The History of Protestantism |
| Chapter 1 | THE DARKNESS AND THE DAYBREAK English and Scottish Reformations Compared — Early Picture of Scotland — Preparation — The Scots become a Nation — Its Independence Secured — Bannockburn — Suppression of the Culdees — Establishment of the Church of Rome -- Its Great Strength — Acts against Lollards and Heretics in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries -- Martyrdom of John Resby -- Bible Readers — Paul Crawar Burned — The Lollards of Kyle — Hector Boece — Luther's Tracts Enter Scotland — The Bible Introduced — It becomes the Nation's One Instructor — Permission to Read it |
| Chapter 2 | SCOTLAND'S FIRST PREACHER AND MARTYR, PATRICK HAMILTON A Martyr Needed — Patrick Hamilton — His Lineage — His Studies at Paris and Marburg — He Returns to Scotland — Evangelizes around Linlithgow — is Inveigled to St. Andrews — St. Andrews in the Sixteenth Century — Discussions with Doctors and Canons — Alesius — Prior Campbell — Summoned before the Archbishop — His Brother Attempts his Rescue — Hamilton before Beaton — Articles of Accusation — Referred to a Commission — Hamilton's Evening Party — What they Talk about — His Apprehension — His Trial — His Judges — Prior Campbell his Accuser — His Condemnation — He is Led to the Stake — Attacks of Prior Campbell — Campbell's Fearful Death — Hamilton's Protracted Sufferings — His Last Words — The Impression produced by his Martyrdom |
| Chapter 3 | WISHART IS BURNED, AND KNOX COMES FORWARD Growing Discredit of the Hierarchy — Martyrs — Henry Forrest — David Straiton and Norman Gourlay — Their Trial and Burning — Thomas Forrest, Vicar of Dollar — Burning of Five Martyrs — Jerome Russel and Alexander Kennedy — Cardinal David Beaton — Exiles — Number of Sufferers — Plot to Cut off all the Nobles favorable to the New Opinions — Defeat at the Solway, and Discovery of the Plot — Ministry and Martyrdom of George Wishart — Birth and Education of Knox |
| Chapter 4 | KNOX'S CALL TO THE MINISTRY AND FIRST SERMON Cardinal Beaton Assassinated — Castle of St. Andrews Held by the Conspirators, Knox Enters it -- Called to the Ministry — His First Sermon — Key-note of the Reformation Struck — Knox in the French Galleys — The Check Useful to Scotland — Useful to Knox — What he Learned Abroad — Visits Scotland in 1555 — The Nobles Withdraw from Mass — A "Congregation" — Elders — The First "Band" Subscribed — Walter Mill Burned at St. Andrews — The Last Martyr of the Reformation in Scotland |
| Chapter 5 | KNOX'S FINAL RETURN TO SCOTLAND The Priests Renew the Persecution — The Queen Regent openly Sides with them — Demands of the Protestant Lords — Rejected — Preaching Forbidden — The Preachers Summoned before the Queen — A Great Juncture — Arrival of John Knox — Consternation of the Hierarchy — The Reformer of Scotland — Knox Outlawed — Resolves to Appear with the Preachers before the Queen — The Queen's Perfidy — Knox's Sermon at Perth — Destruction of the Gray Friars' and Black Friars' Monasteries, etc. — The Queen Regent Marches against Perth — Commencement of the Civil War |
| Chapter 6 | ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND Peace between the Queen and the Reformers — Consultation — The Lords of the Congregation Resolve to Set up the Protestant Worship — Knox Preaches at St. Andrews — His Sermon — St. Andrews Reformed — Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc., Follow — Question of the Demolition of the Images and Monasteries — The Queen and her Army at Leith — The Lords Evacuate Edinburgh — Knox Sets out on a Preaching Tour — His Great Exertions — Scotland Roused — Negotiations with England — England Aids Scotland — Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland. |
| Chapter 7 | CONSTITUTION OF THE "KIRK"--ARRIVAL OF MARY
STUART A Second Battle — Knox's Idea of the Church — Spiritual Independence Essential — Differs from Popish Independence — Calvin demanded a Pure Communion-table; Knox, a Free Assembly — Organization of Scottish "Kirk" — Ministers, Doctors, Elders, and Deacons — Kirk Session — Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly — Knox's Educational Plan — How Defeated — Mary Stuart — Her Accomplishments — Her Beauty — Her Life in France — Her Widow-hood — Invited to Return to Scotland — Sails from France — Arrives at Leith — Enters Holyrood. |
| Chapter 8 | KNOX'S INTERVIEW WITH QUEEN MARY Mary's Secret Purpose — Her Blandishments — The Protestant Nobles begin to Yield — Mass in the Chapel of Holyrood — Commotion — Knox's Sermon against Idolatry — The Mass more to be Feared than 10,000 Armed Men — Reasonableness of the Alarm — Knox Summoned to the Palace of Holyrood — Accused by the Queen of Teaching Sedition — His Defense — Debate between Knox and Mary — God, not the Prince, Lord of the Conscience — The Bible, not the Priest, the Judge in Matters of Faith, etc. — Importance of the Interview |
| Chapter 9 | TRIAL OF KNOX FOR TREASON Distribution of Ecclesiastical Revenues — Inadequate Provision for the Protestant Ministry — First Book of Discipline — Mary Refuses to Ratify the Ecclesiastical Settlement of 1560 — Faithlessness of the Nobles — Grief of Knox — His Sermon — Rebuke of the Protestant Nobles — Summoned to the Palace — Interview with the Queen — Knox's Hardness — Mass at the Palace — Threatened Prosecution of Protestants — Knox's Circular — Put upon his Trial for Treason — Maitland of Lethington — Debate between Maitland and Knox — Knox's Defense on his Trial — His Acquittal — Joy of the Citizens — Consequences of his Acquittal — Knox's Political Sentiments — His Services to the Liberties of Great Britain |
| Chapter 10 | THE LAST DAYS OF QUEEN MARY AND JOHN KNOX Prosperous Events — Ratification of the Protestant Establishment by Parliament — Culmination of Scottish Reformation — Knox Wishes to Retire -- New Storms — Knox Retires to St. Andrews — Knox in the Pulpit — Tulchan Bishops — Knox's Opposition to the Scheme -- The St. Bartholomew Massacre -- Knox's Prediction — His Last Appearance in the Pulpit -- Final End of Mary's Crimes — Darnley — Rizzio — Kirk-of- Field — Marriage with Bothwell — Carberry Hill — Lochleven Castle — Battle of Langside — Flight to England — Execution — Mary the Last Survivor of her Partners in Crime — Last Illness of Knox -- His Death — His Character |
| Chapter 11 | ANDREW MELVILLE--THE TULCHAN BISHOPS The Tulchan Bishops — Evils that grew out of this Arrangement — Supported by the Government — A Battle in Prospect — A Champion Wanting — Andrew Melville — His Parentage — Education — Studies Abroad — Goes to Geneva — Appointed Professor of Humanity in its Academy -- Returns to Scotland in 1574 — State of Scotland at his Arrival — War against the Tulchan Bishops — The General Assembly Abolishes the Order — Second Book of Discipline — Perfected Polity of the Presbyterian Kirk — The Spiritual Independence — Geneva and Scotland — A Great Struggle |
| Chapter 12 | BATTLES FOR PRESBYTERIANISM AND LIBERTY James VI — His Evil Counselors — Love of Arbitrary Power and Hatred of Presbyterianism — State of Scotland — The Kirk its One Free Institution — The Presbyterian Ministers the Only Defenders of the Nation's Liberties — The National Covenant — Tulchan Bishops — Robert Montgomery — His Excommunication — Melville before the King -- Raid of Ruthyen — The Black Acts — Influence of the Spanish Armada on Scotland — Act of 1592 Ratifying Presbyterian Church Government — Return of Popish Lords — Interview between Melville and James VI at Falkland — Broken Promises — Prelacy set up — Importance of the Battle — James VI Ascends the Throne of England |
| Chapter 13 | JAMES IN ENGLAND--THE GUNPOWDER PLOT Steps to Hinder a Protestant Successor to Elizabeth – Bulls of Clement VIII – Application to Philip II – English Jesuits thrown on their own Resources – The Gunpowder Plot Proposed – Catesby – Percy – Preparations to Blow up the Parliament – Pacific Professions of Romanists the while – Proofs that the Plot was Known to the Roman Catholic Authorities – The Spanish Match – Disgraceful Treaty – Growing Troubles |
| Chapter 14 | DEATH OF JAMES VI, AND SPIRITUAL AWAKENING IN SCOTLAND The Nations Dead – Protestantism made them Live – Examples – Scotland – James VI -- Pursues his Scheme on the Throne of England – His Arts – Compliance of the Ministers – The Prelates – High Commission Court – Visit of James to Scotland – The Five Articles of Perth – "Black Saturday" – James's Triumph a Defeat – His Death – A Great Spiritual Awakening in Scotland – Moral Transformations – David Dickson and the Awakening at Stewarton – Market-day at Irvine – John Livingstone and the Kirk of Shotts – The Scottish Vine Visited and Strengthened |
| Chapter 15 | CHARLES I AND ARCHBISHOP LAUD--RELIGIOUS INNOVATIONS Basilicon Doron – A Defense of Arbitrary Government – Character of Charles I – His French Marriage – He Dissolves his Parliament – Imposes Taxes by his Prerogative – A Popish Hierarchy in England – Tonnage and Poundage – Ship-money – Archbishop Laud – His Character – His Consecration of St. Catherine Cree Church – His Innovations – The Protestant Press Gagged – Bishop Williams – The Puritans Exiled, etc. – Preaching Restricted – The Book of Sports – Alarm and Gloom |
| Chapter 16 | THE NATIONAL COVENANT AND ASSEMBLY OF 1638 Preparations in Scotland for introducing Prelacy – The King's Commission to Archbishop Laud -- The Book of Canons sent down to Scotland – The New Liturgy – Indignation in Scotland – The First Reading of the Liturgy – Tumult – The Dean Assailed in the Pulpit – He Flees – The Bishop Mobbed – Charles's Resolve to Force the Canons and Liturgy upon the Scots – Their Resistance – The Four Tables – The National Covenant Framed – Its Provisions – Sworn in the Grayfriars' Church – Solemnity of the Scene – Alarm of the Bishops and the Court – The General Assembly at Glasgow, 1638 – The Assembly Overthrows Prelacy |
| Chapter 17 | CIVIL WAR--SOLEMN LEAGUE--WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY War with the Scots – Charles sends a Fleet and Army – The Scots March to the Border – Treaty of Peace – Violated by the King – Second War with the Scots – Charles Defeated – Makes Peace – Church of Scotland has Rest – The Long Parliament – Grievances – Concessions of Charles – Irish Massacre – Suspected Complicity of the King – Execution of Strafford and Laud – Civil War in England – Scotland Joins England – Solemn League – Summary of its Principles – Sworn to by the Parliament of England – The Westminster Assembly – Its General Appearance – Its Individual Members – Frames a Form of Church Government and Confession of Faith – Influence of these Documents |
| Chapter 18 | PARLIAMENT TRIUMPHS, AND THE KING IS BETRAYED Scotland Receives the Westminster Standards – England becomes Presbyterian – The Civil War – Army of the King – Army of the Parliament – Morale of each – Battle of Marston Moor -- Military Equipment -- The King Surrenders to the Scots – Given up to the English -- Cromwell – The Army takes Possession of the King -- Pride Purges Parliament – Charles Attainted and Condemned – The King's Execution -- Close of a Cycle – Thirty Years' Plots and Wars -- Overthrow of the Popish Projects |
| Chapter 19 | RESTORATION OF CHARLES II, AND ST. BARTHOLOMEW DAY, 1662 The Struggle to be Renewed — The Commonwealth — Cromwell's Rule — Charles II Restored — His Welcome — Enthusiasm of Scotland — Character of Charles II — Attempted Union between the Anglican and Presbyterian Parties — Presbyterian Proposals — Things to be Rectified — Conference at the Savoy — Act of Uniformity — The 24th of August, 1662 — A Second St. Bartholomew — Secession of 2,000 Ministers from the Church of England — Grandeur of their Sacrifice — It Saves the Reformation in England |
| Chapter 20 | SCOTLAND--MIDDLETON'S TYRANNY--ACT RECISSORY Extravagant Loyalty of the Scots — A Schism in the Ranks of the Scottish Presbyterians — Resolutioners and Protesters — Charles's Purpose to Restore Prelacy — Clarendon — Maitland — James Sharp — The "Judas of the Kirk of Scotland" — The Scottish Parliament of 1661 — Decline of the Scottish Presbyterians — Acts passed in Parliament — Act of Supremacy — Lays the Scottish Kirk at the King's Feet — The Oath of Allegiance — The Act Recissory — Tyranny and Revolution — Sudden Destruction of Scottish Liberties — Legislation and Drunkenness |
| Chapter 21 | ESTABLISHMENT OF PRELACY IN SCOTLAND Destruction of Scottish Protestantism — Marquis of Argyle — His Character — His Possessions — His Patriotism — His Service to Charles II — How Requited — He is Condemned as a Traitor — His Demeanor in Prison — on the Scaffold — Mr. James Guthrie — His Character — Sentenced to be Hanged — His Behavior on the Scaffold — His Head Affixed to the Netherbow — Prelacy set up — The New Bishops — Their Character — Robert Leighton — The Ministers required to Receive Presentation and Collation Anew — Will Scotland Submit? |
| Chapter 22 | FOUR HUNDRED MINISTERS EJECTED The Bishops hold Diocesan Courts — Summon the Ministers to Receive Collation — The Ministers Disobey — Middleton's Wrath and Violence — Archbishop Fairfoul's Complaint — "Drunken Act of Glasgow " — The 1st of November, 1662 — Four Hundred Ministers Ejected — Middleton's Consternation — Sufferings of the Ejected — Lamentations of the People — Scotland before the Ejection — The Curates — Middleton's Fall — The Earl of Rothes made Commissioner — Conventicles — Court of High Commission — Its Cruelty — Turner's Troop — Terrible Violence |
| Chapter 23 | BREACH OF THE "TRIPLE LEAGUE" AND WAR WITH
HOLLAND The same Policy pursued in England and Scotland — Scheme for Introducing Popery and Arbitrary Government — Test Acts — Non-resistance — Power of the Militia Given to the King — Humiliation of the Nation — The Queen-mother — Surrender of Dunkirk — Breach of the "Triple League " — The King's Sister — Interview at Dover — M. Colbert — War with Holland resolved on — How the Quarrel was Picked — Piratical Attack on Dutch Merchantmen by the Navy of England — The Exchequer Seized by the King — An Indulgence Proclaimed — War Commenced — Rapid Triumphs of the French — Duplicity of Louis XIV — William, Prince of Orange, made Stadtholder of Holland — The Great Issue |
| Chapter 24 | THE POPISH PLOT, AND DEATH OF CHARLES II The Issue Adjusted — Who shall Sit on the Throne of Britain? — Peace with Holland — Charles II a Pensioner of Louis XIV — English Ships Seized by France — No Redress — Duke of York's Second Marriage — William of Orange Marries the Princess Mary — The Duke of York's Influence in the Government — Alarm — Test Acts — The Duke's Exclusion from the Throne demanded — The Popish Plot — Titus Oates — The Jesuit Coleman — His Letter to Pere la Chaise — Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey — The Duke's Exclusion — Attempts to throw the Plot on the Presbyterians — Execution of Essex, Russell, and Sidney — Judge Jeffreys — Illness and Death of the King — What they Said of his Death at Rome. |
| Chapter 25 | THE FIRST RISING OF THE SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS Barbarities — Inflexible Spirit of the Scots — Dragoons at Dairy — The Presbyterians of the West take Arms — Capture of Sir James Turner — The March to Lanark — They Swear the Covenant, and Publish a Declaration — Their Sufferings on the March — Arrive near Edinburgh — Battle of the Pentlands — Defeat of the Presbyterians — Prisoners — Their Trial and Execution — Neilson of Corsac and Hugh McKail — The Torture of the Boot — Execution of Hugh McKail — His Farewell |
| Chapter 26 | THE FIELD-PREACHING OR "CONVENTICLE" Scotland to be Crushed -- Thomas Dalziel of Binns — His Character — Barbarities exercised by his Soldiers — A Breathing Time — Duke Lauderdale — The Indulgence -- Its Fruits — The Accommodation — Failure of both Plans — The Conventicle — Field-preaching at East Nisbet, Mearse — Place of Meeting — The Assembling -- The Guards — The Psalm — The Prayer — The Sermon — The Communion-tables — The Communicants — The Communicating — Other Services — Blackadder's Account — Terror of the Government |
| Chapter 27 | DRUMCLOG--BOTHWELL BRIDGE--THE "KILLING TIMES" The Conventicle to be Crushed — Storm of Edicts — Letters of Intercommuning — Sharp's New Edict — His Assassination — The Highland Host — Graham of Claverhouse — His Defeat at Drumclog — Dissensions in the Covenanters' Camp — Battle of Bothwell Bridge — Prisoners — They are Penned in Grayfriars' Churchyard — Shipped off to Barbados — The "Killing Times " — James II — His Toleration — The Sanquhar Declaration — The Stuarts Disowned — The Last Two Martyrs, Argyle and Renwick — Importance of the Covenanting Struggle |
| Chapter 28 | JAMES II -- PROJECTS TO RESTORE POPERY James II — Suspicions of the Nation — His Promises to Maintain the Protestant Religion — Joy of the People — Fears of Louis XIV — His Coronation — Goes to Mass — Imposes Taxes without his Parliament — Invasion of Argyle — Insurrection of Monmouth — These Risings Suppressed -- Cruelties of Jeffreys — The Test Act — Debates respecting a Standing Army — State of Protestantism throughout Christendom — Its Afflicted Condition Everywhere — A Moment of Mighty Peril — Hopes of the Jesuits |
| Chapter 29 | A GREAT CRISIS IN ENGLAND AND CHRISTENDOM Ireland — Duke of Ormond Dismissed from the Lieutenancy — The Army Remodeled — Tyrconnel made Lord Lieutenant — Appoints Popish Judges — Lord Chancellor of Ireland — The Charters of the Corporations Abolished — Civil Rights of the Protestants Confiscated — Their Religious Rights Invaded — Protestant Tithes and Churches Seized — Parliament Dissolved — English Judges give James II a Dispensing Power — A Popish Hierarchy — Clergymen Forbidden to Preach against Popery — Tillotson, Stillingfleet, etc. — Ecclesiastical Commission — Bishop of London and Dr. Sharp Suspended — The Army at Hounslow Heath — A New Indulgence — Seven Bishops sent to the Tower — Birth of the Prince of Wales — Acquittal of the Bishops — Rejoicings — Crisis |
| Chapter 30 | PROTESTANTISM MOUNTS THE THRONE OF GREAT BRITAIN The Movement Returns to the Land of its Birth — England Looks to William of Orange — State of Parties in Europe — Preparations in England against Invasion — Alarm and Proclamation of James II — Declaration of William of Orange — The Dutch Fleet Sails -- A Storm — The Dutch Fleet Driven Back — William's Appeals to the English Soldiers and Sailors — The Fleet again Sets Sail — Shifting of the Wind — Landing at Torbay — Prince of Orange's Address — The Nation Declares for him — King James Deserted — His Flight — The Crown Settled on the Prince and Princess of Orange — Protestantism on the Throne |
BOOK TWENTY-FOURTH
PROTESTANTISM IN SCOTLAND
CHAPTER 1 Back to Top
THE DARKNESS AND THE DAYBREAK
English and Scottish Reformations Compared — Early Picture of Scotland —
Preparation — The Scots become a Nation — Its Independence Secured —
Bannockburn — Suppression of the Culdees — Establishment of the Church of Rome
-- Its Great Strength — Acts against Lollards and Heretics in the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries -- Martyrdom of John Resby -- Bible Readers — Paul Crawar Burned
— The Lollards of Kyle — Hector Boece — Luther's Tracts Enter Scotland
— The Bible Introduced — It becomes the Nation's One Instructor —
Permission to Read it
England, in reforming itself, worked mainly from the
political center. Scotland worked mainly from the religious one. The ruling idea in the
former country was the emancipation of the throne from the supremacy of the Pope; the
ruling idea in the latter was the emancipation of the conscience from the Popish faith.
The more prominent outcome of the Reformation in England was a free State; the more
immediate product of the Reformation in Scotland was a free Church. But soon the two
countries and the two Reformations coalesced: common affinities and common aims disengaged
them from old allies, and drew them to each other's side; and Christendom beheld a
Protestantism strong alike in its political and in its spiritual arm, able to combat the
double usurpation of Rome, and to roll it back, in course of time, from the countries
where its dominion had been long established, and over its ruins to go forward to the
fulfillment of the great task which was the one grand aim of the Reformation, namely, the
evangelizing and civilizing of the earth, and the planting of pure churches and free
governments.
From an early date Scotland had been in course of preparation for the part it was to act
in the great movement of the sixteenth century. It would beforehand have been thought
improbable that any very distinguished share awaited it in this great revolution of human
affairs. A small country, it was parted by barbarism as well as by distance from the rest
of the world. Its rock-bound coast was perpetually beaten by a stormy sea; its great
mountains were drenched in rains and shrouded in mist; its plains, abandoned to swamps,
had not been conquered by the plough, nor yielded aught for the sickle. The mariner
shunned its shore, for there no harbor opened to receive his vessel, and no trader waited
to buy his wares. This land was the dwelling of savage tribes, who practiced the horrid
rites and worshipped, under other names, the deities to which the ancient Assyrians had
bowed down.
Scotland first tasted of a little civilization from the Roman sword. In the wake of the
Roman Power came the missionaries of the Cross, and the Gospel found disciples where
Caesar had been able to achieve no triumphs. Next came Columba, who kindled his
evangelical lamp on the rocks of Iona, at the very time that Mohammedanism was darkening
the East, and Rome was stretching her shadow farther every year over the West. In the
ninth century came the first great step in Scotland's preparation for the part that
awaited it seven centuries later. In the year 838, the Picts and the Scots were united
under one crown. Down to this year they had been simply two roving and warring clans;
their union made them one people, and constituted them into a nation. In the erection of
the Scots into a distinct nationality we see a foothold laid for Scotland's having a
distinct national Reformation: an essential point, as we shall afterwards see, in order to
the production of a perfect and catholic Protestantism.
The second step in Scotland's preparation for its predestined task was the establishment
of its independence as a nation. It was no easy matter to maintain the political
independence of so small a kingdom, surrounded by powerful neighbors who were continually
striving to effect its subjugation and absorption into their own wealthier and larger
dominions. To aid in this great struggle, on which were suspended far higher issues than
were dreamed of by those who fought and bled in it, there arose from time to time
"mighty men of valor." Wallace and Bruce were the pioneers of Knox.
The struggle for Scotland's political independence in the fourteenth century was a
necessary preliminary to its struggle for its religious Reformation in the sixteenth. If
the battle of the warrior, "with its confused noise, and garments rolled in
blood," had not first been won, we do not see how a stage could have been found for
the greater battle that was to come after. The grand patriotism of Wallace, and the strong
arm of Bruce, held the door open for Knox; and Edward of England learned, when he saw his
mailed cavalry and terrible bowmen falling back before the Scottish battle-axes and
broadswords, that though he should redden all Scotland with the noblest blood of both
kingdoms, he never should succeed in robbing the little country of its nationality and
sovereignty.
It is now the twelfth century; Iona still exists, but its light has waxed dim. Under King
David the Culdee establishments are being suppressed, to make way for Popish monasteries;
the presbyters of Iona are driven out, and the lordly prelates of the Pope take their
place; the edifices and heritages of the Culdees pass over wholesale to the Church of
Rome, and a body of ecclesiastics of all orders:, from the mitred abbot down to the
begging friar, are brought from foreign countries to occupy Scotland, now divided into
twelve dioceses, with a full complement of abbeys, monasteries, and nunneries. But it is
to be noted that this establishment of Popery in the twelfth century is not the result of
the conversion of the people, or of their native teachers: we see it brought in over the
necks of both, simply at the will and by the decree of the monarch. So little was Scottish
Popery of native growth, that the men as well as the system had to be imported from
abroad.
If in no country of Europe was the dominant reign of Popery so short as in Scotland,
extending only from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, in no country was the Church of
Rome so powerful when compared with the size of the kingdom and the number of the
population. The influences which in countries like France set limits to the power of the
Church did not exist in Scotland. On her lofty height she was without a rival, and looked
down upon all ranks and institutions — upon the throne, Which was weak; upon the
nobles, who were parted into factions; upon the people, who were sunk in ignorance.
Bishops and abbots filled all the great posts at court and discharged all the highest
offices in the State. They were chancellors, secretaries of State, justiciaries,
ambassadors; they led armies, fought battles, and tried and executed criminals. They were
the owners of lordships, hunting-grounds, fisheries, houses; and while a full half of the
kingdom was theirs, they heavily taxed the other half, as they did also all possessions,
occupations, and trades. Thus with the passing years cathedrals and abbeys continued to
multiply and wax in splendor; while acres, tenements, and tithings, in an ever-flowing
stream, were pouring fresh riches into the Church's treasury. In the midst of the
prostration and ruin of all interests and classes, the Church stood up in overgrown
arrogance, wealth, and power.
But even in the midst of the darkness there were glimmerings of light, which gave token
that a better day would yet dawn. From the Papal chair itself we hear a fear expressed
that this country, which Rome held with so firm a grasp, would yet escape from her
dominion. In his bull for anointing King Robert the Bruce, in the beginning of the
fourteenth century, John XXII. complains that Scotland was still defiled by the presence
of heretics.
From about this time the traces of what Rome styles heresy became frequent in Scotland.
The first who suffered for the Reformed faith, so far as can be ascertained, was James
Resby, an Englishman, and a disciple of John Wicliffe. He taught that "the Pope was
not Christ's Vicar, and that he was not Pope if he was a man of wicked life." This
was pronounced heresy, and for that heresy he had to do expiation in the fire at Perth.[1] He was burned in 1406 or 1407,
some nine years before the martyrdom of Huss. In 1416 the University of St. Andrews, then
newly founded, ordained that all who commenced Master of Arts should take an oath to
defend the Church against the insults of the Lollards,[2] proof surely that the sect was sufficiently numerous to render
Churchmen uneasy. A yet stronger proof of this was the appointment of a Heretical
Inquisitor for Scotland. The office was bestowed upon Laurence Lindores, Abbot of Scone.[3] Prior Winton in his Metrical
Chronicle (1420) celebrates the zeal of Albany, Governor of Scotland, against Lollards and
heretics.[4] Murdoch
Nisbet, of Hardhill, had a manuscript copy of the New Testament (of Wicliffe's translation
doubtless), which he concealed in a vault, and read to his family and acquaintance by
night.[5]
Gordon of Earlston, another early favorer of the disciples of Wicliffe, had in his
possession a copy of the New Testament, in the vulgar tongue, which he read at meetings
held in a wood near to Earlston House.[6] The Parliament of James I, held at Perth (1424), enacted that all
bishops should make inquiry by Inquisition for heretics, and punish them according to the
laws of "holy Kirk," and if need were they should call in the secular power to
the aid of "holy Kirk."[7]
In 1431 we find a second stake set up in Scotland. Paul Crawar, a native of
Bohemia, and a disciple of John Huss, preaching at St. Andrews, taught that the mass was a
worship of superstition. This was no suitable doctrine in a place where a magnificent
cathedral, and a gorgeous hierarchy, were maintained in the service of the mass, and
should it fall they too would fall. To avert so great a catastrophe, Crawar was dragged to
the stake and burned, with a ball of brass in his mouth to prevent him from addressing the
people in his last moments.[8]
The Lollards of England were the connecting link between their great master,
Wicliffe, and the English Reformers of the sixteenth century. Scotland too had its
Lollards, who connected the Patriarch and school of Iona with the Scottish Reformers. The
Lollards of Scotland could be none other than the descendants of the Culdee missionaries,
and such of the disciples of Wicliffe as had taken refuge in Scotland.[9] In the testimony of both friend
and foe, there were few counties in the Lowlands of Scotland where these Lollards were not
to be found. They were numerous in Fife; they were still more numerous in the districts of
Cunningham and Kyle; hence their name, the Lollards of Kyle. In the reign of James IV
(1494) some thirty Lollards were summoned before the archiepiscopal tribunal of Glasgow on
a charge of heresy. They were almost all gentlemen of landed property in the districts
already named, and the tenets which they were charged with denying included the mass,
purgatory, the worshipping of images, the praying to saints, the Pope's vicarship, his
power to pardon sin — in short, all the peculiar doctrines of Romanism. Their defense
appears to have been so spirited that the king, before whom they argued their cause,
shielded them from the doom that the archbishop, Blackadder, would undoubtedly have
pronounced upon them.[10]
These incidental glimpses show us a Scriptural Protestantism already in Scotland, but it
lacks that spirit of zeal and diffusion into which the sixteenth century awoke it. When
that century came new agencies began to operate. In 1526, Hector Boece, Principal of
King's College, Aberdeen, and the fellow-student and correspondent of Erasmus, published
his History of Scotland. In that work he draws a dark picture of the manners of the
clergy; of their greed in monopolizing all offices, equaled only by their neglect of their
duties; of their promotion of unworthy persons, to the ruin of letters; and of the
scandals with which the public feeling was continually outraged, and religion affronted;
and he raises a loud cry for immediate Reformation if the Church of his native land was to
be saved.
About the same time the books and tracts of Luther began to enter the seaports of
Montrose, Dundee, Perth, St. Andrews, and Leith. These were brought across by the skippers
who made annual voyages to Flanders and the Lower Germany. In this way the east coast of
Scotland, and the shores of the Frith of Forth, were sown with the seeds of Lutheranism.[11] By this time Tyndale had
translated the New Testament into English, and he had markets for its sale in the towns
visited by the Scottish traders, who bought numerous copies and carried them across to
their countrymen.
When the New Testament entered, a ray from heaven had penetrated the night that brooded
over the country. Its Reformation had begun. The Bible was the only Reformer then possible
in Scotland. Had a Luther or a Knox arisen at that time, he would have been consigned
before many days to a dungeon or a stake. The Bible was the only missionary that could
enter with safety, and operate with effect. With silent foot it began to traverse the
land; it came to the castle gates of the primate, yet he heard not its steps; it preached
in cities, but its voice fell not on the ear of bishop; it passed along the highways and
by-ways unobserved by the spy. To the Churchman's eye all seemed calm — calm and
motionless as during the four dark centuries which had gone before; but in the stillness
of the midnight hour men welcomed this new Instructor, and opened their heart to its
comforting and beneficent teaching. The Bible was emphatically the nation's one great
teacher; it was stamping its own ineffaceable character upon the Scottish Reformation; and
the place the Bible this early made for itself in the people's affections, and the
authority it acquired over their judgments, it was destined never to lose. The movement
thus initiated was helped forward by every event that happened, till at last in 1543 its
first great landing-place was reached, when every man, woman, and child in Scotland was
secured by Act of Parliament in the right to read the Word of God in their own tongue.
CHAPTER 2 Back to Top
SCOTLAND'S FIRST PREACHER AND MARTYR, PATRICK HAMILTON
A Martyr Needed — Patrick Hamilton — His Lineage — His Studies at Paris and
Marburg — He Returns to Scotland — Evangelizes around Linlithgow — is
Inveigled to St. Andrews — St. Andrews in the Sixteenth Century — Discussions
with Doctors and Canons — Alesius — Prior Campbell — Summoned before the
Archbishop — His Brother Attempts his Rescue — Hamilton before Beaton —
Articles of Accusation — Referred to a Commission — Hamilton's Evening Party
— What they Talk about — His Apprehension — His Trial — His Judges
— Prior Campbell his Accuser — His Condemnation — He is Led to the Stake
— Attacks of Prior Campbell — Campbell's Fearful Death — Hamilton's
Protracted Sufferings — His Last Words — The Impression produced by his
Martyrdom
The first step in the preparation of Scotland for the task
that awaited it was to form its tribes into a nation. This was accomplished in the union
of the Pictish and Scottish crowns. The second step was the establishment of its
nationality on a strong basis. The arms of Wallace and Bruce effected this; and now
Scotland, planted on the twin pillars of Nationality and Independence, awaited the opening
of a higher drama than any enacted by armies or accomplished on battlefields. A mightier
contest than Bannockburn was now to be waged on its soil. In the great war for the
recovery in ampler measure, and on surer tenure, of the glorious heritage of truth which
the world once possessed, but which it had lost amid the superstitions of the Dark Ages,
there had already been two great centers, Witternberg and Geneva; The battle was
retreating from them, and the Protestant host was about to make its stand at a third
center, namely Scotland, and there sustain its final defeat, or achieve its crowning
victory.
The Reformation of Scotland dates from the entrance of the first Bible into the country,
about the year 1525. It was doing its work, but over and above there was needed the living
voice of the preacher, and the fiery stake of the confessor, to arouse the nation from the
dead sleep in which it was sunk. But who of Scotland's sons shall open the roll of
martyrdom? A youth of royal lineage, and princely in mind as in birth, was chosen for this
high but arduous honor. Patrick Hamilton was born in 1504. He was the second son of Sir
Patrick Hamilton, of Kincavel, and the great-grandson, both by the father's and the
mother's side, of James II.[1] He
received his education at the University of St. Andrews, and about 1517 was appointed
titular Abbot of Ferne, in Ross-shire, though it does not appear that he ever took
priest's orders. In the following year he went abroad, and would seem to have studied some
time in Paris, where it is probable he came to the first knowledge of the truth; and
thence he went to pursue his studies at the College of Marburg, then newly opened by the
Landgrave of Hesse. At Marburg the young Scotsman enjoyed the friendship of a very
remarkable man, whose views on some points of Divine truth exceeded in clearness even
those of Luther; we refer to Francis Lambert, the ex-monk of Avignon, whom Landgrave
Philip had invited to Hesse to assist in the Reformation of his dominions.
The depth of Hamilton's knowledge, and the beauty of his character, won the esteem of
Lambert, and we find the ex-Franciscan saying to Philip, "This young man of the
illustrious family of the Hamiltons... is come from the end of the world, from Scotland,
to your academy, in order to be fully established in God's truth. I have hardly ever met a
man who expresses himself with so much spirituality and truth on the Word of the
Lord."[2]
Hamilton's preparation for his work, destined to be brief but brilliant, was now
completed, and he began to yearn with an intense desire to return to his native land, and
publish the Gospel of a free salvation. He could not hide from himself the danger which
attended the step he was meditating.
The priests were at this hour all-powerful in Scotland. A few years previously (1513),
James IV and the flower of the Scottish nobility had fallen on the field of Flodden. James
V was a child: his mother, Margaret Tudor, was nominally regent; but the clergy, headed by
the proud, profligate, and unscrupulous James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, had
grasped the government of the kingdom. It was not to be thought that these men would
permit a doctrine to be taught at their very doors, which they well knew would bring their
glory and pleasures to an end, if they had the power of preventing it. The means of
suppressing all preaching of the truth were not wanting, certainly, to these tyrannical
Churchmen. But this did not weigh with the young Hamilton. Intent upon dispelling the
darkness that covered Scotland, he returned to his native land (1527), and took up his
abode at the family mansion of Kincavel, near Linlithgow.
With the sword of Beaton hanging over his head, he began to preach the doctrines of the
Reformed faith. The first converts of the young evangelist were the inmates of the
mansion-house of Kincavel. After his kinsfolk, his neighbors became the next objects of
his care. He visited at the houses of the gentry, where his birth, the grace of his
manners, and the fame of his learning made him at all times welcome, and he talked with
them about the things that belonged to their peace. Going out into the fields, he would
join himself to groups of laborers as they rested at noon, and exhort them, while laboring
for the "meat that perisheth," not to be unmindful of that which "endures
unto eternal life." Opening the Sacred Volume, he would explain to his rustic
congregation the "mysteries of the kingdom" which was now come nigh unto them,
and bid them strive to enter into it. Having scattered the seed in the villages around
Linlithgow, he resolved to carry the Gospel into its Church of St. Michael. The ancient
palace of Linlithgow, "the Versailles of Scotland," as it has been termed, was
then the seat of the court, and the Gospel was now brought within the hearing of the
priests of St. Michael's, and of the members of the royal family who repaired to it.
Hamilton, standing up amid the altar and images, preached to the polished audience that
filled the edifice, with that simplicity and chastity of speech which were best fitted to
win his way with those now listening to him. It is not, would lie say, the cowl of St.
Francis, nor the frock of St. Dominic, that saves us; it is the righteousness of Christ.
It is not the shorn head that makes a holy man, it is the renewed heart. It is not the
chrism of the Church, it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that replenishes the soul
with grace. What doth the Lord require of thee, O man? To count so many beads a day? To
repeat so many paternosters? To fast so many days in the year, or go so many miles on
pilgrimages? That is what the Pope requires of thee; but what God requires of thee is to
do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly. Pure religion, and undefiled, is not to kiss a
crucifix, or to burn candles before Our Lady; pure religion is to visit the fatherless and
the widow in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world.
"Knowest thou," he would ask, "what this saying means? Christ died for
thee?" Verily that thou shouldest have died perpetually, and Christ, to deliver thee
from death, died for thee, and changed thy perpetual death into his own death; for thou
madest the fault, and he suffered the pain."[3]
Among Hamilton's hearers in St. Michael's there was a certain maiden of noble
birth, whose heart the Gospel had touched. Her virtues won the heart of the young
evangelist, and he made her his wife. His marriage was celebrated but a few weeks before
his martyrdom.[4]
A little way inland from the opposite shores of the Forth, backed by the
picturesque chain of the blue Ochils, was the town of Dunfermline, with its archiepiscopal
palace, the towers of which might almost be descried from the spot where Hamilton was
daily evangelizing. Archbishop Beaton was at this moment residing there, and news of the
young evangelist's doings were wafted across to that watchful enemy of the Gospel. Beaton
saw at a glance the difficulty of the case. A heretic of low degree would have been
summarily disposed of; but here was a Lutheran with royal blood in his veins, and all the
Hamiltons at his back, throwing down the gage of battle to the hierarchy. What was to be
done? The cruel and crafty Beaton hit on a device that but too well succeeded. Concealing
his dark design, the primate sent a pressing message to Patrick, soliciting an interview
with him on points of Church Reformation. Hamilton divined at once what the message
portended, but in spite of the death that almost certainly awaited him, and the tears of
his friends, who sought to stay him, he set out for St. Andrews. He seemed to feel that he
could serve his country better by dying than by living and laboring.
This city was then the ecclesiastical and literary metropolis of Scotland. As the seat of
the archiepiscopal court, numerous suitors and rich fees were drawn to it. Ecclesiastics
of all ranks and students from every part of the kingdom were to be seen upon its streets.
Its cathedral was among the largest in Christendom. It had numerous colleges, monasteries,
and a priory, not as now, gray with age and sinking in ruin, but in the first bloom of
their architecture. As the traveler approached it, whether over the long upland swell of
Fife on the west, or the waters of the German Ocean on the east, the lofty summit of St.
Regulus met his eye, and told him that he was nearing the chief seat of authority and
wealth in Scotland.
On arriving at St. Andrews, Hamilton found the archbishop all smiles; a most gracious
reception, in fact, was accorded him by the man who was resolved that he should never go
hence. He was permitted to choose his own lodgings; to go in and out; to avow his
opinions; to discuss questions of rite, and dogma, and administration with both doctors
and students; and when he heard the echoes of his own sentiments coming back to him from
amid the halls and chairs of the "Scottish Vatican," he began to persuade
himself that the day of Scotland's deliverance was nearer than he had dared to hope, and
even now rifts were appearing in the canopy of blackness over his native land. An incident
happened that specially gladdened him. There was at that time, among the Canons of St.
Andrews, a young man of quick parts and candid mind, but enthralled by the scholasticism
of the age, and all on the side of Rome. His name was Alane, or Alesius — a native of
Edinburgh. This young canon burned to cross swords with the heretic whose presence had
caused no little stir in the university and monasteries of the ancient city of St. Andrew.
He obtained his wish, for Hamilton was ready to receive all, whether they came to inquire
or to dispute. The Sword of the Spirit, at almost the first stroke, pierced the scholastic
armor in which Alesius had encased himself, and he dropped his sword to the man whom he
had been so confident of vanquishing.
There came yet another, also eager to do battle for the Church — Alexander Campbell,
Prior of the Dominicans — a man of excellent learning and good disposition. The
archbishop, feeling the risks of bringing such a man as Hamilton to the stake, ordered
Prior Campbell to wait on him, and spare no means of bringing back the noble heretic to
the faith of the Church. The matter promised at first to have just the opposite ending.
After a few interviews, the prior confessed the truth of the doctrines which Hamilton
taught. The conversion of Alesins seemed to have repeated itself. But, alas! no; Campbell
had received the truth in the intellect only, not in the heart. Beaton sent for Campbell,
and sternly demanded of him what progress he was making in the conversion of the heretic.
The prior saw that on the brow of the archbishop which told him that he must make his
choice between the favor of the hierarchy and the Gospel. His courage failed him: the
disciple became the accuser.
Patrick Hamilton had now been a month at St. Andrews, arguing all the time with doctors,
priests, students, and townspeople. From whatever cause this delay proceeded, whether from
a feeling on the part of Beaton and the hierarchy that their power was too firmly rooted
to be shaken, or from a fear to strike one so exalted, it helped to the easy triumph of
the Reformed opinions in Scotland. During that month Hamilton was able to scatter on this
center part of the field a great amount of the "incorruptible seed of the Word,"
which, watered as it was soon thereafter to be with the blood of him who sowed it, sprang
up and brought forth much fruit. But the matter would admit, of no longer delay, and
Patrick was summoned to the archiepiscopal palace, to answer to a charge of heresy.
Before accompanying Hamilton to the tribunal of Beaton, let us mention the arrangements of
his persecutors for putting him to death. Their first care was to send away the king.
James V was then a youth of seventeen, and it was just possible that he might not stand
quietly by and see them ruthlessly murder one who drew his descent from the royal house.
Accordingly the young king was told that his soul's health required that he should make a
pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Duthac, in Ross-shire, whither his father had often gone
to disburden his conscience.[5] It
was winter, and the journey would necessarily be tedious; but the purpose of the priests
would be all the better served thereby. Another precaution taken by the archbishop was to
cause the movements of Sir James Hamilton, Patrick's brother, to be watched, lest he
should attempt a rescue. When the tidings reached Kincavel that Patrick had been arrested,
consternation prevailed at the manor-house; Sir James, promptly assembling a body of
men-at-arms, set out at their head for St. Andrews.
The troop marched along the southern shore of the Forth, but on arriving at Queensferry,
where they intended to cross, they found a storm raging in the Frith. The waves, raised
into tumult in the narrow sea by the westerly gale, would permit no passage; and Sir
James, the precious hours gliding away, could only stand gazing helplessly on the tempest,
which showed no signs of abating. Meanwhile, being descried from the opposite shore, a
troop of horse was at once ordered out to dispute their march to St. Andrews. Another
attempt to rescue Patrick from the hands of his persecutors was also unsuccessful. Duncan,
Laird of Ardrie, in the neighborhood of St. Andrews, armed and mounted about a score of
his tenants and servants, intending to enter the city by night and carry off his friend,
whose Protestant sentiments he shared; but his small party was surrounded, and himself
apprehended, by a troop of horsemen.[6] Hamilton
was left in the power of Beaten.
The first rays of the morning sun were kindling the waters of the bay, and gilding the
hilltops of Angus on the other side of the Tay, when Hamilton was seen traversing the
streets on his way to the archiepiscopal palace, in obedience to Beaton's summons. He had
hoped to have an interview with the archbishop before the other judges had assembled; but,
early as the hour was, the court was already met, and Hamilton was summoned before it and
his accusation read. It consisted of thirteen articles, alleged to be heretical, of which
the fifth and sixth may be taken as samples. These ran: "That a man is not justified
by works, but by faith alone," and "that good works do not make a good man, but
that a good man makes good works."[7] Here followed a discussion on each of the articles, and finally
the whole were referred to a committee of the judges chosen by Beaten, who were to report
their judgment upon them in a few days. Pending their decision, Hamilton was permitted his
liberty as heretofore; the object of his enemies being to veil what was coming till it
should be so near that rescue would be impossible.
In a few days the commissioners intimated that they had arrived at a decision on the
articles. This opened the way for the last act of the tragedy. Beaten issued his orders
for the apprehension of Patrick, and at the same time summoned his court for the next day.
Fearing a tumult should he conduct Hamilton to prison in open day, the officer waited till
night-fall before executing the mandate of the archbishop. A little party of friends had
that evening assembled at Patrick's lodgings. Their converse was prolonged till late in
the evening, for they felt loth to separate. The topics that engaged their thoughts and
formed the matter of their talk, it is not difficult to conjecture. Misgivings and
anxieties they could not but feel when they thought of the sentence to be pronounced in
the cathedral tomorrow. But with these gloomy presentiments there would mingle cheering
hopes inspired by the prosperous state of the Reformation at that hour on the Continent of
Europe. When from their own land, still covered with darkness, they turned their eyes
abroad, they saw only the most splendid triumphs. In Germany a phalanx of illustrious
doctors, of chivalrous princes, and of free cities had gathered round the Protestant
standard. In Switzerland the new day was spreading from canton to canton with an
effulgence sweeter far than ever was day-break on the snows of its mountains. Farel was
thundering in the cities of the Jura, and day by day advancing his posts nearer to Geneva.
At the polished court of Francis I., and in the halls of the Sorbonne, Luther's doctrine
had found eloquent expositors and devoted disciples, making the hope not too bold that the
ancient, civilized, and. powerful nation of France would in a short time be won to the
Gospel. Surmounting the lofty banner of snows and glaciers within which Italy reposes, the
light was circulating round the shores of Como, gilding the palaces of Ferrara and
Florence, and approaching the very gates of Rome itself. Amid the darkness of the Seven
Hills, whispers were beginning to be heard, "The morning cometh."
Turning to the other extremity of Europe, the prospect was not less gladdening. In Denmark
the mass had fallen, and the vernacular Scriptures were being circulated through the
nation. In Sweden a Protestant king filled the throne, and a Protestant clergy ministered
to the people. In Norway the Protestant faith had taken root, and was flourishing amid its
fjords and pine-covered mountains. Nay, to the shores of Iceland had that blessed
day-spring traveled. It could not be that the day should break on every land between
Italy's "snowy ridge" and Iceland's frozen shore, and the night continue to
cover Scotland. It could not be that the sunrise should kindle into glory the Swiss
mountains, the German plains, and the Norwegian pine-forests, and no dawn light up the
straths of Caledonia.
No! the hour would strike: the nation would shake off its chains, and a still brighter
lamp than that which Columba had kindled at Iona would shed its radiance on hill and
valley, on hamlet and city of Scotland. Whatever tomorrow might bring, this was what the
future would bring; and the joy these prospects inspired could be read in the brightening
eyes and on the beaming faces of the little company in this chamber, and most of all on
those of the youthful and noble form in the center of the circle.
But hark! the silence of the night is broken by a noise as of hostile steps at the door.
The company, startled, gaze into one another's faces, and are silent. Heavy footsteps are
now heard ascending the stair; the next moment there is a knocking at the chamber door.
With calm voice Hamilton bids them open the door; nay, he himself steps forward and opens
it. The archbishop's officer enters the apartment. "Whom do you want? " inquires
Patrick. "I want Hamilton," replies the man. "I am Hamilton," says the
other, giving himself up, requesting only that his friends might be allowed to depart
unharmed.
A party of soldiers waited at the door to receive the prisoner. On his descending, they
closed round him, and led him through the silent streets of the slumbering city to the
castle. Nothing was heard save the low moaning of the night-wind, and the sullen dash of
the wave as it broke against the rocky foundations of the sea tower, to the dungeons of
which Hamilton was consigned for the night.
