THE HISTORY

OF

CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND.

THE HISTORY

OF

CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND.

CHAPTER XIII.

Section I.

The Rise and Progress of the Reformation.

PARTLY owing to the insular position of Scotland, the means of intercourse with the other communities of Europe had for ages been comparatively limited, but, from the closing years of the thirteenth century onward, the commercial and foreign relations of the kingdom had gradually extended, and new historic conditions had arisen. The gradual development of the industrial arts, the extension of commercial relations, and the consequent improvement of the means of intercommunication, had at length permitted different nations to influence each other more freely and directly. Step by step commercial enterprise had become a power in Europe, and the narrow feudalism of the earlier period had begun to relax and decay. The energy of the people of Europe had rendered it possible for the various communities to influence each other in their ideas and opinions, as well as to confer benefits by the exchange of their diverse commodities. This mutual influence was most decisively manifested in the department of thought and feeling associated with the Reformation movement. There had been some slight attempts to sow novel doctrines among the Scots in the fifteenth century, but they were still firmly attached to the Roman Catholic creed. The principles and the doctrines of the Reformation were not originated in Scotland, they were imported; and in treating of the historic rise of this revolutionary movement, it is necessary to extend our view beyond the boundaries of the Island.

The mechanical inventions connected with the manufacture of paper, and the art of printing, had a relative bearing on the Reformation. In Europe, paper was first made from cotton about the year 1000, and from rags in 1319; and thus the material for printing on was rendered available. In 1438, the art of printing was discovered; and a few years later, cut metal types were invented and brought into use. Before the end of the fifteenth century many thousands of books had been printed and published in the various countries of Europe. Thus the printing press soon made literature more accessible to mankind; while the range of an individual thinker’s influence was at once greatly widened, his ideas and opinions being easily promulgated to an extent which, in preceding ages, was unknown and undreamed.

These new agencies appeared upon the scene when the chief nations of Europe were seeking unity and aspiring to political independence, and when their languages were assuming the modern forms. This had a close relation and a deep influence on the Reformation movement. The Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Germans, and the English, had each already begun to cultivate their respective languages, and to produce poetry and other compositions. But the languages of the three first were essentially descendants of the Latin; and it is a notable coincidence that, though the Reformation was attempted to be introduced among these nations, they still remain in the Roman Catholic Church. The Italians have produced a rich and varied literature, characterised by flowing cadence and dramatic power. Spanish literature is distinguished for its sonorous rhythm and its romantic characteristics. Both Italian and Spanish literature are somewhat poor in the departments of philosophy and criticism: in these departments French literature has taken a higher rank. German literature and English literature were also influenced by the Latins, but in a much less degree than the rest, each of them having retained a large body of vernacular words, which have been developed into a great and massive national literature. The action of the above agencies and others began to indicate that a revolution was looming in Europe. The fetters which had so long entangled and enslaved the human mind were soon to be snapped; and the time was approaching when the mass of traditions, of legends, and of wonders, would be subjected to a rude and irreparable shock.

It has long been recognised that the revival of Classical literature aided the Reformation movement. This however only affected the educated class, and if there had been no stronger causes of the Reformation, classical learning would have been comparatively powerless to touch the body of a nation; but being in accord with other and deeper causes of the revolutionary movement, it may be reckoned a considerable factor among the antecedents of the Reformation. Inasmuch as this revival of ancient literature contributed to weaken the authority of the theology of the schools, it trenched upon the supreme power of the Church, and by assisting to modify the forms of thought and opinion proved exceedingly favourable to the general movement. Even to awaken a spirit of inquiry was a step of the utmost consequence. Many learned men of the period had no intention of reforming religion, but owing to other tendencies which had been long in operation, their efforts conduced to that end.

At the same time the revival of art and the rise of modern painting in Italy gave an impetus to the onward movement. It is the essential function of painting to embody man’s feelings, emotions, and ideas of beauty, and within certain limits to give them living form and realised existence. The Church thought that art could help her; and to a certain extent it did. By vividly portraying Scripture histories and the lives of the saints, by presenting new types of serene beauty and pure joy, by giving form to the floating notions of angelic beings, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. But its effect was not exactly what the Church desired. Instead of tightening the fetters of ecclesiastical authority and encouraging mysticism and asceticism, it restored humanity to a sense of its dignity and beauty, and helped to show the untenability of the mediæval standpoint; for art is emphatically and uncontrollably free, and it is free in the realm of sensuous delightfulness from which conventual religion turns aside to enjoy her own ecstatic liberty of contemplation. Thus art early contributed to the emancipation of the modern mind by proclaiming to men the tidings of their greatness in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. “Whatever painting touched, became by that touch, human; piety at the lure of art, folded her soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not foreseen.”¹

Before the Reformation the Catholic Church presented a vast and powerful organisation with innumerable agencies which penetrated into every form of society, and attempted to control the whole life of mankind. The body of the clergy, including the monks and friars, had assumed the characteristics and the position of a distinct caste. They were not only distinct, but in many respects antagonistic to the other classes of the people; in their view of life, their laws, their special privileges, their social duties, and in the aim of their existence, they were separated from the lay classes of society by an impassible limit. Their theory of life was to neglect and subdue the body, to mortify the flesh in order that the soul might be made perfect. Whether all this was done for the good of humanity or for the benefit of the clergy themselves is a question of the most momentous importance, and perchance some light may be thrown upon it in the course of this volume.

In every country of Europe the Church held a considerable extent of landed property, which varied in different kingdoms, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century the wealth of the Church was enormous. In England the landed estates of the bishops, of the cathedrals, and of the monastic orders extended into every parish of the kingdom; while the tithes and offerings which maintained the beneficed clergy brought in a revenue larger than the lands. In France a long series of causes and circumstances had combined to throw into the hands of the clergy a very large stretch of landed property; for many generations the Kings of France had vied with each other in heaping estates upon the bishops and in endowing monasteries. The title deeds of church property in France date from a very early period; and in Scotland the earliest body of charters relating to land rights are found in the registers of the Church. The Church lands however formed but a small part of the revenues of the clergy. They had the tenth of all the produce of land, which was extended to include not only all kinds of grain and vegetable produce, but also cattle, sheep, poultry, and all kinds of fish. There were also the votive offerings, many of which were at first free gifts, but had assumed the form of lawful demands. Then the whole life of every Catholic was interwoven with the ceremonial of the Church, and the priest had to be paid for confession, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and the rites of burial, and the saying of masses which were believed to lighten the suffering of the soul after death. Moreover, there were the offerings at the crosses and the shrines of famous and popular saints for their intercessory prayers to avert calamities, to grant success to schemes of ambition, to obtain pardon for sin, and to bring down blessing. Many of the crosses and shrines were supposed to be invested with miraculous powers, and the miracles which were said to have been wrought at them were innumerable. When to all these are added the large subsidies which must have been given to the swarms of friars spread over every country of Christendom,¹ it will be easily realised that the Church was in receipt of a large portion of the industrial produce of Europe, and drew into her coffers an almost incredible amount of wealth.

Such education as then existed was almost wholly under the control of the Church, and the clergy themselves were the best educated body of men in the world. Rome was the head of the educational department as well as the centre of everything else connected with religion, morals, and philosophy. No university could be properly established without the sanction and the approval of its constitution by the Pope; but it does not appear that the Pope threw obstacles in the way of the erection of these institutions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were upwards of fifty universities scattered over Europe: and all learned people were regarded as belonging to the clergy, for the Pope had long claimed them as the special subjects of his empire. It was well understood that all the members of the universities should talk and write in Latin, the universal language of the Church and the learned, in which all the knowledge of the times was sealed up and monopolised by the clergy. They were the canon lawyers, the historians, and the philosophers, for philosophy was wholly under the dominion of theology. They reigned supreme, and everything which they deemed opposed to the Faith or inconsistent with their theology was rigorously excluded from the pale of orthodox Christendom. Medicine and science were left to the Jews and the Arabians; as the Christian had higher objects with which to occupy his mind. If it had been possible to continue making Latin the only medium of communication and record, the sole vehicle of literature, with the Church as its depository, there would have been no Reformation. The modern languages even in their crude state aided the onward movement, and the comparatively rapid development of their varied literature secured its success. Hence, since the sixteenth century, in spite of every effort, the Latin tongue has been constantly falling more and more into the background; it was relegated into the study of the scholar, and into books intended only for the learned. But at the beginning of that century the spiritual authority and the power of the clergy stood unchallenged; and the minds of men were held in the most complete slavery. They declared the eternal destiny of every one, and to doubt their sentence was the most abhorrent sin; those who disbelieved trembled in silence, and shrouded themselves from their fellow creatures; the few who openly ventured to question the unlimited power of the clergy to absolve were the outcasts of society, detested and proscribed by the Church and hated by the people. The whole life and moral being of man was claimed to be under the supervision and control of the clergy; no act was beyond their cognisance, all the thoughts of the mind and the inmost secrets of the heart had to be disclosed to them. Every one was bound to inform against himself, and to submit to a moral torture which threatened him with the severest condemnation. If he concealed anything, he had to undergo the most crushing penance. The sacraments of the spiritual life could be granted or withheld according to the arbitrary judgment of the priest; absolution might be delayed and even refused; after death the body might repose in consecrated ground with the saints, or be cast out into the domain of devils. Excommunication cut the man off from the Church, beyond whose pale there was no possibility of salvation; no one could presume to hope for any one who died under its ban. The inward assurance of faith, of virtue, or of rectitude, unless avouched by the priest, was accounted nothing; without the priestly passport admission into the kingdom of heaven was impossible. But the sacredness of the priest himself was indefeasible, whatever his habits and life might be. The people might murmur in secret at his cupidity and licentiousness; he might even be openly exposed to shame, but he was still a priest and his verdict of condemnation or absolution remained equally valid. This was the crowning triumph of the Roman priesthood over the moral and intellectual faculties of mankind, but it was too complete to endure. Great as the power of the Church was, she could not bind the human mind for ever; she might cramp its freedom and retard its progress, but to arrest the onward movement and destiny of humanity was more than she could do, and the moral indignation of the people at last rent the veil.

The written creed of the Church comprised only a small part of the belief of Roman Catholicism. During the period of a thousand and four hundred years the Church had accumulated and interwoven with Christianity a vast mass of mythology, which consisted partly of notions belonging to the old heathen religions that were current in these countries when the Gospel was introduced into them, and partly of notions and opinions which prevailed among the Jews when Christianity was founded, and largely of traditions and legends associated with the Christian saints.¹ The popular religion of the middle ages composed from these diverse sources, contained a remarkable combination of beliefs, and a mass of crude, unsifted, and materialised notions. Tradition claimed equal authority with the Scriptures; the Church and the hierarchy were assumed to have the power of indefinitely multiplying the objects and articles of faith, and by degrees the whole imaginary belief of the Middle Ages was authorised and ingrafted upon Christianity. Externally there was a certain unity in the diversity of the public worship. Although each nation and even each parish had its peculiar patron saint, no one denied the influence and the power of the saints of other nations and parishes; as there was always plenty of employment for them all within the vast organisation of Roman Catholicism.

There were the realms of angels and devils, and the hierarchies of heaven and hell. The celestial host of angels was divided into three classes, and each class sub-divided into three orders;¹ and these beings formed circles around the throne of the Trinity. They were of a fiery nature, as fire had most of the properties of the divinity, and they were endowed with countless eyes and wings; their form, however, was human, their raiment priestly and exceedingly bright, and they were holy and full of joy. Occasionally they visited the earth as messengers, but angelic apparitions were far less frequent than the interferences and temptations of the demons. The latter were base and cruel, malignant, hideous, and hateful; they took a peculiar delight in the tortures which they inflicted, but the saints often mastered them, and exultingly repulsed their fiercest assaults. The devils were very numerous and ever present under the name of the spirits of the air; this world was their almost exclusive domain; sometimes they assumed beautiful forms, as of frisky women, to tempt the saints; sometimes the devil appeared in the shape of a monstrous animal, at other times as a priest to declaim in the pulpit. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic writer of the fourteenth century, distinctly maintained that diseases and tempests were the direct acts of the devil; that the devil could transport men at his pleasure through the air, and that he could transform himself into any shape. It was generally taught and believed that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking the misery and the ruin of mankind; and that they were always hovering around the inhabitants of the earth, and originating wind, hail, and tempests.²

Closely associated with these demoniac agencies, was the belief in witchcraft, sorcery, spells, talismans, and conjurations. These vaguely connated notions rested upon the supposition that acts and operations were performed by persons who were under the influence of the devil, or who acted as the assistants of evil spirits. The Church had long encouraged these silly notions and wild hallucinations by recognising and treating them as facts; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the belief in witchcraft reached a height which produced the most frightful results. Many thousands of human creatures were burnt and drowned for the supposed crime of having sold themselves to the devil, and having held communication with evil spirits.

The intense and vivid sense of satanic presence which pervaded the minds of the clergy and the legislators of those times, induced them to look upon heresy and witchcraft as nearly allied, and the zeal against both grew together. The idea of demoniac power had so deep a hold upon the minds of men that even the Reformation failed to shake it; and for some time this revolution gave a new impetus to the persecution for witchcraft, and it required the enlightenment of other two centuries to weaken and dispel this dark and cruel belief.

The saints were an intermediate class of beings between God and the living Catholic world of Christians. As they were endowed with human feelings and sympathies, they were naturally supposed to be more closely associated with, and interested in, the welfare of their kindred upon the earth. This kinship between the blessed saints and their brethren and votaries still in the flesh seemed to be mutual; and each saint willingly kept up his special interest and attachment for the places and the associates of his earthly sojourn. By his intercession he exercised a beneficent influence; he was tutelar within his sphere, and so he became an object of devout adoration. So useful a class of beings could not fail to be constantly multiplied, and some of them deified, as they had assumed the position of the rulers and the disposing providence of the earth, and it appeared that the Deity had almost abandoned the government of the world to them. The unmistakable evidence of their place and power in the popular imagination was seen in the numbers of their altars in every church and chapel throughout Christendom, and the costly oblations that were continually offered at their shrines.

But the Virgin Mary was seated far above all the saints and martyrs. Since the beginning of the seventh century the worship of the Virgin had been constantly on the ascendant. Every cathedral, and almost every church, had its Chapel of our Lady; and in every breviary the hymns to the Virgin teemed with poetic images expressive of the homage paid to her: in the worship of the people she was addressed in words similar to those applied to the Deity. A copious and rich legend unfolded the whole history of her birth and life, a subject on which the New Testament was silent: but the spurious gospels had furnished ample incidents, which threw a halo of authority around the details.¹ Painting and sculpture both lent their aid to embody and realise this worship of the Blessed Virgin. At last the question was raised, whether she was entirely free from the sin of Adam, and there were great discussions on the point. The Council of Basle in 1439 passed a decree in favour of the Immaculate Conception; yet some still doubted, and Pope Sixtus the Fourth, in 1477, and again in 1483, declared that the opposite doctrine should not be called heretical, but his bulls did not prohibit those who differed from retaining their own views.² At this time the festivals in honour of the Virgin had increased to seven; and it is almost unnecessary to say that countless miracles were attributed to her.

This worship of the Virgin and the Saints was continually receiving fresh accessions. For many centuries the passions and feelings were kept in a state of excitement, as new saints were always arising and crowding on to the Calendar, and whenever a saint was canonised, it was deemed necessary to show that he had worked miracles; so all the lives of the old saints are full of miracles. Some of the saints had a world-wide fame; their churches were erected in every Christian kingdom, and their shrines sprung up in all lands; but others had only a national or a merely local fame, although within these limits they were worshipped with equal fidelity, their legends, their acts, and their miracles, were commemorated and presented to the eye in architecture, sculpture, and painting. A few of the patron saints of the western kingdoms of Europe belong to a comparatively late date, England placed herself under St. George, a personage of very doubtful origin; St. Louis was the Saint of the Crusades; and St. Thomas Aquinas of Scholasticism. Each order of monks and of friars were bound to hold up to the utmost the saints of their order, and it was the sacred duty of all who wore the garb to spread their fame with especial assiduity. It was also the duty of every king, burgess, and craftsman and parishioner, to assist in propagating the renown and the miracles of his patron saint.¹ Most of the chief churches of a kingdom had a commemorative anniversary of their patron saint, when his wonders were made the subject of endless sermons. Great processions, rejoicings, and feastings were held, and occasionally rendered more attractive by some new miracle, some marvellous cure, some demon ejected, or something which outdid the miracles of every neighbouring saint. Each of these notable saints had his life of strange incidents, the legend of his virtues and miracles, his shrines and his relics; and this legend was to his votaries a kind of gospel, which was worked into the popular belief by constant iteration. Legend, in fact, was the universal poetry of the times. The mythic literature of Roman Catholic Christianity is almost interminable in quantity, and its life and strength is centred in its particularity and individuality; whenever it is reduced to a more compendious form it withers, the chill of the tomb gathers around it; and under the searching grasp of comparative criticism, the specified particulars and the minute detail, are found to lack evidence, and one by one, each story is made to pass from the realm of fact into that of belief, or the hallucinations of the dark and perplexed imagination of the sons of men.

The worship of the saints was connected with the adoration of images, and the veneration of relics. The legend was confirmed and kept alive by the somewhat dimly shown relics, which were generally in the church, either under or upon the altar. In 787, the Second Council of Nice issued a decree prohibiting the consecration of any church without relics; hence it may easily be understood that objects of such virtue and importance continually multiplied. The reliquary was the most precious ornament in the king’s hall, in the lady’s chamber, and in the knight’s armoury. It cannot be denied that there is something human and even amiable in preserving memorials of the departed; and this natural and universal feeling when transferred to the relics of the Blessed Virgin and the saints had an almost incredible power. No one doubted that the relics of the saints worked miracles; while the wood of the true cross grew into a forest, and the most perishable things​—the garments of the Saviour and of the saints​—became imperishable. To such a degree was the veneration of relics carried, and the belief in their virtue and miraculous powers had become so absolute, that the very devil himself failed to detect imposture. Up to the verge of the Reformation period the veneration of relics and the worship of images continued in unshaken authority.

As the Catholic Church developed and completed her organisation, the world after death became more and more distinctly imagined and vividly described. Hell, purgatory, and heaven, were palpably represented to the senses. The conception of hell and the doctrine of future punishment was especially clear and minutely elaborated; the site of the former, its topography, trials and torments, were all portrayed with harrowing exactness and repulsiveness. Hell was described in the writings of the Middle Ages in words too gross to be repeated here; its imagery, gathered from various sources besides the Old and New Testaments, had been for long accumulating. It was held and taught that eternal damnation was the lot which God had prepared for an immense majority of the human race; that their punishment consisted in the burning of their bodies in a literal fire; that the flames of this fire were never quenched and that the bodies of the damned were never consumed; that God had made the contemplation of their sufferings an essential element of the happiness of the redeemed; and that the saint was frequently permitted in visions to behold the agonies of the lost, and to describe the fearful spectacle he had seen. “He loved to tell how by the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had seen millions writhing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs rolling with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and mutilated and quivering with pain, tortured by pangs that seemed ever keener by their recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mercy to an unpitying heaven. Hideous beings of dreadful aspect and of fantastic forms hovered around, mocking them and their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and refined. Amid all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, feeding, and intensifying the waves of fire. There was no respite, no alleviation, no hope. The tortures were ever varied in their character, and they never paused for a moment upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while retaining their intensity withheld their light; a shroud of darkness covered the scene, but the ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the agonies that were below.”¹

The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment as presented in the tenets of the Church of the Middle Ages, destroyed all sense of the Divine goodness, and would at length have extinguished the principles of right and morality. Religion, instead of exhibiting a pure and exemplary morality, had become a system of dogmas, of ceremonies and of relics, of asceticism and of abuse, of extreme credulity and of savage persecution, and all this was mainly supported and maintained by fear.

The doctrine of purgatory seems to have arisen gradually from the notion of a purifying fire, and it was afterwards brought into connection with the notion of the mass. It came in to soften the horrible idea of eternal torture in hell; in another respect it was simply a continuation of the doctrine of penance. The possession of the keys of heaven and hell certainly entailed a terrible responsibility upon the priesthood; and it is only charitable to suppose that many a priest might have thought that the key of purgatory might be used with much less presumption; and so it came to pass that praying souls out of purgatory by saying masses on their behalf was speedily developed into an elaborate office which demanded large remuneration. The purchase of indulgence naturally followed in the same wake; and so much alms-giving to churches or to churchmen was understood to secure the remission of so many years, or it might be, centuries of purgatory.

But the idea of heaven, the state of the blessed, was not nearly so firmly realised as the notions of hell and purgatory. Many had brought back visions of hell and purgatory, but no one had returned from heaven with clear information about it; though some of the saints might occasionally descend on beneficent missions to the world of living men, yet of the state of the blessed they gave only the vaguest tidings. In fact, the notion of heaven was mixed up with the prevailing cosmic theory, as well as with the theology of the age. The whole belief of Roman Catholicism was materialistic; a palpable image or a representation of everything was eagerly sought and as fully supplied.

At the opening of the sixteenth century the political power of the Church varied in different kingdoms. Although the head of the Church made the same absolute claims upon all the rulers of Christendom, the rulers did not always respond equally to his calls and pretensions. In England the aristocracy and the commons had united to limit the exorbitant power and influence of the Pope within the kingdom, and his remonstrances and threats were often unavailing. The English clergy, as a body, had a considerable share of political power; they constituted one of the estates of the realm, and the territorial wealth of the bishops being large, contributed to enhance their social importance. The Pope, however, was still recognised as the head of the Church, and by artful management, and the policy of seizing every opportunity to extend his influence, he as yet retained a firm hold upon the English clergy.

In France the clergy were very powerful in the Middle Ages; and in the first half of the thirteenth century they had begun to exercise an almost complete social tyranny. Heresy was a crime which fell under their jurisdiction; they had a monopoly of granting licences to marry and of power to sanction wills; they had an exclusive right to give judgment in cases of usury, that is loans; and thus became the judges in nearly all the important disputes of daily life. Indeed they interfered in everything, and upon every opportunity launched forth their excommunications, which, if not removed, ended in confiscation. The French nobles who tamely yielded to the encroachments of the kings, resisted the clergy, and entered into a bond to aid each other in defying the Papal ban. In 1249, King Louis issued his Pragmatic Sanction, an ordinance against the undue privileges of the clergy and the usurpations of the Popes. It established the rights of the national prelates to confer benefices as handed down to them, and the right of chapters and cathedrals to elect their bishops; it also abolished simony, which Rome in her urgent need of funds had introduced on a large scale. All these arrangements King Louis declared to be under the protection of his own royal courts. The decree forbade the levy of any tax by the court of Rome, unless it was sanctioned by the King, and consented to, by the national Church. This ordinance remained in force till the reign of Francis I. in the sixteenth century. The Pragmatic Sanction was not a very bold assertion of religious freedom, but it seems to have been highly valued by the French; although one of its results was to foster the growth of the royal authority which long proved fatal to the peace and happiness of the French.

The French nobility were a separate caste and paid no national taxes. Their estates descended to their eldest sons, but the younger sons, according to etiquette, also belonged to the noble class; they became very numerous, and though often poor they were extremely proud of their blood and privileges. Thus it was that the hard worked tillers of the soil of France from an early period were hard pressed by the payment of rents to the nobles, taxes to the King, tithes to the Church, and other fees and payments, which were rigorously exacted from them. In 1483 the French peasants laid their grievances before Charles VIII., hoping for some remedy, but in vain, as the new monarch proceeded to invade Italy, and thereby increased their taxes and shed more of their blood. Absolute monarchy became firmly established in France, and there the Reformation failed, not because the French were Roman Catholic, but mainly because the struggle in France was finally decided upon secular and political grounds. The persecution of heresy in France was excessively severe till Catholicism gained the upper hand, and as it was more favourable to despotic government than Protestantism, the absolute monarchy of France ruled the people almost without a challenge for nearly two centuries. But the accumulated oppressions and wrongs perpetrated upon the people for many generations at last exhausted their endurance, and they arose and laid the Throne and the Church both in the dust. The Reformation which was stifled in the sixteenth century burst with volcanic violence at the end of the eighteenth, when the people, goaded almost to madness, rose in their might, scattered the glittering brass of the Crown, and rent to shreds the hallowed veil of the Church, which had so long favoured the instruments of the oppressors.

In Germany the strife between the Emperor and the Pope had ceased; while externally there seemed to be peace with the head of the Church in that quarter of Christendom. But there were many other elements of discord among the Germans. As yet they were far from having attained national unity. The country, though nominally under the Emperor, was really ruled by a number of petty princes and prelates, and the Emperor merely held a kind of feudal headship. Germany was still under the meshes of the feudal system; she had a class of little princes and great dukes, and under them a host of petty nobles and lords, most of whom were poor but proud and independent, and these constantly resisted all the attempts of the higher powers to control them. They claimed the right of waging private war, and the public peace was often broken. It was only in the free towns of Germany that there was union and orderly organised society; the citizens were thrifty, toiled hard, and saved much, and thus they had obtained wealth. The great want of Germany was a central and organised government with sufficient power to maintain the public peace.

No class in Germany had suffered more from the lawlessness of the nobles and knights than the peasantry, who were still in feudal serfdom. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century there had been several insurrections among the peasantry against their masters; and at last these risings began to be mixed up with the religious movement. They were the natural result of oppression​—in the circumstances rebellion was the only remedy. The peasants of Swabia, a district of South Germany, rebelled in 1525 against the exactions of the Church and the nobles, but they were soon crushed. The demands which the leaders of the peasants put forward were comprised in twelve short articles​—“The right to choose their own pastors; they would pay tithe of corn, out of which the pastors should be paid, the rest to go for the use of the parish; but small tithes, that is, the produce of animals, every tenth calf, lamb, pig, or egg, and so on, they would not pay; they would be free and no longer serfs and bondmen; wild game and fish to be free to all; woods and forests to belong to all for fuel; rent when above the value of the land to be valued and lowered; common land to be again given up to common use; punishments for crimes to be fixed; death gifts, that is, the right of the lord to take the best chattel of the deceased tenant, to be done away with. If any of these articles be proved contrary to Scripture or God’s justice, such to be null and void.” But there was no chance of their demands being granted.

Other local rebellions of the peasantry followed, and severe and savage measures were adopted on both sides, and many were put to death. It has been calculated that before the Peasants’ War was terminated 100,000 were slain. Luther throughout this struggle sided with the ruling powers; he was firmly opposed to the use of the sword against the civil authorities. The sons of toil naturally thought that they should have found a friend in Luther but they were bitterly disappointed, as he openly exhorted the princes and the nobles to crush the rebellion, and urged them on in the work of slaughter.¹ It need not be denied that in some degree this rebellion was incited by the seed which Luther himself had sown, and therefore he deserves the less sympathy for his hard and cruel bearing towards the poor peasantry and their somewhat wild leaders. The monks, who had suffered severely at the hands of the peasants during the progress of the rebellion, blamed Erasmus and the new learning for causing it; Erasmus blamed Luther, and Luther blamed the wild teachers. But history must tell that it was the refusal of timely reforms by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities that was the real cause of these rebellions, and so persistent were the authorities against social reform that the German peasantry were doomed to groan under the yoke of serfdom till the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then, unhappily for the German race, they have been subjected to a crushing and exhausting militarism, a modern form of despotism, which is threatening to extinguish the spirit and consume the heart of this great but too submissive people.

The revival of learning had a remarkable influence on the Reformation movement in Germany. Erasmus had a European reputation and influence, but there was a number of other notable scholars more immediately connected with the rise of the Reformation in Germany; amongst whom were Reuchlin, Buschius, and Hutten; they were called “Humanists,” and those who were bent on maintaining the old modes of learning branded them as “preachers of perversion, and winnowers of the devil’s chaff.” Greek in particular was declared to be heretical: the monks and masters of the Universities were afraid of the light. Reuchlin was the greatest Hebrew scholar of his day, at once a man of the world and of books, but Hebrew was not more in favour than Greek with the theologians of the old school, and they resolved to crush the leaders of the literary reformation. Great efforts were put forth by the enemies of light to overwhelm Reuchlin; the struggle was desperate, and for some time the issue seemed doubtful. His enemies were fast closing around him, when, as a last resort, he wrote to his friends throughout Europe, entreating them to make the utmost efforts to obtain for him new allies. He received from all quarters expressions of sympathy and assistance. Reuchlin’s victory in public opinion was completed by a satire which appeared in the beginning of the year 1516, entitled Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, etc. The aim of this memorable satire was to make the enemies of Reuchlin and polite letters represent themselves: “And the representation is managed with a truth of nature only equalled by the absurdity of the postures in which the actors are exhibited.... Never certainly were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality so ludicrously delineated. The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum are at once the most cruel and the most natural of satires, and as such they were the most effective.... So truly, in fact, did it hit the mark that the objects of the ridicule themselves, with the exception of those who were necessarily in the secret, read the letters as the genuine product of their brethren, and even hailed the publication as highly conducive to the honour of scholasticism and monasticism.”¹

Hutten, who has generally been supposed to be one of the authors of the above satire, at first wrote in Latin rhyme, but he at length resolved to write in German for the instruction of the people. The burden of his popular German rhymes was that Germany should abandon Rome; and he exposed her tyranny and worldliness, and stirred up the people against it. Many other writers also freely ridiculed the existing priestcraft in fables, letters, and rhymes, and prepared the people for the inception of the Reformation.

Before the end of the fifteenth century Spain had fully entered upon the task of persecuting the heretics. The Inquisition was early established in Spain, and more effectively applied to crush all attempts for the reformation of religion than in any other country; and she long enjoyed the glory of being the most Catholic nation in Europe. The modern form of the Inquisition was adopted in Spain in 1484. It was at this time that Torquemada, a friar, was placed at its head with the title of Inquisitor-General, and he at once proceeded to organise the institution. After constituting the new tribunal, he framed a body of rules for its government, which were issued in 1484, and from time to time new rules were added till 1561, when the whole code was revised and published in eighty-one articles, which continued to be the law, with slight variations, down to the present century. Without entering into minute details, it may be stated that the Inquisition was not merely a court for the trial and condemnation of heretics; it exercised the duties of an organised body of police employed in searching out heresy, and thus it was one of its chief functions to hunt for the crimes on which it was afterwards to sit in judgment, and every member of its higher and lower courts was charged with this work. At times when its vigilance was aroused by the alarm of heresy, it had its spies and agents at every port and pass of the kingdom, fully armed with authority to arrest the persons and goods of all who incurred their suspicion. The forms of trial in its courts were all on the side of the inquisitors, and to render it an instrument at once of injustice and terror, all its proceedings were shrouded in complete secrecy. The part of the procedure relating to torture was full of inhuman cruelties; and when the evidence was not sufficient to convict the heretic, he was tortured in order to force him to give answers against himself. From 1484 to 1517 the victims of the Inquisition in Spain numbered thirteen thousand persons who were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three condemned to undergo penance, all within a period of thirty-four years.¹

Various attempts were made to introduce the reformed doctrines into Spain, but they completely failed. Everything savouring of heresy was utterly extinguished. In the sixteenth century, Spain constituted herself the great champion of Roman Catholicism; but the ends for which she leagued with the court of Rome were chiefly political. She aimed at subjecting all classes to the absolute will of the monarch, and the power and seeming greatness which was raised upon this foundation, contained within itself the vices which soon consumed her energy and ensured her decay.

At the opening of the sixteenth century Italy had made but little progress towards becoming a united nation. The country was divided into a number of separate states with varying and opposite interests. The chief states were Venice, Milan, and Florence, in the north; Naples to the south; and the States of the Church lying between them, over which the Pope had endeavoured to rule. These States of the Church contained a number of petty lordships and cities which claimed independence, and the Nobles and the Pope were always quarrelling as to who should bear the chief sway. Quarrels were constantly fomented among the Italian states; and the governments of the neighbouring kingdoms were apt to seize these comparatively weak principalities. Milan was claimed by the Kings of France, Spain, Naples, and the German Emperor; and through these internal and external forces Italy was kept in a sea of unrest and disorder. The power of the Papal Court was not so complete in Italy as it was in some other countries; and even excommunication had lost some of its former power and terrors.

Touching the morals of the clergy before the Reformation, there was a general concurrence of testimony against them; to the historian, however, this subject appears as a complicated problem tinged by the contorted notions of the age; inasmuch as it is difficult to reach the truth and do justice to opposing parties. From the beginning of the fifteenth century, a reformation of the Church had been loudly demanded; and the shortcomings of the clergy were generally, if somewhat reluctantly, acknowledged throughout Christendom. They neglected the religious instruction of the people, and their sacred functions were often prostituted to worldly purposes; while the exactions of the Church were becoming more and more unbearable. Nowhere were these abuses and grievances more rampant than in Italy. The Court of Rome itself was more corrupted than any of the political Courts of Europe; the unprincipled and faithless character of its policy was everywhere notorious; in fact, it was a system of intrigue, of cabal, and of bribery. The sacred bodies of clerical dignitaries who surrounded the throne of the Pope might agree to dupe the world; yet they rarely scrupled to supplant and deceive each other when their personal interests were at stake.¹ Many of the clergy did nothing but say masses for the dead, a more lucrative occupation than praying for the living. The education of the clergy and their modes of life were not well calculated to encourage self-culture nor the study of Divine truth, in order to qualify them to instruct others; and the root of the prevailing system directly tended to narrow their sympathy and to dwarf their humanity. Celibacy cut them off from all the interests and duties of domestic life, and this left them at leisure for mischief of all kinds. “The history of the clerical celibacy, in England as elsewhere, is indeed tender ground; the benefits which it is supposed to secure are the personal purity of the individual, his separation from secular ways and interests, and his entire devotion to the work of God and the Church. But the results, as legal and historical records show us, were very different. Instead of personal purity, there is a long story of licensed and unlicensed concubinage, and appendant to it, much miscellaneous profligacy and a general low tone of morality in the very point that is supposed to be secured. Instead of separation from secular work is found in the higher class of the clergy entire devotion to the legal and political service of the country, and in the lower class idleness and poverty as the alternative. Instead of greater spirituality, there is greater frivolity. The abuses of monastic life, great as they may occasionally have been, sink into insignificance by the side of this evil, as an occasional crime tells against the moral condition of a nation far less fatally than the prevalence of a low morality. The records of the spiritual courts of the middle ages remain in such quantity and in such concord of testimony as to leave no doubt of the facts; among the laity as well as among the clergy, of the towns and clerical centres, there existed an amount of coarse vice which had no secrecy to screen it or prevent it from spreading.... And in this, as in other particulars, the mediæval Church incurred a fearful responsibility. The evils against which she had to contend were beyond her power to overcome, yet she resisted interference from any other hand. The treatment of such moral evils as did not come within the contemplation of the common law were left to the Church courts; the Church courts became centres of corruption which archbishops, legates, and councils tried to reform and failed, acquiescing in the failure rather, than allow the intrusion of the secular power. The spiritual jurisdiction over the clergy was an engine which courts altogether failed to manage, or so far failed as to render reformation of manners by such means absolutely hopeless: yet any interference of the temporal courts was resented and warded off until the evil was irremediable, because a clerk stripped of the reality of his immunities, but retaining all the odium with which they had invested him would have no chance of justice in a lay court. Thus on a smaller stage was reproduced the result which the policy of the papacy brought about in the greater theatre of ecclesiastical politics. The practical assertion that, except by the court of Rome, there should be no reformation, was supplemented by an acknowledgment of the evils that were to be reformed, and of the incapacity of the court of Rome to cure them: there popes and councils toiled in vain; they could neither bear the evils of the age nor their remedies. Strange to say, some part of the mischief of the spiritual jurisdiction survived the Reformation itself, and enlarged its scope as well as strengthened its operation by the close temporary alliance between the Church and Crown.”² Everywhere there was a number of priests and friars, whose religious duties occupied only a small portion of their time, and whose standard of morality was formed upon an extremely low ideal; and it was the moral standard that required to be raised before there could be any real improvement in the social condition either of the clergy or the people.

For several centuries before the Reformation much of the popular literature of Europe was directed against the vices of the clergy and the abuses of the Church; upon this theme the most orthodox and the most heretical were agreed. The secular clergy often despised the monks, the monks satirised the begging friars, and thus their inconsistencies were exposed to the people, and gradually the strength of the old traditions and prejudices were loosened and impaired, and the people partly prepared for a revolution in their opinions and belief.

From an early period in Italy the corruptions of the Church were ably exposed by persons who had not thought of renouncing her communion. The Italian poets laid open the abuses of the head of the Church as well as of the subordinate orders of the clergy. Dante, who was a sincere believer in the Roman Catholic Church, showed little faith in the infallibility of the Popes or general councils, and he describes the avarice and the luxurious lives of the clergy in the language of indignation and ridicule. In his treatise on Monarchy, he inveighed with remarkable boldness against the corruption of the Church; and in the same work he also attacked tradition, the grand fortress of Catholicism. Petrarch and Boccaccio followed in a similar strain; and the latter, especially by his broad humour, keen wit, and reckless pleasantry was exceedingly effective. He mercilessly assailed the popular religion; its pilgrimages, relics, and miracles were scoffed at in the most playful style; its corruptions were exposed, and the monks, the nuns, and the friars were stripped of their sanctity and derided in profane mockery and jeering scorn.¹ The Decameron of Boccaccio is the bitterest satire of the religion of the Middle ages ever written, and to this day it remains the most curious illustration of the belief and notions of that age. Many other Italian poets and writers employed their talents to unmask the ignorance, the vice, the greed, the hypocrisy, and the absurdities of the hierarchy, from the Popes downward to the wandering mendicants; and this warfare was continued down to the eve of the Reformation.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, Savonarola, a Dominican friar, became a religious reformer; he was an Italian by birth and education, a man of talents and great piety; but he seems to have yielded to the illusions of his imagination, and at last persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural gifts. In 1486, he commenced preaching against the vices of the popes, cardinals, priests, and monks, the tyranny of princes, and the immorality of the people; he was an eloquent and powerful preacher, and he called earnestly for repentance and reformation. He preached in various cities, and vast crowds of the people came to hear him. Florence was chosen as the scene of his labour, and for a short time he had a great influence in that city. His aim was to improve the morals of the clergy and the people, not to change the faith of the Christian world. He was also a warm friend of the cause of political liberty and freedom. From this standpoint he was one of the most ardent reformers. Towards the close of his career his mind seems to have become fevered and unbalanced. In 1495, Pope Alexander VI. deemed it time to extinguish so bold a preacher, and he was excommunicated and proclaimed a heresiarch; and he was afterwards taken, tortured, condemned to the flames, and strangled and burned in May, 1498, by the order of the Pope, who had himself committed many dark crimes.¹

For two centuries preceding the Reformation a literature in the language of the people had been growing up in Germany, France, and England, and in each of these countries the vernacular contained a mass of writings which satirised the corruptions of the Church and the vices of the clergy. These compositions were sometimes in the form of rude rhymes and short poems, and sometimes songs or ballads, but occasionally they assumed a more ambitious form, as in the poems of Chaucer, and Piers Ploughman. As before indicated, the general result of this literature upon the minds of the people was that gradually and with difficulty they began to see some of the inconsistencies of the Church, and their moral and religious consciousness at last awoke to a clearer conception of their rights.

But the causes of the Reformation were manifold and extremely varied, rising so high and at the same time descending so low, and yet invoking so many venerated feelings and sentiments; and it must be added, so many prejudices and passions were inflamed on both sides, so many great prizes and vested interests depended upon the issue, that even at this day it is almost impossible for any man to assign the true and just measure of all the causes and influences which contributed to this the most momentous struggle of the Christian era.

Another important agency of the revolutionary movement was implied in the printing and publication of editions and translations of the Scriptures. In Italy during the fifteenth century much attention was devoted to the Hebrew language and to sacred literature. The Psalter appeared in 1477, and from that date parts of the Old Testament in the original continued to be issued from the press till in 1488 a complete Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino in Italy. The first edition of the Septuagint came from the Aldine press at Venice in 1518. Erasmus published at Basle in 1516 his edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, together with his own Latin version and explanatory annotations. The book of Job in Hebrew was printed at Paris in 1516. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible under the patronage and at the expense of Cardinal Ximenes, was printed at Alcala between 1502 and 1517 and published in 1520, in six volumes folio, six hundred copies on paper, and three on vellum. It contained in three columns the Hebrew, the Septuagint Greek, and the Latin Vulgate version of Jerome; the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch by Onkelos was printed at the foot of the page, and to it a Latin translation was given; the New Testament included the original Greek and the Vulgate Latin version. The work also had a grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew, a Greek vocabulary, and other explanatory treatises attached to it. Spain thus had the credit of printing the first complete edition of the Scriptures. It is said that this work cost 250,000 ducats. An edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament was published at Strasburg by Cephalæus in 1524 and 1526; editions of the New Testament also appeared at Paris in 1534, and at Venice in 1538; and about the same time editions were printed at various other places. Hebrew and Greek grammars and lexicons then began to appear, and commentaries on the Scriptures followed.¹

But these important works were confined to the learned, and could have had no impression upon the popular mind. The influences, however, which had contributed to produce them were general and not limited to any class; for the religious feelings and sentiments were as active among the unlearned as among the most cultured men of the age. The activity of the learned class, as manifested in the publication of the Scriptures, was the effect of general and widely spread influences which were running in a definite direction. Translations of the Scriptures were therefore eagerly solicited, and then for the first time began to be supplied. It is said that the Scriptures were translated into the Italian language in the thirteenth century, and it appears that fragments of very early translations were found in libraries during the fifteenth century. Nicolo Malermi, a monk, produced an Italian version of the Bible from the Vulgate, which was published in 1471. Before the end of the century it went through eleven editions, and in the following century through twelve. About this period also Italian versions of parts of the Scriptures appeared. An improved and more faithful translation of the New Testament was executed by Antonio Brucioli, and printed at Venice in 1530. His translation of the whole Bible was published in 1532, and revised and printed in 1541. Other Italian versions of the Scriptures soon followed. But in none of the modern languages were so many translations and editions of the Bible published as in the Flemish or Dutch tongue. A Flemish version of the Bible appeared in 1477; a translation from the Vulgate was printed at Delft in 1497, and reprinted several times before the Reformation at the presses of Antwerp and Amsterdam. A Flemish version of the New Testament from that of Luther was published at Antwerp in 1522, and reprinted twelve times within the next five years. During the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century fifteen editions of the entire Bible were printed in the Flemish language, and thirty-four editions of the New Testament alone within the same period, twenty-four of which were printed at Antwerp; some of them were taken from the Vulgate, but most of them were from Luther’s version. The earliest French translation of the Old Testament from the Vulgate was printed about 1477; a French version of the New Testament was published in 1512, and a version of the Bible in 1530. The earliest Protestant translation of the Bible in French was printed at Neufchatel in 1535.¹

In Spain the Scriptures were translated into the Castilian dialect in the year 1260, and other ancient versions of the Bible in the dialects of the Spanish people have been preserved in the libraries of the Continent. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Bonifacio Ferrer, a Carthusian monk, translated the whole of the Scriptures into the Spanish language, and this translation was printed at Valencia in 1478; but shortly after its publication it was suppressed by the Inquisition, and the whole impression ordered to be burned. A Spanish version of the New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1543.¹ Luther’s German translation of the Old and New Testaments was published between the years 1522 and 1530. Translations of the Bible were published in the Danish language in 1524, and in the Swedish in 1526.

Wycliffe commenced his English translation of the Bible from the Vulgate in 1380, and it is supposed that portions of it were widely circulated in manuscript. Tyndale’s English version of the New Testament was printed in 1526, and within ten years fourteen editions of it were published. Coverdale’s translation of the whole Bible was published in 1535; and another version, mainly based upon Tyndale’s, appeared in 1537. A revised translation was issued in 1539,¹ which was sometimes called Cranmer’s Bible. The publication of so many translations of the Scriptures in the languages and dialects of the people, and the numerous editions which they passed through, seemed to indicate that a crisis was approaching, as the religious sentiments of the people were warmed, and that their feelings and passions were being raised to a pitch of excitement which might be extremely difficult to control. The lower classes in many parts of Europe had been long groaning under oppression, and a sense of wrong had begun to rankle in their minds. A century and a half earlier the English peasantry had rebelled against their masters, and we have seen that the same classes had revolted against the Church and the nobles in Germany. The inconsistencies of the profession and the practice of the clergy could not fail to open the eyes of the people, while the social position in which they found themselves placed did not harmonise with the most elementary ideas of justice and truth. They therefore listened with keen emotion and swelling hearts to the impassioned appeals of the reformed preachers, who they easily won over the multitude; but there was much more difficulty in moderating the zeal and the passions aroused by their preaching. Even in Luther himself the destructive leaning was pretty strong and pronounced; he said​—“I believe it to be impossible that the Church should be reformed without completely eradicating canons, decretals, scholastic theology, philosophy, and logic, as they are now received and taught, and instituting others in their place.”²

This awakening of the religious consciousness, and its association with moral and social practice, soon led to important issues. The married life, which had hitherto been regarded as inferior to celibacy, now appeared in a new light, as something divine, as a law imposed by God Himself; and the domestic duties at once assumed a higher and nobler significance. Poverty was no longer considered an object in itself, and the life of the monk, though before deemed higher than the worldly energy and industry of the layman who supported himself by the labour of his hands, began to be regarded with contempt. Religious freedom took the place of blind obedience, and henceforward monkhood and priesthood lost much of their sway.

Again, in relation to knowledge and to thought, man returned, as it were, from the extramundane to the genial earth​—from the alien region of authority to himself. He was at last convinced that the entire work of salvation must be accomplished within himself, and that reconciliation and grace were matters that stood in a direct relation between himself and God. With this conviction in the core of his soul, he found his real and true being; thus it is that the philosophy of the human mind is closely connected with Protestantism, for the principle of both is one and the same, though it realises itself in the course of development in varying forms.¹

The Bible appeared to the early Reformers as the pure, genuine, and true word of God, and whatever had been added to it, was not regarded as a real advance upon the original, but rather as a debasement. The authority of tradition was denied, the mediæval hierarchy, and the scholastic tendency to rationalise Christian dogmas were rejected. In the first burst of their enthusiasm, the Reformers called the Pope Antichrist, and Aristotle, the chief of the Catholic school of philosophy, the godless bulwark of the Papists. The logical result of this would have been the abandonment of all philosophy in favour of immediate, unquestioning faith: but when Protestantism gained a fixed consistence the necessity of a definite order of instruction became as apparent as that of a new ecclesiastical polity. Melanchthon perceived the need of Aristotle, the master of form, and at last Luther allowed the use of the text of the Aristotelian writings, when not encumbered with scholastic commentaries. Thus there arose at the Protestant Universities a new, though simpler, scholasticism; the development of an independent philosophy on the basis of the generalised Protestant principle was the work of a later time.¹ Modern Philosophy began when the intellect threw off that entire subservience to theology which characterised it in the Middle Ages. In the words of one of the best authorities the chief divisions of modern philosophy are:​—“1. The Transitional Period, beginning with the revival of Platonism; 2. The Epoch of Empiricism, Dogmatism, and Scepticism, from Bacon and Descartes to the Encyclopedists and Hume; and 3. The Epoch of the Kantian Criticism, and of the systems issuing from it, from Kant till the present time.

“Unity, servitude, freedom​—these are the three stages through which the philosophy of the Christian era has passed in its relation to ecclesiastical theology. The stage of freedom corresponds with the general character of the modern era, which seeks to restore, in place of mediæval antagonism, harmonious unity. Freedom of thought, in respect of form and substance, has been secured gradually by modern philosophy. The first movement in this direction consisted in a mere exchange of authorities, or in the reproduction of other ancient systems than that of Aristotle, without much modification, and such adaption to new and changed conditions, as the scholastics had effected in the system of Aristotle. Then followed the era of independent investigation in the realm of nature, and finally also in the realm of mind. There was a transitional period marked by the endeavour of philosophy to become independent. The second epoch, the epoch of Empiricism and Dogmatism, was characterised by methodical investigations and comprehensive systems, which were based on the confident belief that knowledge of natural and spiritual reality was independently attainable by means of experience or thought alone. Scepticism prepared the way for the third stadium in the history of modern philosophy, which was formed by criticism. According to the critical philosophy, the investigation of the cognitive faculty of man is the necessary basis for all strictly scientific philosophising, and the result aimed at by it is, that thought is incompetent to the cognition of the real world of phenomena, beyond which the only guide is man’s moral consciousness. This result has been denied by the following systems, although these systems are all lineal descendants from the Kantian philosophy, which is still of immediate (not merely historical) significance for the philosophy of the present day.”¹

There is only a limited truth in the presuppositions of a complete parallelism between the progress of the development of the ancient philosophy and that of modern systems. “Modern philosophy has from the beginning owed its existence in a far greater measure to an interest in theology (though not for the most part to an interest in the specially ecclesiastical form of theology) than did ancient philosophy previous to the time of Neo-Platonism.” The most remarkable difference between the ancient and modern philosophy is in the science of mind. Psychology has in comparatively recent times been developed to a stage of completeness much beyond what the philosophers of Greece had reached; and the departments of moral and social science are now treated on a different and far wider method than in ancient times.

From the outset there were two chief doctrines which determined the course taken by the Reformers. One of these was the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, the other manifested itself in the constant appeal to the Bible as the only decisive authority in questions concerning faith. It is pretty evident that the German Reformers held mainly by the first, while those of Switzerland, Zuinglius and Calvin, gave the preference to the second.

Although the leaders of the Reformation did not adopt a bold critical method of inquiry, and though the systems which Luther and Calvin founded were essentially dogmatic at all points; yet the admission of an act of spiritual rebellion, of an appeal to conscience and to the judgment of the people, instead of the authority of the Catholic Church, involved a principle which must ultimately lead to consequences that the Reformers hardly intended and could not have ♦foreseen. Questions concerning the sacraments, the meaning of certain texts of Scripture, the forms of church polity, were discussed with the utmost zeal; but the grand issue of the revolution​—the rebellion of the moral faculty against the doctrines that collided with its teaching​—was as yet little manifested by the Reformers. They had rejected many of the traditions and external ceremonies of the Church, but they still looked to the Bible and historical authority for the basis of their theology. And yet it cannot be doubted that the Reformation introduced influences which had a powerful effect on the philosophy of the human mind;¹ and at length greatly modified the moral ideas and sentiments of the people, and led to political and social results. This revolutionary movement also gave a marked impetus to scientific inquiry. It was then that empirical science began to assume importance, and it is only from this epoch that it has a continuous history.

When we inquire what was the meaning of a national revolt from Romanism, and look only to external circumstances, it will not appear to amount to much. It was the claim set up by the Government or the Crown for the control of those rights within the nation, which the Pope had before claimed as the head of the Christian empire; the clergy, monks, and friars had hitherto been regarded as subjects of the Pope’s sacerdotal rule. Now, where there was a revolt from Rome, the allegiance of this class of persons was annulled, and the civil government claimed as full a power over them as it had over its lay subjects; there were some partial exceptions to this, but the essential point was the entire exclusion of all the pretensions of the Pope to interfere with any of the affairs of the nation. Generally, matters relating to marriage and wills still remained under the jurisdiction of the clergy, but when the ecclesiastical courts ceased to be papal they became national, and the special matters with which they dealt, might, if necessary, be brought under the control of the Government. Even touching religious doctrine and the forms of public worship, the Government often claimed the final authority, which had been before exercised by the Pope. Thus externally considered, the revolt from Rome was rather a political and ecclesiastical arrangement than a purely religious matter. In relation to the ruling powers, it was an assertion of free, independent national life; the instinctive feeling for unity and the pride of distinct national independence entered as a very strong influence into the struggles of the Reformation, but it was not always on the side of the Protestants; and in those countries where the movement failed, as in Spain and France, it was probably owing to influences of this kind more than to any other cause. In the imperfectly tutored mind the instinctive tendencies, the inherited feelings, and the traditional notions, form a conservative and unreasoning force which it is almost impossible to overcome without a gradual change of surroundings and circumstances; while to many highly cultured individuals, the mere idea of belonging to the great historical and the only true and infallible Church is exceedingly soothing and gratifying. To be relieved also from all perplexing doubts and questions touching the spiritual and eternal destiny of the soul, is to many a matter of exquisite satisfaction; they glory in the thought of the certainty of their everlasting salvation; they glory in the notion that whatever others may be, they at least cannot be wrong; time may come and go, generation after generation of heretics and heathens may be whirled into everlasting misery, but they alone go on for ever, rejoicing that the universe was specially created for their eternal happiness.

The eras of the Reformation among the different nations of Europe were comprised within a period of about fifty years, though in some countries the struggle lasted longer. The revolt of Luther is usually dated 1517, the year in which he published his theses against indulgences, but the Reformation in Germany was only partly successful. Denmark and Sweden both broke off from Rome and adopted the Lutheran doctrines between 1521 and 1534; about the same time several of the cantons and chief cities of Switzerland became Protestant. England threw off the authority of the Pope in 1535. But the struggle with the Roman Catholic powers was long continued in the Netherlands, in France, and in Germany; and in the two latter the Catholics ultimately recovered much of the ground they had lost.

Luther was supported by the Elector of Saxony, and this enabled him to continue his controversy with the Church. His activity and writings soon raised a stir in Germany, which spread to other lands. In 1520, he published two pamphlets. The first was addressed to the nobility of the German nation, and in it we find the following sentiments:​—“The Romanists have raised round themselves walls to protect themselves from reform. One is their doctrine, that there are two separate estates: the one spiritual, including the pope, bishops, priests, and monks; the other secular, embracing the princes, nobles, artizans, and peasants. And they lay it down that the secular power has no authority over the spiritual, but that the spiritual is above the secular; whereas, in truth, all Christians are spiritual, and there is no difference between them. The secular power is of God, to punish the wicked and protect the good, and so has power over the whole body of Christians without exception, pope, bishops, monks, nuns, and all. For St. Paul says​—‘Let every soul (and I reckon the pope one) be subject to the higher powers.’ Why should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome? Why do the Germans let themselves be fleeced by cardinals, who get hold of the best preferments and spend the revenues at Rome? Let us not give another farthing to the Pope as subsidies against the Turk; the whole thing is a snare to drain from us more money. Let the secular authorities send no more annates to Rome; let the power of the Pope be reduced within clear limits; let there be fewer cardinals, and let them not keep the best things to themselves; let the national churches be more independent of Rome; let there be fewer pilgrimages to Italy; let there be fewer convents; let priests marry; let begging be stopped by making each parish take charge of its own poor; let us inquire into the position of the Bohemians, and if Huss was in the right, let us join with him in resisting Rome.”¹ This passage shows that Luther knew well how to catch the ear of the people, and it was a strain admirably calculated to arrest the attention of the princes of the day; nothing could be more gratifying to them than to set their own authority above the clergy and the Church. From this date Luther’s impassioned nature hurried him onward; and he burned the Pope’s bull and the canon law books in the month of December 1520. But it would be unjust not to mention that there were many in the Roman Catholic Church who earnestly wished for a reform of the discipline, the manners of the clergy, and the monastic orders, although they were averse to any separation from her communion or any breaking up of what was deemed her legitimate authority. This class of moderate men, though some of them were not without influence, were doomed to effect very little, because in times of revolution bold measures alone have the chance of commanding success.

Luther was a voluminous writer as well as a great preacher, and in spite of his faults, taking him all in all, he presents the characteristics of a veritable hero. His works are both numerous and diverse. They consist of sermons and expositions of Scripture, disputations, and controversial writings, many letters and circular epistles, maxims, and hymns, besides his translation of the Bible already mentioned. Most of Luther’s writings were produced on the spur of the moment to meet some exigency. None of them can be regarded as finished compositions, yet they are fresh and full of vigour and energy. Many editions of his works, more or less complete, have been published: one at Wittenberg, twelve volumes in German, 1539‒59, and seven in Latin, 1545‒58; one at Jena, eight volumes in German, 1555‒58, and four in Latin, 1556‒58; another at Altenburg, in ten volumes in German, 1661‒64, and there are several later editions. But it fell to the lot of the calmer and more learned Melanchthon to lead the stream of the newly awakened life of faith into its methodically circumscribed channel. Besides many other valuable works, he composed the first compend of the doctrines of the Protestant Church, which formed the basis of other treatises. His Loci Communes rerum Theologicarum seu Hypotyposes Theologiæ was published in 1521, and has passed through upwards of a hundred editions, about fifty of which appeared during his lifetime.

Melanchthon was appointed by the newly formed Protestant party to draw up a Confession of Faith, in a concise and moderate form, on the basis of the doctrines which he and Luther and other divines had determined. It was laid before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and hence it has been called the Confession of Augsburg. It consists of twenty-eight articles; and in the first twenty-one the principal doctrines of faith were discussed in reference to the Roman Catholic Church, but with remarkable moderation of tone; the last seven articles treated of the prevailing abuses of Catholicism. A confutation of this Confession published by the Roman Catholics, was soon after followed by a treatise from Melanchthon, entitled the Apology of the Confession. A similar arrangement was adopted in the Apology as in the Confession, but the number of articles was reduced to sixteen. This work long held the first place among the theological books of the Lutheran Church; and in argumentative power the Apology is exceptionally masterly amongst this class of theological literature. The Articles of Schmalkald, which were written by Luther in a far bolder strain, appeared in 1536, and the first German edition was published in 1538. With these may be mentioned Luther’s larger and smaller Catechisms, the larger one for the use of the clergy and schoolmasters, and the other for the use of the people and children.

The early Swiss Reformer, Zuinglius, proclaimed the principles of evangelical faith in various writings, which may be regarded as the beginning of the consecutive theology of the reformed Church. Besides his polemical writings, sermons, and letters, he wrote Commentaries concerning True and False Religion, published in 1525, and A Brief and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith. A Confession of the Reformed Church was published in 1534, which is known as the Confession of Basle. But owing to the controversy touching the Lord’s Supper, and the efforts made to restore peace, a second Confession was composed by the Swiss Reformers and divines in 1536, and is usually called the Helvetian Confession.

From the very commencement of the Reformation it became manifest that the Protestants must proceed upon a different method of attaining knowledge from that followed by the Roman Catholics. The radical difference between the two, which has continued to become wider down to the present day, may be shortly stated: The Protestants assert that the Old and New Testament is the only safe source of religious knowledge, and forms the sole rule of faith; the Roman Catholic Church assumes the existence of another source associated with the first, namely, tradition. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically claims the sole right of interpreting Scripture; but the Protestant Church concedes this right, within limits, to every one who has the requisite gifts and attainments, and in a wider sense to every one seeking after salvation; she proceeds upon the view that Scripture should be interpreted in its entirety according to the analogy of faith, and she also allows for the distinction between a critical and general understanding​—between the common understanding and a deeper insight into the meaning of Scripture. Having presented a sketch of the antecedents of the Reformation, I return to the more immediate subject of the work.

Section II.

History of the Reformation in Scotland to the Death of Cardinal Beaton.

WHEN Europe was on the eve of the first stage of the Reformation struggle, Scotland as we have seen in the foregoing volume, had lost her king and many of her leading men upon the disastrous field of Flodden. The citizens of Edinburgh, however, were equal to the emergency, and they immediately took steps to preserve order and to defend the capital; and it was at this time that the authorities resolved to build a wall around Edinburgh.¹ But the fear of an invasion was soon dispelled as the Earl of Surrey disbanded his host. In October, 1513, the infant king was crowned at Scone, and his mother named as regent; but her frothy disposition speedily led her into actions which rendered this arrangement nugatory, as in the following year she married the young Earl of Angus, which at once deprived her of the regency.

Meanwhile a party of the nobles were looking to the Duke of Albany as a likely personage to take the reins of Government. He was a son of Alexander Stuart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., who after his forfeiture passed into France, and had attained to a position of wealth and honour. As a member of the Royal family, after the infant king, he was next heir to the throne. He was requested to assume the functions of Governor of the kingdom; but the state of society in Scotland offered comparatively few attractions to a man habituated to the gay and fashionable society of France, and he seems to have been very loath to leave the enjoyments of his adopted country, even in exchange for the highest office in the Council of Scotland.

As usual there was strife amongst the nobles; while a fierce contest was raging among the dignitaries of the Church about the See of St. Andrews. Gavin Douglas, the provost of St. Giles, John Hepburn, the prior of St. Andrews, and Andrew Forman, the bishop of Moray, were all eagerly struggling to obtain possession of the much coveted primacy. After some very unseemly demonstrations of force, a compromise was effected by a distribution of benefices amongst the aspirants, and Forman obtained St. Andrews with the power of Legate a Latere, and the promise of a cardinal’s hat.¹

In May 1515 the Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland, and received a warm welcome from the people, as they hoped to enjoy greater tranquility under his rule. The task, however, of restoring order amongst the nobles was exceedingly difficult. Although the new governor’s talents were above the average of his class, he laboured under the disadvantage of being French in manner and habits, and of being quite unacquainted with the usages and feelings of the Scots. He began his government with bold measures. Offenders of high rank were seized, imprisoned, and executed. But these proceedings failed to produce the intended effect, and were too much out of the usual course. In a short time Albany discovered the hopelessness of his task. He repeatedly returned to France to be free of the turmoil; and after a fluctuating sway of eight years, his regency terminated in 1524.¹

The persistent interference of Henry VIII. with the internal affairs of Scotland added another element of anarchy, and he appears to have had a special animus at the Duke of Albany, continuing to tease and torment Scotland throughout his reign. Henry’s intrigues and projects were unceasing; he endeavoured to get the young King into his hands by encouraging his sister to flee with her children into England. He kept a number of paid spies and agents in Scotland for the express purpose of exciting popular tumults, private quarrels, and rekindling the jealousy of the nobles, in order to distract and discredit the government of Albany. Project after project arose in his passionate breast, which his ambitious and brutal nature pursued with unrelenting and murderous severity; sometimes his hobby was political, sometimes religious, at other times matrimonial, and in almost every instance he inflicted great suffering upon the people of Scotland. During the regency of Albany, the Earl of Angus, having previously been forced to leave the country, entered into a paction with the English Government in ♦1524, and returned to Scotland.¹

At this time the chief nobles were much divided; and the Earl of Angus quickly matured his plot. Having secured the concurrence of the Earl of Arran and others, he seized the young King, and, as had often been done before in similar circumstances, he shortly concentrated in his own hands all the power of the Crown. Angus kept the King in close restraint, and revelling in his usurped authority, he exercised a severe tyranny on all who dared to oppose him. The kingdom remained in this state for several years, though two attempts were made to rescue the King from the grasp of the bold noble, in one of which the Earl of Lennox lost his life, while the chains of the captive were more firmly rivetted than before. The Douglases were complete masters of the situation, Angus himself was chancellor, his uncle treasurer, and they compelled the King to sign all deeds which they presented to him, while the revenue and the law of the country were wholly under their control. At last, with the assistance of Archbishop Beaton, James escaped from Angus in May 1528, and from that time to the end of his reign, he pursued the Earl and his adherents with relentless severity.¹

In September a parliament met and passed an act of attainder against the Douglases, and Angus was forced to flee into England. The King appointed the Archbishop of Glasgow chancellor, the Abbot of Holyrood treasurer, and the Bishop of Dunkeld, keeper of the privy seal.¹ These appointments indicated that the tide was turned against the aristocracy, and that the policy of the young King would be strongly influenced by the circumstances in which he had been placed. James soon manifested an unmistakeable intention to curb the nobles, but it must be added that he entered upon his purpose without a full and proper appreciation of the difficulties of the task; he seems to have greatly under-estimated the power of the nobles, and accordingly he had to pay the penalty. Whenever the nobles were excluded from the government of the kingdom, they began to show a leaning towards the doctrines of the Reformation; they were extremely dissatisfied with the king, and hated the clergy on account of their influence over him, and their control of the government.

But the causes and circumstances which tended to promote the Reformation in Scotland demand a more minute examination. In the tenth chapter of this work it was noticed that the wealth of the Church gave the clergy much power in public affairs and the government of the country; it was also observed that the clergy generally ranked themselves on the side of the Crown in its struggles with the aristocracy. This deep-seated antagonism of interests between the clergy and the aristocracy was one of the chief external causes of the Reformation in Scotland; and in the development of Protestantism, the motives of this aristocratic connection finally issued in curious and instructive results. James V. was not insensible to the prevailing abuses of the Church, nor was he averse to moderate remedies, but he never entertained the idea of forsaking the religion of his fathers. He, however, incited Buchanan to lash the mendicant friars in the Satire of the Franciscans, and he encouraged by his presence the public performance of Sir David Lindsay’s Satire of the Three Estates, which was acted at Linlithgow in 1540. It was reported that he exhorted the bishops to reform their lives, and threatened if they neglected his warning that he would treat them after the manner of the King of England; still he was a faithful son of the Catholic Church, and pretty well under the influence of the clergy. Many of the nobles, from motives of self-interest, professed a willingness to embrace the reformed opinions, and gradually ranked themselves on the side of the Reformers; as time passed, and the prospects of the division of the church lands approached, they became more and more ardent in their adherence to the principles of the Reformation.

But strong as the influence of the nobles was in hastening on the Reformation, or rather the destruction of the Roman hierarchy, it is a misinterpretation of the historic phenomena to attribute this revolution to them alone. Besides the religious ideas and sentiments which the Reformers themselves honestly held and preached, there were also the domestic, the social, and the moral causes of the Reformation, and which comprised all the relations between the clergy and the people that had arisen and accumulated since the introduction of Christianity. The tenor of these relations and exactions have already been partly noticed in the Introduction and in the fourth and tenth chapters of this work, and again generally touched upon in the preceding pages of the present chapter, and I must now discuss the results which they more or less distinctly produced on the feeling and mind of the nation.

The exactions connected with the Roman Catholic rite of burial were the most teasing and heartless. They were known under the terms of “The Kirk Cow,” “The Uppermost Cloth,” and “Corse Presents,” that is, dues exacted by the parochial clergy on the deaths of their parishioners. These dues were sometimes taken from the surviving relations in cases of the most abject poverty, and however much concern the survivors of a father or a mother might have for the souls of the departed, surely it was a short-sighted piece of policy to lay on a heavy exaction at such a time, irrespective too of the circumstances of the parties. For these and many other obvious reasons the mortuary dues were the most hateful and galling to the people. On the eve of the Reformation (1559) a provincial council of the Catholic clergy enacted a canon relieving the poor from the mortuary dues, but they were to be exacted from those immediately above the poor in a modified form. The concession, however, came too late.¹ Then there were the paschal offerings, the Sunday penny, the penny offering, the christening pennies, and the lights at Candlemas for the feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary. At first these were free gift offerings, according to the benevolence of the giver; but in course of time they became obligatory, and the churchmen enforced the payment of them, when necessary, by fulminating the sentence of cursing and debarring the refractory from the sacraments of holy Church. The priest also claimed the right of common pasture for his cattle throughout the parish.²

The right of the Church to enforce the payment of tithes under penalties had been long established in Scotland as elsewhere, but this often led to disputes between the clergy and the people. An uncounted tithe was a tax on the fruits of industry, increasing in amount with the increase of production and wealth; and however much the hard toil of a man or a family might produce, the tenth part thereof had always to go to swell the riches of the Church. This exaction pressed extremely hard upon the class of tenant farmers and the toilers of the soil, who amid all their difficulties and struggles could not fail to see that the services of the clergy scarcely repaid them for the worry and loss of so large a deduction from the products of their industry. Such thoughts naturally would have arisen in the minds of the people, for strong as their religious feeling was, yet it had a limit, beyond which it could not be drawn upon with any chance of safety. Then the tithes were extended not only to include all kinds of farm produce, live stock, and poultry, but also the produce of gardens, descending to flax, leeks, and cabbages; tithes of pasture and hay, tithes of mills and fishings, tithes of wool and everything else.¹ That the collection of all these dues must have been a constant source of annoyance to the people cannot be doubted, or that it occasioned many disputes and quarrels was not surprising.

But from another point of view the practice of the Roman Catholic Church had issued in a social corruption of the clergy and the religious orders which was too palpably inconsistent to endure. Touching the principle of celibacy, it was briefly noticed in the fourth chapter that the clergy of Scotland had not strictly practised the rule of the Church; and in the sixteenth century this blot on the clergy was not a matter of doubt or dispute, it was a notorious fact and patent to the eyes of all. The result in Scotland was this, the rule of celibacy was enjoined by law but abrogated in practice among those of the clergy who were rich enough to support a household; council after council protested against it, canon after canon called upon the bishops and the clergy to put away their concubines, but all was in vain, on the failing of incontinence they seemed to be utterly irredeemable. Cardinal Beaton had five children; his successor, Archbishop Hamilton, had three; William Gordon, Bishop of Aberdeen, had several children, and one of his daughters married the Laird of Udny; Bishop Chisholm of Dunblane had children, in 1542 one of his daughters married Sir James Stirling of Keir, and her father gave her a dowry of £1000, and also bound himself to keep her and her husband for five years. The Bishop of Moray, when Prior of St. Andrews had three sons, legitimated in 1533; when Bishop of Moray he had five sons legitimated in 1545, and two daughters in 1550​—making ten of a family. In fact most of the bishops and many of the abbots and monks had children at the period immediately preceding the Reformation. The statutes passed in the Provincial Council of the clergy held at Edinburgh in 1549, were prefaced with a confession that the cause of the troubles and heresies which afflicted the Church were the corruption, the lewdness, and the gross ignorance of churchmen of almost all ranks. “The clergy, therefore, were enjoined to put away their concubines under pain of deprivation of their benefices; to dismiss from their houses the children born to them in concubinage; not to promote such children to benefices, nor to enrich them, the daughters with doweries, the sons with baronies, from the patrimony of the Church. Prelates were admonished not to keep in their households manifest drunkards, gamblers, whoremongers, brawlers, night-walkers, buffoons, blasphemers, and profane swearers. The clergy in general were exhorted to amend their lives and manners; to dress modestly and gravely; to keep their faces shaven and their heads tonsured; to live soberly and frugally, so as to have more to spare to the poor; to abstain from secular pursuits, and especially trading.

“Provision was made for preaching to the people; for teaching grammar, divinity, and canon law in cathedrals and abbeys; for visiting and reforming monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals; for recalling fugitives and apostates, whether monks or nuns, to their cloisters; for sending from every monastery one or more monks to a university; for preventing unqualified persons from receiving orders and from holding cure of souls; for enforcing residence and for restraining pluralities; for preventing the evasion of spiritual censures by bribes or fines; for silencing pardoners or itinerant hawkers of indulgences and relics; for compelling parish clerks to do their duty in person, or to find sufficient substitutes; for registering testaments and inventories of persons deceased, and for securing faithful administration of their estates by bringing their executors to yearly account and reckoning; for suspending unfit notaries, and for preserving the protocols of notaries deceased; for reforming the abuses of the Consistorial courts.”¹ This is a very formidable array of abuses to reform brought forward by the Roman Catholic clergy themselves; but the proceedings and canons of subsequent councils show that they were not carried into effect​—indeed it would have been marvellous if the churchmen had complied with the canons of 1549. Sir David Lindsay in the Satire of the Three Estates makes Spiritually say—

Again Diligence announces—

This must have tended to lower the character of the clergy in the popular estimation; there seems also reason to believe that the example of the dignified clergy sporting with their damsels in the face of society had an injurious effect in other directions, by weakening the feeling of chastity and modesty in the relations of the sexes, it encouraged immorality among all ranks of the nation, it lowered and tended to discredit the whole group of feelings and sentiments which should be concentrated around the domestic circle, and which really forms the foundation of social well-being and virtuous life.

Celibacy and monasticism, and the associated group of ascetic and sanctimonious notions, originated from the same principle. Looking on the subject from the standpoint of history, and from the broad ground of morality and freedom, it is not necessary at this time of day to argue that the State should suppress and prohibit monasteries and nunneries. All that the State should be fairly called upon to perform is to see that protection is afforded to those who are forcibly seized and detained in such establishments. But circumstances might arise when it would be necessary for the government to interfere; in well-ordered communities, however, where public opinion has its proper influence, such instances would rarely happen. If men and women voluntarily resolve to shut themselves up within the walls of a building, it is best, perhaps to let them follow their special hobby; when the dominant idea and feeling of their minds lead them to adopt this mode of life, it may be pretty safely assumed that such persons would form comparatively useless members of society. It is not therefore on the ground of any theory of government that the system of monasticism is here discussed; but upon the principles of human nature, morality, the rational and harmonious exercise of the varied faculties of the mind in the development of civilisation.

It is true that the ascetic sentiment has often entered largely into other religions as well as Christianity. This is especially true of the great religions of the East, but it is not unknown in some of the less developed forms of religion. When Mexico and Peru were conquered by the Spaniards in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, they were amazed to find among the inhabitants of these countries religious customs and practices which much resembled some of those of the old world. The resemblance was most noticeable in relation to monasticism; as some of the customs of the natives corresponded pretty closely with the Christian monastic institutions.¹ In Africa and Asia the monastic type of religion has always existed; the horrifying macerations and ascetic rites of the Buddhists surpass those of any Christian order.

The monastic system was first introduced from Egypt into Christendom about the beginning of the fourth century. By the end of that century the system was in vogue and growing rapidly. “At first it called into existence a class of men who for self-denial, sincerity of purpose, heroic endurance, and unyielding fanaticism, have rarely been matched. They abandoned all the ties of home and friendship, renounced all the pleasures and even most of the necessaries of life; they scourged and macerated their bodies, lived in loneliness and desolation, and wandered half-starved and half-naked through deserts, till they had almost extinguished every natural feeling and every human sentiment within their breasts. No affliction could move them, no sympathy for suffering stirred their heart; they embraced misery with an ardent yearning; they gloried in multiplying forms of loathsome penance and in trampling upon every natural desire. To promote the interests of their church was their only passion, and to gratify it there was no torture that they were not ready to endure or to inflict.”¹ The monastic system under various orders of monks, but all founded on the theory of mortification, continued to develop till it reached enormous dimensions; and as centuries passed, the first enthusiasm of the monks died away, the monasteries became rich, and then multitudes entered into them merely to escape the burdens of life. At last the monasteries, instead of being the abodes of saints and holy men and women entirely devoted to the service of God, had become dens of corruption and of luxury; yet until near the end of the fifteenth century the ascetic theory of life, the philosophy of mortification, was everywhere held throughout Christendom; asceticism still represented the highest point of moral dignity, and Protestantism was the first effective declaration against it.

According to every worthy conception of the philosophy of human nature, man has been constituted with feelings, emotions, sentiments, and ideas, which naturally seek gratification; and the chief question is how their varied claims should be subordinated and developed. Every feeling and emotion and idea has an unquestionable right to seek gratification, subject to the necessary limitations, on the ground of reasonable subordination in the interest of development on the lines of harmonious inclusion, instead of exclusion and unnaturally attempted extinction. The most advanced thinkers, moralists, and educators now recognise this; and history presents masses of evidence against the principle of rigid exclusion and asceticism​—the method of maiming the body, dwarfing the human sympathy, and starving the mind, in order to save the soul. The results of this may be seen in the establishment of caste, in Oriental religions and despotisms, in oligarchies and aristocracies, in imperialism and fatalism, and in many other forms.

In the history of the form and the manifestation of the religious feeling and aspiration there has been a tendency in many quarters to draw the lines too sharply between the teachers of religion and the body of the people. This has often resulted in the establishment of a class specially charged with the oracles and message of God; and once the idea began to be entertained, sentiments and habits associated with it sprung up and accumulated around it, till the priesthood finally assumed a strong and commanding position. They were supposed to be the holy servants of God, and they should therefore show to the profane world of the flesh that they were exalted above the most natural and deeply rooted feelings of mankind. Accordingly they proceeded to renounce the idea of marriage, and to forego all the touching domestic feelings and duties associated therewith; the members of the priesthood from the highest to the lowest must forsake all such earthly pleasures; the salvation of the human race having been committed to them by heaven, they in sooth must rise to the height of their sublime calling. The intoxication of power inevitably asserted its supremacy, and then they declared themselves to be the final legislators for this world and the next. If a point of morals, a case of mutual association among any body of men, or a novel opinion were expressed, or a tradition or article of the creed which time had consecrated, were called in question, then, on all such matters, they alone were the arbiters who could pronounce a true verdict.

A celibate clergy among a rude people would probably command most influence. The priest with no family ties was supposed to have abandoned the engrossing interest of earthly enjoyments, to have devoted himself to his God, and to care only for the salvation and eternal welfare of his flock. With nothing else to divert his energies or to ruffle the serenity of his soul, he professed to toil for the benefit of his fellow-creatures. Many priests of all religions have earnestly laboured in such work; the Roman Catholic priesthood have rarely shrunk from facing danger and toil in the cause to which they have devoted themselves. It is, however, possible for the priests to make too stringent rules of self-denial​—rules which aim at extinguishing the natural feelings of our common humanity, and by pushing this to extremes, instead of enhancing their influence, they may degrade themselves. It is possible to be over holy, by publicly professing to believe doctrines and to obey rules which in practice are continually broken by some of their number. Now this was exactly what happened in Scotland, celibacy was the rule and law of the Church but in practice the clergy disregarded it. It may well be asked, why should any class of men be placed in such a position? why should rules be imposed upon the clergy whereby their human feelings become twisted and tied down? Why should their humanity be shorn and mangled as if this was a necessary part of their calling?

The most sympathetic races are those among whom monogamy has been long established. All genuine social feeling and sentiment begins in the family circle, and this is the altar where, if anywhere, love should reign supreme. There the little ones looking up to their father with all the simplicity of a primitive faith, are full of trust and ready to be impressed with reverence. Those who do not love their own, will never care much for any doctrines of religion or morality, however clearly they may be understood. We have no faith in the son who rails against his father and mother; for the best part of our nature is almost unconsciously formed during our earliest years, while all those feelings and sentiments that assist in sustaining the development of the moral character and the finer emotions of the heart, those touches of kindness which sweeten human life and cheer the soul of humanity are the result of family life.

The family must ever be the foundation of society, the first link in the great chain of order, virtue, progress, and civilisation. It was the root from which the most complete social and political organisations have sprung; and the nations which have recognised and adopted this institution have had by far the happiest and most glorious careers of national life. But celibacy, monasticism, and the modern hospital establishments for the young, all discarded it, and proceeded on a single line of characteristic isolation. To retire from the duties of life and bury oneself in a monastery cannot contribute much to the onward movement of society, though it may suit the peculiar mind and circumstances of some individuals.

The evidence of history and psychology both point to the conclusion that monasticism, celibacy, and the hospital system, all violate and trench upon the fundamental principles of social development and healthy society. These systems ignore the doctrine that teaches us to cultivate and develop all our powers and feelings in harmonious subordination to a life of activity and energy, of untiring struggle and conflict with surrounding difficulties, of honest effort and endeavour, of toil and thought. No one has a right to shrink from his duties, and no one should be deprived of any of the enjoyments which our country and age afford.

In connection with these matters, the social miscalculations and economic errors, as formed and taught by the Socialists and Communists, bears a rather close resemblance in some points to the monasticism of the Middle Ages. The modern theories are not all equally impracticable; but the ideas of absolute equality of right, community of goods and property throughout a nation, must be characterised as utterly visionary. In the history of Christianity from the fourth to the fifteenth century there had been innumerable attempts to establish a sort of Communism in societies unripe for its reception, which ended in the results indicated in the preceding pages. All the theories of modern Socialists for the immediate reconstruction of society are based upon equally delusive notions; no theory can have a chance of practical influence and realisation, unless it work through existing forms of social life, and not by isolation from them. A higher moral standard, a clearer idea of justice, and a far greater willingness to look at both sides of a trade question must be attained, even before a great development of simple co-operation can be effected.

Having indicated the external, the political, and social causes of the Reformation, I proceed to consider what may be called the inner or religious causes. They are more difficult to realise than the other causes, and more important, because they are deeper and more intense. The first class of causes were transient and rather selfish, and when the aims which had stimulated their activity were gained, they fluctuated, and shortly ceased to operate. But the purely religious sentiment and aspiration were constant in their action, and persistent in their manifestation in the face of fearful odds; until they attained a complete triumph in the recognition of toleration and religious freedom.

The religious feeling and idea, then, were the constant and the real causes of the Reformation, though these contained immense social and political issues which were hardly foreseen by the politicians of that age. The political movements and combinations prompted by mixed motives, and often by selfish ends, in some quarters accelerated, and in others retarded, the religious upheaval, but all the political powers in the world could neither have accomplished nor prevented the final consummation of the principles of the Reformation. For no external power can extinguish the internal operations of the human mind. From the dawn of history, political power has been characterised by duplicity and a lack of honest principle; diplomatic jugglery and concealed falsehood, have reigned along the whole line of empires and nations down almost to the present century. The proof of this may be read in the records of every government that has existed, and in the honest testimony of the historians of the world. In the sixteenth century no political government had truth enough in its constitution to bring about this great religious revolution; no government had sufficient strength of moral purpose for so mighty a task; and at the utmost governments could only directly hinder or hasten it. Though the Reformation bore on its surface many marks of contact with the political powers, it may be affirmed that the religious feeling and the moral principle were the supreme influences of the movement; as these were its heart and life, the internal and invisible springs of its vigour, and the glorious features of its reality and truth.

There have been politicians who have laid down their lives in testimony of their adherence to political ideas, but they are few in number compared with the army of men and women who have cheerfully endured the tortures of martyrdom for the sake of their religion. Here, then, we have the grand influence and the motive power of this religious movement​—an aspiration and a moral sentiment, the inner craving of the mind which ever seeks a Being worthy of its adoration.

In 1525, Parliament passed an Act prohibiting the importation of Luther’s book, and the propagation of his opinions. The Act stated that damnable opinions have been spread in several countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples; but that Scotland and her people has always firmly believed in the holy faith and never yet admitted any opinion contrary to it. It then declared that no person arriving with ships at the ports of the kingdom should bring any books of this heretic, nor dispute, nor rehearse, his heresy unless it was to refute it. It was reported that a translation of the New Testament in manuscript, was used among the Scots in the reign of James IV. Tyndale’s version in a printed form was brought into Scotland in 1526, and seems to have been pretty freely circulated. The first heretical books of any kind circulated in this country came chiefly from England. In 1535, Parliament commanded all persons who had heretical books in their possession, to deliver them up to the authorities within forty days, under the penalty of confiscation and imprisonment.¹

The first Scotsman who suffered for the profession of the reformed opinions was Patrick Hamilton, the Abbot of Ferne. While sojourning in Germany, he had received the proscribed doctrines from the lips of Luther himself. He returned to Scotland in 1527, and began to disseminate his opinions and doctrines. Early in the following year he was taken and imprisoned in the Castle of St. Andrews, and there tried, convicted, and condemned for heresy. On the 29th of February, 1528, he was led to the stake and burned to death before the College of St. Andrews.¹ It appears that he was married and had a daughter.² He left a short treatise in Latin, which contained a summary of his leading doctrines.

This treatise was translated into English shortly after Hamilton’s death by John Firth, an Englishman, who added a preface to the reader. As a reward for his zeal he was burnt at Smithfield in 1533. The book contains the ten commandments and eighteen propositions, mostly quotations from the Scriptures, which are put into the form of syllogisms. The doctrine of the Gospel is set forth and contrasted with the law, the doctrine of faith​—faith in Christ, free grace, or justification by faith; good works are held neither to save nor to condemn the sinner; a comparison is made between faith, hope, and charity; and finally, “He that thinks to be saved by his works calleth himself Christ, for he calleth himself a saviour, which appertains only to Christ. What is a saviour but he that saveth? And thou sayest, I save myself, which is as much to say as I am Christ, for Christ is the only Saviour of the world.”¹

Three editions of Firth’s translation were published at London, probably before 1540. John Firth was one of the earliest and most consistent of the English Reformers. “He had embraced the rational views of the sacraments that had been taught by ♦Zuinglius. He reasoned that if the body of Christ ascended into heaven it could not be in the Eucharist, for it was impossible for a body to be in more places than one at one time.... Firth complained that the error prevailing in his day was too much trust in the outward signs, as if by them was accomplished what could only be done by faith. He denies that the sign gives the Spirit of God or grace. Those that come rightly to baptism have grace already. The ordinance is a witness that they are in a state of grace. The life of a true Christian is a continual baptism. One result of attaching so much importance to the outward sacrament was the consigning of unbaptised infants to everlasting pain.”

It was mostly among the lower orders of the clergy that the new doctrines were embraced. The friars were the chief preachers of the day, and they occasionally inveighed boldly against the prevailing abuses of the priesthood. A friar named Erth preached a sermon in Dundee, in which he touched upon the licentious lives of the bishops, and the evils connected with excommunication and miracles. The armed followers of the Bishop of Brechin immediately buffeted him and called him a heretic. Naturally the friar was displeased at this treatment, and he proceeded to St. Andrews to consult John Mair, the well-known doctor of the Sorbonne and the author of numerous works, whose word at that time was regarded as an oracle in matters of religion; and he assured the friar that such a doctrine might well be defended, and that he would defend it, for it was not heresy. The friar then intimated to all who were offended with his sermon that he would again preach it in the parish church of St. Andrews. On the appointed day all the regents and masters of the University, and other notable persons, attended to hear him. He ascended the pulpit, and took for his text the words, “Truth is the strongest of all things.” He spoke of excommunication, how fearful a thing it was when rightly applied, that it should not be rashly used for every light cause, but only against open and incorrigible sinners. “But now,” said he, “the avarice of priests and the ignorance of their office has caused it to be altogether vilified; for the priest, whose duty and office it is to pray for the people, stands up on Sunday and cries: ‘One has tint a spurtle; there is a flail stolen from them beyond the burn; the goodwife on the other side of the street has tint a horn spoon; God’s malison and mine I give to them that knows of this gear and returns it not.’” The people, he said, merely mocked at such excommunication. This part of the friar’s sermon was confirmed by acts of Parliament passed about the same date, in which it was stated, “that the dishonesty and misrule of churchmen, both in wit, knowledge and manners, was the reason and cause that the Church and clergy were slighted and contemned; and also that the damnable persuasion of the heretics and their perverse doctrines gave occasion to despise the process of excommunication and other censures of the holy Church.”¹

Friar Erth, however, did not renounce the Catholic faith, but his plain preaching necessitated his flight to England, where he was imprisoned by Henry VIII. for defending the authority of the Pope. In Scotland, as in other countries, there was a number of earnest Roman Catholics who wished to reform the existing abuses and discipline without destroying the Church or forsaking their ancient faith, but things had come to such a crisis that their efforts in this direction were overborne and rendered futile; it was too late in the day, the time for compromises had passed. John Mair, noticed above, was for sometime a regent in the University of Glasgow, but in 1523 he became a regent in the University of St. Andrews. In 1525 he left St. Andrews and went to Paris; but in 1531 he returned to St. Andrews, and resumed his lectures. He was appointed Provost of St. Salvator’s College in 1534, an office which he held till his death in 1550. About the same time Gavin Logie was principal of St. Leonard’s College. Under him many of the early Scottish Reformers were educated at St. Andrews. In this connection might be reckoned Alexander Myln, the Abbot of Cambuskenneth, who was appointed the first President of the Court of Session in 1533; he manifested commendable zeal in religion, and died in 1548. At the same time John Winram was sub-prior of St. Andrews, and afterwards became one of the chief Reformers; and Robert Richardson, a canon-regular of Cambuskenneth, though an adherent of Catholicism, preached with great energy against the scandalous and immoral lives of the higher churchmen, and denounced the intemperate habits which prevailed amongst the monks. Alexander Seton, a black friar, and confessor to the king, preached during the time of Lent, with remarkable boldness against the corruptions of the Church, and especially against the life and conduct of the bishops. The favour of the King shielded him for a time from the wrath of his brethren, but he was at last obliged to retire, and sought refuge in England about the year 1536.¹

For some years after the fall of the Earl of Angus, the anarchy on the Borders, the disturbance in the Highlands, and the harassing conflict between the Crown and the nobles, fully occupied the time and attention of the leading churchmen of the day, so that heretics were comparatively little disturbed. The king, as we have seen, had thrown the government almost entirely into the hands of the clergy, who found sufficient employment in watching the nobles. These, neglected by the king and excluded from the offices of the State, were now manifesting a still stronger inclination to listen to the new opinions. But great as the power of the Church was during the reign of James V., it was not in a position to accuse and try any one of the great nobles for heresy.

In justice to the character of the leading Catholic churchmen of the age, it should be remembered, however, that their ideas and sentiments were very different from those of the present day, and in relation to the persecution of heresy this was specially noticeable. To take the life of a single human being for holding certain opinions on any subject whatever is a great and fearful crime; but in the sixteenth century it was deemed the highest virtue to cut off the obstinate heretic. This throughout Christendom was the common view. It is therefore unjust to judge them by the ideas and sentiments of the nineteenth century. The prevailing Roman Catholic creed seems to have produced upon the character of its most ardent professors an almost absolute indifference to the suffering of those outside the Church; and amongst men of this frame of mind and feeling it was regarded as their first duty to cut off the heretics, and to extinguish them root and branch for the glory and honour of God, the purity of the faith, and the good of society. These notions were so deeply ingrained into the prevailing religious creed and feeling that it was hardly possible for the Reformers to emancipate themselves from them; hence we find that Calvin openly avowed and took credit to himself for his share in the persecution and burning of Servetus. Calvin’s action in this matter was applauded by all sections of Protestants, and warmly approved by his most intimate contemporaries. Calvin, Beza, and others, wrote books on the lawfulness of persecution;¹ so difficult was it for even the greatest minds to disentangle themselves from the current trains of thought and associated sentiments of their age. It is deserving of remark, however, that the persecution in Scotland was not nearly so severe as in some of the other countries of Europe.

