He was allowed to go home—it might not have been safe to arrest him, and the Lords, unanimously, voted that he had done no offence. They repeated their votes in the Queen's presence, and thus a precedent for "mutinous convocation" by Kirkmen was established, till James VI. took order in 1596. We have no full narrative of this affair except that of Knox. It is to be guessed that the nobles wished to maintain the old habit of mutinous convocation which, probably, saved the life of Lethington, and helped to secure Bothwell's acquittal from the guilt of Darnley's murder. Perhaps, too, the brethren who filled the whole inner Court and overflowed up the stairs of the palace, may have had their influence.

This was a notable triumph of our Reformer, and of the Kirk; to which, on his showing, the Queen contributed, by feebly wandering from the real point at issue. She was no dialectician. Knox's conduct was, of course, approved of and sanctioned by the General Assembly. {235} He had, in his circular, averred that Cranstoun and Armstrong were summoned "that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude." To put it mildly, the General Assembly sanctioned contempt of Court. Unluckily for Scotland contempt of Court was, and long remained, universal, the country being desperately lawless, and reeking with blood shed in public and private quarrels. When a Prophet followed the secular example of summoning crowds to overawe justice, the secular sinners had warrant for thwarting the course of law.

As to the brethren and the idolaters who caused these troubles, we know not what befell them. The penalty, both for the attendants at Mass and for the disturbers thereof, should have been death! The dear brethren, if they attacked the Queen's servants, came under the Proclamation of October 1561; so did the Catholics, for they "openly made alteration and innovation of the state of religion. . . . " They ought "to be punished to the death with all rigour." Three were outlawed, and their sureties "unlawed." Twenty-one others were probably not hanged; the records are lost. For the same reason we know not what became of the brethren Armstrong, Cranstoun, and George Rynd, summoned with the other malefactors for November 13. {236}



CHAPTER XVII: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY (continued), 1564-1567

During the session of the General Assembly in December 1563, Knox was compelled to chronicle domestic enormities. The Lord Treasurer, Richardson, having, like Captain Booth, "offended the law of Dian," had to do penance before the whole congregation, and the sermon (unfortunately it is lost, probably it never was written out) was preached by Knox. A French apothecary of the Queen's, and his mistress, were hanged on a charge of murdering their child. {237a} On January 9, 1564-65, Randolph noted that one of the Queen's Maries, Mary Livingstone, is to marry John Sempill, son of Robert, third Lord Sempill, by an English wife. Knox assures us that "it is well known that shame hastened marriage between John Sempill, called 'the Dancer,' and Mary Livingstone, surnamed 'the Lusty.'" The young people appear, however, to have been in no pressing hurry, as Randolph, on January 9, did not expect their marriage till the very end of February; they wished the Earl of Bedford, who was coming on a diplomatic mission, to be present. {237b} Mary, on March 9, 1565, made them a grant of lands, since "it has pleased God to move their hearts to join together in the state of matrimony." {237c} She had ever since January been making the bride presents of feminine finery.

These proceedings indicating no precipitate haste, we may think that Mary Livingstone, like Mary of Guise, is only a victim of the Reformer's taste for "society journalism." Randolph, though an egregious gossip, says of the Four Maries, "they are all good," but Knox writes that "the ballads of that age" did witness to the "bruit" or reputation of these maidens. As is well known the old ballad of "Mary Hamilton," which exists in more than a dozen very diverse variants, in some specimens confuses one of the Maries, an imaginary "Mary Hamilton," with the French maid who was hanged at the end of 1563. The balladist is thus responsible for a scandal against the fair sisterhood; there was no "Mary Hamilton," and no "Mary Carmichael," in their number—Beaton, Seton, Fleming, and Livingstone.

An offended Deity now sent frost in January 1564, and an aurora borealis in February, Knox tells us, and "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," in face of these unusual meteorological phenomena. {238}

Vice rose to such a pitch that men doubted if the Mass really was idolatry! Knox said, from the pulpit, that if the sceptics were right, he was "miserably deceived." "Believe me, brethren, in the bowels of Christ, it is possible that you may be mistaken," Cromwell was to tell the Commissioners of the General Assembly, on a day that still was in the womb of the future; the dawn of common sense rose in the south.

On March 20, much to the indignation of the Queen, the banns were read twice between Knox and a lady of the Royal blood and name, Margaret Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a girl not above sixteen, in January 1563, when Randolph first speaks of the wooing. {239} The good Dr. M'Crie does not mention the age of the bride! The lady was a very near kinswoman of Chatelherault. She had plenty of time for reflection, and as nobody says that she was coerced into the marriage, while Nicol Burne attributes her passion to sorcery, we may suppose that she was in love with our Reformer. She bore him several daughters, and it is to be presumed that the marriage, though in every way bizarre, was happy. Burne says that Knox wished to marry a Lady Fleming, akin to Chatelherault, but was declined; if so, he soon consoled himself.

At this time Riccio—a valet de chambre of the Queen in 1561-62—"began to grow great in Court," becoming French Secretary at the end of the year. By June 3, 1565, Randolph is found styling Riccio "only governor" to Darnley. His career might have rivalled that of the equally low-born Cardinal Alberoni, but for the daggers of Moray's party.

In the General Assembly of June 1564, Moray, Morton, Glencairn, Pitarro, Lethington, and other Lords of the Congregation held aloof from the brethren, but met the Superintendents and others to discuss the recent conduct of our Reformer, who was present. He was invited, by Lethington, to "moderate himself" in his references to the Queen, as others might imitate him, "albeit not with the same modesty and foresight," for Lethington could not help bantering Knox. Knox, of course, rushed to his doctrine of "idolatry" as provocative of the wrath of God—we have heard of the bad harvest, and the frost in January. It is not worth while to pursue in detail the discourses, in which Knox said that the Queen rebelled against God "in all the actions of her life." Ahab and Jezebel were again brought on the scene. It profited not Lethington to say that all these old biblical "vengeances" were "singular motions of the Spirit of God, and appertain nothing to our age." If Knox could have understood that, he would not have been Knox. The point was intelligible; Lethington perceived it, but Knox never chose to do so. He went on with his isolated texts, Lethington vainly replying "the cases are nothing alike." Knox came to his old stand, "the idolater must die the death," and the executioners must be "the people of God." Lethington quoted many opinions against Knox's, to no purpose, opinions of Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Musculus, and Calvin, but our Reformer brought out the case of "Amasiath, King of Judah," and "The Apology of Magdeburg." As to the opinion of Calvin and the rest he drew a distinction. They had only spoken of the godly who were suffering under oppression, not of the godly triumphant in a commonwealth. He forgot, or did not choose to remember, a previous decision of his own, as we shall see.

When the rest of the party were discussing the question, Makgill, Clerk Register, reminded them of their previous debate in November 1561, when {240} Knox, after secretly writing to Calvin, had proposed to write to him for his opinion about the Queen's Mass, and Lethington had promised to do so himself. But Lethington now said that, on later reflection, as Secretary of the Queen, he had scrupled, without her consent, to ask a foreigner whether her subjects might prevent her from enjoying the rites of her own religion—for that was what the "controversies" between her Highness and her subjects really and confessedly meant. {241a}

Knox was now requested to consult Calvin, "and the learned in other Kirks, to know their judgment in that question." The question, judging from Makgill's interpellation, was "whether subjects might lawfully take her Mass from the Queen." {241b} As we know, Knox had already put the question to Calvin by a letter of October 24, 1561, and so had the anonymous writer of November 18, 1561, whom I identify with Arran. Knox now refused to write to "Mr. Calvin, and the learned of other Kirks," saying (I must quote him textually, or be accused of misrepresentation), "I myself am not only fully resolved in conscience, but also I have heard the judgments in this, and all other things that I have affirmed in this Realm, of the most godly and most learned that be known in Europe. I come not to this Realm without their resolution; and for my assurance I have the handwritings of many; and therefore if I should move the same question again, what else should I do but either show my own ignorance and forgetfulness, or else inconstancy?" {241c} He therefore said that his opponents might themselves "write and complain upon him," and so learn "the plain minds" of the learned—but nobody took the trouble. Knox's defence was worded with the skill of a notary. He said that he had "heard the judgments" of "the learned and godly"; he did not say what these judgments were. Calvin, Morel, Bullinger, and such men, we know, entirely differed from his extreme ideas. He "came not without their resolution," or approval, to Scotland, but that was not the question at issue.

If Knox had received from Calvin favourable replies to his own letter, and Arran's, of October 24, November 18, 1561, can any one doubt that he would now have produced them, unless he did not wish the brethren to find out that he himself had written without their knowledge? We know what manner of answers he received, in 1554, orally from Calvin, in writing from Bullinger, to his questions about resistance to the civil power. {242a} I am sceptical enough to suppose that, if Knox had now possessed letters from Calvin, justifying the propositions which he was maintaining, such as that "the people, yea, or ane pairt of the people, may execute God's jugementis against their King, being ane offender," {242b} he would have exhibited them. I do not believe that he had any such letters from such men as Bullinger and Calvin. Indeed, we may ask whether the question of the Queen's Mass had arisen in any realm of Europe except Scotland. Where was there a Catholic prince ruling over a Calvinistic state? If nowhere, then the question would not be raised, except by Knox in his letter to Calvin of October 24, 1561. And where was Calvin's answer, and to what effect?

