They had also at times simple social meals together. Certain priests of the town, with whom they were connected, and whose character they esteemed without sharing their opinions, were invited to these gatherings. The churchmen ate, drank, and talked with them, and thought themselves fortunate to be invited to these honest men’s houses.[312] This circumstance shows a large-heartedness among these Christian folk of Perth, which could see and appreciate whatever good qualities their adversaries possessed. They did not, however, tie themselves down to the Roman rules about meat-days and fish-days, rules from which exemption may be had for a little money: and one Friday it happened that a goose appeared on their table.
Three of these people, Robert Lamb, William Anderson, and James Raveleson, daring characters and given to raillery, were among those who were taken up with Reform on its negative side. They were disgusted at the abuses of the monastic life, and the Franciscans most of all offended them. The sight of one of these mendicant friars in the street, with his brown frock, his girdle of cord, his cowl, and his bare feet, excited in them the keenest aversion. ‘These monks,’ as has been said by a very distinguished Catholic priest, ‘feign chastity, but they know what voluptuousness is, and they often outdo men of the world in luxurious indulgence.’[313] And yet these monks pretend that all that is needed for salvation is to put on a frock of their order at the moment of death. In the judgment of Anderson and of his two friends, the founder of that order, who was nevertheless a better man than most of his successors, must have been the devil himself. They took therefore an image of Francis of Assisi, nailed rams’ horns on the head and hung a cow’s tail behind, and having thus given to it the semblance of a demon, they hung it. The Scots are not jesters by nature. They are on the contrary earnest and energetic towards those whom they oppose; and this blameworthy execution was carried out by these three men with imperturbable gravity.[314]
RAVELESON AND LAMB.
Among these reformed Christians of Perth there were some manifestations of opinion characterized by simplicity and decision, which however occasionally took a strange shape. One of the women who frequented the evangelical meetings, Hellen Stirke, was near her confinement, and in her hour of travail, when surrounded by female friends and neighbors, all of them fervent worshippers of the Virgin Mary, she called upon God and upon God alone in the name of Jesus Christ. The women said to her—‘You ought to call upon the Virgin. Is not Mary immaculate as Christ is, and even above him as first source of redemption? Is she not the queen of heaven, the head of the church?’ The Franciscan friars were continually impressing on the minds of these good women the notion that no one could obtain a blessing from God ‘except by the dispensation of his pious mother.’[315] Hellen revered Mary as a holy and blessed woman, but she held her to be of the same nature as other women, and she told her neighbors so. It was of his mercy, as Mary herself said, that God had looked upon the low estate of his servant. That her friends might better understand her meaning, she boldly added, ‘If I had lived in the days of the Virgin, God might have looked likewise to my humility and base estate, as he did to the Virgin’s, and might have made me the mother of Christ.’[316] The women about her could not believe their own ears, and her words, reported in the town by her neighbors, were counted execrable in the judgment of the clergy and of the multitude.
If St. Francis was Anderson’s nightmare, the pope was Raveleson’s. But the latter gave expression to his sentiments in a less insulting fashion. When he had built a house of four stories, he placed at the top of his staircase, by way of ornament, over the last baluster and the supporting tablet which masked it, the triple diadem of the pope, carved in wood. This was not a very criminal act: a good papist might have done the like. But Raveleson, doubtless, meant to show thereby that in his house the pope was consigned to the top story. Be that as it may, he paid dear for it.
These Protestants of Perth were certainly originals, of which not many copies were to be found. There were some of them, however, who were free from these eccentricities while displaying no less courage. On one occasion, when a monk named Spence very loudly asserted in the church that ‘prayer made to saints is so necessary that without it there could be no hope of salvation to man,’ Robert Lamb rose and accused him before the whole assembly of teaching false doctrines. ‘In the name of God,’ said he, ‘I adjure you to speak the truth.’ The friar, stricken with fear, promised to do so; but there was so much excitement and tumult in the church that the monk could not make himself heard, and Robert, at the peril of his life, barely escaped the violence of the people. The women, above all, uttered piercing screams, and urged on the multitude to the most cruel actions.[317]
THE PERTH PROTESTANTS.
The cardinal, in January, 1544, seeing that his authority was firmly established, thought that the time was come for suppressing the Reformation and glorifying the pope. Having heard of what was going on at Perth, he set out for that place, taking with him the regent, some of the chief lords, bishops, and judges. When he reached Perth on St. Paul’s day, January 19, he ordered the seizure of Robert Lamb, William Anderson, James Hunter, James Raveleson, James Finlason, and Hellen Stirke his wife,[318] and had them imprisoned the same evening in the Spay Tower.
On the following morning the prisoners appeared before their judge. They were accused on several grounds, and particularly of having met together to hear the Holy Scriptures read. A special charge was made against Lamb of having interrupted a friar. ‘It is the duty of no man,’ he answered, ‘who understands and knows the truth to hear the same impugned without contradiction. There are sundry here present in judgment who, while they know what is true, are consenting to what is false; but they will have to bear the burden in God’s presence.’[319] The six prisoners were condemned to death, and were cruelly treated. Many of the inhabitants of Perth were deeply interested in their case, and appealed to the regent to save their lives. But when Arran spoke a word to the cardinal in their behalf, the latter replied, ‘If you refuse to take part in the execution of this sentence, I will depose you.’ Arran trembled, and held his peace.
The friends of the victims, then, remembering that certain priests in the town had frequently sat at the tables of the accused, entreated them to bear in mind their old friends who were then in misfortune, and to intercede with the cardinal in their behalf. But these poor priests were terrified at the thought that the cardinal might hear of their former relations with the condemned, and they answered that they would much rather see them dead than living. That was their way of showing their gratitude. So the chronicler, whose phrase is not always elegant, adds, ‘So cruel are these beasts, from the lowest to the highest.’