A supplementary agreement was proposed between Mary Stuart and her rebellious Protestant subjects. She promised to summon Parliament at once, to make neither war nor peace without the consent of the estates, and to govern according to the advice of a council of twelve chosen jointly by herself and the estates. She promised to give no high offices to strangers or to clergymen; and she extended to all a general amnesty.
[Sidenote: Revolution]
The summons of Parliament immediately after these negotiations proved as disastrous to the old régime as the assembly of the French Estates General in 1789. Though bloodless, the Scotch revolution was as thorough, in its own small way, as that of Robespierre. Religion was changed and a new distribution of political power secured, transferring the ascendency of the crown and of the old privileged orders to a class of "new men," low-born ministers of the kirk, small "lairds" and burgesses. The very constitution of the new Parliament was revolutionary. In the old legislative assemblies between ten and twenty greater barons were summoned; in the Parliament of 1560 no less than 106 small barons assembled, and it was to them, together with the burgesses of the cities, that the adoption of the new religion was due. A Confession of Faith, [Sidenote: Scottish Confession] on extreme Calvinistic lines, had been drawn up by Knox and his fellows; this was presented to Parliament and adopted with only eight dissenting voices, those of five laymen and three bishops. The minority was overawed, not only by the majority in {363} Parliament but by the public opinion of the capital and of the whole Lowlands.
[Sidenote: Laws of the estates]
Just a week after the adoption of the Confession, the estates passed three laws: (1) Abolishing the pope's authority and all jurisdiction by Catholic prelates; (2) repealing all previous statutes in favor of the Roman church; (3) forbidding the celebration of mass. The law calls it "wicked idolatry" and provides that "no manner of person nor persons say mass, nor yet hear mass, nor be present thereat under pain of confiscation of all their goods movable and immovable and punishing their bodies at the discretion of the magistrate." The penalty for the third offence was made death, and all officers were commanded to "take diligent suit and inquisition" to prevent the celebration of the Catholic rite. In reality, persecution was extremely mild, simply because there was hardly any resistance. Scarcely three Catholic martyrs can be named, and there was no Pilgrimage of Grace. This is all the more remarkable in that probably three-fourths of the people were still Catholic. The Reformation, like most other revolutions, was the work not of the majority, but of that part of the people that had the energy and intelligence to see most clearly and act most strongly. For the first time in Scotch history a great issue was submitted to a public opinion sufficiently developed to realize its importance. The great choice was made not by counting heads but by weighing character.
The burgher class having seized the reins of government proceeded to use them in the interests of their kirk. The prime duty of the state was asserted to be the maintenance of the true religion. Ministers were paid by the government. Almost any act of government might be made the subject of interference by the church, for Knox's profession, "with the policy, mind {364} us to meddle no further than it hath religion mixed in it," was obviously an elastic and self-imposed limitation.
[Sidenote: Theocracy]
The character of the kirk was that of a democratic, puritanical theocracy. The real rulers of it, and through it of the state, were the ministers and elders elected by the people. The democracy of the kirk consisted in the rise of most of these men from the lower ranks of the people; its theocracy in the claim of these men, once established in Moses' seat, to interpret the commands of God. "I see," said Queen Mary, after a conversation with Knox, "that my subjects shall obey you rather than me." "Madam," replied Knox, "my study is that both princes and people shall obey God"—but, of course, the voice of the pulpit was the voice of God. As a contemporary put it: "Knox is king; what he wills obeyit is." Finally the kirk was a tyranny, as a democracy may well be. In life, in manners, in thought, the citizen was obliged, under severe social penalty, to conform exactly to a very narrow standard.
[Sidenote: Queen Mary in Scotland, August 19, 1561]
When Queen Mary, a widow eighteen years old, landed in Scotland, she must have been aware of the thorny path she was to tread. It is impossible not to pity her, the spoiled darling of the gayest court of Europe, exposed to the bleak skies and bleaker winds of doctrines at Edinburgh. Endowed with high spirit, courage, no little cleverness and much charm, she might have mastered the situation had her character or discretion equaled her intellect and beauty. But, thwarted, nagged and bullied by men whose religion she hated, whose power she feared and whose low birth she despised, she became more and more reckless in the pursuit of pleasure until she was tangled in a network of vice and crime, and delivered helpless into the hands of her enemies.