John Knox and the Reformation

Knox may have been less unsympathetic, but his advice agreed with the advice of the Genevans. Some of the seceders were imprisoned; Cecil and the Queen’s commissioners encouraged others “to go and preach the Gospel in Scotland,” sending with them, as it seems, letters commendatory to the ruling men there. They went, but they were not long away. “They liked not that northern climate, but in May returned again,” and fell to their old practices. One of them reported that, at Dunbar, “he saw men going to the church, on Good Friday, barefooted and bare-kneed, and creeping to the cross!” “If this be so,” said Grindal, “the Church of Scotland will not be pure enough for our men.” [361 - Strype’s Grindal, 180. Also the letter of Grindal in Ellis, iii. iii. 304]

These English brethren, when in Scotland, consulted Knox on the dispute which they made a ground of schism. One brother, who was uncertain in his mind, visited Knox in Scotland at this time. The result appears in a letter to Knox from a seceder, written just after Queen Mary escaped from Lochleven in May 1568. The dubiously seceding brother “told the Bishop” (Grindal) “that you are flat against and condemn all our doings.. whereupon the Church” (the seceders) “did excommunicate him”! He had reviled “the Church,” and they at once caught “the excommunicatory fever.” Meanwhile the earnestly seceding brother thought that he had won Knox to his side. But a letter from our Reformer proved his error, and the letter, as the brother writes, “is not in all points liked.” They would not “go back again to the wafer-cake and kneelings” (the Knoxian Black Rubric had been deleted from Elizabeth’s prayer book), “and to other knackles of Popery.”

In fact they obeyed Knox’s epistle to England of January 1559. “Mingle-mangle ministry, Popish order, and Popish apparel,” they will not bear. Knox’s arguments in favour of their conforming, for the time at all events, are quoted and refuted: “And also concerning Paul his purifying at Jerusalem.” The analogy of Paul’s conformity had been rejected by Knox, at the supper party with Lethington in 1556. He had “doubted whether either James’s commandment or Paul’s obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost.” [362 - Knox, ii. 247-249.] Yet now Knox had used the very same argument from Paul’s conformity which, in 1556, he had scouted! The Mass was not in question in 1568; still, if Paul was wrong (and he did get into peril from a mob!), how could Knox now bid the English brethren follow his example? [363 - Knox and the Church of England, 298-301.] (See pp. 65-67 supra.)

To be sure Mary was probably at large, when Knox wrote, with 4000 spears at her back. The Reformer may have rightly thought it an ill moment to irritate Elizabeth, or he may have grown milder than he was in 1559, and come into harmony with Bullinger. In February of the year of this correspondence he had written, “God comfort that dispersed little flock,” apparently the Puritans of his old Genevan congregation, now in England, and in trouble, “amongst whom I would be content to end my days… ” [364 - Knox, vi. 559.]

In January 1570, Knox, “with his one foot in the grave,” as he says, did not despair of seeing his desire upon his enemy. Moray was asking Elizabeth to hand over to him Queen Mary, giving hostages for the safety of her life. Moray sent his messenger to Cecil, on January 2, 1570, and Knox added a brief note. “If ye strike not at the root,” he said, “the branches that appear to be broken will bud again… More days than one would not suffice to express what I think.” [365 - Ibid., vi. 568.] What he thought is obvious; “stone dead hath no fellow.” But Mary’s day of doom had not yet come; Moray was not to receive her as a prisoner, for the Regent was shot dead, in Linlithgow, on January 23, by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to the unconcealed delight of his sister, for whom his death was opportune.

The assassin, Bothwellhaugh, in May 1568, had been pardoned for his partisanship of Mary, at Knox’s intercession. “Thy image, O Lord, did so clearly shine on that personage” (Moray) – he said in his public prayer at the Regent’s funeral [366 - M‘Crie, 248.]– “that the devil, and the people to whom he is Prince, could not abide it.” We know too much of Moray to acquiesce, without reserve, in this eulogium.