Knox may have forgotten, and Lethington did not know, that, about 1558- 59, in a tract, already noticed (pp. 101-103 supra), of 450 pages against the Anabaptists, Knox had expressed the reverse of his present opinion about religious Regicide. He is addressing the persecuting Catholic princes of Europe: " . . . Ye shall perish, both temporally and for ever. And by whom doth it most appear that temporally ye shall be punished? By us, whom ye banish, whom ye spoil and rob, whom cruelly ye persecute, and whose blood ye daily shed? {243a} There is no doubt, but as the victory which overcometh the world is our faith, so it behoveth us to possess our souls in our patience. We neither privily nor openly deny the power of the Civil Magistrate. . . . "

The chosen saints and people of God, even when under oppression, lift not the hand, but possess their souls in patience, says Knox, in 1558-59. But the idolatrous shall be temporally punished—by other hands. "And what instruments can God find in this life more apt to punish you than those" (the Anabaptists), "that hate and detest all lawful powers? . . . God will not use his saints and chosen people to punish you. For with them there is always mercy, yea, even although God have pronounced a curse and malediction, as in the history of Joshua is plain." {243b}

In this passage Knox is speaking for the English exiles in Geneva. He asserts that we "neither publicly nor privately deny the power of the Civil Magistrate," in face of his own published tracts of appeal to a Jehu or a Phinehas, and of his own claim that the Prophet may preach treason, and that his instruments may commit treason. To be sure all the English in Geneva were not necessarily of Knox's mind.

It is altogether a curious passage. God's people are more merciful than God! Israel was bidden to exterminate all idolaters in the Promised Land, but, as the Book of Joshua shows, they did not always do it: "for with them is always mercy"; despite the massacres, such as that of Agag, which Knox was wont to cite as examples to the backward brethren! Yet, relying on another set of texts, not in Joshua, Knox now informed Lethington that the executors of death on idolatrous princes were "the people of God"—"the people, or a part of the people." {244a}

Mercy! Happily the policy of carnal men never allowed Knox's "people of God" to show whether, given a chance to destroy idolaters, they would display the mercy on which he insists in his reply to the Anabaptist.

It was always useless to argue with Knox; for whatever opinion happened to suit him at the moment (and at different moments contradictory opinions happened to suit him), he had ever a Bible text to back him. On this occasion, if Lethington had been able to quote Knox's own statement, that with the people of God "there is always mercy" (as in the case of Cardinal Beaton), he could hardly have escaped by saying that there was always mercy, when the people of God had not the upper hand in the State, {244b} when unto them God has not "given sufficient force." For in the chosen people of God "there is always mercy, yea even although God have pronounced a curse and malediction."

In writing against Anabaptists (1558-59), Knox wanted to make them, not merciful Calvinists, the objects of the fear and revenge of Catholic rulers. He even hazarded one of his unfulfilled prophecies: Anabaptists, wicked men, will execute those divine judgments for which Protestants of his species are too tender-hearted; though, somehow, they make exceptions in the cases of Beaton and Riccio, and ought to do so in the case of Mary Stuart!

Lethington did not use this passage of our Reformer's works against him, though it was published in 1560. Probably the secretary had not worked his way through the long essay on Predestination. But we have, in the book against the Anabaptists and in the controversy with Lethington, an example of Knox's fatal intellectual faults. As an individual man, he would not have hurt a fly. As a prophet, he deliberately tried to restore, by a pestilent anachronism, in a Christian age and country, the ferocities attributed to ancient Israel. This he did not even do consistently, and when he is inconsistent with his prevailing mood, his biographers applaud his "moderation"! If he saw a chance against an Anabaptist, or if he wanted to conciliate Mary of Guise, he took up a Christian line, backing it by texts appropriate to the occasion.

His influence lasted, and the massacre of Dunavertie (1647), and the slaying of women in cold blood, months after the battle of Philiphaugh, and the "rouping" of covenanted "ravens" for the blood of cavaliers taken under quarter, are the direct result of Knox's intellectual error, of his appeals to Jehu, Phinehas, and so forth.

At this point the Fourth Book of Knox's "History" ends with a remark on the total estrangement between himself and Moray. The Reformer continued to revise and interpolate his work, up to 1571, the year before his death, and made collections of materials, and notes for the continuation. An uncertain hand has put these together in Book V. But we now miss the frequent references to "John Knox," and his doings, which must have been vigorous during the troubles of 1565, after the arrival in Scotland of Darnley (February 1565), and his courtship and marriage of the Queen. These events brought together Moray, Chatelherault, and many of the Lords in the armed party of the Congregation. They rebelled; they were driven by Mary into England, by October 1565, and Bothwell came at her call from France. The Queen had new advisers—Riccio, Balfour, Bothwell, the eldest son of the late Huntly, and Lennox, till the wretched Darnley in a few weeks proved his incapacity. Lethington, rather neglected, hung about the Court, as he remained with Mary of Guise long after he had intended to desert her.

Mary, whose only chance lay in outstaying Elizabeth in the policy of celibacy, had been driven, or led, by her rival Queen into a marriage which would have been the best possible, had Darnley been a man of character and a Protestant. He was the typical "young fool," indolent, incapable, fierce, cowardly, and profligate. His religion was dubious. After his arrival (on February 26, 1565) he went with Moray to hear Knox preach, but he had been bred by a Catholic mother, and, on occasion, posed as an ardent Catholic. {246} It is unfortunate that Randolph is silent about Knox during all the period of the broils which preceded and followed Mary's marriage.

On August 19, 1565, Darnley, now Mary's husband, went to hear Knox preach in St. Giles's, on the text, "O Lord our God, other lords than Thou have ruled over us." "God," he said, "sets in that room (for the offences and ingratitude of the people) boys and women." Ahab also appeared, as usual. Ahab "had not taken order with that harlot, Jezebel." So Book V. says, and "harlot" would be a hit at Mary's alleged misconduct with Riccio. A hint in a letter of Randolph's of August 24, may point to nascent scandal about the pair. But the printed sermon, from Knox's written copy, reads, not "harlot" but "idolatrous wife." At all events, Darnley was so moved by this sermon that he would not dine. {247a} Knox was called "from his bed" to the Council chamber, where were Atholl, Ruthven, Lethington, the Justice Clerk, and the Queen's Advocate. He was attended by a great crowd of notable citizens, but Lethington forbade him to preach for a fortnight or three weeks. He said that, "If the Church would command him to preach or abstain he would obey, so far as the Word of God would permit him."

It seems that he would only obey even the Church as far as he chose.

The Town Council protested against the deprivation, and we do not know how long Knox desisted from preaching. Laing thinks that, till Mary fell, he preached only "at occasional intervals." {247b} But we shall see that he did presently go on preaching, with Lethington for a listener. He published his sermon, without name of place or printer. The preacher informs his audience that "in the Hebrew there is no conjunction copulative" in a certain sentence; probably he knew more Hebrew than most of our pastors.

The sermon is very long, and, wanting the voice and gesture of the preacher, is no great proof of eloquence; in fact, is tedious. Probably Darnley was mainly vexed by the length, though he may have had intelligence enough to see that he and Mary were subjects of allusions. Knox wrote the piece from memory, on the last of August, in "the terrible roaring of guns, and the noise of armour." The banded Lords, Moray and the rest, had entered Edinburgh, looking for supporters, and finding none. Erskine, commanding the Castle, fired six or seven shots as a protest, and the noise of these disturbed the prophet at his task. As a marginal note says, "The Castle of Edinburgh was shooting against the exiled for Christ Jesus' sake" {248a}—namely, at Moray and his company. Knox prayed for them in public, and was accused of so doing, but Lethington testified that he had heard "the sermons," and found in them no ground of offence. {248b}

[Mary Stuart. From the portrait in the collection of the Earl of Morton: knox5.jpg]

Moray, Ochiltree, Pitarro, and many others being now exiles in England, whose Queen had subsidised and repudiated them and their revolution, things went hard with the preachers. For a whole year at least (December 1565-66) their stipends were not paid, the treasury being exhausted by military and other expenses, and Pitarro being absent. At the end of December, Knox and his colleague, Craig, were ordered by the General Assembly to draw up and print a service for a general Fast, to endure from the last Sunday in February to the first in March, 1566. One cause alleged is that the Queen's conversion had been hoped for, but now she said that she would "maintain and defend" {248c} her own faith. She had said no less to Knox at their first interview, but now she had really written, when invited to abolish her Mass, that her subjects may worship as they will, but that she will not desert her religion. {249a} It was also alleged that the godly were to be destroyed all over Europe, in accordance with decrees of the Council of Trent. Moreover, vice, manslaughter, and oppression of the poor continued, prices of commodities rose, and work was scamped. The date of the Fast was fixed, not to coincide with Lent, but because it preceded an intended meeting of Parliament, {249b} a Parliament interrupted by the murder of Riccio, and the capture of the Queen. No games were to be played during the two Sundays of the Fast, which looks as if they were still permitted on other Sundays. The appointed lessons were from Judges, Esther, Chronicles, Isaiah, and Esdras; the New Testament, apparently, supplied nothing appropriate. It seldom did. The lay attendants of the Assembly of Christmas Day which decreed the Fast, were Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Lethington, with some lairds.

