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PUBLISHED BY Jff
OLIPHANT ANDERSON
U-FERRIER-EDINBVRGH
AND LONDON Ci- -v^

The designs and ornaments of this
volume are by Mr Joseph Brown,
and the printing from the press of
Messrs TurnbuU & Spears, Edinburgh.
May 1896.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Scholar and Priest: His Environment . 9

CHAPTER II
The Crisis : Single or Two-fold ? , . 25
CHAPTER III
The Inner Life : His Women Friends . . 48
CHAPTER IV
The Public Life : To the Parliament of 1560 . 65
CHAPTER V
The Public Life : Legislation and Church Plans 95
CHAPTER VI
The Public Life : The Conflict with Queen Mary 117
CHAPTER VII
Closing Years and Death . . . .144

JOHN KNOX
CHAPTER I
THE SCHOLAR AND PRIEST : HIS ENVIRONMENT
The century now closing has redeemed Knox from
neglect, and has gathered around his name a mass of
biographical material. That material, too, includes
much that is of the nature of self-revelation, to be
gleaned from familiar letters, as well as from his own
history of his time. Yet, after all that has been brought
together, Knox remains to many observers a mere hard
outline, while to others he is almost an enigma — a blur,
bright or black, upon the historic page.
There is one real and great difficulty. For the first
forty years of his life we know absolutely nothing of the
inner man. Yet at forty most men are already made.
And in the case of this man, from about that date on
wards we find the character settled and fixed. Hence
forward, during the whole later life with its continually
changing drama, Knox remains intensely and unchange
ably the same. It is the contrast, perhaps the crisis,
which is worth studying. The contrast, indeed, is not
unprecedented. More than one Knox-hke prophet, in
the solemn days of early faith, ' was in the desert until
the time of his shewing unto Israel'; and not the
poUshed shaft only, but the rough spear-head too, has
remained hid in the shadow of a mighty hand until the
very day when it was launched. But each such case im-
9

lo FAMOUS SCOTS
pels us the more to inquire, What was it after all which
really made the man who in his turn made the age ?
Knox was born in or near Haddington in 1505. Of
his father, William Knox, and his mother, whose maiden
name was Sinclair, nothing is known, except that the
parents of both belonged to that district of country, and
had fought under the standard of the House of Bothwell.
We shall never know which of the two contributed the
insight or the audacity, the tenacity or the tenderness,
the common-sense or the humour, which must all have
been part of Knox's natural character before it was
moulded from without. His father was of the ' simple,'
not of the gentle, sort; possibly a peasant, or frugal
cultivator of the soil. But he saved enough to send one
of his two sons, John, now in the eighteenth year of his
age, and having, no doubt, received his earlier education
in the excellent grammar school of Haddington, to the
University of Glasgow. Haddington was in the diocese
of St Andrews, but a native of Haddington, John Major,
was at this time Regent in Glasgow. He had brought
from Paris, four years before, a vast academical reputa
tion, and Knox now ' sat as at his feet ' during his last
year of teaching in Glasgow. In 1523, however, Major
was transferred to St Andrews, and there he taught
theology for more than a quarter of a century, during
the latter half of which time he was Provost or Head of
St Salvator's College. Whether Knox at any time fol
lowed him there does not appear. Beza, Knox's earliest
biographer, thought he did. But Beza's information
as to this portion of the life, though apparently derived
from Knox's colleague and successor, * is so extremely
* Knox's later biographer, Dr Hume Brown, has given to the
world a letter from Sir Peter Young to Beza, transmitting a
posthumous portrait of Knox, which is thus no doubt the original
of the likeness in Beza's Icones, and makes the latter our only trust-

JOHN KNOX II
confused as to suggest that the Reformer was equally
reticent about it to those nearest him as he has chosen
to be to posterity. For nearly twenty years of manhood,
indeed, Knox disappears from our view. And when,
in 1540, he emerges again in his native district, it is as
a notary and a priest. ' Sir John Knox ' he was called
by others, that being the style by which secular priests
were known, unless they had taken not only the bachelor's
but also the master's degree at the University.* Knox
in after years never alluded to his priesthood, though his
adversaries did; but so late as 27th March 1543 he
describes himself in a notarial deed in his own hand
writing as 'John Knox, minister of the sacred altar, of
the Diocese of St Andrews, notary by Apostolical author
ity.' Apostolical means Papal, the notarial authority
being transmitted through the St Andrews Archbishop ;
and Knox at this time does not shrink from dating his
notarial act as in such a year ' of the pontificate of our
most holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord Paul,
Pope by the Providence of God.' Only three years
later, in 1546, he was carrying a two-handed sword
before Wishart, then in danger of arrest and condem
nation to the stake at the hands of the same Archbishop
worthy representation of him. The letter adds, ' You may look for
(expectabis) his full history from Master Lawson ' ; and this raises
the hope that Beza's biography, founded upon the memoir of Knox's
colleague, James Lawson, as the icon probably was upon the Edin
burgh portrait, would be of great value. In point of fact Beza's
biography does give great prominence to Knox's closing pastorate
and last days, as his newly-appointed colleague might be expected
to do. But about his early years it is hopelessly inaccurate, to say
the least.
* So, in Shakespeare, Sir Hugh, who is ' of the Church ' ; Sir
Topas the curate, whose beard and gown the clown borrows ; Sir
Oliver Martext, who will not be ' flouted out of his calling ; ' and Sir
Nathaniel, who claims to have ' taste and feeling,' and whose female
parishioners call him indiflerently the ' Person ' or the ' Parson.'

I a FAMOUS SCOTS
Beaton under whom Knox held his orders. And in the
following year, 1547, Knox is standing in the Church of
St Andrews, and denouncing the Pope (not as an indi
vidual, though the Pope of that day was a Borgia, but)
as the official head of an Anti-Christian system.
This early blank in the biography raises questions,
some of which will never be answered. We do not
know at all when Knox took priest's orders. It was
almost certainly not before 1530, for it was only in
that year that he became eligible as being twenty-five
years old. It may possibly have been as late as 1540,
when his name is first found in a deed. In that and
the two following years he seems to have resided at
Samuelston near Haddington, and may have officiated
in the little chapel there. But he was also at this time
acting as 'Maister' or tutor to the sons of several
gentlemen of East Lothian, and he continued this down
to 1547, the time of his own 'call' to preach the
Evangel. Nor do we know whether the change in his
views, which in 1547 was so complete, had been sudden
on the one hand or gradual and long prepared on the
other. Knox's own silence on this is very remarkable.
A man of his fearless egoism and honesty might have
been expected to leave, if not an autobiography like
those of Augustine and Bunyan, at least a narrative of
change like the Force of Truth of Thomas Scott, or. the
Apologia of John Henry Newman. He has not done
so ; indeed, the author who preserved for us so much
of that age, and of his own later history in it, seems for
some reason to have judged his whole earlier period
unworthy of record — or even of recal. For we find no
evidence of his having been more confidential on this
subject with any of his contemporaries than he has
been with us. This certainly suggests that the change
may have been very recent — determined, perhaps,
wholly through the personal influence of Wishart, whom

JOHN KNOX 13
Knox so afifectionately commemorates. Or, if it was
not recent, it is extremely unlikely that it can have been
detailed, vivid, and striking, as well as prolonged. Knox
was not the man to suppress a narrative, however
painful to himself, which he could have held to be in a
marked degree to the glory of God or for the good
of men. But whatever the reason was, the time past of
his life sufficed this man for silence and self-accusation.
We may be sure that it would have done so (and perhaps
done so equally), no matter whether those twenty years
had been spent in the complacent routine of a rustic in
holy orders ; in the dogmatism, defensive or aggressive,
of scholastic youth ; in fruitless efforts to understand the
new views of which he was one day to be the chief
representative; or in half-hearted hesitation whether,
after having so far understood them, he could part
with all things for their sake. Which of these positions
he held, or how far he may have passed from one to
another, we may never be able to ascertain. But there
is one too clear indication that Klnox disliked, not only
to record, but even to recal, his life in the Catholic
communion. His greatest defect , in after years, as a
man and a writer, is his inabiUty to sympathise with
those still found entangled in that old life. He
absolutely refuses to put himself in their place, or to
imagine how a position which was for so many years
his own could be honestly chosen, or even honestly
retained for a day, by another. This would have been
a misfortune, and a moral defect, even in a man not
naturally of a sympathetic temper. But Knox, as we
shall see, was a man of quick and tender nature, and
had rather a passion for sympathising with those who
were not on the other side of the gulf he thus fixed.
And this one-sided incapacity for sympathy must cer
tainly be connected with his one-sided reticence as to the
earlier half of his own autobiography.

14 FAMOUS SCOTS
Incapacity to sympathise with persons entangled in a
system is one thing, and disapproval of that system,
or even violent rejection of it, is another. Knox, as
is well known, broke absolutely with the church system
in which he was brought up. What was that system,
and what was Knox's individual outlook upon the
Church — first, of Western Europe, and secondly of
Scotland ?
We know at least that Knox, before breaking with the
church system of mediaeval Europe, was for twenty years
in close contact with it. And his was no mere external
contact such as Haddington, with its magnificent churches
and monasteries, supplied. It commenced with study,
and with study under the chief theological teacher of the
land and the time. Major was the last of the scholastics
in our country. But the energy of thought of scholasti
cism, marvellous as it often was, was built upon the lines
and contained within the limits of an already existing
church system. And that system was an authoritative
one in every sense. The hierarchy which governed the
Church, and all but constituted it, was sacerdotal ; that
is, it interposed its own mediation at the point where the
individual meets and deals with God. But it interposed
correspondingly at every other point of the belief and
practice of the private man, enforcing its doctrine upon
the conscience, and its direction upon the will, of every
member of the church. Nor was the system authoritative
only over those who received or accepted it. Originally,
indeed, and even in the age when the faith was digested
into a creed by the first Council, the emperor, himself
an ardent member of the Church, left it free to all his
subjects throughout the world to be its members or not
as they chose. But that great experiment of toleration
lasted less than a century. For much more than a
thousand years the same faith, slowly transformed into
a church system under the central administration of the

JOHN KNOX IS
Popes, had been made binding by imperial and municipal
law upon every human being in Europe.
Major, not only by his own earlier writings, but as the
representative in Scotland of the University of Paris,
recalled to his countrymen the great struggle of the
Middle Age in favour of freedom — and especially of
church freedom against the Popes. That struggle
indeed had Germany rather than France for its original
centre, and it was under the flag of the Empire that
the progressive despotism of Hildebrand and his suc
cessors over the feudal world was chiefly resisted. The
Empire, however, was now a decaying force. Europe
was being split into nationalities ; and national churches
— a novelty in Christendom — were, under various pre
texts, coming into existence. For the last two centuries
France had thus been the chief national opponent of the
centralising influence of Rome, and the University of
Paris was, during that time, the greatest theological
school in the world. As such it had maintained the
doctrine that the church universal could have no
absolute monarch, but was bound to maintain its
own self-government, and that its proper organ for this
was a general council. And in the early part of the
fifteenth century, when the schism caused by rival Popes
had thrown back the Church upon its native powers, the
University of Paris was the great influence which led the
Councils of Constance and of Basle, not only to assert
this doctrine, but to carry it into effect.
But Major, when Knox met him, represented in this
matter a cause already lost Even in the previous
century the decrees of the reforming Councils were
at once frustrated by the successors of the Popes
whom they deposed, and in this sixteenth century a
Lateran Council had already anticipated the Vatican
of the nineteenth by declaring the Pope to be supreme
over Council and Church alike, Even the anti-Papal

1 6 FAMOUS SCOTS
Councils themselves, too, were exclusively hierarchical,
and accordingly they opposed any independent right on
the part of the laity, as well as all serious enquiries into
the earlier practice and faith of the Church. So at
Constance the Chancellor of Paris, Doctor Christian-
is simus as well as statesman and mystic, compensated
for his successful pressure upon Rome by helping to
send to the stake, notwithstanding the Emperor's safe-
conduct, the pure-hearted Huss. The result was that,
even before the time of Major, the expectation, so long
cherished by Europe, of a great reform through a great
Council had died out. And the University of Paris,
instead of continuing to act in place of that coming
Council as 'a sort of standing committee of the
French, or even of the universal. Church,' * had be
come a reactionary and retarding power. It opposed
Humanism, and was the stronghold of the method of
teaching which the new generation knew as ' So
phistry.' It opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing to
oppose Luther, and to urge against its own most
distinguished pupils the law of penal fire. It con
tinued to oppose the despotism of the Pope, but it
did so rather from the standpoint of a narrow and
nationalist Gallicanism, based largely upon the counter-
despotism of the King. This selfish policy attained in
Major's own time its fitting result and reward. The
despotic King and despotic Pope found it convenient
for their interests to partition between them the
' liberties ' of the Galilean Church ; and by the Con
cordat of Bologna in 1516, Leo gained a huge revenue
from the ecclesiastical endowments of France, while
Francis usurped the right of nominating all its bishops.
The University, as well as the Parliaments, resisted, and
Major, who now lectured in the Sorbonne as Doctor in
Theology, and had become famous as a representative
* RashdaU's ' Universities of Europe,' i. 525.

JOHN ICNOX 17
of the anti-Papal school of Occam, took his share in
the work. He was preparing for publication a Com
mentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and he now added
to it four Disputations against the arbitrary powers of
Popes and Bishops, and especially against the authority
of Popes in temporal matters over Kings, and in
spiritual matters over Councils. It was all in vain.
In 1517 the University was forced by the Crown to
submit, after a protest of the broadest kind ; * and in
1518 Major returned to his native country a famous
teacher, but a defeated churchman. Yet the grave fact
for Scotland was that Major and his old University, and
the Western hierarchy everywhere, henceforward practic
ally acquiesced in their own defeat. A greater question
had arisen, and one which they were unwilling to face.
On the other side of the Rhine, Luther and his friends
now claimed for the individual Christian the same kind
of freedom against Councils and Bishops which the
previous century had claimed for Councils and Bishops
against Popes. Paris took the lead in opposition to the
new Evangel by its Academic decrees of 1521. And
when Major, in 1530, republished his Commentary, he
not only omitted from it his Disputations against Papal
absolutism, but dedicated it to Archbishop James Beaton
* The Act of Appeal of the University lays down principles which
apply far beyond the bounds of Gallicanism ; that ' the Pope,
although he holds his power immediately from God, is not pre
vented, by his possession of this power, from going wrong ' ; that
• if he commands that which is unjust, he may righteously be re
sisted ' ; and ' if, by the action of the powers that be, we are
deprived of the means of resisting the Pope, there remains one
remedy, founded on natural law, which no Prince can take away
—the remedy of appeal, which is competent to every individual, by
divine right, and natural right, and human right.' And, accord
ingly, the University, protesting that the Basle Council's decrees of
the past have been set aside, Appeals to a Council in the future. —
Bulaeus' ' Hist, of the University of Paris,' vol. viii. p. 92.
A. B

1 8 FAMOUS SCOTS
as the ' supplanter ' and ' exterminator ' of Lutheranism,
and, above all, as the judge who, amid the murmurings
of many, had recently * and righteously condemned the
nobly-born Patrick Hamilton.
It may be well thus to represent to ourselves what
must have been the outlook into the Western Church of
Major, or of any one who looked through Major's eyes, in
that year 1523. But I think it very unlikely that Knox
could have derived from such an outlook, or from Major
in any aspect, a serious impulse to his career as Reformer.
Knox no doubt learned from him scholastic logic, and
turned it in later days with much vigour to his own
purposes. Major, too, may have unconsciously revealed
to his pupils with how much hope the former generation
had looked forward to a council. We find afterwards
that Knox and his friends, like Luther in his earlier
stages, when appealing against the hierarchy, sometimes
appealed to a General Council. But neither side re
garded this as serious. It would have been more im
portant if we could have shown that Major transmitted to
his pupil the opposition maintained for centuries by his
university to an ultramontane Pontifi" as the hereditary
opponent of all Church freedom and all Church reform.
But Luther and the German Reformers had already
exaggerated this view, so far as to suggest that the
usurping chief of the Church must be the scriptural
Antichrist. And their views, brought direct to Scot
land by men like Hamilton, had, as we have seen,
immensely increased the reaction in the mind of Major,
which was begun abroad before 15 18. It is, indeed,
* This uncompromising prefece took the place of one in which
Major, on his arrival in Scotland in 1318, praised the same Arch
bishop, then in Glasgow, for his many-sided and ' chamaelon-like
mildness. ' It is generally recognised that the stern policy latterly
carried on under the nominal authority of James Beaton was really in
spired by his nephew and coadjutor, David Beaton, the future cardinal.

JOHN KNOX 19
curious to notice how in his later writings the old
university feeling against tyranny in the Church almost
disappears, while the equally old and honourable feeling
of the learned Middle Age, and especially of its uni
versities, against the tyranny of kings and nobles, finds
expression alike in his history and his commentaries.
Buchanan, who proclaimed to all Europe the consti
tutional rights, even against their sovereign, of the
people of Scotland, and Knox, the ' subject born within
the same,' who was destined to translate that Radical
theory so largely into fact, were both taught by Major.
And they may well have been much influenced on this
side by a man who had long before written that ' the
original and supreme power resides in the whole of a
free people, and is incapable of being surrendered,' in
somuch that an incorrigible tyrant may always be ' de
posed by that people as by a superior authority.' * For
even Fergus the First, he narrates, ' had no right ' other
than the nation's choice, and when Sir William Wallace was
yet a boy, he was taught by his Scottish tutor to repeat
continually the rude inspiring rhyme, ' Dico tibi verum
Libertas optima rerum.' f These views as to the rights
of man, and of Scottish men, may well have fanned, or
even kindled, the strong feeling of independence in
secular matters and as a citizen, which burned in the
breast of Knox. But as to spiritual matters and
the Church universal, the only feeUngs which we can
imagine Major, on his return from abroad, to have
impressed upon the younger man from Haddington
are a despair of reform, and a disbelief in revolution.
Let us turn, therefore, from abroad to the Church at
home. It is admitted on all hands that the clergy of
this age in Scotland were extraordinarily corrupt in life,
• ¦ Expositio Matt.' fol. 71. (Paris.)
+ ' I tell the truth to thee, there's nought like Liberty ! '—
Major's ' History of Greater Britain.'

20 FAMOUS SCOTS
a reproach which applied eminently to the higher ranks
and the representative men. But corruption of church
men is always a symptom of deeper things. It does not
appear that Scotland was much influenced by the spirit
of the Renaissance, whether you apply that term to the
intellectual passion for both knowledge and beauty which
spread over most parts of Europe during the three previous
centuries, or to the more specific and half-Pagan culture
which in some parts of Europe was the result. It may
be more important to observe that the Church in Scot
land had not enjoyed any period of inward religious
revival — any which could be described as native to it
or original. On the contrary its great epoch had been
its transformation, through royal and foreign influence,
into the likeness of English and continental civilisation,
as civilisation was understood in the Middle Age. And
that transformation in the days of Queen Margaret and
her sons was accompanied, and to a large extent com
pensated, by a less desirable incorporation into the
western ecclesiastical system. The later 'coming of
the Friars' had not the same powerful effect in the
remote north which it had in some other realms. And
in any case that impulse too had long since yielded to a
strong reaction, and the preachers were now regarded
with the disgust with which mankind usually resent the
attempt to manipulate them by external means without
a real message. But there were two great sources of
ruin to the Scottish church, both connected with its
relation to a powerful aristocracy. One was the extra
ordinary extent to which its high offices were used as
sinecures for the favourites, and the sons of favourites,
of nobles and of kings. This did not tend to impoverish
the church ; on the contrary, it made it an object to all
the great families to keep up the wealth on whicli they
proposed that their unworthy scions should feed. ' In
proportion to the resources of the country the Scottish

JOHN KNOX 21
clergy were probably the richest in Europe.'* But the
wealth, accumulated in idle and unworthy hands, was
now a scandal to religion, and a constant fountain of
immorality. Still worse was the extent to which that
wealth was in Scotland diverted from its best uses to the
less desirable side — the monastic side — of the mediaeval
church. In the revival which came from England before
the twelfth century, a great impulse had been given to
the parochialising of the country, and to keeping up
religious life in every district and estate. But a prejudice
running back to very early centuries branded the parish
priests as seculars, and gradually drew away again the
devotion and the means of the faithful from the parishes
where they were needed, and to which they properly
belonged. It drew them away, in Scotland, not only to
rich centres like cathedrals, with their too wasteful retinue,
but far more to the great monasteries scattered over the
land. Kings and barons, who proposed to spend life so as
to need after its close a good deal of intercession, naturally
turned their eyes, even before deathbed, to these wealthy
strongholds of poverty and prayer; and of a hundred
other places besides Melrose, we know ' That lands and
livings, many a rood, had gifted the shrine for their
soul's repose.' But the transfer, to such centres, of
lands (which were supposed, by the feudal law, to
belong to chiefs rather than to the community), was not
so direct an injury to the people of Scotland, as the
alienation to the same institutions of parochial tithes —
sometimes under the form of alienating the churches to
which the tithes were paid. These parochial tithes all
possessors of land in the parish were bound by law to
pay, whether they desired it or not. And, strictly, they
should have been paid to the pastor of the parish and
for its benefit. But by a scandalous corruption, often
protested against by both Parliament and the Church, the
* Hume Brown's ' Knox,' i. 44.

2 2 FAMOUS SCOTS
Lords of lands were allowed to divert the tithes, which
they were already bound to pay, to congested ecclesias
tical centres, sometimes to cathedrals, more often to
religious houses of ' regulars.' After this was done the
monastery or religious House enjoyed the whole sheaves
or tithes of the land in question ; the local vicar, if the
House appointed one, being entitled only to the ' lesser
tithes' of domestic animals, eggs, grass, etc. This
robbery of the parishes of Scotland — parishes which
were already far too large and too scattered, as John
Major points out — was carried on to an extraordinary
extent. Each of the religious houses of Holyrood and
Kelso had the tithes of twenty-seven parishes diverted
or ' appropriated ' to it. In some districts two-thirds of
the whole parish churches were in the hands of the
monks, and no fewer than thirty-four were bestowed on
Arbroath Abbey in the course of a single reign. When
we remember that the Lords of these great houses
were generally members — often unworthy members —
of the families which were thus enriching them to the
detriment of the country, we can imagine the com
plicated corruption which went on from reign to reign.
Unfortunately the nepotism and simony which resulted
had direct example and sanction in the relation to
Scotland of the Head of the Church at Rome.* The
most ardent Catholics admit this as true in relation to
Europe generally in the time with which we deal ; t and
the Holy See had been allowed some centuries before
to claim Scotland as a country which belonged to it in
a peculiar sense, and the Church of Scotland as subject
to it specially and immediately. The jealousy of an
Italian potentate which was always powerful in England,
and which had now, under Henry the Eighth, made it
* See Scots Acts, a.d. 1471, c. 43.
t An Petrus Romae fuerit, sub judice lis est :
Simonem Romae nemo fuisse negat.

JOHN KNOX 23
possible to reject the Romish supremacy while retaining
the whole of Roman Catholic doctrine, had little influ
ence farther north. Scotland followed the Pope, even
when he went to Avignon, and when England had
accepted his rival or Anti-Pope. And while in this
it sympathised with France, it had little of that
traditional dislike to high Ultramontane claims which
we saw to have been so strong in Paris. The Pope
remained the centre of our church system, and there
were in Scotland no projects of serious reform except
those which went so deep as (in the case of the Lollards
and other precursors of the Reformation) to break with
the existing ecclesiastical machine as a whole, and so to
challenge the deadliest penalties of the law.
For it is a mistake to suppose that heresy, in the
modern misuse of the word (as equivalent to false
doctrine), was greatly dreaded in the Roman Catholic
Church, or savagely punished by our ancient code. In
Scotland, as elsewhere, the fundamental law was that of
Theodosius and the empire, that every man must be a
member of the Catholic Church, and submit to it. That
law was indeed the original establishment of the Church,
and for many centuries there had been in Scotland no
penalty for breaking it except death. But the Church, when
its authority was thus once for all sufficiently secured,
was, in the early Middle Age, rather tolerant of theological
opinion. And not until error had been published and
persisted in, in face of the injunctions of authority — not
until the heresy thus threatened to be internal schism,
or repudiation of that authority — was the secular power
usually invoked. Unfortunately Western Europe as a
whole, ever since its intellectual awakening three or
more centuries ago, was moving on to precisely this
crisis ; and the very existence of the Church, in the
sense of a body of which all citizens were compulsorily
members, was now felt to be at stake. The Scottish

24 FAMOUS SCOTS
sovereign had long since been taken bound, by his
coronation oath, to interpose his authority; and the
present King, delivered in 1528 from the tutory of the
Douglases by the Beatons, had thrown himself into the
side of those powerful ecclesiastics. A statute, the first
against heresy for nearly a century, was passed two years
after Knox went to college. When he was twenty-three
years old, England was preparing to reject the Pope's
supremacy ; but Scotland was so far from it that this year
Patrick Hamilton was burned at St Andrews. When he
was thirty-four years old, the English revolution had
been accomplished by the despotic Henry; but his
Scottish nephew had refused to follow the lead, and in
that year five other heretics were burned on the Castle-
hill of Edinburgh, the popular ' Commons King ' looking
on. On James V.'s death there was a sUght reaction
under the Regent, and ParUament even sanctioned the
pubhcation of the Scriptures. But Arran made his
peace with the Church in 1543, and Beaton, the able
but worldly Archbishop of St Andrews, and as such
Knox's diocesan, became once more the leader of Scot
land. He had already instituted the Inquisition through
out his see ; he was now advanced to be Papal Legate ;
and he was fully prepared to press into execution the
Acts which a few years before he and the King had per
suaded the Parliament to pass. Not to be a member of
the Church had always meant death. But now it was
death by statute to argue against the Pope's authority ;
it was made unlawful even to enter into discussion on
matters of religion; and those in Scotland who were
merely suspected of heresy were pronounced incapable of
any office there. And, lastly, those who left the country
to avoid the fatal censure of its Church on such crimes
as these, were held by law to be already condemned.
The illustrious Buchanan was one of those who thus
fled. Knox remained, and suddenly becomes visible.

CHAPTER II
the crisis : single or two-fold ?
On this dark background Knox for the first time
appears in history. But we catch sight of him merely
as an attendant on the attractive figure of George
Wishart. At Cambridge Wishart had been ' courteous,
lowly, lovely, glad to teach, and desirous to learn ' ;
when he returned to Scotland, Knox and others found
him ' a man of such graces as before him were never
heard within this realm.' He had preached in several
parts of Scotland, and was brought in the spring of
1546 by certain gentlemen of East Lothian, ' who then
were earnest professors of Christ Jesus,' to the neigh
bourhood of Haddington. On the morning of his last
sermon in that town he had received (in the mansion-
house of Lethington, ' the laird whereof,' father of the
famous William Maitland, ' was ever civil, albeit not
persuaded in religion ') a letter, ' which received and
read, he called for John Knox, who had waited upon
him carefully from the time he came to Lothian.'
And the same evening, with a presentiment of his
coming arrest, he 'took his good-night, as it were for
ever,' of all his acquaintance, and
'John Knox pressing to have gone with the said Master
George, he said, "Nay, return to your bairns, and God bless
you I One is sufficient for one sacrifice." And so he caused a
two-handed sword (which commonly was carried with the said
Master George) be taken from the said John Knox, who,
as

26 FAMOUS SCOTS
ahhough unwillingly, obeyed, and returned vrith Hugh Douglas
of Longniddrie.'* The same night Wishart was arrested by the Earl of
Bothwell, and afterwards handed over to the Cardinal
Archbishop, tried by him as a heretic, and on ist March
1546 burned in front of his castle of St Andrews.
Ere long this stronghold was stormed, and the Cardinal
murdered in his own chamber by a number of the
gentlemen of Fife, whose raid was partly in revenge
for Wishart's death. They shut themselves up in the
castle for protection, and we hear no more of John
Knox till the following year. Then we are told that,
' wearied of removing from place to place, by reason
of the persecution that came upon him by the Bishop
of St Andrews,' he joined Leslie's band in their hold in
St Andrews, in consequence of the desire of his pupils'
parents 'that himself might have the benefit of the
castle, and their children the benefit of his doctrine
[teaching].' It is plain that by this time what Knox
taught was the doctrine of Wishart. Indeed he had not
been long in St Andrews when, urged by the congregation
there, he consented to become its preacher. And his
very first sermon in this capacity rang out the full note
of the coming reform or rather revolution in the religion
of Scotland.
Now, this is a startlingly sudden transition. The
change from the position of a nameless notary under
Papal authority, who is in addition a minister of the
altar of the Catholic Church, to that of a preacher in
the whole armour of the Puritan Reformation, is great.
* The quotations are from Knox himself — in the first book of his
' History of the Reformation in Scotland.'
\A'lien quoting from any part of Knox's ' Works ' (David Laing's
edition in six volumes), I propose to modernise the spelling, but in
other respects to retain Knox's English. It will be found surpris
ingly modern.