Knox was sorely disturbed, at this time, by the publication of a jeu d’esprit, in which the author professed to have been hidden in a bed, in the cabinet of a room, while the late Regent held a council of his friends. [367 - Bannatyne’s Memorials, 5-13 (1836).] The tone and manner of Lindsay, Wood, Knox and others were admirably imitated; in their various ways, and with appropriate arguments, some of them urged Moray to take the crown for his life. By no people but the Scots, perhaps, could this jape have been taken seriously, but, with a gravity that would have delighted Charles Lamb, Knox denounced the skit from the pulpit as a fabrication by the Father of Lies. The author, the human penman, he said (according to Calderwood), was fated to die friendless in a strange land. The galling shaft came out of the Lethington quiver; it may have been composed by several of the family, but Thomas Maitland, who later died in Italy, was regarded as the author, [368 - Calderwood, ii. 515-525.] perhaps because he did die alone in a strange country.

At this time the Castle of Edinburgh was held in the Queen’s interest by Kirkcaldy of Grange, who seems to have been won over by the guile of Lethington. That politician needed a shelter from the danger of the Lennox feud, and the charge of having been guilty of Darnley’s murder. To take the place was beyond the power of the Protestant party, and it did not fall under the guns of their English allies during the life of the Reformer.

He had a tedious quarrel with Kirkcaldy in December 1570-January 1571. A retainer of Kirkcaldy’s had helped to kill a man whom his master only wanted to be beaten. The retainer was put into the Tolbooth; Kirkcaldy set him free, and Knox preached against Kirkcaldy. Hearing that Knox had styled him a murderer, Kirkcaldy bade Craig read from the pulpit a note in which he denied the charge. He prayed God to decide whether he or Knox “has been most desirous of innocent blood.” Craig would not read the note: Kirkcaldy appealed in a letter to the kirk-session. He explained the origin of the trouble: the slain man had beaten his brother; he bade his agents beat the insulter, who drew his sword, and got a stab. On this Knox preached against him, he was told, as a cut-throat.

Next Sunday Knox reminded his hearers that he had not called Kirkcaldy a murderer (though in the case of the Cardinal, he was), but had said that the lawless proceedings shocked him more than if they had been done by common cut-throats. Knox then wrote a letter to the kirk-session, saying that Kirkcaldy’s defence proved him “to be a murderer at heart,” for St. John says that “whoso loveth not his brother is a man-slayer”; and Kirkcaldy did not love the man who was killed. All this was apart from the question: had Knox called Kirkcaldy a common cut-throat? Kirkcaldy then asked that Knox’s explanation of what he said in the pulpit might be given in writing, as his words had been misreported, and Knox, “creeping upon his club,” went personally to the kirk-session, and requested the Superintendent to admonish Kirkcaldy of his offences. Next Sunday he preached about his eternal Ahab, and Kirkcaldy was offended by the historical parallel. When he next was in church Knox went at him again; it was believed that Kirkcaldy would avenge himself, but the western brethren wrote to remind him of their “great care” for Knox’s person. So the quarrel, which made sermons lively, died out. [369 - Bannatyne’s Transactions, 70-82. Bannatyne was Knox’s secretary, and fragments dictated by the Reformer appear in his pages.]

There was little goodwill to Knox in the Queen’s party, and as the conflict was plainly to be decided by the sword, Robert Melville, from the Castle, advised that the prophet should leave the town, in May 1571. The “Castilian” chiefs wished him no harm, they would even shelter him in their hold, but they could not be responsible for his “safety from the multitude and rascal,” in the town, for the craftsmen preferred the party of Kirkcaldy. Knox had a curious interview in the Castle with Lethington, now stricken by a mortal malady. The two old foes met courteously, and parted even in merriment; Lethington did not mock, and Knox did not threaten. They were never again to see each other’s faces, though the dying Knox was still to threaten, and the dying Lethington was still to mock.

