BOOK CHAPTER - 1 Archbishop of St. Andrews (1522-1539); uncle of the more famous Cardinal David Beaton. Dr. Magnus, the English Ambassador, writing to Cardinal Wolsey, on 9th January 1525, speaks of Beaton as ‘the greatest man, both of lands and experience, within this realm,’ and states that he was ‘noted to be very subtle and dissimuling.’ Beaton was the militant churchman who came to the Edinburgh street fight, known as ‘Cleanse the Causeway,’ wearing mail beneath his vestments. When Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop of Dunkeld, besought Beaton to stay the impending conflict between the Hamilton and Douglas factions, he swore on his conscience that he knew nothing of it. His armor rattling as he struck his breast, called forth the rebuke, ‘My Lord, your conscience CLATTERS (tells tales) ! 2 Strenuous but unsuccessful efforts were made at this time to exclude Luther’s works from Scotland. In 1525 the Scots Parliament prohibited their importation under severe penalties. The preamble of the Act runs as follows: — ‘Forasmuch as damnable opinions of heresy are spread in divers countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples, and this realm. . . has never as yet admitted any opinions contrary to the Christian faith, but ever has been clean of all such filth and vice, etc. 3 Hamilton was only twenty-four years of age. 4 ‘Though Patrick Hamilton was the Proto-martyr of Scotland, he was not the initiator of the Scottish Reformation. He was simply one of the many Scottish disciples of the German Reformer.’—Cardinal Beaton, by Rev. ProfessorHERKLESS. 5 Winram afterwards joined the Reformers, and was appointed Superintendent for Fife. Quintin Kennedy, the Abbot of Crossraguel, while admitting that Winram was ‘wonderfully learned both in the New Testament, Old Testament, and meikle mair,’ called him ‘a pestilent preacher.’ 6 John Hepburn had a keen nose for heresy. In 1538, George Wishart fled the kingdom in consequence of a summons from Hepburn to appear before him. The only heresy alleged was that Wishart had taught the Greek New Testament in the school of Montrose! 7 This famous Doctor of the Sorbonne, one of the greatest scholars Scotland has produced, and the last of her Schoolmen, was an old man when the Reformation began. Mr. AEneas Mackay, in his ‘Life of John Major,’ prefixed to Mr. Constable’s edition of Major’s Greater Britain, takes the view that had John Major been twenty years younger, he might have played a leading part in that Reforming movement, which his liberal teaching of constitutional and even democratic views in politics rather than of theology—had done much to originate. 8 In David Buchanan’s edition of John Knox’s History, published at London in 1644, and reprinted at Edinburgh in the same year, these two sentences run thus: ‘Anne has lost her spindle. There is a flail stolen behind the barn.’ The sentence is also inaccurately printed in the edition printed in London by the French printer, Vautrollier, in 1586, and suppressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 9 That is in 1566, when this part of the History was written. 10 Such satire was not confined to men of the Reformed opinions. Quintin Kennedy, the Catholic apologist already mentioned, describing the system by which benefices were filled, wrote: ‘When grasping noblemen have gotten a benefice, if they have a brother or son who can neither sing nor say, nourished in vice all his days, he shall be immediately mounted on a mule, with a side (long) gown and a round bonnet; and then it is a question whether he or his mule knows best to do his office!’ In 1549 a Provincial Council of the Catholic clergy that met in Edinburgh found that ‘the two roots and causes’ of all the troubles in the Church were ‘the corrupt manners and profane lewdness of ecclesiastical persons of almost all ranks, together with their crass ignorance of letters and all culture.’ 11 Daily cometh unto me some Gentlemen and some Clerks, which do flee out of Scotland, as they say for reading of Scripture in English; saying that, if they were taken, they should be put to execution. I give them gentle words, and to some money.’—Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, to Lord Cromwell, frown Betwick, 29th March 1539. 12 Erskine is frequently mentioned by Knox. Although a layman, he was elected on at least five separate occasions Moderator of the General Assembly. He combined the most resolute support of the Reformed opinions with a consistently gentle treatment of those who adhered to the Catholic Church. Mary spoke of him as ‘a mild and sweet-natured man, with true honesty and uprightness.’ George Buchanan refers to him in his History of Scotland as ‘homo doctus, et perinde plus et humanus. 13 But for Cardinal Beaton—the Wolsey of Scotland, the one man of commanding ability among the Scots Roman Catholic clergy—it seems probable that the Scottish Reformation would have been contemporaneous with the English. Chiefly through his influence, the plans of Henry VIII. for uniting the two kingdoms, by bringing up Mary of Scots in England and marrying her to Edward VI, were frustrated. To the policy devised by Beaton of educating Mary in France under the influence of the family of Guise, and in the corrupt atmosphere of the French Court, may be traced all her misfortunes.

Beaton did not live to see the issue; but his plans all miscarried. Had he survived the Reformation, the sorest blow of all would have been to see his illegitimate son, Alexander, become a Protestant minister. 14 Daughter of the Duke of Guise, and widow of the Duke of Longueville.

The inclination which James V. at one time showed for the Reformed opinions ceased on his marriage to a member of one of the most fanatically Catholic families in Europe. Knox throughout treats Mary of Guise simply as the ally of Cardinal Beaton and the opponent of Protestantism, ignoring her many attractive personal qualities and the difficulties of her position, as well as the favorable contrast which her conduct as a widowed queen presented to that of her predecessor, Queen Margaret Tudor, widow of James V., and to that of her own daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, widow first of the King of France, and then of Lord Darnley. 15 At the Reformation, Edinburgh was within the diocese of St. Andrews, which was erected into an Archbishopric in 1471. Edinburgh had no separate bishop of its own. St. Giles was not a cathedral, but a collegiate church, with a provost, a curate, sixteen prebendaries, a sacristan, a minister of the choir, and four choristers. Edinburgh was the political, but St. Andrews the ecclesiastical, capital of Scotland. 16 ‘There was at Dumfries lately one Friar Jerom, called a well-learned man, taken by the Lord Maxwell upon commandment from the Bishops, and lieth in sore irons, like to suffer for the Englishmen’s opinions. It passeth abroad daily, thanks be to God there, all that same notwithstanding.’—Sir Thomas Wharton to Lord Cromwell, 7th November 1538. 17 In his Life of George Buchanan, Dr. Hume Brown brings out the importance to the Reformation cause in Scotland of the adhesion of George Buchanan, a scholar and poet of European eminence, and Queen Mary’s Poet Laureate. Mary endowed him with the revenues of Crossraguel, and he continued on terms of great intimacy with her, till the share which he believed she had in the murder of Darnley turned his friendly feelings into indignation and contempt. ‘The Queen readeth daily after her dinner, instructed by a learned man, Master George Buchanan, somewhat of Livy.’—Letter from Thomas Randolph, English Ambassador at the Scottish Court, to Sir William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth’s Chief Secretary of State, 7th April 1562.

Buchanan represented the intellectual side of the great revolt against Authority in Scotland in the sixteenth century—the Renaissance; and Knox the theological—the Reformation. ‘If the Church of Scotland had a Luther in Knox, it had an Erasmus in the wide and polished culture of George Buchanan.’—Dean Stanley. When James VI. addressed the University of Edinburgh at Stirling, he said: ‘All the world knows that my master, George Buchanan, was a great master in Latin learning. I follow his pronunciation, both of his Latin and Greek, and am sorry that my people of England do not the like; for certainly their pronunciation utterly fails the grace of these two learned languages.’ In June 1567, Buchanan was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, one of the few laymen who have ever held that office. He was born the year after John Knox, and survived him for ten years. 18 In 1543 Lord Glencairn was in England; and Sir Ralph Sadler, English Ambassador in Edinburgh, wrote of him to Henry VIII.: ‘In my poor opinion, there be few such Scots in Scotland, both for his wisdom and learning, and well dedicate to the truth of Christ’s word and doctrine’—(Sadlet’s Papers, vol. i. p. 83). ‘The acute Sadler,’ as Sir Walter Scott remarks, ‘discerned the germs of those qualities which afterwards made this nobleman the great promoter of the Reformation, and in consequence a steady adherent of the English interest’ (ibid.).

Lord Glencairn had one fault. In forwarding one of his letters to Henry vm., Sadler sent a copy, explaining that Glencairn’s letter, ‘being written with his own hand, is therefore not legible! ’ 19 Among the great leaders of the Scottish Reformation whose fame has been unduly overshadowed by that of John Knox, one of the most remarkable was the Paduan Doctor of Laws, John Row. He was first led to entertain doubts regarding the old opinions by his discovery of a fraud practiced by the priests at the Chapel near Musselburgh, dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto, in pretending to have restored the sight of a boy whom they falsely affirmed to have been born blind.

Knox’s preaching finally confirmed him in the new doctrines. 20 The Cardinal always took care to keep out of Henry’s clutches. When the Earl of Arran became Governor, the English envoy, Sir Ralph Sadler, proposed to him that the Cardinal should be kidnapped and sent to England. ‘Hereat,’ writes Sir Ralph, ‘the Governor laughed, and said, “The Cardinal had liefer go into hell!”’ If Mary’s misfortunes can be traced to the Cardinal’s policy of antagonism to England and to Protestantism, so may the war with England, which ended at Solway Moss so disastrously for Mary’s father and for Scotland. 21 Father of Marjorie Bowes, Knox’s first wife. 22 ‘A contemptuous term, the proper meaning of which seems to be now lost.’—JAMESON’ S Scottish Dictionary. ‘Jevels’ in Christ’s Kirk on the Green, and in Dunbar’s Poems, seems the same word. 23 The King of Scots did call upon the Bishop of Glasgow, being Chancellor, and divers other Bishops, exhorting them to reform their fashions and manners of living, saying that unless they so did, he would send six of the proudest of them unto his uncle of England; and, as these were ordered, so he would order all the rest that would not amend.’—Sir Williaw Eure to Lord Cromwell, from Betwick, 26th January 1540. 24 David Buchanan, in the 1644 edition, translates this ‘sluggard’! 25 It was reported that the child was feeble. The English Ambassador, Sir Ralph Sadler, had an interview with the Queen-Dowager, to satisfy himself. He reports the result in a letter to Henry vm., dated 22nd March 1543: —‘Quoth the Queen, “The Governor” [the Earl of Arran, next heir to the throne after the child] “said that the child was not like to live, but you shall see whether he saith true or not.” Therewith she caused me to go with her to the chamber where the child was, and showed her unto me, and also caused the nurse to unwrap her out of the clothes, that I might see her naked. I assure your Majesty it is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live, with the Grace of God.’ He saw the Queen-Dowager again on 10th August. ‘The Queen told me that her daughter did grow apace, and soon she would be a woman, if she took after her mother; who indeed is of the largest stature of women.’ 26 Marjory, daughter of Robert Bruce, wife of Walter the High Steward, mother of Robert H., and ancestress of the House of Stuart. In The Chronicles of Scotland, by Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, a contemporary of Knox, the King’s saying is rendered: — ‘It came with a lass; and it will pass with a lass.’

CHAPTER - 1 Calderwood says that Guillaume was ‘the first to give Knox a taste of the truth.’ He is probably the same as ‘Thomas Gilham, Scot, Bachelor of Divinity,’ whose name occurs, with five other Scots, of whom Knox is one, in the list of eighty Preachers employed by the English Privy Council during the reign of Edward VI. 2 Then the Governor told me swearing a great oath—that the Cardinal’s money had corrupted Lord Seton.’ Sir Ralph Sadler to Sir William Cecil, quoted in Sir John Skelton’s Maitland of Lethington . 3 A term of contempt, meaning either ignorant persons, or worthless persons. David Buchanan, in his edition of 1644, with his usual felicity, renders it ‘Bishops’! 4 Sir Ralph had a very poor opinion of the Scotch. Writing to Henry win, he says: ‘There never was so noble a Prince’s servant as I am so evil entreated among that unreasonable people; nor do I think never man had to do with so rude, so inconsistent, and beastly a nation as this is!’

Sir Ralph was a keen Protestant and Puritan, like Sir William Cecil; and was sent to Edinburgh at this time to counteract the influence of Cardinal Beaton, and to arrange for the marriage of Mary and Edward, in both of which projects he failed. Lloyd, in State Worthies, sums him up thus: ‘Little was his body, but great was his soul.’ It may be added that Thomas Randolph, Sir Ralph’s successor, echoed his opinion of the Scots nation when he wrote to Cecil: — ‘I think marvelously of the wisdom of God, that gave this unruly, inconstant, and cumbersome people no more substance than they have; for then would they run wild.’ 5 Henry Belnaves of Halhill, advocate, one of the most eminent laymen among the Scots reformers, was appointed a judge of the Court of Session by James V. At the beginning of the Earl of Arran’s regency, he was made Secretary of State. 6 The Governor’s inconstancy was proverbial. At a much later period—on 30th November 1563—Thomas Randolph, the English Ambassador, wrote to Sir William Cecil: — ‘The Duke of Chatelherault came unto this town on Thursday last. Upon Sunday at night the Duke supped with Master Knox, where the Duke desired that I should be. Three special points he hath promised to perform to Master Knox before me.

The one is never to go, for any respect, from that he hath promised to be—a professor of Christ’s word and setter forth of the same to his power. The next, always to show himself an obedient subject to his sovereign, as far as in duty and conscience he is bound. The third, never to alter from that promise he hath made for the maintenance of peace and amity between both the realms [of Scotland and England]. I will believe them all as I see them take effect, but trust it shall never lie in his words alone!’ 7 ‘Aye runs the fox, while he foot has.’—DUNBAR’ S Poems (Dr. Laing’s edition, vol. i. p. 136). 8 The English account corresponds with this description: — ‘Finally it was determined by the Lord-Lieutenant [Lord Hertford] utterly to ruinate the town [of Edinburgh] with fire. We continued burning all that day, and the two days next ensuing continually, so that neither within the walls nor in the suburbs was left any one house unburnt.

Also we burned the Abbey called Holy Rood House, and the Palace adjoining to the same.’—The late expedition in Scotland, the Year of our Lord God, 1544, which also describes how Lord Hertford, afterwards known as the Lord Protector Somerset, destroyed the Abbeys of Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose and Jedburgh, whose ruin has often been ignorantly ascribed to the Reformers.

