This is strange enough when one remembers the terrible tragedy which was

soon to burst these walls asunder; but stranger still was to follow. The

two adversaries thus reconciled came to the sermon together next day,

and there was much rejoicing over the new penitent. But four days after,

Arran, with a distracted countenance, followed Knox home after the

preaching, and calling out "I am treacherously betrayed," burst into

tears. He then narrated with many expressions of horror the cause of his

distress. Bothwell had made a proposal to him to carry off the Queen and

place her in Dunkeld Castle in Arran's hands (who was known to be half

distraught with love of Mary), and to kill Murray, Lethington, and the

others that now misguided her, so that he and Arran should rule alone.

The agitation of the unfortunate young man, his wild looks, his

conviction that he was himself ruined and shamed for ever, seem to have

enlightened Knox at once as to the state of his mind. Arran sent letters

all over the country--to his father, to the Queen, to Murray--repeating

this strange tale, but soon betrayed by the endless delusions which took

possession of him that his mind was entirely disordered. The story

remains one of those historical puzzles which it is impossible to solve.

Was there truth in it--a premature betrayal of the scheme which

afterwards made Bothwell infamous? did this wild suggestion drive

Arran's mind, never too strong, off the balance? or was it some strange

insight of madness into the other's dark spirit? These are questions

which no one will ever be able to answer. It seems to have caused much

perturbation in the Court and its surroundings for the moment, but is

not, strangely enough, ever referred to when events quicken and Bothwell

shows himself as he was in the madman's dream.

The chief practical question on which Knox's mind and his vigorous pen

were engaged during this early period of Mary's reign was the

all-important question to the country and Church of the provision for

the maintenance of ministers, for education, and for the poor--the

revenues, in short, of the newly-established Church, these three objects

being conjoined together as belonging to the spiritual dominion. The

proposal made in the Book of Discipline, ratified and confirmed by the

subscription of the lords, was that the tithes and other revenues of the

old Church, apart from all the tyrannical additions which had ground the

poor (the Uppermost Cloth, Corpse present, Pasch offerings, etc.),

should be given over to the Congregation for the combined uses above

described. This in principle had been conceded, though in practice it

was extremely hard to extract those revenues from the strong secular

hands into which in many cases they had fallen, and which had not even

ceased to exact the Corpse present, etc. The Reformers had strongly

urged the necessity of having the Book of Discipline ratified by the

Queen on her arrival; but this suggestion had been set aside even by the

severest of the lords as out of place for the moment. To such

enlightened critics as Lethington the whole book was a devout

imagination, a dream of theorists never to be realised. The Church,

however, with Knox at her head, was bent upon securing this

indispensable provision, though it may well be supposed that now, with

not only the commendators and pensioners but the bishops themselves and

other ecclesiastical functionaries, inspirited and encouraged by the

Queen's favour, and hoping that the good old times might yet come back,

it was more difficult than ever to get a hearing for their claim. And

great as was the importance of a matter involving the very existence of

the new ecclesiastical economy, it was, even in the opinion of the

wisest, scarcely so exciting as the mass in the Queen's chapel, against

which the ministers preached, and every careful burgher shook his head;

although the lords who came within the circle of the Court were greatly

troubled, knowing not how to take her religious observances from the

Queen, they who had just at the cost of years of conflict gained freedom

for their own. On one occasion when a party of those who had so toiled

and struggled together during all the troubled past were met in the

house of one of the clerk registers, the question was discussed between

them whether subjects might interfere to put down the idolatry of their

prince--when all the nobles took one side, and John Knox, his

colleagues, and a humble official or two were all that stood on the

other. As a manner of reconciling the conflicting opinions Knox was

commissioned to put the question to the Church of Geneva, and to ask

what in the circumstances described the Church there would recommend to

be done. But the question was never put, being transferred to

Lethington's hands, then back again to those of Knox, perhaps a mere

expedient to still an unprofitable discussion rather than a serious

proposal.

While these questions were being hotly and angrily discussed on all

sides, the preachers and their party growing more and more pertinacious,

the lords impatient, angry, chafed and fretted beyond bearing by the

ever-recurring question in which they were no doubt conscious, with an

additional prick of irritation, that they were abandoning their own

side, Mary, still fearing no evil, very conciliatory to all about her,

and entirely convinced no doubt of winning the day, went lightly upon

her way, hunting, hawking, riding, making long journeys about the

kingdom, enjoying a life which, if more sombre and poor outwardly, was

far more original, unusual, and diverting than the luxurious life of the

French Court under the shadow of a malign and powerful mother-in-law. It

did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers

should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her

private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman,

her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the

Church in retaliation. The war of letters, addresses, proclamations,

which arose once more between the contending parties is wonderful in an

age which might have been thought more given to the sword than the pen.

But it at last became evident that something must be done in one way or

the other to stop the mouth of the indomitable Knox, with whom were all

the central mass of the people, not high enough to be moved by the

influences of the Court, not low enough to fluctuate with every fickle

popular fancy. Finally it was decided that the Queen should issue a

decree for a valuation of all ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland--a

necessary preliminary measure, but turned into foolishness by the

stipulation that these possessions should be divided into three parts,

two to remain with the present possessors, while the remaining portion

should be divided between the ministers and herself. This proposed

arrangement, with which naturally every one was discontented, called

forth a flight of furious jests. "Good-morrow, my lords of the

Twa-pairts," said Huntly to the array, spiritual and secular, who were

to retain the lion's share; while, on the other hand, Knox in the pulpit

denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and

the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear

witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall

have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion

shall be."--"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the

year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox

records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of

the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge

of this hated partition--"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular

voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive

the Controller."

About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public

disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of

affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin

Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death

George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself

as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have

attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in

his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much

more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn

discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and

railing, but nature passes nurture with you."--"I will neither change

nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says

the preacher. These amenities belonged to the period. But the arguments

seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon

the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and

wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion

that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It

is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better

worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have

completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen

to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that

Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so

little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion

in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the

Romish ceremonies attached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if

the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.

It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this

occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district,

always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards,

the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in

respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by

the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in

half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say

a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When

Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison

but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant

loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before

her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for

Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to

stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two

previous interviews had taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily

encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject,

and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there

was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the

pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still

was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found

something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless

prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he

objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his

sermons--a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox

excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door

and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of

me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and

waiting upon the Court."--"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the

Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence

with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that

he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a

little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn,

"Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked

in the faces of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above

measour"--a most characteristic reply.

