He performed one important piece of public service before undertaking this journey to England.On the 23d of December, the queen granted a commission, under the privy seal, to the archbishop of St Andrews, restoring him to his ancient jurisdiction, which had been abolished in 1560, by act of parliament.[177] This step was taken, partly to prepare for the restoration of the popish religion, and partly to facilitate another dark design which was soon after disclosed. The protestants could not fail to be both alarmed and enraged at this daring measure. Moved by his own zeal no less than by the advice of his brethren, the Reformer addressed a circular letter to the principal protestants in the kingdom, requesting their immediate advice on the measures most proper to be adopted on this occasion, and enclosing a copy of a proposed supplication to the queen. This letter discovers all the ardour of the writer’s spirit, called forth by such an alarming occurrence.After mentioning the late acts for the provision of the ministry,[178] by which the queen attempted to blind them, he says, “How that any such assignation, or any promise made thereof, can stand in any stable assurance, when that Roman antichrist, by just laws once banished from this realm, shall be intrustedabove us, we can no ways understand. Yea, farther, we cannot see what assurance can any within this realm, that hath professed the Lord Jesus, have of life, or inheritance, if the head of that odious beast be cured among us. As from the beginning we have neither spared substance nor life, so mind we not to faint unto the end, to maintain the same, so long as we can find the concurrence of brethren; of whom (as God forbid) if we be destitute, yet we are determined never to be subject to the Roman antichrist, neither yet to his usurped tyranny; but when we can do no farther to suppress that odious beast, we mind to seal it with our blood to our posterity, that the bright knowledge of Jesus Christ hath banished that Man of Sin, and his venomous doctrine, from our hearts and consciences.Let this our letter and request bear witness before God, before his church, before the world, and before your own consciences.”[179] The supplication of the General Assembly to the lords of the privy council, on the same subject, also bears marks of the Reformer’s pen.[180]
During the time that Knox was in England, that tragedy, so well known in Scottish history, was acted, which led to a complete revolution in the government of the kingdom, and, contrary to the designs of the principal actors, threw the power wholly into the hands of the protestants. Mary’s affection for her husband, which had cooled soon after their marriage,was, from the time of Rizzio’s assassination, converted into a fixed hatred, which she was at little pains to conceal. The birth of an heir to the crown produced no reconciliation between the royal parents; the king was not allowed to be present at the baptism of his own son, and was treated with such marked disrespect, even by the servants, that he abandoned the court, and shut himself up in his father’s house. In proportion as the queen’s mind was alienated from her husband, the unprincipled earl of Bothwell grew in her favour. He engrossed the whole management of public affairs, was loaded with honours, and treated by her majesty with every mark of personal regard and affection. In these circumstances, the neglected, unhappy king, was decoyed to Edinburgh, lodged in a solitary dwelling at the extremity of the city, and murdered on the morning of the 10th of February, 1567; the house in which he lay being blown up with gunpowder.
It would be unsuitable to the nature of the present work to enter into the controversy respecting the authors of this murder, which has been agitated with uncommon keenness from that day to the present time. The accusation of the earl of Murray as a party to the deed, is destitute of all proof, and utterly incredible. It was at first circulated with the evident design of turning away the public mind from the real perpetrators; it was insinuated, and afterwards directly brought forward, in the conferences at York and Westminster, as a retaliation upon him for the charge which he exhibited against the queen;and it is now kept up only by the most blind and bigoted of her partisans. That Bothwell was the prime contriver and agent in the murder, cannot admit of a doubt with any impartial and judicious enquirer. And that Mary was privy to the design, and accessory to its execution by permission and approbation, there is, I think, all the evidence, moral and legal, which could reasonably be expected in a case of this kind. The whole of her behaviour towards the king, from the time that she brought him from Glasgow till she left him on the fatal night; the remissness which she discovered in enquiring into the murder; the shameful manner in which she suffered the farce of Bothwell’s trial to be conducted; the glaring act (which struck the whole of Europe, and even her own friends, with horror) of taking to her bed, with indecent haste, the man who was stigmatized as the murderer of her husband; and the manner in which she refused to defend herself, and broke off the conference to which she had agreed, as soon as the charge of accession to the murder was brought against her,—afford the strongest presumptions of her guilt;and, when taken in connexion with the direct evidence arising from letters and depositions, would have been sufficient long ago to shut the mouths of any but the defenders of Mary queen of Scots.[181]
Knox was absent from Edinburgh at the time of the queen’s marriage with Bothwell; but his colleague ably supported the honour of his place and order on that occasion, when the whole nobility of Scotland preserved a passive and disgraceful silence. Being required by both the parties to publish the banns, Craig reluctantly complied, after taking the advice of his session; but, at the same time, he protested from the pulpit, on three several days, and took heaven and earth to witness, that he abhorred and detested the intended marriage as unlawful and scandalous, and solemnly charged the nobility to use their influence to prevent the queen from taking a step, which would inevitably cover her with infamy, and involve her in ruin. Being called before the council, and accused of having exceeded the bounds of his commission, he boldly replied, that the bounds of his commission were the word of God, good laws, and natural reason, to all of which the proposed marriage was contrary. And Bothwell being present, he charged him with the crime of adultery, the precipitancy with which the process of divorce had been carried through, and the suspicions entertained of collusion between him and his wife, of his havingmurdered the king, and ravished the queen, all of which would be confirmed if they carried their purpose into execution.[182]
The events which followed in rapid succession upon this infamous marriage—the confederation of the nobility for revenging the king’s death, and preserving the person of the infant prince; the flight of Bothwell; the surrender and imprisonment of Mary; her resignation of the government; the coronation of her son; and the appointment of the earl of Murray as regent during his minority, are all well known to the readers of Scottish history.
