Chapter VI: Appendix: , 374 (5)

Knox seems to have returned to his charge at the time that the queen fled with Bothwell to Dunbar. He was present in the General Assembly which met at Edinburgh on the 25th of June, and was delegated by them to go to the west country, and endeavour to persuade the Hamiltons, and others who stood aloof from the confederated lords, to join with them in settling the distracted affairs of the country, and to attend a general convention of the delegates of the churches, to be held on the 20th of July following.[183] In this negotiation he was unsuccessful. But the {155} convention was held, and the nobles, barons, and commissioners of boroughs, who were present, subscribed a number of important articles, with reference to religion and the state of the nation.[184]

On the 29th of July, 1567, the Reformer preached the sermon at the coronation of James VI., in the parish church of Stirling.[185] He objected to the ceremony of unction, as a Jewish rite abused under the papacy; but it was deemed inexpedient, on the present occasion, to depart from the accustomed ceremonial. It was therefore performed by the bishop of Orkney; the superintendents of Lothian and Angus assisting him to place the crown on the king’s head.[186] After the coronation, Knox, along with some others, took instruments, and craved extracts of the proceedings.[187]

When the queen was confined by the lords in {156} the castle of Lochleven, they had not resolved in what manner they should dispose of her person for the future. Some proposed that she should be allowed to leave the kingdom; some that she should be imprisoned during life; while others insisted that she ought to be capitally arraigned. Of this last opinion was Knox, with almost all the ministers, and the great body of the people. The chief ground upon which they insisted for this, was not her maladministration in the government, or the mere safety and peace of the commonwealth; which were the reasons upon which the parliament of England, in the following century, proceeded to the execution of her grandson. But they founded their opinion upon the personal crimes with which Mary was charged. Murder and adultery, they reasoned, were crimes to which the punishment of death was allotted by the law of God and of nations. From this penalty persons of no rank could plead exception. The ordinary forms of judicial procedure made no provision for the trial of a supreme magistrate, because the laws did not suppose that such enormous crimes could be committed by him; but extraordinary cases required extraordinary remedies, and new offences gave birth to new laws. There are examples in Scripture of the capital punishment of princes, nor are precedents of it wanting in the history of Scotland.[188]

{157} Upon these grounds, Knox scrupled not publicly to maintain, that the estates of the kingdom ought to bring Mary to a trial; and, if she was found guilty of the murder of her husband, and an adulterous connexion with Bothwell, that she ought to be put to death. Throkmorton, the English ambassador, held a conference with him, with the view of mitigating the rigour of this judgment; but though he acquiesced in the resolution adopted by the nobility to detain her in prison, he retained his own sentiments, and, after the civil war was kindled by her escape from confinement, repeatedly said, that he considered the nation as suffering for their criminal lenity.[189]

Though the earl of Murray, after his return from banishment, had been pardoned, and re‑admitted to his place in the privy council, he did not regain the confidence of her majesty. Perceiving the ruinous tendency of the course on which she was bent, and despairing of being able to prevent it by his advice, he declined taking any active part in the management of public affairs, and appeared very seldom at court. Soon after the king was murdered, he obtained liberty to leave the kingdom, and retired to France, where he remained till recalled by a message from the confederated lords, after Mary had subscribed the instruments by which she resigned the crown, and appointed him regent during the minority of her son. Having arrived in Scotland, he was formally invested with {158} the regency, on the 22d of August, 1567. No sooner was he confirmed in the government, than he exerted himself with great zeal and prudence to secure the peace of the kingdom, and settle the affairs of the church. A parliament being summoned to meet in the middle of December, he, with the advice of the privy council, previously nominated certain barons, and commissioners of boroughs, to consult upon and digest such overtures as were proper to be laid before that assembly. With these he joined Knox, and four other ministers, to assist in matters which related to the church. This committee met in the beginning of December, and sat until the opening of the parliament. The record of their proceedings, both as to civil and ecclesiastical affairs, has been preserved; and, as many of their propositions were not adopted by the parliament, it is valuable as a declaration of the sentiments of a number of the most able men in the kingdom.[190]

On the 15th of December, Knox preached at the opening of the parliament, and exhorted them to begin with the affairs of religion, in which case they would find better success in their other business. The parliament ratified all the acts which had been passed in 1560, in favour of the protestant religion and against popery. New statutes of a similar kind were added. It was provided, that no prince should afterwards be admitted to the exercise of authority in the kingdom, without taking an oath to maintain the {159} protestant religion; and that none but protestants should be admitted to any office, with the exception of those that were hereditary or held for life. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction, exercised by the assemblies of the church, was formally ratified, and commissioners appointed to define more exactly the causes which came within the sphere of their judgment. The thirds of benefices were appointed to be paid at first hand to collectors nominated by the church, who, after paying the stipends of the ministers, were to account to the exchequer for the surplus. And the funds of provostries, prebendaries, and chaplainries were appropriated to maintain bursars in colleges.[191]

