125.
is ordered into ward, 127.
his _Henker-mahl_, 129.
again before the English Council, 131.
is sent to the Tower, 131.
his occupations in prison, 141.
his visitors, 143.
his release, 145.
leaves for France, 146.
settles in Sedan as Professor in the University, 146.
his letters from Sedan, 146, 148, 150.
receives tidings of James Melville's death, 149.
the last production of his pen, 150.
his death, 151.
his character, 151.
James, affection of, for his uncle, 16, 24, 51, 132, 141, 143.
a great literary impressionist, 18.
has a warrant issued for his apprehension, 52.
escapes by open boat to Berwick, 52.
his labours at Berwick, 57.
his attack on Archbishop Adamson, 59.
has a private interview with the King, 77.
as a courtier, 78.
with the expedition against Huntly, 81.
at Hampton Court (chap. ix.), 116-133.
is ordered into ward at Newcastle, 132.
his death, 149.
his character, 149.
his Autobiography and Diary quoted, 24, 25, 37, 41, 47, 48, 49, 55, 60,
79, 80, 83, 90, 107, 109, 120, 122, 129 _et passim_.
Morton, Regent, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 43.
Nicolson, Bishop of Dunkeld, 136.
Paris, University of, 18.
_Perth_, the _Five Articles of_, 151.
Poitiers, 18.
Pont, Robert, minister in Edinburgh, 51, 144.
Presbyterian Church the only voice of the nation, 94.
Presbyterianism, what Scotland owes to, 10.
Puritans of London and the Scottish ministers, 116, 125, 132.
Raid of Ruthven, 48.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 143.
Reformation, Assembly scheme of, 86.
'Riot of December 17th' [1596, in Edinburgh], 97.
Ruthven lords, 55, 57.
Salisbury, Earl of, Premier of England, 121, 128, 131.
Scott, William, minister of Cupar, 122, 132.
Seaton, the Chancellor of Scotland, 146.
Second Book of Discipline, 35, 40.
Sedan, 145.
Sempill, Sir James, of Beltrees, 140.
Spanish Blanks, 73.
Spotswood, Archbishop, 117, 142.
St. Andrews, University of, 17, 27.
Stewart, Esme, Duke of Lennox, 43, 48.
Stewart, James, Earl of Arran, 44, 47, 48, 50, 54, 55.
Strathbogie Castle, 'dinging doun' of, 82.
_True Law of Free Monarchy_, 108.
Tulchan Scheme (chap, iv.), 31-42.
Wallace, Robert, minister of Tranent, 125.
Wishart, George, 15.