CHAPTER XI: KNOX'S INTRIGUES, AND HIS ACCOUNT OF THEM, 1559

The Reformers, and Knox as their secretary and historian, had now reached

a very difficult and delicate point in their labours. Their purpose was,

not by any means to secure toleration and freedom of conscience, but to

extirpate the religion to which they were opposed. It was the religion

by law existing, the creed of "Authority," of the Regent and of the King

and Queen whom she represented. The position of the Congregation was

therefore essentially that of rebels, and, in the state of opinion at the

period, to be rebels was to be self-condemned. In the eyes of Calvin and

the learned of the Genevan Church, kings were the Lord's appointed, and

the Gospel must not be supported by the sword. "Better that we all

perish a hundred times," Calvin wrote to Coligny in 1561. Protestants,

therefore, if they would resist in arms, had to put themselves in order,

and though Knox had no doubt that to exterminate idolaters was thoroughly

in order, the leaders of his party were obliged to pay deference to

European opinion.

By a singular coincidence they adopted precisely the same device as the

more militant French Protestants laid before Calvin in August 1559-March

1560. The Scots and the Protestant French represented that they were

illegally repressed by foreigners: in Scotland by Mary of Guise with her

French troops; in France by the Cardinal and Duc de Guise, foreigners,

who had possession of the persons and authority of the "native prince" of

Scotland, Mary, and the "native prince" of France, Francis II., both

being minors. The French idea was that, if they secured the aid of a

native Protestant prince (Conde), they were in order, as against the

foreign Guises, and might kill these tyrants, seize the King, and call an

assembly of the Estates. Calvin was consulted by the chief of the

conspiracy, La Renaudie; he disapproved; the legality lent by one native

prince was insufficient; the details of the plot were "puerile," and

Calvin waited to see how the country would take it. The plot failed, at

Amboise, in March 1560.

In Scotland, as in France, devices about a prince of the native blood

suggested themselves. The Regent, being of the house of Guise, was a

foreigner, like her brothers in France. The "native princes" were

Chatelherault and his eldest son, Arran. The leaders, soon after Lord

James and Argyll formally joined the zealous brethren, saw that without

foreign aid their enterprise was desperate. Their levies must break up

and go home to work; the Regent's nucleus of French troops could not be

ousted from the sea fortress of Dunbar, and would in all probability be

joined by the army promised by Henri II. His death, the Huguenot

risings, the consequent impotence of the Guises to aid the Regent, could

not be foreseen. Scotland, it seemed, would be reduced to a French

province; the religion would be overthrown.

There was thus no hope, except in aid from England. But by the recent

treaty of Cateau Cambresis (April 2, 1559), Elizabeth was bound not to

help the rebels of the French Dauphin, the husband of the Queen of Scots.

Moreover, Elizabeth had no stronger passion than a hatred of rebels. If

she was to be persuaded to help the Reformers, they must produce some

show of a legitimate "Authority" with whom she could treat. This was as

easy to find as it was to the Huguenots in the case of Conde.

Chatelherault and Arran, native princes, next heirs to the crown while

Mary was childless, could be produced as legitimate "Authority." But to

do this implied a change of "Authority," an upsetting of "Authority,"

which was plain rebellion in the opinion of the Genevan doctors. Knox

was thus obliged, in sermons and in the pamphlet (Book II. of his

"History"), to maintain that nothing more than freedom of conscience and

religion was contemplated, while, as a matter of fact, he was foremost in

the intrigue for changing the "Authority," and even for depriving Mary

Stuart of "entrance and title" to her rights. He therefore, in Book II.

(much of which was written in August-October or September-October 1559,

as an apologetic contemporary tract), conceals the actual facts of the

case, and, while perpetually accusing the Regent of falsehood and

perfidy, displays an extreme "economy of truth," and cannot hide the

pettifogging prevarications of his party. His wiser plan would have been

to cancel this Book, or much of it, when he set forth later to write a

history of the Reformation. His party being then triumphant, he could

have afforded to tell most of the truth, as in great part he does in his

Book III. But he could not bring himself to throw over the narrative of

his party pamphlet (Book II.), and it remains much as it was originally

written, though new touches were added.

The point to be made in public and in the apologetic tract was that the

Reformers contemplated no alteration of "Authority." This was untrue.

Writing later (probably in 1565-66) in his Third Book, Knox boasts of his

own initiation of the appeal to England, which included a scheme for the

marriage of the Earl of Arran, son of the Hamilton chief, Chatelherault,

to Queen Elizabeth. Failing issue of Queen Mary, Arran was heir to the

Scottish throne, and if he married the Queen of England, the rightful

Queen of Scotland would not be likely to wear her crown. The

contemplated match was apt to involve a change of dynasty. The lure of

the crown for his descendants was likely to bring Chatelherault, and

perhaps even his brother the Archbishop, over to the side of the

Congregation: in short it was an excellent plot. Probably the idea

occurred to the leaders of the Congregation at or shortly after the time

when Argyll and Lord James threw in their lot definitely with the

brethren on May 31. On June 14 Croft, from Berwick, writes to Cecil that

the leaders, "from what I hear, will likely seek her Majesty's"

(Elizabeth's) "assistance," and mean to bring Arran home. Some think

that he is already at Geneva, and he appears to have made the

acquaintance of Calvin, with whom later he corresponded. "They are

likely to motion a marriage you know where"; of Arran, that is, with

Elizabeth. {131} Moreover, one Whitlaw was at this date in France, and

by June 28, communicated the plan to Throckmorton, the English

Ambassador. Thus the scheme was of an even earlier date than Knox claims

for his own suggestion.

He tells us that at St. Andrews, after the truce of Cupar Muir (June 13),

he "burstit forth," in conversation with Kirkcaldy of Grange, on the

necessity of seeking support from England. Kirkcaldy long ago had

watched the secret exit from St. Andrews Castle, while his friends

butchered the Cardinal. He was taken in the castle when Knox was taken;

he was a prisoner in France; then he entered the French service, acting,

while so engaged, as an English spy. Before and during the destruction

of monasteries he was in the Regent's service, but she justly suspected

him of intending to desert her at this juncture. Kirkcaldy now wrote to

Cecil, without date, but probably on June 21, and with the signature

"Zours as ye knaw." Being in the Regent's party openly, he was secretly

betraying her; he therefore accuses her of treachery. (He left her

publicly, after a pension from England had been procured for him.) He

says that the Regent averred that "favourers of God's word should have

liberty to live after their consciences," "yet, in the conclusion of the

peace" (the eight days' truce) "she has uttered her deceitful mind,

having now declared that she will be enemy to all them that shall not

live after her religion." _Consequently_, the Protestants are wrecking

"all the friaries within their bounds." But Knox has told us that they

declared their intention of thus enjoying liberty of conscience _before_

"the conclusion of the peace," and wrecked Lindores Abbey during the

peace! Kirkcaldy adds that the Regent already suspects him.

Kirkcaldy, having made the orthodox charge of treachery against the woman

whom he was betraying, then asks Cecil whether Elizabeth will accept

their "friendship," and adds, with an eye to Arran, "I wish likewise her

Majesty were not too hasty in her marriage." {133a} On June 23, writing

from his house, Grange, and signing his name, Kirkcaldy renews his

proposals. In both letters he anticipates the march of the Reformers to

turn the Regent's garrison out of Perth. On June 25 he announces that

the Lords are marching thither. They had already the secret aid of

Lethington, who remained, like the traitor that he was, in the Regent's

service till the end of October. {133b} Knox also writes at this time to

Cecil from St. Andrews.

On June 1, Henri II. of France had written to the Regent promising to

send her strong reinforcements, {133c} but he was presently killed in a

tourney by the broken lance shaft of Montgomery.

The Reformers now made tryst at Perth for June 25, to restore "religion"

and expel the Scots in French service. The little garrison surrendered

(their opponents are reckoned by Kirkcaldy at 10,000 men), idolatry was

again suppressed, and Perth restored to her municipal constitution. The

ancient shrines of Scone were treated in the usual way, despite the

remonstrances of Knox, Lord James, and Argyll. They had threatened

Hepburn, Bishop of Moray, that if he did not join them "they neither

could spare nor save his place." This was on June 20, on the same day he

promised to aid them and vote with them in Parliament. {133d} Knox did

his best, but the Dundee people began the work of wrecking; and the

Bishop, in anger, demanded and received the return of his written promise

of joining the Reformers. On the following day, irritated by some show

of resistance, the people of Dundee and Perth burned the palace of Scone

and the abbey, "whereat no small number of us was offended." An old

woman said that "filthy beasts" dwelt "in that den," to her private

knowledge, "at whose words many were pacified." The old woman is an

excellent authority. {134}

The pretext of perfect loyalty was still maintained by the Reformers;

their honesty we can appreciate. They did not wish, they said, to

overthrow "authority"; merely to be allowed to worship in their own way

(and to prevent other people from worshipping in theirs, which was the

order appointed by the State). That any set of men may rebel and take

their chances is now recognised, but the Reformers wanted to combine the

advantages of rebellion with the reputation of loyal subjects. Persons

who not only band against the sovereign, but invoke foreign aid and seek

a foreign alliance, are, however noble their motives, rebels. There is

no other word for them. But that they were _not_ rebels Knox urged in a

sermon at Edinburgh, which the Reformers, after devastating Stirling,

reached by June 28-29 (?), and the Second Book of his "History" labours

mainly to prove this point; no change of "authority" is intended.

What Knox wanted is very obvious. He wanted to prevent Mary Stuart from

enjoying her hereditary crown. She was a woman, as such under the curse

of "The First Blast of the Trumpet," and she was an idolatress.

Presently, as we shall see, he shows his hand to Cecil.

Before the Reformers entered Edinburgh Mary of Guise retired to the

castle of Dunbar, where she had safe access to the sea. In Edinburgh

Knox says that the poor sacked the monasteries "before our coming." The

contemporary Diurnal of Occurrents attributes the feat to Glencairn,

Ruthven, Argyll, and the Lord James. {135a}

Knox was chosen minister of Edinburgh, and as soon as they arrived the

Lords, according to the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," sent envoys

to the Regent, offering obedience if she would "relax" the preachers,

summoned on May 10, "from the horn" and allow them to preach. The Regent

complied, but, of course, peace did not ensue, for, according to Knox, in

addition to a request "that we might enjoy liberty of conscience," a

demand for the withdrawal of all French forces out of Scotland was made.

{135b} This could not be granted.