CHAPTER - 1 John Knox here mentions himself for the first time. He was twenty-three years old when Patrick Hamilton was burned in St. Andrews, and now, at the age of forty, he attached himself openly to the Reforming party as an avowed adherent of George Wishart, who was his senior by eight or nine years. Of the previous forty years of Knox’s life, strange to say, we know absolutely nothing with certainty, except that he was born in 1505 in or near Haddington, his father’s Christian name being William, and his mother’s surname Sinclair; that he was educated at Haddington and in the University of Glasgow; that he took Priest’s orders in or about 1530; and that, prior to 1545, he was partly employed as a tutor in the families of Douglas of Longniddry and Cockburn of Ormiston, proprietors holding Reformed opinions. It is at least doubtful whether but for Wishart’s influence and Wishart’s tragic death Knox would ever have stepped to the front. 2 Earl Patrick, father of Earl James, Queen Mary’s third husband. Of Earl Patrick, Sir Ralph Sadler, the English envoy, wrote, on 5th May 1543, from Edinburgh: ‘I think him the most vain and insolent man in the world, full of pride and folly, and here, I assure you, nothing at all esteemed.’ 3 Or, according to another reading, ‘for a sacrifice.’ 4 This version of the fifty-first Psalm is identical with that printed in the Gude and Godly Ballatis. See the edition edited for the Scottish Text Society by Rev. Professor Mitchell, D.D., p. 120. Dr. Mitchell shows in his Introduction how much these psalms and hymns contributed to the Scottish Reformation, supplying elements which could ot be found in the satirical, destructive poems of Sir David Lyndsay and George Buchanan. 5 ‘So touching a picture could have been drawn by none but a skillful hand guided by a loving heart.’ —SIR WILLIAM STIRLING MAXWELL. 6 ‘Unexpectedly enough, Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His History, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing their croziers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every way! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; a laugh in the eyes most of all! ’ —THOMAS CARLYLE in Heroes and Hero-Worship. 7 ‘The gentlest and most reverent pages of all Knox’s History are those in which he tells of the courage of George Wishart at his trial and his constancy in the hour of death. For Wishart alone, of all the men he ever knew, Knox seems to have had the feeling of a disciple for a master.’—MRS. M’CUNN’ S Life of John Knox, p. 8. 8 Opposite these words of Melvin, on the margin of the 1566 MS., is written, ‘The godly fact and words of James Melvin.’ Dr. Laing attributes this marginal to Knox. Dr. Hume Brown in his Life of Knox accepts this view, and after showing that Knox, while he may have approved the death of Beaton, although not necessarily the lawless manner in which the deed was done, had no connection of any kind with the murder, adds this note:— ‘To appreciate the precise significance of Knox’s comment, one should place beside it Queen Mary’s deliberately expressed approval of the assassination of her brother, the Regent Moray: “Ce que Bothwellhaugh a fait, a ete sans mon commandement, de quoi je lui sais aussi bon gre et meilleur, que si j’eusse ete du conseil. Je n’oublierai la pension du dit Bothwellhaugh.” “What Bothwellhaugh has done has been without my orders. But I am as much indebted to him for it, a more, than if he had consulted me. I shall not forget the pension of the said Bothwellhaugh (the assassin).”

In the case of both Knox and Mary, the century entered into their words as much as the individual.’

CHAPTER - 1 An attempt has been made to suggest that Knox was concerned in the murder of Cardinal Beaton. For this there is no foundation; and he did not enter the castle of St. Andrews until ten months after Beaton’s death. 2 This was Knox’s favorite gospel, as appears from the accounts we have of his death, which took place about eleven on the night of 24th November 1572. His secretary, Richard Bannatyne, thus records the earlier part of that day: ‘A little after noon Master Knox caused his wife read the 15th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, of the Resurrection, to whom he said, “Is not that a comfortable chapter?” A little after, “Now, for the last, I commend my soul, spirit, and body,” pointing upon his three fingers, “into Thy hands, O Lord! ” Thereafter, about five hours, to his wife, “Go, read where I cast my first anchor.”AND SO SHE READ THE 17 TH CHAPTER OF JOHN’ S EVANGEL.’ 3 ‘The post of Prophet to his nation was not of Knox’s seeking. He had lived forty years quietly obscure, well content to guide his own steps by the light of the Reformation, nowise unduly intruding it on others. .. Resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. ‘—\parTHOMAS CARLYLE in Heroes and Hero-Worship. See Mr. Taylor Innes’s Life of John Knox, p. 37, on this passage of Carlyle. 4 See The Poetical Works of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, edited by David Laing, LL.D. Lyndsay, the head of the Scottish College of Heralds as Lyon King-at-Arms, and the Poet Laureate of the Scottish Court, was the popular poet of the Scottish Reformation, as Dunbar had been of the Scottish Renaissance. George Buchanan was the poet of men of culture; but Lyndsay, like Dunbar, wrote in the vernacular for all classes. In Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott makes Andrew Fairservice express contempt for his master’s efforts at poetry: ‘ Twa lines o’ Davie Lyndsay wald ding a’ he ever clerkit.’ Lyndsay was a musician as well as a poet. Among the first words which James V. lisped in infancy were the royal command to Sir David— ‘Pay,-Day Lyn,’— Play, Davie Lyndsay! It is curious that the lines on Cardinal Beaton’s murder by which Lyndsay is now best known— ‘Although the deed was foully done The loon is wed awa!’ do not appear in any of his extant poems. Both Lyndsay and Buchanan attacked the Roman sacerdotal system in its most vulnerable part, the morals of the clergy, His name was coupled by Dempster, the Roman Catholic writer, in his Scotia Illustrior, page 54, with those of Knox, Buchanan and Willock, as among the most dangerous enemies of the ancient church: — ‘Knoxii, Lindsayi, Buchanani, Willoxii, aliorum, impia scripta incautorum manibus teruntur; opus erat antidoto, ne latius venenum serperet.’ The poems of Lyndsay which had the greatest influence in promoting the Reformation were his Satire on the three Estates and his Monarchies. 5 When Knox lay dying in the old house still remaining in the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, he saw the elders and deacons of St. Giles for the last time on 17th November 1572. Richard Bannatyne, his secretary, tells us what took place: — ‘The elders and deacons came that he might bid them his last good-night, unto whom he protested that. . . he made not merchandise of the Word of God, whose message he bore, to whom he must make account for the same. In respect whereof— ALBEIT HE WAS A WEAK AND FEARFUL MAN—he feared not the faces of men; and therefore exhorted them to stand constant in that doctrine which they had heard of his mouth, how unworthy that ever he was. So with exhortation unto them all, he commendeth them to God; and after the Prayer read for the Sick, as it is in the Psalm Book, they departed with tears.’ In John Knox and John Knox’s House (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1898), I have quoted in full Bannatyne’s pathetic account of Knox’s deathbed. 6 Here and elsewhere throughout the History, it will be observed that Knox says little or nothing about questions of church government— Episcopacy or Presbyterianism. His note is that of Protestantism and Puritanism. 7 Knox was forty-two years of age when he preached his first sermon. 8 Knox probably refers to the epistle which he addressed from the French galleys to his brethren in Scotland in 1548, in connection with Henry Balnaves’s Treatise on Justification, See Dr. Laing’s edition of John Knox’s Works, vol. iii. p. 1. 9 Principal Robertson, in his History of Scotland, calls Balfour ‘the most corrupt man of his age.’ 10 By the ‘Appointment’ entered into in December 1546, between the Regent Arran and those within the castle of St. Andrews, a cessation of hostilities had been arranged till absolution was obtained from Rome for the murder of Cardinal Beaton. 11 John Rough had left the Castle before the surrender. He went to England, where he was appointed by the Archbishop of York to a benefice near Hull, and he continued in England till the death of Edward VI. in 1553, when he fled to Friesland, where he and his wife maintained themselves by knitting hosiery. Having come to London in connection with his business during the persecution under Queen Mary, he preached to a secret society of Protestants, was arrested, tried for heresy, and died at the stake on 22nd December 1557. 12 Norman Leslie, one of the actors in the assassination of Cardinal Beaton. 13 According to George Buchanan, Master Rigg was not a reliable military adviser. In his History of Scotland he describes Rigg as ‘a lawyer, more remarkable for his large body and personal strength, than for any knowledge of military affairs.’ 14 Knox here refers to the Earl of Arran, the Governor of Scotland, by the title Duke of Chatelherault, which he afterwards received from the King of France. 15 William Patten, who was present on the English side, states that the dead Scots were ‘stripped out of their garments stark naked’ by the victors. He adds: — ‘For their tallness of stature, cleanness of skin, bigness of bone, with due proportion in all parts, I for my part advisedly noted to be such, as but that I well saw that it was so, I would not have believed sure so many of that sort to have been in all their country.’ —Expedition into Scotland. 16 In Vautrollier’s edition (1586), ‘sore assaulted.’ 17 Marian controversialists on both sides seem to forget Mary’s upbringing, to which Knox, in this passage, properly attaches so much importance. She was sent to France at the age of five, and remained there, without revisiting Scotland, for twelve years. She was educated at the most dissolute Court in Europe, under the influence of her uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, of Diana of Poitiers, the French king’s mistress, and of her future mother-in-law, Catharine de’ Medici— ‘ the Italian she-wolf,’ as Motley the historian calls her, but ‘a little saint’ according to Pope Paul V.—who all, to licentious lives and habitual disregard for truth and the sacredness of human life, joined cruel persecution of Reformed opinions— persecution which had the avowed object not of conversion, but of extermination. ‘Debauchery of all kinds, and murder in all forms, were the daily matter of excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around Queen Catherine de’ Medici.’—(Algernon C.

Swinburne in ‘Mary Stuart,’ Encyclopedia Britannica.) Sir John Skelton labors to prove that Mary, while in France, was not exposed to Catharine’s malign influence. But, in writing to Catharine on 30th April 1570, Mary refers to ‘the honor [?] that I have had in being nurtured in your family as your very obedient daughter.’ Mary may have gone to France a Scotch woman and a Stuart; she returned a French woman and a Guise. The result was foreshadowed by Henry II. when, on her arrival in France, he exclaimed, ‘La France et l’Ecosse ne font plus qu’un ‘— ‘France and Scotland are now one country.’ 18 ‘The unbridled excesses of the French troops in Scotland, no less than the shameful rapacity of the French agents, aroused a general spirit of resistance in Scotland, and England soon found in the rupture of the ancient alliance between France and Scotland an ample indemnification for the losa of CMais.’—TEULET’ S Papiers d’Etat, i. 12. 19 As we have already seen, John Knox was induced to undertake the work of a preacher through the agency of Belnaves, a Judge of the Court of Session, and of Sir David Lyndsay, Poet-Laureate of Scotland, and of John Rough, a Franciscan friar. Balnaves was a theologian as well as a learned lawyer. His Treatise on Justification, with an introductory epistle by Knox, is printed by Dr. Laing in the third volume of his edition of Knox’s Works. 20 ‘Scottish John Knox, such World-Hero as we know, sat once, nevertheless, pulling grim-taciturn at the oar of French galley, and even flung their Virgin-Mary over, instead of kissing her—as a “pented brodd” or timber Virgin who could naturally swim! So ye of Chateau- Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope!’—THOMAS CARLYLE in The French Revolution, vol. ii. bk. ii. ch. vi. 21 ‘Knox was a galley slave. The master of the galley was glad to be rid of him; because he never had good success so long as he kept that holy man in slavery, whom also when in danger of tempest he, though an arrant Papist, would desire to commend him and his galley to God in his prayers.’—T. Stapleton and Martiall, two Popish heretics, confuted by Dr. Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1580. 22 Writing to one of his London correspondents, Mrs. Anna Locke, an ancestress of John Locke, the philosopher, on 31st December 1559, Knox says that he endured ‘the torments of the galleys for the space of nineteen months.’

CHAPTER - 1 In this modest sentence John Knox disposes of his English residence of five years, making no reference to his appointment as a Royal Chaplain to Edward VI., before whom he frequently preached at Windsor, Hampton Court, St. James’s and Westminster, nor to the share he took in the preparation of the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of the Church of England, nor to his declinature first of the Bishopric of Rochester, and afterwards of the vicarage of All Hallows in London. His appointment as preacher to Igerwick and Newcastle was made by the Privy Council of England. 2 His colleague at Geneva was Christopher Goodman, B.D. of the University of Oxford. The congregation, which freely elected Knox as their preacher and pastor, embraced some of the greatest English scholars of the time, including Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, the translator of the Bible, who acted as an elder in the congregation.

During the persecutions under Mary of England, fully eight hundred English Protestants took refuge on the Continent. 3 His colleague at Frankfort was Thomas Lever, M.A., Master of St.

John’s College, Cambridge. An interesting account of the disputes which led to Knox withdrawing from Frankfort is given by Dr. Lorimer in his Knox and the Church of England. 4 See The Works of John Knox, edited by David Laing, LL.D., vol. iii. p. 257. 5 ‘Her Majesty had three varlets of her chamber that sang three parts, and wanted a bass to sing the fourth part. Therefore they told Her Majesty of this man [David Rizzio] to be their fourth marrow, in sort that he was drawn in to sing sometimes with the rest. Afterward, when the Ambassador, his master, returned [to Savoy], he stayed in this country, and was retained in Her Majesty’s service as a varlet of her chamber.’ —(Memoirs of Sir James Melville, p. 103.) ‘David Riccio now worketh all, and is only Governor to the King and his family.

Great is his pride, and his words intolerable. People have small joy in this new master, and find nothing but that God must either send him a short end, or them a miserable life. The dangers to those he now hateth are great. Either he must be taken away; or they [must] find some support that what he intendeth to others may fall upon himself.’— Randolph to Cecil, 3rd June 1565. In the text, Knox fails to remember that the end cannot justify the means, and has no word of denunciation, as he ought to have had, of the brutality which was displayed by Lords Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthyen, even in the presence of the Queen. But it is fair to remember that his defense of these nobles was written when smarting under the hardship of undeserved banishment from Edinburgh; and further, that it is in striking contrast to the scrupulous regard for the sanctity of human life which Knox usually displayed, as, for instance, in the advice given by him to the Scots Protestant prisoners in Mont St. Michel. 6 The Bishop of Ross was a natural son of Gawin Leslie, parson of Kingussie. His illegitimacy is proved by the terms of a Dispensation in his favor dated in 1538, referred to by Bishop Keith in his Historical Catalogue of Scottish Bishops. Further as to Bishop Leslie, see pp. 69, 243. 7 The Archbishop of St. Andrews was an illegitimate brother of the Duke of Chatelherault. Writing to Cecil on 15th January 1562, Randolph tells us that the Archbishop was cured of a serious illness by the famous physician, Jerome Cardan, brought from Italy for the purpose.

