This success was providential. They next invited English exiles abroad to join them at Frankfort, saying nothing about their mutilations of the service book. If these brethren came in, when they were all restored to England, if ever they were restored, their example, that of sufferers, would carry the day, and their service would for ever be that of the Anglican Church. The other exiled brethren, on receiving this invitation, had enough of the wisdom of the serpent to ask, "Are we to be allowed to use our own prayer book?" The answer of the godly of Frankfort evaded the question. At last the Frankfort Puritans showed their hand: they disapproved of various things in the Prayer Book. Knox, summoned from Geneva, a reluctant visitor, was already one of their preachers. In November 1554 came Grindal, later Archbishop of Canterbury, from Zurich, ready to omit some ceremonies, so that he and his faction might have "the substance" of the Prayer Book. Negotiations went on, and it was proposed by the Puritans to use the Geneva service. But Knox declined to do that, without the knowledge of the non-Puritan exiles at Zurich and elsewhere, or to use the English book, and offered his resignation. Nothing could be more fair and above-board.

There was an inchoate plan for a new Order. That failed; and Knox, with others, consulted Calvin, giving him a sketch of the nature of the English service. They drew his attention to the surplice; the Litany, "devised by Pope Gregory," whereby "we use a certain conjuring of God"; the kneeling at the Communion; the use of the cross in baptism, and of the ring in marriage, clearly a thing of human, if not of diabolical invention, and the "imposition of hands" in confirmation. The churching of women, they said, is both Pagan and Jewish. "Other things not so much shame itself as a certain kind of pity compelleth us to keep close."

"The tone of the letter throughout was expressly calculated to prejudice Calvin on the point submitted to him," says Professor Hume Brown. {56} Calvin replied that the quarrel might be all very well if the exiles were happy and at ease in their circumstances, though in the Liturgy, as described, there were "tolerable (endurable) follies." On the whole he sided with the Knoxian party. The English Liturgy is not pure enough; and the English exiles, not at Frankfort, merely like it because they are accustomed to it. Some are partial to "popish dregs."

To the extreme Reformers no break with the past could be too abrupt and precipitous: the framers of the English Liturgy had rather adopted the principle of evolution than of development by catastrophe, and had wedded what was noblest in old Latin forms and prayers to music of the choicest English speech. To this service, for which their fellow-religionists in England were dying at the stake, the non-Frankfortian exiles were attached. They were Englishmen; their service, they said, should bear "an English face": so Knox avers, who could as yet have no patriotic love of any religious form as exclusively and essentially Scottish.

A kind of truce was now proclaimed, to last till May 1, 1555; Knox aiding in the confection of a service without responses, "some part taken out of the English book, and other things put to," while Calvin, Bullinger, and three others were appointed as referees. The Frankfort congregation had now a brief interval of provisional peace, till, on March 13, 1555, Richard Cox, with a band of English refugees, arrived. He had been tutor to Edward VI., the young Marcellus of Protestantism, but for Frankfort he was not puritanic enough. His company would give a large majority to the anti-Knoxian congregation. He and his at once uttered the responses, and on Sunday one of them read the Litany. This was an unruly infraction of the provisional agreement. Cox and his party (April 5) represented to Calvin that they had given up surplices, crosses, and other things, "not as impure and papistical," but as indifferent, and for the sake of peace. This was after they had driven Knox from the place, as they presently did; in the beginning it was distinctly their duty to give up the Litany and responses, while the truce lasted, that is, till the end of April. In the afternoon of the Sunday Knox preached, denouncing the morning's proceedings, the "impurity" of the Prayer Book, of which "I once had a good opinion," and the absence, in England, of "discipline," that is, interference by preachers with private life. Pluralities also he denounced, and some of the exiles had been pluralists.

For all this Knox was "very sharply reproved," as soon as he left the pulpit. Two days later, at a meeting, he insisted that Cox's people should have a vote in the congregation, thus making the anti-puritans a majority; Knox's conduct was here certainly chivalrous: "I fear not your judgment," he said. He had never wished to go to Frankfort; in going he merely obeyed Calvin, and probably he had no great desire to stay. He was forbidden to preach by Cox and his majority; and a later conference with Cox led to no compromise. It seems probable that Cox and the anti- puritans already cherished a grudge against Knox for his tract, the "Admonition." He had a warning that they would use the pamphlet against him, and he avers that "some devised how to have me cast into prison." The anti-puritans, admitting in a letter to Calvin that they brought the "Admonition" before the magistrates of Frankfort as "a book which would supply their enemies with just ground for overturning the whole Church, and one which had added much oil to the flame of persecution in England," deny that they desired more than that Knox might be ordered to quit the place. The passages selected as treasonable in the "Admonition" do not include the prayer for a Jehu. They were enough, however, to secure the dismissal of Knox from Frankfort.

Cox had accepted the Order used by the French Protestant congregation, probably because it committed him and his party to nothing in England; however, Knox had no sooner departed than the anti-puritans obtained leave to use, without surplice, cross, and some other matters, the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. In September the Puritans seceded, the anti- puritans remained, squabbling with the Lutherans and among themselves.

In the whole affair Knox acted the most open and manly part; in his "History" he declines to name the opponents who avenged themselves, in a manner so dubious, on his "Admonition." If they believed their own account of the mischief that it wrought in England, their denunciation of him to magistrates, who were not likely to do more than dismiss him, is the less inexcusable. They did not try to betray him to a body like the Inquisition, as Calvin did in the case of Servetus. But their conduct was most unworthy and unchivalrous. {58}



CHAPTER VII: KNOX IN SCOTLAND: LETHINGTON: MARY OF GUISE: 1555-1556

Meanwhile the Reformer returned to Geneva (April 1555), where Calvin was now supreme. From Geneva, "the den of mine own ease, the rest of quiet study," Knox was dragged, "maist contrarious to mine own judgement," by a summons from Mrs. Bowes. He did not like leaving his "den" to rejoin his betrothed; the lover was not so fervent as the evangelist was cautious. Knox had at that time probably little correspondence with Scotland. He knew that there was no refuge for him in England under Mary Tudor, "who nowise may abide the presence of God's prophets."

In Scotland, at this moment, the Government was in the hands of Mary of Guise, a sister of the Duke of Guise and of the Cardinal. Mary was now aged forty; she was born in 1515, as Knox probably was. She was a tall and stately woman; her face was thin and refined; Henry VIII., as being himself a large man, had sought her hand, which was given to his nephew, James V. On the death of that king, Mary, with Cardinal Beaton, kept Scotland true to the French alliance, and her daughter, the fair Queen of Scots, was at this moment a child in France, betrothed to the Dauphin. As a Catholic, of the House of Lorraine, Mary could not but cleave to her faith and to the French alliance. In 1554 she had managed to oust from the Regency the Earl of Arran, the head of the all but royal Hamiltons, now gratified with the French title of Duc de Chatelherault. To crown her was as seemly a thing, says Knox, "if men had but eyes, as a saddle upon the back of ane unrewly kow." She practically deposed Huntly, the most treacherous of men, from the Chancellorship, substituting, with more or less reserve, a Frenchman, de Rubay; and d'Oysel, the commander of the French troops in Scotland, was her chief adviser.

[Picture of King James V and Mary of Guise: knox2.jpg]

Writing after the death of Mary of Guise, Knox avers that she only waited her chance "to cut the throats of all those in whom she suspected the knowledge of God to be, within the realm of Scotland." {60} As a matter of fact, the Regent later refused a French suggestion that she should peacefully call Protestants together, and then order a massacre after the manner of the Bartholomew: itself still in the womb of the future. "Mary of Guise," says Knox's biographer, Professor Hume Brown, "had the instincts of a good ruler—the love of order and justice, and the desire to stand well with the people."

Knox, however, believed, or chose to say, that she wanted to cut all Protestant throats, just as he believed that a Protestant king should cut all Catholic throats. He attributed to her, quite erroneously and uncharitably, his own unsparing fervour. As he held this view of her character and purposes, it is not strange that a journey to Scotland was "contrairious to his judgement."

He did not understand the situation. Ferocious as had been the English invasion of Scotland in 1547, the English party in Scotland, many of them paid traitors, did not resent these "rebukes of a friend," so much as both the nobles and the people now began to detest their French allies, and were jealous of the Queen Mother's promotion of Frenchmen.

There were not, to be sure, many Scots whom she, or any one, could trust. Some were honestly Protestant: some held pensions from England: others would sacrifice national interests to their personal revenges and clan feuds. The Rev. the Lord James Stewart, Mary's bastard brother, Prior of St. Andrews and of Pittenweem, was still very young. He had no interest in his clerical profession beyond drawing his revenues as prior of two abbeys; and his nearness to the Crown caused him to be suspected of ambition: moreover, he tended towards the new ideas in religion. He had met Knox in London, apparently in 1552. Morton was a mere wavering youth; Argyll was very old: Chatelherault was a rival of the Regent, a competitor for the Crown and quite incompetent. The Regent, in short, could scarcely have discovered a Scottish adviser worthy of employment, and when she did trust one, he was the brilliant "chamaeleon," young Maitland of Lethington, who would rather betray his master cleverly than run a straight course, and did betray the Regent. Thus Mary, a Frenchwoman and a Catholic, governing Scotland for her Catholic daughter, the Dauphiness, with the aid of a few French troops who had just saved the independence of the country, naturally employed French advisers. This made her unpopular; her attempts to bring justice into Scottish courts were odious, and she would not increase the odium by persecuting the Protestants. The Duke's bastard brother, again, the Archbishop, sharing his family ambition, was in no mood for burning heretics. The Queen Mother herself carried conciliation so far as to pardon and reinstate such trebly dyed traitors as the notorious Crichton of Brunston, and she employed Kirkcaldy of Grange, who intrigued against her while in her employment. An Edinburgh tailor, Harlaw, who seems to have been a deacon in English orders, was allowed to return to Scotland in 1554. He became a very notable preacher. {62a}

Going from Mrs. Bowes's house to Edinburgh, Knox found that "the fervency" of the godly "did ravish him." At the house of one Syme "the trumpet blew the auld sound three days thegither," he informed Mrs. Bowes, and Knox himself was the trumpeter. He found another lady, "who, by reason that she had a troubled conscience, delighted much in the company of the said John." There were pleasant sisters in Edinburgh, who later consulted Knox on the delicate subject of dress. He was more tolerant in answering them than when he denounced "the stinking pride of women" at Mary Stuart's Court; admitting that "in clothes, silks, velvets, gold, and other such, there is no uncleanness," yet "I cannot praise the common superfluity which women now use in their apparel." He was quite opposed, however, to what he pleasingly calls "correcting natural beauty" (as by dyeing the hair), and held that "farthingales cannot be justified."