Presently Mary of Guise issued before July 2, in the name of the King and

Queen, Francis II. and Mary Stuart, certain charges against the

Reformers, which Knox in his "History" publishes. {135c} A remark that

Mary Stuart lies like her mother, seems to be written later than the

period (September-October 1559) when this Book II. was composed. The

Regent says that the rising was only under pretence of religion, and that

she has offered a Parliament for January 1560. "A manifest lie," says

Knox, "for she never thought of it till we demanded it." He does not

give a date to the Regent's paper, but on June 25 Kirkcaldy wrote to

Percy that the Regent "is like to grant the other party" (the Reformers)

"all they desire, which in part she has offered already." {136a}

Knox seizes on the word "offered" as if it necessarily meant "offered

though unasked," and so styles the Regent's remark "a manifest lie." But

Kirkcaldy, we see, uses the words "has in part offered already" when he

means that the Regent has "offered" to grant some of the wishes of his

allies.

Meanwhile the Regent will allow freedom of conscience in the country, and

especially in Edinburgh. But the Reformers, her paper goes on, desire to

subvert the crown. To prove this she says that they daily receive

messengers from England and send their own; and they have seized the

stamps in the Mint (a capital point as regards the crown) and the Palace

of Holyrood, which Lesley says that they sacked. Knox replies, "there is

never a sentence in the narrative true," except that his party seized the

stamps merely to prevent the issue of base coin (not to coin the stolen

plate of the churches and monasteries for themselves, as Lesley says they

did). But Knox's own letters, and those of Kirkcaldy of Grange and Sir

Henry Percy, prove that they _were_ intriguing with England as early as

June 23-25. Their conduct, with the complicity of Percy, was perfectly

well known to the Regent's party, and was denounced by d'Oysel to the

French ambassador in London in letters of July. {136b} Elizabeth, on

August 7, answered the remonstrances of the Regent, promising to punish

her officials if guilty. Nobody lied more frankly than "that imperial

votaress."

When Knox says "there is never a sentence in the narrative true," he is

very bold. It was not true that the rising was merely under pretext of

religion. It may have been untrue that messengers went _daily_ to

England, but five letters were written between June 21 and June 28. To

stand on the words of the Regent--"_every day_"--would be a babyish

quibble. All the rest of her narrative was absolutely true.

Knox, on June 28, asked leave to enter England for secret discourse; he

had already written to the same effect from St. Andrews. {137a} If Henri

sends French reinforcement, Knox "is uncertain what will follow"; we may

guess that authority would be in an ill way. Cecil temporised; he wanted

a better name than Kirkcaldy's--a man in the Regent's service--to the

negotiations (July 4). "Anywise kindle the fire," he writes to Croft

(July 8). Croft is to let the Reformers know that Arran has escaped out

of France. Such a chance will not again "come in our lives." We see

what the chance is!

On July 19 Knox writes again to Cecil, enclosing what he means to be an

apology for his "Blast of the Trumpet," to be given to Elizabeth. He

says, while admitting Elizabeth's right to reign, as "judged godly,"

though a woman, that they "must be careful not to make entrance and title

to many, by whom not only shall the truth be impugned, but also shall the

country be brought to bondage and slavery. God give you eyes to foresee

and wisdom to avoid the apparent danger." {137b}

The "many" to whom "entrance and title" are not to be given, manifestly

are Mary Stuart, Queen of France and Scotland.

It is not very clear whether Knox, while thus working against a woman's

"entrance and title" to the crown on the ground of her sex, is thinking

of Mary Stuart's prospects of succession to the throne of England or of

her Scottish rights, or of both. His phrase is cast in a vague way;

"many" are spoken of, but it is not hard to understand what particular

female claimant is in his mind.

Thus Knox himself was intriguing with England against his Queen at the

very moment when in his "History" he denies that communications were

frequent between his party and England, or that any of the Regent's

charges are true. As for opposing authority and being rebellious, the

manifest fundamental idea of the plot is to marry Elizabeth to Arran and

deny "entrance and title" to the rightful Queen. It was an admirable

scheme, and had Arran not become a lunatic, had Elizabeth not been "that

imperial votaress" vowed to eternal maidenhood, their bridal, with the

consequent loss of the Scottish throne by Mary, would have been the most

fortunate of all possible events. The brethren had, in short, a perfect

right to defend their creed in arms; a perfect right to change the

dynasty; a perfect right to intrigue with England, and to resist a French

landing, if they could. But for a reformer of the Church to give a dead

lady the lie in his "History" when the economy of truth lay rather on his

own side, as he knew, is not so well. We shall see that Knox possibly

had the facts in his mind during the first interview with Mary Stuart.

{138}

The Lords, July 2, replied to the proclamation of Mary of Guise, saying

that she accused them of a purpose "to invade her person." {139a} There

is not a word of the kind in the Regent's proclamation as given by Knox

himself. They denied what the Regent in her proclamation had not

asserted, and what she had asserted about their dealings with England

they did not venture to deny; "whereby," says Spottiswoode in his

"History," "it seemed there was some dealing that way for expelling the

Frenchmen, which they would not deny, and thought not convenient as then

openly to profess." {139b} The task of giving the lie to the Regent when

she spoke truth was left to the pen of Knox.

Meanwhile, at Dunbar, Mary of Guise was in evil case. She had sounded

Erskine, the commander of the Castle, who, she hoped, would stand by her.

But she had no money to pay her French troops, who were becoming

mutinous, and d'Oysel "knew not to what Saint to vow himself." The Earl

of Huntly, before he would serve the Crown, {139c} insisted on a promise

of the Earldom of Moray; this desire was to be his ruin. Huntly was a

double dealer; "the gay Gordons" were ever brave, loyal, and bewildered

by their chiefs. By July 22, the Scots heard of the fatal wound of Henri

II., to their encouragement. Both parties were in lack of money, and the

forces of the Congregation were slipping home by hundreds. Mary,

according to Knox, was exciting the Duke against Argyll and Lord James,

by the charge that Lord James was aiming at the crown, in which if he

succeeded, he would deprive not only her daughter of the sovereignty, but

the Hamiltons of the succession. Young and ambitious as Lord James then

was, and heavily as he was suspected, even in England, it is most

improbable that he ever thought of being king.

The Congregation refused to let Argyll and Lord James hold conference

with the Regent. Other discussions led to no result, except waste of

time, to the Regent's advantage; and, on July 22, Mary, in council with

Lord Erskine, Huntly, and the Duke, resolved to march against the

Reformers at Edinburgh, who had no time to call in their scattered levies

in the West, Angus, and Fife. Logan of Restalrig, lately an ally of the

godly, surrendered Leith, over which he was the superior, to d'Oysel; and

the Congregation decided to accept a truce (July 23-24).

At this point Knox's narrative becomes so embroiled that it reminds one

of nothing so much as of Claude Nau's attempts to glide past an awkward

point in the history of his employer, Mary Stuart. I have puzzled over

Knox's narrative again and again, and hope that I have disentangled the

knotted and slippery thread.

It is not wonderful that the brethren made terms, for the "Historie"

states that their force numbered but 1500 men, whereas d'Oysel and the

Duke led twice that number, horse and foot. They also heard from

Erskine, in the Castle, that, if they did not accept "such appointment as

they might have," he "would declare himself their enemy," as he had

promised the Regent. It seems that she did not want war, for d'Oysel's

French alone should have been able to rout the depleted ranks of the

Congregation.

The question is, What were the terms of treaty? for it is Knox's

endeavour to prove that the Regent broke them, and so justified the later

proceedings of the Reformers. The terms, in French, are printed by

Teulet. {141} They run thus:--

1. The Protestants, not being inhabitants of Edinburgh, shall depart

next day.

2. They shall deliver the stamps for coining to persons appointed by the

Regent, hand over Holyrood, and Ruthven and Pitarro shall be pledges for

performance.

3. They shall be dutiful subjects, except in matters of religion.

4. They shall not disturb the clergy in their persons or by withholding

their rents, &c., before January 10, 1560.

5. They shall not attack churches or monasteries before that date.

6. The town of Edinburgh shall enjoy liberty of conscience, and shall

choose its form of religion as it pleases till that date.

7. The Regent shall not molest the preachers nor suffer the clergy to

molest them for cause of religion till that date.

8. Keith, Knox, and Spottiswoode, add that no garrisons, French or

Scots, shall occupy Edinburgh, but soldiers may repair thither from their

garrisons for lawful business.

The French soldiers are said to have swaggered in St. Giles's, but no

complaint is made that they were garrisoned in Edinburgh. In fact, they

abode in the Canongate and Leith.

Now, these were the terms accepted by the Congregation. This is certain,

not only because historians, Knox excepted, are unanimous, but because

the terms were either actually observed, or were evaded, on a stated

point of construction.

1. The Congregation left Edinburgh.

2. They handed over the stamps of the Mint, Holyrood, and the two

pledges.

3. 4, 5. We do not hear that they attacked any clerics or monastery

before they broke off publicly from the treaty, and Knox (i. 381) admits

that Article 4 was accepted.

6. They would not permit the town of Edinburgh to choose its religion by

"voting of men." On July 29, when Huntly, Chatelherault, and Erskine,

the neutral commander of the Castle, asked for a plebiscite, as provided

in the treaty of July 24, the Truth, said the brethren, was not a matter

of human votes, and, as the brethren held St. Giles's Church before the

treaty, under Article 7 they could not be dispossessed. {142a} The

Regent, to avoid shadow of offence, yielded the point as to Article 6,

and was accused of breach of treaty because, occupying Holyrood, she had

her Mass there. Had Edinburgh been polled, the brethren knew that they

would have been outvoted. {142b}

Now, Knox's object, in that part of Book II. of his "History," which was

written in September-October 1559 as a tract for contemporary reading, is

to prove that the Regent was the breaker of treaty. His method is first

to give "the heads drawn by us, which we desired to be granted." The

heads are--

1. No member of the Congregation shall be troubled in any respect by any

authority for the recent "innovation" before the Parliament of January

10, 1560, decides the controversies.

2. Idolatry shall not be restored where, on the day of treaty, it has

been suppressed.

3. Preachers may preach wherever they have preached and wherever they

may chance to come.

4. No soldiers shall be in garrison in Edinburgh.

5. The French shall be sent away on "a reasonable day" and no more

brought in without assent of the whole Nobility and Parliament. {143a}

These articles make no provision for the safety of Catholic priests and

churches, and insist on suppression of idolatry where it has been put

down, and the entire withdrawal of French forces. Knox's party could not

possibly denounce these terms which they demanded as "things unreasonable

and ungodly," for they were the very terms which they had been asking

for, ever since the Regent went to Dunbar. Yet, when the treaty was

made, the preachers did say "our case is not yet so desperate that we

need to grant to things unreasonable and ungodly." {143b} Manifestly,

therefore, the terms actually obtained, as being "unreasonable and

ungodly," were _not_ those for which the Reformers asked, and which,

_they publicly proclaimed_, had been conceded.

Knox writes, "These our articles were altered, and another form

disposeth." And here he translates the terms as given in the French,

terms which provide for the safety of Catholics, the surrender of

Holyrood and the Mint, but say nothing about the withdrawal of the French

troops or the non-restoration of "idolatry" where it has been suppressed.

