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Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets
The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then Lethington spoke:—
"Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come to the knowledge of others?"
John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be taught my offence."
"Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."
"Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland; for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as a crime."
"Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need of such convocations as sometime we have had."
John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not suffer him to do by strength."
"What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that treason?"
"Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."
"Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."
"I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare, whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is, that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address me for the proof."
"I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"
"I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland; but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think I have done no wrong."
This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen, not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question, is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who refers to the corpus delicti, carrying the question out of mere vague discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox had said in his letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in full front the tremendous charge which followed:—
"While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I be dampned before I be heard?'
'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'
'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in this realm?'
The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said, 'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"
This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance, accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely dignity.
"Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun, yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof your Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters? I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally; whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree, unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most extreme words I said."
Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys) the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to condemn John Knox was not a light matter; that through all the hours of that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt to be unjust.
"John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie so that they began to speak in open audience—'What! shall the Laird of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie absolved John Knox again."
The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"—a noble answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions pours upon them.
This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition of "tarjetted tails," i.e. embroidered or highly decorated trains, and loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust. It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.
DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE
CHAPTER III
THE TRIUMPH AND END
When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to himself—and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk, took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words—"Of you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear—but not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court. At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings, that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back, while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit, his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of prayer which he is in the habit of using—being far too courageous a soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the salvam fac employed by Knox:—
"Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"
"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example of such prayer?"
"Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"
After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient, returns to the original question.
"But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving any doubt?"
"Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart if His good pleasure be."
"But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that has so prayed before you."
"Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for further declaration I will demand ane question, which is this—Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they commanded others to pray?"
"Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.
"Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane condition with his commandment."
With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception, though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature—the preacher stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington, while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was no just comparison—and this twist and confusion belonged to his period as well as to himself—his grotesque argument has an appearance of reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did not.
The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough, indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal, waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and the great prophet and preacher John Knox.
The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation touching all that went on at the abbey—the gaieties, and the beautiful dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal, unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen. We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life—the continual tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St. Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse of the Knox we know:—
"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."
As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted at all.
During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade, separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady, Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and who had never spared himself during his whole public life.
It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps, will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known. But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray (which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton, the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them. Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so. Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but why did he fly?
Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs; and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite insignificant—one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own, looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial, respectable county family of Bowes—carrying off the two ladies in his wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him! All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.