On the whole, he left the sisters fairly free to dress as they pleased. His curious phrase, {62b} in a letter to a pair of sisters, "the prophets of God are often impeded to pray for such as carnally they love unfeignedly," is difficult to understand. We leave it to the learned to explain this singular limitation of the prophet, which Knox says that he had not as yet experienced. He must have heard about it from other prophets.

Knox found at this time a patron remarkable, says Dr. M'Crie, "for great respectability of character," Erskine of Dun. Born in 1508, about 1530 he slew a priest named Thomas Froster, in a curiously selected place, the belfry tower of Montrose. Nobody seems to have thought anything of it, nor should we know the fact, if the record of the blood-price paid by Mr. Erskine to the priest's father did not testify to the fervent act. Six years later, according to Knox, "God had marvellously illuminated" Erskine, and the mildness of his nature is frequently applauded. He was, for Scotland, a man of learning, and our first amateur of Greek. Why did he kill a priest in a bell tower!

In the winter or autumn of 1555, Erskine gave a supper, where Knox was to argue against crypto-protestantism. When once the Truth, whether Anglican or Presbyterian, was firmly established, Catholics were compelled, under very heavy fines, to attend services and sermons which they believed to be at least erroneous, if not blasphemous. I am not aware that, in 1555, the Catholic Church, in Scotland, thus vigorously forced people of Protestant opinions to present themselves at Mass, punishing nonconformity with ruin. I have not found any complaints to this effect, at that time. But no doubt an appearance of conformity might save much trouble, even in the lenient conditions produced by the character of the Regent and by the political situation. Knox, then, discovered that "divers who had a zeal to godliness made small scruple to go to the Mass, or to communicate with the abused sacraments in the Papistical manner." He himself, therefore, "began to show the impiety of the Mass, and how dangerous a thing it was to communicate in any sort with idolatry."

Now to many of his hearers this essential article of his faith—that the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and form of celebration were "idolatry"—may have been quite a new idea. It was already, however, a commonplace with Anglican Protestants. Nothing of the sort was to be found in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI.; broken lights of various ways of regarding the Sacrament probably played, at this moment, over the ideas of Knox's Scottish disciples. Indeed, their consciences appear to have been at rest, for it was after Knox's declaration about the "idolatrous" character of the Mass that "the matter began to be agitated from man to man, the conscience of some being afraid."

To us it may seem that the sudden denunciation of a Christian ceremony, even what may be deemed a perverted Christian ceremony, as sheer "idolatry," equivalent to the worship of serpents, bulls, or of a foreign Baal in ancient Israel—was a step calculated to confuse the real issues and to provoke a religious war of massacre. Knox, we know, regarded extermination of idolaters as a counsel of perfection, though in the Christian scriptures not one word could be found to justify his position. He relied on texts about massacring Amalekites and about Elijah's slaughter of the prophets of Baal. The Mass was idolatry, was Baal worship; and Baal worshippers, if recalcitrant, must die.

These extreme unchristian ideas, then, were new in Scotland, even to "divers who had a zeal to godliness." For their discussion, at Erskine of Dun's party, were present, among others, Willock, a Scots preacher returned from England, and young Maitland of Lethington. We are not told what part Willock took in the conversation. The arguments turned on biblical analogies, never really coincident with the actual modern circumstances. The analogy produced in discussion by those who did not go to all extremes with Knox did not, however, lack appropriateness. Christianity, in fact, as they seem to have argued, did arise out of Judaism; retaining the same God and the same scriptures, but, in virtue of the sacrifice of its Founder, abstaining from the sacrifices and ceremonial of the law. In the same way Protestantism arose out of mediaeval Catholicism, retaining the same God and the same scriptures, but rejecting the mediaeval ceremonial and the mediaeval theory of the sacrifice of the Mass. It did not follow that the Mass was sheer "idolatry," at which no friend of the new ideas could be present.

As a proof that such presence or participation was not unlawful, was not idolatry, in the existing state of affairs, was adduced the conduct of St. Paul and the advice given to him by St. James and the Church in Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 18-36). Paul was informed that many thousands of Jews "believed," yet remained zealous for the law, the old order. They had learned that Paul advised the Jews in Greece and elsewhere not to "walk after the customs." Paul should prove that "he also kept the law." For this purpose he, with four Christian Jews under a vow, was to purify himself, and he went into the Temple, "until that an offering should be offered for every one of them."

"Offerings," of course, is the term in our version for sacrifices, whether of animals or of "unleavened wafers anointed with oil." The argument from analogy was, I infer, that the Mass, with its wafer, was precisely such an "offering," such a survival in Catholic ritual, as in Jewish ritual St. Paul consented to, by the advice of the Church of Jerusalem; consequently Protestants in a Catholic country, under the existing circumstances, might attend the Mass. The Mass was not "idolatry." The analogy halts, like all analogies, but so, of course, and to fatal results, does Knox's analogy between the foreign worships of Israel and the Mass. "She thinks not that idolatry, but good religion," said Lethington to Knox once, speaking of Queen Mary's Mass. "So thought they that offered their children unto Moloch," retorted the reformer. Manifestly the Mass is, of the two, much more on a level with the "offering" of St. Paul than with human sacrifices to Moloch! {66}

In his reply Knox, as he states his own argument, altogether overlooked the offering of St. Paul, which, as far as we understand, was the essence of his opponents' contention. He said that "to pay vows was never idolatry," but "the Mass from the original was and remained odious idolatry, therefore the facts were most unlike. Secondly, I greatly doubt whether either James's commandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost," about which Knox was, apparently, better informed than these Apostles and the Church of Jerusalem. Next, Paul was presently in danger from a mob, which had been falsely told that he took Greeks into the Temple. Hence it was manifest "that God approved not that means of reconciliation." Obviously the danger of an Apostle from a misinformed mob is no sort of evidence to divine approval or disapproval of his behaviour. {67} We shall later find that when Knox was urging on some English nonconformists the beauty of conformity (1568), he employed the very precedent of St. Paul's conduct at Jerusalem, which he rejected when it was urged at Erskine's supper party!

We have dwelt on this example of Knox's logic, because it is crucial. The reform of the Church of Christ could not be achieved without cruel persecution on both parts, while Knox was informing Scotland that all members of the old Faith were as much idolaters as Israelites who sacrificed their children to a foreign God, while to extirpate idolaters was the duty of a Christian prince. Lethington, as he soon showed, was as clear-sighted in regard to Knox's logical methods as any man of to- day, but he "concluded, saying, I see perfectly that our shifts will serve nothing before God, seeing that they stand us in so small stead before man." But either Lethington conformed and went to Mass, or Mary of Guise expected nothing of the sort from him, for he remained high in her favour, till he betrayed her in 1559.

Knox's opinion being accepted—it obviously was a novelty to many of his hearers—the Reformers must either convert or persecute the Catholics even to extermination. Circumstances of mere worldly policy forbade the execution of this counsel of perfection, but persistent "idolaters," legally, lay after 1560 under sentence of death. There was to come a moment, we shall see, when even Knox shrank from the consequences of a theory ("a murderous syllogism," writes one of his recent biographers, Mr. Taylor Innes), which divided his countrymen into the godly, on one hand, and idolaters doomed to death by divine law, on the other. But he put his hesitation behind him as a suggestion of Satan.

Knox now associated with Lord Erskine, then Governor of Edinburgh Castle, the central strength of Scotland; with Lord Lorne, soon to be Earl of Argyll (a "Christian," but not a remarkably consistent walker), with "Lord James," the natural brother of Queen Mary (whose conscience, as we saw, permitted him to draw the benefices of the Abbacy of St. Andrews, of Pittenweem, and of an abbey in France, without doing any duties), and with many redoubtable lairds of the Lothians, Ayrshire, and Forfarshire. He also preached for ten days in the town house, at Edinburgh, of the Bishop of Dunkeld. On May 15, 1556, he was summoned to appear in the church of the Black Friars. As he was backed by Erskine of Dun, and other gentlemen, according to the Scottish custom when legal proceedings were afoot, no steps were taken against him, the clergy probably dreading Knox's defenders, as Bothwell later, in similar circumstances, dreaded the assemblage under the Earl of Moray; as Lennox shrank from facing the supporters of Bothwell, and Moray from encountering the spears of Lethington's allies. It was usual to overawe the administrators of justice by these gatherings of supporters, perhaps a survival of the old "compurgators." This, in fact, was "part of the obligation of our Scottish kyndness," and the divided ecclesiastical and civil powers shrank from a conflict.

