John Knox and the Reformation

It is not argued that Mary of Guise was, or became, incapable of worse than dissimulation (a case of forgery by her in the following year is investigated in Appendix B). But her practices at this time were such as Knox could not throw the first stone at. Her French advisers were in fact “perplexed,” as Throckmorton wrote to Elizabeth (August 8). They made preparations for sending large reinforcements: they advised concession in religion: they waited on events, and the Regent could only provide, at Leith (which was jealous of Edinburgh and anxious to be made a free burgh), a place whither she could fly in peril. Meantime she would vainly exert her woman’s wit among many dangers.

Knox, too, was exerting his wit in his own way. Busied in preaching and in acting as secretary and diplomatic agent to the Congregation as he was, he must also have begun in or not much later than August 1559, the part of his “History” first written by him, namely Book II. That book, as he wrote to a friend named Railton [172 - Knox, i. xxvi.; vi. 87.] on October 23, 1559 (when much of it was already penned), is meant as a defence of his party against the charge of sedition, and was clearly intended (we reiterate) for contemporary reading at home and abroad, while the strife was still unsettled. This being so, Knox continues his policy of blaming the Regent for breach of the misreported treaty of July 24: for treachery, which would justify the brethren’s attack on her before the period of truce (January 10, 1559) ran out.

One clause, we know, secured the Reformers from molestation before that date. Despite this, Knox records a case of “oppressing” a brother, “which had been sufficient to prove the Appointment to be plainly violated.” Lord Seton, of the Catholic party, [173 - Knox, i. 392, 393.] “broke a chair on Alexander Whitelaw as he came from Preston (pans) accompanied by William Knox.. and this he did supposing that Alexander Whitelaw had been John Knox.”

So much Knox states in his Book II., writing probably in September or October 1559. But he does not here say what Alexander Whitelaw and William Knox had been doing, or inform us how he himself was concerned in the matter. He could not reveal the facts when writing in the early autumn of 1559, because the brethren were then still taking the line that they were loyal, and were suffering from the Regent’s breaches of treaty, as in the matter of the broken chair.

The sole allusion here made by Knox to the English intrigues, before they were manifest to all mankind in September, is this, “Because England was of the same religion, and lay next to us, it was judged expedient first to prove them, which we did by one or two messengers, as hereafter, in its own place, more amply shall be declared.” [174 - Ibid., i. 382.] He later inserted in Book III. some account of the intrigues of July-August 1559, “in its own place,” namely, in a part of his work occupied with the occurrences of January 1560. [175 - Knox, ii. 15-38.]

Cecil, prior to the compact of July 24, had wished to meet Knox at Stamford. On July 30 Knox received his instructions as negotiator with England. [176 - Ibid., vi. 56-59.] His employers say that they hear that Huntly and Chatelherault have promised to join the Reformers if the Regent breaks a jot of the treaty of July 24, the terms of which Knox can declare. They ask money to enable them to take Stirling Castle, and “strength by sea” for the capture of Broughty Castle, on Tay. Yet they later complained of the Regent when she fortified Leith. They actually did take Broughty Castle, and then had the hardihood to aver that they only set about this when they heard in mid-September of the fortification of Leith by the Regent. They aimed at it six days after their treaty of July 24. They asked for soldiers to lie in garrison, for men, ships, and money for their Lords.

Bearing these instructions Knox sailed from Fife to Holy Island, near Berwick, and there met Croft, the Governor of that town. Croft kept him, not with sufficient secrecy, in Berwick, where he was well known, while Whitelaw was coming from Cecil with his answers to the petitions of the brethren. Meanwhile Croft held converse with Knox, who, as he reports, says that, as to the change of “Authority” (that is of sovereignty, temporary at least), the choice of the brethren would be subject to Elizabeth’s wishes. Yet the brethren contemplated no change of Authority! Arran ought to be kept secretly in England “till wise men considered what was in him; if misliked he put Lord James second.” As to what Knox told Croft about the terms of treaty of July 24, it is best to state the case in Croft’s own words. “He (Knox) excusys the Protestantes, for that the French as commyng apon them at Edynbrogh when theyr popoll were departed to make new provysyon of vytaylles, forcyd them to make composycyon wyth the quene. Whereyn (sayeth he) the frenchmen ar apoynted to departe out of Scotland by the xth of thys monthe, and they truste verely by thys caus to be stronger, for that the Duke, apon breche of promys on the quene’s part, wyll take playne parte withe the Protestantes.” [177 - S. P. Scotland, Elizabeth, MS. vol. i. No. 80; cf. Bain, i. 236, 237. Croft to Cecil, Berwick, August 3, 1559.]

