St Andrews at that time was the rendezvous of others of the adherents of the young prince, who did not feel themselves safe under the faction then in possession of the castle and city of Edinburgh. One of these, Mr John Durie of Leith, was "for stoutness and zeall in the guid cause mikle renouned and talked of." He was an enthusiastic leader of the volunteers of his day. "The gown was na sooner af and the Byble out of hand fra the kirk, when on ged the corslet, and fangit was the hagbot, and to the fields."[234] Another was Robert Leckprevick, the famous printer, who brought his types and printing-press with him, and so did notable service to the cause. Patrick Adamson. "He haid then in hand," Melville tells us, "Mr Patrik Constant's [or Adamson's[235]] Catechisme of Calvin, converted in Latin heroic vers, quhilk with the author was mikle estimed of";[236] and deservedly so, for Adamson was an accomplished scholar, was using his scholarship for the church's good, was eulogised by Lawson, Knox's colleague and successor, and had not yet developed that spirit of subserviency to the powers that be which afterwards proved his ruin.
The printer had also the honour of publishing in St Andrews the last work which engaged the thoughts of the reformer. This was his 'Answer to a letter of a Jesuit named Tyrie.' It had been drawn up some years before, but was now carefully revised and enlarged, and exhibited his matured views respecting several of the most notable subjects of controversy between the reformed and unreformed churches. Possibly it may have been because he had detected through all their disguises the secret leaning of the two Hamiltons to Romanist or semi-Romanist views regarding the apostolical succession, the nature of the sacraments, and the unfailing visibility and perpetuity of the church, that he now so fully entered into a controversy which previously he had been inclined to shun. Perhaps this is what is hinted at in the preface, in which he says: "Wonder not, gentill reidar, that sic ane argument suld proceid fra me in thir dolorous days after that I have taken gude-night at the warld and at all the fasherie of the same.... There ar sevin yeares past sen a scrole send from a Jesuite to his brother was presented unto me be a faithfull brother requyring sum answer to be maid to the same.... Amongs my other caires I scriblit that which followis, and that in few dayis; which being finished I repented of my laubour, and purposed fullie to have suppressed it. Which, na dout I had done, if that the devil had not steirit up the Jesuites of purpois to trouble godlie harts, with the same argumentis which Tyrie usis, amplifyed and set furth with all the dog eloquence that Sathan can devyse for suppressing of the free progres of the Evangell of Jesus Christ." Then, after a touching reference to the hard lot of his dispersed flock "suffering lytill les calamitie than did the faithfull efter the persecutioun of Steaphen," and an earnest petition that God would grant them one day to meet in glory, he entreats the brethren to pray for him, that God "in His mercy will pleis to put end to my long and panefull battell," as he was unable to fight as erewhile he had done, and longed for release, though still resigned to bear patiently whatsoever God saw meet to lay upon this, his "wicked carkase."[237]
The St Andrews Assembly.
In March 1572 the General Assembly was held at St Andrews in the schools of St Leonard's College.[238] This place was no doubt chosen in part at least for the convenience of the aged reformer, whose counsel in that time of trouble was specially needed. It was the last Assembly at which he was able to be present, and probably the first witnessed by Davidson and Melville. "Thair," the latter narrates, "was motioned the making of bischopes, to the quhilk Mr Knox opponit himselff directlie and zealuslie";[239] and thus probably were implanted in the youthful student's mind the germs of those presbyterian principles which were nurtured by intercourse with his uncle Andrew Melville, and were retained by him to the last with heroic tenacity.