JOHN KNOX 27
Was the transition a public and official one only ? Was
it a change merely ecclesiastical or political ? Or was it
preceded by a more private change and a personal crisis ?
And was that private and personal crisis merely intel
lectual ? Was it, that is, the adoption of a new dogma
only, or perhaps the acceptance of a new system ? Or if
there was something besides these, was it nothing more
than the resolve of a very powerful will — such a will as
we must all ascribe to Knox? Was this all? Or was there
here rather, perhaps, the sort of change which determines
the will instead of being determined by it — a personal
change, in the sense of being emotional and inward as
well as deep and permanent — a new set of the whole
man, and so the beginning of an inner as well as of an
outer and public life ?
The question is of the highest interest, but as we
have said, there is no direct answer. It would be easy
for each reader to supply the void by reasoning out,
according to his own prepossessions, what must have
been, or what ought to have been, the experience of
such a man at such a time. It would be easy — but
unprofitable. Far better would it be could we adduce
from his own utterances evidence — indirect evidence
even — that the crisis which he declines to record really
took place ; and that the great outward career was
founded on a new personal life within. Now there is
such an utterance, which has been hitherto by no means
sufficiently recognised. It is ' a meditation or prayer,
thrown forth of my sorrowful heart and pronounced by
my half-dead tongue,' on 12th March, 1566, at a
moment when Knox's cause was in extremity of danger.
Mary had joined the Catholic League and driven the
Protestant Lords into England, and their attempted
counter-plot had failed by the defection of Darnley. Knox
had now before him certain exile and possible death,
and on the eve of leaving Edinburgh he sat down and

2 8 FAMOUS SCOTS
wrote privately the following personal confession. Five
years later, when publishing his last book, after the
national victory but amid great public troubles, he pre
fixed a preface explaining that he had already ' taken
goodnight at the world and at all the fasherie of the
same,' and henceforward wished his brethren only to pray
that God would ' put an end to my long and painful
battle.' And with this preface he now printed the old
meditation or confession of 1566. It is therefore auto
biographical by a double title. And it is made even
more interesting by the striking rubric with which the
writer heads it.
John Knox, with deliberate mind, to his God.
' Be merciful unto me, O Lord, and call not into judgment my
manifold sins ; and chiefly those whereof the world is not able to
accuse me. In youth, mid age, and now after many battles, I find
nothing in me but vanity and corruption. For, in quietness I am
negligent ; in trouble impatient, tending to desperation ; and in the
mean [middle] state I am so carried away with vain fantasies, that
alas 1 O Lord, they withdraw me from the presence of thy Majesty.
Pride and ambition assault me on the one part, covetousness and
malice trouble me on the other ; briefly, O Lord, the affections of
the flesh do almost suppress the operation of Thy Spirit. I take
Thee, O Lord, who only knowest the secrets of hearts, to record,
that in none of the foresaid do I delight ; but that with them I am
troubled, and that sore against the desire of my inward man, which
sobs for my corruption, and would repose in Thy mercy alone. To
the which I clame [cry] in the promise that Thou hast made to all
penitent sinners (of whose number I profess myself to be one), in
the obedience and death of my only Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.
In whom, by Thy mere grace, I doubt not myself to be elected to
eternal salvation, whereof Thou hast given unto me (unto me, O
Lord, most wretched and unthankful creature) most assured signs.
For being drowned in ignorance Thou hast given to me knowledge
above the common sort of my brethren ; my tongue hast Thou used
to set forth Thy glory, to oppugne idolatry, errors, and false doctrine.
Thou hast compelled me to forespeak, as well deliverance to the
afflicted, as destruction to certain inobedient, the performance

JOHN KNOX 29
whereof, not I alone, but the very blind world has already seen.
But above all, O Lord, Thou, by the power of Thy Holy Spirit,
hast sealed unto my heart remission of my sins, which I acknowledge
and confess myself to have received by the precious blood of Jesus
Christ once shed ; in whose perfect obedience I am assured my
manifold rebellions are defaced, my grievous sins purged, and my
soul made the tabernacle of Thy Godly Majesty — Thou, O Father
of mercies, Thy Son our Lord Jesus, my only Saviour, Mediator,
and Advocate, and Thy Holy Spirit, remaining in the same by true
faith, which is the only victory that overcometh the world.'*
This window into the heart of a great man is not less
transparent because it opens upwards. Its revelation of
an inner life, with the alternations proper to it of struggle
and victory, will receive confirmation as we go on.
As we go on too we shall be arrested by the intense
personal sympathy which Knox showed in helping those
around him who were still weaker and more tempted
than himself — a sympathy in which many will find a
surer proof of the existence of a life within, than even
in this record of his deliberate and devotional mind.
What this record now suggests to us is that the personal
life which it reveals had a foundation in some personal
and moral crisis. The truth and light came to him when
he was ' drowned in ignorance,' and the change cannot
have originated in any fancy as to his own predestina
tion, or in any foresight by himself of his own public
services. The foundation, as it is put by Knox, was
deeper, and was, in his view, common to him with all
Christian men. It is a transaction of the individual
with the Divine, in which the man comes to God by
' true faith.' And this faith is, or ought to be, absolute
and assured, simply because it is faith in the offer and
promise of God himself in his Evangel. This was the
teaching of Wishart, as it had been of Patrick Hamilton
before him. It was the teaching which Hamilton had
*< Works,' vi. 483.

30 FAMOUS SCOTS
derived from Luther, and Wishart from both Luther and
the Reformers of Switzerland. Later on, when the minor
differences between the two schools of Protestantism
had declared themselves, it might fairly be said that
Knox, and with him Scotland, founded their religion
not so much (with Luther) on the central doctrine of
immediate access to God through his promise, as (with
Calvin) on the more general doctrine of the immediate
authority of God through his word. But the former —
the Evangel — was the original life and light of the
Reformation everywhere, and its glow as of ' glad con
fident morning ' now flushed the whole sky of Western
Europe.* Knox himself always preached it, and on the
day before his death he let fall an expression which
indicates that his acceptance of it had rescued him
at this very date from the tossings of an inward sea.
' Go, read where I cast my first anchor ! ' he said to his
wife. 'And so she read the seventeenth of John's
Gospel.' Now the ' Evangel of John ' was what Knox
tells us he taught from day to day in the chapel, within
the Castle of St Andrews, at a certain hour ; and when
* ' The end and intent of the Scripture,' according to the
translation by George Wishart, Knox's earliest master, of the First
Helvetic or Swiss Confession, is, ' to declare that God is benevolent
and friendly-minded to mankind ; and that he hath declared that
kindness in and through Jesu Christ, his only Son ; the which
kindness is received by faith ; but this faith is effectuous through
charity, and expressed in an innocent life.' And even more
strikingly, the very first question of the famous Palatinate Catechism
for Churches and Schools, though that catechism is Calvinistic in its
conception rather than Lutheran, and came out so late as 1563,
bursts out as follows : —
' What is thy only comfort in life and death ?
' Ans. That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am
not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, who
with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and
redeemed me from all the power of the Devil.'

JOHN KNOX 31
on entering the city he took up this hook of the New
Testament, he took it up at the point 'where he left
at his departure from Longniddry where before his
residence was,' and whither Wishart had sent him back
to his pupils a year before. And of all parts of this
Evangel, the rock-built anchorage of the seventeenth
chapter may surely best claim to be that commemorated
in Knox's stately and dehberate words.
But these conjectures must not make us forget the
fact that Knox himself places an undoubted and great
crisis at the threshold of his public life. His teach
ing in 1547 of John's Gospel, and of a certain
'catechism,' though carried on within the walls, some
times of the chapel, and sometimes of the parish kirk,
of St Andrews, was supposed to be private or tutorial.
Soon, however, the more influential men there urged him
' that he would take the preaching place upon him. But
he utterly refused, alleging that he would not run where
God had not called him. . . . Whereupon, they privily
among themselves advising, having with them in council
Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, they concluded that
they would give a charge to the said John, and that
publicly by the mouth of their preacher.' And so, after a
sermon turning on the power of the church or con
gregation to call men to the ministry,
' The said John Rough, preacher, directed his words to the said
John Knox, saying, " Brother, ye shall not be offended, albeit that
I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those
that are here present, which is this : In the name of God, and ol
His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call
you by my mouth, I charge you that you refuse not this holy voca
tion, but . . . that you take upon you the public office and charge
of preaching, even as you look to avoid God's heavy displeasure, and
desire that He shall multiply His graces with you," And in the
end, he said to those that were present, " Was not this your charge
to me ? And do ye not approve this vocation ? " They answered,
"It was: and we approve it." Whereat the said John, abashed.

32 FAMOUS SCOTS
burst forth in most abundant tears, and withdrew himself to his
chamber. His countenance and behaviour, from that day till the
day that he was compelled to present himself to the public place
of preaching, did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his
heart ; for no man saw any sign of mirth in him, neither yet had he
pleasure to accompany any man, many days together. ' *
There is no reason to think that Knox exaggerates the
importance of this scene in his own history. A man has
but one life, and the choosing even of his secular work
in it is sometimes so difficult as to make him welcome
any external compulsion. But the necessity of an
external and even a divine vocation, in order to
justify a man's devoting his life to handling things
divine, has long been a tradition of the Christian
Church — and especially of the Scottish church, which
in its parts, and as a whole, has been repeatedly con
vulsed by this question of 'The Call.' And in
Knox's time, as in the earliest age of Christianity,
what is now a tradition was a very stern fact. The
men who were thus calling him knew well, and Knox
himself, more clear of vision than any of them, knew
better, that what they were inviting him to was in all
probability a violent death. Rough himself perished in
the flames at Smithfield; and four months after this
vocation Knox was sitting chained and half-naked in
the galleys at Rouen, under the lash of a French slave-
driver. He did not perhaps himself always remember
how the future then appeared to him. Old men looking
back upon their past are apt 'to see in their life the
story of their life,' and the Reformer, after his later
amazing victories, sometimes speaks as if these had
been his in hope, or even in promise, from the outset
of his career. But it is plain to us now, as we study
his letters in those early years, that he was repeatedly
brought to accept what we know to have been the real
• 'Works,' i. 187.

JOHN KNOX 33
probability — viz., that, while the ultimate triumph of the
Evangel would be secure, it might be brought about only
after his own failure and ruin. Such were the alterna
tives which Knox — a man of undoubted sensitiveness
and tenderness, and who describes himself as naturally
' fearful ' * — had to ponder during those days of seclusion
at St Andrews. Of one thing he had no doubt. The
call, if once he accepted it, was irrevocable ; f and he
must thenceforward go straight on, abandoning the many
resources of silence and of flight which might still be
open to a private man.
But this was not all. It would be doing injustice to
Knox, and to our materials, to suppose that personal
considerations were the only ones which pressed upon
* On his death-bed. The Regent Morton's famous epitaph spoken
by Knox's grave, is an imperfect echo of what the Reformer ten
days before, in bidding farewell to the Kirk (Session) of Edinburgh,
had said of his own past career : — ' In respect that he bore God's
message, to whom he must make account for the same, he (albeit he
was weak and an unworthy creature, and a fearful man) feared not
the faces of men.' — ' Works,' vi. 637.
t One of the most eloquent documents of the time is the address
in 1565 to the half-starved ministers of the Kirk (inspired and
perhaps written by Knox), urging that having put their hands to the
plough, they could not look back : —
' God hath honoured us so, that men have judged us the messengers
of the Everlasting. By us hath He disclosed idolatry, by us are the
wicked of the world rebuked, and by us hath our God comforted the
consciences of many. . . . And shall we for poverty leave the flock
of Jesus Christ before that it utterly refuse us ? . . . The price of
Jesus Christ, his death and passion, is committed to our charge, the
eyes of men are bent upon us, and we must answer before that Judge.
... He preserved us in the darkness of our mothers' bosom, He
provided our food in their breasts, and instructed us to use the same,
when we knew Him not, He hath nourished us in the time of blind-
ness and of impiety ; and will He now despise us, when we call
upon Him, and preach the glorious Gospel of His dear Son our
Lord Jesus ? '— ' Works,' vi. 425.
4 c

34 FAMOUS SCOTS
him in this crisis. He never, in any circumstances,
could have been a man of ,'a private spirit,' and his
present call was expressly to bear the public burden.
But the burden so proposed was overwhelming. Was
it by his mouth that his countrymen were to be urged
to expose themselves, individually, to certain danger and
possible ruin ? Was it upon his initiative that his country
was to be divided, distracted, and probably destroyed —
deprived of its old faith, severed from its old alliances,
and hurled into revolt from its five hundred years of
Christian peace?* The risk to his country was extreme.
And if, by some marvellous conspiration of providences,
Scotland passed through all this without ruin, was
Knox prepared to face the more tremendous respon
sibilities of success ? Did he hear in that hour the
voice by which leaders of Movements in later days have
been chilled, ' Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst
not rule?' For if we assume that he felt entitled to
throw back this weight of leadership upon God and
God's Evangel, the question still remained. Was even the
Evangel strong enough to bear this burden of a nation's
future ? That it was able to guide and save the indi
vidual man, through all changes and chances of this life
* Seven years after this time, Knox, writing from abroad to ' his
sisters in Edinburgh,' tells of the ' cogitations ' which God permitted
Satan even at that late date to put into his mind —
' Shall Christ, the author of peace, concord, and quietness, be
preached where war is proclaimed, sedition engendered, and tumults
appear to rise. Shall not His Evangel be accused as the cause of
all calamity which is like to follow ? What comfort canst thou have
to see the one-half of the people rise up against the other ; yea, to
jeopard the one to murder and destroy the other? But above all,
what joy shall it be to thy heart to behold with thine eyes thy native
country betrayed into the hands of strangers, which to no man's
judgment can be avoided, because they who ought to defend it and
the liberties thereof are so blind, dull, and obstinate that they will
not see their own destruction?' — ' Works,' iv. 251.

JOHN KNOX 35
and the life beyond, Knox may have been assured. But
the questions which rose behind were those of Church
organisation and social reconstruction. Was it possible,
and was it lawful, to accept the existing Church system,
in whole or in part, and to build upon that ? And if this
was impossible, if Christ's Church must go back to the
Divine foundation in His new-discovered Word, was
that Word sufficient, not for foundation merely, but for
all superstructure — for doctrine, discipline, and worship
alike ? Or would the Church be entitled to impose its
own wise and reasonable additions to the recovered
statute-book of Scripture ? Lastly, if such a new Church
shone already in ' devout imagination ' before Knox, he
must have also had some forecast of its new relations
to feudal and royal Scotland. Was he to plead merely
for freedom, under a neutral civil authority? Or in
the event of the chiefs of the nation, or some of them,
individually adopting the new faith, were they to
adopt it for themselves alone; or for subjects and
vassals too, as under the former regime? And were
they to enforce it, by feudal or royal or even legisla
tive authority, on unwilling subjects and unwilhng
vassals too ?
I think it clear that all these questions must have "
passed before the mind of Knox during that week of
agitated seclusion within the castle walls. Not only so.
There is evidence in his own writings that when at the
close of that time he came forth to take up the public
work, he had already formed his conclusions as to all the
main principles on which it was to proceed. And from
these he never afterwards varied. Thirteen years were
still to elapse before they resulted in Scotland in a
religious revolution ; and during those years of wander
ing and exile Knox learned much from the wisest and
best of the new leaders — much from them ; and much,
too, from his own experience, which he was in the future

36 FAMOUS SCOTS
to reduce to details of practice. Butjiis_grin^ples.were
the same from the first. He believed fundamentally in
tEe^gracious Word of God revealed to man, as over
riding and over-ruling all other authorities. His first
sermon denounced the whole existing church system as
an Anti-Christian substitute, interposed between man
and that original message. But, strange to say, the part of
the discourse which at once aroused controversy was his
sweeping denial of the Church's right to institute cere
monies, the ground of denial being that 'man may
neither make nor devise a religion that is acceptable to
God.' He was thus Protestant and Puritan* from the
first, as his master Wishart was before him, and his choice
had now to be made according to his convictions. We,
looking back upon the past at our ease, may recognise
that on some of these matters he was too hasty in his
conclusions — especially in his conclusions as to his
* The two sources which, next to his own report of this sermon,
best indicate his earliest standpoint, are (i) the (second) Basel Con
fession — better known as the First Confession of Helvetia — which
Wishart had brought with him from the Continent, and before his
death had translated into English, and which Knox, therefore, must
have known and may have used ; and (2) the treatise of his friend, the
layman and lawyer, Balnaves, written two years later, and which
Knox then sent from Rouen to St Andrews with his own approval
and abridgement. The former is distinctly ' Reformed ' and Puritan,
and lays down that all ceremonies, other than the two instituted
sacraments and preaching, ' as vessels, garments, wax-lights, altars,'
are unprofitable, and ' serve to subvert the true religion ' ; while
Balnaves repeats the more fundamental principle of Knox's sermon
(that all religion which is ' not commanded,' or which is ' invented '
with the best motives, is wrong). And both treatises shew that
Knox must have had also before him from the first the thorny ques
tion of the relation of the Church and the private Christian to the
civil magistrate — for both solve it, like Knox himself (but unlike
Luther in his original Confession of Augsburg), by giving the
Magistrate sweeping and intolerant powers of reforming alike the
religion and the Church.

JOHN KNOX 37
opponents, and the duty towards them which the party
now oppressed would have, in the unlikely event of its
coming into power. But we are bound to remember —
Knox himself insists upon it — that he did not take up
the function of guide to his people at his own hand, or
accept it at his own leisure. He was suddenly called
upon in God's name to accept or refuse an almost hope
less task, but one in which success and failure involved
the greatest alternatives to him. That preaching the
Gospel to which he was called, if it meant on the one
hand, in the event of failure, exile or death, meant on
the other, in case of success, the salvation of a whole
people now sitting in darkness. But he had to accept
the task as a whole or to refuse it ; and his conclusions
as to what that task involved were fused into unity — in
some respects into premature unity — in the glow of a
supreme moral trial. For the week of deliberation before
he emerged as the teacher of the Congregation was
certainly not spent upon detailed difficulties either of
future legislation or present consistency. It prolonged
itself rather in poise and struggle against the more
obvious and tremendous obstacles, reinforced no doubt
by a thousand more remote behind them. But the
ultimate question was whether the gigantic strain of all
of these combined would be too much for an anchor
dropped by one strong hand into the depths of the
Evangel. And so that week saved a nation — perhaps a man.
For I think it quite a possible thing that this crisis
in St Andrews, the only one recorded or even suggested
by Knox himself, may have been the one personal crisis
of his life. I cannot indeed say with Carlyle, that
before this Knox 'seemed well content to guide his
own steps by the light of the Reformation, nowise un
duly intruding it on others . . . resolute he to walk
by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it ;

38 FAMOUS SCOTS
not ambitious of more, not fancying himself capable of
more.'* Of all men living or dead, this is the one
whom it is most impossible to think of as acquiescing
in such an easy relation to those around him, or even
as attempting so to acquiesce — at least without inward
self-question and torture. We must remember that
Knox had undoubtedly before this time embraced the
doctrinal system of the Reformation, no doubt in the
form taught by Wishart. And a catechism of that doc
trine, perhaps founded upon or identical with that which
Wishart brought from Basel, he gave to his East Lothian
pupils. Long before his external ' call ' at St Andrews,
the inward impulse to preach the message to his
fellow-men, and to champion their right to receive
it, must have pressed upon his conscience. Was
this pearl worth the price of selling all to buy it?
And was such a price demanded of him individu
ally? If these questions were still unanswered — for
that they had been put, and put incessantly, I have no
doubt — then the Knox whom we know was still waiting to
be born, and the representative of Scotland was like Scot
land itself, ' as yet without a soul.' t He had carried a
sword before Wishart, and he and the gentlemen of East
Lothian would have defended their saintly guest at the
peril of their lives. He had been followed thereafter
by the persecution of his bishop, until he made up his
mind for exile in Germany (rather than in England,
where he heard that the Romish doctrine flourished
under Royal Supremacy). And after the 'slaughter of
the Cardinal,' he took refuge within the strong walls of
the vacant castle, like other men whose sympathies made
them, in the quaint words of the chronicler, J 'suspect
themselves guilty of the death ' of Beaton, though they
might not have known of it before the fact. But all
* ' Lectures on Heroes : The Hero as Priest.'
t Carlyle, as above. J Lindsay of Pitscottie.

JOHN KNOX 39
this Knox might conceivably have done, and still have
borne about with him a troubled and divided mind, until
the address of Rough flashed out upon his conscience
his true vocation, and sent him in tears and solitude to
make proof of the Evangel — and of the Evangel in that
form which takes hold of both eternities. This final crisis
may thus have been the only one. And if it were so,
Knox would not be the first man who has found in self-
consecration a new birth ; nor the first prophet whose
' Here am I ' has been answered by fire from the altar
and the assurance that iniquity is purged.
But even if we assume, what is more probable, that
the crisis in St Andrews was not the first, but the second,
in Knox's religious life, the result for the purposes of
critical biography is the same. For the later crisis re
sumed and gathered up into itself, on a higher plane,
and with more intensity, the elements of the change
which went before. It was, on this assumption, a new
call ; and a call to higher and public work. But it was
a call in the same name, and to the same man, to do
new work on the strength of principles and motives to
which he had already committed himself. It was, in
short, a greater strain, but upon the fust anchor.
This point has acquired more importance since Carlyle,
and so many of us who follow him as admirers of Knox,
have adopted the modern trick of speech of calling him
a Prophet to his time. It is assumed that Knox took
the same view,* and that he held himself to have had,
* Thus, Mrs M'Cunn, in her charming volume on Knox as a.
' Leader of Religion,' says that he ' constantly claimed the position
accorded to the Hebrew prophets, and claimed it on the same
grounds as they.' And even Dr Hume Brown, when narrating Knox's
refusal in the Galleys to kiss the ' Idol ' presented to him, adds :
< It is in such passages as these that we see how completely Knox
identified his action with that of the Hebrew prophets ' (vol. i. 84),
the passage founded upon being one in which Knox points out that

40 FAMOUS SCOTS
if not a prophet's supernatural endowment and vocation,
at least a special mission and an extraordinary call.
The question is complicated by other things than the
special and extraordinary work which he, in point of
fact, achieved. We find that, in the course of that
work, Knox, a man of piercing intuitions in personal
and public matters, repeatedly committed himself to judg
ments, and even predictions, which were unexpectedly
verified. And some of these he himself regarded, as we
have seen already in his deliberate Meditation, as not
intuitions merely, but private intimations given by God
to his own heart and mind. Naturally, too, a man of
Knox's devout and yet passionate temper was disposed
to lay as much stress upon these incidents as they would
bear ; while the marvel-mongers around him, and in the
next generation, went farther still. But the main fact
to remember is, that Knox all his life insisted that such
incidents, whatever their occasional value, were no part
of his original mission, and were outside the bounds of
his life-long vocation. The passage in which he is dis
posed to make most of them is the following ; and it is
worth quoting also, because of the striking terms in
which he incidentally describes his real work and per
manent call. He is explaining why, after twenty years'
preaching, he has never published even a sermon, and
now publishes one with nothing but wholesome ad-
' the same obedience that God required of his people Israel,' even
in idolatrous Babylon, was required by Him of the ' Scottish men '
in France, and was actually given by ' that whole number during
the time of their bondage,' not merely by the one unnamed prisoner
who flung the painted ' board ' into the Loire. One reason why the
prisoner is unnamed is no doubt that here, as in a hundred other
places more explicitly, Knox would impress us with the feeling that
no other or higher obedience in such matters is required of minister
or prophet or apostle, than is required of the humblest nian or the.
youngest child in ' God's people.

JOHN KNOX 41
monitions for the time. (This wholesome sermon was
the one which so much offended Darnley.)
' Considering 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 : seeing that so much is
written (and that by men of most singular condition), and yet so
little well observed ; I decreed to contain myself within the bonds
[bounds?] of that vocation, whereunto I found myself specially
called. I dare not deny (lest that in so doing I should be injurious
to the giver), but that God hath revealed to me secrets unknown to
the world ; and also that he hath made my tongue a trumpet, to
forewarn realms and nations, yea, certain great personages, of
translations and changes, when no such things were feared, nor yet
were appearing ; a portion whereof cannot the world deny (be it
never so blind) to be fulfilled, and the rest, alas ! I fear shall follow
with greater expedition, and in more full perfection, than my sorrow
ful heart desireth. Those revelations and assurances notwithstand
ing, I did ever abstain to commit anything to writ, contented only
to have obeyed the charge of Him who commanded me to cry.' *
And when he did ' cry,' from the pulpit or elsewhere,""
he was careful to found his claim to be heard, not on
private intimations, but on God's open word. As early
as 1554 he denounces judgment to come upon England
(which, by the way, was not fulfilled in the sense which
he expected), but he adds immediately —
' This my affirmation proceedeth, not from any conjecture of
man's fantasy, but from the ordinary course of God's judgments
against manifest contemners of his precepts from the beginning ; ' t
and more fully in another contemporary document —
' But ye would know the grounds of my certitude : God grant
that hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the
same. My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the
dark sentences of profane prophesies; but, I. the plain truth of
* ' Works,' vi. 230. + ' Works,' iii. 245.

42 FAMOUS SCOTS
God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and 3.
the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from the begin
ning, are my assurance and grounds.' *
This was early in his career. At its close Knox, now
very frail, was deeply aggrieved by the troubles caused
by Lethington and Kirkaldy, who held the castle of
Edinburgh. His verbal predictions of their coming end,
as reported (after the event however) by those around
his deathbed, and his assurance at the same time of
' mercy to the soul ' of the chivalrous Kirkaldy, are
among the most striking incidents of this kind in his
life. But in his Will, written contemporaneously on
13th May 1572, he says,
' I am not ignorant that many would that I should enter into
particular determination of these present troubles ; to whom I
plainly and simply answer, that, as I never exceeded the bounds of
God's Scriptures, so will I not do, in this part, by God's grace.' +
This did not prevent him from freely describing his old
friends in the Castle as murderers, and predicting their
destruction, especially as they seemed now to be planning
a counter-revolution in the interest of the exiled Queen
of Scots. They retorted by accusing him, among other
things, of prejudging her and ' entering into God's secret
counsel.' Knox roused himself to answer the charges
in detail. But there remained, he adds,
' One thing that is most bitter to me, and most fearful, if that my
accusers were able to prove their accusation, to wit, that I proudly
and arrogantly entered into God's secret counsel, as if I were called
thereto. God be merciful to my accusators, of their rash and un
godly judgment ! If they understood how fearful my conscience is,
and ever has been, to exceed the bounds of my vocation, they
would not so boldly have accused me. I am not ignorant that the
secrets of God appertain to Himself alone : but things revealed in
His law appertain to us and our children for ever. What I have
spoken against the adultery, against the murder, against the pride,
* ' Works,' iii. 169. + ' Works,' vi. p. Ivi.

JOHN KNOX 43
and against the idolatry of that wicked woman, I spake not as one
that entered into God's secret counsel, but being one (of God's
great mercy) called to preach according to His blessed virill, revealed
in His most holy word.' *
The old man's irritation was most natural. For,
on the one hand, his accusers had hit a blot. He
was sometimes extremely dogmatic, imperious, and
rash in his application of ' God's revealed will ' both
to persons and things. But the form in which they
put it — that he posed as a prophet, as one having a
special message from God's secret counsel, instead of
a general commission to proclaim that revealed will —
was not only false, but struck at the roots of his whole
life and work. It is demonstrable that from Knox's
first teaching in East Lothian and first preaching in St
Andrews onwards, the meaning of both teaching and
preaching was a call to the common Scottish man, and
to every man, to go to God direct without any inter
mediation except God's open word.f And I think it
plain that this direct and divine call to all was not only
the meaning but the strength of the message in Scotland
as elsewhere. It seems to us now as if the burden
which it laid on the individual — on frail and feeble
women, for example, in that time of persecution — was
overwhelming. It is most pathetic to find Knox, when
sitting down to write tender and consoling messages to
those in such circumstances, pre-occupied with urging
the obligation of each one of them individually to hold
fast, against possible torture or death, that which each
one had individually received. But he never shrank
from it, or from pointing out that such relation to
* ' Works,' vi, 592.
+ The right of every man to do so, and his duty to do so, were
both there : the only question might be whether, of the two, the right
to do it (as with Luther), or the duty to do it (as with Calvin] was
first and fundamental.

44 FAMOUS SCOTS
God himself was the noblest privilege. And the evi
dence is plain that all over the Europe of that age
this reception of a Divine message direct to the indi
vidual, in the newly opened Scriptures, was, not a
burden, but a source of incomparable energy and ex
hilaration — alike to men and women, to the simple and
the learned, to the young and — stranger still — to the old.
Knox knew it ; and he knew that his claiming a special
message or ambassadorship would be, not so much
' exceeding the bounds ' of his vocation, as denying it
altogether. He was imperious and dogmatic by nature ;
and he took these natural qualities with him into his
new work. But he would have shuddered at the idea of
formally interposing his own personality between the
hearers of that time and the message which they re
ceived. And he would have regarded the office of a
mere prophet — the bearer, that is, of a special message,
even though that message be divine — as a degradation,
if, in order to attain it, he had to lay down the preaching
of ' that doctrine and that heavenly religion, whereof it
hath pleased His merciful providence to make me, among
others, a simple soldier and witness-bearer unto men.' *
Does it follow that Knox — who thus rejected strongly
the idea of being a prophet to his time, and insisted
instead upon his merely receiving and transmitting the
one message which was common to all — that this man
was therefore little more to his age than any other
might be ? By no means. The same message comes
to all men in an age, and is received by many, but it
is received by each in a different way.f And the way
in which this message was then received by one man in
East Lothian made all the difference to Scotland, and
perhaps to Europe. It must not be forgotten, indeed,
that the result of it upon Knox himself was to transform
him. So certain is this that some have felt as if this
* 'Works,' iii. 155. + Recipitur in modum recipientis.

JOHN KNOX 45
were the case of one who, up to about his fortieth year,
was an ordinary, commonplace, and representative Scots
man, and was thereafter changed utterly, but only by
being filled with the sacred fire of conviction. This is
only about half the truth, though it is an important half
— to Knox himself by far the more important. But it is
not the whole, and it is far from the whole for us. The
author who has enabled us to see his own confused and
changing age under ' the broad clear light of that wonder
ful book'* the ' History of the Reformation in Scotland,'
and who outside that book was the utterer of many an-
armed and winged word which pursues and smites us to
this day, must have been born with nothing less than
genius — genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge.
Even had he written as a mere recluse and critic,
looking out upon his world from a monk's cell or from
the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness,
the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there.
But Knox's genius was predominantly practical ; and the
difference between the transformation which befell him,
and that which changed so many other men in his time,
was that in Knox's case it changed one who was born
to be a statesman. He probably never would have be
come one, but for the light which for him as for the others
made all things new. But in the others it resulted in a
self-consecration whose outlook was chiefly upon the
next world, and in the present was doubtfully bounded
by possible martyrdom and possible evasion or escape.
In the case of Knox the instinctive outlook was not for
himself only, but for others and for his country. And
while he saw from the first, far more clearly than they,
the embattled strength of the forces with which they all
* John Hill Burton's ' History of Scotland,' iii. 339. He adds,
' There certainly is in the English language no other parallel to it
in the clearness, vigour, and picturesqueness with which it renders
the history of a stirring period.'