In the act ratifying the jurisdiction of the church, Knox was appointed one of the commissioners for drawing out the particular points which pertained to ecclesiastical judgment, to be presented to next meeting of parliament. The General Assembly, which met about the same time, gave him a commission, along with some others, to act for them in this matter, and, in general, to consult with the regent and council on such ecclesiastical questions as might occur after their dissolution. He was also appointed to assist the superintendent of Lothian in his visitation, and afterward to visit the churches in Kyle, Carrick, and Cunningham.[192]

During the regency of Murray there were no jars between the church and the court, nor any of those {160} unpleasant complaints which had been made at every meeting of the General Assembly before that period, and which were renewed under the succeeding regents.[193] All the grievances of which they complained were not, indeed, redressed; and the provision made by law was still inadequate for the support of such an ecclesiastical establishment as the nation required, including the seminaries of education. But the regent not only received the addresses of the general assemblies in a “manner very different from that to which they had been accustomed;” but showed a disposition to grant their petitions, whenever it was in his power. It was chiefly through his influence that the favourable arrangement concerning the thirds of benefices was made; and he endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to obtain the {161} consent of parliament to the dissolution of the prelacies, and the appropriation of their revenues to the common fund of the church.[194]

Our Reformer had now reached that point from which he could take a calm and deliberate view of the bustling scene through which he had passed, and of the arduous struggle which he had been so long engaged in, and had at length brought to a happy termination. Papal superstition and tyranny were suppressed and abolished by law; the protestant religion was established; the supreme government of the nation was in the hands of one in whose wisdom and integrity he had the greatest confidence; the church was freed from many of those grievances under which she had hitherto groaned, and enjoyed the prospect of obtaining the redress of such as still remained. The work on which his heart had been so ardently set for such a long period, and for the success of which he had so often trembled, had prospered beyond his utmost expectation. He now congratulated himself on the prospect of being released from all burden of public affairs, and of spending the remainder of his days in religious meditations, and in preparation for that event of whose near approach he was daily admonished by the increasing infirmities of his body.[195] He even secretly cherished the wish of resigning his charge in Edinburgh, and of retiring to that privacy, from which he had been {162} drawn at the commencement of the Scottish Reformation. Speaking of the congregation of which he had been pastor at Geneva, he says, in one of his confidential letters, “God comfort that dispersed little flock, among whom I lived with quietness of conscience and contentment of heart; and amongst whom I would be content to end my days, if so it might stand with God’s good pleasure. For, seeing it hath pleased his majesty, above all men’s expectations, to prosper the work for the performing whereof I left that company, I would even as gladly return to them, if they stood in need of my labours, as ever I was glad to be delivered from the rage of mine enemies. I can give you no reason that I should so desire, other than that my heart so thirsteth.”[196]

But “the way of man is not in himself.” Providence had allotted him farther trials of a public nature: he was yet to see the security of the reformed religion endangered, and the country involved in another civil war, even more distressing than the former, inasmuch as the principal persons on both sides were professed protestants.

From the time that the queen was imprisoned, and the government transferred to the young prince under the regency of Murray, a considerable number of the nobility had withheld their approbation of these proceedings. The popish party were decidedly attached to Mary, and inimical to a revolution, which crushed the hopes which they had all along cherished of accomplishing {163} the restoration of the ancient religion. Others, though professed protestants, were induced by various motives to oppose the new government. Argyle was at this time alienated from Murray by a family quarrel.[197] The house of Hamilton followed that line of narrow and interested policy which they had adopted on former occasions of a similar kind. They were jealous lest the late settlement of the crown should invalidate the right of their chief, the duke of Chastelherault, to the succession; and they were offended that the regency, which they considered as due to him, should have been conferred on Murray.[198] No governor can gratify the expectations of all; and some of those who were early friends of the regent, or had contributed to his advancement, thought that they were not sufficiently rewarded. The very means which he found it necessary to employ, to restore tranquillity and order to the kingdom, created him enemies. During the late confusions, many parts of the country had fallen into a state of anarchy; and the northern counties and the borders presented {164} nothing but scenes of rapine and bloodshed. It was impossible to repress these disorders without making severe examples of the most guilty; and the turbulent and licentious naturally sought the overthrow of a government by which they felt themselves overawed and restrained.[199] But the abilities of the regent enabled him to overcome these difficulties; and he was daily receiving submissions from the most powerful of the opposite party, when, on the 2d of May, 1568, the queen escaped from her confinement in Lochleven. The discontented nobles immediately joined her standard, and, having mustered a large force, avowed their determination to restore her to the exercise of that authority which she had renounced by constraint. This formidable insurrection was defeated by the promptitude of the regent; and, in consequence of the battle of Langside, Mary was driven into England, and her party broken. Elizabeth having procured herself to be chosen umpire between the two parties, the conferences were protracted during so long a period, and the conduct of the English court was so equivocal and contradictory, that the friends of Mary were encouraged to renew their attempts to restore her by force of arms. But although the duke of Chastelherault returned from France with a large sum of money contributed by the popish princes, and came into Scotland in the character of lieutenant of the queen,[200] the regent, {165} by his vigilance, and his vigorous measures, prevented any insurrection, and preserved the kingdom in obedience to the young king’s authority.

