Part 11

{157} I have been the more minute in the detail of these transactions, not only on account of the share which the subject of this memoir had in them, but because they throw light upon the controversy between the conformists and non‑conformists, which runs through the succeeding period of the ecclesiastical history of England. “The troubles at Frankfort” present, in miniature, a striking picture of that contentious scene which was afterwards exhibited on a larger scale in the mother‑country. The issue of that affair augured ill as to the prospect of an amicable adjustment of the litigated points. It had been usual to urge conformity to the obnoxious ceremonies, from the respect due to the authority by which they were enjoined. But in this instance the civil authority, so far from enjoining, had rather discountenanced them. If they were urged with such intolerant importunity in a place where the laws and customs were repugnant to them, what was to be expected in England, where law and custom were on their side? The divines who received ecclesiastical preferment at the accession of Elizabeth, professed, that they desired the removal of these grounds of strife, but could not obtain it from the queen; and I am disposed to give many of them credit for the sincerity of their professions. But as they showed themselves so stiff and unyielding when the matter was wholly in their own power――as {158} some of them were so eager in wreathing a yoke about the consciences of their brethren as to urge reluctant magistrates to rivet it, is it any wonder that their applications for relief were cold and ineffectual, when made to rulers who were disposed to make the yoke still more severe, and to “chastise with scorpions those whom they had chastised with whips?” I repeat it; when I consider the transactions at Frankfort, I am not surprised at the defeat of every subsequent attempt to advance the Reformation in England, or to procure relief to those who scrupled to yield conformity to some of the ecclesiastical laws. I know it is pleaded, that the things complained of are matters of indifference, not prohibited in scripture, not imposed as essential to religion or necessary to salvation, matters that can affect no well‑informed conscience; and that such as refuse them, when enacted by authority, are influenced by unreasonable scrupulosity, conceited, pragmatical, opinionative. This has been the usual language of a ruling party, when imposing upon the consciences of the minority. But not to urge here the danger of allowing to any class of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical, a power of enjoining indifferent things in religion; nor the undeniable fact, that the burdensome system of ceremonial observances, by which religion was corrupted under the papacy, was gradually introduced under these and similar pretexts; nor that the things in question, when complexly and formally considered, are not really matters of indifference; not to insist at present upon these topics, the answer to the above {159} plea is short and decisive. These things appear matters of conscience and importance to the scruplers; you say they are matters of indifference. Why then violate the sacred peace of the church, and perpetuate division; why silence, deprive, harass, and starve men of acknowledged learning and piety, and drive from communion a sober and devout people; why torture their consciences, and endanger their souls, by the imposition of things, which, in your judgment, are indifferent, not necessary, and unworthy to become objects of contention?

Upon retiring from Frankfort, Knox went directly to Geneva. He was cordially welcomed back by Calvin. As his advice had great weight in disposing Knox to comply with the invitation from Frankfort, he felt much hurt at the treatment which had obliged him to leave it. In reply to an apologetic epistle which he received from Dr Cox, Calvin, although he prudently restrained himself from saying any thing which might revive or increase the flame, could not conceal his opinion, that Knox had been used in an unbrotherly and unchristian manner, and that it would have been better for his accuser to have remained at home, than to have come into a foreign country as a firebrand to inflame a peaceable society.[221]

It appeared from the event, that providence had disengaged Knox from his late charge, to employ him {160} on a more important service. From the time that he was carried prisoner into France, he had never lost sight of Scotland, nor relinquished the hope of again preaching in his native country. While he resided at Berwick and Newcastle, he had frequent opportunities of personal intercourse with his countrymen, and of learning the state of religion among them.[222] His unintermitted labours, during the five years which he spent in England, by occupying his time and attention, lessened the regret which he felt at seeing the object of his wishes apparently at as great a distance as ever. Upon leaving that kingdom, his thoughts were anxiously turned to Scotland. He found means to carry on an epistolary correspondence with some of his friends at home; one great object of his journeys to Dieppe was to receive their letters;[223] and he had the satisfaction, soon after his retreat from Frankfort, to obtain such information from them, as encouraged him to execute his design of paying a visit to his native country. To prepare the reader for the account of this journey, it will be necessary to take a view of the principal events which had occurred in that kingdom from the time that Knox was forced to leave it.