The method of cure consisted in feeding the Primate on ‘young whelps,’ and hanging him up by the heels for certain hours each day! 8 A reference to Melville’s Memoirs (Bannatyne Club), pages 21 and 73, will show that the supplanting of the Regent Arran was denounced by Archbishop Hamilton, the head of the Papal Hierarchy in Scotland, in language still more unseemly than Knox’s. 9 In his Admonition to the Professors of the Truth in England, Knox says of Mary, ‘Under an English name, she beareth a Spaniard’s heart!’ We now know that she was only partly responsible for the savage persecution which has branded her for all time with the dreadful name of ‘Bloody Mary.’ All that Knox knew was that more than three hundred of the best of her subjects were burnt at the stake in her name for their religious opinions. Many of these, like Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Hooper, Latimer, and Ridley, had been Knox’s personal friends. 10 Willock was originally a Franciscan friar, then Chaplain, in to the Duke of Suffolk (father to Lady Jane Grey), then a physician at Embden in Friesland. Dr. M’Crie calls Willock ‘the chief coadjutor of Knox.’ In Bullinger’s dedication in Latin of his ‘Fifth Decade’ to the Marquis of Dorset, he mentions Willock: ‘Your piety needs none of my teaching, seeing that it is surrounded with most learned and godly men on all sides, of whom Master Robert Skinner and Master John Willock, very excellent men. are none of the least.’ Willock became Superintendent of the West. He enjoyed the unique distinction of being at the same time a benefited clergyman of the Episcopal Church of England, and a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. During his residence in England the Duke of Suffolk presented Willock to the living of Loughborough, in Leicestershire, which he retained all through his ministry in Scotland. Some time before his death he returned to Loughborough and died there in 1585, thirteen years after Knox’s death. Like Knox, he married an Englishwoman. 11 This is Knox’s first mention of Queen Mary’s Chief Secretary, the statesman whose portrait was thus drawn on 7th December 1561 by Randolph for Cecil— ‘Lethington hath a crafty head and a fell tongue!’

To which character-sketch may be added from a later letter Randolph’s remark, ‘He is more given to policy than to. Master Knox’s preachings!’ Knox and Maitland, unquestionably the two ablest men in Scotland of their time, were born within a mile of each other, the one in 1505 in or near Haddington, the other about 1528 at Lethington, now called Lennox Love. ‘There were not above three or four men of distinctly original force in the whole island from John O’Groats to Land’s End at this period. In England they had Cecil; in Scotland, John Knox and William Maitland. .. Mary, during these years, was the central figure; but the real struggle lay between Knox and Lethington. ..

Queen Elizabeth called MMtland the flower of the wits of Scotland.’—Maitland of Lethington and the Scotland of Mary Stuart, by SirJOHN SKELTON. De Foix, the ambassador of Catharine de’ Medici, described Lethington to De Silva as ‘a sort of Scottish Cecil.’ 12 Here Knox first mentions his great associate, best known under his later title of The Regent Moray. In view of the biographies of Queen Mary, Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, Knox, Cardinal Beaton, the Earl of Bothwell, Maitland of Lethington, George Buchanan, Sir David Lyndsay, and Kirkcaldy of Grange, it is curious that Moray’s career, so full of dramatic incident, and so beset by perplexing, but most interesting, questions, should not yet have been made the subject of a monograph, friendly, hostile, or neutral. Even his enemies admitted his intellectual ability, his culture, his statesman-like moderation and breadth of view, his stainless moral character, his physical courage, and his sincere interest in religion. The Queen Regent and her brothers attributed the success of the Protestant cause in Scotland to Moray more than to any other person: — ‘The Queen Regent marveled of the stiffness of the Lords of the Congregation, but in special of my Lord James, who never did take rest to work in her contrary, though others took some repose’ —(John Wood to Thomas Randolph, 30th November 1559). Moray was assassinated in Linlithgow on 23rd January 1570. The body was borne from Holyrood to St. Giles Church, where Knox preached from the words, ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’ ‘He moved three thousand persons to shed tears for the loss of such a good and godly governor’—(CALDERWOOD, ii. p. 525). Knox was asked to write the Regent’s biography. ‘Lawrence Humphrey, Doctor of Divinity of England [Dean of Winchester], desired Master Knox to put in memory the death and life of the Regent lately and shamefully murdered ‘—(BANNATYNE’ S Memorials). The people called Moray ‘the Good Regent.’ At the time referred to in the text—1555—he was only twenty-four years of age. He was made Prior of St. Andrews in his fifth year, and at a later date Prior of Macon, in France. 13 ‘This seems to have been the first of those religious bonds or covenants by which the confederation of the Protestants in Scotland was so frequently ratified.’—Dr. M’CRIE’ S Life of John Knox. 14 See John Knox’s Works, edited by David Laing, LL.D., vol. iv. p. 69. 15 This was written in 1566. In February of the following year, Lord Darnley, the Queen’s husband, was murdered, at the age of twenty; in May of the same year, the Queen, aged twenty-four, married Lord Bothwell, one of the ringleaders in the murder, and created him Duke of Orkney; in June of the same year, she was a prisoner in Lochleven Castle, and in July, she abdicated the throne of Scotland. 16 ‘Knox bared his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys; wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life. If this world were his place of recompense, he had marie but a bad venture of it! ’—\parTHOMAS CARLYLE in Heroes and Hero-Worship. 17 See Works (vol. iv. p. 461). 18 ‘Comets importing change of times and States.’ —SHAKESPEARE in the first part of Henry VI. 19 This sentence, as printed by Dr. Laing is not very intelligible; but David Buchanan, in his edition of 1644, does not make the happiest conjecture when he prints, ‘This put an affray in Monsieur Dosali’s breeches’! 20 The marshy lake which formerly existed in the hollow between Princes Street and the Old Town. It extended from St. Cuthbert’s Church on the west to the Old Trinity College Church on the east. 21 All the manuscripts make the French Queen Regent speak broken English. 22 Compare fiertre, old French for a chest in which relics of saints were kept. 23 Probably this means ‘the priests with their round caps jostle with the friars with their shaven crowns.’ 24 ‘What distinguishes Knox front men like Calvin or Savonarola is precisely that sense of a humorous side of things which made him at once a great writer and a great leader of men. Of the value of this quality in the conduct of human affairs he was himself perfectly conscious, and deliberately employed it both in his writings and in his dealings with his fellows. “Melancholious reasons,” he said in one of his debates with Lethington, “would have some mirth intermixed.”’ — Dr.HUME BROWN in Life of John Knox, vol. ii. p. 224.

CHAPTER - 1 Bishop of Ross, previously Secretary of State to James V. 2 Or 1557, according to modern reckoning. In Knox’s time the year began on 25th March. 3 Knox spent not less than a year altogether in Dieppe during his two visits in 1557 and 1559. Judging from the following contemporary testimony, his eloquence in the church of La Madeleine seems to have been as persuasive in French as his preaching in English had proved in Scotland, England, and Switzerland: — ‘On February:19th, 1559, arrived at Dieppe the Seigneur Jean Knox, Scotsman, a very learned man, who had been received as a pastor in England in the time of King Edward VI., and was afterwards minister of the English and Scottish Church received at Geneva, and preached at Dieppe for the space of six or seven weeks. He achieved a great result, and the number of the faithful in Dieppe grew in such degree that they dared to preach in full day; whereas, till this time, they had only dared to go to sermon during the night. On the first day of March 1559 there made abjuration of the errors of the Roman Church and profession of the truth of the Gospel by the hands of the Seigneur John Knox, M. de Senerpont, King’s lieutenant in the government of Picardy, a son-in-law of the same, and one of his daughters, named Madame de Monterautier, M. de Bacqueville, and two of his sons, with several other ladies and gentlemen.’—Histoire de la Reformatio d’ Dieppe, byDAVAL. Similar testimony from the Roman Catholic side is quoted by Dr. Hume Brown in his Life of John Knox, vol. i. p. 218. 4 Knox’s residence in Geneva, spent in study (especially of the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek, for the purposes of the translation known afterwards as the Geneva Bible), in converse with Calvin and other French and Swiss Reformers, and in ministering to the little colony of English refugees—em-bracing some of England’s most eminent scholars and divines—seems to have been the happiest period of his life. Writing to John Wood from Edinburgh on 14th February 1568, he said: — ‘God comfort that dispersed little flock, amongst whom I once lived with quietness of conscience and contentment of heart, and amongst whom I would be content to end my days, if so it might stand with God’s good pleasure.’ 5 That is, the Liturgy of Edward VI., which was soon afterwards replaced by the Geneva Prayer-Book, commonly known as John Knox’s Liturgy. The latter book was the production of a committee, of which Knox formed one. The other members of the Committee we, re all English scholars, clergymen or laymen of the Church of England. 6 This letter is printed in the original spelling. 7 Knox seems here to refer to the Earl of Argyle’s continued adherence to Queen Mary at the time the above passage was written. 8 Three days before 15th May 1559, the time mentioned, the three great monasteries in Perth of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and the Charterhouse were utterly destroyed by the mob, or the ‘rascal multitude,’ as Knox called them. 9 The Twopenny Faith (Bannatyne Miscellany, vol. iii.), published in 1558- 59 under Archbishop Hamilton’s auspices, was at one time confounded with Archbishop Hamilton’s Catechism, published in 1552, which was probably composed by Dean John Winram, afterwards a Protestant minister. See the Catechism published in by the Clarendon Press, edited by Mr. T. G. Law, with a Preface by the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, and Professor Mitchell’s note on the authorship of the Catechism at the end of his introduction to Gans’ ‘Richt Vay’ (Scottish Text Society). 10 The grant of the Crown Matrimonial of Scotland to Francis meant that he would be entitled to the Scottish throne on Mary’s death with or without issue. 11 The practice was a common one of giving the revenues of Abbeys to persons who discharged no duties in connection with these establishments. In such cases, the Abbey was said to be given in commendam. This was one of the scandals which brought about the Reformation. Writing from within the Catholic Church, John Major, Knox’s teacher at Glasgow, in his History of Greater Britain, said:— ‘By open flattery do the worthless sons Of our nobility get the governance of convents in commendam. The wealth of these foundations is set before them like a mark before a poor bowman.

They covet these ample revenues, not for the good help that they thence might render unto their brethren, but solely for the high position that these places offer, that out of them they may have the chance to fill their own pockets.’ The proposal referred to by Knox was doubly scandalous in the case of the Cardinal of Lorraine.

Archbishop of Rheims at sixteen and Cardinal of Lorraine at twentythree, he held at one time two other archbishoprics—Narbonne and Lyons—and seven wealthy bishoprics.

BOOK PREFACE TO SECOND BOOK 1 . The Second Book was written about 1560; the First Book not till Hence the existence and form of this Preface. It must be to the Second Book that Randolph refers in his letter to Cecil of 23rd September 1560:—‘I have talked at large with Master Knox concerning his History. As much as he has written thereof shall be sent to Your Honor, at the coming of the Lords Ambassadors, by Master John Wood. He hath written only one Book. If you like that, he shall continue the same, or add any more. He sayeth he must have farther help than is to be found in this country, for more assured knowledge of things past than he hath himself, or can come by here It is a work not to be neglected, and [it is] greatly [to be] wished that it should be well handled.’

CHAPTER - 1 All these were laymen, except perhaps Robert Hamilton, afterwards minister of St. Andrews. Lockhart subsequently went over to the Queen Regent’s side. In the Royal Treasurer’s Accounts, under date 16th January 1560, there is this entry:— ‘By the Queen’s Grace’s Precept to Master Robert Lockhart, xxx. lib.’ 2 Paul Methven, afterwards minister of Jedburgh, was deposed and excommunicated for immorality, in 1563. 3 The dignified moderation of tone in this Petition is in striking contrast with the intolerant and high-handed terms of later Protestant documents. Three causes tend to account for this difference: —first, the failure of the Church and the Crown to give any real effect to the most moderate requests for reform; second, the repeated breach by both Church and Crown of solemn promises made to the Reforming party; and third, the belief, now proved to have been well-founded, that the promises of toleration made both by Mary, Queen of Scots, and by her mother, the Queen Regent, were made only to deceive. It is true that Knox was ignorant of the first principles of toleration. In this particular he never emancipated himself from one of the deadliest errors which the Roman, not the Protestant, Church had taught him.

At the same time, it is fair to remember that he never had a fair chance to consider the question of toleration. The only body to whom toleration was refused was a Church which unceasingly proclaimed its intention to suppress all difference of religious opinion by fire and sword. 4 The abolition of godparents in modern Presbyterian practice cannot be traced to Knox any more than the disuse of instrumental music or of a liturgy. At the baptism of Nathanael, Knox’s eldest son, Dr. Myles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, acted as godfather, and at the baptism of Eleazar, the godfather was William Whittingham, afterwards Dean of Durham. Knox’s participation in the preparation of liturgies, English and Scotch, is noticed afterwards. As to organs, Knox took part in many services at which they were used, as, for instance, when he preached as a Royal Chaplain before Edward VI. at Windsor, at Hampton Court, at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, and at Westminster; and his writings, voluminous and varied as they are, do not contain a word in condemnation of the use of instrumental music in congregational worship. 5 Myln was the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. He had himself expressed the hope that this might be so. A granite obelisk now stands on the site of the ‘great heap of stones,’ with this inscription: ‘In memory of the martyrs, Patrick Hamilton, Henry Forrest, George Wishart, Waiter Mill, who, in support of the Protestant Faith, suffered by fire at St. Andrews, between the years 1528 and 1558. The Righteous shall be held in everlasting remembrance.’ 6 When Archbishop Laud was urging James VI. to force Episcopacy on Scotland, James wrote: —‘I durst not play fast-and-loose with my word. He knows not the stomach of that people. But I ken the story of my grandmother, the Queen Regent. After she was inveigled to break her promise made to some mutineers at a Perth meeting, she never saw good day; but, from thence, being much beloved before, was despised by her people.

