CHAPTER VI.

THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.[273]

If civilisation means the art of living together in peace, Scotland was almost four hundred years behind the rest of Western Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The history of her kings is a tale of assassinations, long minorities, regencies scrambled and fought for by unscrupulous barons; and kingly authority, which had been growing in other countries, was on the verge of extinction in Scotland. Her Parliament or Estates of the Realm was a mere feudal assembly, with more than the usual uncertainty regarding who were entitled to be present; while its peculiar management by a Committee of the Estates made it a facile instrument in the hands of the faction who were for the moment in power, and robbed it of any stable influence on the country as a whole. The Church, wealthy so far as acreage was concerned, had become secularised to an extent unknown elsewhere, and its benefices served to provide for the younger sons of the great feudal families in a manner which recalls the days of Charles the Hammer.[274]

Yet the country had been prepared for the Reformation by the education of the people, especially of the middle class, by constant intercourse between Scotland and France and the Low Countries, and by the sympathy which Scottish students had felt for the earlier movements towards Church reform in England and Bohemia; while the wealth and immorality of the Romish clergy, the poverty of the nobility and landed gentry, and the changing political situation, combined to give an impetus to the efforts of those who longed for a Reformation.

More than one historian has remarked that the state of education in Scotland had always been considerably in advance of what might have been expected from its backward civilisation. This has been usually traced to the enduring influence of the old Celtic Church--a Church which had maintained its hold on the country for more than seven centuries, and which had always looked upon the education of the people as a religious duty. Old Celtic ecclesiastical rules declared that it was as important to teach boys and girls to read, as to dispense the sacraments, and to take part in _soul-friendship_ (confession). The Celtic monastery had always been an educational centre; and when Charles the Great established the High Schools which grew to be the older Universities of northern Europe, the Celtic monasteries furnished many of the teachers. The very complete educational system of the old Church had been taken over into the Roman Church which supplanted it, under Queen Margaret and her sons. Hence it was that the Cathedral and Monastery Schools produced a number of scholars who were eager to enrich their stores of learning beyond what the mother-country could give them, and the Scotch wandering student was well known during the Middle Ages on the Continent of Europe. One Scottish bishop founded a Scots College in Paris for his countrymen; other bishops obtained from English kings safe-conducts for their students to reside at Oxford and Cambridge.

This scholastic intercourse brought Scotland in touch with the intellectual movements in Europe. Scottish students at Paris listened to the lectures of Peter Dubois and William of Ockham when they taught the theories contained in the _Defensor Pacis_ of Marsiglio of Padua, who had expounded that the Church is not the hierarchy, but the Christian people, and had denied both the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the Pope. The _Rotuli Scotiæ_,[275] or collection of safe-conducts issued by English monarchs to inhabitants of the northern kingdom, show that a continuous stream of Scottish students went to the English Universities from 1357 to 1389. During the earlier years of this period--that is, up to 1364--the safe-conducts applied for and granted entitled the bearers to go to Oxford or Cambridge or any other place of learning in England; but from 1364 to 1379 Oxford seems to have been the only University frequented. During one of these years (1365) safe-conducts were given to no fewer than eighty-one Scottish students to study in Oxford. The period was that during which the influence of Wiclif was most powerful, when Oxford seethed with Lollardy; and the teachings of the great Reformer were thus brought into Scotland.

Lollardy seems to have made great progress. In 1405, Robert, Duke of Albany, was made Governor of Scotland, and Andrew Wyntoun in his Metrical Chronicle praises him for his fidelity to the Church:

"He wes a constant Catholike, All Lollard he hatyt and heretike."[276]

From this time down to the very dawn of the Reformation we find references to Lollardy in contemporary writers and in Acts of the Scots Parliament; and all the earlier histories of the Reformation movement in Scotland relate the story of the Lollards of Kyle and their interview with King James IV.[277]

The presence of Lollard opinions in Scotland must have attracted the attention of the leaders of the Hussites in Bohemia. In 1433 (July 23rd), Paul Craw or Crawar was seized, tried before the Inquisitorial court, condemned, and burnt as a heretic. He had brought letters from the Hussites of Prag, and acknowledged that he had been sent to interest the Scots in the Hussite movement--one of the many emissaries who were despatched in 1431 and 1432 by Procopius and John Rokycana into all European lands. He was found by the Inquisitor to be a man _in sacris literis et in allegatione Bibliæ promptus et exercitatus_. Knox tells us that he was condemned for denying transubstantiation, auricular confession to the priests, and prayers to saints departed. We learn also from Knox that at his burning the executioner put a ball of brass in his mouth that the people might not hear his defence. His execution did not arrest the progress of Lollardy. The earlier poems of Sir David Lindsay contain Lollard opinions. By the time that these were published (1529-1530), Lutheran writings had found their way into Scotland, and may have influenced the writer; but the sentiments in the _Testament and Complaynt of the Papyngo_ are more Lollard than Lutheran.

The Romish Church in Scotland was comparatively wealthy, and the rude Scottish nobles managed to place their younger sons in many a fat living, with the result that the manners of the clergy did little honour to their sacred calling. Satirists began to point the moral. John Row says:

"As for the more particulare means whereby many in Scotland got some knowledge of God's trueth, in the time of great darkness, there were some books sett out, such as Sir David Lindesay his poesie upon the _Four Monarchies_, wherein many other treatises are conteined, opening up the abuses among the Clergie at that tyme; Wedderburn's Psalms and _Godlie Ballads_, changing many of the old Popish songs unto Godlie purposes; a _Complaint_ given in by the halt, blinde and poore of England, aganis the prelats, preists, friers, and others such kirkmen, who prodigallie wasted all the tithes and kirk liveings upon their unlawfull pleasures, so that they could get no sustentation nor releef as God had ordained. This was printed and came into Scotland. There were also some theatricall playes, comedies, and other notable histories acted in publict; for Sir David Lindesay his Satyre was acted in the Amphitheater of St. Johnestoun (Perth), before King James the V., and a great part of the nobilitie and gentrie, fra morn to even, whilk made the people sensible of the darknes wherein they lay, of the wickednes of their kirkmen, and did let them see how God's Kirk should have bene otherwayes guyded nor it was; all of whilk did much good for that tyme."[278]

It may be doubted, however, whether the Scottish people felt the real sting in such satires until they began to be taught by preachers who had been to Wittenberg, or who had studied the writings of Luther and other Reformers, or who had learned from private perusal of the Scriptures what it was to be in earnest about pardon of sin and salvation of soul.

Some of the towns on the East Coast were centres of trade with the Continent, and Leith had once been an obscure member of the great Hanseatic League. Lutheran and other tracts were smuggled into Scotland from Campvere by way of Leith, Dundee, and Montrose. The authorities were on the alert, and tried to put an end to the practice. In 1525, Parliament forbade strangers bringing Lutheran books into Scotland on pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods and ships;[279] and in the same year the Government were informed that "sundry strangers and others within the diocese of Aberdeen were possessed of Luther's books, and favoured his errors and false opinions." Two years later (1527), the Act was made to include those who assisted in spreading Lutheran views. An agent of Wolsey informed the Cardinal that Scottish merchants were purchasing copies of Tyndale's New Testament in the Low Countries and sending them to Scotland.[280] The efforts of the Government do not seem to have been very successful. Another Act of Parliament in 1535 declared that none but the clergy were to be allowed to purchase heretical books; all others possessing such were required to give them up within forty days.[281] This legislation clearly shows the spread of Reformed writings among the people of Scotland.

