History of Scotland

by Margaret MacArthur

CHAPTER VI.

THE REFORMATION.

The Reformation (1)—state of the Church (2)—the first Covenant (3)—religious riots (4)—treaties with England (5)—Reformation statutes (6)—return of the Queen (7)—division of the Church lands (8)—fall of Huntly (9)—second marriage of the Queen (10)—murder of Rizzio (11)—flight to Dunbar (12)—murder of Darnley (13)—third marriage of the Queen (14)—surrender at Carberry (15)—captivity of the Queen (16)—James VI.; Regency of Murray (17)—escape of Mary (18)—Battle of Langside; flight of Mary (19)—the Conference (20)—state of parties (21)—murder of the Regent (22)—Regency of Lennox (23)—taking of Dunbarton (24)—Parliament at Stirling (25)—Regency of Mar (26)—Tulchan bishops (27)—death of Knox (28)—taking of Edinburgh (29)—Regency of Morton (30)—fall of Morton (31)—raid of Ruthven (32)—fall of Gowrie (33)—fall of Arran (34)—death of Mary—(35) marriage of the King (36)—abolition of episcopacy (37)—the Spanish blanks (38)—religious tumults (39)—the Gowrie Plot (40)—union of the Crowns (41)—state of the nation (42)—summary (43).

1. The Reformation.—Five hundred years had gone by since the English, who fled from the Norman Conqueror, had brought about a great social revolution in the Celtic kingdom, where they found a refuge. We now find another revolution arising from a very similar cause. But there was a difference in the way in which these great changes were wrought out characteristic of the two centuries in which they took place. In the eleventh century it was the influence of the Court which little by little changed the people; in the sixteenth century, the people struggled against, and in the end overcame, the opposition of the Court. When Mary Tudor became Queen of England, she wished to place the English Church under the authority of the Pope, even more than it had been before the changes of her father Henry. All who held the Reformed doctrines were persecuted as heretics. Many of these so-called heretics sought safety across the Border, in Scotland, and were welcomed there with a kindness that would have seemed impossible but a few years before, when the deadly war was waging. But religious sympathy got the better of national hate, and thus the religious zeal of Mary Tudor may be said to have hastened the Reformation in Scotland, which the cruelties of Henry and of Somerset had for a while delayed. Still the traditional bent of the national feeling influenced the character of the new movement, and led the Scottish Reformers to mould anew the polity and form of worship of their Church after the model of the French Calvinists, rather than to follow the example of the Church of England in her merely doctrinal reform.

2. State of the Church.—In Scotland, as in the other lands of Western Christendom, the clergy had lost their hold on the commons by their immorality and irreligion; their greed of money, and their abuse of their spiritual powers; while they had roused the jealousy of the nobles by their wealth, and by the influence won by their learning, which, though it was often but little, secured to them the offices of state. The hope of getting hold of some of the well-cultivated Church lands, led many lairds, as landholders are called in Scotland, to join the popular movement of Reform.

3. The First Covenant.—The friends of Reform were thus silently becoming a power in the state, and, as had been the Scottish custom for centuries, they joined themselves together by a bond, 1557. In this bond they pledged themselves to support one another, and to do their utmost for the spread of the new doctrines. This bond is called the First Covenant. By it the authority of the Pope was renounced, and the use of the English Bible and of the Prayer Book of Edward VI. was enjoined. Thenceforth the barons who had signed it, called themselves the Lords of the Congregation. The burning of Walter Mill, an aged priest of blameless life, who suffered for heresy at St. Andrews in 1558, roused them to action. They demanded of the Regent a reformation of religion after the principles of their bond. Though at first she seemed inclined to grant what they asked, she afterwards set her face against them, and cited some of the preachers of the new doctrines before the Privy Council. A great body of their followers gathered at Perth to come with them; the Regent, in alarm, begged them to disperse and promised to withdraw the citation. Instead of doing this, she outlawed the preachers for not coming.

4. Religious Riots.—This breach of promise on the Regent's part provoked their followers to a breach of the peace. The mob attacked, and tried to pull down, the churches and the religious houses at Perth, May 11, 1559, and this tumult was followed by riots of the same kind in other towns. John Knox was the spiritual leader of the movement. But he only wished to destroy the images and ornaments in the churches, which he looked on as idolatrous, not the churches themselves. Nor is it to be laid to the charge of the Reformers that there is but one cathedral church left entire in Scotland; the ruin of far the greater number of the churches and religious houses is due to the English invasions, or to the neglect of later times. After this outbreak the Congregation strengthened themselves in Perth, but many of the Lords, among others the Lord James Stewart, illegitimate son of James the Fifth, joined the Regent, and, had she been true to her promises, the strife which now broke out between the two parties might have been prevented. But she led a French force against the Congregation, who were now in open rebellion. An agreement was made that the questions at issue between them should be left to be settled by the Estates, while both armies laid down their arms, and the French garrison was turned out of Perth. But the Regent did not keep to the spirit of this treaty, though she avoided breaking the letter of it by garrisoning Perth with native troops hired with French money. On this the Congregation flew to arms, seized St. Andrews, and occupied Edinburgh. There, in a meeting which they called a Parliament, they deposed the Regent, though they still professed loyalty to the King and Queen. But they were too weak to hold the advantage they had won, and as Elizabeth had now succeeded Mary in England, they looked to her for support.