Despairing to accomplish their darling object during his life, the partisans of Mary resolved to cut off Murray by private means. During the year 1568, two persons were employed to assassinate him; but the design was discovered and prevented.[201] This did not hinder new machinations. Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a nephew of the archbishop of St Andrews, undertook to perpetrate the deed. He was one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Langside; but, after being arraigned, condemned, and brought out to execution, he had his life given him by the regent, and was soon after set at liberty along with the other prisoners.[202] It is said that he was actuated by revenge, on account of an injury which he had received, by detaining one of his forfeited estates, or by the cruel manner in which his wife had been dispossessed of it.[203] Whether this was {166} really the case, or whether it was afterwards alleged to diminish the odium of his crime, and turn it away from his party, cannot perhaps be now certainly determined. But it does not appear, that any part of the regent’s conduct towards him was such as to afford the slightest alleviation of a crime, in the commission of which he burst the ties of gratitude, as well as of humanity and justice. On the other hand, there is ample proof that he was incited to make the attempt by the political party with which he was connected.[204] Having formed his resolution, {167} he deliberately followed the regent in his progress to Glasgow, Stirling, and Linlithgow; and, finding an opportunity in the last of these places, shot him through the body with a musket‑ball. The wound proved mortal, and the regent died the same evening. While some of his friends, who stood round his bed, lamented the excessive lenity which he had shown to his enemies, and particularly to his murderer, he replied, with a noble and christian spirit, that nothing would ever make him repent of an act of clemency.[205]

The consternation which is usually produced by the fall of a distinguished leader, was absorbed in the deep distress which the tidings of the regent’s murder spread through the nation. The common people, who had experienced the beneficial effects of his short administration, to a degree altogether unprecedented in the country, felt as if each had lost a father, and loudly demanded vengeance upon the authors of the parricide. Many who had envied or hated him during his life, were now forward to do justice to his virtues. Those who had not been able to conceal their satisfaction on the first intelligence of his death, became ashamed of the indecent exultation which they had so imprudently expressed. The Hamiltons were anxious to clear themselves from the imputation of a crime which they saw to be universally detested. They dismissed the murderer, who was glad to escape {168} from ignominy by condemning himself to perpetual banishment. The only one of his crimes for which the archbishop of St Andrews afterwards expressed contrition before his execution, was his accession to the murder of the regent.[206] Nor were these feelings confined to Scotland; the sensation was general through England, and the expressions of grief and condolence from that country evinced the uncommon esteem in which he was held by all ranks.

It was the happiness of the regent, that, in his youth, he fell into the company of men, who cultivated his vigorous understanding, gave a proper direction to his activity, and instilled into his mind the principles of religion and virtue. His early adoption of the reformed sentiments, the steadiness with which he adhered to them, the uniform correctness of his morals, his integrity, sagacity, and enterprising but cool courage, soon placed him in the first rank among those who embarked in the struggle for the reformation {169} of religion, and the maintenance of national liberties, and secured to him their cordial and unbounded confidence. The honours which Mary conferred on him were not too great for the services which he performed; and had she continued to act by his advice, those measures would have been avoided which brought on her ruin. He was repeatedly placed in a situation which would have tempted the ambition of persons possessed of far inferior abilities; yet he showed no disposition to grasp at the supreme authority. When he accepted the regency, it was in compliance with the decided and uncorrupted choice of the acting majority in the kingdom, pointing him out as the fittest person for occupying that high station; and his conduct, in one of the most delicate and embarrassing situations in which a governor was ever placed, showed that his countrymen were not mistaken in their choice. He united, in no ordinary degree, those qualities, which are rarely combined in the same individual, and which form the character of an accomplished prince. Excelling equally in the arts of war and peace, he reduced the country to obedience by his military skill and valour, and preserved it in a state of tranquillity and order by the wise and impartial administration of justice. Successful in all his warlike enterprises, he never once tarnished the laurels of victory by cruelty or unnecessary rigour to the vanquished. He knew how to maintain the authority of the laws, and to bridle the licentious, by salutary severity, and at the same time to temper the rigour of justice by the interposition {170} of mercy. He used to sit personally in the courts of judicature, and exerted himself to obtain for all the subjects an easy and expeditious decision of litigated causes. His hospitality, his unostentatious charity, his uncommon liberality to the learned, and the anxiety he showed to confer his favours in the manner least calculated to hurt their feelings, have been celebrated by one who had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with these amiable traits of his character.[207] Nor has the breath of calumny, which has attempted in many ways to blast his reputation, ever insinuated that he oppressed or burdened the public, during his regency, in order to enrich himself or his family. Add to all these qualities, his exemplary piety, the only source of genuine and exalted virtue. His family was so regulated as to resemble a church rather than a court. Not a profane or lewd word was to be heard from any of his domestics. A chapter of the bible was always read at table after dinner and supper; and it was his custom, on such occasions, to require his chaplain, or some learned man present, to give his opinion upon the passage, for his own instruction and that of his family. “A man truly good,” says archbishop Spotswood, “and worthy to be ranked among the best governors that this kingdom hath enjoyed, and, therefore, to this day honoured with the title of The Good Regent.”[208]