This is quite explicit. Knox, as envoy of the Lords, declares that in the treaty it is “appointed” that the French force shall leave Scotland on August 10. (The printed calendars are not accurate.) No such matter occurred in the treaty “wyth the quene.” Knox added, next day, that he himself “was unfit to treat of so great matters,” and Croft appears to have agreed with him, for, by the Reformer’s lack of caution, his doings in Holy Island were “well known and published.” Consequently, when Whitelaw returned to Knox with Cecil’s reply to the requests of the brethren, the performances of Knox and Whitelaw were no secrets, in outline at least, to the Regent’s party. For this reason, Lord Seton, mistaking Whitelaw for Knox (who had set out on August 3 to join the brethren at Stirling), pursued and broke a chair on the harmless Brother Whitelaw. Such was the Regent’s treacherous breach of treaty!

During this episode in his curious adventures as a diplomatist, Knox recommended Balnaves, author of a treatise on “Justification by Faith,” as a better agent in these courses, and with Balnaves the new envoy of Elizabeth, Sadleir, a veteran diplomatist (wheedled in 1543 by Mary of Guise), transacted business henceforth. Sadleir was ordered to Berwick on August 6. Elizabeth infringed the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, then only four months old, by giving Sadleir £3000 in gold, or some such sum, for the brethren. “They were tempting the Duke by all means possible,” [178 - For. Cal. Eliz., 470.] but he will only promise neutrality if it comes to the push, and they, Argyll and Lord James say (Glasgow, August 13), are not yet ready “to discharge this authority,” that is, to depose the Regent. Chatelherault’s promise was less vigorous than it had been reported!

Knox, who now acted as secretary for the Congregation, was not Sir Henry Wotton’s ideal ambassador, “an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country.” When he stooped to statements which seem scarcely candid, to put it mildly, he did violence to his nature. He forced himself to proclaim the loyalty of his party from the pulpit, when he could not do so without some economy of truth. [179 - I assume that he was the preacher at Edinburgh in d’Oysel’s letter of June 30-July 2, 1559. Teulet, i. 325.] He inserted things in his “History,” and spoke things to Croft, which he should have known to be false. But he carried his point. He did advance the “union of hearts” with England, if in a blundering fashion, and we owe him eternal gratitude for his interest in the match, though “we like not the manner of the wooing.” The reluctant hand of Elizabeth was now inextricably caught in the gear of that great machine which broke the ancient league of France and Scotland, and saved Scotland from some of the sorrows of France.

The papers of Sadleir, Elizabeth’s secret agent with the Scots, show the godly pursuing their old plan of campaign. To make treaty with the Regent; to predict from the pulpit that she would break it; to make false statements about the terms of the treaty; to accuse her of their infringement; to profess loyalty; to aim at setting up a new sovereign power; to tell the populace that Mary of Guise’s scanty French reinforcements – some 1500 men – came by virtue of a broken treaty; to tell Sadleir that they were very glad that the French had come, as they would excite popular hatred; to make out that the fortification of Leith was breach of treaty; – such, in brief, were the methods of the Reformers. [180 - Sadleir to Cecil, September 8, 1559. For. Cal. Eliz., 543, 1558-1559. The fortification, says Professor Hume Brown, “was a distinct breach of the late agreement” (of July 24), “and they weir not slow to remind her” (the Regent) “of her bad faith.” The agreement of July 24 says nothing about fortifying. The ingenious brethren argued that to fortify Leith entailed “oppression of our poor brethren, indwellers of the same.” Now the agreement forbade “oppression of any of the Congregation.” But the people of Leith had “rendered themselves” to the Regent on July 24, and the breach of treaty, if any, was “constructive.” (John Knox, ii. 47; Knox, i. 413, 424-433.)]

They now took a new method of proving the Regent’s breach of treaty, that she had “set up the Mass in Holyrood, which they had before suppressed.” They were allowed to have their sermons in St. Giles’s, but she was not to have her rites in her own abbey. Balnaves still harped on the non-dismissal of the French as a breach of treaty!

Arran, returning from Switzerland, had an interview with Elizabeth in England, in mid-September, was smuggled across the Border with the astute and unscrupulous Thomas Randolph in his train. With Arran among them, Chatelherault might waver as he would. Meanwhile Knox and Willock preached up and down the country, doubtless repeating to the people their old charges against the Regent. Lethington, the secretary of that lady, still betrayed her, telling Sadleir “that he attended upon the Regent no longer than he might have a good occasion to revolt unto the Protestants” (September 16).

