Royal Edinburgh Part 7

One of the first indications that the dreadful round of misfortune was about to begin was the sudden denunciation of James Hamilton, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Arran, as a conspirator against the King, an event which Pitscottie narrates as happening in the year 1541. He had been a favourite of the King in his youth, and a great champion against the Douglas faction, and it was indeed his intemperate and imprudent rage which determined the fight called Clear the Causeway, and wrought much harm to his own party. He had been high in favour for a time, probably on the ground of his enmity to the house of Angus, then had fallen into discredit, but had lately been employed in certain public offices, and if we may trust Pitscottie, had been put into some such position by the priests as that which Saul of Tarsus held in the service of the persecuting ecclesiastics of Jerusalem. At all events his sudden accusation as plotting against the King's life, and especially as doing so in the interests of the Douglases, was evidently as startling and extraordinary to the great officials to whom the communication was made as it would be to the reader who has heard of this personage only as the infuriated opponent of Angus and his party. No credence seems to have been given to the story at first, though it was told by another Hamilton, a cousin of the culprit. As this happened, however, in the King's absence from Edinburgh, the lords thought it a wise precaution to secure Sir James, and, according to Pitscottie, proceeded in their own dignified persons--the Lord Treasurer, Secretary, and "Mr. Household,"

preceded by Lyon King-of-Arms--to his lodging in Edinburgh, whence they conveyed him to the castle. Such arrestations would probably cause but little excitement, only a momentary rush and gazing of the crowd as the group with its little band of attendants and defenders pa.s.sed upward along the High Street, the herald's tabard alone betraying its character. Sir James Hamilton, however, was very well known and little loved, and small would be the sympathy in the looks of the citizens, and many the stern nods and whispers of satisfaction that vengeance had seized him at length. The King, like his representatives, was astonished by the accusation, but when he heard of the terrible "dittay" which had been brought against Hamilton "he came suddenly out of Falkland, where His Grace was for the time, and brought the said Sir James out of the castle to the Tolbooth, and gave him fair a.s.size of the lords and barons, who convicted him of sundry points of treason; and thereafter he was headed and quartered, and his lands annexed to the Crown."

It is a curious question, which however none of the historians think of asking, whether there could be any connection between the scheme, if any, for which the Lady Glamis suffered, and this wholly unexpected outbreak of murderous intention on the part of Hamilton. The Hamiltons and Douglases were sworn enemies, yet greater wonders have been seen than the union of two feudal foes to compa.s.s the destruction of the enemy of both. Angus and his brothers banished, but little forgetful of all that had happened, and trusting in the favour of King Henry, were soon to show themselves at the head of expeditions hostile to Scotland across the Border. Were these two sudden disclosures of unexpected treachery the manifestations of a deep-laid plot which might have further developments--if with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Arran also perhaps in still more unlikely quarters? It is but a conjecture, yet it is one that might seem justified by two isolated events so extraordinary, and by the state of discouragement and misery into which James seems soon to have fallen.

Pitscottie relates that the King "took ane great suspition of his n.o.bles, thinking that either one or other of them would deceive him;"

and then there began to appear to him "visions in his bed." He thought he saw Sir James Hamilton, fierce and vengeful, appearing to him in the darkness with a drawn sword, with which he cut off the King's right arm.

Next time the cruel spectre appeared it upbraided him with an unjust sentence and struck off the other arm: "Now therefore thou sall want both thy armes, and sall remain in sorrow ane while, and then I will come and stryk thy head from thee," said the angry ghost. Whatever may be the reader's opinion about the reality of these visions, there can be little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of the same."

"On the morning word came to the King that the prince was very sick and like to die. When the King heard thereof he hasted to Sanct Andros, but, or he could come there the prince was depairted, whereat the King was verrie sad and dolorous. Notwithstanding immediately thereafter the post came out of Stirling to the King showing him that his second son, the Duke of Albany, could not live; and or the King could be in Stirling he was depairted. Whose departures were both within fortie-eight hours, which caused great lamentations to be in Scotland and in especial by the Queen, their mother. But the Queen comforted the King, saying they were young enough, and G.o.d would send them more succession."