The Protestants must have been alarmed, in February 1566, by a report, to which Randolph gave circulation, that Mary had joined a Catholic League, with the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy, and others. Lethington may have believed this; at all events he saw no hope of pardon for Moray and his abettors—"no certain way, unless we chop at the very root, you know where it lieth" (February 9). {249c} Probably he means the murder of Riccio, not of the Queen. Bedford said that Mary had not yet signed the League. {249d} We are aware of no proof that there was any League to sign, and though Mary was begging money both from Spain and the Pope, she probably did not expect to procure more than tolerance for her own religion. {250a} The rumours, however, must have had their effect in causing apprehension. Moreover, Darnley, from personal jealousy; Morton, from fear of losing the Seals; the Douglases, kinsmen of Morton and Darnley; and the friends of the exiled nobles, seeing that they were likely to be forfeited, conspired with Moray in England to be Darnley's men, to slay Riccio, and to make the Queen subordinate to Darnley, and "to fortify and maintain" the Protestant faith. Mary, indeed, had meant to reintroduce the Spiritual Estate into Parliament, as a means of assisting her Church; so she writes to Archbishop Beaton in Paris. {250b}

Twelve wooden altars, to be erected in St. Giles's, are said by Knox's continuator to have been found in Holyrood. {250c}

Mary's schemes, whatever they extended to, were broken by the murder of Riccio in the evening of March 9. He was seized in her presence, and dirked by fifty daggers outside of her room. Ruthven, who in June 1564 had come into Mary's good graces, and Morton were, with Darnley, the leaders of the Douglas feud, and of the brethren.

The nobles might easily have taken, tried, and hanged Riccio, but they yielded to Darnley and to their own excited passions, when once they had torn him from the Queen. The personal pleasure of dirking the wretch could not be resisted, and the danger of causing the Queen's miscarriage and death may have entered into the plans of Darnley. Knox does not tell the story himself; his "History" ends in June 1564. But "in plain terms" he "lets the world understand what we mean," namely, that Riccio "was justly punished," and that "the act" (of the murderers) was "most just and most worthy of all praise." {251a} This Knox wrote just after the event, while the murderers were still in exile in England, where Ruthven died—seeing a vision of angels! Knox makes no drawback to the entirely and absolutely laudable character of the deed. He goes out of his way to tell us "in plain terms what we mean," in a digression from his account of affairs sixteen years earlier. Thus one fails to understand the remark, that "of the manner in which the deed was done we may be certain that Knox would disapprove as vehemently as any of his contemporaries." {251b} The words may be ironical, for vehement disapproval was not conspicuous among Protestant contemporaries. Knox himself, after Mary scattered the party of the murderers and recovered power, prayed that heaven would "put it into the heart of a multitude" to treat Mary like Athaliah.

Mary made her escape from Holyrood to Dunbar, to safety, in the night of March 11. March 12 found Knox on his knees; the game was up, the blood had been shed in vain. The Queen had not died, but was well, and surrounded by friends; and the country was rather for her than against her. The Reformer composed a prayer, repenting that "in quiet I am negligent, in trouble impatient, tending to desperation," which shows insight. He speaks of his pride and ambition, also of his covetousness and malice. That he was really covetous we cannot believe, nor does he show malice except against idolaters. He "does not doubt himself to be elected to eternal salvation," of which he has "assured signs." He has "knowledge above the common sort of my brethren" (pride has crept in again!), and has been compelled to "forespeak," or prophesy. He implores mercy for his "desolate bedfellow," for her children, and for his sons by his first wife. "Now, Lord, put end to my misery!" (Edinburgh, March 12, 1566). Knox fled from Edinburgh, "with a great mourning of the godly of religion," says a Diarist, on the same day as the chief murderers took flight, March 17; his place of refuge was Kyle in Ayrshire (March 21, 1566). {252a}

In Randolph's letter, recording the flight of these nobles, he mentions eight of their accomplices, and another list is pinned to the letter, giving names of men "all at the death of Davy and privy thereunto." This applies to about a dozen men, being a marginal note opposite their names. A line lower is added, "John Knox, John Craig, preachers." {252b} There is no other evidence that Knox, who fled, or Craig, who stood to his pulpit, were made privy to the plot. When idolaters thought it best not to let the Pope into a scheme for slaying Elizabeth, it is hardly probable that Protestants would apprise their leading preachers. On the other hand, Calvin was consulted by the would-be assassins of the Duc de Guise, in 1559-60, and he prevented the deed, as he assures the Duchesse de Ferrare, the mother-in-law of the Duc, after that noble was murdered in good earnest. {252c} Calvin, we have shown, knew beforehand of the conspiracy of Amboise, which aimed at the death of "Antonius," obviously Guise. He disapproved of but did not reveal the plot. Knox, whether privy to the murder or not, did not, when he ran away, take the best means of disarming suspicion. Neither his name nor that of Craig occurs in two lists containing those of between seventy and eighty persons "delated," and it is to be presumed that he fled because he did not feel sure of protection against Mary's frequently expressed dislike.

In earlier days, with a strong backing, he had not feared "the pleasing face of a gentlewoman," as he said, but now he did fear it. Kyle suited him well, because the Earl of Cassilis, who had been an idolater, was converted by a faithful bride, in August. Dr. M'Crie {253a} says that Mary "wrote to a nobleman in the west country with whom Knox resided, to banish him from his house." The evidence for this is a letter of Parkhurst to Bullinger, in December 1567. Parkhurst tells Bullinger, among other novelties, that Riccio was a necromancer, who happened to be dirked; by whom he does not say. He adds that Mary commanded "a certain pious earl" not to keep Knox in his house. {253b}

In Kyle Knox worked at his "History." On September 4 he signed a letter sent from the General Assembly at St. Andrews to Beza, approving of a Swiss confession of faith, except so far as the keeping of Christmas, Easter, and other Christian festivals is concerned. Knox himself wrote to Beza, about this time, an account of the condition of Scotland. It would be invaluable, as the career of Mary was rushing to the falls, but it is lost. {253c}

On December 24, Mary pardoned all the murderers of Riccio; and Knox appears to have been present, though it is not certain, at the Christmas General Assembly in Edinburgh. He received permission to visit his sons in England, and he wrote two letters: one to the Protestant nobles on Mary's attempt to revive the consistorial jurisdiction of the Primate; the other to the brethren. To England he carried a remonstrance from the Kirk against the treatment of Puritans who had conscientious objections to the apparel—"Romish rags"—of the Church Anglican. Men ought to oppose themselves boldly to Authority; that is, to Queen Elizabeth, if urged further than their consciences can bear. {254a}

Being in England, Knox, of course, did not witness the events associated with the Catholic baptism of the baby prince (James VI.); the murder of Darnley, in February 1567; the abduction of Mary by Bothwell, and her disgraceful marriage to her husband's murderer, in May 1567. If Knox excommunicated the Queen, it was probably about this date. Long afterwards, on April 25, 1584, Mary was discussing the various churches with Waad, an envoy of Cecil. Waad said that the Pope stirred up peoples not to obey their sovereigns. "Yet," said the Queen, "a Pope shall excommunicate you, but I was excommunicated by a pore minister, Knokes. In fayth I feare nothinge else but that they will use my sonne as they have done the mother." {254b}



CHAPTER XVIII: THE LAST YEARS OF KNOX: 1567-1572

The Royal quarry, so long in the toils of Fate, was dragged down at last, and the doom forespoken by the prophet was fulfilled. A multitude had their opportunity with this fair Athaliah; and Mary had ridden from Carberry Hill, a draggled prisoner, into her own town, among the yells of "burn the harlot." But one out of all her friends was faithful to her. Mary Seton, to her immortal honour, rode close by the side of her fallen mistress and friend.

For six years insulted and thwarted; her smiles and her tears alike wasted on greedy, faithless courtiers and iron fanatics; perplexed and driven desperate by the wiles of Cecil and Elizabeth; in bodily pain and constant sorrow—the sorrow wrought by the miscreant whom she had married; without one honest friend; Mary had wildly turned to the man who, it is to be supposed, she thought could protect her, and her passion had dragged her into unplumbed deeps of crime and shame.

The fall of Mary, the triumph of Protestantism, appear to have, in some degree, rather diminished the prominence of Knox. He would never make Mary weep again. He had lost the protagonist against whom, for a while, he had stood almost alone, and soon we find him complaining of neglect. He appeared at the General Assembly of June 25, 1567—a scanty gathering. George Buchanan, a layman, was Moderator: the Assembly was adjourned to July 21, and the brethren met in arms; wherefore Argyll, who had signed the band for Darnley's murder, declined to come. {256a} The few nobles, the barons, and others present, vowed to punish the murder of Darnley and to defend the child prince; and it was decided that henceforth all Scottish princes should swear to "set forward the true religion of Jesus Christ, as at present professed and established in this realm"—as they are bound to do—"by Deuteronomy and the second chapter of the Book of Kings," which, in fact, do not speak of establishing Calvinism.