It is the morning of the last day of February, 1528. Far out in the bay the light creeps
up from the German Ocean: the low hills that run along on t. he south of the city, come
out in the dawn, and next are seen the sands of the Tay, with the blue summits of Angus
beyond, while the mightier masses of the Grampians stand up in the northern sky. Now the
sun rises; and tower and steeple and, proudest of all, Scotland's metropolitan cathedral
began to glow in the light of the new-risen luminary. A terrible tragedy is that sun to
witness before he shall set. The archbishop is up betimes, and so too are priest and monk.
The streets are already all astir. A stream of bishops, nobles, canons, priests, and
citizens is roiling in at the gates of the cathedral. How proudly it lifts its towers to
the sky! There is not another such edifice in all Scotland; few of such dimensions in all
Christendom. And now we see the archbishop, with his long train of lords, abbots, and
doctors, sweep in and take his seat on his archiepiscopal throne. Around him on the
tribunal are the Bishops of Glasgow, Dunkeld, Brechin, and Dunblane. The Prior of St.
Andrews, Patrick Hepburn; the Abbot of Arbroath, David Benton; as also the Abbots of
Dunfermline, Cambuskenneth, and Lindores; the Prior of Pittenweem; the Dean and Sub-Dean
of Glasgow; Ramsay, Dean of the Abbey of St. Andrews; Spens, Dean of Divinity in the
University; and among the rest sits Prior Alexander Campbell, the man who had acknowledged
to Hamilton in private that his doctrine was true, but who, stifling his convictions, now
appears on the tribunal as accuser and judge.
The tramp of horses outside announced the arrival of the prisoner. Hamilton was brought
in, led through the throng of canons, friars, students, and townspeople, and made to mount
a small pulpit erected opposite the tribunal. Prior Campbell rose and read the articles of
accusation, and when he had ended began to argue with Hamilton. The prior's stock of
sophisms was quickly exhausted. He turned to the bench of judges for fresh instructions.
He was bidden close the debate by denouncing the prisoner as a heretic. Turning to
Hamilton, the prior exclaimed, "Heretic, thou saidst it was lawful to all men to read
the Word of God, and especially the New Testament." "I wot not," replied
Hamilton, "if I said so; but I say now, it is reason and lawful to all men to read
the Word of God, and that they are able to understand the same; and in particular the
latter will and testament of Jesus Christ." "Heretic," again urged the
Dominican, "thou sayest it is but lost labor to call on the saints, and in particular
on the blessed Virgin Mary, as mediators to God for us."
"I say with Paul," answered the confessor, "there is no mediator between
God and us but Christ Jesus his Son, and whatsoever they be who call or pray to any saint
departed, they spoil Christ Jesus of his office."
"Heretic," again exclaimed Prior Campbell, "thou sayest it is all in vain
to sing soul-masses, psalms, and dirges for the relaxation of souls departed, who are
continued in the pains of purgatory. "Brother," said the Reformer, "I have
never read in the Scripture of God of such a place as purgatory, nor yet believe I there
is anything that can purge the souls of men but the blood of Jesus Christ." Lifting
up his voice once more Campbell shouted out, as if to drown the cry in his own conscience,
"Heretic, detestable, execrable, impious heretic!" "Nay, brother,"
said Hamilton, directing a look of compassion towards the wretched man, "thou dost
not in thy heart think me heretic — thou knowest in thy conscience that I am no
heretic."
Not a voice was there on that bench but in condemnation of the prisoner. "Away with
him! away with him to the stake!" said they all. The archbishop rose, and solemnly
pronounced sentence on Hamilton as a heretic, delivering him over to the secular arm that
is, to his own soldiers and executioners — to be punished.
This sentence, Benton believed, was to stamp out heresy, give a perpetuity of dominion and
glory to the Papacy in Scotland, and hallow the proud fane in which it was pronounced, as
the high sanctuary of the nation's worship for long centuries. How would it have amazed
the proud prelate, and the haughty and cruel men around him, had they been told that this
surpassingly grand pile should in a few years cease to be — that altar, and stone
image, and archiepiscopal throne, and tall massy column, and lofty roof, and painted
oriel, before this generation had passed away, smitten by a sudden stroke, should fall in
ruin, and nothing of all the glory on which their eyes now rested remain, save a few naked
walls and shattered towers, with the hoarse roar of the ocean sounding on the shingly
beach beneath, and the loud scream of the sea bird, as it flew past, echoing through their
ruins!
Escorted by a numerous armed band, Hamilton was led back to the castle, and men were sent
to prepare the stake in front of St. Salvator's College.[8]
The interval was passed by the martyr in taking his last meal and conversing calmly
with his friends. When the hour of noon struck, he rose up and bade the governor be
admitted. He set out for the place where he was to die, carrying his New Testament in his
hand, a few friends by his side, and his faithful servant following. He walked in the
midst of his guards, his step firm, his countenance serene.
When he came in sight of the pile he halted, and uncovering his head, and raising his eyes
to heaven, he continued a few minutes in prayer. At the stake he gave his New Testament to
a friend as his last gift. Then calling his servant to him, he took off his cap and gown
and gave them to him, saying, "These will not profit in the fire; they will profit
thee. After this, of me thou canst receive no commodity except the example of my death,
which I pray thee bear in mind. For albeit it be bitter to the flesh, and fearful before
man, yet is it the entrance to eternal life, which none shall possess that denies Christ
Jesus before this wicked generation."
He now ascended the pile. The executioners drew an iron band round his body, and fastened
him to the stake. They piled up the fagots, and put a bag of gunpowder amongst them to
make them ignite. "In the name of Jesus," said the martyr, "I give up my
body to the fire, and commit my soul into the hands of the Father."
The torch was now brought. The gunpowder was exploded; it shot a fagot in the martyr's
face, but did not kindle the wood. More powder was brought and exploded, but without
kindling the pile. A third supply was procured; still the fagots would not burn: they were
green. Turning to the deathsman, Hamilton said, "Have you no dry wood? " Some
persons ran to fetch some from the castle; the sufferer all the while standing at the
stake, wounded in the face, and partially scorched, yet "giving no signs of
impatience or anger." So testifies Alesins, who says, "I was myself present, a
spectator of that tragedy."[9]
Hovering near that pile, drawn thither it would seem by some dreadful fascination,
was Prior Campbell. While the fresh supplies of powder and wood were being brought, and
the executioners were anew heaping up the fagots, Campbell, with frenzied voice, was
calling on the martyr to recant.
"Heretic," he shouted, "be converted; call upon Our Lady; only say, Salve
Regina." "If thou believest in the truth of what thou sayest," replied the
confessor, "bear witness to it by putting the tip of thy finger only into the fire in
which my whole body is burning."[10] The Dominican burst out afresh into accusations and insults.
"Depart from me, thou messenger of Satan," said the martyr, "and leave me
in peace." The wretched man was unable either to go away or cease reviling.
"Submit to the Pope," he cried, "there is no salvation but in union to
him." "Thou wicked man," said Hamilton, "thou knowest the contrary,
for thou toldest me so thyself. I appeal thee before the tribunal-seat of Jesus
Christ." At the hearing of these words the friar rushed to his monastery: in a few
days his reason gave way, and he died raving mad, at the day named in the citation of the
martyr.[11]
Patrick Hamilton was led to the stake at noon: the afternoon was wearing, in fact
it was now past sunset. These six hours had he stood on the pile, his face bruised, his
limbs scorched; but now the end was near, for his whole body was burning in the fire, the
iron band round his middle was red-hot, and the martyr was almost burned in two. One
approached him and said, "If thou still holdest true the doctrine for which thou
diest, make us a sign." Two of the fingers of his right hand were already burned, and
had dropped off. Stretching out his arm, he held out the remaining three fingers till they
too had fallen into the fire. The last words he was heard to utter were, "How long, O
Lord, shall darkness overwhelm this realm? How long wilt thou suffer this tyranny of men?
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."
We have given prominence to this great martyr, because his death was one of the most
powerful of the instrumentalities that worked for the emancipation of his native land. It
was around his stake that the first decided dawn of Scotland's Reformation took place. His
noble birth, the fame of his learning, his spotless character, his gracious manners, his
protracted sufferings, born with such majestic meekness, and the awful death of the man
who had been his accuser before the tribunal, and his tormentor at the stake, combined to
give unusual grandeur, not unmingled with terror, to his martyrdom, and made it touch a
chord in the nation's heart, that never ceased to vibrate till "the rage of the great
red dragon" was vanquished, and "the black and settled night of ignorance and
Christian tyranny" having been expelled, "the odour of the returning
Gospel" began to bathe the land with "the fragrancy of heaven."[12]
CHAPTER 3 Back to Top
WISHART IS BURNED, AND KNOX COMES FORWARD
Growing Discredit of the Hierarchy — Martyrs — Henry Forrest — David
Straiton and Norman Gourlay — Their Trial and Burning — Thomas Forrest, Vicar of
Dollar — Burning of Five Martyrs — Jerome Russel and Alexander Kennedy —
Cardinal David Beaton — Exiles — Number of Sufferers — Plot to Cut off all
the Nobles favorable to the New Opinions — Defeat at the Solway, and Discovery of the
Plot — Ministry and Martyrdom of George Wishart — Birth and Education of Knox
Between the death of Hamilton and the appearance of Knox
there intervenes a period of a chequered character; nevertheless, we can trace all
throughout it a steady onward march of Scotland towards emancipation. Hamilton had been
burned; Alesius and others had fled in terror; and the priests, deeming themselves
undisputed masters, demeaned themselves more haughtily than ever. But their pride hastened
their downfall. The nobles combined to set limits to an arrogance which was unbearable;
the greed and profligacy of the hierarchy discredited it in the eyes of the common people;
the plays of Sir David Lindsay, and the satires of the illustrious George Buchanan, helped
to swell the popular indignation; but the main forces in Scotland, as in every other
country, which weakened the Church of Rome, and eventually overthrew it, were the reading
of the Scriptures and the deaths of the martyrs.
The burning of Patrick Hamilton began immediately to bear fruit. From his ashes arose one
to continue his testimony, and to repeat his martyrdom. Henry Forrest was a Benedictine in
the monastery of Linlithgow, and had come to a knowledge of the truth by the teaching and
example of Hamilton. It was told the Archbishop of St. Andrews that Forrest had said that
Hamilton "was a martyr, and no heretic," and that he had a New Testament in his
possession, most probably Tyndale's, which was intelligible to the Scots of the Lowlands.
"He is as bad as Master Patrick," said Beaton; "we must burn him." A
"merry gentleman," James Lindsay, who was standing beside the archbishop when
Forrest was condemned, ventured to hint, "My lord, if ye will burn any man, let him
be burned in how [hollow] cellars, for the reek [smoke] of Patrick Hamilton has infected
as many as it did blow upon." The rage of Beaton blinded him to the wisdom of the
advice. Selecting the highest ground in the immediate neighborhood of St. Andrews, he
ordered the stake of Forrest to be planted there (1532), that the light of his pile,
flashing across the Tay, might warn the men of Angus and Forfarshire to shun his heresy.[1]
The next two martyrs were David Straiton and Norman Gourlay. David Straiton, a
Forfarshire gentleman, whose ancestors had dwelt on their lands of Laudston since the
sixth century, was a great lover of field sports, and was giving himself no concern
whatever about matters of religion. He happened to quarrel with Patrick Hepburn, Prior of
St. Andrews, about his ecclesiastical dues. His lands adjoined the sea, and, daring and
venturous, he loved to launch out into the deep, and always returned with his boat laden
with fish. Prior Hepburn, who was as great a fisher as himself, though in other waters and
for other spoil, demanded his tithe. Straiton threw every tenth fish into the sea, and
gruffly told the prior to seek his tithe where he had found the stock. Hepburn summoned
the laird to answer to a charge of heresy. Heresy! Straiton did not even know what the
word meant. He began to inquire what that thing called heresy might be of which he was
accused. Unable himself to read, he made his nephew open the New Testament and read it to
him. He felt his sin; "he was changed," says Knox, "as if by miracle,"
and began that course of life which soon drew upon him the eyes of the hierarchy. Norman
Gourlay, the other person who now fell under the displeasure of the priesthood, had been a
student at St. Andrews, and was in priest's orders. The trial of the two took place in
Holyrood House, in presence of King James V, "clothed all in red;" and James
Hay, Bishop of Ross, acting as commissioner for Archbishop Beaten. They were condemned,
and in the afternoon of the same day they were taken to the Rood of Greenside, and there
burned. This was a high ground between Edinburgh and Leith, and the execution took place
there "that the inhabitants of Fife, seeing the fire, might be stricken with
terror." To the martyrs themselves the fire had no terror, because to them death had
no sting.[2]
Four years elapsed after the death of Straiten and Gourlay till another pile was raised in
Scotland. In 1538, five persons were burned. Dean Thomas Forrest, one of the five martyrs,
had been a canon regular in the Augustinian monastery of St. Colme Inch, in the Frith of
Forth, and had been brought to a knowledge of the truth by perusing a volume of Augustine,
which was lying unused and neglected in the monastery. Lest he should infect his brethren
he was transferred to the rural parish of Dollar, at the foot of the picturesque Ochils.
Here he spent some busy years preaching and catechizing, till at last the eyes of the
Archbishop of St. Andrews were drawn to him. There had been a recent change in that see --
the uncle, James Beaten, being now dead, the more cruel and bloodthirsty nephew, David
Beaten, had succeeded him. It was before this tyrant that the diligent and loving friar of
Dollar was now summoned. He and the four companions who were tried along with him were
condemned to the stake, and on the afternoon of the same day were burned on the
Castle-hill of Edinburgh. Placed on this elevated site, these five blazing pile.,
proclaimed to the men of Fife, and the dwellers in the Lothians, how great was the rage of
the priests, but how much greater the heroism of the martyrs which overcame it.[3]
If the darkness threatened to close in again, the hierarchy always took care to
disperse it by kindling another pile. Only a year elapsed after the bunting of the five
martyrs on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, when other two confessors were called to suffer
the fire. Jerome Russel, a Black Friar, and Alexander Kennedy, a gentleman of Ayrshire,
were put on their trial before the Archbishop of Glasgow and condemned for heresy, and
were burned next day. At the stake, Russel, the more courageous of the two, taking his
youthful fellow-sufferer by the hand, bade him not fear. "Death," he said,
"cannot destroy us, seeing our Lord and Master has already destroyed it."
The blood the hierarchy was spilling was very fruitful. For every confessor that perished,
a little company of disciples arose to fill his place. The martyr-piles, lit on elevated
sites and flashing their gloomy splendor over city and shire, set the inhabitants
a-talking; the story of the martyrs was rehearsed at many a fire-side, and their meekness
contrasted with the cruelty and arrogance of their persecutors; the Bible was sought
after, and the consequence was that the confessors of the truth rapidly increased.
The first disciples in Scotland were men of rank and learning; but these burnings carried
the cause down among the humbler classes. The fury of the clergy, now presided over by the
truculent David Beaten, daily waxed greater, and numbers, to escape the stake, fled to
foreign countries. Some of these were men illustrious for their genius and their
scholarship, of whom were Gawin Logic, Principal of St. Leonard's College, the renowned
George Buchanan, and McAlpine, or Maccabaeus, to whom the King of Denmark gave a chair in
his University of Copenhagen. The disciples in humble life, unable to flee, had to brave
the terrors of the stake and cord.
The greater part of their names have passed into oblivion, and only a few have been
preserved.[4] In
1543, Cardinal Beaten made a tour through his diocese, illustrating his pride by an
ostentatious display of the symbols of his rank, and his cruelty by hanging, burning, and
in some cases drowning heretics, in the towns where it pleased him to set up his tribunal.
The profligate James V had fallen under the power of the hierarchy, and this emboldened
the cardinal to venture upon a measure which he doubted not would be the death-blow of
heresy in Scotland, and would secure to the hierarchy a long and tranquil reign over the
country. He meditated cutting off by violence all the nobles who were known to favor the
Reformed opinions. The list compiled by Beaten contained above 100 names, and among those
marked out for slaughter were Lord Hamilton, the first peer in the realm, the Earls of
Cassillis and Glencairn, and the Earl Marischall — a proof of the hold which the
Protestant doctrine had now taken in Scotland. Before the bloody plot could be executed
the Scottish army sustained a terrible defeat at the Solway, and the king soon thereafter
dying of a broken heart, the list of the proscribed was found upon his person after death.
The nation saw with horror how narrow its escape had been from a catastrophe which,
beginning with the nobility, would have quickly extended to all the favorers of the
Protestant opinions.[5] The
discovery helped not a little to pave the way for the downfall of a hierarchy which was
capable of concocting so diabolical a plot.
Instead of the nobility and gentry of Scotland, it was the king himself whom the priests
had brought to destruction; for, hoping to prevent the Reformed opinions entering Scotland
from England, the priests had instigated James V to offer to Henry VIII the affront which
led to the disaster of Solway-moss, followed so quickly by the death-bed scene in the
royal palace of Falkland. The throne now vacant, it became necessary to appoint a regent
to govern the kingdom during the minority of the Princess Mary, who was just eight days
old when her father died, on the 16th of December, 1542. The man whose name was first on
the list of nobles marked for slaughter, was chosen to the regency, although Cardinal
Beaten sought to bar his way to it by producing a forged will of the late king appointing
himself to the post.[6] The
fact that Arran was a professed Reformer contributed quite as much to his elevation as the
circumstance of his being premier peer. Kirkaldy of Grange, Learmonth of Balcomy, Balnaves
of Halhill, Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and other known friends of the Reformed
opinions became his advisers. He selected as his chaplains Thomas Guilliam and John Rough,
and opening to them the Church of Holyrood, they there preached "doctrine so
wholesome," and so zealously reproved "impiety and superstition," that the
Gray Friars, says Knox, "rowped as they had been ravens," crying out,
"Heresy! Heresy!
Guilliam and Rough will carry the governor to the devil!"[7] But the most important of all the measures of the regent was the
passing of the Act of Parliament, 15th of March, 1543, which made it lawful for every
subject in the realm to read the Bible in his mother tongue. Hitherto the Word of God had
lain under the ban of the hierarchy; that obstruction now removed, "then might have
been seen," says Knox, "the Bible lying upon almost every gentleman's table. The
New Testament was borne about in many men's hands." And though, as Knox tells us,
some simulated a zeal for the Bible to make court to the governor, "yet thereby did
the knowledge of God wondrously increase, and God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in
great abundance. Then were set forth works in our own tongue, besides those that came from
England, that did disclose the pride, the craft, the tyranny and abuses of that Roman
Antichrist."[8]
It was only four months after Scotland had received the gift of a free Bible, that
another boon was given it in the person of an eloquent preacher. We refer to George
Wishart, who followed Patrick Hamilton at an interval of seventeen years. Wishart, born in
1512, was the son of Sir James Wishart of Pitarrow, an ancient and honorable family of the
Mearns. An excellent Grecian, he was the first who taught that noblest of the tongues of
the ancient world in the grammar schools of Scotland. Erskine of Dun had founded an
academy at Montrose, and here the young Wishart taught Greek, it being then not uncommon
for the scions of aristocratic and even noble families to give instructions in the learned
languages. Wishart, becoming "suspect" of heresy, retired first to England, then
to Switzerland, where he passed a year in the society of Bullinger and the study of the
Helvetic Confession. Returning to England, he took up his abode for a short time at
Cambridge. Let us look at the man as the graphic pen of one of his disciples has painted
him. "He was a man," says Tylney — writing long after the noble figure that
enshrined so many sweet virtues, and so much excellent learning and burning eloquence, had
been reduced to ashes — "he was a man of tall stature, polled-headed, and on the
same a round French cap of the best. Judged of melancholy complexion by his physiognomy,
black-haired, long-bearded, comely of personage, well-spoken after his country of
Scotland, courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was
well-traveled; having on him for his habit or clothing never but a mantle, frieze gown to
the shoes, a black Milan fustian doublet, and plain black hosen, coarse new canvass for
his shirts, and white falling bands and cuffs at the hands."[9]
Wishart returned to Scotland in the July of 1543. Arran's zeal for the Reformation
had by this time spent itself; and the astute and resolute Beaton was dominant in the
nation. It was in the midst of perils that Wishart began his ministry. "The beginning
of his doctrine" was in Montrose, at that time the most Lutheran town perhaps in
Scotland. He next visited Dundee, where his eloquence drew around him great crowds.
Following the example of Zwingle at Zurich, and of Calvin at Geneva, instead of
discoursing on desultory topics, he opened the Epistle to the Romans, and proceeded to
expound it chapter by chapter to his audience. The Gospel thus rose before them as a grand
unity. Beginning with the "one man" by whom sin entered, they passed on to the
"one Man" by whom had come the "free gift." The citizens were hanging
upon the lips of the greatest pulpit orator that had arisen in Scotland for centuries,
when they were surprised by a visit from the governor and the cardinal, who brought with
them a train of field artillery. Believing the town to be full of Lutherans, they had come
prepared to besiege it. The citizens retired, taking with them, it is probable, their
preacher, leaving the gates of the city open for the entrance of the Churchman and his
unspiritual accompaniments. When the danger had passed Wishart and his flock returned,
and, resuming his exposition at the point where the cardinal's visit had compelled him to
break off, he continued his labors in Dundee for some months. Arran had sunk into the mere
tool of the cardinal, and it was not to be expected that the latter, now all-powerful in
Scotland, would permit the erection of a Lutheran stronghold almost at his very door. He
threatened to repeat his visit to Dundee if the preacher were not silenced, and Wishart,
knowing that Beaten would keep his word, and seeing some of the citizens beginning to
tremble at the prospect, deemed it prudent to obey the charge delivered to him in the
queen's name, while in the act of preaching, to "depart, and trouble the town no
more."
The evangelist went on his way to Ayr and Kyle. That was soil impregnated with seed sown
in it by the hands of the Lollards. The church doors were locked against the preacher, but
it was a needless precaution, no church could have contained the congregations that
flocked to hear him. Wishart went to the market crosses, to the fields, and making of a
"dry dyke"[10] a
pulpit, he preached to the eager and awed thousands seated round him on the grass or on
the heather. His words took effect on not a few who had been previously notorious for
their wickedness; and the sincerity of their conversion was attested, not merely by the
tears that rolled down their faces at the moment, but by the purity and consistency of
their whole after-life. How greatly do those err who believe the Reformation to have been
but a battle of dogmas!
The Reformation was the cry of the human conscience for pardon. That great movement took
its rise, not in the conviction of the superstitions, exactions, and scandals of the Roman
hierarchy, but in the conviction of each individual of his own sin. That conviction was
wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, then abundantly poured down upon the nations; and the
Gospel which showed the way of forgiveness delivered men from bondage, and imparting a new
life to them, brought them into a world of liberty. This was the true Reformation. We
would call it a revival were it not that the term is too weak: it was a creation; it
peopled Christendom with new men, in the first place, and in the second it covered it with
new Churches and States.
Hardly had Wishart departed from Dundee when the plague entered it. This was a visitant
whose shafts were more deadly than even the cardinal's artillery. The lazar-houses that
stood at the "East Port," round the shrine of St. Roque, the protector from
pestilence, were crowded with the sick and the dying. Wishart hastened back the moment he
heard the news, and mounting on the top of the Cowgate the healthy inside the gate, the
plague-stricken outside — he preached to the two congregations, choosing as his text
the words of the 107th Psalm, "He sent his Word and healed them." A new life
began to be felt in the stricken city; measures were organized, by the advice of Wishart,
for the distribution of food and medicine among the sick,[11] and the plague began to abate. One day his labors were on the
point of being brought to an abrupt termination. A priest, hired by the cardinal to
assassinate him, waited at the foot of the stairs for the moment when he should descend. A
cloak thrown over him concealed the naked dagger which he held in his hand; but the keen
eye of Wishart read the murderous design in the man's face. Going up to him and putting
his hand upon his arm, he said, "Friend, what would ye?" at the same time
disarming him. The crowd outside rushed in, and would have dispatched the would-be
assassin, but Wishart threw himself between the indignant citizens and the man, and thus,
in the words of Knox, "saved the life of him who sought his."
On leaving Dundee in the end of 1545, Wishart repaired to Edinburgh, and thence passed
into East Lothian, preaching in its towns and villages. He had a deep presentiment that
his end was near, and that he would fall a sacrifice to the wrath of Beaton. Apprehended
at Ormiston on the night of the 16th of January, 1546, he was carried to St. Andrews,
thrown into the Sea-tower, and brought to trial on the 28th of February, and condemned to
the flames. Early next morning the preparations were begun for his execution, which was to
take place at noon. The scaffold was erected a little way in front of the cardinal's
palace, in the dungeons of which Wishart lay. The guns of the castle, the gunners by their
side, were shotted and turned on the scaffold; an iron stake, chains, and gunpowder were
provided for the martyr; and the windows and wall-tops were lined with cushions, and
draped with green hangings, for the luxurious repose of the cardinal and bishops while
witnessing the spectacle. At noon Wishart was led forth in the midst of soldiers, his
hands tied behind his back, a rope round his neck, and an iron chain round his middle. His
last meal in the hall of the castle before being led out he had converted into the
"Last Supper," which he partook with his friends. "Consider and behold my
visage," said he, "ye shall not see me change my color. The grim fire I fear
not. I know surely that my soul shall sup with my Savior this night." Having taken
his place at the stake, the powder-bags were first exploded, scorching him severely; the
rope round his neck was then drawn tightly to strangle him, and last of all his body was
burned to ashes."[12]
It was Wishart," says Dr. Lorimer, "who first molded the Reformed
theology of Scotland upon the Helvetic, as distinguished from the Saxon type; and it was
he who first taught the Church of Scotland to reduce her ordinances and Sacraments with
rigorous fidelity to the standard of Christ's Institutions."[13]
It is at the stake of Wishart that we first catch sight as it were of Knox, for the
parting between the two, so affectingly recorded by Knox himself, took place not many days
before the death of the martyr. John Knox, descended from the Knoxes of Ranferly, was born
in Gifford-gate, Haddington,[14] in
1505. From the school of his native town he passed (1522) to the University of Glasgow,
and was entered under the celebrated John Major, then Principal Regent or Professor of
Philosophy and Divinity. After leaving college he passes out of view for ten or a dozen
years. About this time he would seem to have taken priest's orders, and to have been for
upwards of ten years connected with one of the religious establishments in the
neighborhood of Haddington. He had been enamoured of the scholastic philosophy, the
science that sharpened the intellect, but left the conscience unmoved and the soul unfed;
but now loathing its dry crusts, and turning away from its great doctors, he seats himself
at the feet of the great Father of the West. He read and studied the writings of
Augustine. Rich in evangelical truth and impregnate with the fire of Divine love,
Augustine's pages must have had much to do with the molding of Knox's mind, and the
imprinting upon it of that clear, broad, and heroic stamp which it wore all his life long.
Augustine and Jerome led Knox to the feet of a Greater. The future Reformer now opens the
Sacred Oracles, and he who had once wandered in the dry and thirsty wilderness of
scholasticism finds himself at the fountain and well-head of Divine knowledge. The wonder
he felt when the doctrines of the schools vanished around him like mist, and the eternal
verities of the Gospel stood out before him in the clear light of the Bible, we are not
told. Did the day which broke on Luther and Calvin amid lightning and great thundering
dawn peacefully on Knox? We do not think so. Doubtless the Scottish Reformer, before
escaping from the yoke of Rome, had to undergo struggles of soul akin to those of his two
great predecessors; but they have been left unrecorded. We of this age are, in this
respect, free-born; the men of the sixteenth century had to buy their liberty, and ours at
the same time, with a great sum.
From the doctors of the Middle Ages to the Fathers of the first ages, from the Fathers to
the Word of God, Knox was being led, by a way he knew not, to the great task that awaited
him. His initial course of preparation, begun by Augustine, was perfected doubtless by the
private instructions and public sermons of Wishart, which Knox was privileged to enjoy
during the weeks that immediately preceded the martyr's death. That death would seal to
Knox all that had fallen from the lips of Wishart, and would bring him to the final
resolve to abandon the Roman communion and cast in his lot with the Reformers. But both
the man and the country had yet to pass through many sore conflicts before either was
ready for that achievement which crowned the labors of the one and completed the
Reformation of the other.
CHAPTER 4 Back to Top
KNOX'S CALL TO THE MINISTRY AND FIRST SERMON
Cardinal Beaton Assassinated — Castle of St. Andrews Held by the Conspirators, Knox
Enters it -- Called to the Ministry — His First Sermon — Key-note of the
Reformation Struck — Knox in the French Galleys — The Check Useful to Scotland
— Useful to Knox — What he Learned Abroad — Visits Scotland in 1555 —
The Nobles Withdraw from Mass — A "Congregation" — Elders — The
First "Band" Subscribed — Walter Mill Burned at St. Andrews — The Last
Martyr of the Reformation in Scotland
On Saturday morning, the 29th of May, the Castle of St.
Andrews was surprised by Norman Leslie and his accomplices, and Cardinal Beaton slain.
This was a violence which the Reformation did not need, and from which it did not profit.
The cardinal was removed, but the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, a woman of consummate
craft, and devoted only to France and Rome, remained. The weak-minded Arran had now
consummated his apostasy, and was using his power as regent only at the bidding of the
priests. Moreover, the see which the dagger of Leslie had made vacant was filled by a man
in many respects as bad as the bloodthirsty and truculent priest who had preceded him.
John Hamilton, brother of the regent, did not equal Beaten in rigor of mind, but he
equaled him in profligacy of manners, and in the unrelenting and furious zeal with which
he pursued all who favored the Gospel. Thus the persecution did not slacken.
The cardinal's corpse flung upon a dung-hill, the conspirators kept possession of his
castle. It had been recently and strongly repaired, and was well mounted with arms; and
although the regent besieged it for months, he had to retire, leaving its occupants in
peace. Its holders were soon joined by their friends, favorers of the Reformation, though
with a purer zeal, including among others Kirkaldy of Grange, Melville of Raith, and
Leslie of Rothes. It had now become an asylum for the persecuted, and at Easter, 1547, it
opened its gates to receive John Knox. Knox had now reached the mature age of forty-two,
and here it was that he entered on that public career which he was to pursue without
pause, through labor and sorrow, through exile and peril, till the grave should bring him
repose.
That career opened affectingly and beautifully. The company in the castle had now grown to
upwards of 150, and "perceiving the manner" of Knox's teaching, they "began
earnestly to travail with him that he would take the preaching place upon him," and
when he hesitated they solemnly adjured him, as Beza had done Calvin, "not to refuse
this holy vocation." The flood of tears, which was the only response that Knox was
able to make, the seclusion in which he shut himself up for days, and the traces of sore
mental conflict which his countenance bore when at last he emerged from his chamber, paint
with a vividness no words can reach the sensibility and the conscientiousness, the modesty
and the strength of his character. It is a great office, it is the greatest of all
offices, he feels, to which he is called; and if he trembles in taking it upon him, it is
not alone from a sense of unfitness, but from a knowledge of the thoroughness of his
devotion, and that the office once undertaken, its responsibilities and claims must and
will, at whatever cost, be discharged.
Knox preached in the castle, and at times also in the parish church of St. Andrews. In his
first sermon in the latter place he struck the key-note of the Reformation in his native
land. The Church of Rome, said he, is the Antichrist of Scripture. No movement can rise
higher than its fundamental principle, and no doctrine less broad than this which Knox now
proclaimed could have sustained the weight of such a Reformation as Scotland needed.
"Others sned [lopped] the branches of the Papistrie," said some of his hearers,
"but he strikes at the root to destroy the whole."[1] Hamilton and Wishart had stopped short of this. They had condemned
abuses, and pointed out the doctrinal errors in which these abuses had their source, and
they had called for a purging out of scandalous persons — in short, a reform of the
existing Church. Knox came with the ax in his hand to cut down the rotten tree. He saw at
once the point from which he must set out if he would arrive at the right goal. Any
principle short of this would but give him an improved Papacy, not a Scriptural Church
— a temporary abatement to be followed by a fresh outburst of abuses, and the last
end of the Papacy in Scotland would be worse than the first. Greater than Hamilton,
greater than Wishart, Knox took rank with the first minds of the Reformation, in the depth
and comprehensiveness of the principles from which he worked. The deliverer of Scotland
stood before his countrymen. But no sooner had he been revealed to the eyes of those who
waited for deliverance than he was withdrawn. The first gun in the campaign had been
fired; the storming of the Papacy would go vigorously forward under the intrepid champion
who had come to lead. But so it was not to be; the struggle was to be a protracted one. On
the 4th of June, 1547, the French war-ships appeared in the offing. In a few hours the
castle, with its miscellaneous occupants, was enclosed on the side towards the sea, while
the forces of Arran besieged it by land. It fell, and all in it, including Knox, were put
on board the French galleys and, in violation of the terms of capitulation, borne away
into foreign slavery. The last French ship had disappeared below the horizon, and with it
had vanished the last hope of Scotland's Reformation. The priests loudly triumphed, and
the friends of the Gospel hung their heads.
The work now stood still, but only to the eye — -it was all the while advancing
underground. In this check lay hid a blessing to Scotland, for it was well that its people
should have time to meditate upon the initial principle of the Reformation which Knox had
put before them. That principle was the seed of a new Church and a new State, but it must
have time to unfold itself. The people of Scotland had to be taught that Reformation could
not be furthered by the dagger; the stakes of Hamilton and Wishart had advanced the cause,
but the sword of Norman Leslie had thrown it back; they had to be taught, too, that to
reform the Papacy was to perpetuate it, and that they must return to the principle of Knox
if they were ever to see a Scriptural Church rising in their land.
To Knox himself this check was not less necessary. His preparation for the great task
before him was as yet far from complete. He wanted neither zeal nor knowledge, but his
faculties had to be widened by observation, and his character strengthened by suffering.
His sojourn abroad shook him free of those merely insular and home views, which cling to
one who has never been beyond seas, especially in an age when the channels of intercourse
and information between Scotland and the rest of Christendom were few and contracted. In
the French galleys, and scarcely less in the city of Frankfort, he saw deeper than he had
ever done before into the human heart. It was there he learned that self-control, that
parlance of labor, that meek endurance of wrong, that calm and therefore steady and
resolute resistance to vexatious and unrighteous opposition, and that self-possession in
difficulty and danger that so greatly distinguished him ever after, and which were needful
and indeed essential in one who was called, in planting religion in his native land, to
confront the hostility of a Popish court, to moderate the turbulence of factious barons,
and to inform the ignorance and control the zeal of a people who till that time had been
strangers to the blessings of religion and liberty. It was not for nothing that the hand
which gave to Scotland its liberty, should itself for nearly the space of two years have
worn fetters.
It was another advantage of his exile that from a foreign stand-point Knox could have a
better view of the drama now in progress in his native land, and could form a juster
estimate of its connection with the rest of Christendom, and the immense issues that hung
upon the Reformation of Scotland as regarded the Reformation of other countries. Here he
saw deeper into the cunningly contrived plots and the wide-spread combinations then
forming among the Popish princes of the age — a race of rulers who will remain
renowned through all time for their unparalleled cruelty and their unfathomable treachery.
These lessons Knox learned abroad, and they were worth all the years of exile and
wandering and all the hope deferred which they cost him; and of how much advantage they
were to him we shall by-and-by see, when we come to narrate his supreme efforts for his
native land.
Nor could it be other than advantageous to come into contact with the chiefs of the
movement, and especially with him who towered above them all. To see Calvin, to stand
beside the source of that mighty energy that pervaded the whole field of action to its
farthest extremities, must have been elevating and inspiring. Knox's views touching both
the doctrine and the polity of the Church were formed before he visited Calvin, and were
not altered in consequence of that visit; but doubtless his converse with the great
Reformer helped to deepen and enlarge all his views, and to keep alive the fire that
burned within him, first kindled into a flame during those days of anguish which he passed
shut up in his chamber in the Castle of St. Andrews. In all his wanderings it was
Scotland, bound in the chains of Rome, riveted by French steel, that occupied his
thoughts; and intently did he watch every movement in it, sometimes from Geneva, sometimes
from Dieppe, and at other times from the nearer point of England; nor did he ever miss an
opportunity of letting his burning words be heard by his countrymen, till at length, in
1555, eight years from the time he had been carried away with the French fetters on his
arm, he was able again to visit his native land.
Knox's present sojourn in Scotland was short, but it tended powerfully to consolidate and
advance the movement. His presence imparted new life to its adherents; and his counsels
led them to certain practical measures, by which each strengthened the other, and all were
united in a common action.
Several of the leading nobles were now gathered round the Protestant banner. Among these
were Archibald, Lord Lorne, afterwards Earl of Argyle; John, Lord Erskine, afterwards Earl
of Mar; Lord James Stuart, afterwards Earl of Murray; the Earl Marischall; the Earl of
Glencairn; John Erskine of Dun; William Maitland of Lethington, and others.[2] Up to this time these men had
attended mass, and were not outwardly separate from the communion of the Roman Church;
but, at the earnest advice of the Reformer, they resolved not to participate in that rite
in future, and to withdraw themselves from the Roman worship and pale; and they signalized
their secession by receiving the Sacrament in its Protestant form at the hands of Knox.[3] We see in this the laying of the
first foundations of the Reformed Church of Scotland. In the days of Hamilton and Wishart
the Reformation in Scotland was simply a doctrine; now it was a congregation.
This was all that the times permitted the Reformer to do for the cause of the Gospel in
Scotland; and, feeling that his continued presence in the country would but draw upon the
infant community a storm of persecution, Knox retired to Geneva, where his English flock
anxiously waited his coming. But on this second departure from Scotland, he was cheered by
the thought that the movement had advanced a stage. The little seed he had deposited in
its soil eight years before had been growing all the while he was absent, and now when a
second time he goes forth into exile, he leaves behind him a living organization — a
company of men making profession of the truth.
From this time the progress of the Reformation in Scotland was rapid. In the midland
counties, comprehending Forfar, Fife, the Lothians, and Ayr, there were few places in
which there were not now professors of the Reformed faith. They had as yet no preachers,
but they met in such places, his such times, as circumstances permitted, for their mutual
edification. The most pious of their number was appointed to read the Scriptures, to
exhort, and to offer up prayer. They were of all classes — nobles, barons, burgesses,
and peasants. They felt the necessity of order in their meetings, and of purity in their
lives; and with this view they chose elders to watch over their morals, promising
subjection to them. Thus gradually, stage by stage, did they approach the outward
organization of a Church, and at it is interesting to mark that in the Reformed Church of
Scotland elders came before ministers. The beginning of these small congregations,
presided over by elders, was in Edinburgh. The first town to be provided with a pastor,
and favored with the dispensation of the Sacraments, was Dundee, the scene of Wishart's
labors, of which the fruits were the zeal and piety that at this early stage of the
Reformation distinguished its citizens.[4] Dundee came to be called the Geneva of Scotland; it was the
earliest and loveliest flower of that spring-time. The next step of the "lords of the
Congregation" was the framing of a "band" or covenant, in which they
promised before "the Majesty of God and his Congregation" to employ their
"whole power, substance, and very lives" in establishing the Gospel in Scotland,
in defending its ministers, and building up its "Congregation." The earliest of
these "bands" is dated the 3rd December, 1557;[5] and the subscribers are the Earls of Argyle, Glencairn, Morton,
Lord Lorne, and Erskine of Dun. Strengthened by this "oath to God" and pledge to
one another, they went forth to the battle.
The year that followed (1558) witnessed a forward movement on the part of the Protestant
host. The lords of the Congregation could not forbid mass, or change the public worship of
the nation; nor did they seek to do so; but each nobleman within his own jurisdiction
caused the English "Book of Common Prayer," together with the lessons of the Old
and New Testament, to be read every Sunday and festival-day in the parish church by the
curate, or if he were unable or unwilling, by the person best qualified in the parish. The
Reformed teachers were also invited to preach and interpret Scripture in private houses,
or in the castles of the reforming nobles, till such time as the Government would allow
them to exercise their functions in public.[6] The latter measures in particular alarmed the hierarchy.
It began to be apparent that destruction impended ever the hierarchy unless speedy,
measures were taken to avert it. But the priests unhappily knew of only one weapon, and
though their cause had reaped small advantage from it in the past, they were still
determined to make use of it.
They once more lighted the flames of martyrdom. Walter Mill, parish priest of Lunan, near
Montrose, had been adjudged a heretic in the time of Cardinal Beaten, but effecting his
escape, he preached in various parts of the country, sometimes in private and sometimes in
public. He was tracked by the spies of Beaton's successor, Archbishop Hamilton, and
brought to trial in St. Andrews. He appeared before the court with tottering step and
bending figure, so that all who saw him despaired of his being able to answer the
questions about to be put to him. But when, on being helped up into the pulpit, he began
to speak, "his voice," says Knox, "had such courage and stoutness that the
church rang again." "Wilt thou not recant thy errors?" asked the tribunal
after he had been subjected to a long questioning. "Ye shall know," said he,
looking into the faces of his enemies, "that I will not recant the truth, for I am
corn and not chaff. I will not be blown away with the wind, nor burst with the flail, but
I will abide both."
He stood before his judges with the burden of eighty-two years upon him, but this could
procure him no pity, nor could his enemies wait till he should drop into the grave on the
brink of which he stood. He was condemned to the flames. A rope was wanted to bind the old
man to the stake, but so great was the horror of his burning among the townsmen that not a
merchant in all St. Andrews would sell one, and the archbishop was obliged to furnish a
cord from his own palace. When ordered by Oliphant, an officer of the archbishop, to mount
the pile, "No," replied the martyr, "I will not unless you put your hand to
me, for I am forbidden to be accessory to my own death." Whereupon Oliphant pushed
him forward, and Mill ascended with a joyful countenance, repeating the words of the
Psalm, "I will go to the altar of God." As he stood at the stake, Mill addressed
the people in these words: "As for me, I am fourscore and two years old, and cannot
live long by course of nature; but a hundred better shall rise out of the ashes of my
bones. I trust in God that I shall be the last that shall suffer death in Scotland for
this cause.[7] He
expired on the 28th of August, 1558.
These few last words, dropped from a tongue fast becoming unable to fulfill its office,
pealed forth from amid the flames with the thrilling power of a trumpet. They may be said
to have rung the death-knell of Popery in Scotland. The citizens of St. Andrews raised a
pile of stones over the spot where the martyr had been burned. The priests caused them to
be carried off night by night, but the ominous heap rose again duly in the morning. It
would not vanish, nor would the cry from it be silenced.[8] The nation was roused, and Scotland waited only the advent of one
of its exiled sons, who was day by day drawing nearer it, to start up as one man and rend
from its neck the cruel yoke which had so long weighed it down in serfdom and
superstition.
CHAPTER 5 Back to Top
KNOX'S FINAL RETURN TO SCOTLAND
The Priests Renew the Persecution — The Queen Regent openly Sides with them —
Demands of the Protestant Lords — Rejected — Preaching Forbidden — The
Preachers Summoned before the Queen — A Great Juncture — Arrival of John Knox
— Consternation of the Hierarchy — The Reformer of Scotland — Knox Outlawed
— Resolves to Appear with the Preachers before the Queen — The Queen's Perfidy
— Knox's Sermon at Perth — Destruction of the Gray Friars' and Black Friars'
Monasteries, etc. — The Queen Regent Marches against Perth — Commencement of the
Civil War
It was now thirty years since the stake of Patrick Hamilton
had lighted Scotland into the path of Reformation. The progress of the country had been
slow, but now the goal was being neared, and events were thickening. The two great parties
into which Scotland was divided stood frowning at each other: the crime of burning Mill on
the one side, and "the oath to the Majesty of Heaven" on the other, rendered
conciliation hopeless, and nothing remained but to bring the controversy between the two
to a final issue.
The stake of Mill was meant to be the first of a series of martyrdoms by which the
Reformers were to be exterminated. Many causes contributed to the adoption of a bolder
policy on the part of the hierarchy. They could not hide from themselves that the
Reformation was advancing with rapid strides. The people were deserting the mass; little
companies of Protestants were forming in all the leading towns, the Scriptures were being
interpreted, and the Lord's Supper dispensed according to the primitive order; many of the
nobles were sheltering Protestant preachers in their castles. It was clear that Scotland
was going the same road as Wittemberg and Geneva had gone; and it was equally clear that
the champions of the Papacy must strike at once and with decision, or surrender the
battle.
But what specially emboldened the hierarchy at this hour was the fact that the queen
regent had openly come over to their side. A daughter of the House of Lorraine, she had
always been with them at heart, but her ambition being to secure the crown-matrimonial of
Scotland for her son-in-law, Francis II, she had poised herself, with almost the skill of
a Catherine de Medici, between the bishops and the lords of the Congregation. She needed
the support of both to carry her political objects. In October, 1558, the Parliament met;
and the queen regent, with the assistance of the Protestants, obtained from "the
Estates" all that she wished. It being no longer necessary to wear the mask, the
queen now openly sided with her natural party, the men of the sword and the stake. Hence
the courage which emboldened the priests to re-kindle the fires of persecution; and hence,
too, the rigor that now animated the Reformers. Disenchanted from a spell that had kept
them dubiously poised between the mass and the Gospel, they now saw where they stood, and,
shutting their ears to Mary's soft words, they resolved to follow the policy alike
demanded by their duty and their safety.
They assembled at Edinburgh, and agreed upon certain demands, which they were to present
by commissioners to the convention of the nobility and the council of the clergy. The
reforms asked for were three that it should be lawful to preach and to dispense the
Sacraments in the vulgar tongue; that bishops should be admitted into their sees only with
the consent of the barons of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the
parishioners; and that immoral and incapable persons should be removed from the pastoral
office. These demands were rejected, the council having just concluded a secret treaty
with the queen for the forcible suppression of the Reformation.[1] No sooner had the Protestant nobles left Edinburgh than the regent
issued a proclamation prohibiting all persons from preaching or dispensing the Sacraments
without authority from the bishops.
The Reformed preachers disobeyed the proclamation. The queen, on learning this, summoned
them to appear before her at Stirling, on the 10th of May, and answer to a charge of
heresy and rebellion. There were only four preachers in Scotland, namely, Paul Methven,
John Christison, William Harlow, and John Willock. The Earl of Glencairn and Sir Hugh
Campbell, Sheriff of Ayr, waited on the queen to remonstrate against this arbitrary
proceeding. She haughtily replied that "in spite of them all their preachers should
be banished from Scotland." "What then," they asked, "became of her
oft-repeated promises to protect their preachers?" Mary, not in the least
disconcerted, replied that "it became not subjects to burden their princes with
promises further than they pleased to keep them." "If so," replied
Glencairn, "we on our side are free of our allegiance." The queen's tone now
fell, and she promised to think seriously over the further prosecution of the affair. At
that moment, news arrived that France and Spain had concluded a peace, and formed a league
for the suppression of the Reformation by force of arms. Scotland would not be overlooked
in the orthodox crusade, and the regent already saw in the contemplated measures the
occupation of that country by French soldiers. She issued peremptory orders for putting
the four Protestant ministers upon their trial. It was a strange and startling juncture.
The blindness of the hierarchy in rejecting the very moderate reform which the Protestants
asked, the obstinacy of the queen in putting the preachers upon their trial, and the
league of the foreign potentates, which threatened to make Scotland a mere dependency of
France, all met at this moment, and constituted a crisis of a trimly momentous character,
but which above most things helped on that very consummation towards which Scotland had
been struggling for upwards of thirty years.
There wanted yet one thing to complete this strange conjuncture of events. That one thing
was added, and the combination, so formidable and menacing till that moment, was changed
into one of good promise and happy augury to Protestantism. While the queen and the
bishops were concerting their measures in Edinburgh, and a few days were to see the four
preachers consigned to the same fate which had overtaken Mill; while the Kings of Spain
and France were combining their armies, and meditating a great blow on the Continent, a
certain ship had left the harbor of Dieppe, and was voyaging northward with a fair wind,
bound for the Scottish shore, and on board that ship there was a Scotsman, in himself a
greater power than an army of 10,000 men. This ship carried John Knox, who, without human
pre-arrangement, was arriving in the very midst of his country's crisis.
