John Knox

by William M. Taylor

RETURN TO SCOTLAND, 1559.

The landing of Knox in Scotland was almost dramatic in its timeliness; and though we cannot here undertake to rewrite the annals of the period, we must as briefly as possible outline the situation. The Queen Regent, who had so far succeeded in her temporizing policy as even at one time to have secured the commendation of Knox, had now openly declared herself as the enemy of the Reformation; and, at that very moment, four of its preachers were under summons, at her instance, to stand trial before the justiciary court at Stirling on the 10th of May, for "administering without the consent of the ordinaries the sacrament of the altar in a manner different from that of the Catholic Church, during three several days of the late feast of Easter, in the burghs and boundaries of Dundee, Montrose, and various other places in the sheriffdoms of Forfar and Kincardine, and for convening the subjects in these places, preaching to them, seducing them to their erroneous doctrines, and exciting seditions and tumults." How things had come to this crisis it is not hard to tell. At the consultation at which the "Godly Band" was adopted, the Reformers agreed besides on these two things, viz. first, that prayers and the lessons of the Old and New Testaments should be read in English, according to the Book of Common Prayer, in every parish on Sundays and festival days by the curates, or, if they refused, by such persons within the bounds as were best qualified; and second, that the Reformed preachers should teach in private houses only, until the government should allow them to do so in public. In accordance with the latter of these resolutions, the Protestant noblemen took preachers as private chaplains into their homes, kept them under their protection, and encouraged them in informal and domestic meetings to expound the word of God. This soon came to the knowledge of the bishops, and the primate, presuming on his influence with some of Argyle's friends, wrote to that earl, expostulating with him for having John Douglas under his care. Such interference provoked a very smart and stinging retort; and the archbishop, falling back on the old tactics of persecution, thought he would strike terror into the hearts of the Protestants by another execution. He found a victim in Walter Mill, a venerable old man, who, though condemned years before as a heretic by Cardinal Beaton, had escaped the stake at that time, but was now discovered and consigned to the flames, in the midst of which he expired, with these pathetic and prophetic words upon his lips, "As for me, I am four-score and two years old, and cannot live long by the course of nature, but a hundred better shall arise out of the ashes of my bones. I trust in God I shall be the last to suffer death in Scotland in this cause." This horrible deed—done on the 28th August, 1558—thrilled the people into earnestness in a moment, and determined them to make open profession of their adherence to the Reformed worship, so that their ministers were emboldened to preach and administer the sacraments in public, even without the permission of the government, for which until then they had waited.

Meanwhile, in the month of July, a formal petition had been presented to the Regent by the Protestant barons, requesting her to restrain the violence of the clergy, and asking liberty of worship according to a restricted plan, to which they were willing to conform until their grievances should be examined and redressed. To this she replied after her usual plausible fashion, in such a way as to make them believe that she was friendly to their proposals. But the hollowness of her words is apparent from the fact that in the very same month she was in consultation with the archbishop of St. Andrews, as to the course which should be adopted for checking the Reformation; yet, as she needed the help of the Protestants at the meeting of the Parliament in November for the carrying of certain measures on which her heart was set, nothing was done openly by her against them until after that date. In December, however, she gave the primate such assurances of her support, that he summoned the Reformed preachers to appear before him at St. Andrews on the and of February following, to answer the charges of usurping the sacred office and of disseminating heresy. This proceeding on his part stirred up the Protestant nobles, so that they informed the Regent that if the trial went on they would be present to see justice done, and she, fearing the consequences, prevailed upon the archbishop to prorogue the trial. At the same time she summoned a convention of the nobility to meet at Edinburgh on the 7th of March, and induced the archbishop to call a provincial council of the clergy to meet in the city on the first of the same month.

When the clergy met, two representations were laid before them, one from the Protestants, asking what they felt to be needed, and another from persons still attached to the Roman Catholic faith, praying for the redress of certain grievances in ecclesiastical administration; but both were treated with indifference. A secret treaty had been entered into by them with the Queen Regent, wherein they had promised to raise a large sum of money to enable her to put down all heresy, and so in the most uncompromising confidence they confirmed all the doctrines and practices of the Church, and declared that both the preachers who administered the sacraments after the Reformed manner, and those who received them at their hands should be excommunicated.

