John Knox and the Reformation

Knox’s account, in places, appears really to refer to the period of the Provincial Council of March 1559, though it does not quite fit that date either.

The Regent is said on the occasion of Calder’s petition, and after the unsatisfactory replies of the clergy (apparently at the Provincial Council, March 1559), to have made certain concessions, till Parliament established uniform order. But the Parliament was of November-December 1558. [87 - Knox, i. 294, 301-312. On p. 294 Knox dates the Parliament in October.] Before that Parliament, at all events (which was mainly concerned with procuring the “Crown Matrimonial” for the Dauphin, husband of Mary Stuart), the brethren offered a petition, in the first place shown to the Regent, asking for (1) the suspension of persecuting laws till after a General Council has “decided all controversies in religion” – that is, till the Greek Calends. (2) That prelates shall not be judges in cases of heresy, but only accusers before secular tribunals. (3) That all lawful defences be granted to persons accused. (4) That the accused be permitted to explain “his own mind and meaning.” (5) That “none be condemned for heretics unless by the manifest Word of God they be convicted to have erred from the faith which the Holy Spirit witnesses to be necessary to salvation.” According to Knox this petition the Regent put in her pocket, saying that the Churchmen would oppose it, and thwart her plan for getting the “Crown Matrimonial” given to her son-in-law, Francis II., and, in short, gave good words, and drove time. [88 - Knox, i. 309-312.]

The Reformers then drew up a long Protestation, which was read in the House, but not enrolled in its records. They say that they have had to postpone a formal demand for Reformation, but protest that “it be lawful to us to use ourselves in matters of religion and conscience as we must answer to God,” and they are ready to prove their case. They shall not be liable, meanwhile, to any penalties for breach of the existing Acts against heresy, “nor for violating such rites as man, without God’s commandment or word, hath commanded.” They disclaim all responsibility for the ensuing tumults. [89 - Knox, i. 312-314.] In fact, they aver that they will not only worship in their own way, but prevent other people from worshipping in the legal way, and that the responsibility for the riots will lie on the side of those who worship legally. And this was the chief occasion of the ensuing troubles. The Regent promised to “put good order” in controverted matters, and was praised by the brethren in a letter to Calvin, not now to be found.

Another threat had been made by the brethren, in circumstances not very obscure. As far as they are known they suggest that in January 1559 the zealots deliberately intended to provoke a conflict, and to enlist “the rascal multitude” on their side, at Easter, 1559. The obscurity is caused by a bookbinder. He has, with the fatal ingenuity of his trade, cut off the two top lines from a page in one manuscript copy of Knox’s “History.” [90 - See Laing’s edition, i. 320, 321.] The text now runs thus (in its mutilated condition): “.. Zealous Brether.. upon the gates and posts of all the Friars’ places within this realm, in the month of January 1558 (1559), preceding that Whitsunday that they dislodged, which is this.. ”

Then follows the Proclamation.

Probably we may supply the words: “.. Zealous Brethren caused a paper to be affixed upon the gates and posts,” and so on. The paper so promulgated purported to be a warning from the poor of Scotland that, before Whitsunday, “we, the lawful proprietors,” will eject the Friars and residents on the property, unlawfully withheld by the religious – “our patrimony.” This feat will be performed, “with the help of God, and assistance of his Saints on earth, of whose ready support we doubt not.”

As the Saints, in fact, were the “Zealous Brether.” who affixed the written menace on “all the Friars’ places,” they knew what they were talking about, and could prophesy safely. To make so many copies of the document, and fix them on “all the Friars’ places,” implies organisation, and a deliberate plan – riots and revolution – before Whitsunday. The poor, of course, only exchanged better for worse landlords, as they soon discovered. The “Zealous Brethren” – as a rule small lairds, probably, and burgesses – were the nucleus of the Revolution. When townsfolk and yeomen in sufficient number had joined them in arms, then nobles like Argyll, Lord James, Glencairn, Ruthven, and the rest, put themselves at the head of the movement, and won the prizes which had been offered to the “blind, crooked, widows, orphans, and all other poor.”