[Illustration: LOCHLEVEN]

Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven,

to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours

before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people

and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish

(the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as

pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if

she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but

he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact that he and

his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which

now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this

controversy; she kept to her point--the vindication of her own

authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword

in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very

full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not

spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in

their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more

exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a

wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself

"somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and

withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before

sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid

him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May

morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air,

boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water

and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the

lochs and streams--for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the

preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must

have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and

the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory

of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little

disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could

hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"--setting out for the

farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting

to penetrate what were his thoughts as he was rowed across the loch at a

more reasonable hour, when the sunshine shone on every ripple of the

water, and the green hills lay basking in the light. Did he look with

jealous eyes, and wonder whether the grey walls among the trees on St.

Serf's isle were giving shelter to some idolatrous priest? or was his

heart invaded by the beauty of the morning, the heavenly quiet, the

murmur of soft sound? His mind was heavy we know with cares for the

Church, fears for the stability of the Reformation itself, forebodings

of punishment and cursings more habitual to his thoughts, and perhaps

more congenial to the time, than prosperity and blessing. It might be

even that a faint apprehension (not fear, for in his own person Knox had

little occasion for fear even had he been of a timorous nature) of

further trouble with the Queen overclouded his aspect: and if he caught

a glimpse of the ladies and their cavaliers on the mainland, the joyous

cavalcade would rouse no sympathetic pleasure, so sure was he that their

frolics and youthful pleasure were leading to misery and doom--in which,

alas! he was too sooth a prophet.

But when Knox met the Queen's Majestie "be-west Kinross," Mary all

bright with exercise and pleasure had forgotten, or else had no mind to

remember, the offence of the previous night. She began to talk to him of

ordinary matters, of Ruthven who had (save the mark!)--dark Ruthven not

many years removed from that dreadful scene in the closet at

Holyrood--offered her a ring, and other such lively trifles. She then

turned to more serious discourse, warning Knox against Alexander Gordon,

titular Bishop of Athens, "who was most familiar with the said John in

his house and at his table," and whose professions of faith seemed so

genuine that he was about to be made Superintendent of Dumfries. "If you

knew him as well as I do, you would never promote him to that office nor

to any other within your Kirk," she said. "Thereintil was not the Queen

deceived," says Knox, though without any acknowledgment of the service

she did the Church: for on her hint he caused further inquiries to be

made, and foiled the Bishop. Again, as so often, a picture arises before

our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse,

perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where

her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled

downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused

reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new

subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning

aside from the attendants to tell Knox of the new troubles which had

broken out in the house of Argyle between the Earl and his wife, who was

Mary's illegitimate sister. The Reformer had already settled a quarrel

between this pair, and the Queen begged him to interfere again, to write

to Argyle and smooth the matter over if possible. Then, the time having

now arrived when she must dismiss him, the field waiting for her and the

sport suspended, Mary turned again for a parting word.

"And now," said she, "as touching our reasoning yesternight I

promise to do as ye required. I sall cause summon the offenders, and

ye shall know that I shall minister justice."

"I am assured then," said he, "that ye shall please God and enjoy

rest and prosperity within your realm; which to your Majesty is more

profitable than all the Pope's power can be."

We have heard enough and to spare about Mary's tears and the severity of

Knox--here is a scene in which for once there is no severity, but

everything cheerful, radiant, and full of hope. Was there in all

Christendom a more hopeful princess, more gifted, more understanding,

more wise? for it was not only that she had the heart to take (or seem

to take) in a very hard matter the advice of the exasperating Reformer,

entirely inaccessible to reason on that point at least as he was--but to

give it, and that in a matter of real use to himself and his party. Was

it all dissembling as Knox believed? or was there any possibility of

public service and national advantage, and as happy and prosperous a

life as was possible to a queen, before her when she turned smiling upon

the strand and waved her hand to him as he rode away? Who can tell? That

little tower of Lochleven, that dark water between its pastoral hills,

had soon so different a tale to tell.

[Illustration: QUEEN MARY'S BATH]

Had Mary deserted her faith as it would have been such admirable policy

to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth

a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted

the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and

with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to

do--would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would

not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more

clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had

little part in the woes of Mary. Had there been no Darnley or Bothwell

in her path, had it been in her nature to take that wise resolution of

Elizabeth's, wise for every woman who has great duties and position of

her own, how wonderfully everything might have been changed! Such

reflections, however, are very futile, though they are strangely

fascinating.

Knox wrote to Argyle immediately after with that plain speaking in which

he delighted, and made the Earl very angry. It might well have been part

of Mary's "craft," knowing that he was sure to do this, to embroil him

with her brother-in-law. And she prosecuted her bishops to save them

from the Westland lords, and imprisoned them gently to keep them out of

harm's way. Neither of these acts was very successful, and it would seem

that the mollifying impression that had been made upon Knox soon died

away; for when the Queen opened the next Parliament he speaks of her

splendour and that of her train in words more like those of a peevish

scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the

preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the

tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which

they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those

foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely

dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers;

but the silken trains that swept the ground, the wonderful clear

starching of the delicate ruffs, the embroidered work of pearls and gems

which the fashion of the time demanded, were but slight causes to draw

forth the flaming sword. And that Parliament was very unsatisfactory to

Knox and his friends; they tried to bring in a sumptuary law; they

endeavoured to have immorality recognised as crime, and subjected to

penalties as such; and above all, they attempted to obtain the

ratification of various matters of discipline upon which Knox so pressed

that the quarrel rose high between him and Murray, and there ensued a

breach and lasting coolness--Murray being as unwilling to press Queen

Mary into measures she disliked, as Knox was determined that only by

doing so was God's vengeance to be averted. When the Parliament was over

the preacher made his usual commentary upon it in the pulpit; warning

the lords what miseries were sure to follow from their carelessness, and

discussing the chances of the Queen's marriage with much freedom and

boldness. Once more, though with more reason, was God's vengeance

invoked. "This, my lords, will I say (note the day and bear witness

after), whensoever the Nobilities of Scotland, professing the Lord

Jesus, consents that ane infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be

head to your Soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ

Jesus from this realm." This sermon was reported to Mary with

aggravations, though it was offensive enough without any aggravations;

and once more he was summoned to the presence. The Queen was "in a

vehement furie," deeply offended, and in her nervous exasperation unable

to refrain from tears, a penalty of weakness which is one of the most

painful disabilities of women. "What have ye to do with my marriage?"

she cried again and again, with that outburst which Knox describes

somewhat brutally as "owling." His own bearing was manly though dogged.

Naturally he did not withdraw an inch, but repeated to her the scope of

his sermon with amplifications, while the gentler Erskine of Dun who

accompanied him endeavoured to soothe the paroxysm of exasperated

impatience and pain which Mary could not subdue, and for which no doubt

she scorned herself.