This may perhaps be deemed, by some readers, an improper digression. But though it had been less {171} connected with the subject of this work than it is, and though the familiarity and co‑operation between the regent and the Reformer had been less intimate and cordial than they really were, I could not have denied myself the satisfaction of paying a small tribute to the memory of one of the greatest men of his age, who has been traduced and vilified in a most unjustifiable manner, and whose character has been drawn with unfavourable, and, in my opinion, with unfair colours, by the most moderate and impartial of our historians. All that I have attempted, is to sketch the more prominent features of his character. That he was faultless, I am far from wishing to insinuate; but the principal charges which have been brought against him, I consider as either irrelevant, or unproved, or greatly exaggerated. That his exaltation to the highest dignity in the state which a subject could enjoy, produced no unfavourable change on his temper and behaviour, is what none can be prepared to affirm; but I have not seen the contrary established. The confidence which he reposed in his friends was great, and he was inclined to pay much deference to their advice; but that he became the dupe of worthless favourites, and fell by listening to their flattery, and refusing to hearken to wholesome advice, and not by the treachery of his friends and the malice of his enemies, are assertions which have been repeated upon the authority of a single witness, unsupported by facts, and capable of being disproved.[209]

{172} The regent died on the evening of Saturday, the 23d of January, 1570; and the intelligence of his murder was conveyed early next morning to Edinburgh. It is impossible to describe the anguish which the Reformer felt on this occasion. The loss of a noble and endeared friend was the least evil which he had to deplore. Of all the Scottish nobility, he placed the greatest confidence in Murray’s attachment to religion; and his conduct after his elevation to the regency, had served to heighten the good opinion which he formerly entertained of him. He looked upon his death as the greatest calamity which could befall the nation, and as a forerunner of many evils.[210] When the shock produced by the melancholy tidings had subsided, the first thought that rushed into his mind was, that he had himself been the instrument of obtaining, from his clemency, a pardon to the man who had become his murderer; a thought which naturally produced a very different impression on him from what it did on the mind of the dying regent.[211]

In his sermon that day, he introduced the melancholy subject; and after saying, that God in his great mercy raised up pious rulers, and took them away in his displeasure, on account of the sins of a nation, he thus poured out the sorrows of his heart: {173} “O Lord, in what misery and confusion found he this realm! To what rest and quietness now by his labours, suddenly he brought the same, all estates, but especially the poor commons, can witness. Thy image, O Lord, did so clearly shine in that personage, that the devil, and the people to whom he is prince, could not abide it; and so to punish our sins and our ingratitude, (who did not rightly esteem so precious a gift,) thou hast permitted him to fall, to our great grief, in the hands of cruel and traitorous murderers. He is at rest, O Lord; we are left in extreme misery.”[212]

Only a few days before this, and after the plan of the murder was fully concerted, Gavin Hamilton, abbot of Kilwinning, applied to Knox to intercede with the regent in behalf of some of his kinsmen, who were confined for practising against the government. He signified his readiness to do all in his power for the relief of any of that family who were willing to own the authority of the king, but entreated the abbot not to abuse him by employing his services, if his relations intended to do any mischief to the regent;[213] for “I protest,” said he, “before {174} God, who is the only witness now betwixt us, that if there be any thing attempted, by any of that surname, against the person of that man, in that case I discharge myself to you and them for ever.” After the assassination, the abbot sent to desire another interview; but Knox refused to see him, and desired the messenger to say, “I have not now the regent to make suit unto for the Hamiltons.”[214]

At this time there was handed about a fabricated account of a pretended conference held by the late regent with lord Lindsay, Wishart of Pittarrow, the tutor of Pitcur, James Macgill, and Knox; in which they were represented as advising him to set aside the young king, and place the crown on his own head. To give it the greater air of credibility, the modes of expression peculiar to each of the persons were carefully imitated in the speeches put into their mouths. The evident design of circulating it at this time, was to lessen the odium of the murder, and the veneration of the people for the memory of Murray; but it was universally regarded as an impudent and gross forgery. The person who fabricated it was Thomas Maitland, a young man of talents, but corrupted by his brother, the secretary, who had previously engaged himself to the queen’s party, and was suspected of having had a deep hand in the plot for assassinating the regent.[215]

On the day on which the weekly conference was held in Edinburgh, the same person slipped into the {175} pulpit a schedule, containing words to this effect: “Take up now the man whom you accounted another God, and consider the end to which his ambition hath brought him.” It was Knox’s turn to preach that day. On entering the pulpit he took up the paper, supposing it to be a note requesting the prayers of the congregation for a sick person, and having read it, laid it aside without any apparent emotion. But towards the conclusion of his sermon, after deploring the loss which the church and commonwealth had recently sustained, and declaring the account of the conference, which had been circulated, to be false and calumnious, he said that there were persons who rejoiced at the treasonable murder, and scrupled not to make it the subject of their merriment; and particularly, there was one present who had thrown into the pulpit a paper exulting over an event which was the cause of grief to all good men: “that wicked man, whosoever he be, shall not go unpunished, and shall die where there shall be none to lament him.” Maitland, after he went home, said to his sister, that the preacher was raving, when he spake in such a manner of a person who was unknown to him; but she, suspecting that her brother had written the line, reproved him, saying with tears, that none of that man’s denunciations were wont to prove idle. Spotswood (who had his information personally from the mouth of that lady) says, that Maitland died in Italy, “having no known person to attend him.”[216]