Glencairn and the Earl Marischal, in the circumstances, advised Knox to write a letter to Mary of Guise, "something that might move her to hear the Word of God," that is, to hear Knox preach. This letter, as it then stood, was printed in a little black-letter volume, probably of 1556. Knox addresses the Regent and Queen Mother as "her humble subject." The document has an interest almost pathetic, and throws light on the whole character of the great Reformer. It appears that Knox had been reported to the Regent by some of the clergy, or by rumour, as a heretic and seducer of the people. But Knox had learned that the "dew of the heavenly grace" had quenched her displeasure, and he hoped that the Regent would be as clement to others in his case as to him. Therefore he returns to his attitude in the letter to his Berwick congregation (1552). He calls for no Jehu, he advises no armed opposition to the sovereign, but says of "God's chosen children" (the Protestants), that "their victory standeth not in resisting but in suffering," "in quietness, silence, and hope," as the Prophet Isaiah recommends. The Isaiahs (however numerous modern criticism may reckon them) were late prophets, not of the school of Elijah, whom Knox followed in 1554 and 1558-59, not in 1552 or 1555, or on one occasion in 1558-59. "The Elect of God" do not "shed blood and murder," Knox remarks, though he approves of the Elect, of the brethren at all events, when they do murder and shed blood.

Meanwhile Knox is more than willing to run the risks of the preacher of the truth, "partly because I would, with St. Paul, wish myself accursed from Christ, as touching earthly pleasures" (whatever that may mean), "for the salvation of my brethren and illumination of your Grace." He confesses that the Regent is probably not "so free as a public reformation perhaps would require," for that required the downcasting of altars and images, and prohibition to celebrate or attend Catholic rites. Thus Knox would, apparently, be satisfied for the moment with toleration and immunity for his fellow-religionists. Nothing of the sort really contented him, of course, but at present he asked for no more.

Yet, a few days later, he writes, the Regent handed his letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow, saying, "Please you, my Lord, to read a pasquil," an offence which Knox never forgave and bitterly avenged in his "History."

It is possible that the Regent merely glanced at his letter. She would find herself alluded to in a biblical parallel with "the Egyptian midwives," with Nebuchadnezzar, and Rahab the harlot. Her acquaintance with these amiable idolaters may have been slight, but the comparison was odious, and far from tactful. Knox also reviled the creed in which she had been bred as "a poisoned cup," and threatened her, if she did not act on his counsel, with "torment and pain everlasting." Those who drink of the cup of her Church "drink therewith damnation and death." As for her clergy, "proud prelates do Kings maintain to murder the souls for which the blood of Christ Jesus was shed."

These statements were dogmatic, and the reverse of conciliatory. One should not, in attempting to convert any person, begin by reviling his religion. Knox adopted the same method with Mary Stuart: the method is impossible. It is not to be marvelled at if the Regent did style the letter a "pasquil."

Knox took his revenge in his "History" by repeating a foolish report that Mary of Guise had designed to poison her late husband, James V. "Many whisper that of old his part was in the pot, and that the suspicion thereof caused him to be inhibited the Queen's company, while the Cardinal got his secret business sped of that gracious lady either by day or night." {71a} He styled her, as we saw, "a wanton widow"; he hinted that she was the mistress of Cardinal Beaton; he made similar insinuations about her relations with d'Oysel (who was "a secretis mulierum"); he said, as we have seen, that she only waited her chance to cut the throats of all suspected Protestants; he threw doubt on the legitimacy of her daughter, Mary Stuart; and he constantly accuses her of treachery, as will appear, when the charge is either doubtful, or, as far as I can ascertain, absolutely false.

These are unfortunately examples of Knox's Christianity. {71b} It is very easy for modern historians and biographers to speak with genial applause of the prophet's manly bluffness. But if we put ourselves in the position of opponents whom he was trying to convert, of the two Marys for example, we cannot but perceive that his method was hopelessly mistaken. In attempting to evangelise an Euahlayi black fellow, we should not begin by threats of damnation, and by railing accusations against his god, Baiame.



CHAPTER VIII: KNOX'S WRITINGS FROM ABROAD: BEGINNING OF THE SCOTTISH REVOLUTION, 1556-1558

Knox was about this time summoned to be one of the preachers to the English at Geneva. He sent in advance Mrs. Bowes and his wife, visited Argyll and Glenorchy (now Breadalbane), wrote (July 7) an epistle bidding the brethren be diligent in reading and discussing the Bible, and went abroad. His effigy was presently burned by the clergy, as he had not appeared in answer to a second summons, and he was outlawed in absence.

It is not apparent that Knox took any part in the English translation of the Bible, then being executed at Geneva. Greek and Hebrew were not his forte, though he had now some knowledge of both tongues, but he preached to the men who did the work. The perfections of Genevan Church discipline delighted him. "Manners and religion so sincerely reformed I have not yet seen in any other place." The genius of Calvin had made Geneva a kind of Protestant city state [Greek text]; a Calvinistic Utopia—everywhere the vigilant eyes of the preachers and magistrates were upon every detail of daily life. Monthly and weekly the magistrates and ministers met to point out each other's little failings. Knox felt as if he were indeed in the City of God, and later he introduced into Scotland, and vehemently abjured England to adopt, the Genevan "discipline." England would none of it, and would not, even in the days of the Solemn League and Covenant, suffer the excommunication by preachers to pass without lay control.

It is unfortunate that the ecclesiastical polity and discipline of a small city state, like a Greek [Greek word polis], feasible in such a community as Geneva at a moment of spiritual excitement, was brought by Knox and his brethren into a nation like Scotland. The results were a hundred and twenty-nine years of unrest, civil war, and persecution.

Though happy in the affection of his wife and Mrs. Bowes, Knox, at this time, needed more of feminine society. On November 19, 1556, he wrote to his friend, Mrs. Locke, wife of a Cheapside merchant: "You write that your desire is earnest to see me. Dear sister, if I should express the thirst and languor which I have had for your presence, I should appear to pass measure. . . . Your presence is so dear to me that if the charge of this little flock . . . did not impede me, my presence should anticipate my letter." Thus Knox was ready to brave the fires of Smithfield, or, perhaps, forgot them for the moment in his affection for Mrs. Locke. He writes to no other woman in this fervid strain. On May 8, 1557, Mrs. Locke with her son and daughter (who died after her journey), joined Knox at Geneva. {73}

He was soon to be involved in Scottish affairs. After his departure from his country, omens and prodigies had ensued. A comet appeared in November-December 1556. Next year some corn-stacks were destroyed by lightning. Worse, a calf with two heads was born, and was exhibited as a warning to Mary of Guise by Robert Ormistoun. The idolatress merely sneered, and said "it was but a common thing." Such a woman was incorrigible. Mary of Guise is always blamed for endangering Scotland in the interests of her family, the Guises of the House of Lorraine. In fact, so far as she tried to make Scotland a province of France, she was serving the ambition of Henri II. It could not be foreseen, in 1555, that Henri II. would be slain in 1559, leaving the two kingdoms in the hands of Francis II. and Mary Stuart, who were so young, that they would inevitably be ruled by the Queen's uncles of the House of Lorraine. Shortly before Knox arrived in Scotland in 1555, the Duc de Guise had advised the Regent to "use sweetness and moderation," as better than "extremity and rigour"; advice which she acted on gladly.

Unluckily the war between France and Spain, in 1557, brought English troops into collision with French forces in the Low Countries (Philip II. being king of England); this led to complications between Scotland, as ally of France, and the English on the Borders. Border raids began; d'Oysel fortified Eyemouth, as a counterpoise to Berwick, war was declared in November, and the discontented Scots, such as Chatelherault, Huntly, Cassilis, and Argyll, mutinied and refused to cross Tweed. {74} Thus arose a breach between the Regent and some of her nobles, who at last, in 1559, rebelled against her on the ground of religion. While the weak war languished on, in 1557-58, "the Evangel of Jesus Christ began wondrously to flourish," says Knox. Other evangelists of his pattern, Harlaw, Douglas, Willock, and a baker, Methuen (later a victim of the intolerably cruel "discipline" of the Kirk Triumphant), preached at Dundee, and Methuen started a reformed Kirk (though not without being declared rebels at the horn). When these persons preached, their hearers were apt to raise riots, wreck churches, and destroy works of sacred art. No Government could for ever wink at such lawless actions, and it was because the pulpiteers, Methuen, Willock, Douglas, and the rest, were again "put at," after being often suffered to go free, that the final crash came, and the Reformation began in the wrack and ruin of monasteries and churches.

There was drawing on another thunder-cloud. The policy of Mary of Guise certainly tended to make Scotland a mere province of France, a province infested by French forces, slender, but ill-paid and predacious. Before marrying the Dauphin, in April 1558, Mary Stuart, urged it is said by the Guises, signed away the independence of her country, to which her husband, by these deeds, was to succeed if she died without issue. Young as she was, Mary was perfectly able to understand the infamy of the transaction, and probably was not so careless as to sign the deeds unread.

Even before this secret treaty was drafted, on March 10, 1557, Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and the Prior of St. Andrews—best known to us in after years as James Stewart, Earl of Moray—informed Knox that no "cruelty" by way of persecution was being practised; that his presence was desired, and that they were ready to jeopard their lives and goods for the cause. The rest would be told to Knox by the bearer of the letter. Knox received the letter in May 1557, with verbal reports by the bearers, but was so far from hasty that he did not leave Geneva till the end of September, and did not reach Dieppe on his way to Scotland till October 24. Three days later he wrote to the nobles who had summoned him seven months earlier. He had received, he said, at Dieppe two private letters of a discouraging sort; one correspondent said that the enterprise was to be reconsidered, the other that the boldness and constancy required "for such an enterprise" were lacking among the nobles. Meanwhile Knox had spent his time, or some of it, in asking the most godly and the most learned of Europe, including Calvin, for opinions of such an adventure, for the assurance of his own conscience and the consciences of the Lord James, Erskine, Lorne, and the rest. {76a} This indicates that Knox himself was not quite sure of the lawfulness of an armed rising, and perhaps explains his long delay. Knox assures us that Calvin and other godly ministers insisted on his going to Scotland. But it is quite certain that of an armed rising Calvin absolutely disapproved. On April 16, 1561, writing to Coligny, Calvin says that he was consulted several months before the tumult of Amboise (March 1560) and absolutely discouraged the appeal to arms. "Better that we all perish a hundred times than that the name of Christianity and the Gospel should come under such disgrace." {76b} If Calvin bade Knox go to Scotland, he must have supposed that no rebellion was intended. Knox tells his correspondents that they have betrayed themselves and their posterity ("in conscience I can except none that bear the name of nobility"), they have made him and their own enterprise ridiculous, and they have put him to great trouble. What is he to say when he returns to Geneva, and is asked why he did not carry out his purpose? He then encourages them to be resolute.