King James continued attached to the Church, and countenanced the persecution of the heretics. Henry Forest, a Benedictine monk, was taken, tried, condemned for heresy, and burned at St. Andrews in 1532. In 1534, the Bishop of Ross, under a commission issued by the primate, held a court in the Abbey of Holyrood, and many suspected persons were summoned to appear before it; and the king himself attended several of the sittings clothed in scarlet. A number of the accused, both men and women, “burned their faggots,” that is, renounced their erroneous opinions; while some fled to England, and to other countries. On the other hand Norman Gourlay, a priest, and David Straiton, a layman, firmly adhered to their heresy, asserted their innocence, and vindicated their faith to the last, and in consequence were both condemned, and on the 27th of August suffered for their opinions, being burned at Greenside in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.¹ In the case of Straiton there was a quarrel with the clergy about the tithe of fish. He had a boat in which his servants went to sea and fished, and when the collector insisted for the tithe of the fish, Straiton bade his servants throw every tenth fish into the sea again, and let him seek their tithe where he found the stock. Yet despite these executions the new opinions continued to spread, and between the years 1534 and 1537 many persons were accused of heresy. Some of ♦the accused abjured their opinions, while a considerable number of them fled out of the country.²

Henry VIII. was extremely anxious that the young king of Scotland should imitate his example and shake off the authority of the Pope. In 1535, he sent ambassadors into Scotland with a proposal for a marriage between his daughter and the Scottish king, and suggested that James should meet him at York, where they could confer together and cement the ties of friendship. Much showy flattery was used towards James to induce him to follow out the proposals of his uncle; various presents were sent to the king, consisting of horses, offers of the garter, and a copy of a book entitled “The Doctrine of a Christian Man.” A specimen of Henry’s efforts to convert James may be given from his instructions to Bishop Barlow and Thomas Halcroft, his ambassadors at the Scottish court in October, 1535: the following touches on the encroachment of the Pope on kingly prerogatives and royal authority​—“That within the limits of your realm, such spiritual promotions and ecclesiastical dignities as appertain to the collation of your prerogative royal, your clergy have appropriated to the Bishop of Rome for to give and sell them away by prevention, at his own pleasure, without your licence, rather choosing to receive them of a foreign usurper, than of their own natural prince, to the intent your grace should have no liberty in their kingdom. And divers of them have encroached so large possessions, that in richness and yearly revenue they seem able to compare with you; and as for pre-eminent authority they far surpass your highness; which in no condition should be suffered by so noble a prince as your grace is, whom God has endued with prudent wisdom and discretion much excelling many of your noble progenitors, so that nothing is to be desired in you, save only a fervent love of God’s word, whereby without difficulty ye shall know the office of a king, righteously how to rule and not to be ruled of your subjects; which kingly office of God’s ordinate institution most highly preferred, Scripture depaindeth from the first creation hitherto. When God had created Adam and set him in paradise, subduing to his obedient subjection all creatures, and having no superior under God, without any restraint of free liberty save only to obey God’s precept, what was it otherwise than a perfect demonstration of a king’s majesty, to be in his realm as Adam was in paradise, lord over all.” After citing various examples of kings from Scripture, for the instruction of his nephew, which the ambassadors were instructed to beat into his head with all their eloquence and force; and then the practical application was presented to the young king, thus:​—“And therefore this good King Josias, only attended to God’s word, the established foundation of princely governance, without any contrary respect, delayed not his royal power, effectually furthering a due reformation, whereby God’s pleasure accomplished, he prosperously reigned over the people; exhibiting an evident example unto your grace, both of courage and necessity, valiantly now in the clear revelation of God’s word, to enterprise a like reformable redress of your spiritual (so named) clergy, which as it shall be to the glorifying of God’s honour, so must it needs be to the advancement of your realm, also to such augmentation of inestimable riches and unrestrained freedom of your royal liberty, as never none of your noble progenitors hitherto could attain. How should not your treasure be inestimably augmented, if unto your highness, as of duty ought to be, were restored the title, jus, advowson, patronage, gifts and grants of all spiritual promotions, with free interest in their goods, lands, rents, revenues, and possessions, as rightfully belong to your regality, whereof so long season they have injustely dispossessed you by their subtle submission to the Bishop of Rome? What a kingly liberty were it to have them subdued under your obedience and subjection, which by unseemly sufferance are lords over you within your own dominion, whose visured holyness is hypocrisy, and their flattering fidelity nothing else save false dissimulation! If they feign humble submission of allegiance, they show it for a facid intent, to be exalted above your royalty. If they seem to motion you to justice, it shall be to revenge their cruel quarrels. If they offer to assist you with their riches, it is to maintain their extortionate causes. Finally, whatsoever purpose they compass about, always the principal respect is their private commodity, being a kingdom within themselves, confedered together without any profitable consideration of your common public weal.”

James V. replied to Henry in these words​—“As to the matter shown by your said ambassadors, we may not of our conscience but first keep our part toward God and our obedience to Holy Kirk, as all our forefathers had done these thirteen hundred years by past.”¹

All the artful policy of Henry failed; the meeting between the two kings was indefinitely postponed by the advice of the Scottish clergy, and James remained firmly attached to the Roman hierarchy. The agents of the English Government assert that James was completely under the control of the clergy; and Barlow, the bishop of St. Asaph, characterised them thus​—“his spiritual unghostly councillors, who, I dare boldly affirm that, if they might destroy us with a word, their devilish endeavour should not long fail.... Also, I am sure that the Council, which are only the clergy, would not willingly give such advertisement to the king for due execution upon thieves and robbers; for then ought he first of all to begin with them in the midst of his realm, whose abominable abused fashion, so far out of frame, a Christian heart abhorreth to behold. They show themselves to be in all points the pope’s pestilent creatures, very limbs of the devil, whose popish power violently to maintain their lying friars cease not in their sermons, we being present, blasphemously to blatter against the verity, with slanderous reproach of us, who have justly renounced his wrong usurped papacy. Wherefore, in confutation of their detestable lies, if I might obtain the king’s licence (otherwise shall I not be suffered) to preach, I will not spare for no bodily peril, boldly to publish the truth of God’s word among them. Whereat though the clergy shall repine, yet many of the lay people will gladly give ear.”¹

In 1537, Sir Ralph Sadler was sent into Scotland on a mission to the Scottish court. He was instructed to make every endeavour to induce James to resist the Pope and to join his uncle in common measures of defence, and to persuade him to give no heed to the false rumours and slanderous misrepresentations of the motives of his uncle which were so industriously spread. He was also to propose that James should meet with Henry, when they might have a personal interchange of views, from which much mutual benefit was expected to result.¹ The influences which controlled the policy of James V. were manifested in various directions. He went to France in 1536 in search of a wife, and on the 1st of January 1537, his marriage with Magdalene, daughter of the King of France, was celebrated at the French court. The King and Queen landed in Scotland on the 28th of May, amid great rejoicings; but the Queen had a very delicate constitution, and she died on the 7th of July, the same year, greatly lamented by the people. Shortly after an embassy was sent to France, and Mary of Lorraine, a daughter of the Duke of Guise, was conveyed to Scotland in 1538, and married to the King. She was a woman of remarkable energy and talents, and played an active part in the struggles of the Reformation in her adopted country. The house of Guise, however, was one of the most aspiring and ambitious in France, and its aims and policy were wholly devoted to the Roman Catholic Church. The marriage of the King of Scots, therefore, was a plain indication to Henry VIII. of the direction in which the policy of the Scottish King would tend for at least some time to come. But it is only rendering historical justice to state that James V., as compared with his contemporary across the Border, was a liberal minded king; and when he countenanced and permitted the execution of heretics he was merely allowing the law of the kingdom to run its course. He was at variance with the aristocracy as many of his ancestors had been before him; and remembering the treatment which many of the occupants of the throne and even himself had received at their hands, it is not surprising that he pursued the line of policy naturally marked out for him. There is no evidence that James was naturally cruel or inclined to push matters to extremes. Henry VIII. on the other hand persecuted the devotees of the Pope and the disciples of Luther with equal severity, and endeavoured to hold the position of Pope and of King, to concentrate the power of both in his own person, and reign above all law.

In the autumn of ♦1539, James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, died, and was succeeded by his nephew, Cardinal Beaton. David Beaton, Abbot of Arbroath in Scotland, and Bishop of Mirpoix in France, was assured of the primacy in August 1538, and was installed in the See between the 13th and the 25th of February, 1539, six months before the death of his uncle; a few days afterwards his natural son got a grant of lands in Angus. Beaton was made a cardinal upon the 20th of December, 1538, and was exceedingly anxious to obtain from the pope the office of legate a latere. In December, 1539, he wrote to his agent at Rome to press his suit for a commission as legate. James V. wrote to the Pope on the 16th December, 1538, entreating that the office might be bestowed on Beaton, and again in August, 1539, in June 1540, and in March 1541. In February, 1544, the Regent Arran also wrote to the Pope touching the same matter, and a month after the coveted office was granted, and Beaton attained to the summit of his power.¹

About the beginning of the year 1539, several persons, mostly of the lower orders of the clergy, were accused and apprehended for heresy. Thomas Forrest, a canon of Inchcolm and vicar of Dollar; two black friars, named Beveridge and Killor; Duncan Simpson, a priest at Stirling, and Robert Forrester, a layman, belonging to Stirling, were tried before a council held by Cardinal Beaton and the Bishop of Dunblane. They were all condemned, and were burned on the 1st day of March, in the presence of the king, upon the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. At the same time nine persons recanted, and many were banished. Amongst the latter was George Buchanan, who escaped by the window of his bed-chamber while his keepers were asleep.¹ The same year a friar of the name of Russel was apprehended for heresy. He had been preaching at Dumfries and other parts of the country; he was young and intelligent, and therefore it was not likely that he would be suffered to spread his heresies. Another youth of eighteen years, named Kennedy, was also apprehended. Both were brought before the Archbishop of Glasgow, who, it is said, was reluctant to condemn them. They were both, however, sentenced to death and burned at Glasgow. Russel before his death is reported to have spoken the following words:​—“This is your hour and the power of darkness; ye now sit as judges, whilst we stand before you wrongfully accused and more wrongfully condemned, but the day shall come when our innocence shall appear, and then ye shall see your own blindness to your everlasting confusion. Go forward, and fulfil the measure of your iniquity.”²

These executions were not followed by the results expected. Instead of stamping out the heresy they only added more intensity to it, and the proscribed opinions were more firmly held by those who had embraced them. It has been maintained by some that if a persecution be sufficiently severe and prolonged it must extinguish heresy. A great deal depends, however, upon the state of civilisation the people have reached among whom the heresy exists. If a nation be in a comparatively low moral and social condition, and lives under a political or military despotism, heresies or opinions obnoxious to the ruling powers might be extinguished, or rather banished, from that particular quarter of the earth. In such circumstances persecution might be carried to a pitch which would crush the best of causes. But although the usual means by which heresy is propagated be cut off, it cannot eradicate what is believed to be the truth from the minds of those who have cordially embraced it. Oppressive laws and a tyrannical and merciless administration, if carried on long enough, will no doubt prevent the expression of heresies, or of any opinion whatever; still it can hardly be assumed that a heresy is extinguished because its expression is legally and effectively suppressed, which is the utmost that the severest persecution can effect. And it is just at this point where the influences arise in which the human mind derives a peculiar enjoyment from holding on to opinions that have been prohibited by Church and State. For there is unquestionably a high degree of inward pleasure in cherishing proscribed opinions which the judgment and the moral sense believe to be true, and upon this some of the very strongest self-sustaining and original elements of character have been developed. The bond of sympathy that radiated in the hearts of the heretics was not broken when one or two were burnt, indeed their memory and opinions began then only to be thoroughly grasped, and were afterwards retained with a vividness and a faith which their fellow believers alone could fully realise. If it had been possible to burn the enthusiasm of the heretic and of the martyr along with their bodies, truth and religion and morality would long ago have been banished from the world, or rather the higher characteristics of humanity could not have been developed. Hence heresy may be cursed and condemned, heretics may be tortured and consumed to ashes; and yet, as if to mock the limits of the powers which have vainly assayed to crush them, again and again heresies have risen up and shone with a lustre all its own, drawing fresh energy from the manes of the departed.

A parliament met at Edinburgh in December, 1541, and at once proceeded to deal with two measures which directly trenched upon the privileges of the aristocracy. An act was passed confirming the revocation of all grants of lands, lordships, customs, burgh rents, annual fishings, donations, life rents, and gifts, which had been made during the king’s minority. The variety and extent of the transactions which this act covered must have appeared extremely alarming, especially to those who had any hand in the Government within the period specified. Another act declared the Western and the Orkney and Shetland Islands to be annexed to the Crown, together with the lordships of Douglas, Bothwell, Preston, Tantallon, Crawford Lindsay, Crawford John, Bonhill, Jedburgh Forest, ♦Glamis, Liddesdale, Evandale, and the superiority of the Earldom of Angus, with all its forts, castles, and whatever else pertained to it. Though these measures were within the legal limits of the constitution of the kingdom, they were far too bold; but if the Crown had been able to carry them into effect the results would have been beneficial, as the disorderly state of the inhabitants in the annexed districts would have been remedied, and peace and order introduced. The Government was aware of the danger attending the path on which it had entered, and attempted to appease the ruffled feelings of the nobles and chiefs by proclaiming a general pardon for all crimes committed down to the date of the act. This, however, lost much of its calming effect owing to the clause which excluded the banished Earl of Angus and all his adherents.¹ The nobles now became nervously apprehensive, and their feeling soon manifested itself.

In a parliament held in March, 1541, new acts were passed against the spread of heresy. To question the supreme authority of the Pope was declared to be a capital crime, and even a suspicion of heresy was deemed sufficient to disqualify any one for office in the Government or elsewhere; all meetings for the discussion of religious doctrines were strictly prohibited, and rewards were promised to those who revealed to the authorities where such meetings were held. The Church was so solicitous to preserve the purity of her doctrines that no Catholic was permitted to converse with any one who had embraced a single heretical opinion. Another statute was passed which tells that one special feature of the Scottish Reformation had already begun to show itself; as it was directed against those who broke and cast down the images of the saints, or otherwise treated them with irreverence and dishonour.¹

While these events were passing at home, Henry VIII. was assuming a more dictatorial tone, and making demands which no Government of Scotland could ever entertain. His project of a meeting at York was again renewed, and James agreed to meet him there. The King, however, on the advice of the clergy, in the end declined the meeting. Henry was greatly disappointed, and instantly burst into an uncontrollable rage, leaping in his fury and raving like a maniac. Nothing short of a war of conquest against Scotland could appease him. King James’s advisers would not let him go to York; and they had good reason for distrusting his uncle’s professed intentions, as the State papers amply testify.¹

In 1542, Henry resolved on war, in order to let the Scots feel his power. The strife began on the Borders with all the old fury. James mustered his army and marched southwards, but tidings soon came that the English army had disbanded for want of provisions. The Scotch nobles refused to follow their king. Their hour was come, and they determined to show their power by mortifying the man, who had so ruthlessly punished them, and who, according to their ideas, had encroached upon the old rights of their class. Although forced to disband his army, James was very loath to be baulked in his intention of retaliating upon Henry, and very shortly after it was resolved that a smaller force should make a raid across the Border​—a body which was said to have numbered ten thousand mustered. They had passed the Esk and were approaching English ground when a strange fate befell them. It was at this point that Oliver Sinclair, one of the king’s favourites, began to read the commission which appointed him to the chief command. The nobles present were enraged at this new encroachment upon their hereditary rights, a storm of talk arose among them, and all discipline and order was forgotten. Lord Dacre, the English leader, was hovering near with a body of cavalry and a force of three thousand footmen. When he saw the confusion of the Scots, he ordered his party to dash in amongst them, and in a moment the Scottish army was scattered in all directions. A number of the Scots were drowned in crossing the Esk, many were slain in the pursuit by the English cavalry, and upwards of a thousand prisoners, including nine nobles, fell into the hands of the enemy. This severe disaster happened on the 24th of November, 1542, and became known as the panic of Solway Moss.¹

The tidings of this disaster seems to have broken the spirit of the king. He brooded over his disappointments and what he regarded as an unbearable disgrace; and his mind became confused. He continued to sink lower and lower, and died on the 14th December, 1542. Although he was hard on the nobles, he was popular amongst the people. The line of policy which circumstances naturally led him to pursue, cannot be commended either for its wisdom or sagacity; yet, when everything is taken into account, James V. appears as a ruler fully equal to the average of his contemporaries.

The Crown then fell to an infant, Mary Stuart, born in the Palace of Linlithgow seven days before the death of her father. She was destined to become the most famous of the long line of Scottish sovereigns. In her infancy and innocent childhood she was an object of extremely fierce contention. Her youth and beauty, her talents and accomplishments, her success and failure, the strength and weakness of her character, her imprisonment and romantic escape, her flight into England, her long captivity and tragic end​—all concurred to fill the story of her life with the most absorbing interest.

Immediately after the death of the king, Cardinal Beaton made an attempt to obtain the chief position in the government of the kingdom. He was to be the head of the Council and the guardian of the infant princess, associated with the Earls of Arran, Huntly, Moray, and Argyle; and a proclamation was issued at Edinburgh commanding the people to obey the Cardinal and the above earls. But early in January, 1543, the Earl of Arran was named as Governor of the kingdom, and recognised as next heir to the throne; and his appointment was confirmed by parliament in March the same year.

When Henry VIII. heard of the events in Scotland, he assumed that Providence had given him a great opportunity, and at once formed the idea of arranging for a marriage between the infant queen and his son. Matrimonial projects were all-absorbing matters with him, and if his exploits in this region of activity were not always attended with honour and glory, he certainly never lost his relish for the pursuit. His high sense of justice, his love of truth, no less than the unspotted purity of his motives, suggested to him that the banished Earl of Angus, and the Scottish nobles taken at Solway Moss might be made useful agents for the accomplishment of his scheme in Scotland! Henry proposed to the Earl of Angus and the captive nobles that they should enter into an agreement with him, to do their utmost to promote the marriage project, and to deliver the infant queen into his hands to be kept in England. They agreed to this, and also to recognise Henry as lord superior of Scotland; they promised to exert their influence to procure for him the government of the kingdom, and to deliver all the national fortresses into his hands. This bond between Henry and the Scottish prisoners was drawn up with great formality and minuteness, yet, with all his adroitness in taking advantage of the circumstances in which the Scotch nobles were placed, he gained very little by it.¹

Arran was not a man of great talents, and yielded too much to the promises and bullying of Henry VIII. The Solway prisoners, on being released, had promised to do great service for Henry when they returned to Scotland; and the banished Earl of Angus, and Sir George Douglas, had undertaken to procure the government of the kingdom for him and to place the Crown on his head. But the performances of these Lords greatly disappointed the expectation of this ambitious and vain-glorious king. In short, his despotic demands were unreasonable and impracticable; for he demanded that the Cardinal should be seized and delivered into his hands; that the infant Queen should be betrothed to his son, and also delivered into his hands; and in truth he wanted possession of the kingdom of Scotland, although the means which he used to attain his end, were even more despicable than any which had been employed by any of his predecessors. In order to secure the support and confidence of the Governor Arran, in April 1543, Henry offered to give his daughter, Elizabeth, in marriage to Arran’s son. This he imagined would certainly secure the Governor to his interest. He said: “For we have a daughter called Lady Elizabeth, endowed with virtue and qualities agreeable with her status ... if we shall see him sincerely to go through with us in all things, to condescend to a marriage to be celebrated between his son and our daughter, if he shall think it for his favour and advancement to desire the same, and thereby to take his son conjoined with our daughter, as our son-in-law, being content according to that status to bring up and nourish him in our court with us.... And what honour, what reputation, what worldly glory, it shall be to him otherwise, for his son to marry a King of England’s daughter, and to be nourished up thereafter in a King of England’s Court, we doubt not he can consider.” But the one important condition in this proposal was that Arran’s son must live in England. Henry was playing with Arran, for he had no intention of giving his daughter in marriage to Arran’s son. He continued to clamour for the capture and imprisonment of the Cardinal, and to scold the released prisoners and the Earl of Angus that they had done next to nothing in advancing his designs in Scotland. After much underhand dealing and corruption, on the 6th of June, with difficulty the conditions of the treaty of marriage between the infant Queen and Henry’s son, and the treaty of peace, were agreed to by the Regent and a party of the nobles. In this transaction the Earls of Huntly, Argyle, and Moray, had no part. Shortly after, Henry proposed to give the Regent Arran the whole of Scotland beyond the Tay, but the offer was coldly received. On the 25th of August, the treaties were ratified at Holyrood by the Regent, in name of the Queen and the three Estates, in presence of a portion of the nobles, but the Cardinal and his party were absent. These treaties, however, were never ratified by Henry himself; and it is evident that he did not intend to carry his purpose into effect by treaty, but hoped shortly to take possession of the young Queen and the best part of her kingdom, unclogged by special conditions.

The general feeling of the Scots was decidedly opposed to the interference and domineering spirit of Henry VIII. The Regent and a section of the nobles lent their support to his schemes for a time, but at last a coalition was formed against him, and then the Regent sailed under the canvas of the Cardinal. While Henry professed a desire for peace, he was actively preparing for an invasion of Scotland. The course of events had turned against him, his friends were falling off; and so keen was the feeling against his schemes amongst the citizens of Edinburgh that they threatened to lay violent hands on Sadler, the English Ambassador. Henry himself, in his bullying tone, addressed a letter to them, in which he scolded them thus:​—“We have thought good to admonish you to beware and eschew that outrage, whereby ye might provoke our extreme displeasure and indignation, and to forbear that attempt, not only for the detestation of it in all men’s ears, but also for fear of the revenge of our sword to extend to that town and commonalty, and all such people as shall by any means come into our hands, to the extermination of you to the third and fourth generation.” The ambassador found refuge in Angus’ Castle of Tantallon. Parliament met at Edinburgh, and on the 11th December 1543, the treaties of marriage and peace between the two kingdoms were declared to have been violated by the seizure and detention of Scottish ships by the English, and were therefore annulled.¹

Henry then prepared to invade Scotland. It was indeed hard that the Scots could not see his many virtues; it was harder still that they could not believe in his benign purposes, nor appreciate the many acts of condescension which he had shown towards them; he had suffered them long, but his forbearance was at last exhausted, and he must let them feel the weight of his wrath. On the 10th of April, 1544, he issued instructions through his Privy Council to the Earl of Hertford, the leader of the inroads into Scotland; and these instructions were marked by a ferocity of spirit, a fiendish malignity, and a barbarity unmatched in the annals of Europe. Hertford was ordered in Henry’s name to make an inroad into Scotland: “There to put all to fire and sword, to burn Edinburgh town, to raze and destroy when you have sacked and gotten what you can out of it, as there may remain for ever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God lighted upon it, for their falsehood and disloyalty.... Sack Holyrood House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can. Sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man, woman, and child to fire and sword without exception where any resistance shall be made against you. And this done, pass over to Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto ye may conveniently reach, not forgetting among all the rest, so to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal’s town of St. Andrews, as that the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, especially such as either in friendship or blood are allied to the Cardinal; and the accomplishment of all this shall be most acceptable to the majesty and honour of the King.”¹

The Earl of Hertford followed out his instructions pretty fully, he led two expeditions into Scotland, the great one in May 1544, and the other in September, and both were marked by the mere wanton destruction of life and property. Towns and villages one after another were sacked and burned, and wherever the English forces marched, death, desolation, and woe proclaimed the wrath of Henry VIII. The monasteries of Melrose, Kelso, Holyrood, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, and other religious houses, were committed to the flames and laid in ruins.¹

In the reports of the progress of the expedition of May, Hertford gave detailed descriptions of the burning and sacking of Edinburgh, Holyrood, Leith, and many other towns and villages. When the army was encamped at Leith, he said, “The town of Leith we found to be of good substance and riches, at the least of Xᵐᵉ li., as we suppose, whereof there was a great store of grain of all kinds; finding also within the haven two fair ships of the late Scottish King’s, called the ‘Salmon’ and ‘Unicorn,’ for which I, the lord admirall have taken such order, that by the suffrance of God, the same shall arrive to your majesty with the rest of your navy.” From the same place he wrote: “We have daily sent forth both horsemen and footmen, as well by sea as by land, which have devastated the country hereabout, and within six miles of Stirling, in such sort as there shall not only remain a perpetual memory of our being here, but also, we trust, I, the Earl of Hertford, have so accomplished the charge committed to me by your highness in that behalf, as the enemies shall neither be able to recover this damage while we live, nor yet to assemble any power this year in these parts of the realm, whatsoever aid be sent to them out of France or Denmark to annoy your majesty’s subjects, or to make any invasion into your realm of England.”¹

Henry VIII. evidently had engendered in himself a remorseless enmity against the Scots; and there was one man whom he detested more than the rest, and pursued with a venomous malignity. This was Cardinal Beaton, the most talented and strongest adherent of Catholicism in Scotland, and a politician, according to the standard of the times, of consummate ability. The Cardinal had worked hard against the policy of Henry, and had defeated it. Since the death of James V. Henry had marked out the Cardinal, and had employed every means to insnare and crush him, but Beaton was well aware of his venomous designs against him. Henry lent his influence to a plot against the Cardinal’s life, and at last promised a reward to the other conspirators who were concocting a scheme to murder him. As early as 1543 Henry had approved of the plot, and in the event of its being successful, that is, if the Cardinal was killed, and his murderers forced to flee to England, then he bound himself to protect them from all the consequences of their act.¹ But despite all the efforts of Henry and of those whom he employed the Cardinal eluded the machinations of his mortal enemies for several years.

While these events were passing and ruffling the surface of society, the reformed opinions were gradually spreading amongst the people. The contradictory and vacillating policy of the Regent was well adapted to weaken the authority of the old religious creed. In March 1543, Parliament passed an act authorising all men to have and to read the Old and New Testament in the common speech of the country, English or Scottish. This liberty, however, was only enjoyed for a short time, and it is doubtful if any edition of the Scriptures was printed in Scotland during the brief interval in which the act was allowed to remain in force.¹ The Regent Arran, in a few months after the passing of this act, dismissed the two reformed preachers whom he had retained in his family, and the Cardinal soon obtained a complete ascendency. Those affected by the new opinions began to manifest their feeling by attacking and defacing the houses of the Black and Grey Friars in Dundee. About the same time attempts were made to mar the building of the Black Friars at Edinburgh, a movement which was repelled by the citizens; and these outbursts of heretical feeling quickly received a sharp check. A parliament which met at Edinburgh passed an act declaring​—“How there is great murmour because the heretics more and more rise and spread within the realm, sowing their damnable opinions contrary to the faith and laws of the holy Church and the acts and constitutions of the kingdom.” Therefore all the prelates and ordinaries were exhorted, each within their own diocese, to inquire after all such heretical persons, and to proceed against them according to the laws of the Church, and the Regent promised to be always ready to do everything therein that belonged to his office.²

The year 1544 began very ominously for the so-called heretics. The Cardinal was then master of the situation in Scotland, and he was not the man to let his opportunity slip. About the end of January he held a court at Perth, and many suspected persons were summoned before it and accused of heresy. A number of them were banished, but four men, James Hunter, a flesher, William Anderson, a maltman, James Randlson, a skinner, Robert Lamb, a burgess of Perth, and his wife, were all condemned. The four men were hanged, and the helpless woman, Lamb’s wife, who had a child at her breast, was drowned; she gave her infant to the attendants, her hands and feet were then bound, and she was thrown into a deep pool of water where her sufferings were ended.¹ This was the only instance of a woman being put to death for religious opinions in Scotland before the Reformation.

George Wishart returned to Scotland in the end of the year 1544. He was a popular preacher, and was supported by the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, the Lairds of Brunston, Ormiston, and Calder. These men were deeply in the confidence of Henry VIII., and were plotting the murder of Cardinal Beaton; but whether George Wishart was concerned in this plot, is a disputed point. The evidence, however, on which it has been attempted to show that he was implicated in the plots against the Cardinal’s life, certainly does not approach to the requisite standard. The only evidence connecting Wishart, the martyr, with the plot against the Cardinal’s life rests on the fact that a Scotsman named Wishart conveyed letters from Crichton of Brunston to Henry VIII., and it is only conjectured that this individual was Wishart, the preacher of the reformed doctrines. There are some presumptive circumstances which seem to point to him, such as his known association with the Laird of Brunston and others of the conspirators. But even if this conjecture were true, it would not amount to much, as people in these days did not view the murder of an enemy of their faith in the light in which we do, on the contrary, they thought it was rendering a service to God to cut off an able opposer of the truth.¹ Wishart preached in Montrose, Dundee, Ayr, Perth, and in other parts of the country. He delivered his sermons with much vehemence, boldly attacking the errors of the Church and declaiming against the profligacy of the clergy. Knox first appears in history in company with Wishart.²

In the beginning of the year 1546, Wishart was in Lothian, and preached in Haddington, where John Knox accompanied him. On the 16th of January he was apprehended at Ormiston, in East Lothian, by the Earl of Bothwell, and conveyed first to Edinburgh, and shortly after to St. Andrews. He was tried on the 28th of February, condemned, and executed on the 11th of March. When the fire was prepared, he was led from the castle to the stake imploring mercy of his Saviour and commending his soul to Him. He then addressed the people, beseeching them not to be offended with the word of God, for the profession of which he was suffering. He said​—“For the word’s sake, and the true gospel which was given me by the grace of God, I suffer this day by men, not sorrowfully but with a glad heart and mind. For this cause I was sent, that I should suffer this fire for Christ’s sake. Consider and behold my visage, ye shall not see me change my colour. This grim fire I fear not, and so I pray you for to do if that any persecution come to you for the word’s sake and not to fear them that slay the body and afterwards have no power to slay the soul. Some have said of me that I taught that the soul of man should sleep until the last day, but I know surely, and my faith is such, that my soul shall sup with my Saviour this night ere it be six hours, for whom I suffer this.” He then prayed for those who had accused him, saying​—“I beseech thee, Father of Heaven, to forgive them that through ignorance or an evil mind have forged lies upon me; I forgive them with all my heart; I beseech Christ to forgive those who have condemned me to death this day.” And finally to the people he said​—“I beseech you, brethren and sisters, to exhort your bishops to learn the word of God, that at least they may be ashamed to do evil and learn to do good: and if they will not convert themselves and turn from their wicked ways the wrath of God shall swiftly overtake them.” He was then hanged, and his remains burned to ashes.¹

The burning of Wishart aroused a deep feeling in the popular mind, and many began to say that they would not suffer the life of innocent men to be taken away. As the Regent had declined to authorise the execution of Wishart, all the odium of the deed rested upon the Cardinal, so that his enemies increased in number and bitterness. Indeed Beaton had been endeavouring to strengthen his position by the old custom of entering into bonds of man-rent with many of the nobles; he was secure on the side of France, and the faction of the Scottish nobles opposed to his line of policy had been almost put out of reckoning. Soon after the death of Wishart the Cardinal passed through Angus, and attended the marriage of one of his natural daughters at Finhaven Castle. When he was thus enjoying himself, news came that Henry VIII. was again preparing to invade Scotland. He hurried back to St. Andrews to put his castle into a state of defence, as he dreaded that it would be attacked. At that moment his enemies in Scotland were maturing their scheme to murder him, and the folds of the plot were fast closing around their victim.¹

The Cardinal was living securely in his own Castle of St. Andrews, which a number of workmen were engaged in repairing. Early on the morning of the 29th May, 1546, Norman Lesley, the Master of Rothes, and two others, slipped into the castle; these were followed by James Melville and other three, who asked an interview with the Cardinal; immediately after them the Laird of Grange came up with eight armed men. The suspicion of the porter at the gate was now roused, but he was instantly stabbed and thrown into the ditch. Thus in a few minutes the party were within the walls of the castle; and with surprising alacrity its few defenders, and the workmen on the ramparts were led out, and all the gates guarded. The unusual noise had aroused the Cardinal from his bed, and he was ascending the stair of the castle when his enemies came upon him and ruthlessly murdered him. Meanwhile the alarm was given in the city, the common bell was rung, and the citizens, with their provost at their head, rushed in confusion to the castle, and loudly called for the Cardinal; but they were too late, and to show them that the work was done, the murderers exposed the body of the Cardinal over the castle wall. The conspirators, only sixteen in number, kept possession of the castle.¹

Thus perished Cardinal Beaton by the hands of a set of cruel and hired assassins. The Cardinal was the ablest champion of Catholicism in Scotland; and John Hamilton, a brother of the Regent, who succeeded to the primacy, was much inferior in energy and talents to his predecessor. According to the laws of the Church, Beaton’s moral character was extremely defective; but then amongst the clerical dignitaries of the period, the laws of purity and chastity were utterly disregarded, while the morals of the Cardinal were just those of his day. He has been often blamed for persecuting the adherents of the reformed opinions, but when compared with his contemporaries, it appears that the number of persons put to death by him was not great; and there is no evidence that he was naturally cruel. That he was much respected and even loved by many of the citizens of St. Andrews, seems evident. That the men who put him to death were not actuated by religious motives has long ago been clearly proved.¹ The feelings, sentiments, and ideas of those who originated, sustained, and continued the Reformation, were of a very different character from those which animated the mercenary and greedy plotters who cut short the life of Cardinal Beaton.

CHAPTER XIV.

History of the Reformation to the Overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church.

THE sixteen conspirators who had seized the Castle of St. Andrews were soon joined by about one hundred and forty of their adherents, who formed a garrison and defied all the force at the disposal of the Regent. The Cardinal at the time of his death held the Regent’s son James, Lord Hamilton, afterwards third Earl of Arran, as a hostage. He was retained by the conspirators as a pledge for their own advantage; as the Government were afraid he would be delivered to the English. John Rough, a reformed preacher, entered the castle soon after the Cardinal’s death, and began to preach to the garrison. The Regent besieged the castle from the end of August to December without success. In April 1547, John Knox had become wearied by wandering from place to place to avoid persecution, and he felt inclined to visit the schools of Germany; but having the charge of some gentlemen’s sons, he entered the Castle of St. Andrews. During the intervals of the siege a Protestant congregation had been formed in the town, and about the end of May, Knox consented to assume the functions of their minister. Rough had been unable to match the debating powers of John Annand, the principal of St. Leonard’s College, and a firm adherent of Catholicism; but Knox, according to his own narrative, refuted all the arguments of the principal, and compelled him to retire behind the authority of the Church, which had already condemned Lutherism and all other heresies. After worsting the principal, Knox on the following Sunday preached his first public sermon in the parish church of St. Andrews, where were present John Mair, Winram, the sub-prior, many of the canons, and some of the friars. In this sermon he showed to his own satisfaction that the Roman Church was the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, and so on. A discussion then ensued between Knox on the one side, and Winram and a friar on the other; but neither party was convinced by the arguments of the other. The Catholic clergy themselves then began to preach regularly in the parish church every Sunday. Knox continued his sermons on the week days, and the numbers of those who embraced the reformed opinions increased. However, this episode in the history of the Reformation was abruptly terminated.¹

Meanwhile, however, the new opinions were spreading. In the month of June 1546, the Council issued a proclamation warning all persons not to pillage or destroy monastic and church buildings. It stated that​—“In these troublous times it is dreaded and feared that evil disposed persons will invade, destroy, cast down, and withhold abbeys, abbey places, parish kirks, friars’ houses, nunneries, chapels, and other spiritual men’s houses, against the law of God and man, and contrary to the liberty and freedom of the holy Church and acts of parliament made and observed in all bygone times.... All and sundry were charged that none of them take upon hand any of these kirks, religious places, or houses, or to withhold, intermot, or take the same at their own hand by way of deed hereafter, or to spoil the jewels and ornament of the church ordained for God’s service and dedicated to it, under the penalty of forfeiture of life, lands, and goods.”¹ The bishops and the priests were enraged at the proceedings in St. Andrews, and they ran to the Regent, to the Queen, and the whole Council, with their complaints, crying​—“What are we doing? Shall we suffer this whole realm to be infected with pernicious doctrine? Fy upon you, and upon us!”² The Queen and the French ambassador then comforted them with the assurance that matters would ere long be remedied. On the 19th of March 1547, the bishops and clergy assembled at Edinburgh, and presented to the Regent and Council a supplication, calling on them to enforce the laws against the followers of the pestilent heresies of Luther, which had not only spread in several quarters of the kingdom, but also in the Court, and the Regent’s presence, and was sometimes preached openly; and it would daily increase unless the arm of the civil power assisted the spiritual authority to arrest its progress. The Regent and the Council acceded to their request, and desired to be furnished with the names of the heretics and the teachers of heresy; “and his Grace and the temporal lords shall take them and cause the laws of the realm to be executed against them, ay, as he is required thereto, according to the laws of holy Church, and ordained this deliverance to be inserted in the books of the Council.”³

But the resources at the command of the Regent were not sufficient to reduce the Castle of St. Andrews, and there the heretics were practising their own forms of religion. In the end of the month of June 1547, however, a French force arrived in Scotland, and attacked the castle by sea and land. After the guns were put into position, and the batteries opened fire, the bold defenders of the castle were soon brought to submission. The garrison had imagined that they would obtain more favourable terms from the French commander and the King of France than from the Regent Arran and the Council, and surrendered themselves to the French commander.¹ But they were conveyed to France and treated as criminals. They arrived at Fecamp, a seaport about midway between Dieppe and Havre, then passed up the Seine and anchored before Rouen; and the chief gentlemen who had expected to be liberated were put into various prisons; while the rest were left in the galleys and hardly treated, among whom were James Balfour, and his two brothers, and John Knox. The Catholics both of Scotland and France rejoiced greatly at the fate of the heretics and the enemies of the late Cardinal. Knox, along with his fellow-prisoners, had to work on the galleys chained as a slave. After an imprisonment of eighteen months he obtained his liberty in 1549, upon the intercession, it was supposed, of the English Government. Knox came to England, and soon after he was appointed to preach in Berwick; but in 1550 he was removed to Newcastle, where he continued his labours. In 1551, he was appointed one of King Edward’s chaplains, and he remained in England till after the death of Edward VI. Knox left England in the beginning of March, 1554, and passed to Geneva to pursue his private studies. Soon after he was called to be minister to the English exiles in Frankfort, entering on his duties there in November 1554. But disputes arising in the congregation regarding the Book of Common Prayer, and other ceremonies, he relinquished his charge, and in March 1555, returned to Geneva.²

On the 28th of January, 1547, Henry VIII. died, but the policy of aggression towards Scotland was continued. The Duke of Somerset, the new Governor, invaded the kingdom with a strong army and a naval force; and on the 10th of September, 1547, the Scots risked a battle, but were completely defeated. Many of the Scots were slain, while others were taken prisoners in the flight. This disastrous defeat became known in history as the Battle of Pinkie; subsequently the Scots were reduced to great extremities. The English and Scots became much exasperated; the war assumed a fierce and ruthless character, and acts of shocking cruelty were frequently perpetrated. In 1548 a French army of seven thousand men arrived to assist the Scots; while the same year the young Queen was sent to France, and thus one cause of the war was removed. After many severe struggles, the French and the Scots drove the English out of the castles and recovered the southern districts of the kingdom. Peace was at length concluded in April 1550.

When the pressure of external enemies was removed the nation breathed more freely. But the internal political and religious conflict proceeded; and, as the contest between the old and the new religious views became closer and clearer, and the shadow of the revolution was more distinctly seen approaching, the Church and the Government acutely felt the gravity of the issues involved. When the heretics were few in number burning might have kept them down or caused them to hide their faces; but it was now perceived that if heresy was to be extinguished, other means would have to be employed. The whole body of the clergy, from the primate to the humblest monk and friar, must then betake themselves to the proper functions of their calling, and discharge their varied duties honestly and faithfully. Within the ten years immediately preceding the Reformation there were four provincial councils of the Church held in Scotland; and they enacted and adopted one hundred and thirty-one canons, the greater part of which were directed against the immoral lives of the clergy, their ignorance, and the neglect of their essential duties.¹ The provincial council of 1549 ordered a strict search to be made for heresy and heretical books, especially poems and ballads; and to make the inquest effective the inquisitors were supplied with a schedule of the chief points of heresy. Thus the chief points of heresy enumerated in the canons were​—“Speaking against the rites and sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrifice of the mass, the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, extreme unction, and penance; contempt of the censures of the Church; denial of the reign of the souls of saints with Christ in glory; denial of the immortality of the soul; denial of purgatory; denial of prayer and intercession of the saints; denial of the lawfulness of images in Christian churches; denial of recompense for works of faith and charity; denial of the authority of general councils in controversies of faith; neglect of the fasts and festivals of the Church. Heretical books, especially poems and ballads against the Church or clergy, were to be diligently sought after and burned.”

The part which the popular poems and ballads played in the Reformation struggle will be illustrated in the chapter on the literature of the period. One of the canons of the Provincial Council of 1552 stated that​—“Even in the most populous parishes very few of the parishioners came to mass or to sermon, that in the time of service jesting and irreverence go on within the church, sports and secular business in the porch and the churchyard. It therefore enacted that the name of every person wilfully absenting himself from his parish church, shall be taken down by the curate and reported to the Rural Dean, and that all traffic in church porches, in churchyards, or in the immediate neighbourhood, shall be forbidden on Sundays and other holidays during divine worship.”

It was in the Provincial Council of 1552 that the publication of the Catechism was sanctioned. At that time it was openly confessed that​—“The inferior clergy and the prelates for the most part are not in the meanwhile sufficiently learned to instruct the people rightly in the Catholic faith, in things necessary to salvation, or to reclaim them from the path of error.... This work, since commonly known as Archbishop Hamilton’s Catechism, was to be read to the people in church, before high mass, when there was no sermon, as much as would occupy half an hour, being read from the pulpit every Sunday and holiday with a loud voice, clearly, distinctly, impressively, and solemnly by the rector, vicar, or curate, in his surplice and stole. The clergy were enjoined to exercise themselves daily in reading it, lest their stammering or breaking down might move the jeers of the people; and heavy penalties, fine and imprisonment, imposed on all who should fail to observe any part of the canons regarding it.”¹

Thus the party within the pale of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland wished to redress gross abuses without demolishing the old organisations. The Catechism which they produced in the vernacular for the use of the clergy, was characterised by moderate statement and graceful composition. But all the canons and the catechism were of no avail; they were too late, as the fiat had gone forth; the accumulated corruptions of many generations had resulted in a system of institutions incapable of reformation from within; the features of purity, the love of truth and justice had departed from their walls and altars; the great ethical principles at the heart of all true religion had waned dim, and there was no glowing rays to lighten up the darkness which enveloped the Church.

In the summer of 1550, Adam Wallace, a layman from Ayrshire, a man of humble rank, had been occasionally engaged in teaching the children of Cockburn of Ormiston, was accused of heresy. He was seized and conveyed to Edinburgh, and tried before the bishops, the Regent, the Earl of Huntly, and others. Wallace was accused for having assumed to preach without authority, and of reading the Scriptures. He denied having preached in public, but admitted that he had read the Bible, and sometimes added a word of exhortation. Then one of his accusers said, “What shall we leave to the bishops and churchmen to do, if every man shall be a babbler upon the Bible.” Wallace replied that it would befit them better to speak more reverently about the Word of God. Questions were put to him touching the sacraments, prayer for the dead, and other points; and at last, the Earl of Huntly asked him what he thought of the mass. Wallace replied that he could find no authority for it in the Word of God, and therefore it was idolatry in the sight of God. Then they all cried “Heresy! heresy!” He was condemned, and burned on the Castle hill of Edinburgh, where he met his doom with firmness and faith.¹

When Paul III. ascended the papal throne in 1834, he signalised the event by the elevation of several distinguished men to the College of Cardinals without any other object than that of their personal merits. Some of the new Cardinals held opinions which inclined to Protestantism; and by the command of the Pope himself, they prepared a plan for the reform of the Church. When this became known to the Protestants, they rejected it because they had already passed beyond its most liberal proposals. Various other attempts to effect a reconciliation were equally unsuccessful.

In connection with the view of the Reformation, it is necessary to touch briefly on the proceedings of the Council of Trent. As indicated above, a certain number of thoughtful Catholics were willing to make considerable concessions in the form of redressing prevalent abuses. Still a line had to be drawn somewhere, and when it was drawn by the Council of Trent, the Protestants found themselves beyond it. But taking a view of the conditions and circumstances of the nations of Europe, it appeared that the final decision and the conclusions of the Council of Trent were greatly influenced by political interests. As religion had been so long and so much mingled with the politics and the secular affairs of the world, the great majority of the members of the Council were unable to realise the necessity of such a measure of disentanglement as the principles of the Reformation implied; while the strong feeling naturally associated with an inherited belief, the importance attached to tradition, and the efficacy ascribed to external ceremonies in the Roman Catholic Church, were so powerful that they overruled the deliberations of this memorable Council.¹

After many obstacles and circumstances unfavourable to the assembling of the Council of Trent had been overcome, it was opened in December 1545. There was no representative from Scotland at the Council, although a provincial council of the Scottish clergy which met at St. Andrews in March 1546, and imposed a tax of two thousand and five hundred pounds for the expenses of deputies from Scotland to Trent. The tax appears to have been paid, but no Scottish delegate attended the Council. The position of the Church in Scotland was so perilous that Cardinal Beaton, though thrice summoned by the Pope to share the deliberations of the Vatican, did not venture to leave Scotland.¹ When the opening ceremonials and various preliminary matters were disposed of, they proceeded to discuss revelation and the sources from which the knowledge of it was derived. At this stage, some proposals were enunciated in favour of opinions tending towards Protestantism. The Bishop of Chiogga insisted that nothing but Scripture should be admitted; he maintained that the gospel contained all that was necessary. Seripando, the general of the Augustines, also argued that a distinction should be drawn between the canonical books of Scripture and those not yet received as canonical, such as the Proverbs and Books of Wisdom; and that the first class only be used for proving the doctrines of belief. But they found few supporters, and there was an overwhelming majority against these views. The Council at last adopted the resolution that those unwritten traditions which had been received from the mouth of Christ, or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church, were to be regarded with the same veneration and of equal authority with the Scriptures. The Vulgate was declared to be an authentic translation, and it was enjoined that it should be printed with the greatest care as soon as possible.² In the discussion touching the reception of the Vulgate there was much diversity of opinion expressed in the Council; and the following example of the line of argument taken by one party of the Fathers has an interest of its own:​—“That if the providence of God hath given an authentical Scripture to the synagogue, and an authentical New Testament to the Grecians, it cannot be said without derogation that the Church of Rome, more beloved than the rest, hath wanted this great benefit; and therefore that the same Holy Ghost who did dictate the holy books hath dictated also that translation which ought to be accepted by the Church of Rome.... And if any should make dainty to give the Spirit of God to the interpreter, yet he cannot deny it to the Council; and when the vulgar edition shall be approved, and an anathema be thundered against whosoever will not receive it, this will be without error, not by the spirit of him that wrote it, but of the synod that hath received it for such.”³

Upon the great subject of ♦justification there was much diversity of opinion manifested in the ♠Council, and the discussions on it were long and tedious. A section of the members held views nearly similar to those of the Protestants. This party maintained that justification must be ascribed to the merits of Christ and to faith alone; charity and hope they affirmed to be the attendants, and works the proofs of faith, but nothing more; thus the basis of justification was made to rest on faith alone. But this primal doctrine of Protestantism had little chance of even a fair hearing in the Council; it was in vain that Cardinal Pole entreated them not to reject an opinion merely because it was held by Luther. The debate waxed extremely hot: a bishop and a Greek monk from words came to blows. The Council found that it could not argue the questions raised to any purpose, and the discussions were confined; still there were marked differences of opinion expressed among the assembled fathers and divines. Towards the end of the discussion on justification, Seripando advanced his opinion; he contended that the doctrine of justification was twofold, or that there was a twofold righteousness, “the one intrinsic, which he again divided into two kinds; the first being that, whereby we become friends instead of enemies of God, and that this is given us with the grace infused by baptism; the second, whereby man is said to live righteously, which results from the acts of virtue proceeding from the aforesaid grace. The other kind of righteousness was outward, and consisted in the righteousness and merits of Christ, imputed to us by the divine mercy as if they were our own, not indeed wholly, but to such degree, and for such effects, as seems good unto God. If it be asked which of these justifications we must rely on​—that indwelling, or that imparted through Christ​—the devout man will reply that we must confide in the latter only. Our own righteousness is incomplete and ineffective, marred by its deficiences​—that of Christ alone is true and sufficient; this only is entirely pleasing in the sight of God, and in virtue of this alone may we trust to be justified before God.¹ These opinions of Seripando met with little sympathy, only five of the assembled theologians gave their assent to them; while his peculiar tenets on justification were combated with great ability, force, and subtlety, by Cardinal Caraffa,² and the two Jesuits, Salmeron and Laineg.³ The influence of the Jesuits was strong in the Council, and their opinions prevailing, the decision of the assembly was in accordance with their views. There were many and long discussions on the errors of the heretics in connection with the sacraments; debates respecting the granting of the cup to the laity; debates touching the mass and the abuses associated with it; debates concerning the institution of the priesthood and its various orders; discussions on marriage; discussions on pernicious and suspected books;⁴ and discussions on many other matters. But the result of the whole was that after several adjournments and reassemblings during a period of eighteen years, the twenty-fifth and last session terminated the Council in December 1563; the Protestant opinions were excluded from Catholicism, and all hope of mediation or reunion was utterly abandoned. The seven sacraments as heretofore were retained; and also purgatory, indulgences, auricular confession, celibacy of the priesthood, and so on: the incubus of the Middle Ages and the inherited accretions of the creed of the Roman Church rested too heavily and firmly upon her to be shaken off; hence she easily accepted tradition as of equal authority with Scripture; yet she was still bold in assumption, strong in assertion, and vigorous in her denunciations; she had always been kept free from error by special grace; she alone was the true Church, and beyond her walls no religious body could be acknowledged.⁵

Although the Council of Trent did not radically reform the creed of the Roman Church, clerical abuses were corrected and decency enforced. Provision was made for the education of priests and for their devotion in future to active duties; the old laxity of morals was to be no longer tolerated, nor on the other hand, the old diversity of doctrine. Thus the revolt of the Protestants had at least contributed to bring about a degree of moral reform within the Roman Church herself;¹ and for this salutary benefit which the heretics so greatly assisted her to obtain, the Roman Catholics have not as yet shown much gratitude. Doubtless, the salvation of the soul and its eternal life is the highest end of human aspiration; but it can never be permissible to use immoral means even to obtain eternal life. This is the supreme doctrine, the very cornerstone of heaven, and without it there can be no real religion. But Catholics and Protestants alike have often acted in the teeth of this moral law; and the decline of their authority and influence must be attributed to the violation of moral ideas and sentiments more than to aught else. That blind conservatism which causes institutions to have a tendency to outlive the period of their usefulness, has never been more forcibly illustrated than in the history of the Papacy during the last four hundred years.

When we attempt to fix the exact date of the separation between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, we find that it was not strictly coincident with the first appearance of the Reformers, as opinions did not at once assume a fixed character; and for some time there was hope that a compromise between the conflicting principles and doctrines might be effected. But a little past the middle of the century any prospect of this had utterly vanished; and the three forms of Christianity in the West were irrevocably separated. Lutheranism gradually assumed a severity and exclusiveness unknown to it in its earlier stages. The Calvinists had departed from it in several essential doctrines, though Calvin himself in his early days had been considered a Lutheran. But in hostile contrast to both of them, Catholicism firmly invested itself with those forms and ceremonies which still distinguish it. Each of these dogmatic systems sought eagerly to establish its position; each laboured intensely to displace its rival and to subjugate the world. The struggle for many years was desperate. Catholicism after the first shock rallied again, and with renovated and concentrated resources and power it fought its opponent with every available weapon, and with a determination and persistence of purpose, which would have been more worthy of our admiration, if it had been less cruel and merciless.

Having briefly indicated some of the varied agencies and the conflicting influences of the great revolution abroad; I resume the history of the movement as it manifested itself in Scotland. The regency of Arran was approaching its close. His government throughout had been weak and vacillating, and he had now fallen very low in the public estimation. The Queen-mother aspired to the regency, and in connection with her design she made preparations for visiting her daughter in France. In September 1550, along with the Earls of Huntly, Glencairn, Marischal, the king’s natural sons, and others of the barons and clergy, she embarked at Leith, and landed in France on the 19th of the month. The party at the head of affairs in France were eager to promote her object. It was there agreed to press upon Arran’s notice, that the revenues of the Crown had been dilapidated during his regency, that he would be called upon to account when the Queen came of age, and then it would be difficult for him to obtain an honourable discharge, should he remain in office. No line of argument could have been more effective with the weak-minded Regent; and as a compensation for the demission of office he was offered the Dukedom of ♦Chatelherault. The Queen-mother, after concluding her business in France, passed over to the Court of England, and had an interview with Edward VI. She returned to Scotland in the end of November 1551.¹

In 1552, the Queen-mother accompanied the Regent on a judicial circuit through the country. She then reminded him that the time was come when he had promised to demit his office; but he declined to resign the government into her hands, and nearly a year was spent in party recriminations. The Regent’s party, however, dwindled away till only his brother, the primate, remained; accordingly he resigned in April 1554, and the Queen-mother was proclaimed Regent of Scotland amid public rejoicings. Mary of Lorraine, as she was familiarly called, was a woman of exceptional talents. She had acquired some knowledge of the habits and character of the Scots; but she had many adverse circumstances and influences to contend against. Being herself a Catholic, she was most perplexed by the steadily growing strength of the reformed party. On the whole, however, she ruled with remarkable moderation, and exhibited sagacity and tact of a high order. As the Protestants had not yet obtained toleration they gave her government little trouble.¹

Edward VI. died in July, 1553, and the throne of England was soon after occupied by Mary, a daughter of Henry VIII. She was a stanch Roman Catholic, and the wife of the King of Spain. During her brief reign the Protestants in England were subjected to an extremely severe persecution. Mary busied herself in restoring the ancient system and faith to their pristine glory, inflicting enormous suffering upon the English people, many of her subjects being mercilessly sacrificed. A number of Scotsmen who had formerly fled across the Border, now returned to their own country, where they were comparatively safe under the mild government of the Queen-regent. Among those came William Harlaw, who was born about the beginning of the century. He had been originally a tailor in Edinburgh; but afterwards went to England, where he had been ordained a deacon in the English Church, and was employed as a preacher during the reign of Edward VI. Harlaw on his return began to preach in Edinburgh, and in other quarters of the country. John Willock was a native of Ayr, and at first belonged to the order of the friars, but he cast off the monastic habit, and was employed as a preacher in St. Catherine’s, London, and also as chaplain to the Duke of Suffolk. He visited Scotland in 1555 concerning some matters of trade, and took the opportunity of preaching to the people. Knox himself arrived in Scotland about the end of September the same year, and came to Edinburgh where he was warmly welcomed by the Protestants. At this time some of the Protestants still continued to attend mass and join in the worship of the Catholic Church, partly to allay suspicion and to avoid giving unnecessary offence. Knox, however, was opposed to this, and the point was debated at one of their meetings; the Reformer, however, would listen to no compromise even for the sake of safety.¹ The time was not yet come for open manifestation of contempt for the old worship, while possibly the disciples of the Reformer were not as yet prepared to follow a course which might bring their lives and estates into jeopardy.

Knox at the request of John Erskine of Dun, passed to Forfarshire, where he preached every day to many of the chief men of the county. He then recrossed the Forth, and lived at Calder House in West Lothian; while there some of the nobles came and listened to his teaching, and among them the Prior of St. Andrews, afterwards the Regent Moray. In the end of the year he preached mostly in Edinburgh; after Christmas he went to Kyle, and preached in the houses of the local gentry, and in the town of Ayr. Shortly after Easter, he went to the family residence of the Earl of Glencairn, where he preached and administered the communion, whence he again visited West Lothian, and preached to the people. He once more went to the Laird of Dun, and proclaimed the opinions of Protestantism with more freedom than before; and many of the gentry of the Mearns embraced the reformed doctrines.¹ It should be observed that it was chiefly among the nobles and the gentry that Knox preached, and in their own houses; the reformed party were not yet strong enough openly to announce their views; and probably it may have been the perception that the movement was not ripe for open action which induced Knox to leave Scotland. The Catholic clergy had become thoroughly alarmed, and Knox was summoned to appear in the church of the Blackfriars at Edinburgh on the 15th of May, 1556. He resolved to appear, and Erskine of Dun and other barons who adhered to the Protestant opinions met in Edinburgh; whether this was intended to overawe the authorities, the reader must determine for himself. The citation of Knox, however, was abandoned, and on the day that he should have appeared in court, he preached in Edinburgh to a larger audience than had ever attended to hear him. For ten days he preached in Edinburgh twice a-day, and on this occasion his followers met in the Bishop of Dunkeld’s lodgings. In the month of July 1556, Knox left Scotland and proceeded to Geneva to take charge of the English congregation in that city.²

Immediately after Knox’s departure the bishops again summoned him, and when he did not appear, sentence was passed against him, and his effigy was burned at the cross of Edinburgh. But the reformed doctrines still continued to spread. Besides the preachers mentioned in a preceding page, John Douglas, a reformed friar, under the protection of the Earl of Argyle, preached in Leith and Edinburgh; and Paul Methven, originally a baker, preached in Dundee with great acceptance; and others in various parts of the kingdom exhorted the people. They read the Scriptures to those who assembled to hear them, using the English Prayer Book of Edward VI. in their worship. A number of the landed aristocracy​—adherents of the Reformation movement for purposes of their own​—had come to an understanding with each other. They had cast their longing eyes upon the property of the Roman Church, and this, more than anything else, stimulated them to hasten on the revolution. In the beginning of December 1557, they resorted to one of the familiar expedients which they had been in the habit of adopting for centuries, when they had any great enterprise on hand,​—they entered into a bond of man-rent to assist each other in forwarding the reformation of religion. This was the first of the new religious covenants, and those who subscribed it took to themselves the name of the Congregation. Among the names attached to the document were those of the Earls of Argyle, Glencairn, and Morton; the Lord of Lorne, and John Erskine of Dun. It is an extremely vehement piece of writing, and it distinctly proceeded on the ground that they were the true Congregation of Christ, while of course the Romanists were the very limbs of Satan.¹ After consulting together, the Lords of the Congregation agreed to two resolutions for promoting the reformation of religion throughout the country. (1) It was deemed requisite that in all the parish churches the common prayers should be read on Sundays and on festival days, with the lessons from the Old and New Testament, according to the order of the Book of Common Prayer; (2) it was also agreed that doctrine, preaching, and expounding of the Scriptures, should be used quietly without convening great bodies of the people, until God move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful and true ministers.²

The Queen-regent acted with great calmness in the trying position in which she then found herself placed, yet she manifested a disposition not to push matters to extremes. But it was impossible to hold the balance evenly between the Protestants and the Catholic clergy, especially as the latter naturally became much alarmed and excited. The stealing away of images and damaging of religious buildings in Edinburgh had begun. The great image of St. Giles was first drowned in the North Loch, and afterwards burned, incidents which raised an unusual stir in the capital. The Protestant preachers were summoned, and they resolved to appear accompanied by their adherents; but when the authorities saw such a multitude as approached Edinburgh, a proclamation was issued commanding all those who had come without liberty to proceed at once to the Borders and remain there for fifteen days. The gentry were not disposed to submit to this, and they forced their way into the Queen-regent’s presence to remonstrate. James Chalmer of Gadgirth addressed her in the following strain:​—“Madam, we know that this is the malice and device of that bastard (meaning the Archbishop of St. Andrews) that stands by you. We vow to God we shall make a day of it. They oppress us and our tenants for feeding their idle bellies; they trouble our preachers, and would murder them and us. Shall we suffer this any longer? No, Madam, it shall not be;” and therewith every man put on his steel bonnet. There was nothing heard on the Queen’s part but, “My joys, my hearts, what ails you? Me mean no evil to you nor your preachers. The bishops shall do you no harm. Ye are all my loving subjects. Me knew nothing of this proclamation. The day of your preachers shall be discharged, and me will hear the controversy that is between the bishops and you. They shall do you no wrong.” “My Lords,” said she to the bishops, “I forbid you either to trouble them or their preachers.” And to the gentlemen, who were wondrously moved, she turned again and said​—“O, my hearts! should ye not love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind? and should you not love your neighbour as yourselves?” With these and the like fair words she restrained the bishops at that time.¹

In the month of April 1558, Walter Mill, an old man over eighty years, who in early life had been a priest, but had abandoned the Catholic faith in the days of Cardinal Beaton, was apprehended at Dysart, and carried to St. Andrews and imprisoned in the primate’s castle. He was tried before the spiritual court, convicted of heresy, and sentenced to death; on the 24th of April, he was burned at St. Andrews. This was an act of great cruelty and extreme folly. The execution of an old decrepit man for heresy was not at all likely to ♦enhance the respect of the people for the Catholic clergy or the creed of the Church. Indeed his execution strengthened the position of the Protestant party, and they at once sent a remonstrance to the Queen-regent, charging the Church with cruelty. They also demanded a reformation of abuses, and the establishment of religion according to their own views. She received their requests with the regard which the gravity of the subject urgently required, and promised to tolerate their preachers, if they would abstain from holding public meetings in Leith and Edinburgh.¹ The moderation which she showed deserves the highest praise; for according to the constitution and laws of the kingdom, the Lords of the Congregation had put themselves into a state of open rebellion; and however far we may sympathise with the cause of the reform party, this should not blind us to their real attitude in relation to the government of the time. It could hardly have been expected that the Church and the Government would abdicate their functions at the command of their enemies. Those who talk of the obstinacy of the Roman Catholics should remember that the holders of power have always and everywhere endeavoured to retain it to the last. In the end of November 1558, parliament met at Edinburgh, and the Lords of the Congregation then tendered a protest to the effect, “that seeing they could not obtain a reformation of religion according to God’s word, they asked liberty to worship in their own form, until their adversaries proved themselves to be the true ministers of Christ’s Church. They then gave open warning that if any tumult should arise among the people owing to difference of opinion about religion and if it should happen that the abuses in the Church were reformed by violence, the responsibility of this must rest upon the shoulders of those who now refused all reform, and not upon those who are meanwhile struggling to reform all things according to order; and, finally, they professed to be acting simply from the promptings of their consciences, with no other aim but the reformation of religion, and therefore they called upon the government to protect them from the rage and oppression of their enemies.” This protestation was read in parliament, but it was not inserted in the record.² Thus the Reformers intimated to the authorities that force was contemplated; and it seems probable that the leading men among them already saw that if once the passions and feelings of the people were fully aroused, it would be utterly impossible to restrain their riotous excesses.

Meanwhile important events were passing in other countries which affected the contending parties in Scotland. On the 11th of October, 1558, Mary of England died, and she was succeeded by Queen Elizabeth; but for some time it seemed doubtful whether she would declare herself on the Protestant side or not. One of Elizabeth’s first acts was to notify her accession to the Pope, and there was negotiation touching her marriage with the King of Spain. But the Pope, Paul IV., whom we have before met under the title of Cardinal Caraffa, was by no means well qualified for winning to his side a doubtful monarch like Elizabeth. He was incapable of exercising moderation, and instead of attempting to conciliate the Queen, he returned a contemptuous reply to her ambassador; “first of all,” said he, “she must submit her claims to the decision of our judgment.”¹ Now this would certainly have been the last thing in the world to which the daughter of Henry VIII. would have submitted. There were, however, various considerations which might have weighed with the Pope. The French wished to prevent a marriage between Elizabeth and Philip; while the Guises were especially interested in this affair, since, if the claims of Elizabeth were rejected by the Holy See, Mary Stuart, Dauphiness of France and Queen of Scotland, would then possess the title to the English Crown. If her right could only be established, the Guises might reign supreme in her name over the three kingdoms. What a grand prospect for the imagination of a pious pope and the grasping ambition of the house of Guise. At times it seemed as if this dream were to be realised, and it was always kept in view by the parties, and pursued even after it had become entirely hopeless. But the force of circumstances more than her own disposition led Elizabeth to take the side of Protestantism. Her own heresy, save on one or two points, was not of a very decided character; yet it was sufficient to complete the separation of England from Rome. Hence Queen Elizabeth became an object at whom the Roman Catholic powers were extremely anxious to strike a blow. Many schemes and conspiracies were concocted for her destruction, but all failed, and England at last emerged from the struggle victorious.

The influence of France was now brought to bear upon the Queen-regent. She acted with more coldness towards the Lords of the Congregation than formerly; and they began to see that they were losing her countenance. Still attempts continued to be made to pacify the Protestants by propositions for reforming the more flagrant abuses of the Catholic clergy. Early in 1559 the Lords of the Congregation had begun to think of an alliance with England.¹

Everything indicated that the crisis was at hand. The preachers were intently engaged in spreading the new opinions; the old clergy were frightened, and only making feeble efforts to outdo their rivals by preaching and celebrating masses themselves. The Queen-regent had informed some of the Lords of the Congregation that they must desert their principles, as her line of policy was to be shaped according to instructions which she had received from France. Four of the chief Protestant preachers were cited to appear before the Court of Justiciary at Stirling, on the 10th of May, 1559, for convening the people and preaching erroneous doctrines to them, and inciting them to seditions and tumults. The Lords of the Congregation resolved to protect the preachers, and assembled their feudal followers at Perth. John Knox had landed at Leith on the 2nd of May; he stayed two nights in Edinburgh, and then proceeded to Dundee, where he joined his brethren. He received a warm welcome and went to Perth with his friends. In order to prevent a collision, Erskine of Dun passed forward to Stirling and endeavoured to effect an agreement with the Queen-regent, while the Lords of the Congregation and the preachers remained in Perth. But he was unsuccessful, and when the accused preachers failed to appear on the 10th, those who had become sureties for them were fined, and the preachers were proclaimed rebels. The multitude had been gradually becoming more and more excited, their feelings and passions had risen to a pitch which neither the preachers nor the magistrates could regulate, nor could they prevent them from wrecking the monasteries.¹

On the 11th of May, Knox preached a vehement sermon against idolatry in the parish church of Perth. He enlarged upon the abomination of the mass and all the accompanying trumpery of the Roman Catholic form of worship. His hearers had been much excited before, but their passions and cupidity were now roused to a point far beyond the bounds of control. Meantime a priest, utterly incapable, as it seemed, of understanding the state of the people’s minds, uncovered the altar to say mass. It was an exceedingly rich altar-piece, in which the history of many of the saints was carved. A number of Protestants were present, and a youth at the top of his voice, exclaimed,​—“this is intolerable, when God by His word hath plainly damned idolatry, that we should stand by and see it used in dispute.” The priest gave him a blow on the ear, and the youth in retaliation threw a stone at the priest, but it struck the tabernacle and broke one of the images. Very soon the whole multitude threw stones, and proceeded to tear down the altars and destroy every vestige of the ornaments in the church. When it became known in the town that such work was going on, an uproarious mob assembled, which attacked the four monasteries of Perth, and for two days the work of destruction proceeded till only the bare walls remained.¹ The example shown in Perth was followed in the town of Cupar-Fife. There the people destroyed all the altars and images in the church. Shortly after the Abbey of Scone was burned; and the monasteries throughout the country were in an incredibly short time either defaced or demolished.²

The Protestant reformers have been severely blamed for these excesses and the destruction of religious buildings. Each party has striven to lay the blame upon the other, and to exaggerate or extenuate these excesses, according to their respective standpoints. But it should be remembered that there never was a revolution without excesses, the reason of which is not difficult to find. The amount of outrage and the destruction of property which a revolution may entail mainly depends on the strength and completeness of the organised moral force in the country at the time of its occurrence. If the moral sentiments and ideas of the nation are but imperfectly formed, the guiding and restraining feelings and influences only partly developed through the social organisation, and the intelligence of the people is very limited and dim, and as it were, only awakening to a consciousness that they have been long deluded, then, in such circumstances, a revolution cannot be effected without anarchy and excess in various forms. The same undeviating principle comes into play in this as in everything else: when the moral organisation of a nation is sufficiently developed and ripe, the desired and needful reform is gradually brought to pass by peaceful means. But, from the information we now possess, to talk as if a peaceful and harmless revolution had been possible in Scotland in the middle of the sixteenth century, is only a sign of much ignorance. It is well known, how easy it is to arouse the cupidity of a class, and how eagerly any body of men pursue a line of action which promises rapid and great profit; and how fierce the storm of wrath when the result fails, as it almost always does, to answer the expectations which had been raised.

When the Queen-regent heard of these proceedings she was naturally much offended; and she threatened to inflict severe vengeance on the guilty parties. But this was a difficult matter to accomplish, and she soon discovered that her power was not commensurate with her wishes. The Lords of the Congregation issued several manifestoes to the Regent, to the French commanders, and to other persons in authority. These documents were all pervaded by an absolute and dogmatic conviction of the truth of their cause; and they breathed a spirit of uncompromising resolution and defiance, and a determination to carry out their views of reform at all hazards, while they were extremely vehement, and even coarse and rude in expression. Many examples were drawn from the Old Testament of how God and His people had punished unjust and ungodly kings, and these were pressed home as applicable to the existing circumstances of Scotland. One of their manifestoes concluded thus​—“Yea, we shall begin that same war which God commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites; that is, contract of peace shall never be made, till ye desist from your open idolatry and cruel persecution of God’s children. And this we signify unto you in the name of the eternal God, and of His Son Christ Jesus, whose verity we profess, and whose Gospel we will have preached, and holy sacraments rightly ministered, so long as God will assist us to gainstand your idolatry. Take this for ♦advertisement, and be not deceived.”¹

At this time the Lords of the Congregation had entrenched themselves in Perth; while the Regent’s army, mostly composed of Frenchmen, had approached within twenty miles of them. The Congregation had a considerable force, but an arrangement was made with the Regent, mainly through the influence of the Earl of Argyle and the prior of St. Andrews. The agreement was to the effect that both armies were to be disbanded, and the town of Perth left open to the Regent; that none of the inhabitants were to be molested for the late alterations in religion; that no Frenchman should enter the town, nor come within three miles of it; and that when the Queen retired no French garrison would be left in the town. All other controversies were postponed to the next Parliament.¹ This arrangement was concluded on the 28th of May, 1559; and the Lords of the Congregation then retired from Perth. The Queen-regent entered Perth surrounded by a body of French troops which she called her body-guard; but the Protestants regarded this as a violation of the agreement.

The Earl of Argyle and the prior of St. Andrews then left the Regent, and joined the Congregation. Numbers of the people from various quarters of the kingdom gathered round the Lords of the Congregation, who went boldly on with their work. They invaded St. Andrews, where the primate had thought of resisting them, but he was forced to flee. On the 11th of June, Knox preached one of his scathing sermons in St. Andrews, in which he entreated his hearers to eject the buyers and sellers from the Temple, according to the Gospel of Matthew and John; and with all the force of his nature, he applied his examples to the surrounding circumstances. The altars and the images, the monuments of idolatry, as they called them, were quickly destroyed in all the churches of the city.¹ The Regent’s army approached but found the Congregation too strong; and another arrangement was made between the contending parties, which was again soon broken off. The Regent was expecting more assistance from France to crush out the heresy in Scotland. Meanwhile the heretics were increasing in numbers. One division of the Congregation re-entered Perth on the 25th of June, and another under the Earl of Argyle and the Prior of St. Andrews, took possession of Edinburgh on the 29th of June, while the Regent retired to Dunbar.² The Congregation demolished the monasteries of Edinburgh, and seized the coining irons of the Mint. A sort of truce having been concluded between the conflicting parties, the Regent returned to Holyrood. Both parties issued proclamations and appeals to the people. The Regent said she would grant liberty for the exercise of the Protestant religion, provided that wherever she was dwelling preaching should cease and the mass be maintained. This was the difficulty, neither party could tolerate the worship of the other, unless at a respectable distance; Knox and his followers upon no consideration would tolerate manifest idolatry; his aim, as he expressed it, was to “establish God’s eternal verity within the realm.” While these absorbing matters filled the mind of the nation, the intelligence came that Henry II. of France was dead, and that the husband of the Queen of Scots had succeeded to the throne of that Kingdom. This event foreboded severe opposition to the Congregation; and the reformed party in Edinburgh were soon in great straits. They departed from the capital on the 26th of July, and passed to Stirling, from whence on the 11th of ♦August they issued a short manifesto in which they bound themselves to stand true to each other. The Earls of Argyle, Glencairn, Lord Boyd, and other barons, then marched to Glasgow, and “reformed” the city of the West.³

John Willock was left in Edinburgh to keep alive the Protestant opinions, lest the idols might again raise their heads in the capital. He continued to preach in the Church of St. Giles till the month of November. In the end of August a thousand armed Frenchmen arrived and disembarked at Leith, and with the army already there, they began to fortify the position. On the 24th of September two thousand more French troops arrived to assist the Queen-regent in the struggle to uphold the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. The Frenchmen shortly made the defences of Leith so strong that the Congregation could not hope to take it.¹ But the leaders of the Congregation took a bold step, they re-entered Edinburgh in October, and on the 21st of that month they met in the Tolbooth to deliberate concerning the government of the kingdom. Lord Ruthven introduced the business of the meeting by asking:​—“Whether she who so contemptuously refused the most humble Request of the born councillors of the realm, being also but a Regent, whose pretensions threatened the bondage of the whole community, ought to be suffered so tyrannously to rule above them?” As this question had not been debated before in an open assembly, it was deemed right that the opinion of the preachers should be asked, and John Willock was called upon to express his sentiments on the point. He said​—“That though magistrates were granted power and authority from God, yet this power was limited by the word of God; as subjects were commanded to obey their magistrates, so magistrates must discharge their duties to their subjects, and the office of both is prescribed in the word of God. Though God hath appointed magistrates on the earth and honoured them, yet he never did establish any one who for just reasons might not have been deprived. That in deposing princes, and those who had been in authority, God did not always employ his immediate power, but sometimes other means which His wisdom thought good and justice required.” And therefore he concluded​—“That since the Queen-regent denied her chief duty to the subjects of this realm, which was to administer equal justice to them, to preserve their liberty from the invasion of strangers, and to suffer God’s word to be freely and openly preached among them; seeing moreover that the Queen-regent was an open and obstinate idolatress, and finally, that she utterly despised the council and requirements of the nobility, he could see no reason why they, the born councillors, nobility, and barons of the realm, might not justly deprive her of regime and authority amongst them.” The opinion of Knox was then asked, and he concurred with Willock, adding that the iniquity of the Regent ought in no way to withdraw their hearts, nor the hearts of other subjects from the obedience due to their sovereign, and that when she was deposed, if she repented and submitted, she might be restored to her former place and honour. Then every one present was requested to express his opinion freely, and to vote according to his conscience. A document was drawn up and agreed to, deposing the Queen-regent of all authority within the kingdom, proclamation of which was made at the Cross of Edinburgh.²

After this, skirmishing immediately began between the Frenchmen at Leith and the Congregation. In these encounters the forces of the Congregation were generally defeated; and they were again forced to retire from Edinburgh on the 7th November 1559, when they retreated to Stirling. The undisciplined followers of the Lords of the Congregation were unable to cope with the efficient and well handled French troops; so that the Protestant party were reduced to extreme difficulties. The voice of Knox, however, never ceased to exhort and encourage them; he called upon them to put their trust in “the Eternal God, the Lord of Hosts,” and that in the end they would assuredly prevail; he pointed out to them the examples in the Old Testament touching the sufferings and the afflictions of God’s people for their sins. In concluding one of his sermons at Stirling he said​—“Whatever shall become of us and our bodies, I doubt not but this cause, in spite of the devil, shall prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is the eternal truth of the eternal God, so shall it prevail, however for a time it may be impugned. It may be that God shall plague some, because they delight not in the truth, albeit for worldly considerations they seemed to pursue it. Yea, God may take some of his dearest children away before their eyes see greater troubles. But neither shall the one nor the other hinder this action, but in the end it shall triumph.”¹

The Protestant party found it absolutely necessary to make more urgent requests to the English Government for assistance. They had long been in communication with the leading men in England, but something effective was urgently needed; and they therefore sent William Maitland of Lethington to London, with instructions to explain their condition to Queen Elizabeth and her Council. Long before this time Knox himself had been in constant communication with the chief ministers of Elizabeth, and had very earnestly urged upon them the wisdom of rendering support to the Protestant party in Scotland, in order to enable them to overcome the schemes of the Roman Catholic powers.¹ The negotiations with the English Government proceeded favourably, notwithstanding the natural reluctance of Elizabeth to lend assistance to rebellious subjects. The chief men of England were well aware of the relative position and state of parties in Europe at this momentous and critical period, and hence they were extremely anxious and determined to come to an understanding with the Protestants in Scotland. Knox exerted himself to the utmost to secure their aid, and Lethington had an eloquent and diplomatic tongue. On the 23rd of January the English fleet appeared off the coast of Fife, and rendered effective aid to the Congregation. After much diplomatic talk the treaty of Berwick was concluded on the 27th of February, 1560, between the English Government and the Lords of the Congregation; its avowed purpose was to expel the French from Scotland. This was as much calculated to secure the safety of England itself as the liberties of the former kingdom.²

An English army, six thousand strong, entered Scotland in the end of March 1560, and they were soon joined by the Scots who adhered to the Lords of the Congregation. The united forces proceeded to besiege Leith, and skirmishing ensued between them and the French. The French had made their defences very strong, and the attacks of the allied forces were repeatedly driven back with great loss. The Frenchmen exhibited more skill than the besiegers; months passed, and still little progress was made towards the reduction of Leith. But the current of events was working changes in other quarters, and the critical condition of France itself soon began to tell upon the course of affairs in Scotland. Negotiations were commenced to bring the war to an end, but the circumstances being of a peculiar character, the preliminaries required much discussion and deliberation.¹

The negotiations resulted in the conclusion of the treaty of Edinburgh on the 6th of July, 1560. This treaty dealt with a variety of matters touching France and England, some of which were never ratified. The articles more immediately affecting the cause of the Congregation were mainly these​—that the French troops should return home; that no foreigners hereafter should be employed in Scotland without the sanction of Parliament; that an act of oblivion should be passed for all injurious deeds committed against the laws of the kingdom from the 6th of March, 1559, till the 11th of August, 1560; that a general peace should be made amongst the lords and all the subjects of the kingdom, so that those who were of the Congregation, and those who were not, should have no cause of quarrel with each other for the things done since the above date. That a Parliament should be held on the 10th of July, and adjourned to the 11th of August; and that this parliament should be as valid as if it had been expressly summoned by their majesties the King and Queen, provided that nothing be treated before the 1st of August.¹ Peace was proclaimed on the 8th of July, and a few days afterwards the French and English troops departed from Scotland.

The Queen-Regent had removed into the castle of Edinburgh on the approach of the English army. She was wearied with the responsibilities of her position, and, worn out, she died on the 10th of July, 1560. On her death-bed she showed a nobleness of feeling and a magnanimity of soul which moved the minds of the hardest reformers; she called for Willock, the reformed preacher, and freely and cheerfully heard such exhortations as he deemed suitable for the occasion;¹ and thus she gave an example of religious humility and liberality unmatched in that fierce intolerant age. The important place which she naturally assumed in Scotland at this crisis, and the attitude which various associations and influences led her to take up, have often been overlooked in the heat of controversy; and she has been blamed for not acting in a way which her position, and the circumstances of her connections precluded her from attempting, even apart from her hereditary tendencies and her domestic feelings and sentiments. She had often said that, if she had been permitted to act according to her own wishes and judgment, she would have ended the dissensions and settled the kingdom in peace.

The reformed preachers, most of whom were in Edinburgh, were actively engaged preparing matters for the parliament. They met in St. Giles’s church on the 19th of July, and offered up solemn prayers for their deliverance.¹ About the 20th of July, the first appointment of ministers and superintendents to the chief towns and districts of the country was made.

The parliament met at Edinburgh in the beginning of August 1560. All had been summoned who had a right by law or custom to be present, and there was an unusually large attendance. Some time was spent in discussing whether it was a legal meeting of the Estates. The leaders of the Reformation had prepared a document containing what they deemed necessary for reforming the Church. This they placed in the form of a petition before the parliament. It was a rather sweeping production, and extremely vehement in expression. One part of it referred to the patrimony of the Church, but the parliament waived this important and practical question of dealing with the revenues of the hierarchy; and then requested the Reformers to lay before the House a summary of the doctrines which they proposed to establish. The party selected for this task proceeded rapidly with their work; and in four days they produced a Confession of Faith which touched upon many subjects, and delivered opinions upon some of the most difficult and speculative points which have ever tasked the powers of the human mind. It was, however, only a body of doctrine, and when on the 17th of August this Confession of Faith was read in parliament, it was adopted without hesitation “as wholesome and sound, and grounded upon the infallible truth of God’s word.” Only three Earls voted against it, on the ground that they would believe as their fathers believed before them, and no otherwise. The spiritual estate, the bishops and the clergy, said nothing;¹ and there is some reason to think that they had not formed any adequate conception of the immense issues of the revolution which was being enacted before their eyes​—the rending the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church.

This parliament passed an act against the mass, and another abolishing the authority of the Pope in Scotland. By the first act, any person who said mass or attended to hear it was liable to have all their moveable goods confiscated, and to be otherwise punished at the discretion of the magistrate; for a second fault, banishment; and for the third, the punishment of death. It was declared that in future the Bishop of Rome, called the Pope, should have no jurisdiction in Scotland, nor should any bishop or persons whom he might appoint, dare to act, under the penalty of proscription and banishment from the kingdom.¹ The Scottish nobles had now done their work. They had at last laid the Church of their fathers in the dust; hereafter we shall see what was the real depth of their religious feelings and convictions, and how true and faithful they were to the religion which they had professed to fight so hard to establish.

CHAPTER XV.

The Creed and Organisation of the Reformed Church.

THE Confession of Faith, ratified by the Parliament of August 1560, was composed by John Knox, John Winram, John Spottiswood, John Willock, John Row, and John Douglas. It comprised twenty-five very short chapters; and a brief preface, which stated that the Scottish Reformers had long desired to proclaim to the world the sum of the doctrine which they professed, and for which they had faced danger and infamy. In the preface it is announced:​—“If any man will note in our Confession any article or sentence repugnant to God’s holy word, we humbly request him to admonish us of the same, in writing, and on our honour we faithfully promise him satisfaction from the Scriptures, or else reformation of what is proved to be amiss.” This is an indication of fairness and reasonableness; but it must be regretted that the Reformers seldom acted in the spirit of the rule which they here recognised. The preface concluded thus:​—“And therefore by the assistance of the mighty Spirit, our Lord Jesus, we firmly purpose to abide to the end by this Confession of our Faith.”¹

The Confession opened with the belief in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God is eternal, infinite, unmeasureable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, and invisible; one in substance, and yet divided into three persons. It treated concisely of the creation of man, his fall, and original sin; the promise of a Saviour, and the continuation of the faithful from Adam to the coming of the Messiah. As to the Incarnation, Christ is declared to be truly God and truly man, having two perfect natures united in one person. On this doctrine they condemned​—“The damnable and pestilent heresies of Arius, Marcion, Eutyches, Nestorius, and all others who deny the eternity of His Godhead, or the verity of His human nature, or confound them, or divide them.” This wonderful conjunction of the persons of the Godhead, “did proceed from the eternal and immutable decree of God, whence also our salvation springs and depends. For God, the Father, of His mere mercy had elected us in Christ Jesus, before the foundation of the world was laid, and appointed Him to be our Head. So we confess and undoubtedly believe in His Passion, Death, and Burial; his Resurrection and Ascension, His session at the right hand of God, whence He shall visibly return at the day of judgment.”

There are chapters on the Holy Ghost, the cause of good works, on what these consist, the perfection of the law and the imperfection of man; on the true Church, the power and the authority of the Scriptures; on the immortality of the soul, the sacraments and their right administration, the gifts freely given to the Church; and on the civil magistrate.

The Confession recognised empires, kingdoms, and cities, to be distinct realities and ordained by God. Emperors, kings, dukes, and magistrates of cities, each in their proper rank and place, are to be regarded as the holy ordinance of God, established for the manifestations of His own glory, and the good of mankind. So those who go about to destroy the existing constitution of the State, or to confound the government of a kingdom, are not only the enemies of mankind, but they also wickedly fight against the expressed will of God. Such persons therefore as are placed in authority, should be loved, honoured, feared, and held in the most reverent estimation. But then it is the duty of kings and magistrates to reform and purge religion, and to suppress all idolatry and superstition, according to the examples of the Old Testament, as in the case of David, Ezechias, Josias, Josaphat, and others, most worthy of being imitated.

“Arise, O Lord, and let thy enemies be confounded: Let them flee from thy presence that hate thy godly name: give thy servants strength to speak thy word in boldness: and let all nations attain to thy true knowledge. Amen.”¹

The six men who drafted the Confession of Faith, also composed the First Book of Discipline; but it never received the sanction of the government. It was divided into nine heads, and treated of doctrine, polity, discipline and education.¹ It is a production embodying views on various important points that penetrate deeply into the strata of society, and wield a far-reaching influence over its destiny.

The first head announced that the Gospel should be freely and openly preached in every church and assembly of the kingdom; and that all doctrine repugnant to this should be utterly suppressed, “as damnable to man’s salvation;” that the books of the Old and New Testament contained all things necessary for the instruction of the Church, and for perfecting of the man of God: all laws and constitutions imposed upon the consciences of men, without the expressed command of God’s word, such as vows of chastity, celibacy, superstitious observance of fasting days, keeping of saints’ days, prayer for the dead, and other feasts, were therefore declared to be abolished in Scotland, and that obstinate maintainers of these abominations ought not to escape the punishment of the civil magistrate.

The second head asserted that there are only two sacraments, Baptism¹ and the Lord’s Supper, that the people should be instructed in the language which they understood before participating in the sacraments, and that in Baptism the element of water only should be used, oil, salt, wax, conjuration, crossing, and all inventions of men were forbidden. At the Lord’s Supper, sitting at a table was declared to be the most suitable posture, because our Lord Himself sat with His disciples. It was further directed that the people should partake both of the bread and of the wine, that the officiating minister should break the bread, and distribute it to those next to him, commanding the rest, every one with reverence and sobriety, to break with each other, and that during this action, some comforting passages of Scripture should be read, which brought to mind the death of Christ Jesus, and the never-ending benefit flowing from it to mankind.

The third head required the abolition of idolatry with all its monuments, such as abbeys, monasteries, friaries, nunneries, chapels, chantries, cathedral kirks, canonries, and colleges, excepting those used as parish churches and schools, and all the mansions and dwelling places attached thereto, with the gardens and orchards. It should be observed that it was only the monastic system, and the extinction of its pertinents, which was really a consequence of the establishment of Protestantism; not at all the mere wanton destruction of the buildings: in the circumstances it was necessary to remove the ornaments and the internal furniture of the Roman Catholic churches and establishments of every description, as these were all intimately connected with the worship of the system. It is always easy for people to be wise after the event, but if those who now blame the Reformers had been upon the scene at the time, their wisdom would in all probability have proved of little avail. Under idolatry was included the mass, invocation of saints, adoration of images; and finally, all honouring of God not authorised in His holy word.

The fourth head dealt with the ministers and their lawful election. In a reformed Church, it was said, no one ought to preach or to administer the sacraments, till he be called. The ordinary vocation of a minister was said to consist in election, examination, and admission. It pertained to the people and to each congregation to elect their own minister. Examinations must be in public, by the ministers and elders of the Church: the applicant should be examined openly in the presence of the people on all points of controversy between the Protestants and the Catholics, Anabaptists, Arians, and other enemies of the Christian religion, that all may hear and understand. After he has given evidence of his soundness in doctrine, and evinced his ability to convince the gainsayers, he must then appear before the congregation whom he is intended to serve, and in the presence of his flock should deliver several sermons, touching the articles of faith, jurisdiction, the office of Christ Jesus, the number, the effect, and the use of the sacraments, and finally, explain the whole Protestant conception of religion. But great care should always be taken not to thrust any man upon a congregation, if they were not satisfied with him; this point was repeatedly stated in the First Book of Discipline.

Touching the form of admission of members to their charge, a sermon should be preached by some specific member concerning the duties of the office; and an exhortation should be given both to the minister to be admitted and to his congregation. Any other ceremony was deemed unnecessary, only the approbation of the people, and the declaration of the presiding minister that the person then presented was appointed to serve his particular church. Although the apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing that the miracle ceased, this ceremony was unnecessary.

The Scottish Reformers experienced much difficulty in the work of organising their Church, from the paucity of qualified ministers then in Scotland; to overcome this, they adopted the only expedient of employing other two classes of persons in the work of religious instruction, called exhorters and readers. In churches where no ministers could be had, readers were to be appointed, persons who could read distinctly the common prayers and the Scriptures; and afterwards, some of these, if found qualified, might be advanced to the position of ministers. The exhorters were a class between the readers and the minister. As the name imports, they gave some explanation or application of the parts of Scripture which they read to the congregation.

The fifth and sixth heads are very important, and related to the distribution of the possessions, rents, and patrimony of the church, and provision for the ministers. It was exactly in these matters that the strength and weakness of the reformation spirit in Scotland would be tested; it is necessary therefore to indicate the scheme proposed by the leading men among the Protestant clergy. It is very obvious from what has already been stated, that some of the expedients which they adopted were merely intended to meet the exigencies of the circumstances, and to bridge over the great difficulties springing out of the revolutionary changes of the religious movement. Owing to the scarcity of qualified ministers the Reformers had recourse to the expedient of selecting a number of persons with power to plant and erect churches, and to appoint ministers within the bounds of their respective provinces. To effect this they divided the country into five districts, each of which was placed under a superintendent.¹ These men were not to live idly as the bishops had often done; they had to preach themselves three times every week, to labour incessantly and to travel from place to place, till all the churches within their district were provided with ministers, or at least with readers. Till they had gone over their district, they were not to remain longer in one place than thirty days. They were to examine into the life and diligence of the ministers and readers, the order of their churches, the manners of the people, the state of the poor, and the instruction of the young.

It was proposed to regulate the scale of stipend according to the condition and circumstances of the ministers. The superintendents were to get more than the ordinary minister of a parish, a minister more than an exhorter, and the reader less than an exhorter. Proposals were made for securing a provision for the wives and families of the ministers; burghal privileges were demanded for their children, and a special preference to be accorded to their sons in the schools and colleges, with regard to the presentation of bursaries. Thus far, touching the personal wants of the new clergy and their families.

It was proposed that a portion of the property of the Church should be applied to national education. “Seeing that all men came into the world ignorant, and God had ceased to illuminate them miraculously, a system of education for the whole people was therefore a necessity.” A school was to be attached to every church, and when a schoolmaster could not be got, the minister or the reader was to teach the children and the young people of the parish, and instruct them in the rudiments of education, especially in the Catechism as translated in the Book of Common Order, called the Order of Geneva.¹ They further proposed that those who were unable to keep their children at school, should be assisted out of the funds of the Church, especially the people in the landward parts of the country.

The state of the poor labourers of the ground was noticed, with the remark that they had been long oppressed. The Reformers were grieved to see that some of the barons were so cruel to their tenants, and extorted from them as much, and even more, than the priesthood had done; and they argued earnestly that this class should now be relieved of a part of the burdens which had so long pressed upon them. It was also firmly maintained in the First Book of Discipline, that the poor and the helpless ought to be supported and sustained from the property of the Church.

The seventh head treated of ecclesiastical discipline. A distinction was drawn between crimes which should be punished and put down by the State, and those which fell under the discipline of the Church. All capital crimes ought to be punished by the civil power; but drunkenness, excess in eating, oppression of the poor by cruel exactions, or cheating in buying and selling, properly appertained to the Church to punish as God’s word commanded. Owing, however, to the confusion introduced by the Roman Catholic system: “The Church of God is compelled to draw the sword against such open and manifest offenders, cursing and excommunicating all such, as well as those whom the civil sword ought to punish as the others, from all participation with her in prayers and sacraments, till open repentance manifestly appears in them. As the form of proceeding in excommunication ought to be grave and slow, so when once it is pronounced against any person, whatever their rank and condition may be, it must be kept with all severity. For laws made and not kept engender contempt of virtue, and bring in confusion and liberty to sin.” The same sharp and inflexible rules of discipline were to be applied to all ranks in the kingdom, to the rulers as well as to the ruled, and even to the preachers themselves as well as to the humblest in the nation. Here at least there was a thorough recognition of equal justice and no respect of persons.

