CHAPTER II

UNDER QUEEN MARY

When the Parliament which did these great things was over, the newly-established Kirk began to labour at its own development, supplying as far as was possible ministers to the more important centres. There were but thirteen available in all according to the lists of those appointed to independent charges: and though they no doubt were supplemented by various of the laymen who had already been authorised to read prayers and preach in the absence of other qualified persons—one of whom, Erskine of Dun, became one of the superintendents of the new organisation—the clerical element must have been very small in comparison with the number of the faithful and the power and influence accorded to the preachers. When these indispensable arrangements had been made the chiefs of the Reformers began to draw up the Book of Discipline,—a compendium of the Constitution of the Church establishing her internal order, the provisions to be made for her, her powers in dealing with the people in general, and special sinners in particular,—as the Confession of Faith was of her doctrines and belief. But this was a much harder morsel for the lords to swallow. Many a stout spirit of the Congregation had held manfully for the Reformed faith and escaped with delight from the exactions and corruptions of the Romish clergy who yet had not schooled his mind to give up the half of his living, the fat commendatorship or priory which had been obtained for him by the highest influence, and upon which he had calculated as a lawful provision for himself and his family. One would have supposed that the meddling and keen supervision of every act of life, which was involved in the Church's stern claim of discipline, would also have alarmed and revolted a body of men not all conformed to the purest models of morality. But this seems to have troubled them little in comparison with the necessity of giving up their share of Church lands and ecclesiastical wealth generally, in order to provide for the preachers, and the needs of education and charity. "Everything that repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mockage 'devout imaginations,'" says Knox: and it was no doubt Lethington from whose quiver this winged word came, with so many more.



A number of the lords, however, subscribed to the Book of Discipline though with reluctance, but some, and among them several of the most staunch supporters of the Reformation, held back. Knox had himself been placed in an independent position by his congregation, the citizens of Edinburgh, and he was therefore more free to press stipulations which in no way could be supposed to be for his own interest: but he evidently had not taken into account the strong human disposition to keep what has been acquired and the extreme practical difficulty of persuading men to a sacrifice of property. In other matters too there were drawbacks not sufficiently realised. There can be no grander ideal than that of a theocracy, a commonwealth entirely ruled and guided by sacred law: but when it is brought to practice even by the most enlightened, and men's lives are subjected to the keen inspection of an ecclesiastical board new to its functions, and eager for perfection, which does not disdain the most minute detail, nor to listen to the wildest rumours, the high ideal is apt to fall into the most intolerable petty tyranny. And notwithstanding the high exaltation of many minds, and the wonderful intellectual and emotional force which was expended every day in that pulpit of St. Giles's, swaying as with great blasts and currents of religious feeling the minds of the great congregation that filled the aisles of the cathedral, it is to be doubted whether Edinburgh was a very agreeable habitation in those days of early fervour, when the Congregation occupied the chief place everywhere, and men's thoughts were not as yet distracted by the coming of the Queen. During this period there occurs a curious and most significant story of an Edinburgh mob and riot, which might be placed by the side of the famous Porteous mob of later days, and which throws a somewhat lurid light upon the record of this most triumphant moment of the early Reformation. The Papists and bishops, Knox says, had stirred up the rasckall multitude to "make a Robin Hood." We may remark that he never changes his name for the mob, of which he is always sternly contemptuous. When it destroys convents and altars he flatters it (though he acknowledges sometimes a certain ease in finding the matter thus settled for him) with no better a title. He was no democrat though the most independent of citizens. The vulgar crowd had at no time any attraction for him.

It seems no very great offence to "make a Robin Hood": but it is evident this popular festival had been always an occasion of rioting and disorderly behaviour since it was condemned by various acts of previous Parliaments. It will strike the reader, however, with dismay and horror to find that one of the ringleaders having been taken, he was condemned to be hanged, and a gibbet erected near the Cross to carry this sentence into execution. The Diurnal of Occurrents gives by far the fullest and most graphic account of what followed. The trades rose in anxious tumult, at once angry and terrified.

"The craftsmen made great solicitations at the hands of the provost, John Knox minister, and the baillie, to have gotten him relieved, promising that he would do anything possible to be done saving his life—who would do nothing but have him hanged. And when the time of the poor man's hanging approached, and that the poor man was come to the gibbet with the ladder upon which the said cordwainer should have been hanged, the craftsman's children (apprentices?) and servants past to armour; and first they housed Alexander Guthrie and the provost and baillies in the said Alexander's writing booth, and syne come down again to the Cross, and dang down the gibbet and brake it in pieces, and thereafter past to the tolbooth which was then steekit: and when they could not apprehend the keys thereof they brought hammers and dang up the said tolbooth door perforce, the provost, baillies, and others looking thereupon; and when the said door was broken up ane part of them passed in the same, and not only brought the said condemned cordwainer forth of the said tolbooth, but also all the remaining persons being thereintill: and this done they passed up the Hie gate, to have past forth at the Nether Bow."