There is no suggestion, such as might have been natural enough at that age, of poison or foul play in the death of the two infants--nothing but misfortune and fatality and the dark shadows closing over a life hitherto so bright. James was the last of his name: the childless Albany in France, whom Scotland did not love, was the only man surviving of his kindred, and it is not wonderful if the King's heart failed him in such a catastrophe, or if he thought himself doomed of heaven. When this great domestic affliction came to him he was on the eve of a breach with England, brought about not only by the usual mutual aggravations upon the Border, but by other matters of graver importance. King Henry had made many efforts to draw the Scottish King to his side. He had discoursed to him himself by letter, he had sent him not only amba.s.sadors but preachers, he had done everything that could be done to detach the young monarch from the band of sovereigns who were against England, and the allegiance of the Pope. Latterly the correspondence had become very eager and pa.s.sionate on Henry's side. He had repeatedly invited his nephew to visit him, and many negotiations had pa.s.sed between them on the subject. The project was so far advanced that Henry came to York to meet James, and waited there for nearly a week for his arrival. But there was great reluctance on the Scottish side to risk their King so far on the other side of the Border. They had suggested Newcastle as a more safe place of meeting, but this had been rejected on the part of the English king. Finally, Henry left York in great resentment, which was aggravated by a defeat upon the Border. Pitscottie tells us that he sent a herald to James declaring that he considered the truce between them broken; that "he should take such order with him as he took with his father before him; for he had yet that same wand to ding him with that dang his father; that is to say, the Duke of Norfolk living that strak the field of Flodden, who slew his father with many of the n.o.bles of Scotland." The King of Scotland thought, the chronicler adds, that these were "uncouth and sharp words"--an opinion in which the reader will agree. But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it is very evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would lead any man by the nose who gave them credence. The negotiations altogether were carried on from the English side in a very arrogant manner as comported with Henry's character, made all the more overbearing towards James by their relations.h.i.+p, which gave him a certain natural t.i.tle to bully his sister's son.

And everything in Scotland was now tending to the miseries of a divided council and a nation rent asunder by internal differences. The new opinions were making further progress day by day, the priests becoming more fierce in their attempts to crush by violence the force of the Reformation--attempts which in their very cruelty and ferocity betrayed a certain growing despair. When Norfolk came to Scotland from Henry--an ill-omened messenger if what is said above of Henry's threat was true--the Scottish gentlemen sought him secretly with confessions of their altered faith; and the amba.s.sador made the startling report to Henry that James's own mind was in so wavering and uncertain a state that if the priests did not drive him into war during the current summer he would confiscate the possessions of the Church before the year was out. But Norfolk's mission, which was in itself a threat, and the presence of the Douglases over the Border, who had never ceased to be upheld by Henry, and whose secret machinations, of which Lady Glamis and James Hamilton had been victims, were now about to culminate in open mischief, all contributed to exasperate the mind of James. That he was not supported as his father had been by the n.o.bility, who alone had the power of giving effect to his call for a general armament, is evident from the first. His priestly counsellors could support him by the imposts which he made freely upon the revenues of the Church, not always without complaint on their part; but they were of comparatively little influence in bringing together the hosts who had to do the fighting; and from the first the n.o.bility,--half of which or more was leavened with Reformation doctrines and felt that their best support was in England--while the whole, almost without exception, resented the prominence of the Church in the national councils, hating and scorning her interference in secular and especially in warlike matters, as is the case in every age,--showed itself hostile. After various incursions on the part of England, made with much bravado and considerable damage, one of which was headed by Angus and his brother George Douglas (this latter, however, being promptly punished and defeated on the spot by the brave Borderers), James made the usual call for a general a.s.sembly of forces on the Boroughmuir: but he had advanced only a little way on his march to the Borders when he was stopped by the declaration of the lords that they would only act on the defensive, and would on no account go out of Scotland. The fathers of these same lords had followed James IV, though with the strongest disapproval, to the fatal field of Flodden, their loyalty triumphing over their judgment: but the sons on either side had no such bond between them. James disbanded in disgust the reluctant host, which considered less the honour of Scotland than their own safety; but got together afterwards a smaller army under the leaders.h.i.+p of Lord Maxwell, with which to try over again the old issue.

Pitscottie's account of the discussions and dissensions, and of all the scorns which subdued James's spirit, is very graphic. Norfolk had led a great body of men into Scotland, who though not advancing very far had done great harm burning and ravaging; but, checked by a smaller force, which held him back without giving battle, had finally retired across the Border, where James was very anxious to have followed him.

"The King's mind was very ardent on battel on English ground, which when the lords perceived they pa.s.sed again to the council, and concluded that they would not follow the Duke of Norfolk at that time for the King's pleasure, because they said that it was not grounded upon no good cause or reasone, and that he was ane better priests' king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests' counsel nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof they perceived great inconvenients to befall. When they had thus concluded, and the King being advertised thereof, the King departed with his familiar servants to Edinburgh; but the army and council remained still at Lauder."