After Parliament was over, at the end of December 1558, the Archbishop of St. Andrews again summoned the preachers, Willock, Douglas, Harlaw, Methuen, and Friar John Christison to a “day of law” at St. Andrews, on February 2, 1559. (This is the statement of the “Historie.”) [91 - Wodrow Miscellany, i. 55.] The brethren then “caused inform the Queen Mother that the said preachers would appear with such multitude of men professing their doctrine, as was never seen before in such like cases in this country,” and kept their promise. The system of overawing justice by such gatherings was usual, as we have already seen; Knox, Bothwell, Lethington, and the Lord James Stewart all profited by the practice on various occasions.

Mary of Guise, “fearing some uproar or sedition,” bade the bishops put off the summons, and, in fact, the preachers never were summoned, finally, for any offences prior to this date.

On February 9, 1559, the Regent issued proclamations against eating flesh in Lent (this rule survived the Reformation by at least seventy years) and against such disturbances of religious services as the Protest just described declared to be imminent, all such deeds being denounced under “pain of death” – as pain of death was used to be threatened against poachers of deer and wild fowl. [92 - M‘Crie, Knox, 359, 360.]

Mary, however, had promised, as we saw, that she would summon the nobles and Estates, “to advise for some reformation in religion” (March 7, 1559), and the Archbishop called a Provincial Council to Edinburgh for March. At this, or some other juncture, for Knox’s narrative is bewildering, [93 - Knox, i. 306, 307.] the clergy offered free discussion, but refused to allow exiles like himself to be present, and insisted on the acceptance of the Mass, Purgatory, the invocation of saints, with security for their ecclesiastical possessions. In return they would grant prayers and baptism in English, if done privately and not in open assembly. The terms, he says, were rejected; appeal was made to Mary of Guise, and she gave toleration, except for public assemblies in Edinburgh and Leith, pending the meeting of Parliament. To the clergy, who, “some say,” bribed her, she promised to “put order” to these matters. The Reformers were deceived, and forbade Douglas to preach in Leith. So writes Knox.

Now the “Historie” dates all this, bribe and all, after the end of December 1558. Knox, however, by some confusion, places the facts, bribe and all, before April 28, 1558, Myln’s martyrdom! [94 - Knox, i. 307.] Yet he had before him as he wrote the Chronicle of Bruce of Earlshall, who states the bribe, Knox says, at £40,000; the “Historie” says “within £15,000.” [95 - “Historie,” Wodrow Miscellany, i. 55, 56.]

In any case Knox, who never saw his book in print, has clearly dislocated the sequence of events. At this date, namely March 1559, the preaching agitators were at liberty, nor were they again put at for any of their previous proceedings. But defiances had been exchanged. The Reformers in their Protestation (December 1558) had claimed it as lawful, we know, that they should enjoy their own services, and put down those of the religion by law established, until such time as the Catholic clergy “be able to prove themselves the true ministers of Christ’s Church” and guiltless of all the crimes charged against them by their adversaries. [96 - Knox, i. 312-314.] That was the challenge of the Reformers, backed by the menace affixed to the doors of all the monasteries. The Regent in turn had thrown down her glove by the proclamation of February 9, 1559, against disturbing services and “bosting” (bullying) priests. How could she possibly do less in the circumstances? If her proclamation was disobeyed, could she do less than summon the disobedient to trial? Her hand was forced.

It appears to myself, under correction, that all this part of the history of the Reformation has been misunderstood by our older historians. Almost without exception, they represent the Regent as dissembling with the Reformers till, on conclusion of the peace of Cateau Cambresis (which left France free to aid her efforts in Scotland), April 2, 1559, and on the receipt of a message from the Guises, “she threw off the mask,” and initiated an organised persecution. But there is no evidence that any such message commanding her to persecute at this time came from the Guises before the Regent had issued her proclamations of February 9 and March 23, [97 - “Historie,” Wodrow Miscellany, 56.] denouncing attacks on priests, disturbance of services, administering of sacraments by lay preachers, and tumults at large. Now, Sir James Melville of Halhill, the diplomatist, writing in old age, and often erroneously, makes the Cardinal of Lorraine send de Bettencourt, or Bethencourt, to the Regent with news of the peace of Cateau Cambresis and an order to punish heretics with fire and sword, and says that, though she was reluctant, she consequently published her proclamation of March 23. Dates prove part of this to be impossible. [98 - Melville, 76, 77 (1827).But Professor Hume Brown appears to be misled in saying that Bettencourt, or Bethencourt, did not reach Scotland till June (John Knox, i. 344i note i), citing Forbes, i. 141. Bethencourt “passed Berwick on April 13” (For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 214) to negotiate the Scottish part in the peace, signed at Upsettlington (May 31). Bethencourt would be with the Regent by April 15, and he may have confirmed her in summoning the preachers who defied her proclamations, though, with or without his advice, she could do no less.]

