Lang Andrew
John Knox and the Reformation
CHAPTER XIII: KNOX AND THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE
This Book of Discipline, containing the model of the Kirk, had been seen by Randolph in August 1560, and he observed that its framers would not come into ecclesiastical conformity with England. They were “severe in that they profess, and loth to remit anything of that they have received.” As the difference between the Genevan and Anglican models contributed so greatly to the Civil War under Charles I., the results may be regretted; Anglicans, by 1643, were looked on as “Baal worshippers” by the precise Scots.
In February 1561, Randolph still thought that the Book of Discipline was rather in advance of what fallen human nature could endure. Idolatry, of course, was to be removed universally; thus the Queen, when she arrived, was constantly insulted about her religion. The Lawful Calling of Ministers was explained; we have already seen that a lawful minister is a preacher who can get a local set of men to recognise him as such. Knox, however, before his return to Scotland, had advised the brethren to be very careful in examining preachers before accepting them. The people and “every several Congregation” have a right to elect their minister, and, if they do not do so in six weeks, the Superintendent (a migratory official, in some ways superior to the clergy, but subject to periodical “trial” by the Assembly, who very soon became extinct), with his council, presents a man who is to be examined by persons of sound judgment, and next by the ministers and elders of the Kirk. Nobody is to be “violently intrused” on any congregation. Nothing is said about an university training; moral character is closely scrutinised. On the admission of a new minister, some other ministers should preach “touching the obedience which the Kirk owe to their ministers… The people should be exhorted to reverence and honour their chosen ministers as the servants and ambassadors of the Lord Jesus, obeying the commandments which they speak from God’s mouth and Book, even as they would obey God himself..” 207
The practical result of this claim on the part of the preachers to implicit obedience was more than a century of turmoil, civil war, revolution, and reaction. The ministers constantly preached political sermons, and the State – the King and his advisers – was perpetually arraigned by them. To “reject” them, “and despise their ministry and exhortation” (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance), was to “reject and despise” our Lord! If accused of libel, or treasonous libel, or “leasing making,” in their sermons, they demanded to be judged by their brethren. Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any other judicature? These pretensions, with the right to inflict excommunication (in later practice to be followed by actual outlawry), were made, we saw, when there were not a dozen “true ministers” in the nascent Kirk, and, of course, the claims became more exorbitant when “true ministers” were reckoned by hundreds. No State could submit to such a clerical tyranny.
People who only know modern Presbyterianism have no idea of the despotism which the Fathers of the Kirk tried, for more than a century, to enforce. The preachers sat in the seats of the Apostles; they had the gift of the Keys, the power to bind and loose. Yet the Book of Discipline permits no other ceremony, at the induction of these mystically gifted men, than “the public approbation of the people, and declaration of the chief minister” – later there was no “chief minister,” there was “parity” of ministers. Any other ceremony “we cannot approve”; “for albeit the Apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we judge it not necessary.” The miracle had not ceased, if it was true that “the commandments” issued in sermons – political sermons often – really deserved to be obeyed, as men “would obey God himself.” C’est lá le miracle! There could be no more amazing miracle than the infallibility of preachers! “The imposition of hands” was, twelve years later, restored; but as far as infallible sermons were concerned, the State agreed with Knox that “the miracle had ceased.”
The political sermons are sometimes justified by the analogy of modern discussion in the press. But leading articles do not pretend to be infallible, and editors do not assert a right to be obeyed by men, “even as they would obey God himself.” The preachers were often right, often wrong: their sermons were good, or were silly; but what no State could endure was the claim of preachers to implicit obedience.
The difficulty in finding really qualified ministers must be met by fervent prayer, and by compulsion on the part of the Estates of Parliament.
Failing ministers, Readers, capable of reading the Common Prayers (presently it was Knox’s book of these) and the Bible must be found; they may later be promoted to the ministry.
Stationary ministers are to receive less sustenance than the migratory Superintendents; the sons of the preachers must be educated, the daughters “honestly dowered.” The payment is mainly in “bolls” of meal and malt. The state of the poor, “fearful and horrible” to say, is one of universal contempt. Provision must be made for the aged and weak. Superintendents, after election, are to be examined by all the ministers of the province, and by three or more Superintendents. Other ceremonies “we cannot allow.” In 1581, a Scottish Catholic, Burne, averred that Willock objected to ceremonies of Ordination, because people would say, if these are necessary, what minister ordained you? The query was hard to answer, so ceremonies of Ordination could not be allowed. The story was told to Burne, he says, by an eyewitness, who heard Willock.