CHAPTER - 1 I see the battle shall be great; and I am come, I praise my God, even in the brunt of the battle. My fellow-preachers have a day appointed to answer before the Queen Regent, the 10th of this instant, when I intend, if God impede not, also to be present; by life, by death, or else by both, to glorify His Godly Name, who thus mercifully hath heard my long cries. Assist me, Sister, with your prayers, that now I shrink not when the battle approacheth.’—-John Knox to Mrs. Anna Locke, 2nd May 1559. 2 Even Edinburgh Castle could not retain Sir John Maxwell; for Bishop Leslie, in his History, narrates:—’ The Master of Maxwell departed forth of the Castle of Edinburgh by a cord over the wall thereof, where there were certain horses in readiness with friends of his own. Soon after he joined himself with the Lords of the Congregation.’ 3 French Huguenots. 4 On 1st July 1559, Knox wrote to Sir Henry Percy— ‘We mean neither sedition, neither yet rebellion against any just and lawful authority, but only the advancement of Christ’s religion, and the liberty of this poor realm.’ 5 ‘The cruelty and deceit of the Queen Regent has displeased many who before assisted her with their presence and counsel. Among others, the Earl of Argyle and the Prior of St. Andrews left her, and joined themselves to the Congregation openly, which, as it was displeasing to her and to the shavelings, so was it most comfortable and joyful to us, for by their presence were the hearts of many erected from desperation.’—Knox to Mrs. Anna Locke, from St. Andrews, 23rd June 1559.

CHAPTER - 1 This refers to the sentence of excommunication and outlawry pronounced against Knox by the Bishops in 1557. Knox’s opinion of Archbishop Hamilton has been repeated in modern times by Mr.

Froude, who describes him as ‘the most abandoned of all Episcopal scoundrels’! 2 The parallel scarcely needs to be pointed out between Knox at St.

Andrews disregarding the Archbishop’s threats of personal violence, and Luther’s famous resolution to go forward, when urged not to obey the summons to attend the Diet at Worms. In both cases, the Reformation struggle had reached a crisis, when failure of moral courage or of faith on the part of the Protestant champion might have thrown back the whole movement for years. 3 ‘As the Archbishop’s boast did little affray me, so did it more incense and inflame with courage the hearts of the godly, who with one voice proclaimed that Christ Jesus should be preached in despite of Satan.

So that Sabbath, and three days after, I did occupy the public place in the midst of the Doctors, who to this day are dumb, even as dumb as their idols, which were burnt in their presence. The Bishop departed to the Queen, frustrate of his intent; for he had promised to bring me to her either living or dead.’ — Knox to Mrs. Anna Locke, 23rd June 1559. 4 In the picture on the opposite page, Sir David Wilkie, with an artist’s license, represents John Hamilton, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, as present at the sermon, in consultation with the Abbot of Crossraguel, and with a soldier ready with his culverin to shoot at the preacher’s nose! (See page 175.) It will be noticed that the Admirable Crichton, in student’s cap and gown, has his hand on his sword and his eye on the group. The other Archbishop (Glasgow) seems impressed with the Reformer’s vehement eloquence. 5 ‘The Nobility doth wholly join together in matters of religion, few or none excepted; and now a great number of them at St. Andrews, holding a Council, by common consent, have to proceed in this matter, being fully bent to set for God’s Word, wherein if they be letted (hindered) they mean to make resistance, as well assured I am, that in this godly proceeding they look for the Queen’s Majesty’s [Queen Elizabeth’s] assistance.’—Sir James Crofts to Sir William Cecil, 14th June 1559. 6 This Bishop was even more notorious for profligacy than Cardinal Beaton. The Great Seal Register of Scotland contains Letters of Legitimation in favor of ten different illegitimate children of Bishop Hepburn, which were granted in 1533 (two sons), 1545 (five sons), 1550 (two daughters), and 1587 (a daughter). The children were evidently by different mothers. His nephew, James, Earl of Bothwell, Queen Mary’s third husband, was brought up by him. Bothwell’s considerable culture, and his brutal profligacy, are both traced by George Buchanan, in the Detectio, to his early training at Spynie Castle, near Elgin. 7 ‘Men blame Knox for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue. Precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, if we examine. Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men.

Tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that.’ —THOMAS CARLYLE in Heroes and Hero-Worship. The accuracy of Carlyle’s statement is proved by the order issued by the Earl of Argyle, Lord Ruthyen, and Lord James Stewart to the magistrates of Glasgow in 1560:— ‘We pray you will fail not to pass to your Kirks in Glasgow, and take down the whole images thereof, and bring them forth to the Kirkyards and burn them openly. Likewise, east down the altars and purify the Kirks of all kinds of monuments of idolatry. But take great care that neither the desks, windows, nor doors be hurt or broken, and that the glass or iron-work be not injured. This fail not to do as you value our displeasure; and so we commit you to the protection of God.’ ‘This riotous insurrection was not the effect of any concert or previous deliberation. Censured by the reformed preachers, and lmbliely condemned by persons of most power and credit with the party, it must be regarded merely as an accidental eruption of popular rage.’—PrincipalROBERTSON’ S History of Scotland, Book ii. p. 376. 8 ‘Knox was the person who, above all others, baffled the French conspiracy, and saved Queen Elizabeth and the Reformation.’—\parFROUDES History of England, vol. vii. p. 105. 9 This was not the only plot devised against Knox’s life. ‘It was John Knox’s custom to sit at table, in his own house, at the head of it, with his back to the window. Yet, upon a certain night, he sat at a side of the table, when a bullet was shot in at the window, of purpose to kill him. But the conspirators missed, and the bullet lighted upon the chandler (candlestick), and made a hole in the foot of it, which is yet to be seen. ‘—CALDER-WOOD’S History of the Kirk of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 242. ‘Say to Master George’ [Knox’s brother-in-law, afterwards Sir George Bowes, English Ambassador] ‘that I have need of a good and an assured horse; for great watch is laid for my apprehension, and large money promised to any that shall kill me. I write with sleeping eyes.

In twenty-four hours I have not four free to natural rest and ease of this wicked carcass.’ —Knox to Gregory Railton, ‘23rd October 1559. 10 On 6th November 1559, Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Sir William Cecil: ‘God keep us from such a visitation as Knox has attempted in Scotland! ’ The ‘visitation,’ however, resulted within less than a year in the abolition by the Scottish Parliament of the jurisdiction of the Pope in Scotland, and the ratification of the Confession of Faith, notwithstanding the opposition of the Crown, of the Ancient Church by law established, and of a large and powerful section of the nobility. No wonder Calvin wrote to Knox on 8th November 1559: ‘As we wonder at success incredible in so short a time, so also we give great thanks to God.’ Here is Knox’s own account of the ‘ visitation,’ written on 2nd September 1559, to Mrs.

Anna Locke: —’ We do nothing but go about Jericho, blowing with trumpets, as God giveth strength, hoping victory by His power alone.

Christ Jesus is preached even in Edinburgh, and His Blessed Sacraments rightly ministered in all congregations where the ministry is established. They be these—Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Dundee, St.

Johnestoun (Pertk), Breehin, Montrose, Stirling, Ayr. And now Christ Jesus is begun to be preached upon the South Borders, next unto you, in Jedburgh and Kelso. So that the trumpet soundeth over all, blessed be our God!’

BOOK CHAPTER - 1 Sadler writes that the Protestants left Edinburgh ‘between one and two o’clock in the morning,’ and adds:—‘The Queen Dowager and her French be now in Edinburgh in great triumph, the most part of the substantial men of the same being fled out of the town, with their whole families.’ 2 ‘Upon Thursday last, 9th November, the Earl of Arran received a cartel of defiance from the Earl of Bothwell, requiring of him the combat. The copy thereof, and answer to the same, I will bring with me.’ Thomas Randolph to Sir Ralph Sadler. The Earl of Arran received the command of the Royal Scottish bodyguard in France, at the time his father was made Duke of Chatelherault, on demitting the Regency of Scotland in favor of Mary of Guise, the Queen Dowager. The French King’s Scottish guard is now represented by the Royal Scots regiment in the British army. 3 Lord Erskine maintained a strict neutrality, and was, in consequence, alternately praised and abused by both parties. ‘There is something very gallant’ (says Sir Walter Scott) ‘ in the conduct of this nobleman, who, during such a period, was determined to refuse admittance either to French or English, the two powerful allies of the contending factions.’—Sadler’s Papers, vol. i. p. 712. Lord Erskine was afterwards Earl of Mar, and Regent of Scotland. His sister, Margaret Erskine, was the mother of the. Regent Moray. 4 ‘We be advertised’ that Martigues is driven by weather into Denmark; and one thousand Frenchmen lost by tempest in Zealand. So it should seem that God is pleased the French purposes should not so speedily be accomplished as their meaning is.’—Queen Elizabeth to Duke of Norfolk. 5 ‘The Lord of Sutherland, since he was hurt, is become a great enemy of the French.’—The Earl of Arran and Lord James Stewart to Sir Ralph Sadler, 4th February 1560. 6 The Scots have in their camp the preachers Knox and Goodman. They call themselves the Congregation of Christ.’—Bishop Jewel to Peter Martyr, 1st December 1559. The noble leaders of the Scots Protestants were commonly described as the Lords of the Congregation. 7 D’Oysel was the French Ambassador who, according to the contemporary historian Bishop Leslie, requested permission from Queen Elizabeth to visit Scotland in 1561. ‘So soon he came to London, the Queen of England would not suffer him to pass farther, but caused him return again to France. She affirmed that he and Monsieur Rubie were the principal authors of all the troubles which were in Scotland betwixt the Queen Regent and the Nobility thereof, and that it was to be feared he would do the like in time coming, if he were permitted to pass in their country.’—De rebus gestis Scotorum (republication of 1830, p. 298). 8 The Gentlemen of Fife that be Protestants have taken such pains in this last trouble that all men wonder of their patience. From the 1st of January that the French departed from Stirling till the 24th of the same when they retired, they never came in bed, neither yet did they ever sleep but in their jacks and armor. The principal men are the Master of Lyndsay, the Lairds of Lochleven, Bavard, Lundin, Craigiehall, Ramornie, Thomas Scott of Abbotshall. .. I have great need of a good horse, and therefore I pray you put Master Wicliff in mind. My mother [in-law] wrote that she hath one provided, but knoweth not how to get him conveyed.’ —Knox to Gregory Railton, 29th January 1560. ‘The Laird of Grange was shot at Lundie, right under the left pap, through the jack, doublet, and sark, and the bullet did stick in one of his ribs. Master Whitelaw hath gotten a fall, by the which he is unable to bear armour. But, God be praised, both their lives be saved. .. I have written once or twice to Master Bodley’ [father of the founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford] ‘but as yet have received no answer.’— Knox to Mrs. Anna Locke, 4th February 1560.

CHAPTER - 1 This is Knox’s first reference to the great English statesman (one of the greatest—if not the greatest—statesmen England has ever seen)who, in the face of obstacles as formidable as those which Knox overcame, not only achieved for the Reformation in England what Knox accomplished in Scotland, but, at Knox’s instance, succeeded in persuading Queen Elizabeth to contribute money and men to assist the Protestant cause in Scotland. The relations between those two supremely great men form an interesting subject of study. They had profound respect for and belief in each other’s abilities, and in each other’s sincere attachment to Protestantism, but Knox freely lectured Cecil on his shortcomings, specially on his ‘ carnal wisdom and worldly policy,’ and on his habit, instead of giving plain answers to plain questions, of ‘giving counsel—good and fruitful, we grant—but impossible unto us now to be performed, and showing to us dangers already foreseen’; and Cecil, in his letters to Sadler, Crofts, and Randolph, expressed strong disapproval of some of Knox’s sayings and doings, while at the same time instructing the English envoys to keep him fully advised of all Knox’s proceedings. For instance, Cecil wrote to Sadler and Crofts, on 3rd November 1559: ‘Surely I like not Knox’s audacity, which also was well-tamed in your answer. His writings [to Queen Elizabeth] do no good here; and, therefore, I do rather suppress them. Yet I mean not but that ye should continue in sending of them.’ When, so far as Knox was concerned, the struggle with friend and with foe was nearly over, a month before his death, he sent a touching message to his old ally by the hand of Sir Henry Kylligrew, Elizabeth’s envoy. On 6th October 1572, Kylligrew wrote to Cecil (created Lord Burleigh the year before):—‘John Knox is now so feeble as scarce can he stand alone, or speak to be heard of any audience. Yet doth he every Sunday cause himself to be carried to a place where a certain number do hear him, and preacheth with the same vehemence and zeal that ever he did. He doth reverence your Lordship much, and willed me once again to send you word, that he thanked God he had obtained at His hands, that the gospel of Jesus Christ is truly and simply preached throughout Scotland, which doth so comfort him as he now desireth to be out of this miserable life. He said further, that it was not along of your Lordship that he was not a great Bishop in England; but that effect grown in Scotland—he being an instrument—doth much more satisfy him. He desired me to make his last commendations most humbly to your Lordship, and withal, that he prayed God to increase His strong Spirit in you.’ 2 ‘As touching the assurance of a perpetual amity to stand between these two Realms [England and Scotland], as no earthly thing is of us more desired than such a joyful connection, so crave we of God that, by His pleasure, we may be those instruments by the which this unnatural debate, which long hath continued between us, may once be composed to the praise of God’s glory, and to the comfort of the Faithful in both Realms. Perceiving that France, the Queen Regent here, together with priests and Frenchmen, pretend nothing else but the suppression of Christ’s Evangel, the maintenance of idolatry, the ruin of us, and the utter subversion of this poor Realm, we are fully purposed to seek the next remedy to withstand their tyranny, in which matter we heartily and unfeignedly require the faithful counsel at the Queen’s [Elizabeth’s] and Council’s hands for our assistance.’—Letter (written by Knox)from the Lords of the Congregation to Sir William Cecil, 19th July 1559. 3 Although an admirer of Knox, Alexander Whitelaw had a mind of his own. Sir Nicolas Throgmorton, writing to Sir William Cecil from Paris, recommended Whitelaw to Elizabeth’s Privy Council as ‘the most truly affectionate to England of any Scotsman,’ adding, that as Whitelaw was very religious, they should let him see ‘as little sin’ in England’ as possible! Sir Nicolas farther says:—‘Sanders Whittle is greatly esteemed of John Knox, and he doth also favor him above others. Nevertheless, he is sorry for his book [the First Blast] rashly written.’ The correspondence of Sir Nicolas Throgmorton, who was several times sent to Scotland by Queen Elizabeth on special missions, contains much curious information relating to Scotland, particularly in his letters to Elizabeth and to Sir William Cecil, whilst English Ambassador at the Court of France. 4 Landing at Holy Island, they would ride across the sand when the tide was out, and make their way to the Castle of Berwick unobserved.

