of~pr^ BR 385 .L67 1860 Lorimer, Peter, 1812-1879 The Scottish Reformation ■THE * DEC 8 1910 : SCOTTISH REFORMATION: ^ HISTORICAL SKETCH, BY PETER LORIMER, D. D. PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE, LONDON ', Author of i( Patrick Hamilton.' 1 '' WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS OF SCOTTISH REFORMATION LOCALITIES, BY BIRKET FOSTER. LONDON & GLASGOW: RICHARD GRIFFIN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. i860. London .• Printed by Richard Clay, Bread Street Hill. PREFACE. ^x& This Illustrated Book is offered as a contribution to the celebration of the Tricentenary of the Scottish Reformation, which falls in the present year. The Author congratulates himself on having been able to secure the co-operation of his gifted friend, Mr. Birket Foster, and it is hoped that the many charming products of his pencil which the volume contains, may not only prove highly acceptable to Scottish readers, but may also induce many of the artist's English countrymen, with whom he is a great favourite, to peruse with attention a portion of Scottish history which in many of its parts, as well as in its general tendency and effects, had an important English as well as Scottish interest. The reader will not expect in an outline the fulness of detail which is proper to an extended history. But the author has aimed to make this outline as comprehensive as possible ; and the work, though confined to moderate limits, will be found to contain a good many new facts and features. Several blanks in our common histories have been filled up ; literary iv Preface. history is interwoven with the narrative of events; and par- ticular attention has been given to the numerous Protestant exiles who were early driven out of Scotland, and settled in England, Germany, and Denmark. Many of these exiles were men of learning and ability; they were living links of connexion between the Scottish Reformation and the other Protestant churches of Europe; and the important services by which they repaid the hospitality they received, bring out to view the influence which the Reformers of Scot- land exerted upon the Reformation of other lands. Among the new facts contained in the work the author may be allowed to direct particular attention to the recti- fication which he has been able to give of the common account of George Wishart's recantation at Bristol in 1539 ; from which it appears that, instead of ignominiously recanting, on that occasion, an essential doctrine of Protestant truth, it was no truth at all which the Reformer recanted, but a serious error into which he had fallen while still groping his way out of Popish darkness into the light of the Gospel. Presbyterian College, London, May 26, i860. CONTENTS. *^g> PAGE Chapter I. — The Hamilton Period, a. d. 1525 — 1543. Section 1. Commencement of the Reformation 1 2. Patrick Hamilton. 1525 — 1528 6 3. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 1528 — 15 31 . . 18 4. Alexander Alesius, Alexander Seyton, and Henry Forrest. 1529 — 1532 29 5. Struggle for the use of the Vernacular Scriptures. 1532— 1534 • •" 37 6. Persecutions and Martyrdoms. 1534 — 1539 ... 45 7. Scottish Reformers in England. 1534 — J 54° • • 55 8. Sir David Lindsay, and the Satire of the Three Estates. 1539 — 1540 62 9. Sir John Borthwick and the Scottish Nobility and Gentry. 1540— 1541 72 10. Death of James V., and the First Reforming Par- liament. 1542 — 1543 80 Chapter II. — The Wishart Period, a. d. 1543 — 1554. Section 1. Life of George Wishart to 1543 90 2. Apostasy of the Regent, and Commencement of Wishart's Ministry. 1543 — 1544 101 3. Renewal of Persecution — Appeal to the Nation by Alexander Alesius. 1543 — 1544 109 4. Wishart's Preaching in Dundee and Ayrshire. 1544 —1545 122 5. Wishart's Last Labours. 1545 — 1546 133 vi Contents. PAGE Section 6. Wishart's Apprehension, Trial, and Martyrdom. 1546 *4 2 7. Assassination of Beaton, and siege of the Castle of St. Andrews. 1546 — 1547 155 8. English Invasion. Renewal of Persecution. The Reformation-Poets. 1547— 1554 l6 9 Chapter III.— The Knox Period, a. d. 1555— 1560. Section 1. Visit of Knox to Scotland. 1555— 1556 .... 181 2. The First Protestant "Band." 1556— 1558 . . . 190 3. First Petition of the Protestants to the Regent, and their Protestation before Parliament. 1558 . . 201 4. Popular Tumults. The Reformation in Arms. 1559. 213 5. Civil War. Treaty with England. Siege of Leith. 1559— x 56o .' 227 6. The Parliament of 1560 239 7. The Organization of the Reformed Church of Scot- land 252 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. DRAWN BY BIRKET FOSTER, AND ENGRAVED Y W. J. PALMER. PAGE icing's College, Aberdeen ! St. Andrews 6 Falkland Palace 18 Blackfriars. St. Andrews 29 Priory Church, St. Andrews 37 Monastery of Inch Colme 45 Cambuskenneth and Stirling 55 linlithgow Palace 62 Borthwick Castle 72 Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh 80 Chapel and Well of St. Palladius in Fordouti Glen 90 Blackness Castle 10 1 Nunnery of St. Clare, Dundee 109 Cowgate Port, Dundee 122 Haddington Church 133 Elphingston Tower 142 Castle of St. Andrews 155 Steeple Church, Dundee 169 Old Church and Glen at Dun- house 181 Old St. Giles, Edinburgh 190 Old Montrose 201 Old Church of Perth 213 Old Church of Leith 227 Old Holyrood House 239 John Knox's House, Edinburgh 252 1L|| > Old King's ' 'allege, Ab< rdt en. CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE HAMILTON PERIOD. A. D. 1525 1.543- Section i. — Commencement of the Reformation. The year 1525 marks the commencement of the Scottish Reformation. The writings of Luther and his followers had then begun to find their way into the country, and were exciting discussion among the educated part of the commu- nity, on the errors and abuses of the Church. The Bishops If 2 The Scottish Reformation. were already in a state of alarm, and procured the passing of an Act in the Parliament which met in Edinburgh, in July of that year, by which it was ordained "That no manner of persons, strangers, that happen to arrive with the ships within any part of this realm, shall bring with them any books or works of Luther or his disciples, or shall dispute or rehearse his heresies or opinions, unless it be to the con- fusion thereof, under the pain of escheating their ships and goods and putting of their persons in prison. And that this Act be published and proclaimed throughout this realm, at all ports and burghs of the same ; so that they may allege no ignorance thereof." The preamble of the Act boasted that the realm of Scotland and its lieges had "firmly persisted in the holy faith since the same was first received by them, and had never as yet admitted any opinions contrary to the Christian faith, but had ever been clean of all such filth and vice." But the bishops should have remembered that for ages the early Church of Scotland had carefully distinguished between the Christian faith, and what they termed the holy faith of Rome ; and that in the preceding century, the Lollards of Kyle, and Fife, and Perth, had loudly protested against the corruptions of primitive truth and order which had been introduced by the Church of the Popes. Could the Archbishop of Glasgow be ignorant that in days so recent as those of James IV., numerous descendants of the Lollards of Kyle had been arraigned for heresy before the tribunal of that See, and were only saved from the extreme censures of the Church by the interposition of the King % Were the Bishops not aware that Lollardism and Lutheranism were very much alike? At all events they were doomed to see the nation become very much ashamed of that immaculate faith of which they boasted in its name ; and sink deep in the mire of that heretical pravity of which they spoke with such arrogant contempt. Foremost among the Anti-Lutheran Bishops was old Gavin Dunbar, of Aberdeen; and foremost among the Lutheranizing Commencement of the Reformation. 3 communities of the kingdom, was his own ancient cathedral city. Not a month had elapsed from the passing of the above Act, when he obtained from the boy-king, James V. and his Council, a warrant to the Sheriffs of the city and county of Aberdeen, setting forth " that sundry strangers and others within that diocese were possessed of Luther's books, and favoured his errors and false opinions" — and charging them straitly to make immediate inquisition after such persons, and " to confiscate their goods to the King's use and profit." The Bishop thus signalized his diocese as the first in the kingdom where the Reformation struck its roots. A quarter ot a century before, his predecessor, Bishop Elphinston, had made Aberdeen the chief seat of classical learning in the country by founding King's College, and introducing into it the study of Roman literature under the Presidency of Hector Boyce, the fellow-student and correspondent of Erasmus. And already the young institution had begun to bear fruit. Admiration of Erasmus led the way at Aberdeen, as it did in all the universities of Europe, to admiration of Luther. Boyce felt keenly, and spoke strongly, of the need of Church-reform ; and it was no wonder that many of his scholars became professed Reformers. He could have little sympathy with the persecuting zeal of Elphinston's successor. No Lutheran preacher could have expressed himself more warmly regarding the corrupt and disordered state of the Scottish Church than he was doing at that very time, in his History of Scotland — a work which he published in the following year, 1526. "How different," says he, "is the state of matters at the present day, from what it was in the days of James I. — that Maecenas of Scottish letters ! No eloquence can paint it in sufficiently vivid colours, nor deplore it in terms of adequate force. Instead of the best and the most learned men being sought out to fill the highest offices of the Church, the most indolent and the most wicked of mankind have been allowed 1>\ degrees to get possession of them — seizing them with am- bitious hands, and preying voraciously upon a people who are X 4 The Scottish Reformation. half-devoured by their extortions. They leave nothing for men of merit to enjoy. Nay, with all their might they oppose the interests of learning, lest, if the nation should once begin to desire a better state of things, they should be compelled to abandon their vices, and to let the spoil which they have clutched escape out of their hands. These evils call for Reform. Let those whose duty it is to see them remedied look to it. A feeling of just indignation, and a becoming commiseration for the condition of my native church, have compelled me to call their attention to this duty." l It was no marvel that Luther found sympathising readers at Aberdeen, when such sentiments as these came from the Principal's chair of King's College. Nor did Aberdeen stand alone in this early zeal for a Refor- mation. The seaports of Montrose, Dundee, Perth, St. Andrews, and Leith, were all more or less infected with the same spirit. The Scottish traders and " skippers" were in truth the earliest pioneers of the Reformation. In their annual voyages to the ports of Flanders, the Netherlands, and Lower Germany, they found Lutheran books and ideas everywhere in circula- tion ; and they imported them with their merchandise into their own country. Nor was it only the exciting tracts of Wittem- berg which they found exposed to sale in those crowded marts ; William Tyndale had markets for his English Testa- ments in Antwerp, in Middleburg, and in Hamburg, where they were eagerly bought up by British traders, and secretly conveyed into England and Scotland. Halket, an agent em- ployed by Cardinal Wolsey to put a stop to the English importation of the dangerous book, informed his master, in a letter still extant, that many copies of it had been bought up by Scottish merchants, and were conveyed into Leith and Edinburgh, and most of all into St. Andrews. 2 Yes ! St. Andrews itself, the seat of the primacy — the ecclesiastical and literary capital of the kingdom — was 1 Scotcrum Uistoriae, Lib. xvi. fol. ccclv. - Annals of the English Bible, by Rev. Christopher Anderson, vol. ii. Commencement of the Reformation. 5 beginning to Lutheranize. How little did the primate, James Beaton, busy with political faction and intrigue, suspect such a danger ! And how little did the dissolute Prior of St. Andrews, Patrick Hepburn, busy with guilty intrigues of another kind, suspect it ! To all outward appearance, the ancient city of St. Andrew was in the very zenith of its glory. Never before had it been so magnificent in architecture, nor its streets so thronged with churchmen and academics. The College of St. Leonard's had just been added to the cluster of its schools. The Monastery of the Blackfriars had been recently rebuilt with great splendour ; and some architectural works at the Priory, designed and partially executed by John Hepburn the last prior, had been finished in a style of great magnificence by Patrick, his successor. The halls of the University were crowded with students, attracted by the fame of John Major — a doctor of the Sorbonne, and one of the chief scholastic professors of the age. The Archbishop's courts were filled with suitors, and his exchequer enriched, by the sale of privileges and dispensations, with an ever- flowing stream of gold. The Vatican of Scotland appeared to have reached its highest and palmiest estate. And yet the axe was even now laid to the root of the tree ; already the little cloud was seen in the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand, which was ere long to cover the whole firmament of the church with deadly storm. Luther and Tyndale were at the Primate's Castle-gate, and they were more than a match for all the power and policy of the Beatons, and the Hepburns, and the Dunbars of the Episcopate. The word of God was already in men's hands ; and the Spirit of God was begin- ning to move in men's hearts ; and these were soon to show themselves mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of error and superstition. The Reformation of the Church of Scotland had begun. St. Andrews. Section 2. PATRICK HAMILTON. A.D. 1525- -1528. All that was wanting now was the voice of the living Reformer. Luther's Tracts and Tyndale's Testaments could do much, but they could not do every thing. The evange- lical preacher, the godly confessor, the invincible Martyr of Christ's Holy Gospel must speak to the nation, before the nation's heart could be stirred to its depths. And already such a man stood ready to enter upon his work. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are Patrick Hamilton. 7 called to such service ; but one such had been chosen to be the First Preacher and Martyr of the Scottish Reformation. Patrick Hamilton was of noble birth and lineage ; his father, Sir Patrick, was an illegitimate son (afterwards legiti- mated) of the first Lord Hamilton who received in marriage the Princess Mary, daughter of king James the Second ; his mother was Catherine Stewart, daughter of Alexander, Duke of Albany, second son of the same king. One of his uncles, by the father's side, was James Hamilton, first Earl of Arran, one of the most powerful nobles of the Jdngdom, and closely allied to the royal family ; and he stood in a similar relation by the mother's side, to John, Duke of Albany, a prince of the blood, who was Regent of the kingdom during the minority of James V. Neither the date nor the place of his birth is accurately known ; but there is good ground to believe that he was born at Stonehouse, near Glasgow, in the year 1504. He enjoyed every advantage of early education which the country could afford. In his father, he had before his eye the brightest example in the kingdom of all knightly qualities ; and in his relatives, Gavyn Douglas, Provost of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles', Edinburgh, and Lord Sinclair of Newburgh, he had opportunities of conversing with two of the most learned and accomplished of Scottish scholars. As a younger son of the family he was early destined to the Church. In 1517, he was appointed Titular Abbot of Feme, a Praemonstratensian Abbey in Rosshire ; and probably in the same year, he left Scotland to prosecute his studies in the University of Paris. It had always been supposed that he was a student of the University of St. Andrews, but quite recently his name was discovered in a register of the Magistri Jurati of Paris, under the year 1520; and this discovery throws important light upon the way in which he arrived at the knowledge of evangelical truth. There were numerous disciples both of Erasmus and Luther in that great school, at the time of Hamilton's residence there. The flames of con- 8 The Scottish Reformation. troversy, enkindled by the new learning and the new theology, were raging in Paris during those very years ; and when Hamilton returned to Scotland in 1523, he was already a pronounced Erasmian, in regard not only to his love of ancient literature, but also to his conviction of the need of Ecclesiastical Reform. We are told by Alexander Alesius, that "he was a man of excellent learning, and was for banishing all sophistry from the schools, and recalling phi- losophy to its sources; i. e. to the original writings of Aristotle and Plato." The same author informs us that though Hamilton was an Abbot, he never assumed the monastic habit ; " such," he remarks, " was his hatred of monkish hypocrisy." Instead of going to reside with the monks of his own Abbey of Feme, he was incorporated, in 1523, as a Master of Arts with the University of St. Andrews, and took up his abode in that city. It required the study and reflection of several years to de- velop the young disciple of Erasmus into the decided adherent of Luther. Hamilton could not have yet openly declared for the Reformation, when he was admitted to Priest's Orders, probably in 1526 ; but the motives which induced him to take upon him priesthood, reveal the evangelical spirit which was secretly gathering strength in his heart. " It was," says John Frith, the English Martyr, " because he sought all means to testify the truth, even as Paul circumcised Timothy to win the weak Jews." He did not yet understand that the faithful ministry of God's word was utterly irreconcilable with the service of the Church of Rome. It was about the beginning of 1527, that rumours first reached the Archbishop of St. Andrews that Hamilton had openly espoused the cause of Luther ; and Beaton instantly took steps to bring him to a strict account. Such a preacher of heresy was formidable indeed. In a country where noble birth and powerful con- nexions had still more influence in society than in any other kingdom of Europe, a preacher of Lutheranism, with royal blood in his veins, and all the power of the Hamiltons at his Patrick Hamilton. g back, was a more dangerous enemy of the Church than Martin Luther himself, in person, would have been. The moment was critical ; no time must be lost. Beaton made immediate inqui- sition into the truth of the information which had reached him, and having found the young preacher " infamed with heresy, disputing, holding, and maintaining divers heresies of Martin Luther and his followers, repugnant to the faith," he summoned him to appear before his tribunal. Patrick Hamilton had prepared himself to preach the truth, but he did not yet feel himself able to die for it. He had already the faith of an Evangelist, but not quite yet the faith of a Martyr. Early in 1527 he withdrew from Scotland, and repaired to the evan- gelical schools of Germany ; two friends and an attendant accompanied him. He was for a short time at Wittemberg, but unfortunately no particulars have been preserved of his intercourse with Luther and Melancthon. From Wittemberg he proceeded to Marburg, and was present at the inauguration of the new university of Philip the landgrave. His name still stands enrolled on the earliest page of the academic album. Here he attached himself with peculiar love to Francis Lambert, who presided over the Theological Faculty, and under whose teaching his progress in evangelical divinity was signally rapid. The master became as much attached to his disciple, as the disciple was to the master. Lambert has left on record a highly valuable testimony to his talents and character. " His learning," he says, " was of no common kind for his years, and his judgment in divine truth was eminently clear and solid ; his object in visiting the uni- versity was to confirm himself more abundantly in the truth, and I can truly say that I have seldom met with any one who conversed on the word of God with greater spirituality and earnestness of feeling ; he was often in conversation with me upon those subjects." " He was the first man, after the erec- tion of the university, who put forth a series of theses to be publicly defended ; these theses were conceived in the most evangelical spirit, and were maintained by him with the c io The Scottish Reformation. greatest learning ; it was by my advice that he published them." The theses here referred to were afterwards translated into English by John Frith, and in that form have been preserved both by Fox, the English martyrologist, and by John Knox, the historian of the Scottish Reformation, under the name of Patrick's Places. They form an interesting and important monument of the earliest teaching of the Scottish reformers. Their doctrine is purely evangelical, without exhibiting the peculiarities of either the Lutheran or the Helvetic con- fession. At the end of a six months' residence in evangelical Germany, Hamilton felt that the time had arrived when the duty he owed to God and his country obliged him to return home. His two friends appear to have shrunk from the peril of accompanying him, but no prospect of danger could now turn him aside from his high purpose of becoming an evange- list to his native land. What a change ! Six months ago he was a fugitive, escaping from his country, because he felt him- self unequal to the mission of a Gospel martyr. But now he is in haste to face the perils which he was then in haste to shun. How surprising ! And yet the explanation is easy. These six months had been spent among the most illustrious teachers and heroes of the Reformed faith. His teachers had been all evangelical doctors of the highest eminence, and they were all evangelical heroes, as well as doctors. It was impossible for a soul like his to be so long in communion with souls like theirs, without catching their spirit, and being overmastered by their inspiration. On his arrival in Scotland, Hamilton repaired to the family mansion of Kincavel, near Linlithgow, and it was there that he found his first congregation. His elder brother, Sir James, was now in possession of the family estates and honours ; his mother still survived, and he had a sister named Katherine, a lady of spirit and talent. These near relatives and the servants of the family made up his first audience, and his labours among them were blessed with signal success. Both his brother and Patrick Hamilton. 1 1 sister welcomed the truth, and were honoured in after years to suffer much for its sake. But he did not confine himself to the circle of Kincavel ; he began to preach the long-lost Gospel in all the country round. " The bright beams of the true light," says Knox, " which by God's grace were planted in his heart, began most abundantly to burst forth, as well in public as in secret." — " Wheresoever he came/' says another historian, " he spared not to lay open the corruptions of the Roman Church, and to show the errors crept into the Christian religion ; whereunto many gave ear, and a great following he had, both for his learning and courteous demeanour to all sorts of people." What he preached with so much success we may gather from his " Places." In that little tract we come into communion with the very soul and spirit of his brief but fruitful ministry. He preached faith in Jesus Christ to his countrymen, as the living root of hope and charity. He aimed at a reformation of the national Church which began at the root, not at the branches. It was by making the root of his country's religion and life good, that he expected to make the tree good and its fruit good. And his hope did not deceive him. The preacher himself, indeed, was soon silenced and cut off, but his doctrine lived after him, and wrought with a leaven-like virtue in the nation's heart, till it leavened the whole lump. Soon after his return from Germany, Hamilton, though a priest and an abbot, took the decisive step of entering into matrimony. His bride was a young lady of noble rank, whose name, unfortunately, has not been preserved. The motive which Alesius assigns for this step, was the Reformer's hatred of the hypocrisy of the Roman Church. He seems to have felt on the occasion very much as Luther did in similar circumstances. He wished to show by deed, as well as by word, how entirely he had cast off the usurped and oppressive authority of the Roman See. But both his married life and his career as a preacher were destined to be very brief. Early in 1528 the Archbishop of 12 The Scottish Reformation. St. Andrews resumed the proceedings against him which had been interrupted by his flight to Germany a year before. Affecting a tone of candour and moderation, Beaton sent him a message, desiring a conference with him at St. Andrews, on such points of the Church's condition and administration as might seem to stand in need of reform. Hamilton was not deceived by this dissimulation ; he perceived clearly the policy of his enemies, and foresaw and foretold the speedy issue of their proceedings. Like St. Paul, he knew well that bonds and imprisonment awaited him in the city of the chief priests and Pharisees ; but he felt bound in the spirit to go thither notwith- standing, not counting his life dear unto him, that he might finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he had received to testify the Gospel of the grace of God. Having arrived at St. Andrews about the middle of January, the pretended conference took place, and was continued during several days. The Archbishop and his coadjutors seemed to approve of the Reformer's views on many points, and when the conference was ended, he was allowed to move freely through the city and university, and to declare his convictions without hindrance both in public and private. By this dissembling and procrastinating policy his enemies gained several important ends. They gained time for their intrigues with the political chiefs of the country, to secure their tacit acquiescence in the tragical issue which they were all the while preparing; and they gave Hamilton opportunity and inducement to declare his opinions without reserve, in a city which was crowded with their own abettors ; where every new expression of his enmity to the Church would be instantly noted down, and converted into a weapon to destroy him. But the cause of truth was also materially served by this delay. The zealous Reformer turned this unexpected oppor- tunity to the best account. He taught and disputed openly in the university on all the points on which he conceived a reformation to be necessary in the Church's doctrines, and in her administration of the sacraments and other rites ; and he Patrick Hamilton. 13 continued to do so for nearly a whole month. That busy month was a precious seed-time. At St. Andrews he was at ecclesiastical head-quarters, and was brought into communi- cation with a larger variety of influential classes of men than he could have met with in any other city of the kingdom. Regents and students, doctors and lawyers, deans and canons, seculars and regulars, Augustinians, Dominicans and Franciscans, all alike were reached by his voice, and felt the power of his teaching. At length the moment arrived when Beaton and his advisers felt that it was safe to throw off the mask. A summons was issued to Hamilton requiring him to appear before the Primate on a certain day, to answer to the charge of holding and teaching divers heretical opinions. His friends saw what was imminent, and entreated him while yet at liberty to save his life by flight. But he firmly declined to escape from St. Andrews. " He had come thither/' he said, " to confirm the minds of the godly by his death as a martyr to the truth ; and to turn his back now would be to lay a stumbling-block in their path, and to cause some of them to fall." When he appeared before the Archbishop, he was interrogated upon thirteen articles of heresy which were laid to his charge. He answered that several of these articles were " disputable points, but such as he could not condemn unless he saw better reasons than yet he had heard ; but that the first seven were undoubtedly true, to which he was prepared to set his hand." These seven were the following : — That the corruption of sin remains in children after their baptism. That no man, by the power of his free will, can do any good. That no man is without sin so long as he liveth. That every true Christian may know himself to be in the state of grace. That a man is not justified by works, but by faith only. That good works make not a good man, but that a good 14 The Scottish Reformation. man doeth good works, and that an ill man doeth ill works ; yet the same ill works truly repented make not an ill man. That faith, hope, and charity, are so linked together, that he who hath one of them, hath all, and he that lacketh one, lacketh all. The whole of the articles were then remitted to the judg- ment of a council of theologians, and Hamilton, in the mean- while, was allowed to remain at liberty. Within a few days more, everything was ready for the last acts of the tragedy. The Reformer was apprehended, and lodged in the Castle of St. Andrews, and on the last day of February he was brought before a tribunal, consisting of prelates, abbots, priors, and doctors, which sat in the metropolitan cathedral. The theologians presented to the tribunal their censure of the articles, "judging them all heretical, and contrary to the faith of the Church." Then Friar Campbell stood forward and read over the articles with a loud voice, and charged them, one by one, upon the Reformer. " I was myself," says Alesius, " an eye-witness of the tragedy, and heard him answering for his life to the charges of heresy which were laid against him : and he was so far from disowning them, that he defended and established them by clear testimonies of Scripture, and refuted the reasonings of his accuser." At length Campbell was silenced, and turned to the tribunal for fresh instructions. "Desist from reasoning," cried the bishops ; " add new accusations — call him heretic to his face." " Heretic ! " exclaimed the Dominican, turning again towards the pulpit where Hamilton stood. "Nay, brother," replied Hamilton mildly, "you do not think me heretic in your heart ; in your conscience you know that I am no heretic." The appeal must have gone to the friar's heart, for he had professed to Hamilton, in several private interviews, that on many points he agreed with him. But Campbell had basely consented to be an actor, and he must needs go on with his part. " Heretic ! " he exclaimed Patrick Hamilton. , - again, " thou saidst it was lawful to all men to read the Word of God, and especially the New Testament." "I wot not," replied Hamilton, " if I said so, but I say now, it is reason and lawful to all men to read the Word of God, and that they are able to understand the same ; and in particular, the latter will and testament of Jesus Christ, whereby they may acknow- ledge their sins, and repent of the same, and amend their lives by faith and repentance, and come to the mercy of God by Jesus Christ." " Heretic ! thou sayest it is but lost labour to pray to or call upon saints, and in particular on the blessed Virgin Mary, as mediators to God for us." " I say with Paul, There is no mediator betwixt God and man, but Christ Jesus his Son, and whatsoever they be who call or pray to any saint departed, they spoil Christ Jesus of his office." " Heretic ! thou sayest it is all in vain to sing soul-masses, psalms and dirigies for the relaxation of souls departed, who are continued in the pains of purgatory." " Brother, I have never read in the Scripture of God of such a place as purgatory, nor yet believe I that there is anything that may purge the souls of men but the blood of Christ Jesus, which ransom standeth in no earthly thing, nor in soul-mass, nor dirigie, nor in gold, nor silver, but only by repentance of sins, and faith in the blood of Jesus Christ." Such was Patrick Hamilton's noble confession in the face of that solemn tribunal. He spoke out the whole truth of God as he knew it, and he spoke it in love, calling even his opprobrious and perfidious accuser, Brother. Sentence of condemnation was pronounced, and execution was appointed to take place that very day, the bishops having reason to fear that an attempt would be made by armed men to rescue their prisoner by force. The usual formalities of degradation from the priesthood were dispensed with, and in an hour or two after Hamilton had heard his doom in the cathedral, executioners were preparing the stake at which he was to die, in front of the gate of St. Salvator's College. At noon, when the martyr came in sight of the fatal spot, 1 6 The Scottish Reformation. he uncovered his head, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, addressed himself in prayer to Him who alone could give him a martyr's strength and victory. On reaching the stake, he handed to one of his friends a copy of the New Testament which had long been his companion, and taking off his cap and gown, and other upper garments, he gave them to his servant, saying, "These will not profit in the fire, they will profit thee. After this, of me thou canst receive no com- modity, except the example of my death, which I pray thee bear in mind. For, albeit it be bitter to the flesh, and fearful before man, yet is it the entrance to eternal life, which none shall possess that denies Christ Jesus before this wicked generation." The officials of the Archbishop made a last attempt to overcome his constancy. They offered him his life if he would recant the confession which he had made in the cathedral. "As to my confession," he replied, " I will not deny it for the awe of your fire, for my confession and belief is in Christ Jesus. And as to the sentence pronounced against me this day, I here, in presence of you all, appeal contrary the said sentence and judgment, and take me to the mercy of God." The executioners then stepped forward to do their office. Fire was laid to the pile, and exploded some powder which was placed among the faggots, but though thrice kindled, the flames took no steady hold of the pile. Dry wood and more powder had to be brought from the castle. The sufferings of the martyr were thus painfully protracted. Alesius, who was a witness of the whole scene, tells us that the execution lasted for nearly six hours ; and during all that time, he assures us, the martyr never gave one sign of impatience or anger. When surrounded and devoured by fierce flames, he remembered, in his torment, his widowed mother, and commended her to the care of his friends with his dying breath. His last audible words were, " How long, Lord, shall darkness overwhelm this kingdom ? How long wilt thou suffer this tyranny of men Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Pa/rick Hamilton. 17 "Thus tragically, but gloriously, died on the 29th day of February, 1528, Patrick Hamilton, a noble martyr in a noble cause. At a time when the power of the Roman Church in Scotland was yet entire and overwhelming, it was not per- mitted him to serve the cause of the recovered Gospel by the labours of a long life, but he joyfully embraced the honour of serving it by the heroic constancy and devotion of his death. Such a martyrdom was precisely what Scotland needed to stir its heart. Such a death had more awakening power in it than the labours of a long life. If his spoken words had been few, they had, at least, been pithy and pregnant, " the words of the wise, which are as goads and as nails in a sure place," and his fiery martyrdom clenched and riveted them in the nation's heart for ever. " At Marburg the grief of the Reformers was only equalled by their admiration. ' He came to your university,' exclaimed Lambert, addressing the Landgrave, not many months after, ' out of Scotland, that remote corner of the world, and he returned to his country again to become its first, and now illustrious apostle. He was all on fire with zeal to confess the name of Christ, and he has offered himself to God as a holy living sacrifice. He brought into the Church of God not only all the splendour of his station and gifts, but his life itself. Such is the flower of surpassing sweetness, yea, the ripe fruit, which your university has produced in its very commencement. You have not been disappointed of your wishes. You formed this school with the desire that from it might go forth intrepid confessors of Christ, and steadfast assertors of his truth. See ! you have one such already, an example in many ways illus- trious. Others, if the Lord will, will follow soon.' ' 1 Vide "Patrick Hamilton, the first Preacher and Martyr of the Scottish Reformation. An Historical Biography, collected from original sources with an Appendix of Original Papers." Edinburgh. Constable & Go. 1857. By the Author. D J _ ■ -t Falkland Palace. Section 3. — Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 1528 — 31. The preacher's pulpit and the martyr's stake are powerful weapons in the battle of God and truth, and they are the chief arms with which that battle has always been fought and won. But they are not its only artillery. The poet and the painter, the scholar and the dramatist, all played a distinguished part in the great struggle of the Reformation, and were thankfully wel- comed to the field by the preachers and theologians. Luther found most effective auxiliaries in the satires and dramas of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount 19 Ulrich von Hutten and Hans Sachs, and in the paintings and prints of Albert Durer and the two Cranachs; and the Scottish Reformation was powerfully aided by a succession of native poets and dramatists, of whom it produced a larger number, in proportion to the population of the country, than any of the other reformed kingdoms of Europe. Of all these vernacular Reformation poets, the first in time and in influence was Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. Of aristocratic birth and station, the laurelled poet of a court, an ardent patriot, and an enthusiastic sympathizer with the great intellectual and ecclesiastical movement of the age, he may deserve, in these respects, the name of the Ulrich von Hutten of the Scottish Reformation. But he is also its Hans Sachs, for all his poetry was written in the homely vernacular of the people, and was distinguished for the same popular qualities of broad common sense, plainspoken honesty, and hearty home- spun humour, which made the shoemaker-poet of Nuremberg the idol of the multitude. Lindsay was born at the Mount, a small estate belonging to his family near Cupar, in Fife, about the year 1495. In 1508 he entered the university of St. Andrews, along with David Beaton, afterwards the celebrated cardinal ; and immediately after the birth of James V. in 1512, he was appointed Gentle- man Usher to the infant prince. In this office he continued till 1524, when, by the intrigues of the Queen-mother and the Douglases, her son was " erected " to the nominal government of the kingdom at the absurdly early age of twelve years, and when Lindsay was unjustly ejected from his post, to make way for some one who was more in favour with the ruling faction. This long residence at the court was of the greatest importance in qualifying the poet for his after career. It gave him an in- timate knowledge of men and things ; it allowed him to take a very near view of the leading minds who ruled public affairs in Church and State ; and it secured for him a place in the affections of the young king, to whose amusement and instruc- tion he had devoted the earliest efforts of his genius, from 20 The Scottish Reformation. which he could never afterwards be dislodged, and which proved a powerful protection to him from the formidable enemies whom he provoked by his reforming zeal, and goaded to resentment by his pungent satire. Obliged to wait patiently for better times in the solitude of his "neuk" at the Mount, Lindsay employed several years of study and reflection in furnishing himself for the duties of patriotism and religion which lay before him. He was a great reader, not only of poetry and fiction, but of history, geography, astronomy, and all the other branches of general knowledge which were cultivated in that age ; and by these studies he qualified himself to earn the fame of being one of the most learned poets of -his time. His attention was also drawn during these years to the doctrines of Luther. The Mount was only a few miles from St. Andrews, where Patrick Hamilton taught and died, and in the very same year in which the bishops succeeded in stifling the testimony of the first reformer, Lindsay came forth with his first poetical invective against the corruptions of the Church. It was in 1528 that Lindsay wrote and presented to the young king, James V., the earliest of his printed poems, " The Dreme." A few months after Hamilton's martyrdom, the king, who till now had been a mere puppet in the hands of the Douglases, managed by his own unassisted address to effect his escape from the toils of his keepers. In the dead of night he fled on horseback from Falkland to Stirling Castle, and sum- moning his nobles to attend him with all possible haste, and orbidding by proclamation the Douglases to approach Stirling upon pain of treason, he inaugurated a complete revolution in the administration of the kingdom. This unexpected event had the happiest effect upon Lindsay. It rubbed off at once "the rust of his ingyne ;" and before the year was out, he pre- sented to the king a poem of congratulation and advice, which does the highest honour to his genius and patriotism. It opens with " The Epistle to the King's Grace," some interesting lines of which we quote, to show with what tenderness and skill the Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 2 1 poet could touch the springs of his young sovereign's early at- tachment to him, and what advantages that attachment gave him for gaining the royal ear to the earnest words which it was now his wish and purpose to speak. " Right potent prince, of high imperial blood, Unto thy Grace, I traist it be weill knawn, My service done unto thy Celsitude, Whilk need-is nocht at length for to be schawn. " When thou was young I bore thee in mine arm Full tenderly, till thou begouth 1 to gang, And in thy bed oft happit thee full warm. With lute in hand, syne, softly to thee sang. Sometime, in dancing feirelie 2 I flang, And sometime playing farces on the flure, And sometime on mine office taking cure. 3 " And sometime, like ane fiend transfigurate, And sometime like the grisley ghaist of Guy, In divers forms ofttimes disfigurate ; And sometimes disaguised full pleasandly ; So sen thy birth I have continually Been occupied, and aye to thy pleasoiir, And sometime Sewar, Cuppar and Carvour, " Thy purse-maister and secret thesaurare, Thy usher, aye sen thy nativity, And of thy chalmer chief Cubiculare ; Whilk to this hour has keipit my lawtie, 4 Loving 5 be to the blessed Trinitie, That sic ane wretched worm has made so able, To sic ane Prince to be so agreeable." " The Dreme, or Marvellous Vision/' contains, among many other things, a powerful description of hell, to which the poet imagines himself conducted by Dame Remembrance, a lady " of benign countenance " and " perfect portraiture," who 1 Began. 