5. Treaties with England.—Elizabeth would not treat with subjects in open rebellion against their Sovereign, though Mary had given her good reason for offence, by quartering the arms of England on her shield, as though she were lawful Queen and Elizabeth only a usurper. At last a treaty was arranged at Berwick in 1560, between Elizabeth and the rebels. Chatelherault, the next heir to the Scottish crown, acted for the Congregation, and by this treaty Elizabeth promised to send troops to prevent the French conquering Scotland. The war that now followed presented the unwonted sight of the Scots on Scottish ground fighting side by side with the English against their old allies of France. But, before the year was out, the French were called away by troubles at home, and by the treaty of Edinburgh it was agreed that no foreigners should in future be employed in the country without the consent of the Estates. The Estates promised in the name of the King and Queen that they should acknowledge Elizabeth as lawful Queen of England, and thenceforth make no pretension to her kingdom.

6. Reformation Statutes.—Soon after the conclusion of this treaty, the Regent died. The Estates then approved the Geneva Confession of Faith, abjured the authority of the Pope, and forbade the saying of the mass, or even assisting at the mass, on pain of forfeiture for the first offence, banishment for the second, death for the third; 25th August, 1560. Thus the old ecclesiastical system, with all its rites and ceremonies, was suddenly overthrown. But this was only in name; in reality it only died out bit by bit.

7. Return of the Queen.—Just a year after this, the Queen came home, August 1561. She was now a widow, so the Scots were freed from the fear they had felt of seeing their country sink into a province of France. The people, who had an almost superstitious reverence for kingship, which was very inconsistent with their contempt for kingly authority, welcomed her with open arms, and showed their good will by a greater display of discordant and grotesque rejoicing than the austere teachers of the new doctrines could approve. As yet they only saw in her the representative of that long line of Celtic kings whom they chose to look on as their own. She was the "child," for whom they had struggled so long, and had suffered so much from the English. They had yet to find out that she had come back to them French in all but birth, gifted with wit, intellect, and beauty, but subtle beyond their power of searching, and quite as zealous for the old form of religion as they were for the new one. The Queen, too, who came thus as a stranger among her own people, had to deal with a state of things unknown in former reigns. Hitherto the Church had taken the side of the Crown against the nobles; now both were united against the Crown, whose only hope lay in the quarrels between these ill-matched allies.

8. Division of the Church Lands.—The chief cause of discord between them was the property of the Church. The Reformed ministers fancied that they had succeeded, not only to the Pope's right of dictation in all matters, public and private, but to the lands of the Church as well. To neither of these claims would the Lords agree. They were as little inclined to submit to the tyranny of presbyters as to the tyranny of the Pope. They withstood the ministers who wished to forbid the Queen and her attendants hearing mass in her private chapel, and they refused to accept as law the First Book of Discipline, a code of rules drawn up by the ministers for the guidance of the new Church. As to the land, much of it had already passed into the hands of laymen, who, with the lands, generally bore the title of the Church dignitary who had formerly held them. The Privy Council took one-third of what remained to pay the stipends of the ministers, while the rest was supposed to remain in the hands of the Churchmen in possession, and, as they died out, it was to fall in to the Crown.

9. Fall of Huntly.—Lord James Stewart, Prior of St. Andrews, whom the Queen created Earl of Murray, was the hope of the Protestants, but in the north the Romanists were still numerous and strong. Their head was the Earl of Huntly, chief of the Gordons, who reigned supreme over most of the north, and whose word was law where decrees of parliament would have been set at nought. As his great power was looked on as dangerous to the state, his downfall was resolved on. Murray and the Queen set out for the north to visit him, as was said, but with so large a force that he thought it expedient to keep out of their way. His Castle of Inverness was besieged and taken and the governor hanged, and his followers were defeated and he himself slain at Corrichie, near Aberdeen, in 1562. His body was brought to Edinburgh, as was the custom in cases of treason, that the sentence of forfeiture might be passed on it. His son was beheaded at Aberdeen; and thus the power of the Gordons was broken. Thus Mary during the first part of her reign showed no favour to the Romanists, but still she did not confirm the Reformation Statutes.

10. Second Marriage of the Queen.—The most interesting question now for all parties was, whom the Queen would marry. Many foreign princes were talked of, and Elizabeth suggested her own favourite, the Earl of Leicester, but Mary settled the matter herself by falling in love with her own cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. He was son of Lennox and Margaret Douglas, and was therefore the grandson of Margaret Tudor, and was received as first prince of the blood at the English court. Mary called a special council and announced to them her intended marriage. She then raised Darnley to the Earldom of Ross, and afterwards created him Duke of Albany. They were married with the rites of the Romish Church, July 29, 1565. Murray had refused his consent to the marriage. He and some others of the lay Lords now took up arms. They got into the town of Edinburgh, but were fired at from the Castle, and, as they were disappointed in their hopes of recruits, they retreated to Dumfries. There they issued a declaration that their religion was in danger, and that the Queen had acted unconstitutionally in proclaiming Darnley King of Scots without the consent of the Estates. The feudal force was summoned, and the King and Queen led it against them. On this the Lords retreated into England and disarmed their followers.