The shutting up of the provost and bailie in the "writing booth"—one of the wooden structures, no doubt, which hung about St. Giles's, as round so many other cathedrals, where a crowd of little industries were collected about the skirts of the great church, the universal centre of life—has something grimly comic in it, worthy of an Edinburgh mob. Guthrie's booth must have been at the west end, facing the Tolbooth, and the impotence of the authorities, thus compelled to look on while the apprentices and young men in their leather aprons, armed with the long spears which were kept ready in all the shops for immediate use, broke down the prison doors with their hammers and let the prisoners go free—must have added a delightful zest to the triumph of the rebels, who had so lately pleaded humbly before them for the victim's life, but in vain. The provost was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a name little suitable for such a dilemma. When the rude mob, with their shouts and cries, had turned their backs, the imprisoned authorities were able to break out and take shelter in the empty Tolbooth; but when the crowd surged up again, finding the gates closed at the Nether Bow, into the High Street, a scuffle arose, a new "Clear the Causeway," though the defenders of order kept within the walls of the Tolbooth, and thence shot at the rioters, who returned their fire with hagbuts and stones—from three in the afternoon till eight o'clock in the evening, "and never ane man of the town stirred to defend their provost and baillies." Finally the Constable of the Castle was sent for, who made peace, the craftsmen only laying down their arms on condition not only of absolute immunity from punishment for the day's doings, but with an undertaking that all previous actions against them should be stopped, and their masters made to receive them again without grudge or punishment—clearly a complete victory for the rioters. This extorted guarantee was proclaimed at the Cross at nine o'clock on the lingering July night, in the soft twilight which departs so unwillingly from northern skies; and a curious scene it must have been, with the magistrates still cooped up behind the barred windows of the Tolbooth, the triumph of the mob filling the streets with uproar, and spectators no doubt at all the windows, story upon story, looking on, glad, can we doubt? of something to see which was riot without being bloodshed. John Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such as it was.

"Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no other end but to be a patron to their impiety. For he had before made intercession for William Harlow, James Fussell, and others that were convict of the former tumult. They proudly said 'that if it was not stayed both he and the Baillies should repent it.' Whereto he answered 'He would not hurt his conscience for any fear of man.'"

It was not perhaps the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a society which could think such a punishment reasonable is very curious.

Equally curious is the incidental description of how "the Papists" crowded into Edinburgh after this, apparently swaggering about the streets, "and began to brag as that they would have defaced the Protestants." When the Reformers perceived the audacity of their opponents, they replied by a similar demonstration: "the brethren assembled together and went in such companies, and that in peaceable manner, that the Bishops and their bands forsook the causeway." Many a strange sight must the spectators at the high windows, the old women at their "stairheads," from which they inspected everything, have seen—the bishops one day, the ministers another, and John Knox, were it shade or shine, crossing the High Street with his staff every day to St. Giles's, and seeing everything, whatever occurred on either side of him, with those keen eyes.

This tumult, however, was almost the end of the undisturbed reign of the Congregation. In August, Mary Stewart, with all the pomp that her poor country could muster for her, arrived in a fog, as so many lesser people have done, on her native shores; and henceforward the balance of power was strangely disturbed. The gravest of the lords owned a certain divergence from the hitherto unbroken claims of religious duty, and a hundred softnesses and forbearances stole in, which were far from being according to the Reformer's views. The new reign began with a startling test of loyalty to conviction, which apparently had not been anticipated, and which came with a shock upon the feelings even of those who loved the Queen most. The first Sunday which Mary spent in Holyrood, preparations were made for mass in the chapel, probably with no foresight of the effect likely to be produced. Upon this a sudden tumult arose in the very ante-chambers. "Shall that idol be suffered again to take its place in this realm? It shall not," even the courtiers said to each other. The Master of Lindsay, that grim Lindsay of the Byres, so well known among Mary's adversaries, standing with some gentlemen of Fife in the courtyard, declared that "the idolatrous priests should die the death." In this situation of danger the Lord James, afterwards so well known as Murray, the Queen's brother, put himself in the breach. He "took upon him to keep the door of the chapel." There was no man in Scotland more true to the faith, and none more esteemed in the Congregation. He excused himself after for this act of true charity by saying that his object was to prevent any Scot from entering while the mass was proceeding: but Knox divined that it was to protect the priest, and preserve silence and sanctity for the service, though he disapproved it, that Murray thus intervened. The Reformers did not appreciate the good brother's devotion. Knox declared that he was more afraid of one mass than of ten thousand armed men, and the arches of St. Giles's rang with his alarm, his denunciation, his solemn warning. He recounts, however, how by degrees this feeling softened among those who frequented the Court. "There were Protestants found," he says, "that were not ashamed at tables and other open places to ask 'Why may not the Queen have her mass, and the form of her religion? What can that hurt us, or our religion?' until by degrees this indulgence rose to a warmer and stronger sentiment. 'The Queen's mass and her priests will we maintain: this hand and this rapier shall fight in their defence.'" One can well imagine the chivalrous youth or even the grave baron, with generous blood in his veins, who, with hand upon the hilt of the too ready sword, would dare even Knox's frown with this outcry; and in these days it is the champion of the Queen and of her conscience who secures our sympathy. But the Reformer had at least the cruel force of logic on his side, the severe logic which decreed the St. Bartholomew. To stamp out the previous faith was the only policy on either side.