Obviously the Regent had issued her proclamations of February-March 1559 in anticipation of the tumults threatened by the Reformers in their “Beggar’s Warning” and in their Protestation of December, and arranged to occur with violence at Easter, as they did. The three or four preachers (two of them apparently “at the horn” in 1558) were to preach publicly, and riots were certain to ensue, as the Reformers had threatened. Riots were part of the evangelical programme. Of Paul Methuen, who first “reformed” the Church in Dundee, Pitscottie writes that he “ministered the sacraments of the communion at Dundee and Cupar, and caused the images thereof to be cast down, and abolished the Pope’s religion so far as he passed or preached.” For this sort of action he was now summoned. [99 - Pitscottie, ii. 523.]

The Regent, therefore, warned in her proclamations men, often challenged previously, and as often allowed, under fear of armed resistance, to escape. All that followed was but a repetition of the feeble policy of outlawing these four or five men. Finally, in May 1559, these preachers had a strong armed backing, and seized a central strategic point, so the Revolution blazed out on a question which had long been smouldering and on an occasion that had been again and again deferred. The Regent, far from having foreseen and hardened her heart to carry out an organised persecution and “cut the throats” of all Protestants in Scotland, was, in fact, intending to go to France, being in the earlier stages of her fatal malady. This appears from a letter of Sir Henry Percy, from Norham Castle, to Cecil and Parry (April 12, 1559) [100 - State Papers, Borders, vol. i. No. 421 MS.] Percy says that the news in his latest letters (now lost) was erroneous. The Regent, in fact, “is not as yet departed.” She is very ill, and her life is despaired of. She is at Stirling, where the nobles had assembled to discuss religious matters. Only her French advisers were on the side of the Regent. “The matter is pacified for the time,” and in case of the Regent’s death, Chatelherault, d’Oysel, and de Rubay are to be a provisional committee of Government, till the wishes of the King and Queen, Francis and Mary, are known. Again, in her letter of May 16 to Henri II. of France, she stated that she was in very bad health, [101 - Affaires Etrangéres, Angleterre, vol. xv. MS.] and, at about the same date (May 18), the English ambassador in France mentions her intention to visit that country at once. [102 - Forbes, 97; Throckmorton to Cecil, May 18.] But the Revolution of May 11, breaking out in Perth, condemned her to suffer and die in Scotland.

This, however, does not amount to proof that no plan of persecution in Scotland was intended. Throckmorton writes, on May 18, that the Marquis d’Elboeuf is to go thither. “He takes with him both men of conduct and some of war; it is thought his stay will not be long.” Again (May 23, 24), Throckmorton reports that Henri II. means to persecute extremely in Poitou, Guienne, and Scotland. “Cecil may take occasion to use the matter in Scotland as may seem best to serve the turn.” [103 - For. Cal. Eliz., 1558-59, 272.] This was before the Perth riot had been reported (May 26) by Cecil to Throckmorton. Was d’Elboeuf intended to direct the persecution? The theory has its attractions, but Henri, just emerged with maimed forces from a ruinous war, knew that a persecution which served Cecil’s “turn” did not serve his. To persecute in Scotland would mean renewed war with England, and could not be contemplated. If Sir James Melville can be trusted for once, the Constable, about June 1, told him, in the presence of the French King, that if the Perth revolt were only about religion, “we mon commit Scottismen’s saules unto God.” [104 - Melville, 80.] Melville was then despatched with promise of aid to the Regent – if the rising was political, not religious.

It is quite certain that the Regent issued her proclamations without any commands from France; and her health was inconsistent with an intention to put Protestants to fire and sword.