Knox seems to have returned to his charge at the time that the queen fled with Bothwell to Dunbar. He was present in the General Assembly which met at Edinburgh on the 25th of June, and was delegated by them to go to the west country, and endeavour to persuade the Hamiltons, and others who stood aloof from the confederated lords, to join with them in settling the distracted affairs of the country,and to attend a general convention of the delegates of the churches, to be held on the 20th of July following.[183] In this negotiation he was unsuccessful. But theconvention was held, and the nobles, barons, and commissioners of boroughs, who were present, subscribed a number of important articles, with reference to religion and the state of the nation.[184]
On the 29th of July, 1567, the Reformer preached the sermon at the coronation of James VI., in the parish church of Stirling.[185] He objected to the ceremony of unction, as a Jewish rite abused under the papacy; but it was deemed inexpedient, on the present occasion, to depart from the accustomed ceremonial.It was therefore performed by the bishop of Orkney; the superintendents of Lothian and Angus assisting him to place the crown on the king’s head.[186] After the coronation, Knox, along with some others, took instruments, and craved extracts of the proceedings.[187]
When the queen was confined by the lords inthe castle of Lochleven, they had not resolved in what manner they should dispose of her person for the future. Some proposed that she should be allowed to leave the kingdom; some that she should be imprisoned during life; while others insisted that she ought to be capitally arraigned. Of this last opinion was Knox, with almost all the ministers, and the great body of the people. The chief ground upon which they insisted for this, was not her maladministration in the government, or the mere safety and peace of the commonwealth; which were the reasons upon which the parliament of England, in the following century, proceeded to the execution of her grandson. But they founded their opinion upon the personal crimes with which Mary was charged. Murder and adultery, they reasoned, were crimes to which the punishment of death was allotted by the law of God and of nations. From this penalty persons of no rank could plead exception. The ordinary forms of judicial procedure made no provision for the trial of a supreme magistrate, because the laws did not suppose that such enormous crimes could be committed by him; but extraordinary cases required extraordinary remedies, and new offences gave birth to new laws.There are examples in Scripture of the capital punishment of princes, nor are precedents of it wanting in the history of Scotland.[188]
Upon these grounds, Knox scrupled not publicly to maintain, that the estates of the kingdom ought to bring Mary to a trial; and, if she was found guilty of the murder of her husband, and an adulterous connexion with Bothwell, that she ought to be put to death. Throkmorton, the English ambassador, held a conference with him, with the view of mitigating the rigour of this judgment; but though he acquiesced in the resolution adopted by the nobility to detain her in prison, he retained his own sentiments, and,after the civil war was kindled by her escape from confinement, repeatedly said, that he considered the nation as suffering for their criminal lenity.[189]
Though the earl of Murray, after his return from banishment, had been pardoned, and re‑admitted to his place in the privy council, he did not regain the confidence of her majesty. Perceiving the ruinous tendency of the course on which she was bent, and despairing of being able to prevent it by his advice, he declined taking any active part in the management of public affairs, and appeared very seldom at court. Soon after the king was murdered, he obtained liberty to leave the kingdom, and retired to France, where he remained till recalled by a message from the confederated lords, after Mary had subscribed the instruments by which she resigned the crown, and appointed him regent during the minority of her son. Having arrived in Scotland, he was formally invested withthe regency, on the 22d of August, 1567. No sooner was he confirmed in the government, than he exerted himself with great zeal and prudence to secure the peace of the kingdom, and settle the affairs of the church. A parliament being summoned to meet in the middle of December, he, with the advice of the privy council, previously nominated certain barons, and commissioners of boroughs, to consult upon and digest such overtures as were proper to be laid before that assembly. With these he joined Knox, and four other ministers, to assist in matters which related to the church. This committee met in the beginning of December, and sat until the opening of the parliament.The record of their proceedings, both as to civil and ecclesiastical affairs, has been preserved; and, as many of their propositions were not adopted by the parliament, it is valuable as a declaration of the sentiments of a number of the most able men in the kingdom.[190]