The first Scottish martyr was Patrick Hamilton, a younger son of Sir Patrick Hamilton of Kincavel and Stanehouse. He had studied at Paris and Louvain. As he took his degree of M.A. in Paris in 1520, he had been there when the writings of Luther were being studied by all learned men, including the theological students of the Sorbonne (the theological faculty).[282] Hamilton must have been impressed by the principles of the German Reformer, and have made no secret of his views when he returned to Scotland; for in the beginning of 1527 he was a suspected heretic, and was ordered to be summoned and accused as such. He fled from Scotland, went to Wittenberg, was at the opening of Philip of Hesse's new Evangelical University of Marburg (May 30th, 1527), and drafted the theses for the first academic Disputation.[283] He felt constrained, however, to return to his native land to testify against the corruptions of the Roman Church, and was preaching in Scotland in the end of autumn 1527. The success attending his ministry excited the fears of the prelates. He was invited, or rather enticed, to St. Andrews; allowed for nearly a month to preach and dispute in the University; and was then arrested and tried in the cathedral. The trial took place in the forenoon, and at mid-day he was hurried to the stake (Feb. 27th, 1528). The fire by carelessness rather than with intention was slow, and death came only after lingering hours of agony.

If the ecclesiastical authorities thought to stamp out the new faith by this martyrdom, they were soon to discover their mistake. Alexander Alane (Alesius), who had undertaken to convince Patrick Hamilton of his errors, had been himself converted. He was arrested and imprisoned, but escaped to the Continent. The following years witnessed a succession of martyrs--Henry Forrest (1533), David Stratton and Norman Gourlay (1534), Duncan Simpson, Forrester, Keillor, Beverage, Forret, Russell, and Kennedy (1539). The celebrated George Buchanan was imprisoned, but managed to escape.[284] The Scots Parliament and Privy Council assisted the Churchmen to extirpate the new faith in a series of enactments which themselves bear witness to its spread. In 1540, in a series of Acts (March 14th) it was declared that the Virgin Mary was "to be reverently worshipped, and prayers made to her" for the King's prosperity, for peace with all Christian princes, for the triumph of the "Faith Catholic," and that the people "may remain in the faith and conform to the statutes of Holy Kirk." Prayers were also ordered to be made to the saints. It was forbidden to argue against, or impugn, the papal authority under pain of death and confiscation of "goods movable and immovable." No one is to "cast down or otherwise treat irreverently or in any ways dishonour" the images of saints canonised by the Church. Heretics who have seen the error of their ways are not to discuss with others any matters touching "our holy faith." No one suspected of heresy, even if he has recanted, is to be eligible to hold any office, nor to be admitted to the King's Council. All who assist heretics are threatened with severe punishment. In 1543, notwithstanding all this legislation, the Lord Governor (the Earl of Arran) had to confess that heretics increase rapidly, and spread opinions contrary to the Church.[285] The terms of some of these enactments show that the new faith had been making converts among the nobility; and they also indicate the chief points of attack on the Roman Church in Scotland.

In 1542 (Dec. 14th), James V. died, leaving an infant daughter, Mary (b. Dec. 8th), who became the Queen of Scots when barely a week old. Thus Scotland was again harassed with an infant sovereign; and there was the usual scramble for the Regency, which this time involved questions of national policy as well as personal aggrandisement.

It was the settled policy of the Tudor kings to detach Scotland from the old French alliance, and secure it for England. The marriage of Margaret Tudor to James iv. shows what means they thought to employ, and but for Margaret's quarrel with the Earl of Angus, her second husband, another wedding might have bound the nations firmly together. The French marriages of James V., first with Madeleine, daughter of Francis I. (1537), and on her premature death with Mary of Guise (1538), showed the recoil of Scotland from the English alliance. James' death gave Henry VIII. an opportunity to renew his father's schemes, and his idea was to betroth his boy Edward to the baby Mary, and get the "little Queen" brought to England for education. Many Scotsmen thought the proposal a good one for their country, and perhaps more were induced to think so by the money which Henry lavished upon them to secure their support They made the English party in Scotland. The policy of English alliance as against French alliance was complicated by the question of religion. Whatever may be thought of the character of the English Reformation at this date, Henry VIII. had broken thoroughly with the Papacy, and union with England would have dragged Scotland to revolt against the mediæval Church. The leader of the French and Romanist party in Scotland was David Beaton, certainly the ablest and perhaps the most unscrupulous man there. He had been made Archbishop of St. Andrews, coadjutor to his aged uncle, in 1538. In the same month, Pope Paul iii., who needed a Churchman of the highest rank to publish his Bull against Henry VIII. in a place as near England as was possible to find, had sent him a Cardinal's Hat. The Cardinal, Beaton, stood in Scotland for France and Rome against England and the Reformation. The struggle for the Regency in Scotland in 1542 carried with it an international and a religious policy. The clouds heralding the storm which was to destroy Mary, gathered round the cradle of the baby Queen.

At first the English faction prevailed. The claims of the Queen Mother were scarcely considered. Beaton produced a will, said to have been fraudulently obtained from the dying King, appointing him and several of the leading nobles of Scotland, Governors of the kingdom. This arrangement was soon set aside, the Earl of Arran was appointed Governor (Jan. 3rd, 1543), and Beaton was confined in Blackness Castle.

The Governor selected John Rough for his chaplain and Thomas Williams for his preacher, both ardent Reformers. The Acts of the previous reign against heresy were modified to the extent that men suspect of heresy might enjoy office, and heretics were accorded more merciful treatment. Moreover, an Act of Parliament (March 15th, 1543) permitted the possession and reading of a good and true translation of the Old and New Testaments. But the masterful policy of Henry VIII. and the weakness of the Governor brought about a change. Beaton was released from Blackness and restored to his own Castle of St. Andrews; the Governor dismissed his Reformed preachers; the Privy Council (June 2nd, 1543) forbade on pain of death and confiscation of goods all criticism of the mediæval doctrine of the Sacraments, and forbade the possession of heretical books. In September, Arran and Beaton were reconciled; in December, the Parliament annulled the treaties with England consenting to a marriage between Edward and Mary, and the ancient league with France was renewed. This was followed by the revival of persecution, and almost all that had been gained was lost. Henry's ruthless devastation of the Borders did not mend matters. The more enlightened policy of Lord Protector Somerset could not allay the suspicions of the Scottish nation. Their "little Queen" was sent to France to be educated by the Guises, "to the end that in hir youth she should drynk of that lycour, that should remane with hir all hir lyfetyme, for a plague to this realme, and for hir finall destructioun."[286]

But if the Reformation movement was losing ground as a national policy, it was gaining strength as a spiritual quickening in the hearts of the people. George Wishart, one of the Wisharts of Pittarrow, who had fled from persecution in 1538 and had wandered in England, Germany, and Switzerland, returned to his native country about 1543, consumed with the desire to bear witness for the Gospel. He preached in Montrose, and Dundee during a visitation of the plague, and Ayrshire. Beaton's party were anxious to secure him, and after a preaching tour in the Lothians he was seized in Ormiston House and handed over to the Earl of Bothwell, who, breaking pledges he had made, delivered him to the Cardinal; he lodged him in the dungeon at St. Andrews (end of Jan. 1546), and had him tried in the cathedral, when he was condemned to the stake (March 1st, 1546).