2 Vigorously. 3 Care. 4 Loyalty or fidelity. 6 Praise. 22 The Scottish Reformation. appears to him as he lies asleep in a sea-side cave ; and it is in this part of the piece that Lindsay gives the earliest revelation of his opinions respecting the state of the Church. " Get up," quoth the Dame Remembrance : — " and gang anon with me, So were we baith, in twinkling of ane ee " Down through the earth, in middis of the centre Or ever I wist into the lowest hell ; And to that careful cove when we did enter, Yowting l and yowling we heard, with mony yell ; In flame of fire right furious and fell Was crying mony carefull 2 cre-ature ; Blaspheming God and warying 3 nature." And whom of all the world did the poet see plunged in that dismal Pandemonium ? " There saw we divers popes and emperors, Without recover mony careful kings ; There saw we mony wrangous conquerors ; The men of kirk lay bunden into bings ; 4 There saw we mony careful cardinals, And archbishops in their pontificals. ' ' Proud and perverset prelates out of number, Priors, and abbots, and false flattering friers, To specify them all it were ane cumber, Regular canons, churl-monks and chartereres, Curious clerk-is and priest-is seculeres ; There was some part of ilk religion 5 In haly kirk that did abusion. " What a startling stroke of satire ! to represent churchmen of all ranks and orders as the chief population of hell. But the poet is more daring still. 1 Shouting. 2 Woeful. 3 Cursing. 4 Bound in heaps. 5 Religious order. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 23 ' ' Kitting that rout, I saw in caps of brass, Simon Magus and Bishop Caiaphas, The Bishop Annas, and the traitor Judas, And Mahomet, that prophet poisonable ; There Chora, Dathan, and Abiram was, And heretics we saw innumerable ; It was ane sight right wonder lamentable." To put Annas and Caiaphas among the bishops, and to make Judas, Simon Magus, and even Mahomet, the rulers of the churchmen's rout in Pandemonium, was an audacity of satire which had never been matched before in the Scottish tongue. The poet of course is not a little astonished and scandalized at the sight before him, so different from anything commonly imagined in the upper regions ; and he demands of Dame Remembrance the cause of the "punition of the prelates." Her reply is a graphic picture of the disorders of the Church : — " She said the cause of their unhappy chance Was covetyce, and lust, and ambition ; The whilk now gars x them want fruition Of God — and here eternally mon 2 dwell Into this painful, poisoned pit of hell. " Als, they did nocht instruct the ignorant, Provoking them to penitence by preaching, But servit warldly princes, insolent, And were promoved by their feigned fleechmg,^ Nocht for their science, wisdom, nor their teiching, By simony was their promotion Mair for deneirs, 4 nor for devotion. " Ane other cause of the punition Of thir unhappy prelates, imprudent ; They made nocht equal distribution Of haly kirk-is patrimony and rent, But temporally 5 they have it all misspent, Which should have been triparted into three, First to uphauld the kirk in honesty ; 1 Compels. 2 Must. Flattery. Money. 5 On worldly objects. 24 The Scottish Reformation. ' ' The second part to sustain their estates, 1 The third part to be given to the puris. But they disponed that geir all other gaits, 2 On cards and dice, on harlotry and huris — Thir catives took na compt of their own curis ; Their kirk-is revin, their ladies cleanly cled, , And richly rulit, baith at buird and bed. " Their bastard bairn-is proudly they provided, The kirk geir largely they did on them spend ; In their defaults, their subdits 3 were misguided, 4 And compted nocht their God for till offend ; Whilk gart them want grace at their latter end. " That Lindsay meant all this to apply to the state of the national Church he was careful to indicate to the King, in a subsequent part of the piece, where he introduces " John the Commonweill of Scotland," making a bitter complaint of the disorder and corruption into which all ranks and orders of the realm had fallen, during the long minority of the monarch. In the " hieland," in the " lowland," on the borders, all was in confusion and misery, and nowhere could John find any class or condition of men who would listen to his complaints. As for the clergy, he had as little hope from them, as from any other quarter, — " For I have sought through all the spiritual state, Whilk took no compt for to hear me complain ; Their ofhciars — they held me at disdain. For symonie he rul-is all that rout, And covetice, that carle, gart bar me out. Pride has chased far from them humility ; Devotioun is fled unto the freirs ; Sensual plesoiir has banished chastity ; Lords of religion go like seculeres, Taking mair compt in telling their deneirs, Nor they do of their constitution ; Thus are they blinded by ambitioun." 1 Office and position. 2 Ways. 3 Those placed under their charge. Misused or neglected. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 25 Court-poets have sometimes had no higher aims in using the language of Church Reformers than to amuse their princes at the expense of the clergy, to gratify the resentment or the jealousy of their royal patrons, and to carry off the honours of satirical genius. But Lindsay had no such low aims when he knelt before James to present to him " The Dreme." He was thoroughly in earnest for religious reform when he adopted this ingenious expedient for bringing under the young king's notice the disorders of the Church. Lindsay rejoiced in the freedom from the yoke of a selfish faction which his beloved prince had now achieved for himself; and he was sincerely anxious to see the king's government carried on with wisdom and vigour both in its civil and its ecclesiastical administration. The design of the whole poem was to tender to the young monarch at the outset of his management of affairs the best counsel and advice. The " Exhortation to the King's Grace," with which it ends, is a model of enlightened, affectionate, and free-spoken loyalty. Lindsay's next piece, "The Complaint," was presented to the king at the close of 1529. It is in part a complaint for himself, that as yet his early services at court had been left without any substantial reward ; but the chief stress of the poem is laid upon the as yet uncorrected abuses of the Church. Since his accession to real power the king had redressed many evils in the state ; but as yet he had done nothing for the better ordering of the Clergy. Border-robbers and highland " caterans ' had been brought to reason or to the gallows, but the bishops, and abbots, and priests were still unreformed. Of this the poet complains in the following homely but vigorous lines, in which at the same time he gives the king a sketch of the needed reforms : — " So is there nought, I understand, Without gude order in this land, Except the spirituality ; Praying thy Grace thereto have ee. E 26 The Scottish Reformation. Cause them male ministratioun, Conform to their vocatioun ; To preach with tmfeinyet intents, And truly use the sacraments, After Christ's institutions. Leaving their vain traditions, Whilk does the silly sheep illude, Whom for, Christ Jesus shed his blood ; As superstitious pilgrimages, Praying to graven images, Express against the Lord's command ; I do thy Grace to understand, Gif thou to men-is laws assent Against the Lord's commandement, As Jeroboam and mony mo, Princes of Israel also, Assentars to idolatrie, Whilk punished were right piteously, And from their realms were rooted out, So sail thou be, withouten doubt." The poet's complaint personal, could be sooner and more easily redressed than his complaint ecclesiastical. The very next year the king appointed him to the honourable and remunerative office of Lord Lion King-at-arms, or head of the College of Scottish Heralds, a position singularly suitable to Lindsay's tastes, and favourable in a high degree both to the development of his genius, and the diffusion of his influence. Soon after his appointment he produced one of the most ingenious and effective of all his works, " The Complaint of the Papingo," or more fully, " The Testament and Com- plaint of our Sovereign Lord's Papingo, which lies sore wounded, and may nocht die till every man have heard what she says ; wherefore, gentle readers, haste you, that she were out of pain." The papingo is the king's popinjay, or parrot, and a great favourite with the young prince. But royal favourites are fond of climbing, and ambition was the death of poor poll. Nothing would content her, one beautiful summer morning, when the poet took her upon his wrist into Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 27 the palace garden, but she must mount to the very top of a lofty tree : — " But Boreas blew a blast or ever she wist, Which brak the branch, and blew her suddenly Doun to the ground with many woeful cry. Upon a stump she lichted, on her breast, The blude rushed out, and she cried for a priest." The papingo, however, has a great deal to say before she dies. Her gifts of wisdom and speech are much above those of an ordinary parrot, and she dictates first an " Epistle to our Sovereign Lord King James the Fifth," which is full of excel- lent counsel, every way fit for the royal ear. Then a second and much larger epistle to " her brethren of court," in which she shows herself much better able to give advice on the dangers of ambition, than she had been disposed to take such advice herself. Last of all, she gathers up all her remaining strength for a lengthened " communing with her holy executors," to wit, the pye, the raven, and the gled, or kite, who by this time have arrived to receive her dying confession and commands. The pye is a canon regular of St. Austin ; the raven is a black monk, benedictine or dominican ; and the gled, most rapacious of all, is a friar of the order of St. Francis ; and this third part of the poem paints the hypocrisy of the religious orders, their cunning and their sordid greed, to the very life. One after another, the dying papingo's holy execu- tors urge her to make a disposition of her "guids and gear" in favour of their respective orders, and for a time she keeps them all at bay, taxing them all roundly with many shameful vices and corruptions, and lecturing them, with no ordinary powers of satire and sarcasm, upon their flagrant degeneracy from the purity of the holy men who were the founders of their several " rules." In truth, she is as learned a papingo as she is fluent and sarcastic ; she knows Church history well, declaims upon the radical error of the Emperor Constantine and Pope Sylvester in divorcing the Church from Poverty, her first spouse, and marrying her to Property, to which alliance 28 The Scottish Reformation. she traces up, with as much pertinacity as a modern "Voluntary," all the corruptions and disorders of the Church. At last, however, her fast ebbing strength obliges her to come to the point of making her will, though she tells the pye, the raven, and the gled, that she only consents to make them her executors for want of better and honester men. They beg her instructions, and solemnly assure her of their fidelity and honour. She makes her last testament accordingly. Then follows her "mortal passion;" but no sooner is the breath out of her body than they all fall upon her, and tear her limb from limb without pity or remorse. Her last will and testament is a piece of waste paper ; all their holy professions and vows of fidelity go for nothing. They quarrel violently over their booty ; the gled will not hear of even the king getting his legacy — the poor papingo's loyal heart ; and when the pye and the raven, dreading the pains of law, appeal against the gled's treason- able design to the Pope, the greedy gled takes all three, Pope, king, and law, unceremoniously into his own hand. " With that the gled the piece claucht in his cluke, 1 And fled his way, the lave 2 with all their might, To chase the gled, flew all out of my sight." Lindsay never wrote anything better than this piece. Its satire is perfect, and its poetical merit, in point of invention, ingenuity, and felicity of conception, is very high. It was the first work, apparently, which he wrote for the public eye, as well as for the eye of the king and court ; and not only Scotland but England appreciated its excellence. An edition of it was printed in London as early as 1538 ; and its circulation in the two kingdoms could not fail to strengthen greatly the hands of those who, with graver though not always more effective weapons, were fighting the same battle of truth, and liberty, and patriotism as our Poet-Reformer — now styled Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. 3 1 Caught in his claw. 2 The rest. 3 Vide The Poetical Works of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount. By George Chalmers. In three volumes. London, 1806. Blackfriars. St. Andrews. Section 4. Alexander Alesius, Alexander Seyton, and Henry Forrest. 1529— 1532. While the poet of the Mount was thus powerfully serving the cause of truth and reform by successive efforts of his satiric genius, other disciples of Hamilton stood forth to carry forward the work in the pulpit and the cloister. Alexander Alane, afterwards called Alesius, was a canon of the Augusti- nian priory of St. Andrews. Born in Edinburgh in 1500, he 30 The Scottish Reformatio)). was one of the first batch of students who were educated in the new College of St. Leonards, founded in 15 12 by Prior John Hepburn. Having taken his degree in 151 5, he soon after passed from the college into the adjoining cloister ; and when John Major came to St. Andrews in 1523, he applied himself to the study of scholastic theology under that distinguished professor. The young canon was fond of theological disputation, and soon acquired considerable reputation for his dialectic skill. He was perhaps the first Scottish theologian who wrote against Luther ; and his treatise, though borrowed in part, as he acknowledges, from the writings of Bishop Fisher of Rochester, was highly applauded by the doctors of St. Andrews. When Patrick Hamilton came to that city, early in 1528, Ale- sius did not doubt that he would be able to convince him of his errors, and to bring him back to the true faith of the Church. He was personally acquainted with him, as Hamilton had often been a visitor at the priory, and he repeatedly conversed with him during the month which preceded his martyrdom. But instead of converting the Reformer he was himself converted; and the deep impression which Hamilton made upon him by his arguments, was made deeper still by the affecting spectacle of his trial and death. Alesius, as before remarked, was a witness of these scenes, and afterwards penned the earliest account of them in one of his works. The applauded antagonist of Luther was now a Lutheran, and without hastily declaring his convictions, nothing could induce him to express approval of the proceedings which had been taken against Hamilton, or to pronounce any unfavourable judgment upon the articles for which he had been condemned. This silence brought him under suspicion, and gave offence to his superior, Patrick Hepburn, the prior, who had taken an active part in Hamilton's prosecution ; and it was probably with the view of entrapping him into some overt declaration of his new opinions, that he was appointed to preach before a provincial synod which met in St. Andrews in 1529. His Alexander Alesius. 3 1 sermon was in Latin, and was addressed exclusively to the clergy ; it touched no points of doctrine or ecclesiastical pre- rogative : its sole and single aim was to enforce upon the clergy the duty of being faithful pastors, and setting a good example to their flocks ; but it gave mortal offence notwith- standing. He had spoken plainly of the vices of the clergy, though he had said nothing of the doctrinal corruptions of the Church, and the prelates were indignant at the bold preacher. Beaton declared that the sermon smelt of Lutheranism, and the prior cried out in a rage that the whole of it was aimed against himself. Hepburn's conscience, in truth, was defiled with numerous adulteries, and the conscious sting within made him imagine, that what Alesius had spoken in the general interest of clerical morality was directed as a deliberate insult against himself. He vowed to have his revenge upon the heretical canon. Not long after, it chanced that the canons of the priory were assembled in the chapter-house, to advise upon what steps they should take to obtain redress from certain griev- ances, which they were all suffering in common at the hand of their oppressive prior. On a sudden, Hepburn, hearing of their meeting and its design, presented himself at the door of the chapter-house with a band of armed attendants ; and, casting his eye upon Alesius, went straight up to him and dragged him with violence from his seat. In a paroxysm of rage, he threw him down upon the pavement of the chapter-house, and kicked him upon the breast. It seemed as if he would have slain him upon the spot, if the other canons had not rushed to the rescue, and pulled the prior back by main force from his victim. Alesius's life was saved ; but the wrath of his superior was not appeased till he, and all the canons who had taken part with him, were cast into the prison of the monastery. What a picture of the condition of monastic life, in the most dignified of all the monasteries of Scotland, in the sixteenth century ! And what a scandal to the Church, that a 32 The Scottish Reformation. man so dissolute and unprincipled as Patrick Hepburn should a few years after this have been made Bishop of Moray ! The story of Alesius's sufferings and repeated imprisonments, as told by himself, is a long one, and cannot be given in detail here. We can only relate, that when the young king interfered to obtain relief for the imprisoned canons, they were all set at liberty but Alesius ; that when a rumour went through St. Andrews that he was dead, and the provost came to the priory to demand in the king's name that his body should be produced either dead or alive, he was taken out of his loath- some dungeon, and after being washed and dressed, was presented to the magistrate ; but having disobeyed the prior's orders, in answering the provost's questions too frankly, he was taken back again to his prison, where he remained for many months. At last, the canons, having learned that Hepburn was concerting a design with Beaton to bring him to trial for heresy, advised and assisted him to make his escape, and he saved his life by a nocturnal flight from St. Andrews to Dundee. Next morning he made a narrow escape of being retaken by a band of horsemen whom Hepburn sent in pursuit, and succeeded in getting on board a ship which was setting sail for France. This was in 1530. His persecutions and sufferings had lasted nearly a whole year. He never returned to Scotland ; but he never ceased throughout a long life to feel the deepest interest in the reformation of the Scottish Church. When he next comes before us, we shall find him at Wittemberg, an honoured disciple at the feet of Luther and Melancthon, and fighting upon German ground the noble battle of the spiritual emancipation of his native country. A second disciple of Hamilton among the regular clergy of St. Andrews was Alexander Seyton. He was the son of Sir Alexander Seyton of Touch, and was educated at St. Andrews, where his name appears among the graduates of 1 5 1 6. Having entered the dominican order, his talents and character raised him to a high place among its members, who at that time Alexander Seyton. 33 included many of the most learned and exemplary of the Scottish clergy ; and he was appointed confessor to the young king. He is described as a man of tall stature, of quick genius, and of a bold and manly spirit. The date of his first public appearance as a reformed preacher is not exactly known, but it was probably in 1530 or 1531 ; when, having been appointed to preach during Lent in one of the churches of St. Andrews, "he taught for the space of a whole lentran," says Knox, " the commandments of God only, ever beating into the ears of his auditors that the law of God had of many years not been truly taught, for men's traditions had obscured the purity of it. These were his accustomed propositions. First : — Christ Jesus is the end and perfection of the law. Second : — there is no sin where God's law is not violated. Third : — to satisfy for sin lies not in man's power ; but the remission thereof comes by unfeigned repentance and by faith, apprehending God the Father, merciful in Christ Jesus his Son. While oftentimes he puts his auditors in mind of these and the like heads, he makes no mention of purgatory, pardons, pilgrimages, prayer to saints, nor such trifles." Till Lent was over, and Seyton had left St. Andrews for Dundee, " the dumb doctors " of the University said and did nothing ; but as soon as he was gone, they employed a more orthodox predicant to go into the same pulpit, and condemn every word of Seyton's preaching ; " which coming to the ears of the said friar Alexander, without delay he returned to St. Andrews, and caused immediately to jow the bell and give signification that he would preach ; as that he did indeed. In the which sermon he affirmed, and that more plainly than at any other time, whatsoever in his whole sermons he had taught during the whole Lent-tide preceding : adding that within Scotland there was no true bishop, if bishops were to be known by such notes and virtues as St. Paul requires." The archbishop of course soon heard of this bold speech, and sending immediately for Seyton, "began grievously to complain and sharply to accuse that he had so slanderously 34 The Scottish Reformation. spoken of the dignity of the bishops, as to say that it behoved a bishop to be a preacher, or else he was but a dumb dog, and fed not the flock but his own belly. The man, being witty and mindful of that which was his most assured defence, replied : ' My lord, the reporters of such things are manifest liars.' Whereat the bishop rejoiced and said, ' Your answer pleases me well. I never could think of you that ye would be so foolish as to affirm such things. Where are those knaves that have brought me this tale % ' Who compearing and affirming the same that they did before, Seyton still replied that they were liars. At last, while more witnesses were being called, he turned him to the bishop and said, ' My lord, ye may see and consider what ears these asses have, who cannot discern betwixt Paul, Isaiah, Zechariah, and Malachi, and friar Alexander Seyton. In very deed, my lord, I said what Paul says, "It behoveth a bishop to be a teacher." Isaiah saith that they that feed not the flock are dumb dogs, and Zechariah saith they are idol pastors. I of my own head affirmed nothing, but declared what the Spirit of God had before pronounced, at whom, my lord, if ye be not offended, justly ye cannot be offended at me. And so yet again, my lord, I say that they are manifest liars that reported unto you that / said that ye and others that preach not are no bishops, but belly- gods.'" This cutting sally of course did not mend the matter. Beaton was highly offended at "the bold liberty of that learned man," and resolved to make him feel the weight of his resentment. The king was young and addicted to criminal pleasure, and it was easy to gain his ear to the disadvantage of so honest and faithful a confessor as Seyton. The primate employed certain grey-friars who had access to the king to accuse his confessor of heresy. James heard the accusation without displeasure. " Yes," said he, " I understand well enough that he smells of the new doctrine, by such things as he has shown to me under confession. I know more of that matter than you do yourselves. I promise you that I Henry Forrest 35 will follow the counsel of the bishops in punishing him, and all others of that sect." James had already committed him- self to the fatal policy which proved his ruin ; that of resting for support and counsel upon his clergy more than upon his temporal lords. His resentment against the Douglases and all their abettors disposed him to be unreasonably jealous of the nobility at large, and to look to the prelates as his safest and most trusty councillors. This blind partiality of the king, so opposite to what Lindsay had often advised, armed the Church with great power against the Reformers during the whole of his reign, and we see some of the earliest effects of it in the sufferings of Alesius and Seyton. The Dominican, on being informed of the king's words, saw that he was a doomed man, and, despairing of obtaining a fair hearing of his cause, fled out of the kingdom. From Berwick he sent a messenger to the king with a letter, in which he explained that such was the sole reason of his flight, and offered to return, if the king would assure him that he should have an opportunity of defending himself from the accusations of his enemies. He waited for some time for a reply, but he waited in vain. His letter had been delivered into James's own hand, and had been read by many at court ; but what, as Knox observes, " could admonition avail when the pride and corruption of prelates commanded what they pleased, and the flattery of courtiers fostered the insolent prince in all impiety 1 " Seyton repaired to London, where we shall again meet with him, and remained in exile during the rest of his life. A third of these early confessors contributed by the monasteries of St. Andrews was Henry Forrest. He was a native of Linlithgow, and graduated at St. Leonard's College in 1526. He had listened to Hamilton's teaching, and had seen him die, and the sole accusation laid against him, not long after, was that he had been heard to say that " Master Patrick died a martyr, and was no heretic." He was long kept a prisoner in the gloomy sea-tower of the castle of St. Andrews, and was at length cruelly condemned to be burnt as 36 The Scottish Reformation. a heretic, " equal in iniquity with Master Patrick." The pro- bable date of his martyrdom was 1532. His pile was kindled on the eminence adjoining the northern stile of the Abbey Church, and that spot was made choice of, in order that the flames might be visible across the mouth of Tay from the shores of Angus. The persecutors disregarded, in the osten- tatious publicity of this second auto-da-fe', a warning given them by John Lindsay, "a merry gentleman in the service of archbishop Beaton, that the smoke of Hamilton's pile had infected all upon whom it blew." Lindsay had advised them to burn their next victim in some low vault out of sight, instead of in the open face of day. And he was right. The flame of the martyr's pile, beheld with more admiration than fear, kindles in a thousand souls the holy fire of self-sacrificing zeal. The blazing faggots become the torch of truth to a whole land. " Brother ! " cried stout old Latimer at the stake to Ridley, his fellow-martyr, "we light a candle to-day in England which Avill never again be put out." Priory Church, St. Andrews. Section 5. STRUGGLE FOR THE USE OF THE VERNACULAR SCRIPTURES. — 1532-34. "Is not my Word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? " Such it had shown itself to be in Scotland since 1526, when Tyndale's New Testament began to circulate through the realm. Fire-like, it had kindled a blaze of religious fervour in the breasts of many 38 The Scottish Reformation. and hammer-like, it had begun to smite with crushing blows the errors and corruptions of the Church. What were the clergy to do % A crisis had come. They must either put down the Word of God, or the Word of God will put down their abuses. They must either frankly accept the teaching of the Bible, and consent to a reformation, or else they must wage open war with the Bible, and endeavour by violence to sup- press its testimony. Compelled to choose between these alternatives, the Scottish Bishops did not shrink from the impiety of preferring the latter. In 1532, they published a proclamation, prohibiting the sale, possession, and use of copies of the Scriptures translated into the English or Scottish tongues, and denouncing the censures of the Church on all who should dare to violate the prohibition. This edict has not been recorded by any of our historians, but we have the best evidence of its having been issued in the existence of several controversial tracts of the years 1533 and 1534, which were called forth by that event. Curiously enough, the con- troversy was waged not in Scotland, but in Germany ; and the combatants were Alexander Alesius and John Cochlaeus. After many wanderings, which we cannot here recount, in Denmark, France, Belgium, and Germany, Alexander Alane, or Alesius, the exile and wanderer — for such is the significance of the new name which he now assumed — had at length ar- rived in Wittemberg towards the end of 153 1. He was anxious to study there, at the fountain head, the theology of the Reformation, and to accomplish himself in the Greek and Hebrew languages, a knowledge of which he now felt to be indispensable to an evangelical divine. Attaching himself with peculiar sympathy and affection to Melancthon, he had been admitted to the friendship and familiar intercourse of that distinguished scholar and teacher ; and in full possession of all the advantages of a University which was now the best theological school in Europe, he had already made rapid advances in knowledge, when, towards the close of 1532, he had intelligence from Scotland of the publication of the Alexander Alesius. 39 clergy's wicked edict. The same message brought him tidings, of personal wrongs which his persecutors had recently inflicted upon him. They had exhibited articles of heresy against him before the ecclesiastical tribunals, some of which were entirely false, and others much exaggerated ; and they had procured sentence of condemnation to be passed upon him, in absence and without a hearing, by which he was degraded from the priest- hood, and doomed to perpetual banishment from his country. He resolved not to be silent under such heavy injuries inflicted upon himself and his fellow-countrymen ; and he immediately penned and printed a Latin epistle addressed to the Scottish king, in which he warmly protested against the tyranny of the Bishops, and earnestly entreated the King to come to the succour and defence of his afflicted subjects. He said little in the letter of his own private grievances ; he generously threw these into the shade ; but he expatiated at considerable length, and with great force of reasoning and eloquence, upon the impiety of debarring the people from access to the vernacular Word of God. What ? Make that a crime against the Church, which God has commanded man to do as a duty to Himself and to their own souls ? It was a thing unexampled in the whole history of the Church. If such an edict had proceeded from Pagans or Turks, it would not have been surprising; but for men calling themselves Christian bishops, to take out of the mouths of their famishing flocks the very bread of life, — could such men be true pastors of the sheep of Christ ? or could the king, who was the father of his people, see such a cruel tyranny perpetrated upon them and not interpose his authority to put a stop to it 1 Besides, how great would be the benefit and blessing to his subjects, if the Word of God were to be read in every house, and were diligently taught by every parent to his children and household ! How else indeed could anxious souls be led into the way of truth and attain to spiritual peace and comfort, than by the study of the Scriptures in their own homes ? For the Bishops, whose duty 4o The Scottish Refoj'mation. it was to preach God's Word, were unable or unwilling to preach it ; and the friars, to whom they delegated that function, preached nothing but idle and foolish legends, or doctrines which, instead of ministering peace and consolation to the soul, kept it, and were meant to keep it, perpetually in a condition of tormenting doubt and fear. This eloquent epistle was published at Wittemberg with the author's name, and copies of it were despatched into Scotland by a special messenger. 1 Whether it ever came under the eye of the king himself, we are not informed ; but that it reached the hands of his courtiers and chief officers of state is attested by the antagonist whom it instantly brought into the field against its author. This, as already intimated, was John Cochlaeus, the well- known opponent of Luther and Melancthon. He had recently succeeded Emser in his canonry at Meissen, by the favour of Duke George of Saxony, and he repaid the patronage of his zealous prince by a pertinacity of antagonism to the Wittemberg divines, which never suffered his pen to rest for a moment, and by a violence of abuse which defied all the laws of decency and shame. No sooner had he read the epistle of Alesius, than he resolved to answer it in a counter-epistle to the Scottish* king. He suspected another hand in the tract than that of the Scottish exile, and he began his reply to it by expressing his doubt whether Alexander Alesius Scotus was not a mere man of straw, and whether the real author was not Philip Melancthon himself, "that Cory- phaeus of heresy, that architect of lies." Alesius having alluded in his letter to the king's interposition at St. Andrews on his behalf, Cochlaeus has the effrontery, while confessing his entire ignorance of the facts, to deny that the king ever could have so interposed, inasmuch as such an interference 1 The title of the epistle is, ' ' Alexandri Alesii Epistola contra decretum quoddam Episcoporum in Scotia quod prohibet legere novi testamenti libros lingua vernacula." At the end is the date 1533. It is extremely rare. Not more than two or three copies of it are known to exist. John Cochlceus. 41 with the action of his prelates would have been a stretch of kingly power altogether unbecoming so Christian a prince. At all events, he urged that the bishops had done well and wisely in the publication of the edict. There was nothing contrary to Scripture in an act prohibiting the use of Scripture to the laity. The act was entirely agreeable to the teaching of Scripture itself, which told men to " hear the Church," and to learn wisdom and knowledge from " the priest's lips." Nothing but evil and mischief to Church and State, and to men's immortal souls, could result from the practice of laymen reading the Word of God in their own houses ; and every man presuming to interpret it for himself. Such a practice would only make men bad Christians and bad subjects. So it had resulted in Germany, and so it would result in Scotland, if the king took the advice of this apostate exile, and interfered with the pious proceedings of his prudent bishops. The simple truth was, that Alesius, if indeed there was any such person, was a Lutheran, and wanted to make all Scotland Lutherans like himself. But let the king take warning from the example of Germany ; what tragedies, what tumults, what lamentable disasters had flowed in that empire from the heresies of one man — that impious apostate, Luther. If the bishops and princes of Germany had only been more watchful and severe at first, the empire would have been spared all these miseries. Their mistaken clemency to one or two bad men had been the cause of calamity and death to thousands. No ! let the edict of the bishops remain in full force ; let the king confirm, not annul it ; and let both king and bishops take care that it does not remain a dead letter. Let them execute the edict with firmness and rigour. The punishment of a few will prevent the perdition of thousands. 1 Before sending off copies of his epistle for the hands of James and his bishops, Cochlaeus took the precaution of fortifying himself with recommendatory letters from King 1 The title of Cochlaeus's tract is, "An expecliat laicis legere Novi Tes- tamenti libros in lingua vernacula. Disputatio inter Alexandrum Alesium Scotum et Johannem Cochljeum Germanum." Anno Domini MDXXXIII. G 42 The Scottish Reformation. Ferdinand, brother of the Emperor Charles V., and from Erasmus. These letters have not been preserved, but the replies of the Scottish king both to Ferdinand and Erasmus are still extant. 3 It is a fact new to history, that Erasmus brought his influence to bear upon the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland at this crisis ; and it is a sad instance of his revolt from a cause which he had once done so much to promote, that he should have given the support of his illustrious name to a writer so virulent and sophistical as Cochlaeus, and to an edict so opposite in its spirit to some of his own writings as that of the Scottish bishops. It was impossible, of course, that Alesius could be silent under such an attack. He lost no time in committing to the press a " Reply to the Calumnies of Cochlaeus," 2 addressed as before to the Scottish king ; and in which he enters into a detailed account of all the circumstances which had led to his flight from St. Andrews, in order both to show that he was no man of straw, as Cochlaeus had pretended, and to bring out to view the characters of the prelates who were the authors of his misfortunes. These personal incidents and recollections give great historical value to the tract, and throw much light upon the period of the Reformation immediately subsequent to the death of Hamilton. Into the rest of its contents we cannot here enter ; it must suffice to state that it contained a renewed and powerful remonstrance against the tyranny of the clergy, a lengthened reply to the reasoning and declamations of Cochlaeus in their defence, and a fuller statement than before of the author's views of the need of a comprehensive scheme of ecclesiastical reform. Cochlaeus, however, was determined to have the last word. In August, 1534, he published at Leipzig "An Apology for the Kingdom of Scotland against the masked Scotsman Alexander Alesius." 3 Instead of defending his own good name from the 1 Copies of them, and of a royal letter to Cochlaeus, in the writing of the period, are preserved in the British Museum. Royal MSS. 18, B. vi. 2 Alexandri Alesii Scoti responsio ad Cochloei Calumnias. 3 Pro Scotire Regno Apologia Johannis Cochla.'i adversus personatum J olu i Cochlceus. 43 heavy charges laid against him by his opponent as a calum- niator and a sycophant, Cochlceus coolly assumes in this tract the office of defending the fame of the Scottish kingdom against the attacks, as he chooses to regard them, of one of its own citizens. He repeats his assertion that Melancthon is the real author of both the epistles ; he upbraids Alesius with putting lies into the mouth of a foreigner to the disadvantage of his native country ; and he roundly tells him that he would gladly send him back to Scotland with his hands tied behind his back, to be ignominiously punished as a public slanderer, and a traitor to his country. Alesius's minute narrative of facts avails nothing ; Cochkeus pronounces it absurd and incredible, and endeavours to convict him of contradiction in his statements. He forgets, in his excitement, that the king was better able to judge of the truth of the narrative ot Alesius than he could pretend to be, and that it would have been extreme folly in Alesius to have laid a false statement on such a subject before the royal eye. Luther, Melancthon, and Alesius are all loaded by turns with violent abuse, and then, in the end, he gravely assures the king that he is so far from feeling any hatred to their persons, that he would willingly travel on foot, and at his own charges, to Rome, or Compostella, to pray for them at the shrines of St. Peter and St. James, if only he could hope to bring them back from their heresy into, the unity of the Church. It was not without an eye to some substantial reward, that Cochlaeus volunteered in this violent controversy ; and he was not disappointed. The archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow testified their gratitude for his timely and much needed services by sending him liberal presents. The king wrote him a letter — a cotemporary transcript of which is still extant — assuring him of his princely favour ; and the lord treasurer dismissed the servant who had brought copies of his first epistle, with a gift of fifty pounds Scots. As for Alesius, he had no other reward than that of having Alexandrum Alesium Scotum, ad Serenissimum Scotorjjm Regem. Ex Dresda Misnia; Idibus Augusti MDXXXIIII. 44 The Scottish Reformation. sowed good seed in the Scottish soil, which afterwards bore abundant fruit. He got no redress from the king of his personal wrongs. He demanded a hearing for his cause in vain. He was allowed to continue unavenged in unjust exile. But he had earned for himself the glory of being the first Scotsman who stood forth to defend by argument and learning the Christian right of his countrymen to read the Word of God in their mother tongue. Nor does it diminish in the least the honour of such a service, that in rendering it he availed himself of the assistance of his great master Philip Melancthon. Cochlaeus uttered a calumny when he asserted over and over again that Melancthon, and not Alesius, was the author of these epistles. But he would not have exceeded the truth, if he had been contented with alleging that Alesius had had the advantage of Melancthon's aid. It is not difficult to discover in these tracts occasional traces of that elegant pen which was the admiration of all Europe, and to the rhetorical power of which even Cochlaeus is compelled to do homage. It was no unusual thing for Melancthon to look over the Latin compositions of his friends, and to put in touches here and there, before they were recited in public, or committed to the press. Melancthon, as well as Erasmus, bore a part in this long-forgotten but justly memorable struggle. While the scholar of Basle gave his support to Cochlaeus, the scholar of Wittemberg lent a helping hand to Alesius ; and it is certainly a remarkable instance of the important omissions of historians, that neither of these two illustrious names has ever been named before in the history of the Scottish Reformation. 