We now take up Knox where we left him: namely when Wishart was arrested
in January 1546. He was then tutor to the sons of the lairds of
Langniddrie and Ormiston, Protestants and of the English party. Of his
adventures we know nothing, till, on Beaton's murder (May 29, 1546), the
Cardinal's successor, Archbishop Hamilton, drove him "from place to
place," and, at Easter, 1547, he with his pupils entered the Castle of
St. Andrews, then held, with some English aid, against the Regent Arran,
by the murderers of Beaton and their adherents. {22} Knox was not
present, of course, at Beaton's murder, about which he writes so
"merrily," in his manner of mirth; nor at the events of Arran's siege of
the castle, prior to April 1547. He probably, as regards these matters,
writes from recollection of what Kirkcaldy of Grange, James Balfour,
Balnaves, and the other murderers or associates of the murderers of the
Cardinal told him in 1547, or later communicated to him as he wrote,
about 1565-66. With his unfortunate love of imputing personal motives,
he attributes the attacks by the rulers on the murderers mainly to the
revengeful nature of Mary of Guise; the Cardinal having been "the comfort
to all gentlewomen, and _especially to wanton widows_. His death must be
revenged." {23a}
Knox avers that the besiegers of St. Andrews Castle, despairing of their
task, near the end of January 1547 made a fraudulent truce with the
assassins, hoping for the betrayal of the castle, or of some of the
leaders. {23b} In his narrative we find partisanship or very erroneous
information. The conditions were, he says, that (1) the murderers should
hold the castle till Arran could obtain for them, from the Pope, a
sufficient absolution; (2) that they should give hostages, as soon as the
absolution was delivered to them; (3) that they and their friends should
not be prosecuted, nor undergo any legal penalties for the murder of the
Cardinal; (4) that they should meanwhile keep the eldest son of Arran as
hostage, so long as their own hostages were kept. The Government,
however, says Knox, "never minded to keep word of them" (of these
conditions), "as the issue did declare."
There is no proof of this accusation of treachery on the part of Arran,
or none known to me. The constant aim of Knox, his fixed idea, as an
historian, is to accuse his adversaries of the treachery which often
marked the negotiations of his friends.
From this point, the truce, dated by Knox late in January 1547, he
devotes eighteen pages to his own call to the ministry by the castle
people, and to his controversies and sermons in St. Andrews. He then
returns to history, and avers that, about June 21, 1547, the papal
absolution was presented to the garrison merely as a veil for a
treasonable attack, but was rejected, as it included the dubious phrase,
Remittimus irremissibile--"We remit the crime that cannot be remitted."
Nine days later, June 29, he says, by "the treasonable mean" of Arran,
Archbishop Hamilton, and Mary of Guise, twenty-one French galleys, and
such an army as the Firth had never seen, hove into view, and on June 30
summoned the castle to surrender. The siege of St Andrews Castle, from
the sea, by the French then began, but the garrison and castle were
unharmed, and many of the galley slaves and some French soldiers were
slain, and a ship was driven out of action. The French "shot two days"
only. On July 19 the siege was renewed by land, guns were mounted on the
spires of St. Salvator's College chapel and on the Cathedral, and did
much scathe, though, during the first three weeks of the siege, the
garrison "had many prosperous chances." Meanwhile Knox prophesied the
defeat of his associates, because of "their corrupt life." They had
robbed and ravished, and were probably demoralised by Knox's prophecies.
On the last day of July the castle surrendered. {24} Knox adds that his
friends would deal with France alone, as "Scottish men had all
traitorously betrayed them."
Now much of this narrative is wrong; wrong in detail, in suggestion, in
omission. That a man of fifty, or sixty, could attribute the attacks on
Beaton's murderers to mere revenge, specially to that of a "wanton
widow," Mary of Guise (who had, we are to believe, so much of the
Cardinal's attentions as his mistress, Mariotte Ogilvy, could spare), is
significant of the spirit in which Knox wrote history. He had a strong
taste for such scandals as this about the "wanton widow."
Wherever he touches on Mary of Guise (who once treated him in a spirit of
banter), he deals a stab at her name and fame. On all that concerns her
personal character and political conduct, he is unworthy of credit when
uncorroborated by better authority. Indeed Knox's spirit is so unworthy
that for this, among other reasons, Archbishop Spottiswoode declined to
believe in his authorship of the "History." The actual facts were not
those recorded by Knox.
