Mary landed at Leith in a thick fog on August 19, 1561. She was now in a

country where she lay under sentence of death as an idolater. Her

continued existence was illegal. With her came Mary Seton, Mary Beaton,

Mary Livingstone, and Mary Fleming, the comrades of her childhood; and

her uncles, the Duc d'Aumale, Francis de Lorraine, and the noisy Marquis

d'Elboeuf. She was not very welcome. As late as August 9, Randolph

reports that her brother, Lord James, Lethington, and Morton "wish, as

you do, she might be stayed yet for a space, and if it were not for their

obedience sake, some of them care not though they never see her face."

{193b} None the less, on June 8 Lord James tells Mary that he had given

orders for her palace to be prepared by the end of July. He informs her

that "many" hope that she will never come home. Nothing is "so necessary

. . . as your Majesty's own presence"; and he hopes she will arrive

punctually. If she cannot come she should send her commission to some of

her Protestant advisers, by no means including the Archbishop of St.

Andrews (Hamilton), with whom he will never work. It is not easy to see

why Lord James should have wished that Mary "might be stayed," unless he

merely dreaded her arrival while Elizabeth was in a bad temper. His

letter to Elizabeth of August 6 is incompatible with treachery on his

part. "Mr. Knox is determined to abide the uttermost, and others will

not leave him till God have taken his life and theirs together." Of what

were these heroes afraid? A "familiar," a witch, of Lady Huntly's

predicted that the Queen would never arrive. "If false, I would she were

burned for a witch," adds honest Randolph. Lethington deemed his "own

danger not least." Two galleys full of ladies are not so alarming; did

these men, practically hinting that English ships should stop their

Queen, think that the Catholics in Scotland were too strong for them?

Not a noble was present to meet Mary when in the fog and filth of Leith

she touched Scottish soil, except her natural brother, Lord Robert. {194}

The rest soon gathered with faces of welcome. She met some Robin Hood

rioters who lay under the law, and pardoned these roisterers (with their

excommunication could she interfere?), because, says Knox, she was

instructed that they had acted "in despite of the religion." Their

festival had been forbidden under the older religion, as it happens, in

1555, and was again forbidden later by Mary herself.

All was mirth till Sunday, when the Queen's French priest celebrated Mass

in her own chapel before herself, her three uncles, and Montrose. The

godly called for the priest's blood, but Lord James kept the door, and

his brothers protected the priest. Disappointed of blood, "the godly

departed with great grief of heart," collecting in crowds round Holyrood

in the afternoon. Next day the Council proclaimed that, till the Estates

assembled and deliberated, no innovation should be made in the religion

"publicly and universally standing." The Queen's servants and others

from France must not be molested--on pain of death, the usual empty

threat. They were assaulted, and nobody was punished for the offence.

Arran alone made a protest, probably written by Knox. Who but Knox could

have written that the Mass is "much more abominable and odious in the

sight of God" than murder! Many an honest brother was conspicuously of

the opinion which Arran's protest assigned to Omnipotence. Next Sunday

Knox "thundered," and later regretted that "I did not that I might have

done" (caused an armed struggle?), . . . "for God had given unto me

credit with many, who would have put into execution God's judgments if I

would only have consented thereto." Mary might have gone the way of

Jezebel and Athaliah but for the mistaken lenity of Knox, who later

"asked God's mercy" for not being more vehement. In fact, he rather

worked "to slokin that fervency." {195} Let us hope that he is forgiven,

especially as Randolph reports him extremely vehement in the pulpit. His

repentance was publicly expressed shortly before the murder of Riccio.

(In December 1565, probably, when the Kirk ordered the week's fast that,

as it chanced, heralded Riccio's doom.) Privately to Cecil, on October

7, 1561, he uttered his regret that he had been so deficient in zeal.

Cecil had been recommending moderation. {196}

On August 26, Randolph, after describing the intimidation of the priest,

says "John Knox thundereth out of the pulpit, so that I fear nothing so

much as that one day he will mar all. He ruleth the roast, and of him

all men stand in fear." In public at least he did not allay the wrath of

the brethren.

On August 26, or on September 2, Knox had an interview with the Queen,

and made her weep. Randolph doubted whether this was from anger or from

grief. Knox gives Mary's observations in the briefest summary; his own

at great length, so that it is not easy to know how their reasoning

really sped. Her charges were his authorship of the "Monstrous Regiment

of Women"; that he caused great sedition and slaughter in England; and

that he was accused of doing what he did by necromancy. The rest is

summed up in "&c."

He stood to his guns about the "Monstrous Regiment," and generally took

the line that he merely preached against "the vanity of the papistical

religion" and the deceit, pride, and tyranny of "that Roman Antichrist."

If one wishes to convert a young princess, bred in the Catholic faith, it

is not judicious to begin by abusing the Pope. This too much resembles

the arbitrary and violent method of Peter in The Tale of a Tub (by Dr.

Jonathan Swift); such, however, was the method of Knox.

Mary asking if he denied her "just authority," Knox said that he was as

well content to live under her as Paul under Nero. This, again, can

hardly be called an agreeable historical parallel! Knox hoped that he

would not hurt her or her authority "so long as ye defile not your hands

with the blood of the saints of God," as if Mary was panting to

distinguish herself in that way. His hope was unfulfilled. No "saints"

suffered, but he ceased not to trouble.

Knox also said that if he had wanted "to trouble your estate because you

are a woman, I might have chosen a time more convenient for that purpose

than I can do now, when your own presence is in the realm." He _had_, in

fact, chosen the convenient time in his letter to Cecil, already quoted

(July 19, 1559), but he had not succeeded in his plan. He said that

nobody could _prove_ that the question of discarding Mary, on the ground

of her sex, "was at any time moved in public or in secret." Nobody could

_prove_ it, for nobody could publish his letter to Cecil. Probably he

had this in his mind. He did not say that the thing had not happened,

only that "he was assured that neither Protestant nor papist shall be

able to prove that any such question was at any time moved, either in

public or in secret." {197}

He denied that he had caused sedition in England, nor do we know what

Mary meant by this charge. His appeals, from abroad, to a Phinehas or

Jehu had not been answered. As to magic, he always preached against the

practice.

Mary then said that Knox persuaded the people to use religion not allowed

by their princes. He justified himself by biblical precedents, to which

she replied that Daniel and Abraham did not resort to the sword. They

had not the chance, he answered, adding that subjects might resist a

prince who exceeded his bounds, as sons may confine a maniac father.

The Queen was long silent, and then said, "I perceive my subjects shall

obey you and not me." Knox said that all should be subject unto God and

His Church; and Mary frankly replied, "I will defend the Church of Rome,

for I think that it is the true Church of God." She could not defend it!

Knox answered with his wonted urbanity, that the Church of Rome was a

harlot, addicted to "all kinds of fornication."

He was so accustomed to this sort of rhetoric that he did not deem it out

of place on this occasion. His admirers, familiar with his style, forget

its necessary effect on "a young princess unpersuaded," as Lethington put

it. Mary said that her conscience was otherwise minded, but Knox knew

that all consciences of "man or angel" were wrong which did not agree

with his own. The Queen had to confess that in argument as to the

unscriptural character of the Mass, he was "owre sair" for her. He said

that he wished she would "hear the matter reasoned to the end." She may

have desired that very thing: "Ye may get that sooner than ye believe,"

she said; but Knox expressed his disbelief that he would ever get it.

Papists would never argue except when "they were both judge and party."

Knox himself never answered Ninian Winzet, who, while printing his

polemic, was sought for by the police of the period, and just managed to

escape.

There was, however, a champion who, on November 19, challenged Knox and

the other preachers to a discussion, either orally or by interchange of

letters. This was Mary's own chaplain, Rene Benoit. Mary probably knew

that he was about to offer to meet "the most learned John Knox and other

most erudite men, called ministers"; it is thus that Rene addresses them

in his "Epistle" of November 19.

He implores them not to be led into heresy by love of popularity or of

wealth; neither of which advantages the preachers enjoyed, for they were

detested by loose livers, and were nearly starved. Benoit's little

challenge, or rather request for discussion, is a model of courtesy. Knox

did not meet him in argument, as far as we are aware; but in 1562,

Fergusson, minister of Dunfermline, replied in a tract full of

scurrility. One quite unmentionable word occurs, and "impudent lie,"

"impudent and shameless shavelings," "Baal's chaplains that eat at

Jezebel's table," "pestilent papistry," "abominable mass," "idol

Bishops," "we Christians and you Papists," and parallels between Benoit

and "an idolatrous priest of Bethel," between Mary and Jezebel are among

the amenities of this meek servant of Christ in Dunfermline.

Benoit presently returned to France, and later was confessor to Henri IV.

The discussion which Mary anticipated never occurred, though her champion

was ready. Knox does not refer to this affair in his "History," as far

as I am aware. {199} Was Rene the priest whom the brethren menaced and

occasionally assaulted?

Considering her chaplain's offer, it seems not unlikely that Mary was

ready to listen to reasoning, but to call the Pope "Antichrist," and the

Church "a harlot," is not argument. Knox ended his discourse by wishing

the Queen as blessed in Scotland as Deborah was in Israel. The mere fact

that Mary spoke with him "makes the Papists doubt what shall come of the

world," {200a} says Randolph; and indeed nobody knows what possibly might

have come, had Knox been sweetly reasonable. But he told his friends

that, if he was not mistaken, she had "a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an

indurate heart against God and His truth." She showed none of these

qualities in the conversation as described by himself; but her part in it

is mainly that of a listener who returns not railing with railing.

Knox was going about to destroy the scheme of les politiques, Randolph,

Lethington, and the Lord James. They desired peace and amity with

England, and the two Scots, at least, hoped to secure these as the

Cardinal Guise did, by Mary's renouncing all present claim to the English

throne, in return for recognition as heir, if Elizabeth died without

issue. Elizabeth, as we know her, would never have granted these terms,

but Mary's ministers, Lethington then in England, Lord James at home,

tried to hope. {200b} Lord James had heard Mary's outburst to Knox about

defending her own insulted Church, but he was not nervously afraid that

she would take to dipping her hands in the blood of the saints. Neither

he nor Lethington could revert to the old faith; they had pecuniary

reasons, as well as convictions, which made that impossible.

Lethington, returned to Edinburgh (October 25), spoke his mind to Cecil.

"The Queen behaves herself . . . as reasonably as we can require: if

anything be amiss the fault is rather in ourselves. You know the

vehemency of Mr. Knox's spirit which cannot be bridled, and yet doth

utter sometimes such sentences as cannot easily be digested by a weak

stomach. I would wish he should deal with her more gently, being a young

princess unpersuaded. . . . Surely in her comporting with him she

declares a wisdom far exceeding her age." {201a} Vituperation is not

argument, and gentleness is not unchristian. St. Paul did not revile the

gods of Felix and Festus.