It was a fatal spot for such a controversy, the spot where, two generations before, the favourite friends and counsellors of James III, whether guilty or not guilty--who can say?--were hanged over the bridge as an example to all common men who should pretend to serve a king whose peers and the n.o.bles of his realm were shut out from the first of his favour. James V had in his train some familiar servants, confidants of his many public undertakings, who were not of n.o.ble blood or, at least, of distinguished rank, and his angry withdrawal might well be explained by his determination to save them, if indeed any explanations beyond his vexed and miserable sense of humiliation and desertion were necessary to account for it. He left the lords, whom he would seem to have had no longer either the means or the heart to confront, saying in his rage and shame that he would "either make them fight or flee, or else Scotland should not keep him and them both," and returned to Edinburgh sick at heart to his Queen, who was not in very good health to cheer him--pa.s.sing, no doubt, with a deepened sense of humiliation through the crowds which would throng about for news, and to whom the spectacle of their King thus returning discomfited was no pleasant sight; if it were not, perhaps, that many among them had now begun to think all failures and disappointments were so many proofs of the displeasure of heaven against one who would not take upon him the office of reformer.

When James heard soon after that his rebellious lords had disbanded their host, he collected a smaller army to revenge the ravages of Norfolk, issuing, according to Pitscottie, a proclamation bidding all who loved him be ready within twenty-four hours "to follow the King wherever he pleased to pa.s.s"; but even this new levy was little subordinate. After it had penetrated a little way into England a fatal mistake arose--an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its general--upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four, whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen Englishmen"; a very great number, however, were taken prisoners, many of the gentlemen, it is suggested, preferring captivity to the encounter of the King after such an inexcusable catastrophe. We are not told why it was that James had not himself taken the command of his army. He does not even seem to have accompanied it, perhaps fearing that personal opposition which was an insult to a king in those days.

"When these news came to the King of Scotland where he was for the time, how his lords were taken and had in England, and his army defaitt, he grew wondrous dollorous and pensive, seeing no good success to chance him over his enemies. Then he began to remord his conscience, and thought his misgovernance towards G.o.d had the wyte therof and was the princ.i.p.al cause of his misfortune; calling to mind how he had broken his promise to his uncle the King of England, and had lost the hearts of his n.o.bles throw evil counsel and false flattery of his bishops, and those private counsellors and his courtiers, not regarding his wyse lords' counsels."

"He pa.s.sed to Edinburgh," adds the chronicler, "and there remained eight days with great dollour and lamentation for the tinsell (loss) of his lieges and shame to himself." Discouragement beyond the reach of mortal help or hope seemed to have taken hold of the unfortunate King. He saw himself alone, no one standing by him, his n.o.bles hostile, his people indifferent; he had vowed that Scotland should not be broad enough to hold both them and him, but he had no power to carry out this angry threat. His life had been threatened in mysterious ways; he had lost his children, his confidence in himself and his fortunes; last and worst of all, he was dishonoured in the eyes of the world. His army had refused to advance, his soldiers to fight. He was the King, but able to give effect to none of a king's wishes--neither to punish his enemies nor to carry out his promises. He who had done so much for his realm could do no more. He who had ridden the Border further and swifter than any man-at-arms to carry the terror of justice and the sway of law--who had daunted the dauntless Highlands and held the fiercest chiefs in check--who had been courted by pope and emperor, and admired and feasted at the splendid Courts of France--he who had been the King of the Commons, the idol of the people--was now cast down and miserable, the most shamed and helpless of kings.

There seems no reason why James should have so entirely lost heart.

There had already been moments in his life when he had suffered sore discouragement and overthrow, yet never had been overcome. But now it is clear he felt himself at the end of his resources. How could he ever hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his own kingdom from invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital--perhaps to save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his despair--and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so a.s.sociated with stirring pa.s.sages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown, another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.

"By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane la.s.s, and it will pa.s.s with ane la.s.s,' and so commended himself to Almighty G.o.d, and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords and his face to the wall."

Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency, that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his last weakness, a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his death-bed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FALKLAND PALACE]

"As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and thereafter held up his hands to G.o.d and yielded the spirit."

There are many pathetic death scenes in history, but few more touching.