{176} On Tuesday the 14th of February, the regent’s corpse was brought from the palace of Holyroodhouse, and interred in the south aisle of the collegiate church of St Giles. Before the funeral, Knox preached a sermon on these words, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” Three thousand persons were dissolved in tears before him, while he described the virtues of the regent, and bewailed his loss.[217] Buchanan paid a tribute to the memory of his deceased patron, by writing the inscription placed on his monument, with that expressive simplicity and brevity which are dictated by genuine grief.[218] A convention of the nobility was held after the funeral, at which it was resolved to avenge his death; but different opinions were entertained as to the mode of doing this, and the commons complained loudly of the remissness with which the resolution was prosecuted. The General Assembly, at their first meeting, testified {177} their detestation of the crime, by ordering the assassin to be publicly excommunicated in all the chief towns of the kingdom, and by appointing the same process to be used against all who should afterwards be convicted of accession to the murder.[219]

During the sitting of the convention, Knox received a number of letters from his acquaintances in England, expressive of their high regard for the character of the regent, and their sorrow at so grievous a loss.[220] One of these was from Christopher Goodman, and another from John Willock, who either had not complied with the invitation of the General Assembly, or had again returned to England.[221] The other letters were from Englishmen, who had no immediate {178} connexion with Scotland. Dr Laurence Humphrey[222] urged Knox to write a memoir of the deceased. Had he done this, his intimate acquaintance with the regent would, no doubt, have enabled him to communicate many particulars of which we must now be content to remain ignorant; but though he had been disposed to undertake this task, the state of his health would have prevented its execution.

The grief which he indulged on account of this mournful event, and the confusions which followed it, preyed upon his spirits, and injured his health.[223] In the month of October, he had a stroke of apoplexy, which affected his speech to a considerable degree. On this occasion, his enemies exulted, and circulated the most exaggerated tales respecting his disorder. The report ran through Scotland and England, that John Knox would never preach or speak more,――that his face was turned into his neck,――that he was become the most deformed creature ever seen,――that he was actually dead.[224] A most unequivocal proof {179} of the high consideration in which he was held, which our Reformer received in common with other great men of his age![225]

{180}
PERIOD IX.

FROM OCTOBER 1570, WHEN HE WAS STRUCK WITH APOPLEXY,
TO HIS DEATH, IN NOVEMBER 1572.

THOSE who flattered themselves that the Reformer’s disorder was mortal, were disappointed; for he was restored to the use of his speech, and was able, in the course of a few days, to resume preaching, at least on Sabbath days.[226] He never recovered, however, from the debility which was produced by the apoplectic stroke.

The confusions which he had augured from the death of the good regent soon broke out, and again spread the flames of civil discord through the nation. The earl of Lennox, who was the natural guardian of his grandson, was advanced to the regency; but he was deficient in the talents which were requisite for so difficult a station, and the knowledge of his weakness emboldened and increased the party which was attached to the queen. The Hamiltons openly raised her standard, and were strengthened by the influence and abilities of Maitland. William Kircaldy of Grange, whom Murray had made governor of the castle of Edinburgh, after concealing his defection for some time under the flag of neutrality, declared {181} himself on the same side, and became a principal agent in attempting to overturn that government which he had been so zealous in erecting. Maitland’s tergiversation surprised nobody; but the defection of Kircaldy was deeply felt by those with whom he had been so long associated. It proved a source of the keenest distress to Knox. The acquaintance which they had formed in the castle of St Andrews,[227] grew into intimacy during their confinement in the French galleys; and Knox could never forget the services which Kircaldy performed during the subsequent struggle for reformation, and continued to the last to cherish the hope that he was at heart a friend to religion. Under the influence of these feelings, he spared no pains in endeavouring to prevent him from renouncing his fidelity to the king, and afterwards to reclaim him from his apostacy. But in both attempts he was unsuccessful.

In the end of the year 1570, he was personally involved in a disagreeable quarrel with Kircaldy. One of the soldiers belonging to the castle having been imprisoned by the magistrates on a charge of murder, the governor sent a party from the garrison, who broke open the tolbooth, and carried off the prisoner. In his sermon on the following Sabbath, Knox condemned {182} this riot, and violation of the house of justice. Had it been done by the authority of a bloodthirsty man, or one who had no fear of God, he would not, he said, have been so much moved at it; but he was affected to think that one of whom all good men had formed so great expectations, should have fallen so far as to act such a part; one too, who, when formerly in prison, had refused to purchase his own liberty by the shedding of blood.[228] An erroneous and exaggerated report of this censure being conveyed to the castle, the governor, in great rage, made his complaint, first to Knox’s colleague, and afterwards formally to the kirk‑session, that he had been calumniated as a murderer, and required that his character should be vindicated as publicly as it had been traduced. Knox, understanding that his words had been misrepresented, embraced the first opportunity of explaining and vindicating them from the pulpit. On a subsequent day, Kircaldy, who had absented himself from the church nearly a whole year, came down to St Giles’s, accompanied with a number of the persons who had been active in the murder and riot. Regarding this as an attempt to overawe the authorities, and set public opinion at defiance, the Reformer dwelt particularly, in his discourse, upon the sinfulness of forgetting benefits received from God, and warned his hearers against confiding in the divine mercy, while they were knowingly transgressing any of the commandments, or proudly defending their transgression.

