Henry VIII., who received into his realm many of the exiles who were driven from their own country, was troubled at seeing his nephew throw himself into the arms of the Roman pontiff. It was for the interest of England that Scotland should not take a course opposed to her own: the whole of Great Britain ought to cast off the authority of the pope at the same time. The Tudor, impatient to reach this end, conceived the project of giving his daughter Mary in marriage to the King of Scotland; and in order to bring about by degrees a reconciliation, he determined to send Lord William Howard to Scotland. To this intent he had instructions drawn up in full detail to the effect following:[183]—First after your arrival at the court of the king my nephew, you will offer on our part the most friendly greetings, you will thank him for his noble present of falcons, and you will assure him that the ties of blood which unite us lead me to rejoice at every piece of good fortune that befalls him. You will then practise with the lord treasurer by some means to get you the measure of the king’s person, and you will cause to be made for him the richest and most elegant garments possible, by the tailor whom you will have at hand for that intent. Then you will tell him that I am greatly desirous to have conference with him.
Henry VIII., full of hatred for the papacy, and anxious to see other kingdoms strengthen his position by following his example, urged his nearest neighbors to found, as he had done, national churches acknowledging no other head than the king. He had seen his endeavors fail in France, and was all the more desirous of succeeding in Scotland. As uncle to the king, the task seemed easy to him. To accomplish it he was resolved to use all means, and among others he sought to gain over the king by fine clothes made after the London fashion. He sent to him at the same time some books against the usurped authority of the pope.
DR. BARLOW’S EMBASSY
In October, Dr. Barlow, prior of Bisham, one of the king’s councillors, ‘a man sufficiently instructed,’ wrote Henry to James, ‘in the specialities of certain great and weighty causes,’[184] arrived in Scotland, and the queen-dowager Margaret procured him a private conversation with her son.[185] The pope’s partisans at once took the alarm, and conjured James not to read the books which Henry VIII. had sent to him; they depicted the unheard-of dangers to which he would expose his person, his crown, and his kingdom by following his uncle’s example. They had the best of it, and James commanded a reply to be written to Cromwell, that assuredly no means would be neglected of strengthening the bonds of friendship between the two sovereigns; but that, in Scotland, there could be no agreement with the King of England ‘in the opinions concerning the authority of the pope and kirkmen.’[186] ‘Here be,’ wrote Barlow to Cromwell, ‘plenty of priests, sundry sorts of religions, multitudes of monks, flocking companies of friars, yet among them all so many is there not a few, no not one, that sincerely preacheth Christ.’
‘It shall be no more dyspleasant for me to depart,’ he wrote on May 23, 1536, ‘than it was for Lot to pass out of Sodom.’[187]
Henry was not discouraged, and he sent Lord William Howard a second time, in February, 1535. At a solemn session which was held at Holyrood with great pomp, Howard delivered to James V., at one and the same time, the order of the Garter, which Charles V., Francis I., and King Ferdinand had already received, and a declaration touching the ecclesiastical supremacy. The king accepted the order with respect, and handed over the declaration to his bishops to do what they wished with it.[188] In vain had Henry given James a glimpse of the prospect of sitting on the throne of England by marrying his daughter Mary; the priests, and especially Beatoun, got the proposals rejected, from which they anticipated nothing but evil. They represented to him the risk which he would run if he went to London and put his head at the disposal of so treacherous and cruel a prince; and what admiration posterity would cherish for him, if at the time when all Europe was threatening the Church, he should remain true to the faith of his forefathers.
Among the Scottish people there were earnest aspirations after the Gospel: but in that country, as in France, the priesthood and the government forcibly repressed them. The more the state separated itself from the pope in the south of Britain, the more it clung to him in the north. The king, now become the direct instrument of the clergy, required the parliament to check the progress which the Bible seemed to be making in Scotland; and on June 8 this body, adding severity to the former laws, enacted that whosoever possessed a New Testament should deliver it to his bishop under pain of confiscation and imprisonment, and that all discussion about religious opinions was prohibited. It gave permission, however, to clerks of the schools to read that book, in order that they might the more efficiently contend against its adherents. Many priests, monks, and students therefore read the New Testament; but this reading produced a quite contrary effect, for it led them to receive and to defend the Gospel. This could not but irritate the king and his priests, and make them feel still more the necessity of an alliance with some ultramontane power. The conversion of a Churchman who, through his family, was connected with the court, especially attracted their attention.
THOMAS FORREST.
In a small island in the Firth of Forth, not far from Edinburgh, stood the ancient abbey of St. Colme, occupied by Augustinian canons. Distinguished among them was the son of the master of the stables to King James IV. His name was Thomas Forrest, and he is not to be confounded with the Benedictine, Henry Forrest, of whom we have already spoken. A quarrel had broken out between the abbot and the canons; the latter, in order to support their claims, seized the deeds of foundation of the monastery. The abbot came in, scolded them sharply, recovered the volume, and gave them in its place an old folio of St. Augustine. The canons scornfully turned their backs on the book and went back to their cells.
Forrest, left alone, looked at the volume. A work of the great Augustine interested him. He took it into his cell, read it, and ere long was able to say, with the bishop of Hippo—‘That which the dispensation of works commands, is accomplished by the dispensation of grace. O happy and blessed book!’ he would often say, ‘God has made use of thee to enlighten my soul.’[189] St. Augustine led Forrest to the Gospel, and he was not long in making known to his brethren the treasure which he had found in the writings of this Father and in the New Testament. Aged men stopped their ears. ‘Alas,’ said the son of the king’s master-stabler, ‘the old bottles will not receive the new wine.’[190] The old canons complained to the abbot, and the abbot said to Forrest, ‘Look after your own salvation, but talk as other men do.’