His father, after a splendid and prosperous life, had fallen "in the lost battle, borne down by the flying;" he, after a career almost as chivalrous and splendid and full of n.o.ble work for his country, in a still more forlorn overthrow; his hopes all gone from him, his strength broken in his youth. Nothing, it would seem, could save these princes, so n.o.ble and so unfortunate. It was enough to bear the name of James Stewart to be weighed down by cruel Fate. But before his spirit shook off the mortal coil a ray of peace had shot through the clouds; he looked upon the anxious faces of his friends, some of whom at least must surely have been true friends, bound to him by comrades.h.i.+p and brotherhood, with that low laugh which is one of the most touching expressions of weakened and failing humanity--love and kindness in it, and a certain pleasure to see them round him; and yet to be free of it all--the heavy kings.h.i.+p, the hopes that ever failed, the friends that so rarely were true. The lips that touched that cold hand which he kissed before he gave to them must have trembled, perhaps with compunction, let us hope with some vow of fidelity to his memory and trust.

Thus died the last of the five Jameses--the last in one sense of that unfortunate but gallant line. A life more swept by storms, more rent asunder by conflicting pa.s.sions and influences, more tragic still and pa.s.sionate than theirs, was to part them from the singularly changed, modified, and modernised successors who, with a difference, were to wear yet drop this ancient crown. The Stewarts after Mary are no longer like those that went before. James's dying words came in some curious fas.h.i.+on true, though not as he thought. It came with a la.s.s and it went with a la.s.s that ancient crown. When another James reached the throne Scotland was no more as it had been.

It may seem a fantastic chronology to end here the records of the Stewards of Scotland: but it is I think justified by this change, which altered altogether the character of the history and the circ.u.mstances of the monarchs. Henceforward new agencies, new powers, were at work in the little proud and self-contained kingdom, which had maintained its independence and individuality so long. Torn asunder by rival influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little s.h.i.+p of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider seas.

The Stewards of Scotland here ended their special trust and gave in their account. No race was ever more unfortunate, but I think we may say that none more n.o.bly endeavoured to discharge that high commission. With one exception, and that doubtful--for a man may be weak and may not be brave without being a bad man or even king--every bearer of this fated name laboured with courage and constancy at the great work of elevating his country. "Another for Hector!" cried the Highland warrior when his young chief was in danger, and all the world has read the story with moistened eyes. Another for Scotland! had been the cry of the house of Stewart throughout more than a century. As one man fell he handed the sword to another; to an infant hand trained amid feuds and anarchy, but always clasping, as soon as it had force enough, the royal weapon with royal courage and meaning. None of the Jameses lived beyond the earliest chapter of middle age; all of them succeeded in early youth, most of them in childhood; and, with but that uncertain exception of James III, every one of them was actuated by a n.o.ble patriotism, and did his _devoir_ manfully for the improvement and development of his country.

They were n.o.ble gentlemen one and all: the bigotry, the egotism, the obstinacy of the later Stewarts were not in them. Knights and paladins of an age of romance, they were also stern executors of justice, bold innovators, with eyes ever open to every expedient of progress and prosperity. Their faults were those faults of a light heart and genial temperament, which are the most easily understood and pardoned. Under their sway their country and their little capital came to be known over Christendom as not unworthy to hold place among the reigning kingdoms and cities through which the stream of chivalry flowed. They invented the trade, the s.h.i.+pping, the laws and civic order of Scotland. Among her heroes there are none more worthy of everlasting remembrance. They fulfilled their stewardry with a unity of purpose and a steadfastness of aim which, when we take into account the continually recurring lapses of long minorities, is one of the wonders of the time. Edinburgh grew under their sway from an angry village, lying between a fierce castle and a rich monastery, little distinguished above its peers, less favoured than Stirling, less wealthy than the town of St. John, to one of the most noted of cities, picturesque and splendid, full of n.o.ble houses, the centre of national life and government. And it is curious to record that no one of the monarchs who brought it such n.o.bility and fame left any sadness of death to the a.s.sociations of Edinburgh. They lived and were wedded and filled with the brightness of their happier moments the town which afforded so beautiful a scene for all rejoicings: they died on the field of battle or in other places in conflict or violence or despair.

But Edinburgh only retains the brighter memories, the triumphal processions, the bridal finery, the jousts and the feasts, the Parliaments and proclamations of laws and high alliances. The reigns of the Jameses contain the history of her rise, her splendour, her climax of beauty and stateliness, without any a.s.sociation of downfall or decay.