Knox, havinr resided two years on Berwick (1549 to 1551), could not have landed at that port without his presence becoming known. 5 ‘There is neither male nor female; for, as saith Paul, they are all one in Christ Jesus. Blessed is the man who trusteth in the Lord; and the Lord will be his confidence.’ This was a veiled but effective retort to the one-sided and extravagant views on the unfitness of women as rulers, contained in Knox’s ‘First Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.’ Cecil’s letter is given in the original spelling. 6 ‘The result of Knox’s previous communications was very important, having led to the resolution of the English Council to support the Protestants in Scotland in their contest with the Queen Regent, but with so much secrecy as might not infringe the treaty of peace between the two kingdoms.’—DR.LAINGE’ S Note. 7 The Seigneur de Bdthencourt came originally to Scotland as an envoy from the French Court. Writing on 29th July 1559, Sir Nicolas Throgmorton, the English Ambassador at Paris, has this significant passage about Bdthencourt’s mission: ‘Butomcourt had in charge to will the Queen Dowager of Scotland to conform herself to the Scots’ proceedings in all things, and to dissemble with them, supposing that to be the best means to work their purposes.’ 8 The above is quoted from the original letter in the State-Paper Office.

The letter is inaccurately copied in Knox’s History. 9 ‘Ye may assure him [William Kirkcaldy of Grange] that rather than that Realm [Scotland] should be with a foreign nation and power oppressed and deprived of the ancient liberties thereto belonging, and the Nobility thereof, and specially such as at this present seek to maintain the truth of Christian religion, be expelled, the Authority of England would adventure with power and force to aid that Realm against any such foreign invasion.’ —Sir William Cecil to Sir Henry Percy, 4th July 1559. ‘I, Sir James Crofts, understand by Knox, that the Scots will require aid of the Queen’s Majesty for the entertainment and wages of arquebusiers and 300 horsemen, which if they may, then France, as Knox sayeth, shall soon understand their minds.’—Crofts to Cecil, 20th August 1559. 10 It seems no exaggeration to say that on the united action of England and Scotland depended the perpetuation of the Reformation. Cecil thus summed up the European situation:— ‘The Emperor [Charles V.] is aiming at the sovereignty of Europe, which he cannot obtain without the suppression of the Reformed Religion; and, unless he crushes the English nation, he cannot crush the Reformation ‘—(Bishop\parCREIGHTON’ S Age of Elizabeth, p. 14). Cecil would fain have seen the Reformation running in both countries on the same lines. Randolph, writing to him from Edinburgh on 25th August 1560, discusses this subject:—‘I have talked of late with them all, to search their opinions how a uniformity might be had in religion, in both these realms. These seem willing that it so were. Many commodities (advantages) are alleged that might ensue thereof. Howbeit I find them so severe in that that they profess, so loth to remit anything of that that they have received, that I see little hope thereof. Howbeit they will not refuse to commune with any learned in our nation to hear their judgments.’

Whatever causes of complaint Queen Elizabeth had against Knox, she was well assured of his friendliness to England. For example, on 21st July 1567, Sir Nicolas Throgmorton, her envoy in Edinburgh, wrote to her: ‘Master Knox doth in his sermons daily pray for the continuation of amity betwixt England and Scotland, and doth likewise admonish his auditory to eschew their old alliances with France as they would fly from the pots of Egypt, which brought them nothing but sugared poison.’

CHAPTER - 1 Lord Gray got the blame. The Duke of Norfolk made this equivocal apology for his colleague:— ‘Gray is nowise to blame, except it be for that he hath not his wits, and memory faileth him!’ 2 Lord Huntly subsequently became one of the most powerful opponents of Protestantism. His influence was so great, that Knox in a passage of the Fourth Book, which space has compelled me to omit from this edition, says of him, ‘In man’s opinion, under a Prince, there was not such a one these three hundred years in this realm produced.’ In the same passage there is a graphic description of Huntly’s demeanor as he listened to Knox preaching in St. Giles. Knox, in an address to the courtiers, says: ‘ Have ye not seen one greater than any of you sitting where presently ye sit, pick his nails and pull down his bonnet over his eyes when idolatry, witchcraft, murder, oppression, and such vices were rebuked? Was not his common talk, “when these knaves have railed their fill, then will they hold their peace”? Have ye not heard it affirmed to his own face that God should revenge his blasphemy?’ 3 In the Book of Common Order, there occur ‘Prayers used in the Churches of Scotland, in the time of their persecution by the Frenchmen’; and also, ‘A thanksgiving unto God after our deliverance from the tyranny of the Frenchmen, with prayers made for the continuance of peace between the realms of England and Scotland.’

The two chief factors in the Scottish Reformation were the influence of the new doctrines, and national hostility to the French. Thus Sadler wrote to Cecil on 8th September 1559: — ‘The preachers have so won the people to their devotion, that their power is now double that it was in the cause of religion. Such as yet be not fully persuaded thereto, bear such hatred to the Frenchmen, as the whole realm favoureth their party.’

CHAPTER - 1 Wotton, Dean of Canterbury and of York, was much employed as a diplomatist by Henry VIII. and Edward VI. He served on nine embassies to the several States of Europe. 2 No doubt this service was conducted by Knox himself. 3 Writing to Cecil on 12th February 1562, Randolph describes another of Knox’s prayers:— ‘Upon Sunday last Master Knox gave the Cross and the Candle [as then used in the Church of England] such a wipe, that as wise and learned as himself wished him to have held his peace.

He recompensed the same with a marvelous, vehement and piercing prayer, in the end of his sermon, for the continuance of amity and hearty love with England.’ From his Secretary’s account of his last illness, it appears that Prayers for the Sick were frequently read at Knox’s bedside from the Book of Common Order, although we have no record of any instance in which Knox himself is expressly stated to have used set forms of prayer. But it is clear that he can have had no objection in principle to their use, and that he must have used them. In England, as one of the chaplains of Edward VI., he took part in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, and when preaching before the King at Windsor, Hampton Court, St.

James’ Chapel, and Westminster, as well as when officiating elsewhere as a clergyman of the Church of England, he must necessarily have made use of the English Service-book. Again, in Geneva, he assisted in the preparation of what is called in the Book of Discipline, ‘The Book of our Common Order, called the Order of Geneva,’ which was adopted as the liturgy of the Church of Scotland. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there were parts of the Church of England service to which he strongly objected. Writing to Mrs. Anna Locke from Dieppe, on 6th April 1559, he instanced as ‘ diabolical inventions,’ and as ‘dregs of Papistry’—‘Crossing in Baptism, mummelling or singing of the Liturgy, “a fulgure et tempestate; a subitanea et improvisa morte”‘; and in another letter to the same lady, on 15th October of the same year, he said, ‘It is not the leaving off of the surplice, neither yet the removing of external monuments of idolatry, that purgeth the Kirk from superstition.’ It is also clear that Knox was opposed to the exclusive use of any liturgy. In the Book of Common Order, the prayers there given are to be used ‘or like in effect,’ and before the sermon ‘the Minister prayeth for the assistance of God’s Holy Spirit as the same shall move his heart, using after the sermon this prayer following, or such like.’ 4 At the Reformation the Collegiate Church of St. Giles became the Parish Church of Edinburgh, the Canongate or Holyrood House remaining a distinct charge, as well as the landward parish of St. Cuthberts. At first, John Knox was sole minister of St. Giles, with John Cairns as ‘reader.’ Subsequently, John Craig, a Dominican friar, who made a marvelous escape from the dungeons of the Inquisition in Rome, became Knox’s colleague; and Knox was succeeded by James Lawson, Vice-Principal of Aberdeen University, a learned Hebrew scholar. 5 Goodman was an Englishman, a B.D. of Oxford, and had been Knox’s colleague at Geneva. His treatise, published in 1558, ‘How far Superior Powers ought to be obeyed,’ brought him into as much disfavour with Queen Elizabeth as Knox had incurred with her through his treatise on ‘The Monstrous Regiment of Women.’ 6 Some of our literati, who entertain such a diminutive idea of the taste and learning of these times, might have been taken by surprise had they been set down at the table of one of our Scottish Reformers, surrounded with a circle of his children and pupils, when the conversation was all carried on in French, and the chapter of the Bible at family worship was read by the boys in French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Such, however, was the common practice in the house of John Row.’—M’CRIE’ S Life of Knox. Row was a Licentiate of Laws in the University of Rome, and a Doctor of Laws in the University of Padua, and was on the high road to great preferment in the Church of Rome. In Rome he came under the favorable notice of Cardinal Sforza, and of Popes Julius III. and Paul IV. He was the first to teach Hebrew in Scotland. 7 Spottiswood was ordained in London by Archbishop Cranmer. His father was killed at Fledden, and his son was the well-known Archbishop Spottiswood of St. Andrews. 8 In 1566, Queen Mary presented 0arswell to the Bishopric of the Isles, ‘adeo libere in omnibus causis et conditionibus, ac si dictus magister Joannes ad dictum episcopatum in curia Romana provideretur.’ In 1567, Carswell translated into Gaelic what is popularly known as John Knox’s Liturgy. 9 Upon Sunday next they choose in diverse places Superintendents, known and learned men; of those that Your Honor knoweth Master Willock for Glasgow and that country; for St. Andrews, the Sub-Prior of the same. Master Knox thinketh his state [as Minister of Edinburgh] honorable enough, and will receive no other.’—Randolph to Cecil, 5th March 1561. These Presbyterian Superintendents were answerable for all they did to the General Assembly, consisting of the ministers of the Church and all equal number of laymen, and they had no special or exclusive powers, such as of ordination. Knox was certainly opposed to the type of Episcopacy which he found in the Church of England, although he had held office in connection with it, and had been offered a Bishopric. In Scotland, in 1572, he refused to inaugurate Master John Douglas, who had been elected Bishop of St.

Andrews. It may be accurately said that Knox was opposed to Anglican Prelacy, although not to Episcopacy in itself; just as he was opposed to the English Prayer Book, though he had no objection in principle to the use of a liturgy. 10 ‘Though diverse of the Nobility present are not resolved in religion, yet do they repair daily to the preachings, which giveth a good hope to many that God will bow their hearts. The Bishop of Dunblane is come, yet is not to reason upon religion, but to do, as I hear, whatsomever the Earl of Argyle will command him. If God has prepared him and his Metropolitan [the Archbishop of St. Andrews] to die obstinate Papists, yet I would that, before they go to the Devil, they would show some token that once in their lives they loved their country! The Bishop of Dunkeld remaineth as obstinate as [he is] ignorant. Being moved to hear Master Knox, he gave answer that he would never hear an old condemned heretic! Master Knox hath been with him for it, since that time. Sermons are daily, and great audience.’—Randolph to Cecil, 15th August, at 8 of the clock in the morning, 1569. 11 This must mean, ‘spake nothing against the Confession of Faith,’ for it appears from Maitland of Lethington’s letter to Sir William Cecil, of date 18th August 1560, that the Bishops were not entirely silent.

Maitland says:— ‘The Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Bishops of Dunkeld and Dunblane, and two of the Temporal Lords. did excuse themselves if they were not ready to speak their judgment, for that they were not sufficiently advised with the Book. They did liberally profess that they would agree to all things that might stand with God’s Word, and consent to abolish all abuses crept into the Church not agreeable with the Scriptures, whereby they did in a manner confirm our doctrine.’ The feebleness of the resistance of the Roman Catholic clergy to the progress of the Reformation has oftell been remarked. Dr.

Laing (Knox’s Works, vi. 151) explains it on the ground that those among the clergy who were learned and zealous, such as Knox, Row, Rough, Willock, Winram and others, were on the side of the Reformed opinions, while the higher dignitaries, having no strong religious convictions, were content when they had secured for themselves peaceful toleration and two-thirds of their incomes. 12 ‘The pestilent counsel of three or four in this town of Edinburgh seduces many honest men both from good and their country. Master Knox spareth not to tell it them. He and Master Willocks were yesterday before the Lords of the Articles, with the Bishops. St.

Andrews desired to have a copy of the Confession of their Faith. It was not denied him to have it shortly; though it be doubted that it be to send it into France [to Queen Mary] before the Lords do send, than that he hath any mind to examine the verity, or reform his conscience, be it never so reasonable. Being but yesterday concluded, it was not possible to send Your Honor a copy thereof so soon.’—Randolph to Cecil, 15th August 1560. ‘There is already passed the Confession of our Faith by a uniform consent of the whole Lords of Articles, and to be sent to the King and Queen [the King of France and Mary of Scots], whereof within these three or four days I shall send you the copy. The whole estate of the Clergy is on our side, a few excepted of them that be present, as the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Bishops of Dunblanc and Dunkeld. The Religion is like enough to find many favorers of the whole of all Estates.’—Maitland of Lethington to Cecil, 15th August 1560. ‘The old Lord of Lyndsay, as grave and goodly a man as ever I saw, said: —“I have lived many years. I am the oldest in this company of my sort. Now that it hath pleased God to let me see this day, where so many nobles and others have allowed so worthy a work, I will say with Simeon, nunc dimittis.” —Randolph to Cecil, 19th August 1560. ‘The Confession of Faith was committed unto the Laird of Lethington [William Maitland] and the Sub-Prior [John Winram] to be examined.