He adds, "This alteration in words and order was made" (so it actually

_was_ made) "without the knowledge and consent of those whose counsel we

had used in all cases before"--clearly meaning the preachers, and also

implying that the consent of the noble negotiators for the Congregation

_was_ obtained to the French articles.

Next day the Congregation left Edinburgh, after making solemn

proclamation of the conditions of truce, in which they omitted all the

terms of the French version, except those in their own favour, and stated

(in Knox's version) that all of their own terms, except the most

important, namely, the removal of the French, and the promise to bring in

no more, had been granted! It may be by accident, however, that the

proclamation of the Lords, as given by Knox, omits the article securing

the departure of the French. {144a} There exist two MS. copies of the

proclamation, in which the Lords dare to assert "that the Frenchmen

should be sent away at a reasonable date, and no more brought in except

by assent of the whole nobility and Parliament." {144b}

Of the terms really settled, except as regards the immunity of their own

party, the Lords told the public not one word; they suppressed what was

true, and added what was false.

Against this formal, public, and impudent piece of mendacity, we might

expect Knox to protest in his "History"; to denounce it as a cause of

God's wrath. On the other hand he states, with no disapproval, the

childish quibbles by which his party defended their action.

On reading or hearing the Lords' proclamation, the Catholics, who knew

the real terms of treaty, said that the Lords "in their proclamation had

made no mention of anything promised to _them_," and "had proclaimed more

than was contained in the Appointment;" among other things, doubtless,

the promise to dismiss the French. {145a}

The brethren replied to these "calumnies of Papists" (as Calderwood

styles them), that they "proclaimed nothing that was not _finally_ agreed

upon, _in word and promise_, betwixt us and those with whom the

Appointment was made, _whatsoever their scribes had after written_,

{145b} who, in very deed, had altered, both in words and sentences, our

Articles, _as they were first conceived_; and yet if their own writings

were diligently examined, the self same thing shall be found _in

substance_."

This is most complicated quibbling! Knox uses his ink like the cuttle-

fish, to conceal the facts. The "own writings" of the Regent's party are

before us, and do not contain the terms proclaimed by the Congregation.

Next, in drawing up the terms which the Congregation was compelled to

accept, the "scribes" of the Regent's party necessarily, and with the

consent of the Protestant negotiators, altered the terms proposed by the

brethren, but not granted by the Regent's negotiators. Thirdly, the

Congregation now asserted that "_finally_" an arrangement in conformity

with their proclamation was "agreed upon _in word and promise_"; that is,

verbally, which we never find them again alleging. The game was to foist

false terms on public belief, and then to accuse the Regent of perfidy in

not keeping them.

These false terms were not only publicly proclaimed by the Congregation

with sound of trumpets, but they were actually sent, by Knox or

Kirkcaldy, or both, to Croft at Berwick, for English reading, on July 24.

In a note I print the letter, signed by Kirkcaldy, but in the holograph

of Knox, according to Father Stevenson. {146} It will be remarked that

the genuine articles forbidding attacks on monasteries and ensuring

priests in their revenues are here omitted, while the false articles on

suppression of idolatry, and expulsion of the French forces are inserted,

and nothing is said about Edinburgh's special liberty to choose her

religion.

The sending of this false intelligence was not the result of a

misunderstanding. I have shown that the French terms were perfectly well

understood, and were observed, except Article 6, on which the Regent made

a concession. How then could men professionally godly venture to

misreport the terms, and so make them at once seem more favourable to

themselves and less discouraging to Cecil than they really were, while at

the same time (as the Regent could not keep terms which she had never

granted) they were used as a ground of accusation against her?

This is the point that has perplexed me, for Knox, no less than the

Congregation, seems to have deliberately said good-bye to truth and

honour, unless the Lords elaborately deceived their secretary and

diplomatic agent. The only way in which I can suppose that Knox and his

friends reconciled their consciences to their conduct is this:

Knox tells us that "when all points were communed and agreed upon by mid-

persons," Chatelherault and Huntly had a private interview with Argyll,

Glencairn, and others of his party. They promised that they would be

enemies to the Regent if she broke any one jot of the treaty. "As much

promised the duke that _he_ would do, if in case that she would not

remove her French at a reasonable day . . . " the duke being especially

interested in their removal. But Huntly is not said to have made _this_

promise--the removal of the French obviously not being part of the

"Appointment." {148a}

Next, the brethren, in arguing with the Catholics about their own

mendacious proclamation of the terms, said that "we proclaimed nothing

which was not _finally_ agreed upon, _in word and promise_, betwixt us

and those with whom the Appointment was made. . . . " {148b}

I can see no explanation of Knox's conduct, except that he and his

friends pacified their consciences by persuading themselves that

non-official words of Huntly and Chatelherault (whatever these words may

have been), spoken after "all was agreed upon," cancelled the treaty with

the Regent, became the real treaty, and were binding on the Regent! Thus

Knox or Kirkcaldy, or both, by letter; and Knox later, orally in

conversation with Croft, could announce false terms of treaty. So great,

if I am right, is a good man's power of self-persuasion! I shall welcome

any more creditable theory of the Reformer's behaviour, but I can see no

alternative, unless the Lords lied to Knox.

That the French should be driven out was a great point with Cecil, for he

was always afraid that the Scots might slip back from the English to the

old French alliance. On July 28, after the treaty of July 24, but before

he heard of it, he insisted on the necessity of expelling the French, in

a letter to the Reformers. {149a} He "marvels that they omit such an

opportunity to help themselves." He sent a letter of vague generalities

in answer to their petitions for aid. When he received, as he did, a

copy of the terms of the treaty of July 24, in French, he would

understand.

As further proof that Cecil was told what Knox and Kirkcaldy should have

known to be untrue, we note that on August 28 the Regent, weary of the

perpetual charges of perfidy anew brought against her, "ashamed not,"

writes Knox, to put forth a proclamation, in which she asserted that

nothing, in the terms of July 23-24, forbade her to bring in more French

troops, "as may clearly appear by inspection of the said Appointment,

which the bearer has presently to show." {149b}

Why should the Regent have been "ashamed" to tell the truth? If the

bearer showed a false and forged treaty, the Congregation must have

denounced it, and produced the genuine document with the signatures. Far

from that, in a reply (from internal evidence written by Knox), they

admit, "neither do we _here_ {149c} allege the breaking of the

Appointment made at Leith (which, nevertheless, has manifestly been

done), but"--and here the writer wanders into quite other questions.

Moreover, Knox gives another reply to the Regent, "by some men," in which

they write "we dispute not so much whether the bringing in of more

Frenchmen be violating of the Appointment, which the Queen and her

faction cannot deny to be manifestly broken by them in more cases than

one," in no way connected with the French. One of these cases will

presently be stated--it is comic enough to deserve record--but, beyond

denial, the brethren could not, and did not even attempt to make out

their charge as to the Regent's breach of truce by bringing in new, or

retaining old, French forces.

Our historians, and the biographers of Knox, have not taken the trouble

to unravel this question of the treaty of July 24. But the behaviour of

the Lords and of Knox seems characteristic, and worthy of examination.

It is not argued that Mary of Guise was, or became, incapable of worse

than dissimulation (a case of forgery by her in the following year is

investigated in Appendix B). But her practices at this time were such as

Knox could not throw the first stone at. Her French advisers were in

fact "perplexed," as Throckmorton wrote to Elizabeth (August 8). They

made preparations for sending large reinforcements: they advised

concession in religion: they waited on events, and the Regent could only

provide, at Leith (which was jealous of Edinburgh and anxious to be made

a free burgh), a place whither she could fly in peril. Meantime she

would vainly exert her woman's wit among many dangers.

Knox, too, was exerting his wit in his own way. Busied in preaching and

in acting as secretary and diplomatic agent to the Congregation as he

was, he must also have begun in or not much later than August 1559, the

part of his "History" first written by him, namely Book II. That book,

as he wrote to a friend named Railton {150} on October 23, 1559 (when

much of it was already penned), is meant as a defence of his party

against the charge of sedition, and was clearly intended (we reiterate)

for contemporary reading at home and abroad, while the strife was still

unsettled. This being so, Knox continues his policy of blaming the

Regent for breach of the misreported treaty of July 24: for treachery,

which would justify the brethren's attack on her before the period of

truce (January 10, 1559) ran out.

One clause, we know, secured the Reformers from molestation before that

date. Despite this, Knox records a case of "oppressing" a brother,

"which had been sufficient to prove the Appointment to be plainly

violated." Lord Seton, of the Catholic party, {151a} "broke a chair on

Alexander Whitelaw as he came from Preston (pans) accompanied by William

Knox . . . and this he did supposing that Alexander Whitelaw had been

John Knox."

So much Knox states in his Book II., writing probably in September or

October 1559. But he does not here say what Alexander Whitelaw and

William Knox had been doing, or inform us how he himself was concerned in

the matter. He could not reveal the facts when writing in the early

autumn of 1559, because the brethren were then still taking the line that

they were loyal, and were suffering from the Regent's breaches of treaty,

as in the matter of the broken chair.

The sole allusion here made by Knox to the English intrigues, before they

were manifest to all mankind in September, is this, "Because England was

of the same religion, and lay next to us, it was judged expedient first

to prove them, which we did by one or two messengers, as hereafter, in

its own place, more amply shall be declared." {151b} He later inserted

in Book III. some account of the intrigues of July-August 1559, "in its

own place," namely, in a part of his work occupied with the occurrences

of January 1560. {152a}

Cecil, prior to the compact of July 24, had wished to meet Knox at

Stamford. On July 30 Knox received his instructions as negotiator with

England. {152b} His employers say that they hear that Huntly and

Chatelherault have promised to join the Reformers if the Regent breaks a

jot of the treaty of July 24, the terms of which Knox can declare. They

ask money to enable them to take Stirling Castle, and "strength by sea"

for the capture of Broughty Castle, on Tay. Yet they later complained of

the Regent when she fortified Leith. They actually _did_ take Broughty

Castle, and then had the hardihood to aver that they only set about this

when they heard in mid-September of the fortification of Leith by the

Regent. They aimed at it six days after their treaty of July 24. They

asked for soldiers to lie in garrison, for men, ships, and money for

their Lords.