In the records of the Provincial Council of March 1559, the foremost place is given to “Articles” presented to the Regent by “some temporal Lords and Barons,” and by her handed to the clergy. They are the proposals of conservative reformers. They ask for moral reformation of the lives of the clergy: for sermons on Sundays and holy days: for due examination of the doctrine, life, and learning of all who are permitted to preach. They demand that no vicar or curate shall be appointed unless he can read the catechism (of 1552) plainly and distinctly: that expositions of the sacraments should be clearly pronounced in the vernacular: that common prayer should be read in the vernacular: that certain exactions of gifts and dues should be abolished. Again, no one should be allowed to dishonour the sacraments, or the service of the Mass: no unqualified person should administer the sacraments: Kirk rapine, destruction of religious buildings and works of art, should not be permitted.

The Council passed thirty-four statutes on these points. The clergy were to live cleanly, and not to keep their bastards at home. They were implored, “in the bowels of Christ” to do their duty in the services of the Church. No one in future was to be admitted to a living without examination by the Ordinary. Ruined churches were to be rebuilt or repaired. Breakers of ornaments and violators or burners of churches were to be pursued. There was to be preaching as often as the Ordinary thought fit: if the Rector could not preach he must find a substitute who could. Plain expositions of the sacraments were made out, were to be read aloud to the congregations, and were published at twopence (“The Twopenny Faith”). Administration of the Eucharist except by priests was to be punished by excommunication. [105 - Statuta, &c. Robertson, vol. i. clv-clxii.] Knox himself desired death for others than true ministers who celebrated the sacrament. [106 - Book of Discipline. Knox, ii. 253, 254.] His “true ministers,” about half-a-dozen of them at this time, of course came under the penalty of the last statute.

He says, with the usual error, that after peace was made between France and England, on April 2, 1559 (the treaty of Cateau Cambresis), the Regent “began to spew forth and disclose the latent venom of her double heart.” She looked “frowardly” on Protestants, “commanded her household to use all abominations at Easter,” she herself communicated, “and it is supposed that after that day the devil took more violent and strong possession in her than he had before.. For incontinent she caused our preachers to be summoned.”

But why did she summon the same set of preachers as before, for no old offence? The Regent, says the “Historie,” made proclamation, during the Council (as the moderate Reformers had asked her to do), “that no manner of person should.. preach or minister the sacraments, except they were admitted by the Ordinary or a Bishop on no less pain than death.” The Council, in fact, made excommunication the penalty. Now it was for ministering the sacrament after the proclamation of March 13, for preaching heresy, and stirring up “seditions and tumults,” that Methuen, Brother John Christison, William Harlaw, and John Willock were summoned to appear at Stirling on May 10, 1559. [107 - M‘Crie, 360.]

How could any governor of Scotland abstain from summoning them in the circumstances? There seems to be no new suggestion of the devil, no outbreak of Guisian fury. The Regent was in a situation whence there was no “outgait”: she must submit to the seditions and tumults threatened in the Protestation of the brethren, the disturbances of services, the probable wrecking of churches, or she must use the powers legally entrusted to her. She gave insolent answers to remonstrances from the brethren, says Knox. She would banish the preachers (not execute them), “albeit they preached as truly as ever did St. Paul.” Being threatened, as before, with the consequent “inconvenients,” she said “she would advise.” However, summon the preachers she did, for breach of her proclamations, “tumults and seditions.” [108 - The Regent’s account of the whole affair, as given by Francis and Mary to the Pope, is vague and mistily apologetic. (Published in French by Prof. Hume Brown, ii. 300-302.) The Regent wrote from Dunbar, July 1559, that she had in vain implored the Pope to aid her in reforming the lives of the clergy (as in 1556-57). Their negligence had favoured, though she did not know it (and she says nothing about it in 1556-57), the secret growth of heresy. Next, a public preacher arose in one town (probably Paul Methuen in Dundee) introducing the Genevan Church. The Regent next caused the bishops to assemble the clergy, bidding them reform their lives, and then repress heresy. She also called an assembly of the Estates, when most of the Lords, hors du conseil et à part, demanded “a partial establishment of the new religion.” This was refused, and the Provincial Council (of March 1559) was called for reform of the clergy. Nothing resulted but scandal and popular agitation. Public preachers arose in the towns. The Regent assembled her forces, and the Lords and Congregation began their career of violence.]

