MISSION OF THE DUKE OF NORFOLK.
Henry VIII. saw in these acts of the government of his nephew the signal of an impending attack, and he sent one of the greatest lords of his court, the duke of Norfolk, to Berwick and to Carlisle to watch Scotland. Norfolk attentively investigated the condition of that country, and perceived there two opposite currents. ‘The clergy of Scotland,’ he wrote to London, ‘be in such fear that their king should do there as the king’s highness hath done in this realm, that they do their best to bring their master to the war; and by many ways I am advertised that a great part of the temporalty there would their king should follow our example, which I pray God give him grace to come unto.’[210] Presently Norfolk learnt that James V. was making his cannon ready; that a proclamation was published at Edinburgh and in all parts of Scotland, enjoining every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty to be in readiness to set out; and that the fanatic cardinal was gone to the continent to make sure of the aid which Scotland might hope for, both from the king of France and from the pope. Norfolk ere long saw with his own eyes the sad effects of the intrigues of the clergy. Not a day passed but some gentlemen and priests, who were compelled to flee the country because they had had the audacity to read the Holy Scriptures in English, came to him to seek a refuge. ‘Ah,’ they to said him, ‘if we should be captured we should be put to execution.’[211] In the midst of these persecutions and preparations for war, James, initiated in the art of Roman policy, feigned the most pacific sentiments. ‘You may be sure,’ he said to one of the English agents, ‘that I shall never break with the king, my uncle.’ But Norfolk was not deceived: he felt the greatest distrust of the influence of Mary of Guise. ‘The young queen,’ he wrote to Cromwell, ‘is all papist.’[212] That ill-starred marriage linked in his eyes the family and the realm of the Stuarts with France and the papacy.
Norfolk was not wrong. The cardinal, having won over the king by flattery and by the heavy fines extorted from the evangelical Christians, was eager to take advantage of the circumstance for the destruction of the Reform and the satisfaction of some grudges of long standing. A monk named Killon, possessing some poetic talent, had composed, after the fashion of the age, a tragedy on the death of Christ. On the morning of Good Friday, probably in 1536, a numerous audience had assembled at Stirling to hear it. The king himself and the court were present. The piece presented a lively picture of the spirit and the conduct of the Romish clergy. The action was animated, the characters well marked, and the words vigorous and sometimes rude. Fanatical priests and hard-hearted Pharisees instigated the people to demand the death of Jesus, and procured from Pilate his condemnation. The design of this work was so marked that the simplest folk said to one another, ‘It is just the same with us: the bishops and the monks get those persecuted who love Jesus Christ.’[213] The clergy abstained for the moment from molesting Killon, but they took note of his daring drama.
Another Gospeller had left very unpleasant memories in Beatoun’s mind. This was the good dean Forrest, who had boldly said that he had never found either a bad epistle or a bad gospel. The cardinal was only waiting for an opportunity to arrest him, Killon, and others. He had not long to wait. When the vicar of Tullybody, near Stirling, was married, Forrest and Killon had attended the ceremony, as well as a monk named Beverage, Sir Duncan Sympson, a priest, a gentleman named Robin Forrester, and three or four other people of Stirling.[214] At the marriage feast, at the beginning of Lent, they had eaten flesh, according to that word of St. Paul, ‘Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat.’ On March 1, 1539, or according to some authorities, on the last day of February,[215] they were all seized and taken before the cardinal and the bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld, who indulged in practices far more criminal than the eating of what God made for that purpose.
PROSECUTION OF FORREST AND KILLON.
The official accuser, John Lauder, one of Beatoun’s creatures, addressing Forrest rudely, said to him—‘False heretic! thou sayest it is not lawful to kirkmen to take their teinds [tithes] and offerings and corpse presents.’ And the dean Forrest replied, ‘Brother, I said not so: but I said it was not lawful to kirkmen to spend the patrimony of the kirk as they do, as on riotous feasting and on fair women, and at playing at cards and dice: and neither the kirk well maintained nor the people instructed in God’s Word, nor the sacraments duly administered to them as Christ commanded.’
Accuser: ‘Dare thou deny that which is openly known in the country? that thou gave again to thy parishioners the cow and the upmost cloths, saying you had no right to them? ’
Dean: ‘I gave them again to them that had more mister [need] than I’
Accuser: ‘Thou false heretic! thou learned all thy parishioners to say the Paternoster, the creed, and the Ten Commandments in English.’
Dean: ‘Brother, my people are so rude and ignorant they understand no Latin, so that my conscience provoked me to learn them the words of their salvation in English, and the Ten Commandments which are the law of God, whereby they might observe the same. I teached the belief, whereby they might know their faith in God and Jesus Christ his Son, and of his death and resurrection. Moreover I teached them and learned them the Lord’s own prayer in the mother-tongue, to the effect that they might know how they should pray.’