But, prior to these utterances of October, the brethren had been baiting

Mary. On her public entry (which Knox misdates by a month) her idolatry

was rebuked by a pageant of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Huntly managed to

stop a burning in effigy of a priest at the Mass. They never could cease

from insulting the Queen in the tenderest point. The magistrates next

coupled "mess-mongers" with notorious drunkards and adulterers, "and such

filthy persons," in a proclamation, so the Provost and Bailies were

"warded" (Knox says) in the Tolbooth. Knox blamed Lethington and Lord

James, in a letter to Cecil; {201b} in his "History" he says, "God be

merciful to some of our own." {201c}

The Queen herself, as a Papist, was clearly insulted in the proclamation.

Moray and Lethington, the latter touched by her "readiness to hear," and

her gentleness in the face of Protestant brutalities; the former,

perhaps, lured by the hope of obtaining, as the price of his alliance,

the earldom of Moray, were by the end of October still attempting to

secure amity between her and Elizabeth, and to hope for the best, rather

than drive the Queen wild by eternal taunts and menaces. The preachers

denounced her rites at Hallowmass (All Saints), and a servant of her

brother, Lord Robert, beat a priest; but men actually doubted whether

subjects might interfere between the Queen and her religion. There was a

discussion on this point between the preachers and the nobles, and the

Church in Geneva (Calvin) was to be consulted. Knox offered to write,

but Lethington said that he would write, as much stood on the

"information"; that is, on the manner of stating the question. Lethington

did not know, and Knox does not tell us in his "History" that he had

himself, a week earlier, put the matter before Calvin in his own way.

Even Lord James, he says to Calvin, though the Abdiel of godliness, "is

afraid to overthrow that idol by violence"--idolum illud missalicum.

{202}

Knox's letter to Calvin represents the Queen as alleging that he has

already answered the question, declaring that Knox's party has no right

to interfere with the Royal mass. This rumour Knox disbelieves. He adds

that Arran would have written, but was absent.

Apparently Arran did write to Calvin, anonymously, and dating from

London, November 18, 1561. The letter, really from Scotland, is in

French. The writer acknowledges the receipt, about August 20, of an

encouraging epistle from Calvin. He repeats Knox's statements, in the

main, and presses for a speedy reply. He says that he goes seldom to

Court, both on account of "that idol," and because "sobriety and virtue"

have been exiled. {203a} As Arran himself "is known to have had company

of a good handsome wench, a merchant's daughter," which led to a riot

with Bothwell, described by Randolph (December 27, 1561), his own "virtue

and sobriety" are not conspicuous. {203b} He was in Edinburgh on

November 15-19, and the London date of his anonymous letter is a blind.

{203c}

It does not appear that Calvin replied to Knox, and to the anonymous

correspondent, in whom I venture to detect Arran; or, if he answered, his

letter was probably unfavourable to Knox, as we shall argue when the

subject later presents itself.

Finally--"the votes of the Lords prevailed against the ministers"; the

Queen was allowed her Mass, but Lethington, a minister of the Queen, did

not consult a foreigner as to the rights of her subjects against her

creed.

The lenity of Lord James was of sudden growth. At Stirling he and Argyll

had gallantly caused the priests to leave the choir "with broken heads

and bloody ears," the Queen weeping. So Randolph reported to Cecil

(September 24).

Why her brother, foremost to insult Mary and her faith, unless Randolph

errs, in September, took her part in a few weeks, we do not know. At

Perth, Mary was again offended, and suffered in health by reason of the

pageants; "they did too plainly condemn the errors of the world. . . . I

hear she is troubled with such sudden passions after any great unkindness

or grief of mind," says Randolph. She was seldom free from such godly

chastisements. At Perth, however, some one gave her a cross of five

diamonds with pendant pearls.

Meanwhile the statesmen did not obey the Ministers as men ought to obey

God: a claim not easily granted by carnal politicians.

CHAPTER XV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1561-1564

Had Mary been a mere high-tempered and high-spirited girl, easily harmed

in health by insults to herself and her creed, she might now have turned

for support to Huntly, Cassilis, Montrose, and the other Earls who were

Catholic or "unpersuaded." Her great-grandson, Charles II., when as

young as she now was, did make the "Start"--the schoolboy attempt to run

away from the Presbyterians to the loyalists of the North. But Mary had

more self-control.

The artful Randolph found himself as hardly put to it now, in diplomacy,

as the Cardinal's murderers had done, in war, when they met the

scientific soldier, Strozzi. "The trade is now clean cut off from me,"

wrote Randolph (October 27); "I have to traffic now with other merchants

than before. They know the value of their wares, and in all places how

the market goeth. . . . Whatsoever policy is in all the chief and best

practised heads of France; whatsoever craft, falsehood, or deceit is in

all the subtle brains of Scotland," said the unscrupulous agent, "is

either fresh in this woman's memory, or she can bring it out with a wet

finger." {205}

Mary, in fact, was in the hands of Lethington (a pensioner of Elizabeth)

and of Lord James: "subtle brains" enough. _She_ was the "merchandise,"

and Lethington and Lord James wished to make Elizabeth acknowledge the

Scottish Queen as her successor, the alternative being to seek her price

as a wife for an European prince. An "union of hearts" with England

might conceivably mean Mary's acceptance of the Anglican faith. It is

not a kind thing to say about Mary, but I suspect that, if assured of the

English succession, she might have gone over to the Prayer Book. In the

first months of her English captivity (July 1568) Mary again dallied with

the idea of conversion, for the sake of freedom. She told the Spanish

Ambassador that "she would sooner be murdered," but if she could have

struck her bargain with Elizabeth, I doubt that she would have chosen the

Prayer Book rather than the dagger or the bowl. {206a} Her conversion

would have been bitterness as of wormwood to Knox. In his eyes

Anglicanism was "a bastard religion," "a mingle-mangle now commanded in

your kirks." "Peculiar services appointed for Saints' days, diverse

Collects as they falsely call them in remembrance of this or that Saint .

. . are in my conscience no small portion of papistical superstition."

{206b} "Crossing in Baptism is a diabolical invention; kneeling at the

Lord's table, mummelling," (uttering the responses, apparently), "or

singing of the Litany." All these practices are "diabolical inventions,"

in Knox's candid opinion, "with Mr. Parson's pattering of his constrained

prayers, and with the mass-munging of Mr. Vicar, and of his wicked

companions . . ." (A blank in the MS.) "Your Ministers, before for the

most part, were none of Christ's ministers, but mass-mumming priests." He

appears to speak of the Anglican Church as it was under Edward VI. (To

Mrs. Locke, Dieppe, April 6, 1559.) {207a} As Elizabeth brought in

"cross and candle," her Church must have been odious to our Reformer.

Calvin had regarded the "silly things" in our Prayer Book as "endurable,"

not so Knox. Before he came back to Scotland, the Reformers were content

with the English Prayer Book. By rejecting it, Knox and his allies

disunited Scotland and England.

Knox's friend Arran was threatening to stir up the Congregation for the

purpose of securing him in the revenues of three abbeys, including St.

Andrews, of which Lord James was Prior. The extremists raised the

question, "whether the Queen, being an idolater, may be obeyed in all

civil and political actions." {207b}

Knox later made Chatelherault promise this obedience; what his views were

in November 1561 we know not. Lord James was already distrusted by his

old godly friends; it was thought he would receive what he had long

desired, the Earldom of Moray (November 11, 1561), and the precise

professors meditated a fresh revolution. "It must yet come to a new

day," they said. {207c} Those about Arran were discontented, and nobody

was more in his confidence than Knox, but at this time Arran was absent

from Edinburgh; was at St. Andrews.

Meanwhile, at Court, "the ladies are merry, dancing, lusty, and fair,"

wrote Randolph, who flirted with Mary Beaton (November 18); and long

afterwards, in 1578, when she was Lady Boyne, spoke of her as "a very

dear friend." Knox complains that the girls danced when they "got the

house alone"; not a public offence! He had his intelligencers in the

palace.

There was, on November 16, a panic in the unguarded palace: {208a} "the

poor damsels were left alone," while men hid in fear of nobody knew what,

except a rumour that Arran was coming, with his congregational friends,

"to take away the Queen." The story was perhaps a fable, but Arran had

been uttering threats. Mary, however, expected to be secured by an

alliance with Elizabeth. "The accord between the two Queens will quite

overthrow them" (the Bishops), "and they say plainly that she cannot

return a true Christian woman," writes Randolph. {208b}

Lethington and Randolph both suspected that if Mary abandoned idolatry,

it would be after conference with Elizabeth, and rather as being

converted by that fair theologian than as compelled by her subjects.

Unhappily Elizabeth never would meet Mary, who, for all that we know,

might at this hour have adopted the Anglican via media, despite her

protests to Knox and to the Pope of her fidelity to Rome. Like Henri

IV., she may at this time have been capable of preferring a crown--that

of England--to a dogma. Her Mass, Randolph wrote, "is rather for despite

than devotion, for those that use it care not a straw for it, and jest

sometimes against it." {208c}

Randolph, at this juncture, reminded Mary that advisers of the Catholic

party had prevented James V. from meeting Henry VIII. She answered,

"Something is reserved for us that was not then," possibly hinting at her

conversion. Lord James shared the hopes of Lethington and Randolph. "The

Papists storm, thinking the meeting of the queens will overthrow Mass and

all."

The Ministers of Mary, les politiques, indulged in dreams equally

distasteful to the Catholics and to the more precise of the godly; dreams

that came through the Ivory Gate; with pictures of the island united, and

free from the despotism of Giant Pope and Giant Presbyter. {209} A

schism between the brethren and their old leaders and advisers, Lord

James and Lethington, was the result. At the General Assembly of

December 1561, the split was manifest. The parties exchanged

recriminations, and there was even question of the legality of such

conventions as the General Assembly. Lethington asked whether the Queen

"allowed" the gathering. Knox (apparently) replied, "Take from us the

freedom of Assemblies, and take from us the Evangel . . ." He defended

them as necessary for order among the preachers; but the objection, of

course, was to their political interferences. The question was to be

settled for Cromwell in his usual way, with a handful of hussars. It was

now determined that the Queen might send Commissioners to the Assembly to

represent her interests.

The plea of the godly that Mary should ratify the Book of Discipline was

countered by the scoffs of Lethington. He and his brothers ever

tormented Knox by persiflage. Still the preachers must be supported, and

to that end, by a singular compromise, the Crown assumed dominion over

the property of the old Church, a proceeding which Mary, if a good

Catholic, could not have sanctioned. The higher clergy retained

two-thirds of their benefices, and the other third was to be divided

between the preachers and the Queen. Vested rights, those of the

prelates, and the interests of the nobles to whom, in the troubles, they

had feued parts of their property, were thus secured; while the preachers

were put off with a humble portion. Among the abbeys, that of St.

Andrews, held by the good Lord James, was one of the richest. He appears

to have retained all the wealth, for, as Bishop Keith says, "the grand

gulf that swallowed up the whole extent of the thirds were pensions given

gratis by the Queen to those about the Court . . . of which last the Earl

of Moray was always sure to obtain the thirds of his priories of St.