1 1 The learned Strobelius, in his "Neue Beytrage zur Geschichte, &c." vol. i. p. 145, has a catalogue of writings in which Melancthon took part, "woran Melancthon Antheil hatte," which includes both the epistles of Alesius above referred to. The participation of Melancthon in the author, ship was denied by the late Rev. Christopher Anderson in his " Annals of the English Bible," but erroneously. Mr. Anderson, however, was the first to call public attention to these interesting tracts. J ^Pf r -~>^=- ^ r ^.,,r^. j^-^r^vi • ;- ^ '-?^; Monastery of Inch Colme. Section 6. Persecutions and Martyrdoms, i 534— 39- While Lindsay, Seyton, and Alesius were striving to gain over the young King of Scots to the side of religious reform, he was solicited, on the other side, by advocates far more powerful and prevailing, to remain steadfast in his attachment to the Court of Rome. Between 1532 and 1534 two im- portant embassies arrived at the Scottish court— Silvester Darius from the Pope, and Eric Godschalkus from the 46 The Scottish Reformation. Emperor Charles V. The Pope, foreseeing trouble from Henry VIII., was anxious to make sure of the fidelity of his Scottish nephew ; and his legate had authority to grant to the king's use for three years, " the tenth penny of all the benefices of the realm above the annual value of twenty pounds." The emperor's ambassador was the bearer of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and came with proposals to the Scottish king to join with the emperor and the other Catholic princes of Europe in a league, which had for its object the extinction of heresy, and the assembling of a general council to correct the disorders of the Church. To such powerful suitors it was difficult to say no. The king honourably dismissed God- schalkus with letters to the emperor, in which he assured him of his readiness to unite in the proposed league ; and Silvester Darius had the satisfaction of seeing severe measures adopted for the suppression of the Lutherans before he left Scotland on his return to Rome. 1 In 1532 "there was a great abjuration of the favourers of Martin Luther in the abbey of Holyrood House/' 2 but the particulars of this solemn assize have not been preserved. In May, 1534, the king wrote from Aberdeen to the lords of council in Edinburgh, calling their attention to " divers tract- ates and books translated out of Latin into the Scottish tongue by favourers of the sect of Luther, which were sent to various parts of the realm ; whereupon, the lords passed stringent orders for the destruction of all such books, and for the punishing of all suspected persons." These translated books very probably included copies of the Epistles of Alesius. In August, 1534, the tribunal of heresy was again consti- tuted in Holyrood with circumstances of peculiar solemnity. The number of the accused and the summoned was very 1 Several letters relating to this embassy from Chai-les V. are preserved in an imperfect state in Royal MSS. 18, B. vi. in the British Museum. They have not been noticed by our ecclesiastical historians. 2 Diurnal of occurrents, p. 15. Persecutions and Martyrdoms. 4.7 great, and the king himself was present, wearing his scarlet robe as great justiciar of the realm. Of the accused, some took refuge in England before the day of trial, and were condemned, in absence, to banishment, and the forfeiture of all their lands and goods. Among these was Sir James Hamilton, the brother of the martyr. He had applied to the king for protection, but James declined to interfere with the action of the Church, and advised him to save his life by flight. His sister, Catharine Hamilton, appeared before the tribunal and defended herself with spirit and ability. The king was much amused and pleased with her replies to the Church-lawyers, and, taking her aside, was able to persuade her by fair words to promise submission to the Church. But there were other two of the accused who were not so easily persuaded. These were Norman Gourlay, a secular priest, and David Stratoun, a gentleman of the house of Lauriston in the Mearns. Gourlay had studied for some time in Germany, and had returned home professing the dangerous doctrine that the Pope was Antichrist, and had no right to exercise jurisdiction in Scotland. Stratoun had declared that there was no other Purgatory but the Passion of Christ and the tribulations of this world ; and had, moreover, given offence to his bishop by the refusal of some part of his tithe. The king entreated them to abjure, but they both stood firm to their testimony. When sentence was pronounced upon Stratoun, he implored the king to remit it by virtue of his royal prerogative ; but James turned a deaf ear to his appeal, and acquiesced by his silence in the proud answer of the bishops, " that the king had no grace to give to such as were condemned by their law." On the 27th of August, both Gourlay and Stratoun were led to the stake at the Rood of Greenside; and Edinburgh saw on that day, for the first time, a tragical sight which she was destined to see often repeated, before the sufferings of the nation should work out its final emancipation from Papal bondage. For a few years after this cruel auto-da-fe', the fury of perse- 48 The Scottish Reformation. cution somewhat abated. In the Parliament of 1535, indeed, the Act of 1525 against heresy was made greatly more strin- gent by the addition of the following clause, " That none of the king's lieges have, use, keep, or conceal any book of the said heretics, or containing their doctrine and opinions • but that they deliver the same to their ordinaries within forty days, under the pains aforesaid." But another Act of this Parliament showed that the king was fully sensible of the existence of abuses in the Church ; and, though still resolved to oppose the progress of doctrines deemed heretical by the clergy, had serious intentions of pressing for the reform of some, at least, of the more flagrant ecclesiastical disorders. This Act provided for the assembling of a provincial council in the following year, with or without the consent of the primate — a provision which gave great offence to the prelates. When the council met in March, 1536, the articles put before it by the king were found to affect very seriously the temporalities of the clergy. He demanded that " the corpse-present" and "the upmost cloth" should be disused all over Scotland, and that the amount levied in teind or tithe, should be greatly reduced • and he sent them a threat- ening message from Crawford-John in Clydesdale, where he w T as hunting at the time, to tell them " that if they granted not his demands, he would compel them to feu the whole of the Church lands, and to receive for them no more than at the rate of the old rentals." " The Kirkmen of Scotland," wrote the Earl of Angus to his brother, Sir George Douglas, 1 " were never so evil content, and the news is now through all Scot- land that the kings will meet •" alluding to the interview between James and his uncle, Henry VIII. , which the latter was now pressing for very earnestly, and which the bishops had hitherto been able to prevent. How this dispute was composed is not known. All that is recorded of the action 1 State Papers — Henry VIII.— Scottish, vol. iv. p. 666, where the letter is erroneously entered under 1534, but is afterwards referred to 1536, vol. v. p. $6. Persecutions and Martyrdoms. 49 of the council is, " that they adopted certain acts and statutes, made before by a commission of the Pope's honour, with some additions." 1 It is certain that the ecclesiastical reforms which the king demanded were not carried out, and the only gain which accrued to the cause of truth was, that the persecuted Lutherans enjoyed a short breathing-time while the quarrel lasted. At the time when this council was sitting in the Black Friars of Edinburgh, Lord William Howard and Bishop Barlow, the ambassadors of Henry VIII., were using every persuasion to induce the Scottish king to consent to a personal interview with their royal master at York. In 1535, Henry had finally broken with Rome, and was now anxious that his nephew should follow his example. It was of the utmost consequence to the safety of England that Scotland should be detached from the alliance of the great Catholic powers of the Continent ; — an alliance which, as we have seen, those powers were quite as anxious to maintain and draw as close as possible. The moment was a critical one for the Scottish clergy, and we need not be surprised to learn that they strained every nerve to thwart the designs of the apostate king. Their pulpits rang with denunciations of his impiety ; they declaimed against what they called " the heresies of England," even in the presence of the English ambassadors, and Barlow's irritation betrays itself in the bitterness of his letters. "In all points," says he to Crom- well, "they show themselves to be the Pope's pestilent creatures, and very limbs of the devil. Their lying friars cease not in their sermons — we being present — blasphemously to blatter against the verity, with slanderous reproach of us which have justly renounced his wrong usurped papacy. Wherefore, in confutation of their detestable lies, if I may obtain the king's license to preach (otherwise shall I not be suffered), I will not spare for no bodily peril, boldly to publish the truth of God's word among them : whereat though 1 Diurnal of Occurretrts, sub anno 1536. H 5 command ; who could have expected that Sir David Lindsay, who had offended so much more heinously in the same way, would be suffered to remain in the unmolested enjoyment of all his emoluments and honours % And yet such was the fact. Nothing but the king's warm attachment to him can account for it. If he had preserved a judicious silence while danger was imminent, the wonder would have been less. But his muse was as fearless as she was fertile. While persecution was raging all around him, he con- tinued to exhaust upon the corruptions of the Church all the weapons of his ridicule and satire. Nor was he content with lashing what was evil in the Church's teaching and practice. As his own views of divine truth and apostolic order went on ripening into full conviction, he freely communicated them in the same pieces in which he attacked the superstitions, and immoralities, and oppressions of the clergy. He was not only a satirist, but a preacher. When it was no longer safe for men to preach the truth in prose, he became an evangelist in rhyme ; and when Beaton had succeeded in ridding himself of almost every Lutheran divine in the country, either by banishment or the stake, Lindsay still remained out- standing in the double character of poet and theologian ; as able to instruct the court and the country in Gospel truth, as to amuse them at the expense of the errors of the Church. It must have been about this time that Lindsay wrote the piece called " Kitty's Confession," which is as sound in its theology as it is severe in its satire, and which was well fitted to be popular among the common people, and none the less so for an occasional coarseness in its allusions and language. " The curate Kitty could confess, And she told on, baith more and less. Quoth he, ken ye na heresie ? I wait nocht what that is, quoth she ; Quoth he, heard ye na Inglis books ? * Quoth she, my maister on them looks. An allusion to Tyndale's Testament. 6\ The Scottish Reformation. Quotli he, the bishop that shall knaw, For I am sworn that for to shaw. Quoth he, what said he of the king ? Quoth she, of good he spak 11a thing. Quoth he, his grace of that sail wit, And he sail lose his life for it." The theological and pastoral shortcomings of the father- confessor are thus set forth : — ' He schew me nocht of Godd-is Word, Whilk sharper is than any sword, And deep intil 1 our heart does prent Our sin, wherethrough we do repent. He put me nathing into fear, Wherethrough I should my sin forbear ; Of Christ-is blood nathing he knew, Nor of his promises full true, That savis all that will believe, That Satan sail us never grieve. He techit me nocht for till 2 traist The comfort of the Haly Ghaist. He bad me nocht to Christ be kind, To keep his law with heart and mind, And lufe and thank his great mercie, Fra sin and hell that savit me, And lufe my neighbour as mysel ; Of this nathing he could me tell, But gave me penance ilk ane day, And Ave Marie for to say ; And with ane plack to buy ane mess Fra drunken Sir John Latinless." Of Lindsay's rhyming preaching the following is a fair specimen. " To the great God omnipotent, Confess thy sin, and sore repent, And traist in Christ, as wrytis Paul, Whilk shed his blood to saif thy saul, 1 Into. 2 To trust. Sir David Lindsay. 65 For nane can thee absolve but he, Nor tak away thy sin from thee. Gif of glide counsall thou hes nede, Or hes nocht leirnit weill thy crede, Or wicket vices reign in thee, The whilk thou can nocht mortifie, Or be in desperation, Then to ane preacher true thou pass, And shaw thy sin and thy trespass. Thar neid-is nocht to shaw him all, Nor tell thy sins baith great and small, Whilk is impossible to be ; But shaw the vice that troubles thee ; And he sail of thy saul have ruth And thee instruct into the truth, And with the word of veritie Sail comfort and sail counsel thee ; The sacraments shaw thee at lenth, Thy little faith to stark and strenth ; And how thou suld them rightly use, And all hypocrisy refuse. Confession first was ordain't free, In this sort in the kirk to be. Swa to confess, as I descryve, Was in the gude kirk primitive." But " Kitty's Confession," and all the rest of Lindsay's satires, were thrown into the shade by a work upon which he was now engaged, and which was soon to see the light. This was the morality, or drama, entitled, " Ane Plesant Satyre of the Three Estates, in Commendation of Vertue and Vitu- peration of Vice ; " or, as it was sometimes called, " The Parliament of Correction." He had been for some years em- ployed upon it, and one of his biographers conjectures that he had exhibited it, in its first form, at Cupar, as early as the year 1535. But, however this may be, it is certain that Lind- say had the king's authority and licence to exhibit a perform- ance of it at Linlithgow during the Feast of Epiphany, at the beginning of the year 1540. It had long been the custom of K 66 The Scottish Reformation. the Scottish court to amuse itself with plays and moralities at that festive season, and for several years Lindsay had been the manager of these courtly diversions — a function for which he was peculiarly fitted by his tastes as a poet, and as lion- herald. But on the present occasion, instead of reproducing one of the old moralities, or imitating the new-fashioned " interludes " which were so much admired in the courts of England and France, he produced an original piece, which, improving immensely upon his predecessors, was the nearest approximation that had yet been made to the regular drama of later times. The great hall of the palace of Linlithgow was probably the theatre made use of on this occasion ; and the dramatist had for his spectators and audience the king and queen, the court and council, and a select circle of nobles, gentry, and burgesses from the ancient burgh and all the country round. Several of the bishops themselves were present, and were obliged in courtesy to the king to laugh with as good a grace as possible at the poet's humorous exposure of the corruptions of the ecclesiastical estate. Fortunately there was present at the performance a Scottish correspondent of the English border commissioner, Sir William Eure, who sent him immediately after a written account of the piece. This curious document is still extant, and runs as follows : — " In the first entres came in Solace (whose part was but to make merry, sing ballads with his fellows, and drink at the interludes of the play), who showed first to all the audience the play to be played, which was a general thing, meaning nothing in special to displease no man, praying therefore no man to be angry with the same. Next came in a King, who passed to his throne, having no speech to the end of the play, and then to ratify and approve, as in plain parliament, all things done by the rest of the players, which represented the Three Estates. AVith him came his courtiers, Placebo, Pik- thank, and Flattery, and such a like guard. Thereafter came Sir David Lindsay. 67 a man armed in harness, with a sword drawn in his hand, a Bishop, a Burgessman, and Experience clad like a Doctor, who sat them all down on the dais under the King. After them came in a poor man, who did go up and down the scaffold making a heavy complaint that he was heryed through the courtiers taking his fee in one place, and afterwards his tacks in another place, wherethrough he had scayled his house, his wife and children begging their bread, and so of many thousands in Scotland, which would make the King's Grace lose of men, if his Grace stood in need. Saying there was no remedy to be gotten, for though he would suit to the King's Grace, he was neither acquainted with Controller nor Treasurer, and without them might no man get no goodness of the King And then he looked to the King and said he had left one thing undone, which pertained as well to his charge as the other. And when he was asked what that was, he made a long narration of the oppression of the poor by the taking of the corpse-present beasts, and of the herying of poor men by the Consistory law, and of many other abusions of the spiritualty and Church, with many long stories and authorities. And then the Bishop rose and rebuked him, saying, it effeired not to him to speak such matters, com- manding to him silence, or else to suffer death for it by their law. Thereafter rose the Man of arms, alledging the con- trary, and commanded the poor man to speak, saying their abusion had been overlong suffered without any law. Then the poor man showed the great abusion of Bishops, Prelates, Abbotts, reving men's wives and daughters, and holding them ; and of the maintaining of their children ; and of their over- buying of the eldest sons of lords and barons to their daughters, wherethrough the nobility of the blood of the realm was degenerate ; and of the great superfluous rents that pertained to the Church by reason of overmuch temporal lands given to them, which the King might take both by the canon law and the civil law. And of the great abominable vices that reign in cloisters, and of the common bordells that 68 The Scottish Rejormation. were kept in cloisters of nuns. All this was proved by Experi- ence, and also was showed the office of a bishop, and was producit the New Testament with the authorities to that effect. And then rose the Man of arms and the Burgess, and did say, that all that was produced by the poor man and Experience was reasonable, of verity, and of great effect ; and very expedient to be reformed with the consent of Parliament. And the Bishop said he would not consent thereunto ; the Man of arms and the Burgess said, they were two, and he but one, where- fore their voice should have most effect. Thereafter the King in the play ratified, approved, and confirmed all that was rehearsed." 1 Such was the ingenious and striking way in which Lindsay brought before the king and his court and council the need of religious reform, and shadowed forth the kind of reformation which he desired to see accomplished ; and we are happily able to report, upon an authority equally good, the effect which the piece produced upon the mind of the king. Sir Thomas Bellenden, one of the king's council, was present at the performance, and informed Sir William Eure a few weeks afterwards, in a personal interview at Coldstream, that "after the said interlude was finished, the King of Scots did call upon the Bishop of Glasgow, being chancellor, and divers other bishops, exhorting them to reform their fashions and manners of living ; saying, that unless they so did, he would send ten of the proudest of them unto his uncle of England, and as those were ordered, 2 so he would order all the rest that would not amend. And thereunto the chancellor should answer and say unto the king, that ' one word of his grace's mouth should suffice them to be at commandment' And the king hastily and angrily answered that he would gladly bestow any words of 1 We have preferred to quote the above description of the performance as it took place in 1540, rather than to give the reader any account of the drama as it now stands, because it is evident from that description that the am >rk afterwards underwent great alterations. 2 Handled. Sir David Lindsay. 6g his mouth that could amend them." " I am also advertised by the same Mr. Bellenden," continued Sir William Eure, " that the King of Scots is fully minded to expel all spiritual men from having any authority of office under his grace, either in house- hold or elsewhere within the realm, and daily studieth and deviseth for that intent." 1 Seldom has a poet or a dramatist had greater success than Lindsay commanded on this remarkable occasion. The king was deeply impressed ; the reforming party in his council had their hands greatly strengthened ; and the bishops were fain to promise to their angry sovereign that they should be at his commandment. It seemed for a while as if a reformation was now at hand, and that James would at length be impelled by his sense of kingly duty to imitate the policy of his uncle, Henry VIII. Only one thing was wanting to make the triumph of the Poet-Reformer complete ; and that was the presence and humiliation of the cardinal. But Beaton, ever full of weighty affairs, was absent from the pastimes of the court on this occasion, and was spared the mortification of seeing Lindsay's success, and of listening to the rebuke of the king. At that very time he was in busy correspon- dence with his agents at Rome, and with the managers of the Vatican, to obtain the enormous powers of a legate a latere, in addition to all the power he already possessed as primate, cardinal, and legatus natus ; and, strange to say, the king was supporting him in his negotiation by letters to the Pope in his behalf. It is very puzzling to find that while James was holding such language to his bishops at Linlithgow, and was canvassing such designs as Bellenden speaks of among the laymen of his council, he could yet have authorized or warranted Beaton to speak of his views and wishes in such terms as the following. "We assure you," says he to Master Andrew Oliphant, his agent at Rome, " the king's grace has this 1 Stale Tapers, vol. v. p. 169, Letter oi Eure t<> Cromwell, dated 26th January, 1540. 70 The Scottish Reformation. matter right high in head and mind, for the common weal of this realm and subjects, and thinks, considering the great parts he keeps to the siege apostolick and obedience thereof, and maintenance of the faith catholick in this his realm, now in this most perilous time, that his grace should not be denied of his just and reasonable desires, which tend all utterly to the auctorization of the holy siege apostolick, and obedience of the Pope's Holiness, as head of the Church Catholick; and here- after with the first ships his grace will write of new to the Pope's Holiness hereupon, that it may be understood perfectly that this legation is desired by his grace specially, and not principally by us." x What can we conclude from contradictions so puzzling, but that the king's private conscience and his overt public policy were at this time on opposite sides of the great question of the age % In his conscience he could not defend the flagrant corruptions of the Church ; he felt, and at times he even confessed, that they demanded reform ; but the whole policy of his reign was founded upon the mistaken principle, that it was necessary for him to make sure of the support of the clergy, in order to keep in check the ambition of his nobles ; and to make sure of the clergy he was obliged to oppose himself to the demands of the Reformers. Beaton, with all his cruelty and ambition, was never so odious to him as the banished Douglases and their abettors ; and to escape the tyranny of a faction who would have domineered over the crown, he was willing to let his whole kingdom remain under the bondage of a persecuting church. It is evident that his heart some- times misgave him, in pursuing a policy so selfish and so pernicious to his people ; but to the last he could never summon up virtue and resolution enough to abandon it. It is certain that at the commencement of 1540, Beaton had 1 Sadler's State Papers and Letters, vol. i. p. 15. Two of the Cardinal's letters to Rome, dated 16 Nov. and ro Dec. 1539, had fallen into Henry's hands, and hence they appear in Sadler. Sir David Lindsay. 7 1 powerful rivals to counterwork him in the king's cabinet but it is equally certain that they were never able to supplant him in the king's confidence. He kept his place and power as prime minister of state to the last; and it was his fatal influence that brought on those tragical events which hurried the king's reign to a close too early for the expectations of the prince himself, but not too early for his oppressed and groaning kingdom. BortJivAcJc Castle. Section 9. Sir John Borthwick and the Scottish Nobility and Gentry. 1540 — 41. Soon after the success of the satire of the " Three Estates " at Linlithgow, and as if to turn to political account the good impressions which had been made on the mind of the king, Sir Ralph Sadler arrived at Holyrood on a special mission from Henry VIII. His instructions were to use his utmost efforts to detach the Scottish monarch from the policy of the cardinal, to induce him to imitate the example of ecclesiastical reform which Henry had set in the Church of England, and to obtain Sir John Borthwick. 73 from him a definite promise to meet his royal uncle in a personal interview at York. How he carried out these instructions, Sadler fully informs us in his interesting letters to Henry, still extant; and nothing was wanting on the part of so accomplished and experienced a negotiator to insure success. But he failed in every point of his mission, and the cardinal remained absolute master of the field. "I assure your majesty," writes Sadler, "he excused the cardinal in everything, and seemed wondrous loath to hear ot any thing that should sound as an untruth in him, but rather gave him great praise." When the ambassador sought to excite James's cupidity by pointing out the advantages which would result to his crown from the suppression of some of the Scottish monasteries, he cut him short with the curt reply, " By my troth, I thank God I have enough to live on, and if we need anything that the clergy have, we may have it at our pleasure." Sadler then began to " reprehend their idle life, their vices, and their abuses," but even on this the most vulnerable point of the king's defences, he was prepared to parry the ambassador's blow. " He interrupted me," says Sadler, and laughed, saying, ' By God,' quoth he, ' they that be naught, ye shall hear that I shall redress them, and make them live like religious men, according to their professions.' ' Sir,' quoth I, ' it will be hard to do.' 'Well,' quoth he, 'you shall hear tell;' and so began he to break off, as though he had no will to talk more thereof." A remarkable instance of the cardinal's power, and of the boldness with which he used it, occurred during Sadler's sojourn in Edinburgh. It was the season of Lent, and Sadler being "an evil fishman," as he expresses it, used a diet of eggs and whitemeats ; "whereupon the bishops and priests raised a bruit, that I and all my folks did eat flesh during Lent, and open proclamation was made, by the commandment of the cardinal, in all the churches within his dioceses, "that whosoever should buy an egg, or eat an egg, within those dioceses, should forfeit no less than his body to the fire, to L 74 The Scottish Reformation. be burnt as an heretick, and all his goods confiscate to the king." Still, the foundation of this exorbitant power was anything but secure. The very exorbitancy of it provoked opposition, and this opposition was nowhere more undisguised than in the court itself. The king sent Rothsay Herald to tell Sadler, " that whatsoever publications were made, the king's pleasure was, that he should eat what he would, and that victuals should be appointed to him of what he would eat ; " and when Sadler " thanked humbly his Grace," and assured Rothsay that if he thought it was any offence to a good conscience to eat eggs and whitemeats, he would be as loath to eat them as the holiest of the priests who thus had belied him. " Oh ! " exclaimed the king's messenger, scouting the idea of the holiness of the priests ; " Oh ! know ye not our priests % A mischief on them all. I trust," quoth he, " the world will amend here some day." " And thus," continues Sadler, " I had liberty to eat what I would." But these were trifling, though significant incidents, compared with other facts which the English Envoy observed on this occasion. He reported to a member of the Privy Council in England, that "the king himself was of a right good inclination," and so was a great part of the nobility and commonalty of the realm. Of the noblemen and gentlemen at court, who were "well given to the verity of Christ's word and doctrine, there was a great number." The only drawback was, that the noblemen so minded were still young, and Sadler saw "none amongst them that had any such agility of wit, gravity, learning, or experience, as to take in hand the direction of things ; so that the king was of force driven to use the bishops and the clergy, as his only ministers for the direction of the realm." But this was a drawback which time would mend. The young noblemen who sat at the king's council table, including the Earl of Errol, the Earl of Cassilis, and the Lord Erskine, would not be always young, nor would their high stomach always be content to see the whole power of the court and the state monopolised by the prelates. Sir John Borthwick. 75 Beaton, in truth, was uneasy, in the midst of all his apparent security. He felt the fabric of his dominion tremble to its foundations. These English embassies alarmed him. He dreaded the influence of Henry over his nephew, and he could not but feel what a formidable antagonist he had in the English king. Could he hope to be always able to thwart the wishes of Henry for a personal interview with James 1 Especially could he expect to do so, when Henry had an increasing number of men to abet his wishes and aims in James's own court and council ] No ! with all his seemingly immense power, the cardinal felt that he was not yet powerful enough. Hence his anxiety to be armed with the full faculties of a legation a latere, which would virtually make him a pope in the realm. And hence, too, a maxim of persecuting policy which he was now preparing to lay down, for the direction of his future action — that the church must not only strike heavily, but strike high. It was soon after the departure of Sadler from Holyrood, that Beaton conceived the daring design of singling out for persecution the heretics of the king's own court. It was now plain to him that to burn obscure evangelical friars, and to banish crowds of humble scholars addicted to the new learning, was not enough. To save the church, her lightnings must fall upon the tall pines and the lofty towers. To make sure of the king, he must find means to deprive him of all his reforming courtiers and councillors. As early as May, 1540, his plan of action was matured. Among the king's favourite attendants, Beaton had for some time regarded with an evil eye the accomplished knight, Sir John Borthwick. A younger son of William, third Lord Borthwick, Sir John had served with distinction in the army of France, where he had risen to be lieutenant of the French king's guard. At the Scottish court he was styled Captain Borthwick, and at the time of Sadler's visit, he was in close attendance upon the person of the king. He was a man of varied accomplishments ; a scholar as well as a soldier, a 76 The Scottish Reformation. theologian as well as a courtier. He had a library well replenished with the new books of the time, and it was imputed to him as a crime, that among these were the English New Testament and divers treatises of Erasmus, (Ecolampa- dius, and Melancthon. These books " he read and studied, as well openly as privately," and, being zealous for the truth, he was accused, no doubt quite justly, " of presenting and com- municating his books to others, and of instructing and teaching many christians in the same, to divert and turn them away" from what seemed to the clergy, "the true christian and catholic faith." Nor was this all. Sir John was guilty of a still heavier crime. He laboured hard to make a convert to Lutheranism of the king himself. He not only held and affirmed that the king should appropriate to himself all the possessions, lands, and rents of the church, " but for this end and purpose, he many times wrote unto the king, and with his whole endeavour persuaded him thereto." In a word, Sir John was a holder of what were then called, "the heresies of England," and had persuaded many persons to embrace the same ; " willing and desiring, and with his whole heart pray- ing, that the Church of Scotland might be brought to the same spirit and state, and to like ruin, as the Church of England was already come to." That Beaton should have been anxious to rid himself of such an enemy at court is not surprising. Borthwick was too formidable an ally of Henry to be allowed to remain un- challenged and unmolested in a position so near the ear of the king. He was formally accused of heresy, and summoned to appear at the primate's tribunal on the 28th of May. Would the king protect his own servant, and one of the chief ornaments of his court % If Borthwick reckoned upon the king's support he was disappointed. It was probably by the monarch's advice that he fled to England, and allowed judgment to pass against him by default. The tribunal sat with great pomp and solemnity on the appointed day at St. Andrews, and Sir John was not only condemned, and forfeited, and banished from the kingdom, Sir John Borthwick. 77 but his effigy was ignominiously burnt at the market crosses of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, " in token of malediction and curse, and for a perpetual remembrance of his obstinacy and condemnation." His " articles " were twelve in number, to all of which he afterwards wrote and published answers, dis- tinguished by eminent learning and ability. The piece con- stitutes indeed, one of the most interesting literary monuments of the early period of the Reformation. Borthwick lived to return to Scotland after the Reformation was accomplished ; was rehabilitated in his estates in 1561, and "ended his age with fulness of days about the year 1570, at St. Andrews, where, thirty years before, he had been burnt in effigy." Encouraged by the king's unworthy connivance on this occasion, the cardinal proceeded with all his wonted energy to follow up his advantage. While every Lutheran in the court trembled to see the king's indifference to the fate of his most faithful servants, Beaton was emboldened by it to open up to James the whole extent of his design. Having associated with himself several of the other prelates, they presented to the king a scroll containing the names of more than a hundred of the nobility of the kingdom, and other landed proprietors of inferior rank, who were all suspected or known to be favourers of heresy. It was their desire, they said, that proceedings should be taken against the whole of these men, with a view to the complete extirpation of heresy from the realm ; and they represented to the king the immense profits that would accrue to the crown from the forfeiture of so large a proportion of the landholders of the country. But with all his ability and knowledge of princes, Beaton had miscalculated the effect of this atrocious proposal. His anti-Lutheran zeal far outran the king's. James was shocked at the suggestion of such a wholesale scheme of execution and confiscation. His better nature revolted from it with horror, and broke forth in high indignation against his ruthless prelates. " Pack you, get you to your charges, reform your own lives, and be not instruments of discord between my nobility and me, or else, I 78 The Scottish Reformation. avow to God, I will reform you, if ever I hear such motion of you again." It was an answer, as Knox remarked, worthy of a prince. The bishops were " dashed and confounded by it, and ceased for a season to tempt him any further to consent to their wicked design." That such a scroll of noble and wealthy proscripts should have been exhibited to the king, is a fact which throws a flood of light upon the progress which the Reformation had made at this early period among the upper classes of the kingdom ; and it is one which ought to be borne in mind when we sit in judgment, as we are often summoned by unfriendly critics to do, upon the sincerity of the attachment of the Scottish nobility to reformation principles. The truth is, that the Scottish Reformation, even when viewed as a strictly religious move- ment, owed more to the aristocracy of the kingdom than to any other class. It was not a democratic movement in the sense of having originated in the lower ranks of the. people, or of having been chiefly sustained by their zeal and endurance. It began with Patrick Hamilton, a nobleman ; at the close of the Hamilton period, it numbered its adherents, among the nobility and gentry, by hundreds ; and down to the hour of its final triumph, almost all its leaders were men of superior family, as well as of superior culture. The Scottish Reformation has often been called an ascending movement, and so it was, in the sense that it did not commence with, or receive any aid or direction from the heads of the Church and the State. But it was a descending movement as well, because, beginning in the ranks of the aristocracy it penetrated downwards among the popular masses. In this respect the Reformation of the Scottish Church seemed to obey the law of Feudality, which was then so prominent a characteristic of all Scottish social life. The government of the kingdom was an aristocracy almost as much as it was a monarchy. The episcopacy of the Church being almost exclusively in the hands of the sons of the lesser barons, was only the ecclesiastical branch of the power and prerogative of the nobles. The temporal lords and the spiritual lords Sir Jo Jui Borthwick. 79 reduced to very narrow limits, between them, the power and prerogatives of the crown, and wielded an almost unrestricted dominion over the rights and liberties of the people. Scotland remained in the sixteenth century as feudal, in the spirit of her institutions and life, as she had been in the middle ages. It was perfectly natural then that her aristocracy should have been the prime movers in the great work of her Reformation, as in all her other important national affairs. The upper classes were still the chief seat and organ of the national life and energies. The lower classes were still content to follow in all things, in the wake of their liege lords. How natural then, that when the heart of the nation began to be stirred with a new religious life, it should have been the upper classes who furnished both the foremost champions, and the foremost persecutors of reform — both the Hamiltons and Borthwicks, who suffered death or banishment in its defence, and the Beatons and Dunbars who sought to stifle it in flames and blood ! Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh. Section 10. Death of James V., and the First Reforming Parliament. 1542 — 43. The king's withering rebuke had the effect of putting a stop, for a few months, to the violent proceedings of Beaton and the other bishops. But the clergy only delayed the execution of their designs ; they did not abandon them ; and they still had influence enough with the parliament which met in March, 1541, to procure the passing of several acts against heresy, which were greatly more oppressive and severe than any which pre- ceded them. By these new laws, all discussion on matters of Renewed Mission of Sadler. 