46 FAMOUS SCOTS
had to contend, the unbending will of this man rejected
all idea of concession or compromise, evasion or escape.
And his native sagacity (made keener as well as more
comprehensive now that it looked down from that re
mote and stormless anchorage), revealed to him that
there was at least the possibility of the mightiest earthly
fabric breaking up before him in unexpected collapse.
Our conclusion then must be that the call which
Knox received was one common to him with every man
and woman of that time — to accept the Evangel — and
common to him with every preacher of that time — to
preach the Evangel ; but that this man's large concep
tion of what such a call practically meant, not for
himself alone, but for all around him and for his
country, made it from the first for him a pubhc call,
and compelled him to hear in the invitation of the St
Andrews congregation the divine commission for his
life-long work. From the first, and in conception as
well as execution, that work was great and revolutionary.
And from the first, and in its very plan, it involved
serious errors. But Knox himself, in this and every
stage of his career, claimed to be judged by no lower
tribunal than that Authority whose dread and strait
command he at the first accepted. And if there are
some things in that career which his country has simply
to forgive, we shall not reckon among these the original
resolve of that day in St Andrews — a resolve which
has made Knox more to Scotland ' than any million of
unblameable Scotchmen who need no forgiveness.'
But there are few who will doubt the sincerity, or the
strength, of the impulse which launched Knox upon his
public career. There are many however who, recog
nising that he was a great public man, doubt persistently
whether he was anything more. They are not satisfied
with the evidence of trumpet-tones from the pulpit, or

JOHN KNOX 47
of solemn and passionate prayer at some crisis of a
career. These are part of the furniture of the orator,
the statesman, and the prophet. Was there a private
life at all, as distinguished from the inner side of that
which was public ? And was that private life genuine and
tender and strong ? Have we another window into this
man's breast — opening in this case, not upwards and God-
wards, but towards the men — or women — around him ?
We have : and it is fortunate that the evidence on this
subject is found, not at a late date in Knox's life, as is
the Meditation of 1565, but close to the threshold of
his career.

CHAPTER III
THE INNER LIFE : HIS WOMEN FRIENDS
Before the age with which we are dealing there was,
throughout Europe, a certain barrier between the religious
life on the one hand and the domestic and private life
— the ordinary vie intime — on the other. Among the
men and women of the new era that barrier was broken
down. The religious was no longer a recognised class :
religion was no longer a luxury for the few, or to be
partaken of in sacred places and at fixed days and hours.
The common man, if a Christian man at all, was to be
so now in his common and daily life, living it out from
day to day on the deepest principles and from the
highest motives. And the Christian woman, having a
similar and an equal vocation, undertook the like respon
sibilities. But her responsibihties were in that age of
transition very perplexing, and more than ever invited
friendly counsel and pastoral care. Now what was John
Knox's private life? He was twice married, and we
know from his correspondence that even before his first
marriage there were women of high position and character
to whom he sustained what may be called personal and
pastoral relations. Have we any documents from that
time by which to illustrate, and perhaps to test, the
principles of his inward and personal life, before we go
on to find these written large in the scroll of his country's
history ?
Norham Castle, near Berwick, is still a very striking
pile, especially to those who come upon it, as the writer
43

JOHN KNOX 49
did, after four days leisurely walking down the banks of
the great border river. Every curve of the stream had
its natural beauty intertwined with some association of
history or the poets, from the first morning on Neidpath
Fell, to the fourth evening when
' Day set on Norham's castled steep.
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep.
And Cheviot's mountains lone.
The battled towers, the donjon keep.
The loophole grates where captives weep.
The flanking walls that round it sweep ' —
are all still there, though the inmates are no longer
captives. Norham is, indeed, best known as the scene
of the whole of the first canto of ' Marmion.' In
that poem Sir Hugh the Heron is supposed to have
been Lord of it, while his wife is away in Scotland,
prepared to sing ballads of Lochinvar to the ill-fated
King on his last evening in Holyrood. But when
Knox, delivered from the galleys, preached in Berwick
in 1549, the Captain of the Hold of Norham, only
six miles off, was Richard Bowes. And his lady, born
Elizabeth Aske, and co-heiress of Aske in Yorkshire
(already an elderly woman and mother of fifteen chil
dren), became Knox's chief friend, and after he left
Berwick for Newcastle his correspondent, chiefly as to
her religious troubles. Most of the letters of Knox to
her which are preserved are in the year 1553, and one
of the earliest of these acknowledges a communication
' from you and my dearest spouse.' This means that
Marjory Bowes, the fifth daughter in that large house
hold, had already been sponsa or betrothed, with her
mother's consent, to the Scottish preacher. Knox,
now forty-eight years old, had recently declined an
English bishopric, offered him through the Duke of
Northumberland, but was still chaplain to the King.
4 D

50 FAMOUS SCOTS
A letter to Marjory, undated, follows, in which he ex
plains to his 'dearly beloved sister' some passages of
Scripture, and adds — ' The Spirit of God shall instruct
your heart what is most comfortable to the troubled
conscience of your mother.' This communication ends
with the subdued or sly postscript, ' I think this be the
first letter that ever I wrote to you.' * In July, while
Knox was in London, Mary Tudor ascended the throne,
and everything began to look threatening. In Sep
tember Knox acknowledges the ' boldness and con
stancy' of Mrs Bowes in pushing his cause with her
husband, who was as yet ' unconvinced in religion,' but
he urges her not to trouble herself too much in the
matter. He would himself press for the betrothal being
changed into marriage, or at least acknowledged. ' It
becomes me now to jeopard my life for the comfort and
deliverance of my own flesh, as that I will do by God's
grace ; both fear and friendship of all earthly creature
laid aside.'t Mrs Bowes suggested that, in addition to
writing her husband, he should lay his case before an
elder brother. Sir Robert Bowes, Warden of the Marches,
who seems to have acted as head of the family. Sir
Robert turned out to be more hostile to the perilous
aUiance proposed for his niece than even her father ;
and Knox wrote that 'his disdainful, yea, despiteful
words have so pierced my heart that my life is bitter
unto me.' When Knox was about to have 'declared
his heart ' in the whole matter, Sir Robert interrupted
him with, ' Away with your rhetorical reasons ! for I
will not be persuaded with them.' Knox, indignant,
predicted to the mother of his betrothed that ' the days
should be few that England should give me bread,' | but
adds again, ' Be sure I will not forget you and your
company so long as mortal man may remember any
* ' Works,' iii. 395. t ' Works,' iii. 376. J ' Works,' iii. 378.

JOHN KNOX SI
earthly creature.'* He escaped from England very
soon, and not till September 1555 did he return, and
that on Mrs Bowes' invitation ; and with the result that
he brought off to Geneva, where he was now pastor of a
distinguished English colony, not only his wife Marjory,
but his wife's mother too. Here his two sons, Nathaniel
and Eleazar, afterwards students at Cambridge and
ministers of the Church of England, were born. But in
1559 wife and mother-in-law accompanied or followed
him from the Continent to Edinburgh. During the
anxious and critical winter which followed, Mrs Knox
seems to have acted as her husband's amanuensis, but
' the rest of my wife hath been so unrestful since her
arriving here, that scarcely could she tell upon the
morrow what she wrote at night.' t Next year brought
victory and peace, but too late for her ; for in December
1 560, about the time when the first General Assembly was
sitting in Edinburgh, Knox's wife died. We learn this
from the ' History of the Reformation,' in which Knox
records a meeting of that date between himself and the
two foremost nobles of Scotland, Chatelherault and
Moray, upon public affairs, ' he upon the one part com
forting them, and they upon the other part comforting him,
for he was in no small heaviness by reason of the late
death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes.' J And of
her we have no further record, except Calvin's epithet of
suavissima,% and her husband's repetition years after, in
his Last Will, of the 'benediction that their dearest
mother left ' to her two sons, ' whereto, now as then, I
from my troubled heart say. Amen.' ||
Four years passed, and Knox, still minister of Edin
burgh, and now in his fifty-ninth year, was seen riding
home with a second wife, 'not Uke a prophet or old
decrepit priest as he was,' said his Catholic adversaries,
• • Works,' iii. 358. t ' Works,' vi. 104. t ' Works,' ii. 138.
§ ' Calvini Epistolae,' Ep. 306. || ' Works,' vi. p. Ivii.

52 FAMOUS SCOTS
'but with his bands of taffetie fastened with golden
rings.' The lady for whom he put on this state was
Margaret Stewart, the daughter of his friend Lord Ochil
tree, and the same critics assure us that ' by sorcery and
witchcraft he did so allure that poor gentlewoman, that
she could not live without him.' Queen Mary was
angry when she heard of it, because the bride ' was of
the blood,' i.e. related to the Royal house; and even
Knox's friends did not like his union at that age with a
girl of seventeen. Young Mrs Knox seems, however,
to have played her part well, especially as mother of
three daughters ; she tended their father carefully in his
last illness ; and no one will regret that two years after
his death she made a more suitable marriage as to years
with Andrew Ker of Faudonside, one of the fierce band
whose daggers had clashed ten years before in the body
of David Rizzio.
Knox's liking for feminine society, and his suspicion
that he had more qualifications for it than the world
has beheved, come out sometimes in a casual way. After
one of his famous interviews with Queen Mary, he was
ordered to wait her pleasure in the ante-room.
'The said John stood in the chamber, as one whom men had
never seen (so were all afraid), except that the Lord Ochiltree bare
him company ; and therefore began he to forge talking of the ladies
who were there sitting iii all their gorgeous apparel ; which espied,
he merrily said, " O fair ladies, how pleasing were this life of yours
if it should ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to
heaven with all this gay gear. But fye upon that knave Death,
that will come whether we will or not ! And when he has laid on
his arrest, the foul worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so
fair and so tender ; and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that
it can neither carry with it gold, garnassing, targetting, pearl, nor
precious stones." And by such means procured he the company of
women.' These moralities, however merrily intended and at

JOHN KNOX S3
the time successful, would have perhaps been more
appropriate in the Forest of Arden or the graveyard of
Hamlet, than among the four Maries in Holyrood ; and
for anything that is to be of autobiographical value we
must go elsewhere and go deeper. His wives contribute
nothing ; we may hope that they were as happy as the
countries which have no history. And if that is too much
to belieye — or too little to hope — we shall find enough
in the next few pages to satisfy us that they had near
them in all their trials a strong and tender heart. But
of their inward troubles, and of the sympathy these
may have drawn forth, Knox is not the historian — he
refuses to be the historian even of his own inner life.
He unfolds himself in writing only to the women who
are in trouble, and at a distance. And the only con
cession to domesticity is in the fact that his chief corre
spondent is, if not a wife, a prospective mother-in-law.
The letters to her are the most important of all,
and the following extract is from one published among
the letters of 1553 as 'The First to Mrs Bowes.' It
was by no means the first, even in that year ; but it is
the one which Knox himself long afterwards selected as
the first for republication and as best illustrating the
original relation between himself and the lady recently
deceased. In it he had said, writing from London to
Norham : —
' Since the first day that it pleased the providence of God to bring
you and me into familiarity, I have always delighted in your com
pany ; and when labour would permit, you know that I have not
spared hours to talk and commune with you, the fruit whereof I did not
then fully understand nor perceive. But now absent, and so absent
that by corporal presence neither of us can receive comfort of other,
I call to mind how that ofttimes when, with dolorous hearts, we
have begun our talking, God hath sent great comfort unto both,
which for my own part I commonly want. The exposition of your
troubles, and acknowledging of your infirmity, were first unto me a
very mirror and glass wherein I beheld myself so rightly painted forth

S4 FAMOUS SCOTS
that nothing could be more evident to my own eyes. And then the
searching of the Scriptures for God's sweet promises, and for his
mercies freely given unto miserable offenders — (for his nature
delighteth to shew mercy where most misery reigneth) — the col
lection and applying of God's mercies, I say, were unto me as the
breaking and handling with my own hands of the most sweet and
delectable unguents, whereof I could not but receive some com
fort by their natural sweet odours.' *
The sympathy that flows through this beautiful
passage comes out very strongly in another written in
bodily illness. His importunate correspondent had
proposed to call for him in Newcastle that very day.
Knox suggests to-morrow instead.
' This day ye know to be the day of my study and prayer unto
God ; yet if your trouble be intolerable, or if ye think my presence
may release your pain, do as the Spirit shall move you, for you
know that I will be offended with nothing that you do in God's
name. And O, how glad would I be to feed the hungry and give
medicine to the sick 1 Your messenger found me in bed, after a
sore trouble and most dolorous night, and so dolour may complain
to dolour when we two meet.' +
Another letter, also to Mrs Bowes, is from London,
and reveals a very remarkable scene. He acknowledges
receiving one letter from Marjory, and one from her
mother, the latter, as usual, full of complaint.
' The very instant hour that your letter was presented unto me, was
I talking of you, by reason that three honest poor women were come
to me, and were complaining their great infirmity, and were showing
unto me the great assaults of the enemy, and I was opening the
cause and commodities thereof, whereby all our eyes wept at once ;
and I was praying unto God that ye and some others had been
there with me for the space of two hours. And even at that instant
came your letters to my hands ; whereof one part I read unto
them, and one of them said, ' ' O would lo God I might speak with
that person, for I perceive that there be more tempted than I." 'J
* 'Works,' iii. 337. t 'Works,' iii. 352.
t 'Works,' iii. 379. Compare, or contrast, this scene of the
three poor women with another recorded by a still greater

JOHN KNOX 55
The persuasive ingenuity which would suggest to the
Lady of Norham that she was a source not only of com
fort but of strength to those troubled like herself, turns
out much to our advantage. For Knox puts himself,
first of all, in the place of those whom he would either
advise or console. And in the earliest dated letter of
his which we possess there is a vivid picture of what
took place between two people who were much in
earnest, three and a half centuries ago, about this life
and the next. Knox has written fully to Mrs Bowes,
and adds —
' After the writing of these preceding, your brother and mine,
Harry Wycliffe, did advertise me by writing that your adversary took
occasion to trouble you, because that I did start back from you re
hearsing your infirmities. I remember myself to have so done, and
that is my common consuetude when anything pierceth or toucheth
my heart. Call to your mind what I did standing at the cupboard
at Alnwick ; in very deed I thought that no creature had been
tempted as I was. And when that I heard proceed from your
mouth the very words that he troubles me with, I did wonder and
from my heart lament your sore trouble, knowing in myself the
dolour thereof.' *
What was the temptation which Knox thought no
creature shared with him, but which he found, as he
master of English. The tinker had gone on business one day to
Bedford :
' In one of the streets of that town, I came where there were
three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and talking
about the things of God. . . , But they were far above, out of my
reach ; for their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on
their hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable
state. . . . And methought they spake as if joy did make them
speak ; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language,
and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were
to me as if they had found a new world, as if they were people that
dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned among their neighbours.'
— Bunyan's Grace Abounding. * 'Works,' iii. 350.

56 FAMOUS SCOTS
stood at the cupboard at Alnwick, had come to Mrs
Bowes in the same form, and even in the same words ?
As it happens, we can answer with great certainty. It
was a temptation to infidelity or ' incredulity ' : the
adversary 'would cause you abhor that, and hate it,
wherein stands only salvation and life,' viz., the name,
as well as the whole message, of Jesus Christ. So it is
put in this letter; and in others, apparently later, we
read —
' That ye are of that foolish sort of men that say in their heart,
" There is no God," I wonder that the Devil shames not to allege
that contrary [to] you ; but he is a liar, and father of the same.
For if in your heart ye said there is no God, why then should ye
suffer anguish and care by reason that the enemy troubles you with
that thought ? Who can be afraid, day and night, for that which
is not?'* Again —
' He would persuade you that God's Word is of no effect, but
that it is a vain tale invented by man, and so all that is spoken of
Jesus, the Son of God, is but a vain fable. . . . He says the Scrip
tures of God are but a tale, and no credit is to be given to them.f
. . . Before he troubled you that there is not a Saviour, and now he
affirms that ye shall be like to Francis Spira, who denied Christ's
doctrine.' J
In that age, which broke through the crust of mere
authority to seek some ' foundation of belief,' there
must have been many of both sexes in this state of
mind ; though each doubter might think that ' no
creature ' shared it. The new doctrine of individual
faith and individual responsibility was one for women
as well as men, and they had a special claim on the
sympathy of their teachers when central doubts
attacked them. Whether these doubts in the case of
Mrs Bowes, or in that of Knox, arose in .the line of any
particular enquiries does not appear. He treats them as
* ' Works,' iii. 360. + ¦ Works,' iii. 366. J ' Works,' iii. 368.

JOHN KNOX 57
if they were rather moral than intellectual, and born of
the feebleness of the soul under temptation. And in
this relation it says not a little for his estimate of Mrs
Bowes, whom he was leaving behind under the Marian
persecution, and with her husband and most of her
family hostile to her, that, instead of attenuating, he
rather magnifies the external difficulties she had to
meet. ' Your adversary, sister, doth labour that ye should doubt whether
this be the Word of God or not. If there had never been testi
monial of the undoubted truth thereof before these our ages, may
not such things as we see daily come to pass prove the verity there
of? Doth it not affirm that it shall be preached, and yet contemned
and lightly regarded by many ; that the true professors thereof shall
be hated with [by] father, mother, and others of the contrary re
ligion; that the most faithful shall cruelly be persecuted? And
come not all these things to pass in ourselves ? ' *
But sceptical or speculative doubts were not Mrs
Bowes' chief trouble. She writes Knox complaining
of her temptations — even temptations of sense. And
chiefly and continually she complained of past guilt and
present sin, by reason of which she felt as if ' remission
of sins in Christ Jesus pertained nothing to her.' f This
was not a case for the 'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable
comfort' which the Church of England ascribes to the
doctrine of Predestination rightly used. Nor does
* ' Works,' iii. 357. Browning makes his good old Pope feel, in
the later Renaissance, as if Christian heroism had been
* so possible
When in the way stood Nero's cross and stake,
So hard now ' —
and, looking back almost regretfully to Nero's time, to ask —
' How could saints and martyrs fail see truth
Streak the night's blackness ? '
¦ The Ring and the Book. The Pope,' line 1827.
t ' Works,' vi. Si4-

58 FAMOUS SCOTS
Knox deal with it — at least in his letters — by the
simple and peremptory preaching of the Evangel. He
recognised it as a case calling for sympathy, and he does
not find the sympathy hard. Knox, indeed, like the
other Reformers, had parted for ever with the mediaeval
idea of salvation by self-torture — even by self-torture for
sin. Like all the wisest of the human race, too — even
before Christianity came to sanction their surmise — he
held that religion must be an objective thing, and that
salvation lies in dealing, not with ourselves, but with
One outside of us and above. Yet it is a salvation from
sin, and the new life now springing up throughout
Europe was intensely a moral life. The faith, too, on
which the age laid so much stress as a ' coming ' to
God, involved repentance as a ' turning ' to God. And
while repentance no longer meant penance, whether of
body or mind, it meant — and as Knox puts it repeatedly
— ' it contains within itself a dolour for sin, a hatred of
sin, and yet hope of mercy ' ; and it is renewed as often
as the occasion arises for renewed deliverance from the
evil. Accordingly, Knox now acts on the principle
which he announced years afterwards in a letter to
another friend,* and again and again tears open his
own heart to comfort others by shewing that he, with
hope or assurance in Christ, still felt the burden and
assault of sin.
' I can write to you by my own experience. I have sometimes
been in that security that I felt not dolour for sin, neither yet dis
pleasure against myself for any iniquity in that I did offend. But
rather my vain heart did thus flatter myself, (I write the truth to my
own confusion, and to the glory of my heavenly Father, through
Jesus Christ), ' Thou hast suffered great trouble for professing of
Christ's truth ; God has done great things for thee.' . . . O Mother I
* ' The examples of God's children always complaining of their
own wretchedness serve for the penitent that they slide not into
desperation.' — ' Works,' vi. 85.

JOHN KNOX 59
this was a subtle serpent who thus could pour in venom, I not per
ceiving it ; but blessed be my God who permitted me not to sleep
long in that estate. I drank, shortly after this flattery of myself, a
cup of contra-poison, the bitterness whereof doth yet so remain in
my breast, that whatever I have suflfered, or presently do, I repute
as dung, yea, and myself worthy of damnation for my ingratitude
towards my God. The like, Mother, might have come to you,'
&c.* Mrs Bowes lived in her famous son-in-law's house till
close upon her death. By that time he had come to
recognise that her experience was an exceptional t and,
perhaps, a morbid one; and at a very early date he
manifestly felt the pressure of her constant applications
to him for help. Yet throughout the correspondence
his unfailing attitude to her is that of admirably tender
solicitude; and when he has to go into exile in the
beginning of 1554 he first sits down and writes — still
partly in the form of letters to her — a treatise on Afflic
tion. It is of great and permanent value, the subject
not being one which our race can as yet claim to have
outgrown : but I shall make no reference to its contents.
Even in his previous and ordinary letters, however,
Knox had reached the conclusion that her case was one
of inward Affliction, rather than, as she would have it,
of sin. And the treatment of this great subject of
'desertion,' by one who was a standard-bearer of the
new doctrine of faith and assurance, is remarkably
beautiful. 'It is dolorous to the faithful,' he writes
another friend, 'to lack the sensible feeling of God's
mercy and goodness (and the sensible feeling thereof he
lacketh what time he fully cannot rest and repose upon
the same). And yet as nothing more commonly cometh
to God's children, so is there no exercise more profitable
for his soldiers than is the same.' But to Mrs Bowes he
points out, what she certainly would not have observed,
• ' Works,' iii. 386. t ' Works,' vi. 513.

6o FAMOUS SCOTS
that 'it doth no more offend God's Majesty that the
spirit sometimes lie as it were asleep, neither having
sense of great dolour nor great comfort, more than it
doth offend him that the body use the natural rest,
ceasing from all external exercise.' And again, varying
the figure, 'no more is God displeased, although that
sometimes the body be sick, and subject to diseases,
and so unable to do the calling ; no more is he offended,
although the soul in that case be diseased and sick.
And as the natural father will not kill the body of the
child, albeit through sickness it faint, and abhor com
fortable meats, no more (and much less) will our
heavenly Father kill our souls, albeit, through spiritual
infirmity and weakness of our faith, sometimes we refuse
the lively food of his comfortable promises.'* . . .
' You are sick, dear sister,' he had said elsewhere, ' and
therefore,' alluding even to her confidences of scepticism
as to Christian doctrine, ' you abhor the succour of most
wholesome food.' 'Fear not,' he sums up in a sub
sequent letter, 'the infirmity that you find either in
flesh or spirit. Only abstain from external iniquity ' —
which he supplements elsewhere with the more positive
advice, 'Be fervent in reading, fervent in prayer, and
merciful to the poor, according to your power, and God
shall put an end to all dolours, when least is thought
[according] to the judgment of man.' And in the
meantime, ' Dear mother, he that is sorry for absence
of virtue is not altogether destitute of the same . . .
our hunger cries unto God.' Knox himself, he assured
his troubled friend, never ceased to pray for her; but
' although I would cease, and yourself would cease, and
* It is of the letter from which the above is taken that Knox
n publishing it long after says apologetically, ' If it serve not for
this estate of Scotland, yet it will serve a troubled conscience, so
long as the Kirk of God remaineth in either realm.' — 'Works,'
vi. 617.

JOHN KNOX 6 1
all other creature, yet your dolour continually cryeth
and returneth not void from the presence of our
God.'* Mrs Bowes was not the only 'mirror and glass' in
whom Knox allows us to see his inner self 'painted,'
though the woman-hearted warrior is limned in the
letters to her more nearly at full length. Two ladies in
Edinburgh, one the wife of the Lord Clerk Register,
and the other of the City Clerk, were his friends and
correspondents, at a later date, but while he was still in
exile. And in a letter ' to his sisters ' in that town, he
unbosoms himself as usual as to the principles of his
inner life, but adds —
'Alas ! as the wounded man, be he never so expert in physic or
surgery, cannot suddenly mitigate his own pain and dolour, no
more can I the fear and grief of my heart, although I am not alto
gether ignorant what is to be done.'t
The same sentiment is expanded in one of a number
of letters sent to a group of ' merchants' wives in
London,' which probably included the 'three honest
poor women ' J of whom we have already heard. Of
this group the most remarkable was Mrs Anna Locke,
of the family which afterwards yielded the famous John
Locke. She, Uke Mrs Bowes, followed Knox to Geneva
amid the stream of exiles from London ; and his letters
to her give the impression that she was not only wealthy
and energetic, but possessed of higher character and
more accomplishments than the wellborn Elizabeth
Bowes. The letters to the latter were written chiefly in
1553. The following, to Mrs Locke, is sent from
* 'Works,' iii. 362. t ' Works,' iv. 252.
X ' Honest ' in that age meant something nearly equivalent
to 'honourable,' and that they were 'poor women' may refer
to troubles which they brought to him, other than want of
money.

62 FAMOUS SCOTS
Scotland after Knox's return there, and is dated on the
last day of 1559 : —
' God make yourself participant oi the same comfort which you
write unto me. And in very deed, dear sister, I have no less need
of comfort (notwithstanding that I am not altogether ignorant) than
hath the living man to be fed, although in store he hath great sub
stance. I have read the cares and temptations of Moses, and some
times I supposed myself to be well practised in such dangerous
battles. But, alas ! I now perceive that all my practice before was
but mere speculation ; for one day of troubles since my last arrival
in Scotland, hath more pierced my heart than all the torments of
the galleys did the space of nineteen months ; for that torment, for
the most part, did touch the body, but this pierces the soul and
inward affections. Then I was assuredly persuaded that I should
not die till I had preached Jesus Christ, even where I now am.
And yet having now my hearty desire, I am nothing satisfied, neither
yet rejoice. My God, remove my unthankfulness ! ' *
Men of this expansive and confiding temperament
are attractive, and will occasionally get into trouble,
even in later life. We find Mrs Bowes ere long com
plaining that she ' had not been equally made privy to
Knox's coming into the country with others,' and need
ing to be assured that ' none is this day within the
realm of England, with whom I would more gladly
speak (only she whom God hath offered unto me, and
commanded me to love as my own flesh, excepted) than
with you.' t Mrs Locke, later on, points out that she
has not had a letter for a whole year. And this eUcits
not only the assurance that it is not the absence of one
year or two ' that can quench in my heart that familiar
acquaintance in Christ Jesus, which half a year did
engender, and almost two years did nourish and confirm,'
but also the following striking general statement, which,
like many things from Knox, impresses us by a certain
straightforward and noble egotism :
* ' Works,' vi. 104. f 'Works,' iii. 370.

JOHN KNOX 63
'Of nature I am churlish, and in conditions* different from
many : yet one thing I ashame not to affirm, that familiarity once
thoroughly contracted was never yet broken on my default. The
cause may be that I have rather need of all, than that any have need
of me.'t It may be true that Knox never broke a friendship
with either sex. But his friendships with men were
masculine and very reserved in tone ; and we may be
quite sure that the memorable concluding sentence of
the above paragraph would never have been written
except to a woman. Most people will be delighted to
see already fallen under the ' regimen of women ' the
very man who was to set the trumpet to his lips against
it. But those who study Knox's life are indebted to
his familiar correspondence, and especially to the earlier
part of it, for far more than the gratification of this not
unkindly maUce. For these letters, I think, prove to
all — what the finer ear might have gathered with
certainty from many things even in his public writings
— that the main source of that outward and active career
was an inner life.
We must part for ever with the idea of Knox as a
human cannon-ball, endowed simply with force of will, and
tearing and shattering as it goes. The views which at a
definite period gave this tremendous impulse to a nature
previously passive, are not obscure, and are perfectly
* ' Conditions ' refers to inward nature, not outward circum
stances. It may be explained by a letter written nine years later,
also to a friend in England, in which Knox apologises for not having
written him for years, during which the Reformer had been ' tossed
with many storms,' yet might have sent a letter, ' if that this my
churlish nature, for the most part oppressed with melancholy, had
not staid tongue and pen from doing of their duty.' — ' Works,' vi.
566. Knox in 1553 was suffering severely from gravel and dyspepsia ;
one of these was already an ' old malady ' ; and both seem to have
clung to him during the rest of his life.
t ' Works,' vi. 11.

64 FAMOUS SCOTS
traceable. They are views upon which Knox continu
ally insists as common to himself with all Christian men,
and which were common to him with the mass of Christian
men — and women — who were the strength of that time
and the hope of the age to follow. They were views
which, when received with full conviction by any
individual, led outwardly to suffering on the one
hand, or, on the other, to shattering the whole com
pacted system of opposing intolerance. But they were
views which, when thus translated into convictions, not
only pressed outward with explosive force, but also, and
necessarily, spread inwards in reflux and expansion to
refresh and animate the man. They might have done so
— in the case of some men of that time they did — without
overflowing into the private life and into sympathetic
converse and confidence with others. But Knox was
so constituted as to need this also and to supply it. And
the fragments of his correspondence whicli are all that
remain to us, and which probably were all that an extra
ordinarily busy public work permitted, are conclusive on
some things and instructive on others. They are con
clusive as to the existence, under that breastplate of
hammered iron with which Knox confronted all outward
opposition, of a private and personal life — a life inward,
secret, and deep, and a life also rich, tender, and emi
nently sympathetic. They are conclusive also, I think,
of this inner life being the source and spring of the
life without, instead of being merely derived from it.
And they will thus be found instructive as to the in
fluence of that hidden life, in its strength and its limita
tions alike, on the external career which we have now
to trace.