Knox "certainly made the most," says Professor Hume Brown, "of the two letters from correspondents unknown to us." He at once represented them as the cause of his failure to keep tryst; but, in April 1558, writing from Geneva to "the sisters," he said, "the cause of my stop to this day I do not clearly understand." He did not know why he left England before the Marian persecutions; and he did not know why he had not crossed over to Scotland in 1557. "It may be that God justly permitted Sathan to put in my mind such cogitations as these: I heard such troubles as appeared in that realm;"—troubles presently to be described.

Hearing, at Dieppe, then, in October 1557, of the troubles, and of the faint war with England, and moved, perhaps, he suggests, by Satan, {77a} Knox "began to dispute with himself, as followeth, 'Shall Christ, the author of peace, concord, and quietness, be preached where war is proclaimed, and tumults appear to rise? What comfort canst thou have to see the one part of the people rise up against the other,'" and so forth. These truly Christian reflections, as we may think them, "yet do trouble and move my wicked heart," says Knox. He adds, hypothetically, that perhaps the letters received at Dieppe "did somewhat discourage me." {77b} He was only certain that the devil was at the bottom of the whole affair.

The "tumults that appear to arise" are probably the dissensions between the Regent and the mutinous nobles who refused to invade England at her command. D'Oysel needed a bodyguard; and he feared that the Lords would seize and carry off the Regent. Arran, in 1564, speaks of a plot to capture her in Holyrood. Here were promises of tumults. There were also signs of a renewed feud between the house of Hamilton and the Stewart Earl of Lennox, the rival claimant of the crown. There seems, moreover, to have been some tumultuary image-breaking. {78}

Knox may have been merely timid: he is not certain, but his delay passed in consulting the learned, for the satisfaction of his conscience, and his confessed doubts as to whether Christianity should be pushed by civil war, seem to indicate that he was not always the prophet patron of modern Jehus, that he did, occasionally, consult the Gospel as well as the records of pre-Christian Israel.

The general result was that, from October 1557 to March 1558, Knox stayed in Dieppe, preaching with great success, raising up a Protestant church, and writing.

His condition of mind was unenviable. He had been brought all the way across France, leaving his wife and family; he had, it seems, been met by no letters from his noble friends, who may well have ceased to expect him, so long was his delay. He was not at ease in his conscience, for, to be plain, he was not sure that he was not afraid to risk himself in Scotland, and he was not certain that his new scruples about the justifiableness of a rising for religion were not the excuses suggested by his own timidity. Perhaps they were just that, not whisperings either of conscience or of Satan. Yet in this condition Knox was extremely active. On December 1 and 17 he wrote, from Dieppe, a "Letter to His Brethren in Scotland," and another to "The Lords and Others Professing the Truth in Scotland." In the former he censures, as well he might, "the dissolute life of (some) such as have professed Christ's holy Evangel." That is no argument, he says, against Protestantism. Many Turks are virtuous; many orthodox Hebrews, Saints, and Patriarchs occasionally slipped; the Corinthians, though of a "trew Kirk," were notoriously profligate. Meanwhile union and virtue are especially desirable; for Satan "fiercely stirreth his terrible tail." We do not know what back-slidings of the brethren prompted this letter.

The Lords, in the other letter, are reminded that they had resolved to hazard life, rank, and fortune for the delivery of the brethren: the first step must be to achieve a godly frame of mind. Knox hears rumours "that contradiction and rebellion is made by some to the Authority" in Scotland. He advises "that none do suddenly disobey or displease the established authority in things lawful," nor rebel from private motives. By "things lawful" does he mean the command of the Regent to invade England, which the nobles refused to do? They may "lawfully attempt the extremity," if Authority will not cease to persecute, and permit Protestant preaching and administration of the Sacraments (which usually ended in riot and church-wrecking). Above all, they are not to back the Hamiltons, whose chief, Chatelherault, had been a professor, had fallen back, and become a persecutor. "Flee all confederacy with that generation," the Hamiltons; with whom, after all, Knox was presently to be allied, though by no means fully believing in the "unfeigned and speedy repentance" of their chief. {80a}

All the movements of that time are not very clear. Apparently Lorne, Lord James, and the rest, in their letter of March 10, 1557, intended an armed rising: they were "ready to jeopardise lives and goods" for "the glory of God." If no more than an appeal to "the Authority" for tolerance was meant, why did Knox consult the learned so long, on the question of conscience? Yet, in December 1557, he bids his allies first of all seek the favour of "the Authority," for bare toleration of Protestantism.

From the scheme of March 10, of which the details, unknown to us, were orally delivered by bearer, he appears to have expected civil war.

Again, just when Knox was writing to Scotland in December 1557, his allies there, he says, made "a common Band," a confederacy and covenant such as the Scots usually drew up before a murder, as of Riccio or Darnley, or for slaying Argyll and "the bonny Earl o' Murray," under James VI. These Bands were illegal. A Band, says Knox, was now signed by Argyll, Lorne, Glencairn, Morton, and Erskine of Dun, and many others unknown, on December 3, 1557. It is alleged that "Satan cruelly doth rage." Now, how was Satan raging in December 1557? Myln, the last martyr, was not pursued till April 1558, by Knox's account.

The first godly Band being of December 1557, {80b} and drawn up, perhaps, on the impulse of Knox's severe letter from Dieppe of October 27, in that year; just after they signed the Band, what were the demands of the Banders? They asked, apparently, that the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. should be read in all parish churches, with the Lessons: if the curates are able to read: if not, then by any qualified parishioner. Secondly, preaching must be permitted in private houses, "without great conventions of the people." {81a} Whether the Catholic service was to be concurrently permitted does not appear; it is not very probable, for that service is idolatrous, and the Band itself denounces the Church as "the Congregation of Satan." Dr. M'Crie thinks that the Banders, or Congregation of God, did not ask for the universal adoption of the English Prayer Book, but only requested that they themselves might bring it in "in places to which their authority and influence extended." They took that liberty, certainly, without waiting for leave, but their demand appears to apply to all parish churches. War, in fact, was denounced against Satan's Congregation; {81b} if it troubles the Lords' Congregation, there could therefore be little idea of tolerating their nefarious creed and ritual.

Probably Knox, at Dieppe in 1557 and early in 1558, did not know about the promising Band made in Scotland. He was composing his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women." In England and in Scotland were a Catholic Queen, a Catholic Queen Mother, and the Queen of Scotland was marrying the idolatrous Dauphin. It is not worth while to study Knox's general denunciation of government by ladies: he allowed that (as Calvin suggested) miraculous exceptions to their inability might occur, as in the case of Deborah. As a rule, a Queen was an "idol," and that was enough. England deserved an idol, and an idolatrous idol, for Englishmen rejected Kirk discipline; "no man would have his life called in trial" by presbyter or preacher. A Queen regnant has, ex officio, committed treason against God: the Realm and Estates may have conspired with her, but her rule is unlawful. Naturally this skirl on the trumpet made Knox odious to Elizabeth, for to impeach her succession might cause a renewal of the wars of the Roses. Nothing less could have happened, if a large portion of the English people had believed in the Prophet of God, John Knox. He could predict vengeance on Mary Tudor, but could not see that, as Elizabeth would succeed, his Blast would bring inconvenience to his cause; or, seeing it, he stood to his guns.

He presently reprinted and added to his letter to Mary of Guise, arguing that civil magistrates have authority in religion, but, of course, he must mean only as far as they carry out his ideas, which are the truth. In an "Appellation" against the condemnation of himself, in absence, by the Scottish clergy, he labours the same idea. Moreover, "no idolater can be exempted from punishment by God's law." Now the Queen of Scotland happened to be an idolater, and every true believer, as a private individual, has a right to punish idolaters. That right and duty are not limited to the King, or to "the chief Nobility and Estates," whom Knox addresses. "I would your Honours should note for the first, that no idolater can be exempted from punishment by God's Law. The second is, that the punishment of such crimes as are idolatry, blasphemy, and others, that touch the Majesty of God, doth not appertain to kings and chief rulers only" (as he had argued that they do, in 1554), "but also to the whole body of that people, and to every member of the same, according to the vocation of every man, and according to that possibility and occasion which God doth minister to revenge the injury done against His glory, what time that impiety is manifestly known. . . . Who dare be so impudent as to deny this to be most reasonable and just?" {83}

Knox's method of argument for his doctrine is to take, among other texts, Deuteronomy xiii. 12-18, and apply the sanguinary precepts of Hebrew fanatics to the then existing state of affairs in the Church Christian. Thus, in Deuteronomy, cities which serve "other gods," or welcome missionaries of other religions, are to be burned, and every living thing in them is to be destroyed. "To the carnal man, . . . " says Knox, "this may rather seem to be pronounced in a rage than in wisdom." God wills, however, that "all creatures stoop, cover their faces, and desist from reasoning, when commandment is given to execute his judgement." Knox, then, desists from reasoning so far as to preach that every Protestant, with a call that way, has a right to punish any Catholic, if he gets a good opportunity. This doctrine he publishes to his own countrymen. Thus any fanatic who believed in the prophet Knox, and was conscious of a "vocation," might, and should, avenge God's wrongs on Mary of Guise or Mary Stuart, "he had a fair opportunity, for both ladies were idolaters. This is a plain inference from the passage just cited.