11. Murder of Rizzio.—Mary soon began to tire of her worthless husband. She had all the weakness of her family for making favourites, and no wisdom in the choice of them. At this time she had taken a fancy to an Italian, David Rizzio, who acted as her secretary, and who had great skill in music to recommend him. The nobles grew jealous of this foreigner and determined to get rid of him; but, to save themselves from any ill-consequences of the murder which they had planned, they persuaded Darnley to sign a bond promising to stand by them in anything they might do. At the same time he signed another bond for the recall of Murray and the other banished lords. The Queen summoned a parliament, which she expected would pronounce sentence of forfeiture on those banished lords. In order to secure compliance with her wishes, she interfered with the choosing of the Lords of the Articles, into whose hands all the real business of the parliament was thrown. One evening, as she was sitting at supper in the palace at Holyrood, the conspirators, who had secured the gates, burst into the room, headed by the Lord Ruthven. They seized on Rizzio, who clutched at the Queen for help; they dragged him into the outer room; killed him, and then threw the body downstairs, March 9, 1566. His fate was not made known to the Queen till next day. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who already stood high in the Queen's favour, and the Earl of Huntly, who had been restored to the titles and estates which his father had forfeited, were in the palace when it was thus taken possession of, but they contrived to escape.

12. Flight to Dunbar.—The Queen showed no signs of anger at first. She pretended to be reconciled to Darnley, and promised pardon to the banished lords. When they appeared before her the next day, she received Murray affectionately. But the confederates soon found that they had been mistaken in their hopes of Darnley, for in the night following he fled with the Queen to Dunbar. Bothwell brought up a force for her protection, and before the end of the month she re-entered Edinburgh. Rizzio's body was taken up and buried among the kings in the palace chapel, and James Douglas, Earl of Morton, Ruthven, and others were cited to answer for the murder of Rizzio, and, as they did not appear, they were outlawed.

13. Murder of Darnley.—A new favourite soon took the place of Rizzio in the Queen's favour. This was Bothwell, who had lately done such good service in coming to her aid at Dunbar. The abbey-lands of Melrose and Haddington were given to him. He was made Lord High Admiral, and Warden of the Borders, and it was noticed that it was he and not Darnley who played the principal part at the baptism of her son, the Prince of Scotland. Darnley was hated by everyone; by his wife, because he had connived at the murder of her favourite, and by his accomplices for his treachery in deserting them. Shortly after this he fell ill of the small-pox, and was taken to Glasgow, to be tended by his father, Lennox. There, when he was getting better, the Queen paid him a visit, and proposed that he should be taken to Craigmillar Castle, in order to hasten his recovery; but this plan was afterwards changed, and he went instead to a house called the Kirk-o'-Field, close to Edinburgh. This house was blown up on the night of February 9, 1567, while the Queen was present at a ball at Holyrood, and the bodies of Darnley and of his page were found in a field hard by, as though they had been killed while trying to make their escape. It was commonly believed that Bothwell was guilty of the murder, and it was suspected that he had done it to please the Queen and with her consent. This suspicion was strengthened by her conduct. She made no effort to find out the murderer and to bring him to punishment, and on the day of the funeral she gave Bothwell the feudal superiority over the town of Leith. Lennox now came forward and demanded that Bothwell and the other persons suspected of the murder should be tried by the Estates. This was granted, and a day was fixed for the trial. But as Lennox was forbidden to bring any but his own household when he appeared as the accuser of the murderer, while Bothwell had a great following, he thought it more prudent not to appear. As no one came forward to bring evidence against Bothwell, he was acquitted, and he offered to give wager of battle to anyone who should still accuse him.

14. Third Marriage of the Queen.—Bothwell was now determined on marrying the Queen, and, after the parliament rose, he got many of the nobles to sign a bond agreeing to help him to do so. As he was already married to Huntly's sister, his wife had to be got rid of first. This was not now such an easy matter as it had been in former times. The canon law had been done away with along with the old Church; the Reformers had set up a court of their own to try such cases, while the Queen had lately restored the old one. To make the matter sure Bothwell's marriage was dissolved in both these courts. As the Queen was coming back from Stirling, where she had been to visit her child, Bothwell met her and carried her off to Dunbar, and on the day the divorce was sent they came back to Edinburgh together. He was created Duke of Orkney and Shetland, and they were married by Adam Bothwell, who had been Bishop of Orkney, but was now one of the ministers of the new Church, May 15, 1567.

15. Surrender at Carberry.—A fortnight later Mary called out the feudal force for an attack on the Borderers, but the barons did not answer to her summons. On this the Queen and Bothwell, alarmed at the increasing signs of discontent, shut themselves up in his strong castle of Borthwick, but they were scarcely there before an army with the Lords Morton and Home at its head appeared at its gates, and they fled to Dunbar. The barons then entered Edinburgh; the governor of the Castle gave it up to them. They had the Prince in their hands, and they took measures for carrying on the government, though they still professed to act in the Queen's name, and to be only striving to free her from Bothwell. He meanwhile had mustered his followers, who, though nearly equal in numbers, were in discipline far inferior to their opponents. The two armies came in sight near Musselburgh, but there was no battle, for the Queen surrendered to William Kirkcaldy of Grange, who had been sent out with a body of horse to cut off her retreat to Dunbar, at Carberry, June 15, 1567, on condition that Bothwell should be allowed to return to Dunbar unhurt. Bothwell escaped first to his own dukedom of Orkney, and afterwards to Denmark, where he died about ten years later.