CHAPTER IV
THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560
Knox had preached only for a few months in St Andrews
in 1547, when the castle capitulated to the foreign fleet,
and he and his companions were flung into the French
galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at the oar
under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and
the heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count
the cost of the choice so recently made. It is a tribute
to his constancy that men chiefly remember this dark
time by its spots of colour — as when, at Nantes, he flung
Our Lady's image into the Loire — ' She is light enough :
let her learn to swim 1 ' And when off St Andrews they
pointed out to him the steeple of the kirk, the emaciated
prisoner replied, ' Yes, I know it well : and I am fully
persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I shall
not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify His
godly name in the same place.' But this first appren
ticeship to sorrow went deep into the man. It was when
he was ' in Rouen, lying in irons, and sore troubled by
corporal infirmity, in a galley named Notre Dame,' that
he sent a letter to his St Andrews friends. And in it he
asks them to ' Consider ' — his countrymen have scarcely
as yet considered it sufficiently — ' Consider, brethren, it
is no speculative theologue which desireth to give you
courage, but even your brother in affliction, which partly
hath experience what Satan's wrath may do against the
chosen of God.'* His spirit indeed was in no wise
* ' Works,' iii. lo.
4 E <S

66 FAMOUS SCOTS
broken : on his escape from France he became again a
garrison preacher, and gained over King Edward's rude
soldiers in Berwick an ascendancy, even greater than he
had held in St Andrews over the young lairds of Fife.
But, though not broken, it was chastened. It was during
the following years, and especially in 1553, that he wrote
the deeply sympathetic letters from which we have already
quoted. And in 1554, when he left England to escape
Mary Tudor, he introduces into a short but admirable
treatise on Prayer some autobiographical references, which
seem to date back to the extreme suffering of his captivity,
' when not only the ungodly, but even my faithful brethren,
yea, and my own self, that is, all natural understanding,
judged my cause (case) to be irremediable.'
' The frail flesh, oppressed with fear and pain, desireth deliver
ance, ever abhorring and drawing back from obedience giving. O
Christian brethren, I write by experience ... I know the grudg
ing and murmuring complaints of the flesh ; I know the anger,
vnrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God, calling all
his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour utterly to fall
from God. Against which rests [remains] only faith.'
Knox's faith sprang readily to whatever active duty
was set before it. On his escape from France he spent,
as we have seen, five years in England, and at the close
of that period we have his own assurance that he had
become almost an Englishman.
' Sometime I have thought that impossible it had been, so to
have removed my affection from the realm of Scotland, that any
realm or nation could have been equally dear to me. But God I
take to record in my conscience that the troubles present (and
appearing to be) in the realm of England are doubly more dolorous
unto my heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland.'*
He had laboured incessantly in many parts of Eng
land, first as licensed preacher and then as King's chap
lain, and this of course brought him in contact with
* 'Works,' iii. 133,

JOHN KNOX 67
church politics as well as the Evangel. It was owing to
Knox's remonstrances that, when King Edward's Council
put kneeling at the Sacrament into the Prayer-Book,
they accompanied it with the Rubric, which is still re
tained, and which testifies ' that thereby no adoration is
intended or ought to be done.' So far his position was
reasonable, and even conciliatory. But as early as 1 550,
when requested, perhaps by the Council of the North,
to 'give his confession' in Newcastle as to the Mass,
he repeated the Puritan view of his first St Andrews
sermon, but now in his favourite form of a syllogism,
and with its major clause dangerously enlarged.
' All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of
man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment,
is Idolatry:* The Mass is invented by the brain of man without any
commandment of God, therefore it is idolatry.'
To Knox's five years in England now succeeded five
years which may be said to have been spent on the
Continent. He first drifted to Frankfort, and was put
in charge of the English congregation there. Very soon
the two parties, which have ever since divided the
Church of England, made their appearance in this
representative fragment of it. Knox, of course, took
the Puritan side as to the form of worship ; but a large
part of his congregation insisted on the full service of
King Edward's book. The matter was brought to a
close in rather an unfortunate way by two of Knox's
opponents lodging an accusation against him before the
Magistrates, of treason against the Emperor, the English
Queen, and her Spanish husband. Frankfort was an im
perial city, and Knox was thus no longer safe there. He
went to Geneva, which was then, under Calvin's influence,
* 'Works,' iii. 34. The rashness of the general proposition here
can only be appreciated when we remember Knox's view that it
was the duty of the Magistrate not only to suppress idolatry, but to
punish it with death.

68 FAMOUS SCOTS
an illustrious centre of the reformed faith ; and was at
once called to be co-pastor there (along with Goodman)
of the English-speaking congregation. Knox's later
biographer points out the historic importance of this
' the first Puritan congregation.' It was the source of
Elizabethan Non-conformity, and 'it is in the writings
of Knox and Goodman that those doctrines were first
unflinchingly expounded which eventually became the
tradition of Puritanism.' * The Church Order, too,
which they adopted became afterwards that of worship
in Scotland ; their Psalms were the model for the Eng
lish and Scotch versions ; and, above all, the Genevan
Bible, prepared by the members of Knox's congregation
at the very time he was their minister, continued for
three-quarters of a century thereafter to be ' the house
hold book of the English-speaking nations.' It is called
the happiest and most peaceful time of Knox's hfe.
But it was a time of incessant preparation for still greater
things, and in this short biography we must confine our
selves to what bears either on the man himself or on his
supreme work for his native country.
For during all Knox's life on the Continent he seems
to have kept in view the problem of how the Evangel
could be set free in Scotland. He never had any
doubt as to the duty of the individual to confess it in
the teeth of the Magistrate and of the law. But how
could men combine together to do so, against authority
otherwise lawful ? On this and similar points he pro
posed questions on his first arrival in Switzerland to the
leading theologians. Bullinger, with the approval of
Calvin, gave an answer which may have suggested to
Knox the idea that a people (the Armenians are speci
ally instanced) may revolt against 'their legitimate
magistrate ' who persecutes the truth, provided they
• Hume Brown, i. 203,

JOHN KNOX 69
have an inferior magistrate to lead them.* And next year,
1555, Knox made a memorable visit to Scotland. There
James the Fifth's widow, Mary of Lorraine, was now
Regent, and so chief ' Magistrate.' She was during all
those years not disposed to be intolerant, and the prospect
was everywhere encouraging. From Edinburgh Knox
writes to Mrs Bowes (still in Northumberland), thanking
her for being
' the instrument to draw me from the den of my own ease (you
alone did draw me from the rest of quiet study) to contemplate and
behold the fervent thirst of our brethren, night and day sobbing
and groaning for the bread of life. If I had not seen it with my eyes
in my own country, I could not have believed it. Depart I cannot,
unto such time as God quench their thirst a little, ' And accordingly
later on he adds, ' The trumpet blew the old sound three days
together, till private houses of indifferent largeness could not contain
the voice of it. God for Christ his Son's sake grant me to be mind
ful that the sobs of my heart have not been in vain, nor neglected
in the presence of his Majesty. O sweet were the death that
should follow such forty days in Edinburgh as here I have had
three ! 't
It was in the midst of this glowing enthusiasm that
Knox attended an Edinburgh supper party in the house
of Erskine, the Laird of Dun, where the question was
formally discussed whether those who believed the
Evangel could countenance by their presence the cele
bration of the Mass? Knox maintained the negative,
and as young Maitland of Lethington and other acute
doubters were there, all views were well represented. But
in the end the Reformer's zeal prevailed, and another
step was taken to making Protestantism a public if not
a permitted thing in Scotland. From Edinburgh he
took journeys to Forfarshire, to West Lothian, to Ayr
shire, and to Renfrewshire ; and after half a year spent
in incessant preaching, followed occasionally by admin-
* ' Works,' iii, 224, t 'Works,' iv. 217, 218.

70 FAMOUS SCOTS
istering the Sacraments, he was at last cited to appear
before the bishops in the Blackfriars Church, Edinburgh.
He went, but attended by so many friends that nothing
was attempted against him for the time. And now, at
the suggestion of Glencairn and Marischal, two of the
lords who were favourable to the new doctrine, Knox sat
down to write a letter to the Queen Dowager, as Regent of
Scotland. It had hitherto been Mary of Lorraine's policy
to play off the Protestant party, which had leanings to
England, against the Catholic side, which was faithful to
France. Knox accordingly blesses 'God, who by the dew
of his heavenly grace, hath so quenched the fire of dis
pleasure in your Grace's heart,' and with unprecedented
courtesy apologises ' that a man of base estate and con
dition dare enterprise to admonish a Princess so honour
able, endued with wisdom and graces singular.' Those
whom Knox represented were a small minority of Scotch
men ; but that did not prevent him demanding of the
Regent far more than mere neutrality or ' indifferency '
between the contending parties. He demands of her
the reform of both religion and the church. He admits
that ' your Grace's power is not so free as a pubUc Re
formation perchance would require ' ; you ' cannot hastily
abolish superstition, . . . which to a public Reforma
tion is requisite and necessary. But if the zeal of God's
glory be fervent in your Grace's heart, you will not by
wicked laws maintain idolatry, neither will you suffer
the fury of Bishops to murder and devour.' The Queen
Regent was not disposed to go very far with the bishops,
but still less was she fervent for God's glory and public
Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she
handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of
Glasgow, with the words, ' Please you, my Lord, to read
a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to Knox's ears, and
some years after he published his letter with resentful
additions and interpolations. In these he assumed —

JOHN KNOX 71
much too soon — that there was no longer hope of the
Regent becoming personally convinced of the Evangel.
But he at the same time modified his ' Petition ' on
behalf of his party to this, ' that our doctrine may be
tried by the plain word of God, and that liberty be
granted to us to utter and declare our minds at large in
every article and point which are now in controversy ' ;
and on his own behalf and ' in the name of the Lord
Jesus, that with indifferency I may be heard to preach,
to reason, and to dispute in that cause.'
But now, in July 1556, letters came to Knox in
Edinburgh from his congregation in Geneva, ' com
manding him in God's name, as he was their chosen
pastor, to repair unto them for their comfort.' He at
once complied, sending before him from Norham to
Dieppe his wife and her mother. Scotland was not yet
ripe. The lay professors of the Evangel indeed were
not seriously molested after his departure. But on the
other hand Knox himself was at once cited to appear in
Edinburgh, condemned in absence as a contumacious
heretic, and burned at the Cross in the High Street —
in effigy. Neither this, nor his daily work in Geneva,
had the effect of withdrawing him for a day from his
solicitude for his native country. On leaving it he wrote
an admirable ' Letter of Wholesome Counsel ' * urging
the continual study of the word of God in families and
in congregations.
' Within your own houses, I say, in some cases, ye are bishops
and kings ; your wife, children, servants, and family are your
bishopric and charge ; of you it shall be required how carefully and
diligently ye have always instructed them in God's true knowledge,
how that ye have studied in them to plant virtue and repress vice.
And therefore, I say, ye must make them partakers in reading, ex
horting, and in making common prayers, which, I would, in every
house were used once a day at least, '
* 'Works,' iv. 129.

72 FAMOUS SCOTS
And for each congregation he urged an order of pro
cedure much nearer that of apostolic times than that
which the Reformed Church, at his own instance, after
wards instituted in Scotland.
' I think it necessary that for the conference [comparing] 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. And hereof I doubt
not but great profit shall shortly ensue ; for, first, by hearing read
ing and conferring the Scriptures in the Assembly, the whole body
of the Scriptures of God shall become familiar, the judgments and
spirits of men shall be tried, their patience and modesty shall be
known, and finally their gifts and utterance shall appear.'
If any difficulty of interpretation occurs, it should be
' put in writing before ye dismiss the congregation,'
with the view of consulting some wise adviser. Many,
he hopes, would be glad to help them.
' Of myself I will speak as I think ; I will more gladly spend
fifteen hours in communicating my judgment with you, in explaining
as God pleases to open to me any place of Scripture, than half an
hour in any matter beside,'
Before six months had passed, however, Knox, who
was again abroad, had become troubled by the too great
freedom of opinion and the dangers of consequent free
dom of life even in the Protestant community, and his
letter ' To the Brethren ' * in Scotland from Dieppe,
against Anabaptists and Sectarians, foreshadows the
more rigid form which was to be one day impressed upon
Church doctrine and life in his native land.
During the ensuing year, 1557, everything was peace
ful and hopeful. The Protestants kept their worship
* ' Works,' iv. 261.

JOHN KNOX 73
private, but it spread from town to town, and from the
land of one friendly baron to his neighbours' territory.
Knox had been formally condemned, but those he left
behind were not molested, and in March four of the
Lords wrote him to Geneva asking him to return to
Scotland. They accompanied this with assurances that
though ' the Magistrates in this country ' were in the
same state as before, the Churchmen there were daily in
less estimation. After consulting Calvin, Knox said
farewell to his congregation, and had got as far home
wards as Dieppe, where he was much disappointed to
receive 'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly ac
quiescing, indicates the plan which by this time he had
formed in order to solve the combined difficulties in theory
and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded his
correspondents — Glencairn, Lome, Erskine, and James
Stewart — in very memorable words, that they were them
selves magistrates, or at least representatives of the
people, and had duties accordingly.
' Your subjects, yea, your brethren, are oppressed, their bodies
and souls holden in bondage ; and God speaketh to your consciences
(unless ye be dead with the blind world) that you ought to hazard
your own lives (be it against kings and emperors) for their deliver
ance. For only for that cause are ye called Princes of the people,
and ye receive of your brethren honour, tribute and homage at God's
commandment ; not by reason of your birth and progeny (as the
most part of men falsely do suppose), but by reason of your office
and duty, which is to vindicate and deliver your subjects and
brethren from all violence and oppression, to the utmost of your
power.' *
The effect of this and other encouragements was to
bring matters to a point in Scotland. The Protestant
party, which had now been joined by Argyll and
Morton, entered into the kind of engagement which
was then called a ' Band,' and afterwards became widely
* 'Works,' i. 272,

74 FAMOUS SCOTS
known in Scotland as a ' Covenant' This document,
dated 3rd December 1557, bound the signatories to
' apply our whole power, substance, and our very hves,
to maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed
Word of God and his congregation .... unto which
holy word and congregation we do join us, and also do
forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan.' This
important step, which seems to have been represented
by rumour in Dieppe as something like rebellion in
Scotland, apparently startled Knox. A fortnight after
it took place he writes the ' Lords of the Congregation,'
as they were henceforth called, a letter of caution, urging
them to
' seek the favour of the Authority, that by it, if possible be, the
cause in which ye labour may be promoted, or at the least not perse
cuted, which thing after all humble request if ye can not attain,
then, with open and solemn protestation of your obedience to be
given to the Authority in all things not plainly repugning to God,
ye lawfully may attempt the extremity, which is to provide,
whether the Authority will consent or no, that Christ's Evangel
may be duly preached, and his holy Sacraments rightly ininistered
unto you, and to your brethren the subjects of that realm.'
The Lords of the Congregation were disposed to be
at least as cautious as Knox, and during the following
year, 1558, there was a remarkable approximation to a
possible settlement in Scotland on the basis of tolera
tion. The ' Band ' of the congregation does not at all
suggest that the Barons who joined in it, and thereby
bound themselves to defend their religion against the
pressure and tyranny of outsiders, would think it right
themselves to exercise a counter pressure and tyranny
upon their own vassals within their own lands. And
Knox's intimation that the Authority — i.e., the Regent
and Parliament — though refusing to promote the Evangel,
ought to be asked at least not to persecute it, was most
timely. He held, indeed, at this time, that such a con-

JOHN KNOX 75
cession, if granted, ought to bar not only insurrection,
but even a partial and divided establishment of religion.
The state of matters was reflected in two resolutions
which the Congregation came to immediately after the
Band. By the first, common prayers were to be read on
Sundays in the churches — which must mean in the
churches where the innovators had influence — by the
curates, 'if qualified,' and, if not, by those of the
parishioners who were. But the second provided that
preaching be, in the meantime, ' had and used privately
in quiet houses,' great conventions being avoided ' till
God move the Prince to grant public preaching,' And
another influence now entered into the history. Knox
had initiated an aristocratic revolution. But the Burghs
of Scotland had been there, as in every other country of
Europe, fortresses of freedom and the advance-guard of
constitutional civilisation. And it was now resolved,
that the brethren in every town ' should assemble
together. And this our weak beginning did God so
bless, that within few months the hearts of many were so
strengthened, that we sought to have the face of a church
among us.' . . . And the town of Dundee in particular
' began to erect the face of a public church reformed.' *
Henceforward the great towns became more and more
prepared to be the centres of the future struggle.
Meantime, however, early in 1 5 5 8, the ' First Petition
of the Protestants of Scotland' was presented to the
Regent. It protested against the existing tyranny, and
craved, in general and cautious terms, a 'public Re
formation,' laying stress on church services in the vulgar
tongue, and offering to submit differences to be publicly
decided, not only by the New Testament, but by the
writings of the Fathers and the laws of Justinian. The
offer seems to have been at once accepted. But, accord
ing to the account of Knox, who, of course, was still
• ' Works,' i. 300.

76 FAMOUS SCOTS
abroad, the proposed public discussion came to nothing,
because both parties fell back upon other conditions of
arbitration; the Protestants now demanding that the Scrip
tures alone should decide all controversy, the Catholics
insisting on Councils and Canon Law. The next step
was a proposal by the Bishops of ' Articles of Recon
ciliation,' according to which the Old Church was to
remain pubhcly estabUshed, while the Protestants might
privately pray and baptise in the vulgar tongue. This
the innovating party dechned, and pressed for ' reforma
tion.' And now the Regent, whom Knox afterwards '
came to regard as ' crafty and dissimulate,' and who, no
doubt, even now desired to please and ' make her profit
of both parties,' announced to the Congregation her
decision. ' She gave to us permission to use ourselves
godly, according to our desires, provided that we should
not make public assemblies in Edinburgh or Leith ' — i.e.,
in the capital. The Queen went so far as to promise
positive ' assistance to our preachers,' the assistance no
doubt being rather private and personal, and the whole
arrangement being an interim one, 'until some uniform
order might be established by a Parliament.' It was a
great step in advance ; indeed, Knox says, ' we departed
fully contented with her answer ; ' * and it is impossible
not to speculate on what the result might have been had
the order finally established by Parliament been that
both parties should permanently ' use themselves godly
according to their desires,' with a publicly acknowledged
right of proselytism or persuasion.
But from both sides there still came some things
hostile to the advent in Scotland of that toleration
which the modern conscience has approved. In April
1558 Walter Myln, a priest eighty-two years of age, was
seized by order of the Archbishop of St Andrews, con
demned for heresy, and burned there amid the general
* ' Works,' i, 307.

JOHN KNOX 77
but ineffectual resentment of the people. The sentence
was quite legal under the laws which still enforced
membership of the Catholic Church upon all Scotch
men. But the last man who had been so condemned
was Knox; and he no longer delayed to pubhsh in
Geneva an Appellation or appeal against his sentence,
directed to the nobles, the estates and the commonalty
of- Scotland. His demand for a return to the primitive
Gospel under the Divine authority is powerful and
eloquent. His reasons, on the other hand, for 'appeal
from the sentence and judgment of the visible Church
to the knowledge of the temporal magistrate ' are diffi
cult to reconcile with the position which Knox after
wards took up when that Church was on his own side ;
and they are indeed chiefly drawn from the Old Testa
ment. It is not until we observe from his re-statement
of the case farther on, that his was an appeal ' against
a sentence of death,' that the argument once more
straightens itself out so as to suit the lips even of Paul.
But Knox declines now to remain on the defensive.
He accuses his accusers of heresy and idolatry, and
calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide against
them according to God's Word. Here, again, the
appeal, so long as it is made to the conscience of all
men and of nobles alike, is very cogent. Nor is it
less so as addressed specially to the most representative
and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the
Lords of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It be
comes doubtful only when it insists on the right of
these temporal 'Princes of the people' to j reform the
Church — apparently even without the consent of its
majority ; and it becomes worse than doubtful when
he urges their duty as magistrates to repress false re
ligion and to punish idolatry with death. Along with
this, however, was published a shorter letter 'To his
Beloved Brethren the Commonalty of Scotland.' To

78 FAMOUS SCOTS
these subjects born within the same, their brother
John Knox wishes in it 'the spirit of righteous judg
ment ; ' and that in a tone of independence which must
have sounded to Scottish peasants and burghers like a
call to a new life. For in this treatise, unlike the last,
each private Scottish man is urged to judge of what
claimed to be the original truth, even against an ad
mittedly ancient system. And ' If that system was an
error in the beginning, so it is in the end, and the
longer that it be followed, and the more that do receive
it, it is the more pestilent, and more to be avoided.'
' Neither would I that ye should esteem the Reformation and
care of religion less to appertain to you, because ye are no kings,
rulers, judges, nobles, nor in authority. Beloved brethren, ye are
God's creatures, created and formed to His own image and simili
tude, for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of
the only beloved Son of God. . . . For albeit God hath put and
ordained distinction and difference between the king and subjects,
between the rulers and the common people, in the regimen and
administration of civil policies, yet in the hope of the life to come
He hath made all equal. . . . And this is the equality which
is between the king and subjects, the most rich or noble, and be
tween the poorest and men of lowest estate ; to wit, that as the
one is obliged to believe in heart, and with mouth to confess, the
Lord Jesus to be the only Saviour of the world, so also is the
other.' And by this time Knox has reasoned out for himself
the right of the people to maintain the true Church, and
to band in defence of it — though that right he even now
recognises only when they cannot do better.
'And if in this point your superiors be negligent, or yet pretend
to maintain tyrants in their tyranny, most justly ye may provide
true teachers for yourselves, be it in your cities, towns, or villages :
them ye may maintain and defend against all that shall persecute
them, and by that means shall labour to defraud you of that most
comfortable food of your souls, Christ's evangel truly preached.

JOHN KNOX 79
Ye may, moreover, withhold the fruits and profits which your false
Bishops and clergy most unjustly receive of you, unto such time as
they be compelled faithfully to do their charge and duties.'
These appeals by Knox can only have made their
way in Scotland gradually and privately. But as the
year 1558 went on, the prospect of union became more
hopeful. The Queen Regent acted as if ' the duty of
the Magistrate ' were to prevent majorities and minorities
from laying hands on each other. And, then at least,
this was not an easy work. The Bishops tyrannised in
details in localities where the barons were still on their
side ; but Myln was the last Protestant martyr in Scot
land. On the other hand, the adherents of the con
gregation became so bold, especially in the towns, that
(as Knox tells us) ' the images were stolen away in all
parts of the country, and in Edinburgh was that great
idol called St Gile first drowned in the North Loch, and
after burned.' * This was too much, and the Regent
allowed the Bishops to summon the iconoclast preachers
for the 19th of July. But a party of Western lairds
heard of it on their way from the army of the Border,
and insisted on interviewing the Queen. Knox's vivid
account of what followed must be quoted. It includes
a dehcious phonograph of the Scots speech of Mary of
Lorraine, who, to the desire to please all men which was
common to her with her more famous daughter, seems
to have added real good nature and kindliness of heart.
James Chalmers of Gadgirth, a rough Ayrshireman,
burst out against the Bishops —
' " Madam, we vow to God we shall make one day of it. They
oppress us and our tenants for feeding of their idle bellies ; they
trouble our preachers, and would murder them and us : shall we
suffer this any longer? No, madam, it shall not be." And there
with every man put on his steel bonnet. There was heard nothing
of the Queen's part but " My joys, my hearts, what ails you ? Me
* 'Works,' i, 256.

8o FAMOUS SCOTS
means no evil to you nor to your preachers. The Bishops shall do you
no wrong. Ye are all my loving subjects. Me knew nothing of this
proclamation. The day of your preachers shall be discharged, and
me will hear the controversy that is betwixt the Bishops and you.
They shall do you no wrong. My Lords," said she to the Bishops,
" I forbid you either to trouble them or their preachers." And
unto the gentlemen, who were wondrously commoved, she turned
again and said, " O, my hearts, should ye not love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your mind ? and should ye not
love your neighbours as yourselves ? " With these and the like fair
words she kept the Bishops from buSets at that time,' *
Her daughter Mary, the celebrated Queen of Scots,
had been married in April to Francis, the Dauphin of
France, and the Regent, rejoicing in this long hoped-for
alliance, had one thing more at heart. The Scots Parlia
ment was to meet in November, and she hoped that it
would confer the crown ' Matrimonial ' of Scotland upon
her son-in-law, thus consolidating the two kingdoms. In
view of this meeting the Lords of the Congregation pre
pared a petition, the leading prayer of which would have
practically freed Scotland from the intolerance of existing
legislation in the matter of religion —
' We most humbly desire that all such Acts of Parliament, as in
the time of darkness gave power to the churchmen to execute their
tyranny against us, by reason that we to them were delated as
heretics, may be suspended and abrogated.' +
Here again was a proposal which, if taken by itself,
would have satisfied the modern view of liberty of con
science. But the petitioners went on to say that they
did not object to a temporal jxidge of heresy, provided
he judged according to the Word of God; and they
looked forward to a decision of 'all controversies in
religion,' not however by Parliament, but by a General
Council. This proposal was first handed to the Queen
Regent, who ' spared not amiable looks and good words
* 'Works,' i. 258. t ' Works,' i. 310.

JOHN KNOX 8 1
in abundance, but always she kept our Bill close in her
pocket.' Both parties in Parliament being thus pleased,
the Crown Matrimonial was consented to, and before
the Session closed, the Protestant Lords read an im
portant protest, repeating the positions which they had
already taken up.
I. ' We protest, that seeing we cannot obtain a just reformation,
according to God's word, that it be lawful to us to use ourselves in
matters of religion and conscience, as we must answer unto God.
2, ' That we shall incur no danger in life or lands, or other
political pains, for not observing such A cts as heretofore have passed
in favour of our adversaries.'
They added a protest that if any tumult should arise
' for the diversity of religion,' and if any abuses should
be 'violently reformed,' it should not be imputed to
them, who desired a reformation in matters of religion by
the Authority. From that Authority, however, they, in
closing — somewhat inconsistently but most rightfully —
demanded once more the ' indifferency ' which becometh
God's Lieutenant.
Parliament declined to record the Protest, but the
Queen Regent said in her confidential way to the Lords,
' Me will remember what is protested ; and me shall put
good order after this to all things.' Knox was delighted,
and in writing to Calvin commended her ' for excellent
knowledge in God's word, and good will towards the
advancement of his glory.' There is no reason to
suppose that Mary of Lorraine had attained to much
more than a kindly appreciation of all parties around
her, and to that general sense of justice which is strong
in rulers and other men so long as they have no per
sonal interest to the contrary. Yet under this feminine
' regimen ' Scotland was now within measurable distance
of being, alone among the commonwealths of Europe,
the home of liberty of worship and freedom of con
science. But that great time was not come ; and the
4 F

82 FAMOUS SCOTS
small northern land was now caught up again into the
whirl of European politics. On the 17th November
1558 Mary of England, the unhappy wife of Philip,
died ; and her Protestant sister Elizabeth, the daughter
of Anne Boleyn, succeeded. It became at once the
chief point in the policy of Catholic Europe that France
and Scotland should be fast bound together in religion
and turned, along v.'ith Spain, as one force for the
restoration or re-conquest of England. For if the
English queen was an illegitimate heretic, then Mary
Stuart, already Queen of Scotland and Dauphuiess
of France, was now Queen of England too ; and
without delay the French king quartered the arms of
England with those of Mary's own country and that of
her adoption. The magnificent bribe of a third crown
for that fair ' daughter of debate ' was too much for her
mother in Scotland, who in any case would have found
a continued toleration there irreconcileable with the
traditions of their House of Guise. The Regent now,
in her mild way, joined the cruel Catholic crusade of
the French Court, and from the beginning of 1559 the
conciliatory policy which had distinguished the previous
year in Scotland was at an end.
But its results were not ended. They had spread
through all ranks, and had gone down to the foundations
of society. On New Year's Day of 1559 there was
found affixed to the door of every religious house in
Scotland the following document — the most extraor
dinary imitation of a legal writ that Scotland has seen.
It is probably not written by Knox, but by some other
strong pen. It bears to be a notice or ' summons ' of
ejectment for the ensuing Whitsunday, and is called
The Bkggars' Warning.
The Blind, Crooked, Bedrels [bedfast]. Widows, Orphans, and
all other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as they may
not work.

JOHN KNOX 83
TO
The Flocks of all Friars within this realm, we wish restitution of
wrongs bypast, and reformation in rime coming, for salutation.
Ye yourselves are not ignorant, and though ye would be it is now,
thanks to God, known to the whole world, by His infallible word,
that the benignity or alms of all Christian people pertains to us
allanerly [exclusively] ; which ye, being hale of body, stark, sturdy,
and able to work, what [partly] under pretence of poverty (and
nevertheless possessing most easily all abundance) what [partly]
through cloaked and hooded simplicity, though your proudness is
known, and what [partly] by feigned holiness, which now is declared
superstition and idolatry, have these many years, express against
God's word and the practice of His Holy Apostles, to our great tor
ment alas I most falsely stolen from us. And as ye have, by your false
doctrine and wresting of God's word (learned of your father Satan),
induced the whole people high and low, into sure hope and belief,
that to clothe, feed, and nourish you is the only acceptable alms
allowed before God, and to give one penny or one piece of bread
once in the week, is enough for us ; Even so ye have persuaded
them to build to you great hospitals, and maintain you therein by their
purse, which only pertains now to us by all law, as builded and
doted [given] to the poor — of whose number ye are not, nor can be
repute, neither by the law of God, nor yet by no other law pro
ceeding of nature, reason, or civil policy. . . . We have thought
good, therefore, before we enter with you in conflict, to warn you,
in the name of the great God, by this public writing, affixed on your
gates, where ye now dwell, that ye remove forth of our said hos
pitals betwixt this and the feast of Whitsunday next, so that we the
only lawful proprietors thereof may enter thereto, and afterward
enjoy these commodities of the Kirk, which ye have hereunto
wrongously holden from us : Certifying you, if ye fail, we will at the
said term, in whole number (with the help of God and the assistance
of His saints in earth, of whose readie support we doubt not), enter
and take possession of our said patrimony, and eject you utterly
forth of the same.
Let him therefore that before has stoien, steal no more ; hut rather
et him work with his hands that he may be helpful to the poor.
From thb whole Cities, Towns, and Villages of
Scotland, the First Day of January, 1558 [1559].*
* 'Works,' i. 320.

