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 4?0tO6IC\L S£* 
 
 BX9223 .M32 1895 
 Maccumi, Florence A. 
 John Knox / 
 
JOHN KNOX 
 
JOHN KNOX. 
 

 JOHN KNOX 
 
 EY 
 
 FLORENCE A.'mACCUNN 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1895 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE FIRST FORTY YEARS ... 
 
 II. IN ENGLAND 
 
 III. ENGLISH FRIENDS 
 
 IV. ON THE CONTINENT (1554 — 1555) 
 V. SCOTLAND (1555 — 1556) ... 
 
 VI. KNOX's POLITICAL WRITINGS 
 
 VII. BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 
 
 VIII. CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND (1559 — 1560) 
 
 IX. END OF THE CIVIL WAR (1559 — 1560) 
 
 X. THE CONFESSION OF FAITH 
 
 XI, THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE AND THE BOOK OF 
 
 COMMON ORDER 
 
 XII. RETURN OP MARY STUART (1561) ... 
 
 XIII. KNOX's FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MARY 
 
 XIV. LIFE IN THE NETHERBOW 
 
 XV. KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS 
 
 XVI. KNOX AND THE COURT (1563 — 1564) 
 
 XVII. KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 
 
 PAas 
 1 
 
 13 
 24 
 30 
 39 
 49 
 58 
 68 
 79 
 89 
 
 96 
 109 
 117 
 124 
 132 
 142 
 152 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XVIII. THE TRIUMPH OF THE UNGODLY ... 
 
 XIX, THE GENERAL FAST (mARCH 1566) 
 
 XX. FALL OF MARY (1567) ... 
 
 XXI. Moray's regency (1567 — 1570) ... 
 
 XXII. KNOX AND KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE 
 
 XXIII. ST. ANDREWS (1571 — 1572) 
 
 XXIV. THE END (1572) 
 
 PAGE 
 
 163 
 170 
 178 
 189 
 198 
 207 
 218 
 
The writer desires to express her thanks to Mr. John 
 Smith of the University Library, St. Andrews; 
 and more especially to Mr. Andrew Lang for 
 valued assistance in the revision of the proofs of 
 the following pages. 
 
JOHN KNOX. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FIRST FORTY YEARS. 
 
 Perhaps the most singular fact in the life of Knox 
 is the unbroken silence of the first forty years. He, 
 who was the most explicit of men in all that related 
 to himself, never referred to his early life except in 
 some such short, uneasy allusion as "the time spent 
 in the puddle of Papistry." Shame probably kept him 
 silent. What we know from other sources is little 
 enough. He was born probably near Haddington in 
 the year 1505. Unlike most of his countrymen, of 
 whom Erasmus remarks that they all claimed to be 
 of noble birth, Knox was content to ^describe himself 
 as "a man of base estate and condition." His name 
 occurs in the student lists of Glasgow College for the 
 year 1522, but is absent from the list of those who took 
 their degree. The famous John Major was lecturing 
 in Glasgow in those years ; and it is possible that the 
 strong democratic convictions and contempt for con- 
 ventional authorities which Knox shared with Major's 
 other pupil Buchanan, may have been instilled into 
 
S JOHN KNOX 
 
 tliem as students in the class-room at Glasgow. Pos- 
 sibly also Knox's later habit of scornfully thrusting 
 aside his adversaries' logic may have been formed 
 while he listened, with impatience, to Major's endless 
 scholastic subtleties. It is certain that Knox was in 
 minor orders. His Catholic adversaries used to taunt 
 him with having been one of the "Pope's Knights," 
 and with having received orders " by which ye were 
 umquhile called Sir John." The tradition followed by 
 Beza describes him as a lecturer in subtlest dialectics 
 at St. Andrews, and as later renouncing scholastic 
 theology for the study of Jerome and Augustine. Of 
 evidence for this tradition there is no trace in any 
 written record. On the contrary, the only documentary 
 evidence we have is the name of "Sir John Knox" 
 appended to two or three notarial papers, which show 
 that, between the years 1540 and 1543, Knox was 
 deciding the value of chalders of victual and drawing 
 uj) law papers in the neighbourhood of Haddington. 
 
 During these long years of obscurity, Knox may have 
 been silently gathering evidence of those scandals and 
 abuses in the Church which he relates with such relish 
 in his History. Gross and grotesque as are the charges 
 of profligacy which he brings against the prelates, they 
 are borne out by the admissions made in all severe 
 sobriety by one Provincial Assembly of the Church after 
 the other. If Knox stigmatizes indolent and worldly 
 bishops as " idle bellies " and " dumb dogs," the Catholic 
 apologist, Quintin Kennedy, describes, with a satire as 
 pungent though more delicate, the system by which bene- 
 fices were filled. " And when they — i. c. grasping noble- 
 men — have gotten a benefice, if they have a brother or 
 son who can neither sing nor say, nourished in vice all 
 
THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 3 
 
 his days, he shall be immediately mounted on a mule, 
 with a side-gown and a round bonnet, and then it is a 
 question whether he or his mule know best to do his 
 office." Among prelates elected in this manner, it was 
 no wonder that some were like the Bishop of Dunkeld, 
 who " thanked God that he knew neither the Old nor 
 New Testament." 
 
 Living in a country parish, Knox must have seen 
 with his own eyes the greed, ignorance and licentious- 
 ness of the smaller clergy. In Haddington, as in other 
 parts of Scotland, priests made a trade of their office, 
 turning once again the House of God into a den 
 of thieves. "Teinds," a tax levied by the Church on 
 all agricultural produce, weighed heavily on peasants 
 already ground down by the feudal dues of the land- 
 owners. " They two (i. c. churchman and noble) live by 
 me," says the peasant in the Complaynt of Scotland, 
 "and I die by them." The tyranny of the Churchmen 
 seems to have rankled most deeply — 
 
 " Our parson here, lie takes no otlier pyne (pain), 
 But to receive his teind and spend it syne. 
 Though they should want preaching seventeen year, 
 Our parson will nut want one sheaf of bear " (barley). 
 
 Against the neglect and oppression of the Church, the 
 poor had only the last ineffectual weapons of contempt 
 and derision. The people ceased to attend the services, 
 "they so lightlied the Mass" that priests complained 
 that there was no longer a living to be made out of 
 it. " Cursing " (excommunication) — once the awful 
 severance of a sinful soul from the Church's charity 
 and the mercy of God — became a jest and mockery 
 to peasants as they sat drinking together at the tavern. 
 
4 JOHN KNOX 
 
 But the Cliurch, though she was losing all hold on the 
 people, was politically strong in the reign of James V 
 (1513—1542). The pupil of Sir David Lindsay, and 
 himself a man of shrewdness and experience, the King 
 could not shut his eyes to flagrant abuses. But though 
 he might at times threaten the Churchmen, he knew, 
 and they knew, that he was entirely dependent on their 
 support. From the time he had escaped from the 
 hated tutelage of the Douglases, he had tried systematic- 
 ally to abase the Nobility, and had filled all offices with 
 Churchmen, Avho indeed, by their greater learning and 
 knowledge of the world, were more fitted to discharge 
 public duties than ignorant and violent noblemen. Of 
 these ecclesiastical politicians, the ablest and most 
 consjjicuous was Cardinal Beaton. Under his influence 
 James leaned more and more to a French alliance, and 
 resisted the persuasions of his uncle, Henry VIII, to 
 follow his example and at once reform the lives of the 
 Churchmen, and fill his own coffers with their wealth. 
 Foiled in his attempt to influence his nephew, Henry 
 was secretly busy making allies of the discontented 
 Scotch Nobility. Many of the more needy and un- 
 scrupulous of these were in his pay. 
 
 But there was another section of the Scottish people 
 who also favoured a close alliance with England. 
 After Henry's breach with Home, this party looked 
 to the English King for aid in carrying out rehgious 
 reform in their own country. Conspicuous among these 
 friends of England were a group of East Lothian 
 gentlemen, the Laird of Brunston, Cockburn of Ormiston, 
 and Hugh Douglas of Long Niddry. Of t.hese the first 
 w^as a paid agent of the English King during the years 
 that followed the death of James V (1543-4G), and was 
 
THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 5 
 
 deeply involved in a plot to murder Cardinal Beaton. 
 During these same years John Knox was tutor in the 
 household of Douglas of Long Niddry, and numbered 
 also some of the young Cockburns among his pupils. 
 That he was the chosen associate of such men shows 
 clearly what were his religious and political opinions. 
 During the years when Knox was quiescent and 
 passive, the new doctrines had spread secretly in Scot- 
 land, partly through " the English books," which were 
 surreptitiously imported and read, partly through 
 merchants and mariners who brought the new ideas 
 from abroad, but chiefly through the heroic constancy 
 of those who died for their faith. The list of martyrs 
 is after all small, but it included several men of singular 
 devoutness and attractiveness of character. The first 
 of these was Mr. Patrick Hamilton.^ Gently born, but 
 contemning the world and its advantages, endowed 
 with princely wit but still more inflamed Avith godliness, 
 he was learned in philosophy and eager to restore the 
 pure text of Ai'istotle to the schools; but still more 
 intent on making plain to the unlearned the Gospel, as 
 he had received it from Luther and Melancthon. He was 
 only twenty-four years old when he was burned at St. 
 Andrews in 1528. The "reek which blew from Patrick 
 Hamilton," infecting so many with his heresies, seems 
 to have left Knox unaffected. It was probably two 
 
 ^ Hamilton had himself been endowed as a child with the 
 wealthy Abbacy of Feme. Dying at twenty-four, while there 
 was yet no question of practical reform, it is impossible to 
 pronounce wbat his action would have been with regard to the 
 profitable corruption of the Church, but it is difficult to believe 
 that self-interest would have weighed with a spirit as pure anil 
 ardent as his. 
 
v/ 
 
 6 JOHN KNOX 
 
 years later in 1530 that he received minor orders. For 
 the next seventeen years he was content to adjudge 
 chalders of victual, to teach children their grammar, 
 and to read the Fathers in his closet; while simple 
 country gentlemen, unlettered craftsmen, single-minded 
 parish priests were going into " the Kingdom " before 
 him. In 1538 a young school-master, George Wishart, 
 was forced to fly to England to escape persecution for 
 teaching the New Testament in Greek. He spent six 
 years between Germany, Switzerland, and Cambridge, 
 and returned to Scotland either in 1543 or 1544. His 
 tall, ascetic figure, in its fustian cloak, recalled the first 
 brothers of the Preaching Orders. Like them, he 
 strove by meekness and patience, by nights spent in 
 prayer, and by constant charity to the poor, to imitate 
 literally the life of Jesus. He had had moments of weak- 
 ness, as when at Bristol he had "burned his faggot" in 
 sign of public recantation ; the calm fearlessness with 
 which he afterwards met persecution and death had been 
 gained only after lonely hours of prayer and tears and 
 pleadings with Almighty God. The plague was raging 
 at Dundee in the summer of 1545 ; he preached to the 
 stricken in the open street, and passed in and out 
 among them ministering to their needs. When a 
 monk, suborned by the Cardinal, attempted to murder 
 him, his one anxiety was to save the assassin from the 
 anger of the crowd. If Cardinal Beaton was a relent- 
 less persecutor, he was moved less by religious con- 
 victions than an anxious jealousy over the vested 
 interests of the Church. In Wishart's case, political 
 motives added to his animosity. In the preacher and 
 his friends he saw, not without reason, the secret allies 
 of England. e. 
 
THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 7 
 
 lu the end of the year 1545, Beaton's enmity was 
 drawing a close net round Wishart, and many who had 
 at first resorted to him began to stand aloof. Wounded 
 in spirit and full of foreboding, he continued the more 
 earnestly to use what time remained to him in preach- 
 ing. " In those days, that are called the Holy days of 
 Yule," he came into East Lothian and stayed in turn 
 in the households of Brunston, Orrniston and Long 
 Niddry. 
 
 There was no dogma of the Church of Rome for which 
 Knox in after days felt more contempt than that of 
 Apostolic Succession. There is no more striking instance 
 of the real Apostolic Succession than this meeting 
 between him and Wishart at Long Niddry. Convictions 
 that had been slowly forming in Knox's mind were quick- y 
 ened into life by the touch of Wishart's pure and fervent "^ 
 spirit. The preacher was in that intense state of 
 feeling when insight becomes prophetic vision. He 
 saw, as no one else had done, latent power and passion 
 in the dark, rugged-faced man of forty. To this new 
 disciple he unburdened the sorrows and fears which 
 else found expression only in his nightly prayers. Once, 
 in the Abbey of Haddington, Knox watched him walking 
 up and down behind the high altar, with troubled coun- 
 tenance. He called Knox to him and told him that 
 " he wearied of the world because he perceived that men ^ 
 began to weary of God." After the sermon, lie took 
 farewell of his friends as if for the last time, Knox \ / 
 had made himself attendant and body-guard to Wishart, ' 
 marching in front of him with a two-handed sword, and 
 now he pressed to be allowed to return with him to 
 the House of Ormiston, but Wishart put him gently 
 by, sayijig, " Nay, return to your bairns; one is sufficient 
 
8 JOHN KNOX 
 
 for a sacrifice." " God grant good rest," he said, as lie 
 withdrew tliat niglit to liis own room. At midnight 
 the house was surrounded by armed men, and he, 
 yielding himself a prisoner, was delivered into the hands 
 of the Cardinal. The gentlest and most reverent pages 
 of all Knox's History are those in which he tells of the 
 courage of George Wishart at his trial and his constancy 
 in the hour of death. For him alone of all the men he 
 ever knew Knox seems to have had the feeling of a 
 disciple for a master. 
 
 Wishart was not long unavenged. There had long 
 been a plot on foot to take the Cardinal prisoner and 
 deliver him to Henry VIII, alive or dead. It had 
 been originally contrived by paid agents of England, 
 but sorrow and anger for Wishart's death secured the 
 approval and connivance of men of very different 
 character. Early on the 29th of May, while the 
 Cardinal still slept in his chamber, the Castle of St. 
 Andrews was forcibly entered by a body of armed men 
 led by Melville of Raith, a grave and religious gentle- 
 man of Fife, William Kirkcaldy, younger, of Grange, 
 and by John and Norman Leslie, personal enemies of 
 the Cardinal. They burst open the door of his private 
 room, and found him helpless and unarmed. " I am a 
 priest, ye will not slay me," he cried Avith despairing- 
 reiteration, but even as he pled for mercy he Avas struck 
 down on his own hearth, his murderers sternly bidding 
 him repent his sins, especially the death of "that 
 notable instrument of God, Maister George Wishart." 
 
 The well-built, sea-girt Castle to which Beaton had 
 trusted so blindly now became the stronghold whence 
 his enemies for fifteen months defied the intermittent 
 attempts of the Eegent Arran to dislodge them. 
 
THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 9 
 
 Thither resorted all those who, in Pitscottie's curious 
 phrase, "suspected themselves to be guilty of the said 
 slaughter." The political significance of the murder can 
 be judged by the fact, that amongst the number were 
 the veteran statesman, Sir David Lindsay, the elder 
 Laird of Grange, and the eminent lawyer Henry 
 Balnaves. In spite of the weight of these elder men, 
 the garrison was a wild and lawless band. In the 
 intervals of the siege, they passed freely up and down 
 the little town, and, in their hour of reckless triumph, 
 plundered and distressed the country-side. They in- 
 clined, however, to the Reformed doctrines, and a 
 certain John Rough became their chaplain. At Easter 
 (April 10, 1547), Knox arrived in the Castle with 
 three of his pupils. He had been a marked man since 
 Wishart's death, and, wearied of passing from one 
 hiding-place to another, he had desired to go to 
 Germany; but the fathers of his pupils had been 
 earnest with him to continue the education of their 
 sons, and had sent him and them to the Castle of St. 
 Andrews as to a place of safety. It was a strange 
 place for such a purpose. Already the fortress, crowded 
 to excess, was scourged with sickness ; lawless men-at- 
 arms were the comrades of the boys and their tutor; 
 and it was from the gossip of the guard-room that 
 Knox probably learned the ghastly circumstances of the 
 Cardinal's death, and the disgusting details of his burial 
 which he retails in his History with savage merriment. 
 Sir David Lindsay and Henry Balnaves had shrewd 
 eyes for the qualities of men. They had listened to 
 Knox catechizing his pupils and expounding the Gospel 
 to them. It was resolved that he should be constrained 
 to accept the office of preacher. Upon a certain Sunday, 
 
10 JOHN KNOX 
 
 I Rough discoursed " in the pubHc preaching place " on 
 I the election of ministers ; and at the end of the sermon 
 
 1 1 he suddenly turned directly to where Knox was sitting, 
 land charged him in the name of the congregation then 
 'present, that he should not refuse the holy vocation of 
 the Ministry. Then, addressing the people, he said, 
 " Was not this your charge to me ? " With one voice 
 they answered, " It was ; and we approve it." To Knox 
 this call was as irresistible as the voice of God Himself, 
 but like Jeremiah of old his spirit shrank from the 
 burden suddenly laid upon it. " Whereat," he tells us, 
 " the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant 
 tears and withdrew himself to his chamber." 
 
 But the call once accepted, Knox laid aside fear and 
 misgivings for ever. His first sermon, preached in the 
 Parish Church before the University, the garrison, the 
 townspeople and an angry body of monks and priests, 
 was a direct challenge to the Romish Church. From 
 Daniel, from St. Paul, from the Apocalypse he had 
 gathered the images of " the great Beast," the " Anti- 
 christ," the " Man of Sin," the " Babylonian Harlot " ; 
 these he applied to the Popes and " all the shavelings," 
 tearing open their lives, denouncing their doctrines, 
 deriding their idolatry. To us these images may 
 smack of conventional caricature ; they were startlingly 
 new and apt to a congregation who had read neither 
 St. Paul nor Daniel, and who had long regarded the 
 Churchmen with sullen hostility. They greeted Knox's 
 audacity with acclamation. " Others," said they, " hewed 
 the branches of the Papistry, but this man strikes at 
 
 *^ the root." 
 
 For their own credit the Churchmen at St. Andrews 
 could not let such a challenge pass unanswered. The 
 
THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 11 
 
 chief ecclesiastic, Dean Winram, himself secretly inclined 
 to the new doctrines, prudently left the dispute to the 
 friars, to whom Knox submitted a list of the abuses of 
 the Romish Church. 
 
 From this dispute it is clear that Knox had already 
 reached the dogmatic position from which he never 
 afterwards moved. In Hamilton and Wishart the new 
 teaching had been a quickening spirit; in Knox the 
 same spirit had taken body in a theological system. 
 Perhaps it was all the more serviceable in that shape* 
 both as a weapon of defence and as a standard round 
 which men might rally. 
 
 In June Knox administered the Sacrament after 
 the reformed manner to over two hundred people in 
 the Parish Church, Only once before had the Lord's 
 Supper been celebrated in this form in Scotland. On 
 the day on which he suffered, George Wishart, sitting 
 at breakfast with his gaoler, had used that simple meal 
 as a Sacrament, and had blessed the food and given it 
 to all present. 
 
 In the same month the Government tried to bribe the 
 garrison to surrender with the Pope's pardon for the 
 murder. Rome was already mistress of the casuistry 
 that was to become her chief reproach. "Remittimus 
 irremissibile " ran the pardon ; a sophistry hardly likely 
 to deceive a lawyer like Balnaves or a statesman like 
 Lindsay. The garrison hoped to be able to prolong 
 the time till help could arrive from England. 
 
 But the Regent had a stronger ally than Rome 
 and her casuistries. On the last day of June, a fleet of 
 French galleys suddenly appeared in St. Andrews Bay, 
 bringing soldiers and heavy cannon. For a month the 
 garrison braved it out. They bragged of the thickness 
 
12 .lOHN KNOX 
 
 of their walls ; Knox assured them " tliey sliould be 
 but egg-shells." They boasted, "England will rescue 
 us;" and he retorted, "Ye shall not see them, but ye 
 shall be delivered into your enemy's hands, and shall 
 be carried to a strange country." Recording these 
 words years afterwards in his History, Knox put in 
 prophetic shape Avhat was at the time the simple 
 deduction of a shrewd judgment from obvious facts. 
 The French were skilled in artillery and all the 
 art of beleaguering; Henry VIII had died in the 
 previous January ; the English Government were dis- 
 inclined to fulfil his obligation to his Scotch allies ; nor 
 did it require a supernatural revelation to recognize 
 the hopeless weakness of a garrison without law or 
 loyalty. " Their corrupt life," Knox told them, " could 
 not escape the judgment of God." Plague was within 
 the Castle ; outside, the French cannon, mounted on 
 the College tower and Abbey steeples, raked the walls 
 and court of the fortress. On Saturday the last of 
 July the Castle surrendered. The garrison were care- 
 ful to yield only to the French Admiral, trusting his 
 promise that they should be taken to France and there 
 either remain at liberty or be allowed to depart to 
 another country. But it was not a habit of the French 
 princes to keep faith with heretics. The more im- 
 portant of the St. Andrews garrison were scattered in 
 French prisons ; the rest, and among them Knox, were 
 sent to the galleys. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 IN ENGLAND. 
 
 FuK tbu nineteen months that fulluwed (August \ 
 1547 — February 1549), Knox Avas a slave on a French ] 
 galley. This means that he formed part of the wretched 
 human machinery that worked those great transport 
 vessels. Railed off from the rest of the ship's company, 
 the rowers, riveted by chains to the deck, worked in- 
 cessantly at their heavy oars. The squalor of the 
 place was unspeakable ; the company coarse and 
 brutal. From the labours and exposure of these 
 months, Knox contracted one of the cruellest diseases 
 that can torture human tiesh. From this he suffered 
 all his days. It is a singular merit that he who was 
 so explicit about himself never complains of bodily 
 suffering. His religion, which had such large room 
 for spiritual torments, forbade all murmuring against 
 the torments of the body. Illness was to him either^ 
 the obstruction of the devil to be triumphed over, or | 
 the dispensation of Almighty God, to be patiently I 
 borne as the well-merited punishment for sin. 
 
 Neither the apparent triumph of Antichrist in 
 Scotland, nor his own helplessness, lying in chains 
 and in the last extremity of sickness, could shake 
 
 r 
 
U JOHN KNOX 
 
 his confident belief that God had work for him to do 
 in his own country. At the time when few hoped that 
 he would recover, the galley he was in happened to 
 be lying in the North Sea off Dundee. Pointing across 
 the bay to the roofs and towers of St. Andrews, a 
 companion asked him if he knew the place. " Yea, I 
 know it well : for I see the steeple of the place where 
 God first, in public, opened my mouth to His glory; 
 and I am fully persuaded, how weak soever I now 
 appear, I shall not depart this life till that my tongue 
 ■' shall glorify His godly Name in that place." In winter, 
 the Notre, Dame, the galley on which Knox was a 
 prisoner, was laid up off Rouen; Henry Balnaves was 
 lying a captive in the palace of the same town. He 
 contrived secretly to send Knox a treatise he had 
 written in prison on Justification, Having read the 
 work, " to the comfort of his spirit," Knox sent it with 
 his own comments to the faithful in Scotland, adding 
 noble words of courage and hope. "The serpent," he 
 wrote, "hath power only to molest and trouble the 
 tlesh, but not to move the spirit from constant adhering 
 to Jesus Christ, nor public professing of His true 
 Word." This "public professing" afforded Knox the 
 satisfaction of deriding the religious observances of his 
 enemies. One day an image of Our Lady — " a painted 
 brod " (picture) — was brought on deck. The officers of 
 the galley, with petty tyranny, thrust it roughly into 
 Knox's hands, bidding him kiss it. He forbade them 
 to trouble him with the accursed idol ; they persisted. 
 Then he, " looking round advisedly, cast it into the 
 river, and said, ' Let Our Lady now save herself : 
 >^ she is light enough : let her learn to swim.' " In 
 relating this " merry fact," Knox adds significantly. 
 
IN ENGLAND 16 
 
 "After that was no Scottislimau urged with that 
 idolatry." 
 
 Early iu 1549 deliverance came. The English 
 Government negotiated with the French King the 
 release of the Scottish prisoners. It was a tardy 
 recognition on the part of the Privy Council of the 
 fact that the St. Andrews garrison had been the late 
 King's allies and had fought in his quarrel. 
 
 The Protector Somerset had probably a purpose of 
 his own in bringing Knox to England. The condition 
 of religion in that country was confused and shifting. 
 Before he died, Henry VIII himself had grown averse 
 to persecution and more tolerant of innovations. After 
 his death (January 1547) changes took place so sweeping 
 as almost to be revolutionary. 
 
 Somerset, who had seized the Protectorship on the 
 death of Henry, was a Protestant of an advanced type. 
 The boy-king was surrounded by Protestant tutors. 
 Amongst the bishops several were distinctly Protestant. 
 Cranmer himself was gradually drifting into a Pro- ^ 
 testantism that in some points Avas more akin to Geneva 
 than to Wittenberg. In London and in the towns of 
 the eastern sea-board many of the citizens were Pro- 
 testant by conviction ; but the bulk of the people was 
 obstinately eonservative and resented further innovation 
 in ritual or teaching. It was part of Somerset's plan 
 for forcing the Reformation on the people, to send 
 preachers of approved doctrine into all parts of the 
 country. He must have heard of Knox's power iu 
 the pulpit, for on his arrival the latter was dispatched 
 at once to Berwick as a licensed preacher. 
 
 Berwick was a garrison town, and the first con- 
 gregation Knox had in England was made up of much 
 
16 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the same rough elements as the congregation he had 
 had at St. Andrews. The Evangelical message which 
 Knox brought to these self-willed, ignorant men has 
 always had a strange power over soldiers by reason of 
 its definiteness and emphasis. The images that came 
 most readily to him in preaching or exhorting were 
 all drawn from the camp and the battle-field. " Though 
 the battle appear strong, your Captain is inexpugnable," 
 he writes. And again, "Abide, stand and call for His 
 support, and so the enemies which now affray you shall 
 be confounded." When, early in 1551, he Avas removed 
 to Newcastle, he carried with him his own following. 
 " Many Scots resorted to Newcastle chiefly for his 
 fellowship." Otherwise, he found himself in hostile 
 surroundings. The North was peculiarly conservative 
 in religion ; the influence of Bishop Tunstall — " dream- 
 ing Durham," as Knox nicknamed the friend of More 
 and Erasmus — was adverse to the Reformation, The 
 authorities in Newcastle looked with dislike on the 
 new preacher who refused even to conform to the 
 ritual prescribed in the Prayer-Book. 
 
 But the Government, eager to press the Keformation 
 on the reluctant country, needed men like Knox. In 
 December 1551 he was appointed one of King Edward's 
 Chaplains, along with five others all chosen from the 
 more extreme school. In January 1552 the Duke of 
 Somerset died on the scaffold ; but, though Somerset 
 was gone, there was no change in the policy of the 
 Government. Northumberland, the ambitious rival 
 whose malignity had precipitated Somerset's fate, with 
 rapid calculation, determined to throw in his lot with 
 the advanced party among the Reformers, With the 
 simple readiness of dogmatic theologians to believe 
 
IN ENGLAND 17 
 
 nothing but good of those who give adherence to their 
 formulas, many of the extreme Protestants were eager 
 to acknowledge Northumberland as their champion. 
 Even the clear-sighted Hooper wrote of him, " To tell 
 the truth, England cannot do without him. He is a 
 most holy and fearless instrument of the Word of 
 God." No such flattering words fell from the lips or 
 pen of Knox. He openly lamented the death of 
 Somerset, both in Newcastle and in other places, much 
 to the chagrin of the authorities. He was " compelled 
 of conscience" to blame that "ungodly breach of 
 charity " by which Northumberland had procured the 
 death of " his innocent friend." 
 
 In the summer of 1552 Northumberland was at 
 Newcastle as Warden of the North. Knox boasts that 
 he preached before the great man with perfect plain- 
 ness of speech. Whether offended or not, the Duke 
 was astute enough to recognize in the preacher a man 
 whom it was worth while to conciliate, or at least to 
 remove from his own neighbourhood. Knox came to 
 London in his train in October 1552, and was generally 
 spoken of as the " Duke's chaplain," It was, however, 
 as " King's chaplain " that he had been summoned to 
 London to preach in his turn at Court. His first 
 sermon arrested instant attention. Under the date 
 October 12, 1552, a foreign divine in London wrote 
 to Bullinger the Zurich Reformer : " Some disputes 
 have arisen amongst the Bishops, in consequence of 
 a sermon by a pious preacher, chaplain to the Duke of 
 Northumberland, preached before the King and Council, 
 in which he inveighed with great freedom against the 
 kneeling at the Lord's Supper. This good man — a 
 Scotsman by nation — has so wrought upon the minds -^ 
 
18 JOHN KNOX 
 
 of many, that we may hope some good to the Church 
 will at length arise from it." 
 
 It happened to bo the moment when the liturgical 
 forms of the Church of England were under consider- 
 ation. The Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI. was going 
 through the press during October 1552. It contained 
 a rubric enjoining kneeling as the proper attitude for re- 
 ceiving the Sacrament. Those Prayer-Books which were 
 printed in the end of September, had that rubric with- 
 out comment ; those that appeared after October 27th 
 had, inserted in the Communion Office, a note explain- 
 ing that the attitude of kneeling is " well meant for a 
 signification of our humble and grateful acknowledg- 
 V ments of the benefits of Christ therein given . . . but 
 thereby no adoration is intended . . . either unto the 
 Sacramental Bread and Wine ... or unto any Corporal 
 presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood," 
 
 This note is still appended to the Communion Office 
 of the Book of Common Prayer, and is known as the 
 " Black Rubric." That its presence there is partly at 
 least due to Knox's influence is rendered probable by the 
 remark of a Catholic opponent : " A runagate Scot," 
 said Dr. Weston, in dispute with Latimer at Oxford 
 (1554), "did take away the adoration or worshipping 
 of Christ in the Sacrament ; by whose procurement it 
 was put into the last Prayer-Book." Kneeling at the 
 Sacrament was no idle question of ritual; it involved 
 one of the main articles in dispute between the Church 
 of Rome and the Reformed Churches. Knox's chief 
 concern was how this new enactment, even in its 
 modified form, would affect the congregations in 
 Berwick and Newcastle, which he had trained in the 
 austerest simplicity of ritual. If they resisted the new 
 
IN ENGLAND 19 
 
 ordinance, peace would be broken ; if they submitted, 
 believing it to be wrong, they would wound their 
 consciences ; worst of all, if they accepted it willingly, 
 they would fall from the purity of their first belief. 
 For the sake of peace and to avoid all cause of offence, 
 Knox forced himself to counsel submission. He even did 
 such violence to his own instincts as to speak of rites 
 and ceremonies as " things of smaller weight," though 
 he added, with passionate emphasis, "that he Avould 
 gladly die, if thereby he could establish that order 
 ■^ that God's truth hath planted among you." 
 
 This pastoral devotion was but ill deserved by the 
 congregation at Berwick. They appear to have shown 
 a " godly jealousy " over the worldly promotion of their 
 pastor, and Knox, arrogant to his enemies, was at all 
 times painfully sensitive to the opinion of those he 
 considered the "faithful." It is pathetic to hear him 
 plead that they, " whose offence I more fear than my 
 own life," "should not be slandered nor offended, as 
 that some spirit of pride was of late crept into me." 
 He had proved his disinterestedness by refusing one 
 of the highest honours the Church of England had to 
 offer. In the end of October, Northumberland had 
 written to Cecil (already Secretary of State) suggesting 
 that Knox might be made Bishop of Rochester, "an 
 act which would be both for God's service and the 
 King's." He might have added, "and for the con- 
 venience of the Duke of Northumberland." He had 
 in fact a scheme for breaking up the diocese of Durham 
 and appropriating part of the princely estates, and the 
 presence of the clear-sighted, plain-spoken preacher 
 would not further this plan. The vacant see of 
 Rochester would dispose handsomely of Knox; the 
 
20 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Scottish preacher, he added, " would be a whetstone to 
 sharpen the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as a 
 confounder of the Anabaptists." 
 
 To Northumberland's disgust, Knox roundly refused 
 to come into the plan, "I do return him," wrote the 
 Duke, in high dudgeon, after an intervicAV with Knox in 
 November, " because I love not to do with men wdio be 
 neither grateful nor pleasable." 
 
 Ostensibly Knox refused this promotion because he 
 disapproved of many things in the Church of England 
 — the absence of Church Discipline for one thing, the 
 wealth and political influence of the bishops for another. 
 Still, Hooper was as uncompromisingly Puritan as 
 Knox, and Hooper had accepted the see of Gloucester. 
 In reality, Knox's reason for refusing went deeper than 
 any single scruple. He felt profoundly the unreality 
 and insecurity of the Reformation in England. A year 
 later, when the evil times had come and he himself 
 was in exile, he wrote : " What moved me to refuse, and 
 1/ that with displeasure of all men, those high promotions ? 
 Assuredly the foresight of troubles to come. How oft 
 have I said that the time would not be long that 
 England would give me bread ? " 
 
 Even to a less penetrating eye the state of the 
 country was deplorable enough. The majority of the 
 people were divided into those who sullenly held to 
 the old faith and those who rushed headlong into licence 
 and stupid irreverence. The Court was torn with 
 factions ; Edward was failing in health ; Mary, the 
 next heir, was a bigoted Catholic. Her supporters 
 were watching their chance and busily intriguing, 
 while, reckless of justice and the feeling of the country, 
 Northumberland was plotting to keep the power in his 
 
IN ENGLAND 21 
 
 own hand. Even the Reformers could not deceive 
 themselves as to the condition of the country. With 
 an irony that cannot be quite unconscious, one of the 
 foreign divines wrote to Bullinger, " Religion is indeed 
 prospering, but the wickedness of those who profess the 
 Gospel is wonderfully on the increase." 
 
 The only expressions of public opinion came from 
 the pulpit. All through Lent (1553) divines of the 
 more Puritan school preached before the dying boy, 
 exposing the falsehood and greed of his ministers. 
 Their tongues were, in no case, " tempered by holy 
 water of the Court," but perhaps none spake so plainly 
 as Knox. Under the transparent veil of Shebna, 
 Achitophel and Judas, he described the "crafty, covetous, 
 wicked, and ungodly councillors," who were probably 
 all present at the sermon. That there might be no 
 uncertainty as to his meaning, he ended with unfalter- 
 ing emphasis, "I am greatly afraid that Achitophel 
 be Councillor" — and all the Court glanced at North- 
 umberland — " that Judas bear the purse " — this appli- 
 cation was doubtless as clear as the other to his hearers, 
 though it is now uncertain — " and that Shebna be 
 scribe, controller, and treasurer " — and all present 
 recognized Paulet, Marquis of Winchester. This was 
 the last time Knox preached at Court. The King was 
 removed to Greenwich in April, and lay there, slowly 
 dying, for two months, while greed and ambition 
 intrigued to the last round his bed. 
 
 Edward died on July 6, and at once the country 
 was plunged into confusion. The excitement spread 
 to remote villages. Knox was at this time on a 
 missionary tour through Buckinghamshire, and on 
 July 16 he preached in the Parish Church of Amersham ; 
 
22 JOHN KNOX 
 
 and there, before au excited and partly hostile auditory, 
 he took up his lament for England : " Oh, England, 
 thou shalt be plagued and brought to desolation by 
 the means of those whose favour thou seekest, and by 
 whom thou art procured to fall from Christ, and to 
 serve Antichrist." 
 
 Knox was in London when Mary was proclaimed 
 Queen; but the "fires of joy" and ill-timed rejoicing of 
 the deluded people only deepened his foreboding. The 
 immediate effect of the change of government on him per- 
 sonally was to stop his stipend and reduce him to absolute 
 poverty. When he left London, on his way North in 
 December, ten groats comprised his whole fortune, but 
 " that little troubles me " is his characteristic comment. 
 That autumn he found safety in constant travelling and 
 solace in constant preaching. 
 
 The ostensible toleration with which Mary's reign 
 began deceived no one. By the end of October the 
 foreign divines were expelled, and several bishops were 
 in prison. It was an urgent question with all the 
 Protestant preachers whether prudence counselled 
 flight, or duty demanded quiet abiding at their posts. 
 Cranmer had been accounted timid, but he remained at 
 Lambeth; many another humble professor showed the 
 same steadfastness. There had been no sign of falter- 
 ing on Knox's part. Everywhere in those last months 
 he had proclaimed the same message, "The last trumpet 
 is blown, within the realm of England ; let every man 
 prepare himself for the battle." 
 
 The 20th of December was the limit fixed by Mary's 
 Government for toleration of the Reformed services. 
 About that date Knox arrived in Newcastle. He was 
 in the midst of enemies on the alert to injure him ; a 
 
IN ENGLAND 23 
 
 messenger carrying his private letters was stopped and 
 searched; his friends urged him, even with tears, to 
 save himself by flight. He happened to be worn with 
 labour, perplexed and discouraged in his private affairs, 
 tormented Avith his chronic malady. The decision was 
 of necessity hurried and Knox yielded to the entreaties 
 of his friends. He is himself the only authority for his 
 conduct ; it is obvious that he was hardly clear about his 
 own motives. " Some will then ask : ' Why did I fly ? ' 
 Assuredly I cannot tell, but of one thing I am sure, the 
 fear of death was not the chief cause of my flying." 
 
 The letter containing this passage was written at 
 Dieppe, in the first days of solitude and reaction after 
 the excitement of the escape. He was restless for lack 
 of his accustomed preaching ; he was full of regret for 
 friends in England ; above all he had an uneasy sense 
 that his flight might be adversely interpreted. " Albeit," 
 he writes at the end of the same letter, " I have at the 
 beginning of this battle appeared to play the faint- 
 hearted and feeble soldier (the cause I remit to God), 
 yet my prayer is that I may be restored to the battle. 
 . . . For a few sermons by me to be made in England, 
 my heart at this hour would be content to suffer more 
 than nature were able to contain, as by the grace of the 
 most mighty and most merciful God, shall one day be 
 known." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ENGLISH FRIENDS. 
 
 Knox was forty-four when he first arrived in Berwick. 
 Holy orders had cut him off in early life from the 
 nearer domestic ties, and had probably kept him remote 
 from familiar friendships. There are, in his later life, 
 only two slight references to the pupils and friends of 
 East Lothian days. It was in England that he first 
 formed ties of enduring intimacy. Singularly enough, 
 though he never failed to vociferate his belief in the 
 immeasurable superiority, spiritual and intellectual, of 
 man, his warmest and most confidential friendships were 
 with women. Solitary and often ailing, he needed the 
 comfortable kindness of women ; in return he gave 
 unfailing sympathy and counsel in their spiritual life to 
 devout " sisters in Christ," who had hardly had time to 
 unlearn the habit of resorting to a father confessor. 
 
 The conflict between new convictions and old authori- 
 ties, which was disturbing every realm in Europe, must 
 have been painfully re-enacted in many private house- 
 holds. This was the case in the family of Richard 
 Bowes, Governor of the Castle of Norham at the time 
 Knox arrived in Berwick. He himself, it seems, was 
 " unconvinced in religion," but liis wife, Elizabeth Aske, 
 
ENGLISH FRIENDS 25 
 
 had adopted the Reformed religion at a time when it 
 Avas perilous to do so. In spite of the opposition of all 
 her friends, this lady clung to her faith with a persist- 
 ence that is pathetic ; but perplexed by argument and 
 harassed by the constant efforts to realize the spiritual 
 advantages for which she had sacrificed ease and friend- 
 shijD, she fell alternately into nervous self-scrutiny and 
 a state of despairing doubt concerning the truths of 
 religion. 
 
 This spiritual hypochondria, though not peculiar to 
 extreme Protestantism, is apt to be fostered by the 
 stress laid in that form of faith on " inward assurance." 
 The Catholic Church, by enjoining external acts, may 
 stupefy the soul or raise it to exaltation, but at least it 
 lightens the weight of personal responsibility. Modern 
 religion, allying itself with active benevolence, leaves 
 Christians scant leisure for the care of their own souls. 
 Protestantism, placing salvation in an inward appropria- 
 tion of spiritual mysteries, laid a weight on the in- 
 dividual reason and conscience that often proved over- 
 whelming. To understand the reality and pathos of 
 these self-questionings and spiritual terrors, we must go 
 to the pages of the Pilgrim's Progress. No one can 
 dismiss as mere morbidity the sufferings of the tender 
 conscience and valiant spirit of Mr. Fearing. We need 
 the recollection of that beautiful picture to keep us in 
 patience with such a weariful Mrs. Much-Afraid as 
 Elizabeth Bowes. From the first time she heard Knox 
 preach she judged him to be one of the faithful, and 
 soon communication between the two became constant, 
 either by speech or by correspondence. Her letters 
 have, fortunately perhaps, perished. From his answers, 
 it is plain that she was dexterous in wresting texts to 
 
26 JOHN KNOX 
 
 her own tormenting and unwearied in discovering new 
 (and often impossible) temptations. Oddly enough Knox 
 seems never to have lost interest in her monotonous 
 complaints. Only once is there a little gentle impa- 
 tience in his reply to her ; " My daily labours must now 
 increase, and therefore spare me as much as you may. 
 My old malady troubles me sore and nothing is more 
 contrary to my health than writing." Usually how- 
 ever, this singular, religious friendship seems to have 
 been as great a solace to him as it was to her. Espe- 
 cially in the beginning of the correspondence, Knox saw 
 in Mrs. Bowes' experiences " the very mirror and glass " 
 of that inner life which, at this time, he cultivated so 
 sedulously. The friends discussed their temptations 
 with curious particularity. " Call to your mind what I 
 did standing at the cupboard in Alnwick," wrote Knox, 
 in one of his letters. " In very deed I thought that no 
 creature had been tempted as I was." But though 
 " dolour complained to dolour " on terms of apparent 
 equality, Knox at times asserted the superiority of the 
 man and the preacher. " If I," he wrote, " to whom 
 God has given greater gifts am so wrapt into misery . . . 
 if such wretched wickedness remain in God's chief 
 ministers, what wonder albeit the same remain in 
 you ? " 
 
 Considering the ample leisure Mrs. Bowes spent on 
 her correspondence it is surprising to learn that she was 
 the mother of twelve children. The fifth of these was 
 a daughter not yet out of her teens. This shadowy 
 Marjorie, of whom we catch but faint, pathetic glimpses, 
 became the affianced wife of Knox before he left 
 Berwick for Newcastle early in (1551). It may have 
 been by her own desire. The romance of self-devotion 
 
ENGLISH FRIENDS 27 
 
 has for some young girls a stronger attraction than the 
 less illusory romance of love. Her relations however 
 hotly accused Mrs. Bowes of having made up the matter 
 with Knox. Not unreasonably, Richard Bowes' fatherly 
 kindness objected to an elderly suitor of uncertain pros- 
 pects. Besides, there remained in the mind of the 
 ordinary Englishman of that time a marked distaste for 
 married clergymen. The prejudice was shared by many 
 of Knox's Berwick friends, and the preacher, who loved 
 to plead the Divine sanction for all his acts, was irritated 
 by it into protest. " I do purpose and intend," he wrote 
 to them, " to obey God, embracing such as He has offered 
 unto me (rather) than to please and flatter man that 
 unjustly holdeth the same from me." 
 