"The said John stood still without any alteration of countenance,

while that the Queen gave place to her inordinate passion; and in

the end he said, 'Madam, in God's presence I speak, I never

delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can

scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand

corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majestie's weeping. But

seeing that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but

have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain,

albeit unwillingly, your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my

conscience or betray my Commonwealth through my silence.'"

He was ordered to withdraw after this, and retired proud and silent to

the ante-room where he had immediate proof what it was to lose the royal

favour. Hitherto he had been, it is clear, a not unwelcome visitor: to

Mary an original, something new in prickly opposition and eloquence,

holding head against all her seductions, yet haply, at Lochleven at

least, not altogether unmoved by them, and always interesting to her

quick wit and intelligence; and Maister John had many friends among the

courtiers. But now while he waited the Queen's pleasure, not knowing

perhaps if she might not send him to the Castle or the Tolbooth in her

wrath, all his fine acquaintances forsook him. He stood, "the said

John," for an hour in that bustling ante-room, "as one whom men had

never seen," only Lord Ochiltree who had come to Holyrood with him, and

whose daughter he was about to marry, giving any sign of acquaintance to

the disgraced preacher. And Knox was human: he loved the cold shade as

little as any man, and the impertinences of all those butterfly

courtiers moved him as such a man ought not to have been moved. He burst

out suddenly upon the ladies who sat and whispered and tittered among

themselves (no doubt) at his discomfiture. He would not have us think

even then that his mind was disturbed; he merely said--

"Oh fayr Ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should

ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven with

all this gay gear! But fie upon that Knave Death that will come

whether we will or not. And when he has laid on his arrest the foul

worms will be busy with this flesh be it never so fayre and so

tender, and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can

neither carry with it gold garnissing, tarjetting, pearls, nor

precious stones!"

Knox was never called to the royal presence more, nor did Mary ever

forgive him the exhibition of feminine weakness into which his severity

had driven her. It was intolerable, no doubt, to her pride to have been

betrayed into those tears, to have seen through them the same immovable

countenance which had yielded to none of her arguments and cared nothing

for her anger, and to have him finally compare her to his own boys whom

his own hands corrected--the blubbering of schoolboys to the tears of a

queen! There is perhaps always a mixture of the tragi-comic in every

such scene, and this humiliating comparison, obtusely intended as a sort

of blundering apology, but which brought the Queen's exasperation and

mortification to a climax, and Knox's bitter assault upon the ladies in

their fine dresses outside, give a humiliating poignancy to the

exasperated feeling on both sides such as delights a cynic. It was the

end of all personal encounter between the Queen and the preacher. She

did not forgive him, and did her best to punish: but in their last and

only subsequent meeting, Knox once more had the better of his royal

adversary.

He had never been during all his career in such stormy waters as now

threatened to overwhelm him. Hitherto his bold proceedings had been

justified by the support of the first men in the kingdom. The Lords of

the Congregation, as well as that Congregation itself, the statesmen and

"natural counsellors," as they call themselves, of Scotland, had been at

his back: but now one by one they had fallen away. The Lord James, now

called Murray, the greatest of all both in influence and character, had

been the last to leave his side. The preachers, the great assembly that

filled St. Giles's almost daily, the irreconcilables with whom it was a

crime to temporise, and who would have all things settled their own way,

formed, it is true, a large though much agitated backing; but the solid

force of men who knew the world better than those absolute spirits, had

for the moment abandoned the impracticable prophet, and the party of the

Queen was eagerly on the watch to find some opportunity of crushing him

if possible. It was not long before this occurred. While Mary was absent

on one of those journeys through the kingdom which had been the constant

habit of Scottish monarchs, the usual mass was celebrated in the Chapel

of Holyrood, the priests who officiated there evidently feeling

themselves authorised to continue their usual service even in the

Queen's absence, for whose sake alone it was tolerated. But they were

interrupted by "a zealous brother," and some little tumult rose, just of

importance enough to justify the seizure of two offenders, who were

bound under sureties to "underlie the law" at a given date, within three

weeks of the offence. In the excited state of feeling which existed in

the town this arrest was magnified into something serious, and "the

brethren," consulting over the matter with perhaps involuntary

exaggeration, as if the two rioters were in danger of their lives,

concluded that Knox should write a circular letter to the Congregation

at a distance, as had been done with such effect in the early days under

the Queen Regent, bidding them assemble in Edinburgh upon the day fixed

for the trial. A copy of this letter was carried to the Court then at

Stirling and afforded the very occasion required. Murray returned in

haste from the north, and all the nobility were called to Edinburgh to

inquire into this bold semi-royal summons issued to the Queen's lieges

without her authority and in resistance to her will. "The Queen was not

a little rejoiced," says Knox, "for she thought once to be revenged of

that her great enemy." And it was evident that Mary did look forward to

the satisfaction of crushing this arrogant priest and achieving a final

triumph over the man whom she could neither awe nor charm out of his own

determined way.

[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL]

The commotion produced by these proceedings was unexampled. One after

another of the men who had by Knox's side led the entire movement of the

Reformation and to whom he had been spokesman, secretary, and

counsellor, came with grave looks and anxious urgency to do what they

could to procure his submission. The Master of Maxwell, hitherto his

great friend, but who now broke off from him entirely, was the first to

appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and

Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of

frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic--the dour

preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults,

light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile

of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout

imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove

Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at

last the day, or rather night, of the trial came.

It was in December, the darkest moment of the year, between six and

seven in the evening, when the Lords assembled at Holyrood, and the

formidable culprit was introduced to their presence. The rumour had

spread in the town that Knox was to be put on his trial, and the whole

Congregation came with him down the Canongate, filling the court of

Holyrood with a dark surging mass of men, who crowded the very stairs

towards the room in which the council was held. The lords were "talking

ane with another" in the preliminary moment before the council was

formed, when Knox entered the room. They were then told to take their

places, headed on one side by "the Duke" Chatelherault, and on the other

by Argyle. Murray, Glencairn, Ruthven, the Earl Marischal, Knox's tried

companions in arms, who had stood with him through many a dark day, took

their seats with averted looks, his judges now, and judges offended,

repulsed, their old sympathies aggravating the breach. Then came the

Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those

two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the

other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye[4] whereat

I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these

intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear

himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."

[4] It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is

reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of

the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she

could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts

and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version

of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that

could not be passed without remark.

The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a

conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that

intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the

authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual

vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to

permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and

there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and

contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there

was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then

Lethington spoke:--

"Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not

repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come

to the knowledge of others?"

John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be

taught my offence."

"Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the

convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."

"Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference

between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been

guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland;

for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with

which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as

a crime."

"Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need

of such convocations as sometime we have had."