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The surrender of the castle of St Andrews seemed to have given an irrecoverable blow to the reformed interest in Scotland. Among the prisoners conveyed to France were some of the most zealous and able {161} protestants in the kingdom; and the rest, seeing themselves at the mercy of their adversaries, were dispirited and intimidated. The clergy triumphed in the victory which they had obtained,[224] and flattered themselves that they would now be able with ease to stifle all opposition to their measures. The regent, being guided entirely by his brother, the archbishop of St Andrews, was ready to employ all the power of the state in support of the church, and for suppressing those who refused to submit to her decisions. During the confusions produced by the invasion of the kingdom under the duke of Somerset, and by the disastrous defeat of the Scots at Pinkie, in the year 1547, the regent found it his interest not to irritate the protestants; but no sooner was he freed from the alarm created by these events than be began to treat them with severity. Aware that it would be extremely invidious to prosecute the barons and gentry upon a charge of heresy, and perhaps convinced that such measures in the time of his predecessor, had proved injurious to the hierarchy, the crafty primate commenced his attack by bringing them to trial for crimes against the state.[225] Although they had conducted themselves in the most peaceable and loyal manner during the late invasion, and many of them {162} had died under the standard of the regent,[226] they were accused of being secretly favourable to the English, and of holding correspondence with them. Cockburn of Ormiston, and Crichton of Brunston, were banished, and their estates forfeited.[227] Sir John Melville of Raith, a gentleman of distinguished probity, and of untainted loyalty, was accused of a traitorous connexion with the enemy; and although the only evidence adduced in support of the charge was a letter written by him to one of his sons then in England, and although this letter contained nothing criminal, yet was he unjustly condemned and beheaded.[228] The signing of a treaty of peace with England, in 1550, was a signal for the clergy to proceed to acts of more undisguised persecution. Adam Wallace, who had lived for some time as tutor in the family of Ormiston, was apprehended, and being tried for heresy before a convention of clergy and nobility was committed {163} to the flames on the Castle‑hill of Edinburgh.[229] These prosecutions were not confined to persons in holy orders. George Winchester of Kinglassie was summoned before the archbishop and clergy at St Andrews, and, having made his escape, was condemned as a heretic, and his goods escheated.[230] In the following year, the parliament renewed the laws in support of the church, and added a new statute against the circulation of heretical ballads and tragedies.[231]

By these severe measures the clergy struck terror into the minds of the nation; but they were unable to conceal the glaring corruptions by which their own order was disgraced, and they could not remain strangers to the murmurs that these had excited throughout the whole kingdom. In the month of November 1549, a provincial council was held at Edinburgh “for the reformation of the church, and the extirpation of heresy.[232] This council acknowledged that “corruption and profane lewdness of life {164} as well as gross ignorance of arts and sciences, reigned among the clergy of almost every degree,”[233] and they enacted no fewer than fifty‑eight canons for correcting these evils. They agreed to carry into execution the decree of the general council of Basle, which ordained, that every clergyman who lived in concubinage should be deprived of the revenues of his benefice for three months, and that if, after due admonition, he did not dismiss his concubine, or if he took to himself another, he should be deprived of his benefices altogether.[234] They exhorted the prelates and inferior clergy not to retain in their own houses their bastard children, nor suffer them to be promoted directly or indirectly to their own benefices, nor employ the patrimony of the church for the purpose of marrying them to barons, or of erecting baronages for them.[235] That the distinction between clergy and laity might be visibly preserved, they appointed the ordinaries to charge the priests under their care to desist from the practice of preserving their beards, which had begun to prevail, and to see that the canonical tonsure was duly observed.[236] To remedy the neglect of public instruction, which was loudly complained of, they agreed to observe the act of the council of Trent, which ordained that every bishop, “according to the grace given to him,” should preach personally four times a year at least, unless lawfully hindered; and that such of them as were unfit for this duty, through want of practice, {165} should endeavour to qualify themselves, and for that end should entertain in their houses learned divines capable of instructing them. The same injunctions were laid on rectors.[237] They determined that a benefice should be set apart in each bishopric and monastery, for supporting a preacher who might supply the want of teaching within their bounds; that, where no such benefice was set apart, pensions should be allotted; and that, where neither of these was provided, the preacher should be entitled to demand from the rector forty shillings a‑year, provided he had preached four times in his parish within that period.[238] The council made a number of other regulations, concerning the dress and diet of the clergy, the course of study in cathedral churches and monasteries, union of benefices, pluralities, ordinations, dispensations, and the method of process in consistorial courts. But not trusting altogether to these remedies for the cure of heresy, they farther ordained that the bishop of each diocese, and the head of each monastery, should appoint “inquisitors of heretical pravity, men of piety, probity, learning, good fame, and great circumspection,” who should make the most diligent search after heresies, foreign opinions, condemned books, and particularly profane songs, intended to defame the clergy, or to detract from the authority of the ecclesiastical constitutions.[239]