84 FAMOUS SCOTS
As it turned out, this summons was in some cases
Uterally fulfilled, and a revolutionary ejectment carried
out by Whitsunday 1559. But now from another side
came another warning to put the house of the Church
in order. The Catholic barons presented a petition for
its reform, and the Regent called a Provincial Council
on I St March. It dealt, however, almost exclusively with
the lives and duties of the clergy, and leaving untouched
the central grievance — the legal authority of the Church
and of the Pope over all subjects — had no effect
whatever on the public. Immediately after, all 'un
authorised ' preaching was forbidden. The Protestants,
astonished, waited on the Regent and reminded her of
her promises. She replied, in words which were often
recalled during the reigns of her Stewart descendants,
that 'it became not subjects to burden their Princes
with promises, farther than it pleaseth them to keep the
same,' and the preachers were ordered to appear before
her at Stirling. But now Knox, who had kept up con
stant communication from Geneva with his friends,
suddenly appears on the scene. On 2d May he writes
from Edinburgh to Mrs Locke :
' I am come, I praise my God, even in the brunt of the battle :
for my fellow-preachers have a day appointed to answer before the
Queen Regent, the loth of this instant, where 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.' *
The day after this letter was written, Knox was ' blown
loud to the horn,' i.e., declared an excommunicated out
law : but he had meantime left for Dundee, where he
was received with acclamation, and from thence departed
to Perth, now the centre of Protestantism. There, day
by day, he preached to excited multitudes in the Parish
* 'Works,' vi. 21,

JOHN KNOX 85
Church; and it was after a sermon there, 'vehement
against idolatry,' that a foolish priest, attempting to
perform mass in the same building, was set upon by
the mob of Perth, who had an old feud with the
clergy. From the church the multitude streamed
away to the magnificent Religious Houses which had
adorned the town, and sacked and burned them so
thoroughly that only the walls were left standing. It
wanted yet four days to that Whitsunday, for ejection
on which the 'rascal multitude' had last New Year's
Day warned the Friars ! The Queen Regent resented
this outrageous violence, but was forced to come to an
interim agreement with the Lords of the Congregation.
On her entry into Perth they moved into Fife, and Knox
having preached in Crail and Anstruther, resolved to do
so also in the Parish Church of St Andrews on Sunday.
But the St Andrews populace had not yet declared them
selves ; the Regent's hostile army was only twelve miles
off ; and the Archbishop — who had occupied the town
with a hundred spears and a dozen of culverins — now
threatened his life if he attempted it. It was a moment
for a bold man. At the hour fixed Knox made his
appearance. No one ventured to attack him. He
preached with his usual impetuous eloquence on
'casting the buyers and sellers out of the temple,'
and at its close the magistrates and council permitted
the majority of the people to destroy most of the
monasteries, and strip the churches and cathedral of
their apparatus of 'idolatry.' Knox was always more
comfortable where he could say that such proceedings
were countenanced by the local authority, or by the
majority of a civic community. In Edinburgh, to
which the Congregation next moved, the majority had
hitherto been hostile to them ; and now, on the Queen
Regent's departure, the pulpits were for the first time
opened to what was the legitimate glory of the new move-

86 FAMOUS SCOTS
ment — free and unfettered preaching. Knox, church-
statesman though he was, threw himself into this work
with a delight that Ufted him above calculation of
consequences, ' The long thirst of my wretched heart is satisfied, in abundance
that is above my expectation ; for now, forty days and more hath
God used my tongue in my native country to the manifestation of
His glory. Whatever now shall follow, as touching my own carcase,
His Holy Name be praised.'*
The castle, however, still remained faithful to the
Regent, and on her forces approaching Edinburgh,
both parties agreed to a truce till January, which, as
respects the town and its religion, provided that —
'The town of Edinburgh shall, without compulsion, use and choose
what religion and manner thereof they please, to the said day ; so
that every vian may have freedom to use his own conscience to the day
foresaid, '+
The truce was to be for six months, to January 1560,
and it was employed by both parties in preparing for a
renewed struggle, and, on the side of the Congregation,
in negotiations with Elizabeth and her ministers. Politic
ally, this last step was of the highest importance. For
the first time for centuries, it healed the breach with ' our
auld enemies of England,' as the Scots statutes had so
* ' Works,' vi. 26.
+ 'Works,' i. 378. Knox objected to this unlimited freedom of
conscience being granted, even for a time ; and actually succeeded
in retaining the public worship on the ground that Edinburgh had
chosen already, though under compulsion. The interest lies in the
fact that, at every turn of the open stru^le which now took place
between the two parties, the true ultimate solution, that of tolera
tion, came to the front. But it was proposed, or suggested, by each
party only when that party was in the minority, and ignored as soon
as it regained the power to do wrong. See the following additional
pages in Knox's own History :— 'Works,' i, 389, 390, 428 ('idolatry
and murder '), 432, 442 (' chief duty '), and 444,

JOHN KNOX 87
often described them, and founded an alliance between
the two kingdoms, which has since that date been only
changed in order to become a union. And in this
negotiation the agent and secretary was Knox,* He
corresponded with the Queen's great minister Cecil
(Elizabeth herself would not hear Knox's name). And
it says not a little for the self-command and honesty of
the English statesman, that he trusted so fully a man
whose first letter, written several years before— a letter,
too, asking a favour — commenced by Knox's 'discharging
his conscience ' in this way : —
' In time past, being overcome with common iniquity, you have
followed the world in the way of perdition: for . . . to the
shedding of the blood of God's dear children have you, by
silence, consented and subscribed. Of necessity it is, that carnal
wisdom and worldly policy, (to both which, you are bruited to be
much inclined) give place to God's simple and naked truth.'
Cecil had made no answer to this or to similar
subsequent remarks, but he now wrote asking the
Congregation, ' if support should be sent hence, what manner of amity might
ensue betwixt these two realms, and how the same might be
hoped to be perpetual, and not to be so slender as heretofore hath
been, without other assurance of continuance than from time to
time hath pleased France. '
And the answer, in Knox's handwriting, is signed
by the Protestant lords, and assures England
' of our constancy (as men may promise) till our lives end ; yea,
farther, we will divulgate and set abroad a charge and command
ment to our posterity, that the amity and league between you and
us contracted and begun in Christ Jesus may by them be kept
inviolated for ever.'
* Knox himself takes care in his History ' to let the posterity
that shall follow understand, by what instruments God wrought
the familiarity and friendship, that after we found in England.'—
' Works,' ii. 43.

88 FAMOUS SCOTS
There was to be in the future a still more Solemn
League and Covenant between the two nations, it too
having for its object the deliverance (and, alas ! also
the uniformity) of religion in both kingdoms. But
that public, and this private, league were alike dis
avowed by the Sovereign, and both became the badge
of rebelUon. The Queen Regent, indeed, had now
fortified Leith, and was filling it with French soldiers.
The Lords of the Congregation, founding on this
as a breach of faith, resolved to suspend her from
the regency, and did so by a proclamation, strangely
signed : ' By us, the nobility and commons of the
Protestants of the Church of Scotland.' The preachers
approved, Knox, however, demanding that a door be
still kept open for her restoration. War, of course, at
once followed, and it turned out to be very much a
fight between Edinburgh and Leith, then not un
equally matched.* Soon the Protestants got the
worst of it. On the last day of October the French,
pouring up Leith Walk, drove them back into the
Canongate, attacked Leith Wynd, and sent their
horsemen in headlong flight through the Netherbow
Port and up the High Street. Five days after,
the forces of the Congregation having advanced to
Restalrig, were enclosed by two advancing bodies of
the enemy, and so jammed in near 'Holyrood, be
tween the crags of the Calton on the one side and the
crags of Arthur Seat on the other, as to be extricated
only with most serious loss. Confusion and dismay
* ' It is not unknown to the most part of this realm, that there
has been an old hatred and contention betwixt Edinburgh and
Leith ; Edinburgh seeking continually to possess that liberty which
by donation of kings they have long enjoyed, and Leith, by the
contrary, aspiring to a liberty and freedom in prejudice of Edin
burgh.'— Declaration of the Lords of the Congregation in 1559.
'Works,' i. 426,

JOHN KNOX 89
seized upon aU, and at midnight they marched out of
Edinburgh, pursued by voices of reproach and execra
tion from the overhanging roofs. Next night they
gathered helplessly at Stirling. But on the following
day Knox entered the pulpit there, and preached a
memorable sermon. It recalled the despairing Con
gregation to a mood of resolute trust and hope. And
yet his text was the Psalm which tells of the vine
brought from Egypt to be planted in the land, but
now wasted and broken down ; and the preacher
throughout refused even to suggest to the shrinking
multitude any lower hope than the vouchsafed shining
again of the Divine countenance. There remains only,
he concluded,
' that we turn to the Eternal our God, who beats down to death,
to the intent that he may raise up again, to leave the remembrance of
his wondrous deliverance, to the praise of his own name . . . yea,
whatsoever shall become of us and of our mortal carcases, I doubt
not but that this cause, in despite of Satan, shall prevail in the
realm of Scotland.'
But his words were as life from the dead, and the
sermon, which Buchanan also commemorates, was long
after recalled by the preacher himself in St Giles, in
another great crisis of the Evangel.
' From the beginning of God's mighty working within this realm,
I have been with you in your most desperate tentations. Ask your
own consciences, and let them answer you before God, if that I —
not I, but God's Spirit by me — in your greatest extremity willed you
not ever to depend upon your God, and in His name promised unto
you victory and preservation from your enemies, so that ye would
only depend upon his protection and prefer His glory to your own
lives and worldly commodity. In your most extreme dangers I
have been with you : St Johnstone, Cupar Muir, and the Crags of
Edinburgh, are yet recent in my heart : yea, that dark and dolorous
night wherein all ye, my Lords, with shame and fear left this town,
is yet in my mind ; and God forbid that ever I forget it ! '
' The voice of one man,' it was afterwards said b'f

90 FAMOUS SCOTS
Knox by the English ambassador in Edinburgh, ' is able
in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred
trumpets continually blustering in our ears.' This day
in StirUng was the very lowest point of the fortunes
of the Congregation, and from this hour they began
to rise. There were reverses still ; but Scotland was
sick of the French, and the end was to come with
the coming year. In April 1560, the English forces
surrounded Leith ; the Queen Regent withdrew from
it into the Castle of Edinburgh; and the Lords of
the Congregation, stronger than they were originally
by the accession of the Duke of Hamilton and the
Earls of Morton and Huntly,* made one more
' Band ' or Covenant. In it for the last time they fall
back on liberty of conscience ; for all they bind them
selves to is,
' with our bodies, goods, friends, and all that we may do, to set
forward the Reformation of Religion, according to God's word ; and
procure, by all means possible, that the truth of God's word may
have free passage within this realm, with due administration of the
Sacraments, and all things depending upon the said word. ' t
A copy of this Band, by which each subscriber also
bound himself not to make separate overtures to the
Regent, was brought to her in the Castle. Knox, who
by this time was become very hostile to Mary of
Lorraine, and reports much doubtful gossip as to her
rejoicing over the victories and cruelties of her soldiers,
says that when she read the Band, she spoke in quite
another and milder sense.
' The malediction of God I give unto them that counselled me to
persecute the preachers, and to refuse the petitions of the best part
of the true subjects of this realm.'
* Lesser barons sign too, from Cranstoun and Cessford on the
Borders, to Leslie of Buchan and John Innes of that Ilk in the
North. t 'Works,' ii. 61. It is dated 26 April 1560.

JOHN KNOX 91
But the time was past for her co-operating for the
welfare of that realm. She had fallen into a dropsy,
and, becoming daily worse, sent for the Earls Argyll,
Glencairn, and Marischal, and the Lord James (her
husband's son). They came to her separately, and to
each she confessed that she had made a mistake, and
should have acceded to the arrangement they had pro
posed. ' They gave unto her both the counsel and the
comfort which they could in that extremity, and willed
her to send for some godly learned man, of whom she
might receive instruction.' They proposed Willock ;
but even that gentle preacher did not set forth 'the
virtue and strength of the death of Jesus Christ,' without
touching also upon ' the vanity and abomination of that
idol, the mass.' The dying woman said nothing, good
or bad, of the form in which Christianity had been first
presented, long years ago, to her childish eyes. But
' she did openly confess " that there was no salvation
but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." ' And Knox,
holding that in this ' Christ Jesus got no small victory '
over her, grudges extremely that to her approval of ' the
chief head of our religion, wherein we dissent from all
Papists and Papistry,' she added no condemnation of
opposing ways. But Mary of Lorraine had uttered the
last even of her good-natured ' maledictions,' and on the
loth of June the Regent of Scotland ended her 'un
happy life ' — a life, that is, which had pleased neither
party, though in its later years a great revolution, carried
through at the expense of comparatively little violence
or bloodshed, had narrowly missed attaining an even
ideal result.
And now those troubles were over. Nine months be
fore, her daughter had become Queen of France, and a
treaty was now concluded at Edinburgh, between the
Queen of England on the one part and the ' King and
Queen of France and Scotland ' on the other, by which

92 FAMOUS SCOTS
the French troops and officials withdrew from Scotland,
and an indemnity was granted to the insurgent nobility
for all that the Congregation had done. Elizabeth still
looked on them as rebels ; but Cecil, with more fore
sight, instructed her plenipotentiaries to provide ' that
the government of Scotland be granted to the nation of
the land'; and the treaty provided for a Council of
Administration in the absence from Edinburgh of the
Sovereigns, and — more important still — for an immediate
meeting of the Estates, which was to be as valid as if
presided over by them.* The most important Parlia
ment which Scotland has ever seen sat on ist August
1560, and was very largely attended by nobles, lairds, and
burgh representatives. Naturally, a petition was at once
laid before it for the abolition of the old Church system.
Equally naturally, this was met by a request for a state
ment of the new Church doctrine — a confession of faith.
It was prepared by Knox and three others, and in four
days presented to the Parliament.
' I never heard,' says the English envoy to Cecil,
'matters of so great importance, neither sooner de
spatched nor with better will agreed unto.' Knox's
narrative, which is borne out by the records of Parlia
ment, says that
' This our Confession was publicly read, first in audience of the
Lords of the Articles, and after, in audience of the whole Parlia
ment, where were present, not only such as professed Christ Jesus,
* It does not say that all its acts were to be valid. On the con
trary, • certain Articles concerning religion ' having been presented
on the part of the nobles and people of Scotland, and not meddled
with by the plenipotentiaries 'as being of such importance that
they judged them proper to be remitted to the King and Queen,'
it was provided that the Estates, on their meeting, should choose
some persons of quality ' to repair to their Majesties and remon
strate to them the state of their affairs, particularly those last
mentioned.'

JOHN KNOX 93
but also a great number of the adversaries of our religion, such as
the fore-named bishops, and some others of the temporal estate,
who were commanded, in God's name, to object, if they could,
anything against that doctrine.'
The ministers were present to defend it, but there
was no opposition, and a second day was appointed,
when the Confession was again read over, article by
article, and then a vote was taken. Three, or at the most
five, temporal peers voted against ratifying it ; ' and yet
for their disassenting they produced no better reason
but. We will believe as our fathers believed.' Nor was
this strange, for the Bishops present, Knox says, ' spake
nothing,' Randolph explaining that the three who got to
their feet, headed by the St Andrew's primate, said the
doctrine was a matter new and strange to them, which
they had not examined, and which they could not
' utterly condemn,' or, on the other hand, quite consent
to. The vote on the side of the majority was largely a
rejoicing outburst of individual conviction. The Earl
Marischal indeed, took the obvious ground that
'seeing that my Lords Bishops, who for their learning can, and
for that zeal they should bear to the verity, would (as I suppose)
gainsay anything that directly repugns to the verity of God — seeing,
I say, my Lords here present speak nothing in the contrary of the
doctrine proposed, I cannot but hold it to be the very truth of God,
and the contrary to be deceivable doctrine.'
The rest of the Lords, says Randolph, with common
consent, and ' as glad a will as ever I heard men speak,'
allowed the same.
' Divers, with protestation of their conscience and faith, desired
rather presently to end their lives than ever to think contrary unto
that allowed there. Many also offered to shed their blood in de
fence of the same. The old Lord of Lindsay, 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." '

94 FAMOUS SCOTS
It was the birthday of a people. For not in that
assembly alone, and within the dim walls of the old
Parliament House of Edinburgh, was that faith confessed
and those vows made. Everywhere the Scottish burgess
and the Scottish peasant felt himself caUed to deal, in
dividually and immediately, with Christianity and the
divine; and everywhere the contact was ennobling.
' Common man ' as he was, ' the vague, shoreless universe
had become for him a firm city, and a dwelling-place
which he knew. Such virtue was in belief: in these
words well spoken, / believe.' * But being a common
man in Scotland, his religion could not be isolated, or
his faith for himself alone. Wherever he dwelt, ' in our
towns and places reformed,' he was already a member of
a self-governing republic, a republic within the Scottish
State but not of it, and subject to an invisible King.
'The good old cause' was already born. It kindled
itself, as that son of the Burgher ,mason in Annandale
says again, ' like a beacon set on high ; high as heaven,
yet attainable from earth, whereby the meanest man
becomes not a citizen only, but a member of Christ's
visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true

Day by day at this critical epoch Knox preached in
St Giles from the ' prophet Haggeus,' on what he caUed
The Building of the House. In one sense the founda
tion was laid already. In another. Parliament might be
called upon to supply one. What foundation was Par
liament to lay, and what structure was promised for the
days to come ? * Thomas Carlyle.

CHAPTER V
THE PUBLIC LIFE : LEGISLATION AND CHURCH PLANS
The Confession presented to the Parliament of 1560
was one of a group which sprang as if from the soil, in
almost every country in Europe. They had all a strong
family likeness ; but not because one imitated the other.
They were honest attempts to represent the impression
made on the mind of that age by the newly discovered
Scriptures, and that impression — the first impression at
least — was everywhere the same. And everjrwhere it
was overwhelmingly strong. So far as Knox at least
is concerned, he plainly held the extreme view, not
only that no one could read the Scriptures with
out finding in them the new doctrine, but that — as
he quite calmly observed on one memorable occasion
in St Giles — 'all Papists are infidels,' either refusing
to consult the light, or denying it when seen. And, of
course, nothing was more calculated to confirm this view
than a scene like that which we have just described, and
which had been recently rehearsed in innumerable cases
in Scotland and elsewhere. But, in truth, the new light
dazzled all eyes. Later on, men had to analyse it, and
they found there were distinctions to be made as to its
value : — for example, between truth natural and truth
revealed, between the Old Testament and the New,
between the truths even of the New Testament and its
sacraments — distinctions which some among themselves
admitted, and which others refused. The very last
publication, too, of Knox in 1572 was an answer to a
95

96 FAMOUS SCOTS
Scottish Jesuit ; for by that time a counter-Reformation,
which also was not without its convictions, had begun.
But, in the meantime, the energy and the triumph were
all on one side. And although only the first step had
been taken, it must be remembered that the first step was,
in Scotland, the great one. With the really Protestant
party, and, of course, with the Puritans, the confession
of truth was fundamental. Subsequent arrangements
as to the State, and even as to the Church, were
subordinate — they were, at the best, mere corollaries
from the central doctrine affecting the individual. In
every case truth comes first : and human authority a
long way later on. In this transaction, for example, of
the 17th August 1560, nothing is clearer than that the
Parliament did not adopt the doctrine in any way on
the authority of the new-born Church. All the forms
of a free and dehberate voting of the doctrine as truth
— as the creed of the estates, not of the Church, were
gone through. Still less, on the other hand, did the
Church really adopt it on the authority of the Parlia
ment ; (though it must be confessed that this expression
of it — the written creed of 1560 — had no formal sanc
tion other than that of the State). But it was the con
fession ' professed by the Protestants,' and exhibited by
them 'to the estates;' and it contained in itself abundant
and adequate foundation for that independence of the
Church which became so dear to Scotland in following
ages, and of which Knox himself has always been re
cognised as, more than any other man, the historical
embodiment. The great confession in this creed that ' as we believe
in one God — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — so do we
most constantly believe that from the beginning there has
been, now is, and to the end of the world shall be, one
Kirk,' is there so deduced from the everlasting purpose
and revelations of God, and is so concentrated upon

JOHN KNOX 97
the duty and the privilege of the individual man, that
the church in Scotland, even had it never become
national, would have stood square and perhaps risen
high upon this one foundation. But it was by no means
intended to stand on that foundation alone, however
adequate. And it was with a view to further steps — not
all of them taken at this time — that clauses as to the
civil magistrate were introduced in the penultimate
chapter, assigning to him ' principally ' the conservation
and purgation of the religion — by which, it is carefully
explained, is meant not only the ' maintenance ' of the
true religion, but the ' suppressing ' of the false. One
more remark may be made. Theoretically, the Church
could improve its creed. In France it was read aloud
on the first day of each yearly Assembly, that amend
ments or alterations upon it might be proposed;
and in Scotland also the view was strongly held that
the only standard unchangeable by the Church was
Scripture. This theoretical view, however, was not to
have much immediate practical result ; especially as the
Confession was now ratified by the Parliament. And
this was done without change or qualification, though
the preface prefixed to it by the Churchmen admits
its faUibility and invites amendment — a view in which
Knox had long since been encouraged by his earliest
teacher.* * The writers of the Scottish Confession in 1560 protest ' that if
any man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence
repugning to God's holy word, that it would please him of his
gentleness, and for Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the
same in write ; and we of our honour and fidelity do promise unto
him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from His Holy
Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be
amiss.' — ' Works,' ii. 96.
Wishart, the translator in or before 154S of the First Helvetic
Confession, adds to it this similar and very beautiful declaration : —
'It is not our mind for to prescribe by these brief chapters a,
4 G

98 FAMOUS SCOTS
The congregation had confessed the doctrine to the
Parliament, and the Parliament had accepted and ap
proved it. Had the Parliament more to do ?
Some things were absolutely necessary. It had to
wipe out the previous legislation against the profession
of the new faith. The Evangel had to be set free by
statute. Once liberated from the ban of the law under
which its previous victories had been won, it could finish
its work independently, and without difficulty sweep the
whole of Scotland. And Knox had no doubt as to the
right of the Kirk to act independently, or as to its
duty to do so — if it could not do more and better.
Already, before the Parliament met, the members of it
who were Protestants had gathered together in Edin
burgh, and arranged for fixing this and that minister of
the word in the various centres of population. And
once the legal obstacles to proselytism were removed,
the way would be open for a more glorious advance than
they had yet seen. But such a work in the future,
though comparatively easy, and though in Knox's view
certain rule of the faith to all churches and congregations, for we
know no other rule of faith but the Holy Scripture ; and, therefore,
we are well contented with them that agree with these things,
howbeit they use another manner of speaking or Confession,
different partly to this of ours in words ; for rather should the
matter be considered than the words. And therefore we make it
free for all men to use their own sort of speaking, as they shall per
ceive most profitable for their churches, and we shall use the same
liberty. And if any man will attempt to corrupt the true meaning
of this our Confession, he shall hear both a confession and a defence
of the verity and truth. It was our pleasure to use these words at
this present time, that we might declare our opinion in our religion
and worshipping of God,' — ' Miscellany of Wodrow Society,' i. 23.
This 'declaration' is not in the original Confession, either in
Latin or German, and must have been vmtten, probably by Wish
art himself, rather for the English readers or the Scottish churches
for whom the rest was translated. It is a remarkable legacy.

JOHN KNOX 99
certain in its result, would be slow. Why not do it all
at a stroke ? Instead of merely revoking the intolerant
laws, why not turn them against the other side ?
A very strong petition had been already presented
against the Romish Church, and exactly a week after
the ratification of the Confession, three Acts were
passed.* These three Acts, with that ratification, con
stituted the public ' state of religion ' during the seven
years of Mary's reign, and they were re-enacted on her
abdication in 1567 as the foundation of the regime of
Protestantism. Of the three, the first was only ambigu
ously intolerant, for though it ordained that the Pope
' have no jurisdiction nor authority within this realm,'
that might be held to reject mainly the Papal encroach
ment upon civil power. The second was not intolerant
at all, and as being well within the power and duty of the
nation, it ought to have come first. By it all Acts bypast,
and especially those of the five Jameses, not agreeing
with God's Word and contrary to the Confession, and
' wherethrow divers innocents did suffer,' were abolished
and extinguished for ever. But the third, passed the
same day, proceeded on the preamble that 'notwith
standing the reformation already made, according to
God's Word, yet there is some of the said Papist Kirk
that stubbornly persevere in their wicked idolatry saying
Mass and baptising.' And it ordained, against not only
them but all dissenters and outsiders for all time, ' that
no manner of person in any time coming administer any
of the Sacraments foresaid, secretly or any other manner
of way, but they that are admitted, or have power to
that effect,' And lastly, with regard to the large
minority (if, indeed, it was not a clear majority) of the
nation who still clung to their ordinary worship, it pro
vided that no one ' shall say Mass, nor yet hear Mass,
nor be present thereat,' under the pains, for the first
* As now in the Statute Book, 1567, chaps. 2, 3, and 5,

100 FAMOUS SCOTS
fault, of confiscation of goods and bodily punishment,
for the second, of banishment, and for the third, of
death. This has always remained the fundamental positive
ordinance among the statutes of the Reformation; though
it may be fair to take along with it the first of these
three Acts, and especially a positive clause in it which
forbids bishops to exercise jurisdiction by Papal au
thority. No farther establishment of the Church was at
the time attempted ; and there was indeed no farther
legislation tiU Mary's downfall in 1567. In that year
the three Acts of 1560 were anew passed; and they
were followed by the formal statement (more or less
implied even in the legislation of 1560) that the
ministers and people professing Christ according to
the Evangel and the Reformed Sacraments and Con
fession are ' the only true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ
within this realm.' An Act followed by which each
king at his coronation was to take an oath to main
tain this religion, and also, explicitly, to root out all
heretics and enemies ' to the true worship of God that
shall be convict by the true Kirk of God.' It seems
difficult for statutory religion to go farther : but the
solid system and block of intolerance was completed by
a group of statutes in 1572, the year of Knox's death.
They ordain that Papists and others not joiningin
the Reformed worship shall after warning be excom
municated by the Church (of which a previous Act,
somewhat inconsistently, had declared them not to be
at all members) ; and that ' none shall be reputed as
loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord or his
authority, but be punishable as rebels and gain-standers
of the same, who shall not give their confession, and
make their profession of the said true religion.'
Scotland had taken the wrong legislative turning.
The only defence of these statutes, and it is a very in-

JOHN KNOX 101
adequate one, is that they could not be fully enforced and
were not, and that perhaps they were not quite intended
to be enforced. In point of fact Scotland in the Refor
mation time had little blood-shedding for mere religion
on either side to shew, compared to the deluge which
stained the scaffolds of continental Europe. That is no
answer to the criticism that the only law now needed
was one to ' abolish and extinguish ' the persecuting
laws which had been enacted of old. But even to such
a critic, and on the ground of theory, there is something
to be said. It is not true that the new theory was worse
than the old. On the contrary, the old theory allowed
no private judgment to the individual at all; he was
bound by the authority of the Church, and it was no
comfort to him to know that the state was bound by it
too. On the Protestant theory neither the individual
nor the state were in the first instance so bound ; both
were free to find and utter the truth, free for the first
time for a thousand years ! It was this feeUng — that
the state was free truthwards and Godwards — which ac
counted for half of the enthusiasm in the Scots Parlia
ment a week before. And it was not at once perceived,
there or elsewhere, that for the state to make use of this
freedom by embracing a creed itself — even though it
now embraced it as the true creed and no longer as the
Church's creed — was perilous for the more fundamental
freedom of the individual. He would be sure to feel
aggrieved by his state adopting the creed which was not
his. And the state might readily be led into holding
that it had adopted it not for its officials only but for
its subjects, and might shape its legislation accordingly.
Knox was more responsible for the result than any
other man, and for him also there is something to be
said. The view that the state must adopt a religion for
all its subjects and compel them all to be members of
its Church, was common ground in that age; both

102 FAMOUS SCOTS
parties proclaimed it (except when they were in too
hopeless a minority), and the few Anabaptists and others
who anticipated the doctrine of modern times had not
been able to get it into practical poUtics. Knox too, in
his first contact with the Reformed faith (and the con
tact, as we know, was a plunge), had found the tenet of
the magistrate's duty in an exaggerated form. And in
that form he now reproduced it. The statement of his
Confession of 1560 that 'To Kings, Princes, Rulers,
and Magistrates we affirm that chiefly and most prin
cipally the conservation and purgation of the Religion
appertains,' is not at all stronger than that in the First
Confession of Helvetia which Wishart had brought with
him before 1545. Switzerland, taught by bitter ex
perience, exchanged it for a milder statement in its
Second Confession of 1566.* But Calvin and Beza and
Knox's friends in the French Protestant Church generally
had held to the stronger view of the magistrate's duty,
even amid all his persecutions of them; and Knox's
passionate indignation against idolatry had led him,
* It may be interesting to read the statement of the First Helvetic
in Wishart's translation (though this is one of the paragraphs in
which that translation mangles the Latin and German originals).
It is given in the ' Miscellany of the Wodrow Society,' i. 21 :
' Seeing every magistrate and high power is of God, his chief
and principal office is (except he would rather use tyranny) to defend
the true worshipping of God from all blasphemy, and to procure
true religion . . . //^«k <y?i!?- to judge the people by equal and godly
laws to exercise and maintain judgment and justice, &c.' (Sec. 26) ;
and (Sec. 24), ' They that bring in ungodly sects and opinions
. . . should be constrained and pimished by the magistrates and
high powers.'
The Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 rather inverts the order
put by the First. ' The magistrate's principal office is to procure
and preserve peace and public tranquillity. And he never can do
this more happily ' than by promoting religion, extirpating idolatry,
and defending the Church. . . , For 'the care of religion be
longs,' not to the magistrate simply, but ' to the pious magistrate.'

JOHN KNOX 103
even in his early English career, to maintain the duty
not only of the magistrate, but even of the subject in so
far as he had power, to punish it with death. Indeed
his only chance of escaping from the vicious circle of
that murderous syllogism* was by going back to the
right of the individual to stand against the magistrate,
and if need be to combine against him, in defence of
truth. On this side even that early Helvetic Confession
had proclaimed (in Wishart's words but in Knox's spirit),
that subjects should obey the magistrate only ' so long
as his commandments, statutes, and empires, evidently
repugn not with Him for whose sake we honour and
worship the magistrate.' And Knox in later years had
travelled so far on the road of modern constitutionalism
as to maintain the right of subjects to combine against
and overthrow the ruler whose intolerant statutes so
repugned. How far he had exactly gone would have
appeared had the chapter 'of the obedience or dis
obedience that subjects owe unto their magistrates '
appeared in the Scottish Confession unrevised, Ran
dolph says that the ' author of this work ' was advised
by Lethington and Winram to leave it out. Something,
if not a whole chapter, has been left out ; and the con
sequence is that the first Confession of the Scottish
Church and people is very much overweighted on the
side of absolute power. But had that chapter gone in,
it would have been difficult not to have recognised even
then, that there was an inconsistency between the
alleged high function of the magistrate as to religion,
and the disobedience which on that head his subjects
may ' owe unto him ' — an inconsistency even in theory.
The inconsistency in practice Providence was to make
its early care.
It had been necessary for Parliament to revoke its
* See page 67 and note.