John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my

eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has

been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure

upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by

open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused

idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully

assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil

comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not

suffer him to do by strength."

"What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who

gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that

treason?"

"Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the

people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your

Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."

"Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."

"I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare,

whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is,

that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has

given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address

me for the proof."

"I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor

against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye

to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"

"I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former

purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I

answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland;

but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers

advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if

your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's

commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this

Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I

must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the

duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either

I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare

would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the

commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think

I have done no wrong."

This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original

manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the

leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the

story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be

more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this

grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been

carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen,

not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the

practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but

only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the

council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question,

is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The

heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as

well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who

refers to the _corpus delicti_, carrying the question out of mere vague

discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox had said in his

letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service

at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater

multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in

full front the tremendous charge which followed:--

"While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the

Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I

be dampned before I be heard?'

'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'

'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this

maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the

obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the

evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the

extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in

this realm?'

The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said,

'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying

of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just

experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"

This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which

already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have

sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed

on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not

even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to

resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete

change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that

after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object

of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance,

accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was

a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many

salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely

dignity.

"Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has

branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be

holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun,

yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof

your Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently

handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I

with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters?

I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane

subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil

it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the

Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason

whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as

oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one

or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that

traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally;

whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree,

unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound

that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor

Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce

that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies

to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I

grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable

weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose

your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay

your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I

never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own

children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to

see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your

Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your

own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray

both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most

extreme words I said."

Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys)

the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to

his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more

clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly

carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and

bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be

desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they

impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council

was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an

anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and

broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to

condemn John Knox was not a light matter; that through all the hours of

that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of

Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it

was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a

hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the

force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her

certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually

acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom

and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt

to be unjust.

"John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that

were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had

not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they

could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the

flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The

Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded

to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie

so that they began to speak in open audience--'What! shall the Laird

of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane

woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our

conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie

absolved John Knox again."

The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly

the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the

multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may

consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his

profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"--a noble

answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were

not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions

pours upon them.

This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public

affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all

those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale

that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the

most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places

against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such

profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are

discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip

with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition

of "tarjetted tails," _i.e._ embroidered or highly decorated trains, and

loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished

because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way

inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the

minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust.

It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention

among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure

the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.

[Illustration: DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE]

CHAPTER III

THE TRIUMPH AND END

When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these

stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in

the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of

discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he

disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of

late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to

himself--and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than

send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the

great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk,

took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words--"Of

you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do

not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in

private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in

reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his

duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear--but

not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court.

At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally

acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings,

that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting

themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations

between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time

after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords

upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose

constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and

the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great

offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's

sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a

sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at

all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already

employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is

like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable

tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back,

while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which

only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit,

his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable

preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every

act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps

Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of

seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for

the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of

prayer which he is in the habit of using--being far too courageous a

soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the _salvam fac_ employed

by Knox:--

"Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty

from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and

thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet

remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that

eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the

end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and

vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy

manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is

the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is

worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"

"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but

the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition

saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may

appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example

of such prayer?"

"Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the

rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He

will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray

unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"

After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient,

returns to the original question.

"But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving

any doubt?"

"Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now

faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that

the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of

God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have

just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart

if His good pleasure be."

"But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that

has so prayed before you."

"Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for

further declaration I will demand ane question, which is

this--Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they

commanded others to pray?"

"Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.

"Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these

words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and

pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be

forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane

condition with his commandment."

With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the

absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the

dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception,

though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature--the preacher

stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and

sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual

abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity

which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced

him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to

Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not

for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always

applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to

understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington,

while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a

conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the

twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was

no just comparison--and this twist and confusion belonged to his period

as well as to himself--his grotesque argument has an appearance of

reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in

their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did

not.

The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his

determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should

die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the

Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The

argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but

as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much

more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually

under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington

himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held

the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough,

indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the

disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one

of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that

period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the

afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal,

waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George

Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim

a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and

the great prophet and preacher John Knox.

The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened

offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an

additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation

touching all that went on at the abbey--the gaieties, and the beautiful

dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal,

unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such

opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was

no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry

on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible

by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war

when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's

fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for

her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough

to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges

that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself

had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked

for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen.

We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added

so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he

were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of

the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to

see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life--the continual

tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations

full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of

the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were

familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls

from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared

it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the

same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to

which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the

storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion

after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the

balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St.

Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh,

where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an

honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as

one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys

and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was

called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the

council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach

for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to

his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching

he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal

note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse

of the Knox we know:--

"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as

the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured

the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of

his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen

being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her

John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."

As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to

silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as

they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted

at all.

During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade,

separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of

his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the

second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many

fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have

said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady,

Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to

bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether

seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her

father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort

and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and

who had never spared himself during his whole public life.

It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of

the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the

centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the

already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps,

will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker

conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the

banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the

rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley

for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with

the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the

executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the

partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And

that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when

that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption

against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the

other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy

knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known.

But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was

not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a

ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in

spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in

Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that

immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for

the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and

who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some

pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to

justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and

Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that

Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in

Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged

upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his

mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray

(which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton,

the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any

complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven

and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them.

Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of

guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on

the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of

Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the

prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more

apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of

Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his

friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment

at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters

she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to

write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so.

Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but

why did he fly?

Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from

the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs;

and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he

was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though

inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent

tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless

controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what

is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was

falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution

overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely

enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner

extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and

comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite

insignificant--one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the

other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery

spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame

security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own,

looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with

youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given

that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance

altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial,

respectable county family of Bowes--carrying off the two ladies in his

wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and

guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the

Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these

incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame

sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him!

All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare

the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it

were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find

no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young

wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said

is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.

[Illustration: MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE]

When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon

his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the

community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which

is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less

ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer

and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and

excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the

first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the

sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to

Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his

desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the

Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the

old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of

religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the

settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the

affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still

able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to

give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of

government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at

eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray

changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St.

Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned

lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in extreme misery,"

he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had

procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of

the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble,

pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of

the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die

in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great

cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only

compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities

and decoration sacrificed--the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic

listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but

full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and

prophet.

A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said;

but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He

recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again;

and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged

found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head

against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already

existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its

garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a

gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the

gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now

accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause

by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any

sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of

Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for

much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed

to be so, and at all events was tragically unfortunate and in

circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate

opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is

impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have

injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute

who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of

the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in

these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it

was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name,

was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over

again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been

justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's

failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of

persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in

the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the

church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with

railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support

of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations

had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the

matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air

must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty

vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep

eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under

their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either

dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country."

