To ourselves it does seem that for a preacher to call levies out of every town and province, to meet in the capital on a day when a trial was to be held, is a thing that no Government can tolerate. The administration of justice is impossible in the circumstances. But it was the usual course in Scotland, and any member of the Privy Council might, at any time, find it desirable to call a similar convocation of his allies. Mary herself, fretted by the perfidies of Elizabeth, had just been consoled by that symbolic jewel, a diamond shaped like a rock, and by promises in which she fondly trusted when she at last sought an asylum in England, and found a prison. For two months she had often been in deep melancholy, weeping for no known cause, and she was afflicted by the “pain in her side” which ever haunted her (December 13-21). [{233b}]
Accused by the Master of Maxwell of unbecoming conduct, Knox said that such things had been done before, and he had the warrant “of God, speaking plainly in his Word.” The Master (later Lord Herries), not taking this view of the case, was never friendly with Knox again; the Reformer added this comment as late as December 1571. [{233c}]
Lethington and Moray, like Maxwell, remonstrated vainly with our Reformer. Randolph (December 21) reports that the Lords assembled “to take order with Knox and his faction, who intended by a mutinous assembly made by his letter before, to have rescued two of their brethren from course of law. . . . ” [{234a}] Knox was accompanied to Holyrood by a force of brethren who crowded “the inner close and all the stairs, even to the chamber door where the Queen and Council sat.” [{234b}] Probably these “slashing communicants” had their effect on the minds of the councillors. Not till after Riccio’s murder was Mary permitted to have a strong guard.
According to Knox, Mary laughed a horse laugh when he entered, saying, “Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear himself. I will see gif I can gar him greit.” Her Scots, textually reported, was certainly idiomatic.
Knox acknowledged his letter to the Congregation, and Lethington suggested that he might apologise. Ruthven said that Knox made convocation of people daily to hear him preach; what harm was there in his letter merely calling people to convocation. This was characteristic pettifogging. Knox said that he convened the people to meet on the day of trial according to the order “that the brethren has appointed . . . at the commandment of the general Kirk of the Realm.”
Mary seems, strangely enough, to have thought that this was a valid reply. Perhaps it was, and the Kirk’s action in that sense, directed against the State, finally enabled Cromwell to conquer the Kirk-ridden country. Mary appears to have admitted the Kirk’s imperium in imperio, for she diverted the discussion from the momentous point really at issue—the right of the Kirk to call up an armed multitude to thwart justice. She now fell on Knox’s employment of the word “cruelty.” He instantly started on a harangue about “pestilent Papists,” when the Queen once more introduced a personal question; he had caused her to weep, and he recounted all their interview after he attacked her marriage from the pulpit.
He was allowed to go home—it might not have been safe to arrest him, and the Lords, unanimously, voted that he had done no offence. They repeated their votes in the Queen’s presence, and thus a precedent for “mutinous convocation” by Kirkmen was established, till James VI. took order in 1596. We have no full narrative of this affair except that of Knox. It is to be guessed that the nobles wished to maintain the old habit of mutinous convocation which, probably, saved the life of Lethington, and helped to secure Bothwell’s acquittal from the guilt of Darnley’s murder. Perhaps, too, the brethren who filled the whole inner Court and overflowed up the stairs of the palace, may have had their influence.
This was a notable triumph of our Reformer, and of the Kirk; to which, on his showing, the Queen contributed, by feebly wandering from the real point at issue. She was no dialectician. Knox’s conduct was, of course, approved of and sanctioned by the General Assembly. [{235}] He had, in his circular, averred that Cranstoun and Armstrong were summoned “that a door may be opened to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude.” To put it mildly, the General Assembly sanctioned contempt of Court. Unluckily for Scotland contempt of Court was, and long remained, universal, the country being desperately lawless, and reeking with blood shed in public and private quarrels. When a Prophet followed the secular example of summoning crowds to overawe justice, the secular sinners had warrant for thwarting the course of law.
As to the brethren and the idolaters who caused these troubles, we know not what befell them. The penalty, both for the attendants at Mass and for the disturbers thereof, should have been death! The dear brethren, if they attacked the Queen’s servants, came under the Proclamation of October 1561; so did the Catholics, for they “openly made alteration and innovation of the state of religion. . . . ” They ought “to be punished to the death with all rigour.” Three were outlawed, and their sureties “unlawed.” Twenty-one others were probably not hanged; the records are lost. For the same reason we know not what became of the brethren Armstrong, Cranstoun, and George Rynd, summoned with the other malefactors for November 13. [{236}]