Among those who sign are Morton, who had guilty foreknowledge of the murder; while his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, was present at the doing; Sir James Balfour, who was equally involved; Lethington, who signed the murder covenant; and Douglas of Whittingham, and Ker of Faldonside, two of Riccio's assassins. Most of the nobles stood aloof.

Presently Throckmorton arrived, sent by Elizabeth with the pretence, at least, of desiring to save Mary's life, which, but for his exertions, he thought would have been taken. He "feared Knox's austerity as much as any man's" (July 14). {256b}

On July 17 Knox arrived from the west, where he had been trying to unite the Protestants. {256c} Throckmorton found Craig and Knox "very austere," well provided with arguments from the Bible, history, the laws of Scotland, and the Coronation Oath. {257a} Knox in his sermons "threatened the great plague of God to this whole nation and country if the Queen be spared from her condign punishment." {257b}

Murderers were in the habit of being lightly let off, in Scotland, and, as to Mary, she could easily have been burned for husband-murder, but not so easily convicted thereof with any show of justice. The only direct evidence of her complicity lay in the Casket Letters, and several of her lordly accusers were (if she were guilty) her accomplices. Her prayer to be heard in self-defence at the ensuing Parliament of December was refused, for excellent reasons; and her opponents had the same good reasons for not bringing her to trial. Knox was perfectly justified if he desired her to be tried, but several lay members of the General Assembly could not have faced that ordeal, and Randolph later accused Lethington, in a letter to him, of advising her assassination. {257c}

On July 29 Knox preached at the Coronation of James VI. at Stirling, protesting against the rite of anointing. True, it was Jewish, but it had passed through the impure hands of Rome, as, by the way, had Baptism. Knox also preached at the opening of Parliament, on December 15. We know little of him at this time. He had sent his sons to Cambridge, into danger of acquiring Anglican opinions, which they did; but now he seems to have taken a less truculent view of Anglicanism than in 1559-60. He had been drawing a prophetic historical parallel between Chatelherault (more or less of the Queen's party) and Judas Iscariot, and was not loved by the Hamiltons. The Duke was returning from France, "to restore Satan to his kingdom," with the assistance of the Guises. Knox mentions an attempt to assassinate Moray, now Regent, which is obscure. "I live as a man already dead from all civil things." Thus he wrote to Wood, Moray's agent, then in England on the affair of the Casket Letters (September 10, 1568).

He had already (February 14) declined to gratify Wood by publishing his "History." He would not permit it to appear during his life, as "it will rather hurt me than profit them" (his readers). He was, very naturally, grieved that the conduct of men was not conformable to "the truth of God, now of some years manifest." He was not concerned to revenge his own injuries "by word or writ," and he foresaw schism in England over questions of dress and rites. {258a}

He was neglected. "Have not thine oldest and stoutest acquaintance" (Moray, or Kirkcaldy of Grange?) "buried thee in present oblivion, and art thou not in that estate, by age, {258b} that nature itself calleth thee from the pleasure of things temporal?" (August 19, 1569).

"In trouble impatient, tending to desperation," Knox had said of himself. He was still unhappy. "Foolish Scotland" had "disobeyed God by sparing the Queen's life," and now the proposed Norfolk marriage of Mary and her intended restoration were needlessly dreaded. A month later, Lethington, thrown back on Mary by his own peril for his share in Darnley's murder, writes to the Queen that some ministers are reconcilable, "but Nox I think be inflexible." {259a}

A year before Knox wrote his melancholy letter, just cited, he had some curious dealings with the English Puritans. In 1566 many of them had been ejected from their livings, and, like the Scottish Catholics, they "assembled in woods and private houses to worship God." {259b} The edifying controversies between these precisians and Grindal, the Bishop of London, are recorded by Strype. The bishop was no zealot for surplices and the other momentous trifles which agitate the human conscience, but Elizabeth insisted on them; and "Her Majesty's Government must be carried on." The precisians had deserted the English Liturgy for the Genevan Book of Common Order; both sides were appealing to Beza, in Geneva, and were wrangling about the interpretation of that Pontiff's words. {259c}

Calvin had died in 1564, but the Genevan Church and Beza were still umpires, whose decision was eagerly sought, quibbled over, and disputed. The French Puritans, in fact, extremely detested the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Thus, in 1562, De la Vigne, a preacher at St. Lo, consulted Calvin about the excesses of certain Flemish brethren, who adhered to "a certain bobulary (bobulaire) of prayers, compiled, or brewed, in the days of Edward VI." The Calvinists of St. Lo decided that these Flemings must not approach their holy table, and called our communion service "a disguised Mass." The Synod (Calvinistic) of Poictiers decided that our Liturgy contains "impieties," and that Satan was the real author of the work! There are saints' days, "with epistles, lessons, or gospels, as under the papacy." They have heard that the Prayer Book has been condemned by Geneva. {260a}

The English sufferers from our Satanic Prayer Book appealed to Geneva, and were answered by Beza (October 24, 1567). He observed, "Who are we to give any judgment of these things, which, as it seems to us, can be healed only by prayers and patience." Geneva has not heard both sides, and does not pretend to judge. The English brethren complain that ministers are appointed "without any lawful consent of the Presbytery," the English Church not being Presbyterian, and not intending to be. Beza hopes that it will become Presbyterian. He most dreads that any should "execute their ministry contrary to the will of her Majesty and the Bishops," which is exactly what the seceders did. Beza then speaks out about the question of costume, which ought not to be forced on the ministers. But he does not think that the vestments justify schism. In other points the brethren should, in the long run, "give way to manifest violence," and "live as private men." "Other defilements" (kneeling, &c.) Beza hopes that the Queen and Bishops will remove. Men must "patiently bear with one another, and heartily obey the Queen's Majesty and all their Bishops." {260b}

As far as this epistle goes, Beza and his colleagues certainly do not advise the Puritan seceders to secede.

Bullinger and Gualterus in particular were outworn by the pertinacious English Puritans who visited them. One Sampson had, when in exile, made the life of Peter Martyr a burden to him by his "clamours," doubts, and restless dissatisfaction. "England," wrote Bullinger to Beza (March 15, 1567), "has many characters of this sort, who cannot be at rest, who can never be satisfied, and who have always something or other to complain about." Bullinger and Gualterus "were unwilling to contend with these men like fencing-masters," tired of their argufying; unable to "withdraw our entire confidence from the Bishops." "If any others think of coming hither, let them know that they will come to no purpose." {261a}

Knox may have been less unsympathetic, but his advice agreed with the advice of the Genevans. Some of the seceders were imprisoned; Cecil and the Queen's commissioners encouraged others "to go and preach the Gospel in Scotland," sending with them, as it seems, letters commendatory to the ruling men there. They went, but they were not long away. "They liked not that northern climate, but in May returned again," and fell to their old practices. One of them reported that, at Dunbar, "he saw men going to the church, on Good Friday, barefooted and bare-kneed, and creeping to the cross!" "If this be so," said Grindal, "the Church of Scotland will not be pure enough for our men." {261b}

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

In fact they obeyed Knox's epistle to England of January 1559. "Mingle- mangle ministry, Popish order, and Popish apparel," they will not bear. Knox's arguments in favour of their conforming, for the time at all events, are quoted and refuted: "And also concerning Paul his purifying at Jerusalem." The analogy of Paul's conformity had been rejected by Knox, at the supper party with Lethington in 1556. He had "doubted whether either James's commandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost." {262a} Yet now Knox had used the very same argument from Paul's conformity which, in 1556, he had scouted! The Mass was not in question in 1568; still, if Paul was wrong (and he did get into peril from a mob!), how could Knox now bid the English brethren follow his example? {262b} (See pp. 65-67 supra.)

To be sure Mary was probably at large, when Knox wrote, with 4000 spears at her back. The Reformer may have rightly thought it an ill moment to irritate Elizabeth, or he may have grown milder than he was in 1559, and come into harmony with Bullinger. In February of the year of this correspondence he had written, "God comfort that dispersed little flock," apparently the Puritans of his old Genevan congregation, now in England, and in trouble, "amongst whom I would be content to end my days. . . . " {263a}

In January 1570, Knox, "with his one foot in the grave," as he says, did not despair of seeing his desire upon his enemy. Moray was asking Elizabeth to hand over to him Queen Mary, giving hostages for the safety of her life. Moray sent his messenger to Cecil, on January 2, 1570, and Knox added a brief note. "If ye strike not at the root," he said, "the branches that appear to be broken will bud again. . . . More days than one would not suffice to express what I think." {263b} What he thought is obvious; "stone dead hath no fellow." But Mary's day of doom had not yet come; Moray was not to receive her as a prisoner, for the Regent was shot dead, in Linlithgow, on January 23, by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to the unconcealed delight of his sister, for whom his death was opportune.

The assassin, Bothwellhaugh, in May 1568, had been pardoned for his partisanship of Mary, at Knox's intercession. "Thy image, O Lord, did so clearly shine on that personage" (Moray)—he said in his public prayer at the Regent's funeral {263c}—"that the devil, and the people to whom he is Prince, could not abide it." We know too much of Moray to acquiesce, without reserve, in this eulogium.

