The burial of Marion Ruet was decently attended by Bailie Kilspinnie and
all his family; and though he did not carry the head himself, he yet
ordered their eldest son to do so, because, whatever her faults had
been, she was still the youth's mother. And my grandfather, with his
wife, having spent some time after with their friends at Crail, returned
homeward by themselves, passing over to Edinburgh, that they might taste
once more of the elixir of salvation as dispensed by John Knox, who had
been for some time in a complaining way, and it was by many thought that
the end of his preaching was drawing nigh.
It happened that the dreadful tidings of the murder of the protestants
in France, by the command of "the accursed king," reached Edinburgh in
the night before my grandfather and wife returned thither; and he used
to speak of the consternation that they found reigning in the city when
they arrived there, as a thing very awful to think of. Every shop was
shut, and every window closed; for it was the usage in those days, when
death was in a house, to close all the windows, so that the appearance
of the town was as if, for the obduracy of their idolatrous sovereign,
the destroying angel had slain all the first-born, and that a dead body
was then lying in every family.
There was also a terrifying solemnity in the streets; for, though they
were as if all the people had come forth in panic and sad wonderment,
many were clothed in black, and there was a funereal stillness--a dismal
sense of calamity that hushed the voices of men, and friends meeting one
another, lifted their hands, and shuddering, passed by without speaking.
My grandfather saw but one, between Leith Wynd and the door of the house
in the Lawnmarket, where he proposed to lodge, that wore a smile, and it
was not of pleasure, but of avarice counting its gains.
The man was one Hans Berghen, an armourer that had feathered his nest in
the raids of the war with the Queen Regent. He was a Norman by birth,
and had learnt the tempering of steel in Germany. In his youth he had
been in the Imperator's service, and had likewise worked in the arsenal
of Venetia. Some said he was perfected in his trade by the infidel at
Constantinopolis; but, however this might be, no man of that time was
more famous among roisters and moss-troopers, for the edge and metal of
his weapons, than that same blasphemous incomer, who thought of nothing
but the greed of gain, whether by dule to protestant or papist; so that
the sight of his hard-favoured visage, blithened with satisfaction, was
to my grandfather, who knew him well by repute, as an omen of portentous
aspect.
For two days the city continued in that dismal state, and on the third,
which was Sabbath, the churches were so filled that my grandmother,
being then in a tender condition, did not venture to enter the High
Kirk, where the Reformer was waited for by many thirsty and languishing
souls from an early hour in the morning, who desired to hear what he
would say concerning the dark deeds that had been done in France. She
therefore returned to the Lawnmarket; but my grandfather worked his way
into the heart of the crowd, where he had not long been when a murmur
announced that Master Knox was coming, and soon after he entered the
kirk.
He had now the appearance of great age and weakness, and he walked with
slow and tottering steps, wearing a virl of fur round his neck, and a
staff in one hand; godlie Richie Ballanden, his man, holding him up by
the oxter. And when he came to the foot of the pulpit, Richie, by the
help of another servant that followed with the Book, lifted him up the
steps into it, where he was seemingly so exhausted that he was
obligated to rest for the space of several minutes. No man who had never
seen him before could have thought that one so frail would have had
ability to have given out even the psalm; but when he began the spirit
descended upon him, and he was so kindled that at last his voice became
as awful as the thunders of wrath, and his arm was strengthened as with
the strength of a champion's. The kirk dirled to the foundations; the
hearts of his hearers shook, till the earth of their sins was shaken
clean from them; and he appeared in the wirlwind of inspiration, as if
his spirit was mounting, like the prophet Elijah, in a fiery chariot
immediately to the gates of heaven.
His discourse was of the children of Bethlehem slain by Herod, and he
spoke of the dreadful sound of a bell and a trumpet heard suddenly in
the midnight hour, when all were fast bound and lying defenceless in the
fetters of sleep. He described the dreadful knocking at the doors--the
bursting in of men with drawn swords--how babies were harled by the arms
from their mothers' beds and bosoms, and dashed to death upon the marble
floors. He told of parents that stood in the porches of their houses and
made themselves the doors that the slayers were obliged to hew in pieces
before they could enter in. He pictured the women flying along the
street, in the nakedness of the bedchamber, with their infants in their
arms, and how the ruffians of the accursed king, knowing their prey by
their cries, ran after them, caught the mother by the hair and the bairn
by the throat, and, in one act, flung the innocent to the stones and
trampled out its life. Then he paused, and said, in a soft and thankful
voice, that in the horrors of Bethlehem there was still much mercy; for
the idolatrous dread of Herod prompted him to slay but young children,
whose blameless lives were to their weeping parents an assurance of
their acceptance into heaven.
"What then," he cried, "are we to think of that night, and of that king,
and of that people, among whom, by whom, and with whom, the commissioned
murderer twisted his grip in the fugitive old man's grey hairs, to draw
back his head that the knife might the surer reach his heart? With what
eyes, being already blinded with weeping, shall we turn to that city
where the withered hands of the grandmother were deemed as weapons of
war by the strong and black-a-vised slaughterer, whose sword was owre
vehemently used for a' the feckless remnant of life it had to cut! But
deaths like these were brief and blessed compared to other
things--which, Heaven be praised, I have not the power to describe, and
which, among this protestant congregation, I trust there is not one able
to imagine, or who, trying to conceive, descries but in the dark and
misty vision the pains of mangled mothers; babes, untimely and
unquickened, cast on the dung-hills and into the troughs of swine; of
black-iron hooks fastened into the mouths, and driven through the cheeks
of brave men, whose arms are tied with cords behind, as they are dragged
into the rivers to drown, by those who durst not in fair battle endure
the lightning of their eyes. O, Herod!--Herod of Judea--thy name is
hereafter bright, for in thy bloody business thou wast thyself nowhere
to be seen. In the vouts and abysses of thy unstained palace, thou hidst
thyself from the eye of history, and perhaps humanely sat covering thine
ears with thy hands to shut out the sound of the wail and woe around
thee. But this Herod--let me not call him by so humane a name. No: let
all the trumpets of justice sound his own to everlasting infamy--Charles
the Ninth of France! And let his ambassador that is here aye yet, yet to
this time audaciously in this Christian land, let him tell his master
that sentence has been pronounced against him in Scotland; that the
Divine vengeance will never depart from him or his house until
repentance has ensued, and atonement been made in their own race; that
his name will remain a blot--a blot of blood, a stain never to be
effaced--a thing to be pronounced with a curse by all posterity; and
that none proceeding from his loins shall ever enjoy his kingdom in
peace."
The preacher, on saying these prophetic words, paused, and, with his
eyes fixed upwards, he stood some time silent, and then, clasping his
hands together, exclaimed with fear and trembling upon him, "Lord, Lord,
thy will be done?"
Many thought that he had then received some great apocalypse; for it was
observed of all men that he was never after like the man he had once
been, but highly and holily elevated above earthly cares and
considerations, saving those only of his ministry, and which he
hastened to close. He was as one that no longer had trust, portion, or
interest in this temporal world, which in less than two months after he
bade farewell, and was translated to a better. Yes, to a better; for
assuredly, if there is aught in this life that may be regarded as the
symbols of infeftment to the inheritance of Heaven, the labours and
ministration of John Knox were testimonies that he had verily received
the yird and stane of an heritage on High.