"What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity

that calls forth all our sympathies, "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 have to oppose

anything 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 should be compelled to fight

against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."

These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well

accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such

as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and

had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing

which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was

persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the

citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and

their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved

to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place

beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the

Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life

suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was

reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed

and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh

citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed,

and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any

sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How

strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the

sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the

preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.

The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all

these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from

being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan"

bishops--called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of

their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron,

and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to

the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service--had just been

invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St.

Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused

by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such

as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he

condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants

of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a

pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock

bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in

the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the

recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St.

Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the

boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he

himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in

his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our

college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to

know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause--to

use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid

examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and

scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two

colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men,

for when one of the professors made a play at the marriage of Mr. John

Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us

to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the

occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the

Castle of Edinburgh--then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame

to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers--and "the Captain with ane or

twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox

loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of

his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at

Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke

from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to

them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.

[Illustration: THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS]

Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a

portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in

the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the

noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to

the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has

shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.

Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of

Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,

the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that

maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."

"I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I

could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the

space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me

so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.

Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go

hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a

furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude

godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey

to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant

lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first

entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and

vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out

of it."

Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of

Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to the Castle of Edinburgh,

which he said would run like a sand-glass--a prediction supposed to be

fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and

its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken

and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more,

occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe

to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special

prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God

assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and

impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the

chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring

spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his

body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the

Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the

steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the

unseen.

Knox returned to Edinburgh in 1572, in August, the horrors of the

struggle between the Queen's party and the King's, as it was called, or

Regent's, being for the moment quieted, and the banished citizens

returning, although no permanent pacification had yet taken place. He

had but a few months remaining of life, and was very weary of the long

struggle and longing for rest. "Weary of the world, and daily looking

for the resolution of this my earthly tabernacle," he says. And in his

last publication dated from St. Andrews, whither the printer Lekprevik

had followed him, he heartily salutes and takes good-night of all the

faithful, earnestly desiring the assistance of their prayers, "that

without any notable scandal to the evangel of Jesus Christ I may end my

battle: for," he adds, "as the world is weary of me, so am I of it." He

lived long enough to welcome his successor in St. Giles's, to whom, to

hasten his arrival, he wrote the following touching letter, one of the

last compositions of his life:--

"All worldlie strength, yea even in things spiritual, decayes, and

yet shall never the work of God decay. Belovit brother, seeing that

God of His mercy, far above my expectation, has callit me over again

to Edinburgh, and yet that I feel nature so decayed, and daylie to

decay, that I look not for a long continuance of my battle, I would

gladly ance discharge my conscience into your bosom, and into the

bosom of others in whom I think the fear of God remains. Gif I had

the abilitie of bodie, I suld not have put you to the pain to the

whilk I now requyre you, that is, ance to visit me that we may

confer together on heavenly things; for into earth there is no

stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the

cross; to whose myghtie protection I heartilie commit you. Of

Edinburgh the VII. of September 1572.

JHONE KNOX.

"Haist lest ye come too lait."

He lived to induct this successor, and to hear the terrible news of that

massacre in France, which horrified all Christendom, but was of signal

good to Scotland by procuring the almost instantaneous collapse of the

party which fought for the Queen, and held the restoration of Roman

Catholic worship to be still possible. That hope died out with the first

sound of the terrible news which proved so abundantly Knox's old

assertion that in the hands of the Papists there was no safety for his

life, or the life of any who believed with him. Almost, however, before

this grain of good in the midst of so much evil became apparent the

prophet had taken his departure from this world. After the simple

ceremonial at which he had officiated, of his successor's installation,

John Knox returned home in the light of the brief November day, as

Melville had seen him, supported by the arm of his faithful servant. The

crowd which had filled St. Giles's hurrying out before him lined the

street, and watched the old man as he crept along down the hill to his

house, with many a shaken head and many a murmured blessing. In this

last scene all were unanimous; there was no one to cast a gibe or an

unkindly look upon that slow aged progress from the scene of his

greatest labours to the death-bed which awaited him. When the spectators

saw him disappear within his own door, they all knew that it was for the

last time. He lay for about a fortnight dying, seeing everybody, leaving

a charge with one, a prophecy with another, with a certain dignified

consciousness that his death should not be merely as other men's, and

that to show the reverential company of friends who went and came how to

die was the one part of his mission which had yet to be accomplished. He

ended his career on the 24th November 1572, having thus held a sort of

court of death in his chamber and said everything he had to say--dying a

teacher and prophet to men, as he had lived.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. GILES'S]

No man has been more splendidly applauded, and none more bitterly

dispraised. It is in one sense the misfortune of our age that it is

little able to do either. If steadfast adherence to what he thought the

perfect way, if the most earnest purpose, the most unwearying labour,

the profoundest devotion to his God and his country are enough to

constitute greatness, John Knox is great. He was at the same time a man

all faults, bristling with prejudices, violent in speech, often

merciless in judgment, narrow, dogmatic, fiercely intolerant. He was

incapable of that crowning grace of the imagination and heart which

enables a man to put himself in another's place and do as he would be

done by. But even this we must take with a qualification; for Knox would

no doubt have replied to such an objection that had he been a miserable

idolater, as he considered the upholders of the mass to be, he could not

but have been grateful to any man who had dragged him by whatever means

from that superstition. He was so strong in the certainty of being right

that he was incapable even of considering the possibility that he might

be wrong. And there was in him none of those reluctances to give pain,

none of those softening expedients of charity which veil such a harsh

conviction and make men hesitate to condemn. He knew not what hesitation

was, and scorned a compromise as if it had been a lie, nor would he

suffer that others should do what was impossible to himself. His

determination to have his own way was indeed justified by the conviction

that it was the way of God, but his incapability of waiting or having

patience, or considering the wishes and convictions of others, or

contenting himself with a gradual advance and progression, have no such

excuse.

These were, however, of the very essence of his character. A perfectly

dauntless nature fearing nothing, the self-confidence of an inspired

prophet, the high tyrannical impulse of a swift and fiery genius

impatient of lesser spirits, were all in him, making of him the

imperative, absolute, arrogant autocrat he was; but yet no higher

ambition, no more noble purpose, ever inspired a man. He desired for his

countrymen that they should be a chosen people like those of old whom

God had selected to receive His revelation; his ambition was to make

Scotland the most pure, the most godlike, of all countries of the earth.