July found Knox and his family at St. Andrews, in the New Hospice, a pre-Reformation ecclesiastical building, west of the Cathedral, and adjoining the gardens of St. Leonard’s College. At this time James Melville, brother of the more celebrated scholar and divine, Andrew Melville, was a golf-playing young student of St. Leonard’s College. He tells us how Knox would walk about the College gardens, exhorting the St. Leonard’s lads to be staunch Protestants; for St. Salvator’s and St. Mary’s were not devoted to the Reformer and his party. The smitten preacher (he had suffered a touch of apoplexy) walked slowly, a fur tippet round his neck in summer, leaning on his staff, and on the shoulder of his secretary, Bannatyne. He returned, at St. Andrews, in his sermons, to the Book of Daniel with which, nearly a quarter of a century ago, he began his pulpit career. In preaching he was moderate – for half-an-hour; and then, warming to his work, he made young Melville shudder and tremble, till he could not hold his pen to write. No doubt the prophet was denouncing “that last Beast,” the Pope, and his allies in Scotland, as he had done these many years ago. Ere he had finished his sermon “he was like to ding the pulpit to blads and fly out of it.” He attended a play, written by Davidson, later a famous preacher, on the siege and fall of the Castle, exhibiting the hanging of his old ally, Kirkcaldy, “according to Mr. Knox’s doctrine,” says Melville. This cheerful entertainment was presented at the marriage of John Colville, destined to be a traitor, a double spy, and a renegade from the Kirk to “the Synagogue of Satan.” [370 - Melville’s “Diary,” 20-26.]

Knox now collected historical materials from Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, and heard of the publication of Buchanan’s scurrilous “Detection” of Queen Mary, in December 1571. [371 - Knox, vi. 606-612.]

Knox had denounced the Hamiltons as murderers, so one of that name accused our Reformer of having signed a band for the murder of Darnley – not the murder at Kirk o’ Field, but a sketch for an attempt at Perth! He had an interview with Knox, not of the most satisfactory, and there was a quarrel with another Hamilton, who later became a Catholic and published scurrilous falsehoods about Knox, in Latin. In fact our Reformer had quarrels enough on his hands at St. Andrews, and to one adversary he writes about what he would do, if he had his old strength of body.

Not in the Regency, but mainly under the influence of Morton, bishops were reintroduced, at a meeting of the Kirk held at Leith, in January 1572. The idea was that each bishop should hand over most of his revenues to Morton, or some other person in power. Knox, of course, objected; he preached at St. Andrews before Morton inducted a primate of his clan, but he refused to “inaugurate” the new prelate. The Superintendent of Fife did what was to be done, and a bishop (he of Caithness) was among the men who imposed their hands on the head of the new Archbishop of St. Andrews. Thus the imposition of hands, which Knox had abolished in the Book of Discipline, crept back again, and remains in Presbyterian usage. [372 - Bannatyne, 223, 224 (1836).]

Had Knox been in vigour he might have summoned the brethren in arms to resist; but he was weak of body, and Morton was an ill man to deal with. Knox did draw up articles intended to minimise the mischief of these bastard and simoniacal bishoprics and abused patronages (August 1572). [373 - Knox, vi. 620-622.] On May 26, 1572, he describes himself as “lying in St. Andrews, half dead.” [374 - Ibid., 236] He was able, however, to preach at a witch, who was probably none the better for his distinguished attentions.

On August 17, during a truce between the hostile parties, Knox left St. Andrews for Edinburgh, “not without dolour and displeasure of the few godly that were in the town, but to the great joy and pleasure of the rest;” for, “half dead” as he was, Knox had preached a political sermon every Sunday, and he was in the pulpit at St. Giles’s on the last Sunday of August. [375 - Bannatyne, 268.] As his colleague, Craig, had disgusted the brethren by his moderation and pacific temper, a minister named Lawson was appointed as Knox’s coadjutor.

Late in August came the news of the St. Bartholomew massacre (August 24). Knox rose to the occasion, and, preaching in the presence of du Croc, the French ambassador, bade him tell his King that he was a murderer, and that God’s vengeance should never depart from him or his house. [376 - Ibid., 273.] The prophecy was amply fulfilled. Du Croc remonstrated, “but the Lords answered they could not stop the mouths of ministers to speak against themselves.”