Every church must have a schoolmaster, who ought to be able to teach grammar and Latin. Education should be universal: poor children of ability must be enabled to pass on to the universities, through secondary schools. At St. Andrews the three colleges were to have separate functions, not clashing, and culminating in Divinity.
Whence are the funds to be obtained? Here the authors bid “your Honours” “have respect to your poor brethren, the labourers of the ground, who by these cruel beasts, the papists, have been so oppressed.. ” They ought only to pay “reasonable teinds, that they may feel some benefit of Christ Jesus, now preached unto them. With grief of heart we hear that some gentlemen are now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the papists, requiring of them whatsoever they paid to the Church, so that the papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the landlord or laird.” Every man should have his own teinds, or tithes; whereas, in fact, the great lay holders of tithes took them off other men’s lands, a practice leading to many blood-feuds. The attempt of Charles I. to let “every man have his own tithes,” and to provide the preachers with a living wage, was one of the causes of the distrust of the King which culminated in the great Civil War. But Knox could not “recover for the Church her liberty and freedom, and that only for relief of the poor.” “We speak not for ourselves” the Book says, “but in favour of the poor, and the labourers defrauded.. The Church is only bound to sustain and nourish her charges.. to wit the Ministers of the Kirk, the Poor, and the teachers of youth.” The funds must be taken out of the tithes, the chantries, colleges, chaplainries, and the temporalities of Bishops, Deans, and cathedrals generally.
The ministers are to have their manses, and glebes of six acres; to this many of the Lords assented, except, oddly enough, those redoubtable leaders of the Congregation, Glencairn and Morton, with Marischal. All the part of the book which most commands our sympathy, the most Christian part of the book, regulating the disposition of the revenues of the fallen Church for the good of the poor, of education, and of the Kirk, remained a dead letter. The Duke, Arran, Lord James, and a few barons, including the ruffian Andrew Ker of Faldonside, with Glencairn and Ochiltree, signed it, in token of approval, but little came of it all. Lethington, probably, was the scoffer who styled these provisions “devout imaginations.” The nobles and lairds, many of them, were converted, in matter of doctrine; in conduct they were the most avaricious, bloody, and treacherous of all the generations which had banded, revelled, robbed, and betrayed in Scotland.
There is a point in this matter of the Kirk’s claim to the patrimony of the old Church which perhaps is generally misunderstood. That point is luminous as regards the absolute disinterestedness of Knox and his companions, both in respect to themselves and their fellow-preachers. The Book of Discipline contains a sentence already quoted, conceived in what we may justly style a chivalrous contempt of wealth. “Your Honours may easily understand that we speak not now for ourselves, but in favour of the Poor, and the labourers defrauded.. ” Not having observed a point which “their Honours” were not the men to “understand easily,” Father Pollen writes, “the new preachers were loudly claiming for themselves the property of the rivals whom they had displaced.” 208 For themselves they were claiming a few merks, and a few bolls of meal, a decent subsistence. Mr. Taylor Innes points out that when, just before Darnley’s murder, Mary offered “a considerable sum for the maintenance of the ministers,” Knox and others said that, for their sustentation, they “craved of the auditors the things that were necessary, as of duty the pastors might justly crave of their flock. The General Assembly accepted the Queen’s gift, but only of necessity; it was by their flock that they ought to be sustained. To take from others contrary to their will, whom they serve not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable.”
Among other things the preachers, who were left with a hard struggle for bare existence, introduced a rule of honour scarcely known to the barons and nobles, except to the bold Buccleuch who rejected an English pension from Henry VIII., with a sympathetic explosion of strong language. The preachers would not take gifts from England, even when offered by the supporters of their own line of policy.
