But this assembly was not content with rejecting the proposals: they confirmed the usages and services stigmatised by their opponents as superstitious, and forbade the celebration of the sacraments in any other form than that sanctioned by the Church. The royal court at Stirling called a number of preachers to its bar for unauthorised assumption of priestly functions.
The preachers were ready to come: the lords in whose houses they sojourned were security for them. And already they had the popular sympathy as well as aristocratic protection. It was an old custom of the country that, in especially important judicial proceedings, the accused appeared accompanied by his friends. Now therefore the friends of the Reformation assembled in great numbers at Perth from the Mearns, Dundee, and Angus, that, by jointly avowing the doctrines on account of which their spiritual leaders were called to account, their condemnation might be rendered impossible.
As to the Regent we are assured that she was not in general firmer in her leaning towards the hierarchy than other Princes of the time, and had once even entertained the thought that the supreme ecclesiastical power belonged to her;[197] but, perhaps alarmed by the vehemence of the preachers, she had done nothing to obtain such a power. It now appeared to her that it would be a good plan to check the flow of the masses to the place of trial by some friendly words which she addressed to Erskine of Dun.[198] The Protestants saw in them the assurance of an interposition in the direction of lenity, and stayed away; but without regard to this and without delay the Justiciary at Stirling, Henry Levingstoune, proceeded to business on the day appointed, 20 May 1559. As the preachers did not appear, those who had become security for them were condemned to a money-fine, while they themselves were denounced as rebels,[199] as having withdrawn themselves from the royal jurisdiction; an edict followed which pronounced them exiled, and in the severest terms forbade any to give them protection or favour.
The news fell like a spark of fire among the inflammable masses of Protestants assembled at Perth. The sentence promulgated was an open act of hostility against the lords, who felt themselves bound by their word which they had given to the preachers and by their vow to each other. They considered that the Regent's promise had given them a right against her; Lord Erskine, whom the others had warned, declared that he had been deceived by her. While the Regent had prevented a collision between the two parties at Stirling, she had occasioned in one of them, at Perth, the outbreak of a popular storm against the hierarchy of the land, their representatives, and the monuments of their religion. John Knox, who had come, as he said, to be where men were striving against Satan, called on them in a fiery sermon to destroy the images which were the instruments of idolatry. The attempt of a priest, after the sermon, to proceed to high mass and open the tabernacle of the altar, was all that was needed to cause a tumult even in the church itself, in which the images of the saints were destroyed; and the outbreak spreading through the city directed itself against the monasteries and laid them too in ruins. How entirely different is Knox from Luther! The German reformer made all outward change depend on the gradual influence of doctrine, and did not wish to set himself in rebellious opposition to the public order under which he lived. The Scot called on men to destroy whatever contravened his religious ideas. The Lords of the Congregation, who became ever more numerous, declared themselves resolved to do all that God commands in Scripture, and destroy all that tended to dishonour his name. With these objects, and with their co-operation and connivance, the stormy movement once raised surged everywhere further over the country. The monasteries were also destroyed in Stirling, Glasgow, and S. Andrews; the abbeys of Melrose, Dunfermline, and Cambuskenneth fell: and the proud abbey of Scone, an incomparable monument of the hierarchic feeling of earlier ages, was, together with the bishop's palace, levelled to the ground. It may be that the popular fury went far beyond the original intentions of the leaders, but without doubt it was also part of their purpose, to make an end above all of the monasteries and abbeys, from which nothing but resistance could be expected.[200] It has been regarded even in our days as a measure of prudence, dictated by the circumstances, that they destroyed these monuments, which by their imposing size and the splendour of the service performed in them would have always produced an impression adverse to the Reformation. On the other hand the cathedrals and parish churches were to be preserved, and after being cleansed from images were to be devoted to Protestant worship. Everywhere the church-unions, which were at once formed and organised on Protestant principles, gained the upper hand. The Mass ceased: the Prayer-book of King Edward VI took its place.
So the reformed Scotch Church put itself in possession, in a moment, of the greatest part of the country. It was from the beginning a self-governed establishment: it found support in the union of some lords, whose power likewise rested on independent rights: but it first gained free play when the French policy of the Regent alienated the nobility and the nation from her. On the one side now stood the princess and the clergy, on the other the lords and the preachers. As their proposals were rejected and preparations made to defend the hierarchic system with the power of the State, the opposition also similarly arose, claiming to have an original right: revolt broke out; the church system of the Romish hierarchy was overthrown and a Protestant one put in its place. In the history of Protestantism at large the year 1559 is among the most important. During the very days in which the revised Common Prayer-book was restored in England (so definitely putting an end to the Catholic religion of the realm), the monuments of Roman Catholicism in Scotland were broken in pieces, and the unrevised Common Prayer-book introduced into the churches. But yet how great was the difference! In the one country all was done under the guidance of a Queen to whom the nation adhered, in consequence of Parliamentary enactments, the ancient forms being preserved as far as possible: here the whole transaction was completed in opposition to the Regent, under the guidance of an aristocracy engaged in conflict with her, amidst very great tumult, while all that was ancient was set aside.
