Of Knox’s Language respecting the Assassination of Cardinal Beatoun.—Mr Hume has, not very philosophically, inferred the savageness of Knox’s temper from the evident satisfaction with which he wrote of Cardinal Beatoun’s assassination; and in this judgment he has been followed by several writers. If to express satisfaction at cutting off one who was regarded as a public enemy be viewed as an infallible mark of cruelty, we must pronounce this verdict upon many who were never before suspected of such adisposition. The manner in which the Christian fathers expressed themselves, respecting the death of the persecutors of the church, is not unknown. See Julian the apostate, chap. vii. viii. in Works of the Rev. Samuel Johnston, p. 22–24. Bayle, Critique General de l’Histoire du Calvinisme, p. 295. Even the mild and philosophic Erasmus could not refrain from declaring his joy at the violent death of two of the most learned and eminent reformers. “Bene habet (says he) quod duo Coriphæi perierunt, Zuinglius in acie, Oecolampadius paulo post febri et apostemate. Quod si illis favisset Ενυαλιος, actum est de nobis.” Epist. 1205: Jortin’s Life of Erasmus, ii. 28. Sir Walter Scott, in his Cadyow Castle, (See Lyrical Pieces,) has lately exerted all his poetic powers to invest Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh with the character of a hero, in assassinating the regent Murray, a person who is no more to be compared to cardinal Beatoun, than “Hyperion to a Satyr.” I know the apology that will be made for the poet (although I think he might have found, in this, and in some other instances, a subject more worthy of his muse); but what shall we say of the historian who narrates the action of Bothwellhaugh “approvingly,” celebrates the “happy pencil of the poet” in describing it, and insults over the fall of Murray, by quoting a sarcastic line from the poem, in the very act of relating his death! Chalmers’s Caledonia, ii. 571. Yet this same writer is highly displeased that Sir David Lindsay, in his Tragedy of Beatoun, has “no burst of indignation” at the cardinal’s murder; and twice in the same work he has related with triumph, that, on the margin of one edition of Knox’s history, the part which James Melvin acted in that scene is called a “godly fact.” And he pronounces the assassination of Beatoun to be “the foulest crime which ever stained a country, except perhaps the similar murder of archbishop Sharpe, within the same shire, in the subsequent century, by similar miscreants.” Chalmers’s Works of Lyndsay, vol. i. 34, 35, ii. 231. How marvellously does prejudice distort the judgment even of learned men! And how surprising to find the assassination of two sanguinary persecutors represented as more criminal than the murder of the generous Henry IV., the patriotic Prince of Orange, and the brave and pious Coligni! There are not a few persons who can read in cold blood of thousands ofinnocent persons being murdered under the consecrated cloak of authority, but who “burst into indignation” at the mention of the rare fact (ocurring once in a century) of a person, who, goaded by oppression and reduced to despair, has been driven to the extremity of taking vengeance on the proud and tyrannical author of his own and his country’s wrongs.—I mention these things to show the need which certain writers have to look at home, and to judge of characters and actions with a little more impartiality, or at least consistency.
Honest Keith, whose personal feelings do not appear to have been violent, has expressed with much simplicity the feelings of his party, in the reflections which be makes on the cardinal’s assassination. “What might have proved (says he) to be the issue of such procedure [Beatoun’s severe measures against the reformers], had he enjoyed his life for any considerable time, I shall not pretend to judge: Only this seems to be certain, that by his death the reins of the government were much loosened; and some persons came to be considerable soon after, who probably, if he had lived, had never got the opportunity to perpetrate such villanies, under the cloak of religion, as ’tis certain they did; he being at least no less a statesman than a clergyman.” History, p. 45. This language needs no commentary; and the callousness to the interests of (I say not the Reformation, for that is entirely out of the question, but) humanity, implied in the prospect that Keith takes of the cruelties which the protestants must have suffered from the cardinal, if his life had been spared, is far more reprehensible than any satisfaction which Knox expressed at his death.
“It is very horrid,” says Hume, “but at the same time somewhat amusing, to consider the joy, alacrity, and pleasure which that historian [Knox] discovers in his narrative of this assassination.” History of England, vol. vi. chap. iv. Mr Hume makes a partial apology for Knox by the description which he gives of his own feelings; while he allows that what, in the main, excites horror, may produce some amusement. It is well known that there are writers who can treat the most sacred subjects with a levity bordering upon profaneness. Must we at once pronounce them profane? And is nothing to be set down to the score of natural temper incliningthem to wit and humour? The Reformer rejoiced at the death of Beatoun; and even those who could not approve of the act of the conspirators, were happy that he was taken away:
“As for the Cardinal, we grant,
He was a man we weell might want,
And we’ll forget him sone:
And yet I think, the sooth to say,
Although the lown is weell away,