Knox landed at Leith on the 2nd of May, 1559. The provincial council was still sitting in
the Monastery of the Gray Friars when, on the morning of the 3rd of May, a messenger
entering in haste announced that John Knox had arrived from France, and had slept last
night in Edinburgh. The news fell like a thunder-bolt upon the members of council. They
sat for some time speechless, looking into one another's faces, and at last they broke up
in confusion. Before Knox had uttered a single word, or even shown himself in public, his
very name had scattered them. A messenger immediately set off with the unwelcome news to
the queen, who was at that time in Glasgow; and in a few days a royal proclamation
declared Knox a rebel and an outlaw.[2] I
the proclamation accomplished nothing else, it made the fact of the Reformer's presence
known to all Scotland. The nation had now found what it needed, a man able to lead it in
the great war on which it was entering. His devotion and zeal, now fully matured in the
school of suffering; his sincerity and uprightness; his magnanimity and courage; his skill
in theological debate, and his political insight, in which he excelled all living
Scotsmen; the confidence and hope with which he was able to inspire his fellow-countrymen;
and the terror in which the hierarchy stood of his very name, all marked him out as the
chosen instrument for his country's deliverance. He knew well how critical the hour was,
and how arduous his task would be. Religion and liberty were within his country's grasp,
and still it might miss them. The chances of failure and of success seemed evenly poised;
half the nobles were on the side of Rome; all the Highlands, we may say, were Popish;
there were the indifference, the gross ignorance, the old murky superstition of the rural
parts; these were the forces bearing down the scale, and making the balance incline to
defeat. On the other side, a full half of the barons were on the side of the Reformation;
but it was only a few of them who could be thoroughly depended upon; the rest were
lukewarm or wavering, and not without an eye to the spoils that would be gathered from the
upbreak of a hierarchy owning half the wealth of the kingdom. The most disinterested, and
also the most steadfast, supporters of the Reformation lay among the merchants and traders
of the great towns the men who loved the Gospel for its own sake, and who would stand by
it at all hazards. So evenly poised was the balance; a little thing might make it incline
to the one side or to the other; and what tremendous issues hung upon the turning of it!
Not an hour did Knox lose in beginning his work. The four preachers, as we have already
said, had been summoned to answer before the queen at Stirling. "The hierarchy,"
said the lords of the Congregation, "hope to draw our pastors into their net, and
sacrifice them as they did Walter Mill. We will go with them, and defend them."
"And I too," said Knox, not daunted by the outlawry which had been passed upon
him, "shall accompany my brethren, and take part in what may await them before the
queen." But when the queen learned that Knox was on his way to present himself before
her, she deserted the Diet against the preachers, and forbade them to appear; but with the
characteristic perfidy of a Guise, when the day fixed in the citation came, she ordered
the summons to be called, and the preachers to be outlawed for not appearing.[3]
Then the news reached Perth that the men who had been forbidden to appear before
the queen, were outlawed for not appearing, indignation was added to the surprise of the
nobles and the townspeople. It chanced that on the same day Knox preached against the mass
and image-worship. The sermon was ended, and the congregation had very quietly dispersed,
when a priest, "to show his malapert presumption," says Knox, "would open
ane glorious tabernacle that stood upon the high altar," and began to say mass. A boy
standing near called out, "Idolatry! " The priest repaid him with a blow: the
youth retaliated by throwing a stone, which, missing the priest, hit one of the images on
the altar, and shivered it in pieces. It was the sacking of Antwerp Cathedral over again,
but on a smaller scale. The loiterers in the church caught the excitement; they fell upon
the images, and the crash of one stone idol after another reechoed through the edifice;
the crucifixes, altars, and church ornaments shared the same fate. The noise brought a
stream of idlers from the street into the building, eager to take part in the demolition.
Mortified at finding the work finished before their arrival, they bent their steps to the
monasteries.[4] The
tempest took the direction of the Gray Friars on the south of the town, another rolled
away towards the Black Friars in the opposite quarter, and soon both monasteries were in
ruins, their inmates being allowed to depart with as much of their treasure as they were
able to carry. Not yet had the storm expended itself; it burst next over the abbey of the
Charter House. This was a sumptuous edifice, with pleasant gardens shaded by trees. But
neither its splendor, nor the fact that it had been founded by the first James, could
procure its exemption from the fury of the iconoclasts. It perished utterly. This tempest
burst out at the dinner hour, when the lords, the burghers, and the Reformers were in
their houses, and only idlers were abroad. Knox and the magistrates, as soon as they were
informed of what was going on, hastened to the scene of destruction, but their utmost
efforts could not stop it. They could only stand and look on while stone cloister, painted
oriel, wooden saint, and fruit-tree, now clothed in the rich blossoms of early summer,
fell beneath the sturdy blows of the "rascal multitude." The monasteries
contained stores of all good things, which were divided amongst the poor; "no honest
man,' says Knox, "was enriched thereby the value of a groat."[5]
It is to be remarked that in Perth, as in the other towns of Scotland, it was upon
the monasteries that the iconoclastic vengeance fell; the cathedrals and churches were
spared. The monasteries were in particularly evil repute among the population as nests of
idleness, gluttony, and sin. Dark tales of foul and criminal deeds transacted within their
walls were continually in circulation, and the hoarded resentment of long years now burst
out, and swept them away. The spark that kindled the conflagration was not Knox's sermon,
for few if any of those rioters had heard it: Knox's hearers were in their own houses when
the affair began. The more immediate provocative was the wanton perfidy of the queen,
which more disgraced her than this violence did the mob; and the remoter cause was the
rejection of that moderate measure of Reformation which the lords of the Congregation had
asked for, protesting at the same time that they would not be responsible for the
irregularities and violences that might follow the rejection of their suit.
Knox deplored the occurrence. Not that he mourned over idol slam, and nest of lazy monk
and moping nun rooted out, but he foresaw that the violence of the mob would be made the
crime of the Reformers. And so it happened; it gave the queen the very pretext she had
waited for. The citizens of Perth, with the lords of the Congregation at their head, had,
in her eye, risen in rebellion against her government. Collecting an army from the
neighboring counties, she set out to chastise the rebels, and lay waste the city of Perth
with fire and sword.
CHAPTER 6 Back to Top
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND
Peace between the Queen and the Reformers — Consultation — The Lords of the
Congregation Resolve to Set up the Protestant Worship — Knox Preaches at St. Andrews
— His Sermon — St. Andrews Reformed — Glasgow, Edinburgh, etc., Follow
— Question of the Demolition of the Images and Monasteries — The Queen and her
Army at Leith — The Lords Evacuate Edinburgh — Knox Sets out on a Preaching Tour
— His Great Exertions — Scotland Roused — Negotiations with England —
England Aids Scotland — Establishment of the Reformation in Scotland.
When the queen regent arrived before Perth at the head of
8,000 men, she found the Reformers so well prepared to receive her that, instead of
offering them battle as she had intended, she agreeably surprised them with overtures of
peace. Although fully resolved to repel by arms an assault which they deemed none the less
illegal and murderous that it was led by the queen, the lords of the Congregation joyfully
accepted the olive-branch now held out to them. "Cursed be he," said they,
"that seeks effusion of blood, war, or dissension. Give us liberty of conscience, and
the free profession of the `Evangel,' [1] and none in all the realm will be more loyal subjects than
we." Negotiations were opened between the regent and the Reformers, which terminated
amicably, and the strife ceased for the moment. The lords of the Congregation disbanded
their army of about 5,000, and the queen took peaceable possession of the city of Perth,
where her followers began to make preparations for mass, and the altars having been
overturned, their place was supplied by tables from the taverns, which, remarks Knox,
"were holy enough for that use."
The Reformers now met, and took a survey of their position, in order to determine on the
course to be adopted. They had lost thirty years waiting the tardy approach of the reforms
which the queen had promised them. Meanwhile the genius, the learning, the zeal which
would have powerfully aided in emancipating the country from the sin and oppression under
which it groaned, were perishing at the stake. Duped by the queen, they had stood quietly
by and witnessed these irreparable sacrifices. The reform promised them was as far off as
ever. Abbot, bishop, and cowled monk were lifting up the head higher than before. A French
army had been brought into the country, and the independence and liberties of Scotland
were menaced.[2] This
was all the Reformers had reaped by giving ear to the delusive words of Mary of Guise.
While other countries had established their Reformation Scotland lingered on the
threshold, and now it found itself in danger of losing not only its Reformation, but its
very nationality. The lords of the Congregation, therefore, resolved to set up the
Reformed worship at once in all those places to which their authority extended, and where
a majority of the inhabitants were favorable to the design.[3]
A commencement was to be made in the ecclesiastical metropolis of Scotland. The
Earl of Argyle and Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, arranged with Knox to meet in
that city on an early day in June, and inaugurate there the Protestant worship. The
archbishop, apprised of Knox's coming, hastened in from Falkland with 100 spears, and sent
a message to him on Saturday night, that if he dared to appear in the pulpit of the
cathedral tomorrow, he would cause his soldiers to shoot him dead. The lords, having
consulted, agreed that Knox should forego the idea of preaching. The resolution seemed a
prudent one. The dispositions of the townspeople were unknown; the lords had but few
retainers with them; the queen, with her French army, was not more than fifteen miles off;
and to preach might be to give the signal for bloodshed. Knox, who felt that to abandon a
great design when the moment for putting it in execution had arrived, and retire before an
angry threat, was to incur the loss of prestige, and invite greater attacks in future,
refused for one moment to entertain the idea of not preaching. He said that when lying out
in the Bay of St. Andrews in former years, chained to the deck of a French galley, his eye
had lighted on the roof of the cathedral, which the sun's rays at that moment illuminated,
and he said in the hearing of some still alive, that he felt assured that he should yet
preach there before closing his career; and now when God, contrary to the expectations of
all men, had brought him back to this city, he besought them not to hinder what was not
only his cherished wish, but the deep-rooted conviction of his heart. He desired neither
the hand nor weapon of man to defend him; He whose glory he sought would be his shield.
"I only crave audience," said he, "which, if it be denied here unto me at
this time, I must seek where I may have it."[4]
The intrepidity of Knox saved the Reformation from the; brand of timidity which the
counsel of the lords, had it been followed, would have brought upon it. It was a display
of courage at the right time, and was rewarded with a career of success. On the morrow
Knox preached to perhaps the most influential audience that the Scotland of that day could
furnish; nobles, priests, and townspeople crowding to hear him. Every part of the vast
edifice was filled, and not a finger was lifted, nor a word uttered, to stop him. He
preached on the cleansing of the Temple of old, picturing the crowd of buyers and sellers
who were busy trafficking in that holy place, when One entered, whose awful glance, rather
than the scourge of cords which he carried, smote with terror the unholy crew, and drove
them forth a panic-stricken crowd. The preacher then called up before his hearers a yet
greater crowd of traffickers, occupied in a yet unholier merchandise, therewith defiling,
with immeasurably greater pollutions and abominations, the New Testament temple. As he
described the corruptions which had been introduced into the Church under the Papacy
— the great crowd of simonists, pardon-mongers, sellers of relics and charms,
exorcists, and traffickers in the bodies and souls of men, with the sin and shame and ruin
that followed — his eye began to burn, his words grew graphic and trenchant, the
tones of his righteous yet terrible reproof rung out louder and fiercer, and rolled over
the heads of the thousands gathered around him, till not a heart but quaffed under the
solemn denunciations. It seemed as if past ages were coming up for trial; as if mitred
abbots and bishops were leaving their marble tombs to stand at the judgment-seat; as if
the voices of Hamilton, and Wishart, and Mill — nay, as if the voice of a yet Greater
were making itself audible by the lips of the preacher. The audience saw as they had never
done before the superstitions which had been practiced as religion, and felt the duty to
comply with the call which the Reformer urged on all, according to the station and
opportunity of each, to assist in removing these abominations out of the Church of God
before the fire of the Divine wrath should descend and consume what man refused to put
away. When he had ended, and sat down, it may be said that Scotland was reformed.
Knox, though he did not possess the all-grasping, all-subduing intellect of Calvin, nor
the many-toned eloquence of Luther, which could so easily rise from the humorous and
playful to the pathetic and the sublime, yet, in concentrated fiery energy, and in the
capacity to kindle his hearers into indignation, and rouse them to action, excelled both
these Reformers. This one sermon in the parish church of St. Andrews, followed as it was
by a sermon in the same place on the three consecutive days, cast the die, and determined
that the Reformation of Scotland should go forward. The magistrates and townspeople
assembled, and came to a unanimous resolution to set up the Reformed worship in the city.
The church was stripped of its images and pictures,[5] and the monasteries were pulled down. The example of St. Andrews
was quickly followed by many other places of the kingdom. The Protestant worship was set
up at Craft, at Cupar, at Lindores, at Linlithgow, at Scone, at Edinburgh and Glasgow.[6]
This was followed by the purgation of the churches, and the demolition of the
monasteries. The fabrics pulled down were mostly those in the service of the monks, for it
was the cowled portion of the Romish clergy whom the people held in special detestation,
knowing that they often did the dishonorable work of spies at the same time that they
scoured the country in quest of alms. A loud wail was raised by the priests over the
destruction of so much beautiful architecture, and the echoes of that lamentation have
come down to our day. But in all righteously indignant mobs there is excess, and however
much it may be regretted that their zeal outran their discretion, their motives were good,
and the result they helped achieve was enduring peace, progress, and prosperity.
The peace between the queen regent and the Reformers, agreed upon at Perth, was but
short-lived. The queen, hearing of the demolition of images and monasteries at St.
Andrews, marched with her French soldiers to Cupar-Moor, and put herself in order of
battle. The tumult of a mob she held to be the rebellion of a nation, and threatened to
chastise it as such. But when the lords of the Congregation advanced to meet her, she fled
at their approach, and going round by Stirling, took refuge in Edinburgh. On being
followed by the forces of the "Congregation," she quitted the capital, and
marched to Dunbar. After a few weeks, learning that the soldiers of the Reformers had
mostly returned to their homes, she set out with her foreign army for Leith, and took
possession of it. The lords of the Congregation now found themselves between two fires:
the queen threatened them on the one side, and the guns of the castle menaced them on the
other, and their new levies having left them, they were forced to conclude a treaty by
which they agreed to evacuate Edinburgh. The stipulation secured for the citizens the
right of worshipping after the Protestant form, and Willock was left with them as their
minister. Knox, who had preached in St. Giles's Cathedral, and in the abbey church, had
been chosen as pastor by the inhabitants, but he was too obnoxious to Mary of Guise, to be
left in her power, and at the earnest request of the; lords of the Congregation he
accompanied them when they left the capital. On retiring from Edinburgh the Reformer set
out on a preaching-tour, which embraced all the towns of note, and almost all the shires
on the south of the Grampian chain.
From the time of his famous sermon in St. Andrews, Knox had been the soul of the movement.
The year that followed was one of incessant and Herculean labor. His days were spent in
preaching, his nights in writing letters, he roused the country, and he kept it awake. his
voice like a great trumpet rang through the land, firing the lukewarm into zeal, and
inspiriting the timid into courage. When the friends of the Reformation quarreled, he
reconciled and united them. When they sank into despondency he rallied their spirits. He
himself never desponded.
Cherishing a firm faith that his country's Reformation would be consummated, he neither
sank under labor, nor fell back before danger, nor paused in the efforts he found it
necessary every moment to put forth. He knew how precious the hours were, and that if the
golden opportunity were lost it would never return. He appealed to the patriotism of the
nobles and citizens. He told them what an ignominious vassalage the Pope and the
Continental Powers had prepared for them and their sons, namely, that of hewers of wood
and drawers of water to France. He especially explained to them the nature of the Gospel,
the pardon, the purity, the peace it brings to individuals, the stable renown it confers
on kingdoms; he forecast to them the immense issues that hung upon the struggle. On the
one side stood religion, like an angel of light, beckoning Scotland onwards; on the other
stood the dark form of Popery, pulling the country back into slavery. The crown was before
it, the gulf behind it. Knox purposed that Scotland should win and wear the crown.
The Reformer was declared an outlaw, and a price set upon his head; but the only notice we
find him deigning to take of this atrocity of the regent and her advisers, was in a letter
to his brother-in-law, in which with no nervous trepidation whatever, but good-humoredly,
he remarks that he "had need of a good horse.[7] Not one time less did Knox preach, although he knew that some
fanatic, impelled by malignant hate, or the greed of gain, might any hour deprive him of
life. The rapidity of his movements, the fire he kindled wherever he came, the light that
burst out all over the land — north, south, east, and west — confounded the
hierarchy; unused to preach, unskilled in debate, and too corrupt to think of reforming
themselves, they could only meet the attack of Knox with loud wailings or impotent
threatenings.
A second line of action was forced upon Knox, and one that not only turned the day in
favor of the Reformation of Scotland, but ultimately proved a protection to the liberties
and religion of England. It was here that the knowledge he had acquired abroad came to his
help, and enabled him to originate a measure that saved two kingdoms. Just the year before
— that is, in 1558 — Spain and France, as we have previously mentioned, had
united their arms to effect the complete and eternal extirpation of Protestantism. The
plan of the great campaign — a profounder secret then than now — had been
penetrated by Calvin and Knox, who were not only the greatest Reformers, but the greatest
statesmen of the age, and had a deeper insight into the politics of Europe than any other
men then living.
The plan of that campaign was to occupy Scotland with French troops, reduce it to entire
dependency on the French crown, and from Scotland march a French army into England. While
France was assailing England on the north, Spain would invade it on the south, put down
the Government of Elizabeth, raise Mary Stuart to her throne, and restore the Romish
religion in both kingdoms. Knox opened a correspondence with the great statesmen of
Elizabeth, in which he explained to them the designs of the Papal Powers, their purpose to
occupy Scotland with foreign troops, and having trampled out its religion and liberties,
to strike at. England through the side of Scotland. He showed them that the plan was being
actually carried out; that Mary of Guise was daily bringing French soldiers into Scotland;
that the raw levies of the Reformers would ultimately be worsted by the disciplined troops
of France, and that no more patriotic and enlightened policy could England pursue than to
send help to drive the French soldiers out of the northern, country; for assuredly, if
Scotland was put down, England could not stand, encompassed as she then would be by
hostile armies. Happily these counsels were successful. The statesmen of Elizabeth,
convinced that this was no Scottish quarrel, but that the liberty of England hung upon it
also, and that in no more effectual way could they rear a rampart around their own
Reformation than by supporting that of Scotland, sent military aid to the lords of the
Congregation, and the result was that the French evacuated Scotland, and the Scots became
once more masters of their own country. Almost immediately thereafter, Mary of Guise, the
regent of the kingdom, was removed by death, and the government passed into the hands of
the Reformers. The way was now fully open for the establishment of the Reformation. It is
hardly possible to over-estimate the impotence of the service which Knox rendered. It not
only led to the establishment of Protestantism in Scotland, and the perpetuation of it in
England; but, in view of the critical condition in which Europe then was, it may indeed
with justice be said that it saved the Reformation of Christendom.[8]
The fifteen months which Knox had spent in Scotland had brought the movement to its
culminating point. The nation wag ready to throw off the Popish yoke; and when the Estates
of the Realm met on the 8th of August, 1560, they simply gave expression to the nation's
choice when they authoritatively decreed the suppression of the Romish hierarchy and the
adoption of the Protestant faith. A short summary of Christian doctrine had been drawn up
by Knox and his colleagues;[9] and
being read, article by article, in the Parliament, it was on the 17th of August adopted by
the Estates.[10] It
is commonly known as the First Scots Confession.[11] Only three temporal lords voted in the negative, saying "that
they would believe as their fathers believed." The bishops, who had seats as temporal
lords, were silent.
On the 24th of August, Parliament abolished the Pope's jurisdiction; forbade, under
certain penalties,[12] the
celebration of mass; and rescinded the laws in favor of the Romish Church, and against the
Protestant faith.[13]
Thus speedily was the work consummated at last. There are supreme moments in the
life of nations, when their destiny is determined for ages. Such was the moment that had
now come to Scotland. On the 17th of August, 1560, the Scotland of the Middle Ages passed
away, and a New Scotland had birth — a Scotland destined to be a sanctuary of
religion, a temple of liberty, and a fountain of justice, letters, and art. Intently had
the issue been watched by the Churches abroad, and when they learned that Scotland had
placed itself on the side of Protestant truth, these elder daughters of the Reformation
welcomed, with songs of joy, that country which had come, the last of the nations, to
share with them their glorious inheritance of liberty.
CHAPTER 7 Back to Top
CONSTITUTION OF THE "KIRK"--ARRIVAL OF MARY STUART
A Second Battle — Knox's Idea of the Church — Spiritual Independence Essential
— Differs from Popish Independence — Calvin demanded a Pure Communion-table;
Knox, a Free Assembly — Organization of Scottish "Kirk" — Ministers,
Doctors, Elders, and Deacons — Kirk Session — Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly
— Knox's Educational Plan — How Defeated — Mary Stuart — Her
Accomplishments — Her Beauty — Her Life in France — Her Widow-hood —
Invited to Return to Scotland — Sails from France — Arrives at Leith —
Enters Holyrood.
Knox had now the sublime satisfaction of thinking that his
country was emancipated from the superstition and thralldom of Popery, and illumined in no
small degree with the light of the "Evangel." But not yet had he rest; no sooner
had he ended one battle than he had to begin another; and the second battle was in some
respects more arduous than the first. He had called the Reformation into being, and now he
had to fight to preserve it. But before following him in this great struggle, let us
consider those organizations of an ecclesiastical and educational kind which he was called
to initiate, and which alone could enable the Reformation to spread itself over the whole
land, and transmit itself to after-ages.
Knox's idea of a Church was, in brief, a divinely originated, a divinely enfranchised, and
a divinely governed society. Its members were all those who made profession of the Gospel;
its law was the Bible, and its King was Christ. The conclusion from these principles Knox
did not hesitate to avow and carry out, that the Church was to be governed solely by her
own law, administered by her own officers, whose decisions and acts in all things falling
within the spiritual and ecclesiastical sphere were to be final.
This freedom he held to be altogether essential to the soundness of the Church's creed,
the purity of her members, and that vigor and healthfulness of operation without which she
could not subserve those high ends which she had been ordained to fulfil to society. This
independence he was careful to confine to the spiritual sphere; in all other matters the
ministers and members of the Church were to be subject to the civil law of their country.
He thus distinguished it from the independence of the Romish Church, which claimed for its
clergy exemption from the civil tribunals, and exalted its jurisdiction above the power of
the crown. The beginning of this theory was with Wicliffe; Calvin developed it; but in a
little city like Geneva, where the same persons nearly composed both the Church and the
State, it was neither very easy nor very necessary to draw the line between the two
jurisdictions. The power of admitting or excluding members from the Communion-table was
all that Calvin had demanded; and he had a hard battle to fight before he could obtain it;
but having won it, it gave a century of glory to the Church of Geneva. Knox in Scotland
had more room for the development of all that is implied in the idea of a Church with her
own law, her own government, and her own monarch. An independent government in things
spiritual, but rigidly restricted to things spiritual, was the root-idea of Knox's Church
organization. Knox hinged this independence on another point than that on which Calvin
rested it. Calvin said, "Take from us the purity of the Communion-table, and you take
from us the Evangel." Knox said, "Take from us the freedom of Assemblies, and
you take from us the Evangel." It was, however, the same battle on another fold: the
contest in both cases had for its object the freedom of the Church to administer her own
laws, without which she could exist for no useful end.
A few sentences will enable us to sketch the Church organization which Knox set up.
Parliament had declared Protestantism to be the faith of the nation: Knox would make it so
in fact. The orders of ecclesiastical men instituted by him were four — 1st,
Ministers, who preached to a congregation; 2nd, Doctors, who expounded Scripture to the
youth in the seminaries and universities; 3rd, Elders, who were associated with the
minister in ruling, though not in teaching, the congregation; and, 4th, Deacons, who
managed the finance, and had the care of the poor. In every parish was placed a minister;
but as the paucity of ministers left many places without pastoral instruction meanwhile,
pious persons were employed to read the Scriptures and the common prayers; and if such
gave proof of competency, they were permitted to supplement their reading of the
Scriptures with a few plain exhortations. Five Superintendents completed the
ecclesiastical staff, and their duty was to travel through their several districts, with
the view of planting Churches, and inspecting the conduct of ministers, readers, and
exhorters.[1]
The government of the Church, Knox regarded as hardly second to her instruction,
believing that the latter could not preserve its purity unless the other was maintained in
its rigor. First came the Kirk Session, composed of the minister and elders, who managed
the affairs of the congregation; next came the Presbytery, formed by the delegation of a
minister and elder from every congregation within the shire; above it was the Synod,
constituted by a minister and elder from each congregation within the province, and
having, like the court below it, power to decide on all causes arising within its bounds.
Last of all came the General Assembly, which was constituted of a certain number of
delegates from every Presbytery. This scheme gave to every member of the Church, directly
or indirectly, a voice fix her government; it was a truly popular rule, but acting only
through constitutional channels, and determining all cases by the laws of Scripture.
In the lowest court the laity greatly outnumbered the ministers; in all the others the two
were equal. This gradation of Church power, which had its bases in the Kirk Sessions
distributed all over the land, found its unity in the General Assembly; and the
concentrated wisdom and experience of the whole Church were thus available for the
decision of the weightiest causes.
The Reformer no more overlooked the general tuition of the people than he did their
indoctrination in the faith. He sketched a scheme of education more, complete and thorough
than any age or country had ever yet been privileged to enjoy. He proposed that a school
should be planted in every parish, that a college should be erected in every notable town,
and a university established in the three chief cities of Scotland.[2] He demanded that the nobility
and gentry should send their sons to these seminaries at their own expense, and that
provision should be made for the free education of the entire youth of the humbler
classes, so that not a child in all Scotland but should be thoroughly instructed, and the
path of all departments of knowledge and the highest offices of the State opened to every
one who had inclination or talent for the pursuit. Such was the scheme proposed by Knox in
the First Book of Discipline. In order to carry it out, the Reformer proposed that the
funds set free by the fall of the Romish Church, after due provision for the dismissed
incumbents, should be divided into three parts, and that one-third should go to the
support of the Protestant Church, another to the endowment of the schools and colleges,
and the remaining portion to the support of the deserving poor. Could these funds have
been devoted to worthier objects? Was there any class in the country who had a prior or a
stronger claim upon them? How then came it that a third only of the revenues of the fallen
establishment was given to these objects, and that the munificent scheme of Knox was never
carried out, and to this day remains unrealized?
The answer of history to this question is that the nobles rapaciously seized upon these
lands and heritages, and refused to disgorge their plunder. The disappointment must have
been unspeakably bitter to the great patriot who devised the plan: but while disgusted at
the greed which had tendered it frustrate, he places his scheme sorrowfully on record, as
if to challenge future ages to produce anything more perfect.
Had the grand and patriotic device of Knox been fully carried out, Scotland would have
rivaled, it may be eclipsed, the other kingdoms of Europe, in the number of its
educational institutions, and in the learning of its sons. As it was, an instantaneous
impulse was given to all its energies, intellectual and industrial. Learning and art began
to flourish, where for four centuries previously nothing had prospered save hierarchic
pride and feudal tyranny. And if Scotland has attained no mean rank among the nations
despite the partial and crippled adoption of the Reformer's plan, how much more brilliant
would have been its place, and how much longer the roll of illustrious names which it
would have been to letters and science, to the senate, the army, and the State, had the
large-hearted plan of Knox been in operation during the three following centuries?
The Reformer was yet smarting from the avariciousness of those who preferred the filling
of their purses and the aggrandizing of their families to the welfare and grandeur of
their country, when another powerful adversary stood up in his path. This new opponent
sought to strip him of all the fruits of his labor, by plucking up by the very roots the
ecclesiastical and educational institutions he had just planted in Scotland.
On the 19th of August, 1561, Mary Stuart arrived at Holyrood from France. There are few
names in Scottish history that so powerfully fascinate to this day as that of Mary Stuart.
She could have been no common woman to have taken so firm a hold upon the imaginations of
her countrymen, and retained it so long. Great qualities she must have possessed, and did
no doubt possess. Her genius was quick and penetrating; she was an adept in all field
exercises, more particularly those of riding and hunting; she was no less skilled in the
accomplishments of her age. She was mistress of several languages, and was wont, when she
lived in France, to share with her husband, Francis II, the cares of State, and to mingle
in the deliberations of the Cabinet. In person she was tall and graceful: the tradition of
her beauty, and of the fascination of her manners, has come down to our days. Had Mary
Stuart known to choose the better part, had she taken the side of her country's religion
and liberty, she might, with her many valuable and brilliant qualities, her wit, her
penetration, her courage, her capacity for affairs, her power of awakening affection and
winning homage, have been one of the happiest of women, and one of the best of sovereigns.
But these great faculties, Perverted by a sinister influence, led her first of all into
hurtful follies, next into mean deceptions and debasing pleasures, then into dark
intrigues, and at of last into bloody crimes. The sufferings of Mary Stuart have passed
into a proverb. Born to a throne, yet dying as a felon: excelling all the women of her
time in the grace of her person and the accomplishments of her mind, and yet surpassing
them in calamity and woe as far as she did in beauty and talent! Unhappy in her life
— every attempt to retrieve her fallen fortunes but sank her the deeper in guilt; and
equally unhappy in death, for whenever the world is on the point of forgetting a life from
the odiousness of which there is no escape but in oblivion, there comes forward, with a
certainty almost fated — the Nmesis, one might say, of Mary Stuart — an
apologist to rehearse the sad story over again, and to fix the memory of her crimes more
indelibly than ever in the minds of men.
It is at the tragic death-bed of her father, James V, in the palace of Falkland, that we
first hear the name of Mary Stuart. A funeral shadow rests above her natal hour. She was
born on the 8th of December, 1542, in the ancient palace of Linlithgow. The infant had
seen the light but a few days when, her father dying, she succeeded to the crown. While
only a girl of six years of age, Mary Stuart was sent to France, accompanied by four young
ladies of family, all of her own age, and all bearing the same name with their royal
mistress, and known in history as the "Queen's Maries."
Habituated to the gallantry and splendor of the French court, her love of gaiety was
fostered into a passion; and her vanity and self-will were strengthened by the homage
constantly paid to her personal charms. Under the teaching of her uncles, the Duke of
Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, she contracted a blind attachment to the religion of
Rome, and an equally blind detestation of the faith of her future subjects. So had passed
the youth of Mary Stuart. It is hardly possible to conceive a course of training that
could have more unfitted her to occupy the throne of a Protestant nation, and that nation
the Scots.
Fortune seemed to take a delight in tantalizing her. A mishap in the tournament field
suddenly raised her to the throne of France. She had hardly time to contemplate the
boundless prospect of happiness which appeared to be opening to her on the throne of a
powerful, polished, and luxurious nation, when she was called to descend from it by the
death of her husband. It was now that the invitation reached her to return to her native
country and assume its government. No longer Queen of France, Mary Stuart turned her face
towards the northern land which had given her birth. She set sail from Calais on the 15th
of August, 1561. The anguish that wrung her heart in that hour it is easy to conceive, and
impossible not to sympathize with. She was leaving a land where the manners of the people
were congenial to her tastes, where the religion was dear to her heart, and where the
years as they glided past brought her only new pleasures and brighter splendors. Mary took
her stand on the deck of the vessel that was bearing, her slowly away, and fixed her eyes
on the receding shores of France. The sun sank in the ocean; the shades of evening
descended; but the queen made her couch be placed on the vessel's deck.
The morning dawned: Mary was still there, gazing in the direction of the shore, which was
still in sight. But now a breeze springing up, she was quickly borne away into the North
Sea. "Farewell," said she, as the land sank finally beneath the wave,
"farewell, happy France! I shall nevermore see thee."[3]
The queen arrived at Leith on the 19th of August. The citizens, who had not
reckoned on the voyage being completed in four days, were not prepared to receive her, and
they had to extemporize a cavalcade of ponies to convey their queen to the palace of
Holyrood. This simplicity could be no agreeable surprise to the young sovereign. Nature
seemed as much out of unison with the event as man. It had dressed itself in somber
shadows when Mary was about to step upon the ancient Scottish shore. A dull vapor floated
over-head.[4] The
shores, islands, and bold rocky prominences that give such grandeur to the Frith of Forth
were wholly hidden; a gray mist covered Arthur Seat, and shed a cold cheerless light upon
the city which lay stretched out at its feet. Edinburgh, which in romantic beauty throws
even the Paris of today into the shade, was then by no means imposing, and needed all the
help which a bright sun could give it; and the region around it, which in our times much
excels in rich and careful cultivation the country around the French capital, must then to
an eye accustomed to the various fruitage of France have looked neglected and wild; for
the principle from which were to spring all the marvels which now adorn this same spot had
not yet had time to display its plastic energy. Nevertheless, despite this conjunction of
untoward circumstances, which made Mary's arrival so unlike the first entrance of a
sovereign into the capital of her dominions, the demonstrations of the people were loyal
and hearty, and the youthful queen looked really pleased, as surrounded by her Scottish
nobles and her French attendants, and dressed in widow's weeds, she passed in under those
gray towers, which were destined to wear from this day the halo of a tragic interest in
all coming time.
CHAPTER 8 Back to Top
KNOX'S INTERVIEW WITH QUEEN MARY
Mary's Secret Purpose — Her Blandishments — The Protestant Nobles begin to Yield
— Mass in the Chapel of Holyrood — Commotion — Knox's Sermon against
Idolatry — The Mass more to be Feared than 10,000 Armed Men — Reasonableness of
the Alarm — Knox Summoned to the Palace of Holyrood — Accused by the Queen of
Teaching Sedition — His Defense — Debate between Knox and Mary — God, not
the Prince, Lord of the Conscience — The Bible, not the Priest, the Judge in Matters
of Faith, etc. — Importance of the Interview
The nobles had welcomed with a chivalrous enthusiasm the
daughter of their ancient kings; and the people, touched by her beauty and her widowhood,
had begun to regard her with mingled feelings of compassion and admiration. All was going
well, and would doubtless have continued so to do, but for a dark purpose which Mary
Stuart carried in her breast. She had become the pivot around which revolved that plot to
which those monstrous times had given birth, for the extermination of the Protestant faith
in all the countries of the Reformation. If that conspiracy should succeed, it would open
the Scottish queen's way to a fairer realm and a mightier throne than the kingdom she had
just arrived to take possession of. The first step in the projected drama was the forcible
suppression of the Protestant faith in Scotland, and the restoration in it of the Church
of Rome. This was the dark purpose which Mary had carried across the seas, and brought
with her to Holyrood.[1]
But meanwhile, as tutored by her uncles the Guises, who accompanied her, she
dissembled and temporized. Smiles and caresses were her first weapons; the nobles were to
be gained over by court blandishments and favors; the ministers were to be assailed by
hypocritical promises; and the people were to be lured by those fawning arts of which
there lived no greater adept than Mary Stuart. The "holy water of the court"
soon began to tell upon the Protestant leaders. Even the lords of the Congregation were
not proof against the fascination which the young queen seemed to exert upon every one who
entered her presence. If her thinly-veiled Romish proclivities had at first alarmed or
offended them, they had been no long time in the queen's presence till their anger cooled,
their fears were laid aside, and their Protestant zeal in some measure evaporated. Every
man, one man excepted, who entered this charmed circle was straightway transformed. Knox
in his History has quaintly described the change that passed upon the nobility under this
almost magical influence. "Every man as he came up to court," says he,
"accused them that were before him; but, after they had remained a certain space,
they came out as quiet as the former. On perceiving this, Campbell of Kinyeancleugh, a man
of some humor and zealous in the cause, said to Lord Ochiltree, whom he met on his way to
court, "My lord, now ye are come last of all, and I perceive that the fire edge is
not yet off you, but I fear that after the holy water of the court be sprinkled upon you,
ye shall become as temperate as the rest. I think there be some enchantment by which men
are bewitched."[2]
On the first Sunday after her arrival, Mary adventured on an act, by the advice of
her uncles, which was designed to feel the pulse of her Protestant subjects;[3] at all events, it unmistakably
notified to them what her future course was to be: mass was said in her chapel of
Holyrood. Since the establishment of the Reformation, mass had not been publicly
celebrated in Scotland, and in fact was prohibited by Act of Parliament. When the citizens
learned that preparations were making for its celebration in the Chapel Royal, they were
thrown into excitement and alarm, and but for the interposition of Knox would have
forcibly prevented it. Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, and the brother of Mary,
stood sentinel at the door of the chapel, all the time the service was going on; the man
who carried in the candle trembled all over; and the priest who performed the rite was, at
its conclusion, conducted to his chamber by two Protestant lords. The queen's relatives
and attendants threatened that they would instantly return to France, for they could not
live in a land where mass could not be said, without which they could not have the pardon
of their sins. "Would," says Knox, "that they, together with the mass, had
taken good night of this realm for ever."[4]
On the following Sunday, Knox, although he had restrained the more zealous of the
Protestants who sought by force to suppress the celebration, sounded a note of warning
from the pulpit of St. Giles's. He preached on the sin of idolatry, "showing what
tenable plagues God had taken upon realms and nations for the same;" and added,
"One mass is more fearful to me than if 10,000 armed enemies were landed in any part
of the realm, of purpose to suppress the whole religion."[5] We are apt at this day to think that the alarm expressed was
greater than its cause warranted.
So thought the queen's guards at the time, who said openly in the church that "such
fear was no point of their faith." But, we may ask, had mass no more significance in
the Scotland of the sixteenth century than it would have in the Scotland of the
nineteenth? Mary had not yet ratified the Act of Parliament establishing the Protestant
faith, and alienating the national revenues from the Romish Church. Her refusal implied
that what the Estates had done in changing the national faith was illegal, and that the
Reformation was rebellion. What construction then could her subjects put upon this mass,
but that it was the first step towards the overthrow of the Protestant Church, and the
restoration of the Romish ritual and hierarchy?
Nor did they do their sovereign injustice in so construing it. To compel her subjects to
abjure their Protestantism, and to embrace again the creed they had renounced, by soft
methods if possible, and if not by the stake and the cord, was Mary's settled purpose. In
Italy, in Spain, in France, and in the Netherlands, pries were at that moment blazing in
support of the mass. The same baleful fires were but newly extinguished in England and in
Scotland; and were they to be lighted before they had well ceased to burn, or the ashes of
the noble men who had perished in them had grown cold?
Had not all their past experience told them that the stake followed the mass as invariably
as the shadow followed the substance; that the written law of the Popish system, and its
ineradicable instincts, made it at all times and in all places a persecutor? The Scots
would have shown themselves incapable of reading the past, and forecasting the future, had
they failed in these circumstances to take alarm. It was the alarm not of timidity, but of
wisdom; no of bigotry, but of patriotism.
It is probable that the substance of the Reformer's sermon was reported to the queen for
in a few days after its delivery she sent a message to Knox, commanding his attendance at
the palace. This interview has gathered round it great historic grandeur, mainly from the
sentiments avowed by Knox before his sovereign, which made it one of the turning-points in
the history of the man and of the country, and partly also from the charge which the
flatterers of despotic princes have founded upon it, that Knox was on that occasion
lacking in courtesy to Mary as a woman, and in loyalty to her as his sovereign; as if it
were a crime to defend, in words of truth and soberness, the religion and liberties of a
country in the presence of one bent on ruining both. The queen opened the conference, at
which only her brother Lord James Stuart, and two ladies in waiting were present, with a
reference to the Reformer's book on the "Regiment of Women," and the
"necromancy" by which he accomplished his ends; but departing from the grave
charge of magic, she came to what was uppermost in her mind, and what was the head and
front of Knox's offending.
"You have taught the people," remarked the queen, "to receive another
religion than that which their princes allow; but God commands subjects to obey their
prince;" ergo, "you have taught the people to disobey both God and their
prince." Mary doubtless thought this syllogism unanswerable, till Knox, with a little
plain sense, brushed it away completely.
"Madam," replied the Reformer, "as right religion received neither its
origin nor its authority from princes, but from the eternal God alone, so are not subjects
bound to frame their religion according to the tastes of their princes. For oft it is that
princes, of all others, are the most ignorant of God's true religion. If all the seed of
Abraham had been of the religion of Pharaoh, whose subjects they long were, I pray you,
madam, what religion would there have been in the world? And if all in the days of the
apostles had been of the religion of the Roman emperors, I pray you, madam, what religion
would there have been now upon the earth?... And so, madam, you may perceive that subjects
are not bound to the religion of their princes, although they are commanded to give them
reverence."
"Yea," relied the queen, "but non of these men raised the sword against
their princes."
"Yet, madam," rejoined Knox, "they resisted, for they who obey not the
commandment given them, do in some sort resist."
"But," argued the queen, "they resisted not with the sword."
"God, madam," answered the Reformer, "had not given them the power and the
means."
"Think ye," said the queen, "that subjects having the power may resist
their princes?"
"If princes exceed their bounds, madam, and do that which they ought not, they may
doubtless be resisted even by power. For neither is greater honor nor greater obedience to
be given to kings and princes, than God has commanded to be given to father and mother.
But, madam, the father may be struck with a frenzy, in which he would slay his own
children. Now, madam, if the children arise, join together, apprehend him, take the sword
from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till the frenzy be over, think ye, madam,
that the children do any wrong? Even so is it, madam, with princes who would murder the
children of God who are subject unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a mad frenzy;
and, therefore, to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into
prison till they be brought to a sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but a
just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God."
We must carry ourselves three centuries back, and think of the slavish doctrines then
prevalent all over Christendom — that it was taught as infallibly true in theological
canons and juridical codes, and echoed back from university chairs, that kings reigned by
Divine right, and that the understandings and consciences of their subjects were in their
keeping; and we must think too of the high-handed way in which these demoralizing and
enslaving doctrines were being carried out in Europe — that in every Popish country a
scaffold or a stake was the certain fate of every man who dared to maintain the right of
one's thinking for oneself -- we must transport ourselves into the midst of these times,
we say, before we can fully estimate the courage of Knox in avowing these sentiments in
the presence of Mary Stuart. These plain bold words, so different from the glozing terms
in which she had been accustomed to be addressed in France, fell upon her ear like a
thunder-peal. She was stunned and amazed, and for a quarter of all hour stood speechless.
If her passion found not vent in words, it showed itself in the pallor of her face.
"Her countenance altered."
The past age of feudalism and the coming age of liberty stood confronting each other under
the roof of Holyrood. We wait with intense anxiety during that quarter of an hour's
silence, to see what the next move in this great battle shall be, and whether it is to be
maintained or abandoned by Knox. Vast issues hang upon the words by which the silence is
to be broken! If Knox yield, not only will Scotland fall with him, but Christendom also;
for it is Philip of Spain, and Pius IV of Rome, who are confronting him in the person of
Mary Stuart.
At last Lord James Stuart, feeling the silence insupportable, or fearing that his sister
had been seized with sudden illness, began to entreat her and to ask, "What has
offended you, madam?" But she made him no answer. The tempest of her pride and
self-will at length spent itself. Her composure returned, and she resumed the argument.
"Well then," said she, "I deafly perceive that my subjects shall obey you,
and not me; and shall do what they list, and not what I command; and so must I be subject
to them, and not they to me."
"God forbid," promptly rejoined the Reformer, "that ever I take upon me to
command any to obey me, or to set subjects at liberty to do whatever pleases them."
Is then Knox to concede the "right Divine?" Yes; but he lodges it where alone it
is safe; not in any throne on earth. "My travail," adds he, "is that both
subjects and princes may obey God. And think not, madam, that wrong is done you when you
are required to be subject unto God; for he it is who subjects peoples unto princes, and
causes obedience to be given unto them. He craves of kings that they be as it were
foster-fathers to his Church, and commands queens to be nurses to his people."
"Yes," replied the queen; "but ye are not the Kirk that I will nourish. I
will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God."
"Your will, madam," said Knox, "is no reason; neither doth it make that
Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. I offer myself, madam,
to prove that the Church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus was not so far
degenerate from the ordinances and statutes given it of God, as the Church of Rome is
declined, and more than 500 years hath declined, from the purity of that religion which
the apostles taught and planted."
"My conscience," said Mary, "is not so." "Conscience,
madam," said Knox, "requires knowledge, and I fear that right knowledge ye have
none."
"But," said she, "I have both heard and read." "Have you,"
inquired Knox, "heard any teach but such as the Pope and cardinals have allowed You
may be assured that such will speak nothing to offend their own estate."
"You interpret the Scripture in one way, and they interpret it in another," said
Mary: "whom shall I believe, and who shall be judge?"
"You shall believe God, who plainly speaketh in his Word," was the Reformer's
answer, "and farther than the Word teaches you, ye shall believe neither the one nor
the other. The Word of God is plain in itself, and if in any one place there be obscurity,
the Holy Ghost, who never is contrary to himself, explains the same more clearly in other
places, so that there can remain no doubt but unto such as are obstinately ignorant."
He illustrated his reply by a brief exposition of the passage on which the Romanists found
their doctrine of the mass; when the queen said that, though she was unable to answer him,
if those were present whom she had heard, they would give him an answer.
"Madam," replied the Reformer, "would to God that the learnedest Papist in
Europe, and he that you would best believe, were present with your Grace, to sustain the
argument, and that you would patiently hear the matter debated to an end; for then I doubt
not, madam, you would know the vanity of the Papistical religion, and how little
foundation it has in the Word of God."
"Well," said she, "you may perchance get that sooner than you
believe."
"Assuredly," said Knox, "if I ever get it in my life I get it sooner than I
believe; for the ignorant Papist cannot patiently reason, and the learned and crafty
Papist will not come in your presence, madam, to have the, grounds of his belief searched
out, for they know that they cannot sustain the argument unless fire and sword and their
own laws be judges. When you shall let me see the contrary, I shall grant myself to have
been deceived in that point."
The dinner-hour was announced, and the argument ended. "I pray God, madam," said
Knox in parting, "that ye may be as blessed within the commonwealth of Scotland, as
ever was Deborah in the commonwealth of Israel."[6]
Luther before Charles V at Worms, Calvin before the Libertines in the Cathedral of
St. Pierre, and Knox before Queen Mary in the Palace of Holyrood, are the three most
dramatic points in the Reformation, and the three grandest passages in modern history. The
victory in each of these three cases was won by one man, and was due solely to his faith.
Luther, Calvin, Knox at these unspeakably critical moments stood alone; their friends
could not or dared not show themselves; they were upheld only by the truth and greatness
of their cause, and the aid of Him whose it was. A concession, a compromise, in either
case would have ruined all; and Worms, St. Pierre, and Holyrood would have figured in
history as the scenes of irretrievable disaster, over which nations would have had cause
to weep. They are instead names of glorious victory; Marathon, Morat, and Bannockburn
shine not with so pure a splendor, nor will they stir the hearts of men so long. The
triumph of Luther at Worms secured the commencement of the Reformation, that of Calvin in
St. Pierre its consummation, and that of Knox in Holyrood its preservation.