This action of theirs convinced the Reformers that nothing was to be hoped for from the clergy, and the treaty to which we have referred having somehow come to their knowledge revealed to them that they had just as little to hope for from the court; so they broke off all further negotiations and left the city. But they had scarcely gone when a proclamation was made at the Market Cross, by order of the Regent, prohibiting any person from preaching or administering the sacraments without authority from the bishops; and it was because they had disregarded that injunction that Paul Methven, John Christison, William Harlow, and John Willock were now summoned to appear at Stirling on the 10th of May, before the Court of Justiciary. When, therefore, Knox arrived at Leith on the 2nd of that month, he could truly say that he had come "even in the brunt of the battle." Nor was he dismayed thereat. Rather like the war-horse of the sacred poet, he said among the trumpets Aha! and went forth rejoicing in his strength to mingle in the fray.

The next morning the announcement of his arrival to the provincial council of the clergy which was still in session in Edinburgh broke up that assembly in haste, but not before its members had despatched a messenger with the news to the Queen Regent who was then at Glasgow, and who a few days later proclaimed Knox as a rebel and an outlaw in virtue of the sentence formerly pronounced against him in his absence by the bishops. But all this counted for little with him, for after waiting only a few hours at Edinburgh, he had already gone to Dundee, where he found the Protestants of Angus and neighbourhood gathered in great numbers and determined to attend their ministers to Stirling. Lest, however, they should do harm, when they only intended to do good, they determined to halt at Perth, from which place they sent forward Erskine of Dun to inform the Regent at Stirling of the peaceable object of their approach. As usual, when she heard what he had to say, she sought to gain time by temporizing. She authorized him to promise in her name that the trial should not go on, and prevailed on him to persuade them to give up their purpose. Accordingly the larger number of them returned to their homes. But when the day appointed for the trial came, the summons was called by the Regent's orders, the ministers were outlawed for non-appearance, and all persons were prohibited, under pain of being treated as rebels, from harbouring or assisting them. Erskine, finding that he had been grievously befooled, escaped from Stirling and carried the news to Perth, where on the day of his arrival Knox preached a sermon in which he denounced the idolatry of the mass, and on which consequences followed which he did not at the moment anticipate. For after his discourse had been concluded a priest "in contempt" uncovered a rich altar-piece and prepared to celebrate mass, whereupon a youth uttered an exclamation of indignation. This provoked the priest to strike him "a great blow," and he retaliated "in anger" by throwing a stone at the priest, which hit the altar and broke one of the images. This was the spark to which the people were as tow, and in the course of a few minutes everything in the church that savoured of idolatry—altar, images, ornaments and the like—was thrown down and demolished. The report of this outbreak soon gathered a mob described by Knox as "not of the gentlemen, neither of them that were earnest professors, but of the rascal multitude," who finding nothing more to be done in the church rushed to the monasteries of the Black and Grey Friars and to the Charterhouse and laid them all in ruins.

This was the beginning of that demolition of Roman Catholic edifices for which Knox has been so grievously assailed. But, without entering minutely into the merits of the question, and cheerfully admitting that—owing to human imperfection—a work like that in which our Reformer was engaged could not be carried through without the doing of some things of which men in less troublous times must disapprove, we must be permitted to advance the following considerations. First, the outbreak at Perth was in a manner accidental, and was not either premeditated or instigated by Knox. Second, when the work of purifying the churches was systematically entered upon, special instructions were given to those entrusted with it to guard against any injury to the fabrics themselves; for in a document enjoining the purgation of the Cathedral of Dunkeld and subscribed by Argyle and Ruthven on the 12th August, 1560, the parties commissioned are thus addressed: "Fail not ye, but that ye take good heed that neither the desks, windows, nor doors be anywise burnt or broken, either glass-work or iron-work." Third, the work of absolute destruction was reserved for the monasteries. Now we can clearly see the reason for such a distinction. The churches were the property of the people, and after being cleansed were preserved for the people's use; but the monasteries, as Burton candidly admits, were in a manner "fortresses of the enemy," and as such were demolished. Yet even for the destruction of them Knox and his brethren are not solely to be blamed; for as the historian just named has said[[1]]: "In the history of the invasions directed by King Henry and Somerset we have seen enough to account for large items in the ruin that overcame ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland. For Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh, and the many other buildings torn down in these inroads, the Scots Reformers have no censure beyond that of neutrality or passiveness. The ruined edifices were not restored as they naturally would have been had the old Church remained predominant." When all these things are taken into account, it will be seen that there is very little foundation for the common outcry against Knox in this matter.

