THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560
Knox had preached only for a few months in St Andrews in 1547, when the
castle capitulated to the foreign fleet, and he and his companions were
flung into the French galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at
the oar under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and the
heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count the cost of the
choice so recently made. It is a tribute to his constancy that men
chiefly remember this dark time by its spots of colour--as when, at
Nantes, he flung Our Lady's image into the Loire--'She is light enough:
let her learn to swim!' And when off St Andrews they pointed out to him
the steeple of the kirk, the emaciated prisoner replied, 'Yes, I know it
well: and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I
shall not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify His godly
name in the same place.' But this first apprenticeship to sorrow went
deep into the man. It was when he was 'in Rouen, lying in irons, and
sore troubled by corporal infirmity, in a galley named _Notre Dame_,'
that he sent a letter to his St Andrews friends. And in it he asks them
to 'Consider'--his countrymen have scarcely as yet considered it
sufficiently--'Consider, brethren, it is no speculative theologue which
desireth to give you courage, but even your brother in affliction, which
partly hath experience what Satan's wrath may do against the chosen of
God.'[60] His spirit indeed was in no wise broken: on his escape from
France he became again a garrison preacher, and gained over King
Edward's rude soldiers in Berwick an ascendancy, even greater than he
had held in St Andrews over the young lairds of Fife. But, though not
broken, it was chastened. It was during the following years, and
especially in 1553, that he wrote the deeply sympathetic letters from
which we have already quoted. And in 1554, when he left England to
escape Mary Tudor, he introduces into a short but admirable treatise on
Prayer some autobiographical references, which seem to date back to the
extreme suffering of his captivity, 'when not only the ungodly, but even
my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self, that is, all natural
understanding, judged my cause (case) to be irremediable.'
'The frail flesh, oppressed with fear and pain, desireth
deliverance, ever abhorring and drawing back from obedience
giving. O Christian brethren, I write by experience ... I know
the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh; I know the
anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God,
calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour
utterly to fall from God. Against which rests [remains] only
faith.'
Knox's faith sprang readily to whatever active duty was set before it.
On his escape from France he spent, as we have seen, five years in
England, and at the close of that period we have his own assurance that
he had become almost an Englishman.
'Sometime I have thought that impossible it had been, so to have
removed my affection from the realm of Scotland, that any realm
or nation could have been equally dear to me. But God I take to
record in my conscience that the troubles present (and appearing
to be) in the realm of England are doubly more dolorous unto my
heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland.'[61]
He had laboured incessantly in many parts of England, first as licensed
preacher and then as King's chaplain, and this of course brought him in
contact with church politics as well as the Evangel. It was owing to
Knox's remonstrances that, when King Edward's Council put kneeling at
the Sacrament into the Prayer-Book, they accompanied it with the Rubric,
which is still retained, and which testifies 'that thereby no adoration
is intended or ought to be done.' So far his position was reasonable,
and even conciliatory. But as early as 1550, when requested, perhaps by
the Council of the North, to 'give his confession' in Newcastle as to
the Mass, he repeated the Puritan view of his first St Andrews sermon,
but now in his favourite form of a syllogism, and with its major clause
dangerously enlarged.
'All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of
man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment,
is _Idolatry_.[62] The Mass is invented by the brain of man
without any commandment of God, therefore it is idolatry.'
To Knox's five years in England now succeeded five years which may be
said to have been spent on the Continent. He first drifted to Frankfort,
and was put in charge of the English congregation there. Very soon the
two parties, which have ever since divided the Church of England, made
their appearance in this representative fragment of it. Knox, of course,
took the Puritan side as to the form of worship; but a large part of his
congregation insisted on the full service of King Edward's book. The
matter was brought to a close in rather an unfortunate way by two of
Knox's opponents lodging an accusation against him before the
Magistrates, of treason against the Emperor, the English Queen, and her
Spanish husband. Frankfort was an imperial city, and Knox was thus no
longer safe there. He went to Geneva, which was then, under Calvin's
influence, an illustrious centre of the reformed faith; and was at once
called to be co-pastor there (along with Goodman) of the
English-speaking congregation. Knox's later biographer points out the
historic importance of this 'the first Puritan congregation.' It was the
source of Elizabethan Non-conformity, and 'it is in the writings of Knox
and Goodman that those doctrines were first unflinchingly expounded
which eventually became the tradition of Puritanism.'[63] The Church
Order, too, which they adopted became afterwards that of worship in
Scotland; their Psalms were the model for the English and Scotch
versions; and, above all, the Genevan Bible, prepared by the members of
Knox's congregation at the very time he was their minister, continued
for three-quarters of a century thereafter to be 'the household book of
the English-speaking nations.' It is called the happiest and most
peaceful time of Knox's life. But it was a time of incessant preparation
for still greater things, and in this short biography we must confine
ourselves to what bears either on the man himself or on his supreme work
for his native country.
For during all Knox's life on the Continent he seems to have kept in
view the problem of how the Evangel could be set free in Scotland. He
never had any doubt as to the duty of the individual to confess it in
the teeth of the Magistrate and of the law. But how could men combine
together to do so, against authority otherwise lawful? On this and
similar points he proposed questions on his first arrival in Switzerland
to the leading theologians. Bullinger, with the approval of Calvin, gave
an answer which may have suggested to Knox the idea that a people (the
Armenians are specially instanced) may revolt against 'their legitimate
magistrate' who persecutes the truth, provided they have an inferior
magistrate to lead them.[64] And next year, 1555, Knox made a memorable
visit to Scotland. There James the Fifth's widow, Mary of Lorraine, was
now Regent, and so chief 'Magistrate.' She was during all those years
not disposed to be intolerant, and the prospect was everywhere
encouraging. From Edinburgh Knox writes to Mrs Bowes (still in
Northumberland), thanking her for being
'the instrument to draw me from the den of my own ease (you
alone did draw me from the rest of quiet study) to contemplate
and behold the fervent thirst of our brethren, night and day
sobbing and groaning for the bread of life. If I had not seen it
with my eyes in my own country, I could not have believed it.