PART III

THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS

CHAPTER I

UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT

There is perhaps among the many historical personages attached by close a.s.sociation to Edinburgh no one so living, so vigorous, so present, as the great figure of the Reformer and Prophet, who once filled the air with echoes of his vehement and impa.s.sioned oratory, who led both Lords and Commons, and mated with princes on more than equal terms, the headstrong, powerful, pa.s.sionate Preacher, who was at once the leading spirit of his time and its most vigorous chronicler. To fill the circle of a.s.sociation, he alone, of all the animated groups who withstood or who followed him, has left us not only a number of books which disclose his mind with all its powers and imperfections, but the very dwelling in which he pa.s.sed at least the latter part of his life, intact and authentic, a memorial more striking and attractive than any "storied urn or animated bust." Nor are even the a.s.sociations of burial wanting; for though it is no longer within the solemn enclosure of a churchyard, and there is no certainty that the stone which is supposed to mark the position of the Reformer's grave is historically exact, it is yet sure enough that near by, within reach of the doors of his ancient church, beneath the pavement trodden by so many feet, his remains repose in the centre of the life of the Scottish capital, a position more appropriate than any other that could be imagined. Thus by life and by death this singular and most evident and unmistakable man, still alive in every lineament, is connected with the city in which his life was pa.s.sed, and in the history of which he can never be forgotten. There may be doubts about other localities, and it may be difficult to identify the houses which have been inhabited and the floors that have been trod by other distinguished personages. Crowding footsteps of the poor have obliterated the record in many a n.o.ble house abandoned by history; even the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force of an indestructible individuality--in the existing life of the country which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he lived, the stone under which he lies.

To estimate the share he had in the foundations of that modern Scotland which has so increased and thriven since his day, is perhaps more hard now than it was even eighty years ago, when his biography was written by Dr. M'Crie to the great interest and enthusiasm of the country. The laws of historical judgment are subject to perpetual change, and the general estimate of the great personages of the past has undergone various modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good conscience, as our best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty was freedom to curse and pull down every tenet other than their own. No belief has been more obstinate or is more time-honoured: but in theory at least it has been much subdued in recent times, so that few of us are able to hold by our own side with the perfect confidence which once we felt. And in these changing views, and in the impulse towards a greater catholicity of feeling which has sprung up in Scotland, the influence of that uncompromising teacher to whom reform was everything, who had no prepossession in favour of what was old and venerable, but desired with all the fervour of his fiery soul to make everything new, has doubtless waned, save to that sacred simplicity of ignorance which forms no judgment. But nothing can obliterate the person and strenuous being of John Knox, or make him a less interesting figure on the crowded and tragic stage of that epoch which he dominated and chronicled. And nothing can unlink the a.s.sociations which make him ever present and living in Edinburgh, which was the capital and centre of his kingdom as much as of any king who ever breathed.

John Knox was in every sense of the words a son of the soil, yet came of a not unknown family, "kent folk" of East Lothian: if not lairds of any great heritage, yet possessing lands and living sufficient to ent.i.tle them to consideration. They were able to give him the best education of the time, which he completed at the University of Glasgow under the teaching of Major or Mair, the same whom George Buchanan accompanied to France; so that both these great men, as well as various n.o.bles and ecclesiastics of the time, were his fellow-students, trained under the same influence. Whether Knox followed Major to St. Andrews as Buchanan followed him to Paris is not known; but he would seem to have lectured on philosophy in St. Andrews at the beginning of his career. It might be that he was himself present, and heard some of the bold and familiar addresses of the wandering friars, the first rude champions of Reform, whose protest against the wickedness of the bishops and the extortions of the clergy he quotes with so much enjoyment of their rough humour, in the beginning of his history; or even might have witnessed the lighted pile and felt across his face the breath of that "reek" which carried spiritual contagion with it, as it flew upon the keen breeze from the sea over that little centre of life, full of scholars and wits, and keen cynical spectators little likely to be convinced by any such means. It is curious to hear of Major for instance, one of the Sorbonne, a doctor of Paris and man of the world, as present at all those proceedings, listening to Friar William's denunciation of the priests, to which he gave his a.s.sent as "a doctrine that might weill be defended, for it contayned no heresye"--and in very different circ.u.mstances to the sermons of Rough, addressed to the slayers of the Cardinal, and to the calling of Knox himself, a crisis of popular emotion and vehement feeling. Such a man as Major, a son of the Renaissance, no Reformer nor careful of any of these things, must have looked on with strange feelings at all the revolutions accomplished before him, the rude jests and songs, the half-jocular broadly humorous a.s.saults, the cry of heresy, the horror of the burnings, the deadly earnest of both preacher and people after Beatoun's well-deserved but terrible end which cut all compromises short. One wonders what thoughts were going on in the mind of the old scholar who kept his place in his stall as well when ma.s.s was sung as when every trace of that "idolatrous sacrifice" had been trodden under foot. Would it be more or less the same to him whatever they preached, those wild religionists, who tore each other in pieces? did he look on with a secret smile at the turmoil they made, as if it mattered which was uppermost, with a natural horror at the fierce flames of the human sacrifice, yet consent in his mind that if they could so stamp the heresy out which would otherwise destroy them, the bishops were only logical to do it? while on the other side there was not much in point of natural justice to be said against Norman Leslie and his men who slew the Cardinal. Such spectators there must have been in no small number, affording a curious rim and edge of observers to all that the more active and violent might do or say. But these lookers-on have said nothing on the subject, or their mild voices have been lost in the clangour of actors vehement and earnest. It has been reserved for our age to bring these dispa.s.sionate or, as we are apt to think, cynical observers into the front rank.

