Those who flattered themselves that the Reformer’s disorder was mortal, were disappointed;for he was restored to the use of his speech, and was able, in the course of a few days, to resume preaching, at least on Sabbath days.[226] He never recovered, however, from the debility which was produced by the apoplectic stroke.
The confusions which he had augured from the death of the good regent soon broke out, and again spread the flames of civil discord through the nation. The earl of Lennox, who was the natural guardian of his grandson, was advanced to the regency; but he was deficient in the talents which were requisite for so difficult a station, and the knowledge of his weakness emboldened and increased the party which was attached to the queen. The Hamiltons openly raised her standard, and were strengthened by the influence and abilities of Maitland. William Kircaldy of Grange, whom Murray had made governor of the castle of Edinburgh, after concealing his defection for some time under the flag of neutrality, declaredhimself on the same side, and became a principal agent in attempting to overturn that government which he had been so zealous in erecting. Maitland’s tergiversation surprised nobody; but the defection of Kircaldy was deeply felt by those with whom he had been so long associated. It proved a source of the keenest distress to Knox.The acquaintance which they had formed in the castle of St Andrews,[227] grew into intimacy during their confinement in the French galleys; and Knox could never forget the services which Kircaldy performed during the subsequent struggle for reformation, and continued to the last to cherish the hope that he was at heart a friend to religion. Under the influence of these feelings, he spared no pains in endeavouring to prevent him from renouncing his fidelity to the king, and afterwards to reclaim him from his apostacy. But in both attempts he was unsuccessful.
In the end of the year 1570, he was personally involved in a disagreeable quarrel with Kircaldy. One of the soldiers belonging to the castle having been imprisoned by the magistrates on a charge of murder, the governor sent a party from the garrison, who broke open the tolbooth, and carried off the prisoner. In his sermon on the following Sabbath, Knox condemnedthis riot, and violation of the house of justice. Had it been done by the authority of a bloodthirsty man, or one who had no fear of God, he would not, he said, have been so much moved at it; but he was affected to think that one of whom all good men had formed so great expectations, should have fallen so far as to act such a part;one too, who, when formerly in prison, had refused to purchase his own liberty by the shedding of blood.[228] An erroneous and exaggerated report of this censure being conveyed to the castle, the governor, in great rage, made his complaint, first to Knox’s colleague, and afterwards formally to the kirk‑session, that he had been calumniated as a murderer, and required that his character should be vindicated as publicly as it had been traduced. Knox, understanding that his words had been misrepresented, embraced the first opportunity of explaining and vindicating them from the pulpit. On a subsequent day, Kircaldy, who had absented himself from the church nearly a whole year, came down to St Giles’s, accompanied with a number of the persons who had been active in the murder and riot. Regarding this as an attempt to overawe the authorities, and set public opinion at defiance, the Reformer dwelt particularly, in his discourse, upon the sinfulness of forgetting benefits received from God, and warned his hearers against confiding in the divine mercy, while they were knowingly transgressing any of the commandments, or proudly defending their transgression.
Kircaldy was much incensed at this admonition, which he considered as levelled at him, and made use of very threatening language in speaking of the preacher. The report spread that the governor of the castle was become a sworn enemy to Knox, and intended to kill him. Upon this, several noblemen and gentlemen of Kyle and Cunningham sent a letter to Kircaldy, in which, after reminding him of his former appearances for religion, and mentioning the reports which had reached their ears, they warned him against doing any thing to the hurt of that man, whom“God had made the first planter and chief waterer of his church among them,” and protested that “his death and life were as dear to them as their own.”[229]
Knox was not to be deterred from doing what he considered to be his duty. He persisted in warning his hearers to avoid all participation with those who prevented the punishment of atrocious crimes, by supporting the pretensions of the queen, and who exposed the reformed religion to the utmost hazard, by opposing the king’s authority. When the General Assembly met in March, 1571, anonymous libels were thrown into the house where they were sitting, and placards affixed to the church‑doors, accusing him of seditious railing against their sovereign, the queen, refusing to pray for her welfare and conversion, representing her as a reprobate whose repentance was hopeless, and uttering imprecations against her. One of the placards concluded with a threat, that, ifthe assembly did not restrain him by their authority from using such language, the complainers would themselves apply a remedy to the evil “with greater unquietness.” The assembly having, by public intimation, required the complainers to come forward and substantiate their charges, another anonymous writing appeared, promising that accusers should not be wanting against next assembly, if the preacher continued his offensive speeches, and was “then law‑byding, and not fugitive, according to his accustomed manner.”