Another provincial council, held in 1551 and 1552, besides ratifying the preceding canons,[240] adopted an {166} additional expedient for correcting the continued neglect of public instruction. After declaring that “the inferior clergy, and the prelates for the most part, were still unqualified for instructing the people in the catholic faith, and other things necessary to salvation, and for reclaiming the erroneous,” they proceeded to approve of a catechism which had been compiled in the Scottish language, ordered that it should be printed, and that copies of it should be sent to all rectors, vicars, and curates, who were enjoined to read a portion of it, instead of a sermon, to their parishioners, on every Sunday and holiday, when no person qualified for preaching was present. The rectors, vicars, and curates, were enjoined to practise daily in reading their catechism, lest, on ascending the pulpit, they should stammer and blunder, and thereby expose themselves to the laughter of the people. The archbishop was directed, after supplying the clergy with copies, to keep the remainder beside him “in firm custody;” and the inferior clergy were prohibited from indiscreetly communicating their copies to the people, without the permission of their bishops, who might allow this privilege to “certain honest, grave, trusty, and discreet laics, who appeared to desire it for the sake of instruction, and not of gratifying curiosity.”[241] If any of the hearers testified a disposition to call in question any part of the catechism, the clerical reader was prohibited, under the pain of deprivation, from entering into dispute with them on {167} the subject, and was instructed to delate them to the inquisitors.[242]

Many of the regulations enacted by these two councils were excellent;[243] but the execution of them was committed to the very persons who were interested in support of the evils against which they were directed. Accordingly, the canons of the Scottish clergy, like those of general councils called for the reformation of the church, instead of correcting, served only to proclaim the abuses which prevailed. We know from the declarations of subsequent provincial councils,[244] as well as from the complaints of the people, that the licentiousness of the clergy continued; and the catechism which they had sanctioned seems to have been but little used. I have not found it mentioned by any writer of that age, popish or protestant; and we know of its existence only from the canon of the assembly which authorized its use, and from a few copies of it which have descended to our time.[245]

The council which met in 1551, boasts that, through the singular favour of the government, and the vigilance of the prelates, heresy, which had formerly spread through the kingdom, was now repressed, and almost extinguished.[246] There were still, however, many protestants in the nation; but they were deprived of teachers, and they satisfied themselves with retaining their sentiments, without exposing their lives to inevitable destruction by avowing their creed, {168} or exciting the suspicions of the clergy by holding private conventicles. In this state they remained from 1551 to 1554.

While the Reformation was in this languishing condition, it experienced a sudden revival in Scotland, from two causes which appeared at first view to threaten its utter extinction in Britain. These were the elevation of the queen dowager to the regency of Scotland, and the accession of Mary to the throne of England.

The queen dowager of Scotland, who possessed a great portion of that ambition by which her brothers, the princes of Lorrain, were fired, had long formed the design of wresting the regency from the hands of Arran. After a series of political intrigue, in which she discovered the most consummate and persevering address, she at last succeeded; and, on the 10th of April, 1554, the regent resigned his office to her in the presence of parliament, and retired into private life with the title of duke of Chastelherault. The dowager had at an early period made her court to the protestants, whom Arran had alienated from him by persecution; and, to induce them to favour her pretensions, she promised to screen them from the violence of the clergy. Having received their cordial support, and finding it necessary still to use them as a check upon the clergy, who, under the influence of the primate, favoured the interest of her rival, the queen regent secretly countenanced them, and the protestants were emboldened again to avow their sentiments.

In the meantime, the queen of England was exerting {169} all her power to crush the Reformation; and had the court of Scotland acted in concert with her for this purpose, the protestants must, according to all human probability, have been exterminated in Britain. But the English queen having married Philip, king of Spain, while the queen regent was indissolubly attached to France, the rival of Spain, a coldness was produced between these two princesses, which was soon after succeeded by an open breach. Among the protestants who fled from the cruelty of Mary, some took refuge in Scotland, where they were suffered to remain undisturbed, and even to teach in private, through the connivance of the new regent, and in consequence of the security into which the clergy had been lulled by success. Travelling from place to place, they propagated instruction, and by their example and their exhortations fanned the latent zeal of those who had formerly received the knowledge of the truth.