 Among the numerous letters to Mrs. Bowes, there is 
 a solitary one to Marjorie. It begins, " Dearly beloved 
 sister in the common faith of Jesus our Saviour ; " and 
 ends enigmatically, " I think this be the first time I ever 
 wrote to you." Does the " I think " chronicle prosaic 
 doubt or endearing emphasis ? 
 
 When the evil days came under Mary, and Knox was 
 a fugitive, mother and daughter held true to him with 
 heroic persistence, and faced much painful opposition 
 from their relatives on his behalf. " I was assured of 
 your trouble," wrote Knox in September 1553, "and of 
 the battle of my own flesh " — by this ungraceful image 
 he always alludes to his bride — " before God, and I 
 suspect a greater to lie upon you both than that your 
 letters declare unto me." The thought of these lonely 
 women fighting his battle stirred a chivalrous chord in 
 this rather tardy lover. " It becomes me noAv to jeopard 
 my life for the comfort and deliverance of my own flesh ; 
 both fear and friendship of all earthly creature laid 
 
28 JOHN KNOX 
 
 aside." In pursuance of this resolve, Knox went ou 
 November 6 to see the head of the house, Sir Robert 
 Bowes, Marjorie's uncle, in London. He found the 
 choleric old knight "not only a despiscr, but also a 
 taunter of God's messengers (God be merciful unto 
 him)." The preacher braved out the interview with a 
 " good countenance," but the " despiteful words had so 
 pierced his heart that his life was bitter unto him." 
 Though he was even inclined to acquiesce rather 
 tamely in the decision " that such things as I have 
 desired, and ye and others have long desired, are never 
 like to come to pass," yet he undertook the perilous 
 journey to Newcastle in December, chiefly in the hope 
 of seeing Mrs. Bowes and Marjorie. His coming had 
 been carefully concealed from mother and daughter by 
 their relatives, and, as danger closed round him, Knox 
 recognized the impossibility of seeing either of them 
 " till God offer some better occasion." 
 ' This friendship with Mrs. Bowes was not the only 
 intimacy Knox formed in England. In a letter written 
 to her from London in the winter of 1552-53, he 
 described himself at the time her letter reached him, 
 as sitting with "three poor honest women" Aveej)ing 
 together "over the assaults of the enemy." Mrs. Bowes' 
 letter, being of course germane to the matter, was read 
 aloud. "Oh, would to God I might speak Avith that 
 person," cried one of the matrons present, " for I perceive 
 there are more tempted than I." 
 
 This scene may have taken place in the house either 
 of Mrs. Locke or Mrs. Hickman, two merchants' wives 
 in London, They seem to liave been rich, and, after 
 the manner of devout women in all ages, they showed 
 a " special care " for the comfort of their spiritual guide. 
 
ENGLISH FRIENDS 29 
 
 For the ten folloAving years Mrs. Anna Locke was 
 Knox's most valued and confidential friend. He writes 
 to her of the progress of the Reformation in Scotland, 
 commissions her to get him books, consults her as to 
 the possibility of raising funds among the faithful. He 
 resolves her doubts, but they are reasonable doubts 
 concerning the duty of attending the imperfect services 
 of the Church of England, very different from the in- 
 firmities of poor Mrs. Bowes. To Mrs. Locke is addressed 
 that golden sentence in one of Knox's letters which 
 touches us by its human humility infinitely more than 
 the " sobs " and " dolours " of his self-abasement before 
 God. "Of nature, I am churlish, and in conditions 
 different from many; yet one thing I ashame not to 
 affirm, that familiarity once thoroughly contracted was 
 never yet broken on my default. The cause may be 
 that I have rather need of all than that any have need 
 of me." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ox THE CONTINENT (1554 — 1555). 
 
 The desire to be Avithin reach of news from England 
 kept Knox at Dieppe till the end of February. He was 
 full of passionate solicitude for the congregations he 
 had left in London, Berwick, and Newcastle. Cut off 
 from the spoken word of exhortation, he addressed a 
 letter to the " faithful " in these places, wishing them 
 "continuance in godliness to the end." He reminded 
 them, how constantly, in the days of seeming prosperity, 
 he had sounded in their ears the judgment that must 
 fall on the country for its neglect and contempt of God's 
 Word. His authority for that prophecy had not been 
 the " marvels of Merlin," but the plain truth of God's 
 Word, His invincible justice. His dealings with His 
 people Israel as revealed to the prophets. On the same 
 infallible authorities Knox now proclaimed that the 
 punishment begun at the household of faith must 
 shortly fall, with ten-fold weight, on the idolatrous 
 children of disobedience. " Dear brethren," he writes, 
 "if idolatry continue as it has begun, no more may 
 England escape God's vengeance than God Himself may 
 lose His justice." The first motive he urges for the 
 avoidance of idolatry, is that they who share in the sin 
 
ON THE CONTINENT 31 
 
 will certainly be included in the vengeance which must 
 shortly follow. Far more emphasis is laid on this old 
 message of the prophets, the terrible judgments of God 
 on unrighteous nations, than on the rewards and punish- 
 ment of a future life. These indeed are neither for- 
 gotten nor softened. " For avoiding idolatry ye may, 
 perchance, be compelled to leave your native land ; but 
 obeyers of idolatry . . . shall be compelled, body and 
 soul, to burn in Hell. For avoiding idolatry your sub- 
 stance shall be spoilt ; for obeying idolatry Heavenly 
 riches shall be lost." But it is characteristic of Knox 
 that the strongest incentive he can urge for avoiding 
 " fellowship with the filthy abomination/' is the natural 
 love and care of a man for his children. " The only 
 way to leave our children blessed and happy is to leave 
 them rightly instructed in God's true religion." " Your 
 patience and constancy," he declares, " shall be a louder 
 trumpet to your posterity, than were all the voices of 
 the prophets that instructed you : and so is not the 
 trumpet ceased so long as any boldly resisteth idolatry." 
 This letter to his old congregations was written at 
 the end of February, " from a sore-troubled heart, upon 
 my departure from Dieppe, Avhither God knoweth." 
 Switzerland, that hospitable stronghold of the Reforma- 
 tion, was the only place whither a fugitive Protestant 
 could turn. For two months Knox went from one 
 religious centre to another, conversing with eminent 
 divines, everywhere received as a guest and brother. 
 But his heart could find no rest out of hearing of his 
 friends. By May he was back at Dieppe eagerly look- 
 ing for news from England. When he wrote his first 
 letter he had believed that the " battle would be short." 
 The worst trial he contemplated for the faithful was 
 
32 JOHN KNOX 
 
 exile or the loss of worldly substance. But the fugitives 
 who daily arrived at Dieppe from England in the 
 months of May and June brought news of relentless 
 persecution and of a political alliance subversive of the 
 Reformation. In April Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer 
 had been condemned (though they did not suffer till a 
 year later) and a marriage with Philip of Spain, detested 
 by Catholic and Protestant Englishmen alike, was 
 imminent. For a moment Knox thought of returning 
 to England ; if he were assured of the support of his 
 friends he would put his own life in jeopardy " to let men 
 see what may be done with a safe conscience in these 
 dolorous and dangerous days," but the fear of involving 
 others as well as himself in danger withheld him. 
 Stirred to the depths by the news he heard daily, he 
 wrote in July his famous Admonition to the Professors 
 of God's Truth in England. It is more urgent and 
 passionate than the former letter. In the face of the 
 fires at Smithfield, of prisons packed with notable 
 preachers, and of the " most Catholic King " already 
 on his way to share the imperial crown of England, 
 Knox could no longer declare that the judgments of 
 God are to fall swiftly on the wicked. Rather are these 
 to be suffered to till up the " cup of their abominations 
 to the brim." Only when they have endured to the 
 uttermost are the faithful to look for deliverance. 
 Though God shall save *' from the very throat and 
 bottom of Hell," it will not be in a way easy or pleasing 
 to the flesh. " Of some God will so touch the heart 
 that they will rather ... go as pilgrims . . . suffering 
 hunger, cold, heat, thirst, weariness, and poverty, than 
 that they will abide ... in subjection to idolatry." 
 There is another deliverance more swift and certain. 
 
ON THE CONTINENT 33 
 
 " It may be that God will so strengthen the hearts of 
 some of those that have fainted before, that they will 
 resist idolatry to the death ; and that were a glorious 
 and triumphant deliverance." It is the strength of the 
 doctrine preached by Knox that men should believe 
 themselves to be " elected " ; elected not to ease nor 
 prosperity, nor speedy deliverance, but to the fiercest 
 trials of flesh and spirit, certain only of this, that God 
 will not suffer His chosen to fail Him in " His battle.' 
 It is a faith for heroes ; but it has its dark shadow. It 
 teaches that the wicked are also " elected." " There is 
 no hope for their amendment," says Knox ; and, in the 
 spirit of the most bloodthirsty of the Psalms, he adds, 
 " Let death devour them in haste ; let the earth swallow 
 them up." It would have been prudent if he had kept 
 to general denunciations, but that was not his manner 
 of fighting. Not sin in the abstract but wicked men 
 in high places were his opponents. The " Devil's 
 Gardener," " Bloody Bonner," " blind buzzards," " blood- 
 thirsty wolves," are the missiles he hurls recklessly at 
 the Bishops of Winchester and London, and their 
 brethren. Mary is worse than " Athaliah " and " Hero- 
 dias' daughter," and is denounced as " false, dissembling, 
 inconstant, proud, and a breaker of promises," the 
 " utter mischief of England." His hot accusation that 
 " under an English name she beareth a Spanish heart," 
 shows how completely Knox shared the English feeling 
 on the subject of her marriage. Heedless of the 
 perilous position of the Protestants in the Emperor's 
 dominions and the destruction that might fall on them, 
 he refers to Charles V as " no less enemy to Christ than 
 ever was Nero" — words that were destined to ring in 
 his ears before many months were past. 
 
34 JOHN KNOX 
 
 It was probably in July that Knox finally quitted 
 Dieppe for Geneva, that spiritual Republic where every 
 member of the Reformed Church had a natural right of 
 citizenship. He was drawn thither, rather than to the 
 more liberal and genial society of Zurich, by the great 
 name of Calvin. Knox had bitterly denounced the 
 absence of all discipline in the English Church ; he was 
 eager to see at Geneva "the most perfect school of 
 Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the 
 Apostles," That this "perfect school" excited angry 
 opposition in a portion of the citizens, that reaction 
 from its strictness sometimes resulted in secret licen- 
 tiousness, brought no misgivings to him any more 
 than to Calvin himself. Both believed that it was 
 as much the Divine mission of God's Word to harden 
 the reprobate in sin as to increase the godly in 
 righteousness. 
 
 Few men have ever to the same degree as Calvin 
 combined practical and speculative genius. In his own 
 day he was referred to by all Protestant communions as 
 an infallible authority in details of Church Government, 
 as well as on the profoundest theological questions. 
 The very men who dogmatized the right of private 
 judgment into a fundamental article of belief knew 
 no higher exercise for that right than to absorb the 
 dogmas of Calvin. Nor was this ascendancy confined 
 to his own day. For three centuries Reformed Churches, 
 with the exception of the Anglican and Lutheran, have 
 been content to let Calvin do their thinking for them. 
 Knox was not a man of original speculative power, and 
 he found in Calvin's theology a sweep of intellect that 
 brought all things in Heaven and Earth into a self- 
 consistent system, and a practical logic that turned 
 
ON THE CONTINENT 35 
 
 abstract metaphysics into serviceable dogmas. He was 
 conscious of his own lack of learning, and especially 
 lamented his ignorance of Hebrew. He found ripe 
 knowledge of the Scriptures, of the Fathers, even of 
 Antiquity engrained in the very texture of Calvin's 
 thoughts and dedicated to the sole service of Theology. 
 In this model city, and in converse with this master- 
 mind, Knox hoped to find that leisure for study that 
 he so ardently desired. But he was not suffered to 
 carry out his intention. In October came a call from 
 the English Church at Frankfort. The little company 
 of English fugitives who had settled in that city were 
 associated with a French congregation, and the Senate 
 had generously granted them a church on the condition 
 that neither congregation should introduce into their 
 services anything unpleasing to the other. Of the 
 English society the greater part belonged to the ex- 
 treme or Puritanic party. To these the opportunity 
 was welcome for discarding many forms enjoined by 
 the Prayer-Book, and for conforming more closely to 
 the foreign Churches. There was a distinct logic in 
 the position of this extreme school. The Protestant 
 Churches, when casting off the yoke of Rome, took up 
 firm ground on the absolute authority of Scripture. It 
 was incumbent on them therefore to justify every 
 change they made in rites or doctrines by the same 
 infallible sanction. Hence Knox's extraordinary pro- 
 position that every' form of worshipping God not en- 
 joined in the Scriptures is idolatry. With less of logic, 
 but with a finer and more humane common-sense, the 
 framers of the English Prayer-Book had decided to 
 retain as much of the old form of w^orship as was good 
 and pious in itself, and in no wise opposed to the 
 
36 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Scrijotures, These authors of the Prayer-Book were 
 now in prison and about to testify by their death to 
 the sincerity of their work. It was no wonder, there- 
 fore, that many of the exiled English Protestants feared 
 " lest, by much altering of the same, they should seem 
 to condemn the chief authorities thereof." Knox had 
 no such scruples. Even in England, when he was one 
 of the King's chaplains, he had never been bound by 
 the prescribed forms. Under his guidance and that of 
 his colleague Whittingham, the services at Frankfort 
 approached more and more to the simplicity of the 
 Genevan worship. Not however without protest from 
 the minority. They had given up the Litany, the 
 surplice, the attitude of kneeling at Communion ; they 
 clung to the rest of the ritual. It was resolved that 
 the Prayer-Book should be submitted to the infallible 
 arbiter at Geneva. The account of the various rites and 
 services drawn up by Knox and Whittingham is on 
 the whole fair enough, though contempt is dexterously 
 conveyed by occasional "forsooths," or by such paren- 
 theses as " Then he goeth to the sermon (if there be 
 any)." As might have been expected, Calvin pro- 
 nounced against such Popish dregs as he found in the 
 English Prayer-Book. A compromise was arrived at in 
 the Church at Frankfort, and seems to have worked 
 happily enough till March, when a fresh company of 
 English exiles arrived. Many of these were men of 
 eminence in the Church, and chief amongst them was 
 Dr. Cox, tutor and almoner to the late King. On the 
 very first Sunday of their attendance at the service, 
 they insisted on responding loudly, and when ad- 
 monished, replied roundly that " they would do as they 
 had done in England, and their Church should have an 
 
ON THE CONTINENT 37 
 
 English face." Taking this up as a challenge, Knox on 
 the same afternoon preached a sermon denouncing the 
 Aveak places of the Church of England, Confident in 
 the strength of his position, he himself urged that the 
 new-comers should be admitted to a voice in the con- 
 gregation, when others would have excluded them on 
 a point of order. There was no possibility of any real 
 conciliation. Knox's habitual contempt for the com- 
 promising Anglican spirit was increased by his know- 
 ledge that one at least of his opponents had in a 
 moment of danger abjured the faith ; on the other 
 hand his passionate dogmatism and impatience of all 
 merely human distinctions exasperated men, some of 
 whom were Court bred and accustomed to meet with 
 deference, not to pay it. They had besides brought 
 from England a bitter sense of wrong against Knox. 
 They averred, and only too truly, that " that outrageous 
 pamphlet " of his, the Admonition to the Frofcssm^s 
 of God's Truth, " had added much oil to the flame of 
 persecution in England." 
 
 The controversy was at its height when one of Cox's 
 party came secretly to Knox threatening that if he did 
 not withdraw his opposition something would follow. 
 Knox treated the warning with contempt. Thereupon 
 his adversaries suddenly produced the weapon they 
 held in reserve and formally accused him to the Frank- 
 fort Senate of " nine articles of high treason against 
 the Emperor, his son Philip, and the Queen of 
 England." The Senate, having reason to think well 
 of the preacher, Avere at first reluctant to do more than 
 forbid his preaching. But the passages in the Admoni- 
 tion relating to Philip and the Emperor were laid 
 before them in Latin, and they were reminded that the 
 
^ 
 
 38 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Emperor was at that time at Augsburg, where rumours 
 of Knox and his pamphlet might reach his ears. To 
 avoid all danger and difficulty, they required Knox to 
 leave the city. The night before his departure he 
 preached in his lodgings to a few faithful friends. Next 
 day these accompanied him several miles on his way, 
 and " with great heaviness of heart and plenty of tears 
 committed him to the Lord." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SCOTLAND (1555 — 1556). 
 
 During the years of Knox's absence from Scotland, 
 the Reformed doctrines had steadily been making way 
 amongst the people. Political conditions had, on the 
 whole, been favourable. The wars with England (1547 — 
 1550) had distracted men's minds from their religious 
 differences. In 1554 came a change of government. 
 The Earl of Arran was induced to resign the regency 
 in favour of the ambitious and capable Queen Dowager, 
 Mary of Guise. Always facile and indolent, it cost 
 him little to exchange the thankless cares of government 
 for an estate in France and the sounding title of Duke 
 of Chatelherault. But his politic, masterful brother, 
 Archbishop of St. Andrews, remained a watchful 
 opponent of Mary's government. It became therefore 
 a distinct part of her policy to conciliate the Protestants, 
 as a counter-weight to the Churchmen who might be 
 expected to act under the influence of the Primate. 
 From these causes persecution had practically ceased. 
 From 1550 till 1558 no one suffered in Scotland for 
 religion. The persecution in England, under Mary 
 Tudor, sent many Protestant preachers across the 
 Border. These, earnest and unlettered men for the 
 
40 JOHN KNOX 
 
 most part, seem to have been suffered to preach in 
 different parts of the country, secretly indeed, but 
 unmolested. The Church, in truth, was during these 
 years ineffectually busy in trying to reform abuses in 
 her own bounds, and to create zeal for learning in her 
 members. But she had not life enough to cast out the 
 old evils and to receive the new impulse ; she could 
 
 \ not, with all her efforts, regain the confidence of the 
 N people. In lieu of the sermon, which not one priest 
 in fifty was capable of preaching, a course of instruction 
 in the truths and duties of religion had been drawn up 
 and ordered to be read on Sundays in the parish 
 y^ churches. This admirable compendium of religious 
 teaching, known as ATclibislioi) Hamilton's Catechism, 
 failed entirely of its purpose ; it was little read and 
 less heeded. The old formulas, the old sanctions, had 
 small interest for people who refused to be satisfied 
 with anything short of a new statement of the relation 
 of man to God, founded on the authority of the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 It is a fact curiously significant in the light of later 
 history, that the Reformed doctrines seem to have been 
 accepted first amongst the humbler classes. As early 
 as 1551 a foreign divine, John ab Ulmis, visiting the 
 Scottish Border in the train of the Earl of Dorset, had 
 been struck by this. "There appears to be great 
 firmness and no little religion among the people of 
 Scotland, but . . . the chiefs of that nation resist and 
 
 ^ oppose the truth in every possible way." But if the 
 bulk of the Nobility were slow to receive the new 
 religious teaching, there was another aspect of the 
 Reformation of which they were eagerly receptive. 
 Eight years earlier in 1543, Arran had complained to 
 
SCOTLAND 41 
 
 Sadler that the nobles were such firm Papists that they 
 would not admit the Reformation, " unless the sin of 
 covetousness bring them into it." The " sin of covet- 
 ousness " was destined to play a large part in the 
 history of the Scottish Reformation. Closer diplomatic 
 relations with the wealthy nobility of England and the 
 magnificent Court of France, had made the Scottish 
 nobles of the sixteenth century bitterly conscious of 
 their poverty. On the question of " teinds " and the 
 scandalous wealth of the Churchmen, they were prepared 
 to receive the new teaching with open minds. 
 
 While this is true of the majority, it is fair to say 
 that there was a minority whose acceptance of the 
 Reformed teaching was the result of sincere conviction. 
 In 1543, that shrewd observer, Sir Ralph Sadler, had 
 noted that the younger men were favourable to " Christ's 
 cause," though they had then too little influence or 
 experience to act with effect. The young men of 1543 
 were the middle-aged, influential men of 1555. Sadler 
 had singled out the young Lord Kilmaurs for his wit 
 and learning, as well as for his favourable disposition 
 toward the Reformation, In his youth as Lord 
 Kilmaurs he had satirized the religious orders with his 
 pen ; now (1555) as Lord Glencairn he was ready to 
 serve the Reformation with counsel and with sword. 
 Ayrshire — where his territorial influence was great — 
 had always been a home of heresies; Ayrshire lairds, 
 Lord Ochiltree, Campbell of Kinyeancleuch, and others, 
 were amongst the earliest and firmest Protestants, On 
 tlie other side of the country the lairds of Fife and Angus 
 were equally enlightened. Amongst these the name of 
 Erskine of Dun was honourably known for his services 
 to liberal education and his devotion to the new 
 
42 JOHN KNOX 
 
 doctrines. A more recent convert was the Earl of 
 Argyle who had received the new teaching in his old 
 age, and at his death solemnly charged his sou to 
 suppress superstition and set forward the Evangel of 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 The most remarkable, however, of those who favoured 
 the Reformation were two young men, William Mait- 
 land of Lethington, Secretary to the Queen Regent, and 
 Lord James Stuart, an illegitimate son of James V. 
 The former was once described by Queen Elizabeth as 
 the " finest wit of any in Scotland." In knowledge of 
 the world, in keen and polished intelligence, in personal 
 fascination he was the equal of any at the English 
 Court. To the blunt, headlong judgments of his 
 countrymen he was a constant puzzle. The nickname 
 of " Mitchell Wylie " (a corruption of Machiavelli) 
 indicates the mistrust with which he was regarded by 
 the vulgar. Even his equals failed to see, in the 
 subtleties and changes of his political course, his 
 adherence to one great practical ideal, the prosperity 
 of Scotland through alliance with England. He recog- 
 nized that this ideal was incompatible with devotion to 
 Rome and adherence to the French alliance. If never 
 profoundly influenced by religion, he saw clearly, and 
 at an early stage, the necessity of moderate reform. 
 
 If Maitland was a puzzle to his contemporaries, 
 Lord James from first to last was approved as an 
 honest, blameless and religious man. But for the 
 historical student, the obviously virtuous patriot offers 
 a more baffling problem than the obviously subtle 
 diplomatist. Both were zealous for the prosperity of 
 Scotland, and sought to secure it through alliance with 
 England; both favoured the Reformation, but Lord 
 
SCOTLAND 43 
 
 James placed the religious question before the political, 
 while to Lethiugton the religious question was only 
 important in so far as it furthered the political. Lord 
 James was sincerely convinced in the matter of religion ; 
 Lethington had the same ready acquaintance with 
 current divinity as a cultivated politician of our day 
 might have with the theory of evolution. Cecil said 
 once of Lord James that he was not unlike "neither 
 in person nor qualities to be a king's son." Perhaps 
 the fact that he was a king's son is the key to his 
 character. He was greedy for power with the not 
 ignoble greed of one who has all the hereditary 
 capacities and instincts of a great ruler. His false 
 position, the nearest possible to the throne, yet divided 
 from it by an impassable gulf, made him politic, re- 
 served and subtle. In 1555 he was three-and-twenty 
 years old, and had been destined for the Church — indeed, 
 he already bore the title of Prior of St. Andrews, and 
 enjoyed the revenues of that benefice — but had de- 
 termined against taking orders. He had made Knox's 
 acquaintance in the end of the year 1552, when he passed 
 through London on his way from France. 
 
 It was possibly by his suggestion that Knox was, in 
 the summer of 1555, invited to return to his own country. 
 Knox had been nine years absent from Scotland, and 
 had apparently kept up little correspondence with any 
 friends there. So completely had he identified his 
 interest and sentiment with England that he could 
 write with perfect sincerity, " Sometimes I have thought 
 that impossible it had been so to have removed my 
 affections from the realm of Scotland, that any realm 
 could have been equally dear unto me . . . but God 
 I take to witness . . . that the troubles present in the 
 
44 JOHN KNOX 
 
 realm of England are double more dolorous to my 
 heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland." 
 
 The quiet life of study at Geneva had been grateful 
 to his soul after the contentions of Frankfort, and the 
 invitation from Scotland found him loth to leave " the 
 den of his own ease." By his own confession, his chief 
 motive in undertaking the journey was to see Marjorie 
 Bowes and her mother. " You alone," he writes to the 
 latter, " did draw me from the rest of quiet study." He 
 spent some time in Berwick, and it was probably on this 
 visit that he was married. There is no allusion how- 
 ever to that event in his letter, only a fervent thanks- 
 giving that they two were among the faithful daughters 
 " whom God had still left in Sodom." " In the end of 
 the harvest " he passed into Scotland. He was startled 
 by the welcome he received in Edinburgh among 
 brethren, who with " fervent thirst were night and day 
 groaning and sobbing for the Bread of Life." " Oh, 
 sweet were the death that should follow such forty days 
 in Edinburgh, as here I have had three," he wrote to 
 Mrs. Bowes ; and again, " If I had not seen it with my 
 eyes in my own country, I would not have believed it." 
 He was indeed in " his own country," among a people 
 as fervid and self-willed as himself; a people of strong 
 logical brains and tenacious of convictions, and yet 
 easily moved by eloquence to tears, tumult, or fierce, 
 derisive laughter. " The trumpet blew the old sound, 
 three days together, till private houses of indifferent 
 largeness could not contain the voice of it." It is 
 always a war-note that Knox sounds through that 
 mighty trumpet of his; "Let men prepare for the 
 battle." After all it is the only possible message for 
 men who, on the morrow, may have to give an account 
 
SCOTLAND 45 
 
 of their faith before the world's tribunals, and, the day 
 after, bear witness to it at the stake. To Knox, as to 
 Bunyan, this world was but the battle-field where God 
 and the Devil waged perpetual and, to the discerning 
 eye, visible warfare. In his sermons he makes Christ 
 address Satan as the hero of some primitive epic might 
 defy his antagonist. "Do what thou canst, I shall not 
 flee the place of battle. If thou become victor, thou 
 mayst still continue in possession of thy kingdom. If 
 thou canst not prevail against Me, then must thy prey 
 be taken from thee." It was part of the power of 
 Knox's preaching that he mingled with these concrete 
 images strains of mysticism, as when he assures the 
 faithful that their victory is certain, " for in the cross 
 of Christ, always, is included a secret and hid victory, 
 never well known till the sufferer appears altogether 
 exterminate." It was with such lofty consolations that 
 Knox, in those November days, ministered to the 
 troubled soul of a dying woman in Edinburgh. " And 
 she, shortly thereafter, slept in the Lord Jesus to the 
 no small comfort of those who saw her blessed depart- 
 ing." This scene in the house of James Baron, burgess 
 of Edinburgh, has a place in Knox's History as im- 
 portant as the deaths of kings or the fate of empires. 
 
 At all hours of day and night crowds resorted secretly 
 to hear him preach in some quiet corner of the great, 
 tall houses which lay back from the High Street in a 
 labyrinth of wynds and courts; but in public many 
 still resorted to Mass for the avoidance of scandal. 
 This matter was earnestly discussed one evening, in the 
 lodgings of Erskine of Dun, between Knox and young 
 Maitland of Lethington. Lethington, who, for dialec- 
 tical purposes, knew his Bible as well as Knox himself, 
 
46 JOHN KNOX 
 
 defended this practice by the example of St. Paul 
 paying his vows in the Temple. " I greatly doubt," 
 replied Knox, with a disregard for Scriptural authority 
 he was never known to permit to any one but himself, 
 "I greatly doubt whether James's commandment or 
 Paul's obedience were of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Knox was in Scotland all that winter ; as the guest 
 of Erskine of Dun, of Lord Glencairn and others, he 
 travelled through Ayrshire, Angus, Fife, and even into 
 Argyleshire, preaching and celebrating the Communion 
 in the Reformed manner. For some time the authori- 
 ties were, or feigned to be, ignorant of his movements. 
 One day it was asked at Court Avho the preacher might 
 be who drew such crowds to hear him at Ayr. Some 
 suggested that it was another English refugee. " Nay, no 
 Englishman, but Knox, that knave ! " cried the Bishop 
 of Glasgow testily. For her own credit the Church 
 could not afford to go on ignoring the " runagate priest," 
 who was the friend and guest of some of the most 
 important men in the country. Knox was accordingly 
 summoned to appear at the Blackfriars on May 15, 
 1556; but his appearance in Edinburgh with a train of 
 friends sobered the zeal of the Churchmen. Without 
 reason given they let the summons drop, and Knox 
 thereafter preached to larger audiences than before. 
 One evening Lord Glencairn brought the Earl of 
 Marischall to hear him. It occurred to both these 
 noblemen that much might be gained if Knox were to 
 address a plea for toleration and reform to the Queen 
 Dowager, whom they believed to be both candid and 
 moderate in her opinions. The result was that Letter 
 to the Begent, which is one of the least impressive 
 of Knox's writings. He never wielded a courtly pen. 
 
SCOTLAND 47 
 
 His first aim in addressing princes was always to prove 
 himself one " of the rare number that boldly and plainly 
 speak the native verity in presence of their Princes." V; 
 So concerned is he with the " plainness " and " bold- 
 ness," that he almost neglects to expound the " native 
 verity." The letter itself was full of emphasis and 
 menace ; it was not convincing nor persuasive. It fell 
 moreover on the barrenest of soils. Mary of Guise, 
 with frivolous blindness, merely turned the letter into 
 ridicule. "Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquill," 
 she said, handing the letter to one of the bishops. It 
 was a foolish mockery, but is hardly worth the bitter 
 indignation with which Knox records it. 
 
 Knox's stay in Scotland had been one prolonged 
 triumph, but the time was not yet ripe for revolution. 
 He himself seems hardly to have contemplated the 
 possibility of carrying reform by violence. Early in 
 the summer of 1556, a call came from the remnant of 
 his Frankfort congregation, now collected at Geneva. 
 This he accepted without hesitation. But before he 
 left he was careful to draw up instructions how the 
 faithful, in the absence of ministers, might edify and 
 confirm one another in the faith. In their own house- 
 holds men are " bishops and kings," " their wives, 
 children, servants and family, are their bishopric and 
 charge." For fear of the old sophistry that as long as 
 men worshipped God in private they may bow to idols 
 in public, Knox is careful to add, " Neither yet may ye 
 do this so quietly that ye will admit no witness." He 
 had misgivings that this incitement to a fearless con- 
 fession before men came with little weight from one 
 who had suddenly left the country for fear of perse- 
 cution. He wrote from Geneva to certain "godly 
 
48 JOHN KNOX 
 
 sisters" in Edinburgh, "If any object that I follow not 
 the counsel which I give to others, for my fleeing the 
 country declareth my fear ; I answer, I bind no man to 
 my example," 
 
 He left Scotland in July 1556. His wife and her 
 mother had preceded him to Dieppe. It was probably 
 for the sake of the spiritual ministrations of her son-in- 
 law that Mrs. Bowes had taken the extraordinary step 
 of leaving her husband and remaining children. Per- 
 haps domestic life at Norham was simplified by her 
 absence. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 KNOX'S POLITICAL WRITINGS. 
 
 Implicit in tlie teaching of the Reformation, were 
 principles that later centuries were to apply to political 
 and social conditions with revolutionary effect. Liberty 
 of conscience, which was the result of the Reformation 
 though not the aim of the Reformers, was sure in 
 time to bring liberty of speech and of action in its 
 train. Men who believed themselves to be predestined 
 to fulfil the will of God could no longer be bound in 
 all things by the will of the temporal ruler; on the 
 contrary, they found themselves often constrained to 
 oppose it. The teaching which laid an equal weight of 
 responsibility on each individual soul, allowing not even 
 the ignorant nor weak to confide their salvation to an 
 ecclesiastical system, was bound sooner or later to demand 
 a more equal share of opportunity for all men. But it 
 was to take several generations before these principles 
 passed into the conscience and reason of men and were 
 freely applied to politics. The immediate practical 
 effect of the Reformation was greatly to strengthen the 
 hands of the temporal ruler. To break the power of 
 the Pope effectually, the wide organization of the 
 Church had to be brought into obedience to the civil 
 
 E 
 
50 JOHN KNOX 
 
 authority. This was done most simply by trausferriug 
 the spiritual power undiminished from the Pope to the 
 secular ruler. The English Reformers were not merely 
 servile, they were practical when they recognized the 
 Prince as supreme head of the Church. In Germany 
 also the Reformers looked to enlightened Princes to 
 forward and establish their work. Their Catholic 
 opponents industriously accused the Reformers of 
 desiring " to subvert order and government ... to 
 abolish all laws, destroy the distinctions of rank and 
 property, and, in short, turn all things upside-down." 
 It Avas their anxiety to disarm these accusers that lay 
 at the root of the harshness with which the Reformers 
 denounced the sedition of the Anabaptist movement 
 and the Peasants' Rising. Even Luther denied the 
 peasant blood that was in him and urged on the nobles 
 to vengeance. It is as surprising to find Calvin 
 cautiously and almost abjectly conservative, as to find 
 Luther harsh and narrow ; but it is not the less true, 
 that the man who formulated the religious creed of 
 Cromwell and Milton, preached, in matters political, 
 nothing more heroic than passive obedience. " If we 
 keep before our minds," he writes, " the fact that even 
 the most iniquitous kings are appointed by the same 
 decree which establishes all regal authority, we will never 
 entertain the seditious thought, that a king is to be 
 treated according to his deserts, and that we are not 
 bound to act the part of good subjects to him who 
 does not in his turn act the part of a king to us." 
 In his theology Knox was content to be a mouth- 
 piece of the ideas of Calvin ; in his political convic- 
 tions he repudiated the cautious counsels of his 
 master. He came of a race where personal independ- 
 
KNOX'S POLITICAL WKITINGS 51 
 
 ence was a passion with the lowest as with the highest. 
 As a student in Major's class-room in Glasgow, there 
 had rung in his ears sentences like these, "That 
 which is generally called nobility is a windy thing of 
 human devising. There is absolutely no true nobility, 
 but virtue and the evidence of virtue." Even in 
 England under Edward VI, where the power of the 
 Crown was used to forward the cause he loved, Knox 
 had grown restive under its authority. ** For, what 
 then was heard," he cries impatiently, " but * the 
 King's proceedings, the King's proceedings must be 
 obeyed. It is enacted in Parliament, therefore it must 
 be obeyed.' " At Mary's accession he had seen Eng- 
 land " set forth for a prey to foreign nations, the blood 
 of the members of Jesus Christ most cruelly to be shed, 
 and the monstrous empire of a cruel Avoman to be the 
 only occasion of all these miseries." Indignation set 
 his mind to work fiercely on the wdiole questiun of 
 submission to the temporal ruler. Himself unlearned 
 and comparatively obscure, he turned for guidance to 
 the men of weight and wisdom. He addressed to 
 Bullinger questions on the limits of obedience to the 
 ruler in things spiritual, and on the lawfulness of femi- 
 nine rule. The answers of BulHnger were extremely 
 prudent ; men must be^vare of acting with precipitancy, 
 lest they occasion mischance to many worthy persons. 
 On the whole he seems to be of the opinion, " that it is 
 a hazardous thing for godly persons to set themselves 
 in opposition to political regulations." When Knox 
 was in Scotland in 1555-56, he persuaded himself 
 that the whole community was eager to receive the 
 new teaching and that the main obstruction lay in the 
 obstinacy and frivolity of the ruler, and that ruler a 
 
52 JOHN KNOX 
 
 woman ! He returned to Geneva with mucli food for 
 thought. ' 
 
 In May 1557 two of Knox's Edinburgh friends 
 arrived in Geneva bearing a letter signed by Glencairn, 
 Lome, Lord James Stewart, and Erskine of Dun.^ It 
 urged him to return to Scotland, and in October he 
 left his household and church at Geneva. In the in- 
 terval his friends in Scotland had seen reasons to with- 
 draw from the bold policy they had adopted. On his 
 arrival at Dieppe in the end of October Knox was met 
 by letters from them containing the mortifying injunc- 
 tion to proceed no further on his journey. In indigna- 
 tion he wrote to the Nobility of Scotland the shortest 
 but the most dignified and trenchant of all his letters. 
 He resents the personal slight : how should he — being 
 thus rejected — return without shame to the godly and 
 learned men at Geneva by whose advice he had 
 accepted the invitation ? Still more keenly he feels the 
 injury done to his people at Geneva. It had been no 
 light matter to him to leave his " small (but to Christ 
 dearly-beloved) flock." Was he to have undergone all 
 his sorrow for a cajarice ? But his chief concern is the 
 destruction that must fall on the Scottish noblemen 
 themselves, if they thus play fast-and-loose with the 
 salvation, " not of one or two but, as it were, of a whole 
 nation." On them he throws all responsibility. " For 
 only for that cause are ye called princes of the people, 
 and ye receive of your brethren honour, tribute and 
 homage at God's commandment ; not by reason of your 
 birth and progeny . . . but by reason of your office 
 and duty, which is to vindicate your subjects and 
 
 ^ It is doubtful wliether the fourth name on the list is the 
 simiature of Lord Erskine or of Erskine of Dun. 
 
KNOX'S POLITICAL WRITINGS 53 
 
 brethren from all violence and oppression, to the utter- 
 most of your power." His letter served its purpose ; it 
 stung the prudent deliberation of the Scotch Protestant 
 Lords into resolute and responsible action. On the 
 third of December (1557) the former subscribers, Lome, 
 Glencairn, Lord James, Erskine of Dun, and Morton drew 
 up a paper binding themselves to defend Christ's cause 
 and to support His ministers, with all their power and 
 even at the risk of their lives. From this first solemn 
 bond or covenant the subscribers received the name of 
 " Lords of the Congregation." 
 
 It is noticeable that Knox's letter to these Lords 
 contained no reference to the Regent. His convictions 
 with regard to the authority of princes were growing 
 menacingly revolutionary. Whilst he was at Dieppe 
 came news of a cruel assault on the Protestants in 
 Paris, begun indeed by the mob, but sanctioned and 
 completed by the responsible action of the Government. 
 " In a few words to speak my conscience," he breaks out 
 impatiently, " the regiment of princes is this day come 
 to that heap of iniquity that no godly man can enjoy 
 office or authority under them. And what must follow 
 hereof, either that princes be reformed and be compelled 
 also to reform their wicked laws, or else that all good 
 men depart from their service and company." 
 
 In 1558 when Knox was again at Geneva, he wrote 
 another solemn appeal to the whole Nobility of Scot- 
 land, urging them to take the control of the spiritual 
 power into their own hands. He warns them that it 
 shall by no means serve them as an excuse to plead that 
 they are bound to obey the Prince. "Your duty," he 
 writes, " is to hear the voice of the Eternal, your God, 
 y and unfeignedly to study to follow His precepts." It is 
 
54 JOHN KNOX 
 
 part of the very fluty tliey owe to the king, he tells 
 them, " to correct and repress whatsoever ye know liim 
 to attempt expressedly repugnant to God's Word . . . 
 or what ye shall espy him to do, be it by ignorance, or 
 be it by malice, against his subjects great or small." 
 Such counsels would be very apt to "cause mischance 
 to many worthy persons," but probably Knox was grow- 
 ing tired of the prudent pusillanimity of his brethren 
 and fathers in the faith. He does not disguise his 
 contempt. " Now the common song of all men is, ' "We 
 must obey our kings, be they good or be they bad ; for 
 God has so commanded.'" Not content with this 
 ajDpeal to the Nobles of Scotland, Knox, with a courage 
 and originality all his own, appeals to the conscience of 
 the nation as a whole. The simple people, as much as 
 " kings, judges, rulers, and nobles," are, he declares, 
 responsible for the dominant iniquity, as long as they 
 fail to resist it to the utmost. " Beloved brethren, 
 ye are all God's creatures." In this fact lies " the 
 equality which is between kings and subjects, the 
 most rich and noble, and the poorest and men of low 
 estate." And this equality carries equal responsibility. 
 " For the Gospel ... is the power of God to the sal- 
 vation of every believer, Avhich to credit and receive, 
 you, the Commonalty, are no less indebted than be 
 your rulers and princes." " If your superiors," he con- 
 tinues in the words as well as the spirit of a revolution- 
 ist, " be negligent, or pretend to maintain tyrants in 
 their tyranny, justly ye may provide true teachers for 
 yourselves, ye may maintain and defend them . . . Ye 
 may, moreover, withhold the fruits and profits which 
 your false Bishops and Clergy, most unjustlv, receive of 
 
 you." 
 
KNOX'S POLITICAL WRITINGS 55 
 
 After all he was not concerned to establish abstract 
 principles of liberty and equality ; it was enough for 
 him that the Gospel was crushed in England and 
 excluded from Scotland by the will of two sovereigns. 
 Now it happened that both these obstructive rulers 
 were women. Catching at the idea that such a rule 
 was an anomaly, Knox had persuaded himself that it 
 was forbidden by the Scriptures. 
 
 Some time in the winter of 1557, he had gone pri- 
 vately to consult Calvin on this question. The inter- 
 view was disappointing. Calvin understood his Bible 
 too well to force such meanings on the text and he was 
 too prudent to wish to apply such ideas to existing 
 politics. " It would not be lawful," he explained to his 
 unwilling disciple, " to unsettle governments which are 
 ordained by the peculiar providence of God." Knox 
 was unconvinced. He went home to study the Scrip- 
 tures and to twist them, with the perverse logic of 
 prejudice, to fit his own views ; to brood on the iniqui- 
 ties of the two Queens ; and — in a household of admiring- 
 women — to convince himself of the immeasurable 
 superiority of men ! 
 
 Early in 1558 appeared The First Blast of the Trumpet 
 against the monstrous Begiment of Women. Unlike all 
 his other writings it appeared anonymously. Warned 
 perhaps by the dire results to the faithful of his 
 Admonition (1554), he feared to bring down disaster on 
 bis little flock in Geneva, The argument of this famous 
 pamphlet is singularly inconclusive. Catholicism had 
 unduly and perhaps artificially exalted all women with 
 the Blessed Virgin ; the Reformation abased them into 
 their proper position with Eve. In her greatest per- 
 fection, woman was made to serve and obey man ; after 
 
56 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the curse pronounced against her, she is to be in " com- 
 plete bondage to man"; her main duty and privilege 
 is " daily, to humble and subject herself," and " to abhor 
 whatever might exalt her or puff her up with pride," 
 It was quite necessary that such sweeping statements 
 should be clearly supported by the Word. Now, Knox 
 could not ignore the fact that there were certain 
 Scripture precedents distinctly against him. Huldah 
 and Deborah were difficult facts to get over — fortun- 
 ately so, as it turned out. Knox's evasion of the 
 difficulty can hardly be called successful : he declares 
 these to be miraculous instances on which no general 
 law can be grounded, and expects that this halting 
 argument will " be sufficient for reasonable and moderate 
 spirits," The real interest and value of this remark- 
 able work lies, not in strained arguments against an 
 accidental state of things, but in the revolutionary 
 spirit which glows in its pages, " The sound of our 
 weak trumpet may," he says in the preface, "by the 
 support of some wind (blow it from the south or blow 
 it from the north, it is no matter), come to the ears of 
 the chief offenders. But, whether it do or not, we 
 dare not cease to blow as God will give strength. For 
 we are debtors to more than to princes, to wit, to the 
 imtltitiide of our brethren." Knox is already dreaming 
 of a day of deliverance from secular tyranny : " Let 
 not the faithful, godly, and valiant hearts of Christ's 
 soldiers be utterly discouraged, neither yet let tyrants 
 rejoice." Not by a miracle is this deliverance to be 
 wrought, far less by the passive endurance of a perse- 
 cuted Church, but by some " noble heart " whom God 
 shall raise up to vindicate the liberty of his country. 
 The First Blast was published in the spring of 1558, 
 
KNOX'S POLITICAL WRITINGS 57 
 
 find in the following autumn Mary Tudor died, and 
 Elizabeth, the hope and the mainstay of the Protestants, 
 ascended the English throne. This fact is the coni- 
 pletest and the most ironical comment upon Knox's 
 arguments against the " Regiment of Women." The 
 echoes of that ill-timed Blast were to ring in his ears 
 all his life. 
 