Andrews and Pittenweem." In all, the whole reformed clergy received

annually (but not in 1565-66) 24,231 pounds, 17s. 7d. Scots, while Knox

and four superintendents got a few chalders of wheat and "bear." In

1568, when Mary had fallen, a gift of 333 pounds, 6s. 8d. was made to

Knox from the fund, about a seventh of the money revenue of the Abbey of

St. Andrews. {210} Nobody can accuse Knox of enriching himself by the

Revolution. "In the stool of Edinburgh," he declared that two parts were

being given to the devil, "and the third must be divided between God and

the devil," between the preachers and the Queen, and the Earl of Moray,

among others. The eminently godly Laird of Pitarro had the office of

paying the preachers, in which he was so niggardly that the proverb ran,

"The good Laird of Pitarro was an earnest professor of Christ, but the

great devil receive the Comptroller."

It was argued that "many Lords have not so much to spend" as the

preachers; and this was not denied (if the preachers were paid), but it

was said the Lords had other industries whereby they might eke out their

revenues. Many preachers, then or later, were driven also to other

industries, such as keeping public-houses. {211a} Knox, at this period,

gracefully writes of Mary, "we call her not a hoore." When she scattered

his party after Riccio's murder, he went the full length of the

expression, in his "History."

"Simplicity," says Thucydides, "is no small part of a noble nature," and

Knox was now to show simplicity in conduct, and in his narrative of a

very curious adventure.

The Hamiltons had taken little but loss by joining the Congregation.

Arran could not recover his claims, on whatever they were founded, over

the wealth of St. Andrews and Dunfermline. Chatelherault feared that

Mary would deprive him of his place of refuge, the castle of Dumbarton,

to which he confessed that his right was "none," beyond a verbal promise

of a nineteen years "farm" (when given we know not), from Mary of Guise.

{211b} Randolph began to believe that Arran really had contemplated a

raid on Mary at Holyrood, where she had no guards. {211c} "Why," asked

Arran, "was it not as easy to take her out of the Abbey, as once it had

been intended to do with her mother?"

Here were elements of trouble, and Knox adds that, according to the

servants of Chatelherault, Huntly and the Hamiltons devised to slay Lord

James, who in January received the Earldom of Moray, but bore the title

of Earl of Mar, which earldom he held for a brief space. {212a} Huntly

had claims on Moray, and hence hated Lord James. Arran was openly

sending messengers to France; "his councils are too patent." Randolph at

the same time found Knox and the preachers "as wilfull as learned, which

heartily I lament" (January 30). The rumour that Mary had been persuaded

by the Cardinal to turn Anglican "makes them run almost wild" (February

12). {212b} If the Queen were an Anglican the new Kirk would be in an

ill way. Arran still sent retainers to France, and was reported to speak

ill of Mary (February 21), but the Duke tried to win Randolph to a

marriage between Arran and the Queen. The intended bridegroom lay abed

for a week, "tormented by imaginations," but was contented, not to be

reconciled with Bothwell, but to pass his misdeeds in "oblivion," {212c}

as he declared to the Privy Council (February 20).

In these threatening circumstances Bothwell made Knox's friend, Barron, a

rich burgess who "financed" the Earl, introduce him to our Reformer. The

Earl explained that his feud with Arran was very expensive; he had for

his safety to keep "a number of wicked and unprofitable men about

him"--his "Lambs," the Ormistouns, {213} young Hay of Tala, probably, and

the rest. He therefore repented, and wished to be reconciled to Arran.

Knox, pleased at being a reconciler where nobler men had failed, and

moved, after long refusal, by the entreaties of the godly, as he tells

Mrs. Locke, advised Bothwell first to be reconciled to God. So Bothwell

presently was, going to sermon for that very purpose. Knox promised to

approach Arran, and Bothwell, with his usual impudence, chose that moment

to seize an old pupil of Knox's, the young Laird of Ormiston (Cockburn).

The young laird, to be sure, had fired a pistol at his enemy. However,

Bothwell repented of this lapse, and at the Hamilton's great house of

Kirk-of-Field, Knox made him and Arran friends. Next day they went to

sermon together; on the following day they visited Chatelherault at

Kinneil, some twelve miles from Edinburgh. But on the ensuing day (March

26) came the wild end of the reconciliation.

Knox had delivered his daily sermon, and was engaged with his vast

correspondence, when Arran was announced, with an advocate and the town

clerk. Arran began a conference with tears, said that he was betrayed,

and told his tale. Bothwell had informed him that he would seize the

Queen, put her in Dumbarton, kill her misguiders, the "Earl of Moray"

(Mar, Lord James), Lethington, and others, "and so shall he and I rule

all."

But Arran believed Bothwell really intended to accuse him of treason, or

knowledge of treason, so he meant to write to Mary and Mar. Knox asked

whether he had assented to the plot, and advised him to be silent.

Probably he saw that Arran was distraught, and did not credit his story.

But Arran said that Bothwell (as he had once done before, in 1559) would

challenge him to a judicial combat--such challenges were still common,

but never led to a fight. He then walked off with his legal advisers,

and wrote to Mary at Falkland. {214a} If Arran went mad, he went mad

"with advice of counsel." There had come the chance of "a new day,"

which the extremists desired, but its dawn was inauspicious.

Arran rode to his father's house of Kinneil, where, either because he was

insane, or because there really was a Bothwell-Hamilton plot, he was

locked up in a room high above the ground. He let himself down from the

window, reached Halyards (a place of Kirkcaldy of Grange), and was thence

taken by Mar (whom Knox appears to have warned) to the Queen at Falkland.

Bothwell and Gawain Hamilton were also put in ward there. Randolph gives

(March 31) a similar account, but believed that there really was a plot,

which Arran denied even before he arrived at Falkland. Bothwell came to

purge himself, but "was found guilty on his own confession on some

points." {214b}

The Queen now went to St. Andrews, where the suspects were placed in the

Castle. Arran wavered, accusing Mar's mother of witchcraft. Mary was

"not a little offended with Bothwell to whom she has been so good."

Randolph (April 7) continued to think that Arran should be decapitated.

He and Bothwell were kept in ward, and his father, the Duke, was advised

to give up Dumbarton to the Crown, which he did. {215a} This was about

April 23. Knox makes a grievance of the surrender; the Castle, he says,

was by treaty to be in the Duke's hands till the Queen had lawful issue.

{215b} Chatelherault himself, as we said, told Randolph that he had no

right in the place, beyond a verbal and undated promise of the late

Regent.

Knox now again illustrates his own historical methods. Mary, riding

between Falkland and Lochleven, fell, was hurt, and when Randolph wrote

from Edinburgh on May 11, was not expected there for two or three days.

But Knox reports that, on her return from Fife to Edinburgh, she danced

excessively till after midnight, because she had received letters "that

persecution was begun again in France," by the Guises. {215c} Now as,

according to Knox elsewhere, "Satan stirreth his terrible tail," so did

one of Mary's uncles, the Duc de Guise, "stir his tail" against one of

the towns appointed to pay Mary's jointure, namely Vassy, in Champagne.

Here, on March 1, 1562, a massacre of Huguenots, by the Guise's

retainers, began the war of religion afresh. {215d}

Now, in the first place, this could not be joyful news to set Mary

dancing; as it was apt to prevent what she had most at heart, her

personal interview with Elizabeth. She understood this perfectly well,

and, in conversation with Randolph, after her return to Edinburgh,

lamented the deeds of her uncles, as calculated "to bring them in hate

and disdain of many princes," and also to chill Elizabeth's amity for

herself--on which her whole policy now depended (May 29). {216a} She

wept when Randolph said that, in the state of France, Elizabeth was not

likely to move far from London for their interview. In this mood how

could Mary give a dance to celebrate an event which threatened ruin to

her hopes?

Moreover, if Knox, when he speaks of "persecution begun again," refers to

the slaughter of Huguenots by Guise's retinue, at Vassy, that untoward

event occurred on March 1, and Mary cannot have been celebrating it by a

ball at Holyrood as late as May 14, at earliest. {216b} Knox, however,

preached against her dancing, if she danced "for pleasure at the

displeasure of God's people"; so he states the case. Her reward, in that

case, would he "drink in hell." In his "History" he declares that Mary

did dance for the evil reason attributed to her, a reason which must have

been mere matter of inference on his part, and that inference wrong,

judging by dates, if the reference is to the affair of Vassy. In April

both French parties were committing brutalities, but these were all

contrary to Mary's policy and hopes.

If Knox heard a rumour against any one, his business, according to the

"Book of Discipline," was not to go and preach against that person, even

by way of insinuation. {216c} Mary's offence, if any existed, was not

"public," and was based on mere suspicion, or on tattle. Dr. M'Crie,

indeed, says that on hearing of the affair of Vassy, the Queen

"immediately after gave a splendid ball to her foreign servants." Ten

weeks after the Vassy affair is not "immediately"; and Knox mentions

neither foreign servants nor Vassy. {216d}

The Queen sent for Knox, and made "a long harangue," of which he does not

report one word. He gives his own oration. Mary then said that she

could not expect him to like her uncles, as they differed in religion.

But if he heard anything of herself that he disapproved of, "come to

myself and tell me, and I shall hear you." He answered that he was not

bound to come "to every man in particular," but she _could_ come to his

sermons! If she would name a day and hour, he would give her a doctrinal

lecture. At this very moment he "was absent from his book"; his studies

were interrupted.

"You will not always be at your book," she said, and turned her back. To

some papists in the antechamber he remarked, "Why should the pleasing

face of a gentlewoman affray me? I have looked in the faces of many

angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure."

He was later to flee before that pleasing face.

Mary can hardly be said to have had the worse, as far as manners and

logic went, of this encounter, at which Morton, Mar, and Lethington were

present, and seem to have been silent. {217a}

Meanwhile, Randolph dates this affair, the dancing, the sermon, the

interview, not in May, but about December 13-15, 1562, {217b} and

connects the dancing with no event in France, {217c} nor can I find any

such event in late November which might make Mary glad at heart. Knox,

Randolph writes, mistrusts all that the Queen does or says, "as if he

were of God's Privy Council, that knew how he had determined of her in

the beginning, or that he knew the secrets of her heart so well that she

neither did nor could have one good thought of God or of his true

religion." His doings could not increase her respect for his religion.

The affair of Arran had been a sensible sorrow to Knox. "God hath

further humbled me since that day which men call Good Friday," he wrote

to Mrs. Locke (May 6), "than ever I have been in my life. . . ." He had

rejoiced in his task of peace-making, in which the Privy Council had

practically failed, and had shown great naivete in trusting Bothwell. The

best he could say to Mrs. Locke was that he felt no certainty about the

fact that Bothwell had tempted Arran to conspire. {218}

The probability is that the reckless and impoverished Bothwell did intend

to bring in the desirable "new day," and to make the Hamiltons his tools.

Meanwhile he was kept out of mischief and behind stone walls for a

season. Knox had another source of annoyance which was put down with a

high hand.

The dominie of the school at Linlithgow, Ninian Winzet by name, had lost

his place for being an idolater. In February he had brought to the

notice of our Reformer and of the Queen the question, "Is John Knox a

lawful minister?" If he was called by God, where were his miracles? If

by men, by what manner of men? On March 3, Winzet asked Knox for "your

answer in writing." He kept launching letters at Knox in March; on March

24 he addressed the general public; and, on March 31, issued an appeal to

the magistrates, who appear to have been molesting people who kept

Easter. The practice was forbidden in a proclamation by the Queen on May

31. {219a} "The pain is death," writes Randolph. {219b} If Mary was

ready to die for her faith, as she informed a nuncio who now secretly

visited her, she seems to have been equally resolved that her subjects

should not live in it.