Knox himself was present at the Revolution which ensued, but we must now return to his own doings in the autumn and winter of 1558-59. [109 - As to Knox’s account of this reforming Provincial Council (Knox, i. 291, 292), Lord Hailes calls it “exceedingly partial and erroneous.. no zeal can justify a man for misrepresenting an adversary.” Bold language for a judge to use in 1769! Cf. Robertson, Statuta, i. clxii, note I.]

CHAPTER IX: KNOX ON THE ANABAPTISTS: HIS APPEAL TO ENGLAND: 1558-1559

While the inevitable Revolution was impending in Scotland, Knox was living at Geneva. He may have been engaged on his “Answer” to the “blasphemous cavillations” of an Anabaptist, his treatise on Predestination. Laing thought that this work was “chiefly written” at Dieppe, in February-April 1559, but as it contains more than 450 pages it is probably a work of longer time than two months. In November 1559 the English at Geneva asked leave to print the book, which was granted, provided that the name of Geneva did not appear as the place of printing; the authorities knowing of what Knox was capable from the specimen given in his “First Blast.” There seem to be several examples of the Genevan edition, published by Crispin in 1560; the next edition, less rare, is of 1591 (London). [110 - Knox, v. 15-17.]

The Anabaptist whom Knox is discussing had been personally known to him, and had lucid intervals. “Your chief Apollos,” he had said, addressing the Calvinists, “be persecutors, on whom the blood of Servetus crieth a vengeance… They have set forth books affirming it to be lawful to persecute and put to death such as dissent from them in controversies of religion… Notwithstanding they, before they came to authority, were of another judgment, and did both say and write that no man ought to be persecuted for his conscience’ sake..” [111 - Knox, v. 207, 208.] Knox replied that Servetus was a blasphemer, and that Moses had been a more wholesale persecutor than the Edwardian burners of Joan of Kent, and the Genevan Church which roasted Servetus [112 - Ibid., v. 229.] (October 1553). He incidentally proves that he was better than his doctrine. In England an Anabaptist, after asking for secrecy, showed him a manuscript of his own full of blasphemies. “In me I confess there was great negligence, that neither did retain his book nor present him to the magistrate” to burn. Knox could not have done that, for the author “earnestly required of me closeness and fidelity,” which, probably, Knox promised. Indeed, one fancies that his opinions and character would have been in conflict if a chance of handing an idolater over to death had been offered to him. [113 - Ibid., v. 420, 421.Ibid., v. 495-523. [This footnote is provided in the original book but isn’t referenced in the text. DP.]]

The death of Mary Tudor on November 17, 1558, does not appear to have been anticipated by him. The tidings reached him before January 12, 1559, when he wrote from Geneva a singular “Brief Exhortation to England for the Spedie Embrasing of Christ’s Gospel heretofore by the Tyrannie of Marie Suppressed and Banished.”

The gospel to be embraced by England is, of course, not nearly so much Christ’s as John Knox’s, in its most acute form and with its most absolute, intolerant, and intolerable pretensions. He begins by vehemently rebuking England for her “shameful defection” and by threatening God’s “horrible vengeances which thy monstrous unthankfulness hath long deserved,” if the country does not become much more puritan than it had ever been, or is ever likely to be. Knox “wraps you all in idolatry, all in murder, all in one and the same iniquity,” except the actual Marian martyrs; those who “abstained from idolatry;” and those who “avoided the realm” or ran away. He had set one of the earliest examples of running away: to do so was easier for him than for family men and others who had “a stake in the country,” for which Knox had no relish. He is hardly generous in blaming all the persons who felt no more “ripe” for martyrdom than he did, yet stayed in England, where the majority were, and continued to be, Catholics.

