CHAPTER IX.
DAVID BEATOUN ESTABLISHES HIS INFLUENCE: PERSECUTION REVIVES.
(1539.)
DAVID BEATOUN.
A man with whom we have already made acquaintance was now for eight years to play a prominent part in Scotland, and to contend energetically against the Reformation. This was David Beatoun, one of the members of the Fifeshire family, and nephew of archbishop James. He belonged to the class of minds which take their place with enthusiasm under an absolute government, and become its most formidable instruments. Thoroughly at home and highly esteemed at the court of France, it was he who had conducted the negotiations for the king’s marriage, first with Madeleine of Valois, afterwards with Mary of Lorraine. But his intent was to devote his life to a union more sublime—that of Scotland and the papacy. Animated with hearty sympathy for Gregory VII., Boniface VIII., and Innocent III., he believed, as they did, that Rome, formerly mistress of the pagan world, should now be mistress of the Christian world. In his eyes all authority emanated from her, and he was resolved to consecrate to her his life, his energies, and everything that he possessed. As he meant to fight with carnal weapons, he must attain some dignity which would invest him with authority to make use of them. He speedily attained his end. Paul III., alarmed at seeing the separation of England from Rome, and fearing lest Scotland, as she had a nephew of Henry VIII. for her king, should follow her example, was anxious to have in that country one man who would be absolutely devoted to him. David Beatoun offered himself. The pope created him cardinal in December 1538, and thenceforth the red, a color thoroughly congenial with him, became his own, and as it were his symbol. Not that he was by any means a religious fanatic; he was versed neither in theology nor in moral philosophy. He was a hierarchical fanatic. Two points above all were offensive to him in evangelical Christians: one that they were not submissive to the pope; the other, that they censured immorality in the clergy, for his own licentiousness drew on himself similar rebukes. He aimed at being in Scotland a kind of Wolsey, only with more violence and bloodshed. The one thing of moment in his eyes was that everything in church and state should bend under a twofold despotism. Endowed with large intelligence, consummate ability, and indomitable energy, he had all the qualities needed to insure success in the aim on which his mind was perpetually bent without ever being diverted from it. Passionately eager for his projects, he was insensible to the ills which must result from them. One matter alone preoccupied him: the destruction of all liberty. The papacy divined his character, and created him cardinal.
For the suppression of evangelical Christianity, which upheld the supreme authority of the Divine Word in the presence of the tiara and its oracles, Beatoun needed the royal support. His first step therefore must be to make himself master of the king. This was not difficult. The nobility had rights which they meant to make respected, and which the crown wished to take away. The king and the cardinal were naturally impelled to unite against the Gospellers and the nobles. In addition, James V., a prince of good natural endowments both of body and of mind, and of a frank and amiable disposition, was strongly inclined to sensual pleasures. In order to keep him out of the way of state affairs, the courtiers and the regent had fostered in him the taste for intrigues and adventures of gallantry, a vice which he never got rid of even after his marriage.[206] Dissolute as a man, prodigal as a king, and superstitious as a Catholic, he could not but easily fall under the sway of superior minds,[207] especially if they promised him money, and that Beatoun could do.
Henry VIII., who, like his nephew, was habitually in want of money, had sought it in the treasures of the monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions. The King of Scotland might be tempted to follow that example. Beatoun, and the other ecclesiastical dignitaries who were about the prince, discovered a certain means of preventing it. Instead of taking the money of the clergy, they said, let the king take that of the Gospellers; let the property of those who may be condemned to death for their faith, and even that of those who, after having embraced the Reform, may abjure it, be confiscated for his majesty’s benefit. This scheme was all the more seductive in that, while it secured their wealth to the clergy, it at the same time deprived the friends of the Reformation of theirs. This was killing two birds with one stone. The plan gives a special character to the Scottish persecutions. The cruel Gardiner said in England, that when people went stag-hunting they must fire at the leader of the herd, and that the same course must be pursued in hunting the Gospellers. In Scotland it was agreed not to harass those poor Christians who had nothing to leave at their death. Why seize these lean sheep? The knife must be laid on the big fat ones—on those which have a rich fleece. War on the rich! This was the cry raised by the party of the persecutors. For about four years the sword had not been drawn from its scabbard, and the horror excited by the persecution of 1534 had, as it seemed, subsided. The Gospel had reaped advantage from the lull: the number of those who confessed Christ as their only Saviour had increased, and thus the irritation of the priests was soon aroused again.
