1570; and the intelligence of his murder was conveyed early next
morning to Edinburgh. It is impossible to describe the anguish which
the Reformer felt on this occasion. The loss of a noble and endeared
friend was the least evil which he had to deplore. Of all the Scottish
nobility, he placed the greatest confidence in Murray’s attachment
to religion; and his conduct after his elevation to the regency, had
served to heighten the good opinion which he formerly entertained of
him. He looked upon his death as the greatest calamity which could
befall the nation, and as a forerunner of many evils.[210] When the
shock produced by the melancholy tidings had subsided, the first
thought that rushed into his mind was, that he had himself been the
instrument of obtaining, from his clemency, a pardon to the man who
had become his murderer; a thought which naturally produced a very
different impression on him from what it did on the mind of the dying
regent.[211]
In his sermon that day, he introduced the melancholy subject; and
after saying, that God in his great mercy raised up pious rulers, and
took them away in his displeasure, on account of the sins of a nation,
he thus poured out the sorrows of his heart: {173} “O Lord, in what
misery and confusion found he this realm! To what rest and quietness
now by his labours, suddenly he brought the same, all estates, but
especially the poor commons, can witness. Thy image, O Lord, did so
clearly shine in that personage, that the devil, and the people to
whom he is prince, could not abide it; and so to punish our sins and
our ingratitude, (who did not rightly esteem so precious a gift,)
thou hast permitted him to fall, to our great grief, in the hands of
cruel and traitorous murderers. He is at rest, O Lord; we are left in
extreme misery.”[212]
Only a few days before this, and after the plan of the murder was
fully concerted, Gavin Hamilton, abbot of Kilwinning, applied to Knox
to intercede with the regent in behalf of some of his kinsmen, who
were confined for practising against the government. He signified his
readiness to do all in his power for the relief of any of that family
who were willing to own the authority of the king, but entreated the
abbot not to abuse him by employing his services, if his relations
intended to do any mischief to the regent;[213] for “I protest,” said
he, “before {174} God, who is the only witness now betwixt us, that
if there be any thing attempted, by any of that surname, against the
person of that man, in that case I discharge myself to you and them
for ever.” After the assassination, the abbot sent to desire another
interview; but Knox refused to see him, and desired the messenger
to say, “I have not now the regent to make suit unto for the
Hamiltons.”[214]
At this time there was handed about a fabricated account of a
pretended conference held by the late regent with lord Lindsay,
Wishart of Pittarrow, the tutor of Pitcur, James Macgill, and Knox;
in which they were represented as advising him to set aside the young
king, and place the crown on his own head. To give it the greater
air of credibility, the modes of expression peculiar to each of the
persons were carefully imitated in the speeches put into their mouths.
The evident design of circulating it at this time, was to lessen the
odium of the murder, and the veneration of the people for the memory
of Murray; but it was universally regarded as an impudent and gross
forgery. The person who fabricated it was Thomas Maitland, a young
man of talents, but corrupted by his brother, the secretary, who had
previously engaged himself to the queen’s party, and was suspected of
having had a deep hand in the plot for assassinating the regent.[215]
On the day on which the weekly conference was held in Edinburgh, the
same person slipped into the {175} pulpit a schedule, containing words
to this effect: “Take up now the man whom you accounted another God,
and consider the end to which his ambition hath brought him.” It was
Knox’s turn to preach that day. On entering the pulpit he took up
the paper, supposing it to be a note requesting the prayers of the
congregation for a sick person, and having read it, laid it aside
without any apparent emotion. But towards the conclusion of his
sermon, after deploring the loss which the church and commonwealth had
recently sustained, and declaring the account of the conference, which
had been circulated, to be false and calumnious, he said that there
were persons who rejoiced at the treasonable murder, and scrupled not
to make it the subject of their merriment; and particularly, there was
one present who had thrown into the pulpit a paper exulting over an
event which was the cause of grief to all good men: “that wicked man,
whosoever he be, shall not go unpunished, and shall die where there
shall be none to lament him.” Maitland, after he went home, said
to his sister, that the preacher was raving, when he spake in such
a manner of a person who was unknown to him; but she, suspecting
that her brother had written the line, reproved him, saying with
tears, that none of that man’s denunciations were wont to prove idle.