104 FAMOUS SCOTS
old persecuting statutes. And on that side it had gone
farther, proscribing the old religion and Church, and
setting up, if not a new church, at least a new religion.
But, on another side, and one with which Parliament
alone could deal, there was also something necessary.
What was to be done with the huge endowments of the
Church now abolished and proscribed ? And what pro
vision was to be made by the State for that ' main
tenance of the true religion' to which it had bound
itself, and for its spread among a people, half of whom
were not even acquainted with it, though all of them
were already bound to it by law ?
The question of the endowments was a more difficult
one, theoretically and practically, than that of the yearly
tithes. For the former had been actual gifts, made to
the Church or its officials by kings, barons, and other
individuals, when there was no law compelling them
to give them. What right had the State now to
touch these? Two things are to be recalled before
answer. All these individual donors had been by law
compelled not only to be members of that Church, but
to accept it (whether they wished to do so or not) as the
exclusive receiver of whatever charities they might desire
to institute or to bequeath. For many centuries past in
Scotland the proposal to do otherwise would have been
not only futile, but a deadly risk to him who tried it.
Then, secondly, the same law which had bound the
individual to the Church as the exclusive administrator
of charities, had kept him in compulsory ignorance of
other objects of munificence than those which the
Church sanctioned; or if by chance that pious ignorance
was broken, it sternly forbade him to support them.
For reasons such as these the modern European state
has never been able to treat ancient endowments made
under the pressure of its own intolerance with the same
respect as if the donors had been really free — free to

JOHN KNOX 105
know, and free to act. The presumption that the donor
or testator, if he were living now, would have acted far
otherwise than he did, and that in altering his destina
tion the State may be carrying out what he reaUy would
have wished, is in such cases by no means without
foundation. Knox and others reveal to us that this
feeling was overwhelmingly strong at the time with
which we are dealing, especially in the minds of the
descendants and representatives of the donors them
selves. And in the minds of the common people, and
of Knox as one sprung from them, there was lying,
unexpressed, the feeling which in modern times has
been expressed so loudly, that the claim of the individual,
whether superior or sovereign, to alienate for unworthy
uses huge tracts of territory which carry along with
them the lives and labours of masses of men — and of
men who have never consented to it — is a claim doubt
ful in its origin and pernicious in its results. All over
Protestant Europe the conclusion even of the wise and
just was, that, subject to proper qualifications, the ancient
endowments of the Church were now the treasury of the
people. But there was another part of the patrimony of the
,old Church on which Knox had a still stronger opinion
— viz., the yearly tithes or Teinds. To these, in his
view, that Church and its ministers had neither the
divine right which they had claimed, nor any right at
all. The ' commandment ' of the State indeed had
compelled men, often cruelly and unjustly, to pay them
to the Church. But the State was now free to dispose
of them better, and it was bound to dispose of them
justly. And in so far as they should still be exacted at
all, they must now be devoted to the most useful and
the most charitable purposes — ^purposes which should
certainly include the support of the ministry, but should
include many other things too. One of the positions

io6 FAMOUS SCOTS
taken up by Knox in his very first sermon in St Andrews
(following the views which he reports as held by the
Lollards of Kyle), was, ' The teinds by God's law do not
appertain of necessity to the Kirkmen,' * And now the
Book of Discipline, under its head of ' The Rents and
Patrimony of the Kirk,' demanded that
' Two sorts of men, that is to say, the ministers and the poor,
together with the schools, when order shall be taken thereanent,
must be sustained upon the charges of the church.' t
And again —
' Of the teinds must not only the ministers be sustained, but also
the poor and schools.'
The kirk was now powerful, and the poor and the
schools were weak ; and Knox now as ever put forward
the strong to champion those who could not help them
selves. But he had long before come to the conclusion, |
that of the classes here co-ordinated as having a right
to the teinds, it was the right of the poor that was
fundamental, and the claim of the ministers was
secondary or ancillary, and perhaps only to be sustained
in so far as they preached and distributed to the poor, or
* 'Works,' i. 8, 194. t 'Works,' ii, 221, 222.
% Knox's opinion was asked upon the point in or before 1556,
and he anwered ('Works,' iv, 127), 'Touching Tithes, by the law
of God they appertain to no priest, for now we have no levitical priest
hood ; but by law, positive gift, custom, they appertain to princes,
and by their commandment to "men of kirk," as they would be
termed. In their first donation respect was had to another end, as
their own law doth witness, than now is observed. For first, respect
was had that such as were accounted distributors of those things
that were given to churchmen, should have their reasonable sustenta-
tion of the same, making just account of the rest, how it was to be
bestowed upon the poor, the stranger, the widow, the fatherless, for
whose relief, all such rents and duties were chiefly appointed to the
church. Secondly, that provision should be made for the ministers
of the church, &c.'

JOHN KNOX 107
possibly only in so far as they were of, and represented,
the poor. Accordingly the Assembly of 1562, in a
Supplication, no doubt written by Knox, and certainly
breathing what had been his spirit ever since the early
days of Wishart, conjoins the cause of both in passionate
eloquence :
' The Poor be of three sorts : the poor labourers of the ground ;
the poor desolate beggars, orphans, widows, and strangers ; and
the poor ministers of Christ Jesus His holy Evangel : which are all
so cruelly treated. . . . For now the poor labourers of the ground
are so oppressed by the cruelty of those that pay their Third, that
they for the most part advance upon the poor whatsoever they pay
to the Queen or to any other. As for the very indigent and poor,
to whom God commands a sustentation to be provided of the Teinds,
they are so despised that it is a wonder that the sun giveth light
and heat to the earth where God's name is so frequently called upon,
and no mercy, according to His commandment, shown to His
creatures. And also for the ministers, their livings are so appointed,
that the most part shall live but a beggar's life. And all cometh of
that impiety — ' *
The position that the ' patrimony of the Church ' is
fundamentally rather the ' patrimony of the poor,' and
that ecclesiastics are merely its distributors, was any
thing but new. It is a commonplace! among the
• ' Works,' ii. 340.
t Thomassin, a very great authority, devotes no fewer than eight
chapters of his third folio De Beneficiis to proving from Councils
and the Fathers that ' Res Ecclesiae, res et patrimonia sunt pau-
perum. Earum beneficiarii non domini sunt sed dispensatores.'
After voluminous evidence from all the centuries, he holds it super
fluously plain that all beneficed men are ' mere dispensers and
administrators, not proprietors nor even possessors, of what is truly
the patrimony of the poor,' and what is held as trustee for the
indigent by Christ Himself; so much so, that when this property of
the poor is diverted to support a bishop or other dignitary, he is not
entitled to enjoy his house, table, or garments, unless these have a
certain suggestion and savour of destitution — necesse est paupertatis

io8 FAMOUS SCOTS
learned of the Catholic Church — the difference was that
at this crisis it was possible for Scotland to act upon it,
and that the state was urged to remember the poor
by a man who, with all his devotion to God and to
the other world, burned with compassion for the hard
wrought labourers of his people. For it will be observed
that here, as elsewhere, Knox is concerned, not only for
the ' very indigent,' and the technically ' poor,' * but for
those especially whom he calls ' your poor brethren, the
labourers and manurers (hand-workers) of the ground.'
In the Book of Discipline, before entering upon its pro
visions for dividing the tithe between the ministers, the
poor, and the schools, he urges that the labourers must
be allowed ' to pay so reasonable teinds, that they may
feel some benefit of Christ Jesus, now preached unto
them.' For
' With the grief of our hearts we hear that some gentlemen are
now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the Papists, requiring
of them whatever before they paid to the Church, so that the
Papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the
lord or of the laird.' . . . But 'the gentlemen, barons, earls,
lords, and others, must be content to live upon their just rents, and
suffer the Church to be restored to her liberty, that in her restitu
tion, the poor, who heretofore by the cruel Papists have been spoiled
and oppressed, may now receive some comfort and relaxation.'
For Knox had now fully conceived that magnificent
odore aliquo perfundi. Thomassin, of course, holds that the
Church has a divine right to tithes ; but it is a divine right to ad
minister, not to enjoy, them. Knox and the Reformers denied
the divine right even to administer : they urged that the State
should make the Kirk its administrators.
* For them too, and even for the strong and sturdy and the Jolly
Beggars among them, he had a certain fellow-feeling; as is wit
nessed by the zest with which he records their ' Warning ' (p. 82).
The one point, indeed, at which Knox and Burns come together
is ' A man's a man for a' that ! '

JOHN KNOX 109
scheme of statesmanship for Scotland, which is preserved
for us in his book of Discipline, presented, after the
Confession, to the Estates of Scotland in 1560.* How
long this project may have been in incubation in his
mind, we do not know. But the germ of it may have
been very early indeed. It may have come into ex
istence simultaneously with his earliest hope for the
' liberty ' and ' restitution ' of the oppressed and cap
tive kirk. For I shaU now for the last time quote a
passage from that early Swiss Confession which his
master Wishart had brought over with him to Scotland
so long ago ; a passage which in its bold comprehen
siveness may well have been the original even in his
(Knox's) early East Lothian days, of his later ' devout
imagination.' The Church, said the Swiss Reformers,
as translated by the Scot (and translated, as there is
high authority for believing,! for the express purpose of
founding a Protestant Church in Scotland — or at least
in those burghs of Scotland which had received his
teaching), is entitled to call upon the magistrate for
' A right and diligent institution of the discipline of citizens, and
of the schools a just correction and nurture, with liberality to
wards the ministers of the Church, with a solicitate and thoughtful
charge of the poor, to which end all the riches of the Church [in
German, die Giiter der Kirche'\ is referred.' J
* 'Works,' ii. 183 to 260.
t I am indebted for this view to Dr. A. F. Mitchell, Emeritus
Professor of Church History in St Andrews, to whom all are
indebted who are interested in the historical learning of either the
Reformation or the Covenant.
X The ' end ' to which or for which all the Church patrimony
is here said to be given, does not seem to be merely the ' charge
of the poor ' ; though Protestants as well as Catholics often urge
that as fundamentally true. It seems to be rather the whole group
of good objects which are gathered together. The Latin and
German originals must be consulted.

no FAMOUS SCOTS
Knox's ' Book ' and scheme are an expansion of this
one sentence. It was statesmanship in the fullest sense,
including a poor-law and a system of education, higher
and elementary, for the whole country. But it was in
the first place a Book of the Church. And while its
' system of national education was realised only in its
most imperfect fashion, its system of religious instruction
was carried into effect with results that would alone
stamp the First Book of Discipline as the most im
portant document in Scottish history ' (Hume Brown).
Even on the Church side it is somewhat too despotic.
The power of discipline and of exclusion which is
necessary to every self-governing society was rightly
preserved. But in its application it tended here, as
in Geneva, to press too much upon the detail of in
dividual life. So, too, the prominence now given to
preaching, and the duty laid down of habitually waiting
upon it, may seem inconsistent with the primitive Pro
testant authority of the Word of God alone. This,
however, would have been modified, had the system
of 'weekly prophesyings ' (which provided for not one
man only but for all who are qualified communicating
their views), taken root in Scotland, as it has so largely
done in Wales, And even as it was, this work of a
trained ministry, and especially the preaching, passed
in those early days like a ploughshare through the whole
soil and substance of the Scottish character, and left
enduring and admirable results.
Had Knox been able to throw himself directly upon
the people, all would have been well. But the people
were to be approached through hereditary rulers, whose
consent was necessary for funds with which the Church
might administer, not the department of religion and
worship only, but those also of national education and
national charity. That the Church should be adminis
trator was not the difficulty. Whether, indeed, the

JOHN KNOX III
selection of one religion, to be by ordinance of Parlia
ment the religion of the subjects of the State, was
justifiable, will always be gravely questioned. But,
rightly or wrongly, that had already been done ; and it
was clearly fitting that the body which was thus in a
sense made co-extensive with the nation, should under
take national duties, of a kind cognate with those pro
perly its own. No one — except perhaps the CathoUcs
— doubted that the new Church, with both the new
learning and the new enthusiasm behind it, was better
fitted to administer alike education and charity than
either the Estates or the Crown. And Knox's great'
scheme proposed that the Church, in addition to ad- .
ministering its own religion and worship, should in
every parish provide — i. That those not able to work
should be supported ; 2, that those who »were able
should be compelled to work ; 3, that every child
should have a public school provided for it ; 4, that
every youth of promise should have an open way
through a system of public schools on to the Univer
sities. It was a great plan, but a perfectly reasonable
one. And there was abundance of money for it. For
the wealth of the Church now abolished, which the law
held to be, at least after the death of the existing life-
renters, at the disposal of the Crown,* and which was
indeed afterwards transferred to it by statute, •!* is gener
ally calculated to have amounted to nearly one half of
the whole wealth of the country. But the crowning sin
of the old hierarchy had been that on the approach oC
the Reformation they commenced, in the teeth of their
own canons, to alienate the temporalities which they
had held only in trust, to the lords and lairds around
them as private holders. And the process of waste thus
initiated by the Church and the nobles was continued by
* Stair's ' Institutions,' ii, 3, 36. Erskine's ' Institutes,' ii. 10, 19.
+ 1587. ^- 29.

112 FAMOUS SCOTS
the Crown and its favourites ; the result being that the
aristocracy so enriched became a body with personal
interests hostile to the people and their new Church.
Even in the first flush of the Reformation all that the
Reformers could procure was an immediate ' assump
tion ' by the Crown of one-third of the benefices. And
even of this one-third, only a part was to go to the
Church, the rest being divided between the old pos
sessors and the Crown ; or, as Knox pithily put it, ' two
parts are freely given to the devil, and the third must be
divided between God and the devil' Even God's part,
however, was scandalously ill-paid during Mary's reign,
and in addition the Church objected to receiving by
way of gift from the Crown what they should have
received rather as due from the parishes and the people.
This came out very instructively in the Assembly of
December 1566. The Queen was now courting the
Protestants, and had signed an offer for a considerable
sum for the maintenance of the ministers. What was
to be said to her offer ? The Assembly first requested
the opinion of Knox and the other ministers, as the
persons concerned. They retired for conference, and
' very gravely ' answered —
' That it was their duty to preach to the people the Word of God
truly and sincerely, and to crave of the auditors the things that
were necessary for their sustentation, as of duty the pastors might
justly crave of their flock.' *
This striking reversion to the Apostolic rule — all the
more striking because it is easily reconcilable with the
now accepted doctrine of toleration — was, no doubt, not
only in substance but in form the utterance of Knox.
But so also, if we are to judge by internal evidence, was
the formal answer of the Assembly. They accepted the
Queen's gift under the pressure of present necessity,
but * ' Works,' ii. 538.

JOHN KNOX 113
' Not the less, in consideration [of] the law of God ordains the
persons who hear the doctrine of salvation at the mouths of his
ministers, and thereby receive special food to the nourishment of
their souls, to communicate temporal sustentation on [to] their
preachers : Their answer is. That having just title to crave the
bodily food at the hands of the said persons, and finding no others
bound unto them, they only require at their own flock, that they
will sustain them according to their bounden duty, and what it shall
please them to give for their sustentation, if it were but bread and
water, neither will they refuse it, nor desist from the vocation.
But to take from others contrary to their will, whom they serve
not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable.' *
The principle so admirably laid, do-wn, by Knox Jias_
become the principle of modern Presbytenaiiism throiigh;
out thejvprld. And even in that day it required nothing
to oe^added to it except the recognition that Catholics,
and others outside the ' flock,' who were merely statutory
' auditors,' were not bound to its pastor in the tithe, or
other proportion, of their means. Elementary as this
may now seem, it was of course too much for that age.
The same Assembly went on to declare that ' the teinds
properly pertain to the Kirk,' and while they should be
applied not only to the ministers, but also to 'the sus
tentation of the poor, maintaining of schools, repairing
of kirks, and other godly uses,' such application should
be ' at the discretion of the Kirk.' It was all right,
provided the intolerant establishment were to remain.
For in that case the tithes as a State tax were the
proper means for the State maintaining church and
school and poor ; and as the Church had already been
set by the State over both poor and school, it was the
fit administrator of all. And all this ascendancy was
about to be renewed; for two months after this Assembly
Bothwell murdered Darnley, and three months later
• ' Book of the Universall Kirk of Scotland,' p. 46, The signifi
cance of this utterance was long ago pointed out by the Rev. J. C.
Macphail, D.D., of Pilrig Church, Edinburgh.
4 ' H

114 FAMOUS SCOTS
Mary married BothweU and abdicated. And the great
Parliamentary settlement of 1567 commenced with the
long delayed ratification of the three old statutes of 1560;
two Acts being now added, one declaring that the Re
formed Church is the only Church within the realm, the
other giving it jurisdiction over Catholics and all
others. It was fit that between these two later Acts
should be interposed another,* giving the ministers a
first claim on the ' thirds ' of benefices, ' aye and untU
the Kirk come to the full possession of their proper
patrimony, which is the teinds.' The proper patrimony
of the ancient Church was, perhaps, rather the endow
ments which had been gifted to it; yet Knox, who
abhorred the idea of inheriting anything from that old
Church, took a share of that money, even from the
State, with reluctance. But the tithes, to be enforced
yearly from Scotsmen by the law, he claimed freely, for
they were due to the poor, were due to learning and the
school, and were above all due to the Kirk, as entrusted
with these other interests no less than with its own.
The battle was not over. The scheme of the Book
of Discipline remained, even after the statutes of
1567, a mere 'imagination,' all attempted embodiment
of it being starved by the nobility and the crown.
And in our own century the Church, retaining its
statutory jurisdiction over Catholics and Nonconformists,
has lost its statutory control over both the schools and
the poor, while it has never got anything like ' full pos
session ' or even administration of the teinds, in which
all three were to share, but of which it desired to be
sole trustee.
It it easy for us, looking back — superfluously easy —
to see the fundamental mistake in Knox's legislation.
But taking that first step of intolerant establishment as
fixed, I see nothing in his proposed superstructure which
* 1567, c. 10,

JOHN KNOX 115
was not admirable and heroic, and also — as heroic things
so often are — sane and even practicable. And it was all
conceived in the interest of the people — of those ' poor
brethren ' of land and burgh, with whom Knox increas
ingly identified himself. No doubt the Kirk had no
right to claim administration, even as trustee, of the
tenth of the yearly fruits of all Scottish industry. But
when we think of the objects to which these fruits were
to be applied, we shall not be disposed to deal hardly
with such a claim. It is not the divided and dis
inherited Churches of Scotland alone — it is, even more,
the ' poor labourers of the ground ' — who have reason,
in these later days, to join in the death-bed denunciation
by Knox of the ' merciless devourers of the patrimony
of the Kirk.'
Knox's statesmanship may have failed — partly because
an unjust and unchristian principle was unawares im
bedded in its foundation, and partly because the heredi
tary legislators of Scotland could not rise to the level of
its peasant-reformer. But Knox's churchmanship did
not fail. It might well have been contended that the
freedom of the Church had been compromised by the
legislation which was granted or petitioned for. But
that was not the Church's view, and the internal organi
sation which nobles and politicians refused to sanction,
the Church, claiming to be free, instantly took up as its
own work. In_each_iQwii,jQr--.parishi.-the--el4€rs- and
deacons met weekly with the pastor for the care of the
congregation. And these ' particular Kirks ' now met
half-yearly representatively as the ' Universal Kirk ' of
Scotland. From its first meeting in December 1560
onwards, the General Assembly or Supreme Court of the
Church was convened by the authority of the Church
itself, and year by year laid the deep foundations of the
social and religious future of Scotland. It was a great

ii6 FAMOUS SCOTS
work — nothing less than organising a rude nation into a
self-governing Church. And there were difficulties and
dangers in plenty, some of them unforeseen. The
nobles were rapacious, the people were divided, the
ministers leaned to dogmatism, the lawyers leaned to
Erastianism, the Lowlands were menaced by Episcopacy,
the Highlands were emerging from heathenism, and
between them both there stretched a broad belt of
unreformed Popery. There were a hundred difficulties
like these, but they were all accepted as in the long
day's work. For in Scotland the dayspring was now
risen upon men !
What we have here to remember is, that of this huge
national struggle the chief weight lay on the shoulders of
Knox, a mere pastor in Edinburgh. And during the
first seven years of its continuance this indomitable man
was sustaining another doubtful conflict, in which the
issues not for Scotland only, but for Europe, were so
momentous that it must be looked at separately.

CHAPTER VI
THE PUBLIC LIFE : THE CONFLICT WITH QUEEN MARY
Parliament had made a great and revolutionary change.
It had acted as if the government had been already
granted to it, or, in Cecil's phrase, to ' the nation of the
land.' And the change was on one side a breaking off
of the old alliance with Catholic France. But the
sovereigns of Scotland, now and for the last twelve
month, were no other than the King and Queen of
France, They, rather than Parliament, were the
' Authority,' which, according to the consistent theory
of that age, had the right to make and enforce changes
of religion ; and which, according to the more puzzling
theory of Knox, had the right to do so — provided the
religion so to be enforced was the true one. Accordingly
the new Confession of Faith and the statutes passed by
the late Parliament, were sent to Paris by the Lord St
John. He waited there long, but, of course, brought
back no ratification. But that, says Knox, ' we little
regarded, nor yet do regard ' ; for, he adds, falling back
rather too late upon one of those great principles his
utterance of which has sunk into the hearts of his
countrymen,
' all that we did was rather to shew our dutiful obedience than to
beg of them any strength to our religion, which from God has full
power, and needeth not the suffrs^e of man, but in so far as man
hath need to believe it, if that ever he shall have participation of
the life everlasting.' * * ' Works,' ii. 126. 117

ii8 FAMOUS SCOTS
It was no wonder that the royal pair did not ratify
a Protestant Confession, for during their brief reign
over France they were the centre of a keen crusade
against Protestantism, conducted far more by Mary's
counsellors and uncles, the Guises, than by her feeble
minded husband. Towards the end of 1560 this had
gone so far that secret preparations seem to have been
made for immediately anticipating the St Bartholomew
of twelve years later. But the sudden death of
Francis and the widowhood of Mary changed the
whole situation. The new King was in the power,
not of the Guises, but of his mother, Catherine de
Medici ; and Mary of Scots would now have to accept
a second or a third place in Paris. But in Europe,
and in the politics of Europe, the beautiful young
widow sprang at once into the foremost rank, and
became the star of all eyes, Ex-Queen of France,
Queen-presumptive of England, and actual Queen of
Scotland, which had always been the link between the
other two, and to which she was now to return, the
marriage destiny of this girl of eighteen would probably
decide the wavering balance of Christendom,*
Mary understood her high part, and accepted it
with alacrity. Fascinating and beautiful, keen-witted
and strong-willed, she would have found herself at
home in this great game of politics, even if it had not
turned upon an element of intense personal interest
for herself. But while all men knew that her hand
was the chief prize of the game, almost the first man
to act on this knowledge, strange to say, was Knox.
* So much was this looked forward to, that two months before
the death of her husband King Francis, the English ambassador,
writing from Paris to London of the King's feeble health, says :
' There is much talk of the Queen's second marriage. Some talk
of the Prince of Spain, some of the Duke of Austrich, others of
the Earl of Arran,

JOHN KNOX 119
The Treaty of Edinburgh had acknowledged the right
of the Duke (Hamilton or Chatelherault), and of his
eldest son Arran, as the next in succession to the
Scottish crown after its present holder. And while
that present holder was still married to the King of
France, the Scottish nobles had urged Arran as a suit
able husband for Elizabeth of England. It would be
the best arrangement, they thought, for binding the two
countries together, and counteracting the inevitable pull
asunder from the Sovereigns in Paris. Elizabeth, how
ever, had replied, to the grave displeasure of the Estates,
that she was not ' presently disposed to marry.' And
now a new question was raised, Scotland was, of
course, still more deeply interested in the probable
second marriage of its own Queen. Arran, an ex
tremely flighty young man, was at this moment much
under the personal influence of the Reformer; and it
was with Knox's privity, and perhaps on his suggestion,
and certainly without the knowledge of the nobility
generally, that before Mary had been a widow for a
month, her young Protestant cousin sent her a ring and
a secret letter of courtship. It was again in vain.
When Elizabeth refused him, the Estates had been
offended, but Arran himself bore the loss with much
resignation. Now, however, the case was different ;
and though Mary at all times treated her young kins
man with kindness, Arran took her prompt rejection of
his present overtures grievously to heart, and his wits,
never very stable, were soon completely overturned.
Knox, however, had now fair warning that Mary Stuart
knew herself to be more than a mere Queen of Scots,
and that the infinitely difficult questions, which her
approaching return to Scotland must necessarily raise,
were not to be evaded on easy terms.
There was among these one theoretical question which
ought to have been a difficulty for Knox, but of which

120 FAMOUS SCOTS
he was not now disposed to make much. According to
his view women should not be sovereigns at all. But,
in truth, this was but one branch of the general grievance
of arbitrary power in that age. The Reformation took
place, we must always remember, at a time when the
hereditary authority of kings was greater than either
before or since. And this arbitrary power of one man
became, if possible, a little more absurd when it hap
pened to be the power of one woman. In 1557, Knox
had found himself confronted with a Queen of England,
a Queen of Scotland, and a Queen-Regent in Scotland
— all of them ladies immersed in CathoUcism, and each
in a position which, in his view, implied the duty of
selecting religion for all her lieges. We, in our time,
have a very simple way of getting rid of such an intoler
able difficulty. But in that age a man even of the
boldness of Knox was thankful to mitigate it. He
thought he found a mitigation in the view (held by
thinkers and publicists at the time commonly enough)
that women should not be entrusted with such a power ;
and, in 1558, he published anonymously his ' First Blast
of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment [Re
gimen or Rule] of Women.' Though anonymous, the
book was well known to be his ; and being Knox's it
was founded not so much on theory as on Scripture
precedents, largely misread according to the exigencies
of the argument. But the publication was, in any case,
a practical mistake. Mary of England died immediately
after, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who was rather
more of a woman than her sister, but to whom Knox
and Scotland looked as their only ally against Continental
Catholicism, Knox repeatedly tried to explain to the
new English Queen ; but that very great but very
feminine ruler never forgave his book. Meantime he
came, as we saw, into more personal contact with the
Queen-Regent of Scotland, and had the highest hopes

JOHN KNOX 121
from her. Ultimately she disappointed these ; but even
when she was deposed by the nobles, to whom he had
originally looked as the agents in the Reform, Knox
insisted on keeping open a door for her restoration, in
the event of her coming in the meantime to think with
himself. And now her daughter was come to her native
country as Queen in her own right. Knox, taught by
experience, had already taken part in private overtures
to her, and was no longer disposed to stand on any
theoretical difficulty as to the rule of a woman. The
practical difficulties were enough.
And the practical difficulties were tremendous. Had
Mary ruled as a modern constitutional Queen, with
toleration of religion all around, things would have been
easy. She would have enjoyed the freedom which she
granted to the lowest of her subjects, and every one of
them would have supported her enthusiastically against
domestic and foreign aggression. But the reign of
religion which, according to her first proclamation, she,
on her arrival, ' found publicly and universally standing,'
was very different. It was one by which half the lieges
were forbidden the exercise of their own religion and of
their ordinary worship ; and by which Scotland and all its
rulers were pledged to a faith she had been trained as a
child to detest, and as a Queen to suppress. The situa
tion was impossible from the first. "The only question
was, how long it would last.
Knox would have met it fairly by making her acknow
ledgment of the Protestant Acts and Confession a con
dition of her being acknowledged by Scotland. And
had the fact been known that Mary, by three secret
documents, executed just before her childless marriage to
the Dauphin, had already handed over her native king
dom, in the event of her having no issue, to the King
of France, the crisis, which was to be postponed for so
many years, might have come at once. But an inter-

122 FAMOUS SCOTS
mediate plan was arranged in Paris through ' the man
whom all the godly did most reverence,' and whose
weight of character was gradually giving him the fore
most place in Scotland — Lord James Stewart, the
Queen's natural brother. Mary, quick to understand
men, put herself under her brother's guidance, and the
result was that she was joyfully received in Edinburgh,
and a proclamation was issued forbidding, on the one
hand, any 'alteration or innovation of the state of
religion ' as Her Majesty found it in the realm on her
arrival, and, on the other, any tumult or violence,
especially against Her Majesty's French domestics and
followers. So, on the first Sunday, while the Evangel
was publicly preached in St Giles in Edinburgh, and in
all the great towns and burghs of Scotland, mass was
privately celebrated in her chapel at Holyrood, the Lord
James with his sword keeping the door, to ' stop all
Scottish men to enter in,' whether to join in the worship
or to disturb it. It was drawing a different line from
that which had been fixed by the recent Parliament,
whose Acts also the new Queen had evaded ratifying.
Knox's passion against ' idolatry,' beyond all other forms
of false religion or irreligion, was fully shared by the
mass of his followers, and he tells us that, on this
occasion, he worked in private ' rather to mitigate, yea
to sloken, that fervency that God had kindled in others.'
But in the pulpit 'next Sunday' he said that 'one Mass was
more fearful to him than if ten thousand armed enemies
were landed in any part of the realm, of purpose to
suppress the whole religion ' — an exaggeration of intoler
ance which is unintelligible, until we remember that the
' one mass ' which he was thinking of was that of the
ruler who might soon have the power, and perhaps had
already the intention, of suppressing religion.
Mary had come to Scotland with the deliberate plan
of conciliating and capturing her native kingdom, and

JOHN KNOX 123
she was not the woman to shrink from whatever seemed
to be necessary in the process. It may have been her
brother who suggested a meeting between two people
whom, in different ways, he certainly liked as well as ad
mired. In any case, Knox was now at once sent for to
the Court, and there followed the first of the famous
interviews between Knox and the Queen, recorded in
the Fourth Book of his History. The detailed truth of
these Dialogues is not to be inferred merely from their
vigour and verisimilitude. It results equally from the
fact that, throughout, Knox represents the young Queen
as meeting him with perfect inteUigence, while on most
points she actually has the better of the argument. The
vindication of Knox has come, not so much from what
he has himself so faithfully recorded, as from the judg
ment of .history on the whole situation, and on the
relation to it of speakers who were also actors.
The first is probably the most important of the
dialogues.* Mary and her brother received Knox
in Holyrood, two ladies standing in the other end of
the room. She commenced by taxing him with his
book against her ' regimen,' He explained that, if
Scotland was satisfied with a female ruler, he would
not object.
' But yet,' said she, ' ye have taught the people to receive another
religion than their Princes can allow : And how can that doctrine
be of God, seeing that God commands subjects to obey their
Princes ? '
Knox, in answer, ignored the article of his Confession which bears
closely on this point,t and fell back on the more fundamental
truth. * ' Works,' ii. 277.
+ ' To Kings, Princes, Rulers, and Magistrates we affirm that,
chiefly and most principally, the reformation and purgation of the
Religion appertains, so that, not only are they appointed for civil
policy, but also for maintenance of the true Religion, and for sup-

124 FAMOUS SCOTS
'Madam, as right religion took neither original nor authority
from worldly princes, but from the Eternal God alone, so are not
subjects bound to frame their religion according to the appetites of
their Princes.'
He easily illustrated this by instances of men in Scripture, who
resisted such commands of Princes, and suffered.
' But yet,' said she, ' they resisted not with the sword.'
' God,' said he, ' Madam, had not given unto them the power
and the means.'
' Think ye,' quoth she, ' that subjects, having power, may resist
their Princes ? '
' If their Princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he, ' Madam, and
do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but
they may be resisted, even by power.'
That Princes should regulate the religion of subjects Knox held
to be within their ' bounds,' but only apparently if they regulated it
aright, and according to the Word. Otherwise, he now explained,
the prince might be restrained, like a father ' stricken with a
frenzy.' At this remarkable argument the Queen 'stood, as it
were, amazed more than the quarter of an hour.' Recovering
herself, she said —
' Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not
me.' . .
'God forbid,' answered he, in words which really express his
fundamental view, ' that ever I take upon me to command any to
obey me, or yet to set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth them.
But my travel is that both princes and subjects obey God, who,' he
added, ' commands queens to be nurses unto His people.'
' Yea,' quoth she, ' but ye are not the Church that I will nourish.
I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for, I think, it is the true Kirk of
God,' ' Your will,' quoth he, ' Madam, is no reason ; neither doth your
thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate
spouse of Jesus Christ. ' . . .
'My conscience,' said she, ' is not so.'
pressing of idolatry and superstition whatsoever. . . . And, there
fore, we confess and avow that such as resist the supreme power
(doing that thing which appertains to his charge) do resist God's
ordinance, and therefore cannot be guiltless.' — 'Works,' ii, 119.