Depart I cannot, unto such time as God quench their thirst a
little.' And accordingly later on he adds, 'The trumpet blew the
old sound three days together, till private houses of
indifferent largeness could not contain the voice of it. God for
Christ his Son's sake grant me to be mindful that the sobs of my
heart have not been in vain, nor neglected in the presence of
his Majesty. O sweet were the death that should follow such
forty days in Edinburgh as here I have had three!'[65]
It was in the midst of this glowing enthusiasm that Knox attended an
Edinburgh supper party in the house of Erskine, the Laird of Dun, where
the question was formally discussed whether those who believed the
Evangel could countenance by their presence the celebration of the Mass?
Knox maintained the negative, and as young Maitland of Lethington and
other acute doubters were there, all views were well represented. But in
the end the Reformer's zeal prevailed, and another step was taken to
making Protestantism a public if not a permitted thing in Scotland. From
Edinburgh he took journeys to Forfarshire, to West Lothian, to Ayrshire,
and to Renfrewshire; and after half a year spent in incessant preaching,
followed occasionally by administering the Sacraments, he was at last
cited to appear before the bishops in the Blackfriars Church, Edinburgh.
He went, but attended by so many friends that nothing was attempted
against him for the time. And now, at the suggestion of Glencairn and
Marischal, two of the lords who were favourable to the new doctrine,
Knox sat down to write a letter to the Queen Dowager, as Regent of
Scotland. It had hitherto been Mary of Lorraine's policy to play off the
Protestant party, which had leanings to England, against the Catholic
side, which was faithful to France. Knox accordingly blesses 'God, who
by the dew of his heavenly grace, hath so quenched the fire of
displeasure in your Grace's heart,' and with unprecedented courtesy
apologises 'that a man of base estate and condition dare enterprise to
admonish a Princess so honourable, endued with wisdom and graces
singular.' Those whom Knox represented were a small minority of
Scotchmen; but that did not prevent him demanding of the Regent far more
than mere neutrality or 'indifferency' between the contending parties.
He demands of her the reform of both religion and the church. He admits
that 'your Grace's _power_ is not so free as a public Reformation
perchance would require'; you 'cannot hastily abolish superstition, ...
which to a public Reformation is requisite and necessary. But if the
zeal of God's glory be fervent in your Grace's heart, you will not by
wicked laws maintain idolatry, neither will you suffer the fury of
Bishops to murder and devour.' The Queen Regent was not disposed to go
very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's
glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she
handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the
words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to
Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful
additions and interpolations. In these he assumed--much too soon--that
there was no longer hope of the Regent becoming personally convinced of
the Evangel. But he at the same time modified his 'Petition' on behalf
of his party to this, 'that our doctrine may be tried by the plain word
of God, and that liberty be granted to us to utter and declare our minds
at large in every article and point which are now in controversy'; and
on his own behalf and 'in the name of the Lord Jesus, that with
_indifferency_ I may be heard to preach, to reason, and to dispute in
that cause.'
But now, in July 1556, letters came to Knox in Edinburgh from his
congregation in Geneva, 'commanding him in God's name, as he was their
chosen pastor, to repair unto them for their comfort.' He at once
complied, sending before him from Norham to Dieppe his wife and her
mother. Scotland was not yet ripe. The lay professors of the Evangel
indeed were not seriously molested after his departure. But on the other
hand Knox himself was at once cited to appear in Edinburgh, condemned in
absence as a contumacious heretic, and burned at the Cross in the High
Street--in effigy. Neither this, nor his daily work in Geneva, had the
effect of withdrawing him for a day from his solicitude for his native
country. On leaving it he wrote an admirable 'Letter of Wholesome
Counsel'[66] urging the continual study of the word of God in families
and in congregations.
'Within your own houses, I say, in some cases, ye are bishops
and kings; your wife, children, servants, and family are your
bishopric and charge; of you it shall be required how carefully
and diligently ye have always instructed them in God's true
knowledge, how that ye have studied in them to plant virtue and
repress vice. And therefore, I say, ye must make them partakers
in reading, exhorting, and in making common prayers, which, I
would, in every house were used once a day at least.'
And for each congregation he urged an order of procedure much nearer
that of apostolic times than that which the Reformed Church, at his own
instance, afterwards instituted in Scotland.
'I think it necessary that for the conference [comparing] of
Scriptures, assemblies of brethren be had. The order therein to
be observed is expressed by St Paul,' ... after 'confession' and
'invocation,' 'let some place of Scripture be plainly and
distinctly read, so much as shall be thought sufficient for one
day or time, which ended, if any brother have exhortation,
question, or doubt, let him not fear to speak or move the same,
so that he do it with moderation, either to edify or to be
edified. And hereof I doubt not but great profit shall shortly
ensue; for, first, by hearing reading and conferring the
Scriptures in the Assembly, the whole body of the Scriptures of
God shall become familiar, the judgments and spirits of men
shall be tried, their patience and modesty shall be known, and
finally their gifts and utterance shall appear.'
If any difficulty of interpretation occurs, it should be 'put in writing
before ye dismiss the congregation,' with the view of consulting some
wise adviser. Many, he hopes, would be glad to help them.
'Of myself I will speak as I think; I will more gladly spend
fifteen hours in communicating my judgment with you, in
explaining as God pleases to open to me any place of Scripture,
than half an hour in any matter beside.'
Before six months had passed, however, Knox, who was again abroad, had
become troubled by the too great freedom of opinion and the dangers of
consequent freedom of life even in the Protestant community, and his
letter 'To the Brethren'[67] in Scotland from Dieppe, against
Anabaptists and Sectarians, foreshadows the more rigid form which was to
be one day impressed upon Church doctrine and life in his native land.