Appealing to the Commonalty of Scotland, Knox next asked that he might come and justify his doctrine, and prove Popery "abominable before God." Now, could any Government admit a man who published the tidings that any member of a State might avenge God on an idolater, the Queen being, according to him, an idolater? This doctrine of the right of the Protestant individual is merely monstrous. Knox has wandered far from his counsel of "passive resistance" in his letter to his Berwick congregation; he has even passed beyond his "Admonition," which merely prayed for a Phinehas or Jehu: he has now proclaimed the right and duty of the private Protestant assassin. The "Appellation" containing these ideas was published at Geneva in 1558, with the author's, but without the printer's name on the title-page.

"The First Blast" had neither the author's nor printer's name, nor the name of the place of publication. Calvin soon found that it had given grave offence to Queen Elizabeth. He therefore wrote to Cecil that, though the work came from a press in his town, he had not been aware of its existence till a year after its publication. He now took no public steps against the book, not wishing to draw attention to its origin in Geneva, lest, "by reason of the reckless arrogance of one man" ('the ravings of others'), "the miserable crowd of exiles should have been driven away, not only from this city, but even from almost the whole world." {84} As far as I am aware, no one approached Calvin with remonstrance about the monstrosities of the "Appellation," nor are the passages which I have cited alluded to by more than one biographer of Knox, to my knowledge. Professor Hume Brown, however, justly remarks that what the Kirk, immediately after Knox's death, called "Erastianism" (in ordinary parlance the doctrine that the Civil power may interfere in religion) could hardly "be approved in more set terms" than by Knox. He avers that "the ordering and reformation of religion . . . doth especially appertain to the Civil Magistrate . . . " "The King taketh upon him to command the Priests." {85} The opposite doctrine, that it appertains to the Church, is an invention of Satan. To that diabolical invention, Andrew Melville and the Kirk returned in the generation following, while James VI. held to Knox's theory, as stated in the "Appellation."

The truth is that Knox contemplates a State in which the civil power shall be entirely and absolutely of his own opinions; the King, as "Christ's silly vassal," to quote Andrew Melville, being obedient to such prophets as himself. The theories of Knox regarding the duty to revenge God's feud by the private citizen, and regarding religious massacre by the civil power, ideas which would justify the Bartholomew horrors, appear to be forgotten in modern times. His address to the Commonalty, as citizens with a voice in the State, represents the progressive and permanent element in his politics. We have shown, however, that, before Knox's time, the individual Scot was a thoroughly independent character. "The man hath more words than the master, and will not be content unless he knows the master's counsel."

By March 1558, Knox had returned from Dieppe to Geneva. In Scotland, since the godly Band of December 1557, events were moving in two directions. The Church was continuing in a belated and futile attempt at reformation of manners (and wonderfully bad manners they confessedly were), and of education from within. The Congregation, the Protestants, on the other hand, were preparing openly to defend themselves and their adherents from persecution, an honest, manly, and laudable endeavour, so long as they did not persecute other Christians. Their preachers—such as Harlaw, Methuen, and Douglas—were publicly active. A moment of attempted suppression must arrive, greatly against the personal wishes of Archbishop Hamilton, who dreaded the conflict.

In March 1558, Hamilton courteously remonstrated with Argyll for harbouring Douglas. He himself was "heavily murmured against" for his slackness in the case of Argyll, by churchmen and other "well given people," and by Mary of Guise, whose daughter, by April 24, 1558, was married to the Dauphin of France. Argyll replied that he knew how the Archbishop was urged on, but declined to abandon Douglas.

"It is a far cry to Loch Awe"; Argyll, who died soon after, was too powerful to be attacked. But, sometime in April 1558 apparently, a poor priest of Forfarshire, Walter Myln, who had married and got into trouble under Cardinal Beaton, was tried for heresy, and, without sentence of a secular judge, it is said, was burned at St. Andrews, displaying serene courage, and hoping to be the last martyr in Scotland. Naturally there was much indignation; if the Lords and others were to keep their Band they must bestir themselves. They did bestir themselves in defence of their favourite preachers—Willock, Harlaw, Methuen; a ci-devant friar, Christison; and Douglas. Some of these men were summoned several times throughout 1558, and Methuen and Harlaw, at least, were "at the horn" (outlawed), but were protected—Harlaw at Dumfries, Methuen at Dundee—by powerful laymen. At Dundee, as we saw, by 1558, Methuen had erected a church of reformed aspect; and "reformed" means that the Kirk had already been purged of altars and images. Attempts to bring the ringleaders of Protestant riots to law were made in 1558, but the precise order of events, and of the protests of the Reformers, appears to be dislocated in Knox's narrative. He himself was not present, and he seems never to have mastered the sequence of occurrences. Fortunately there exists a fragment by a well-informed writer, apparently a contemporary, the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland" covering the events from July 1558 to 1560. {87a} There are also imperfect records of the Parliament of November-December 1558, and of the last Provincial Council of the Church, in March 1559.

For July 28 {87b} four or five of the brethren were summoned to "a day of law," in Edinburgh; their allies assembled to back them, and they were released on bail to appear, if called on, within eight days. At this time the "idol" of St. Giles, patron of the city, was stolen, and a great riot occurred at the saint's fete, September 3. {87c}

Knox describes the discomfiture of his foes in one of his merriest passages, frequently cited by admirers of "his vein of humour." The event, we know, was at once reported to him in Geneva, by letter.

Some time after October, if we rightly construe Knox, {88a} a petition was delivered to the Regent, from the Reformers, by Sandilands of Calder. {88b} They asserted that they should have defended the preachers, or testified with them. The wisdom of the Regent herself sees the need of reform, spiritual and temporal, and has exhorted the clergy and nobles to employ care and diligence thereon, a fact corroborated by Mary of Guise herself, in a paper, soon to be quoted, of July 1559. {88c} They ask, as they have the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, for common prayers in the same. They wish for freedom to interpret and discuss the Bible "in our conventions," and that Baptism and the Communion may be done in Scots, and they demand the reform of the detestable lives of the prelates. {88d}

Knox's account, in places, appears really to refer to the period of the Provincial Council of March 1559, though it does not quite fit that date either.

The Regent is said on the occasion of Calder's petition, and after the unsatisfactory replies of the clergy (apparently at the Provincial Council, March 1559), to have made certain concessions, till Parliament established uniform order. But the Parliament was of November-December 1558. {89a} Before that Parliament, at all events (which was mainly concerned with procuring the "Crown Matrimonial" for the Dauphin, husband of Mary Stuart), the brethren offered a petition, in the first place shown to the Regent, asking for (1) the suspension of persecuting laws till after a General Council has "decided all controversies in religion"—that is, till the Greek Calends. (2) That prelates shall not be judges in cases of heresy, but only accusers before secular tribunals. (3) That all lawful defences be granted to persons accused. (4) That the accused be permitted to explain "his own mind and meaning." (5) That "none be condemned for heretics unless by the manifest Word of God they be convicted to have erred from the faith which the Holy Spirit witnesses to be necessary to salvation." According to Knox this petition the Regent put in her pocket, saying that the Churchmen would oppose it, and thwart her plan for getting the "Crown Matrimonial" given to her son-in- law, Francis II., and, in short, gave good words, and drove time. {89b}

The Reformers then drew up a long Protestation, which was read in the House, but not enrolled in its records. They say that they have had to postpone a formal demand for Reformation, but protest that "it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God," and they are ready to prove their case. They shall not be liable, meanwhile, to any penalties for breach of the existing Acts against heresy, "nor for violating such rites as man, without God's commandment or word, hath commanded." They disclaim all responsibility for the ensuing tumults. {90a} In fact, they aver that they will not only worship in their own way, but prevent other people from worshipping in the legal way, and that the responsibility for the riots will lie on the side of those who worship legally. And this was the chief occasion of the ensuing troubles. The Regent promised to "put good order" in controverted matters, and was praised by the brethren in a letter to Calvin, not now to be found.

Another threat had been made by the brethren, in circumstances not very obscure. As far as they are known they suggest that in January 1559 the zealots deliberately intended to provoke a conflict, and to enlist "the rascal multitude" on their side, at Easter, 1559. The obscurity is caused by a bookbinder. He has, with the fatal ingenuity of his trade, cut off the two top lines from a page in one manuscript copy of Knox's "History." {90b} The text now runs thus (in its mutilated condition): " . . . Zealous Brether . . . upon the gates and posts of all the Friars' places within this realm, in the month of January 1558 (1559), preceding that Whitsunday that they dislodged, which is this . . . "

Then follows the Proclamation.

Probably we may supply the words: ". . . Zealous Brethren caused a paper to be affixed upon the gates and posts," and so on. The paper so promulgated purported to be a warning from the poor of Scotland that, before Whitsunday, "we, the lawful proprietors," will eject the Friars and residents on the property, unlawfully withheld by the religious—"our patrimony." This feat will be performed, "with the help of God, and assistance of his Saints on earth, of whose ready support we doubt not."

As the Saints, in fact, were the "Zealous Brether . . ." who affixed the written menace on "all the Friars' places," they knew what they were talking about, and could prophesy safely. To make so many copies of the document, and fix them on "all the Friars' places," implies organisation, and a deliberate plan—riots and revolution—before Whitsunday. The poor, of course, only exchanged better for worse landlords, as they soon discovered. The "Zealous Brethren"—as a rule small lairds, probably, and burgesses—were the nucleus of the Revolution. When townsfolk and yeomen in sufficient number had joined them in arms, then nobles like Argyll, Lord James, Glencairn, Ruthven, and the rest, put themselves at the head of the movement, and won the prizes which had been offered to the "blind, crooked, widows, orphans, and all other poor."