There was a convention of Protestants in Edinburgh on October 20, but lords did not attend, and few lairds were present. The preachers and other brethren in the Assembly proposed that all Catholics in the realm should be compelled to recant publicly, to lose their whole property and be banished if they were recalcitrant, and, if they remained in the country, that all subjects should be permitted, lawfully, to put them to death. (“To invade them, and every one of them, to the death.”) [377 - Ibid., 278.] This was the ideal, embodied in law, of the brethren in 1560. Happily they were not permitted to disgrace Scotland by a Bartholomew massacre of her own.

Mr. Hume Brown thinks that these detestable proposals “if not actually penned by Knox, must have been directly inspired by him.” He does not, however, mention the demand for massacre, except as “pains and penalties for those who preached the old religion.” [378 - John Knox, ii. 282, 283.] “Without exception of persons, great or small,” all were to be obliged to recant, or to be ruined and exiled, or to be massacred. Dr. M‘Crie does not hint at the existence of these articles, “to be given to the Regent and Council.” They included a very proper demand for the reformation of vice at home. Certainly Knox did not pen or dictate the Articles, for none of his favourite adjectives occurs in the document.

At this time Elizabeth, Leicester, and Cecil desired to hand over Queen Mary to Mar, the Regent, “to proceed with her by way of justice,” a performance not to be deferred, “either for Parliament or a great Session.” Very Petty Sessions indeed, if any, were to suffice for the trial of the Queen. [379 - Cf. Leicester’s letter of October 10, 1574, in Tytler, vii. chap, iv., and Appendix.] There are to be no “temporising solemnities,” all are to be “stout and resolute in execution,” Leicester thus writes to an unknown correspondent on October 10. Killigrew, who was to arrange the business with Mar, was in Scotland by September 19. On October 6, Killigrew writes that Knox is very feeble but still preaching, and that he says, if he is not a bishop, it is by no fault of Cecil’s. “I trust to satisfy Morton,” says Killigrew, “and as for John Knox, that thing, as you may see by my letter to Mr. Secretary, is done and doing daily; the people in general well bent to England, abhorring the fact in France, and fearing their tyranny.”

“That thing” is not the plan for murdering Mary without trial; if Killigrew meant that he had obtained Knox’s assent to that, he would not write “that thing is doing daily.” Even Morton, more scrupulous than Elizabeth and Cecil, said that “there must be some kind of process” (trial, procès), attended secretly by the nobles and the ministers. The trial would be in Mary’s absence, or would be brief indeed, for the prisoner was not to live three hours after crossing the Border! Others, unnamed, insisted on a trial; the Queen had never been found guilty. Killigrew speaks of “two ministers” as eager for the action, but nothing proves that Knox was one of them. While Morton and Mar were haggling for the price of Mary’s blood, Mar died, on October 28, and the whole plot fell through. [380 - Tytler, vii. chap. iv.; Appendix xi, with letters.] Anxious as Knox had declared himself to be to “strike at the root,” he could not, surely, be less scrupulous about a trial than Morton, though the decision of the Court was foredoomed. Sandys, the Bishop of London, advised that Mary’s head should be chopped off!

On November 9, 1572, Knox inducted Mr. Lawson into his place as minister at St. Giles’s. On the 13th he could not read the Bible aloud, he paid his servants, and gave his man a present, the last, in addition to his wages. On the 15th two friends came to see Knox at noon, dinner time. He made an effort, and for the last time sat at meat with them, ordering a fresh hogshead of wine to be drawn. “He willed Archibald Stewart to send for the wine so long as it lasted, for he would never tarry until it were drunken.” On the 16th the Kirk came to him, by his desire; and he protested that he had never hated any man personally, but only their errors, nor had he made merchandise of the Word. He sent a message to Kirkcaldy bidding him repent, or the threatenings should fall on him and the Castle. His exertions increased his illness. There had been a final quarrel with the dying Lethington, who complained that Knox, in sermons and otherwise, charged him with saying there is “neither heaven nor hell,” an atheistic position of which (see his eloquent prayer before Corrichie fight, wherein Huntly died [381 - Knox, ii. 356; Bannatyne, 281, 282.]) he was incapable. On the 16th he told “the Kirk” that Lethington’s conduct proved that he really did disbelieve in God, and a future of rewards and punishments. That was not the question. The question was – Did Knox, publicly and privately, as Lethington complained, attribute to him words which he denied having spoken, asking that the witnesses should be produced. We wish that Knox had either produced good evidences, or explained why he could not produce them, or had apologised, or had denied that he spoke in the terms reported to Lethington.