In the present instance the demolition of the monasteries by the mob in Perth seriously complicated the situation, and gave the Regent an advantage which she was not slow to improve. For in an address to the nobility in Stirling, she so employed it as to succeed in getting their assistance in advancing against Perth", with an army, for the purpose of putting down what she chose to call a dangerous rebellion. The Reformers wrote to her disclaiming all such intention; but finding her inflexible, they prepared to defend themselves, and were assisted by the opportune arrival of Glencairn from Ayrshire, with 2,500 volunteers. When therefore she reached Perth she discovered that her force was greatly outnumbered by theirs, and she was obliged to accept an "appointment," by which she engaged to leave the citizens unmolested in the exercise of their religion, and they pledged themselves to return to their homes. This agreement she violated in many ways, and so finally lost the confidence and support of Argyle and Lord James Stuart, both of whom had been thus far politically on her side, but now cast in their lot whole-heartedly with the congregation. After this experience the leaders determined to take a step in advance and set up Protestant worship in those places where their own personal influence or the adherence of the people promised success, and it was resolved to begin at St. Andrews. They therefore set a day for Knox to meet them in that city, where he arrived on the 9th of July. When the archbishop learned that he intended to preach in the cathedral he sent a message to his friends to the effect that, "In case John Knox presented himself at the preaching-place in his town and principal church, he should make him be saluted with a dozen of culverings, whereof the most part would light upon his nose." This threat somewhat daunted those by whom he was accompanied, and they endeavoured to dissuade him from preaching; but the reply of the Reformer takes its place beside Luther's words on the way to Worms, for he said, "As for the fear of danger that may come to me let no man be solicitous, for my life is in the custody of Him whose glory I seek, and therefore I cannot so fear their boast or tyranny that I will cease from doing my duty, when of His mercy He offereth me the occasion. I desire the hand or weapon of no man to defend me. I only crave audience, which if it be denied me here I must seek further where I may have it." There was no resisting such a determination, and the result justified his courage, for remembering doubtless his own words years before, while a slave in the French galley, he preached on the Sunday, nor on that day alone, but also on the four next following, without seeing anything either of the archbishop or his culverings; and such was the effect of his discourses that the provost, magistrates, and inhabitants agreed to set up the Reformed worship forthwith, and proceeded at once to strip the church of its images and to pull down the monasteries.

The report of all this taken to the Queen Regent in the palace of Falkland by the archbishop, led to the affair of Cupar Muir, which Carlyle has thus described after his own manner: "Not itself a fight, but the prologue or foreshadow of all the fighting that followed. The Queen Regent and her Frenchmen had marched in triumphant humour out of Falkland, with their artillery ahead, soon after midnight, trusting to find at St. Andrews the two chief lords of the congregation, the Earl of Argyle and Lord James Stuart (afterwards Regent Murray), with scarcely a hundred men about them,—found suddenly that the hundred men, by good industry over-night, had risen to an army; and that the congregation itself, under these two lords, was here, as if by tryst, at mid-distance, skilfully posted, and ready for battle either in the way of cannon or of spear. Sudden halt of the triumphant Falklanders in consequence; and after that a multifarious manoeuvring, circling, and wheeling, now in clear light, now hidden in clouds of mist; Scots standing steadfast on their ground, and answering message-trumpets in an inflexible manner, till, after many hours, the thing had to end in an 'appointment,' truce, or offer of peace, and a retreat to Falkland of the Queen Regent and her Frenchmen, as from an enterprise unexpectedly impossible."[[2]]