{183} Kircaldy was much incensed at this admonition, which he considered as levelled at him, and made use of very threatening language in speaking of the preacher. The report spread that the governor of the castle was become a sworn enemy to Knox, and intended to kill him. Upon this, several noblemen and gentlemen of Kyle and Cunningham sent a letter to Kircaldy, in which, after reminding him of his former appearances for religion, and mentioning the reports which had reached their ears, they warned him against doing any thing to the hurt of that man, whom “God had made the first planter and chief waterer of his church among them,” and protested that “his death and life were as dear to them as their own.”[229]

Knox was not to be deterred from doing what he considered to be his duty. He persisted in warning his hearers to avoid all participation with those who prevented the punishment of atrocious crimes, by supporting the pretensions of the queen, and who exposed the reformed religion to the utmost hazard, by opposing the king’s authority. When the General Assembly met in March, 1571, anonymous libels were thrown into the house where they were sitting, and placards affixed to the church‑doors, accusing him of seditious railing against their sovereign, the queen, refusing to pray for her welfare and conversion, representing her as a reprobate whose repentance was hopeless, and uttering imprecations against her. One of the placards concluded with a threat, that, if {184} the assembly did not restrain him by their authority from using such language, the complainers would themselves apply a remedy to the evil “with greater unquietness.” The assembly having, by public intimation, required the complainers to come forward and substantiate their charges, another anonymous writing appeared, promising that accusers should not be wanting against next assembly, if the preacher continued his offensive speeches, and was “then law‑byding, and not fugitive, according to his accustomed manner.”

Several of his friends dealt with him to pass over these unauthenticated libels in silence, but he refused to comply with this advice, considering that the credit of his ministry was implicated. Accordingly, he produced them in the pulpit, and returned a particular answer to the accusations which they contained. That he had charged the late queen with the crimes of which she had been notoriously guilty, he granted,――that he had railed against her, he denied; nor would they be able to substantiate this charge against him, without at the same time proving Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other inspired writers, to have been railers. “From them he had learned plainly and boldly to call wickedness by its own terms, a fig, a fig, and a spade, a spade.” He had never called the queen reprobate, nor said that her repentance was impossible; but he had affirmed that pride and repentance could not remain long together in one heart. He had prayed, that God, for the comfort of his church, would oppose his power to her pride, and confound her and {185} her assistants in their impiety: this prayer, let them call it imprecation or execration as they pleased, had stricken, and would yet strike, whoever supported her. To the charge of not praying for the queen, he answered, “I am not bound to pray for her in this place, for sovereign to me she is not; and I let them understand that I am not a man of law that has my tongue to sell for silver, or favour of the world.”[230] What title she now had, or ever had to the government, he would not dispute; the estates had deprived her of it, and it belonged to them to answer for this: as for him, he had hitherto lived in obedience to all lawful authority within the kingdom. To the threatening against his life, and the insinuation that he might not be “law‑byding, but fugitive” against next assembly, he replied, that his life was in the custody of Him who had hitherto preserved him from many dangers, that he had reached an age at which he was not apt to flee far, nor could any yet accuse him of having left the people committed to his charge, except at their own command.

{186} After these answers, his enemies fled, as their last resort, to an attack upon his Blast of the Trumpet, and accused him of inconsistency in writing against female government, and yet praying for queen Elizabeth, and seeking her support against his native country. This accusation he also met in the pulpit, and refuted with great spirit. After vindicating his consistency, he concluded in the following manner:――“One thing in the end, I may not pretermit, that is, to give him a lie in his throat that either dare, or will say, that ever I sought support against my native country. What I have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that has to oppose any thing against me, that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable, that, in my decrepit age, I shall be compelled to fight against shadows, and howlets that dare not abide the light.”[231]

The conduct of our Reformer at this period affords a striking display of the unextinguishable ardour of his mind. Previous to the breaking out of the late disturbances, he had given up attendance on church courts. He never went abroad except on Sabbath‑days, to preach in the forenoon. He was so debilitated as to be unable to go to the pulpit without {187} assistance.[232] He had weaned his heart from the world, and expressed his resolution to take no more part in public affairs. In answer to a letter of his esteemed friend, Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, who had informed him of an intended attempt on the castle of St Andrews by archbishop Hamilton, and requested his good offices for certain preachers, we find him, on the 31st of March, 1570, writing as follows:――“How such troublers may be stayed in their enterprises, I commit to God, to whose counsels I commit you in that and all other causes worldly, for I have taken my good‑night of it; and therefore bear with me, good sir, albeit I write not to the superintendent of Fife in the action that ye desire.”[233] But whenever he saw the church and commonwealth seriously in danger, he forgot his infirmities and his resolutions, and entered into the cause with all the keenness of his more vigorous days. Whether the public proceedings of the nation, or his own conduct, were arraigned,――whether the attacks upon them were open or clandestine, he stood prepared to repel them, and convinced the adversaries, that they could not accomplish their designs without opposition, as long as he was able to move or speak.[234]