The first scene in which John Knox comes prominently into sight of the world occurs in the midst of that small but urgent and much-agitated society on the fierce little headland by the sea, in the great and n.o.ble cathedral which for most of the intervening time has been nothing but ruins. We must in imagination rebuild these lofty walls, throw up again the n.o.ble piers and cl.u.s.tered pillars, and see the townsfolk streaming in--a crowd more picturesque in garb than any Scots a.s.sembly nowadays, with its provost and councillors in their munic.i.p.al finery: and the grave representatives of the colleges filing in to their stalls--very grave now, we may well believe, with many a look at the group of gentry, among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded ominous in the background. Among the congregation was a dark, vehement man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his side, of whom he had charge--strange tutor! flames of zeal and earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral, vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the superseded faith.

Knox's gifts and qualities were already well known; he had been a devoted friend and follower of Wishart, the martyr whose memory was still fresh in the minds of all men; and these public examinations of the three boys, and the expositions he addressed to them, but which many of mature age also gathered to hear, had given the many competent judges then a.s.sembled in the beleaguered city a practical knowledge of his gifts and endowments. And Rough, who filled the post of preacher in St.

Andrews, was not a man of learning, and in consequence would seem to have been troubled by disputatious members of the priesthood, eager, not unnaturally, to defend their own tenets, and with all the authorities at their fingers' ends. In this strait John Knox was entreated to accept the charge of the congregation, but in vain. Perhaps the memory of Wishart's charge to him, "Return to your bairns," was still in his ears; perhaps the reluctance and hesitation of a man who felt himself incompetent for so great a responsibility--though it is strange to a.s.sociate any idea of shrinking from responsibility with such a dauntless spirit, and he was by this time a man of forty-two, with a matured mind and some experience of life. At all events he "utterlie refused": he "would not run where G.o.d had not called him." This being so, there was no alternative but to take him by surprise and force him into the position which all desired him to a.s.sume. And this was the step which was accordingly taken by the a.s.sembly of the Reformers in St.

Andrews, an a.s.sembly in which were many well-known and distinguished men, so ill.u.s.trious a councillor as Sir David Lindsay, the poet and Lyon-King of Scotland, being one of the gentlemen and commoners who decided upon this dramatic and picturesque call.

They were all met to the preaching upon a certain day, the date of which is not given, but which was presumably in the summer of 1547, Knox having arrived with his pupils in St. Andrews in the Easter of that year. The princ.i.p.al persons present were aware of what was coming, and probably the ma.s.s of the congregation knew that some event more than ordinary was preparing, which would quicken the eagerness of their attention. The sermon was upon the right of the congregation to the services of "any man in whom they espied the gifts of G.o.d," and the risk on his part of refusing their call. Mair, sitting by in his doctor's gown, though he had committed himself to no religious heresy, had discoursed much to his students upon the rights of the people as the source of power--a doctrine, indeed, which Knox did not hold in that naked form, though most probably he had been influenced by these teachings towards the still more tremendous form of doctrine which sets forth the voice of the Christian people as representing the voice of G.o.d. And no doubt up to this point he gave his adhesion to the words of the preacher. But when Rough had reached the crown of his argument he suddenly turned to where Knox sat and addressed him individually, while the people held their breath.