Two months before this a convention at Leith had given its sanction to a sort of mongrel episcopacy, nominally to secure the tithes more completely to the church, but really to secure the bulk of them by a more regular title to certain covetous noblemen who sought in this way to reimburse themselves for their services in the cause of the Reformation.[240] Chief among these noblemen was the Earl of Morton, then one of the chief supporters of the young prince, and soon after regent of the kingdom. Having secured a presentation to the Archbishopric of St Andrews for Mr John Douglas before mentioned, he came over to the city, had him elected by the chapter in terms of the convention, and on the 10th of February inaugurated into his office. This function was performed by Wynram, Superintendent of Fife, according to the Order followed in the admission of Superintendents, save that the Bishop of Caithness, the Superintendent of Lothian, and Mr David Lindsay, who sat beside Douglas, laid their hands on his head. Knox had preached that day as usual; but, as Bannatyne is careful to tell us, had "refuised to inaugurat the said bischope";[241] and as others add had "denounced anathema Three Kinds of Bishops. to the giver, anathema to the receaver,"[242] who as rector and principal had already far more to do than such an aged man could hope to overtake.[243] It was in reference to the same appointment that Adamson, as yet uncorrupted by Court influences, had a few days before in a sermon from the same pulpit given utterance to his famous distinction of three kinds of bishops, my lord bishop, my lord's bishop, and the Lord's bishop, the first of whom had been in time of popery, the second was now brought in merely to enable my lord to draw the kirk rents, and the third was the evangelical pastor as he should be in times of thorough reformation.[244]
One more brief sketch from the Diary of the quaint but graphic chronicler on whom I have repeatedly drawn may conclude our notice of these last labours of the reformer, and bring us to his last illness and death. "The town of Edinbruche recovered againe [out of the hands of the queen's faction] and the guid and honest men therof retourned to thair housses,[245] Mr Knox with his familie past hame to Edinbruche." During the time of his residence in St Andrews he was very weak. "I saw him everie day of his doctrine," says Melville, "go hulie and fear with a furring of martriks about his neck, a staff in the an hand, and guid godlie Richart Ballanden, his servand, halding upe the uther oxtar, from the abbey to the paroche kirk; and be the said Richart and another servant lifted upe to the pulpit, whar he behovit to lean at his first entrie; bot or he haid done with his sermont he was sa active and vigorus that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads, and fly out of it."[246]
Soon after his return to Edinburgh he found himself quite unable to preach in the large church which he had formerly occupied, and a smaller one was fitted up for him in the western His Message to Charles IX. part of the nave of St Giles.[247] But not even so were his services to be long available. On one occasion only after his return may it be said that the old fire burst out with all its former fierceness and brilliancy. This was in September, when tidings reached him of the bloody massacre of St Bartholomew's day in France. "Being conveyed to the pulpit," Dr M'Crie tells us, "and summoning up his remaining strength, he thundered the vengeance of God against 'that cruel murderer and false traitor, the King of France,' and [borrowing the language of the Old Testament prophets] desired Le Croc, the French ambassador, to tell his master that sentence was pronounced against him in Scotland, that the divine vengeance would never depart from him nor from his house, if repentance did not ensue; but his name would remain an execration to posterity, and none proceeding from his loins should enjoy his kingdom in peace."[248] The only further notice of his work is by Melville, who simply informs us that after "instituting in his roum, be the ordinar calling of the kirk and congregation, Mr James Lawsone, a man of singular learning, zeal, and eloquence, ... he tuk him to his chamber and most happelie and comfortablie departed this lyff."[249]
With this kindly notice by his youthful admirer this lecture would have ended, had I not promised to the late Dean Stanley several years ago that, when a suitable opportunity occurred, I would not fail publicly to advert to a shameless misrepresentation of the closing scene to which he had directed my attention. This originated with Archibald Hamilton, already referred to as one of the two masters of the New College, who apostatised from the Protestant faith, and after his flight to the Continent published the most barefaced lies of his old antagonist and the noble men who were associated with him in his hard battle and well-earned triumph. These lies were exposed and refuted at the time by Principal Smeton of Glasgow, himself a convert from that Society of Jesus which Hamilton ultimately joined. But as they have been revived in our own day, and distributed in the form of a tract by Popish emissaries at the doors of Protestant churches in London, and as one of a series bearing the sensational title of "Death-bed Scenes," I shall, in fulfilment of my promise, subjoin a brief account of the reformer's last illness and death, taken almost exclusively from the contemporary narratives of Bannatyne and Smeton, the former of whom was an eye-witness, and the latter of whom had full information from Lawson,[250] who also was an eye-witness of all. This, I feel assured, is all that is required to set matters in their true light.