8 1 religion was prohibited ; all persons were discharged from arguing against the authority of the pope, upon pain of death and confiscation of goods ; and all persons who were so much as suspected of heresy, were declared incapable of holding any office in the state. With these new statutes of the realm to back him, and expecting to be soon armed besides with all the plenary powers of Legatus a latere, Beaton did not yet despair of the safety of the church. But neither did Henry yet despair of defeating the cardinal by gaining over the king. Towards the end of 1541, Sir Ralph Sadler was again at Holyrood, upon the same mission as before. The instructions upon which he acted are still extant, and reveal the nature of the appeals which were now addressed to the reluctant monarch. Formerly, Henry had endeavoured to rouse his nephew's jealousy of Beaton's power, and to excite his cupidity by the prospect of enriching himsell with the church's superfluous wealth ; but on the present occasion, he addressed himself to feelings and sentiments still stronger than these — to the sensibilities and self-respect of the man, rather than of the prince. Sadler was instructed to urge upon him, " Not to think himself" — on subjects of religion — "as perchance sundry of his clergy would have him to do, as a brute or as a stock ; or to mistrust that his wits, which he had received from God, were not able to perceive Christ's word, which his grace hath left to us common, to be understood by all christian men, as well as by such as be learned in the Latin tongue and heathen authors. The king did not doubt but his good nephew, endowed with such reason and wit, may as well understand the effect of the true doctrine, and know the truth of things, as the most of the clergy, who are commonly led by the affection they have to their maintenance out of their prince's hand, and to the continuance of their authority in pomp and pride. Let his nephew, for his better knowledge of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy, no less mark and give credence to their works and deeds, than to their fair painted words ; and observing these, his highness had no doubt but he M 82 The Scottish Reformation. should find much ease and perfection of knowledge of the very- truth of the same ; for that should induce him to lean unto the pure Word of God, and to pass light upon dreams of men, abused by superstition to blind princes and other persons of much simplicity." There was much skill evinced in representations such as these, addressed to a young prince of superior talents and culture ; and they were not without some effect. In one point at least, Sadler had better success now than he had had before. James gave his consent to the long-desired interview, and came under a promise to meet his uncle at York, in the autumn of 1542. Now then at last there was a gleam of hope that Beaton's influence over the king would be destroyed, and that Henry would be able to induce his nephew to imitate his example as an ecclesiastical reformer. But it was only a gleam. Sadler was no sooner gone than the clergy once more recovered all their former influence in the king's councils. They had a powerful ally, it is to be remem- bered, in the young queen— the accomplished Mary of Lorraine, sister of the Duke of Guise ; a princess as able to sway the mind of her royal husband, by her talents and address, as she was deeply devoted to the service of the church of Rome. The absent Henry was too weak a rival to cope with such a queen as Mary of Guise, and such a prime minister as David Beaton. James relapsed once more, and finally, into his old policy of making common cause at any hazard with his clergy — a policy which had been the bane of his whole administration, and which was now to entail upon him disaster, humiliation, and ruin. The series of events which followed in 1542 — the king's breach of promise to meet Henry at York, after the latter had proceeded thither with his whole court ; Henry's high resent- ment at this affront, and declaration of war ; the invasion of Scotland, and the refusal of the nobles at Fala to revenge this invasion by a raid into England ; James's deep disgust at this refusal, and his still deeper chagrin at the disgraceful rout of Death of James V. 83 Solway-Moss, which shortly after ensued ; his profound and settled melancholy under these disasters, which was increased rather than diminished by the tidings of the birth of a princess as the heir of the throne ; and finally his death soon after, at Falkland, on the 16th of December; all these tragical events are well known to every reader of Scottish history, and need not be dwelt upon here. But they furnished a sadly true commentary upon the words which Sadler had been instructed to whisper into his ear the last time he was at Holyrood, "that the Bishop of Rome and his faction of cardinal and adherents cared not whether both uncle and nephew should consume each other, so that the holy father and his apostles might have their purpose. They loved him not, but only loved the commodity and profit which they might take of him ; they fed him with false confidences for their own purpose, to his great loss, dis- quiet and damage, and for a reward procured his destruction." The premature death of the king could not fail to prove an event of the highest consequence to the nation, in the existing condition of religious and political parties. A new scene of national life immediately opened ; a new struggle of parties instantly began. Who should be regent during the long minority of the crown % should it be Beaton, who exhibited the king's testament appointing him to the regency, along with a council of three of the nobles, including the young Earl of Arran, heir presumptive to the crown 1 or should it be the Earl of Arran himself, in virtue of his claim of hereditary right, and conformably to the laws and ancient usages of the kingdom 1 The conflict was sharp and short. Beaton's testament was pronounced a forgery by an assembly of the nobles hastily convened in Edinburgh in the interest of Arran ; and Arran was declared and proclaimed sole regent of the kingdom, as early as the 2 2d of December, 1542. The officers of the deceased king immediately delivered up to him the king's palaces, treasure, jewels, and plate. His regency was already an accomplished fact, and for once the cardinal, with all his promp- 84 The Scottish Reformation. titude and energy, was compelled to give way before a more fortunate rival, and to bide his time for remedy and redress. The success of Arran was owing to his popularity with a strong party of the nobles and gentry, and this popularity was due to his being a professed reformer. It was known that the cardinal had inscribed his name first upon the scroll of proscription, which the bishops had a second time proffered to the king shortly before his death ; and to the numerous party who were zealous for reform, this high distinction con- ferred by his rival seemed a title to the regency of almost equal consideration with his ancestral rank as premier peer of the realm. His success was hailed by the whole of this party as a glorious triumph. The hope of a happy era dawned brightly upon the nation, now that a professed reformer was placed at the head of affairs. Congratulations, thanksgivings, and sanguine expectations ran through thousands of hearts in all parts of the kingdom. The Regent's first acts gave promise of an early fulfilment of these sanguine hopes. Many of those whom he called to his councils and kept about his person — men like Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, Sir James Learmonth of Balcomy, Henry Balnaves of Halhill, Thomas Bellenden of Auchinoul, and Sir David Lindsay of the Mount — were men of earnest religious feeling and enlightened patriotism, and all in the highest degree solicitous to turn the present crisis to account for the interests both of the church and the state. Opening his ears to the wise counsel of such advisers, the Regent chose for his court-chaplains Thomas Guilliam and John Rough, both evangelical preachers, and whose frequent sermons in the Church of Holyrood were " in doctrine so wholesome, and against superstition so vehement," that the Grey Friars, and other lovers of the old darkness, " rowped as they had been ravens," crying out "heresy, heresy; Guilliam and Rough will carry the governor to the devil." He summoned the Estates of the realm to meet on an early day, and prepared measures to submit to them in the interest of religious liberty Parliament of 1543. 85 and reform ; and having learned that the disappointed cardinal had commenced intrigues with France to obtain assistance for the suppression of his government, he suddenly apprehended his powerful rival, and committed him to custody in the Castle of Dalkeith, and afterwards in Blackness — a bold stroke, which inspired his enemies with a wholesome opinion of his resolution and energy. What a revolution ! The cardinal-primate in prison, the gospel in the pulpit of Holyrood, reformers all round the council-table, and a parliament summoned which is expected to begin the great work of the Reformation of the Church ! The Three Estates assembled at Edinburgh on the 12th of March, 1543. They met as usual in the Tolbooth — an ancient building which stood close to the west side of the church of St. Giles. Sir George Douglas, brother of the Earl of Angus, who had hastened down from London to be present, spoke of the meeting " as the most substantial parliament that ever was seen in Scotland in any man's remembrance, and best furnished with all the Three Estates." The only man of eminent rank who was absent was the Earl of Argyle, who was "sore sick." It was felt that a national crisis had come, and men of all ranks and parties hurried to the field of legislative contest. High questions of state came up first for decision — the confirmation of Arran's regency, the appointment of tutors for the infant queen, the appointment of an embassy to Henry VIII. to negotiate touching a projected marriage between Prince Edward and the infant Queen Mary, the recall and re-habilitation in his estates and honours of the long-banished Earl of Angus. On these measures we cannot dwell. We must confine ourselves to the ecclesiastical deliberations of this important parliament. Fore- most among the champions of religious liberty stood Lord Maxwell. His frequent intercourse, as warden of the West Marches, with the ministers and commissioners of Henry VIII., and his recent sojourn in London as one of the prisoners of Solway-Moss, had predisposed him in favour of the " Heresies of England;'' and his name is honourably recorded in the rolls of parliament as the nobleman who submitted to " the Lords of 86 TJie Scottish Reformation. the Articles," the draft of an act to make it lawful to all the lieges to possess and to read the Word of God in their mother tongue. The proposal excited long and animated discussions, and of these Knox has given us so graphic and lively an account, that no words can better depict them to the reader. " Question was raised in the Parliament, of the abolishing of certain tyrannical acts made before, at devotion of the prelates, for maintaining of their kingdom of darkness — to wit, That under pain of heresy no man should read any part of the Scriptures in the English tongue, neither yet any tractate or exposition of any place of Scripture. Such articles began to come in question, we say, and men began to inquire if it Was not as lawful to men that understood no Latin, to use the word of their salvation in the tongue they understood, as it was for Latin men to have it in Latin, and Grecians or Hebrews to have it in their tongues 1 It was answered that the kirk first had forbidden all tongues but these three. But men demanded when that inhibition was given, and what council had ordained it ; considering that in the days of Chrysostom he complains that the people used not the Psalms and other holy books in their own tongues. And if ye will say they were Greeks and understood the Greek tongue, we answer that Christ Jesus commanded his word to be preached to all nations; and if it ought to be preached to all nations, it must be preached in the tongue they understand. Now, if it be lawful to preach it, and to hear it preached in all tongues, why shall it not be lawful to read it, and to hear it read in all tongues 1 to the end that the people may try the spirits according to the commandment of the Apostle. Beaten with these and other reasons, they denied not but it may be read in the vulgar tongue, provided that the translation were true. It was demanded what could be reprehended in it 1 And when much searching was made, nothing could be found but that love, say they, was put in the place of charity. When the question was asked what difference was betwixt the one and the other, and if they understood the nature of the Greek term < agape,' they were dumb. Reasoned Parliament of 1543. 87 for the party of the seculars the Lord Ruthven, a stout and discreet man in the cause of God, and maister Henry Balnaves, an old professor. For the party of the clergy, the Dean of Restalrig, and certain old bosses with him. The conclusion was, that the commissioners of Burghs, and a part of the nobility, required of the Parliament that it might be enacted, That it should be lawful to every man to use the benefit of the translation which then they had of the Bible and New Testa- ment, together with the benefit of other treatises containing wholesome doctrine, until such time as the prelates and kirk- men should give and set forth unto them a translation more correct. The clergy long repugned hereto; but in the end, convicted by reasons and by multitude of votes opposed to them, they also condescended ; and so, by Act of Parliament, it was made free to every man and woman to read the Scriptures in their own tongue, or in the English tongue, and so were all Acts made to the contrary abolished." l "This," continues Knox, "was no small victory of Christ Jesus, fighting against the conjured enemies of his verity, and no small comfort to such as before were holden in such bondage that they durst not have read the Lord's prayer, the ten commandments, nor the articles of their faith in the English tongue, but they should have been accused of heresy. Then might have been seen the bible lying almost upon every gentle- 1 In addition to the names of Lord Maxwell, Lord Ruthven, and Balnaves, those of the zealous commissioners of burghs who acted along- with them have also been recorded, and deserve to be recounted with gratitude in every commemoration of the nation's deliverance from the Papal yoke. The following were the commissioners of Burghs who sat among " The Lords of the Articles," who prepared and recommended the measure to the Parliament : — William Adamson and George Henderson for Edinburgh ; James Learmonth, Provost of St. Andrews ; William Hamilton, Provost of Ayr ; the Constable of Dundee, i.e. Sir John Scrymgeour ; Robert Myln for Dundee ; Thomas Menzies, Provost of Aberdeen ; Thomas Jameson foi Perth ; David Lindsay (the Poet) for Cupar ; William Alison, Provost of Jedburgh. 88 The Scottish Reformation. man's table. The New Testament was borne about in many men's hands. We grant that some, alas ! profaned that blessed word, for some that perchance had never read ten sentences in it, had it maist common in their hand ; they would chop their familiars on the cheek with it, and say, 'This has lain hid under my bed-feet these ten years.' Others would glory, ' O, how oft have I been in danger for this book ! How secretly have I stolen from my wife at midnight to read upon it !' And this was done of many to make court thereby, for all men esteemed the governor to have been the most fervent Protestant that was in Europe. Albeit, we say, that many abused that liberty granted of God miraculously; yet thereby did the knowledge of God wondrously increase, and God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance. Then were set forth works in our awin tongue, besides those that came from England, that did disclose the pride, the craft, the tyranny, and abuses of that Roman Antichrist." On the 19th day of March, 1543, appeared the following proclamation of the Regent of the kingdom. GUBERNATOR. Clerk of Register. It is our will and we charge you, that ye gar proclaim this day at the mercat cross of Edinburgh, the Acts made in our Sovereign lady's Parliament, that should be proclaimed and given forth to her lieges ; and in special, the Act made for having of the New Testament in vulgar tongue, with certain additions, and thereafter give forth the copies thereof authentic, as effeiris, to all them that will desire the samyn, and insert this our command and charge in the books of Parliament for your warrant. Subscrivit with our own hand at Edinburgh, the 19th day of March, the year of God 1543 years. JAMES G. Thus happily closed the Hamilton period of the Reforma- tion. The blood of the first noble martyr, and of so many other good men, had not been shed in vain; nor in vain Close of the Hamilton Period. 89 had the truth by so many different agencies been intro- duced and disseminated throughout the realm. The success obtained in this Parliament seemed to men almost miracu- lous. The truth of God was at length in the ascendant in the councils of the nation, and legislation began to flow in Reformation channels. The cheering prospect which was thus opened was indeed soon overcast. The cardinal still lived to oppose the good cause, and the Regent was soon to prove himself no match against Beaton's powers of obstruction and intrigue. A few months sufficed to change the whole aspect of public affairs, and to cover the ecclesiastical firmament again with storm-clouds. Still, much of what was now gained to the cause of religious liberty, was never again lost. However low the outward fortunes of the Reformation afterwards fell, the strong hold which its principles now obtained upon the national mind, could never again be seriously relaxed ; nor could it ever be deprived of two capital advantages now gained for it ; — the virtual recognition, by Act of Parliament, of the fundamental principle of the Reformation, that the Word of God is the supreme standard of religious truth ; and the concession by statute of the fundamental Protestant right, that every man, woman, and child in the kingdom, should be free to possess, and to make use of the vernacular Bible. N Chapel and Well of St. Palladius in Fordoun Gh n. CHAPTER THE SECOND. THE WTSHART PERIOD. A.D. 1 543 1554- Section i. Life of George Wis hart to 1543. When the commissioners sent by the Scottish Parliament to London to negotiate the marriage of Edward and Mary re- turned to Scotland, in July, 1543, they brought home with them an exiled countryman, whom Knox has characterised in George Wishart. pi the following glowing terms: "A man of such graces, as before him were never heard within this realm, and are rare to be found yet in any man, notwithstanding the great light of God that since his days has shined unto us ; a man singularly learned, as well in godly knowledge as in all honest human science." Such was George Wishart — with whose return to Scotland at this date, commences the Wishart period of the Scottish Refor- mation. Neither the place nor the date of his birth has been recorded, but he was probably born at the house of Pitarrow, in the Mearns, about the year 15 12. The family of the Wisharts of Pitarrow was ancient and honourable, and had produced several eminent men for the service of the church and the state. Sir James Wishart, the father of the reformer, was a man of ability and learning, and held for ten years — between 1513 and 1524 — the high judicial office of Lord Justice Clerk. The house of Pitarrow stood at no great distance from the ancient church of St. Palladius, in the beautiful Glen of Fordoun, and George Wishart must have been early familiar with the popular super- stitions connected with the shrine and the holy well of that long-honoured saint. So recently as the days of Archbishop Shevez, the relics of St. Paldy, as he was popularly called, had been deposited in a silver shrine by that prelate upon occa- sion of his making a pilgrimage to the sacred spot — a proof that the worship of the saint was still flourishing in the reign of James the Third. The place of Wishart's education is not certainly known, but may be conjectured with great probability to have been King's College, Aberdeen. It is known that he had acquired early in life a knowledge of the Greek tongue, and King's College was the only university in Scotland at that time, where such an accomplishment could be obtained. He was early associated in these humanising studies with John Erskine of Dun, who had the honour of being one of the first promoters of Greek learning in Scotland. The two families of Dun and Pitarrow were near neighbours, and were allied by intermarriage. Young 9 2 The Scottish Reformation. Erskine and Wishart grew up together from childhood : a con- nexion which was afterwards closely cemented by the intel- lectual and religious congeniality of their riper years. Wishart was an instance of what was then no uncommon occurrence in Europe, viz. for noblemen, and the sons of noble- men, to devote themselves to the task of classical instruction. Erskine had resolved, as Provost of Montrose, to introduce the teaching of Greek into the grammar school of that ancient burgh, and he found an able and zealous teacher in his friend and fellow-student. Wishart was engaged for some years in that useful office; and it is a curious fact that even after he had reached the more exalted honours of a great preacher, and a venerated martyr, he still continued to be spoken of, at least in that district of the country, as " the Schoolmaster of Montrose." 1 Unfortunately for the first Greek grammar school in Scot- land, it was then considered a heresy by the bishops to teach Greek, and particularly the Greek Testament, which was Wish- art's text book. In 1538, the schoolmaster was summoned by John Hepburn, Bishop of Brechin, to answer to such a charge. David Beaton, as we have seen, was then Chief Inquisitor of the kingdom, and took care that all the bishops of his province should imitate his own example of unrelenting bigotry. But Wishart, though a zealous Grecian, did not think it his duty to suffer martyrdom for the teaching of Greek, and wisely con- sulted his safety by withdrawing into England. We next meet with him in Bristol, in the following year, 1539, engaged as a public lecturer and preacher in several of the churches of that city. The Deanery of Bristol was at that time a part of the diocese of Worcester, and Latimer was then the bishop of the see ; and, in the absence of any other expla- nation of the curious fact that the Scottish exile should turn up 1 The late Patrick Chalmers, Esq., of Aldbar, came into possession of an ancient clock, which had descended for generations in a Montrose family "f the name of Barclay, and which had been always spoken of in the family ashavingonce belonged to "George Wishart, the Schoolmaster of Montrose." George Wis hart. 93 as a lecturer there, the conjecture may be allowed, that he had been recommended by one or other of his numerous fellow- exiles to the zealous Protestant bishop, and that Latimer had given him a faculty to preach in his diocese. 1 However this may have been, there is evidence of the most authentic kind for a singular fact connected with Wishart's sojourn in Bristol, which was left unrecorded by all our early historians ; and which, though referred to by several writers of our own time, has never hitherto been set in a correct light. While at Bristol, Wishart was publicly accused and convicted of setting forth doctrines which were heretical, in the sense of being not merely opposed to the teaching of the Romish Church, but to the teaching and truth of the Word of God. The following record of this fact is found entered in "The Mayor's Calendar" of Bristol; a very ancient volume, in which have been chronicled for centuries the names of the municipal authorities of the city, and occasional incidents which occurred during the successive mayoralties. 2 " 30. Henry VIII. That this year, the 15 May, a Scot, named George Wysard, set furth his lecture in St. Nicholas Church of Bristowe, the most blasphemous heresy that ever was herd, openly declarying that Christ nother hath nor coulde merite for him, nor yet for us ; which heresy brought many of the commons of this town into a great error, and divers of them were persuaded by that heretical lecture to heresy. Whereupon, the said stiff-necked Scot was accused by Mr. John Kerne, deane of the said diocese of Worcester, and soon after he was sent to the most reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, before whom and others, that is to signify, the 1 The author had hoped to find Wishart's name mentioned in Latimer's register at Worcester; but on inspecting it, neither his name nor that of any other of the Scottish protestant exiles was to be found. 2 The author inspected the original record, in possession of the corpo- ration of Bristol, with his own eyes, and can vouch for the entire accuracy of the transcript as here given. Many months afterwards, he found that it had been transcribed and printed by Mr. Sever, in his Memoirs of Bristol, and that this transcript agreed in every parttculai with his own. 94 The Scottish Reformation. Bishops of Bath, Norwich, and Chichester, with others as doctors ; and he before them was examined, convicted and condemned in and upon the detestable heresy above mentioned ; whereupon, he was injoyned to bere a fagot in St. Nicholas church aforesaid, and the parish of the same, the 13 July, anno fore- mentioned ; and in Christ church and parish thereof, the 20 July, abovesaid following ; which injunction was duly executed in aforesaid." The acccuray of this original record is confirmed by the following letter from the Mayor of Bristol, for the year 1539, which is still extant among the papers of Lord Cromwell, to whom it was addressed. 1 " Pleaseth it your honourable lordship to be advertised, that certain accusations are made and had by Sir John Kerell, Dean of Bristowe, deputy of the Bishop of Worcester, our ordinary, and by divers others, inhabitants of Bristowe fore- said, against one George Wischarde, a Scottishman born, lately being before your honourable lordship. Which accusations the said Dean and other inhabitants aforesaid have presented before me the mayor of Bristowe, and justices of peace; and the same accusations I have received, sending the same unto your said honourable lordship ; and furthermore, the chamberlain and the Dean of Bristowe shall signify unto your honourable lordship, the very truth in the premises, unto whom we shall desire you to give credence. And thus our Lord preserve your honourable lordship in health and wealth, according unto your own heartiest desire. At Bristowe, the ix day of June, Anno Regis Henrici VIII, xxxi. 2 Be me Thomas Jeffryis, Mayor of Brystowe. 1 Attention was first called to this letter by Mr. Froude, in his History of England in the reign of Henry VIII. The transcript given above has been made by the author from the original, in the Rolls' office, Chancery Lane. 2 In the Mayor's Calendar, the date given is 30 Henry ; in the above letter it is 31 Henry. The latter is no doubt correct. The entry may not have been made in the calendar till some time after, when the exact date was forgotten. The 31- Henry corresponds with 1539. George Wis hart. 95 It does not admit of a doubt then, that Wishart had fallen at this early period of his life, while his views of divine truth were still immature, into some serious misapprehension on the subject of the merits of Christ, and the way o f human re- demption. If the popish churchmen of Bristol had been his only judges, we might have been justified in receiving with hesitation so strange an accusation, because he was no doubt even then a vigorous opponent of popish doctrines ; and it was, probably, his zeal in attacking the doctrine of mediatory merit in the case of the Romish saints, which carried him into the here- tical extreme of denying the mediatory merit of the Redeemer himself. But as he was sent up to London to be tried by a tribunal over which Cranmer presided, it is only fair to conclude that the sentence which that tribunal pronounced upon him was just. If the Protestant preacher had been misunderstood or calumniated by his enemies, the Protestant archbishop would have protected him from their malice. Wishart himself acknow- ledged the justice of the sentence, by publicly recanting his error in the very churches where he had promulgated it. But this account of Wishart's conduct at Bristol is very dif- ferent from the version of it which has hitherto been current. It has long been supposed that what Wishart preached against there, was the mediatory merit of the Virgin Mary, and that what he publicly recanted twice over was the Protestant doc- trine upon that subject, a doctrine which he no doubt believed to be true and scriptural at the very time he was supposed to have ignominiously recanted it. The difficulty of accounting for Cranmer's condemnatory sentence, was, upon this supposition, insuperable ; and equally so was the difficulty of vindicating the conduct of the Reformer in publicly declaring to be false, what he could not but know to be the truth of God. Still, the record in "The Mayor's Calendar" was thought to be decisive upon the point. But it is now ascertained that this reading of the Calendar was an entire mistake ; and curiously enough, a serious misunderstanding of history, which has now been current for nearly half a century, is found to have arisen 96 The Scottish Reformation. from the misreading of a single word, nay, of a single letter of the original chronicle. 1 The incident, thus cleared of misapprehension, leaves the character of the Reformer for sincerity and fortitude without a stain. It reveals indeed the unripeness of his views of Gospel truth at that early period of his life ; he had fallen into a serious error of judgment, and he had incurred just censure for rashly proclaiming so dangerous an error to the uninstructed multitude. But he now stands acquitted of all imputation upon his firmness and integrity. When Cranmer and his other judges condemned him to abjure his error at their bar, he honestly abjured it. When he publicly recanted it at Bristol, his recantation was sincere. It was an error which he re- canted, not a truth. Instead of diminishing our admiration ot his heroism as a confessor of the faith, the incident enhances it ; for it shows that he was as ready to brave the ignominy of a public recantation in the interest of truth, as he afterwards showed himself prepared to suffer the disgrace and the horror of a heretic's death, in the same service. If Wishart's views of divine truth were still somewhat un- settled upon some important points, and he had not yet learned to draw accurately the lines of distinction between Scripture truths and Rome's corruptions of them, it was a happy arrangement of Providence which led him, on leaving 1 A gentleman of Bristol, who sent a copy of the entiy in the Mayor's Calendar to the late Dr. McCrie, had read it thus: " openly declaring that Christ's Mother hath not, nor could merit for him, nor yet for us." He read m other for mother (the old form of neither), and then, unable to make sense of the words, he inserted the negative "not" after "hath," think- ing himself, no doubt, justified in doing so by the following "nor." A second examination of the word which he took to be mother, would have revealed his mistake ; because, though the writing is extremely minute, it is remarkably distinct and clear, especially when read through a glass. The eminent historian to whom the copy was sent, relying upon its accuracy, and having no opportunity of examining the original for himself, pub- lished it in his notes to the Life of Knox in the form in which he had received it. George Wis hart. 97 England, in 1540, to visit the Reformed Churches of Switzer- land. These Churches were now far advanced in Christian knowledge and life. When prematurely bereaved of Zwingle and CEcolampadius, they had found a worthy successor to these great and good men in Henry Bullinger ; and Bullinger, building upon the foundations which his predecessors had laid, in the same spirit as the founders, had raised up a goodly fabric of Church discipline and order, which was the admira- tion of evangelical visitors from all the Reformed countries of Europe. The First Helvetic Confession became the subject of Wish- art's careful study, during his sojourn in the Cantons ; and he gave an unmistakeable proof of his approbation of its teaching, by executing a translation of it into his mother-tongue. Nor is it difficult to trace the influence of that Confession in his sub- sequent public teaching. The great prominence which he was wont to give on all occasions to the Word of God, as the only legitimate source and standard of Christian truth, corresponded exactly with the spirit of the Swiss Confession ; and no less so did the distinctness and decision of his doctrine on the subject of the Sacraments. In a word, the effect of his visit to Switzer- land seems to have been to give to his theological views the characteristics of the Helvetic type of doctrine, as distinguished from the German or Lutheran type ; and this fact had an im- portant influence in the long run, upon the Confessional characteristics of the Reformed Scottish Church. It was during his sojourn on the Continent that an incident occurred, which he afterwards referred to, shortly before his martyrdom. " I once chanced," said he, " to meet with a Jew when I was sailing upon the waters of Rhine. I inquired of him what was the cause of his pertinacie, that he did not believe that the true Messiah was come, considering that they had seen all the prophecies which were spoken of him, to be fulfilled ; moreover, the prophecies taken away and the sceptre of Judah 1 By many other testimonies of the Scripture I vanquished him, and approved that Messiah was come — the same which they o 98 The Scottish Refortnation. called Jesus of Nazareth. The Jew answered again unto me, 'When Messiah cometh, He shall restore all things, and He shall not abrogate the Law which was given to our fathers, as ye do. For why % We see the poor almost perish through hunger among you, yet you are not moved with pity towards them ; but among us Jews, though we be poor, there are no beggars found. Secondarily, it is forbidden by the Law to fame any kind of nagery of things in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the sea under the earth, but one God only to honour ; but your sanctuaries and churches are full of idols. Thirdly, a piece of bread baken upon the ashes ye adore and worship, and say that it is your god.' " These Jewish censures upon the practice of Christendom, appear to have made a deep impression upon Wishart. He never forgot them. He used to refer to them in his preaching, as a proof of the bad impression which was made upon the minds of unbelievers, by the use of images in Christian worship, and by the Popish doctrine of the Real Presence ; and it is not improbable that words which he quoted so often as a lesson to others, may have made some salutary impression, when he first heard them, upon himself. It is certain that Wishart became, in his own person, an eminent instance of that humane concern for the poor, with the want of which the Jew reproached the Christian world at large ; and no less so of that zeal against religious " imagery " and bread- worship, of which the latter had set him so fervent an example. Having returned to England, probably late in 1541, Wishart repaired to Cambridge, and took up his residence in Corpus Christi, or Bene't College. It was no time to think of returning to Scotland, for the Cardinal was still at the pinnacle of his despotic power. But there were many devout students of the Word of God in the colleges of Cambridge ; and there, amidst studious shades, and in the enjoyment of the society of men of congenial spirit, he could wait for the arrival of better times for his persecuted country. He went to Cambridge, however, not only to study, but to teach ; and among his pupils there was one Emery Tylney, who George Wis hart. 99 conceived for him the deepest veneration and love. To this affectionate scholar we are indebted for an account of his person, character, and habits of life, which, for its minuteness of detail, and graphic truth of description, is of great biographical value. It was contributed by Tylney, many years afterwards, to Fox's Book of Martyrs, and it was well worthy of a place in that great gallery of Christian worthies. "About the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred forty and three, there was in the university of Cambridge one Maister George Wishart, commonly called Maister George of Bennet's College, who was a man of tall stature, polled- headed, and on the same a round French cap of the best. Judged of melancholy complexion by his physiognomy, black- haired, long-bearded, comely of personage, well-spoken after his country of Scotland, courteous, lowly, lovely, glad to teach, desirous to learn, and was well travelled ; having on him for his habit or clothing, never but a mantle, frieze gown to the shoes, a black Milan fustian doublet, and plain black hosen, coarse new canvas for his shirts, and white falling bands and cuffs at the hands, all the which apparel he gave to the poor ; some weekly, some monthly, some quarterly, as he liked, saving his French cap, which he kept the whole year of my being with him. He was a man modest, temperate, fearing God, hating covetousness, for his charity had never end, night, noon, nor day ; he forbore one meal in three, one day in four for the most part, except something to comfort nature ; he lay hard upon a puff of straw, coarse new canvas sheets, which, when he changed, he gave away. He loved me tenderly, and I him for my age, as effectually. He taught with great modesty and gravity, so that some of his people thought him severe, and would have slain him, but the Lord was his defence. And he, after due correction for their malice, by good exhortation amended them, and he went his way. O that the Lord had left him to me his poor boy, that he might have finished that he had begun ! For in his religion he was, as you see here, in the rest of his life, when he went into Scotland ioo The Scottish Reformation. with divers of the nobility that came for a treaty to King Henry VIII. His learning was no less sufficient than his desire ; always prest and ready to do good in that he was able, both in the house privately and in the schools publicly, professing and reading divers authors. If I should declare his love to me and all men, his charity to the poor in giving, relieving, caring, helping, providing, yea, infinitely studying how to do good unto all and hurt to none, I should sooner want words than just cause to commend him. All this I testify with my whole heart and truth, of this godly man." What a noble instrument of good to his country had God prepared in " Maister George of Bennet College !" "a character like Latimer or Tyndale," and a man sealed like them to be a sacrifice for the salvation of his native land. On the tiptoe of expectation he awaited God's call. The arrival of these am- bassadors at the English court was the signal of Providence, that his long wished for hour of opportunity was come. He hastened from Cambridge to join them in London ; and sym- pathising in the joy of their successful embassy — a success which promised a lasting peace and a common crown to the two kingdoms, as well as an intimate alliance in the work of Religious Reform — he set off with them for Scotland, where the whole party arrived before the end of July, 1543. Blackness Castle. Section 2. Apostasy of the Regent, and Commencement of Wishart's Ministry. 1543 — 1544. When the commissioners returned to Edinburgh, they found the Regent mistrusted, and his court abandoned by the friends of the Gospel and of the English alliance. Kirkaldy, Bellenden, Lindsay, Durham, the court physician, and Borthwick, the king's advocate, had all become sensible of a change in the regent's disposition towards his former advisers, and had been com- pelled by the insults of the Hamiltons, who crowded his court, to withdraw. 102 The Scottish Reformation. When Arran entered upon his high office, he was a young and untried man, and a few months of power had sufficed to reveal the weakness of his character, and his great deficiency in steadiness and resolution. As yet only a novice in the religion of the Reformers, and occupying a position of great delicacy and danger, where it was easy for abler men than himself to make him believe that his worldly interests were opposed to his religious profession, he soon began to waver in his attachment to the cause of reform. His brother, John Hamilton, abbot of Paisley, who had returned to Scotland from Paris in the month of April, proved his evil genius. A zealous Papist, and a man of talent and address, the abbot was more than a match for the feeble earl, and was soon able to poison his mind against the wise and patriotic men who had hitherto been his accepted councillors. The palace was filled with gentlemen of the name of Hamilton, who were easily brought to assist in carrying on the abbot's crafty designs, and who, on one occasion, made bold to tell the Regent, in the presence of some of the men to whom he had hitherto given his confidence, " that neither he nor his friends would ever be at quietness till a dozen of these knaves who abused his grace were hanged." When such language was heard by Arran without censure, a change in his public policy could not be far distant. He was soon induced by the abbot to dismiss his Protestant chaplains ; when Rough withdrew to the district of Kyle, and Guilliam to England. This took place in April. Then he allowed the cardinal to regain his liberty, permitting him to be transferred from the fortress of Blackness to his own castle of St. Andrews, where he was really his own master, though kept, for the sake of appearances, under the pretended custody of Lord Seton, who was a zealous Papist ; a liberty which Beaton instantly made use of to prepare a threatening demonstration of the nobility and clergy against the English match and alliance. In a word, the Regent had now put himself entirely into the hands of men, who soon after, as Knox says, " led him so far from God, that he falsified his promise to the English Apostasy of the Regent. 