"Brother," he said, "ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge even from all those that are here present: which is this. In the name of G.o.d and of His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as you tender the glory of G.o.d, the increase of Christ His kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to be oppressed by the mult.i.tude of labours, that you take upon you the public office and charge of preaching even as ye look to avoid G.o.d's heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His grace with you."

And in the end he said to those present, "Was not this your charge to me? and do ye not approve this vocation?" They answered, "It was, and we approve it." "Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber."

It would be difficult to find a more striking scene. Any sudden incident of an individual character thus occurring in a public a.s.sembly calls forth a thrill of interest, and gives at once to the most disconnected crowd a pictorial unity. The interest and excitement in those roused and eager eyes, the crowd all turned towards the astonished subject of this appeal, the soft young faces making a little circle round him, half terrified, half flattered by the sudden consciousness that all eyes were turned towards them, would make a fine theme for a historical painter.

And "the said John, abashed," finding no refuge in the great excitement and surprise of the moment, he so stern and so strong, but in tears! It was thus that the ministry of the great Reformer began.

It is unnecessary to follow in detail a career so well known. Every particular of it, and even the sermons with all their heads, may be found in the _Historie of the Reformation in Scotland_, which yields in interest, in picturesqueness and the most living and graphic power of narrative, to none of the primitive chronicles. No professional word-painter has ever put a dramatic scene, a contention, a battle, such as those which were everyday occurrences in Scotland at that time, upon paper with more pictorial force, or with half the fervour of life and reality. The writer goes through all the gamut of popular pa.s.sion. He exults sometimes fiercely, laughs sometimes coa.r.s.ely, throws in "a merry jest," which is often grim with savage humour; but throughout all is always real, always genuine, writing not impartially, but with the strong conviction and sentiment of a man elucidating matters in which he has been himself a prominent actor. The arguments of his adversaries when he enters upon a public controversy are unaccountably feeble, which perhaps may be explained by the fact that the friars were not much accustomed to controversy, perhaps by the natural bias of a controversialist to lessen the force of his antagonists' arguments; and he does not pretend to contemplate his adversaries, either spiritual or political, with any tolerance, or permit any possibility that they too might perhaps mean well and have a righteous intention, even though it was entirely opposed to that of John Knox: such ideas had no currency in his day. That Mary of Guise might really mean and wish to avoid bloodshed, to strike no blow that was not inevitable, to keep the breach from being widened by actual civil war; and that the policy of temporising as long as that was possible was anything but wicked wiles and intentions of betrayal, was an idea which he would seem to have been incapable of conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side, and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess.

Major indeed was a historian, but he did not meddle with the history of his own time; and Buchanan, while separated from the reader by the bonds and cerements of his Latin, and therefore shut out from a popular audience, is as great a partisan as Knox.

The little garrison of St. Andrews was taken, as everybody knows, by the French, and carried away to prison and the galleys; but no blood was shed to avenge the blood of Beatoun, a point which ought to be put to their credit. John Knox suffered all these misfortunes with a steadfast soul, still declaring to all who surrounded him, in the extremity of suffering, hards.h.i.+p, and sickness, that he should again preach in that Church of St. Andrews from which he had been taken. This is the first of the many prophecies completely verified afterwards with which he is credited. He escaped after about three years of captivity and misery in France, during which he would seem to have been actually employed in the galleys, and came to England, where it is to be supposed the story of his influence and power with the Scotch Reformers had preceded him, otherwise the advancement to which he reached, and which might have been greater but for his dissatisfaction with the imperfectly Reformed Church there, and the bondage of ceremonials and traditions still left in it, would have been still more extraordinary. He was one of the chaplains to the boy-king Edward, for whom he had the amiable prejudice common to those who secure the favour of very young princes, expecting from him everything that was great and good. At the death of the young King, however, Knox removed hurriedly to the Continent with many others, knowing that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his life--Marjory Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea of that relations.h.i.+p, he seems to have given much regard and affection, notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help feeling a sort of compa.s.sion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel addressed to her under the t.i.tle of "weill belovit sister," there is not among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which, considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to a young woman than these expositions and addresses.

For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to a congregation of exiles a.s.sembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary.

But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In 1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by urgent letters and by the eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to G.o.dliness" still attended ma.s.s, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine--and that the outer structure of the Church remained much as it had been, without any such shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company he found there--among whom were one or two ministers and the young but already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington--the question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful."

The question was very fully defended from the other point of view.

"Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox p.r.o.nounced at once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been wrong, and not of G.o.d--a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly bringing no blessing with it. His bold and a.s.sured argument cut the ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of their lives.