Receiving no satisfactory _written_ answer from Knox, Winzet began to

print his tract, and then he got his reply from "soldiers and the

magistrates," for the book was seized, and he himself narrowly escaped to

the Continent. {219c} Knox was not to be brought to a written reply,

save so far as he likened his calling to that of Amos and John the

Baptist. In September he referred to his "Answer to Winzet's Questions"

as forthcoming, but it never appeared. {219d} Winzet was Mary's chaplain

in her Sheffield prison in 1570-72; she had him made Abbot of Ratisbon,

and he is said, by Lethington's son, to have helped Lesley in writing his

"History."

On June 29 the General Assembly, through Knox probably, drew up the

address to the Queen, threatening her and the country with the wrath of

God on her Mass, which, she is assured, is peculiarly distasteful to the

Deity. The brethren are deeply disappointed that she does not attend

their sermons, and ventures to prefer "your ain preconceived vain

opinion." They insist that adulterers must be punished with death, and

they return to their demands for the poor and the preachers. A new

rising is threatened if wicked men trouble the ministers and disobey the

Superintendents.

Lethington and Knox had one of their usual disputes over this manifesto;

the Secretary drew up another. "Here be many fair words," said the Queen

on reading it; "I cannot tell what the hearts are." {220a} She later

found out the nature of Lethington's heart, a pretty black one. The

excesses of the Guises in France were now the excuse or cause of the

postponement of Elizabeth's meeting with Mary. The Queen therefore now

undertook a northern progress, which had been arranged for in January,

about the time when Lord James was made Earl of Moray. {220b}

He could not "brook" the Earldom of Moray before the Earl of Huntly was

put down, Huntly being a kind of petty king in the east and north. There

is every reason to suppose that Mary understood and utterly distrusted

Huntly, who, though the chief Catholic in the country, had been a traitor

whenever occasion served for many a year. One of his sons, John, in

July, wounded an Ogilvy in Edinburgh in a quarrel over property. This

affair was so managed as to drive Huntly into open rebellion, neither

Mary nor her brother being sorry to take the opportunity.

The business of the ruin of Huntly has seemed more of a mystery to

historians than it was, though an attack by a Catholic princess on her

most powerful Catholic subject does need explanation. But Randolph was

with Mary during the whole expedition, and his despatches are better

evidence than the fables of Buchanan and the surmises of Knox and Mr.

Froude. Huntly had been out of favour ever since Lord James obtained the

coveted Earldom of Moray in January, and he was thought to be opposed to

Mary's visit to Elizabeth. Since January, the Queen had been bent on a

northern progress. Probably the Archbishop of St. Andrews, as reported

by Knox, rightly guessed the motives. At table he said, "The Queen has

gone into the north, belike to seek disobedience; she may perhaps find

the thing that she seeks." {221a} She wanted a quarrel with Huntly, and

a quarrel she found. Her northward expedition, says Randolph, "is rather

devised by herself than greatly approved by her Council." She would not

visit Huntly at Strathbogie, contrary to the advice of her Council; his

son, who wounded Ogilvy, had broken prison, and refused to enter himself

at Stirling Castle. Huntly then supported his sons in rebellion, while

Bothwell broke prison and fortified himself in Hermitage Castle. Lord

James's Earldom of Moray was now publicly announced (September 18), and

Huntly was accused of a desire to murder him and Lethington, while his

son John was to seize the Queen. {221b} Mary was "utterly determined to

bring him to utter confusion." Huntly was put to the horn on October 18;

his sons took up arms. Huntly, old and corpulent, died during a defeat

at Corrichie without stroke of sword; his mischievous son John was taken

and executed, Mary being pleased with her success, and declaring that

Huntly thought "to have married her where he would," {221c} and to have

slain her brother. John Gordon confessed to the murder plot. {221d} His

eldest brother, Lord Gordon, who had tried to enlist Bothwell and the

Hamiltons, lay long in prison (his sister married Bothwell just before

Riccio's murder). The Queen had punished the disobedience which she

"went to seek," and Moray was safe in his rich earldom, while a heavy

blow was dealt at the Catholicism which Huntly had protected. {222a}

Cardinal Guise reports her success to de Rennes, in Austria, with

triumph, and refers to an autograph letter of hers, of which Lethington's

draft has lately perished by fire, unread by historians. As the Cardinal

reports that she says she is trying to win her subjects back to the

Church, "in which she wishes to live and die" (January 30, 1562-63),

Lethington cannot be the author of that part of her lost letter. {222b}

Knox meanwhile, much puzzled by the news from the north, was in the

western counties. He induced the lairds of Ayrshire to sign a Protestant

band, and he had a controversy with the Abbot of Crosraguel. In

misapplication of texts the abbot was even more eccentric than Knox,

though he only followed St. Jerome. In his "History" Knox "cannot

certainly say whether there was any secret paction and confederacy

between the Queen herself and Huntly." {222c} Knox decides that though

Mary executed John Gordon and other rebels, yet "it was the destruction

of others that she sought," namely, of her brother, whom she hated "for

his godliness and upright plainness." {222d} His upright simplicity had

won him an earldom and the destruction of his rival! He and Lethington

may have exaggerated Huntly's iniquities in council with Mary, but the

rumours reported against her by Knox could only be inspired by the

credulity of extreme ill-will. He flattered himself that he kept the

Hamiltons quiet, and, at a supper with Randolph in November, made

Chatelherault promise to be a good subject in civil matters, and a good

Protestant in religion.

Knox says that preaching was done with even unusual vehemence in winter,

when his sermon against the Queen's dancing for joy over some unknown

Protestant misfortune was actually delivered, and the good seed fell on

ground not wholly barren. The Queen's French and Scots musicians would

not play or sing at the Queen's Christmas-day Mass, whether pricked in

heart by conscience, or afraid for their lives. "Her poor soul is so

troubled for the preservation of her silly Mass that she knoweth not

where to turn for defence of it," says Randolph. {223a} These

persecutions may have gone far to embitter the character of the victim.

Mr. Froude is certainly not an advocate of Mary Stuart, rather he is

conspicuously the reverse. But he remarks that when she determined to

marry Darnley, "divide Scotland," and trust to her Catholic party, she

did so because she was "weary of the mask which she had so long worn, and

unable to endure any longer these wild insults to her creed and herself."

{223b} She had, in fact, given the policy of submission to "wild

insults" rather more than a fair chance; she had, for a spirited girl,

been almost incredibly long-suffering, when "barbarously baited," as

Charles I. described his own treatment by the preachers and the

Covenanters.

CHAPTER XVI: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued): 1563-1564

The new year, 1563, found Knox purging the Kirk from that fallen brother,

Paul Methuen. This preacher had borne the burden and heat of the day in

1557-58, erecting, as we have seen, the first "reformed" Kirk, that of

the Holy Virgin, in Dundee, and suffering some inconvenience, if no great

danger, from the clergy of the religion whose sacred things he overthrew.

He does not appear to have been one of the more furious of the new

apostles. Contrasted with John Brabner, "a vehement man inculcating the

law and pain thereof," Paul is described as "a milder man, preaching the

evangel of grace and remission of sins in the blood of Christ." {224a}

Paul was at this time minister of Jedburgh. He had "an ancient matron"

to wife, recommended, perhaps, by her property, and she left him for two

months with a servant maid. Paul fell, but behaved not ill to the mother

of his child, sending her "money and clothes at various times." Knox

tried the case at Jedburgh; Paul was excommunicated, and fled the realm,

sinking so low, it seems, as to take orders in the Church of England.

Later he returned--probably he was now penniless--"and prostrated himself

before the whole brethren with weeping and howling." He was put to such

shameful and continued acts of public penance up and down the country

that any spirit which he had left awoke in him, and the Kirk knew him no

more. Thus "the world might see what difference there is between

darkness and light." {225a}

Knox presently had to record a scandal in a higher place, the capture and

execution of the French minor poet, Chastelard, who, armed with sword and

dagger, hid under the Queen's bed in Holyrood; and invaded her room with

great insolence at Burntisland as she was on her way to St. Andrews.

There he was tried, condemned, and executed in the market-place. It

seems fairly certain that Chastelard, who had joined the Queen with

despatches during the expedition against Huntly, was a Huguenot. The

Catholic version, and Lethington's version, of his adventure was that

some intriguing Huguenot lady had set him on to sully Queen Mary's

character; other tales ran that he was to assassinate her, as part of a

great Protestant conspiracy. {225b}

Randolph, who knew as much as any one, thought the Queen far too familiar

with the poet, but did not deem that her virtue was in fault. {225c} Knox

dilates on Mary's familiarities, kisses given in a vulgar dance, dear to

the French society of the period, and concludes that the fatuous poet

"lacked his head, that his tongue should not utter the secrets of our

Queen." {225d}

There had been a bad harvest, and a dearth, because the Queen's luxury

"provoked God" (who is represented as very irritable) "to strike the

staff of bread," and to "give His malediction upon the fruits of the

earth. But oh, alas, who looked, or yet looks, to the very cause of all

our calamities!" {226a}

Some savage peoples are said to sacrifice their kings when the weather is

unpropitious. Knox's theology was of the same kind. The preachers, says

Randolph (February 28), "pray daily . . . that God will either turn the

Queen's heart or grant her short life. Of what charity or spirit this

proceeds, I leave to be discussed by great divines." {226b} The prayers

sound like encouragement to Jehus.

At this date Ruthven was placed, "by Lethington's means only," on the

Privy Council. Moray especially hated Ruthven "for his sorcery"; the

superstitious Moray affected the Queen with this ill opinion of one of

the elect--in the affair of Riccio's murder so useful to the cause of

Knox. "There is not an unworthier in Scotland" than Ruthven, writes

Randolph. {226c} Meanwhile Lethington was in England to negotiate for

peace in France; if he could, to keep an eye on Mary's chances for the

succession, and (says Knox) to obtain leave for Lennox, the chief of the

Stuarts and the deadly foe of the Hamiltons, to visit Scotland, whence,

in the time of Henry VIII., he had been driven as a traitor. But

Lethington was at that time confuting Lennox's argument that the Hamilton

chief, Chatelherault, was illegitimate. Knox is not positive, he only

reports rumours. {226d} Lethington's serious business was to negotiate a

marriage for the Queen.

Despite the recent threats of death against priests who celebrated Mass,

the Archbishop Hamilton and Knox's opponent, the Abbot of Crossraguel,

with many others, did so at Easter. The Ayrshire brethren "determined to

put to their own hands," captured some priests, and threatened others

with "the punishment that God has appointed to idolaters by His law."