CHAPTER 9 Back to Top
TRIAL OF KNOX FOR TREASON
Distribution of Ecclesiastical Revenues — Inadequate Provision for the Protestant
Ministry — First Book of Discipline — Mary Refuses to Ratify the Ecclesiastical
Settlement of 1560 — Faithlessness of the Nobles — Grief of Knox — His
Sermon — Rebuke of the Protestant Nobles — Summoned to the Palace —
Interview with the Queen — Knox's Hardness — Mass at the Palace —
Threatened Prosecution of Protestants — Knox's Circular — Put upon his Trial for
Treason — Maitland of Lethington — Debate between Maitland and Knox —
Knox's Defense on his Trial — His Acquittal — Joy of the Citizens —
Consequences of his Acquittal — Knox's Political Sentiments — His Services to
the Liberties of Great Britain
In the room of a sacerdotal hierarchy there had been planted
in Scotland a body of teaching pastors. The change had been accomplished with the sanction
of Parliament, but no provision was made for the temporal support of the new
ecclesiastical establishment. This was a point on which Knox was not unnaturally anxious,
but on which he was doomed to experience a bitter disappointment. The Romish Church in
Scotland had possessed a boundless affluence of houses, valuables, and lands. Her abbacies
dotted the country, mountain and meadow, forest and cornfield, were hers; and all this
wealth had been set free by the suppression of the priesthood, and ought to have been
transferred, so far as it was needed, to the Protestant Church. But the nobles rushed in
and appropriated nearly the whole of this vast spoil. Knox lifted up his voice to denounce
a transaction which was alike damaging to the highest interests of the country, and the
characters of those concerned in it: but he failed to ward off the covetous hands that
were clutching this rich booty; and the only arrangement he succeeded in effecting was,
that the revenues of the Popish Church should be divided into three parts, and that two of
these should be given to the former incumbents, to revert at their death to the nobility,
and that the third part should be divided between the court and the Protestant ministers.
The latter had till now been entirely dependent upon the benevolence of their hearers, or
the hospitality of the noblemen in whose houses some of them continued to reside. When
Knox beheld the revenues which would have sufficed to plant Scotland with churches,
colleges, and schools, and suitably provide for the poor, thus swallowed up, he could not
refrain from expressing his mortification and disgust. "Well," exclaimed he,
"if the end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me. I see two parts freely
given to the devil, and the third must be divided between God and the devil. Who would
have thought that when Joseph ruled in Egypt his brethren would have traveled for
victuals, and would have returned with empty sacks to their families?" It was concern
for his brethren's interest that drew from the Reformer this stern denunciation, for his
own stipend, appointed by the magistrates of Edinburgh, was an adequate one. The same
cause occasioned to Knox his second great disappointment. He had received from the Privy
Council a commission, along with Winram, Spottiswood, Douglas, and Row, to draft a plan of
ecclesiastical government. Comprehensive in outline and perfect in detail, incalculable,
we have already seen, would have been the moral and literary benefits this plan would have
conferred upon Scotland had it been fully carried out. But the nobles liked neither the
moral rules it prescribed, nor the pecuniary burdens it imposed, and Knox failed to
procure for it the ratification of the Privy Council. Many of the members of Council,
however, subscribed it, and being approved by the first General Assembly, which met on the
20th of December, 1560, [1] it
has, under the name of the "First Book of Discipline," always held the rank of a
standard in the Protestant Church of Scotland.[2]
A third and still more grievous disappointment awaited the Reformer. The Parliament
of 1560, which had abolished the Papal jurisdiction, and accepted Protestantism as the
national religion, had been held when the queen was absent from the kingdom, and the royal
assent had never been given to its enactments, not only did Mary, under various pretexts,
refuse to ratify its deeds while she resided in France, but even after her return to
Scotland she still withheld her ratification, and repeatedly declared the Parliament of
1560 to be illegal. If so, the Protestant establishment it had set up was also illegal,
and no man could doubt that it was the queen's intention, so soon as she was able, to
overthrow it and restore the Romish hierarchy. This was a state of matters which Knox
deemed intolerable; but the Protestant lords, demoralized by the spoils of the fallen
establishment and the blandishments of the court, took it very easily. The Parliament the
first since Mary's arrival — was about to meet; and Knox fondly hoped that now the
royal ratification would be given to the Protestant settlement of the country. He pressed
the matter upon the nobles as one of vital importance. He pointed out to them that till
such assent was given they had no law on their side; that they held their religion at the
mere pleasure of their sovereign, that they might any day be commanded to go to mass, and
that it was indispensable that these uncertainties and fears should be set at rest. The
nobles, however, found the matter displeasing to the queen, and agreed not to press it.
Knox learned their resolve with consternation.
He could not have believed, unless he had seen it, that the men who had summoned him from
Geneva, and carried their cause to the battle-field, and who had entered into a solemn
bond, pledging themselves to God and to one another, to sacrifice goods and life in the
cause if need were, could have so woefully declined in zeal and courage, and could so
prefer the good-will of their sovereign and their own selfish interests to the defense of
their religion, and the welfare of their country. This exhibition of faithlessness and
servility well-nigh broke his heart, and would have made him abandon the cause in despair
but for his faith in God. The Parliament had not yet ended, and in the pulpit of St.
Giles's, Knox poured out the sorrows that almost overwhelmed him in a strain of lofty and
indignant, yet mournful eloquence. He reminded the nobles who, with some thousand of the
citizens, were gathered before him, of the slavery of body, and the yet viler slavery of
soul, in which they had been sunk; and now, when the merciful hand of God had delivered
them, where was their gratitude? And then addressing himself in particular to the
nobility, he continued, "In your most extreme dangers I have been with you; St.
Johnston, Cupar-Moor, the Craigs of Edinburgh" (names that recalled past perils and
terrors) "are yet fresh in my heart; yea, that dark and dolorous night wherein all
ye, my lords, with shame and fear left this town, is yet in my mind, and God forbid that
ever I forget it. What was, I say, my exhortation to you, and what has fallen in vain of
all that ever God promised unto you by my mouth, ye yourselves are yet alive to testify.
There is not one of you, against whom was death and destruction threatened, perished; and
how many of your enemies has God plagued before your eyes! Shall this be the thankfulness
that ye shall render unto your God? To betray his cause when you have it in your hands to
establish it as you please?... Their religion had the authority of God, and was
independent of human laws, but it was also accepted within this realm in public
Parliament, and that Parliament he would maintain was as free and lawful as any that had
ever assembled in the kingdom of Scotland." He alluded, in fine, to the reports of
the queen's marriage, and bidding his audience mark his words, he warned the nobility what
the consequences would be should they ever consent to their sovereign marrying a Papist.[3]
Knox himself tells us in his History that this plainness of speech gave offense to
both Papists and Protestants. He had not expected, nor indeed intended, that his sermon
should please the latter any more than the former. Men who were sinking their patriotism
in cupidity, and their loyalty in sycophancy, would not be flattered by being told to
their face that they were ruining their country. Another result followed, which had
doubtless also been foreseen by the preacher. There were those in his audience who hurried
off to the palace as soon as the sermon was ended, and reported his words to the queen,
saying that he had preached against her marriage. Hardly had he finished his dinner when a
messenger arrived from Holyrood, ordering his attendance at the palace. His attached
friend, Lord Ochiltree, and some others, accompanied him, but only Erskine of Dun was
permitted to go with him into the royal cabinet. The moment he entered, Mary burst into a
passion, exclaiming that never had prince been vexed by subject as she had been by him;
"I vow to God," said she, "I shall once be revenged." "And with
these words, hardly could her page bring napkins enough to hold her tears." Knox was
beginning to state the paramount claims that governed him in the pulpit, when the queen
demanded, "But what have you to do with my marriage?" He was going on to
vindicate his allusion to that topic in the pulpit on the ground of its bearing on the
welfare of the country, when she again broke in, "What have you to do with my
marriage? or what are you in this commonwealth?"
Posterity has answered that question, in terms that would have been less pleasing to Mary
than was Knox's own reply. "A subject born within the same, madam," he at once
said with a fine blending of courtesy and dignity: "a subject born within the same,
madam, and albeit I be neither earl, lord, nor baron in it, yet has God made me (how
abject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same; yes, madam, to me
it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if foresee them, than it
doth to any of the nobility, for both my vocation and my conscience require plainness of
me; and, therefore, madam, to yourself I say, that which I spake in public place —
whensoever the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be obedient to all unfaithful
husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce Christ, to banish his truth from
them, to betray the freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort
to yourself." Mary's reply to these words was a burst of tears.[4]
Erskine of Dun stepped forward to soothe her, but with no great success. Knox stood
silent till the queen had composed herself, and then said he was constrained, though
unwillingly, to sustain her tears, rather than hurt his conscience and betray the
commonwealth by his silence. This defense but the more incensed the queen; she ordered him
to leave her presence and await in the ante-chamber the signification of her pleasure.
There he was surrounded by numbers of his acquaintances and associates, but he stood
"as one whom men had never seen." Lord Ochiltree alone of all that dastardly
crowd found courage to recognize him. Turning from the male, but not manly, courtiers,
Knox addressed himself to the queen's ladies. "O fair ladies," said he, in a
vein of raillery which the queen's frown had not been able to extinguish, "how
pleasing were this life of yours, if it should ever abide, and then, in the end, we might
pass to heaven with all this gay gear! but fie upon that knave Death that will come
whether we will or no." Erskine now came to hint to say that the queen permitted him
to go home for the day. Mary was bent on a prosecution of the Reformer, but her councilors
refused to concur, and so, as Knox says, "this storm blew over in appearance, but not
in heart."[5]
Sternly, uncompromisingly, Knox pursues his course! Not an uncourteous,
undignified, treasonable word does he utter; yet what iron inflexibility! He sacrifices
friends, he incurs the mortal hatred of his: sovereign, he restrains the yearnings of his
own heart; the sacrifice is painful — painful to himself and to all about him, but it
is the saving of his country. What hardness! exclaim many. We grant it; Knox is hard as
the rock, stubborn as the nether millstone; but when men seek to erect a beacon that may
save the mariner from the reef on which the tumultuous billows are about to pitch his
vessel headlong, it is the rock, not the sand-heap, that they select as a foundation.
At last, as the queen thought, the Reformer had put himself in her power. Had it been as
Mary believed, no long time would have elapsed till his head had fallen on the scaffold,
and with it, in all human reckoning, would have fallen the Protestant Church of his native
land. During the queen's absence at Stirling, the same summer, mass was celebrated at
Holyrood by her domestics with greater pomp than usual, and numbers of the citizens
resorted to it. Some zealous Protestants of Edinburgh forced their way into the chapel,
principally to see who of their fellow-citizens were present, and finding the priest
attired for celebration, they asked him why he durst do these things in the queen's
absence. The chaplain and the French domestics, taking fright, raised a cry which made
Comptroller Pitarrow hasten to their aid, who found no tumult, however, save what he
brought with him. Information having been sent to the queen, she caused two of the
Protestants to be indicted for "forethought felony, hamesucken, and invasion of the
palace." Fearing that it might go hard with the accused, the ministers urged Knox,
agreeably to a commission he had received from the Church, to address a circular to the
leading Protestants of the country, requesting their presence on the day of trial. A copy
of this letter having been sent to the queen, she submitted it to the Privy Council; and
the Council, to her great delight, pronounced it treasonable.
In December, 1563, an extraordinary meeting of Council was called, and Knox was put upon
his trial. Mary took her seat at the head of the table with an affectation of great
dignity, which she utterly spoiled by giving way to a fit of loud laughter, so great was
her joy at seeing Knox standing uncovered at the foot of the table. "That man,"
said she, "made me weep, and shed never a tear himself; I will now see if I can make
him weep."
Secretary Maitland of Lethinton conducted the prosecution, and seemed almost as eager as
Mary herself to obtain a conviction against the Reformer. Maitland was a formidable
opponent, being one of the most accomplished dialecticians of the age. He had been a
zealous Protestant, but caring little at heart for any religion, he had now cooled, and
was trying to form a middle party, between the court and the Church. Nothing has a greater
tendency to weaken the insight than the want of definite views and strong convictions, and
so the secretary was laboring with all his might to realize his narrow and impracticable
scheme, to the success of which, as he deemed, one thing only was wanting, namely, that
Knox should be got rid of. The offense for which the Reformer was now made answerable was,
"convening the lieges" by his circular; but the sting of his letter lay in the
sentence which affirmed that the threatened prosecution "was doubtless to make
preparation upon a few, that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater
number." Knox had offended mortally, for he had penetrated the designs of the court,
and proclaimed, them to the nation. The proceedings were commenced by the reading of the
circular for which Knox had been indicted. "Heard you ever, my lords," said
Mary, looking round the Council, "a more spiteful and treasonable letter?" This
was followed up by Maitland, who, turning to Knox, said, "Do you not repent that such
a letter has passed your pen?" The Reformer avoided the trap, and made answer,
"My lord secretary, before I repent I must be shown my offense."
"Offense!" exclaimed Maitland, in a tone of surprise; "if there were no
more but the convocation of the queen's lieges, the offense cannot be denied." The
Reformer took his stand on the plain common sense of the matter, that to convene the
citizens for devotion, or for deliberation, was one thing:, and to convene them with arms
was another; and Maitland labored to confound the two, and attach a treasonable purpose to
the convocation in question. "What is this?" interposed the queen, who was
getting impatient; "methinks you trifle with him. Who gave him authority to make
convocation of my lieges?. Is not that treason?" "No, madam," replied Lord
Ruthyen, whose Protestant spirit was roused — "no, madam, for he makes
convocation of the people to hear prayers and sermon almost daily, and whatever your Grace
or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."
After a long and sharp debate between the Reformer and the secretary, the "cruelty
upon a greater multitude," for which the summons served on the two Protestants would,
it was affirmed, prepare the way, came next under discussion. The queen insisted that she
was the party against whom this allegation was directed; Knox contended that its
application was general, and that it was warranted by the notorious persecutions of the
Papacy to exterminate Protestants. He was enlarging on this topic, when the chancellor
interrupted him. "You forget yourself," said he; "you are not now in the
pulpit." "I am in the place," replied the Reformer, "where I am
demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it
whose list." At last Knox was withdrawn, and the queen having retired, in order that
the judgment of the Council might be given, the lords unanimously voted that John Knox had
been guilty of no violation of the laws. Secretary Maitland stormed, and the courtiers
stood aghast. The queen was brought back, and took her place at the head of the table, and
the votes were called over again in her presence. "What!" said the members,
"shall the Laird of Lethington make us condemn an innocent man?" The Council
pronounced a second unanimous acquittal. They then rose and departed. The issue had been
waited for with intense anxiety by the Protestant citizens of Edinburgh, and during the
sitting of Council a dense crowd filled the court of the palace, and occupied the stairs
up to the very door of the council-chamber. That night no instruments of music were
brought before the queen; the darkened and silent halls of Holyrood proclaimed the grief
and anger of Mary Stuart. But if the palace mourned, the city rejoiced.[6]
We have missed the true character of this scene if we have failed to see, not Mary
Stuart and Knox, but Rome and the Reformation struggling together in this chamber. Where
would Scotland have been today if the vote of the Privy Council that night had consigned
Knox to the Castle, thence to pass, in a few days, or in a few weeks, to a scaffold in the
Grass Market? The execution of the Reformer would have been immediately followed by the
suppression of the ecclesiastical and educational institutions which he had set up, and
Scotland plunged again into Popery would have been, at this day, a second Ireland, with a
soil less fertile, and a population even more pauperized. Nay, the disastrous consequences
of the Reformer's imprisonment or death would have extended far beyond his native land.
Had Scotland been a Popish country at the time of the Armada, in all human probability the
throne of Elizabeth would have been overturned. Nay, with Scotland Popish, it may be
doubted whether the throne of Elizabeth would have stood till then. If Mary Stuart had
succeeded in restoring the Papacy in Scotland, the country would, as an almost inevitable
consequence, have fallen under the power of France, and would have become the door by
which the Popish Powers would have entered England to suppress its Reformation, and place
the Queen of the Scots upon its throne. Had Knox that night descended the stairs of the
royal cabinet of Holyrood with a sentence of condemnation upon him, his countrymen would
have had more cause to morn than himself, and England too would, in no long time, have
learned the extent of the calamity which had befallen the great cause with which she had
identified herself, when she saw the fall of the northern kingdom followed by the
destruction of her own Protestant religion and liberties.
Even yet we hear at times echoed of the charge preferred against Knox at the council-table
of the queen. Tried by the political creed of Mary Stuart, it must be confessed that his
sentiments were disloyal Mary held by the principle, to sovereigns a convenient one, of
"the right divine of king to govern wrong;" Knox, on the contrary, held that
"all power is founded on a compact expressed or understood between the rulers and the
ruled, and that no one has either divine or human right to govern, save in accordance,
with the will of the people and the law of God." This is the amount of all that Knox
advanced under that head in his various interviews with Queen Mary. His opinions may have
sounded strange to one reared in a despotic court; and when the Reformer enunciated them
with such emphasis in the Palace of Holyrood, they were before their time; but the world
has since seen cause to ratify them, and States of no mean name have acted upon them.
Holland embodied them in its famous declaration of independence twenty years afterwards;
they received a signal triumph when the British nation adopted them at the Revolution of
1688; and they form, at this day, the basis of that glorious constitution under which it
is now happiness to live. Branded as treason when first uttered beneath the royal roof of
Holyrood, not a day now passes without our reading these same sentiments in a hundred
journals. We hear them proclaimed in senates, we see them acted on in cabinets, and
re-echoed from the throne itself. Let us not forget that the first openly to avow them on
Scottish soil was John Knox.
Let it be remembered too, that there was then no free press, no free platform, no one
organ of public sentiment but the pulpit; and had Knox been silent, the cause of liberty
would have been irretrievably betrayed and lost. He had penetrated the design of Mary,
inflexibly formed, and craftily yet steadily pursued, of overturning the Reformation of
her native land. Knox was the one obstacle in Mary's path to the accomplishment of that
design. When nobles and burgesses were bowing down he stood erect, unshaken in his firm
resolve, that come what might, and forsake it who would, he would stand by the cause of
his country's Reformation. He saw in the back-ground of Mary's throne the dark phalanx of
the Popish despots who were banded together to crush the Reformation of Christendom by
making a beginning of their work in Scotland, and he stood forward to denounce and, if
possible, prevent the perpetration of that gigantic crime. In that chamber of Holyrood,
and in the pulpit of St. Giles's, he fought the noblest battle ever waged upon Scottish
soil, and defeated a more formidable foe than Wallace encountered at Stirling, or Bruce
vanquished at Bannockburn. He broke the firm-knit league of Papal conspirators, plucked
from their very teeth the little country of Scotland, which they had made their prey, and,
rescuing it from the vile uses to which they had destined it, made it one of the lights of
the world, and, along with England, a mother of free nations. Through all the ages of the
future, the foremost place among Scotsmen must belong to Knox.[7]
CHAPTER 10 Back to Top
THE LAST DAYS OF QUEEN MARY AND JOHN KNOX
Prosperous Events — Ratification of the Protestant Establishment by Parliament —
Culmination of Scottish Reformation — Knox Wishes to Retire -- New Storms — Knox
Retires to St. Andrews — Knox in the Pulpit — Tulchan Bishops — Knox's
Opposition to the Scheme -- The St. Bartholomew Massacre -- Knox's Prediction — His
Last Appearance in the Pulpit -- Final End of Mary's Crimes — Darnley — Rizzio
— Kirk-of- Field — Marriage with Bothwell — Carberry Hill — Lochleven
Castle — Battle of Langside — Flight to England — Execution — Mary the
Last Survivor of her Partners in Crime — Last Illness of Knox -- His Death — His
Character
The dangerous crisis was now past, and a tide of prosperous
events began to set in, in favor of the Scottish Reformation. The rising of the Earl of
Huntly, in the north who, knowing the court to be secretly favorable, had unfurled the
standard for Rome — was suppressed. The alienation which had parted Knox and Lord
James Stuart, now Earl of Murray, for two years was healed; the Protestant spirit in the
provinces was strengthened by the preaching tours undertaken by the Reformer; the
jealousies between the court and the Church, though not removed, were abated; the
abdication of the queen, which grew out of the deplorable occurrences that followed her
marriage with Darnley, and to which our attention must briefly be given, seeing they were
amongst the most powerful of the causes which turned the balance between Protestantism and
Romanism, not in Scotland only, but over Europe; and, as a consequence of her abdication,
the appointment, as regent of the kingdom, of the Earl of Murray, the intimate friend of
Knox, and the great outstanding patriot and Reformer among the Scottish nobles -- all
tended in one direction, to the establishment, namely, of the Scottish Reformation.
Accordingly, in 1567, the infant James being king, and Murray regent, the Parliament which
met on the 15th of December ratified all the Acts that had been passed in 1560, abolishing
the Papal jurisdiction, and accepting the Protestant faith as the religion of the nation.
Valid legal securities were thus for the first time reared around the Protestant Church of
Scotland. It was further enacted, "That no prince should afterwards be admitted to
the exercise of authority in the kingdom, without taking an oath to maintain the
Protestant religion; and that none but Protestants should be admitted to any office, with
the exception of those that were hereditary, or held for life. The ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, exercised by the Assemblies of the Church, was formally ratified, and
commissioners appointed to define more exactly the causes which came within the sphere of
their judgment."[1]
The Scottish Reformation had now reached its culmination in that century, and from
this point Knox could look back over the battles he had waged, and the toils he had borne,
and contemplate with thankfulness their issue in the overthrow of the Papal tyranny, and
the establishment of a Scriptural faith in Scotland. He had, too, received legal
guarantees from the State that the abolished jurisdiction would not be restored, and that
the Protestant Church would have liberty and protection given it in the exercise of its
worship and the administration of its discipline. The two years that followed, 1568 and
1569, were perhaps the happiest in the Reformer's life, and the most prosperous in the
history of his country during that century. Under the energetic and patriotic
administration of the "Good Regent" Scotland enjoyed quiet. The Reformed Church
was enlarging her borders; all was going well; and that yearning for rest which often
visits the breasts of those who have been long tossed by tempests, began to be felt by
Knox. He remembered the quiet years at Geneva, the loving flock to whom he had there
ministered the Word of Life, and he expressed a wish to return thither and spend the
evening of his life, and lay his wearied body, it might be, by the side of greater dust in
the Plain-palais.
But it was not to be so. Other storms were to roll over him and over his beloved Church
before he should descend into his grave. The assassination of the Regent Murray, in
January, 1570, was the forerunner of these evils. The tidings of his death occasioned to
Knox the most poignant anguish, but great as was his own loss, he regarded it as nothing
in comparison with the calamity which had befallen the country in the murder of this great
patriot and able administrator. Under the Earl of Lennox, who succeeded Murray as regent,
the former confusions returned, and they continued under Mar, by whom Lennox was
succeeded. The nobles were divided into two factions, one in favor of Mary, while the
other supported the cause of the young king. In the midst of these contentions the life of
the Reformer came to be in so great danger that it was thought advisable that he should
remove from Edinburgh, and take up his residence for some time at St. Andrews. Here he
often preached, and though so feeble that he had to be lifted up into the pulpit, before
the sermon had ended his earnestness and vehemence were such that, in the words of an
eye-witness, "He was like to ding the pulpit in blads [2] and flie out of it."
Weary of the world, and longing to depart, he had nevertheless to wage battle to the very
close of his life. His last years were occupied in opposing the introduction into the
Presbyterian Church of an order of bishop known only to Scotland, and termed Tulchan.[3] Several rich benefices had
become vacant by the death of the incumbents, and other causes; and the nobles, coveting
these rich living, entered into simoniacal bargains with the least worthy of the
ministers, to the effect that they should fill the post, but that the patron should
receive the richest portion of the income: hence the term Tulchan Bishops. Knox strongly
objected to the institution of the new order of ecclesiastics — first, because he
held it a robbery of the Church's patrimony; and secondly, because it was an invasion on
the Presbyterian equality which had been settled in the Scottish Kirk. His opposition
delayed the completion of this disgraceful arrangement, which was not carried through till
the year in which he died.
In August, 1572, he returned to Edinburgh, and soon thereafter received the news of the
St. Bartholomew Massacre. We need not say how deeply he was affected by a crime that
drowned France in Protestant blood, including that of many of his own personal friends.
Kindling into prophet-like fire, he foretold from the pulpit of St. Giles's a future of
revolutions as awaiting the royal house and throne of France; and his words, verily, have
not fallen to the ground.
His last appearance in public was on the 9th of November, 1572, when he preached in the
Tolbooth Church on occasion of the installation of Mr. Lawson as his colleague and
successor. At the close of the service, as if he felt that no more should flock see their
pastor, or pastor address his flock, he protested, in the presence of Him to whom he
expected soon to give an account, that he had walked among them with a good conscience,
preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all sincerity, and he exhorted and charged them to
adhere steadfastly to the faith which they had professed. The services at an end, he
descended the pulpit-stairs, with exhausted yet cheerful look, and walked slowly down the
High Street leaning on the arm of his servant, Richard Bannatyne; his congregation lining
the way, reverently anxious to have their last look of their beloved pastor. He entered
his house never again to pass over its threshold,[4] was meet he should now depart, for the shadows were falling
thickly, not around himself only, but around Christendom.
While the events we have so rapidly narrated were in progress, Mary Stuart, the other
great figure of the time, was pursuing her career, and it is necessary that we should
follow — not in their detail, for that is not necessary for our object, but in their
outline and issue — a series of events of which she was the center, and which were
acting with marked and lasting effect on both Romanism and Protestantism. We have
repeatedly referred to the league of the three Papal Powers France, Spain, and Rome —
to quench the new light which was then dawning on the nations, and bring back the night on
the face of all the earth. We have also said that of this plot Mary Stuart had become the
center, seeing the part assigned her was essential to its success. It is surely a most
instructive fact, that the series of frightful crimes into which this prince as plunged
was one of the main instrumentaries that Providence employed to bring this plot to nought.
From the day that Mary Stuart put her hand to this bond of blood, the tide in her fortunes
turned, and all things went against her. First came her sudden and ill-starred affection
for Lord Darnley, the son of the Earl of Lennox; then followed her marriage with him,
accomplished through treachery, and followed by civil war. The passion which Mary felt for
Darnley, a weak, vain, and frivolous youth, and addicted to low company, soon gave place
to disgust. Treated with neglect by her husband, Mary was thrown upon others, and then
came her worse than unseemly intimacy with the low-born and low-bred Italian, David
Rizzio. This awakened a fierce and revengeful jealousy in the breast of Darnley, which led
to the midnight assassination in the palace. A band of vizored barons, with naked swords,
suddenly appeared in the supper-chamber of the queen, and seizing her favorite, and
loosening his grasp on the dress of his mistress, which he had clutched in despair, they
dragged him out, and dispatched him in the ante-chamber, his screams ringing in the ears
of the queen, who was held back by force from rescuing him. Then came the settled purpose
of revenge in the heart of Mary Stuart against her husband, for his share in the murder of
Rizzio. This purpose, concealed for a time under an affectation of tender love, the more
effectually to lure the vain and confiding Lord Darnley into the snare she had set for
him, was steadily and coolly pursued, till at last it was consummated in the horrible
tragedy of the "Kirk-of-Field." The lurid blaze which lighted the sky of
Edinburgh that night, and the shock that roused its sleeping citizens from their beds,
bring upon the stage new actors, and pave the way for outrages that startle the
imagination and stupefy the moral sense. Darnley has disappeared, and now an infamous and
bloody man starts up by the side of Mary Stuart.
There comes next, her strange passion for Bothwell, a man without a single spark of
chivalry or honor in him — coarse-minded, domineering, with an evil renown haning
about him for deeds of violence and blood, and whose gross features and badly-molded limbs
did not furnish Mary with the poor apology of manly beauty for the almost insane passion
for him to which she abandoned herself. Then, before the blood of her husband was dry, and
the ruins of the Kirk-of-Field had ceased to smoke, came her marriage with Bothwell, whom
the nation held to be the chief perpetrator of the cruel murder of her former husband. To
take in marriage that hand which had spilt her husband's blood was to confess in act what
even she dared not confess in words. From this moment her fatuous career becomes more
reckless, and she rushes onward with awful speed towards the goal.
Aghast at such a career, and humiliated by being ruled over by such a sovereign, her
subjects broke out in insurrection. The queen flew to arms; she was defeated on the field
of Carberry Hill and brought as a captive to Edinburgh; thence sent to Lochleven Castle,
where she endured a lonely imprisonment of some months. Escaping thence, she fled on
horseback all night long, and at morning presented herself at the castle-gates of the
Hamiltons. Here she rallied round her the supporters whom her defeat had scattered, and
for the last time tried the fortune of arms against her subjects on the field of Langside,
near Glasgow. The battle went against her, and she fled a second time, riding night and
day across country towards the Border, where, fording the Solway, she bade adieu to
Scottish soil, nevermore to return. She had left her country behind, not her evil genius,
nor her ill-fortune; these, as a terrible Nemesis, accompany her into England. There,
continuing to be the principal card in the game the Popish Powers were playing, she was
drawn to conspire against the life and throne of Elizabeth. It was now that doom overtook
her. On a dull winter morning, on the 8th of February, she who had dazzled all eyes by her
beauty, all imaginations by her liveliness and gaiety, and who had won so many hearts by
her fascinating address -- the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, and the mother of a
king, and who herself had sat on two thrones — laid her head, now discrowned, gray
with sorrows, and stained with crimes, upon the block. At the very time that the Armada
was being built in the dockyards of Spain, and an immense host was being collected in the
Netherlands, with the view of making vacant Elizabeth's throne, and elevating Mary Stuart
to it, the head of the latter princess fell on the scaffold.
It is noteworthy that Queen Mary survived all who had been actors along with her in the
scenes of crime and blood in which she had so freely mingled. Before she herself mounted
the scaffold, she had seen all who had sided with her in Scotland against Knox and the
Reformation, die on the gallows or in the field. Before her last hour came the glory of
the House of Hamilton had been tarnished, and the member of that house who fired the shot
that deprived Scotland of her "Good Regent" had to seek asylum in France.
Kirkaldy of Grange, who espoused Mary's quarrel at the last hour, and held the Castle of
Edinburgh in her behalf, was hanged at the Market Cross; and Maitland of Lethington, who
had lent the aid of his powerful talents to the queen to bring Knox to the block, died, it
is supposed, by his own hand, after living to witness the utter wreck of all Mary's
interests in Scotland. Bothwell, who had stained his life and conscience with so many
horrid deeds to serve her, rotted for years in a foreign dungeon, and at last expired
there. The same fatality attended all in other lands who took part with her or embarked in
her schemes. Her co-conspirators in England came to violent ends. The Earls of
Westmoreland and Northumberland were executed. The Duke of Norfolk, the premier peer, was
beheaded in the Tower. All concerned in the Babington plot were swept off by the ax. In
France it was the same. Her uncles had died violent and bloody deaths; Charles IX expired,
blood flowing from every opening in his body; Catherine de Medici, after all her crimes,
trod the same road; and last of all Mary herself went to her great audit. As she stands
this dark morning beside the block in Fotheringay Castle, it could hardly fail to put a
double sting into death to reflect that she had seen the ruin of all her friends, and the
utter overthrow of all her projects, while the Reformation against which she had so sorely
combated was every year striking its roots deeper in her native land.
From this blood-stained block, with the headless corpse of a queen beside it, we turn to
another death-scene, tragic too — not with horrors, as the other, but with triumph.
We stand in a humble chamber at the foot of the High Street of Edinburgh. Here, on this
bed, is laid that head over which so many storms had burst, to find at last the rest
which, wearied with toil and anxiety, it had so earnestly sought. Noblemen, ministers,
burgesses pour in to see how Knox will die. As he had lived so he dies, full of courage.
From his dying bed he exhorted, warned, admonished all who approached him as he had done
from the pulpit. His brethren in the ministry he adjured to "abide by the eternal
truth of the Gospel." Noblemen and statesmen he counseled to uphold the
"Evangel" and not forsake the Church of their native land, if they would have
God not to strip them of their riches and honors. He made Calvin's sermons on the
Ephesians be read to him, as if his spirit sought to commune once more on earth with that
mightier spirit.
But the Scriptures were the manna on which he mostly lived: "Turn," said he to
his wife, "to that passage where I first cast anchor, the seventeenth of the Gospel
of John." In the midst of these solemn scenes, a gleam of his wonted geniality breaks
in. Two intimate friends come to see him, and he makes a cask of French wine which was in
his cellar be pierced for their entertainment, and hospitably urges them to partake,
saying that "he will not tarry till it be all drunk." He was overheard breathing
out short utterances in prayer: "Give peace to this afflicted commonwealth; raise up
faithful pastors." On the day before his death, being Sunday, after lying some time
quiet, he suddenly broke out, "I have fought against spiritual wickedness in heavenly
things," referring to the troubled state of the Church, "and have prevailed; I
have been in heaven and taken possession, I have tasted of the heavenly joys." At
eleven o'clock in the evening of the 24th of November, he heaved a deep sigh, and
ejaculated, "Now it is come." His friends desired of him a sign that he died in
peace, whereupon, says the chronicler of his last hours, "As if he had received new
strength in death, he lifted one of his hands towards heaven, and sighing twice, departed
with the calmness of one fallen into sleep."[5]
The two master-qualities of Knox were faith and courage. The fundamental quality
was his faith, courage was the noble fruit that sprang from it. The words of Regent
Morton, spoken over his dust, have become proverbial, "There lies one who never
feared the face of man." John Knox never feared man because he never mistrusted God.
His faith taught him, first of all, a fearless submission of his understanding to the Word
of God. To this profound submission to the Bible we can trace all the noble and rare
qualities which he displayed in his life. To this was owing the simplicity, the clearness
and the vigor of all his views, his uniform consistency, and that remarkable foresight
which to his countrymen appeared to approach almost to prophecy. Looking along the lines
of the Divine government, as revealed in the Scriptures, he could fortell what would
inevitably be the issue of a certain course of conduct or a certain train of events. It
might come sooner or it might come later, but he no more doubted that it would come than
he doubted the uniformity and equity of God's rule over men.
To this too, namely, his submission to the Bible, was owing at once the solidity and the
breadth of his Reform. Instead of trammeling himself by forms he threw himself fearlessly
and broadly upon great principles. He spread his Reformation over the whole of society,
going down till he had reached its deepest springs, and traveling outwards till he had
regenerated his country in all departments of its action, and in all the spheres of its
well-being. He was all advocate of constitutional government, and a friend, as we have
seen, of the highest and widest intellectual culture. It is no proof of narrowness,
surely, but of insight and breadth, that he discerned the true foundation on which to
build in order that his Reformation might endure and extend itself, he placed it upon the
Bible. His wide and patriotic views on public liberty and education, which he held and
inculcated, we gratefully acknowledge; but the great service which he rendered to Scotland
was the religious one — he gave it liberty by giving it the "Evangel." It
would have but little availed Scotsmen in the nineteenth century if Knox had wrought up
their fathers to a little political enthusiasm, but had failed to lead them to the Bible,
that great awakening of the human soul, and bulwark of the rights of conscience. If this
had been all, the Scots, after a few abortive attempts, like those of misguided France, to
reconcile political freedom with spiritual servitude, would assuredly have fallen back
under the old yoke, and would have been lying at this day in the gulf of
"Papistrie." Discarding this narrow visionary project, Knox grasped the one
eternal principle of liberty, the government of the human conscience by the Bible, and
planting his Reformation upon this great foundation-stone, he endowed it with the
attribute of durability.
CHAPTER 11 Back to Top
ANDREW MELVILLE--THE TULCHAN BISHOPS
The Tulchan Bishops — Evils that grew out of this Arrangement — Supported by the
Government — A Battle in Prospect — A Champion Wanting — Andrew Melville
— His Parentage — Education — Studies Abroad — Goes to Geneva —
Appointed Professor of Humanity in its Academy -- Returns to Scotland in 1574 — State
of Scotland at his Arrival — War against the Tulchan Bishops — The General
Assembly Abolishes the Order — Second Book of Discipline — Perfected Polity of
the Presbyterian Kirk — The Spiritual Independence — Geneva and Scotland —
A Great Struggle
The same year (1572) which saw Knox descend into the grave
beheld the rise of a system in Scotland, which was styled episcopacy, and yet was not
episcopacy, for it possessed no authority and exercised no oversight. We have already
indicated the motives which led to this invasion upon the Presbyterian equality which had
till now prevailed in the Scottish Church, and the significant name borne by the men who
filled the offices created under this arrangement. They were styled Tulchan bishops, being
only the image or likeness of a bishop, set up as a convenient vehicle through which the
fruits of the benefices might flow, not into the treasury of the Church, their rightful
destination, but into the pockets of patrons and landlords.
We have seen that Knox resisted this scheme, as stained with the double guilt of simony
and robbery. He held it, moreover, to be a violation of one of the fundamental laws of the
Presbyterian polity, so far as the new bishops might possess any real superiority of power
or rank. This they hardly did as yet, for the real power of the Church lay in her courts,
and the Tulchan bishops were subject to the jurisdiction of the Synods and Assemblies
equally with their brethren; but the change was deemed ominous by all the more faithful
ministers, as the commencement of a policy which seemed certain in the end to lay
prostrate the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland, and with it the Reformed religion
and the liberties of the country.
Meanwhile, numerous other evils grew out of this arrangement. The men who consented to be
obtruded into these equivocal posts were mostly unqualified, some by their youth, others
by their old age; some by inferior talents, others by their blemished character. They were
despised by the people as the tools of the court and the aristocracy. Hardly an Assembly
met but it had to listen to complaints against them for neglect of duty, or irregularity
of life, or tyrannical administration. The ministers, who felt that these abuses were
debasing the purity and weakening the influence of the Church, sought means to correct
them. But the Government took the side of the Tulchan dignitaries. The regent, Morton,
declared the speeches against the new bishops to be seditious, threatened to deprive the
Church of the liberty of her Assemblies, and advanced a claim to the same supremacy over
ecclesiastical affairs which had been declared an inherent prerogative in the crown of
England.[1] Into
this complicated and confused state had matters now come in Scotland.
The man who had so largely contributed by his unwearied labors to rear the Scottish
ecclesiastical establishment, and who had watched over it with such unslumbering
vigilance, was now in his grave. Of those who remained, many were excellent men, and
ardently attached to the principles of the Presbyterian Church; but there was no one who
possessed Knox's sagacity to devise, or his intrepidity to apply, the measures which the
crisis demanded. They felt that the Tulchan episcopacy which had lifted up its head in the
midst of them must be vigorously resisted if Presbyterianism was to live, but a champion
was wanting to lead in the battle.
At last one not unworthy to succeed Knox came forward to fill the place where that great
leader had stood. This man was Andrew Melville, who in 1574 returned from Geneva to
Scotland. He was of the Melvilles of Baldovy, in the Mearns, and having been left an
orphan at the age of four years, was received into the family of his elder brother, who,
discovering his genius and taste for learning, resolved to give him the best education the
country afforded. He acquired Latin in the grammar-school of Montrose, and Greek from
Pierre de Marsilliers, a native of France, who taught in those parts; and when the young
Melville entered the University of St. Andrews he read the original text of Aristotle,
while his professors, unacquainted with the tongue of their oracle, commented upon his
works from a Latin translation.[2] From
St. Andrews, Melville went to prosecute his studies at that ancient seat of learning, the
University of Paris. The Sorbonne was then rising into higher renown and attracting
greater crowds of students than ever, Francis I, at the advice of the great scholar
Budaeus, having just added to it three new chairs for Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
These unlocked the gates of the ancient world, and admitted the student to the philosophy
of the Greek sages and the diviner knowledge of the Hebrew prophets. The Jesuits were at
that time intriguing to obtain admission into the University of Paris, and to insinuate
themselves into the education of youth, and the insight Melville obtained abroad into the
character and designs of these zealots was useful to him in after-life, stimulating him as
it did to put the colleges of his native land on such a footing that the youth of Scotland
might have no need to seek instruction in foreign countries. From Paris, Melville repaired
to Poictiers, where, during a residence of three years, he discharged the duties of regent
in the College of St. Marceon, till he was compelled to quit it by the troubles of the
civil war. Leaving Poictiers, he journeyed on foot to Geneva, his Hebrew Bible slung at
his belt,[3] and
in a few days after his arrival he was elected to fill the chair of Humanity, then vacant,
in the famous academy which Calvin had founded ten years before, and which, as regards the
fame of its masters and the number of its scholars, now rivaled the ancient universities
of Europe.[4] His
appointment brought him into daily intercourse with the scholars, ministers, and senators
of Geneva, and if the Scotsman delighted in their urbanity and learning, they no less
admired his candor, vivacity, and manifold acquirements. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew
took place during Melville's residence in Geneva, and that terrible event, by crowding
Geneva with refugees, vastly enlarged his acquaintance with the Protestants of the
Continent. There were at one time as many as 120 French ministers in that hospitable city,
and among other learned strangers was Joseph Scaliger, the greatest scholar of his age,
with whom Melville renewed an acquaintance which had been begun two years before. The
horrors of this massacre, of which he had had so near a view, deepened the detestation he
felt for tyranny, and helped to nerve him in the efforts he made in subsequent years for
the liberties of his native land.
Surrounded with congenial friends and occupied in important labors, that land he had all
but forgotten, till it was recalled to his heart by a visit from two of his countrymen,
who, struck with his great capabilities, urged him to return to Scotland. Having obtained
with difficulty permission from the Senate and Church of Geneva to return, he set out on
his way homeward, with a letter from Beza, in which that illustrious man said that
"the Church of Geneva could not have a stronger token of affection to her sister of
Scotland than by despoiling herself of his services that the Church of Scotland might
therewith be enriched."[5] Passing
through Paris on the very day that Charles IX died in the Louvre, he arrived in Edinburgh
in July, 1574, after an absence of ten years from his native country. "He brought
with him," says James Melville, "an inexhaustible treasury of learning, a vast
knowledge both of things human and divine, and, what was better still, an upright and
fervent zeal for true religion, and a firm resolution to devote all his gifts, with
unwearied painfulness, to the service of his Kirk and country without recompense or gain.[6]
On his arrival in Scotland he found the battle against the Tulchan episcopate, so
incongruously joined on to the Presbyterian Church, halting for one to lead. Impressed
with the simple order which Calvin had established in Geneva, and ascribing in large
degree to that cause the glory to which that Church had attained, and the purity with
which religion flourished in it, and believing with Jerome that, agreeably to the
interchangeable use of the words "bishop" and "presbyter" in the New
Testament, all ministers of the Gospel were at first equal, Melville resolved not to rest
till he had lopped off the unseemly addition which avaricious nobles and a tyrannical
Government had made to the Church of his native land, and restored it to the simplicity of
its first order. He began the battle in the General Assembly of 1575; he continued it in
following Assemblies, and with such success that the General Assembly of 1580 came to a
unanimous resolution, declaring "the office of a bishop, as then used and commonly
understood, to be destitute of warrant from the Word of God, and a human invention,
tending to the great injury of the Church, and ordained the bishops to demit their
pretended office simpliciter, and to receive admission as ordinary pastors de novo, under
pain of excommunication."[7] Not
a holder of a Tulchan mitre but bowed to the decision of the Assembly.
While, on the one hand, this new episcopacy was being cast down, the Church was laboring,
on the other, to build up and perfect her scheme of Presbyterian polity. A committee was
appointed to prosecute this important matter, and in the course of a series of sittings it
brought its work to completion, and its plan was sanctioned by the General Assembly which
met in the Magdalene Chapel of Edinburgh, in 1578, under the presidency of Andrew
Melville. "From this time," says Dr. McCrie, "the Book: of Policy, as it
was then styled, or Second Book of Discipline, although not ratified by the Privy Council
or Parliament, was regarded by the Church as exhibiting her authorized form of government,
and the subsequent Assemblies took steps for carrying its arrangements into effect, by
erecting presbyteries throughout the kingdom, and committing to them the oversight of all
ecclesiastical affairs within their bounds, to the exclusion of bishops, superintendents,
and visitors."[8]
It may be well to pause and contemplate the Scottish ecclesiastical polity as now
perfected. Never before had the limits of the civil and the ecclesiastical powers been
drawn with so bold a hand as in this Second Book of Discipline. In none of the Confessions
of the Reformation had the Church been so clearly set forth as a distinct and, in
spiritual matters, independent society as it was in this one. The Second Book of
Discipline declared that "Christ had appointed a government in his Church, distinct
from civil government, which is to be executed in his name by such office-bearers as he
has authorized, and not by civil magistrates or under their direction." This marks a
notable advance in the Protestant theory of Church power, which differs from the Popish
theory, inasmuch as it is co-ordinate with, not superior to, the civil power, its claims
to supremacy being strictly limited to things spiritual, and subject to the State in
things temporal. Luther had grasped the idea of the essential distinction between the two
powers, but he shrank from the difficulty of embodying his views in a Church organization.
Calvin, after a great battle, had succeeded in vesting the Church of Geneva with a certain
measure of spiritual independence; but the State there was a theocracy with two branch
— the spiritual administration of the consistory, and the moral administration of the
senate — and hence the impossibility of instituting definite boundaries between the
two. But in Scotland there was more than a city; there were a kingdom, a Parliament, a
monarch; and this not only permitted, but necessitated, a fuller development of the
autonomy of the Church than was possible in Geneva. Hence the Scottish arrangement more
nearly resembles that which obtained in France than that which was set up in Geneva;
besides, Mary Stuart was Romish, and Knox could not give to a Popish sovereign the power
which Calvin had given to the Protestant senate of Geneva. Still the First Book of
Discipline was incomplete as regards its arrangements. It was compiled to meet an
emergency, and many of its provisions were necessarily temporary. But the Second Book of
Discipline contained a scheme of Church polity, developed from the root idea of the
supernatural origin of the Church, and which alike in its general scope and its particular
details was framed with the view of providing at once for the maintenance of the order,
and the conservation of the liberty of the Church. The Parliament did not ratify the
Second Book of Discipline till 1592; but that was a secondary matter with its compilers,
for in their view the granting of such ratification could not add to, and the withholding
of it could not take from, the inherent authority of the scheme of government, which had
its binding power from the Scriptures or had no binding power whatever. Of what avail,
then, was the ratification of Parliament. Simply this, that the State thereby pledged
itself not to interfere with or overthrow this discipline; and, further, it might be held
as the symbol of the nation's acceptance of and submission to this discipline as a
Scriptural one, which, however, the Church neither wished nor sought to enforce by civil
penalties.
It was out of this completed settlement of the Presbyterian polity that that great
struggle arose which ultimately involved both England and Scotland in civil war, and
which, after an immense effusion of blood, in the southern kingdom on the battle-field,
and in the northern on the scaffolds of its martyrs, issued in the Revolution of 1688,
which placed the Protestant House of Orange on the throne of Great Britain, and secured,
under the sanction of an oath, that the constitution and sovereigns of the realm should in
all time coming be Protestant.
CHAPTER 12 Back to Top
BATTLES FOR PRESBYTERIANISM AND LIBERTY
James VI — His Evil Counselors — Love of Arbitrary Power and Hatred of
Presbyterianism — State of Scotland — The Kirk its One Free Institution —
The Presbyterian Ministers the Only Defenders of the Nation's Liberties — The
National Covenant — Tulchan Bishops — Robert Montgomery — His
Excommunication — Melville before the King -- Raid of Ruthyen — The Black Acts
— Influence of the Spanish Armada on Scotland — Act of 1592 Ratifying
Presbyterian Church Government — Return of Popish Lords — Interview between
Melville and James VI at Falkland — Broken Promises — Prelacy set up —
Importance of the Battle — James VI Ascends the Throne of England
In 1578, James VI, now twelve years of age, took the reins of
government into his own hand. His preceptor, the illustrious Buchanan, had labored to
inspire him with a taste for learning — the capacity he could not give him — and
to qualify him for his future duties as a sovereign by instructing him in the principles
of civil and religious liberty. But unhappily the young king, at an early period of his
reign, fell under the influence of two worthless and profligate courtiers, who strove but
too successfully to make him forget all that Buchanan had taught him. These were Esme
Stuart, a cousin of his father, who now arrived from France, and was afterwards created
Earl of Lennox; and Captain James Stuart, a son of Lord Ochiltree, a man of profligate
manners, whose unprincipled ambition was rewarded with the title and estates of the
unfortunate Earl of Arran. The sum of what these men taught James was that there was
neither power nor glory in a throne unless the monarch were absolute, and that as the
jurisdiction of the Protestant Church of his native country was the great obstacle in the
way of his governing according to his own arbitrary will, it behoved him above all things
to sweep away the jurisdiction of Presbyterianism. An independent Kirk and an absolute
throne could not co-exist in the same realm. These maxims accorded but too well with the
traditions of his house and his own prepossessions not to be eagerly imbibed by the king.