 Before Knox finally left Geneva, in the spring of 
 1559, he had written his one theological work, the 
 Answer to Blasphemous Cavillations urittcn hy an Ana- 
 baptist and Adversary to God's Mernal Predestination. 
 This work is remarkable as being .the only writing of 
 Knox's which is entirely unreadable by the ordinary 
 layman. Open the treatise where he will, the argu- 
 ment always appears to him to be at the same point, and 
 that point the lofty and inscrutable commonplace of 
 Calvinism which declares that " God, in His eternal and 
 immutable counsels, hath once appointed and decreed 
 whom He would take to salvation, and whom also He 
 would leave in ruin and perdition." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 A QUEEN, suiToimded by complacent courtiers, is ill 
 fitted for measuring the force of a great popular move- 
 ment. It is always difficult for a woman to recognize 
 that the facts of life are hostile to her expectations. In 
 the sixteenth century it was impossible for a ruler to 
 believe that his or her authority could be set aside by 
 the will of the people ; nor could a daughter of the great 
 Catholic house of Guise be easily brought to fear that 
 the power of the Church could be seriously menaced by 
 upstart preachers. To these disabilities Mary of Guise 
 added the grave disadvantage of being an alien ruling 
 over a fiercely independent people. Her enemies can 
 hardly deny her capacity as a ruler, but they accuse 
 her truly of governing Scotland in the interests of 
 France. Responsible posts were bestowed on French- 
 men ; her efforts to establish a standing army and to 
 regulate taxation had not only made her rule unpopular, 
 bvit had thrown suspicion on the French alliance itself. 
 So little did she understand the strength of the religious 
 movement that was every day more markedly dividing 
 the country into two hostile parties, that she tried to 
 heal the breach by favours and banquetings and fair 
 words. 
 
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 59 
 
 Slie pursued this policy with both parties all through 
 the year 1558. Her daughter had married tlie Dauphin 
 in April, but the French Court could not be satisfied 
 unless the crown of Scotland was secured to the French 
 Prince as inalienabty as to his wife. To obtain th3 
 " Crown Matrimonial " for her son-in-law, the Reefent 
 had to use craft with both parties ; promising the 
 Churchmen that if this suit were granted her she would 
 put an end to " these heretics and confederates of 
 England " ; promising the Protestants that she would 
 gladly consent to reformation in religion if they would 
 support her plea against the Churchmen, the Bishop 
 of St. Andre Avs, and the house of Hamilton. 
 
 The two religious parties were almost evenly balanced 
 in the State; but the Protestants were daily gaining 
 in confidence and popular estimation. There were 
 ominous signs that the common people understood 
 enough of the new doctrines to have a restless and 
 irritated sense that they had been wronged and deceived 
 by the Church. In various places they had seized and 
 destroyed images of the saints ; the citizens of Edinburgh 
 had first burnt their patron, St. Giles, and then flung 
 him into the Nor'loch. When his festival recurred on 
 September 1, 1558, the Churchmen had procured a 
 new image, and the Queen Regent herself joined in 
 solemn procession through the town. But when she, 
 as was her frank, affable habit, had gone to dine 
 with one of the citizens, the fierce humour and indig- 
 nation of the Edinburgh mob burst forth, and a riot 
 beginning with rough laughter, ended with cracked 
 crowns, and Churchmen fleeing for their lives. 
 
 Nor was evidence wanting that there were men of 
 skill and conviction directing the irritated feelings of 
 
60 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the populace. On January 1, 1559, there appeared, 
 stuck on gates of all the friars' places, a singular paper 
 purporting to come from " the blind, crooked, beggars, 
 widows, and all other poor," accusing the friars of having 
 " falsely stolen the wealth given by the pious for the 
 service of the poor," and ending with this significant 
 note of menace, "We have thought good therefore to 
 warn you . . . that ye remove forth of our said hospitals 
 betwixt this and the feast of Whitsunday next . . . 
 Certifying you, if ye fail, we will at the said term, in 
 whole number {with the hel2J of Ood and assistance of 
 His saints on earth, of whose ready su2Jport we douht not) 
 enter and take possession of our said patrimony and 
 eject you utterly forth of the same." As it turned out, 
 this threat was literally fulfilled. 
 
 On March 2, the Provincial Council of the Church 
 met for the last time in Scotland. Never were men 
 more in earnest to set a house in order that was already 
 tottering to its fall. They had in the preceding Novem- 
 ber rejected the reasonable terms of the Protestant 
 Lords. But now at the eleventh hour they tried in 
 all haste to carry out internal reforms of such strictness 
 that their only result was to send many waverers into 
 the opposite camp. 
 
 It was unfortunate also that the Queen Regent 
 chose this precise moment to depart from the tolerant, 
 non-committal course she had hitherto held in religious 
 questions. Her policy was at all times dictated by the 
 French Court. A peace, known as the Peace of 
 Cateau-Cambr^sis (April 2, 1559), had just been 
 concluded between France, England, and Spain. To 
 conciliate the latter power the French Government 
 had determined on strong measures against the Reform- 
 
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 61 
 
 ation, aud the Scottish Regent received orders from 
 her brothers, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, to suppress the Congregation. 
 
 In the districts where the Lords of the Congregation 
 were dominant — such as Fife, Angus, Mearns, and the 
 Westland — Protestant ministers had preached openly, 
 hitherto unmolested ; suddenly Mary of Guise sum- 
 moned them to appear before the Council at Stirling, 
 on May 10, 1559. " They shall be banished out of 
 Scotland, albeit they preach as truly as ever did St. 
 Paul," she is reported (but only by Knox) to have 
 exclaimed. 
 
 In the beginning of May the Protestant gentlemen of 
 Angus and Mearns and the citizens of Dundee resolved 
 to accompany their preachers before the Council at 
 Stirling. They claimed to come as " peaceable men 
 minding only to give confession with their preachers," 
 and, except Erskine of Dun, they could not boast of men 
 of rank or importance among their numbers. They had 
 however been reinforced by the strongest will, the 
 stoutest voice, and the most passionate heart in 
 Scotland. 
 
 On May 2, John Knox arrived in Edinburgh. He 
 had hoped to arrive sooner, but at Dieppe his journey 
 had been stayed. To his imfeigned surprise he learned 
 that his First Blast had so inflamed the heart of the 
 English Queen against him, that not only was free 
 passage through England denied him, but the friends 
 who had requested it on his behalf barely escaped 
 imprisonment. The letter he addressed to Cecil on the 
 subject was hardly calculated to mend matters. He 
 , reminds the Secretary that his " terrible defection from 
 i the truth known " had rendered him " worthy of Hell," 
 
62 JOHN KNOX 
 
 and enjoins on him to signify to that " intirm vessel," 
 Queen Elizabeth, that only by " humility and dejection 
 of herself before God," can she secure the stability of 
 her throne, " the which I know shall be assaulted more 
 ways than one." 
 
 Knox doubtless alluded to the fact that the French 
 Court "ivas slow to acknowledge Elizabeth's right to the 
 English throne, and had encouraged Mary Stuart to 
 assume the arms of England. He had a singular con- 
 firmation of these designs against Elizabeth in his 
 voyage from Dieppe to Edinburgh. A fellow-traveller 
 on board showed him, in great secrecy, a staff with the 
 arms of England engraved on it, which he was bringing 
 as a present to the Queen Regent. The fact was carefully 
 noted by Knox and six months later used as an argu- 
 ment to persuade the English Queen that her interests 
 were identical with those of Mary's rebellious subjects. 
 
 On his arrival in Edinburgh Knox learned that the 
 brethren were assembled to defend their preachers. " I 
 am come, I praise God," he writes to his favourite 
 correspondent, Mrs. Anna Locke, " even in the brunt of 
 the battle." " If God impede not," he intended to 
 present himself with his fellow-preachers before the 
 Queen and Council ; " there, by life, by death, or else 
 by both to glorify His godly name, who thus mercifully 
 hath heard my long cries." He joined the brethren at 
 Dundee, and thence the whole party marched to Perth, 
 where the Protestant interest was strong. 
 
 To avoid the suspicion of rebellion, the Protestants 
 decided to send Erskine of Dun to Stirling to negotiate 
 with the Queen. His gentle, conciliatory character 
 made him easy to deal with, easy also to be deceived. 
 Mary was alarmed at the numbers and resolution of the 
 
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 63 
 
 Protestants. Slie promised to postpone the summons 
 if they would disperse ; but, when the danger seemed 
 imst, she adhered to her former policy. On the 10th 
 the preachers were cited, and not appearing, Avere " put 
 to the horn " (outlawed). The Protestants of Perth had 
 mistrusted her fair speeches ; the preachers, at least, 
 were more indignant than surprised when Erskine of 
 Dun returned on the 11th with the full account of 
 her treachery. " Which understood, the multitude 
 were so inflamed that neither could the exhorta- 
 tion of the preachers nor the commandments of the 
 magistrate stay them from destroying the places of 
 idolatry." Such is the description in Knox's History of 
 the riot in Perth, where images were broken, churches 
 gutted, and the houses of the Black and Grey Friars 
 plundered and destroyed. This deliberate account was 
 written several months after the event, but there is no 
 mistaking the exultation which throbs through a letter 
 written immediately after the riot to Mrs. Locke. " The 
 brethren sought the next remedy . . . and . . . put-to 
 their hands to reformation in St. Johnstouu, where the 
 places of idolatry . . . were made equal to the ground ; 
 all monuments of idolatry that could be apprehended, 
 consumed with fire ; and priests commanded, under 
 pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous Mass." 
 After such words from Knox's own pen, it is surely a 
 waste of pious zeal to try to lay the blame of all 
 excesses on the "rascal multitude." 
 
 News of these riots fell like a thunderclap on the 
 Court at Stirling; the Churchmen, " rowping like 
 ravens," clamoured for vengeance ; the Queen vowed 
 to destroy St. Johnstoun with every man, woman and 
 child in it ; the very Lords of the Congregation hung 
 
64 JOHN . KNOX 
 
 back, alarmed at the sight of open rebellion. The 
 wealth of the Church, the authority of the Crown, the 
 small but disciplined body of French troops, the strength 
 afforded by the French alliance, all were arrayed against 
 the Protestants at Perth. Knox's courage was always the 
 higher, his voice always sounded the clearer, in moments 
 of public danger or defeat. From the camp at Perth 
 letters were dispatched to the Regent, to the Frenchmen 
 in her service, to the Churchmen, and to the Nobility ; 
 every burning line in these breathes the spirit of Knox. 
 The message to Mary is full of menace ; so lightly is 
 the awful power of the king regarded in the Councils 
 of Perth, " that it is to be feared that neither her Grace 
 nor yet her posterity shall, after this, find that obedience 
 and faithful service " which till then has been found in 
 the Scottish people. In the short letter to the French- 
 men there is audible the muttering of that suspicion 
 and jealousy, which for the past few years the Scottish 
 people had been transferring from " the auld enemy," 
 England, to the ancient ally, France. The letter to 
 the Churchmen is a sheer declaration of hostility, 
 addressed " to the generation of Antichrist, the pesti- 
 lent Prelates, and their shavelings in Scotland." But 
 Knox's real message is to the Nobility of Scotland. In 
 his letter to these he is too intent on carrying conviction 
 to indulge in scurrility or violence. From the opponents 
 of the Protestants, men like the Hamiltons and Huntley, 
 he demands that no compliance with the corrupt will 
 of the Sovereign shall persuade them to condemn their 
 countrymen unheard, but that they shall fairly try the 
 lives and doctrines of the Protestants by the Word of 
 God. In a strain of more solemn warning, he addresses 
 those who had once professed Christ, whose names were 
 
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 65 
 
 appended to the Common Bond of 1557, men like Lord 
 James and Argyle who were hesitating to break with 
 the Court, or like Morton, intent at this crisis, as at 
 every other moment of his evil life, upon his selfish 
 interest. Knox had most emphatically claimed for the 
 Reformed Church the right of excommunication. At 
 this moment, when " Christ's true Kirk " in Scotland 
 was represented by half-a-dozen preachers and their 
 followers, he threatened to use this power against the 
 only men from whom efficient support could be expected. 
 " Unless ye join yourselves with us," he writes, " as of 
 God ye are reputed traitors, so shall ye be excommuni- 
 cated from our society. The glory of the victory 
 which God shall give to His Church, yea, even in the 
 eyes of men, shall not appertain to you." This letter 
 passed like a fiery cross among the faithful in all parts 
 of the country ; when it was read aloud in the church 
 of Craigie in Ayrshire the Earl of Glencairn, moved in 
 heart and conscience, rose up and said, " Let every man 
 serve his conscience. I will, by God's grace, see my 
 brethren in St. Johnstoun ; yea, albeit never a man 
 should accompany me, I will go, and if it were but with 
 a pike upon my shoulder ; for I had rather die with 
 that company than live after them." 
 
 The arrival of a contingent of stout *' professors " 
 from Ayrshire under this gallant nobleman strengthened 
 the little company in Perth so mightily that they were 
 able to make terms with the Regent. They consented 
 to leave the town and to disperse to their houses on 
 condition that no one should suffer for the late disturb- 
 ances, and that all questions of religion should be con- 
 sidered in the next Parliament. Neither side expected 
 nor indeed wished for a permanent peace. The Regent, 
 
 U 
 
^ 
 
 ee JOHN KNOX 
 
 convinced that rebellion not religion was aimed at, held 
 herself bound to keep faith with heretics, only as long 
 as it suited her convenience. The preachers openly 
 affirmed that the Queen meant no truth. They advised 
 their hearers to consent to an appointment merely to 
 "stop the mouths of their adversaries," and to "suffer 
 hypocrisy to discover itself." 
 
 On May 29, the Queen with her troops marched into 
 Perth. According to the expectations and hopes of the 
 Protestants, she soon broke the terms — at least a child 
 accidentally killed, and the Mass celebrated on a dicing- 
 table in default of an altar, could be thus interpreted. 
 Lord James and the Earl of Argyle — he had been Lord 
 Lome when he signed the bond in 1557 — convinced of 
 the Queen's bad faith, had now no scruples in openly 
 putting themselves at the head of the Protestants. 
 They with their followers withdrew to St. Andrews, 
 and required the other leaders of their party to join 
 them on June 4, "for reformation to be made there." 
 Knox was already busy, "making reformation" in the 
 neighbouring seaports of Grail and Anstruther. After 
 sermon, stout traders and seamen "also put to their 
 hand," and reformed their churches in what a decorous 
 English bishop describes as " a somewhat Scythian 
 manner." 
 
 But the goal of Knox's wishes was St. Andrews. He 
 took his own prophecies very seriously. Again and 
 again they supplied motives for their own fulfilmenti 
 In the darkest days in the galley he had been assured 
 that he would again preach Christ in that place. His 
 friends doubted the prudence of allowing him to preach 
 on Sunday, June 11. Archbishop Hamilton had arrived 
 in the town the night before with a hundred armed 
 
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 67 
 
 men, and angrily forbade the outlawed preacher to ap- 
 pear in his pulpit. Knox, who himself loved to make 
 his adversaries ridiculous as well as odious, bitterly 
 resented the mocking message sent by the Bishop to 
 the Lords, " That if they suffered Knox to preach, twelve 
 hackbuts should light upon his nose at once (oh, burning 
 charity of a bloody Bishop !)." Knox knew, and soon 
 the Bishop was forced to recognize, that the hearts of 
 the townspeople were with the Reformers. The Bishop 
 retired in dudgeon to Falkland Palace; and Knox 
 preached on that Sunday and on the three following 
 days, " even amidst the Doctors, who to this day are 
 dumb ; even as dumb as their idols who were burned 
 in their presence." For the Reformers, who professed 
 Christ as the beginning and end of their faith, treated 
 the image of the Crucified as if it had been the 
 shameless idol of some pagan cult. 
 
 Knox had preached on the cleansing of the Temple, 
 and immediately after, the beautiful cathedral, the 
 monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the 
 other sacred buildings which had made St. Andrews 
 the fairest town in Scotland, were " purified." Knox ^ 
 felt neither compunction nor misgiving ; his whole heart 
 was filled with solemn triumph. " The long thirst of 
 my wretched heart," he writes, " is satisfied in abundance, 
 . . . for now, forty days and more, hath my God used 
 my tongue in my native country, to the manifestation 
 of His glory. . . The thirst of the poor people, as 
 well as of the Nobility here, is wondrous great, which 
 putteth me in comfort, that Christ Jesus shall triumph 
 for a space here, in the North, and extreme parts of the 
 earth." 
 
CHAPTER VIIT. 
 
 CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND. (1559 — 1560.) 
 
 On Monday, June 12, the Queen's forces took up 
 position on Cupar Muir. The army of the Congregation 
 which opposed them was at first a mere handful, but 
 during the night men poured in from the Lothians, 
 from Perth, and from the towns and districts of Fife, 
 " so that it appeared as men had rained from the clouds." 
 On both sides there was an unwillingness to shed blood, 
 most unusual in the Scotland of the sixteenth century, 
 Avhere arms were the only arbiters that commanded any 
 respect. The more sober spirits among the Congrega- 
 tion were still anxious to avoid the reproach of stirring 
 up rebellion ; on the side of the Court, parties were 
 divided. The Duke of Chatelherault could not forget 
 that he was next heir to the throne ; it was not to his 
 interest to prostrate his own countrymen under the 
 power of France. On their part, the Queen and her 
 French officers were unwilling to proceed to extremities 
 till they felt secure of help from abroad. At the very 
 instant when the two armies were confronting one 
 another, Sir James Melville had arrived at Falkland 
 Palace on an embassy from the French King. Henry II 
 was hardly zealous enough to waste men and treasure 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 69 
 
 in settling religious difficulties in Scotland, and agreed 
 with his minister, De Montmorency, when he declared, 
 *' We must commit Scotsmen's souls unto God, for we 
 have difficulty enough to rule the consciences of 
 Frenchmen." 
 
 "With so much reluctance on both sides to make an 
 irreparable breach, a battle was avoided and a truce 
 signed for eight days, the Regent consenting to with- 
 draw her troops to Dunbar. The only man among the 
 Protestants who had trained experience in arms was 
 William Kirkcaldy, Laird of Grange, Knox's old co- 
 mate in the garrison of St. Andrews. He had served 
 in the French army, and was a skilful general as well as 
 a stout and chivalrous soldier. No man recognized 
 more clearly the weakness of the disorganized feudal 
 army of the Congregation, nor was better acquainted 
 with the poAver France might at any moment put into 
 the field in support of the Regent. On the day after 
 the meeting on Cupar Muir he sought out his old 
 acquaintance, Knox, in St, Andrews. The same idea 
 may have been in both their minds, but it was the 
 preacher (who looked for assured victory from the power 
 of God alone, and by no " arm of flesh ") who, " after 
 many words, burst forth : ' If England would foresee 
 their own commodity . . . they would not suffer us to 
 perish in this quarrel.' " It was a thought that had long 
 occupied Knox's mind. " My eye," he wrote to Cecil, 
 " hath long looked to a perpetual concord betwixt these 
 two realms," founded on a common zeal for Christ's 
 cause. It was no mere political alliance that he looked 
 for such as was, later, ardently desired by Lord James 
 and Lethington. To Knox the people were always 
 more important than princes, and the establishment of 
 
70 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Christ's Kingdom of infinitely greater moment than the 
 prosperity of England or Scotland. It was chiefly to 
 further this plan that he had begged leave to pass 
 through England, that there he might "communicate 
 with some :man, secret and of solid judgment, such 
 things as gladly I would not commit to paper." But 
 for the obstinate refusal of the English Court to grant 
 him licence, he had intended to visit the North of 
 England where he had influence, to enlist the sympathy 
 of the people for their Scottish brethren. It was his 
 settled belief that " if the hearts of the Borderers of 
 both parts can be united together in God's fear, our 
 victory shall then be easy." Like others of Knox's 
 statesmanlike schemes, the plan of a union between two 
 nations, as distinct from an alliance between two 
 governments, was never carried out. In the meantime 
 the urgent question was how aid in men and treasure 
 might be obtained from the cautious English Govern- 
 ment. Knox, knowing himself to be in disfavour Avith 
 Elizabeth, left Grange to take the initial steps. 
 
 Meanwhile the Lords of the Cougregation and their 
 following had visited Perth and Stirling, "purifying" 
 and "reforming" Avherever they came. On June 29 
 they arrived in Edinburgh. Here however they found 
 that the populace had so efficiently " reformed " all the 
 religious houses " that they had left nothing but bare 
 walls, yea, not so much as door or window ; where 
 through w^e were the less troubled in putting order to 
 such places." The Regent was at Dunbar and the 
 Congregation took possession of the capital unopposed. 
 But, though they might fill the crowded, narrow town 
 with their men-at-arms, the strength of the place, the 
 fortress, whose cannon commanded the main street, did 
 
diVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 7l 
 
 liot fall into their hands. Lord Erskine the com- 
 mandant had received his charge from the Parliament, 
 to the Parliament alone would he yield it ; through the 
 whole civil war he kept this neutrality, as little moved 
 by his religious sympathies with the Congregation as by 
 the demands of the Regent. 
 
 A revolutionary party should never pause in the 
 midst of its success. With inaction, enthusiasm cools 
 and reflection begins. The dread of an uncertain future 
 tends to reconcile men to the old order of things ; in 
 such moments the instinct to return to traditional 
 authority is strong in ordinary men. The Congrega- 
 tion lacked a political head- whose claim to leadership 
 could not be disputed. Far the ablest man amongst 
 them, Lord James, was from his peculiar position 
 prohibited from taking too prominent a part. Mary of 
 Guise was already spreading rumours that he aimed 
 at nothing less than the Crown ; rumours that at least 
 served to keep the jealous and suspicious Duke of 
 Chatelherault some months longer on her side. In 
 these anxious days of inaction, it was the burning 
 enthusiasm and extraordinary influence of Knox and his 
 fellow-preachers that kept the Congregation together 
 and prevented betrayals and defections to the Court 
 party, where all deserters would have been welcomed by 
 the diplomatic Regent. It was their opposition that 
 prevented the Congregation accepting her terms when 
 she seemed to promise "liberty to religion." They 
 " perceived her malicious craft " in these fair promises ; 
 but, even if they had believed her sincere, toleration and 
 liberty of conscience were not what they were fighting 
 for. Their object was that "manifest idolatry" should 
 be overthrown and the preaching of the Word and right 
 
72 JOHN KNOX 
 
 administration of the Sacrament should be established. 
 Yet all the zeal and eloquence of the preachers 
 failed to keep the Congregation's army together 
 through the month of July. Against want and poverty 
 they could work no miracles. The Protestant army 
 had been under arms since May and their provisions 
 were exhausted ; nor could men be spared from the work 
 of the fields in a country where want trod close upon 
 subsistence. 
 
 In the meantime the Regent had everything to gain 
 by the drift of time. Her disciplined French troops 
 were paid by money sent out of France, or by funds 
 bestowed by the Churchmen as insurance against 
 Reformation. An unexpected event had moreover 
 entirely changed her position. The death of the 
 French King, Henry II, on July 10, produced an 
 immediate change of policy. Francis II, a sickly lad of 
 sixteen, was guided in all things by his wife's uncles, 
 the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. These 
 were committed to a policy of extermination of the 
 Protestants ; and their sister could count confidently 
 on help from France in her conflict with the Scottish 
 Nobility. 
 
 By the end of July the leaders of the Congregation 
 recognized the impossibility of holding Edinburgh any 
 longer. The town was delivered to the Regent and a 
 truce was concluded. All questions of religion were to 
 be suspended till the next Parliament ; in the meantime, 
 the Congregation bound themselves to respect sacred 
 buildings and to leave Churchmen undisturbed in the 
 enjoyment of their property — ungodly compromises 
 which Knox feared would draw down God's judgment 
 on those consenting to tliem. On July 26 the Con- 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 73 
 
 gregation, disheartened and anxious, leftEdinbuigli and 
 withdrew to the West, and the Eegent entered the 
 Canongate in triumph, and took up her abode in 
 Holy rood. 
 
 Tlie burghers of Edinburgh, the firmest Protestants 
 in the kingdom, had chosen Knox as their minister 
 on July 7. He had however left his congregation 
 when the city surrendered, and had gone with the 
 Lords to Stirling. It was Willock who administered 
 the Lord's Supper to the faithful in St. Giles, while 
 French soldiers showed their contempt by strutting 
 up and down the aisles, talking and laughing. More 
 than once or twice in the life of Knox we find him, 
 in the hour of peril, disappearing with the swiftness 
 of his great prototype, Elijah. In the cause of religion 
 he was no private combatant who might most effi- 
 ciently do service by heroic death ; he was the leader 
 whose hot and passionate faith could animate a nation, 
 and whose strong will and practical genius could hold 
 men together and plan far-reaching schemes. It was 
 for the furthering of one of these schemes that Knox's 
 services were at this crisis absolutely necessary to the 
 Congregation. Unlike all his contemporaries, — with the 
 exception of Lord James and Lethington, — he had 
 complete sympathy with England, and lacked any 
 trace of that irritable patriotism which made the 
 Scotch Nobility suspicious of the " auld enemy," even 
 when most dependent on her support. It was growing 
 daily clearer to the Congregation that without help 
 from England their cause was hopeless. If Knox's 
 forcible pen and acquaintance with Englishmen pointed 
 him out as spokesman in these negotiations, one insur- 
 mountable obstacle stood in his way. That unlucky 
 
74 JOHN KNOX 
 
 First Blast had as he complained blown all his 
 English friends from him. Cecil, it is true, habitually 
 denied himself the indulgence of resentments, and for 
 the sake of England in the first place, and Christ's 
 Cause in the second, could overlook much; but Cecil 
 had at his back a woman who, astute politician though 
 she was, never restrained her feminine partialities or 
 prejudices. "Of all other, Knox's name, if it be not 
 Goodman's, is odious here, and therefore I wish no 
 mention of him hither." So Cecil wrote to Sadler, and 
 Cecil knew his mistress. 
 
 There Avas nothing for it but for Knox to explain 
 and apologize with as good a grace as he could bring 
 himself to assume. On July 20 he set himself to 
 the sour task of writing to Elizabeth. To save his 
 self-respect, and to avoid all courtliness, he " discharged 
 his conscience towards her," reminding her how " she 
 had declined from Christ in the day of His battle 
 for fear of her life." As to the main contention, he 
 might protest attachment to Elizabeth's person as much 
 as he liked ; that which is " repugnant to nature, 
 contumely to God, and contrarious to His revealed 
 Word," was not changed because the " degenerate 
 woman " who occupied the throne of England, was in a 
 position to favour the cause Knox had at heart. To 
 recant, or own himself mistaken, was impossible to a 
 man who honestly believed himself prompted by the 
 Holy Spirit. In a shuffling and unsatisfactory manner 
 he contrived to shelter himself behind Deborah, and 
 admitted that God had raised up Elizabeth " from the 
 dust, to rule above His people for the comfort of His 
 Kirk." Exhortations to "forget her birth and title," 
 and to consider her " former offences," were not calcu- 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 75 
 
 lated to conciliate the English Queen. Fortunately 
 for the Protestant cause, Cecil was conspicuous for tact, 
 and Knox's letter was quietly put aside. The same 
 post that carried this ineffectual writing, bore also 
 letters from the Congregation addressed severally to 
 Cecil and to Elizabeth. There is a striking difference 
 in the style of the two missives. That to Cecil is 
 aglow with the sincere religious enthusiasm which at 
 that moment possessed equally rough barbarians like 
 Ruthven, gallant soldiers like Grange, staunch, simple 
 characters like Ochiltree, undistinguished men like 
 Argyle and Boyd, and prudent counsellors and men 
 of the world like Lord James and Glencairn. Cecil 
 was the recognized friend of the Reformation; to his 
 sympathetic ear the Scottish Lords declared that their 
 only purpose was to advance the glory of Jesus Christ, 
 and the true preaching of His Evangel within their 
 country. They proposed to establish a perpetual amity 
 with England " to the praise of God's glory and the 
 comfort of the faithful in both realms;" finally they 
 hinted that they were prepared to adopt " the next 
 remedy," in case the Regent continued to oppose the 
 changes in religion. To Cecil they might exclaim, in 
 all sincerity of fervour, " Now feel we the Heaven 
 rather than the earth ; " but men like Glencairn and 
 Lord James knew that a message from *' Heaven " 
 would have far less weight with Elizabeth than a 
 simple statement of danger threatening her crown and 
 kingdom. " If in this battle we shall be overthrown," 
 they wrote to the Queen, " we fear that our ruin shall 
 be but the entrance to a greater cruelty." Elizabeth 
 was indifferent to religion, she detested the bald ritual 
 of Calvinism, and resented the republican views of Knox 
 
76 JOHN KNOX 
 
 and liis fellow-preachers, but she had perforce to throw 
 iu her lot with the Protestants. In France the Guises 
 were already treating Mary Stuart as the rightful 
 Queen of England ; in England the Catholics were 
 ready to support a princess of their own faith ; Eliza- 
 beth was forced to recognize the fact that if a French 
 army were triumphant in Scotland, her crown would 
 not be secure for a day. On the other hand, to break 
 faith with France by openly supporting the Scottish 
 Protestants would precipitate matters and bring about 
 the very danger she feared. She desired to gain time, 
 to negotiate, and finally to give help as sparingly as 
 possible, and above all things with perfect secrecy. 
 
 Secrecy being a first consideration, there is an irony 
 in the fact that it was John Knox, the most direct and 
 outspoken of men, who, in the beginning of August, 
 went on an embassy to Elizabeth's representative at 
 Berwick, Sir Harry Percy, Deputy Warden of the 
 Marches. It had first been intended that he should 
 continue his journey as far as Stamford, there to have 
 an interview with Cecil, but it soon became apparent 
 to the English statesmen that he was scarcely fitted 
 for a secret embassy. " Since my departure from Nor- 
 ham there hath arrived at Holy Island Mr. Knox, in 
 such unsecret sort," wrote Sir Harry Percy, " that it is 
 openly known both in England and Scotland ; wherefore, 
 I think, he hath not discreetly used his coming." Knox 
 was accompanied by another minister, and Sir James 
 Croft, who, in Sir Harry's absence, was their host, 
 recognizing the impossibility of dealing with such a 
 pair of diplomatists, urged their return home with 
 urbane ingenuity. "I think it not expedient," he said, 
 " that in such rarity of preachers, ye two be any long 
 
CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND 77 
 
 time absent from the Lords ; " " faithful counsel " which 
 Knox received and acted upon in all simplicity. 
 
 If he were no diplomatist, he was the only man in 
 Scotland who could have held the Protestant party 
 together in the weeks that followed. He had to keep 
 the Lords of the Congregation in patience with the 
 English Court whose dilatory policy and shifting 
 promises exasperated the proud Scots, already irritably 
 sensitive to the humiliation of being suppliants to their 
 old enemy. At the same time he had, over and over 
 again, to explain to English statesmen the poverty that 
 prevented the Scots from striking a bolder stroke for 
 themselves. For the Protestant Lords had by no means 
 the support of the whole people. It fell to Knox to 
 instruct public opinion, and to rouse popular antipathy 
 against the Regent and her French allies. In proclam- 
 ations and appeals Mary of Guise kept laying her case 
 before the world. When, despite the treaty, she forti- 
 fied Leith, she likened herself " to a small bird which, 
 being pursued, will provide some nest, so her Grace 
 could do no less than provide some sure retreat for 
 herself and her company." It is a pathetic image 
 which loses a little of its force when we learn that " the 
 nest " was guarded by a thousand newly-arrived French 
 soldiers, and that " her Grace " was daily looking for 
 more. In counter proclamations, issued by the Congre- 
 gation and obviously penned by Knox, appeal is made 
 alike to the national pride and the material interests 
 of the people. They are reminded of the taxes the 
 Regent had levied, the coinage she had debased, the 
 Sta,te offices she had bestowed on Frenchmen ; and, it is 
 added, if this be not enough, they may find evidence of 
 her " motherly care " in the French soldiers who are 
 
78 JOHN KNOX 
 
 daily coming into the country " to take the barnyards 
 newly-gathered, the granaries replenished, the houses 
 garnished, and by force to put the just possessors and 
 ancient inhabitants therefrom, to shift for themselves 
 in begging .... they being true Scotsmen, members of 
 our Commonwealth, and our dear brothers and sisters." 
 If the appeal throughout the proclamation is to patriot- 
 ism and prejudice, it was because Knox saw clearly that, 
 on the subject of religion, the bulk of the people were 
 still apathetic. They might join in a riot and destroy 
 sacred buildings, actuated by hatred of the Churchmen 
 and love of mischief; they were not prepared to make 
 prolonged sacrifices for a faith they hardly understood. 
 During the months of August and September Knox 
 preached the Gospel unremittingly in all parts of Scot- 
 land, travelling without rest from town to town. " I 
 have been in continual travail," he writes to Mrs. 
 Locke, in September, " and, notwithstanding that fevers 
 have vexed me the space of a month, yet have I 
 travelled through the most part of this realm, where 
 . . . men of all sorts and conditions embrace the truth." 
 The manner of his preaching can only be described by 
 his favourite image : " We do nothing but go about 
 Jericho blowing with trumpets as God giveth strength." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 END OF THE CIVIL WAR. (1559 — 1560.) 
 
 Harvests are never early in Scotland, and in 1559 
 the season was unusually late; it was October 18 
 before the scattered army of the Congregation, fresh 
 from the labours of the field, gathered in Edinburgh. 
 Their situation had changed in more than one respect. 
 The Duke had come over to their side bringing the 
 strength of his title and wealth, and the weakness of 
 his wavering purposes. His son, Arran, was a more 
 important ally; the insanity that was to wreck his 
 career was still latent, while his fanatical zeal for the 
 Protestant cause procured him a place in Knox's esteem 
 second only to Lord James. The English Government 
 had so far recognized the Congregation as to send an 
 accredited envoy to them, Mr. Randolph. Not only 
 was the consequence of the Protestant party augmented, 
 their numbers also had increased. This was, however, 
 to prove a source of weakness. " The number is now 
 augmented and their poverty also," Knox wrote sadly 
 to a friend in England. A towQ like Edinburgh, narrow, 
 walled, and already overcrowded, could not lodge the 
 large body of men that pressed into it, and friction 
 with the populace was constant, and daily grew more 
 
80 JOHN KNOX 
 
 acute. The country round, already swept by the 
 French troops, could not furnish provisions, and food 
 rose at once to famine prices. The mercenary foot- 
 soldiers, sullen and mutinous, clamoured for pay that 
 was not forthcoming. The Duke, the nominal head of 
 the party, never failed to discourage and paralyze any 
 enterprise in which he had a part ; there were others 
 equally half-hearted, and it was feared that some whom 
 "money largely offered could not corrupt," would be 
 compelled to remain at home from " extreme poverty." 
 But difficulties and dangers which depressed their 
 comrades only roused a sterner spirit in the real leaders 
 of the party. " I have found in Arran and Lord James 
 more honour, stoutness and courage than in all the 
 rest," Avrote Randolph to Cecil. " Whitelaw and Grange," 
 he adds, " are worth three hundred of the rest." 
 
 It was characteristic of these men, and still more of 
 the fiery soul of Knox which animated them, that the 
 lower their fortunes sank the more aggressive their 
 actions became. In July they had hinted to Cecil that 
 they might be driven " to take the next remedy " ; on 
 October 21 they formally deposed Mary of Guise from 
 being Regent. Kings had, more than once, been 
 removed in Scottish history, but only with violence and 
 by some discontented faction ; here it was the Nobility 
 sitting in solemn council who deposed the ruler, after 
 due discussion and with appeals to first principles and 
 Scriptural precedents. True to that reverence for legal 
 forms which Avas to become a characteristic of later 
 Scottish rebels, they deposed the Regent in the name 
 of their sovereign Lord and Lady. The act is curiously 
 significant of the new spirit which had come into 
 society. It was like a prologue to that drama of 
 
END OF THE CIVIL WAR 81 
 
 arbitrary government and determined revolution which, 
 three generations later, was to end tragically on the 
 scaffold at Whitehall. At the moment however this 
 audacious act did not materially help the Congre- 
 gation ; the deposed Regent had an army at her back, 
 the deposing nobles were but a company of anxious and 
 penniless men. 
 
 Despondency seems at this time to have seized even 
 the indomitable spirit of Knox. There is an anxious 
 urgency in the frequent letters he wrote to Croft and 
 others in England entreating that money may be sent. 
 He fears " lest extreme poverty should compel them 
 (i. e. the Protestant Lords) to remain at home, for they 
 are super-expended already ; " and he adds warningly : 
 " Ye are not ignorant what poverty on the one hand 
 and money largely offered on the other part is able to 
 persuade." If Mary of Guise was prepared to bribe 
 largely, money flowed but sparingly from Elizabeth's 
 coffers. It needed urgent appeals from her own 
 servants before help was dispatched to the suffering 
 Protestants in Scotland. 
 
 In the end of October the superiority in arms 
 of the French troops was clearly shown. Day after 
 day they sallied out of Leith, attacked the Protestant 
 forces, and drove them flying through the Canongate 
 to the very walls of Edinburgh. The assailants grew 
 more daring with each fresh triumph, while disorder 
 and discouragement broke the spirit of the Protestant 
 troops. No one felt these reverses more bitterly than 
 Knox. He had to uphold the courage of the whole 
 company and to endure the gibes of the angry popu- 
 lace ; yet, in that moment of stress and strain, he could 
 pause to record the godly death and dying testimony of 
 
82 JOHN KNOX 
 
 a certain Captain Alexander Halyburton, killed in one 
 of these frays. " He confessed that he doubted nothing 
 of God's mercy, purchased to him by the blood of 
 Christ Jesus, neither that it pleased God to make him 
 worthy to shed his blood and spend his life in the 
 defence of so just a cause. And thus, with the dolour 
 of many he ended his dolour, and did enter, we doubt 
 not, into that blessed immortality within two hours 
 after that we were defeated." 
 
 Panic had spread through the Protestant ranks. 
 Lord James and Arran offered to remain and hold the 
 town, but they could get no support. In the dark, 
 early morning of November 7, in all haste and secrecy, 
 the Congregation marched out of Edinburgh, At 
 Stirling they drew to a halt, and here the tramjDet 
 voice of Knox sounded clear and confident, re-animating 
 hearts heavy with disappointment and the dread of an 
 uncertain future. Though their faces might this day 
 be confounded, he told them, their enemies triumphant 
 and their hearts quaking with fear ; if they would but 
 turn unfeignedly to the Eternal, their God ("Who 
 beats down to death to the intent that He may raise 
 up again "), then " their dolours, confusion, and fear 
 should be turned into joy, honour, and boldness." 
 
 It was found advisable to divide into two parties ; one 
 half of the Protestants remained in the West to stagnate 
 under the infirm command of the Duke, the other 
 made a splendid and desperate defence of Fife under 
 the leadership of Lord James, Arran, and Kirkcaldy of 
 Grange. With these went Knox. He lived at St. 
 Andrews, and was chiefly occupied in writing the 
 History of the conflict. He kept a keen and watchful 
 eye on every detail of the fighting. There is a sympa- 
 
END OF THE CIVIL WAR 83 
 
 tlietic ring of pride in the words with which he 
 describes the courage of those two "young plants," 
 Lord James and Arran, who for a month on end " lay 
 in their clothes, their boots never off, and had skirmish- 
 ing almost every day, yea, some days from morn till 
 evening." Of his old comrade, Kirkcaldy, he writes iu 
 the same spirit, " God is highly to be praised in the 
 prudent boldness and painful diligence of the Laird of 
 Grange." But most touching and most characteristic 
 of Knox is the tenderness which makes him pause in 
 his narrative to note the death of a young " French 
 boy, fervent in religion, and clean of life, whom in 
 despite they (the Regent's soldiers) hanged on a 
 steeple." 
 
 Knox was no longer burdened Avith the task of 
 negotiating with England, work for which he was un- 
 fitted. In the end of October, Lethington had openly 
 joined the Protestants, and already in November had 
 been sent to London as the ambassador of the Con- 
 gregation, No man in Scotland Avas so well fitted for 
 the difficult part he had to play, A friend of Cecil, 
 a favourite of Elizabeth, a dexterous diplomatist, and a 
 politician of large and enlightened ideas, he had at the 
 same time a proud and sensitive patriotism that made 
 him quick to guard the honour as well as the interests 
 of Scotland. He required all his remarkable qualities 
 to bring his task to a successful issue. Slowly, with 
 many delays and capricious counter-orders, Elizabeth 
 was making up her mind to send material aid to the 
 Scottish Lords. The delay was almost intolerable to 
 the sujBfering army in Fife. Knox, as the known friend 
 of England, was openly reproached. Men said bitterly 
 to his face, " Support will come from England when we 
 
84 JOHN KNOX 
 
 have no need of it." He withdrew from pubUc hfe, 
 and in sadness of soul looked back on the days spent 
 in the galley as less painful ; " For that torment, for the 
 most part, did touch the body, but this pierces the soul 
 and inward affections. Then was I assuredly persuaded 
 that I should not die till I had preached Christ Jesus, 
 even where I now am. And yet, having now my 
 heart's desire, I am nothing satisfied neither yet 
 rejoice." 
 
 Through those winter months the Regent's troops 
 were pressing hard on the small Protestant army. 
 "Where is now John Knox, his God?" Mary of Guise 
 is reported to have said in derision (but only by 
 Knox). "My God is now stronger than his — yea, even 
 in Fife." 
 
 On January 4, the French soldiery were within 
 eight miles of St. Andrews. Suddenly a fleet of several 
 sail appeared off the Isle of May. A French fleet 
 under d'Elbeuf was daily expected, and the Regent's 
 forces advanced triumphantly to welcome it, only to 
 learn that it was the long-delayed English ships making 
 for the Firth of Forth. The arrival of these auxiliaries 
 turned the fortune of war, the French withdrew pre- 
 cipitately on Leith, and the Congregation in Fife had 
 a breathing space in which to recover strength. 
 