The eighth head related to the election of elders and deacons. The most intelligent, faithful, and honest men that could be found within the Church should be nominated for election, and their names publicly announced by the minister to the whole congregation. Regarding the form of voting, so that every man might give his vote with freedom, each congregation was left to adopt such rules as seemed most likely to attain the end. They were to be elected yearly, but those in office the preceding year might be re-elected. The elders were to assist the minister in all the public affairs of the church, in judging causes, and in admonishing the licentious; for by the gravity of the elders, the levity and unbridled life of the immoral should be corrected and restrained. They were to observe the life, diligence, and study of the minister himself, to admonish and correct him, and when necessary, with the consent of the congregation and the superintendent, they might depose him. The office of the deacon was to receive the rents and gather the alms of the church, and to keep and distribute them as should be appointed. They were also to assist the minister and elders in deciding causes, and they might be admitted to read publicly, if required, and found fit to perform that duty. The deacons personally should be sober, humble, lovers of concord and peace, and examples of godliness to all. The elders and deacons were to receive no stipend, because they held office only from year to year, and because their services to the Church did not prevent them from attending to their private business.

The ninth head referred to the polity of the Church, which embraced those things that might bring the rude and ignorant to knowledge, inflame the learned to greater fervency and to retain the Church in good order. It was then stated that there were two kinds of polity, the one necessary, the other merely expedient and amenable to circumstances. The first required that the word should be truly preached, the sacraments rightly administered, and the common prayers publicly offered; that children and rude and ignorant persons should be instructed in the chief points of religion, and offenders punished, as without these there was not the face of a visible Church. The second touched upon such matters as that psalms should be sung, that certain portions of Scripture should be read when there was no sermon, and that on this or the next day of the week, few or many, the congregation should meet for worship. Regarding points of this character each congregation was permitted within limits to frame rules suitable to its circumstances. It was required, however, that in all the chief towns there should either be a sermon or common prayers every day, with some exercise of reading the Scriptures. In every notable town it was also required that there should be sermon and prayers on one day of the week, besides Sunday; and during the time of this service both masters and servants should cease from their business and labour. In all places the Sunday was to be regularly kept: in the forenoon the Word was to be preached, the sacraments administered, and marriage solemnised; and in the afternoon the children should be taught in their catechism and examined in the presence of the people, as thereby the old as well as the young might be better enabled to understand the questions and answers propounded, and the doctrines of Christianity. To promote this great end every church should have an English Bible, and the people were commanded to convene at befitting times to hear it read and interpreted, and thus by degrees to dispel the grovelling ignorance and thick darkness which had so long enslaved their bodies and minds.

Concerning marriage, it was found that the existing relations of the different sex were of the most lax and immoral character. Under the Roman Catholic system, the practice of divorce, of dissolving marriage by granting dispensations on various grounds, tended to foster immorality and to encourage crimes of the most atrocious description, more especially among the upper classes.¹ The Reformers, therefore, endeavoured to frame regulations calculated to remedy this class of social evils. Henceforth marriage must be publicly celebrated in the face of the Church; and to avoid all suspicion, the banns should be proclaimed on three successive Sundays. On no consideration should secret marriages be permitted; the ceremony should be solemnised publicly.

Touching burial it was stated:​—“In all ages it has been held to signify that the same body that was committed to the earth should not utterly perish, but should rise again.” From what immediately followed, it is pretty clear that the Reformers were reluctant to abolish all the forms and ceremonies which till then had been associated with the burial of the dead. This is not surprising, as veneration for the memory of the departed is one of the strongest and deepest sentiments of human nature; it touches those tender strings of the heart which are at once the source of the purest emotions and the noblest feelings of our common humanity. In Scotland, as elsewhere, from the earliest period there is ample evidence of this respect for the memory of the deceased, and it was keenly felt by the Reformers themselves. At the same time they were more strongly impressed by the baneful results which superstitious notions and practices had produced; and thus without much discrimination they put a ban on the expression of one of the most affectionate features of human character, when, to avoid all superstition, they enjoined​—“that the dead should be conveyed to the place of interment with some honest company of the Church, without either singing or reading; yea, without any kind of ceremony hitherto used, other than that the dead be committed to the grave, with such gravity and sobriety as those that be present may seem to fear the judgment of God, and to hate sin, which is the cause of death.”

The First Book of Discipline concluded with an article concerning the punishment of those who profane the sacraments and contemn the Word of God. It suggested that very severe measures should be adopted for the repression of all such abuses within the kingdom. This Book of Discipline was not sanctioned by parliament, but it was approved by an act of the Privy Council in January, 1561, and about thirty of the nobles and gentry subscribed it. The Reformers failed to obtain any settled provision or adequate allowance for the new clergy out of the confiscated lands of the Church; and none of the Acts of the Parliament which abolished the Roman Catholic religion were ever sanctioned by Queen Mary.

The Book of Common Order, mentioned in the First Book of Discipline, was a kind of directory of public worship.¹ It contained a form of prayer for the ordinary meeting of the congregation. At that time extempore prayer was not common in Scotland, nor anywhere else among the reformed clergy. The book also gave directions for the administration of the sacraments; a form of marriage; a prayer to be said at the visitation of the sick; and instructions on the order of ecclesiastical discipline.² There were also two treatises, the one on fasting, and the other on excommunication. These, however, were written and adopted by the Church a few years later, and will fall to be noticed in connection with other influences which affected the people.

The system of doctrine and polity of the Reformed Church of Scotland as presented in the Confession, the First Book of Discipline, the Catechism, and the Book of Common Order was pretty distinct, although on several points rather crude and imperfectly developed. The doctrines of Calvin were adopted by the Scottish Reformers with little modification, and it was at this time that Calvinism seized the minds of men with irresistible power.¹ The Calvinistic modes of belief and thought were decidedly more opposed to the Roman Catholic tenets than the doctrines of Luther. Of this fact, the Catholics themselves were well aware, and hence the intense bitterness that eventually prevailed everywhere, when Calvinists and Romanists came into conflict with each other. In Scotland amongst the Protestants heresy was for a long time quite unknown; the disputes which arose within the Reformed Church in this country were always about points of polity or external forms, or the limits of the liberty and power of the Church. The first brunt of the battle was directed against the Roman Catholic system; and it is vain and untrue to deny that the Protestants persecuted the Catholics. The moral ideas and sentiments of the sixteenth century were comparatively narrow and imperfectly developed, and Knox and his associates would most assuredly not have taken it as a compliment, if they had been told that they tolerated the Catholics. The Reformers distinctly, emphatically, and constantly, proclaimed that it was the duty of the State and the Church to punish and extinguish the confessors of the mass and other forms of idolatry. The proceedings of the General Assemblies, the Acts of Parliament, and other national records, contain endless evidence of this. What else could have been expected? A nation does not spring up to an elevated moral position in a day or in a few years; and the ultimate results of a great revolution cannot justly be measured by its immediate effects. On the contrary, the movement must be followed century after century ere its truth and glory can be fully apprehended.

The first General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 20th of December, 1560. There were only a few ministers present, but a number of lay commissioners attended. The Assembly enumerated and recorded the names of those who were deemed best qualified for preaching the word and administrating the sacraments, and reading the common prayers in all the churches. The ministers and readers together did not exceed sixty in number; and it can easily be seen that the difficulties and obstacles which the leaders of the Protestant revolution had to overcome, were something enormous; but they boldly proceeded to meet the necessities of the circumstances, in the way already indicated, by placing a man over a district to organise and appoint readers and exhorters to the churches where ministers could not be obtained.¹

Another General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 26th of May, 1561. It passed an act for the suppression of the Catholic worship throughout the kingdom; and measures were proposed for strengthening the hands of the superintendents. A supplication was sent to the government calling on them to take order​—“With the pestilent generation of that Roman Antichrist within the realm, who was again threatening to erect their idolatry.” The Privy Council acceded to their request and passed an act thereon; and the Protestants went forward with their work of suppression and reorganisation.¹

CHAPTER XVI.

Reign of Queen Mary.

WHILE the Protestants were still uneasy and somewhat alarmed by the intelligence that France had firmly refused to confirm the Treaty of Edinburgh, or to ratify any part of the proceedings of the last Parliament, the welcome tidings reached Scotland that Francis II. had died on the 6th of December, 1560. As this event broke and limited the sway of that scheming and ambitious house of Guise, the death of the young king was hailed with undisguised satisfaction by the leaders of the Protestants. The work of the Reformation in Scotland proceeded without serious interruption from any quarter; and the nation began to look for the early return of their Queen without misgiving.

A considerable section of the people still professed to adhere to the old religion, and they were headed by the Earl of Huntly. This noble was then almost the supreme ruler in the north and north-west of Scotland; and he put himself forward as the representative of the Roman Catholics. John Lesly, the parson of Oyne, and afterwards bishop of Ross, was deputed in April 1561, to proceed to France and represent the views of the Catholic party to Queen Mary. He suggested that she should land at Aberdeen, where twenty thousand troops would be ready at her command; and with these a blow might be struck against the Protestants. This plan was not followed by the Queen; but it had some connection with events which happened shortly after her return to Scotland.¹

The prior of St. Andrews, Lord James Stuart, the Queen’s natural brother, passed through England on his way to France, as the deputy of the Protestant Lords; and was warmly received by the Queen. After many interviews with her brother, concerning the state of Scotland, Mary informed him that she intended to return to the home of her ancestors. She embarked at Calais on the 14th of August, 1561, and landed at Leith on the 19th of the month. Her arrival was announced by the sound of cannon; and all ranks of the people hastened to meet her and to welcome her home. The loyal citizens of Edinburgh endeavoured to enliven her first night at Holyrood by a musical performance, in which fiddles with three strings were the leading instruments. This serenade seems to have grated on the ears of her French attendants; and indeed the whole people and their surroundings must have presented a strange contrast to the luxury, the external polish, and the enchanting pleasures, which had encircled Mary during the palmy days of her life in France. Many of the citizens of the capital, however, were anxious to show their goodwill towards her, and on the 2nd of September they presented to her a cupboard which cost two hundred marks. The expense of the town in connection with the banquet, the triumph, and gift to the Queen on the occasion amounted to four thousand marks.¹

The exceeding interest of the events crowded into the history of the succeeding seven years, the tragic, and often dark character which they assumed, and the vital importance of the main issue involved, have induced me to attempt a concise explanation of the causes which controlled the current of events, and ultimately led to the flight of Queen Mary into England. This part of our history has often been ably treated in the narrative form, and with every point of detail, especially in reference to the character of Queen Mary herself; but in nearly all the writings on this period there is rather much of the partisan spirit, and too keen a tendency to rest the issue of the momentous revolutionary movement on points of merely secondary weight and import. The questions as to whether there is evidence that Mary was implicated in the plot to murder her husband, whether this or that noble was concerned in the plot to murder Riccio and Darnley, whether Mary’s marriage with Bothwell was voluntary, or forced by violence; how this King or Queen struggled to outwit and befoul another; or how this statesman and that confounded each other, by framing misrepresentations​—such are the questions and matters which mostly fill the literature on the reign of Queen Mary. But without by any means ignoring the relative value of the literature, the chief aim of this chapter will be to reach the underlying ideas, not of the literature itself, but of the Reformation movement.

It is quite unnecessary to dwell on the charming beauty, the varied accomplishments, and the unquestionable talents of Mary Stuart, Queen of France and Scotland. But once for all it must be stated that I am not a hard and fast apologist of Mary throughout her chequered career; although on the other hand, I have been unable to discover that she was so deceitful, immoral, and wicked, as she has often been painted. If she be measured by the standard of morality common amongst her contemporaries of the sixteenth century, she will not suffer by a comparison with the best of them. The cupidity and faithlessness of the royal families and many of their counsellors, who were then trying to sway the destinies of Europe, had reached a height of enormity which would be incredible, if it were not attested by piles of unimpeachable evidence. Everywhere the suffering of the lower classes had became almost unbearable; and this was a time of destruction, of revolution, and of renovation. In these circumstances it is unjust, and historically false to single out Queen Mary because she was unfortunate, as baser and worse than her compeers.

The Scottish nobles had long been accustomed to fight against the Crown; and they had at last laid one of the strongest arms of the throne in the dust. They had abolished the old Church and seized its landed property; and what they had thus taken, they intended to retain, while they eagerly looked for more. Most of them had joined with the Reformers for no higher aim than the enlargement of their estates; and the whole of their subsequent proceedings were quite consistent with the origin of their reforming spirit. John Knox was smarting under the sting of blasted hopes and defeated schemes. He at least acted from honest intention and firm conviction. He believed that he was following out the will of God, and delivering His message to Scotland. His whole heart and soul was in his work, and he struggled with all his energy to enforce what he deemed to be “the eternal truth of God.” Yet like other men, he was intolerant, overbearing, and greedy of power. The party who faithfully adhered to him were naturally suspicious, and dreaded that a reaction might be attempted; and for the protection of their own lives, and the safety of the reformed faith, they were always on the outlook and ready to frustrate the machinations of those who were opposed to it. That the utmost vigilance was necessary for the success of their cause, they were well aware. Their scheme of life was narrow, and many of their ideas extremely crude. But the Reformation on the other hand embraced the elements of a social and religious revolution. It went to the roots of evil, stirred the inmost thoughts of men, and aimed at the elevation of society, from the humble tiller of the ground to the occupant of the throne. Underneath all the rudeness of the reformed preachers, there was the moving, invisible flow of the moral principle​—the consciousness of a God before and above all, and the conviction of the justice of their cause. They believed that the decrees of the Almighty were irresistible in their sweep. It was chiefly in the “eternal decree” that the intensity of Calvinism rested; and this absolute dogma was the secret of the influence which Calvin so long wielded over the minds of men. So long as there was no question touching the power of the mind to discover this decree, its influence had full swing, and remained unimpaired.

The nobles and barons had gathered from all quarters to welcome Queen Mary; but the trying circumstances in which she was placed, soon became apparent. Though her personal talent for government was conspicuous, she never had a fair chance as a Queen in Scotland. On Sunday, four days after her arrival, when the preparations began to be made for the celebration of mass in the royal chapel, the Reformers were greatly offended. The more zealous of them openly asked whether this idol should be again suffered, even in the Queen’s chapel. When it appeared that there would be an attack upon the priest, the Queen’s brother, the Lord James, guarded the chapel door during the service. After it was over, John and Robert Stuart, other two natural brothers of the Queen, took the priest between them and conducted him safely to his chamber.¹

The following day a proclamation was issued, announcing that the Queen was to make no alteration in the form of religion which she had found existing when she returned to her kingdom, without the consent of parliament. The people were enjoined to make no attempts either publicly or privately to change the form of religion; but at the same time the proclamation commanded that no one should molest any of the Queen’s French followers or servants, for any cause whatever, under the penalty of death.¹ On the following Sunday Knox inveighed against idolatry, and declared what terrible plagues God had sent upon the nations who indulged in this false worship. He had a special hatred at the service of the mass, and dreaded the effects of allowing the Queen to engage in the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. In the circumstances there was reasonable ground for his apprehension.²

Queen Mary was naturally extremely annoyed at the outspoken proceedings of the preachers, and resolved to try the effect of her wit upon Knox himself. The Reformer had a long dialogue with the Queen which is reported in his history. The Queen tackled him on a variety of points, chiefly political; and even according to Knox’s report, clearly held her own in the argument, showing at every turn a quickness of perception and a dialectic tact which brought out the unyielding and intolerant features of Knox’s character.¹

Mary’s government, notwithstanding the alarm of the Protestants, was for some years conducted with unusual success. Her brother, Lord James, was placed at the head of affairs; and Maitland of Lethington, a man of ability, was Secretary of State, and played an active part in the Government. In September Mary made a progress to Linlithgow, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, and St. Andrews, and was everywhere well received by the citizens. She returned to Edinburgh in the end of September; but Knox complained that she had polluted the places she had visited with idolatry. Means were taken to punish the lawless Borderers and to restore order amongst them, but with little success.¹

As yet the Reformed Church was merely on sufferance; the head of the State was a confirmed Roman Catholic; and there was no provision made for the Protestant preachers. Knox and other ardent reformers had been much mistaken when they supposed that the Lords of the Congregation who had so actively assisted in pulling down the Roman hierarchy, would also be ready to transfer its property to the new Church. The preachers had rather foolishly imagined that the nobles, who at first had stuck so close to the good cause, were really actuated by pure religious motives and honest convictions. When the practical proposals for the disposal of the lands and the wealth of the old establishment came under their consideration their eyes were opened. The reformed clergy desired the Parliament and Queen to ratify the First Book of Discipline, but the reforming lords now asked in jeering tones​—“How many of those who subscribed that book would be subject to it?” Maitland of Lethington said​—“Many subscribed it in fide parentum, as the bairns are baptized.” In the face of the remonstrances of Knox himself, another of the lords said​—“Stand content, that book will not be obtained.” Then said Knox, “Let God require the lack which this poor commonwealth shall sustain of the things therein contained from the hands of such as stop the same.”¹

By an Act of the Privy Council, 22nd of December, 1561, it was proposed to appropriate a third of the revenue of all the benefices in the kingdom to the Crown. The Catholic bishops and clergy who were still in possession, were to retain the rents and proceeds of their benefices, except the third which was to be applied to the purposes of the Queen and the government of the country, and to making a reasonable provision for the Protestant ministry. The rentals of all the benefices in the kingdom were ordered to be given in at a specified time, that the amount of the thirds might be ascertained and the arrangements carried out. A Royal Commission was appointed with power to carry the Act into effect, but those who were in possession of the benefices seem to have paid little or no heed to it. On the 12th of February, 1562, the Council complained, “That the Queen’s Majesty and the Council, and others appointed by her for receiving the said rentals, have continually since the said 24th of January awaited upon the receiving thereof; yet only a very small number of them have produced their rentals, contemning thereby not only Her Grace’s ordinance and proclamation, but also herself and her authority, like as if they were princes and not subjects, expressly against reason, equity, and justice.” Her Majesty and the Council therefore resolved to appoint factors to intromit, gather, uplift, and receive the rentals in all cases where they had not been given in according to the ordinance.¹ The reformed clergy were extremely displeased with this arrangement, and Knox expressed his opinion on its defects as usual with great freedom: “Well, if the end of this order pretended to be taken for the sustentation of the ministers be happy, my judgment faileth me; for I am assured that the Spirit of God is not the author of it; for, first, I see two parts freely given to the devil, and the third part must be divided between God and the devil. Well, be witness to me, that this day I say it, or it be long, the devil shall have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God’s portion shall be.” Many were offended at this language, and some were not ashamed to affirm that, “After the ministers were sustained the Queen will not get at the end of the year as much as to buy her a pair of new shoes.”² Knox was pretty near the truth, for by grants of lands, long leases, alienations, pensions, actual seizure by force, and other means, the nobles and gentry swallowed up the greater part of the property and revenue of the Roman Church.³

The stipends granted to the reformed ministers were not large. The sum fixed for the ordinary ministers was to range from one hundred marks to three hundred. But from various causes even this small sum was very irregularly paid, and the ministers were constantly complaining in the General Assembly. Some persons had the audacity to tell them that many of the barons had not so much to spend as they had; but this comparison was deemed unfair and inapt, as a baron might augment his rent by engaging in other business, while a minister had no other source of income but his stipend, and required books and quietness in order to study and work to edify the Church of Christ. When the clergy put these reasons before the authorities and complained of their poverty, they were told that the Queen could not spare greater sums. The preachers, however, often sounded into their ears​—“O, happy servants of the devil, and miserable servants of Jesus Christ, if after this life there was not a hell and a heaven! For to the servants of the devil, to your dumb dogs, and horned bishops, to one of these idle bellies, ten thousand a-year was not enough; but to the servants of Christ who laboriously preach the Gospel, a thousand pounds; how can that be sustained?” Lethington, the Queen’s secretary of state, said that the ministers were paid so much every year by the Queen, and he asked, “Was there ever a minister that gave thanks to God for her Majesty’s liberality towards them.” Then “one smiled and answered, Assuredly, I think that such as receive anything gratis of the Queen, are unthankful if they acknowledge it not, both in heart and speech; but whether the ministers be of that rank or not I greatly doubt. Gratis, I am assured, they receive nothing, and whether they receive anything at all from the Queen wise men may dispute. I am assured that neither the third nor two parts ever appertained to her predecessors within the realm these thousand years bypast; neither has the Queen a better title to that which she usurps, be it given to others, or taken to herself, than such as crucified Christ Jesus had to divide his garments among them. And if the truth may be spoken, she has not so good a title as they had; for such spoil used to be the reward of such men, and in that point these soldiers were more gentle than the Queen and her flatterers, for they parted not the garments of our Master till that he himself was hung upon the cross; but she and her flatterers part the spoil while poor Christ is yet preached amongst you.... Let the Catholics, who have the two parts, some that have their thirds free, and some that have gotten abbacies and feu lands, thank the Queen, and sing Placebo Dominæ. The poor preachers will not yet flatter for feeding their belly.”¹

But dissatisfied as the Protestant ministers were with Mary, her proceedings were probably much more displeasing to the magnate of the north, the Earl of Huntly. The Earldom of Moray was detached from Huntly’s possessions and conferred on Lord James, who was henceforth known as the Earl of Moray. Huntly had not changed his religion, but throughout the religious struggle his chief aim had apparently been to retain his vast territories and his influence in the north. Various incidents and circumstances indicated that Moray had resolved to crush him. The house of Huntly had long ruled supreme over the smaller chiefs in the northern Highlands, and had sometimes committed acts of oppression and injustice amongst them. In August, 1562, the Queen and Moray moved northwards; Huntly suspected that mischief was brewing against him, and sent his wife to Aberdeen to meet the royal party and to ascertain their purpose. The Countess invited the Queen to ♦Strathbogie Castle, but Mary declined, and proceeded by Rothiemay, and onward to Inverness. The gates of the Castle of Inverness were closed against the Queen, but it was besieged, and taken, and the garrison hanged. Some of the clans, including the Clan Chattan, the Camerons, and the Monros who had been under Huntly, now that they had an opportunity, deserted his standard and joined the Queen. When the royal party were returning to Aberdeen, Huntly with a body of his retainers followed them, marching well up along the heights to the Hill of Fare, in Midmar, where the battle of Corrichie was fought on the 28th of October, 1562. The royal troops under Moray were victorious, and the Earl of Huntly himself was slain, his followers scattered, and two of his sons captured. Two days after the battle, five gentlemen of the Gordon clan were hanged on the Castlegate of Aberdeen; and three days later, Huntly’s son, Sir John Gordon, was executed at the same place, “greatly pitied, for he was a manly youth, exceedingly handsome, and just in the opening bloom of life.” George Gordon, the late Earl’s eldest son, was seized and imprisoned in the Castle of Dunbar. Strathbogie Castle was then rifled. Many of its rich furnishings and ornaments were taken to Holyrood House; others of them were carried by Moray to the Castle of Darnaway to fit up his newly acquired residence in this ancient Earldom, which was once held by James Stuart, a natural son of James IV. George Gordon was tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to be executed. But in 1565 he was pardoned by the Queen, and restored to his titles and lands as fifth Earl of Huntly. Thus Moray managed to crush and humble the great house of Huntly only for a time. Early in November, 1562, the Queen proceeded from Aberdeen southward by Dundee, Perth, Stirling, and reached Edinburgh on the 21st of the month.¹

The Court stayed in Edinburgh during the winter. The gaiety of the Queen and her courtiers gave much offence to Knox and the reformed preachers; and they were extremely outspoken touching the excessive banqueting and dancing of the Court. It was said that some of the dances then fashionable in the Queen’s Court were indecorous and immoral, and that it was against these that Knox declaimed. It is evident, however, that from the first the reformed clergy of Scotland went too far in limiting and in denouncing almost every form of amusement. But Knox had also a suspicion that Queen Mary’s dancing was the expression of her heterodoxy and malignancy. As, “among other things, he was assured,” he said in a sermon, “that the Queen had danced excessively till after midnight, because she had received letters that persecution was begun in France, and that her uncles were beginning to stir their tails, and to trouble the whole realm of France.” When the Queen heard of this sermon, she sent for Knox, and accused him of having spoken irreverently of the Queen, of endeavouring to make her an object of hatred and contempt amongst her people, and of having exceeded the limits of his text. In self-defence, the Reformer proposed to rehearse from memory what he had said in the pulpit; and proceeded to deliver one of the most plain and vehement harangues ever uttered in the presence of a monarch. “The complaint of Solomon is this day most true, to wit: That violence and oppression do occupy the throne of God here in this earth: for, while murderers, blood-thirsty men, oppressors, and malefactors dare be bold to present themselves before kings and princes, and the poor saints of God are banished and exiled, what shall we say? But that the devil has taken possession in the throne of God, which ought to be fearful to all wicked doers, and a refuge to the innocent and oppressed. And how can it be otherwise? For princes will not understand; they will not be learned as God commands them. But God’s law they despise, His statutes and holy ordinances they will not understand; for in fiddling and flinging they are more exercised than in reading and hearing God’s most blessed word; and fiddlers and flatterers are more precious in their eyes than men of wisdom and gravity, who by wholesome admonition might beat down into them some part of that vanity and pride whereinto all are born, but in princes it takes deep root and strength by wicked education. And dancing, Madam, I said, that albeit in Scripture I find no praise of it, and in profane writings, that it is termed the gesture rather of them that are mad and in phrensy than of sober men: yet I do not utterly condemn it, provided ♦two vices be avoided; the former, that the principal vocation of those who use that exercise be not neglected for the pleasure of dancing, and secondly, that they dance not, as the Philistines their fathers, for the pleasure that they take in the displeasure of God’s people.” The Queen looked around and said​—“Your words are sharp enough as you have spoken them; but yet they were told to me in another manner. I know that my uncles and you are not of one religion, and therefore I cannot blame you, albeit you have no good opinion of them.”¹

The idea of religious toleration was adopted by the Protestants in practice, no more than it was by the Roman Catholics. The only difference between them was, that the first had introduced a principle which would ultimately develop a spirit of toleration; whereas on this point the principle of Romanism never changes, however circumstances may modify its practical operation. As might naturally be expected there was still a considerable section of the people unconverted to the Protestant opinions, especially in the north, where the power of the local Catholic ruler was only newly broken. In several other quarters of the kingdom, where the influence of the local chief was on the side of the old religion, the Catholic worship still prevailed. The Protestant clergy insisted that the laws against the Romanists should be enforced; but the government was negligent, and the preachers threatened to take the matter into their own hands; as they firmly believed themselves to be justified according to the command of God to extinguish all idolatry. They apprehended some priests in the west, and intimated to others that punishment awaited them. The Queen again sent for Knox and once more tried her wit and policy upon him; and this time she managed him far better than usual, and the two parted on good terms. She promised to summon the offending Catholics, and to show the Reformer that she would administer justice; and he blessed her and departed.¹ The Catholics were accordingly summoned to appear at Edinburgh before the Justiciary Court on the 19th of May, 1563. There were about forty-eight persons brought before the court, and amongst them the Archbishop of St. Andrews. They were accused of celebrating and attending mass. Most of them were imprisoned in Edinburgh and Dumbarton, and some in other places; but none of them was executed.² It need hardly be said that the Queen was unwilling to punish the professors of her own religion, but she yielded to the clamour of the Protestants thus far, for the sake of other advantages.

Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 26th of May, 1563, but it did little to strengthen the walls of the reformed Church. Articles were presented for moderating the excess of dress, and for the reformation of other enormities; but they were all shuffled aside. The Acts of 1560 which abolished Catholicism were not even mentioned. But an Act was passed which gave full protection to all who had been connected with the rebellious proceedings between the 6th of March, 1558, and the 1st of September, 1561. This Act afforded much satisfaction to many of the nobles, as it in a measure secured to them the lands on which they had laid hands during the period of conflict and confusion: but the preachers were not pleased with it, nor with any of the acts of this parliament. Other enactments were passed touching the punishment of witchcraft, adultery, and the restitution of the glebes and manses to the ministers of the Church;¹ yet this did little to appease the wrath of Knox. Before parliament dissolved, he preached a sermon in the presence of the nobles, and spoke very plainly. “The Queen, say ye, will not agree with us: Ask ye of her that which by God’s word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree with you in God, ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil. Let her plainly understand so far of your minds, and steal not from your former stoutness in God, and ye shall prosper in your enterprises. But I can see nothing but such a recoiling from Christ Jesus, as the man that first and most speedily fleeth Christ’s banner, holds himself most happy. Yea, I hear that some say, that we have nothing of our religion established either by law or parliament. Albeit that the malicious words of such can neither hurt the truth of God, nor yet us who thereupon depend, yet the speaker for his treason committed against God, and against this poor commonwealth, deserves the gallows. For our religion being commanded, and so established by God, was accepted within this realm in public parliament; and if they will say that was no parliament, we must, and will say, and also prove, that that parliament was as lawful as ever any that passed before it within the realm.... And now, my Lords, to put an end to all, I hear of the Queen’s marriage: dukes, brethren, to emperors and kings, strive all for the best game; but this, my Lords, will I say (note the day, and bear witness after) whensoever the nobility of Scotland professing the Lord Jesus, consents that an infidel (and all papists are infidels), shall be head to our sovereign, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm; ye bring God’s vengeance upon the country, a plague upon yourselves, and perchance ye shall do small comfort to your sovereign.”²

This came rather near an assumption of the gift of prophecy. There is an element of supreme boldness, intense earnestness, and not a little arrogance in it. But Knox had unquestionably a clearer view of the real difficulty and danger which was then menacing the reformed Church, than any other man in Scotland. That his language was strong, seething, and sometimes rebellious, must be admitted; yet underneath it all he had an unbending, unswerving, and true moral conviction, which he followed with an unflinching resoluteness of will rarely equalled. He was well aware that Catholicism in other countries was beginning to show unmistakable signs of fresh activity and power; it had reorganised its armies, and was rapidly recovering from the effects of the first shock of the Reformation; in many things indeed Catholicism had reformed itself. Though the fascinating smiles and enchantments of Queen Mary had failed to cast their spell over Knox, they had won for her the hearts of many. Day by day the prospects of the Protestants in Scotland were becoming darker; and Knox adopted a special form of prayer for the conversion of the Queen, the good of the kingdom, and the preservation of the light of the word of God.¹ The prayer for the Queen was couched in an extreme strain of phraseology, and it is not surprising that it offended her. The current of events in Scotland seemed likely soon to engulf the Protestant party and their Church in a sea of trouble. The Queen was meditating and preparing for her marriage with a branch of the Lennox family. The Earl of Lennox, after twenty years of banishment, arrived at Edinburgh on the 23rd of September, 1564. Parliament met in December and restored to him the family estates and titles. In the end of the year the General Assembly met at Edinburgh, and petitioned the Queen to put the laws in execution against the sayers and hearers of mass, who were then so numerous throughout the kingdom.²

Henry, Lord Darnley, the eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, came to Edinburgh on the 12th of February, 1565. A few days after, he visited the Queen at Wemyss Castle in Fife; and soon found himself at a height of fortune far too dazzling for his poorly gifted nature. He was quite a youth, blooming and handsome, vain and full of ambition, but utterly void of ability and moral character; and before he had been many weeks at the Scottish court, he had made the Protestant lords his enemies. The Earls of Moray, Morton, and Glencairn disliked him; and Moray, who had been at the head of affairs since the return of the Queen from France, soon began to feel that his influence and power were slipping away. Darnley was a Roman Catholic, which further intensified the complications throughout the nation. Moray at length began to concert measures to prevent his marriage with the Queen.¹ A special meeting of the nobles and chief officers of State was held at Stirling in May 1565; and Mary announced to it her intention to marry Darnley. The Protestants became greatly alarmed. They seemed to think that a reaction was impending, and that at any moment the Queen might proclaim the restoration of Catholicism. The Queen had intended to hold a parliament at Perth to sanction her marriage; but the attitude which Moray and his party assumed, rendered the step unsafe.²

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 23rd of June, 1565, and at once proceeded to adopt measures for the suppression of the mass and other Catholic practices. They demanded that all popery, idolatry, and jurisdiction of the Pope should be utterly extinguished throughout the kingdom, not only among the people but also in the Queen’s own person and household, without any exception. Mary’s answer to this demand was very candid. She said, that she did not believe in the Protestant religion, nor that there was anything wrong in the mass, that she believed the Catholic religion to be well grounded; and she therefore desired her subjects not to press her to receive any religion against her conscience; as she had never pressed them, they should not press her. She also stated that if she changed her religion, she would lose the friendship of the King of France and other great princes, who were her firm allies, to whom she could look for support in all her necessities and difficulties; and that she would be indeed extremely reluctant to hazard the loss of all these advantages in an instant.¹

Meanwhile the Earl of Moray had broken off from the court, and meditated a rebellion. On the 15th of July, he and his party met at Stirling to consult upon their project. The same day the Queen issued a proclamation at Edinburgh, announcing that she intended to make no change in religion, and intimating to all her loyal subjects to prepare themselves to attend her for fifteen days in the field, and to be ready to appear the instant they were charged. The Queen and her adherents were too active and numerous on this occasion for Moray and his party. Seven days later a general muster of the Crown vassals was ordered. Offers were made to Moray to appear before the council and obtain satisfaction; but in vain. Mary ordered her intended marriage to be publicly proclaimed; and on the 29th of July she and Darnley were joined in wedlock amid rejoicing at Holyrood.¹

Various rumours were afloat as to the conflict between the Queen and her nobles. Some said that it had its origin in envy, ambition, and hatred, rather than in religion. The newly married pair, however, began their reign by adopting vigorous measures. Moray and the Protestant nobles who had joined him, were declared rebels: and to crush them swiftly, the feudal vassals of the Crown were at short intervals summoned anew to muster and rally round their King and Queen. Their majesties also raised considerable sums of money from the citizens and burgesses for licenses to absent themselves from the army. The disloyal nobles, the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earls of Moray, Glencairn, Argyle, Rothes, and other barons, had mustered about a thousand of their followers. They soon found that the Queen and her party were too strong for them. Mary at this time was exceedingly well served, and the action of her government was prompt and decisive.¹

The provost of Edinburgh was an adherent of the Protestant Lords, and the Queen at once commanded the town council to discharge him from his office, and named another to be elected in his place. About the same time the court had ordered the magistrates of the capital to suspend Knox from preaching, but this the council firmly refused to do; and several of the citizens fled to the banished Lords. On the other hand, Lord George Gordon was restored to honour and to the Lordship of Gordon, by royal proclamation at Edinburgh. The Queen now recalled Bothwell, whom Moray hated, and had contrived to keep out of Scotland for several years. He was then residing in France, and landed at Eyemouth on the 17th of September. He immediately proceeded to the court, and was there graciously received by Mary, who restored him to all his hereditary titles and offices. Along with the Earl of Lennox, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, which the Queen and Darnley personally accompanied. The rebellious lords after various moves and efforts found themselves unable to face the royal army in the field. They retired to Dumfries, and there issued a manifesto on the 8th of September, 1565, calling upon the Protestants to rally round them. But few joined their standard. They had rashly calculated on receiving assistance from England, but none came; and on the approach of the Queen’s army, led by Bothwell, they disbanded their followers, and retired beyond the Border.¹

The Queen and her government were now victorious, and many of the Protestants dreaded that the Reformation would soon be extinguished in Scotland. At the time there were many schemes and plots on hand among the Roman Catholic States of Europe, and more in the fountain head​—the Curia of Rome​—for the total overthrow of heresy and all its works. Spain was deeply interested in the recovery of Britain to the Holy See;¹ but the stream of events swept away this dream.

The marriage of the Queen with Darnley turned out to be extremely unfortunate. She discovered when too late that her husband was a vicious, vain, and childish fool, utterly unfitted to be her companion and guide. Their domestic quarrels soon became notorious. The Queen had several foreigners in her service. One of them named Riccio acted as her foreign secretary. He seems to have enjoyed her confidence, and was occasionally consulted by her on important matters. Darnley, however, began to think that Riccio was his enemy, and fancied that he had prevented the Queen from granting to him the Crown matrimonial. He ran from one silly thought to another, until he came to the conclusion that Riccio had frustrated his aim.¹ This is characteristic of all weak-minded and naturally vain persons. They fancy that some one has set himself purposely to defeat them; while all the time the cause of their defeat is in their own defects. The Scottish nobles at once saw Darnley’s weakness, and seeking a way to restore the rebel lords, they fixed upon him as their tool, and on Riccio as their victim.

A parliament was summoned to meet at Edinburgh on the 4th of March, 1566, to confiscate the lands of the banished lords. They had many friends in Scotland and even in the government; but, although they had made incessant efforts to obtain pardon and to be restored, the Queen still held out against them. The Scottish nobles have never been deficient in devising bold plots for the overthrow of their enemies and the attainment of their ends. Accordingly Morton the Chancellor, Lord Ruthven, Lord Lindsay of the Byres, and others, now entered into a bond with Darnley for the murder of Riccio and the restoration of the banished Lords, Moray and his associates, and pledged themselves in return to procure for him the Crown matrimonial, on which he set so much store.¹ It is plain, however, that Darnley was a mere tool in the hands of the nobles. They had no intention of elevating him to the throne. Their chief aim was to prevent the meeting of parliament, and thus preserve intact the estates of the rebel lords. Probably they foresaw that Darnley would prove false, and thus throw himself outside the bond.

The plot was exceedingly well matured and everything was prepared for its realisation. On the 7th March, 1566, parliament was opened by the Queen in person. Darnley, instead of accompanying her, rode off to Leith to enjoy himself among his companions. The first business of the parliament was to summon the exiled nobles to appear before it on the 12th of March; but they were already moving towards Edinburgh.

The evening of the 9th of March was fixed by the conspirators for the consummation of their dismal deed. The Earl of Morton commanded a body of one hundred and sixty armed men, and took possession of the inner court of the palace and secured all the gates; a party of these men took up their position in the royal audience chamber on the ground floor; thence Darnley ascended to the Queen’s apartments and Lord Ruthven followed him. They found their victim sitting with his cap on his head in her Majesty’s presence, along with a small social party in the Queen’s supping-room. Some parley and sharp talk passed between the Queen and Ruthven; but suddenly more of the conspirators rushed in, instantly the tables and chairs were overturned in the scuffle, and David Riccio was seized and dragged to an outer room, and there stabbed to death. A guard was placed over the Queen; but in spite of their vigilance several gentlemen escaped, and warned the citizens of Edinburgh. The common bell was wrung, and the people rushed to the palace with torch lights. They demanded the instant deliverance of the Queen; but she was not permitted to speak to them: Darnley appeared and assured the citizens that the Queen was quite safe, and commanded them to go home. Darnley and Ruthven then prepared two proclamations to be issued next day in the name of the King, the one ordering the citizens of Edinburgh to keep order in the streets, and the other dissolving the parliament, and commanding all the members to leave the city within three hours, except those whom the King might request to remain. Lord Ruthven placed men to watch the gates and all the private passages; but in spite of the utmost vigilance of the conspirators, the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly managed to escape during the night.¹

The following day, Sunday, the banished lords arrived in the evening, and were ready to make the most of the peculiar circumstances. They took possession of Edinburgh, and frustrated the proceedings of parliament. But Mary soon disengaged her husband from the nobles, who had murdered her favourite, and there can be no doubt that he was duped by the Queen as well as by the nobles. He had neither the ability, the resolution, nor even the recognised rough honesty of his day, to carry him through such a plot. Mary and he slipped out a little past midnight on Tuesday morning, and rode to Seton House, whence they were escorted to Dunbar Castle.¹

When the confederate nobles rose that morning they found that they had been completely outwitted, and that they were in imminent danger. A large force quickly rallied round the Queen, who at once advanced upon Edinburgh. The opposing party of nobles were unprepared to meet her army, and immediately dispersed; Morton and Ruthven fled to England, others fled to the Highlands, and some of them went home to their estates. After a short time the Queen pardoned Moray, and some of his associates; but on those directly concerned in the murder of Riccio, she seemed determined to be revenged. Darnley exhibited the baseness of his nature by loudly denouncing his fellow-murderers. His treachery he hoped would win back the esteem and regain for him the love of his wife. In reality it only made him loathsome to her, while the nobles regarded him as an object of hatred and utter contempt.¹ When the Queen returned to the capital, Knox left it and went to Kyle. Many persons were apprehended in Edinburgh and accused of being concerned in the murder of Riccio, but only two men were executed​—Thomas Scott, Sheriff-Depute of Perth, and Henry Yair.² On the 8th of June, 1566, the Council passed an act commanding the people not to receive or entertain the Earl of Morton, Lord Lindsay, the Master of Ruthven, and other thirty persons named, because they were implicated in the vile and treasonable slaughter of David Riccio, her Majesty’s French Secretary. All these and some more of their accomplices were denounced as rebels and outlaws, for not appearing before the Council and answering to the charges against them.³

The Queen retired into the castle of Edinburgh, and on the 19th of June, 1566, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, was born. After this event the Queen showed a disposition to listen to the suggestions for reconciliation with the nobles who had rebelled against her. Moray, Argyle, Glencairn, and others of the Protestant party, were re-admitted to a share in the administration, although Bothwell and Huntly were at the head of the government. Mary rewarded Bothwell for his very important service by appointing him Keeper of Dunbar Castle.¹

The series of events leading up to the murder of Darnley, the ♦marriage of the Queen with Bothwell, and her subsequent imprisonment, have often been detailed at great length. All that can be attempted here is to indicate the motives of the chief actors and the circumstances which controlled the form of the drama. On the one hand, we have the Queen and her husband; Mary was a good Catholic and really wished to stand well in the eyes of the Pope and the other Catholic rulers of Europe. She was a woman of great energy and remarkable talents. Up to the time of the birth of her son, she may be said, when everything is taken into account, to have acted in the government of the country with surprising moderation and fairness. But her feelings were extremely keen, her sentiments tender and kindly, her emotions and passions strong; withal she was a woman of exceptional polish and commanding presence. On the other hand, Darnley had acted in a very singular way towards his wife. He had exhibited so much folly, falsehood, depravity, and such utter stupidity, that he must have completely alienated the Queen from him; while on the other side, he had unpardonably offended the pride and aroused the hatred of a party of the nobles, whose revenge was deep and never slumbered. His doom was therefore settled. Indeed, the aristocracy had long been following a line of policy which tended directly to depress the authority of the Crown, and they were not likely to let the opportunity slip, which a concurrence of circumstances was now offering, without turning it to their own advantage.

The plot for the murder of Darnley, which seems to have originated with Lethington, was soon concocted. According to custom a bond was drawn up by Sir James Balfour, an experienced lawyer, and a firm friend of Bothwell. This bond declared that Darnley​—“was a young fool and tyrant, and unworthy to rule over them.” They therefore bound themselves to remove him by some means or another, and each engaged to stand true to the other in this deadly enterprise. The bond was subscribed by the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Bothwell, Lethington the Secretary of State, Sir James Balfour, and others who joined in the conspiracy. Their victim had become sick, and was visited by the Queen at Glasgow, whence he was conveyed to Edinburgh on the last day of January 1567. He was put into a house close to the city wall, called Kirk-of-Field, and here the Queen was very attentive to him and for several nights before the murder slept in the room immediately below him. At last everything seems to have been prepared, and the evening of Sunday the 9th of February, was fixed for his murder. When the day arrived everything at the court was going on in the most natural and joyful fashion; the Earl of Moray had left to join his wife at St. Andrews; and on the evening fixed for the murder a marriage was to be celebrated between two of the Queen’s servants. Meanwhile the servants of Bothwell and the Earl himself were intently engaged in making the final preparations for the horrible deed. The conspirators had resolved to blow up the house with powder. After dark they placed a large quantity of that destructive element in the room below the king, Bothwell himself superintending the operations. About ten o’clock in the evening the Queen arrived from Holyrood to join her husband, and passing the door of her own bedroom, entered the apartment of the king. Some agreeable conversation passed between them; and then the Queen recollected that she had promised to attend the ball to be held that night in honour of her two servants’ marriage. She bade the King farewell and departed, with Bothwell and Huntly and her attendants to Holyrood; and apparently only two of the conspirators remained behind at the King’s lodgings. In spite of all the care that had been taken by the contrivers of this dolesome plot, there appears to have been a hitch in their proceedings. It is pretty evident that Darnley and his servant had discovered their danger and attempted to escape, and had got some distance away when they were caught in the garden and strangled. Bothwell with a company of his followers returned from the palace about midnight, and joined the two conspirators, who had already lighted the train. The explosion shook the earth for miles around, and all the inhabitants of Edinburgh were aroused from their sleep. The murderers had to escape swiftly. Bothwell ran to his apartments in the palace and immediately went to bed, only to be awakened as if from slumber half an hour afterwards, by a message informing him of the tragedy. He then, like an innocent man, shouted “Treason! treason!” and along with the Earl of Huntly called on the Queen to tell her what had happened.¹

It was well known at the time that the chief actor in this great crime was Bothwell, but at the moment no one would have been safe to accuse him. Many of the nobles were directly, and others indirectly, implicated in it. The confused state of feeling and belief, and the traditional policy of the nobles introduced a variety of motives into the breasts of these desperate men.¹ The murder caused great excitement among the people, owing more to the unusual way in which it was committed, than to any feelings of compassion or humanity. Voices were heard at night in the streets of Edinburgh denouncing the murderers. On the 12th of February, a statement emanated from the Privy Council which announced “that two hours after midnight, the house where the late King’s grace was lodged, was in an instant blown in the air, while he was sleeping in his bed, with such force and vehemence that the whole lodging was destroyed and driven to dross to the very ground stone; and not long thereafter the bodies of his grace and of a servant were found dead within a short space of the same lodging.” A reward of two thousand pounds and a grant of lands was offered to any one who should discover the murderers of the King; but no one ventured to claim the reward by an open accusation, although a bill was fixed to the door of the parliament house, naming Bothwell, Balfour, Chambers, and John Spense, as the guilty parties; and another placard named others of the inferior actors in the tragedy. On the 14th of the month the remains of the King were privately interred in the Chapel of Holyrood. The following day the Queen, with Huntly, Argyle, Bothwell, and the Archbishop of St. Andrews, removed to the house of Lord Seton; and it was observed at the time that more inquiry was made for the authors of the placards than for the murderers of the King. Bothwell himself, surrounded by fifty armed men on horseback, rode from Seton to Edinburgh, paraded the streets, and, with hideous oaths and furious gestures, openly declared “that if he knew who were the authors of the bills, he would wash his hands in their blood.”²

Touching the never-ending question of the guilt of the Queen in connection with the murder of Darnley, it must be admitted that while many of her enemies in Scotland were prepossessed against her, and others of them were eager to assume that she was guilty, there is evidence that she was informed of a proposal which had been under the consideration of a party of the nobles for removing the King out of the way; but no direct evidence has been found that she gave any encouragement to the plot or in any way sanctioned it. The point has been often fully argued on both sides; but much of the whole evidence which has from time to time been adduced, is utterly worthless and irrelevant. After a careful examination of the case I am compelled to state that the circumstantial evidence is strong on the count that Mary knew something about the plot; but that she encouraged or sanctioned it seems to me improbable. In that direction there is no real evidence against her. Indeed, she had too much judgment to commit herself to anything of this character; and a mere silent acquiescence in what was to be done, was in all probability the relation in which Mary stood to the murderers of her husband. But even this was sufficient to compromise her, while immediately succeeding events, and her relations with the chief actor in the tragedy, tended to stain her character.

Rumours immediately began to arise that the Queen was about to marry Bothwell, and that she was not innocent of the King’s death. A correspondence was opened between her and the Earl of Lennox, who naturally insisted that the parties who had murdered his son, should be brought to justice, and distinctly called upon the Queen to take steps to effect that end. At last, Lennox himself was charged to attend the trial of Bothwell, as a party to the action; and on the 28th of March, 1567, the Queen consulted the Council concerning the application of Lennox, as to the trial of Bothwell and others for the murder of the King. The Council ordered them to be tried by a jury; and accordingly the trial of Bothwell was fixed for the 12th of April.¹ The trial, however, was a mere farce. The court sat in Edinburgh, and Bothwell had three thousand of his armed retainers on the streets of the capital. Certain forms of law were gone through, but no witnesses appeared against him, and he was of course acquitted. He then published a challenge, boldly offering single combat to any one, noble or commoner, rich or poor, who dared to affirm that he was guilty of the murder of the king. This had at least a touch of rather grim humour about it; and as no one responded to his challenge, he could then aver that he had satisfied the law and the ancient custom of his country.²

Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 14th April, two days after the trial of Bothwell, and he bore the crown and sceptre before the Queen when she rode to the parliament house. A number of acts were passed, chiefly relating to ratifications of grants of land. John Erskine got a ratification of the earldom of Mar, the regality of the Garioch, and other lordships. There were also ratifications of lands to the Earls of Huntly, Moray, Crawford, Morton, Rothes, and other barons, and formal reductions of the forfeitures against the Earls of Huntly and Sutherland, and a number of gentlemen of the name of Gordon, were gone through. Bothwell got a grant of lands with the castle of Dunbar; and an act was passed against the makers and up-setters of the placards and bills which had given Mary and Bothwell so much annoyance. An act was also passed which purported to recognise religious toleration.¹

The relations of the Queen and Bothwell quickly developed. On the day after parliament rose, Bothwell invited the nobility to a banquet at an hotel in Edinburgh; and a large party of the nobles responded to his hospitable call. After the red wine had been freely quaffed which warmed all their hearts and quickened the circulation of their blood till their faces smirked with joy, he placed before them a bond and kindly requested them to subscribe it. This document stated that some of Bothwell’s ill-willers and private enemies had malignantly slandered and accused him of being art and part in the heinous murder of the late king; but now that he was acquitted, and had also according to ancient custom offered to prove his innocence by single combat, and having a due regard to the nobleness of his house, and the good and honourable service rendered by his predecessors, and more especially by himself to her Majesty the Queen, “in the defence of her realm against the enemies thereof;” considering moreover that it was ruinous to the kingdom for the Queen to remain a widow, the bond then went on to recommend Bothwell, a married man, as the most suitable match she could obtain amongst her own subjects. All the nobles present, except the Earl of Eglinton, who managed to slip away, signed the bond. They undertook upon their honour and faith​—“to promote, further, advance, and set forward the marriage to be solemnised and completed between her Highness and the said noble lord, with our votes, counsel, strength, and assistance in word and deed, at such time as it should please her Majesty to fix, and as soon as the law shall allow it to be done.” They thus bound themselves to risk their lands and lives against all who might oppose the marriage.¹

On the 21st of April the Queen went to Stirling to visit her son, and remained two days. When returning to Edinburgh on the 24th, she was met by Bothwell at the head of a company of his own retainers, and conveyed to the castle of Dunbar. Whether the Queen was taken by Bothwell against her will and forcibly detained, is a point which has long been vehemently contested. Both sides have argued their special views at great length, but with little decisive results.¹ Without venturing to pronounce any dogmatic opinion upon the matter, it should be remembered that in those days there was hardly anything too daring for a Scottish noble to undertake if there was a chance of success and the object interesting and important, and that obstacles which would now be deemed insurmountable, were then often disregarded, and the main aim pursued with a recklessness of consequences almost incredible. A little attention to this feature in the character of the aristocracy of the period might tend to clear the capture of Mary of some of its difficulties; we should be prepared to see that neither honesty nor consistency were essential features of the aristocratic character of the age, and allowance should be made for the play and action of this throughout the whole of the revolutionary movement. But when all the circumstances are taken into account, and every corollary duly weighed, it is rather difficult to believe that Mary was not aware of the intention of Bothwell to lead her to Dunbar. If she had not been so, there was no necessity for her yielding to him at the Bridge of Almond; and even when in the castle of Dunbar, a woman of her mental resource and energy could easily have found means of discarding him, without leaving any disgrace upon her brow. Although Bothwell was a profligate and unscrupulous man, it is not likely that he would have murdered the Queen if she had resisted his advances.

But according to the Queen’s own account, it was against her will that Bothwell conveyed her to Dunbar castle. The Earl of Huntly, the Chancellor, Lethington the Secretary, and Sir James Melville, were in attendance upon her when she was carried to Dunbar. Melville said that Bothwell boasted that he would marry her, “who would or who would not; yea, whether she would herself or not;” and he also said that the Queen could not help marrying Bothwell, after he had publicly carried her off and dishonoured her. Mary was kept for a week a close prisoner in Dunbar castle. Although the exact character of the acts and proceedings which occurred between Mary and Bothwell during these seven days, can never be accurately known, yet there is evidence that Bothwell was permitted and even encouraged by many of the nobles​—to shamefully handle the Queen.

Whether Mary was passionately in love with Bothwell before the murder of Darnley, seems a difficult question to settle. At a later stage, an attempt was made to prove that she was by “The Casket Letters,” and thus directly to connect her with the murder of Darnley, as a partner of Bothwell’s guilt in the deed. Much has been written about these letters, and great ingenuity has been shown both by the defenders of Mary, and by her assailants. The one party have maintained that these letters were forgeries​—fabricated by the accusers of the Queen; while another party have maintained with more or less confidence that they were genuine letters of Mary’s addressed to Bothwell, or which passed between her and him. Some of them are harmless, others are incriminating. But the latest authority who has carefully examined them and the related circumstances, Mr. Henderson, seems to have some doubts about their genuineness; although he attaches much importance to Morton’s recently discovered declaration concerning them. My own view is that they are not genuine letters of Queen Mary to Bothwell, though some parts of letters of hers may have been infused into them.

Bothwell conducted the Queen to the castle of Edinburgh on the 29th of April, and preparations for their union were rapidly pushed forward. He obtained a divorce from his own wife on the 7th of May, 1567, upon the ground of consanguinity, and for adultery on his part. The banns of marriage were proclaimed on the 12th of May; and on the 15th of the month the marriage was celebrated in the palace of Holyrood.¹

But unfortunately the stream of events soon began to disturb the happiness of the newly wedded pair. It was surely a cruel destiny that so swiftly overtook them, and led to their final separation. For three weeks after their marriage, they remained at Holyrood, and on the 4th of June the Privy Council passed an act in the form of a declaration from the Queen, upon the groundlessness of the rumours and fears of the people. “Her Majesty, considering and thinking upon her own state, and the government of her realm, over which Almighty God has placed her supreme head and lawful inheritor, and moreover, recalling what great alterations and strange accidents have from time to time occurred during her Majesty’s reign; but especially since her highness entered this realm and took the management and government of the affairs thereof on her own person, which, all praise be to God, were happy and quietly settled down by her Majesty: And God so prospered the work in her hands, as well to her own honour as the satisfaction and contentment of all her good subjects, that all the time of her Majesty’s personal reign, they have never felt the force of foreign enemies, but lived in good peace ... so that they may justly compare their state during her Majesty’s reign to the most happy time that has occurred within the memory of man. But as envy is the enemy of virtue, and that seditious and unquiet spirits for ever seek occasion to stir up trouble and strife; so however sincerely and uprightly, or however perfectly her Majesty direct her doings, instead of thankful hearts and good obedience, her Highness’ clemency is commonly abused and recompensed with thwartness and ingratitude; and when she is thinking least of any innovation, always some clamour is raised that alterations are to be introduced, and the people persuaded to believe it; as if her Highness’ care of the nation were lost, that she meant to subvert the laws, to reject the counsel and assistance of her nobility, and to handle all things without discretion, and contrary to the ancient customs. But last, it is most grevious and offensive of all, when it is said, that the health, preservation, sure custody, and guardianship of her most dear and only son the prince, now in his infancy, has been neglected by her Highness.”¹ Most people will be ready to exonerate the Queen from the foolish slanders that she ever intended any harm to her infant.

This declaration plainly shows that troubles had been gathering round the unhappy Queen. She had ordered the feudal array to assemble at Melrose on the 15th of June, for an attack upon the insolent and disorderly borderers; but there was no appearance of the order being obeyed. In fact, the ball was taking another turn. A party of the nobles, including the Earls of Morton, Mar, Athole, and Glencairn, Lords Lindsay, Hume, the Laird of Grange, and others, were then uniting for a struggle against Bothwell, and, as the issue showed, also against the Queen herself. The Queen and Bothwell left Edinburgh on the 7th of June, and passed to Borthwick Castle, a place of great strength about ten miles south of the capital. Two of the confederate leaders, the Earl of Morton and Lord Hume, with a considerable force immediately appeared before the castle, and Bothwell and the Queen with difficulty escaped to Dunbar. The pair were now much alarmed. They issued a proclamation commanding the Crown vassals of the district to muster immediately. The confederates took possession of Edinburgh, and proceeded to make themselves secure; and having managed to come to an understanding with Sir James Balfour, the governor of the Castle, they at once assumed all the functions of the government. On the 11th of June, they issued a proclamation from the Canongate, touching the crisis of affairs and ordering the people of all ranks, but especially the burgesses and inhabitants of Edinburgh, to muster and assist in rescuing the Queen from thraldom, “to preserve the prince’s most gracious person from all such as would invade him, and to try and purge the kingdom of the most cruel and abominable murder of his late father,” by bringing the guilty parties to punishment.¹

Meanwhile the Queen and Bothwell had mustered between two and three thousand men, and advanced on Edinburgh. The confederate lords resolved to meet them, and marching from the capital, the two parties came in sight of each other near Musselburgh. Bothwell had posted his men on Carberry Hill. After a day’s manœuvering and treating, the Queen surrendered herself to the nobles, and Bothwell was allowed to ride off in the direction of Dunbar. The Queen was taken to Edinburgh, and when she at last saw herself a prisoner in the hands of a party of the nobles, she was extremely displeased. She surrendered on the 15th of June, and on the 17th was conveyed a captive to Lochleven, on the alleged ground that she had refused to abandon Bothwell.¹

The confederate nobles soon developed their scheme, which was in harmony with their traditions and previous history. It consisted in taking the rights of the Crown into their own hands. They ordered all the members of the Court of Session to resume their business; they issued proclamations against Bothwell, and demanded the surrender of the Castle of Dunbar; they gave instructions that those who were suspected of being concerned in the King’s murder should be seized and tortured; and all this was done by the very men who were themselves more or less implicated in the murder of the King, and many of whom had sanctioned the marriage of the Queen with Bothwell. They issued a proclamation also against the inhabitants of Crail for abetting Bothwell and furnishing him with boats; and the Bishop of Moray they punished for harbouring him in the Castle of Spynie.¹ Yet, it may be doubted if the confederate nobles really desired to take Bothwell; he would have been a very dangerous prisoner in their hands. Probably they merely wanted to drive him out of the country, and in this they succeeded.

The plans which the party then at the head of affairs had determined upon, rendered it necessary to treat the Queen with great severity. They had resolved to depose her, to place the crown on her infant son, and to appoint the Earl of Moray regent during the prince’s minority. In the Island of Lochleven on the 23rd of July they presented two documents to the Queen, which they requested her to subscribe; the one was a renunciation of her crown, and the other appointed Moray to the regency. These were hard terms for a young high-spirited princess; but such pressure was put upon Mary that she yielded and signed the two deeds, which were then ratified by parliament. When Queen Elizabeth heard of the treatment which the Queen of Scots had received at the hands of her rebellious subjects, she was extremely wroth and threatened to inflict condign punishment upon them, but her boasting ended in nothing. For some time after her imprisonment in Lochleven Mary was very strictly guarded, and hardly any one was admitted to visit her.¹

In the summer of 1567, the General Assembly held two meetings, and the reformed clergy threw the whole weight of their influence on the side of the confederate nobles. They first met at Edinburgh on the 25th of June, George Buchanan being chosen moderator. Knox, who had been for some time absent from the chief centre of activity, then returned to Edinburgh; and the members of the Assembly resolved to meet again on the 20th of July, and meantime to send letters to all the earls, lords, barons, and other brethren, to attend upon that day. The letters sent out to the nobles indicated the matters which it was intended to discuss at the ensuing Assembly. The Assembly met at the appointed time. John Row, minister of Perth, was elected moderator. The Earl of Argyle sent in a letter to the Assembly, stating that as he had not joined the confederate lords, who were then surrounded with an army in Edinburgh, he could not attend the meeting of the Church; and for the same reason Lord Boyd and the commendators of the abbacies of Arbroath and Kilwinning refused to attend the Assembly. In the list of the nobility present were the names of the Earls of Morton, Mar, and Glencairn; Lord Hume, Lord Ruthven, Lord Lindsay, Lord Graham, Lord Innermaith, Lord Ochiltree, Sir James Balfour, James M‘Gill, Tulliebardie, and a large number of the smaller barons and lairds; but the body of the higher nobles had as yet stood aloof from the proceedings against the Queen. A number of articles were laid before the lords and barons who were present, and they subscribed them. The articles were then recorded in the Register of the Privy Council. These articles embraced a variety of matters touching religion: the thirds of benefices, the distribution of the patrimony of the Church, and the social state of the people. They bore that at the first lawful Parliament the nobles and barons should exert themselves to the utmost to establish and promote the reformed religion within the kingdom; that Parliament must do something to relieve and lighten the extreme burdens of the poor labourers of the ground; that all vice, crimes, and offences against God’s law should be severely punished according to the Scriptures; that the horrible murder of the King, which was odious in the sight of God and the whole world, should not be hushed up, and that the Signatories bound themselves to punish all persons who should be found guilty of that crime. The articles concluded​—“The nobility, barons, and others of the Church under-subscribed, in the presence of God have faithfully promised to convene their power and forces, and then to root out, destroy, and utterly subvert all the monuments of idolatry, namely, the odious and blasphemous mass, and thereafter to go forward throughout the whole kingdom, to all and sundry places wheresoever idolatry is fostered, haunted, or maintained, and chiefly where mass is said, to execute the reformation aforesaid, without exception of place or person; and shall to the uttermost of their power remove all idolaters and others that are not admitted to the ministry of the Church from all function thereof, as well private as public, that they hinder not the ministry in any manner of way in their vocation. And in the place of the premises shall set up and establish the true religion of Jesus Christ throughout this whole realm by planting churches, superintendents, ministers, and other needful members of the Church, then the rest of the lords shall pass through the whole country to this effect, and also shall proceed to the punishment of idolaters according to the laws thereupon pronounced; and in like manner they shall punish and cause to be punished all other vices that presently abound within this realm, which God’s law and the civil laws of the kingdom command to be punished, and chiefly the murder of the King lately committed. And likewise faithfully promise to reform the schools, colleges, and the universities, and to expel and remove the idolaters that have charge thereof, and others who as yet have not joined themselves to the true Church of Christ, and plant faithful instructors in their places, to the end that the youth be not infected by poisoned doctrine at the beginning which after cannot be well removed away.”¹

It is in these proceedings that we see the real spirit which animated the reformed clergy, who had a great influence with the people; and it was this that gave the confederate nobles success against the Queen. Her own conduct again, was such that it was often turned against her. But after all it is very questionable whether she would have been able to remain upon the throne of Scotland much longer, even though her conduct had been far more exemplary.

Her reign was characterised by many and great difficulties. There were not merely political matters demanding wise management, but also difficult and pressing religious and social questions, springing from the Reformation movement. With the latter, Mary, when she came to the throne, was not in a position to deal satisfactorily; being a Catholic herself, to have attempted to deal with them would have been contrary to her belief, her education, her ideas of authority, and to the aims of the Pope, and all her Roman Catholic allies. Thus it is not surprising that she failed to hold the reins of government in Scotland. Many of the nobles opposed her for their own ends, and exerted themselves to the utmost to destroy whatever influence she had among the people; and their success was complete.

Having imprisoned and deposed the Queen, the Lords next proceeded according to custom to place her son upon the throne. The infant King was crowned in the parish church of Stirling on the 29th of July, 1567. The two deeds which Mary had signed at Lochleven were publicly read, and the Earl of Morton took the Coronation oath for the prince and Steward of Scotland, whom the bishop of Caithness then anointed “the most excellent Prince and King of this realm.” The proceedings were wound up by John Knox with a sermon which he delivered in his most vigorous style.¹ The following day the King’s authority was proclaimed; and the reign of Queen Mary in fact and law terminated.

CHAPTER XVII.

History of Protestantism in Scotland, and the Conflict of the Clergy with the Government.

THUS far the revolutionary movement awakened and stirred society to the core; but as yet the nation was much divided. On the one hand, the Earls of Morton, Glencairn, Athole, Mar, Lord Lindsay, Lord Hume, and others, with Moray as their leader, were supported by the reformed clergy. On the other hand, a section of the Protestant nobles who disapproved of the treatment of the Queen, still stood aloof and were assuming a decided attitude; while the Roman Catholic party were constantly active and looking for their opportunity. On all sides the elements of conflict were apparent.

On the 11th of August, 1567, the Earl of Moray, who had been recalled from France by his party, arrived in Edinburgh. After conferring with his friends, he consented to accept the regency, but before formally assuming the office, he wished to have an interview with the Queen. He was accompanied to Lochleven, by Morton, Athole, and Lord Lindsay; but the Queen naturally desired to see her brother alone, and her request was granted. What passed between them, is rather hard to ascertain. It has been reported that he reproached her for her conduct in the severest manner, that the Queen was extremely afflicted, and that after a long interview he left her to ponder over what he had said. Next morning the Queen and Moray again met. There was more sympathy between them; and at the Queen’s request Moray agreed to accept the regency.¹

On the 22nd of August, Moray formally assumed office in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and having taken the oath required by the constitution, was proclaimed Regent. The following day the Council issued an order calling in all the seals, that they might be broken and destroyed, and new ones made with a legend appropriate to James VI.¹ The new Regent exerted himself to the utmost to restore order and administer justice in the nation. He commanded the leading men of the Merse to appear before the Council on the last day of August to concert measures for the quiet administration of justice within the East March. The Hamiltons offered some opposition to his authority within their territories, but it was easily overcome. Moray’s next aim was to get possession of the castle of Edinburgh. The Governor, Sir James Balfour, was bought over by a bribe, and the castle was then committed to Sir William Kirkaldy the laird of Grange. The Regent also struggled hard for the castle of Dunbar, and it fell into his hands about the end of September. The castle of Dumbarton, however, still held out for the Queen. Orders were issued for the surrender of many other castles; and great efforts were made to establish peace and order throughout the kingdom.²

Moray summoned a parliament which met at Edinburgh in December, 1567, “to treat on the affairs tending to the glory of God, the setting forth of the King’s authority, and for establishing good and necessary laws in the kingdom.” This parliament ratified the most important steps of the Reformation. The acts passed in 1560 which had never received the royal assent, were confirmed, and the Confession of Faith was inserted in the record of the parliamentary proceedings.¹ Henceforward the great revolution which had substituted Protestantism for Romanism in Scotland may be regarded as secured; though there were still many weighty and interesting matters relating to the polity and rights of the reformed Church, and the claims of her clergy, remaining to be settled, which afterwards led to a protracted struggle with the Crown.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 25th of December, 1567. All the members present agreed to a proposition that a certain number of ministers should be appointed to meet at any time with such members of parliament or of the Privy Council as the Regent should name, as a committee to advise on the affairs of the Church.¹ The reformed Church gave the Regent a firm and undivided support; and his government required all their aid. It was said that he took great trouble to pounce upon the thieves and vagabonds who distressed the people, and held courts of justice throughout the country; but that he took no such care to settle the differences and whims of the nobility, and thus failed to draw them into obedience to the King. For all the Regent’s energy and the success of his government, the army still required to be kept in the field. On the 14th of February, 1568, the lead on the cathedral churches of Aberdeen and Elgin, part of which had already been stolen, was ordered to be stripped off and sold, and the proceeds applied to maintain the King’s troops.² The Queen’s party continued exceedingly active. A considerable section of the people were still dissatisfied, and the Regent was often warned that trouble was brewing.

In the beginning of May, 1568, the Queen escaped from her imprisonment in Lochleven, and proceeded to Hamilton. Her chief adherents were the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, Rothes, Cassillis; the Lords Harris, Livingston, Fleming, and Claud Hamilton.¹ In a few days she was at the head of a force of four or five thousand armed men. When the intelligence of Mary’s escape reached him, the Regent was at Glasgow holding justice courts. On the 3rd of May he ordered a muster of all the Crown vassals, for the preservation of the King’s authority and person, and for establishing justice and peace in the kingdom. He resolved at once to meet the danger, and marching out of Glasgow, took up a position at Langside. On the 13th of May the followers of the Queen gave him battle. His victory was complete, and Mary herself fled towards the Border;² and in an unhappy hour determined to throw herself upon the hospitality of the Queen of England.

After the flight of the Queen, the Regent continued his efforts to restore order in the kingdom. This was no easy task. He had a host of enemies, and was always making more, for the peculiar position into which he had allowed himself to be put, necessarily multiplied his foes. When parliament was summoned to meet in July, 1568, the keenness of the struggle was intensified as soon as it became known that the enemies of the Regent’s government would be subjected to forfeiture. The Archbishop of St. Andrews was cited to appear before the Council, and having failed to appear, was declared a rebel and outlawed. The Earl of Crawford and others were also proclaimed rebels. Parliament met at the appointed time, but it was immediately adjourned to August, when proceedings of forfeiture were to be begun against the opponents of the government. From motives of policy, however, only a few were condemned, and hopes were held out to others, with the view of inducing them to submit.¹

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 1st of July, 1568. John Willock was chosen moderator, and the members proceeded to the business before them. They presented a number of articles to the Regent and craved reform of abuses. Among other things they complained that their stipends were not fully paid; and requested that the College of Aberdeen should be reformed, the corrupted office-bearers removed and others appointed in their places, so that the youth might be instructed in letters and godliness. They desired the Regent to adopt measures for the suppression of vice, that the plague of God might thereby be withdrawn from the nation. The Regent listened with respect to their requests and returned a favourable answer. This Assembly resolved that all the Catholics, who after due admonition refused to join themselves to the Reformed Church, should be cast out of the society of Christ’s body and excommunicated. But the Assembly which met in February the following year, presented to the Regent a series of similar articles praying that remedies might be adopted; and in reference to the Regent’s former proposal touching vice and crime, they added​—“If his grace send us to the Justice-Clerk, experience has sufficiently taught us what he has done in any such matters.”¹ They meant that he had done nothing at all.

In the end of September, 1568, the Regent, accompanied by the Earl of Morton, Lord Lindsay, and other leading men of his party, passed to England to attend the conference at York touching Queen Mary. But it does not fall within the scope of my work to follow the story of that unhappy Queen after her flight to England; although it has been intensely interesting to some minds, it is not sufficiently important in its bearing upon the main subject to justify its introduction.¹

When the Regent returned from England in the beginning of February 1569, he found his position in Scotland to be one of extreme difficulty. In the interval the Queen’s party had become more powerful and restless, and were employing every means in their power to harass his government and the unhappy people. Moray continued to act with energy, but some of his supporters deserted, and his enemies multiplied. Maitland of Lethington, who had fallen under the suspicion of the Regent, joined the Laird of Grange, the governor of the Castle of Edinburgh. Both of them threw in their lot with the cause of Mary, and thus the strongest and most important fortress in the kingdom passed into the hands of her party. It was mainly owing to this circumstance that the supporters of the Queen were able to hold out so long in Scotland. The other centres of her party were Huntly and the Gordons in the north, the Hamiltons and Argyle in the west, and some of the border clans. Thus hemmed in and hard pressed on every side, the Regent struggled on, and if his career had not been cut short, he would in all probability, with the assistance of the money of England, have overcome his enemies; but in the beginning of the year 1570, as the castle of Edinburgh was in the hands of the Queen’s adherents, he set out for Stirling; and on the 13th of January, when returning through Linlithgow, he was shot by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. The bullet passed through his body, and he died in a few hours. The assassin escaped on a fleet horse and rode to Hamilton Castle. Moray’s death was bewailed by the people and by the reformed clergy, who both regarded him as the arm of their safety.¹ To the party of the young King Moray’s death was a severe blow. He was an unscrupulous man, and his character will not bear close inspection; but he had great energy and some of the qualifications of a successful ruler; and with such means as he could command, he struggled bravely and worthily to maintain order and to administer justice.

For several years after the death of Moray, the factions of the King and Queen kept the country in an incessant turmoil. The adherents of the Queen still held the castle of Edinburgh; and in May, 1570, the English Government sent a small force to Edinburgh, but instead of restoring order, it intensified rather the general wretchedness. The passion and hatred of the opposing parties went on increasing, but at length the enthusiasm of the Queen’s followers spent itself. In July, 1570, the Earl of Lennox was elected Regent. His election was approved by the English Government, and he received the unswerving support of the reformed clergy.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 5th of July, and passed an act commanding all the ministers throughout the kingdom to pray publicly in their churches for the preservation of the King’s person and authority, and to proclaim to the people that he should be universally obeyed. The Assembly further unanimously agreed to appoint a commission of their brethren to attend any conventions of the nobility which might be held, and to assist and consent to everything that should be treated, which tended to promote the glory of God, the preaching and ministering of the true religion, the authority of the King, and the common good of the nation. The Assembly also, having regard to the troubled state of the kingdom, appointed a number of their brethren to be sent to all the earls, barons, and gentlemen who had fallen off from the King’s authority, and by every lawful means to endeavour to win them back and to reconcile them to the government of his majesty.¹

In the midst of the strife in Edinburgh, about the middle of October, 1570, Knox sustained a shock of apoplexy, which impaired his speech; but he recovered so far as to be able to preach on Sundays. In one of his sermons in the month of December, he made some personal remarks on the proceedings of the Laird of the Grange, the governor of the castle, which led to a bitter quarrel between him and his old friend. Knox defended himself and insisted on his freedom of speech in the pulpit, but anonymous libels were circulated against him. He was accused of not praying for the Queen, and for maligning her name and her adherents. His brethren and friends prevailed upon him to leave Edinburgh for his own safety, and he went to St. Andrews early in May, 1571. The bishop of Galloway, Alexander Gordon, then filled his pulpit in Edinburgh, and preached in a strain more acceptable to the Queen’s party. It was reported that he prayed for the Queen on the ground of her extreme wickedness, thus​—“All sinners ought to be prayed for: If we should not pray for sinners, for whom should we pray, seeing that God came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. St. David was a sinner, and so was she: St. David was an adulterer, and so was she: St. David committed murder in slaying Uriah for his wife, and so did she: but what is this to the matter; the more wicked that she be, her subjects should pray for her, to bring her to the spirit of repentance.”¹

The Castle of Dumbarton was taken from the Queen’s party in the beginning of April, 1571; and Hamilton, the archbishop of St. Andrews, was among the prisoners who surrendered. The Regent Lennox brought him to Stirling, where he was tried, condemned, and hanged on the 9th April. He was the last Roman Catholic Bishop ♦of St. Andrews. He had never ceased to assert his rights, and was therefore obnoxious to the reformed clergy and the King’s party. He was an active and able man in public life; and Lennox was glad of the opportunity to put him out of the way, but his execution was an act of cruelty and gross injustice.¹

Both parties issued proclamations and counter-manifestoes, and there was much skirmishing about Edinburgh, which produced little result. The Regent summoned a parliament to meet at Stirling in August, 1571. The General Assembly met in the same town on the 6th of August. Knox, being unable to attend the meeting, sent a letter to his brethren. In this he referred to the graceless libels which had been circulated against him, and called on the Assembly to judge the matter as they would answer to God. As his natural strength was daily decaying, and he was looking for a sudden departure to that land where the weary find rest, he earnestly exhorted his brethren to be faithful to the flock over whom God had placed them, and to resist all tyranny to the last. The battle, he said, would be hard, “but they must withstand the merciless devourers of the patrimony of the Church.... God give you wisdom and stout courage in so just a cause, and me a happy end.”¹ This Assembly repeated the injunctions that prayer should be offered up for the King, and that the people should submit to his authority. Complaints were made, touching the oppression of the ministers and the people in the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, by the Earl of Huntly and his servants, and of their neglect to pay the stipends of the ministers.²

Parliament assembled at Stirling on the 25th of August. About the same time the Queen’s party held their parliament in Edinburgh. In the Queen’s parliament sentences of forfeiture were passed against the Earl of Morton, and other chiefs of the King’s party; while in the King’s parliament an act was passed which ratified all former acts in favour of the liberty and freedom of the reformed Church. Acts were also passed in favour of Morton and Lord Lindsay, as a reward for their resistance to the open enemies of the King, and in favour of those who had taken the castle of Dumbarton from the enemy. While the King’s party were thus helping themselves and mutually congratulating each other, a company of the Queen’s adherents, under the command of the Earl of Huntly and Lord Hamilton, marched from Edinburgh upon Stirling, and on the 4th of September, surprised them, and slew the Regent Lennox. Ten days after the death of Lennox, the Earl of Mar was elected Regent; but the Earl of Morton had by this time become the real leader of the King’s party.¹

The regency of Mar was of short duration. He died on the 28th of October, 1572. The Earl of Morton was then elected Regent; since the death of Moray he had been the ruling spirit of his party. Morton had been more or less deeply implicated in all the plots and political murders of the past twenty years. He was an ambitious, greedy, crafty, and unscrupulous man; but brave and determined like all his ancestors of the Douglas tribe. He courted the friendship of the English government; and in the spring of 1573, concluded an arrangement by which fifteen hundred English troops and a train of artillery entered Scotland, and assisted in the reduction of the castle of Edinburgh. The Queen’s party throughout the country were broken up, and most of the leaders submitted to the Regent. Her adherents in the castle held out bravely, but were at last reduced to despair, and surrendered in the end of May, 1573. The common soldiers were dismissed. Lethington, who had served so many masters, and attempted to play so many parts, died about the 7th of June, a week after the castle fell. The laird of Grange, William Kirkaldy, the governor of the Castle, was tried, condemned, and hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh.¹ Mary’s party in Scotland never after raised their heads.

Maitland of Lethington’s recent biographer, has with much ingenuity and great literary power, attempted to prove that he was one of the very greatest statesmen of the period. “In fine, Maitland’s was one of the governing minds of the time in which he lived. The number of such men at any particular period is as a rule extremely limited​—much more so than is commonly supposed. I am inclined to hold that, at the period of which I am writing, there were not above three or four men of distinctly original and creative force in the whole island, from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End. In England they had Cecil; in Scotland, John Knox and William Maitland. Cecil’s ‘brothers in Christ’​—the envoys and emissaries of the English Government​—were men of a specifically inferior order, who derived their inspiration from their master, and who, when deprived of his guidance, of the habitual support of his cautious but fertile brain, showed themselves, almost without exception, extraordinarily helpless.... There are eminent writers who would be prepared to place the Earl of Moray beside Knox and Maitland and Cecil. It appears to me that Moray belongs to another class altogether,​—the class of men whose mutual processes are slow, involved, and dependent. It was a common saying, when he came to be Regent, that Moray was the hand and Morton the head; and during the earlier and brighter years of Mary’s reign, it might have been said quite as truly​—with even greater truth indeed​—that if Moray was the head, Maitland was the heart.

“I have said that a statesman in Lethington’s position must be judged less by his actions than by his aims. What were his aims? We shall see that they involved the determination of political and religious questions of the first importance:​—How to diminish the power of an anarchical nobility, how to promote the union of the nations, how to secure the succession to a Scottish prince (to the throne of England), how to establish a religious peace on tolerable conditions​—these were the problems to which, as a Scottish Protestant and a Scottish patriot, Maitland addressed himself.... His field was comparatively narrow; but the issues of the conflict in which he was engaged were momentous and far reaching.”

The aims of Lethington as stated above by Skelton, invites comment:​—1. There is no evidence that Lethington ever made any real effort to reduce the power of the nobles; but there is evidence that he used the influence of his official position, and also exerted his talents and wit, to enhance the power and the wealth of the nobles in connection with the landed property of the old Church. In the face of such evidence, it is surprising that his elegant panegyrist should have ventured to advance this, as one of the leading aims of the great statesman of the period. 2. It may be true that Maitland aimed to promote the union of the Crowns of England and Scotland; yet it is evident that some of his efforts in this direction were short-sighted, impracticable, and inconsistent. 3. Touching his aim to establish a religious peace in Scotland on tolerable conditions, it may be fairly questioned whether he was capable of appreciating and realising the real conditions of the problem. Most of Lethington’s efforts in this department were imperfectly conceived, or unrealisable in the circumstances, and consequently proved utter failures. It seems a rather curious historic phenomenon that one of the three greatest governing minds of the Reformation period in Britain, has somehow left so few traces on the nation of the result of his faculties. The fact is, that Lethington was a clever, glib, and scheming politician, but in no sense a great and wise statesman; and his recent biographer has glorified the Laird of Lethington by investing him with many virtues, which are quite inconsistent with his public career.¹

The polity of the Reformed Church so far as yet developed, tended to leave a blank in the chief council of the nation. As the bishops, abbots, and other orders of the Roman clergy died out, the spiritual estate ceased to be represented in parliament. Knox was not decidedly opposed to a gradation of rank among the ministers of the Church; the democratic polity of presbyterianism was not matured in the First Book of Discipline, nor in any work emanating from the Reformed Church of Scotland in the reformer’s lifetime. At this stage, however, the most interesting point centred around the territorial possessions and the wealth of the ancient hierarchy. The nobles, the old orders of clergy, and the reformed preachers, were all scrambling according to the measure of their power and opportunity for what each imagined to be their share of the endowments which the piety of bygone generations had consecrated to religion. For all the preaching against idolatry and the monuments thereof, there was one idol not as yet extinguished​—the golden calf. The aristocracy had recourse to various expedients to reach the revenues of the great benefices, and it must be admitted that in the end they succeeded.

For the settlement of this matter, an extraordinary meeting of the barons, superintendents, and ministers, was held at Leith in January, 1572. They assumed the powers of a General Assembly, and resolved to hand over the business to a committee of six, viz.:​—John Erskine, John Winram, David Lindsay, John Craig, Andrew Hay, and Robert Pont, authorising any four of them to meet with those appointed by the Privy Council, the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven, the Abbot of Dunfermline, Mr. James M‘Gill, Sir John Bellenden, and Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, and to ratify whatever they might determine agreeable to their instructions. The joint committee met on the 16th of the same month, and agreed upon a form of polity for the Church, known as the Leith Concordat. It was agreed that the names and titles of archbishops and bishops, and the bounds of the dioceses, should not be altered, at least until the King’s majority or the parliament consented to another arrangement. The document went on to state, that persons promoted to bishoprics should as far as possible have the requisite scriptural qualifications; that they should be elected by a chapter or assembly of learned ministers; that archbishops and bishops should have no greater jurisdiction than the superintendents already had, and that they should be subject to the church and the General Assembly in spiritual matters, as they were to the Crown in temporal; that in the admission of persons to spiritual functions in the Church, they should at least take the advice of six of the best learned of the chapter; that all the archbishoprics and bishoprics then vacant or which hereafter became so, should within a year and a day after the vacancy be filled up with qualified persons not under thirty years of age; and that the dean, or failing him, the next in dignity among the chapter, should be vicar-general during the vacancy. Concerning the abbacies, priories, and nunneries, it was concluded that no disposition of these benefices should be made, nor any grants out of the funds of the same till it was ascertained what portion of the rents consisted in churches and tithes, and what portion of temporal lands, and until provision was made for the ministers properly belonging thereto. Touching the person holding the title and receiving the fruits of the benefice, it was agreed that he should fill the place of one of the ecclesiastical Estate in parliament, and have the style of abbot, prior, or commendator; that all such should be learned and qualified for their office, and that to secure this end, on the recommendation of the King, they should be tried and admitted by the bishops. It was further agreed that when the present members of the convents were all departed this life, the ministers of the churches belonging to the abbey or priory should then act as the chapter of the commendator in the administration of the property and rents of the establishment, and that if these commendators should be found worthy, they might be promoted to act as senators for the spiritual estate in the Court of Session.

There were proposals also for dealing with the rights of lay patrons, with benefices in the patronage of the Crown, and for the disposal of the smaller benefices throughout the kingdom. The latter were to be conferred only on duly qualified ministers, and churches were to be planted throughout the realm, residence secured, and pluralities prevented. The revenues of provostries, prebendaries, and chaplainries in college churches, if founded upon lands or annual rents, it was proposed to apply to the maintenance of bursars at the grammar schools and universities; and a form was drawn up for the election and appointment of bishops.¹

The proposals of the Committee, were immediately confirmed by the Regent and the Council, and an attempt was forthwith made by the government to carry out the scheme they embodied. On the 6th of February, 1572, the chapter of St. Andrews met and elected John Douglas to be archbishop of that ancient see. Douglas was also rector of the university and provost of St. Mary’s College, and besides, he was a man advanced in years. Knox merely protested against the accumulation of offices in the person of one man. Some of the other sees were filled up, but the new bishops were simply the tools of their patrons. They had consented to assume the title with only a very small portion of the episcopal revenues, the greater part being retained in the hands of their masters​—the nobles.¹ To secure the richest portion of the benefices to the court, the nobles, and their friends and dependents, was the motive in which the whole scheme originated; and if the Reformed Church had yielded it would have destroyed its usefulness, and ended in a despotism of a degrading character. But a strong party of the clergy were thoroughly opposed to the scheme, and although the struggle between them and the Crown was protracted and severe, the liberties of the Church and the freedom of the nation eventually triumphed.

When the Articles came before the General Assembly, which met at Perth in August, 1572, that body unanimously agreed that such names as archbishop, dean, archdeacon, chancellor, and chapter sounded scandalous to the ears of many of the brethren, and recalled the ring of popery, and protested that while recognising the names, it did not mean to ratify, consent, or agree to any kind of superstition, but wished rather that the titles should be changed for others less offensive. The Assembly protested also that the articles and heads of the Leith Concordat were only to be received as interim, till a more perfect order could be obtained at the hands of the King, the Regent, and the nobility, for which they were to press whenever an opportunity occurred.

Knox addressed a letter to the Assembly containing a number of suggestions. He exhorted them to contend earnestly for the truth and for the liberty to express it, to endeavour to recover the patrimony of the Church, to petition the Regent to have all the vacant bishoprics filled up according to the order agreed on at Leith, but especially to complain that the bishopric of Ross was given to Lord Methven. He urged also that the Assembly should pass an act, ordering all the bishops admitted under the new articles to give an account of the whole rents of their sees and their intromissions therewith once every year; and that the present Assembly should determine the jurisdiction of the Church, as that part of the polity had long been postponed.¹

For some time Knox had been in feeble health, but his spirit continued vigorous to the last. When the strife between the two contending parties was at its height, he had retired to St. Andrews, as we have seen, but by the end of August, 1572, he had returned once more to Edinburgh and resumed his preaching in St. Giles. When the intelligence of the massacre of the Protestants in Paris on the 25th of August arrived, he was deeply moved. A proclamation was immediately issued in the Regent’s name, calling on the Protestants to meet at Edinburgh on the 20th of October. Every congregation in the kingdom was directed to send one or more commissioners to consult and deliberate upon such matters and overtures as might be proposed, tending to protect and mutually to defend the professors of the Gospel within the kingdom, “from the furious rage and lawless cruelty of the bloodstained and treasonable Catholics, the executors of the decrees of that devilish and terrible Council of Trent.”¹ On the appointed day a number of the ministers and barons assembled. Among other things, they proposed that a national fast should be held, to begin on the 23rd of November and continue to the end of the month, that thereby the wrath of God might be mitigated. They desired that all the Catholics without exception should be summoned before the Council and the commissioners of the Church, to give confession of their faith, and that all who did not conform to the reformed religion, should be punished according to the acts of parliament. For resisting the Catholics in and without the country, they proposed that a league should be made with England and other reformed kingdoms, for their mutual defence, and the maintenance of the true religion against all its enemies; as it was only by banding themselves together that they could hope to thwart and frustrate the endless machinations which were constantly forming against them. “At this time the ministers then in Edinburgh did most vehemently inveigh against this most beastly and more than treasonable fact; whereat the French ambassador, called La Crocke, was not a little displeased, because that his master the King of France should be called a traitor, and a murderer of his own subjects, under promise and trust; but especially against John Knox, who had pronounced in his sermon, and had declared the same to the ambassador to tell his master, that the sentence is pronounced in Scotland, against that murderer the King of France, that God’s vengeance shall never depart from him nor his house, but that his name shall remain an execration unto the posterity to come, and that none that shall come of his loins, shall enjoy that kingdom in peace and quietness, unless repentance prevent God’s judgments.”²

On Sunday the 9th of November, 1572, Knox officiated at the induction of James Lawson as his colleague and successor. His voice was weak, and he never again appeared in public. On the 11th of the month he was seized with a severe cough, but continued cheerful. Richard Bannatyne, his faithful servant, attended him. He was surrounded by his family, and visited by many warm friends. He died in peace and full of hope on the 24th of November, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. On the 26th of the month his body was laid in the grave in the churchyard of St. Giles.¹

The character of Knox is manifested in his work, although the manner of performing it is a fair subject for criticism. But there is a prior point which must be noticed. In that and in all ages of recorded history, when a revolution is preparing and even after it is carried through, those who oppose it with all their power and still strive to resist its outcome, and those who struggle with all their energy to hasten and accomplish it, cannot both be animated by identical ideas, principles, and sentiments. The two contending parties must be influenced and swayed in varying degrees according to the strength or the feebleness of their sentiments, the firmness of their belief, the clearness of their ideas, and the grasp which they have of their principles; or their course of action may be partly controlled by the object and ends towards which they look, as these may be conceived from different points of view: as when one party regards the commemoration of the saints as an essential article of religion while the other does not, and so on through many other articles of belief. If then the God of the one party is exactly the God of the other, they at least desire to take different ways of approaching Him. It is the distinctive and characteristic glory of Roman Catholicism to proclaim that it has never changed its creed nor its principles; both are constantly assumed to be infallible. But Protestantism admits of change, and recognises the laws of development and progress, of corruption and decay, in religious systems as in everything else; and endeavours by a process of gradual elimination to advance towards the conception of a supreme moral ideal to which all theology should eventually subordinate itself.

Those who looked upon the Reformation as an evil, and on Protestantism as a heresy which deserved to be condemned and stamped out, could see in Knox only an embodiment of wickedness. For this reason their libels on his character may be justly disregarded. It is a fashionable thing to talk in modern phrases about toleration, and then proceed to stigmatise the Reformers of the sixteenth century for their bigotry, dogmatism, narrowness, and ignorance; but this is neither just nor in accordance with true historical ideas. In the great religious revolutions of the world toleration has had little place; and for ages the expression of difference of religious opinion has been punished as a crime. There is only one way of fairly appreciating the character of all great religious Reformers. To form a true estimate of their character, a thorough knowledge of the state of society in which they lived, and of all the associated circumstances, is a preliminary requisite. It is in the degree which the Reformer’s ideas and sentiments rise above those of his own age that his character must be measured, not by the standard of a later age. That Knox’s ideas were higher and purer than those current among the ruling class of Scotland is a fact, which any one who desires may verify for himself. That he was animated by a firm belief in a righteous and just God who rules the universe, cannot be doubted. His moral ideas were in some respects in advance of those of his age, but some of them were crude, erroneous, and even savage, and as a thinker he takes no rank. Owing, however, to his natural sagacity and shrewd common sense, and to his deep feeling of the realities and the responsibilities of human life, some of his practical views were singularly clear, far-reaching, and well developed.