Though they could not reprove the doctrine, yet did they mitigate the austerity of many words and sentences which sounded to proceed rather of some evil-conceived opinion than of any sound judgment.

The author of this work [John Knox] had also put a chapter of the obedience or disobedience that subjects owe unto their Magistrates.

The surveyors of this work thought it to be an unfit matter to be entreated at this time, and so gave their advice to leave it out.’— Randolph to Cecil, 7th September 1560. 13 Of this intolerant statute, which provided confiscation of goods for the first offense, banishment for the second, and death for the third, Principal Lee wrote, ‘This severe statute was never executed, so far as I have been able to learn, and probably it was never intended to be executed in its full extent.’ By way of illustration of Principal Lee’s statement, take what Randolph wrote to Cecil on 22nd January 1563:— ‘The venerable Prelate of St. Andrews hath been in this town [Edinburgh]. I thought to have heard when he should have been committed to the Castle for saying and hearing of Mass. He is dismissed in hope of amendment; for such faults with us are seldom punished.’ Notice also Knox’s statement addressing the Popish Princes who persecuted the Protestants’— ‘God will not use His saints and chosen children to punish you. With them is always mercy, yea, even although God hath pronounced a curse. He will punish you by such as in whom there is no mercy.’ The testimony of Leslie, the Catholic Bishop of Ross, is still more emphatic:— ‘At that time they exiled few Catholics on the score of religion, imprisoned fewer, and put none to death. De rebus gestis Scotorum. It ought also to be noted that the distinctive principles of the Reformation cannot be justly blamed for such statutes. The views which inspired them were ‘rags of Popery’ which the Reformers failed to discard. Mary’s mother, when Queen Regent, issued a Proclamation threatening death to any one who dared to eat flesh in Lent!

CHAPTER - 1 Knox was not singular in his detestation of the Cardinal of Lorraine. Two contemporaries, both Catholics, may be quoted. Writing on 4th December 1560, from Orleans, Michiel Surian, the Venetian Ambassador, says: ‘Everybody so detests the Cardinal of Lorraine that if the matter depended upon suffrage, not only would he have no part in the government, but perhaps not be in this world!’ The poet Brantome, who accompanied Mary to Scotland in 1561, pays the Cardinal the following equivocal compliment:— ‘Quoique mauvais Chrdtien, le Cardinal de Lorraine etait, pour le temps, tres bon Catholique’! But although of dissolute life, the Cardinal seems to have been sincerely anxious about the good upbringing of his niece, Mary of Scots. He wrote to her mother on 25th February 1553:—‘I forgot not to remind her to keep a guard upon her lips; for really some who are in this Court are so bad in this respect that I am very anxious for her to be separated from them by the forming of an establishment of her own.’ 2 The knowledge in Scotland of these persecutions in France gave point to the pungent question which Sir William Cecil addressed to the Lords of the Congregation in the end of July 1559, ‘Will they favor you in Scotland, that burn their own daily in France?’ 3 On the margin of the 1566 MS., there occurs at this point these words, ‘Corrected by Master George.’ This, no doubt, refers to George Buchanan, who was in France at the time of the King’s death, which occurred on 5th December 1560. 4 Sir James Melville, Mary’s ambassador to the Court of England, was less reticent than Knox. In his Memoirs, he tells us that he told Elizabeth to her face:—‘I know your stately stomach. Ye think if ye were married, ye would be but Queen of England, and now ye are King and Queen both!’ 5 There had been talk of marriage between Mary and Arran before this.

Writing to Cecil, the English Ambassador in Paris said: ‘There is much talk of the Queen’s second marriage. Some talk of the Prince of Spain; some of the Duke of Austria, others of the Earl of Arran.’ This letter was written two months before the death of Mary’s husband, Francis II., who at the time was in feeble health! 6 The ‘advertizer’ was probably George Buchanan. 7 ‘In his “First Blast” Knox said that women are weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish. Yet it does not appear that Knox was himself any less dependent than other men upon the sympathy and affection of these weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish creatures! It seems even as if he had been rather more dependent than most. ‘—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in Men and Books, p. 364. Writing to Christopher Goodman, on 23rd April 156’2, John Calvin said, ‘I am not a little grieved that our brother Knox has bcen deprived of the most delightful of wives’ (~uavis~ima uxor). 8 That is, ‘Holy Trinity, accept this offering, which I, unworthy sinner, offer to Thee, the living and true God, for my sins, and for the sins of the whole Church of the living and the dead.’ 9 This and the six preceding words have been added on the margin of the 1566 MS. in a different hand, which Dr. Laing thinks he can identify as that of Knox, Further as to Bishop Leslie, see pp. 69, 102. 10 The Minutes of the Town Council of Edinburgh bear abundant evidence of the cordial relations which subsisted between Knox and the Corporation of Edinburgh, and of their solicitude for his comfort. The more important are quoted by me in John Knox and John Knox’s House (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1898). Two may be given here: — ‘ 5th November 1561. ‘The Provost, Bullies, and Council ordain the Dean of Guild with all diligence to make a warm study of deals to the minister, John Knox, within his house, above the hall of the same, with lights and windows thereunto, and all other necessaries.’ ‘ 23rd August 1565. ‘The Bailies, Council, and Deacons ordain John Syme, David Forester, and Allan Dickson, Bullies, Master Robert Glen, Treasurer, James Nicholl and William Fowler of the Council, this afternoon to pass to the King and Queen’s Majesties [Queen Mary and Lord Darnley], desiring to be heard of them touching the discharging of John Knox, nilulster, of further preaching, and to report their answer in the morn. ‘The same day, afternoon, the Bullies, Council, and Deacons foresaid, being convened in the Council House, after long reasoning upon the discharging of John Knox, minister, of preaching during the King and Queen’s Majesties being in this town, all in one voice conclude that they will no manner of way consent that his mouth be closed in preaching the True Word, and therefore willed him at his pleasure, as God should move his heart, to proceed forward in true doctrine as he has been of before, WHICH DOCTRINE THEY WOULD APPROVE AND ABIDE AT TO THEIR LIFE’ S END.’ 11 Writing to Throgmorton from Nancy on 22nd April 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots, thus referred to her brother’s visit:— ‘Quant a Lord James qui est devers moi, il y est renu pour son devoir, comme devers sa Souveraine Dame, que je suis, sans charge ou commission qui concerne autre chose que son droit.’ 12 The Count Rheingrave had commanded the German troops who formed one of the divisions of the French forces sent to Scotland in 1548. He distinguished himself at the sieges of Haddington and Dundee. 13 In the edition of the History printed at London by Vautrollier, the French printer, in 1586 (which was suppressed by order of the Archbishop of Canterbury), this sentence runs thus:—‘Upon the point of change they had prepared a procession’!

CHAPTER - 1 This is now known as the First Book of Discipline. The Second Book of Discipline, under which Presbyterian Church Government as it now exists in Scotland was almost fully matured, was not adopted till 1581, nine years after Knox’s death, when the Church of Scotland was led by Andrew Melville, a scholar of European fame, Knox’s equal in eloquence and in disinterestedness, famous for his resolute opposition to the ecclesiastical supremacy of ‘God’s silly (weak) vassal,’ as he called James w. to his face. 2 In our first Reformation in England in King Henry the Eighth’s [time], although in some points there was oversight for the help of the ministry and the poor, yet if the Prelacy had been left in their pomp and wealth, the victory had been theirs. I like no spoil; but I allow to have good things put to good uses, as to the enriching of the Crown, to the help of the youth of the Nobility, to the maintenance of ministry in the Church, of learning in schools, and to relieve the poor members of Christ being in body and limbs impoverished.’ Sir William Cecil to the Lords of the Congregation, 2nd July 1559. 3 In the South of Europe, the Revival of Letters preceded the Reformation of Religion, and materially facilitated its progress. In the North this order was reversed, and Scotland, in particular, must date the origin of her literary acquirements from the first introduction of the Protestant opinions.’—Dr.MCRIE’ S Life of Knox. 4 The University of Edinburgh was not founded till 1582, ten years after Knox’s death. The Scots Universities in his time were those of St.

Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, of which the University of St.

Andrews, founded in 1410, was the most famous, St. Andrews being at that time, in the words of the Scots Reformers writing on 4th September 1566, to Theodore Beza, urbs literis divinis humanisque in Scotia fiorentissima. 5 ‘Honor to all the brave and true! Everlasting honor to brave old Knox, one of the truest of the true! That in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the schoolmaster forth to all corners, and said, “Let the people be taught!” This is but one, and indeed a comparatively inconsiderable, item in his great message to men. His message in its true compass was: “Let men know that they are men; created by God, responsible to God; who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity.” This great message Knox did deliver, with a man’s voice and strength; and found a people to believe him.’ —THOMAS CARLYLE in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Compulsory education was enacted in Scotland in 1872. 6 At first, apparently, Knox had contemplated a less formal order of worship than that afterwards adopted. In his ‘Letter of Wholesome Counsel to his Brethren in Scotland,’ written from Geneva in (Works, vol. iv. p. 129), he said: ‘I think it necessary that, for the conference of Scriptures, assemblies of Brethren be had. The order therein to be observed is expressed by St. Paul. .. After confession and invocation, let some place of Scripture be plainly and distinctly read, so much as shall be thought sufficient for one day or time which ended, if any brother have exhortation, question or doubt, let him not fear to speak or move the same, so that he do it with moderation, either to edify or to be edified,’ 7 According to modern reckoning. 1561.

BOOK PREFACE TO BOOK 1 ‘I know nothing more touching in history than the way in which the Commons of Scotland took their places by the side of Knox. Broken they might have been; trampled out as the Huguenots were trampled out in France, had Mary Stuart been less than the most imprudent or the most unlucky of sovereigns. But Providence, or the folly of those with whom they had to deal, fought for them. The aristocracy of Scotland were eager to support Mary. John Knox alone, and the Commons, whom Knox had raised into a political power, remained true. Good reason has Scotland to be proud of Knox. He only in this wild crisis saved the Kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scotch and English freedom.’—J. A.FROUDE in The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Church, p. 21. 2 ‘Knox’s object was to free Christianity from the deformation and disguises which it had suffered in the dogmas, worship and hierarchy of the Roman Church, and to bring its genuine, original, or natural truth in faith and morals again to recognition. ‘—ProfessorPRLEXDERER’ S Gifford Lectures, vol. i. p. 4.

CHAPTER - 1 ‘This “dispersion of God’s people” refers to what occurred shortly after the murder of David Rizzio, when, besides the persons implicated in that outrage, many others, like Knox himself, who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the Queen, were obliged to fly from Edinburgh for safety. As Knox was employed at this time in compiling his History, this may serve to explain, although not to justify, the very strong language which he frequently uses in mentioning Queen Mary, and the license of the courtiers.’—Dr. LAING’S Notes. 2 ‘Amongst us were such as more sought the purse than Christ’s glory.’ — Knox to Mrs. Anna Locke, 18th November 1559. 3 On the truth or falsehood of this statement, the whole question of Knox’s conduct to Mary, down to the murder of Darnley and the marriage to Bothwell, turns. If she was sincere in her professions of readiness to tolerate Protestantism, then, from our modern point of view, no language can be too strong to denounce John Knox’s treatment of the Queen. If, on the other hand, he—and he almost alone—was correct in branding these professions as deliberately false, then his acts become not only intelligible, but praiseworthy. To those who have studied Mary’s own letters, as printed in Prince Labanoff’s collection (vol. i. pp. 177, 179, 355, 369; vol. vii. 6), it may well appear difficult to understand how any unprejudiced reader can come to any other conclusion than that at which John Knox arrived at his first interview with the Queen. The original materials for deciding this question will be found impartially noted in Mr. Hay Fleming’s Mary Queen of Scots, vol. i. pp. 267-269, 376. Compare Booksby to Cecil (Hatfield, i. 339), and Forbes-Leith’s Narratives, p. 67. 4 ‘I1 nous est bien permis au xix siecle d’etre pour Marie Stuart contre Knox. Mais, au xvi sibcle, le Protestantisme fanatique servait mieux ]a cause du progres que le Catholicisme, meme relache’—(‘ In the nineteenth century, it is quite allowable for us to be all for Mary Stuart and against Knox. But, at the same time, in the sixteenth century, fanatical Protestantism served the cause of progress better than Catholicism, even of a liberal sort ‘).ERNEST RENAN’ S Histoire du Peuple d’Israel, vol. iii. p. 155. 5 The memoir writer Brantome, who accompanied the Queen to Scotland, tells us that he saw nothing but grand brouillard—a dense fog! 6 Brantbme gives in his Memoirs the following account:—‘Le soir ainsi qu’elle se’vouloit eoucher, vindrent sous le fenetre cinq ou six cent marduds (rascals) de la ville, lui donner aubade (serenade) de m~chants violons et petits rebecs (.fiddles), dont il n’y en a faute en ce pays-la, et se mirent chanter Psaumes, tant mal chantez et si real accordez que rien plus. He! Quelle musique! Et quel repos pour sa nuit!’ So far as the psalm-singing goes, Brantome’s account is confirmed by the entry in the Town Treasurer’s accounts of 24s. ‘for a dozen of torches that yead afore (went before) the Provost, Bailies, and Town when they yead to the Abbey to sing the Psalms to the Queen’s Grace.’ 7 This was not the church of the Abbey, the ruins of which still exist, but the Chapel Royal attached to the Palace. 8 ‘Near an hundred years after this period, when the violence of religious animosities had begun to subside, when time and the progress of learning had enlarged the views of the human mind, an English House of Commons refused to indulge the wife of their sovereign in the private use of the Mass.’—PrincipalROBERTSON’ S History of Scotland, Book iii. p.-59. 9 This sentence has often been quoted as a typical instance of Knox’s fanaticism. Not so thought Mr. Froude the historian, neither a compatriot nor a co-religionist of John Knox. In a letter to Sir John Skelton, he wrote:—‘Whatever was the cause, the Calvinists were the only fighting Protestants. It was they whose faith gave them courage to stand up for the Reformation. In England, Scotland, France, Holland, they, and they only, did the work, and but for them the Reformation would have been crushed. This is why I admire them, and feel there was something in their creed that made them what they were. .. I entirely agree with Knox in his horror of that one Mass. If it had not been for Calvinists, Huguenots, Puritans, and whatever you like to call them, the Pope and Philip would have won, and we should either be Papists or Socialists. ‘—SirJOHN SKELTON’ S Mary Stuart, p. 192. 10 The situation of Mary—trained as a child to detest Protestantism, and as a Queen to suppress it—at the head of a nation in which the Reformation leaven was strongly working, was impossible. Randolph, the sagacious English Ambassador, soon saw this. With prophetic instinct he wrote to Queen Elizabeth on 26th May 1562:— ‘To make it more plain unto Your Majesty, as long as this Queen is in heart divided from her subjects through the diversity of religion, they neither have that quietness of mind nor peace in conscience that is most to be desired in true worship of their Sovereign, nor yet see how her state can long continue, seeing the self-same seeds remain that were the occasion of a former mischief.’ Four years later, on 27th August 1566, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Orindal) wrote to Henry Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer:—‘The churches in Scotland still retain the pure confession of the Gospel; but the Queen of Scotland seems to be doing all in her power to extirpate it. She has lately given orders that six or seven Popish Masses should be celebrated daily in her Court, where all are admitted who choose to attend; whereas she was till now content with only one Mass, and that a private one, no Scotsman being allowed to be present. She has lately banished John Knox from her Royal City of Edinburgh, where he has hitherto been chief minister, nor can she be induced to allow him to return.’ 11 It is probable that conversation was carried on at this first interview between the Queen and Knox in French, which Knox spoke fluently.