Knox’s failure in his admirable attempt to secure the wealth of the old Church for national purposes was, as it happened, the secular salvation of the Kirk. Neither Catholicism nor Anglicanism could be fully introduced while the barons and nobles held the tithes and lands of the ancient Church. Possessing the wealth necessary to a Catholic or Anglican establishment, they were resolutely determined to cling to it, and oppose any Church except that which they starved. The bishops of James I., Charles I., and Charles II. were detested by the nobles. Rarely from them came any lordly gifts to learning and the Universities, while from the honourably poor ministers such gifts could not come. The Universities were founded by prelates of the old Church, doing their duty with their wealth.
The arrangements for discipline were of the drastic nature which lingered into the days of Burns and later. The results may be studied in the records of Kirk Sessions; we have no reason to suppose that sexual morality was at all improved, on the whole, by “discipline,” though it was easier to enforce “Sabbath observance.” A graduated scale of admonitions led up to excommunication, if the subject was refractory, and to boycotting with civil penalties. The processes had no effect, or none that is visible, in checking lawlessness, robbery, feuds, and manslayings; and, after the Reformation, witchcraft increased to monstrous proportions, at least executions of people accused of witchcraft became very numerous, in spite of provision for sermons thrice a week, and for weekly discussions of the Word.
The Book of Discipline, modelled on the Genevan scheme, and on that of A’Lasco for his London congregation, rather reminds us of the “Laws” of Plato. It was a well meant but impracticable ideal set before the country, and was least successful where it best deserved success. It certainly secured a thoroughly moral clergy, till, some twelve years later, the nobles again thrust licentious and murderous cadets into the best livings and the bastard bishoprics, before and during the Regency of Morton. Their example did not affect the genuine ministers, frugal God-fearing men.
CHAPTER XIV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY, 1561
In discussing the Book of Discipline, that great constructive effort towards the remaking of Scotland, we left Knox at the time of the death of his first wife. On December 20, 1560, he was one of some six ministers who, with more numerous lay representatives of districts, sat in the first General Assembly. They selected some new preachers, and decided that the church of Restalrig should be destroyed as a monument of idolatry. A fragment of it is standing yet, enclosing tombs of the wild Logans of Restalrig.
The Assembly passed an Act against lawless love, and invited the Estates and Privy Council to “use sharp punishment” against some “idolaters,” including Eglintoun, Cassilis, and Quentin Kennedy, Abbot of Crosraguel, who disputed later against Knox, the Laird of Gala (a Scott) and others.
In January 1561 a Convention of nobles and lairds at Edinburgh perused the Book of Discipline, and some signed it, platonically, while there was a dispute between the preachers and certain Catholics, including Lesley, later Bishop of Ross, an historian, but no better than a shifty and dangerous partisan of Mary Stuart. The Lord James was selected as an envoy to Mary, in France. He was bidden to refuse her even the private performance of the rites of her faith, but declined to go to that extremity; the question smouldered through five years. Randolph expected “a mad world” on Mary’s return; he was not disappointed.
Meanwhile the Catholic Earls of the North, of whom Huntly was the fickle leader, with Bothwell, “come to work what mischief he can,” are accused by Knox of a design to seize Edinburgh, before the Parliament in May 1561. Nothing was done, but there was a very violent Robin Hood riot; the magistrates were besieged and bullied, Knox declined to ask for the pardon of the brawlers, and, after excursions and alarms, “the whole multitude was excommunicate” until they appeased the Kirk. They may have borne the spiritual censure very unconcernedly.
The Catholic Earls now sent Lesley to get Mary’s ear before the Lord James could reach her. Lesley arrived on April 14, with the offer to raise 20,000 men, if Mary would land in Huntly’s region. They would restore the Mass in their bounds, and Mary would be convoyed by Captain Cullen, a kinsman of Huntly, and already mentioned as the Captain of the Guards after Riccio’s murder.
It is said by Lesley that Mary had received, from the Regent, her mother, a description of the nobles of Scotland. If so, she knew Huntly for the ambitious traitor he was, a man peculiarly perfidious and self-seeking, with a son who might be thrust on her as a husband, if once she were in Huntly’s hands. The Queen knew that he had forsaken her mother’s cause; knew, perhaps, of his old attempt to betray Scotland to England, and she was aware that no northern Earl had raised his banner to defend the Church. She, therefore, came to no agreement with Lesley, but confided more in the Lord James, who arrived on the following day. Mary knew her brother’s character fairly well, and, if Lesley says with truth that he now asked for, and was promised, the earldom of Moray, the omen was evil for Huntly, who practically held the lands. 209 A bargain, on this showing, was initiated. Lord James was to have the earldom, and he got it; Mary was to have his support.