James Melville says that the Rev. Mr. Lindsay, of Leith, told him that Knox bade him carry a message to Kirkcaldy in the Castle. After compliments, it ran: “He shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment, and hung on a gallows before the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life, and flee to the mercy of God.” Knox added: “That man’s soul is dear to me, and I would not have it perish, if I could save it.” Kirkcaldy consulted Maitland, and returned with a reply which contained Lethington’s last scoff at the prophet. However, Morton, when he had the chance, did hang Kirkcaldy, as in the play acted before Knox at St. Andrews, “according to Mr. Knox’s doctrine.” “The preachers clamoured for blood to cleanse blood.” [382 - Morton to Killigrew, August 5, 1573.]

As to a secret conference with Morton on the 17th, the Earl, before his execution, confessed that the dying man asked him, “if he knew anything of the King’s (Darnley’s) murder?” “I answered, indeed, I knew nothing of it” – perhaps a pardonable falsehood in the circumstances. Morton said that the people who had suffered from Kirkcaldy and the preachers daily demanded the soldier’s death.

Other sayings of the Reformer are reported. He repressed a lady who, he thought, wished to flatter him: “Lady, lady, the black ox has never trodden yet upon your foot!” “I have been in heaven and have possession, and I have tasted of these heavenly joys where presently I am,” he said, after long meditation, beholding, as in Bunyan’s allegory, the hills of Beulah. He said the Creed, which soon vanished from Scottish services; and in saying “Our Father,” broke off to murmur, “Who can pronounce so holy words?” On November 24 he rose and dressed, but soon returned to bed. His wife read to him the text, “where I cast my first anchor,” St. John’s Gospel, chapter xvii. About half-past ten he said, “Now it is come!” and being asked for a sign of his steadfast faith, he lifted up one hand, “and so slept away without any pain.” [383 - Bannatyne, 283-290.]

Knox was buried on November 26 in the churchyard south of St. Giles. A flat stone, inscribed J. K., beside the equestrian statue of Charles II., is reported to mark his earthly resting-place. He died as he had lived, a poor man; a little money was owed to him; all his debts were paid. His widow, two years later, married Andrew Ker of Faldonside, so notorious for levelling a pistol at the Queen on the occasion of Riccio’s murder. Ker appears to have been intimate with the Reformer. Bannatyne speaks of a story of Lady Atholl’s witchcraft, told by a Mr. Lundie to Knox, at dinner, “at Falsyde.” This was a way of spelling Faldonside, [384 - There was another Falsyde.] the name of Ker’s place, hard by the Tweed, within a mile of Abbotsford. Probably Ker and his wife sleep in the family burying-ground, the disused kirkyard of Lindean, near a little burn that murmurs under the broad burdock leaves on its way to join the Ettrick.

APPENDIX A: ALLEGED PERFIDY OF MARY OF GUISE

The Regent has usually been accused of precipitating, or causing the Revolution of 1559, by breaking a pledge given to the Protestants assembled at Perth (May 10-11, 1559). Knox’s “History” and a letter of his are the sources of this charge, and it is difficult to determine the amount of truth which it may contain.