This scene throws a strange and in some respects new light upon the more human side of the great movement. It is easier perhaps to us who are acquainted with all that followed to understand the fiery zeal which flamed against every accessory of what they conceived to be idolatry--the saintly image, which was nothing but a painted board, and the "round clipped G.o.d" upon the altar which was blasphemously a.s.serted to be the very Lord Himself--than to remember that these men had also many links of use and wont, of attachment and habit, to the churches in which they had been christened, and the position, with all its needs and simple duties, to which they had been born. To see them standing there for a moment reluctant, with the tremendous breach that must be made in life gaping before them, and the sense of universal disruption and tearing asunder which must follow, is to me more touching than the stern conviction which never pauses nor fears. They were so thoroughly convinced, however, of the necessity which he reasoned out with such remorseless logic, that Erskine first, and after him many gentlemen through Scotland, craved the help of the preacher to put the crown upon their convictions, and spread in their halls and private chambers, no church being attainable, what was now for the first time called the Table of the Lord. Knox went to Dun in Forfars.h.i.+re across the great firths of Forth and Tay, and to Calder, the house of Sir James Sandilands, afterwards Lord Torphichen, in Lothian, where many gathered to hear him. But it would seem to have been in the West, always the most strenuous in doctrine, that he first celebrated the new rite, the holy feast as yet unknown in Scotland. During the eventful winter of 1555-56 he pervaded the country thus, setting forth the special bond of evangelical religion, uniting those different groups by the sacred seal of the bread and wine--who can doubt received with a profound and tremulous awe by lips to which the wafer had been hitherto the only symbol of that act of closest communion?

This would seem to have been the chief work of Knox during the visit which, in the midst of his Geneva ministry, he paid to his native land: and it is easy to perceive that it was of supreme importance as identifying and separating the converts into a definite community, bound together by that sacrament of fealty, an oath more binding than any expressed only in words. Hitherto the preaching and teaching of the Word, which was itself a discovery, and came with all the freshness of a new revelation, had been the only sacred office carried on by the Reformers. The Sacraments were all in the hands of ecclesiastics, who had been for generations past losing the confidence and respect of the nation--though one cannot but believe there must still have been here and there a humble curate, a parish priest like Chaucer's Parsoune, to strengthen the hold of the accustomed ordinances upon men's minds, who, however strongly they might turn against the miracle of transubstantiation, could not cast aside the only means of partaking in the great mystery of the body and blood of Christ. To all such here was now the answer set forth, and the hope--the holy Table, the communion of saints, the bread and wine of the great and ceaseless commemoration. It would be doing the greatest wrong to these small devout a.s.semblies, and to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there can be no reasonable doubt.

While travelling on this solemn mission from place to place and house to house of the religious gentry of Scotland, Knox would seem to have made Edinburgh his headquarters, and preached there from time to time, not always secretly. He had here "a greater audience than ever before" in "the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging," that ancient habitation from which Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop, had watched and waited while the fight went on within the gates of the Nether Bow, and from which he rushed out to rescue the other prelate whose corslet rang under his rochet. Strange a.s.sociation, yet not inappropriate; for the mild Bishop of Dunkeld had also found many potent words to say against the abuses of the Church, though the new presbyter who now took his place was rather of Beatoun's warlike mettle than of Douglas's. The n.o.bles who came thither to hear the preacher were so "weill contented" with his doctrine--which is his own moderate version of what was no doubt an enthusiasm of grave approbation--that they seem to have imagined, in that solemn simplicity which belongs to fresh conviction, that he might perchance, could she but hear him, move the Regent Queen herself, Mary of Guise, an unlikely convert no doubt. He was accordingly exhorted by three gentlemen, specified as the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl Marischal, and Harye Drummond, to write a letter to the Queen, which Knox, always eager for the pen, and full of matter boiling to have utterance, immediately did. It is difficult not to think of the _sancta simpilicitas_, which rarely belongs to such a group of men, when we think of the grave trio of advisers, and the still graver but fiery prophet-preacher, making this wonderful appeal. It was less wonderful in him who loved nothing so much as to write when he could not be preaching, to set forth those high-handed arraignments before the visionary tribunal of the one true and only faith, of whomsoever he could address, queen or peasant; but it is strange that men of the world, and of the society of their time, should have thus thought it possible to convert a lady so full of policy and cares of government, so entirely occupied with the most important matters of statesmans.h.i.+p, not to say so determined a Catholic, as the daughter of the Guises, the sister of the Cardinal.