CLOSING YEARS AND DEATH
It is time to part from the public life of the greatest public man whom Scotland has known. That side of Knox's work, attractively presented to the world at first in the memorable biography of Dr Thomas MʻCrie, has been admirably restated by Dr Hume Brown for a later age and from his own judicial standpoint. But Knox's public life was not the whole of his work: in bulk, it was a small part of it. When he became minister of Edinburgh in 1560 there was only one church there; St Cuthberts and Canongate were country parishes outside. It was some years before he got a colleague; and, as sole minister of Edinburgh, he preached twice every Sunday and three times during the week to audiences which sometimes were numbered by thousands. Once a week he attended a Kirk Session; once a week he was a member of the assembly or meeting of the neighbouring elders for their 'prophesying' or 'exercise on Scripture.' Often he was sent away to different districts of the country on preaching visitations under the orders of the Church. But when Knox was at home, his preparations for the pulpit, which were regular and careful, and his other pastoral work, challenged his whole time. And this work was carried on in two places chiefly; in St Giles, which now became the High Church of Edinburgh, and in his house or lodging, which was always in or near the Netherbow, a few hundred yards farther down the High Street. The picturesque old building 'in the throat of the Bow,' which attracts innumerable visitors as the traditional house where Knox died, was not that in which he spent most part of his Edinburgh life. From 1560 down to about the time of his second marriage he lived in a 'great mansion' on the west side of Turing's or Trunk Close; and thereafter for some years in a house on the east side of the same close. Neither of them now exists; but the entrance into the High Street from both was under the windows of the third or Netherbow house, which is shewn in modern times, and which was probably ready for Knox's reception, if not earlier, at least when he came back from his latest visit to St Andrews. In these he kept his books, which constituted much the larger part of his personal property—('you will not always be at your book,' Queen Mary had said, as she turned her back upon him in closing their second interview). And with them, and with helps from the old logic and the new learning (for while abroad he had added Hebrew to his previous instruments of Greek and Latin) he studied hour by hour for the sermons which he delivered—and their delivery also lasted hour after hour—in the great church. In that church there was occasionally much to draw even the vulgar eye. One day it was Huntly, the great Catholic Earl, the most famous man in Knox's opinion among the nobility of Scotland for three hundred years for 'both felicity and worldly wisdom,' whose huge bulk as he had sat opposite to the preacher (the year before he died 'without stroke of sword' on the field of Corrichie) was afterwards, thus vividly recalled.
'Have ye not seen one greater than any of you sitting where presently ye sit, pick his nails, and pull down his bonnet over his eyes, when idolatry, witchcraft, murder, oppression, and such vices were rebuked? Was not his common talk, When the knaves have railed their fill, then will they hold their peace?'[118]
Or, again, it was the French Ambassador, Le Croc, sitting in state on the first Sunday after the news of St Bartholomew, who heard the preacher denounce his master, King Charles, as a 'murderer,' from whom and from whose posterity the vengeance of God would refuse to depart. But these were incidents dramatic and political. And noble as a political calling may be, there have always been some to believe that drawing men and women up to a higher moral life, especially when that life is fed from an immortal hope, is nobler still. But Knox, let us remember, was throughout his early ministry the witness of a still more fascinating and indeed unexampled spectacle—a whole generation suddenly confronted with the moral call of primitive Christianity, and striving to respond to it, no longer in dependence on Church tradition, but by each man moulding himself directly upon Christian facts and Christian promises in the very form in which these were originally delivered by the apostolic age. He was witness of it; and more than witness, for beyond any other man in Scotland Knox was its guide. And while the guidance of the great theological leaders of that generation tended naturally—and quite apart from their usurped statutory ascendency—to press too heavily upon the recovered freedom of Scotland, that danger was but little felt in those early days of enthusiasm in the High Church of Edinburgh.
What like was the man who was seen, almost every day during all those years, pacing up and down between the Netherbow and St Giles?
Knox, as we are told by a surviving contemporary (who enclosed a portrait of him along with the description), was a man of slightly less than middle height, but with broadish shoulders, limbs well put together, and long fingers. He had a rather swarthy face, with black hair, and a beard a span and a half long, also black, but latterly turning grey. The face was somewhat long, the nose decidedly so, the mouth large, and the lips full, so that the upper lip in particular seemed to be swollen. The chief peculiarity of his face was that his eyes—sunk between a rather narrow forehead, with a strong ridge of eyebrow, above, and ruddy and swelling cheeks, below—looked hollow and retreating. But those eyes were of a darkish blue colour, their glance was keen and vivid, and the whole face was 'not unpleasing.' We can easily believe that 'in his settled and severe countenance there dwelt a natural dignity and majesty, which was by no means ungracious, but in anger authority sat upon his brow.'[119]