Spotswood (who had his information personally from the mouth of that
lady) says, that Maitland died in Italy, “having no known person to
attend him.”[216]
{176} On Tuesday the 14th of February, the regent’s corpse was brought
from the palace of Holyroodhouse, and interred in the south aisle of
the collegiate church of St Giles. Before the funeral, Knox preached
a sermon on these words, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.”
Three thousand persons were dissolved in tears before him, while
he described the virtues of the regent, and bewailed his loss.[217]
Buchanan paid a tribute to the memory of his deceased patron, by
writing the inscription placed on his monument, with that expressive
simplicity and brevity which are dictated by genuine grief.[218] A
convention of the nobility was held after the funeral, at which it was
resolved to avenge his death; but different opinions were entertained
as to the mode of doing this, and the commons complained loudly of
the remissness with which the resolution was prosecuted. The General
Assembly, at their first meeting, testified {177} their detestation of
the crime, by ordering the assassin to be publicly excommunicated in
all the chief towns of the kingdom, and by appointing the same process
to be used against all who should afterwards be convicted of accession
to the murder.[219]
During the sitting of the convention, Knox received a number of
letters from his acquaintances in England, expressive of their
high regard for the character of the regent, and their sorrow at
so grievous a loss.[220] One of these was from Christopher Goodman,
and another from John Willock, who either had not complied with
the invitation of the General Assembly, or had again returned to
England.[221] The other letters were from Englishmen, who had no
immediate {178} connexion with Scotland. Dr Laurence Humphrey[222]
urged Knox to write a memoir of the deceased. Had he done this, his
intimate acquaintance with the regent would, no doubt, have enabled
him to communicate many particulars of which we must now be content
to remain ignorant; but though he had been disposed to undertake this
task, the state of his health would have prevented its execution.
The grief which he indulged on account of this mournful event, and
the confusions which followed it, preyed upon his spirits, and injured
his health.[223] In the month of October, he had a stroke of apoplexy,
which affected his speech to a considerable degree. On this occasion,
his enemies exulted, and circulated the most exaggerated tales
respecting his disorder. The report ran through Scotland and England,
that John Knox would never preach or speak more,――that his face was
turned into his neck,――that he was become the most deformed creature
ever seen,――that he was actually dead.[224] A most unequivocal proof
{179} of the high consideration in which he was held, which our
Reformer received in common with other great men of his age![225]
{180}
PERIOD IX.
FROM OCTOBER 1570, WHEN HE WAS STRUCK WITH APOPLEXY,
TO HIS DEATH, IN NOVEMBER 1572.
THOSE who flattered themselves that the Reformer’s disorder was mortal,
were disappointed; for he was restored to the use of his speech, and
was able, in the course of a few days, to resume preaching, at least
on Sabbath days.[226] He never recovered, however, from the debility
which was produced by the apoplectic stroke.
The confusions which he had augured from the death of the good regent
soon broke out, and again spread the flames of civil discord through
the nation. The earl of Lennox, who was the natural guardian of his
grandson, was advanced to the regency; but he was deficient in the
talents which were requisite for so difficult a station, and the
knowledge of his weakness emboldened and increased the party which was
attached to the queen. The Hamiltons openly raised her standard, and
were strengthened by the influence and abilities of Maitland. William
Kircaldy of Grange, whom Murray had made governor of the castle of
Edinburgh, after concealing his defection for some time under the flag
of neutrality, declared {181} himself on the same side, and became
a principal agent in attempting to overturn that government which he
had been so zealous in erecting. Maitland’s tergiversation surprised
nobody; but the defection of Kircaldy was deeply felt by those with
whom he had been so long associated. It proved a source of the keenest
distress to Knox. The acquaintance which they had formed in the castle
of St Andrews,[227] grew into intimacy during their confinement in
the French galleys; and Knox could never forget the services which
Kircaldy performed during the subsequent struggle for reformation,
and continued to the last to cherish the hope that he was at heart a
friend to religion. Under the influence of these feelings, he spared
no pains in endeavouring to prevent him from renouncing his fidelity
to the king, and afterwards to reclaim him from his apostacy. But in
both attempts he was unsuccessful.