Wishart was Knox's forerunner, and during this tour in the Lothians, Knox had been his constant companion. The Romanist party had tried to assassinate the bold preacher, and Knox carried a two-handed sword ready to cut down anyone who attempted to strike at the missionary while he was speaking. All the tenderness which lay beneath the sternness of Knox's character appears in the account he gives of Wishart in his _History_. And to Wishart, Knox was the beloved disciple. When he foresaw that the end was near, he refused to allow Knox to share his danger.[287]

Assassination was a not infrequent way of getting rid of a political opponent in the sixteenth century, and Beaton's death had long been planned, not without secret promptings from England. Three months after Wishart's martyrdom (May 29th, 1546), Norman Lesley and Kirkcaldy of Grange at the head of a small band of men broke into the Castle of St. Andrews and slew the Cardinal. They held the stronghold, and the castle became a place of refuge for men whose lives were threatened by the Government, and who sympathised with the English alliance. The Government laid siege to the place but were unable to take it, and their troops withdrew. John Rough, who had been Arran's Reformed chaplain, joined the company, and began to preach to the people of St. Andrews. Knox, who had become a marked man, and had thought of taking refuge in Germany, was persuaded to enter the castle, and there, sorely against his will, he was almost forced to stand forth as a preacher of the Word. His first sermon placed him at once in the foremost rank of Scottish Reformers, and men began to predict that he would share the fate of Wishart. "Master George Wishart spak never so plainelye, and yitt he was brunt: evin so will he be."[288]

Next to nothing is known about the early history of John Knox. He came into the world at or near Haddington in the year 1515,[289] but on what day or month remains hidden. He sprang from the commons of Scotland, and his forebears were followers of the Earls of Bothwell; he was a papal notary, and in priest's orders in 1540; he was tutor to the sons of the lairds of Ormiston and Longniddry in 1545; he accompanied Wishart in December and January 1545, 1546--these are the facts known about him before he was called to stand forward as a preacher of the Reformation in Scotland. He was then thirty-two--a silent, slow ripening man, with quite a talent for keeping himself in the background.

Knox's work in the castle and town of St. Andrews was interrupted by the arrival of a French fleet (July 1547), which battered the walls with artillery until the castle was compelled to surrender. He and all the inmates were carried over to France. They had secured as terms of surrender that their lives should be spared; that they should be safely transported to France; and that if they could not accept the terms there offered to them by the French King, they should be allowed to depart to any country they might select for their sojourn, save Scotland. It was not the custom, however, for French kings to keep promises made to heretics, and Knox and his companions were made galley-slaves. For nineteen months he had to endure this living death, which for long drawn out torture can only be compared with what the Christians of the earliest centuries had to suffer when they were condemned to the mines. He had to sit chained with four or six others to the rowing benches, which were set at right angles to the side of the ship, without change of posture by day, and compelled to sleep, still chained, under the benches by night; exposed to the elements day and night alike; enduring the lash of the overseer, who paced up and down the gangway which ran between the two lines of benches; feeding on the insufficient meals of coarse biscuit and porridge of oil and beans; chained along with the vilest malefactors. The French Papists had invented this method of treating all who differed from them in religious matters. It could scarcely make Knox the more tolerant of French policy or of the French religion. He seldom refers to this terrible experience. He dismisses it with:

"How long I continewed prisoneir, what torment I susteaned in the galaies, and what war the sobbes of my harte, is now no time to receat: This onlie I can nocht conceall, which mo than one have hard me say, when the body was far absent from Scotland, that my assured houp was, in oppin audience, to preache in Sanctandrois befoir I depairted this lyeff."[290]

The prisoners were released from the galleys through the instrumentality of the English Government in the early months of 1549, and Knox reached England by the 7th of April. It was there that he began his real work as a preacher of the Reformation. He spent nearly five years as minister at Berwick, at Newcastle, and in London. He was twice offered preferment--the vacant bishopric of Rochester in 1552, and the vicarage of All Hallows in Bread St., London, in the beginning of 1553. He refused both, and was actually summoned before the Privy Council to explain why he would not accept preferment.[291] It is probable that he had something to do with the production of _The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England, 1552_, commonly called the _Second Prayer-Book_ of King Edward VI. The rubric explaining kneeling at the partaking of the Holy Supper, or at least one sentence in it, is most probably due to his remonstrances or suggestions.[292] The accession of Mary Tudor to the throne closed his career in England; but he stuck to his work long after his companion preachers had abandoned it. He was in London, and had the courage to rebuke the rejoicings of the crowd at her entry into the capital--a fearless, outspoken man, who could always be depended on for doing what no one else dared.

Knox got safely across the Channel, travelled through France by ways unknown, and reached Geneva. He spent some time with Calvin, then went on to Zurich to see Bullinger. He appears to have been meditating deeply on the condition of Scotland and England, and propounded a set of questions to these divines which show that he was trying to formulate for himself the principles he afterwards asserted on the rights of subjects to restrain tyrannical sovereigns.[293] The years 1554-58, with the exception of a brief visit to Scotland in the end of 1555, were spent on the Continent, but were important for his future work in Scotland. They witnessed the troubles in the Frankfurt congregation of English exiles, where Knox's broad-minded toleration and straightforward action stands in noble contrast with the narrow-minded and crooked policy of his opponents. They were the time of his peaceful and happy ministrations among the refugees at Geneva. They made him familiar with the leading Protestants of France and of Switzerland, and taught him the inner political condition of the nations of Europe. They explain Knox's constant and accurate information in later years, when he seemed to learn about the doings of continental statesmen as early as Cecil, with all the resources of the English Foreign Office behind him. Above all, they made him see that, humanly speaking, the fate of the whole Reformation movement was bound up with an alliance between a Protestant England and a Protestant Scotland.

Knox returned to Scotland for a brief visit of about ten months (Sept. 1555-July 1556). He exhorted those who visited him in his lodgings in Edinburgh, and made preaching tours, dispensing the Lord's Supper according to the Reformed rite on several occasions. He visited Dun, Calder House, Barr, Ayr, Ochiltree, and several other places, and was welcomed in the houses of many of the nobility. He left for Geneva in July, having found time to marry his first wife, Marjory Bowes,--_uxor suavissima_, and "a wife whose like is not to be found everywhere,"[294] Calvin calls her,--and having put some additional force into the growing Protestantism of his native land. He tells us that most part of the gentlemen of the Mearns "band thame selfis, to the uttermost of thare poweris, to manteane the trew preaching of the Evangell of Jesus Christ, as God should offer unto thame preacheris and opportunitie"--whether by word of mouth or in writing, is not certain.[295]

In 1557 (Dec. 3rd) the Protestants of Scotland laid the foundations of a definite organisation. It took a form familiar enough in the civil history of the country, where the turbulent character of the Scottish barons and the weakness of the central authority led to constant confederations to carry out with safety enterprises sometimes legal and sometimes outside the law. The confederates promised to assist each other in the work proposed, and to defend each other from the consequences following. Such agreements were often drafted in legal fashion by public notaries, and made binding by all forms of legal security known. The _Lords of the Congregation_, as they came to be called, followed a prevailing custom when they promised--

"Befoir the Majestie of God and His congregatioun, that we (be His grace) shall with all diligence continually apply our hole power, substance, and our verray lyves, to manteane, sett fordward, and establish the most blessed word of God and His Congregatioun; and shall laubour at our possibilitie to have faythfull Ministeris purely and trewlie to minister Christis Evangell and Sacramentes to His people."[296]

This "Band subscrived by the Lords" was the first (if the promise made by the gentlemen of the Mearns be excepted) of the many Covenants famous in the history of the Church of Scotland Reformed.[297] It was an old Scottish usage now impregnated with a new spiritual meaning, and become a public promise to God, after Old Testament fashion, to be faithful to His word and guidance.