JOHN KNOX 125
' Conscience, Madam, requires knowledge, and I fear that right
knowledge ye have none. '
' But,' said she, ' I have both heard and read.'
; , . ' Have ye heard,' said he, ' any teach, but such as the Pope
and his Cardinals have allowed ? '
The Queen avoided a direct answer,* but took the next point
with unfailing acuteness.
' Ye interpret the Scriptures,' said she, ' in one manner, and they
interpret in another ; whom shall I believe ? and who shall be judge ? '
And Knox's answer is from his side perfect —
' Ye shall believe God, that plainly speaketh in His word ; and
farther than the word teacheth you, ye neither shall believe the one
nor the other. The word of God is plain in itself; and if there
appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, who is never
contrarious to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other
places.' The conference was long, and was ended with mutual
courtesies. Both parties in the country suspected that
the new sovereign might be gradually coming round to
the new faith. No triumph could have been more
glorious for Knox, and at the opening of the interview
he had used every method of conciliation. But he
never henceforth deceived himself as to the chances
in this case. Outwardly, the Queen remained friendly,
and he remained loyal; but his opinion as expressed
privately, immediately after this first meeting, was
recorded later on,
' If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate
heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me,'
Induration of heart was not a charitable judgment to
* Mary may not have met a Protestant teacher before, except
those whom she and her husband had more than once viewed suffer
ing on the scaffold ; but she had read books like the Colloquies of
Erasmus with keen appreciation, she was instructed in the great
controversy from the Catholic side, and one of the youthful exercises
which remain written in her girlish hand is a letter to John Calvin
in defence of purgatory.

126 FAMOUS SCOTS
pass against a young woman brought up in the worst
school of morals in Europe, but whom the speaker held
never to have met ' God and his truth ' till that fore
noon. Yet, as usual, Knox's judgment was by no
means wholly wrong. There is a certain brilliant hard
ness about the charm of Mary Queen of Scots, even
with posterity ; and as to religion, whatever may have
been the case in the later years of her sad imprison
ment, there is no evidence in her early days in Scotland
of personal or earnest interest in the religion even of
her own church,* And a tender and serious interest in
religion was held by the whole Protestantism of that day
to be the one gate for the individual into ' God's truth,'
Had his Queen shown anything of this spirit of earnest
enquiry, our rough Reformer might have been precipi
tate to help her steps, though they should be as yet on
the wrong side of the dividing line. But Mary made
no pretences on the subject, and it was her misfortune,
and that of all around, that her opinion on reUgion — a
matter in which she took no more interest than was
natural to her years — should have been all important to
her subjects. They at least were, or professed to be, in
earnest about it ; and the man who in her presence now
represented that earnestness made no pretences either.
But we may be sure that Knox's judgment on a ' proud
mind' as to the more central and personal truths
of religion, would not be mitigated by that keen ' wit '
which played so freely round its external parts, and
transfixed so easily his own theory of Church and State.
We know from himself that Mary, having found the
weak point of the intolerant legislation, took care to
press upon it. She was ' ever crying conscience, con
science ! it is a sore thing to constrain the conscience ; ' +
* See Hume Brown, ii, 171, note.
t ' Works,' ii. 276. Her answer to the General Assembly in
1565, was that ' she prays all her loving subjects, seeing they have

JOHN KNOX 127
and she selected for her ' flattering words ' the best of
the men around her, till from the question, ' Why may
not the Queen have her own Mass, and the form of her
religion ? what can that hurt us or our religion ? '
there came a formal discussion and a yote of the
Lords that they were not entitled to constrain her.
This state of matters continued during the year 1562.
But the real danger, of course, was from abroad, and
Knox had intelligence of all that was going on there.
In December 1562a victory of the Guises in France had
been followed by dancing at Holyrood; and Knox
preached against ' taking pleasure for the displeasure of
God's people.' The Queen sent for him, and suggested
his speaking to herself privately rather than haranguing
publicly upon her domestic proceedings : a proposal
which he so promptly rejected that she at once turned
her back on him. It was on this occasion that, hearing
the whisper as he went out, ' He is not afraid,' he
replied, with a ' reasonably merry ' countenance, ' Where
fore should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray
me ? I have looked into the faces of many angry men,
and yet have not been affrayed above measure,' But
the effect of that pleasing face upon others around may
be measured by a letter written next day to Cecil by
Randolph, who had for some time been Queen Eliza
beth's envoy in Edinburgh. He was an intelligent and
well-meaning man ; but Mary was far more than a match
for him, as she had been in France for an abler diplo
matist, Throckmorton. Randolph tells the English
minister that Knox is still full of ' good zeal and affec
tion' to England. 'I know also that his travail and
had experience of her goodness, that she neither has in times past,
nor yet means hereafter to press the conscience of any man, but that
they may worship God in such sort as they are persuaded to be best,
that they also will not press her to offend her own conscience.' —
' Book of the Universall Kirk,' p. 34.

128 FAMOUS SCOTS
care is great to unite the hearts of the princes and
people of these two realms in perpetual love and hearty
kindness,' In the previous year Randolph had heard
an incident of Knox's first interview with Mary, which
we only know from his letter. Even then Knox
'knocked so hastily upon her heart that he made her
weep, as well you know there be of that sex that will do
that as well for anger as for grief.' But since that date
the Queen of Scots had turned her caressing courtesy
directly upon this EngUshman, and even the golden cup
which she presented to him at Lord James Stewart's
marriage had perhaps less influence with Randolph than
the bright eyes of one of her 'four Maries' whom he
was now pursuing. So he adds now that 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 know 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.' No criti
cism could be more acute. And yet the research of
later times has shown that Knox's judgment, or informa
tion, as to what Mary of Scots was now doing, was
superior to that of all around him. This was the
very close of 1562, and in the next month of January
she extended her Catholic correspondence, which had
hitherto been chiefly with the Guises and her Cardinal
uncle, by letters to the Pope.* On the 31st she wiites
Pius IV. assuring him of her devotion to the Church,
and that for it and for the restoration to it of her king
dom she is ready to sacrifice her life.! The bearer, too,
of this secret missive was Cardinal Granvelle, from Madrid,
* The Pope had already, since her husband's death, sent her the
Golden Rose, with the suggestion that in Scotland she must be a
rose among thorns.
t LabanofTs ' Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i, 177,

JOHN KNOX 129
and deep at this moment in the persecuting plans of
Alva and his master Philip. For a new and greater
danger was now rising for Scotland. Hitherto the chief
pretenders for the hand of the Queen of Scots had been
the Archduke Charles, and the Duke of Anjou. (The
new King of France was also supposed to be in love
with her.) But now the project was pressed of a marriage
between her and Don Carlos, the oldest son of PhiUp
and the heir of the mighty monarchy of Spain. And it
was with this full in her mind, and with the determina
tion to take a step forward in her own kingdom, that
Mary again sent for Knox — this time to Lochleven,
where she was hawking. The occasion was well chosen.
The Queen's mass was now tolerated : why should not
private subjects also be allowed to have it, provided they
worshipped privately? 'Who can stop the Queen's
subjects to be of the Queen's religion ? ' Already many
Catholics had acted upon this reasoning at Easter of
1563 ; but in the West the Protestant barons and magis
trates, instead of complaining to the Queen and her
Council, had apprehended the wrong-doers and proposed
to punish them, ' For two hours ' the Queen urged him
to persuade the gentlemen of the West ' not to put hands
to punish any man for the using of themselves in their
religion as pleased them,' Nothing could be more
clearly right. But nothing could be more clearly against
the law ; and Knox assured her that if she would enforce
that law herself her subjects would be quiet. But ' Will
ye,' said she, ' that they shall take my sword into their
hand?' 'The sword of justice. Madam,' he answered, 'is
God's ; and if the magistrate will not use it the people
must do so. And therefore it shall be profitable to
your Majesty to consider what is the thing your Grace's
subjects look to receive of your Majesty, and what it is
that ye ought to do unto them by mutual contract.
4 I

13° FAMOUS SCOTS
They are bound to obey you, and that not but in God.
You are bound to keep laws unto them. You crave of
them service : they crave of you protection and defence
against wicked doers,'
The Queen, ' somewhat offended, passed to her
supper,' and Knox prepared to return to Edinburgh,
But her brother, afterwards the Regent, had heard the
result of the conference, and Mary learned that matters
could not safely be left in this condition. Next morn
ing the Queen sent for Knox as she was going out
hawking. She had apparently forgotten all the keen
dispute of the evening before; and her manner was
caressing and confidential. What did Mr Knox think
of Lord Ruthven's offering her a ring ? ' I cannot love
him,' she added, ' for I know him to use enchantment.'
Was Mr Knox not going to Dumfries, to make the
Bishop of Athens the superintendent of the Kirk in that
county ? He was, Knox answered ; the proposed
superintendent being a man in whom he had con
fidence. ' If you knew him,' said Mary, ' as well as
I do, ye would never promote him to that office, nor
yet to any other within the Kirk.' In yet another
matter, and one more private and delicate, she required
his help. Her half-sister, Lady Argyll, and the Earl,
her husband, were, she was afraid, not on good terms.
Knox had once reconciled them before, but, 'do this
much for my sake, as once again to put them at unity.'
And so she dismissed him with promises to enforce the
laws against the mass,
Knox for once fell under the spell. He seems to
have believed that this most charming of women was
at last leaning to the side of her native land. And so
he sat down and wrote a long letter to Argyll, He
went to Dumfries, and on making enquiry, he found
that the Queen was right in her shrewd estimate of the
proposed superintendent, and took means to prevent the

JOHN KNOX 131
election. It turned out, too, that she had kept her
promise about citing offenders, and no fewer than
forty-eight persons, one of them an Archbishop,
had been indicted. The first Parliament since her
landing had been summoned for June, and Moray
and Lethington seem to have suggested to Knox that
the Queen would be glad then to ratify the Acts of
1560, in exchange for the approval by the estates of some
suitable marriage. Even now, it was these two heads
of the Protestant party whom Knox trusted rather than
Mary. But the young Queen had outwitted all of them
together. The prosecutions throughout the country
had pacified the Protestants,- and they did not come up
to the Parliament. When it met, it did not even ask
that the ' state of religion ' should be ratified. Mean
time the Cardinal of Lorraine had carried to the Council
of Trent the adhesion of the Queen of Scots, and a
special congregation was held by it for the private
reception of her letter. Worse still, the plan for a
Spanish marriage, and for setting a Scoto-Spanish queen
upon the throne of the Bloody Mary, was now actively
prosecuted. All this spring, while professing to carry
out her promises to Knox, Mary was negotiating with
Madrid, and 'already, in imagination, Queen of Scot
land, England, Ireland, Spain, Flanders, Naples, and
the Indies,' she was but little interested in the plans
which her Scottish nobility were proposing for her to
England. Knox had hoped that if not a Protestant
noble like Leicester or Arran, at least a royal Pro
testant like the King of Denmark or the King of
Sweden, would, with Elizabeth's help, be a successful
suitor. But Queen Elizabeth, whom Knox pithily
describes as ' neither good Protestant nor yet resolute
Papist,' was not disposed to help any one to marry
before herself, least of all her lovely cousin. And the
Scottish statesmen, Moray and Maitland, like her own

132 FAMOUS SCOTS
English advisers often, were now so driven to despera
tion by Elizabeth's vacillations that they had actually —
possibly with the hope of frightening her — pressed both at
home and abroad the project of marrying the Queen of
Scots to the heir of Spain ! This apparently came to the
knowledge of Knox along with the refusal to meet his
hopes on the part of the Scots Parliament ; and now his
cup was full. Lord James Stewart, by this time the
Earl of Moray, son-in-law of the Earl Marischal, and
gifted with great estates of the forfeited Earl of Huntly,
had been his chief friend. But ' familiarly after that
time they spake not together more than a year and a
half ; for the said John, by his letter, gave a discharge
to the said Earl of all farther intromission or care with
his affairs.' In this stately letter Knox recalled all their
past career in common, and added that, seeing his hopes
had been disappointed,
' I commit you to your own wit, and to the conducting of those
who better please you. I praise my God, I this day leave you
victor of your enemies, promoted to great honours, and in credit
and authority with your sovereign. If so ye long continue, none
within the realm shall be more glad than I shall be ; but if that
after this ye shall decay (as I fear that ye shall) then call to mind
by what means God exalted you.'
But the pulpit remained to him, and the pulpit in
those days had sometimes to combine the functions of
free Parliament and free press. Knox went into St Giles',
and in a great sermon before the assembled Lords, from
whose retrospective eloquence we have already quoted,*
he drove right at the heart of the situation.
' And now, my Lords, to put end to all, I hear of the Queen's
marriage ; dukes, brethren to emperors, and kings, all strive for the
best game. But this, my Lords, will I say — note the day, and bear
witness after — whensoever the nobility of Scotland, professing the
* Page 89,

JOHN KNOX 133
Lord Jesus, consent that an infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall
be head to your Sovereign, ye do as far as in you lieth to banish
Christ Jesus from this realm ; ye bring God's vengeance upon the
country, a pl^;ue upon yourselves, and perchance ye shall do small
comfort to your Sovereign.'
That sovereign could scarcely be expected to take the
same view, and for the last time the Queen sent for
Knox. No one knew so well as she that he had laid
his finger on the true hinge of the political question,
and that her opponent would have a far stronger case
now than at any of their previous interviews. She burst
into tears the moment he entered. ' I have borne with
you,' she said most truly, 'in all your rigorous manner
of speaking ; I have sought your favour by all possible
means.' ' True it is, madam,' he answered, ' your Grace
and I have been at divers controversies, in the which
I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me.'
Knox's complacency is sometimes thick-skinned : but
he was not wrong in thinking that Mary, a woman with
immensely more brains than the generality of her post
humous admirers, had from the first understood and,
perhaps, half liked her uncompromising adversary, and
that she had at least enjoyed the dialectic conflicts in
which she had held her own so well. But the matter
was more serious now. ' What have you to do with my
marriage?' she demanded. Knox in answer hinted
that she had herself invited him to give her private
advice ; but what he had said was in the pulpit, where
he had to speak to the nobility and to think of the good
of the whole commonwealth.
' What have you to do,' she persisted, ' with my
marriage ? or what are you within this commonwealth ? '
' A subject born within the same,' said he, ' Madam.
And albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it,
yet has God made me (how abject that ever I be in
your eyes) a profitable member within the same.'

134 FAMOUS SCOTS
Under the new discipline the preacher claimed a
right to utter opinions even as to private marriages, and
used it much beyond what the fundamental principles
of Protestantism could justify. But Knox was now
dealing with his Queen, and he felt himself well within
the line of his duty in repeating to herself the deadly
consequences to Scotland if its nobility ever consented
to her being ' subject to an unfaithful husband.' It was
unanswerable, except by a new passion of tears, under
which the Reformer stood at first silent and unmoved.
He broke silence at last with a clumsy attempt to explain
or to console; and Mary's indignation was not diminished
by Knox's quaint protest that he was really a tender
hearted man, and could scarcely bear to see his own
children weep when corrected for their faults. She
broke with him finally; and Knox, dismissed to the
ante-chamber, found himself so solitary, though among
the ladies of the Court, that (as we have already seen)
he attempted to ' procure the company of women ' by
moralisings which they too may have found impressive
rather than delightful.
From this point — June 1563 — the history slopes
steadily downwards. Mary's ambition was still to be
Queen of Spain, Messengers on the subject went to
Spain and came to Scotland, But her plans were
secretly counterworked by her old enemy Catherine
de Medici, the French Queen-mother, and Philip
changed his mind continually. In December an in
cident happened which shewed Knox's new position.
A riot arose in the Queen's absence between Catholics
who wished to worship in her private chapel and Pro
testants who wished to prevent or denounce it. The
latter were indicted for 'invading' the palace, Knox
instantly wrote a letter summoning the faithful to attend
in a body along with them ; and he was cited to appear
before the Queen in Council on a charge of ' convoca-

JOHN KNOX 135
tion of the lieges.' Once more he stood before Mary,
but now it was at her bar. Knox had the weakness of
Ustening to gossip, especiaUy as to what his feminine
adversaries said ; and he records not only what he saw,
that 'her pomp lacked one principal point, to wit,
womanly gravity,' but also that she was heard to observe
— this time apparently in admirable Scots — ' Yon man
gart me greet, and grat never tear himself. I wiU see if
I can gar him greet.' Knox absolutely refused to with
draw his letter or to apologise for it : and though the
Council did not desire to justify his conduct, they heard
with some sympathy his plea that Papists were not good
advisers of princes, being sons of him who was 'a
murderer from the beginning,' Lethington, the Secre
tary, conducted the prosecution, and it was probably he
who at this point remarked —
'You forget yourself: you are not now in the
pulpit.' ' I am in the place,' said Knox — and again his word
has become memorable — 'where I am demanded of
conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth
I speak, impugn it whoso list.'
The votes were taken twice over; but the nobles
steadily refused to find Knox guilty, and 'that night
there was neither dancing nor fiddling in the palace,'
During the whole of 1564, however, Knox and the
General Assembly were divided from the Protestant
courtiers, who argued, with perfect justice, that the
attitude of the Reformer and his fellow preachers to
the Queen was one of scarcely veiled disloyalty. In a
long and formal conference upon the subject, Knox said
some things so plainly that Lethington answered —
' Then will ye make subjects to control their princes
and rulers ? '
'And what harm,' said the other, 'should the Common
wealth receive, if that the corrupt affections of ignorant

136 FAMOUS SCOTS
rulers were moderated, and so bridled by the wisdom
and discretion of godly subjects that they should do
wrong nor violence to no man ? '
But even the leading men of the Court, themselves
Protestants, were now beginning to be disquieted by a
sense that they did not know what their queen was
planning, and that they could not be responsible for
her actions. During this year, 1564, she was making
herself more independent, both of them and of her old
advisers in France ; one great step being the promotion
of the Italian, Rizzio, who was now her confidential
secretary. The Spanish marriage was becoming more
hopeless, and the eyes of Mary's Catholic friends were
now turning in another direction. The man at the
English court nearest to the English throne was young
Henry Darnley, and Elizabeth had herself jealously
suggested that ' yonder long lad ' might possibly please
her Scottish cousin. Mary and he were both great
grandchildren of Henry VII., and their union would
consolidate the Scottish claim to the English crown
— a dangerous result for the daughter of Ann Boleyn.
That was a sufficient reason for Darnley not being
encouraged to go to Scotland; but he was at last
allowed to leave London secretly in February 1565.
The young people met in Wemyss Castle, and it was soon
plain that Mary and her handsome cousin were on the
best terms. Archbishop Beaton, acting as her secretary
in Paris, was still pressing King Philip, and on the 15 th
of March he warned the Spanish ambassador that unless
his master came to the rescue Mary would have to throw
herself away on her English relative. There was no
response, and between the 7th and loth of April, Mary
of Scots and Henry Lord Darnley were privately married
in Rizzio's apartment in Holyrood, No one knew it ;
and nearly two months after, the Archbishop again urges
the King of Spain to consent, for his Queen is not yet

JOHN KNOX 137
married, and there is still time for the greater alUance.
Seven weeks more passed, and on the 29th June the
public marriage took place, and Mary gave her husband
the title of king.
It was the downfall of Moray, and, as Knox points
out, of the whole temporising Protestant policy since the
Queen came to Scotland. Moray saw that clearly
enough, and confederating with a number of the other
Lords to protest against the marriage and the proposed
kingship, the whole party were within three months
driven out of Scotland by the energy of the Queen. In
the field, Knox confesses, ' her courage increased man
like so much, that she was ever with the foremost.' And
in her proclamation she frankly made it her case against
the recalcitrant nobility
' that the establishment of Religion will not content them, but
we must be forced to govern by Council, such as it shall please them
to appoint us ; a thing so far beyond all measure, that we think
the only mention of so unreasonable a demand is sufficient ... for
what other thing is this but to dissolve the whole policy, and in a
manner to invert the very order of nature, to make the Prince obey
and subjects command ? '
For now the triumph of absolutism and of Rizzio, as
the Papal agent, was complete — more so than Moray or
Knox knew. France and Spain, long divided, seemed
at last to be working together for the faith. And the
greatest of European monarchs, though he declined to
wed his heir in Scotland, had by no means abandoned
the cause there. On the contrary, in this very spring of
1565, while the Darnley-marriage was preparing, the
savage Alva and Granvelle were laying down at Bayonne,
by Philip's authority, the first lines of the plan for send
ing an Armada against Protestant England, in order to
place Mary on its throne : and the assurance to that
effect, given by Alva's own lips to Mary's envoy, was

138 FAMOUS SCOTS
carried by him to Scotland in time to swell the exulta
tion of her nuptials,*
One man was left in Scotland, and he now had at
least the people of Edinburgh with him, Darnley,
though a Catholic, thought it prudent to come to Knox's
preaching on a Sunday very soon after the marriage, but
was so unfortunate as to hear a sermon on the text —
' Other lords than Thou have had dominion over us,' The
preacher explained that in very bad cases of ingratitude
.of the people, God permitted such lords to be ' boys and
women,' and the weakness of Ahab was specially dwelt
upon in not restraining his strong-minded wife. Worse
than all, the service was an hour longer than he had
expected ; and the king, characteristically, ' would not
dine, and with great fury passed to the hawking.'
Knox was summoned to the Council, and ordered not
to preach while the Court remained in town. He gave
the particularly cautious answer that ' if the Church
would command him either to speak or abstain, he
would obey, so far as the Word of God would permit
him ' ; but times were changed, and in this matter the
Church had now to obey the Authority. The Lords of
the Congregation, for four years the Queen of Scots'
nominal advisers, were very soon in exile in England ;
and Queen Elizabeth, in mortal dread of the appre
hended union of France and Spain in a Catholic
crusade against her own crown, received ' her sister's
rebels ' with upbraiding and almost menace. Knox and
the General Assembly maintained a defensive warfare all
through the year 1565-6. But they had no representa
tion in the Court, and Rizzio succeeded so far that
Mary herself tells ! how she had arranged for the
counter-revolution being commenced by a Parliament in
* The dates are indicated generally in Hill Burton's ' History,' iv.
133- t Labanoffs ' Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i. 342,

JOHN KNOX 139
April 1566, 'the spiritual estate being placed therein in
the ancient manner, tending to have done some good
anent restoring the old religion,' Two things prevented
this smooth programme being carried out. Mary's
rather weak fancy for Darnley seems to have only lasted
for a few weeks after her marriage. He turned out to
be a fool ; and his wife and the nobility declined to
promise him the Crown-matrimonial, i.e., to make him
successor to her in case there were no children. Darnley
now courted the banished lords, and made a ' Band '
with them according to the old Scots fashion, a fashion
which was to break out nearer home in more savage
survival stiU. For Mary's imprudent favouritism of
Rizzio had roused the deadly jealousy both of her hus
band and of the nobles who remained at home. And
on the 9th of March a band of men headed by Morton
and Ruthven dragged the Italian out from her supper-
table at Holyrood, and stabbed him to death in the
ante-chamber ; Darnley and the lords remaining in order
to make terms with their Queen, The outrage was un
availing ; in two days Mary had talked over her husband,
escaped with him from Holyrood to Dunbar, and sum
moned her new favourite, Lord Bothwell, to her aid.
Years before, when fighting the Earl of Huntly in the
far North, she had expressed to Randolph her regret
' 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 and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler, and a broad
sword,' And now, as before, her energy swept the
field clear of her enemies, and she returned to Edinburgh
victorious, Knox may not have known of the formal
Band ; but he was even more opposed to his Queen than
were those who signed it, and on 17th March 1566 he
' departed of the Burgh at two hours afternoon, with a
great mourning of the godly of religion,' Five days
before, on the very day, indeed, after Mary had ridden

140 FAMOUS SCOTS
away through the night from Holyrood, he had penned,
' with dehberate mind to his God,' his retrospective con
fession, * prefixing to it the prayer —
' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and put an end, at thy good
pleasure, to this my miserable life ; for justice and truth are not to
be found among the sons of men ! '
It was the old sigh, which has been breathed from
the most heroic hearts in times of crisis and failure;
' Let me now die, for I am not better than my fathers ! '
And here once again it was premature. For the Queen,
now awakened to the whole situation, saw how rash had
been her recent aggressive policy. After the birth of her
son in June 1566, instead of framing Parliamentary enact
ments against the new religion, she vaguely proposed to
make some provision for the ministers, and allowed the
banished lords, one by one, to come back. And though
they now found their unfortunate confederate, Darnley,
in neglect and disgrace, they found also their sovereign
passing rapidly under a new and more controlling in
fluence ; and the Earl of Bothwell was a nominal Pro
testant, Knox at first was forbidden to return to his
pulpit, and he visited the Churches in Ayrshire and Fife,
occupying himself among other things in revising the
first four books of his history — the only part which is
finished by his trenchant pen. But in December the
General Assembly met in Edinburgh, and Knox was
with them. We have already seen the striking answer sent
by this Assembly! as to the proposed gifts of the Queen.
But their attention was arrested at this moment by another
and very inconsistent order of the Crown restoring the
Archbishop of St Andrews, the head of the old hier
archy, to his consistorial jurisdiction, contrary to the law
of 1560. It was either a very absurd, or a very alarm
ing, step ; and Knox, at the request of the Assembly,
* Page 28. t Page 113,

JOHN KNOX 141
prepared a powerful manifesto on the subject. He then
went away, with their approval, on a long-meditated
visit to England, to visit his sons in Northumberland or
Yorkshire, and to strengthen his friends on the more
Puritan side of the English Church in their new troubles
under Elizabeth. Little is known of his proceedings
there ; though he remained in England during the whole
time between the Assembly of December 1566 and
another which sat on 2Sth June 1567.
But between these dates, and in Knox's absence, the
most amazing tragedy in the history of Scotland had
unrolled itself in Edinburgh. Week by week, the in
creasing power of Lord Bothwell over the Queen, and
her increasing dislike of her husband, had attracted the
attention of men. But before February there was a
sudden reconciliation between her and Darnley. She
brought him to a house in Kirk of Field, near Edinburgh,
and at midnight of the 9th it was blown up with gun
powder by the servants of Bothwell, the body of the
King being found in the garden. On 2 ist April Bothwell
waylaid and carried off Mary to Dunbar. But he was
still a married man, having wedded Lord Huntly's sister
fourteen months before. And now in May, came in
the new consistorial jurisdiction of the Archbishop, for
the only act which that prelate ever performed under it
was to confirm a sentence of nullity of this very marriage,
and that on the ground that Bothwell and his wife being
too nearly related, had not procured a Papal dispensa
tion (the Papal dispensation having not only been pro
cured before the marriage, but having been granted by the
hands of the Archbishop himself as Legate). Ten days
after this divorce, and in spite of dissuasions from her
friends at home and abroad, the ill-fated Queen publicly
married the murderer of her husband, and the strong
shudder of disgust that passed through the commons of
Scotland shook her throne to the ground. So upon

142 FAMOUS SCOTS
Mary's half-compulsory abdication, Moray became
Regent for the infant King, who was crowned at StirUng,
Knox preaching the coronation sermon, (There were
men present on this triumphal occasion before whom
he had preached once before in the same place, when
sunk in despair after that ' dark and dolorous ' flight
from Edinburgh.) And now came that great winding
up already discussed in our last chapter, the Protestant
legislative settlement of Church matters in 1567.
It was the second great climax of Knox's life ; and
now his public work was done. We shall not find it
necessary to follow his later years in detail. They were
troubled by ineffectual attempts to reverse the verdict of
the people already given. For Mary had a majority of the
nobles still with her, and Elizabeth of England resented
the claim of a nation to judge its sovereign. An appeal
to arms followed : the Regent was victorious at Lang-
side, and the Queen of Scots fled to a long captivity in
England, But her claims threw Scotland into civil war
during most of the remaining life of Knox, Moray was
assassinated in 1570 by one of the Hamiltons whose life
he had spared upon Knox's intercession ; and next
Sunday Knox, who had long since returned into friend
ship with him, preached on ' Blessed are the dead,' and
' moved three thousand persons to shed tears for the
loss of such a good and godly governor.' But Lething
ton had now gone over to the exiled Queen, and took
with him even Kirkaldy, who had fought with Moray at
Langside, Henceforth the Castle, where they resided,
was a danger to Edinburgh, and in July, 15 71, Knox,
by agreement of both parties there, was sent for a
twelvemonth to St Andrews to be out of harm's way.
He had left Edinburgh in wholly broken health, after a
fit of apoplexy : he returned feebler still, and had a col
league at once appointed. Yet when the news came from
Paris, in September, 1572, of the great massacre of St