{227a} The Queen commanded Knox to meet her at Lochleven in

mid-April--Lochleven, where she was later to be a prisoner. In that

state lay the priests of her religion, who had been ministering to the

people, "some in secret houses, some in barns, some in woods and hills,"

writes Randolph, "all are in prison." {227b}

Mary, for two hours before supper, implored Knox to mediate with the

western fanatics. He replied, that if princes would not use the sword

against idolaters, there was the leading case of Samuel's slaughter of

Agag; and he adduced another biblical instance, of a nature not usually

cited before young ladies. He was on safer ground in quoting the Scots

law as it stood. Judges within their bounds were to seek out and punish

"mass-mongers"--that was his courteous term.

The Queen, rather hurt, went off to supper, but next morning did her best

to make friends with Knox over other matters. She complained of Ruthven,

who had given her a ring for some magical purpose, later explained by

Ruthven, who seems to have despised the superstition of his age. The

Queen, says Ruthven, was afraid of poison; he gave her the ring, saying

that it acted as an antidote. Moray was at Lochleven with the Queen, and

Moray believed, or pretended to believe, in Ruthven's "sossery," as

Randolph spells "sorcery." She, rather putting herself at our Reformer's

mercy, complained that Lethington alone placed Ruthven in the Privy

Council.

"That man is absent," said Knox, "and therefore I will speak nothing on

that behalf." Mary then warned him against "the man who was at time most

familiar with the said John, in his house and at table," the despicable

Bishop of Galloway, and Knox later found out that the warning was wise.

Lastly, she asked him to reconcile the Earl and Countess of Argyll--"do

this much for my sake"; and she promised to summon the offending priests

who had done their duty. {228a}

Knox, with his usual tact, wrote to Argyll thus: "Your behaviour toward

your wife is very offensive unto many godly." He added that, if all that

was said of Argyll was true, and if he did not look out, he would be

damned.

"This bill was not well accepted of the said Earl," but, like the rest of

them, he went on truckling to Knox, "most familiar with the said John."

{228b}

Nearly fifty priests were tried, but no one was hanged. They were put in

ward; "the like of this was never heard within the realm," said pleased

Protestants, not "smelling the craft." Neither the Queen nor her Council

had the slightest desire to put priests to death. Six other priests "as

wicked as" the Archbishop were imprisoned, and the Abbot of Crossraguel

was put to the horn in his absence, just as the preachers had been. The

Catholic clergy "know not where to hide their heads," says Randolph. Many

fled to the more tender mercies of England; "it will be the common refuge

of papists that cannot live here . . ." {228c} The tassels on the trains

of the ladies, it was declared by the preachers, "would provoke God's

vengeance . . . against the whole realm . . " {229a}

The state of things led to a breach between Knox and Moray, which lasted

till the Earl found him likely to be useful, some eighteen months later.

The Reformer relieved his mind in the pulpit at the end of May or early

in June, rebuking backsliders, and denouncing the Queen's rumoured

marriage with any infidel, "and all Papists are infidels." Papists and

Protestants were both offended. There was a scene with Mary, in which

she wept profusely, an infirmity of hers; we constantly hear of her

weeping in public. She wished the Lords of the Articles to see whether

Knox's "manner of speaking" was not punishable, but nothing could be

done. Elizabeth would have found out a way. {229b}

The fact that while Knox was conducting himself thus, nobody ventured to

put a dirk or a bullet into him--despite the obvious strength of the

temptation in many quarters--proves that he was by far the most potent

human being in Scotland. Darnley, Moray, Lennox were all assassinated,

when their day came, though the feeblest of the three, Darnley, had a

powerful clan to take up his feud. We cannot suppose that any moral

considerations prevented the many people whom Knox had offended from

doing unto him as the Elect did to Riccio. Manifestly, nobody had the

courage. No clan was so strong as the warlike brethren who would have

avenged the Reformer, and who probably would have been backed by

Elizabeth.

Again, though he was estranged from Moray, that leader was also, in some

degree, estranged from Lethington, who did not allow him to know the

details of his intrigues, in France and England, for the Queen's

marriage. The marriage question was certain to reunite Moray and Knox.

When Knox told Mary that, as "a subject of this realm," he had a right to

oppose her marriage with any infidel, he spoke the modern constitutional

truth. For Mary to wed a Royal Catholic would certainly have meant peril

for Protestantism, war with England, and a tragic end. But what

Protestant could she marry? If a Scot, he would not long have escaped

the daggers of the Hamiltons; indeed, all the nobles would have borne the

fiercest jealousy against such an one as, say, Glencairn, who, we learn,

could say anything to Mary without offence. She admired a strong brave

man, and Glencairn, though an opponent, was gallant and resolute. England

chose only to offer the infamous and treacherous Leicester, whose

character was ruined by the mysterious death of his wife (Amy Robsart),

and who had offered to sell England and himself to idolatrous Spain.

Mary's only faint chance of safety lay in perpetual widowhood, or in

marrying Knox, by far the most powerful of her subjects, and the best

able to protect her and himself.

This idea does not seem to have been entertained by the subtle brain of

Lethington. Between February and May 1563, the Cardinal of Lorraine had

reopened an old negotiation for wedding the Queen to the Archduke, and

Mary had given an evasive reply; she must consult Parliament. In March,

with the Spanish Ambassador in London, Lethington had proposed for Don

Carlos. Philip II., as usual, wavered, consented (in August),

considered, and reconsidered. Lethington, in France, had told the Queen-

Mother that the Spanish plan was only intended to wring concessions from

Elizabeth; and, on his return to England, had persuaded the Spanish

Ambassador that Charles IX. was anxious to succeed to his brother's

widow. This moved Philip to be favourable to the Don Carlos marriage,

but he waited; there was no sign from France, and Philip withdrew,

wavering so much that both the Austrian and Spanish matches became

impossible. On October 6, Knox, who suspected more than he knew, told

Cecil that out of twelve Privy Councillors, nine would consent to a

Catholic marriage. The only hope was in Moray, and Knox "daily thirsted"

for death. {231a} He appealed to Leicester (about whose relations with

Elizabeth he was, of course, informed) as to a man who "may greatly

advance the purity of religion." {231b}

These letters to Cecil and Leicester are deeply pious in tone, and reveal

a cruel anxiety. On June 20, three weeks after Knox's famous sermon,

Lethington told de Quadra, the Spanish Ambassador, that Elizabeth

threatened to be Mary's enemy if she married Don Carlos or any of the

house of Austria. {231c} On August 26, 1563, Randolph received

instructions from Elizabeth, in which the tone of menace was unconcealed.

Elizabeth would offer an English noble: "we and our country cannot think

any mighty prince a meet husband for her." {231d}

Knox was now engaged in a contest wherein he was triumphant; an affair

which, in later years, was to have sequels of high importance. During

the summer vacation of 1563, while Mary was moving about the country,

Catholics in Edinburgh habitually attended at Mass in her chapel. This

was contrary to the arrangement which permitted no Mass in the whole

realm, except that of the Queen, when her priests were not terrorised.

The godly brawled in the Chapel Royal, and two of them were arrested, two

very dear brethren, named Cranstoun and Armstrong; they were to be tried

on October 24. Knox had a kind of Dictator's commission from the

Congregation, "to see that the Kirk took no harm," and to the

Congregation he appealed by letter. The accused brethren had only "noted

what persons repaired to the Mass," but they were charged with divers

crimes, especially invading her Majesty's palace. Knox therefore

convoked the Congregation to meet in Edinburgh on the day of trial, in

the good old way of overawing justice. {232a} Of course we do not know

to what lengths the dear brethren went in their pious indignation. The

legal record mentions that they were armed with pistols, in the town and

Court suburb; and it was no very unusual thing, later, for people to

practise pistol shooting at each other even in their own Kirk of St.

Giles's. {232b}

Still, pistols, if worn in the palace chapel have not a pacific air. The

brethren are also charged with assaulting some of the Queen's domestic

servants. {232c}

Archbishop Spottiswoode, son of one of the Knoxian Superintendents, says

that the brethren "forced the gates, and that some of the worshippers

were taken and carried to prison. . . . " {232d} Knox admits in his

"History" that "some of the brethren _burst in_" to the chapel. In his

letter to stir up the godly, he says that the brethren "passed" (in),

"and that _in most quiet manner_."

On receiving Knox's summons the Congregation prepared its levies in every

town and province. {233a} The Privy Council received a copy of Knox's

circular, and concluded that it "imported treason."

To ourselves it does seem that for a preacher to call levies out of every

town and province, to meet in the capital on a day when a trial was to be

held, is a thing that no Government can tolerate. The administration of

justice is impossible in the circumstances. But it was the usual course

in Scotland, and any member of the Privy Council might, at any time, find

it desirable to call a similar convocation of his allies. Mary herself,

fretted by the perfidies of Elizabeth, had just been consoled by that

symbolic jewel, a diamond shaped like a rock, and by promises in which

she fondly trusted when she at last sought an asylum in England, and

found a prison. For two months she had often been in deep melancholy,

weeping for no known cause, and she was afflicted by the "pain in her

side" which ever haunted her (December 13-21). {233b}

Accused by the Master of Maxwell of unbecoming conduct, Knox said that

such things had been done before, and he had the warrant "of God,

speaking plainly in his Word." The Master (later Lord Herries), not

taking this view of the case, was never friendly with Knox again; the

Reformer added this comment as late as December 1571. {233c}

Lethington and Moray, like Maxwell, remonstrated vainly with our

Reformer. Randolph (December 21) reports that the Lords assembled "to

take order with Knox and his faction, who intended by a mutinous assembly

made by his letter before, to have rescued two of their brethren from

course of law. . . . " {234a} Knox was accompanied to Holyrood by a

force of brethren who crowded "the inner close and all the stairs, even

to the chamber door where the Queen and Council sat." {234b} Probably

these "slashing communicants" had their effect on the minds of the

councillors. Not till after Riccio's murder was Mary permitted to have a

strong guard.

According to Knox, Mary laughed a horse laugh when he entered, saying,

"Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear himself. I will see gif I

can gar him greit." Her Scots, textually reported, was certainly

idiomatic.

Knox acknowledged his letter to the Congregation, and Lethington

suggested that he might apologise. Ruthven said that Knox made

convocation of people daily to hear him preach; what harm was there in

his letter merely calling people to convocation. This was characteristic

pettifogging. Knox said that he convened the people to meet on the day

of trial according to the order "that the brethren has appointed . . . at

the commandment of the general Kirk of the Realm."

Mary seems, strangely enough, to have thought that this was a valid

reply. Perhaps it was, and the Kirk's action in that sense, directed

against the State, finally enabled Cromwell to conquer the Kirk-ridden

country. Mary appears to have admitted the Kirk's imperium in imperio,

for she diverted the discussion from the momentous point really at

issue--the right of the Kirk to call up an armed multitude to thwart

justice. She now fell on Knox's employment of the word "cruelty." He

instantly started on a harangue about "pestilent Papists," when the Queen

once more introduced a personal question; he had caused her to weep, and

he recounted all their interview after he attacked her marriage from the

pulpit.