Knox was sorely disturbed, at this time, by the publication of a jeu d'esprit, in which the author professed to have been hidden in a bed, in the cabinet of a room, while the late Regent held a council of his friends. {264a} The tone and manner of Lindsay, Wood, Knox and others were admirably imitated; in their various ways, and with appropriate arguments, some of them urged Moray to take the crown for his life. By no people but the Scots, perhaps, could this jape have been taken seriously, but, with a gravity that would have delighted Charles Lamb, Knox denounced the skit from the pulpit as a fabrication by the Father of Lies. The author, the human penman, he said (according to Calderwood), was fated to die friendless in a strange land. The galling shaft came out of the Lethington quiver; it may have been composed by several of the family, but Thomas Maitland, who later died in Italy, was regarded as the author, {264b} perhaps because he did die alone in a strange country.

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

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

Next Sunday Knox reminded his hearers that he had not called Kirkcaldy a murderer (though in the case of the Cardinal, he was), but had said that the lawless proceedings shocked him more than if they had been done by common cut-throats. Knox then wrote a letter to the kirk-session, saying that Kirkcaldy's defence proved him "to be a murderer at heart," for St. John says that "whoso loveth not his brother is a man-slayer"; and Kirkcaldy did not love the man who was killed. All this was apart from the question: had Knox called Kirkcaldy a common cut-throat? Kirkcaldy then asked that Knox's explanation of what he said in the pulpit might be given in writing, as his words had been misreported, and Knox, "creeping upon his club," went personally to the kirk-session, and requested the Superintendent to admonish Kirkcaldy of his offences. Next Sunday he preached about his eternal Ahab, and Kirkcaldy was offended by the historical parallel. When he next was in church Knox went at him again; it was believed that Kirkcaldy would avenge himself, but the western brethren wrote to remind him of their "great care" for Knox's person. So the quarrel, which made sermons lively, died out. {266}

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

July found Knox and his family at St. Andrews, in the New Hospice, a pre- Reformation ecclesiastical building, west of the Cathedral, and adjoining the gardens of St. Leonard's College. At this time James Melville, brother of the more celebrated scholar and divine, Andrew Melville, was a golf-playing young student of St. Leonard's College. He tells us how Knox would walk about the College gardens, exhorting the St. Leonard's lads to be staunch Protestants; for St. Salvator's and St. Mary's were not devoted to the Reformer and his party. The smitten preacher (he had suffered a touch of apoplexy) walked slowly, a fur tippet round his neck in summer, leaning on his staff, and on the shoulder of his secretary, Bannatyne. He returned, at St. Andrews, in his sermons, to the Book of Daniel with which, nearly a quarter of a century ago, he began his pulpit career. In preaching he was moderate—for half-an-hour; and then, warming to his work, he made young Melville shudder and tremble, till he could not hold his pen to write. No doubt the prophet was denouncing "that last Beast," the Pope, and his allies in Scotland, as he had done these many years ago. Ere he had finished his sermon "he was like to ding the pulpit to blads and fly out of it." He attended a play, written by Davidson, later a famous preacher, on the siege and fall of the Castle, exhibiting the hanging of his old ally, Kirkcaldy, "according to Mr. Knox's doctrine," says Melville. This cheerful entertainment was presented at the marriage of John Colville, destined to be a traitor, a double spy, and a renegade from the Kirk to "the Synagogue of Satan." {267a}

Knox now collected historical materials from Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, and heard of the publication of Buchanan's scurrilous "Detection" of Queen Mary, in December 1571. {267b}

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

Not in the Regency, but mainly under the influence of Morton, bishops were reintroduced, at a meeting of the Kirk held at Leith, in January 1572. The idea was that each bishop should hand over most of his revenues to Morton, or some other person in power. Knox, of course, objected; he preached at St. Andrews before Morton inducted a primate of his clan, but he refused to "inaugurate" the new prelate. The Superintendent of Fife did what was to be done, and a bishop (he of Caithness) was among the men who imposed their hands on the head of the new Archbishop of St. Andrews. Thus the imposition of hands, which Knox had abolished in the Book of Discipline, crept back again, and remains in Presbyterian usage. {268a}

Had Knox been in vigour he might have summoned the brethren in arms to resist; but he was weak of body, and Morton was an ill man to deal with. Knox did draw up articles intended to minimise the mischief of these bastard and simoniacal bishoprics and abused patronages (August 1572). {268b} On May 26, 1572, he describes himself as "lying in St. Andrews, half dead." {268c} He was able, however, to preach at a witch, who was probably none the better for his distinguished attentions.

On August 17, during a truce between the hostile parties, Knox left St. Andrews for Edinburgh, "not without dolour and displeasure of the few godly that were in the town, but to the great joy and pleasure of the rest;" for, "half dead" as he was, Knox had preached a political sermon every Sunday, and he was in the pulpit at St. Giles's on the last Sunday of August. {269a} As his colleague, Craig, had disgusted the brethren by his moderation and pacific temper, a minister named Lawson was appointed as Knox's coadjutor.

Late in August came the news of the St. Bartholomew massacre (August 24). Knox rose to the occasion, and, preaching in the presence of du Croc, the French ambassador, bade him tell his King that he was a murderer, and that God's vengeance should never depart from him or his house. {269b} The prophecy was amply fulfilled. Du Croc remonstrated, "but the Lords answered they could not stop the mouths of ministers to speak against themselves."

There was a convention of Protestants in Edinburgh on October 20, but lords did not attend, and few lairds were present. The preachers and other brethren in the Assembly proposed that all Catholics in the realm should be compelled to recant publicly, to lose their whole property and be banished if they were recalcitrant, and, if they remained in the country, that all subjects should be permitted, lawfully, to put them to death. ("To invade them, and every one of them, to the death.") {269c} This was the ideal, embodied in law, of the brethren in 1560. Happily they were not permitted to disgrace Scotland by a Bartholomew massacre of her own.

Mr. Hume Brown thinks that these detestable proposals "if not actually penned by Knox, must have been directly inspired by him." He does not, however, mention the demand for massacre, except as "pains and penalties for those who preached the old religion." {269d} "Without exception of persons, great or small," all were to be obliged to recant, or to be ruined and exiled, or to be massacred. Dr. M'Crie does not hint at the existence of these articles, "to be given to the Regent and Council." They included a very proper demand for the reformation of vice at home. Certainly Knox did not pen or dictate the Articles, for none of his favourite adjectives occurs in the document.

At this time Elizabeth, Leicester, and Cecil desired to hand over Queen Mary to Mar, the Regent, "to proceed with her by way of justice," a performance not to be deferred, "either for Parliament or a great Session." Very Petty Sessions indeed, if any, were to suffice for the trial of the Queen. {270} There are to be no "temporising solemnities," all are to be "stout and resolute in execution," Leicester thus writes to an unknown correspondent on October 10. Killigrew, who was to arrange the business with Mar, was in Scotland by September 19. On October 6, Killigrew writes that Knox is very feeble but still preaching, and that he says, if he is not a bishop, it is by no fault of Cecil's. "I trust to satisfy Morton," says Killigrew, "and as for John Knox, that thing, as you may see by my letter to Mr. Secretary, is done and doing daily; the people in general well bent to England, abhorring the fact in France, and fearing their tyranny."

"That thing" is not the plan for murdering Mary without trial; if Killigrew meant that he had obtained Knox's assent to that, he would not write "that thing is doing daily." Even Morton, more scrupulous than Elizabeth and Cecil, said that "there must be some kind of process" (trial, proces), attended secretly by the nobles and the ministers. The trial would be in Mary's absence, or would be brief indeed, for the prisoner was not to live three hours after crossing the Border! Others, unnamed, insisted on a trial; the Queen had never been found guilty. Killigrew speaks of "two ministers" as eager for the action, but nothing proves that Knox was one of them. While Morton and Mar were haggling for the price of Mary's blood, Mar died, on October 28, and the whole plot fell through. {271} Anxious as Knox had declared himself to be to "strike at the root," he could not, surely, be less scrupulous about a trial than Morton, though the decision of the Court was foredoomed. Sandys, the Bishop of London, advised that Mary's head should be chopped off!

On November 9, 1572, Knox inducted Mr. Lawson into his place as minister at St. Giles's. On the 13th he could not read the Bible aloud, he paid his servants, and gave his man a present, the last, in addition to his wages. On the 15th two friends came to see Knox at noon, dinner time. He made an effort, and for the last time sat at meat with them, ordering a fresh hogshead of wine to be drawn. "He willed Archibald Stewart to send for the wine so long as it lasted, for he would never tarry until it were drunken." On the 16th the Kirk came to him, by his desire; and he protested that he had never hated any man personally, but only their errors, nor had he made merchandise of the Word. He sent a message to Kirkcaldy bidding him repent, or the threatenings should fall on him and the Castle. His exertions increased his illness. There had been a final quarrel with the dying Lethington, who complained that Knox, in sermons and otherwise, charged him with saying there is "neither heaven nor hell," an atheistic position of which (see his eloquent prayer before Corrichie fight, wherein Huntly died {272a}) he was incapable. On the 16th he told "the Kirk" that Lethington's conduct proved that he really did disbelieve in God, and a future of rewards and punishments. That was not the question. The question was—Did Knox, publicly and privately, as Lethington complained, attribute to him words which he denied having spoken, asking that the witnesses should be produced. We wish that Knox had either produced good evidences, or explained why he could not produce them, or had apologised, or had denied that he spoke in the terms reported to Lethington.