JOHN KNOX 143
Bartholomew, Knox himself took charge of organising
the protest of Scotland against the gigantic crime. But
that crime of France saved Scotland, and the voice of
Scotland's leader was no longer needed. The end was
now near, and while ' so feeble as scarce can he stand
alone ' he sends a farewell message to ' Mr Secretary
Cecil ' through Killigrew, the new English envoy.
' John Knox 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.'*
And with an explosion^ equally characteristic, against
one who had anonymously accused Knox of ' seeking
support against his native country,' we may close our
notices of this great public Ufe.
' I give him a lie in his throat ! . . , What I have been to my
country, although this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to
come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. ... To me
it seems a thing most unreasonable, that, in this my decrepit age,
I should be compelled to fight against shadows and howlets, that
dare not abide the light 1 ' t
* ' Works,' vi. 633. t ' Works,' vi, 596,

CHAPTER VII
CLOSING YEARS AND DEATH
It is time to part from the public life of the greatest
public man whom Scotland has known. That side of
Knox's work, attractively presented to the world at first
in the memorable biography of Dr Thomas M'Crie, has
been admirably restated by Dr Hume Brown for a later
age and from his own judicial standpoint But Knox's
public life was not the whole of his work : in bulk, it
was a small part of it. When he became minister of
Edinburgh in 1560 there was only one church there;
St Cuthberts and Canongate were country parishes out
side. It was some years before he got a colleague ; and,
as sole minister of Edinburgh, he preached twice every
Sunday and three times during the week to audiences
which sometimes were numbered by thousands. Once a
week he attended a Kirk Session ; once a week he was a
member of the assembly or meeting of the neighbouring
elders for their ' prophesying ' or ' exercise on Scrip
ture.' Often he was sent away to different districts of
the country on preaching visitations under the orders of
the Church. But when Knox was at home, his prepara
tions for the pulpit, which were regular and careful, and
his other pastoral work, challenged his whole time. And
this work was carried on in two places chiefly ; in St
Giles, which now became the High Church of Edinburgh,
and in his house or lodging, which was always in or near
the Netherbow, a few hundred yards farther down the
High Street. The picturesque old building 'in the
144

JOHN KNOX 145
throat of the Bow,' which attracts innumerable visitors as
the traditional house where Knox died, was not that in
which he spent most part of his Edinburgh life. From
1560 down to about the time of his second marriage he
Uved in a ' great mansion ' on the west side of Turing's
or Trunk Close ; and thereafter for some years in a
house on the east side of the same close. Neither of
them now exists ; but the entrance into the High Street
from both was under the windows of the third or Nether
bow house, which is shewn in modern times, and which
was probably ready for Knox's reception, if not earlier,
at least when he came back from his latest visit to St
Andrews. In these he kept his books, which constituted
much the larger part of his personal property — (' you will
not always be at your book,' Queen Mary had said, as
she turned her back upon him in closing their second
interview). And with them, and with helps from the old
logic and the new learning (for while abroad he had
added Hebrew to his previous instruments of Greek
and Latin) he studied hour by hour for the sermons
which he delivered — and their delivery also lasted hour
after hour — in the great church. In that church there was
occasionally much to draw even the vulgar eye. One
day it was Huntly, the great Catholic Earl, the most
famous man in Knox's opinion among the nobility of
Scotland for three hundred years for ' both felicity and
worldly wisdom,' whose huge bulk as he had sat opposite
to the preacher (the year before he died ' without stroke
of sword ' on the field of Corrichie) was afterwards thus
vividly recalled.
' 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 the knaves have
railed their fill, then will they hold their peace?'*
* ' Works,' ii, 362.
4 K

146 FAMOUS SCOTS
Or, again, it was the French Ambassador, Le Croc,
sitting in state on the first Sunday after the news of St
Bartholomew, who heard the preacher denounce his
master. King Charles, as a ' murderer,' from whom and
from whose posterity the vengeance of God would refuse
to depart. But these were incidents dramatic and
political. And noble as a political caUuig may be, there
have always been some to believe that drawing men and
women up to a higher moral life, especially when that life
is fed from an immortal hope, is nobler still. But Knox,
let us remember, was throughout his early ministry the
witness of a still more fascinating and indeed unexampled
spectacle — a whole generation suddenly confronted with
the moral call of primitive Christianity, and striving to
respond to it, no longer in dependence on Church
tradition, but by each man moulding himself directly
upon Christian facts and Christian promises in the very
form in which these were originally delivered by the
apostolic age. He was witness of it; and more than
witness, for beyond any other man in Scotland Knox was
its guide. And while the guidance of the great theo
logical leaders of that generation tended naturaUy — and
quite apart from their usurped statutory ascendency — to
press too heavily upon the recovered freedom of Scot
land, that danger was but little felt in those early days of
enthusiasm in the High Church of Edinburgh,
What like was the man who was seen, almost every
day during all those years, pacing up and down between
the Netherbow and St Giles ?
Knox, as we are told by a surviving contemporary
(who enclosed a portrait of him along with the descrip
tion), was a man of slightly less than middle height, but
with broadish shoulders, limbs weU put together, and
long fingers. He had a rather swarthy face, with black
hair, and a beard a span and a half long, also black, but

JOHN KNOX 147
latterly turning grey. The face was somewhat long, the
nose decidedly so, the mouth large, and the lips full, so
that the upper lip in particular seemed to be swollen.
The chief peculiarity of his face was that his eyes — sunk
between a rather narrow forehead, with a strong ridge of
eyebrow, above, and ruddy and swelling cheeks, below —
looked hollow and retreating. But those eyes were of a
darkish blue colour, their glance was keen and vivid, and
the whole face was 'not unpleasing,' We can easily be
lieve that ' in his settled and severe countenance there
dwelt a natural dignity and majesty, which was by no
means ungracious, but in anger authority sat upon his
brow,' *
This seems to be a true portraiture of Knox in the
days of his vigour ; if we are to speak of vigour in the
case of a man with a small and frail body (one of his
early biographers speaks of him as a mere corpuscle), and
a man throughout his whole public life struggUng with
disease. In the last year of his prematurely 'decrepit
age,' we have another description of him ; and this time
it is taken in St Andrews. Edinburgh and Leith were
now again at war, and the quarter of Knox's house was
the most unsafe in the city. The ' King's Men ' outside
were always attempting to force the Netherbow Port ; and
their guns, planted close by on the Dow Craig, + and a
httle farther off on Salisbury Crags, smote from either
side. They were crossed and answered, not only by
the great guns of the castle, held by the Queen's Men
under Kirkaldy, but by a nearer battery on the Black
friars' Yard, and by guns planted on the roof of St Giles
* Sir Peter Young's letter to Beza, 13th Nov. 1579. — 'Life of
Knox,' by Hume Brown, ii. 323.
t That is, the Craig Dhu or Black Rock. So the Calton Crags
were called, which now look green amid surrounding buildings,
but which then were a dark and frowning patch in a semicircle of
green hill that stretched from St Cuthberts to Holyrood.

148 FAMOUS SCOTS
(the biggest of which the soldiers of course christened
' John Knox '). In these circumstances Knox was safer
away ; and from May 1 5 7 1 to August 1572 his residence
was St Andrews. There the mild James Melville, a
student at St Leonards, watched the old man with the
wistful reverence of youth.
' I saw him every day of his doctrine go hulie and fear, "" with a
furring of martricks about his neck, a staff in the one hand, and
good godly Richard Ballanden, his servant, holding up the other
oxter.t from the Abbey to the parish kirk ; and by the said Richard
and another servant, lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean
at his first entry ; but before he had done with his sermon, he was
so active and vigorous that he was like to ding that pulpit in blads,X
and fly out of it ! ' § And the impact on the mind of the youthful
Melville was scarcely less than that on the pulpit. He had his
' pen and little book,' and for the first half hour of Knox's sermon,
took down ' such things as I could comprehend ' ; but when the
preacher ' entered to the application of his text he made me so to
grue II and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write ! ' IT
But his day was rapidly moving to its close; and
Knox, without waiting for his return to Edinburgh, now
wrote his Will. In it, after an unexpectedly mild address
to the Papists, and a prophecy (which was not fulfilled)
that his death would turn out a worse thing for them
than his life, he turns to the other side, and in one strik
ing paragraph sums up the work that was now to close.
' To the faithful I protest, that God, by my mouth, be I never so
abject, has shewn to you His truth in all simplicity. None I have
corrupted ; none I have defrauded ; merchandise have I not made
(to God's glory I write) of the glorious Evangel of Jesus Christ.
But according to the measure of the grace granted unto me, I have
divided the sermon [word] of truth into just parts : beating down
* Slowly and warily. t Armpit. J Smite it into shivers,
§ ' Autobiography and Diary,' p. 33.
II To grue = to thrill and shudder.
IT ' Autobiography and Diary,' p. 26,

JOHN KNOX 149
the pride of the proud in all that did declare their rebellion against
God, according as God in His law gives to me yet testimony ; and
raising up the consciences troubled with the knowledge of their
own sins, by the declaring of Jesus Christ, the strength of His
death, and the mighty operation of His resurrection in the hearts of
the faithful.'
When (still before leaving St Andrews) he publishes
his last book, he dedicates it to the faithful ' that God
of His mercy shall appoint to fight after me ; ' and he
adds, ' I heartily salute and take my good-night of all
the faithful of both realms ... for as the world is
weary of me, so am I of it.' In those darkening days,
even when he is merely to write his subscription, it is
' John Knox, with my dead hand but glad heart.' For
in this inevitable anti-climax of failing life, Knox found
his compensations not in the world, nor even in the
Church. When he returned to Edinburgh, he had be
come unable for pastoral work. ' All worldly strength,
yea, even in things spiritual,' he writes to his expected
colleague, ' decays, and yet never shall the work of God
decay. . , . Visit me, that we may confer together on
heavenly things : for, in earth, there is no stability,
except in the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under
the cross. Haste, ere you come too late,' His colleague
hurried from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, and at his induc
tion Knox appeared and spoke once more in public.
But it was the last time, and at the close of the service
the whole congregation accompanied the failing steps of
their minister down to the Netherbow. And from that
9th November 1572 he never left his house.
We have at least two accounts of his death — one in
Latin from a colleague, one in Scots by his old servitor
and secretary ; and the latter seems to have the merit of
admiring and indiscriminating faithfulness. It is often
said that such death-bed narratives are worthless, unless

ISO FAMOUS SCOTS
judged by the light thrown upon them from the previous
life. It is true. Yet Death, too, is a great critic;
and, at least when that previous life has included a
problem, (as we have thought to be the case here), it
may be well before we volunteer a verdict to listen to
his summing up. It may finally divide, or it may re
unite, the inward and outward elements which have
co-existed in the life. And it may at least reveal which
of them was the ruling and radical characteristic. For
while Knox had long been a beacon-light to Scotland,
we have had reason to think that the flame was first
kindled in this man's own soul. But now that the
fuel which fed it is withdrawn, will that flame sink
into the socket ? Will it flicker out, now that the
airs which fanned it have become still ? How will it
behave in the chill that falls from those winnowing
wings ?
The day after Knox sickened he gave one of his
servants twenty shillings above his fee, vnth the words,
' Thou wilt never get no more from me in this life.' Two
days after, his mind wandered ; and he wished to go to
church ' to preach on the resurrection of Christ.' Next
day he was better ; and when two friends called he
ordered a hogshead of wine to be pierced, and urged
them to partake, for their host ' would not tarry until it
was all drunk.' On Monday, the 17th, he asked the
elders and deacons of his church, with the ministers of
Edinburgh and Leith, to meet with him ; and in solemn
and affectionate words, nearly the same with those above
quoted from his will, reviewed his ministry and took
leave of them all. But here too trouble from his past
awaited him. He had not long before accused from
the pulpit Maitland of Lethington, now in the Castle,
of having said that ' Heaven and hell are things
devised to fray bairns ; " and Maitland's demand for
evidence or apology was brought to him. Knox had

JOHN KNOX 151
never been able to bear contradiction, especially when
he was somewhat in the wrong ; and those who wish to
acquire new virtues must not postpone them to their
last hours. His defence was roundabout and ineffectual ;
and all were glad when he parted from these details of
his long life-struggle, so that his friends, with tears,
might take their last look of his worn and wearied face.
The effort had been too much for him, and henceforth
he never spoke but with great pain. Yet during the
rest of the week he had many visitors. One after
another the nobles in Edinburgh, Lords Boyd, Drum-
lanrig, Lindsay, Ruthven, Glencairn, and Morton (then
about to be elected Regent) had interviews with him.
Of Morton he demanded whether he had been privy to
the murder of Darnley, and receiving an evasive
assurance that he had not, he charged him to use his
wealth and high place ' better in time to come than you
have done in time past. If so ye do, God shall bless
and honour you ; but if ye do it not, God shall spoil
you of these benefits, and your end shall be ignominy
and shame.' When so many men pressed in, women,
devout and honourable, were of course also present.
One lady commenced to praise his works for God's
cause : ' Tongue ! tongue ! lady,' he broke in ; ' flesh of
itself is overproud, and needs no means to esteem itself.'
Gradually they aU left, except his true friend Fairley of
Braid, Knox turned to him : ' Every one bids me
good-night ; but when will you do it ? I shaU never be
able to recompense you ; but I commit you to One that
is able to do it — to the Eternal God,' During the days
that followed, his weakness reduced him to ejaculatory
sentences of prayer. ' Come, Lord Jesus, Sweet Jesus,
into Thy hands I commend my spirit.' But Scotland
was still on his heart ; and as Napoleon in his last hours
was heard to mutter ttte d'armte, so Knox's attendants

152 FAMOUS SCOTS
caught the words, ' Be merciful, O Lord, to Thy Church,
which Thou hast redeemed. Give peace to this afflicted
commonwealth. Raise up faithful pastors who will take
charge of Thy Church, Grant us. Lord, the perfect
hatred of sin, both by the evidences of Thy wrath and
mercy.' Sometimes he was conscious of those around,
and seemed to address them, ' O serve the Lord in
fear, and death shall not be terrible to you. Nay,
blessed shall death be to those who have felt the power
of the death of the only begotten Son of God,'
On his last Sabbath a more remarkable scene oc
curred. He had been lying quiet during the afternoon,
and suddenly exclaimed, ' If any be present let them
come and see the work of God.' His friend, Johnston of
Elphinstone, was summoned from the adjacent church,
and on his arrival Knox burst out, 'I have been these two
last nights in meditation on the troubled Church of God,
the spouse of Jesus Christ, despised of the world, but
precious in His sight. I have called to God for her,
and have committed her to her head, Jesus Christ, I
have been fighting against Satan, who is ever ready to
assault. Yea, I have fought against spiritual wickedness
in heavenly things, and have prevailed. I have been in
heaven and have possession, I have tasted of the
heavenly joys where presently I am," Gradually this
rapture of retrospection and assurance wore itself down,
with the help of recitation by the dying man of the Creed
and the Lord's Prayer — Knox pausing over the clause
' Our Father,' to ejaculate, ' Who can pronounce so holy
words ? '
Next day, Monday, 24 November, 1572, was his last
on earth. His three most intimate friends sat by his
bedside. Campbell of Kinyeancleugh asked him if he
had any pain. 'It is no painful pain,' he said; 'but
such a pain as shall soon, I trust, put an end to the
battle.' To this friend he left in charge his wife, whom

JOHN KNOX 153
later of the day he asked to read him the fifteenth
chapter to the Corinthians, When it was finished,
' Now for the last [time],' he said, ' I commend my
soul, spirit, and body' (and as he spoke he touched
three of his fingers) 'into Thy hands, O Lord,' Later
of the day he called to his wife again, ' Go read where I
cast my first anchor ! ' She turned to the seventeenth
chapter of John, and followed it up with part of a
sermon of Calvin on the Epistle to the Ephesians, It
seems to have been after this that he fell into a moaning
slumber. All watched around him. Suddenly he woke,
and being asked why he sighed, said that he had been
sustaining a last 'assault of Satan.' Often before had
he tempted him with allurements, and urged him to
despair. Now he had sought to make him feel as if
he had merited heaven by his faithful ministry. 'But
what have I that I have not received? Wherefore,*
I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, who
hath been pleased to give me the victory ; and I am
persuaded that the tempter shall not again attack
me, but that within a short time I shall, without
any great pain of body or anguish of mind, exchange
this mortal and miserable life for a blessed immor-
taUty through Jesus Christ.' During the hours which
foUowed he lay quite still, and they delayed reading
the evening prayer till past ten o'clock, thinking he
was asleep. When it was finished, his physician asked
him if he had heard the prayers. 'Would to God,'
he answered, ' that you and all men had heard them as
I have heard them; I praise God for that heavenly
sound." As eleven o'clock drew on he gave a deep
sigh, and they heard the words, ' Now it is come.' His
servant, Richard Bannatyne, drew near, and called upon
him to think upon the comfortable promises of Christ
* It will be recognised that this sentence is translated from the
Latin.

154 FAMOUS SCOTS
which he had so often declared to others. Knox was
already speechless, but his servant pleaded for one sign
that he heard the words of peace. As if collecting his
whole strength, he lifted up his right hand heavenwards,
and sighing twice, peacefully expired.
Such a life had such a close.

INDEX

Acts ot Parliament, 24, 80, 99,
100, 114,
Affliction, Treatise on, 59,
Alnwick, Cupboard at, 55,
Alva, 137,
Anabaptists, 72, 102.
Anchor, Knox's first, 30, 37, 39,
47. 153-
Apostolic Order of Worship, 72.
Appellation, 77,
Appropriations, 21, 22,
Archbishop of St Andrews, 140,
141.
Argyll, Earl of, 130,
Aristocracy, Scottish, 20-22, 73,
77, IIS-
Armenians, 68,
Arran, Earl of, 119,
Assembly, General, 107, 115,
140.
Assurance, 28, 29, 30,
Auditors bound to support, 112,
113-
Autobiography, 9, 12, 13, 28, 31,
S3-
Balnaves, 36.
Band, 73, 74, 90, 139.
Bannatyne, Richard, 153,
Bartholomew, St, 146.
Beaton, David (Cardinal), 18,
24, 26, 38.
Beaton, James (Archbishop), 17,
Beggars' Warning, 82, 108.
Benefices, 107, 112.
Berwick, 49, 66.
Beza, 10.
Bible, 24, 30, 33. 72, 125.
Bishopric offered Knox, 49,

Bishops, The R,C., 93.
' Bishops and Kings,' 71,
Blast (against Women's Regi
men), 120,
Books in Knox's Library, 145.
Borgia, 12,
Bothwell, 139, 140, 141.
Bothwellhaugh,Bowes, Mrs, 53-61.
Bowes, Marjory, (Mrs Knox,)
49-51-
Bowes, Sir R., 50.
Brown, Dr Hume, 10, 21, 39,
68, no, 144.
Browning, 57.
Buchanan, George, 19, 24.
Bullinger, 68.
Bunyan in Bedford, 55.
Burghs, 75.
Burton, J. Hill, 45.
Calvin, 30, 43, Si, 67, 68,
Campbell of Kinzeancleuch, 152.
Cannon-ball, 63.
Cariyle, 37, 38, 39, 46, 94.
Catechism Palatinate, 30.
Catholic system, 14-24, 23.
Call, Knox's, 28, 31, 32, Chap.
II. (25-47),
Cecil, 87, 92, 143.
Ceremonies, 36.
Charities, 104.
Chatelherault, Duke of, 51.
Comfort, Knox's lack of, 53.
Commonalty, Letter to, 77, 78.
' Common Man, The,' 43, 48,
78, 94-
Compensations, 149.
' Conditions,' Knox's, 63. J55

IS6

INDEX.

Confession of 1560, 92-97, 117,
123.
Confession of Wishart (First
Helvetic), 30, 36, 38, 97, 102,
103, 109.
Confession, Knox's personal, 28,
140.
Confessions, Change in, 97.
Confessions of Protestantism, 95,
lOI.
'Congregation, The,' 74.
Conscience, 86, 90, 124, 126,
I3S-
Constantine, 14.
Constitutionalism, 19, 137.
Consuetude, 55.
Conversion, Knox's, 9, 27, Chap.
II. (25-47)-
Convocation of Lieges, 135.
Coronation Oath, 100,
Coronation Sermon, 142,
Corpuscle, 147,
Council, General Church, 15-17,
18,
Council, Provincial Church, 84,
' Country, What I have been to
my,' 143,
Creed {see Confession).
Crisis in life. Chap. II,
Crock, Le, 146,
Darnley, 41, 136, 138-141,
Death of Knox, 149-154,
' Deliberate Mind," 27-31, 140,
Desertion, 59,
Dialogues with Queen Mary,
123-134.
Discipline, Book of, 106, 108,
109-115,
Dispensation for Bothwell's
Marriage, 141,
Donations, 104.
Dow Craig, 147.
Dundee, 75.
Dyspepsia, 63.
Edinburgh, 6r, 69, 86, 88,
Chapter VII. (144-154).

Edinburgh, Treaty of, 91.
Ejectment, Summons of, 83, 84.
Eleazar Knox, 51.
Elizabeth, Queen, 82, 92, 119,
120, 131, 138.
Endowments, 20-22, 83, 104,
105, III, 114,
England, 20, 21, 22, 24, 38, 41,
66, 67, 86, 141.
Establishment, 14, 23, 100.
Evangel, 28-31, 34, 39, 43, 44,
46, 69, 94, 148.
Excommunication, 100.

Face, Knox's, 146.
Fairley of Braid, 151,
Familiarity,' never broken, 63.
' Fearfulness ' of Knox, 33.
Fergus the First, 19,
France, 82, 117, 118, 143,
Francis II., 118.
Frankfort, 67.
Friars, The, 80, 83,
Galleys, 32, 65, 66,
Gallicanism, 15, 16, 17,
Geneva, 68,
Genius, Knox's, 45.
Gentlewoman's face, 127,
Gerson, Chancellor, 16.
Golden Rose, 128.
Granvelle, Cardinal, 128, 137.
Gravel, 63.
Haddington, id, 12, 14, 19,
25.
Hamilton, Patrick, 18, 24, 29.
Hebrew, 145.
Helvetic (First) Confession, 30,
36, 38, 97, 102, 103, 109.
' History of Reformation,' 45,
140.
Hospitals, 83,
House, Knox's, 144, 145,
Humanism, l6, 20, 23.
Huntly, Eari of, 139, 145.

INDEX,

157

Idolatry, 40, 67, 77, 102, 103,
122.
Independence of Church, 94, 96,
98, IIS.
' Indifferency,' 70, 71, 81, 86,
Individualism, 43, 56.
Induration, 126,
Infidelity, 56, 60, 95, 133,
Inner Life, Knox's, Chapters II,
and III.
Intolerance, 14, 23, 24, 26, 32,
99-103.
Irrevocableness of Call, 33.
James V,, 24.
Jesuit (Tyrie), 96,
Johnston of Elphinstone, 152.
Jurisdiction, 99, 100, 114,
Kirk of Field,
Kirkcaldy of Grange, 42, 142,
Laing, David, 26.
Lawson, James, 10, 11,
Leadership, Weight of, 34.
Legislation, 14, 24, Chap. V.
(95-116).
Leith, 88, 147.
Lethington, 42, 89, 131, 135,
142, 150.
Letters of Knox (private). Chap.
IIL
Lindsay, Sir David, 31.
Lindsay, Lord, 93.
Locke, Mrs, 61-63.
Loire, 39, 65.
Longniddry, 26, 31.
Luther, 17, 18, 20, 36, 43.
M'Crie, Dr Thomas, 144,
M'Cunn, Mrs, 39.
Macphail, Dr Jas. C, 113.
'Magistrate, The,' 35, 36, 67,
68, 73,77.97. I03, "7, 120,
124.
Mair {see Major).
Maitland {see Lethington).
Major, John, 10, 15-19, 22.

Maries, The Four, 52, 63.
Marischal, The Earl, 93.
Marmion, 49.
' Marriage, My,' 133.
Marvels, 40-44.
Mary of Lorraine, Queen Regent,
69-71. 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84,
90, 91, 126.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 42, 52,
80, 82, Chap. VI. (117-143)-
Mary, Queen of England, 82.
Mass, The, 67, 69, 99, 122, 127,
129.
'Meditation or Prayer,' 27-31.
Melancholy, Knox's, 63.
Melville, James, 148.
Mitchell, Dr A. F., 109.
Moray, Earl of, 51, 122, 131,
132. 137, 142-
Morton, Earl of, 33, 139, 151.
Movements, Leadership of, 34.
Nathaniel Knox, 51.
National Churches, 15-18.
'Need of all, 'of Knox, 63.
Netherbow, 145, 147, 149.
Norham Castle, 48, 49.
Notary, 11.
Ochiltree, Lord, 52.
Organisation of Church, 35, 1 10,
lis, 116.
Palatinate Catechism, 30.
Parentage of Knox, 10.
Paris, University of, 15-18.
Parishes, 20-22.
Parliament, 92, 94, 98, 138.
Pasquil, 70.
Patrimony of the Church, 106,
114, 115.
Patrimony of the Poor, 83, 107.
Persecution, 14, 23, 24, 26, 32,
35, 43, 57, 74, 76, 99-io3-
Perth, 85.
Poor, The, 83, 106-108, in,
115.

158

INDEX.

Pope, The, li, 12, 15, 18, 22,
23, 99, 128.
Portraits, 10, II.
Prayer-book, English, 67.
Prayer, Treatise on, 66.
Preaching, 20, 41, 75, 86, 89,
94, no, 132, 138, 142, 144,
145, 146, 148.
Predictions, 40-44.
Priest, Knox as, 11, 12, 13.
Principles, Fundamental, of
Knox, 35, 36, 146.
Private Life, Chap. III.
'Prophesyings,' no, 144.
Prophet, Knox as, 39-44.
'Proud Mind,' 126.
Puritanism of Knox, 26, 35, 36,
67, 68, 96,
Radicalism, 19, 103, 105, no,
115, 124, 133, 135, 137.
Randolph (English Ambassa
dor), 90, 92, 93, 103, 127,
128.
Ratification of Creed, 117,
' Reconciliation, Articles of,' 75,
Regimen of Women, 63, 120.
Regular Priests, 21, 22.
Renaissance, 20, 23.
Repentance, 58.
Reticence of Knox, i, 12, 13.
Risks of the Reformation, 3,),
35-
Rizzio, 136, 137, 139.
Rouen, 65.
Rough, John, 31, 32.
Ruthven, Lord, 130, 139.
Sacerdotalism, 14,
Sandilands, Sir James, 117.
Scholasticism, 14, 16, 18.
Schools in Scotland, no, in.
Scriptures, The, 24, 30, 35, 72,
125.
Secrets of God's Counsel, 42,
Self-torture, 58,
Shakespeare, Priests in, 11,
Simony, 22,

Sir John Knox, 1 1 {Note).
Spain, 129, 131, 132, 134, 136,
137.
St Andrews, 10, 26, 31, 65, 85,
142, 148,
St Giles, 144.
Statesman, Knox as, 45, 46, no,
in, 114, 115.
Statutes, 24, 80, 99, 100, 114,
Stewart, Lord James (see Moray),
Stewart, Margaret (Mrs Knox),
Stirling, 89, 142,
Sustentation, 112, 113,
Sword, The Civil, 124, 129,
Syllogism, 67, 103,
Sympathy of Knox, 13, 26, 53-
64.
Testamentary Charities, 104,
Thomassin, 107.
Teinds, 21, 22, 105-108, 112-115.
Tithes {see Teinds).
Toleration, 14, 18, 23, 24, 35,
74, 76, 79, 80, 81, 86, 90, 91,
98-103, 112, 113, 114, 121,
126, 129.
Trent, Council of, 131.
Turing, or Trunk Close, 145.
' Use themselves Godly,' 75,
81, 129.
Vocation, Knox's, 28, 31, 32,
Chap, II.
Wallace, Sir William, 19,
' Wholesome Counsel,' Letter of,
71, 72.
Will, Knox's, 42, 51, 148.
Willock, 91.
Window, 29, 47.
Wishart, George, 25, 26, 30, 36,
38, 97, 102, 109.
Women Friends, Chap. III.
Young, Sir Peter, 10, 146.

FAMOUS SCOTS
THOMAS CARLYLE
By hector C. MACPHERSON
' One of the very best little books on Carlyle yet written,
far outweighing in value some more pretentious works with
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' We heartily congratulate author and publishers on the
happy commencement of this admirable enterprise.' —
British Weekly,
'As an estimate of the Carlylean philosophy and of
Carlyle's place in literature and his influence in the domains
of morals, politics, and social ethics, the volume reveals
not only care and fairness, but insight and a large capa
city for original thought and judgment.' — Scotsman.
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of a master-mind, and is lighted up by many airy touches
of fact and fancy.' — Weekly Free Press.
'A fascinating story of a wonderful writer.' — Leeds
Mercury. ' An eminently readable book.' — Evening Dispatch. •
' Is distinctly creditable to the publishers, and worthy
of a national series such as they have projected.' — Glasgow
Daily Record.
'The book is written in an able, masterly, and pains
taking m.z.-a.-atx.'— Educational News.

FAMOUS SCOTS
ALLAN RAMSAY
By OLIPHANT SMEATON
' Graphic and winning.' — Dundee Advertiser.
' Gives many quaint and pleasant glimpses of Scottish
life in the last century.' — Newcastle Chronicle.
' A most interesting monograph.' — Arbroath Herald.
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biographer gives an able analysis of his chief writings.
The whole book is, indeed, marked by authority and
ability.' — Ban^shire fournal.
'A new and most important addition to our national
biography.' — Scottish Notes and Queries.
' Eminently readable.' — Border Advertiser.
'The story throughout is told with vigour.' — Glasgow
Citizen. 'Presents a very interesting sketch of the life of the
poet, as well as a well-balanced estimate and review of his
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' The author has shown scholarship and much enthusiasm
in his task.' — Edinburgh Dispatch.
' The kindly, vain, and pompous little wig-maker lives for
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worker, taking genuine interest in his subject and bestow
ing conscientious pains on his task, has his materials well in
hand, and has used them to produce a portrait that is both
lifelike and well-balanced.' — Scotsman.

2477