Balnaves got some two to three thousand pounds in gold (the sum is variously stated) from Sadleir. “He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority.” This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had “tempted him” sufficiently. They had come up to his price. Arran, the hoped-for Hamilton king, the hoped-for husband of the Queen of England, had arrived, and with Arran the Duke joined the Reformers. About September 20 they forbade the Regent to fortify Leith.

The brethren say that they have given no “provocation.” Six weeks earlier they had requested England to help them to seize and hold Broughty Castle, though the Regent may not have known that detail.

The Regent replied as became her, and Glencairn, with Erskine of Dun, wrecked the rich abbey of Paisley. The brethren now broke the truce with a vengeance.

CHAPTER XII: KNOX IN THE WAR OF THE CONGREGATION: THE REGENT ATTACKED: HER DEATH: CATHOLICISM ABOLISHED, 1559-1560

Though the Regent was now to be deposed and attacked by armed force, Knox tells us that there were dissensions among her enemies. Some held “that the Queen was heavily done to,” and that the leaders “sought another end than religion.” Consequently, when the Lords with their forces arrived at Edinburgh on October 16, the local brethren showed a want of enthusiasm. The Congregation nevertheless summoned the Regent to depart from Leith, and on October 21 met at the Tolbooth to discuss her formal deposition from office. Willock moved that this might lawfully be done. Knox added, with more reserve than usual, that their hearts must not be withdrawn from their King and Queen, Mary and Francis. The Regent, too, ought to be restored when she openly repented and submitted. Willock dragged Jehu into his sermon, but Knox does not appear to have remarked that Francis and Mary were Ahab and Jezebel, idolaters. He was now in a position of less freedom and more responsibility than while he was a wandering prophet at large.

On October 24 the Congregation summoned Leith, having deposed the Regent in the name of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary, and of themselves as Privy Council! They did more. They caused one James Cocky, a gold worker, to forge the great seal of Francis and Mary, “wherewith they sealed their pretended laws and ordinances, tending to constrain the subjects of the kingdom to rebel and favour their usurpations.” Their proclamations with the forged seal they issued at St. Andrews, Glasgow, Linlithgow, Perth, and elsewhere; using this seal in their letters to noblemen, who were ordered to obey Arran. The gold worker, whose name is variously spelled in the French record, says that the device for the coins which the Congregation meant to issue and ordered him to execute was on one side a cross with a crown of thorns, on the other the words VERBUM DEI. The artist, Cocky, was dilatory, and when the brethren were driven out of Edinburgh he gave the dies, unfinished, to John Achison, the chief official of the Mint, who often executed coins of Queen Mary. [181 - The evidence as to these proceedings of the brethren is preserved in the French archives, and consists of testimonies given on oath in answer to inquiries made by Francis and Mary in November 1559.] As Professor Hume Brown says of the audacious statement of the brethren, that they acted in the name of their King and Queen, their use of the forged Royal seal, “as covering their action with an appearance of law, served its purpose in their appeals to the people.” Cocky and Kirkcaldy were hanged by Morton in 1573.

The idea of forging the great seal may have arisen in the fertile brain of Lethington, who about October 25 had at last deserted the Regent, and now took Knox’s place as secretary of the Congregation. Henceforth their manifestoes say little about religion, and a great deal about the French design to conquer Scotland. [182 - We have dated Lethington’s desertion of the Regent about October 25, because Knox says it was a “few days before our first defeat” on the last day in October. M. Teulet dates in the beginning of October a Latin manifesto by the Congregation to all the princes of Christendom. This document is a long arraignment of the Regent’s policy; her very concessions as to religion are declared to be tricks, meant to bring the Protestant lords under the letter of the law. The paper may be thought to show the hand of Lethington, not of Knox. But, in point of fact, I incline to think that the real author of this manifesto was Cecil. He sketches it in a letter sent from the English Privy Council in November 15, 1559. This draft was to be used by the rebels in an appeal to Elizabeth.]

To the wit of Lethington we may plausibly attribute a proposal which, on October 25, Knox submitted to Croft. [183 - Knox, vi, 89, 90; M‘Crie, 143.] It was that England should lend 1000 men for the attack on the Regent in Leith. Peace with France need not be broken, for the men may come as private adventurers, and England may denounce them as rebels. Croft declined this proposal as dishonourable, and as too clearly a breach of treaty. Knox replied that he had communicated Croft’s letter “to such as partly induced me before to write” (October 29). Very probably Lethington suggested the idea, leaving the burden of its proposal on Knox. Dr. M‘Crie says that it is a solitary case of the Reformer’s recommending dissimulation; but the proceeding was in keeping with Knox’s previous statements about the nature of the terms made in July; with the protestations of loyalty; with the lie given to Mary of Guise when she spoke, on the whole, the plain truth; and generally with the entire conduct of the prophet and of the Congregation. Dr. M‘Crie justly remarks that Knox “found it difficult to preserve integrity and Christian simplicity amidst the crooked wiles of political intrigue.”