 From this point the conflict takes larger dimensions. 
 The stage is still Scotland, but the key to the position 
 is to be found in Elizabeth's relations to France and 
 other powers. The successful issue of the negotiations 
 between Elizabeth's Government and the Lords of the 
 Congregation, which brought an English army into 
 Scotland in April 1560, was the work of diplomatists 
 like Lethington and Lord James; the surrender of 
 
END OF THE CIVIL WAR 85 
 
 Leith, after a two months' siege, which broke the power 
 of the Regent's army and drove her French allies out 
 of Scotland, was entirely due to the well-equipped 
 English forces. From Knox's silence on the matter we 
 may conclude that he took no active part in these 
 transactions. It is probable that he was with the 
 Protestant army before Leith during the months of 
 May and June. He relates incidents of the siege that 
 he must have seen as an eye-witness or picked up from 
 the current hearsay of the camp. Where his enemies 
 were concerned Knox had an uncritical greed for 
 gossip. While the tide of fortune was setting against 
 her, Mary of Guise lay dying in the Castle of Edin- 
 burgh. The defeated chief of a failing cause, a lonely 
 woman dying in a strange land, she had claims to the 
 forbearance even of an enemy ; but when Knox deals 
 with such as he considered " the seed of Antichrist," he 
 knows neither courtesy to women, generosity to a fallen 
 foe, nor simple humanity to the suffering and dying. 
 With unseemly eagerness, he records an idle and 
 malicious tale that from tlie Castle of Edinburgh the 
 dying Regent gloated over the spectacle of the dead 
 bodies of English soldiers exposed under the walls of 
 Leith — a fact physically impossible at that distance ! 
 He exults over her bodily sufferings in words too coarse 
 to be repeated. Yet even the hostile narrative of Knox 
 cannot conceal the gentle magnanimity shown by Mary 
 of Guise on her death-bed. She bade farewell to Lord 
 James, Glencairn, Argyle, and Lord Marischall, and 
 admitted with sad candour that she had been mistaken 
 and misled by evil counsel. She even consented to 
 see the Protestant minister, Willock ; an act probably 
 more due to unchanging courtesy than to changing 
 
8G JOHN KNOX 
 
 convictions. Knox ends his account of her deatli with the 
 fervent ejaculation, "God for His great mercy's sake rid 
 us from the rest of the Guisian blood. Amen. Amen." 
 Hatred to the House of Guise is — not indeed a justi- 
 fication — but an explanation of the bitterness with 
 which he detested and suspected the Regent. Tlie 
 Guises were earning the undying hate of all Pro- 
 testants. All through the preceding March (1560) at 
 the Pout d'Amboise, Protestants — many of them of 
 distinction — had been drowned, tortured, or executed, 
 while from the palace windows, the Cardinal, the 
 Duke, the poor boy-king, his little brothers and his 
 beautiful young wife Mary of Scotland, had looked 
 down unmoved on their torments. These facts must 
 not be forsfotten if we would be fairer to Knox than he 
 is to his enemies. 
 
 By the beginning of July Leith had surrendered and 
 Cecil and Wotton on behalf of England, and two pleni- 
 potentiaries on the part of France, were in Edinburgh 
 arranging the terms of the peace. It was a curious 
 triangular treaty, in which each country made separate 
 arrangements with the other two. 
 
 Cecil, perhaps better than any other man in Europe, 
 knew the real difficulty and importance of the crisis. 
 Never did the balance of power hang more delicately 
 poised. France would never have relinquished her 
 hold on Scotland, the Guises would never have con- 
 sented to peace with heretics, if the Huguenots in 
 France had not been restless and menacing. Philip 
 of Spain looked on sourly while his protegee, Elizabetli, 
 lent her aid to the Scotch Protestants, but jealousy of 
 France and dread of his own subjects in the Low 
 Countries kept him inactive. Elizabeth herself knew 
 
END OF THE CIVIL WAT^ ^7 
 
 that her Catholic subjects — a large and influential 
 body — disliked the alliance with the Scotch Protestants. 
 Above all other considerations, Cecil felt himself 
 hampered by his Scotch allies. Among the nobles 
 many were half-hearted, distrustful of England, anxious 
 to secure the lands and pensions they possessed in 
 France. On the other hand, the preachers were vehe- 
 ment and extravaofant in their demands for reliofious 
 reform. " Their folly," Cecil wrote impatiently to 
 Norfolk, "would hazard all." "Religion is more 
 earnestly received here than at home," he writes. 
 " Some are so deeply persuaded in this matter as 
 nothing can persuade them that may appear to hinder." 
 " Lethington," he adds with relief, " whose capacity is 
 worth six others, helpeth much in this." 
 
 The French deputation, whose object was to estrange 
 the Scots from their allies, conceded frankly all the 
 demands made by the former. They consented that 
 the French troops should evacuate Scotland, and that 
 the fortresses they had occupied should be destroyed. 
 An Act of Oblivion was to cover whatever had been 
 against the Government since March 1558. The 
 Estates were to be convened, the question of religion 
 was to be carefully considered by them in full Council, 
 and the result submitted to the Sovereigns. 
 
 On July 8 the peace was concluded, and immediately 
 the French troops began to embark. It was practically 
 the end of the kindly old French alliance that had 
 lasted for centuries. To it Scotland owed most of 
 what was refined in her social life, much that was 
 chivalrous and picturesque in her history. The remem- 
 brance of it still stirs a chord of romantic sentiment in 
 Scottish hearts like the echoes of an old song. But to 
 
88 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Knox it was the dominion of Satan that was coming to 
 an end to give place to a godly and perpetual amity 
 with England. In the noble and fervent prayer which 
 he offered in St. Giles' before the assembled Nobility on 
 a solemn day of thanksgiving, he renders special grati- 
 tude to God for " our confederates of England," and 
 prays that the two nations may be so closely united in 
 the Holy Spirit " that Satan have never power to set 
 us at variance again." Preachers who pray extempore 
 can hardly forbear at times mixing exhortation of their 
 hearers with invocation of the Almighty ; there was a 
 note of warning meant for some present in the earnest 
 petition : " Confound Thou the counsels of them that 
 go about to break that most godly league contracted in 
 Thy Name." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF FAITH. 
 
 The cause of the Congregation seemed now triumph- 
 ant. The Catholic Church had apparently collapsed 
 without resistance, but the completeness of the victory 
 showed its insecurity. If the Churchmen seemed to 
 acquiesce in their own destruction, it was because they 
 were confident that the French would return in the 
 name of the lawful Sovereign and reverse whatever 
 changes might have been made in the religion of 
 Scotland. The Lords of the Congregation clearly re- 
 cognized this danger; they were persuaded by the 
 preachers that one way of preparing for it was to lose 
 no time in establishing the Reformed Church firmly 
 in the country. 
 
 Parliament met early in August. It was the largest 
 and most popular assembly that had ever met in 
 Scotland, and was largely composed of the lesser barons 
 or lairds. This class furnished from first to last the 
 most zealous and disinterested supporters of the Re- 
 formation. For already among the nobles there were 
 some " who, for worldly respects, abhorred a perfect 
 Reformation." When Knox preached in St. Giles' from 
 the prophet Haggai, vehemently urging the duty and 
 
90 JOHN KNOX 
 
 privilege of rebuilding the Temple of the Lord, Leth- 
 ington remarked, in his peculiar vein of light mockery, 
 "We must now forget ourselves, and bear the barrow 
 to build the houses of God." 
 
 The first act of the Parliament Avas to request some 
 of the most notable preachers to draw up Articles of 
 Belief for the new Church. This they did in the space 
 of four days. Randolph might well write, in astonish- 
 ment, " I never heard matters of so great importance 
 neither sooner dispatched nor with better will agreed 
 to," He might have added that never was a Confession 
 of Faith drawn up with greater completeness, distinct- 
 ness, or a more noble eloquence. 
 
 This Confession has been perhaps the most im- 
 portant influence in Scottish history. It passed like 
 iron into the spiritual life of the nation ; in times of 
 storm and stress it became a sword in the hands of 
 a determined people ; for generations it has been the 
 mould which has shaped powerful intellects and resolute 
 characters ; at times also it has been like strong chains 
 binding the souls and intelligences of men. In the 
 form in which it was recast by the Puritan Revolution, 
 it has survived into our own day. If to some it has 
 become as an old weapon unfit for modern warfare, 
 none can, without blindness, cease to wonder at an 
 instrument so admirably tempered, or at the strength 
 of those who wore and wielded it. 
 
 This Confession Avhich was so powerful both to 
 quicken and transform the life of the nation, was 
 essentially the work of one mind — that of John Knox. 
 We have seen that he was not a man of original 
 speculation. The definite religious system which the 
 intellect of Calvin had built on the foundations of 
 
THE CONFESSION OF FAITH 91 
 
 Paul and Augustine, had been adopted with passionate 
 conviction by the Scottish Reformer, because, in every 
 respect, it met the requirements of his ardent tempera- 
 ment and practical intellect. His nature abhorred 
 compromise and was incapable of toleration ; the system 
 of Calvin swept away, without compunction, the whole 
 authority and experience of the Church — the good with 
 the evil — and took up firm ground on the sole authority 
 of Scripture. Knox was a man whose intuitions were so 
 rapid and penetrating that they seemed . to himself to 
 be direct inspirations, and Calvinism taught that of 
 ourselves we are dead, blind, and corrupt, till the Spirit 
 of God "quickeneth that Avhich is dead, removeth the 
 darkness from our minds, and boweth our stubborn 
 hearts to the obedience of His blessed will." He was 
 a man of strong affections and of bitter animosities, 
 and his experience of life had helped to make him a 
 good hater. Calvinism taught, at least by implication, 
 that those whom God had reprobated man might hate 
 with a godly hatred. Everywhere he had seemed to 
 see evil triumphant and righteousness oppressed; in 
 every country of Europe, as he believed, temporal 
 power was allying itself with moribund spiritual 
 authority to stifle the spirit of truth. The perplexing 
 problem of trying to find God's eternal justice beneath 
 the iniquities and inequalities of actual life was solved 
 in Calvinism by the dogma that the Glory of God is 
 manifested as clearly in the judgment and perdition 
 of the wicked as in the salvation of the just. But 
 there were also in Knox depths of feeling and a fervid 
 spiritual imagination which were stirred by the central 
 facts of the Christian Creed into utterances of lofty 
 and tender beauty. Where the Confession of Faith 
 
92 JOHN KNOX 
 
 deals with the work of Redemption, the language has 
 the ring of martial music. "And so was born the just 
 seed of David, the angel of the great counsel of God ; 
 the very Messiah promised whom we acknowledge and 
 confess Emmanuel. . . It behoved further the Messiah 
 and Redeemer ... by death to overcome him that 
 was author of death. But because the only Godhead 
 could not suffer death, neither could the only Manhood 
 overcome the same; He joined both together in one 
 person, that the imbecility of the one should suffer and 
 be subject to death, and the infinite and the invincible 
 power of the other . . . should triumph and purchase 
 for us life, liberty, and perpetual victory." There is 
 the same sonorous ring in the Article concerning the 
 Resurrection of Christ : " We undoubtedly believe 
 (that inasmuch as it was impossible that the dolours of 
 death should retain in bondage the Author of life), that 
 our Lord Jesus Christ . . . did rise again for our 
 justification and, destroying him who was the author 
 of death, brought life again to us who were subject 
 to death and to the bondage of the same." 
 
 To a man of Knox's invincible vitality, bound and 
 thwarted by the body and, as he constantly laments, 
 subject to many temptations, the vision of the life 
 after death was full of triumphant joy. "The Elect 
 departed are in peace," so runs the Article concerning 
 the Immortality of the Soul, "and rest from their 
 labours; not that they sleep and come to a certain 
 oblivion (as some fantastic heads do affirm), but that 
 they are delivered from all fear, all torment, and all 
 temptation, to which we and all God's elect are subject 
 in this life." Concerning the general resurrection on 
 the last day, the Confession ends with a burst of exulting 
 
THE CONFESSION OF FAITH 93 
 
 faith. " 111 the general judgment there shall be given 
 to every man and woman resurrection of the flesh ; for 
 the sea shaU give her dead, the earth those that therein 
 be enclosed; yea, the Eternal, our God, shall stretch 
 out His hand upon the dust, and the dead shall arise 
 incorruptible, and that in the substance of the same 
 flesh that every man now bears, to receive, according to 
 their works, glory or punishment." 
 
 If this Confession has a stately rhythm and a nobility 
 of diction lacking in the more formal, scholastic Creeds 
 and Catechisms of the following century, it is perhaps 
 because the first Reformers had still the music of the 
 Church's Latin sounding in their ears. 
 
 The same dogmatic certainty that expounds the 
 Divine scheme as it is conceived in the Councils of God, 
 traces its working among the obscurities and perplex- 
 ities of this life. " From the beginning even to the 
 end of the world, there has been, is, and shall be a 
 Church . . . which Church is Catholic because it contains 
 the Elect of all ages, all realms, nations, and tongues, be 
 they of the Jews, or be they of the Gentiles." This 
 noble breadth of view is, at once and to a modern ear, 
 startlingly modified by the vehement declaration, " We 
 utterly abhor the blasphemy of those that affirm that 
 men Avho live according to equity and justice, shall be 
 saved what religion soever they have professed." 
 Though this Catholic Church be invisible, " known only 
 to God, Who alone knoweth whom He hath chosen," yet 
 there are signs by which the true Church may be known ; 
 the sincere preaching of the Word, the right administra- 
 tion of the Sacraments of Christ Jesus, and lastly, eccle- 
 siastical discipline rightly administered. " And such 
 Churches, we the inhabitants of the realm of Scotland, 
 
94 JOHN KNOX 
 
 professors of Christ Jesus, confess us to have in our cities, 
 towns, and places reformed." 
 
 Before it was presented to Parliament, the Confession 
 was revised by Lord James and Lethiugton, prudent 
 counsellors who mitigated " the austerity of many words 
 and sentences." Knox had originally introduced a 
 chapter on the " Obedience and disobedience due to 
 magistrates," but they, remembering how " disobedi- 
 ence " based on the Word of God might sound in the 
 ears of their despotic and irreligious ally. Queen 
 Elizabeth, expunged the passage as *' unfit to be en- 
 treated at this time." Knox finds room, however, to 
 suggest his favourite principles in a passage where he 
 grudgingly admits the duty " of loving rulers and obey- 
 ing their charges," but promptly modifies the admission 
 by the express injunction, " to repress tyranny and save 
 the lives of innocents." 
 
 On August 17, 1560, the Confession was presented 
 to Parliament. The preachers were present, " standing 
 on their feet," ready to meet any objection to their 
 Articles. None was made. The three bishops present, 
 St. Andrews, Dunblane, and Dunkeld, kept a prudent 
 silence. They were ecclesiastics, not theologians ; it 
 was their policy to save what they could of their vested 
 interests, and to trust to time and to France to restore 
 the Church. Of the temporal lords, Athol, Somerville, 
 and Borthwick had the fine, unreasoning loyalty to 
 dissent on the grounds that they would believe as their 
 fathers had believed. " The ^rest of the Lords," wrote 
 Randolph, an eye-witness of the scene, " with common 
 consent, and as glad a will as ever I heard men speak, 
 allowed the same." There was nothing in the Confession 
 of Faith to rouse that sinister self-interest which, later 
 
THE CONFESSION OF FAITH 95 
 
 on, was to frustrate the practical work of the Church. 
 It was sincere and passionate enthusiasm that possessed 
 this assembly of grave men. Statesmen, soldiers, self- 
 willed and ignorant noblemen, all equally moved, broke 
 down habitual reticence ; some desired rather presently 
 to end their lives than ever to change their faith ; many 
 offered to shed their blood in defence of it. " I am the 
 oldest in this company," said Lord Lindsay, " now that 
 it hath pleased God to let me see this day, wdiere so 
 many nobles and others have allowed so worthy a work ; 
 I will say with Simeon * Nunc Dimittis.' " 
 
 While men's minds were still in this high-wrought 
 condition, Parliament passed on rapidly to clear the way 
 for the establishment of the Reformed Church. In 
 one day the authority of the Pope was abrogated, penal 
 statutes against heresy done away, the Mass abolished 
 and penalties appointed, both to such as heard and such 
 as celebrated it. In so short a time does prosperity turn 
 the persecuted into the persecuting Church. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE AND THE BOOK OF c;OMM0N 
 ORDER. 
 
 The Confession of Faith had, in its noble and sonorous 
 phrases, given utterance aUke to the intellectual con- 
 victions and to the fervid spiritual life of the Reforma- 
 tion. The next thing to be done was to provide the 
 outward body of a Church, in and through which the 
 new spirit might quicken, transform and purify the life 
 of the whole people. As early as April 15G0 (while 
 the fortune of war was yet uncertain) the Lords had 
 appointed a commission to draw up the "Policy and 
 Discipline of the Church." The men chosen for the 
 stupendous task of reconstructing the Church, and 
 welding it firmly into the popular life, were remarkable 
 for eminence and for the variety of their positions and 
 experiences. Knox and Willock were the recognized 
 leaders of the Reformation ; Spottiswood was a minister 
 who, for his learning and goodness, was immediately 
 afterwards elected one of the first Superintendents; 
 Dean Winram was a Churchman of such consummate 
 prudence that he retained the office of Sub-Prior of St. 
 Andrews to the very eve of the Reformation, and im- 
 mediately, on its triumph, was elected Superintendent 
 
BOOKS OF DISClPLINfi AND COMMON ORDER 97 
 
 of Fife, without any one having, apparently, called his 
 sincerity in question; John Douglas, a man of learn- 
 ing and of gentle but feeble character, was Rector of 
 St. Andrews University ; John Row had had a re- 
 markable career, first as a distinguished canonical 
 lawyer at Rome, and since his conversion to the Re- 
 formed doctrines as the first teacher of Hebrew in 
 Scotland. The more moderate and conservative of 
 these commissioners, recoo^nizing- that " Government 
 once loosed is not easily again fastened," were anxious 
 to avoid unnecessary changes in the outward form of 
 religion. But Knox had seen at Geneva the perfect 
 pattern of a Church. Nothing less austere in discipline 
 and severely pure in doctrine would satisfy him in his 
 own country. He expected in all simplicity that his 
 countrymen, who had fought and suffered for Christ's 
 true Church, would be disinterested in her support, and 
 obedient to her discipline. Archbishop Hamilton who 
 knew the world, at least in its baser aspects, better than 
 Knox, is said to have sent him a message that " he 
 would do well not to shake loose the order and policy 
 received . . . till he was sure of a better to be settled 
 in the place of it." This worldly but substantially 
 sound advice, coming from a suspected quarter, prob- 
 ably only increased Knox's determination to break en- 
 tirely with the past. The new Church was to rest solely 
 on two foundations, the unquestioned authority of Holy 
 Scripture and the will of the Christian community. 
 
 The Booh of Discipline reads in some respects like 
 a code of laws for an ideal Commonwealth, so liberal, 
 practical, and statesman-like are many of its regula- 
 tions. In one or two respects only has opposition to 
 the Church of Rome introduced a spirit of narrowness 
 
 H 
 
98 JOHN KNOX 
 
 and contradiction. With a " superstitious avoidance of 
 superstition " it is demanded, for the sake of reserving 
 the purity of the new Church, that all existing rehgious 
 buildings be utterly abolished, except such as are parish 
 churches or schools. This was one of the few regula- 
 tions destined to be promptly and effectually carried 
 out. In the following summer Lord James in the North, 
 Arran and Argyle in the West, completed systematic- 
 ally what the blind fanaticism of the "rascal multi- 
 tude" bad begun in the previous year. This dread of 
 the hold that habit has on the minds of the ignorant 
 prompted two of the most repellent regulations of the 
 Booh of Discipline. Of all the Churches in Christen- 
 dom the Scottish alone ignored the festivals of the 
 Birth and Resurrection of her Redeemer ; and, to avoid 
 all false opinion concerning the state of the soul after 
 death, allowed the Christian dead to be laid in the 
 grave without one word of hope or faith or consolation. 
 In the beginning of the Booh of Disci]ilin& it is laid 
 down that the main functions of a Church are the true 
 preaching of the Word apart from all tradition, and the 
 sincere and simple administration of the Sacraments. 
 Two of the greatest and most permanent services of the 
 Reformation were the gift to every nation of the Bible 
 in its own tongue, and the restoration of the Eucharist 
 from the elaborate mystery of the Mass to the touching 
 simplicity of the Supper of the Lord. The Scottish 
 Reformers were true to the essential principles of Pro- 
 testantism when they insisted that the main element 
 in the right celebration of the Sacrament was intelli- 
 gent understanding of the same on the part of the 
 minister and people. For this end the heads of house- 
 holds were exhorted to cause their servants and children 
 
BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE AND COMMON ORDER 99 
 
 to be instructed in the faith; and, for the same end, 
 weekly meetings were ordered to be held in the churches 
 for the discussion and expounding of Scripture. But, if 
 men were exhorted in every way to try the grounds of 
 their own faith, it was always with the proviso that the 
 convictions they arrived at were to be in accord with 
 the orthodox teaching of the Church. This condition 
 might have proved even more strangling to free inquiry 
 than the passive obedience exacted by Rome if the 
 spirit inherent in Protestantism had not been stronger 
 than the narrow bonds of its accidental forms. 
 
 With regard to the Church services and the times 
 and seasons most convenient for these, the rules are 
 elastic enough. " Every particular church, by their 
 own consent, may appoint their own policy." It is 
 notable that there were daily services in the larger 
 towns, and even in the smaller service was held on one 
 day of the week besides Sunday. Beyond the general 
 injunction " that the Sabbath be straightly kept," there 
 is no emphasis laid on what came to be, in the Scotland 
 of the next two centuries, the most important com- 
 mandment in the Decalogue. Knox himself wrote 
 letters, made journeys, and even entertained guests of 
 importance on Sunday, 
 
 In the early days of the Reformation, when services 
 had been held secretly in noblemen's households and 
 other private places. King Edward's Prayer-Book had 
 been used ; as soon as the Reformation was established, 
 the Booh of Common Order, used by Knox's congre- 
 gation at Geneva, was substituted. But the use of this 
 book was not distinctly enjoined by the Booh of Disci- 
 pline. Knox himself seems never to have been bound 
 by any liturgy ; he preferred extempore prayers, into 
 
100 JOHN KNOX 
 
 which he might introduce comments and criticisms on 
 contemporary events. The vigorous individuality of 
 many of his fellow-preachers and their horror of "vain 
 repetitions" seem to have made extempore prayers at 
 least as much the rule in most churches as the use 
 of the appointed Prayer- Book. It would appear that 
 the Booh of Common Order gradually fell into dis- 
 use. It cannot be regretted. The stereotyped prayers 
 of the Church, sounding constantly in men's ears from 
 youth to age, form the religious mood and habit of a 
 people as certainly as creeds and catechisms form their 
 convictions. It was well for the obstinately tenacious 
 and imaginative people of Scotland that their affec- 
 tions and superstitious reverence were exclusively given 
 to the Bible. Though they might perversely choose 
 from its pages the passages they could twist to suit 
 the harsher and darker aspects of their faith, they could 
 not prevent the beauty and dignity and consolation of 
 the Book from passing into the national conscience and 
 imagination. Fortunately the sharp distinction they 
 made between the Word of God and any merely human 
 writing prevented their attaching any superstitious vener- 
 ation to the Booh of Common Order. Had they done 
 so, it would but have strengthened all that was gloomy 
 and terrible in their creed. " Heavy souls and comfort- 
 less, the humble hearts and consciences, oppressed and 
 laden with the grievous burden of their sins," could 
 hardly find consolation in such abject deprecation of 
 God's wrath as this, "Wherefore, forasmuch as we 
 have felt Thy stripes, we acknowledge that we have 
 justly stirred up Thy displeasure against us, yea, and 
 yet we see Thy hand lifted up to beat us afresh ; for the 
 rods and weapons wherewith Thou art accustomed to 
 
BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE AND COMMON ORDER 101 
 
 execute Thy vengeance, are already in Thine hand ; and 
 the threatenings of Thy wrath, which Thou usest against 
 the wicked sinners, be in full readiness." The over- 
 whelming sense of God's wrath and man's corruption, 
 which monotonously moulds every prayer in the Booh 
 of Common Order, probably reflects faithfully the general 
 religious mood of the Scottish Reformers. A deep sense 
 of sin is part of the strength and reality of Calvinism ; 
 it came unfortunately to be the preponderating ele- 
 ment. Believers clung Avith passionate devotion to the 
 idea of Christ, but it was Christ the innocent and suf- 
 fering Victim of man's sin and God's justice, or Christ 
 the Judge in glory coming to take vengeance on His 
 enemies; there is hardly a suggestion of that Jesus 
 who walked in Galilee, who loved Mary and John, who 
 told men that the Kingdom of God was among them, 
 who bade them to be perfect even as their Father 
 which is in Heaven is perfect. In proof of this, we 
 may look long through Knox's collected writings and 
 find no reference to the sayings of Jesus Christ. 
 
 If much is incomprehensible, and even repellent to a 
 modern mind in the religion of Knox and his fellows, 
 in their statesmanlike and liberal scheme of Church 
 polity they have gone far beyond modern practice, nor 
 have modern ideas conceived anything nobler and more 
 practical than their plan which combined a national 
 Church, a national system of education, and a national 
 charge of the poor and the sick. 
 
 Though, as a final condition, the Church looked 
 forward to, equality among her Ministers, the needs of 
 the times made it necessary to introduce several degrees 
 in the first instance. In 1560 there were at most some 
 score or so of men in Scotland recognized as true and 
 
102 JOHN KNOX 
 
 capable teachers ; till the number was increased, it was 
 expedient that the most eminent of these should be 
 placed in the chief centres as Superintendents. These 
 were to travel as missionary preachers through their 
 own districts, and exercise authority over the Ministers 
 within their bounds. Till enough godly and learned 
 men were found to provide Ministers for every parish, 
 the smaller places were to be supplied with " Readers," 
 men capable of reading the Scriptures and the Common 
 Prayers, but not allowed to administer the Sacraments. 
 In the original scheme a fourth order was contemplated. 
 Teachers or Doctors, learned men, whose office should 
 be to teach the faithful in sound doctrine and guard the 
 purity of the Gospel from all heresies and false opinions. 
 A lack of learned men in the beginning, and later of 
 endowments, frustrated the hope of this important class 
 ever becoming part of the Church. 
 
 The only " holy orders " recognized in the Booh of 
 Discipline consisted in the " call " from the congregation, 
 and the admission of the candidate into the Church 
 by the Superintendent, neighbouring Ministers and 
 Elders, after due examination of his life, doctrine, and 
 capacity. Beyond the public expression of approbation, 
 there was to be no ceremony ; " imposition of hands " 
 is explicitly rejected, the Reformers preferring to dis- 
 agree with Apostles rather than to agree with Papists. 
 Besides these clerical orders. Superintendents, Ministers, 
 and Readers, the Booh of Disci^jlinc recognized also the 
 offices of Elders and Deacons, of whom the latter were 
 to have in charge all the financial business of the 
 Church, while the former were to assist the Minister 
 in the administration of Church Discipline. This 
 Discipline, which is perhaps the feature of the Reformed 
 
BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE AND COMMON ORDER 103 
 
 Church most alien to our modern sympathy, is precisely 
 the point which men like Calvin and Knox especially 
 valued. They were all the more zealous for moral 
 goodness because they emphatically repudiated the 
 merit of " works." They felt that the sins of " pro- 
 fessors" brought intolerable scandal on their central 
 dogma of the all-sufficient grace of God. 
 
 Three centuries lie between us and the Booh of 
 Discijyline. The biting wit of Burns's satires, and the 
 trivial tyranny and pharisaic harshness of old session 
 books, distort our views of what was probably a strong 
 defence against licentiousness and disorder at a time 
 when law was weak and men's passions ungovernably 
 strong. The sins dealt with by Church censure were 
 not heresies, nor breaches of the ceremonial law, but 
 plain moral offences, drunkenness, fornication, oppression 
 of the poor by exactions, false weights and measures, 
 excess and licentious living. The sword of the Church 
 fell heavily, but it fell slowly and deliberately with 
 many pauses to allow of repentance. All estates within 
 the kingdom were equally subject to this discipline, the 
 ruler as well as the ruled; Ministers, as being "eyes 
 and mouth of the Church," were to be tried with special 
 sharpness. A few years after the establishment of the 
 Reformation, one of the most eminent preachers fell 
 into mortal sin ; with grief and shame, but with relent- 
 less rigour, the Church subjected the erring brother to 
 Discipline, The whole system was founded on the 
 conviction of the radical corruption of human nature ; 
 at each General Assembly Superintendents were sub- 
 jected to the criticism of the Ministers in their district ; 
 Ministers were subject to the censure of their Elders ; 
 Elders and Deacons were only elected for one year lest 
 
104 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the temptations of office should prove too much for 
 their integrity. 
 
 There were three objects for which the funds of the 
 Church were to provide — (1) stipends for Ministers of 
 all grades, (2) support of the poor, (3) maintenance of 
 schools and colleges. Two reasons are urged for liberal 
 provision to be made for Ministers. It was necessary 
 to attract the best and most learned men into the 
 Church. "It is not to be supposed that every man 
 will dedicate himself and children so to God, and to 
 serve His Church, that they look for no worldly com- 
 modity . . . and sorry would we be that poverty 
 should discourage men from study and from following 
 the way of virtue, by the which they might edify the 
 Cliurch and flock of Christ Jesus." Further, if the 
 Ministers were to have sufficient dignity and influence, 
 it was necessary that they should have " neither occasion 
 of solicitude, neither yet of insolency and wantonness," 
 The needs of a Minister were held to include books, and 
 the claims of a simple hospitality ; their stipends were 
 calculated to put them on a level with lairds of moderate 
 rental; and, because good men are chiefly distracted 
 from the public service by a natural and laudable 
 anxiety for wife and children, the Church was to 
 provide for these after the Minister's death, taking care 
 that the children received good learning or were started 
 in an honest trade. 
 
 The care of the poor is recognized as a distinct duty 
 of the Church, not by the easy and extravagant method 
 of alms-giving, but by regulations which anticipate our 
 modern poor-law. "All must not be suffered to beg 
 that gladly would do so . . . but the stout and strong 
 beggar must be compelled to work, and every person 
 
BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE AND COMMON ORDER 105 
 
 that may not work must be compelled to return to the 
 place where he or she was born." 
 
 But the crowning work of the Book of Disciijline is 
 the liberal and enlightened scheme for education. The 
 general plea for education is laid down with noble 
 breadth and unhesitating authority. " No father," it 
 is declared, " of Avhat state or condition ever he be, may 
 use his children at his own fantasy, especially in their 
 youth, but all must be compelled to bring up their 
 children in learning and virtue." This compulsion 
 applies to all estates equally. "The rich and potent 
 may not be permitted to suffer their children to spend 
 their youth in vain idleness as heretofore they have 
 done." They must dedicate their sons to the profit of 
 Church and Commonwealth by the proper studies, 
 "and this they must do at their own expense, because 
 they are able." And, that no virtue nor talent may be 
 lost to the State for lack of nurture, poor children are 
 to be kept at school at the charge of the Church till it 
 be seen "if the spirit of docility be found in them." 
 All, rich and poor alike, that are found apt to learn are 
 to "be charged to continue their study so that the 
 Commonwealth may have some comfort of them." 
 p]ven more than the State, the Church is interested 
 " in the virtuous and godly upbringing of the youth of 
 this realm," seeing that she must, in the time coming, 
 be served by their labour and learning. Nothing can 
 be more practical and complete than the scheme of 
 national education. In remote "upland" places, the 
 Minister or Reader is to take care that the children learn 
 their rudiments, and are instructed in the catechism. 
 In towns a school-master, able to teach grammar and 
 the Latin tongue, is to be attached to every church ; 
 
106 JOHN KNOX 
 
 every large town is to have a college — what we should 
 call a secondary school — where the " Arts, at least Logic 
 and Rhetoric and the Tongues," may be taught by 
 approved masters, "for wliom honest stipends must be 
 appointed," All education is to lead up to and be 
 completed by the University. There, after a liberal 
 training in " the Arts, Tongues, and Philosophy," each 
 youth must study the subjects "in which he intends 
 chiefly to travail for the profit of the Commonwealth." 
 
 Large and enlightened as the scheme appears, even 
 in our own days of popular education, it would, if it had 
 been carried out, have found the people of Scotland 
 ready and eager to accept it. This proud and ambitious 
 race had always had zeal for education and respect for 
 learning. Schools and school-masters appear in Acts 
 of Parliament from very early times. The compulsory 
 clause in Knox's scheme is anticipated by the famous 
 Act of 1496, which enjoins on barons and freeholders 
 " to put their eldest sons to the schools from they be 
 eight or ten till they be competently founded and have 
 perfect Latin, and thereafter to remain three years at 
 the schools of Art and Jure, so that they may have 
 knowledge and understanding of the laws." 
 
 If this threefold scheme of national civilization 
 required large endowments, the patrimony of the Church 
 was ample enough to meet all demands. Some writers 
 compute it as half the whole wealth of the country, 
 others as one-third. But Knox was sanguine indeed 
 when he expected that the wealth which had kept the 
 old Church in idleness and luxury was to be handed 
 over to keep the new in learning and holiness. Even 
 if the Church's wealth had still been unappropriated, 
 it is certain that the greedy and poverty-stricken 
 
BOOKS OF DISCIPLINE AND COMMON ORDER 107 
 
 Nobility would have secured their own share before 
 considering the claims of religion. As it was, much of 
 the property had already passed into the hands of lay- 
 men. Some had been frankly confiscated during the 
 civil war. Some of the larger benefices had been held 
 " in commendam " for young laymen, who adopted the 
 new faith but never renounced the profits of their 
 benefices. Lord James, for instance, enjoyed the rents 
 of Pittenweem and St. Andrews to the day of his death 
 without a shadow of compunction. Much Chm'ch 
 property had passed into lay hands through the system 
 of feuing out tithes and letting Church lands on lonsc 
 leases. When the civil war broke out, Churchmen, 
 afraid of losing all, had made over rents and tithes to 
 friends or kinsfolk, making what terms they could. 
 Many of these present holders were Protestants and, 
 with indignation, the Reformers saw them intent on 
 making the most of their bargains, and pressing the 
 tenants as cruelly as ever their old masters had done. 
 " Ye must have compassion upon your brethren," runs 
 a noble passage in the Booh of Discipline, " appointing 
 them such reasonable teinds that they may feel some 
 benefit of Jesus Christ, now preached to them." But, 
 though it was a grievance that the labourer of the earth 
 should be taxed, not to maintain the Church, but " to 
 feed delicately the idle belly of some priest's pensioner," 
 there was to be no violent confiscation ; those who had 
 disbursed money were to receive just compensation. 
 
 The Booh of Discipline had to be examined by the 
 Lords of the Articles, the twelve peers appointed to 
 govern in the Queen's absence ; they were precisely the 
 men who had secured most of the spoil for themselves 
 or their friends. The Reformers, with their wonted 
 
108 JOHN KNOX 
 
 fearlessness, ended the book with the solemn warning, 
 that if blind affection moved them to prefer the profit 
 of their carnal friends to the freedom of God's oppressed 
 Church, sharp and sudden punishment would fall on 
 them, " and the glory and honour of this enterprise Avill 
 be reserved for others." 
 
 In January 1561 the book was submitted to the 
 Council. It was not generally approved. Lethington 
 with his sharp Avit summed up the feelings of his less 
 articulate fellows when he dismissed as "devout imagin- 
 ation," one of the noblest schemes ever devised for 
 civilizing and educating a nation. Of all the noblemen 
 and lairds present, Lord Erskine alone had the honesty 
 to refuse to sign what would have condemned his large 
 appropriation of Church lands ; the rest signed readily 
 enough, however much certain regulations " repugned 
 to their corrupt affections." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RETURN OF MARY STUART. (1561.) 
 
 At once sobered and exalted by the momentous 
 changes that had passed over the Church and State, the 
 Scottish people preserved a most unusual order and 
 stability under the provisional government of the 
 Lords of the Articles. "It passes the judgment of all 
 men of experience ..." writes Lord James, " and is 
 reckoned a manifest miracle of God." Even the more 
 sceptical Lethington was at a loss to find a reason for 
 the extraordinary quietness of the realm, "but only 
 that it hath pleased the goodness of God to give this 
 glory to His Truth preached among us." 
 
 While the vengeance that might at any moment fall 
 on them from France still tarried, the Scottish noble- 
 men attempted to ally themselves still more closely 
 with England. In October 1560 an embassy was sent 
 to Elizabeth to urge her to marry Arran. If he were 
 not a king he was the next in place, and, they assured 
 her, would have the whole force and friendship of the 
 kingdom at his back. Mary Stuart and her claims 
 were strangely ignored in this proposal, which however 
 so flattered the national vanity of the Scots that Leth- 
 ington was bold to declare, " There is a general consent 
 
no JOHN KNOX 
 
 amongst the whole nation, the very Papists can be con- 
 tent, for the accomphshment thereof, to renounce their 
 great god, the Pope." While Elizabeth hesitated or 
 affected to hesitate, an event occurred which changed the 
 whole fate of Europe. 
 
 John Knox had correspondents in all the Protestant 
 Churches in France, and even at the Court. Early in 
 December 1560 a ship arriving in Leith brought him 
 the news that Francis, the young French King, was 
 mortally sick. That same afternoon he sought out the 
 Duke at his lodgings in the ruinous Kirk-of-Field, and, 
 as it happened, found Lord James in his company. 
 While Knox announced his great news, a messenger, 
 arriving post-haste from England, brought further 
 tidings of the death of the French King. If this news 
 removed the imminent danger of conflict with France, 
 it also opened up new difficulties. But to Knox the 
 death or downfall of his enemies was always a "joyful 
 deliverance sent by the hand of God." Of the painful 
 death of young Francis he writes with savage satisfac- 
 tion : " For, unhappy Francis suddenly perished of a 
 rotten ear . . . that deaf ear that never could hear the 
 truth of God." 
 
 And yet at that very moment Knox's private sorrow 
 might have softened his heart and tempered his tongue, 
 even in recording the death of the reprobate. His 
 young wife had just died, and, in the midst of his cares 
 for the Commonwealth, he mentions the fact in a sad, 
 abrupt little parenthesis : " They three were familiarly 
 communing together, he upon the one part comforting' 
 them, and they upon the other part comforting him 
 (for he was in no small heaviness by reason of the 
 late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes)." With 
 
RETURN OF MARY STUART Ul 
 
 a similar pathetic brevity Ezekiel has recorded the 
 death of his wife : " Also the word of the Lord came 
 unto me, saying, ' Son of man, behold, I take away 
 from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke : yet 
 neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy 
 tears run down.' ... So I spake unto the people in 
 the morning : and at even my wife died." 
 
 Very little is known of Marjorie Bowes' married life. 
 Scanty references in her husband's letters suggest that 
 there was much hard work and little ease or cheerful- 
 ness in the young wife's lot. Knox calls her his " left 
 hand," and employed her constantly as his secretary. 
 Some of the endless letters resolving the doubts of his 
 " sisters in Christ " are in her clear, fine handwriting. 
 Sometimes, when she was overworked, these precious 
 answers were mislaid. "She cannot find my first 
 extract," Knox wrote apologetically, " but the rest of my 
 wife has been so unrestful since her arriving here, that 
 scarcely could she tell upon the morrow what she wrote 
 at night." Calvin, in his conventional Latin, writes of 
 her as " dilectissima uxor," so she probably fulfilled his 
 requirements in a wife, and had " good humour, chastity, 
 thrift, patience, and solicitude for her husband's health." 
 She left Knox with two young children, Nathaniel and 
 Ebenezer; and a year later her mother Mrs. Bowes 
 came to live in Knox's house in the Netherbow, to be 
 a "relief to him in the burden of the household," and a 
 burden to him in the relief of her conscience. 
 
 In January 1561 the ambassadors returned from 
 London, bringing Elizabeth's answer that she *' would 
 not marry hastily, and so willed the Council of Scotland 
 and the Earl of Arran not to depend on any hope 
 thereof." It was a rebuff to the national vanity; at 
 
112 JOHN KNOX 
 
 least the noblemen chose to receive it as such. It gave 
 those on whom the English alliance sat uneasily an 
 excuse for turning their wishes and devotion in the 
 direction of their own Queen, whose favour it was im- 
 portant to conciliate. Arran had not even waited for 
 Elizabeth's reply ; he was already urging his suit with 
 Mary. And the confidant of this indecently hasty 
 proposal was, of all men, Knox ! " My Lord Arran 
 Avriteth also to the Connetable," wrote Randolph 
 alluding to this matter. " Of all these matters there 
 is no man privy but Knox." 
 
 Mary — the widow of a month's standing — sent no 
 encouraging reply to her inopportune suitor. Thrown 
 by the death of her husband from one of the proudest 
 positions in Europe to the premature obscurity of a 
 Dowager Queen, her ambition was set "on the con- 
 tinuation of her honour," and on marriage with *' one 
 Avho may uphold her to be great." She was the most 
 important member of the most ambitious family in 
 Europe. The Guises were stout soldiers of France, and 
 faithful servants of Rome, but their staunchest loyalty 
 was devotion to the House of Guise, their sincerest 
 religion faith in the family fortune. The ambition of 
 this powerful and curiously united family centred, at 
 this period, in their young kinswoman, the Queen of 
 Scots. It was a century which had seen the face of 
 Europe changed by fortunate marriages, and with her 
 beauty, wit, and singular fascination, Mary might aspire 
 to any alliance. She was, besides, not merely a reign- 
 ing sovereign in her own right, she was next heir to 
 the throne of England. To secure the recognition of 
 this claim, and on the strength of it to ally herself 
 with one of the great Catholic dynasties, was the end 
 
RETUEN OF MARY STUART 113 
 
 of all Mary's thoughts from the moment of her husband's 
 death. In the great game which the Guises were 
 playing for predominance in the politics of Europe, this 
 girl of nineteen was no mere card in the hands of 
 practised players, she was herself an eager and skilful 
 partner. Under a hundred aspects, gay, pensive, spirited, 
 or gracious, she could cover a settled purpose with a 
 deep dissimulation. She used her personal fascination 
 with feminine adroitness in the game of diplomacy, but 
 she could also flash into sudden decision with the 
 vigour and persistence of a man. Her uncles had freely 
 admitted her into their councils ; the Cardinal discussed 
 in her presence questions of politics and religion. She 
 was familiar with the controversial commonplaces of 
 Catholic theology ; Calvin's and Luther's writings were 
 certainly among her books, and she knew at least some 
 of the stock arguments used to refute them. What 
 her uncles could not teach her, and what it was fatal 
 to her to ignore, was the strength and reality of the 
 new religious spirit. She expressed her serene and 
 simple conviction when she said to the English am- 
 bassador Throgmorton: "God doth command subjects 
 to be obedient to their princes, and commands princes 
 to read His Law and govern thereby themselves and 
 the people committed to their charge." She had heard 
 of Knox and was fully persuaded that he was the most 
 dangerous of her enemies, declaring hotly to Throg- 
 morton that she would either banish him from her 
 kingdom or refuse to dwell there herself. She sent a 
 copy of the First Blast to Elizabeth, as if to make 
 common cause with a sister-queen equally outraged in 
 her prerogative. It is amusing and curiously illustrative 
 of her anomalous position, to find Knox adopting the 
 
114 JOHN KNOX 
 
 same attitude of partnership with the English Queen. 
 He tells her that the Queen of Scots is going to have 
 the First Blast refuted, and, "though he will not 
 prescribe unto her Majesty what is to be done," he adds 
 the warning that " she (^. c. Mary) would not take such 
 pains, unless her crafty counsel in so doing shot at a 
 further mark." Elizabeth's counsellors at least recog- 
 nized Knox's importance as an ally. Throgmortou 
 likened Mary's attempt to "make him odious" to 
 Elizabeth to the efforts, of Philip of Macedon to 
 discredit Demosthenes with the Athenians. 
 