In common with all great men and religious reformers, Knox exercised a wonderful sway over his followers, and inspired them with confidence in the hour of danger and of battle. He always avowed his opinions openly, and acted on them with a bold and fearless independence; yet in matters of doctrine he was not rigidly dogmatic. The Reformation Confession of Scotland is remarkable for the acknowledgment of its own fallibility.¹ It was only what he emphatically believed to be the inspired word of God, and necessary for the Church and the good of the nation, that he insisted on being adopted by others. To blame him for not embracing a tolerant policy is simply to forget the state of society and the circumstances of the times; and if he had followed such a course, the Reformation in Scotland would never have been accomplished, while he himself would certainly have been crushed. He was greedy of power and impatient of the least opposition. But he believed that he had a message from God, and that it was his imperative duty to proclaim and enforce it, and in this he toiled with untiring industry and energy. There are some of the lighter shades and graces of life which he seems to have been incapable of appreciating, and he certainly showed a disposition to limit the amusements and the enjoyments of others; but this arose from his deep sense of the realities of human life and the gravity of its manifold duties. Among his friends, and in the family circle, he could on occasion unbend and disport himself in an exceedingly social and agreeable manner; he had indeed a humourous and peculiar comic side which comes out in many forms in his writings.

John Knox, in conjunction with his contemporaries, brought blessings to the people of Scotland which they have never forgotten. Although he was extremely strong in assertion and firm in his own convictions, it should be remembered that he was still stronger in denial and negation. He swept off at once the accumulated mass of legends, traditions, and ceremonies which had enslaved the mind and obscured the glory, purity, and truth of Christianity.

Much of the energy of the leading men among the clergy was still devoted to the improvement of the polity of the Church, and to the planting and the organisation of congregations throughout the country. As yet the practical establishment of the reformed worship was in many places only imperfectly accomplished. The disorder which accompanied the revolution itself, and the internal struggle of the contending factions of the King and the Queen which followed it, had all contributed to leave the Church in a state of disorganisation. The new clergy, with all the power and means at their command, were ardently and incessantly labouring to remedy these evils; but they were met at every turn with the inexorable fact, that it is a much easier matter to destroy the forms and institutions of a religious system than to construct others to replace them. The history of mankind has shown that the genius of destruction is more common than the genius of appropriate construction; hence the curious spectacle presented in the history of Scotland, the constantly recurring tendency and the efforts of the party at the head of the government to return to the forms and modes of the old system of church polity. As the practical solution of the problem involved great secular as well as religious issues, it was hotly contested between the Crown and the clergy for many generations. There was an element of democracy inherent in the very heart of the Reformation; but the Reformers in Scotland went beyond their contemporaries in the admission of democratic principles. Knox maintained that the King and the ruling political powers were responsible to the people, and that if they abused the trust committed to them, the people might lawfully depose them and appoint others in their place. Similar principles were taught by Buchanan. Thus it was that the Reformation in Scotland assumed an intensely political importance, but always in connection with religion and the polity of the Church.

The rarity of original construction among the leaders of the revolutionary movement is very remarkable. Even by Calvin, the greatest master of dogmatic form that the Reformation produced, religion, secular government, and morality were all mixed up and regarded as integral parts of one and the same system. In fact, it could hardly have been otherwise, for philosophy had no separate and independent existence. A Church distinct from and independent of the State was a conception quite alien to the modes of thinking which prevailed among the Reformers. On the other side, a government distinct and independent of the Church was an idea scarcely entertained by the statesmen of the sixteenth century. They all seemed to be more or less possessed with the notions common to theocracies, that the Church and the State as being both under the direction of God, should be associated together. The idea of a theocracy is grand and inspiring in contemplation, but in practical operation it turns out that the Church and the State both claim a supremacy; and they often come to hold very different views as to what is, or is not, the will of God. For the intelligent apprehension of the history of Scotland during the next one hundred years, it is necessary to have a clear conception of this theocratic principle. The struggle of the Crown to establish Episcopacy, and the opposition of the Presbyterian clergy; the Covenants, the Solemn League and Covenant, with many of their attendant tragedies, had their origin in the theocratic notions which were gathered out of the Old Testament, and attempted on both sides to be applied to forms of society and circumstances which were beyond their scope.

After the fall of the castle of Edinburgh, the Regent Morton succeeded in restoring comparative quietness in the kingdom. He was known to be inclined towards the hierarchy of bishops; not from principle but from ambition and greed. The management of the thirds of benefices he took out of the hands of the collectors appointed by the Church, and then united a number of parishes under one minister, who was assisted by readers to whom a trifling stipend was paid. When the Church complained of these abuses, he accused the ministers of seditious and treasonable speeches, refrained from attending their assemblies, and began to question their right to meet and pass acts without his express permission.¹ But crafty and astute as Morton was, he miscalculated his power, and utterly failed to comprehend the intense earnestness and honesty of purpose by which the reformed clergy was animated.

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in March, 1574, and concluded that the bishops should be subject to the discipline of the Assembly, the same as the superintendents in all points. Among the evils which this Assembly enumerated and desired the assistance of the government to remedy, were specified some books issued by the Jesuits and others which contained manifest blasphemies against God and His revealed truth, and were daily brought into the country by Poles and others to the offence of the Church. The Assembly passed an act against simony in the Church, and unanimously declared​—“That all such persons as either buy or sell benefices, or use any other kind of bargaining thereon, either directly or indirectly, should be deprived of all function in the Church; and the discipline of the Church to be laid upon them with the utmost rigour and severity; and the buyers and sellers, or otherwise coupers of the benefices to lose the same for evermore.”¹ This act was much required. It is reported and recorded in many forms that Morton and the nobles carried the traffic in benefices to an enormous length.²

It was daily becoming more manifest that the clergy would throw off what remained of the forms of Episcopacy. The existing state of the Church was extremely confused and unsatisfactory. A convention of the Estates in the beginning of March, 1575, voted that inconveniences had arisen, and were likely to increase, from the want of a proper government in the Church; and a committee was appointed to draw up a form of polity agreeable to the Word of God, and adapted to the state of the kingdom.¹ The General Assembly met on the 7th of March the same year, and appointed a committee of their number to meet with the Regent’s commissioners, and to reason and confer on the jurisdiction and polity of the Church. The draft of whatever scheme was proposed the committee were directed to lay before the Assembly. Andrew Melville was a member of this committee, which was reappointed from time to time, and at last produced the Second Book of Discipline.²

The Assembly met again at Edinburgh in August, 1575, and according to custom the trial of the bishops and superintendents was begun, when John Dury, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, rose and protested that the trial of the bishops should not prejudge what he and others had to propose against the name and office of a bishop. At a subsequent sederunt Andrew Melville addressed the Assembly in support of Dury’s proposition; his speech was attentively listened to, and it produced a marked impression. The question was next proposed, Whether the bishops as then placed in the Church of Scotland had their function in the Word of God or not; and whether the chapters appointed for electing them should be tolerated in a Reformed Church? For the better discussion of the questions, the Assembly appointed John Craig, minister of Aberdeen, James Lawson, minister at Edinburgh, and Andrew Melville, principal of the University of Glasgow, on the one side; and George Hay, commissioner of Caithness, John Row, minister of Perth, and David Lindsay, minister of Leith, on the affirmative side of the subject. In two days the committee reported that they did not think it expedient at present to answer the first part of the question directly; but they were of opinion that if any bishop was chosen without the qualifications which the Word of God required, he should be tried by the Assembly anew and so deposed. Touching the office of a bishop or superintendent, they reported that the name of bishop is common to all who are appointed to have the charge of a particular flock in preaching the word and administering the sacraments, and exercising discipline with the consent of the elders; and that this is the chief function of bishops according to the Word of God. But out of this number some might be chosen to visit and oversee, besides their own congregation, within such reasonable bounds as the General Assembly might appoint to them; and in these districts to admit ministers, with the consent of the other ministers, and the approval of the congregations concerned: and also to admit elders and deacons when necessary, with the consent of the people; and to suspend ministers for reasonable causes, with the consent of their brethren of the province. A full discussion of the report was deferred to the next Assembly.¹ There were six bishops present in the Assembly, none of whom seems to have offered any defence of Episcopacy.

When the Assembly again met at Edinburgh in April, 1576, the question of the bishops was discussed anew. After a long debate the propositions laid by the committee before the last Assembly were affirmed; and the bishops who had not as yet received the charge of a particular congregation were ordered to make choice of one. There was much reasoning touching the districts of the various bishops, superintendents, and commissioners. It was agreed that the existing districts were too large for them to overtake, and it was arranged to allot only such a district to each as he could duly oversee, and with this aim a new distribution of districts was proposed. The persons who visited such districts whether called bishops, superintendents, or by other names, were interrogated at every General Assembly, and required to render an account of their proceedings.¹

Questions and points concerning the patrimony of the Church came before almost every Assembly. At this time it was asked, whether the Assembly should proceed against those who unjustly possessed the patrimony of the Church and the poor, and if so, how far? The Assembly unanimously concluded that they might be proceeded against, first by way of doctrine and admonition, and if in this way no remedy was obtained, then to try the censures of the Church against them. The Assembly reappointed the committee on the polity of the Church, and enjoined its members to hold meetings at St. Andrews, Montrose, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Stirling, and to invite all ranks of the people to attend and give their opinion on the proposed polity.¹

The French Protestants who had taken refuge in England from persecution, addressed a letter to their brethren in Scotland, bewailing their sad condition, and desiring that the money which had been collected for them among the Scots should be sent to them. The Assembly had delayed sending it, because much of what had been promised, was not yet collected; but it was resolved to forward at once the sum in hand to the persecuted Frenchmen.¹

In 1577 the General Assembly met twice at Edinburgh, and on both occasions the book on the polity and jurisdiction of the Church was discussed. The various heads of the subject were put into form and read in the Assembly, and sanctioned by the majority; but the book itself was still reserved for further reasoning. The Regent was asked to attend the Assembly, but he excused himself on the ground that he was otherwise occupied. The Assembly, however, resolved to lay the proposed polity before him. Morton, however, who had never been very popular, was now tottering towards his fall. Early in 1578 he resigned the regency; and the government was committed to a Council of twelve men and the young King, then in his twelfth year.¹

The popular party of the clergy were very active. In 1578 they held three General Assemblies. These enacted that the bishops in the Reformed Church of Scotland should henceforward be called by their own names, and the chapters were prohibited from making any new elections of bishops, under the penalty of deprivation of their offices. All the bishops were ordered to submit themselves to the General Assembly for reformation, and if they refused after admonition, they were to be excommunicated; indeed the ruling party in the Church pursued the bishops with astonishing energy. In the General Assembly which met at Dundee in July, 1580, the subject of bishops was proposed for discussion, and full liberty given to all the members to reason on the matter and express their opinion. After this the Assembly unanimously found that the office of a bishop, as then used and commonly understood, had no warrant nor ground in the word of God. It was therefore declared that this pretended office should be terminated, as being unlawful in itself​—a corruption and an invention of men. All the bishops were charged to demit their office at once, to cease from preaching or administering the sacraments or in any way exercising the functions of pastors, until they received admission anew from the General Assembly, under the penalty of excommunication. So energetic were the measures of the Church that within a year all the bishops had submitted except five;¹ the democratic spirit had become so strong and determined that the Episcopal party had no longer any chance of retaining their position in the Church.

In 1579 the General Assembly had presented a long address to King James VI., putting him in remembrance of things pertaining to the advancement of God’s glory, the welfare of the Church, and the common good of the nation. In this they pointed out to him his duties to the Church, and warned him of his perils. Referring to the translation of the Bible, which under the direction of the Assembly, had been newly printed and dedicated to his highness, they went on to say:​—“This holy book of God should be set forth, and printed within your own realm, to the end that in every parish church there should be kept at least one, to be called the common book of the Church, as a most meet ornament for such a place, and a perpetual register of the Word of God, the fountain of all true doctrine, to be made patent to all the people of each congregation, as the only rule to direct and govern them in matters of religion, as also to confirm them in the truth, and to reform and to redress corruptions wherever they may creep in; certainly we have great occasion both to glorify the goodness of God towards this country, and highly to extol and commend your highness’s most godly purpose and enterprise. Oh! what a difference may be seen between these days of light, when almost in every private house the book of God’s law is read and understood in the Vulgar language, and the age of darkness, when scarcely in a whole city, without the cloisters of monks and friars, could the book of God ever be found, and that in a strange tongue of Latin, not good, but mixed with barbarisms, used and read by few and almost understood and expounded by none; and when the false named clergy of this realm abused the gentle nature of your highness’s grandfather of worthy memory, made it a capital crime to be punished with the fire to have read the New Testament in the Vulgar tongue; yea, and to make them more odious to all men, as if it had been the detestable name of a pernicious sect, they were called New Testamenters.... Call for the wisdom of Solomon to endue your grace with a spiritual spirit, as well in the civil policy as in advancing the spiritual policy of the Church; imitate the fervent faith of Jehosaphat putting his whole trust in the Lord and believing his prophets; imitate the diligence of Jehoash, in repairing the house of the Lord; follow godly Ezekias in rooting out all monuments of idolatry, making the book of the law of God, a long time ignored and left in silence, yea, utterly forgotten, to be publicly read and accepted by the people and recommended to their posterity. To such diligence as this did the prophets of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi exhort the princes of the Jews.... This is a matter most worthy of your royal heart, a purpose proper for the exercise of the vivacity of your divine and high genius.... All other glory at last shall decay, and all commendations that result from other princely acts, are either not of long duration, or commonly mixed up with such things as are also deserving of blame; but the honour of this act shall endure for ever, and shall be fully approved by Him whose judgment must be equal and right, who is the eternal Lord of lords and King of kings; whom with most humble hearts and instant prayers we beseech to bless your majesty with continual and daily increase of His abundant blessings both spiritual and temporal; and to maintain in wealth and prosperity your princely estate to the praise and glory of His holy name, your assured salvation, the comfort and quietness of this country, the overthrow of the power of Satan and the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Amen.”¹

While the clergy were busy abolishing the remaining fragments of Episcopacy, they were, as we have seen, intently engaged in maturing their own scheme of church polity. It had been laid before several Assemblies, and its various chapters and heads had been discussed, altered, amended, and rendered as perfect as possible. It was adopted by the Assembly which met at Edinburgh in April, 1578. This polity, which then became the authorised form of church government in Scotland, is known by the title of the Second Book of Discipline; it was placed before the King, but it was not ratified by the Privy Council nor by Parliament. The Reformed Church, however, acted upon it, and inserted it in the Register of the Acts of the General Assembly in 1581.¹

This book of polity is a comparatively short but logical and compact treatise. It contains thirteen chapters, each of which is again divided into a number of short expository statements of the different points of the general heading or doctrines to be established. It is essentially a deductive work, and presents an admirable example of that method of exposition. In the general scope and spirit of the book there are many points of difference between it and the First Book of Discipline: the earlier book was a meritorious and comprehensive production, but some parts of it were ill arranged and not fully developed, and several other matters were simply introduced to meet the exigencies of the time. There is a notable difference in the view taken of the authority of the civil power in the two books, touching ecclesiastical matters; in the latter the distinction between the Church and the State is far more fully worked out than in the earlier work. The first book, as we have seen, gave a large share of power to the people in the election and control of their ministers; the second book also gave a share of power to the people, but divided it between the judgment of the eldership and the consent of the congregation. It deals less with doctrine and more with the external form and order of the Church than the first book. But according to the second scheme, the Church would be altogether independent of the civil government, and the civil government would in things spiritual be subject to the orders of the Church. “This power and ecclesiastical polity is different and distinct in its own nature, from that power and policy which is called the civil power, and belongs to the civil government of the Commonwealth; albeit they are both of God, and tend to the same end, if they be rightly used, namely, to advance the glory of God, and to have godly and good subjects. This power ecclesiastical flows immediately from God and the Mediator, Christ Jesus, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only spiritual King and Governor of His Church. Therefore this power and polity of the Church should lean upon the Word of God immediately as the only ground thereof, and should be taken from the pure fountains of the Scriptures, hearing the voice of Christ, the only spiritual King, and being ruled by His laws.... Notwithstanding, as the ministers, and others of the ecclesiastical estate, are subject to the civil magistrate, so ought the person of the magistrate in spiritual matters to be subject to the Church, and in ecclesiastical government.

“The Civil power should command the Spiritual to exercise and perform their office according to the Word of God. The spiritual rulers should require the Christian magistrate to administer justice and punish vice, and to maintain the liberty and quietness of the Church within their bounds.... The magistrate ought neither to preach, minister the sacraments, nor execute the censures of the Church, nor yet prescribe any rule how it should be done, but command the ministers to observe the rule commanded in the Word of God, and punish the transgressors by civil means. The ministers do not exercise civil jurisdiction, but teach the magistrate how it should be exercised according to the Word.” This style of illustration by contrast is much employed in the Second Book of Discipline. “The magistrate ought to assist, maintain, and fortify the jurisdiction of the Church. The ministers to assist their princes in all things agreeable to the word, provided they do not neglect their own charge, by involving themselves in civil affairs.

“So it appertains to the office of the Christian magistrate to assist and fortify the godly proceedings of the Church in all behalfs, and to see that the public estate of the ministry be maintained and sustained, according to the Word of God. To see that the Church be not invaded nor hurt by false teachers or hirelings, nor their places occupied by dumb dogs and idle bellies. To assist and maintain the discipline of the Church, and to punish them civilly that will not obey the censures of the Church. To make laws and constitutions agreeable to the Word, for the advancement of the Church and her polity, without usurping anything that does not belong to the civil sword, but belongs to the offices that are ecclesiastical.... And although kings and princes who are godly, sometimes by their own authority, when the Church is corrupted and all things out of order, may place ministers and restore the true service of the Lord, after the example of some of the godly kings of Judah, and divers godly kings and emperors also in the light of the Gospel; yet where the ministry of the Church is once lawfully constituted, and those that are placed in offices perform their duties faithfully, all godly princes and magistrates ought to hear and obey their voice, and reverence the majesty of the Son of God speaking by them.”¹

This treatise laid down the lines of Presbyterianism, that form of church government and organisation which has taken the firmest hold upon the national mind. For some time the Assemblies had been taking steps and labouring incessantly to complete this organisation, but much still remained to be done and various obstacles had yet to be overcome. The most pressing difficulty was the want of a sufficient number of qualified ministers. In 1567 there were upwards of a thousand parishes and churches in Scotland under the charge of two hundred and fifty-seven ministers, one hundred and fifty-one exhorters, and four hundred and fifty-five readers. Thus a number of parishes had neither ministers nor readers. There were only 868 persons, including the superintendents, for all the churches of the country. In 1574 there were two hundred and eighty-nine ministers and seven hundred and fifteen readers engaged in the religious instruction of the people, but there were many complaints that a number of those who had charge of churches were not qualified for the office. To meet the aim of the Presbyterian polity in 1581 a rearrangement of the parishes was proposed. Excepting the Diocese of Argyle and the Isles, it was resolved to reduce the number of parish churches to six hundred, and to divide these into fifty presbyteries​—“twelve churches to every presbytery, or thereabout.” But for some time it was found to be impracticable to carry this scheme fully out, although the unwearying perseverance of the leading ministers was rewarded with a considerable measure of success. It was agreed to abolish the office of reader, and gradually to replace it by regularly ordained ministers. The General Assembly of 1580 concluded that all the readers who had been two years in office should be tried and examined by the superintendents and commissioners, and if they were found unqualified to be pastors and to preach the word, to depose them; and in 1581 it was resolved that no new readers should hereafter be admitted in the Church. We find, however, that there were still readers in the Church at the end of the century. Many of the readers had belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, but they were not allowed to administer the sacraments or to solemnise marriage. Still there was a lack of qualified ministers. This was owing partly to the small and uncertain provision assigned to the ministry, and partly to the disturbing circumstances of the times. Even in 1596 there were four hundred churches destitute of ministers. In Argyle and other parts of the Highlands the doctrines of the Reformation were only very imperfectly introduced, and in some of these portions of the kingdom the people long remained Catholics. “Besides the Diocese of Argyle and the Isles, of which no rentals were ever given up, there are in Scotland nine hundred and twenty-four churches.” But several of them were very small, and many of the churches were demolished. The Diocese of Argyle and the Isles seems to have stood in a rather distant attitude towards the Reformed Assemblies of the Church. In 1586, one of the petitions presented by the Assembly to the King ran​—“That the bishops and commissioners of Argyle and the Isles may be subject to attend upon the General Assemblies, and to keep their synodial meetings as in other parts of the realm, which is a furtherance of the King’s majesty’s obedience, since otherwise they appear to be exempted out of his dominions.” Since the Reformation, however, the means of diffusing religious instruction had been immensely increased; and the facilities for acquiring information were steadily widening.¹

Although Morton had resigned the regency, he was still greedy of power and struggled to regain it; but his enemies were closing in around him and plotting his ruin. The young King naturally had his favourites. They were constantly with him, and aroused the suspicion of the Protestants and the clergy. In the year 1579 Eme Stewart, a cousin of the king, arrived from France. He was kindly received by his royal kinsman, with whom he soon became a great favourite. The two were always together, and whatever interested the King and engaged his attention was sure to interest his cousin. The result was that Eme Stewart speedily rose to greatness. First, he was made an Earl, and shortly after, Duke of Lennox. Then he was appointed High Chamberlain; and in order that his wealth might be commensurate with his rank, the once rich Abbey of Arbroath was freely granted to him. To complete his influence in the councils of the kingdom he was made governor of the Castle of Dumbarton. About the same time a Captain James Stewart, another of the King’s favourites, came upon the scene. In the spring of 1581 he was elevated to the rank of Earl of Arran, and put in possession of a portion of the estates of the house of Hamilton. As long as Morton was at liberty, however, these two upstarts were insecure; they therefore contrived to compass his destruction.¹ The new Duke of Lennox was known to be a Roman Catholic, and it was whispered that he had come to Scotland as a secret emissary of the Pope. To allay the suspicion of the clergy he professed that he was converted and joined the Reformed Church. But the popular mind was not satisfied. It was still feared that a scheme was being formed among those about the court to bring back the old religion; and to calm this apprehension, at the request of the King, a document was prepared, and signed by himself, the Duke of Lennox, and the other members of the royal household in March, 1581. Hence this paper has sometimes been called the King’s Confession, the First Covenant, and in later times the Negative Confession, from its extremely condemnatory character. It was a most vehement protest and denunciation of many of the tenets of the Roman Church, and it concluded with these words, “And because we perceive that the peace and stability of our religion and Church depends upon the safety and good behaviour of the King’s majesty, as upon a comfortable instrument of God’s mercy granted to this country, for the maintenance of His Church, and the administration of justice among us: we protest and promise solemnly with our hearts, under the same oath, hand write, and pains, that we shall defend his person and authority with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the defence of Christ’s Gospel, the liberty of our country, the administration of justice, and the punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within and without this realm, as we desire our God to be a strong and merciful defender to us in the day of our death, and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: to whom with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory eternally. Amen.”²

About the beginning of the year 1581 the Duke of Lennox accused Morton of complicity in the murder of Darnley, the King’s father; and the fallen regent was taken and imprisoned, first in the Castle of Edinburgh, and afterwards in Dumbarton Castle. He was brought to trial on the 1st of June; and on his own confession that he was privy to the plot for the murder of Darnley, was condemned and beheaded on the 2nd of June. Morton faced death as he had faced life, and died with characteristic firmness.¹

Lennox and Arran were now supreme in the court and in the government. But, as usual in the history of Scotland, a party of the nobles entered into a bond against the favourites to crush them, take the King into their own hands, and hold the reins of government themselves.¹ Some time, however, elapsed before the project was matured. This interval afforded Lennox an opportunity of trying his skill in the affairs of the Church. On the death of Boyd, the Archbishop of Glasgow, the disposal of the see was given to Lennox; and although the regulations which recognised Episcopacy had been abrogated by the General Assembly, and virtually abandoned by the court, they were revived by an act of the Privy Council. The Duke offered the see to various ministers upon the condition of their giving over to him the revenues, and agreeing to accept an annual pension; and at last the offer was accepted by Robert Montgomery, the minister of Stirling. To the reformed clergy this simoniacal paction was extremely odious. The matter came before the Assembly in October, 1581, and in spite of Lennox, the court party, and the King, Montgomery was subjected by the Church to a form of treatment which made him glad to submit, and in the end to supplicate for permission to take the charge of a congregation, instead of the Archbishopric of Glasgow. The King’s favourites and the court party had not reckoned on the determined stand which the clergy made against them; and were greatly enraged at being defeated.²

The feeling of uneasiness amongst the people, springing out of a fear that the Catholics were preparing plots, continued. The adherents of the old faith were very active; some of the most ardent of those who had fled to the Continent after the Reformation were then returning; and the court was showing a decided leaning towards Episcopacy. The reformed ministers were not silent. They frequently expressed their sentiments and opinions in the pulpit with irritating plainness. Walter ♦Balcanquhal, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, in a sermon which he preached in October, 1581, said,​—“That within these few years Popery had entered into the country, not only in the court, but in the King’s hall, and was maintained by the tyranny of a great champion, who was called Grace; and if his grace would oppose himself to God’s Word, he should have little grace.” For this sermon he was called before the King’s Council, but he declined to recognise their right to try him for anything which he had spoken in the pulpit, and offered to submit the matter to the General Assembly. His case came before the Assembly, and his brethren, after inquiry among the preacher’s session, unanimously found that there was nothing wrong in his sermon; “but that it was solid, good, and true doctrine.”¹

By the freedom which they took in the pulpit the ministers of Edinburgh were extremely annoying to the dominant faction, who had the King’s ear. John Dury charged the King himself to his face for exchanging presents with the Duke of Guise, “that cruel murderer of the saints.” When he ascended the pulpit, he made the church resound with his denunciations of the bishops, the King, and his favourites, who ruled the kingdom. Dury was at first an exhorter in Leith, and though not a learned man, he had much energy and intense earnestness of purpose. He could wield a weapon on the field of battle, as well as preach a sermon in the pulpit. It was on the evening of Wednesday, the 23rd of May, 1582, in the Cathedral Church of Edinburgh, that he made his great attack upon the court faction. “I pray you,” he said, “what should move Guise, that bloody persecutor, that enemy unto all truth, that pillar of the Pope, to send this present by one of his trustiest servants to our King? not for any love, no, no, his pretence is known.... What amity or friendship can we look for at his hands who has been the bloodiest persecutor of the professors of the truth in all France, neither was there any notable murder or havoc of God’s people, but what he was at in person. And yet for all this, the Duke and Arran will needs have our King to take a present from him. If God did threaten the captivity and spoil of Jerusalem because their King Hezekia did receive a lure and present from the King of Babylon, shall we think to be free when committing the like or rather worse?” In his prayers, he prayed that the Lord would either convert or confound the Duke. For his sermon he was called before the Privy Council, and banished from Edinburgh by an Act of Council. When the General Assembly met in June, 1582, he placed the whole process against him before it, and the members of the Assembly found nothing amiss in what he had spoken. “The whole Assembly found nothing in him but sound, true, and wholesome doctrine; and that he was upright and honest in his life and conversation.” As the King had banished him from the capital, the Assembly gave him liberty to preach wherever providence might cast his lot, until he should be restored to his own flock.¹

The plot against the King’s favourites was at length ripe for execution. The King was very fond of hunting, and on August 22, 1582, his Majesty, by invitation, proceeded to the grounds of Ruthven Castle, in the neighbourhood of Perth, to enjoy his favourite amusement. When the sport was concluded for the day, he went to Ruthven Castle as the welcome guest of its noble lord. Everything passed off in the most agreeable fashion, and his Majesty at last retired to rest. The following morning, when he arose and looked abroad, he was alarmed by the throng of armed men around the place, and when he wished to depart, discovered that he was a captive. The Earl of Arran was seized and imprisoned; and the Duke of Lennox was warned to leave the country without delay. This affair is known in history as “The Raid of Ruthven.”

The King was permitted to step about, but he was attended by a body of well-armed followers to preserve his royal person from danger. In a few days he was removed to Stirling, and in October was conveyed to Holyrood House. A Parliament was then held at Edinburgh on the 19th of October, and an act of indemnity, or rather a vote of thanks to the chief actors in the enterprise, was passed. This was a farce which the aristocracy often played. They proclaimed that, under the providence of God, they were moved to attempt the reform of many abuses in the State, which threatened to subvert the established religion, and were equally perilous to his Majesty and the crown.¹ By the most ardent Protestants and the clergy, “The Raid of Ruthven” was regarded as a deliverance for the Church, and the ministers declared their satisfaction from the pulpits. When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh on the 9th October, 1582, the members heartily approved of the proceedings of the Earl of Gowrie and his adherents, and passed an act declaring “that the prosecution and following out of the said good and godly cause, all particulars put aside, is and shall be most acceptable to all that fear the majesty of God aright; and to all who tender the preservation of the King’s Majesty, most noble person, and estate, and loves the prosperous and happy success of this troubled nation.” The members of the Assembly were therefore recommended to explain the affair, and the proceedings of the noblemen connected with it, to the people throughout the country.²

During the time that the King was in the hands of Gowrie and the barons who joined him, the government was carried on pretty much in accordance with the views of the Church. When ambassadors arrived from France in January, 1583, the Presbytery of Edinburgh appointed some of the ministers to go to the King and admonish him to beware of them. The King thanked the preachers for their friendly admonition, but said that he must show the common courtesies to the ambassadors of his old ally, the King of France; but promised, however, to use no great familiarity with them. The ♦distinguished strangers were permitted to celebrate the mass, and their celebration of it excited the popular displeasure; the ministers of the capital declaimed bitterly against them, especially against La Motte, a knight who wore a white cross on his shoulder, which they called the badge of Antichrist. Indeed, such was the feeling aroused against them that the representatives of the King of France could scarcely appear on the streets without being followed by the jeers and hooting of the mob. The King desired the magistrates to entertain them at a banquet before they departed; but the ministers were extremely opposed to it, and immediately proclaimed a fast to be kept on the day of the banquet. On that day the preachers in St. Giles made the walls resound with their denunciations. Three ministers, in succession, mounted the pulpit, and, without intermission for four hours, thundered out maledictions against the nobles and the magistrates who waited on the ambassadors, and took part in the banquet.¹

Despite the vigilance of his keepers, the young King contrived to escape in the end of June, 1583, and to throw himself into the Castle of St. Andrews. The power of the Ruthven party was shortly after terminated. The King issued a proclamation on the 30th of July, touching the Raid of Ruthven, and announcing that he had resumed his independent authority. Referring to the Raid, he expressed his willingness to forget the offence and grant forgiveness to all concerned in it, if they should timeously profess their penitence; and for some time several of the nobles implicated in the Raid continued members of the Privy Council. But on the 23rd of August the Earl of Arran reappeared in the Council, and shortly resumed his power and influence in the government; and he seems to have instigated the young prince to prosecute to the utmost those concerned in the Raid of Ruthven, and at last, on the 31st of March, 1584, it was denounced as high treason. By this time, a number of those implicated in the Raid had been tried one by one or collectively, and sentenced to banishment or imprisonment, and disgraced. But the hatred of the Earl of Arran’s rule had become general, and a new plot, sanctioned by a bond, was formed against him, in which the Earls of Mar, Angus, and Gowrie, the Lords Lindsay, John Hamilton and Claud Hamilton, the Master of Glamis, and others, were associated. They resolved to seize Stirling Castle, and then to raise a general insurrection. On the 10th of April, Mar and Glamis, with a body of their followers, captured Stirling Castle; but on the 15th of April, the Earl of Gowrie was arrested by Colonel Stewart at Dundee, and immediately conveyed to Edinburgh. The capture of Gowrie somewhat disconcerted the insurgent nobles. Arran, with a strong force, advanced against them, and on the 24th of April, they fled from Stirling, leaving only a garrison of twenty-four men in the Castle. The following day, a proclamation was issued for the pursuit and capture, dead or alive, of the Earls of Mar and Angus, the Master of Glamis, and other rebels; but they escaped by Lanark to Kelso, and crossed the border into England. The King and his army appeared before Stirling, the small garrison left by the insurgents surrendered the Castle, and on the 28th of April, their captain and other three men were hanged. On the 2nd of May, the Earl of Gowrie was tried for treason at Stirling by a jury of his peers, including ♦Argyle, Arran, Crawford, and others; he was convicted, and beheaded the same day beneath the castle wall. The same month an Act of Parliament was passed for disinheriting his posterity, and in August an act of forfeiture was passed against the Countess of Gowrie. From May 1584, till Midsummer 1585, Arran was the supreme ruler of Scotland, and his policy was clearly manifested in the two short sessions of what is known as the “running” Parliament, and in the proceedings of the Privy Council during the brief period of his sway.¹

Meanwhile the apprehensions of the clergy had risen to an unusual height. They had applauded the Raid of Ruthven, and some of them still continued to reiterate their former sentiments on that enterprise. John Dury, who had returned to Edinburgh, was ordered to retire beyond the Tay, and to abide in Montrose. In the middle of February, 1584, Andrew Melville, one of the chief leaders of the clergy, was cited to appear before the Privy Council, touching seditious language which he had uttered in his sermons. When he came before the Council, he at once offered to give an account of the sermon upon which he was accused, and after he had done this, the Council resolved to proceed with the trial. Melville then protested and declined to answer, on the ground that the case ought in the first instance to be tried by the Presbytery. The reading of his protest seems to have greatly irritated Arran and the King. On the second day of the trial Melville lost his temper, and told the King and Council that they had taken too much on themselves to control the servants of a Master far higher than they were. That they might see their rashness, he took a Hebrew Bible from his girdle, and throwing it down on the table challenged his judges to try conclusions on that and then they would see their folly. The record states that he “proudly, irreverently, and contemptuously declared that the laws of God and the practices observed within the country were perverted and not observed in this case.” The court ordered him to enter as a prisoner into the Castle of Blackness within ten hours, under the penalty of being proclaimed a rebel and an outlaw; but Melville preferred to choose his own place of imprisonment, and immediately fled to Berwick, which in those days was the city of refuge.¹

The contest between the Crown and the clergy had now reached a crisis. Archbishop Adamson, acting in concert with the King and Arran, was busy concocting a plan for the reintroduction of Episcopacy and the destruction of the Presbyterian polity, which had been rapidly completing its organisation. Adamson drew up a series of articles for the constitution of the Church and the acceptance of the Government. According to this scheme, which recognised in emphatic terms that the King was head of the Church, and that it was therefore his prerogative to appoint the order of her polity, the government of the Church consisted, subject to the headship of the King, in the power and authority of the bishops, whose office is of apostolic institution and in accordance with the primitive purity of the Church of God. On the other hand, it was pointed out that presbyteries in which laymen associated with the ministers, were in fact a continual source of sedition. No General Assembly was to be allowed to meet without a license from the King.¹ These ideas were instilled into the mind of the young King at this impressionable period of his life, and throughout the rest of his career he never ceased to hold and enforce them to the utmost of his power.

Rumours of impending calamities to the Church and the nation filled the land. In the beginning of May several of the most energetic preachers fled to Berwick, and joined Melville and the banished lords. When Parliament met at Edinburgh on the 19th of May, 1584, these gloomy forebodings were fully realised. A series of acts were passed which placed in the hands of the King powers quite unprecedented in Scotland. One act declared that the King had an absolute power and authority over all ranks in the kingdom, and that he was supreme judge in all matters civil and religious. Another enacted that to speak against any of the proceedings of Parliament should be accounted treason; a third, that all the acts and judgments of the church courts, if unsanctioned by Parliament, were to be held as unlawful, and all meetings of the people to consult and deliberate on any matter, either civil or ecclesiastical, without the King’s special licence, were declared criminal and deserving the severest punishment. A fourth act placed the chief ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the hands of the bishops. A fifth commanded that no person whatever should dare to comment upon the proceedings of the King and Council, either in sermons or declamations, in public, in private, or in familiar conversation; nor at all presume to utter any false and slanderous statements to the reproach, the disdain, or the contempt of His Majesty, or to the prejudice and dishonour of his highness and his parents and worthy progenitors, under the penalty of the laws against the makers and tellers of lies. And that these royal prerogatives which by the gift of heaven belonged to his highness and to all his heirs and successors on the throne should continue unimpaired, it was deemed absolutely necessary to condemn Buchanan’s History of Scotland and his Jure Regni apud Scotos; and therefore all persons who possessed any copies of these books were ordered to deliver them to the royal officers within forty days, “that they might be purified of the extraordinary matters which they contained.”¹

The clergy had become aware that these acts were preparing, and some of them went to the Parliament House, with the intention of protesting for the rights of the Church, but the doors were closed against them. When the Acts were proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh, three of the ministers, Lawson, Pont, and Balcanquhal, protested publicly against them as injurious to the former liberties of the Church. These acts had been passed in great haste, the parliament having sat but two days, and passed forty-nine acts; and the King and Arran made a bold attempt to carry them into effect. For some time nothing was heard of but arrests, trials, hornings and forfeitures. These measures unquestionably expressed the intentions of the party in power. Orders were issued to apprehend the preachers who had protested against the acts, but they had saved themselves by flight. Soon after more than twenty ministers took refuge in England; and there was then a pretty large party of Scots in Berwick, Newcastle, and other parts of that kingdom.¹

The King and his party having now asserted their supremacy, resolved to crush the rebellious nobles and the bold preachers. Parliament again met in August, 1584, and passed thirty-eight acts to strengthen the hands of the government. A process of treason against the banished lords and others associated with them was carried through, and their property was forfeited to the Crown. An act was passed which commanded all beneficed men, ministers, readers, masters of colleges and schools, to subscribe and faithfully promise that they would humbly and dutifully submit to the King, and obey the acts of the last parliament; and to show their submissive spirit, they were ordered at once to obey the bishops and the commissioners appointed by the King to rule over them in all religious matters, under the penalty of forfeiting their stipends.¹ All the ministers between Stirling and Berwick were summoned to appear at Edinburgh, on the 16th of November, 1584, there to attest their submission to the will of the King. This was a very hard measure, and many of the ministers refused to comply with it. When Craig and other leading preachers were before the court, Arran asked them, how they durst venture to be so bold as to find fault with the acts of parliament; Craig answered that they durst find fault with anything which was repugnant to God’s Word. Upon this Arran started to his feet and threatened that, “he would shave their heads, pare their nails, cut their toes, and make them an example to all rebels.” After some further debate, Craig and the most of his brethren signed the deed, with a clause which was added​—“agreeable to the Word of God.” Erskine of Dun, the venerable superintendent, also signed it, and used his influence in persuading others to conform. On the 2nd of January, 1585, it was proclaimed that all those who had not subscribed the acts of parliament were then offered the last opportunity of doing so; and that in the event of their declining, their stipends would be withheld, and their persons punished for contempt of the laws.²

But neither the rage of Arran, nor the kingcraft of James, could stifle thought and feeling. The ministers, however, were extremely hard pressed. The laws against them were rigorously enforced; and even the wives of the refractory preachers were turned out of their houses, and commanded to leave the country.¹ By such means the King and his associates fondly imagined that they would crush the spirit of the clergy and the people; and an onlooker might well have thought that the clergy were completely subdued; but the inner springs of the movement the King with all his craft and acts was unable to touch. It was here that he failed. He could enforce compliance with certain things; but it was beyond his power to control the motives, the ideas, and the convictions; and it is these which ultimately prevail.

One of the inner political peculiarities of the history of Scotland appears in the rapid rise and fall of the factions of the nobles who ruled the country, or rather the king. This process of action and reaction was always at short intervals producing sudden and unexpected changes at the centre of authority. Looking merely at the external features of these manifestations, they seem to be capricious, irregular, and extremely confused; but when we extend our view over a series of centuries, and learn to appreciate the position and the power of the aristocracy, these surprising changes in the government become intelligible and full of sequence. In this light, the long series of unforeseen changes in the government, the seizures, the imprisonments, the depositions, and the murders, of the kings are seen to be the results of a movement springing out of the social and political organisation of the nation. In other words, the aggregates of society in Scotland had for ages circled round the nobles, but often in separate and conflicting groups; hence the comparative weakness of the Crown arose partly from its having to contend with the freaks of these natural and traditional centres of power.

Lord Maxwell had been for many generations the leading local noble in Dumfries and its neighbourhood, and had frequently held the office of Warden of the Western March. On the 29th of April, 1581, John, Lord Maxwell, was appointed to that office by the King and Council. A supporter of Lennox and Arran, immediately after the execution of the Regent, he was created Earl of Morton, and on the 5th of June, 1581, he obtained a charter granting the Earldom to him. The new Earl was at feud with John Johnstone of Johnstone, a powerful border laird, and formerly a Warden of the Western March; and on the 26th of May, 1582, a royal proclamation ordered them not to appear with their armed followers in Edinburgh​—“to a day of law appointed to be held on the last day of May.” On the 19th of November the Earl of Morton was deprived of the Wardenship of the Western March, and his rival, Johnstone of Johnstone, was appointed to the office. The Earl of Morton was subsequently charged with many misdemeanours, and denounced as a rebel. In the winter of 1585 he appears as the leader of a border revolt against Arran’s government; and in April a muster of the loyal vassals of the Crown was ordered, and then to proceed against him, while the gift to Maxwell of the Earldom of Morton was revoked; and therefore he was at war with the King and his government. Maxwell had a thousand armed men in the field, and the banished Lords at once saw their opportunity, and joined him. In the beginning of November, 1585, they returned, and having collected their adherents, met Maxwell at Selkirk. Thence they marched on Stirling with a force of eight thousand men. The King and Arran were at Stirling when the rebels appeared before it. Arran fled towards the Highlands; while the King, notwithstanding all his craft and the astuteness of his favourites, had no alternative but to receive the proffered homage of his rebellious nobles, and pardon them.¹

With the nobles most of the exiled preachers had returned, and the hopes of the Protestant clergy were somewhat brightened. But if they expected much aid from the party whom they had befriended, they were quickly disabused. The nobles told them that first of all their own estates must be restored, and that when they were, they would work intently for the Church. This was the characteristic form of the policy of the aristocracy towards the reformed clergy, when a party of the clergy had interests of their own at stake, they were ready to promise assistance to the clergy; but, excepting a few individual nobles who appeared from time to time, there was no real religious principle or living conviction amongst them from the beginning to the end of the conflict. The clergy themselves, however, continued to struggle on, and fought manfully for the redress of their grievances. The Parliament met in the beginning of December, 1585, and restored the estates of the nobles who had been disinherited for their rebellion. But the despotic acts of 1584 were left untouched. The only act in favour of the Church was one which restored all the ministers and masters of colleges to their offices and possessions.¹

It has become apparent that the King had an enormous amount of self-conceit; and that he was filled with a passion for polemics. He had been so flattered and puffed up by those who had lately associated with him, that he verily thought he could settle theological questions, make a commentary, or handle a text better than all the preachers and professors in the kingdom. About the beginning of the year 1586 he attended worship in the High Church of Edinburgh, when Balcanquhal the minister made some derogatory remarks touching the authority of bishops. James immediately rose from his seat and asked him what Scripture he had for his assertions. The preacher said he could adduce sufficient proofs from Scripture for what he had stated. The King vehemently denied this, and offered to pledge his kingdom that he would prove the contrary, and he added that it was the practice of preachers to busy themselves with such matters in the pulpit, but he was aware of their intentions, and would look after them. The interlude continued for a quarter of an hour, after which the King resumed his seat and heard the sermon to the end. Balcanquhal was subsequently sent for, and in the palace his Majesty had the satisfaction of engaging him for more than an hour.¹ It should be stated, however, that the preachers sometimes provoked the King. A short time before this incident, James Gibson, the minister of Pencaitland, preached a sermon in Edinburgh, and uttered the following statement​—“I thought that Captain James Stewart, Lady Isabel his wife, and William Stewart, had persecuted the Church, but now I have found the truth, that it was the King himself. As Jeroboam and his posterity were rooted out for staying of the true worship of God, so I fear that if our King continue in his present course, he shall be the last of his race.” For this, Gibson was brought before the Privy Council and imprisoned. He was afterwards liberated, and for a time suspended by order of the General Assembly.²

The General Assembly met at Edinburgh in May, 1586. The King attended at the election of the moderator, and gave his vote in favour of David Lindsay, the minister of Leith, who was in consequence chosen. There had been no General Assembly for a long time, and there was much business to transact; but the proceedings ended in a compromise which was satisfactory to neither party. Discussions were held concerning the office of a bishop, the discipline of the Church, the limits of the jurisdiction of the Synods and Presbyteries, and a scheme for the division of the whole country into Synods and Presbyteries was adopted. The King’s Commissioners and the members of the Assembly held long communings; the King had one chief object always in view​—to keep the Episcopal element in the Church. Bishop Adamson, who had been irregularly excommunicated by the Synod of Fife, appeared before the Assembly and submitted. He promised to behave himself for the future, and to submit his life and doctrine to the trial, the judgment and censure of the General Assembly, and upon which, and no other condition, were bishops to be recognised in the Church.¹

But the nation was not as yet fully under the discipline of the Reformed Church. A considerable section of the people still adhered to the Roman Catholic religion in the remote districts of the West and North. There was also, as we have seen, a lack of qualified ministers to overtake the work throughout the country. Besides, the reformed system of organisation had scarcely come into full operation when the diverging views of the King and his government began to obstruct its development.¹

At this time a number of French Protestant ministers had taken refuge in Scotland from the severe persecution which was raging in their own country. The General Assembly employed Andrew Melville to write a letter assuring the exiled preachers that the Assembly would do everything in its power to assist them and to render their sojourn agreeable. The magistrates of Edinburgh allowed the French refugees to meet for worship in the common hall of the College, and allotted stipends to their ministers. Collections also for them and their brethren in England were made in the parishes throughout the kingdom.¹

When it became known in Scotland that Queen Mary was to be executed, the King issued an act of council ordering the ministers at all their preachings and meetings to pray for his mother in this form, “The Lord illuminate and enlighten her spirit, that she may attain to the knowledge of His truth, for the safety of soul and body, and preserve her from the present peril.” Some of the ministers, especially those of Edinburgh, refused to pray but as the spirit moved them. The King seems to have been disappointed at this, and on the 3rd of February, 1587, he appointed Archbishop Adamson to preach in St. Giles, and after a little scene, the bishop was allowed to go on with his prayer and his sermon. The truth is, that James was far more concerned and interested about his own succession to the English throne than about his mother’s death.¹

The unfortunate queen herself was endowed with a courage and a spirit which, in the final scene of her chequered career, astonished and dismayed all her enemies. Never had martyr exhibited a grander spectacle of fortitude than did Mary Stuart in the closing act of her fitful life. And she has had her reward. Her bearing upon the scaffold shed a glory around her which has been transmitted and worshipped by her admirers down to the present. But amongst the people of Scotland she was at the time of her execution but little regarded.

The parliament which met at Holyrood House in July, 1587, ratified all the acts passed in favour of the reformed religion during the minority of the King. An act was passed against seminary priests and Jesuits, and all the enemies of the reformed religion. The temporal lands of the bishoprics, abbacies, and priories, which then remained unappropriated, were annexed to the crown; but the chief gainers by this act were the nobility, as it secured to them the lands which they had obtained since the Reformation. By this measure, whether the King perceived it or not, a severe blow was given to Episcopacy, as it really divested the bishops of the right to sit in parliament by their landed titles, and thus cut from beneath them the strongest ground for their continuance.¹

Meanwhile the Presbyterian clergy were persevering in their attacks on the bishops, and were fast becoming masters of the field. They were making incessant efforts also for the utter suppression of the adherents of Catholicism. An extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly was convened at Edinburgh in February, 1588, for the purpose of arousing the nation to a sense of its danger from the threatened Spanish Armada. Andrew Melville, as moderator of the last Assembly, opened the proceedings with an address, in which he explained the reasons for their meeting. The alarming nature of the crisis had attracted a great concourse of members who were all animated with one spirit. They drew up an extremely dark picture of the state of the kingdom: “It was an exceedingly great grief to all such,” they said, “as have any spunk of the love of God and his Christ, to see Jesuits, seminary priests, and other teachers of popery and error, to be so long suffered to pollute this land with idolatry, corrupt and seduce the people, and spread abroad their poisonable doctrine; to see practisers and traffickers against the true religion, and the present liberty of this realm, to be received, maintained, and entertained; to bring to pass their most dangerous devices and plots, and the receivers, the entertainers, and the maintainers, and the professed favourers of both the one and the other, so to abound everywhere; and not only to be tolerated with impunity, without executing of the laws of the country against them, but also to have special credit, favour, and furtherance, at the court, in the session, in the burghs, and throughout the realm, in all their affairs. And, on the other hand, to behold the true Word of God contemptuously despised by the great multitude; His holy sacraments horribly profaned by private, corrupt, and unlawful persons; the discipline of the Church disregarded, the persons of the ministers and the office-bearers within the same stricken, menaced, and shamefully abused, themselves beggared, and their families shamefully hungered. And yet, notwithstanding, neither the laws against idolatry nor vice were put into execution, neither sufficient laws made for the liberty and welfare of the Church, nor such as are made put into effect for removing of these fearful enormities.” The records then enumerate a number of Catholics by name who were spread throughout the country. In the north, where the Earl of Huntly was supreme, the reformed religion had as yet taken comparatively little hold upon the people. Many of the parishes in this region had no ministers, and even where there were readers and pastors, they found it extremely difficult to perform their functions. In Lennox, at this time, there were twenty-four churches, and not four ministers amongst them all.¹ The Assembly appointed a commission to visit the north, south, and west, to introduce order and discipline, plant qualified ministers, and establish the authority of the Church.

The Scots made every preparation which their limited means afforded to defend themselves, if the Spaniards should attempt to land in Scotland. For some time great uneasiness was felt among all ranks of the nation. Time passed on, and the Spaniards at last landed in Scotland, but not in the character of a conquering army. Early one morning, before the fate of the Armada was known, James Melville, the minister of Anstruther, was informed that a ship filled with Spaniards had entered the harbour and were imploring aid, and the authorities requested his advice as to how they should act towards them. The principal inhabitants of the town were at once assembled, and when the real condition of the Spaniards was ascertained, the Scots treated them with all the kindness and hospitality in their power. Afterwards they obtained a license and safe conduct from the King to return to Spain.¹

But the reformed clergy continued their endeavours to put down the Jesuits and seminary priests, who were protected by some of the local nobles. A convention of the chief ministers was held at Edinburgh in January, 1589, to devise and recommend measures to the government. Andrew Melville was chosen chairman of the meeting, and his nephew James acted as clerk. The meeting petitioned the government to purge the land of all Jesuits and priests; and before separating they appointed a number of their brethren as commissioners to meet every week in Edinburgh, and consult upon matters relating to the Church. In the spring of this year the Earl of Huntly and other Catholic lords broke out into rebellion. They collected their followers and met at Aberdeen in April, but the King marched in person against them, and the insurrection was for a time suppressed.¹

The Presbyterian party was now almost masters of the position. The Synods and Assemblies were enforcing the discipline of the Church with a firm hand. They demanded conformity of polity and doctrine, and the discipline was brought to bear upon the highest as well as upon the humblest in the land.¹ In the pulpit the ministers were extremely outspoken and freely rebuked the King and the chief officials of the government. Mr. Robert Bruce, when preaching a sermon in Edinburgh in the presence of the King said​—“What could the great disobedience of this land mean now while the King was at home, seeing that some reverence was borne to his shadow when he was absent? He answered, it meant a universal contempt of the subjects; therefore he willed the King to call to God, before he either ate or drank, that the Lord would give him a resolution to execute justice upon malefactors, although it should be with the hazard of his life. Which if he would courageously attempt, the Lord would raise anew to assist him, and all these obstacles would vanish away, otherwise he would not be suffered to brook his crown, but every man will have one.” Others of the ministers were equally explicit in warning the King of his sins.²

The King himself was in a state of almost utter poverty. During the revolutionary period the revenue of the Crown had decreased; and the unseemly squabbles in the court, together with the King’s inability to punish notorious criminals, and his leniency towards the Catholic Earls, had all tended to lower him in the eyes of the people. Harassed by these circumstances and uncertain which way to turn, the idea seems to have crossed his mind that he might regain the esteem of the people by cultivating the friendship of the Church. The leaders of the clergy were only too eager to let such an opportunity slip. When the General Assembly met in May, 1592, it was resolved to petition Parliament to pass an Act which should recognise the polity and the liberties of the Church.¹

Parliament met at Edinburgh in June 1592, when the petition of the General Assembly was laid before it. The Assembly craved that the acts passed against the discipline and the liberty of the Church in the year 1584, should be repealed, that the discipline which had been in use should be ratified, and that the act of annexation should be reduced, and the patrimony of the Church restored. An act was accordingly passed which confirmed all the liberties and privileges granted by the King and the regents in his name to the Reformed Church as then established in the kingdom. The act recognised and sanctioned the general assemblies, synods, presbyteries, and particular sessions of the Church. The General Assembly was to be allowed to meet once a-year, or oftener, if necessary, the time and place of the next meeting to be fixed by the King or his Commissioner, or if neither of them should be present, by the Assembly itself. Then followed a special abrogation of acts passed in bygone ages in favour of the Roman Catholic Church, which were prejudicial to the Reformed Church and her discipline within the realm. Acts of the Parliaments of James II. and James III. were specially pointed out as recognising the authority of the Pope and holy days, but these and all other acts authorising the interference of the Pope were declared to be for ever annulled. It was distinctly stated that the act passed in the Parliament of 1584, concerning the royal supremacy, should be in no way derogatory to the privileges of the office-bearers of the Church, touching the heads of religion, points of heresy, excommunication, appointment or deprivation of ministers, or any censures warranted by the Word of God. The act of 1584 relating to the bishops was also repealed.¹ Thus the legal establishment of Presbyterianism, for which the leading men among the clergy had so long fought, was at last obtained. Although the settlement was far from complete, it has always been regarded by the Presbyterian body of Christians as an important step in national reformation. But the Reformed Church of Scotland did not consider either this, or any other Parliamentary sanction as the basis of her religious constitution. This had already been laid down and so far fixed in her Confession and in her Books of Discipline; but all her internal regulations she considered to be founded upon higher grounds than any earthly authority. Still in that age, when the traditions of the old system were by no means extinct in the country, and while the energy of Roman Catholicism was successfully recovering its lost ground in other parts of Europe, it will be seen that it was no small advantage for the Reformed Church of Scotland to obtain a firmer and more public establishment of the principles of Protestantism.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Continuation of the History of Protestantism.

THOUGH the clergy had obtained the sanction of the government to their form of Church polity, the public mind was still agitated. The air was filled with rumours of plots and conspiracies on the part of the Jesuits, and of projected invasions for the overthrow of the Reformed religion and the massacre of the Protestants. The zeal of the clergy against the Catholics was intense and implacable. They were much annoyed at the lenity of the King towards the Catholic Earls of Huntly, Errol, and Angus, and were constantly on the outlook for their enemies. In the month of November, 1592, they appointed a committee to sit in Edinburgh during the emergency in order to watch over the Church. To sharpen the feeling of the people, they proclaimed a fast to begin on Sunday, the 17th of December, “That by true humiliation and unfeigned repentance, the fearful judgments of God that hang over this land may be prevented.” During the fast the pulpits resounded with denunciations of the Catholics, the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the remissness of the King and the government in not executing justice upon malefactors and murderers. According to Calderwood, the effect of the fast was immediately manifested in the apprehension of George Ker, a doctor of laws, who was connected with a strange conspiracy. On the 27th of December, Andrew Knox, the minister of Paisley, having learned that Ker was ready to proceed to Spain, traced him to Glasgow, thence to the Island of Cumbrae, and apprehended him on the ship in which he was about to sail. Ker’s baggage was searched, and some packets of letters of a suspicious character being found, he was conveyed a prisoner to Edinburgh. Among the letters, several signatures of the ♦Earls of Huntly, Errol, and Angus, were found at the bottom of blank slips of paper. Graham of Fintry, an associate of Ker’s, was shortly after apprehended. Ker was tortured, and on the first stroke of the boots confessed the conspiracy. This mode of extracting information destroys any degree of credit which might otherwise attach to the statements of the accused individual, but it was enough in the heated temper of the clergy and the people, to arouse their passions and feelings to a pitch of great excitement. The Privy Council, after examining the letters, had no doubt of their authenticity. The King, then at Stirling, was requested to return to Edinburgh. The people clamoured for the trial and execution of Ker; and the authorities issued a proclamation ordering all Jesuits and excommunicated persons to depart from Edinburgh within three hours, under the penalty of death. Upon Sunday the 7th of January, 1583, the King attended church, and Robert Bruce, the preacher, exhorted him “that now was the time to execute justice,” or else, said he, “the chronicles will keep in remembrance King James VI. to his shame.” A meeting of the Protestant barons and ministers was held, and they called upon the King to prosecute and punish the traitors. Ker escaped; but Graham was convicted of conspiracy, and on the 10th of February, he was executed to appease the rage of the people, but in vain. On the night after his execution, a bill was posted up in a conspicuous part of the capital, which asserted that all the preparations against the Catholics would end in nothing, for the greatest criminals had been allowed to escape by the connivance of the Court.¹

Towards the end of February, 1593, the King, at the head of an army made a demonstration against the Catholic Earls, but it resulted merely in the Earls of Huntly and Errol withdrawing to Caithness. Many circumstances indicated that the King intended to treat them leniently, and there were obvious reasons for this policy in the existing state of things. The Crown of Scotland was never strong, and the craft of James VI. was little fitted to enhance its importance. The nobles, on the other hand, were unusually distracted by feuds and factions, springing out of a variety of causes, social and political, as well as religious. Since the Reformation their landed possessions had frequently changed hands. The national records of the time are full of forfeitures, revocations, and confirmations, of landed estates; and naturally the plots of those who had been defeated and ruined were incessant. About one-third of the nobles were still more or less firmly attached to the Roman Catholic religion.¹ From these circumstances a mass of difficulties arose which reduced the Crown to the most miserable straits, and placed the King in the most ridiculous plights. Unfortunately, James had neither the sagacity to appreciate the tendency of his age, and to follow and moderate it, nor grasp of principle and firmness of character to turn it aside. His thin narrow mind was filled with little conceits and possessed with the most childish notion of his own power and prerogatives; while the moral side of his character was even worse than the intellectual, indeed, he had little regard either for truth or honesty. Yet, he was continually tampering with the Church, and in his own underhand and crafty fashion endeavoured to impress his notions upon her, and to install the bishops as executors of his will.

The reformed clergy boldly insisted on the complete submission of the Catholics, and the entire extirpation of their faith. The General Assembly which met at Dundee in April, 1593, called upon the King and the government to punish all the Catholics in the country, according to the laws of God and the laws of the realm. They insisted “That Parliament should declare all the Jesuits and trafficking Catholics to be guilty of treason, and that the same penalties should be enforced against all persons who harboured them, not for three days, as the law then stood, but for any time, however short. That all those whom the Church found to be Catholics, although not excommunicated, should be debarred from holding any office in the kingdom; and also debarred from all access to his Majesty, and from the protection of the laws; and that the consequences of horning and all other social penalties should follow upon such a declaration, as upon the sentence of excommunication: that an act of council should be immediately made thereon, till the next Parliament, when it should be passed into a law.”¹

When the petition in which these demands were embodied came before the King, he refused to grant it. In his answer he reminded the petitioners of his right to appoint the day and the place of the Assembly, and desired them to pass an act prohibiting every minister from declaiming in their pulpits against himself or the proceedings of his council. He also wished the ministers to name six of the wisest of their number, that from these he might select two to serve in his own household. Nothing, he said, would afford him more pleasure than to hear through the clergy what was doing in all parts of the country, for whoever were their enemies, were his enemies; he would be highly delighted, not only to hear from time to time about the practices of the Catholics and the Spanish faction, but also about Bothwell, whenever they had any information of him, because his whole course of action was directed against his Majesty’s person, and the total subversion of all religion.¹

Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, was a near relative of the King. But he was restless, daring, and unscrupulous; and had repeatedly thrown the King into fits of terror for his life, by sudden and unexpected attempts to make him a prisoner. Bothwell was known to have entered into plots with the Catholic party, the Protestant party, and with Queen Elizabeth; but he lacked the strength of character and intelligence to carry out any great enterprise; while his exploits with the King, although extremely annoying and fearful to the royal personage himself, often assumed a rather ridiculous and comic form, and had no effect whatever on the main current of history.¹

Parliament met in July 1593, but the process against the Catholic lords failed. The King’s advocate informed the commissioners of the Church that the summons was informal, and the evidence against them insufficient, and that it was impossible then to forfeit them. An act was passed against the mass, and a searching inquisition was ordered to be made for all Catholics. But this did not satisfy the clergy; and they freely expressed their sentiments in the pulpits to the people. On the Sunday after the close of the parliament, John Davidson said in his sermon, “It was a black parliament, for iniquity was seated in the high court of justice: the arch traitors having not only escaped, but in a manner were absolved, as it was alleged that no evidence could be adduced against them. The absolving of the wicked, imported the persecution of the righteous, except God restrained the adversaries. Let us pray, that the King by some sanctified plagues, may be turned again to God.”¹

The King was still averse to proceed to extremities against the Catholic Earls. But the more ardent Protestants and the clergy had come to the conclusion, that it was impossible for the old and the new religion to exist together in Scotland. They therefore deemed it necessary to employ the power of the Church against the Catholics. The Synod of Fife met at St. Andrews on the 25th of September 1593, and agreed to a resolution to excommunicate the Earls of Huntly, Errol, Angus, Lord Home, and others of their adherents. This sentence was ordered to be intimated in all the congregations throughout the kingdom. The Synod concluded its proceedings by exhorting the pastors to prepare themselves by prayer and diligent study of the word, for the solemn fast which was to be observed in every parish of the realm.¹

The excommunication of the Earls highly displeased the King, and there was much contention between him and the clergy concerning it. The Earls themselves then supplicated the King to put them on their trial for conspiracy, and complained that they had been excommunicated and were treated as traitors, without having been offered an opportunity of vindicating themselves. When everything is taken into account, it certainly was hard that they should be compelled either to renounce their own religion and sign the Protestant confession, or submit to banishment and utter ruin. These, however, were the alternatives which the clergy were determined to exact. From the standpoint of modern ideas, the proceedings and the demands of the Protestants would be pronounced wholly wrong; but at the time the prevailing ideas, and the religious notions of truth and error, were far more influenced by the pressure of circumstances than they are in the present. With their aim, and from their point of view, the single line of policy which they followed was thoroughly logical and honest according to their light. On the 17th of October the leading ministers and their adherents met at Edinburgh to consult and prepare to face the threatened danger. They appointed six of their number to request the King to take order with the excommunicated Earls, and they freely expressed their regret that he had permitted those cast-off persons to come into his presence. The King gave them no thanks. He upbraided the members of the Synod of Fife for excommunicating the Earls. But the representatives of the clergy told him, that if their enemies took up arms, they had resolved to meet them face to face. “This,” they said, “we are minded to do, although it should be with the loss of all our lives in one day; for certainly we are determined that the country shall not brook us and them both, so long as they are God’s professed enemies.”¹

Matters were rapidly running to a crisis. Both parties were mustering their followers in all parts of the country. To the religious elements of the struggle, there were added the bitter and revengeful feelings springing out of long-standing family feuds, and if once the swords were drawn, the results would prove disastrous in the extreme to all alike. This was well known to the government; and a committee of the Three Estates, along with six of the leading clergy, met to deliberate on the state of affairs. After some animated debates, the King, on the 26th of November, pronounced what was called “The Act of Abolition,” touching the accused Earls. This act stated that the true religion, which was established in the first year of his Majesty’s reign, should be the only one professed in Scotland; and that those who had never embraced it, and those who had declined from it, should either conform to it, before the 11th of February, 1594, or depart from the country to such places as the King should direct, and there to remain till they professed the truth and satisfied the Church. During their banishment, they were to retain the full possession of their estates. All accusations against them were annulled. The Catholic Earls were ordered to inform the King and the Church, before the 11th of January, which of the alternatives they meant to accept.¹

This act pleased neither party. The Earls were not disposed to renounce their religion, nor to retain it only at the cost of exile: while the clergy and their adherents were extremely annoyed at this temporising line of action, and immediately expressed their disapproval of it from their pulpits. On the 30th of November, 1593, Mr. Balcanquhal touched upon the practices of the court, in his sermon, and recalled the judgments of God that had fallen upon some of the chief actors​—“as upon Bothwell who had died like a dog; and upon the Queen who was beheaded that day twenty years, after she had caused her husband to be murdered.” On the 4th of December, the ministers of the Presbytery of Edinburgh met to consult upon the Act, and many faults were found in it. Some proposed to amend it, but Pont thought it should be disannulled, for the reason that if they amended it, it would be called their work. Upon Sunday, the 16th of December, Mr. Robert Bruce in his sermon, in the presence of the officers of State and the Justice-Clerk, said “The King’s reign would be troublesome and short if he did not abolish the Act of Abolition.”¹

The clergy stood constantly on their watch-towers, ready to descry the enemy. When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh in May, 1594, Andrew Melville was chosen moderator, and the Assembly immediately proceeded to deal with the case of the Catholic Earls. Some persons in Perth, who had resetted them, were sharply called to account for their conduct; but they confessed their offence, and satisfied the Church. The Assembly unanimously avowed and ratified the sentence of excommunication passed by the Synod of Fife against the Catholic Lords, and ordered this to be intimated to every congregation in the kingdom. As the Catholic Earls had disregarded the Act of Abolition, and were persisting in their unholy and unlawful courses, the Assembly petitioned the King to confiscate all their lands, and annex them to the Crown; and then to muster the feudal array of the realm for the purpose of pursuing and defeating them.¹

Parliament met in June 1594, and though the Catholic nobles were then in open rebellion, they had friends in Parliament. Andrew Melville appeared for the Church before the Lords of the Articles, and insisted upon strong measures being taken. He told the King to his face, “That many thought it a matter of great weight to overthrow the estate of three so great men. I grant that it is so; but yet it is a greater matter to overthrow and expel out of the country three far greater, to wit, true religion, the quietness of the commonwealth, and the prosperous state of the King.” Addressing the Lords, he said​—“If ye can get us a better commonwealth than our own, and a better King, we are content that the treacherous lords be spared; otherwise we desire you to do your duty.” The majority of the Lords of the Articles voted for the forfeiture of the Earls, Parliament passed the act, and they were proclaimed traitors and rebels. The Earl of ♦Argyle was commanded to assemble his vassals and to wage war against them. But the Earls of Huntly and Errol attacked the hastily collected and undisciplined army of ♦Argyle in Glenlivet, on the 13th of October, and after a severe struggle, ♦Argyle was completely defeated, and his followers fled in confusion.¹

The King had advanced to Dundee when tidings of ♦Argyle’s defeat reached him, and he at once pushed forward with his army to Aberdeen. There some of the local chiefs, who were at feud with Huntly, joined him. On this occasion, Andrew Melville and a number of the most ardent preachers accompanied the army, and by their exertions and example contributed to bring the expedition to a successful issue. Huntly found himself unable to face the royal army and fled to Caithness. His stronghold, the Castle of Strathbogie, was dismantled; the Castle of Slaines, the seat of the Earl of Errol, and other mansions were also defaced. On returning to Aberdeen, the King caused a number of the Earl of Huntly’s adherents to be executed, and proclaimed a general pardon to all who had been with him at the Battle of Glenlivet, providing they paid the fines imposed by the Council. After making arrangements with the view of securing peace in the north, the army was disbanded, and the King returned to Stirling on the 14th of November, 1594.¹

The Catholic Earls were reduced to despair, and they quitted the country in the month of March, 1595. The Protestants, however, did not relax their efforts. They knew that the Catholics would renew their plots. When the General Assembly met at Montrose in June, 1595, an order was issued to the presbyteries throughout the country to proceed against the Catholics within their bounds and excommunicate them, and to enforce the penalties of the law upon all who had offended, and on any who held intercourse with those who were absenting themselves from the sacraments on the plea that they were at deadly feud with their neighbours; indeed there was still a considerable amount of social anarchy in the country which seemed to defy all restraints and remedies.¹ Owing to the enormous iniquity and sins of the nation, the Assembly ordered a general fast to be held in all the churches throughout the kingdom on the first two Sundays of August. The ministers were enjoined to put the causes of the fast fully before the people. They were chiefly​—“The great and present danger that the Church, the commonwealth, and the King standeth in through the wrath of God, not only kindled against us, but also justly burning and devouring us up already by sundry fearful plagues and punishments ... the deep conspiracies and daily confederacies of the faction of the known adversaries to religion, to the King, and to the country, and threatening to root us out from being any more a nation, and the breaking and removing of our two estates of Church and Commonwealth.” The Assembly also resolved that it was their duty to sympathise with the Protestants of other Churches.²

The clergy were in continual fear of the return of the Catholic nobles and the renewal of their intrigues. When the General Assembly met at Edinburgh in March 1596, the King attended in person, and is reported to have delivered a speech in which he regretted that the ministers were so poorly paid. A list of the crimes, the sins, and the iniquities, of all ranks in the nation was drawn up by this Assembly. It presents a frightful state of society, and will be more fully examined elsewhere. The King, we learn, was in the habit of swearing, and set a bad example to all around him. He had also a habit of conversing with those beside him in the church during the time of sermon, and was therefore earnestly recommended to hold private meditation with God in spirit and conscience. The offences in the court and judgment seat were:​—“a universal neglect of justice both in civil and criminal causes​—by a system of granting remissions and respites for slaughter and other hideous crimes; and no execution of the laws against vice, nor in favour of the Church. Most of the judges in civil matters were declared unqualified for their office, either in respect of knowledge or conscience, or both; and when any office became vacant, the worst men were advanced to it both in high and low positions. The Court of Session was charged with buying pleas, delaying justice, and bribery, which was palpably to be seen by sudden conquests​—by the extraordinary quickness in obtaining property which had become so common.”¹

In the summer of 1596, the Catholic Earls had secretly returned, and there were indications that the government would restore them. Huntly had forwarded overtures to the King offering submission and praying to be absolved from the sentence of excommunication. At a meeting of the nobles and some of the clergy it was agreed that Huntly might, under certain conditions to be drawn up by the King and the Privy Council, be received. But the majority of the clergy were opposed to this resolution; and the commissioners of the last General Assembly met at Cupar in Fife, and sent a deputation to remonstrate with the King on the evil consequences which were likely to result from the measures which his Council were pursuing. The King assured the ministers that the Catholic Earls should obtain no favour, until they had satisfied the Church. The ministers, however, had no faith in the King’s promises; and sixteen of their number from different parts of the country were selected to sit in Edinburgh, and along with the ministers of the capital, to watch over the reformed religion. This body immediately proceeded to action, and summoned Seaton, the President of the Court of Session, to appear before the Synod of Lothian to answer for his conduct, touching the recall of the Earl of Huntly. The President offered some resistance, but found it necessary to come forward and satisfy the Church.¹

The King quickly saw an invasion of his royal prerogatives in these proceedings. He endeavoured to convince the clergy of the justice and mercy implied in his proposals to restore the Catholic Earls, but in vain. The clergy were inexorable; and their firmness strengthened him in his intention to remodel the government of the Church, whenever an opportunity occurred. While the feelings of both parties were running high, and recriminations were passing from mouth to mouth, Mr. Black, one of the ministers of St. Andrews, delivered a sermon on the threatened triumph of idolatry in Scotland. Alluding to the prelacy established in the adjoining kingdom, he said: “The Queen of England was an atheist; the religion professed in that kingdom was nothing better than an empty show, gilded by the injunctions of the bishops; and not content with this pageant at home, they were persuading the King to set it up in Scotland. As for his highness, none knew better than he did of the meditated return of the Catholic Earls, and therein he was guilty of manifest treachery. But what could they look for? Was not Satan at the head of both court and council? Were not all kings devil’s bairns? Were not the Lords of Session miscreants and bribers, the nobility cormorants, and the Queen of Scotland a woman whom for fashion’s sake they might pray for, but in whose time it was vain to hope for any good.”¹

For this Black was summoned to appear before the Privy Council. But the ministers knew that a blow was aimed against the liberties of the Church, that the King was bent on limiting freedom of speech in the pulpit; and they therefore advised him to decline the authority of the Council, in the first instance, on the ground that it was a spiritual subject. On the 10th of November, 1696, he obeyed the summons and appeared before the Council; but he denied that the court had any right to try him. “He was ready,” he said, “to give a confession and stand to the defence of every point of the truth of God which he had uttered ... yet seeing I am not at this time brought to stand before your Majesty and council, as a judge set to cognise and discern upon my doctrine; and though my answering to the said pretended accusation might import with the manifest prejudices of the liberties of the Church, and acknowledging also of your Majesty’s jurisdiction in matters that are merely spiritual, which might move your Majesty to attempt further in the spiritual government of the Church”; and so on. Afterwards he gave his reasons at length for declining the jurisdiction of the court. Enraged at this refusal of the preacher to recognise his supremacy, the King issued a proclamation commanding the commissioners of the Church to leave the capital and return to their flocks within twenty-four hours, under the penalty of rebellion. At so critical a time the ministers were not disposed to obey this royal order, as it was deemed rather arbitrary. They resolved therefore to remain and watch over the safety of the Church. Some of them went to the King to try the effect of a personal interview, but he insisted stoutly that they should allow his claim of supreme jurisdiction, as the condition of stopping the process against Black. The ministers could not agree to this, which would have been almost equivalent to a renunciation of their Protestantism; so the charge against Black was recast, and his trial proceeded. He was found guilty, and the measure of his punishment referred to the King; meanwhile he was ordered to be confined beyond the North Water.¹ The ministers then proclaimed a fast to avert the impending danger and judgments, “When the doctrine was sounded powerfully, and stirred up a mighty motion amongst the people of God.” The King seems to have considered this as a personal affront, and issued an order commanding the commissioners to depart from the capital; and announced that the ministers must subscribe a bond to obey the King and the Privy Council, before they received their stipends. At the same time Black was ordered to enter into ward.²

The commissioners left Edinburgh on the 15th of December, 1596, and were no sooner gone than the King again thought of trying his craft on the ministers of the capital, who he imagined would be more manageable when alone. He accordingly invited them to an interview, but in reply they said that unless the commissioners were recalled as openly as they had been dismissed, there could be no communication between the court and them. The King’s flatterers continued to keep him upon the line of thought towards which he had always inclined; and he next commanded twenty-four of the most ardent Protestants among the citizens to leave Edinburgh within six hours. The excitement in the capital then became extreme. On the 17th of December a rumour spread that Huntly had been at the Palace of Holyrood, and the alarm of the preachers was intense. Balcanquhal was ascending the pulpit for the week-day sermon when this story was told to him, and unaware of its falsehood, he commented on it in his discourse, and aroused the feelings and passions of the congregation to the highest pitch. At the close of his sermon, he called on the barons present not to disgrace their names and their ancestors, but to meet the ministers immediately in the Little Church. A crowd had already collected there, and when the barons were seated, the preacher addressed them on the dangers to which the Church was exposed by the return of the Catholic lords. He reminded them of the rigour lately shown to the faithful professors of the reformed religion, and desired them to hold up their hands and swear to defend their faith against all opposers.¹

A deputation was sent to the King, who at the moment was in the Tolbooth with the Lords of Council. When admitted, they informed him that they were sent by the barons convened in the Little Church, to lay before his Majesty the imminent dangers which threatened religion. “What dangers see you,” said the King, “and who dares to assemble against my proclamation?” Lord Lindsay replied, “we dare do more than that, and will not suffer religion to be overthrown.” The clamour increased, and a number of the people rushing into the room, the King started to his feet in great alarm, and without giving any answer, ran down the stairs and ordered the doors to be shut. The deputation returned to the Little Church, where one of the ministers had been reading the story of Haman and Mordecai; and when it was announced that the King had given no answer, the multitude were furious. The tumult thickened, and Lord Lindsay shouted at the top of his voice not to separate, that their only hope of safety was to remain and send notice to their friends to come and assist them. Some cried “to bring out the wicked Haman;” others shouted, “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” One of the crowd cried, “Fy, Fy, save yourselves, the Catholics are coming to massacre you, To arms! to arms! bills and axes.” The seething mob rushed hither and thither in wild confusion. Some fancied that the King was a prisoner, and ran to the Tolbooth; others, imagining that their ministers were being murdered, flew to the church; some knocked on the Tolbooth door, and called for President Seaton and other councillors to be delivered up to them, that summary punishment might be executed upon the misdoers. At last the provost of the city arrived. He addressed the multitude, and advised them to go quietly to their homes; and thus the uproar which threatened to be dangerous was quelled without serious mischief.¹

After the King’s courage had revived, he determined to let the ministers and the citizens feel the weight of his wrath. The following morning he left Edinburgh for Linlithgow; and there issued a proclamation which described the disturbance of the preceding day as a treasonable uproar, excited by the ministers; and ordered the courts of law to leave the capital, which was no longer a fit place for the administration of justice. At the same time he commanded all the barons to depart to their own homes, and not dare again to assemble until they had received his permission.¹

This unexpected move on the part of the King, cowed the citizens and cooled their ardour. The burgesses and craftsmen saw in it the decay of the town, and the loss of their trade, and were therefore ready to yield, and implore his Majesty’s clemency. The clergy, on the other hand, were prepared to brave the tempest. When all the people were in despair, Mr. Robert Bruce ascended the pulpit, and upbraided them for their timidity. He said, “A trial shall go through all men, from the King and Queen to the council and nobility, from the session to the barons, from the barons to the burgesses, yea, to the very craftsmen. The love of all men shall be seen, both towards God and the religion. Sorry am I that I should see such weakness in many of you, that ye dare not so much as utter one word for God’s glory and the good cause.... I am heartily sorry that our holy and gracious cause should be so obscured by this late tumult, and that the desperate enemies should be emboldened to pull down the crown off Christ’s head.... Let us suffer cheerfully, and in the meantime stand to the cause. The Lord so bear us out that, if the greatest were sitting there, we shrink not to admonish them with all reverence.... The Lord prepare us in mercy, enlarge the narrow bounds of our wretched hearts that they may be capable, and multiply His holy and divine unction on them, that His glory may break out, and shine on our constancy and holy perseverance; and, on the other side, that the tokens of His hot and just wrath may break up and begin in the heart of the enemy, and awaken their conscience, and open their mouths to confess their own turpitude, to the honour of the good cause, and the glory of Christ for ever.” The ministers invited Lord Hamilton to place himself at the head of those who had embraced the cause of the Church; but he modestly declined the honour, and sent the letter of invitation to the King. The citizens of Edinburgh dispatched humble messages to the King to appease his wrath, and solicited him to return to his capital, but in vain. The only answer he returned was an announcement, that ere long he would come to Edinburgh, and let them know he was their King. The Provost was meantime ordered to imprison the ministers; and the tumult was declared to be treason by an act of the Privy Council. A rumour arose that the city was to be sacked, razed, and sown with salt. But on the 1st of January 1597, the gates and streets were occupied with bodies of armed men, and the King re-entered the capital with all the pomp and circumstance of a conquering hero. The magistrates and the citizens offered the most complete submission, but the King declined to accept it. A convention of the Estates at Holyrood anew denounced the disturbance as a treasonable riot and ordered the Provost and Bailies to be imprisoned in Perth before the 11th of February, and there to remain till they were tried.¹

The day of the trial was at last fixed for the 5th of March, 1597; and the case was then put into this form:​—two of the bailies, the treasurer, the dean of guild, four of the council, the town clerk, and four of the deacons, were summoned to attend their trial, as representing the city. On the appointed day they all appeared, except one, who, it was alleged, had the King’s dispensation; but the plea was overruled, and they were all found guilty of not fulfilling the order of the council, which required thirteen to be present. The city was denounced, the burgesses declared rebels, and all their public property forfeited to the crown. This sentence filled the capital with dismay; the magistrates threw up their offices and refused to act, and for fifteen days the city was without either magistrates or ministers. After this the provost, the magistrates, and the deacons were admitted into the King’s presence at Holyrood, and on their knees besought his highness to take pity on the city as they had thrown themselves entirely upon his mercy. The King severely reprimanded them, and after expatiating long on the enormity of their offence, he ordered them to retire, till he should resolve upon their doom. When recalled, they were commanded to give up to his Majesty the houses in the churchyard where the ministers used to dwell, who were henceforth to live separately; to protect the Lords of Session during their sittings under a penalty; to give up the lower council house for exchequer chambers, and to pay a fine of twenty thousand marks.¹ Such was the enormous punishment which the wisdom of James VI. deemed it necessary to inflict upon the inhabitants of Edinburgh for a harmless hubbub, which it was impossible for them to have foreseen or prevented, and for which the King himself and his courtiers were more to blame than any one else in the kingdom.

This severe punishment of the people of Edinburgh enabled the King to extend his influence and power over the Church. For a time the chief ministers of the capital were silenced and put out of the way. Two of the most active had fled to England, and other two were in Fife. James had thus gained ground in the direction of the object which he had in view​—the establishment of Episcopacy. He was aware that any overt attempt to reintroduce the bishops would be firmly resisted; and in accordance with the statecraft and pedantry on which he prided himself, a series of fifty-five questions were drawn up and published in the name of the King,¹ touching the polity of the Church, and appointing a General Assembly to be held at Perth on the last day of February, 1597. Those questions were drawn up by Secretary Lindsay, and they were issued with the intention of casting discredit upon the established government of the Church. The points raised in this long string of questions involved among other matters the great and difficult problem of the relations of the Church and State, a subject on which the King and the clergy held directly opposite views. The Church, in all spiritual things, claimed a supremacy over the civil government, as Jesus Christ was her Head and King, and the word of God her guide, to these only was she bound to render obedience. But the weak side of this principle, as then understood, came out clearly in the realities of political and practical life. The proceedings of the Church were held to be independent of the civil government in form and doctrine; and yet, according to the theory of the Church, the civil authorities must enforce the decisions of the spiritual courts by the infliction of secular penalties, as when a person was excommunicated all the legal machinery of the land was to be employed to crush him. This singular confusion of ideas was one of the main embittering stings in the long conflict of the Church and State in Scotland. It seems to have originated from the theocratic conception embedded in the Old Testament, already noticed, as influencing the form and spirit of the reformed religion. Thus it was that the Church and the King both claimed to be directly under God, and each consequently thought they were supreme. According to some of the notions of the time the King was accountable to God alone, and therefore his authority must be above all persons and courts in the kingdom. At this period the social advantages of the contention were nearly all on the side of the Church, and it was with the aim of turning the balance in his own favour that the King proposed the questions.

The clergy of the age had no idea of a Church existing separately from the State. They were continually calling on the King and the government to pass laws relating to the establishment of the Church, and also on points of discipline and doctrine; and many acts of parliament, and of council, were passed on these matters from the Reformation to the end of the century. But the conditions of society, and the circumstances in which Protestantism found itself placed, rendered the sanction and support of the State necessary to its existence; and even if an idea of the complete separation of the Church and State had arisen in the minds of the Reformers, it could not have been realised anywhere in Europe for long after their day.

The King’s questions were industriously circulated among the presbyteries and synods. The leading ministers, however, were opposed to the discussion of them, because they wished to hold by the existing polity and discipline. The Synod of Fife drew up instructions for the guidance of the commissioners of all the presbyteries within its bounds, who were to attend the ensuing Assembly at Perth; and the Presbytery of Edinburgh did the same. The tenor of these instructions were directly adverse to the renewed discussion of the polity of the Church.¹

When the Assembly met at Perth, after a long debate on the manner of appointing a General Assembly, the majority agreed to hold the meeting to be a lawful General Assembly. The proposals submitted by the King were then considered. They were hotly contested; but in the end the King gained his object. It was carried by a majority, that the King or his commissioner might propose any point of the external polity of the Church which he desired to be reformed; that the ministers in their sermons should refrain from rebuking individuals by name, and from introducing political subjects in their discourses; that they should hold no unusual meetings without his Majesty’s consent; and that in all the chief towns the ministers should be chosen with the consent of the King. The rest of the King’s questions were postponed to the next Assembly, on the understanding that in the meantime they should not be condemned either in pulpits, synods, or presbyteries. These conclusions were ratified by the parliament then sitting in Perth.¹ The King had thus gained a footing in the General Assembly, which he retained, until it became a mere organ of the court, and the clergy opposed to his measures were kept in the background for many years.

Another General Assembly met at Dundee on the 10th of May, 1597, when the Assembly at Perth was declared lawful, and its proceedings were ratified. The court party had made great exertions, but it was with difficulty that they carried their measures. The King was present, and he obtained the consent of the Assembly to a standing commission of fourteen ministers, who were to meet with his Majesty and consult and deliberate on all matters concerning the Church.¹

The conditions prescribed for the absolution and admission of the Earls of Huntly, Errol, and Angus, came before this Assembly; and a commission was appointed to receive them into the Church. The ceremony of their reconciliation to the Church, and their restoration to their estates, took place at Aberdeen in the Old Church on the 26th of June, 1597. The church was crowded. Immediately before the sermon, the three earls publicly subscribed the Confession of Faith. After the sermon, they rose and with a loud voice confessed their defection and apostacy, and professed their present conviction of the truth of the Protestant faith, and their resolution to adhere to it. The Earl of Huntly then declared before God, the King, and the Church, his penitence for the murder of the Earl of Moray. The three earls were then absolved from the sentence of excommunication and received into the bosom of the Church. They next communicated in the Protestant form, and solemnly swore to keep order in all respects and to execute justice within their territories. The following day their reconciliation was proclaimed at the cross amid a multitude of the people, who shouted for joy, drank their health, and tossed their glasses in the air.¹

The four ministers of Edinburgh, who had sought refuge in flight, were permitted to return, and began to preach in their own churches in July, 1597. The King was all the more bent on his project of improving the polity of the Church, as the democratic elements of Presbyterianism were extremely hateful to him. It was soon shown what he intended to effect by the commission of ministers. He called them together at the Palace of Falkland, and having summoned the Presbytery of St. Andrews to appear before them, they reversed two of its judgments. The King with his commissioners next proceeded to the University of St. Andrews, and instituted an inquiry into the teaching of the professors. The commission manifested an intention to find matter for censure against Andrew Melville, the rector of the new college and professor of divinity; and, though nothing was proved against him, he was deprived of his rectorship.¹ The King had at last got his foot pretty fast upon the chief university and the Church. He aspired to be the supreme dictator in literature as well as religion.

Parliament met at Edinburgh in December, 1597, and the Commissioners of the Church presented a petition, asking that the ministers should be permitted to vote in parliament as the third estate of the realm. This was the way which the King took to restore the order of bishops and episcopacy; and the presbyterian clergy at once saw the drift of the proposal, and attempted to oppose it. But parliament passed an act authorising the King to appoint such pastors as he thought fit to the office of bishop or abbot, and conferred upon them the right to vote in parliament as in past ages. In keeping with the petty craft of the King, it was left to himself and the General Assembly to determine the limits of the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops.¹ It was well known that there would be much opposition to this act among the clergy, and the commissioners endeavoured to represent what they had done in the most favourable light.

When the Assembly met at Dundee in March 1598, the question of the bishops, and their voting in parliament in the name of the Church, was hotly discussed. The King’s party had made great efforts to pack the Assembly, yet there were still members present whom his majesty wished to exclude from the debate. At the beginning of the Assembly, when Andrew Melville’s name was called, the King challenged it, and said that he could not agree to the admission of one whom he had restricted from attending on Church courts. Melville, of course, defended his right to be there; and was supported by the venerable Mr. Davidson, who reminded the King that he was present only as a Christian, and not as the President of the Assembly. The King then, with his characteristic tactics, declared that he would not allow the business of the Assembly to proceed till Melville retired; and accordingly he was ordered to confine himself to his lodgings; but when it was found that his brethren repaired to him, he was charged to quit Dundee under the penalty of rebellion. After a week spent on the complaints given in against the commissioners, and a number of other matters, the chief question was introduced by a speech from the King. He reminded the Assembly of his own services to the Church; how he had laboured to remove controversies, restore discipline, and increase the patrimony of the establishment; and how that in order to secure this, it was now necessary that she should have a voice in parliament. He therefore desired the members to discuss every point of the act lately passed on the subject. The question whether ministers should have a vote in parliament was then debated at great length, and the affirmative was carried by a majority of ten. It was further agreed that the number of the representatives of the Church should be fifty-one, about the same number as under the Roman Catholic system. Their election was to belong partly to the King and partly to the Church; but this and other details were referred for consideration to the presbyteries and synods, and then to the delegates of the synods, who were to meet with the theological professors, and, in the presence of his Majesty, to reason and conclude on the points undecided; and if they could not agree, the whole matter was to be again put before the General Assembly.¹

The resolutions in the southern Presbyteries and Synods showed a strong opposition to Episcopacy, and an attempt to confine the powers of their representatives in Parliament within narrow limits. When the discussions in the provincial meetings were concluded, and their deputies chosen for the conference, several meetings were held with the professors; but the result was not satisfactory to the King. He then summoned the leading ministers of the kingdom to meet at Holyrood in November, 1599, where with their brethren of the commission they opened a debate upon the whole subject. The chief proposition was, whether it was lawful for ministers of the Gospel to have a seat in Parliament? A long and hot discussion ensued, which naturally enough ended in settling nothing. Those who took the affirmative side argued that the Gospel was not intended to destroy civil polity, that the ministry were a part of the State, and ought therefore to be represented in Parliament, as well as any other class; that it was reasonable that they should assist in framing and passing the laws by which they were to be governed; that ministers were not prohibited from discharging the social duties of life, and that to debar them entirely from secular business would be to carry the doctrine as far as the Catholics had done, when they forbade the priests to marry. It was also pointed out that, as matters had actually stood for some time past, the Commissioners of the Church had waited on meetings for fixing stipends, and often presented petitions to Parliament, and that General Assemblies had repeatedly craved that no one should vote in Parliament for the Church without their commission. Those who opposed the proposition maintained, on the other hand, that though the Gospel by no means sought to destroy civil polity, Christianity was distinct from it, and might exist under any form of government; that a seat in the high council of a kingdom constituted no part of this religion; and that the ministry was not a civil corporation, nor recognised as a distinct body in the State, but only as a portion of the general community, and the ministers, like their fellow-citizens, were already represented in Parliament by the commissioners of the shires and the burghs. The performance of the natural duties of domestic life, and the social duties which devolved upon them all, was a different matter, they said, from being directly engaged in the offices of the government; and the presenting of a petition occasionally, had little resemblance to a regular attendance in Parliament. They knew little of the importance of the ministerial function, who thought that it was compatible with the holding of civil offices, and the worldly titles and dominion which it was sought to import into the Church were not in harmony, they maintained, with the injunctions of the Gospel, but opposed to the leading example of Jesus Himself, who professed that His kingdom was not of this world. It was suggested that the elders and deacons might be commissioned by the General Assembly to vote for the Church in Parliament, if it was necessary, which, however, was not admitted. It was urged also that no General Assembly, before the last, had ever solicited a seat for the ministers in Parliament; and since 1580, the Church had objected to bishops and other ecclesiastical persons sitting in Parliament in her name. The meeting ended where it began. The King saw that he could gain nothing by it, on the second day he broke it up, and announced that he would leave the matter to the ensuing General Assembly.¹ The scheme for the establishment of Episcopacy meantime continued to be pushed on.