On the behaviour of the godly heaven did not smile – for the moment. Scaling-ladders had been constructed in St. Giles’s church, “so that preaching was neglected.” “The preachers spared not openly to say that they feared the success of that enterprise should not be prosperous,” for this reason, “God could not suffer such contempt of His word.. long to be unpunished.” The Duke lost heart; the waged soldiers mutinied for lack of pay; Morton deserted the cause; Bothwell wounded Ormiston as he carried money from Croft, and seized the cash [184 - Bothwell states the amount at 3000 écus de soleil. French Archives MS.]– behaving treacherously, if it be true that he was under promise not to act against the brethren. The French garrison of Leith made successful sorties; and despite the valour of Arran and Lord James and the counsel of Lethington, the godly fled from Edinburgh on November 5, under taunts and stones cast by the people of the town.

The fugitives never stopped till they reached Stirling, when Knox preached to them. He lectured at great length on discomfitures of the godly in the Old Testament, and about the Benjamites, and the Levite and his wife. Coming to practical politics, he reminded his audience that after the accession of the Hamiltons to their party, “there was nothing heard but This lord will bring these many hundred spears.. if this Earl be ours, no man in such a district will trouble us.” The Duke ought to be ashamed of himself. Before Knox came to Scotland we know he had warned the brethren against alliance with the Hamiltons. The Duke had been on the Regent’s side, “yet without his assistance they could not have compelled us to appoint with the Queen upon such unequal conditions” in the treaty of July. So the terms were in favour of the Regent, after all is said and done! [185 - Knox, i. 472.]

God had let the brethren fall, Knox said, into their present condition because they put their trust in man – in the Duke – a noble whose repentance was very dubious.

Then Knox rose to the height of the occasion. “Yea, whatsoever becomes of us and our mortal carcases, I doubt not but that this Cause (in despite of Satan) shall prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is the eternal truth of the eternal God, so shall it once prevail.” Here we have the actual genius of Knox, his tenacity, his courage in an uphill game, his faith which might move mountains. He adjured all to amendment of life, prayer, and charity. “The minds of men began to be wonderfully erected.” In Arran and Lord James too, manifestly not jealous rivals, Randolph found “more honour, stoutness, and courage than in all the rest” (November 3).

Already, before the flight, Lethington was preparing to visit England. The conduct of diplomacy with England was thus in capable hands, and Lethington was a persona grata to the English Queen. Meanwhile the victorious Regent behaved with her wonted moderation. “She pursueth no man that hath showed himself against her at this time.” She pardoned all burgesses of Edinburgh, and was ready to receive the Congregation to her grace, if they would put away the traitor Lethington, Balnaves, and some others. [186 - Sadleir to Cecil, Nov. 15, 1559. For. Cal. Eliz., 1559-60, 115.] Knox, however, says that she gave the houses of the most honest men to the French. The Regent was now very ill; graviter aegrotat, say Francis and Mary (Dec. 4, 1559). [187 - Labanoff, vii. 283.]

The truth is that the Cause of Knox, far from being desperate, as for an hour it seemed to the faint-hearted, had never looked so well. Cecil and the English Council saw that they were committed; their gift of money was known, they must bestir themselves. While they had “nourished the garboil” in Scotland, fanned the flame, they professed to believe that France was aiming, through Scotland, at England. They arranged for a large levy of forces at Berwick; they promised money without stint: and Cecil drew up the paper adopted, as I conceive, by the brethren in their Latin appeal to all Christian princes. The Scots were to say that they originally took arms in defence of their native dynasty (the Hamiltons), Mary Stuart having no heirs of her body, and France intending to annex Scotland – which was true enough, but was not the cause of the rising at Perth. That England is also aimed at is proved by the fact that Mary and Francis, on the seal of Scotland, quarter the arms of England. Knox himself had seen, and had imparted the fact to Cecil, a jewel on which these fatal heraldic pretensions were made. The Queen is governed by “the new authority of the House of Guise.” In short, Elizabeth must be asked to intervene for these political reasons, not in defence of the Gospel, and large preparations for armed action in Scotland were instantly made. Meanwhile Cecil’s sketch of the proper manifesto for the Congregation to make, was embodied in Lethington’s instructions (November 24) from the Congregation, as well as adapted in their Latin appeal to Christian princes.