From this place Knox accompanied the forces of the congregation to Perth, and thence to Edinburgh, where on the 7th of July the Protestants of the city chose him to be their minister, and then for the first time his voice sounded through the cathedral of St. Giles in ringing notes of trumpet power. But soon after the lords of the congregation, having been compelled to conclude a treaty with the Regent, by the terms of which they agreed to quit Edinburgh and deliver it up to her, judged it unsafe that he, being so obnoxious to her, should remain there without their protection, and so, putting the less objectionable John Willock for the time into his place, they set him free for a preaching excursion through different parts of the kingdom.

How he wrought on that occasion, and where, he has himself described in one of his letters thus: "I have been in continual travel since the day of appointment (i.e. the treaty with the Regent), and notwithstanding the fevers have vexed me the space of a month, yet have I travelled through the most part of this realm, where all praise be to his blessed Majesty, men of all sorts and conditions embrace the truth. Enemies we have many, by reason of the Frenchmen who are lately arrived, of whom all parties hope golden hills and such support as we are not able to resist. We do nothing but go about Jericho, blowing with trumpets as God giveth strength, hoping victory by His laws alone. Christ Jesus is preached even in Edinburgh, and His blessed sacraments rightly ministered in all congregations where the ministry is established; and they be these, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Dundee, Perth, Brechin, Montrose, Stirling, and Ayr. And now Christ Jesus is begun to be preached upon the south borders in Jedburgh and Kelso, so that the trumpet soundeth over all, blessed be our God."

This was written on the 2nd September, 1559, and on the 20th, his wife, having obtained through the influence of Throckmorton, the English ambassador at Paris, that permission to pass through England which had been denied to her husband, reached Scotland in safety. Her mother came with her as far as Northumberland, and after remaining a short time with her friends there, took up her abode in Knox's household, and continued a member of his family, at least till the death of her daughter, though some believe that even after that she remained with him, with but a brief interval, till her own decease. Mrs. Knox was accompanied by Christopher Goodman, who had been the colleague of her husband in Geneva, and who continued to labour in Scotland, first at Ayr and afterwards at St. Andrews, until his return to England in 1565.

But the work in Scotland was too great to be successfully carried out by its own people, even if they had been united among themselves, which, unhappily, they were not. The Reformers there had to contend not only with the adherents of the papacy in their own land, but also with the power and diplomacy of France, and therefore it was of the utmost consequence that assistance from England should be secured. It was, fortunately, also quite important for England that France should be prevented from securing a permanent hold on Scotland; but it was some time before the English queen could be induced to commit herself in any way to the cause of the Scottish congregation; and many negotiations were required before that result was obtained. Neither into the details of these, nor into the particulars of the civil war, which lasted at this time in Scotland for about a year, can we enter here. They will be found at length in the pages of the historians; and it may suffice in this place to say that at last, as the fruit of the mission of the younger Maitland to the English Court, Elizabeth consented to send a fleet into the Firth of Forth, and an array across the border; and that the ultimate issue was a treaty entered upon during the siege of Leith, on the 7th July, 1560, which secured that the French troops should be immediately removed from Scotland; that an amnesty should be granted to all who had been engaged in the late resistance to the Queen Regent; that the principal grievances in the civil administration should be redressed; and that a Free Parliament should be held to settle the affairs of the kingdom.