James had at last got the preachers of Edinburgh, who had for long been rather free in their comments on him and his government, pretty well under his hand. But he was greatly mortified to meet with a rebuff in a quarter where he least expected it. He had deprived the popular preacher, Mr. Robert Bruce, of a part of his stipend. Bruce sued the Crown before the Court of Session, and got a decision in his favour. James appealed, appeared at the bar in person, and ordered the judges to give their votes against Bruce. Seaton, the President, then rose and said: “It is my part to speak first in this court, of which your highness has made me head. You are our King, we your subjects, bound and ready to obey you with our lives and substance; but this is a matter of law, in which we are sworn to do justice according to conscience and the laws of the realm. Your Majesty may indeed command us to the contrary; in which case I, and every honest man on this bench, will either vote according to conscience, or resign and not vote at all.” Lord Newbottle next rose and said: “It had been spoken in the town, to his Majesty’s great slander and theirs, who were his judges, that they dare not do justice to all classes​—a foul imputation, to which the lie that day would be given; for they would deliver an unanimous opinion against the crown.” For this the King was utterly unprepared, and proceeded to use the most childish arguments, taunts, and threats; but in vain. The judges re-affirmed their decision in favour of Bruce, and the abashed monarch, flung out of court, vowing vengeance and raging like a maniac.¹

Much interest was felt throughout the country in the General Assembly which met at Montrose on the 28th of March, 1600. Both parties had exerted themselves to the utmost to bring up their men, and there was a very full attendance of members. It was well known that the decision of the Assembly would fix the fate of the establishment. The Presbyterians were confident of their superiority in point of argument and debating power. Andrew Melville attended the Assembly as the representative of the Presbytery of St. Andrews; but he was called before the King, who asked him why he persisted in coming to the Assemblies after his Majesty had prohibited him. Melville answered that he had a commission from the Church, and it was his duty to discharge it, on higher grounds than the command of any earthly monarch. He was not allowed to take his seat in the Assembly, but he remained in the town and assisted his brethren with arguments and advice.¹

The debate on the proposition of ministers voting in parliament was resumed. Many arguments were adduced against it and backed by references to the Scriptures, the writings of the reformed divines, and the decision of general councils. The court party finding themselves fairly vanquished by their opponents in the field of open discussion, then shifted their ground, and affected to condemn the union of sacred and civil offices, and asserted that the ministers who were to sit in parliament, would have no civil charge, but would simply be present to watch over the interest of the Church. But they were quickly driven from this position; and at last retired behind the maxims of their master, and asserted that the King alone makes the laws, and the estates only gave him advice. When the discussion reached the words of the act of parliament which restored “the office, estate, and dignity of bishops,” the discussion became too hot, and the King intimated that this point had been already settled by the last General Assembly, which at once terminated the debate. If the general question had been put to the vote, it seems probable that the scheme would have been defeated; yet, by one device and another the Assembly sanctioned the measure. A series of restrictions were framed by the Assembly to keep the commissioners, who were to vote for the Church to their duty; but the King had no intention of observing these customs. His object was the re-establishment of Episcopacy, and he filled up several of the bishoprics; although, in spite of all his efforts, he failed to materially alter the presbyterian organisation of the Church, till after his accession to the throne of England.¹

However much the policy of James the VI. has been admired,¹ it is a fact, that for many years he distracted the reformed clergy by his childish notions and his scheme of Church polity. Much of the energy of the ministers, which but for him might have been employed in the instruction of the people, was wasted without producing any good results. The higher aims of religion were neglected, and the introduction of the reformed religion into the Highlands was greatly retarded.

The reader of Scottish history soon becomes familiar with the plots of the aristocracy against the Crown. The 5th of August, 1600, was memorable for an event of this character, known as the Gowrie conspiracy. The Earl of Gowrie of that time was the grandson of Lord Ruthven, who acted a leading part in the Riccio tragedy. It seems, for the evidence is imperfect, that Gowrie intended to imprison the King and then rule the kingdom in his name, as had often been done before. Very few persons were aware of the plot; hence the doubts of its reality, and the natural suspicion that it was got up by the King himself. The main facts were, that the Earl of Gowrie decoyed the King to his house; and after dinner conducted him into a room in which the Master of Ruthven handled him rather roughly, but the nobles who accompanied the King coming to his rescue, after a short scuffle, the Master and his brother, the Earl of Gowrie, were both slain in the house. The family of Gowrie, of course, was utterly ruined. The King insisted that all men must believe that his escape was miraculous. The ministers of Edinburgh, who had not quite so high an idea of the King as he had of himself, refused to admit that there was any conspiracy at all, and would not give thanks to God for his Majesty’s deliverance in the exact words dictated to them. Five of them were therefore removed from the capital. With one exception they afterwards submitted and professed to believe in the conspiracy. The exception was Robert Bruce, who refused to believe in this conspiracy, and was banished.¹

The King manifested his vanity and want of common sense in connection with this affair more than in any of his proceedings. Granting that the conspiracy of the Earl of Gowrie was real, it was not an unusual occurrence or one which stood alone. At the utmost it was simply one of those projects which were from time to time attempted by the nobles against their kings. It is not surprising therefore that some of the clergy and the people should have failed to see anything miraculous about the matter; and especially those who knew how great an adept the King was at making conspiracy and treason out of a harmless affair, such as the recent example of the tumult in Edinburgh. The King issued a mandate to change the week-day religious service in all towns to Tuesday, the day on which the event happened. Nor was he content with this. An Act of Parliament was passed which ordained that the fifth of August should be observed yearly​—“In all times and ages to come, as a perpetual monument of their humble, hearty, and unfeigned thanks to God for his miraculous and extraordinary deliverance from the horrible and detestable murder and parricide attempted against his Majesty’s most noble person.”¹

Notwithstanding that the King continued his efforts to complete his scheme of Church polity, his success while he remained in Scotland was very limited; and he looked eagerly forward to the time when he could command greater resources for the accomplishment of his projects.

Queen Elizabeth died on the 24th of March 1603. The same day the King of Scots was proclaimed her successor. For some time the English had been looking toward the rising sun; and James immediately prepared to go and take possession of the throne. If he did not fulfil all the expectations of his new subjects, this was perhaps more their own fault than his, for if they had moderated their hopes and expected little, they would not have been disappointed. On the 5th of April James began his journey, and entered London on the 6th of May, greeted by the shouts of his English subjects.

Before proceeding further, it seems appropriate to ask what is the ultimate problem of the Reformation in relation to the development of Civilisation? The first thought that strikes one is the extreme complexity of the problem. The influence of the Reformation was felt throughout the entire organisation of the nation. The domestic, the social, the moral, the political, and the intellectual relations of the people were affected by it, not less profoundly than their religious practice and faith. Their whole circle of thought and action was moved to its centre. This revolutionary movement, then, must have a connection with the philosophy of the human mind. But the historical manifestation of the mind, for obvious reasons, is exceedingly difficult to handle; when it is applied to nations or communities, and not merely treated as a history of systems. There have been various elaborate philosophical systems emanating from individuals and schools, which have had comparatively little effect on the progress of the race, or on the civilisation of independent nations. The philosophy of the Reformation, however, whatever it was, deeply affected the people; and this at least is an indication of its reality. In its essence the Reformation was a religious movement springing out of the devout feeling and aspiration of the people, which was then associated with the belief in the divine revelation of the Bible. It opened to the individual a free access to the heavenly promises offered in the Gospel, and thus for the time satisfied the inherent cravings of his being and the deepest emotions of his mind; warm thrills of joy passed through his soul, till his nature was renewed and he lived in peace and hope. Another tendency of the movement was to withdraw the senses from the mere external emblems and material forms of worship, in order to concentrate the mind on the essential dogmas and the doctrines of religion in their ideal modes. Hence religion became more allied with morality and the understanding; but this was rather a result which ensued in the subsequent development of Protestantism than a special aim of the Reformers.

The search for the ultimate problem of the Reformation suggests the question of the relative efficacy of the religious feelings, the moral sentiments, and the intellectual ideas, as factors in the development of civilisation; in other words, the comparative potency of religion, morality, and science, in advancing social organisation, the development, the progress, and the happiness of mankind. Upon the evidence adduced in the first volume, and especially on the evidence in the preceding chapters of this volume, the following tentative deduction is proposed:​—That the supreme sustaining power of the Reformation throughout was the moral sentiments and ideas, coupled with the religious feeling and aspiration. In the succeeding chapters of this volume more evidence will be advanced and summarised, and finally the various steps of the generalisation will be explained and formulated.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Social State of the People in the Sixteenth Century.

Section I.

PRIOR TO THE REFORMATION.

IN the preceding volume the characteristics of the government and the institutions of the kingdom were described; the general traits of feudalism, the powers and privileges of the nobles, and their action, as exhibited in the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Resuming the social history of the people from that period, it is unnecessary to dwell on matters of a similar kind to those treated in the foregoing chapters. The aim of this work will be attained by giving a connected view of the social relations of the people, and thus present a continuous account of their development, while noting the causes adverse or favourable to their progress. In the main the present chapter is a continuation of the chapters in the first volume, with this difference, that the habits and the institutions of the people are now assumed to be more familiar, so that only the changes and modifications, and especially those consequent on the revolutionary movement, have to be noticed at length. Such is the method which will be followed, in order to throw light on this interesting department of human activity.

The Crown of Scotland had few great royal prerogatives which it could wield at pleasure; the government was, at all points, essentially aristocratic. The pretentions to prerogative which the kings sometimes assumed, were soon dashed to the ground by the dominant faction of the nobles. While in other nations of Europe the kings were augmenting their power by curtailing the privileges of their nobles, the Scottish nobility had gradually, during the last two centuries and a half, been increasing their power, till, at the time of the Reformation, they became supreme. But from that time onward other influences came into operation which slowly undermined their power.

In 1533 James V. remodelled the Court of Session, as the supreme court for the administration of justice in civil cases. From this date the Court of the Lords-Auditors ceased; but the Privy Council still retained the judicial power of the old Lords of Council. The theory of these courts seems to have been that the Council could administer justice by its inherent prerogative, and therefore it should interfere if the strict rule of law inflicted a wrong; while the Court of Session was supposed to proceed according to the rules of law. In consequence of this distinction, the lords of the Privy Council assumed something like a right of superiority over the Court of Session, and on critical occasions the former sometimes took a very emphatic and decisive attitude.¹

The ordinary official staff of the executive comprised the sheriffs of the counties and their deputes, the bailies of the hereditary regalities, baronies, lordships, stewardships, and their subordinate officers. In time of peace throughout the Lowlands, this organisation afforded a comparative measure of rough order and security to the inhabitants, though, even in the best settled parts of the kingdom, acts of violence and lawlessness were very common, and, owing to the defective means for detecting and apprehending them, and the want of simplicity in criminal procedure, the offenders often escaped unpunished. Upon the Borders and in the Highlands, on the other hand, the state of society was little removed from intermittent anarchy. In both regions the small clan system prevailed; feuds were frequent and bloody. At short intervals, when the excesses rose to an unusual height, the government proceeded to punish and repress them. The chiefs of the clans were made responsible for the action of their followers, but this was soon found to be but a very imperfect restraint. When, as it frequently happened, the chiefs and their men were both engaged in the same lawless depredations, it often became necessary for the government to interfere directly. The usual mode of treating the Borderers was this: the king mustered an armed force, and proceeded against the reivers and notorious thieves, and executed justice upon them by seizing and hanging them on the spot, or by occasionally bringing some of them to Edinburgh to be hanged. The national records during this century are full of such raids on the border thieves and reivers. The mode of dealing with the Highlanders was much the same, only the Crown often delegated its power to a local noble, as to the Earl of Huntly in the north, and the Earl of Argyle in the west.

During the minority of James V. the administration of justice was wretchedly neglected in every quarter of the kingdom. But in 1530 disorder on the Borders had risen to such a crisis that the King, at the head of an army, scoured the glens of Yarrow and Ettrick, and seized Cockburne of Henderland, and Scott of Tuschielaw, two of the most notorious offenders. They were taken to Edinburgh, and tried for extorting black-mail from the poor tenants, and for common theft and reset. Both were convicted and executed, and their lands forfeited to the Crown.¹ In connection with this raid the king summoned the Earl of Bothwell, the Lords of Home and Maxwell, the Lairds of Buccleuch, Fernihirst, Johnstone, and Mark Ker; all of them were imprisoned, and Bothwell was at last banished. At the same time the King compelled about fifty other barons and lairds in the counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, Peebles, and Selkirk, to find security to appear before the Justiciary when required. In this way the Crown sought to bridle the reivers and cattle-lifters by making their superiors and neighbours responsible for the crimes and depredations of those who lived and harboured upon their lands.² The same year the King made another raid on the Borders, partly for pleasure, but at the same time prepared to punish any noted thief who came within his grip. He was accompanied by the Earls of Athole, Huntly, Argyle, and many other barons, and it was reported that they killed eighteen score of deer. It was on this occasion that the famous John Armstrong was taken, a border marauder who, it seems, operated chiefly on the English side of the marches. He is represented as surrounded by his followers, and coming to meet the king to offer him homage; but when James saw him and his company mounted on horseback, he ordered the chief and most of his men to be immediately hanged, without the formality of a trial. Armstrong’s fate excited great commiseration amongst the people of the district, and his memory is commemorated in a stirring ballad.³ By repeating these harsh measures, the King for a time reduced the borderers to comparative quiet,⁴ but it is doubtful whether the severe punishment he inflicted on them was at all calculated to promote the permanent peace of the district. Excessive severity often defeats itself; and, besides, the lawlessness of the borderers could be effectually remedied only by changing their circumstances; harsh treatment might aggravate existing evils, but could not reform them.

After the death of the King the borderers broke out in greater excesses than ever; and throughout the regencies of Arran and the Queen mother, they grew worse and worse. In the end of the year 1546 the Council resolved that the regent should pass with an army towards the Borders and restore order; but the government being then occupied with the siege of the Castle of St. Andrews, had not a sufficient force. Accordingly an Act of Council was passed in March, 1547, calling a muster of the local forces to accompany the regent to the Borders to assist in stanching the theft, reif, and oppression of the thieves and reivers. Five years later the Queen regent again attempted to remedy the evils of the borders, but the people there daily became more disorderly. The Master of Maxwell in 1553 declined to accept the Wardenship of the West Marches which his deceased brother had held. The government offered him five hundred pounds yearly, and some other reward, such as a benefice or the like, but he still refused to undertake the office till the offenders against the public authority were punished, or a sufficient force was placed at his command to punish them. This could not be done, and Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig took the office, but threw it up in less than a year, and the troubles of the region thickened.¹

The social state of the Highlands resembled that of the Borders in many particulars, but there were some differences between them. The peculiarities of race which have been made so much of, were in reality of little consequence. The social condition of the Highlanders was the result of a long chain of causes, rather than of any peculiarities belonging to the race. This is well shown by the quickness with which the Highlanders adapt themselves to the requirements of a higher civilisation so soon as their surroundings are changed. If they had been the incapable and erratic savages that some have represented them, how came it, that on being removed from the mountains and glens, and placed under a course of training for a few months, they proved themselves amongst the best soldiers in the British army? If idleness, thieving, and fighting, for the mere love of such things, had been essential features in the Celtic population of the Highlands, why was it that they were so easily and readily cast aside when the circumstances of the Highlander were changed? The fact is that the social condition of the Highlands was due to a long chain of circumstances by which the inhabitants were forced into those habits of living that characterised them, and which were explained in the preceding volume. To talk, therefore, of their social condition being due to their defects or peculiarities as a race is inapt and misleading, and calculated to distort justice and obscure history. The main difference between the Borderer and the Highlander consisted in the more complete dependence of the latter on his chief. The vassals and dependents of the Highland chief stood by him with a fidelity and love in misfortune as well as in prosperity, which we do not meet with among the Borderers. In this respect, one of the moral elements of clanship was decidedly higher in the Highlands than on the Borders.

The heads of the clans Cameron and Ranald having failed to appear before the Council at Inverness, the case of the latter was entrusted to the Earl of Argyle. In 1552 Argyle reported to the government that the captain of the clan was loyal to their authority, and that he would have attended before the justiciary if the charge had reached him previous to his departure for Ireland. Argyle was ordered to continue his proceedings, and to cause the head of the clan to appear before the regent and council before Christmas, and take their orders for the good government of the district. If he failed, Argyle was to make war upon the clan, and to pursue them with fire and sword, according to the Act passed at Inverness. At the same time the Earl of Huntly was ordered to proceed against the Camerons and to pursue them in the same fashion.¹

In the autumn of 1553 it was recorded that for a long time there had been great slaughter, reifs, enormities, and oppression, committed upon the people in the northern quarters of the kingdom, and especially by the strife between the Earl of Caithness and M‘Kay, and their kin and adherents. The Earl of Caithness was summoned to meet the Earl of Huntly and the Bishop of Ross at Inverness, in order to concert measures for restoring order in the county; but he neither appeared nor condescended so much as to answer the Regent’s letters. The Council then directed the officers at arms to charge the Earl of Caithness to come to Inverness and meet the Earl of Huntly and the Bishop of Ross, and to bring sufficient pledges for himself, his kin, and his allies, that he would maintain better order in future, under the penalty of rebellion and horning.¹

There was one enemy of peace and civilisation common in the Highlands, the Borders, and the Lowlands; this was the numerous feuds which had sprung up and accumulated during centuries of internal strife, till they were spread throughout the entire nation. The bonds of manrent by which the different clans and families became bound and banded together, and against one another in all their causes and quarrels, constantly tended towards anarchy and confusion. An injury, or the slaughter of a member of the clan, was never forgotten by the surviving kin; and an intense feeling of revenge had been fostered so long that it had assumed an almost incredible strength, as the feud had in many cases been transmitted from father to son, and from kindred to kindred, through many generations. In Catholic times the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy.¹ This sentiment now appears to us extremely shocking, but it is one which belongs to all stages of predatory society. It was nursed, not only among the Highlanders and the Borderers, but also among the Lowland aristocracy, and was encouraged and prolonged by the weakness of the central authority. The feuds among the Lowland nobles in the sixteenth century were notorious, and often formed the subject of parliamentary enactments and acts of Council.² Some of the bonds which they entered into for gaining their ends through deeds of violence have long been matter of history. The habits of the Scottish nobles always tended towards lawlessness. Whatever party was at the head of affairs, there was always sure to be another party plotting, scheming, or fighting against them, and thus the nation was continually kept in a state of insecurity. Revolutions in the government followed each other so rapidly that no encouragement whatever was afforded for peaceful industry among the people.

During the half century immediately preceding the Reformation, the national records disclose a deplorable state of crime among all ranks of society. Murder, slaughter, mutilation, and theft in the form of cattle lifting, were extremely prevalent. Theft in these times often led to assault, which usually ended in slaughter, or something like robbery and murder. Parliament passed many Acts against these crimes, and the phraseology of the Acts themselves vividly recalls the state of society. Homicide and slaughter were so common that many respites and pardons were granted every year. In the end of the year 1501 the Master of Errol, the son of the Earl of Errol, and three others, were granted a remission for stealing thirty-one oxen from Sir William Keith of Inverugy. In 1508 a remission was given to Lord Oliphant and two of his accomplices for the oppression of Lord Drummond, by casting down the dykes between the lands of Drymane and Balloch, “and for the murder of John, Earl of Buchan, in Perth, after the slaughter of James Oliphant, committed by the said Earl and his accomplices, and for all other oppressions, felonies, and crimes.” Here we see the action of the feeling of revenge; the Earl of Buchan had murdered an Oliphant, Lord Oliphant then murdered the Earl, and we may pretty safely assume that Lord Drummond was an ally of the Earl of Buchan. To grant pardons for these crimes was perhaps the best thing that the government of the time could do. If every one had been hanged who committed slaughter and murder, there would have been two or three executions every day of the year. In 1517 “The Master of Glencairn, the son of the Earl of Glencairn, and twenty-seven others, obtained a remission for the cruel murder of Sir Matthew Montgomery, Archibald Caldwell, and James Smyth, and for hurting John Montgomery, the son of the Earl of Eglinton.” The Earl of Argyle, in 1532, and ninety-two of his followers, obtained a remission for treasonable fire-raising in the Islands, with his standard unfurled. “The King and his Council dispensed with the general act, on the condition that the Earl satisfied the kin of Donald Ballo M‘Ancrum, Donald Crum M‘Cowuane, Farquhar M‘Sevir, and others having lawful claims.”¹ These few cases of pardon for crimes are merely a selection from hundreds of a similar character; and though the criminal records for the first half of the century are very incomplete, an examination of what remains discloses a state of society absolutely lawless.

Although in 1528 Parliament attached a severe penalty to the crime of rape, this crime was often passed over with a very light punishment. Bigamy and adultery were common offences, and in 1551 Parliament enacted a measure which proposed severe penalties against them. The Act proceeds to deal with married persons “that are open, manifest, and common, and incorrigible adulterers, and will not desist nor cease therefrom, for any fear of the spiritual jurisdiction or the censure of holy Church, to the great peril of their own souls,” and directs that such persons shall be visited with the processes of the Church, and then denounced as rebels and put to the horn. Divorce was also extremely common among the upper class in Scotland, and was encouraged by the fashion of granting papal dispensations.¹

As indicating the absence of respect for the law, and the defectiveness of the police organisation, the treatment which the executive officers and messengers often met with may be instanced. Their summonses and letters were often taken from them and torn to tatters; “and the evildoers boasted, menaced, disobeyed, struck, and pursued the officers, and sometimes killed them outright.” In 1546 the Lords of Council passed an Act imposing severe penalties upon offenders of this description; and it was resolved to grant no respites to any one guilty of such crimes for three years to come. On the other hand, the officers of the law were often guilty of oppression and corruption. They took bribes from the rich and powerful and permitted them to remain at home, so that when the pursuer’s case came on before the court, there was not a sufficient number of jurymen, and the case broke down, while the injured party lost all the value involved, and the trouble and the expense of the action. They were accused of summoning poor and simple persons as jurymen, who had no knowledge to enable them to decide upon doubtful matters. In 1531 twelve messengers-at-arms were by one sentence proclaimed fugitives from the law and rebels, and forbidden to exercise their office on pain of being hanged and drawn. In 1539, again, thirty-three messengers-at-arms were convicted at once, and deprived of their offices, for common oppression of the people, “by the false and unjust exercise of their office, and frustrating them in their just actions through their ignorance.” After the Reformation attempts were made to remedy the defects among the officers at arms.¹

The municipal organisation of the burghs was pretty complete, but owing to various causes the state of society in them was by no means peaceful or secure. In 1529 it was stated in the Town Council of Edinburgh that in past times there had been slaughters and murders in the burgh, because the officers and citizens had not been careful to resist and punish evildoers, and that thus the character of the town had been defamed. It was therefore enacted, “That every merchant and craftsman should always have beside them in their shops ready for use an axe or two or more, according to the number of their servants, that they might be prepared to fortify and assist the magistrates in the administration of justice.” Those failing to comply with the Act were to be fined forty shillings for the first fault, and for the second, forty pounds. This Act was repeated in 1539, and again in 1553, when it was stated that there had been great slaughters and tussles in the town, which were likely to recur. It was therefore enacted that “all persons who occupied shops or chambers in the Highgate should have long weapons therein, such as a hand axe, a Jedburgh staff, or a halbert, and that after the ringing of the common bell, or when they saw or apprehended any brawls on the streets, they should immediately turn out and assist the officers in stanching and quelling the disturbance. Those who absented themselves from a tussle on the streets, after being warned, were to be deprived of their freedom for ever. Each bailie was ordered to search his own quarter of the city to see that the statute was obeyed.”¹ Similar regulations for meeting sudden brawls on the streets were enforced in all the burghs of the kingdom. In 1522 the citizens of Aberdeen unanimously ordained that all men dwelling in the town, both burgesses of guild and other craftsmen, should always have in their shops and office-houses a good fencible weapon, such as an axe, a halbert, or a Jedburgh staff, for the defence of their persons, goods, and the commonweal of the city. But in 1530, at a meeting of the whole citizens called by the provost, it was resolved that​—“Considering the cruel slaughters, murders, and oppression done to them and their neighbours by gentlemen of the country, ... every neighbour dwelling in the town should wear daily his weapon on his person, until some remedy be found how this good town may be freed from such cruel oppressors; and that every craftsman have his weapon beside him in his workshop, and when he passes into the street to truss it in his hand, that they may be able at all times to defend themselves and their neighbours.”²

In 1529, during the months of October and November, there were nineteen persons, male and female, banished from Edinburgh for various offences. Margaret Clapane was banished for buying oysters to regrate contrary to the statutes; William Cawdor was banished for buying wild fowls contrary to the statutes; Janet Brown for her demerits was banished for all the days of her life; David Christeson was banished because he was a young stark fellow, who begged and would not work for his living. An Irishman that sung with a lass, and begged through the streets of the town, was banished because he was a stout young fellow, and would not work; if he failed to depart out of the city, he was to be burned on the cheek. Luke Jamison was expelled for regrating herring; and Andrew Gibson for regrating the king’s money. In 1536 all the vagabonds without masters were ordered forthwith to decamp from the town under the penalty of imprisonment, and thereafter to be banished. The same year, vagabonds who would not pay their debts, were to be banished from the burgh; and vagabonds who had no occupation, nor anything to live upon, nightwalkers, and players at dice and cards, were all commanded to remove out of the city, under the penalty of imprisonment. No beggars were to be allowed to live in the town, except those who had been born in it, and of these such only as were feeble and unable to work for their living, under the penalty of burning of their cheeks and banishment. It appears, however, from other statutes that the beggars in Edinburgh were many. In 1538 Agnes Wright was convicted for causing a disturbance, and was sentenced to be put in irons at the market cross, or else above the cross on the scaffold, that the people might see her, when her offence was to be openly proclaimed, and thereafter she was to be banished. In 1551 all the sergeants of the burgh were dismissed for failing in the execution of their duties, and the bailies were commanded to receive others in their places.¹

Among the sums disbursed by the Treasurer of Edinburgh for the year 1554‒55, we find the following: “For taking of a great gibbet off the nether Tolbooth, and bringing it to the top of the Dow Crag, to have hanged hummil Jok on, and bringing it down again to St. Paul’s Work, the sum of twelvepence; and for cords to bind and hang him with, eightpence. In November, for cords to bind and hang a thief, who was convicted before the sheriff, eightpence. The same month, a great long chain of iron for the thieves’ hole, with four arms extended from it, and four locks and bolts, weighing eleven stones and three quarters, made by John Ahamnay, blacksmith, and the price of each stone was eleven shillings and fourpence​—the total sum six pounds fourteen shillings and twopence: and for bringing it from the workshop, and helping to fasten it​—eightpence. For cords to bind and hang Tom Gelirson, and to bind a woman when she was burned on the cheek​—two shillings. For cords to bind Nicoll Ramsay when he was hanged​—sixpence. For cords to hang the man that burnt Lord James’ corn​—eightpence.” In the month of February, 1557, the Town Council ordered their treasurer, “To pay to John Wauchlott, officer and surgeon, the sum of three pounds for curing and mending of James Henderson’s leg, which was broken in the town’s service at the taking of Ramsay, a thief who was slain in the taking.”¹

The surgeons of the period had considerable work in attending to the broken heads and limbs which resulted from brawls and assaults, and it appears that the injury inflicted by an assailant was usually assessed upon their judgment. “When David Arthor hurt Wille Terbat, it was ordered that the Leech, by the great oath, deponed how many days Wille might not work through the hurt, and David to pay each day eightpence, and also pay the leech-craft.” So also “when Rob Dawson struck Wille Pangell, he was ordained to pay the Leech for his craft of Wille’s head breaking, and give Wille twelve pence each day that the Leech deponed that he might not freely labour through the hurt.”

Persons appearing before the burgh court were required to show due respect to it, and to give the bailies becoming honour. On the 13th of March, 1551, in the burgh court of Dundee, Andro Kynneris was sentenced to pay “to Our Lady light two pounds of wax for causing a disturbance in the court.” Three years later David Spankey was fined ten shillings, and ordered to ask the bailies’ forgiveness, for saying in their presence “that there was no justice done in the Tollbooth.” Subsequently the Head Court of the burgh enacted: “That if any person be found disobeying or slighting any officer holding office, he shall pay to Our Lady Kirk five pounds of money; and the person convicted of such an offence shall come to the High alter and offer a pound of wax in a candle, and, if he disobeys, to lose his freedom. But, if he has not goods or gear, in that case, he shall lie forty-eight hours in the stocks, and on the following Sunday shall pass about the Kirk, afore the procession, in linen clothes, and a wax candle of two pounds in his hand; and if he fails to perform this, to be banished from the town for a year and a day.” Shortly after this Act was made, Robert Peblis disturbed the court and uttered defaming words to the bailies, for which he was fined five pounds.

In 1556 harlots were ordered to wear a distinctive dress when they appeared on the streets of Edinburgh. The Town Council of Dundee, on the 10th of January, 1559, said that “It had been reported to the great defame, slander, and shame of honest men’s wives, their daughters, and women servants, that they have been seduced by panders and procurers to use themselves unlawfully in fornication; for remedy of which the Council ordered that if there be any such men or women panders in the burgh, they despatch themselves off within twenty-four hours, under the penalty of being openly taken to the Market Cross, and there banished for ever.” Regarding the places where immoral practices were carried on, it was enacted “that from this day forth no brothels should be permitted within the burgh.” The custom of “hand-fasting” was then not uncommon, which was an agreement between a man and a woman to live together either for a limited or an indefinite yet a terminable time.¹

In Catholic times a form of penance was sometimes imposed on offenders as a part of their punishment. In the year 1523, John Pitt, a tailor in Aberdeen, was convicted, on his own confession, for disobeying David Anderson, one of the bailies. The tailor had refused to take his proper place, with the sign of his craft, in the Candlemas procession, and he abused the bailie and the merchants of the town by calling them “coffers, and bidding them take the salt-pock and the fire-brush in their hands.” For this offence he bound himself before the council to appear the next Sunday bare-headed and bare-footed in the church, in the time of high mass, with a wax-candle in his hand, and to offer it to their patron saint, Nicholas; he also promised to have the usual token of his craft on his breast​—that is, a pair of patent shears; and then to sit down humbly on his knees and beseech the provost to remit his fault. Bessie Dempster was convicted in 1538, before the council by a jury, for the aspersion of David Reid, both by word and deed; and a part of her punishment was that, on the next Sunday, she should go before the procession, with nothing on her but her shift, and enter the High Church with a wax-candle in her hand, and offer it “to the holy blood light;” and then sit down on her knees, and beseech the magistrates and the good men of the town to request David to forgive her. In 1544 the Town Council commanded Mage Durtty, who had been twice convicted before, and at this time for disturbing Janet Lesly, that she must go the next Sunday, with a wax-candle burning in her hand, into the church, and sit down on her knees, and ask Janet to forgive her. But if ever she again committed such offences, they ordained that “her crag should be put in the jougs.” Thomas White was convicted by the bailies, in 1549, for interfering with David Reid, an officer, in the execution of his duty, and for assaulting Duncan Fraser. He was ordered to appear on Sunday in the church, in the time of high mass, bare-headed and bare-footed, with a wax-candle in his hand, and then sit down on his knees, and ask the magistrates and council to forgive him, and the officer, Duncan Fraser; and, finally, to offer the candle to St. Nicholas light.¹

There is little variation in these cases of public penance, but they enable us to understand some of the peculiar features of the Catholic system; and it will be found that something of the old forms of penance passed into the discipline of the Reformed Church. Although the hierarchy in Scotland was tottering to its fall, and was upon the very brink of destruction, yet within a few years of the Reformation the surface of things was seemingly little disturbed. In 1555, John Sandris, a couper, and his wife, were tried and convicted by the bailies of Aberdeen, for striking and drawing blood of Thomas Gellane and his wife; and their sentence was that they should pay Thomas twenty shillings, to be given to the barbour for curing his wounds; and to go next Sunday to St. Nicholas Church, in the time of high mass, each of them with a candle of wax in their hands, and there ask forgiveness of Thomas and his wife. The same year, other two persons in Aberdeen underwent penance in a similar form for their offences.

In Dundee between the years 1520‒3 the bailies in the burgh court, among other cases, disposed of the following, which have the characteristic of penance. Willy Marshall for disobedience to the bailies, and not paying the King’s tax, was sentenced to go to the kirk “on Sunday before the time of high mass in shirt and gown, barefooted and bareheaded, with a candle of a pound of wax, and ask the bailies’ forgiveness, and offer the candle where they command him: and, if he fails, to come next Sunday with a candle of four pounds; and, if he fails the third Sunday, to pay a stone of wax to Our Lady.” Reche Crag had threatened the town’s officers with a dirk, and having confessed the fault, he was “ordered to come on Sunday in the time of high mass, and the knife drawn in his hand by the point, and on his knees ask the provost’s forgiveness, and give him the knife to be placed where he pleases.” If he failed to do this, he was to pay half a stone of wax to Our Lady light.¹

All classes of the people were in the habit of swearing. The literature of the period contains ample evidence of the number of oaths which were then common among the Scots. The writings of Sir David Lindsay alone exhibit upwards of fifty forms.¹ Parliament, in 1551, passed an act touching “the abominable swearing, execration, and blaspheming of the name of God, swearing in vain by His precious blood, body, and wounds; devil stick, cummer-gor, reist or rife them, and other vulgar oaths and execrations against the command of God. Yet, both among the high and low, it has come into such vain-glorious use that the people may be heard daily and hourly blaspheming openly God’s name and majesty.” The remedy proposed was a graduated scale of fines for those who could pay them; and the poor people found guilty were to be put in the stocks or imprisoned for four ♦hours; but women guilty of swearing were to be treated according to their blood and station, and the parties with whom they were coupled.²

Some of the habits of the people and their modes of living were extremely defective. This appeared most in the deplorable sanitary state of the towns. The necessary conditions of health were but little understood, and usually disregarded, till pestilence reached a height which compelled the authorities to take active measures, and endeavour to mitigate the suffering. The streets of the towns, and the houses of the poorer classes, were in a wretched state; and throughout this century the country was never long free from the pest. Many acts of parliament and council were passed for dealing with the pestilence, and the records of all the burghs are full of regulations about it; but they are chiefly remarkable for the single idea, that to prevent contact with the persons affected with the disease was the only remedy and protection against it. The efforts of the authorities were mostly directed to this, and thorough cleanliness seems to have been greatly undervalued and neglected. The authorities, however, often showed commendable energy to prevent the spread of the pest by actual contact; they exerted themselves to separate those affected with the disease from the healthy portion of the people; and, in carrying out their regulations on this point, they frequently acted with great determination.¹ On the second of October, 1559, the Town Council of Dundee ordered “that all persons, either rich or poor, having middens in any place within the boundary of the burgh, should remove them before Wednesday night, and lay no more in time coming.” Each bailie was enjoined to visit the quarters where they were, and to cause the Act to be put into execution. Subsequently the town’s officers were ordered to pass through the burgh once every twenty-four hours, and enforce the Act. But, although repeatedly prohibited, the offensive heaps still continued. It is now well known, though as yet only imperfectly acted upon, that the rational mode of preserving health depends on the proper sanitary conditions of the country, and especially of the great centres of population​—thorough drainage and sewerage arrangements, which tend to promote the general vigour of the entire population of the Island.

In Scotland the streets, even of the chief towns, were not lighted at night. The Town Council of Edinburgh, in November, 1554, ordained that, “for eschewing of the evil doings of the vagabonds and others who go in the burgh in the night, stealing and robbing within the same, there be nightly, from this day forth till the 24th of February, lanterns and bowets set up and lighted at five o’clock in the evening, and to burn till nine, by the following persons:​—Each barber on the highgate, each candlemaker on the highgate, each apothecary, each taverner, each baker, and each common cook, to have a lantern or bowet burning in front of their shops and houses during the said hours; and likewise each brewer in the closes and outwith should furnish a bowet; and also that all the persons dwelling in closes must furnish bowets night about, as they shall be ordered by the bailies: and where it happens that two candlemakers or barbers dwell near to each other, then the bailies shall put one of their bowets to any other place as he pleases; and these parties were required to comply with this statute under a fine of two shillings.”¹ This was a primitive enough mode of lighting the streets of the capital of a kingdom.

In 1557 Bessie Campbell having been brought before the magistrates of Edinburgh, promised that she would desist from making aqua vitæ, or selling it in the burgh, except on the market days. It appears from various records that the use of spirits was quite common amongst all classes of the people; and drink-money and drink-silver was a very common phrase in the accounts paid to the different classes of workmen by the Town Councils throughout the kingdom.

Reference has already been made to the oppressive burdens which were imposed upon the tenants, the occupiers, and the tillers of the land. Contemporary literature abounds with evidence of the wretched state of these classes of the people. Sir David Lyndsay enumerates by name several of the burdens which the landlords enforced upon their tenants; such as “the great fine on the renewal of leases,” and the fines which had to be paid on the marriage of their daughters.¹ In the Complaynt of Scotland, which was published in 1549, the oppression of the tenants and labourers of the ground is touchingly related. Their corn and cattle were often reft from them, and they were then turned out of their holdings. The poor especially were excessively oppressed.² Prior to the Reformation, however, some efforts were made to relieve them. In 1535, Parliament enacted that the poor who cannot work should be supported by the parishes in which they were born.³ In 1553, James Henderson laid proposals before the Town Council of Edinburgh for the improvement of the burgh; and it was then suggested that a new hospital should be built, with forty beds, for helpless men and women, with a priest, a surgeon, and a doctor attached to it. The scheme, does not appear to have been carried out; but about the same time the necessity of some mode of assisting the helpless poor was recognised. The Town Council, in 1555, appointed a committee to devise means for supporting the poor, and expelling sturdy beggars from the town. The next year the Council appointed two men to receive the bread and the silver collected for the poor, and to distribute them till the next term. In 1557, the Council resolved to provide for the maintenance of the poor in the meantime, and passed several Acts in 1559 for expelling beggars who did not belong to the town. It was also proposed to make provision for the poor, according to the Act of Parliament and the statutes of the burgh. The most common mode of dealing with the poor in the burghs seems to have been to grant to those who were born in the town liberty to beg, and to expel all other beggars.⁴ Many of the hospitals for the sick and infirm which had formerly existed in many places throughout the country,⁵ had fallen into a state of decay; and as yet there was no definitely organised scheme for giving assistance to the poor, although the matter had frequently engaged the attention of public bodies.

The religious feelings and opinions of the people themselves, as manifested in their daily life during this revolutionary period, is a highly interesting subject; and an attempt will be made to show what they were immediately before the crisis of the Reformation. In 1514, the Town Council of Aberdeen resolved to impose a tax for buying ornaments and books to the church of their “glorious patron Saint Nicholas.” At the same time an act was passed by which no burgess was admitted, nor any unfreeman licensed to sell, without the payment of a certain sum of money for the repairing of St. Nicholas church and choir. This act was often repeated, and others similar to it were enacted with the consent of the whole community of the city.¹ The citizens also gave voluntary contributions for furnishing ornaments to the altars of their “glorious Saint Nicholas”; and in many other ways they exhibited their feelings by bestowing a liberal share of the good things of the earth and of the waters on the Church.² The Town Council of Edinburgh, in 1518, ordained that the servants of the guild and the beadle should keep the College Church of St. Giles and its choir free from all evil persons in the time of matins, high mass, and evensong; and that no beggars should be permitted to enter the church at such times. In 1521, the Town Council resolved that the dean of guild and seven others should form a committee, to meet every Friday, and sit one hour, and deliberate and advise touching the good of the church and the making of freemen and guild brethren. The Council, in 1546, ordered that all the fines taken from those who had broken the price of wine, should be applied to the reparation of the high altar; and the following year the magistrates resolved that the tavern keepers should be poinded for the dues which they owed to St. Anthony’s altar. In 1552 the magistrates entered into a contract for making the stalls of the choir of St. Giles; and in 1555 they appointed a man to sing in the choir at the masses of Our Lady and the Holy Blood, for which service he was to receive twenty merks a-year. The same year the council ordered the musicians who played before St. Giles on that saint’s day to be paid out of the town’s funds. In the beginning of the year 1556, the provost and bailies granted to Alexander Scott a pension of ten pounds for one year only, for his attendance and singing in the choir on all the festival days, and for playing on the organ when he was requested by the authorities of the town. On the 5th of November, 1557, the Town Council granted the benefice of St. Andrews altar in St. Giles’ church to Robert Craig, the son of a goldsmith, “who promised to be a priest within two years, or else renounce his prebendary.” The great church of St. Mary in Dundee had upwards of thirty altars, and a large staff of priests and officials. There was a peal of five bells in the tower, on which a chime of one hundred and twenty-nine strikes was rung three times daily, to call the people to matins, mass, and evening song. In such churches, and in the grand cathedrals of the kingdom, the magnificence of the ritualistic service was exceedingly imposing. The varied and beautiful decoration of the whole interior of the churches, the altars adorned with cloth of gold, silver vessels, and fine service books, the beautiful hues of the vestments of silk and tissues of gold, the sacred crucifix, and the greatly venerated relics of the saints, and withal, the vocal chanting of touching hymns to the resonant harmony of the organ, were all carefully calculated to touch the devout hearts and impress the souls of the humble worshippers.³

Touching the processions in which the craftsmen joined on notable saint days, pretty full accounts are contained in the Records of Aberdeen, where they were an important institution. It appears, however, that these displays sometimes ended in bickerings, that is, in a general uproar, especially among the young.¹ In 1531 the Town Council of Aberdeen passed the following statute: “According to the lovable custom and right of this burgh, and of the noble burgh of Edinburgh, of which rite and custom the provost has received a copy: that is to say, that in the name of God and the blessed Virgin Mary, the craftsmen of this burgh, in their best array, keep and decorate the procession, as on Corpus Christi day and Candlemas day, as honourably as they can, every craft with their own banner, with the arms of their craft thereon, and they shall pass each craft by themselves, two and two, in this order:​—First the fleshers, and next the barbers; next the skinners and furriers together; next the shoemakers; next the tailors; after them weavers, walkers, and listers together; next them the bakers; and last of all, nearest to the Sacrament, passes all the hammermen​—namely, smiths, wrights, masons, ♦coupers, slaters, goldsmiths, and armourers. And every one of the said crafts, in the Candlemas procession, shall furnish their pageants, according to the old statute of the year of God 1510.” The crafts were ordered to furnish their pageants as follows:​—“The fleshers, St. Bestian and his tormenters; the barbers, St. Lawrence and his tormenters; the skinners, St. Stephen and his tormenters; the shoemakers, St. Martin; the tailors, the coronation of our Lady; the listers, St. Nicholas; the weavers, walkers, and bonnetmakers, St. John; the bakers, St. George; the hammermen, the Resurrection and the Cross.”²

Turning to another class of illustrations of the religious sentiments of the people, the shoemakers of Edinburgh were incorporated by a seal of cause, 1510, which contained rules touching payments to the altar of the craftsmen. “For augmentation of divine service at the altar of St. Crispin, in the College Church of St. Giles, we desire that the following statutes, articles, and rules, should be sanctioned by your authority.” Every apprentice at his entry to the craft had to pay six shillings and eightpence, for upholding of divine service at the altar of St. Crispin; and when a shoemaker commenced business as a master, he had to pay four marks to the altar of St. Crispin. Every master had to pay one penny weekly for keeping the altar in repair, and each of his servants a half-penny. All the fines for breaking the rules of the craft, or disobeying the kirk-master, were also to be applied to the service of the altar of St. Crispin. The candlemakers were incorporated in 1517; and it was stated in their seal of cause, “that when they set up shop, each master must pay to St. Giles’ work half a mark of silver, and to the reparation and upholding of the light of any altar in St. Giles’ Church, where the deacon and craftsmen think it most needful, half a mark weekly; ay, and until they be furnished with an altar of their own. And, likewise, each master of the craft, in honour of Almighty God and his Blessed Mother St. Mary, and of our patron St. Giles, and of all the saints of heaven, shall give the sum of ten shillings yearly to the helping and furnishing, either of light or any other needful thing to any altar in the church of St. Giles.” The bakers were incorporated in 1523, and their patron was St. Cuthbert, whose altar was in St. Giles; and they kept a chaplain of their own to perform divine service at their altar. All the fines for disobeying the rules of the craft were to be devoted to the altar, chiefly in the form of wax candles to lighten the church and enliven the worship. The tailors had St. Ann for their patron; and they also had an altar and a chaplain of their own, “who said prayers.” The bonnetmakers were under the protection of St. Mark. The skinners and furriers of Edinburgh were incorporated in 1533. “In example of others, and for augmentation of divine service at the altar of St. Christopher our patron, in the college church of St. Giles. Seeing that all virtuous practices depend on a good beginning, thence persevering and advancing to the end, therefore all those who set up as skinners and furriers should pay five pounds for the maintaining of divine service at their altar of St. Christopher; unless, indeed, they be skinners’ sons within this burgh, in which case, they shall only pay ten shillings. Every master who has a shop, should pay one penny weekly to the reparation of the ornaments of our altar and sustaining of the priests’ meat thereof, as it comes about.” Indeed almost every craft had its special saint and altar. Toward the end of the fifteenth century the weavers of Dundee resolved to found an altar to St. Severus, their patron saint, and the erection having been sanctified, they then framed rules, which were presented to the town council. In 1512, the council granted a seal of cause, incorporating the weavers, “for the supplying and upholding of divine service and reapparelling of their altar of St. Severus, uphorlden by them in Our Lady Kirk, and for the government of their work and labours. It was provided that the fees and fines exacted for infringement of the rules of the craft should go to the upholding of the altar, and that each man and woman engaged in the craft, who gives not to the priest of the altar his meat in the year, as the rest does, shall pay every week to the altar a penny, to be collected by the deacon of the craft.” In 1516, the town council incorporated the glovers, and the craft became bound, “in honour and loving of God Almighty, and of the glorious Lady the Virgin Mary, and of St. Duthac, our patron, to the reparation of our altar in the parish kirk, for the upholding of God’s service daily at the said altar, and to the honest sustentation of a chaplain daily to sing and say at the altar;” and to collect from every person engaged in the craft forty shillings, for upholding the altar and the service thereof, except freemen’s sons of the craft, who should pay only six shillings and eightpence. St. Cuthbert was the baker’s patron saint, and they founded and maintained his altar in St. Mary’s Church, and appointed their chaplain annually. In 1515 the guild merchants of Dundee, with the consent of the town council, resolved to erect an altar in St. Mary’s Church, “to the loving of God Almighty, of Christ’s precious blood, and to his blessed mother the Virgin Mary, and to appoint a chaplain daily to sing and say divine service there, and for singing mass solemnly every Thursday in honour of the Holy Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” For the reparation of the altar and the upholding of the service, the merchants were empowered to elect a dean, who was authorised to exact duties on all goods exported, to tax all merchants beginning business, and to exact fines from those who encroached on the High Market Gait with their goods.¹

In the preceding pages some of the religious sentiments of the people have been indicated, as manifested in their life and action; the next point is to look for the signs of the new religious opinions amongst them before the crisis of the Revolution. The magistrates of Aberdeen in 1525 received a letter from the King, stating that the bishop of the diocese had informed him that there were several persons in the district who had the books of the heretic Luther, and who favoured his opinions; and the act of parliament newly passed against heresy was ordered to be proclaimed, and a searching inquisition made of all suspected persons within the bounds of the diocese. The king’s letter and the act of parliament were both inserted in the records of the city. There was no more mention of heresy in Aberdeen till 1544, when some of the citizens were committed, and convicted for injuring the black friars; while the same year two of the townsmen were found guilty of hanging the image of St. Francis. In the beginning of the year 1559 the buildings of the black and the gray friars were attacked by some of the citizens, who were assisted by certain strangers; and the bailies then inquired whether these buildings should be preserved for the good of the town, “and the setting forth of God’s glory, and the suppression of idolatry;” notwithstanding the provost’s protest, which was adhered to by fifteen of the inhabitants, in March the whole community of “the good town” resolved to support the Lords of the Congregation. In the month of June the chaplains of St. Nicholas church petitioned the magistrates to devise some means for defending their church, and for preserving the chalices, silver work, caps, and ornaments, till the uproar and tumult of the people was quelled by the ancient and wise council of the kingdom.¹

In 1551, parliament had passed an act prohibiting the printing or publishing of any books or ballads, either in Latin or English, unless licensed by the king and government; and in 1554, the Town Council of Edinburgh passed an act against the makers of defamatory and blasphemous ballads. The ballads had been placed before the people, and had raised discord among them; but the parties who composed the ballads were unknown, and the bailies ordered that no one should dare to make such ballads, under the penalty contained in the common laws. On the 22nd of September, 1556, the archbishop of St. Andrews sent a document to the town council of Edinburgh, touching the images which had been taken down in the churches; and the council agreed to make inquiry concerning the matter, and to report to the justice clerk. The following day the council received a message from the Queen Regent, in the name of the primate, which she desired to be inserted in the records of the burgh. It proceeded, “as we are informed that there are certain odious ballads and rhymes lately set forth by some evil-inclined persons of your town, who have also taken down divers images, and contemptuously broken them​—which is a thing very slanderous to the people, and contrary to the ordinances and the statutes of Holy Kirk​—and we understand that the makers of this misorder are all dwellers and inhabitants of your town. Wherefore we charge you that immediately after the sight hereof, ye diligently inquire, search, and seek for their names, and deliver them in writ to our cousin the archbishop of St. Andrews, to be used according to the statutes of the Kirk; assuring you, if ye do not your utmost endeavours therein to bring the same to light, that ye shall be considered by us favourers and maintainers of such persons, and shall underlay the same punishment that they ought to sustain, in case we get knowledge thereof by you.”¹ Thus we see that the popular ballads had an influence on the revolutionary movement.

In June, 1559, Matthew Stevenson, a servant of a barber, was accused before the Council of Edinburgh for throwing stones at the windows of the buildings of the black and the gray friars, the last night that he was upon the watch. He pleaded guilty, and his master became bail for his appearance when required. On the 27th of June the Council appointed a number of persons to whom the vestments, the ornaments, and the gear of the church of St. Giles were committed for safety. The council met in the Tolbooth on the 29th of June, and after long reasoning upon the coming of the Lords of the Congregation to Edinburgh, they at last resolved to send a deputation to meet them at Linlithgow; and to arrange with them for the preservation of the religious buildings and the churches of the burgh.¹ There is something very touching in the anxiety and the care which the town council of Edinburgh exhibited for the preservation of the furnishings and the ornaments of their churches, which, as we have just seen, had been so long and so closely associated with their altars, and with the religion of their fathers.

Section II.

AFTER THE REFORMATION.

When the Protestants came into power the evidence of the great change was soon seen in the proceedings of the citizens. In May, 1560, the town council of Edinburgh ordered their treasurer to pay the sum of forty pounds for furnishing the household of their minister, John Knox, and because he had been living with David Forester since he came to the town, to settle this account also; and they ordered the treasurer to pay for a lock to Knox’s lodgings. In June the council ordered that twenty pounds should be paid to John Willock, the Reformer; while the council and the deacons of the crafts resolved that the bell, called the Mary Bell, and the brazen pillars of the Church of St. Giles, should be made into cannon for the use of the town; they also directed that the silver work belonging to the town, which had been used in St. Giles’ church in bypast times, both the gilt and the ungilt, should be at once sold or coined into money; and the whole of the vestments, caps, and other gear of the church were to be sold, and the proceeds to be applied to the common works of the town, and especially to the rebuilding of the interior of the church, according to the requirements of the new order of worship. The dean of guild and the treasurer were appointed to carry these arrangements into effect.¹ The interior of the churches of Edinburgh were refitted on the 1st of August, 1560, and the deacon of the tailor craft presented the following complaint to the provost and council:​—“Bearing in effect that the traves close room or seat, built and made by command of James Barron, dean of guild, at St. Anne’s altar, sometimes called the tailor’s altar, ought and should be removed, and the deacons and brethren of the tailor craft permitted to build their seats there, to be used by them and their craft at all sermons and other times convenient and none others, conform to their old possession; to this it was answered, and for plain ordinance by the provost, bailies, council, and deacons, declared, that in respect of the goodly order now taken in religion all title and claim to altars and such other superstitious practices are and should be abolished, and no further word nor claim thereof to be in time coming; but as it is commanded by God’s most holy Word, brotherly amity should be amongst us who are joined in his congregation, the nobility, provost, bailies, council, elders, and deacons, being first placed, the honest merchants and the honest craftsmen to place and set themselves together as loving brethren and friends in that and all other places of the church vacant at all times needful, providing always that nowhere the apprentices or servants of the merchants or the craftsmen, or other common people take up the places and seats of the said merchants and craftsmen; and this act to take effect without alteration in all time coming.” In the beginning of January, 1561, the town council of Aberdeen agreed to sell all the silver and brass work, the images and the ornaments of the church of St. Nicholas; and the whole of the inhabitants of the city were warned to attend on the 6th of that month and see these articles sold by auction. The caps brought one hundred and forty-two pounds, the brass work sixteen shillings the stone, the silver work was sold at twenty-one shillings per ounce, and the total sum of the sale amounted to five hundred and forty pounds. Two men, David Menzie and Gilbert Collison, dissented and protested against this sale for themselves and their adherents, but the goods were delivered to the purchasers by the voice of the majority.² On the 8th of May, 1562, the town council resolved to apply the above sum of money to the building of a pier and quay-head;³ so swiftly had the religious notions of the leading citizens changed.

It will be seen that a new epoch had begun. When objects which had been venerated for many centuries, and were still believed to be possessed of uncommon virtues, were turned into cash and cannon, and applied to build harbours, it was obvious that a revolution had been effected. The citizens of Edinburgh entered warmly and earnestly into the reformation movement. The town council and some of the deacons of the crafts met in June, 1560, and having considered the great number of idolaters, whoremasters, and harlots who daily resorted within the burgh, provoking the indignation of God upon it, as had been oftentimes foreshadowed by the preachers, so they issued a proclamation in a comprehensive form​—“That all such persons should come into the presence of the ministers or the elders, and give testimony of their conversion from such abuses before next Sunday, or failing that, the said idolaters to be defamed by setting them upon the market cross, there to remain for the space of six hours; and carrying of the said whoremasters and harlots through the town in a cart for the first fault: and burning of both classes of offenders on the cheek for the second fault, and banishment from the town; and for the third fault to be punished to the death.” On the 20th of September, 1560, the town council ordered the Act of Parliament against idolaters to be proclaimed.¹ On the 30th of October, the town council enacted that henceforward the holy day commonly called Sunday should be kept by all persons in the burgh, and that no one make market, nor open their shops, nor exercise any worldly calling on this day, but that all should attend the ordinary sermons both in the forenoon and in the afternoon: “And that from the first toll of the bell announcing the hour of the sermon to the final end thereof, there should be neither meat nor drink sold in open taverns, but that during this time they should be closed. That the flesh market, which used to be held on Sunday, should be henceforth held upon the Saturday; and that the cattle market at the House of the Muir, which had been held in past times on Sunday, should in all time coming be held on the Thursday.” At the same time they passed an act against swearing and taking God’s name in vain, under the penalty of being placed in the iron branks, “there to remain during the pleasure of the judge.” They also enjoined concerning taverns: “Because in past times the iniquity of women taverners in this burgh has been a great occasion of whoredom, insomuch that there appears to be a brothel in every tavern; therefore all vintners of wine who may engage women taverners before the next Martinmas hereafter were to be certified, that if their women committed any immoral fault they should have to pay forty pounds, except they deliver the offender into the hands of the bailie, to be banished, according to the laws, as soon as the offence comes to their knowledge.”² In November the same year, John Sanderson, the deacon of the fleshers, was convicted for adultery, and the bailies sentenced him to be carted through the town and then banished. But when the deacons of the various crafts heard of the sentence, and their aid was asked to carry it into execution, they unanimously dissented, and declared that they would not allow such extreme punishment to be inflicted upon any honest craftsman. The bailies and council then applied to the Lords of the Privy Council for their help and support in this case, and after much wrangling it was at last settled.³

These social immoralities not only engaged the attention of the burgh magistrates and the courts of the Reformed Church, but Parliament also, and the Privy Council passed acts for their suppression. There can be no doubt that a clearer sense of the enormity of social vice originated with the Reformation; the most strenuous efforts were made to purify the feelings and the sentiments of the people, as well as to purge the nation of idolatry. The first General Assembly of the Reformed Church declared that fornication should be punished according to the law of God, and that public repentance should be made by those who were guilty of this sin. All through the acts and proceedings of the Assemblies of the Church, the clergy, as may be seen, were incessantly and earnestly trying to improve the morals of the people.¹ It is somewhat disagreeable to touch much on these matters, but social vice affects the very foundation of society, and should not be summarily dismissed; a false delicacy which would ignore the roots of social evil will never do much to help the onward and upward movement of mankind towards a higher civilisation and a happier life.

As we have seen, the clergy were well supported by the authorities of the towns, and especially by those of Edinburgh, in their efforts to reform the morals of the people. In November, 1561, the bailies of Edinburgh banished an adulterer; and in May, 1562, they prepared a hole in the North Loch for dipping fornicators in, as the best means of suppressing them. On the 6th of November, 1562, the town council passed an act which directed the bailies to search all parts of the town for offenders of this description, and to apprehend them, whether man or woman, without exception of persons; “and then put them in the iron-house, and there to be fed on bread and water only for the space of a month, and afterwards to banish them from the town for ever. And suchlike offenders who had been tried and convicted by order, both the man and the woman should be scourged at the cart’s end through the streets and banished from the town; aye, and until some evidence be presented to the kirk and the magistrates of the amendment of their lives; and this order was to be observed in Edinburgh till it should please the Almighty to move the hearts of the higher powers to establish better laws for the punishment of these crimes.” In December the town council ordered a prison to be prepared for the reception of adulterers and fornicators, which should be secure and lockfast.¹

The wish expressed in the last paragraph was realised. In 1563, parliament passed an act against notorious adulterers: and the Privy Council in 1564 passed an act prohibiting brothels, either openly or privately, under the penalty of eight days’ imprisonment with bread and water, and then to be scourged through the town, for the first fault; and for the second fault to be burned on the cheek and banished from the town for ever. At the same time the Privy Council ordered that those convicted of fornication, should be punished in the following manner:​—“For the first fault they shall pay the sum of forty pounds, or else both he and she shall be imprisoned for the term of eight days, and their food to be bread and small drink, and thereafter presented in the market-place of the town bareheaded, and there to stand fastened that they may not remove for the space of two hours, from ten o’clock to twelve noon. For the second fault, when convicted, they shall pay the sum of one hundred marks, or else sixteen days’ imprisonment on bread and water only, and in the end to be fastened in the market-place, and the heads of both the man and woman to be shaven; and on conviction for the third fault they shall pay one hundred pounds, or else the above term of imprisonment, their food to be bread and water only, and in the end to be taken to the deepest and the foulest pool of water in the town or parish, and there to be thrice ducked, and thereafter to be banished from the town for ever; and thenceforward, that however often they may be convicted for this vice, the third penalty shall be executed upon them.” Parliament repeated this act in 1569; and it was then enacted that incest should be punished by death. The vice of adultery was also made punishable by death, according to the acts of parliament. But in spite of the severity of the laws this vice continued to be common; and as late as 1592 an act was passed which declared that the crime of adultery was daily increasing.¹ The citizens of Edinburgh had anticipated Parliament and the Privy Council, and it was because a section of the people were prepared to enforce a better social order that gave to these acts historic importance.

In 1562, the General Assembly resolved to petition the Queen for the punishment of all vice that the law of God commanded, which, as yet, was not commanded by the public laws of the kingdom: Such as blaspheming of God’s name, contempt of the Word and sacraments, perjury, breaking of the Sunday by holding common markets on that day, and profane talking. The clergy directed their efforts especially to the abolition of markets on the Lord’s-day.¹ This is a point of much interest, and well deserves to be further explained. We have seen that the Town Council of Edinburgh passed an act, in October, 1560, immediately after the establishment of the Reformation, ordering that Sunday should be observed; and it may safely be assumed that the ministers of Edinburgh had been consulted by the magistrates before this act was passed.

The Privy Council passed an act in 1564, re-enacting the statute of James IV., which prohibited the holding of markets on holydays, or in churches or churchyards. But this act, like many others, had never been observed, and the Council then enjoined that no markets should be held on Sunday, nor in churchyards. And in July, 1569, the Regent issued a proclamation prohibiting markets on Sunday, which directed the authorities throughout the country to seize and confiscate the goods of those who exposed anything for sale on Sunday. The provost and bailies of Elgin were charged by the Lords of Council, in November, 1569, to put the acts prohibiting markets on Sunday into execution. It was further ordered that in all the free burghs common harlots should be banished; and the provost and bailies of Elgin were imprisoned for not executing these acts. In 1574, the magistrates of Aberdeen were enjoined by the Lords of Council to prohibit markets on Sunday, within the bounds of the freedom of the burgh, under the penalty of forfeiting all the goods offered for sale on that day.¹ Parliament, in 1579, re-affirmed the act of James IV., and added, that as markets were yet held in the towns and in the country on Sunday, and that the people still continued to work at their usual occupations on the Lord’s-day, or gamed and played, and passed the day in taverns, and remained away from the church in the time of sermon and prayers: it was therefore anew enacted that no markets should be held on Sunday, nor in churches, nor churchyards, on any other days, under the penalty of forfeiting the goods exposed for sale, and the proceeds thereof to be given to the poor of the parish. All manual labour was strictly forbidden on Sunday, and the frequenting of ale-houses, and the selling of meat and drink, and also all gaming and playing, under the penalty of severe fines, which were to be applied to the relief of the poor and helpless.²

In 1574, the Town Council of Glasgow ordered that every Sunday one of the bailies, with an officer and some other honest men, should pass through the town to visit the taverns and the flesh-market; and if any flesh was found exposed for sale after nine o’clock, it was to be confiscated, and given to the poor; and if the taverners offered any contempt, they were to be punished according to the judgment of the council. In 1576, two persons were convicted in Glasgow for selling meal in their houses on Sunday; and the same year the council and bailies agreed to a conditional restriction touching the taking of salmon on Sunday. “No salmon-cobles were to be employed on the Sunday, within the freedom of the city, by the inhabitants thereof, providing that the whole of the cobles on the waters of the Clyde, burgh and land, do likewise and keep the same, and otherwise not.” But in 1577, the Town Council of Glasgow concluded that no market should be held on Sunday, under the penalty of forfeiting all the goods exposed; yet some persons were shortly after convicted for selling flesh on Sunday.¹ The Town Council of Aberdeen, in 1580, ordained that the fish-market should in future be held within the Iron-ring, and around the Fish-cross; and that on Sunday, from the ringing of the first bell in the forenoon and in the afternoon, until the sermon be done, there should be no market, under the penalty of the confiscation of the fish to the poor. The General Assemblies were always complaining that the acts of Parliament and of the Privy Council touching the keeping of Sunday were not enforced. In 1581, the Synod of Lothian complained before the General Assembly that the act of parliament for prohibiting markets on Sunday was not put into execution, that the people still continued to hold their markets on that day, absented themselves from the church, and remained in their ignorance, and that thus atheism was increased.²

But it is extremely difficult to change the customs of a people; and in spite of all the efforts of the clergy and the authorities, ♦the observance of Sunday for several generations after the Reformation was far from universal in Scotland. In 1588 the Town Council of Aberdeen recorded that many of the citizens stayed away from the church on Sunday, frequented taverns and alehouses, dealt in merchandise, and continued at their manual labour during the time of the sermon, contrary to the order of the Reformed Church. The council then proposed the following scale of fines to be exacted from those who absented themselves from the preaching: “Every burgess of guild and his wife for their remaining from the sermon on Sunday, thirteen shillings and fourpence; and for their remaining from the sermon on the weekly days, two shillings. Every craftsman, householder, and other inhabitants, for remaining from the sermon on Sunday, six shillings and eightpence; and every week-day, twelvepence. And in case any merchant or burgess of guild be found in his shop after the ringing of the third bell on the week-day, he must pay six shillings and eightpence.”¹ The days on which sermons were preached in Aberdeen, besides Sunday, were the Tuesdays and Thursdays; and down to the present time there is a service in one of the city churches every Thursday, though sad to tell, few of the inhabitants are even aware of it.

In 1590 the General Assembly found it necessary to pass an act for restraining of markets on Sunday, the going of mills, the delivering of loads, and the selling of flour and fruit in Edinburgh; and in 1592 parliament passed another act touching the holding of markets on Sunday. It enacted that the markets formerly held on Sunday should be held on any other day of the week, except the day on which the neighbouring burgh held their market. In 1598 the town council of Aberdeen ratified the act passed before concerning the holding of markets on Sunday in the time of the sermon. From this it seems to follow that markets were still held on Sunday in Aberdeen about the end of the century, though not during the hours of worship.¹ Even as late as 1602, more than forty years after the Reformation, the General Assembly reported that the churches in many places were not well attended, owing to the people continuing to labour on Sunday, especially during the harvest and seed-time, and also by the going of the mills, and by many of the people fishing on Sunday for white fish and salmon. The Assembly ordered that all such labour upon the Lord’s Day should cease, under the penalty of incurring the censures of the Church; and at the same time the Assembly requested the King to enact some special punishment for those who persisted in working on Sunday.² The observance of Sunday in Scotland was not attained till after a long and vigilant struggle. On this point the reformed clergy and the magistrates both may have sometime been rather severe; yet it is difficult to see how they could have reached their end otherwise. The importance of the day of rest, even on the comparatively low ground of the physical and social advantages resulting from it to the people themselves, is very great, apart from the higher aims of morality and religion.

It is true that the discipline of the Reformed Church of Scotland assumed an austere and rigid form, although on the whole it was far more moral and vigorous than the system which it superseded; but in the special region of feeling and emotion it was weaker than its Catholic rival. The strongest characteristic of Roman Catholicism has always consisted in the art of presenting to the human senses a variety of easily comprehended objects. The immense multitude of her saints and martyrs can be easily localised anywhere, and in the requisite proportion to fit the capacity of her humblest votary. In the chief church of the city or parish there may be ten, twenty, thirty, or forty altars, each dedicated to a particular saint, as in St. Giles at Edinburgh, where each of the different crafts of the town had their own special saint and altar, at which they worshipped. It must be admitted that there is something indescribably fascinating in the feeling of having the assistance and the protection of a great saint; and the element of selfishness in it merely raises the emotion to a higher pitch, and enhances the value of the benefits which spring out of the union between the saint and his devoted adherents. In this connection everything has been very skilfully arranged for avoiding any unnecessary strain on the imagination of the worshipper: the image of his patron saint is pleasingly and gracefully placed before his eyes, and he is thus relieved from all troublesome cogitation. As the God of the universe has condescended to make the Roman Catholic Church infallible, the true Catholic can have no religious doubts; he has no occasion to ruffle the serenity of his mind, for his Church has settled everything, and his simple duty is to believe what she teaches, and he cannot be wrong. This is a primary article of faith with all Roman Catholics. It has taken a firm hold on multitudes of the human race, and penetrates deeply into the minds of many earnest and able men. Hence Roman Catholicism has a stronger tendency to make men docile and submissive than Protestantism. Those who believe that the Church is infallible on earth and supreme in heaven, can have no motive to venture beyond the comparatively narrow circle marked out for them. Thus it is, that in those countries where Catholicism has most completely maintained its sway, there has been little real progress in the region of science, or philosophy, or the higher criticism, and less freedom of thought, than amongst the Protestant nations. But in the realm of the fine arts Catholicism has held her own, if she has not always been able to maintain an unchallenged supremacy. Yet our deepest thoughts touching God, the world, and man, cannot be successfully handled by the figurative arts; as these thoughts are too abstract for sensuous representation.

The discipline of the Reformed Church was brought to bear upon the people in many ways. The process of censure which she then wielded was a great power. The form of excommunication used in the Church of Scotland was drawn up by John Knox, and, as finally revised, it was adopted by the General Assembly in 1569, and ordered to be printed. It is a treatise containing an enumeration of the crimes which deserve excommunication, the forms to be followed, the pains and penalties incurred, the form of repentance, and of readmission to the society of the Church.¹ The first part treats of summary excommunication. And under this head the following crimes are noted as deserving of such a sentence: Wilful murder, adultery, sorcery, witchcraft, conjuring, charming, giving of drink to destroy children, and open blasphemy against God and his holy Word, or railing against the Sacraments. All who committed these offences were to be excluded from the society of Christ’s Church, that their impiety might be held in greater horror, and that they might be the more deeply moved when they saw themselves abhorred by the godly. Against these open malefactors the process of summary excommunication might be applied. When the offender had been tried by a jury, the Church was not to excommunicate him, but to proceed by way of admonition, and to show him how precious human life is in the sight of God, and that no one ought to shed blood, except by the sword of the magistrate; and upon sufficient evidence of repentance he was to be restored to the fellowship of the Church. If the offender was fugitive from the law and his crime well known, the sentence of excommunication was to be pronounced without delay.² There were forms also for the readmission of penitents. After confessing their sin and admitting that Satan had for a time gotten the victory over them, they had to present themselves on three Sundays before being finally restored.³

One class of offences came under the punishment of what was called public repentance, such as fornication, drunkenness, swearing, breaking the Sabbath, and common contempt of the order of the Church. Lesser offences, as vain words and uncomely gestures, were visited with admonition.

The form of excommunication and the rules of the process for the case of the absolutely obstinate sinner who resisted all admonition were minutely laid down. The final words of the sentence ran thus: “And at the command of this congregation, cut off, seclude, and excommunicate this man from the body and from our society, as a person slanderous, proud, a contemner, and a member at present altogether corrupt and pernicious to the body. And this his sin by virtue of our authority we bind and pronounce it to be bound in heaven and in earth. We further give him over into the hands and the power of the devil to the destruction of his flesh.” Every one who associated with or sheltered an excommunicated person rendered himself liable to a similar sentence.

The last part of this remarkable treatise laid down the mode of procedure for receiving the excommunicated person again into the fold of the faithful. The civil penalties attached to the sentence of excommunication was enough to make it a terrible punishment. No other punishment at all approaches that which deprives a man of all intercourse with his fellowmen; and probably if a human being were certain that no other person in the world sympathised with him, and that he was abandoned and abhorred by all men and driven from their presence, he could not live. Even the most degraded individuals need the sympathy of their fellows. Among the criminal class this is the case; the most hardened criminal feels that he has at least the sympathy of his companions and confederates. A criminal who has often eluded the hand of justice and defied the laws of his country, is regarded as a hero among his own class. Though he has been convicted often and has suffered many years of imprisonment, he is still looked upon by them as a distinguished character, and is conscious that he has their sympathy. But the man who was excommunicated in the sixteenth century was probably placed in a much more harrowing position than the worst criminal of the present day.

Fasting in the Reformed Church of Scotland was a mode of discipline which was often resorted to; and there was a treatise on the subject composed by Knox and Craig, in 1565, by the authority of the General Assembly, which reduced this exercise to a regular form.¹ When the General Assembly of 1565 proposed to hold a fast, the order and form to be observed was drawn up and printed. This form was afterwards followed, and a brief notice of the occasions on which, according to a statement afterwards added to it, it was deemed necessary to hold a national fast, will give a vivid impression of the ideas and sentiments of the clergy and of the state of society.

In 1572 the Assembly resolved that there should be a public humiliation among all who feared God and professed the true religion, with prayers and fasting throughout the kingdom, to begin on the 23rd of November, and to be continued to the last day of the month, “with the intent that the notorious offenders and open slanderers of the Church may be brought to amend their lives, or else to be excluded from the society of the faithful.” It was deemed necessary that before the fast the superintendents and the ministers should appoint certain days and call before them all the known offenders in their respective districts and parishes, such as murderers and their accomplices, adulterers, robbers of the patrimony of the Church and of other men’s possessions; commencing with the ministers themselves and the nobility, and then to proceed through every other class of the people, that wickedness and heinous crimes which offend the majesty of God may be purged out of the nation. A rigorous scrutiny was to be made of the diligence and the life of the clergy themselves, and also of the life of the nobility, who ought to be the chief example of the whole country.¹ The General Assembly which met in April, 1577, having considered the great iniquity that overflowed the whole face of the community, as it appeared by the light and revelation of the true religion, justly to provoke and stir up the justice of God to take judgment and vengeance on this unworthy and unthankful nation; “observing also the many perilous storms and the rage of persecution daily invading the true Church of Jesus Christ; the extreme suffering of her members in France and elsewhere, that therefore earnest recourse should be had to God by prayers, the Assembly appointed a fast in all the congregations of the realm, to begin on Sunday the 9th of July and to be continued to the following Sunday.”²

The cry of the Church was that corruption pervaded all classes of the nation, that it was therefore necessary to have recourse to fasting, and to call upon God to avert His righteous judgment impended over the people. Another specimen of the language commonly used to express their ideas and sentiments as to the grounds of fasting, may suffice to illustrate this phase of the reformed religion, as it was then understood and practised. The General Assembly in 1581, “ordained a general fast to be observed universally in all the kirks of the realm, with doctrine and instruction of the people, to begin the first Sunday of July and to be continued to the next Sunday thereafter inclusive, using in the meantime, exercise of doctrine according to the accustomed order; and the commissioners were instructed to call on the King and to request him to assist therein by sending out proclamations to that effect.” The causes of this fast are stated in the following order. “1. Universal conspiracies of the papists and the enemies of God in all countries against Christians, for execution of the bloodthirsty Council of Trent. 2. The oppression and thraldom of the Kirk of God. 3. Wasting the rents thereof without remedy. 4. Falling from the former zeal. 5. Flocking home of Jesuits and Papists. 6. Manifest bloodshed, incest, adultery, and such horrible crimes defiling the land unpunished. 7. The danger wherein the King’s majesty stands through evil company resorting about him, by whom it is feared that he may be corrupted in manners and in religion. 8. Universal oppression and contempt of the poor.”¹ About this time, the Church of Scotland stood almost alone in her bold and unflinching opposition to the pretensions of the Church of Rome. Through all the vehement and rude language of the Protestant clergy, they never forgot to plead for the oppressed and the struggling poor.

When a national fast was proclaimed by the Church its observance was strictly enforced. In the General Assembly of 1580, Mr. Thomas Buchanan, the minister of Ceres, was questioned for not causing the fast to be observed within his bounds; “so that when the rest of the country was humbled in fasting, there was no fasting in Fife.” His answer was that he had done all that he could to cause the fast to be observed, but there were instances which no one could remedy, and these he had particularised in his report to the Assembly.¹ As we have seen, the saints’ days, festivals, and holydays, were all discarded at the Reformation; and although sometimes here and there the people showed a tendency to revert to observances of them,² the sermons on two days of the week, the occasional fast days, and the entire devotion of Sunday to religious exercises, were amply sufficient to satisfy the spiritual needs of the people.

But some of the old traditions and customs associated with the saints still exhibited signs of life amid the changed forms of worship and belief. This was strikingly manifested in connection with the venerated wells of the early saints. The General Assembly, in 1573, determined that the discipline of the Church should be used against all who went on pilgrimage to wells; and it was deemed an offence that the magistrates ought to punish. In 1580, the Church requested the government to make a special punishment for all those who went on pilgrimages to wells and churches, as a number of persons had lately passed on pilgrimages to the Holy Rood of Peebles, and to other places. The following year, the General Assembly craved that an act of parliament should be passed against persons who go on pilgrimages, and perform superstitious practices at wells, crosses, images, and altars, or observe feasts on days dedicated to saints. Accordingly parliament passed an act in 1581 forbidding pilgrimages to wells, chapels, and crosses, the observance of any festival days, “and such other monuments of idolatry​—as making bonfires, singing of carols in and about the churches at certain seasons of the year, and the observance of other superstitious rites to the dishonour of God and the contempt of true religion.” A severe fine was to be imposed upon all who broke the law for the first time, and for the second offence the penalty of death was to be inflicted.¹ But only two years later, a question came before the Assembly as to how the ministers who permitted people to repair on pilgrimages to wells close beside their own manses, without reproving, but rather encouraging them by entertaining them with meat and drink, should be punished? The Assembly concluded that a minister guilty of such neglect of his obvious duty, deserved to be deprived of his office.² In spite, however, of the acts of parliament and the discipline of the Church, numbers of the people still continued to visit the wells, to go on pilgrimages to certain churches, to make bonfires, and to keep holydays.³ In fact, many of the wells were resorted to down to the present century, and within my own recollection there were wells supposed to possess special virtues, which were frequently resorted to by the people.

The relation of the sexes at the time of the Reformation was in an extremely unsatisfactory state. In the preceding volume of this work, it was shown that the institution of marriage had passed through various modifications, and that though the Roman Catholic Church had often attempted to make it a public and solemn act, she had only partly succeeded in overcoming the loose habits of the people.¹ In this volume it has already been indicated that the principle of celibacy imposed upon the Roman priesthood and the religious orders had the effect of lowering, instead of elevating, the feelings and sentiments naturally associated with the institution of marriage. The obvious fact could hardly fail to strike the mind that, if marriage is a good and lawful connection instituted for the continuance and comfort of the race, the consequent inconsistency of prohibiting any class or profession from entering into it becomes palpable; for what is absolutely necessary to the continuance of the race, and calculated to increase the sum of human happiness, cannot be denied to any class of men without introducing a most invidious, immoral, and warping distinction. The principle of moral consistency is utterly shocked by the rules of a celibate priesthood, as if this pretension of unhuman purity exalted them above their fellow-men, and prepared and enabled them to become qualified instructors of mankind; as if the natural sentiments which cluster round the domestic hearth must be eradicated from their breasts; and that when thus shorn and dwarfed, they are better able to feel and understand what is needful for the well-being of humanity. First extinguish the strongest and most essential sentiments of the human heart, and then you have a priesthood admirably fitted to maintain their position as the enemies of all progress, of all liberty, of all freedom of thought; a priesthood that for ever struggles to uphold a belief in traditions and legends, in signs and wonders, and enfolds their adherents in a mesh of puerilities and absurdities well suited to the spirit of the Dark Ages.

The first General Assembly of the Reformed Church agreed to adopt the law of Moses, touching the degrees of blood relations in marriage. By it first cousins were allowed to marry with each other, and all remoter degrees, but in the direct line of descent marriage is forbidden throughout; this became law by act of parliament in 1567. It was found, however, to be difficult to bring the people under restraint in the relation of the different sexes; as men and women had a custom of cohabiting after promising to marry, without publicly solemnising their marriage. The Church was forced to take severe measures against defaulters of this character, and the reformed discipline was sternly applied. It was enacted by the General Assembly that those who wished to be married must give in banns to their parish minister and be proclaimed on three successive Sundays. In 1579 it was stated in the General Assembly that some of the ministers would solemnise marriage only on Sunday, while others married people upon week-days, which had raised much slander; and the Assembly was called upon to give a decisive answer on the point. The answer of the Assembly was, that when parties had been thrice proclaimed they might be married on any day of the week if a sufficient number of witnesses were present.¹ But some persons were still married without proclamation of banns, and the General Assembly of 1597 resolved that none should be joined together in marriage, unless thrice proclaimed in their own parish church, according to the custom observed in Scotland; and that any minister who contravened this rule should be deprived of his office, and the other parties ordained to satisfy the Church by public repentance.²

It was not necessary that marriage should be celebrated by a clergyman, and though it was the law of the Church that banns should be proclaimed, the consent of the parties might be declared simply before witnesses. Even when no formal consent appeared, marriage was presumed from cohabitation, if the parties were reputed to be husband and wife. Before the civil courts of Scotland evidence of this description was often held to prove marriage.¹ When marriage was solemnised according to the order of the Church, it was called regular, when otherwise, clandestine, which, however, was held to be valid, though penalties were sometimes annexed to it.

In connection with marriage some curious points were occasionally brought before the General Assembly. In 1575 this question was asked: “Whether the contract of marriage which used to be made before the proclamation of banns between the man and the woman should be made by words of the present time. The man saying to the woman, I take thee to be my wife, and the woman saying to the man, I take thee to be my husband; or should there be no promise made till the very time of the solemnisation of the marriage. Answer​—Parties to be married should come before the session and give in their names, that their banns may be proclaimed, and no further ceremony used.” Again, it was asked what should be done in the following case: “A man and a woman in the presence of some of the parishioners were married in the parish church, or hand-fast by the reader, and thereafter mutually cohabited together at bed and board as married people, and were so reputed and holden. The minister of the same church, at the woman’s desire, a good space after, leads a form of divorce between them in this manner: he calls the woman before him, and caused her to swear that her husband never had any sexual intercourse with her, and thereupon, without further questions at the man, decerns them separated and divorced from each other, the man always dissenting and still claiming her as his wife. Whether is this form of divorce allowable in a Reformed Church that has received the Gospel, and if it be not, what correction does the minister deserve who usurped and used this manner of process and judgment?” The Assembly answered: “That this divorce was not lawful, and that the minister should be suspended and make public repentance.” Once more: “A certain man with his accomplices ravished and took away a woman, and thereafter married her without proclamation of banns, but did not solemnise the marriage in the face of the Church, but in a private house. Whether is this marriage lawful, or are children begotten therein legitimate or not? and what punishment should the minister receive who so abused marriage?” The Assembly answered that the minister should be deposed.¹ In 1579 it was asked in the General Assembly: “What order should be taken with the persons who went to a popish priest to be married, and their banns not being proclaimed, should they be esteemed as married persons, and if not, what discipline should be used against them?” It was answered: “This connection is no marriage, and therefore ordains the persons to be called before the particular assemblies, and to make satisfaction as fornicators; and upon a new proclamation to be married according to the order of the Reformed Church, and the papist priest to be punished.”²

The question, at what age the young should be allowed to marry, came before the General Assembly in 1600. It was then stated that great inconveniences had arisen from the untimeous marriages of young persons before they were of age meet for entering into this union. As yet there was no statute of the Church defining the age at which persons might marry; but it was then enacted that henceforth no minister should join in matrimony any persons, except the male be fourteen years of age, and the female at the least twelve years: the Assembly directed their commissioners to request parliament to ratify this act.¹ When the Church was making an act on this important social point, she might have shown a little more wisdom, and not given her sanction to the marriage of persons at this early age. In justice to the Church, however, it must be mentioned that there was still an heirship of feudalism involved in the marriage of a certain class of individuals. This was a pecuniary casualty due to the superior from the heir of his former vassal, after the age of fourteen if a male, and if a female twelve; and thus there was an engrossing interest attached to the marriage of a portion of the landed class while they were minors, and under the control of their superiors. This marriage casualty arose from the right which the superior had over the person, as well as over the estates of the minor heir; and it was chiefly restricted to ward holdings, except where a special clause in the charter imported it. It was the privilege of the superior to dispose of the heir in marriage, and to take the marriage portion to himself; but if the minor heir refused the offered match, and named another, then he was not entitled to the possession of his lands after the ward terminated, till the superior was refunded the double of the value of the portion which would have accrued to him from the offered marriage. Seeing, however, that no man nor woman could be forced to marry, it was the interest of the superior to have the power of arranging this important affair, while the heir or heiress was very young; and so an extremely complicated mode of attaining this end was gradually introduced into the law of the kingdom.² Cases arising out of these peculiar rights of the superior, in connection with the marriage of his vassals, frequently came before the courts;³ and under various modifications these invidious privileges continued till 1748, when they were finally abolished.

Regarding divorce, the doctrine of the Reformed Church was clear and emphatic. She insisted that marriage could only be dissolved either on the ground of adultery, or wilful desertion; and for obvious reasons she endeavoured to make divorce difficult. The Church firmly maintained that divorced persons should not be permitted to marry their paramours; and at her request, Parliament passed an Act in 1600 prohibiting such unions.¹ There are two sides to this social question, and at that time there was ample justification for the Act.

Some account has already been given of the measures taken for the relief of the poor in the period preceding the Reformation. From the first, the Reformed Church endeavoured to make provision for the really indigent poor, and also to relieve the labourers of the ground and the oppressed tenants, from some of their burdens. The first General Assembly resolved to petition the government to make better laws for the protection of pupils and orphans. In 1565, the Assembly took into consideration what should be done to those who oppressed children, and it was resolved in 1568, that oppressors of children, should be admonished by the Church to make public repentance in sackcloth, bareheaded and barefooted, as often as the particular congregation shall appoint.¹ The following year, the General Assembly petitioned the government to make provision for the poor, suggesting that a portion of the tithes should be applied to that purpose, and requesting that the poor labourers of the ground should have intromission to take their own tithes upon a reasonable composition. It is quite evident that after the nobles obtained possession of the Church lands, they then oppressed the tenants by exacting tithes, rents, and other dues, so that for a considerable time the occupiers of these lands were much harder pressed than before the Reformation. The reformed clergy in many ways exerted themselves to improve the material well-being of the people, as well as their moral and social state: and there is ample evidence of this throughout the records of the period.²

Collections were made in the churches every Sunday for the poor; other sources of revenue that should have fallen to them, had been diverted by the Revolution into other channels. The government in 1574 ordered the provost and magistrates of Aberdeen to remove the organs out of their churches, and dispose of them, and to give the proceeds to the poor. They were ordered to sell the Gray Friars’ church and grounds to the highest bidder, except what was required for lodging the poor, and all the proceeds of the sale to be applied to sustain the poor. At the same time the Town Council of Aberdeen came under an obligation to build an hospital for the poor and impotent, and to put the croft and the mire and the house belonging to the leper folk, which lies between Old and New Aberdeen, into proper repair, for the support of the leper men and women, as was originally intended. The community of the city the same year resolved that alms should be collected weekly by one of the elders of the Church, and delivered to the keeping of the minister, to be distributed among the poor every month, according to the discretion of the session. Beggars not born in the town were ordered to be removed, and the poor citizens were directed to wear the town’s token on their outer garments that they might be known.¹ The Lords of Council passed an act in 1575 for the punishment of sturdy and idle beggars, and for providing support for the poor and helpless. In 1578 there was a great dearth in Scotland, and the Lords of Council discharged the customs on victuals imported, in order to mitigate the suffering of the poor.²

One difficulty of dealing with the poor arose from the defective police organisation. There was no adequate means for handling the multitude of strong beggars, “such as make themselves fools and bards,” gipsies, and a host of other vagabonds, who moved about and continually multiplied. It was difficult to separate these from the really deserving poor, and this long hampered the laws relating to the latter class. The city of Aberdeen had an official whose duty it was to keep the town free from extraneous beggars “not born and bred within the burgh.” In 1577 the council agreed to give him forty shillings to buy a garment to himself, on which the town’s arms was to be put, and then remitted “him to the session, to be helped and aided by them also, as his office concerns for the most part the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.”¹ When mixed notions of this kind prevailed regarding the jurisdiction of the civil and ecclesiastical spheres of action, we can easily see how the beggars would succeed. In 1574 Parliament passed an Act re-enacting the former Acts against beggars and all idle persons between the age of fourteen and seventy, and proposed to inflict severe penalties upon them. This Act also provided for the support of the poor, the aged, and the helpless, and it may be considered the first Poor-law Act of Scotland. It was repeated in 1579, and again, with some additions, in 1592, and once more in 1597. But the beggars and vagabonds still increased.² The centuries of feudal anarchy had entailed a legacy of vagrancy which the Government and the Church endeavoured to suppress. Years and generations passed, yet all the influences of religion and the restraints of the law appeared equally powerless to remove the idle and the ruffian population who preyed upon the industrious inhabitants of the kingdom. A long train of circumstances had concurred to feed the natural inclination to idleness and wandering among the people. A large portion of mankind have always manifested a similar tendency. But notwithstanding all the anarchy and the wretchedness of the nation, there was a core of vigour and health; and the moral discipline which the Church was so earnestly inculcating soon began to take root in the heart of the people.

The subject now to be noticed is one of melancholy interest, for the sad aberration of the faculties of the human mind which it manifested. A belief in magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy is a phenomenon which has afflicted mankind from the earliest ages onward to the present day. The forms they assumed are innumerable and endless; but whether it originated from ignorance, and has been sustained and continued by this; or whether something akin to it must naturally arise from the constitution of man, and the circumstances in which he was placed in the universe, as some eminent philosophers seem to hold; or whether it springs up gradually from a confused consciousness, at first tinged with an inclination, and afterwards with a deliberate intention to impose upon and deceive the people for interested ends, is a problem that cannot be decidedly answered.¹ The manifestation of the mind and feeling of the human race has been so diversified and unequally developed, that what is superstition and necromancy to one nation, may appear to another to be the only true form of religion; while that which another community believes and professes to be true and holy, a different people may believe to be the very work of the enemy himself. The beliefs of mankind, so far as they are known, have always contained opposing and directly exclusive elements of this character, which is mainly a result of the varied degrees of civilisation that have prevailed throughout the world. Even the same nation, at different periods of her life and development, may entertain the most opposite beliefs, as we find in the history of our own country. The difference between a believer in witchcraft and a believer in modern spiritualism is only one of degree and development; and if witchcraft and spiritualism are both founded upon the same class of notions, it is the higher development of morality and intelligence which renders the latter more harmless in the nineteenth century than the former was in the sixteenth. Among all the forms of belief in evil spirits, that which assumes the reality of a union between the evil spirit and a human being for the purpose of doing injury to other people is the most mischievous in its action on society. When men believed that the devil was an enormously powerful being, and that he could give an almost unlimited portion of this power to his confederates​—the witches, for working all manner of evil​—we need not be surprised that the King and the clergy were very anxious to purge the land of witches.

It seems to be pretty well ascertained that the belief in ghosts, spirits, and demons, has descended from the early cult of the prehistoric ages. One cause of the continuance of the belief in such imaginary beings into comparatively advanced stages of civilisation, appears to be the extreme credulity of uncultured and uncritical man, and another is the craving for the marvellous​—a notable trait even in recent times. In the early stages of culture there seems to have been scarcely any distinction between the facts of inspiration and the facts of divination. The diviner employed his power for practical ends. The medicine-man of the savage stage operated in a somewhat similar way as an exorcist does; he invoked the aid of supernatural agents, and then endeavoured to make the body of the patient so disagreeable that the demon became glad to depart. In the more developed forms of exorcism, one demon was employed to expel another, or the officiating priest might summon a friendly spirit to his assistance. This power of the exorcist over evil spirits, when further developed, was used for many other purposes, and assumed the forms of sorcery and magic. The belief in the agency of evil spirits which the human race has manifested is a perplexing problem in the history of religion. In the earlier forms of religion the evil spirit or god was most feared, and hence a kind of devil worship seems to have prevailed. In the neo-platonic philosophy​—that curious mixture of subjective thought, ecstasy, and theosophy, which flourished from the beginning of the third century to the sixth​—there was a large element of theurgy and magic, and some of the most eminent of these philosophers were addicted to sorcery, and professed to have received divine communications to foresee ♦the future, and to perform miracles. The trials and executions for witchcraft in the sixteenth century present painful evidence of the continuance of the belief of demoniac agency. The belief in the power of the devil as something which manifested itself in the life of men and women was universal; the Reformation failed to shake it. The seventy-third canon of the Church of England, enacted in 1603, prohibited the clergy from casting out devils; in the present century the belief in demoniac possession of the body, which continued among the lower classes of the people in Germany in spite of the progress of civilisation, was revived among educated Protestants; and even yet it is not quite extinct in any nation in Europe.