103 king, dipt his hands in the blood of the saints of God, and brought the commonwealth to the point of utter ruin." It was only by degrees, however, that he advanced to these extremes of perfidy. The embassy sent to Henry had not acted solely in the Regent's name, but as commissioners from the Three Estates, and Arran was too timid and irresolute to take the bold step of repudiating the contract into which they had entered with the English king. He must needs for a time dissemble his altered views, and appear to concur, as even the cardinal and his party pretended for a time to do, in a ratifi- cation of the treaty. He summoned a convention of the nobles at Holyrood, and submitted the contract to their judg- ment and approval. On the 25th of August, 1543, both the Match and the Peace were solemnly ratified in the abbey church, " and that nothing should lack that might fortify the matter, was Christ's body broken betwixt the Governor and Maister Sadler, Ambassador, and received of them both, as a sign and token of the unity of their minds, inviolably to keep that contract in all points, as they looked of Christ to be saved, and afterwards to be reputed men worthy of credit before the world." Sadler dined with the Regent after the solemnity was over, and reported to Henry, in a letter written the same day, that Arran, referring to the oath which he had just taken, declared " that if all the rest of the realm should be against it, he alone would shed his blood and spend his life in the obser- vation thereof." " In which case," he added, " if he should be pursued by the cardinal and his accomplices, he must needs make his refuge to his majesty, without whose help and aid he should not be able to withstand their malice ; but his trust was, that all should be well." These words betrayed his inward uneasiness, and half revealed to the sagacious ambassador his treacherous design. In fact, the Regent was revolving in his thoughts much more seriously the power of his enemies, and the dangers which were now threatening his own authority, than the obligations of honour and truth which lay upon his conscience, in relation to the English king. He dreaded the 104 The Scottish Reformation. issue, to himself, of an open struggle between the cardinal's party, and the party of the English alliance. He saw many indications of the unpopularity of the policy which had led to the treaty which he had just concluded. The clergy had suc- ceeded but too well in rousing among the people the old feelings of national jealousy and antipathy against their "auld enemies of England ;" and the Regent came at last to the con- clusion that, in order to save himself, it was indispensable to reconcile himself to the cardinal, and break with the king. To keep his word and suffer for it, was a pitch of honour to which his virtue as a man and a governor proved wholly unequal. Affairs soon came to a crisis. On the 28th of August, Sadler informed his royal master that " the adverse party had already a great advantage over the friends of England : they were already gathered, and were ready to set forward, intend- ing to be at Stirling on an early day." But Arran was still loud in his professions of devotion to Henry. "No prince alive had, nor should have, his heart and service, but your majesty only ; alledging plainly, that of force he must adhere to your majesty, for he had lost all other friends in the world besides, and without your majesty's aid and supportance, he was in great danger of overthrow." Alas, for the faith of princely protestations ! In eight days thereafter Sadler wrote again from Edinburgh, to tell that " the governor was now revolted to the cardinal and his complices. On Monday last, after that Sir John Campbell of Lundy, and the Abbot of Pittenweem had been here with the governor, with letters from the cardinal, the said governor, the same day towards night, departed hence suddenly, alledging that he would go to the Blackness to his wife, who, as he said, laboured of child ; and yesterday he rode to my lord Livingston's house, which is betwixt Linlithgow and Stirling, where the cardinal and the Earl of Murray met with him, and very friendly embracings were betwixt them, with also a good long communication. And then they departed from thence alto- gether to Stirling, where they now be." Apostasy of the Regent 105 At Stirling, "the unhappy man," says Knox, "beaten with the temptations brought to bear upon him, rendered himself to the appetites of the wicked ; subjected himself to the cardinal and his counsels ; received absolution, renounced his pro- fession of Christ's Holy Evangel, and violated his oath for observation of the contract and league with England." All men stood amazed at the disgraceful deed. The friends of the Reformation were plunged into distress by such a sudden disappointment of their most cherished hopes. The king of England was roused to a transport of resentment, and made a vow of revenge, which he was not slow to fulfil with all the terrors of invasion and war. The suddenness and completeness of the Regent's apostasy took the cardinal himself by surprise • he was for a time even embarrassed by his unexpected success. Cal- culating upon a much more protracted struggle, he had intrigued with the Earl of Lennox, to bring him over from France as a rival to Arran ; holding out to him not only the promise of the regency, but also the prospect of a marriage with the dowager queen. But when the earl by-and-bye arrived, and found Arran and Beaton reconciled, and no hope remaining of his being able to realise these splendid objects of ambition, he naturally vented upon the cardinal the bitterness of his chagrin; and his revenge threatened for a time to give serious disturbance to the unholy league which had now been consum- mated between the governor and the clergy. It was in the midst of all these vicissitudes of hope and fear for the cause of reform, that George Wishart began his labours as a preacher of the Gospel. " The beginning of his doctrine was in Montrose," the scene of his former labours, and where the remembrance of his early learning and zeal must have predis- posed the minds of many to listen to his teaching with favour. The topics of his discourse, as he tells us himself, were chiefly the Ten Commandments of God, the Twelve Articles of the Faith in the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer." Unfor- tunately, there is not a single trace remaining in the records of the town, by which we might be able to estimate the effects p 106 The Scottish Reformation. which his ministrations produced. But their fruits were no doubt considerable, for Montrose ever afterwards displayed a steady attachment to the cause of reform. The minds of the population had long been under training to welcome such a ministration as Wishart's. Montrose, as we formerly saw, was one of the earliest towns in Scotland to receive importations of the English Testament. It was one of the first to have teachers able to teach, and scholars willing to learn, the Greek Scriptures. The Erskines of Dun, who took a lead in its municipal affairs, had long been gained to the side of religious truth, and other pious families of good estate in the neighbourhood, such as the Melvilles of Baldowey, the Stratons of Lauriston, and the Wisharts of Pitarrow, all contributed their influence in the same direction. Indeed, so strong had been the demonstrations of Lutheran opinion and feeling as early as 1540, that in that year, the Monastery of Black Friars, near the town, then under the rule of Prior Robert Borthwick, had found it necessary to obtain from James V. a special patent of protection for them- selves and all their possessions and goods, movable and immovable — a curious document which is still extant. 1 From Montrose Wishart passed to Dundee, where his preaching attracted much attention, and called forth "great admiration of all who heard him." He chose for his subject the Epistle to the Romans, which he appears to have expounded consecutively from chapter to chapter — the first example given in Scotland of the expository lecture; a method of pulpit instruc- tion which continues in high favour among her people to the present day. Wishart had seen this method practised in the pulpits of Switzerland, for we know that it was Bullinger's habit, as it had been Zwingle's before him, to lecture in the 1 It is much to be regretted that neither the Burgh Records of Montrose nor Dundee go back so far as the time of the Reformation. The author searched them both for notices of Wishart, but without success ; nor have any such notices yet been found among the records preserved in the charter chest of Dun House, though these have been lately examined by several antiquaries. Apostasy of the Regent. 107 pulpit as well as in the chair upon whole books of Scripture ; and it was very natural that the Scottish Reformer, who sym- pathised so thoroughly with what the Swiss divines taught, should have been led to imitate them also in the manner in which they taught it. It was, in all probability, the preaching of Wishart in Dun- dee, which led to a popular demonstration against the monas- teries, which is known to have taken place there in the autumn of 1543. On the 13th of September, Lord Parr, the Warden of the East English Marches, informed the Duke of Suffolk "that the work of Reformation had begun at Dundee, by destroying the houses of the Black and Grey Friars, and that afterwards the Abbey of Lindores had been sacked by a com- pany of good Christians, who turned the monks out of doors." Parr also mentions the singular fact, that the Regent soon afterwards acknowledged, at Stirling, to the cardinal, that this demolition at Dundee had taken place with his consent; "for which he did open penance in the Friar-house at Stirling, and took an oath to defend the monks, heard mass, and received the sacrament, and was therefore absolved by the cardinal and bishops." 1 It was probably soon after this outbreak of popular zeal against the corruptions of the church, the first of the kind which occurred in Scotland, that Wishart was charged by the Governor's authority to desist from preaching in Dundee. That he was so prohibited from continuing his ministrations, is a fact which we learn from the first of the Articles afterwards alleged against him ; and the most probable date of the prohibition is that which we have assumed. It need scarcely be added that he paid no regard to an abuse of authority which he knew well had been dictated to the feeble Regent by the imperious cardinal. " My lords," said he to Beaton and the other prelates, at his 1 The only conventual building in Dundee that escaped the fury of this popular demonstration, was the Nunnery of the Sisters of St. Clare, which is still preserved, and of which the reader will find an illustration in a sub- sequent page. 108 The Scottish Reformation. trial, "I have read in the Acts of the Apostles, that it is not law- ful, for the threats and menaces of men, to desist from the preaching of the Evangel; therefore, it is written "we shall rather obey God than men' " It was equally in vain that John Hep- burn, Bishop of Brechin, reiterated the command that he should preach no more, and clenched it with the curse and excommu- nication of the Church, " delivering him over into the hands of the devil," as his accusers afterwards themselves expressed it. " My lords, I have also read in the Prophet Malachi, ' I shall curse your blessings, and bless your cursings, saith the Lord.' " With such a conviction of his duty to God, and of Divine acceptation and benediction in his work, no wonder that the Reformer exposed himself to the charge of " continuing obsti- nately to preach in Dundee, notwithstanding." So long as Dundee herself, with her Evangelical Constable, Sir John Scrymgeour, and her godly magistrates and burghers, was willing to hear the words of Eternal Life, Wishart was resolved not to desert his post at the bidding either of regent, cardinal, or bishop. Nunnery of St. Clare, Dundee. Section 3. Renewal of Persecution— Appeal to the Nation by Alexander Alesius. 1543 — 1 544- The Regent was now to turn persecutor of his former friends, and reversing St. Paul's happier case, destroyer of the faith which once he professed. He was not naturally cruel ; he would have even been pleased to avoid rekindling the flames of persecution; but he had sold himself to the cardinal to obtain his support ; he must now do the Church's work, not his own ; and Beaton was not the man to spare him the humiliation and no The Scottish Reformation. mortification of having to brand with ignominy, and doom to death, the disciples of a faith which only a few weeks before had been his own. In a Parliament held at Edinburgh, in December, 1543, the already enormous power of the cardinal, both civil and ec- clesiastical, was still further increased by his receiving the Great Seal as Chancellor ; an office which placed him at the head of the law and judicature of the kingdom. And further, on the 15th of the same month, the record of Parliament bears that " My lord governor caused to be shown and proclaimed in Parliament to all Estates being there gathered ; how there is great murmur that heretics more and more rise and spread within this realm, sowing damnable opinions contrary to the faith and laws of Holy Kirk, and to the acts and constitutions of the realm ; exhorting, therefore, all prelates and ordinaries, severally within their own diocese and jurisdiction, to make inquisition after all such manner of persons, and proceed against them according to the laws of Holy Kirk. And my lord governor shall be ready at all times to do therein what accords him of his office." The Regent is now plainly a mere puppet in the hands of the cardinal, his mere tool and mouth- piece. When before did ever such exhortations to prelates to push their cruel inquisitions, and such ostentatious professions of readiness to support them in their oppressive work, come from the lips of a Scottish ruler, presiding in the midst of the great council of the nation 1 Truly the prelates needed no such spurs to excite them to diligence in such work. But Beaton might think some such harangue from Arran necessary to make men believe that the man, who had aimed only a few months be- fore to break the arm of persecution, was now in earnest to strengthen it with new vigour, and to provide for it new victims. Thus, in a few short months, all was changed ; not only the whole political, but also the whole ecclesiastical policy of the kingdom. The year 1543, which had opened with the brightest hopes for truth and liberty, closed under the darkest shades of disappointment and despondency. All good men had hoped Renewal of Persecution. 1 1 1 to see the end of religious oppression, and to witness the good beginning which had been made by the Regent's first Par- liament in the work of Reformation, followed up by a course of progressive improvement ; but another persecution was now imminent, and the hope of ecclesiastical reform was indefinitely postponed. Many enlightened patriots, who saw clearly that a close union with England was indispensable to the peace and prosperity of the kingdom, had hailed the matrimonial treaty with Henry as the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the two nations, and as the happy solution of a problem which had awaited solution for centuries; but the fickleness and the perfidy of one man had dashed to the ground the hope of two kingdoms ; the flame of war had again burst forth upon the borders, and an invasion of the country from England by land and sea was threatened in the ensuing spring. The state of the nation's affairs at the opening of 1544, was pitiable indeed. The clergy chuckled at their marvellous success, and the cardinal had reached the pinnacle of power ; but the country lay bleeding at their feet, under the wounds which they had inflicted ; and the friends of the Gospel through- out the land saw themselves menaced by a new reign of terror. The festivities of Yule were no sooner over, than the Regent and the cardinal, who had spent a merry Christmas in Stirling Castle with the Queen-Dowager, set off, on the 20th of January, on a mission of persecution to Perth and Dundee. They were accompanied by the Earl of Argyle as Lord Justiciary, and Sir John Campbell of Lundy, his deputy ; by Lord Bothwick, and several other nobles, and by the Bishops of Dunblane and Orkney. They had made preparations more befitting a campaign than the grave administration of ecclesias- tical law ; for they took with them a large park of artillery, great and small, dragged by eighty cart-horses, and conducted by twelve pioneers. The heretics of the two towns must have mustered strong indeed, when their judges prepared to meet them with such a display of unspiritual artillery. It must have been ii2 The Scottish Reformation. expected that it might be necessary to lay siege to the walls ot Perth and Dundee, and force an entrance by cannon shot. What a striking proof of the powerful hold which the Re- formation had got upon the public mind in these two important communities ! When the Regent and cardinal arrived at Perth, they found no use for th- dr cannon and pioneers, for the peaceable burghers made no opposition to their entrance ; but they soon made ample work for the gallows-tree and the halter. The story of the Martyrs of Perth is one of the most cruel and tragical in the records of Scottish martyrology, and has been told with touching minuteness in the histories of the time • but we prefer to give it in a briefer form, as it occurs in a letter of Alexander Alesius to Melancthon, written only a few months after the event. This letter is preserved in the City Library of Hamburgh, and now, for the first time, sees the light. It is dated the 23d of April, 1544, from Leipzig, where Alesius was now settled as a Professor of Theology. " To the most famous and honoured man, Dominus Philip Melancthon, his dearest preceptor. Alexander Alesius, S.D. " . . . . Three days ago, there were here several coun- trymen of mine, who declare that the cardinal rules all things at his pleasure in Scotland, and governs the governor himself. In the town of St. Johnston, he hung up four respectable citizens, for no other cause than because they had requested a monk, in the middle of his sermon, not to depart in his doctrine from the sacred text, and not to mix up notions of his own with the words of Christ. Along with these a most respectable matron, carrying a sucking child in her arms, was haled before the tribunal and condemned to death by drowning. They report that the constancy of the woman was such, that when her husband was led to the scaffold, and mounted the ladder, she followed and mounted along with him, and entreated to be allowed to hang from the same beam. She encouraged him to be of good cheer, for in a few hours, said she, I shall be with Christ along Rene tv al of Persecution. 113 with you. 1 They declare also, that the governor was inclined to liberate them, but that the cardinal suborned the nobles to threaten that they would leave him if the condemned were not put to death. When the cardinal arrived with his army at Dundee, from which the monks had been expelled, all the citizens took to flight ; and when he saw the town quite deserted, he laughed, and remarked, that he had expected to find it full of Lutherans. The King of England has induced the Emperor to issue an order for detaining our Scottish ships in the Belgian ports ; and that Scotsmen, wherever they can be found, should be thrown into prison. The King himself invaded Scotland with 40,000 foot, and 300 ships, about the middle of Quadragesima ; what success he has had, we have been unable as yet to learn, on account of the sea being every- where covered with .English ships. If you have heard any later news in Wittemberg by way of Denmark, take care to communicate it either to me, or to his Magnificence, our Rector. Farewell, viii. Calend. Maias, 1554. " Yours, " Alexander Alesius." These cruel executions at Perth took place on St. Paul's day, the 25th of January, and immediately after, the Regent and his party proceeded with the artillery to Dundee. The flight of the burghers, and the merriment of Beaton at finding himself in such a ridiculous position — loaded with heavy ordnance to fight the Lutherans, and no Lutherans to fight with, after all — are curious circumstances which the letter just given alone has recorded. The destroyers of the monasteries of Dundee, however, did not escape altogether, for in February, several of the citizens were summoned to appear before Sir 1 Alesius gives a fuller account of the persecutions at Perth, in his Commentary on the Psalms ; where he gives the names of the principal sufferers quite correctly, according to other accounts. These were Robert Lamb, William Anderson, James Hunter, James Ranoldson, and Helen, the wife of James Ranoldson. Q ii4 The Scottish Reformation. John Campbell, of Lundy, the justice deputy, "for breaking the gates and doors of the Black Friars, and carrying away chalices, vestments, and the eucharist." But what punishment was inflicted upon these tumultuary reformers we have not been told. They had a powerful plea to urge, when they could show that the Regent had confessed that the sack had been made with his own knowledge and consent; and probably this plea would be allowed to prevail before a secular judge. It was not so easy to appease the vengeance of a primate and a cardinal ; and this found John Rogers, " a godly, learned Black Friar, who had fruitfully preached Christ Jesus, to the comfort of many in Angus and Mearns." He was one of many whom Beaton imprisoned at that time, and his prison was the lowest dungeon of the sea-tower of the castle of St. Andrews — a dismal cavern hollowed out of the solid rock, which still remains as a memorial of those fearful times. Here, by order of the cardinal, he was secretly murdered, without even the form of a trial, and his body cast over the castle wall into the sea. When the waves gave up their dead upon the beach, the false rumour was spread by Beaton's attendants, that "the said John, seeking to flee, had broken his own neck." " Thus ceased not Satan," the historian adds, " by all means, to maintain his kingdom of darkness, and to suppress the light of Christ's gospel." And such "a sworn enemy to Christ Jesus, and to all in whom any spark of know- ledge appeared," was he, who at this very time was invested with all the powers and honours which the see of Rome could bestow. For it was on the 30th of January, 1544, that the bull of Pope Paul III. 1 was signed and sealed with the ring of the Fisherman, which constituted David Beaton legatus a latere, and made him virtually a pope in the Scottish kingdom. The tidings of these persecutions made a deep impression, 1 This bull is still extant among the records of the State Paper Office, and a copy of it may be seen in the Collection of Records appended to Burnet's History of the Reformation. Renewal of Persecution. 115 as we have just seen, upon Alesius. A year before, when the news from Scotland were so different, all his German friends expected that nothing would be able to keep him a day longer in Germany, but that he would instantly return to Scotland, from which he had been so long banished, to bear a hand in carrying forward the work of her reformation. But, happily, he had not adopted that course. Probably, the recency of his appointment at Leipzig had induced him to postpone his return. He was thus spared the experience of new trials. But, though still far from the land of his birth, he continued to feel the deepest interest in the strange vicissitudes of joy and grief through which it was passing; and the tidings of what had just happened at Perth and Dundee, determined him to try once more what service he might be able to render, by his pen, to the struggling cause of truth and liberty. In the year 1544, he addressed himself to "the chief nobles, prelates, barons, and whole people of Scotland," in a "Cohortatio ad Co?i- cordiam Pietatis" &c. or, " Exhortation to Peace and Concord, in the bonds of Christian piety and truth." 1 The piece is instinct throughout with the spirit of true Christian patriotism, as well as with genuine evangelical earnestness and fervour. Lamenting the distraction of the kingdom by opposing political factions — the French faction and the English — he implores his countrymen to lay aside these divisions, and demonstrates, by many examples from classical history, the dangers of national disunion, and the duty of patriotic con- cord, in defence of the safety and honour of their common country. His expostulations against the oppression and cruelty of the bishops, and his allusions to the martyrs who had suffered in the cause of truth, are full of interest ; and his digression, in particular, upon the character and martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton, is a noble burst of eloquence and pathos. 1 The title of this rare tract is as follows : " Cohortatio ad Concordiam. Pietatis ac Doctrinse Christiana? defensionem, missa in patriam ab Alex- andra Alesio, Scoto, sacra? theologiae doctore, 1544." n6 The Scottish Reformation. When he exhorts to national union, he means union in the truth, union in the one great work of purifying religion, and reforming the corruptions of the Church of God. What urgent need there was of such a work, he demonstrates at much length, and with great freedom and faithfulness. Unless the Church of Christ be reformed, it must perish from the earth, and those are its worst enemies, not its real friends, who oppose such indispensable reform. "Everywhere," says he, "we see the church driven forward upon change. Ask even those who are most solicitous for its welfare, and they will tell you that the church can no longer be safe or without troubles, unless it be strengthened by the removal of abuses. If this, then, is a matter of absolute necessity, unless we would see the whole church fall into ruins ; if all men confess that this should be done ; if facts themselves call with a loud voice that some care should be taken to relieve the labouring church, to purify her depraved doctrine, and to reform her whole corrupt admi- nistration, why, I demand, are those evil spoken of, and vilified, who discover and point out the church's vices and evils % Never could the proper remedies have been applied till the disease was known, and yet the men who point it out, with all its virulence and danger, and- wish to alleviate or entirely remove it, are hated and persecuted as much as if they had themselves been the cause of it all." With equal force and spirit he repels the cry of innovation, which was raised against the doctrines of the Reformers. What was calumniated as an innovation, ought rather to be regarded as a restoration of most ancient truth. " It is just," says he, " such a change as would take place in the manners of an age, if the gravity, modesty, and frugality of ancient times, took the place of levity, immodesty, luxury, and other vices. Such a change might be called an introduction of what was new, but, in truth, it would be only the bringing back again of what was old. And, in like manner, let us have innovation everywhere, provided only we can get the true for the false, the serious for the trifling, and solid realities for empty dreams." Renewal of Persecntio?i. 117 The conclusion of the piece is in a strain of entreaty and appeal, which was well fitted to impress and solemnize the highest and proudest in the land. " In whatever estimation I may stand among you, I am at least your fellow-countryman, and as such, I earnestly entreat all and every man ; I throw myself at your knees, in the name of God himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the sal- vation of our common country, and of every man among you, I implore, that you will open your eyes, and candidly consider both the past and the present. It is well known to you how many in former days have been banished from their country on the slightest suspicion : some, who spoke out more freely and boldly, have even been put to death. King James, of illustrious memory, acknowledged before his death, that he had been guilty of violence and injustice to many ; he commanded those who were exiles for the Gospel to be recalled ; and he did his utmost to avert from himself the wrath of God in this behalf. Take care, I beseech you, lest by your fault and heedlessness, the most just wrath of God, which King James so earnestly strove to avert, by his repentance and conversion to God, however late, should flow back again upon you on account of your neglect of his truth, or even enmity and opposition to the Gospel. Call to mind, I pray you, the suc- cessions to the Scottish crown which took place in times some- what farther back, and you will find in these no equivocal signs of the divine vengeance. And do we suppose that God will not punish impiety and wickedness in our own times % Nay, he will do it all the more, and all the more severely, by how much more mercifully and gently he is calling us to repentance, and inviting us to return to the right way. He is commanding us to return to him ; he is sending messengers to call us ; let not the words of these men be laughed at ; let not the men themselves be repelled ; do not suffer yourselves to be deceived by the false discourses of those, who exclaim that this new doctrine is a doctrine of turbulence and disorder." " It is no new doctrine — it is most ancient, or rather it is eter- n8 The Scottish Reformation. nal • for it preaches that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to save sinners, and that remission of sins is obtained by the faith of Him. Of Him even Moses wrote, as He tells us himself ; of Him wrote all the prophets. Who should call a doctrine like this new — the old doctrine which runs on through all ages, and is the same in all 1 Rather let those dogmas be called new, as new they are, by which this doctrine is con- taminated and obscured, having been brought in by the au- dacity, or ambition, or superstition, of those to whom had been entrusted the care of the vineyard of the Lord. For what else have these men done than the men in the Gospel parable, to whom the vineyard was let out ? How many men, sent to them by the Lord of the vineyard, have they slain, as the Prophets were slain by the Pharisees of old. Such violence and wrong is in fact done to the Son of God himself ; for the community of the church is the body of Christ. Let us not fight against God, in the teeth of our own conscience. Not Nineveh alone was laid waste and overthrown, as had been foretold, though a most mighty city and most powerful kingdom, as a punishment for its sins • but often since then, both in other ages and in our own, have similar examples been given. Let us endeavour at least to postpone a similar overthrow, if we cannot entirely avert it. Confessing our sins, and hating our past life, let us throw ourselves at the feet of Christ ; let us hold fast by the hem of his garment ; let us regard no other with our eyes than this one and only Saviour and Redeemer, our God and Lord. Thus will God, whose compassion and clemency are infinite, avert from us the punishments which we deserve in this life, and bring us through death to the life everlasting ; to whom the only true, eternal, omnipotent and merciful God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be praise, honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen." Before this excellent work of Alesius was printed off, it passed through the hands of Melancthon and Luther, by both of whom it was highly approved. How it was re- ceived in Scotland, we are not informed ; for, like the other Renciaal of Persecution. 119 epistles of this long-forgotten patriot and reformer, it is never referred to in our common histories. Like the others too, it has made a narrow escape of perishing entirely from human memory, for it now only survives in a very few copies. This was the last occasion on which Alesius took any direct part in the history of the Reformation of his native Church. But in 1554, when he published a Latin Commentary upon the Psalms, the interest which he felt in the country of his birth was still deep and active, for that work contains many refer- ences, full of the strongest feeling, to the Scottish martyrs who had perished and were still perishing in the long-protracted conflict. He survived to learn the successes of Knox in 1555 and 1559, and to hear the joyful tidings of the final triumph of the cause in 1560. But he did not return to Scotland at that era. He continued to serve the Evangelical Church of Germany, in the theological faculty of the University of Leipzig, till his death in 1565. He was several times rector of the University, and was indefatigable in promoting and defending the interests of true religion both by his writings and public disputations. Melancthon continued to the end of his life in 1560 to honour him with his confidence and friendship, and frequently chose him as his colleague and coadjutor, in the theological conferences which he held both with the theologians of Rome and the teachers of new doctrines in the Evangelical Church. So eminent was his name on the Continent, that when Beza wrote his " Icones," or portraits of the great theo- logians of the sixteenth century, he introduced the name of Alexander Alesius, as that of a man " who was dear to all the learned — who would have been a distinguished ornament of Scotland if that country had recovered at an earlier period the light of the gospel — and who, when rejected by both Scotland and England, was most eagerly embraced by the evangelical church of Saxony, and continued to be warmly cherished and esteemed by her to the day of his death." But Alesius was not the only living link of connexion between the Lutheran Churches of the Continent and the 120 The Scottish Reformation. Scottish Reformation. His friend, John McAlpin, shared his long continental exile, and rose to almost equal eminence as a theologian and academic teacher. After his flight from England, in 1540, he staid for a short time at Bremen, where he gave evangelical instruction to San Roman, the first Pro- testant martyr of Spain. Early in 1542 he was created Doctor of Theology at Wittemberg, and was soon after invited by Christiern III., King of Denmark, to settle in the University of Copenhagen, in the room of John Bugenhagen Pomeranus, who had returned to Wittemberg. In this influential post, in which he continued till his death, he rendered eminent ser- vices to the Danish Church. He was one of the translators of the Scriptures into the Danish tongue, a work which was completed in 1550, and in the preparation of which he was associated with Peter Palladius, and the other members of the theological faculty. The historians of Denmark commemorate his distinguished learning and usefulness ; and a good many of his writings, published and in manuscript, still survive. He had assumed at Wittemberg the name of Maccabaeus, at the suggestion of Melancthon, and by this surname, which was probably nothing more than a Latinized form of his family cognomen, which was sometimes pronounced Mc Alpy, he continued to be known for the rest of his life. When he died, in 1557, the King of Denmark followed him to his grave, and Melancthon wrote his epitaph. 1 John Faith was another of these learned Scottish exiles. He was incorporated with the University of Wittemberg in 1540, along with McAlpin, and afterwards went by the name of John Fidelis. Having mastered the German language, he was appointed Pastor of the Evangelical Church of Liegnitz, in Silesia ; and was subsequently promoted to a theological chair in the University of Francfort-on-the-Oder. For these appointments he was probably indebted to the good offices of 1 Stephani Historia Danica. Sorae : 1650. In Nyerup's "Litteratur- Lexicon fur Danmark," &c, may be seen a list of Maccabaeus's works. Renewal of Persecution. 1 2 1 Melancthon, who seems to have taken a peculiarly warm interest in the fortunes of all these Scottish exiles. There is a letter of Melancthon, still extant, addressed to John Fidelis at Francfort, in 1556, in which he introduces to him a Scotch- man, named Linus or Lyne, as a man of learning and true piety, and in which, after reminding him that it is the will of God that we should show hospitality to such guests, he remarks, " For my part, I think we Germans owe a special debt of gra- titude to the Scottish nation ; because in former times we received from them both Christianity and letters, when the Churches of Germany had been overrun and ruined by the Heneti and the Huns." 1 1 Becman, in his "Notitia Universitatis Francofurtanse," states that John Fidelis Scotus was Rector of the University in 155 1, and that he died in 1562. R Cowgate Port, Dundee. Section 4. Wishart's Preaching in Dundee and Ayrshire. 1544— T 545- Happily for the cause of the Reformation in the evil days upon which it had again fallen, there was still one powerful living preacher who stood forth to defend it in one of its chief strongholds, and whose fervent appeals from the pulpit could do more to plead for it, and sustain the sinking hearts of its friends, than any letters, however excellent, from reformers in distant exile. George Wishart was still preaching on the Epistle to the Romans, in the zealous burgh of Dundee, and multitudes were Wisharfs Preaching. 123 hanging upon the lips of the greatest pulpit orator that Scotland had seen for centuries. Wishart had no doubt fled for a time from Dundee, when it was occupied by the governor and the cardinal, in February, 1544; but returning again with his fugitive flock, when the danger was over, he continued for several months longer to preach to them without interruption. His position in Dundee was a very strong one. The most powerful man in the town was the hereditary constable of the Castle, Sir John Scrymgeour of Dudhope, and Sir John was a steady friend of the Reformation. In his father, Sir James, Alesius had found a friend as early as 1531, on his flight from St. Andrews; and the whole influence of the family had been ever since employed on the side of the truth. They were the chief ecclesiastical patrons of the town ; a large proportion of its chapelries and altarages were in their gift ; and by the judicious use of this power, they were able to render important services to the cause of Reform. Still Wishart had an enemy to contend with, who was more than a match for all the power of his patrons and friends. What an eyesore such a preacher was to Beaton may be easily imagined, and the all-powerful cardinal was now resolved to put a stop to his labours. From about the middle of 1544, we can trace the hand of this resolute and unscrupulous church- man in a series of attempts, either to stifle the Reformer's preaching, or to deprive him of life, which were continued with unrelenting pertinacity, till they took effect at last in his apprehension and death. The cardinal's first design was to drive him from Dundee, and in this he succeeded for a time, by working upon the fears of some of its magistrates. Reminding them of the troubles which their heretical preacher had already brought upon the town, he menaced them with the terrors of a second visit, unless they used their authority to put an end to his harangues. In the name of the queen and the governor, they must charge him to depart. In truth, the governor was now so entirely at the cardinal's devotion, that the town was completely at 124 The Scottish Reformation. Beaton's mercy. The magistrates were overawed by his threats, and Robert Mill, a man who had himself been for- merly a sufferer for the truth, consented to be the instrument of carrying out his demands. Wishart was in the pulpit, sur- rounded by a great congregation, including the Earl Mareshal and others of the nobility, when Mill entered the Church, and charged him, in the queen and governor's name, to depart from the town and trouble it no more. " Whereupon, he mused a little space with his eyes bent unto the heavens, and then looking sorrowfully to the people, he said, ' God is my witness that I minded ever your comfort and not your trouble, which to me is more grievous than to yourselves. But, sure I am, to reject the Word of God and drive away his messengers is not the way to save you from trouble. When I am gone, God will send you messengers who will not be afraid either for horning or banishment. 