Having asserted his very contestable superiority and uttered pages of biblical threatenings, Knox says that the repentance of England “requireth two things,” first, the expulsion of “all dregs of Popery” and the treading under foot of all “glistering beauty of vain ceremonies.” Religious services must be reduced, in short, to his own bare standard. Next, the Genevan and Knoxian “kirk discipline” must be introduced. No “power or liberty (must) be permitted to any, of what estate, degree, or authority they be, either to live without the yoke of discipline by God’s word commanded,” or “to alter.. one jot in religion which from God’s mouth thou hast received… If prince, king, or emperor would enterprise to change or disannul the same, that he be of thee reputed enemy to God,” while a prince who erects idolatry.. “must be adjudged to death.”

Each bishopric is to be divided into ten. The Founder of the Church and the Apostles “all command us to preach, to preach.” A brief sketch of what The Book of Discipline later set forth for the edification of Scotland is recommended to England, and is followed by more threatenings in the familiar style.

England did not follow the advice of Knox: her whole population was not puritan, many of her martyrs had died for the prayer book which Knox would have destroyed. His tract cannot have added to the affection which Elizabeth bore to the author of “The First Blast.” In after years, as we shall see, Knox spoke in a tone much more moderate in addressing the early English nonconformist secessionists (1568). Indeed, it is as easy almost to prove, by isolated passages in Knox’s writings, that he was a sensible, moderate man, loathing and condemning active resistance in religion, as to prove him to be a senselessly violent man. All depends on the occasion and opportunity. He speaks with two voices. He was very impetuous; in the death of Mary Tudor he suddenly saw the chance of bringing English religion up, or down, to the Genevan level, and so he wrote this letter of vehement rebuke and inopportune advice.

Knox must have given his biographers “medicines to make them love him.” The learned Dr. Lorimer finds in this epistle, one of the most fierce of his writings, “a programme of what this Reformation reformed should be – a programme which was honourable alike to Knox’s zeal and his moderation.” The “moderation” apparently consists in not abolishing bishoprics, but substituting “ten bishops of moderate income for one lordly prelate.” Despite this moderation of the epistle, “its intolerance is extreme,” says Dr. Lorimer, and Knox’s advice “cannot but excite astonishment.” [114 - John Knox and the Church of England, 215-218.] The party which agreed with him in England was the minority of a minority; the Catholics, it is usually supposed, though we have no statistics, were the majority of the English nation. Yet the only chance, according to Knox, that England has of escaping the vengeance of an irritable Deity, is for the smaller minority to alter the prayer book, resist the Queen, if she wishes to retain it unaltered, and force the English people into the “discipline” of a Swiss Protestant town.

Dr. Lorimer, a most industrious and judicious writer, adds that, in these matters of “discipline,” and of intolerance, Knox “went to a tragical extreme of opinion, of which none of the other leading reformers had set an example;” also that what he demanded was substantially demanded by the Puritans all through the reign of Elizabeth. But Knox averred publicly, and in his “History,” that for everything he affirmed in Scotland he had heard the judgments “of the most godly and learned that be known in Europe.. and for my assurance I have the handwritings of many.” Now he had affirmed frequently, in Scotland, the very doctrines of discipline and persecution “of which none of the other leading Reformers had set an example,” according to Dr. Lorimer. Therefore, either they agreed with Knox, or what Knox told the Lords in June 1564 was not strictly accurate. [115 - Knox, ii. 460, 461. We return to this point.] In any case Knox gave to his country the most extreme of Reformations.

The death of Mary Tudor, and the course of events at home, were now to afford our Reformer the opportunity of promulgating, in Scotland, those ideas which we and his learned Presbyterian student alike regret and condemn. These persecuting ideas “were only a mistaken theory of Christian duty, and nothing worse,” says Dr. Lorimer. Nothing could possibly be worse than a doctrine contrary in the highest degree to the teaching of Our Lord, whether the doctrine was proclaimed by Pope, Prelate, or Calvinist.

Here it must be observed that a most important fact in Knox’s career, a most important element in his methods, has been little remarked upon by his biographers. Ever since he failed, in 1554, to obtain the adhesion of Bullinger and Calvin to his more extreme ideas, he had been his own prophet, and had launched his decrees of the right of the people, of part of the people, and of the individual, to avenge the insulted majesty of God upon idolaters, not only without warrant from the heads of the Calvinistic Church, but to their great annoyance and disgust. Of this an example will now be given.