In 1563, witchcraft was declared by Act of Parliament to be punishable by death. Probably the sudden shaking and the suppression of the traditions and notions of the people at the Reformation, had tended to arouse and revive other ideas of the demoniac order. However, witches soon became numerous after the revolution. The clergy and the kirk-sessions were very active in searching for witches. When these poor creatures were apprehended, they were placed in solitary confinement, and often fearfully tortured, to extort a confession of their guilt. They were systematically deprived of their natural rest; they had to endure cold, hunger, and thirst; and then the branks were applied to the unhappy victims, who were soon reduced to a fit state for confessing what was required. Their trial followed on the emission of one or more of the confessions thus obtained, which usually formed the groundwork of the public accusation and prosecution for this imaginary crime.¹

It was stated in the General Assembly of 1563, that four witches had been delated for witchcraft by the superintendent of Fife and Galloway. The Assembly requested the Lords of Council to take order with them, and the complainers were commanded to give in their information. The General Assembly, in 1573, passed an act touching those who consult with witches, and ordered that persons suspected of conferring with them should be called before the superintendents; and, if they were found to have consulted witches, then they had to undergo public repentance in sackcloth, on Sunday in the church, under the penalty of excommunication. “If they be disobedient, to proceed after due admonition, and excommunicate them.” The popular party in the Church accused Bishop Adamson of consulting witches. Under the year 1583, James Melville records that Adamson was lying sick in his castle, “and oftentimes under the care of a woman suspected of witchcraft.... This woman being examined by the presbytery, and found to be a witch, in their judgment, was given to the bishop to be kept in his castle for execution, but he suffered her to slip away; but within three or four years thereafter, she was taken, and executed in Edinburgh for a witch.”¹

It is well known that James VI. was a firm believer in witchcraft, and he greatly encouraged the prosecution of the wretched creatures accused of this crime. During the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, a considerable number of witches were tried and executed in every quarter of the kingdom. They were accused, tried, burnt, and drowned, for doing and attempting to do, many curious and wonderful things; but most of the points in the accusations appear to us very ridiculous and absurd. Making a clay picture of the individual whom the witch intended to injure or to kill, was a very common point of the indictment. One count of the indictment against Bessy Rory, who was tried in 1590 for witchcraft, but acquitted, was this: “Thou art indicted for a common awaytaker of women’s milk in the whole country, and detaining the same at thy pleasure, as the whole country will testify.” Much of the records of the trials for witchcraft are quite unfit for publication. One of the most extraordinary stories in these indictments is the account of the meeting of the witches with the devil in the church of Berwick. The company who met his satanic majesty on this occasion consisted of a hundred persons, of whom six were men, and the rest women. The old enemy boldly ascended the pulpit, and delivered an address to his servants. He inquired what they had done since their last meeting; then, after giving them some more instructions, he concluded by commanding them to do all the evil that they could. Before the company separated, the witches showed their respect for their master in an unmistakable and exceedingly becoming fashion. On this night, the devil was respectably dressed​—he wore a fine black gown and a hat.¹

Many of the witches were accused of conspiring and attempting by their devilry to destroy the King; and this aroused the weak-minded monarch to greater efforts against them.

Francis Stewart, Earl Bothwell and High Admiral of Scotland, was a son of John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, a natural son of James V.; thus the Earl was a nephew of Queen Mary and the Regent Moray, and a cousin of James VI. He became a powerful personage, and by his daring exploits often threw the King into a state of extreme alarm and terror. Politically he was wayward and reckless, and acquired a reputation for dissipation. For a considerable time many of his offences were condoned; but at last he was accused of trafficking with witches in a treasonable manner, and for treasonable purposes, and on these charges he was brought before the King and Council on the 15th of April, 1591, and committed to prison in Edinburgh Castle to await his trial; while two of his servants were summoned on similar charges to appear before the King and Council on the 6th of May. Bothwell escaped from the Castle of Edinburgh on the morning of the 21st of June; and on the 25th a royal proclamation was issued denouncing him as a wicked traitor who had entered into a conspiracy “against his Majesty’s own person, consulted with necromancers and witches, both in and without this country, for the purpose of taking his Highness’s life, which was confessed by some of the same class already executed, and by some others yet alive, ready to be executed for the same crime.... For which cause, and the former treasonable offence whereof he was convicted, his Majesty now at last has caused the doom of forfeiture to be pronounced against him, so that he is now a declared rebel, a traitor, an enemy to God, his Majesty, and this his native country.” Yet Bothwell was not extinguished, for, on the night of the 27th of December, he suddenly entered Holyrood Palace and battered at the doors of the King’s chamber, the Queen’s chamber, and the apartments of Maitland, the Chancellor. It seems that he intended to seize the King, to murder the Chancellor if necessary, and thus effect such a revolution in the Government as he desired in his own interest; but his attempt failed, though it appeared that he was abetted by several persons in the King’s court. The hue and cry against the bold rebel and consulter of witches was redoubled, and proclamations against his accomplices were issued, still the daring Bothwell, with his witchery, almost drove the King, the Chancellor, and the Council, into utter distraction. Meantime the prosecution and execution of the witches and the sorcerers had been proceeding. Euphame MacCalyean, the wife of a notable Edinburgh advocate, was accused on various charges of witchcraft. Her trial lasted from the 9th to the 13th of June, and one of the chief counts in her indictment was that she had kept intercourse with the witches who had formed a conspiracy for the destruction of the King. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and the poor woman, “on her conscience, protested that she was innocent of the crimes laid to her charge.” On the 25th of June, 1591, the very day on which Bothwell was proclaimed a rebel, Euphame was executed on the castle hill of Edinburgh. Barbara Napier of Edinburgh was another reputed witch, and was also accused of treasonable witchcraft against the King’s own person. On the 11th of May, 1591, she was convicted, and sentenced to be strangled and burned; but, after the stake was set in the Castlehill, and everything prepared for her execution, some of her friends alleged that she was pregnant, whereupon the execution was delayed. As it was considered hard to execute her after this, her life was spared, whereat the King was much displeased. James was enraged at the jury for acquitting her of the charge of treasonable witchcraft against his own person, and he purposely went to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh and delivered an oration on the subject to enlighten the minds of jurymen and the people touching “The use of witchcraft, and the enormity of the crime; its punishment according to Scripture, the ignorance of thinking such matters were fantasies, the cause of his own interference, the ignorance of the jury in the late trial, the cause of their finding, and his own opinion of what witches really are.” His Majesty explicated the above points at great length; and it appears that his oratory had been effective, for on the 26th of October the Privy Council appointed a Special Commission, consisting of six members, viz., Cockburne, the Justice-Clerk; MacGill, the King’s advocate; two burgesses of Edinburgh, and two Presbyterian ministers. This Commission was empowered to deal with all persons suspected, delated, or accused of witchcraft, sorcery, and all such devilish devices, and to examine, imprison, and torture them, and then report in writing the depositions to the King and his Council in order that the witches and sorcerers might be tried by a jury and justice executed upon them. Moreover, the King granted, and also sold, many commissions to earls, barons, sheriffs, stewards, and to the local authorities of burghs and towns, which empowered them to search for all persons suspected of witchcraft within the districts included in the commissions, to examine and torture them, put them to trial and execute them. For many years this cruel mania against witches raged throughout the kingdom, and was mainly instigated by the conceit and timidity of the King.

Richard Graham, the great sorcerer of the time, who had been connected with the alleged evil practices of Euphame MacCalyean, Barbara Napier, Earl Bothwell, and others, was himself at last brought to trial and condemned. He appears to have been a thorough rascal; but he adhered to the declarations which he had emitted, that Bothwell had held magical consultations touching the King’s death, and he also asserted that Ex-Chancellor Arran had dealt in witchcraft. He confessed to several raisings of the devil, especially once in the house of John Boswell of Auchinleck, “and once in the yard of the house in the Canongate belonging to Sir Lewis Ballenden, the late Justice-Clerk.” On the 29th of February, 1592, Graham was strangled and burned at the Cross of Edinburgh.

Bothwell still continued his exploits. On the night of the 28th of June, 1592, he re-appeared with an armed company of his followers and besieged the King and Queen in Falkland Castle, intending to carry them off, and putting them in terror of their lives; but the people of Fifeshire mustered and went to the rescue of the King, and on their approach Bothwell retired, having been frustrated in his main object. Great efforts were made to drive him out of the kingdom, yet, though repeatedly chased, condemned and forfeited, and proclaimed a traitor and an outlaw, under every possible form, still he was at liberty, and supported by an unknown number of followers; and thus he was a cause of constant anxiety to the Government and of terror to the King. Early on the morning of the 24th of July, 1593, Bothwell was again in the Palace of Holyrood by the connivance of the Duke of Lennox, Lord Ochiltree, and other courtiers. The King was then forced to capitulate to his detested archenemy; in fact, Bothwell for five or six weeks was master of the political situation; so on the 26th of July the King granted an act of remission and condonation of all the crimes of Bothwell and his accomplices. This was obtained, however, under menacing circumstances, when Bothwell and a band of his armed followers stood around the King, who was in terror of his life. Bothwell then had such a number of associates in Edinburgh that he offered to stand his trial to clear himself of the charges of witchcraft against the King’s life, which had been the chief cause of all the trouble with him. Accordingly a jury was summoned, and on the 10th of August he was tried before it, and unanimously acquitted of all the charges of witchcraft against the King’s person. For a time Bothwell and his party had the King in their hands, and his Majesty was sorely vexed at the restraint of his liberty, and extremely perplexed as to how he could extricate himself from his embarrassed position. On the 7th of September, a Convention of Estates was assembled at Stirling, in which Bothwell’s party seems to have sunk into a feeble minority. On the initiative of the King, the Convention intimated to him that he was not in any way bound by the conditions extorted from him at Holyrood Palace, and an Act was immediately passed declaring “that his Majesty, with the advice of the Estates, had recalled the grant made to Bothwell in August last.” This was intimated to Bothwell, and shortly after he assumed a threatening attitude. On the 11th of October he was summoned, along with two of his adherents, to appear before the King and the Council on the 25th, under the penalty of rebellion, and having failed to appear he was denounced; still, he was not extinguished. On the 3rd of April, 1594, he appeared at Leith with a body of armed followers, attacked the royal army under the King’s own command, and forced them to retire, and nearly obtained possession of the capital. The following year, early in April, however, he was obliged to leave Scotland. It was reported that he had gone to France, thence into Spain, and finally to Naples, where he died in poor circumstances, about the year 1606.

It appears that no other man of public mark had been so much connected with the alleged practices of witchcraft as Bothwell, or so incessant in consultations with the noted witches and warlocks of the period, and especially with the arch warlock Richard Graham. In the charge of high treason on which he was arrested and imprisoned in April 1591, which had driven him into his subsequent career of rebellion, the main count had been that he conspired with such infernal agencies for the death of the King, and thus to attain his own ambitious aims in the State. This was the view that the King entertained of Bothwell’s proceedings and exploits.

It is quite evident that the belief in witchcraft was entertained by all classes, the parliament, the Lords of Council, and the Judges of the Court of Session; none of them indicated any doubt of the reality of infernal agency, nor any inkling of the absurdity of the devil appearing in a human form, and assisting persons to accomplish all manner of mischief.¹

The Church also continued to search and hunt for witches. The General Assembly, in 1587, had before them the case of a witch who was lying in prison at St. Andrews; but it seems the evidence in her case was insufficient, and James-Melville was ordered by the Assembly to travel on the coast side and collect matter for an indictment against her. In 1597, it was reported to the Assembly that several persons had been convicted of witchcraft, yet the magistrates not only refused to punish them according to the law of the country, but in contempt set them at liberty. The Assembly then ordered that the presbyteries should proceed in all severity with the censures of the Church against such magistrates as liberated convicted witches. About the end of the century a great number of witches were burnt in Aberdeen; yet it seems the city was not free of them, as in the beginning of the year 1600 the council resolved​—“That the commission purchased to the provost of the burgh and the sheriff of the county, for holding of justice courts on witches and sorcerers, should be prosecuted upon all persons in this burgh and the freedom thereof, who were delated for this crime, so that the city should be purged of such contagious enemies of the commonweal.”¹ Indeed the local authorities and the clergy were intently bent on reforming the nation, and with the Catholics, the Jesuits, the troops of beggars, the poor, and the mass of crime and vice, it must be admitted that their hands were full enough. They never wavered, however, but steadfastly fought against everything which they deemed an evil; and, although we must candidly confess that their ideas of what constituted an evil or a crime were often confused and mistaken, and that their judgments were frequently wanting in discrimination, nevertheless, the evidence proves that they struggled manfully to improve the social state of the people.

The number of trials and executions for witchcraft in Scotland was not comparatively greater than in other European countries. Barrington estimated that in England, during a period of two centuries, 30,000 witches were executed. Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder, by his allegations caused the execution of one hundred persons in 1645‒47, in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. In 1515, five hundred witches were burned at Geneva in the space of three months. In 1520, a great number were burned in France, and one sorcerer confessed to having twelve associates; while in Lorraine, between the years 1580 and 1595, nine hundred witches and warlocks were burned; and in Bretagne twenty poor women were executed as witches in 1654. In Germany upwards of 100,000 were executed for witchcraft; while in Wurtemburg alone, between the years 1627 and 1629, one hundred and fifty-seven persons were burned.

The discipline of the Reformed Church not only aimed at the suppression of crime and vice, but also, according to its light, endeavoured to strike at the roots of evil. The General Assembly in 1563 passed an act prohibiting the publication of any book either printed or written, if it touched upon religion, till it was presented to the superintendent of the district and approved by him and the most learned of his brethren within his bounds; but if they could not agree on the points raised in the book, then it should be placed before the General Assembly for a final decision on its merits and orthodoxy. In 1568 the Assembly found that Thomas Bassandyne had printed a book in Edinburgh, entitled The Fall of the Roman Church, “naming our King supreme head of the primitive Church,” and that he had printed a psalm book at the end of which was a profane song called “Welcome Fortune”; and that these books had been issued without the license of the magistrates or the Church. The Assembly unanimously agreed to order the printer to call in all the copies of the book which had been sold, to alter the title and expunge the profane song, and in the future to refrain from printing anything without the license of the supreme magistrate, and the revision of such matters as related to religion by the committee appointed for that purpose.¹ Though the Church was thus careful in guarding against the spread of immoral writings, and what she held to be erroneous doctrine, she was not an enemy to the press. Robert Lekpreuik, the Edinburgh printer, had fallen into straitened circumstances; and in 1569 the General Assembly, after considering his position, and the money which he had expended on his establishment, resolved to give him fifty pounds yearly out of the funds of the Church. The Assembly in several other instances encouraged printers, and petitioned the government to treat them liberally.²

The Privy Council in 1574 passed an act prohibiting the printing of any book without a license from the government. The act directed that the authorities throughout the kingdom should proclaim to the people, that none of them may presume to print or sell any books, ballads, rhymes or tragedies, either in Latin or English until they were seen and examined, and allowed by the Chancellor and other persons appointed by the King, and at the least three of these must concur before the King’s license could be granted for the publication. The penalty attached to the contravention of this act was death and confiscation of goods.¹

In the secular affairs of life, the citizens still exhibited the same restriction and monopoly, which was described in the tenth chapter of the first volume. This greatly hampered the internal industry and the trade of the country. While the wars with England and the disturbed state of the nation before the Reformation, and the troubles which ensued after it, were all inimical to trade and commerce. Owing to these circumstances, industry and trade made comparatively little progress in the sixteenth century; this period was more remarkable for moral and religious change and transformation than for material prosperity.

During the reigns of James V. and Queen Mary, many acts of parliament were passed relating to the coinage of the kingdom. A great variety of gold, silver, and copper coins were struck. In 1525 it was ordered that a gold coin should be struck, called a crown, of the fineness of twenty-one carats and a-half and two grains; nine of these were to be coined out of the ounce of gold, and each to pass current for twenty shillings. For every ounce of gold brought to the mint, the seller was to get seven pounds, and out of every ounce of coined gold the King was to get twenty-five shillings. In 1527 the Crown entered into a contract with two men for coining of silver money. According to this agreement, one hundred and seventy-six coins were to be made out of the pound of silver, and each was to be of the value of eighteen pence Scots. The coins of Queen Mary are numerous and present a variety of types. In 1547 the Regent and Lords of Council passed an act stating that the pennies and half-pennies were mostly all gone out of the country; and thus the people, but especially the poor, suffered for want of them. The Council ordered twelve stones of silver to be coined into pennies and half-pennies, of the fineness and weight of the old pennies; and commanded that they should have currency throughout the kingdom. In 1554 the Bishop of Ross was going to France in the character of ambassador, and the Regent and Council ordered James Atcheson, the master coiner, to receive a silver vessel and coin it into babies to defray the ambassador’s expenses. In the end of the year 1565 directions were issued for coining the silver piece called the Mary Rall; it was to pass for thirty shillings, and the two-thirds and the one-third of the same to pass for twenty, and ten shillings respectively. During the reign of Queen Mary, the intrinsic value of the currency underwent several remarkable changes. As in 1544 the value of a pound of silver was £9 10 shillings, in 1556, £13, and in 1565 it was raised to £18. At this time, in England the pound of silver was worth from £2 8 shillings to £3, which pretty plainly shows that money was scarce in Scotland.¹

In 1565, the Lords of Council ordered the false coins called hardheads, brought from Flanders, to be melted, and to have no currency in the kingdom. The same year an act was passed against the importation of false coin; and in 1566, several persons were convicted in Aberdeen for this offence. The following year, in May, a proclamation was issued against importing false coins​—hardheads, placks, babies, or any other light money; and in 1568, Forbes of Monymusk and Forbes of Pitsligo, two brothers, were cited for coining false babies.¹

Many acts touching the coinage were passed in the reign of James VI. In 1567, the regent and council passed an act ordering the coinage of a silver piece, to be called the James Rall, of the weight of an ounce troy, and to pass for thirty shillings in Scotland, two-parts of the same for twenty shillings, and the third-part for ten shillings. This year, in December, the parliament passed an act dealing with the coinage, and with false and clipped coins. It was stated that the King with the consent of the Regent, may coin gold and silver pieces of the same fineness as that of other countries, and that no gold or silver coin should be melted. The Lords of Council, in 1572, stated that parliament had authorised a new silver coin to be sent out, “for payment and support of the charges of this present civil and intestine war, raised against his highness’ authority by certain declared traitors, rebels, and conspirators, who, after the murder of the King’s dearest father, and of his uncle the Regent of this realm, have never ceased to resist his highness’ authority and to seek his own life, and, as far as in them lies, to pull his royal crown off his head.” This money was coined in whole and in half-pieces​—the first to be called the half mark, and to pass for six shillings and eightpence; the second to be called the forty-penny piece, and to pass for three shillings and fourpence. The council ordered that the new coinage should be made known to the people by proclamation: “And to command and charge them to receive the said money in thankful and ready payment, and no one may presume to refuse the same upon any pretence whatever, under the penalty of treason; certifying to those that fail, that they shall be condemned to death with all rigour as an example to others.”¹ This act gives some indication of the difficulties connected with the currency, which mainly arose from the scarcity of specie, and the confused ideas of what constituted wealth; as yet there was no paper currency to make up the deficiency. Only three months after the issue of these two pieces of money, the Council had to proclaim that it was counterfeited by some persons to the great injury of the people.² It may be inferred that the motive for counterfeiting these coins so quickly arose from their being further debased than the money before in circulation. In the copper coinage, as well as in the gold and silver, there seems to have been much counterfeiting practised.³ During the later half of the century numerous acts were passed prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver; and injunctions were issued for bringing all the gold and silver to the master coiner, who was to pay the ordinary price for it.⁴

In 1579 parliament enacted that there should be a piece of gold coined of twenty-one carats, containing ten in the ounce, to be called the Scottish crown, and to pass for forty shillings. At the same time it was proclaimed that the ounce of the finest gold was to be bought for twenty-one pounds of the money of the realm, and the price of all other gold to be according to its fineness. A silver piece was to be coined of the fineness of eleven deniers, in whole and in half pieces​—the first to pass for twenty-six shillings and eightpence, and to be called the two-mark coin; and the half piece to pass for thirteen shillings and fourpence, and to be called the half-mark. The price to be given for the finest silver was thirty-six shillings the ounce, and for other silver in proportion to its quality. But in 1580, parliament ordered that all the money in the kingdom, except the stamped placks and pennies, should be reformed and reduced to the fineness of eleven deniers, and a new gold coin was also ordered to be struck. The next year, the King and parliament thought that the last silver coinage had been fixed at too high a value, and this had caused great injury to the people, and had also been the occasion of a dearth and many other inconveniences. The new act, therefore, directed that the last coinage, which extended to two hundred and eleven stones and ten pounds of silver, should be brought in again to be recoined into ten shilling pieces, containing four in the ounce. In 1584, parliament passed another act, reciting that the gold of the kingdom had been continually exported, and that of other countries introduced to the loss and injury of the people; and it was then ordered that two pieces of gold, of the fineness of twenty-one carats and a-half, should be coined​—the one of six coins to the ounce, each to pass for three pounds fifteen shillings; and the other nine to the ounce, and to pass for fifty shillings. In 1597, it was stated in an act of parliament that the current money of the kingdom was scarce, and that gold and silver had risen to exorbitant prices owing to the liberty which all persons took of raising the price of money at their pleasure, far above the value prescribed by the laws and acts of parliament. Through this, and constant exporting of the money, great confusion had been caused; and it was then enacted that parties transgressing the laws would be severely punished. The scarcity of money is very apparent from the high value which the laws set upon it. The ounce of foreign gold of twenty-two carats was twenty-eight pounds sixteen shillings, Scots money, in 1598; and in 1601, the price given at the mint for gold was thirty-three pounds the ounce; at the same time the ounce of silver was about forty-eight shillings, Scotch money.¹ In 1587, parliament passed an act limiting the rate of interest on money and on grain to ten per cent.

At the time of the union of the crowns the relative value of English and Scotch money was as twelve to one; the gold pieces which passed in England for twenty-one shillings each, in Scotland passed for twelve pounds.

Some early attempts at mining were noticed in the preceding volume. In the reign of James IV., the gold mines of Crawfurd Moor were discovered; and in the years 1511, 1512, and 1513, many payments were made by the crown to Sir James Pettigrew for working these gold mines. Payments were also made to Sebald Northberge, the master finer, Andrew Ireland, finer, and Gerard Essemer, the melter; and in 1513 the Abbot of Tungland received payment from the King to visit the mines of Crawfurd Moor. These mines engaged the attention of the government in 1515. In 1524 a court was ordered to be held at Edinburgh to deal with those who had broken the order of the mine, and conveyed gold out of the kingdom; and the gold of the mine was then ordered to be coined in the coining house. The Albany medal of 1524 was made from gold found in Crawfurd Moor; and it seems that some of the gold coinage of James V. was minted of native metal. In 1526 a lease was granted to a party of Germans and Dutchmen of all the mines of gold, silver, and other metals for a term of forty-three years; and in the following year a contract was made with them to coin certain gold and silver money for ten years, but it appears that the enterprise was not successful as the foreigners departed homeward in 1531. In 1535 a Commission was appointed to inquire into the working of the mines, and in 1539 miners from Lorraine were brought to Scotland to work the mines. They were placed under the management of John Mossman, a goldsmith, and a considerable quantity of gold seems to have been found by them; and shortly after forty-one ounces of native gold were used in making a crown for James V., and thirty-five ounces for a crown to his Queen, while seventeen ounces were added to the King’s great chain, and nineteen and a half ounces for making a belt to the Queen; a quantity was also used for the coinage of gold bonnet pieces and other purposes. During the minority of Queen Mary little was done in gold mining. In 1565 the Privy Council granted a licence to John Stewart of Tarlair, and his son William, to search for all kinds of minerals, and to work the mines of gold and silver and other metal between the Tay and Orkney, on the condition that they should pay to the government one stone of metal out of every ten which they found. They were also authorised to work all the gold and silver mines throughout the country, on the condition that they brought all the gold and silver to the coining-house; for every ounce of gold they were to receive ten pounds, and for each ounce of silver twenty-four shillings. If in the course of their explorations they discovered coal haughs, not within ten miles of any royal residence, then they should be free to work them, and only pay the tenth penny of the proceeds to the Crown. Their licence was to endure for nine years. In March, 1568, the Regent Moray granted a licence to Cornelius Vois, a Dutchman, to work the gold and silver mines for nineteen years in every quarter of the kingdom, and he undertook to pay to the Crown for every hundred ounces of gold and silver which was found, purified by washing, eight ounces, and if purified by fire, four ounces; while there were other alternative arrangements. Cornelius was allowed to employ as many of the Scots as he pleased, but not more than twenty foreigners. He had, as one of his partners, Nicolas Hilliard, the noted medallist, and also the Earl of Morton, who had ten shares, and some of the Scottish merchants.

In 1576 Abraham Paterson and his partners obtained a licence to work all the gold, silver, lead, and copper mines in Scotland, excepting the lead mines of Glengonar and Orkney, which were then worked by George Douglas of Parkhead, and Adam Fullerton, a burgess of Edinburgh. Lengthy and very minute stipulations occur in this licence; he was to pay six ounces out of every hundred of gold or silver to the Crown, and the licence was to continue for twelve years. In 1583 a general grant of all the mines and minerals in the country for twenty-one years was given to Eustachius Roche, mediciner. He was authorised to search anywhere for minerals, and to use timber, coals, and peats from the royal territories on the condition of paying seven ounces out of every hundred of gold found, and of all the other metals ten ounces out of every hundred, and all the rest of the gold and silver was to be brought to the coining-house at the price of twenty-two pounds Scots per ounce of fine gold, and forty shillings per ounce for fine silver. All other persons were prohibited from working minerals unless authorised by Roche. Further privileges were granted to him by contract, which was ratified by Parliament in August, 1584; but certain mines which belonged to the Earl of Arran were exempted from the scope of Roche’s lease; afterwards Roche obtained a separate lease of Arran’s mines, but when Roche attempted to transport the lead, in 1585, which had been got in the mines of Glengonar and Wanlock (on Arran’s territory) it was arrested in Leith by the Treasurer, although, on appeal to the Privy Council, the claim was abandoned and the lead permitted to be transported on payment of the royal duty according to the contract.

George Douglas of Parkhead, mentioned above, had obtained a grant of the mines in the Leadhills district in 1576, but he was forfeited in 1581, and fled to England. On the turn of the political wheel, however, he was restored in 1585, and in 1592 he was permitted to work the mines of Waterhead, “otherwise called Over-Glengonar,” on the condition of paying fifty ounces of fine silver out of every thousand stone of lead ore. He was allowed to sell one thousand stone weight of the ore for the advancement of the work. The following year the master of the metals complained to the Privy Council that Douglas had worked much more ore than his licence permitted, and so he was summoned to pay the whole duty due from the commencement of his lease. This resulted in an agreement between Douglas and Thomas Foullis, a goldsmith and burgess of Edinburgh, by which all the rights of Douglas in connection with the mines were transferred to Foullis for an annual rent of five hundred merks. Foullis then obtained an Act of the Privy Council, confirmed by Parliament, granting to him all the minerals and metals in the lands of the Friar’s Moor, in the sheriffdom of Lanark, for twenty-one years, at a yearly rent of one thousand merks; but he ceased to search for the precious metals on any extensive scale, and directed his attention to develop the lead mines.¹

A long Act of Parliament touching the mines was passed in 1592. This Act explicitly stated that all mines belonged to the Crown, and that in the past these mines had not been made so profitable as they might have been, owing mainly to there not having been a specially qualified man appointed to look after the whole work connected with them. Therefore, it was enacted that henceforth there should be an officer appointed by the Government to oversee the whole matter of the metals and minerals, who should be called the Master of the Metals, with full powers touching the management and working of the mines. The Act appointed Mr. John Lindsay, a brother of Sir David Lindsay of Edzell, Master of the Metals for life. One clause of the Act stated that the King, if he thought fit, with the advice of the Treasurer and the Master of the Metals, for a reasonable composition, might let in feu to every earl, baron, or other freeholder in the kingdom, all mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, or other metals and minerals “which is or may be found in their own lands, giving to them power to seek and to work such mines on the condition of paying the Crown one-tenth part of the whole metals found.” It appears that Roche had not been very successful in his mining operations, and it was resolved to reduce his contract. Accordingly he was charged with having neither worked the mines in operation before the date of his contract, nor those which he had discovered himself, that he had also neglected to pay the duty owing to the Crown, and he was ordered to appear before the Privy Council to answer these charges, and at the same time to produce all his papers and titles. Roche appeared and answered the charges against him, but the contract with him was reduced, and his connection with the mines then ceased.¹

There is little mention of iron mining till a comparatively late period, but coal was a common article of commerce in ♦1425. In 1542 the annual value of the coal haughs of Wallyfurd and Preston, which belonged to the Crown, was 1100 merks. Coal was worked at Culross in 1572, and in 1584, Lord Sinclair had a coal pit at Dysart. In 1592 Parliament passed an Act relating to the working of coal, which enacted that any person who wilfully set fire to coal haughs, from motives of revenge and spite, should incur the penalty of treason, if found guilty of this crime. In 1600 it was enacted, that as the King’s coal haughs could not be worked within the bounds of his annexed territories unless at great expense; in consequence of this his Majesty neither received coal for the royalty, nor any profit, it was therefore resolved to separate them from the Crown lands and let them in feu.¹

In the sixteenth century there was not much commerce between England and Scotland. The Low Countries, France, and the Baltic kingdoms, were the places where the Scots mostly traded. During the war between the two countries in the reign of Henry VIII., within a very short time, the English took twenty-eight trading ships from the Scots. In 1545 the treaty between the Emperor and Scotland touching the commerce of the Scots with Flanders was renewed; thus the Flemings were exempted from attacks of the Scottish ships commissioned for warfare. But difficulties arose between this country and Flanders, and several Scottish ships were detained there. It was stated in 1550 that “when our ships came to Flanders as to our friends for traffic of merchandise, after they had been well received, and were ready to depart, the whole fleet of fourteen ships, richly laden with Flemish wares, were taken, held, and disposed of, and the merchants imprisoned by the Emperor’s subjects.” The same year the Lords of Council had to interfere to protect the Scots from the ships of Holland and the Lowlands of Flanders, the subjects of the Emperor; they were daily committing enormities upon the Scots within the Firths and other places. As many of the Scottish war ships as could be put into a seaworthy state, were commissioned and instructed to proceed against them; they were commanded to take, and chase these pirates off the coasts and out of the waters of Scotland. But they were specially restricted from interfering with the ships of England, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Hamburg. It seems however that trade was not long interrupted between Scotland and Flanders. In 1552 the Lords of Council passed an act complaining that the flesh of the country was barrelled, packed, sold, and sent out of the kingdom to other countries, and especially to Flanders, which had caused a great dearth of meat at home whereby the people had been much hurt; and its exportation was therefore prohibited under the penalty of confiscation and death.¹ New regulations were passed by the Council in 1565 for the guidance of the Scotch Conservator in Flanders; these were very minute and bear upon the merchants as well as the Conservator, touching the hours of business and such matters as the following: “That no merchant when he has bought his goods should bring them home himself, but should employ others to carry his gear to his lodgings or his cellar like a merchant, under a fine of five shillings. That no merchant who buys his meat in the market should truss it home upon his sleeve or on the point of his knife, under the same fine. That no one should deal in merchandise unless he be honestly able like a merchant; and if he be not well dressed the Conservator should warn him to clothe himself better, and if he fail to do that, then the Conservator should take as much of his goods as will clothe him properly withal.”²

Even in the latter part of the sixteenth century the foreign trade of Scotland was comparatively small. The exports were comprised within very narrow limits, but the imports were more varied. There were some very curious regulations imposed in connection with the exports, which strikingly brings before us the state of society and the character of the times. It was noticed that there were acts prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver; and there were other things which were allowed to be exported under limitations one year, while the next they were absolutely prohibited. A considerable quantity of salt was produced at the various salt works throughout the country, but the export of salt was only permitted under certain contingencies. The Council in 1573 passed an act stating that it was unlawful to export any salt until the whole people and the carriers to all the markets in the kingdom were supplied with a sufficient quantity of it, which had to be sold at the salt-pans for eight shillings the boll. Then whatever quantity of it remained after satisfying the people, was allowed to be exported to other countries. But the owners and carriers of it were obliged to buy six ounces of silver for every chalder of salt exported, and this silver had to be delivered to the master coiner within eight days after their return to Scotland, and for every ounce of which the owner of the salt was to receive from the master coiner thirty shillings. It was further provided, that in the event of the exporters of salt buying up the stipulated proportion of silver, and not buying it from abroad, the silver so bought should be forfeited to the crown, and the exporters of the salt condemned to pay a sum equivalent to the silver they should have brought from foreign parts. To ensure the fulfilment of this condition the custom officers were ordered not to give the exporters of salt a cocket, till they came to the coining-house and gave security to bring home the required quantity of silver.¹

This rather peculiar arrangement, which was contrary to acts of parliament, did not prove to be satisfactory. In 1574, the Lords of Council discharged the granting of licenses to export salt, on account of the exorbitant dearth of small salt at home. “As experience now teaches,” they said, “the granting of such licenses has been very prejudicial to the commonweal of the nation, as the conditions for furnishing and serving the people at the prices mentioned in the Acts of Parliament has in nowise been observed; but our sovereign lord’s subjects have been constrained to buy salt at exorbitant and unreasonable prices, and likely from day to day to rise to greater extortion, if timely remedy be not provided. Therefore all the licenses for exporting salt out of the kingdom were henceforward discharged.”¹ Three weeks after their lordships had passed this act, however, they granted a license to Robert Paterson, the master of the ship called “The Grace of God,” to export to Norway six chalders of salt for curing fish; and another to William Ker, the master of the “Swallow,” to export four chalders; and two burgesses of Edinburgh became sureties that the salt should not be converted to any other use. At this time the authorised price of salt was eight shillings per boll, but there were many complaints of parties selling it at a higher rate.² Only white salt was allowed to be exported in 1584; and the export of salt was prohibited in 1587; there was a duty on salt exported.

Several other articles were dealt with in the same way. Licenses were now and again granted by the Lords of Council for exporting things which were prohibited by parliament. The exportation of coal was prohibited by Act of Parliament; but the Council, in 1573, resolved to grant licenses for exporting smithy-coal. In the same year, on the other hand, Walter Scott, in Dysart, became bound that the coals loaded in a ship of that port should not be exported;¹ the export of coal was forbidden in 1586, and in 1597. The trade of the country was carried on under the same changing and disturbing influences as its politics; and, so few of the resources of the country were as yet developed, and such restrictive and conflicting agencies were in operation that the merchants were greatly hampered. The regulations touching the export of lead were of the same varying character. Lead might be exported, but there was a royalty placed upon it; the exporter had to pay fifteen ounces of silver for every thousand stones of lead shipped.²

Licenses were sometimes granted for exporting grain, but owing to bad harvests, and the frequent neglect of agriculture from war, it was often deemed necessary to prohibit the export of corn and wheat. There were frequently seasons of dearth, and many attempts to fix the price of grain were made. In September, 1567, the Regent and Council stated that the merchants and others had exported great quantities of grain, under the pretence of licenses granted “by the Queen’s grace, our Sovereign Lord’s dearest mother, to the great increase and dearth of the same; the corn of this year’s crop being at God’s pleasure plagued and spoiled with rain, and so in all appearance scarce enough to sustain the inhabitants of this country.” Therefore the Council resolved to revoke all such licenses, and ordered that no grain should be exported hereafter, under the penalty of the confiscation of the ship and her cargo. In 1574, the Regent and Council ordered the comptroller to ascertain the quantity of grain exported that year, by whom, and at what ports, and other points concerning it. The Council, in the winter of 1577, agreed to allow the free export of grain for the following reason: “In times of dearth this country has received large help and support of victuals out of France, Flanders, and England, whereby the people have been greatly relieved; and the like favour and good neighbourhood, charity, and amity ought to be extended towards the people of these countries in this present year, when it has pleased God to visit them with the like dearth and scarcity, and this realm with such increase and plenty of grain, as some part thereof may, without prejudice of the State, be spared to the relief of our neighbours’ necessities.”¹

Horses and cattle were occasionally exported, but Acts of Parliament and Council frequently prohibited this; and on the whole the regular export trade of Scotland was as yet very small. It consisted mostly of raw materials, such as hides, wool, and the like; but the imports were more varied, and comprised a variety of articles, and especially large quantities of wines. There were Acts of Parliament and Council which prohibited the importers of wines from selling any to the people till the king, bishops, earls, lords, and barons, were first well stocked.¹

The trade between the Highlands and Lowlands chiefly consisted of cattle and wood. The Highlanders had long been accustomed to bring their cattle to the Lowland markets; but sometimes parties in the Lowlands seized their flocks under the pretence that they were authorised by the Government, which was not the case. They brought the timber down the rivers in floats to the towns and sold it to the citizens.¹

The internal trade of the country was still carried on, under the strict principle of monopoly. The price of manufactured articles and goods, as well as of food and provisions, was fixed by law and regulated by the local authorities. The guild or merchants openly insisted on their exclusive right of commerce, not only in foreign trade, but also within the burgh, and often over the county in which it was situated.¹

Among the many regulations fixing the supply and the price of provisions, perhaps those relating to the sale of ale and spirits are the most instructive. Ale had long been a beverage in common and daily use, and large quantities of it were consumed by all classes of the people. The Acts of Parliament and Council fixing the price of malt and ale were numerous; and the statutes and regulations of the burghs touching the supply and the price of these two necessaries were endless. In 1535 Parliament passed an Act stating that the inhabitants of Edinburgh and the people who frequented it were greatly oppressed by the maltmakers of Leith, and others in that neighbourhood, exacting four, five, and even six shillings more for the malt than they paid for the barley. It was therefore enacted that maltmakers should produce and sell their malt at a competent profit, and charge only two shillings more for the boll of malt than the current price of the boll of barley. “Those who disobey these acts, it was ordained, shall be called and punished as oppressors of the King’s subjects, and particular courts shall be set for them, and the King shall give commission to such as he pleases to call the offending maltmakers before them in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, to execute justice upon them as they may think fit, and to cause this statute to be observed in all points.”¹ In 1551 the Regent and the Lords of Council, taking into consideration the high prices of all kinds of victuals “whereby the poor were at the point of perishing,” issued a commission under the great seal to the provost of Edinburgh, authorising him to deal with all the maltmakers, maltsellers, bakers, and regraters, within a circle of four miles of Edinburgh; and to bring them to punishment according to the Acts of Parliament and the laws of the kingdom. When Queen Mary visited Jedburgh in October, 1566, it seems that the good citizens of that town raised the price of provisions. Whereupon her majesty called together her council and the authorities of the burgh, who passed an act fixing the price of everything during the stay of the court in that quarter. The pint of good ale was to be fourpence, and sixteen ounces of fine bread fourpence. The price of a man’s dinner, “being served with beef, mutton, and roast at the least, was sixteenpence. For the use of a furnished bed the charge was to be twelvepence each night; and for stabling to a horse for the space of twenty-four hours, twopence.”² In 1573 the price of ale was four shillings the gallon; in 1589 the pint of ale was eightpence; and from this time to the end of the century it ran from one shilling to one and fourpence the pint.³ In 1571 the magistrates of Edinburgh enacted that Dutch drinking beer should not be sold higher than sixpence the pint.

The price of wine varied during the first half of the sixteenth century, from sixpence the pint to one shilling and fourpence; but towards the end of the century, the price of it had nearly tripled. There is much evidence that large quantities of wine were consumed in Scotland. The members of the guild claimed the exclusive right to sell wine in all the burghs of the kingdom.¹

Whisky was known, but as yet it was not much used among the people. In 1557, as noticed in a preceding page, Bessy Campbell was brought before the magistrates of Edinburgh, and ordered to cease from making whisky in the burgh, and from selling it, except on the market-day, according to the privilege granted to the barbers, under their seal of cause, unless she was permitted by them. The use of whisky, however, was gradually becoming more common. In 1579, Parliament passed an act restricting the making and selling of it. This Act opened with a statement that grain would be scarce that year, and yet great quantities of malt was consumed in the making of aquavitæ, which was the cause of the dearth of the malt. It was enacted therefore that no person, either in town or country, should brew or sell any whisky, from the 1st of December, 1579, to the 1st of October, 1580, under the penalty of the breaking of their brewing utensils, and the confiscation of their stock of spirits. But the nobles and men of rank were permitted to brew and distil whisky from their own malt, on their own premises, for the use of their own house, families, and friends.¹ This act is very characteristic of much of the subsequent legislation relating to the sale of whisky and spirits; but it is clear that whisky had not then the hold on the people which it afterwards obtained.

There were many complaints that leather and shoes were so dear that the people were unable to buy them. In 1541, a number of the shoemakers of Aberdeen were convicted by a jury for making insufficient shoes, and for selling them above the legal price. The magistrates of Edinburgh, in 1563, fixed the price of boots and shoes as follows: “The pair of double-soled shoes of the largest size, well made and of good material, three shillings and eightpence; a pair of single-soled shoes of similar size, two shillings and eightpence; a pair of the finest double-soled boots, twenty-four shillings; a pair of single-soled boots, twenty shillings;” and so on in proportion for smaller sizes. The authorities of Aberdeen, in 1580, ordained that the price for shoeing the largest horses should be six shillings and eightpence, and the charge for the smaller horses and nags, four shillings.¹

Complaints were often made against the craftsmen that their workmanship was insufficient, and their charges too high. Complaints of this description frequently came before Parliament and the Privy Council, and acts were from time to time passed fixing the price of manufactured goods and articles. But the craftsmen struggled hard, and by their organisations they became a considerable power in the burghs. Sometimes they were rather troublesome to the guilds. Amongst the craftsmen the spirit of monopoly was excessive. The trade disputes between Edinburgh and Leith, and between the Canongate and Edinburgh, were numerous and bitter. The different bodies of craftsmen sometimes manifested an extreme jealousy of each other, and of their exclusive privileges, which was unfavourable to the development of trade and to the acquisition of skill.¹

In 1562, the bonnetmakers of Edinburgh complained that various craftsmen, fleshers, wrights, shoemakers, and others, in the burgh, had enticed away their apprentices and servants, who were unfree persons, and had caused them to labour at kinds of work which belonged to their craft. The provost and council agreed that the bonnetmakers should be protected in their privileges and liberties; but they added, “That in case it pleased the goodness of God to give the gift to strangers and others resorting to this town to labour, and invent upon points a more perfect and finer fashion of hose, sleeves, gloves, and such like, than they themselves, their servants, or apprentices, could do, or has done, at any time before this, and that in such cases the said persons should not be stopped, nor the gifts of God smothered, provided always that nowhere they nor any others should be served by servants and apprentices who have had their beginning under the deacon and masters.”¹ This opinion of the Town Council was on the line which leads to improvement. In 1587, Parliament passed an act in favour of Flemish craftsmen​—makers of serges, bedcovers, and other woollen fabrics belonging to their craft. They were to teach the Scots to make this class of goods, and the conditions of the bargain extended to twelve heads.²

It was already observed that the reformed clergy had exerted themselves to extinguish some of the amusements of the people; and Parliament followed in the same track, and passed sumptuary enactments. In 1567, the Estates of the realm enacted that no women should adorn themselves with dress above what was appropriate to their rank, unless they were prostitutes. And Parliament, in 1581, passed an act touching dress, and another against superfluous banqueting, and the inordinate use of confectionery and drugs. The act on dress opened with a statement that there was great abuse among the common people, even of the meanest rank, inasmuch as they presumed to counterfeit the king and his nobility by their habit of wearing costly clothing of silk, and of all varieties: “Laine, cameraige, fringes, pasments of gold, of silver, of silk, and woollen cloth, brought from other countries; thus the price of these goods had been raised to such a dearth that this state of matters cannot be longer endured without great scath to the nation. Though God has granted to the kingdom sufficient commodities for clothing the people thereof within itself, if they were properly employed manufacturing them at home; and whereby great numbers of the people now wandering in beggary might be relieved, and the honesty and the wealth of the country greatly increased.” The Act prohibited all persons below the ranks of duke, earl, lord of parliament, knight, and landed gentlemen, and their wives and families, from wearing costly dresses. Minute provisions were made for carrying out the Act, and penalties were to be inflicted for its infringement. This Act also contained a clause prohibiting the exportation of wool, under the penalty of confiscation, the object of which was to give more employment to the people at home, and to confer a benefit on the nation. The act against the wearing of costly clothing was ratified in 1584, and ordered to be carried out with all rigour.¹

Parliament was equally anxious to put the people right in the matter of eating and drinking at marriages and baptisms. It was enacted that only bishops, earls, barons, and gentlemen who have two thousand marks of free yearly rent, or fifty chalders of grain after deducting all charges, should presume to have at their marriages and banquets, or on their tables for their daily fare, any drugs or confectionaries, brought from foreign countries. After the Reformation Acts of Parliament and Council were often passed forbidding the eating of flesh during Lent. On the 12th of February, 1562, the Lords of Council passed an Act prohibiting the eating of flesh from that date to the 29th of March, under the penalty of ten pounds for the first offence, twenty pounds for the second, and confiscation of all movable goods for the third. The Act proceeded on the ground that:​—“In the spring of the year, called Lenten, all kinds of flesh decays and grows out of season, that it is not meet for eating; and also that by the tempestuous storms of the last and preceding winters, the whole stocks of cattle were so plagued, smothered and dead, that the price of flesh had risen to such extreme dearth that the like had not been within this realm; and if such dearth continued it will be to the great hurt of the commonweal.”¹ In 1567, Parliament, to save the nation from the harm entailed by the daily eating of flesh, enacted that the people should eat flesh only on four days of the week, under a penalty: and in 1568 the Lords of Council passed an act forbidding all classes to eat any flesh during Lent. It was ordered also that no fleshers, cooks, hostlers, nor tavern keepers, should slay or prepare any kind of flesh for sale during that time, under the penalty of the confiscation of their goods and the imprisonment of their persons, unless they had obtained a written license from the King upon reasonable consideration. During the time of the civil war, after the flight of Mary, the Lords of Council issued proclamations against the eating of flesh in Lent, but they were little heeded.² In 1584 it was again enacted, “because of the disorder amongst all ranks of the people by the licentious eating of flesh every day of the week, which besides producing other evils, was also the cause of the dearth of all meat.” It was then commanded that no one should presume hereafter to eat any kind of flesh on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday, nor in the time of Lent, under the penalty of the confiscation of all their goods to the Crown. This act was again repeated in 1587 with some additions.³

After the Reformation several of the old amusements of the people were proscribed. This however need occasion no great regret, for with the spread of refinement and the progress of civilisation they would have died out of themselves. The citizens of Edinburgh had a pastime called “bickering,” and this word itself partly explains the character of the amusement. The bickering seems to have consisted of a company of people, mostly the young, who made a mock attack upon certain places, which however often ended in serious mischief. On the 11th of April, 1567, the Town Council of Edinburgh:​—“ordered the bellman to pass through the town and discharge the bickerers, under the penalty of hanging those come to age, and the scourging of such as are not of age.” ¹ The people were still in the habit of amusing themselves pretty freely. There were rude stage plays; the field games of golf, of football, and many others, which the humblest of the people enjoyed. Towards the end of the century parliament passed an act that enjoined Monday to be observed as a holiday for pastime and amusement, that every one in the nation might have one day in the week for their own enjoyment. The King himself had a fancy for rope-dancers, in the year 1600 James Melville records in his diary “that in Falkland, I saw a Frenchman play strange and incredible pranks upon stretched ropetakle in the Palace close, before the King, the Queen, and the whole Court.” In the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, in August, 1600, the sum of £333 7 shillings 8 pence is entered as the payment of this rope-dancer, so it seems he was handsomely rewarded for his performance. In 1598 an English juggler, “played such supple tricks upon a rope, which was fastened between the top of St. Giles’s Kirk steeple and a stair beneath the cross, the like was never seen in this country, as he rode down the rope and played so many pavies on it.” For the performance of this trick the King ordered him to get twenty pounds.²

The general influence of the Reformation on the social state of the people was in the main salutary and beneficial. It is true that some of the commons and tenants were in better circumstances under the Roman Catholic churchman than after the Reformation, and the fact is undeniable that many of the tenants of land were excessively oppressed by the nobles after that event.¹ The evidence adduced in this volume is sufficient to prove that the exertions of the reformed clergy to lighten the burdens of the people were not in vain; while the benefits of the revolution were far reaching and immense.

CHAPTER XX.

The Literature of the Nation in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century.

IN the eleventh chapter of the first volume an account of the national literature to the end of the fifteenth century was presented; and in this chapter it is intended to present a continuation, till the current of thought and feeling became affected by the revolutionary movement; and then in the succeeding chapter to treat of the literature of the Reformation, and the latter part of the century; and thus exhibit a connected narrative of its development. Education, culture, and literature, in one point of view are mutually related words, and in many ways reciprocal in their effects; although they are far from being co-extensive in meaning. Education of some kind precedes literature and culture; but at a comparatively early stage of civilisation, literature assumes a more general, if a less definite influence than education. In nations with pretty well developed civilisations, the customary education and the national literature sometimes run on opposite lines. This is especially observable in revolutionary periods, when the established education and the national literature may each be seen pursuing diverse ends. At such times, the existing school ♦education is often more than ever conservative and opposed to any change. Illustrations of this will occur to every one; and yet all the elements and influences of a nation are closely related, and act and re-act upon each other in manifold ways; still, in historic exposition it is necessary to signalise the opposites, in what appears to be the most nearly allied and interdependent agencies in the organisation of a nation.

In the first section of this volume, reference to the invention and the introduction of printing was made; but it is a singular fact that until near the end of the last century, it was unknown when the typographic art was first introduced into Scotland. Mr. George Chalmers, the author of Caledonia, first announced the real date of its introduction. He said that “it was the intelligent and industrious William Robertson, of the General Register House, who, to gratify my desire, discovered a patent by James IV., which plainly demonstrates that a printing press was established at Edinburgh during the year 1507.” Prior to this there was no printing press in Scotland. Since Chalmers’ time, the late Dr. David Laing and others, and the efforts of printing clubs, have rendered the earlier productions of the Scottish press familiar.

The history of the matter may be briefly told. In 1507, James IV. granted a patent to Walter Chepman, a burgess of Edinburgh, and Andrew Myllar, to erect a printing press, for printing within the kingdom the Books of Law, Acts of Parliament, Chronicles, Mass Books, Legends of Scottish Saints then collected, and all other books, that should be necessary, and to sell them for competent prices, “by our advice and discretion their labour and expense being considered.... It is also devised and thought expedient by us and our council, that in time coming, Mass Books, after our own Scottish use, and with Legends of Scottish Saints, as now collected by a Reverend Father in God, and our trusty counsellor, William, Bishop of Aberdeen, and others, should be used generally within the realm as soon as the same may be printed and provided, and that no manner of such books of Salisbury use be brought to be sold within our realm in time coming; and if any one does in the contrary, that they shall lose the same. Wherefore we charge strictly and command you all, our officers and subjects, that none of you take upon hand to do anything contrary to this our ordinance, under the penalty of escheating the books and punishment of their persons.” As Bishop Elphinstone’s Breviary was to be printed as soon as possible, while other service books were to be excluded, it may be inferred that he had used his influence with the King in the granting of the patent to Chepman and Myllar for erecting a printing press.

Both Chepman and Myllar were burgesses of Edinburgh. Chepman was a merchant, and traded in wood, wool, cloths, and other articles of merchandise, a man of some capital and property, and appears to have had a connection with the King’s household; while Myllar was a bookseller in the city, and had supplied books to the King for some time, importing them from England and the Continent; and he also appeared as a publisher in 1505 and 1506, and as a practical printer in 1508. Chepman possessed several houses in Edinburgh, in one of which, at the foot of the Blackfriars Wynd, in the Cowgate, he and Myllar erected their printing press. After obtaining the patent, they immediately proceeded to work; and in April, 1508, they issued a number of short pieces. These consisted of: 1. “The Porteous of Noblenes,” in commendation of the twelve virtues “in ane nobil man;” 2. “The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane,” a somewhat singular romance, which has been assigned to the fourteenth century; 3. “Syr Eglamoure of Artoys,” a short romance; 4. “Book of Good Council to the King,” a piece which also forms the last chapter of the eleventh book of the “Liber Pluscardensis;” 5. “The Maying of Chaucer,” found in all the collections of his works; 6. “The Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice,” one of Robert Henryson’s poems; 7. “The Gest of Robyn Hode,” and the following four pieces of Dunbar’s: “The Golden Targe,” “The Flyting between Dunbar and Kennedy,” “A Ballad of Lord Barnard Stewart,” and the “Two Married Women and the Widow.” Only one imperfect copy of the volume containing the above pieces is known to be extant. As in it have been preserved the very earliest specimens of the first Scottish press, it was deemed of inestimable value. Early in the present century the late Dr. Laing undertook the reproduction of this volume in facsimile, and also to supply the deficiencies of the original. After the volume had been completed, excepting the preliminary notices, a disastrous fire happened, which consumed the premises of Abram Thomson, bookbinder in Edinburgh, where the sheets were lying, and the greater part of the volume was destroyed or rendered useless. At last the volume was published in 1827, seventy-two copies on paper, and four on vellum were issued. One of the vellum copies was sold at Dr. Laing’s sale in December 1879, and was purchased by Mr. Quaritch for £71. Dr. Laing in his valuable introduction to the volume, presented a body of interesting information touching the earliest Scottish printers, to which subsequent inquirers have been much indebted.¹

As the Aberdeen Breviary was intended to supersede the Sarum Breviary, and to become the chief church service book for the priesthood of Scotland, it might be presumed that its publication had excited some interest. It was the most important work issued from the primitive Scottish press, and consisted of two volumes​—the first was completed on the 13th of February 1510, and the second on the 4th of June the same year. The text was printed in double columns of thirty-seven lines each, and done in black and red ink; and the whole work extended to 1527 pages of comparatively small type. The printing is unequally executed, some pages being very clear and distinct, while others are blurred. Four copies of the original edition are known to be extant, all of which are incomplete. One in the University of Edinburgh, which has the title to the first volume but not to the second; one in the Advocates’ Library which wants twenty-seven leaves of the first volume and fourteen of the second; an imperfect copy of the first volume in the University Library of Aberdeen; and one belonging to the Earl of Strathmore in the Library at Glamis Castle, which wants only a few leaves. Under the editorship of the Rev. James Blew, a reprint of this Breviary was published in 1854 by James Toovey, London, in two volumes. A number of special copies were executed for the members of the Bannatyne Club, to which Dr. Laing contributed an excellent preface.¹

Myllar’s name does not appear in the pages of the Breviary, and it has been supposed that he had retired from the partnership or died. It seems probable that with the completion of the Breviary Chepman’s connection with printing ceased; and the printing materials were perhaps sold, or laid aside. Chepman died in the winter of 1529; and during the last fifteen years of his life, all the works of learned Scotsmen were printed on the Continent. But it cannot be supposed that the pieces and fragments which have been preserved, represent all the works printed by Chepman and Myllar. It appears that they printed some small school books; and probably an edition of blind Henry’s Wallace.

Excepting a fragment of eight leaves, containing “the Office of our Lady of Pity,” and the legend of the relics of St. Andrew, which was printed at Edinburgh in 1520, by John Story, the printing art seems to have ceased in Scotland for nearly twenty years. Although during this interval there is evidence that books were imported into Scotland from England and the Continent.

Thomas Davidson, said to have been a north countryman, born on the banks of the river Dee, was a practical printer. The exact date when he began to print in Edinburgh has not been ascertained; some writers have supposed that he commenced about 1530, but only one of his works is dated 1542. In December, 1541, he was commissioned by the Lord Clerk Register to print the Acts of three Parliaments of James V., which he executed in the following February. This placed him in the position of King’s printer, and he assumed that title in his works. As only three complete specimens of his works have been preserved, the number of different books which he printed cannot be ascertained; but the finest specimen of his press is Bellenden’s translation of Boece’s History of Scotland.

John Scot was a contemporary of Davidson. It appears that Scot printed books both in Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and possibly also in Dundee, where it seems he was living in 1547. In 1552 he printed Archbishop Hamilton’s Catechism at St. Andrews. After the Reformation he printed the new Confession of Faith. In August, 1562, he was engaged in printing “The Last Blast of the Trumpet,” by Ninian Winzet, when the magistrates of Edinburgh and their officers entered the printing office, seized the copies of the work, and imprisoned the printer. Scot again appeared in 1568, when he printed an edition of Sir David Lindsay’s works; and in 1571 he printed the same work, but after this his name disappeared. From this time to the end of the century, the chief printers in Scotland were​—Robert Lekpreuik, Thomas Bassandyne, John Ross, Henry Charteris, Vantrollier, Robert Waldegrave, and Robert Smyth.

The most eminent Scottish writer of this period was William Dunbar, the court poet of James IV. He was born in East Lothian about the year 1460, and on rather slender ground it has been conjectured that he was descended from the fourth son of the tenth Earl of Dunbar. It seems probable that Dunbar received his early education at the well-known school of Haddington; and he entered the University of St. Andrews in 1474, attained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1477, and graduated as Master of Arts in 1479. He became a novice in the order of Franciscans; and in the character of a friar, he for some time travelled and preached in France and England, as well as in Scotland. At a later stage of his life, it seems he visited France in 1491, in connection with an embassy from Scotland to negotiate a marriage for James IV.; yet little is clearly known touching the life and wanderings of Dunbar from 1479 to the end of the century. But in one of his poems he claims to have served the King, not only in France, England, Ireland, and Germany, but also in Italy and Spain. His name first occurs in the public records in 1500, when he obtained from the King an annual pension of ten pounds, which should “be paid to him of our Sovereign Lord’s coffers, by the Treasurer, for all the days of his life, or until he be promoted by the King to a benefice of the value of forty pounds or more yearly.” In 1507, the King increased Dunbar’s pension to twenty pounds, and again in 1510 it was increased to eighty pounds​—“to be paid to him half-yearly by the Treasurer, until he be promoted to a benefice of one hundred pounds or above.” Dunbar also occasionally received presents from his royal master, and, while James IV. lived, at least, the poet was pretty liberally rewarded; although he never obtained the great object of his ambition​—to wit, a benefice. From the end of the fifteenth century to the death of James IV., Dunbar attended the Scottish court regularly; and he addressed many of his short poems to the King, and also to the Queen, while the burden of most of these effusions was that the poet wanted to be presented to a benefice. Though Dunbar had abandoned the order of St. Francis, still he had become a priest; and on the 17th of March, 1504, he performed his first mass in presence of the King, who gave an offering of four pounds and eighteen shillings in honour of the occasion. Yet he was only one of the many servants who catered to the royal pleasure and the court.¹ Most of Dunbar’s writings, between 1500 and 1513, were poems composed to amuse the court, or to suit his own humour, by satirising its policies and vices; and they show the favour in which he was held, especially by the Queen, and his constant petitions for salary and for a benefice. The picture which they presented of the Scottish court was a real, but not a flattering or a pleasing one​—to modern taste and sentiment. The poet’s benefactor fell on the fatal field of Flodden, and whether he continued to receive his pension subsequent to that event, has not been ascertained, as the Treasurer’s accounts from August, 1513, to June, 1515, have not been preserved, and in those of a subsequent date Dunbar’s name does not occur. Most of his religious poems or hymns were supposed to have been written between the date of Flodden and the time of his death. The exact date of Dunbar’s death has not been discovered; but it has been supposed that he died about the year 1520, when he had reached sixty years of age.²

Although during Dunbar’s lifetime, and for a few years after his death, his writings received attention and were admired, and a few of his poems were printed as mentioned in a preceding paragraph, yet from about the year 1530 to 1724 his name was rarely mentioned in Scottish literature; and therefore the historian cannot assume that Dunbar’s writings have had much influence upon the nation, seeing that for two hundred years few, if any of them, were read by the people. The chief historic value of his poems consists in the many pictures of the Scottish court and its coarse manners and speech, which they so vividly portray; and the illustrations of the habits and manners of other classes of society in his time, which they presented. If we look for great conceptions, any inspiring ideals, or striking thought and ennobling passion or sentiment calculated to stimulate and improve the civilisation of the people, in Dunbar’s writings, we will be somewhat disappointed.

Since 1724, when Allan Ramsay called attention to the long forgotten poems of Dunbar, and published sixteen of them in his Evergreen, there have been several notable efforts made to restore the lost fame of this poet. In 1770 Lord Hailes, in his “Ancient Poems from the Bannatyne Manuscript,” published thirty-one of Dunbar’s poems; in 1786, Pinkerton, in his “Ancient Scottish Poems from the Maitland Manuscript,” published twenty-one of Dunbar’s; and in 1802, Sibbald’s “Chronicle of Scottish Poetry from the Thirteenth Century,” was published, which included thirty-two poems by Dunbar. About the beginning of this century George Chalmers, the well-known author of “Caledonia,” made collections for a complete edition of Dunbar’s poems; but he died before accomplishing the work. Chalmers’ intention was carried into effect by the late Dr. Laing, who had acquired his transcripts for the purpose. Dr. Laing’s edition appeared in 1834, in two volumes, to which he issued a supplement in 1865: this edition has been long much esteemed, as it is enriched with various readings, interesting and valuable notes, and a concise but excellent glossary. The works of Dunbar, including his life, by James Paterson, author of “The History of Ayrshire and Ayrshire Families,” was published at Edinburgh in 1863. The very valuable researches of Dr. Laing, and the excellent work of Professor Schipper of Vienna, which appeared in 1884, and made Dunbar known on the Continent, seems to have given a remarkable stimulus to the study of this ancient Scottish poet. It has been reported that Schipper’s is the best work which has been written on Dunbar, and that his German translations of the Scotch poet are executed with surprising skill and fidelity, and astonishing lucidity. Kaufmann has also written a Dissertation on Dunbar, which was published in 1873. But apparently the most elaborate edition of Dunbar’s poems will be the one undertaken by the Scottish Text Society, which when completed will consist of five parts. Part I. was published in 1884, and Part II. in 1885; these contain the text of the poems, which was ably and carefully edited by Mr. John Small, M.A., F.S.A., Scotland; Part III. appeared in 1887, consisting of an exceedingly elaborate Introduction by Sheriff Mackay, and extending to 283 pages. It presents​—1, an interesting and comprehensive biography of Dunbar, judiciously introducing such portions of the contemporary history of Scotland as seemed necessary to estimate the character and genius of his author; 2, a classification of Dunbar’s poems​—dividing them into ten classes, and commenting on each class in detail; 3, a valuable Appendix to the Introduction, which gives​—a, Table of Dunbar’s poems according to the probable order of their dates; b, Notes on the versification and metres of Dunbar; c, Bibliography of Dunbar​—including both manuscripts and printed editions of his writings; d, Historical notice of persons alluded to in Dunbar’s poems, in which many interesting particulars are given. Part IV. was published in 1890, and consists of Notes to the Poems by Walter Gregor, LL.D., and covers the poems from number one to thirty-eight. Dr. Gregor is an enthusiastic admirer of Dunbar as a poet, and he is himself a thorough master of the Scottish language. He is also fully conversant with the literature of the subject. Thus his notes on each of the poems of Dunbar are numerous, varied, accurate, and instructive, showing wide and intelligent research throughout, and consequently they are exceedingly valuable. Part V. will contain the remainder of Dr. Gregor’s Notes, and a Glossary by him; and also an Appendix on the “Intercourse between Scotland and Denmark,” by Sheriff Mackay. When this edition is completed, it will be a veritable offering to the genius of Dunbar, and a striking monument of the special historic research and enthusiasm of its editors.

There were various causes which accounted for Dunbar and his writings being neglected and almost forgotten for about two centuries. The chief cause was the approach of the Reformation, and the new turn which it gave to the sentiments and opinions of the people. When Dunbar had attempted to be a friar,​—he ultimately became a priest,​—and during the time that he was Court poet, he was ever clamouring for a benefice. In spite of his ironical treatment of the lives of the friars, he showed not the slightest trace of accepting any of the doctrines of the Reformation; and as he advanced in years he became a more pious observer of Roman Catholic usage; while his last poems were of the nature of religious hymns in strict conformity with Romanism. Thus Dunbar was in no sense a precursor of the Reformation.

The range of Dunbar’s subjects was pretty wide. In the new edition mentioned above, there are one hundred and one poems, of which eighty-nine have been considered as undoubtedly Dunbar’s, and the other twelve have, on various grounds, with more or less probability, been attributed to him. Most of his poems are comparatively short, the longest one is “The Two Married Women and the Widow,” extending to 530 lines. His poems may be described as consisting of allegorical poems, comic and humourous, satirical, moral, religious and amatory. The best marked specimens of his allegorical poems, are “The Goldyn Targe,” “The Thistle and Rose,” and “Beauty and the Prisoner.” “The Goldyn Targe” extends to 275 lines, and its aim was to show that love, unless restrained by reason, always blinds and leads astray. The language and versification of the poem is flowing and easy, and some fine descriptive touches occur in it, such as this:​—

He introduces Homer and a number of classic gods in this poem, and the student will find it amply illustrated in Dr. Gregor’s notes.

The short ballad sung at the marriage of James IV., was composed by Dunbar to welcome the Princess Margaret, and began thus:​—

He also produced “The Thistle and the Rose” to celebrate this interesting event. This poem extends to 185 lines, and it assumed the characteristics of allegory and the mingling of classic names with the objects of nature. The rhyme is flowing, and it presents many pleasing descriptive touches; but it lacks strength and the characteristic glow of real poetry. The following stanzas occur near the end of the poem:​—

Many of Dunbar’s short pieces have much merit, “The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins” is animated and full of biting satire. Take the stanzas on “Gluttony”:​—

This piece exhibits a strong satirical vein, while the whole picture is boldly drawn and full of energy.

The curious satirical poem, entitled “The Joust between the Tailor and the Shoemaker,” is brimful of comic humour, but the phraseology is extremely coarse and vulgar. His “Devil’s Inquest” is also strong in satire and humour. The poem addressed to the “Merchants of Edinburgh” afforded Dunbar an opportunity of giving a vivid and characteristic description of the capital, which in his day presented to the beholder anything rather than the picture of a fair city. Much of the manners of the court and also of the habits of the people, are reproduced in the writings of Dunbar: and it is this chiefly that renders them valuable to us: the mere literary and poetical value of his works have sometimes been over-estimated by modern authorities.

The long and curious production, entitled “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy,” which extends to 552 lines, was written, as the title implies, partly by both. Kennedy was a contemporary poet, and the two by turns abuse each other in no stinted terms: the “Flyting,” was exceedingly rich in words and phrases of biting scorn and vehement vituperation. It has been supposed that the two poets had no personal animosity towards each other, which may or may not have been the case. Dunbar began the flyting, and Kennedy had the last words, thus: “Out! out! I schout, upon that snout that snevels, tale teller, rebel, indweller with the devil, spink, sink with stink ad Tertara Termagorum.”¹ Walter Kennedy was the third son of Gilbert, first Lord Kennedy, and was educated at the College of Glasgow. Besides his part of the “Flyting,” a few of his poems have been preserved.

A number of Dunbar’s poems have been supposed to be lost, and, as mentioned in a preceding page, other poems and pieces of verses have sometimes been attributed to him, most of which were printed in Dr. Laing’s edition of the poet. Of this class is “The Friars of Berwick,” a rhymed tale extending to 592 lines. It is a satire on the life of the religious orders, and it is worked out with considerable skill and effect.¹

Gavin Douglas, the bishop of Dunkeld, was the third son of Archibald, the fifth Earl of Angus, “Bell the Cat,” and was born about the year 1474. He completed his education at the University of St. Andrews, and graduated Master of Arts in 1494. Shortly after this he entered into priest’s orders and in the year 1496 he received a grant of the tithes of Monymusk, in Aberdeenshire. Chiefly owing to his family connections, other preferments soon came to him, and about the year 1501 he was appointed provost of the collegiate church of St. Giles, at Edinburgh. It was while he held this office that most of his works were composed. His poem, “The Palace of Honour,” was finished in 1501; and in 1512 he began the translation of Virgil, and completed it in July, 1513.¹ After the battle of Flodden he became deeply involved in the knotty politics of the times; and made a bold but unsuccessful effort to attain to the primacy of the Scottish Church. In 1515 he was nominated to the see of Dunkeld, and after much opposition and delay obtained possession of the bishop’s palace. He again became entangled in the political troubles of the day, and, having passed to England, died near London in the year 1522.²

The “Palace of Honour,” his longest poem, is an allegorical production of remarkable power. Douglas had one requisite of the poet in a high degree, a command of copious, varied, and striking imagery. His poetry has a glow about it which will be sought in vain in Dunbar. His language is difficult to understand, as he used many words and phrases derived from the Latin and the French, which often render his expression obscure and his lines rather stilted. But his diction is entirely free from the coarse and vulgar phrases which disfigure the writings of Dunbar. As a poem, the “Palace of Honour” is loose and rambling; though it gives ample evidence of the classical reading of the author. He introduces various moral reflections throughout the production, and concludes it with a ballad on virtue. The last stanza is rhetorical and ornate:​—

His poem of “King Hart” is an allegory of the progress of human life. The heart of man is represented in it as a mystical king in the full bloom of youth, surrounded by attendants who personify the propensities of early manhood. Though the King is a feudal monarch, he is far from enjoying freedom; for those around him hold him in leading-strings without much hope of his being able to shake them off. After a few more details about the King, the palace of Dame Pleasance is described. This lady with a legion of attendants passes by the Castle of King Hart; and two of his attendants go to ascertain who the party are. They are surprised and easily made prisoners. The King then sends out other messengers, who are also captured; at last, becoming enraged, he arrays his host for battle with Dame Pleasance and her army. But the King’s party are defeated, many of his subjects are taken prisoners and confined in dungeons; and King Hart is imprisoned in a grated chamber, where he listened to the mirth proceeding from the halls of the Queen. Through the help of Dame Pity, who at this juncture deserts Dame Pleasance, King Hart and his adherents are set free; and then, taking possession of the palace, they capture the Queen herself. After an interview with King Hart, she finds that he is deeply affected by her charms, and the first canto ends with their espousals and the marriage feast.¹

The second canto begins with a description of age in this form:​—

The sentiment is very natural, few people wish for old age to overtake them. The King is grieved that fresh delight has deserted him, sadness intrudes and whispers something into his ear. The Queen now loses patience, and when the King is asleep, she leaves him; wisdom and reason then counsel him to return to his own castle. There, however, he finds little comfort; enjoyment and strength both creep away, and decrepitude with his host takes the castle and mortally wounds the King, who prepares for death, and makes his last testament, the details of which conclude the poem.¹

The most notable of Douglas’s works is his translation of the Æneid of Virgil. He has the honour of being the author of the first metrical translation of a Latin classic in Britain, although soon followed by others. Virgil was the most popular of the classical writers, and before the end of the fifteenth century his works had passed through ninety editions. In the days of Douglas they were read by young and old. Taking everything into account, competent authorities have affirmed that Douglas has discharged the duty of a translator tolerably well, “he was a master of the Latin tongue,” and his translation of the greatest Roman poet is a work of which his countrymen may justly be proud.¹ To each of the thirteen books of his translation of the Æneid, Douglas wrote a prologue. Some of these prologues are of considerable length, and three at least out of the thirteen contain passages of remarkable descriptive power. As a whole, they display considerable knowledge of human nature, and contain many pointed observations on the manners of mankind. The following passage is from the seventh of the series, and is a part of his much admired description of winter, from a modernised version.

These lines have something of the genuine classic roll and swell, and are fairly natural. To compensate for the dreary prospect outside, the poet warmed himself at the fire, and resolved to resume his task of translation.

Douglas’s prologue to the twelfth book contains a picture of May, which has been much and justly admired. The following lines are taken from a modernised copy:—

Douglas concluded his translation of Virgil by intimating his belief in the continuance of his fame​—“On Virgil’s post I fix for ever more;” and he then bids farewell to his poetical studies.¹ Several editions of his works were published in the sixteenth century at London and Edinburgh, and they were comparatively popular.²

Dunbar and Douglas both belonged to the old form of religion and society; and there are a few other writers of the same class who have to be noticed ere we enter the heat of the Reformation era. The method followed is intended to indicate the lines on which the historical tendencies were running. While it will appear that the adherents of Roman Catholicism were not all equally blind to the evils around them; it will also appear that it has always been an object of the policy of Romanism to hold the people in leading-strings, though this should entail the utmost oppression and cruelty.

John Mair, already mentioned in connection with the Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews, was born in 1470, at Gleghornie, in the parish of North-Berwick. It seems that he received the rudiments of his education at the Grammar School of Haddington, a school which had attained some note, even in the fourteenth century. In 1493, he studied one session at the University of Cambridge, and the same year he crossed the channel, and entered on his studies at the University of Paris. Mair was an eager and diligent student, and he graduated Master of Arts in 1496. He continued at the University of Paris, and taught classes in Logic and Philosophy. In 1505 he graduated as Doctor of Theology, and became one of the most famous scholastics of his day, in the character of a Professor and a writer. Mair taught Logic and Theology in the University of Paris from 1496 till 1518, and in the latter year he returned to Scotland. On the 25th of June he was installed as Principal Regent of the College of Glasgow, and he taught in this College for five years. On the 9th of June 1523, he was appointed a Regent or Professor in the University of St. Andrews, where he taught Logic and Philosophy for some time. In 1525 Mair returned to the University of Paris, where he remained till 1531, and then returned to St. Andrews and lectured on Theology. In 1533 he was appointed Provost of St. Salvator’s College, holding this office till his death, which occurred in 1550. He is the author of a History of Britain in Latin, a work of considerable value. He wrote also commentaries on the Book of the Master of Sentences (Peter Lombard); an exposition of the four Gospels; an Introduction to Aristotle’s Dialectics, and many other writings. He wrote in Latin, and his style is harsh and uncouth. But he held some comparatively liberal opinions touching the Church and civil government. He denied the supremacy of the Pope, and showed a disposition to limit the power of the censures of the Church; he held that tithes were merely a human appointment; censured the avarice, the ambition, and the secular pomp of the Episcopal order; and advised the reduction of monasteries and holydays.¹ His views of government were to the effect that kings and princes originally derived their authority from the people; and that therefore the people were superior to the King, if considered in their corporate character: that when kings are tyrannical, or employed their power for the destruction of their subjects, they may lawfully be controlled by them, and if incorrigible, might be deposed and even punished by the community. The connection of these principles with the political opinions afterwards avowed by Knox, and clearly expounded by Buchanan, is too striking to need further illustration. Yet, though these liberal and rational sentiments are embodied in the writings of John Mair, it requires some attention to disentangle them from the mass of trifling questions and discussions which fill the pages of his works. The Scottish History Society have just issued a translation of Mair’s History of Britain. The translation was executed by Mr. Archibald Constable, who has added many interesting notes to the work; while a Life of the Author, written by Sheriff Mackay, is prefixed to it; and also a careful Bibliography of John Mair and his Disciples, compiled by Mr. T. G. Law, the learned Librarian of the Signet Library.

The writings of Boece, the Principal of King’s College, Aberdeen, are better known than Mair’s. Boece was a good Latinist, and has an eloquent and charming style. His chief works are the Lives of ♦the Bishops of Mortlach and Aberdeen, and the History of Scotland. Notwithstanding his learning he was extremely credulous; and in his history he allowed his fancy a pretty long rein; but the character of this work is so well known that it is unnecessary to dwell on its peculiarities. It was published at Paris in 1526, and was afterwards translated into the Scottish dialect by Bellenden.¹

John Bellenden was a Catholic churchman, and attained to the rank of Archdeacon of Moray. Before he was promoted to that position, he had translated Boece’s History of Scotland into the vernacular, for the use of James V. He was engaged on this task in 1530 and the three following years; and at intervals he received from the Treasurer small sums of money as the reward of his labours. His translation of Boece is reported to have been printed in 1536, but it is more likely that it was printed about 1540 by Thomas Davidson, the King’s printer; there is no date on the book itself. Bellenden’s translation of the first five books of Livy’s history, which was also produced for the instruction of the King, was not printed till 1822. About 1537 he was promoted to the archdeaconry of Moray, and shortly after obtained a prebend in the cathedral of Ross.¹

Bellenden’s translations are the longest prose compositions in the Scottish dialect prior to the Reformation that have come down to our times. His powers of expression were conspicuous, his style is remarkably fluent and easy, and it often surprises the reader by touches of vivacity and force. In his version of Boece’s history, however, he does not adhere closely to his author, and frequently takes the liberty of curtailing as well as amplifying; but, on the whole he has improved the original, and rendered it more interesting. To his translation of Boece’s history he has subjoined an epistle to the King, which is written with manly freedom, and a few sentences of it may be quoted as a specimen of the language of the period. “In every history that men redis, apperis, evidently, the same maneris with the pepil, which are usit by the King. And sen na thing is, that the pepil followis with mair imitation, nor kepis in mair recent memory, than werkis of nobil men; of reason, their besines suld be mair respondent to virtew, than of any other estatis.... For these reasons, I that hes bene your humil servitour sen your first infance, hes translatit the History of Scotland, sen the first beginning thereof, in your vulgar langage; that your Hienes may know the vailyeant and nobil dedis done be your progenitouris; and have cognasance how this realm hes bene governit these one thousand and eight hundred years bygane: which was nevir subdewit to uncouth empire, but only to the native princis thereof; howbeit the same hes sustenit gret truble, be weris of Romanis, Inglismen, and Danis, with sindry chancis of fortoun. Here, may your hienes understand how your realm suld be governit in justice, and what persons are maist abil to beir authority or office thairintil.... The truth is, that kingis and tyrannis hes mony handis, mony ene, and mony more membris. A tyranne settis him to be dred; a king, to be loved. A tyrane rejoices to make his pepil poor; a king, to make them rich. A tyrane draws his pepil to sindry factions, discord, and hatred: a king makis peace, tranquilite, and concord; knowing nathing sa dammagious as division amang his subdittis. A tyrane confoundis all divine and humane lawis; a king observes them, and rejoices in equite and justice.... What is he that will not rejoice to heir the knichtly affaris of thay forcy compionis, King Robert Bruce, and William Wallace?”¹

In common with John Mair and a few others of his contemporaries, Bellenden held liberal political sentiments; although he was not prepared for any radical change in the national religion, he was well aware of the vicious lives of many of the clergy. In his proem or preface to the translation of Boece, he states that the large incomes of the churches had made the priests more slothful than fervent in their proper work; and that the wealth of the bishops afforded them occasion to lead vicious lives. The honest archdean was opposed to the Reformation movement, but did not live to see it established in Scotland. He went to Rome, where he died in 1550.¹

The Complaynt of Scotland, a very remarkable production, now falls to be examined. Its authorship has not been exactly ascertained, but it has been brought within the limit of two or three individuals who lived in the first half of the sixteenth century. It is, however, pretty clear that the author of this remarkable book was a Scotchman, a churchman, and firmly attached to the Roman Catholic faith, and a warm adherent of the French side in the struggle then raging in Scotland.¹ The work was called forth by the exigencies of the kingdom at the time of its composition, and this greatly enhances its value. To the historian it is a book of exceeding importance for the numerous illustrations of the state of society which it affords, and for the opinions of the author himself on a variety of matters. He introduces an extremely multitudinous mass of subjects besides the treatment of the main theme, and these digressions are very interesting.

The Complaynt of Scotland consists of two chief parts, the author’s discourse concerning the wretched state of his country, and his dream of Dame Scotia and her complaint against her three sons. But in the sixth chapter he makes a digression and introduces what he knew of cosmogony, botany, naval architecture, native songs, dances, and popular tales. As this part of the book is interesting in connection with the history of the national ballads and music, after describing the chief part of the treatise, I will return and touch upon the points embraced in it, and then conclude the account of the pre-reformation literature, so far as it was unaffected by the new influences of the revolutionary movement.

The writer begins his work with an epistle to the Queen mother, Mary of Lorraine, and, rising to the height of the occasion, extols her virtue and wisdom. He thinks that her counsel will do something to stave off the subjection of the nation to their old enemies, the English. He then proceeds to indicate the causes of their affliction, but soon returns to the praise of the Queen and her noble ancestors, and continues in this strain through six pages. To this illustrious person he had resolved, he says, to dedicate the first work of his pen, and had experienced some difficulty in deciding what to write about; but after searching the library of his understanding, he deemed it most meet to rehearse the miseries of Scotland and their causes. The epistle to the Queen is followed by a prologue to the reader. He quotes with approval the ancient laws against idleness; and sets himself to show that the labour of the pen is no pastime, whatever it may seem. Having a talent for study and writing, he desires to assist the public-weal by his pen; as the pen had done more for the Romans than the sword, though each craft was necessary in a well organised state, and every honest occupation was equally honourable. He thinks it necessary to make an apology for writing in the vulgar Scottish dialect; and he states that several writers before him had mixed their language with uncouth terms, derived from Latin, and measured their eloquence by the length of their words;¹ but he, repudiating all such conceits, means to use his natural Scottish tongue alone. In spite, however, of this declaration, his work is encumbered with more foreign words than that of any Scottish writer.² He requests the reader to look favourably upon his intentions, and thus encourage him to make greater efforts in his next work.

The Complaynt extends to twenty chapters, some of which are very short. The first five chapters are filled with the author’s opinions upon the fortunes of nations, and the causes of the distress and suffering which then afflicted Scotland. He avers that rulers are set up and overturned by Divine Providence; and he supports this view by instances from Scripture and from profane history, citing the fate of Troy, Thebes, Sparta, Athens, Rome, and other powers, which had at one time held empire in the world. He translates several passages from the Vulgate, which he thinks applicable to the state of Scotland; and concludes this part of his subject with a hit at the sceptical readers, who might malignantly say that the threatenings of Moses referred not to Scotland but to Israel.

He digresses to discuss various opinions concerning the world, its duration and nature. Many believe, he says, that nothing is lasting but the world, and are thus led to value temporal good more than eternal well-being. People speak of the world, and know not what it is. The ancient philosophers had spent much time in speculating on this question; and he proceeds to state their opinions about the world. Too many, he goes on to say, still believed that it would last 37,000 years, as Socrates had taught, but will that make human life one day longer? He quotes John Carion’s account of the prophecy of Elijah, to show that the world will endure only 6000 years; and then states that as 1548 of the last two thousand were already past, there remain but 452 years till the final consummation of all things. Even this period was to be shortened for the sake of the elect people, though the exact date is not fixed, and thus the end of the world may be close at hand. Therefore, as it is so near its end, “it should be held in detestation,” he argues, “and our thoughts concentrated on the future eternal happiness that God has promised to all those that hold it in abomination.”¹

“The Vision of Dame Scotia” opens in the seventh chapter, and occupies the rest of the book. In somewhat figurative language he describes the nobles, the clergy, and the people, all of whom were in a most wretched state. He begins the eighth chapter by making more direct charges of degeneracy, selfishness, and want of patriotism amongst all classes of the Scots. Next, he draws a very natural picture of the condition of the kingdom, reproaches the men who had sacrificed their country for their own private interest, and refers to the feuds of the Scots among themselves, and affirming that some of them had yielded to the English and become vile slaves.¹ Having expressed his indignation, he proceeds in the ninth chapter to urge the Scots to pray to God and help themselves, to repent and prosper, and recited for their encouragement the examples of several countries whose struggle for independence had been successful. Next he briefly notices some of the wars of the Jews as recorded in the Bible; recounts Darius’ invasion of Greece, and his discomfiture by Miltiades; and how the great host of Xerxes, the King of Persia, was bravely encountered by the Greeks, and ultimately compelled to beat a retreat. He recalls to the mind of his countrymen and bids them consider how the English were driven out of France. But now it is manifest, he says, that the English have violently usurped all Scotland, in the east, in the west, and in the north, where they are dwelling peaceably under their own laws. In the days of Edward I. they had done the same thing; though, with the aid of God, Robert Bruce had driven them out of the kingdom. “Therefore I hope in God that within a short time the Protector of England and his cruel council shall be put in the chronicles in as abominable a style as was Philaris, Dionysius, Nero, Callugala, or Domician, the which came to a mischievous end, for the violent invasion of other princes’ countries without any just cause.”

The tenth chapter begins with an attack upon a book, set forth by the English orators and their Protector, in which, though the grounds of the claim were frivolous, the English wished to show to foreign princes that they had a just title to make war upon Scotland; but our author remarks that realms are not conquered by books, but with blood.¹ Englishmen, he said, gave more credence to the prophecies of Merlin than to the Gospel, “because that their old prophet prophesied that England and Scotland should be both under one prince.” The author himself believed that this would come to pass, but not in his day, nor in the way that the English expected; since they were to be conquered by the Scots: “And from that time forth, England and Scotland shall be but one monarchy, and shall live under one prince; and so Englishmen shall get their prophecy fulfilled to their own mischief.”

At the beginning of the eleventh chapter he introduces a rather sweeping mode of treating the English claim; and yet it had a strain of historic truth. He proposes to examine their title to England and what they were themselves, and comes to the conclusion that they were the descendants of Sergest and Hengest, the two Saxons who came to assist the King of Britain in his wars, and after a short time, treacherously dispossessed him. Ever since, this false race have possessed the country by violence and tyranny; and most of the English kings have murdered their predecessors. Henry I. was banished from the throne; Henry III. was driven from it by his second son, Richard; King John was a murderer; Edward II. and Richard II., perished miserably; Henry VI. was murdered; Richard III. slew the children of Edward IV., and Henry VII. obtained the crown of England by the support of the King of France; so that not one of them had a just title to the throne of England, much less to Scotland. “All this if well considered, should inflame your hearts with courage to resist their cruel assaults, and to maintain by valour the just defence of your native country. Ye know how they and their forefathers have been your old mortal enemies for twelve hundred years, making cruel war against your ancestors by fire and sword, daily destroying your fields, villages, and burghs, with a firm purpose to strip Scotland from your generation ... constantly lying in wait against you, and taking advantage of your dissensions.” He exhorts his countrymen to remove the causes of discord among themselves; and asks what castle could be kept against besiegers, if mortal strife raged within it among the defenders? He calls on them to remember the valour of their forefathers, and to take an example from the noble deeds of those, who in bygone ages had often been harder pressed than they were. He tells the Scots that their enemies would not have troubled them, if their own discord had not opened the way; and implores them to make a final effort before their wives and daughters were ravished, their property seized; their ruin complete, and the nation for ever enslaved. After reminding them of the treatment to which the English had subjected Ireland and Wales, he warns them to expect nothing better at the hands of their old enemies. The King of England was of Welsh descent, yet the Welsh were subjected to all kinds of oppression. So likewise the English have oppressed Ireland, for the chief men of that country have been beheaded, and the people enslaved, excepting the few who had fled and found a refuge in the wilds. But a still harder yoke, he argues, will be put on the necks of the Scots who help England to subdue their native land​—“As King Edward in the black parliament at the barns of Ayr hanged sixteen score of his Scottish adherents; so in 1547 the Protector Somerset intended to repeat this feat ... for the invader had brought to Scotland two barrels full of halters, each with a loop ready-made to receive its victim.... Though the English King patronises the renegade Scots, he would be well pleased if every Scotsman had another in his stomach; as he merely uses them for his own ends, he loved the treason that suited his purpose, but not the traitor that committed it.”

In the thirteenth chapter the author discusses the familiarity between the English and the Scots, and its evil effects. This familiarity arose from the intercourse of the people on the borders, and was contrary to the laws both of England and Scotland. No two nations, he asserts, were more unlike each other than the English and the Scots, though they were neighbours and spoke the same language. “For Englishmen are subtle, and Scotsmen are facile. Englishmen are ambitious in prosperity, and Scotsmen are humane in prosperity. Englishmen are humble when they are subjected by force and violence, and Scotsmen are furious when they are violently subjected. Englishmen are cruel when they get victory, and Scotsmen are merciful when they get victory.... Their natures and conditions are as different as is the natures of sheep and wolves.” He came to the conclusion that there should be no familiarity between them; as familiarity between enemies is sure to beget treason, and the King of England had tampered with several Scottish gentlemen. There were also some traitors who revealed the secret plans of the Scottish Council to the King of England; so when the Lords of Council resolved on any matter, within twenty-four hours a full account of it was in Berwick, and three days after the Berwick post presented it in London: thus the English were ready to thwart the purpose of the Scots, even before it was entered upon. He regretted that there were Scotsmen who would reveal every secret of their country rather than burn a finger of their gloves. But, lest persuasion and invective should both fail to arrest the Scottish traitors, he quoted various classical and Scriptural instances to show that traitors and conspirators were always punished even by those who have profited most by their treason.¹ He devoted the whole of the fourteenth chapter to the illustration of the subject.

In the fifteenth chapter he enters on another side of the state of Scotland​—the commons and the people state their grievances against the nobles and the clergy. I referred to this chapter before, and will now give a summary of its contents, as it is one of the most valuable parts of the book. The industrious husbandmen and the labourers pour forth their lamentations against the oppressive exactions of the landlords and the clergy. The people are, like dull asses, kicked and goaded, and made the butt of every dart. They are compelled to labour night and day to feed lazy and useless men, who, in return, oppress them and fleece them even to beggary. The nobles and the clergy are described as more cruel to them than the English invaders. Their corn and cattle are daily reft from them, and they themselves turned out of their holdings. “They were forced to lend to the tyrants above them, and when they asked for the debt, they were cuffed or killed. There was a cry for war against England, but the brunt of it really fell upon the poor labourers; and there was no help for them in Scotland, except to pray to God that He would take vengeance upon their oppressors. For it is to be presumed that the lamentable voice and cries of the afflicted people complaining to heaven, will move to pity the clemency of the most merciful and puissant divine Creator, who, through His eternal justice, will crush in confusion all violent usurpers that perpetrate such cruel iniquities upon the desolate and poor people. Therefore, oh! my country, since I am in danger of death, and despairing of my life, necessity drives and constrains me to call on God, and to desire vengeance on them that persecute me, in hope that He will relieve me, or else take me out of this miserable life, for the ingratitude of the nobles and the clergy.” He goes on to say that they had misgoverned the kingdom, and brought the people into this dire extremity, yet they were displeased because the people murmured, though they did not desist from wrongdoing. These proud men, it is said, would fain have it believed that they were the progeny of angels and archangels, instead of the common sons of Adam. How baseless is the boast of blood! “Let it be tested. The stock of the first genealogy of all the nobles that has been since the world began has been poor labourers and mechanical craftsmen; and God grant that these arrogant ones may have grace to know themselves. For in the past all conspiracies have been originated and fomented by the great, as treason is impossible among the poor.”

No one can read this chapter without perceiving that the author has felt keenly for the hard lot of the common people; albeit, in the next chapter he looks at the other side of the shield, and he is equally severe on the faults of the people themselves. The commonalty are described as deserving punishment as much as their betters, and are not fit for liberty; if they had the opportunity, they would be worse than the others. Their meetings were usually scenes of uproar; “where they scolded and barked without rhyme or reason all the day long.” They follow the most blatant prater like sheep, were fickle in their minds, and the counsel of ten prudent men was better than all the wisdom of the commons. Their judgment is worthless, as they jump to conclusions at first sight, and are worse than the brute beasts. They are intemperate, lustful, and steady only when forced. When any of them rise in the world, they were much worse than the higher classes, and their children are ignorant, vain, prodigal and arrogant. The chapter closes with an old piece of advice to the commons, that they should correct themselves before they accuse the nobles and the clergy.

