In the “History” Knox says that after the news came of the Regent’s perfidy, and after a sermon “vehement against idolatry,” a priest began to celebrate, and “opened a glorious tabernacle” on the high altar. “Certain godly men and a young boy” were standing near; they all, or the boy alone (the sentence may be read either way), cried that this was intolerable. The priest struck the boy, who “took up a stone” and hit the tabernacle, and “the whole multitude” wrecked the monuments of idolatry. Neither the exhortation of the preacher nor the command of the magistrate could stay them in their work of destruction. [{111}] Presently “the rascal multitude” convened, without the gentry and “earnest professors,” and broke into the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries. They wrecked as usual, and the “common people” robbed, but the godly allowed Forman, Prior of the Charter House, to bear away about as much gold and silver as he was able to carry. We learn from Mary of Guise and Lesley’s “History” that the very orchards were cut down.
If, thanks to the preachers, “no honest man was enriched the value of a groat,” apparently dishonest men must have sacked the gold and silver plate of the monasteries; nothing is said by Knox on this head, except as to the Charter House.
Writing to Mrs. Locke, on the other hand, on June 23, Knox tells her that “the brethren,” after “complaint and appeal made” against the Regent, levelled with the ground the three monasteries, burned all “monuments of idolatry” accessible, “and priests were commanded under pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous mass.” [{112}] Nothing is said about a spontaneous and uncontrollable popular movement. The professional “brethren,” earnest professors of course, reap the glory. Which is the true version?
If the version given to Mrs. Locke be accurate, Knox had sufficient reasons for producing a different account in that portion of his “History” (Book ii.) which is a tract written in autumn, 1559, and in purpose meant for contemporary foreign as well as domestic readers. The performances attributed to the brethren, in the letter to the London merchant’s wife, were of a kind which Calvin severely rebuked. Similar or worse violences were perpetrated by French brethren at Lyons, on April 30, 1562. The booty of the church of St. Jean had been sold at auction. There must be no more robbery and pillage, says Calvin, writing on May 13, to the Lyons preachers. The ruffians who rob ought rather to be abandoned, than associated with to the scandal of the Gospel. “Already reckless zeal was shown in the ravages committed in the churches” (altars and images had been overthrown), “but those who fear God will not rigorously judge what was done in hot blood, from devout emotion, but what can be said in defence of looting?”
Calvin spoke even more distinctly to the “consistory” of Nîmes, who suspended a preacher named Tartas for overthrowing crosses, altars, and images in churches (July-August, 1561). The zealot was even threatened with excommunication by his fellow religionists. [{113a}] Calvin heard that this fanatic had not only consented to the outrages, but had incited them, and had “the insupportable obstinacy” to say that such conduct was, with him, “a matter of conscience.” “But we” says Calvin, “know that the reverse is the case, for God never commanded any one to overthrow idols, except every man in his own house, and, in public, those whom he has armed with authority. Let that fire-brand” (the preacher) “show us by what title he is lord of the land where he has been burning things.”
Knox must have been aware of Calvin’s opinion about such outrages as those of Perth, which, in a private letter, he attributes to the brethren: in his public “History” to the mob. At St. Andrews, when similar acts were committed, he says that “the provost and bailies . . . did agree to remove all monuments of idolatry,” whether this would or would not have satisfied Calvin.
Opponents of my view urge that Knox, though he knew that the brethren had nothing to do with the ruin at Perth, yet, in the enthusiasm of six weeks later, claimed this honour for them, when writing to Mrs. Locke. Still later, when cool, he told, in his “History,” “the frozen truth,” the mob alone was guilty, despite his exhortations and the commandment of the magistrate. Neither alternative is very creditable to the prophet.
In the “Historie of the Estate of Scotland,” it is “the brethren” who break, burn, and destroy. [{113b}] In Knox’s “History” no mention is made of the threat of death against the priests. In the letter to Mrs. Locke he says, apparently of the threat, perhaps of the whole affair, “which thing did so enrage the venom of the serpent’s seed,” that she decreed death against man, woman, and child in Perth, after the fashion of Knox’s favourite texts in Deuteronomy and Chronicles. This was “beastlie crueltie.” The “History” gives the same account of the Regent’s threatening “words which might escape her in choler” (of course we have no authority for her speaking them at all), but, in the “History,” Knox omits the threat by the brethren of death against the priests—a threat which none of his biographers mentions!
If the menace against the priests and the ruin of monasteries were not seditious, what is sedition? But Knox’s business, in Book II. of his “History” (much of it written in September-October 1559), is to prove that the movement was not rebellious, was purely religious, and all for “liberty of conscience”—for Protestants. Therefore, in the “History,” he disclaims the destruction by the brethren of the monasteries—the mob did that; and he burkes the threat of death to priests: though he told the truth, privately, to Mrs. Locke.
Mary did not move at once. The Hamiltons joined her, and she had her French soldiers, perhaps 1500 men. On May 22 “The Faithful Congregation of Christ Jesus in Scotland,” but a few gentlemen being concerned, wrote from Perth, which they were fortifying, to the Regent. If she proceeds in her “cruelty,” they will take up the sword, and inform all Christian princes, and their Queen in France, that they have revolted solely because of “this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murder, intended against towns and multitudes.” As if they had not revolted already! Their pretext seems to mean that they do not want to alter the sovereign authority, a quibble which they issued for several months, long after it was obviously false. They also wrote to the nobles, to the French officers in the Regent’s service, and to the clergy.