16. Captivity of the Queen.—Just a month after her third marriage the Queen was brought back to Edinburgh, to be greeted by the railings of the mob, who now openly accused her as a murderess, and paraded before her eyes a banner, showing the dead body of her husband; her infant son on his knees, as though praying for justice against the murderers of his father, and the words, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord," embroidered upon it. From Edinburgh she was taken to a lonely castle built on a small island in the centre of Loch Leven. A few days later a casket containing eight letters was produced. These letters, it was said, Bothwell had left behind him in his flight, and they seemed to have been written by Mary to him while Darnley was ill in Glasgow. If she really wrote them, they proved very plainly that she had planned the murder with Bothwell. They are called the "casket letters," from the box or casket in which they were found. The confederate barons acted as if they were really hers. The Lord Lindsay and Robert Melville were sent to her at Loch Leven, and she there signed the demission of the government to her son, and desired that Murray should be the first Regent. From that time Mary ceased to be Queen of Scots. Her beauty, talents, and misfortunes have won her much pity and many champions, but it was her own folly and sin that changed the love of her people into hate, and their rejection of her stands out as one of the facts in their history that does most honour to the nation.

17. James VI., 1567-1625. Regency of Murray.—The infant King who was now to be set up in the room of his mother was crowned and anointed at Stirling. By his sponsor Morton he took an oath to uphold the Reformed, or as its supporters called it, the true Church, and to root out all heretics and enemies of the same. Murray was recalled from France, whither he had gone soon after the murder of the King. He made some objection to accepting the regency, and would not do so till he had had an interview with his sister. At last he agreed to take it, to comply with her wishes, as he said. As the country was crying out for vengeance on the murderers of the King, four of Bothwell's creatures who had aided in his crime were hanged at Edinburgh, but no steps were taken to punish the lords who had joined themselves by a bond with Bothwell.

18. Escape of Mary.—But there was a large party of the nobles, with the Hamiltons at their head, who were opposed to the new government and kept themselves apart at Hamilton. Before a year of her captivity had passed, Mary escaped and joined them there, and again took up the sceptre which she had so lately laid down. Eighteen lords of parliament and many lesser barons signed a bond to uphold their Queen, and she sent a message from her court at Hamilton to Murray, who was at Glasgow almost unguarded, commanding him to resign the regency. Instead of obeying, Murray seized the herald who had come to proclaim the Queen; sent to Stirling for cannon, and called out the feudal force in the name of King James.

19. Battle of Langside.—The Castle of Dunbarton Rock, the strongest fortress in the kingdom, was held for the Queen, and to it she determined to go for greater safety. To get there she had to pass close by Glasgow, where Murray was. At Langside, on the southern shore of the Clyde, her way was barred by the King's army, which, though not so large as her own, had much better leaders. The fight that followed settled the fate of Scotland, May 13, 1568. Few lives were lost, for at the first charge the spears of the front rank got locked in the jacks of their opponents. They could thus neither go backward nor forward, and kept those behind from coming within arm's length of one another. Grange turned the day by charging the Queen's force with his cavalry. They fled in confusion, and Mary rode with all speed to the Border; crossed the Solway, and going straight to Carlisle, threw herself on the protection of Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had not forgotten how Mary had assumed her arms and had given herself out as the real Queen of England; and as she knew that Mary, if left at liberty, would plot with the English Roman Catholics, she put her in ward in Bolton Castle, and refused to see her till she cleared herself of the suspicion under which she lay of having been concerned in her husband's death. But at the same time Elizabeth would not acknowledge the government of Scotland, nor approve the conduct of the lords who had set up King James, for she did not like the doctrine that princes, however badly they had acted, might be judged and punished by their subjects.

20. The Conference.—To give both parties a chance of saying what they could for themselves, it was agreed to hold a conference, to which Murray came in person, and Mary and Elizabeth each sent commissioners. The conference met at York in October. On opening it the Duke of Norfolk required that Murray should do homage in the name of his King to the Queen of England. On this, William Maitland of Lethington, the Scottish Secretary of State, a very subtle man, said that if England liked to give up again the northern counties, once held by Scotland, their King would gladly do homage for them; but as for the kingdom it was as free, or more so, than England itself. This he said to show that they did not ask Elizabeth to judge between them because she had any right to interfere, but only because she was their nearest neighbour. Before the end of the month the conference was removed to Hampton Court, and held before the Queen in Council. The lords brought forward the "casket letters," as a proof against Mary, and she refused to vindicate herself, but ordered her commissioners to withdraw. Thus the conference ended, leaving matters much as they were before, for Elizabeth decided that nothing had been brought forward to the dishonour of Murray, nor anything proved against Mary. At the same time she lent Murray five thousand pounds for the maintenance of peace and order between the two countries, which was an indirect acknowledgment of his government.

21. State of Parties.—The Hamiltons and Huntly were the chief upholders of Mary's interest. The Hamiltons wished to keep Mary on the throne, because they were the next heirs to Mary, and in the event of her son dying before her, Chatelherault could claim the crown. But as they were not the next heirs to James, they were naturally opposed to the revolution which had placed him on the throne, for they feared that if he died when actually reigning, the crown would pass to his heir, Charles Stewart, his father's brother. Huntly held out, from hatred of Murray and love of the old Church, which was still strong in his county. A compromise was at last made between the two parties. Murray promised a pardon for all past offences and a reversal of forfeitures if the other party would promise to obey King James. To make matters more sure, when the Duke of Chatelherault went up to Edinburgh, Murray put him in ward in the Castle. Just at this time there was a great rising of the Roman Catholics in the north of England, Murray marched southward, in order to be ready to put down any disturbance on the Border. There he seized as his prisoner the Earl of Northumberland, the head of the Romanists in England, who had come to seek a refuge on the Scottish side among the Borderers, many of whom still clung to the old Church.

