These are unfortunately examples of Knox’s Christianity. [{71b}] It is very easy for modern historians and biographers to speak with genial applause of the prophet’s manly bluffness. But if we put ourselves in the position of opponents whom he was trying to convert, of the two Marys for example, we cannot but perceive that his method was hopelessly mistaken. In attempting to evangelise an Euahlayi black fellow, we should not begin by threats of damnation, and by railing accusations against his god, Baiame.
CHAPTER VIII: KNOX’S WRITINGS FROM ABROAD: BEGINNING OF THE SCOTTISH REVOLUTION, 1556-1558
Knox was about this time summoned to be one of the preachers to the English at Geneva. He sent in advance Mrs. Bowes and his wife, visited Argyll and Glenorchy (now Breadalbane), wrote (July 7) an epistle bidding the brethren be diligent in reading and discussing the Bible, and went abroad. His effigy was presently burned by the clergy, as he had not appeared in answer to a second summons, and he was outlawed in absence.
It is not apparent that Knox took any part in the English translation of the Bible, then being executed at Geneva. Greek and Hebrew were not his forte, though he had now some knowledge of both tongues, but he preached to the men who did the work. The perfections of Genevan Church discipline delighted him. “Manners and religion so sincerely reformed I have not yet seen in any other place.” The genius of Calvin had made Geneva a kind of Protestant city state κατ' ευχην; a Calvinistic Utopia—everywhere the vigilant eyes of the preachers and magistrates were upon every detail of daily life. Monthly and weekly the magistrates and ministers met to point out each other’s little failings. Knox felt as if he were indeed in the City of God, and later he introduced into Scotland, and vehemently abjured England to adopt, the Genevan “discipline.” England would none of it, and would not, even in the days of the Solemn League and Covenant, suffer the excommunication by preachers to pass without lay control.
It is unfortunate that the ecclesiastical polity and discipline of a small city state, like a Greek πολις, feasible in such a community as Geneva at a moment of spiritual excitement, was brought by Knox and his brethren into a nation like Scotland. The results were a hundred and twenty-nine years of unrest, civil war, and persecution.
Though happy in the affection of his wife and Mrs. Bowes, Knox, at this time, needed more of feminine society. On November 19, 1556, he wrote to his friend, Mrs. Locke, wife of a Cheapside merchant: “You write that your desire is earnest to see me. Dear sister, if I should express the thirst and languor which I have had for your presence, I should appear to pass measure. . . . Your presence is so dear to me that if the charge of this little flock . . . did not impede me, my presence should anticipate my letter.” Thus Knox was ready to brave the fires of Smithfield, or, perhaps, forgot them for the moment in his affection for Mrs. Locke. He writes to no other woman in this fervid strain. On May 8, 1557, Mrs. Locke with her son and daughter (who died after her journey), joined Knox at Geneva. [{73}]
He was soon to be involved in Scottish affairs. After his departure from his country, omens and prodigies had ensued. A comet appeared in November-December 1556. Next year some corn-stacks were destroyed by lightning. Worse, a calf with two heads was born, and was exhibited as a warning to Mary of Guise by Robert Ormistoun. The idolatress merely sneered, and said “it was but a common thing.” Such a woman was incorrigible. Mary of Guise is always blamed for endangering Scotland in the interests of her family, the Guises of the House of Lorraine. In fact, so far as she tried to make Scotland a province of France, she was serving the ambition of Henri II. It could not be foreseen, in 1555, that Henri II. would be slain in 1559, leaving the two kingdoms in the hands of Francis II. and Mary Stuart, who were so young, that they would inevitably be ruled by the Queen’s uncles of the House of Lorraine. Shortly before Knox arrived in Scotland in 1555, the Duc de Guise had advised the Regent to “use sweetness and moderation,” as better than “extremity and rigour”; advice which she acted on gladly.
Unluckily the war between France and Spain, in 1557, brought English troops into collision with French forces in the Low Countries (Philip II. being king of England); this led to complications between Scotland, as ally of France, and the English on the Borders. Border raids began; d’Oysel fortified Eyemouth, as a counterpoise to Berwick, war was declared in November, and the discontented Scots, such as Chatelherault, Huntly, Cassilis, and Argyll, mutinied and refused to cross Tweed. [{74}] Thus arose a breach between the Regent and some of her nobles, who at last, in 1559, rebelled against her on the ground of religion. While the weak war languished on, in 1557-58, “the Evangel of Jesus Christ began wondrously to flourish,” says Knox. Other evangelists of his pattern, Harlaw, Douglas, Willock, and a baker, Methuen (later a victim of the intolerably cruel “discipline” of the Kirk Triumphant), preached at Dundee, and Methuen started a reformed Kirk (though not without being declared rebels at the horn). When these persons preached, their hearers were apt to raise riots, wreck churches, and destroy works of sacred art. No Government could for ever wink at such lawless actions, and it was because the pulpiteers, Methuen, Willock, Douglas, and the rest, were again “put at,” after being often suffered to go free, that the final crash came, and the Reformation began in the wrack and ruin of monasteries and churches.
There was drawing on another thunder-cloud. The policy of Mary of Guise certainly tended to make Scotland a mere province of France, a province infested by French forces, slender, but ill-paid and predacious. Before marrying the Dauphin, in April 1558, Mary Stuart, urged it is said by the Guises, signed away the independence of her country, to which her husband, by these deeds, was to succeed if she died without issue. Young as she was, Mary was perfectly able to understand the infamy of the transaction, and probably was not so careless as to sign the deeds unread.
Even before this secret treaty was drafted, on March 10, 1557, Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and the Prior of St. Andrews—best known to us in after years as James Stewart, Earl of Moray—informed Knox that no “cruelty” by way of persecution was being practised; that his presence was desired, and that they were ready to jeopard their lives and goods for the cause. The rest would be told to Knox by the bearer of the letter. Knox received the letter in May 1557, with verbal reports by the bearers, but was so far from hasty that he did not leave Geneva till the end of September, and did not reach Dieppe on his way to Scotland till October 24. Three days later he wrote to the nobles who had summoned him seven months earlier. He had received, he said, at Dieppe two private letters of a discouraging sort; one correspondent said that the enterprise was to be reconsidered, the other that the boldness and constancy required “for such an enterprise” were lacking among the nobles. Meanwhile Knox had spent his time, or some of it, in asking the most godly and the most learned of Europe, including Calvin, for opinions of such an adventure, for the assurance of his own conscience and the consciences of the Lord James, Erskine, Lorne, and the rest. [{76a}] This indicates that Knox himself was not quite sure of the lawfulness of an armed rising, and perhaps explains his long delay. Knox assures us that Calvin and other godly ministers insisted on his going to Scotland. But it is quite certain that of an armed rising Calvin absolutely disapproved. On April 16, 1561, writing to Coligny, Calvin says that he was consulted several months before the tumult of Amboise (March 1560) and absolutely discouraged the appeal to arms. “Better that we all perish a hundred times than that the name of Christianity and the Gospel should come under such disgrace.” [{76b}] If Calvin bade Knox go to Scotland, he must have supposed that no rebellion was intended. Knox tells his correspondents that they have betrayed themselves and their posterity (“in conscience I can except none that bear the name of nobility”), they have made him and their own enterprise ridiculous, and they have put him to great trouble. What is he to say when he returns to Geneva, and is asked why he did not carry out his purpose? He then encourages them to be resolute.