During the ensuing year, 1557, everything was peaceful and hopeful. The
Protestants kept their worship private, but it spread from town to
town, and from the land of one friendly baron to his neighbours'
territory. Knox had been formally condemned, but those he left behind
were not molested, and in March four of the Lords wrote him to Geneva
asking him to return to Scotland. They accompanied this with assurances
that though 'the Magistrates in this country' were in the same state as
before, the Churchmen there were daily in less estimation. After
consulting Calvin, Knox said farewell to his congregation, and had got
as far homewards as Dieppe, where he was much disappointed to receive
'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly acquiescing, indicates the
plan which by this time he had formed in order to solve the combined
difficulties in theory and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded
his correspondents--Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and James Stewart--in
very memorable words, that they were themselves magistrates, or at least
representatives of the people, and had duties accordingly.
'Your subjects, yea, your brethren, are oppressed, their bodies
and souls holden in bondage; and God speaketh to your
consciences (unless ye be dead with the blind world) that you
ought to hazard your own lives (be it against kings and
emperors) for their deliverance. For only for that cause are ye
called Princes of the people, and ye receive of your brethren
honour, tribute and homage at God's commandment; not by reason
of your birth and progeny (as the most part of men falsely do
suppose), but by reason of your office and duty, which is to
vindicate and deliver your subjects and brethren from all
violence and oppression, to the utmost of your power.'[68]
The effect of this and other encouragements was to bring matters to a
point in Scotland. The Protestant party, which had now been joined by
Argyll and Morton, entered into the kind of engagement which was then
called a 'Band,' and afterwards became widely known in Scotland as a
'Covenant.' This document, dated 3rd December 1557, bound the
signatories to 'apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to
maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed Word of God and
his congregation ... unto which holy word and congregation we do join
us, and also do forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan.' This
important step, which seems to have been represented by rumour in Dieppe
as something like rebellion in Scotland, apparently startled Knox. A
fortnight after it took place he writes the 'Lords of the Congregation,'
as they were henceforth called, a letter of caution, urging them to
'seek the favour of the Authority, that by it, if possible be,
the cause in which ye labour may be promoted, _or at the least
not persecuted_, which thing after all humble request if ye can
not attain, then, with open and solemn protestation of your
obedience to be given to the Authority in all things not plainly
repugning to God, ye lawfully may attempt the extremity, which
is to provide, whether the Authority will consent or no, that
Christ's Evangel may be duly preached, and his holy Sacraments
rightly ministered unto you, and to your brethren the subjects
of that realm.'
The Lords of the Congregation were disposed to be at least as cautious
as Knox, and during the following year, 1558, there was a remarkable
approximation to a possible settlement in Scotland on the basis of
toleration. The 'Band' of the congregation does not at all suggest that
the Barons who joined in it, and thereby bound themselves to defend
their religion against the pressure and tyranny of outsiders, would
think it right themselves to exercise a counter pressure and tyranny
upon their own vassals within their own lands. And Knox's intimation
that the Authority--_i.e._, the Regent and Parliament--though refusing
to promote the Evangel, ought to be asked at least _not to persecute
it_, was most timely. He held, indeed, at this time, that such a
concession, if granted, ought to bar not only insurrection, but even a
partial and divided establishment of religion. The state of matters was
reflected in two resolutions which the Congregation came to immediately
after the Band. By the first, common prayers were to be read on Sundays
in the churches--which must mean in the churches where the innovators
had influence--by the curates, 'if qualified,' and, if not, by those of
the parishioners who were. But the second provided that preaching be, in
the meantime, 'had and used privately in quiet houses,' great
conventions being avoided 'till God move the Prince to grant public
preaching.' And another influence now entered into the history. Knox had
initiated an aristocratic revolution. But the Burghs of Scotland had
been there, as in every other country of Europe, fortresses of freedom
and the advance-guard of constitutional civilisation. And it was now
resolved, that the brethren in every _town_ 'should assemble together.
And this our weak beginning did God so bless, that within few months the
hearts of many were so strengthened, that we sought to have the _face of
a church_ among us.'... And the town of Dundee in particular 'began to
erect the face of a public church reformed.'[69] Henceforward the great
towns became more and more prepared to be the centres of the future
struggle. Meantime, however, early in 1558, the 'First Petition of the
Protestants of Scotland' was presented to the Regent. It protested
against the existing tyranny, and craved, in general and cautious terms,
a 'public Reformation,' laying stress on church services in the vulgar
tongue, and offering to submit differences to be publicly decided, not
only by the New Testament, but by the writings of the Fathers and the
laws of Justinian. The offer seems to have been at once accepted. But,
according to the account of Knox, who, of course, was still abroad, the
proposed public discussion came to nothing, because both parties fell
back upon other conditions of arbitration; the Protestants now demanding
that the Scriptures alone should decide all controversy, the Catholics
insisting on Councils and Canon Law. The next step was a proposal by the
Bishops of 'Articles of Reconciliation,' according to which the Old
Church was to remain publicly established, while the Protestants might
privately pray and baptise in the vulgar tongue. This the innovating
party declined, and pressed for 'reformation.' And now the Regent, whom
Knox afterwards came to regard as 'crafty and dissimulate,' and who, no
doubt, even now desired to please and 'make her profit of both parties,'
announced to the Congregation her decision. 'She gave to us permission
_to use ourselves_ godly, according to our desires, provided that we
should not make public assemblies in Edinburgh or Leith'--_i.e._, in the
capital. The Queen went so far as to promise positive 'assistance to our
preachers,' the assistance no doubt being rather private and personal,
and the whole arrangement being an interim one, 'until some uniform
order might be established by a Parliament.' It was a great step in
advance; indeed, Knox says, 'we departed fully contented with her
answer;'[70] and it is impossible not to speculate on what the result
might have been had the order finally established by Parliament been
that both parties should permanently 'use themselves godly according to
their desires,' with a publicly acknowledged right of proselytism or
persuasion.
But from both sides there still came some things hostile to the advent
in Scotland of that toleration which the modern conscience has approved.
In April 1558 Walter Myln, a priest eighty-two years of age, was seized
by order of the Archbishop of St Andrews, condemned for heresy, and
burned there amid the general but ineffectual resentment of the people.