He proved an apt scholar, and the evil transformation wrought upon him by the counselors
to whom he had surrendered himself was completed by his initiation into scenes of youthful
debauchery.
The Popish politicians on the Continent foresaw, of course, that James VI would mount the
throne of England; and there is reason to think that the mission of the polished and
insinuating but unprincipled Esme Stuart had reference to that expectation. The Duke of
Guise sent him to restore the broken link between Scotland and France; to fill James's
mind with exalted notions of his own prerogative; to inspire him with a detestation of
Presbyterian Protestantism, the greatest foe of absolute power; and to lead him back to
Rome, the great upholder of the Divine right of kings.
Accordingly Esme Stuart did not come alone. He was in due time followed by Jesuits and
seminary priests, and the secret influence of these men soon made itself manifest in the
open defection of some who had hitherto professed the Protestant faith. In short, this was
an off-shoot of that great plot which was in 1587 to be smitten on the scaffold in
Fotheringay Castle, and to receive a yet heavier blow from the tempest that strewed the
bottom of the North Sea with the hulks of the "Invincible Armada," and lined the
western shores of Ireland with the corpses of Spanish warriors.
The Presbyterian ministers took the alarm. This flocking of foul birds to the court, and
this crowding of "men in masks" in the kingdom, fore-boded no good to that
Protestant establishment which was the main bulwark of the country's liberties: The alarm
was deepened by intercepted letters from Rome granting a dispensation to Roman Catholics
to profess the Protestant faith for a time, provided they cherished in their hearts a
loyalty to Rome, and let slip no opportunity their disguise might offer them of advancing
her interests.[1] Crisis
was evidently approaching, and if the Scottish people were to hold possession of that
important domain of liberty which they had conquered they must fight for it.
Constitutional government had not indeed been set up as yet in full form in Scotland; but
Buchanan, Knox, and now Melville were the advocates of its principles; thus the germs of
that form of government had been planted in the country, and its working initiated by the
erection of the Presbyterian Church Courts; limits had been put upon the arbitrary will of
the monarch by the exclusion of the royal power from the most important of all departments
of human liberty and rights; and the great body of the people were inflamed with the
resolution of maintaining these great acquisitions, now menaced by both the secret and the
open emissaries of the Guises and Rome. But there were none to rally the people to the
defense of the public liberties but the ministers. The Parliament in Scotland was the tool
of the court; the courts of justice had their decisions dictated by letters from the king;
there was yet no free press; there was no organ through which the public sentiment could
find expression, or shape itself into action, but the Kirk. It alone possessed anything
like liberty, or had courage to oppose the arbitrary measures of the Government. The Kirk
therefore must come to the front, and give expression to the national voice, if that voice
was to be heard at all; and the Kirk must put its machinery in action to defend at once
its own independence and the independence of the nation, both of which were threatened by
the same blow. Accordingly, on this occasion, as so often afterwards, the leaders of the
opposition were ecclesiastical men, and the measures they adopted were on their outer
sides ecclesiastical also. The circumstances of the country made this a necessity. But
whatever the forms and names employed in the conflict, the question at issue was, shall
the king govern by his own arbitrary irresponsible will, or shall the power of the throne
be limited by the chartered rights of the people?
This led to the swearing of the National Covenant. It is only ignorance of the great
conflict of the sixteenth century that would represent this as a mere Scottish
peculiarity. We have Already met with repeated instances, in the course of our history, in
which this expedient for cementing union and strengthening confidence amongst the friends
of Protestantism was had recourse to. The Lutheran princes repeatedly subscribed not
unsimilar bonds. The Waldenses assembled beneath the rocks of Bobbio, and with uplifted
hands swore to rekindle their "ancient lamp" or die in the attempt. The citizens
of Geneva, twice over, met in their great Church of St. Peter, and swore to the Eternal to
resist the duke, and maintain their evangelical confession. The capitals of other cantons
also hallowed their struggle for the Gospel by an oath. The Hungarian Protestants followed
this example. In 1561 the nobles, citizens, and troops in Erlau bound themselves by oath
not to forsake the truth, and circulated their Covenant in the neighboring parishes, where
also it was subscribed.[2] The
Covenant from which the Protestants of Scotland sought to draw strength and confidence has
attracted more notice than any of the above instances, from this circumstance, that the
Covenanters were not a party but a nation, and the Covenant of Scotland, like its
Reformation, was national. The Covenanters swore in brief to resist Popery, and to
maintain Protestantism and constitutional monarchy. They first of all explicitly abjured
the Romish tenets, they promised to adhere to and defend the doctrine and the government
of the Reformed Church of Scotland, and finally they engaged under the same oath to defend
the person and authority of the king, "with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the
defense of Christ's Evangel, liberties of our country, ministration of justice, and
punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within this realm and without." It was
subscribed (1581) by the king and his household and by all ranks in the country. The
arrangement with Rome made the subscription of the courtiers almost a matter of course;
even Esme Stuart, now Earl of Lennox, seeing how the tide was flowing, professed to be a
convert to the Protestant faith.[3]
The national enthusiasm in behalf of the Reformed Church was greatly strengthened
by this solemn transaction, but the intrigues against it at court went on all the same.
The battle was begun by the appointment of a Tulchan bishop for Glasgow. The person
preferred to this questionable dignity was Robert Montgomery, minister of Stirling, who,
said the people, "had the title, but my Lord of Lennox (Esme Stuart) had the
milk."
The General Assembly of 1582 were proceeding to suspend the new-made bishop from the
exercise of his office, when a messenger-at-arms entered, and charged the moderator and
members, "under pain of rebellion and putting them to the horn," to stop
procedure. The Assembly, so far from complying, pronounced the heavier sentence of
excommunication on Montgomery; and the sentence was publicly intimated in Edinburgh and
Glasgow, in spite of Esme Stuart, who, furious with rage, threatened to poignard the
preacher. It shows how strongly the popular feeling was in favor of the Assembly, and
against the court, that when Montgomery came soon after to pay a visit to his patron
Lennox, the inhabitants of Edinburgh rose in a body, demanding that the town should not be
polluted with his presence, and literally chased him out of it. Nor was he, with all his
speed, about to escape a few "buffets in the neck" as he hastily made his exit
at the wicket-gate of the Potter Row.
The matter did not end with the ignominious expulsion of Montgomery from the capital. The
next General Assembly adopted a spirited remonstrance to the king, setting forth that the
authority of the Church had been invaded, her sentences dissanulled, and her ministers
obstructed in the discharge of their duty, and begging redress of these grievances. Andrew
Melville with others was appointed to present the paper to the king in council; having
obtained audience, the commissioners read the remonstrance. The reading finished, Arran
looked round with a wrathful countenance, and demanded, "Who dares subscribe these
treasonable articles?" "We dare," replied Melville, and, advancing to the
table, he took the pen and subscribed. The other commissioners came forward, one after
another, and appended their signatures. Even the insolent Arran was abashed; and Melville
and his brethren were peaceably dismissed. Protection from noble or from other quarter the
ministers had none; their courage was their only shield.[4]
There followed some chequered years; the nobles roused by the courageous bearing of
the ministers, made all attempt to free themselves and the country from the ignominious
tyranny of the unworthy favorites, who were trampling upon their liberties. But their
attempt, known as the "Raid of Ruthven," was ill-advised, and very unlike the
calm and constitutional opposition of the ministers. The nobles took possession of the
king's person, and compelled the Frenchmen to leave the country. The year's peace which
this violence procured for the Church was dearly purchased, for the tide of oppression
immediately returned with all the greater force. Andrew Melville had to retire into
England, and that intrepid champion off the scene, the Parliament (1584) overturned the
independence of the Church. It enacted that no ecclesiastical Assembly should meet without
the king's leave; that no one should decline the judgment of the king and Privy Council on
any matter whatever, under peril of treason, and that all ministers should acknowledge the
bishops as their ecclesiastical superiors. These decrees were termed the Black Acts.
Their effect was to lay at the feet of the king that whole machinery of ecclesiastical
courts which, as matters then stood, was the only organ of public sentiment, and the only
bulwark of the nation's liberties. The General Assembly could not meet unless the king
willed, and thus he held in his hands the whole power of the Church. This was in violation
of repeated Acts of Parliament, which had vested the Church with the power of convoking
and dissolving her Assemblies, without which her liberties were an illusion.
The Reformed Church of Scotland was lying in what seemed ruin, when it was lifted up by an
event that at first threatened destruction to it and to the whole Protestantism of
Britain. It was at this time that the storm-cloud of the Armada gathered, burst, and
passed away, but not without rousing the spirit of liberty, in Scotland. The Scots
resolved to set their house in order, lest a second Armada should approach their shores,
intercepted letters having made them aware that Huntly and the Popish lords of the north
were urging Philip II of Spain to make another attempt, and promising to second his
efforts with soldiers who would not only place Scotland at his feet, but would aid him to
subjugate England.[5] Even
James VI paused in the road he was traveling towards that oldest and staunchest friend of
despotic princes, the Church of Rome, seeing his kingdom about to depart from him. His
ardor had been cooled, too, by the many difficulties he had encountered in his attempts to
impose upon his subjects a hierarchy to which they were repugnant; and either through that
fickleness and inconstancy which were a part of his nature, or through that incurable
craft which characterized him as it had done all his race, he became for the time a
zealous Presbyterian. Nay, he "praised God that he was born in such a place as to be
king in such a Kirk, the purest Kirk in the world. I, forsooth," he concluded,
"as long as I brook my life and crown shall maintain the same against all deadly.[6] Andrew Melville had returned
from London after a year's absence, and his first care was to resuscitate the Protestant
liberties which lay buried under the late Parliamentary enactments. Nor were his labors in
vain. In 1592, Parliament restored the Presbyterian Church as it had formerly existed,
ratifying its government by Kirk-sessions, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and National
Assemblies.
This Act has ever been held to be the grand charter of Presbyterianism in Scotland.[7] It was hailed with joy, not as
adding a particle of inherent authority to the system it recognized — the basis of
that authority the Church had already laid down in her Books of Discipline — but
because it gave the Church a legal pledge that the jurisdiction of the Romish Church would
not be restored, and by consequence, that of the Reformed Church not overthrown.[8] This Act gave the Church of
Scotland a legal ground on which to fight her future battles.
But James VI was incapable of being long of one mind, or persevering steadily in one
course. In 1596 the Popish lords, who had left the country on the suppression of their
rebellion, returned to Scotland.
Notwithstanding that they had risen in arms against the king, and had continued their
plots while they lived abroad, James was willing to receive and reinstate these
conspirators. His Council were of the same mind with himself. Not so the country and the
Church, which saw new conspiracies and wars in prospect, should these inveterate plotters
be taken back.
Without loss of time, a deputation of ministers, appointed at a convention held at Cupar,
proceeded to Falkland to remonstrate with the king on the proposed recall of those who had
shown themselves the enemies of his throne and the disturbers of his realm. The ministers
were admitted into the palace. It had been agreed that James Melville, the nephew of
Andrew, for whom the king entertained great respect, being a man of courteous address,
should be their spokesman. He had only uttered a few words when the king violently
interrupted him, denouncing him and his associates as seditious stirrers up of the people.
The nephew would soon have succumbed to the tempest of the royal anger if the uncle had
not stepped forward. James VI and Andrew Melville stood once more face to face. For a few
seconds there was a conflict between the kingly authority of the sovereign and the moral
majesty of the patriot. But soon the king yielded himself to Melville. Taking James by the
sleeve, and calling him "God's sillie vassal," he proceeded, says McCrie,
"to address him in the following strain, perhaps the most singular, in point of
freedom, that ever saluted royal ears, or that ever proceeded from the mouth of loyal
subject, who would have sprit his blood in defense of the person and honor of his prince:
"Sir," said Melville, "we will always humbly reverence your Majesty in
public, but since we have this occasion to be with your Majesty in private, and since you
are brought into extreme danger both of your life and crown, and along with you the
country and the Church of God are like to go to wreck, for not telling you the truth and
bring you faithful counsel, we must discharge our duty or else be traitors, both to Christ
and you. Therefore, sir, as divers times before I have told you, so now again I must tell
you, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland: there is Christ Jesus the King of
the Church, whose subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king,
nor a lord, nor a head, but a member... We will yield to you your place, and give you all
due obedience; but again I say, you are not the head of the Church; you cannot give us
that eternal life which even in this world we seek for, and you cannot deprive us of it.
Permit us then freely to meet in the name of Christ, and to attend to the interests of
that Church of which you are the chief member. Sir, when you were in your
swaddling-clothes, Christ Jesus reigned freely in this land, in spite of all his enemies;
his officers and ministers convened for the ruling and the welfare of his Church, which
was ever for your welfare, defense, and preservation, when these same enemies were seeking
your destruction and cutting off. And now, when there is more than extreme necessity for
the continuance of that duty, will you hinder and dishearten Christ's servants, and your
most faithful subjects, quarreling them for their convening, when you should rather
commend and countenance them as the godly kings and emperors did?"[9] The storm, which had risen with
so great and sudden a violence at the mild words of the nephew, went down before the
energy and honesty of the uncle, and the deputation was dismissed with assurances that no
favor should be shown the Popish lords, and no march stolen upon the liberties of the
Church.
But hardly were the ministers gone when steps were taken for restoring the insurgent
nobles, and undermining the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The policy adopted for
accomplishing this was singularly subtle, and reveals the hand of the Jesuits, of whom
there were then numbers in the country.
First of all, the king preferred the apparently innocent request that a certain number of
ministers should be appointed as assessors, with whom he might advise in "all affairs
concerning the weal of the Church." Fourteen ministers were appointed: "the very
needle," says James Melville, "which drew in the episcopal thread." The
second step was to declare by Act of Parliament that Prelacy was the third Estate of the
Realm, and that those ministers whom the king chose to raise to that dignity should be
entitled to sit or vote in Parliament. The third step was to enact that the Church should
be represented in Parliament, and that the fourteen assessors already chosen should form
that representation. The matter having reached this hopeful stage, the king adventured on
the fourth and last step, which was to nominate David Lindsay, Peter Blackburn, and George
Gladstanes to the vacant bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, and Caithness. The new-made bishops
took their seats in the next Parliament. The art and finesse of the king and his
counselors had triumphed; but his victory was not yet complete, for the General Assembly
still continued to manage, although with diminished authority and freedom, the affairs of
the Church.
The war we have been contemplating was waged within a small area, but its issue was
world-wide. The ecclesiastical names and forms that appear on its surface may make this
struggle repulsive in the eyes of some. Waged in the Palace of Falkland, and on the floor
of the General Assembly, these contests are apt to be set down as having no higher origin
than clerical ambition, and no wider object than ecclesiastical supremacy. But this, in
the present instance at least, would be a most superficial and erroneous judgment. We see
in these conflicts infant Liberty struggling with the old hydra of Despotism. The
independence and freedom of Scotland were here as really in question as on the fields
waged by Wallace and Bruce, and the men who fought in the contests which have been passing
before us braved death as really as those do who meet mailed antagonists on the
battlefield.
Nay, more, Scotland and its Kirk had at this time become the key-stone in the arch of
European liberty; and the unceasing efforts of the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Guises
were directed to the displacing of that keystone, that the arch which it upheld might be
destroyed. They were sending their agents into the country, they were fomenting
rebellions, they were flattering the weak conceit of wisdom and of arbitrary power in
James: not that they cared for the conquest of Scotland in itself so much as they coveted
a door by which to enter England, and suppress its Reformation, which they regarded as the
one thing wanting to complete the success of their schemes for the total extermination of
Protestantism. With servile Parliaments and a spiritless nobility, the public liberties as
well as the Protestantism of Scotland would have perished but for the vigilance, and
intrepidity of the Presbyterian ministers, and, above all, the incorruptible, the
dauntless and unflinching courage and patriotism of Andrew Melville. These men may have
been rough in speech; they may have permitted their temper to be ruffled, and their
indignation to be set on fire, in exposing craft and withstanding tyranny; but that man's
understanding must be as narrow as his heart is cold, who would think for a moment of
weighing such things in the balance against the priceless blessing of a nation's
liberties.
The death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, called James VI to London, and the center of the
conflict, which widens as the years advance, changes with the monarch to England.
CHAPTER 13 Back to Top
JAMES IN ENGLAND--THE GUNPOWDER PLOT
Steps to Hinder a Protestant Successor to Elizabeth – Bulls of Clement VIII –
Application to Philip II – English Jesuits thrown on their own Resources – The
Gunpowder Plot Proposed – Catesby – Percy – Preparations to Blow up the
Parliament – Pacific Professions of Romanists the while – Proofs that the Plot
was Known to the Roman Catholic Authorities – The Spanish Match – Disgraceful
Treaty – Growing Troubles
When it became known at Rome that the reign of Elizabeth was
drawing to a close, steps were immediately taken to prevent any one mounting her throne
save a prince whose attachment to Roman Catholicism could not be doubted, and on whom sure
hopes could be built that he would restore the Papacy in England. The doubtful
Protestantism of the Scottish king had, as we have already said, been somewhat
strengthened by the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It was further steadied by the
representations made to him by Elizabeth and her wise ministers, to the effect that he
could not hope to succeed to the throne of England unless he should put his attachment to
the Protestant interests beyond suspicion; and that the nobility and gentry of England had
too much honor and spirit ever again to bow the neck to the tyranny of the Church of Rome.
These representations and warnings weighed with the monarch, the summit of whose wishes
was to ascend the throne of the southern kingdom, and who was ready to protest or even
swear to maintain any set of maxims, political or religious, which the necessity of the
hour made advisable, seeing that his principles of kingcraft permitted the adoption of a
new policy whenever a new emergency arose or a stronger temptation crossed his path.
Accordingly we find James, in the instructions sent to Hamilton, his agent in England in
1600, bidding him "assure honest men, on the princely word of a Christian king, that
as I have ever without swerving maintained the same religion within my kingdom, so, as
soon as it shall please God lawfully to possess me of the crown of that kingdom, I shall
not only maintain the profession of the Gospel there, but withal not suffer any other
religion to be professed within the bounds of that kingdom." This strong assurance,
doubtless, quieted the fears of the English statesmen, but in the same degree it awakened
the fears of the Roman Catholics.
They began to despair of the King of the Scots – prematurely, we think; but they were
naturally more impatient than James, seeing the restoration of their Church was with them
the first object, whereas with James it was only the second, and the English crown was the
first. The conspirators in England, whose hopes had been much dashed by the strong
declaration of the Scottish king, applied to Pope Clement VIII to put a bar in the way of
his mounting the throne. Clement was not hard to be persuaded in the matter. He sent over
to Garnet, Provincial of the Jesuits in England, two bulls of his apostolical authority:
one addressed to the Romish clergy, the other to the nobility and laity, and both of the
same tenor. The bulls enjoined those to whom they were directed, in virtue of their
obedience, at whatever time "that miserable woman,"[1] for so he called Elizabeth, should depart this life, to permit no
one to ascend her throne, how near so ever in blood, unless he swore, according to the
example of the former monarchs of England, not only to tolerate the Roman Catholic faith,
but to the utmost of his power uphold and advance it. Armed with this authoritative
document, the Romish faction in the kingdom waited till Elizabeth should breathe her last.
On the death of the queen, in March, 1603, they instantly dispatched a messenger to
announce the fact to Winter, their agent at the Court of Spain. They charged him to
represent to his most Catholic Majesty that his co-religionists in England were likely to
be as grievously oppressed under the new king as they had been under the late sovereign,
that in this emergency they turned their eyes to one whose zeal was as undoubted as his
arm was powerful, and they prayed him to interpose in their behalf. The disaster of the
Armada was too fresh in Philip's memory, the void it had made in his treasury, and which
was not yet replenished, was too great, and the effects of the terrible blow on the
national spirit were too depressing, to permit his responding to this appeal of the
English Catholics by arms. Besides, he had opened negotiations for peace with the new
king, and these must be ended one way or the other before he could take any step to
prevent James mounting the throne, or to dispossess him of it after he had ascended it.
Thus, the English Jesuits were left with the two bulls of Clement VIII, and the good
wishes of Philip II, as their only weapons for carrying out their great enterprise of
restoring their Church to its former supremacy in England. They did not despair, however.
Thrown on their own resources, they considered the means by which they might give triumph
to their cause.
The Order of Jesus is never more formidable than when it appears to be least so. It is
when the Jesuits are stripped of all external means of doing harm that they devise the
vastest schemes, and execute them with the most daring courage. Extremity but compels them
to retreat yet deeper into the darkness, and arm themselves with those terrible powers
wherein their great strength lies, and the full unsparing application of which they
reserve for the conflicts of mightiest moment. The Jesuits in England now began to
meditate a great blow. They had delivered an astounding stroke at sea but a few years
before; they would signalize the present emergency by a nearly as astounding stroke on
land. They would prepare an Armada in the heart of the kingdom, which would inflict on
England a ruin sudden, strange, and terrible, like that which Philip's fleet would have
inflicted had not the "winds become Lutheran," as Medina Sidonia said with an
oath, and in their sectarian fury sent his ships to the bottom.
In September, 1603, it would seem that the first meeting of the leading spirits of the
party was held to talk over the course the new king was pursuing, and the measures to be
adopted. Catesby, a gentleman of an ancient family, began by recounting the grievances
under which the Roman Catholics of England groaned. His words kindling the anger of Percy,
a descendant of the House of Northumberland, he observed that nothing was left them but to
kill the king. "That," said Catesby, "is to run a great risk, and
accomplish little," and he proceeded to unfold to Percy a much grander design, which
could be executed with greater safety, and would be followed by far greater consequences.
"You have," he continued, "taken off the king; but his children remain, who
will succeed to his throne. Suppose you destroy the whole royal family, there will still
remain the nobility, the gentry, the Parliament. All these we must sweep away with one
stroke; and when our enemies have sunk in a common ruin, then may we restore the Church of
Rome in England." In short, he proposed to blow up the Houses of Parliament with
gunpowder, when the king and the Estates of the Realm should be there assembled.
The manner in which this plot was proceeded with is too well known, and the details are
too accessible in the ordinary histories, to require that we should here dwell upon them.
The contemplated destruction was on so great a scale that some of the conspirators, when
it was first explained to them, shrunk from the perpetration of a wickedness so awful. To
satisfy the more scrupulous of the party they resolved to consult their spiritual
advisers. "Is it lawful," they asked of Garnet, Tesmond, and Gerard, "to do
this thing?" These Fathers assured them that they might go on with a good conscience
and do the deed, seeing that those on whom the destruction would fall were heretics and
excommunicated persons. "But," it was replied, "some Catholics will perish
with the Protestants: is it lawful to destroy the righteous with the wicked? " It was
answered, "Yes, for it is expedient that the few should die for the good of the
many."
The point of conscience having been resolved, and the way made clear, the next step was an
oath of secrecy, to inspire them with mutual confidence: the conspirators swore to one
another by the Blessed Trinity and by the Sacrament not to disclose the matter, directly
or indirectly, and never to desist from the execution of it, unless released by mutual
consent. To add to the solemnity of the oath, they retired into an inner chamber, where
they heard mass, and received the Sacrament from Gerard. They had sanctified themselves as
the executioners of the vengeance of Heaven upon an apostate nation.
They set to work; they ran a mine under the Houses of Parliament; and now they learned by
accident that with less ado they might compass their end. The vault under the House of
Lords, commonly used as a coal-cellar, was to be let. They hired it, placed in it
thirty-six barrels of gun, powder, and strewing plenteously over them billets, fagots,
stones, and iron bars, threw open the doors that all might see how harmless were the
materials with which the vault was stored. The plot had been brewing for a year and a
half; it had been entrusted to some twenty persons, and not a whisper had been uttered by
way of divulging the terrible secret.
The billets, fagots, and iron bars that concealed the gunpowder in the vault were not the
only means by which it was sought to hide from the people all knowledge of the terrible
catastrophe which was in preparation. "The Lay Catholic Petition" was at this
time published, in which they supplicated the king for toleration, protesting their
fidelity and unfeigned love for his Majesty, and offering to be bound life for life with
good sureties for their loyal behavior. When the plot approached execution, Father Garnet
began to talk much of bulls and mandates from the Pope to charge all the priests and their
flocks in England to carry themselves with profound peace and quiet. Garnet sent Fawkes to
Rome with a letter to Clement, supplicating that "commandment might come from his
Holiness, or else from Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits, for staying of all commotions
of the Catholics in England." So anxious were they not to hurt a Protestant, or
disturb the peace of the kingdom, or shake his Majesty's throne. The sky is clearing, said
the Protestants, deceived by these arts; the winter of Catholic discontent is past, and
all the clouds that lowered upon the land in the days of Elizabeth are buried in the
"deep sea" of mutual conciliation. They knew not that the men from whom those
loud protestations of loyalty and brotherly concord came were all the while storing
gunpowder in the vault underneath the House of Lords, laying the train, and counting the
hours when they should fire it, and shake down the pillars of the State, and dissolve the
whole frame of the realm. The way in which this hideous crime was prevented, and England
saved – namely, by a letter addressed to Lord Monteagle by one of the conspirators,
whose heart would seem to have failed him at the last moment, leading to a search below
the House of Lords, followed by the discovery of the astounding plot -- we need not
relate.
There is evidence for believing that the projected iniquity was not the affair of a few
desperate men in England only, but that the authorities of the Popish world knew of it,
sanctioned it, and lent it all the help they dared. Del Rio, in a treatise printed in
1600, puts a supposititious case in the confessional: "as if," says Dr. Kennet,
"he had already looked into the mine and cellars, and had surveyed the barrels of
powder in them, and had heard the whole confession of Fawkes and Catesby."[2] The answer to the supposed case,
which is that of the Gunpowder Plot, the names of the actors left out, forbade the
divulging of such secrets, on the ground that the seal of the confessional must not be
violated. This treatise, published at so short a distance from England as Louvain, and so
near the time when the train was being laid, shows, as Bishop Burnet remarks, that the
plot was then in their minds. In Sully's Memoirs there is oftener than once a reference to
a "sudden blow" which was intended in England about this time; and King James
was warned by a letter from the court of Henry IV to beware of the fate of Henry III; and
in the oration pronounced at Rome in praise of Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV, it was
said that he (Henry IV) was not only an enemy to the Catholic religion in his heart, but
that he had obstructed the glorious enterprise of those who would have restored it in
England, and had caused them to be crowned with martyrdom. It is not easy to see to what
this can refer if it be not to the Gunpowder Plot, and the execution of the conspirators
by which it was followed. The proof of knowledge beforehand on the part of the Popish
authorities seemed to be completed by the action of Pope Paul V, who appointed a jubilee
for the year 1605 – the year when the plot was to be executed for the purpose of
"praying for help in emergent necessities," and among reasons assigned by the
Pontiff for fixing on the year 1605, was that it was to witness "the rooting out of
all the impious errors of the heretics.[3] Copely says that "he could never meet with any one Jesuit who
blamed it."[4] Two
of the Jesuit conspirators who made their escape to Rome were rewarded; one being made
penitentiary to the Pope, and the other a confessor in St. Peter's. Garnet, who was
executed as a traitor, is styled by Bellarmin a martyr; and Misson tells us that he saw
his portrait among the martyrs in the hall of the Jesuit College at Rome, and by his side
an angel who shows him the open gates of heaven.[5]
That the Romanists should thus plot against the religion and liberties of England
was only what might be expected, but James himself became a plotter towards the same end.
Instead of being warned off from so dangerous neighbors, he began industriously to court
alliances with the Popish Powers. In these proceedings he laid the foundation of all the
miseries which afterwards overtook his house and his kingdom. His first step was to send
the Earl of Bristol to Spain, to negotiate a marriage with the Infanta for his son Prince
Charles. He afterwards dispatched Buckingham with the prince himself on the same errand to
the Spanish Court – a proceeding that surprised everybody, and which no one but the
"English Solomon" could have been capable of. It gave fresh life to Romanism in
England, greatly emboldened the Popish recusants, and was the subject (1621) of a
remonstrance of the Commons to the king. The same man who had endeavored to stamp out the
infant constitutional liberties of Scotland began to plot the overthrow of the more
ancient franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of England.
While the prince was in Spain all arts were employed to bring him within the pale of the
Roman Church. An interchange of letters took place between him and the Pope, in which the
Pontiff expresses his hope that "the Prince of the Apostles would be put in
possession of his [the prince's] most noble island, and that he and his royal father might
be styled the deliverers and restorers of the ancient paternal religion of Great
Britain." The prince replies by expressing his ardent wishes "for an alliance
with one that hath the same apprehension of the true religion with myself."[6] A Papal dispensation was
granted; the marriage was agreed upon; the terms of the treaty were that no laws enacted
against Roman Catholics should ever after be put in execution, that no new laws should
ever hereafter be made against them, and that the prince should endeavor to the utmost of
his power to procure the ratification by Parliament of these articles; and that, further,
the Parliament "should approve and ratify all and singular articles in favor of Roman
Catholics capitulated by the most renowned kings." The marriage came to nothing;
nevertheless, the consequences of the treaty were most disastrous to both the king and
England. It filled the land with Popish priests and Jesuits; it brought over the titular
Bishop of Chalcedon to exercise Episcopal jurisdiction; it lost King James the love of his
subjects; it exposed him to the contempt of his enemies; and in addition it cost him the
loss of his honor and the sacrifice of Sir Walter Raleigh. Extending beyond the bounds of
England, the evil effects of this treaty were felt in foreign countries. For the sake of
his alliance with the House of Austria, James sacrificed the interests of his son-in-law:
he lost the Palatinate, and became the immediate cause, as we have seen in a previous part
of this history, of the overthrow of Protestantism in Bohemia.
James VI did not grow wiser as he advanced in years. Troubles continued to embitter his
life, evils to encompass his throne, contempt to wait upon his person, and calamity and
distraction to darken his realm. These manifold miseries grew out of his rooted aversion
to the religion of his native land, and an incurable leaning towards Romanism which led
him to truckle to the Popish Powers, whose tool and dupe he became, and to cherish a
reverence for the Church of Rome, which courted him only that she might rob him of his
kingdom. And the same man who made himself so small and contemptible to all the world
abroad was, by his invasion of the laws, his love of arbitrary power, and his
unconstitutional acts, the tyrant of his Parliament and the oppressor of his people at
home.
CHAPTER 14 Back to Top
DEATH OF JAMES VI, AND SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
IN SCOTLAND
The Nations Dead – Protestantism made them Live – Examples – Scotland
– James VI -- Pursues his Scheme on the Throne of England – His Arts –
Compliance of the Ministers – The Prelates – High Commission Court – Visit
of James to Scotland – The Five Articles of Perth – "Black Saturday"
– James's Triumph a Defeat – His Death – A Great Spiritual Awakening in
Scotland – Moral Transformations – David Dickson and the Awakening at Stewarton
– Market-day at Irvine – John Livingstone and the Kirk of Shotts – The
Scottish Vine Visited and Strengthened
The first part of the mighty task which awaited Protestantism
in the sixteenth century was to breathe life into the nations. It found Christendom a vast
sepulcher in which its several peoples were laid out in the sleep of death, and it said to
them, "Live." Arms, arts, political constitutions, cannot quicken the ashes of
nations, and call them from their tomb: the mighty voice of the Scriptures alone can do
this. Conscience is the life, and the Bible awoke the conscience.
The second part of the great task of Protestantism was to make the nations free. It first
gave them life, it next gave them freedom. We have seen this order attempted to be
reversed in some modern instances, but the result has shown how impossible it is to give
liberty to the dead. The amplest measure of political freedom cannot profit nations when
the conscience continues to slumber. It is like clothing a dead knight in the armor of a
living warrior. He reposes proudly in helmet and coat of mail, but the pulse throbs not in
the limbs which these cover. Of all the nations of Christendom there was not one in so
torpid a state as Scotland. When the sixteenth century dawned, it was twice dead: it was
dead in a dominant Romanism, and it was dead in an equally dominant feudalism; and for
this reason perhaps it was selected as the best example in the entire circle of the
European nations to exhibit the power of the vitalizing principle. The slow, silent, and
deep permeation of the nation by the Bible dissolved the fetters of this double slavery,
and conscience was emancipated. An emancipated conscience, by the first law of nature
– self-preservation – immediately set to work to trace the boundary lines around
that domain in which she felt that she must be sole and exclusive mistress. Thus arose the
spiritual jurisdiction – in other words, the Church. Scotland had thus come into
possession of one of her liberties, the religious. A citadel of freedom had been reared in
the heart of the nation, and from that inner fortress religious liberty went forth to
conquer the surrounding territory for its yoke -- fellow, civil liberty; and that kingdom
which had so lately been the most enslaved of all the European States was now the freest
in Christendom.
Thus in Scotland the Church is older than the modern State. It was the Church that called
the modern, that is, the free State, into existence. It watched over it in its cradle; it
fought for it in its youth; and it crowned its manhood with a perfect liberty. It was not
the State in Scotland that gave freedom to the Church: it was the Church that gave freedom
to the State.
There is no other philosophy of liberty than this; and nations that have yet their liberty
to establish might find it useful to study this model. The demise of Elizabeth called
James away before he had completed his scheme of rearing the fabric of arbitrary power on
the ruins of the one independent and liberal institution which Scotland possessed. But he
prosecuted on the throne of England the grand object of his ambition. We cannot go into a
detail of the chicaneries by which he overreached some, the threats with which he
terrified others, and the violence with which he assailed those whom his craft could not
deceive, nor his power bend.
Melville was summoned to London, thrown into the Tower, and when, after an imprisonment of
four years, he was liberated, it was not to return to his native land, but to retire to
France, where he ended his days. The faithful ministers were silenced, imprisoned, or
banished. Those who lent themselves to the measures of the court shrunk from no perfidy to
deceive the people, in order to secure the honors which they so eagerly coveted.
Gladstanes and others pursued the downward road, renewing the while their subscription to
the National Covenant, "promising and swearing by the great name of the Lord our God
that we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this Kirk, and
shall defend the same according to our vocation and power all the days of our lives, under
the pains contained in the law, and danger both of body and soul in the day of God's
fearful judgment." At length, in a packed assembly which met in Glasgow in 1610,
James succeeded in carrying his measure – prelacy was set up. The bishops acted as
perpetual moderators, and had dioceses assigned them, within which they performed the
ordinary functions of bishops. Alongside of them the Presbyterian courts continued to
meet: not indeed the General Assembly – this court was suspended -- but Kirk
sessions, presbyteries, and synods were held, and transacted the business of the Church in
something like the old fashion. This was a state of matters pleasing to neither party, and
least of all to the court, and accordingly the tribunal of High Commission was set up to
give more power to the king's bishops; but it failed to procure for the men in whose
interests it existed more obedience from the ministers, or more respect from the people;
and the sentiment of the country was still too strong to permit it putting forth all those
despotic and unconstitutional powers with which it was armed. Making a virtue of
necessity, the new dignitaries, it must be confessed, wore their honors with commendable
humility; and this state of matters, which conjoined in the same Church lawn robes and
Geneva cloaks, mitred apostles and plain presbyters, continued until 1618, when yet
another stage of this affair was reached.
Seated on the throne of England, the courtly divines and the famed statesmen of the
southern kingdom bowing before him, and offering continual increase to his
"wisdom," his "scholarship," and his "theological
erudition," though inwardly they must have felt no little disgust at that curious
mixture of pertness, pedantry, and profanity that made up James VI – with so much to
please him, we say, one would have thought that the monarch would have left in peace the
little kingdom from which he had come, and permitted its sturdy plainspoken theologians to
go their own way. So far from this, he was more intent than ever on consummating the
transformation of the northern Church. He purposed a visit to his native land,[1] having, as he expressed it with
characteristic coarseness, "a natural and salmon-like affection to see the place of
his breeding," and he ordered the Scottish bishops to have the kingdom put in due
ecclesiastical order before his arrival. These obedient men did the best in their power.
The ancient chapel of Holyrood was adorned with statues of the twelve apostles, finely
gilded. An altar was set up in it, on which lay two closed Bibles, and on either side of
them an unlighted candle and an empty basin.
The citizens of Edinburgh had no difficulty in perceiving the "substance" of
which these things were the "shadow." Every parish church was expected to
arrange itself on the model of the Royal Chapel. These innovations were followed next year
(1618) by the Five Articles of Perth, so called from having been agreed upon at a meeting
of the clergy in that city. These articles were:
A beacon-light may be white or it may be red, the color in
itself is a matter of not the smallest consequence; but if the one color should draw the
mariner upon the rock, and the other warn him past it, it is surely important that he
should know the significance of each, and guide himself accordingly. The color is no
longer a trifling affair; on the contrary, the one is life, the other is death. It is so
with rites and symbols. They may be in themselves of not the least importance; their good
or evil lies wholly in whether they guide the man who practices them to safety or to ruin.
The symbols set up in the Chapel Royal of Holyrood, and the five ordinances of Perth, were
of this description. The Scots looked upon them as sign-posts which seduced the traveler's
feet, not into the path of safety, but into the road of destruction; they regarded them as
false lights hung out to lure the vessel of their commonwealth upon the rocks of Popery
and of arbitrary government. They refused to sail by these lights. Their determination was
strengthened by the omens, as they accounted them, which accompanied their enactment by
Parliament in July, 1621. On the day on which they were to be sanctioned, a heavy cloud
had hung above Edinburgh since morning; that cloud waxed ever the darker as the hour
approached when the articles were to be ratified, till at last it filled the Parliament
Hall with the gloom of almost night. The moment the Marquis of Hamilton, the commissioner,
rose and touched the Act with the royal scepter, the cloud burst in a terrific storm right
over the Parliament House.
Three lurid gleams, darting in at the large window, flashed their vivid fires in the
commissioner's face. Then came terrible peals of thunder, which were succeeded by torrents
of rain and hail, that inundated the streets, and made it difficult for the members to
reach their homes. The day was long remembered in Scotland by the name of "Black
Saturday."[2]
The king, and those ministers who from cowardice or selfishness had furthered his
measures, had now triumphed; but that triumph was discomfiture. In the really Protestant
parts of Scotland – for the Scotland of that day had its cities and shires in which
flourished a pure and vigorous Protestantism, while there were remote and rural parts
where, thanks to that rapacity which had created a wealthy nobility and an impoverished
clergy, the old ignorance and superstition still lingered – the really Protestant
people of Scotland, we say, were as inflexibly bent as ever on repudiating a form of
Church government which they knew was meant to pave the way for tyranny in the State, and
a ritualistic worship, which they held to be of the nature of idolatry; and of all his
labor in the matter the king reaped nothing save disappointment, vexation, and trouble,
which accompanied him till he sank into his grave in 1625. Never would Scottish monarch
have reigned so happily as James VI would have done, had he possessed but a tithe of that
wisdom to which he laid claim. The Reformation had given him an independent clergy and an
intelligent middle class, which he so much needed to balance the turbulence and power of
his barons; but James fell into the egregious blunder of believing the religion of his
subjects to be the weakness, instead of the strength, of his throne, and so he labored to
destroy it. He blasted his reputation for kingly honor, laid up a store of misfortunes and
sorrows for his son, and alienated from his house a nation which had ever borne a
chivalrous loyalty to his ancestors, despite their many and great faults.
The year of the king's death was rendered memorable by the rise of a remarkable influence
of a spiritual kind in Scotland, which continued for years to act upon its population.
This invisible but mighty agent moved to and fro, appearing now in this district and now
in that, but no man could discover the law that regulated its course, or foretell the spot
where it would next make its presence known. It turned as it listed, even as do the winds,
and was quite as much above man's control, who could neither say to it, "Come,"
nor bid it depart. Wherever it passed, its track was marked, as is that of the rain-cloud
across the burned-up wilderness, by a shining line of moral and spiritual verdure.
Preachers had found no new Gospel, nor had they become suddenly clothed with a new
eloquence; yet their words had a power they had formerly lacked; they went deeper into the
hearts of their hearers, who were impressed by them in a way they had never been before.
Truths they had heard a hundred times over, of which they had grown weary, acquired a
freshness, a novelty, and a power that made them feel as if they heard them now for the
first time. They felt inexpressible delight in that which aforetime had caused them no
joy, and trembled under what till that moment had awakened no fear. Notorious profligates,
men who had braved the brand of public opinion, or defied the penalties of the law, were
under this influence bowed down, and melted into penitential tears. Thieves, drunkards,
loose livers, and profane swearers suddenly awoke to a sense of the sin and shame of the
courses they had been leading, condemned themselves as the chief of transgressors,
trembled under the apprehension of a judgment to come, and uttered loud cries for
forgiveness. Some who had lived years of miserable and helpless bondage to evil habits and
flagrant vices, as if inspired by a sudden and supernatural force, rent their fetters, and
rose at once to purity and virtue.
Some of these converts fell back into their old courses, but in the case of the majority
the change was lasting; and thousands who, but for this sudden transformation, would have
been lost to themselves and to society, were redeemed to virtue, and lived lives which
were not less profitable than beautiful. This influence was as calm as it was strong;
those on whom it fell did not vent their feelings in enthusiastic expressions; the change
was accompanied by a modesty and delicacy which for the time forbade disclosure; it was
the judgment, not the passions, that was moved; it was the conscience, not the
imagination, that was called hire action; and as the stricken deer retires from the herd
into some shady part of the forest, so these persons went apart, there to weep till the
arrow had been plucked out, and a healing balm poured into the wound.
Even the men of the world were impressed with these tokens of the working of a
supernatural influence. They could not resist the impression, even when they refused to
avow it, that a Visitant whose dwelling, was not with men had come down to the earth, and
was moving about in the midst of them. The moral character of whole towns, villages, and
parishes was being suddenly changed; now it was on a solitary individual, and now on
hundreds at once, that this mysterious influence made its power manifest; plain it was
that in some region or other of the universe an Influence was resident, which had only to
be unlocked, and to go forth among the dwellings of men, and human wickedness and
oppression would dissolve and disappear as the winter's ice melts at the approach of
spring, and joy and singing would break forth as do blossoms and verdure when the summer's
sun calls them from their chambers in the earth.
One thing we must not pass over in connection with this movement: in at least its two
chief centers it was distinctly traceable to those ministers who had suffered persecution
for their faithfulness under James VI. The locality where this revival first appeared was
in Ayrshire, the particular spot being the well-watered valley of Stewarton, along which
it spread from house to house for many miles. But it began not with the minister of the
parish, an excellent man, but with Mr. Dickson, who was minister of the neighboring parish
of Irvine. Mr. Dickson had zealously opposed the passing of the Articles of Perth; this
drew upon him the displeasure of the prelates and the king; he was banished to the north
of Scotland, and lived there some years, in no congenial society. On his return to his
parish, a remarkable power accompanied his sermons; he never preached without effecting
the conversion of one or, it might be, of scores. The market-day in the town of Irvine,
where he was minister, was Monday; he began a weekly lecture on that day, that the country
people might have an opportunity of hearing the Gospel. At the hour of sermon the market
was forsaken, and the church was crowded; hundreds whom the morning had seen solely
occupied with the merchandise of earth, before evening had become possessors of the
heavenly treasure, and returned home to tell their families and neighbors what riches they
had found, and invite them to repair to the same market, where they might buy wares of
exceeding price "without money." Thus the movement extended from day to day.[3]
The other center of this spiritual awakening was a hundred miles, or thereabout,
away from Stewarton. It was Shorts, a high-lying spot, midway between the two cities of
Glasgow and Edinburgh. Here, too, the movement took its rise with those who had been
subjected to persecution for opposing the measures of the court. A very common-place
occurrence originated that train of events which resulted in consequences so truly
beneficial for Shorts and its neighborhood. The Marchioness of Hamilton and some ladies of
rank happening to travel that road, their carriage broke down near the manse of the
parish. The minister, Mr. Home, invited them to rest in his house till it should be
repaired, when they could proceed on their journey. This gave them an opportunity of
observing the dilapidated state of the manse, and in return for the hospitality they had
experienced within its walls, they arranged for the building, at their own expense, of a
new manse for the minister. He waited on the Marchioness of Hamilton to express his
thanks, and to ask if there was anything he could do by which he might testify his
gratitude. The marchioness asked only that she might be permitted to name the ministers
who should assist him at the approaching celebration of the Lord's Supper. Leave was
joyfully given, and the marchioness named some of the more eminent of the ministers who
had been sufferers, and for whose character and cause she herself cherished a deep
sympathy. The first was the Venerable Robert Bruce, of Kinnaird, a man of aristocratic
birth, majestic figure, and noble and fervid eloquence; the second was Mr. David Dickson,
of whom we have already spoken; and the third was a young man, whose name, then unknown,
was destined to be famous in the ecclesiastical annals of his country – Mr. John
Livingstone. The rumor spread that these men were to preach at the Kirk of Shorts on
occasion of the Communion, and when the day came thousands flocked from the surrounding
country to hear them. So great was the impression produced on Sunday that the strangers
who had assembled, instead of returning to their homes, formed themselves into little
companies and passed the night on the spot in singing psalms and offering prayers. When
morning broke and the multitude were still there, lingering around the church where
yesterday they had been fed on heavenly bread, and seeming, by their unwillingness to
depart, to seek yet again to eat of that bread, the ministers agreed that one of their
number should preach to them. It had not before been customary to have a sermon on the
Monday after the Communion. The minister to whom it fell to preach was taken suddenly ill;
and the youngest minister present, Mr. John Livingstone, was appointed to take his place.
Fain would he have declined the task; the thought of his youth, his unpreparedness, for he
had spent the night in prayer and converse with some friends, the sight of the great
multitude which had assembled in the churchyard, for no edifice could contain them, and
the desires and expectations which he knew the people entertained, made him tremble as he
stood up to address the assembly. He discoursed for an hour and a half on the taking away
of the "heart of stone," and the giving of a "heart of flesh," and
then he purposed to make an end; but that moment there came such a rush of ideas into his
mind, and he felt so great a melting of the heart, that for a whole hour longer he ran on
in a strain of fervent and solemn exhortation.[4]
Five hundred persons attributed their conversion to that sermon, the vast majority
of whom, on the testimony of contemporary witnesses, continued steadfastly to their lives'
end in the profession of the truth; and seed was scattered throughout Clydesdale which
bore much good fruit in after-years.[5] In memory of this event a thanksgiving service has ever since been
observed in Scotland on the Monday after a Communion Sunday.
Thus the Scottish Vine, smitten by the tyranny of the monarch who had now gone to the
grave, was visited and revived by a secret dew. From the high places of the State came
edicts to blight it; from the chambers of the sky came a "plenteous rain" to
water it. It struck its roots deeper, and spread its branches yet more widely over a land
which it did not as yet wholly cover. Other and fiercer tempests were soon to pass over
that goodly tree, and this strengthening from above was given beforehand, that when the
great winds should blow, the tree, though shaken, might not be overturned.
CHAPTER 15 Back to Top
CHARLES I AND ARCHBISHOP LAUD--RELIGIOUS
INNOVATIONS
Basilicon Doron – A Defense of Arbitrary Government – Character of Charles I
– His French Marriage – He Dissolves his Parliament – Imposes Taxes by his
Prerogative – A Popish Hierarchy in England – Tonnage and Poundage –
Ship-money – Archbishop Laud – His Character – His Consecration of St.
Catherine Cree Church – His Innovations – The Protestant Press Gagged –
Bishop Williams – The Puritans Exiled, etc. – Preaching Restricted – The
Book of Sports – Alarm and Gloom
Along with his crown, James VI bequeathed one other gift to his son, Charles I. As in the ancient story, this last was the fatal addition which turned all the other parts of the brilliant inheritance to evil. We refer to the Basilicon Doron. This work was composed by its royal author to supply the prince with a model on which to mold his character, and a set of maxims by which to govern when he came to the throne.