William Harlow, whose zeal and acquaintance with the scriptures compensated for the defects of his education, was the first preacher who at this time came to Scotland. Let those who do not know, or who wish to forget, that the religion which they profess was first preached by fishermen and tentmakers, labour to conceal the occupations of some of those men whom providence raised up to spread the reformed gospel through their native country. Harlow had followed the trade of a tailor in Edinburgh;[247] {170} but having imbibed the protestant doctrine, he retired to England, where he was admitted to deacon’s orders, and employed as a preacher, during the reign of Edward VI.[248] Upon his return to Scotland, he remained for some time in Ayrshire, and continued to preach in different parts of the country, with great fervour and diligence, until the establishment of the Reformation, when he was admitted minister of St Cuthbert’s, in the vicinity of Edinburgh.[249]

Some time after him arrived John Willock. This reformer afterwards became the principal coadjutor of Knox, who never mentions him without expressions of affection and esteem. The cordiality which subsisted between them, the harmony of their sentiments, and the combination of the peculiar talents and qualities by which they were distinguished, conduced in no small degree to the advancement of the Reformation. Willock was not inferior to Knox in learning, and, though he did not equal him in eloquence and intrepidity, surpassed him in affability, in moderation, and in address:[250] qualities which enabled him sometimes to maintain his station and to accomplish his {171} purposes, when his colleague could not act with safety or with success. He was a native of Ayrshire, and had belonged to the order of Franciscan friars; but, having embraced the reformed opinions at an early period, he threw off the monastic habit, and fled to England. During the persecution for the Six Articles in 1541, he was thrown into the prison of the Fleet. He afterwards became chaplain to the duke of Suffolk, the father of lady Jane Grey;[251] and upon the accession of queen Mary, left England, and took up his residence at Embden. Having practised there as a physician, he was introduced to Anne, duchess of Friesland, who patronised the Reformation,[252] and whose opinion of his talents and integrity induced her to send him to Scotland, in the summer of 1555, with a commission to the queen regent, to make some arrangements respecting the trade carried on between the two countries. The public character with which he was invested gave Willock an opportunity of cultivating acquaintance with the leading protestants, and while he resided in Edinburgh, they met with him in private, and listened to his religious instructions.[253]

{172} Knox received the news of this favourable change in the situation of his brethren with heartfelt satisfaction. He did not know what it was to fear danger, and was little accustomed to consult his own ease, when he had the prospect of being useful in advancing the interests of truth; but he acknowledges that, on the present occasion, he was at first averse to a journey into Scotland, notwithstanding some encouraging circumstances in the intelligence which he had received from that quarter. He had been so much tossed about of late, that he felt a peculiar relish in the learned leisure which he at present enjoyed, and which he was desirous to prolong. His anxiety to see his wife, after an absence of nearly two years, and the importunity with which his mother‑in‑law, in her letters, urged him to visit them, determined him at last to undertake the journey.[254] Setting out from Geneva in the month of August 1555, he came to Dieppe, and, sailing from that port, landed on the east coast, near the boundaries between Scotland and England, about the end of harvest.[255] He repaired immediately to Berwick, where he had the satisfaction of finding his wife and her mother in comfortable circumstances, and enjoying the happiness of religious society with several individuals in that city, who, like themselves, had not “bowed the knee” to the established idolatry, nor consented to “receive the mark” of antichrist.[256]

{173} Having remained some time with them, he set out secretly to visit the protestants in Edinburgh; intending, after a short stay, to return to Berwick. But he found employment which detained him beyond his expectation. He lodged with James Syme, a respectable burgess of Edinburgh, in whose house the friends of the Reformation assembled, to attend the instructions of Knox, as soon as they were informed of his arrival. Few of the inhabitants of the metropolis had as yet embraced the reformed doctrines, but several persons had repaired to it at this time, from other parts of the country, to meet with Willock. Among these were John Erskine of Dun, whom we had formerly occasion to mention as an early favourer of the new opinions, and a distinguished patron of literature,[257] and whose great respectability of character, and approved loyalty and patriotism, had preserved him from the resentment of the clergy, and the jealousy of the government, during successive periods of persecution;[258] and William Maitland of Lethington, a young gentleman of the finest parts, improved by a superior education, but inclined to subtlety in reasoning, accommodating in his religious sentiments, and extremely versatile in his political conduct. Highly gratified with Knox’s discourses, which were greatly superior to any which they had heard either from popish or protestant preachers, they brought their acquaintances along with them to {174} hear him, and his audiences daily increased. Being confined to a private house, he was obliged to preach to successive assemblies; and was unremittingly employed, by night as well as by day, in communicating instruction to persons who demanded it with extraordinary avidity. The following letter, written by him to Mrs Bowes, to excuse himself for not returning so soon as he had purposed, will convey the best idea of his employment and feelings on this interesting occasion.