In the end of the year 1570, he was personally involved in a
disagreeable quarrel with Kircaldy. One of the soldiers belonging to
the castle having been imprisoned by the magistrates on a charge of
murder, the governor sent a party from the garrison, who broke open
the tolbooth, and carried off the prisoner. In his sermon on the
following Sabbath, Knox condemned {182} this riot, and violation
of the house of justice. Had it been done by the authority of a
bloodthirsty man, or one who had no fear of God, he would not, he said,
have been so much moved at it; but he was affected to think that one
of whom all good men had formed so great expectations, should have
fallen so far as to act such a part; one too, who, when formerly
in prison, had refused to purchase his own liberty by the shedding
of blood.[228] An erroneous and exaggerated report of this censure
being conveyed to the castle, the governor, in great rage, made his
complaint, first to Knox’s colleague, and afterwards formally to the
kirk‑session, that he had been calumniated as a murderer, and required
that his character should be vindicated as publicly as it had been
traduced. Knox, understanding that his words had been misrepresented,
embraced the first opportunity of explaining and vindicating them
from the pulpit. On a subsequent day, Kircaldy, who had absented
himself from the church nearly a whole year, came down to St Giles’s,
accompanied with a number of the persons who had been active in
the murder and riot. Regarding this as an attempt to overawe the
authorities, and set public opinion at defiance, the Reformer dwelt
particularly, in his discourse, upon the sinfulness of forgetting
benefits received from God, and warned his hearers against confiding
in the divine mercy, while they were knowingly transgressing any of
the commandments, or proudly defending their transgression.
{183} Kircaldy was much incensed at this admonition, which he
considered as levelled at him, and made use of very threatening
language in speaking of the preacher. The report spread that the
governor of the castle was become a sworn enemy to Knox, and intended
to kill him. Upon this, several noblemen and gentlemen of Kyle and
Cunningham sent a letter to Kircaldy, in which, after reminding him of
his former appearances for religion, and mentioning the reports which
had reached their ears, they warned him against doing any thing to
the hurt of that man, whom “God had made the first planter and chief
waterer of his church among them,” and protested that “his death and
life were as dear to them as their own.”[229]
Knox was not to be deterred from doing what he considered to be his
duty. He persisted in warning his hearers to avoid all participation
with those who prevented the punishment of atrocious crimes, by
supporting the pretensions of the queen, and who exposed the reformed
religion to the utmost hazard, by opposing the king’s authority. When
the General Assembly met in March, 1571, anonymous libels were thrown
into the house where they were sitting, and placards affixed to
the church‑doors, accusing him of seditious railing against their
sovereign, the queen, refusing to pray for her welfare and conversion,
representing her as a reprobate whose repentance was hopeless, and
uttering imprecations against her. One of the placards concluded with
a threat, that, if {184} the assembly did not restrain him by their
authority from using such language, the complainers would themselves
apply a remedy to the evil “with greater unquietness.” The assembly
having, by public intimation, required the complainers to come forward
and substantiate their charges, another anonymous writing appeared,
promising that accusers should not be wanting against next assembly,
if the preacher continued his offensive speeches, and was “then
law‑byding, and not fugitive, according to his accustomed manner.”
Several of his friends dealt with him to pass over these
unauthenticated libels in silence, but he refused to comply with this
advice, considering that the credit of his ministry was implicated.