This important act had immediate consequences. The confederated Lords sent letters to Knox, then at Geneva, and to Calvin, urging the return of the Scottish Reformer to his native land. They also passed two notable resolutions:

"First, It is thought expedient, devised and ordeaned that in all parochines of this Realme the Common Prayeris (probably the Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI.)[298] be redd owklie (weekly) on Sounday, and other festuall dayis, publictlie in the Paroche Kirkis, with the Lessonis of the New and Old Testament, conforme to the ordour of the Book of Common Prayeris: And yf the curattis of the parochynes be qualified to cause thame to reid the samyn; and yf thei be nott, or yf thei refuise, that the maist qualified in the parish use and read the same. Secoundly, it is thought necessare that doctrin, preacheing and interpretatioun of Scriptures be had and used privatlie in Qwyet housis, without great conventionis of the people tharto, whill afterward that God move the Prince to grant publict preacheing be faithful and trew ministeris."[299]

The Earl of Argyle set the example by maintaining John Douglas, and making him preach publicly in his mansion.

This conduct evidently alarmed the Queen Mother, who had been made Regent in 1554 (April 12th), and she attempted to stir the Primate to exercise his powers for the repression of heresy. The Archbishop wrote to Argyle urging him to dismiss Douglas, apologising at the same time for his interference by saying that the Queen wondered that he could "thole" persons with perverted doctrine within his diocese.

Another step in advance was taken some time in 1558, when it was resolved to give the _Congregation_, the whole company of those in Scotland who sincerely accepted the Evangelical Reformation, "the face of a Church," by the creation and recognition of an authority which could exercise discipline. A number of elders were chosen "by common election," to whom the whole of the brethren promised obedience. The lack of a publicly recognised ministry was supplied by laymen, who gave themselves to the work of exhortation; and at the head of them was to be found Erskine of Dun. The first regularly constituted Reformed church in Scotland was in the town of Dundee.[300]

The organisation gave the Protestant leaders boldness, and, through Sir James Sandilands, they petitioned the Regent to permit them to worship publicly according to the Reformed fashion, and to reform the wicked lives of the clergy. This led to the offer of a compromise, which was at once rejected, as it would have compelled the Reformed to reverence the Mass, and to approve of prayers to the saints. The Queen Mother then permitted public worship, save in Leith and Edinburgh. The Lords of the Congregation next demanded a suspension of the laws which gave the clergy power to try and punish heresy, until a General Council, lawfully assembled, should decide upon points then debated in religion; and that all suspected of heresy should have a fair trial before "temporal judges."[301] When the Regent, who gave them "amyable lookis and good wordes in aboundance," refused to allow their petition to come before the Estates, and kept it "close in hir pocket," the Reformers resolved to go to Parliament directly with another petition, in which they declared that since they had not been able to secure a reformation, they had resolved to follow their own consciences in matters of religion; that they would defend themselves and all of their way of thinking if attacked; that if tumults arose in consequence, the blame was with those who refused a just reformation; and that in forwarding this petition they had nothing in view but the reformation of abuses in religion.[302]

Knox had been invited by the Earl of Glencairn, the Lords Erskine and Lorn, and James Stewart (afterwards the Earl of Moray), to return to Scotland in 1557.[303] He reached Dieppe in October, and found letters awaiting him which told him that the times were not ripe. The answer he sent spurred the Reforming lords to constitute the _Band_ of December 1557. It was while he was at Dieppe, chafing at the news he had received, that he composed the violent treatise, entitled _The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_[304]--a book which did more to hamper his future than anything else. The state of things was exasperating to a man who longed to be at work in Scotland or England. "Bloody" Mary in England was hounding on her officials to burn Knox's co-religionists, and the Reformation, which had made so much progress under Edward VI., seemed to be entirely overthrown; while Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother and Regent in Scotland, was inciting the unwilling Archbishop of St. Andrews to make use of his legatine and episcopal powers to repress the believers of his native land. But as chance would have it, Mary Tudor was dead before the pamphlet was widely known, and the Queen whom of all others he desired to conciliate was seated on the throne of England, and had made William Cecil, the staunchest of Protestants, her Secretary of State. She could scarcely avoid believing that the _Blast_ was meant for her; and, even if not, it was based on such general principles that it might prove dangerous to one whose throne was still insecure. It is scarcely to be wondered at that the Queen never forgave the vehement writer, and that the _Blast_ was a continual obstacle to a complete understanding between the Scottish Reformer and his English allies.[305] If Knox would never confess publicly to queens, whether to Elizabeth Tudor or to Mary Stuart; that he had done wrong, he was ready to say to a friend whom he loved:

"My rude vehemencie and inconsidered affirmations, which may rather appear to procead from coler then of zeal and reason, I do not excuse."[306]

It was the worse for Knox and for Scotland, for the reign of women had begun. Charles V., Francis I., and Henry VIII. had passed away, and the destinies of Europe were to be in the hands of Elizabeth, Catherine de' Medici, Mary Stuart, and Philip of Spain, the most felinely feminine of the four.

Events marched fast in Scotland after Knox returned in the early summer of 1559. The Queen Regent and the Lords of the Congregation were facing each other, determined on a trial of strength. Knox reached Edinburgh on May 2nd, 1559, and hurried on to Dundee, where the Reformed had gathered in some force. They had resolved to support their brethren in maintaining public worship according to the usages of the Reformed Church, and in repressing "idolatrie" in all towns where a majority of the inhabitants had declared for the Reformed religion. The Regent threw down the gauntlet by summoning the preachers to appear before her, and by inhibiting their preaching. The Lords took it up by resolving that they would answer the summons and appear along with their preachers. A letter was addressed to the Regent (May 6th, 1559) by "The professouris of Christis Evangell in the realme of Scotland." It was an admirable statement of the principles of the Scottish Reformation, and may be thus summarised:

"It records the hope, once entertained by the writers, that God would make her the instrument of setting up and maintaining his Word and true worship, of defending his congregation, and of downputting all idolatry, abomination, and superstition in the realm; it expresses their grief on learning that she was determined to do the very opposite; it warns her against crossing the bounds of her own office, and usurping a power in Christ's kingdom which did not belong to her; it distinguishes clearly between the civil jurisdiction and the spiritual; it asks her to recall her letters inhibiting God's messengers; it insists that His message ought to be received even though the speaker should lack the ordinary vocation; it claims that the ministers who had been inhibited were sent by God, and were also called according to Scriptural order; it points out that her commands must be disobeyed if contrary to God's, and that the enemies were craftily inducing her to command unjust things so that the professors, when they disobeyed, might be condemned for sedition and rebellion; it pled with her to have pity on those who were seeking the glory of God and her true obedience; it declared that, by God's help, they would go forward in the way they had begun, that they would receive and assist His ministers and Word, and that they would never join themselves again to the abominations they had forsaken, though all the powers on earth should command them to do so; it conveyed their humble submission to her, in all obedience due to her in peace, in war, in body, in goods and in lands; and it closed with the prayer that the eternal God would instruct, strengthen, and lead her by His Spirit in the way that was acceptable to Him."[307]

Then began a series of trials of strength in which the Regent had generally the better, because she was supplied with disciplined troops from France, which were more than a match for the feudal levies of the Lords of the Congregation. The uprising of the people against the Regent and the Prelates was characterised, as in France and the Low Countries, with an outbreak of iconoclasm which did no good to the Protestant cause. In the three countries the "raschall multitude" could not be restrained by the exhortation of the preachers nor by the commandment of the magistrates from destroying "the places of idolatrie."[308]

From the beginning, Knox had seen that the Reformers had small hope of ultimate success unless they were aided from England; and he was encouraged to expect help because he knew that the salvation of Protestant England lay in its support of the Lords of the Congregation in Scotland.

The years from 1559 to 1567 were the most critical in the whole history of the Reformation. The existence of the Protestantism of all Europe was involved in the struggle in Scotland; and for the first and perhaps last time in her history the eyes that had the furthest vision, whether in Rome, for centuries the citadel of mediævalism, or in Geneva, the stronghold of Protestantism, were turned towards the little backward northern kingdom. They watched the birth-throes of a new nation, a British nation which was coming into being. Two peoples, long hereditary foes, were coalescing; the Romanists in England recognised the Scottish Queen as their legitimate sovereign, and the Protestants in Scotland looked for aid to their brethren in England. The question was: Would the new nation accept the Reformed religion, or would the reaction triumph? If Knox and the Congregation gained the upper hand in Scotland, and if Cecil was able to guide England in the way he meant to lead it (and the two men were necessary to each other, and knew it), then the Reformation was safe. If Scotland could be kept for France and the Roman Church, and its Romanist Queen make good her claim to the English throne, then the Reformation would be crushed not merely within Great Britain, but in Germany and the Low Countries also. So thought the politicians, secular and ecclesiastical, in Rome and Geneva, in Paris, Madrid, and in London. The European situation had been summed up by Cecil: "The Emperor is aiming at the sovereignty of Europe, which he cannot obtain without the suppression of the Reformed religion, and, unless he crushes England, he cannot crush the Reformation." In this peril a Scotland controlled by the Guises would have been fatal to the existence of the Reformation.

In 1559 the odds seemed in favour of reaction, if only its supporters were whole-hearted enough to put aside for the time national rivalries. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, concluded scarcely a month before Knox reached Scotland (April 1559), had secret clauses which bound the Kings of France and Spain to crush the Protestantism of Europe, in terms which made the young Prince of Orange, when he learned them, vow silently to devote his life to protect his fellow-countrymen and drive the "scum of the Spaniards" out of the Netherlands. Henry II. of France, with his Edict of Chateaubriand and his _Chambre Ardente_, with the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal Lorraine to counsel him, and Diane of Poitiers to keep him up to the mark, was doing his best to exterminate the Protestants of France. Dr. Christopher Mundt kept reporting to Queen Elizabeth and her Minister the symptoms of a general combination against the Protestants of Europe--symptoms ranging from a proposed conquest of Denmark to the Emperor's forbidding members of his Household to attend Protestant services.[309] Throckmorton wrote almost passionately from Paris urging Cecil to support the Scottish Lords of the Congregation; and even Dr. Mundt in Strassburg saw that the struggle in Scotland was the most important fact in the European situation.[310]

Yet it was difficult for Cecil to send the aid which Knox and the Scottish Protestants needed sorely. It meant that the sovereign of one country aided men of another country who were _de jure_ rebels against their own sovereign. It seemed a hazardous policy in the case of a Queen like Elizabeth, who was not yet freed from the danger arising from rebellious subjects. There was France, with which England had just made peace. Cecil had difficulties with Elizabeth. She did not like Calvin himself. She had no sympathy with his theology, which, with its mingled sob and hosanna, stirred the hearts of oppressed peoples. There was Knox and his _Blast_, to say nothing of his appealing to the commonalty of his country. "God keep us from such visitations as Knockes hath attempted in Scotland; the people to be orderers of things!" wrote Dr. Parker to Cecil on the 6th of November.[311] Yet Cecil knew--no man better--that if the Lords of the Congregation failed there was little hope for a Protestant England, and that Elizabeth's crown and Dr. Parker's mitre depended on the victory of Knox in Scotland.

He watched the struggle across the border. He had made up his mind as early as July 8th, 1559, that assistance must be given to the Lords of the Congregation "with all fair promises first, next with money, and last with arms."[312] The second stage of his programme was reached in November; and, two days before the Archbishop of Canterbury was piously invoking God's help to keep Knox's influences out of England, Cecil had resolved to send money to Scotland and to entrust its distribution to Knox. The memorandum runs: Knox to be a counsel with the payments, to see that they be employed to the common action.[313]

The third stage--assistance with arms--came sooner than might have been expected. The condition of France became more favourable. Henry II. had died (July 10th, 1559), and the Guises ruled France through their niece Mary and her sickly devoted husband. But the Bourbon Princes and many of the higher nobles did not take kindly to the sudden rise of a family which had been French for only two generations, and the easiest way to annoy them was to favour publicly or secretly "those of the religion." There was unrest in France. "Beat the iron while it is hot," Throckmorton wrote from Paris; "their fair flatterings and sweet language are only to gain time."[314] Cecil struck. He had a sore battle with his royal mistress, but he won.[315] An arrangement was come to between England and the Lords of the Congregation acting on behalf "of the second person of the realm of Scotland" (Treaty of Berwick, May 10th, 1560).[316] An English fleet entered the Firth of Forth; an English army beleaguered the French troops in Leith Fort; and the end of it was that France was obliged to let go its hold on Scotland, and never thoroughly recovered it (Treaty of Edinburgh, July 6th, 1560).[317] The great majority of the Scottish people saw in the English victory only their deliverance from French tyranny, and for the first time a conquering English army left the Scottish soil followed by blessings and not curses. The Scottish Liturgy, which had contained _Prayers used in the Churches of Scotland in the time of their persecution by the Frenchmen_, was enriched by a _Thanksgiving unto God after our deliverance from the tyranny of the Frenchmen; with prayers made for the continuance of the peace betwixt the realms of England and Scotland_, which contained the following petition:

"And seeing that when we by our owne power were altogether unable to have freed ourselves from the tyranny of strangers, and from the bondage and thraldome pretended against us, Thou of thyne especial goodnes didst move the hearts of our neighbours (of whom we deserved no such favour) to take upon them the common burthen with us, and for our deliverance not only to spend the lives of many, but also to hazards the estate and tranquillity of their Realme and commonwealth: Grant unto us, O Lord, that with such reverence we may remember thy benefits received that after this in our defaute we never enter into hostilitie against the Realme and nation of England."[318]