Much has been said about Lord James’s betrayal to Throckmorton of Mary’s intentions, as revealed by her to himself. But what Lord James said to Throckmorton amounts to very little. I am not certain that, both in Paris with Throckmorton, and in London with Elizabeth and Cecil, he did not moot his plan for friendship between Mary and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s recognition of Mary’s rights as her heir. 210 Lord James proposed all this to Elizabeth in a letter of August 6, 1561. 211 He had certainly discussed this admirable scheme with Lord Robert Dudley at Court, in May 1561, on his return from France. 212 Nothing could be more statesmanlike and less treacherous.
Meanwhile (May 27, 1561) the brethren presented a supplication to the Parliament, with clauses, which, if conceded, would have secured the stipends of the preachers. The prayers were granted, in promise, and a great deal of church wrecking was conscientiously done; the Lord James, on his return, paid particular attention to idolatry in his hoped for earldom, but the preachers were not better paid.
Meanwhile the Protestants looked forward to the Queen’s arrival with great searchings of heart. She had not ratified the treaty of Leith, but already Cardinal Guise hoped that she and Elizabeth would live in concord, and heard that Mary ceded all claims to the English throne in return for Elizabeth’s promise to declare her the heir, if she herself died childless (August 21). 213
Knox, who had not loved Mary of Guise, was not likely to think well of her daughter. Mary, again, knew Knox as the chief agitator in the tumults that embittered her mother’s last year, and shortened her life. In France she had threatened to deal with him severely, ignorant of his power and her own weakness. She could not be aware that Knox had suggested to Cecil opposition to her succession to the throne on the ground of her sex. Knox uttered his forebodings of the Queen’s future: they were as veracious as if he had really been a prophet. But he was, to an extent which can only be guessed, one of the causes of the fulfilment of his own predictions. To attack publicly, from the pulpit, the creed and conduct of a girl of spirit; to provoke cruel insults to her priests whom she could not defend; was apt to cause, at last, in great measure that wild revolt of temper which drove Mary to her doom. Her health suffered frequently from the attempt to bear with a smiling face such insults as no European princess, least of all Elizabeth, would have endured for an hour. There is a limit to patience, and before Mary passed that limit, Randolph and Lethington saw, and feebly deplored, the amenities of the preacher whom men permitted to “rule the roast.” “Ten thousand swords” do not leap from their scabbards to protect either the girl Mary Stuart or the woman Marie Antoinette.
Not that natural indignation was dead, but it ended in words. People said, “The Queen’s Mass and her priests will we maintain; this hand and this rapier will fight in their defence.” So men bragged, as Knox reports, 214 but when after Mary’s arrival priests were beaten or pilloried, not a hand stirred to defend them, not a rapier was drawn. The Queen might be as safely as she was deeply insulted through her faith. She was not at this time devoutly ardent in her creed, though she often professed her resolution to abide in it. Gentleness might conceivably have led her even to adopt the Anglican faith, or so it was deemed by some observers, but insolence and outrage had another effect on her temper.
Mary landed at Leith in a thick fog on August 19, 1561. She was now in a country where she lay under sentence of death as an idolater. Her continued existence was illegal. With her came Mary Seton, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone, and Mary Fleming, the comrades of her childhood; and her uncles, the Duc d’Aumale, Francis de Lorraine, and the noisy Marquis d’Elboeuf. She was not very welcome. As late as August 9, Randolph reports that her brother, Lord James, Lethington, and Morton “wish, as you do, she might be stayed yet for a space, and if it were not for their obedience sake, some of them care not though they never see her face.” 215 None the less, on June 8 Lord James tells Mary that he had given orders for her palace to be prepared by the end of July. He informs her that “many” hope that she will never come home. Nothing is “so necessary.. as your Majesty’s own presence”; and he hopes she will arrive punctually. If she cannot come she should send her commission to some of her Protestant advisers, by no means including the Archbishop of St. Andrews (Hamilton), with whom he will never work. It is not easy to see why Lord James should have wished that Mary “might be stayed,” unless he merely dreaded her arrival while Elizabeth was in a bad temper. His letter to Elizabeth of August 6 is incompatible with treachery on his part. “Mr. Knox is determined to abide the uttermost, and others will not leave him till God have taken his life and theirs together.” Of what were these heroes afraid? A “familiar,” a witch, of Lady Huntly’s predicted that the Queen would never arrive. “If false, I would she were burned for a witch,” adds honest Randolph. Lethington deemed his “own danger not least.” Two galleys full of ladies are not so alarming; did these men, practically hinting that English ships should stop their Queen, think that the Catholics in Scotland were too strong for them?