 In the meantime in Scotland, Knox and the other 
 "people committed to her charge" were debating whether 
 Mary might be allowed to have her private Mass in her 
 own kingdom. Nowhere in Europe could Catholic Mass 
 and Protestant Sermon exist side by side. Knox fore- 
 saw intolerable evils in any exception being made for 
 Mary, and plainly warned Lord James that if " he con- 
 descended that she should have Mass either publicly 
 or privately Avithin the realm of Scotland, that then 
 betrayed he the cause of God." " That she should have 
 the Mass publicly," replied Lord James, " that I will 
 never consent to, but to have it secretly in her chamber, 
 who can stop her ? " He, as her nearest kinsman, had 
 been appointed to go to the Queen in France. The 
 day before he arrived at the little town in Champagne, 
 where he was to meet her, Leslie a Scottish Catholic 
 Bishop (afterwards so closely associated with Mary) 
 brought her secret messages from the Catholic noble- 
 men and prelates in Scotland, offering, if she would 
 trust herself to them and land at Aberdeen, to put 
 20,000 men into the field and to march against her 
 enemies. Mary knew that so rash a policy would 
 
RETURN OF MARY STUART 115 
 
 destroy for ever her chance of the English succession, 
 and gratefully refused this offer. She received her 
 brother with that cordiality which she knew so well how 
 to make special and flattering. He might refuse indeed 
 with emphasis, the Church preferments lavishly promised 
 if he would renounce his religious opinions, but she 
 succeeded in shaking his devotion to Elizabeth. He 
 might still aim at a union with England, but it was 
 no longer through the marriage of the English Queen 
 with the contingent heir of the Scottish throne, but 
 through her recognition of Mary as her successor. 
 Elizabeth might well feel indignant at the fickleness 
 and ingratitude of the Scots, when the most reason- 
 able and responsible of them faltered in fulfilling his 
 engagement. 
 
 On August 19, 1561, Mary landed at Leith in a dense 
 chill fog. With that superstitious looking for signs so 
 characteristic of him, Knox records that " the very face 
 of Heaven the time of her arrival did manifestly speak 
 what comfort was brought into this country with her — 
 to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness, and all impiety." Had 
 she been so inclined, Mary might have seen worse 
 omens in the fact that, arriving unexpectedly, no pre- 
 parations were made to receive her, and that Holyrood 
 — bald and meagre at best compared to French palaces 
 — was but half furnished. But she was in no mood 
 for fault-finding. It was not only her policy to be 
 pleased, it was part of her superb vitality that she could 
 adapt herself to all circumstances and find pleasure in 
 doing so. If she missed the refinement and brilliance 
 of the French Court, she "delighted above all things 
 to hear of brave deeds," and could take pleasure in the 
 strength and courage of her Scottish Nobility. She said 
 
116 JOHN KNOX 
 
 once that she longed to know " what a life that was to 
 lie in the fields and walk on the causeway with a 
 Glasgow buckler and broadsword." 
 
 At once on her arrival she set herself to the congenial 
 task of winning all hearts. With the people she had 
 the frank, affable manner that had gained for her father 
 his title of " King of the Commons." Grave lords were 
 won when this girl of nineteen could sit morning after 
 morning in the council chamber attentive to matters 
 of State, her beautiful hands occupied with some feminine 
 task. She could at will surround her brilliant person- 
 ality with a gentle pathos as irresistible as was the effect 
 of her bright beauty in the widow's dress she Avore at 
 times. " Our Queen weareth the dule (weeds), but she 
 can dance daily, dule and all," is Knox's sour comment. 
 It was her fixed policy to conciliate the Protestant 
 Lords and induce them to support her in refusing to 
 ratify the Treaty of Leith. She flattered Lord James 
 by submitting in all things to his judgment, and gratified 
 him by substantial grants of lands. Lethington knew 
 himself to be suspected by the Queen as "the best 
 Englishman of them all," but, as soon as they met, her 
 confiding frankness won him completely to her service. 
 Glencairn was the staunchest of Protestants, yet it 
 passed current " that nothing he said ever came amiss 
 to her." Randolph was a prejudiced observer, but her 
 courtesy and apparent frankness won him over to 
 believe that she really meant well to his mistress. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 KNOX'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MARY. 
 
 The first week after her arrival Mary put in jeopardy 
 lier newly-won popularity. On Sunday August 24, 
 Mass was celebrated in the Abbey of Holyrood. There 
 was instant outcry among the extreme Protestants 
 about the Court, " Lord Lindsay and the gentlemen of 
 Fife crying plainly in the close, * The idolater priest 
 shall die the death ! ' " Panic seized the French 
 attendants ; but for the interposition of Mary's three 
 half-brothers, her Mass must have been stopped. Lord 
 James (" the man whom all the godly did most rever- 
 ence ") himself kept the door, while Lord John and Lord 
 Robert between them guarded the priest back to his 
 chamber. In the afternoon great companies repaired 
 to the Abbey to signify that they would not suffer the 
 land to be polluted with idolatry. It was the first 
 time Mary heard the angry mutterings of that fierce 
 Edinburgh mob, Avhich was to play the part of ominous 
 chorus in all the most tragic moments of her stormy 
 years in Scotland. Thanks to her own tact, and the 
 moderation of her counsellors, on this occasion all 
 danger of conflict was tided over. During the ensuing 
 week eminent Protestants flocked to Edinburgh to utter 
 an indignant protest, but only to prove that the atmo- 
 
118 JOHN KNOX 
 
 sphere of the Court was like " some enchantment where- 
 by men were bewitched," *' I have been here five 
 weeks," wrote Campbell of Kinyeancleucb, whose own 
 virtue was untouched, to Lord Ochiltree, "and at first 
 I heard every man say, ' Let us hang the priest,' but 
 after they had been twice or tbrice at the Abbey, all that 
 fervency was past." " There is not one who doth absent 
 himself," wrote Randolph, "... saving John Knox that 
 thundereth out of the pulpit," All through the week 
 Knox had seen the defection of the godly ; on Sunday 
 he spoke out of the bitterness of his soul, saying, "that 
 one Mass was more fearful to him than if ten thousand 
 armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm 
 of purpose to suppress the whole religion," With the 
 instincts of a high-spirited woman, Mary recognized in 
 Knox her one implacable foe, and determined to meet 
 him without delay. On tlie Tuesday after his sermon 
 he was summoned to Holyrood. Mary received him in 
 the council chamber. Lord James was in attendance, 
 but took no part in the interview ; two waiting-women 
 stood at the far end of the room. Mary Stuart and 
 John Knox stood face to face, two of the most remark- 
 able figures of any time or country. She was at the 
 height of her glorious beauty; the fine, liberal outlines 
 of her features were softened and rounded by youth and 
 health, while strong vitality and a sense of power gave 
 the sparkle and fascination that no painter could repro- 
 duce. She saw before her a man already old, below 
 middle height, but broad and well-made ; a long black 
 beard, already grizzled, shaded the lower part of the 
 dark face, while deep-set grey eyes looked out keenly 
 from under the narrow but prominent brow. Both 
 were accustomed to read the characters of men quickly 
 
KNOX'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MARY 119 
 
 and keenly. In the beautiful girl opposite him Knox 
 recognized the power of a practised diplomatist. "In 
 communicating with her," he wrote to Cecil, " I espied 
 such craft as I have not found in such age." In the 
 grave, worn preacher Mary found an unhesitating 
 authority and a disregard alike of her womanly charms 
 and her royal prerogative that for the moment almost 
 disconcerted her. If she failed to measure fully the 
 power of her opponent, it was because that spiritual life 
 from which it was drawn was blank and meaningless to 
 her. She met him with reproaches ; he had written a 
 book denying her lawful authority ; he had incited her 
 subjects against her ; he had stirred up sedition in 
 England. He had his answers ready. As for his book 
 against the rule of women, he was prepared to defend 
 his doctrine but not to act on it. He was "as content 
 to live under her Grace as was Paul to live under 
 Nero." Where she accused him of stirring up sedition 
 in England, he could assure her that the fruits of his 
 labour had been peace and order. But these matters 
 were beside the mark Mary aimed at. She made now 
 a direct accusation. " Ye have taught the people to 
 receive another religion than princes can allow, nor can 
 that doctrine be of God, seeing God commands subjects 
 to obey their princes." To Mary nations were but 
 " subjects," counters in the great political game princes 
 played with one another ; to Knox, princes were as 
 other men, except that they had often a more formid- 
 able power of obstructing the word of God. " Princes," 
 he replied austerely, " were often the most ignorant of 
 God's true religion." As for the obedience of subjects, 
 it extends no further than the law of God allows. 
 Children are not bound to obey a father seized with 
 
120 JOHN KNOX 
 
 madness, but may bind and restrain him ; not otherwise 
 is the duty of subjects to princes who in their blind 
 wrath would destroy the children of God. Three cen- 
 turies of revolution and of constitutional government 
 have made these commonplaces; to Mary they were 
 incredible. " At these words, the Queen stood, as it 
 were, amazed for a quarter of an hour." At length she 
 spoke, and, in her angry surprise, hit very near the 
 mark. " Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall 
 obey you and not mc." 
 
 " Let both princes and subjects obey God . . . and 
 this subjection, Madame, unto God and unto His 
 troubled Church, is the greatest dignity that flesh can 
 get upon earth." 
 
 But it was another Church, Mary objected, that she 
 was willing to obey. " Ye interpret the Scripture in one 
 manner, and they (the Church of Rome) in another ; 
 whom shall I believe ? " she asked, astutely hitting a 
 weak point in the pretensions of the Reformed Church. 
 
 " Ye shall believe God that plainly speaketh in His 
 Word," answered Knox. 
 
 Mary, who had never " laid her faith to the square- 
 rule of God's Word," had no patience to listen while 
 Knox expounded hoAV plainly the Scriptures condemned 
 the Mass. " Ye are too hard for me," she broke in, 
 " but if tlicy were here that I have heard, tliey would 
 answer you." 
 
 Throughout the interview Knox had been severely 
 plain-spoken, but he had not been churlish. Taking his 
 leave, he said, " I pray God, Madame, that ye may be as 
 blessed within the Commonwealth of Scotland (if it be 
 the pleasure of God) as ever Deborah was in the Com- 
 monwealth of Israel." But in his heart he had little 
 
KNOX'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MARY 121 
 
 doubt Avhat " the pleasure of God " with Mary would bo. 
 " If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and 
 an indurate heart against God and His truth, my 
 judgment faileth me." 
 
 Afterwards, when the troubles he had foreseen came 
 upon the country, Knox accused himself bitterly that 
 he had not been more " vehement and upright " against 
 " that idol — the Mass." Had he willed it he might have 
 plunged the country into civil war. "God had given 
 me credit with many who would have put in execution 
 God's judgments if I would only have consented." At 
 the tune however his practical sagacity saved him from 
 so fatal a course. A following he would have had 
 among the burghers and smaller lairds, but the men of 
 leading would have been united against him. Arran 
 alone, moody and disappointed, would have been on his 
 side, and to have fought^ for the Hamiltons would have 
 degraded his party to a faction, Knox wisely, if un- 
 willingly, refused to sanction violence. The pulpit 
 however remained to him. " Where your Honour 
 exhorteth us to stoutness," Randolph wrote to Cecil, " I 
 assure you that the voice of one man is able in an hour 
 to put more life in us than six hundred trumpets con- 
 tinually blustering in our ears." Public opinion obliged 
 even Papists like Huntley to be present at the sermon. 
 He might gloom and pull his bonnet over his brows 
 and mutter beneath his breath, " When will the knaves 
 have railed their fill ? " he was constrained to sit still 
 and hear vengeance denounced against his blasphemy. 
 Men's sins and shortcomings were rebuked under the 
 thinnest disguise of Biblical examples; public events, 
 tidings out of France and England, gossip of the Court, 
 were all subjected to searching criticism and fiery de- 
 
122 JOHN KNOX 
 
 nunciations. The very prayers partook of the nature 
 of manifestoes. With " piercing " earnestness, Knox 
 would pray for continuance of the friendship with 
 England ; his prayer for the Queen was almost an in- 
 citement to sedition. " 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 thral- 
 dom of Satan, wherein she has been brought up and yet 
 remains . . . that this poor realm may also escape that 
 plague and vengeance which inevitably follows idolatry." 
 
 In the following spring (1562) Knox was again sum- 
 moned to Holyrood, to answer for a sermon in which 
 "he inveighed sore against the Queen's dancing and 
 little exercise of herself in godliness and virtue." 
 
 During the preceding week Knox had received news 
 out of France (where the religious wars had again 
 broken out) of an encounter between the Protestants 
 and the followers of the Duke of Guise, in which the 
 latter had massacred women, children, and unarmed men. 
 The night the news reached Edinburgh Mary gave a 
 ball in Holyrood and dancing was prolonged unusually 
 late. It may have been accidental, but Knox was con- 
 vinced that it was meant to celebrate a triumph over 
 the godly. Next Sunday he was vehement against 
 " the ignorance, the vanity, and the despite of princes." 
 Mary was not alone at this interview as at the last. 
 She received Knox in her bedroom in company with 
 her ladies. Lord James, Morton, and Lethington. In 
 answer to the accusation that he had tried to excite 
 hatred and contempt of the Queen in her people, he 
 replied by giving the substance of his sermon. Without 
 softening word or phrase, he assured the Queen that 
 they who dance immoderately or as a sign of triumph 
 
KNOX'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MARY 123 
 
 over the godly will assuredly " receive the rewaid of 
 dancers, and that will be drink in Hell ; unless they 
 speedily repent," It was Mary's policy to conciliate 
 Knox. " Your words ' are sharp enough as ye have 
 spoken them," she said, and added, with what seemed 
 a noble candour, " My uncles and ye are not of one 
 religion, therefore I cannot blame you if you have no 
 good opinion of them. But if you hear anything of 
 myself that mislikes you, come to myself and tell me 
 and I shall hear you." It was a generous condescension 
 calculated to disarm the suspicions of the preacher. It 
 offered him a position of influence, it flattered his zeal 
 with the hope of making a convert of the Queen. Knox 
 was proud, arrogant, eager for power, but he was too 
 clear-sighted to be easily flattered. The condescension 
 of princes had no power to move one who held his com- 
 mission directly from Almighty God. " I am called, 
 Madame, to a public function within the Church ... I 
 am not appointed to come to every man in particular 
 and show him his offence." The office Mary had 
 offered him savoured too much of the private director. 
 He was too constantly occupied with his books, he 
 added, with a shadow of grave mockery, to have leisure 
 to hang about the Court, and to " whisper his mind into 
 her Grace's ear, or bear the tales of what men said of 
 her." Amazed, hurt, and angry at such a reception of 
 her studied gentleness, Mary turned her back and the 
 interview was ended. Knox left her presence with a 
 " reasonable merry countenance." To those who won- 
 dered at his boldness he answered, " Why should the 
 pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray me ? I have 
 looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have 
 not been afraid beyond measure." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LIFE IN THE NETHERBOW. 
 
 Writing to Cecil after liis first interview with Mary, 
 Knox had said, " Since then hath the Court been dead 
 to me and I to it." To Knox " being dead " to anything 
 meant simply inability to control it after his own Avill. 
 To possess his soul in patience, to retire into the 
 seclusion of prayer and study, was to him sheer impossi- 
 bility. 
 
 Those whom we recognize as saints differ from other 
 zealous and righteous men in virtue of a certain 
 spiritual aloofness. They may associate with the vilest, 
 loving them with a pure passion unknown to other 
 men ; they may wear out heart and brain contending 
 with triumphant worldliness, but they keep their souls 
 anchored in the Eternal Calm, and thus escape the 
 deadliest danger of the conflict, the temptation to use 
 in God's quarrel weapons forged by craft or violence. 
 Knox was no saint — he was a passionately earnest man 
 possessed by definite spiritual convictions and holding 
 a lofty and rigid ideal of conduct. To move hot hearts 
 and stubborn wills, to strike hard blows in the cause of 
 religion had not been difficult ; to make the Scotsmen 
 of the sixteenth century a whit less violent, less greedy. 
 
LIFE m THE NETHERBOW 125 
 
 less self-indulgent was a task in which he only did not 
 entirely fail. He was not content simply to try and 
 reach men's consciences by the spoken word ; even the 
 discipline of the Church, minute and searching as that 
 was, did not satisfy his passion for mending what was 
 amiss. Imperiously, without misgiving, he intermeddled 
 in men's lives ; seldom unwisely, never except in what 
 he held to be the interests of truth and righteousness. 
 But a spiritual guide interfering actively in the affairs 
 of men must needs at times compromise his sacred 
 character. Knox did not come unscathed out of the 
 ordeal. Once and again he committed himself to 
 extreme positions from which he refused to retreat ; he 
 mistook his own prejudices and irritation for zeal 
 against evil-doers; to attain righteous ends he allied 
 himself with men whose characters and methods were 
 strangely at variance with his religion. He poured 
 forth unmeasured denunciations, and yet resented any 
 criticism of the preachers as blasphemy against God in 
 His messengers; worst point of all, his whole credit 
 as a prophet was involved in proving his case against 
 those he had denounced as " reprobate," and he became 
 credulous of scandals and greedy for evidence of their 
 " indurate hearts against God." 
 
 With this intense interest in personal matters Knox 
 was living in the heart of a capital, the smallest, the 
 most crowded, the most turbulent in Europe. One 
 long mile of street running along a narrow slope 
 comprised the town. At one end, on the height, in the 
 most commanding position, was the Castle with its guns 
 and garrison ; at the other extreme lay Holyrood in its 
 meadows ; midway, the gate of the Netherbow cut off 
 the Canongate from the City of Edinburgh. There, 
 
126 JOHN KNOX 
 
 probably in a wynd back from the street, was the 
 dwelling which the Town Council of Edinburgh had 
 taken and fitted up as a manse for Knox ; a few hundred 
 yards higher up the slope was the Church of St. Giles. 
 Much of the life of the City was passed in the streets ; 
 the traffickings and marketings of the citizens, the brawls 
 of the craftsmen, the fiercer quarrels among the armed 
 retainers of noblemen, constantly brought eager eyes 
 and ears to the many windows and balconies of the 
 tall, dark houses on either side. No great state or 
 ceremonial separated the Court from the City. The 
 townspeople were familiar with the figure of Mary, 
 as she passed on foot to dine or sup with the richer 
 burghers, or, in transparent disguise, pursued some frolic 
 with Darnley, in the first days of courtship. What 
 was done at Holyrood over-night was the talk of the 
 causeway next morning, and probably the subject of 
 sermon on the Sunday following. Great nobles would 
 quarrel at Court, and in the dead of night the tramp 
 of armed men in the street would startle agitated 
 burghers from their sleep. A centre for all this eager, 
 contentious life was the little, warm study lined with 
 " deals " (deal panelling), which the kindly Town Coun- 
 cillors had provided for their Minister's comfort. 
 Thither many and various men, on many and various 
 errands, resorted daily. Did a wife desert her austerely 
 Protestant husband, straightway must the afflicted 
 burgess call-in Knox and his fellow-Superintendents to 
 write a circular to the English Bishops demanding their 
 help in reclaiming the runaway. Now it is craftsmen 
 who have had a diff'erence with the magistrates, who 
 come to Knox to demand his intervention ; now it 
 is the Duke and the English ambassador who meet in 
 
LIFE IN THE NETHERBOW 127 
 
 his house at supper to discuss affairs of State. The 
 strangest of all among the varied guests was the Earl 
 of Both well, who came some time in March 1562 to beg 
 Knox's good offices in reconciling him to the Earl of 
 Arran. Knox was recognized as an arbitrator of quarrels, 
 and, to his honour be it recorded, a peacemaker. His 
 gravely courteous and dignified speech to Bothwell is 
 noteworthy as containing his one allusion to his birth 
 and parentage. It is also the only place where he 
 recognizes human ties other than that "fellowship in 
 Christ," which may be the coldest or the closest of 
 bonds. " For albeit," he began, " to this hour it hath 
 not chanced me to speak with your Lordship face to 
 face, yet have I borne a good mind to your house, and 
 have been sorry from my heart of the troubles I have 
 heard you to be involved in. For, my Lord, my grand- 
 father, goodsire, and father have served your Lordship's 
 predecessors, and this is a part of the obligations 
 
 of our Scottish kindness ; but that is not the chief " 
 
 And with the last words Knox resumes the minister, 
 gravely calls on the Earl to repent, and offers the 
 required service. The reconciliation was completed, 
 but the end was disastrous, and caused Knox grief and 
 mortification. The following Friday after the sermon, 
 Arran appeared in Knox's room in great agitation, 
 accusing Bothwell incoherently of trying to involve 
 him in a plot to murder Lord James and carry 
 off Mary. Wild as the project was, it was not 
 incredible. Arran had been suspected of such an 
 attempt a month or two before ; Bothwell was later 
 to carry out something very like it. Knox, with quick, 
 quiet observation, recognized that Arran was out of his 
 mind ; his timely warning sent to Lord James may 
 
128 JOHN KNOX 
 
 have saved Mary at least one act of violence, Arran, 
 the next heir to the crown, the suitor of two Queens, 
 passes thus tragically from the stage. 
 
 During the first year of Mary's reign the Avhole 
 weight of government rested on her brother, Lord 
 James, and on Secretary Lethington ; not without 
 grudging and jealous criticism of many, especially 
 among the godly. They imagined that Lord James 
 was "growing cold" and "seeking too much his own 
 advancement," and that Lethington was ambitious and 
 " too politic.'^ Knox had always distrusted Lethington ; 
 at tliis time he was also disappointed with Lord James. 
 He could not understand his " yielding to Mary's 
 appetite," and blamed him for much that had happened. 
 But if Knox loved any man it Avas James Stuart, of 
 whom he writes affectionately that " the image of God 
 did evidently appear in him," and whom he praised to 
 Calvin as " the only man at Court who opposed himself 
 to uDgodliness." In February 1562 Lord James was 
 married to the Earl Marischall's daughter, Agnes Keith. 
 There had been "long love" between them; in his 
 affections, as in his ambitions, Lord James was patient 
 and tenacious of his ends. The wedding was celebrated 
 with more pomp than was pleasing to the godly, but the 
 admonition from the pulpit was direct and particular 
 enough. There was no courtly flattering of the bride. 
 The thought was always present with Knox that by 
 woman sin had entered into the world, by woman man 
 was still constantly led astray. "Unto this day the 
 Church hath received comfort by you," the preacher 
 admonished the bridegroom, " .... in the which, if 
 hereafter you shall be found fainter, it will be said that 
 your wife hath changed your nature." 
 
LIFE IN THE NETHERBOW 129 
 
 So intent was Knox on this multiplied task of 
 keeping all men right, that Randolph might well say 
 of him : " He ruleth the roost, and of him all men stand 
 in fear." It had been part of Mary's courtly and 
 diplomatic training to read the weaknesses of men 
 and turn them to account. She had signally failed with 
 Knox, she could neither overawe nor flatter him. She 
 made another attempt to win him by appealing to his 
 love of influence. Some Westland priests had been 
 apprehended for celebrating Mass at Easter (April 
 11, 1563), and were to be tried by the harsh enact- 
 ments against all Popish observances. To Mary's 
 indignation, she found her Council stiffly determined 
 on carrying out the laws; even her brother was not 
 compliant on religious matters. She hit therefore 
 on the bold plan of appealing to Knox on behalf of 
 her unfortunate co-religionists. She happened to be 
 on a visit at the Castle of Loch Leven, and sent for 
 Knox to attend her there. She received him in the 
 castle destined to become so mournfully familiar to 
 her, and for two hours "travailed earnestly" with him, 
 pleading for that " liberty of conscience" which Catholic 
 and Protestant alike claimed when they were in a 
 minority and condemned when they were triumphant. 
 Knox coldly entrenched himself behind the Act of 
 Parliament. If her Majesty thought to elude the law, 
 he threatened that "some" would be found to take 
 the matter into their own hands. It was a distinct 
 threat of rebellion ; in his impatience, Knox was all 
 too ready to adopt that extreme medicine of the 
 State, Thwarted a third time in her efforts to win 
 the unbending preacher, Mary withdrew to supper in 
 
 manifest displeasure. But next morning her mood 
 
iSO JOHN KNOX 
 
 had changed. Before the sun was up, she sent him 
 a message to meet her west of Kinross. She was 
 hawking early that spring morning, for she was 
 splendidly active and hardy in her habits. She had 
 planned this informal meeting that she might, on a 
 friendly and familiar footing, make a last attempt to 
 conciliate her unimpressionable opponent. 
 
 No word was spoken of last night's discussion. She 
 began to complain of Lord Ruthven and insinuated 
 blame of Lethington, to whom she knew that Knox 
 was hostile. With dignified reticence he refused to 
 discuss the absent. No whit disconcerted, Mary turned 
 the conversation on to a certain Alexander Gordon, a 
 former bishop, now candidate for the Superintendent- 
 ship of Galloway. He was a time-server, and Mary's 
 judgment of him was entirely just when she warned 
 Knox that the man was dangerous. But Knox was 
 irritably jealous of advice given by Mary on Church 
 matters. Where free election was, he replied, God 
 Avould not suffer His Church to be so deceived as to 
 elect the unworthy. " Well, do as you will," replied 
 the Queen, with unperturbed good-humour. She 
 proceeded to introduce other subjects, while Knox tried 
 in vain to take his leave. At last she said, "I have 
 one of the greatest matters that have touched me 
 since I came to this realm, and I must have your help." 
 It was a frank offer of comradeship that not another 
 man in Scotland could have resisted. This matter was 
 the unhappy relations of her half-sister, the Countess 
 of Argyle, to her husband. Knox's interest awoke at 
 once, he was almost off his guard. Mary was encroaching 
 on his particular province, the office of arbiter between 
 man and wife. He was specially familiar with the 
 
LIFE IN THE NETHERBOW 131 
 
 relations of the couple under discussion. He had made 
 peace between them before, and Lady Aigyle had 
 promised to complain to no living creature till she 
 could explain the controversy to him, her spiritual 
 director. He had heard nothing; therefore he could 
 confidently assure her Majesty that there was nothing 
 but concord. 
 
 It was a masterpiece of irony — surely not uncon- 
 scious — when the Queen begged him to put them at 
 unity again "for ray sake." At parting she lightly 
 alluded to the matter they had discussed the night 
 before, saying : " I shall cause summon all offenders, 
 and ye shall know that I shall minister justice," 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS. 
 
 Nothing convinces one so clearly that the Catholic 
 Church in Scotland deserved to perish — was, in fact, 
 self-doomed to perish — as the supineness with which 
 she acquiesced in her own destruction. Stringent as 
 were the enactments and harsh as were the penalties 
 against the celebration of Catholic rites, confiscation of 
 goods for the first offence, exile for the second, death 
 for the third, there is absolutely no contemporary 
 instance of the last having been inflicted. It is the 
 innovating faith, not the time-honoured faith on its trial 
 that generally produces martyrs. Some of the bishops, 
 Ross, Dunkeld, Dunblane, St. Andrews and others, were 
 faithful sons of the Papacy, but their devotion stopped 
 far short of the stake. 
 
 While these dignitaries enjoyed what they had been 
 able to secure of their benefices, little or no provision 
 liad been made for the lower clergy. Many of these, 
 with shameless facility, changed their religion to suit 
 the times — at Easter preaching and administering the 
 Sacraments in the Catholic fashion, at Whitsuntide 
 subscribing the Confession of Faith, saying to the " rude 
 Reformers," " My masters, your doctrines please us." 
 Those priests who adhered to their religion were turned 
 
KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS 133 
 
 out of their cures and practically left to starve; they 
 and a remnant of faithful laymen met for religious 
 observances in barns and fields and secret places very 
 much as their opponents had done ten years before. 
 Proclamations commanding evil-doers to leave the city 
 bounds bracketed " obstinate Papists and massmongers, 
 such as priests and friars," with " adulterers, fornicators, 
 and noted drunkards." The same sweeping regulations 
 which ousted Catholic clergy from their cures removed 
 all school-masters and other teachers of youth from their 
 charges. In Linlithgow there happened to be a school- 
 master in priest's orders, Ninian Wingate, a man of 
 " sobriety and learned simplicity " — to use one of his 
 own happy phrases — and of singular zeal in his office. 
 At Linlithgow he had spent, he tells us, "ten years 
 of my most flourishing age, not without manifest 
 utility of their commonwealth," when the newly- 
 appointed Protestant Minister, Dean Patrick Kinlochy, 
 full of arrogant zeal and supported by his Super- 
 intendent, the good Spottiswood, must needs submit 
 the school-master to the religious test. A fearless 
 and faithful man, hating and despising the renegades 
 among his brethren, Wingate refused to alter his 
 faith at any man's bidding, and consequently was " shot 
 out and expelled from his kindly town and his tender 
 friends there." At a time when bishops thought it 
 prudent to keep unbroken silence, this obscure school- 
 master stood out almost alone as the champion of the 
 Church, throwing the gauntlet of defiance at Knox 
 himself. His first Tractate, written in beautiful old 
 Scots, appeared in February 1562, and is addressed to 
 Queen Mary. It is the work not of a partisan, but 
 of a clear-sighted, patriotic thinker. He arraigns the 
 
134 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Churchmen with a force and irony that few of the 
 Reformers have equalled, denouncing not only their 
 corrupt lives but "their dumb doctrine in exalting 
 ceremonies only . . . and far more their keeping in 
 silence the true Word of God necessary to all men's 
 salvation." Yet, after all, it required but little courage 
 to attack the Churchmen when their iniquities were 
 in the mouth of every hot-headed Reformer, Where 
 Wingate shows his independence of judgment is in his 
 attack on the Nobility. Their avarice, he tells them, 
 was the cause of the abuses in the old Church. Nor 
 are those amongst them, who now delight to be called 
 " Gospellers " and are cunning in Scripture, any better ; 
 " who, though they call out on idolatry , . . are bound 
 subjects to the monstrous idolatry of avarice, never in- 
 tending to cleanse their hands of the rents of the Church, 
 nor of the blood and sweat of the poor, spurring others 
 to Reformation, but never reforming themselves." In 
 these days, when all men are clamorous to root out 
 idols, he can see idols set up in " kitchens," and coffers, 
 in the market-place and even in the Temple of God. 
 ' The third idol and worst of all is the false preacher 
 . . showing himself as he were God ; that is, exalted 
 in the conscience and conceit of men and esteemed to 
 have that perfection that he cannot nor may not lie." 
 
 There could be no doubt who was meant by that last 
 idol ; but, not content with this allusion, Wingate, in 
 March 1562, challenged Knox directly, demanding by 
 what authority he exercised spiritual dominion in the 
 kingdom, and who gave him that authority. If he be 
 called to his sacred office directly by God Himself, 
 where, asks Wingate, are the miracles to attest the 
 calling ? if by man, who are they that have lawful 
 
KNOX AND HIS CATHOLTf OPPONENTS 135 
 
 power to ordain to such a calling (" seeing ye renounce 
 that ordination by the which sometime ye were called 
 Sir John")? It is the question with which authority 
 and tradition have in all ages met the boundless self- 
 confidence of innovating faith. Knox never answered 
 the challenge directly. Reasoning, arguing, meeting an 
 adversary point to point with candour and logic, if not 
 with courtesy, was never his habit. No Avritten answer 
 was vouchsafed to Wingate, but from the vantage 
 ground of the pulpit Knox vindicated his position, and 
 likened his " call " to that which drew Amos from his 
 herds and sycamore-trees and drove John the Baptist 
 into the wilderness. These prophets had done no 
 miracles, yet no one doubted that they had been inspired. 
 Knox constantly claimed the position accorded to 
 " God's earlier servants," the Hebrew prophets, and 
 claimed it on the same grounds as they — namely, the 
 intensity of moral conviction that possessed him like 
 a distinct message from God, and the reality of which 
 he might neither doubt himself nor allow others to 
 question. Prophets have, in many cases, associated 
 with their message the claim to miraculous powers; but 
 the difference is wide between those who base their 
 message on their miracles and those who use their 
 miracles to illustrate their message. Knox, especially 
 in his later years, undoubtedly believed in his own 
 power of foretelling events, but his predictions were 
 almost always founded on experience and observation, 
 and were part of his general message of God's impend- 
 ing judgments. Among a people always prone to 
 superstition, this gift of prediction gained for Knox a 
 peculiar veneration from his followers, and a peculiai- 
 fear mingled with hate from his enemies. Nor can it 
 
136 JOHN KNOX 
 
 be denied that this self-announced prophetic character, 
 attested by miracles, was in the later history of the 
 Scottish Church claimed by various Ministers, and 
 that the claim '^gave them (especially in the days of 
 persecution) a spiritual ascendancy greater than the 
 officially supernatural authority of the Romish Priest- 
 hood. But Knox has made clear his own convictions 
 with regard to miraculous confirmations of the Divine 
 call in the proposition he laid down in answer to 
 Wingate's question : " A truth by itself, without 
 miracles, hath sufficient strength to prove the lawful 
 vocation of the teachers thereof, but miracles destitute 
 of truth have efficacy to deceive but never to bring to 
 God." As for the orders conferred by Pope or priest, 
 Knox treated them much as Cromwell treated the time- 
 honoured constitutional forms of the English Parliament. 
 There is a story, resting only on tradition but character- 
 istic of the man, that once, when he was questioned about 
 his orders, he answered impatiently, " Buf, buf, man, we 
 are once entered ; let us see who dare put us out again." 
 
 All through the spring of 1562 Wingate waited for a 
 direct answer to his questions. In his rough arrogance 
 Knox seems hardly to have vouchsafed to read the 
 writings " fully and sincerely," or to have stated their 
 contents candidly. So entirely had he failed to under- 
 stand the gentle and open-minded character of his 
 antagonist, that he stigmatized him as 2^'''ogenies 
 viparu7n, to the scandal — Wingate avers — even of 
 some of his own scholars. 
 
 The vigilance of the Reformers against the Papists 
 was not without cause during the summer of 1562. 
 The Holy See had given Mary time to settle down and 
 Qow looked for some fruit of her rule. It was impossible 
 
KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS 137 
 
 for any one at a distance to understand her helplessness 
 to effect any religious change in her kingdom. In 
 June 1562 the Pope sent a certain Father Goudanus 
 as his Nuncio to Mary and to such of the bishops as 
 were still faithful. Arrived in Scotland this priest 
 found his situation so perilous that he had to lie hid in 
 the house of some devout Catholics for at least a month 
 before he could obtain a secret audience of the Queen. 
 A rumour had gone abroad of his arrival, and Knox 
 thundered in the pulpit against the Antichrist and his 
 emissaries. By a curious irony, the heat of his elo- 
 quence, detaining his congregation, served the Nuncio's 
 turn. The only time the Queen could venture to 
 receive him was during the time of service, when Lord 
 James and the other noblemen were safely at church. 
 One Sunday in July while Knox up at St. Giles' was 
 declaiming against the Popish Antichrist, down at 
 Holyrood the Nuncio was deliberating with the Queen 
 how she might restore her country to obedience to 
 Rome. He may have brushed against Lord James in 
 the Canongate as he stole back to his hiding-place. 
 During the couple of months Goudanus passed in 
 Scotland, he saw something of the state of the country. 
 Churches, monasteries, and altars had been wrecked 
 and lay in ruins ; images of Christ and the Saints were 
 prostrate in the dust.^ " The Ministers," he says, " are 
 either apostate monks or laymen of low rank, and are 
 quite unlearned, being cobblers, shoemakers, tanners, or 
 the like." It might have been retorted to the good 
 
 ^ One of the Ministers, David Fergusson of Dunfermline, 
 speaks even more strongly of the " foul deformity of the Kirks 
 and Temples, which are more like sheepcotes than the House of 
 God." 
 
13S JOHN KNOX 
 
 Father tliat there had been a time in the world's history 
 Avhen the sole custodians of the Word of Life were un- 
 lettered fishermen. But in the matter of learning, 
 though Erskine of Dun, the Hebraists John Row and 
 John Lawson, Dean Winram, and even David Fergusson 
 — originally a tanner, but well read in the Fathers and 
 in the Scriptures — could challenge comparison with 
 the contemporary Catholic Bishops in Scotland, still 
 the accusation of ignorance did unfortunately apply 
 generally to the first set of Reformed Ministers. In 
 the succeeding generation, Andrew Melville's noble 
 scheme of University education removed this slur 
 from the Scottish Church. 
 
 While the Nuncio was aghast at the absence of all 
 public Catholic observances, the Ministers were in- 
 dignant that Catholic rites were still performed in 
 certain remote parts of the country. In Ayrshire under 
 the protection of his kinsman, the Earl of Cassilis, 
 Quintin Kennedy, Abbot of Crosraguel, still celebrated 
 Mass and instructed his flock in the doctrines of Holy 
 Church. A man of learning and good life, he was the 
 only Churchman of position who tried by pen and 
 tongue to stem the tide of Reformation. Candid and 
 liberal in his own way he had written frankly denounc- 
 ing the abuses in the Church, but beyond this he 
 would not go. He could not swallow his formulas ; a 
 symbol was to him as cogent as an argument ; the 
 decrees of Councils as weighty as the authority of the 
 Scriptures. With this excellent, if somewhat hide- 
 bound Churchman Knox held the famous" Reasoning" 
 at Maybole in September 15G2. The opponents offer 
 a singular contrast. The Abbot desired a leisurely, 
 academic conference in a quiet room, ample space for 
 
KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS 139 
 
 tlie cartload of books to which he meant to refer, and 
 an audience of twelve persons on each side. Knox had 
 no desire to play at logical fencing, or even to meet 
 reason Avith reason, but he was burning to deliver him- 
 self in the presence of a multitude, to sound the 
 " trumpet " in the ears of the " converted " and " un- 
 converted." 
 
 This difference of view, and also some difficulty with 
 regard to the date, led to a curious and acrimonious 
 correspondence. 
 
 Knox begins by disclaiming any intention of seeking 
 dispute ; he had come to the district, he declares, 
 " simply to proclaim to the people Jesus Christ crucified 
 to be the only Saviour." " That," retorts the Abbot, 
 " praise be to God was no newings in this country before 
 you were born." Knox commits himself recklessly to 
 a sweeping retort, " I greatly doubt if ever Jesus 
 Christ was truly preached by a Papistical prelate or 
 monk." 
 
 A little later the Abbot declares, not without reason, 
 " For if victory consists in clamour and crying out, I 
 will quit you the cause without further play." 
 
 Knox had accused the Abbot of being a " dumb dog " 
 and a " negligent pastor " and an " ignorant idolater," 
 and the Abbot answers angrily, " I marvel how ye 
 forget yourself, chiding and railing in this manner." 
 
 " The speaking of truth is chiding unto you!' (The 
 personal note is getting shrill on both sides.) 
 
 " Considering that ye said a little before, ye did abhor 
 all chidings and railing; but nature passes nurture 
 with you," retorts the Abbot. 
 
 " I will neither interchange nature nor nurture with 
 you for all the profits of Crosraguel," answers Knox, 
 
140 JOHN KNOX 
 
 always nettled by personal criticism, even when he 
 himself is dealing out wholesale denunciations. 
 
 In no point do these singularly contrasted opponents 
 differ more than in the humour they both display in 
 their writings. That of the Abbot is neat as becomes 
 a gentleman and scholar ; it plays with verbal felicities 
 and inclines even to puns. But the humour of Knox 
 is harsh and derisive, like rough laughter with animosity 
 at the heart of it. In his introduction to the printed 
 account of the " Reasoning " at Maybole, he makes 
 merry over the idolatry of the Mass. Taking as his 
 model the splendid satiric passage where Isaiah mocks 
 the false gods of the heathen (Isaiah xliv. 10 — 18), he 
 pours contempt upon the central symbol of Catholic 
 worship. Haying described how the " idol " is sown in 
 the earth, nourished by rain, dew and heat, cut down 
 by the reaper, borne home to the barn, trodden by 
 hoof of ox, winnowed by the fan, ground by the mill- 
 stone, and moulded by the baker, he goes on with 
 indecent mirth, " The poor god of bread is most miserable 
 of all other idols ... for within one year the god will 
 putrefy and then he must be burnt . . . yea, what is 
 most of all to be feared, that god is a prey to rats and 
 mice, for they will desire no better dinner than white, 
 round gods enough." Time has its revenges. In that 
 same Ayrshire two centuries later the dogmas most 
 sacred to Knox were parodied with an irreverence as 
 reckless, but with a humour far richer and keener, than 
 his own. Holy Willies Prayer has paid full compensa- 
 tion for Knox's scoffs at the Mass. 
 
 At the end of September the antagonists met in a 
 room at Maybole. Had the Abbot been wise and alive 
 to the great issues in question, he would have taken 
 
KNOX AND HIS CATHOLIC OPPONENTS 141 
 
 the offensive ; for Knox had laid himself open to attack 
 when he committed himself to his favourite syllogism : 
 " All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the 
 brain of man in the religion of God without His own 
 express command is idolatry : the Mass is invented by 
 the brain of man without any commandment of God ; 
 therefore it is idolatry." The Abbot was prepared to 
 prove that this syllogism could draw no support from 
 Scripture. Unfortunately he quitted this firm ground 
 of attack, and, with the infatuation of too many Church- 
 men of his time, leaned all the weight of his defence 
 on the shifting sands of symbols and traditions. For 
 three days the " Reasoning " turned upon whether 
 Melchisedek had brought forth bread and wine as an 
 oblation to God or as a gift to Abraham. Knox seems 
 to have thought it worth while to win a victory even 
 on this ground. The " Reasoning " broke up before 
 the real issues had been touched, but not before the 
 Abbot had lost both his head and his temper. The 
 victory, such as it was, remained with Knox. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 KNOX AND THE COURT. (1563—1564.) 
 