The Regent had died during the course of the hostilities, and Cecil, following and improving upon the wise policy of Protector Somerset, left it entirely to the Scots to settle their own affairs.[319]

Now or never was the opportunity for Knox and the Lords of the Congregation. They had not been idle during the months since Knox had arrived in Scotland. They had strengthened the ties uniting them by three additional _Bands_. At a meeting of the Congregation of the West with the Congregations of Fife, Perth, Dundee, Angus, Mearns, and Montrose, held in Perth (May 31st, 1559), they had covenanted to spare neither

"labouris, goodis, substancis, bodyis, and lives, in manteaning the libertie of the haill Congregatioun and everie member thairof, aganis whatsomevir power that shall intend trubill for the caus of religion."[320]

They had renewed this _Band_ in Edinburgh on July 13th; and at Stirling (Aug. 1st) they had covenanted,

"that nane of us sall in tymeis cuming pas to the Quenis Grace Dowriare, to talk or commun with hir for any letter without consent of the rest and commone consultatioun."[321]

They had the bitter satisfaction of knowing that although the French troops and officers of the Regent were too strong for them in the field, the insolence and rapine of these foreigners was rousing all ranks and classes in Scotland to see that their only deliverance lay in the English alliance and the triumph of the Reformation. The _Band_ of 1560 (April 27th) included, with "the nobilitie, barronis, and gentilmen professing Chryst Jesus in Scotland ... dyveris utheris that joyint with us, for expelling of the French army: amangis quham the Erle of Huntlie was principall."[322]

The Estates or Parliament met in Edinburgh on July 10th, 1560. Neither the French nor the English soldiers had left; so they adjourned to August 1st, and again to the 8th.[323]

Meanwhile Knox and the Congregation were busy. The Reformer excelled himself in the pulpit of St. Giles', lecturing daily on the Book of the Prophet Haggai (on the building of the Temple)--"a doctrine proper for the time."[324] Randolph wrote to Cecil, Aug. 15th:

"Sermons are daylie, and greate audience; though dyvers of the nobles present ar not resolved in religion, yet do thei repayre to the prechynges, which gevethe a good hope to maynie that God wyll bowe their hartes."[325]

The Congregation held a great thanksgiving service in St. Giles'; and after it arranged for eight fully constituted churches, and appointed five superintendents in matters of religion.[326] They also prepared a petition for Parliament asking for a settlement of the religious question in the way they desired.[327] At the request of the Estates or Parliament, Knox and five companions prepared _The Confessioun of Faith professit and belevit be the Protestantis within the Realme of Scotland_, which was ratified and approved as "hailsome and sound doctrine, groundit upoun the infallible trewth of Godis Word." It was afterwards issued by the Estates as the "summe of that doctrin quhilk we professe, and for the quhilk we haif sustenit infamy and daingear."[328] Seven days later (Aug. 24th), the Estates decreed that "the Bischope of Rome have na jurisdictioun nor authoritie in this Realme in tymes cuming"; they annulled all Acts of previous Parliaments which were contrary to the Confession of Faith; and they forbade the saying, hearing, or being present at Mass, under penalty of confiscation of goods and bodily punishment at the discretion of the magistrates for the first offence, of banishment for the second, and of death for the third.[329] These severe penalties, however, were by no means rigidly enforced. Lesley (Roman Catholic Bishop of Ross) says in his _History_:

"The clemency of the heretic nobles must not be left unmentioned, since at that time they exiled few Catholic on the score of religion, imprisoned fewer, and put none to death."[330]

One thing still required to be done--to draft a constitution for the new Protestant Church. The work was committed to the same ministers who had compiled the Confession. They had been asked to prepare it as early as April 29th, and they had it ready for the Lords of the Congregation within a month. It was not approved by the Estates; but was ordered to be submitted to the next general meeting, and was meanwhile translated into Latin, to be sent to Calvin, Viret, and Beza in Geneva.[331] The delay seemed to some to arise from the unwillingness of many of the lords to see "their carnal liberty and worldly commoditie impaired";[332] but another cause was also at work. Cecil evidently wished that the Church in Scotland should be uniform with the Church in England, and had instructed Randolph to press this question of uniformity. It was a favourite idea with statesmen of both countries--pressed on Scotland by England during the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and by Scotland on England in the Solemn League and Covenant. Randolph was wise enough to see that such uniformity was an impossibility.[333]

_The Confession of the Faith and Doctrine, Believed and Professed by the Protestants of Scotland_, was translated into Latin, and, under the title _Confessio Scoticana_, occupies an honoured place in the collections of the creeds of the Reformed Churches. It remained the symbol of the Church of Scotland during the first stormy century of its existence. It was displaced by the Westminster Confession in 1647, only on the understanding that the later document was "in nothing contrary" to the former; and continued authoritative long after that date.[334] Drawn up in haste by a small number of theologians, it is more sympathetic and human than most creeds, and has commended itself to many who object to the impersonal logic of the Westminster Confession.[335] The first sentence of the preface gives the tone to the whole:

"Lang have we thirsted, dear Brethren, to have notified to the Warld the Sum of that Doctrine quhilk we professe, and for quhilk we have susteined Infamie and Danger; Bot sik has bene the Rage of Sathane againis us, and againis Christ Jesus his eternal Veritie latlie now againe born amangst us, that to this daie na Time has been graunted unto us to cleir our Consciences as maist gladlie we wald have done."[336]

The preface also puts more clearly than any similiar document save the First Confession of Basel the reverence felt by the early Reformers for the Word of God and the renunciation of any claim to infallibility of interpretation:

"Protestand that gif onie man will note in this our confessioun onie Artickle repugnand to Gods halie word, that it wald pleis him of his gentleness and for christian charities sake to admonish us of the same in writing; and we upon our honoures and fidelitie, be Gods grace do promise unto him satisfaction fra the mouth of God, that is fra his haly scriptures, or else reformation of that quhilk he sal prove to be amisse."

The Confession itself contains the truths common to the Reformed creeds of the Reformation. It contains all the Oecumenical doctrines, as they have been called--that is, the truths taught in the early Oecumenical Councils, and embodied in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds; and adds those doctrines of grace, of pardon, and of enlightenment through Word and Spirit which were brought into special prominence by the Reformation revival of religion. The Confession is more remarkable for quaint suggestiveness of titles than for any special peculiarity of doctrine. Thus the doctrine of revelation is defined by itself, apart from the doctrine of Scripture, under the title of "The Revelation of the Promise." Election is treated according to the view of earlier Calvinism as a means of grace, and an evidence of the "invincible power" of the Godhead in salvation. The "notes by which the true Kirk is discerned from the false" are said to be the true preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of the sacraments, and ecclesiastical discipline rightly administered. The authority of Scriptures is said to come from God, and to depend neither "on man nor angels"; and the Church knows them to be true, because "the true kirk always heareth and obeyeth the voice of her own spouse and pastor."