Not a noble was present to meet Mary when in the fog and filth of Leith she touched Scottish soil, except her natural brother, Lord Robert. 216 The rest soon gathered with faces of welcome. She met some Robin Hood rioters who lay under the law, and pardoned these roisterers (with their excommunication could she interfere?), because, says Knox, she was instructed that they had acted “in despite of the religion.” Their festival had been forbidden under the older religion, as it happens, in 1555, and was again forbidden later by Mary herself.
All was mirth till Sunday, when the Queen’s French priest celebrated Mass in her own chapel before herself, her three uncles, and Montrose. The godly called for the priest’s blood, but Lord James kept the door, and his brothers protected the priest. Disappointed of blood, “the godly departed with great grief of heart,” collecting in crowds round Holyrood in the afternoon. Next day the Council proclaimed that, till the Estates assembled and deliberated, no innovation should be made in the religion “publicly and universally standing.” The Queen’s servants and others from France must not be molested – on pain of death, the usual empty threat. They were assaulted, and nobody was punished for the offence. Arran alone made a protest, probably written by Knox. Who but Knox could have written that the Mass is “much more abominable and odious in the sight of God” than murder! Many an honest brother was conspicuously of the opinion which Arran’s protest assigned to Omnipotence. Next Sunday Knox “thundered,” and later regretted that “I did not that I might have done” (caused an armed struggle?)… “for God had given unto me credit with many, who would have put into execution God’s judgments if I would only have consented thereto.” Mary might have gone the way of Jezebel and Athaliah but for the mistaken lenity of Knox, who later “asked God’s mercy” for not being more vehement. In fact, he rather worked “to slokin that fervency.” 217 Let us hope that he is forgiven, especially as Randolph reports him extremely vehement in the pulpit. His repentance was publicly expressed shortly before the murder of Riccio. (In December 1565, probably, when the Kirk ordered the week’s fast that, as it chanced, heralded Riccio’s doom.) Privately to Cecil, on October 7, 1561, he uttered his regret that he had been so deficient in zeal. Cecil had been recommending moderation. 218
On August 26, Randolph, after describing the intimidation of the priest, says “John Knox thundereth out of the pulpit, so that I fear nothing so much as that one day he will mar all. He ruleth the roast, and of him all men stand in fear.” In public at least he did not allay the wrath of the brethren.
On August 26, or on September 2, Knox had an interview with the Queen, and made her weep. Randolph doubted whether this was from anger or from grief. Knox gives Mary’s observations in the briefest summary; his own at great length, so that it is not easy to know how their reasoning really sped. Her charges were his authorship of the “Monstrous Regiment of Women”; that he caused great sedition and slaughter in England; and that he was accused of doing what he did by necromancy. The rest is summed up in “&c.”
He stood to his guns about the “Monstrous Regiment,” and generally took the line that he merely preached against “the vanity of the papistical religion” and the deceit, pride, and tyranny of “that Roman Antichrist.” If one wishes to convert a young princess, bred in the Catholic faith, it is not judicious to begin by abusing the Pope. This too much resembles the arbitrary and violent method of Peter in The Tale of a Tub (by Dr. Jonathan Swift); such, however, was the method of Knox.
Mary asking if he denied her “just authority,” Knox said that he was as well content to live under her as Paul under Nero. This, again, can hardly be called an agreeable historical parallel! Knox hoped that he would not hurt her or her authority “so long as ye defile not your hands with the blood of the saints of God,” as if Mary was panting to distinguish herself in that way. His hope was unfulfilled. No “saints” suffered, but he ceased not to trouble.