Before this turn was given to matters, and at midnight between the 10th and 11th of June, the Queen Regent, Mary of Lorraine, the mother of the Queen of Scots, had passed away from the earth, and thus the stage was as it were cleared for the important things which were so soon to be achieved. The one Mary had gone to her account; the other had not yet come from France to take personal possession of the throne of her native land, and in the interval many things otherwise—humanly speaking at least—unattainable were obtained. "The stars in their courses" were fighting for the Reformation; the providence of God was on its side, and blind indeed must the historian be who sees no indication of that fact. But because we fully recognise His hand, it is the more important that we distinctly note also the obliquities which characterized the conduct of many of the human actors in these transactions; and it is with a sense of something like mortification that we confess that even Knox did not stand the ordeal without deterioration. He was, as Laing remarks, "a chief instigator and agent" in the negotiations with England; and, for the most part, he manifested the strictest integrity. But there is one letter extant which prevents us from being able to say that he never lent his countenance to deceit. He is writing to Sir James Croft requesting that men should be sent by him to the help of the Reformers; and in answer to the objection that the league between England and France made it impossible to do that without offending France, he says,[[3]] "If ye list to craft with them, the sending of a thousand men to us can break no league nor point of peace contracted between you and France; for it is free for your subjects to serve in war any prince or nation for their wages; and if you fear that such excuses shall not prevail, you may declare them rebels to your realm, when ye shall be assured that they are in our company." We mention it that we may not be accused of concealing any portion of the truth concerning him. We do not extenuate it; we cannot vindicate it. We say only that it is, so far as we know, the solitary instance of the kind in the extensive correspondence of our Reformer; that it is a clear exception to the general outspoken, and in some cases even indiscreet, frankness by which he was characterized; and that, perhaps, he caught the infection from those with whom he was treating, for Froude says of Elizabeth at this time, "It is certain only that on the one hand she was distinctly doing, what as distinctly she said she was not doing; and on the other, that she was holding out hopes which, if she could help it, she never meant to fulfil;"[[4]] and even Cecil, as the same author proves, was a master in the same kind of craft, so that his indignant reference to Knox's proposal reads to us now like an illustration of "Satan reproving sin." It was in truth, as Laing has said, "an age of dissimulation;" but Knox knew better; he was before his age in other things, and should have been above it in this.

But enough, we gladly turn from censure to praise, and wish to direct attention at this point to Knox's views concerning civil government. There was an assembly of nobles, barons, and representatives of burghs held at Edinburgh on the 21st of October, 1559, at which the propriety or lawfulness of depriving the Queen Regent of her authority (which was afterwards resolved upon) was debated; and before which John Willock and Knox were asked to give their opinion on the question. Willock alleged that the power of rulers is limited, that they might be deprived of it on valid grounds; and that the fortification of Leith, and the introduction of foreign troops into the kingdom, was a good reason why the Regent should be divested of her authority. Knox, while agreeing with what he had said, added that the assembly might safely proceed on these principles, provided only that they did not suffer the misconduct of the Regent to alienate them from their allegiance to their own proper sovereigns, Francis and Mary; that they were not actuated by any private hatred of the Regent herself; and that any sentence which they should now pronounce should not preclude her re-admission to office if she afterwards acknowledged her error, and agreed to submit to the estates of the realm. These sentiments, considering the circumstances in which the Reformers were then placed, were moderate and wise. They show how very far from revolutionary Knox and his associates were; and it is no small praise to him to say that in a struggle which strained everything to the utmost, he sought to maintain law while striving after liberty, and was careful to discriminate between condemnation of the manner in which an office was filled, and repudiation of the office itself. The relation of the Reformation from popery to civil liberty is a theme which might furnish materials for a goodly volume, and space will not allow us to enlarge upon it here; but it might be well in these days if more attention were directed to the opinions of the Reformers regarding political government, and the share which these have had in laying the foundation of freedom, as it is now enjoyed in Great Britain and the United States. So far as Knox is concerned, we could have no better summary of his views on the subject than that which is given by his great biographer, from which we quote the following sentence,[[5]] each clause of which is amply confirmed by McCrie in the learned and elaborate note which he has appended to his statement:—"He held that rulers, supreme as well as subordinate, were invested with authority for the public good; that obedience was not due to them in anything contrary to the Divine law, natural or revealed; that in every free and well-constituted government, the law of the land was superior to the will of the prince; that inferior magistrates and subjects might restrain the supreme magistrate from particular illegal acts, without throwing off their allegiance, or being guilty of rebellion; that no class of men have an original, inherent, and indefeasible right to rule over a people, independently of their will and consent; that every nation is entitled to provide and require that they shall be ruled by laws which are agreeable to the Divine law, and calculated to promote their welfare; that there is a mutual compact, tacit and implied, if not formal and explicit, between rulers and their subjects; and if the former shall flagrantly violate this, employ that power for the destruction of the commonwealth which was committed to them for its preservation and benefit, or, in one word, if they shall become habitual tyrants and notorious oppressors, that the people are absolved from allegiance, and have a right to resist them, formally to depose them from their place, and to elect others in their room." It may surprise some of our readers to discover how fully Knox in these particulars was abreast of many of the views of the most enlightened Liberals of our generation; but even Major, the principal of the Glasgow University when Knox became a student, had struck out in the same direction, and in one of his works[[6]] has declared that "a free people first gives strength to a king, whose power depends on the whole people;" and that "a people can discard or depose a king and his children for misconduct just as it appointed him at first;" and similar sentiments might be cited from the pages of Buchanan. Major taught them in the class, and Buchanan wrote them in his works; but Knox gave them utterance, and that too with such force, that they were widely diffused among the people, so that in due season the divine-right nonsense of the Stuarts was exploded, and the beginning of a new order of things introduced.