Randolph says in a letter to Cecil (September 7th, 1560) that before the Confession was publicly read it was revised by Lethington and Lord James Stewart, who "dyd mytigate the austeritie of maynie wordes and sentences," and that a certain article which dealt with the "dysobediens that subjects owe unto their magistrates" was advised to be left out.[337] Thus amended it was read over, and then re-read article by article in the Estates, and passed without alteration,[338]--"no man present gainsaying."[339] When it was read before the Estates:

"Maynie offered to sheede ther blude in defence of the same. The old Lord of Lynsay, as grave and goodly a man as ever I sawe, said, 'I have lyved maynie yeres, I am the eldest in thys Compagnie of my sorte; nowe that yt hathe pleased God to lett me see thys daye wher so maynie nobles and other have allowed so worthie a work, I will say with Simion, _Nunc dimittis_.'"[340]

A copy was sent to Cecil, and Maitland of Lethington assured him that if there was anything in the Confession of Faith which the English Minister misliked, "It may eyther be changed (if the mater so permit) or at least in some thyng qualifieed"; which shows the anxiety of the Scots to keep step with their English allies.[341]

The authors of the Confession were asked to draw up a short statement showing how a Reformed Church could best be governed. The result was the remarkable document which was afterwards called the _First Book of Discipline_, or _the Policie and Discipline of the Church_.[342] It provided for the government of the Church by kirk-sessions, synods, and general assemblies; and recognised as office-bearers in the Church, ministers, teachers, elders, deacons, superintendents, and readers. The authors of this Book of Discipline professed to go directly to Scripture for the outlines of the system of Church government which they advised their countrymen to adopt, and their profession was undoubtedly sincere and likewise just. They were, however, all of them men in sympathy with Calvin, and had had personal intercourse with the Protestants of France. Their form of government is clearly inspired by Calvin's ideas as stated in his _Institution_, and follows closely the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of the French Church. The offices of superintendent and reader were added to the usual threefold or fourfold Presbyterian form of government. The former was due to the unsettled state of the country and the scarcity of Protestant pastors. The _Superintendents_ took charge of districts corresponding not very exactly with the Episcopal dioceses, and were ordered to make annual reports to the General Assembly of the ecclesiastical and religious state of their provinces, and to preach in the various churches in their district. The _Readers_ owed their existence to the small number of Protestant pastors, to the great importance attached by the early Scottish Reformers to an educated ministry, and also to the difficulty of procuring funds for the support of pastors in every parish. They were of two classes--those of a higher grade, who were permitted to deliver addresses and who were called _Exhorters_; and those of the lower grade, whose duty it was to read "distinctly" the Common Prayers and the Scriptures. Both classes were expected to teach the younger children. _Exhorters_ who studied theology diligently and satisfied the synod of their learning could rise to be ministers. The Book of Discipline contains a chapter on the patrimony of the Church which urges the necessity of preserving monies possessed by the Church for the maintenance of religion, the support of education, and the help of the poor. The presence of this chapter prevented the book being accepted by the Estates in the same way as the Confession of Faith. The barons, greater and lesser, who sat there had in too many cases appropriated the "patrimony of the Kirk" to their own private uses, and were unwilling to sign a document which condemned their conduct. The Book of Discipline approved by the General Assembly, and signed by a large number of the nobles and burgesses, never received the legal sanction accorded to the Confession.

The General Assembly of the Reformed Church of Scotland met for the first time in 1560; and thereafter, in spite of the struggle in which the Church was involved, meetings were held generally twice a year, sometimes oftener, and the Church was organised for active work.

A third book, variously called _The Book of Common Order_,[343] _The Order of Geneva_, and now frequently _Knox's Liturgy_, was a directory for the public worship and services of the Church. It was usually bound up with a metrical version of the Psalms, and is often spoken of as the _Psalm Book_.

_Calvin's Catechism_ was translated and ordered to be used for the instruction of the youth in the faith. Later, the _Heidelberg Catechism_ was translated and annotated for the same purpose. They were both superseded by _Craig's Catechism_, which in its turn gave way to the _Larger_ and _Shorter Catechisms_ of the Westminster Divines.[344]

The democratic ideas of Presbyterianism, enforced by the practical necessity of trusting in the people, made the Scotch Reformers pay great attention to education. All the leaders of the Reformation, whether in Germany, France, or Holland, had felt the importance of enlightening the commonalty; but perhaps Scotland and Holland were the two countries where the attempt was most successful. The education of the people was no new thing in Scotland; and although in the troublous times before and during the Reformation high schools had disappeared and the Universities had decayed, still the craving for learning had not altogether died out. Knox and his friend George Buchanan had a magnificent scheme of endowing schools in every parish, high schools or colleges in all important towns, and of increasing the power and influence of the Universities. Their scheme, owing to the greed of the Barons, who had seized the Church property, was little more than a devout imagination; but it laid hold on the mind of Scotland, and the lack of endowments was more than compensated by the craving of the people for education. The three Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen took new life, and a fourth, the University of Edinburgh, was founded. Scotch students who had been trained in the continental schools of learning, and who had embraced the Reformed faith, were employed to superintend the newly-organised educational system of the country, and the whole organisation was brought into sympathy with the everyday life of the people by the preference given to day schools over boarding schools, and by a system of inspection by the most pious and learned men in each circle of parishes. Knox also was prepared to order compulsory attendance at school on the part of two classes of society, the upper and the lower--the middle class he thought might be trusted to its own natural desire for learning; and he wished to see the State so exercise power and patronage as to lay hold on all youths "of parts" and compel them to proceed to the high schools and Universities, that the commonwealth might get the greatest good of their service.

The form of Church government given in the _First Book of Discipline_ represented rather an outline requiring to be filled in than a picture of what actually existed for many a year after 1560. It provided for a form of Church government by ecclesiastical councils rising from the Session of the individual congregation up to a National Assembly, and its first requisite was a fully organised church in every parish ruled by a minister with his Session or council of Elders and his body of Deacons. But there was a great lack of men having the necessary amount of education to be ordained as ministers, and consequently there were few fully equipped congregations. The first court in existence was the Kirk-Session; it was in being in every organised congregation. The second in order of time was the General Assembly. Its first meeting was in Edinburgh, Dec. 20th, 1560. Forty-two members were present, of whom only six were ministers. These were the small beginnings from which it grew. The Synods came into existence later. At first they were yearly gatherings of the ministry of the Superintendent's district, to which each congregation within the district was asked to send an Elder and a Deacon. The Court of the Presbytery came latest into existence; it had its beginnings in the "weekly exercise."

The work had been rapidly done. Barely a year had elapsed between the return of Knox to Scotland and the establishment of the Reformed religion by the Estates. Calvin wrote from Geneva (Nov. 8th, 1559):

"As we wonder at success incredible in so short a time, so also we give great thanks to God, whose special blessing here shines forth."

And Knox himself, writing from the midst of the battle, says:[345]

"We doe nothing but goe about Jericho, blowing with trumpets, as God giveth strength, hoping victorie by his power alone."[346]

But dangers had been imminent; shot at through his window, deadly ambushes set, and the man's powers taxed almost beyond endurance:

"In twenty-four hours I have not four free to naturall rest and ease of this wicked carcass ... I have nead of a good and an assured horse, for great watch is laid for my apprehension, and large money promissed till any that shall kyll me."[347]

If the victory had been won, it was not secured. The sovereigns Mary and Francis had refused to ratify the Acts of their Estates; and it was not until Mary was deposed in 1567 that the Acts of the Estates of 1560 were legally placed on the Statute Book of Scotland. Francis II. died in 1560 (Dec. 5th), and Mary the young and widowed Queen returned to her native land (Aug. 19th, 1561). Her coming was looked forward to with dread by the party of the Reformation.