The sentence was quite legal under the laws which still enforced
membership of the Catholic Church upon all Scotchmen. But the last man
who had been so condemned was Knox; and he no longer delayed to publish
in Geneva an Appellation or appeal against his sentence, directed to the
nobles, the estates and the commonalty of Scotland. His demand for a
return to the primitive Gospel under the Divine authority is powerful
and eloquent. His reasons, on the other hand, for 'appeal from the
sentence and judgment of the visible Church to the knowledge of the
temporal magistrate' are difficult to reconcile with the position which
Knox afterwards took up when that Church was on his own side; and they
are indeed chiefly drawn from the Old Testament. It is not until we
observe from his re-statement of the case farther on, that his was an
appeal 'against a sentence of death,' that the argument once more
straightens itself out so as to suit the lips even of Paul. But Knox
declines now to remain on the defensive. He accuses his accusers of
heresy and idolatry, and calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide
against them according to God's Word. Here, again, the appeal, so long
as it is made to the conscience of all men and of nobles alike, is very
cogent. Nor is it less so as addressed specially to the most
representative and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the Lords
of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It becomes doubtful only when it
insists on the right of these temporal 'Princes of the people' to reform
the Church--apparently even without the consent of its majority; and it
becomes worse than doubtful when he urges their duty as magistrates to
repress false religion and to punish idolatry with death. Along with
this, however, was published a shorter letter 'To his Beloved Brethren
the Commonalty of Scotland.' To these subjects born within the same,
their brother John Knox wishes in it 'the spirit of righteous judgment;'
and that in a tone of independence which must have sounded to Scottish
peasants and burghers like a call to a new life. For in this treatise,
unlike the last, each private Scottish man is urged to judge of what
claimed to be the original truth, even against an admittedly ancient
system. And 'If that system was an error in the beginning, so it is in
the end, and the longer that it be followed, and the more that do
receive it, it is the more pestilent, and more to be avoided.'
'Neither would I that ye should esteem the Reformation and care
of religion less to appertain to you, because ye are no kings,
rulers, judges, nobles, nor in authority. Beloved brethren, ye
are God's creatures, created and formed to His own image and
similitude, for whose redemption was shed the most precious
blood of the only beloved Son of God.... For albeit God hath put
and ordained distinction and difference between the king and
subjects, between the rulers and the common people, in the
regimen and administration of civil policies, yet in the hope of
the life to come He hath made all equal.... And this is the
equality which is between the king and subjects, the most rich
or noble, and between the poorest and men of lowest estate; to
wit, that as the one is obliged to believe in heart, and with
mouth to confess, the Lord Jesus to be the only Saviour of the
world, so also is the other.'
And by this time Knox has reasoned out for himself the right of the
people to maintain the true Church, and to band in defence of it--though
that right he even now recognises only when they cannot do better.
'And if in this point your superiors be negligent, or yet
pretend to maintain tyrants in their tyranny, most justly ye may
provide true teachers for yourselves, be it in your cities,
towns, or villages: them ye may maintain and defend against all
that shall persecute them, and by that means shall labour to
defraud you of that most comfortable food of your souls,
Christ's evangel truly preached. Ye may, moreover, withhold the
fruits and profits which your false Bishops and clergy most
unjustly receive of you, unto such time as they be compelled
faithfully to do their charge and duties.'
These appeals by Knox can only have made their way in Scotland gradually
and privately. But as the year 1558 went on, the prospect of union
became more hopeful. The Queen Regent acted as if 'the duty of the
Magistrate' were to prevent majorities and minorities from laying hands
on each other. And, then at least, this was not an easy work. The
Bishops tyrannised in details in localities where the barons were still
on their side; but Myln was the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. On
the other hand, the adherents of the congregation became so bold,
especially in the towns, that (as Knox tells us) 'the images were stolen
away in all parts of the country, and in Edinburgh was that great idol
called St Gile first _drowned_ in the North Loch, and after burned.'[71]
This was too much, and the Regent allowed the Bishops to summon the
iconoclast preachers for the 19th of July. But a party of Western lairds
heard of it on their way from the army of the Border, and insisted on
interviewing the Queen. Knox's vivid account of what followed must be
quoted. It includes a delicious phonograph of the Scots speech of Mary
of Lorraine, who, to the desire to please all men which was common to
her with her more famous daughter, seems to have added real good nature
and kindliness of heart. James Chalmers of Gadgirth, a rough
Ayrshireman, burst out against the Bishops--
'"Madam, we vow to God we shall make one day of it. They oppress
us and our tenants for feeding of their idle bellies; they
trouble our preachers, and would murder them and us: shall we
suffer this any longer? No, madam, it shall not be." And
therewith every man put on his steel bonnet. There was heard
nothing of the Queen's part but "My joys, my hearts, what ails
you? Me means no evil to you nor to your preachers. The Bishops
shall do you no wrong. Ye are all my loving subjects. Me knew
nothing of this proclamation. The day of your preachers shall be
discharged, and me will hear the controversy that is betwixt the
Bishops and you. They shall do you no wrong. My Lords," said she
to the Bishops, "I forbid you either to trouble them or their
preachers." And unto the gentlemen, who were wondrously
commoved, she turned again and said, "O, my hearts, should ye
not love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
mind? and should ye not love your neighbours as yourselves?"
With these and the like fair words she kept the Bishops from
buffets at that time.'[72]
Her daughter Mary, the celebrated Queen of Scots, had been married in
April to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and the Regent, rejoicing in
this long hoped-for alliance, had one thing more at heart. The Scots
Parliament was to meet in November, and she hoped that it would confer
the crown 'Matrimonial' of Scotland upon her son-in-law, thus
consolidating the two kingdoms. In view of this meeting the Lords of the
Congregation prepared a petition, the leading prayer of which would have
practically freed Scotland from the intolerance of existing legislation
in the matter of religion--
'We most humbly desire that _all such Acts of Parliament_, as in
the time of darkness gave power to the churchmen to execute
their tyranny against us, by reason that we to them were delated
as heretics, may be _suspended and abrogated_.'[73]
Here again was a proposal which, if taken by itself, would have
satisfied the modern view of liberty of conscience. But the petitioners
went on to say that they did not object to a _temporal_ judge of heresy,
provided he judged according to the Word of God; and they looked forward
to a decision of 'all controversies in religion,' not however by
Parliament, but by a General Council. This proposal was first handed to
the Queen Regent, who 'spared not amiable looks and good words in
abundance, but always she kept our Bill close in her pocket.' Both
parties in Parliament being thus pleased, the Crown Matrimonial was
consented to, and before the Session closed, the Protestant Lords read
an important protest, repeating the positions which they had already
taken up.