As regards the "Appointment" or arrangement of the Scottish Government
with the Castilians, it was not made late in January 1547, but was at
least begun by December 17-19, 1546. {25a} On January 11, 1547, a spy of
England, Stewart of Cardonald, reports that the garrison have given
pledges and await their absolution from Rome. {25b} With regard to
Knox's other statements in this place, it was not _after_ this truce,
first, but before it, on November 26, that Arran invited French
assistance, if England would not include Scotland in a treaty of peace
with France. An English invasion was expected in February 1547, and
Arran's object in the "Appointment" with the garrison was to prevent the
English from becoming possessed of the Castle of St. Andrews. Far from
desiring a papal pardon--a mere pretext to gain time for English
relief--the garrison actually asked Henry VIII. to request the Emperor,
to implore the Pope, "to stop and hinder their absolution." {25c} Knox
very probably knew nothing of all this, but his efforts to throw the
blame of treachery on his opponents are obviously futile.
As to the honesty of his associates--before the death of Henry VIII.
(January 28, 1547), the Castilians had promised him not to surrender the
place without his consent, and to put Arran's son in his hands, promises
which they also made, on Henry's death, to the English Government; in
February they repeated these promises, quite incompatible with their vow
to surrender if absolved. Knox represents them as merely promising to
Henry that they would return Arran's son, and support the plan of
marrying Mary Stuart to Prince Edward of Wales! {26a} In March 1547,
English ships gathered at Holy Island, to relieve the castle. Not on
June 21, 1547, as Knox alleges, but before April 2, the papal absolution
for the murderers arrived. They mocked at it; and the spy who reports
the facts is told that they "would rather have a boll of wheat than all
the Pope's remissions." {26b} Whatever the terms of the papal remission,
they had already, before it arrived, bound themselves to England not to
accept it save with English concurrence; and England, then preparing to
invade Scotland, could not possibly concur. Such was the honesty of
Knox's party, and we already see how far his "History" deserves to be
accepted as historical.
Next, what is most surprising, Knox's account of the month of ineffectual
siege by the French, while he was actually in the castle, rests on a
strange error of his memory. The contemporary diary, Diurnal of
Occurrences dates the _sending_ (the arrival must be meant) of the French
galleys, not on June 29, as Knox dates their arrival, but on July 24.
Professor Hume Brown says that the Diurnal gives the date as _June_ 24 (a
slip of the pen), "but Knox had surely the best opportunity of knowing
both facts" {27a}--that is, the number of the galleys, and the date of
their coming. Despite his unrivalled opportunities of knowledge, Knox
did not know. It is not quite correct to say that "Knox in his 'History'
shows throughout a conscientious regard to accuracy of statement."
Whatever the number of the galleys (Knox says twenty-one; the Diurnal
says sixteen), on July 13-14, they are reported by Lord Eure, at Berwick,
as passing or having just passed Eyemouth. {27b} They did not therefore
suffer for three weeks at the garrison's hands, or for three weeks desert
the siege, but probably reached the scene of action before the date in
the Diurnal (July 24), as, on July 23, the French Ambassador in England
heard that they were investing the castle. {27c} Allowing five or six
days for transmission of news, they probably began the attack from the
sea about July 16 or 17, not, as Knox says, on June 30. Perhaps he is
right in saying that the French galleys only fired for two days and
retreated, rather battered, to Dundee. Land forces next attacked the
hold, which surrendered on July 29 (as was known in London on August 5),
that is, on the first day that the _land_ battery was erected.
Knox gives a much more full account of his own controversies, in April-
June 1547, than of political events. He first, on arrival at the castle,
drew up a catechism for his pupils, and publicly catechised them on its
tenets, in the parish kirk in South Street. It is unfortunate that we do
not possess this catechism. At the time when he wrote, Knox was possibly
more of "Martin's" mind, as he familiarly terms Luther, both as to the
Sacrament and as to the Order of Bishops, than he was after his residence
in Geneva. Wishart, however, was well acquainted with Helvetic doctrine;
he had, as we saw, translated a Helvetic Confession of Faith, perhaps
with the view of introducing it into Scotland, and Knox may already have
imbibed Calvinism from him. He was not yet--he never was--a full-blown
Presbyterian, and, while thinking nothing of "orders," would not have
rejected a bishop, if the bishop _preached_ and was of godly and frugal
life. Already sermons were the most important part of public worship in
the mind of Knox.
