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John Knox

<h2 class="space">CHAPTER VI</h2> [Pg 117] 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 twelvemonth, 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, <div class="blockquot">'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 suffrage of man, but in so far as man hath need to believe it, if that ever he shall have participation of the life everlasting.'[102][Pg 118] </div> 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.[103] 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.[Pg 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 suitable 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, however, 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 extremely 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 kinsman 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[Pg 120] 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 happened 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 Catholicism, 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 intolerable 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 [Regimen 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[Pg 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 situation was impossible from the first. The only question was, how long it would last. Knox would have met it fairly by making her acknowledgment of the Protestant Acts and Confession a condition 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 kingdom, 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[Pg 122]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 foremost 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 intolerance 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[Pg 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 admired. 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 intelligence, 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 judgment 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.[104] 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. <div class="blockquot">'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,[105] and fell back on the more fundamental truth. [Pg 124] '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.' [Pg 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,[106] 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.' </div> 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. <div class="blockquot">'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.' </div> Induration of heart was not a charitable judgment to[Pg 126] 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 forenoon. Yet, as usual, Knox's judgment was by no means wholly wrong. There is a certain brilliant hardness 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 imprisonment, there is no evidence in her early days in Scotland of personal or earnest interest in the religion even of her own church.[107] 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 precipitate 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 religion—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, conscience! it is a sore thing to constrain the conscience;'[108][Pg 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 vote 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 1562 a 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, 'Wherefore 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 Elizabeth'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 diplomatist, Throckmorton. Randolph tells the English minister that Knox is still full of 'good zeal and affection' to England. 'I know also that his travail and[Pg 128] 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 Englishman, 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 criticism could be more acute. And yet the research of later times has shown that Knox's judgment, or information, 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.[109] On the 31st she writes Pius IV. assuring him of her devotion to the Church, and that for it and for the restoration to it of her kingdom she is ready to sacrifice her life.[110] The bearer, too, of this secret missive was Cardinal Granvelle, from Madrid,[Pg 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 Philip and the heir of the mighty monarchy of Spain. And it was with this full in her mind, and with the determination 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 magistrates, 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.[Pg 130] 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 morning 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 confidence. '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[Pg 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. Meantime 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 Scotland, 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 Protestant 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[Pg 132] English advisers often, were now so driven to desperation 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, <div class="blockquot">'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.' </div> 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,[111] he drove right at the heart of the situation. <div class="blockquot">'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[Pg 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 plague upon yourselves, and perchance ye shall do small comfort to your Sovereign.' </div> 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 posthumous 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.'[Pg 134] 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 tenderhearted 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 incident 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 Protestants 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[Pg 135]tion of the lieges.' Once more he stood before Mary, but now it was at her bar. Knox had the weakness of listening to gossip, especially 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 will see if I can gar him greet.' Knox absolutely refused to withdraw 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 Secretary, 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 Commonwealth receive, if that the corrupt affections of ignorant[Pg 136] 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 15th 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 10th 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[Pg 137] married, and there is still time for the greater alliance. 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 manlike so much, that she was ever with the foremost.' And in her proclamation she frankly made it her case against the recalcitrant nobility <div class="blockquot">'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?' </div> 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 sending 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[Pg 138] carried by him to Scotland in time to swell the exultation of her nuptials.[112] 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 apprehended 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 representation in the Court, and Rizzio succeeded so far that Mary herself tells[113] how she had arranged for the counter-revolution being commenced by a Parliament in[Pg 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 still. For Mary's imprudent favouritism of Rizzio had roused the deadly jealousy both of her husband 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 unavailing; in two days Mary had talked over her husband, escaped with him from Holyrood to Dunbar, and summoned 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 broadsword.' 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[Pg 140] away through the night from Holyrood, he had penned, 'with deliberate mind to his God,' his retrospective confession,[114] prefixing to it the prayer— <div class="blockquot">'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!' </div> 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 enactments 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 influence; and the Earl of Bothwell was a nominal Protestant. 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[115] 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 hierarchy, to his consistorial jurisdiction, contrary to the law of 1560. It was either a very absurd, or a very alarming, step; and Knox, at the request of the Assembly,[Pg 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 25th 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 increasing 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 gunpowder by the servants of Bothwell, the body of the King being found in the garden. On 21st 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 dispensation (the Papal dispensation having not only been procured 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[Pg 142] Mary's half-compulsory abdication, Moray became Regent for the infant King, who was crowned at Stirling, 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 Langside, 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 friendship 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 Lethington 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, 1571, 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 colleague at once appointed. Yet when the news came from Paris, in September, 1572, of the great massacre of St[Pg 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. <div class="blockquot">'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.'[116] </div> 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 life. <div class="blockquot">'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!'[117] </div> <hr /> <div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES</h3> <div class="footnote">[102] 'Works,' ii. 126. </div> <div class="footnote">[103] 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. </div> <div class="footnote">[104] 'Works,' ii. 277. </div> <div class="footnote">[105] '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 suppressing of idolatry and superstition whatsoever.... And, therefore, 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. </div> <div class="footnote">[106] Mary may not have met a Protestant teacher before, except those whom she and her husband had more than once viewed suffering 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. </div> <div class="footnote">[107] See Hume Brown, ii. 171, note. </div> <div class="footnote">[108] 'Works,' ii. 276. Her answer to the General Assembly in 1565, was that 'she prays all her loving subjects, seeing they have 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. </div> <div class="footnote">[109] 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. </div> <div class="footnote">[110] Labanoff's 'Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i. 177. </div> <div class="footnote">[111] Page 89. </div> <div class="footnote">[112] The dates are indicated generally in Hill Burton's ' History,' iv, 133. </div> <div class="footnote">[113] Labanoffs 'Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i. 342. </div> <div class="footnote">[114] Page 28. </div> <div class="footnote">[115] Page 113. </div> <div class="footnote">[116] 'Works,' vi. 633. </div> <div class="footnote">[117] 'Works,' vi. 596. </div> </div> <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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