{188} His situation became very critical in April 1571, when Kircaldy received the Hamiltons, with their forces, into the castle. Their inveteracy against him was so great, that his friends were obliged to watch his house during the night. They proposed forming a guard for the protection of his person when he went abroad; but the governor of the castle forbade this, as implying a suspicion of his own intentions, and offered to send Melvil, one of his officers, to conduct him to and from the church. “He wold gif the woulf the wedder to keip,” says Bannatyne. Induced by the importunity of the citizens, Kircaldy applied to the duke and his party for a protection to Knox; but they refused to pledge their word for his safety, because “there were many rascals and others among them who loved him not, that might do him harm without their knowledge.”[235] Intimations were often given him of threatenings against his life; and one evening a musket‑ball was fired in at his window, and lodged in the roof of the apartment in which he was sitting. It happened that he sat at the time in a different part of the room from that which he had been accustomed to occupy, otherwise the ball, from the direction it took, must have struck him.[236] Alarmed by this occurrence, a deputation of the citizens, accompanied by his colleague, waited upon him, and {189} renewed a request which they had formerly made, that he would remove from Edinburgh, to a place where his life would be in greater safety, until the queen’s party should evacuate the town. But he refused to yield to them, apprehending that his enemies wished to intimidate him into flight, that they might carry on their designs more quietly, and then accuse him of cowardice. Being unable to persuade him by any other means, they had recourse at last to an argument which prevailed. They told him that if he was attacked, they were determined to risk their lives in his defence, and if blood was shed in the quarrel, which was highly probable, they would leave it on his head. Upon this he consented to remove from the city, “sore against his will.”[237]

He left Edinburgh on the 5th of May, 1571, and crossing the Frith at Leith, travelled by short stages to St Andrews, which he had chosen as the place of his retreat.[238] His pulpit was filled by Alexander Gordon, bishop of Galloway, who preached and prayed in a manner more acceptable to the queen’s party than his predecessor, but little to the satisfaction of the people, who despised him on account of his weakness, and disliked him for supplanting their favourite pastor.[239] A number of the most respectable inhabitants {190} were driven from the capital by violence, while others were induced to quit it, and retire to Leith, that they might not be understood as even practically submitting to the queen’s authority. The church of Edinburgh was for a time dissolved. The celebration of the Lord’s supper was suspended. And, whereas formerly scarce a day passed without some public exercise of religion, there was now, during a whole week, “neither preaching nor prayer; neither was there any sound of bell heard in all the town, except the ringing of the cannon.”[240]

The kingdom was now subjected to all the miseries of civil war and intestine faction. In almost every part of the country there were adherents to the king and to the queen, who exasperated each other by reciprocal reproaches and injuries. The regent fortified Leith, while the queen’s party kept possession of the castle and town of Edinburgh. As the two armies lay at a small distance from one another, and neither of them was sufficiently strong for undertaking to dispossess the other, they were daily engaged in petty skirmishes; and several acts of disgraceful retaliation, which rarely happen in the open field, were committed on both sides. The evidence which the queen’s friends gave of their personal antipathy to the Reformer, clearly showed that his life {191} would have been in imminent danger, if he had remained among them. An inhabitant of Leith was assaulted and his body mutilated, because he was of the same name with him. A servant of John Craig, being met one day by a reconnoitring party, and asked who was his master, answered, in his trepidation, Mr Knox; upon which he was seized, and, although he immediately corrected his mistake, they desired him to “hold at his first master,” and dragged him to prison. Having fortified St Giles’s steeple to overawe the inhabitants, the soldiers baptized one of the cannons by the name of Knox, which they were so fond of firing, that it burst, killed two of the party, and wounded others.[241] They circulated the most ridiculous tales respecting his conduct at St Andrews. John Law, the letter‑carrier of that city, being in the castle of Edinburgh, “the ladie Home and utheris wald neidis thraip in his face, that” John Knox “was banist the said toune, becaus that in the yarde he had reasit sum sanctis, amongis whome thair came up the devill with hornis, which when his servant Richart sawe, [he] ran woode, and so died.”[242]