1 I have with the hazard of my life remained among you, preaching the word of salvation; and now, since yourselves refuse me, I must leave my innocency to be declared by God. If it be long well with you, I am not led by the Spirit of truth ; and if trouble unexpected fall upon you, remember this is the cause, and turn to God by repentance, for He is merciful.' These words pronounced, he came down from the pulpit, and declining the earnest request of Earl Mareshal to accompany him into the northern parts of the king- dom, ' with all possible expedition, he passed to the westland.' " Our historians have accustomed us to associate with the name of George Wishart, mainly the two ideas of heroism and gentleness ; heroism as a confessor, and gentleness as a man. But it is plain from the above address, and from several other incidents of his life, that upon just occasions he could be stern as well as gentle, and that he could speak as firmly and faithfully of the duty of others, as he could act heroically in fulfilment of his own. According to Tylney's account of him, he was a strict disciplinarian as a college regent, and the 1 Horning, or being put to the horn, means to be denounced and out- lawed for rebellion. Wisharfs Preach ing. 125 remains of his sermons show that he was a disciplinarian in the pulpit as well as in the schools. His voice had often the solemn tones of a prophet, as well as the gentler notes of an evangelist. Wishart had made the acquaintance of the Earl of Glencairn in England, and it was probably this tie, as well as the Lollard traditions of Kyle, " that ancient receptacle of God's people," which drew him to the west. During his sojourn there, he preached commonly at the kirk of Galstone, and was frequently a guest at the house of John Lockhart of Barr. Interesting notices have also been preserved of his preachings in Ayr and Mauchline. In Ayr he was obliged to preach at the market- cross, because the Archbishop of Glasgow had first got possession of the church. Instigated by the cardinal to a new effort of reluctant zeal, Dunbar had hastened from Glasgow, "with his jackmen," to oppose and apprehend the Reformer, and had hoped by the aid of these carnal weapons at once to end the strife. But upon the first notice of his arrival, Glencairn and other barons hurried into the town to defend the preacher, and proposed to dispute possession of the church with the Archbishop by force of arms. " But to this Maister George utterly repugned, saying, 'Let him alone, his sermon will not much hurt ; let us go to the market-cross.' And so they did ; where he made so notable a sermon, that the very enemies themselves were confounded." As for Dunbar, he had few to hear him but his own jackmen, and his sermon was notable only for its weakness. " The sum of all his sermon was, ' They say that we should preach — why not % Better late thrive than never thrive. Hold us still for your bishop, and we shall provide better the next time/ This was the beginning and end of the bishop's discourse, who with haste departed the town, but returned not again to fulfil his promise." Wishart gave another example of the same noble moderation, and confidence in the unaided power of Gospel truth, in what took place soon after at Mauchline. Having been invited to preach there, he consented to do so ; but Sir Hugh Campbell 126 The Scottish Reformation. of Loudoun, who was sheriff of the county, took possession of the church with a band of armed men, in order to exclude him from the pulpit. Sir Hugh feared for the safety of a beautiful tabernacle which stood upon the altar. " Some zealous men, among whom was Hugh Campbell of Kinzean- cleugh, offended that they should be debarred their own parish kirk, concluded to enter by force. But Maister George with- drew him, and said unto him, ' Brother, Christ Jesus is as potent upon the fields as in the kirk, and he himself preached oftener in the desert, at the sea-side, and in other places judged profane, than he did in the temple of Jerusalem. It is the word of peace which God sends by me. The blood of no man shall be shed this day for the preaching of it.' And so withdrawing the whole people, he came to a dyke in the edge of a moor, upon the south-west side of Mauchline, upon the which he ascended. The whole multitude stood and sat about him : God gave the day pleasing and hot. He continued in preaching more than three hours. In that sermon, God wrought so wonderfully with him, that one of the most wicked men in that country, the Laird of Scheill, was converted. The tears ran down from his eyes in such abundance that all men wondered ; and his conversion was without hypocrisy, for his life and conversation witnessed it in all time to come." This is the first time we read of field-preaching in the history of Scottish evangelism ; the stones of a " dry dyke " serving for a pulpit, and the tufts of moss and moor-heather for benches and faldstools. And was not that scene at Mauchline — a fervent evangelist preaching for three hours at a time, and a vast congregation of worshippers fixed to the turf in mute attention, and God " working wonderfully " with the word, and tears of repentance rolling down the cheeks of stalwart men and hardened sinners — was it not what Christian men in our own time would call a revival 1 Yes ; the Reformation of the six- teenth century was undoubtedly a great movement of religious revival. Its aspect as a mighty work of ecclesiastical reform was only the outside manifestation of its inner soul and spirit I J Ish art } s Preach ing. 127 as a wide-spread spiritual awakening ; and if there had been no spiritual awakening, there would have been no effectual ecclesiastical reform. With regard to Scotland, in particular, nobody can doubt that if the Spirit of God had not breathed the breath of new religious life into a large number of souls throughout the kingdom, a Reformation of the Church would have been impossible. There was no country in Christendom where the Papal Church was so rich and powerful in proportion to the wealth and influence of the rest of the nation ; and there was none where the struggle, which issued in its downfal, was so long protracted. It required no less than thirty-five years of conflict and suffering to work out the great change. Could anything less than a mighty re-quickening of religious feeling in the heart of the nation, have carried it successfully through such a conflict, and given it the victory over such a gigantic foe? If ever there were preachers of the Gospel who were eminently godly and devoted men, Hamilton, Wishart, and Knox, were a trio of such men. And their word was with power. Great numbers who heard them woke up to " newness of life," and it was the power of this new life, in the party of the Reformers, which at last achieved the ecclesiastical revolution of the Reformation. While Wishart was thus occupied in the west of Scotland, rumours ere long reached him that the plague had broken out in Dundee. One of those " messengers of God " which he had forewarned its citizens of, " not to be effrayed for horning, nor yet for banishment," had been sent to them sooner than he ex- pected. The fatal disease had begun to show itself only a few days after his departure, and it shortly became so vehement, that the numbers who died every four and twenty hours were almost incredible. The pestilence would seem to have followed upon the heels of a famine, for a contemporary chronicler in- forms us that " in this time many people died with great scant and want of victuals, and the pest was wonder great in all boroughs-towns of this realm." On learning the certainty of these evil tidings, Wishart instantly 128 The Scott isJi Reformation. took leave of his friends and followers in Kyle. They lamented his departur , and entreated him to remain, but no urgency could constr 1 him to delay his return to Dundee. " They are now in trou 1 - e," said he, " and they need comfort. Perchance this hand of /od will make them now to magnify and reverence that Word, rich before, for fear of men, they set at light price." The oy of the plague-smitten town, on hearing of his arrival, was exceeding great. Without delay, he an- nounced that he wpuld preach on the morrow. The most part of the inhabitant's were either sick themselves, or in attend- ance upon their sick relatives and friends. They could not assemble in the church. They were crowded in and about the lazar-houses, near " the East Port " of the town, and Wishart chose for his preaching place the top of the Cowgate port or gate. "The sick and suspected sat without the port, the healthy sat or stood within." The text of his first sermon was these words of the 107th Psalm, " He sent his Word and healed them." "O Lord," he began, "it is neither herb nor plaster, but thy Word that healeth all." "In the which sermon," says Knox, "he most comfortably did treat of the dignity and utility of God's Word, the punishment that comes for contempt of the same, the promptitude of God's mercy to such as truly turn to Him ; yea, the great happiness of those whom God takes from this misery, even in his own gentle visitation, which the malice of man can neither add to, nor take from. By the which sermon he so raised up the hearts of all that heard him, that they regarded not death, but judged those more happy that should depart than such as should remain behind, considering that they knew not if they should have such a comforter with them at all times." It has not been noticed by our historians that the locality where Wishart preached during this season of public distress, gave a peculiar significance to the text of his first address from the top of the East Port. Just outside the gate stood the ancient Chapel of St. Roque ; and St. Roque, in popular belief, was the helper of men in time of plague and pestilence. Hence the erection of the ancient lazar-houses of the town in that locality ; Wisharfs Preachi?ig. 129 and hence, too, in all probability, the choice of the Reformer's first text, " ' He sent his Word and healed them, id delivered them from their destructions.' It is God, not St. i )que, who is the healer of the plague-stricken ; look unto Hi ,1 and be ye saved. It is to Him you must turn your languid e s, not to the image and shrine of St. Roque." It was not only, however, by his powerful and consoling preaching, that Wishart ministered on this occasion to the sick and dying inhabitants of Dundee. He was equally assiduous in his attentions to their bodily wants. Regardless of the dan- ger of contagion, "he spared not to visit those that lay in the very extremity, he comforted them as well as he might in such a multitude, and he caused all things necessary to be ministered to those who were well enough to eat and drink ;" taking care so to apply the beneficent aid which was obtained from the public funds of the town, " that the poor were no more neglected than were the rich." Prodigal of his life in this public mortality, Wishart entirely forgot not only the peril of contagion, but also the hazards which he ran at the hand of the fanatic and assassin. He for- got that he had been placed by the ban of the Church, and the outlawry of the state, beyond the protection of law, and that any man might take his life without a crime. In truth, his enemy the cardinal was again upon his track, and, thirsting for his blood, had suborned a wretched priest to dispatch him with a dagger, in the very midst of his labour of love. " Upon a day, the sermon being ended, and the people departing, no man suspecting danger, and therefore not heeding Maister George, a priest, called John Wighton, stood waiting at the foot of the steps which led up to the top of the gate ; his gown loose, and his dagger drawn in his hand under his gown. Maister George, being most sharp of eye and judgment, marked him, and as he came near, he said, ' My friend, what would ye do V and there- with he clapped his hand upon the priest's hand wherein the dagger was, which he took from him. The priest abashed, fell down at his feet and openly confessed the verity as it was. The s 130 The Scottish Reformation. noise rising and coming to the ears of the sick, they cried out, 1 Deliver the traitor to us, or else we will take him by force,' and so they burst in at the gate. But Maister George took him in his arms, and said, ' Whosoever troubles him, shall trouble me, for he has hurt me in nothing, but he has done great com- fort both to you and to me ; to wit, he has letten us understand what we may fear in times to come : we will watch better.' And so he appeased both the one part and the other, and saved the life of him that sought his." " He saved the life of him who sought his." " Whosoever troubles him, shall trouble me." Can the man who spoke and acted thus, have been the same man as " a Scotishman called Wisharf," who is mentioned in a letter of the Earl of Hertford, dated the 17th of April, 1544, "as privy to a conspiracy to assassinate Cardinal Beaton, and as employed to carry letters between the conspirators and the English court " % So some of our historians have conjectured, especially in our own time. But never surely was there a conjecture (for it is nothing more) more violently improbable, or more injurious to the memory of a good man, and an eminent benefactor of his country. Cer- tainly the spirit of moderation and forbearance, the disappro- bation of violence, and the hatred of blood, manifested by Wishart in the affair of priest Wighton, in Dundee, and on several other occasions mentioned in the preceding narrative, were very unlike the fierce and violent passions which prompted some of the enemies of Beaton to enter into such a conspiracy. Is it conceivable, or without good evidence credible, that a man such as Tylney has described, with a character so lofty, so pure, so gentle, and so beneficent, would lend his sanction to a deli- berate scheme of blood, and would even degrade himself to act a very subordinate part in the plot — to be a carrier of letters from men who were basely bargaining for the price of murder, to other men who were so ashamed to be seen in the conspi- racy, that though they wished it for their own ends to be success- ful, they refused to give any formal promise of the price which was demanded? Surely, instead of "sorrowfully" confessing, Wisharfs Preaching. 131 as a recent historian does, 1 that there is a " strong presumption " that George Wishart was connected with such a conspiracy, we ought to answer indignantly to such a charge, that the strong presumption is all the other way. For what is the whole basis of proof upon which this alleged presumption is made to rest *? The only fact that is produced in support of it is, that Wishart was personally acquainted with several or all of the men who were engaged in the conspiracy, and that he sympathized generally in their ecclesiastical and political views. But is that fact a sufficient warrant for subjecting him to such a grave and injurious suspicion 1 Is every individual of a whole party to be held capable of approving of, and taking part in, whatever extreme and desperate measures are suggested and plotted by any two or three of the party? Admitting that Wishart, as the great preacher of the Reforming party, was acquainted with all its leading men, is that to be considered adequate historical proof that he, and not some other person of the same family name, was the person alluded to in Hertford's letter 1 There were other members of the family of Pittarrow who shared in the same religious and political views ; why should he be thus singled out for suspicion from all the rest 1 There were other Wisharts in Scotland besides the Wisharts of Pittarrow ; why might not the individual alluded to have been one of them 1 Besides, there is good evidence to show that the Reformer was preaching in Dundee, at the very time when he is alleged to have been carrying letters to London. Knox informs us that he continued to preach there from the time of his first visit till he was charged by Robert Mill, in the queen's name, to depart. But this took place shortly before the plague appeared in the town, and the date usually assigned, both by general and local historians, to that incident, is the summer of 1544. In the spring of that year, then, Wishart must have been still in Dundee ; that is, at the very season when he is alleged to have been absent in England. So much for the properly historical evidence bearing upon the question. As to the allegation made use of to weaken the 1 Rev. John Cunningham, in his Church History of Scotland. 132 The Scottish Reformation. improbability of a man of Wishart's high religious character giving any countenance to such a plot, that religious fanaticism is able to blind the eyes of men to the most palpable distinc- tions between right and wrong, it is enough to reply, that before this general observation is directed against any particular his- torical personage, the fact should first be established that he was a fanatic. But no evidence of such a fact is produceable in the case of Wishart, unless we assume the very point which has to be proved — his complicity in this conspiracy. It may be true, also, that if this conspiracy had taken effect in Wishart's lifetime, he would have rejoiced, as Knox rejoiced, in the deliverance thus wrought for the afflicted cause of God, as a dis- pensation of Divine Providence. No doubt he would have seen the hand of God in it as an avenging judge and a righteous deliverer, as Knox saw it. But to show that even in that age of high-wrought feeling and religious passion, wise and good men made a distinction between what God permitted and over- ruled, and what was right for men to do and approve, it may suffice to refer to the judgment of Sir David Lindsay upon the assassination of Beaton, when it actually took place : — " As for the Cardinal, I grant He was the man we weel could want, And we'll forget him soon ; And yet I think, the sooth to say, Although the loon is weel away, The deed was foully done." But are we never to hear the last of this rash and groundless calumny upon the name and memory of one of the most honoured and beloved of our " Scottish Worthies " 1 We lament that it should still be repeated and countenanced by the -writers of our time. Can they not condemn a guilty conspiracy without themselves seeming to conspire against a name which is justly dear to almost a whole nation 1 Where is the historical justice of blotting such a name upon mere suspicion ; upon evidence which would be deemed in any court of law insufficient to convict any man, even the worst, of any crime, even the most insignificant ? Haddington Church. Section 5. Wishart's last Labours. 1545 — 1546. Wish art continued his labours in Dundee till the plague ceased. The date of his departure has not been given, but it was probably late in the year 1545. " God," he remarked on leaving, " has almost put an end to the battle in Dundee, I find myself called to another." The new battle he alluded to was a public disputation which he expected soon to maintain with the Romish bishops and doc- tors in Edinburgh. A provincial Council was to assemble there, in January, 1546, and "the Gentlemen of the West," including the Earl of Cassilis, had resolved to appear before the council and demand a public disputation between the Romish theolo- i,34 The Scottish Refor?nation. gians and Wishart. They had previously written to the Re- former, and obtained his consent. The risks, or rather the certain dangers of such a " battle," to a man who was under the ban of the church, were indeed obvious; but the effects of a public discussion could not fail to be beneficial to the cause of truth. The battle, however, soon proved to be of another kind ; not a public disputation, but a public martyrdom. Every day that such a man was suffered to live, was a day of new losses to the church, and the cardinal was on the watch for the first opportunity of seizing his prey. Before proceeding to Edinburgh, Wishart passed from Dun- dee to Montrose, " to salute the Kirk " there. During his stay he occupied himself sometimes in preaching, but, for the most part, " in meditation, in which he was so earnest, that night and day he would continue in it." He was, no doubt, preparing himself for the conflict of argument to which he was looking forward, arranging his plans of attack and defence, and making ready the weapons of Scripture and learning, by which he hoped to prevail. " While he was thus occupied with his God," a letter was put into his hand, purporting to come from his most familiar friend, the Laird of Kinneir, in Fife, and desiring him to come to him with all possible diligence, " for he was stricken with a sudden sickness." The messenger brought a horse for his use, which he mounted without delay, and, accompanied by a few of his friends, he rode out of the town. But after going a little way, he suddenly stopped short, and exclaimed, " I will not go ; I am forbidden of God ; I am sure there is treason ; let some of you go to yonder place," pointing, as he spoke, to a particular spot near the road, about a mile and a half from the town, "and tell me what you find." Astonished at his words, his friends moved forward upon the road to ascertain their truth. They found the treason, as he had said. An ambush had been laid for him : threescore men, armed with jacks and spears, were lying in wait to dispatch him. And who was the author of the treason 1 Who had forged the letter, and suborned the assassins? It was the implacable and unscrupulous cardinal. "I Wisharfs last Labours. 135 know," said Wishart, as he turned his horse's head back again to the town ; " I know that I shall finish my life in that blood- thirsty man's hands, but it will not be after this manner." God had rescued him from the hands of hired assassins, that his death might take place in circumstances where the sacrifice would be more honourable to the martyr, and more useful to the cause of truth. The time now drew near when he had engaged to meet the gentlemen of Kyle and Cunningham in the capital, and he pre- pared to take leave of his friends in Montrose. The narrow escape which he had just made alarmed them for his safety in undertaking such a journey, and John Erskine of Dun, and others, did their utmost to dissuade him from the design. But he felt bound by his engagement. He must go where public duty calls him, at whatever risk. Christ-like, and with all a martyr's constancy and courage, "he steadfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem." But the martyr after all is still only a man. He has his hours of weakness like other men, to remind him that he can only be strong in the strength of God, and to remind posterity that even an Elijah and a John the Baptist, though seemingly of more than mortal mould, are, in truth, only men of like passions and infirmities with ourselves. On his way to the prison and the stake, George Wishart felt, for a time, the inward recoil of nature from sufferings so full of anguish to flesh and blood ; and it was only after a struggle with all the weakness of the man, that he was raised by Divine might to all the strength of the martyr. This touching incident befel him upon his road to Edinburgh ; at Invergowry, a village two miles west of Dundee. Spending a night in the house of James Watson, "a faithful brother" there, it was observed by two of his friends that he passed forth from his chamber into the garden a little before sunrise ; and there, says Knox, relating the story as he had it from William Spadin and John Watson, the two friends referred to, " when he had gone up and down in an alley for a reasonable space, with many sobs and deep groans, he sunk down upon his knees, 136 The Scottish Reformation. and sitting thereon his groans increased, and from his knees he fell upon his face, and then they heard weeping, and an indigest sound, as it were of prayer, in the which he con- tinued near an hour, and after began to be quiet; and so arose and came in to his bed. Then began they to demand, as though they had been ignorant, where he had been ; but that night he would answer nothing. Upon the morrow they urged him again. 'Maister George,' said they, 'be plain with us, for we heard your groans ; yea, we heard your bitter mourning, and saw you both upon your knees and upon your face.' With dejected visage he said, ' I had rather you had been in your beds, and it had been more profitable to you, for I was scarce weill occupied.' When they pressed him to let them know some comfort, he said, * I will tell you that I am assured my travail is near an end, and therefore call to God with me, that now I shrink not when the battle waxes hot' " These words revealed the nature of the struggle through which he had passed. But he had left his weakness at God's feet ; he had risen from the earth with reno- vated strength, like a giant refreshed with wine ; and the interesting dialogue with his two friends ended with these remarkable words : "'God shall send you comfort after me. This realm shall be illuminated with the light of Christ's Evangel, as clearly as ever was any realm since the days of the apostles. The house of God shall be builded in it ; yea, it shall not lack (whatsoever the enemy imagine to the contrary) the very cope stone. Neither,' continued he, ' shall this be long delayed. There shall not many suffer after me, till that the glory of God shall evidently appear, and shall once for all triumph in despite of Satan. But alas ! if the people shall afterwards be unthankful, then fearful and terrible shall the plagues be that shall follow after it' And with these words he marched forwards on his journey towards St Johnston, and so to Fife, and then to Leith." " He marched forward," says Knox, a man of kindred spirit, who knew the right word to use upon such an occasion. It was the only word that could express the now firm and bounding step with which the " good soldier of Jesus Christ, enduring hard- Wisharfs last Labours. 137 ness," went forward to meet danger and death at the bidding of the Great Captain. When he reached Leith he found that his Ayrshire corre- spondents had not yet arrived ; and being now entirely without protection, he was willing for a day or two to keep himself secret. " But beginning to wax sorrowful in spirit, and being demanded of the cause, he said, ' What differ I from a dead man, except that I eat and drink 1 To this time God has used my labours to the instruction of others, and unto the disclosing of darkness ; but now I lurk as a man that were ashamed, and durst not show himself.' By these and like words they that heard him understood that his desire was to preach, and therefore said, ' Maist comfortable it were unto us to hear you, but because we know the danger wherein ye stand, we dare not desire you.' ' But dare you and others hear,' said he, ' and then let my God provide for me as best pleaseth him.' Finally it was concluded that the next Sunday he should preach in Leith, which he did, and took for his text the parable of the sower that went forth to sow." It was now the 12th of December, and the Regent and cardinal were expected shortly in Edinburgh to keep Yule, and prepare for the coming council. It was not deemed expedient therefore that Wishart should continue any longer in Leith, and he went in succession to the houses of Alexander Crichton of Brunston, Hugh Douglas of Longniddry, and John Cockburn of Ormiston. It was at this time that John Knox was first introduced to Wishart. He was already " an earnest professor of Christ Jesus," and was employed as a tutor in the family of Hugh Douglas. Sharing warmly in the attachment of his patron to the Reformer's person and ministry, he waited constantly upon him from the time of his arrival in Lothian, and obtained the singular honour of carrying before him, wherever he went, a large two-handed sword. Wishart had a presentiment that his time was short, and he filled up every day with godly labours. Before another Sunday T 138 The Scottish Reformation. came round the Regent and cardinal had arrived in Edinburgh ; but this did not deter him from preaching on that day, which was the 18th of December, in the church of Inveresk, where there was a great gathering to hear him. His discourse was a vehement denunciation of the idolatrous worship of Rome. Sir George Douglas, brother of the Earl of Angus, was present, and openly declared at the end of the service, that he would not only maintain the doctrine he had heard, but also the person of the teacher to the uttermost of his power. " I know," said he, " that my lord governor and my lord cardinal will hear that I have been at this preaching. Say unto them that I will avow it." As he spoke these last bold words of defiance, Douglas glared at two grey friars who had entered the church while Wishart was preaching, and who were no doubt spies sent by the vigilant cardinal to report to him the preacher's words. Still looking for intelligence from the west, Wishart's next remove was to Longniddry; and on the two following Sundays he preached at Tranent, " with the like grace and the like confluence of people. In all his sermons after his departure from Angus, he forespoke the shortness of the time that he had to travail, and of his death, the day whereof he said approached nearer than any would believe." It was now Christmas-tide, and during the holy-days of Yule the people were accustomed to resort to the churches daily. To make the most of such an opportunity, Wishart moved forward to Haddington, where the largest congregation in that district might be expected. Knox accompanied him as before, and his narrative of what passed at Haddington has all the graphic vividness which might be looked for from an eye and ear-witness ; for it is to be remembered that Wishart's enthusiastic sword-bearer was also his first and only biographer. " The first day, before noon, the audience in the great church of the town was reasonably large, and yet nothing in comparison of that which used to be in that kirk ; but the afternoon and the next day following, before noon, the auditure was so slender Wisharth last Labours. 139 that many wondered. The cause was judged to have been that the Earl of Bothwell, who in those bounds had great credit and obedience, by procurement of the cardinal had given inhibition, as well to the town as to the country, that they should not hear him under the pain of his displeasure. The first night he lay within the town, in the house of David Forres, a man that long had professed the truth. The second night he lay in Lethington, the laird whereof — Sir Richard Maitland — was ever civil, albeit not persuaded in religion. The day following, before the said Maister George passed to the sermon, there came to him a boy with a letter from the West land, which received and read, he called for John Knox, with whom he began to enter in purpose, that he wearied of the world, for he perceived that men began to weary of God. The cause of his complaint was, the gentlemen of the west had written to him that they could not keep diet at Edinburgh. The said John Knox, wondering that he desired to keep any purpose (/. e. hold any conversation) before sermon, (for that was never his accustomed use before) said, ' Sir, the time of sermon approaches ; I will leave you for the present to your meditation,' and so took the bill containing the purpose afore- said, and left him. " The said Maister George spaced up and down behind the high altar more than half an hour. His very countenance and visage declared the grief and alteration of his mind. At last he passed to the pulpit, but the auditure was small. He should have begun to have entreated the second table of the law. But thereof in that sermon he spake very little, but began on this manner ; ' O Lord, how long shall it be that thy holy word shall be despised, and men shall not regard their own salvation. I have heard of thee, Haddington, that in thee would have been at a vain clerk-play 1 two or three thousand people ; and now to hear the messenger of the eternal God, 1 An allusion to the sacred dramas called mysteries, which were performed by the clergy in the churches at the high festivals ol the Christian year. 140 The Scottish Reformation. of all thy town and parish cannot be numbered a hundred persons. Sore and fearful shall the plague be that shall ensue this thy contempt. With fire and sword thou shalt be plagued. Yea ! thou Haddington in special, strangers shall possess thee, and you, the present inhabitants, shall either in bondage serve your enemies, or else ye shall be chased from your own habitations, and that because ye have not known, nor will not know, the time of God's merciful visitation.' In such vehemency and threatening continued that servant of God near an hour and a half, in the which he declared all the plagues that ensued, as plainly as after our eyes saw them performed. In the end, he said, ' I have forgotten myself and the matter that I should have entreated ; but let these my last words, as concerning public preaching, remain in your minds till that God send you new comfort' Thereafter he made a short paraphrase upon the second table, with an exhortation to patience, to the fear of God, and unto the works of mercy ; and so put end, as it were making his last testament; as the issue declared that the spirit of truth and of true judgment was both in his heart and head ; for that same night was he apprehended before midnight in the house of Ormiston." John Knox, it will be observed, regarded these predictions of Wishart as true and proper prophecies. Tytler and others explain them on the unsupported assumption that Wishart was privy to the hostile plans of England, through Brunston and others who were in correspondence with Henry's officers ; an explanation which implies the offensive imputation that, while he assumed the air and tone of a prophet, he was availing himself of the secrets of a treasonable correspondence. For ourselves, we utterly disbelieve that such a man as Wishart was capable of practising upon the people such a dishonourable deception ; or that such a man as Knox was capable, in his history, of abetting and carrying on the delusion. But we do not think it necessary to adopt the view of Knox, any more than we can concur for a moment in the unworthy imputations of Tytler. There was entire earnestness and good faith in Wisharfs last Laboui-s. 141 Wishart's predictions, but they can be sufficiently accounted for without referring them to supernatural foresight. The language of such predictions as those of Wishart and of Knox himself, is no more than the vivid and graphic utterance of a strong and earnest faith in the presence and providence of God as a ruler among men. " Shall not the judge of all the earth do right 1 ?" was, with them, a truth as real and a fact as certain, as the truth and the fact that earthly governments are bound, and have the right and power, to execute just judgment upon trans- gressors. Will God let sin go unpunished, either in individuals, or churches, or political communities, even in this world % No ! He will not ; He cannot. As God liveth, the wickedness of a corrupt, and cruel, and oppressive Church shall assuredly be brought to nought. The carelessness and unbelief of any city or people that despiseth the word and the salvation of God shall assuredly be punished, as God liveth. The punish- ment is as certain as God's own being. It may be still future ; but it is as sure to come as if it were actually present. In the sense of a faith in God like this, a faith in things unseen which makes them as real as the things of sight, every true minister of God's word is a prophet and a seer, and not only sees what is coming, but foreshows and foretells it. And the only difference between prophet-preachers like Wishart and Knox, and the more ordinary homilists of our own time, is, that their faith in God and his moral government was a great deal stronger and more realizing than that of their successors. They believed as though they beheld, and therefore they both foresaw clearly and foretold distinctly ; we believe much less strongly and vividly, and therefore, though the sons of the pro- phets, and proud of our descent, we have much less of the prophetic spirit ourselves. • _— - z~ ill ' ''■' '■" - '^~ ~ ElpMngston Tower. o'p in- sertion 6. Wishart's Apprehension, Trial, and Martyrdom. 1546. Before setting out to Ormiston, where he was to spend the night, Wishart took an affectionate leave of Hugh Douglas and John Knox at Haddington. The latter pressed to be allowed to accompany him to Ormiston, but Wishart said, " Nay ! return to your bairns (meaning his pupils), and God bless you ; one is sufficient for a sacrifice." Knox with great reluctance gave up the sword which he had carried Wisharfs Apprehension. 143 before him, and returned to Longniddry, never to see him again in this world. He was accompanied on foot to Ormiston by John Cockburn of Ormiston, Alexander Crichton of Brunston, and John Sandelands, younger, of Calder; and after supper addressed them in cheerful terms on the death of God's chosen children. He then added, " Methinks that I desire earnestly to sleep. Shall we sing a psalm 1 ?" and so he selected the 51st Psalm, in Scottish metre, beginning thus : — Have mercy on me now, good Lord, After thy great mercy, &c. Which being ended, he passed to his chamber, and sooner than his common time was, passed to bed, with these words, " God grant quiet rest." But the hour which he had long anticipated was now come. Before midnight the house was beset with horsemen, and the Reformer was demanded to be given up in the queen's name. On the sixteenth day of January, 1546, the Regent and cardinal arrived after night-fall at Elphingston Tower, in the neighbourhood of Ormiston, with five hundred men, and despatched the Earl of Bothwell to apprehend Wishart, holding themselves in readiness, if need were, to support him by force. As soon as the Reformer became aware of his errand, he cried out to Cockburn and his other friends, " Open the gates), the blessed will of my God be done." The earl being admitted with some other gentlemen who accompanied him, Wishart addressed him thus : " I praise my God that so honourable a man as you, my lord, receives me this night in the presence of these noblemen, for now I am assured, that for your honour's sake, you will suffer nothing to be done unto me contrary to the order of law. I am not ignorant that their law is nothing but corruption, and a cloak to shed the blood of the saints ; but yet I less fear to die openly, than secretly to be murdered." Bothwell gave a solemn promise that he would not only 144 The Scottish Reformation. preserve his body from all violence that might be purposed against him, without order of law, but also that neither the governor nor the cardinal should have their will of him ; " but I shall retain you," he added, " in my own hands, and in my own place, till that either I shall make you free, or else restore you in the same place where I receive you." As resistance was hopeless, Wishart's friends were glad to receive these assurances from Bothwell. Their revered preacher, they thought, would at least be safer in his hands than in those of the cardinal ; and after solemn promises made, and " hands struck" in the presence of God, they sorrowfully surrendered him into his power. Wishart was first conveyed to Elphingston Tower, then on the morrow to Edinburgh, and next, in fulfilment of Bothwell' s engagement, to Hailes Castle in East Lothian, the principal residence of that nobleman. This last move, however, was only a blind to conceal his real design. Wishart was a valuable prize in Bothwell's hands, and the earl, a man without principle or honour, was only solicitous to sell him into the hands of his enemies at the highest price. The cardinal, the Regent, and the queen dowager, all joined in soliciting him to give up the prisoner ; and as early as the 1 9th of January, he was induced to appear before the Regent and lords of council, and "bound and obliged himself to deliver Maister George Wishart to my lord governor, or any others in his behalf, whom he will depute to receive him, betwixt this and the penult day of January, and shall keep him surely and answer for him in the mean time, under all the highest pain and charge that he may incur, if he fails herein." The Reformer was accordingly brought back from Hailes, in terms of this infamous pact, and first lodged as the governor's prisoner in the Castle of Edinburgh ; and then, soon afterwards, transferred to the hands of his deadly enemy the cardinal. What treachery and baseness in Both- well ! What criminal weakness in the Regent ! What eager thirst for Protestant blood in the cardinal, and what craft and address in using other men to work out the purposes of his own hate and revenge ! Wisharfs Trial. 145 The scene now shifts to St. Andrews, where Wishart lay for a month in irons in the Sea-tower of the Castle. The cardinal had appointed his trial to take place on the last day of February, and had summoned all the bishops and other dignitaries of the church, to be present at the solemn auio da fe, on which he was now resolved. It was in vain that the governor had sent him word, " that he should do well not to precipitate the man's trial, but to delay it until his coming ; for as to himself, he would not consent to his death before the cause were truly examined, and if the cardinal should do otherwise, he would make protestation that the man's blood should be required at his hands." Beaton haughtily replied that he had not written unto the governor to ask his concurrence, " as though he depended in any matter upon his authority, but out of a desire he had that the heretic's condemnation might proceed with a show of public consent, which, since he could not obtain, he would himself do that which he held most fitting." On the morning of the 28th day of February, 1546, the Tribunal of Heresy was constituted with great pomp and solemnity in the cathedral ; and George Wishart was brought from the Sea-tower by the Captain of the Castle at the head of a hundred men, armed with jacks, spears, and axes. As he entered the church, he threw* his purse to a poor man lying at the door, who asked alms. John Wynram, sub-prior of the Abbey and dean of the Cathedral, opened the proceedings with a sermon, which formed a singular prelude to what fol- lowed. He took for his text the parable of the sower, and explained it in a way which must have been much more satisfactory to the Reformer at the bar, than to the prelates and doctors on the tribunal. The good seed, he said, was the Word of God, and the evil seed was heresy. ' But what was heresy 1 " Heresy," said Wynram, " is a false opinion, defended with pertinacity, clearly repugnant to the Word of God ;" a definition which entirely ignored the dogmas of the church. Passing to the cause of heresy within that realm, and all other realms, he declared it to be the ignorance of those who had u 146 The Scottish Reformation. the care of men's souls; "to whom," said he, "it necessarily belongeth to have the true understanding of the Word of God, that they may be able to win again the false teachers of heresies with the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God ; and not only to win again, but also to overcome, as saith Paul, ' a Dishop must be faultless, as becometh the minister of God, and such as cleaveth unto the true word of doctrine, that he may be able to exhort with wholesome learning, and to reprove that which they say against him.' " If Sir David Lindsay had been in the pulpit, he could not have spoken more plainly what the bishops needed to hear. Once more demanded the preacher, how heresies should be known % and "heresies," quoth he, "may be known in this manner : As the goldsmith knoweth the fine gold from the imperfect by the touchstone, so likewise may we know heresy by the undoubted touchstone ; that is, the true, sincere, and undefiled Word of God." Never was a tribunal of bishops so unfortunate in their preacher. It was a wonder that the cardinal, in the plenitude of his legantine powers, did not command Wynram to go* down from the pulpit, and take his place beside Wishart at the bar. The truth is, the dean was a reformer at heart, and had long been so ; and he lived to become one of the first Super- intendents of the Reformed church. The sermon over, the reading of the "articles" of the accused began. Right over against Wishart stood John Lauder, Arch- deacon of Teviotdale, holding in his hand a long roll, from which he commenced to read a series of accusations of heresy, accompanied with so many heavy maledictions, and " hitting him so spitefully with the pope's thunder, that the ignorant people dreaded lest the earth would have swallowed him up alive on the spot." At last Lauder concluded by demanding, in the most violent manner, " What answerest thou to these sayings, thou runnigat, traitor, thief, which we have duly proved by suffi- cient witness against thee V Wishart, who had listened to the accuser with great patience, " not once moving or changing his countenance, fell down upon his knees on hearing these last Wisharfs Trial. 147 words, and made his prayer to God," which done, he rose again, and made answer in this manner : " Many and horrible sayings unto me, a Christian man ; many words abominable to hear ye have spoken here this day, which not only to teach, but also to think, I ever thought it great abomination. Wherefore, I pray your discretions quietly to hear me, that ye may know what were my sayings, and the manner of my doctrine. This my peti- tion, my lords, I desire to be heard for three causes ; the first, for the glory and honour of God, which is made manifest through preaching of his word ; the second, for your own health, because your health springeth of the Word of God; and the third, for the safeguard of my life, that I perish not unjustly to the great peril of your souls. Wherefore I beseech your discretions to hear me, and in the meantime I shall recite my doctrine without any colour." The Reformer was then proceeding to declare what doctrine he had taught ever since he came into the realm, when Lauder suddenly interrupted him, crying out with great vehe- mence, " Thou heretic, runnigat, traitor, and thief, it was not lawful for thee to preach. Thou hast taken the power at thine own hand without any authority, of the church ; we repent that thou hast been a preacher so long." And then said the whole congregation of the prelates and their accomplices these words : " If we give him license to preach, he is so crafty, and in Holy Scriptures so exercised, that he will persuade the people to his opinion, and raise them against us." Perceiving that a fair and impartial hearing was to be denied him, the Reformer appealed from the cardinal to an indifferent and equal judge. Whereupon, Lauder exclaimed, " Is not my lord cardinal the second person within this realm ? Chancellor of Scotland, Archbishop of St. Andrews, Bishop of Miropoix, Legatus natus, Legatus a latere % Is not he an equal judge, ap- parently, to thee 1 whom other desirest thou to be thy judge ?" To whom Wishart mildly replied, " I refuse not my lord car- dinal, but I desire the Word of God to be my judge, and the temporal estate with some of your lordships to be mine auditors ; because I am here my lord governor's prisoner." The plea was 148 The Scottish Reformation. a good one. Wishart had been given up by Bothwell to the Regent, not to the cardinal, and it was contrary to the Regent's desire that the cardinal had hurried on the present trial. But his appeal to the governor was received with derision by the tribunal. " Such man, such judge," some exclaimed, meaning the governor to be a heretic as well as himself. "And imme- diately the tribunal would have given sentence upon the accused, and that without farther process, had not certain men coun- selled my lord cardinal to read again the articles, and to hear his answers thereupon, that the people might not com- plain of his wrongful condemnation." His Articles were eighteen in number, and turned chiefly upon the doctrine which he was alleged to have taught respecting the seven sacraments of the Church of Rome. The third article was this, " Thou, false heretic, preachest against the sacraments, saying that there are not seven sacraments f to which Wishart replied, " My lords, if it be your pleasure, I taught never of the number of the sacraments, whether they were seven or eleven. So many as are instituted by Christ, and are shown to us by the Evangel, I profess openly. Except it be the Word of God I dare affirm nothing." The fourth ran thus, " Thou, false heretic, hast openly taught that auricular confession is not a blessed sacrament, and thou sayest that we should only confess us to God, and to no priest." He answered, " My lords, I say that auricular confession, seeing that it hath no promise of the Evangel, cannot therefore be a sacrament. Of the confession to be made to God there are many testimo- nies in Scripture, as when David saith, ' I thought that I would acknowledge my iniquity unto the Lord, and He forgave the trespasses of my sins.' Here confession signifieth the secret acknowledgment of our sins before God. When I exhorted the people on this manner, I reproved no manner of confession. And farther St. James saith, 'Confess your sins one to another.' Here the apostle meaneth nothing of auricular confession, but that we should acknowledge and confess ourselves to be sinners before our brethren and before the world, and not to esteem Wisharfs Trial. 