 To men of the prophetic or reforming type like Knox 
 the violence, vice or greed of evil men are hardly so 
 abominable as the frivolity and callousness of luxurious 
 Avomen. To Isaiah as to Amos the sensuousness and 
 pride of the daughters of Jerusalem and Samaria were 
 the measure of their countries' corruption. Knox had 
 more toleration for the lawless insolence of a gallant like 
 Bothwell than for tlie frivolities and extravagances of 
 the Court ladies. He lent a greedy ear to whatever 
 gossip and prejudice reported of a Court which, if not 
 corrupt and indecorous, was at least unguarded in the 
 pursuit of pleasure. He sourly describes entertainments 
 at Holyrood as the " skipping of French fillocks and 
 fiddlers, not very comely for honest women " ; he refers 
 to lewd ballads as evidence against the four Maries. In 
 any other relation the character and career of Chastelar 
 would have met with fiercest denunciations, but by 
 treating him as the victim of her feminine caprice, Knox 
 was able to strike a blow at the Queen's reputation ; 
 " and so received Chastelar the reward of his dancing ; 
 for he lacked his head that his tongue should not utter 
 the secrets of our Queen." Knox had a juster cause of 
 
KNOX AND THE COURT 143 
 
 offence in the extravagance of the Court. He, who had 
 ever in his ears the cry of the over-taxed labouier in the 
 field, and ever before his sight the silent indignity of 
 Ministers destitute for lack of stipend, saw a luxury in 
 banquets and pageants unknown before in the country. 
 When dearth and severe weather set in, he recognized 
 in these God's visible " declaration that He was offended 
 at the iniquity that was committed even within this 
 realm." Unfortunately trifles excited his indignation as 
 fiercely as grave iniquities ; he declared solemnly from 
 the pulpit that God's wrath could not fail to be moved 
 by " the targatting of the tails of the Court ladies and 
 the rest of their vanity." He was to pay the penalty of 
 all who are habitually violent in speech ; men were 
 growing weary of his vehemence and heedless of his 
 warnings. Powerless and isolated, he had to stand by 
 and see the men who had " desired to end their lives 
 rather than change their faith," bartering not only their 
 own salvation but the salvation of the whole people for 
 tawdry and sensuous pleasures imported from France. 
 Even Lord James who, Knox admitted, alone opposed 
 the wickedness of the Court, had been won to Mary's 
 interest by the grant of the earldom of Moray. It had 
 been bestowed on him in the previous autumn, when 
 Huntley, the great chief in the North, had been crushed. 
 Mary herself had been forced to take an active part in, 
 the overthrow of the great Catholic nobleman who had 
 offered to establish the Mass in three counties if she 
 desired it. It was still her policy to conciliate her 
 Protestant subjects and lull the suspicions of Elizabeth's 
 Protestant ministers, but she must in her heart have 
 resented the brother who made it necessary for her 
 to take extreme measures against her own friends ; 
 
144 JOHN KNOX 
 
 outwardly however she continued to honour and reward 
 him. In May 15G3 Mary opened her first Parhament. 
 As she rode up the street to the Tolbooth the populace 
 cried : " God bless her sweet face." In Parliament itself 
 men were astonished at the eloquence of her speech, " The 
 voice of a goddess not of a woman," they said one to the 
 other. Knox could not deny her evident popularity ; it 
 was gall and wormwood to him, but he had more serious 
 cause for anxiety and indignation. The Crown had 
 never ratified the enactments of 1560 with regard to the 
 change of religion, and the Reformers claimed that this 
 should be the first matter attended to in the present 
 Parliament. Lord James — or Moray as he must 
 henceforth be called — was deeply committed to the 
 Reformation. In his own person he was sincerely 
 attached to the Protestant faith ; on him was centred all 
 the hopes of the godly. To their indignation he dis- 
 appointed their trust, and Knox did not hesitate to 
 ascribe his conduct to self-interest ; the earldom of 
 Moray needed ratification as well as the religion of the 
 country, and seemed to have a prior claim on Moray's 
 interests. " The matter fell so hot between the Earl of 
 Moray and John Knox that familiarly together they 
 spake not for more than a year and half." Whether in 
 the right or in the wrong — and in this case he was 
 substantially in the right — Knox had always an authori- 
 tative dignity in his intercourse with other men, 
 especially with those of high station. It was he who 
 formally broke with the Earl. " Seeing that I perceive 
 myself frustrate of my expectation, which was, that ye 
 should ever have preferred God to your own affection, 
 and the advancement of His truth to your singular 
 (private) commodity, I commit you to your own wit 
 
KNOX AND THE COURT 145 
 
 and to the conducting of those who better can please 
 you." Moray might be dazzled by his great position, 
 Knox saw its insecurity and unreality. " If after this 
 ye shall decay (as I fear ye shall), call to mind by what 
 means God exalted you." Whatever view one may 
 take of Knox's prophetic utterances, it cannot be denied 
 that events had a habit of justifying them. 
 
 It was not alone that Knox had keener and clearer 
 insight into the real drift of affairs, he had a far wider 
 outlook than most of his countrymen. Through his 
 correspondents at the English Court, in France and at 
 Geneva, he was kept informed of the state of religious 
 parties all over Europe. The religious wars in France 
 had, by the spring of 1563, left the Catholic party 
 stronger and more consolidated ; persecution was grow- 
 ing hot in the Low Countries ; the Council of Trent was 
 preparing measures for a concerted attack on the Refor- 
 mation. And here in the meantime were the Protes- 
 tant noblemen of Scotland who had fought for their 
 faith on the sands at Leith, eagerly desirous of match- 
 ing their Queen with some great Catholic potentate ! 
 In March 1563 Lethington was in London on the 
 never-ending business of the ratification of the Treaty 
 of Leith and the recognition of Mary as Elizabeth's 
 successor. All agreement seemed as far off as ever, and 
 Mary turned to other allies. Lethington had a secret 
 interview with the Spanish ambassador in London, in 
 which a marriage was discussed between his sovereign 
 and Don Carlos, the heir to the Spanish crown. Leth- 
 ington assured De Quadra that the Scottish nobles, though 
 Protestant, would welcome such an alliance, and that 
 Moray in especial was favourable to it. 
 
 Through some of his numerous correspondents, pos- 
 
 L 
 
146 JOHN KNOX 
 
 sibly through Cecil himself, rumours of these trans- 
 actions reached Knox. He knew that national pride 
 and ambition were making the Protestant noblemen 
 indifferent to religion, he must also have felt that he 
 had himself lost credit with most of them. These 
 reasons served only to make his warnings all the clearer 
 and more emphatic. 
 
 The greater part of the Nobility still resorted to the 
 sermon at St. Giles'. From his pulpit Knox could see 
 face after face — some estranged now and hostile — whom 
 he had known familiarly when they had fought together 
 for the faith. Preaching one Sunday during the session 
 of Parliament, he recalled the extremity they had knoAvn 
 together and the mighty deliverance they had experi- 
 enced in common. " In your extreme dangers I have 
 been with you ; St. Johnstoun, Cupar Muir, and the 
 Crags of Edinburgh are yet recent in my heart ; yea, 
 and that dark and dolorous night wherein all ye, my 
 Lords, with shame and fear left this town, is yet in my 
 mind." Were they, he asked, to betray the cause for 
 which they had fought, for the ambitious pleasure of a 
 woman? To Knox the way out of all political and 
 diplomatic difficulties was clear and direct. " Ask ye of 
 her that which by God's Word ye may justly require ; if 
 she will not agree with you in God, ye are not bound to 
 agree with her in the Devil ! " 
 
 But it was not Knox's way to lay down general 
 principles ; his meaning must be unmistakable. " But 
 this, my Lords, will I say (note the day, and bear 
 witness after), whensoever the Nobility of Scotland, 
 professing the Lord Jesus, consent that an infidel — 
 and all Papists are infidels — shall be head to your 
 Sovereign, ye do so far as in you lieth to banish Christ 
 
KNOX AND THE COURT 147 
 
 Jesus from this realm." It is not surprising that " this 
 manner of speaking was judged intolerable," Protestant 
 and Papist being alike offended by it. Nothing was so 
 likely to thwart the plans they secretly inclined to as 
 this premature plain speaking. " Even his own familiars 
 disdained him," while " flatterers posted to the Court to 
 give advertisement " that Knox had spoken against the 
 Queen's marriage. Apparently on the same day after 
 dinner he was summoned to Holyrood. Of the few still 
 faithful several, including Lord Ochiltree, accompanied 
 him to the Abbey, but only Erskine of Dun went with 
 him into the presence chamber. 
 
 In the early days of her dignified young widowhood, 
 Mary had prided herself on her reticence and self-control, 
 glancing contemptuously at Elizabeth's frank outbursts 
 of temper. *' I like not to have so many witnesses of 
 my passions as the Queen your mistress was content to 
 have," she had said to Throgmorton. Perhaps two 
 years in a rougher, more passionate society had loosened 
 her habit of self-repression ; she was in a " vehement 
 fume " when Knox was ushered into her presence. She 
 broke into passionate reproaches. Never had Prince been 
 so handled ; she had borne patiently his rigour against 
 herself and her uncles ; she had offered him presence and 
 audience when he desired it ; all had been in vain ; noiu 
 she was resolved to be avenged. " And with these 
 words, scarcely could Marnock, her secret chamber-boy, 
 get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the tears ; and the 
 owling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech." 
 Knox answered temperately, taking however lofty 
 ground. He admitted her courtesy, but his vocation 
 was such that it could receive no honour from the con- 
 descension of princes. He was sent to speak plainly 
 
148 JOHN KNOX 
 
 from '* the preaching place," and to " flatter no flesh on 
 the face of the earth." Her nobles were forgetting their 
 duty to God and the Commonwealth from " being 
 addicted to her affection " ; he had only done his in 
 admonishing them. " The Evangel," " the Common- 
 wealth," were meaningless terms to Mary, absorbed in 
 her own ambitions and disappointments, 
 
 " What have ye to do with my marriage ? Or what 
 are ye within this realm ? " 
 
 " A subject born within the same, Madame," was the 
 memorable answer, containing in it a century of revo- 
 lution. " And," he continued, " albeit I neither be 
 Earl, Lord, nor Baron within it, yet has God made me 
 (how abject that ever I be in your eyes,) a profitable 
 member within the same. Yea, Madame, to me it 
 appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may 
 hurt it . . . than it does to any of the Nobility ; for 
 both my vocation and conscience crave plainness of 
 me." What he had said in the pulpit about her 
 marriage, he now repeated before her face. Mary's 
 passion broke forth afresh in angry sobs. With a 
 masculine horror of tears, Erskine of Dun, "a man of 
 meek and gentle spirit," hastily and impotently tried 
 the comfort of kindly compliments on her beauty, 
 while Knox stood by in grim silence. But even in his 
 greatest, most authoritative moments, he was keenly 
 sensitive to the opinion others had of him. It irked 
 him now, the implied reproach of churlishness. 
 " Madame," he said, " in God's presence I speak ; I 
 never delighted in the weeping of any of God's crea- 
 tures ; yea, I can scarcely well abide the tears of my 
 own boys whom my own hand corrects, much less can I 
 rejoice in your Majesty's weeping. But ... I must 
 
KNOX AND THE COURT 140 
 
 sustain your Majestj^'s tears rather than I dare hurt my 
 conscience, or betray my Commonwealth through my 
 silence." Still more offended, the Queen commanded 
 " the said John " to pass out of the Cabinet and to 
 remain in the outer room. It was full of ladies and 
 courtiers. Knox stood among them with spare form, 
 worn face, and keen eyes looking out from under heavy 
 brows, the most notable figure that ever stood in a 
 Queen's ante-room. Staunch and silent, Lord Ochiltree 
 took up his stand beside him. The rest of the company 
 affected not to see him. Beside him were the ladies 
 of the Court, low-voiced, white-fingered, " in gorgeous 
 apparel." Himself for ever haunted by the doom pro- 
 nounced against mankind, he saw those bright creatures 
 careless and at their ease in the midst of threaten- 
 ing mysteries. It moved him to an outburst of irony, 
 stern indeed but not unkindly. In this " merry sort " 
 did he " forge " — to use his own graphic expression — 
 conversation with them. " Oh, fair 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 silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, 
 that it can neither carry with it gold, garnishing, 
 targatting (bordering with tassels), pearl, nor precious 
 stones." 
 
 In the end of June Lethington returned to Edinburgh 
 and by his indignant denial probably confirmed Knox's 
 belief in the reality of the Spanish project. Four months 
 later, through the secret information that he had always 
 at command, Knox knew certainly that it was again 
 under discussion, and that nine members of the Council 
 
(/ 
 
 j 
 
 150 JOHN KNOX 
 
 out of the twelve were prepared to accede to the Queeu's 
 wishes. He who had once "ruled the roost" had now 
 little influence with the Council, but he did what he 
 could to avert the danger by warning Cecil of what was 
 being carried on under a show of friendship with 
 England. Moray had quarrelled with him, but he had 
 confidence that Moray was still true to the religion he 
 professed. "If the man most inward with you and 
 dear unto me for those graces which God had bestowed 
 upon him, be such as both our hearts wish him to be, 
 then will the few number that yet remain uncorrupted 
 strive for a season against the force of the blinded 
 multitude." If he follow the contrary fashion, Knox 
 foresees nothing but destruction. 
 
 After all they came to nothing, those plots and 
 counter-plots. Don Carlos' condition, mental and 
 physical, forbade the thought of marriage at that time, 
 nor had Philip fully made up his mind to take all the 
 consequences of an alliance with the Scottish Queen. 
 
 Hardly a twelvemonth later than their last interview 
 at Holyrood, Mary was in her turn highly incensed at 
 Knox's projected marriage. In March 1564, Randolph 
 writes to Cecil : " Mr. Knox hath been twice proclaimed 
 in church to be married upon Palm Sunday to Margaret 
 Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, whereat the Queen 
 stormeth wonderfully, for that she is of the blood and 
 name." Some months before he had deprecated Cecil's 
 incredulous laughter when he mentioned rumours of 
 Knox's engagement to this " Lord's daughter, a very 
 young lass, not above sixteen years old." It was probably 
 to please her parents that this poor child consented to the 
 match. The marriage, undignified and almost grotesque 
 in itself, was twisted into endless ugly calumnies by 
 
KNOX AND THE COURT 151 
 
 Knox's enemies. The mildest and wisest comment on 
 it is Randolph's : " In this I wish that he had done 
 otherwise." We know little of the second Mrs. Knox, 
 except that she was a faithful and affectionate wife. 
 Knox's few allusions to her are possibly a shade tenderer 
 than those to Marjorie Bowes. Two years after his 
 death she married again — this time, perhaps, to please 
 herself. Her second husband was Andrew Ker of 
 Faldonside, notorious as one of Riccio's murderers. He 
 was, by conviction, an earnest Protestant, and a ruffian 
 by habit and repute. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 KXOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON. 
 
 In the early days after her return to Scotland, no- 
 thing could have been more studiously moderate than 
 Mary's action with regard to religion. For her own 
 part, she adhered firmly to her Mass ; but, when a 
 public celebration on All Hallows, November 1561, had 
 excited another popular tumult, she acquiesced in the 
 arrangement that she was henceforth to have her 
 services in private. 
 
 It was on this occasion that a meeting was held 
 between Moray, Lethington, and others of the Nobility 
 on the one hand, and the preachers on the other, to 
 discuss whether subjects might lawfully suppress the 
 idolatry of their rulers. The nobles, having by their 
 votes secured the practical result that the Queen might 
 have her Mass, agreed to send the general question to 
 be settled by the infallible oracle, John Calvin. Knox 
 offered to be scribe, but Lethington undertook the office 
 himself, affirming that " there stood mickle in the 
 information." 
 
 Whatever Mary's ultimate plans might be, she " was 
 not so atfectioned to her Mass that she would leave a 
 kingdom for it," Randolph wrote to Cecil that she had 
 
KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 153 
 
 very early made up her mind that three poiuts were neces- 
 sary, " To have peace with England, to be served v/ith 
 Protestants, and to enrich herself with the Abbey lands." 
 It must always be remembered of course that Mary 
 showed Randolph exactly so much of her views as 
 would read agreeably in his report to the English 
 Court ; the tenor of her correspondence with her 
 uncles was quite different. 
 
 The General Assembly of the Church met for the 
 third time in December 1561. Then became evident 
 the difference between those who were really zealous for 
 religion — chiefly the ministers, burghers, and lesser lairds 
 — and those — chiefly courtiers and great nobles — who 
 had other and more political objects in view. The noble- 
 men withdrew themselves from their brethren and met 
 in the Abbey of Holyrood. In their anxiety to avoid fi'ic- 
 tion with the Queen, they began to call in question the 
 legality of such conventions or assemblies. As usual, 
 the protagonists on either side were Knox and Lething- 
 iou. They were well matched; if Lethington had a 
 quick and polished mockery, peculiarly exasperating to 
 an opponent in deadly earnest, Knox had a shrewd 
 satiric humour of his own. Moreover he had at his 
 command spiritual threatenings that Lethington could 
 not afford to disregard. Himself an enlightened child 
 of the Renaissance, they probably affected him but 
 little, but they influenced other men, and public opinion 
 is the very element in which politicians have to work. 
 When it was proposed, in the Assembly of 1561, to 
 ratify the Book of Discipline, it was found how hollow 
 had been the subscriptions of the year before. Lething- 
 ton had never been deceived. How many of the sub- 
 scribers, he asked, would be subject to it ? Would the 
 
154 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Duke ? They had but subscribed, he added, " m fide 
 parentum, as the bairns are baptized." So Knox's 
 noble scheme was shelved, and the Reformers and their 
 friends had to make what conditions they could for the 
 support of their Church. The provision was meagre 
 enough. Of the rents of the benefices two-thirds were 
 to go to the present possessor for his lifetime, of the 
 remaining third half was appropriated to the support of 
 the Protestant Ministers, half was to go for " the Queen's 
 necessities." Knox spoke out plainly in the indignation 
 of his soul, " I am assured that the Spirit of God is not 
 the author of this order ; for, first, I see two parts freely 
 given to the Devil, and the third must be divided 
 between God and the Devil." If the Church had even 
 received her portion equitably it would have been 
 slender, but Knox only foretold the fact when he added, 
 " Ere it be long the Devil shall have three-parts of the 
 third." Court patronage was the great gulf that 
 swallowed up the funds. When benefices fell vacant, 
 Mary bestowed them on laymen without making 
 stipulations for the support of Ministers, George 
 Buchanan, for instance, sturdy Reformer and Republican, 
 enjoyed later the temporalities of Crosraguel unfettered 
 by any obligations. Another form of Court favour was 
 to remit the payment of " the thirds " to those who held 
 benefices. Year after year " the thirds " of St. Andrews 
 and Pittenweem were remitted to Moray ; the same 
 benevolence was also shown to Argyle. (It is fair to 
 add that, at the instance of a later Assembly, these 
 leaders of Protestantism did undertake to support the 
 Ministers out of their superfluity.) 
 
 The Catholic prelates had the mortification of seeing 
 their rivals recognized as the Church of the country, 
 
KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 155 
 
 but they had secured a main point — life-interest in their 
 benefices. It was the Ministers of the Church by law 
 established who were bitterly disappointed. Unreason- 
 able and impracticable as was their determination to 
 force their unmitigated Protestantism on their Catholic 
 Queen, they were convinced that only by such a course 
 could they secure the blessing of Heaven. The " fear- 
 ful idolatry of the Mass," which was certain to bring 
 down God's judgment " on the head and tail, the in- 
 obedient prince and sinful people," could not be stamped 
 out as long as it was maintained by the Queen and 
 sanctioned by her Protestant Council. Against these 
 evils preaching and elaborate Church Discipline availed 
 nothing. What was there left for them to do ? " Com- 
 plain ! " answered Lethington impatiently. " Whom 
 to ? " " To the Queen's Majesty." " If the sheep," 
 answered Knox, " shall complain to the wolf that the 
 wolves and whelps have devoured their lambs, the 
 complainer may stand in danger ; but the offender, we 
 fear, shall have leave to hunt after his prey." " Such 
 comparisons," said Lethington, " are very unsavoury." 
 Year after year in the petitions addressed by the General 
 Assemblies to the Queen's Majesty demanding redress 
 of grievances, the note of menace becomes more audible. 
 " If they be frustrate " (of their demands), runs the 
 petition of June 29, 1562, " men will attempt the utter- 
 most before, with their own eyes, they behold the house 
 of God demolished." 
 
 In August 1563 "the godly," losing patience and 
 prudence, attacked the Queen's chapel at Holyrood dur- 
 ing the celebration of Mass. She was herself absent, 
 but the priest and her French dames, terrified by the 
 intrusion of the angry mob, sent post-haste to summon 
 
156 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the magistrates. According to Knox, when these arrived 
 on the scene they found all quiet, and " peaceable (!) 
 men looking to the Papists and forbidding them to 
 transgress the laws." Readmits indeed that "a zealous 
 brother, Patrick Cranstouu," had burst into the chapel 
 and insulted the priest. " No further was done nor said," 
 adds Knox ; but, from the Criminal Trials, it appears 
 that two more of the godly were accused of " carry- 
 ing pistols, of convoking the lieges . . . and invading 
 sundry of the Queen's domestic servants." As Secretary 
 Lethington had said, " Mickle lies in the information." 
 
 The Queen was not unnaturally indignant, and the 
 two zealous brethren were summoned to " underlie the 
 Law." To Knox this was the signal for concerted 
 resistance on the part of the Protestants. With the 
 consent of the brethren in Edinburgh, he dispatched a 
 letter to the godly all over the country, summoning 
 them to be present in the capital to support their 
 brethren on the day appointed for the trial. It was a 
 distinct recognition of the Church as an independent 
 body in the State, issuing her own orders, and prepared 
 to resist the laws of the land when these opposed her 
 interest. 
 
 A copy of Knox's letter fell into the Queen's hands ; 
 it was welcome to her as a proof that must convict 
 her chief enemy of treason. In the end of December 
 Knox was summoned to appear before the Queen and her 
 Councillors. The Council sat late and, as Knox walked 
 down the dark, wintry streets from the Netherbow to 
 Holyrood, a crowd of his friends accompanied him, fear- 
 ing for his safety. They filled the court of the palace, 
 and even crowded up the stair. 
 
 The presence chamber was full of the Queen's 
 
KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 157 
 
 Councillors. As Knox entered, they took their places 
 according to rank. They were all his familiars — the 
 Duke, Moray, Ruthven, Glencairn, Argyle, and others — 
 men with whom he had taken counsel, whom he had 
 rebuked from the pulpit. Immediately after, Mary 
 entered in state and took her place at the head of 
 the long table, the Master of Maxwell and Secretary 
 Lethington standing on either side of her. Though 
 himself standing at the bar of judgment, Knox re- 
 mained unmoved, appraising with clear eyes the beau- 
 tiful woman opposite him. " Her pomp lacked one 
 principal point," he says, " to wit, womanly gravity ; 
 for when she saw John Knox standing at the other 
 end of the table, bareheaded, she first smiled and after 
 gave a gawf laughter (horse-laugh)." " Wot ye whereat 
 I laugh ? " she said. " Yon man garred (caused) me 
 greet (weep) and grat never tear himself. I will see 
 if I can gar him greet." 
 
 Though some of the members of Council might be 
 offended with Knox, they were not prepared to see him 
 condemned. Some like Glencairn, Moray, and Argyle 
 had regard and veneration for him, and all must have 
 felt that he was a powerful bulwark against a possible 
 Catholic reaction such as might at any time sweep over 
 Scotland, as it had swept over England under Mary 
 Tudor. There was consequently no desire to find him 
 guilty, except on the part of Mary and her supporters, 
 
 Lethington conducted the examination and accused 
 Knox of "convoking the lieges" without authority. 
 Ruthven broke in, urging in Knox's defence, "Daily 
 he makes convocation of the people to prayer and 
 sermon, and, whatever your Grace and others may 
 think, we think it no treason." This legal sophistry, 
 
158 JOHN KNOX 
 
 of which even " the Antichrist of Rome " need not have 
 been ashamed, was tacitly adopted by Knox. Next it 
 was urged against him that he had accused the Queen 
 of cruelty. At this point Mary impatiently interrupted 
 her Secretary, and heaped reproaches on Knox. He had 
 defied her authority; he had made her weep. Her 
 vehemence probably confirmed him in contempt for 
 what he had described as the " foolish, mad, and frantic " 
 character of women. " I began, Madame," said he, " to 
 reason with the Secretary whom I take to be a far 
 better dialectician than your Grace." 
 
 In the end Knox was dismissed, his judges refusing 
 to condemn him in spite first of the persuasions and 
 then of the angry taunts of the Queen, 
 
 He had stood his trial unmoved ; what pierced him 
 to the heart was the criticism of his own party. At 
 the next Assembly, when diverse questions were moved, 
 to all men's surprise he remained silent. At last, after 
 several had questioned the reason of his behaviour, he 
 burst out and demanded that they should either acquit 
 or condemn him. "Words," he said, "fearful and 
 dolorous to my heart . . . were plainly spoken, and 
 that by some Protestants, * What can the Pope do more 
 than send forth his letters and expect them to be 
 obeyed?'" 
 
 The last and most notable controversy between Knox 
 and Lethington took place during the General Assembly 
 of June 1564. Lethington, with mischievous enjoy- 
 ment of what he knew to be their real feelings, gravely 
 called on the Ministers present to give thanks to 
 Almighty God for the religious freedom they enjoyed 
 under the tolerant rule of the Queen. Then, but still 
 with perfect suavity, he proceeded to find fault with 
 
KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 159 
 
 the doctrine generally preached concerning obedience 
 to princes, and more especially with the customary form 
 of prayer for the Queen. Directing his speech to Knox, 
 he said, with an audacious irony that must have taxed 
 his gravity, "But especially we must crave of you 
 our brother, John Knox, to moderate yourself . . . 
 because that others by your example may imitate the 
 like liberty, howheit not ivith the same modesty and 
 foi^esight. Ye pray," he continued, "for the Queen's 
 Majesty with a condition, ' Illuminate her heart if Thy 
 good pleasure be ' ... in so doing ye put a doubt in 
 the people's head of her conversion." 
 
 " Not I, my Lord, but her own obstinate rebellion 
 causes more than me to doubt of her conversion." 
 
 " Whereunto rebels she against God ? " 
 
 "In all the actions of her life," was the sweeping 
 reply. Two special iniquities are however singled out ; 
 she maintains " that idol the Mass," and refuses to hear 
 the preaching of the Gospel. "When," asked Knox, 
 " shall she be seen to give her presence to the public 
 preaching ? " 
 
 "I think never," answered Lethington with con- 
 viction, " as long as she is thus entreated." 
 
 The question at issue was the " obedience," and — as 
 Knox would have added — " disobedience due to magis- 
 trates." In his sermon of the day before he had drawn 
 a sharp distinction between the person of the ruler and 
 the " ordinance of God," which is " the conservation of 
 mankind, the punishment of vice, and the maintaining 
 of virtue," and above ruler and ruled alike. In demo- 
 cratic days men recognize this "ordinance of God" in 
 the accumulated results of the human conscience and 
 experience embodied in laws and institutions and 
 
160 JOHN KNOX 
 
 supported by the general consent of society, Knox 
 apparently believed that this " ordinance of God " was 
 committed to a righteous renmant in the community, 
 acting in conformity to the oracles laid down in the 
 Bible and according to precedents drawn from the 
 Jewish Commonwealth. It is noticeable that he never 
 indicates anybody in the nation as the depositaries of 
 this formidable trust; one is inclined to think that 
 what he had in his mind was the Church expressing 
 her will through the lips of certain inspired preachers. 
 It follows plainly that such a body could not long be 
 bound to implicit obedience to rulers ; here Scripture 
 precedents were clearly on the side of righteous subjects 
 disobeying and even controlling evil princes. Lething- 
 ton makes the admission that active obedience may 
 not be rendered to unlawful commands, but takes his 
 stand on the doctrine — destined to play so large and 
 so mean a part in later English politics — of passive 
 resistance. 
 
 Far nobler and freer is Knox's contention : " Hereof, 
 my Lord, it is plain that God craves not only that a 
 man do no iniquity in his own person, but also that he 
 oppose himself to all iniquity so far forth as in him 
 lies." 
 
 "Then will ye make subjects to control their princes 
 and rulers," answered Lethington, as if this were a 
 rednctio ad absurdum. 
 
 But Knox is no whit aghast at the conclusion, " And 
 what harm should the Commonwealth receive if that 
 the corrupt affections of ignorant rulers were moderated, 
 and so bridled by the wisdom and discretion of godly 
 subjects, that they should do wrong nor violence to no 
 man ? " 
 
KNOX AND MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON 161 
 
 Letlnngton now approaches the practical issue of the 
 debate. It is no question here of resisting the perse- 
 cution of princes. The contention is, May and ought 
 the Queen's Mass to be taken from her? Knox 
 answered stiffly that not only ought idolatry to be 
 repressed, but the idolater ought to die the death. 
 Such a conclusion must have been repugnant to the 
 good sense and enlightenment of Lethington, but he 
 was painfully weighted in controversy by having, out 
 of deference to public opinion, to acknowledge the 
 unimpeachable authority of any and every text of 
 Scripture. Unfortunately he forgot the precedent 
 Knox had given nine years previously for doubting 
 the inspiration of prophet or apostle where they dis- 
 agreed with his own doctrine.^ Lethington made the 
 admission that practically lost his case, " I knoAV the 
 idolater is commanded to die the death." To plead the 
 inviolability of princes was, after this, a waste of labour, 
 though a pompous list of quotations from Luther, 
 Calvin, Bucer and Musculus strengthened his case. 
 Knox was familiar with the opinions of these "most 
 famous men of Europe " ; one doubts if, in his heart, 
 he respected them much. In the present instance 
 their judgment was beside the mark, they were laying 
 down rules for Christians in a helpless minority; he 
 had in his mind, " a people assembled together in one 
 body of a Commonwealth unto whom God has given 
 sufficient force not only to resist but to repress . . . 
 idolatry." 
 
 Every point of this lengthy controversy had been 
 illustrated by quotations from Scripture, and Biblical 
 analogies are heavy armour to fight in. Lively as was 
 
 1 See p. 46. 
 
 M 
 
162 JOHN KNOX 
 
 his knowledge of Jewish history, the Secretary could 
 hardly meet Knox on every detail of the stories of 
 Jezebel, Jehu, and Uzziah. At the end these many 
 illustrations had only obscured counsel. " I cannot 
 tell," said Lethington wearily, " what has been con- 
 cluded." Knox on the contrary was satisfied that 
 he had clearly proved "that God's people have 
 executed God's law against their King, having no 
 further regard to him than if he had been the most 
 simple subject within this realm." "Well," said 
 Lethington, " I fear ye shall not have many learned 
 men of your opinion." " The truth," answered Knox, 
 " does not cease to be the truth because men misknow 
 it." Still he is not, he thanks God, without witnesses ; 
 he too can produce his list of authorities, certain 
 ministers of Magdeburgh who had subscribed the 
 declaration : " That to resist a tyrant is not to resist 
 God, nor yet His ordinance." 
 
 Lethington, like most of the world, was only prepared 
 to admit such authorities as bore the hall-mark of 
 celebrity. "Homines obscuri'' he said contemptuously. 
 " Dei tamen servi" answered Knox, democrat and con- 
 temner of authorities. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF THE UNGODLY. 
 
 It was an impossible thing in the sixteenth century 
 for a Catholic prince to rule peacefully over a Pro- 
 testant community, or even over a community where a 
 majority was Protestant. Moray and Lethington tried 
 to ignore this fact; dazzled by hopes of the English 
 succession and of some great foreign alliance, they per- 
 suaded themselves that Mary — perhaps the cleverest 
 and most ambitious woman in Europe — would consent 
 to leave the administration of her kingdom in their 
 capable hands. Knox was under no such delusion. He 
 believed such an arrangement to be impossible and did 
 his utmost to make it so. 
 
 By the spring of 1564, Mary must have been heartily 
 sick of the dissimulation she had been compelled to 
 practise. While she continued to endorse the acts 
 against her co-religionists in Scotland, she was actively 
 corresponding with the Pope, assuring him of her devo- 
 tion to the Church and determination to restore her 
 people to its fold, and receiving in return his blessing 
 and promise of help (February and June 1564). The 
 pretence of friendship with the Queen of England had 
 grown threadbare with the friction of secretly op- 
 posing interests and ostensible affection. Elizabeth in 
 
164 JOHN KNOX 
 
 1564 insulted her cousin by offering her as a husband 
 her own discredited lover, Lord Robert Dudley ; " her 
 groom," Mary called him in disdain. This facile noble- 
 man, already in correspondence with the King of Spain 
 and the French Huguenots, thought it worth his while 
 to try and conciliate the Scottish Reformer. Knox 
 was not pervious to flattery; his reply was cautious 
 and non-committal; he contented himself with point- 
 ing Lord Robert to the steep and thorny path to 
 Heaven and gave no encouragement to his designs on 
 the Scottish throne. 
 
 Deeply disappointed by the failure of the Spanish 
 schemes, Mary, in the summer of 1564, turned her 
 thoughts towards her cousin Lord Darnley, after herself, 
 the next heir to the English throne and the hope of 
 the English Catholics. All that summer rumours were 
 rife of this change in the Queen's policy. Knox, always 
 on the alert for signs of danger, wrote to Randolph in 
 May 1564 : " The Mass shall up; the Bishop of Glasgow 
 and Abbot of Dunfermline come as ambassadors from 
 the General Council (of Trent). My Lord Bothwell 
 shall follow with power to put in execution whatsoever 
 is demanded, and our Sovereign will have done ; and 
 then shall Knox and his preaching be pulled by 
 the ears." 
 
 With growing confidence Mary pursued her inde- 
 pendent policy; in September 1564 the first step 
 towards the Darnley alliance was made by the recall of 
 his father, Lennox. It is probable that one of Mary's 
 motives at this time was a desperate desire to escape 
 from her brother's tutelage. Knox said that she hated 
 him " for the image of God that was apparent in him," 
 but Knox is hardly an impartial judge. She probably 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE UNGODLY 165 
 
 thought that she had other and sufficient reasons for 
 distrusting and disliking him. He was recognized by 
 the Catholics as their chief opponent; he had always 
 been a close ally of the English Queen ; he stood peril- 
 ously near the throne and commanded popular confi- 
 dence. After the breach between them was complete, 
 Mary referred bitterly in a proclamation to " some who 
 bore the whole sway with us," and who "would be 
 kings themselves, or at least leaving to us the bare 
 name and title, would take to themselves the credit 
 and whole administration of the kingdom." 
 
 There are three significant items of news in the 
 letters Randolph wrote to Cecil under the dates 
 February 19 and March 4 (1565) respectively. "Darn- 
 ley comes to Court and is well received. It is suspected 
 that his presence may hinder other things and that his 
 religion is Popish." The next is : " Murray of Tulli- 
 bardine comes from Bothwell out of France to sue 
 for . . . liberty (?'. c. for Bothwell) to return ; " and the 
 third is : " An Italian Piedmontese, a singer, is in place 
 of Raulet, her secretary for the French." Each of 
 these men, Darnley, Bothwell, Riccio, was to have a 
 sinister influence on the fate of the woman who, in 
 her turn, was to involve each of them in death or 
 dishonour. 
 
 Darnley was merely a petulant, dissolute lad, insolent 
 in prosperity, abject in adversity, pushed into a great 
 position by the ambition of a clever mother and the 
 brief infatuation of the Queen. A far abler man was 
 Riccio. He had made himself indispensable to the 
 Queen by his ability and devotion to her interests. 
 From the time he undertook her foreign correspond- 
 ence her relations to Rome certainly grew closer. He 
 
166 JOHN KNOX 
 
 was popularly suspected of being in the pay of the 
 Pope. In Bothwell, Mary knew that she had a violent 
 and unscrupulous servant who would hesitate at no 
 crime in her interests. Surrounded as she was by overt 
 enemies and doubtful friends, she felt the value of his 
 ruffianly fidelity. " Our Queen thinks to have him at 
 all times ready to shake out of her pocket against us 
 Protestants,"^ Knox had written to Randolph a year 
 earlier (April 1564). 
 
 Through the spring of 1565, Mary, Riccio and 
 Darnley ruled the Court in their own way, surrounding 
 themselves with the most reckless of the younger 
 Nobility. The Protestant nobles, the old Lords of the 
 Congregation, withdrew more and more from Court, 
 and in March Moray, the Duke of Chatelherault and 
 the Earl of Argyle drew up a bond for their mutual 
 support and defence. 
 
 It is an irreparable loss that just at this point where 
 the history becomes most complicated and dramatic, 
 Knox's narrative comes to an end. He had been re- 
 conciled to Moray — probably about the date of Lennox's 
 return (September 1564) — and was doubtless in the 
 confidence of the Protestant Lords, but of this there is 
 no record. It was a time of plots and counter-plots. 
 Disquietude and suspicion took possession of the people ; 
 there was constant friction between the old religion 
 and the new. The Catholics were emboldened to hold 
 their services more openly; even in the Queen's ab- 
 sence (February 1565) many resorted to her chapel in 
 Holyrood. A priest, discovered saying Mass, was tied 
 for several hours to the Cross of Edinburgh by the 
 
 ^ The letter in whicli this passage occurs is anonymous and is 
 variously ascribed to Knox or Kirkcaldy of Grange. 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE UNGODLY 167 
 
 authorities, and pelted by the fierce mob with rotten 
 eggs till he was insensible. Naturally enough Mary 
 hotly resented this outrage. Still she was not prepared 
 to break with the Protestants. More than ever in need 
 of popular support, she even courted their approval. 
 She promised vaguely to hear certain preachers. Above 
 all others, she said, she would gladly hear the Super- 
 intendent of Angus, "for he was a mild and sweet- 
 natured man, with true honesty and uprightness, John 
 Erskine of Dun." When, however, the General As- 
 sembly made its usual impracticable and aggressive 
 demand for the suppression of the Mass as well in the 
 Queen's own person as generally, she answered roundly 
 that she would not give up the religion in which she 
 had been brought up nor imperil her alliance with the 
 Catholic powers. The brethren in Edinburgh, regard- 
 ing this as a challenge, held a tumultuous meeting on 
 St. Leonard's Crags, chose leaders, and behaved like 
 men on the eve of a revolt. At Stirling the Protestant 
 Lords, Moray, the Duke, Argyle, Kirkcaldy of Grange, 
 Ochiltree, Glencairn were already under arms and 
 believed themselves to be secure of support from the 
 English Queen. 
 
 Elizabeth was, or pretended to be, highly incensed 
 by Mary's proposed marriage with Darnley. Her 
 cousin's displeasure and the opposition of the Pro- 
 testant Lords only incited Mary to precipitate action ; 
 on Sunday, July 28, she made her first irreparable 
 mistake by marrying Darnley. After the wedding 
 there was a short interval of inaction like the ominous 
 hush before the breaking of a thunder-storm. Sum- 
 monses were sent to all the Nobility to appear in arms 
 within fifteen days to assist the Queen against the 
 
168 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Rebel Lords. At the same time futile attempts were 
 made to conciliate the Protestants in Edinburgh. On 
 Sunday, August 19, Daruley went in state to St. Giles' 
 to hear Knox jjreach from the text " Oh, Lord our God, 
 other lords than Thou have ruled over us." This is 
 the only sermon of Knox's that has come down to us, 
 and it must be confessed that without the passion of 
 his voice and manner, the notes of the trumpet sound 
 tame and long drawn out. On that Sunday morning 
 however the excitement that was filling all men's 
 hearts supplied sufficient weight to the words of the 
 preacher. Sitting sullen and restless under the in- 
 ordinate length of the sermon — Knox himself admits 
 that it exceeded the appointed time by more than an 
 hour — Darnley was startled into attention by certain 
 emphatic passages. "The same justice remaineth in 
 God to punish thee, Scotland," rang out the voice from 
 the pulpit, "and thee, Edinburgh in especial, that 
 before punished Judah and the City of Jerusalem . . . 
 for this is the only cause why God taketh away * the 
 strong man and the man of war, the judge and the 
 prophet, the prudent and the aged, the captain and the 
 honourable, the counsellor and the cunning artificer.' " 
 Dull as he was, even the King could supply the names 
 that occurred to the minds of all present — Moray, Glen- 
 cairn, Grange, Argyle, Ochiltree. Still more distinctly 
 fell the next sentence on his awakened sense : " And I 
 will appoint, saith the Lord, children to be their princes 
 and babes shall rule over them. Children arc ex- 
 tortioners of My people, and women have rule over 
 them." 
 
 Darnley returned to Holyrood and, like the petulant 
 boy he was, refused to eat his dinner till he had avenged 
 
THE TRIUMPH OF THE UNGODLY 169 
 
 his outraged vanity. Late that evening Knox was 
 brought from his bed to appear before the Council. 
 He was suspended from preaching during such time as 
 their Majesties should remain in Edinburgh, It was 
 a nominal penalty ; a week later the King and Queen 
 had departed towards the West to take vengeance 
 on the Rebel Lords. Mary was to know the sensation 
 of riding at the head of an army in a steel cap with 
 pistols in her saddle-bow. Even Knox is forced into 
 an unwilling tribute of admiration. " Albeit, the most 
 part waxed weary," he wrote, " yet the Queen's courage 
 increased man-like so much, that she was ever with the 
 foremost." The rapidity and decision of her action 
 ensured success. The Protestant Lords, not daring to 
 risk a battle, eluded Mary, and on August 31, 1565, 
 rode by the West Port into Edinburgh, in number 
 merely thirteen hundred men. Knox, sitting in his 
 study in the Netherbow, heard the Castle guns opening 
 fire on them as they rode up the West Bow. "The 
 terrible roaring of guns," he writes, " and the noise of 
 armour do so pierce my heart that my soul thirsteth 
 to depart." The people of Edinburgh, so valiant against 
 helpless priests, so warlike on St. Leonard's Crags, 
 refused to join the Lords though they were offered 
 good pay "for defending the glory of God." With no 
 following in their own country, the Lords were basely 
 repudiated by their ally. Queen Elizabeth, and in their 
 poverty and humiliation found but a bare and inhospit- 
 able admittance into England. Mary's triumph over 
 her enemies seemed complete. 
 
 u 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE GENERAL FAST. (MARCH 1566.) 
 
 Clouds Avere gathering round the Reformed Church 
 when the General Assembly met on December 28, 
 1565. Though Mary still affected an unaggressive 
 policy in religious matters, Catholic rites were openly 
 celebrated and it had become the fashion to neglect 
 the sermon and attend the Royal Chapel. Among 
 the Queen's immediate following, Bothwell alone sturdily 
 refused to go to Mass. 
 
 The Protestant Ministers were full of anxiety about 
 their own position. The Laird of Pitarrow, who had 
 been Controller or Treasurer of the Church, had joined 
 the Rebel Lords ; since his departure the Ministers 
 had not received one penny of their stipends, Mr. 
 James Melville, in his graphic and intimate Diary, 
 gives a touching picture of the distress prevalent in the 
 homes of the clergy. Promising lads were removed from 
 school to receive intermittent teaching from fathers 
 burdened with too much work and too many cares. 
 The children of the household became pathetically 
 familiar with anxiety for daily bread, or, with precocious 
 sympathy, feared lest the head of the family might be 
 driven by poverty to relinquish his charge, and so lose 
 
THE GENERAL FAST 171 
 
 his part in the Kingdom of God, Ballads of godly 
 exhortation passed from hand to hand. 
 
 " Who so do put hand to the plough, 
 And therefrom backward goes ; 
 The Scripture makes it plain enough, 
 My Kingdom is not for those." 
 
