The reader must be struck with the difference between this dispute, and that which Knox formerly maintained with the abbot of Crossraguel. Although long, it was kept up by the disputants with great spirit; nor did they take refuge under those ambiguities of speech, or those sophistical forms of argument, of which persons trained to wrangle in the schools were ever ready to avail themselves, to perplex an adversary, or to conceal their own defeat. Few secretaries of state in modern times would, it is presumed, be able to acquit themselves so well as Maitland did, on questions which were decided chiefly by an appeal to the scriptures. But learned and acute as he was, Knox was fully a match for him, and, on the greater part of the topics introduced into the debate, evidently had the advantage, according to the principles held, and the concessions made, by his opponent. For both parties maintained, that idolatry ought to be punished by death;a sentiment which they were led to adopt in consequence of their holding the untenable opinion, that Christian nations are bound to enact the same penalties against all breaches of the moral law, which were enjoined by the judicial laws of Moses.[133] This being taken for granted,the dispute between them resolved itself entirely into a question respecting the prerogatives of princes and the rights and duties of subjects. It may be questioned, too, whether Knox’s reasoning from extraordinary examples, qualified as it was by him, is sufficiently guarded and correct; for the instances in which punishment was inflicted in an extraordinary way on criminals, although the punishment itself was merited and agreeable to law, cannot be pleaded as precedents in ordinary cases. But even when we cannot approve of his reasonings, we are compelled to admire the openness with which he avowed, and the boldness with which he defended, sentiments so opposite to those which were generally received in that age.
In the month of August, Knox went, by appointment of the General Assembly, as visitor of thechurches, to Aberdeen and other parts of the north, where he remained six or seven weeks.[134] At the subsequent meeting of Assembly, he received a similar appointment to Fife and Perthshire.[135]
Our Reformer’s predictions at the last meeting of parliament were now fully realized. Another parliament was held in the end of 1564, but nothing was done for securing the protestant religion.[136] The queen’s marriage had long engaged the anxious attention of her ministers, and had been the subject of much negotiation with England and at foreign courts; but the various proposals which had been made with a view to it, and the political intrigues to which they gave rise, were all thwarted by the sudden and strong passion which Mary conceived for Henry, lord Darnley, the son of the earl of Lennox.As this young nobleman, so far as he had discovered any religious sentiments, was inclined to popery,[137] the match could not be very agreeable to the great body of the nation, who had already testified the strongest jealousy at the queen’s attachment to that religion. It was, therefore, natural for the nobility, in the prospect of this event, to provide additional securitiesfor the protestant church, and to insist that the royal sanction, hitherto withheld, should now be granted to its legal establishment.Upon this condition, they promised their consent to the marriage.[138] The queen agreed to summon a parliament to settle this important affair, but she found some pretext for proroguing its meeting;[139] and, having gained a number of the nobility by favours and promises, she proceeded, in July 1565, not only to solemnize the nuptials, but to proclaim her husband king, without the consent of the estates of the kingdom.
The dissatisfaction produced by these precipitate and illegal steps was heightened by the conduct of Darnley.Naturally vain, rash, and vindictive, his unexpected prosperity rendered him insolent and overbearing; and it required all the prudence of the queen to preserve him from falling into contempt, even before their marriage.[140] Although he could not have come to Scotland, and his father could not have been restored to his honours and possessions, considering the opposition made by the house of Hamilton, without the concurrence and interest of the earl of Murray; yet, he no sooner found himself seated in the affections of Mary, than he exerted his influence to deprive that nobleman of her favour, represented the honours which she had conferred on him as excessive, and leagued with those who were hostile to him and to the reformed religion.Lennox, Athole, and David Rizzio, a low‑bred Italian, who had insinuated himselfinto the good graces of Mary, now ruled the court, to the exclusion of the most able counsellors.[141] Murray had been urged in private to sign an approbation of the intended marriage, but refused to do it until the nobility were consulted.[142] His refusal to gratify the queen, by forwarding a match on which she was passionately bent, obliterated the memory of all his past services, and drew upon him the furious resentment of Darnley. Having declined to attend a convention at Perth, from just apprehensions of personal danger, he was summoned to court by the queen.The summons was repeated three days after her marriage, and because he refused to intrust his person, on her safe conduct, to a court where the influence of his declared enemies prevailed, he was immediately proclaimed an outlaw.[143] In the meantime, the persons who had discovered the greatest hostility to him were openly encouraged.Bothwell was invited to return; lord George Gordon was set at liberty, and the earldom of Huntly restored to him; and the earl of Sutherland was recalled from banishment.[144] The lords who were dissatisfied with the late proceedings, assembled at Stirling, and, after agreeing to request the protection of Elizabeth, retired to their houses;[145] but the queen taking the field with all the forces which she could collect, they were at last compelledto arm in their own defence.[146] Even after they were driven to this extremity, they neglected no means of conciliation. They professed their steadfast loyalty to the queen. They declared that their sole desire was, that the reformed religion should be secured against the dangers to which it was exposed, and that the administration of public affairs should be put into the hands of those whom the nation could trust.And they offered to submit their own cause to be tried by the laws of their country.[147] But the queen spurned all their offers of submission, refused to listen to any intercession in their favour, and advancing against them with an army, obliged them to take refuge in England.[148]
While her marriage with Darnley was in dependence, and she laboured to surmount the opposition made to it by the nobility, Mary had condescended to court the protestant ministers. Having sent for the superintendents of Lothian, Glasgow, and Fife, (for Knox could not now be admitted to her presence,) she amused them with fair words. She was not yet persuaded, she said, of the truth of their religion, but was willing to hear conference and reasoning on the subject; she was also content to attend the public sermons of some of them;and, “above all others, she would gladly hear the superintendent of Angus, for he was a mild and sweet‑natured man, with true honesty and uprightness, Sir John Erskine of Dun.”[149] She even went so far as to be present at a sermon preached by one of the ministers in Callendar‑house, at the baptism of a child of lord Livingston.[150] But as soon as her marriage was accomplished, she told the commissioners of the church, in very plain and determined language, “her majesty neither will, nor may, leave the religion wherein she has been nourished and brought up.”[151] And there was no further proposal of attending either sermon or conference.