We may suppose that a man of Knox’s unbending honesty was glad to have thrown off his functions as secretary to the brethren. Far from disclaiming their idolatrous King and Queen (the ideal policy), they were issuing proclamations headed “Francis and Mary,” and bearing the forged signet. Examples with the seal were, as late as 1652, in the possession of the Erskine of Dun of that day. In them Francis and Mary denounce the Pope as Antichrist! Keith, who wrote much later, styles these proclamations “pretty singular,” and Knox must have been of the same opinion.

After Lethington took the office of secretary to the Congregation, Knox had for some time no great public part in affairs. Fife was invaded by “these bloody worms,” as he calls the French; and he preached what he tells us was a “comfortable sermon” to the brethren at Cupar. But Lethington had secured the English alliance: Lord Grey was to lead 4000 foot and 2000 horse to the Border; Lord Winter with fourteen ship set sail, and was incommoded by a storm, in which vessels of d’Elboeuf, with French reinforcements for the Regent, were, some lost, some driven back to harbour. As in Jacobite times, French aid to the loyal party was always unfortunate, and the arrival of Winter’s English fleet in the Forth caused d’Oysel to retreat out of Fife back to Leith. He had nearly reached St. Andrews, where Knox dwelt in great agony of spirit. He had “great need of a good horse,” probably because, as in October 1559, money was offered for his head. But private assassination had no terrors for the Reformer. [188 - Knox, vi. 105-107.]

Knox, as he wrote to a friend on January 29, 1560, had forsaken all public assemblies and retired to a life of study, because “I am judged among ourselves too extreme.” When the Duke of Norfolk, with the English army, was moving towards Berwick, where he was to make a league with the Protestant nobles of Scotland, Knox summoned Chatelherault, and the gentlemen of his party, then in Glasgow. They wished Norfolk to come to them by Carlisle, a thing inconvenient to Lord James. Knox chid them sharply for sloth, and want of wisdom and discretion, praising highly the conduct of Lord James. They had “unreasonable minds.” “Wise men do wonder what my Lord Duke’s friends do mean, that are so slack and backward in this Cause.” The Duke did not, however, write to France with an offer of submission. That story, ben trovato but not vero, rests on a forgery by the Regent! [189 - See Appendix B.] The fact is that the Duke was not a true Protestant, his advisers, including his brother the Archbishop, were Catholics, and the successes of d’Oysel in winter had terrified him; but, seeing an English army at hand, he assented to the league with England at Berwick, as “second person of the realm of Scotland” (February 27, 1560). Elizabeth “accepted the realm of Scotland” – Chatelherault being recognised as heir-apparent to the throne thereof – for so long as the marriage of Queen Mary and Francis I. endured, and a year later. The Scots, however, remain dutiful subjects of Queen Mary, they say, except so far as lawless attempts to make Scotland a province of France are concerned. Chatelherault did not sign the league till May 10, with Arran, Huntly, Morton (at last committed to the Cause), and the usual leaders of the Congregation.

With the details of the siege of Leith, and with the attempts at negotiation, we are not here concerned. France, in fact, was powerless to aid the Regent. Since the arrival of Throckmorton in France, as ambassador of England, in the previous summer (1559), the Huguenots had been conspiring. They were in touch with Geneva, in the east; on the north, in Brittany, they appear to have been stirred up by Tremaine, a Cornish gentleman, and emissary of Cecil, who joined Throckmorton at Blois, in March 1560. Stories were put about that the young French King was a leper, and was kidnapping fair-haired children, in whose blood he meant to bathe. The Huguenots had been conspiring ever since September 1559, when they seem to have sent to Elizabeth for aid in money. [190 - Corp. Ref., xlv. 645 (3118, note I).] More recently they had held a kind of secret convention at Nantes, and summoned bands who were to lurk in the woods, concentrate at Amboise, attack the château, slay the Guises, and probably put the King and Queen Mary under the Prince de Condé, who was by the plotters expected to take the part which Arran played in Scotland. It is far from certain that Condé had accepted the position. In all this we may detect English intrigue and the gold of Elizabeth. Calvin had been consulted; he disapproved of the method of the plot, still more of the plot itself. But he knew all about it. “All turns on killing Antonius,” he wrote, “Antonius” being either the Cardinal or the Duc de Guise. [191 - Calvinus Sturmio, Corp. Ref., xlvi. 38, 39, March 23, 1560. Sturmius Calvino, ibid., 53-56, April 15.]