Our earliest evidence on the matter is found in a letter to the English Privy Council, from Sir James Croft, commanding at Berwick. The letter, of May 19, is eight days later than the riots at Perth. It is not always accurately informed; Croft corrects one or two statements in later despatches, but the points corrected are not those with which we are here concerned. [385 - See the letter in Maxwell’s Old Dundee, 399-401.] Neither in this nor in other English advices do I note any charge of ill faith brought against the Regent on this occasion. Croft says that, on Knox’s arrival, many nobles and a multitude of others repaired to Dundee to hear him and others preach. The Regent then summoned these preachers before her to Stirling, [386 - Bain’s Calendar is misleading here (vol. i. 202). Why Mr. Bain summarised wrongly in 1898, what Father Stevenson had done correctly in 1863 (For. Cal. Eliz,, p. 263) is a mystery.] but as they had a “train” of 5000 or 6000, she “dismissed the appearance,” putting the preachers to the horn, and commanding the nobility to appear before her in Edinburgh. The “companies” then retired and wrecked monasteries at Perth. The Lords and they had previously sent Erskine of Dun to the Regent, offering to appear before her with only their household servants, to hear the preachers dispute with the clergy, if she would permit. The Regent, “taking displeasure with” Erskine of Dun, bade him begone out of her sight. He rode off (to Perth), and she had him put to the horn (as a fact, he was only fined in his recognisances as bail for one of the preachers). The riots followed his arrival in Perth.

Such is our earliest account; there is no mention of a promise broken by the Regent.

Knox himself wrote two separate and not always reconcilable accounts of the first revolutionary explosion; one in a letter of June 23 to Mrs. Locke, the other in a part of Book II. of his “History,” composed at some date before October 23, 1559. That portion of his “History” is an apologia for the proceedings of his party, and was apparently intended for contemporary publication. [387 - See the “Prefatio,” Knox, i. 297, 298. In this preface Knox represents the brethren as still being “unjustly persecuted by France and their faction.” The book ends with the distresses of the Protestants in November 1559, with the words, “Look upon us, O Lord, in the multitude of Thy mercies; for we are brought even to the deep of the dungeon.” —Knox, i. 473.]

This part of the “History,” therefore, as the work of an advocate, needs to be checked, when possible, by other authorities. We first examine Knox’s letter of June 23, 1559, to Mrs. Locke. He says that he arrived in Edinburgh on May 2, and, after resting for a day, went (on May 4) to the brethren assembled at Dundee. They all marched to Perth, meaning thence to accompany the preachers to their day of law at Stirling, May 10. But, lest the proceeding should seem rebellious, they sent a baron (Erskine of Dun, in fact) to the Regent, “with declaration of our minds.” The Regent and Council in reply, bade the multitude “stay, and not come to Stirling.. and so should no extremity be used, but the summons should be continued” (deferred) “till further advisement. Which, being gladly granted of us, some of the brethren returned to their dwelling-places. But the Queen and her Council, nothing mindful of her and their promise, incontinent did call” (summon) “the preachers, and for lack of their appearance, did exile and put them and their assistants to the horn… ” [388 - Knox, vi. 22, 23.]

It would be interesting to know who the Regent’s Council were on this occasion. The Reformer errs when he tells Mrs. Locke that the Regent outlawed “the assisters” of the preachers. Dr. M‘Crie publishes an extract from the “Justiciary Records” of May 10, in which Methuen, Christison, Harlaw, and Willock, and no others, are put to the horn, or outlawed, in absence, for breach of the Regent’s proclamations, and for causing “tumults and seditions.” No one else is put to the horn, but the sureties for the preachers’ appearance are fined. [389 - M‘Crie’s Knox, 360.]

In his “History,” Knox says that the Regent, when Erskine of Dun arrived at Stirling as an emissary of the brethren, “began to craft with him, soliciting him to stay the multitude, and the preachers also, with promise that she would take some better order.” Erskine wrote to the brethren, “to stay and not to come forward, showing what promise and hope he had of the Queen’s Grace’s favours.” Some urged that they should go forward till the summons was actually “discharged,” otherwise the preachers and their companions would be put to the horn. Others said that the Regent’s promises were “not to be suspected.. and so did the whole multitude with their preachers stay… The Queen, perceiving that the preachers did not appear, began to utter her malice, and notwithstanding any request made on the contrary, gave command to put them to the horn..” Erskine then prudently withdrew, rode to Perth, and “did conceal nothing of the Queen’s craft and falsehood.” [390 - Knox, i. 317-319.]