CHAPTER X: KNOX AND THE SCOTTISH REVOLUTION, 1559

Knox had learned from letters out of Scotland that Protestants there now ran no risks; that “without a shadow of fear they might hear prayers in the vernacular, and receive the sacraments in the right way, the impure ceremonies of Antichrist being set aside.” The image of St. Giles had been broken by a mob, and thrown into a sewer; “the impure crowd of priests and monks” had fled, throwing away the shafts of the crosses they bore, and “hiding the golden heads in their robes.” Now the Regent thinks of reforming religion, on a given day, at a convention of the whole realm. So William Cole wrote to Bishop Bale, then at Basle, without date. The riot was of the beginning of September 1558, and is humorously described by Knox. [116 - Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Majoris Brit. Catalogus Poster., p. 219 (1559). Knox, i. 258-261.]

This news, though regarded as “very certain,” was quite erroneous except as to the riot. One may guess that it was given to Knox in letters from the nobles, penned in October 1558, which he received in November 1558; there was also a letter to Calvin from the nobles, asking for Knox’s presence. It seemed that a visit to Scotland was perfectly safe; Knox left Geneva in January, he arrived in Dieppe in February, where he learned that Elizabeth would not allow him to travel through England. He had much that was private to say to Cecil, and was already desirous of procuring English aid to Scottish reformers. The tidings of the Queen’s refusal to admit him to England came through Cecil, and Knox told him that he was “worthy of Hell” (for conformity with Mary Tudor); and that Turks actually granted such safe conducts as were now refused to him. [117 - Dieppe, April 10-April 22, 1559. Knox, vi. 15-21.] Perhaps he exaggerated the amenity of the Turks. His “First Blast,” if acted on, disturbed the succession in England, and might beget new wars, a matter which did not trouble the prophet. He also asked leave to visit his flock at Berwick. This too was refused.

Doubtless Knox, with his unparalleled activity, employed the period of delay in preaching the Word at Dieppe. After his arrival in Scotland, he wrote to his Dieppe congregation, upbraiding them for their Laodicean laxity in permitting idolatry to co-exist with true religion in their town. Why did they not drive out the idolatrous worship? These epistles were intercepted by the Governor of Dieppe, and their contents appear to have escaped the notice of the Reformer’s biographers. A revolt followed in Dieppe. [118 - Desmarquets, Mem. Chronol. Jour. l’Hist, de Dieppe, i. 210.] Meanwhile Knox’s doings at Dieppe had greatly exasperated François Morel, the chief pastor of the Genevan congregation in Paris, and president of the first Protestant Synod held in that town. The affairs of the French Protestants were in a most precarious condition; persecution broke into fury early in June 1559. A week earlier, Morel wrote to Calvin, “Knox was for some time in Dieppe, waiting on a wind for Scotland.” “He dared publicly to profess the worst and most infamous of doctrines: ‘Women are unworthy to reign; Christians may protect themselves by arms against tyrants!’” The latter excellent doctrine was not then accepted by the Genevan learned. “I fear that Knox may fill Scotland with his madness. He is said to have a boon companion at Geneva, whom we hear that the people of Dieppe have called to be their minister. If he be infected with such opinions, for Christ’s sake pray that he be not sent; or if he has already departed, warn the Dieppe people to beware of him.” [119 - Corp. Ref., xlv. (Calv., xvii.) 541.] A French ex-capuchin, Jacques Trouillé, was appointed as Knox’s successor at Dieppe. [120 - Naissance de l’Hérésie à Dieppe, Rouen, 1877, ed. Lesens.]

Knox’s ideas, even the idea that Christians may bear the sword against tyrants, were all his own, were anti-Genevan; and though Calvin (1559-60) knew all about the conspiracy of Amboise to kill the Guises, he ever maintained that he had discouraged and preached against it. We must, therefore, credit Knox with originality, both in his ideas and in his way of giving it to be understood that they had the approval of the learned of Switzerland. The reverse was true.

By May 3, Knox was in Edinburgh, “come in the brunt of the battle,” as the preachers’ summons to trial was for May 10. He was at once outlawed, “blown loud to the horn,” but was not dismayed. On this occasion the battle would be a fair fight, the gentry, under their Band, stood by the preachers, and, given a chance in open field with the arm of the flesh to back him, Knox’s courage was tenacious and indomitable. It was only for lonely martyrdom that he never thought himself ready, and few historians have a right to throw the first stone at him for his backwardness.