149 ourselves as the Grey Friars do, thinking themselves already- purged." When he had said these words, the horned bishops and their accomplices cried out, and grinned with their teeth, saying, " See ye not what colours he hath in his speech, that he may beguile us and seduce us to his opinion." When accused of having preached plainly that there is no purgatory, his reply was equally explicit and characteristic. "Mylords,asIhave oftentimes said heretofore, without express witness and testimony of Scrip- ture I dare affirm nothing ; I have oft and divers times read over the Bible, and yet such a term found I never, nor yet any place of Scripture applicable thereunto ; therefore, I was ashamed ever to teach of that thing which I could not find in Scripture." Then said he to Lauder, his accuser, "If you have any testimony of the Scripture by the which ye may prove any such place, show it now before this auditory." But Lauder was dumb. At last the bishops grew impatient of his " witty and godly answers." John Scot, a Grey Friar and a notorious deceiver of the people, who was standing behind Lauder, "hasted him to read the rest of the articles, and not to tarry upon his answers." " For we may not abide them," quoth he, " no more than the devil may abide the sign of the cross." The whole demeanour of Wishart throughout these proceed- ings was worthy of the man whom Tylney describes as " a man modest, courteous, lowly, lovely, and well spoken after his country of Scotland." He had as much the advantage of his accuser and judges in good breeding, as in the goodness of his cause, " not rendering evil for evil, or railing for rail- ing, but, contrariwise, blessing — if God, peradventure, would give them repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth." But his answers and his bearing could do nothing to pre- vent an issue which was foregone and inevitable. He was in the power of men who both hated and feared him, and he must be destroyed to gratify their hatred and relieve their fear. The tribunal was unanimous in condemning him to die the death of a heretic in the flames. His prayer on hearing the sentence pronounced was affect- 150 The Scottish Reformation. ing and sublime. "O, immortal God ! how long shalt thou suffer the madness arid great cruelty of the ungodly to exercise their fury upon thy servants which do further thy Word in this world % O Lord, we know surely that thy true servants must needs suffer, for thy name's sake, persecution, affliction, and trouble in this present life which is but a shadow, as thou hast showed to us by thy prophets and apostles ; but yet we desire thee, merciful Father, that thou conserve, defend, and help thy congregation which thou hast chosen before the beginning of the world, and give them thy grace to hear thy Word, and to be thy true servants in this present life." The execution was appointed to take place on the follow- ing day, and the Reformer was led back to the castle to await his doom. His calmness and self-possession never forsook him. The prayers, which he had often put up that his heart might not shrink when the battle waxed hot, were answered. The battle was now at the hottest, and his heart was fixed, trusting in the Lord. Early next morning he had an interview with John Wynram, who came to the Castle at his desire. The spectacle of so much worth and wisdom, doomed in a few hours to suffer such extremity of anguish, overcame the feelings of the good Sub- prior, who was melted into tears. At last recovering himself, and " as soon as he was able to speak," he asked him, " If he would receive the communion 1 " " Yea, gladly," said he, " if I might have it as Christ instituted it." "Then the Sub-prior returned to the bishops," continues Lindsay of Pitscottie, "and showed them that he had conferred with Mr. George, and asked if they would consent that he should have the sacrament. The bishops, after consultation, concluded that, since he was condemned as a heretic, he should have no benefit of the Kirk. With this answer the Sub-prior returned to Mr. George, and having promised to pray each one for the other, they parted with shedding of tears." A little after, the Captain of the Castle, with some other friends, came to Wishart and asked if he would eat with them. He answered, " With a Wisharfs Execution. 151 good will, and more gladly than ever heretofore, because I perceive ye are good men and godly, and that this shall be my last meal on earth. But I exhort you that you would give me audience with silence for a little time, while I bless this meat, which we shall eat as brethren in Christ, and thereafter I will take my leave of you." So the table being covered, and bread set thereon, Mr. George discoursed half an hour of Christ's last supper, death, and passion, exhorting them to leave malice and envy, and to fix love and charity in their hearts, one towards another, as the members of Christ. Thereafter he blessed the bread and drink, and ate and drank himself, and desired the rest to do so, for they should drink no more with him, for he was to taste a bitter cup ; " But," said he, " pray ye for me, and I for you, that our meeting may be in the joys of heaven with our Father, since there is nothing in earth but anxiety and sorrow." Having thus said, he gave thanks to God, and retired to his devotion." Immediately after, his room was entered by two executioners ; one brought him a coat of linen dyed black, and put it upon him ; the other carried some bags full of powder, which he tied to several parts of his body. Thus arrayed for the fire, they brought him forth to an outer room, near the gate of the castle. Meanwhile, the artillery of the block houses was charged and pointed in the direction of the scaffold, and cushions and green-cloths were spread upon the wall-heads, for the cardinal and bishops to sit upon. " When all things were made ready," says Spottiswoode, "he was led forth, with his hands tied behind his back, and a number of soldiers guarding him, to the place of execution. As he was going forth at the castle-gate, some poor creatures who were lying there, did ask of him some alms for God's sake, to whom he said, ' I have not the use of any hands wherewith I should give you alms, but our merciful God, who .out of his abundance feedeth all men, vouchsafe to give you the things which are necessary both for your bodies and for your souls.' " When he ascended the scaffold, he fell upon his knees, and 152 The Scottish Reformation. thrice he said these words, "O thou Saviour of the world, have mercy upon me. Father of heaven, I commend my spirit into thy holy hands." Then he turned to the people and said these words, "I beseech you, Christian brethren and sisters, that ye be not offended at the word of God, for the affliction and torments which ye see prepared for me, but I exhort you that ye love the word of God your salvation, and suffer patiently and with a comfortable heart, for the Word's sake. Moreover, I pray you, show my brethren and sisters which have heard me oft before, that they cease not to learn the word of God, which I taught unto them, for no persecutions nor troubles in this world which lasteth not. For the Word's sake, and the true Evangel which was given to me by the grace of God, I suffer this day not sorrowfully, but with a glad heart and mind. Consider and behold my visage ; ye shall not see me change my colour. This grim fire I fear not. I know surely that my soul shall sup with my Saviour this night, for whom I suffer this." Then he prayed for his accusers, saying, " I beseech the Father of heaven to forgive them that have, of any ignorance, or else of any evil mind, forged lies upon me. I forgive them with all my heart. I beseech Christ to forgive them that have this day ignorantly condemned me to death." And last of all he said to the people on this manner, " I beseech you, brethren and sisters, to exhort your prelates to the learning of the word of God, that they may be ashamed to do evil, and learn to do good ; and if they will not convert themselves from their wicked error, there shall hastily come upon them the wrath of God, which they shall not eschew." * 1 We agree with those writers who think that the story of Wishart's prediction of the cardinal's speedy and ignominious end is apocryphal. Knox says nothing of it, and he is the principal authority in everything relating to Wishart, and would have been all the more sure to record the prediction if it had been authentic, that he believed in Wishart's prophetic spirit. Sir David Lindsay is equally silent in his "Tragedy of the Cardinal," and so also is Foxe in the Book of Martyrs. Besides, it is easy to see how Wisharfs Execution. 153 After these words, the martyr gave himself into the hands of the executioner. " Sir, I pray you forgive me," cried the tor- mentor, " for I am not guilty of your death ; " to whom he answered, kissing his cheek, " Lo ! here is a token that I forgive thee ; my heart, do thine office." He carried a chain of iron at his middle, by which he was fastened to a gibbet which rose in the centre of the scaffold. Fire was then put to the pile ; the powder-bags exploded, and enveloped him in fierce flames ; a cord, which had been placed round his neck, was pulled tightly till he was suffocated, and the body of the lifeless martyr was speedily reduced to ashes. "When the people beheld his great tormenting, they might not withhold from piteous mourning, and complaining of the innocent lamb's slaughter." The cardinal and the bishops, unforgiving even in death, caused a proclamation the same night to be made throughout the city, that none should pray for the soul of the heretic, under pain of the heaviest censures of the church. Thus mournfully ended the life and ministry of George Wishart, one of the truest evangelists and holiest confessors of Christ that the Church of Scotland ever produced. But his influence long survived his death. His characteristic teaching was reproduced in the confession of Adam Wallace, the martyr of 1550, and in the theology of Sir David Lind- say's "Monarchies," published in 1554. Wishart lived again in John Knox. Elijah's mantle fell upon the shoulders of Elisha. The zealous disciple who had counted it an honour to be allowed to carry a sword before his master, stood forth immediately to wield the spiritual sword which had fallen from the master's grasp, and to wield it with a vigour and tren- some of the words which Wishart made use of, might be readily developed into such an alleged prophecy. What was said of all the bishops, would easily come to be individualized and applied to their chief; and a general hypothetical warning of coming wrath, in the event of continued impeni- tence, would naturally be magnified into an unconditional prediction, when men recalled the language long after the event. X 154 The Scottish Reformation. chant execution superior even to his. In truth, the effects of Wishart's teaching, as conveyed onward through Knox, survive at the present day. It was Wishart, as already noticed, who first moulded the Reformed Theology of Scotland upon the Helvetic, as distinguished from the Saxon type ; and it was he who first taught the Church of Scotland to reduce her ordi- nances and sacraments with rigorous fidelity to the standard of Christ's institutions. Wishart, in fact, died a martyr to the true doctrine of the Sacraments. When we compare his Articles with those of Patrick Hamilton, we become aware of the interesting fact that, while Hamilton gave up his life for those truths which were revived in the teaching of Luther and Melancthon, and which they held in common with all the Con- tinental and British Reformers, Wishart gave up his, not only for these truths, but also for those principles which gave a dis- tinctive character to the Reform which Zwingle began in Zurich and Calvin perfected in Geneva. ,VJ PALMER -V fustic oj St. Andrews. Section 7. Assassination of Beaton, and siege of the Castle of St. Andrews. 1546 — 47. In less than three months after the death of Wishart, that cruel tragedy was as cruelly avenged in the death of its chief perpetrator. On the 29th of May, 1546, while the applause of the priests and friars was still ringing in the ears of the cardinal, and saluting him as the saviour of the Church ; and while he was proudly congratulating himself on the success of 156 The Scottish Refor?nation. all his measures, and his now complete and unopposed ascendancy both in Church and State, he was suddenly sur- prised in his own strong castle and palace, and cut off by a fate as tragical and ignominious in all its circumstances, as any that has ever been recorded in the long catalogue of human crimes and calamities. The details of this assassination are so familiar to all the readers of Scottish history, that it is quite unnecessary here to repeat them ; while to offer any defence, or even any extenua- tion of so criminal an act, would be itself a crime. In so far as the Reformation was really responsible for the doings of the conspirators, its honour must be confessed to have con- tracted a deep stain from their deed of violence and blood. But though the atrocity cannot be defended or even palliated, it admits of being explained. Its chief actors held the prin- ciple, that when it had become hopeless to expect deliverance from public oppressors by the arm of public justice, it was lawful for private individuals to remove them as the enemies of mankind. They made a distinction between the removal, by such means, of private and public enemies — a principle ot social morality, which was undoubtedly as vicious in its own nature, as it was dangerous in its consequences ; but which carried with it an appearance of wild justice, that recommended it to a fierce and impatient age ; and which was not without its use as a terror to evil-doers, in times when law was often too weak to reach the greatest criminals, and when the worst transgressors of law were often the very men whose duty it was to defend and administer it. The truth is, the cardinal had acted upon such a principle himself. There had been times when he despaired of being able to stop the career of George Wishart by the impediments of public law and authority; so powerful was the protection which that reformer had found behind the shields of the protestant nobles and their retainers ; and at such times he had not disdained to hire the dagger of the private assassin, or to lay the ambush of armed ruffians. The end, he thought, Assassination of Beaton. 157 justified the means. Wishart, in his view, was a public enemy and nuisance, and everything was lawful against such a foe. No marvel then, that his own example should have provoked an act of imitation which was fatal to himself; and that this should have been the way in which the angry justice both of God and man should have at last overtaken him, and exacted from him, in the very zenith of his power, a fresh fulfilment of the ancient and unrepealed doom, " that whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The benefit which accrued to the Reformation from the removal of so powerful an adversary as the cardinal, was much more than counterbalanced by the long train of evils which resulted from the event. Beaton's successor in the primacy, John Hamilton, though much his inferior in talent and energy, was almost his equal in profligacy of manners, and in persecuting zeal and cruelty, so that little was gained by the change in this respect ; while the exasperation of feeling called forth by a deed so daring and criminal, gave rise to proceedings against the conspirators, which being extended indiscriminately to all their abettors, real or supposed, had the effect of retarding the progress of the Reformation for many years ; and of weighing it down with a load of opprobrium, from the effects of which it could only slowly recover. The moment the success of Norman Leslie and the other conspirators became known, and that they meant to keep possession of the stronghold which they had so unexpectedly seized, they were joined in the Castle of St. Andrews by as many as one hundred and forty persons, including many members of the reforming families of Kirkaldy of Grange, Melville of Raith, Leslie of Rothes, and Balfour of Mont- quhany, and many other gentlemen of the same party in Fife and the neighbouring counties. In the circumstances of suspicion in which the conspiracy had placed many of these men, owing to their close connexion with the conspirators, it was natural enough that they should have taken this step. Behind the strong defences of the castle they hoped to be 158 The Scottish Reformation. safe from the new outburst of trouble and persecution, which they knew must soon follow. Still the step was a false one, and drew after it great disasters. It identified them in public opinion with the crime which was now to be avenged ; they were naturally regarded as the friends and abettors of the conspirators, to whom they thus joined themselves. The Refor- mation, to which they were all known to be attached, was held responsible for a deed which its disciples thus publicly countenanced ; and they all became involved in the calamities which resulted from the siege, to which the castle was ere long subjected. As early as the 10th of June, a summons of treason passed under the great seal, citing not only the original conspirators, but many of those who had afterwards entered the castle, to appear before the Parliament in Edinburgh, on the 30th of July. The summons being disregarded, all who were named in it were declared guilty of treason ; their lands and goods were forfeited to the crown ; they were solemnly cursed and excommunicated by the church ; and before the end of August, the Regent marched with an army to St. Andrews, and laid siege to the castle. The siege was long and tedious. The strength of the place was great, and the art of sieging was then little understood in Scotland. The Regent, for a time, had only two great cannons with him, "Crook-Mow and Deaf-Meg;" but these ill-favoured ordnance could effect nothing against the guns of the new- built block-houses of the castle ; and though the artillery of the besiegers was afterwards much reinforced, it never occurred to their inexperienced gunners to avail themselves either of the college steeple hard by, or the high walls of the abbey church, as posts of vantage for their batteries. The besieged were thus able for several months to maintain an equal conflict with their enemies. Arran being without war-ships, the sea was open to them, and they succeeded in communicating with the English court, which sent them timely supplies of provisions and munition. Siege of St. Andrews. 159 The Regent at last despaired of being able to reduce the place, till he could invest it by sea as well as land ; and con- cealing his intention of applying for aid to France, he entered in the meantime into " an appointment," the terms of which were much more to the advantage of the besieged than of his own dignity. By these stipulations, the Castle of St. Andrews was still to remain in their hands, on condition that they should hold it for the Regent, and not deliver it to the English ; and it was provided that they should not be called upon to surrender it into his keeping, until he had obtained absolution from Rome for the offence of the conspirators in the slaughter of the cardinal ; and had granted them and all their friends and servants full remission of the pains and penalties which they had incurred thereby. The siege was suspended in the end of January, 1547 ; Arran withdrew his soldiers to the south of Forth ; and the besieged were at liberty to come out from the castle at their pleasure, and to resume intercourse with their friends in the city and neighbourhood. This state of things continued till the month of June fol- . lowing, and allowed opportunity for several proceedings of a religious kind to take place at St. Andrews, which were of much interest in themselves, and proved of great importance in their issues to the cause of the Reformation. At Easter, which fell that year on the 10th of April, the castle gates were opened to receive John Knox. He was accompanied by three young gentlemen, his pupils — Francis and George Douglas of Longniddry, and Alexander Cockburn of Ormiston ; and he had repaired to the castle as a place of safety from the persecutions of the new archbishop. On the 1 9th of March, that prelate had presented to the Regent and his council a supplication in the name of the bishops and other churchmen, "for help and remeid against the sacra- mentaries, and those infected with the pestilential heresy of Luther;" stating, as the special occasion of this request, "that persons who had formerly been banished for heresy, were now coming openly and without any fear, not only 160 The Scottish Reformation. into the remote parts of the realm, but even into the court and presence of their lordships ; and were preaching pub- licly and instructing others in their damnable heresies." The death of the cardinal would appear to have given new boldness to the friends of truth ; and this again to have stirred up the clergy to renewed severities. In such circum- stances, it was natural that Knox, who had associated himself so openly with Wishart, should be one of the first to be pursued ; and he had for some time been removing from place to place, in order to elude the vigilance of his enemies. But at length, growing weary of such a life, he had resolved to leave the kingdom, and to go on a visit to the universities of Germany, when his friends, the Lairds of Ormiston and Long- niddry, earnestly pressed him to betake himself with their sons to St. Andrews ; in order that " he might have the benefit of the castle, and their children might continue to have the benefit of his doctrine." He was now in the prime of manhood — upwards of forty years of age ; and his remarkable manner of teaching the principles of religion to his young charge, soon drew upon him the eyes of all the more godly portion of the inhabitants both of the castle and the city. He tells us that, " he began to exercise his pupils after his accustomed manner. Besides their grammar and other human authors, he read unto them a catechism, an account whereof he caused them to give publicly in the parish church of St. Andrews. He read moreover unto them the Evangel of John ; and that lecture he read in the chapel within the castle at a certain hour." There were among his auditors, on these occasions, several men who were able to appreciate perfectly the purity and the power of his teaching. One of these was John Rough, who had taken refuge in the castle soon after the slaughter of the cardinal, and had all along acted as chaplain to the be- sieged ; another was Henry Balnaves, an eminent lawyer, and one of the judges of the kingdom, who had early embraced the Reformation, and was one of its most distinguished orna- John Knox at St. Andrews. 161 ments ; and a third was Sir David" Lindsay of the Mount, the Lion-king, whose frequent presence in the castle at that time, while quite consistent with the duty of his office — inas- much as the fortress was then held in the governor's name and behalf, is a remarkable proof of the interest which he con- tinued to take in the cause of the Reformation, even in this the lowest ebb of its fortunes. These men saw at a glance the high powers of the tutor of Longniddry as a religious teacher ; and they perceived how much would be gained to the cause of truth by converting the modest tutor into a public preacher of the word. What followed can best be told in the words of Knox himself : — " They of the place, but especially Maister Henry Balnaves, and John Rough, preacher, perceiving the manner of his doctrine, began earnestly to travail with him, that he would take the preaching place upon him ; but he utterly refused, alleging ' that he would not run where God had not called him,' meaning that he would do nothing without a lawful vocation. Whereupon, they privily among themselves advising, having with them in counsel Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, they concluded that they would give a charge to the said John, and that publicly, by the mouth of their preacher ; and so, upon a certain day, a sermon being had of the election of ministers, what power the congregation (how small that ever it was, passing the number of two or three) had above any man, in whom they supposed and espied the gifts of God to be, and how dangerous it was to refuse and not to hear the voice of such as desire to be instructed ; these and other heads (we say) declared, John Rough, preacher, directed his words to John Knox, saying, ' Brother, ye shall not be offended, albeit I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this, in the name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but as you tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ's Kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom you understand Y 1 62 The Scottish Reformation. well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that ye take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as ye look to avoid God's heavy displeasure, and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you.' And in the end, he said to those that were present, ' Was not this your charge to me 1 and do ye not approve this vocation 1 ' they answered, ' It was, and we approve it ; ' whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears, and withdrew himself to his chamber. His countenance and behaviour, from that day till the day that he was compelled to present himself to the public place of preaching, did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his heart, for no man saw any sign of mirth of him, neither yet had he pleasure to accompany any man, many days together." The intrepid boldness with which Knox soon after began to exercise his ministry formed a singular contrast to the un- affected modesty and reluctance with which he had consented to undertake it. His first public sermon was in a high degree characteristic, both of his principles and his temper as a Reformer. It struck the key-note in truth of his whole subse- quent preaching, and however much he may have afterwards learned in point of theological erudition from his intercourse with the English and Continental Reformers, it is plain that all the main principles of his teaching were already fixed, and that in point of clearness of perception, strength of conviction, and unsparing vigour of application of the truth both for instruction and reproof, he was already all that his later minis- trations evinced him to be. His first sermon arose out of a controversy which he had begun to wage with Dean John Annan, of St. Andrews. He had already " beaten the Dean," as he tells us, " from all his defences, and compelled him to fly to his last refuge, that is, the authority of the Church." "This authority," exclaimed Annan one day from the pulpit of the parish church, " damns all Lutherans and heretics, and therefore I need no farther dis- putation." But Knox, who was in the audience, replied aloud, John Knox at St. Andrews. 163 " Before we hold ourselves, or you can prove us sufficiently con- victed of heresy by the authority of the Church, we must define the Church by the right notes given to us in God's Scripture of the true Church ; for as for your Roman Kirk, as it is now corrupted, and the authority thereof, wherein stands the hope of your victory, I no more doubt that it is the synagogue of Satan, and the Head thereof, called the Pope, to be that Man of Sin of whom the apostle speaks, than I doubt that Jesus Christ suffered by the procurement of the visible Kirk of Jerusalem. Yea, I offer myself by word or write to prove the Roman Church to be, this day, further degenerate from the purity which was in the days of the apostles, than was the Church of the Jews from the ordinance given by Moses, when they consented to the innocent death of Jesus Christ." The people hearing the offer, cried out with one consent, " We cannot all read your writings, but we may all hear your preaching, therefore we require you, in the name of God, that ye will let us hear the probation of that which ye have affirmed ; for if it be true we have been miserably deceived." And so the next Sunday was appointed to express his mind in the public preaching place. We cannot find space for even an outline of this remarkable sermon. We can only tell that the drift of it was to prove that the Papacy is the great Antichrist, being contrary to Christ both in life, doctrine, laws, and subjects; that the intrepid preacher alleged in proof of his theme, manifold arguments from Scrip- ture, from the Fathers, and from history ; and that he wound up with the challenge, that, "if any here (and there were present, the university, John Major, the sub-prior, and many canons, with some friars of both the orders) will say that I have alleged Scripture, doctor, or history, otherwise than it is written, let them come unto me with sufficient witness, and by conference I shall let them see not only the original, where my testimonies are written, but I shall prove that the writers meant as I have spoken." Of this his first sermon, he tells us " there were divers 164 The Scottish Reformation. bruits. Some said, " Others sned {i.e. lopped) the branches of the papistry, but he strikes at the root to destroy the whole." Others said, " Maister George Wishart spake never so plainly, and yet he was burnt ; even so will he be in the end." Others said, " The tyranny of the cardinal made not his cause the better, neither yet the suffering of God's servant made his cause the worse ; and therefore we would counsel you to provide better defences than fire and sword, for it may be that else ye will be disappointed ; men now have other eyes than they had then." These remarks passing from mouth to mouth indicated that a great step in advance had now been taken by the Scottish Reformation. In the person and ministry of Knox it had entered upon a new stage. Hamilton, Wishart, and others had condemned particular doctrines and rites of the Church of Rome, but now a great preacher stood forth to deny the authority of the Church of Rome itself. If that authority should fall, all the Church's powers and prero- gatives, doctrines and institutes, must fall with it in one mighty overthrow. If the Church of the Popes was Antichrist, how could it be any true part of the body of Christ 1 and how could it have any claim whatever to the submission, or even to the deference, of the Christian world 1 No wonder the archbishop-elect was astonished and scandalized to hear that such teaching was permitted and listened to in the parish church of his metropolitical city ; and that he wrote instantly to John Wynram the sub-prior, who was acting as Vicar-General of the province, "that he marvelled that he should suffer such heretical and schismatical doctrine to be taught, and not to oppose himself to the same." Wynram was obliged to do something to save appearances ; but the course he took was highly characteristic. He summoned Knox and Rough to appear before a convention of theologians, in St. Leonard's college, to answer to certain articles gathered out of their sermons ; but he soon put them at their ease, by telling them, in effect, that he had invited them to a conference, without meaning to put them upon their trial. Knox's Preaching. 165 " The strangeness of these articles," said he, after the list had been read over, " has moved us to call for you, to hear your own answers." " For my part," replied Knox, " I praise my God that I see so honourable and apparently so modest and quiet an auditure. But because it is long since I have heard that you are one who is not ignorant of the truth, I must crave of you, in the name of God, yea, and I appeal your conscience before that supreme Judge, that if ye think any article there expressed contrarious unto the truth of God, ye would oppose yourself plainly to it and suffer not the people to be therewith deceived. But and if in your conscience ye know the doctrine to be true, then will I crave your patronage thereto ; that by your authority the people may be moved the rather to believe the truth, whereof many doubt, by reason of our youth." To which the sub-prior answered, " I came not here as a judge, but only familiarly to talk ; and therefore I will neither allow nor condemn ; but if ye list, I will reason :" And then followed a friendly disputation between him and Knox, upon the question moved by the sub-prior, Why may not the kirk, for good causes, devise ceremonies to decore the Sacraments and other parts of God's service 1 The argument was a short one ; for Wynram was only half in earnest, and was more disposed to jest than to reason. " Forgive me," said he to Knox, who had used the liberty of saying that he would they should not jest in so grave a matter \ " forgive me ; and now, father," turning to Gray-friar Arbuckle, who stood by eager to enter the lists, " follow the argument. Ye have heard what I have said, and what is answered to me again ;" and then ensued a somewhat lengthened encounter between the Reformer and the too confident friar. Arbuckle began boldly thus : " I shall prove plainly that ceremonies are ordained by God ; I will even prove these that ye damn to be ordained of God." "The proof hereof," said the Reformer quietly, " I would gladly hear." The friar's proof, of course, was quite beside the mark, ludicrously so indeed ; and only gave advantage against himself to his powerful antagonist. 1 66 The Scottish Reformation. Arbuckle then left the high ground of divine appointment which he had first taken up, and began to allege "that we ought not to be so straitly bound to the word," as Knox con- tended. But, " while he wandered about in the mist, he fell into a foul mire, for he affirmed, 'That the apostles had not received the Holy Ghost, when they did write their epistles ; but afterwards they received Him, and then they did ordain the ceremonies.'" "Few would have thought," says Knox, " that so learned a man would have given so foolish an answer; and yet it is even as true as that he bare a gray cowl." The sub-prior was as much scandalized at the Father's blunder, as Knox. " Father," cried he, " What say ye ? God forbid that ye affirm that ; for then, fareweel the ground of our faith." "The friar, astonied, made the best shift that he could to correct his fall, but it would not be. John Knox brought him oft again to the ground of the argument, but he would never answer directly, but ever fled to the authority of the kirk. Whereto the said John answered oftener than once, " That the spouse of Christ had neither power nor authority against the word of God." Then said the friar, " ye will leave us no kirk." The Inquisition demanded by the primate, ended, by Wyn- ram's astute management, in smoke instead of fire ; and the Reformers were both left at liberty to reiterate their articles in the pulpit as oft as they pleased. The only limitation put upon them was, that they were kept out of the pulpit of the parish church on Sundays by the appointment of others to preach, whose sermons were " penned to offend no man ;" but they might preach on other days — a liberty which Knox turned to the utmost account ; and not without fruit, for " God," he records, " so assisted his weak soldier, and so blessed his labours, that not only all those of the castle, but also a great number of the town, openly professed the truth by participation in the Lord's Table," which was then, for the first time in Scotland, administered in its primitive purity and simplicity. Fall of the Castle. 167 These interesting proceedings took place in the months of May and June ; and if the Reformer had been allowed to go on he would no doubt have reaped still greater successes as the first-fruits of his ministry; but his labours were sud- denly interrupted by the renewal of the siege. " On the fourth day of June appeared in the sight of the castle of St. Andrews, twenty-one French galleys, with a force of an army the like whereof was never seen in that frith before." The next day the French commander summoned the castle to surrender, but its defenders refused, on the plea that French- men had no authority in Scottish waters. The Regent, on hearing of the arrival of the Frenchmen whom he had so treacherously brought to his aid, hurried from the western borders to St. Andrews, to co-operate with the besiegers. The trenches were opened on the 24th of July. The steeple of St. Salvator's College, and the towers and walls of the Abbey were converted into batteries by the French gunners, who smiled at the simplicity of the garrison in having allowed these commanding eminences to fall into their hands. So long as the attack was made only from the sea the defence was hopefully maintained ; but the besieged were soon brought to terms when the gunners were able to open upon them their land batteries. In a few hours, as Knox had warned his friends when they bragged of the force and thick- ness of their walls, the defences crumbled like egg-shells before that formidable foreign artillery; and William Kirkaldy went forth with a flag of truce to capitulate with the French commander. The conditions obtained were, that the lives of all within the castle should be spared; that they should be safely transported to France; and "in case they could not be content to remain in service and freedom there upon such conditions as should be offered them by the French king, they should be safely conveyed, at his charge, to any other country, except Scotland, which they would require." Prisoned and bound in the French galleys, they were all doomed to go forth into perpetual exile ; many of them with the 1 68 The Scottish Reformation. sentence of forfeiture and outlawry upon their heads ; ex- communicated by the church, and deprived of all their lands and goods by the state. In a few days thereafter, the last galley had disappeared below the horizon, that bore away to France the mixed company of good and bad men who had been so long asso- ciated together within the walls of the castle of St. Andrews. It was one of the worst results of the conspiracy against Beaton, that it ended in driving into protracted exile men like Henry Balnaves, and John Rough, and John Knox ; and in leaving the kingdom for years destitute of teachers to carry on the work which had been so prosperously begun. So different, so opposite, are the results of doing God's work in God's own appointed way, and of doing it in a way of man's own impatient and rash invention ! By faithful labour and patient martyr-like endurance, the Reformation prospered and triumphed in the hands of Hamilton and Wishart and other worthies ; but in the hands of the Kirkaldies, and the Leslies, and the Melvilles, the cause had been covered with a cloud of public opprobrium ; and but for the providential appearance of Knox at that critical moment, would have been brought into danger of a hopeless overthrow. Indeed, as Knox himself, its new champion, was involved along with the rest in the final disaster, it was natural that the churchmen should have triumphed, as he tells us they did, in the complete ruin of the Lutherans and Sacramentaries. "In Scotland that summer, was nothing but mirth, for all went with the priests even at their own pleasure. The joy of the papists both of Scotland and France was in full perfection, and this was their song of triumph : — ' Priests content ye now, priests content ye now, For Normand and his company have filled the galleys fou\ And so judged the ungodly that after that in Scotland should Christ Jesus never have triumphed." Mffl r c Steeple Church, Dundee. Sedio7i 8. English Invasion. Renewal of Persecution. The Reformation-Poets. 1547 — 1554. The condition of Scotland from 1547 to 1550 was deplorable. Henry VIIL, who died in the beginning of 1547, had be- queathed his quarrel with Scotland to his son and successor, Edward VI. ; and the young king's uncle, the Earl of Hertford, now created Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, invaded the kingdom in September of the same year with a z 170 The Scottish Reformation. powerful army and fleet. The battle of Pinkie which followed, and which was one of the greatest disasters that ever befell the Scottish arms, was only the beginning of a long series ol troubles. English garrisons long held possession of Had- dington, Inchkeith, Broughty, and Home Castle, and pillaged and wasted the adjoining districts. Again and again the flames of war were rekindled upon the borders. The French were called in to assist in driving out the English invaders, but they showed much more zeal to secure the consent of the nation to the marriage of the young queen with the dauphin, than to pursue the war with earnestness and vigour ; and the citizens of Edinburgh — who saw their provost, Sir James Hamilton, of Stenhouse, and other inhabitants, stretched lifeless upon the High Street by the swords of the disorderly French bands who were quartered in the Canongate — had as much reason to dread and resent the insolent violence of their " auld allies " of France, as the attacks of their " auld enemies of England." The only topic of consolation in the history of these long troubles and confusions, was the immunity which they brought to the disciples of the Reformation from the persecutions of the clergy, and the deepened interest and significance which they imparted to the lessons of that blessed word, in which growing numbers of the people sought their only solace amidst the public disasters. The success of the Churchmen in avenging the death of Beaton contented for a season their anti-Lutheran zeal ; and at a time when the Earl of Angus's heretical " bands " were as necessary to carry on the war with England as the more orthodox " followings " of Huntley and Argyle, it would have been bad policy to rekindle the flames of ecclesiastical strife. No sooner, however, was peace concluded in 1550 between Scotland, England, and France, than the old battle between light and darkness was renewed. John Hamilton had now been fully installed in the primacy of St. Andrews, and having long possessed a complete ascendancy over his brother, the English Invasion. 