He was allowed to go home--it might not have been safe to arrest him, and

the Lords, unanimously, voted that he had done no offence. They repeated

their votes in the Queen's presence, and thus a precedent for "mutinous

convocation" by Kirkmen was established, till James VI. took order in

1596. We have no full narrative of this affair except that of Knox. It

is to be guessed that the nobles wished to maintain the old habit of

mutinous convocation which, probably, saved the life of Lethington, and

helped to secure Bothwell's acquittal from the guilt of Darnley's murder.

Perhaps, too, the brethren who filled the whole inner Court and

overflowed up the stairs of the palace, may have had their influence.

This was a notable triumph of our Reformer, and of the Kirk; to which, on

his showing, the Queen contributed, by feebly wandering from the real

point at issue. She was no dialectician. Knox's conduct was, of course,

approved of and sanctioned by the General Assembly. {235} He had, in his

circular, averred that Cranstoun and Armstrong were summoned "that a door

may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude." To put it

mildly, the General Assembly sanctioned contempt of Court. Unluckily for

Scotland contempt of Court was, and long remained, universal, the country

being desperately lawless, and reeking with blood shed in public and

private quarrels. When a Prophet followed the secular example of

summoning crowds to overawe justice, the secular sinners had warrant for

thwarting the course of law.

As to the brethren and the idolaters who caused these troubles, we know

not what befell them. The penalty, both for the attendants at Mass and

for the disturbers thereof, should have been death! The dear brethren,

if they attacked the Queen's servants, came under the Proclamation of

October 1561; so did the Catholics, for _they_ "openly made alteration

and innovation of the state of religion. . . . " They ought "to be

punished to the death with all rigour." Three were outlawed, and their

sureties "unlawed." Twenty-one others were probably not hanged; the

records are lost. For the same reason we know not what became of the

brethren Armstrong, Cranstoun, and George Rynd, summoned with the other

malefactors for November 13. {236}

CHAPTER XVII: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1564-1567

During the session of the General Assembly in December 1563, Knox was

compelled to chronicle domestic enormities. The Lord Treasurer,

Richardson, having, like Captain Booth, "offended the law of Dian," had

to do penance before the whole congregation, and the sermon

(unfortunately it is lost, probably it never was written out) was

preached by Knox. A French apothecary of the Queen's, and his mistress,

were hanged on a charge of murdering their child. {237a} On January 9,

1564-65, Randolph noted that one of the Queen's Maries, Mary Livingstone,

is to marry John Sempill, son of Robert, third Lord Sempill, by an

English wife. Knox assures us that "it is well known that shame hastened

marriage between John Sempill, called 'the Dancer,' and Mary Livingstone,

surnamed 'the Lusty.'" The young people appear, however, to have been in

no pressing hurry, as Randolph, on January 9, did not expect their

marriage till the very end of February; they wished the Earl of Bedford,

who was coming on a diplomatic mission, to be present. {237b} Mary, on

March 9, 1565, made them a grant of lands, since "it has pleased God to

move their hearts to join together in the state of matrimony." {237c} She

had ever since January been making the bride presents of feminine finery.

These proceedings indicating no precipitate haste, we may think that Mary

Livingstone, like Mary of Guise, is only a victim of the Reformer's taste

for "society journalism." Randolph, though an egregious gossip, says of

the Four Maries, "they are all good," but Knox writes that "the ballads

of that age" did witness to the "bruit" or reputation of these maidens.

As is well known the old ballad of "Mary Hamilton," which exists in more

than a dozen very diverse variants, in some specimens confuses one of the

Maries, an imaginary "Mary Hamilton," with the French maid who was hanged

at the end of 1563. The balladist is thus responsible for a scandal

against the fair sisterhood; there was no "Mary Hamilton," and no "Mary

Carmichael," in their number--Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingstone.

An offended Deity now sent frost in January 1564, and an aurora borealis

in February, Knox tells us, and "the threatenings of the preachers were

fearful," in face of these unusual meteorological phenomena. {238}

Vice rose to such a pitch that men doubted if the Mass really was

idolatry! Knox said, from the pulpit, that if the sceptics were right,

_he_ was "miserably deceived." "Believe me, brethren, in the bowels of

Christ, it is possible that you may be mistaken," Cromwell was to tell

the Commissioners of the General Assembly, on a day that still was in the

womb of the future; the dawn of common sense rose in the south.

On March 20, much to the indignation of the Queen, the banns were read

twice between Knox and a lady of the Royal blood and name, Margaret

Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a girl not above sixteen, in January

1563, when Randolph first speaks of the wooing. {239} The good Dr.

M'Crie does not mention the age of the bride! The lady was a very near

kinswoman of Chatelherault. She had plenty of time for reflection, and

as nobody says that she was coerced into the marriage, while Nicol Burne

attributes her passion to sorcery, we may suppose that she was in love

with our Reformer. She bore him several daughters, and it is to be

presumed that the marriage, though in every way _bizarre_, was happy.

Burne says that Knox wished to marry a Lady Fleming, akin to

Chatelherault, but was declined; if so, he soon consoled himself.

At this time Riccio--a valet de chambre of the Queen in 1561-62--"began

to grow great in Court," becoming French Secretary at the end of the

year. By June 3, 1565, Randolph is found styling Riccio "only governor"

to Darnley. His career might have rivalled that of the equally low-born

Cardinal Alberoni, but for the daggers of Moray's party.

In the General Assembly of June 1564, Moray, Morton, Glencairn, Pitarro,

Lethington, and other Lords of the Congregation held aloof from the

brethren, but met the Superintendents and others to discuss the recent

conduct of our Reformer, who was present. He was invited, by Lethington,

to "moderate himself" in his references to the Queen, as others might

imitate him, "albeit not with the same modesty and foresight," for

Lethington could not help bantering Knox. Knox, of course, rushed to his

doctrine of "idolatry" as provocative of the wrath of God--we have heard

of the bad harvest, and the frost in January. It is not worth while to

pursue in detail the discourses, in which Knox said that the Queen

rebelled against God "in all the actions of her life." Ahab and Jezebel

were again brought on the scene. It profited not Lethington to say that

all these old biblical "vengeances" were "singular motions of the Spirit

of God, and appertain nothing to our age." If Knox could have understood

_that_, he would not have been Knox. The point was intelligible;

Lethington perceived it, but Knox never chose to do so. He went on with

his isolated texts, Lethington vainly replying "the cases are nothing

alike." Knox came to his old stand, "the idolater must die the death,"

and the executioners must be "the people of God." Lethington quoted many

opinions against Knox's, to no purpose, opinions of Luther, Melanchthon,

Bucer, Musculus, and Calvin, but our Reformer brought out the case of

"Amasiath, King of Judah," and "The Apology of Magdeburg." As to the

opinion of Calvin and the rest he drew a distinction. They had only

spoken of the godly who were suffering under oppression, not of the godly

triumphant in a commonwealth. He forgot, or did not choose to remember,

a previous decision of his own, as we shall see.

When the rest of the party were discussing the question, Makgill, Clerk

Register, reminded them of their previous debate in November 1561, when

{240} Knox, after secretly writing to Calvin, had proposed to write to

him for his opinion about the Queen's Mass, and Lethington had promised

to do so himself. But Lethington now said that, on later reflection, as

Secretary of the Queen, he had scrupled, without her consent, to ask a

foreigner whether her subjects might prevent her from enjoying the rites

of her own religion--for that was what the "controversies" between her

Highness and her subjects really and confessedly meant. {241a}

Knox was now requested to consult Calvin, "and the learned in other

Kirks, to know their judgment in that question." The question, judging

from Makgill's interpellation, was "whether subjects might lawfully take

her Mass from the Queen." {241b} As we know, Knox had already put the

question to Calvin by a letter of October 24, 1561, and so had the

anonymous writer of November 18, 1561, whom I identify with Arran. Knox

now refused to write to "Mr. Calvin, and the learned of other Kirks,"

saying (I must quote him textually, or be accused of misrepresentation),

"I myself am not only fully resolved in conscience, but also I have heard

the judgments in this, and all other things that I have affirmed in this

Realm, of the most godly and most learned that be known in Europe. I

come not to this Realm without their resolution; and for my assurance I

have the handwritings of many; and therefore if I should move the same

question again, what else should I do but either show my own ignorance

and forgetfulness, or else inconstancy?" {241c} He therefore said that

his opponents might themselves "write and complain upon him," and so

learn "the plain minds" of the learned--but nobody took the trouble.

Knox's defence was worded with the skill of a notary. He said that he

had "heard the judgments" of "the learned and godly"; he did not say what

these judgments were. Calvin, Morel, Bullinger, and such men, we know,

entirely differed from his extreme ideas. He "came not without their

resolution," or approval, to Scotland, but that was not the question at

issue.

If Knox had received from Calvin favourable replies to his own letter,

and Arran's, of October 24, November 18, 1561, can any one doubt that he

would now have produced them, unless he did not wish the brethren to find

out that he himself had written without their knowledge? We know what

manner of answers he received, in 1554, orally from Calvin, in writing

from Bullinger, to his questions about resistance to the civil power.

{242a} I am sceptical enough to suppose that, if Knox had now possessed

letters from Calvin, justifying the propositions which he was

maintaining, such as that "the people, yea, _or ane pairt of the people_,

may execute God's jugementis against their King, being ane offender,"

{242b} he would have exhibited them. I do not believe that he had any

such letters from such men as Bullinger and Calvin. Indeed, we may ask

whether the question of the Queen's Mass had arisen in any realm of

Europe except Scotland. Where was there a Catholic prince ruling over a

Calvinistic state? If nowhere, then the question would not be raised,

except by Knox in his letter to Calvin of October 24, 1561. And where

was Calvin's answer, and to what effect?

Knox may have forgotten, and Lethington did not know, that, about 1558-

59, in a tract, already noticed (pp. 101-103 supra), of 450 pages against

the Anabaptists, Knox had expressed the reverse of his present opinion

about religious Regicide. He is addressing the persecuting Catholic

princes of Europe: " . . . Ye shall perish, both temporally and for ever.

And by whom doth it most appear that temporally ye shall be punished? By

_us_, whom ye banish, whom ye spoil and rob, whom cruelly ye persecute,

and whose blood ye daily shed? {243a} There is no doubt, but as the

victory which overcometh the world is our faith, so it behoveth us to

possess our souls in our patience. We neither privily nor openly deny

the power of the Civil Magistrate. . . . "

The chosen saints and people of God, even when under oppression, lift not

the hand, but possess their souls in patience, says Knox, in 1558-59. But

the idolatrous shall be temporally punished--by other hands. "And what

instruments can God find in this life more apt to punish you than those"

(the Anabaptists), "that hate and detest all lawful powers? . . . God

will not use his saints and chosen people to punish you. _For with them

there is always mercy_, yea, even although God have pronounced a curse

and malediction, as in the history of Joshua is plain." {243b}

In this passage Knox is speaking for the English exiles in Geneva. He

asserts that we "neither publicly nor privately deny the power of the

Civil Magistrate," in face of his own published tracts of appeal to a

Jehu or a Phinehas, and of his own claim that the Prophet may preach

treason, and that his instruments may commit treason. To be sure all the

English in Geneva were not necessarily of Knox's mind.