There was abundant reason for alarm. Mary was the Stuart Queen; she represented France, the old hereditary ally; she had been trained from childhood by a consummate politician and deadly enemy of the Reformation, her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine, to be his instrument to win back Scotland and England to the deadliest type of Romanism. She was a lovely creature, and was, besides, gifted with a power of personal fascination greater than her physical charms, and such as no other woman of her time possessed; she had a sweet caressing voice, beautiful hands; and not least, she had a gift of tears at command. She had been brought up at a Court where women were taught to use all such charms to win men for political ends. The _Escadron volant de la Reine_ had not come into existence when Mary left France, but its recruits were ready, and some of them had been her companions. She had made it clearly understood that she meant to overthrow the Reformation in Scotland.[348] Her unscrupulous character was already known to Knox and the other Protestant leaders. Nine days before her marriage she had signed deeds guaranteeing the ancient liberties and independence of Scotland; six days after her marriage she and her husband had appended their signatures to the same deeds; but twenty days before her wedding she had secretly signed away these very liberties, and had made Scotland a mere appanage of France.[349] They suspected that the party in France whose figure-head she was, would stick at no crime to carry out their designs, and had shown what they were ready to do by poisoning four of the Scotch Commissioners sent to Paris for their young Queen's wedding, because they refused to allow Francis to be immediately crowned King of Scotland.[350] They knew how apt a pupil she had already shown herself in their school, when she led her boy husband and her ladies for a walk round the Castle of Amboise, to see the bodies of dozens of Protestants hung from lintels and turrets, and to contemplate "the fair clusters of grapes which the grey stones had produced."[351]

It was scarcely wonderful that Lord James, Morton, and Lethington, were it not for obedience' sake, "cared not thoughe theie never saw her face," and felt that there was no safety for them but in Elizabeth's protection. As for Knox, we are told: "Mr. Knox is determined to abide the uttermost, and others will not leave him till God have taken his life and theirs together."[352] What use might she not make of these fascinations of hers on the vain, turbulent nobles of Scotland? Is it too much to say that but for the passionate womanly impulse--so like a Stuart[353]--which made her fling herself first into the arms of Darnley and then of Bothwell, and but for Knox, she might have succeeded in re-establishing Popery in Scotland and in reducing Protestant England?

Cecil himself was not without his fears, and urged the Protestants in Scotland to stand firm. Randolph's answer shows how much he trusted Knox's tenacity, however much he might sometimes deprecate his violence:

"Where your honour exhortethe us to stowteness, I assure you the voyce of one man is hable in one hower to put more lyf in us than five hundred trompettes contynually blusteringe in our eares."[354]

He was able to write after Mary's arrival:

"She (Mary) was four days without Mass; the next Sunday after arrival she had it said in her chapel by a French priest. There were at it besides her uncles and her own Household, the Earle of Montrose, Lord Graham ... the rest were at Mr. Knox sermon, as great a number as ever was any day."[355]

Mary's advisers, her uncles, knew how dangerous the state of Scotland was for their designs, and counselled her to temporise and gradually win over the leading Reforming nobles to her side. The young Queen entered on her task with some zest. She insisted on having Mass for her own household; but she would maintain, she promised, the laws which had made the Mass illegal in Scotland; and it says a great deal for her powers of fascination and dissimulation that there was scarcely one of the Reforming nobles that she did not win over to believe in her sincerity at one time or another, and that even the sagacious Randolph seemed for a time to credit that she meant what she said.[356] Knox alone in Scotland read her character and paid unwilling tribute to her abilities from his first interview with her.[357]

He saw that she had been thoroughly trained by her uncles, and especially by the Cardinal of Lorraine, and that it was hopeless to expect anything like fair dealing from her:

"In verry dead hir hole proceadings do declayr that the Cardinalles lessons ar so deaplie prented in hir heart, that the substance and the qualitie ar liek to perische together. 1 wold be glaid to be deceaved, but I fear I shall not. In communication with her, I espyed such craft as I have not found in such aige."[358]

Maitland of Lethington thought otherwise. Writing to Cecil (Oct. 25th, 1561) he says:

"You know the vehemency of Mr. Knox spreit, which cannot be brydled.... I wold wishe he shold deale with her more gently, _being a young princess unpersuaded_."[359]

It was thought that Mary might be led to adopt the Reformation if she were only tenderly guided. When Mary's private correspondence is read, when the secret knowledge which her co-religionists abroad had of her designs is studied and known, it can be seen how true was Knox's reading of her character and of her intentions.[360] He stood firm, almost alone at times among the leading men, but faithfully supported by the commons of Scotland.[361]

Then began the struggle between the fascinating Queen, Mary Stuart, one of the fairest flowers of the French Renaissance, and the unbending preacher, trained in the sternest school of the Reformation movement--a struggle which was so picturesque, in which the two opponents had each such strongly marked individuality, and in which the accessories were so dramatic, that the spectator insensibly becomes absorbed in the personal side of the conflict, and is tempted to forget that it was part of a Revolution which was convulsing the whole of middle and western Europe.

A good deal has been written about the rudeness with which Knox assailed Mary in public and in private, and his conversations with her are continually referred to but seldom quoted in full. It is forgotten that it was Mary who wished to try her gifts of fascination on the preacher, just as Catherine de' Medici tried to charm de Bèze before Poissy; that Knox never sought an interview; that he never approached the Court unless he was summoned by the sovereign to her presence; that he was deferential as a subject should be; and it was only when he was compelled by Mary herself to speak on themes for which he was ready to lay down his life that he displayed a sternness which monarchs seldom experience in those to whom they give audience. What makes these interviews stand forth in history is that they exhibit the first clash of autocratic kingship and the hitherto unknown power of the people. It was an age in which sovereigns were everywhere gaining despotic power, when the might of feudal barons was being broken, when the commonalty was dumb. A young Queen, whose training from childhood had stamped indelibly on her character that kingship meant the possession of unlimited autocratic privileges before which everything must give way, who had seen that none in France had dared dispute the will of her sickly, dull boy-husband simply because he was King, was suddenly confronted by something above and beyond her comprehension:

"'What have ye to do,' said sche, 'with my marriage? Or what ar ye within this Commounwealth?' '_A subject borne within the same_,' said he, 'Madam. And albeit I neather be Erle, Lord, nor Barroun within it, yitt hes God maid me (how abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.'"[362]

Modern democracy came into being in that answer. It is curious to see how this conflict between autocratic power and the civil and religious rights of the people runs through all the interviews between Mary and Knox, and was, in truth, the question of questions between them.[363]

It is unnecessary to tell the story of the seven years of struggle between 1560 and 1567. In the end, Mary was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, deposed, and her infant son, James VI., was placed on the throne. Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was made Regent. The Estates or Parliament again voted the Confession of Faith, and engrossed it in their Acts. The Regent, acting for the sovereign, signed the Acts. The Confession thus became part of the law of the land, and the Reformed Church was legally recognised in Scotland.