The conspiracy failed at Amboise, on March 17-19, 1560. Throckmorton was present, and describes the panic and perplexity of the Court, while he eagerly asks to be promptly and secretly recalled, as suspicion has fallen on himself. He sent Tremaine home through Brittany, where he gathered proposals for betraying French towns to Elizabeth, rather prematurely. Surrounded by treachery, and destitute of funds, the Guises could not aid the Regent, and Throckmorton kept advising Cecil to “strike while the iron was hot,” and paralyse French designs. The dying Regent of Scotland never lost heart in circumstances so desperate.

Even before the outbreak at Perth, Mary of Guise had been in very bad health. When the English crossed the Border to beleaguer Leith, Lord Erskine, who had maintained neutrality in Edinburgh Castle, allowed her to come there to die (April 1, 1560).

On April 29, from the Castle of Edinburgh, she wrote a letter to d’Oysel, commanding in Leith. She told him that she was suffering from dropsy; “one of her legs begins to swell… You know there are but three days for the dropsy in this country.” The letter was intercepted by her enemies, and deciphered. [192 - Bain, i. 389, 390; For. Cal. Eliz., 1559-60, 604.] On May 7, the English and Scots made an assault, and were beaten back with loss of 1000 men. According to Knox, the French stripped the fallen, and allowed the white carcases to lie under the wall, as also happened in 1746, after the English defeat at Falkirk. The Regent saw them, Knox says, from the Castle, and said they were “a fair tapestry.” “Her words were heard of some,” and carried to Knox, who, from the pulpit, predicted “that God should revenge that contumely done to his image.. even in such as rejoiced thereat. And the very experience declared that he was not deceived, for within few days thereafter (yea, some say that same day) began her belly and loathsome legs to swell, and so continued, till that God did execute his judgments upon her.” [193 - Knox, ii. 68; cf. the Regent’s letter. Bain, i. 389.]

Knox wrote thus on May 16, 1566. [194 - The date may be part of an interpolation.] He was a little irritated at that time by Queen Mary’s triumph over his friends, the murderers of Riccio, and his own hasty flight from Edinburgh to Kyle. This may excuse the somewhat unusual and even unbecoming nature of his language concerning the dying lady, but his memory was quite wrong about his prophecy. The symptoms of the Regent’s malady had begun more than a week before the Anglo-Scottish defeat at Leith, and the nature of her complaint ought to have been known to the prophet’s party, as her letter, describing her condition, had been intercepted and deciphered. But the deciphering may have been done in England, which would cause delay. We cannot, of course, prove that Knox was informed as to the Regent’s malady before he prophesied; if so, he had forgotten the fact before he wrote as he did in 1566. But the circumstances fail to demonstrate that he had a supernormal premonition, or drew a correct deduction from Scripture, and make it certain that the Regent did not fall ill after his prophecy.

The Regent died on June 11, half-an-hour after the midnight of June 10. A report was written on June 13, from Edinburgh Castle, to the Cardinal of Lorraine, by Captain James Cullen, who some twelve years later was hanged by the Regent Morton. He says that since June 7, Lord James and Argyll, Marischal, and Glencairn, had assiduously attended on the dying lady. Two hours before her death she spoke apart for a whole hour with Lord James. Chatelherault had seen her twice, and Arran once. [195 - This account is from the French Archives MS., Angleterre, vol. xv.] Knox mentions the visits of these lords, and says that d’Oysel was forbidden to speak with her, “belike she would have bidden him farewell, for auld familiarity was great.”

According to Knox, the Regent admitted the errors of her policy, attributing it to Huntly, who had deserted her, and to “the wicked counsel of her friends,” that is, her brothers. At the request of the Lords, she saw Willock, and said, as she naturally would, that “there was no salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ.” “She was compelled.. to approve the chief head of our religion, wherein we dissent from all papists and popery.” Knox had strange ideas about the creed which he opposed. “Of any virtue that ever was espied in King James V. (whose daughter she,” Mary Stuart, “is called”), “to this hour (1566) we have seen no sparkle to appear.” [196 - Knox, ii. 72.]