Accordingly, he produced them in the pulpit, and returned a particular
answer to the accusations which they contained. That he had charged
the late queen with the crimes of which she had been notoriously
guilty, he granted,――that he had railed against her, he denied; nor
would they be able to substantiate this charge against him, without
at the same time proving Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other inspired writers,
to have been railers. “From them he had learned plainly and boldly to
call wickedness by its own terms, a fig, a fig, and a spade, a spade.”
He had never called the queen reprobate, nor said that her repentance
was impossible; but he had affirmed that pride and repentance could
not remain long together in one heart. He had prayed, that God, for
the comfort of his church, would oppose his power to her pride, and
confound her and {185} her assistants in their impiety: this prayer,
let them call it imprecation or execration as they pleased, had
stricken, and would yet strike, whoever supported her. To the charge
of not praying for the queen, he answered, “I am not bound to pray
for her in this place, for sovereign to me she is not; and I let them
understand that I am not a man of law that has my tongue to sell for
silver, or favour of the world.”[230] What title she now had, or ever
had to the government, he would not dispute; the estates had deprived
her of it, and it belonged to them to answer for this: as for him,
he had hitherto lived in obedience to all lawful authority within the
kingdom. To the threatening against his life, and the insinuation that
he might not be “law‑byding, but fugitive” against next assembly, he
replied, that his life was in the custody of Him who had hitherto
preserved him from many dangers, that he had reached an age at which
he was not apt to flee far, nor could any yet accuse him of having
left the people committed to his charge, except at their own command.
{186} After these answers, his enemies fled, as their last resort,
to an attack upon his Blast of the Trumpet, and accused him of
inconsistency in writing against female government, and yet praying
for queen Elizabeth, and seeking her support against his native
country. This accusation he also met in the pulpit, and refuted with
great spirit. After vindicating his consistency, he concluded in the
following manner:――“One thing in the end, I may not pretermit, that is,
to give him a lie in his throat that either dare, or will say, that
ever I sought support against my native country. What I have been to
my country, albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to
come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease,
requiring of all men that has to oppose any thing against me, that he
will do it so plainly as I make myself and all my doings manifest to
the world; for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable, that, in my
decrepit age, I shall be compelled to fight against shadows, and
howlets that dare not abide the light.”[231]
The conduct of our Reformer at this period affords a striking display
of the unextinguishable ardour of his mind. Previous to the breaking
out of the late disturbances, he had given up attendance on church
courts. He never went abroad except on Sabbath‑days, to preach in the
forenoon. He was so debilitated as to be unable to go to the pulpit
without {187} assistance.[232] He had weaned his heart from the world,
and expressed his resolution to take no more part in public affairs.
In answer to a letter of his esteemed friend, Sir William Douglas of
Lochleven, who had informed him of an intended attempt on the castle
of St Andrews by archbishop Hamilton, and requested his good offices
for certain preachers, we find him, on the 31st of March, 1570,
writing as follows:――“How such troublers may be stayed in their
enterprises, I commit to God, to whose counsels I commit you in
that and all other causes worldly, for I have taken my good‑night
of it; and therefore bear with me, good sir, albeit I write not to
the superintendent of Fife in the action that ye desire.”[233] But
whenever he saw the church and commonwealth seriously in danger,
he forgot his infirmities and his resolutions, and entered into
the cause with all the keenness of his more vigorous days. Whether
the public proceedings of the nation, or his own conduct, were
arraigned,――whether the attacks upon them were open or clandestine,
he stood prepared to repel them, and convinced the adversaries, that
they could not accomplish their designs without opposition, as long
as he was able to move or speak.[234]
{188} His situation became very critical in April 1571, when Kircaldy
received the Hamiltons, with their forces, into the castle. Their
inveteracy against him was so great, that his friends were obliged to
watch his house during the night. They proposed forming a guard for
the protection of his person when he went abroad; but the governor of
the castle forbade this, as implying a suspicion of his own intentions,
and offered to send Melvil, one of his officers, to conduct him to
and from the church. “He wold gif the woulf the wedder to keip,”
says Bannatyne. Induced by the importunity of the citizens, Kircaldy
applied to the duke and his party for a protection to Knox; but they
refused to pledge their word for his safety, because “there were many
rascals and others among them who loved him not, that might do him
harm without their knowledge.”[235] Intimations were often given
him of threatenings against his life; and one evening a musket‑ball
was fired in at his window, and lodged in the roof of the apartment
in which he was sitting. It happened that he sat at the time in a
different part of the room from that which he had been accustomed
to occupy, otherwise the ball, from the direction it took, must have
struck him.[236] Alarmed by this occurrence, a deputation of the
citizens, accompanied by his colleague, waited upon him, and {189}
renewed a request which they had formerly made, that he would remove
from Edinburgh, to a place where his life would be in greater safety,
until the queen’s party should evacuate the town. But he refused to
yield to them, apprehending that his enemies wished to intimidate
him into flight, that they might carry on their designs more quietly,
and then accuse him of cowardice. Being unable to persuade him by any
other means, they had recourse at last to an argument which prevailed.