1. 'We protest, that seeing we cannot obtain a just reformation,
according to God's word, that it be lawful to us _to use
ourselves_ in matters of religion and conscience, as we must
answer unto God.
2. 'That we shall incur no danger in life or lands, or other
political pains, for not observing such Acts as heretofore have
passed in favour of our adversaries.'
They added a protest that if any tumult should arise 'for the diversity
of religion,' and if any abuses should be 'violently reformed,' it
should not be imputed to them, who desired a reformation in matters of
religion by the Authority. From that Authority, however, they, in
closing--somewhat inconsistently but most rightfully--demanded once more
the 'indifferency' which becometh God's Lieutenant.
Parliament declined to record the Protest, but the Queen Regent said in
her confidential way to the Lords, 'Me will remember what is protested;
and me shall put good order after this to all things.' Knox was
delighted, and in writing to Calvin commended her 'for excellent
knowledge in God's word, and good will towards the advancement of his
glory.' There is no reason to suppose that Mary of Lorraine had attained
to much more than a kindly appreciation of all parties around her, and
to that general sense of justice which is strong in rulers and other men
so long as they have no personal interest to the contrary. Yet under
this feminine 'regimen' Scotland was now within measurable distance of
being, alone among the commonwealths of Europe, the home of liberty of
worship and freedom of conscience. But that great time was not come; and
the small northern land was now caught up again into the whirl of
European politics. On the 17th November 1558 Mary of England, the
unhappy wife of Philip, died; and her Protestant sister Elizabeth, the
daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded. It became at once the chief point in
the policy of Catholic Europe that France and Scotland should be fast
bound together in religion and turned, along with Spain, as one force
for the restoration or re-conquest of England. For if the English queen
was an illegitimate heretic, then Mary Stuart, already Queen of Scotland
and Dauphiness of France, was now Queen of England too; and without
delay the French king quartered the arms of England with those of Mary's
own country and that of her adoption. The magnificent bribe of a third
crown for that fair 'daughter of debate' was too much for her mother in
Scotland, who in any case would have found a continued toleration there
irreconcileable with the traditions of their House of Guise. The Regent
now, in her mild way, joined the cruel Catholic crusade of the French
Court, and from the beginning of 1559 the conciliatory policy which had
distinguished the previous year in Scotland was at an end.
But its results were not ended. They had spread through all ranks, and
had gone down to the foundations of society. On New Year's Day of 1559
there was found affixed to the door of every religious house in Scotland
the following document--the most extraordinary imitation of a legal writ
that Scotland has seen. It is probably not written by Knox, but by some
other strong pen. It bears to be a notice or 'summons' of ejectment for
the ensuing Whitsunday, and is called
THE BEGGARS' WARNING.
The Blind, Crooked, Bedrels [bedfast], Widows, Orphans, and all
other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as they may not work,
TO
The Flocks of all Friars within this realm, we wish restitution
of wrongs bypast, and reformation in time coming, for
salutation.
* * * * *
Ye yourselves are not ignorant, and though ye would be it is
now, thanks to God, known to the whole world, by His infallible
word, that the benignity or alms of all Christian people
pertains to us allanerly [exclusively]; which ye, being hale of
body, stark, sturdy, and able to work, what [partly] under
pretence of poverty (and nevertheless possessing most easily all
abundance) what [partly] through cloaked and hooded simplicity,
though your proudness is known, and what [partly] by feigned
holiness, which now is declared superstition and idolatry, have
these many years, express against God's word and the practice of
His Holy Apostles, to our great torment alas! most falsely
stolen from us. And as ye have, by your false doctrine and
wresting of God's word (learned of your father Satan), induced
the whole people high and low, into sure hope and belief, that
to clothe, feed, and nourish you is the only acceptable alms
allowed before God, and to give one penny or one piece of bread
once in the week, is enough for us; Even so ye have persuaded
them to build to you great hospitals, and maintain you therein
by their purse, which only pertains now to us by all law, as
builded and doted [given] to the poor--of whose number ye are
not, nor can be repute, neither by the law of God, nor yet by no
other law proceeding of nature, reason, or civil policy.... We
have thought good, therefore, before we enter with you in
conflict, to warn you, in the name of the great God, by this
public writing, affixed on your gates, where ye now dwell, that
ye remove forth of our said hospitals betwixt this and the feast
of Whitsunday next, so that we the only lawful proprietors
thereof may enter thereto, and afterward enjoy these
_commodities of the Kirk_, which ye have hereunto wrongously
holden from us: Certifying you, if ye fail, we will at the said
term, in whole number (with the help of God and the assistance
of His saints in earth, of whose readie support we doubt not),
enter and take possession of _our said patrimony_, and eject you
utterly forth of the same.
_Let him therefore that before has stolen, steal no more; but
rather let him work with his hands that he may be helpful to the
poor._
FROM THE WHOLE CITIES, TOWNS, AND VILLAGES OF SCOTLAND, THE
FIRST DAY OF JANUARY, 1558 {1559}.[74]
As it turned out, this summons was in some cases literally fulfilled,
and a revolutionary ejectment carried out by Whitsunday 1559. But now
from another side came another warning to put the house of the Church in
order. The Catholic barons presented a petition for its reform, and the
Regent called a Provincial Council on 1st March. It dealt, however,
almost exclusively with the lives and duties of the clergy, and leaving
untouched the central grievance--the legal authority of the Church and
of the Pope over all subjects--had no effect whatever on the public.