WAR ON THE RICH.
Martin Balkerley, a wealthy citizen of Edinburgh, was confined in the castle at the time when David Beatoun was going to be made cardinal at Rome. The latter had already acquired great influence. As coadjutor to his uncle, the archbishop of St. Andrews, who was then advanced in years and in ill health, and whom he was to succeed, the administration of all ecclesiastical affairs was even then in his hands.[208] Balkerley, who was imprisoned for reading the prohibited books, complained as follows: ‘I have done nothing,’ said he, ‘but refuse to give up my book of matins to the officer.’ The king sent him back to Beatoun, who then referred the case to the privy council. The lords composing the council promised the accused his liberty on condition of his giving a ransom of one thousand pounds sterling, an enormous sum according to the value of money at that period. This ransom was paid on February 27, 1539, but Balkerley remained in prison. It was not enough. Beatoun, who had then been cardinal for a month or two, demanded an additional ransom of double the amount. Three rich Scotchmen offered themselves as bail on March 7, pledging themselves that the prisoner would do the king’s will. Five days later he was set at liberty. Thus the sum of three thousand pounds, paid down, was at length thought sufficient to expiate the crime of reading the New Testament.
Beatoun did not think it necessary thenceforward to have recourse to the privy council. His arrogance had increased, and he assumed a haughty air. As the consuls of ancient Rome had their lictors, who bore the fasces before them as the symbol of their power, so the cardinal, whithersoever he went, had the cross carried before him; and this symbol of the love of God, which signifies pardon, signified, when it preceded Beatoun, condemnation, and spread terror everywhere. The cardinal claimed to be master of souls, and to dispose of the lives of men. The money which he had so shamefully acquired served only to stimulate his desire to get more by the same means. Several eminent and wealthy citizens—Walter Stewart, son of Lord Ochiltree, Robert Forester, brother of the laird of Arngibbon, David Graham, John Steward, son of Lord Methven, with others belonging to the élite of Scotland—were thrown into prison. In the castles, and in the towns of Stirling, Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee, numerous families were left desolate.[209]
MISSION OF THE DUKE OF NORFOLK.
Henry VIII. saw in these acts of the government of his nephew the signal of an impending attack, and he sent one of the greatest lords of his court, the duke of Norfolk, to Berwick and to Carlisle to watch Scotland. Norfolk attentively investigated the condition of that country, and perceived there two opposite currents. ‘The clergy of Scotland,’ he wrote to London, ‘be in such fear that their king should do there as the king’s highness hath done in this realm, that they do their best to bring their master to the war; and by many ways I am advertised that a great part of the temporalty there would their king should follow our example, which I pray God give him grace to come unto.’[210] Presently Norfolk learnt that James V. was making his cannon ready; that a proclamation was published at Edinburgh and in all parts of Scotland, enjoining every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty to be in readiness to set out; and that the fanatic cardinal was gone to the continent to make sure of the aid which Scotland might hope for, both from the king of France and from the pope. Norfolk ere long saw with his own eyes the sad effects of the intrigues of the clergy. Not a day passed but some gentlemen and priests, who were compelled to flee the country because they had had the audacity to read the Holy Scriptures in English, came to him to seek a refuge. ‘Ah,’ they to said him, ‘if we should be captured we should be put to execution.’[211] In the midst of these persecutions and preparations for war, James, initiated in the art of Roman policy, feigned the most pacific sentiments. ‘You may be sure,’ he said to one of the English agents, ‘that I shall never break with the king, my uncle.’ But Norfolk was not deceived: he felt the greatest distrust of the influence of Mary of Guise. ‘The young queen,’ he wrote to Cromwell, ‘is all papist.’[212] That ill-starred marriage linked in his eyes the family and the realm of the Stuarts with France and the papacy.