Bearing these instructions Knox sailed from Fife to Holy Island, near

Berwick, and there met Croft, the Governor of that town. Croft kept him,

not with sufficient secrecy, in Berwick, where he was well known, while

Whitelaw was coming from Cecil with his answers to the petitions of the

brethren. Meanwhile Croft held converse with Knox, who, as he reports,

says that, as to the change of "Authority" (that is of sovereignty,

temporary at least), the choice of the brethren would be subject to

Elizabeth's wishes. Yet the brethren contemplated no change of

Authority! Arran ought to be kept secretly in England "till wise men

considered what was in him; if misliked he put Lord James second." As to

what Knox told Croft about the terms of treaty of July 24, it is best to

state the case in Croft's own words. "He (Knox) excusys the

Protestantes, for that the French as commyng apon them at Edynbrogh when

theyr popoll were departed to make new provysyon of vytaylles, forcyd

them to make composycyon wyth the quene. Whereyn (sayeth he) the

frenchmen ar apoynted to departe out of Scotland by the xth of thys

monthe, and they truste verely by thys caus to be stronger, for that the

Duke, apon breche of promys on the quene's part, wyll take playne parte

withe the Protestantes." {153}

This is quite explicit. Knox, as envoy of the Lords, declares that in

the treaty it is "appointed" that the French force shall leave Scotland

on August 10. (The printed calendars are not accurate.) No such matter

occurred in the treaty "wyth the quene." Knox added, next day, that he

himself "was unfit to treat of so great matters," and Croft appears to

have agreed with him, for, by the Reformer's lack of caution, his doings

in Holy Island were "well known and published." Consequently, when

Whitelaw returned to Knox with Cecil's reply to the requests of the

brethren, the performances of Knox and Whitelaw were no secrets, in

outline at least, to the Regent's party. For this reason, Lord Seton,

mistaking Whitelaw for Knox (who had set out on August 3 to join the

brethren at Stirling), pursued and broke a chair on the harmless Brother

Whitelaw. Such was the Regent's treacherous breach of treaty!

During this episode in his curious adventures as a diplomatist, Knox

recommended Balnaves, author of a treatise on "Justification by Faith,"

as a better agent in these courses, and with Balnaves the new envoy of

Elizabeth, Sadleir, a veteran diplomatist (wheedled in 1543 by Mary of

Guise), transacted business henceforth. Sadleir was ordered to Berwick

on August 6. Elizabeth infringed the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, then

only four months old, by giving Sadleir 3000 pounds in gold, or some such

sum, for the brethren. "They were tempting the Duke by all means

possible," {154a} but he will only promise neutrality if it comes to the

push, and they, Argyll and Lord James say (Glasgow, August 13), are not

yet ready "to discharge this authority," that is, to depose the Regent.

Chatelherault's promise was less vigorous than it had been reported!

Knox, who now acted as secretary for the Congregation, was not Sir Henry

Wotton's ideal ambassador, "an honest man sent to lie abroad for his

country." When he stooped to statements which seem scarcely candid, to

put it mildly, he did violence to his nature. He forced himself to

proclaim the loyalty of his party from the pulpit, when he could not do

so without some economy of truth. {154b} He inserted things in his

"History," and spoke things to Croft, which he should have known to be

false. But he carried his point. He did advance the "union of hearts"

with England, if in a blundering fashion, and we owe him eternal

gratitude for his interest in the match, though "we like not the manner

of the wooing." The reluctant hand of Elizabeth was now inextricably

caught in the gear of that great machine which broke the ancient league

of France and Scotland, and saved Scotland from some of the sorrows of

France.

The papers of Sadleir, Elizabeth's secret agent with the Scots, show the

godly pursuing their old plan of campaign. To make treaty with the

Regent; to predict from the pulpit that she would break it; to make false

statements about the terms of the treaty; to accuse her of their

infringement; to profess loyalty; to aim at setting up a new sovereign

power; to tell the populace that Mary of Guise's scanty French

reinforcements--some 1500 men--came by virtue of a broken treaty; to tell

Sadleir that they were very glad that the French _had_ come, as they

would excite popular hatred; to make out that the fortification of Leith

was breach of treaty;--such, in brief, were the methods of the Reformers.

{155}

They now took a new method of proving the Regent's breach of treaty, that

she had "set up the Mass in Holyrood, which they had before suppressed."

_They_ were allowed to have their sermons in St. Giles's, but _she_ was

not to have her rites in her own abbey. Balnaves still harped on the non-

dismissal of the French as a breach of treaty!

Arran, returning from Switzerland, had an interview with Elizabeth in

England, in mid-September, was smuggled across the Border with the astute

and unscrupulous Thomas Randolph in his train. With Arran among them,

Chatelherault might waver as he would. Meanwhile Knox and Willock

preached up and down the country, doubtless repeating to the people their

old charges against the Regent. Lethington, the secretary of that lady,

still betrayed her, telling Sadleir "that he attended upon the Regent no

longer than he might have a good occasion to revolt unto the Protestants"

(September 16).

Balnaves got some two to three thousand pounds in gold (the sum is

variously stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make,

the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State

and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were

actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The

Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now

he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the

leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had come up to his

price. Arran, the hoped-for Hamilton king, the hoped-for husband of the

Queen of England, had arrived, and with Arran the Duke joined the

Reformers. About September 20 they forbade the Regent to fortify Leith.

The brethren say that they have given no "provocation." Six weeks

earlier they had requested England to help them to seize and hold

Broughty Castle, though the Regent may not have known that detail.

The Regent replied as became her, and Glencairn, with Erskine of Dun,

wrecked the rich abbey of Paisley. The brethren now broke the truce with

a vengeance.

CHAPTER XII: KNOX IN THE WAR OF THE CONGREGATION: THE REGENT ATTACKED:

HER DEATH: CATHOLICISM ABOLISHED, 1559-1560

Though the Regent was now to be deposed and attacked by armed force, Knox

tells us that there were dissensions among her enemies. Some held "that

the Queen was heavily done to," and that the leaders "sought another end

than religion." Consequently, when the Lords with their forces arrived

at Edinburgh on October 16, the local brethren showed a want of

enthusiasm. The Congregation nevertheless summoned the Regent to depart

from Leith, and on October 21 met at the Tolbooth to discuss her formal

deposition from office. Willock moved that this might lawfully be done.

Knox added, with more reserve than usual, that their hearts must not be

withdrawn from their King and Queen, Mary and Francis. The Regent, too,

ought to be restored when she openly repented and submitted. Willock

dragged Jehu into his sermon, but Knox does not appear to have remarked

that Francis and Mary were Ahab and Jezebel, idolaters. He was now in a

position of less freedom and more responsibility than while he was a

wandering prophet at large.

On October 24 the Congregation summoned Leith, having deposed the Regent

_in the name of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary_, and of themselves

as Privy Council! They did more. They caused one James Cocky, a gold

worker, to forge the great seal of Francis and Mary, "wherewith they

sealed their pretended laws and ordinances, tending to constrain the

subjects of the kingdom to rebel and favour their usurpations." Their

proclamations with the forged seal they issued at St. Andrews, Glasgow,

Linlithgow, Perth, and elsewhere; using this seal in their letters to

noblemen, who were ordered to obey Arran. The gold worker, whose name is

variously spelled in the French record, says that the device for the

coins which the Congregation meant to issue and ordered him to execute

was on one side a cross with a crown of thorns, on the other the words

VERBUM DEI. The artist, Cocky, was dilatory, and when the brethren were

driven out of Edinburgh he gave the dies, unfinished, to John Achison,

the chief official of the Mint, who often executed coins of Queen Mary.

{158a} As Professor Hume Brown says of the audacious statement of the

brethren, that they acted in the name of their King and Queen, their use

of the forged Royal seal, "as covering their action with an appearance of

law, served its purpose in their appeals to the people." Cocky and

Kirkcaldy were hanged by Morton in 1573.

The idea of forging the great seal may have arisen in the fertile brain

of Lethington, who about October 25 had at last deserted the Regent, and

now took Knox's place as secretary of the Congregation. Henceforth their

manifestoes say little about religion, and a great deal about the French

design to conquer Scotland. {158b}

To the wit of Lethington we may plausibly attribute a proposal which, on

October 25, Knox submitted to Croft. {159} It was that England should

lend 1000 men for the attack on the Regent in Leith. Peace with France

need not be broken, for the men may come as private adventurers, and

England may denounce them as rebels. Croft declined this proposal as

dishonourable, and as too clearly a breach of treaty. Knox replied that

he had communicated Croft's letter "to such as partly induced me before

to write" (October 29). Very probably Lethington suggested the idea,

leaving the burden of its proposal on Knox. Dr. M'Crie says that it is a

solitary case of the Reformer's recommending dissimulation; but the

proceeding was in keeping with Knox's previous statements about the

nature of the terms made in July; with the protestations of loyalty; with

the lie given to Mary of Guise when she spoke, on the whole, the plain

truth; and generally with the entire conduct of the prophet and of the

Congregation. Dr. M'Crie justly remarks that Knox "found it difficult to

preserve integrity and Christian simplicity amidst the crooked wiles of

political intrigue."

On the behaviour of the godly heaven did not smile--for the moment.

Scaling-ladders had been constructed in St. Giles's church, "so that

preaching was neglected." "The preachers spared not openly to say that

they feared the success of that enterprise should not be prosperous," for

this reason, "God could not suffer such contempt of His word . . . long

to be unpunished." The Duke lost heart; the waged soldiers mutinied for

lack of pay; Morton deserted the cause; Bothwell wounded Ormiston as he

carried money from Croft, and seized the cash {160a}--behaving

treacherously, if it be true that he was under promise not to act against

the brethren. The French garrison of Leith made successful sorties; and

despite the valour of Arran and Lord James and the counsel of Lethington,

the godly fled from Edinburgh on November 5, under taunts and stones cast

by the people of the town.

The fugitives never stopped till they reached Stirling, when Knox

preached to them. He lectured at great length on discomfitures of the

godly in the Old Testament, and about the Benjamites, and the Levite and

his wife. Coming to practical politics, he reminded his audience that

after the accession of the Hamiltons to their party, "there was nothing

heard but This lord will bring these many hundred spears . . . if this

Earl be ours, no man in such a district will trouble us." The Duke ought

to be ashamed of himself. Before Knox came to Scotland we know he had

warned the brethren against alliance with the Hamiltons. The Duke had

been on the Regent's side, "yet without his assistance they could not

have compelled us to appoint with the Queen upon such unequal conditions"

in the treaty of July. So the terms _were_ in favour of the Regent,

after all is said and done! {160b}

God had let the brethren fall, Knox said, into their present condition

because they put their trust in man--in the Duke--a noble whose

repentance was very dubious.

Then Knox rose to the height of the occasion. "Yea, whatsoever becomes

of us and our mortal carcases, I doubt not but that this Cause (in

despite of Satan) shall prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is

the eternal truth of the eternal God, so shall it once prevail . . ."

Here we have the actual genius of Knox, his tenacity, his courage in an

uphill game, his faith which might move mountains. He adjured all to

amendment of life, prayer, and charity. "The minds of men began to be

wonderfully erected." In Arran and Lord James too, manifestly not

jealous rivals, Randolph found "more honour, stoutness, and courage than

in all the rest" (November 3).

Already, before the flight, Lethington was preparing to visit England.