It is altogether a curious passage. God's people are more merciful than

God! Israel was bidden to exterminate all idolaters in the Promised

Land, but, as the Book of Joshua shows, they did not always do it: "for

with them is always mercy"; despite the massacres, such as that of Agag,

which Knox was wont to cite as examples to the backward brethren! Yet,

relying on another set of texts, not in Joshua, Knox now informed

Lethington that the executors of death on idolatrous princes were "the

people of God"--"the people, or a part of the people." {244a}

Mercy! Happily the policy of carnal men never allowed Knox's "people of

God" to show whether, given a chance to destroy idolaters, they would

display the mercy on which he insists in his reply to the Anabaptist.

It was always useless to argue with Knox; for whatever opinion happened

to suit him at the moment (and at different moments contradictory

opinions happened to suit him), he had ever a Bible text to back him. On

this occasion, if Lethington had been able to quote Knox's own statement,

that with the people of God "there is always mercy" (as in the case of

Cardinal Beaton), he could hardly have escaped by saying that there was

always mercy, _when the people of God had not the upper hand in the

State_, {244b} when unto them God has _not_ "given sufficient force." For

in the chosen people of God "there is _always_ mercy, yea even although

God have pronounced a curse and malediction."

In writing against Anabaptists (1558-59), Knox wanted to make _them_, not

merciful Calvinists, the objects of the fear and revenge of Catholic

rulers. He even hazarded one of his unfulfilled prophecies: Anabaptists,

wicked men, will execute those divine judgments for which Protestants of

his species are too tender-hearted; though, somehow, they make exceptions

in the cases of Beaton and Riccio, and ought to do so in the case of Mary

Stuart!

Lethington did not use this passage of our Reformer's works against him,

though it was published in 1560. Probably the secretary had not worked

his way through the long essay on Predestination. But we have, in the

book against the Anabaptists and in the controversy with Lethington, an

example of Knox's fatal intellectual faults. As an individual man, he

would not have hurt a fly. As a prophet, he deliberately tried to

restore, by a pestilent anachronism, in a Christian age and country, the

ferocities attributed to ancient Israel. This he did not even do

consistently, and when he is inconsistent with his prevailing mood, his

biographers applaud his "moderation"! If he saw a chance against an

Anabaptist, or if he wanted to conciliate Mary of Guise, he took up a

Christian line, backing it by texts appropriate to the occasion.

His influence lasted, and the massacre of Dunavertie (1647), and the

slaying of women in cold blood, months after the battle of Philiphaugh,

and the "rouping" of covenanted "ravens" for the blood of cavaliers taken

under quarter, are the direct result of Knox's intellectual error, of his

appeals to Jehu, Phinehas, and so forth.

At this point the Fourth Book of Knox's "History" ends with a remark on

the total estrangement between himself and Moray. The Reformer continued

to revise and interpolate his work, up to 1571, the year before his

death, and made collections of materials, and notes for the continuation.

An uncertain hand has put these together in Book V. But we now miss the

frequent references to "John Knox," and his doings, which must have been

vigorous during the troubles of 1565, after the arrival in Scotland of

Darnley (February 1565), and his courtship and marriage of the Queen.

These events brought together Moray, Chatelherault, and many of the Lords

in the armed party of the Congregation. They rebelled; they were driven

by Mary into England, by October 1565, and Bothwell came at her call from

France. The Queen had new advisers--Riccio, Balfour, Bothwell, the

eldest son of the late Huntly, and Lennox, till the wretched Darnley in a

few weeks proved his incapacity. Lethington, rather neglected, hung

about the Court, as he remained with Mary of Guise long after he had

intended to desert her.

Mary, whose only chance lay in outstaying Elizabeth in the policy of

celibacy, had been driven, or led, by her rival Queen into a marriage

which would have been the best possible, had Darnley been a man of

character and a Protestant. He was the typical "young fool," indolent,

incapable, fierce, cowardly, and profligate. His religion was dubious.

After his arrival (on February 26, 1565) he went with Moray to hear Knox

preach, but he had been bred by a Catholic mother, and, on occasion,

posed as an ardent Catholic. {246} It is unfortunate that Randolph is

silent about Knox during all the period of the broils which preceded and

followed Mary's marriage.

On August 19, 1565, Darnley, now Mary's husband, went to hear Knox preach

in St. Giles's, on the text, "O Lord our God, other lords than Thou have

ruled over us." "God," he said, "sets in that room (for the offences and

ingratitude of the people) boys and women." Ahab also appeared, as

usual. Ahab "had not taken order with that harlot, Jezebel." So Book V.

says, and "harlot" would be a hit at Mary's alleged misconduct with

Riccio. A hint in a letter of Randolph's of August 24, may point to

nascent scandal about the pair. But the printed sermon, from Knox's

written copy, reads, not "harlot" but "idolatrous wife." At all events,

Darnley was so moved by this sermon that he would not dine. {247a} Knox

was called "from his bed" to the Council chamber, where were Atholl,

Ruthven, Lethington, the Justice Clerk, and the Queen's Advocate. He was

attended by a great crowd of notable citizens, but Lethington forbade him

to preach for a fortnight or three weeks. He said that, "If the Church

would command him to preach or abstain he would obey, so far as the Word

of God would permit him."

It seems that he would only obey even the Church as far as he chose.

The Town Council protested against the deprivation, and we do not know

how long Knox desisted from preaching. Laing thinks that, till Mary

fell, he preached only "at occasional intervals." {247b} But we shall

see that he did presently go on preaching, with Lethington for a

listener. He published his sermon, without name of place or printer. The

preacher informs his audience that "in the Hebrew there is no conjunction

copulative" in a certain sentence; probably he knew more Hebrew than most

of our pastors.

The sermon is very long, and, wanting the voice and gesture of the

preacher, is no great proof of eloquence; in fact, is tedious. Probably

Darnley was mainly vexed by the length, though he may have had

intelligence enough to see that he and Mary were subjects of allusions.

Knox wrote the piece from memory, on the last of August, in "the terrible

roaring of guns, and the noise of armour." The banded Lords, Moray and

the rest, had entered Edinburgh, looking for supporters, and finding

none. Erskine, commanding the Castle, fired six or seven shots as a

protest, and the noise of these disturbed the prophet at his task. As a

marginal note says, "The Castle of Edinburgh was shooting against the

exiled for Christ Jesus' sake" {248a}--namely, at Moray and his company.

Knox prayed for them in public, and was accused of so doing, but

Lethington testified that he had heard "the sermons," and found in them

no ground of offence. {248b}

[Mary Stuart. From the portrait in the collection of the Earl of Morton:

knox5.jpg]

Moray, Ochiltree, Pitarro, and many others being now exiles in England,

whose Queen had subsidised and repudiated them and their revolution,

things went hard with the preachers. For a whole year at least (December

1565-66) their stipends were not paid, the treasury being exhausted by

military and other expenses, and Pitarro being absent. At the end of

December, Knox and his colleague, Craig, were ordered by the General

Assembly to draw up and print a service for a general Fast, to endure

from the last Sunday in February to the first in March, 1566. One cause

alleged is that the Queen's conversion had been hoped for, but now she

said that she would "maintain and defend" {248c} her own faith. She had

said no less to Knox at their first interview, but now she had really

written, when invited to abolish her Mass, that her subjects may worship

as they will, but that she will not desert her religion. {249a} It was

also alleged that the godly were to be destroyed all over Europe, in

accordance with decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, vice,

manslaughter, and oppression of the poor continued, prices of commodities

rose, and work was scamped. The date of the Fast was fixed, not to

coincide with Lent, but because it preceded an intended meeting of

Parliament, {249b} a Parliament interrupted by the murder of Riccio, and

the capture of the Queen. No games were to be played during the two

Sundays of the Fast, which looks as if they were still permitted on other

Sundays. The appointed lessons were from Judges, Esther, Chronicles,

Isaiah, and Esdras; the New Testament, apparently, supplied nothing

appropriate. It seldom did. The lay attendants of the Assembly of

Christmas Day which decreed the Fast, were Morton, Mar, Lindsay,

Lethington, with some lairds.

The Protestants must have been alarmed, in February 1566, by a report, to

which Randolph gave circulation, that Mary had joined a Catholic League,

with the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and

others. Lethington may have believed this; at all events he saw no hope

of pardon for Moray and his abettors--"no certain way, unless we chop at

the very root, you know where it lieth" (February 9). {249c} Probably he

means the murder of Riccio, not of the Queen. Bedford said that Mary had

not yet signed the League. {249d} We are aware of no proof that there

was any League to sign, and though Mary was begging money both from Spain

and the Pope, she probably did not expect to procure more than tolerance

for her own religion. {250a} The rumours, however, must have had their

effect in causing apprehension. Moreover, Darnley, from personal

jealousy; Morton, from fear of losing the Seals; the Douglases, kinsmen

of Morton and Darnley; and the friends of the exiled nobles, seeing that

they were likely to be forfeited, conspired with Moray in England to be

Darnley's men, to slay Riccio, and to make the Queen subordinate to

Darnley, and "to fortify and maintain" the Protestant faith. Mary,

indeed, had meant to reintroduce the Spiritual Estate into Parliament, as

a means of assisting her Church; so she writes to Archbishop Beaton in

Paris. {250b}

Twelve wooden altars, to be erected in St. Giles's, are said by Knox's

continuator to have been found in Holyrood. {250c}

Mary's schemes, whatever they extended to, were broken by the murder of

Riccio in the evening of March 9. He was seized in her presence, and

dirked by fifty daggers outside of her room. Ruthven, who in June 1564

had come into Mary's good graces, and Morton were, with Darnley, the

leaders of the Douglas feud, and of the brethren.

The nobles might easily have taken, tried, and hanged Riccio, but they

yielded to Darnley and to their own excited passions, when once they had

torn him from the Queen. The personal pleasure of dirking the wretch

could not be resisted, and the danger of causing the Queen's miscarriage

and death may have entered into the plans of Darnley. Knox does not tell

the story himself; his "History" ends in June 1564. But "in plain terms"

he "lets the world understand what we mean," namely, that Riccio "was

justly punished," and that "the act" (of the murderers) was "most just

and most worthy of _all_ praise." {251a} This Knox wrote just after the

event, while the murderers were still in exile in England, where Ruthven

died--seeing a vision of angels! Knox makes no drawback to the entirely

and absolutely laudable character of the deed. He goes out of his way to

tell us "in plain terms what we mean," in a digression from his account

of affairs sixteen years earlier. Thus one fails to understand the

remark, that "of the manner in which the deed was done we may be certain

that Knox would disapprove as vehemently as any of his contemporaries."

{251b} The words may be ironical, for vehement disapproval was not

conspicuous among Protestant contemporaries. Knox himself, after Mary

scattered the party of the murderers and recovered power, prayed that

heaven would "put it into the heart of a multitude" to treat Mary like

Athaliah.