22. Murder of the Regent.—The Hamiltons had determined on Murray's death. Though the Duke was in prison, John, the archbishop, the constant stirrer up of strife, was at liberty, and he was popularly supposed to be the contriver of a plot against the life of the Regent. Murray was murdered by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, who shot at him as he was riding in state through that town on his way from Stirling to Edinburgh, February 23, 1570. This foul murder, the third which had disgraced Scotland within the last quarter of a century, was a great misfortune for the country, for Murray had ruled well and wisely, he had put down the Highlanders and the Borderers, and had enforced justice and order with a strong hand. In his time the land was visited by a famine and a plague, evils for which the people are ever apt to blame their rulers, but, in spite of these calamities, he was popular during his life, and was remembered after his death as the Good Regent.

23. Regency of Lennox.—While the government was thus without a head, and the country was in confusion, two English armies invaded Scotland to punish the Borderers for the shelter which they had given to the leaders of the late rising in England. One of these armies came north as far as the Clyde and wasted the Hamilton country. Hitherto the Queen's party had been chiefly made up of nobles with but a small following, but this attack on the part of the English aroused the old hatred of England and drove a large mass of the people to join them. The choice of Lennox, the King's grandfather, as the new Regent, did still more to divide the nation, for not only was he the subject of Elizabeth and recommended by her, but also, when he came to Scotland, it was as joint leader of one of these invading armies. Now, for the first time, the nation was truly divided against itself. The war which followed was the first real civil war in the annals of Scotland. It was no strife of class against class, or of one chief against another, but a war in which the commons were severed into two parties by the great questions of loyalty, national honour, and religion. Grange, whom Murray had made governor of Edinburgh Castle, declared for the Queen, and Lethington, who was there in ward on a charge of having had some part in the King's murder, followed his example.

24. Taking of Dunbarton.—This castle, the strongest in the kingdom, was the chief strength of the Queen's party, and in it was the moving spirit of the Hamiltons, John, the much hated and feared archbishop. Both fell during this regency. Crawford of Jordanhill, a retainer of Lennox, took the castle by subtlety with but a handful of men. He scaled the steep rock on which the castle is built under cover of the night, and when he had gained the highest point he turned the guns on the garrison below, who had no choice left but to give in, April 2, 1571. Five days later, the archbishop was hanged at Stirling, after the form of a trial had been hurried through, on a charge of having planned the murder of the King and of the Regent.

25. Parliament at Stirling.—The other noteworthy event during the regency of Lennox was the holding of a parliament, for the first time since 1567. It met at Stirling, and the young King, who lived in the castle under the care of the Earl of Mar, was himself present. While the Regent and all the leaders of his party were thus gathered in the town, a body of four hundred men, sent out by the Queen's party in Edinburgh Castle, came down upon them suddenly, swept the streets, and captured Morton and the Regent; and though the latter was afterwards rescued, he had been mortally wounded in the scuffle, and died after lingering a few hours, September 4, 1571. It was then remembered how the little King had spied a hole in the cloth with which the board whereon he sat was covered, and, trying to poke his finger into it, had said, "There is a hole in this parliament." This was looked on as a prophecy of the violent death of the Regent, and laid the foundation of that reputation for wisdom and acuteness which clung to James all his life.

26. Mar's Regency.—John Erskine, Earl of Mar, governor of Stirling, was chosen Regent the very next day. As the Queen's party, who held Edinburgh, had held a rival parliament in her name in the Parliament House, it was clear that all efforts must be made to get the castle out of their hands. Mar therefore began the siege, and open war broke out. The West, the North, and the Border were for the Queen, the eastern Lowlands for the King; the latter looked to England for help, but got none; the former appealed to France with not much better success. After much useless bloodshed, a truce of two months was agreed on, August 1, 1572.

27. Tulchan Bishops.—Under Mar episcopacy was set up again. At least it was settled that the titles and dignities of bishops and archbishops were to stay as they were before the Reformation till the King's majority, but they were shorn of their old authority, and were to be subject to the General Assembly, which now managed all church matters. The people thought so little of them that they called them in mockery "Tulchan" bishops: the word "Tulchan" meaning a sham calf which it was the custom to place before a cow to make her give milk when the real calf had been taken from her. About this time there came the news of the massacre of all the Protestants in Paris, on St. Bartholomew's Day. This roused a general horror of Romanists and created a reaction in favour of Presbytery, for the Scots wished to be more like the French Protestants, who had no bishops. It also made many of the Queen's party go over to the other side.

Mar died after being little more than a year in office, and Morton, who had latterly directed everything, was chosen Regent in his place, November 24, 1572.

28. Death of Knox.—On the same day died John Knox, who for thirteen years had been the leader of religious reform in Scotland. He spent his life and his wonderful talents in striving for what he believed to be truth and sound doctrine. One of the finest traits in his character was his moral courage, which enabled him to speak the truth boldly to those who stood highest in rank or power. To this Morton himself bore witness, saying, as he looked on the dead body of Knox, "There lies he who never feared the face of man." His zeal sometimes led him to turn against the Romanists their own weapons of intolerance and persecution, but he lived in times when men had not yet found out that it was best to let one another alone in the matter of religion. In those days any one who had shown himself tolerant of the errors of others would have been looked on either as a hypocrite or as an unbeliever. But Knox was not so much opposed to bishops and to a set form of prayer as his followers afterwards became. He drew up a prayer-book for daily use called the Book of Common Order, which was pretty nearly a translation of the book of the church at Geneva, and was what he had himself used when ministering to the English Protestants who in the reign of Mary Tudor had taken refuge at Frankfort.