The consequences that flow from these two fundamental
propositions are deduced and stated with a fearless logic. "Monarchy," says
James, "is the true pattern of the Divinity; kings sit upon God's throne on the
earth; their subjects are not permitted to make any resistance but by flight, as we may
see by the example of brute beasts and unreasonable creatures." In support of his
doctrine he cites the case of Elias, who under "the tyranny of Ahab made no
rebellion, but fled into the wilderness;" and of Samuel, who, when showing the
Israelites that their future king would spoil and oppress them, and lead them with all
manner of burdens, gave them nevertheless no right to rebel, or even to murmur. In short,
the work is an elaborate defense of arbitrary government, and its correlative, passive
obedience.[1]
Under the head of Presbyterianism, the king's doctrine is equally explicit. It is a form
of Church government, he assures the prince, utterly repugnant to monarchy, and
destructive of the good order of States, and only to be rooted up. "Parity?" he
exclaims, "the mother of confusion, and enemy to unity." "Take heed
therefore, my son, to such Puritans, very pests in the Church and commonweal, whom no
deserts can oblige, neither oaths or promises bind; breathing nothing but sedition and
calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own
imaginations, without any warrant of the Word, the square of their conscience. I protest
before the great God, and since I am here as upon my testament it is no place for me to be
in, that ye shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves greater ingratitude, and
more lies and vile perjuries, than with these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the
principals of them to brook your land, if ye like to sit at rest, except you would keep
them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an evil wife."[2] Such were the ethical and
political creeds with which James VI descended into the grave, and Charles I mounted the
throne. These maxims were more dangerous things in the case of the son than in that of the
father. Charles I had a stronger nature, and whatever was grafted upon it shot up more
vigorously. His convictions went deeper, and were more stubbornly carried out. He had not
around him the lets and poises that curbed James.
There was no Andrew Melville among the prelates of the court of Charles I When baffled, he
would cover his retreat under a dissimulation so natural and perfect that it looked like
truth, and again he would return to his former design. His private character was purer and
more respectable; than that of his father, and his deportment more dignified, but his
notions of his own prerogative were as exalted as his father's had been. In this respect,
the Basilicon Doron was his Bible. Kings were gods. All Parliaments, laws, charters,
privileges, and rights had their being from the prince, and might at his good pleasure be
put out of existence; and to deny this doctrine, or withstand its practical application,
was the highest crime of which a subject could be guilty. There was but one man in all the
three kingdoms who could plead right or conscience – namely, himself. Charles had not
Presbyterianism to fight against in England, as his father had in Scotland, but he had
another opponent to combat, even that liberty which lay at the core of Presbyterianism,
and he pursued his conflict with it through a succession of tyrannies, doublings,
blunders, and battle-fields, until he arrived at the scaffold.
We can touch upon the incidents of his reign only so far as they bear upon that
Protestantism which was marching on through the plots of Jesuits, the armies: of kings,
the calamities of nations, and the scaffolds of martyrs, to seat itself upon a throne
already great, and to become yet greater. The first error of Charles was his French
marriage. This match was concluded on much the same conditions which his father had
consented to when the Spanish marriage was in prospect. It allied Charles with a daughter
of France and Rome; it admitted him, in a sense, within the circle of Popish sovereigns;
it introduced a dominating Popish element into his councils, send into the education of
his children. "The king's marriage with Popery and France," says Dr. Kennet,
"was a more inauspicious omen than the great plague that signalized the first year of
his reign." His second error followed fast upon the first: it was the dissolution of
his Parliament because it insisted upon a redress of grievances before it would vote him a
supply of money. This spread discontent through the nation, and made Charles be distrusted
by all his future Parliaments. His second Parliament was equally summarily dismissed, and
for the same reason; it would vote no money till first it had obtained redress of
grievances. Advancing from one great error to a yet greater, Charles proceeded to impose
taxes without the consent of Parliament. He exacted loans of such citizens as were
wealthy, or were believed to be so, and many who opposed these unconstitutional imposts
were thrown into prison. "The lord may tax his villain high or low," said Sir
Edward Coke, "but it is against the franchises of the land for freemen to be taxed
but by their consent in Parliament."
The nation next came to see that its religion was in as great danger as its liberty. In a
third Parliament summoned at this time, the indignant feelings of the members found vent.
In a conference between the Lords and Commons, Coke called the attention of the members to
a Popish hierarchy which had been established in competition with the national Church.
"They have," says he, "a bishop consecrated by the Pope. This bishop hath
his subaltern officers of all kinds; as vicars-general, arch-deans, rural-deans, etc.
Neither are these titular officers, but they all execute their jurisdictions, and make
their ordinary visitations through the kingdom, keep courts, and determine ecclesiastical
causes; and, which is an argument of more consequence, they keep ordinary intelligence by
their agents in Rome, and hold correspondence with the nuncios and cardinals, both in
Brussels and in France. Neither are the seculars alone grown to this height, but the
regulars are more active and dangerous, and have taken deep root.
They have already planted their colleges and societies of both sexes. They have settled
revenues, houses, libraries, vestments, and all other necessary provisions to travel or
stay at home. They intend to hold a concurrent assembly with this Parliament." This
Parliament, like its predecessors, was speedily dissolved, and a hint was dropped that,
seeing Parliaments understood so in the cardinal virtue of obedience, no more assemblies
of that kind would be held.
Tyranny loves simplicity in the instrumentalities with which it works: such are swift and
sure. Taking leave of his Parliaments, Charles governed by the prerogative alone. He could
now tax his subjects whenever, and to whatever extent, it suited him. "Many unjust
and scandalous projects, all very grievous," says Clarendon, "were set on foot,
the reproach of which came to the king, the profit to other men."[3] Tonnage and poundage were
imposed upon merchandise; new and heavy duties lettered trade; obsolete laws were revived
– among others, that by which every man with 40 pounds of yearly rent was obliged to
come and receive the order of knighthood; and one other device, specially vexatious, was
hit upon, that of enlarging the royal forests beyond their ancient bounds, and fining the
neighboring land-owners on pretense that they had encroached upon the royal domains,
although their families had been in quiet possession for hundreds of years.
But the most odious and oppressive of these imposts was the project of
"ship-money." This tax was laid upon the port towns and the adjoining counties,
which were required to furnish one or more fully equipped warships for his Majesty's use.
The City of London was required to furnish twenty ships, with sails, stores, ammunition,
and guns, which, however, the citizens might commute into money; and seeing that what the
king wanted was not so much ships to go to sea, as gold Caroli to fill his empty
exchequer, the tax was more acceptable in the latter form than in the former. One
injustice must be supported by another, and very commonly a greater. The Star Chamber and
the High Commission Court followed, to enforce these exactions and protect the agents
employed in them, whose work made them odious. These courts were a sort of Inquisition,
into which the most loyal of the nation were dragged to be fleeced and tortured.
Those who sat in them, to use the words applied by Thucydides to the Athenians, "held
for honorable that which pleased, and for just that which profited." The authority of
religion was called in to sanction this civil tyranny. Sibthorpe and Mainwaring preached
sermons at Whitehall, in which they advanced the doctrine that the king is not bound to
observe the laws of the realm, and that his royal command makes loans and taxes, without
consent of Parliament, obligatory upon the subject's conscience upon pain of eternal
damnation.[4]
The history of all nations justifies the remark that civil tyranny cannot maintain
itself alongside religious liberty, and whenever it finds itself in the proximity of
freedom of conscience, it must either extinguish that right, or suffer itself to be
extinguished by it. So was it now. There presided at this time over the diocese of London
a man of very remarkable character, destined to precipitate the crisis to which the king
and nation were advancing. This was Laud, Bishop of London. Of austere manners,
industrious habits, and violent zeal, and esteeming forms of so much the more value by how
much they were in themselves insignificant, this ecclesiastic acquired a complete
ascendancy in the councils of Charles. "If the king was greater on the throne than
Laud," remarks Bennet, "yet according to the word of Laud were the people
ruled," The extravagance of his folly at the consecration (January 16, 1630-31) of
St. Catherine Cree Church, in Leadenhall Street, London, is thoroughly characteristic of
the man. "At the bishop's approach," says Rushworth, "to the west door of
the church, some that were prepared for it cried with a loud voice, 'Open, open, ye
everlasting doors, that the king of glory may come in.' And presently the doors were
opened, and the bishop, with three doctors, and many other principal men, went in, and
immediately falling down upon his knees, with his eyes lifted up, and his arms spread
abroad, uttered these words: 'This place is holy, this ground is holy: in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.' Then he took up some of the dust and
threw it up into the air several times in his going up towards the church. When they
approached near to the rail and Communion table, the bishop bowed towards it several
times, and returning they went round the church in procession, saying the Hundredth Psalm,
after that the Nineteenth Psalm, and then said a form of prayer, 'The Lord Jesus Christ,'
etc., and concluding, 'We consecrate this church, and separate it to thee as holy ground,
not to be profaned any more to common use.' After this, the bishop, being near the
Communion table, and taking a written book in his hand, pronounced curses upon those that
should afterwards profane that holy place by musters of soldiers, or keeping profane
law-courts, or carrying burdens through it; and at the end of every curse he bowed toward
the east, and said, 'Let all the people say, Amen.' When the curses were ended, he
pronounced a number of blessings upon all those that had any hand in framing and building
of that sacred church, and those that had given, or should hereafter give, chalices,
plate, ornaments, or utensils; and at the end of every blessing he bowed towards the east,
saying, 'Let all the people say, Amen,' After this followed the sermon, which being ended,
the bishop consecrated and administered the Sacrament in manner following. As he
approached the Communion table he made several lowly bowings, and coming up to the side of
the table where the bread and wine were covered, he bowed seven times. And then, after the
reading of many prayers, he came near the bread, and gently lifted up the corner of the
napkin wherein the bread was laid; and when he beheld the bread, he laid it down again,
flew back a step or two, bowed three several times towards it; then he drew near again,
and opened the napkin, and bowed as before.
Then he laid his hand on the cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it, which he
let go again, went back, and bowed thrice towards it. Then he came near again, and lifting
up the cover of the cup, looked into it, and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover again,
retired back, and bowed as before; then he received the Sacrament, and gave it to some
principal men; after which, many prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration
ended."[5]
Laud bent his whole energies to mold the religion and worship of England according
to the views he entertained of what religion and worship ought to be, and these were
significantly set forth in the scene we have just described. The bishop aimed, in short,
at rescuing Christianity from the Gothicism of the Reformation, and bringing back the
ancient splendors which had encompassed worship in the Greek and Roman temples. When
Archbishop of Canterbury, he proceeded to reform his diocese, but not after the manner of
Cranmer. He erected a rail around the Communion table, and issued peremptory orders that
the prebends and chapter, as they came in and out of the choir, "should worship
towards the altar." He provided candlesticks, tapers, and copes for the
administration of the Sacrament. He set up a large crucifix above "the high
altar," and filled the window of the chapel with a picture representing God the
Father, with a glory round his head.
Such of the clergy as refused to fall into his humor, and imitate his fancies, he
prosecuted as guilty of schism, and rebels against ecclesiastical government. Those who
spoke against images and crucifixes were made answerable in the Star Chamber, as persons
ill-affected towards the discipline of the Church of England and were fined, suspended,
and imprisoned. He made use of forms of prayer taken from the Mass-book and Roman
Pontifical; "as if he wished," says one, "to try how much of a Papist might
be brought in without Popery." There were some who said that the archbishop was at no
great pains to make any wide distinction between the two; and if distinction there was, it
was so very small that they were unable to see it at Rome; for, as Laud himself tells us
in his Diary, the Pope twice over made him the offer of a red hat.
It added to the confusion in men's minds to find that, while the Protestants were severely
handled in the Star Chamber and High Commission Court, Papists were treated with the
utmost tenderness. While the former were being fined and imprisoned, favors and caresses
were showered on the latter. It was forbidden to write against Popery. The Protestant
press was gagged. Fox's Book of Martyrs could not appear; the noble defenses of Jewell and
Willet were refused license; Mr. Gillabrand, professor of mathematics in Gresham College,
was prosecuted for inserting in his Almanack the names of the Protestant martyrs out of
Fox, instead of those of the Roman calendar; while the archbishop's chaplain licensed a
book in which the first Reformers, who had died at the stake, were stigmatized as traitors
and rebels.
Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, had been the warmest and most powerful of Laud's patrons;
but all his past services were forgotten when Williams wrote a book against the
archbishop's innovations. The solid learning and sound logic of the book were offense
greater than could be condoned by all the favors conferred on Laud in former years; the
good bishop had to pay a fine of 10,000 pounds to the king, was suspended by the Court of
High Commission from all his dignities, offices, and functions, and sentenced to
imprisonment during the king's pleasure. The Puritans were compelled to transport
themselves beyond seas, and seek in America the toleration denied them in England. The
Dutch and French Protestant congregations, which had flourished in the nation since the
days of Edward VI, had their liberties all but entirely swept away. Such of their members,
within the diocese of Canterbury, as had been born abroad, were permitted to retain their
own form of worship, but all of them who had been born in England were commanded to repair
to their own parish churches, and preparation was made for the ultimate extinction of
their communities by the injunction to bring up their children in the use of the English
Liturgy, which for that end was now translated into French and Dutch.
The scaffold was not yet set up, but short of this every severity was employed which might
compel the nation to worship according to the form prescribed by the king and the
archbishop. Prynne, a member of the bar; Bastwick, a physician; and Burton, a divine, were
sentenced in the Star Chamber to stand in the pillory, to lose their ears at Palace Yard,
Westminster, to pay a fine of 500 pounds each to the king, and to be imprisoned during
life. The physician had written a book which was thought to reflect upon the hierarchy of
the Church; the clergyman had attacked the innovations in a sermon which he preached on
the 5th of November; and the lawyer, who was held the arch-offender, had sharply
reprobated stage-plays, to which the queen was said to be greatly addicted.
One sermon each Sunday was held to be sufficient for the instruction of the people; and
afternoon and evening preaching was stringently forbidden. That the parishioners might
fill up the vacant time, and forget as speedily as possible what they had heard in church,
the "Book of Sports" put forth by King James was re-enacted, and every Sunday
turned into a wake. James had enjoined that "his good people be not let from any
lawful recreation, such as dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, etc., though none must
have this indulgence that abstain from coming to church." And Charles "out of
the like pious care for the service of God," it was said, "and for suppressing
of any humors that oppose truth, doth ratify and publish this his blessed father's
declaration." All ministers were enjoined to read this edict from the pulpit during
the time of Divine service, and several were visited with suspension for refusing
obedience.
Alarm and discontent, with a smoldering spirit of insurrection, the consequences of this
policy, pervaded all England. The more the position of the country was considered, the
greater the peril was seen to be. Slavish principles were being disseminated in the
nation; the ancient laws of England were being subverted by the edicts of arbitrary power;
privileges and rights conveyed by charter, and hallowed by long custom, were being buried
under unconstitutional exactions; the spirit of the people was broken by cruel and
shameful punishments; superstitious rites were displacing the pure and Scriptural forms
which the Reformation had introduced; and a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny was rearing
its head in the land. Nor was the darkness of the outlook relieved by the prospect of any
one, sufficiently powerful, rising up to rally the nation around him, and rescue it from
the abyss into which it appeared to be descending. It was at this moment that an
occurrence took place in Scotland which turned the tide in affairs, and brought
deliverance to both kingdoms. This recalls us to the northern country.
CHAPTER 16 Back to Top
THE NATIONAL COVENANT AND ASSEMBLY OF 1638
Preparations in Scotland for introducing Prelacy – The King's Commission to
Archbishop Laud -- The Book of Canons sent down to Scotland – The New Liturgy –
Indignation in Scotland – The First Reading of the Liturgy – Tumult – The
Dean Assailed in the Pulpit – He Flees – The Bishop Mobbed – Charles's
Resolve to Force the Canons and Liturgy upon the Scots – Their Resistance – The
Four Tables – The National Covenant Framed – Its Provisions – Sworn in the
Grayfriars' Church – Solemnity of the Scene – Alarm of the Bishops and the Court
– The General Assembly at Glasgow, 1638 – The Assembly Overthrows Prelacy
We have noted the several steps by which James VI advanced
his cherished project of planting prelacy in Scotland. First came an order of Tulchan
bishops. These men were without jurisdiction, and, we may add, without stipend; their main
use being to convey the Church's patrimony to their patrons. In 1610 the Tulchan bishop
disappeared, and the bishop ordinary took his place. Under cover of a pretended Assembly
which met that year in Glasgow, diocesans with jurisdiction were introduced into the
Church of Scotland; and a Court of High Commission was set up for ordering causes
ecclesiastical. In 1618 some conclusions agreeable to the English Church were passed at
Perth. In 1617 an Act was passed in Parliament to this effect, "That whatever his
Majesty should determine in the external government of the Church, with the advice of the
archbishop, bishops, and a competent number of the ministry, should have the strength of a
law."
James VI had made a beginning, Charles I with the help of his primate purposed to make an
end. It is necessary, in order to a true insight into the struggle that followed, to bear
in mind what we have already explained, that with their form of Church government were
bound up the civil rights of the Scots, since, owing to the recent redemption of the
nation from feudalism, the conservator of its liberties was not the Parliament as in
England, but the Kirk.
The Scottish bishops, in a letter to Laud, expressed a wish for a nearer conformity with
the Church of England, adding for the primate's satisfaction that their countrymen shared
with them in this wish. If they really believed what they now affirmed, they were
grievously mistaken. The flower of their ministers banished, and their places filled by
men who possessed neither learning nor piety, the. Scottish people cherished mournfully
the memory of former times, and only the more disliked, the longer they knew it, the
prelacy which was being thrust upon them. But the wishes of the people, one way or other,
counted for little with the king. His Grace of Canterbury was bidden try his hand at
framing canons for the government of the Scottish Church, and a Liturgy for her worship.
The primate, nothing loth, addressed himself to the congenial task. The Book of Canons was
the first. fruits of his labors. Its key-note was the unlimited power and supremacy of the
king. It laid the ax at the root of liberty, both in Church and State. Next came the
Liturgy, of which every minister was enjoined to provide himself with four copies for the
use of his church on pain of deprivation. When the Liturgy was examined it was found to be
alarmingly near to the Popish breviary, and in some points, particularly the Communion
Service, it borrowed the very words of the Mass Book.[1] The 23rd of July, 1637, was fixed on for beginning the use of the
new Service Book.
As the day approached it began to be seen that it would not pass without a tempest. This
summons to fall down and worship as the king should direct, roused into indignation the
sons of the men who had listened to Knox, and who saw the system being again set up which
their fathers, under the leading of their great Reformer, had cast down. Some of the
bishops were alarmed at these manifestations, well knowing the spirit of their countrymen,
and counseled the king, with a tempest in the air, not to think of rearing his new
edifice, but to wait the return of calmer times. The headstrong monarch, urged on by his
self-willed primate, would not listen to this prudent advice. The Liturgy must be
enforced.
The day arrived. On the morning of Sunday, the 23rd July, about eight of the clock, the
reader appeared in the desk of St. Giles's and went over the usual prayers, and having
ended, said, with tears in his eyes, "Adieu, good people, for I think this is the
last time I shall ever read prayers in this church." The friends of the new service
heard in this last reading the requiem of the Protestant worship. At the stated hour, the
Dean of Edinburgh, clad in canonicals, appeared to begin the new service. A vast crowd had
assembled, both within and without the church, and as the dean, Liturgy in hand, elbowed
his way, and mounted the stairs to the desk, the scene was more animated than edifying. He
had hardly begun to read when a frightful clamor of voices rose round him. His tones were
drowned and his composure shaken. Presently he was startled by the whizz of a missile
passing dangerously near his ear, launched, as tradition says, by Janet Geddes, who kept a
stall in the High Street, and who, finding nothing more convenient, flung her stool at the
dean, with the objurgation, "Villain, dost thou say mass at my lug?" The dean
shut the obnoxious book, hastily threw off the surplice, which had helped to draw the
tempest upon him, and fled with all speed. The Bishop of Edinburgh, who was present,
thinking, perhaps, that the greater dignity of his office would procure him more reverence
from the crowd, ascended the pulpit, and exerted himself to pacify the tumult, and
continue the service. His appearance was the signal for a renewal of the tempest, which
grew fiercer than ever. He was saluted with cries of "A Pope – a Pope –
Antichrist! Pull him down!" He managed to escape from the pulpit so his coach, the
magistrates escorting him home to defend him from the fury of the crowd, which was
composed mostly of the baser sort.
If the hatred which the Scottish people entertained of the Liturgy had found vent only in
unpremeditated tumults, the king would have triumphed in the end; but along with this
effervescence on the surface there was a strong and steady current flowing underneath; and
the intelligent determination which pervaded all ranks shaped itself into well-considered
measures. The Privy Council of Scotland, pausing before the firm attitude assumed by the
nation, sent a representation to the king of the true state of feeling in Scotland. The
reply of Charles was more insolent than ever: the new Liturgy must be brought into use;
and another proclamation was issued to that effect, branding with treason all who opposed
it. This was all that was needed thoroughly to rouse the spirit of the Scots, which had
slumbered these thirty years, and to band them together in the most resolute resistance to
a tyranny that seemed bent on the utter destruction of their liberties. Noblemen,
gentlemen, and burgesses flocked from all the cities and shires of the Lowlands to
Edinburgh, to concert united action.
Four committees, termed "Tables," were formed -- one for the nobility, one for
the barons, a third for the boroughs, and a fourth for the Church. These submitted
proposals to a General Table, which consisted of commissioners from the other four, and
decided finally on the measures to be adopted.
The issue of their deliberations was a unanimous resolution to renew the National Covenant
of Scotland. This expedient had been adopted at two former crises, and on both occasions
it had greatly helped to promote union and confidence among the friends of liberty, and to
disconcert its enemies; and the like effects were expected to follow it at this not less
momentous crisis. The Covenant was re-cast, adapted to the present juncture, and
subscribed with great solemnity in the Grayfriars' Church at Edinburgh, on the 1st of
March, 1638.
The "underscribed" noblemen, barons, gentlemen, burgesses, ministers, and
commons promised and swore, "all the days of our life constantly to adhere unto and
to defend the true religion;" and to labor by all means lawful to recover the purity
and liberty of the Gospel as it was established and professed" before the
introduction of the late innovations; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all
these contrary errors and corruption, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that
power which God hath put into our hands, all the days of our life." The Covenant
further pledged its swearers to support "the king's majesty," and one another,
in the defense and preservation of the aforesaid true religion, liberties, and laws of the
kingdom."
It will not be denied that nations are bound to defend their religion and liberties; and
surely, if they see cause, they may add to the force of this duty the higher sanctions of
vows and oaths. In doing so they invest the cause of patriotism with the sacred, Less of
religion. This was what the Scots did on this occasion, which is one of the great events
of their history.
From the Grampian chain, which shut out the Popish north, to the Tweed, which parts on the
south their country from England, the nation assembled in the metropolis, one sentiment
animating the whole mighty multitude, and moving them all towards one object, and that
object the highest and holiest conceivable. For, great and sacred as liberty is, liberty
in this case was but the means to an end still loftier and more sacred, namely the pure
service of the Eternal King. This added unspeakable solemnity to the transaction. God was
not merely a witness, as in other oaths. He was a party. On the one side was the Scottish
nation; on the other was the Sovereign of heaven and earth: the mortal entered into a
covenant with the Eternal: the finite allied itself with the Infinite. So did the Scots
regard it.
They stood on the steps of the Divine throne as they lifted up their hands to swear to the
Lord, the everlasting God." A scene like this stamps, as with photographic stroke,
the impress of its grandeur upon a nation's character, and the memory of it abides as a
creative influence in after-generations.
Let us view the scene a little more nearly. The hour was yet early when a stream of
persons began to flow towards the Church of the Gray Friars. No one fabric could contain a
nation, and the multitude overflowed and covered the churchyard. All ranks and ages were
commingled in that assembly -- the noble and the peasant, the patriarch and the stripling.
One fire burned in all hearts, and the glow of one enthusiasm lighted up all faces. The
proceedings of the day were opened with a confession of national sins. Then followed a
sermon. The Covenant was then read by Sir Archibald Johnston, afterwards Lord Warriston.
He it was who had drafted the bond, and few then living could have taught Scotland so
fittingly the words in which to bind herself to the service of the God of heaven. There
was breathless silence in the great assembly while the Covenant, so reverent in spirit,
and so compendious and appropriate in phraseology., was being read. Next the Earl of
London, considered the most eloquent man of his age, rose, and with sweet and persuasive
voice exhorted the people to steadfastness in the oath. Alexander Henderson, who not
unworthy filled the place which Andrew Melville had held among the ministers, led the
devotions of the assembly. With solemn awe and rapt emotion did he address "the high
and lofty One" with whom the Scottish nation essayed to enter into covenant,
"the vessels of clay with the Almighty Potter." The prayer ended, there was
again a pause. The profound stillness lasted for a minute or two, when the Earl of
Sutherland was seen to rise and step forward to the table. Lifting up his right hand, he
swore the oath; and taking the pen, the first of all the Scottish nation, he affixed his
name to the Covenant. Noble followed noble, sweating with uplifted hand, and subscribing.
The barons, the ministers, the burgesses, thousands of every age and rank subscribed and
swore. The vast sheet was filled with names on both sides, and subscribers at last could
find room for only their initials. The solemn enthusiasm that filled the assembled
thousands found varied expression: some wept aloud, others shouted as on a field of
battle, and others opened their veins and subscribed with their blood.
This transaction, which took place in the Gray-friars' Churchyard at Edinburgh, on the 1st
of March, 16313, was the opening scene of a struggle that drew into its vortex both
kingdoms, that lasted fifty years, and that did not end till the Stuarts had been driven
from the throne, and William of Orange raised to it. It was this that closed all the great
conflicts of the sixteenth century. By the stable political position to which it elevated
Protestantism, and the manifold influences of development and propagation with which it
surrounded it, this conflict may be said to have crowned as well as closed all the
struggles that went before it.
"To this much-vilified bond," says a historic writer, "every true Scotsman
ought to look back with as much reverence as Englishmen do to Magna Charta."[2] It is known by all who are
acquainted with this country," say the nobility, etc., in their Remonstrance,
"that almost the whole kingdom standeth to the defense of this cause, and that the
chiefest of the nobles, barons, and burgesses [the subscribers] are honored in the places
where they live for religion, wisdom, power, and wealth, answerable to the condition of
this kingdom."[3] The
opposing party were few in numbers, they were weak in all the elements of influence and
power, and the only thing that gave them the least importance was their having the king on
their side. The prelates were thunderstruck by the bold measure of the Covenanters. When
Spottiswood, Archbishop of St. Andrews, heard that the National Covenant had been sworn,
he exclaimed in despair, "Now all that we have been doing these thirty years byepast
is at once thrown down." Nor was the court less startled when the news reached it.
Charles saw all his visions of arbitrary power vanishing. "So long as this Covenant
is in force," said the king to Hamilton, "I have no more power in Scotland than
a Duke of Venice."[4] Promises,
concessions, threats, were tried by turns to break the phalanx of Scottish patriots which
had been formed in the Gray Friars' Churchyard, but it refused to dissolve.[5] Their Covenant bound them to be
loyal to the king, but only while he governed according to law. Charles placed himself
above the law, and was at that moment making preparations to carry out by force of arms
the extravagant notions he entertained of his prerogative. To this tyranny the Scots were
resolved not to yield. "We know no other bands between a king and his subjects,"
said the Earl of London to the royal commissioner, "but those of religion and the
laws. If these are broken, men's lives are not dear to them." It was not long till
the echoes of these bold words came back in thunder from all parts of Scotland.
The king at last found himself obliged to convoke a free General Assembly, which was
summoned to meet at Glasgow on the 21st of November, 1638.
It was the first free Assembly which had met for forty years; the Marquis of Hamilton was
sent down as commissioner, he came with secret instructions which, had he been able to
carry them out, would have made the meeting of the Assembly of no avail as regarded the
vindication of the national liberties. Hamilton was instructed to take care of the bishops
and see that their dignities and powers were not curtailed, and generally so to manage as
that the Assembly should do only what might be agreeable to the king, and if it should
show itself otherwise minded it was to be dissolved. The battle between the king and the
Assembly turned mainly on the question of the bishops. Had the Assembly power to depose
from office an order of men disallowed by the Presbyterian Church, and imposed on it by an
extrinsic authority? It decided that it had. That was to sweep away the king's claim to
ecclesiastical supremacy, and along with it the agents by whom he hoped to establish both
ecclesiastical and civil supremacy in Scotland. Hamilton strenuously resisted this
decision. He was met by the firmness, tact, and eloquence of the moderator, Alexander
Henderson. The commissioner promised, protested, and at last shed tears. All was in vain;
the Assembly, unmoved, proceeded to depose the bishops.
To avert the blow, so fatal to the king's projects, Hamilton rose, and in the king's name,
as head of the Church, dissolved the Assembly, and discharged its further proceedings.
The crisis was a great one; for the question at issue was not merely whether Scotland
should have free Assemblies, but whether it should have free Parliaments, free laws, and
free subjects, or whether all these should give way and the king's sole and arbitrary
prerogative should come in their room. The king's act dissolving the Assembly was illegal;
for neither the constitution nor the law of Scotland gave him supremacy in ecclesiastical
affairs; and had the Assembly broken up, the king's claim would have been acknowledged,
and the liberties of the country laid at the feet of the tyrant.
The commissioner took his leave; but hardly had his retreating figure vanished at the door
of the Assembly, when the officer entered with lights, and a protest, which had been
prepared beforehand, was read, in which the Assembly declared that "sitting in the
name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only head and monarch of his
Church, it could not dissolve." The members went on with their business as if nothing
had occurred. They proceeded to try the bishops, fourteen in number, who were charged with
not a few moral as well as ecclesiastical delinquencies.
The two archbishops and six bishops were excommunicated -- four deposed and two suspended.
Thus the fabric of prelacy, which had been thirty years a-building, was overturned, and
the Church of Scotland restored to the purity and rigor of her early days.
When its thorough and memorable work was finished, the Assembly was dismissed by the
moderator with these remarkable words: "We have now cast down the walls of Jericho;
let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite!"
The Reformed Church of Scotland uprose in new power; the schemes of tyrants who had hoped
to plant arbitrary power upon its ruins were baffled; and the nation hailed its recovered
liberties with a shout of joy.
CHAPTER 17 Back to Top
CIVIL WAR--SOLEMN LEAGUE--WESTMINSTER
ASSEMBLY
War with the Scots – Charles sends a Fleet and Army – The Scots March to the
Border – Treaty of Peace – Violated by the King – Second War with the Scots
– Charles Defeated – Makes Peace – Church of Scotland has Rest – The
Long Parliament – Grievances – Concessions of Charles – Irish Massacre
– Suspected Complicity of the King – Execution of Strafford and Laud –
Civil War in England – Scotland Joins England – Solemn League – Summary of
its Principles – Sworn to by the Parliament of England – The Westminster
Assembly – Its General Appearance – Its Individual Members – Frames a Form
of Church Government and Confession of Faith – Influence of these Documents
The Scots had initiated their rebellion by swearing the
National Covenant, and they crowned it by continuing to sit in Assembly after the royal
commissioner had ordered them to dissolve. In the opinion of Charles I nothing remained to
him but the last resort of kings the sword. In April, 1640, the king summoned a Parliament
to vote him supplies for a war with the Scots. But the Lords and Commons, having but
little heart for a war of Laud's kindling, and knowing moreover that to suppress the
rights of Scotland was to throw down one of the main ramparts around their own liberties,
refused the money which the king asked for. Charles had recourse to his prerogative, and
called upon the bishops to furnish the help which the laity withheld. Less lukewarm than
the Parliament, the clergy raised considerable sums in the various dioceses. The queen
addressed a letter to the Roman Catholics, who were far from being indifferent spectators
of the quarrel between the king and his northern subjects. They willingly contributed to
the war, and as the result of the joint subsidy Charles raised an army, and marched to the
Scottish Border; he ordered a fleet to blockade the Frith of Forth, and he sent the
Marquis of Hamilton with a body of troops to co-operate with Huntly, who had unfurled the
standard on the king's side in the North.
The Scots were not taken unawares by the king's advance. They knew that he was preparing
to invade them. They had sworn their Covenant, and they were as ready to shed their blood
in fulfillment of their oath as they had been to subscribe their names. Thirty thousand
able-bodied yeomen offered themselves for the service of their country. They were
marshaled and drilled by General Leslie, a veteran soldier, who had acquired skill and won
renown in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus. Hardly had their preparations been completed when
the bonfire, which was to announce the arrival of the invading force, summoned them to
battle. Charles's fleet appeared at the mouth of the Forth; but the Scots mustered in such
numbers on the shore that not a man, could land. The main body of the army, under Leslie,
in their uniforms of olive or gray plaiden, with a knot of blue ribbons in their bonnets,
had meanwhile marched to the Border.
Their progress was a victorious one, for it was the flower of the Scots that were in arms,
whereas the English soldiers had little heart for fighting. Negotiations were opened
between the king and the Scots at Dunse Law, a pyramidal hill that rises near the town of
that name, on the north of the Tweed. A treaty of peace was concluded, and, though its
terms were neither clear nor ample, the Scots in the excess of their loyalty accepted it.
They fought for neither lands nor laurels, but for the peaceable practice of their
religion and the quiet enjoyment of their civil rights, under the scepter of their native
prince. "Had our throne been void," says an eye-witness, "and our voices
sought for the filling of Fergus' chair, we would have died ere any one had sitten down on
that fatal marble but Charles alone."[1]
This devoted loyalty on the one side was repaid with persistent perfidy on the
other. Next year (1640) Charles anew denounced the Scots as rebels, and prepared to invade
them. Not waiting this time till the king's army should be on the Border, the Scots at
once unfurled the blue banner of the Covenant, entered England, encountered the king's
forces at Newburn on the Tyne, and discomfited them, almost without striking a blow. The
victors took possession of the towns of Newcastle and Durham, and levied contributions
from the whole of Northumberland.
Meanwhile the king lay at York; his army was dispirited, his nobles were lukewarm; he was
daily receiving letters from London, urging him to make peace with the Scots, and he was
persuaded at last to attempt extricating himself from the labyrinth into which his
rashness and treachery had brought him, by opening negotiations with the Scots at Ripon.
The treaty was afterwards transferred to London. Thus had the king brought the fire into
England.
The Church of Scotland had rest for twenty years (1640 – 1660). The Scots had
repelled the edicts and the soldiers of an arbitrary monarch, for though chivalrously
loyal to their kings, they would give them no obedience but such as it was meet for
freemen to render; and Scotland being again mistress of herself, her General Assemblies
continued to meet, her Presbyterian Church government was administered, her flocks were
supplied with faithful and diligent pastors, some of whom were distinguished by learning
and genius, and vital Christianity flourished. The only drawback to the prosperity of the
country was the raids of Montrose, who, professing a zeal for the king's interests,
stained indelibly his own character for humanity and honor, by ravaging many parts of his
native land with fire and sword. All the while there raged a great storm in England, and
the northern country was too near the scene of strife not to feel the swell of the
tempest. Nor could Scotland regard her own rights as secure so long as those of England
were in question. It was her own quarrel mainly which had been transferred into the sister
kingdom, and she felt called upon to contribute what help she could, by mediation or by
arms, to bring the controversy between the king and the Parliament to a right issue.
The poise of the conflict was in the hands of the Scots; for, balanced as parties then
were in England, whichever side the Scots should espouse would be almost certain of
victory. Could they hesitate to say whether Popery or Protestantism should be established
in England, when by the triumph of the latter a bulwark would be raised against the
advancing tide of despotism which was then threatening all Europe? A strange concurrence
of events had thrown the decision of that question into the hands of the Scots; how they
decided it, we shall see immediately. In November, 1640, a Parliament met at Westminster.
It is known in history as the Long Parliament. The grievances under which the nation
groaned were boldly discussed in it. The laws were infringed; religion was being changed,
and evil counselors surrounded the throne; such were the complaints loudly urged in this
assembly. Wisdom, eloquence, patriotism, were not lacking to that Parliament; it included
the great names of Hyde and Falkland, and Digby, and others; but all this could not
prevent a rupture between the king and the people, which widened every day till at last
the breach was irreparable. The king's two favorites, Strafford and Laud, were impeached
and brought to the block. The Star Chamber and High Commission Court were abolished.
Ship-money, and other illegal imposts, the growth of recent years of despotism, were swept
away; and the spirit of reform seemed even to have reached the throne, and made a convert
of the king. In his speech on the 25th of January, 1641, the king said, "I will
willingly and cheerfully concur with you for the reformation of all abuses, both in Church
and commonwealth, for my intention is to reduce all things to the best and purest times,
as they were in the days of Queen Elizabeth." The olive-branch was held out to even
the Presbyterians of Scotland. Charles paid a visit at this time to his ancient kingdom,
for the end, as he assured his Parliament of Scotland, "of quieting the distractions
of his kingdom;" for, said he, "I can do nothing with more cheerfulness than to
give my people a general satisfaction." And, by way of seconding these promises with
deeds, he ratified the National Covenant which had been sworn in 1638, and made it law.
The black clouds of war seemed to be roiling away; the winds of faction were going down in
both countries; the biting breath of tyranny had become sweet, and the monarch who had
proved false a score of times was now almost trusted by his rejoicing subjects.
The two kingdoms were now, as a speaker in the English Parliament expressed it, "on
the vertical point." The scales of national destiny hung evenly poised between remedy
and ruin. It was at this moment that terrible tidings arrived from Ireland, by which these
fair prospects were all at once overcast. We refer to the Irish Massacre. This butchery
was only less horrible than that of St. Bartholomew, if indeed it did not equal it. The
slaughter of the Protestants by the Roman Catholics commenced on the 23rd of October,
1641, and continued for several months; forty thousand, on the lowest estimate, were
murdered; many writers say from two hundred to three hundred thousand. The northern parts
of Ireland were nearly depopulated; and the slaughter was accompanied by all those
disgusting and harrowing cruelties which marked similar butcheries in the Waldensian
valleys. The persons concerned in this atrocity pleaded the king's authority, and produced
Charles's commission with his broad seal attached to it. There is but too much ground for
the dark suspicion that the king was privy to this fearful massacre;[2] but what it concerns us to note
here is that this massacre, occurring at this juncture, powerfully and fatally influenced
the future course of affairs, revived the former suspicions of the king's sincerity,
kindled into a fiercer flame the passions that had seemed expiring, and hurried the king
and the nation onwards at accelerated speed to a terrible catastrophe.
Charles, on his return to England, was immediately presented with the famous Petition and
Remonstrance of the State of the Nation. This was no agreeable welcome home. Dark rumors
began to circulate that the court was tampering with the army in the North, with a view to
bringing it to London to suppress the Parliament. The House provided a guard for its
safety. These the king dismissed, and appointed his own train-bands in their room. The
members felt that they were not legislators, but prisoners. The king next denounced five
of the leading members of Parliament as traitors, and went in person to the House with an
armed following to apprehend them. Happily, the five members had left before the king's
arrival, otherwise the civil war might have broken out there and then. The House voted
that a great breach of privilege had been committed. Immediately London bristled with
mobs, and the precincts of Whitehall resounded with cries for justice. These tumults, said
the king, "were not like a storm at sea, which yet wants not its terror, but like an
earthquake, shaking the very foundation of all, than which nothing in the world hath more
of horror."[3] The
king withdrew to Hampton Court.
Confidence was now at an end between Charles and the Parliament; and the Jesuits, who were
plentifully scattered through England, by inflaming the passions on both sides, took care
that it should not be restored. After some time spent in remonstrances, messages, and
answers, the king marched to Hull, where was store of all kinds of arms, the place having
been made a magazine in the war against the Scots. At the gates, Charles was refused
entrance by the governor, Sir John Hotham, who held the city for the Parliament.
Pronouncing him a traitor, the king turned away and directed his course to Nottingham.[4] There on the 22nd of August,
1642, Charles set up his standard, which, as Lord Clarendon takes note, was blown down the
same night, nor could it be replaced till two days thereafter, from the violence of the
storm then blowing. It was a worse omen that comparatively few assembled to that standard.
The king now issued his summons to the gentlemen of the North to meet him at York. The
word, "To your tents, O Israel," had gone forth; the civil war had commenced.
This recalls us once more to Scotland. The two kingdoms were at that moment threatened
with a common peril, and this summoned them to a common duty. That duty was to unite for
their mutual defense. They looked around them for a basis on which they might combine,
each feeling that to let the other sink was to betray its own safety. The ground
ultimately chosen was partly civil and partly religious, and necessarily so, seeing that
the quarrel conjoined inseparably the two interests. The bond of alliance finally adopted
was the Solemn League and Covenant. Whether we approve or disapprove of its form, it was
in its substance undeniably lawful and even necessary, being for the defense of religion
and liberty; and in its issue it saved the liberties of Great Britain.
There is a prevalent idea that the Solemn League and Covenant was a merely religious bond,
the device of an exclusive and sour Presbyterianism – a propagandist measure,
promoted mainly by propagandist zealots. Nothing could be farther from the truth of
history. The Solemn League was the matured and compendious deliverance of the people of
England and Scotland on the great question of civil and religious liberty, as it stood in
that age; and it put into shape the practical steps which it behoved the two nations to
take, if they would retain the blessings of a free Government and a Protestant Church.
This bond was framed with much care by the Scottish Parliament and the General Assembly of
the Scottish Church, with the concurrence and assistance of the English commissioners who
were sent down for that purpose. It was heartily accepted by the ablest statesmen, the
most learned divines, and by the whole body of the Protestant people in both England and
Scotland. The analysis which Hallam has given of this famous document is remarkably
concise and eminently fair. We quote the yet more compendious statement of its provisions
by another historical writer, who says: "Looking at both Covenants [the National and
the Solemn League], and treating them as one document, the principles therein embodied
were the following –
The signing of the Solemn League by the Scottish Convention
of Estates and the General Assembly recalled the memorable scene transacted in the
Grayfriars' Churchyard in 1638. Tears rolled down the face of the aged as they took the
pen to subscribe, while the younger testified by their shouts or their animated looks to
the joy with which they entered into the bond.
In the City of London the spectacle was scarcely less impressive, but more novel. On the
25th of September, 1643, the two Houses of Parliament, with the Assembly of Divines,
including the Scottish Commissioners, now sitting at Westminster, met in St. Margaret's
Church, Westminster, and after sermon the Solemn League was read, article by article, the
members standing uncovered, and swearing to it with uplifted hands. Afterwards, Alexander
Henderson, who presided over the famous assembly at Glasgow, delivered an address ending
with these words – "Did the Pope at Rome know what is this day transacting in
England, and were this Covenant written on the plaster of the wall over against him, where
he sitteth, Belshazzar-like, in his sacrilegious pomp, it would make his heart to tremble,
his countenance to change, his head and mitre to shake, his joints to loose, and all his
cardinals and prelates to be astonished." The Scots followed up their Covenant by
sending an army into England to assist the Parliament against the royal forces. While the
controversy is finding its way to an issue through the bloody fields of the civil war, we
must turn for a little space to a more peaceful scene.
These civil convulsions, which owed their origin in so large a degree to the innovations
and ceremonies of Laud, led many in England to ask whether the National Church had been
placed under the best form of government, and whether something more simple than the
lordly and complicated regime enacted by Elizabeth might not be more conservative of the
purity of the Church and the liberties of the nation? Might it not, they said, be better
to complete our Reformation more on the model of the other Protestant Churches of
Christendom? The Scots, too, in their negotiations with them in 1640 and 1641, had
represented to them how much a "nearer conformity" in worship and discipline
would tend to cement the union between the two kingdoms. If the Reformation had brought
the two nations together, a yet greater accord in ecclesiastical matters would make their
union still stronger, and more lasting. There was profound policy in these views in an age
when nations were so powerfully influenced by the principle of religion. From this and
other causes the question of Church government was being very anxiously discussed in
England; pamphlets were daily issuing from the press upon it; the great body of the
Puritans had become Presbyterians; and in 1642, when the royal standard was set up at
Nottingham, and the king unsheathed the sword of civil war, the Parliament passed an Act
abolishing prelacy; and now came the question, what was to be put in its room?
On the 1st of July, 1643, the Lords and Commons passed an ordinance "for the calling
of an Assembly of learned and godly divines and others, to be consulted with by the
Parliament for the settling of the government and Liturgy of the Church of England, and
for vindicating and clearing of the doctrines of the said Church from false aspersions and
interpretations." To this Assembly 121 divines were summoned, with thirty lay
assessors, of whom ten were Lords and twenty Commoners. The divines were mostly clergymen
of the Church of England, and several of them were of Episcopal rank. It would be hard to
find in the annals of the Church, council or synod in which there were so many men of
great talents, ripe scholarship, mature theological knowledge, sober judgment, and sincere
piety as in the Assembly which now met at Westminster. The works of many of them, which
have descended to our day, attest the range of their acquirements and the strength of
their genius. Hallam admits their "learning and good sense " and Richard Baxter,
who must be allowed to be an impartial judge, says, "Being not worthy to be one of
them myself, I may the more freely speak that truth which I know, even in the face of
malice and envy – that the Christian world had never a synod of more excellent
divines (taking one thing with another) than this synod and the synod of Dort." At
the request of the English Parliament, seven commissioners from Scotland sat in the
Assembly – three noblemen and four ministers. The names of the four ministers the
best proof of whose superiority and worth is that they are household words in Scotland to
this day – were Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Baillie, and George
Gillespie. The elders associated with them were the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and
Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston. They met in Henry VII's Chapel, and on the approach
of winter they retired to the Jerusalem Chamber.
They were presided over by Dr. William Twiss, the prolocutor – "a venerable man
verging on seventy years of age, with a long pale countenance, an imposing beard, lofty
brow, and meditative eye, the whole contour indicating a life spent in severe and painful
study."[6] More
the scholar than the man of business, he was succeeded in the chair, after a year's
occupancy, by Mr. Charles Herle – "one," says Fuller, "so much
Christian, scholar, gentleman, that he can unite in affection with those who are disjoined
in judgment from him."[7] At
the prolocutor's table sat his two assessors – Dr. Cornelius Burgess, active and
intrepid, and Mr. John White, the "Patriarch of Dorchester." On either hand of
the prolocutor ran rows of benches for the members. There they sat calm, grave, dignified,
with mustache, and peak beard, and double Elizabethan ruff, dressed not in canonicals, but
black coats and bands, as imposing an Assembly as one could wish to look upon. There with
pale, gracious face, sat Herbert Palmer, one of the most scholarly and eloquent men of the
day. There was Stephen Marshall, the powerful popular declaimer, who made his voice be
heard, in pulpit, in Parliament, in the Assembly, all through these stormy times; there
was Edmund Calamy, the grandfather of the yet more celebrated man of that name; there was
Edward Reynolds, the scholar, orator, and theologian; there were Arrowsmith and Tuckhey,
to whom we mainly owe the Larger and Shorter Catechisms; there were Vines, and Staunton,
and Hoyle; there were Ashe, Whitaker, Caryl, Sedgwick, and many others, all giving their
speeches and votes for Presbyterian government.
On the Erastian side there were the learned Light-foot, the pious Coleman, and the
celebrated John Selden, a man of prodigious erudition, who was deputed as a lay assessor
by the House of Commons. His model of Church and State was the Jewish theocracy;
"Parliament," he said, "is the Church."[8] Apart there sat a little party; they amounted to ten or eleven
divines, the most distinguished of whom were Philip Nye and Thomas Goodwin, whom Wood, in
his Athenae, styles "the Atlases and patriarchs of independency." On the right
hand of the prolocutor, occupying the front bench, sat the Scottish commissioners. A large
share in the debate on all questions fell to them; and their dialectic skill and
theological learning, having just come from the long and earnest discussion of the same
questions in their own country, enabled them to influence Powerfully the issue.