Then, as now, we think, there are few even of those who are forced to believe that the after-accusations against Queen Mary were but too clearly proved, who will not look back with a compunctious tenderness upon that early and bright beginning of her career. So strong a sense of remorseful pity, and the intolerableness of such a fate, overcomes the spectator, that he who stands by and looks on, knowing all that is coming, can scarcely help feeling that even he, unborn, might send a shout from out the dim futurity to warn her. She came with so much hope, so eagerly, to her new kingdom, so full of pleasure and interest and readiness to hear and see, and to be pleased with everything—even John Knox, that pestilent preacher, of whom she must have heard so much; he who had written the book against women which naturally made every woman indignant yet curious, keenly desirous to see him, to question him, to put him on his defence. I think great injustice has been done to both in the repeated interviews in which the sentimentalist perceives nothing but a harsh priest upbraiding a lovely woman and making her weep; and the sage of sterner mettle sees an almost sublime sight, a prophet unmoved by the meretricious charms of a queen of hearts. Neither of these exaggerated views will survive, we believe, a simple reading of the interviews themselves, especially in Knox's account of them. He is not merciless nor Mary silly. One would almost fancy that she liked the encounter which matched her own quick wit against the tremendous old man with his "blast against women," his deep-set fiery eyes, his sovereign power to move and influence the people. He was absolutely a novel personage to Mary: their conversations are like a quick glancing of polished weapons—his, too heavy for her young brilliancy of speech and nature, crushing with ponderous force the light-flashing darts of question; but she, no way daunted, comprehending him, meeting full in the face the prodigious thrust. A brave young creature of twenty confronting the great Reformer, in single combat so to speak, and retiring from the field, not triumphant indeed, but with all the honours of war, and a blessing half extorted from him at the end, she secures a sympathy which the weaker in such a fight does not always obtain, but which we cannot deny to her in her bright intelligence and brave defence of her faith. When his friends asked him, after this first interview, what he thought of the Queen, he gave her credit for "a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart." But curiously enough, though the effect is not unprecedented, the faithfulness of genius baulks the prejudices of the writer, and there is nowhere a brighter or more genial representation of Mary than that which is to be found in a history full of abuse of her and vehement vituperation. She is "mischievous Marie," a vile woman, a shameless deceiver; every bad name that can be coined by a mediaeval fancy, not unlearned in such violences; but when he is face to face with this woman of sin it is not in Knox to give other than a true picture, and that—apart from the grudging acknowledgment of her qualities and indication of evil intentions divined—is almost always an attractive one.

He, too, shows far from badly in the encounter. In this case, as in so many others, the simple record denuded of all gloss gives at once a much better and we do not doubt much more true representation of the two remarkable persons involved, than when loaded with explanations, either from other people or from themselves. It cannot be said that Knox is just to Mary in the opinions he expresses of her, as he is in the involuntary picture which his inalienable truthfulness to fact forces from him. It must be remembered, however, that his history was written after the disastrous story had advanced nearly to its end, and when the stamp of crime (as Knox and so many more believed) had thrown a sinister shade upon all her previous life. Looking back upon the preliminaries which led to such wild confusion and misery, it was not unnatural that a man so absolute in judgment should perceive in the most innocent bygone details indications of depravity. It is one (whether good or bad we will not say) consequence of the use and practice of what may, to use a modern word, be called society, that men are less disposed to believe in the existence of monstrous and hideous evil, that they do not attach an undue importance to trifles nor take levity for vice. Knox had all the limitations of mind natural to his humble origin, and his profession, and the special disadvantage which must attach to the habit of investigating by means of popular accusation and gossip, problematical cases of immorality. He was able to believe that the Queen, when retired into her private apartments with her ladies, indulged in "skipping not very comelie for honest women," and that all kinds of brutal orgies went on at court—incidents certainly unnecessary to prove her after-guilt, and entirely out of keeping with all the surrounding associations, as if Holyrood had been a changehouse in "Christ Kirk on the green." It did not offend his sense of the probable or likely that such insinuations should be made, and he recorded them accordingly not as insinuations but as facts, in a manner only possible to that conjoint force of ignorance and scorn which continually makes people of one class misconceive and condemn those of another. Dancing was in those days the most decorous of performances: but if Mary had been proved to have danced a stately pas seul in a minuet, it was to Knox, who knew no better, as if she had indulged in the wildest bobbing of a country fair—nay, he would probably have thought the high-skipping rural performer by far the more innocent of the two.