They told him that if he was attacked, they were determined to risk
their lives in his defence, and if blood was shed in the quarrel,
which was highly probable, they would leave it on his head. Upon this
he consented to remove from the city, “sore against his will.”[237]
He left Edinburgh on the 5th of May, 1571, and crossing the Frith at
Leith, travelled by short stages to St Andrews, which he had chosen
as the place of his retreat.[238] His pulpit was filled by Alexander
Gordon, bishop of Galloway, who preached and prayed in a manner more
acceptable to the queen’s party than his predecessor, but little
to the satisfaction of the people, who despised him on account
of his weakness, and disliked him for supplanting their favourite
pastor.[239] A number of the most respectable inhabitants {190} were
driven from the capital by violence, while others were induced to
quit it, and retire to Leith, that they might not be understood as
even practically submitting to the queen’s authority. The church of
Edinburgh was for a time dissolved. The celebration of the Lord’s
supper was suspended. And, whereas formerly scarce a day passed
without some public exercise of religion, there was now, during a
whole week, “neither preaching nor prayer; neither was there any sound
of bell heard in all the town, except the ringing of the cannon.”[240]
The kingdom was now subjected to all the miseries of civil war and
intestine faction. In almost every part of the country there were
adherents to the king and to the queen, who exasperated each other by
reciprocal reproaches and injuries. The regent fortified Leith, while
the queen’s party kept possession of the castle and town of Edinburgh.
As the two armies lay at a small distance from one another, and
neither of them was sufficiently strong for undertaking to dispossess
the other, they were daily engaged in petty skirmishes; and several
acts of disgraceful retaliation, which rarely happen in the open field,
were committed on both sides. The evidence which the queen’s friends
gave of their personal antipathy to the Reformer, clearly showed that
his life {191} would have been in imminent danger, if he had remained
among them. An inhabitant of Leith was assaulted and his body
mutilated, because he was of the same name with him. A servant of
John Craig, being met one day by a reconnoitring party, and asked who
was his master, answered, in his trepidation, Mr Knox; upon which he
was seized, and, although he immediately corrected his mistake, they
desired him to “hold at his first master,” and dragged him to prison.
Having fortified St Giles’s steeple to overawe the inhabitants,
the soldiers baptized one of the cannons by the name of Knox, which
they were so fond of firing, that it burst, killed two of the party,
and wounded others.[241] They circulated the most ridiculous tales
respecting his conduct at St Andrews. John Law, the letter‑carrier
of that city, being in the castle of Edinburgh, “the ladie Home and
utheris wald neidis thraip in his face, that” John Knox “was banist
the said toune, becaus that in the yarde he had reasit sum sanctis,
amongis whome thair came up the devill with hornis, which when his
servant Richart sawe, [he] ran woode, and so died.”[242]