In the seventeenth chapter he turns again to the vices of the nobles, and begins by saying that the faults of the people should not make the nobles glory. He shortly shows that they have no ground for glorification, and he declares that they have scarcely a spark of nobleness or gentleness in them. To make this quite clear, he discusses the origin of gentlemen, speaks of the golden age, when habits were simple and men’s tastes natural; when the people drank no wine nor beer, nor yet disordered their appetites with spices, herbs, drugs, gums, or sugar, brought from distant lands. There was no difference of conditions, and all being equal, they all lay together in a corner without any shame or offence. But, since the iron age, which now reigns, was ushered in, everything has been perverted, and though many expedients have been tried to mitigate suffering, there has been comparatively little success.

True nobility is not hereditary, and when the descendants of nobles cease to perform worthy deeds, they deserve to be degraded from their privileged position. It is far better to be virtuous one’s self than to attempt to draw one’s lineage from the virtuous; even the son of a prince if he lacks virtue is not a gentleman. Some gentlemen are ashamed that their ancestors were plebeians. But how vain is the boast of high ancestry, as the longest line must begin in mud and clay. Men therefore should have as their armorial bearings dust, ashes, and earth. “As they must all return to their common and general mother the earth, and she makes no acceptation of persons nor differences of qualities between gentlemen and mechanics, but receives them all indifferently in her domicile and receptacle. Then when the corrupted flesh is consumed from the bones, no man can distinguish a prince from a beggar.”

He becomes very serious on the character of the nobles, but from other sources of information it seems that his description of them is not much overdrawn. “It appears that when your noble predecessors died, they took their virtue and gentility with them to their sepultures, and they left nothing with you but the title of their gentle rank.... For I see nothing among gentlemen but vice. For honesty is spotted, ignorance is praised, prudence is scorned, and chastity is banished; the nights are too short to gentlemen to commit their lecheries, and the days are too short to them to commit extortions upon the poor people. Their blasphemy of the name of God corrupts the ear. The prodigal pride that reigns among them is detestable, not only in costly dress above their state, but also in the prodigal expenses that they incur on horses and dogs, above their rents or riches. A man is not reputed for a gentleman in Scotland unless he expends more on his horses and his dogs than he does on his wife and children.... There are too many horses in Scotland, like Diomede’s horse, that eats the poor people; and there are too many dogs in Scotland that worries their master, as Actæon was worried.”

The nineteenth chapter treats of the shortcomings of the clergy, but the treatment of them is not so severe as that of the nobles and the people. The author makes general charges against the spiritual estate, and speaks of abuses prevailing among them; but his reproof of the priesthood is not so distinctly put or thrust home as his complaints against the other classes. From this it has been inferred that the author was himself an ecclesiastic.¹ Probably he was a member of the spiritual class; at least, be was firmly attached to the Roman Catholic faith, and a hater of schism; though his sagacity enabled him to see the folly of burning heretics.

The abuses of the clergy had caused dissension between them and the temporal estate. “For the clergy and the nobles lived like cats and dogs barking at each other, therefore there is not one of you better than another.... Doubtless thy abuse, and the sinister ministration of thy office, is the special cause of the schism and of the diverse sects that troubles all Christendom. Howbeit, though the root of these schisms and sects are in Germany, Denmark, and England, nevertheless the branches of them are spread athwart all Christian realms in such a way that they have more adherents nor adversaries, for diverse men desire a part of the temporal patrimony of the kirk, because of the abuse and evil example of the churchmen. And this plague of schism can never be reformed by any statutes, laws, punishments, banishings, burning, forfeiting, nor torment that can be devised till the time that the clergy reform themselves. Therefore, if the clergy were as solicitous to reform and correct their own malversation as they are solicitous to punish those that detract and murmur at their obstinate abuses, certainly the example of their good conversation would extinguish and supplant more hastily all perverted opinions and schism, than all the punishment that Christendom can execute. While the clergy remain in their present state, the punishment which they execute upon schismatics may be fitly compared to a man that casts oil on a burning fire in hope to extinguish it and to drown it out, the which oil makes the fire more bold than it was before. The evidence of this is manifest; for as soon as there is a person slain, burnt, or banished for holding perverted opinions, immediately there rises up three in his place; therefore such punishment may be compared to a serpent called hydra, which had seven heads.” He tells the clergy to unite together and reform their scandalous lives and the abuses that reign amongst themselves.

The author of the Complaynt shows sound judgment in his remarks on the burning of heretics. He informs his brethren that they have more to fear from England than from the laity; and proceeds to show that Henry VIII. hated the English clergy, and that those of Scotland need expect no more mercy at his hands. He therefore counsels the clergy, at least all who were able-bodied, to cast aside their cowls and long robes and buckle themselves with steel jackets and coats of mail, and go boldly into the battle against the English army of vile heretics and excommunicated infidels.¹

He begins the twentieth and last chapter by stating that the intestine strife which was raging in Scotland had done her more injury than all the armies of England; and he concludes his work with a general address to the various ranks of the Scots, in which he illustrates his views by historical examples at great length; and ends by telling them that God will help them, if they help themselves.

The author of the Complaynt displays much knowledge of the world, and considerable learning for his age and country. His style of remark is shrewd and striking, and his illustrations are often apposite, and sometimes exceedingly happy. He exhibits a very keen relish for invective, and occasionally he makes telling hits. His phraseology is not nearly so coarse as that of many of his contemporaries.

It has been inferred that the sixth chapter, as it now stands, is mainly an addition made by the author when his work was passing through the press, and inserted as a piece of attractive reading. This chapter opens with the description of a walk which he took among the green fields. He passed to the foot of a hill where there was a stream teeming with fishes, and overhung by a wooded bank, amid which the melodious songs of birds charmed his ear. He then entered a forest, and listened to the cries of the animals and the fowls of the air. From this scene he passed to the seashore, and there he saw a naval conflict between a galley and another ship. His description of the scene is very minute and animated. He repeats the sea cries then in use, and gives a list of the artillery and firearms known in Scotland in the early part of the sixteenth century. Leaving the two vessels enveloped in the smoke of powder, he returns to the fresh fields. He then proceeds to relate the current opinions of the age about the universe, the motions of the sun, the moon, the fixed stars, and the planets; and astrology as well as astronomy engaged his attention. After discoursing learnedly on these exalted subjects, he concludes this part of his work in the following words:​—“All these things before rehearsed, of the circles of the sphere, and of the heavens and planets, is said to cause you to consider that mankind is subject to the planets and their influences; therefore we should prepare and provide to resist these evil constellations. For, howbeit, that they are the instruments of God, yet, nevertheless, He of his goodness resists their evil influences from the time that we become obedient to his command.”

The latter half of this chapter is very valuable, as he introduces into it a list of the popular tales, songs, ballads, and dances, then popular among the Scots. The names, or titles, of forty-eight tales were recorded, the names of thirty-seven songs, or ballads, and the names of about thirty dance-tunes. Altogether the list contains one hundred and sixteen titles of distinct things of the character indicated.¹ These lists are important in connection with the history of our popular literature, as they afford the earliest date for many tales, ballads, and tunes; although a tale or a ballad is only mentioned in the briefest terms, still it is evidence that they existed, at least, in the first half of the sixteenth century.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Literature of the Reformation, and the latter part of the Sixteenth Century.

IN the preceding pages an account was given of the pre-reformation literature of Scotland; in this chapter the class of writings more immediately associated with the revolution will be treated. In this connection, the writings of Sir David Lyndsay had more influence among the people in hastening on the Reformation than those of any other man of the age in Scotland. It is a singular and notable fact that Lyndsay was not interfered with, nor accused of heresy in the Church, though he made many bold attacks upon the priesthood and the corrupted doctrine of the Roman Church: probably it was his rank and position that saved him from the heresy hunters of the times. Whether he ever actually renounced his general adherence to the Roman Catholic faith is uncertain. His name, however, is always reckoned among those of the early adherents of the Scottish Reformation. His death took place before the reformed party in Scotland had assumed a distinct attitude toward the government of the kingdom, or had even formed themselves into an open congregation; but, if he cannot be exactly counted as one of the Protestant Reformers, we must at least regard him as a great power in preparing the national mind for the reception of the radical revolution, which triumphed in Scotland within a few years after his death.¹ In fact, Lyndsay was a real and worthy Reformer. He openly and bravely stood up and exposed the abuses of the government of his country, and held up to scorn the corruptions of the Church; he was not afraid to denounce the host of traditions, of puerile fancies, and inherited prejudices, which had been venerated for centuries; he felt keenly for the hard lot of the toiling mass of his countrymen, and the whole force of his nature and power over the language was thrown into his writings, with the aim of mitigating the suffering of the people. Having honestly faced the storm, he has had his reward in the grateful remembrance of succeeding generations.

Little is known about the early days of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount; but it appears that he was employed at the court of Scotland during the greater part of his life. For a period of nearly fifty years, excepting the short time that the Earl of Angus held James V. in captivity, Lyndsay seems to have been constantly engaged in various offices in the royal household. About the year 1529, he was appointed chief Herald, or Lyon King of Arms, as it is called, and he held this office till his death. In the latter part of the reign of James V. he was occasionally sent on foreign embassies in the service of the government. He died about the year 1555.¹

Lyndsay was not a great poet nor a man of very remarkable genius; all his works had practical aims, and were intended to produce moral results. He was well informed, familiar with the history of his own and other countries, and his writings are interspersed with many historical allusions. He had a fund of genuine humour, and his satire is often pungent and stinging; but his taste was rather coarse, which, however, was partly the fault of his age, and sprang out of the state of society. If his style had been pitched on a higher key, it is certain that his writings would not have been so popular, and that his influence as a reformer must have been greatly circumscribed. Some of Lyndsay’s productions were printed in his own lifetime, but it is uncertain if any of the existing early impressions had the advantage of his own revision when passing through the press.¹ The earliest collection of his writings extant is the edition which was published in France in 1558. From this date to the year 1614 there was no fewer than fourteen editions of his works published, including the two French and the three English ones. His writings were not only very popular among all ranks of the Scots; they were also well received in England and France, and were printed in Holland and in Ireland. It is reported that his poems were read by the children in the schools,² but there is little evidence of this; though for three or four generations his writings were to be found in almost every household throughout the kingdom.

In the days of Lyndsay the orthography of the vernacular language was not definitely fixed, and the spelling of the same word is often varied in his writings. He sometimes makes violent changes in words to suit the necessity of his rhyme, and occasionally carries this so far as to obscure the sense. But he had a copious command of words, and used a great variety of all sorts of terms. His chief object was to instruct and to make himself intelligible to the common people; in his own words—

He went on to state that when the Romans held universal sway, “the ornate Latin was their proper lingo;” but if St. Jerome, who translated the Scriptures into Latin, had been born in Argyle, he assuredly would have written his books in Gaelic. He argues that all the books necessary for the commonweal and our salvation should be translated into the language of the people. His works are full of moral sentences and proverbial phrases, but many of his words are obsolete, and others which he freely used are regarded as profane slang; in fact, some of his expressions can only be characterised as swearing at large; on the whole, his language gives a sad impression of the state of society in pre-reformation times.

Lyndsay’s first poem, “The Dreme,” in which he began his attack upon the clergy and the Church, was written in 1528. It contains a deplorable picture of the religious orders. Pride had usurped the place of humility amongst them, sensual pleasure had banished chastity; the lords of religion were more absorbed in counting their money than in observing their rule and attending to their duty, as ambition had so utterly blinded them. In his Complaynt, written in 1529, and addressed to the King, Lindsay warns his royal master to keep his eyes upon the clergy, to cause them to perform their functions, to preach and to administer the sacraments according to the injunctions of Christ, to put aside their vain traditions by which the silly people were deluded, as in praying to graven images, and making superstitious pilgrimages, expressly against the Lord’s command. He recalls the examples of the kings of Israel, who were punished for assenting to idolatry, and then instances David and Solomon, who suffered no images to stand in the Temple, and their reward was heavenly bliss, which should also be granted to the King of Scotland if he followed in their footsteps.¹

Lyndsay’s next production, “The Testament and Complaynt of the King’s Papyngo,” that is, the king’s parrot, was written in 1530. He brings out this bird to laugh at clerical persons and the attendants of the court, and uses his satirical faculty with much effect, ridiculing in turn the courtiers, flatterers, and clergy. One of the latter is made to reply in these words:—

The “Supplication to the King, in Contemplation of Side Tails,” is an extremely curious commentary on the dress of the period. Lyndsay here directs his satire against the long trains and veiled faces of the ladies; but rarely lets slip an opportunity of having a fling at the clergy and the monastic orders, as the following lines bear witness:—

To show the power of fashion, he asserts that even moorland Meg, who milked the ewes, will immediately counterfeit the queen’s dress, and have her kirtle with its tail wherever she goes. In summer when the streets are dry, the long tails of the ladies’ dresses raise such a dust, he says, that no one can walk near them without covering their mouth and nose and eyes, and many other rather comical effects of wearing long tails are noticed.¹

In the short poem “Kitteis Confession,” Lindsay directed his satire against auricular confession, and exposes this source of priestly influence with much pungency and some happy touches of humour. He pursued a similar end in “the Tragedie of the Cardinal,” but with less spirit and energy. To a rather general account of Cardinal Beaton’s life, and his end in the castle of St. Andrews, he adds an admonition and a warning to the bishops, and another to princes; the latter concludes with the following:—

The most remarkable of all Lyndsay’s works is his play, “The Satire of the Three Estates.” It is a curious production, and in the history of dramatic literature comes under the class of what is called moralities or moral plays.¹ In its construction a number of real and allegorical characters are brought upon the scene, such as king humanitas, diligence, wantonness, good counsel, the bishop, the abbot, and the parson; the shoemaker and his wife, the tailor and his wife, the cottar and his wife, the old man, common theft, oppression, and many other mixed characters. Much ingenuity in the marshalling of these various characters is displayed in order to suit the action of the play; though it is hardly possible for such a multitudinous rally to exhibit a natural succession of incidents throughout so long a performance. The action of the play, however, is sustained with wonderful spirit, and occasionally with comic effect. The characters sometimes express themselves in very coarse and obscene language, and there is much of what would be called swearing, and would not be tolerated on the stage of the present day or anywhere else; yet, there is not the slightest reason to doubt that the “Satire of the Three Estates” is a pretty faithful representation of the state of society in Scotland in pre-reformation times.

The play, as its title imported, is a satire on the chief ranks of the kingdom. But, as usual with Lyndsay, the burden of his rhyme and the force of his lash falls upon the religious orders. He proceeds from point to point, and charges them with a catalogue of immoralities which is appalling. The bishops, with their lordly riches and immoral modes of life, are represented in the most glaring colours, as are also the abuses of their courts and the oppressions of the poor people. The pardoner and his ways of extorting money are handled with boldness and effect. It is forcibly shown that the priesthood had entirely neglected to instruct the people in the religion of Christ; and that most of the clergy were utterly ignorant of the Scriptures. It must be added that the language itself which imparts this information affords evidence of the fearful corruption of the nation: the profane swearing, the obscene words and phrases, the extreme licentiousness, and the lack of delicacy, which pervades the performance, all shows that there was great need for a reformation.

In the course of the play the abbot is called upon to tell how he has performed the duties of his office, and he replies in these words:

Next, the abbot is asked how he has kept his three vows, and returns this answer:—

On being asked whether he can preach, the Parson replies:—

There was no theatre at the time in Scotland, and the satire of the “Three Estates” was acted in the open air, upon the green. It was first played at Linlithgow, on the 6th of January, 1540, in the presence of the King and Queen, the ladies of the court, the bishops, and a great assemblage of the people. It was again acted at Cupar Fife, on the playfield, about the year 1552; and at Edinburgh in 1554, before the Queen Regent, the nobles, and a large gathering of the people. On the latter occasion the performance of the play began at nine in the morning and continued till six at night; but it appears from the play itself that there were short intervals, when the chief auditory retired for refreshments.¹

Some information respecting dramatic exhibitions of the period may be obtained from the records of Edinburgh. According to these, in June, 1554, the provost and council ordered the treasurer to pay the workmen, the merchants, the carters, and others, who furnished the gear to the convoy of the moirs to the abbey, and for the play which was acted the same day, the sum of thirty-seven pounds, sixteen shillings, and fourpence, “provided always that the master of work deliver to the dean of guild the hand-scene and canvass, to be kept to the behoof of the town.” On the 27th of the same month the treasurer was ordered to pay the sum of twenty-four pounds for the making of the playing place. On the 20th of July the town council ordered the payment of forty-two pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence, to complete the playfield “now building in the Greenside.” On the 18th of August the council directed that the twelve minstrels who passed before the convoy and the players on Sunday last should be paid forty shillings. The play-gear it seems belonged to the town, as the council ordered the treasurer to pay Walter Binning the sum of five pounds for making the play-gear, painting the hand-scene and the players’ faces, “provided always that the said Walter make the play-gear underwritten, forthcoming to the town, when required, and which he has now received​—eight play-hats, a king’s crown, a mitre, a fool’s hood, a sceptre, a pair of angel-wings, two angel-hair, and a chaplet of triumph.”¹ On the occasion of Queen Mary’s marriage with the Dauphin of France in 1558, the magistrates of Edinburgh voted various sums of money for plays and triumphs;² and there are many indications that the people delighted in rude plays and pageants.

Sir David Lyndsay’s other works are “Squire Meldrum,” and “The Monarchy” or “A Dialogue between Experience and a Courtier of the miserable Estate of the World.” The first is a kind of rhymed tale of chivalry, though the hero of the story lived at the time, and Lyndsay reported that he received some of his information from the lips of the champion himself; and thus by a mixture of fact and romance, he has woven a long and pretty animated poem. The many exploits of the heroic squire are narrated with much energy throughout a performance extending to nearly two thousand lines.¹ In 1553 Lyndsay finished his longest work, the Monarchy, which extends to 6333 lines. In this work, his chief object seems to have been, to make use of the great events recorded in history for the purpose of illustrating general positions. After a review of the most notable events narrated by Moses, and of the four great ancient monarchies​—Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, of whose history he evinces some knowledge, he proceeds to handle the spiritual monarchy of the Pope. In this he was more in his element, and soon shows that none of the rulers of the ancient monarchies ever had such powerful armies to uphold their authority throughout their dominions, as the Pope of Rome actually commanded. He illustrated his view by referring to the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, and the vast legions of priests, vicars, monks, friars, and nuns​—all holding under the Pope, and mentioned the enormous privileges and powers which this army had obtained in every Christian kingdom. He then goes on to show that the Popes had abused their power, by corrupting religion, by enslaving and oppressing the people without mercy; and he lashes the occupant of the chair of St. Peter and all his hosts down to the begging friars on the street, and the pardoners that hawked the country selling salvation. Waxing bolder, he predicts the downfall of the temporal power of the Pope, and fixes the day of God’s judgment of the world to be​—“in four hundred and forty-seven years” from the date when he wrote. This remarkable work concluded with these words:—

There were other writers of rhymes in Scotland, who attacked the abuses of Catholicism, though their names are not so well known as Sir David Lyndsay’s. Killor, a friar, who was burnt for heresy, is reported to have composed a tragedy on the crucifixion of Christ, in which the Catholic clergy was attacked. About the same time James Stewart, son of Lord Methven, wrote short poems and ballads satirising the priesthood. James Wedderburn, a poet of some note, the son of a merchant, was born in Dundee about the beginning of the sixteenth century. According to the Bannatyne manuscript, he was the author of three short poems, commencing respectively with the following lines:​—“My love was ♦fals and full of flatterie,” “I think thir men are very fals and vain,” “O man, transformit and unnaturall.” It is also reported that he composed two dramatic pieces, which were acted at Dundee about the year 1540; in both of which the Catholic clergy were attacked, but these are now lost.¹ James Wedderburn and his brother Robert are the reputed authors of another and a very important production of the Reformation period. This is the curious collection known by the title of “The Gude and Godlie Ballads.”² It is true that this singular book may appear to modern taste as “only a tissue of blasphemy and absurdity;” but it is equally true that these rhymed parodies and ballads had a real influence upon the mind of the people in connection with the Reformation movement; and the historian is not at liberty to ignore anything which was conducive to that revolution, on the ground of its being unpleasant to existing notions of taste. The mixture of sacred and profane subjects was quite common in Catholic places of worship, both in Scotland and in other countries long before the Reformation.

The collection naturally falls into three divisions: the first doctrinal, embracing a short Catechism, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, which are repeated both in prose and in metre. The second part contains versions of twenty-two psalms, and a number of hymns mostly translations from the German. The third comprises secular songs, but they are parodied, or mixed up with religious opinions. During the Reformation era the practice of adopting rude popular songs along with their airs to sacred subjects was common in several countries. In Scotland, the initial line or the chorus of the ballads then popular among the people were transferred to hymns of devotion; this as may be seen in the collection of “Godly Ballads,” often resulted in an odd kind of parody.¹ Though the association of the coarsely profane and the sacred appears to be ridiculously out of character, it is, nevertheless, certain that compositions of this description had a powerful effect in contributing to the change of the religious opinions. From allusions which occur in them to the Queen Regent, the Pope, and the Priesthood, it is evident that some of them were written during the heat of the Reformation; and that ballads touching the Roman Catholic religion, were circulated among the people, appears from the national records.² Though these ballads were popular among the common people, who could easily appreciate words sung to popular airs, it is not probable, however, that many of the pieces in the collection had been printed in Scotland before the Reformation. It is hardly necessary to say, that the book was never authorised by the General Assembly, nor known to have been used in the public service of the Church.³

Touching the authorship of the “Godly Ballads” in the form that we now have them, little can be said with certainty. As indicated above, it has sometimes been attributed to James Wedderburn, while other early authorities attribute the collection to two brothers of his, John and Robert Wedderburn; all the three flourished in the second quarter of the century. The earliest reference to the book is by James Melville, in the year 1570 when speaking of his own education; he says that, at that time he first saw Wedderburn’s songs, and learned several of them by heart, with a great diversity of tunes. Melville does not mention Wedderburn’s Christian name; and although the Wedderburns may have translated some of the psalms, recast or composed some of the songs in this collection, there is no available information for distinctly assigning the contents of the book to the respective translators and authors. A number of the psalms were versified, printed, and circulated in England and in Scotland before the Reformation. In the former country Coverdale compiled a book of psalms and spiritual songs which was printed about the year 1539; and four of the psalms in this collection are almost verbatim with four of those in the book of “Godly Ballads;” and the presumption seems reasonable that they had been taken from Coverdale’s collection. The chief source of modern hymnology, however, is Germany. The Hussites in the fifteenth century had their devotional songs; Luther’s collection of hymns was published in 1524, and it was enlarged from time to time by himself and others. As these hymns were written in the vernacular tongue and many of them set to popular airs, they were admirably suited for private instruction as well as for public worship.¹ These hymns accompanied with the music which the people understood and loved, formed one of the strong points of the German Reformation. The poetic inspiration that glowed in the heart and stirred the soul of the German Reformer, joined with his sublime confidence, rang out in many of his popular hymns.²

A number of the spiritual songs in the collection of “Godly Ballads” are derived or founded upon German hymns of the Reformation period: others are merely modifications of the original songs current among the Scots at the time; while others are entirely of a satirical turn, directed against Roman Catholicism, and naturally sprang out of the struggle of the Reformation in Scotland. It is the two latter that are of most importance in connection with the subject in hand. In one of the spiritual songs the burden of a very old ballad is retained​—“The wind blaws cauld.” It is found in the following connection:—

Another satirical ballad refers to events when the Protestants, under the name of “the Congregation,” had taken matters into their own hands, in the year 1559, and it retains the following refrain:​—“Hay trix, tryme go trix, under the green-wood tree.” The drift of the effusion is directed against the Pope and all the religious orders, the cardinals, bishops, priests, abbots, and monks and nuns are each in turn severely handled, and charged with obscene immoralities.¹ The doctrines of Catholicism are also boldly, fearlessly, and effectively attacked in these rude ballads. Not a tenet of Romanism is spared. All are treated with scorn and contempt. Of the fire of purgatory, it is said, there is not left a spunk; and the reek, that was sold so dear, is said to have fallen into utter disrepute. The monks having long neglected to pray for the souls of the founders of the monasteries​—“their souls were left to burn and biss” as they might. Touching the worship of saints, it is said:​—“I wat St. Peter, nor St. Paul, nor yet any saint, can save your soul, though many lies make many brawl.” Relics, the adoration of images, indulgence, the mass, and other doctrines of Catholicism, are treated with sharp and bitter derision.² It is easy to understand the effect of this upon the mind of the people; and in connection with other influences the tone and spirit of these ballads and rhymes tended to intensify the Protestantism of the Scots.

John Knox was more remarkable as a reformer and a preacher than as a writer and a thinker. He was aware of this himself, for he said that, “considering myself rather called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke the proud, by tongue and living voice, in these most corrupt days, than to compose books for the age to come.” That he did his duty to his country and to society, as thus conceived by himself, is matter of history. Looking to his life and the important work which he so actively contributed to effect, the writings that he produced are surprising. His compositions it must be remembered were hastily prepared, under the pressure of many disquieting influences, or amid constant and exciting occupation.¹ Neither great elaboration nor the finer graces of style can be expected from him; yet, for all the unpropitious circumstances under which he laboured, his writings in the language of the people will compare favourably with those of any of his contemporaries in Britain. He had a good command of his mother tongue: his style is equally remarkable for strength, clearness, and vehemence. He never leaves any doubt about his meaning; as he held his opinions firmly, so he expressed them with all the force of his nature; his thoughts and judgments are thrown out, with a rapidity and animation which is striking and effective. He had a keen vein of humour in his constitution, and frequently adopted a strain of remark and expression of a grotesque and humorous character; and sometimes touches of sarcasm and bitter scorn occur in his compositions. His humour is often coarse and even vulgar; but this was partly the fault of his age, and partly a result of the kind of work that fell to him.

Knox’s works may be described as mostly admonitory and historical. In the department of theology itself he produced nothing, except a treatise on predestination. As a writer, he is best known by his History of the Reformation in Scotland. He began it in 1559, and finished the fourth book, bringing the narrative down to 1564, in 1566. He left a few marginal notes and materials for a continuation of the history, which were used by others after his death in compiling the fifth book, and also the volume of memorials published under the name of Richard Bannatyne. Many references have been made to his history in the preceding chapters of this work, and quotations given, which render any lengthy account of its contents and character unnecessary. Its historical value and general accuracy have now been fully recognised. When narrating events which happened under his own eyes, it could hardly be expected that he should always be able to refrain from bitter reflections on his opponents; but his humour for abusing them he has often carried to an extreme length. The only excuse for the coarse expressions and hard epithets which he hurls at their heads must be sought in the corrupt and immoral state of society, and the inflamed and enraged feelings of the people around him.

Knox’s admonitory writings consist of his public letters, such as the “Admonition to the Faithful in England,” “to the Godly,” “to the Professors of the Faith,” his “Letter to the Queen Regent,” “The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regime of Women,” and others of a similar description. In this department he was particularly strong; he had a special faculty for scolding, and employed it with much effect. Many examples of this might be quoted from his writings. In his “Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God’s Truth in England,” which was printed and circulated in 1554, there are some passages touching Queen Mary and those at the head of the government of England, which are extremely vehement. “And, now, does she not manifestly show herself to be an open traitress to the imperial Crown of England, contrary to the just laws of the realm, to bring in a stranger, and make a proud Spaniard king? to the shame, dishonour, and the destruction of the nobility; to the spoil from them and theirs of their honours, lands, possessions, chief offices, and promotions; to the utter decay of the treasure, commodities, navy, and fortifications of the realm; to the abasing of the yeomanry, to the slavery of the commons, to the overthrow of Christianity, and God’s true religion, and, finally, to the utter subversion of the whole estate and commonwealth of England.”¹

After the death of Queen Mary, Knox wrote, in 1559, “A brief Exhortation to England for the speedy embracing of the Gospel.” In this tract, which was printed at Geneva, he at once strikes the keynote and states what should be done: “Touching reformation of religion, you must at once so purge and expel all dregs of papistry, superstition, and idolatry, that thou, O England, must judge and hold execrable whatsoever God hath not sanctified unto thee by his word, or by the action of our master Christ Jesus. The glistening beauty of vain ceremonies, the keeping of things pertaining nothing to edification, by whomsoever they were invented, justified, or maintained, ought at once to be removed, and so trodden under the obedience of God’s word, that continually this sentence of thy God be present in thy heart and ready in thy mouth:​—‘Not that which appears good in thy eyes, shalt thou do to the Lord thy God, but what the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, that shalt thou do: add nothing to it, diminish nothing from it.’”¹ He then proceeds at length to admonish and counsel them to embrace the gospel, and to cast aside the devices of men, and to rest only on the word of God.

In the Reformer’s letter to the Queen Regent of Scotland in 1558, which was printed the same year, there are also some characteristic and important passages. The following is one:​—“As Satan by craft hath corrupted the most holy ordinance of God’s precepts, I mean of the first table, in the place of the spiritual honouring of God, introducing men’s dreams, inventions, fantasies; so hath he, abusing the weakness of man, corrupted this precept of the second table, touching the honour which is due to parents, under whom are comprehended princes and teachers; for the devil hath so blinded the senses of many, that they cannot, or at the least, will not, learn what appertains to God, and what to Cæsar. But, because the Spirit of God hath said, ‘Honour the king,’ therefore whatsoever they command, be it right or wrong, must be obeyed. But heavy shall the judgment be which apprehends such blasphemers of God’s majesty, who dare be so hold as to affirm that God hath commanded any creature to be obeyed against himself. Against God it is, that for the commandment of any prince, be he never so potent, men shall commit idolatry, embrace a religion which God hath not approved by his word, or confirm by their silence wicked and blasphemous laws made against the honour of His Majesty. Men, I say, that do so, give no true obedience; but as they are apostates from God, so are they traitors to their princes, whom by flattery they confirm in rebelling against God.” After citing several examples from the Old Testament, he continues: “But, Madame, more profitable it is that the pestilent tumours be expelled with pain, than that they be nourished to the destruction of the body. The papistical religion is a moral pestilence, which shall assuredly bring to death eternal the bodies and souls from the which it is not purged in this life. And therefore take heed betimes, God calls upon you, beware that ye shut not yourself up.... I come to you in the name of the eternal God, and of Christ Jesus his Son, to whom the Father hath committed all power, whom he hath established Sovereign Judge over all flesh, before whose throne ye must make account with what reverence ye hear such as he sends. It shall not excuse you to say or to think, that ye doubt whether I be sent of God or not. I cry unto you, that the religion which the princes and the blinded papists maintain with fire and sword, is not the religion of Christ; that your proud prelates are none of Christ’s bishops. I admonish you that Christ’s flock is oppressed by them; and therefore I require, and that yet again, in the name of the Lord Jesus, that with impartiality I may be heard to preach, to reason, and to dispute, in that cause, which ye deny; ye declare yourself to bear no reverence to Christ, nor love to his true religion.”¹

The Roman Catholic clergy did not show much energy in their writings, nor in their arguments in defence of their religion in England and Scotland; no very memorable effort of eloquence or argument was put forth within the Island during the progress of the Reformation. Those who desired to maintain the ancient worship unimpaired, staked the issue more upon the fire and sword principle than on reasoning and discussion; and they were wise in their generation, for when it came to this, the palmy days of a conservative priesthood were well-nigh past. There were a few, however, from the humbler ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy, that came forward and wrote in defence of their faith. Quintin Kennedy, the abbot of Crossraguel, ♦Ninian Winzet, a schoolmaster, and James Tyrie, a Scottish Jesuit, were the only controversialists on the Catholic side in Scotland, whose writings have been preserved.

Ninian Winzet was born in 1518, in the burgh of Renfrew. He received a liberal education, and was appointed schoolmaster of the Grammar School of Linlithgow about the year 1551. Winzet himself said, in 1562, that his happiest days were “spent in teaching of the Grammar School of Linlithgow about the space of ten years;” but, at the command of Dene Patrik Kinloquhy, preacher in Linlithgow, and of his superintendent, “when I, for denying only to subscribe their phantasy and factioun of faith, was expelled and shut out of that, my kindly town, and from my tender friends there, whose perpetual kindness I hoped that I had conquest.” The superintendent mentioned was John Spotiswoode, whose jurisdiction extended from Dunbar to Stirling; and it appears that Winzet then made a severe attack upon the creed of the Reformers. He was a priest as well as a schoolmaster, and he was one of the ablest and boldest defenders of Catholicism in Scotland. He held out vigorously, and addressed questions to Knox and other reformed preachers; as he had asked and received the permission of Queen Mary to address the Protestant leaders touching certain doctrines, order, and forms, approved by them. In the end of February, 1562, Winzet, as a first instalment, specially addressed three questions to John Knox and the reformed preachers of Scotland touching their vocation, which were stated thus:​—“1. Is John Knox a lawful minister? Since we read, that none should take the honour of ministration of God’s Word and sacraments on him, except he be lawfully called thereto, either by God immediately, or by a man having power to promote thereto. 2. If John Knox be not a lawful bishop, how can they be lawfully ordained by him? If he cannot show himself a lawful bishop, how can ye superintendents or other inferior preachers, elected and ordained by him, not having power thereto, judge yourselves to be lawful ministers in the Church of God? 3. If John Knox and ye affirm yourselves lawful by reason of your science, and that ye are permitted always, if ye be not admitted by these Churches, whom ye serve, why have ye preached manifestly a great error and schism in your congregation, contending with tooth and nail, some lords and gentlemen to have greatly failed, administering your communion in bypast times to their own households and tenants, since the lords and gentlemen were men of science; by their own judgment, in that case, was permitted by their said servants to that office, who affirm themselves to be a Church of God?” Knox referred to these questions in his sermons, but he never sent a written rejoinder to Winzet. Three tractates of Winzet’s were published at Edinburgh on the 21st of May, 1562, in which the position of Knox was boldly assailed. He said:​—“I exhort ye cause your prophet, John Knox, and your superintendent, John Spotiswoode, to impeach saints Hierome and Augustine as leading witnesses in the premises; and cause them deliver their answer in write, for these holy Fathers books are patent to us and them. And some of our faithful brethren have written several times to them both, and got no answer in write, but waste wind again. But peradventure, albeit, these two, your champions, dare not for shame answer in this matter, ye will appeal to the rest of your learned theologians of a great number in Scotland and Geneva. But to them we oppose all the Christian Catholics in Africa, Asia, and Europe.”

It seems that Winzet had some influence in the court of Queen Mary, and he continued his attacks on the leaders of the Protestants. His “Last Blast of the Trumpet of God’s Word,” printed at Edinburgh, 31st July, 1562, was directed “against the usurped authority of John Knox and his Calvinistic brethren, intruded preachers, etc.” Only a fragment of five leaves of the original edition is known to be extant. As mentioned in a preceding chapter, the printer of the book was seized and imprisoned, and Winzet narrowly escaped. He gained a ship bound for Flanders, and reached Antwerp on the 13th of September, and immediately proceeded to Louvain. His Book of Four Score and Three Questions was published at Antwerp in 1563, to which he added a postscript personally addressed to John Knox. For some time he was connected with the University of Paris; and in 1577 Winzet was appointed Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of St. James, at Ratisbon, by a bull of Pope Gregory XIII. At Ratisbon Winzet continued to labour industriously till his death, which occurred on the 21st of September, 1592, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. His writings consists of certain tracts, already mentioned, and The Book of Four Score and Three Questions, proposed to the Calvinistic preachers in Scotland, and written in the vernacular: these were reprinted in a volume issued by the Maitland Club in 1835. He also translated into Scots the once well-known work on dogmatics, entitled, Commonitorium pro Catholicæ fidei antiquate et univeritate, adversus profanas omnium Hæreseon nouationes, written in the fifth century by Vincentius, Abbot of the monastery of Lerinum; and Winzet, in the title page to his translation, called it “a right goldin buke, written in Latin about eleven hundred years past,” and he prefaced it with an address to Mary Queen of Scots. He was further credited with making translations of Optatus, Tertullian, and other fathers, which are not now known to exist. But two of his Latin treatises have been preserved​—one entitled Flagellum Sectariorum, and the other Velitatio adversus Georgium Buchananum. The first treated the question whether obedience should be shown to kings or ministers; he handled this subject because the teaching of the Calvinists tended to unsettle all legitimate authority, and in his treatment of the subject he showed considerable research; it also dealt with the subject of the Vocation of the Calvinistic ministers. The second was a political pamphlet of one hundred and thirty-three pages​—an answer to Buchanan’s Dialogue De Jure Regni apud Scotos​—and it was published in 1582. Winzet’s argument against Buchanan was that kings must be paramount, and that the people had no right to rebel against them, until the Church declared a king unfit to rule.

The Scottish Text Society issued an excellent edition of Winzet’s works in 1888‒90, which contains his writings and translations in the Scottish language, and also a useful glossary, valuable introductions, and notes.

Kennedy was the fourth son of Gilbert, the second Earl of ♦Cassillis, and was appointed abbot in 1548. He attended the Provincial Council of the clergy held in Edinburgh in 1549, and had the reputation of being a learned man. His treatise entitled, “A Compendious Tractive, conform to the Scriptures of Almighty God, Reason and Authority,” etc., was published in 1558. It was praised by his friends, and in latter times by Bishop Keith, and others. It is hardly necessary to say, that the Abbot’s chief and final argument was whatever the Church of Rome said must be true and right. Kennedy’s “Tractive” was answered by John Davidson, principal of the University of Glasgow, in a book printed at Edinburgh in 1563.¹ The Abbot’s next work was an “Oration,” printed in the year 1561, mainly intended to demolish a position held “by a famous preacher called John Knox.” After some correspondence had passed between Kennedy and Knox, a public discussion took place between them, on the subject of the Mass, at Maybole, in September, 1562, when the discussion lasted three days, and ended as disputes of the kind usually end, without either of the parties convincing the other. In 1563, Knox published a curious and rather interesting narrative of this three days’ talk. The following are the concluding sentences:​—“And therefore, must I say, the Mass standeth groundless, and the greatest patron thereof, for all his sicker riding, hath once lost his stirrups, yea, is altogether, set beside his saddle. And yet the common brute goes, that you, my Lord, your flatterers and collaterals, brag greatly of your victory obtained in disputation against John Knox; but I will not believe you to be so vain, unless I shall know the certainty by your hand writ. Let all men now judge upon what ground the sacrifice of the Mass stands. The heavenly Father hath not planted within his Scriptures such a doctrine; it follows, therefore, that it ought to be routed out of all godly men’s hearts.”²

The latest of Knox’s writings was a tract published in vindication of the reformed religion, in answer to a letter of Tyrie, a Jesuit.¹ It was composed in 1568, and printed at St. Andrews ♦in 1572. Knox gives a portion of Tyrie’s letter in separate paragraphs, then his own comments follow, and thus each in turn succeed the other to the end of the discussion. The Jesuit began by asking​—“What words, if any, would apply to those new formed Kirks, and especially of your invisible Kirk of Scotland, not yet eight years old, he is convicted.... Wherefore if ye cannot show what place of the world afore three hundred years your Kirk was into, it follows of necessity, that it is not a kirk.” The argument is the very old one, namely, that there is but one Church​—the Roman Church. Knox answers this point at great length, and closes with these words:​—“We say yet again, that whensoever the Church of Rome shall be reduced to the state in which the Apostles left her, we are assured that she shall vote in our favour, against all such as shall deny us to be a Church, if God continue us in the simplicity which this day is mocked of the world.”² The other points which the Jesuit advances touching the Reformed Church, are forms of the arguments always used by the Roman Catholic writers. Such as, that the Protestant Church had no succession from Christ; that there is a continual succession of doctrine which has never varied in the Catholic Church, but has prevailed in all ages. With more truth and reason, he refers to the differences of the Protestants among themselves, and specially notes the contrast between some of the congregations of Germany and those of Scotland. Immediately after Knox’s answer, Tyrie prepared a refutation, which was published at Paris in 1573, but ere this Knox was dead. In March, 1574, the General Assembly had under consideration an answer to James Tyrie’s book, composed by John Duncanson, minister of the King’s household.³

The longest of Knox’s polemical works is his treatise on predestination, published at Geneva in 1560. It was directed against an anonymous adversary, and its full title was, “An Answer to a great number of blasphemous cavillations written by an Anabaptist and an adversary to God’s eternal predestination; and confuted by John Knox, minister of God’s word in Scotland; wherein the author so discovers the craft and falsehood of that sect, that the godly, knowing that error, may be confirmed in the truth by the evident word of God.”¹ At that time the doctrine of predestination itself, as well as other tenets of the Anabaptists, had evoked much controversy. But, before saying anything about Knox’s contribution to the mass of this class of theological literature, it is necessary to refer briefly to the writings of Calvin himself, and to those of some of his predecessors and contemporaries.

At an early stage in the history of Christian doctrine the idea of an eternal decree of God began to arise. The notion of predestination was held with varying degrees of definiteness, and it early became associated with the freedom of the will. But the crude psychology of the Fathers was entirely subordinated to the assumed necessities of the conditions of salvation.¹ About the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth centuries conflicting doctrines touching sin, grace, and liberty, were advanced and maintained. Original sin was supposed to have entailed utter ruin upon the human race; but Celestius and Pelagius both denied the natural depravity of man; and it was out of these controversies that the doctrine of predestination, or the eternal decree sprang. When St. Augustine carried the notion of original sin to its logical consequences, he arrived at the following statement of his doctrine:​—“As all men have sinned in Adam, they are justly exposed to the vengeance of God, because of this hereditary sin and guilt of sin.” He could see nothing in the natural power of man to choose between good and evil, but only a liberty to do evil, since the regenerated man alone can will aright. In short, Augustine held that all mankind were in a state of depravity; that those alone will be saved to whom the grace of God is imparted: in this way he led up to the eternal decree.²

Pelagius and Celestius, on the other hand, held, along with other heresies, that every human being is a moral agent, and must be accountable for himself; hence it naturally followed that sin was a voluntary act of the individual. According to this ethical view, every infant is in the same state as Adam was before the fall; so that neither sin nor virtue is innate, but the one as well as the other develops itself when man comes to exercise his liberty, for which he alone is responsible. Touching liberty and grace, however, Pelagius admitted that man in his moral efforts had need of the Divine aid; the grace of God assisted man in various ways, although he thought that it is something external, merely added to a man’s own efforts. In short, Pelagius’s theory assumed that man had it in his power to choose between good and evil. These opinions were condemned at Carthage in 412; again, in a synod of the North-African bishops at the same place, in 418. The controversy was hot, and the Emperor Honorius put a check to his external manifestation.¹

Still the peculiar views of Augustine were not recognised in the east; even in the west his notion of predestination never became universally popular in the Roman Catholic Church. As we approach the Reformation period it is evident that the doctrines of Augustine did not prevail. Instead of free grace through the mercy of God and the merits of Christ, the supererogatory works of the saints formed a ladder by which the greatest sinner might easily mount to heaven, provided he paid enough for the privilege, or left his lands to the Church. It was therefore natural that the Reformers should look back to the belief of the primitive Church, and receive with gladness some of the tenets of St. Augustine.

Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion was first published in 1536. Although in subsequent editions it was greatly enlarged, the principles which he then enunciated were pretty consistently maintained to the end of his days.¹ Knox followed Calvin, with little deviation, in dogma and doctrine. In 1559 he was very anxious “to read Calvin upon Isaie, and his Institutes revised,” but the common troubles at that time were forcing him to forego such important things.² Calvin in his Institutes gives four chapters of the third book, 21‒24, to the treatment of election and predestination. He was aware of the difficulties of the subject, and discussed it with a sobriety of judgment, a sense of responsibility, and a power of intellect, rarely matched in theological literature. But the line of argument that he followed, the definite issue that he arrived at, and the evidence from Scripture which he adduced to confirm the doctrine of predestination, are not satisfactory.³ After he had expounded, illustrated, and repelled objections to the doctrine of predestination, exhibiting much power, logical skill, and ingenuity, the eternal decree is still hard to reconcile with the moral attributes of a just and beneficent God of the universe.⁴ On a pure moral principle the doctrine of the eternal decree as stated by Calvin cannot be consistently maintained. He asserts that the will of God is the supreme rule of right, and that the mere fact of his willing anything makes it to be right. Indeed, Calvin seems to have been controlled in the treatment of predestination by practical religious considerations. His point of view is unphilosophical, and moral truth and consistency were subordinated in his mind to the assumed necessities of the conditions of salvation. That God should voluntarily and knowingly condemn myriads of his creatures to endless torture, merely because He so willed it, is certainly not an elevated conception. On the other side, the doctrine of predestination afforded to all who adopted it, ample scope for insisting on the duty of submission to the will of God; and for inveighing against the pride and self-conceit of those who might pretend that their own merits entitled them to claim a right to heaven, instead of being absolutely indebted for it to God’s pleasure, grace, and benignity.

The doctrines of Calvin were opposed in his own lifetime by Jerome Bolsec, Sebastia Castellio, and others. Bolsec openly impugned the doctrine of the eternal decree of predestination, and fought over the points involved with Calvin himself. He had little difficulty in showing that the human mind was unable to cope with the eternal and unalterable counsel of God, or to lay down dogmatically what its issue must be in relation to mankind. Castellio vehemently attacked the Calvinistic doctrines, and especially assailed the tenet of election by grace, with the weapons of acute thought and satire. Both maintained that the eternal decree tended to fatalism, and made God the author of sin, as everything happened according to an inexorable purpose. Calvin answered both opponents, and prepared a public declaration of the doctrine of predestination, which was approved by the consistory of Geneva. The controversy, however, went on; but Calvin boldly faced all his enemies, and fought with an energy and a resoluteness which at last commanded a large measure of success.¹

In Geneva Calvin had many difficulties to contend against. There were anabaptists in the city who sometimes caused disturbance, and anti-Unitarian doctrines had also sprung up. After the burning of Servetus, his disciples published several libels and attacks upon Calvin. These parties were bitterly opposed to various points of his system of theology, and one of their onslaughts was written in the following strain:​—“Moreover, though you affirm yours to be the true doctrine, they say that they cannot believe you. For since your God very often says one thing, and thinks and wills another, it is to be feared that you may imitate him, and deceive men in like manner. I myself was once taken with your doctrine; and though I did not quite understand it, I defended it, because I so much esteemed your authority, that it seemed to me forbidden even to think differently from you. But now, when I hear the objections of your adversaries, I know not what to reply.” He concludes with the request to Calvin, “If you have any good arguments let me know them.”¹ The anabaptists were annoying, and though often persecuted, not only in Switzerland, but also in Germany, England, and other countries, they continued to spread and multiply.

As already mentioned, it was against one of the anabaptist class that Knox composed his book on predestination. Many of this unknown writer’s objections to the Calvinistic tenets he states with much force; and, although he insists throughout that his opponent’s inferences are not deducible from their doctrines, this is not always the case.¹ In the sixth section of his book “the adversary” advanced the following statements on the Calvinistic conception of God:​—“Of all sorts and sects of men, I have judged them to be the most abhorred who are called Atheists, that is to say, such as deny that there is a God. But now, methinks these careless men are much more to be abhorred; my reason is because they be more injurious to God than the Atheists; for it is less injurious to a man to believe that he is not, than to call him a cruel man, a tyrant, and an unjust person; so are they less injurious to God who believe that he is not, than they that say he is unmerciful, cruel, and an oppressor. Now what greater cruelty, tyranny, and oppression, can be, than to create the most part of the human race to everlasting damnation? so that by no manner of way they can escape and avoid the cruel decree and sentence against them. Seeing that the philosopher Plato judged them unworthy to live and to be suffered in any commonwealth who spoke evil of God, what ought the judgment to be of such men who have so wicked an opinion of God? Whatever our judgment be of them, and whatsoever their deserving be, let us labour rather to win them than to lose them. But, forasmuch as he that touches pitch is in danger of being defiled therewith, therefore ought we to walk warily with such men that we be not defiled and infected of them; seeing that now-a-days this horrible doctrine does fester even as the disease of a canker, which infects from one member to another until it has occupied the whole body, unless it be cut away; even so this error hath already infected from one member to another a great number. The Lord grant them the true meaning and understanding of His word, whereby they may be healed and the sickness cut off, the member being saved.”

Knox answers this reasoning in a carping way. He does not attempt to grapple with the real difficulty; the inconsistency of the decree of predestination and special election of only a small number of the human race to everlasting happiness; while the great majority is inevitably doomed to endless suffering. He merely says​—“Because that in all this your long discourse, ye more show your malice, which unjustly against us ye have conceived, than that either you expunge our belief, either yet promote your false opinion. I will not spend time to recompense your dispute. Only this I will offer in the name of all my brethren: that if you will be able, in the presence of a lawful judge and magistrate, evidently to convict us that either we speak evil of God, either yet that by our writings, preaching, or reasoning, it justly can be proved that our opinion is evil of His eternal majesty, power, and wisdom, and goodness, that then we refuse not to suffer the same punishment which by the authority of Plato ye judge us worthy of.... What is your study to win us, and whether our doctrine be a horrible error or not, I do not now dispute. Thus you reason:—

“‘God created man a very good thing; and dare you say that God ordained a very good thing to destruction? thus God delights in the destruction of that which is good. Man at his creation was a just and innocent creature, for before the transgression there was no evil neither in Adam nor in us; and think you that God ordained his just and innocent creatures to condemnation? What greater tyranny and unrighteousness can the most wicked man in the world, yea, the devil himself, do, than to condemn the innocent and just person? Hereby may we see that these careless men are more abominable than the Atheists who believe that there is no God. But these affirm God to be as bad as the devil, yea, and worse; forasmuch as the devil can only tempt a man to death, but he can compel none to fall into condemnation; but God may not only tempt, but also compel by his eternal decree the most part of the race to destruction, and has so done, as they say, so that of necessity, and only because it was his pleasure and will​—then must God be worse than the devil; for the devil only tempted man to fall, but God compelled them to fall by his immutable decree. Oh, horrible blasphemy!’”¹

To these questions Knox has given no satisfactory answer, nor has anyone else. They have engaged the minds of many writers, but so far as theological exposition is concerned, they remain in much the same state at the present day; though few cultivated preachers would now attribute the wrathful and avenging character to God, which it was common to do in the sixteenth century. The statement of the theory of the eternal decree in any form is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in connection with the doctrine of the conditional and limited salvation of the human race, especially when it is deemed right to employ all the examples of what is called the pouring out of God’s wrath upon the enemies of the Jews, and upon the Jews themselves, when their turn came. From one standpoint this is the weak side of Calvinism; yet to many it has been, and is now, exceedingly fascinating to imagine that they know the eternal counsel of God, and are able to formulate His will and intention.

One other quotation and then I will leave this subject. “If God reprobated man before the foundation of the world, then God reprobated man before he had offended; and if God reprobated and damned man before he offended, then is death the reward of God’s ordinance before the world, and not the reward of sin. But the apostle teaches us, that by sin death entered into the world, and also that death is the reward of sin. I pray you, does either God’s law, or man’s law, condemn any man before he has offended? I am certain ye are not able to prove it to be so; then ought you to be ashamed to burden God with such unrighteous judgment. Does not God rather forgive the offence already committed? Let him be your God who condemns the innocent before he offended; but he shall be my God who pardons and forgives the offence already committed, who in his very wrath thinks upon mercy. And so with Job will I conclude,​—‘The great God casts away no man.’” Knox’s answer to this is as follows:​—“How ignorantly and how impudently ye confound the eternal purpose of God’s reprobation with the just execution of his judgments I have before declared, and therefore here it only rests to admonish the reader that most unjustly ye accuse us in that ye say, that we hold and teach that God damned man before he offended. This ye be never able to show in any of our writings; for constantly, in word and writing, we affirm that man willingly fell from God, and made himself a slave to Satan before that death was inflicted upon him; and so neither make we death to be the reward of God’s ordinance, neither do we burden Him with unrighteous judgments.”¹ This reasoning is not to the point; the adversary’s objections are deductions from the theory of the eternal decree of predestination, election, and reprobation, which were all fixed before the foundation of the world. It is no refutation to say that his opponent cannot find the words which he used in their writings. How could man “have willingly fallen from God,” when, according to their theory, God had it all inexorably settled before the creation? These are questions which the human mind cannot settle dogmatically; they are immeasurably beyond its powers. But when men assume that they can form definite ideas and pronounce true judgments upon these mysterious and in a sense inscrutable matters, and enforce people to profess their belief in them, suffering and persecution often ensued, and men are tortured and put to death for not believing what they are unable to understand; not only so, but for not believing things which no human being has ever yet been able fully to comprehend. The arrogance of those that presume to fix what the eternal counsel of the Godhead is and must be, can hardly be expected to manifest much respect for the people who do not think and believe as they do. We need not be surprised, therefore, that intolerance was a characteristic of men that professed to know the eternal counsel and will of the Supreme Being. Seeing that they were thoroughly convinced and firm in their faith, they deemed it their highest duty to compel others to adopt their creed, that they too might have a chance of entering into the glories of heaven, and of escaping the torments of hell. It is easy for us now, with more varied, wider, and more minute knowledge of nature and mankind, to point out the weak side of the great men of the sixteenth century; but we are bound, at the same time, to recognise the noble and unfaltering spirit which the leaders of the Reformation displayed, however much we may deplore the use of coercive means which they were far too eager to wield.

Perhaps the most interesting class of Knox’s writings is his letters, of which upwards of a hundred are included in Dr. Laing’s edition of his works. They chiefly relate to the Reformation and the historical events of the time; and many of them are valuable. His letters also show him in a more amiable light than that in which he is usually represented. He had a warm and tender heart, and for all his reputed harshness of demeanour and his inflexible firmness of purpose, he was by no means a man of blood; indeed there is no evidence that he was ever accessory to the death of any one for his religious opinions. In his history of the Reformation there are passages full of comic humour. The description of the scene that happened in Edinburgh, at the close of the procession on St. Giles’ day, is a fair example of his wit​—“The people began to cry down with the idol, down with it; and so without delay it was pulled down.... Then might have been seen so sudden a fray as seldom has been seen among that sort of men within this realm; for down goes the crosses, off goes the surplices, round caps corner with the crowns. The Gray Friars gaped, the Black Friars blew, the priests panted and fled, and happy was he that first got to the house; for such a sudden fray never came among the generation of Antichrist within this realm before.”¹

The Literature of the Reformation in Scotland may be said to close with George Buchanan, whose life was prolonged to a comparatively old age. Buchanan was born on the lands of Moss, in Stirlingshire, in the beginning of February, 1506. The spot of his birth was a few yards from the river Blane, and about two miles to the south-east of the village of Killearn. On his father’s side he was of Celtic descent, and probably Gaelic was his mother tongue; and, at least, it is clear that he was quite familiar with that language; as he had the feeling and intuition of a Celt, which was manifested throughout his writings. He probably received the elements of his education at the schools of Killearn and Dumbarton. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Paris, in which he spent two years, mainly devoted to Latin, and writing verse in that language. He returned to Scotland in weak health in 1522, and it was nearly a year ere he recovered. In 1525, Buchanan proceeded to St. Andrew’s University to complete his first stage in the curriculum of Arts, and, as mentioned in a preceding page, he was under the teaching of John Mair. In October, 1525, he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts, so it appears that his studies in Paris must have been recognised by the Faculty of St. Andrews. Buchanan returned to Paris in the summer of 1526, and entered the Scots College; and in March, 1528, he graduated Master of Arts. Shortly after, he commenced his teaching career as a regent in the University of Paris. He returned to Scotland in 1535, and immediately became closely connected with the Court of James V. At this time he wrote the poem entitled “Somnium,” which gave great offence to the order of the Franciscans, who thenceforth in Scotland, England, France, Portugal, and Italy, pursued him with every weapon at their command. Buchanan was engaged by James V. as tutor to one of his natural sons​—Lord James Stuart, then a child, not the James who was afterwards known as the Regent Moray, but another natural son of the King, of the same name, who died in 1558. Thus Buchanan was brought into very close connection with the Court, and then the King prompting him to write more satires against the Franciscans, he produced two severe writings against them. But the resentment of the friars and the clergy was roused, and Buchanan soon realised that even the countenance of the King would not protect him from their wrath; and, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, he escaped and fled to England, and shortly after proceeded to France. From this time (1539), for upwards of twenty years, Buchanan was mainly engaged as a professor in the Universities of France and Portugal, and occasionally acted as a private tutor to the sons of personages of high rank. At this period thought, creeds, doctrines, and opinions, were in a state of great agitation and transition throughout Europe, which rendered the calling of a public teacher one of extreme difficulty and danger. Buchanan did not escape the anxieties, the troubles and dangers then associated with his mode of life; for he had often to face privation, and to encounter extreme difficulties and perplexities in his career abroad. In March, 1547, under an engagement to act as a professor in the Faculty of Arts in the University of Coimbra, Buchanan proceeded to Portugal, and left France. For a short time, under the management of Gouvéa, the principal of the institution, everything succeeded delightfully, but he suddenly died in the end of the year 1547.

The following year Buchanan and other humanists connected with the college were assailed by the Jesuits, and public charges of heresy were made against them. Buchanan and other two were seized and imprisoned in a dungeon. After long confinement they were brought to trial, and for several days subjected to the most cruel reproaches, although no accusers were even named, and they were sent back to prison. Towards Buchanan the Jesuits were especially bitter; they accused him of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and of having eaten flesh during Lent, and that in conversation with some young Portuguese, when the subject of the Eucharist was mentioned, he had said that Augustine was far more with the heretics than the Church in his teaching on that subject. After the inquisitors for a year and a half had worn out Buchanan’s patience and their own, they shut him up for some months in a monastery, in order that he might be more accurately instructed by the monks, who proved neither unkindly nor ill disposed, though they were utterly ignorant of religious truth. It was mainly at this time that Buchanan translated a number of the Psalms into various measures. At length, being restored to liberty, he embarked at Lisbon in a Cretan ship, and sailed for England, where he arrived towards the end of 1552; but shortly after proceeded to France, where he was again engaged in public and private teaching, sometimes in Italy and sometimes in France. After having experienced many vicissitudes in foreign lands, in 1561 Buchanan returned to his native country, after an absence of twenty-two years.

On his return to Scotland, Buchanan became allied with the Protestant party. He was not, however, a reformer in the same sense as Knox or Calvin; he had more of the characteristics of a humanist and a scholar, a man of genius and of letters. Buchanan became connected with the court, and in 1562 he was acting as classical tutor to Queen Mary; and in February, 1563, he was appointed to interpret documents written in foreign languages, “that the Queen and council might thereafter understand the same.” He addressed several of his short poems to Mary herself, and he wrote and addressed a remarkable poem to her on the birth of James VI. in 1566. The Earl of Moray, as Commendator of the Priory of St. Andrews, appointed Buchanan principal of St. Leonard’s College in 1566, an office which he held till 1570. Afterwards Buchanan became attached to the party opposed to the Queen, and was closely associated with the Regents Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton. In 1570 he was appointed tutor to the young King, and directed to devote attention to his education; and, along with Peter Young, Buchanan was in 1572 and 1578 confirmed by acts of the Privy Council in his office as “Master” to the King. When Lennox became Regent, Buchanan was made Director of Chancery, and then Keeper of the Privy Seal, an office which he held till 1578; and in virtue of this office, he had a seat in parliament. He died on the 28th of September, 1582, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.¹

Although Buchanan wrote very little in the language of the people, his Latin works have had much influence, not only in Scotland but also on the Continent. He was universally recognised as an elegant Latin poet, and a very successful writer of classic prose.

A review of his Latin poems does not come within the scope of this work, but his prose writings demand some notice. His largest and most popular work is the History of Scotland in twenty books. Though the early portion of it is unmistakably fabulous, it is written throughout with great animation and force. For the part of it which relates to the history of the sixteenth century, he is an original and contemporary authority, and from his official position it may reasonably be assumed that he had access to the most trustworthy sources of information for the later portion of his history. Though an ardent party man, he had a strong sense of justice, a good judgment, and a love of truth. His narrative is enriched with wise and just political reflections, and his sentiments are almost always liberal, and for the time even radical. This feature of his History drew down upon it the vengeance of all who were attached to Romanism, all the enemies of freedom and all the lovers of despotism; even at this day, there are some who utterly detest the political principles of George Buchanan. The personal responsibility of kings for their conduct which he emphatically asserted in his history, was the most unpalatable of all opinions, and it met with virulent and bitter opposition.

But the work in which Buchanan most fully and logically developed the principles of political freedom is the De Jure Regni apud Scotos, published in 1579. This work was written in the form of a dialogue, and is a masterly compend of political thought. It at once excited a large degree of attention.¹ The principles which he enunciated were clear and decisive; they were derived from reason and experience, and unflinchingly directed against every form of tyranny. The argument was put in the following form:​—Men were naturally formed for society, but in order to arrest the internal broils that sprang up among them, they created kings, and in order to restrain the power of their kings, they enacted laws. As the community is the source of legal power it is greater than the king, and may therefore judge him; and since the laws are intended to restrain the king in case of collision, it is for the people, not for the ruler, to interpret them, as otherwise they could have no assurance that their interests would be safe. It is the duty of the king to associate himself with the law, and to govern exclusively according to its decisions. A king is one that rules by law, and in accordance with the interests of the people; but a tyrant is one that rules by his own will, and contrary to the interests of the people. An opinion has been promulgated that a king who is hampered by recognised constitutional ties, may be resisted if he violates them, but that a tyrant who reigns where no constitution exists must be always obeyed; this view, however, is wholly false. The people may justly make war against such a ruler, and may pursue him till he be slain. Buchanan illustrated and sent home these political opinions by examples drawn from history. He had also the merit of completely disentangling politics from the puerile conceits and endless subtleties of the Catholic theologians.

Buchanan’s writings in the Scottish dialect are two political pamphlets, which were written in support of the King’s party, one entitled “An Admonitioun direct to the trew Lordis maintenaris of Justice and Obedience to the King’s Grace,” and the other called the “♦Chamaeleon.” They both originated from the critical state of the Kingdom immediately after the murder of the Regent Moray, and show the keen and practical interest which Buchanan took in the politics of his day; and also his insight into the real position of the nation at the time. In the Admonitioun his chief contention is that the only hope for religion and liberty in Scotland depended on the safety of the young King; and the aim of the pamphlet was to show the King’s supporters the national ruin that would issue from the defeat of their cause. He insisted that the Hamiltons were the chief enemies of the King’s cause. The Chamaeleon was directed against Maitland of Lethington, who had joined the Queen’s followers, and used his talents and energy to subvert the King’s party; and he more than any one else was the moving spirit of Mary’s party. Lethington was then in the Castle of Edinburgh, and tidings having reached him that such a pamphlet was forthcoming, on the night of the 14th of April, 1571, Captain Melvin was sent from the Castle to Lekpreuik’s house to seize him, and if possible to obtain the manuscript of the offensive pamphlet. The printer, however, having had warning, made his escape; but the publication of the Chamaeleon was stopped, and it was not printed till 1710. Lekpreuik went to Stirling, and there he printed in the summer of 1571 Buchanan’s Admonitioun direct to the trew Lordis. These two pamphlets of Buchanan are very good specimens of Scottish prose literature; although the form of his sentences is in the Latin style, the expression is clear and effective. The Scottish Text Society have recently published Buchanan’s two Scottish pamphlets, edited by Mr. P. Hume Brown.

The teaching of the reformed preachers has prepared the Scots for the reception of the political opinions proclaimed by Buchanan: they were in harmony with the spirit of the time, and had a great influence. They offer a striking contrast to the slavish opinions then entertained by the majority of the English clergy. The English Church for more than a hundred and fifty years was the servile handmaid of monarchy, and the steady enemy of political liberty and freedom,¹ while the body of the English Puritans and the Scotch clergy struggled hard against the despotism of the Crown, and the clergy of the Church of England. They constantly taught the doctrine of the divine right of kings; and insisted that passive obedience and absolute submission to the will of the king was the first and highest duty of the people. The clergy of Scotland taught and preached a very different doctrine; they, at least, were not afraid of rebellion when it was necessary, and to maintain that it was unlawful for the people to rise against their King, if he proved an unworthy ruler or had encroached upon their freedom, would have been the last thing that they would have thought of.

The Scottish poets of the later half of the sixteenth century were not of high rank, and therefore need not detain us long. None of their writings appear to have been very popular, and they did not exercise much influence on the people. The name of Sir Richard Maitland, of Lethington, a lawyer, a Lord of Session, and a Privy Councillor, in the reign of Queen Mary, is associated with the history of Scottish poetry more from the fact of his having been a collector of the verses and poems of others, than for the importance of his own compositions. He was born in 1494, and after a long, an active, and honourable life, during the last twenty years of which he was deprived of his eyesight, died in March 1586, at the great age of ninety. His poems were all written after his sixtieth year, and they bear the impress of the sober reflection of mature age. None of his verses are soaring or glowing, but they contain some very pointed references to the state of society and the events of the period. The subjects of most of his poems are lamentations for the disturbed state of his country, such as the feuds amongst the nobles, the discontent of the common people, complaints against the courts for long delay in deciding cases, and the depredations of the border thieves. Touching a remedy for the delay of law suits, Maitland advised the King to increase the number of judges, and to augment their salaries out of the funds of the abbacies, parsonages, and provestries, which were then at the disposal of the Crown. His poems were first printed in a separate and complete form in 1830 by the Maitland Club; some of them, however, had appeared before in Pinkerton’s Ancient Scottish Poems, and in other collections of early poetry.¹

Maitland’s collections of early Scottish poetry consists of two volumes, containing two hundred and seventy-two pieces, and specimens of these have long been before the public. He was the author of a book entitled The History and Chronicle of the House and Surname of Seytoun, which was printed for the Maitland Club in 1829.

George Bannatyne was a writer of verses, but was more remarkable as a collector of early poetry, with the history of which department of our vernacular literature his name is inseparably associated. He formed his collection in the year 1568, when a young man, while the plague was raging in Scotland. His manuscript is neatly transcribed, and extends to eight hundred pages folio. He was engaged on it for three months. In the beginning of the manuscript he states that he was forced to have recourse to old and mutilated copies. There are only a few of his own compositions in the collection, two of which deal with amatory subjects. He concludes the manuscript with an address to the reader in the following words:—

Only a few of Bannatyne’s own poems are preserved, and they have not much poetical merit, though they are interesting as the effusions of one that was so instrumental in transmitting to posterity the early poetry of bygone generations.

Alexander Scott wrote poetry during this period, and his poems were edited by the late Dr. Laing, but nothing has been definitely ascertained concerning his parentage or profession. From his writings it appears that he was married; but his wife deserted him, and fled with some wanton man; however, after expressing his sorrow for this mishap, he avowed his determination to choose another wife, and to forget the faithless one. His poems are mostly founded on subjects of an amatory character, and he often shows a considerable degree of fancy and harmony. The longest of his productions is entitled “A New-Year’s Gift to Queen Mary when she came first hame,” but it has little poetic merit. His “Justing between Adamson and Sym” appears to be an imitation of “Christ’s Kirk of the Green.”¹

Alexander Arbuthnot was born in 1538 at Pitearles, in Mearns, and educated at the University of St. Andrews. In 1561 he passed to France, and for five years prosecuted the study of the law under Cujacius, in the University of Bruges. He returned to Scotland in 1566, with the intention of following the profession of law, but was induced to enter the ministry, and became an able adherent of the Reformation. He was highly respected for his learning and knowledge, and in 1568 was appointed Principal of the University of Aberdeen. He took an active part in the proceedings of the Church Courts, and was twice elected Moderator of the General Assembly. To the study of theology he joined the study of letters, and was the author of an elegant Latin work entitled “Orations on the Origin and Dignity of the Law,” which was printed at Edinburgh in 1572. In his poems, which are in the Scottish language, he mostly confines himself to subjects of a serious cast, and some of his pieces are pervaded with a pleasing air of melancholy and a warm benignity. He died in 1583, regretted by his contemporaries, who united in recording his virtues.¹

Only four or five of Arbuthnot’s poems are preserved. The most lively of them is the one entitled “The Praise of Women,” which extends to 224 lines, and contains a very warm encomium of the fair sex. His effusion entitled “The Miseries of a Poor Scholar,” is rather an interesting composition, and shows that he had a vein of keen and glowing, though somewhat carping, sentiment.¹

Among the writers of rhyme of this period may be mentioned John Davidson, who was born about the year 1549 at Dunfermline. He studied at the University of St. Andrews from 1567 to 1570; and afterwards became a Regent of St. Leonards College. He was a strong adherent of the Reformation; and took a warm interest in promoting education amongst the people. He wrote a metrical panegyric on John Knox, entitled “A Brief Commendation of Uprightness,” which was printed at St. Andrews in 1573. The aim of this rhymed production is to record in popular language the memorable service that the Reformer rendered to the nation. Every stanza of the poem closes with the word uprightness. About the same time he composed a poem called “A Dialogue between a Clerk and a Courtier,” which was printed in the beginning of the year 1574. It contains an exposure of a practice adopted by the Regent Morton for the purpose of retaining at his own disposal a large part of the thirds of benefices, by uniting two, three, or four churches under the care of one minister, thus restoring the abuse of pluralities. Morton was much offended at the outspoken style of the poem; and its author was cited and convicted before a court at Haddington, and banished from the country. Lekpreuik, the printer of the rhyme, was also prosecuted, and imprisoned for some time in the Castle of Edinburgh.¹ They were indicted on an Act of Parliament, of 1551, “against blasphemous rhymes.” There is little in Davidson’s book that could have given reasonable ground of alarm to any well regulated government, as it merely describes a subject of public interest in a comparatively sober manner. Davidson returned to Scotland after the fall of Morton, and, as we have seen in preceding pages, took an active part in the proceedings of the Church.

The literary merits of the piece, which offended the Regent, are not great. The versification, however, is easy, and the conversation is carried on in a natural and spirited style. Shortly after its publication, Davidson composed a poem to the memory of Robert Campbell of Kinyeancleugh, a man that had shown his attachment to the reformed religion by his steadfast support of Knox. Campbell died while endeavouring to shelter Davidson from the effects of persecution, and the latter gratefully commemorated the virtues of his protector. The poem was published in 1595. Having returned from exile, Davidson was appointed minister of the parish of Liberton in 1579. Afterwards he incurred the displeasure of the King, and had to leave his charge, and retired to England. After his return he preached at various places in and around Edinburgh; and in 1596 he became minister of Prestonpans. But owing to his opposition to the King’s scheme of Church polity, he was imprisoned for a time, and afterwards his action was restricted to his own parish. After a life of activity and earnest work, he died in 1604, leaving behind him a collection of papers relating to the ecclesiastical history of Scotland.¹

Alexander Montgomery was one of the most eminent and popular of the Scottish poets of the later half of the sixteenth century. Of his life and character very few facts are known. He seems to have been for sometime employed in the service of James VI.; while it also appears that he experienced some of the vicissitudes of favour which so often fall to the lot of the courtier. It is supposed that he died about 1609. Several of his short poems occur in Bannatyne’s manuscript, and must have been composed forty years before his death.¹ Montgomery’s poems are numerous, embracing sonnets and short pieces of very varied degrees of merit. It has been supposed that his taste was partly formed by the study of the Italian poets, as some of his quaint turns of fancy betray their Italian origin. He has written on many subjects, and tried his ingenuity in a variety of measures, but his happiest efforts were those of a lyric cast. To him amorous subjects afforded the most common themes for the exercise and the display of his powers. He had a good command of language, and, like some of his predecessors, especially of words of abuse and scorn.²

His greatest effort is “The Cherrie and the Slae,” a poem of considerable ingenuity, extending to one hundred and fourteen stanzas, comprising one thousand five hundred and ninety-five lines. The poem begins in an amatory mood, and ends with a moral. Though the allegory is rather obscure, and the thought too dim, many of the stanzas are rich in imagery and smooth in diction. It was very popular, and continued to be printed till a recent period.¹

Montgomery’s sonnets were mostly all addressed to some of his contemporaries or friends, to the King, the Lords of Session, and to others, male and female. They have not much poetical merit, nor much interest now; some of his miscellaneous poems, however, are more valuable and interesting. The following lines are from his short piece headed “The Opposition of the Court to Conscience”:—

Montgomery also versified several of the Psalms, and wrote many devotional verses.¹

We have already seen that James VI. was fond of displaying his learning and his theological knowledge. He was equally anxious to show his subjects and the world that he was a poet. In 1584, when only eighteen years of age, he published his first work, entitled “Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie.” This publication consists of a mixture of poetry and prose: the poems are mostly a kind of sonnet. None of them are of high merit, but, emanating from such an exalted personage, they were greatly praised, and James was soon recognised as a poet and a scholar. He appeared as a contributor to the Cambridge collection of verses on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, published in 1587. In this book the king’s verses were placed first.¹ His subsequent writings were numerous, but a review of them would not repay the trouble and the space which it would occupy. It may at once be stated that his books have contributed nothing to the advancement of an enlightened and liberal policy of government, nor to the progress of civilisation.²

Towards the end of the century, there is some indication of an improvement in the moral sentiment and tone of the popular literature. Alexander Hume, minister of Logie, who died in 1609, produced in the later years of his life a number of hymns or sacred songs. A volume which he printed at Edinburgh in 1599, contains eight hymns, a short poem on the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and a prose Epistle in which he records the experiences of his youth. In the Epistle he expresses himself pretty freely respecting the corruption of the judges, and animadverts boldly on the Scottish Court.¹ His hymns are very unequal, but the versification is occasionally fluent and easy; and some of his descriptions are natural and vigorous. The following lines are taken from the hymn entitled “the Day Festival:”—

This is certainly a great advance from the rude and coarse rhymes of the “Gude and Godlie Ballads.” There is an ease and artless vividness of description in this beautiful hymn which renders it exceedingly pleasing to read; and it must have been more touching when sung.

James Melville, the nephew of Andrew Melville, whose valuable and interesting Diary has been often referred to in the preceding pages of this work, also indulged in writing Scottish poetry. In early life he acted as a professor at Glasgow and at St. Andrews, and afterwards as a parish minister. He was one of the ministers that were deprived of their livings and liberty after the accession of the King to the throne of England. He died at Newcastle in 1614. He was a mild and estimable man, more remarkable for his piety than for any original poetic power. In 1599 his work entitled a “Catechism” was published at Edinburgh. The first part of it is in prose, and consists of prayers and meditations for different occasions, directions for self-examination, a form of examination for those seeking to be admitted to the communion, in the order of question and answer. The second part is in verse, and has the following title​—“A Morning Vision, or Poem for the Practice of Piety, in devotion, faith, and repentance: wherein the Lord’s Prayer, Belief, and Commands, and so the whole Catechism, and right use thereof, is largely expounded.” He composed many other religious pieces in verse, but his poetry is very homely and tame; and it appears that his Catechism was not popular. His writings are interesting, however, as specimens of the native language, and for the curious and plain statement of customs and notions which prevailed in Scotland in his day.¹

The fashion of the age led the learned to make attempts to write Latin poetry and rhymes. The quantity of effort spent in learning to read and compose in the Latin language was enormous; and although this had a tendency to improve the standard of culture, it may be doubted if it was not carried too far. We are also told that “in all the schools and colleges, and from the age of six to sixteen, the youth spoke and heard nothing but Latin;” also that in their correspondence and ordinary conversation with each other, the learned used the Latin tongue.¹ Supposing this to be literally true, it can hardly be said to have been the most effective way to develop the faculties of the mind, or to advance the civilisation of the nation. This mode of culture tends to separate men of letters from the general community, and prevents them from exercising an influence over the mind of the people; and thus deprives literature of the advantages to be derived from its diffusion among all ranks of society. It may be said, indeed, that the Scottish Latinists of this period exercised an indirect influence upon the national mind, which in one sense may be granted; but after the Reformation the spell of Latin Christianity was broken, and in Protestant nations the Latin language as a formative power inevitably became greatly circumscribed. This was a consequence of the Reformation, whether learned men saw it or not, that did not effect its operation.

Remembering the comparatively unsettled state of the nation, the religious and theological literature produced in the later part of the century was considerable. Before this period no commentary on Scripture, nor any collection of sermons, had appeared in Scotland; for the writings on the Four Gospels of the Scottish Scholastic, John Mair, were published in Paris. But Robert Rollock, the first Principal of the University of Edinburgh, was an earnest educationalist and a warm promoter of literature, whose name is closely and honourably associated with the history of education and religious literature in Scotland. In connection with his profession, he composed commentaries on many parts of the Bible, some of which were published at Edinburgh toward the end of the century, and were shortly after reprinted at Geneva, and commended by several foreign divines. He wrote in Latin, and though his mode of exposition was not free from the fetters of the pedantic logic of Scholasticism, and themes that involved the most momentous moral issues were handled as mere abstractions. Having formed certain premises, the intermediate conclusions to which the rules of their method led, they treated these deductions as logical symbols, and reasoned them out, utterly ignoring the difficulty and the doubt which so often attends the steps of moral reasoning. Everything rested on the truth of the definitions and the premises; and to change or doubt any of these was fatal to the whole structure. Protestantism has only gradually and with difficulty extricated itself from this purely dogmatic method; and even yet we are not altogether clear of its meshes. Rollock’s good sense and feeling of the practical often appears in his commentaries on the Scripture in spite of the art of the dialectician, though in some of his Latin writings he revels in dialectics. His sermons in the Scottish dialect, published at Edinburgh in 1599, from notes taken by some of his students, are pretty concise and practical discourses, and exhibit him in a favourable light. His work entitled “God’s Effectual Calling,” originally published in Latin at Edinburgh, 1597, is rather an elaborate performance. It formed a portion of the system of theology which he taught. In this treatise Rollock touches upon a variety of topics relating to the Scriptures; and like other Protestant divines of the period, exhibits an unhesitating and firm belief in revelation. He mentions various early translations of the Old and New Testament, and briefly discusses the authorship and claims of the Vulgate. Passing to the consideration of translations into the modern tongues, he inquires whether it is lawful to translate the Bible into every modern language, whether the common prayers should be in the mother tongue, and whether the people should read the Scriptures. The arguments of the Roman Catholics against the free communication of the Bible to the people he minutely examines and effectively exposes.¹

Robert Bruce, whom we have seen in preceding pages, as a bold and popular preacher, was a man of strong and vigorous mind, intensely earnest, honest, and steadfast in principle. His sermons in the Scottish dialect were published at Edinburgh in 1590 and 1591; and are exceedingly interesting specimens of vernacular composition, shortly before the period when it was generally superseded by modern English. They are full of doctrinal points and arguments, remarkably regular in style and clear in expression. He had a good sense of method, and the faculty of making an intricate subject intelligible to the ordinary understanding.¹

Robert Pont was born about 1528. Educated in St. Leonard’s College at St. Andrews, he early embraced the reformed opinions, and his name appeared among the members of the first General Assembly. From this time till his death in 1606, he took an active part in the affairs of the Church. In 1572, with the consent of the General Assembly, he accepted an appointment to act as a senator of the college of justice, and he held a seat on the bench till 1584. He was chosen minister of St. Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh, in 1574; the same year, he was appointed to revise all the books that were printed and published.

Pont was one of the most learned of the early ministers of the Church of Scotland. In 1566 he published A Translation and Interpretation of the Helvetian Confession. At the request of the General Assembly, he composed three sermons against sacrilege in 1594, which were published in 1599. This is an interesting subject, and has been often touched on, in preceding chapters; yet a short quotation from a well informed contemporary cannot be out of character:​—“From the year of our Lord 1560 to this present time, the greatest study of all men of power of this land has been, by all kinds of inventions, to spoil the Kirk of Christ of her patrimony, by chopping and changing, diminishing of rentals, converting of victual in small sums of money, setting of feus under the value, long tackes upon tackes, with two or three life-rents, with many twenty years of a tack, annexations, erections of Kirk-rents into temporal livings and heritage, pensions, simple donations, erecting of new patronages, union of teinds, making new abbots, commendators, priors, and other papistical titles, which ought to have no place in a reformed Kirk and country, with many other corrupt and fraudful ways, to the detriment and hurt of the Kirk, the schools, and the poor, without any stay or gainsaying.”¹ His other writings chiefly related to chronology. “A new treatise on the right reckoning of the years and ages of the world and men’s lives, and of the state of the last decaying age thereof, this year of Christ, containing sundry singularities worthy of observation, concerning courses of times and revolutions of the heavens, reformation of kalendars, and prognostications,” etc., published at Edinburgh, 1599. His work, entitled Chronologiam de Sabbatis, was published at London in 1626. He also wrote a tract on the union of the kingdoms, in the form of a dialogue, which was published in 1604. In this dialogue he gives a deplorable description of the tyranny of the aristocracy, the weakness of the law, and the terrors of the judges, who trembled before the power of the nobles.²

The Reformation movement was admirably adapted to call forth any latent talent that existed in the nation; as it tended to arouse the latent powers of the mind, and to widen the range of ideas and the objects of study. After the Revolution, the department of jurisprudence began to receive more attention; and indeed, it may be said that in Scotland the teaching of the civil law only commenced at this period. Previously, the canons were the great object of study; those who delivered lectures occasionally on the civil law were in priests’ orders. It was not till the later part of the sixteenth century that the institutes and pandects began to be substituted for the sacred canons and decretals. Dr. Edward Henryson edited and wrote a preface to a collection of the acts of parliament, from 1424 to 1564, which was published at Edinburgh in 1566: this volume, however, is rather carelessly arranged.¹ Sir John Skene, the clerk registrar, edited a collection of the Acts of Parliament, from 1424 onwards to the later part of the sixteenth century, which was published at Edinburgh in 1597. He also, for the first time, published in 1609, in Latin and in English, a collection of the laws and constitutions of Scotland, from the days of Malcolm II. to the reign of James I.; to this he added a treatise on the explanation of difficult words and terms.² Although modern investigators have found many reasons for the rejection and modification of not a few of Skene’s opinions and conclusions touching the early laws of Scotland, it must be acknowledged that his labours were valuable and meritorious, and at the time of their publication threw much light on the ancient customs and laws of Scotland.

Sir Thomas Craig was an eminent and successful lawyer in the reign of James VI. His best known work is the learned treatise on the feudal law, “Jus Feudale, Tribus Libris Comprehensum,” which he finished in 1603, but it was not published till 1655, forty-seven years after the author’s death. It is written in a vigorous Latin style. It obtained a wide and authoritative reputation; many translations and editions of it were published. He was a vigorous thinker, and made the first regular attempt to treat the feudalism of Scotland in a philosophic spirit. It is not surprising, however, that he failed to explain the peculiar form that feudalism had assumed in Scotland; when he wrote, feudalism was full of life in the kingdom; and it may be questioned, if a professional lawyer is the best qualified person to give a true exposition of the system in operation around him. Every one that has tried to grasp and comprehend the special form of feudalism which so long prevailed in this country, is well aware of the difficulties of the subject. As we have seen, Scotch feudalism was not a natural growth of the clan organisation. In the days of Craig, the distinctive feature of feudalism was connected with the holding of land​—the customary rights and claims of the superior, and the obligation of his vassals to satisfy all his demands; but one by one, here and there, the feudal burdens were gradually lightened and outgrown, till at last the tenants of the land only paid a money rent.

William Welwood was for sometime Professor of Law in the University of St. Andrews, and published several useful treatises on juridical subjects. He wrote both in Latin and English. In one of his works, he drew a parallel of the points of resemblance between the Jewish and the Roman codes. His tract on ecclesiastical processes was intended to distinguish the forms of procedure in the civil courts, from the forms that should be used in the Church courts, touching citation, the mode of trial, and appeals. His abridgment of sea laws​—one of the most useful of his productions​—was the first systematic book on maritime jurisprudence which appeared in Britain. But Welwood ventured into other fields: he wrote a treatise on practical theology, which was published at Middleburgh in 1594. He had an inquiring mind, and in all his writings there is a worthy desire to turn his knowledge to the good of mankind.¹

This very industrious man was also connected with the progress of physics and the arts. In 1577, while teaching at St. Andrews, he obtained from the Government a patent for a new mode of raising water with greater facility from coal pits, sinks, and low places. He afterwards published an account of his plan, and of the principles upon which he calculated that it would produce the intended effect: this publication appeared in 1582. It is an interesting indication of the state of hydraulic science at the time, and of the experiments which gradually led to the discovery and to the application of its true principles.¹ In 1594, Parliament granted to two men the exclusive right of making certain pumps for raising and forcing water out of mines.²

But the most celebrated name in connection with the history of science in Scotland was John Napier of Merchiston. This remarkable man, who contributed so much to extend the bounds of knowledge, was born in the year 1550. He was educated at the University of St. Andrews, and afterwards in France at the University of Paris. He had returned to Scotland before 1571, and for many years took an active interest in the affairs of the Church. He was twice married, and had a family of sons and daughters. Although he was of a studious and inquiring turn of mind, he was by no means a mere recluse, as he attended to his domestic duties and the business of his father, who was connected with the mint and mining operations of Scotland. In short, he interested himself in many projects, and seems to have passed a comparatively happy life. He died in the month of April, 1617.¹

The dominant feelings and the belief of the age had taken a firm hold upon Napier’s mind, as his earliest publication manifested. This was an ingenious and extremely curious book, containing an exposition of the whole Revelations of St. John. He prefaced this work with a short poetical address to Antichrist; and to his interpretation, he annexed certain oracles of Sibylla, which he conceived to agree with the Revelations and other parts of Scripture.¹ The full title of this work will perhaps give a better idea of its contents than any lengthy description: “A Plain Discovery of the Revelations of St. John, set down in two Treatises; the one searching and proving the true interpretation thereof; the other applying the same paraphrastically and historically to the text: by John Napier; with a resolution of certain doubts, moved by some well affected brethren; whereunto are annexed certain oracles of Sibylla, agreeing with the Revelations and other places of Scripture; and also an epistle omitted in the last edition, 1645. This was printed for Andrew Wilson, and sold at his shop at the foot of the Ladie’s Steps.”

The conclusions which he draws from the introductory and expositive treatise on the Revelations of St. John were thus stated in his own words:​—“Then for conclusion, by these interpretative propositions followeth four things, marvellous and notable. First, that the interpretation of every part of the Revelations is accessory or consectory to another​—that is to say, it is so chained and linked together, that every mystery opens the other, to the discovery of the whole. Secondly, that the first half of the book is orderly​—that is to say, it containeth in order of time the most notable accidents that concerneth God’s Church, from the time of Christ’s baptism successively to the latter day. Thirdly, that every history prophesied is limited or dated with its own number of years. Fourthly, and last of all, that whatsoever history is more orderly and summarily than plainly set down in the first orderly part of the book, the same is repeated, interpreted, or amplified in the last part of the book, which therefore we call the amplicative part of the book, dividing the whole Revelations according to the following table, before we proceed to the principal matter.”¹ The table which Napier drew is ingenious and elaborate, and his interpretation and exposition of the Book of Revelations is fully as sensible as many others that have appeared since his day. This treatise must have been comparatively popular, as the first edition was published at Edinburgh in 1593, and the fifth, corrected and amended, appeared in 1645.

In 1596, Napier published a letter, entitled “Secret Inventions, profitable and necessary in those days for the defence of this Island, and withstanding of strangers, enemies of God’s truth and religion.” The inventions which he proposed do not appear to be very hopeful, and at first sight they seem to hover between the possible and impossible; yet some of his schemes were not incredible or beyond the limits of realisation. The following are the words in which he announced the new inventions:—

“First, the invention, proof, and perfect demonstration, geometrical and algebraical, of a burning mirror, which receiving the dispersing beams of the sun, doth reflect the same beams altogether united and concurring precisely in one mathematical point, in the which point most necessarily it engenders fire, with an evident demonstration of their error who affirm this to be made a parabolic section. The use of the invention serveth for burning the enemies’ ships at whatsoever appointed distance.

“Secondly, the invention and sure demonstration of another mirror which, receiving the dispersed beams of any material fire or flame, yields also the former effect, and serveth for the like use.

“Thirdly, the invention and visible demonstration of a piece of artillery, which shot passeth not linally through the enemy destroying only those that stand on the random thereof, and from them flying idly as others do; but passeth superficially, ranging abroad within the whole appointed place, and not departing forth of the place till it hath exhausted its whole strength, by destroying those that be within the bounds of the said place. The use hereof not only serveth greatly against the army of the enemy on land; but also by sea it serveth to destroy and cut down, and one shot the whole masts and tackling of so many ships as be within the appointed bounds, so long as any strength at all remains.

“Fourthly, the invention of a round chariot made of metal of the proof of double musket, which motion shall be by those that be within the same, more easy, more light, and more speedy by much, than so many armed men would be otherwise. The use hereof, as well in moving, serveth to break the array of the enemy’s battle, and to make passage, as also in staying and abiding within the enemy’s battle, it serveth to destroy the environed enemy by continual charge and shot of harquebush through small holes; the enemy in the meantime being abashed, and altogether uncertain what defence to use against a moving mouth of metal.