29. Taking of Edinburgh.—With the new year the war began again. Morton was now in possession of the town of Edinburgh, and he held a meeting of the Estates there. But the castle still held out, and it was only by bringing against it an English force of fifteen hundred men that Elizabeth had at last sent, that its defenders were reduced to such straits that they were compelled to surrender. Grange gave himself up to the English general and appealed to the English Queen. But she either could not or would not protect him. His gallant defence of the castle for Mary was looked on as treason against the government of James, which Elizabeth had in a manner acknowledged. He was given up into the hands of Morton, his bitter enemy, and hanged at Edinburgh, August 3, 1573, in spite of all the efforts of his many friends to save him. Brave, gallant, and unselfish, he was distinguished among a greedy generation by his contempt alike of money and of place. In this he was a great contrast to his companion, the clever, unprincipled, selfish Lethington, who died by his own hand.

30. Morton's Regency.—Morton had now got all his old enemies out of the way, but he soon made more; partly by his avarice, partly by the firmness with which he insisted that the crown property should be restored. He offended Argyle by making him give back some crown jewels that had come into his possession by his marriage with Murray's widow; and, by trying to stop a feud between him and Athole, he made enemies of them both. To make his power complete Morton longed to get the King into his own hands, but he was kept apart in Stirling, under the care of Erskine the Governor, and while there Morton had no more power over him than any of the other nobles. He tried to persuade James, who was now twelve years old, that he was old enough to rule alone, but Argyle and Athole, who were both in the castle at the time, found out his plan and outwitted him. A proclamation was suddenly issued by them, setting forth that the king would now take the government into his own hands, and would act by the advice of a council, March 4, 1578. A time of great confusion followed. Morton, who at first had seemed to lay down his power with a good grace, before long was up in arms, got into Stirling Castle, dispersed the new council, and again directed everything just as he pleased.

31. Fall of Morton.—About this time Esmé Stewart, Lord of Aubigny, and nephew of the late Earl of Lennox, came from France and became a great favourite with his cousin the king. Aubigny was stirred up by James Stewart of Ochiltree, another favourite, to do his utmost to turn the king against Morton, whom he already disliked. At length Ochiltree accused Morton before the Council of having been a party in the king's murder, and on this charge he was condemned and beheaded at Edinburgh. After his death the two favourites rose still higher. Aubigny was made Duke of Lennox, and Keeper of Dunbarton Castle; and a royal bodyguard was set up in order to give him the dignity of commander. Stewart, whose mother was a Hamilton, was raised to their Earldom of Arran.

32. Raid of Ruthven.—Certain of the old nobles, who were displeased and alarmed by the power exercised by these upstarts, bound themselves together to displace them both, and to get the King by a bond into their own power. The time they chose for carrying out their plan was when the King went on a hunting party into the Highlands. The Earl of Gowrie, one of the confederates, son of that Ruthven who had played the chief part in the murder of Rizzio, invited him to the castle of Ruthven. James went, and found himself a prisoner in the hands of the barons, August 22, 1581. They then made him declare that he was well pleased with what they had done, and was not under any restraint. Lennox was ordered to leave the kingdom, and after wandering about in poverty and distress till the end of the year, he went back to France, where he died before long. But before the Ruthven Lords had been a year in power, another change came. The king escaped disguised as a groom, rode to St. Andrews, where the nobles who were not in the bond gathered round him in such force that the Confederates were obliged to yield.

33. Fall of Gowrie.—At first James acted moderately and wisely, for he promised to pardon all those who had taken part in the Raid of Ruthven; but when Arran got back his old power over him he turned about and declared them all traitors, who must submit to his grace. Upon this most of them fled to England, but Gowrie submitted to the King and was pardoned. Arran had however determined on his fall, and Gowrie was so much insulted and slighted at Court that he made up his mind to leave the country. Just before he sailed, he heard that his old comrades had contrived another plot, and he delayed his setting out in order to have a share in it. Before anything was done, news of it got abroad, Gowrie was seized and, after a very unjust trial, beheaded at Stirling. The other conspirators made off to England again and were outlawed, and their estates were forfeited.

34. Fall of Arran.—Arran's triumph did not last long. A fray took place on the Border in which an Englishman, Lord Russell, was slain. Arran was accused of having been the chief cause in this affair, and he was ordered to withdraw from Court. Then the banished lords, thinking this a good opportunity for them to return, went northward, joined the Hamiltons and Maxwells on the Border, came to Stirling and made their way into the presence of the king, who was forced to seem pleased to see them, as they had eight thousand men to support them, November 4, 1585. A Parliament was called soon after, in which three important pieces of business were done. Gowrie's children were restored to the honours forfeited by the treason of their father; Arran was stripped of all his dignities, and a new league was made with England.