Knox also said that if he had wanted “to trouble your estate because you are a woman, I might have chosen a time more convenient for that purpose than I can do now, when your own presence is in the realm.” He had, in fact, chosen the convenient time in his letter to Cecil, already quoted (July 19, 1559), but he had not succeeded in his plan. He said that nobody could prove that the question of discarding Mary, on the ground of her sex, “was at any time moved in public or in secret.” Nobody could prove it, for nobody could publish his letter to Cecil. Probably he had this in his mind. He did not say that the thing had not happened, only that “he was assured that neither Protestant nor papist shall be able to prove that any such question was at any time moved, either in public or in secret.” 219
He denied that he had caused sedition in England, nor do we know what Mary meant by this charge. His appeals, from abroad, to a Phinehas or Jehu had not been answered. As to magic, he always preached against the practice.
Mary then said that Knox persuaded the people to use religion not allowed by their princes. He justified himself by biblical precedents, to which she replied that Daniel and Abraham did not resort to the sword. They had not the chance, he answered, adding that subjects might resist a prince who exceeded his bounds, as sons may confine a maniac father.
The Queen was long silent, and then said, “I perceive my subjects shall obey you and not me.” Knox said that all should be subject unto God and His Church; and Mary frankly replied, “I will defend the Church of Rome, for I think that it is the true Church of God.” She could not defend it! Knox answered with his wonted urbanity, that the Church of Rome was a harlot, addicted to “all kinds of fornication.”
He was so accustomed to this sort of rhetoric that he did not deem it out of place on this occasion. His admirers, familiar with his style, forget its necessary effect on “a young princess unpersuaded,” as Lethington put it. Mary said that her conscience was otherwise minded, but Knox knew that all consciences of “man or angel” were wrong which did not agree with his own. The Queen had to confess that in argument as to the unscriptural character of the Mass, he was “owre sair” for her. He said that he wished she would “hear the matter reasoned to the end.” She may have desired that very thing: “Ye may get that sooner than ye believe,” she said; but Knox expressed his disbelief that he would ever get it. Papists would never argue except when “they were both judge and party.” Knox himself never answered Ninian Winzet, who, while printing his polemic, was sought for by the police of the period, and just managed to escape.
There was, however, a champion who, on November 19, challenged Knox and the other preachers to a discussion, either orally or by interchange of letters. This was Mary’s own chaplain, René Benoit. Mary probably knew that he was about to offer to meet “the most learned John Knox and other most erudite men, called ministers”; it is thus that René addresses them in his “Epistle” of November 19.
He implores them not to be led into heresy by love of popularity or of wealth; neither of which advantages the preachers enjoyed, for they were detested by loose livers, and were nearly starved. Benoit’s little challenge, or rather request for discussion, is a model of courtesy. Knox did not meet him in argument, as far as we are aware; but in 1562, Fergusson, minister of Dunfermline, replied in a tract full of scurrility. One quite unmentionable word occurs, and “impudent lie,” “impudent and shameless shavelings,” “Baal’s chaplains that eat at Jezebel’s table,” “pestilent papistry,” “abominable mass,” “idol Bishops,” “we Christians and you Papists,” and parallels between Benoit and “an idolatrous priest of Bethel,” between Mary and Jezebel are among the amenities of this meek servant of Christ in Dunfermline.
Benoit presently returned to France, and later was confessor to Henri IV. The discussion which Mary anticipated never occurred, though her champion was ready. Knox does not refer to this affair in his “History,” as far as I am aware. 220 Was René the priest whom the brethren menaced and occasionally assaulted?
Considering her chaplain’s offer, it seems not unlikely that Mary was ready to listen to reasoning, but to call the Pope “Antichrist,” and the Church “a harlot,” is not argument. Knox ended his discourse by wishing the Queen as blessed in Scotland as Deborah was in Israel. The mere fact that Mary spoke with him “makes the Papists doubt what shall come of the world,” 221 says Randolph; and indeed nobody knows what possibly might have come, had Knox been sweetly reasonable. But he told his friends that, if he was not mistaken, she had “a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth.” She showed none of these qualities in the conversation as described by himself; but her part in it is mainly that of a listener who returns not railing with railing.