This is but an instance of many similar misconceptions with which the colour of the picture is heightened. An impassioned spectator looking on with a foregone conclusion in his mind, never apparently able to convince himself that vice does not always wear her trappings, but is probably much more dangerous when she observes the ordinary modesties of outward life, is always apt to be misled in this way. The state of affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us—a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied her to Scotland, was one of the young men concerned, along with Earl Bothwell and another. "The horror of this fact and the raretie of it commoved all godlie hearts," said Knox—and yet there was no lack of scandals in that age notwithstanding the zeal of purification. When the courtiers, alarmed by this commination (in which every kind of spiritual vengeance upon the realm and its rulers was denounced), asked, "Who durst avow it?" the grim Lindsay replied, "A thousand gentlemen within Edinburgh." Yet if Edinburgh was free from disorders of this kind, it was certainly far from free of other contentions. The proclamations from the Cross during Mary's brief reign give us the impression of being almost ceaseless. The Queen's Majestie proclaimed by the heralds now one decree, now another, with a crowd hastily forming to every blast of the trumpet: and the little procession in their tabards, carrying a moving patch of bright colour and shining ornament up all the long picturesque line of street, both without and within the city gates, was of almost daily occurrence. It was some compensation at least for the evils of an uncertain rule to have that delightful pageant going on for ever. Sometimes there would arise a protest, and one of the lords, all splendid in his jewelled bonnet, would step forward to the Lord Lyon and "take instruments and crave extracts," according to the time-honoured jargon of law; while from his corner window perhaps John Knox looked out, his eager pen already drawn to answer, the tumultuous impassioned sentences rushing to his lips.

When it was found that no punishment was to follow that "enormitie and fearful attemptal," but that "nightly masking" and riotous behaviour continued, some of the lords took the matter in their own hands, and a great band known as "my Lord Duke his friends" took the causeway to keep order in the town. When the news was brought to Earl Bothwell that the Hamiltons were "upon the gait," there were vows made on his side that "the Hamiltons should be driven not only out of the town but out of the country." The result, however, of this sudden surging up of personal feud to strengthen the bitterness of the quarrel between licence and repression, was that the final authorities were roused to make the fray an affair of State; and Murray and Huntly were sent from the abbey with their companies to stop the impending struggle. These sudden night tumults, the din of the struggle and clashing of the swords, the gleaming torches of the force who came to keep order, were sights very familiar to Edinburgh. But this fray brings upon us, prominent in the midst of the nightly brawls, the dark and ominous figure whose trace in history is so black, so brief, and so disastrous—once only had he appeared clearly before, when he intercepted in the interest of the Queen Regent the money sent from England to the Congregation. Now it is in a very different guise. Bothwell, as probably the ringleader in the disorders of the young nobles, was apparently the only person punished. He was confined to his own lodging, and it was apparently at this time that he sought the intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview, which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's object was not entirely of this pious kind. He informed Knox that he had offended the Earl of Arran, and that he was most anxious to recover that gentleman's favour, on the ground, apparently, that a feud with so great a personage compelled him to maintain a great retinue, "a number of wicked and unprofitable men, to the utter destruction of my living."

Knox received with unusual favour this petition for his intervention, and for (to the reader) an unexpected reason: "Albeit to this hour," he said, "it hath not chanced me to speak to your lordship face to face, yet have I borne a good mind to your honour, and have been sorry in my heart of the troubles that I have heard you to be involved in. For, my lord, my grandfather, goodsire and father, have served your lordship's predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards; and this is part of the obligation of our Scottish kindness." He goes on naturally to exhort his visitor to complete repentance and "perfyte reconciliation with God;" but ends by promising his good offices for the wished-for reconciliation with man. In this mediation Knox was successful: and as the extraordinary chance would have it, it was at the Kirk of Field, doomed to such dismal association for ever with Bothwell's name, that the meeting with Arran, under the auspices of Knox—strange conjunction!—took place, and friendship was made between the two enemies. Knox made them a little oration as they embraced each other, exhorting them to "study that amitie may ensure all former offences being forgotten."

This is strange enough when one remembers the terrible tragedy which was soon to burst these walls asunder; but stranger still was to follow. The two adversaries thus reconciled came to the sermon together next day, and there was much rejoicing over the new penitent. But four days after, Arran, with a distracted countenance, followed Knox home after the preaching, and calling out "I am treacherously betrayed," burst into tears. He then narrated with many expressions of horror the cause of his distress. Bothwell had made a proposal to him to carry off the Queen and place her in Dunkeld Castle in Arran's hands (who was known to be half distraught with love of Mary), and to kill Murray, Lethington, and the others that now misguided her, so that he and Arran should rule alone. The agitation of the unfortunate young man, his wild looks, his conviction that he was himself ruined and shamed for ever, seem to have enlightened Knox at once as to the state of his mind. Arran sent letters all over the country—to his father, to the Queen, to Murray—repeating this strange tale, but soon betrayed by the endless delusions which took possession of him that his mind was entirely disordered. The story remains one of those historical puzzles which it is impossible to solve. Was there truth in it—a premature betrayal of the scheme which afterwards made Bothwell infamous? did this wild suggestion drive Arran's mind, never too strong, off the balance? or was it some strange insight of madness into the other's dark spirit? These are questions which no one will ever be able to answer. It seems to have caused much perturbation in the Court and its surroundings for the moment, but is not, strangely enough, ever referred to when events quicken and Bothwell shows himself as he was in the madman's dream.