Each proposition was first considered in committee. There it was long and anxiously
debated. It was next discussed sentence by sentence and word by word in the Assembly. Into
these discussions it is unnecessary for us to enter. Laboriously and patiently, during the
slow process of more than five years, did the builders toil in the rearing of their
edifice. They sought to the best of their knowledge and power to build it on the rock of
the Scriptures. They meant to rear a temple in which three nations might worship; to erect
a citadel within which three kingdoms might entrust their independence and liberties. We
need not analyze, we need only name the documents they framed. These were the Confession
of Faith, the Form of Church Government, the Directory for Public Worship, and the Larger
and Shorter Catechisms, all of which were voted by an overwhelming majority of the
Assembly. "It would be difficult to fix upon any Point of doctrine," says an
ecclesiastical writer who labors under no bias in favor of Presbytery, "in which the
Confession of Faith materially differs from the [Thirty-nine] Articles. It has more
system... The majority of the ministers of the Assembly were willing to set aside
episcopacy, though there were some who wished to retain it. The majority were also willing
to set up Presbytery in its place, though there were a few who preferred the Independent
or Congregational government. On one subject they were all united, and that was in their
adherence to the doctrines of Calvin."[9]
There will be various opinions on the system of doctrine exhibited in the four documents
mentioned above, compendiously styled the "Westminster Standards." There will be
only one opinion respecting the logical fearlessness and power, the theological
comprehensiveness, and the intellectual grandeur of these monuments. The collected genius
and piety of the age – if we may not call it the first, yet hardly inferior to the
first age of England's Protestantism – were brought to the construction of them. They
have influenced less the country in which they had their birth than they have done other
lands. During the succeeding years they have been molding the opinions of individuals, and
inspiring the creed of Churches, in all palaces of the world. They are felt as plastic
agencies wherever the English scepter is swayed or the English tongue is spoken; nor are
there yet any decided signs that their supremacy is about to pass away.
CHAPTER 18 Back to Top
PARLIAMENT TRIUMPHS, AND THE KING IS
BETRAYED
Scotland Receives the Westminster Standards – England becomes Presbyterian – The
Civil War – Army of the King – Army of the Parliament – Morale of each
– Battle of Marston Moor -- Military Equipment -- The King Surrenders to the Scots
– Given up to the English -- Cromwell – The Army takes Possession of the King --
Pride Purges Parliament – Charles Attainted and Condemned – The King's Execution
-- Close of a Cycle – Thirty Years' Plots and Wars -- Overthrow of the Popish
Projects
In 1647 the "Westminster Standards" were received
by the Church of Scotland as a part of the uniformity of religion to which the three
kingdoms had become bound in the Solemn League. These Acts were afterwards ratified by the
Estates in Parliament, and sworn to by all ranks and classes in the kingdom. Scotland laid
aside her simple creed, and accepted in its room an elaborate "Confession of
Faith," composed by an Assembly of English divines. She put her rudimental catechisms
on the shelf, and began to use those of the "Larger and Shorter" which had first
seen the light in Henry VII's Chapel! Her "Book of Common Order" no longer
regulated her public worship, which was now conducted according to a
"Directory," also framed on English soil and by English minds. Her old Psalter,
whose chants had been so often heard in days of sorrow and in hours of triumph, she
exchanged for a new Psalm book, executed by Mr. Francis Rous, an Independent of the Long
Parliament. The discarded documents had been in use for nearly a century, Scotland had
received them from the most venerated Fathers of her Church, but she would suffer no
national predilection to stand in the way of her honorable fulfillment of her great
engagement with England. She wished to be thoroughly united in heart with the sister
kingdom, that the two might stand up together, at this great crisis, for the cause of
civil and religious liberty. England on her part made greater concessions than Scotland
had dared to hope. Though the English Parliament does not appear ever to have ratified the
scheme of doctrine and government drawn up, at its own request, by the Westminster
Assembly, the Church and nation nevertheless adopted it, and for some time acted upon it.
Episcopacy was abandoned, the Liturgy was laid aside, and worship conducted according to
the "Directory for the Public Worship of God." The country was divided into
Provinces; each Province was subdivided into Presbyteries; and so many delegates from each
Presbytery were to form a National Assembly. England was Presbyterian – it is an
almost forgotten chapter in its history – and its Presbyterianism was not borrowed
from either Geneva or Scotland: it had its birth in the Chapel of Henry VII, and was set
up at the wish of its own clergy. And although it flourished only for a brief space in the
land where it arose, it has left its mark on Scotland, where it modified the
Presbyterianism of John Knox, and stamped it with the impress of that of Westminster.
From that unique transaction, which, as we have seen, had assembled two nations before one
altar, where they swore to combat together for religion, for law, and for liberty, we turn
to the battle-field. Fierce and bloody were these fields, as ever happens in a civil war,
where the hates and passions of rival factions contend together with a bitterness and fury
unknown to foreign strife. The two armies first met at Edgehill, Warwickshire. The
hard-contested field was claimed by both sides. To either victory could not be other than
mournful, for the blood that moistened the dust of the battlefield was that of brother
shed by the hand of brother. The campaign thus opened, the tide of battle flowed hither
and thither through England, bringing in its train more than the usual miseries attendant
on war. The citizens were dragged away from their quiet industries, and the peasants from
their peaceful agricultural labors, to live in camps, to endure the exhausting toil of
marches and sieges, to perish on the battle-field, and be flung at last into the trenches,
instead of sleeping with ancestral dust in the churchyards of their native village or
parish. It was a terrible chastisement that was now inflicted on England. The Royalists
had at first the superiority in arms; their soldiers were well disciplined, and they were
led by commanders who had learned the art of war on the battle-fields of the Continent. To
these trained combatants the Parliament at the outset could oppose only raw and
undisciplined levies; but as time wore on, these new recruits acquired skill and
experience, and then the fortune of battle began to turn. As the armies came to be finally
constituted, the one was brave from principle: the consciousness of a just and noble cause
inspired it with ardor and courage, while the want of any such inspiriting and ennobling
conviction on the other side was felt to be an element of weakness, and sometimes of
cowardice. The longer the war lasted, this moral disparity made itself but the more
manifest, and at last victory settled unchangeably with the one side, and defeat as
unchangeably with the other. The gay and dissolute youths, who drank so deeply and swore
so loudly, and who in the end were almost the only persons that assembled to the standard
of the king, were on the day of battle trodden down like the mire of the streets by the
terrible Ironsides of Cromwell, who resumed their enthusiasm for the fight and not for the
revel, and who, bowing their heads before God, lifted them up before the enemy.
The day of Marston Moor, 1st of July, 1644, virtually decided the fate of the war. It was
here the Scottish army, 9,000 strong, first took their place alongside the soldiers of the
Parliament, in pursuance of their compact with England, and their union was sealed by a
great victory. This field, on which were assembled larger masses of armed men than perhaps
had met in hostile array on English soil since the wars of the Roses, was a triangle, of
which the base was the road running east and west from York to Wetherby, and the two sides
were the rivers Nidd and Ouse, the junction of which formed the apex.[1] Here it was covered with gorse,
there with crops of wheat and rye. Forests of spears – for the bayonet had not yet
been invented – marked the positions taken up by the pikemen in their steel morions,
their corsets and proof-cuirasses. On either flank of their squares were the musketeers,
similarly armed, with their bandoliers thrown over their shoulders, holding a dozen
charges. They were supported by the cavalry: the cuirassiers in casque, cuirass, gauntlet,
and greave; the carbineers and dragoons in their buff coats, and armed with sword,
pistols, and short musket. Then came the artillery, with their culverins and falconets.[2] The Royalist forces appeared
late on the field; the Scots, to beguile the time, began to sing psalms. Their general,
Leslie, now Earl of Leven, had mingled, as we have already said, in many of the bloody
scenes of the Thirty Years' War, and so bravely acquitted himself that he was the favorite
field-marshal of Gustavus Adolphus. Altogether there were close on 50,000 men on that
memorable field, now waiting for the signal to join battle. The sun had sunk low – it
was seven of the evening, but the day was a midsummer one – ere the signal was given,
and the two armies closed. A bloody struggle of two hours ended in the total rout of the
king's forces. Upwards of 4,000 corpses covered the field: the wounded were in proportion.
Besides the slaughter of the battle, great numbers of the Royalists were cut down in the
flight. The allies captured many thousand stand of arms, and some hundred colors. One
eye-witness writes that they took colors enough, had they only been white, to make
surplices for all the cathedrals in England.[3]
From this day the king's fortunes steadily declined. He was worsted on every
battle-field; and in the spring of 1646, his affairs having come to extremity, Charles I
threw himself into the arms of the Scots. In the Parliament of England the Independent
party, with Cromwell at its head, had attained the supremacy over the Presbyterian, and
the king's choice having to be made between the two, turned in favor of the Presbyterians,
whose loyalty was far in excess of the deserts of the man on whom it was lavished. This
was an acquisition the Scots had not expected, and which certainly they did not wish,
seeing it placed them in a very embarrassing position. Though loyal – loyal to a
weakness, if not to a fault – the Scots were yet mindful of the oath they had sworn
with England, and refused to admit Charles into Scotland, and place him again upon its
throne, till he had signed the terms for which Scotland and England were then in arms. Any
other course would have been a violation of the confederacy which was sealed by oath, and
would have involved them in a war with England.[4] But Charles refused his consent to the conditions required of him,
and the Scots had now to think how the monarch should finally be disposed of. They came
ultimately to the resolution of delivering him up to the English Parliament, on receiving
assurance of his safety and honor. The disposal of the king's person, they held, did not
belong to one, but to both, of the kingdoms. The assurance which the Scots asked was
given, but in words that implied a tacit reproof of the suspicions which the Scots had
cherished of the honorable intentions of the English Parliament; for, "as all the
world doth know," said they, "this kingdom hath at all times shown as great
affection for their kings as any other nation."[5]
But the Parliament soon ceased to be master of itself, and the terrible catastrophe
was quickly reached. The king being now a prisoner, England came under a dual directorate,
one half of which was a body of debating civilians, and the other a conquering army. It
was very easy to see that this state of matters could not long continue, and as easy to
divine how it would end. The army, its pride fanned by the victories that it was daily
winning, aspired to govern the country which it believed its valor was saving. Lord
Fairfax was the nominal head of the army, but its real ruler and animating spirit was
Cromwell. A man of indomitable resolution and vast designs, with a style of oratory
singularly tangled, labyrinthic, and hazy, but with clear and practical conceptions, and a
fearless courage that led him right to the execution of his purposes, Cromwell put himself
at the head of affairs, and soon there came an end to debates, protestations, and delays.
Colonel Joyce was sent to Holmby House, where Charles was confined, to demand the
surrender of the king, and he showed such good authority – an armed force, namely
– that Charles was immediately given up. Colonel Pride was next sent to the House of
Commons, and taking his stand at the door, with a regiment of soldiers, he admitted only
such as could be relied on with reference to the measures in prospect. The numbers to
which Parliament was reduced by "Colonel Pride's purge," as it was called, did
not exceed fifty or sixty, and these were mostly Independents. This body, termed the Rump
Parliament, voted that no further application should be made to the king; and soon
thereafter drew up an ordinance for attainting Charles Stuart of high treason. They
appointed commissioners to form a High Court of Justice, and Charles, upon being brought
before this tribunal, and declining its jurisdiction, was condemned as a traitor, and
sentenced to be beheaded. The scaffold was erected in front of Whitehall, on the 30th of
January, 1649. An immense crowd filled the spacious street before the palace, and all the
avenues leading to it, on which shotted cannon were turned, that no tumult or rising might
interrupt the tragedy about to be enacted. The citizens gazed awed and horror-struck; so
suddenly had the spectacle risen, that it seemed a horrid dream through which they were
passing. A black scaffold before the royal palace, about to be wetted with their
sovereign's blood, was a tragedy unknown in the history of England; the nation could
scarcely believe even yet that the terrible drama would go on to an end. They took it
"for a pageantry," says Burnet, "to strike a terror." At the appointed
hour the king stepped out upon the scaffold. The monarch bore himself at that awful moment
with calmness and dignity. "He died greater than he had lived," says Burnet.[6] He bent to the block; the ax
fell, and as the executioner held up the bleeding head in presence of the spectators, a
deep and universal groan burst forth from the multitude, and its echoes came back in an
indignant protest from all parts of England and Scotland.
From this scaffold in front of Whitehall, with the unwonted and horrid spectacle of a
royal corpse upon it, let us turn to the wider drama with which the death of Charles I
stands connected, and inquire what were the bearings of the king's fall on the higher
interests of human progress. In his execution we behold the close of a cycle of thirty
years' duration, spent in plotting and warring against the Reformation. That cycle opened
with a scaffold, and it closed with a scaffold. It commenced with the execution of the
martyrs of Prague in 1618, recorded in preceding chapters of this history, and it closed
at Whitehall on the scaffold of Charles I in 1649.
Between these two points what a multitude of battles, sieges, and tragedies – the
work of the Popish Powers in their attempt to overthrow that great movement that was
brining with it a temporal and spiritual emancipation to the human race! Who can count the
number of martyrs that had been called to die during the currency of that dark cycle! No
history records even a tithe of their names. What oceans of blood had watered the Bohemian
and Hungarian plains, what massacres and devastation had overthrown their cities and
villages! These nations, Protestant when this cycle began, were forced back and trodden
down again into Popish superstition and slavery when it had come to an end. This period is
that of the Thirty Years' War, which continued to sweep with triumphant force over all the
Protestant kingdoms of Germany till a great champion was summoned from Sweden to roll it
back. After Gustavus Adolphus had gone to his grave, the Roman Catholic reaction seemed to
gather fresh force, and again threatened to overflow, with its devastating arms and its
debasing doctrines, all the German countries. But by this time the area of Protestantism
had been enlarged, and England and Scotland had become more important theaters than even
Germany. The Reformation had drawn its forces to a head in Britain, and the unceasing aims
of the Popish Powers were directed with the view of destroying it there. While abroad
Ferdinand of Austria was endeavoring to waste it with armies, the Jesuits were intriguing
to corrupt it in Great Britain, and thereby recover to the obedience of Rome those two
nations where Protestantism had entrenched itself with such power, and without which their
triumphs in other parts of Christendom would have but little availed. Their efforts were
being attended with an ominous success. James VI and Charles I seemed instruments
fashioned on purpose for their hands. Filled with an unconquerable lust of arbitrary
power, constitutionally gloomy, superstitious, and crafty, nowhere could better tools have
been found. The Jesuits began by throwing the two countries into convulsions – their
established mode of proceeding; they marked out for special attack the Presbyterianism of
the northern kingdom; they succeeded in grafting prelacy upon it, which, although it did
not exterminate it, greatly emasculated and crippled it; they took from the Church the
freedom of her Assemblies, the only organ of public sentiment then in Scotland, and the
one bulwark of its liberties. In England they managed to marry the king to a Popish
princess; they flooded the kingdom with Romish emissaries; they overlaid the Protestant
worship with Popish rites; and the laws of England they were replacing with the tribunals
of despotism. Their design seemed on the very eve of being crowned with complete success,
when suddenly the terrible apparition of a royal scaffold arose before the Palace of
Whitehall. It was only a few months before this that the Thirty Years' War had been ended
by the Peace of Westphalia, which gave greatly enlarged liberties to Protestantism, and
now the western branch of the great plot was brought to nought. So sudden a collapse had
overtaken the schemings and plottings of thirty years! The sky of Europe changed in almost
a single day; and that great wave of Popish reaction which had rolled over all Germany,
and dashed itself against the shores of Britain, threatening at one time to submerge all
the Protestant States of Christendom, felt the check of an unseen Hand, and subsided and
retired at the scaffold of Charles I.
CHAPTER 19 Back to Top
RESTORATION OF CHARLES II, AND ST.
BARTHOLOMEW DAY, 1662
The Struggle to be Renewed — The Commonwealth — Cromwell's Rule — Charles
II Restored — His Welcome — Enthusiasm of Scotland — Character of Charles
II — Attempted Union between the Anglican and Presbyterian Parties —
Presbyterian Proposals — Things to be Rectified — Conference at the Savoy —
Act of Uniformity — The 24th of August, 1662 — A Second St. Bartholomew —
Secession of 2,000 Ministers from the Church of England — Grandeur of their Sacrifice
— It Saves the Reformation in England
This long cycle, which had seen so many flourishing
Protestant Churches exterminated, so many martyrs lay down their lives, and so many fair
lands covered with ruins, had ended, as we have seen, in the overthrow of the Popish
projects, and the elevation of Protestantism to a higher platform than it had ever before
attained. Nevertheless, the end was not yet: the victory was not assured and complete, and
the defeat of the Popish Powers was not a final one. The struggle was to be renewed once
more, and another crisis had to be passed through before Protestantism should be able to
surround itself with such political bulwarks as would assure it against a repetition of
those armed attacks to which it had been perpetually subject from the Vatican and its
vassal kings, and be left in peace to pursue its evangelical labors.
The fall of the Monarchy in England was succeeded by a Commonwealth. The Commonwealth soon
passed into a military Dictatorship. The nation felt that the constitutional liberty for
which it had contended on the battle-field had escaped it, and that it had again fallen
under that arbitrary government which many hoped had received its mortal wound when the
head of Charles rolled on the scaffold. Both England and Scotland felt the heavy weight of
that strong hand which, putting away the crown, had so firmly grasped the scepter. Perhaps
England, swarming with Royalists and Republicans, with factions and sectaries, was not yet
fit for freedom, and had to return for a little while longer into bonds. But if the forms
of the rule under which she was now placed were despotic, the spirit of liberty was there;
her air had been purified from the stifling fog of a foreign slavery; and her people could
more freely breathe. If Cromwell was a tyrant, he was so after a very different pattern
from that of Charles I; it was to evildoers at home and despots abroad that he was a
terror. England, under his government, suddenly bounded up out of the gulf of contempt and
weakness into which the reigns of the two Stuarts had sunk her.
Rapidly mounted upward the prestige of England's arms, and brightly blazed forth the
splendor of her intellect. She again became a power in Christendom, and was feared by all
who had evil designs on hand. The Duke of Savoy at the bidding of the Lord Protector
stayed his massacres in the Waldensian Valleys, Cardinal Mazarin is said to have changed
countenance when he heard his name mentioned, and even the Pope trembled in the Vatican
when Oliver threatened to make his fleet visit the Eternal City. He said he should make
"the name of an Englishman as great as ever that of a Roman had been." At home
his severe countenance scared the persecutor back into his cell, and the streets of the
capital were cleansed from the horrible sights, but too common in the days of Charles and
Laud, of men standing in the pillory to have their noses slit, their ears cropped off, and
their cheeks branded with red-hot irons, for no offense save that of being unable to
practice the ceremonies that formed the king's and the archbishop's religion. His death in
1658 was followed by the Protectorate of his son Richard, who finding the burden, which
even the Atlantean shoulders of his father had borne uneasily, insupportable to him,
speedily resigned it, and retired into private life.[1]
Weary of the confusions and alarms that prevailed under the "Committee of
Safety" that was now formed to guide the State, the nation as one man turned their
eyes to the son of their former sovereign. They sent a deputation to him at Breda,
inviting him to take possession of the throne of his ancestors. The Scottish Presbyterians
were among the most forward in this matter; indeed they had proclaimed Charles as king
upon first receiving tidings of his father's execution, and had crowned him at Scone on
the 1st January, 1651. We reflect with astonishment on the fact that, despite all the
blood which the two nations had shed in resistance of arbitrary power, Charles II was now
received back without conditions, unless a vague declaration issued from Breda should be
considered as such. The nation was stupefied by an excess of joy at the thought that the
king was returning.
From Dover, where Charles II landed on the 26th May, 1660, all the way to London his
progress was like that of a conqueror returning from a campaign in which his victorious
arms had saved his country. Gay pageantries lined the way, while the ringing of bells, the
thunder of cannon, the shouts of frantic people, and at night the blaze of bonfires,
proclaimed the ecstasy into which the nation had been thrown.[2] A like enthusiasm was displayed in Scotland on occasion of the
return of the royal exile. The 19th of June was appointed to be observed as a thanksgiving
for the king's restoration, and after sermon on that day the magistrates assembled at the
Cross of Edinburgh, where was set a table with wine and sweetmeats. Glasses were broken,
trumpets were sounded, drums were beat; the church-bells sent forth their merriest peals,
and in the evening a great fire, in which was burned the effigy of Cromwell, blazed on the
Castle-hill.[3]
Charles was crowned at London on the 29th of May, a truly fatal day, which was
followed by a flood of profanity and vice in England, and a torrent of righteous blood in
Scotland. This had been foreseen by some whose feelings were not so perturbed as to be
incapable of observing the true character of Charles. Mr. John Livingstone, one of the
Scottish ministers sent to accompany the king from Holland, is said to have remarked, when
stepping on board the ship with Charles, "that they were bringing God's heavy wrath
to Britain."[4]
For all who approached him Charles II had a smiling face, and a profusion of
pleasant words. He was as yet only thirty years of age, but he was already a veteran in
vice. He was a consummate dissembler. The school of adversity, which strengthens the
virtues of other men, had only perfected Charles Stuart in the arts of hypocrisy and
falsehood. The English Presbyterians sent over some of their number — among others
Reynolds, Manton, and Calamy — to wait on him in Holland; and he so regaled them with
pious discourse, after the manner of his grandfather, that they thought they were getting
for their king an experienced and matured Christian. "He knew how to bewail the sins
of his father's house, and could talk of the power of godliness as fluently as if he had
been pupil all his days to a Puritan."[5] When seated on the throne he took several of the Presbyterian
ministers into the number of his chaplains, and even heard Richard Baxter preach. Charles
II had returned to England with his mind made up touching the form of Church government
which was to be established in the kingdom, but the time was not yet ripe for carrying his
project into execution. There were two things that Charles lacked notwithstanding his
merry countenance and his pious talk; the one was conscience, and the other was a heart.
He was the coldest of mankind. He was a tyrant, not from ambition, and certainly not from
that sort of ambition which is "the last infirmity of noble minds," but from the
cold, cruel selfishness of the voluptuary; and he prized his throne for no object of glory
or honor, the stirrings of which he never felt, but because it enabled him to wallow in
low, bestial pleasures. From that throne, as from an overspreading Upas, distilled the
poison of moral death all over the kingdom. He restored to England in the seventeenth
century one of those royal sties which had disgraced pagan Rome in the first. His minister
was Clarendon, on whom, as Asiatic Sultan on vizier, Charles devolved all the care and
toil of government, that he might pass his hours less interruptedly in his seraglio.
The first measure after Charles's restoration was an attempted union between the Anglican
and the Presbyterian parties, the latter being the chief promoters of the project. Having
as yet free access to the king, the Presbyterians brought in their proposals. The things
of which they complained were mainly these — the great extent of the dioceses, the
performance of the bishop's duty by deputy, his assuming the whole power of ordination and
jurisdiction, the imposition of new ceremonies, and the arbitrary suspension of ministers.
For reforming these evils they proposed that "Bishop Usher's reduction of episcopacy
to the form of synodical government, received in the ancient Church, should be the
ground-work of an accommodation." They proposed that suffragans should be chosen by
the respective synods; that the ministers should be under no oaths or promises of
obedience to their bishops; and that the bishops should govern according to the canons and
constitutions to be ratified and established by Parliament. As to ceremonies, they humbly
represented that the worship of God was perfect without them: that they had been fruitful
in disputes, schisms, and the silencing of pious pastors in the past; and being, on the
confession of their advocates, in themselves matters of indifference, they prayed to be
released from kneeling at the Sacrament, wearing of sacerdotal vestments, making the sign
of the cross in baptism, and bowing at the name of Jesus. They also craved a slight
revision of the Liturgy.
The answer returned by those with whom they were negotiating, and whom they had not yet
been permitted to meet in conference, though desirous of doing so, was not such as to
inspire them with sanguine hopes.
Some little while after, the king put forth a declaration, containing some concessions
which came nearer what the Presbyterians thought might form a basis of union.[6] But neither did this please the
Royalist and prelatic party. All it led to was a conference between a certain number of
ministers of both parties, who met at the Savoy. The Presbyterian ministers were invited
to conference, and encouraged to unbosom themselves, in the way of revealing all their
difficulties and scruples. But for what end?That their scruples might be removed, said the
prelates; though in truth the real object of the opposite party was that, being masters of
the sentiments of the Presbyterians, they might the more easily overreach them. It was a
foregone conclusion that no union should be formed; but that, on the contrary, the Puritan
element should once for all be purged out of the Church of England.
The king and prelates now knew how far the Puritans would yield, and on what points they
would make no compromise, and so they were able to frame their contemplated Act of
Uniformity, so as to place the Puritan ministers between the alternative, as they phrased
it, of proving knaves or becoming martyrs. On the 19th May, 1662, was passed the following
famous Act — "That all who had not received Episcopal ordination should be
re-ordained by bishops: that every minister should, on or before the 24th of August
following, being the feast of St. Bartholomew, declare his unfeigned assent and consent to
everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, on pain of being ipso facto deprived of
his benefice; that he should also abjure the Solemn League and Covenant as an unlawful
oath, and swear the oath of supremacy and allegiance; and declare it to be unlawful, under
any pretext whatsoever, to take up arms against the sovereign."[7]
Under this Act, equally remarkable for what it tolerated as well as for what it
stringently prohibited, it was lawful to preach another gospel than that which Paul
preached, but it was a crime to preach at all without a surplice. Under this Act it was
lawful to believe in baptismal regeneration, but a crime to administer baptism without the
sign of the cross. Under this Act it was lawful to profane God's name every hour of the
day, but it was a crime to mention the name of Jesus without lifting one's hat. Some have
distinguished between principles and points; in this controversy all the principles were
on one side, and all the points on the other; for the men enforcing the latter admitted
that for these rites there was no foundation in the Word of God, and that they were
matters of indifference.
A space for deliberation was allowed. The 24th of August was fixed upon as the term when
they must express their submission to the Act, or abide the consequences. That day had
already been marked by a horror unspeakably great, for on the 24th of August, 1572, had
been enacted one of the most terrible crimes of all history — the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew.
With very different feelings was that day waited for in the halls of the voluptuous court
of Charles II, in the conclave of a tyrannical hierarchy, and in the parsonages and homes
of the godly ministers and people of England. Issues of tremendous magnitude hung on the
part which the Puritan party should act on that day. If they should succumb, farewell to
the Reformation in England: it would be laid in its grave, and a great stone rolled to the
mouth of its sepulcher. The day arrived, and the sacrifice it witnessed saved the realm of
England, by preserving the Protestant element in the nation, which, had the Puritans
conformed, would have utterly perished. On the 24th of August, two thousand ministers,
rather than submit to the Act of Uniformity, surrendered their livings, and left their
sanctuaries and parsonages. They went out each man alone. The England of their day was no
free country in which they were at liberty to organize and carry on their Church in a
state of secession. They had no great leader to march before them in their exodus; they
had no generous press to proclaim their wrongs, and challenge the admiration of their
country for their sacrifice; they went forth as Abraham did, at the call of God, "not
knowing whither they went," not knowing where they should find the next meal, or
where they should lay their head at night. They were ordered to remove to a distance of
twenty miles from their own parish. It was farther enjoined on the ejected ministers to
fix their residence not nearer than six miles to a cathedral town, nor nearer than three
miles to a royal burgh; and it was made unlawful for any two of them to live in the same
place. What a glory this army of confessors shed on England! What a victory for
Protestantism! The world thought they were defeated. No, it was the king whom this
spectacle startled amid his revels; it was the prelates whom this noble sacrifice at the
shrine of conscience rebuked and terrified; it was a godless generation, whom this sight
for a moment roused from its indifference, that was conquered.
These men were the strength and glory of the Church of England. The author of The Reformed
Pastor, surely a fair judge of ministerial qualifications, says of them: "I do not
believe that ever England had as faithful and able a ministry, since it was a nation, as
it hath at this day; and I fear few nations on earth, if any, have the like."
"It raised a grievous cry over the nation," writes Bishop Burner; "for here
were many men much valued, and distinguished by their abilities and zeal, cast out
ignominiously, reduced to great poverty, and provoked by spiteful usage."
"Worthy, learned, pious, orthodox divines," says the philosophic Locke,
"who did not throw themselves out of service, but were forcibly ejected." St.
Bartholomew's Day, 1662, is one of the great outstanding epochs in the long combat of
conscience against power. But it is well to bear in mind that the victories of conscience
must always, from the very nature of the case, as indeed the St. Bartholomew and all
similar days teach us, bear outwardly the guise of defeat, and the checks and
discomfitures of power must come in the garb of victory; and thus it is through seeming
triumph that error marches to ruin. and thus it is, too, through apparent defeat that
truth advances to dominion.
CHAPTER 20 Back to Top
SCOTLAND--MIDDLETON'S TYRANNY--ACT
RECISSORY
Extravagant Loyalty of the Scots — A Schism in the Ranks of the Scottish
Presbyterians — Resolutioners and Protesters — Charles's Purpose to Restore
Prelacy — Clarendon — Maitland — James Sharp — The "Judas of the
Kirk of Scotland" — The Scottish Parliament of 1661 — Decline of the
Scottish Presbyterians — Acts passed in Parliament — Act of Supremacy —
Lays the Scottish Kirk at the King's Feet — The Oath of Allegiance — The Act
Recissory — Tyranny and Revolution — Sudden Destruction of Scottish Liberties
— Legislation and Drunkenness
The Jesuits had anew betaken themselves to spinning that same
thread which had been so suddenly and rudely severed on the scaffold which the 30th of
January, 1649, saw erected before the Palace of Whitehall. There had been a pause in their
scheming during the administration of Cromwell, but no sooner had the head of that great
ruler been laid in the grave, and a Stuart again seen on the throne of England, than the
Fathers knew that their hour was come, and straightway resumed their plots against the
religion and liberties of Great Britain. We have seen the first outburst; of that cloud
that descended upon England with the advent of Charles II in the expulsion of the 2,000
Nonconformists; but it was on the northern kingdom that the tempest was destined to break
in greatest fury, and to rage the longest. We return to Scotland.
We have seen the extravagant joy with which the king's return was hailed in Scotland. This
ecstasy had its source in two causes, and a brief explanation of these will help to make
clearer the course which events took afterwards. The first cause was the almost idolatrous
loyalty which the Scots bore to the House of Stuart, and from which all their dire
experience of the meanness, fickleness, and perfidy which had characterized the recent
sovereigns of that house had not been able to wean them. The second was a decay of that
spirit of pure patriotism that had animated the Scots in the days of Alexander Henderson,
and the immediate consequence of which was a deplorable disunion in their ranks at a time
when it behoved them above all things to be united. The schism to which we refer is that
known in history as the Resolutioners and the Protesters, which had arisen in 1651. The
question between the two parties into which the once united band was now split, had its
first rise in the suspicions of the sincerity of Charles II, that began to be entertained
by some of the ministers, who blamed their brethren for admitting him to make solemn
professions which all they knew of his conduct and character belied. This led to the
formation of a Royalist party in the Church; and the breach between them and their
brethren was widened by what soon thereafter took place. Cromwell invaded Scotland with
his army, and the question was raised, shall the whole fencible population be enrolled to
resist him, or shall those only who are the known friends of the Reformation be permitted
to bear arms?
It was resolved to admit all sorts into the army, and the Parliament proceeded to fill up
some of the highest military commands, and some of the most dignified and influential
offices in the Civil Service, from among those who were the avowed and bitter enemies both
of the Presbyterian Church and the civil liberties of the kingdom. The General Assembly of
1651 was divided on the question; a majority supported the action of Parliament, and were
termed Resolutioners; the minority protested against it, and were known as the Protesters.
The latter were headed by James Guthrie, who was afterwards martyred. Many plausible
arguments were pleaded on both sides; in the ordinary state of affairs the course approved
by the Resolutioners was the natural one; but in the circumstances in which Scotland then
was, it was, to say the least, inexpedient, and in the end it proved most fatal. It cleft
the Protestant phalanx in twain, it embittered the minds of men by the sharp contention to
which it led, and above the brutal violence of Middleton, and the dark craft of Sharp, two
men of whom we are about to speak, it paved the way for the fall of Presbyterianism and
the triumph of Charles II.
Hardly had Charles mounted the throne, when he resumed the work of his father and
grandfather in Scotland. His sure instincts taught him that there was no greater obstacle
to his cherished object of arbitrary government than the Scottish Kirk watching jealously
over the popular liberties, and by the working of its courts reading daily lessons to the
people on liberty in the best of all ways, that of teaching them to use their rights, and
to defend their privileges. He could no more tolerate an Independent Presbyterian Church
alongside an absolute throne than James I had been able to do, believing such an anomaly
to be just as impossible in the wider realm of Britain as his grandfather had deemed it in
the narrower domain of Scotland. But Charles was too indolent to prosecute in person his
grand scheme, and its execution was handed over to others. Lord Clarendon, we have said,
was his minister, and knowing his master's wishes, one of his first cares was to find
fitting tools for the work that was to be done in Scotland. Clarendon accounted himself
exceedingly fortunate, no doubt, in discovering two men whom nature seemed to have shaped
and molded for his very purpose. The two men on whom Clarendon's eye had lighted were not
only richly endowed with all the vile qualities that could fit them for the base task to
which he destined them, but they were equally distinguished by the happy absence of any
noble and generous endowment which might have enfeebled the working and impaired the
success of those opposite qualities, the possession of which had led to their selection.
These two men were Middleton and Sharp.
The first was the less base of the two. Obscurely born, we know nothing of Middleton till
we find him acting as "a pickman in Colonel Hepburn's regiment in France."[1] He next served under the
Parliament in England, "taking the Covenant as he would have put a cockade in his
hat, merely as the badge of the side on which he fought."[2] Afterwards he took arms for the king; he adhered to the royal
cause in exile; and on the death of Montrose, Charles's unacknowledged lieutenant in
Scotland, Middleton succeeded to his place. His daring and success on the field brought
him rapid promotion. He had now attained the rank of earl. He retained the coarse, brutal,
overbearing habits of the camp; he drank deeply, withheld himself from no vice, answered
all appeals to reason or justice with a stroke of his sword. Cruel by disposition, and
with heart still further hardened by the many scenes of atrocity and outrage in which he
had mingled, he was set over the people of Scotland, as the fittest tool for taming their
obdurate and haughty spirits into compliance with the mandates of the court.
James Sharp was in some respects very unlike the man with whom he was mated in the
infamous work of selling his Church and betraying his country; in other respects he bore a
very close resemblance to him. With placid face, stealthy eye, and grave, decorous
exterior, Sharp seemed to stand far apart from the fierce, boisterous, and debauched
Middleton; nevertheless, in their inner qualities of suppleness, unscrupulousness, and
ambition, the divine and the soldier were on a level. Sharp was a person of very ordinary
capacity; he had but one pre-eminent talent, and even that he was careful to hide till it
revealed itself in the light of its crooked working: he was a consummate deceiver. Sent to
London by the Scottish ministers at the period of the Restoration, with instructions to
watch over the Presbyterian interests, he not only betrayed the cause confided to him, but
he did so with an art so masterly, and a dissimulation so complete, that his treachery was
not once suspected till it had borne its evil fruit, and was beyond remedy. The letters
which he wrote to his brethren in Scotland, and by which he kept their eyes closed till
their Church was overthrown, are embodied in the Introduction to Wodrow's History, and
will remain a monument of his infamy to all coming time. His name has become a synonym
among his countrymen for all that is dark and hypocritical. He received the wages for
which he had undertaken his work, and became known henceforth among his contemporaries as
the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and Primate of all Scotland. He stands in the pillory of
history as the "Judas of the Kirk of Scotland."
It was resolved to establish prelacy in Scotland; and only a few months elapsed after
Charles II ascended the throne till a beginning was made of the work; and once commenced,
it was urged forward without pause or stop to the end. In January, 1661, the Scottish
Parliament was assembled. It was opened by Middleton, as royal commissioner. The
appearance of this man was to Scotland a dark augury of the work expected of the
Parliament. Had the nation been fairly represented, the religion and liberties of the
country would have been in small danger; for even yet the majority of the aristocracy,
almost all the ministers, and the great mass of the people remained true to the principles
of the Reformation. But "Middleton's Parliament," for by this name was it
known:, did not fairly represent the nation. Wholesale bribery and open force had been
employed to pack the House. The press was gagged, many gentlemen known to be zealous
Presbyterians were imprisoned, and some popular ministers were banished, the better to
secure a Parliament that would be subservient to the court. Scotland enjoyed no Act of
Indemnity, such as protected England, and not a public man was there in the northern
country who was not liable to be called to account for any word or action of his during
the past ten years which it might please the Government to construe unfavorably. This let
loose a reign of violence and terror. The ministers, though pious and diligent, did not
possess the intrepid spirit of Melville and Henderson, and those of their time. The grand
old chiefs of the Covenant — London, Sutherland, Rothes — were dead, and the
young nobles who had arisen in their room, quick to imbibe the libertine spirit of the
Restoration, and to conform themselves to the pattern shown to them at Whitehall, had
forgotten the piety, and with that the, patriotism, of their fathers. The great scholars
and divines who had illumined the sky of Scotland in the latter days of James VI and the
reign of Charles I — the Hendersons, the Hallyburtons, the Gillespies — had died
as these troubles were beginning.
Rutherford lived to publish his Lex Rex in 1660, and to hear that the Government had
burned it by the hands of the hangman, and summoned its author to answer to a charge of
high treason, when he took his departure "to where," in his own words, "few
kings and great folk come." The existing race of clergy, never having had the bracing
influence which grappling with great questions gives, and emasculated by the narrow and
bitter controversies which had raged in the Church during the twelve preceding years, were
somewhat pusillanimous and yielding, and incapable of showing that bold front which would
repel the bad men and the strong measures with which they were about to be assailed.
"The day was going away," but no one had foreseen how black would be the night
that was descending on the poor Church of Scotland, and how long its hours of darkness
would continue.
The first measure passed in Parliament was of such vast significance that it may be said
to have consummated the work which it professed only to have begun. This was the Act of
Supremacy, which transferred the whole power of the Church to the king, by making him
absolute judge in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. This was a blow at the root. It
did not indeed set up prelacy, but it completely subverted the Presbyterian Kirk which
Knox had established in Scotland; for that Church is independent in things spiritual, or
it is nothing.
This Act was immediately followed by another, which was meant to carry into effect the
former. This second Act imposed an Oath of Allegiance. Allegiance to the king was what
every Scotsman was willing to render as fully without as with an oath; but the allegiance
now exacted of him went beyond the just measure of obedience due by Scottish subject to
sovereign. The new oath bound the swearer to uphold the supremacy of the king in all
religious as well as all civil matters; and to refuse the oath, or deny the principle it
contained, was declared to be high treason. This left to Scotsmen no alternative but
perjury or treason. The whole Scottish nation, only twenty-three years before, had taken
an oath which declared that "the Lord Jesus Christ is the only King and Head of his
Church," an expression which was meant to repudiate and shut out the ecclesiastical
supremacy of the monarch. The new oath was in fact contradiction of the old, and made the
swearer vest in an earthly throne that which he had declared with all the solemnity of an
oath was the exclusive prerogative of the Heavenly King. How then could the Scottish
people swear this second oath without perjuring themselves? The Act laid a yoke on the
consciences of the Christian people. On those who had no conscience, it imposed no burden;
but all were not in a condition to swear contradictory oaths, and to feel that they had
incurred neither sin nor shame, and the latter class were the greater as well as the more
loyal part of the nation.
The flood-gates of tyranny now thrown wide open, the deluge poured in. As if tyranny had
become giddy and grown delirious — an almost insane attempt was made to blot out, and
cause to perish from the memories of men, that whole period of the nation's history during
which the Church of Scotland had administered her doctrine and government, subject only to
her Divine Head. We refer to the period during which her Assemblies and courts had been
free to meet and legislate. The "Act Recissory" was passed. This Act swept away
all the Parliaments, all the General Assemblies in short, the whole legislation of
Scotland since the year 1638. All were by a single stroke buried in oblivion. Thus the men
who now reigned, not content with having the future in their hands, made war upon the
past. The National Covenant was declared an unlawful oath and condemned. The Solemn League
was also condemned as an unlawful and treasonable compact. The Glasgow Assembly of 1638,
over which Alexander Henderson presided, could not be other than specially obnoxious,
seeing it overturned the prelacy of the previous period, and accordingly it was declared
to be a seditious and unlawful meeting, and put under the ban of Government.
We know not whether the wildest revolutionist ever committed greater excesses, or showed
himself under the spirit of a more delirious madness, than the men who now unhappily
governed Scotland. We behold them scorning all truth and equity, making void all oaths and
promises, tearing down all the fences of the State and leaving the throne no claim to
obedience and respect save that which the sword and the gallows can enforce. Although they
had plotted to bring all authority into contempt, to vilify all law, and destroy society
itself, they could not have adopted fitter methods. In a neighboring country, liable to be
visited with periodic revolutionary tempests, we have seen nothing wilder than the scenes
now being transacted, and about to be transacted, in Scotland. In France the tempest rises
from below; it ascends from the Communistic abyss to assail the seats of power and the
tribunals of justice: in the instance we are now contemplating the storm descended upon
the country from the throne: it was the closet of the monarch that sent forth the
devastators of order.
Never before, perhaps, had country made so swift and terrible a descent into, not social
anarchy, but monarchical and military despotism. Scotland up to this hour was enjoying an
ample liberty -- that liberty was fenced round on all sides by legal securities: a single
edict laid them all in the dust, and confiscated that whole liberty which they guarded,
and the country went sheer down at a plunge into the gulf.
The tyranny that wrought all this havoc in a moment, as it were, has been stigmatized as
"intoxicated." History has preserved the fact that the intoxication was more
than a figure. "It was a maddening time," says Burner, "when the men of
affairs were perpetually drunk."[3] Middleton, who presided over this revolutionary crew, was a
notorious inebriate, and came seldom sober to the House; and it is an accepted fact that
the framers of the Act Recissory passed the night that preceded the proclamation of their
edict in a deep debauch.
CHAPTER 21 Back to Top
ESTABLISHMENT OF PRELACY IN SCOTLAND
Destruction of Scottish Protestantism — Marquis of Argyle — His Character —
His Possessions — His Patriotism — His Service to Charles II — How Requited
— He is Condemned as a Traitor — His Demeanor in Prison — on the Scaffold
— Mr. James Guthrie — His Character — Sentenced to be Hanged — His
Behavior on the Scaffold — His Head Affixed to the Netherbow — Prelacy set up
— The New Bishops — Their Character — Robert Leighton — The Ministers
required to Receive Presentation and Collation Anew — Will Scotland Submit?
We have seen the scheme resumed, after a short pause, of
seating a Popish prince upon the throne of England, and carrying over the whole power and
influence of the three kingdoms to the interests of Rome. A beginning had been made of the
bold project in the restoration of Charles II, whose concealed Popery better served the
purpose of the men who were behind the scenes than an open profession of the Romish faith
would have done. The next part of the program was the destruction of the Protestantism of
Scotland. The three infamous edicts passed in the Parliament of 1661 had stripped the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland of every legal security, had imposed upon the Scots a
virtual abjuration of Presbyterianism, and left the Protestant Church of the northern
country little better than a wreck. A fourth edict was about to complete the work of the
former three. But at this stage it was found necessary to set up the scaffold. There were
two men in Scotland of pre-eminent position and influence, who must be taken out of the
way before it would be safe to proceed with the measure now contemplated, namely, that of
abolishing Presbyterianism and substituting prelacy. These two men were the Marquis of
Argyle and Mr. James Guthrie, minister at Stirling.
Archibald, Marquis of Argyle, stood conspicuous among the nobles of Scotland; in grandeur
and influence he towered high above them all. Nature had endowed him with excellent
talents, which a careful education had developed and trained. He was cautious, eminently
wise, liberal in politics, eloquent in discourse, and God-fearing, and to the graces of
the true Christian he added the virtues of the patriot. His inheritance was a magnificent
one. From those western isles which receive the first shock of the Atlantic wave as it
rushes toward the mainland, his possessions stretched southward to the Clyde, and away
towards the Tay on the east, comprehending many a grand mountain, many a far-extending
forest, many a strath and moorland, watered by great rivers, and dotted with meadow and
corn land — the seat of a mighty clan, who knew no king but the Maccallum-More. To
his Highland princedom he added many an acre of the richer south, and he owned many a
mansion in the great cities, where he occasionally kept court. In those years when
Scotland had no king, Argyle bore the burden of the State, and charged himself with the
protection of the Presbyterian interests.
That he was wholly free from the finesse of the age, that threading his way amid the
snares and pitfalls of the time he never deviated from the straight road, and that amid
his many plans he never thought of the aggrandizement of his own family, we will not
venture to affirm; but in the main his designs were noble, and his aims steadily and
grandly patriotic. He had rendered some important services to Charles Stuart when the
fortunes of the royal house were at the lowest. Argyle had protested against the execution
of Charles I, and when England rejected the son, Argyle was the first to invite Charles to
Scotland, and he it was who placed the crown of that ancient kingdom upon his head. He
naturally expected that these services, done at a time which made them trebly valuable,
would not be wholly forgotten. Argyle posted up to London to congratulate the king on his
restoration. It was now that he discovered the utter baseness of the man by whose side he
had stood when so many had forsaken him. Without even being admitted into Charles's
presence, he was seized, and sent down by sea to Scotland, to be tried by the Parliament
for high treason. On Saturday, the 25th of May, 1661, he was sentenced to be beheaded on
the Monday following. He was the most prominent Protestant in Scotland, and therefore he
must die.
Argyle shrank from physical suffering; but now, sentenced to the ax, he conquered his
constitutional weakness, and rose above the fear of death. A deep serenity filled his
mind, which imparted a calmness, and even majesty, to his demeanor during the hours
between his sentence and its execution. In his prison he had a ravishing sense of God's
love, and a firm assurance of his admission into the heavenly joys. All night through he
slept sweetly, and rose refreshed in the morning. He dined with his friends on the day of
his execution, discoursing cheerfully with them, and retiring after dinner for secret
prayer. The procession to the scaffold being formed, "I could die like a Roman,"
said he, "but choose rather to die as a Christian. Come away, gentlemen; he that goes
first goes cleanest." He stopped a moment on his way to execution, to greet James
Guthrie, now under sentence of death, and confined in the same prison. They embraced.
"Were I not under sentence of death myself," said the minister to the marquis,
"I would cheerfully die for your lordship." They parted as men do who are soon
to meet again, and Argyle, his step firm, and the light of triumph on his brow, went on
his way. On the scaffold he addressed the people with great composure, bidding them
prepare for times which would leave them only this alternative, to "sin or
suffer." When about to lay his head on the block his physician approached him and
touched his pulse, and found that it was beating at its usual rate, calm and strong.[1] He kneeled down, and after a few
minutes' prayer, he gave the signal, the ax fell, and that kingly head rolled on the
scaffold.[2] It
was affixed to the west end of the Tolbooth, "a monument," says Wodrow, "of
the Parliament's injustice and the land's misery."[3]
In a few days Mr. James Guthrie was brought forth to die. Guthrie was descended
from an ancient Scottish family, and was distinguished for his piety, his learning, his
eloquence, and his sweetness of disposition, combined with great firmness of principle.