Norfolk was not wrong. The cardinal, having won over the king by flattery and by the heavy fines extorted from the evangelical Christians, was eager to take advantage of the circumstance for the destruction of the Reform and the satisfaction of some grudges of long standing. A monk named Killon, possessing some poetic talent, had composed, after the fashion of the age, a tragedy on the death of Christ. On the morning of Good Friday, probably in 1536, a numerous audience had assembled at Stirling to hear it. The king himself and the court were present. The piece presented a lively picture of the spirit and the conduct of the Romish clergy. The action was animated, the characters well marked, and the words vigorous and sometimes rude. Fanatical priests and hard-hearted Pharisees instigated the people to demand the death of Jesus, and procured from Pilate his condemnation. The design of this work was so marked that the simplest folk said to one another, ‘It is just the same with us: the bishops and the monks get those persecuted who love Jesus Christ.’[213] The clergy abstained for the moment from molesting Killon, but they took note of his daring drama.
Another Gospeller had left very unpleasant memories in Beatoun’s mind. This was the good dean Forrest, who had boldly said that he had never found either a bad epistle or a bad gospel. The cardinal was only waiting for an opportunity to arrest him, Killon, and others. He had not long to wait. When the vicar of Tullybody, near Stirling, was married, Forrest and Killon had attended the ceremony, as well as a monk named Beverage, Sir Duncan Sympson, a priest, a gentleman named Robin Forrester, and three or four other people of Stirling.[214] At the marriage feast, at the beginning of Lent, they had eaten flesh, according to that word of St. Paul, ‘Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat.’ On March 1, 1539, or according to some authorities, on the last day of February,[215] they were all seized and taken before the cardinal and the bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld, who indulged in practices far more criminal than the eating of what God made for that purpose.
PROSECUTION OF FORREST AND KILLON.
The official accuser, John Lauder, one of Beatoun’s creatures, addressing Forrest rudely, said to him—‘False heretic! thou sayest it is not lawful to kirkmen to take their teinds [tithes] and offerings and corpse presents.’ And the dean Forrest replied, ‘Brother, I said not so: but I said it was not lawful to kirkmen to spend the patrimony of the kirk as they do, as on riotous feasting and on fair women, and at playing at cards and dice: and neither the kirk well maintained nor the people instructed in God’s Word, nor the sacraments duly administered to them as Christ commanded.’
Accuser: ‘Dare thou deny that which is openly known in the country? that thou gave again to thy parishioners the cow and the upmost cloths, saying you had no right to them? ’
Dean: ‘I gave them again to them that had more mister [need] than I’
Accuser: ‘Thou false heretic! thou learned all thy parishioners to say the Paternoster, the creed, and the Ten Commandments in English.’
Dean: ‘Brother, my people are so rude and ignorant they understand no Latin, so that my conscience provoked me to learn them the words of their salvation in English, and the Ten Commandments which are the law of God, whereby they might observe the same. I teached the belief, whereby they might know their faith in God and Jesus Christ his Son, and of his death and resurrection. Moreover I teached them and learned them the Lord’s own prayer in the mother-tongue, to the effect that they might know how they should pray.’
Accuser: ‘Why did you that? By our acts and ordinances of our holy father the pope?’
Dean: ‘I follow the acts of our master and Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the apostle Paul, who saith that he had rather speak five words to the understanding and edifying of his people than ten thousand in a strange tongue which they understand not.’
Accuser: ‘Where finds thou that?’
Dean: ‘In my book here, in my sleeve.’
At these words the accuser, rushing at a bound on the dean, snatched from his hands the New Testament, and holding it up, said with a loud voice, ‘Behold, sirs, he has the book of heresy in his sleeve that makes all the din and play in our kirk.’
Dean: ‘Brother, ye could say better if ye pleased, nor to call the book of the Evangel of Jesus Christ the book of heresy.’