The chief practical question on which Knox's mind and his vigorous pen were engaged during this early period of Mary's reign was the all-important question to the country and Church of the provision for the maintenance of ministers, for education, and for the poor—the revenues, in short, of the newly-established Church, these three objects being conjoined together as belonging to the spiritual dominion. The proposal made in the Book of Discipline, ratified and confirmed by the subscription of the lords, was that the tithes and other revenues of the old Church, apart from all the tyrannical additions which had ground the poor (the Uppermost Cloth, Corpse present, Pasch offerings, etc.), should be given over to the Congregation for the combined uses above described. This in principle had been conceded, though in practice it was extremely hard to extract those revenues from the strong secular hands into which in many cases they had fallen, and which had not even ceased to exact the Corpse present, etc. The Reformers had strongly urged the necessity of having the Book of Discipline ratified by the Queen on her arrival; but this suggestion had been set aside even by the severest of the lords as out of place for the moment. To such enlightened critics as Lethington the whole book was a devout imagination, a dream of theorists never to be realised. The Church, however, with Knox at her head, was bent upon securing this indispensable provision, though it may well be supposed that now, with not only the commendators and pensioners but the bishops themselves and other ecclesiastical functionaries, inspirited and encouraged by the Queen's favour, and hoping that the good old times might yet come back, it was more difficult than ever to get a hearing for their claim. And great as was the importance of a matter involving the very existence of the new ecclesiastical economy, it was, even in the opinion of the wisest, scarcely so exciting as the mass in the Queen's chapel, against which the ministers preached, and every careful burgher shook his head; although the lords who came within the circle of the Court were greatly troubled, knowing not how to take her religious observances from the Queen, they who had just at the cost of years of conflict gained freedom for their own. On one occasion when a party of those who had so toiled and struggled together during all the troubled past were met in the house of one of the clerk registers, the question was discussed between them whether subjects might interfere to put down the idolatry of their prince—when all the nobles took one side, and John Knox, his colleagues, and a humble official or two were all that stood on the other. As a manner of reconciling the conflicting opinions Knox was commissioned to put the question to the Church of Geneva, and to ask what in the circumstances described the Church there would recommend to be done. But the question was never put, being transferred to Lethington's hands, then back again to those of Knox, perhaps a mere expedient to still an unprofitable discussion rather than a serious proposal.

While these questions were being hotly and angrily discussed on all sides, the preachers and their party growing more and more pertinacious, the lords impatient, angry, chafed and fretted beyond bearing by the ever-recurring question in which they were no doubt conscious, with an additional prick of irritation, that they were abandoning their own side, Mary, still fearing no evil, very conciliatory to all about her, and entirely convinced no doubt of winning the day, went lightly upon her way, hunting, hawking, riding, making long journeys about the kingdom, enjoying a life which, if more sombre and poor outwardly, was far more original, unusual, and diverting than the luxurious life of the French Court under the shadow of a malign and powerful mother-in-law. It did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman, her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the Church in retaliation. The war of letters, addresses, proclamations, which arose once more between the contending parties is wonderful in an age which might have been thought more given to the sword than the pen. But it at last became evident that something must be done in one way or the other to stop the mouth of the indomitable Knox, with whom were all the central mass of the people, not high enough to be moved by the influences of the Court, not low enough to fluctuate with every fickle popular fancy. Finally it was decided that the Queen should issue a decree for a valuation of all ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland—a necessary preliminary measure, but turned into foolishness by the stipulation that these possessions should be divided into three parts, two to remain with the present possessors, while the remaining portion should be divided between the ministers and herself. This proposed arrangement, with which naturally every one was discontented, called forth a flight of furious jests. "Good-morrow, my lords of the Twa-pairts," said Huntly to the array, spiritual and secular, who were to retain the lion's share; while, on the other hand, Knox in the pulpit denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion shall be."—"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge of this hated partition—"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive the Controller."

About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and railing, but nature passes nurture with you."—"I will neither change nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says the preacher. These amenities belonged to the period. But the arguments seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the Romish ceremonies attached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.

It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district, always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards, the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two previous interviews had taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject, and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his sermons—a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and waiting upon the Court."—"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn, "Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above measour"—a most characteristic reply.



Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven, to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish (the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact that he and his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this controversy; she kept to her point—the vindication of her own authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself "somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air, boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the lochs and streams—for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"—setting out for the farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting to penetrate what were his thoughts as he was rowed across the loch at a more reasonable hour, when the sunshine shone on every ripple of the water, and the green hills lay basking in the light. Did he look with jealous eyes, and wonder whether the grey walls among the trees on St. Serf's isle were giving shelter to some idolatrous priest? or was his heart invaded by the beauty of the morning, the heavenly quiet, the murmur of soft sound? His mind was heavy we know with cares for the Church, fears for the stability of the Reformation itself, forebodings of punishment and cursings more habitual to his thoughts, and perhaps more congenial to the time, than prosperity and blessing. It might be even that a faint apprehension (not fear, for in his own person Knox had little occasion for fear even had he been of a timorous nature) of further trouble with the Queen overclouded his aspect: and if he caught a glimpse of the ladies and their cavaliers on the mainland, the joyous cavalcade would rouse no sympathetic pleasure, so sure was he that their frolics and youthful pleasure were leading to misery and doom—in which, alas! he was too sooth a prophet.

But when Knox met the Queen's Majestie "be-west Kinross," Mary all bright with exercise and pleasure had forgotten, or else had no mind to remember, the offence of the previous night. She began to talk to him of ordinary matters, of Ruthven who had (save the mark!)—dark Ruthven not many years removed from that dreadful scene in the closet at Holyrood—offered her a ring, and other such lively trifles. She then turned to more serious discourse, warning Knox against Alexander Gordon, titular Bishop of Athens, "who was most familiar with the said John in his house and at his table," and whose professions of faith seemed so genuine that he was about to be made Superintendent of Dumfries. "If you knew him as well as I do, you would never promote him to that office nor to any other within your Kirk," she said. "Thereintil was not the Queen deceived," says Knox, though without any acknowledgment of the service she did the Church: for on her hint he caused further inquiries to be made, and foiled the Bishop. Again, as so often, a picture arises before our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse, perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning aside from the attendants to tell Knox of the new troubles which had broken out in the house of Argyle between the Earl and his wife, who was Mary's illegitimate sister. The Reformer had already settled a quarrel between this pair, and the Queen begged him to interfere again, to write to Argyle and smooth the matter over if possible. Then, the time having now arrived when she must dismiss him, the field waiting for her and the sport suspended, Mary turned again for a parting word.

"And now," said she, "as touching our reasoning yesternight I promise to do as ye required. I sall cause summon the offenders, and ye shall know that I shall minister justice."

"I am assured then," said he, "that ye shall please God and enjoy rest and prosperity within your realm; which to your Majesty is more profitable than all the Pope's power can be."

We have heard enough and to spare about Mary's tears and the severity of Knox—here is a scene in which for once there is no severity, but everything cheerful, radiant, and full of hope. Was there in all Christendom a more hopeful princess, more gifted, more understanding, more wise? for it was not only that she had the heart to take (or seem to take) in a very hard matter the advice of the exasperating Reformer, entirely inaccessible to reason on that point at least as he was—but to give it, and that in a matter of real use to himself and his party. Was it all dissembling as Knox believed? or was there any possibility of public service and national advantage, and as happy and prosperous a life as was possible to a queen, before her when she turned smiling upon the strand and waved her hand to him as he rode away? Who can tell? That little tower of Lochleven, that dark water between its pastoral hills, had soon so different a tale to tell.



Had Mary deserted her faith as it would have been such admirable policy to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to do—would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had little part in the woes of Mary. Had there been no Darnley or Bothwell in her path, had it been in her nature to take that wise resolution of Elizabeth's, wise for every woman who has great duties and position of her own, how wonderfully everything might have been changed! Such reflections, however, are very futile, though they are strangely fascinating.