Immediately after, all 'unauthorised' preaching was forbidden. The
Protestants, astonished, waited on the Regent and reminded her of her
promises. She replied, in words which were often recalled during the
reigns of her Stewart descendants, that 'it became not subjects to
burden their Princes with promises, farther than it pleaseth them to
keep the same,' and the preachers were ordered to appear before her at
Stirling. But now Knox, who had kept up constant communication from
Geneva with his friends, suddenly appears on the scene. On 2d May he
writes from Edinburgh to Mrs Locke:
'I am come, I praise my God, even in the brunt of the battle:
for my fellow-preachers have a day appointed to answer before
the Queen Regent, the 10th of this instant, where I intend, if
God impede not, also to be present: by life, by death, or else
by both, to glorify His godly name, who thus mercifully hath
heard my long cries.'[75]
The day after this letter was written, Knox was 'blown loud to the
horn,' _i.e._, declared an excommunicated outlaw: but he had meantime
left for Dundee, where he was received with acclamation, and from thence
departed to Perth, now the centre of Protestantism. There, day by day,
he preached to excited multitudes in the Parish Church; and it was
after a sermon there, 'vehement against idolatry,' that a foolish
priest, attempting to perform mass in the same building, was set upon by
the mob of Perth, who had an old feud with the clergy. From the church
the multitude streamed away to the magnificent Religious Houses which
had adorned the town, and sacked and burned them so thoroughly that only
the walls were left standing. It wanted yet four days to that
Whitsunday, for ejection on which the 'rascal multitude' had last New
Year's Day warned the Friars! The Queen Regent resented this outrageous
violence, but was forced to come to an interim agreement with the Lords
of the Congregation. On her entry into Perth they moved into Fife, and
Knox having preached in Crail and Anstruther, resolved to do so also in
the Parish Church of St Andrews on Sunday. But the St Andrews populace
had not yet declared themselves; the Regent's hostile army was only
twelve miles off; and the Archbishop--who had occupied the town with a
hundred spears and a dozen of culverins--now threatened his life if he
attempted it. It was a moment for a bold man. At the hour fixed Knox
made his appearance. No one ventured to attack him. He preached with his
usual impetuous eloquence on 'casting the buyers and sellers out of the
temple,' and at its close the magistrates and council permitted the
majority of the people to destroy most of the monasteries, and strip the
churches and cathedral of their apparatus of 'idolatry.' Knox was always
more comfortable where he could say that such proceedings were
countenanced by the local authority, or by the majority of a civic
community. In Edinburgh, to which the Congregation next moved, the
majority had hitherto been hostile to them; and now, on the Queen
Regent's departure, the pulpits were for the first time opened to what
was the legitimate glory of the new movement--free and unfettered
preaching. Knox, church-statesman though he was, threw himself into this
work with a delight that lifted him above calculation of consequences.
'The long thirst of my wretched heart is satisfied, in abundance
that is above my expectation; for now, forty days and more hath
God used my tongue in my native country to the manifestation of
His glory. Whatever now shall follow, as touching my own
carcase, His Holy Name be praised.'[76]
The castle, however, still remained faithful to the Regent, and on her
forces approaching Edinburgh, both parties agreed to a truce till
January, which, as respects the town and its religion, provided that--
'The town of Edinburgh shall, without compulsion, use and choose
what religion and manner thereof they please, to the said day;
_so that every man may have freedom to use his own conscience_
to the day foresaid.'[77]
The truce was to be for six months, to January 1560, and it was employed
by both parties in preparing for a renewed struggle, and, on the side of
the Congregation, in negotiations with Elizabeth and her ministers.
Politically, this last step was of the highest importance. For the first
time for centuries, it healed the breach with 'our auld enemies of
England,' as the Scots statutes had so often described them, and
founded an alliance between the two kingdoms, which has since that date
been only changed in order to become a union. And in this negotiation
the agent and secretary was Knox.[78] He corresponded with the Queen's
great minister Cecil (Elizabeth herself would not hear Knox's name). And
it says not a little for the self-command and honesty of the English
statesman, that he trusted so fully a man whose first letter, written
several years before--a letter, too, asking a favour--commenced by
Knox's 'discharging his conscience' in this way:--
'In time past, being overcome with common iniquity, you have
followed the world in the way of perdition: for ... to the
shedding of the blood of God's dear children have you, by
silence, consented and subscribed. Of necessity it is, that
carnal wisdom and worldly policy, (to both which, you are
bruited to be much inclined) give place to God's simple and
naked truth.'
Cecil had made no answer to this or to similar subsequent remarks, but
he now wrote asking the Congregation,
'if support should be sent hence, what manner of amity might
ensue betwixt these two realms, and how the same might be hoped
to be perpetual, and not to be so slender as heretofore hath
been, without other assurance of continuance than from time to
time hath pleased France.'
And the answer, in Knox's handwriting, is signed by the Protestant
lords, and assures England
'of our constancy (as men may promise) till our lives end; yea,
farther, we will divulgate and set abroad a charge and
commandment to our posterity, that the amity and league between
you and us contracted and begun in Christ Jesus may by them be
kept inviolated for ever.'