The conduct of diplomacy with England was thus in capable hands, and

Lethington was a persona grata to the English Queen. Meanwhile the

victorious Regent behaved with her wonted moderation. "She pursueth no

man that hath showed himself against her at this time." She pardoned all

burgesses of Edinburgh, and was ready to receive the Congregation to her

grace, if they would put away the traitor Lethington, Balnaves, and some

others. {161a} Knox, however, says that she gave the houses of the most

honest men to the French. The Regent was now very ill; graviter

aegrotat, say Francis and Mary (Dec. 4, 1559). {161b}

The truth is that the Cause of Knox, far from being desperate, as for an

hour it seemed to the faint-hearted, had never looked so well. Cecil and

the English Council saw that they were committed; their gift of money was

known, they must bestir themselves. While they had "nourished the

garboil" in Scotland, fanned the flame, they professed to believe that

France was aiming, through Scotland, at England. They arranged for a

large levy of forces at Berwick; they promised money without stint: and

Cecil drew up the paper adopted, as I conceive, by the brethren in their

Latin appeal to all Christian princes. The Scots were to say that they

originally took arms in defence of their native dynasty (the Hamiltons),

Mary Stuart having no heirs of her body, and France intending to annex

Scotland--which was true enough, but was not the cause of the rising at

Perth. That England is also aimed at is proved by the fact that Mary and

Francis, on the seal of Scotland, quarter the arms of England. Knox

himself had seen, and had imparted the fact to Cecil, a jewel on which

these fatal heraldic pretensions were made. The Queen is governed by

"the new authority of the House of Guise." In short, Elizabeth must be

asked to intervene for these political reasons, not in defence of the

Gospel, and large preparations for armed action in Scotland were

instantly made. Meanwhile Cecil's sketch of the proper manifesto for the

Congregation to make, was embodied in Lethington's instructions (November

24) from the Congregation, as well as adapted in their Latin appeal to

Christian princes.

We may suppose that a man of Knox's unbending honesty was glad to have

thrown off his functions as secretary to the brethren. Far from

disclaiming their idolatrous King and Queen (the ideal policy), they were

issuing proclamations headed "Francis and Mary," and bearing the forged

signet. Examples with the seal were, as late as 1652, in the possession

of the Erskine of Dun of that day. In them Francis and Mary denounce the

Pope as Antichrist! Keith, who wrote much later, styles these

proclamations "pretty singular," and Knox must have been of the same

opinion.

After Lethington took the office of secretary to the Congregation, Knox

had for some time no great public part in affairs. Fife was invaded by

"these bloody worms," as he calls the French; and he preached what he

tells us was a "comfortable sermon" to the brethren at Cupar. But

Lethington had secured the English alliance: Lord Grey was to lead 4000

foot and 2000 horse to the Border; Lord Winter with fourteen ship set

sail, and was incommoded by a storm, in which vessels of d'Elboeuf, with

French reinforcements for the Regent, were, some lost, some driven back

to harbour. As in Jacobite times, French aid to the loyal party was

always unfortunate, and the arrival of Winter's English fleet in the

Forth caused d'Oysel to retreat out of Fife back to Leith. He had nearly

reached St. Andrews, where Knox dwelt in great agony of spirit. He had

"great need of a good horse," probably because, as in October 1559, money

was offered for his head. But private assassination had no terrors for

the Reformer. {163}

Knox, as he wrote to a friend on January 29, 1560, had forsaken all

public assemblies and retired to a life of study, because "I am judged

among ourselves too extreme." When the Duke of Norfolk, with the English

army, was moving towards Berwick, where he was to make a league with the

Protestant nobles of Scotland, Knox summoned Chatelherault, and the

gentlemen of his party, then in Glasgow. They wished Norfolk to come to

them by Carlisle, a thing inconvenient to Lord James. Knox chid them

sharply for sloth, and want of wisdom and discretion, praising highly the

conduct of Lord James. They had "unreasonable minds." "Wise men do

wonder what my Lord Duke's friends do mean, that are so slack and

backward in this Cause." The Duke did not, however, write to France with

an offer of submission. That story, ben trovato but not vero, rests on a

forgery by the Regent! {164} The fact is that the Duke was not a true

Protestant, his advisers, including his brother the Archbishop, were

Catholics, and the successes of d'Oysel in winter had terrified him; but,

seeing an English army at hand, he assented to the league with England at

Berwick, as "second person of the realm of Scotland" (February 27, 1560).

Elizabeth "accepted the realm of Scotland"--Chatelherault being

recognised as heir-apparent to the throne thereof--for so long as the

marriage of Queen Mary and Francis I. endured, and a year later. The

Scots, however, remain dutiful subjects of Queen Mary, they say, except

so far as lawless attempts to make Scotland a province of France are

concerned. Chatelherault did not _sign_ the league till May 10, with

Arran, Huntly, Morton (at last committed to the Cause), and the usual

leaders of the Congregation.

With the details of the siege of Leith, and with the attempts at

negotiation, we are not here concerned. France, in fact, was powerless

to aid the Regent. Since the arrival of Throckmorton in France, as

ambassador of England, in the previous summer (1559), the Huguenots had

been conspiring. They were in touch with Geneva, in the east; on the

north, in Brittany, they appear to have been stirred up by Tremaine, a

Cornish gentleman, and emissary of Cecil, who joined Throckmorton at

Blois, in March 1560. Stories were put about that the young French King

was a leper, and was kidnapping fair-haired children, in whose blood he

meant to bathe. The Huguenots had been conspiring ever since September

1559, when they seem to have sent to Elizabeth for aid in money. {165a}

More recently they had held a kind of secret convention at Nantes, and

summoned bands who were to lurk in the woods, concentrate at Amboise,

attack the chateau, slay the Guises, and probably put the King and Queen

Mary under the Prince de Conde, who was by the plotters expected to take

the part which Arran played in Scotland. It is far from certain that

Conde had accepted the position. In all this we may detect English

intrigue and the gold of Elizabeth. Calvin had been consulted; he

disapproved of the method of the plot, still more of the plot itself. But

he knew all about it. "All turns on killing Antonius," he wrote,

"Antonius" being either the Cardinal or the Duc de Guise. {165b}

The conspiracy failed at Amboise, on March 17-19, 1560. Throckmorton was

present, and describes the panic and perplexity of the Court, while he

eagerly asks to be promptly and secretly recalled, as suspicion has

fallen on himself. He sent Tremaine home through Brittany, where he

gathered proposals for betraying French towns to Elizabeth, rather

prematurely. Surrounded by treachery, and destitute of funds, the Guises

could not aid the Regent, and Throckmorton kept advising Cecil to "strike

while the iron was hot," and paralyse French designs. The dying Regent

of Scotland never lost heart in circumstances so desperate.

Even before the outbreak at Perth, Mary of Guise had been in very bad

health. When the English crossed the Border to beleaguer Leith, Lord

Erskine, who had maintained neutrality in Edinburgh Castle, allowed her

to come there to die (April 1, 1560).

On April 29, from the Castle of Edinburgh, she wrote a letter to d'Oysel,

commanding in Leith. She told him that she was suffering from dropsy;

"one of her legs begins to swell. . . . You know there are but three

days for the dropsy in this country." The letter was intercepted by her

enemies, and deciphered. {166a} On May 7, the English and Scots made an

assault, and were beaten back with loss of 1000 men. According to Knox,

the French stripped the fallen, and allowed the white carcases to lie

under the wall, as also happened in 1746, after the English defeat at

Falkirk. The Regent saw them, Knox says, from the Castle, and said they

were "a fair tapestry." "Her words were heard of some," and carried to

Knox, who, from the pulpit, predicted "that God should revenge that

contumely done to his image . . . even in such as rejoiced thereat. And

the very experience declared that he was not deceived, for within few

days thereafter (yea, some say that same day) began her belly and

loathsome legs to swell, and so continued, till that God did execute his

judgments upon her." {166b}

Knox wrote thus on May 16, 1566. {167a} He was a little irritated at

that time by Queen Mary's triumph over his friends, the murderers of

Riccio, and his own hasty flight from Edinburgh to Kyle. This may excuse

the somewhat unusual and even unbecoming nature of his language

concerning the dying lady, but his memory was quite wrong about his

prophecy. The symptoms of the Regent's malady had begun more than a week

before the Anglo-Scottish defeat at Leith, and the nature of her

complaint ought to have been known to the prophet's party, as her letter,

describing her condition, had been intercepted and deciphered. But the

deciphering may have been done in England, which would cause delay. We

cannot, of course, prove that Knox was informed as to the Regent's malady

before he prophesied; if so, he had forgotten the fact before he wrote as

he did in 1566. But the circumstances fail to demonstrate that he had a

supernormal premonition, or drew a correct deduction from Scripture, and

make it certain that the Regent did not fall ill after his prophecy.

The Regent died on June 11, half-an-hour after the midnight of June 10. A

report was written on June 13, from Edinburgh Castle, to the Cardinal of

Lorraine, by Captain James Cullen, who some twelve years later was hanged

by the Regent Morton. He says that since June 7, Lord James and Argyll,

Marischal, and Glencairn, had assiduously attended on the dying lady. Two

hours before her death she spoke apart for a whole hour with Lord James.

Chatelherault had seen her twice, and Arran once. {167b} Knox mentions

the visits of these lords, and says that d'Oysel was forbidden to speak

with her, "belike she would have bidden him farewell, for auld

familiarity was great."

According to Knox, the Regent admitted the errors of her policy,

attributing it to Huntly, who had deserted her, and to "the wicked

counsel of her friends," that is, her brothers. At the request of the

Lords, she saw Willock, and said, as she naturally would, that "there was

no salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "She was

compelled . . . to approve the chief head of our religion, wherein we

dissent from all papists and popery." Knox had strange ideas about the

creed which he opposed. "Of any virtue that ever was espied in King

James V. (_whose daughter she_," Mary Stuart, "_is called_"), "to this

hour (1566) we have seen no sparkle to appear." {168}

With this final fling at the chastity of Mary of Guise, the Reformer

takes leave of the woman whom he so bitterly hated. Yet, "Knox was not

given to the practice so common in his day, of assassinating reputations

by vile insinuations." Posterity has not accepted, contemporary English

historians did not accept, Knox's picture of Mary of Guise as the wanton

widow, the spawn of the serpent, who desired to cut the throat of every

Protestant in Scotland. She was placed by circumstances in a position

from which there was no issue. The fatal French marriage of her daughter

was a natural step, at a moment when Scottish independence could only be

maintained by help of France. Had she left the Regency in the hands of

Chatelherault, that is, of Archbishop Hamilton, the prelate was not the

man to put down Protestantism by persecution, and so save the situation.

If he had been, Mary of Guise was not the woman to abet him in drastic

violence. The nobles would have revolted against the feeble Duke. {169}

On July 6, the treaty of Edinburgh was concluded by representatives of

England (Cecil was one) and of France. The Reformers carried a point of

essential importance, the very point which Knox told Croft had been

secured by the Appointment of July 1559. All French forces were to be

dismissed the country, except one hundred and twenty men occupying Dunbar

and Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth. A clause by which Cecil thought he

had secured "the kernel" for England, and left the shell to France, a

clause recognising the "rightfulness" of Elizabeth's alliance with the

rebels, afforded Mary Stuart ground, or excuse, for never ratifying the

treaty.