With this final fling at the chastity of Mary of Guise, the Reformer takes leave of the woman whom he so bitterly hated. Yet, “Knox was not given to the practice so common in his day, of assassinating reputations by vile insinuations.” Posterity has not accepted, contemporary English historians did not accept, Knox’s picture of Mary of Guise as the wanton widow, the spawn of the serpent, who desired to cut the throat of every Protestant in Scotland. She was placed by circumstances in a position from which there was no issue. The fatal French marriage of her daughter was a natural step, at a moment when Scottish independence could only be maintained by help of France. Had she left the Regency in the hands of Chatelherault, that is, of Archbishop Hamilton, the prelate was not the man to put down Protestantism by persecution, and so save the situation. If he had been, Mary of Guise was not the woman to abet him in drastic violence. The nobles would have revolted against the feeble Duke. [197 - It is an inexplicable fact that, less than a month before Glencairn and Lord James signed the first godly Band (December 3, 1557), these two, with Kirkcaldy of Grange, “were acting with the Queen-Dowager against Huntly, Chatelherault, and Argyll,” who in December signed with them the godly Band. The case is thus stated by Mr. Tytler, perhaps too vigorously. It appears that, after the refusal of the Lords to cross Tweed and attack England, in the autumn of 1557, the Regent, with the concurrence of Glencairn, Lord James, and Kirkcaldy of Grange, proposed to recall from exile in England the Earl of Lennox, father of Darnley. He, like the chief of the Hamiltons, had a claim to the crown of Scotland, failing heirs born of Mary Stuart. Lennox, therefore, would be a counterpoise to Hamilton and his ally in mutiny, Argyll. Thus Lord James and Glencairn, in November 1557; support the Regent against the Hamiltons and Argyll, but in December Glencairn, reconciled to Argyll, signs with him the godly Band. We descry the old Stewart versus Hamilton feud in these proceedings.]

On July 6, the treaty of Edinburgh was concluded by representatives of England (Cecil was one) and of France. The Reformers carried a point of essential importance, the very point which Knox told Croft had been secured by the Appointment of July 1559. All French forces were to be dismissed the country, except one hundred and twenty men occupying Dunbar and Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth. A clause by which Cecil thought he had secured “the kernel” for England, and left the shell to France, a clause recognising the “rightfulness” of Elizabeth’s alliance with the rebels, afforded Mary Stuart ground, or excuse, for never ratifying the treaty.

It is needless here to discuss the question – was the Convention of Estates held after the treaty, in August, a lawful Parliament? There was doubt enough, at least, to make Protestants feel uneasy about the security of the religious settlement achieved by the Convention. Randolph, the English resident, foresaw that the Acts might be rescinded.

Before the Convention of Estates met, a thanksgiving day was held by the brethren in St. Giles’s, and Knox, if he was the author of the address to the Deity, said with scientific precision, “Neither in us, nor yet in our confederates was there any cause why thou shouldst have given unto us so joyful and sudden a deliverance, for neither of us both ceased to do wickedly, even in the midst of our greatest troubles.” Elizabeth had lied throughout with all her natural and cultivated gift of falsehood: of the veracity of the brethren several instances have been furnished.

Ministers were next appointed to churches, Knox taking Edinburgh, while Superintendents (who were by no means Bishops) were appointed, one to each province. Erskine of Dun, a layman, was Superintendent of Angus. A new anti-Catholic Kirk was thus set up on July 20, before the Convention met and swept away Catholicism. [198 - Knox, ii. 87, note.] Knox preached vigorously on “the prophet Haggeus” meanwhile, and “some” (namely Lethington, Speaker in the Convention) “said in mockage, we must now forget ourselves, and bear the barrow to build the houses of God.” The unawakened Lethington, and the gentry at large, merely dilapidated the houses of God, so that they became unsafe, as well as odiously squalid. That such fervent piety should grudge repairs of church buildings (many of them in a wretched state already) is a fact creditable rather to the thrift than to the state of grace of the Reformers. After all their protestations, full of texts, the lords and lairds starved their preachers, but provided, by roofless aisles and unglazed windows, for the ventilation of the kirks. These men so bubbling over with gospel fervour were, in short, when it came to practice, traitors and hypocrites; nor did Knox spare their unseemly avarice. The cause of the poor, and of the preachers, lay near his heart, and no man was more insensible of the temptations of wealth.

Lethington did not address the Parliament as Speaker till August 9. Never had such a Parliament met in Scotland. One hundred and six barons, not of the higher order, assembled; in 1567, when Mary was a prisoner and the Regent Moray held the assembly, not nearly so many came together, nor on any later occasion at this period. The newcomers claimed to sit “as of old custom”; it was a custom long disused, and not now restored to vitality.