After Parliament was over, at the end of December 1558, the Archbishop of St. Andrews again summoned the preachers, Willock, Douglas, Harlaw, Methuen, and Friar John Christison to a "day of law" at St. Andrews, on February 2, 1559. (This is the statement of the "Historie.") {91} The brethren then "caused inform the Queen Mother that the said preachers would appear with such multitude of men professing their doctrine, as was never seen before in such like cases in this country," and kept their promise. The system of overawing justice by such gatherings was usual, as we have already seen; Knox, Bothwell, Lethington, and the Lord James Stewart all profited by the practice on various occasions.

Mary of Guise, "fearing some uproar or sedition," bade the bishops put off the summons, and, in fact, the preachers never were summoned, finally, for any offences prior to this date.

On February 9, 1559, the Regent issued proclamations against eating flesh in Lent (this rule survived the Reformation by at least seventy years) and against such disturbances of religious services as the Protest just described declared to be imminent, all such deeds being denounced under "pain of death"—as pain of death was used to be threatened against poachers of deer and wild fowl. {92a}

Mary, however, had promised, as we saw, that she would summon the nobles and Estates, "to advise for some reformation in religion" (March 7, 1559), and the Archbishop called a Provincial Council to Edinburgh for March. At this, or some other juncture, for Knox's narrative is bewildering, {92b} the clergy offered free discussion, but refused to allow exiles like himself to be present, and insisted on the acceptance of the Mass, Purgatory, the invocation of saints, with security for their ecclesiastical possessions. In return they would grant prayers and baptism in English, if done privately and not in open assembly. The terms, he says, were rejected; appeal was made to Mary of Guise, and she gave toleration, except for public assemblies in Edinburgh and Leith, pending the meeting of Parliament. To the clergy, who, "some say," bribed her, she promised to "put order" to these matters. The Reformers were deceived, and forbade Douglas to preach in Leith. So writes Knox.

Now the "Historie" dates all this, bribe and all, after the end of December 1558. Knox, however, by some confusion, places the facts, bribe and all, before April 28, 1558, Myln's martyrdom! {93a} Yet he had before him as he wrote the Chronicle of Bruce of Earlshall, who states the bribe, Knox says, at 40,000 pounds; the "Historie" says "within 15,000 pounds." {93b}

In any case Knox, who never saw his book in print, has clearly dislocated the sequence of events. At this date, namely March 1559, the preaching agitators were at liberty, nor were they again put at for any of their previous proceedings. But defiances had been exchanged. The Reformers in their Protestation (December 1558) had claimed it as lawful, we know, that they should enjoy their own services, and put down those of the religion by law established, until such time as the Catholic clergy "be able to prove themselves the true ministers of Christ's Church" and guiltless of all the crimes charged against them by their adversaries. {93c} That was the challenge of the Reformers, backed by the menace affixed to the doors of all the monasteries. The Regent in turn had thrown down her glove by the proclamation of February 9, 1559, against disturbing services and "bosting" (bullying) priests. How could she possibly do less in the circumstances? If her proclamation was disobeyed, could she do less than summon the disobedient to trial? Her hand was forced.

It appears to myself, under correction, that all this part of the history of the Reformation has been misunderstood by our older historians. Almost without exception, they represent the Regent as dissembling with the Reformers till, on conclusion of the peace of Cateau Cambresis (which left France free to aid her efforts in Scotland), April 2, 1559, and on the receipt of a message from the Guises, "she threw off the mask," and initiated an organised persecution. But there is no evidence that any such message commanding her to persecute at this time came from the Guises before the Regent had issued her proclamations of February 9 and March 23, {94a} denouncing attacks on priests, disturbance of services, administering of sacraments by lay preachers, and tumults at large. Now, Sir James Melville of Halhill, the diplomatist, writing in old age, and often erroneously, makes the Cardinal of Lorraine send de Bettencourt, or Bethencourt, to the Regent with news of the peace of Cateau Cambresis and an order to punish heretics with fire and sword, and says that, though she was reluctant, she consequently published her proclamation of March 23. Dates prove part of this to be impossible. {94b}

Obviously the Regent had issued her proclamations of February-March 1559 in anticipation of the tumults threatened by the Reformers in their "Beggar's Warning" and in their Protestation of December, and arranged to occur with violence at Easter, as they did. The three or four preachers (two of them apparently "at the horn" in 1558) were to preach publicly, and riots were certain to ensue, as the Reformers had threatened. Riots were part of the evangelical programme. Of Paul Methuen, who first "reformed" the Church in Dundee, Pitscottie writes that he "ministered the sacraments of the communion at Dundee and Cupar, and caused the images thereof to be cast down, and abolished the Pope's religion so far as he passed or preached." For this sort of action he was now summoned. {95a}

The Regent, therefore, warned in her proclamations men, often challenged previously, and as often allowed, under fear of armed resistance, to escape. All that followed was but a repetition of the feeble policy of outlawing these four or five men. Finally, in May 1559, these preachers had a strong armed backing, and seized a central strategic point, so the Revolution blazed out on a question which had long been smouldering and on an occasion that had been again and again deferred. The Regent, far from having foreseen and hardened her heart to carry out an organised persecution and "cut the throats" of all Protestants in Scotland, was, in fact, intending to go to France, being in the earlier stages of her fatal malady. This appears from a letter of Sir Henry Percy, from Norham Castle, to Cecil and Parry (April 12, 1559) {95b} Percy says that the news in his latest letters (now lost) was erroneous. The Regent, in fact, "is not as yet departed." She is very ill, and her life is despaired of. She is at Stirling, where the nobles had assembled to discuss religious matters. Only her French advisers were on the side of the Regent. "The matter is pacified for the time," and in case of the Regent's death, Chatelherault, d'Oysel, and de Rubay are to be a provisional committee of Government, till the wishes of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary, are known. Again, in her letter of May 16 to Henri II. of France, she stated that she was in very bad health, {96a} and, at about the same date (May 18), the English ambassador in France mentions her intention to visit that country at once. {96b} But the Revolution of May 11, breaking out in Perth, condemned her to suffer and die in Scotland.

This, however, does not amount to proof that no plan of persecution in Scotland was intended. Throckmorton writes, on May 18, that the Marquis d'Elboeuf is to go thither. "He takes with him both men of conduct and some of war; it is thought his stay will not be long." Again (May 23, 24), Throckmorton reports that Henri II. means to persecute extremely in Poitou, Guienne, and Scotland. "Cecil may take occasion to use the matter in Scotland as may seem best to serve the turn." {96c} This was before the Perth riot had been reported (May 26) by Cecil to Throckmorton. Was d'Elboeuf intended to direct the persecution? The theory has its attractions, but Henri, just emerged with maimed forces from a ruinous war, knew that a persecution which served Cecil's "turn" did not serve his. To persecute in Scotland would mean renewed war with England, and could not be contemplated. If Sir James Melville can be trusted for once, the Constable, about June 1, told him, in the presence of the French King, that if the Perth revolt were only about religion, "we mon commit Scottismen's saules unto God." {97} Melville was then despatched with promise of aid to the Regent—if the rising was political, not religious.

It is quite certain that the Regent issued her proclamations without any commands from France; and her health was inconsistent with an intention to put Protestants to fire and sword.

In the records of the Provincial Council of March 1559, the foremost place is given to "Articles" presented to the Regent by "some temporal Lords and Barons," and by her handed to the clergy. They are the proposals of conservative reformers. They ask for moral reformation of the lives of the clergy: for sermons on Sundays and holy days: for due examination of the doctrine, life, and learning of all who are permitted to preach. They demand that no vicar or curate shall be appointed unless he can read the catechism (of 1552) plainly and distinctly: that expositions of the sacraments should be clearly pronounced in the vernacular: that common prayer should be read in the vernacular: that certain exactions of gifts and dues should be abolished. Again, no one should be allowed to dishonour the sacraments, or the service of the Mass: no unqualified person should administer the sacraments: Kirk rapine, destruction of religious buildings and works of art, should not be permitted.

The Council passed thirty-four statutes on these points. The clergy were to live cleanly, and not to keep their bastards at home. They were implored, "in the bowels of Christ" to do their duty in the services of the Church. No one in future was to be admitted to a living without examination by the Ordinary. Ruined churches were to be rebuilt or repaired. Breakers of ornaments and violators or burners of churches were to be pursued. There was to be preaching as often as the Ordinary thought fit: if the Rector could not preach he must find a substitute who could. Plain expositions of the sacraments were made out, were to be read aloud to the congregations, and were published at twopence ("The Twopenny Faith"). Administration of the Eucharist except by priests was to be punished by excommunication. {98a} Knox himself desired death for others than true ministers who celebrated the sacrament. {98b} His "true ministers," about half-a-dozen of them at this time, of course came under the penalty of the last statute.

He says, with the usual error, that after peace was made between France and England, on April 2, 1559 (the treaty of Cateau Cambresis), the Regent "began to spew forth and disclose the latent venom of her double heart." She looked "frowardly" on Protestants, "commanded her household to use all abominations at Easter," she herself communicated, "and it is supposed that after that day the devil took more violent and strong possession in her than he had before . . . For incontinent she caused our preachers to be summoned."