At the beginning of July the Scotch lords had become masters of the capital as well, and had reformed it according to their own views, with the most lively sympathy of the citizens. They were resolved to uphold the change of religion now effected, cost what it would, and hoped to do so in a peaceful manner. When Perth again opened her gates to the Regent after the first tumult, under the condition that she should punish no one, she promised at the same time to put off the adjustment of all questions in dispute to the next Parliament. There they intended to carry at once the recognition of the Reformation in its whole breadth, and the removal of the French. We perceive that it was their plan in that case to obey the Regent as before, and to unite the abbey-lands to the possessions of the crown. 'But if your Grace does not agree to this,' so runs the letter of a confederate, 'they are resolved to reject all union with you.'
It was soon shown that the last was the only alternative. The regent collected so many French and Scotch troops that the lords did not venture to stop her return to Edinburgh. They came to an agreement instead, in which she promised to prosecute no member of the Congregation, and especially no preacher, and not to allow the clergy on the ground of their jurisdiction to undertake any annoying proceedings: in return for which the lords on their side pledged themselves not to disturb any of the clergy or destroy any more of the church buildings. It was a truce in which each party, sword in hand, reserved to itself the power of defending its partisans against the other. The two parties encountered in Edinburgh. The inhabitants had called Knox to be their preacher, and when he thought it unsafe to stay in the city after the Congregation withdrew, another champion of the Reformation, Willok, filled his place with hardly less zeal and success. But on the other side the bishop of Amiens appeared with some doctors of the Sorbonne at the Regent's court. Here and there the Protestant service was again discarded; the Paris theologians defended the old dogma among the Scotch scholars, and made even now some impression; the mass and the preaching contended with each other. As to the Regent's views there can be no doubt. She drew the attention of the French court to the frequent intercourse between the nobles of Protestant views in France and Scotland, and to the encouragement the Scots had from the French; but she gave the assurance that she would soon finish with the Scots if she received support. Some French companies had just landed at Leith, they had brought with them munitions of war and money: the Regent demanded four companies more, to make up twenty, and perhaps 100 hommes d'armes; if only four French ships were stationed at Leith to keep off foreign assistance, she pledged herself to put down the movement everywhere.[201]
Then the Scots also decided that they must employ their utmost means of resistance. They had framed politico-religious theories, in virtue of which they believed in their right to do so. The substance of the whole is that they acknowledged indeed an obligation on the conscience which required obedience to the sovereign, but at the same time they held that the obligation came to an end as soon as the sovereign contravened the known will of God: an idolatrous sovereign, so said the preachers, could be deposed and punished:—should the supreme Head put off the reform which was required by God's law, the right and the duty of executing it falls on the subordinate authorities.
But the lords claimed also an authority based on the laws of the land. When the French troops began to fortify Leith, they held themselves justified in raising remonstrances against it: they demanded that the Regent should desist from the design. As she replied with a proclamation which sounded very offensive to themselves, they had no scruple in taking up arms. Each noble collected his men round him and appeared at their head in the field. Relying on the fine army which was thus brought together, they repeated their demand, with the remark, that in receiving foreign troops into the harbour-town there was involved a manifest attempt to enslave the land by force: if the Regent would not lend an ear to their remonstrances, they being the hereditary councillors of the crown, they would remember their oath which bound them to provide for the general welfare. The Regent expressed her astonishment to the lords through a herald that there should be any other authority in the realm than that of her daughter, the Queen. She already felt herself strong enough to order them and their troops to disperse, on pain of the punishment appointed for high treason. On this the great men met in the old council-house at Edinburgh, to consider the question whether it was obligatory to pay obedience to a princess, who was but regent, and who disregarded the opinion of the hereditary councillors of the crown. The consultation, at which some preachers supported the views of the lords with similar arguments, ended in the declaration that the Regent no longer possessed an authority which she was using to the damage of the realm. In the name of the King and Queen they announced to her that the commission she had received from them was at an end. 'And as your Grace,' so they continued, 'will not acknowledge us as your councillors, we also will no longer acknowledge you as our regent.'[202]
To this pass matters had now come. The combined interests, on the one side of the crown and the clergy, on the other of the lords and the Protestants, came into open and avowed conflict. The Act of Suspension is but the proclamation of war in a form which would enable them to avoid directly breaking with their duties towards their born prince.