In this version the Regent bears all the blame, nothing is said of the Council. “The whole multitude stay” – at Perth, or it may perhaps be meant that they do not come forward towards Stirling. The Regent’s promise is merely that she would “take some better order.” She does not here promise to postpone the summons, and refuses “any request made” to abstain from putting them to the horn. The account, therefore, is somewhat more vague than that in the letter to Mrs. Locke. Prof. Hume Brown puts it that the Regent “in her understanding with Erskine of Dun had publicly cancelled the summons of the preachers for the 10th of May,” which rather overstates the case perhaps. That she should “publicly cancel” or “discharge” the summons was what a part of the brethren desired, and did not get. [391 - Hume Brown, John Knox, ii. 6.]

We now turn to a fragmentary and anonymous “Historie of the Estate of Scotland,” concerning which Prof. Hume Brown says, “Whoever the author may have been, he writes as a contemporary, or from information supplied by a contemporary.. what inspires confidence in him is that certain of his facts not recorded by other contemporary Scottish historians are corroborated by the despatches of d’Oysel and others in Teulet.” [392 - John Knox, ii. 4.]

I elsewhere [393 - Scot. Hist. Review, January 1905.] give reasons for thinking that this “Historie” is perhaps the chronicle of Bruce of Earl’s Hall, a contemporary gentleman of Fife. I also try to show that he writes, on one occasion, as an eye-witness.

This author, who is a strong partisan of the Reformers, says nothing of the broken promise of the Regent and Council. He mentions the intention to march to Stirling, and then writes: “And although the Queen Regent was most earnestly requested and persuaded to continue” – that is to defer the summons – “nevertheless she remained wilful and obstinate, so that the counsel of God must needs take effect. Shortly, the day being come, because they appeared not, their sureties were outlawed, and the preachers ordered to be put to the horn. The Laird of Dun, who was sent from Perth by the brethren, perceiving her obstinacy, they” (who?) “turned from Stirling, and coming to Perth, declared to the brethren the obstinacy they found in the Queen… ”

This sturdy Protestant’s version, which does not accuse the Regent of breaking troth, is corroborated by a Catholic contemporary, Lesley, Bishop of Ross. He says that Erskine of Dun was sent to beg the Regent not to impose a penalty on the preachers in their absence. But as soon as Dun returned and Knox learned from him that the Regent would not grant their request, he preached the sermon which provoked the devastation of the monasteries. [394 - Lesley, ii. 40, Scottish Text Society, 1895.] Buchanan and Spottiswoode follow Knox, but they both use Knox’s book, and are not independent witnesses.

The biographers of Knox do not quote “The Historie of the Estate of Scotland,” where it touches on the beginning of the Revolution, without disparaging the Regent’s honour. We have another dubious witness, Sir James Melville, who arrived on a mission from France to the Regent on June 13; he left Paris about June 1. This is the date of a letter [395 - In the French Archives MS., Angleterre, vol. xv.] in which Henri II. offers the Regent every assistance in the warmest terms. Melville writes, however, that in his verbal orders, delivered by the Constable in the royal presence, the Constable said, “I have intelligence that the Queen Regent has not kept all things promised to them.” But Melville goes on to say that the Constable quoted d’Elboeuf’s failure to reach Scotland with his fleet, as a reason for not sending the troops which were promised by Henri. As d’Elboeuf’s failure occurred long after the date of the alleged conversation, the evidence of Melville is here incorrect. He wrote his “Memoirs” much later, in old age, but Henri may have written to the Regent in one sense, and given Melville orders in another. [396 - Melville, 79 (1827).]