As for armed conflict, at this moment Mary of Guise could only reckon surely on the small French garrison of Scotland, perhaps 1500 or 2000 men. She could place no confidence in the feudal levies that gathered when the royal standard was raised. The Hamiltons merely looked to their own advancement; Lord James Stewart was bound to the Congregation; Huntly was a double dealer and was remote; the minor noblesse and the armed burghers, with Glencairn representing the south-west, Lollard from of old, were attached to Knox’s doctrines, while the mob would flock in to destroy and plunder.

Meanwhile Mary of Guise was at Stirling, and a multitude of Protestants were at Perth, where the Reformation had just made its entry, and had secured a walled city, a thing unique in Scotland. The gentry of Angus and the people of Dundee, at Perth, were now anxious to make a “demonstration” (unarmed, says Knox) at Stirling, if the preachers obeyed the summons to go thither, on May 10. Their strategy was excellent, whether carefully premeditated or not.

The Regent, according to Knox, amused Erskine of Dun with promises of “taking some better order” till the day of May 10 arrived, when, the preachers and their backers having been deluded into remaining at Perth instead of “demonstrating” at Stirling, she outlawed the preachers and fined their sureties (“assisters”). She did not outlaw the sureties. Her treachery (alleged only by Knox and others who follow him) is examined in Appendix A. Meanwhile it is certain that the preachers were put to the horn in absence, and that the brethren, believing themselves (according to Knox) to have been disgracefully betrayed, proceeded to revolutionary extremes, such as Calvin energetically denounced.

If we ask who executed the task of wrecking the monasteries at Perth, Knox provides two different answers.

In the “History” Knox says that after the news came of the Regent’s perfidy, and after a sermon “vehement against idolatry,” a priest began to celebrate, and “opened a glorious tabernacle” on the high altar. “Certain godly men and a young boy” were standing near; they all, or the boy alone (the sentence may be read either way), cried that this was intolerable. The priest struck the boy, who “took up a stone” and hit the tabernacle, and “the whole multitude” wrecked the monuments of idolatry. Neither the exhortation of the preacher nor the command of the magistrate could stay them in their work of destruction. [121 - Knox, i. 321-323.] Presently “the rascal multitude” convened, without the gentry and “earnest professors,” and broke into the Franciscan and Dominican monasteries. They wrecked as usual, and the “common people” robbed, but the godly allowed Forman, Prior of the Charter House, to bear away about as much gold and silver as he was able to carry. We learn from Mary of Guise and Lesley’s “History” that the very orchards were cut down.

If, thanks to the preachers, “no honest man was enriched the value of a groat,” apparently dishonest men must have sacked the gold and silver plate of the monasteries; nothing is said by Knox on this head, except as to the Charter House.

Writing to Mrs. Locke, on the other hand, on June 23, Knox tells her that “the brethren,” after “complaint and appeal made” against the Regent, levelled with the ground the three monasteries, burned all “monuments of idolatry” accessible, “and priests were commanded under pain of death, to desist from their blasphemous mass.” [122 - Knox, vi. 23.] Nothing is said about a spontaneous and uncontrollable popular movement. The professional “brethren,” earnest professors of course, reap the glory. Which is the true version?

If the version given to Mrs. Locke be accurate, Knox had sufficient reasons for producing a different account in that portion of his “History” (Book ii.) which is a tract written in autumn, 1559, and in purpose meant for contemporary foreign as well as domestic readers. The performances attributed to the brethren, in the letter to the London merchant’s wife, were of a kind which Calvin severely rebuked. Similar or worse violences were perpetrated by French brethren at Lyons, on April 30, 1562. The booty of the church of St. Jean had been sold at auction. There must be no more robbery and pillage, says Calvin, writing on May 13, to the Lyons preachers. The ruffians who rob ought rather to be abandoned, than associated with to the scandal of the Gospel. “Already reckless zeal was shown in the ravages committed in the churches” (altars and images had been overthrown), “but those who fear God will not rigorously judge what was done in hot blood, from devout emotion, but what can be said in defence of looting?”