171 Regent, stood prepared to take vigorous measures against the enemies of the Church. He saw with particular anxiety the state of the archiepiscopal province of Glasgow. That see had been vacant since the death of Gavin Dunbar in 1547, and heresy, which had rapidly gained ground in the arch- bishop's lifetime, had greatly increased during this prolonged vacancy. According to Hamilton's own showing, in an In- formation presented by him to the court of Rome, " a great part of the diocese was infected with heresy, and the greatest scandals were committed against the Catholic faith ; such as the burning of the images of God and the saints, the contempt of prelates, the beating of priests and monks, and the eating of forbidden meats ; " and in the same document, the primate takes credit to himself for the zeal and vigour with which he had proceeded against two heretics of the diocese, " an apostate heresiarch of the name of McBrair, and another of the same character called Wallace." John McBrair was a gentleman of Galloway, and had been educated in St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, where he took his degree in 153 1. Having entered the Augustinian monastery of Glenluce, he had become a canon of that house ; and after embracing the Reformation, he had carried on as a popular preacher in " the westland " the mission which had been so successfully prosecuted there by Willock, Rough and Wishart. At the time when the primate proceeded to the west to put a stop to his labours, he was living under the protection of Lord Ochiltree, in the castle of Ochiltree, and had many patrons and followers in the country around. The archbishop did not trust to the terror of ecclesiastical citations and censures ; he went to Ochiltree with a band of armed men, and overpowering the preacher's defenders, took him prisoner, along with several of his followers, and lodged him in the dungeons of the castle of Hamilton. This was in the spring of 1550. But before the month of May was out, McBrair was again at liberty. John Lockhart of Barr, the same " stout gentleman " who had been Wishart's patron, stood true also to 172 The Scottish Reformation. McBrair in the crisis of his fate. To attempt the forcible release of a prisoner from the Regent's own castle was a crime inferring the penalties of treason. But Lockhart took counsel with his courage rather than with his fears, and having come silently by night with a few attendants as resolute as himself, to the Regent's stronghold, he succeeded in delivering the reformer, and carrying him in safety to the Barr, from which McBrair had no difficulty in effecting his escape across the English border. The primate's other victim, Adam Wallace, was less fortunate. He was a native of Ayrshire, and is described by Knox as " a simple man, without great learning, but one that was zealous in godliness and of an upright life." He had not much Latin, but he carried a Bible at his belt in three languages, French, German, and English. "With his wife he frequented the company of the Lady Ormiston for instruction of her chil- dren, during the trouble of her husband, who was then banished;" and at the time when he was seized, he was on a visit to the noble family of Winton, in East Lothian. It was no doubt the access which he enjoyed to the houses of the reforming nobility, and the influence which he was exerting in diffusing the principles of the Reformation among the upper classes, which made him an object of jealousy to the clergy. He was carried prisoner to Edinburgh, and his trial took place in the great Church of the Blackfriars in September, 1550. From his answers to the articles laid against him, it appears that he was no preacher ; " He had never judged himself worthy ot so excellent a vocation, and there- fore never took upon him to preach ; but he would not deny but that sometimes at table, and sometimes in other privy places, he would read the Scriptures, and had given such exhortations as God pleased to give to him, to such as pleased to hear him." He owned the truth of the accusation that he had said and openly taught, " that the mass is very idolatry, and abominable in the sight of God !" " He had taught nothing," he added, " but what was agreeable to the holy word Renewal of Persecution. 173 as he understood it. God and his own conscience were judges, and by that doctrine he would abide unto the time he were better instructed by Scripture, and the contrary proved, even to the death." " Then all cried out, Heresy ! heresy ! and so was the simple servant of God adjudged to the fire." On the following day, the sentence was executed with every circumstance of cruelty on the castle-hill. The kingdom was now stripped bare of all its reforming teachers. However many heretics there might still be lurking among all classes of the nation, the primate was able to look round and congratulate himself and his brother bishops that at least all the heresiarchs were either burnt or driven into exile. Nor only the preachers, but also many of their most active and powerful abettors. The cause of the Reformation seemed now at its lowest ebb. Its adversaries appeared to have recovered all their former power. Who was now to stand forward and lift up again its fallen banner 1 It is an interesting fact, that for the next four years, from 1550 to 1554, — the remainder of the Wishart period, — the interests of the Reformation and the religious instruction of the people were almost exclusively in the hands of the poets and the printers. It was at this time that the following act of the Scottish Parliament against the press was obtained by the influence of the clergy : " Forasmuch as there are divers printers in this realm that daily and continually print books concerning the faith — ballads, songs, blasphemations, rhymes — as well of churchmen as temporal men, tragedies as well in Latin as in English tongue, not seen and considered by the superiors, as appertains, to the defamation of the lieges, the Parliament therefore prohibits the printing of all such things either in Latin or English, without licence, under pain of confiscation of the printer's goods, and banishment from the realm." Among the " ballads, songs, and rhymes" here referred to, were included many of those which form the curious and highly interesting collection called, " Ane compendious Book 1 74 The Scottish Reformation. of Godly and Spiritual Songs, collected out of sundry parts 01 the Scripture ; with sundry other Ballats changed out ot prophane Sangs, for avoiding of sin and harlotry." These went by the name of Wedderburn's Psalms and Songs ; the author being John Wedderburn, of Dundee, who was educated at St. Andrews under Gavin Logie, and is said to have afterwards studied under Luther and Melancthon. He became a zealous Reformer, and translated many of Luther's hymns, and of the Psalms of David, into Scottish metre. These were already in circulation in Wishart's time, for we find him singing one of Wedderburn's Psalms at Ormiston, on the night of his apprehension. Many of the tunes to which the poet adapted his pieces were national favourites, and had long been associated in the minds of the people with rude and indecent verse ; and it was then deemed a great service to the cause of truth, not only in Scotland, but also in Germany, France, and England — whatever would be thought of such a measure in our own day — not only to enlist these popular airs on the side of religion, but even to imitate closely, in the new psalms and hymns, the structure and rhythm of the old licentious ballads, which had descended to that age from times still ruder and coarser than itself. Some of Wedderburn's pieces are sufficiently free in this respect, and others of them have no great poetical merit ; but many of them are marked by extraordinary power of satire ; and many more, by fulness of evangelical doctrine and fervour of religious feeling. Carried to all parts of the country by travelling chapmen, their influence, as they passed from mouth to mouth, could not fail to be very great, and very beneficial to the cause of Reform. Among the tragedies proscribed by the Act of Parliament, was doubtless, " The Tragedie of the Cardinal," by Sir David Lindsay. By that name were then understood not tragic dramas, but rhyming histories of public and private calamities, especially those of fallen greatness. Boccacio had set the example of such compositions in his "Fall of Princes;" and The Reformation Poets. 175 his tragedies, "done into English" by John Lydgate, were then in the hands of all lovers of poetry and history. Lindsay was a great admirer of "John Boccace;" and soon after the fall of Beaton — a tragedy equal in astonishment and horror to any that had ever occurred in history — he produced a piece upon the same model, with the design of reading a new lesson to prelates and princes, suggested by the cardinal's proud career, and miserable end. The prologue begins thus : — "Nocht long ago, efter the hour of prime, Secretly sitting in mine oratory ; I took ane book to occupy the time, Where I found many tragedie and story, Whilk John Boccace had put in memory, How many princes, conquerors and kings, War dolefully deposit from their rings. "I sitting so, upon my book reading, Right suddenly afore me did appear Ane woundit man abundantly bleeding, With visage pale, and with ane deadly cheer, Seeming ane man of twa and fifty year ; In raiment red, clothit full courteously Of velvet and of satin crammosie. " x It was the cardinal himself! and he was come to say, that no doubt, John Boccace, if he had been alive, would have described " his tragedie ;" but since he was gone, he looked to Lindsay to do that office : — "I pray thee to indite Of my infortune some rememberance ; Or at the least my tragedie to write, As I to thee shall shew the circumstance, Sen my beginning to my fatal end, Whilk I would to all creature were kend. " The poet then begins to write to the cardinal's dictation : — 1 Crimson. 176 The Scottish Reformation. "I, David Betoun, umquhyl 1 cardinal, Of noble blood by line I did descend ; During my time I had no perigal, 2 Ay gre by gre 3 upward I did ascend, Swa that into this realm did never ring 4 Sa great ane man as I, under ane king." And so on, in stanzas of fluent ten-syllable verse, through the cardinal's whole life and career ; forming a kind of epitome of the history of the country during the period of Beaton's ascendancy. The concluding stanza of the story runs thus : — ' ' I lay unburied seven months and more, Or I was borne to closter, kirk, or queir, In ane midding, whilk pain be to deplore, Without suffrage of canon, monk or freir. All proud prelates at me may lessons leir, Whilk rang so lang, and so triumphantly, Syne in the dust doung doun so dolefully. " Then follows an address to the " proud prelates," as if from the lips of the cardinal himself; in which his "brether princes of the priests," are compelled to hear from him very different language from what they had ever heard from his living lips. It is full of Lindsay's favourite grievances against the bishops, which, though meant of course quite seriously, have rather a droll effect when taken up and enforced by the dead cardinal. " Alas ! " he cries, — " If ye that sorrowful sight had seen How I lay bullerand, 5 bathit in my blude, To mend your life, it had occasion been, And leave your auld corrupted consuetude ; Failing thereof, then shortly I conclude, Without ye from your ribaldry arise, Ye shall be servit on the samyn wise." The cardinal's address " To the Princes," is equally plain- spoken, and turns upon the sin and folly of appointing to the cure of souls "blind pastors," without knowledge and conscience. He rebukes them sharply for taking more care to appoint, — 1 Deceased. 2 Equal. 3 Step by step. 4 Reign. 5 Roaring. The Reformation- Poets. 177 " Ane brewster whilk can brew maist hailsum aill, Ane cunning cook whilk best can season caill, Ane tailor whilk has fostered been in France, That can mak garments on the gayest gyse ; " than they bestowed in the nomination of bishops and abbots. Witness himself, for example, quoth the now candid and humble cardinal : — " Howbeit I was legate and cardinal, Little I knew therein what should be done ; I understood no science spiritual, No more than did blind Allan of the mone." " Wherefore," he concludes, — "I counsel everilk Christian king, Within his realm mak reformation, And suffer no mo ribalds for to ring Above Christ-is true congregation ; Failing thereof, I mak narration, That ye princes and prelates all at anes, Shall buried be in hell, soul, blude, and banes. " No wonder that the cardinal's successor and the rest of the prelates complained of the " Tragedies," and tried by Act of Parliament to gag Lindsay and the other poets. It was bad enough for Lindsay's friends to have slain the cardinal ; but to turn him into a heretic and a preacher after he was dead was a grosser affront still. Why, Wishart and Knox themselves had never told them the truth with so little ceremony as Lindsay had made the cardinal do, in this provoking " blasphe- mation." "The Tragedie of the Cardinal" was a happy sally of satiric genius, and no doubt did great execution upon the credit of the churchmen throughout the kingdom. In 1553 Lindsay finished and sent to the press of John Scot, of St. Andrews, a still more important work, his " Monarchic, or Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour, of the Miserable Estate of the Warld." It is the A A 178 The Scottish Reformation. most copious and elaborate of all his poems, and differs from almost all the rest in the thoroughly grave and solemn tone in which it is conceived. So much so, that at the outset, declining the help of the Muses of Parnassus and Helicon, he tells his reader that he looks only for inspiration to Mount Calvary — " Therefore, O Lord, I pray thy Majesty, As thou did shew thy heich power divine First plainly in the Cane of Galilee, Whare thou convertit water into wine, Convoy my matter to ane fructuous fyne, 1 And save my sayings both from shame and sin." Then begins the " Dialog," in which Lindsay, " the Courteour," and Experience run through, in the form of question and answer, and comment, the whole history of the world, both sacred and profane ; recapitulating the story of the four ancient monarchies, and dwelling with special emphasis of remark upon the fifth monarchy, that is, " the spiritual and Papal." It is in handling this last topic of course that the theological and religious spirit of the poet shows itself most fully ; and as this work was the latest and ripest fruit of his genius, we see here the matured and concentrated results of the observation, reading, and reflection of his whole life, upon the great question and controversy of his day. But we cannot stop to characterise the poet-reformer as he here reveals him- self, farther than to say, that in accomplishments he is almost as good a theologian and Church historian as he is a poet, and that in fearless truth and energy of speech he is almost a match to John Knox himself. His denunciations of Roman corruption and superstition are of the most earnest and fervid description, and in reading them one can only marvel that such a scourge of the Popes and all their ministers and abettors should have been permitted to end his days in peace. Lindsay did not long survive the publication of "The Monarchic," but he was still able in 1554 to take the manage- 1 End. The Reformation-Poets. 179 ment of another grand performance of his " Satire of the Three Estates." It is almost incredible that such a spectacle should have been allowed to take place in the metropolis of the kingdom. But the fact is indubitable, and not only so, but the drama was produced at Greenside, under the slopes of the Calton hill, in presence of the magistrates of the city and of the Queen Dowager herself, who had now superseded Arran in the regency of the kingdom. But she had owed that political success very much to the support of the Protestant lords, and it might be partly with the view of gratifying them that she conceded to Lindsay such a dangerous privilege. The poet seems to have reproduced the piece in its fullest dimensions, for the performance lasted — as we are told by Henry Charters, the Edinburgh bookseller, who saw it — from nine o'clock in the morning to six o'clock in the afternoon ; and in this its unabridged form, with all its prologues, parts, and interludes, it formed an extraordinary reflex of the spirit and manners of the age. The coarseness of the dialogue in some places is so gross, that it would not now be tolerated on the boards of the lowest penny theatre. And yet' the ideas of the piece, political, social, moral, ecclesiastical, and religious, are of the most enlightened kind. Its key-note is reform ; reform everywhere, in church and state, in prince and people, in the maxims of trade, and in the habits of domestic life. Lindsay was a sound politician and enlightened patriot, as well as an evangelical theologian and zealous iconoclast. It is singular that the date of the death of such a man should not have been exactly recorded. It probably, however, took place in 1557. He survived therefore to witness the commencement of the Knox period of the Reformation; and it must have been a great joy to him to see the man whom he had assisted to bring out of privacy into the public pulpit of St. Andrews, return to the kingdom after an absence of eight years, to resume the great work where his predecessors had left it. But Lindsay's name does not again occur as that of a living man in the history of the Reformation. His light 180 The Scottish Reformation. disappeared beneath the horizon just when the star of Knox rose again to view in the opposite quarter of the heavens ; and well had he merited the eulogium of Henry Charters, one of his publishers : — " Never poet of our Scottish clan So clearly schew that monster with his marks, The Roman god, in whom all guile began, As does gude David Lyndsay in his warks." Old Church and Glen at Dun-house. CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE KNOX PERIOD. A. D.I 555 1560. Section i. Visit of Knox to Scotland. 1555, 1556. With the year 1555 commences the Knox period of the Scottish Reformation — its last and crowning stage. The Wishart period had closed in extreme apparent weakness and discouragement. After thirty years of conflict and suffering 1 82 The Scottish Reformation. the reformers of Scotland were still without union as a party, and without organization as a power in the Church and the State. Their preachers were all in exile, and their leaders among the nobles reduced to silence and inaction. But with the reappearance of Knox upon the scene all this was speedily changed. His presence and power gave a new impulse to the cause, which immediately launched it upon a period of revival, of union, of organization, and of ultimate triumph. Eight years had passed away since the surrender of the castle of St. Andrews, and to Knox they had been singularly full of incident and change. For twenty months he was kept a captive on board the French galleys, " lying in irons, miserably entreated, and sore troubled by corporal infirmity." Released at length in the spring of 1549, he gave the next five years of his life to the promotion of the Reformation in England, preaching for some time in Berwick, then in New- castle, and afterwards, when he was made one of King Edward's six chaplains, in London, and various parts of the counties of Buckingham and Kent. He was consulted by Cranmer and the other reforming bishops in the preparation of King Edward's Second Liturgy, and of the Articles of Religion, and might even have been promoted to the see of Rochester, if he had not been less solicitous of high place for himself than of a thorough reformation of the discipline of the Church. But he complained that no minister in England had authority to execute needful discipline, " to separate the lepers from the whole," which he accounted " a chief point of his office ;" and he repeatedly declined to fill any other post in the Church than that of a preacher. Soon after the death of Edward, he left England and repaired to Geneva ; and there he remained, he tells us, "at his private study" till he was called by the congregation of English refugees at Frank- fort to be their preacher, " which vocation he obeyed (albeit unwillingly) at the commandment of that notable servant of God, John Calvin. At Frankfort he remained till that some Visit of Knox to Scotland. 183 of the learned," he continues, " more given to unprofitable ceremonies than to sincerity of religion, began to quarrel with him ; and because they despaired to prevail before the magistrate there for the establishing of their corruptions, they accused him of treason committed against the emperor and against their sovereign, Queen Mary, because in his ' Admonition to England ' he had called the one little inferior to Nero, and the other more cruel than Jezebel. The magis- trates perceiving their malice, and fearing that he should fall into the hands of his accusers by one mean or by other, gave advertisement secretly to him to depart their city, for they could not save him if he were required by the Emperor, or by the Queen of England in the Emperor's name ; and so the said John returned to Geneva, and from thence to Dieppe, and thereafter to Scotland." The time when Knox arrived in Edinburgh — about the end of September, 1555 — was peculiarly favourable to the success of his visit. The clergy had sunk into a state of false security, and were dreaming that heresy had been well-nigh extirpated from the land. The regency had recently passed into the hands of the Queen Dowager, Mary of Guise, whose political schemes made it necessary for her to pursue a temporizing policy with the Protestant lords, and to disguise for a time the hatred which she cherished, in common with all her family, to the doctrines and aims of the reformers. Just at that time, too, a number of the leading Protestants, including John Erskine of Dun, and William Maitland of Lethington, had gathered into Edinburgh to confer with and enjoy the mini- strations of John Willock, who had been sent by the Duchess of East Friesland to the Scottish court on a commercial mission. But Willock's " principal purpose was to assay what God would work by him in his native country ; " and the private meetings for prayer and exposition of the word which he had already held in Edinburgh, suggested a similar plan of usefulness to Knox. The first citizen of Edinburgh who received Knox into his 184 The Scottish Reformation. house, and afforded facilities for such secret assemblies, was James Syme. James Barron, another burgess, and his pious wife, Elizabeth Anderson ; Janet Adamson, the wife of James McGill, of Rankeillor, clerk register ; David Forres, Master of the Mint, and Maister Robert Lockhart, are all mentioned, in addition to Erskine and Maitland, as attendants at these edifying assemblies. It was necessary, in order to escape obser- vation, that the meetings should be small ; and this, with the ardent desire of many to receive spiritual instruction, kept the reformer closely engaged for weeks, both by day and by night. After he had been several weeks in Edinburgh, he wrote to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Bowes, in Berwick, to say that " the fervent thirst of his brethren, night and day sobbing and groaning for the bread of life, was such, that if he had not seen it with his own eyes he could not have believed it. I praised God when I was with you, perceiving that in the midst of Sodom God had more Lots than one, and more faithful daughters than twa. But the fervency here doth far exceed all others that I have seen ; and therefore ye shall patiently bear although I spend here yet some days, for depart I cannot, unto such time as God quench their thirst a little. Yea, mother, their fervency doth so ravish me, that I cannot but accuse and condemn my slothful coldness. God grant them their hearts' desire. In great haste, the 4th of November, 1555." It was evidently a time of spiritual awakening like that which had occurred under the ministry of Wishart in Ayrshire and Dundee ; and instead of being able to return to Berwick in a few days, Knox found it impossible to leave the country for many months. The news of his arrival and of the power of his ministry having spread among the reformers in all parts of the country, his presence was everywhere ardently desired, and he deemed it his duty " to pass through all quarters, strengthening the disciples." We have the advantage of the following sketch of his labours during this spring-time of religious life, from his own pen. " John Knox, at the request of the Laird of Dun, followed Visit of Knox to Scot/and. 185 him to his place of Dun, where he remained a month, daily- exercised in doctrine, whereunto resorted the principal men of that country. After his returning, his residence was most in Calder, where repaired unto him the "Lord Erskine, the Lord Lorn, and Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, where they heard, and so approved his doctrine, that they wished it to have been public. That same winter he taught commonly in Edin- burgh ; and after the Yule, by the conduct of the Laird of Barr, and Robert Campbell of Kinyeancleugh, he came to Kyle, and taught in the Barr, in the house of the Carnell, in the Kinyean- cleugh, in the town of Ayr, and in the houses of Ochiltree and Gadgirth, and in some of them ministered the Lord's table. Before the Pasch, the Earl of Glencairn sent for him to his place of Finlaston, where, after doctrine, he likewise ministered the Lord's table; whereof, besides himself, were partakers his lady, two of his sons, and certain of his friends. And so returned he to Calder, where divers from Edinburgh, and from the country about, convened as well for the doctrine as for the right use of the Lord's table, which before they had never practised. From thence he departed the second time to the Laird of Dun, and teaching then in greater liberty, the gentlemen required that he should minister likewise unto them the table of the Lord Jesus ; whereof were partakers the most part of the gentlemen of the Mearns, who professed that they refused all society with idolatry, and bound themselves to the uttermost of their power to maintain the true preaching of the Evangel of Jesus Christ, as God should offer to them preachers and opportunity." It is surprising that Knox was allowed to continue these labours for so many months without interruption from the bishops. At last, however, while he was yet in Angus, he was summoned to appear before them on the 15th of May, in the Church of the Blackfriars, at Edinburgh. Encouraged by the support of so many powerful friends, he resolved to obey the summons, and set out for Edinburgh with the Laird of Dun and other gentlemen, to face his enemies. But it turned out that the B B 1 86 The Scottish Reformation. bishops were little disposed to face a heretic of so undaunted a spirit. They had not expected that he would be so bold as to obey the summons, and they shrank from the consequences of such an encounter. On the Saturday preceding the day appointed, "they cast their ain summons, and the said John, the same day of the summons, taught in Edinburgh in a greater audience than ever before he had done in that town. The place was the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging, where he continued in doctrine ten days, both before and after noon." These were ten days of remarkable power and success in the exercise of his ministry. Writing to Mrs. Bowes, after he had been three days thus employed, he exclaimed, in a fervour of pious enthusiasm, " O ! sweet were the death that should follow sic forty days in Edinburgh as here I have had three. Rejoice, mother, the time of our deliverance approacheth ; for as Satan rageth, so does the grace of the Holy Spirit abound, and daily giveth new testimonies of the everlasting love of our merciful Father. I can write na mair to you at the present. The grace of the Lord Jesus rest with you. In haste." Emboldened by these successes, the Reformer was led to hope that he might even be able to speak a word with effect to the conscience of the Queen Regent. The idea of addressing a letter to her, " to move her to hear the Word of God," was suggested to him by the Earl Marischall and Henry Drummond, who had been " allured " to come and hear him by the Earl of Glencairn, and who enforced the suggestion by assuring him, from what they knew of the queen's disposition, that the moment was favourable. He complied with their request, and penned a letter to the Regent, which, for its courtesy of phrase and faithfulness of counsel, was equally suitable to her dignity as a queen and to his character as a minister of God. " I doubt not," said he, " but the rumours which came to your Grace's ears of me, have been such, that if all reports were true, I were unworthy to live on the earth ; and wonder it is that the voices of the multitude should not so have inflamed your Grace's Visit of Knox to Scotland. 187 heart with just hatred of such a one as I am accused to be, that all access to pity should have been shut up. I am traduced as an heretic, accused as a false teacher and seducer of the people, besides other opprobries, which, affirmed by men of worldly honour and reputation, may easily kindle the wrath of magis- trates when innocency is not known. But blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the dew of his heavenly grace, hath so quenched the fire of displeasure in your Grace's heart (which of late days I have understood), that Satan is frustrate of his enterprise and purpose. Which to my heart is no small comfort ; not so much (God is witness) for any benefit that I can receive in this miserable life by protection of any earthly creature (for the cup which it behoveth me to drink is appointed by the wisdom of Him whose counsels are not changeable), as that I am for that benefit, which I am assured your Grace shall receive, if that ye continue in like moderation and clemency towards others that most unjustly are and shall be accused. That is, if by godly wisdom ye shall study to bridle the rage and fury of them who, for maintenance of their worldly pomp, regard nothing the cruel murdering of simple innocents ; then shall He who proclaimeth mercy to appertain to the merciful, and promiseth that a cup of cold water given for his name's sake shall not lack reward, first cause your happy government to be praised in this present age, and in posterity to come ; and last, recompense your godly pains and study with that joy and glory which the eye hath not seen, nor yet can enter into the heart of mortal creature." This specimen of the letter must suffice. It ought to have made a right impression, but it did not. A day or two after the Regent received it, she handed it to Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, to read, with the contemptuous phrase, "Please you, my lord, to read a pasquil." This " mockage " was reported to the stern Reformer, and Mary of Lorraine paid the penalty of her obduracy by not being forgotten in the "First Blast" of his trumpet "against the Monstrous Regiment of Women." 1 88 The Scottish Reformation. This incident served to reveal how little dependence could be placed upon the disposition of the Regent, and to prepare both Knox and his friends for a temporary suspension of his labours in the country. Just at this time arrived letters from the English congregation in Geneva, "commanding him in God's name, as he that was their chosen pastor, to repair unto them for their comfort." He determined to obey the call, and prepared to take his departure for a season. Revisiting almost all the congregations which he had before addressed, he exhorted them to meet together from time to time for prayers, the reading of the Scriptures, and mutual conference, "unto such time as God should give unto them greater liberty." Among other visits, "he passed to the old Earl of Argyle, who was then in the Castle of Campbell, where he taught certain days. The Laird of Glenurchy, Sir Colin Campbell, being one of his auditors, willed the said earl to retain him still ; but he, purposed upon his journey, would not at that time stay for no request, adding, ' That if God so blessed these small beginnings that they continued in godliness, whensoever they pleased to command him, they should find him obedient' And so in the month of July he left this realm, and passed to France, and so to Geneva." Immediately afterwards the bishops summoned him anew, and, upon non-appearance, burnt him in effigy at the Cross of Edinburgh — a dastardly deed, which Knox too much honoured in thinking it worthy even of an " appellation." His enemies were bold enough to confront his effigy, but they had shrunk like cravens from the encounter with himself. This visit of Knox to Scotland was of immense service to the cause of the Reformation. The new converts whom he had gained to it were not only numerous, but many of them men of high rank and expectation, and of distinguished talents. Adherents like Lord James Stuart, the Prior of St. Andrews, Lord Lorn, the heir of Argyle, Lord Erskine, Captain of the Castle of Edinburgh, the Earl Marischall, the Lord of Glenurchy, and the old Earl of Argyle, were accessions to the ranks of Reform of the highest value, and vouchers that the Visit of Knox to Scotland. 189 day of final triumph could not now be very far off. But to have secured even such conquests as these was not the largest part of the Reformer's success. He had not only added to the numbers and individual power of the Reformers ; he had formed them into a body ; he had given them union and organization and concentrated strength ; he had taken particular pains to convince them of the sin of any longer taking even an apparent part in the corrupt worship of the dominant Church ; and young Maitland of Lethington, after arguing this point with all his usual subtlety and skill, had been brought to own that it was impossible any longer to defend the practice. In thus cutting the last link that connected them with the Church of Rome, Knox had at the same time organized them to some extent into a distinct ecclesiastical body. They were now a " Congregation," or community of evangelical Christians, having a worship, a creed, and a discipline of their own ; by which, as by common ties, they were now as much bound to one another, as they were dissevered from the Church of the Popes. In a word, the foundations were now laid of the coming Reformed Church of Scotland. In Hamilton's and Wishart's days, the Reformation was a reformed doctrine ; but it was now becoming a new rite. For thirty years it had existed only as a new idea, and a new inner life in individual souls ; but now, in its last stage, it begins to develop itself into the form of a new social worship, and a new ecclesiastical communion and organization. Old St. Giles, E " root of bitterness " was left in the soil which could afterwards spring up and trouble the peace and purity of the Church. The Church which was followed most closely in this respect by the Scottish Reformers, was that of Geneva, and " The Book of Com- mon Order " — a directory of public worship drawn up by Knox and others for the use of the English Reformers in that city, upon the model of a similar work by Calvin — had been introduced to some of the congregations before the Parliament of 1560. Some others had made use of the second Prayer-book of King Edward VI. ; but this liturgy never received the sanction of the General Assembly, and was soon everywhere superseded by the Book of Common Order, which had been thus formally approved. Such a liturgical help was indispensable at a time when most of the congregations of the Church were dependent upon the services of readers and exhorters. Yet the ordained ministry was not bound to a rigid adherence to these litur- gical forms, but might freely use the gifts of prayer and utterance / 262 The Scott is Ji Reformation. with which it had been endowed. We find instances of this freedom and variety in prayer among the most distin- guished preachers during the sitting of the Parliament. " The Bishop of Galloway," says Randolph, "preacheth earnestly, and prayeth heartily, for the Queen's Majesty, our Sove- reign, and greatly extolleth her benefits. Mr. Willock, specially by name, prayeth both for France and England. Mr. Knox, universally, for all princes living in the fear of God, desiring Him to turn the hearts of other, and to send them in the right way." Another important feature of resemblance between the Scottish and the Genevan ecclesiastical platforms was the pro- minence given to the exercise of Discipline as an institution of Christ, and an indispensable guarantee for the purity of the Church's communion. The principal function of the elders of the Church, as distinguished from the ministers, was to take part with t^e latter in the administration of discipline ; and such elders nad been appointed as soon as separate congre- gations began to be formed, " when as yet there was no public face of a kirk, nor open assemblies, but secret and privy con- ventions in houses or in the fields." Randolph saw with wonder the religious submission with which the exercise of discipline was received in the church of Edinburgh even by persons of rank and station. "It is almost miraculous," says he in a letter to Henry Killygrew, "to see how the Word of God taketh place in this country. They are better willing to receive discipline here than in any country that ever I was in. Upon Sunday last, both before noon and after, there were at the sermons that confessed their offences, and repented their lives before the congrega- tion. Mr. Secretary (Cecil) and Dr. Wotton were present. The Wednes- day after, three others did the like. We think to see next Sunday a lady of the country, named the Lady Stenhouse, by whom the Bishop of St. Andrews hath had, without shame, five or six children, openly repent her life. God send us great increase hereof to his honour." Nor was it only the Church courts that exercised this disciplinary jurisdiction ; the magistrates of all the cities and principal towns of the kingdom zealously seconded the Church Organizatiofi of the Reformed Church. 263 n her efforts to restrain vice and impiety, and to promote habits of religion, sobriety, and purity among the people. The municipal records of that age are full of examples of such an exercise of civic authority; and occasional instances oc- curred, in which the punishments inflicted upon offenders were so severe and ignominious, as to excite sympathy and tumultuous opposition on the part of the less religious and moral portion of the community. Still, on the whole, these records of municipal zeal form an honourable memorial of the Reformers of the age. They show what an earnest spirit of improvement was diffused by the young Church throughout the whole of society, and what a powerful current of new moral ^ife was poured at that era into all the arteries of the nation. The methods adopted, indeed, to bring about a renovation of the national life, were not always such as we can now approve. Both civil and ecclesiastical power was often, as we must think, unduly stretched to gain the ends of public religion 1 and morality. But it was a grand thing to witness almost a whole nation in earnest to prosecute such noble aims. And it was a splendid testimony to the purity, and power, and usefulness of the Reformed Church of Scotland and her Pres- byterian order, that it was under her teaching and discipline that a nation which, of all European peoples, had become the most corrupt in religion and morals, was enabled to # recover itself from that debased condition, to shake itself from the dust, and to put on again the beautiful garments of truth and righteousness, and to enter upon a new and high career of Christian civilisation and progress, upon which it has never ceased to advance to the present time. Well might John Knox, the great hero of this Reformation, exclaim, on looking back from the year 1566 upon the immense difficulties which had been overcome, and the splendid triumphs which had been won — " How potently God hath performed in these our last and wicked days the promise that is made to the servants of God, that they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall lift up the wings as the eagles ; they 264 The Scottish Reformation. shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint. For what was our force ? What was our number % Yea, what wisdom or worldly policy was in us to have brought to any good end so great an enterprise 1 And yet in how great purity God did establish among us his true religion as well in doctrine as in ceremonies ! To what confusion and fear were idolaters, adulterers, and all public transgressors of God's commandments within short time brought ! The public order of the Church, yet by the mercy of God preserved, and the punishment executed against malefactors, can testify unto the world. For as touching the doctrine taught by our ministers, and as touching the administration of sacraments used in our churches, we are bold to affirm that there is no realm this day upon the face of the earth that hath them in greater purity ; yea, we must speak the truth whomsoever we offend, — there is none, no realm we mean, that hath them in the like purity. All praise to God alone, we have nothing within our churches that ever flowed from that 1 Man of sin? And this we acknowledge to be the strength given to us by God, because we esteemed not ourselves wise in our own eyes, but understanding our whole wisdom to be but mere foolishness before our God, we laid it aside, and followed only that which we found approved by Himself. Our First Petition was, ' That the reverent face of the primitive and apostolic Church should be reduced again to the eyes and knowledge of men.' And in that point we say that God has strengthened us till the work was finished, AS THE WORLD MAY SEE." THE END. R. Clay, Printer, Braid Street Hill.