35. Death of Mary.—The captive Queen, whose influence in the affairs of her own country had ceased with the surrender of Edinburgh, had, during her long imprisonment, been the cause of many plots against the peace of England and the life of Elizabeth. For her share in Babington's Plot, the object of which was the assassination of Elizabeth, she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. She was beheaded at Fotheringhay, February 8, 1587. Though James made some show of feelings of grief and anger at the news of his mother's death, no steps were taken to avenge it, and the matter soon seemed to be forgotten.

36. Marriage of the King.—As James was now of age, his counsellors were looking about for a suitable wife for him. Frederick the Second King of Denmark had lately sent offering to pay up the money for which the Orkney and Shetland Isles had been given in pledge, and as Scotland had no wish to give them back, it was thought that the difficulty might be got over by choosing one of his daughters, who would most likely bring the islands as her dowry. This proposal was agreed to by Frederick. His daughter Anne was betrothed to James, and Keith, the Earl Marshal, was sent to Copenhagen to act as proxy for the King in the marriage ceremony and to bring home the bride. On their way home the wedding party were storm-stayed and obliged to put into a Norwegian Port, and the King, to the surprise of every one, suddenly made up his mind to go himself to fetch his bride. He joined her at Upslo, but as nothing could make him brave the long sea voyage again till the winter was over they returned together to Copenhagen, and did not come to Scotland till the next spring, May 1, 1590.

37. Abolition of Episcopacy.—For some time the government and the church had been at variance about the bishops. The General Assembly of 1581 had declared the episcopal order to be contrary to the Word of God, and had adopted the Second Book of Discipline as the rule of the government of the Church. This book was drawn up by Andrew Melville, who had succeeded Knox as the spiritual leader of the reformed Church. He was a zealous presbyterian, and it was mainly owing to him that the Scottish Church adopted that form of church government. The Ruthven lords had been the champions of the presbyterian or no-bishop party, and, while they were in power, the ministers upheld by them had taken more and more authority upon themselves. In theory they placed the church far above the civil power, and they taught that the chief magistrate, the King, ought to be subject to them in all matters of conscience and religion. They also claimed the right of the old Church in interfering with people's private affairs. Each minister looked on himself as bishop over his own flock, and would not submit to having any overseer set over him again. But, as the removal of the bishops as spiritual peers would have been the removal of one of the three Estates—that one too that had always been on the side of the crown—and as their existence served as a pretext to the nobles for drawing their revenues, it was clearly the interest both of the crown and of the nobles to maintain them. In 1588 Philip of Spain fitted out a great fleet for the invasion of England. This caused a great panic throughout Scotland. The people feared that Philip might conquer England and bring it again under the dominion of the Pope, in which case the subjection of Scotland must soon follow. The Covenant for the maintenance of the Protestant religion, which had been signed in 1581, was renewed and signed all over the land. So great was the dread of the bishop of Rome that the people looked on all bishops with suspicion, and in 1592 an act was passed by which the whole order was swept away and the presbyterian polity established. Thenceforth the church was to be governed by a series of courts, the members of which were presbyters. The ministers of several parishes formed a presbytery, these again were grouped together into synods, while supreme over all was the General Assembly, composed of ministers and lay elders from the several presbyteries, which was to meet once a year at Edinburgh, and at which the King or his commissioner was to be present.

38. The Spanish Blanks.—Still a large party adhered to the old Church. The chiefs of this party were Huntly in the north and the Maxwells on the Border. They were always suspected of scheming for its restoration, and, as the King could not or would not proceed against them, he was supposed to favour their plans. In 1592 eight suspicious papers were seized on the person of George Kerr, the Lord Newbottle's brother, who was leaving Scotland by the western coast. These papers, called the Spanish blanks, were signed by Huntly, Errol, and Angus, but had no other writing on them. Kerr, after being put to the torture, declared that these blank papers were to be filled up by two Jesuits who were commissioned to offer the services of the nobles who had signed them to the King of Spain, to aid him in the re-establishment of the old religion. This discovery filled every one with horror. Angus was seized; but as Huntly retreated to his own country in the north, Argyle, his rival in the Highlands, was sent with full power against him. The two armies met at Glenlivat, not far from the scene of the well-remembered fight of Harlaw. Huntly had but two thousand men, raised chiefly in the northern Lowlands, but they defeated Argyle's swarm of Highlanders, October 1594. But the Romish party was too weak to follow up the victory, and in 1597 Huntly and Errol publicly renounced their old faith, and joined the established Church.

39. Religious Tumults.—The King and the Church were not long at peace. He called certain of their ministers to account before the council for what they had said in the pulpit. The ministers looked upon this interference as an attack on their privileges. The people supported them, and the result was a riot, so serious that the Court had to flee to Linlithgow. Upon this the King threatened to take away the courts of justice from Edinburgh. The fear of this damped the spirit of the mob, and after the return of the Court the ministers who had withstood the King fled to England. The Estates soon after passed an act by which the King might confer on any minister the title of bishop or abbot, but only so as to give him a seat in Parliament; the title was not to imply any lordship over his brethren.