It is needless here to discuss the question--was the Convention of

Estates held after the treaty, in August, a lawful Parliament? There was

doubt enough, at least, to make Protestants feel uneasy about the

security of the religious settlement achieved by the Convention.

Randolph, the English resident, foresaw that the Acts might be rescinded.

Before the Convention of Estates met, a thanksgiving day was held by the

brethren in St. Giles's, and Knox, if he was the author of the address to

the Deity, said with scientific precision, "Neither in us, nor yet in our

confederates was there any cause why thou shouldst have given unto us so

joyful and sudden a deliverance, for neither of us both ceased to do

wickedly, even in the midst of our greatest troubles." Elizabeth had

lied throughout with all her natural and cultivated gift of falsehood: of

the veracity of the brethren several instances have been furnished.

Ministers were next appointed to churches, Knox taking Edinburgh, while

Superintendents (who were by no means Bishops) were appointed, one to

each province. Erskine of Dun, a layman, was Superintendent of Angus. A

new anti-Catholic Kirk was thus set up on July 20, before the Convention

met and swept away Catholicism. {170} Knox preached vigorously on "the

prophet Haggeus" meanwhile, and "some" (namely Lethington, Speaker in the

Convention) "said in mockage, we must now forget ourselves, and bear the

barrow to build the houses of God." The unawakened Lethington, and the

gentry at large, merely dilapidated the houses of God, so that they

became unsafe, as well as odiously squalid. That such fervent piety

should grudge repairs of church buildings (many of them in a wretched

state already) is a fact creditable rather to the thrift than to the

state of grace of the Reformers. After all their protestations, full of

texts, the lords and lairds starved their preachers, but provided, by

roofless aisles and unglazed windows, for the ventilation of the kirks.

These men so bubbling over with gospel fervour were, in short, when it

came to practice, traitors and hypocrites; nor did Knox spare their

unseemly avarice. The cause of the poor, and of the preachers, lay near

his heart, and no man was more insensible of the temptations of wealth.

Lethington did not address the Parliament as Speaker till August 9. Never

had such a Parliament met in Scotland. One hundred and six barons, not

of the higher order, assembled; in 1567, when Mary was a prisoner and the

Regent Moray held the assembly, not nearly so many came together, nor on

any later occasion at this period. The newcomers claimed to sit "as of

old custom"; it was a custom long disused, and not now restored to

vitality.

A supplication was presented by "the Barons, gentlemen, Burgesses, and

others" to "the nobility and Estates" (of whom they do not seem to reckon

themselves part, contrasting _themselves_ with "yourselves"). They

reminded the Estates how they had asked the Regent "for freedom and

liberty of conscience with a godly reformation of abuses." They now, by

way of freedom of conscience, ask that Catholic doctrine "be abolished by

Act of this Parliament, and punishment appointed for the transgressors."

The Man of Sin has been distributing the whole patrimony of the Church,

so that "the trew ministers," the schools, and the poor are kept out of

their own. The actual clergy are all thieves and murderers and "rebels

to the lawful authority of Emperors, Kings, and Princes." Against these

charges (murder, rebellion, profligacy) they must answer now or be so

reputed. In fact, it was the nobles, rather than the Pope, who had been

robbing the Kirk, education, and the poor, which they continued to do, as

Knox attests. But as to doctrine, the barons and ministers were asked to

lay a Confession before the House. {172}

It will be observed that, in the petition, "Emperors, Kings, and Princes"

have "lawful authority" over the clergy. But that doctrine assumes,

tacitly, that such rulers are of Knox's own opinions: the Kirk later

resolutely stood up against kings like James VI., Charles I., and Charles

II.

The Confession was drawn up, presented, and ratified in a very few days:

it was compiled in four. The Huguenots in Paris, in 1559, "established a

record" by drawing up a Confession containing eighty articles in three

days. Knox and his coadjutors were relatively deliberate. They aver

that all points of belief necessary for salvation are contained in the

canonical books of the Bible. Their interpretation pertains to no man or

Church, but solely to "the spreit of God." That "spreit" must have

illuminated the Kirk as it then existed in Scotland, "for we dare not

receive and admit any interpretation which directly repugns to any

principal point of our faith, to any other _plain_ text of Scripture, or

yet unto the rule of charity."

As we, the preachers of the Kirk then extant, were apostate monks or

priests or artisans, about a dozen of us, in Scotland, mankind could not

be expected to regard "our" interpretation, "our faith" as infallible.

The framers of the Confession did not pretend that it was infallible.

They request that, "if any man will note in this our Confession any

article or sentence repugning to God's Holy Word," he will favour them

with his criticism in writing. As Knox had announced six years earlier,

that, "as touching the chief points of religion, I neither will give

place to man or angel . . . teaching the contrair to that which ye have

heard," a controversialist who thought it worth while to criticise the

Confession must have deemed himself at least an archangel. Two years

later, written criticism was offered, as we shall see, with a demand for

a written reply. The critic escaped arrest by a lucky accident.

The Confession, with practically no criticism or opposition, was passed

en bloc on August 17. The Evangel is candidly stated to be "death to the

sons of perdition," but the Confession is offered hopefully to "weak and

infirm brethren." Not to enter into the higher theology, we learn that

the sacraments can only be administered "by lawful ministers." We learn

that _they_ are "such as are appointed to the preaching of the Word, or

into whose mouth God has put some sermon of exhortation" and who are

"lawfully chosen thereto by some Kirk." Later, we find that rather more

than this, and rather more than some of the "trew ministeris" then had,

is required.

As the document reaches us, it appears to have been "mitigated" by

Lethington and Wynram, the Vicar of Bray of the Reformation. They

altered, according to the English resident, Randolph, "many words and

sentences, which sounded to proceed rather of some evil conceived opinion

than of any sound judgment." As Lethington certainly was not "a lawful

minister," it is surprising if Knox yielded to his criticism.

Lethington and Wynram also advised that the chapter on obedience to the

sovereign power should be omitted, as "an unfit matter to be treated at

this time," when it was not very obvious who the "magistrate" or

authority might be. In this sense Randolph, Arran's English friend,

wrote to Cecil. {174a} The chapter, however, was left standing. The

sovereign, whether in empire, kingdom, duke, prince, or in free cities,

was accepted as "of God's holy ordinance. To him chiefly pertains the

reformation of the religion," which includes "the suppression of idolatry

and superstition"; and Catholicism, we know, is idolatry. Superstition

is less easily defined, but we cannot doubt that, in Knox's mind, the

English liturgy was superstitious. {174b} To resist the Supreme Power,

"doing that which pertains to his charge" (that is, suppressing

Catholicism and superstition, among other things), is to resist God. It

thus appears that the sovereign is not so supreme but that he must be

disobeyed when his mandates clash with the doctrine of the Kirk. Thus

the "magistrate" or "authority"--the State, in fact--is limited by the

conscience of the Kirk, which may, if it pleases, detect idolatry or

superstition in some act of secular policy. From this theory of the Kirk

arose more than a century of unrest.

On August 24, the practical consequences of the Confession were set forth

in an Act, by which all hearers or celebrants of the Mass are doomed, for

the first offence, to mere confiscation of all their goods and to

corporal punishment: exile rewards a repetition of the offence: the third

is punished by death. "Freedom from a persecuting spirit is one of the

noblest features of Knox's character," says Laing; "neither led away by

enthusiasm nor party feelings nor success, to retaliate the oppressions

and atrocities that disgraced the adherents of popery." {174c} This is

an amazing remark! Though we do not know that Knox was ever "accessory

to the death of a single individual for his religious opinions," we do

know that he had not the chance; the Government, at most, and years

later, put one priest to death. But Knox always insisted, vainly, that

idolaters "must die the death."

To the carnal mind these rules appear to savour of harshness. The carnal

mind would not gather exactly what the new penal laws were, if it

confined its study to the learned Dr. M'Crie's Life of Knox. This

erudite man, a pillar of the early Free Kirk, mildly remarks, "The

Parliament . . . prohibited, under certain penalties, the celebration of

the Mass." He leaves his readers to discover, in the Acts of Parliament

and in Knox, what the "certain penalties" were. {175} The Act seems, as

Knox says about the decrees of massacre in Deuteronomy, "rather to be

written in a rage" than in a spirit of wisdom. The majority of the human

beings then in Scotland probably never had the dispute between the old

and new faiths placed before them lucidly and impartially. Very many of

them had never heard the ideas of Geneva stated at all. "So late as

1596," writes Dr. Hay Fleming, "there were above four hundred parishes,

not reckoning Argyll and the Isles, which still lacked ministers." "The

rarity of learned and godly men" of his own persuasion, is regretted by

Knox in the Book of Discipline. Yet Catholics thus destitute of

opportunity to know and recognise the Truth, are threatened with

confiscation, exile, and death, if they cling to the only creed which

they have been taught--after August 17, 1560. The death penalty was

threatened often, by Scots Acts, for trifles. In this case the graduated

scale of punishment shows that the threat is serious.

This Act sounds insane, but the Convention was wise in its generation.

Had it merely abolished the persecuting laws of the Church, Scotland

might never have been Protestant. The old faith is infinitely more

attractive to mankind than the new Presbyterian verity. A thing of slow

and long evolution, the Church had assimilated and hallowed the world-old

festivals of the year's changing seasons. She provided for the human

love of recreation. Her Sundays were holidays, not composed of gloomy

hours in stuffy or draughty kirks, under the current voice of the

preacher. Her confessional enabled the burdened soul to lay down its

weight in sacred privacy; her music, her ceremonies, the dim religious

light of her fanes, naturally awaken religious emotion. While these

things, with the native tendency to resist authority of any kind,

appealed to the multitude, the position of the Church, in later years,

recommended itself to many educated men in Scotland as more logical than

that of Knox; and convert after convert, in the noble class, slipped over

to Rome. The missionaries of the counter-Reformation, but for the

persecuting Act, would have arrived in a Scotland which did not

persecute, and the work of the Convention of 1560 might all have been

undone, had not the stringent Act been passed.

That Act apparently did not go so far as the preachers desired. Thus

Archbishop Hamilton, writing to Archbishop Beaton in Paris, the day after

the passing of the Act, says, "All these new preachers openly persuade

the nobility in the pulpit, to put violent hands, and slay all churchmen

that will not concur and adopt their opinion. They only reproach my Lord

Duke" (the Archbishop's brother), "that he will not begin first, and

either cause me to do as they do, or else to use rigour on me by

slaughter, sword, or, at least, perpetual prison." {177a} It is probable

that the Archbishop was well informed as to what the bigots were saying,

though he is not likely to have "sat under" them; moreover, he would hear

of their advice from his brother, the Duke, with whom he had just held a

long conference. {177b} Lesley, Bishop of Ross, in his "History,"

praises the humanity of the nobles, "for at this time few Catholics were

banished, fewer were imprisoned, and none were executed." The nobles

interfering, the threatened capital punishment was not carried out. Mob

violence, oppression by Protestant landlords, Kirk censure, imprisonment,

fine, and exile, did their work in suppressing idolatry and promoting

hypocrisy.