In many things he was intolerable, in some he was wrong and

self-deceived. He was too eager, too restless, too intent upon doing

everything, forcing the wheels of the great universe and clutching at

his aim whatever conditions of nature might oppose--to be wholly heroic.

Yet there are none of the smoother or even more lovable figures of

history whom it would be less possible to strike from off the list of

heroes. The impression which he left upon the religion and character of

Scotland remains to this day; and if we think, as many have done during

all these ages, that that development of national life is the highest

that could be aimed at, John Knox was one of the greatest of men. But if

he transmitted many great qualities to his country, he also transmitted

the defects of these qualities. He cut Scotland adrift in many respects

from the community of Christendom. He cut her off from her ancestors and

from those hallowing traditions of many ages which are the inheritance

of the universal Church. He taught her to exult in that disruption, not

to regret it; and he left an almost ineradicable conviction of

self-superiority to a world lying in wickedness, in the innermost heart

of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have

thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no

doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its

national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious

power through these three hundred years.

[Illustration: KNOX'S PULPIT. In the Antiquarian Society's Museum,

Edinburgh.]

He lies, it is thought, if not within the walls of St. Giles's under the

flags between the Cathedral and the Parliament House, with all the busy

life of modern Edinburgh, the feet of generations of men treading out

the hours and years over his head; a more appropriate bed for him than

green mound or marble monument. That stony square is consecrated ground

blessed near a thousand years ago by ancient priests who cared little

more for Rome than do their modern successors now. But little heeded

Knox for priestly blessing or consecrated soil. "The earth is the Lord's

and the fulness thereof" was the only consecration of which he thought.

CHAPTER IV

THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION

The age of Mary Stewart is in many ways the climax of Scottish national

history, as well as one of the most interesting and exciting chapters in

the history of the world. The Stewarts of Scotland had been up to this

point a native race entirely Scots in training as in birth, and bent

above all things upon the progress and consolidation of their own

ancient kingdom, the poor but proud; a speck all but lost in the

distance of the seas, yet known all over Christendom wherever errant

squires or chivalrous pretensions were known. But the new sovereign of

Scotland was one whose heart and pride were elsewhere, whose favourite

ambitions were directed beyond the limits of that ancient kingdom with

which she had none of the associations of youth, and to which she came a

stranger from another Court far more dazzling and splendid, with hopes

and prospects incapable of being concentrated within the boundary of the

Tweed. There is no indication that the much-contested history of Mary

Stewart has lost any of its interest during the progress of the

intermediate centuries; on the contrary, some of its questions are

almost more hotly contested now than they were at the moment when they

arose. Her chivalrous defenders are more bold than once they were, and

though the tone of her assailants is subdued, it is from a natural

softening of sentiment towards the past, and still more from the fashion

of our time, which finds an absorbing interest in the manifestations of

individual character and the discussion of individual motives, rather

than from any change of opinion. I do not venture to enter into that

long-continued conflict, or to attempt to decide for the hundredth time

whether a woman so gifted and unfortunate was more or less guilty. Both

parties have gone, and still go, too far in that discussion; and Mary

would not have thanked (I imagine) those partisans who would prove her

innocence at the cost of all those vigorous and splendid qualities which

made her remarkable. She could scarcely be at once an unoffending victim

and one of the ablest women of her time.

As this is the most interesting of all the epochs of Scottish

history--and that not for Mary's sake alone, but for the wonderful

conflict going on apart from her, and in which her tragic career is but

an episode--so it is the most exciting and picturesque period in the

records of Edinburgh, which was then in its fullest splendour of

architectural beauty and social life; its noble streets more crowded,

more gay, more tumultuous and tragical; its inhabitants more

characteristic and individual; the scenes taking place within it more

dramatic and exciting than at any other part of its history. Fine

foreign ambassadors, grave English diplomates trained in the school of

the great Cecil, and bound to the subtle and tortuous policy of the

powerful Elizabeth; besides a new unusual crowd of lighter import but

not less difficult governance, the foreign artists, musicians, courtiers

of all kinds, who hung about the palace, had come in to add a hundred

complicating interests and pursuits to the simpler if fiercer

contentions of feudal lords and protesting citizens: not to speak of the

greatest change of all, the substitution for the ambitious Churchman of

old, with a coat of mail under his rochet, of the absolute and

impracticable preacher who gave no dispensations or indulgences, and

permitted no compromise. All these new elements, complicated by the

tremendous question of the English succession, and the introduction of

many problems of foreign politics into a crisis bristling with

difficulties of its own, made the epoch extraordinary; while the very

streets were continually filled by exciting spectacles, by processions,

by sudden fights and deadly struggles, by pageants and splendours, one

succeeding another, in which the whole population had their share. The

decree of the town council that "lang weapons," spears, lances, and

Jedburgh axes, should be provided in every shop--so that when the town

bell rang every man might be ready to throw down his tools or his

merchandise and grip the ready weapon--affords the most striking

suggestion of those sudden tumults which might rise in a moment, and

which were too common to demand any special record, but kept the town in

perpetual agitation and excitement--an agitation, it is true, by no

means peculiar to Edinburgh. No painter has ever done justice to the

scene which must have been common as the day, when the beautiful young

Queen, so little accustomed to the restraints and comparative poverty of

her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour

she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the

Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded

with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the

grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with

the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm.

Sadder spectacles that same beautiful Queen provided too--miserable

journeys up and down from the unhappy palace, sometimes through a stern

suppressed tumult of hostile faces, sometimes stealthily under cover of

night which alone could protect her. Everything in Edinburgh is

associated more or less with Mary's name. There is scarcely an old house

existing, with any authentic traces of antiquity, in which she is not

reported to have taken refuge in her trouble or visited in her pleasure.

The more vulgar enthusiasts of the causeways are content to abolish all

the other associations of old Edinburgh for Mary's name.

But I will not attempt to revive those pageants either of joy or sorrow.

There are other recollections which may be evoked with less historical

responsibility and at least a little more freshness and novelty. No

figure can be introduced out of that age who has not some connection one

way or other with the Queen; and the great scholar, whose reputation has

remained unique in Scotland, had some share in her earlier and happier

life, as well as a link, supposed of treachery, with her later career.

George Buchanan was the Queen's reader and master in her studies when

all was well with her. He is considered by some of her defenders to be

the forger of the wonderful letters which, if true, are the most

undeniable proof of her guilt. But these things were but incidents in

his career, and he is in himself one of the most illustrious and

memorable figures among the throngs that surrounded her in that brief

period of sovereignty which has taken more hold of the imagination of

Scotland, and indeed of the world, than many a longer and, in point of

fact, more important reign.