 There are two letters of Knox written during this 
 Assembly; one to the Ministers whom poverty was 
 driving to give up their cures, one to the congregations 
 on behalf of the Ministry. In the first letter the reality 
 of the trial is gravely admitted. " We who admonish 
 you are not ignorant, neither yet altogether without 
 experience how vehement a dart poverty is." When 
 he had himself left London with ten groats in his 
 pocket and the long road to Newcastle before him, it 
 had troubled him " but little." So now, he exhorts his 
 brethren " to be ashamed to faint suddenly, even in the 
 brunt of the battle." "It is but poverty that as yet 
 doth threaten us, which, if we be not able to contemn, 
 how shall we abide the fury and terror of death ? " 
 
 The letter addressed to the laity has a different but 
 an equally direct and noble message. Men, he tells 
 them, are now called on to testify to the reality of 
 their faith by making a sacrifice of their substance. 
 " Let us therefore begin to reverence the blessed 
 Evangel of our salvation. Reverence and magnify it 
 we cannot, when that Ave suff'er the true preachers 
 thereof to be oppressed with poverty before our eyes, 
 and yet we shut up the bowels of mercy from them." 
 
 Poverty and an uncertain future were not the only 
 ills that troubled the Church of Scotland ; disquieting 
 rumours came from abroad of a secret bond that was 
 
172 JOHN KNOX 
 
 being formed between the great Catholic powers for 
 the destruction of the Reformation. Everywhere it was 
 currently reported that the Council of Trent had decreed 
 that Bishops and Cardinals should be taxed for this 
 good work. The Scottish Protestants feared, and not 
 without reason, that their Church would be among 
 the first to be attacked. Substantially these rumours 
 corresponded with the facts, though the alliance had 
 not been completed before the death of Pius IV, in 
 December 1565. His successor, Pius V, was a militant 
 Catholic whose little finger was thicker than his 
 predecessor's loins. In January 1566 he sent a message 
 to urge on Mary the restoration of her kingdom to the 
 Catholic fold. Mary was at last preparing to commit 
 herself to a policy of aggression. " With the help of 
 God and your Holiness," she replied, " I will leap over 
 the dyke." 
 
 With the world full of these uneasy rumours, the 
 General Assembly had to prepare means of defence. 
 The " arm of the flesh " was powerless, politic alliances 
 had failed ignominously ; in this sore strait nothing 
 remained to the faithful but to return unto "the 
 Eternal, their God," with humility and repentance and 
 confession of sins. A general fast w^as fixed for the 
 beginning of March, and Knox drew up not only the 
 order to be observed in the same but also an instruc- 
 tion to the faithful how they might fitly prepare for 
 this act of public repentance. To his eye the Divine 
 judgment was plainly manifested in the apparent 
 triumph of the ungodly. God, he was convinced, must 
 deny His own justice before He could leave unpunished 
 the flagrant sins and shortcomings of His chosen people. 
 Avarice, greed and injustice had been shameful blots 
 
THE GENERAL FAST 173 
 
 on the Reformed Church of Scotland in her hour of 
 success ; peasants who had enjoyed " a moderate and 
 reasonable life " under their Catholic masters — it is 
 Knox's own admission — were so ground down by the 
 new landowners that " for poverty the ancient labourers 
 are compelled to leave the ground in the hands of 
 the lords." These are specific sins that must be re- 
 pented of and renounced on the day of national humi- 
 liation. The sophistries of the world — as threadbare 
 in the sixteenth century as now — are swept aside : 
 " We see no good reason why it should be thought 
 impossible that men . . . should begin to express in 
 their lives that which in word they have publicly pro- 
 fessed." It may not serve the landowner who oj^presses 
 the poor to plead : " I may do with my own as best 
 pleaseth me ; " nor may the dishonest merchant or 
 craftsman excuse himself, saying : " The world is evil, 
 and how can men live if they do not do as others do ? " 
 " Let us be assured," says Knox, " that these be the 
 sins that have provoked God ... to destroy and 
 utterly overthrow strong realms and flourishing Com- 
 monwealths." He lays down short and simple rules 
 for amendment : " Let every man speak the truth with 
 his brother ; let none oppress or defraud another in 
 any business ; let the bowels of mercy appear among 
 such as God hath called to His mercy." These passages 
 — bald though they be in form and lacking in Knox's 
 peculiar eloquence — are faithful echoes of the voice 
 that, centuries before, had rung through Israel : '•' Is 
 not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bonds 
 of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to 
 let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every 
 yoke ? " 
 
174 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Whilst the Church was thus taking counsel with 
 herself, other and very different meetings and conferences 
 were being held secretly in Edinburgh, The strange 
 and almost incredible fact is that the very men who 
 were engaged in preparing the order of the Fast were 
 probably not ignorant of the sinister plot that was being 
 hatched at their side. 
 
 Mary's prosperity had never seemed greater ; her 
 prospects of becoming a mother had increased her 
 popularity. But she was surrounded by men absorbed 
 in personal ambitions and grievances, and had no one 
 sincerely and disinterestedly her friend. Riccio indeed 
 was her devoted and confidential servant ; consequently 
 hatred of him united men moved by every motive, from 
 the mean and calumnious jealousy of Darnley to the 
 patriotism and religious zealotry of Knox. The bulk 
 of the Nobility despised the accomplishments of the 
 Italian, and fiercely envied his position ; the Protestants 
 saw in him an emissary of the Pope and the chief 
 obstacle to the return of the banished Lords. For 
 many weeks conclaves had been held in secret ; messen- 
 gers had been sent to Moray and his friends at New- 
 castle ; Randolph was aware of the plot ; in ambiguous 
 phrase Lethington hinted at it in a letter to Cecil ; 
 Riccio himself was warned of the danger ; Mary alone 
 seems to have been entirely unconscious. 
 
 She had fixed on Thursday, March 7, for the opening 
 of Parliament, when she meant to introduce a Bill of 
 Attainder and Forfeiture against Moray and the other 
 rebels. The General Fast was appointed to begin on 
 the previous Sunday, March 3, and to continue till the 
 following Saturday. Every day of that week, before 
 noon and after, the faithful crowded into St. Giles'. 
 
THE GENERAL FAST 175 
 
 Was it by accident that, for an occasion of national 
 confession of sins, the fiercest stories out of the Old 
 Testament had been chosen as appropriate lessons? 
 The rooting out of idolatry in Israel, Gideon destroying 
 the altar of Baal, Jael treacherously slaying the enemy 
 of her country, the destruction of the Benjamites; 
 these stories must have stirred dark, uneasy expectations 
 among the impressionable congregation. 
 
 On Thursday the Queen passed to the Tolbooth " in 
 wondrous gorgeous apparel," but it was noticed that 
 few of the Lords accompanied her. That day the Bill 
 of Attainder was prepared against Moray and his 
 friends. Quite near, in St. Giles', Knox was reading to 
 his congregation out of the Book of Esther, how 
 destruction was planned against God's people, and how 
 the services of faithful Mordecai were forgotten. In 
 the gathering twilight of the wintry afternoon the 
 lesson was completed of vain-glory suddenly overthrown : 
 " Yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in with 
 the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but 
 myself; and to-morrow also am I invited by her together 
 with the king ; " up to the vengeful climax : " So they 
 hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared 
 for Mordecai." Then the hoarse, high voice of the 
 preacher ceased, and the book was shut. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, March 9, this ominous Fast 
 came to an end, and at seven that evening Riccio sat 
 down to supper with the Queen in her cabinet. No 
 familiarity with the incidents that follow can lessen 
 their horror ; the appearance of Darnley's mean, hand- 
 some face at the supper party; his perfidious caress; 
 the sound of armed men behind the arras ; the appari- 
 tion of Ruthven grey and gaunt as a vengeful spectre ; 
 
176 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the dark, cruel face of Morton beliiud ; the outcry and 
 sudden darkness as the torches are overturned ; the 
 poor wretch clinging to Mary's skirts ; his dying shrieks 
 echoing from the outer entry. Hardly was the deed 
 completed when from the court below the window 
 came the tramp of feet and murmurs of an excited 
 crowd ; the Provost, alarmed at the tumult, had arrived 
 with the Town Guard ; Darnley's voice from the 
 open window assured them that all was well, and, 
 leaving a guard, they returned to Edinburgh. 
 
 Mary was not the woman to sit down tamely under 
 an outrage. With deliberate fascination and terrible 
 coolness of dissimulation, she lured Darnley back to her 
 side till the mean-spirited boy was fain to buy her 
 favour by betraying his fellow-conspirators. Taking 
 him with her, she stole secretly from Holyrood on the 
 night of Monday, March 11, and fled to Dunbar. The 
 conspirators, balked of their triumph and anxious about 
 their own fate, kept together in Edinburgh, but held 
 themselves prepared for flight. That Knox felt his 
 own position insecure is proved by a remarkable prayer 
 written on Tuesday, March 12, in which, as if on the 
 eve of a crisis, he settles his account with Almighty 
 God. It begins with that touch of greatness insepar- 
 able from everything he wrote : " John Knox, with 
 deliberate mind to his God." In his History he never 
 disguises nor modifies his exultation over the murder of 
 that " great abuser of our Commonwealth, that poltroon 
 and vile knave Davie, who was justly punished the 9th 
 of March " ; but in his pr yer there is no triumphant 
 thanksgiving, rather despont.cncy and heavy anxiety for 
 the future. The confession of sins with which the 
 prayer begins, sincere though it be, is sucli as devout 
 
THE GENERAL FAST 177 
 
 men have made in all ages ; the thanksgiving for special 
 mercies is heartfelt and individual. " For being drowned 
 in ignorance Thou hast given me knowledge above the 
 common sort of my brethren. . . Thou hast com- 
 pelled me to fore-speak as well deliverance to the 
 afflicted, as destruction to certain inobedient ; the per- 
 formance whereof, not I alone, but the very blind world 
 has already seen." 
 
 By March 18 Mary had collected her friends and 
 returned to Edinburgh to take vengeance on all who 
 Avere concerned in the murder. On her approach they 
 fled, Morton and Ruthven to Berwick, Lethington to 
 the Highlands, and "John Knox, Minister of Edinburgh, 
 likewise departed from the said burgh at two hours 
 after noon with a great mourning of the godly of 
 religion." 
 
 It is impossible to decide how far Knox was party to 
 the plot to remove Riccio. He was probably privy to 
 it to the same degree as Bedford and Cecil were privy 
 to it. His name, along with that of his colleague 
 John Craig, appears on the list copied in the hand- 
 writing of Bedford's clerk, and sent to the English 
 Government enclosed in Randolph's dispatch from Ber- 
 wick, March 21 ; it is absent from the second list (in 
 Randolph's handwriting) sent from Berwick on March 
 27, after Morton's arrival. Morton and Ruthven writing 
 to Cecil on the same date declare that none of the 
 Ministers "were art or part of that deed nor were 
 participate thereof." " Art or part," in Morton's phrase- 
 ology means, however, active participation, and does not 
 include knowledge of the plot.^ 
 
 ^ Cf. Earl of Morton's trial in Bannatyne's Memorials. 
 
 N 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 FALL OF MARY. (1567.) 
 
 For the next fifteen months (from March 1566 
 to June 1567) Knox was a fugitive, first in Kyle 
 and later in the North of England. Cut off from 
 preaching and from public life, he had — fortunately 
 for us — time to resume the writing of his History, laid 
 aside since 1560. Books I. and IV. were written at 
 this time. Perhaps the only writings with which this 
 History can be fitly compared are the historical books 
 of the Old Testament. Like the various writers of 
 Samuel and Kings Knox sees the course of history 
 against a clearly defined background of the Divine 
 purposes and judgments ; like them he breaks the 
 narrative to introduce episodes and dialogues out of pro- 
 portion to the scheme of the book but startling in their 
 picturesque reality. The style is terse and rapid, and 
 abounds in sentences winged and pointed like arrows. 
 Unlike most of his countrymen who — with the exception 
 of Lethington — wrote in Scots, Knox writes in clear, 
 excellent English, with an intermixture of Scotch 
 words. His Catholic opponent, Ninian Wingate, makes 
 it a reproach to him " that, through curiosity of nova- 
 tions," he had "forgotten that old plain Scots which 
 
FALL OF MARY 179 
 
 his niutlier learned him." The passionate prejudices 
 of the passing hour pervade and colour every page of 
 Books I, and IV. Mary of Guise is specially hateful 
 as the mother of "our Jezebel Mistress." At more 
 than one point, the writer breaks away from his story 
 to exult over the punishment of " that vile knave 
 Davie." In one emphatic passage he clearly incites to 
 rebellion, bidding men turn to their God Who will 
 either cut off that Avicked woman in her sin (the 
 original expression is coarser), " or else shall put it 
 in the heart of a multitude to take the same vengeance 
 upon her that has been taken of Jezebel and Athaliah." 
 Over against this passage on the margin are two entries, 
 one merely the date when it was penned, "April 
 1566," the other the exultant prayer "Perfice quod 
 coepisti, mi Deus, propter tui nominis gloriam," and 
 the significant date, "June 15, 1567," the day when 
 Mary's reign ended tragically on Carberry Hill. 
 
 To Knox the shame and discomfiture of her who had 
 been so radiant and gracious in her prosperity was a 
 triumphant vindication of God's just judgments ; to us, 
 who try and spell out the dark, pitiful story by the 
 uncertain light of contradictory records, it seems like 
 the last awful act of a tragedy where Mary is at once 
 the victim and the author of her fate. It is only 
 possible here to indicate certain moments in the drama. 
 After Riccio's murder, Mary had seen the necessity of 
 reconciliation with Moray ; in the following September 
 (1566) she brought herself to pardon Lethington, whose 
 services, indeed, she could not forego. All through 
 that summer it was noticeable to every one that none 
 so fully possessed her favour and confidence as Bothwell; 
 of all the inner circle of her Court, he alone had never 
 

 
 180 JOHN KNOX 
 
 betrayed her. Meanwhile her husband became daily 
 more intolerable to her, his fatuous and dissolute 
 behaviour would, in fact, have alienated a less high- 
 spirited woman. While Mary carried in her proud 
 heart an unforgiving remembrance of the part he 
 had played in Riccio's murder, his betrayal of his 
 allies had brought on him the malignant hostility of 
 all the nobles about the Court. When any man's 
 existence became obnoxious, there was but one method 
 of dealing with him in the Scotland of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 In the end of November 1566 Mary and her Court 
 were at Ciaigmillar, a castle in the neighbourhood of 
 Edinburgh. A scheme was arranged by Moray, Leth- 
 ington, Argyle, Huntly, and Bothwell for inducing the 
 Queen to restore Morton and others, banished for 
 Riccio's murder. If she would consent, they offered 
 in return to free her from her husband. In the 
 previous June (1566) Mary had given birth to a son. 
 Prince James, and she now demurred at any arrange- 
 ment that might cast a doubt on the child's legitimacy. 
 That a way might be found of disposing of the 
 father without injuring the son, was hinted by Leth- 
 ington, not obscurely. He added : " And albeit my Lord 
 of Moray, here present, be little less scrupulous for a 
 Protestant nor your Grace is for a Papist, I am assured 
 he will look through his fingers thereto, and will behold 
 our doings, saying nothing to the same." This notice- 
 able sentence — reported by Huntly and Argyle who 
 were both present — would seem to lay the same 
 measure of guilty foreknowledge on Mary and on 
 Moray. 
 
 It is possible — those who hold the Casket Letters 
 
FALL OF MAFvY 181 
 
 to be genuine must consider it certain — that beneath 
 this plot, lawless and cruel indeed, but not abnormally 
 base in that age and country, was another hideous 
 understanding between Mary and Bothwell. There 
 is one incident that might be brought in as evidence 
 that Bothwell, at least, was indulging ambitious dreams. 
 Curiously enough, this incident is also notable as calling 
 forth one of the only two public utterances of Knox 
 during the year in which he was a fugitive. On the 
 eve of starting for England his anxious vigilance for 
 the Church was roused by hearing that the Archbishop 
 of St. Andrews had "hy means of the Earl of Bothioell " 
 procured from Mary the restoration of his " consistorial 
 jurisdiction." This privilege was conferred on him 
 alone of all the Catholic prelates. Among other powers, 
 it put into his hands the decision of all cases of 
 marriage and divorce within his diocese ; and that 
 diocese included the Lothians in which Hailes, Both- 
 well's domicile, was situated. But what roused Knox's 
 alarm was the power of judging cases of heresy which 
 this "consistorial jurisdiction" would restore to the 
 arch-enemy of the Eeformed Church. He saw in it 
 the first step towards the re-establishment of the 
 Roman Antichrist. To submit to this new tyranny, 
 what is it, he asks, but " to separate ourselves and our 
 posterity from God ; yea, and to cut ourselves from the 
 freedom of this realm?" The Archbishop never sat 
 in judgment on a single heretic. The sole use he made 
 of his restored rights was, in the following May, to 
 pronounce sentence of divorce between James, Earl of 
 Bothwell, and Jean Gordon, his wife. 
 
 In the end of December 1.566 Knox departed to 
 England, bearing with him the protest of the Scottish 
 
1/ 
 
 182 JOHN KNOX 
 
 Church against the ritual innovations that Elizabeth 
 was forcing on her sorely perplexed prelates. Their 
 difficulties would hardly be lessened by the earnest 
 invective of the neighbouring Church against the 
 " Romish rags." 
 
 Of the ensuing months which Knox spent in Eng- 
 land, no record remains. If the monstrous events 
 which followed one another thick and fast in Scotland 
 drew passionate comments from him, unfortunately no 
 syllable has come down to us. 
 
 In the beginning of February Darnley, sick in body 
 but cheered in spirit by apparent reconciliation with his 
 wife, took up his abode in meanly-appointed lodgings 
 in the ruinous Kirk-o'-Field. On the 8tli of the same 
 month Moray, always determinedly blameless, obtained 
 permission to visit his wife at St. Andrews. On the 
 evening of the 9th, Mary sat in friendly converse with 
 her sick husband till ten, when she suddenly recollected 
 her promise to attend a masque at Holyrood in honour 
 of the wedding of Bastiat, her French servant, and 
 left him alone in the house with a couple of servants. 
 Between two and three next morning the citizens of 
 Edinburgh were startled out of their sleep by a loud 
 explosion. 
 
 Wliile, with fatal callousness, Mary left all investi- 
 gations of the murder to Bothwell, popular instinct at 
 once fixed on him as the author of the crime ; placards 
 posted on the door of the Tolbooth even bracketed the 
 Queen's name with his as an assenting party. Again 
 the Edinburgh mob played its ominous part as chorus 
 to the play. Strange voices heard at midnight in the 
 silent streets called aloud for vengeance on Bothwell 
 and the Queen. 
 
FALL OF MARY 183 
 
 Abroad, the darkest suspicion fell upon Mary. Her 
 faithful ambassador at the French Court, the Bishop 
 of Glasgow, was hardly himself convinced of her 
 innocence, and could get little credence when he 
 asserted it to others. In London the Spanish am- 
 bassador reported that many even among the Catholics 
 believed her guilty. 
 
 Guilty or innocent, her conduct was fatally im- 
 prudent. It was only after a lapse of two months, and 
 in consequence of pressure from England, that she 
 saved appearances by letting Bothwell stand an assize. 
 
 Argyle, the judge, was himself one of the conspirators, 
 the jury were venal; Both well's friends and followers 
 fidly armed filled the town ; Mary herself looked forth 
 and waved him God-speed as he rode under her window 
 to his trial. Old Lennox dared not appear for the 
 prosecution, and the shameless farce ended in triumph 
 for the murderer. On April 24, Bothwell waylaid and 
 carried Mary off to the castle of Dunbar. Whether 
 this Avas with or without her consent will always be a 
 disputed question. By May 3 they were back at Holy- 
 rood and Mary had announced her intention of marrying 
 her captor. So far his schemes had succeeded by virtue 
 of their very audacity. But the other Lords had not 
 conspired to murder Darnley merely to put Bothwell 
 in his place. Moray, very characteristically, had left 
 the country before Bothwell's assize and was now in 
 France. Lethington, Morton, Grange and the others 
 drew together to Stirling, vigilant and menacing. One 
 voice only was fearlessly raised in protest against these 
 infamous proceedings. John Craig, Knox's colleague, 
 standing in the presence of Bothwell and the Secret 
 Council, " laid to his charge, the law of adultery, the 
 
y 
 
 184 JOHN KNOX 
 
 ordinance of the Church, the law of ravishing, the sus- 
 picion of collusion betwixt him and his wife, the sudden 
 divorce, . . . and last, the suspicion of the King's death, 
 which his marriage would confirm." Admirers of Knox 
 may almost grudge his colleague such an opportunity ! 
 
 One miserable, feverish month of married life was all 
 that was gained by so much rashness and crime. On 
 June 15, on Car berry Hill, Mary and Bothwell were 
 parted for ever. The indignant decision of a whole 
 nation was too strong to be resisted even by wills as 
 passionate as theirs. 
 
 True to the Scotch love of decent legal forms, the 
 nobles in taking up arms against the pair kept up the 
 fiction that they were acting solely against Bothwell 
 and in defence of Mary. But on Carberry Hill, as soon 
 as the Queen was in their hands, they gladly connived 
 at the escape of her husband ; his trial and confession 
 would have complicated the situation painfully for most 
 of them. As it was, they found themselves in a wholly 
 untried and sufficiently difficult position. There were 
 various powers to be considered, for they were acting in 
 the face of all Europe. The French Court was quiescent 
 but Elizabeth would not for a moment endure the 
 dangerous precedent of subjects calling their sovereign 
 to account. By the beginning of July she had sent her 
 ambassador Throgmorton to Scotland to demand that 
 Mary should be set at liberty. At home the Queen 
 was hardly imprisoned at Lochleven, before the Hamil- 
 tons were forming a party, ostensibly on her behalf, 
 though they were equally willing to consent to her 
 death, if such a course would further the fortunes of 
 their house. But there was a power more formidable 
 than any of these that had to be reckoned with. The 
 
FALL OF MAKY 185 
 
 Scottish people had become articulate and were fiercely 
 demanding justice. When Mary passed along the 
 ranks after she had yielded to the Lords at Carberry 
 Hill, the men-at-arms cried aloud, " Burn the murderess 
 of her husband," till Grange silenced them, striking 
 with the flat of his sword. When she entered Edin- 
 burgh, " her face soiled with mud and tears," her 
 clothes bespattered, her whole frame shaken with 
 misery and impotent rage, the crowd, pressing on her, 
 yelled insults and curses. Throgmorton on his arrival 
 was astonished at the strength of popular feeling. 
 " The Lords," he said, " dared not show as much lenity 
 to the Queen as they would wish, for fear of the angry 
 people. The women be most furious and impudent 
 against the Queen, but yet the men be mad enough." 
 
 But popular sentiment against crime changes rapidly 
 into sentimental interest in the criminal whom justice 
 has overtaken. " Before many weeks were passed 
 the hatred of the people was by process of time turned 
 into pity." But between the self-interested policy 
 of the nobles and the fleeting passion of the crowd 
 lay the compact body of opinion held by the burghers 
 and country gentlemen, the men who made up the 
 strength of the Protestant Church. On July 20 the 
 Assembly met. Throgmorton had wished to have it 
 prorogued, Lethington had tried to persuade the more 
 moderate members to refrain from all matters touchins- 
 the Queen. Both recognized Mary's most formidable 
 enemies in these men of clear moral convictions and 
 relentless severity. "It is the public speech amongst 
 all the people and amongst all the estates, saving the 
 Councillors," Throgmorton reported to his Government, 
 " that their Queen hath no more liberty nor privilege 
 
186 JOHN KNOX 
 
 to commit murder nor adultery than any other private 
 person, neither by God's laws, nor by the laws of the 
 realm." It is not difficult to guess from whom this 
 lesson had been learned. 
 
 It was the policy of the Confederate Lords to profess 
 zeal for religion and to ally themselves with the 
 preachers. A few days after Mary's imprisonment, 
 Lord Glencairn had broken down the altars and images 
 at Holyrood, " to the great contentment " of the zealous 
 Protestants, At this date Knox was probably back at 
 Edinburgh to applaud the pious deed. At the end of 
 June, he, Craig and others of their colleagues were sent 
 by the Confederate Lords to the West Country to per- 
 suade the Hamiltons to enter into alliance with them. 
 The embassy was fruitless. Knox had no longer, as in 
 \J the first Civil War, power to control statesmen and 
 dictate a policy, but he had created a formidable public 
 opinion in the people at large, and this he continued to 
 direct and inflame by his sermons. He demanded open 
 judgment on the Queen and condign punishment if she 
 were proved guilty, threatening "the great plague of 
 God to this Avhole nation if she Avere spared." As the 
 mouthpiece of the newly-awakened national conscience* 
 as the voice of the Reformed Church, he enunciated 
 God's eternal decrees against murder and adultery, and, 
 in the face of Elizabeth and every Court in Europe, 
 insisted that Princes and Queens are subject to the laws 
 of their country. At the same time it cannot be denied 
 that Knox was influenced by personal animosity and 
 religious prejudice. More than once he had been the 
 apologist for murder ; no syllable of compunction softens 
 his exultation at the deaths of Beaton and Riccio. The 
 nature of Mary's guilt, if guilty she were, was, it is 
 
FALL OF MARY 187 
 
 true, peculiarly abhorrent. The Reformed Church was 
 specially severe on sins of the flesh, as the records of 
 every Assembly bear ample witness. But Knox has 
 left no expression of amazement at the special nature 
 of the crime, far less of any austere pity for the criminal, 
 rather he seems to exult that Mary's depravity (which 
 he had recognized from the beginning) should now be 
 patent to the whole world. From the moment of her 
 landing he had wished for her deposition. A woman in 
 authority, an idolatress ruling over a faithful people, 
 had been alike obnoxious to his political and his religious 
 convictions. It was probably the fulfilment of wishes / 
 he had long cherished in secret when Mary was com- 1/ 
 pelled to abdicate, and her brother, the Earl of Moray, 
 was appointed Regent for the infant Prince. 
 
 When James was crowned at Stirling on July 29, 
 Knox preached the sermon, taking for his text the 
 coronation of the young king Joash. It was a bitter 
 mortification to him that he could not persuade the 
 nobles to forego the Jewish rite of anointing. 
 
 On August 22, 1567, Moray was proclaimed Regent, / 
 
 He had carefully secured every step to the supreme 
 power; he had waited in France till the Confederate 
 Nobles were convinced that they could not do without 
 him ; in that strange midnight conversation with Mary 
 at Lochleven, he had so worked on her fears as to induce 
 her to urge him to accept the Regency ; but his main 
 strength lay in the support of the preachers and the 
 men they influenced. 
 
 No one has denied Moray's capacities as a ruler. 
 Like all the earlier Stuarts — Mary no less than her 
 father and grandfather — he had the prompt decision 
 and strong hand that could enforce his will. Moreover, 
 
188 JOHN KNOX 
 
 he had learned from Knox a moral and religious, albeit 
 narrow and rigid, ideal of his country's welfare. " He 
 seeks to imitate rather some that have led the people 
 of Israel than any captain of our age," wrote Throg- 
 morton, in the very early days of his Regency. Under 
 the care of such a ruler the Reformed Church might 
 fairly hope to recover the position she had held for a 
 moment before Mary's return (1560-61). It is significant 
 of the increased power of the Church that at the next 
 Assembly (December 1567), both the Earl and Countess 
 of Argyle were subjected to penance in the congrega- 
 tion; he for conjugal infidelity, she for her presence at 
 the Papistical rites of the young King's baptism. In 
 the Parliament of the same date the Thirds were 
 appointed for the sustentation of the Church. To Knox 
 it seemed at last as if his work were done, as if the 
 Joshua had arisen who was to lead into the Promised 
 Land the people he had himself led through the desert 
 from the House of Bondage. It is touching to find his 
 thoughts going back to the old days of peaceful exile 
 at Geneva. "God comfort that dispersed little flock, 
 amongst whom I once lived with quietness of conscience 
 and contentment of heart ; and amongst whom I would 
 be content to end my days, if so it would stand with 
 God's good pleasure ... I can give no reason that I 
 should so desire, other than that my heart so thirsteth." 
 Knox was premature in believing that his " battle " was 
 over ; in some ways, " the worst and the last " was still 
 to come. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 Moray's regency. (1567 — 1570.) 
 
 On May 2, 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven, 
 and set the whole world aflame again. Her defeat at 
 Langside and flight into England were to complicate 
 European politics for the next eighteen years. 
 
 There is an obscure little incident which curiously 
 and, as it turned out, fatally connects Knox with the 
 battle of Langside. On May 22, nine prisoners taken 
 on the field were put to an assize, convicted and 
 sentenced to death. It had always been Knox's 
 privilege to intervene between those condemned to 
 suffer and the last rigour of the law. The nine *' were 
 pardoned at the request of Mr. Knox." One of the 
 number was Hamilton of Bothwdlhaugh, 
 
 With the dreary and discreditable farce of the Con- 
 ferences at York and at "Westminster — where the 
 mutual accusations of Mary and her rebellious sub- 
 jects were submitted to Commissioners appointed by 
 Elizabeth, (October to December 1568,) — Knox had 
 no concern ; his biographer is thus mercifully spared 
 the perilous task of pronouncing on the genuineness of 
 the Casket Letters. With Knox at his elbow, instead 
 of Buchanan, Moray could not have held the wary, 
 
190 JOHN KNOX 
 
 compromising course he did ; at cue point prepared to 
 make a composition with Mary and to receive her back, 
 with restricted powers but whitewashed reputation, and, 
 at another, to produce evidence — carefully elaborated — 
 such as must, for very shame, have driven all her 
 friends from her. For indeed the effrontery and 
 cleverness of one Queen and the mendacity, wilfulness 
 and fickleness of the other, had woven a confused tangle 
 of lies and intrigues through which it seemed impossible 
 for any man to break his way with prudence and 
 honour. Knox, with his love of clear issues, must 
 have been profoundly disappointed with the verdict. 
 " Nothing," it was declared, " had been deduced against 
 the Earl of Moray and his adherents that may impair 
 their honour or allegiance ; and, on the other part, there 
 hath nothing been sufficiently produced against the 
 Queen their sovereign whereby the Queen of England 
 should take any evil opinion against the Queen, her 
 good sister." To Knox henceforth all the evils that 
 fell on the distracted realm of Scotland, — the plague 
 that visited Edinburgh in 1569, the famine that ensued, 
 tlie horrors of the three years of civil war that followed 
 — were God's judgments on the "reservation of that 
 wicked woman, whose iniquity known and lawfully con- 
 victed deserved more than ten deaths." 
 
 Moray returned to Scotland in January 1569. The 
 Conferences had at least this result, that Mary was kept 
 a prisoner in England while her brother was recognized 
 as Regent by the English Government. For the next 
 year, his last on earth, he was to lead what his great 
 ancestor James I. had called a " dog's life " in the 
 sleepless effort to repress disorder. In the North the 
 Earl of Huntley, in the West the Hamiltous, on the 
 
MORAY'S REGENCY 191 
 
 Border, restless freebooters, kept hiui constantly under 
 arms, while Elizabeth harassed him and Aveakened his 
 position by ill-timed proposals for Mary's restoration. 
 His chief associates and supporters were among the 
 zealous Protestants. The Ministers lent him the weight 
 of their spiritual authority; from the Assembly of 
 March 1569 a threat of excommunication was issued 
 against the Hamiltons couched in terms as forcible and 
 imperious as were ever used by Hildebrand or Thomas 
 a Becket. 
 
 In the autumn of 1569 the rumour reached Knox — 
 as all rumours did reach him — that it was proposed in 
 some quarters to patch up matters by marrying Mary to 
 the Duke of Norfolk. He broke out indignantly, "I 
 see England become more foolish than foolish Scotland. 
 For foolish Scotland would not obey the mouth of God 
 when He had delivered that vile adulteress and cruel 
 murderer of her own husband into their hands to have 
 suffered as her iniquity deserved." 
 
 In October the sudden, abortive Catholic rising in 
 the North of England shook Elizabeth's confidence and 
 constrained her to make common cause with Moray's 
 Government. In Scotland, it led to the final breach 
 between Moray and Lethington. It was not altogether 
 without reason that the Secretary " was suspected to be 
 the contriver of all the plots and conspiracies in 
 England and Scotland." From the day of Carberry 
 Hill onwards, he had consistently and secretly been 
 working in Mary's interests. He was in correspondence 
 with the Queen ; he was in the counsels of Norfolk ; 
 he secretly dictated the policy of Mary's friends in 
 Scotland. It was becoming imperative, by some means 
 or other, to get rid of " the necessary evil," as Moray 
 
192 JOHN KNOX 
 
 bitterly nicknamed his former friend. Complicity in 
 the King's murder was a convenient accusation to keep 
 in readiness; with justice it might have been brought 
 at any time against the chief men of both parties. At 
 the Convention at Stirling on September 3, it was 
 suddenly launched against the Secretary. " As long as I 
 Avas with them, they never accused me of the King's 
 murder; ... as long as I was a pillar to maintain 
 their unjust authority they never put at me as they 
 do," is his own bitter but matter-of-fact explanation. 
 
 He was sent to Edinburgh and received as prisoner 
 of State by the Captain of the Castle, Kirkcaldy of 
 Grange, not without opposition on the part of the 
 Kegent and his friends who had misgivings as to the 
 Captain's loyalty. Few men in Scotland could show as 
 fair a record as the Laird of Grange. He had been the 
 bravest and not the least self-sacrificing of the Protestant 
 leaders during the Civil War ; he had followed Moray 
 into exile when the fortunes of the Congregation were 
 at the lowest. But he had a chivalrous habit of being 
 on the weaker side. On the day when she lost every- 
 thing else, Mary won to her service the stoutest arm 
 and the most honest heart in Scotland. Lethington, 
 with his personal attraction, the active scheming of his 
 politic brain and the cunning straightforwardness of 
 speech which he affected, fascinated the simpler 
 character of the soldier. So persuasive was the tongue 
 of this " Machiavelli," that had it been possible it would 
 have deceived the very elect. On September 20, 
 Lethington wrote hopefully to Mary, "I have of late 
 dealt with diverse Ministers here, who will not be 
 repugnant to a good accord ; howsoever, I think Nox 
 (sic) be inflexible," It was impossible for a man of the 
 
MORAY'S REGENCY 193 
 
 world and a politiciaD like the Secretary to realize the 
 passion of religious hatred with which the Reformer 
 regarded "Satan's dearest lieutenant," the Queen of 
 Scots. Knox's political sagacity demanded her removal 
 as imperatively as his religious zeal demanded the 
 execution of God's righteous judgments on her iniquity. 
 On January 2, 1570, he wrote urgently to Cecil : " If ye 
 strike not at the root, the branches that appear to be 
 broken will bud again . . . with greater force than we 
 would wish." Years before he had warned Cecil against 
 that " carnal wisdom and worldly policy (to which both, 
 ye are bruited to be much inclined) " ; now he urges 
 him to " turn to God and forget yourself and yours." 
 The " broken branches" to which Knox refers were the 
 leaders of the Northern Rising, the Earls of Northumber- 
 land and Westmoreland who, on the failure of their 
 rebellion, had found refuge among the lawless chiefs of 
 the Scottish Border. Moray had perhaps only played 
 the part of a faithful ally to Queen Elizabeth when 
 he pursued her rebels and succeeded in capturing 
 Northumberland, but his action was resented by most 
 of his countrymen as a national disgrace and an outrage 
 on hospitality, the one virtue universally recognized in 
 Scotland. 
 
 His breach with Lethington — still more, his action 
 with regard to Northumberland — had added to the 
 number of Moray's enemies, but the most dangerous of 
 these, the Hamiltons, cherished a deadlier and a more 
 personal hostility. As next heirs to the throne they 
 claimed the Regency and bitterly resented Moray's 
 ascendancy. 
 
 Early in January 1570 Moray had gone to the West 
 Country despite the anxious warnings of his friends. 
 
 \^ 
 
194 JOHN KNOX 
 
 During his absence Knox had an interview with the 
 Abbot of Kilwinning, one of the chief men among the 
 Hamiltons, who begged his interest with the Regent to 
 obtain pardon for certain of his relations. It was the 
 kind of request that Knox rarely refused ; but he had 
 a profound distrust of the Hamiltons, and added this 
 warning: "Abuse not my labours, my Lord, although 
 I be a poor man, yet I am a servant of God, and would 
 be loth to be spotted without any dishonesty . . . But 
 this I will protest before God . . . that if there be 
 anything attempted in that surname against the person 
 of that man, I discharge myself of you and them for 
 ever." After this interview Knox's anxiety seems to 
 have taken the shape of definite presentiment. Two 
 several times he sent his confidential servant to the 
 Countess of Moray to urge her to warn her husband 
 against passing through Linlithgow. 
 
 When at last the blow fell, and a shot from an 
 upper window in Linlithgow struck down the " Good 
 Regent," it added a bitter pang to Knox to learn that 
 it had been fired by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, the 
 man whose life he had saved. The Abbot of Kilwin- 
 ning, anxious to disavow all knowledge of the deed, 
 was urgent to see Knox, but he closed his door on him 
 with the bitter sarcasm : " I have not the Regent to 
 make suit unto for the Hamiltons." 
 
 There is a weight of personal sorrow in the prayer 
 in which Knox publicly lamented Moray's death : " 
 Lord, in what misery and confusion found he this 
 realm ! And to what rest and quietness now by his 
 labours suddenly he hath brought the same, all Estates, 
 but especially the poor Commons, can witness. Thy 
 image, Lord, did so clearly shine in him, that the 
 
MORAY'S REGENCY 195 
 
 Devil, and the wicked, to whom he is prince, could not 
 abide it ... He is at rest, O Lord, and we are left 
 in extreme misery." 
 
 From this mood of despondency he was stirred to 
 active indignation by slanders against himself, the late 
 Regent, and others, his associates. A singular paper 
 was going from hand to hand purporting to be a letter 
 from some one in the Regent's household. The writer 
 describes himself as roused one morning from sleep in 
 his little inner room by the assembling of guests in the 
 Regent's private chamber. Through a crack in the 
 wall he recognized Moray's familiar acquaintances, Lord 
 Lindsay, the Laird of Pitarrow, Macgill, Clerk Register, 
 John Knox, and some other notable Protestants. 
 Listening, he overhears startling matters. Moray be- 
 gins the conversation, suggesting the advice he desires 
 his friends to urge on him, namely, that he should 
 possess himself of the Crown. Lord Lindley speaks 
 next — a blunt, plain man, affecting swash-buckler 
 phrases, and bragging that if it comes to blows he will 
 play his part. Knox follows with a "stuir (husky) 
 and krocken (croaking) voice " and " eyes uplifted to 
 Heaven." So admirably have the rhythm and diction 
 of his style been caught, that any one reading the 
 first phrases inattentively would certainly think them 
 genuine. Even when he ends by declaring that he 
 has written a companion pamphlet to the Blast against 
 the Regiment of Women, proving " that birth has no 
 power to promote, nor yet bastardy to exclude men 
 from government," it is only the matter and not the 
 manner that is incredible. In perfect character, Moray 
 disclaims all ambition, but adds : " But I will not 
 oppose myself to the will of God revealed in you, who 
 
196 JOHN KNOX 
 
 are His true minister." If we were familiar with the 
 rest of the company we should probably recognize as 
 equally happy the neat, classical apologue of the Tutor 
 of Pitcure, the pragmatical pedantry of Mr. John Wood, 
 and the broken hints and allusions of that " wily child," 
 the Clerk Register. 
 
 If this production was meant merely as a political 
 satire, its exceeding fineness defeated its end. That 
 generation of Scotsmen had laughed over Sir David 
 Lindsay's picturesque and pungent Satires; it could 
 enjoy Knox's occasional harsh outbursts of laughter 
 over the follies and disasters of his opponents ; nor was 
 the dull and elaborate sarcasm of Buchanan's Chameleon 
 beyond its comprehension ; but it had no understanding 
 of satirical portraiture which kept so close to proba- 
 bility that it never passed into caricature. The letter 
 was received with a burst of indignation, " as the most 
 malicious lies that ever man invented." Some even 
 of Knox's admirers had an anxious misgiving that it 
 might be true. Women are proverbially deficient in 
 a sense of irony ; it was one of " the devouter sex," 
 Alice Sandilands, Lady of Ormiston, who, in great 
 perturbation, brought the pamphlet to Knox. Her 
 mind was only put at rest when the preacher on the 
 following Sunday, from his pulpit in St. Giles', de- 
 nounced " the Devil, the father of lies, as the chief 
 inventor of the letter," and prophesied a lonely death 
 in a strange land to the penman of it. The fine wits, 
 which were the inheritance of all the " brothers of the 
 House of Lethington," had already made some of the 
 young Maitlands suspected. Going out of church that 
 Sunday Mr. Thomas, younger brother to the Secretary, 
 admitted that he was the writer of the pamphlet. 
 
MORAY'S REGENCY 197 
 
 On February 14, Moray was buried in the south 
 aisle of St. Giles'. Knox preached from the text, " Beati 
 mortui qui in Domino moriuntur," moving many to 
 tears. His own heart was heavy and full of foreboding. 
 The next day he wrote in his journal : " And so I 
 end, rendering my troubled spirit in the hands of the 
 eternal God . . . All debts known to me are paid, 
 death only excepted, which I defy, for the sting of it 
 is destroyed by Jesus Christ, Who is my life now and 
 ever." 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 KNOX AND KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. 
 
 The death of Moray left Knox sadly isolated. Of 
 the old band with whom he had wronght and fought 
 in the Civil War of 1559-60, the Duke, Lethington, 
 Grange and Argyle were all on the Queen's side. So 
 destitute was the King's party of capable leaders, that it 
 was constrained to choose, as the new Regent, the King's 
 grandfather, the Catholic Earl of Lennox, whose return 
 to Scotland five years before had raised an outcry among 
 the faithful. His incapacity was a jest among the 
 Queen's faction. " Whether the Earl of Lennox's back 
 be able to carry the heavy burden which her weak 
 shoulders could not bear, let the world judge, especially 
 such as are acquainted with his naturality, and have 
 good proof how gravely he can discourse on matters of 
 State." The sneer is probably Lethington's. The real 
 head of the King's party was the Earl of Morton whose 
 gi'eed and private vices were a by- word. He had stood 
 selfishly aloof in the early struggle and had taken no 
 part in the Reformation except to share the crimes and 
 to divide the spoil. These were strange allies for Knox 
 whose single-mindedness and sincerity his worst enemies 
 could not deny. He was at this time sixty-five years 
 
KNOX AND KIRKCALDY OF ORANGE 199 
 
 of age, and constant labours and anxieties had made him 
 an old man ; attacks of pain and despondency became 
 more frequent. The brief, imperative note to Cecil, 
 already referred to (January 2, 1570), is subscribed : 
 " John Knox with his one foot in the grave." In the 
 autumn of this year (1570) he had a stroke of paralysis. 
 His speech was ever afterwards affected, and his voice, 
 never very strong, could no longer fill St. Giles'. He 
 still preached every Sunday but he had to creep 
 slowly up the street leaning on his " club." 
 
 There was a young man at this time in his household, 
 half secretary, half servant, named Richard Bannatyne, 
 who describes himself as gladly doing Knox menial 
 service, " not so much for worldly commodity, as for the 
 integrity and uprightness he knew to be in him." The 
 pen had fallen from his master's hand, we have no more 
 of his short, passionate comments on current events; 
 but this secretary, a stupid, observant man, had an in- 
 discriminating industry in collecting and transcribing 
 alike political news and minute gossip. Posterity would 
 have been more grateful to him if he had had the 
 foresight to record his master's table-talk. 
 