Mary made her escape from Holyrood to Dunbar, to safety, in the night of

March 11. March 12 found Knox on his knees; the game was up, the blood

had been shed in vain. The Queen had not died, but was well, and

surrounded by friends; and the country was rather for her than against

her. The Reformer composed a prayer, repenting that "in quiet I am

negligent, in trouble impatient, tending to desperation," which shows

insight. He speaks of his pride and ambition, also of his covetousness

and malice. That he was really covetous we cannot believe, nor does he

show malice except against idolaters. He "does not doubt himself to be

elected to eternal salvation," of which he has "assured signs." He has

"knowledge above the common sort of my brethren" (pride has crept in

again!), and has been compelled to "forespeak," or prophesy. He implores

mercy for his "desolate bedfellow," for her children, and for his sons by

his first wife. "Now, Lord, put end to my misery!" (Edinburgh, March 12,

1566). Knox fled from Edinburgh, "with a great mourning of the godly of

religion," says a Diarist, on the same day as the chief murderers took

flight, March 17; his place of refuge was Kyle in Ayrshire (March 21,

1566). {252a}

In Randolph's letter, recording the flight of these nobles, he mentions

eight of their accomplices, and another list is pinned to the letter,

giving names of men "all at the death of Davy and privy thereunto." This

applies to about a dozen men, being a marginal note opposite their names.

A line lower is added, "John Knox, John Craig, preachers." {252b} There

is no other evidence that Knox, who fled, or Craig, who stood to his

pulpit, were made privy to the plot. When idolaters thought it best not

to let the Pope into a scheme for slaying Elizabeth, it is hardly

probable that Protestants would apprise their leading preachers. On the

other hand, Calvin was consulted by the would-be assassins of the Duc de

Guise, in 1559-60, and he prevented the deed, as he assures the Duchesse

de Ferrare, the mother-in-law of the Duc, after that noble was murdered

in good earnest. {252c} Calvin, we have shown, knew beforehand of the

conspiracy of Amboise, which aimed at the death of "Antonius," obviously

Guise. He disapproved of but did not reveal the plot. Knox, whether

privy to the murder or not, did not, when he ran away, take the best

means of disarming suspicion. Neither his name nor that of Craig occurs

in two lists containing those of between seventy and eighty persons

"delated," and it is to be presumed that he fled because he did not feel

sure of protection against Mary's frequently expressed dislike.

In earlier days, with a strong backing, he had not feared "the pleasing

face of a gentlewoman," as he said, but now he did fear it. Kyle suited

him well, because the Earl of Cassilis, who had been an idolater, was

converted by a faithful bride, in August. Dr. M'Crie {253a} says that

Mary "wrote to a nobleman in the west country with whom Knox resided, to

banish him from his house." The evidence for this is a letter of

Parkhurst to Bullinger, in December 1567. Parkhurst tells Bullinger,

among other novelties, that Riccio was a necromancer, who happened to be

dirked; by whom he does not say. He adds that Mary commanded "a certain

pious earl" not to keep Knox in his house. {253b}

In Kyle Knox worked at his "History." On September 4 he signed a letter

sent from the General Assembly at St. Andrews to Beza, approving of a

Swiss confession of faith, except so far as the keeping of Christmas,

Easter, and other Christian festivals is concerned. Knox himself wrote

to Beza, about this time, an account of the condition of Scotland. It

would be invaluable, as the career of Mary was rushing to the falls, but

it is lost. {253c}

On December 24, Mary pardoned all the murderers of Riccio; and Knox

appears to have been present, though it is not certain, at the Christmas

General Assembly in Edinburgh. He received permission to visit his sons

in England, and he wrote two letters: one to the Protestant nobles on

Mary's attempt to revive the consistorial jurisdiction of the Primate;

the other to the brethren. To England he carried a remonstrance from the

Kirk against the treatment of Puritans who had conscientious objections

to the apparel--"Romish rags"--of the Church Anglican. Men ought to

oppose themselves boldly to Authority; that is, to Queen Elizabeth, if

urged further than their consciences can bear. {254a}

Being in England, Knox, of course, did not witness the events associated

with the Catholic baptism of the baby prince (James VI.); the murder of

Darnley, in February 1567; the abduction of Mary by Bothwell, and her

disgraceful marriage to her husband's murderer, in May 1567. If Knox

excommunicated the Queen, it was probably about this date. Long

afterwards, on April 25, 1584, Mary was discussing the various churches

with Waad, an envoy of Cecil. Waad said that the Pope stirred up peoples

not to obey their sovereigns. "Yet," said the Queen, "a Pope shall

excommunicate _you_, but _I_ was excommunicated by a pore minister,

Knokes. In fayth I feare nothinge else but that they will use my sonne

as they have done the mother." {254b}

CHAPTER XVIII: THE LAST YEARS OF KNOX: 1567-1572

The Royal quarry, so long in the toils of Fate, was dragged down at last,

and the doom forespoken by the prophet was fulfilled. A multitude had

their opportunity with this fair Athaliah; and Mary had ridden from

Carberry Hill, a draggled prisoner, into her own town, among the yells of

"burn the harlot." But one out of all her friends was faithful to her.

Mary Seton, to her immortal honour, rode close by the side of her fallen

mistress and friend.

For six years insulted and thwarted; her smiles and her tears alike

wasted on greedy, faithless courtiers and iron fanatics; perplexed and

driven desperate by the wiles of Cecil and Elizabeth; in bodily pain and

constant sorrow--the sorrow wrought by the miscreant whom she had

married; without one honest friend; Mary had wildly turned to the man

who, it is to be supposed, she thought could protect her, and her passion

had dragged her into unplumbed deeps of crime and shame.

The fall of Mary, the triumph of Protestantism, appear to have, in some

degree, rather diminished the prominence of Knox. He would never make

Mary weep again. He had lost the protagonist against whom, for a while,

he had stood almost alone, and soon we find him complaining of neglect.

He appeared at the General Assembly of June 25, 1567--a scanty gathering.

George Buchanan, a layman, was Moderator: the Assembly was adjourned to

July 21, and the brethren met in arms; wherefore Argyll, who had signed

the band for Darnley's murder, declined to come. {256a} The few nobles,

the barons, and others present, vowed to punish the murder of Darnley and

to defend the child prince; and it was decided that henceforth all

Scottish princes should swear to "set forward the true religion of Jesus

Christ, as at present professed and established in this realm"--as they

are bound to do--"by Deuteronomy and the second chapter of the Book of

Kings," which, in fact, do not speak of establishing Calvinism.

Among those who sign are Morton, who had guilty foreknowledge of the

murder; while his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, was present at the doing;

Sir James Balfour, who was equally involved; Lethington, who signed the

murder covenant; and Douglas of Whittingham, and Ker of Faldonside, two

of Riccio's assassins. Most of the nobles stood aloof.

Presently Throckmorton arrived, sent by Elizabeth with the pretence, at

least, of desiring to save Mary's life, which, but for his exertions, he

thought would have been taken. He "feared Knox's austerity as much as

any man's" (July 14). {256b}

On July 17 Knox arrived from the west, where he had been trying to unite

the Protestants. {256c} Throckmorton found Craig and Knox "very

austere," well provided with arguments from the Bible, history, the laws

of Scotland, and the Coronation Oath. {257a} Knox in his sermons

"threatened the great plague of God to this whole nation and country if

the Queen be spared from her condign punishment." {257b}

Murderers were in the habit of being lightly let off, in Scotland, and,

as to Mary, she could easily have been burned for husband-murder, but not

so easily convicted thereof with any show of justice. The only direct

evidence of her complicity lay in the Casket Letters, and several of her

lordly accusers were (if she were guilty) her accomplices. Her prayer to

be heard in self-defence at the ensuing Parliament of December was

refused, for excellent reasons; and her opponents had the same good

reasons for not bringing her to trial. Knox was perfectly justified if

he desired her to be tried, but several lay members of the General

Assembly could not have faced that ordeal, and Randolph later accused

Lethington, in a letter to him, of advising her assassination. {257c}

On July 29 Knox preached at the Coronation of James VI. at Stirling,

protesting against the rite of anointing. True, it was Jewish, but it

had passed through the impure hands of Rome, as, by the way, had Baptism.

Knox also preached at the opening of Parliament, on December 15. We know

little of him at this time. He had sent his sons to Cambridge, into

danger of acquiring Anglican opinions, which they did; but now he seems

to have taken a less truculent view of Anglicanism than in 1559-60. He

had been drawing a prophetic historical parallel between Chatelherault

(more or less of the Queen's party) and Judas Iscariot, and was not loved

by the Hamiltons. The Duke was returning from France, "to restore Satan

to his kingdom," with the assistance of the Guises. Knox mentions an

attempt to assassinate Moray, now Regent, which is obscure. "I live as a

man already dead from all civil things." Thus he wrote to Wood, Moray's

agent, then in England on the affair of the Casket Letters (September 10,

1568).

He had already (February 14) declined to gratify Wood by publishing his

"History." He would not permit it to appear during his life, as "it will

rather hurt me than profit them" (his readers). He was, very naturally,

grieved that the conduct of men was not conformable to "the truth of God,

now of some years manifest." He was not concerned to revenge his own

injuries "by word or writ," and he foresaw schism in England over

questions of dress and rites. {258a}

He was neglected. "Have not thine oldest and stoutest acquaintance"

(Moray, or Kirkcaldy of Grange?) "buried thee in present oblivion, and

art thou not in that estate, by age, {258b} that nature itself calleth

thee from the pleasure of things temporal?" (August 19, 1569).

"_In trouble impatient, tending to desperation_," Knox had said of

himself. He was still unhappy. "Foolish Scotland" had "disobeyed God by

sparing the Queen's life," and now the proposed Norfolk marriage of Mary

and her intended restoration were needlessly dreaded. A month later,

Lethington, thrown back on Mary by his own peril for his share in

Darnley's murder, writes to the Queen that some ministers are

reconcilable, "but Nox I think be inflexible." {259a}

A year before Knox wrote his melancholy letter, just cited, he had some

curious dealings with the English Puritans. In 1566 many of them had

been ejected from their livings, and, like the Scottish Catholics, they

"assembled in woods and private houses to worship God." {259b} The

edifying controversies between these precisians and Grindal, the Bishop

of London, are recorded by Strype. The bishop was no zealot for

surplices and the other momentous trifles which agitate the human

conscience, but Elizabeth insisted on them; and "Her Majesty's Government

must be carried on." The precisians had deserted the English Liturgy for

the Genevan Book of Common Order; both sides were appealing to Beza, in

Geneva, and were wrangling about the interpretation of that Pontiff's

words. {259c}

Calvin had died in 1564, but the Genevan Church and Beza were still

umpires, whose decision was eagerly sought, quibbled over, and disputed.

The French Puritans, in fact, extremely detested the Anglican Book of

Common Prayer. Thus, in 1562, De la Vigne, a preacher at St. Lo,

consulted Calvin about the excesses of certain Flemish brethren, who

adhered to "a certain bobulary (bobulaire) of prayers, compiled, or

brewed, in the days of Edward VI." The Calvinists of St. Lo decided that

these Flemings must not approach their holy table, and called our

communion service "a disguised Mass." The Synod (Calvinistic) of

Poictiers decided that our Liturgy contains "impieties," and that Satan

was the real author of the work! There are saints' days, "with epistles,

lessons, or gospels, as under the papacy." They have heard that the

Prayer Book has been condemned by Geneva. {260a}