On August 17, during a truce between the hostile parties, Knox left St. Andrews for Edinburgh, “not without dolour and displeasure of the few godly that were in the town, but to the great joy and pleasure of the rest;” for, “half dead” as he was, Knox had preached a political sermon every Sunday, and he was in the pulpit at St. Giles’s on the last Sunday of August. [{269a}] As his colleague, Craig, had disgusted the brethren by his moderation and pacific temper, a minister named Lawson was appointed as Knox’s coadjutor.
Late in August came the news of the St. Bartholomew massacre (August 24). Knox rose to the occasion, and, preaching in the presence of du Croc, the French ambassador, bade him tell his King that he was a murderer, and that God’s vengeance should never depart from him or his house. [{269b}] The prophecy was amply fulfilled. Du Croc remonstrated, “but the Lords answered they could not stop the mouths of ministers to speak against themselves.”
There was a convention of Protestants in Edinburgh on October 20, but lords did not attend, and few lairds were present. The preachers and other brethren in the Assembly proposed that all Catholics in the realm should be compelled to recant publicly, to lose their whole property and be banished if they were recalcitrant, and, if they remained in the country, that all subjects should be permitted, lawfully, to put them to death. (“To invade them, and every one of them, to the death.”) [{269c}] This was the ideal, embodied in law, of the brethren in 1560. Happily they were not permitted to disgrace Scotland by a Bartholomew massacre of her own.
Mr. Hume Brown thinks that these detestable proposals “if not actually penned by Knox, must have been directly inspired by him.” He does not, however, mention the demand for massacre, except as “pains and penalties for those who preached the old religion.” [{269d}] “Without exception of persons, great or small,” all were to be obliged to recant, or to be ruined and exiled, or to be massacred. Dr. M‘Crie does not hint at the existence of these articles, “to be given to the Regent and Council.” They included a very proper demand for the reformation of vice at home. Certainly Knox did not pen or dictate the Articles, for none of his favourite adjectives occurs in the document.
At this time Elizabeth, Leicester, and Cecil desired to hand over Queen Mary to Mar, the Regent, “to proceed with her by way of justice,” a performance not to be deferred, “either for Parliament or a great Session.” Very Petty Sessions indeed, if any, were to suffice for the trial of the Queen. [{270}] There are to be no “temporising solemnities,” all are to be “stout and resolute in execution,” Leicester thus writes to an unknown correspondent on October 10. Killigrew, who was to arrange the business with Mar, was in Scotland by September 19. On October 6, Killigrew writes that Knox is very feeble but still preaching, and that he says, if he is not a bishop, it is by no fault of Cecil’s. “I trust to satisfy Morton,” says Killigrew, “and as for John Knox, that thing, as you may see by my letter to Mr. Secretary, is done and doing daily; the people in general well bent to England, abhorring the fact in France, and fearing their tyranny.”
“That thing” is not the plan for murdering Mary without trial; if Killigrew meant that he had obtained Knox’s assent to that, he would not write “that thing is doing daily.” Even Morton, more scrupulous than Elizabeth and Cecil, said that “there must be some kind of process” (trial, procès), attended secretly by the nobles and the ministers. The trial would be in Mary’s absence, or would be brief indeed, for the prisoner was not to live three hours after crossing the Border! Others, unnamed, insisted on a trial; the Queen had never been found guilty. Killigrew speaks of “two ministers” as eager for the action, but nothing proves that Knox was one of them. While Morton and Mar were haggling for the price of Mary’s blood, Mar died, on October 28, and the whole plot fell through. [{271}] Anxious as Knox had declared himself to be to “strike at the root,” he could not, surely, be less scrupulous about a trial than Morton, though the decision of the Court was foredoomed. Sandys, the Bishop of London, advised that Mary’s head should be chopped off!
On November 9, 1572, Knox inducted Mr. Lawson into his place as minister at St. Giles’s. On the 13th he could not read the Bible aloud, he paid his servants, and gave his man a present, the last, in addition to his wages. On the 15th two friends came to see Knox at noon, dinner time. He made an effort, and for the last time sat at meat with them, ordering a fresh hogshead of wine to be drawn. “He willed Archibald Stewart to send for the wine so long as it lasted, for he would never tarry until it were drunken.” On the 16th the Kirk came to him, by his desire; and he protested that he had never hated any man personally, but only their errors, nor had he made merchandise of the Word. He sent a message to Kirkcaldy bidding him repent, or the threatenings should fall on him and the Castle. His exertions increased his illness. There had been a final quarrel with the dying Lethington, who complained that Knox, in sermons and otherwise, charged him with saying there is “neither heaven nor hell,” an atheistic position of which (see his eloquent prayer before Corrichie fight, wherein Huntly died [{272a}]) he was incapable. On the 16th he told “the Kirk” that Lethington’s conduct proved that he really did disbelieve in God, and a future of rewards and punishments. That was not the question. The question was—Did Knox, publicly and privately, as Lethington complained, attribute to him words which he denied having spoken, asking that the witnesses should be produced. We wish that Knox had either produced good evidences, or explained why he could not produce them, or had apologised, or had denied that he spoke in the terms reported to Lethington.
James Melville says that the Rev. Mr. Lindsay, of Leith, told him that Knox bade him carry a message to Kirkcaldy in the Castle. After compliments, it ran: “He shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment, and hung on a gallows before the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life, and flee to the mercy of God.” Knox added: “That man’s soul is dear to me, and I would not have it perish, if I could save it.” Kirkcaldy consulted Maitland, and returned with a reply which contained Lethington’s last scoff at the prophet. However, Morton, when he had the chance, did hang Kirkcaldy, as in the play acted before Knox at St. Andrews, “according to Mr. Knox’s doctrine.” “The preachers clamoured for blood to cleanse blood.” [{272b}]
As to a secret conference with Morton on the 17th, the Earl, before his execution, confessed that the dying man asked him, “if he knew anything of the King’s (Darnley’s) murder?” “I answered, indeed, I knew nothing of it”—perhaps a pardonable falsehood in the circumstances. Morton said that the people who had suffered from Kirkcaldy and the preachers daily demanded the soldier’s death.
Other sayings of the Reformer are reported. He repressed a lady who, he thought, wished to flatter him: “Lady, lady, the black ox has never trodden yet upon your foot!” “I have been in heaven and have possession, and I have tasted of these heavenly joys where presently I am,” he said, after long meditation, beholding, as in Bunyan’s allegory, the hills of Beulah. He said the Creed, which soon vanished from Scottish services; and in saying “Our Father,” broke off to murmur, “Who can pronounce so holy words?” On November 24 he rose and dressed, but soon returned to bed. His wife read to him the text, “where I cast my first anchor,” St. John’s Gospel, chapter xvii. About half-past ten he said, “Now it is come!” and being asked for a sign of his steadfast faith, he lifted up one hand, “and so slept away without any pain.” [{273}]