We find that Knox’s charge against the Regent is not made in our earliest information, Croft’s letter of May 19: is not made by the Protestant (and, we think, contemporary) author of the “Historie,” and, of course, is not hinted at by Lesley, a Catholic. We have seen throughout that Knox vilifies Mary of Guise in cases where she is blameless. On the other hand, Knox is our only witness who was at Perth at the time of the events, and it cannot be doubted that what he told Mrs. Locke was what he believed, whether correctly or erroneously. He could believe anything against Mary of Guise. Archbishop Spottiswoode says, “The author of the story” (“History”) “ascribed to John Knox in his whole discourse showeth a bitter and hateful spite against the Regent, forging dishonest things which were never so much as suspected by any, setting down his own conjectures as certain truths, yea, the least syllable that did escape her in passion, he maketh it an argument of her cruel and inhuman disposition.. ” [397 - Spottiswoode, i. 320.] In the MS. used by Bishop Keith, [398 - Keith, i. 493, 494 (1835).] Spottiswoode added, after praising the Regent, “these things I have heard my father often affirm”; he had the like testimony “from an honourable and religious lady, who had the honour to wait near her person.” Spottiswoode was, therefore, persuaded that the “History” “was none of Mr. Knox his writings.” In spite of this opinion, Spottiswoode, writing about 1620-35, accepts most of the hard things that Knox says of the Regent’s conduct in 1559, and indeed exaggerates one or two of them; that is, as relates to her political behaviour, for example, in the affair of the broken promise of May 10. It may be urged that here Spottiswoode had the support of the reminiscences of his father, a Superintendent in the Knoxian church.

APPENDIX B: FORGERY PROCURED BY MARY OF GUISE

In the writer’s opinion several of Knox’s accusations of perfidy against the Regent, in 1559, are not proved, and the attempts to prove them are of a nature which need not be qualified. But it is necessary to state the following facts as tending to show that the Regent was capable of procuring a forgery against the Duke of Chatelherault. A letter attributed to him exists in the French Archives, [399 - Angl. Reg., xvi., fol. 346.] dated Glasgow, January 25, 1560, in which the Duke curries favour with Francis II., and encloses his blank bond, un blanc scellé, offering to send his children to France. [400 - Teulet, i. 407.]On January 28, the Regent writes from Scotland to de Noailles, then the French Ambassador to England, bidding him to mention this submission to Elizabeth, and even show the Duke’s letter and blank bond, that Elizabeth may see how little he is to be trusted. Now how could the Regent, on January 28, have a letter sent by the Duke to France on January 25? She must have intercepted it in Scotland. [401 - Ibid., i. 410.] Next, on March 15, 1560, the Duke, writing to Norfolk, denies the letter attributed to him by the French. [402 - For. Cal. Eliz., 1559-60, p. 453.] He said that any one of a hundred Hamiltons would fight M. de Seurre (the French Ambassador who, in February, succeeded de Noailles) on this quarrel. [403 - Ibid., p. 469.]

There exists a document, in the cipher of Throckmorton, English Ambassador in France, purporting to be a copy of a letter from the Regent to the Duc and Cardinal de Guise, dated Edinburgh, March 27, 1560. [404 - Ibid., p. 480.] The Regent, at that date, was in Leith, not in Edinburgh Castle, where she went on April 1. In that letter she is made to say that de Seurre has “very evil misunderstood” the affair of the letter attributed to Chatelherault. She had procured “blanks” of his “by one of her servants here” (at Leith) “to the late Bishop of Ross”; the Duke’s alleged letter and submission of January 25 had been “filled up” on a “blank,” the Duke knowing nothing of the matter.

This letter of the Regent, then, must also, if authentic, have been somehow intercepted or procured by Throckmorton, in France. It is certain that Throckmorton sometimes, by bribery, did obtain copies of secret French papers, but I have not found him reporting to Cecil or Queen Elizabeth this letter of the Regent’s. The reader must estimate for himself the value of that document. I have stated the case as fairly as I can, and though the evidence against the Regent, as it stands, would scarcely satisfy a jury, I believe that, corrupted by the evil example of the Congregation, the Regent, in January 1560, did procure a forgery intended to bring suspicion on Chatelherault. But how could she be surprised that de Seurre did not understand the real state of the case? The Regent may have explained the true nature of the affair to de Noailles, but it may have been unknown to de Seurre, who succeeded that ambassador. Yet, how could she ask any ambassador to produce a confessed forgery as genuine?

notes

1

Inventories of Mary, Queen of Scots, p. cxxii., note 7.

2