This question is discussed in volume iv. of Hill Burton’s History of Scotland, p. 211. Mr. Taylor Innes (Life of Knox, in Famous Scots Series, p. 123) suggests that it may have been the Earl of Moray who proposed this first interview, which took place seven days after Mary’s arrival in Scotland from France. The Queen had probably never met a Protestant teacher before, except those whom she and her husband had seen earn a martyr’s crown in France. 12 John Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London. His answer bore the title of, ‘An Harborowe for faithful and true subjects against the late blown blast concerning the Government of Women.’ He severely condemns Knox’s views, but bears testimony to Knox’s candor:—‘I have that opinion of John Knox’s honesty and godliness, that he will not disdain to hear better reasons, nor be loath to be taught in anything he misseth.’ Aylmer also uses language about women, which goes farther than anything to be found in the First Blast. Without drawing breath, he pronounces ‘the worst sort’ to be ‘foolish, fiibbergibs, tattlers, triflers, wavering, witless, without counsel, feeble, careless, rash, proud, talebearers, eavesdroppers, rumor-raisers, evil-tongued, worseminded, and in every wise doltified with the dregs of the Devil’s dunghill’! The book is not paged; but this choice parosage will bo found by the curious on the twenty-seventh leaf, counting the titlepage. 13 In Knox the people of Berwick got the very man whose character had been drawn by John Brende, while Knox was still a galley slave.

Brende, the ‘Master of the Musters,’ wrote to the Protector Somerset on 14th November 1548:— ‘There is better order among the Tartars than in this town of Berwick. It will require a stern disciplinarian in the pulpit, as well as a stirring preacher to work out a moral and social reform.’ 14 When Knox was credited by his followers with prophetic gifts, he replied: ‘My assurances are not marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecies. But first, the plain truth of God’s Word, second, the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and third, the ordinary course of His punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my assurances and grounds.’ —Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Truth in England. 15 ‘Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon.

Such cruelty, such coarseness, fills us with indignation! On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said and what Knox meant, I must say, one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit. Whoever reading these colloquies thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate, high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was, unfortunately, not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scots, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled under foot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil’s Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable. The hapless Queen!—But the still more hapless country, if she were made happy! ’—THOMAS CARLYLE in Heroes and Hero-Worship. 16 ‘For her own freedom of will and of way, of passion and of action, Mary cared much; for her creed she cared something; for her country she cared less than nothing. Elizabeth of England, so shamefully her inferior in personal loyalty, fidelity, and gratitude, was as clearly her superior on the all-important point of patriotism. Overmuch as she loved herself, Elizabeth did yet love England more.’—A. C. SWINBURNE in ‘Mary Stuart’ (Encyclopedia Britannica). 17 Queen Mary was well able to hold her own in discussion. Thus Randolph wrote to Cecil from Edinburgh, on 4th September 1563:— ‘The first of this instant I dined with the Lord of Murray and the Laird of Lethington. I received many good words, and gave as many. We repaired after dinner all together to the Queen. At good length, I declared my Sovereign’s mind given me in my instructions, in uttering whereof, many interruptions were made by the Queen herself, and many questions demanded, so that scarce in one hour I could utter that that might have been spoken in one quarter.’ 18 ‘Master Knox spoke upon Tuesday with the Queen. He knocked so hardly upon her heart that he made her to weep. Well you know, there be of that sex that will do that, as well for anger as for grief! The bruit that he hath talked with the Queen maketh the Papists doubt what will become of the world!... Where Your Honor exhorteth us to stoutness, I assure you the voice of one man [John Knox] is able in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears.’—Randolph to Cecil, 7th October 1561. ‘The Queen neither is, neither shall be, of our opinion. In very deed her whole proceedings do declare that the lessons of the Cardinal [of Lorraine] are so deeply printed in her heart, that the substance and the quality are like to perish together. I would be glad to be deceived; but I fear I shall not. In communication with her, I espied such craft as I have not found in such age. Since, hath the Court been dead to me and I to it.’—Knox to Cecil, 12th October 1561. ‘Whatsoever policy is in all the chief and best practiced heads in France, whatsoever craft, falsehood or deceit there is in all the subtle brains in Scotland is either fresh in this woman’s [Mary’s] memory, or she can fett it (bring it back) with a wet finger.’—Randolph to Cecil, 27th October 1561. ‘Master Knox hath written unto Your Honor his mind. I am not always of his opinion for his exact severity. Yet I find it doth most good.’ — Randolph to Cecil, 7th September 1561.

CHAPTER - 1 . This is one of the few cases in which Knox gives a wrong date. Mr. Hay Fleming has shown that Mary’s State entry was on 2 nd September. 2 . These verses thus began: — ‘Welcome our Sovereign! Welcome our native Queen!

Welcome to us your subjects great and small, Welcome, I say, even from the very spleen, To Edinburgh, your city principal! ’ Foreign Calendar, Elizabeth iv. ‘287. 3 ‘The Lord John of Coldingham hath not least favor [at Court] with his leaping and dancing. He is like to marry the Lord Bothwell’s sister.

The Lord Robert eonsumeth with love of the Earl of Cassillis’ sister.’—Randolpk to Cecil, 24th August 1561. 4 ‘Mary Stuart had not one true friend, who could or would speak the word of reproof or warning. Her half-brother, Moray, was the tool of Elizabeth. Her husband, Darnley, was a selfish traitor. Her Secretary of State, Lethington, took upon himself the duties of that office that he might fathom her secrets and betray her policy to her enemies.’—Mary Stuart, by the Rev.JOSEPH STEVENSON, of the Society of Jesus. 5 This was the second meeting of what was originally called ‘The Universal Kirk of Scotland,’ now ‘The General Assembly.’ The first meeting was held on 20th December 1560, in the Magdalene Chapel, which still exists, in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, and at that meeting forty-two persons were present, of whom only six are described as ministers. 6 ‘O Lord! for Thy Great Name’s sake, give unto us Princes that delight in Thy truth, that love virtue, hate impiety, and that desire rather to be soundly taught to their salvation, than deceivably flattered, to their everlasting confusion. Amen.’—Knox’s Preface to Sermon preached before the Earl of Darnley on 19th August 1565. David Buchanan’s edition of 1644 has many stupid mistakes. One of the most unaccountable consists in substituting in this passage ‘Thomas Burrows’ for ‘the Barons.’ 7 David Buchanan’s edition of 1644 has many stupid mistakes. One of the most unaccountable consists in substituting in this passage ‘Thomas Burrows’ for ‘the Barons.’ 8 James Melville tells us that John Knox, a year before his death, when resident at St. Andrews, was present at a theatrical performance given by the students of the University:—‘This year [1571], in the month of July, Master John Davidson, one of our Regents, made a play at the marriage of Master John Colvin, which I saw played in Master Knox’s presence, wherein, according to Master Knox’s doctrine, the Castle of Edinburgh was besieged, taken, and the Captain, with one or two with him, hanged in effigy.’ 9 The sixth volume of Dr. Laing’s edition of Knox’s Works contains a letter from Knox to Randolph, with many enigmatic sentences in it, and many letters from Randolph to Sir William Cecil and others, with reference to Knox. Randolph’s graphic letters to Sir William Cecil are among the most valuable sources of information for this period. He was on intimate relations with men of all parties, and no detail was too minute to escape record. For instance, he follows Darnley’s movements through a certain Monday in 1565, and notes how on that day Darnley heard Knox preach, dined with Moray and Randolph, and after supper danced a ‘galiarde’ with the Queen at Moray’s request, Foreign Calendar, Elizabeth, vii. 304. Randolph played many parts in his long career. In Paris, he had been a companion of the Scottish Protestant students there. He was afterwards Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, and in his later years he filled the offices of Postmaster-General and Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is the only passage of the History in which his name occurs.

CHAPTER - 1 ‘The Earl of Bothwell is departed to return into Scotland, and hath made boast that he will do great things, and live in Scotland in despite of all men. He is a glorious (boastful), rash, and hazardous young man; and, therefore, it were meet that his adversaries should both have an eye to him and also keep him short.’—Sir Nicolas Throgmorton, English Ambassador in Paris, to Sir William Cecil, 28th November 1560.

Writing to Cecil in 1563, Randolph described Bothwell as ‘the mortal enemy of England—false and untrue as a devil was blasphemous and irreverent speaker both of his own Sovereign and of the Queen my mistress—one that the godly of this nation have cause to curse for ever.’ Read along with this the letter from Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, who was faithful to Mary’s cause even unto death, to Lord Bedford, dated 20th April 1567:— ‘She [Mary, Queen of Scots] hath been heard to say that she careth not to lose [though she lose] France, England, and her own country for him [Bothwell], and shall go with him to the world’s end in a white petticoat before she leave him! ’ At the date of this letter, only two months had elapsed from Darnley’s murder, and Bothwell was one of his murderers. 2 In this sentence we have all that is known of Knox’s ancestors. They appear to have been vassals of the Earls of Bothwell. The battles referred to were probably Flodden and Sauchieburn, at both of which members of the Hepburn family were present. When Flodden was fought, Knox was eight years old. Whether his father fell on that ‘unhappy field,’ as Knox calls it (page 3), is not stated. But the then Earl of Bothwell, with his two grand-uncles, Sir Adam Hepburn and George Hepburn, Bishop of the Isles, were among the slain. The Earl commanded the reserve, and advanced so gallantly as nearly to have changed the fortunes of the day. 3 Received in 1559, when Bothwell, at the instigation of the Queen Regent, attacked Cockburn, wounded him severely, and carried off £1000 sent by queen Elizabeth to the Protestant leaders, which the Laird of Ormiston was carrying from Betwick. 4 This refers to the persecution of the Huguenots. 5 It has often been assumed that Knox forced his views on his Sovereign.

This is a mistake. Knox never wrote Mary a letter, and she refused to hear him preach. She had four interviews with him—one at Lochleven, and three at Holyrood; and she presided at his trial for treason before the Privy Council. But, on each occasion, Knox attended in obedience to the Queen’s commands, and departed at her pleasure. He only spoke in reply to the Queen’s questions, and his attitude was defensive. While he did not disguise his views, his manner was calm; that of the Queen, when they disagreed, was either hysterical or insolent. Not even prudence could restrain what Mr. Algernon Swinburne calls ‘the terrible weapon of Mary’s bitter and fiery tongue.’—(‘Mary Stuart’ in Encylopedia Britannica.) 6 Knox’s voluminous writings contain only one sermon (Works, vol. vi. p. 229). Writing in 1565, in the preface to that sermon, he observes: ‘Wonder not that of all my study and travail within the Scriptures of God these twenty years, I have set forth nothing in exponing any portion of Scripture. I consider myself rather called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke the proud, by tongue and lively voice, in these most corrupt days, than to compose books for the age to come. I decreed to contain myself within the bounds of that vocation, whereunto I found myself especially called.’ Knox knew exactly the limitations of his powers. In his Epistle, written from the French galleys, to the Congregation of the Castle of St. Andrews, in 1548, he said: ‘Consider, Brethren, it is no speculative Theologue which desireth to give you courage, but even your brother in affliction.’ 7 Hill Burton (History of Scotland, iv. 57) proves that the dancing practiced in Mary’s Court merited and received condemnation for its indecency at the hands of those who had no objection to dancing in itself. A month before Rizzio’s murder, the Queen and her Maries and ladies, at the masque in honor of Rambouillet, who had brought the Order of the Cockle from France for Darnley, ‘were all clad in men’s apparel.’—(Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 87.) Knox’s views on dancing were really rather liberal than extreme. Archbishop Hamilton, whose morality was certainly not strait-laced, included dancing in his Catechism among the breaches of the Third Commandment of the Second Table. 8 Knox here alludes to the massacre of Protestants by the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, at the Castle of Amboise, of which Mary, Queen of Scots, had been an eye-witness. 9 Referring to this interview, Thomas Randolph, the English Ambassador, wrote to Sir William Cecil, on 16th December 1562:— ‘Upon Sunday last John Knox inveighed sore against the Queen’s dancing, and the little exercise of herself in virtue or godliness. The report hereof being brought unto her ears yesterday, she sent for him. She talked long time with him. Little liking there was between them. Yet did they so depart as no offense or slander did rise thereupon. Knox is so full of mistrust in all the Queen’s doings, words and sayings, as though he were either of God’s privy counsel, that knows how He had determined of her from the beginning, or that he knew the secrets of her heart so well, that neither she did nor could have for ever one good thought of God or of His true religion.’ At this time, Randolph seems to have believed in Mary’s sincerity. Could he have seen her letters to the Pope referred to in a previous note, as well as those of Cardinal de St. Croix, which make it clear that, all the time she was offering toleration to the Scotch Protestants, she was also assuring the Pope, and the Courts of France and Spain, that she would effect no compromise with Protestantism, he would have earlier adopted Knox’s view of Mary’s character and conduct, and the policy which that view inspired.