But why did she summon the same set of preachers as before, for no old offence? The Regent, says the "Historie," made proclamation, during the Council (as the moderate Reformers had asked her to do), "that no manner of person should . . . preach or minister the sacraments, except they were admitted by the Ordinary or a Bishop on no less pain than death." The Council, in fact, made excommunication the penalty. Now it was for ministering the sacrament after the proclamation of March 13, for preaching heresy, and stirring up "seditions and tumults," that Methuen, Brother John Christison, William Harlaw, and John Willock were summoned to appear at Stirling on May 10, 1559. {99a}

How could any governor of Scotland abstain from summoning them in the circumstances? There seems to be no new suggestion of the devil, no outbreak of Guisian fury. The Regent was in a situation whence there was no "outgait": she must submit to the seditions and tumults threatened in the Protestation of the brethren, the disturbances of services, the probable wrecking of churches, or she must use the powers legally entrusted to her. She gave insolent answers to remonstrances from the brethren, says Knox. She would banish the preachers (not execute them), "albeit they preached as truly as ever did St. Paul." Being threatened, as before, with the consequent "inconvenients," she said "she would advise." However, summon the preachers she did, for breach of her proclamations, "tumults and seditions." {99b}

Knox himself was present at the Revolution which ensued, but we must now return to his own doings in the autumn and winter of 1558-59. {100}



CHAPTER IX: KNOX ON THE ANABAPTISTS: HIS APPEAL TO ENGLAND: 1558-1559

While the inevitable Revolution was impending in Scotland, Knox was living at Geneva. He may have been engaged on his "Answer" to the "blasphemous cavillations" of an Anabaptist, his treatise on Predestination. Laing thought that this work was "chiefly written" at Dieppe, in February-April 1559, but as it contains more than 450 pages it is probably a work of longer time than two months. In November 1559 the English at Geneva asked leave to print the book, which was granted, provided that the name of Geneva did not appear as the place of printing; the authorities knowing of what Knox was capable from the specimen given in his "First Blast." There seem to be several examples of the Genevan edition, published by Crispin in 1560; the next edition, less rare, is of 1591 (London). {101}

The Anabaptist whom Knox is discussing had been personally known to him, and had lucid intervals. "Your chief Apollos," he had said, addressing the Calvinists, "be persecutors, on whom the blood of Servetus crieth a vengeance. . . . They have set forth books affirming it to be lawful to persecute and put to death such as dissent from them in controversies of religion. . . . Notwithstanding they, before they came to authority, were of another judgment, and did both say and write that no man ought to be persecuted for his conscience' sake. . . ." {102a} Knox replied that Servetus was a blasphemer, and that Moses had been a more wholesale persecutor than the Edwardian burners of Joan of Kent, and the Genevan Church which roasted Servetus {102b} (October 1553). He incidentally proves that he was better than his doctrine. In England an Anabaptist, after asking for secrecy, showed him a manuscript of his own full of blasphemies. "In me I confess there was great negligence, that neither did retain his book nor present him to the magistrate" to burn. Knox could not have done that, for the author "earnestly required of me closeness and fidelity," which, probably, Knox promised. Indeed, one fancies that his opinions and character would have been in conflict if a chance of handing an idolater over to death had been offered to him. {102c}

The death of Mary Tudor on November 17, 1558, does not appear to have been anticipated by him. The tidings reached him before January 12, 1559, when he wrote from Geneva a singular "Brief Exhortation to England for the Spedie Embrasing of Christ's Gospel heretofore by the Tyrannie of Marie Suppressed and Banished."

The gospel to be embraced by England is, of course, not nearly so much Christ's as John Knox's, in its most acute form and with its most absolute, intolerant, and intolerable pretensions. He begins by vehemently rebuking England for her "shameful defection" and by threatening God's "horrible vengeances which thy monstrous unthankfulness hath long deserved," if the country does not become much more puritan than it had ever been, or is ever likely to be. Knox "wraps you all in idolatry, all in murder, all in one and the same iniquity," except the actual Marian martyrs; those who "abstained from idolatry;" and those who "avoided the realm" or ran away. He had set one of the earliest examples of running away: to do so was easier for him than for family men and others who had "a stake in the country," for which Knox had no relish. He is hardly generous in blaming all the persons who felt no more "ripe" for martyrdom than he did, yet stayed in England, where the majority were, and continued to be, Catholics.

Having asserted his very contestable superiority and uttered pages of biblical threatenings, Knox says that the repentance of England "requireth two things," first, the expulsion of "all dregs of Popery" and the treading under foot of all "glistering beauty of vain ceremonies." Religious services must be reduced, in short, to his own bare standard. Next, the Genevan and Knoxian "kirk discipline" must be introduced. No "power or liberty (must) be permitted to any, of what estate, degree, or authority they be, either to live without the yoke of discipline by God's word commanded," or "to alter . . . one jot in religion which from God's mouth thou hast received. . . . If prince, king, or emperor would enterprise to change or disannul the same, that he be of thee reputed enemy to God," while a prince who erects idolatry . . . "must be adjudged to death."

Each bishopric is to be divided into ten. The Founder of the Church and the Apostles "all command us to preach, to preach." A brief sketch of what The Book of Discipline later set forth for the edification of Scotland is recommended to England, and is followed by more threatenings in the familiar style.

England did not follow the advice of Knox: her whole population was not puritan, many of her martyrs had died for the prayer book which Knox would have destroyed. His tract cannot have added to the affection which Elizabeth bore to the author of "The First Blast." In after years, as we shall see, Knox spoke in a tone much more moderate in addressing the early English nonconformist secessionists (1568). Indeed, it is as easy almost to prove, by isolated passages in Knox's writings, that he was a sensible, moderate man, loathing and condemning active resistance in religion, as to prove him to be a senselessly violent man. All depends on the occasion and opportunity. He speaks with two voices. He was very impetuous; in the death of Mary Tudor he suddenly saw the chance of bringing English religion up, or down, to the Genevan level, and so he wrote this letter of vehement rebuke and inopportune advice.

Knox must have given his biographers "medicines to make them love him." The learned Dr. Lorimer finds in this epistle, one of the most fierce of his writings, "a programme of what this Reformation reformed should be—a programme which was honourable alike to Knox's zeal and his moderation." The "moderation" apparently consists in not abolishing bishoprics, but substituting "ten bishops of moderate income for one lordly prelate." Despite this moderation of the epistle, "its intolerance is extreme," says Dr. Lorimer, and Knox's advice "cannot but excite astonishment." {104} The party which agreed with him in England was the minority of a minority; the Catholics, it is usually supposed, though we have no statistics, were the majority of the English nation. Yet the only chance, according to Knox, that England has of escaping the vengeance of an irritable Deity, is for the smaller minority to alter the prayer book, resist the Queen, if she wishes to retain it unaltered, and force the English people into the "discipline" of a Swiss Protestant town.

Dr. Lorimer, a most industrious and judicious writer, adds that, in these matters of "discipline," and of intolerance, Knox "went to a tragical extreme of opinion, of which none of the other leading reformers had set an example;" also that what he demanded was substantially demanded by the Puritans all through the reign of Elizabeth. But Knox averred publicly, and in his "History," that for everything he affirmed in Scotland he had heard the judgments "of the most godly and learned that be known in Europe . . . and for my assurance I have the handwritings of many." Now he had affirmed frequently, in Scotland, the very doctrines of discipline and persecution "of which none of the other leading Reformers had set an example," according to Dr. Lorimer. Therefore, either they agreed with Knox, or what Knox told the Lords in June 1564 was not strictly accurate. {105} In any case Knox gave to his country the most extreme of Reformations.

The death of Mary Tudor, and the course of events at home, were now to afford our Reformer the opportunity of promulgating, in Scotland, those ideas which we and his learned Presbyterian student alike regret and condemn. These persecuting ideas "were only a mistaken theory of Christian duty, and nothing worse," says Dr. Lorimer. Nothing could possibly be worse than a doctrine contrary in the highest degree to the teaching of Our Lord, whether the doctrine was proclaimed by Pope, Prelate, or Calvinist.

Here it must be observed that a most important fact in Knox's career, a most important element in his methods, has been little remarked upon by his biographers. Ever since he failed, in 1554, to obtain the adhesion of Bullinger and Calvin to his more extreme ideas, he had been his own prophet, and had launched his decrees of the right of the people, of part of the people, and of the individual, to avenge the insulted majesty of God upon idolaters, not only without warrant from the heads of the Calvinistic Church, but to their great annoyance and disgust. Of this an example will now be given.



CHAPTER X: KNOX AND THE SCOTTISH REVOLUTION, 1559

Knox had learned from letters out of Scotland that Protestants there now ran no risks; that "without a shadow of fear they might hear prayers in the vernacular, and receive the sacraments in the right way, the impure ceremonies of Antichrist being set aside." The image of St. Giles had been broken by a mob, and thrown into a sewer; "the impure crowd of priests and monks" had fled, throwing away the shafts of the crosses they bore, and "hiding the golden heads in their robes." Now the Regent thinks of reforming religion, on a given day, at a convention of the whole realm. So William Cole wrote to Bishop Bale, then at Basle, without date. The riot was of the beginning of September 1558, and is humorously described by Knox. {107}

This news, though regarded as "very certain," was quite erroneous except as to the riot. One may guess that it was given to Knox in letters from the nobles, penned in October 1558, which he received in November 1558; there was also a letter to Calvin from the nobles, asking for Knox's presence. It seemed that a visit to Scotland was perfectly safe; Knox left Geneva in January, he arrived in Dieppe in February, where he learned that Elizabeth would not allow him to travel through England. He had much that was private to say to Cecil, and was already desirous of procuring English aid to Scottish reformers. The tidings of the Queen's refusal to admit him to England came through Cecil, and Knox told him that he was "worthy of Hell" (for conformity with Mary Tudor); and that Turks actually granted such safe conducts as were now refused to him. {108a} Perhaps he exaggerated the amenity of the Turks. His "First Blast," if acted on, disturbed the succession in England, and might beget new wars, a matter which did not trouble the prophet. He also asked leave to visit his flock at Berwick. This too was refused.

