Parliament opened on Monday, March 12. The assembly was numerous, for the gravity of the occasion was universally understood. ‘This parliament,’ said the earl of Angus, ‘is the most substantial that was ever seen in Scotland; the three estates are present in great force, and the multitude of on-lookers is so great that no more could find lodging in the two towns of Edinburgh and Leith.’ The first resolution of this important assembly approved the marriage of prince Edward and the little Queen Mary, and empowered ambassadors to negotiate it with England.[282] The second resolution (Tuesday) was the confirmation of the earl of Arran in the office of regent. On Wednesday the earl of Angus and his brother were reinstated in the honors and the estates of which they had been deprived during their fifteen years’ exile. On Thursday the most important of all the resolutions of this body was to be presented and debated.
Lord Maxwell, whom the folly of James V. had deprived of the command in the affair at Solway, was generally known as ‘a man of good intentions with respect to the Word of God.’ He had not openly professed the evangelical doctrine so long as the cardinal was in possession of the supreme power; but his sojourn in England, though short, had induced him to take a more decisive course. He rose and introduced a bill providing ‘that all the subjects of the kingdom might read the Holy Scriptures in their mother-tongue.’ The debate began immediately. Dunbar, archbishop of Glasgow, who since the imprisonment of the cardinal had become chancellor of the realm, declared that he would oppose the motion in his own name and in the name of all the prelates, at least until the period when a provincial council of all the clergy of Scotland should have decided the question. ‘Wherefore,’ answered the friends of the Scriptures, ‘should it not be lawful to men that understood no Latin, to use this word of their salvation in the tongue they understand, as it was for Latin men to have it in Latin, Grecians and Hebrews to have it in their tongues.’ ‘The kirk,’ replied the priests, ‘had forbidden all kind of tongues but these three.’ ‘When was that inhibition given?’ retorted the friends of the Gospel. ‘Christ has commanded his word to be preached to all nations. Now if it ought to be preached to all nations, it must be preached in the tongue they understand. Now if it be lawful to preach it in all tongues, why shall it not be lawful to read it and to hear it read in all tongues? To the end that the people may try the spirits according to the commandment of the apostle.’[283]
FREEDOM TO READ THE BIBLE.
The prelates finding themselves beaten admitted that the Holy Scripture might indeed be read in the vulgar tongue, provided that the translation were true. Some of the members of the assembly then handed to the priests some copies of the Holy Scriptures which they drew from their pockets, and begged them to point out any faults they could find in them. The prelates, in great embarrassment, began to make search, turned over the leaves of the book, opening it at the beginning, at the end, and in all parts, taking infinite pains to find some mistake. But nothing could be found. At last, ‘Here,’ said one of them, ‘here is a passage to be reprehended; love is put in the place of charity.’ ‘What difference is there,’ it was replied, ‘betwixt the one and the other? It seems you do not understand the Greek term ἀγάπη.’ Before the Greek word the priests stood dumb.[284]
The deputies of the burgesses and a part of the nobles then required that the reading asked for should be permitted; as well as the reading of Christian treatises, until such time as the clergy should give a better translation of the Bible. The prelates still stood out; but at length, reduced to silence, they submitted, and it was enacted by Act of Parliament that ‘all men and women should be free to read the Holy Scriptures in their own tongue or in the English tongue, and that all acts passed to the contrary should be abolished.’ This bill, which passed on March 15, was promulgated on the 19th, and sent into all parts of the kingdom by order of the regent. The priests immediately began to cry out with one voice against him as the promoter of heresy.[285]
This was the first public Act passed in Scotland in favor of religious liberty. The victory, says Knox, which Christ Jesus then won over the enemies of his truth was of no little importance. The trumpet of the Gospel gave at once a certain sound, from Wigton to Inverness, from south to north. No small comfort was given to the souls, to the families, who till then durst not read the Lord’s Prayer or the Ten Commandments in English through fear of being accused of heresy. The Bible, which had long lain hidden in some out-of-the-way corner, was now openly placed on the tables of pious and well-informed men. The New Testament was indeed already widely circulated, but many of those who possessed it had shown themselves unworthy of it, never having read ten sentences in it through fear of men.
Now they brought out their New Testaments, and ‘they would chop their familiars on the cheek with it.’[286] ‘Here,’ said they, ‘this book has lain hid under my bed feet these ten years.’ Others, on the contrary, exclaimed with joy, ‘Oh, how often have I been in danger for this book! how secretly have I stolen away from my wife at midnight to read upon it in that lonely silent hour!’ Some, who were minded to turn everything to account, made a great parade of their joy, on purpose to pay court to the regent, who was then esteemed the most fervent Protestant in all Europe. ‘But in general,’ add the historians, ‘the knowledge of God was wonderfully increased by the perusal of the sacred writings, and the Holy Spirit was given in great abundance to simple men.’ Many works were also published at the same time in Scotland, which were intended to disclose the abuses of the Romish Church, and others of the same character were brought from England. That important Act of the Scottish parliament was never repealed.
MISSION OF SIR R. SADLER.
While these wholesome measures were being adopted, the alliance of the country with England appeared to be growing stronger; and even if a purely evangelical reformation was not to be looked for, the ties which bound Scotland to Rome must certainly be broken. On Sunday afternoon, March 18, the day after the closing of the session of parliament, arrived Sir Ralph Sadler, an envoy from Henry VIII. He betook himself that very evening to Holyrood, and there learnt from the regent the resolutions which had just been taken. Sadler was charged with the duty of concluding the marriage contract between Edward and Mary, as well as the project of a perpetual alliance between the two countries.[287] Sadler, who acted in the business with his utmost energy, soon found that the Scots were not prepared to go to the same length as his master. ‘In my opinion,’ he wrote (March 27), ‘they had lever suffer extremity than come to the obedience and subjection of England: they will have their realm free and live within themselves after their own laws and customs.... I think assuredly all the nobles and the whole temporality of this realm desire the marriage and to join with us in perfect friendship: in which case I think also they will utterly abandon France.’ This was not what Henry was aiming at. After the death of the young princess, the Tudors, in his view, were to inherit her kingdom.
The alliance, nevertheless, was concluded. On July 1 the earl of Glencairn, Sir George Douglas, Learmont, and Balnaves, the Scottish envoys, signed at Greenwich the treaty of marriage and of peace. This treaty was solemnly read, August 25, in Holyrood abbey, and was there signed, sealed, and approved by the regent and the nobles. The queen was to remain in Scotland until she should be ten years old, and then be taken into England to be educated. Three Scottish lords should be given as hostages to Henry; and in confirmation of the alliance a consecrated wafer, according to a Romish usage, was broken between the regent and Sir R. Sadler, the representative of Henry VIII. Each of them received and ate half of it, in token of their unity and as a pledge of their fidelity,—a strange method of cementing an alliance which had for its end the destruction of Romish superstitions. The treaty was published everywhere as a basis of perpetual agreement; but the union of the two nations had still many a storm to encounter.