James Melville says that the Rev. Mr. Lindsay, of Leith, told him that Knox bade him carry a message to Kirkcaldy in the Castle. After compliments, it ran: "He shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment, and hung on a gallows before the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life, and flee to the mercy of God." Knox added: "That man's soul is dear to me, and I would not have it perish, if I could save it." Kirkcaldy consulted Maitland, and returned with a reply which contained Lethington's last scoff at the prophet. However, Morton, when he had the chance, did hang Kirkcaldy, as in the play acted before Knox at St. Andrews, "according to Mr. Knox's doctrine." "The preachers clamoured for blood to cleanse blood." {272b}

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

Other sayings of the Reformer are reported. He repressed a lady who, he thought, wished to flatter him: "Lady, lady, the black ox has never trodden yet upon your foot!" "I have been in heaven and have possession, and I have tasted of these heavenly joys where presently I am," he said, after long meditation, beholding, as in Bunyan's allegory, the hills of Beulah. He said the Creed, which soon vanished from Scottish services; and in saying "Our Father," broke off to murmur, "Who can pronounce so holy words?" On November 24 he rose and dressed, but soon returned to bed. His wife read to him the text, "where I cast my first anchor," St. John's Gospel, chapter xvii. About half-past ten he said, "Now it is come!" and being asked for a sign of his steadfast faith, he lifted up one hand, "and so slept away without any pain." {273}

Knox was buried on November 26 in the churchyard south of St. Giles. A flat stone, inscribed J. K., beside the equestrian statue of Charles II., is reported to mark his earthly resting-place. He died as he had lived, a poor man; a little money was owed to him; all his debts were paid. His widow, two years later, married Andrew Ker of Faldonside, so notorious for levelling a pistol at the Queen on the occasion of Riccio's murder. Ker appears to have been intimate with the Reformer. Bannatyne speaks of a story of Lady Atholl's witchcraft, told by a Mr. Lundie to Knox, at dinner, "at Falsyde." This was a way of spelling Faldonside, {274} the name of Ker's place, hard by the Tweed, within a mile of Abbotsford. Probably Ker and his wife sleep in the family burying-ground, the disused kirkyard of Lindean, near a little burn that murmurs under the broad burdock leaves on its way to join the Ettrick.



APPENDIX A: ALLEGED PERFIDY OF MARY OF GUISE

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

Our earliest evidence on the matter is found in a letter to the English Privy Council, from Sir James Croft, commanding at Berwick. The letter, of May 19, is eight days later than the riots at Perth. It is not always accurately informed; Croft corrects one or two statements in later despatches, but the points corrected are not those with which we are here concerned. {275a} Neither in this nor in other English advices do I note any charge of ill faith brought against the Regent on this occasion. Croft says that, on Knox's arrival, many nobles and a multitude of others repaired to Dundee to hear him and others preach. The Regent then summoned these preachers before her to Stirling, {275b} but as they had a "train" of 5000 or 6000, she "dismissed the appearance," putting the preachers to the horn, and commanding the nobility to appear before her in Edinburgh. The "companies" then retired and wrecked monasteries at Perth. The Lords and they had previously sent Erskine of Dun to the Regent, offering to appear before her with only their household servants, to hear the preachers dispute with the clergy, if she would permit. The Regent, "taking displeasure with" Erskine of Dun, bade him begone out of her sight. He rode off (to Perth), and she had him put to the horn (as a fact, he was only fined in his recognisances as bail for one of the preachers). The riots followed his arrival in Perth.

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

Knox himself wrote two separate and not always reconcilable accounts of the first revolutionary explosion; one in a letter of June 23 to Mrs. Locke, the other in a part of Book II. of his "History," composed at some date before October 23, 1559. That portion of his "History" is an apologia for the proceedings of his party, and was apparently intended for contemporary publication. {276a}

This part of the "History," therefore, as the work of an advocate, needs to be checked, when possible, by other authorities. We first examine Knox's letter of June 23, 1559, to Mrs. Locke. He says that he arrived in Edinburgh on May 2, and, after resting for a day, went (on May 4) to the brethren assembled at Dundee. They all marched to Perth, meaning thence to accompany the preachers to their day of law at Stirling, May 10. But, lest the proceeding should seem rebellious, they sent a baron (Erskine of Dun, in fact) to the Regent, "with declaration of our minds." The Regent and Council in reply, bade the multitude "stay, and not come to Stirling . . . and so should no extremity be used, but the summons should be continued" (deferred) "till further advisement. Which, being gladly granted of us, some of the brethren returned to their dwelling- places. But the Queen and her Council, nothing mindful of her and their promise, incontinent did call" (summon) "the preachers, and for lack of their appearance, did exile and put them and their assistants to the horn. . . . " {276b}

It would be interesting to know who the Regent's Council were on this occasion. The Reformer errs when he tells Mrs. Locke that the Regent outlawed "the assisters" of the preachers. Dr. M'Crie publishes an extract from the "Justiciary Records" of May 10, in which Methuen, Christison, Harlaw, and Willock, and no others, are put to the horn, or outlawed, in absence, for breach of the Regent's proclamations, and for causing "tumults and seditions." No one else is put to the horn, but the sureties for the preachers' appearance are fined. {276c}

In his "History," Knox says that the Regent, when Erskine of Dun arrived at Stirling as an emissary of the brethren, "began to craft with him, soliciting him to stay the multitude, and the preachers also, with promise that she would take some better order." Erskine wrote to the brethren, "to stay and not to come forward, showing what promise and hope he had of the Queen's Grace's favours." Some urged that they should go forward till the summons was actually "discharged," otherwise the preachers and their companions would be put to the horn. Others said that the Regent's promises were "not to be suspected . . . and so did the whole multitude with their preachers stay. . . . The Queen, perceiving that the preachers did not appear, began to utter her malice, and notwithstanding any request made on the contrary, gave command to put them to the horn. . . ." Erskine then prudently withdrew, rode to Perth, and "did conceal nothing of the Queen's craft and falsehood." {277a}

In this version the Regent bears all the blame, nothing is said of the Council. "The whole multitude stay"—at Perth, or it may perhaps be meant that they do not come forward towards Stirling. The Regent's promise is merely that she would "take some better order." She does not here promise to postpone the summons, and refuses "any request made" to abstain from putting them to the horn. The account, therefore, is somewhat more vague than that in the letter to Mrs. Locke. Prof. Hume Brown puts it that the Regent "in her understanding with Erskine of Dun had publicly cancelled the summons of the preachers for the 10th of May," which rather overstates the case perhaps. That she should "publicly cancel" or "discharge" the summons was what a part of the brethren desired, and did not get. {277b}

We now turn to a fragmentary and anonymous "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," concerning which Prof. Hume Brown says, "Whoever the author may have been, he writes as a contemporary, or from information supplied by a contemporary . . . what inspires confidence in him is that certain of his facts not recorded by other contemporary Scottish historians are corroborated by the despatches of d'Oysel and others in Teulet." {277c}

I elsewhere {277d} give reasons for thinking that this "Historie" is perhaps the chronicle of Bruce of Earl's Hall, a contemporary gentleman of Fife. I also try to show that he writes, on one occasion, as an eye- witness.

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

This sturdy Protestant's version, which does not accuse the Regent of breaking troth, is corroborated by a Catholic contemporary, Lesley, Bishop of Ross. He says that Erskine of Dun was sent to beg the Regent not to impose a penalty on the preachers in their absence. But as soon as Dun returned and Knox learned from him that the Regent would not grant their request, he preached the sermon which provoked the devastation of the monasteries. {278a} Buchanan and Spottiswoode follow Knox, but they both use Knox's book, and are not independent witnesses.