Doubtless Knox, with his unparalleled activity, employed the period of delay in preaching the Word at Dieppe. After his arrival in Scotland, he wrote to his Dieppe congregation, upbraiding them for their Laodicean laxity in permitting idolatry to co-exist with true religion in their town. Why did they not drive out the idolatrous worship? These epistles were intercepted by the Governor of Dieppe, and their contents appear to have escaped the notice of the Reformer's biographers. A revolt followed in Dieppe. {108b} Meanwhile Knox's doings at Dieppe had greatly exasperated Francois Morel, the chief pastor of the Genevan congregation in Paris, and president of the first Protestant Synod held in that town. The affairs of the French Protestants were in a most precarious condition; persecution broke into fury early in June 1559. A week earlier, Morel wrote to Calvin, "Knox was for some time in Dieppe, waiting on a wind for Scotland." "He dared publicly to profess the worst and most infamous of doctrines: 'Women are unworthy to reign; Christians may protect themselves by arms against tyrants!'" The latter excellent doctrine was not then accepted by the Genevan learned. "I fear that Knox may fill Scotland with his madness. He is said to have a boon companion at Geneva, whom we hear that the people of Dieppe have called to be their minister. If he be infected with such opinions, for Christ's sake pray that he be not sent; or if he has already departed, warn the Dieppe people to beware of him." {109a} A French ex-capuchin, Jacques Trouille, was appointed as Knox's successor at Dieppe. {109b}

Knox's ideas, even the idea that Christians may bear the sword against tyrants, were all his own, were anti-Genevan; and though Calvin (1559-60) knew all about the conspiracy of Amboise to kill the Guises, he ever maintained that he had discouraged and preached against it. We must, therefore, credit Knox with originality, both in his ideas and in his way of giving it to be understood that they had the approval of the learned of Switzerland. The reverse was true.

By May 3, Knox was in Edinburgh, "come in the brunt of the battle," as the preachers' summons to trial was for May 10. He was at once outlawed, "blown loud to the horn," but was not dismayed. On this occasion the battle would be a fair fight, the gentry, under their Band, stood by the preachers, and, given a chance in open field with the arm of the flesh to back him, Knox's courage was tenacious and indomitable. It was only for lonely martyrdom that he never thought himself ready, and few historians have a right to throw the first stone at him for his backwardness.

As for armed conflict, at this moment Mary of Guise could only reckon surely on the small French garrison of Scotland, perhaps 1500 or 2000 men. She could place no confidence in the feudal levies that gathered when the royal standard was raised. The Hamiltons merely looked to their own advancement; Lord James Stewart was bound to the Congregation; Huntly was a double dealer and was remote; the minor noblesse and the armed burghers, with Glencairn representing the south-west, Lollard from of old, were attached to Knox's doctrines, while the mob would flock in to destroy and plunder.

[Bridal medal of Mary Stuart and the Dauphin, 1558: knox3.jpg]

Meanwhile Mary of Guise was at Stirling, and a multitude of Protestants were at Perth, where the Reformation had just made its entry, and had secured a walled city, a thing unique in Scotland. The gentry of Angus and the people of Dundee, at Perth, were now anxious to make a "demonstration" (unarmed, says Knox) at Stirling, if the preachers obeyed the summons to go thither, on May 10. Their strategy was excellent, whether carefully premeditated or not.

The Regent, according to Knox, amused Erskine of Dun with promises of "taking some better order" till the day of May 10 arrived, when, the preachers and their backers having been deluded into remaining at Perth instead of "demonstrating" at Stirling, she outlawed the preachers and fined their sureties ("assisters"). She did not outlaw the sureties. Her treachery (alleged only by Knox and others who follow him) is examined in Appendix A. Meanwhile it is certain that the preachers were put to the horn in absence, and that the brethren, believing themselves (according to Knox) to have been disgracefully betrayed, proceeded to revolutionary extremes, such as Calvin energetically denounced.

If we ask who executed the task of wrecking the monasteries at Perth, Knox provides two different answers.

In the "History" Knox says that after the news came of the Regent's perfidy, and after a sermon "vehement against idolatry," a priest began to celebrate, and "opened a glorious tabernacle" on the high altar. "Certain godly men and a young boy" were standing near; they all, or the boy alone (the sentence may be read either way), cried that this was intolerable. The priest struck the boy, who "took up a stone" and hit the tabernacle, and "the whole multitude" wrecked the monuments of idolatry. Neither the exhortation of the preacher nor the command of the magistrate could stay them in their work of destruction. {111} Presently "the rascal multitude" convened, without the gentry and "earnest professors," and broke into the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries. They wrecked as usual, and the "common people" robbed, but the godly allowed Forman, Prior of the Charter House, to bear away about as much gold and silver as he was able to carry. We learn from Mary of Guise and Lesley's "History" that the very orchards were cut down.

If, thanks to the preachers, "no honest man was enriched the value of a groat," apparently dishonest men must have sacked the gold and silver plate of the monasteries; nothing is said by Knox on this head, except as to the Charter House.

Writing to Mrs. Locke, on the other hand, on June 23, Knox tells her that "the brethren," after "complaint and appeal made" against the Regent, levelled with the ground the three monasteries, burned all "monuments of idolatry" accessible, "and priests were commanded under pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous mass." {112} Nothing is said about a spontaneous and uncontrollable popular movement. The professional "brethren," earnest professors of course, reap the glory. Which is the true version?

If the version given to Mrs. Locke be accurate, Knox had sufficient reasons for producing a different account in that portion of his "History" (Book ii.) which is a tract written in autumn, 1559, and in purpose meant for contemporary foreign as well as domestic readers. The performances attributed to the brethren, in the letter to the London merchant's wife, were of a kind which Calvin severely rebuked. Similar or worse violences were perpetrated by French brethren at Lyons, on April 30, 1562. The booty of the church of St. Jean had been sold at auction. There must be no more robbery and pillage, says Calvin, writing on May 13, to the Lyons preachers. The ruffians who rob ought rather to be abandoned, than associated with to the scandal of the Gospel. "Already reckless zeal was shown in the ravages committed in the churches" (altars and images had been overthrown), "but those who fear God will not rigorously judge what was done in hot blood, from devout emotion, but what can be said in defence of looting?"

Calvin spoke even more distinctly to the "consistory" of Nimes, who suspended a preacher named Tartas for overthrowing crosses, altars, and images in churches (July-August, 1561). The zealot was even threatened with excommunication by his fellow religionists. {113a} Calvin heard that this fanatic had not only consented to the outrages, but had incited them, and had "the insupportable obstinacy" to say that such conduct was, with him, "a matter of conscience." "But we" says Calvin, "know that the reverse is the case, for God never commanded any one to overthrow idols, except every man in his own house, and, in public, those whom he has armed with authority. Let that fire-brand" (the preacher) "show us by what title he is lord of the land where he has been burning things."

Knox must have been aware of Calvin's opinion about such outrages as those of Perth, which, in a private letter, he attributes to the brethren: in his public "History" to the mob. At St. Andrews, when similar acts were committed, he says that "the provost and bailies . . . did agree to remove all monuments of idolatry," whether this would or would not have satisfied Calvin.

Opponents of my view urge that Knox, though he knew that the brethren had nothing to do with the ruin at Perth, yet, in the enthusiasm of six weeks later, claimed this honour for them, when writing to Mrs. Locke. Still later, when cool, he told, in his "History," "the frozen truth," the mob alone was guilty, despite his exhortations and the commandment of the magistrate. Neither alternative is very creditable to the prophet.

In the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," it is "the brethren" who break, burn, and destroy. {113b} In Knox's "History" no mention is made of the threat of death against the priests. In the letter to Mrs. Locke he says, apparently of the threat, perhaps of the whole affair, "which thing did so enrage the venom of the serpent's seed," that she decreed death against man, woman, and child in Perth, after the fashion of Knox's favourite texts in Deuteronomy and Chronicles. This was "beastlie crueltie." The "History" gives the same account of the Regent's threatening "words which might escape her in choler" (of course we have no authority for her speaking them at all), but, in the "History," Knox omits the threat by the brethren of death against the priests—a threat which none of his biographers mentions!

If the menace against the priests and the ruin of monasteries were not seditious, what is sedition? But Knox's business, in Book II. of his "History" (much of it written in September-October 1559), is to prove that the movement was not rebellious, was purely religious, and all for "liberty of conscience"—for Protestants. Therefore, in the "History," he disclaims the destruction by the brethren of the monasteries—the mob did that; and he burkes the threat of death to priests: though he told the truth, privately, to Mrs. Locke.

Mary did not move at once. The Hamiltons joined her, and she had her French soldiers, perhaps 1500 men. On May 22 "The Faithful Congregation of Christ Jesus in Scotland," but a few gentlemen being concerned, wrote from Perth, which they were fortifying, to the Regent. If she proceeds in her "cruelty," they will take up the sword, and inform all Christian princes, and their Queen in France, that they have revolted solely because of "this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murder, intended against towns and multitudes." As if they had not revolted already! Their pretext seems to mean that they do not want to alter the sovereign authority, a quibble which they issued for several months, long after it was obviously false. They also wrote to the nobles, to the French officers in the Regent's service, and to the clergy.

What really occurred was that many of the brethren left Perth, after they had "made a day of it," as they had threatened earlier: that the Regent called her nobles to Council, concentrated her French forces, and summoned the levies of Clydesdale and Stirlingshire. Meanwhile the brethren flocked again into Perth, at that time, it is said, the only wall-girt town in Scotland: they strengthened the works, wrote everywhere for succour, and loudly maintained that they were not rebellious or seditious.

Of these operations Knox was the life and soul. There is no mistaking his hand in the letter to Mary of Guise, or in the epistle to the Catholic clergy. That letter is courteously addressed "To the Generation of Anti-Christ, the Pestilent Prelates and their Shavelings within Scotland, the Congregation of Jesus within the same saith."

The gentle Congregation saith that, if the clergy "proceed in their cruelty," they shall be "apprehended as murderers." "We shall begin that same war which God commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites . . . " This they promise in the names of God, Christ, and the Gospel. Any one can recognise the style of Knox in this composition. David Hume remarks: "With these outrageous symptoms commenced in Scotland that hypocrisy and fanaticism which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to break out on all occasions." Hume was wrong, there was no touch of hypocrisy in Knox; he believed as firmly in the "message" which he delivered as in the reality of the sensible universe.