It is difficult to understand how it is that in later days, and when

established peace and tranquillity of living might have been supposed to

give greater encouragement to study, accurate and fine scholarship

should have ceased to be prized or cultivated in Scotland. Perhaps,

however, the very advantages upon which we have plumed ourselves so

long, the general diffusion of education and higher standard of

knowledge, is one of the causes of this failure--not only the poverty of

Scotch universities and want of endowments, but the broader and simpler

scale on which our educational systems were founded, and which have made

it more important to train men for the practical uses of teaching than

permit to them the waywardness and independence of a scholar. These

results show the "_defauts de nos qualites_," though we are not very

willing to admit the fact. But in the earlier centuries no such reproach

rested upon us. Although perhaps, then as now, the Scotch intelligence

had a special leaning towards philosophy, there was still many a learned

Scot whose reputation was in all the universities, whose Latinity was

unexceptionable, and his erudition immense, and to whom verses were

addressed and books dedicated in every centre of letters. One of the

most distinguished of these scholars was George Buchanan, and there

could be no better type of the man of letters of his time, in whom the

liberality of the cosmopolitan was united with the exclusiveness of the

member of a very strait and limited caste. He had his correspondents in

all the cities of the Continent, and at home his closest associates were

among the highest in his own land. Yet he was the son of a very poor

man, born almost a peasant and dying nearly as poor as he was born. From

wandering scholar and pedagogue he became the preceptor of a King and

the associate of princes; but he was not less independent, and he was

scarcely more rich in the one position than the other. His pride was not

in the high consultations he shared or the national movements in which

he had his part, but in his fine Latinity and the elegant turn of those

classical lines which all his learned compeers admired and applauded.

The part that he played in history has been made to look odious by

skilled critics; and the great book in which he recorded the deeds of

his contemporaries and predecessors has been assailed violently and

bitterly as prejudiced, partial, and untrue. But nobody has been able to

attack his Latin or impair the renown of his scholarship; and perhaps

had he himself chosen the foundation on which to build his fame, this is

what he would have preferred above all. History may come and politics

go, and the principles of both may change with the generations, but

Latin verse goes on for ever: no false ingenuity of criticism can pick

holes in the deathless structure of an art with which living principles

have had nothing to do for a thousand years and more.

Buchanan was born in a farmhouse, "a lowly cottage thatched with straw,"

in the year 1506, in Killearn in the county of Stirling; but not without

gentle blood in his veins, the gentility so much prized in Scotland,

which makes a traceable descent even from the roughest of country lairds

a matter of distinction. His mother was a Heriot, and one wonders

whether there might not be some connection between the great scholar and

the worthy goldsmith of the next generation, who did so much for the

boys of Edinburgh. Buchanan's best and most trustworthy biographer, Dr.

Irving,[5] pictures to his readers the sturdy young rustic trudging two

miles in all weathers to the parish school, with his "piece" in his

pocket, and already the sonorous harmonies of the great classic tongues

beginning to sound in his ears--a familiar picture which so many country

lads born to a more modest fame have emulated. In the parish school of

Killearn, in that ancient far-away Scotland before the Reformation,

which it is hard to realise, so different must it have been from the

characteristic Scotch school of all our traditions, the foundations of

Buchanan's great scholarship and power were laid. His father died while

he was still a mere child, and the future man of letters had plenty of

rough rustic work, helping his mother about the farm on the holidays,

which must have been more frequent while all the saints of the calendar

were still honoured. Trees of his planting, his biographer says, writing

in the beginning of this century, still grow upon the banks of the

little stream which runs by the beautiful ruins of Dunblane, and which

watered his mother's fields. When he had reached the age of fourteen an

uncle Heriot seeing his aptitude for study sent him off, it would seem

alone, in all his rusticity and homeliness, to Paris--a curious sign of

the close connection between Scotland and France--where he carried on

his studies or, a phrase more appropriate to his age, learned his

lessons amid the throngs of the French schools. Before he was sixteen,

however, his uncle died, leaving him desolate and unprovided for amongst

strangers; and the boy had to make his way home as best he could, half

begging, half working his passage, stopping perhaps here and there to

help a schoolboy or to write a letter for the unlearned, and earning a

bed and a meal as poor scholars were used to do. He remained a year in

his mother's house, but probably was no longer wanted for the uses of

the farm, since his next move was to the wars. He himself informs us in

the sketch of his life which he wrote in his old age that he was "moved

with a desire to study military matters," a desire by no means unusual

at seventeen. These were the days when the fantastic French Albany was

at the head of affairs in Scotland, during the childhood of James V, and

the country was in great disorder, torn with private quarrels and

dissensions. It is evident that, the kind uncle being dead and affairs

in general so little propitious, there would be little chance in the

resources of the farm of securing further university training for the

boy who had his own way to make somehow in the world; and perhaps his

experience of Paris and possession of the French language (no

inconsiderable advantage when there were so many French adventurers and

hangers on about the Court) might be expected to give him chances of

promotion; while his service perhaps exempted an elder brother, of more

use than he upon the farm, from needful service, when his feudal lord

called out his men on the summons of the Regent.

[5] I must explain that this chapter was written before the publication

of the recent, and I believe excellent, biography of Buchanan by Mr. P.

Hume.

[Illustration: NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT'S HOSPITAL]

George Buchanan accordingly followed the Laird's flag upon one of the

wildest and most fruitless of Albany's expeditions to the Border, for

the siege of Wark. The great Border stronghold, the size and wonderful

proportions of which astonished the Scots army, stands forth again,

clear as when it first struck his boyish imagination, in the description

which Buchanan gives of it nearly half a century later in his history of

that time--where the reader can still see the discomfited army with its

distracted captains and councils, and futile leader, straggling back

through the deep snow, each gloomy band finding its way as best it could

to its own district. Buchanan would seem to have had enough of fighting;

and perhaps he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither

arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way

to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or

rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years;

taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed

Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that

Major's interest as a doctor of the Sorbonne might help him to find

employment in Paris, we are not told. One of the many stories to his

prejudice which were current in his after-career describes Buchanan as

dependent on Major and ungrateful to him, repaying with a cruel epigram

the kindness shown him. But there seems absolutely no foundation for

this accusation which was probably suggested to after-detractors anxious

for evidence that ingratitude, as one of them says, "was the great and

unpardonable blemish of his life"--by the epigram in question, in which

he distinguishes his professor as "solo cognomine Major." It might very

well be, however, that Buchanan expected a kind recommendation from his

St. Andrews master, such as the habit of the kindly Scots was apt to

give, and some help perhaps in procuring employment, and that the

failure of any aid of this description betrayed the youth into the

national tendency to harshness of speech and the bitter jeer at one who

was great only in his name.