There was to be in the future a still more Solemn League and Covenant
between the two nations, it too having for its object the deliverance
(and, alas! also the uniformity) of religion in both kingdoms. But that
public, and this private, league were alike disavowed by the Sovereign,
and both became the badge of rebellion. The Queen Regent, indeed, had
now fortified Leith, and was filling it with French soldiers. The Lords
of the Congregation, founding on this as a breach of faith, resolved to
suspend her from the regency, and did so by a proclamation, strangely
signed: 'By us, the nobility and commons of the Protestants of the
Church of Scotland.' The preachers approved, Knox, however, demanding
that a door be still kept open for her restoration. War, of course, at
once followed, and it turned out to be very much a fight between
Edinburgh and Leith, then not unequally matched.[79] Soon the
Protestants got the worst of it. On the last day of October the French,
pouring up Leith Walk, drove them back into the Canongate, attacked
Leith Wynd, and sent their horsemen in headlong flight through the
Netherbow Port and up the High Street. Five days after, the forces of
the Congregation having advanced to Restalrig, were enclosed by two
advancing bodies of the enemy, and so jammed in near Holyrood, between
the crags of the Calton on the one side and the crags of Arthur Seat on
the other, as to be extricated only with most serious loss. Confusion
and dismay seized upon all, and at midnight they marched out of
Edinburgh, pursued by voices of reproach and execration from the
overhanging roofs. Next night they gathered helplessly at Stirling. But
on the following day Knox entered the pulpit there, and preached a
memorable sermon. It recalled the despairing Congregation to a mood of
resolute trust and hope. And yet his text was the Psalm which tells of
the vine brought from Egypt to be planted in the land, but now wasted
and broken down; and the preacher throughout refused even to suggest to
the shrinking multitude any lower hope than the vouchsafed shining again
of the Divine countenance. There remains only, he concluded,
'that we turn to the Eternal our God, who beats down to death,
to the intent that he may raise up again, to leave the
remembrance of his wondrous deliverance, to the praise of his
own name ... yea, whatsoever shall become of us and of our
mortal carcases, I doubt not but that this cause, in despite of
Satan, shall prevail in the realm of Scotland.'
But his words were as life from the dead, and the sermon, which Buchanan
also commemorates, was long after recalled by the preacher himself in St
Giles, in another great crisis of the Evangel.
'From the beginning of God's mighty working within this realm, I
have been with you in your most desperate tentations. Ask your
own consciences, and let them answer you before God, if that
I--not I, but God's Spirit by me--in your greatest extremity
willed you not ever to depend upon your God, and in His name
promised unto you victory and preservation from your enemies, so
that ye would only depend upon his protection and prefer His
glory to your own lives and worldly commodity. In your most
extreme dangers I have been with you: St Johnstone, Cupar Muir,
and the Crags of Edinburgh, are yet recent in my heart: yea,
that dark and dolorous night wherein all ye, my Lords, with
shame and fear left this town, is yet in my mind; and God forbid
that ever I forget it!'
'The voice of one man,' it was afterwards said of Knox by the English
ambassador in Edinburgh, 'is able in one hour to put more life in us
than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears.' This day
in Stirling was the very lowest point of the fortunes of the
Congregation, and from this hour they began to rise. There were reverses
still; but Scotland was sick of the French, and the end was to come with
the coming year. In April 1560, the English forces surrounded Leith; the
Queen Regent withdrew from it into the Castle of Edinburgh; and the
Lords of the Congregation, stronger than they were originally by the
accession of the Duke of Hamilton and the Earls of Morton and
Huntly,[80] made one more 'Band' or Covenant. In it for the last time
they fall back on liberty of conscience; for all they bind themselves to
is,
'with our bodies, goods, friends, and all that we may do, to set
forward the Reformation of Religion, according to God's word;
and procure, by all means possible, that the truth of God's word
may have _free passage within this realm_, with due
administration of the Sacraments, and all things depending upon
the said word.'[81]
A copy of this Band, by which each subscriber also bound himself not to
make separate overtures to the Regent, was brought to her in the Castle.
Knox, who by this time was become very hostile to Mary of Lorraine, and
reports much doubtful gossip as to her rejoicing over the victories and
cruelties of her soldiers, says that when she read the Band, she spoke
in quite another and milder sense.
'The malediction of God I give unto them that counselled me to
persecute the preachers, and to refuse the petitions of the best
part of the true subjects of this realm.'
But the time was past for her co-operating for the welfare of that
realm. She had fallen into a dropsy, and, becoming daily worse, sent for
the Earls Argyll, Glencairn, and Marischal, and the Lord James (her
husband's son). They came to her separately, and to each she confessed
that she had made a mistake, and should have acceded to the arrangement
they had proposed. 'They gave unto her both the counsel and the comfort
which they could in that extremity, and willed her to send for some
godly learned man, of whom she might receive instruction.' They proposed
Willock; but even that gentle preacher did not set forth 'the virtue and
strength of the death of Jesus Christ,' without touching also upon 'the
vanity and abomination of that idol, the mass.' The dying woman said
nothing, good or bad, of the form in which Christianity had been first
presented, long years ago, to her childish eyes. But 'she did openly
confess "that there was no salvation but in and by the death of Jesus
Christ."' And Knox, holding that in this 'Christ Jesus got no small
victory' over her, grudges extremely that to her approval of 'the chief
head of our religion, wherein we dissent from all Papists and Papistry,'
she added no condemnation of opposing ways. But Mary of Lorraine had
uttered the last even of her good-natured 'maledictions,' and on the
10th of June the Regent of Scotland ended her 'unhappy life'--a life,
that is, which had pleased neither party, though in its later years a
great revolution, carried through at the expense of comparatively little
violence or bloodshed, had narrowly missed attaining an even ideal
result.
And now those troubles were over. Nine months before, her daughter had
become Queen of France, and a treaty was now concluded at Edinburgh,
between the Queen of England on the one part and the 'King and Queen of
France and Scotland' on the other, by which the French troops and
officials withdrew from Scotland, and an indemnity was granted to the
insurgent nobility for all that the Congregation had done. Elizabeth
still looked on them as rebels; but Cecil, with more foresight,
instructed her plenipotentiaries to provide 'that the government of
Scotland be granted to the nation of the land'; and the treaty provided
for a Council of Administration in the absence from Edinburgh of the
Sovereigns, and--more important still--for an immediate meeting of the
Estates, which was to be as valid as if presided over by them.[82] The
most important Parliament which Scotland has ever seen sat on 1st August
1560, and was very largely attended by nobles, lairds, and burgh
representatives. Naturally, a petition was at once laid before it for
the abolition of the old Church system. Equally naturally, this was met
by a request for a statement of the new Church doctrine--a confession of
faith. It was prepared by Knox and three others, and in four days
presented to the Parliament.