His indictment charged him with a variety of offenses, amounting in the eyes of his
enemies to high treason; but his real offense was his being a consistent, eloquent, and
influential Protestant, which made it necessary that he should be put out of the way, that
Middleton might rule Scotland as he liked, and that James Sharp might march in and seize
the mitre of St. Andrews. He was sentenced to be "hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh as
a traitor, on the 1st of June, 1661, and thereafter his head to be struck off and affixed
on the Netherbow, his estate to be confiscated, his coat-of-arms torn and reversed, and
his children declared incapable, in all time coming, to enjoy any office, dignities, etc.,
within this kingdom." His composure was not in the least disturbed by hearing this
sentence pronounced as doom; on the contrary, he expressed, with much sweetness, a hope
that it would never affect their lordships more than it affected him, and that his blood
would never be required of the king's house. On the day of his execution he dined with his
friends in prison, diffusing round the table the serenity and joy that filled his own
soul, and cheering the sorrow of his guests by the hopes that found eloquent expression
form his lips. The historian Burner, who witnessed his execution, says that "on the
ladder he spoke an hour with the composedness of one who was delivering a sermon rather
than his last words."[4] The
martyr himself said that he had often felt greater fear in ascending the pulpit to preach
than he now did in mounting the gallows to die. "I take God to record upon my
soul," said he in conclusion, "I would not exchange this scaffold with the
palace or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain." his face was now covered with
the fatal napkin; he made it be lifted a moment, and said, "The Covenants shall yet
be Scotland's reviving."[5]
His head was affixed to the Netherbow, and there it remained, blackening in the
sun, through all the dark years of persecution that followed. The martyrs on their way to
the Grass Market to die passed the spot where these honored remains were exposed. They
must have felt, as they looked up at them, that a ray of glory wins cast athwart their
path to the scaffold, though the persecutor had not meant it so. "Courage,"
would these moldering lips seem to say, and strengthened by the thought that James Guthrie
had trodden this road before them, the martyrs passed on to the gallows. Raving hung all
these mournful years, and been observed of many martyr processions, Guthrie's head was at
last taken down by a young man named Hamilton, who was at the time a student in Edinburgh,
and afterwards became successor at Stirling to the man to whose remains he had performed
this kind office.
The two men of all living Scotsmen whom Middleton and Sharp most feared were now in their
grave, and the way was open for the execution of the project on which their heart, as well
as that of the king, was so much set — the institution of prelacy in Scotland.
Accordingly, on the 6th of September, 1661, Charles II issued a proclamation, restoring
"the ancient and legal government of the Church by archbishops and bishops, as it was
exercised in the year 1637." The only reason assigned for so vast a change was the
king's good pleasure. The royal mandate must serve for the wishes of the people, the law
of the country, and the warrant of Scripture. In the December following, five ministers
set out for London, and got themselves appointed bishops, and consecrated in Westminster.
The first was James Sharp, who now, as the reward of his treachery, obtained the
archiepiscopal mitre of St. Andrews. The second was Fairfoul, who was made Bishop of
Glasgow. If a slender theologian, he had some powers as a humorist; but his censors said
that his morals were not so pure as his lawn.
The third was Wishart, who had the See of Edinburgh. He, too, was of damaged character,
and had a habit, when he had drunk freely, of emphasizing his talk with oaths. The fourth
was Sydserf, now in his dotage, and made Bishop of Orkney. The fifth was a man of pure
character, and fine genius, who was thrown in to reconcile the Scots to the new
Establishment. This was Robert Leighton, appointed to the Episcopal chair of Dunblane. His
exposition of the first Epistle of Peter, so chaste and graceful in style, and so rich in
evangelical truth, will long remain a monument of his fervent piety. Leighton held that
nothing had been laid down, even inferentially, in Scripture on the subject of Church
government; and he looked on episcopacy as the best form, but he knew that, as matters
then stood in Scotland, the liberties of the nation were bound up with the maintenance of
the Presbyterian government; and that government, moreover, he had sworn to maintain.
This, if nothing else, ought to have inspired him with a salutary fear of becoming the
tool of the tyrant and the partner of renegades in a traitorous scheme for sapping the
ancient liberties of his native land, and overthrowing the sacred independence of his
Church. His genius and piety but made the part he acted the more criminal, seeing they
were employed to support measures which he condemned. The blood of Argyle and Guthrie had
to be poured out before he could wear his mitre, and one would have thought that never
could he put it on his head without feeling that it imprinted its red marks on his brow.
In those days there were few genuine honors to be gained in Scotland save those which the
headsman bestowed.
Soon after their consecration the new prelates arrived in Scotland. They entered Edinburgh
with some little pomp, being not unwilling to air their new dignity — all except
Leighton, who, as if ashamed of his companions, and unwilling to be paraded in the train
of Sharp, stole away when the party approached the city, and made his entrance privately.
One of their first acts after setting foot on their native soil was to ordain other ten
bishops. These had till now been Presbyterian ministers; their anointing took place in the
Chapel of Holyrood. Scotland was now divided into fourteen dioceses, and over each diocese
was set a regularly consecrated bishop with jurisdiction. The new shepherds to whom the
Scottish flock was committed by Charles II had all, before receiving their second
consecration, renounced their Presbyterian ordination as null. This throws an interesting
light on the mission they had now taken in hand, and the condition of that country, as it
appeared in their eyes, in which they were to fulfill it. If their Presbyterian ordination
was worthless, so was that of all Presbyters in Scotland, and equally worthless were the
powers and ministrations of the whole Presbyterian Church. Scotland, in short, was a pagan
country. It possessed neither valid pastors nor valid Sacraments, and had been without
both since the Reformation; and these men, themselves consecrated in Westminster, now
consecrated others in Holyrood, and came with the benevolent design of restoring to
Scotland the valid orders of which Knox had deprived it. In short, they came to plant
Christianity a second time in Scotland. Let us mark how they proceeded in their work.
On the 8th of May, 1662, the Scottish Parliament sat. The new bishops took their places in
that Assembly, gracing it, if not by their gifts of learning and apostleship, on which
history is silent, by their titles and official robes. Their presence reminded the
Parliament of the necessity of showing its zeal in the king's service, and especially that
branch of it on which Charles was at that time so intent, the transforming a Presbyterian
country into a prelatic one, and changing a constitutional government into an arbitrary
monarchy. The Parliament was servile and compliant. Act followed Act, in rapid succession,
completing the work which the king had commenced in his proclamation of the September
previous ordaining episcopacy. In the first Act of Parliament it was laid down that
"the ordering and disposing of the external government and policy of the Church doth
properly belong unto his Majesty as an inherent right of the crown, by virtue of his royal
prerogative and supremacy in causes ecclesiastical."[6] The next Act restored the bishops to all their ancient privileges,
spiritual and temporal; another Act was passed against all resistance to the king's
government; another forbidding all attempts for any alteration in Church or State, and
another declaring the Covenants unlawful and seditious. To this Act was added a curious
appendage, which would not have been surprising had it issued from the Vatican, but coming
from a temporal government was certainly a novelty. A dispensing clause was sent forth
from Whitehall, releasing all who had taken the Covenant from the obligation of fulfilling
the oath. That oath might or might not be valid, but for the government to publish a
release of conscience to all who had sworn it was one of the startling assumptions of this
extraordinary time.
One other edict remains to be specially noted. It required all ministers in Scotland
ordained since 1649, on or before the 20th of September to present themselves before the
patron to take presentation anew to their livings, and before the bishop of the diocese to
receive collation. The year 1649 was fixed on as that from which commenced this second
ordination because, the strict covenanting party being then in power, patronage had been
abolished. But now, patronage being restored, those who had entered the Church by the free
choice of the people, and not by the nomination of the patron, were called on to retrace
their steps, and begin anew by passing through this ordeal. Collation from the bishop,
which was also required of them, implied something more than that they had been informal
ministers, namely, that they had not been ministers at all, nor had ever discharged one
valid function. One of the clauses of that collation ran thus — "I do hereby
receive him into the functions of the holy ministry." That certainly meant that the
man now receiving collation had not till then been clothed with the ministerial office,
and that for the first time was he now validly to discharge its functions. The principle
on which all these changes proceeded was plainly this, that government was restoring to
Scotland a true ministry, which it had lost when its ancient hierarchy was overthrown.
It was not necessary in order to the carrying out of these edicts that Charles II should
leave London, the scene of his ease and of his pleasures, and visit the northern kingdom.
The royal voluptuary, dearly as he loved power, would perhaps have foregone it in part,
had he been required to earn it at the price of anxiety and drudgery. But there was no
need he should submit to this sacrifice; he had zealous and trusty tools on the spot, who
were but too willing to do the work which he was too indolent to undertake himself. The
Privy Council exercised supreme power in his name in Scotland, and he could safely leave
with the members of that Council the prosecution of all the schemes of tyranny then on
foot. There were men around him, too, of darker counsels and wider schemings than himself
— men who, though he little suspected it, were just as ready to thrust him aside as
they would have been to dispatch any Covenanter in all Scotland, should he stand in their
way; these persons devised the steps which were necessary to be taken, the king sanctioned
them, and the perjured and brutal junto who served Charles in Scotland carried them out.
We behold the work already almost completed. Only two years have elapsed since Charles II
ascended the throne, and the liberties and religion of Scotland have been all but entirely
swept away. What it had taken a century and a half to achieve, what had been painfully
won, by the stake of Hamilton, the labors of Knox, and the intrepidity of Melville and
Henderson, had, as it now seemed, been lost in the incredibly short space from 1600 to
1602. The tame acquiescence of Scotland at so great a crisis amazes us! Have all become
unfaithful? Is there no one to fight the old battle? Of the tens of thousands who
twenty-four years before assembled in the Grayfriars' Church-yard of Edinburgh, their
hands lifted up to heaven, is there no select band — a thousand? a hundred? fifty?
— willing to throw themselves into the breach, and stem the torrent of Popish
intrigue and tyrannical violence that is flooding Scotland, and, having overwhelmed it,
will next rush on England, burying beneath its swelling wave the Protestantism of the
southern kingdom, and along with it the Protestantism of all Christendom? Is there none to
avert a catastrophe so awful? We shall see.
CHAPTER 22 Back to Top
FOUR HUNDRED MINISTERS EJECTED
The Bishops hold Diocesan Courts — Summon the Ministers to Receive Collation —
The Ministers Disobey — Middleton's Wrath and Violence — Archbishop Fairfoul's
Complaint — "Drunken Act of Glasgow " — The 1st of November, 1662
— Four Hundred Ministers Ejected — Middleton's Consternation — Sufferings
of the Ejected — Lamentations of the People — Scotland before the Ejection
— The Curates — Middleton's Fall — The Earl of Rothes made Commissioner
— Conventicles — Court of High Commission — Its Cruelty — Turner's
Troop — Terrible Violence
The Parliament, having done its work, dissolved. It had
promulgated those edicts which placed the Church and State of Scotland at the feet of
Charles II, and it left it to the Privy Council and the bishops to carry into effect what
it had enacted as law. Without loss of tune the work was commenced. The bishops held
diocesan courts and summoned the ministers to receive collation at their hands. If the
ministers should obey the summons, the bishops would regard it as an admission of their
office: they were not unnaturally desirous of such recognition, and they waited with
impatience and anxiety to see what response their citation should receive from the
Presbyterian pastors. To their great mortification, very few ministers presented
themselves. In only a few solitary instances were the Episcopal mandates obeyed. The
bishops viewed this as a contempt of their office and an affront to their persons, and
were wroth at the recalcitrants. Middleton, the king's prime minister in Scotland, was
equally angry, and he had not less cause than the bishops for being so. He had assured the
king that the royal scepter once firmly stretched out would compel the Presbyterians of
the North to bow to the crosier; and if, after all, his project should fail, he would be
ruined in the eyes of Charles. To the irascibility and imperiousness with which nature had
endowed him, Middleton added the training of the camp, and he resolved to deal with this
matter of conscience as he would with any ordinary breach of military discipline. He did
not understand this opposition. The law was clear: the king had commanded the ministers to
receive collation at the hands of the bishop, and the king must be obeyed, and if not, the
recusant must take the consequences — he must abide both Middleton's and the king's
wrath.
Having made up his mind to decisive measures, Middleton and the other members of the Privy
Council set out on a tour of inspection of the western counties, where the more
contumacious lived. Coming to Glasgow, Archbishop Fairfoul complained that "not one
minister in his whole diocese had presented himself to own him as bishop, and receive
collation to his benefice; that he had only the hatred which attends that office in
Scotland, and nothing of the power; and that his Grace behoved to fall upon some other and
more effectual methods, otherwise the new-made bishops would be mere ciphers."[1] Middleton consoled the poor man
by telling him that to the authority of his crosier he would add the weight of his sword,
and he would then see who would be so bold as to refuse to own him as his diocesan. A
meeting of the Privy Council was held in the College Hail of Glasgow, on the 1st of
October, 1662. They met in a condition that augured ill for the adoption of moderate
measures. The bishops urged them to extreme courses; with these counsels their own
passions coincided; they drank till they were maddened, and could think only of vengeance.
It was resolved to extrude from their livings and banish from their parishes all the
ministers who had been ordained since 1649, and had not received presentation and
collation as the king's Act required. In pursuance of this summary and violent decision a
proclamation was drawn up, to be published on the 4th of October, commanding all such
ministers to withdraw themselves and their families out of their parishes before the 1st
of November next, and forbidding them to reside within the bounds of their respective
presbyteries, They had three weeks given them to determine which they would choose,
submission or ejection.[2]
This Act came afterwards to be known as the "Drunken Act of Glasgow." It
is hardly conceivable that sober men would, in the circumstances, have issued so ferocious
an edict. "Duke Hamilton told me," says Burner, "they were all so drunk
that day that they were not capable of considering anything that was before them, and
would hear of nothing but executing the law without any relenting or delay."[3] The one sober man at the board,
Sir James Lockhart of Lee, remonstrated against the madness of his fellow councilors, but
he could recall them neither to sobriety nor to humanity. Their fiat had gone forth: it
had sounded, they believed, the knell of Scottish Presbyterianism. "There are not ten
men in all my diocese," said Bishop Fairfoul, "who will dare to disobey."
Middleton was not less confident. That men should cast themselves and their families
penniless upon the world for the sake of conscience, was a height of fanaticism which he
did not believe to be possible even in Scotland. Meanwhile the day drew on.
The 1st of November, to which Middleton had looked forward as the day that was to crown
his bold policy with success, and laying the Presbyterianism of Scotland in the dust, to
establish on its ruins prelacy and arbitrary government, was, to the contrary, in the
issue to hurl him from power, and lift up that Presbyterianism which he thought to
destroy.
But to Middleton retribution came in the guise of victory. Hardly four weeks had he given
the ministers to determine the grave question whether they should renounce their
Presbyterianism or surrender their livings. They did not need even that short space to
make up their minds. Four hours — four minutes — were enough where the question
was so manifestly whether they should obey God or King Charles. When the 1st of November
came, four hundred ministers — more than a third of the Scottish clergy — rose
up, and quitting their manses, their churches, and their parishes, went forth with their
families into banishment. Middleton was astounded. He could never have believed that the
gauntlet he had flung down would be taken up so boldly. It was submission, not defiance,
he had looked for from these men. The bishops shared his consternation. They had counseled
this violent measure, and now they trembled when they saw how well it had succeeded. They
had thought that the Scotland of Knox was dead, and this Act was meant to consign it to
its sepulcher; the Act, on the contrary, had brought it to life again; it was rising in
the strength of old days, and they knew that they must surely fall before it. Middleton's
rage knew no bounds: he saw at a glance all the fatal consequences to himself of the step
he had taken — the ultimate failure of his plans, the loss of the royal favor, and
the eventual triumph of that cause to which he thought he had given the death-blow.
Meanwhile, the sufferings of the ejected ministers were far from light. The blow had come
suddenly upon them, and left them hardly any time to provide accommodation for themselves
and their families.
It was the beginning of winter, and the sight of the bare earth and the bleak skies would
add to the gloom around them. They went forth not knowing whither they went. Toiling along
on the rough miry road, or laying them down at night under the roof of some poor hovel, or
seated with their little ones at some scantily furnished table, they nevertheless tasted a
joy so sweet that they would not have exchanged their lot for all the delights of their
persecutors. They had their monarch's sore displeasure, but they knew that they had the
approval of their heavenly King, and this sweetened the bitter cup they were drinking. The
sacrifice they were now making had only added to their guilt in the eyes of their monarch,
and they knew that, distressing as was their present condition, their future lot was sure
to be more wretched; but rather than take their hands from the plough they would part with
even dearer possessions than those of which they had been stripped. They had counted the
cost, and would go forward in the path on which they had set out, although they plainly
descried a scaffold at the end of it.
The religious people of Scotland followed with their affection and their prayers the
pastors who had been torn from them. The throne had loosened its hold, prelacy had sealed
its doom, but the firmness of principle shown by the ministers had exalted the cause of
Presbytery, and rallied once more round it the better portion of the Scottish people. The
shepherds had been smitten, but the flocks would not long escape, and they prepared to
suffer when their day of trial should come. Meanwhile, lamentation and woe overspread the
country. "Scotland," says Wodrow, "was never witness to such a Sabbath as
the last on which these ministers preached; and I know no parallel to it save the 24th of
August to the Presbyterians in England. Tears, loud wailings, and bursts of sorrow broke
in many cases upon the public service. It was a day not only of weeping but howling, like
the weeping of Jazer, as when a besieged city is sacked."
The Sunday that followed the ejection was sadder even than that on which the pastors had
bidden their congregations farewell. The silence as of death brooded over a large portion
of Scotland. All over the western counties of Ayr and Lanark; over many parts of Lothian,
Fife, Eskdale, Teviot-dale, and Nithsdale the churches were closed. To quote
"Naphtali's" song of Lamentation (a well-known book in Scotland) — "
Then might we have seen the shepherds smitten and the flocks scattered, our teachers
removed into corners, and the Lord's vineyard and sanctuary laid most desolate, so that in
some whole counties and provinces no preaching was to be heard, nor could the Lord's Day
be otherwise known than by the sorrowful remembrance of those blessed enjoyments whereof
now we are deprived."
From this scene of desolation let us turn to the Scotland of only two years before, as
graphically depicted by an old chronicler. "At the king's return every parish had a
minister, every village had a school, every family almost had a Bible, yea, in most of the
country all the children of age could read the Scriptures, and were provided of Bibles,
either by their parents, or by their ministers... I have lived many years in a parish
where I never heard an oath, and you might have ridden many miles before you heard one;
also you could not for a great part of the country have lodged in a family where the Lord
was not worshipped by reading, singing, and public prayer.
Nobody complained more of our Church government than our taverners; whose ordinary
lamentation was — their trade was broke, people were become so sober."[4] It was from this flourishing
condition that Scotland, in the short space of two years, was plunged into her present
desolation. The numerous vacant pulpits had to be filled. The bishops turned their eyes to
the northern counties in quest of men to succeed the pious and learned ministers who had
been ejected. Some hundreds of raw untaught young men were brought from that part of
Scotland, drafted into the Church, and taught to do duty as curates. The majority of them
were as incapable as they were unwelcome. They were all of them without liberal education,
and many of them lacked morals as well as letters. "They were ignorant to a
reproach," says Bishop Burnet, "and many of them openly vicious; they were a
disgrace to the order and the sacred functions, and were indeed the dregs and refuse of
the northern parts."[5] In
some cases their arrival in the parish was met by a shower of stones; the church door was
barricaded on Sunday morning, and they had to make their entrance by the window.
Middleton was now drawing near the close of his career. He had dragged Argyle to the block
and Guthrie to the gallows, and he had filled up his cup by extruding from their charges
four hundred of the best ministers of Scotland, and now his fall followed hard on the
heels of his great crime. But in his case, as in so many similar ones, infatuation
preceded destruction. Middleton had now few sober hours; for no sooner had the fumes of
one debauch been dissipated than those of another began to act upon him. Even Charles
became disgusted at his habitual intoxication. His passionate violence and drunken
recklessness had completely lost the opportunity for the peaceable establishment of
prelacy in Scotland. He had but damaged the king's interests by his precipitation, and the
Earl of Rothes was sent down to supersede him. The new commissioner was a son of that Earl
Rothes who had been one of the early leaders of the Covenanters. The son was as
distinguished for his profligacy as the father had been for his piety and his talents. He
was coarse, avaricious, licentious, and the policy of violence which had been inaugurated
under Middleton was continued under Rothes.
It was now that field-meetings termed conventicles arose. The greater part of the pious
ministers cast out, and their places filled by incapable men, the people left the new
preachers to hold forth within empty walls. It was in vain that the church doors were
thrown open on Sunday morning, few entered save the curates' dependents, or the reprobates
of the place; the bulk of the population were elsewhere, listening to those ministers who,
not being comprehended in the Act of 1662, having been ordained before the year 1649, were
still permitted to occupy their pulpits; or they had gathered by hundreds or by thousands,
devout and reverend, on some moorland, or in some sequestered glen, or on some
mountain-side, there to listen to one of the ejected ministers, who, taking his stand on
some rock or knoll, preached the Word of Life. It was exceedingly mortifying to the
bishops to see their curates despised, their churches empty, and the people traveling
miles in all weathers to hear those whom they had extruded. They immediately obtained an
Act forbidding any one to preach unless he had a license from a bishop, and commanding the
people to attend their parish churches under the penalty of a fine. This Act was termed
the "bishops' drag-net." It failed to fill the empty pews of the parish
churches. One tyrannical measure only necessitates another and more tyrannical. Archbishop
Sharp posted up to London to obtain additional powers. He returned, and set up the Court
of High Commission.
This was the Star Chamber of England over again. In truth, it bore, in its flagrant
defiance of forms, and its inexorably merciless spirit, a close resemblance to the
"Holy Office" of the Inquisition. Soldiers were sent forth to scour the country,
and if one was found who had been absent from the parish church, or had given a little aid
to any of the outed ministers, or was suspected of the sin of Presbyterianism, he was
dragged to the bar of the High Commission Court, where sat Sharp, like another
Rhadaman-thus, ready to condemn all whom the soldiers had captured and baled to his dread
tribunal. The lay-judges in disgust soon left the entire business in the hands of the
archbishop and his assistant prelates. Their process was simple and swift. The labor of
compiling an indictment, the trouble of examining witnesses, the delay of listening to
pleadings were all dispensed with. The judges walked by no rule or statute, they kept no
record of their proceedings, and they suffered no one to escape. All who came to that bar
left it under condemnation. The punishments awarded from that judgment-seat were various.
Some it amerced in heavy fines: some it ordered to be publicly whipped: some it sent into
banishment: others it consigned to dungeons; and some it branded on the cheek with hot
irons, and sold as slaves, and shipped off to Barbados. The times, bad as they were, were,
not so bad as to suffer such a court to exist. In two years the High Commission sank under
the, odium which its atrocious injustice, cruelty, and tyranny drew down upon it.
"Sir," said the minister of Colvend on the Solway, addressing Sharp one day from
the bar of this terrible court. "Know you," growled Rothes, "to whom you
speak?" "Yes," replied the undaunted pastor, "I speak to James Sharp,
once a fellow-minister with myself." Without further inquiry into his offenses, he
was laid in irons, thrown into the "Thieves' Hole" in the Tolbooth, with a
lunatic for his companion, and ultimately banished to the Shetland Islands, where
"for four years," says Wodrow, "he lived alone in a wild desolate island,
in a very miserable plight. He had nothing but barley for his bread, and his fuel to
prepare it with was sea-tangle and wreck; and had no more to preserve his miserable
life."
In Scotland, Presbytery and Liberty, like the twins of classic story, have ever flourished
and faded together. After 1663 no Parliament met in Scotland during six years. The laws
were virtually defunct, and the will of the king was the sole authority in the State.
Charles II issued proclamations, his Privy Council in Scotland turned them into Acts, and
the soldiers executed them with their swords. It was in this way that the country was
governed. Its Presbyterian religion and its constitutional liberties had fallen together.
No part of the country south of the Grampian chain escaped this most terrible tyranny, but
the south and west in particular were mercilessly scourged by it. The wretched inhabitants
of these counties had been given into the hands of Sir James Turner. Turner was a man
naturally of choleric temper, and when his passions were inflamed by drink, which often
happened, his fury rose to madness. His troop was worthy of himself. Drawn from the dregs
of the populace, they ruined the name, not of soldiers, but of ruffians, who were in their
element only when carousing, pillaging, and shedding blood. It would be endless to recount
the barbarities which Turner's troop exercised upon the poor peasantry.
The great public offense of each parish was still the empty church of the curate. To
punish and so abate this scandal, the following device was fallen upon. After sermon the
curate called over the roll of the parishioners, and marked those not present. A list of
the absentees was given to the soldiers, who were empowered to levy the fine to which
non-attendance at church rendered the person liable. If the family was not able to pay the
fine, a certain number of the troop took up their quarters in the house, cursing,
blaspheming, carousing, wasting by their riotous living the substance of the family, and,
before taking leave, destroying what they had not been able to devour. Ruin was almost the
inevitable consequence of such a visit, and members of families, recently in affluence,
might now be seen wandering about the country in circumstances of destitution. After the
landlord, it came to be the tenants turn to be eaten up. As the locust-swarms of the East,
so passed these miscreant bands from parish to parish, and from family to family, leaving
their track an utter waste. The sanctity of home, the services of devotion, the decencies
of morality, respect to rank, and reverence for age, all perished in the presence of this
obscene crew. Louder and louder every day waxed the cry of the suffering country.
CHAPTER 23 Back to Top
BREACH OF THE "TRIPLE LEAGUE" AND
WAR WITH HOLLAND
The same Policy pursued in England and Scotland — Scheme for Introducing Popery and
Arbitrary Government — Test Acts — Non-resistance — Power of the Militia
Given to the King — Humiliation of the Nation — The Queen-mother —
Surrender of Dunkirk — Breach of the "Triple League " — The King's
Sister — Interview at Dover — M. Colbert — War with Holland resolved on
— How the Quarrel was Picked — Piratical Attack on Dutch Merchantmen by the Navy
of England — The Exchequer Seized by the King — An Indulgence Proclaimed —
War Commenced — Rapid Triumphs of the French — Duplicity of Louis XIV —
William, Prince of Orange, made Stadtholder of Holland — The Great Issue
The great project planned and moved by the Jesuits for
reconquering England, and through England subjugating Christendom, and restoring the
Church of Rome to her former dominance in every country of Europe, was proceeding on
parallel lines, stage by stage, in both England and Scotland at once. On the 24th of
August, 1662, two thousand ministers, who formed the strength and glory of English
Protestantism, were driven out of the Church of England. In the November following, a
similar measure was adopted in Scotland. Four hundred men, the flower of the Scottish
clergy, were extruded from their churches, and soon thereafter forbidden all exercise of
their office under pain of death. The Protestantism of Great Britain was not indeed
entirely smitten down by these great blows, but it lay wounded and bleeding, and had
scarce spirit or strength left it for continuing the battle with a yet powerful foe. This
was an entire reversal of the policy which had been pursued before the Restoration. The
policy of the Solemn League was to unite the two kingdoms of Scotland and England on a
thoroughly Protestant basis, that they might be able in concert to establish a
constitutional throne, maintain the authority of the laws, and fortify the domain of civil
and religious liberty. Now the policy of the Government was to break up the concord which
had been formed between the two countries, that on the ruins of their Protestantism they
might plant arbitrary power and the Popish religion. What Charles mainly aimed at, we
grant, was absolute power; what the yet deeper plotters around him sought to compass was
the restoration of the Romish faith; but they found it easy to persuade the monarch that
he could not gain his own object except by advancing theirs. Thus each put their shoulder
to the great task, and the king's prerogative and the usurpation of the tiara advanced by
equal steps, while English liberty and national honor sank as the other rose.
The first more manifest step of this national decline was the famous declaration inserted
in the Act of Uniformity, and which every ecclesiastical functionary, from the Primate of
all England down to the village schoolmaster, was required to subscribe, and in which he
declared it to be "unlawful, on any pretense whatever, to take up arms against the
king." This test pledged beforehand all who took it to submit to any act of tyranny,
however gross, and to any invasion on their property and person, however monstrous. It
left to Englishmen a strange measure of liberty, namely that of passive obedience and
non-resistance. Soon thereafter, there followed another declaration which all civil and
military functionaries were enjoined to make, and which ran thus: "I do swear I will
not endeavor any alteration in the government of this kingdom in Church or State, as it is
by law established." The nation was thus pledged neither to amend anything that might
be wrong, however glaringly so, in the existing state of matters, nor to offer resistance
to any aggression, however unjust and oppressive, that might be attempted in future. While
it disarmed itself, and stood literally manacled before the throne of Charles, the nation
armed him with full means for tyrannizing over itself, by handing over to him the sole
power of the militia, which then occupied the place of the army. Thus was arbitrary
government set up. To resist the king, said the men of law, is treason; to dissent from
his religion, said the divines, is anathema. What was this but an apotheosis of the
prerogative? And the only maxim to which Charles now found it needful to have respect in
ruling, was to make the yoke press not too heavily at first, lest the nation should break
the fetters with which it had bound itself, and resume the powers it had surrendered.
There now opens a chapter in English history which is sad indeed, being a continuous
succession of humiliations, disasters, and dishonors. Soon after Charles II ascended the
throne, the queen-mother, who had been residing in Paris since the execution of her
husband, Charles I, came across to pay her son a visit. The ostensible object of her
journey was to congratulate her son, but her true errand was to ripen into an alliance a
friendship already formed between Charles II and Louis XIV, termed the Grand Monarch, and
truly worthy of the name, if a hideous and colossal combination of dissoluteness,
devotion, and tyranny can make any one great. It would mightily expedite the great scheme
then in hand that rite King of England should be in thorough accord with the King of
France, whose arms were carrying the fame of Louis and the faith of Rome over so many
countries of the Continent of Europe.
The first fruits of this interview were the surrender of Dunkirk to the French. This
fortress had been deemed of so great importance, that Parliament a little before had it in
contemplation to prepare an Act annexing it for ever to the crown of these realms; it was
now sold to the French king for 400,000 pounds — a sum not more than sufficient to
cover the value of the guns and other military stores contained in it. The loss of this
important place deeply grieved the nation, but what affected the English people most was
the deplorable sign which its sale gave of a weak and mercenary court.
The next public proof that the Court of England was being drawn into the scheme for the
destruction of the Protestant faith, was the breach of the "Triple League" on
the part of Charles II, and his uniting with France to make war upon Holland. This famous
Alliance had been formed between England, Holland, and Sweden; and its object was to stem
the torrent of Louis XIV's victorious arms, which were then threatening to overrun all
Europe and make the Roman sway again universal. This Triple Alliance, which the great
minister Sir William Temple had been at great pains to cement, was at that time rite
political bulwark of the Protestant roll, on and the liberties of Europe, and its betrayal
was a step to the ruin of more than England. Britain was very artfully detached from her
Protestant allies and her own true interests. The Duchess of Orleans, King Charles's
sister, was dispatched (1670) on a private interview with her brother at Dover, on purpose
to break this design to him. Having brought her negotiation a certain length she returned
to Paris, leaving behind her a lady of acknowledged charms, Madam Carewell, afterwards
Duchess of Portsmouth, and the king's favorite mistress, to prosecute what she had been
unable to conclude. Next, M. Colbert, ambassador from the Court of France, came across
with 100,000 pistols to lay out to the best advantage.
With so many and so convincing reasons Colbert had little difficulty in persuading the
ministry, known as the Cabal,[1] to
espouse the French interests, and persuade the king to fall out with the Dutch. Coventry
was sent across to Sweden to induce that Government also to withdraw front the League. He
succeeded so far that Sweden first grew lukewarm in the cause, and after having armed
itself at the expense of the Alliance, and dissembling for a while, it dropped the visor,
and drew the sword on the side of France.[2] Thus Protestant Holland was isolated.
A war with Holland having been resolved upon, the next thing was to pick a quarrel. This
task required no little invention, for the Dutch had not only behaved with perfect good
faith, but had studied not to give offense to England. A new and hitherto untried device
was fallen upon. In August, 1671, the Dutch fleet was cruising in the North Sea, in
fulfillment of their treaty engagements: a "sorry" yacht carrying the English
flag suddenly sailed into the fleet, and singling out the admiral's ship, twice fired into
her. The Dutch commander, having regard to the amity existing between the two nations,
paid a visit to the captain of the yacht, and inquired his reason for acting as he had
done. The admiral was told that he had insulted England by failing to make his whole fleet
strike to his little craft. The Dutch commander civilly excused the omission, and the
yacht returned to England, bearing as her freight the quarrel she had been sent to open.[3] This, with a few other equally
frivolous incidents, furnished the English Court with a pretext for declaring war against
Holland.
The Dutch could not believe that England was in earnest. They were conscious of no
offense, and pursued their commerce in our seas without suspicion. A rich fleet of
merchantmen, on their voyage from Smyrna, were passing through the Channel, with a feeble
convoy, when they were set upon by English men-of-war near the Isle of Wight. The king had
thought to seize this rich booty, and therewith defray the expenses of the war which he
was meditating. His attempt at playing the pirate upon his own coasts did not succeed: the
merchantmen defended themselves with spirit, and the king's prize was so meager that it
scarce sufficed to pay the surgeons who attended the wounded, and the carpenters who
repaired the battered ships. The next attempt of Charles II to put himself in funds for
the war' was to seize on the Exchequer, and confiscate all moneys laid up there to the use
of the State. To the terror of the whole nation and the ruin of the creditors, the Crown
issued a proclamation declaring itself bankrupt, "made prize of the subject, and
broke all faith and contract at home in order to the breaking of them abroad with more
advantage."[4]
While the king's fleet was in the act of attacking the Dutch merchantmen in the
Channel, his printers were busy on a proclamation of Indulgence. On the 15th of March,
1672, a proclamation was issued repealing all the penal laws against Papists and
Nonconformists, and granting to both the free exercise of their worship. A gift in itself
good only alarmed the nation, by the time at which it was issued, and the ground on which
it was placed. The Indulgence was based on the king's inherent supremacy in ecclesiastical
affairs, a prerogative in virtue of which he might re-impose the fetters on Nonconformists
when he chose, and the end would be that only Papists would be free, and the nation would
lose its religion. So did the people reason.
It was now (17th March, 1672) that the stroke fell upon Holland. Charles II and the
powerful Louis XIV united in a simultaneous attack on the little Protestant State, the
former by sea and the latter by land. The invasion was the more successful that it had
been so little expected. The victorious arms of France poured across the frontier of the
United Provinces in an irresistible torrent. The towns and fortresses upon the German side
opened their gates to the invaders, and the French made themselves masters of the inland
cities "in as little time as travelers usually employ to view them."[5] This rapid advance of the French
armies was aided by an extraordinary drought which that summer rendered their rivers and
canals easily fordable, and which may be said to have opened the gates of their country to
the enemy.[6]
The English had not the success at sea which the French king had on land, nor did
this displease Louis XIV. He had declared by his ambassador at Vienna that he had
undertaken this war for the extirpation of heresy, and he had instructed his admiral so to
arrange the line of battle in the joint fleets as that the English heretics should have a
large share of the promised extirpation. "He only studied," says Marvell,
"to sound our seas, to spy our ports, to learn our buildings, to contemplate our way
of fighting, to consume ours and to preserve his own navy, and to order all so that the
two great naval Powers of Europe being crushed together, he might remain sole arbitrator
of the ocean, and by consequence master of all the isles and continents."[7]
In truth Louis XIV wanted but little of accomplishing his whole design. In the
short space of three months he had, with his army of 150,000 men, overrun Holland, and
reduced the States to the brink of ruin. Many of the richest families, believing all to be
lost, had fled from the country. The conqueror was refusing to make peace on any other
terms than the establishment of the Romish Church in Holland. The French king, prompted by
his Jesuit advisers, scorned to accept of toleration for "the Catholic Apostolic
Roman religion," and demanded its public exercise throughout all the United
Provinces, and that provision should be made from the public revenue for its maintenance.
The English Government seconded the French king's demands, and the fall of Holland as a
Protestant State seemed imminent. With dragoons hewing down Protestantism in Scotland,
with arbitrary edicts and dissolute maxims wasting it in England, with Holland smitten
down and Louis XIV standing over it with his great sword, it must have seemed as if the
last hour of the Reformation was come, and the triumph of the Jesuits secured. As Innocent
X surveyed Europe from the Vatican, what cause he had for exultation and joy! He was
nearing the goal of his hopes in the speedy accession of a Popish monarch to the throne of
England.
It was out of the great wreck caused by the triumph of the Spanish arms in the preceding
century that William the Silent emerged, to achieve his mighty task of rescuing
Protestantism from impending destruction. Sinking States, discomfited armies, and
despairing Protestants surrounded him on all sides when he stood up to retrieve the mighty
ruin. A second time was the grand marvel to be repeated. The motto of his house, Tandem
fit surculus arbor,[8] was
once more to be verified. Out of this mighty disaster produced by the French arms, was a
deliverer, second only in glory to the Great William, to arise to be the champion of a
sinking Protestantism, and the upholder of perishing nations. The House of Orange had for
some time past been under a cloud. A generation of Dutchmen had arisen who knew not, or
did not care to know, the services which that house had rendered to their country. The
ambition of burgomasters had eclipsed the splendor of the glorious line of William, and
the strife of factions had brought low the country which his patriotism and wisdom had
raised so high. The office of Stadtholder had been abolished, and the young Prince of
Orange, the heir not only of the name, but of the virtues and abilities of his great
ancestor, forbidden access to all offices of the State, was living as a private person.
But the afflictions that now overtook them chastened the Hollanders, and turned their eyes
toward the young prince, if haply it might please Providence to save them by his hand. The
States-General appointed him Captain and Admiral-General of the United Provinces.[9] From this hour the spirits of
the Dutch began to revive, and the tide in their fortunes to turn. The conflict was nearly
as arduous as that which his illustrious progenitor had to wage. He dealt Louis XIV
several repulses, obliged him in surrender some of his conquests, and by his prudence and
success so won upon his countrymen, that their suffrages placed him in the high position
of Hereditary Stadtholder. We now behold a champion presenting himself on the Protestant
side worthy of the crisis. He must wage his great fight against tremendous odds. He is
opposed by all the Jesuits of Europe, by the victorious arms of France, by the treachery
and the fleet of Charles II; but he feels the grandeur as well as the gravity of his noble
mission, and he addresses himself to it with patience and courage. The question is now who
shall occupy the throne of England? Shall it be the Prince of Orange, under the title of
William III, or shall it be a protege of the Jesuits, under the title of James II? In
other words, shall the resources of Great Britain be wielded for Protestantism, or shall
its power be employed to uphold Popery and make its sway again triumphant and universal?
Fleets and armies, prayers and faith, must decide this question. The momentous issues of
the conflict were felt on both sides. The Kings of France and England pressed William of
Orange to accept of a sovereignty under their suzerainty, in the hope of beguiling him
from his destined mission. The prince replied that he would never sell the liberties of
his country which his ancestors had so long defended: and if he could not prevent the
overthrow with which they threatened it, he had one way left of not beholding its ruin and
that was "to he in the last ditch."
CHAPTER 24 Back to Top
THE POPISH PLOT, AND DEATH OF CHARLES II
The Issue Adjusted — Who shall Sit on the Throne of Britain? — Peace with
Holland — Charles II a Pensioner of Louis XIV — English Ships Seized by France
— No Redress — Duke of York's Second Marriage — William of Orange Marries
the Princess Mary — The Duke of York's Influence in the Government — Alarm
— Test Acts — The Duke's Exclusion from the Throne demanded — The Popish
Plot — Titus Oates — The Jesuit Coleman — His Letter to Pere la Chaise
— Murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey — The Duke's Exclusion — Attempts to
throw the Plot on the Presbyterians — Execution of Essex, Russell, and Sidney —
Judge Jeffreys — Illness and Death of the King — What they Said of his Death at
Rome.
Is the great war of Truth and Liberty against Error and
Slavery which had raged since the days of Wicliffe, and in which there had been so many
momentous crises, but no crisis so momentous as the present, the grand issue had now been
adjusted. That issue was simply this: Shall a Protestant or a Popish regime be established
in Christendom? In order to arrive at the final determination of this issue the question
had first to be decided, as one of the essential preliminaries, to whom shall the throne
of Great Britain belong? — whether shall Protestant or a Popish sovereign occupy it?
The house of Orange had for some time been in obscurity, but it was the singular fortune
of that illustrious line to emerge into prominence at all the great epochs of the
Reformation, and with its re-emergence the light of victory ever returned to gild again
the banners of Protestantism. The present hour produced a second William of Orange, who,
devoting himself to the cause of his country and of Christendom, when the condition of
both seemed desperate, turned the tide of the French victories which were overflowing
Europe, uplifted the sinking balance of the Protestant interests in England, and elevated
the cause of the Reformation to so stable a position, that of the second William it may be
truly said that he crowned the great struggle which the first William had commenced more
than a century before.
We cannot follow in its details the progress of this great struggle, we can only indicate
the direction and flow of its current. The veteran warriors of the French king had to
retreat before the soldiers of the young Stadtholder, and the laurels which Louis XIV had
reaped on so many bloody fields, he had at last to lay at the feet of the young prince.
The English, who had conducted their operations by sea with as little glory as the French
had carried on theirs by land, found it expedient in 1674 to conclude a peace with
Holland. The union between England and France was thus at an end, but though no longer
confederate in arms, the two crowns continued to prosecute in concert the greater plot of
overthrowing Protestantism. A deeper influence than perhaps either Power was aware of,
steadily moved both towards one goal. The more successfully to undermine and ruin the
Protestantism of Great Britain, England was kept dependent on France.
The necessities of the English monarch were great, for his Parliament was unwilling to
furnish him with supplies while he and his Government pursued measures which were in
opposition to the nation's wishes and interests. In the straits to which he was thus
reduced, Charles II was but too glad to have recourse to Louis XIV, who freely permitted
him access to his purse, that he might the more effectually advance the glory of France by
lowering the prestige of England, and securing the co-operation of the English king in the
execution of his projects, and more especially of those that had for their object the
overthrow of Protestantism, which Louis XIV. deemed the great enemy of his throne and the
great disturber of his kingdom. Thus Charles II, while he played the tyrant at home, was
content to be the pensioner abroad.
The subserviency of the English Government to France was carried still further. After
England had made peace with Holland the French king sent out his privateers, which scoured
the Channel, made prizes of English merchantmen, and came so close in shore in these
piratical expeditions, that our ships were seized at the very entrance of their harbors.
The king's Government submitted to these insults, not indeed from any principle of
Christian forbearance, but because it dared not demand reparation for the wrongs of its
subjects at the hand of the King of France.[1] Instead of enforcing redress, insults were recompensed with
favors, and vast stores of warlike ammunition, guns, iron, shot, gunpowder, pikes, and
other weapons were sent across, to arm the fortresses and ships of France. This
transportation of warlike material continued to go on, more or less openly, from June,
1675, to June, 1677. [2] Such
was the reprisal we took of the French for burning our ships and robbing our merchants, as
if King Charles were bent on doing what he had urged the Prince of Orange to do in respect
of Holland, and were content to hold the sovereignty of England under the protection of
France. The two crowns were drawn yet closer by the marriage of the king's brother, the
Duke of York. His first wife, a daughter of Lord Clarendon, having died, Louis XIV chose a
second for him in the person of the Princess of Modena, a relation of the reigning Pope.
The princess was a pensioner of France, and Louis XIV admitted her husband to the same
honor, by offering his purse to the duke, since their interests were now the same, to
assist him against all his enemies.
While one train of events was going forward, and the throne of England was being drawn
over to the side of Rome, another train of events was in progress, tending to link that
same throne to the Protestant interests. Another marriage, which took place soon after the
duke's, paved the way for that great issue in which this complication of affairs was to
end. The Prince of Orange, having finished his campaign of 1677, came across to England,
accompanied by a noble retinue, to open marriage negotiations with the Princess Mary. This
princess, the daughter of the Duke of York by his first wife, was a lady of graceful
person and vigorous intellect, and the prince on seeing her was fascinated with her
charms, and eagerly pressed his suit. After some delays on the part of the king and the
duke, the marriage was at last arranged, and was consummated to the great joy of the
people of both countries.[3] To
that general satisfaction there was one exception. Louis XIV was startled when he learned
that an affair of such consequence had been transacted at a court where, during many
years, nothing of moment had been concluded without his knowledge and advice. Our
ambassador at Versailles, Montague, said that he had never seen the king so moved as on
receiving this news. "The duke," he said, "had even his daughter to the
greatest enemy he had in the world."[4] Men saw in it another proof that the great conqueror had begun to
fall before the young Stadtholder. The marriage placed William in the line of succession
to the English throne, though still there were between him and this high dignity the
possible offspring of Charles II and also James, Duke of York.
Meanwhile the kingdom was filled with priests and Jesuits. Their numbers had been
recruited by new arrivals in the train of the Princess of Modena. Mass was said openly in
the queen's chapel at Somerset House, and the professors of the Romish faith were raised
to the highest offices of the kingdom. Charles wore the crown, but the Duke of York
governed the nation. The king, abandoning himself to his pleasures, left the care of all
affairs to his brother; whom, although a member of the Church of Rome, no one durst call a
Papist without incurring the penalty of death. All who had eyes, and were willing to use
them, might now see the religion of Rome marching like an armed man upon the liberties of
England.
The Parliament was at last aroused, and set about concerting measures to save the country.
They had often addressed the king on the matter, but in a manner so little in earnest that
nothing came of it. If Charles was of any faith it was that of Rome, and his usual answer
to the supplications of the Commons, praying him to take steps to prevent the growth of
Popery, was the issue of a new proclamation, which neither hurt the Romanists nor
benefited the Protestants. Now the Parliament, more in earnest, resolved to exclude all
Papists from any share in the government. For this end the "Test Act" was
framed. This Act required, "That all persons bearing any office, or place of trust
and profit, shall take the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance in public and open court, and
shall also receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the usage of the Church
of England." The swearer was also required to subscribe a declaration that he did not
believe in Transubstantiation. This test aimed at a great deal, but it accomplished
little. If it excluded the more honest of the professors of the Roman creed, and only
these, for no test could bar the entrance of the Jesuit,[5] it equally excluded the Nonconformists from the service of the
State. Immediately on the passing of the Bill, the Duke of York and the Lord Treasurer
Clifford laid down all their offices. These were the first-fruits, but they were
altogether deceptive; for while the duke professed to bow to the nation's wishes by
publicly stripping himself of his offices, he, continued to wield in private all the
influence he had before exercised openly.
The fears of the nation rose still higher. The Test Act had done little to shelter them
from the storm they saw approaching, and they demanded other and greater securities. The
duke had laid down his staff as commander of the army, but by-and-by he would grasp a yet
mightier rod, the sceptre of England namely. The nation demanded his exclusion from the
throne. There could be no permanent safety for the liberties of England, they believed,
till the duke's succession was declared illegal. The army lay encamped at Blackheath; this
also aggravated the popular terror.
The excuse pleaded by the court for stationing the army so near to London was the fear of
the Dutch. The Dutch against whom the army are to act, said the people, are not so far off
as Holland, they are the men who assemble in St. Stephens. The court has lost all hope of
the Parliament establishing the Roman religion by law, and here is the army ready at a
stroke to sweep away all Parliaments, and establish by the sword the Roman Church and
arbitrary government. These suspicions were held as all but confirmed, when it was found
that in the course of a single month not fewer than fifty-seven commissions were issued to
Popish recusants, without demanding either the oath of supremacy or the test. The
Secretary of State who countersigned the warrants was committed to the Tower by the
Commons, but liberated next day by the king.
The alarm rose to a panic by an extraordinary occurrence which happened at this time, and
which was enveloped in considerable mystery, from which it has not even yet been wholly
freed. We refer to the Popish Plot. Few things have so deeply convulsed England. The
information was in some parts so inconsistent, incredible, and absurd, and in others so
circumstantial, and so certainly true, and the story so fell in with the character of the
times, which were prolific in strange surmises and unnatural and monstrously wicked
devices, that few people doubted that a daring and widely ramified Conspiracy was in
progress for burying England and all its Protestant institutions in ruins. Titus Oates was
the first to give information of this astounding project. Oates, who had received orders
in the Church of England, but had reconciled himself to Rome, appeared before the king and
Council, and stated in effect, "That there had been a plot carried on by Jesuits and
other Catholics, against his Majesty's life, the Protestant religion, and the government
of this kingdom." Oates was only half informed; he was to a large extent guessing,
and hence the variations, mistakes, and contradictions into which he fell. He may have
be