But even in this matter, advanced as he was, Knox was not entirely above the narrowness of his age. In common with all the Reformers, and the most of the Puritans, he held that the theocracy of the Jews was the ideal state, and as a consequence, that it was the duty of the civil government to punish idolatry with death, to set up and maintain the true religion by all the means at its disposal, and to put down heresy as rebellion. Neither the statesmen nor the divines of that age seem to have perceived that the true analogue to the Jewish theocracy is the spiritual Church of Christ, and so we account for the fact that they continually referred to the Old Testament as their warrant for seeking to advance what they believed to be the truth, and to put down what they considered to be error by force. They did not remember that in the Jewish state God was in no mere figurative sense, but really and absolutely the King, so that in it to fear God and to honour the king was virtually the same thing, and sin in every form was also ipso facto crime, was indeed treason, as committed against the head of the government, and so was punishable by civil pains and penalties. Forgetting or not perceiving that, the Reformers took the Jewish for the model constitution. In all the states which they sought to remodel, they lost sight of the distinction between a theocracy and an ordinary government, and confounded crime with sin, and sin with crime. More especially they made the crime of crimes to be, the resisting or not conforming to what they themselves believed to be the true religion as revealed by God, and as such they punished that with all severity. There is no instance indeed on record of Knox himself being in any way mixed up with persecution, understanding by that word merely the putting of one to death for religious practices or opinions. No such controversy can be raised over him as that which has been held regarding Calvin and the prosecution of Servetus. But they all alike held that it was the duty of the government to establish and maintain, as a government, and that means by enactments enforced by penalties, the true religion; and from that persecution follows; rather let us say, in that persecution is involved. To this error, which, however, was the common opinion of their times, may be traced most of the difficulties in which they were involved in the prosecution of their work. The world has been slow to come to it, but no perfect liberty either in Church or in state is possible save through the separation of the one from the other, and the restriction of each to its own proper domain. When this shall be attained in Scotland and England, then shall be the beginning of another era, as strongly marked as that which began in the overthrow of the Papal Church three hundred years ago. The course of our narrative takes us now into parliamentary debates, and royal closets, fully as often as into assemblies of the Church, and therefore before we enter upon this section of the history, we deem it right to indicate once for all the views which we ourselves hold upon the subject. It is the province of the biographer to narrate, and he must not be held as endorsing everything which he records.

[[1]] "History of Scotland," vol. iii. p. 354.

[[2]] "An Essay on the Portraits of John Knox," pp. 139-140. "Works," vol. xii.

[[3]] "Works," vol. vi. p. 90.

[[4]] Froude's "History of England," vol. vi. p. 273.

[[5]] McCrie's "Works," vol. i. p. 149.

[[6]] "De Historia Gentis Scotorum," book iv. chap. 22. I am indebted for these citations to my late friend, Dr. J. M. Ross, whose researches into the literature of Scotland have been recently published, and whose early death is mourned by all who knew his worth. His work on the Pre-reformation Literature of Scotland is a perfect thesaurus of precious things, and has attracted the widest attention.