'I never heard,' says the English envoy to Cecil, 'matters of so great
importance, neither sooner despatched nor with better will agreed unto.'
Knox's narrative, which is borne out by the records of Parliament, says
that
'This our Confession was publicly read, first in audience of the
Lords of the Articles, and after, in audience of the whole
Parliament, where were present, not only such as professed
Christ Jesus, but also a great number of the adversaries of our
religion, such as the fore-named bishops, and some others of the
temporal estate, who were commanded, in God's name, to object,
if they could, anything against that doctrine.'
The ministers were present to defend it, but there was no opposition,
and a second day was appointed, when the Confession was again read over,
article by article, and then a vote was taken. Three, or at the most
five, temporal peers voted against ratifying it; 'and yet for their
disassenting they produced no better reason but, We will believe as our
fathers believed.' Nor was this strange, for the Bishops present, Knox
says, 'spake nothing,' Randolph explaining that the three who got to
their feet, headed by the St Andrew's primate, said the doctrine was a
matter new and strange to them, which they had not examined, and which
they could not 'utterly condemn,' or, on the other hand, quite consent
to. The vote on the side of the majority was largely a rejoicing
outburst of individual conviction. The Earl Marischal indeed, took the
obvious ground that
'seeing that my Lords Bishops, who for their learning can, and
for that zeal they should bear to the verity, would (as I
suppose) gainsay anything that directly repugns to the verity of
God--seeing, I say, my Lords here present speak nothing in the
contrary of the doctrine proposed, I cannot but hold it to be
the very truth of God, and the contrary to be deceivable
doctrine.'
The rest of the Lords, says Randolph, with common consent, and 'as glad
a will as ever I heard men speak,' allowed the same.
'Divers, with protestation of their conscience and faith,
desired rather presently to end their lives than ever to think
contrary unto that allowed there. Many also offered to shed
their blood in defence of the same. The old Lord of Lindsay, as
grave and goodly a man as ever I saw, said: "I have lived many
years; I am the oldest in this company of my sort; now that it
hath pleased God to let me see this day, where so many nobles
and others have allowed so worthy a work, I will say, with
Simeon, _Nunc dimittis_."'
It was the birthday of a people. For not in that assembly alone, and
within the dim walls of the old Parliament House of Edinburgh, was that
faith confessed and those vows made. Everywhere the Scottish burgess and
the Scottish peasant felt himself called to deal, individually and
immediately, with Christianity and the divine; and everywhere the
contact was ennobling. 'Common man' as he was, 'the vague, shoreless
universe had become for him a firm city, and a dwelling-place which he
knew. Such virtue was in belief: in these words well spoken, _I
believe_.'[83] But being a common man in Scotland, his religion could
not be isolated, or his faith for himself alone. Wherever he dwelt, 'in
our towns and places reformed,' he was already a member of a
self-governing republic, a republic within the Scottish State but not of
it, and subject to an invisible King. 'The good old cause' was already
born. It kindled itself, as that son of the Burgher mason in Annandale
says again, 'like a beacon set on high; high as heaven, yet attainable
from earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a citizen only, but a
member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true
man.'
* * * * *
Day by day at this critical epoch Knox preached in St Giles from the
'prophet Haggeus,' on what he called The Building of the House. In one
sense the foundation was laid already. In another, Parliament might be
called upon to supply one. What foundation was Parliament to lay, and
what structure was promised for the days to come?
[60] 'Works,' iii. 10.
[61] 'Works,' iii. 133.
[62] 'Works,' iii. 34. The rashness of the general proposition here can
only be appreciated when we remember Knox's view that it was the duty of
the Magistrate not only to suppress idolatry, but to punish it with
death.
[63] Hume Brown, i. 203.
[64] 'Works,' iii. 224.
[65] 'Works,' iv. 217, 218.
[66] 'Works,' iv. 129.
[67] 'Works,' iv. 261.
[68] 'Works,' i. 272.
[69] 'Works,' i. 300.
[70] 'Works,' i. 307.
[71] 'Works,' i. 256.
[72] 'Works,' i. 258.
[73] 'Works,' i. 310.
[74] 'Works,' i. 320.
[75] 'Works,' vi. 21.
[76] 'Works,' vi. 26.
[77] 'Works,' i. 378. Knox objected to this unlimited freedom of
conscience being granted, even for a time; and actually succeeded in
retaining the public worship on the ground that Edinburgh _had_ chosen
already, though under compulsion. The interest lies in the fact that, at
every turn of the open struggle which now took place between the two
parties, the true ultimate solution, that of toleration, came to the
front. But it was proposed, or suggested, by each party only when that
party was in the minority, and ignored as soon as it regained the power
to do wrong. See the following additional pages in Knox's own
History:--'Works,' i. 389, 390, 428 ('idolatry _and_ murder'), 432, 442
('chief duty'), and 444.
[78] Knox himself takes care in his History 'to let the posterity that
shall follow understand, by what instruments God wrought the familiarity
and friendship, that after we found in England.'--'Works,' ii. 43.
[79] 'It is not unknown to the most part of this realm, that there has
been an old hatred and contention betwixt Edinburgh and Leith; Edinburgh
seeking continually to possess that liberty which by donation of kings
they have long enjoyed, and Leith, by the contrary, aspiring to a
liberty and freedom in prejudice of Edinburgh.'--Declaration of the
Lords of the Congregation in 1559. 'Works,' i. 426.
[80] Lesser barons sign too, from Cranstoun and Cessford on the Borders,
to Leslie of Buchan and John Innes of that Ilk in the North.
[81] 'Works,' ii. 61. It is dated 26 April 1560.
[82] It does not say that all its acts were to be valid. On the
contrary, 'certain Articles concerning religion' having been presented
on the part of the nobles and people of Scotland, and not meddled with
by the plenipotentiaries 'as being of such importance that they judged
them proper to be remitted to the King and Queen,' it was provided that
the Estates, on their meeting, should choose some persons of quality 'to
repair to their Majesties and remonstrate to them the state of their
affairs, particularly those last mentioned.'
[83] Thomas Carlyle.