The friendship between the earl of Murray and the Reformer had been renewed in the beginning of 1565. Knox was placed in a very delicate predicament by the insurrection under Murray, and the other lords who opposed the queen’s marriage. His father‑in‑law was one of their number. They professed that the security of the protestant religion was the principal ground of their taking arms; and they came to Edinburgh to collect men to their standard.But whatever favour he might have for them, he kept himself clear from any engagement.[152] If he had taken part in this unsuccessful revolt, we need not doubt that her majesty would have embraced the opportunity of punishing him for it, when his principal friends had fled the kingdom.
We find, in fact, that she immediately proceeded against him on a different, but far more slender ground.The young king, who could be either papistor protestant, as it suited him, went sometimes to mass with the queen, and sometimes attended the reformed sermons.[153] To silence the suspicions of his alienation from the protestant religion, circulated by the insurgent lords, he, on the 19th of August, made a solemn appearance in St Giles’s church, sitting on a throne which had been prepared for his reception. Knox preached that day, and happened to prolong the service beyond his usual time. In one part of the sermon, he quoted these words of scripture, “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them,—children are their oppressors, and women rule over them;”and in another part of it, he mentioned that God punished Ahab, because he did not correct his idolatrous wife, Jezabel.[154] Though no particular application was made by the preacher, the king applied these passages to himself and the queen, and, returning to the palace in great wrath, refused to taste dinner. The papists, who had accompanied him to church, inflamed his resentment and that of the queen by their representations.
That very afternoon Knox was taken from bed,[155] and carried before the privy council. Some respectable inhabitants of the city, understanding his citation, accompanied him to the palace. He was told that he had offended the king, and must desist from preaching as long as their majesties were in Edinburgh.He replied, that “he had spoken nothing but according to his text; and if the church should command him to speak or abstain, he would obey, so far as the word of God would permit him.”[156] Spotswood says, that he not only stood to what he had said in the pulpit, but added, “That as the king, for the queen’s pleasure, had gone to mass, and dishonoured the Lord God, so should He in his justice make her the instrument of his overthrow. This speech,” continues the archbishop’s manuscript, “esteemedtoo bold at the time, came afterwards to be remembered, and was reckoned among other his prophetical sayings, which certainly were marvellous.The queen, enraged at this answer, burst forth into tears.”[157]
The report of the inhibition laid upon the Reformer created great agitation in the city. His colleague, who was appointed to supply his place during his suspension, threatened to desist entirely from preaching. The town council met, and appointed a deputation to wait on their majesties, and request the reversal of the sentence; and at a second meeting held on the same day,they came to a unanimous resolution that they would, “in no manner of way, consent or grant that his mouth be closed,” but that he should be desired, “at his pleasure, and as God should move his heart, to proceed forward to true doctrine as before, which doctrine they would approve and abide at to their life’s end.”[158]
It does not appear that he continued any time suspended from preaching.For the king and queenleft Edinburgh before next Sabbath[159] and the prohibition extended only to the time of their residence in the city. Upon their return, it is probable that they judged it advisable not to enforce an order which had already created much discontent, and might alienate the minds of the people still farther from the present administration. Accordingly, we find him exercising his ministry in Edinburgh with the same boldness as formerly. Complaints were made to the council of the manner in which he prayed for the exiled noblemen;but secretary Maitland, who had formerly found so much fault with his prayers, defended them on the present occasion, saying, that he had heard them, and they were such as nobody could blame.[160]