Knox wrote to Argyle immediately after with that plain speaking in which he delighted, and made the Earl very angry. It might well have been part of Mary's "craft," knowing that he was sure to do this, to embroil him with her brother-in-law. And she prosecuted her bishops to save them from the Westland lords, and imprisoned them gently to keep them out of harm's way. Neither of these acts was very successful, and it would seem that the mollifying impression that had been made upon Knox soon died away; for when the Queen opened the next Parliament he speaks of her splendour and that of her train in words more like those of a peevish scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers; but the silken trains that swept the ground, the wonderful clear starching of the delicate ruffs, the embroidered work of pearls and gems which the fashion of the time demanded, were but slight causes to draw forth the flaming sword. And that Parliament was very unsatisfactory to Knox and his friends; they tried to bring in a sumptuary law; they endeavoured to have immorality recognised as crime, and subjected to penalties as such; and above all, they attempted to obtain the ratification of various matters of discipline upon which Knox so pressed that the quarrel rose high between him and Murray, and there ensued a breach and lasting coolness—Murray being as unwilling to press Queen Mary into measures she disliked, as Knox was determined that only by doing so was God's vengeance to be averted. When the Parliament was over the preacher made his usual commentary upon it in the pulpit; warning the lords what miseries were sure to follow from their carelessness, and discussing the chances of the Queen's marriage with much freedom and boldness. Once more, though with more reason, was God's vengeance invoked. "This, my lords, will I say (note the day and bear witness after), whensoever the Nobilities of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus, consents that ane infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be head to your Soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm." This sermon was reported to Mary with aggravations, though it was offensive enough without any aggravations; and once more he was summoned to the presence. The Queen was "in a vehement furie," deeply offended, and in her nervous exasperation unable to refrain from tears, a penalty of weakness which is one of the most painful disabilities of women. "What have ye to do with my marriage?" she cried again and again, with that outburst which Knox describes somewhat brutally as "owling." His own bearing was manly though dogged. Naturally he did not withdraw an inch, but repeated to her the scope of his sermon with amplifications, while the gentler Erskine of Dun who accompanied him endeavoured to soothe the paroxysm of exasperated impatience and pain which Mary could not subdue, and for which no doubt she scorned herself.

"The said John stood still without any alteration of countenance, while that the Queen gave place to her inordinate passion; and in the end he said, 'Madam, in God's presence I speak, I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majestie's weeping. But seeing that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain, albeit unwillingly, your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my conscience or betray my Commonwealth through my silence.'"

He was ordered to withdraw after this, and retired proud and silent to the ante-room where he had immediate proof what it was to lose the royal favour. Hitherto he had been, it is clear, a not unwelcome visitor: to Mary an original, something new in prickly opposition and eloquence, holding head against all her seductions, yet haply, at Lochleven at least, not altogether unmoved by them, and always interesting to her quick wit and intelligence; and Maister John had many friends among the courtiers. But now while he waited the Queen's pleasure, not knowing perhaps if she might not send him to the Castle or the Tolbooth in her wrath, all his fine acquaintances forsook him. He stood, "the said John," for an hour in that bustling ante-room, "as one whom men had never seen," only Lord Ochiltree who had come to Holyrood with him, and whose daughter he was about to marry, giving any sign of acquaintance to the disgraced preacher. And Knox was human: he loved the cold shade as little as any man, and the impertinences of all those butterfly courtiers moved him as such a man ought not to have been moved. He burst out suddenly upon the ladies who sat and whispered and tittered among themselves (no doubt) at his discomfiture. He would not have us think even then that his mind was disturbed; he merely said—

"Oh fayr Ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven with all this gay gear! But fie upon that Knave Death that will come whether we will or not. And when he has laid on his arrest the foul worms will be busy with this flesh be it never so fayre and so tender, and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can neither carry with it gold garnissing, tarjetting, pearls, nor precious stones!"

Knox was never called to the royal presence more, nor did Mary ever forgive him the exhibition of feminine weakness into which his severity had driven her. It was intolerable, no doubt, to her pride to have been betrayed into those tears, to have seen through them the same immovable countenance which had yielded to none of her arguments and cared nothing for her anger, and to have him finally compare her to his own boys whom his own hands corrected—the blubbering of schoolboys to the tears of a queen! There is perhaps always a mixture of the tragi-comic in every such scene, and this humiliating comparison, obtusely intended as a sort of blundering apology, but which brought the Queen's exasperation and mortification to a climax, and Knox's bitter assault upon the ladies in their fine dresses outside, give a humiliating poignancy to the exasperated feeling on both sides such as delights a cynic. It was the end of all personal encounter between the Queen and the preacher. She did not forgive him, and did her best to punish: but in their last and only subsequent meeting, Knox once more had the better of his royal adversary.

He had never been during all his career in such stormy waters as now threatened to overwhelm him. Hitherto his bold proceedings had been justified by the support of the first men in the kingdom. The Lords of the Congregation, as well as that Congregation itself, the statesmen and "natural counsellors," as they call themselves, of Scotland, had been at his back: but now one by one they had fallen away. The Lord James, now called Murray, the greatest of all both in influence and character, had been the last to leave his side. The preachers, the great assembly that filled St. Giles's almost daily, the irreconcilables with whom it was a crime to temporise, and who would have all things settled their own way, formed, it is true, a large though much agitated backing; but the solid force of men who knew the world better than those absolute spirits, had for the moment abandoned the impracticable prophet, and the party of the Queen was eagerly on the watch to find some opportunity of crushing him if possible. It was not long before this occurred. While Mary was absent on one of those journeys through the kingdom which had been the constant habit of Scottish monarchs, the usual mass was celebrated in the Chapel of Holyrood, the priests who officiated there evidently feeling themselves authorised to continue their usual service even in the Queen's absence, for whose sake alone it was tolerated. But they were interrupted by "a zealous brother," and some little tumult rose, just of importance enough to justify the seizure of two offenders, who were bound under sureties to "underlie the law" at a given date, within three weeks of the offence. In the excited state of feeling which existed in the town this arrest was magnified into something serious, and "the brethren," consulting over the matter with perhaps involuntary exaggeration, as if the two rioters were in danger of their lives, concluded that Knox should write a circular letter to the Congregation at a distance, as had been done with such effect in the early days under the Queen Regent, bidding them assemble in Edinburgh upon the day fixed for the trial. A copy of this letter was carried to the Court then at Stirling and afforded the very occasion required. Murray returned in haste from the north, and all the nobility were called to Edinburgh to inquire into this bold semi-royal summons issued to the Queen's lieges without her authority and in resistance to her will. "The Queen was not a little rejoiced," says Knox, "for she thought once to be revenged of that her great enemy." And it was evident that Mary did look forward to the satisfaction of crushing this arrogant priest and achieving a final triumph over the man whom she could neither awe nor charm out of his own determined way.