“These inventions, besides devices of slaying under the water, with divers other devices and stratagems for harming of the enemies, by the grace of God and work of expert craftsmen I hope to perform.”¹

They afford evidence of his speculative powers, and the scientific bent of his mind struggling with the narrow resources within his reach to produce practical results. Although the existing conditions​—say the requisite mechanical skill​—may not admit of the immediate application of a discovery or an invention, that is no evidence of the possible value and ultimate practicability of such things. In the Introduction of this history it was observed, that the lack of combined action and organised means have always greatly retarded the realisation of many things, even after the discovery, the invention, or the knowledge of a principle, had been reached.¹ Most of the sciences began at a point too remote from the real struggle of human life to be obviously useful, and would have made no progress at all if they had waited to justify their existence by their usefulness: their progress is mainly due to their own internal, intellectual, and moral interest. If science had always been absorbed in the search after obvious utilities, the highest discoveries would never have been made, and the greatest utilities would in all likelihood have been missed.²

In 1614, Napier published his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio. This work presented a mode of calculation which greatly abridged the labour and facilitated the solution of all the vast problems involving numbers. “The general idea which Napier formed was that of two flowing points, generating magnitudes by infinitely small degrees, so regulated in their respective motions, that in the one case, the successive increments would be equal to each other; and in the other case, would differ proportionately from each other in an infinitely small degree.” He had a fine faculty of exposition, and he developed his conception with unrivalled clearness. The invention was soon known throughout Europe amongst men of science. The work was speedily translated into English by Edward Wright and Henry Briggs: the former set himself to translate it, and the latter became a warm and able co-operator of Napier’s in computing improved tables. Wright finished his translation and sent it to the author for revisal in 1615. He shortly after died, and the task then devolved upon his son, Samuel Wright assisted by Briggs, and the translation was published in London, in 1616. Edward Wright had specially directed his attention to navigation, which stood greatly in need of the aid of exact science. He published a treatise at London in 1559, entitled “Certain errors in Navigation detected and corrected;” he also computed tables of latitude, and is distinguished for his sea rings, his great quadrant, his sea quadrant, and other ingenious astronomical contrivances.¹

The only other work that Napier published in his lifetime was his short treatise on the method of computing by figured rods, known by the name of Napier’s bones, 1617: it contained the most important of his minor inventions touching various numerical properties. The following is a part of his own description of it, from the dedication to the Earl of Dunfermline:​—“Of which logarithms, indeed, I have found out another species much superior to the former; and intend, if God shall grant me longer life and the possession of health, to make known the method of construction, as well as the manner of using them. But the actual computation of this new canon I have left, on account of the infirmity of my bodily health, to those conversant in such studies; and especially to that truly and most learned man, Henry Briggs, public professor of geometry in London, my most beloved friend. In the meantime, however, for the sake of those who prefer to work with the natural numbers as they stand, I have excogitated three other compendious modes of calculation, of which the first is by means of numerating rods, and these I have called ‘Rabdologia.’ Another, by far the most expeditious of all for multiplication, and which on that account I have not inaptly called the promptuary of multiplication, is by means of little plates of metal disposed in a box. And lastly, a third method, namely, local arithmetic performed upon a chess-board.”¹

In 1619 Napier’s son published the work which his father had left incomplete​—“Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio,” that is, the method of their construction. The purpose of the work is to show the way that he conquered the second difficulty in his path to the logarithms; namely, how to calculate the numbers to be intercalculated between the terms of his progressions, in order to reap the fruits of his original conception. Though the author did not live to give it the final touches, the book is teeming with profound thought, and exhibits a grasp of the subject and a clearness of exposition which is rare even among the efforts of the highest genius. Professor Playfair has well said, “Napier’s view of the subject is as simple and profound as any which after two hundred years has yet presented itself to mathematicians. The mode of deducing the results has been simplified; but it can hardly be said that the principle has been more clearly developed.” Sir John ♦Lesly has said, “his sublime invention of Logarithms about this epoch eclipsed every minor improvement, and as far transcended the denary notation, as this had surpassed the numerical system of the Greeks.” Robert Napier in the preface to his father’s posthumous work said​—“Some years ago, my father, of ever venerable memory, published the use of the wonderful Canon of Logarithms; but the construction and method of generating it, he, for certain reasons, was unwilling to commit to types, as he mentions upon the seventh and the last pages of the Logarithms; until he knew how it was judged of and criticised by those who were versed in this department of letters. But since his death, I have been assured from undoubted authority, that this new invention is much thought of by the most able mathematicians; and that nothing would delight them more than if the construction of his wonderful Canon, or so much at least as might suffice to illustrate it, were published for the benefit of the world.... I doubt, not, however, that this posthumous work would have seen the light in a far more perfect and finished state, if the author himself, who according to the opinion of the best judges, possessed among other illustrious gifts this one in particular, that he could explicate the most difficult matter by some sure and easy method, and in the fewest words​—if God had granted a longer use of life. You have the doctrine of the construction of Logarithms​—which here, he calls artificial numbers, for he had this treatise composed for several years before he invented the word Logarithms, most copiously unfolded, their nature, accidences, and various adaptations to their natural numbers, perspicuously demonstrated. I have thought good to subjoin to the construction a certain appendix, concerning the method of forming another and more excellent species of Logarithms, to which the inventor himself alludes in his epistle prefixed to the Rabdologia, and in which the Logarithm of unity is 0.... I have also published some lucubrations upon the new species of Logarithms, by that most excellent mathematician, Henry Briggs, public professor in London, who undertook most willingly the very severe labour of calculating this Canon, in consequence of the singular affection that existed between him and my father, the method of construction and explanation of its use being left to the inventor himself.”¹

It was observed in the preceding volume, that there was little or no medical science among the Scots at the end of the fifteenth century.¹ According to the statement of the elder Scaliger, who visited Scotland about the middle of the sixteenth century, the kingdom did not contain more than one regular practitioner. It is known, however, that this learned man was rather fastidious in his taste and in his mode of life.² It is possible that he might have exaggerated a little, or that his information may have been incomplete. At least, this science had made some progress in the country before the end of the century; though as yet there was no medical school in the kingdom, as now understood; and Scotsmen intending to follow this profession were trained abroad.

The people suffered greatly from the frequent recurrence of pestilence; and in 1568 Gilbert Skene, doctor in medicine, published at Edinburgh, “A Brief Description of the Pest,” which was the first medical treatise printed in Scotland. This treatise consists of forty-six small pages, and may be supposed to give the views of the learned of those days touching the pest. He described it as “a feverable infection, most cruel, and in sundry ways striking down many in haste. It proceeded from a corruption of the air, which has strength and wickedness above all natural putrefaction, and springs from the wrath of the just God at the sins of mankind.” He recognised, however, other causes, “as stagnant waters, corrupting animal matters and filth, the eating of unwholesome meat and decaying fruits, and the drinking of corrupt water. Great humidity of the atmosphere, dearth of victual, whereby men are forced to eat bad meat.” He adverts to the suspicious intermeddling of the comets and the shooting stars. He observed that the poor were more subject to this fearful disorder than the rich; indeed, his description of the state of the former was deplorable​—“Every one is become so detestable to another, which is to be lamented, and especially the poor in the sight of the rich, as if they were not equal with them touching their creation, but rather without soul or spirit, as beasts degenerated from mankind.” This worthy doctor’s regimen for the pest, regarding both its prevention and its cure, consisted of a vast variety of curious recipes and rules of treatment, written partly in Latin and partly in English.

Dr. Peter Lowe had practised in various parts of the Continent, and returned to his native country toward the end of this century. He published a system of surgery in 1597, giving a popular view of the healing art, along with some description of cases which had occurred in his own practice. The title of Dr. Lowe’s work will give the best idea of its character:​—“The Whole Course of Surgery; wherein is briefly set down the Causes, Signs, Prognostications, and Curations of all sorts of Tumours, Wounds, Ulcers, Fractures, Dislocations, and all other Diseases, usually practised by Surgeons, according to the opinion of all our ancient Doctors in Surgery: Compiled by Peter Lowe, Scotsman, Arellian Doctor in the Faculty of Surgery in Paris, and Surgeon Ordinary to the King of France and Navarre. Whereunto is annexed the Book of Presages of Hippocrates, divided into three parts; also the Protestation which Hippocrates caused his Scholars to make. The whole collected and translated. London, 1596.” Reprinted in 1597, 1612, 1634, 1654. It was regarded as a work of merit in its day, and was translated into several languages. Dr. Lowe also wrote a book entitled, “An Easy, Certain, and Perfect Method to Cure and to Prevent the Spanish Sickness. Published at London in 1596.”

About this time he was appointed by the Government to examine the persons that proposed to practise the art of surgery in the West of Scotland. He resided in Glasgow, and was the founder of the faculty of physicians and surgeons of that city.

Dr. Duncan Liddel was born in Aberdeen, 1561, and attained an eminent position as a professor of mathematics and as a physician. In the later part of the sixteenth, and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, he was a professor of mathematics and of medicine in the University of Helmstadt; he also acted as first physician to the court of Brunswick, and had a large practice among the families in the neighbourhood. He was elected to fill several posts of honour in connection with the University of Helmstadt, and achieved much celebrity. About 1608 he returned to Scotland, and directed his attention to the diffusion of science among his countrymen. He died in December, 1613. Dr. Liddel was the author of several works composed in Latin, which were well received on the Continent. His work entitled, “Disputationes Medicinales,” in four volumes, was published in 1605; and it was reprinted as late as 1720; it contained the theses maintained by himself and his pupils at Helmstadt from 1592 to 1605. In 1607 his well known work, “Ars Medica, succincte et perspicue explicata,” was published at Hamburg; a second edition was published at Lyons, 1624, and a third at Hamburg in 1628. This work was pretty highly esteemed during the seventeenth century. Like other works of the period in this department it treated largely on metaphysics as well as on medicine.¹

Having concluded the examination of the literature of the nation in the sixteenth century; we may pause a little, and reflect on the characteristics of the works, the opinions, the sentiments, and the feelings, manifested in them. Looking backwards we find that there had been some advance in physical knowledge amongst the Scots during the century, but by no means a marked progress in this department. Although Napier announced an important invention in the department of mathematical science early in the seventeenth century, no one can fail to see that the intellectual and scientific advancement of the Scots was comparatively meagre as contrasted with the radical changes of their religious belief, their sentiments and feelings. The great intellectual revival in Europe, however, was beginning to be felt in the sixteenth century. The Copernican system of the universe was first printed in 1543, but it met with much opposition, even among the learned its acceptance was extremely slow, probably not ten men in Europe had adopted it in the sixteenth century; and there is not the slightest reason to believe that any of the chief Reformers recognised or comprehended it. Even Buchanan, though not ignorant of the Copernican system, yet in his own philosophical poem, “The Sphere,” he rejected it, and followed the Ptolemaic system. Long after their day, the far famed Lord Bacon rejected the Copernican system to the last; he also treated the valuable discoveries of Gilbert about the magnet with the most arrogant contempt. When this great philosopher assumed such an attitude to the greatest conception of his age, we can hardly suppose that the mind of the Scots had as yet been in the least affected by these scientific ideas; though it is possible that some individual Scotsmen toward the end of the century might have been aware of them; but the religious revolution was accomplished before this; and the conclusion pointed to is that the Reformation depended more upon moral causes than intellectual and scientific ones. Throughout the literature of the period it will be found that there is more evidence of change in the feelings and sentiments of the people, than of any display of increasing intellectual power.

The writers in the Scottish dialect of the latter part of the century are inferior to those of the first quarter of the century in point of intellectual power. After the Reformation there is no Scottish poet equal to Dunbar or even to Gavin Douglas, the versifiers of the close of the century stand lower than those of its opening years; the balance in conception, range of imagery, of ideas, and in appropriate construction, is on the side of the earlier poets. If, however, we look to the feelings and the sentiments which were expressed in the compositions of both, the later writers appear in a more favourable light; as the extremely coarse expressions which Dunbar and Sir David Lyndsay frequently used, were gradually cast aside, and a better moral tone observed. The improvement of the moral sentiments and the broadening of the national sympathy were indicated in various directions, as in the emphatic complaints touching the oppression of the poor and the earnest efforts to relieve them.

Thus, the revolutionary waves of the sixteenth century were mainly religious and moral, and considering the state of society, not merely in Scotland, but throughout Europe, it was not surprising that the Reformers were only partly successful. The reactionary spirit of Roman Catholicism was great, and it long presented an undaunted opposition to every form of liberal policy and moral freedom; and Rome still claims a supremacy in all matters of morality and religion. The Pope is the supreme and only visible head of this planet, appointed by God to rule over the human mind, and if necessary, to spurn the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the race. Centuries roll on, revolutions in governments, in knowledge, and in education, may be brought to pass among the nations; but the Pope remains unchanged, the same circumscribed views characterise the Popes of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

CHAPTER XXII.

Education and Art in the Sixteenth Century.

EDUCATION has long been a subject of interest; and there is nothing more important in a civilised nation than its system of educational establishments. An educational system, like all other human institutions, must in some degree conform to the laws of social organisation and progress, if it would maintain the complement of its influence upon the mind of the nation. It is not enough that an educational system should maintain its efficacy according to a stereotyped standard, it should also take account of changing circumstances, and accommodate itself to the requirements and the wants of a highly artificial and progressive society. It was in this that many of the knotty questions connected with national education arose. The chief difficulty to a just and wise reform sprang out of the conservative interests, class prejudice, hereditary pride, and narrowness of sympathy; or on the part of some, a fear, not unreasonable, that the ancient landmarks might be altogether obliterated. In every nation where a comparative degree of civilisation and freedom has been attained, there will always be persons and parties who cling with extreme tenacity to whatever is old and established, as if the least change or modification of an institution was certain to derange the order of the universe; while other parties may be more inclined to move onward and to improve the existing institutions, to bring them more into harmony with circumstances and the realised results of the age. The great revolution which we have been attempting to explain in the preceding chapters, is a grand exemplification of these conflicting tendencies of parties; and when the demand for reasonable and necessary reform is obstinately resisted and withheld, it requires no prophet to announce that the consequences must be ruinously disastrous.

In the first volume some notices of the early schools of the country were given;¹ and in this chapter it is proposed to present a brief history of the origin of the parish schools, and other educational institutions of the kingdom. Before the Reformation in Scotland, there were at least two classes of schools, besides the universities: one of these was called the “lecture-school,” in which the children were taught to read the vernacular language; the other was the grammar schools, in which the Latin language was taught, and these were attached to the monasteries and to the burghs. Prior to the Reformation, however, the first class of schools were not numerous. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were schools in Edinburgh for the instruction of children, and in which there were female teachers; but there were some early indications of a disposition to give the grammar schools a monopoly of teaching. In 1520 the town council of Edinburgh, on grounds which they deemed sufficient, enacted that no inhabitant of the town should put their children to any particular school in the burgh, but to the principal grammar school, “to be taught in any science, except only grace-book, primar, and plain duty,” under a fine of ten shillings.²

We have seen, that after the Reformation strenuous and worthy efforts were made to extend the means of education to the people. Where regular schools were not erected, the readers in the churches often supplied the deficiency, by teaching the youth to read the catechism and the Bible. The reformed clergy took a warm interest in the education of the people, by exerting themselves to establish parish schools; and the Church courts were untiring in their exertions to forward the cause of popular education.¹ At the annual visitation of the parishes by the presbyteries, the state of the schools always formed a subject of inquiry; the qualifications of the teachers were examined; and where no schools existed, means were employed to establish them. The parochial schools of Scotland were not originated by the act of Council in 1616, which was ratified by parliament in 1633. Long before that time the Church courts had a “common order” touching the rate to be raised for the salary of the teacher, the fees to be paid by the scholars, and many other regulations for the organisation of the primary schools. In this way many schools were erected before the close of the sixteenth century. There was often reference to the trial and inspection of schoolmasters in the register of the Church courts, and regulations for providing means to educate the children of the poor. Although it is undoubted that many schools were founded and in operation during the later part of the century, it would be a mistake to suppose that every parish had a school,² as there were many and great difficulties to be overcome ere a popular system of education could be organised to such a point of completeness.

After the Reformation, in all the schools the children were learned to read the catechism, the prayers, and parts of the Bible; and even to rehearse the catechism and portions of Scripture from memory. It was common to instruct the boys in manly exercises and sports, to develop their bodies and limbs, by the practice of archery, fencing, running, leaping, wrestling, swimming, and other games.¹

All the chief towns in the kingdom had grammar schools before the Reformation; it is unnecessary, however, to give an account of each, and only a general description of their character, and the aim of the instruction afforded in them, and the changes which the Reformation introduced, will be presented. With comparatively few exceptions, the whole of the educational institutions of Scotland were under the control of the Church, both before and after the Reformation; and it is only recently that the control of the Church in education was limited to special branches, and altogether excluded from others.

In the first half of the sixteenth century there were sometimes two or more grammar schools in Edinburgh, as the Canongate had one from an early period. The magistrates exercised authority over these schools, although the abbot of Holyrood had the right of nominating the head masters. The town council paid the master of the grammar school various sums of money and fees annually; and they also attended to the building and repairing of the schools. In 1555 there was a school for teaching French in Edinburgh, and that year the town’s treasurer paid ten marks to the master of the French school; and French seems to have been occasionally taught as a branch of education in the grammar schools.¹

In 1521, John Marschall, master of the grammar school of Aberdeen, asked the provost to tell him of whom he held the school, and the answer was, that he held it under the appointment of the magistrates of the burgh. This, however, was not exactly correct; for in 1537 the Chancellor of the diocese of Aberdeen claimed the right of appointing the master of the grammar school, and nominated Robert Skene to that office, and requested the town council to accept him. The master of the grammar school claimed a monopoly of teaching in the city, both before and after the Reformation. In 1529, Mr. John Bisset, the master of the grammar school, received from the town council the sum of ten pounds Scots yearly to help to pay his board, till they promoted him to a benefice. The council, in 1542, unanimously ordered that the master of the grammar school should have forty shillings for his wages from the humblest persons, who received him and the bishop on St. Nicholas day, and every honest man to give him at their pleasure. Four years later, Hugh Munro, the master of the grammar school, by the order of the council, was to get ten pounds yearly; and, at the same time, the citizens were requested to give him the accustomed wages on St. Nicholas day. Hugh Munro had a wife and a family, and thus it seems, he was not in priest’s orders. In 1550 he resigned, and the council then nominated Mr. James Chalmer to the office of master of the school, and presented him to the Chancellor to be admitted according to the usage of bygone times. It is evident that the grammar schools of the burghs were partly under the magistrates. But it seems to have been the policy of the Church to allow the local authorities and the citizens to have as much of the management of the schools as would cause them to take an interest in these establishments.¹

The grammar schools of Glasgow, Dunfermline, Perth, Stirling, Linlithgow, Dundee, and others, had attained to some importance. Andrew Simson was master of the grammar school of Perth from 1550 to 1560, and it was reported that he had sometimes three hundred boys under his charge. He was the author of a Latin grammar, which kept its ground in the schools of Scotland till the eighteenth century, when it was superseded by Ruddiman’s grammar. On the eve of the Reformation, Ninian Winzet, the opponent of Knox, held the post of master of the grammar school of Linlithgow; and in one of his works he complained bitterly that “so little respect has ever been paid to the grammar schools.”

The chief subject taught in these schools was the Latin language. The amount of information imparted to the scholars was very limited. It consisted of the matters connected with the Roman Catholic religion, and of portions of Latin authors, which were read and explained. After the Reformation these institutions were taken under the charge of the Protestants; but the teaching of grammar and the Latin language still continued to be their distinguishing characteristic.

At the time of the Reformation, the grammar school of Edinburgh was taught by William Robertson, who continued to adhere to the Roman Catholic faith; and the magistrates had much difficulty in removing him from office, as his appointment was vested in the abbot of Holyrood. In the month of April, 1562, the town council requested Lord James Stuart to deal with his brother, Lord Robert, abbot of Holyrood, for ejecting Mr. Robertson from the school; and the council proposed to grant the post of master to the most learned man that could be found. The council also expressed a desire to have a college built within the burgh for regents, and suggested that the Queen might be persuaded to grant to the town the yards and rents of the friars and the altarages of the kirk. The master of the grammar school, however, was not to be so easily removed as had been supposed. He was then ordered to produce his right, and a long process of disputes between him and the council ensued. He insisted that his fee should be paid; and in 1565, owing to the Queen interposing in his favour, the council was obliged to pay him for the year 1566. Though at last, Robertson was superseded by another master, yet as late as 1580 he interfered with the grammar school of the Canongate, and interrupted the teaching for three months.¹

The council and the deacons of the crafts united in their endeavours to find a qualified master for their grammar school. In July, 1568, the council ordered their treasurer to ride to St. Andrews for Thomas Buchanan. At a meeting of the council in August, after long reasoning with this learned man, concerning the instruction of the youth of the town, knowing him to be an able and qualified teacher, they resolved to appoint him on the following terms:​—“For the first year, in case it be known to them that the said Thomas, with the fifty merks they have granted him of yearly pension, with the fees of the bairns, which is four shillings each, be not worth three hundred merks for the first year or thereby, they shall cause their treasurer to give him other fifty, which shall be one hundred merks for the first year, and each year thereafter according to their appointment.” He entered on his duties in February, 1569, but he left the situation in July, 1570.¹ The citizens of Edinburgh manifested a keen interest in education, and their persistent efforts were at last rewarded.

In the year 1578, the High School of Edinburgh was erected on the ground where the monastery of the Black Friars had stood. This school soon took a high position among the educational establishments of the kingdom. It was fortunate in having at its head two excellent teachers in succession, who laid the foundation of its reputation. Hercules Rollock was appointed Master of the High School of Edinburgh in 1584, and filled this post for eleven years, and, by his energy and example, and the success of his teaching, he contributed much to raise the character of the school. Alexander Hume, the next head master, was appointed in 1596. He was a good classical scholar, and proved to be a very acceptable teacher. He was the author of a Latin grammar, which the Privy Council, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, ordered to be used in all the schools of the kingdom. This injunction, however, was frustrated by the action of some of the bishops, and by the opposition of Ray, who succeeded him in the High School.¹ In the year 1598, a set of rules was framed for the High School by a committee of learned men, and were intended to regulate the mode of teaching and the government of the youth; but I will return to this matter when I come to describe the method of teaching and the subjects taught.

After the Reformation, the Grammar School of Glasgow was taught by Thomas Jack, who had the reputation of being well qualified for the task. He was the author of a work entitled “Onomasticon Poeticum,” published at Edinburgh in 1592. It contains an explanation of the proper names which occur in the writings of the ancient poets, and composed in Latin verse, with the view of being committed to memory by the boys. He left the school of Glasgow in 1574, and became minister of the parish of Eastwood. Jack was succeeded by Patrick Sharp, who held the office of master of the Grammar School till 1582; and he was afterwards appointed principal of the University of Glasgow. Sharp was succeeded by John Blackwood, who held the post of master of this school for thirty years.¹

About the beginning of the seventeenth century the Town Council of Glasgow was much occupied with the building of a new Grammar School. In May, 1600, they ordered the master of work to go with two craftsmen, a mason and a wright, to inspect the school and to ascertain what repairs it required. But at a meeting of the council in August the same year, it was “condescended that in respect that there was nothing more profitable, first to the glory of God, next to the well of the town, than to have a good grammar school;” and, seeing that it was altogether ruinous and must be entirely rebuilt, they resolved to prosecute the undertaking till it was finished.¹

Touching the method of teaching and the books used by the teachers, some interesting information has been preserved. In 1575 the Lords of the Privy Council deemed it expedient for the upbringing of the youth of the kingdom, that there should be only one form of grammar taught in all the schools; and that this important end might be attained by common consent, the council ordered letters to be sent to the most learned schoolmasters​—“Mr. George Buchanan, or Peter Young, preceptors to the King’s majesty, Mr. Thomas Buchanan, Mr. William Robertson, Mr. Andrew Simson, Mr. James Carmichael, and Mr. Patrick Auchinlek​—schoolmasters of Stirling, Edinburgh, Dunbar, Haddington, and St. Andrews, requesting them to appear personally before the Regent and Council at Holyrood, on the 10th of January, to give their advice concerning the form of Grammar that should be used in all the Schools of the realm hereafter; thus at once to show their desire to promote so necessary a work, and to manifest their loyalty.”¹ It does not appear that this order directly led to the production of such a Latin grammar as was desired; but in the latter half of the century there were at least four different Latin grammars written by Scotsmen​—Simson’s, Duncan’s, Carmichael’s, and Hume’s; and several attempts were made by Parliament and by the Privy Council, to cause the same grammar to be used in all the schools of the kingdom.²

As before observed, the aim of these schools was to impart to the pupils a knowledge of the Latin language, as it was then the medium through which Greek, theology, and ancient literature was universally taught. That this method involved an excessive degree of labour in order to reach its end, is quite evident; nor was the result obtained at all commensurate to the waste of energy; and that it was so long followed, is only another illustration of the strength and power of habit.

In the year 1598 the Town Council of Edinburgh adopted a set of rules framed by one of the Senators of the College of Justice, six advocates, the Principal of the university, and three of the ministers of the city, for regulating the mode of teaching, and the management of the scholars in the High School. The school was divided into four classes, each to be taught by a separate master, one of whom was the rector. The boys passed from master to master at the end of each year; the subjects and the books to be taught, as well as the mode of teaching, were minutely specified. No boy was to be admitted to the school till he had learned to read English perfectly, and all the common schools were strictly prohibited from teaching Latin. The following is a part of the rules:​—“They think it best and expedient that there be four learned and godly men appointed regents to teach the grammar school of Edinburgh, in all time coming by four several classes in the following manner:​—The first class, the regent thereof shall teach the first and second rudiments of Dunbar, with the Colloquies of Corderius; and on Sunday the catechism platatine. The second regent shall teach the rules of the first part of Pelisso, with Cicerois familiar epistles; and to make some version thrice in the week; and to teach them on Sunday the foresaid catechism lately set out in Latin, with Ovid de tristibus. The third regent shall teach the second part of Pelisso, with the supplement of Erasmus Sintaxis Terence, the Methamorphoris of Ovide, with Buchanan’s psalms on Sunday. The fourth regent shall teach the third part of Pelisso, with Buchanan’s Prosodia, Taleus figures, and rhetoric figure, constructions, Thome Linacri, Virgelius, Salustius, Cesaris Commentaria, and florus Ovidij epistole, and the heroic psalms of Buchanan on Sunday. Each of the foresaid regents shall teach their class in separate apartments, and to this effect the High School shall be divided into four houses.

“And that there may be the better harmony between the four regents in their procedure and teaching, and that they may the better answer for their duty, discharges simpliciter masters or other persons whatsoever from teaching of any rudiments or any other book in Latin in any of their lecture schools. So that the first regent may be the more answerable in grounding, and instructing them in rudiments. It is always provided in favour of lecture schools, that none shall be received in the said first class but he who can read first perfectly the English with some writ; and the first regent shall in no ways be suffered to teach any one the first A. B. C.

“The fourth regent shall be Principal of the school and of the regents, and have the oversight of them all, namely, he shall see and animadvert that every one of the regents keep their own hours in the manner and form of teaching presently set down, and that each of them continually await all the day long upon the school in teaching and examining their bairns. That all the regents, the Principal as well as the other three inferiors, each of them teach their own class, and that each of them use correction upon their own disciples, except in great and notorious faults, then all the four to be assembled in a house and have the Principal regent to punish the same.”

Regarding the fees​—“It has been thought good to make the fees and quarter payments of the regents in this manner​—The first and second regents shall have quarterly each thirteen shillings and fourpence, the third fifteen shillings, and the fourth twenty shillings.”

“Their salaries, the first and second regents each twenty pounds; the third forty merks; and the Principal two hundred merks. The same day the provost, bailies, and council, discharged all masters, regents, and teachers of bairns in their grammar schools of all creaving and receiving of any bleyis silver of their bairns and scholars; as also of any bent silver, except fourpence at a time only.”¹

Passing to the universities, the next and the highest educational institutions of the kingdom, we naturally begin with the earliest. Additions were made to the University of St. Andrews early in the century. Near the church of St. Leonards, within the precincts of the Abbey, there was an hospital for the reception of pious strangers, who came on pilgrimage to visit the relics of St. Andrews; and the patrons resolved to convert it into a college, “for training up poor scholars in learning and the arts, to the glory of God and the edification of the people.” The foundation charter of St. Leonard’s college was executed in 1512, by John Hepburn, prior of the abbey, and confirmed by the Archbishop, and his father James IV. The prior and conventual chapter were the patrons of this college, and retained the power of visiting and correcting it; and the teachers were always taken from the monastery. The college was intended for the support and education of twenty poor scholars. The Principal was appointed to lecture twice in the week on Scripture or theology to the priests, the regents, and others who chose to attend.¹

The college of St. Mary was begun under the direction of Archbishop Beaton, who obtained a papal bull in 1537 authorising him to erect the buildings. The branches authorised to be taught in it were grammar, logic, theology, medicine, canon and civil law; and within the establishment divine offices were to be performed, and a common table provided for the members from the rents and benefices annexed to the institution. The building was begun by Archbishop Beaton, and carried on by his successor the Cardinal; but the college was not completed till 1554, when Archbishop Hamilton obtained a papal bull empowering him to alter the arrangements made by his predecessors. According to Hamilton’s foundation of the new college, there were to be four principal teachers, called respectively, the provost, the licentiate, the bachelor, and the canonist; eight students of theology, three teachers of philosophy, and two of rhetoric and grammar. A pretty full course of studies was prescribed; and there was to be lectures on the Bible, the canon law, logic, ethics, physics, and mathematics; and minute rules were laid down for the order and regulation of the institution. The teachers, regents, and students, had to wear caps after the Parisian fashion; and all the students, the nobles, as well as the bursars, had to wear gowns bound round them with a girdle, but the bursars were to add to this a black hood. There were then three colleges at St. Andrews.¹

The defence of the Roman Catholic faith was a special end of the erection of all the colleges in the kingdom; but how far they contributed to this, it is not difficult to discover. There can be no doubt that the Scottish Universities aided the revolutionary movement; as the carefully calculated system of instruction yielded results little suspected by those who originated it. During the heat of the Reformation struggle, the number of students at the universities diminished; but many of the masters and regents of the colleges embraced the reformed opinions.

Everything relating to the Roman Catholic faith and worship, in any way connected with the laws and practice of the universities, was removed as soon as possible, after the establishment of the Reformation. Yet the modes of teaching philosophy and the arts were little changed; and even in the theological faculty some of the old forms of teaching were retained.

At St. Andrews the regular length of the course was four years, though it was usually finished in three and a half. The session began on the 1st of October, and continued throughout the year, except the months of August and September. All the scholars who entered for the first time were placed under the tuition of a regent, who carried them through the whole curriculum. He assembled his class three hours every day, and read and explained the books of Aristotle; beginning with dialectics, then ethics and physics, concluding the course with arithmetic and mathematics, and the highest branch of philosophy, to wit, metaphysics. In the progress of the course, the students were often engaged in disputations and declamations, both before their class, and publicly before the university. The Principal occasionally read public lectures on what was deemed the higher branches of philosophy, which were attended by the advanced students.¹

About the middle of the third year of the course, the students that had obtained an attestation of regular attendance and good behaviour from the regent and the Principal of the college, were then admitted to enter on trials for the degree of bachelor. Every year the faculty elected three of the regents as examiners; and in their presence the candidates determined a question in logic or morals in a connected discourse, and answered the questions proposed on any of the branches, which they had studied under their regents. The examiners reported to the faculty, and those who passed were confirmed by the dean, and the rest sent to a lower class. At the end of the course they were examined in all the subjects taught, and candidates for graduation had to defend a thesis, which had before been affixed to the gates of the different colleges. They were divided into circles, and their names arranged in the order of merit, but with a ♦preference to persons of rank; then the degree of Master of Arts was solemnly conferred by the Chancellor of the university, in the name of the Trinity.¹

The First Book of Discipline sketched a scheme for remodelling the three universities, but it was not adopted. In vain the Reformers recommended it to the aristocracy, and argued for its acceptance with all their powers of persuasion; in vain they urged, “if God shall give your wisdoms grace to set forward letters in the way prescribed, ye shall leave wisdom and learning to your posterity​—a treasure more to be esteemed than any earthly treasure ye are able to amass for them, which, without wisdom, are more likely to be their ruin and confusion than help and comfort.”¹

Naturally the Reformation had more or less affected the teaching staff of all the universities, and to a much greater extent the funds on which they were supported. The University of Glasgow was nearly ruined by the change of religion. As several of its professors were maintained by their livings in the Church, and, as they adhered to the old religion, there were no salaries for the Protestant professors, its small revenue was also partly alienated, and unjustly seized. If the Principal of the college, John Davidson, had not embraced the reformed opinions, and continued his academical labour, indeed the institution might have been utterly extinguished. As it was, Queen Mary in 1563, granted to the College of Glasgow some houses, lands, and annual rents, which had formerly been held by the friars, to found bursaries for five poor scholars. The same year a petition was presented to the Queen and the Lords of the Articles, “in the name of all that within this realm are desirous that learning and letters may flourish.” This petition stated that the patrimony of some of the foundations in the colleges, especially those of St. Andrews, were wasted; and the sciences that were most necessary, the tongues and humanity, were very imperfectly taught in them, which was equally injurious to the people, to their children, and to posterity. The petitioners therefore earnestly requested that measures should be taken to remedy these matters. Parliament appointed a committee to visit the universities, and to report their opinions, as to the best mode of improving the state of education. No report from the committee is preserved. But there is a scheme for the University of St. Andrews, which was drawn by Buchanan, who was one of the Commissioners.¹ Buchanan took a very keen interest in all matters connected with education; and he had a leading hand in the many schemes proposed after the Reformation. But the unsettled state of public affairs, divided aims, and especially the lack of funds, made it impossible to carry into effect the national system of education proposed in the Book of Discipline. Along with the other Reformers and friends of education, Buchanan did all that he could in the circumstances; and the very inspiration of his name as a scholar, and his life-long devotion to learning, was itself a powerful influence on education in Scotland. Although it does not appear, that he had high administrative abilities, still his example was great, and produced a marked effect. The civil war, however, put a stop for a time to these educational reforms.

But in 1572 the town council of Glasgow granted lands, houses, and rents to their college, which was called a new foundation. It was, however, only sufficient to support fifteen persons. Andrew Melville was appointed Principal of the University of Glasgow in 1574, and by his energy and talents contributed much to raise the institution. He proceeded to work with great earnestness, and resolved to conduct a class himself through what he deemed a complete course of study.¹ His method, and the subjects which he led the class through have been minutely detailed by his nephew, James Melville. He began by teaching his class the principles of Greek grammar, rhetoric, and logic, using the dialects of Ramus. Once the students were engaged in these fascinating subjects, he read with them the best classical authors, pointing out their beauties, and thus illustrated the principles of logic and rhetoric. He next treated geography and mathematics, using the arithmetic and geometry of Ramus, the tables of Hunter, and the astrology of Aratus. Moral philosophy followed; and he read the ethics and politics of Aristotle; Cicero’s offices, paradoxes, and Tusculan questions, and some of Plato’s dialogues: in physics, he commented on some parts of the works of Aristotle and Plato. At last, entering upon the subjects of his own special department, he taught the Hebrew grammar; first cursorily, and then by a more searching examination of its principles, accompanied with a praxis upon the Psalter and the books of Solomon. Proceeding to the Chaldee and Syriac, he read the parts of the Books of Ezra and Daniel which are written in Chaldee, and the Epistle of the Galatians in the Syriac version. He also went through the common heads of divinity, following the order of Calvin’s Institutes; and gave lectures on the different books of the Bible. This course was completed in six years. During all this time, Melville met his class twice every day, including Sunday, besides holding occasional discussions after dinner and supper with such as were present.²

Andrew Melville was a man of great energy and ability, and enthusiastically attached to his profession. In 1575 his nephew, James Melville, began a class in the College of Glasgow: and he states that he was the first regent in Scotland, who read the Greek authors to his class in the original. In 1577, Andrew Melville attempted to appoint permanent teachers to the different departments of study; while the revenue of the university was augmented, and its privileges anew confirmed by a royal charter, called a new erection.¹

The leaders of the Reformed Church were fully aware that the universities greatly needed more reform. The General Assembly in 1576 appointed Commissioners to visit and examine the state of the University of St. Andrews; and the following year parliament appointed a committee to visit all the universities of the kingdom, but it seems to have done nothing; and the General Assembly which met in 1579 presented a petition to the Government, urging the necessity of reforming the University of St. Andrews, and nominated Commissioners to act along with those whom the Council might appoint. The Council at last named Commissioners, and gave them ample powers; they were authorised to remove superstition, disqualified persons, and, if necessary, to change the form of study, and the number of professors and regents, to join or divide the faculties, and generally to make such arrangements in the universities as should “tend to the glory of God, the profit of the nation, and the upbringing of the youth in the sciences which are needful for the continuance of religion.” They found that all the colleges had departed from their original foundations, and that the foundations themselves disagreed in many ways with the true religion, and were not nearly up to “that perfection of teaching which this learned age craves.”¹

The Commissioners introduced the following in St. Salvator’s College: a Principal, and four ordinary regents of humanity and philosophy were instituted. The first regent was to teach the Greek grammar; to exercise the students in Latin composition during the first half year of the course, and in Greek the second half. The second regent was to teach rhetoric and elocution, illustrating them by examples from the best Greek and Roman authors; this class had also an hour every day for Latin composition, and during the last half of the session they had to declaim an oration once every month in Latin and Greek alternately. The third regent was to teach the most useful parts of Aristotle’s logic, ethics, and politics, all in Greek, and the offices of Cicero in Latin. The fourth regent was to teach as much of the physics as was necessary, and the motions of the sphere. On Sunday a lesson on the Greek New Testament had to be read in all the four classes. There were also to be regents in mathematics, and law, who were to lecture on four days of the week. The Principal of the college himself was to act as professor of medicine. Similar arrangements were adopted in St. Leonards, except that in it there was no classes for mathematics and law; and the Principal, instead of teaching medicine, was to expound the philosophy of Plato.

St. Mary’s, or the New College, was limited to the study of theology, and the languages connected with it. It was to have five instructors, and a course of study extending to four years. The chief subjects embraced in the course were the Hebrew, the Chaldee, and the Syriac languages, in connection with the books of the Old Testament. One regent was to explicate the New Testament during the whole course. The Principal himself, the fifth instructor, was to lecture on the system of divinity during all the time of the course. Public disputations were to be held every week, declamations once a month; and, at three different times during the course, a solemn examination was to be held, at which “every learned man should be free to dispute.” The regents and masters then in office were ordered to remove without delay; the Commissioners elected those whom they thought best qualified for teaching. They enacted that when a vacancy occurred in the future, it should be filled by an open competitive trial; and vacancies in the other two colleges were to be filled up in the same way. Regulations were made to prevent the revenue of the university from being diverted to improper purposes. At the end of every four years, there was to be a royal visitation of the university to inquire into the effects of this reformation, and to see that the regulations were observed.¹

This scheme of educational reform indicated, that its authors were anxious to promote the study of the higher literature, and the various branches of learning inseparably associated with Christian theology and religion. The new plan, however, was not fully carried into effect. In the College of St. Salvador and St. Leonards, the act of parliament touching the number of regents was not carried out.

Andrew Melville was translated from Glasgow to St. Andrews, and appointed Principal of St. Mary’s College in 1580. After being installed, he delivered his inaugural oration, and began to lecture on theology. He went through the course of lectures and teaching with much energy and ability. His lectures excited unusual interest in the university, and were attended by some of the regents of the other colleges, as well as by the class of theological students. Yet Melville met with many difficulties in carrying out the new regulations, and his own ideas of educational reform.¹ It has always been proverbially difficult to reform old corporations; owing to various well known influences, and the wisest reforms are often rendered almost nugatory. An outside and powerful agent often sought to control the teaching in the universities; as so many political crisis occurred, each dominant party at the head of the Government deemed it necessary to apply their tests, and to purge the educational institutions, and thus the field of culture and the forms of religious thought were narrowed within the walls of the universities.

The first attempt to purge the University of Aberdeen was made by the General Assembly in January, 1561, when Knox and the leading Reformers held a conference with Alexander Anderson, the Principal, John ♦Lesly, the canonist, and others. This meeting produced no definite result, and it seems that King’s College remained unreformed till 1569. In that year the Commission of the General Assembly, led by Sir John Erskine of Dun, Superintendent of Angus, and the Regent, accompanied by some of the members of the Privy Council, proceeded to Aberdeen, and, having called before them Mr. Alexander Anderson, Principal, Mr. Alexander Galloway, sub-principal, and the three regents of the College, they were then asked to subscribe this declaration:​—“We whose names are underwritten, do ratify and approve, from our very hearts, the Confession of Faith, together with all other Acts concerning our religion, given forth in the Parliaments held at Edinburgh, the 24th day of August, 1560, and the 15th day of December, 1567, and join ourselves as members of the true Kirk of Christ, whose visible face is described in the said Acts; and shall, in time coming, be participant of the sacraments, now most faithfully and publicly ministered in the said Kirk, and submit us to the jurisdiction and discipline thereof.” As they showed no signs of compliance with the requisition of the Commission, they were then called before the Regent and Lords of Council; but “they contemned his Grace’s admonitions, and declined to subscribe the said articles.” Consequently the Principal, sub-principal, and the three regents, were deprived of their offices, ordered to remove from the College, and prohibited from teaching publicly or privately in any quarter of Scotland.

Alexander Arbuthnot was immediately appointed Principal of the reformed University, and James Lawson, sub-principal, and new regents were introduced. The office of canonist was abolished. Arbuthnot introduced the study of Greek into the College, and, following the views of his associate, Andrew Melville, he made an effort to limit each regent or professor to one department of study, instead as had been the practice formerly for each regent to take his class through all the branches taught during the four years of the curriculum. Unfortunately the records of the University under Arbuthnot’s presidency have been lost, and no lists of the number of students or graduates now exist for this period. It appears, however, that the new system had either not been completely established, or it had fallen into disuse, shortly after Arbuthnot’s death, as the lists of intrants from 1601 onwards show that a regent taught the same students from the first to the fourth year.¹

We have seen that the citizens of Edinburgh took a warm interest in education, and they were exceedingly anxious to have a college in the capital. In 1579, the Town Council resolved to commence the building on the piece of ground where Darnley met his fate. Owing, however, to the opposition of some parties, the undertaking was for a time suspended; but in 1581 the work was pushed forward with energy. It was not a new and regularly designed structure, as it was patched up partly by repairing the old houses upon the spot, and partly by the erection of others upon the most economical plan. A royal charter was granted in 1582, authorising the foundation of the college, and confirming the rights of the Town Council, with the advice of the ministers of the city, as the patrons of the institution, conferring on them “full freedom to elect the best qualified persons that could be found for the discharge of the duties of the institution, with power to instal and remove them as should be deemed expedient; and prohibiting all other persons from teaching these sciences within the burgh, unless with the permission of the magistrates and council.”¹

The patrons intended the students to lodge within the college and to reside there during the course of their study. This was the custom in the other Scottish universities, and was continued till a much later period. In King’s College at Aberdeen, by a regulation of the Senatus in 1753, all the students had to live within the college gates. The second section of the statutes enacted by the Senatus of King’s College, touching the lodging of the students, after stating that the practice of the students living and eating in private houses had been attended with bad results, proceeded thus:​—“Therefore, the masters have decreed that for the future all the students shall lodge in rooms within the college, and eat at the college table during the whole session, and that no student whatsoever shall be exempted from obedience to this statute without a dispensation from the Principal or sub-principal, who are empowered to grant such dispensations, for weighty reasons to be therein expressed.” At the same time we find the following interesting statute:​—“That students may have the benefit of those parts of education which are not reckoned academical, such as dancing, writing, book-keeping, French, etc., without losing time in attending Masters at a distance from the college, the sub-principal and regents shall appoint proper rooms in the college, and proper hours, when these things may be taught, and shall bespeak masters of the best characters and qualifications for instructing those who chose to attend them.” As directly applicable to the later part of the sixteenth century, I may transcribe what James Melville said about similar matters in connection with his own education at St. Andrews, between 1569 and 1573. “Moreover, in these years I learned my music, in which I took great delight, of one Alexander Smith, a servant to the Principal of our college, who had been trained up among the monks in the abbey. I learned of him the gamut and plain song, and many of the trebles of the psalms.... I loved singing and playing on instruments passing well, and would have gladly spent time when the exercise thereof was within the college; for two or three of our condisciples played tolerably well on the virginals, and other instruments. Our regent also had the spinet in his chamber, and learned something, and I after him.”¹

The Town Council of Edinburgh in 1583 appointed Robert Rollock to take charge of the youth in the new institution, who had been acting as a regent of philosophy in the University of St. Andrews. In October the magistrates issued a proclamation requesting those that desired to be taught in the college to present themselves before one of the bailies, and enrol their names. A considerable number appeared, and with them Rollock began the first year of the course. Many of them, however, were too deficient in the Latin language for entering on the subjects contemplated in the college. He recommended Duncan Narne as one of the regents of philosophy, and proposed that Narne should take those that were deficient in Latin, and prepare them for a new Bajan class the next session, when those under his own charge would be in the second year of their course. This plan was followed, so during the first session of the college, which lasted from October, 1853, till the end of August, 1584, there were only two classes and two instructors. During the second session there was no more, but the two regents proceeded with their classes.

In the winter of 1586 Rollock was appointed Principal of the college; he continued, however, to teach his class to the end of the course. When the fourth session was opened, the teaching staff consisted of the Principal and two regents, each having one class. In August 1587, the first graduation took place, Principal Rollock conferred the degree of Master of Arts on the students of the fourth year, educated by himself​—the number who graduated was forty-seven. After this Rollock resigned the post of regent, and was appointed teacher or professor of divinity, an office which continued to be attached to the Principalship of the college till 1620. In 1589 a fourth regent of philosophy was appointed, and in 1597 Mr. John Ray was elected regent of humanity. The college now had six instructors​—a professor of divinity, four regents of philosophy, and a regent of humanity. At this strength the teaching staff of the institution remained for many years.¹

Rollock in his method of exposition followed Ramus, and no man knew how to make a better use of this famous philosopher’s dialectics than the first professor of the college of Edinburgh. The writings of Ramus, however, though adopted by Andrew Melville and some of the other regents in the Universities, did not supersede the authority of Aristotle, whose writings were for long the texts of the philosophical teaching imparted by the regents in Scotland. Rollock, according to all accounts, was a very successful teacher, an exceedingly industrious man, and did much to ensure the success, and to raise the character of the new institution. He was cut off in the midst of his arduous work in the forty-third year of his age, in 1598. After his death, the greatest respect was shown to his memory, his body was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of the people, lamenting him with the deepest manifestations of grief. His old pupils and literary friends composed upwards of forty Latin elegies in his praise; and the magistrates of Edinburgh did not forget to provide for his widow and daughter.¹

The salaries of the Principal and the regents of the college of Edinburgh were comparatively small, and not at all calculated to attract a man of great talents and ambition. In 1594 the four regents of philosophy had each one hundred pounds Scots, that is £8 6 shillings 8 pence sterling per annum; even in 1620 the Principal had only five hundred pounds yearly, or £41 14 shillings 4 pence sterling; in consequence of the smallness of their salaries the regents seldom remained long, and vacancies were always occurring.¹

From the opening of the college of Edinburgh to the end of the sixteenth century, the number of students who graduated in the faculty of arts was about three hundred and twenty-two; the average attendance including the four classes, probably did not exceed one hundred and fifty. The number of students attending St. Andrews in the latter half of the century was about two hundred;¹ and the number of students at the other two Universities was at least, somewhat less than the average at St. Andrews.

Before leaving this subject, it seems desirable to give some account of the kind of literature and science which was taught in the college of Edinburgh. As it was founded after the Reformation, it may be assumed so far to represent the views of the Protestants, touching learning, literature, and science; this may also enable us to understand the cast of the national mind, when we obtain a glimpse of one of the moulds which so long contributed to form it. As then conceived, the main aim of a liberal education was to acquire a knowledge of the Latin language, as without this it was impossible to read the works of Roman authors, which with the writings of the ancient Greeks, were deemed the only genuine standards of fine composition. Much of the students’ time was occupied in hearing the regents read and explain Latin authors, in translating Latin exercises themselves, and in translating Greek into Latin, and Latin into Greek. When they became adepts at this kind of work, and had learned the rules of formal logic, with the ethics of Aristotle, they were supposed to have received a liberal education.

When the students returned to their work in the month of October, they were employed in reading Latin and Greek, preparing for the ensuing session: and about the first of November, when the classes were fully assembled, the Principal in a meeting in the public hall, at nine in the morning, prescribed to the Bajan class a piece of Scotch, which being copied and read aloud, the students were separated, and under the observation of the regents who attended by turns, they translated it into Latin, then having copied their versions, and each subscribed his own one with his name, and the name of the master, who had instructed him in Latin, they delivered the versions to the attending regent before twelve o’clock. At four in the afternoon they re-assembled in the presence of the Principal and regents, and each being called by name, read his Latin version aloud under the inspection of one of the regents, and then returned the paper to be perused by the Principal and the regents; if any one of them was so deficient in Latin as to be unable to follow the instruction given in the class, they were advised to return to the study of that language. The next day, a Latin theme was prescribed to the Semi class, to be translated into Greek, and afterwards read and examined in the form above stated. A passage of some Latin and Greek author was set to the third class to be analysed, and this was disposed of in the same manner. At the opening of the session, the Semi class was engaged for several days in repeating what they had learned before; after this they were publicly examined by the regents and the professor of humanity; they were examined on Ramus’ Dialectics and the compend of Ars Syllogistica, the Greek poets and prose authors; and an account was taken of what had been taught publicly, and also of what each student had acquired by his own energy and industry. The third class was examined on philosophy and the categories, some other parts of Aristotle’s logic, and on Ramus. The Magistrand, or fourth year’s students, were examined on logic, demonstration, on a few acromatical books, and on Aristotle’s ethics.

In the month of July, near the close of the session, the fourth class gave up their names for trial in the public hall, preparatory to receiving the degree of Master of Arts. This examination was nearly similar to the preceding. The evening before the public disputation on the thesis, they met in the presence of the Principal and the regents, and subscribed the Confession of Faith. When the Principal found that they had all received certificates, and that they had performed the necessary exercises, he then took the report of the five regents touching the behaviour and ability of every one, and according to their merit enrolled their names, distinguishing them into ranks. The disputation upon the thesis commenced in the morning, and concluded in the evening about six o’clock, when the candidates were called in by name according to their ranks, and the Principal briefly exhorted them to follow a virtuous life, and then performed the ceremony of graduation in the form still practised on such occasions.¹

There was a steadily growing interest in national education, and the educational institutions were increasing. In the year 1592 a college was founded at Fraserburgh by Sir Alexander Fraser, of Philorth, the lineal ancestor of Lord Saltoun. It did not succeed, however, although its foundation was ratified by parliament, and sanctioned by the General Assembly. The change of Church government, and the disturbing influences thence arising, were against it; while the establishing of Marischal College in the new town of Aberdeen in 1693, probably interfered with the chance of success of the College of Fraserburgh. As originally endowed, Marischal College had only a rector, a dean of faculty, a Principal, three regents, and six bursars; but the number of its professors and bursars gradually increased, and it became a very useful educational institution.¹

In forming an opinion on the educational system as it existed in the latter part of the sixteenth century, it is necessary to remember the limited range of the scientific knowledge of the period. As yet the majority of learned teachers had no idea of the modern system of the universe; they knew that the earth is a globe, but they thought it was in the centre of the universe, and that all the heavenly bodies moved round it every twenty-four hours. The idea that it was the earth that moved they thought to be absurd; the earth stood still, they maintained, like the everlasting hills. From this limited view of the universe, there has sprung up a vast accumulation of childish and absurd notions: the most learned men of the age thought that the planets were moved by angels, and that the stars had a magic influence upon the affairs of men. Thus they were ready to believe in visions, in prodigies, in witchcraft, and in the power of the devil to fight pretty successfully against God and mankind. Although a more correct conception and a wider view of the universe had been expounded long before the end of the sixteenth century, yet the mind of Europe had been so long held in leading-strings that centuries were required for its emancipation.

An educational system which assumed that the ancients knew everything, could not have been expected to show much favour to any new discoveries in physical science. Hence the comparatively narrow course of education which so long prevailed in the Scottish universities. This education, however, produced logical habits of thought, which, associated with many other influences, contributed to form a strongly marked national character. The encouragement given to dogmatic instruction in religion, from the humblest of the parish schools to the divinity halls, powerfully conduced to mould that argumentative cast of mind, so characteristic of the Scottish people. This dogmatic and logical system of theology ran very much in one channel for two centuries after the Reformation, before it was at all seriously challenged among the Scots: as they were well contented with their Church and her doctrine, which maintained its ground with wonderful completeness.

The deficiencies of the system in its early stages are seen in the fact, that it was long after the Reformation ere either law or medicine, reached the maturity of a faculty in any of the Scottish universities. The languages and the literature of the Island itself were not deemed worth the attention of the higher schools, till the present century.¹ There were no chairs for history before the eighteenth century; and many other requisites, such as large libraries, were almost entirely wanting in the Scottish universities at the end of the sixteenth century. It is known that there was a collection of books in King’s College at Aberdeen in the sixteenth century, but there is no record touching the library or its management prior to 1634. There were collections of books in the University of Glasgow before the Reformation, but that event in a great measure dispersed them; yet there was a small library in the college in 1578. From that date it has gradually increased, and in the first quarter of the present century it contained upwards of 30,000 volumes. The library of the University of St. Andrews was never large. In the year 1580, Mr. Clement Little, one of the Commissaries of Edinburgh, bequeathed his library for the use of the citizens of the capital. It consisted of 268 volumes, which at that time was considered a valuable collection. They were at first placed in the lodgings of Mr. Lawson, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who was a warm promoter of the scheme for erecting a college in the city. And in 1584 the Town Council ordered Mr. Little’s donation of books to be removed to the college, and delivered to the care of Principal Rollock. This was the foundation of the library of the University of Edinburgh, which now contains over 158,000 volumes, and 700 manuscripts.

We have seen that music was cultivated and taught in the schools from a very early period,¹ and there is evidence that singing was regularly taught throughout the kingdom before the Reformation. In January, 1553, the Town Council of Edinburgh resolved to grant a license to James Lauder, the prebendary of their choir, to go to England and France, and remain for a year, and learn better music, and more aptitude for performing on musical instruments. In 1554 the Council ordered the Dean of Guild to repair the song school in the churchyard, so that the bairns may enter and attend it. The same year the magistrates engaged Alexander Stevinson to sing in the choir every festival day, at the masses of Our Lady and the Holy Blood, and ordered their treasurer to pay him twenty merks for the year. To cheer the hearts of the national legislators, four musicians were paid for playing during the sitting of Parliament in 1555; while that year the musicians who played before the image of St. Giles on his day, received forty shillings. In the year 1556, Jacques and his sons were paid for playing on All-hallow-een, and all the time of the fair twice in the day through the town.²

The Reformation, however, was not favourable to the musical art. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1579 stating that the teaching of the youth in the art of music and singing had begun to be neglected. It affirmed that the instruction of the children in music and singing had almost decayed, and must decay altogether, if a timely remedy was not provided. The provosts and councils of the burghs throughout the kingdom, and the patrons and provosts of colleges, were enjoined to repair and “to set-a-going the sang-schools,” and to appoint qualified masters to instruct the young in the science of music.¹

Although psalms were always sung, and sometimes hymns, in the Reformed Church, the organs and all instrumental music were entirely discarded from the public worship. From this and other influences the musical faculty of the people was not so much encouraged and cultivated as it might have been: in fact, in some of its forms music was directly discouraged, while dancing was frowned upon, and sometimes denounced as a sin.¹

There are numerous early editions of the metrical Psalms which were adopted by the Reformed Church of Scotland. Touching the singing of the Psalms in the sixteenth century, only the Church part, or the melody of the tune, was given on the tenor cleff C, and not, as now, on the treble cleff G, thus leaving the harmony to be supplied at discretion, according to the skill of the different congregations. The music of the Reformed Church at that time was what is called “plain song.”¹ The importance justly ascribed to singing in public worship, seems to have suggested this simple mode.

During the sixteenth century architecture made no remarkable progress in Scotland. The most notable peculiarity of the buildings of this period was the adoption of several features of the French flamboyant style, which had become mixed with other characteristics of native origin. This peculiarity was frequently exhibited in the castellated architecture of the period. The flowing tracery was retained till the Reformation, but from that date church architecture has declined. A pretty full account of the baronial and ecclesiastical architecture is presented in Billing’s work, in four volumes, published in 1845‒52; and in other works devoted to the subject.

The Regent Morton greatly embellished his palace of Dalkeith with tapestry and very fine pieces of art. Later in the century, Duncan Campbell of ♦Glenorchy employed artists to decorate his mansion at Taymouth, and others of the nobles then began to show a somewhat better taste in connection with the style, the interior decoration, and the convenient arrangement of their castles and houses; and in some castles the ceilings and roofs were ornamented with a variety of paintings, in small divisions, containing emblematic figures. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, the first Marquis of Huntly rebuilt portions, and repaired the whole of the Castle of Strathbogie; the later portions of the castle were elaborately and finely ornamented, both externally and internally, and some of the chimney-pieces were highly ornamented, one of which is preserved​—a beautiful piece of sculpture in freestone.

Wood work, especially carving in oak, had attained a high degree of perfection; but foreign artists have usually received the credit of executing the best specimens of this description of work. A very fine specimen of wood carving in oak is preserved in the chapel of King’s College, Aberdeen, which presents a grand double row of oak canopied stalls, with miserere seats and high open screen. The workmanship is clean and delicate, and the traceried panels are beautifully diversified and relieved by bold and elaborate treatment. The wood carving of the stalls in the Cathedral of Dunblane is also fine, and a few other specimens which have been preserved. The ceiling of the audience-chamber of Queen Mary in the palace of Holyrood was executed about 1558, and it is a good example of oak carving. Many admirable specimens of the wood-workers’ art, such as cabinets, chests, and other articles of household furniture, are preserved in public and in private collections.

Touching the higher forms of art, painting and sculpture were as yet, almost a blank in Scotland. The remarkable revival of art in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had little effect in this northern corner of Europe. Indeed, painting may be said to be an importation among us; for, with a few exceptions, Scotland had no painters till a recent period. It is not, however, to be supposed that the Scots made no attempts at the figurative arts; only their efforts in this department were so crude, comparatively, as to place them nearly beyond criticism. No doubt a large quantity of decorations, and frescoes, associated with the churches in Roman Catholic times, disappeared at the Reformation. In the sixteenth century painters were mentioned both before and after the Reformation, but probably few of them were artists. A considerable number of portraits were painted in Scotland in the sixteenth century. A few seem to have been painted in the reign of James V., and a greater number in the latter part of the century: and amongst those of the later time, were portraits of Esme Stewart, Duke of Lennox; the Earl of Mar, Regent of Scotland; and his brother, Sir Alexander Erskine of Gogar, by unknown artists. Arnold Bronkhorst, a Fleming, appears to have attended the court of James VI., and was employed as a painter. He received sixty-four pounds for painting three portraits, viz., “a portrait of His Majesty from the belt upward, a portrait of His Majesty full length; and another portrait of Master George Buchanan,” and moreover a gift of one hundred merks for his coming to this country. It seems that Ruthven, the unfortunate and last Earl of Gowrie, showed a taste for art. It was not any inaptitude of the mental characteristics of the Scots in relation to art, but their social and material condition, which in the sixteenth century rendered art so backward amongst them. As yet the art of the professional painter can scarcely be said to have existed.

The Reformation in Scotland was at first unfavourable to the culture of the fine arts. Calvin admitted painting and sculpture to be gifts of God, which should be used purely and lawfully; but he was disposed to limit the subjects of the artist and the sculptor. He objected to all images in churches and places of worship.¹ Thus the change in the creed of the nation had a retarding influence on the development of art in Scotland for several generations.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Ultimate Problem of the Reformation.

IT was indicated in the Introduction that we must look to the human mind itself for the origin of society and of civilisation; and in like manner, we must look to it as the prime source of religion. Although the origin of religion cannot be reached by historic research, still, from what has been ascertained by psychological analysis and the results obtained through prehistoric and scientific investigation, it appears that religion arose at a very early stage of man’s career.

Probably the very earliest impulse of religious feeling sprang from the primitive instinct of self-preservation. The sentiment evolved from this instinct and the emotions associated with it run through the lower and the higher religions of the world, in more or less developed forms. Religion in the earlier stage of society seems to have been limited to the family. Every father of a family acted as a priest, just as he acted as a labourer in the field, and a soldier in war. Thought must have preceded language, and the notion of an object mentally exists in the mind, before it can be intelligibly expressed. Thus the idea of power has to be realised, before applying it even to a natural phenomenon; and therefore men must first have conceived their gods, before they gave them names. When the gods were once conceived, descriptive names were usually applied to them, which seem gradually to have undergone modifications of form and meaning.

The elements of the human mind are connected with the great external system of natural phenomena, and the external senses of the human organism are the media through which the processes of sensation and perception operate. The prime and distinctive characteristic of mind is consciousness, that is, to be conscious of its own phenomena, both in the perception of external objects, and its own inner mental operations​—thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The nature of an act of consciousness may be indicated thus:​—I am conscious that I know, I am conscious that I feel, I am conscious that I desire; so on the one hand, consciousness is the recognition by the mind of its own acts and affections, which is the simple self-affirmation that certain mental modifications are known by me; while on the other hand, consciousness may be viewed as the primary datum of intelligence itself. Thus consciousness in its simplicity involves three points: 1, a recognising subject, an Ego or self; 2, a modification, state, affection or operation; 3, a recognition by the Ego of the modification, or operation. Every mental phenomenon may be called a fact of consciousness. Although it is usual and useful to distinguish consciousness from the special faculties of mind, for purposes of analysis and exposition, yet these special faculties are fundamentally modifications of consciousness itself. In short, philosophy is simply a systematic evolution of the contents of consciousness.

But viewed historically, the human mind in the early stages of the race was in some measure influenced by the great cosmic forces of the solar system. Such changes as day and night, summer and winter, the varying phases of the moon, and the mystery of the vast cosmic movements, had an influence on the mind of the human race for a long period. This influence, however, was only relative, and it slowly diminished with the advance of definite knowledge and experience. The influences of a terrestrial character were considered in the second section of the Introduction. Such influences viewed as bearing on man, are usually called the environment, and their effects on the history of the human mind have sometimes been grossly exaggerated. Environment has had an influence on the thoughts and feelings of men, and in some quarters of the globe it has been more felt than in others; yet, after all, the power of environment on man is only relative in its action. For it is the pre-eminent characteristic and function of man to rise above his environment by the energy of his mind, and the application of his knowledge and experience; and, in so far as the higher mental operations of his mind are concerned, he can discard the influence of external environment.

In the early stages of the race, the most striking phenomena of nature, as the sun, fire, the moon, the loud crack of thunder, the tempest, and many other objects, which caused amazement or fear in the human breast, were deified, and, for a time, worshipped. The conception of gods seems to have been primarily individual, and the conceived standards of the gods harmonised with the very limited range of ideas and knowledge then attained. But the continuance of a religion was not dependent on the character of its gods in early ages. The relation between men and their gods was then very simple, and the moral element scarcely appeared. In the Vedic hymns of India, such phrases were addressed to the gods, as: “If you give me this, I shall give you that,” or, “As you have given me this, I shall give you that.” Sometimes a strain of expostulation with the gods occurs, in which the sacred writer tells them that, “if he was as rich as they are, he would not allow his worshippers to go begging.” When sacrificial offerings began, they consisted of some kinds of food which men themselves relished, such as milk, butter, and berries, cooked in various ways; and of sacrificial animals, such as sheep, goats, oxen, and horses. The brief indications of cosmic notions in the Veda are extremely crude, for instance, the following:​—“The right and true was born from kindled heat, then the night was born and the surging sea. From the surging sea the annual sun was born, He who orders day and night, the Lord of all that sees. The Creator made sun and moon in turn, the sky, the earth, and the air, and then the heaven.”

Another source of early religion sprang out of kinship, and ♦is usually called ancestor-worship. This worship often co-existed in the same communities with other religions; yet this co-existence​—and even association with other forms of religion​—does not prove that ancestor-worship was the earliest, or the original religion; ♠as it seems to have been preceded by nature-worship. But the worship of ancestors, or the spirits of the departed, arose at a comparatively early stage of human progress, and became widely prevalent. It explicitly implied a belief in the future existence of the human soul, which gave it an elevation over many of the other early forms of religion.

Brahmanism never reached a high ethical standard, and socially it issued in the institution of caste. The pantheistic conception which finds God in all things, at a certain stage of its development when applied to social life, leads to the conclusion that whatever exists, simply because it exists, is therefore right. Hence, on this principle, as class distinctions already existed in India, Brahmanism fixed and consecrated them into the system of castes, which thenceforth settled the status and the vocation of every individual in society. The Brahmans were by origin and birth invested with sacred functions, they were hereditary priests and lords over all the other castes, and separated from them by an impassable barrier. They had the exclusive right of reading and expounding the sacred books, and of performing sacrificial rites; and any interference with their sacred functions was prohibited under the severest penalties. This order of priesthood, as determined by descent and birth alone, inevitably tended to the substitution of mere rites and ceremonies for spiritual worship; and ultimately issued in a fixed and dead level of debased ceremonialism and superstition; while its system of caste resulted in a social organisation of stereotyped inequalities, which completely stifled all hope and chance of progress; and thus morally and socially perpetuated injustice. As the Brahman by birth was nearer to God than other men, whatever his character or moral worth might be, he stood in a special relation to God such as no man of any other caste could aspire to, however great his gifts and abilities; no other man could by any possibility become his equal. On the other hand, there were amongst the people those with whom the Brahman dare not associate, or help, eat with, or visit in sickness, or even come into accidental contact with, without undergoing a ceremonial pollution which could only be atoned for by severe penalties. In short, the system of caste involved the sanction of some of the worst and most cruel wrongs which could be inflicted on human society. A reaction gradually arose in the consciousness of the people against a religion, which so grossly outraged the deepest instincts of man’s being.

About the sixth century B.C., the great religious teacher Buddha appeared in India, and entered on his remarkable career. There is no very authoritative account of his personal characteristics and life, as the writings in which such information is given were not written until long after his death. But it has been recorded that, Buddha, the Enlightened, was the son of a Rajah of the Sakyas, an Aryan tribe of central India, who in early life abandoned his position and prospects as heir to his father’s throne, and entered on a wandering life as a religious mendicant. Considering the influence which the corruption of the period​—an age of degrading superstition and of cruel social inequality and fixed injustice​—would be likely to exert on a mind of marked originality and great metaphysical power, as well as of deep moral and intense religious susceptibilities, the step which Buddha took is not difficult to understand. He seems to have been gifted with a reflective, introspective, and restless mind, for which the great problems of the moral and spiritual life have a significance transcending all external interests, and which is induced to seek the solution of these problems by an inner and irresistible aspiration. Whether the inquiry present itself as the search for truth, or as the search for the meaning and end of human life, the explanation of its inconsistencies and anomalies, or for salvation from sin, suffering, and death​—for such a mind there is no resting-place till the inner perplexities of the soul are dispelled. They cannot passively accept the existing conditions of social life, so long as these conflict with pure morals, and the higher craving and aspiration of the human soul exists. Buddha’s life was a search for truth, a struggle for spiritual rest and the moral reform of the race.

Buddha first enrolled himself under the most famous Brahmanical teachers of the time, and listened earnestly to their expositions of the questions of metaphysics and ethics. But these studies under the Brahmans failed to give him any mental peace. His moral and religious sympathies were too keen, and his interest in humanity and its suffering too intense to admit of his being satisfied with any doctrines which the Brahmans could present. He then retired with five faithful friends to a solitary spot in the jungles of Uruvela, and there followed the ascetic discipline for the space of six years. At last he became convinced that in seeking mental and spiritual peace through the ascetic channel, he was on the wrong path. Accordingly he relinquished asceticism, and betook himself simply to meditation and prayer, wandering about from place to place, still longing and aspiring after the secret of spiritual rest. It seems highly probable that it was during these wanderings that Buddha made his profound and exhaustive analysis of the human mind​—an analysis perhaps more accurate than has ever been made by any single man before or since. At length, (we are told) after a prolonged stretch of meditation, while resting under a tree, a new light seemed to break in upon his mind, his difficulties vanished, and the secret of his own spiritual freedom, and of the regeneration of the human race were within his grasp.

The new light or doctrine which Buddha found and proclaimed, was that salvation can not be obtained by external sacrifices and penances, but only through inner renunciation and self-devotion. This religion announced that human happiness, salvation, and blessedness, which is the goal of life, does not consist in external conditions, but essentially in the internal character of the mind itself. Thenceforth the life of Buddha was that of a preacher of the new doctrine. Filled with compassion for the wretchedness and ignorance of his fellow-men, and conscientiously believing that he possessed the only truth which could save them, he proceeded enthusiastically on his mission of love. The fame of the new teacher and his doctrine began to spread abroad. His intense earnestness, his self-renunciation, associated with unusual gentleness and great benignity, his stirring eloquence and wisdom, and his personal dignity, gave striking force to the doctrines which he taught, and everywhere moved men’s hearts and minds. Great crowds of people flocked to hear his teaching, and thousands of all castes soon became his adherents; the schools of the Brahmans began to be deserted, and some of the notable Brahmanical teachers joined Buddha. The bondage of caste was shaken by the power of the new doctrine of human brotherhood which Buddha preached; and a great moral Reformation bore witness to the influence of the doctrines which he taught. It is reported that he lived to the age of eighty years. He was a highly gifted man, of a very lofty nature, one of those rare and exceptional personalities, who wield a strange power over all men coming within the range of their influence, and become great moral and religious leaders of the human race.

Morality formed the prime part of Buddha’s teaching, and this was one of the chief causes of his remarkable success. The pre-existing Brahmanism might be characterised as a political and social institution​—an organised system of castes​—rather than as a religion in the usual meaning of the term. Brahmanism had driven the religious and moral instincts of the body of the people into a groove of an elaborate system of prayers, penances, purifications, authoritative precepts and prohibitions touching almost every action of daily life. But it was the special and distinctive characteristic of Buddhism, that the way in which it taught men to reach salvation, was simply through the inner purification of the mind and heart, and moral goodness. It rejected secret mysteries and ontological dogmas, which were attainable only to speculative minds; and instead of these, demanded a knowledge of morality which could be attained by clearing the soul from the darkening influence of impulse and passion. Buddha said: “The highest insight is not that which can be measured by an intellectual standard. Merely to know is of little use. What is of supreme importance, is a change of the heart and spirit.” As “anger, drunkenness, deception, and envy constitute uncleanness, and not the eating of flesh,” so “neither abstinence, nor going naked, nor shaving the head, nor a rough garment; neither offerings to the priests nor sacrifices to the gods, will cleanse a man, nor free him from the deluding influence of sensual pleasure.” The importance assigned to practical morality in the Buddhist religion, and its recognition of an appeal to the conscience and the inner spiritual sentiment of man, formed the main element of its strength, and placed it higher than any religion which had preceded it. In short, its morals founded on love, charity and virtue, are so humane, that it might perhaps be said to be the only religion that has brought no ideal element of hostility into the world.

When Buddha’s disciples met in council to form their primitive church, they did not propose to teach men a new metaphysics; their chief aim was to improve the bad customs of the people, to reform their morals, to purify their souls from all debasing passions, and to unite them in a universal sense of brotherhood and love. From this sprang the intense proselytising spirit of Buddhism, and the remarkable self-denial of its early teachers, who established centres of their religion in Tibet, in Samarcand, in Siam, in Ceylon, China, and other countries, to the reformation and the civilisation of which it largely contributed. Its conquests have been greater and more permanent than those of any other religion; and even now, two thousand and four hundred years after the birth of its founder, its adherents number upwards of two hundred millions of the human race. It appears that Buddhism easily and rapidly overcame those countries in which there was no organised priesthood or orthodox religion. A somewhat similar result occurred when Christianity arrived in the West, where it only met with a decaying and incoherent Polytheism.

In so far as Buddha’s teaching was in its essence opposed to the system of castes, Buddhism was a reaction against Brahmanism. From another point of view, it was a marked original advance, and a higher development of genuine religion. The vigour and spiritual power of Buddhism as a reforming influence, was manifested in the effect which it produced on the ancient religion itself; and in the reform which it partly succeeded in effecting in the social life of the people. For several centuries it was the dominant religion in India; although the Brahmans after a time became intensely alarmed at its success, and, at last, began to fight against it. When it is stated that the principles of Buddhism admitted and recognised a priesthood recruited from the lower castes, and from the pariahs or outcasts, the causes of the opposition and the enmity of the Brahmans against it, is easily understood. The Brahmans, as a hereditary priesthood, considered themselves a class of very superior beings, on account of their pure Aryan blood, and gloried in tracing their descent back to the early Vedic times of the invasion and conquest of India. A hereditary caste of priests, and a hereditary caste of legislators associated with political institutions, always and everywhere, have fought hard to maintain their status and special privileges. Buddhism dealt a severe blow to the system of caste, and almost effected a complete social revolution in India. But unhappily the usual and baneful consequence followed. The reform of morals and religion had to give way to state and political considerations. Hence on the revival of Brahmanism with its political institution of castes, Buddhism was driven out of India, the place of its birth, about the beginning of the sixth century, A.D. The Brahman priesthood has continued, owing to the institution of castes, which is its corner-stone.

It would be going beyond the scope and aim of this chapter to enter into the treatment of the ontology, metaphysics, or the highest conceptions of the Brahmans touching God and the universe; let it suffice to say that the highest conception of the Brahmans and of Hindu thought are fundamentally pantheistic. The highest form of this conception may be indicated thus:​—The visible universe is nothing, God is all in all​—the One Unity, the One Being; or in other words, God is the invisible substance, the only real existence​—the One eternal and self-existent essence of the universe. Such is the highest conception of Brahmanic thought. Although metaphysics form one of the three parts of the collection of Buddhist writings, usually called the “Tripitaka,” yet it would be quite unhistoric and unjust to judge of Buddhism from its metaphysical side. As I said before, it was in psychology, ethics and religion, that Buddha was original, and really great, for in these branches he left all his Aryan predecessors far behind him. Touching Nirvana, which has been made a special Buddhist problem, and has elicited much discussion, the conception of it was expounded by the Brahmans long before Buddha’s time. It cannot therefore be specially assigned to Buddha as one of his original and primary doctrines. Nirvana means extinction, and applied to man it may be taken to mean his absorption into God at death.

Let me now direct attention briefly to the religion of the people of Europe prior to the introduction of Christianity. The ancient religion of Greece was elaborately polytheistic. There was no clear idea of the one God in Greek religion, or any worthy conception of the Divine attributes. The gods of the Greeks were mostly local, and bound to a particular family, city, or district. As observed in the fifth section of the Introduction, the Greeks had only a vague and feeble notion of the immortality of the soul. Heroes might sometimes be exalted to the skies, but for the common people there was no hope beyond the grave. There was nothing in their religion to satisfy the inner craving of the human soul, while its moral side was negative, if not positively baneful. It was the Greek philosophers who gave morals and rules of life to the people, not their religion. Thus Greek philosophy from the first tended to undermine the popular religion, and any cult which cannot embrace ethical ideas and truth, is doomed to decay.

The religion of the ancient Romans was also polytheistic, and associated with a strong element of ancestor worship. Apparently the Romans had no more difficulty in changing and modifying their gods, than in making new domestic and State arrangements. They had a great multitude of gods and also goddesses, as the formula used by the officiating priest on great occasions shows:​—“Be thou god or goddess, man or woman; whoever thou art, or by whatever name it is right to call thee.” Ancestor worship held an important place among the Romans, and their funeral rites were elaborate. At Rome it was the custom, after the dead body had been washed, anointed, and clothed, to keep it seven days in the house: and on the eighth day it was carried out and burned; then the remains were collected, sprinkled with wine and milk, placed in an urn, and deposited in the family tomb. The relatives on returning home stepped over a fire, and were sprinkled with water. Then the departed was believed to be a kind of divine being, and eight days after the funeral, sacrifices were celebrated in his honour; and the offering consisted of sheep or swine, dedicated to Ceres. This was followed by a feast, during which speeches and songs were given in honour of the departed, libations were made for him and incense burned. After all the requisite rites had been performed, the soul of the departed was supposed to be at rest; as it had become one of the Manes. On the 19th of February every year, a commemorative festival was held, at which offerings were made to the Manes; and similar offerings had to be made on several other days; and again on other occasions connected with important events. The Manes were supposed to remain in the lower world; but the departed were also called gods. Cicero said “that the days kept sacred for the dead, would not, like the days kept sacred for the gods, have been called solemn holydays, had not our ancestors wished that the departed should be considered as gods.” From this it was an easy step to the deification of the Emperors.

The College of Pontiffs was instituted at an early period, and originally consisted of four persons of the patrician class, who continued members for life, and had the right of electing to all vacancies. In 300 B.C., four plebeians were added; and in 81 B.C. the number was increased to fifteen. At first the Supreme Pontiff of the College was elected by and from its own members, and subsequently by the voice of the people. He was perpetual president of the College, and invested with supreme power over the religion, worship, and the priesthood of the State. In all matters relating to religious rites, sacrifice and worship, sacred days and festivals, and the admission of foreign gods with their cultus, the ceremonies at birth, marriage, and funeral, and the conduct of the priesthood, their power was supreme. All official documents touching religion were in their custody; and of all the laws written and unwritten relating to it, they were the interpreters and guardians; they had also the sole powers of legislation in such matters. Dressed in purple-bordered robes and conical woollen caps, they attended all the great public ceremonies, and presided and read prayers at the opening of the Comitia, and other important assemblies. The great Cæsar was made Supreme Pontiff as well as Dictator; and all the Emperors to Theodosius assumed the same office. Cæsar in his lifetime was honoured as a god, and after his death, he was by the Senate formally enrolled amongst the deities. The Emperors were also deified; the Romans talked of their majesty and eternity; sacrifices were offered to them, and the sacred fire was carried before them. The worship of the Emperors, in short, constituted the religion of a corrupted and declining Empire.

The religion of the Teutonic nations​—the Germans and the Scandinavians​—was a rude and vigorous polytheism. Their chief gods were Odin and Thor, and their great goddess was Friga, one of Odin’s wives, though they had many minor gods, and elves and dwarfs were also numerous in their world. Odin, as the father of the gods, was called Allfather, and also Valfather, because he takes as his sons the heroes who fall in battle. He was represented as a very tall, one-eyed old man, with a long beard and flowing hair, and a rather broad brimmed hat, which was supposed to represent the vault of heaven, and a spear in his hand to signify his great conquering power. All the other gods were emanations from him, or renovations of him. He was the “father of time, the lord of gods and men, the god of heaven, the king of the year, and the god of war and giver of victory.” The other gods were generated through Odin’s relations to external objects. Thor was the son of Odin by his wife Jord, the uninhabited earth, and he was a great and physically powerful personage. He was the god of thunder, and ruled over clouds and rain. His home was in the region of cloudy gloom, and his great shining palace contained five hundred and forty floors, from which he sent forth lightnings. His grand chariot was drawn by two goats, whose hoofs and teeth flashed forth fire. He was girded with a wonderful belt which doubled his strength, and in his hand he carried his terrible hammer, which he hurled at his foes, and which, after dealing the fatal blow, returned to him. His great enemies were the frost and mountain giants, with whom he was constantly at war. He was represented as a powerful young man with a red beard, and when it thundered in some places, the people used to say that “Thor is blowing through his beard.” The worshippers of Odin and Thor were rude and ruthless, yet they were free, brave, vigorous, and enterprising. Their cult was extremely crude, and their stage of civilisation was still comparatively low.

Looking at the peoples of Europe from the moral and social stand-point at the period immediately preceding the general introduction of Christianity amongst them, it appears that they were in a very bad condition. In those parts of Europe which had been overrun and conquered by the Romans, the spirit of the inhabitants was broken and greatly enfeebled by complete subjection to a military power, which had obtained the empire by force and upheld it by the same means; while the Romans themselves had become corrupted by power, and their Empire was disorganised, and exhausted at its centre. When the day of retribution came, the Empire, raised by so many hands, by so much bloodshed, cruelty and oppression, was attacked in the north and in the south, in the west and in the east, and compelled to contract its lines till its power and existence ceased.

It has been ascertained that humane sentiment, a respect for justice, honesty, and an elevating and humanising morality, have been only very slowly developed, even amongst the most advanced branches of mankind. How is this? What were the causes and influences which retarded moral developments? Such questions are not easily answered, and can be only briefly touched on, in relation to the problem under consideration. For a long period mankind was so much engaged in war that the higher sentiments could not be developed, save in a very imperfect and limited degree. At later periods, when conquering races appeared, the rude and cruel natural propensities and passions were stimulated, fed, and developed to an extent which often engendered in the conquering race or nation an utter disregard for human life and human suffering. The conquering race or nation became intoxicated by power, and elated by the feelings and pride always associated with power, easily imagined that they were a superior class of people, and had a right to subject and enslave as many of the human race as they possibly could. Time rolled on and human intellect developed, and mankind multiplied; but the military passion and the inhuman propensities associated with it still reigned in the world.

In the short intervals of peace, which occurred here and there, moral feeling and humane sentiment had not time to develop, except on a very narrow and limited scale. For ages, the moral development of the race was retarded by the interest of power, empire, caste, and the supposed requisites of political institutions. Religion too was usually subordinated to State and political considerations, and this often vitiated its moral influence. Although Buddhism had effected a social revolution in India, the ruling power, for considerations connected with the immoral and degrading system of caste, expelled this great religion from India.

Viewed as a conception of an invisible Being, religion is distinct from morality. Yet it is only when religion exercises an influence on the moral character and life of man that it attains significance and real importance. If the god or object of worship be not conceived as benevolent, perfect, pure, and just, the religion to which it belongs can be neither elevating nor purifying. It is quite true that the attributes of God cannot be adequately conceived by finite minds; still, if in the Divine attributes there is no moral characteristic, the great difficulty of the relation between God and man becomes insurmountable. Christianity removed this difficulty.

Christianity in the person and life of Jesus, its founder, manifested the complete relation between God and man, the union of the Divine and human. This Christian communion with God should embrace the whole receptive life of man, filling him with the peace and love and joy of God, and pervade his whole active life.

When Christianity was introduced into Europe, it had no difficulty in overcoming the decaying and disjointed polytheisms which then existed. Yet the Gospel of Jesus, as may be easily imagined, was too elevated to be received in all its purity; and the result was that some of the old notions were retained and transferred to it, for instance, ancestor worship was continued under the form of the worship of the Saints. In fact, at an early stage of the history of Christianity in the West, Rome became its chief centre, and the Popes of Rome with their immediate associates elaborated a great system of religious polity, framed partly on the principles of the Roman empire; but partly also on the principle of caste. Thus what is called Roman Catholicism is essentially a political, and not a religious institution. It is well known that the Popes claimed and exercised unlimited temporal power. The royal power of Kings was subordinated to the head of the Church; the authority of the Church assumed the right to dominate over civil law and every institution. The Pope suspended Kings by excommunication, and exercised despotic political power. Centuries passed, and the organisations of the Roman hierarchy multiplied and developed to an enormous extent in every country of Europe; while, as stated in the first section of this volume, the Gospel of Jesus was obscured and almost superseded by a vast number of legends, relics, traditions and ceremonies, which for a considerable length of time seems to have been pretty much in harmony with the ancient cultus of the people of Europe. Throughout the centuries of comparative darkness, however, there was a slow but continuous moral and intellectual progress, which, owing to various agencies and influences, at last assumed the form of a reaction, and issued in the Reformation.

It was already stated, that the diffusion of the Bible amongst the people of Europe in the vernacular language was one of the deepest and most powerful causes of the Reformation. Both Catholics and Protestants believed in the supernatural origin of the Scriptures. The latter especially maintained that the Bible contained a special revelation from God to man, and therefore to the Reformers the Word of God was the real and absolute authority in religion. The influence of this belief was great, and in conjunction with other influences contributed much to awaken the religious consciousness, and to intensify the feelings and emotions. Moreover, the Gospel​—the Christian revelation as contained in the New Testament​—presented in a simple and intelligible form, the precepts, the doctrines, and the promises of immortality, which satisfied the inmost craving of the soul, gave to faith and hope a clearer vision, and in relation with the will and active efforts, contributed much to sustain and cheer man in the daily struggle of life, and in the most trying and perplexing difficulties. As life’s sojourn approached its termination, and the years came when men are accustomed to say there is no pleasure in them, they experienced the Saviour to be as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. At last, when the Christian’s feet began to stumble upon the dark mountains of eternity, and one by one external objects began to vanish away, the faith in immortality became as an anchor of hope to the still conscious soul.

This faith in a future life has had a great and beneficial influence in stimulating and sustaining human effort. A belief in the immortality of the soul is not in the least inconsistent with the highest knowledge and the most accurate results as yet reached by science. While the universe still remains far above and beyond our finite power of comprehension, a belief in the immortality of the soul appears to be requisite, as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God’s work. It seems to me, that only on such a view can the reasonableness of the universe maintain its ground.

Volition, feeling, emotion, and sentiment, have usually entered more into the heart of religion than cognition or formal thought. Religion in the highest reach of its ideal always involves something which cannot be known as a fact, or demonstrated as a scientific truth; in other words, there is a region of belief, and beyond it, a region of faith and hope. As some men manifest this emotional and volitional side of the mind more than others, or even the same man at different times under changed circumstances and influences may manifest it in higher or lower degrees; in like manner there have been periods in the history of the race, and in the history of nations, when this psychological phenomenon became unusually prominent, and culminated in social revolutions. Now, the Reformation era was of this character, as it was characterised by an awakening of the religious consciousness, which was manifested by an intense and prolonged excitement of the emotional and the volitional sides of the mind.

I. The evidence supplied by the history of Scotland touching the progress of social organisation and religion in relation to the Reformation, may be briefly summarised. In the first volume it was shown that the earliest inhabitants of the country were a people of short stature, living under the tribal organisation; and that their religion probably contained an element of animal worship, which was connected with a form of ancestor worship. Subsequently the Celts arrived and became the dominant people. The religion of the Celts was polytheistic, with a strong element of ancestor worship in it; and a vivid belief in the future existence of the soul. Christianity was introduced into Scotland under the monastic form; and the early saints who converted the people were venerated down to the eve of the Reformation. In the twelfth century the Church of Scotland was brought into conformity with the prevailing form of Christendom​—Roman Catholicism. The national clergy, however, on many occasions gave evidence that their patriotism had risen above their allegiance to the Pope; and this was specially manifested in the great struggle for national Independence, as the bishops and the clergy gave effective aid to Wallace and Bruce, and to other national leaders.¹

It was shown that historic conditions had arisen after the arrival of the Celts, and that the nation was gradually developed out of a number of tribes. It was indicated how the social and moral characteristics of the nation had been developed, and the influences which Christianity had contributed to it were pointed out. At a certain stage of civilisation the customary law of the country appeared to be passing into crude written laws, which in turn were modified and improved by the current flow of influences and events, and the increasing command of appliances; and it was noted that the conception of public justice was gradually formed, and at last distinguished from the primitive feeling of revenge. The growing complexity of the internal organisation of the nation, as shown in the rise and the incorporation of the towns, and also in the incorporation of the various classes of craftsmen in these small centres of industry, was elucidated. Ample details were presented touching the religious ideas, feelings, and sentiments of the people from the prehistoric ages to the end of the fifteenth century.

II. In this volume, the first section of the thirteenth chapter presented a brief outline of the general causes of the Reformation, and of the state of Roman Catholicism and its chief characteristics; while in the second section of the same chapter, and in the fourteenth chapter, and the first part of the twenty-first chapter, evidence of the awakening of the moral and religious consciousness was given, which was soon perceived by the Roman Catholic clergy, who exerted themselves to the utmost to extinguish it. Many of the heretics proved the sincerity of their conviction and the strength of their faith by suffering at the stake. Thus the religious feeling and aspiration was constant in its action and persistent in its manifestation, even in the face of the most appalling suffering and of death itself. On the other hand, it was pointed out that the political causes of the Reformation could not have originated, or produced, or sustained it; because when the selfish aims which stimulated these political causes were gained, then such causes fluctuated, and soon ceased to operate; nay, these political powers, as soon as their special ends were attained, frequently turned round and fought against the genuine outcome of this great religious and moral revolution of the sixteenth century.

III. In this chapter on psychological and historic ground, I have made a brief, and consequently a very incomplete effort, to indicate the probable origin of religion. It appears that religion at first was limited to the family, and to small communities, so that great orthodoxies, such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism, are comparatively late developments. Fully developed ♦Brahmanism was more of a political institution than a religion, while Buddhism was a real and vigorous religious reaction against the frigid and rigid orthodox Brahmanism and its system of castes. After Buddhism had effected a social and moral revolution in India, mainly through the purity of its moral doctrines and the humane ideas which it inculcated, the ruling power, for political considerations connected with the degrading system of castes, deemed it necessary to expel Buddhism from India. Thus Brahmanism was revived and continued in India, because it was a political institution under the semblance of a religion, but utterly without the spirit and the characteristics of a real religion. In like manner, the Reformation was a reaction against the hierarchy and orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism; and, in so far as Catholicism was a political institution, it then suffered an irreparable shock.

It was remarked on a preceding page that the moral development of the race has been greatly retarded by the absorbing interest always associated with political power, empire, caste, and the supposed necessities of State institutions. Thus the highest ideal of Christianity and its most elevating doctrines have often been perverted, and used for the accomplishment of the most pernicious ends; yet this will yield no ground for an argument against Christianity. On the contrary, it only shows how corrupting the love of power and its exercise by an individual, a class, a nation, or an empire, always is, when not limited and restrained by a sense of justice and feelings of humanity.

IV. In Scotland there were indications of widening sympathy and humane feeling in the earnest appeals of the Reformed preachers on behalf of the oppressed tenants and labourers of the land, and in the efforts to mitigate the suffering of the poor and helpless. The reformed clergy made the utmost efforts to procure the cessation of all manual labour on Sunday, and to devote that day to the moral and religious instruction of the people, and to the worship of God. The ministers in the daily exercise of their functions, and in their Sessions, and in other Church Courts, unceasingly struggled to reform the habits and to improve the morals of the people; they endeavoured to check all disorder and excess; to place the important institution of marriage on a proper footing, and manifested an earnest intention to protect the lives of infants. They fearlessly exposed the immorality of the Court, and of those in authority, and fought manfully against vice and crime in all its forms. When they were harassed by the Government and deserted by the nobles, they still continued steadfastly to contend for what they believed to be the truth. Finally, they made great and successful efforts to introduce and to extend the means of education to the humblest classes of the people in the Kingdom. Thus various influences were brought to bear upon the people which ultimately effected a marked improvement in their moral habits and character. The tentative deduction enunciated at the close of the eighteenth chapter may be re-stated:​—“The prime sustaining causes of the Reformation throughout were the moral sentiments and ideas, associated with the religious aspiration and the belief in the Divine revelation of the Bible.” This deduction seems to be well founded, inasmuch, that, so far as has been ascertained, the social instincts of the race originated society; and that slowly in the roll of ages, the primitive social instincts developed into moral sentiments, humane feeling, and finally, the moral sense or conscience​—from which in association with cognition and the special faculties of knowledge​—all conceptions of Justice, of Law, of Truth, and of God, have been gradually developed. The social feelings were the original foundation of society, and the ethnic conceptions and ideals evolved from them in association with the cognitive faculties of the mind, ultimately gave forms to law and justice, and to all organisations and institutions. Thus the social feelings and the moral sentiments have always been an essential factor in the progress and civilisation of the human race. In so far as religion has tended to elevate the ethnic standard and ideal, it has contributed to the culture of the race. While viewed in its divine and spiritual characteristics, it has satisfied the inner craving and the highest aspiration of the soul, and thus Christianity has been an important factor in civilisation.

V. But the Reformation ultimately produced intellectual results not less remarkable than the moral and religious ones; as it was then that a real zeal for education was instilled into the Scottish mind, which ever since has been developing. The general intelligence of the people of Scotland, the scientific and literary eminence which many Scotsmen have attained, is partly traceable to the revolutionary movement of the sixteenth century.

Another important result of the Reformation was to weaken the claims and the chains of authority, and thus to give a new impetus to those habits of mind so necessary in all branches of scientific inquiry. Men began with greater freedom and boldness to interrogate nature; the human mind awoke from a long sleep, and with refreshed strength and glowing energy entered on the course of modern scientific progress. Improvements in the methods of investigation were made, and original discoveries and inventions soon followed; conquest after conquest succeeded each other in regular sequence, the varied and beneficial results of which we see around us at the present day. After a relatively advanced stage of scientific knowledge is reached, intellectual ideas begin to influence religious beliefs and doctrines, and in some directions moral conceptions. The diffusion of knowledge tends to purify religion; the conception of the Supreme Being gradually becomes more elevated; the horizon of the moral vision is widened; and more effective methods are devised and applied for the moral culture of the race.