No doubt this grinding ceaseless daily process of enforcing Truth, did

not go far enough for the great body of the brethren, especially the

godly burgesses of the towns; indeed, as early as June 10, 1560, the

Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Edinburgh proclaimed that idolaters

must instantly and publicly profess their conversion before the Ministers

and Elders on the penalty of the pillory for the first offence,

banishment from the town for the second, and death for the third. {177c}

It must always be remembered that the threat of the death penalty often

meant, in practice, very little. It was denounced, under Mary of Guise

(February 9, 1559), against men who bullied priests, disturbed services,

and ate meat in Lent. It was denounced against shooters of wild fowl,

and against those, of either religious party, who broke the Proclamation

of October 1561. Yet "nobody seemed one penny the worse" as regards

their lives, though the punishments of fining and banishing were, on

occasions, enforced against Catholics.

We may marvel that, in the beginning, Catholic martyrs did not present

themselves in crowds to the executioner. But even under the rule of Rome

it would not be easy to find thirty cases of martyrs burned at the stake

by "the bloudie Bishops," between the fifteenth century and the martyrdom

of Myln. By 1560 the old Church was in such a hideous decline--with

ruffianly men of quality in high spiritual places; with priests who did

not attend Mass, and in many cases could not read; with churches left to

go to ruin; with license so notable that, in one foundation, the priest

is only forbidden to keep a _constant_ concubine--that faith had waxed

cold, and no Catholic felt "ripe" for martyrdom. The elements of a

League, as in France, did not exist. There was no fervently Catholic

town population like that of Paris; no popular noble warriors, like the

Ducs de Guise, to act as leaders. Thus Scotland, in this age, ran little

risk of a religious civil war. No organised and armed faction existed to

face the Congregation. When the counter-Reformation set in, many

Catholics endured fines and exile with constancy.

The theology of the Confession of Faith is, of course, Calvinistic. No

"works" are, technically, "good" which are not the work of the Spirit of

our Lord, dwelling in our hearts by faith. "Idolaters," and wicked

people, not having that spirit, can do no good works. The blasphemy that

"men who live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what

religion soever they have professed," is to be abhorred. "The Kirk is

invisible," consisting of the Elect, "who are known only to God." This

gave much cause of controversy to Knox's Catholic opponents. "The notes

of the true Church" are those of Calvin's. As to the Sacrament, though

the elements be not the _natural_ body of Christ, yet "the faithful, in

the right use of the Lord's Table, so do eat the body and drink the blood

of the Lord Jesus that He remains in them and they in Him . . . in such

conjunction with Christ Jesus as the natural man cannot comprehend."

This is a highly sacramental and confessedly mystical doctrine, not less

unintelligible to "the natural man" than the Catholic theory which Knox

so strongly reprobated. Alas, that men called Christian have shed seas

of blood over the precise sense of that touching command of our Lord,

which, though admitted to be incomprehensible, they have yet endeavoured

to comprehend and define!

A serious task for Knox was to draw up, with others, a "Book of the

Policy and Discipline of the Kirk," a task entrusted to them in April

1560. In politics, till January 1561, the Lords hoped that they might

induce Elizabeth (then entangled with Leicester, as Knox knew) to marry

Arran, but whether "Glycerium" (as Bishop Jewel calls her) had already

detected in "the saucy youth" "a half crazy fool," as Mr. Froude says, or

not, she firmly refused. She much preferred Lord Robert Dudley, whose

wife had just then broken her neck. The unfortunate Arran had fought

resolutely, Knox tells us, by the side of Lord James, in the winter of

1559, but he already, in 1560, showed strange moods, and later fell into

sheer lunacy. In December died "the young King of France, husband to our

Jezebel--unhappy Francis . . . he suddenly perished of a rotten ear . . .

in that deaf ear that never would hear the truth of God" (December 5,

1560). We have little of Knox's poetry, but he probably composed a

translation, in verse, of a Latin poem indited by one of "the godly in

France," whence he borrowed his phrase "a rotten ear" (aure putrefacta

corruit).

"Last Francis, that unhappy child,

His father's footsteps following plain,

To Christ's crying deaf ears did yield,

A rotten ear was then his bane."

The version is wonderfully close to the original Latin.

Meanwhile, Francis was hardly cold before Arran wooed his idolatrous

widow, Queen Mary, "with a gay gold ring." She did not respond

favourably, and "the Earl bare it heavily in his heart, and more heavily

than many would have wissed," says Knox, with whom Arran was on very

confidential terms. Knox does not rebuke his passion for Jezebel. He

himself "was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his

dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes," of whom we know very little, except that

she worked hard to lighten the labours of Knox's vast correspondence. He

had, as he says, "great intelligence both with the churches and some of

the Court of France," and was the first to receive news of the perilous

illness of the young King. He carried the tidings to the Duke and Lord

James, at the Hamilton house near Kirk o' Field, but would not name his

informant. Then came the news of the King's death from Lord Grey de

Wilton, at Berwick, and a Convention of the Nobles was proclaimed for

January 15, 1561, to "peruse newly over again" the Book of Discipline.

CHAPTER XIII: KNOX AND THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE

This Book of Discipline, containing the model of the Kirk, had been seen

by Randolph in August 1560, and he observed that its framers would not

come into ecclesiastical conformity with England. They were "severe in

that they profess, and loth to remit anything of that they have

received." As the difference between the Genevan and Anglican models

contributed so greatly to the Civil War under Charles I., the results may

be regretted; Anglicans, by 1643, were looked on as "Baal worshippers" by

the precise Scots.

In February 1561, Randolph still thought that the Book of Discipline was

rather in advance of what fallen human nature could endure. Idolatry, of

course, was to be removed universally; thus the Queen, when she arrived,

was constantly insulted about her religion. The Lawful Calling of

Ministers was explained; we have already seen that a lawful minister is a

preacher who can get a local set of men to recognise him as such. Knox,

however, before his return to Scotland, had advised the brethren to be

very careful in examining preachers before accepting them. The people

and "every several Congregation" have a right to elect their minister,

and, if they do not do so in six weeks, the Superintendent (a migratory

official, in some ways superior to the clergy, but subject to periodical

"trial" by the Assembly, who very soon became extinct), with his council,

presents a man who is to be examined by persons of sound judgment, and

next by the ministers and elders of the Kirk. Nobody is to be "violently

intrused" on any congregation. Nothing is said about an university

training; moral character is closely scrutinised. On the admission of a

new minister, some other ministers should preach "touching the obedience

which the Kirk owe to their ministers. . . . The people should be

exhorted to reverence and honour their chosen ministers as the servants

and ambassadors of the Lord Jesus, obeying the commandments which they

speak from God's mouth and Book, even as they would obey God himself. . . . "

{182}

The practical result of this claim on the part of the preachers to

implicit obedience was more than a century of turmoil, civil war,

revolution, and reaction. The ministers constantly preached political

sermons, and the State--the King and his advisers--was perpetually

arraigned by them. To "reject" them, "and despise their ministry and

exhortation" (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance),

was to "reject and despise" our Lord! If accused of libel, or treasonous

libel, or "leasing making," in their sermons, they demanded to be judged

by their brethren. Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any

other judicature? These pretensions, with the right to inflict

excommunication (in later practice to be followed by actual outlawry),

were made, we saw, when there were not a dozen "true ministers" in the

nascent Kirk, and, of course, the claims became more exorbitant when

"true ministers" were reckoned by hundreds. No State could submit to

such a clerical tyranny.

People who only know modern Presbyterianism have no idea of the despotism

which the Fathers of the Kirk tried, for more than a century, to enforce.

The preachers sat in the seats of the Apostles; they had the gift of the

Keys, the power to bind and loose. Yet the Book of Discipline permits no

other ceremony, at the induction of these mystically gifted men, than

"the public approbation of the people, and declaration of the chief

minister"--later there was no "_chief_ minister," there was "parity" of

ministers. Any other ceremony "we cannot approve"; "for albeit the

Apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing the miracle is ceased,

the using of the ceremony we judge it not necessary." The miracle had

_not_ ceased, if it was true that "the commandments" issued in

sermons--political sermons often--really deserved to be obeyed, as men

"would obey God himself." C'est la le miracle! There could be no more

amazing miracle than the infallibility of preachers! "The imposition of

hands" was, twelve years later, restored; but as far as infallible

sermons were concerned, the State agreed with Knox that "the miracle had

ceased."

The political sermons are sometimes justified by the analogy of modern

discussion in the press. But leading articles do not pretend to be

infallible, and editors do not assert a right to be obeyed by men, "even

as they would obey God himself." The preachers were often right, often

wrong: their sermons were good, or were silly; but what no State could

endure was the claim of preachers to implicit obedience.

The difficulty in finding really qualified ministers must be met by

fervent prayer, and by compulsion on the part of the Estates of

Parliament.

Failing ministers, Readers, capable of reading the Common Prayers

(presently it was Knox's book of these) and the Bible must be found; they

may later be promoted to the ministry.

Stationary ministers are to receive less sustenance than the migratory

Superintendents; the sons of the preachers must be educated, the

daughters "honestly dowered." The payment is mainly in "bolls" of meal

and malt. The state of the poor, "fearful and horrible" to say, is one

of universal contempt. Provision must be made for the aged and weak.

Superintendents, after election, are to be examined by all the ministers

of the province, and by three or more Superintendents. Other ceremonies

"we cannot allow." In 1581, a Scottish Catholic, Burne, averred that

Willock objected to ceremonies of Ordination, because people would say,

if these are necessary, what minister ordained _you_? The query was hard

to answer, so ceremonies of Ordination could not be allowed. The story

was told to Burne, he says, by an eyewitness, who heard Willock.

Every church must have a schoolmaster, who ought to be able to teach

grammar and Latin. Education should be universal: poor children of

ability must be enabled to pass on to the universities, through secondary

schools. At St. Andrews the three colleges were to have separate

functions, not clashing, and culminating in Divinity.