CHAPTER - 1 In a passage which want of space has compelled me to omit, Knox sums up Queen Elizabeth thus: ‘She is neither good Protestant, nor yet resolute Papist!’ This may be put alongside the description given of her by Sir William Cecil: ‘If today she is more than man, to-morrow she is less than woman!’ 2 The reasons for the failure of the proposals for this meeting between the Queens are thus given in a letter from Randolph to Cecil, dated 31st March 1562:— ‘Some allege the hazard of herself [Queen Mary] and Nobles; many are loath for the charges; others say that amity being once made, her power will be the greater. Though in verity the charges will be great, and a hard matter to find so much gold that is current in England in men’s hands in Scotland as will furnish this voyage, yet I know that this last point is more feared of many in Scotland, than either of the other two. The difficulty is for the exchange, seeing that there are many here that have great sums of silver that have little gold.’

Schiller, in his tragedy of Mary Stuart, represents a meeting between Elizabeth and Mary; but it is certain that the two Queens never met. 3 King Eric XIV. was virtuous, but unfortunate. He was forced to abdicate in 1568; and he died from poison in 1578. When Knox wrote this sentence in 1566, he had in view one of the contemptible creatures whom Mary had married or had desired to marry—the feeble Francis, Dauphin of France, the effeminate and dissolute Lord Darnley, and the epileptic, half-witted Don Carlos. His language would have been still more severe could he have foreseen her marriage in the following year to the ruffianly and obscene Earl of Bothwell, her husband’s murderer. 4 Eighty-three were taken at Hawick, of the which twenty were acquitted by the assizes; the rest condemned, of the which, twenty-two were presently drowned there, for lack of trees and halters, [and] six hanged at Edinburgh, yesterday being Monday.’—Randolph to Cecil, 7th July 1562. 5 ‘The Copy of the Reasoning which was betwixt the Abbot of Crossraguel and John Knox, in Maybole, concerning the Mass.

Imprinted at Edinburgh by Robert Lekprevik,’ 1563. Works, vol. vi. p. 149. 6 See ‘The Confutation of the Abbot of Crossraguel’s Mass, set forth by Master George Hay. Imprinted at Edinburgh by Robert Lekprevik, 1563.’ Dedicated ‘To the Most Noble, Potent, and Godly Lord James, Earl of Murray.’ 7 Randolph, the English Ambassador, accompanied Mary on this expedition. His letters complain of the journey as being ‘cumbersome, painful, and marvelous long; the weather [in August and September] extreme foul and cold; all victuals marvelous dear, and the corn that is, never like to come to ripeness.’ In another letter he refers to this ‘terrible journey both for horse and men. The country is so poor and victuals so scarce.’ Mary, however, enjoyed the expedition thoroughly. ‘In all these garboils’ (disorders), Randolph writes to Cecil, ‘I assure you I never saw her merrier, never dismayed, nor never thought that so much be in her that I find. She repented nothing, but— when the Lords and others at Inverness came in the morning from the watch—that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the causeway with a jack (coat of mail) and a knapschalle (headpiece), a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword!’ This was no mere boasting. In a passage in the so-called Fifth Book of Knox’s History, in which Mr. Hay Fleming thinks he can trace Knox’s pen, it is recorded with admiration that when with her army at a time of extreme danger, ‘albeit the most part waxed weary, yet the Queen’s courage increased man-like so much that she was ever with the foremost.’ 8 See the remarkable letter from John Knox to the Earl of Leicester, written from Edinburgh, 6th October 1563, given in Dr. Laing’s edition of Knox’s Works, vol. vi. p. 530. 9 Hawking appears to have been a favorite amusement of the Queen. The Royal Accounts contain several entries referring to it. For example, in April 1562, £20 was paid to ‘two persons passing of Edinburgh to Shetland for hawks.’ 10 ‘The Queen cannot abide Lord Ruthyen; and all men hate him.’— Randolph to Cecil, 3rd June 1563. 11 Alexander Gordon, second son of the Master of Huntly and Jane, natural daughter of James IV. Gordon was Bishop of Galloway, and titular Archbishop of Athens. He and Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, and Robert Stewart, Bishop of Caithness, joined the Reformers. But it is doubtful whether any of these dignitaries, although presented by the Crown to the temporalities of their dioceses, had been consecrated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. See Canon Bellesheim’s History of the Catholic Church in Scotland. 12 Lady Janet Stewart, the Regent Moray’s sister, a natural daughter of James the Fifth, married the fifth Earl of Argyle in 1554. She was one of the party at supper in Holyrood when Rizzio was murdered, on 9th March 1566; and she stood sponsor for Queen Elizabeth at the baptism of James VI. After a lengthened litigation, the Earl divorced her in 1573. She was buried in the Royal vault in Holyrood Abbey. 13 ‘The gifted pupil of the Italianized French Court, under her winning smile, and the bland courtesy which seemed also so full of candor, kept impenetrably hidden a subtle dissimulation, which was high art beside the clumsy cunning of Queen Elizabeth and her English advisers.’—\parHILL BURTON’ S History of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 258. Father Stevenson, Mary’s apologist, admits that her maternal uncles of the House of Guise ‘found it no difficult task to mold her character according to their own principles. The lessons which they taught the child were never forgotten by the woman and the Queen.’ 14 There is a tradition that at this interview Queen Mary presented Knox with a watch, which has been preserved in the family of the late Mr.

Thomson of Banchory, who claim descent from one of Knox’s daughters. The watch, to which so picturesque a history is attributed, was exhibited in the ‘Bishop’s Castle’ at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888.

CHAPTER - 1 ‘The Parliament began 26th May, on which day the Queen came to it in her robes and crowned; the Duke carrying the Crown, Argyle the scepter, and Moray the sword. She made in English an oration publicly there, and was present at the condemnation of the two Earls, Huntly and Sutherland.’ —Randolph to Cecil, 3rd June 1563. The trial of the Earls, which took place on 28th May 1563, must have been a ghastly affair, for Huntly had been dead for seven months. His rudely embalmed corpse was arraigned in Mary’s presence at the bar of Parliament. A contemporary account says, ‘the coffin was set upright, as if the Earl stood upon his feet.’ 2 None of Mary’s extant portraits, except perhaps that by Francois Clouet, now in the Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg (see p. 260), convey the beauty of feature and charm of expression spoken to by all her contemporaries, both friendly and hostile. The universal reports of Mary’s beauty were very distasteful to Elizabeth. She could not conceal her jealousy even from Mary’s ambassador, the shrewd Sir James Melville. In his Memoirs occurs one of the quaintest accounts of a royal interview to be found in all literature:— ‘The Queen of England enquired whether the Queen’s [Mary’s] hair or hers was best, and which of these two was fairest. I said that the fairness of them both was not their worst faults! But she was earnest with me to declare which of them I thought fairest. I said she was the fairest Queen in England, and ours the fairest Queen in Scotland! Yet she was earnest. I said the Queen of England was whiter, but our Queen was very leesome (lovely). She inquired which of them was of highest stature. I said, our Queen. Then she said the Queen was too high, and that herself was neither too high nor too low!’ 4 ‘Men delighting to swim betwixt two waters have often complained upon my severity.’—Knox to Cecil, 7th October 1561. ‘The defection of them that have joined hands with impiety doth plainly declare that when they were with us they were but as corrupted humors within the body, which behooved to be expelled forth before the body could convalesce. Lament their fall, but follow not their trade! Be faithful and loving, one to another. Let bitterness and suspicion be far out of your hearts. Rejoice in the Lord that He hath counted you worthy to suffer for His Name’s sake. Pray for me, Brethren, that I may fight my battle lawfully to the end. The Lord Jesus preserve you now and ever! Amen.’4Knox to his Brethren of the Church of Edinburgh. From St.

Andrews, 17th July 1571. ‘You know the vehemences of Master Knox’s spirit, which cannot be bridled, and that doth sometimes utter such sentences as cannot easily be digested by a “weak stomach.” ‘—Maitland of Lethington to Cecil, 25th October 1561. 5 Lethington was in favor of this marriage, and pressed his views on De Quadra, the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of England. These views were thus reported by De Quadra to Philip II. of Spain:— ‘This Queen [Elizabeth] was in great fear of his [Don Carlos’] marriage, and the Queen of France the same, with very good reason, as, if your Majesty listened to it, not only would you give your son a wife of such excellent qualities as those possessed by his [Lethington’s] Queen [Mary of Scots] who was in prudence, chastity and beauty, equaled by few in the world, but you also add to the dominions already possessed by your Majesty two entire islands, this and Ireland, the possession of which by your Majesty would give no trouble whatever.’ Lethington reported to Queen Mary that he believed Don Carlos was ‘very far in love with her.’ Compare Macbeth, Act iv. Scene 3: — ‘... Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven on the face.’ 6 ‘The Regent, Earl of Morton, loved Master Knox while he was alive. At his death and burial he gave him an honorable testimony, “that he neither fearit nor flatterit any flesh”; and, after his death, was friendly to his wife and children.’ Diary of JAMES MELVILLE, 1556-1601. 7 ‘Knox was never in the least ill-tempered with Her Majesty. Mary often enough burst into tears, Knox standing with mild and pitying visage, but without the least hair’s-breadth of recanting or recoiling, waiting till the fit passed, and then, with all softness, but with all inexorability, taking up his theme again. .. Knox was no despiser of women—far the reverse, in fact. His behavior to good and pious women is full of respect. His tenderness, his filial helpfulness in their suffering and infirmities (see the letters to his mother-in-law and others)are beautifully conspicuous.’—THOMAS CARLYLE. Others besides Knox had to choose between Mary’s ready tears and their country’s welfare.

During the imprisonment of the Archbishop of St. Andrews in Edinburgh Castle, in 1563, Randolph wrote to Cecil on 19th June:— ‘Our pestilent Prelate, put in the Castle, made great moans unto the Queen for his deliverance, so far that he won her consent. The Lords were fain to resist her will as that the tears burst out, but nothing able to prevail.’ 8 In 1564, John Knox, at the age of fifty-nine, a widower with two little children, married Margaret Stewart, Lord Ochiltree’s daughter, aged seventeen. ‘Master Knox hath been twice proclaimed in the church to be married on Palm Sunday to Margaret Stewart, daughter to the Lord Ochiltree, WHEREAT THE QUEEN STORMETH WONDERFULLY: FOR MARGARET STEWART IS OF THE BLOOD AND NAME’ [of the Royal House of Stuart].—Randolph to Cecil, 18th March 1564.

Margaret Stewart’s brother, James Stewart, one of the basest men of his time, was created Earl of Arran by James VI. It was in answer to his insolent question, ‘Who dare subscribe these treasonable Articles?’ that Andrew Melville, Knox’s great successor, stepped forward in the King’s presence, saying, ‘WE DARE,’ and subscribed the document in which the Churell of Scotland protested against the King’s attempt to usurp ecclesiastical supremacy. Knox’s second marriage, like his first, was a very happy one. His contemporary, Thomas Smeton, Principal of the University of Glasgow, says that ‘Margaret Stewart was a pious woman, who was extremely attentive to John Knox.’ She had three daughters, Martha, married to Alexander Fairlie of Braid, Margaret, married to the Rev. Zachary Pont, and Elizabeth, the intrepid wife of the Rev. John Welsh, of Ayr. From these, any descendants of Knox now existing must trace their origin, Knox’s two sons having died childless. 9 ‘This sentence of quaint and solemn moralizing may fairly match with Hamlet’s over Yorick’s skull. ‘—HILL BURTON’ S History of Scotland, vol. iv.

CHAPTER - 1 The Cardinal of Lorraine was a dangerous adviser, not only in the matter of Don Carlos, but in all questions affecting Mary’s relations to England, to whose throne she was heiress presumptive. The most fatal step in Mary’s whole career wan action which Elizabeth never forgave—was Mary’s assumption, while Queen of Scotland and France, of the arms of England. This was believed to be due to the Cardinal of Lorraine. 2 ‘Master Knox’s prayer is daily for the Queen, “that God will turn her obstinate heart against God and His truth; or, if the Holy Will be otherwise, to strengthen the hands and hearts of His chosen and elect, stoutly to withstand the rage of all tyrants,” in words terrible enough,’—Randolph to Cecil, 29th October 1561. 3 The difference in manner between Moray and Lethington, who were acting together on this occasion, was indicated by Randolph in his description to Cecil of Mary’s ‘courtiers:—‘With the Queen the Lord James dealeth according to his nature—rudely, homely, and bluntly; the Laird of Lethington, more delicately and finely.’—Randolph to Cecil, 24th October 1561. 4 That man made me weep, and wept never a tear himself. I will see if I can make him weep!’ If Mary spoke to Knox in French at their previous interviews, it is clear that she used the Scots tongue on this occasion.

She certainly knew it. Nicolas White, writing to Cecil in 1578, speaks of her ‘pretty Scottish speech.’ 5 This was a direct challenge to Mary, and it was not met. There was much to confirm Knox in his original impression of her intentions, that, in the words of Mr. Froude (History of England, vi. 510), she was ‘prepared to wait, to control herself, to hide her purpose, till the moment came to strike; yet with a purpose resolutely formed to trample down the Reformation.’ 6 Take along with this, from page 175, another equally notable saying of Knox:—‘As for the fear of danger that may come to me, let no man be solicitous. My life is in the custody of Him whose glory I seek.

Therefore I cannot so fear their boast or tyranny that I will cease from doing my duty, when of His mercy He offereth me the occasion. I desire the hand or weapon of no man to defend me. Only do I crave audience. Which, if it be denied here unto me at this time, I must seek further where I may have it.’ A sentence from a letter to his mother-inlaw in 1553 breathes the same heroic spirit:—‘Never can I die in a more honest quarrel than to suffer as a witness of that Truth whereof God has made me a messenger.’ 7 Strong as this expression is, it is the very word used by Randolph to Cecil in describing Mary’s disapprobation of Knox’s marriage to a scion of the Royal House (see p. 332). It is a curious instance of the irony of history that Mary’s loudest grievance against Knox was his objection to her proposed marriage to Don Carlos of Spain.