A stranger with nothing but his learning and his Latin epigrams (though

these last were a more marketable commodity then than now) would no

doubt be forlorn enough, struggling to find himself standing-ground and

a living, subsisting hardly on what chance employment might fall in his

way, and reflecting, as most adventurers are apt to do, how easy it

would be for his prosperous countryman to befriend him. Paris, always

full of stir and commotion, had at this moment a new source of agitation

in the rising force of the Reformation principles or, as Buchanan calls

it, "the Lutheran controversy, which was already spreading far and

wide," and into the midst of which he fell on his return. Whether his

interest in the new creed did him harm in his search for an

establishment we are not told: and probably the "struggle with adverse

fortune for about two years" which he records was merely the difficulty

in making himself known which affects every young man. At the end of

that time he got an appointment in the College of St. Barbe as Professor

of Grammar, and was henceforward exempted at least from the

heart-sickening conflict with absolute poverty.

Buchanan would seem to have had already high ambitions and a certainty

that he was fit for something better than the post of schoolmaster in a

French college--for notwithstanding his eagerness to get this post we

soon find him lamenting, in the abstract indeed, but in a manner too

particular to be without special meaning, the small profit of

intellectual labour and the weariness of a continual toil which was so

little rewarded. His plaint of the long night's work, the burning of the

midnight oil, the hunt through dusty and rotting manuscripts, seems

touched with a tone of bitterness unusual in the student's murmurs over

a lot which after all brings him as much pleasure as weariness. The

ambitious lad was already, it is evident, longing for more brilliant

scenes.

"Pervigil in lucem lecta atque relecta revolves

Et putri excuties scripta sepulta situ:

Saepe caput scalpes, et vivos roseris ungues,

Irata feries pulpita saepe manu."

At St. Barbe, however, he secured a noble young pupil of his own

country, the future Earl of Cassilis, who opened to him a brighter way,

and finally led him back to his own country and for a time to higher

fortune. When young King James came to Paris to meet Magdalen of

France--with the sudden pathetic result of a hasty romantic marriage

soon followed by the poor young lady's death--young Cassilis was still

there with his tutor, who was himself but little advanced in life beyond

his patron. And it was presumably in the train of the royal pair that

the young men returned home. In that case Buchanan must have witnessed

the touching scene that took place at the poor young Queen's

disembarkation when she kissed the soil of her new country, the land

which was to afford her only a grave. Whether dreams of Court favour and

advancement were beginning to germinate in the young scholar's brain as

he was thus suddenly swept into the train of royalty there is nothing to

say; but at all events he observed everything with keen attentive eyes,

unconsciously collecting the best materials for the history he was yet

to write. And it is clear that this accidental connection with the King

bore after-fruit. Buchanan went to Ayrshire with his young patron who

had come of age, and whose studies were over it is to be supposed: and

in the leisure of that relaxation from former duties amused himself with

compositions of various sorts, and in particular with the _Somnium_, a

lively poetical satire upon the Franciscans. The monks, who had been the

favourite butt of all the ages, were more than ever open to the assaults

of the wits now that the general sentiment had turned so strongly

against them, and Buchanan said no more than Dunbar with full

permission, before any controversy arose, had said, nor half so much as

David Lindsay was privileged to say. And Lord Cassilis' tutor had all

the freedom of a private individual responsible to no one while he

lingered at his young patron's castle, pleased to make as many as

comprehended his Latin laugh, though probably there were few capable of

appreciating its classical beauty. This, however, was but a pastime, and

his mind again began to turn towards Paris, where alone perhaps there

was to be found the kind of work for which he was most fit and the

literary applause and emulation which were dear to his soul.

He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some

entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who

must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by

offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several

for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was

already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James

who was afterwards the Regent Murray. This appointment brought Buchanan

at once within the charmed circle of the Court, and probably prepared

the way for all his after-honours. But his career in Edinburgh at this

moment was not especially glorious. Delighted by the _Somnium_, which

had been read to him and applauded by all the obsequious audience round,

James, who though a good Catholic liked a clever assault upon the

priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household

to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their

great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of

Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was

certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther

should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but

Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it

was not necessary to be a Protestant to give vent to the broadest

satires against the monks and friars who had been for so long the least

defensible portion of the Catholic establishment. Buchanan, however, was

not bold enough to fall upon his enemies as Sir David Lindsay did. A

poor man and a dependant, had he the highest spirit in the world, must

still bear traces of the yoke to which circumstances have accustomed

him, and a scholar is not necessarily brave. He shrank from encountering

the great and powerful community of the Grey Friars in the eye of day,

and instead of the lively assault expected from him, temporised and

wrote something which was neither satisfactory to the King who wanted a

laugh at the expense of the monks, nor to the monks who were more

enraged by the covert character of a satire which could be read both

ways, than they would have been by straightforward abuse. The

dissatisfaction of James moved Buchanan to bolder measures, and after

his halfhearted attempt to compromise himself as little as possible, he

was goaded into the most virulent use of his pen, and cut down his

adversaries with the sharp shafts of his _Franciscanus_ with a vigour

and malice which left nothing to be desired. The Court had its laugh

which was resounding and long, but neither King nor courtiers had any

penalty to pay for the pranks which the classical Samson wrought for

their pleasure.

Though they were thus mocked in high places, the Churchmen, however, had

lost none of their power, and even the protection of the royal household

did not avail the audacious poet. In the raid upon heretics which was

made in the beginning of the year 1539 Buchanan's name was included

among the guilty. He himself tells us that "Cardinal Beatoun bought his

life from the King with money": making it probably the price of some

concession that this audacious assailant should be delivered into the

hands of the Church. At all events the terrified scholar had no

confidence in the power or will of his Sovereign to protect him, and,

scared by the flames of various burnings which had taken place

throughout the kingdom, directed his best wits to finding a way of

safety. He escaped through a window while his keepers were asleep, some

say from the Castle of St. Andrews, some from that of Edinburgh. His own

account is more simple and goes into no detail. "He made his way into

England, eluding the guards set for him." But England was not more

secure than Scotland. The quick-witted fugitive found Henry VIII

impartially burning victims from both sides, on the same day at the same

stake, and considered this sublime indifference as still more dangerous

than the strife of Scotch affairs. "His old familiarity with the French,

and the singular hospitality of that nation," led him back to the city

which was then the favourite resort of all the Muses. When, however,

Buchanan arrived in Paris he found that his special enemy, Cardinal

Beatoun, had preceded him there as ambassador from King James, and,

alarmed by so dangerous a vicinity, he accepted at once an offer made to

him by Andrew Govra, one of his colleagues of former times, who had been

appointed to the charge of a college in Bordeaux, and removed thither

with the greatest expedition before his foe could be made aware of his

presence in Paris.