Whence are the funds to be obtained? Here the authors bid "your Honours"

"have respect to your poor brethren, the labourers of the ground, who by

these cruel beasts, the papists, have been so oppressed . . . " They

ought only to pay "reasonable teinds, that they may feel some benefit of

Christ Jesus, now preached unto them. With grief of heart we hear that

some gentlemen are now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the

papists, requiring of them whatsoever they paid to the Church, so that

the papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the

landlord or laird." Every man should have his own teinds, or tithes;

whereas, in fact, the great lay holders of tithes took them off other

men's lands, a practice leading to many blood-feuds. The attempt of

Charles I. to let "every man have his own tithes," and to provide the

preachers with a living wage, was one of the causes of the distrust of

the King which culminated in the great Civil War. But Knox could not

"recover for the Church her liberty and freedom, and that only for relief

of the poor." "_We speak not for ourselves_" the Book says, "but in

favour of the poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . The Church is only

bound to sustain and nourish her charges . . . to wit the Ministers of

the Kirk, the Poor, and the teachers of youth." The funds must be taken

out of the tithes, the chantries, colleges, chaplainries, and the

temporalities of Bishops, Deans, and cathedrals generally.

The ministers are to have their manses, and glebes of six acres; to this

many of the Lords assented, except, oddly enough, those redoubtable

leaders of the Congregation, Glencairn and Morton, with Marischal. All

the part of the book which most commands our sympathy, the most Christian

part of the book, regulating the disposition of the revenues of the

fallen Church for the good of the poor, of education, and of the Kirk,

remained a dead letter. The Duke, Arran, Lord James, and a few barons,

including the ruffian Andrew Ker of Faldonside, with Glencairn and

Ochiltree, signed it, in token of approval, but little came of it all.

Lethington, probably, was the scoffer who styled these provisions "devout

imaginations." The nobles and lairds, many of them, were converted, in

matter of doctrine; in conduct they were the most avaricious, bloody, and

treacherous of all the generations which had banded, revelled, robbed,

and betrayed in Scotland.

There is a point in this matter of the Kirk's claim to the patrimony of

the old Church which perhaps is generally misunderstood. That point is

luminous as regards the absolute disinterestedness of Knox and his

companions, both in respect to themselves and their fellow-preachers. The

Book of Discipline contains a sentence already quoted, conceived in what

we may justly style a chivalrous contempt of wealth. "Your Honours may

easily understand _that we speak not now for ourselves_, but in favour of

the Poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . " Not having observed a

point which "their Honours" were not the men to "understand easily,"

Father Pollen writes, "the new preachers were loudly _claiming for

themselves_ the property of the rivals whom they had displaced." {186}

For themselves they were claiming a few merks, and a few bolls of meal, a

decent subsistence. Mr. Taylor Innes points out that when, just before

Darnley's murder, Mary offered "a considerable sum for the maintenance of

the ministers," Knox and others said that, for their sustentation, they

"craved of the auditors the things that were necessary, as of duty the

pastors might justly crave of their flock. The General Assembly accepted

the Queen's gift, but only of necessity; it was by their flock that they

ought to be sustained. To take from others contrary to their will, whom

they serve not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable."

Among other things the preachers, who were left with a hard struggle for

bare existence, introduced a rule of honour scarcely known to the barons

and nobles, except to the bold Buccleuch who rejected an English pension

from Henry VIII., with a sympathetic explosion of strong language. The

preachers would not take gifts from England, even when offered by the

supporters of their own line of policy.

Knox's failure in his admirable attempt to secure the wealth of the old

Church for national purposes was, as it happened, the secular salvation

of the Kirk. Neither Catholicism nor Anglicanism could be fully

introduced while the barons and nobles held the tithes and lands of the

ancient Church. Possessing the wealth necessary to a Catholic or

Anglican establishment, they were resolutely determined to cling to it,

and oppose any Church except that which they starved. The bishops of

James I., Charles I., and Charles II. were detested by the nobles. Rarely

from them came any lordly gifts to learning and the Universities, while

from the honourably poor ministers such gifts could not come. The

Universities were founded by prelates of the old Church, doing their duty

with their wealth.

The arrangements for discipline were of the drastic nature which lingered

into the days of Burns and later. The results may be studied in the

records of Kirk Sessions; we have no reason to suppose that sexual

morality was at all improved, on the whole, by "discipline," though it

was easier to enforce "Sabbath observance." A graduated scale of

admonitions led up to excommunication, if the subject was refractory, and

to boycotting with civil penalties. The processes had no effect, or none

that is visible, in checking lawlessness, robbery, feuds, and

manslayings; and, after the Reformation, witchcraft increased to

monstrous proportions, at least executions of people accused of

witchcraft became very numerous, in spite of provision for sermons thrice

a week, and for weekly discussions of the Word.

The Book of Discipline, modelled on the Genevan scheme, and on that of

A'Lasco for his London congregation, rather reminds us of the "Laws" of

Plato. It was a well meant but impracticable ideal set before the

country, and was least successful where it best deserved success. It

certainly secured a thoroughly moral clergy, till, some twelve years

later, the nobles again thrust licentious and murderous cadets into the

best livings and the bastard bishoprics, before and during the Regency of

Morton. Their example did not affect the genuine ministers, frugal God-

fearing men.

CHAPTER XIV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY, 1561

In discussing the Book of Discipline, that great constructive effort

towards the remaking of Scotland, we left Knox at the time of the death

of his first wife. On December 20, 1560, he was one of some six

ministers who, with more numerous lay representatives of districts, sat

in the first General Assembly. They selected some new preachers, and

decided that the church of Restalrig should be destroyed as a monument of

idolatry. A fragment of it is standing yet, enclosing tombs of the wild

Logans of Restalrig.

The Assembly passed an Act against lawless love, and invited the Estates

and Privy Council to "use sharp punishment" against some "idolaters,"

including Eglintoun, Cassilis, and Quentin Kennedy, Abbot of Crosraguel,

who disputed later against Knox, the Laird of Gala (a Scott) and others.

In January 1561 a Convention of nobles and lairds at Edinburgh perused

the Book of Discipline, and some signed it, platonically, while there was

a dispute between the preachers and certain Catholics, including Lesley,

later Bishop of Ross, an historian, but no better than a shifty and

dangerous partisan of Mary Stuart. The Lord James was selected as an

envoy to Mary, in France. He was bidden to refuse her even the private

performance of the rites of her faith, but declined to go to that

extremity; the question smouldered through five years. Randolph expected

"a mad world" on Mary's return; he was not disappointed.

Meanwhile the Catholic Earls of the North, of whom Huntly was the fickle

leader, with Bothwell, "come to work what mischief he can," are accused

by Knox of a design to seize Edinburgh, before the Parliament in May

1561. Nothing was done, but there was a very violent Robin Hood riot;

the magistrates were besieged and bullied, Knox declined to ask for the

pardon of the brawlers, and, after excursions and alarms, "the whole

multitude was excommunicate" until they appeased the Kirk. They may have

borne the spiritual censure very unconcernedly.

The Catholic Earls now sent Lesley to get Mary's ear before the Lord

James could reach her. Lesley arrived on April 14, with the offer to

raise 20,000 men, if Mary would land in Huntly's region. They would

restore the Mass in their bounds, and Mary would be convoyed by Captain

Cullen, a kinsman of Huntly, and already mentioned as the Captain of the

Guards after Riccio's murder.

It is said by Lesley that Mary had received, from the Regent, her mother,

a description of the nobles of Scotland. If so, she knew Huntly for the

ambitious traitor he was, a man peculiarly perfidious and self-seeking,

with a son who might be thrust on her as a husband, if once she were in

Huntly's hands. The Queen knew that he had forsaken her mother's cause;

knew, perhaps, of his old attempt to betray Scotland to England, and she

was aware that no northern Earl had raised his banner to defend the

Church. She, therefore, came to no agreement with Lesley, but confided

more in the Lord James, who arrived on the following day. Mary knew her

brother's character fairly well, and, if Lesley says with truth that he

now asked for, and was promised, the earldom of Moray, the omen was evil

for Huntly, who practically held the lands. {191a} A bargain, on this

showing, was initiated. Lord James was to have the earldom, and he got

it; Mary was to have his support.

Much has been said about Lord James's betrayal to Throckmorton of Mary's

intentions, as revealed by her to himself. But what Lord James said to

Throckmorton amounts to very little. I am not certain that, both in

Paris with Throckmorton, and in London with Elizabeth and Cecil, he did

not moot his plan for friendship between Mary and Elizabeth, and

Elizabeth's recognition of Mary's rights as her heir. {191b} Lord James

proposed all this to Elizabeth in a letter of August 6, 1561. {191c} He

had certainly discussed this admirable scheme with Lord Robert Dudley at

Court, in May 1561, on his return from France. {191d} Nothing could be

more statesmanlike and less treacherous.

Meanwhile (May 27, 1561) the brethren presented a supplication to the

Parliament, with clauses, which, if conceded, would have secured the

stipends of the preachers. The prayers were granted, in promise, and a

great deal of church wrecking was conscientiously done; the Lord James,

on his return, paid particular attention to idolatry in his hoped for

earldom, but the preachers were not better paid.

Meanwhile the Protestants looked forward to the Queen's arrival with

great searchings of heart. She had not ratified the treaty of Leith, but

already Cardinal Guise hoped that she and Elizabeth would live in

concord, and heard that Mary ceded all claims to the English throne in

return for Elizabeth's promise to declare her the heir, if she herself

died childless (August 21). {192}

Knox, who had not loved Mary of Guise, was not likely to think well of

her daughter. Mary, again, knew Knox as the chief agitator in the

tumults that embittered her mother's last year, and shortened her life.

In France she had threatened to deal with him severely, ignorant of his

power and her own weakness. She could not be aware that Knox had

suggested to Cecil opposition to her succession to the throne on the

ground of her sex. Knox uttered his forebodings of the Queen's future:

they were as veracious as if he had really been a prophet. But he was,

to an extent which can only be guessed, one of the causes of the

fulfilment of his own predictions. To attack publicly, from the pulpit,

the creed and conduct of a girl of spirit; to provoke cruel insults to

her priests whom she could not defend; was apt to cause, at last, in

great measure that wild revolt of temper which drove Mary to her doom.

Her health suffered frequently from the attempt to bear with a smiling

face such insults as no European princess, least of all Elizabeth, would

have endured for an hour. There is a limit to patience, and before Mary

passed that limit, Randolph and Lethington saw, and feebly deplored, the

amenities of the preacher whom men permitted to "rule the roast." "Ten

thousand swords" do not leap from their scabbards to protect either the

girl Mary Stuart or the woman Marie Antoinette.

Not that natural indignation was dead, but it ended in words. People

said, "The Queen's Mass and her priests will we maintain; this hand and

this rapier will fight in their defence." So men bragged, as Knox

reports, {193a} but when after Mary's arrival priests were beaten or

pilloried, not a hand stirred to defend them, not a rapier was drawn. The

Queen might be as safely as she was deeply insulted through her faith.

She was not at this time devoutly ardent in her creed, though she often

professed her resolution to abide in it. Gentleness might conceivably

have led her even to adopt the Anglican faith, or so it was deemed by

some observers, but insolence and outrage had another effect on her

temper.