‘It is enough to burn thee for,’ said the accuser, coolly.[216]
Five of these pious men were immediately condemned to death and were taken the same day to the castle hill, where the piles were ready; and the king, following the example of Francis I., was present with his court at this cruel execution.[217] Those who went first to the stake piously and wonderfully consoled those who were to follow them. ‘At the beginning of 1539,’ says Buchanan, ‘many suspected of Lutheranism were arrested; five were burnt at the end of February, nine recanted, and others were sentenced to banishment.’[218] The same day orders were issued to confiscate the property of those who had been declared heretics.[219] The king, the cardinals, and their subordinates took their reward out of the penalties.
GEORGE BUCHANAN.
The illustrious Buchanan was himself in prison at that time. He was thirty-two years of age, and after a residence at the university of Paris, he had returned to Scotland and had been named preceptor to the earl of Murray, a natural son of James V. He was a poet as well as a historian, and his genius grew and developed itself under the influence of the classical poetry which charmed his leisure hours. There was something sharp and biting in his temperament, peculiarly apt for satire; and he had not spared the clergy in his Somnium, his Palinode, and above all in his satire against the Franciscans. It was for this last poem he was imprisoned. The companies of monks had keenly resented his sarcasm, and there was not a man in all Scotland whose death was more eagerly desired by the Romish party. It was said that the cardinal offered the king a considerable sum of money in order to compass it. However that may be, Buchanan was at that time a prisoner and was carefully watched in the prison of St. Andrews, some of the guards even spending the night in his room. The young man, already an illustrious writer, knew that they were seeking his life; the death of five martyrs showed him clearly enough the fate which awaited himself. One night he perceived that his keepers had fallen asleep.[220] He went on tiptoe towards the window, and climbing up the walls, succeeded, although with difficulty, in getting out. He then passed on and surmounted other obstacles as great;[221] and thus by the aid of God, and stimulated by the desire of saving his life, ‘he escaped the rage of those that sought his blood.’[222] He betook himself to France, taught for several years in the Collège de Guienne at Bordeaux, and afterwards in a college at Paris. Henry Stephens, when he published at Paris the first edition of Buchanan’s Paraphrase of the Psalms, calls him on the title-page of the book, ‘Poetarum nostri sæculi facile princeps.’ His escape took place, as nearly as we can learn, in March 1539. Many Gospellers, as we have said, followed the example of Buchanan that same month. As for himself, he appears at that period of his life to have been nothing more than one of the numerous poets and prose-writers who were then attacking the vices and the follies of the Romish clergy. But while attacking superstition, Buchanan did not fall as many did into infidelity: he adhered heartily at a later period to the evangelical reform, and Knox bears noble witness to him.[223]
Beatoun, while sacrificing many victims, had lit a fire on elevated ground, ‘to the effect that the rest of the bischoppes myght schaw thame selfis no less fervent to suppress the light of God.’[224] That signal was not made in vain. In the town of Ayr, in the midst of the rich plains of that fertile county, was a young gentleman named Kennedy, about eighteen years of age, who had received a liberal education, and had tasted of the Gospel, without however attaining a well-grounded faith; a state sufficiently accounted for by his years. Gifted with some poetic faculty he had not spared the ignorance of the priests. Kennedy was seized and cast into prison.
In the same diocese, that of Glasgow, there lived in a convent of the Cordeliers one of those enlightened and pious monks who shone like stars in the deep night of the age. His name was Jerome Russel; his character was good, his wit ready, and his mind enriched with literary acquirements. Wharton, writing to Lord Cromwell in November 1538, speaks of a friar John, a well-informed man who was imprisoned at Dumfries at the instance of the bishops, and who had been loaded with chains because he professed respecting the law of God the same opinions which were held in England.[225] It is not to be doubted that he speaks of Russel. Dumfries is not far from Ayr.
The archbishop of Glasgow, Gawin Dunbar, was not of so persecuting a spirit as Beatoun, and as lord chancellor he was invested with the highest authority in the state. It was then the summer of 1539, and as Beatoun, although named cardinal, had not yet received the pontifical act which conferred on him that dignity, he could not have dared to appear in the diocese of Glasgow with his cross borne before him. But it was not enough for him to know that the learned Russel and the young Kennedy were in prison, he must get them burnt. Consequently he sent to Glasgow his favorite agent Lauder, who could affect insinuating manners and put on exaggerated pretensions to compass his ends. The clever notary Andrew Oliphant and the ardent monk Mortman accompanied him, charged to obtain from the archbishop the promise ‘that he would imbrue his hands in the blood of the friends of God.’ Knox therefore calls these three men Satan’s sergeants.