Several of his friends dealt with him to pass over these unauthenticated libels in silence, but he refused to comply with this advice, considering that the credit of his ministry was implicated. Accordingly, he produced them in the pulpit, and returned a particular answer to the accusations which they contained. That he had charged the late queen with the crimes of which she had been notoriously guilty, he granted,—that he had railed against her, he denied; nor would they be able to substantiate this charge against him, without at the same time proving Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other inspired writers, to have been railers. “From them he had learned plainly and boldly to call wickedness by its own terms, a fig, a fig, and a spade, a spade.” He had never called the queen reprobate, nor said that her repentance was impossible; but he had affirmed that pride and repentance could not remain long together in one heart. He had prayed, that God, for the comfort of his church, would oppose his power to her pride, and confound her andher assistants in their impiety: this prayer, let them call it imprecation or execration as they pleased, had stricken, and would yet strike, whoever supported her.To the charge of not praying for the queen, he answered, “I am not bound to pray for her in this place, for sovereign to me she is not; and I let them understand that I am not a man of law that has my tongue to sell for silver, or favour of the world.”[230] What title she now had, or ever had to the government, he would not dispute; the estates had deprived her of it, and it belonged to them to answer for this: as for him, he had hitherto lived in obedience to all lawful authority within the kingdom. To the threatening against his life, and the insinuation that he might not be “law‑byding, but fugitive” against next assembly, he replied, that his life was in the custody of Him who had hitherto preserved him from many dangers, that he had reached an age at which he was not apt to flee far, nor could any yet accuse him of having left the people committed to his charge, except at their own command.
After these answers, his enemies fled, as their last resort, to an attack upon his Blast of the Trumpet, and accused him of inconsistency in writing against female government, and yet praying for queen Elizabeth, and seeking her support against his native country. This accusation he also met in the pulpit, and refuted with great spirit. After vindicating his consistency, he concluded in the following manner:—“One thing in the end, I may not pretermit, that is, to give him a lie in his throat that either dare, or will say, that ever I sought support against my native country. What I have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that has to oppose any thing against me, that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and all my doings manifest to the world;for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable, that, in my decrepit age, I shall be compelled to fight against shadows, and howlets that dare not abide the light.”[231]
The conduct of our Reformer at this period affords a striking display of the unextinguishable ardour of his mind. Previous to the breaking out of the late disturbances, he had given up attendance on church courts. He never went abroad except on Sabbath‑days, to preach in the forenoon.He was so debilitated as to be unable to go to the pulpit withoutassistance.[232] He had weaned his heart from the world, and expressed his resolution to take no more part in public affairs. In answer to a letter of his esteemed friend, Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, who had informed him of an intended attempt on the castle of St Andrews by archbishop Hamilton, and requested his good offices for certain preachers, we find him, on the 31st of March, 1570, writing as follows:—“How such troublers may be stayed in their enterprises, I commit to God, to whose counsels I commit you in that and all other causes worldly, for I have taken my good‑night of it;and therefore bear with me, good sir, albeit I write not to the superintendent of Fife in the action that ye desire.”[233] But whenever he saw the church and commonwealth seriously in danger, he forgot his infirmities and his resolutions, and entered into the cause with all the keenness of his more vigorous days. Whether the public proceedings of the nation, or his own conduct, were arraigned,—whether the attacks upon them were open or clandestine,he stood prepared to repel them, and convinced the adversaries, that they could not accomplish their designs without opposition, as long as he was able to move or speak.[234]
His situation became very critical in April 1571, when Kircaldy received the Hamiltons, with their forces, into the castle. Their inveteracy against him was so great, that his friends were obliged to watch his house during the night. They proposed forming a guard for the protection of his person when he went abroad; but the governor of the castle forbade this, as implying a suspicion of his own intentions, and offered to send Melvil, one of his officers, to conduct him to and from the church. “He wold gif the woulf the wedder to keip,” says Bannatyne.Induced by the importunity of the citizens, Kircaldy applied to the duke and his party for a protection to Knox; but they refused to pledge their word for his safety, because “there were many rascals and others among them who loved him not, that might do him harm without their knowledge.”[235] Intimations were often given him of threatenings against his life; and one evening a musket‑ball was fired in at his window, and lodged in the roof of the apartment in which he was sitting.It happened that he sat at the time in a different part of the room from that which he had been accustomed to occupy, otherwise the ball, from the direction it took, must have struck him.[236] Alarmed by this occurrence, a deputation of the citizens, accompanied by his colleague, waited upon him, andrenewed a request which they had formerly made, that he would remove from Edinburgh, to a place where his life would be in greater safety, until the queen’s party should evacuate the town. But he refused to yield to them, apprehending that his enemies wished to intimidate him into flight, that they might carry on their designs more quietly, and then accuse him of cowardice. Being unable to persuade him by any other means, they had recourse at last to an argument which prevailed.They told him that if he was attacked, they were determined to risk their lives in his defence, and if blood was shed in the quarrel, which was highly probable, they would leave it on his head. Upon this he consented to remove from the city, “sore against his will.”[237]
He left Edinburgh on the 5th of May, 1571, and crossing the Frith at Leith, travelled by short stages to St Andrews, which he had chosen as the place of his retreat.[238] His pulpit was filled by Alexander Gordon, bishop of Galloway, who preached and prayed in a manner more acceptable to the queen’s party than his predecessor, but little to the satisfaction of the people, who despised him on account of his weakness, and disliked him for supplanting their favourite pastor.[239] A number of the most respectable inhabitantswere driven from the capital by violence, while others were induced to quit it, and retire to Leith, that they might not be understood as even practically submitting to the queen’s authority. The church of Edinburgh was for a time dissolved. The celebration of the Lord’s supper was suspended.And, whereas formerly scarce a day passed without some public exercise of religion, there was now, during a whole week, “neither preaching nor prayer; neither was there any sound of bell heard in all the town, except the ringing of the cannon.”[240]