A supplication was presented by “the Barons, gentlemen, Burgesses, and others” to “the nobility and Estates” (of whom they do not seem to reckon themselves part, contrasting themselves with “yourselves”). They reminded the Estates how they had asked the Regent “for freedom and liberty of conscience with a godly reformation of abuses.” They now, by way of freedom of conscience, ask that Catholic doctrine “be abolished by Act of this Parliament, and punishment appointed for the transgressors.” The Man of Sin has been distributing the whole patrimony of the Church, so that “the trew ministers,” the schools, and the poor are kept out of their own. The actual clergy are all thieves and murderers and “rebels to the lawful authority of Emperors, Kings, and Princes.” Against these charges (murder, rebellion, profligacy) they must answer now or be so reputed. In fact, it was the nobles, rather than the Pope, who had been robbing the Kirk, education, and the poor, which they continued to do, as Knox attests. But as to doctrine, the barons and ministers were asked to lay a Confession before the House. [199 - Knox, ii. 89-127.]

It will be observed that, in the petition, “Emperors, Kings, and Princes” have “lawful authority” over the clergy. But that doctrine assumes, tacitly, that such rulers are of Knox’s own opinions: the Kirk later resolutely stood up against kings like James VI., Charles I., and Charles II.

The Confession was drawn up, presented, and ratified in a very few days: it was compiled in four. The Huguenots in Paris, in 1559, “established a record” by drawing up a Confession containing eighty articles in three days. Knox and his coadjutors were relatively deliberate. They aver that all points of belief necessary for salvation are contained in the canonical books of the Bible. Their interpretation pertains to no man or Church, but solely to “the spreit of God.” That “spreit” must have illuminated the Kirk as it then existed in Scotland, “for we dare not receive and admit any interpretation which directly repugns to any principal point of our faith, to any other plain text of Scripture, or yet unto the rule of charity.”

As we, the preachers of the Kirk then extant, were apostate monks or priests or artisans, about a dozen of us, in Scotland, mankind could not be expected to regard “our” interpretation, “our faith” as infallible. The framers of the Confession did not pretend that it was infallible. They request that, “if any man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning to God’s Holy Word,” he will favour them with his criticism in writing. As Knox had announced six years earlier, that, “as touching the chief points of religion, I neither will give place to man or angel.. teaching the contrair to that which ye have heard,” a controversialist who thought it worth while to criticise the Confession must have deemed himself at least an archangel. Two years later, written criticism was offered, as we shall see, with a demand for a written reply. The critic escaped arrest by a lucky accident.

The Confession, with practically no criticism or opposition, was passed en bloc on August 17. The Evangel is candidly stated to be “death to the sons of perdition,” but the Confession is offered hopefully to “weak and infirm brethren.” Not to enter into the higher theology, we learn that the sacraments can only be administered “by lawful ministers.” We learn that they are “such as are appointed to the preaching of the Word, or into whose mouth God has put some sermon of exhortation” and who are “lawfully chosen thereto by some Kirk.” Later, we find that rather more than this, and rather more than some of the “trew ministeris” then had, is required.

As the document reaches us, it appears to have been “mitigated” by Lethington and Wynram, the Vicar of Bray of the Reformation. They altered, according to the English resident, Randolph, “many words and sentences, which sounded to proceed rather of some evil conceived opinion than of any sound judgment.” As Lethington certainly was not “a lawful minister,” it is surprising if Knox yielded to his criticism.

Lethington and Wynram also advised that the chapter on obedience to the sovereign power should be omitted, as “an unfit matter to be treated at this time,” when it was not very obvious who the “magistrate” or authority might be. In this sense Randolph, Arran’s English friend, wrote to Cecil. [200 - Randolph to Cecil, September 7; Bain, i. 477, 478.] The chapter, however, was left standing. The sovereign, whether in empire, kingdom, duke, prince, or in free cities, was accepted as “of God’s holy ordinance. To him chiefly pertains the reformation of the religion,” which includes “the suppression of idolatry and superstition”; and Catholicism, we know, is idolatry. Superstition is less easily defined, but we cannot doubt that, in Knox’s mind, the English liturgy was superstitious. [201 - Knox, vi. 83, 84.] To resist the Supreme Power, “doing that which pertains to his charge” (that is, suppressing Catholicism and superstition, among other things), is to resist God. It thus appears that the sovereign is not so supreme but that he must be disobeyed when his mandates clash with the doctrine of the Kirk. Thus the “magistrate” or “authority” – the State, in fact – is limited by the conscience of the Kirk, which may, if it pleases, detect idolatry or superstition in some act of secular policy. From this theory of the Kirk arose more than a century of unrest.