 As Knox grew weaker in body, the cares and con- 
 tradictions and conflicts of life lay more heavily on his 
 spirit. Though he might write with all sincerity : " I 
 have taken my good-night of the world, and all the 
 * fascherie ' (vexations) of the same except to lament for 
 my own sins, and for the sins of others," it was impossible 
 for him to leave the world to go on its own ungodly 
 way. To himself it seemed as if his inward vision were 
 growing preternaturally clear. His denunciations of his 
 enemies took most frequently the form of foretelling 
 particular evils against them ; prophecies which more 
 
200 JOHN KNOX 
 
 than once, in that fanatical and superstitious age, brought 
 about their own fulfilment. In ordinary occurrences he 
 saw signs and wonders. One evening the noisy garrison 
 up in the Castle were having a mock combat, and three 
 shots were fired. Knox was sitting with two friends in 
 his house in the Netherbow. To his visionary sense 
 those three stray shots brought some mysterious message, 
 but the weary mind and the heavily- weighted tongue 
 refused to convey it. " I could expound if I might 
 speak, the mystery of yon three cannons ; but because 
 the night is far spent, and I may not well speak, I 
 conclude with this sentence of Solomon, ' Ante ruinam 
 praeit fastus.' " His most mystical utterances were, 
 after all, generally based on solid practical judgment 
 and experience. " I saw as great bravado in the Castle 
 of St. Andrews," he added, " and yet few days brought a 
 miserable desolation." A story has become traditional 
 that one evening, by an inexplicable impulse, he left his 
 usual seat at supper which was opposite the window, 
 and took his place at one side of the table. As he and 
 his household sat at meat, a shot shattered the window 
 and struck the vacant chair at the head of the table. 
 Unauthenticated as is this legend, it serves to show the 
 superstitious sanctity that was attached by his followers 
 to his person. " Meddle with him who will, to his hurt," 
 wrote one of his friends to an officer of the garrison, 
 " God shall revenge it ere it be long." 
 . During the winter of 1570-71 the country was drift- 
 's/ ing into civil war, a war of factions, treacheries, and 
 greed. If there were any virtue, patriotism or good 
 faith among the combatants, it was not more discernible 
 on the one side than on the other. Knox's colleague, 
 the fearless and judicious Craig, denounced both sides 
 
KNOX AND KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE 201 
 
 equally. Knox was a stronger partisan ; hatred of the 
 Queen and her crimes kept him unfaltering on the 
 side of the King's party. 
 
 In Edinburgh the feeling between the town and the 
 Castle grew daily more strained. In December 1570 
 a servant of the Laird of Grange had been clapped 
 into the city gaol for an act of violence done at Leith 
 in his master's quarrel. In defiance of all good order, 
 the Captain sent armed men, under cover of a dark 
 night, who broke open the prison, brought off their own 
 man, and set the other inmates free. Fearful or 
 treacherous, the authorities made no remonstrance, but, 
 next Sunday in St. Giles' the old preacher spoke out 
 with broken utterance but unabated fire. The affection 
 he had formerly felt for Grange gave pathetic weight to 
 his reproaches. "If the committer had been a man 
 without God, a throat-cutter, and such as had never 
 known the works of God, it had moved me no more 
 than other riots and enormities . . . but to see stars 
 fall from Heaven, and a man of knowledge to commit 
 such manifest treason, what godly heart cannot lament, 
 tremble, and fear ? " 
 
 Grange had given up the habit of going to church — 
 he had found it irksome and mortifying to have personal 
 rebukes hurled at him from the pulpit — but eager 
 informers, stupidly inaccurate or treacherously bent on 
 mischief, hastened to tell him that he had been called 
 " murderer," " cut-throat," and " man without God." 
 The high spirit and hot temper of the soldier was 
 naturally stung. He wrote to the Session of Edinburgh, 
 angrily accusing Knox of exceeding the bounds of his 
 office ; " which, probably, he has done of private grudge, 
 to alienate the hearts of all honest men from me, and 
 
202 JOHN KNOX 
 
 to make me odious and contemptible, rather tlian for 
 correction's sake." When however on the following- 
 Sunday Knox repeated his former words with emphasis, 
 the Captain declared himself satisfied, and here the 
 quarrel between the two old friends might have ended. 
 But Knox would not let the matter rest there. In his 
 defence of himself presented to the Session, he repeats 
 his accusation in an altered and sophistical shape : " To 
 the said William's complaint I answer nothing, save 
 only this : that his own confession convicts him to be a 
 murderer in heart . . . for our Master Jesus Christ and 
 His apostle John pronounced the hatred of the heart to 
 be murder before God ; yea, John affirms ' that whoso 
 loveth not his brother is a raanslayer.' " 
 
 But neither the brawl at Leith with its fatal termina- 
 tion nor the lawless assault on the Tolbooth was the 
 worst of Grange's offences in Knox's eye. " What it 
 is to accuse a minister for the function of his office, I 
 suppose you understand ? " he asked the Session sternly, 
 standing before them leaning on his staff. The 
 sacerdotal authority of the Romish priesthood was being 
 rapidly replaced in the Protestant Church of Scotland 
 by a mysterious sanctity attached to certain preachers 
 by right of prophetic gifts which they believed them- 
 selves to hold directly from God. In this sacred character 
 Knox claimed not only immunity from criticism but 
 also recognition as one peculiarly identified with God's 
 cause. As early as 1558, in his Appellation to the 
 Nobility of Scotland from the unjust accusation of the 
 prelates, he had been bold to tell them that if they 
 refused his petition " God (Whom in me ye contemn) 
 will also refuse you." 
 
 The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in the 
 
KNOX AND KIEKCALDY OF GRANGE 203 
 
 beginning of March. The presence of a hostile garrison 
 seems to have subdued the spirit of the Ministers. 
 Knox was left to bear the brunt of the battle alone. 
 The Assembly met in a room immediately below that 
 in which the Lords of Session held their meetings. 
 One day a paper was dropped from the upper into the 
 lower room. It was unsigned and accused Knox of 
 railing at Mary and of refusing to pray for her. " Good, 
 godly Mr. Richard Bannatyne," moved by affection and 
 officious zeal, urged the Assembly to sign a bond unani- 
 mously supporting his master. There was no alacrity 
 to sign ; on the contrary, some of the brethren were 
 earnest with Knox that he should pass over the accusa- 
 tions in silence. He answered shortly, " The Church may 
 forbid me preaching, but to stop my tongue being in the 
 pulpit it may not." As to the accusation of railing, he 
 declared himself ready to acknowledge himself a railer 
 if the Queen were indeed innocent of the crime laid 
 to her charge ; but, he asks, How many of her friends, 
 in their consciences, believe in her innocence ? Among 
 those who espoused Mary's cause, it is difficult to make 
 out if any believed her to be guiltless. They certainly 
 made no remonstrance to the damnatory prayer of one 
 of her own supporters, the Bishop of Galloway : " If we 
 should not pray for sinners, for whom should we pray ? 
 ... St. David was a sinner, and so is she ; St. David 
 was an adulterer, and so is she ; St. David committed 
 murder in slaying Urias for his wife, and so did she." 
 
 But if Knox flung off the main accusation in this 
 manner, two taunts in the libel cut him to the quick. 
 Not without sufficient grounds the writer had described 
 him as " entering into God's secret counsel as though 
 he were privy thereof and called thereto." In this 
 
204 JOHN KNOX 
 
 very sermon, Knox had hinted at a mysterious power 
 bestowed on himself, whereby he could influence the 
 judgments of God. Admitting that he had always 
 desired the confusion of Mary and her flatterers, he 
 added, " I praise my God, He of His mercy has not dis- 
 appointed my first just prayer; let them call it impre- 
 cation or execration as pleases them. It has oftener 
 than once stricken, and shall strike, in despite of man." 
 Yet he was sincerely aghast at the accusation of spiritual 
 arrogance : " If my accusers understood how fearful my 
 conscience is, and ever has been, to exceed the bonds of 
 my vocation, they would not so boldly have accused 
 me." 
 
 The libel had ended with a threat of further accusa- 
 tions against Knox to follow at the next Assembly, 
 " provided he be then law-abiding, and not fugitive 
 according to his accustomed manner." If this sneer re- 
 called the old, uneasy scruples as to his own conduct, 
 there is a noble dignity in the old man's reply to it; 
 whether he be law-abiding or not, was, he declared, in 
 the hands of Him who, through many troubles had 
 preserved him to this "decrepit age which now is not 
 like to fly far." 
 
 The " Castilians " (as the garrison was called) had 
 discovered the way to torment Knox. Two Sundays 
 later another anonymous letter was nailed to the door 
 of the Tolbooth. It was drawn up with skill, the work 
 evidently of " some lawless man-of-law's brain." The 
 notes of that unlucky First Blast were to ring in 
 Knox's ears once again. A dilemma was put in the 
 libel neatly enough ; either the doctrine of that book 
 was seditious, or, if it were true, how came Knox to 
 pray for the Queen of England, and even to invoke her 
 
KNOX AND KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE 205 
 
 aid " against his own native country, and the liberty 
 thereof" ? 
 
 Knox was never arrested by a logical difficulty. He 
 got out of the dilemma, though in a way that would 
 hardly have conciliated Elizabeth. "The prayer of 
 God's servants for the maintenance of Commonwealths, 
 where the people of God remains, does not prove that 
 they allow all things done in such Commonwealths ; 
 neither yet does the seeking of help (even from the 
 wicked) prove that the godly justifies the wicked," 
 
 To the wanton and lying accusation that he had 
 failed in patriotism, there was no answer possible but 
 indignant, brief denial : " One thing I may not preter- 
 mit, to give him the lie in his throat that either dare or 
 will say that ever I sought support against my own 
 country," 
 
 He had told angry men the truth to their faces ; he 
 could boast truly that he had " made himself and all 
 his doings manifest to the world," Now he was himself 
 struck at in the dark by an unknown hand, " To me it 
 seems," he declares, " a thing most unreasonable, that, 
 in this my decrepit age, I shall be compelled to fight 
 against shadows and owlets, that dare not abide the 
 light." 
 
 In the spring of 1571 the smouldering fire of civil war 
 burst into a blaze. In April the leaders of the Queen's ^ 
 faction assembled in Edinburgh. From the stronghold 
 of the Castle they meant to defy the Regent and the 
 Earl of Morton. The first to arrive was " the head of 
 wit, the Secretary." He, like Knox, was stricken by 
 disease ; though he was so helpless that he had to be 
 carried from Leith to the Castle in a litter, yet from his 
 sick bed he directed all the counsels of his party. The 
 
206 JOHN KNOX 
 
 town filled rapidly with the Hamiltons and their allies, 
 among whom many were bitterly hostile to Knox. It 
 became a question whether his life were safe amongst 
 them. On April 19, some of the brethren watched 
 all night round his house. When they appealed to the 
 Captain for protection, Grange offered a guard to convey 
 their minister to and from church, commanded by one 
 of his officers whom he recommended as " an old Protes- 
 tant." "An old Protestant like the Secretary," is 
 Knox's comment. But with the town full of reckless 
 men-at-arms and hostile Hamiltons, Grange would take 
 no further responsibility unless Knox would come up to 
 the Castle, where he should be assured of honourable 
 treatment. Knox's friends urged him to quit the city 
 but at first he declined to forsake his charofe. 
 , By the end of April Lennox and Morton were en- 
 
 camped at Leith and skirmishes took place daily. The 
 roof of St. Giles' was fortified, and cannons were planted 
 on the steeple. (The soldiers in jest called the largest 
 of them " Knox," and when it burst and killed several 
 of them, the godly recognized the Divine judgment on 
 their ribaldry.) Seeing that it was impossible to carry 
 on services under these conditions, "John Knox de- 
 parted the town on May 5, 1571, sore against his will, 
 being compelled of the brethren of the Church and 
 town ; because that his tarry would be an occasion of 
 further trouble to them." 
 
CHAPTER XXill. 
 
 ST. ANDREWS. (1571 — 1572.) 
 
 The little, grey cathedral town of St. Audicws set 
 beside a wintry sea has a charm, denied to many happier 
 places, potent to call back to lier those who have at any 
 time tarried long beneath the shadow of her towers. 
 But it was probably reasons of safety rather than of 
 sentiment that sent Knox back to the scene of his early 
 ministry, when he was driven out of Edinburgh in the 
 summer of 1571. Civil war was raging over the 
 length and breadth of the kingdom. Kyle, his former 
 refuge, lay too near the country of the Harailtons to 
 offer him shelter, while the East Neuk of Fife was 
 at least remote from scenes of bloodshed. But St. 
 Andrews was not exactly the place where a world- 
 weary man could find peace. An active, highly organized 
 society, ecclesiastical and academic, crowded together in 
 narrow streets and College buildings, could hardly 
 lack subjects of jealousy and conflict ; to these local 
 bickerings there was added, in the summer of 1571, a 
 contention which, while it agitated the whole Church 
 of Scotland, happened to have its centre in St. Andrews. 
 
 Morton had been sent in the spring of 1571 on an 
 embassy to Elizabeth, and had, at least, succeeded in 
 preventing that wavering politician from sending help 
 
208 JOHN KNOX 
 
 to the Queen's party in Scotland. As a reward for his 
 services, he, on his return, bestowed on himself the 
 Archbishopric of St, Andrews, left vacant by the exe- 
 cution of Archbishop Hamilton. To cloak this act of 
 rapacity, he appointed as nominal Archbishop, John 
 Douglas, the old and simple-minded Rector of the 
 University of St. Andrews, who, for his share, was to 
 have the dignity and the duties of the See, while 
 Morton seized the emoluments and the patronage. It 
 was the heaviest blow that had been aimed at the 
 Reformed Church of Scotland since she was a Church 
 at all, and it came from the head of the party on whose 
 success in arras her very existence depended ! 
 
 By this system, initiated by Morton, greedy nobles 
 could continue to enrich themselves and their kindred 
 out of the Church's patrimony as unscrupulously as in 
 the worst times of Catholicism, while they would care- 
 fully choose to fill the higher posts in the Church such 
 Ministers as would not dare to rebuke the avarice nor 
 curb the violence of their patrons. Frail and confined 
 to bed and only able to write to dictation, Knox had 
 left the duty of defending the Church from this new 
 tyranny to Erskine of Dun, whose letter to the Regent 
 is as fearless and noble a protest as ever came from the 
 hands of Knox himself. But when in the last days of 
 August 1571 the General Assembly met at Stirling, 
 Knox sent a clear and authoritative message to his 
 sorely-perplexed and despondent brethren. " Remember 
 the judge before whom ye stand, and resist that tyranny 
 as ye would Hell-fire." Morton was all-powerful in the 
 Parliament that sat at Stirling in the last days of 
 August; when the Assembly presented their protest 
 against this new invasion of the Church's liberty, Len- 
 
ST. ANDKEWS 209 
 
 nox, the Catholic Regent, thought it most " reasonable," 
 but Morton, in his hectoring fashion, called the Ministers 
 " proud knaves," and vowed that " he would lay their 
 pride and put order thereto." 
 
 A week later the Parliament was rudely interrupted ; 
 a body of the Queen's troops was sent from Edinburgh 
 to surprise the town and seize the person of the Regent 
 and his associates. Had Grange commanded as well as 
 devised the attack, it would probably have been as 
 successful as it was daring. As it was, it only failed by 
 a hair's-breadth. In the fray Lennox lost his life. 
 The Earl of Mar was within four-and-twenty hours iX 
 chosen Regent in his place. If he had no conspicuous 
 ability, he had shown, both as Captain of Edinburgh 
 Castle and later as guardian of the King, an incorrupt- 
 ible fidelity, which was a finer and rarer distinction in 
 those days. But he was powerless, even if he were 
 willing, to oppose Morton's design on the Church. 
 
 In the following January (1572) an Assembly of 
 Ministers met the Lords of the Council at Leith. In 
 the previous autumn the Ministers had expostulated 
 boldly with the Regent against the new tyranny of 
 Morton and his fellows. But, at the Convention of 
 Leith, this boldness had given place to a spirit of com- 
 promise. The dangerous state of the country had 
 prevented many of the Ministers attending ; those who 
 were present were over-awed by Morton and others of 
 the Lords " who were hunting for fat Church livings." 
 In undignified haste the desired concessions were 
 made. " At that meeting, Bishops, Archdeacons, Deans, 
 Chapters, and Chancellors were agreed upon to stand 
 during the King's minority; but Bishops to have no 
 further jurisdiction than Superintendents." 
 
 7 
 
210 JOHN KNOX 
 
 This system of Morton's invention, by which the 
 highest dignitaries of the Church became mere " Tul- 
 chans " ^ in the hands of greedy nobles, was the cause of 
 that detestation of bishops which in the next century 
 was raised in Scotland into a religious principle of such 
 importance, that men were not only willing to die for 
 it but even to put others to death. This feeling sprang 
 up in the first instance from no abstract objection to an 
 ecclesiastical system. The Superintendents appointed 
 by the Booh of Discipline were practically bishops shorn 
 of wealth and ceremonial and political power. Erskine 
 of Dun uses the two terms interchangeably ; and Knox, 
 though he thanked God that "he was but a painful 
 preacher of His blessed Evangel and not a lord-like 
 bishop," inveighs, not against the office but against the 
 pomp attached to it. 
 
 Even in the servile Assembly at Leith there was one 
 fearless voice raised on behalf of the Ministers whose 
 poverty was as afflicting under a Protestant Regent as 
 formerly under a Catholic Queen. Robert Ferguson, a 
 man of wit and character, preaching before the Regent 
 told him boldly that " the reason why ye have not pre- 
 vailed against yon throat-cutters and unnatural mur- 
 derers within the Castle of Edinburgh ... is this, that 
 the spoil of the poor is within your household . . . 
 Seeing there is enough (and overmuch) to do it, let the 
 preachers of God's "Word be reasonably sustained, the 
 schools and poor well provided, and the temples honestly 
 and reverently repaired, that the people without injury 
 of wind or weather may sit and hear God's Word." It 
 was not often that Knox rejoiced in spirit, but this 
 
 ^ Stuffed calf-skins placed under cows to induce them to give 
 their milk. 
 
ST. ANDREWS 211 
 
 faithful echo of his own trumpet stirred his heart. The 
 copy of Ferguson's sermon presented to the Kegent is 
 subscribed (along with the names of other Ministers) by 
 " John Knox, with my dead hand but glad heart, prais- 
 ing God, that of His mercy He leaves such light to His 
 Church in this desolation." 
 
 Knox was 'to find at St. Andrews that there was no 
 lack of torch-bearers to hand on the light that he had 
 kindled. During the autumn and winter of 1571-72 he 
 grew weaker from month to month, though without 
 much " corporal pain." It was a severe season, and he 
 came little " out of bed and from his book." His *' dull 
 heart " constantly meditating on the state of Scotland 
 and of the Church, found cause enough for fear and 
 despondency. He was driven to the admission that the 
 Protestant nobles " take no more care of the instruction 
 of the ignorant and of the feeding of the flock of Jesus 
 Christ than ever did the Papists whom ive have condeimied, 
 and yet are worse ourselves in that hehal/y But the 
 Reformer or thinker may be well content who finds his 
 own thought again in the convictions of the men under 
 thirty. The Abbey where Knox had his lodgings lay 
 near St. Leonard's College, and the " regents " or fellows 
 resorted daily to him after dinner or supper to hear him 
 talk. On mild days he would himself creep along the 
 street, wrapt in his furred mantle, leaning on his staff 
 and on the arm of Richard Bannatyne. He would often 
 turn into the court of St. Leonard's College to rest, and 
 the students, reverent and interested, would crowd 
 around him. On the ingenuous and finely sympathetic 
 nature of one of these, James Melville, these visits made 
 an impression so vivid that years afterwards he could 
 recall them in detail. " He would call us scholars unto 
 
212 JOHN KNOX 
 
 him, bless us and exhort us to know God and His will 
 in our country and stand by the good cause, to use our 
 time well and learn the good instructions and follow 
 the good example of our masters." Melville and his 
 fellow-students used to bring pens and ink-horns and 
 little books with them to church to take down the 
 sermon. Knox was so frail that he had to be lifted 
 into the pulpit, and " behoved to lean at his first entry ; 
 but ere he had done with his sermon he was so active 
 and vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in 
 blads (knock the pulpit to pieces) and fly out of it." He 
 preached all that winter from the Book of Daniel, apply- 
 ing the prophecies so plainly and particularly to current 
 events in ^Scotland that pens and ink-horns were laid 
 aside, and men feared and trembled as they listened. 
 Once, as if he were seeing a vision, he described the 
 vengeance that should overtake his enemies " when 
 Edinburgh Castle should run like sand in a glass, and 
 the Captain should come, with shame, over the wall 
 on a ladder." The parish-minister, a certain Robert 
 Hamilton, sat in the congregation, irritated and sceptical ; 
 from the pulpit Knox addressed him : " Thou, that will 
 not believe my warrant,'shalt see it with thine eyes that 
 day." " Many," adds Melville, " were offended at this 
 particularity, and called it rash railing." Not one whit 
 was Knox's '* particularity " mitigated when he preached 
 before the all-powerful Morton, who, in January 1572, 
 came over in person to overawe the Church at St. 
 Andrews and see his nominee, John Douglas, installed 
 as Archbishop. Hitherto Knox had spoken but sparingly 
 against the appointment, " because he loved the man," 
 and, feeling the weight of his own years, had chiefly pity 
 for another old man eagerly accepting a charge, " which 
 
ST. ANDREWS 213 
 
 twenty of the best gifts could not bear." But face to 
 face with Morton he vehemently denounced " anathema 
 to the giver, anathema to the receiver." His age and 
 the superstitious reverence in which he was held enabled 
 him to speak out with impunity — but without effect. 
 The Lords had threatened to desert the Church if they 
 got not the Church livings, so the Ministers of Fife saw 
 themselves constrained to yield to Morton and solemnly 
 installed the new Bishop. 
 
 It came to Knox's ears that his enemies went about 
 insinuating that his opposition sprung from chagrin that 
 the bishopric had not been offered to himself. It was 
 not in his choleric, sensitive nature to ignore unworthy 
 slanders ; he vindicated himself proudly from the pulpit 
 in the presence of all the dignitaries of Church and 
 University. " I have refused a greater bishopric than 
 ever it was which I might have had with the favour of 
 greater men than he hath his." 
 
 Knox had many enemies overt or hidden in the little 
 town who not daring, for the reverence in which he was 
 held, to attack him directly, spread false reports about 
 him. The story that he had conspired with Moray to 
 make away with Darnley before his marriage with Mary, 
 could be met with the stern demand that proof should 
 be produced; it was far more difficult to meet vague 
 and ugly rumours with regard to his domestic life. 
 Malignant and irresponsible tongues had got hold of his 
 close and peculiar friendship for his mother-in-law, Mrs, 
 Bowes, and had twisted them to their own vile purposes. 
 The poor, innocent cause of the scandal was dead and 
 Knox felt it due to himself to declare to the world that 
 the grounds of their friendship had been neither " flesh 
 nor blood, but her troubled conscience which could find 
 
214 JOHN KNOX 
 
 rest in the society of the faithful, of whom she judged 
 me to be one." A finer reticence, a more chivalrous 
 tenderness for the dead would have omitted the further 
 explanation. " Her company to me was comfortable 
 (yea, honourable and profitable, for she was to me and 
 mine a mother), but yet, it was not without some cross ; 
 for, besides trouble and faschery of body sustained for her, 
 my mind was seldom quiet for doing somewhat for the 
 comfort of her troubled conscience." These wearisome 
 scandals were raked up after Knox's death, and repeated 
 again and again with odious and monstrous additions by 
 one Catholic writer after the other. Incredible and 
 absurd as such stories are, there is an ironical justice in 
 the fact that he, who was himself so greedy and credulous 
 of scandals, should have become, in his turn, the prey of 
 scandal-mongers. 
 
 One chief authority for these slanders was a certain 
 Archibald Hamilton, whose enmity to Knox dated from 
 this winter (1572) in St, Andrews. Society in Scotland 
 was still so feudal that a man's surname generally 
 dictated his religious and political convictions. There 
 were among the members of the Colleges of St. Salvator 
 and St. Mary several Hamiltons who chafed angrily at 
 Knox's constant denunciations of their kinsfolk for 
 murder. Archibald Hamilton, having on this account 
 absented himself from the sermon, was summoned by 
 the Bishop and Superintendent of Fife before a Synod 
 held in Knox's bed-chamber. He held his ground, and 
 in his turn accused Knox of preaching in the pulpit 
 doctrines he could not defend in the schools, — an aca- 
 demic aspect of the matter not likely to commend itself 
 to the prophetic spirit of Knox ! His resentment of 
 this criticism is curiously reflected in a letter to the 
 
ST. ANDREWS 215 
 
 General Assembly which met at Perth in August 1572 : 
 "Above all things preserve the Church from the 
 bondage of the Universities . . . subject never the pulpit 
 to their judgment ; neither ye exempt them from 
 your jurisdiction." 
 
 Two episodes in this visit to St. Andrews are 
 singularly obnoxious to modern feeling. 
 
 The rationalizing spirit of Protestantism had discarded 
 the mystical adoration of the Real Presence in the 
 Mass ; to the superstitious belief in witchcraft it was, at 
 least, as much in bondage as the teaching of the older 
 Church. In the spring of 1572 a miserable old woman 
 was burnt at St, Andrews. The Sunday before she 
 had been dragged to church, and callous with wretched- 
 ness and hallucination, was held up opposite the pulpit 
 whence Knox hurled denunciations at her. In this 
 scene of ignominy and ignorance the preacher plays a 
 more pitiable part than his victim. The age was in 
 truth incredibly harsh and unimaginative. When the 
 youths of St. Leonard's entertained Knox with a 
 dramatic performance, they represented the fall of the 
 Castle of Edinburgh, and burnt Knox's old friend 
 Grange in effigy. 
 
 In May 1572, feeling that the end could not be 
 far off, Knox made his will. First, to the community 
 at large he left a testimony of his mind ; to the Papists 
 this special message that unless they repented, the 
 death of him (their faithful admonisher) would be the 
 greatest calamity that had befallen them ; to the 
 faithful this vindication of his work amongst them : 
 " None I have corrupted ; none I have defrauded ; 
 merchandise have I not made ... of the glorious 
 Evangel of Jesus Christ." The testamentary part of 
 
216 JOHN KNOX 
 
 the will shows that Knox had that practical mastery of 
 his private economies, without which no man can have 
 perfect freedom for the things of the spirit. The 
 "debts owing to the dead" amounted to £830 Scots 
 ( = £166). The " debts owing by the dead = none." To 
 his sons, Ebenezer and Nathaniel (at that time students 
 at Cambridge), he left, as a precious remembrance, 
 " that same benediction that their dearest mother, 
 Marjorie Bowes, left unto them . . . that God would 
 make them His true worshippers ; whereto, now as then, 
 I from my troubled heart say, Amen." Their mother's 
 fortune of a hundred marks sterling ( = £66 13s. M.), 
 augmented by his care to £500 Scots ( = £100),^ was left 
 to these two sons, also certain articles of plate, among 
 them a silver goblet with J. K. M, on one side, and on 
 the other E. B. N. 
 
 The rest of his property was left to his wife, Margaret 
 Stuart and his three children, Martha, Margaret, and 
 Elizabeth Knox; including the debts owing to him it 
 amounted to £1526 Scots ( = £305), besides furniture 
 valued at £30 Scots ( = £6), and books valued at £130 
 Scots ( = £26). The people of Edinburgh had dealt 
 liberally with their minister.^ His stipend, which had 
 been two hundred marks Scots ( = £10 16s. 8d.) to 
 begin with, had been augmented latterly to five hundred 
 
 ^ Following the calculations of Mr. Laing (Knox's Collected 
 Wm'ks, Vol. VI., p. Ixii), £5 Scots were, at this time, equal to 
 ^1 sterling. The mark Scots, in which Knox's salary was paid, 
 was two-thirds of £1 Scots. Mrs. Knox's dowry was paid in 
 marks sterling, equal to 13s. 4d, 
 
 2 According to the standard of his age and country, Knox's 
 stipend was liberal. The Principal of St. Leonard's College, St. 
 Andrews, at the same date had a salary of J 10 Scots, 
 
ST. ANDREWS 217 
 
 marks Scots ( = £27 Is. 8d.). Relying on their tried 
 generosity, he simply nominates ** the faithful to be 
 oversmen " (trustees). They fulfilled the trust. The 
 Town Council of Edinburgh granted the enjoyment of 
 his stipend to his wife and children for two years after 
 his death. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Meanwhile all Scotland, and especially the capital, 
 was plunged in the horrors of a factious and merciless 
 civil war. There was a growing exasperation in the 
 country against Maitland and Grange as the cause of 
 all the misery. These men had their backs to the wall, 
 and were obstinately holding out in what they must 
 have known to be a hopeless cause. Up to the begin- 
 ning of 1572, the Secretary, confident in his knowledge 
 of Elizabeth's character, had expected that she would 
 eventually restore Mary to her kingdom. The discovery, 
 in the autumn of ] 571, of the Norfolk conspiracy and 
 Mary's complicity in it, made such a policy on Eliza- 
 beth's part for ever impossible : in Scotland the Queen's 
 party had been weakened by the defection of the 
 Protestant Lords, Argyle, Cassilis, and Boyd. The one 
 hope of the Queen's friends lay in foreign intervention ; 
 they wasted time and kept their party alive in the 
 expectation that any day might see French troops 
 landed at Leith, or Alva heading a Spanish invasion. 
 French money and French arms were secretly conveyed 
 into the Castle ; at the same time an active correspond- 
 ence was carried on with the Spanish Government at 
 
THE END 219 
 
 Brussels by means of Mary's faithful friend, Lord Seton. 
 Knox had grounds for denouncing the "treasonable 
 doings of the Castle of Edinburgh," when Lethington, 
 the enlightened patriot and firm friend of England, was 
 inviting a Spanish invasion, and Grange, the champion 
 of Protestantism, was the ally of Alva ! 
 
 But if these men were desperate, if Lethington 
 especially was, as Randolph describes him, " unmindful 
 of God and unnatural to his country" (March 7, 1572), 
 it was because the opposite side had made reconciliation 
 impossible. Knox and the other preachers with their 
 prophecies and solemn denunciations had so inflamed 
 the superstitious imagination of the people that nothing 
 short of the destruction of Grange and Lethington 
 would appease their rage. Moreover, Morton was the 
 real head of the King's party, and Morton was as cruel 
 as he was greedy. To a man of his churlish nature it 
 was no claim that in the old days Lethington had done 
 him such substantial kindness that he (Morton) had 
 declared in jest that the record of it should be laid up 
 in his charter chest. On the contrary, the memory of 
 obligations probably made him more willing to destroy 
 his former friend. All through the winter and spring 
 of 1572' the weary siege went on, while famine made 
 a desert of Edinburgh and of all the country for miles 
 round. It was, as Lord Hunsdon, the English envoy, 
 described it, " a pleasant and profitable time for mur- 
 derers, thieves, and such as live only by the spoils of 
 true men." The substantial citizens of Edinburgh, 
 men of Knox's congregation, had been forced to leave 
 their houses in the city and had taken refuge with the 
 Regent and his troops at Leith. In the skirmishes 
 with the Castle garrison, they fought more constantly 
 
220 JOHN KNOX 
 
 tlian the hired soldiers. In the end of July, thanks 
 to the good offices of the English and French ambas- 
 sadors, a two months' armistice was arranged between 
 the garrison and the army at Leith. On the even- 
 ing of the first day the exiled citizens marched in at 
 the gates in a compact body. At their head walked 
 one minister with his Bible under his arm, another 
 minister brought up the rear in full armour and with 
 his "caliver on his shoulder." It was an accidental 
 but curiously apt type of the Church of Scotland. 
 Many of these burgesses found their dwellings wrecked, 
 the woodwork torn down and carried off for fuel. They 
 had their houses to re-build, their trades to re-establish, 
 but there was a more urgent duty which had first to 
 be discharged. On July 2, they drew up a bond, 
 obliging themselves not only to defend Christ's cause 
 and the common interest, but to submit their lives and 
 conversation to the discipline of the Church. In this 
 mood of stern enthusiasm they were dissatisfied with 
 the ministrations of John Craig. He had remained in 
 Edinburgh during the siege, not unsuspected by the 
 godly of having lent a too willing ear to " Machiavelli's " 
 silver tongue. On August 4, his old congregation wrote 
 to Knox craving " that once again his voice might be 
 heard amongst them." " Loth we are to disease or 
 hurt your person in any way," they wrote, "but far 
 lother to want you." Weak as he was, it was not 
 "inability of the body" that made Knox hesitate to 
 accept this invitation. He knew the hollo wness of the 
 present peace, and feared lest the vengeance of "the 
 Castilians " might fall later upon those who had associ- 
 ated themselves with him. Yet for no prudent con- 
 sideration would he consent " to temper his tongue." 
 
THE END 221 
 
 His congregation recognized the danger but thought it 
 not too high a price to pay for his presence amongst 
 them. 
 
 On August 17 (1572), Knox left St. Andrews—" to 
 the dolour of the few godly, but to the great joy and 
 pleasure of the rest " — and, travelling by slow stages, 
 reached Edinburgh in the last week of August. On 
 the following Sunday he preached to a vast throng in 
 St. Giles'. His voice, never strong enough to fill the 
 building, could scarcely be heard. He desired to go on 
 preaching if only to a hundred persons, and so long as 
 his strength allowed he held services in the Tolbooth. 
 He had often prayed that he might end his ministry 
 in expounding Christ's Passion, and, indeed, the last 
 sermon he preached was on the Death on the Cross. 
 
 His main anxiety was that a faithful minister might 
 be appointed in his place. The choice of the congrega- 
 tion fell on Mr. Lawson, sub-principal of Aberdeen and 
 a learned Hebraist. In a singularly courteous note the 
 old man wrote begging the younger one to come and 
 visit him " that they might confer together of heavenly 
 things." There is an urgent postscript to the letter — 
 " Haste, lest ye come too late." 
 
 Before he laid down his work Knox had a last 
 prophetic message to deliver. As the Hebrew prophets 
 pronounced oracles against Tyre, Babylon and Egypt, 
 in like fashion did Knox watch God's judgments in the 
 history of Europe. In the early days of September 
 1572, news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew reached 
 Scotland. Knox was appalled by the sufferings and 
 danger of his brethren in Christ, but he felt also that 
 the Church of Rome had justified the harshest things 
 he had ever said of her. From the pulpit he bade the 
 
222 JOHN KNOX 
 
 French ambassador tell his master " that the sentence 
 is pronounced in Scotland against that murderer the 
 King of France, that God's vengeance shall never depart 
 from him nor his house . . . and that none that shall 
 come of his loins shall enjoy that kingdom in peace 
 and quietness, unless repentance prevent God's judg- 
 ment," The ambassador angrily desired the Regent 
 and Council to silence the pulpits. They answered 
 frankly that they could not stop the Ministers from 
 railing against themselves. 
 
 On Sunday, November 9, Knox inducted Mr. Lawson 
 in St. Giles'. He had already preached that morning 
 in the Tolbooth and his voice was weak. A hushed 
 and awestruck crowd saiu but scarcely heard him re- 
 hearse the simple service of admitting the new pastor, 
 and for the last time pronounce the final benediction. 
 He crept back exhausted to his house in the Netherbow, 
 never again to cross its threshold. 
 
 On Tuesday, the 11th, he was attacked by a harsh 
 cough and feeling the end draw near he began to set his 
 house in order. He paid his servants their wages, and 
 added more than was actually due, saying he would 
 never give them another fee. His mind seems to have 
 wandered slightly. Mistaking the days of the week, 
 he rose on Friday and prepared for his Sunday sermon. 
 All night he had been meditating on the Resurrection 
 of Christ and desired to complete his course of sermons 
 on the Passion. He was constantly rapt in meditation. 
 At intervals his wife and Richard Bannatyne read aloud 
 to him, sometimes Calvin's sermons, but chiefly the 
 Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Ephesians. But, 
 even in this last hour, " the world with its faschery " 
 could not be excluded. As he said of himself, " John 
 
THE END 223 
 
 Knox remains the same man now going to die that he 
 has been before when he was able of body " — as constant 
 to his animosities as to his faith. 
 
 Up in the Castle his old adversary Lethington lay 
 also dying. His feet were paralyzed, his whole person 
 so frail that he could not endure to sneeze *' for annoy- 
 ing the whole body." His nerves and courage were 
 shaken. He knew that the old accusation of complicity 
 in the King's murder would be brought up against him, 
 and would exclude him from pardon. Drury and 
 Randolph who saw him in the previous winter (1572) 
 describe him as " so full of fear and doubt for himself, 
 that if that were provided for " they did not doubt but 
 that other matters could be arranged. All his life 
 Lethington had been a wit and had mocked the 
 Ministers and their pretensions, and they had retaliated 
 by accusations of atheism and irreligion. He had often 
 before disregarded their railing, but now, with the 
 sobering shadow of death upon him, he refused to lie 
 under the opprobrium of being as the fool " who saith 
 in his heart, ' there is no God.' " Two days after Knox 
 fell ill of his last illness, the Secretary wrote to the 
 Session of Edinburgh complaining that their minister 
 had accused him of saying that " there is neither Heaven 
 nor Hell," and that " they are things to frighten bairns 
 with." There is a flash of the old irony in Lethington's 
 final demand that if Knox failed to name his authorities, 
 " at least hereafter ye receive not every word proceeding 
 from his mouth as an oracle." 
 
 On Monda}'^, November 17, by his own desire the 
 Session assembled in Knox's sick room. He began by 
 justifying his work in the ministry with all his old 
 force and nobility of phrase, then passed to the con- 
 
224 JOHN KNOX 
 
 sideration of Lethington's letter. His refusal to name 
 his authorities was only honourable and prudent in a 
 time when vengeance was quick and animosities bitter ; 
 his evasion of the direct issue was almost audacious in 
 its want of candour. " He desired all men to consider 
 their works, especially the ruin of Edinburgh and the 
 troubling of this quiet Commonwealth and the Church 
 of God within the same : which were a sufficient 
 declaration that he (the Secretary) denied there was 
 any God to punish such wickedness, or yet any Heaven 
 or Hell wherein virtue should be rewarded and vice 
 punished." 
 
 Knox regarded Grange as a mere tool in the hands 
 of Lethington and he was full of concern for his old 
 friend. One day when a minister, Mr. David Lindsay, 
 went in to see him, Knox greeted him eagerly : " All 
 this day I have desired to have you, that I might yet 
 send you to yon man in the Castle whom you know I 
 have loved so dearly . . . Bid him in the Name of God 
 leave that evil cause and give over the Castle ; if not 
 he shall be brought down over the walls of it with 
 shame and hung against the sun. So God has assured 
 me." Mr. Lindsay, though he thought " the threaten- 
 ing over particular," delivered the message to the 
 Captain, who at first seemed somewhat moved by it, 
 but after he had conferred with the Secretary, came out 
 again and bade Mr. Lindsay " tell Mr. Knox that he 
 was but a ' drytting ' (drivelling) prophet." When this 
 was reported to Knox, he answered : " Well, I have 
 been earnest with my God anent these two men ; for 
 the one, I am sorry that so should befall him, yet God 
 assures me there is mercy for his soul ; for that other 
 I have no warrant that ever he shall be well." Several 
 
THE END 225 
 
 months later, when English cannons had indeed made 
 the "Castle Rock to run like sand," and when the 
 Captain had been condemned to death, that the prophecy 
 of John Knox might be fulfilled, Mr. Lindsay reported 
 these words to Grange the day before he was to suffer : 
 " The which he would have repeated over again to 
 him ; and thereupon was greatly comforted and became 
 of good and cheerful courage." 
 
 Before he took his last "good-night of the world," 
 Knox was once more to touch the public life. 
 
 The Earl of Mar had died in the end of October and 
 the Regency was perforce offered to Morton. Some- 
 where in his hard and worldly nature was a spot sus- 
 ceptible to religious impressions, and despite, or perhaps 
 by virtue of unsparing plain speaking, Knox had won 
 and retained his deference. Just before Morton ac- 
 cepted the Regency, he came to take farewell of the 
 dying preacher. They met in the sick-chamber, no 
 one else being present. With all the old directness 
 Knox asked him first, "If he knew anything of the 
 King's murder ? " Being satisfied on this point, he 
 charged Morton solemnly " to use all his benefits aright, 
 and better in times to come than ye have done in times 
 past." 
 
 These November days in the house in the Netherbow 
 are like the last scene of the Pilgrims Progress, where 
 a great concourse of pilgrims accompany Mr. Valiant- 
 for-Truth to the river side. Men came and went in 
 Knox's sick-chamber ; devout ladies, tried Protestants 
 like Glencairn and Ruthven, old friends like the Laird 
 of Braid and Campbell of Kinyeancleuch, to whose care 
 he confided his wife and little daughters. As long as 
 his strength allowed, Knox sat at table with his guests 
 
 Q 
 
226 JOHN KNOX 
 
 and courteously entertained them. On Saturday (15th) 
 two of his acquaintances were at supper with him ; he 
 bade his servant pierce a hogshead of claret and desired 
 one of them to send for some of the wine, for he himself 
 would not live to drink it. Up to the last he recognized 
 his friends and said special words of farewell to each, 
 but he was constantly rapt in the inner vision. Once, 
 repeating " Our Father which art in Heaven," the 
 solemn beauty of the familiar words struck him with 
 sudden awe. He interrupted himself, saying, " Who can 
 pronounce so holy words ? " 
 
 On Monday, November 24, the end came. " A little 
 after noon he caused his wife to read the 15th chapter 
 of I. Corinthians, of the Resurrection ; to whom he said : 
 ' Is not that a comfortable chapter ? ' . . . Thereafter, 
 about five hours, he says to his wife, ' Go, read where I 
 cast my first anchor,' and so she read the I7th of 
 John's Evangel. . . We, thinking that he was asleep, 
 demanded if he heard ? Answered, ' I hear, and under- 
 stand far better, I praise God.' " In that day men 
 believed that the powers of darkness were strong in 
 the last hour, and it was held that dying saints owed 
 it to the Church to bear triumphant witness to their 
 faith. At ten o'clock the brethren watching round 
 Knox's bed in prayer saw the change come. " Sir," 
 said Richard Bannatyne, " the time that ye have long 
 called to God for, to wit, an end to your battle, is 
 come ! And seeing all natural power now fails, re- 
 member upon these comfortable promises, which often- 
 times ye have shown to us of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 
 and that we may understand that ye hear us, make 
 us some sign." "And so he lifted up his one hand, 
 and incontinent thereafter rendered the spirit, and 
 
THE END 227 
 
 slept away without any pain, about eleven hours at 
 even ! " 
 
 On the Wednesday following he was buried in the 
 shadow of St. Giles'. The Regent Morton, standing 
 beside the grave, " gave him an honourable testimony, 
 that he neither feared nor flattered any flesh." 
 
 Among the prophetic utterances of Knox is one which 
 time itself has been busy fulfilling for good and evil 
 during the last three centuries. " What I have been 
 to my country, albeit this ungrateful age will not know, 
 yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness 
 to the truth." To comment adequately on this 
 prophecy would be to write the history of Scotland, 
 political, social, and religious, from the time of Knox 
 to our own day. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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