In addition to public catechising he publicly expounded, and lectured on
the Fourth Gospel, in the chapel of the castle. He doubted if he had "a
lawful vocation" to _preach_. The castle pulpit was then occupied by an
ex-friar named Rough. This divine, later burned in England, preached a
sermon declaring a doctrine accepted by Knox, namely, that any
congregation could call on any man in whom they "espied the gifts of God"
to be their preacher; he offered Knox the post, and all present agreed.
Knox wept, and for days his gloom declared his sense of his
responsibility: such was "his holy vocation." The garrison was,
confessedly, brutal, licentious, and rapacious, but they "all" partook of
the holy Communion. {28}
In controversy, Knox declared the Church to be "the synagogue of Satan,"
and in the Pope he detected and denounced "the Man of Sin." On the
following Sunday he proved, from Daniel, that the Roman Church is "that
last Beast." The Church is also anti-Christ, and "the Hoore of Babylon,"
and Knox dilated on the personal misconduct of Popes and "all shavelings
for the most part." He contrasted Justification by Faith with the
customs of pardons and pilgrimages.
After these remarks, a controversy was held between Knox and the
sub-prior, Wynram, the Scottish Vicar of Bray, Knox being understood to
maintain that no bishop who did not preach was really a bishop; that the
Mass is "abominable idolatry"; that Purgatory does not exist; and that
the tithes are not necessarily the property of churchmen--a doctrine very
welcome to the hungry nobles of Scotland. Knox, of course, easily
overcame an ignorant opponent, a friar, who joined in the fray. His own
arguments he later found time to write out fully in the French galleys,
in which he was a prisoner, after the fall of the castle. If he "wrate
in the galleys," as he says, they cannot have been always such floating
hells as they are usually reckoned.
That Knox, and other captives from the castle, were placed in the galleys
after their surrender, was an abominable stretch of French power. They
were not subjects of France. The terms on which they surrendered are not
exactly known. Knox avers that they were to be free to live in France,
and that, if they wished to leave, they were to be conveyed, at French
expense, to any country except Scotland. Buchanan declares that only the
lives of the garrison and their friends were secured by the terms of
surrender. Lesley supports Knox, {30a} who is probably accurate.
To account for the French severity, Knox tells us that the Pope insisted
on it, appealing to both the Scottish and French Governments; and
Scotland sent an envoy to France to beg "that those of the castle should
be sharply handled." Men of birth were imprisoned, the rest went to the
galleys. Knox's life cannot have been so bad as that of the Huguenot
galley slaves under Louis XIV. He was allowed to receive letters; he
read and commented on a treatise written in prison by Balnaves; and he
even wrote a theological work, unless this work was his commentary on
Balnaves. These things can only have been possible when the galleys were
not on active service. In a very manly spirit, he never dilated on his
sufferings, and merely alludes to "the torment I sustained in the
galleys." He kept up his heart, always prophesying deliverance; and once
(June, 1548?), when in view of St. Andrews, declared that he should
preach again in the kirk where his career began. Unluckily, the person
to whom he spoke, at a moment when he himself was dangerously ill, denied
that he had ever been in the galleys at all! {30b} He was Sir James
Balfour, a notorious scoundrel, quite untrustworthy; according to Knox,
he had spoken of the prophecy, in Scotland, long before its fulfilment.
Knox's health was more or less undermined, while his spiritual temper was
not mollified by nineteen months of the galleys, mitigated as they
obviously were.
It is, doubtless, to his "torment" in the galleys that Knox refers when
he writes: "I know how hard the battle is between the spirit and the
flesh, under the heavy cross of affliction, where no worldly defence, but
present death, does appear. . . . Rests only Faith, provoking us to call
earnestly, and pray for assistance of God's spirit, wherein if we
continue, our most desperate calamities shall turn to gladness, and to a
prosperous end. . . . With experience I write this."
In February or March, 1549, Knox was released; by April he was in
England, and, while Edward VI. lived, was in comparative safety.