40. The Gowrie Plot.—On the morning of the fifth of August, 1600, as James was setting out hunting from Falkland Palace, he was met by Alexander Ruthven, the younger brother of the Earl of Gowrie, who told him with a great air of mystery that he had discovered a man burying a pot of money in a field, and that he thought the affair so suspicious that he had taken him prisoner, and begged the King to come to Gowrie House in Perth to see him. James went, taking with him Mar, Lennox, and about twenty other gentlemen. After dinner Alexander took the King aside, and, when his attendants missed him, they were told that he had gone back to Falkland. They were preparing to follow him there when some of them heard cries from a turret. They recognized the King's voice, and they presently saw his head thrust out of a window calling for help. They had much ado to make their way to him, but they found him at last in a small room struggling with Alexander, while a man dressed in armour was looking on. Alexander Ruthven and Gowrie were both killed in the scuffle which followed. A tumult rose in the town, for the Earl had been Provost and was very popular with the townsfolk, and the King and his followers had to make their escape by the river. The doom of traitors was passed on the dead men, and their name was proscribed, but, as no accomplice could be discovered, it was hard to say what was the extent or object of their plot. The whole affair was very mysterious, the only witnesses being the King himself and Henderson the man in armour. Some of the ministers thought it so suspicious that they refused to return thanks for the King's safety, as they thought the whole affair an invention of his own. Eight years later some letters were discovered in the hands of one Sprot, a notary at Eyemouth, which threw some more light on the mystery. They were written by Logan of Restalrig, and revealed a plan between him and the Ruthvens for bringing some prisoner, who was not named, but might possibly be the King, to Fast Castle, a fortress belonging to Logan, standing on a rock at the entrance to the Forth. Sprot was found guilty of treason, and was put to death for not revealing all he knew about the plot long before.

41. Union of the Crowns.—When Elizabeth died, James was the nearest heir to the throne of England by right of descent from Margaret, elder daughter of Henry the Seventh. But her right had been passed over by Henry the Eighth, who had in the will, which he was empowered by Parliament to make, settled the succession on the heirs of his younger sister, Mary. As it was politically convenient to the English Privy Council that James should succeed Elizabeth on her death, they sent off post haste to summon him to come and take the crown. His questionable right was made good by the voice of the people in his first Parliament. He entered London May 6, 1603. Hitherto he had had less money and less power than almost any other prince in Europe; he now became suddenly one of the richest and most powerful among them. This union of the crowns made the third break in the history of Scotland. The gallant struggle for freedom which had drawn forth all the energies of the nation during the past three centuries was now over. It was now to be united to the powerful neighbour that had so long threatened its independence. The representative of the ancient royal Celtic line, which the national reverence for hereditary royalty had upheld unbroken through the strain of seven long minorities, now became king of the larger and richer kingdom of England, which had been ruled by one foreign dynasty after another ever since the Norman Conquest.

42. State of the Nation.—In Scotland the feudal system was still unshaken. To it the great barons owed their power, and the Reformation, which in England had strengthened the crown, had in Scotland only thrown more wealth and more power into the hands of the nobles. Hitherto the people had been only dependents of the great feudal barons, whose burthens they bore in return for their protection. Still they could not have been very badly off, for in Scotland there were no peasant wars, as in France and England. It was the Reformation which first brought them out as a separate body in the state. Their condition was now much worse than it had formerly been. The crown brought its increased power to bear upon the nobles, who in their turn, slaves and flatterers at the foreign Court and tyrants at home, used their feudal rights for the oppression of the people, who could hope for no redress from their absent King.

43. Summary.—We have, in this chapter, traced the progress of the Reformation, and noted the changes which it made in the state of the nation. Though the Reformation did not begin so soon in Scotland as in Germany and England, it made more striking changes and overthrew the old Church more completely than it did in either of those countries. It first gave to the people an independent national life. Until it roused them to separate action, they had been swayed by no party feelings, but had blindly followed the lead and fought in the feuds of their feudal superiors, without paying any heed to the cause for which they laid down their lives. The Reformation also broke off the alliance with France which had subsisted ever since the War of Independence. All the events of this period are closely connected with the change of religion, and it is marked by more civil war, more bloodshed, more crimes of violence, more party strife, more treachery and wrong and robbery, than any other period in the history of Scotland. It was the bad faith of Mary of Lorraine which first drove the Reformers to take up arms in defence of their opinions. Under their own native queen they hoped to enjoy liberty of conscience, and as they looked to her to redress their grievances they welcomed her return with much loyal feeling. By the craftiness and dissimulation of her policy in public affairs, and by the scandals of her private life, she changed their loyal affection into loathing and contempt, and finally forfeited the crown. During the long minority which followed, the country was desolated by a civil war, and the crown was impoverished by the grasping greediness of the nobles. When the King came of age, he showed himself quite unequal to the task of ruling and uniting the different rival factions in the church and in the state, and allowed himself to be governed by one worthless favourite after another. Nor were the ecclesiastical affairs of this period at all more settled than the secular. The form of church government was changed four times before the presbyterian polity was finally established in 1592. The lands of the old Church had been seized by the most worthless of the nobles instead of being set apart for the support of the new Church, so that the ministers could with difficulty secure a bare subsistence. During such an unhappy state of affairs there could be little social or intellectual development. There were however among the Reformers many men distinguished for their learning and brilliant talents. Of these the most conspicuous were George Buchanan, tutor to the young king, who wrote a fabulous history of Scotland and other books in very elegant Latin, and John Knox, who wrote a History of the Reformation, remarkable for the vigour, clearness, and simplicity of its style. Sir James Melville, who was also an accomplished courtier, and stood high in favour both with Mary and with James, gives an excellent picture of these disturbed times in his very entertaining memoirs. The Prayer Book of the Reformed Church was also translated into Gaelic. It was published in 1567, and was the first Celtic book that had ever yet been printed.

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