The commotion produced by these proceedings was unexampled. One after another of the men who had by Knox's side led the entire movement of the Reformation and to whom he had been spokesman, secretary, and counsellor, came with grave looks and anxious urgency to do what they could to procure his submission. The Master of Maxwell, hitherto his great friend, but who now broke off from him entirely, was the first to appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic—the dour preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults, light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at last the day, or rather night, of the trial came.

It was in December, the darkest moment of the year, between six and seven in the evening, when the Lords assembled at Holyrood, and the formidable culprit was introduced to their presence. The rumour had spread in the town that Knox was to be put on his trial, and the whole Congregation came with him down the Canongate, filling the court of Holyrood with a dark surging mass of men, who crowded the very stairs towards the room in which the council was held. The lords were "talking ane with another" in the preliminary moment before the council was formed, when Knox entered the room. They were then told to take their places, headed on one side by "the Duke" Chatelherault, and on the other by Argyle. Murray, Glencairn, Ruthven, the Earl Marischal, Knox's tried companions in arms, who had stood with him through many a dark day, took their seats with averted looks, his judges now, and judges offended, repulsed, their old sympathies aggravating the breach. Then came the Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye[4] whereat I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."

[4] It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that could not be passed without remark.

The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then Lethington spoke:—

"Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come to the knowledge of others?"

John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be taught my offence."

"Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."

"Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland; for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as a crime."

"Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need of such convocations as sometime we have had."

John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not suffer him to do by strength."

"What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that treason?"

"Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."

"Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."

"I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare, whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is, that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address me for the proof."

"I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"

"I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland; but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think I have done no wrong."

This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen, not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question, is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who refers to the corpus delicti, carrying the question out of mere vague discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox had said in his letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in full front the tremendous charge which followed:—

"While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I be dampned before I be heard?'

'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'

'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in this realm?'

The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said, 'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"

This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance, accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely dignity.

"Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun, yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof your Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters? I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally; whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree, unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most extreme words I said."

Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys) the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to condemn John Knox was not a light matter; that through all the hours of that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt to be unjust.

"John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie so that they began to speak in open audience—'What! shall the Laird of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie absolved John Knox again."

The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"—a noble answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions pours upon them.

This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition of "tarjetted tails," i.e. embroidered or highly decorated trains, and loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust. It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.



CHAPTER III

THE TRIUMPH AND END

When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to himself—and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk, took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words—"Of you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear—but not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court. At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings, that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back, while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit, his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of prayer which he is in the habit of using—being far too courageous a soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the salvam fac employed by Knox:—

"Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"

"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example of such prayer?"

"Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"

After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient, returns to the original question.

"But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving any doubt?"

"Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart if His good pleasure be."

"But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that has so prayed before you."

"Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for further declaration I will demand ane question, which is this—Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they commanded others to pray?"

"Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.

"Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane condition with his commandment."

With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception, though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature—the preacher stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington, while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was no just comparison—and this twist and confusion belonged to his period as well as to himself—his grotesque argument has an appearance of reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did not.

The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough, indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal, waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and the great prophet and preacher John Knox.

The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation touching all that went on at the abbey—the gaieties, and the beautiful dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal, unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen. We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life—the continual tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St. Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse of the Knox we know:—

"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."

As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted at all.

During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade, separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady, Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and who had never spared himself during his whole public life.

It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps, will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known. But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray (which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton, the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them. Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so. Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but why did he fly?

Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs; and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite insignificant—one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own, looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial, respectable county family of Bowes—carrying off the two ladies in his wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him! All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.



When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St. Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in extreme misery," he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble, pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities and decoration sacrificed—the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and prophet.

A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said; but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again; and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed to be so, and at all events was tragically unfortunate and in circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name, was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country." "What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity that calls forth all our sympathies, "albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that have to oppose anything against me that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable that in my decrepit age I should be compelled to fight against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."

These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed, and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.