The biographers of Knox do not quote "The Historie of the Estate of Scotland," where it touches on the beginning of the Revolution, without disparaging the Regent's honour. We have another dubious witness, Sir James Melville, who arrived on a mission from France to the Regent on June 13; he left Paris about June 1. This is the date of a letter {278b} in which Henri II. offers the Regent every assistance in the warmest terms. Melville writes, however, that in his verbal orders, delivered by the Constable in the royal presence, the Constable said, "I have intelligence that the Queen Regent has not kept all things promised to them." But Melville goes on to say that the Constable quoted d'Elboeuf's failure to reach Scotland with his fleet, as a reason for not sending the troops which were promised by Henri. As d'Elboeuf's failure occurred long after the date of the alleged conversation, the evidence of Melville is here incorrect. He wrote his "Memoirs" much later, in old age, but Henri may have written to the Regent in one sense, and given Melville orders in another. {279a}

We find that Knox's charge against the Regent is not made in our earliest information, Croft's letter of May 19: is not made by the Protestant (and, we think, contemporary) author of the "Historie," and, of course, is not hinted at by Lesley, a Catholic. We have seen throughout that Knox vilifies Mary of Guise in cases where she is blameless. On the other hand, Knox is our only witness who was at Perth at the time of the events, and it cannot be doubted that what he told Mrs. Locke was what he believed, whether correctly or erroneously. He could believe anything against Mary of Guise. Archbishop Spottiswoode says, "The author of the story" ("History") "ascribed to John Knox in his whole discourse showeth a bitter and hateful spite against the Regent, forging dishonest things which were never so much as suspected by any, setting down his own conjectures as certain truths, yea, the least syllable that did escape her in passion, he maketh it an argument of her cruel and inhuman disposition . . . " {279b} In the MS. used by Bishop Keith, {279c} Spottiswoode added, after praising the Regent, "these things I have heard my father often affirm"; he had the like testimony "from an honourable and religious lady, who had the honour to wait near her person." Spottiswoode was, therefore, persuaded that the "History" "was none of Mr. Knox his writings." In spite of this opinion, Spottiswoode, writing about 1620-35, accepts most of the hard things that Knox says of the Regent's conduct in 1559, and indeed exaggerates one or two of them; that is, as relates to her political behaviour, for example, in the affair of the broken promise of May 10. It may be urged that here Spottiswoode had the support of the reminiscences of his father, a Superintendent in the Knoxian church.



APPENDIX B: FORGERY PROCURED BY MARY OF GUISE

In the writer's opinion several of Knox's accusations of perfidy against the Regent, in 1559, are not proved, and the attempts to prove them are of a nature which need not be qualified. But it is necessary to state the following facts as tending to show that the Regent was capable of procuring a forgery against the Duke of Chatelherault. A letter attributed to him exists in the French Archives, {280a} dated Glasgow, January 25, 1560, in which the Duke curries favour with Francis II., and encloses his blank bond, un blanc scelle, offering to send his children to France. {280b} On January 28, the Regent writes from Scotland to de Noailles, then the French Ambassador to England, bidding him to mention this submission to Elizabeth, and even show the Duke's letter and blank bond, that Elizabeth may see how little he is to be trusted. Now how could the Regent, on January 28, have a letter sent by the Duke to France on January 25? She must have intercepted it in Scotland. {280c} Next, on March 15, 1560, the Duke, writing to Norfolk, denies the letter attributed to him by the French. {280d} He said that any one of a hundred Hamiltons would fight M. de Seurre (the French Ambassador who, in February, succeeded de Noailles) on this quarrel. {280e}

There exists a document, in the cipher of Throckmorton, English Ambassador in France, purporting to be a copy of a letter from the Regent to the Duc and Cardinal de Guise, dated Edinburgh, March 27, 1560. {280f} The Regent, at that date, was in Leith, not in Edinburgh Castle, where she went on April 1. In that letter she is made to say that de Seurre has "very evil misunderstood" the affair of the letter attributed to Chatelherault. She had procured "blanks" of his "by one of her servants here" (at Leith) "to the late Bishop of Ross"; the Duke's alleged letter and submission of January 25 had been "filled up" on a "blank," the Duke knowing nothing of the matter.

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



Footnotes

{0a} Inventories of Mary, Queen of Scots, p. cxxii., note 7.

{0b} Hume Brown, John Knox, ii. 320-324.

{2a} Probably Mrs. Knox died in her son's youth, and his father married again. Catholic writers of the period are unanimous in declaring that Knox had a stepmother.

{2b} Knox, Laing's edition, iv. 78.

{4} See Young's letter, first published by Professor Hume Brown, John Knox, vol. ii. Appendix, 320-324.

{5} Laing, in his Knox, vi. xxi. xxii.

{6} Knox, i. 36-40. The facts are pointed out by Professor Cowan in The Athenaeum, December 3, 1904, and had been recognised by Dr. Hay Fleming.

{7} Beza, writing in 1580, says that study of St. Jerome and St. Augustine suggested his doubts. Icones Virorum Doctrina Simul ac Pietate Illustrium.

{9} Pollen, Papal Negotiations with Mary Stuart, 428-430, 522, 524, 528.

{10} Knox, vi. 172, 173.

{12} Letter of Young to Beza. Hume Brown, John Knox, ii. 322-24.

{15a} Cf. Life of George Wishart, by the Rev. Charles Rodger, 7-12 (1876).

{15b} Maxwell, Old Dundee, 83, 84.

{17} M'Crie's Knox, 24 (1855).

{18a} "Letter to the Faithful," cf. M'Crie, Life of John Knox, 292.

{18b} Knox, vi. 229.

{19} M'Crie, 292.

{20} Dr. Hay Fleming has impugned this opinion, but I am convinced by the internal evidence of tone and style in the tract; indeed, an earlier student has anticipated my idea. The tract is described by Dr. M'Crie in his Life of Knox, 326-327 (1855).

{22} Most of the gentry of Fife were in the murder or approved of it, and the castle seems to have contained quite a pleasant country-house party. They were cheered by the smiles of beauty, and in the treasurer's accounts we learn that Janet Monypenny of Pitmilly (an estate still in the possession of her family), was "summoned for remaining in the castle, and assisting" the murderers. Dr. M'Crie cites Janet in his list of "Scottish Martyrs and Prosecutions for Heresy" (Life of Knox, 315). This martyr was a cousin, once removed, of the murdered ecclesiastic.

{23a} Knox, Laing's edition, i. 180.

{23b} Knox, i. 182. "The siege continued to near the end of January." "The truce was of treacherous purpose," i. 183.

{24} Knox, i. 203-205.

{25a} Thorpe's Calendar, i. 60; Register Privy Council, i. 57, 58; Tytler, vi. 8 (1837).

{25b} State Papers, Scotland, Thorpe, i. 61.

{25c} Bain, Calendar of Scottish Papers, 1547-69, i. I; Tytler, iii. 51 (1864).

{26a} Bain i. 2; Knox, i. 182, 183.

{26b} For the offering of the papal remission to the garrison of the castle before April 2, 1547, see Stewart of Cardonald's letter of that date to Wharton, in Bain's Calendar of Scottish Papers, 1547-69, i. 4-5.

{27a} John Knox, i. 80.

{27b} State Papers, Domestic. Addenda, Edward VI., p. 327. Lord Eure says there were twenty galleys.

{27c} Odet De Selve, Correspondence Politique, pp. 170-178.

{28} Knox, i. 201.

{30a} Leonti Strozzio, incolumitatem modo pacti, se dediderunt, writes Buchanan. Professor Hume Brown says that Buchanan evidently confirms Knox; but incolumitas means security for bare life, and nothing more. Lesley says that the terms asked were life and fortune, salvi cum fortunis, but the terms granted were but safety in life and limb, and, it seems, freedom to depart, ut soli homines integri discederent. If Lesley, a Catholic historian, is right, and if by discederent he means "go freely away," the French broke the terms of surrender.

{30b} Knox, i. 206, 228.

{33a} Lorimer, John Knox and the Church of England, 261.

{33b} Ibid., 158.

{33c} Ibid., 156, 157.

{35} Compare the preface, under the Restoration, to our existing prayer book.

{36a} Lorimer, John Knox and the Church of England, 98-136.

{36b} Knox, iii. 122.

{37a} Knox, iii. 297.

{37b} Ibid., iii. 122.

{38a} Knox, iii. 280-282.

{38b} Lorimer, i. 162-176.

{39} But, for the date, cf. Hume Brown, John Knox, i. 148; and M'Crie, 65, note 5; Knox, iii. 156.

{40a} Knox, iii. 120.

{40b} Laing, Knox, vi. pp. lxxx., lxxxi.

{40c} Pollen, The Month, September 1897.

{43} Knox, iii. 366.

{45} Lorimer, John Knox and the Church of England, 259.

{47a} Original Letters, Parker Society, 745-747; Knox, iii. 221-226.

{47b} M'Crie, 65 (1855); Knox, iii. 235.

{48} Knox, iii. 184.

{49a} Knox, iii. 309.

{49b} Ibid., iii. 328, 329.

{49c} Ibid., iii. 194.

{54} cf. Hume Brown, ii. 299, for the terms.

{56} John Knox, i. 174, 175; Corp. Ref., xliii. 337-344.

{58} For the Frankfort affair, see Laing's Knox, iv. 1-40, with Knox's own narrative, 41-49; the letters to and from Calvin, 51-68. Calvin, in his letter to the Puritans at Frankfort, writes: "In the Anglican Liturgy, as you describe it, I see many trifles that may be put up with," Prof. Hume Brown's rendering of tolerabiles ineptias. The author of the "Troubles at Frankfort" (1575) leaves out "as you describe it," and renders "In the Liturgie of Englande I see that there were manye tollerable foolishe thinges." But Calvin, though he boasts him "easy and flexible in mediis rebus, such as external rites," is decidedly in favour of the Puritans.

{60} Knox i. 244.

{62a} Knox, i. 245, note I.

{62b} Ibid., iv. 245.

{66} I conceive these to have been the arguments of the party of compromise, judging from the biblical texts which they adduced.

{67} Knox, i. 247-249.

{71a} Knox, i. 92.

{71b} Ibid., iv. 75-84.