TRIAL OF KENNEDY AND RUSSEL.
Having reached Glasgow the three men got round the chancellor-prelate, and demanded of him far more than he could lawfully grant: he was not only to have the two evangelical Christians examined, he must put them to death. What reproaches he would incur if he protected heretics! what praises would he not win if he were ardent in serving the Church! Gawin yielded, and Russel and Kennedy were put on their trial. They appeared before the court, over which the archbishop himself presided, and the proceedings began. Thanks to the inventive zeal of Lauder and his colleagues, numerous charges were brought forward against the accused. Kennedy had an upright soul, but had rather an inclination to the faith than faith itself. The imposing display of judicial pomp, the gravity of the accusations, the severity of the punishment which was preparing, and the horrible agony which was to precede it, all disturbed the young man; he was distressed, and being sharply pressed to retract what he had written, he was intimidated and went astray.
Russel, on the other hand, whose faith, the fruit of close examination of the Word of God, was developed and established by long-continued studies, appeared full of decision. He replied with wisdom to his accusers, defended by powerful proofs the doctrines which he professed, and repulsed with calmness, dignity, and intrepidity the false accusations of his enemies. His words had an unlooked-for result: they reawakened the conscience of his young companion. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of all consolation, worked in him. The Christian life, which had scarcely begun in his heart, now expanded itself. ‘He felt himself as it were a new creature; his mind was changed;’ a living faith filled his heart; he was confirmed in his resolution.[226] From that time he no longer hesitated to give up his life for the truth. The happiness which he had lost came back to him; his countenance brightened, his tongue was loosed, there was a radiance in his whole person; and, falling on his knees, he exclaimed with joy—‘O eternal God, how wondrous is that love and mercy that thou bearest unto mankind, and unto me the most caitiff and miserable wretch above all others; for even now, when I would have denied thee and thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, my only Saviour, and so have casten myself in everlasting damnation, thou by thine own hand hast pulled me from the very bottom of hell, and makest me to feel that heavenly comfort which takes from me that ungodly fear wherewith before I was oppressed. Now I defy death.’ Then, rising, he turned towards his persecutors and said, ‘Do what ye please; I praise God I am ready.’[227]
The prayer of Kennedy touched the archbishop of Glasgow. He was disturbed. ‘It is better to spare these men,’ said he; ‘executions such as those which have taken place only do harm to the cause which they are meant to serve.’ The cardinal’s agents resolved to frighten the prelate, whose weakness they well knew, and they cried out lustily—‘Take care what ye are doing, my lord. Will ye condemn all that my lord cardinal and the other bishops and we have done? If so ye do, ye show yourself enemy to the kirk.’ Fear fell on the archbishop. Repressing the pity which had touched him, and silencing his conscience for the sake of preserving his reputation and his comfortable and easy life, he gave way.
THEIR MARTYRDOM.
Russel had remained calm till then, but exasperated by the calumnies of his enemies, indignant at the weakness of the archbishop, and confident in his own innocence, he said with dignity—‘This is your hour and power of darkness; now sit ye as judges, we stand wrongously accused, and more wrongously to be condemned; but the day shall come when our innocency shall appear, and that ye shall see your own blindness, to your everlasting confusion. Go forward, and fulfil the measure of your iniquity.’ Russel and Kennedy, condemned to the flames, were immediately handed over to the secular power.
The day following, as they passed to the place of execution, Russel thought that he perceived some apprehension in his friend. ‘Brother,’ said he, ‘fear not: more potent is he that is in us than is he that is in the world. The pain that we shall suffer is short and shall be light, but our joy and our consolation shall never have end.’ They who heard it were wonderfully affected. When the two martyrs arrived at the pile, they fell on their knees and prayed; then, rising, they were bound to the stake without uttering a word, and supported the fire with patience, making no sign of fear. ‘They won the victory over death, looking with faith,’ says a historian, ‘for everlasting habitations.’