Although he was now free from personal danger, Knox did not find St Andrews that peaceful retreat which he had expected. The friends of Kircaldy, and of Sir James Balfour,[243] resided in the neighbourhood, {192} and the Hamiltons had their relations and partisans both in the university and among the ministry. These were thorns in the Reformer’s side, and made his situation very uneasy, as long as he resided among them. Having left Edinburgh, because he could not be permitted to disburden his conscience, by testifying against the designs of persons whom he regarded as conspirators against the legal government of the country, and favourers of a faction who intended nothing less than the overthrow of the reformed religion, it was not to be expected that he would preserve silence on this subject at St Andrews. Accordingly, in the discourses which he preached on the eleventh chapter of Daniel’s prophecy, he frequently took occasion to advert to recent transactions, and to inveigh against the murder of the late king, and of the regent. This was very grating to the ears of the opposite faction, particularly to Robert and Archibald Hamilton, the former one of the ministers of the city, and the latter a professor in one of the colleges. Irritated by the censures which Knox pronounced against his kinsmen, Robert Hamilton attempted to injure his reputation, by circulating in private that it did not become him to exclaim so loudly against murderers; for he had seen his subscription, along with that of the earl of Murray, to a bond for assassinating Darnley at Perth. When this came to the Reformer’s ears, he immediately wrote a letter to Hamilton, desiring him to say, whether he was the author of the slanderous report. Not receiving a satisfactory answer, he communicated {193} the matter to Douglas, rector of the university, and Rutherford, provost of St Salvator’s college; requesting them to converse with their colleague on the subject, and to inform him, that if he did not give satisfaction for the slander which he had propagated, a complaint would be lodged against him before the church. Upon this he came to Knox’s room, and denied that he had ever given any ground for such a scandalous surmise.[244]

Archibald Hamilton being complained of for withdrawing from Knox’s sermons, and for accusing him of intolerable railing, endeavoured to bring the matter under the cognizance of the masters of the university, {194} among whom he possessed considerable influence.[245] Knox did not scruple to give an account of his conduct before the professors for their satisfaction; but he judged it necessary to enter a protest, that his appearance before them should not invalidate the liberty of the pulpit, nor the authority of the regular church‑courts, to which, and not to any university, the judgment of religious doctrine belonged.[246] This incident accounts for the zeal with which he expresses himself on this subject, in one of his letters to the General Assembly; in which he exhorts them, above all things, to preserve the church from the bondage of the universities, and not to exempt them from ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or allow them to become judges of the doctrine taught from the pulpit.[247]

The military operations during the civil war were chiefly distinguished by two enterprises, which claim {195} our notice from the influence which they had upon the affairs of the church. The one was the taking of Dunbarton castle, which was surprised, on the 2d of April, 1571, by a small party of the regent’s forces, led by captain Crawford of Jordanhill. Archbishop Hamilton having fallen into the hands of the captors, was soon after condemned, and ended his life on the gibbet. The execution of prisoners, although chargeable with crimes which merit death, is ordinarily avoided in civil contests, because it produces reprisals from the opposite party; but in every other respect the fate of Hamilton is not a subject of regret or of censure. Of all the queen’s adherents, his motives for supporting her cause appear to have been the most unworthy; and his talents and rank in the church ought not to be pleaded in extenuation of the vices by which his private character was stained, or the crimes of which he had been guilty.[248] The death {196} of Hamilton gave occasion to a change in the ecclesiastical government, of which I shall speak immediately.

An enterprise equally bold with Crawford’s, but less successful, was planned by Kircaldy. While the regent Lennox was holding a parliament at Stirling, which was numerously attended, a party of soldiers suddenly entered the town early on the morning of September 3, 1571, seized the regent and the nobility who were along with him, and carried them away prisoners. The alarm having been given, the earl of Mar sallied from the castle, and with the assistance of the townsmen, dispersed the assailants, and rescued the noblemen.[249] But this was not accomplished without the loss of the regent, who was slain by the orders of lord Claud Hamilton, in revenge for the death of the archbishop of St Andrews. Lennox was succeeded in the regency by the earl of Mar, a nobleman of great moderation, who, during the short time that he held that office, exerted himself to restore peace to the kingdom, and brought the negotiations for this purpose very near to a successful termination.

{197} During these transactions the courtiers were devising a scheme for securing to themselves the principal part of the ecclesiastical revenues, which led to an alteration of the polity of the church. We have repeatedly had occasion to notice the aversion of the nobility to the Book of Discipline, and the principal source from which this aversion sprung. While the earl of Murray administered the government, he prevented any new encroachments upon the rights of the church; but the succeeding regents were either less friendly to them, or less able to check the avarice of the more powerful nobles. Several of the richest benefices having become vacant by the death or by the forfeiture of the popish incumbents who had been permitted to retain them, it was necessary to determine in what manner they should be disposed of. The church had uniformly required that their revenues should be divided, and applied to the support of the religious and literary establishments; but with this demand the courtiers were as much indisposed to comply as ever. At the same time, the secularization of them was deemed too bold a step; nor could laymen, with any shadow of consistency, or by a valid title, hold benefices which the law declared to be ecclesiastical. The expedient resolved on was, that the bishoprics and other rich livings should be presented to certain ministers, who, previous to their admission, should make over the principal part of the revenues to such noblemen as had obtained the patronage of them from the court. This plan, which was concerted under the regency of Lennox, was {198} carried into execution during that of Mar, chiefly by the influence of the earl of Morton.