{73} Knox; iv. 238-240.

{74} We shall see that reformers like Lord James and Glencairn seem, at this moment, to have sided with Mary of Guise.

{76a} Knox, i. 267-270.

{76b} Corpus Reformatorum, xlvi. 426.

{77a} More probably by Calvin's opinion.

{77b} Knox, iv. 248-253; i. 267-273.

{78} Stevenson, Selected MSS., pp. 69, 70 (1827); Bain, i. 585; Randolph to Cecil, January 2, 1561.

{80a} Knox, iv. 255-276.

{80b} Ibid., i. 273, 274.

{81a} Knox, i. 275, 276.

{81b} Ibid., i. 273, 274.

{83} Knox, iv. 501, 502.

{84} Knox, iv. 358. Zurich Letters, 34-36.

{85} Knox, iv. 486, 488.

{87a} Wodrow Miscellany, vol. i.

{87b} Here the "Historie of the Estate" is corroborated by the Treasurer's Accounts, recording payment to Rothesay Herald. He is summoning George Lovell, David Ferguson (a preacher, later minister of Dunfermline), and others unnamed to appear at Edinburgh on July 28, to answer for "wrongous using and wresting of the Scriptures, disputing upon erroneous opinions, and eating flesh in Lent," and at other times forbidden by Acts of Parliament (M'Crie, 359, note G). Nothing is here said about riotous iconoclasm, but Lovell had been at the hanging of an image of St. Francis as early as 1543, and in many such godly exercises, or was accused of these acts of zeal.

{87c} "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," Wodrow Miscellany, i. 53-55.

{88a} Knox, i. 301.

{88b} Knox appears (he is very vague) to date Calder's petition after Willock's second visit, which the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland" places in October 1558. Dr. M'Crie accepts that date, but finds that Knox places Calder's petition before the burning of Myln, in April 1559. Dr. M'Crie suggests that perhaps Calder petitioned twice, but deems Knox in the right. As the Reformer contradicts himself, unless there were two Calder petitions (i. 301, i. 307), he must have made an oversight.

{88c} Hume Brown, John Knox, ii. Appendix, 301-303.

{88d} Knox, i. 301-306

{89a} Knox, i. 294, 301-312. On p. 294 Knox dates the Parliament in October.

{89b} Knox, i. 309-312.

{90a} Knox, i. 312-314.

{90b} See Laing's edition, i. 320, 321.

{91} Wodrow Miscellany, i. 55.

{92a} M'Crie, Knox, 359, 360.

{92b} Knox, i. 306, 307.

{93a} Knox, i. 307.

{93b} "Historie," Wodrow Miscellany, i. 55, 56.

{93c} Knox, i. 312-314.

{94a} "Historie," Wodrow Miscellany, 56.

{94b} Melville, 76, 77 (1827).

But Professor Hume Brown appears to be misled in saying that Bettencourt, or Bethencourt, did not reach Scotland till June (John Knox, i. 344i note i), citing Forbes, i. 141. Bethencourt "passed Berwick on April 13" (For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 214) to negotiate the Scottish part in the peace, signed at Upsettlington (May 31). Bethencourt would be with the Regent by April 15, and he may have confirmed her in summoning the preachers who defied her proclamations, though, with or without his advice, she could do no less.

{95a} Pitscottie, ii. 523.

{95b} State Papers, Borders, vol. i. No. 421 MS.

{96a} Affaires Etrangeres, Angleterre, vol. xv. MS.

{96b} Forbes, 97; Throckmorton to Cecil, May 18.

{96c} For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 272.

{97} Melville, 80.

{98a} Statuta, &c. Robertson, vol. i. clv-clxii.

{98b} Book of Discipline. Knox, ii. 253, 254.

{99a} M'Crie, 360.

{99b} The Regent's account of the whole affair, as given by Francis and Mary to the Pope, is vague and mistily apologetic. (Published in French by Prof. Hume Brown, ii. 300-302.) The Regent wrote from Dunbar, July 1559, that she had in vain implored the Pope to aid her in reforming the lives of the clergy (as in 1556-57). Their negligence had favoured, though she did not know it (and she says nothing about it in 1556-57), the secret growth of heresy. Next, a public preacher arose in one town (probably Paul Methuen in Dundee) introducing the Genevan Church. The Regent next caused the bishops to assemble the clergy, bidding them reform their lives, and then repress heresy. She also called an assembly of the Estates, when most of the Lords, hors du conseil et a part, demanded "a partial establishment of the new religion." This was refused, and the Provincial Council (of March 1559) was called for reform of the clergy. Nothing resulted but scandal and popular agitation. Public preachers arose in the towns. The Regent assembled her forces, and the Lords and Congregation began their career of violence.

{100} As to Knox's account of this reforming Provincial Council (Knox, i. 291, 292), Lord Hailes calls it "exceedingly partial and erroneous . . . no zeal can justify a man for misrepresenting an adversary." Bold language for a judge to use in 1769! Cf. Robertson, Statuta, i. clxii, note I.

{101} Knox, v. 15-17.

{102a} Knox, v. 207, 208.

{102b} Ibid., v. 229.

{102c} Ibid., v. 420, 421.

{102d} Ibid., v. 495-523. [This footnote is provided in the original book but isn't referenced in the text. DP.]

{104} John Knox and the Church of England, 215-218.

{105} Knox, ii. 460, 461. We return to this point.

{107} Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brit. Catalogus Poster., p. 219 (1559). Knox, i. 258-261.

{108a} Dieppe, April 10-April 22, 1559. Knox, vi. 15-21.

{108b} Desmarquets, Mem. Chronol. Jour. l'Hist, de Dieppe, i. 210.

{109a} Corp. Ref., xlv. (Calv., xvii.) 541.

{109b} Naissance de l'Heresie a Dieppe, Rouen, 1877, ed. Lesens.

{111} Knox, i. 321-323.

{112} Knox, vi. 23.

{113a} Corpus Reformatorum, xlvi. 609, xlvii. 409-411, August 13, 1561.

{113b} The learned Dr. M'Crie does not refer to this letter to Mrs. Locke, but observes: "None of the gentry or sober part of the congregation were concerned in this unpremeditated tumult; it was wholly confined to the lowest of the inhabitants" (M'Crie's Life of Knox, 127, 1855). Yet an authority dear to Dr. M'Crie, "The Historie of the Estate of Scotland," gives the glory, not to the lowest of the inhabitants, but to "the brethren." Professor Hume Brown blames "the Perth mob," and says nothing of the action of the "brethren," as described to Mrs. Locke by Knox. John Knox, ii. 8.

{117} Theses of Erastus. Rev. Robert Lee. Edinburgh, 1844.

{120} Knox, i. 341,342; vi. 24. Did the brethren promise nothing but the evacuation of Perth?

{121a} "Historie," Wodrow Miscellany, i. 58.

{121b} Knox, i. 343, 344. The Congregation are said to have left Perth on May 29. They assert their presence there on May 31, in their Band.

{122} Edinburgh Burgh Records.

{123a} But see Knox, i. 347-349. Is a week (June 4 to June 11) accidentally omitted?

{123b} Writing on June 23, Knox dates the "Reformation" "June 14." His dates, at this point, though recorded within three weeks, are to me inexplicable. Knox, vi. 25.

{124} Keith, i. 265, note.

{125a} Lesley, ii. 443, Scottish Text Society.

{125b} For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 367.

{126a} Knox, vi. 26.

{126b} Ibid., i. 355.

{126c} Wodrow Miscellany, i. 60.

{127a} Knox, vi. 26.

{127b} See Scottish Historical Review, January 1905, 121-122, 128-130.

{131} Bain, i. 215.

{133a} For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 278. Erroneously dated "May 24" (?).

{133b} Bain, i. 216-218; For. Cal. Eliz., ut supra, 335, 336.

{133c} Archives Etrangeres, Angleterre, vol. xv. MS.

{133d} For. Cal. Eliz., 336; Knox, i. 359, 360.

{134} Knox, i. 360-362.

{135a} Knox dates the entry of the Reformers into Edinburgh on June 29. But he wrote to Mrs. Locke from Edinburgh on June 25, probably a misprint. The date June 29 is given in the "Historie." Knox dates a letter to Cecil, "Edinburgh, June 28." The Diurnal of Occurrents dates the sack of monasteries in Edinburgh June 28.

{135b} Wodrow Miscellany, i. 62; Knox, i. 366, 367, 370.

{135c} Knox, i. 363; cf. Keith, i. 213, 214; Spottiswoode, i. 280, 281.

{136a} Knox, i. 363-365; For. Cal. Eliz., 337.

{136b} Teulet, i. 338-340.

{137a} Bain, i. 218; For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 339. 340.

{137b} Knox, vi. 45.

{138} In Dr. Hay Fleming's The Scottish Reformation (p. 57), he dates the Regent's proclamation July 1. He omits the charge that, as proof of their disloyalty, "they daily receive Englishmen with messages, and send the like into England" (Knox, i. p. 364). "The narrative of the proclamation, Knox says, is untrue," Dr. Hay Fleming remarks; but as to the dealing with England, the Reformer confessed to it in his "History," Book III., when he could do so with safety.