A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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In 1541 the idea of a meeting between James and Henry was again mooted,
and Henry actually went to York, where James did not appear. Henry, who
had expected him, was furious. In August 1542, on a futile pretext, he
sent Norfolk with a great force to harry the Border. The English had the
worse at the battle of Hadden Rig; negotiations followed; Henry
proclaimed that Scottish kings had always been vassals of England, and
horrified his Council by openly proposing to kidnap James. Henry's
forces were now wrecking an abbey and killing women on the Border. James
tried to retaliate, but his levies (October 31) at Fala Moor declined to
follow him across the Border: they remembered Flodden, moreover they
could not risk the person of a childless king. James prepared, however,
for a raid on a great scale on the western Border, but the fact had been
divulged by Sir George Douglas, Angus's brother, and had also been sold
to Dacre, cheap, by another Scot. The English despatches prove that
Wharton had full time for preparation, and led a competent force of
horse, which, near Arthuret, charged on the right flank of the Scots, who
slowly retreated, till they were entangled between the Esk and a morass,
and lost their formation and their artillery, with 1200 men: a few were
slain, most were drowned or were taken prisoners. The raid was no secret
of the king and the priests, as Knox absurdly states; nobles of the
Reforming no less than of the Catholic party were engaged; the English
had full warning and a force of 3000 men, not of 400 farmers; the Scots
were beaten through their own ignorance of the ground in which they had
been burning and plundering. As to confusion caused by the claim of
Oliver Sinclair to be commander, it is not corroborated by contemporary
despatches, though Sir George Douglas reports James's lament for the
conduct of his favourite, "Fled Oliver! fled Oliver!" The misfortune
broke the heart of James. He went to Edinburgh, did some business,
retired for a week to Linlithgow, {89} where his queen was awaiting her
delivery, and thence went to Falkland, and died of nothing more specific
than shame, grief, and despair. He lived to hear of the birth of his
daughter, Mary (December 8, 1542). "It came with a lass and it will go
with a lass," he is said to have muttered.

On December 14th James passed away, broken by his impossible task, lost
in the bewildering paths from which there was no outgait.

James was personally popular for his gaiety and his adventures while he
wandered in disguise. Humorous poems are attributed to him. A man of
greater genius than his might have failed when confronted by a tyrant so
wealthy, ambitious, cruel, and destitute of honour as Henry VIII.;
constantly engaged with James's traitors in efforts to seize or slay him
and his advisers. It is an easy thing to attack James because he would
not trust Henry, a man who ruined all that did trust to his seeming
favour.

CHAPTER XVI. THE MINORITY OF MARY STUART.

When James died, Henry VIII. seemed to hold in his hand all the winning
cards in the game of which Scotland was the stake. He held Angus and his
brother George Douglas; when he slipped them they would again wield the
whole force of their House in the interests of England and of Henry's
religion. Moreover, he held many noble prisoners taken at
Solway--Glencairn, Maxwell, Cassilis, Fleming, Grey, and others,--and all
of these, save Sir George Douglas, "have not sticked," says Henry
himself, "to take upon them to set the crown of Scotland on our head."
Henry's object was to get "the child, the person of the Cardinal, and of
such as be chief hindrances to our purpose, and also the chief holds and
fortresses into our hands." By sheer brigandage the Reformer king hoped
to succeed where the Edwards had failed. He took the oaths of his
prisoners, making them swear to secure for him the child, Beaton, and the
castles, and later released them to do his bidding.

Henry's failure was due to the genius and resolution of Cardinal Beaton,
heading the Catholic party.

What occurred in Scotland on James's death is obscure. Later, Beaton was
said to have made the dying king's hand subscribe a blank paper filled up
by appointment of Beaton himself as one of a Regency Council of four or
five. There is no evidence for the tale. What actually occurred was the
proclamation of the Earls of Arran, Argyll, Huntly, Moray, and of Beaton
as Regents (December 19, 1542). Arran, the chief of the Hamiltons, was,
we know, unless ousted by Henry VIII., the next heir to the throne after
the new-born Mary. He was a good-hearted man, but the weakest of
mortals, and his constant veerings from the Catholic and national to the
English and reforming side were probably caused by his knowledge of his
very doubtful legitimacy. Either party could bring up the doubt; Beaton,
having the ear of the Pope, could be specially dangerous, but so could
the opposite party if once firmly seated in office. Arran, in any case,
presently ousted the Archbishop of Glasgow from the Chancellorship and
gave the seals to Beaton--the man whom he presently accused of a
shameless forgery of James's will. {91}

The Regency soon came into Arran's own hands: the Solway Moss prisoners,
learning this as they journeyed north, began to repent of their oaths of
treachery, especially as their oaths were known or suspected in Scotland.
George Douglas prevailed on Arran to seize and imprison Beaton till he
answered certain charges; but no charges were ever made public, none were
produced. The clergy refused to christen or bury during his captivity.
Parliament met (March 12, 1543), and still there was silence as to the
nature of the accusations against Beaton; and by March 22 George Douglas
himself released the Cardinal (of course for a consideration) and carried
him to his own strong castle of St Andrews.

Parliament permitted the reading but forbade the discussion of the Bible
in English. Arran was posing as a kind of Protestant. Ambassadors were
sent to Henry to negotiate a marriage between his son Edward and the baby
Queen; but Scotland would not give up a fortress, would never resign her
independence, would not place Mary in Henry's hands, would never submit
to any but a native ruler.

The airy castle of Henry's hopes fell into dust, built as it was on the
oaths of traitors. Love of such a religion as Henry professed, retaining
the Mass and making free use of the stake and the gibbet, was not, even
to Protestants, so attractive as to make them run the English course and
submit to the English Lord Paramount. Some time was needed to make
Scots, whatever their religious opinions, lick the English rod. But the
scale was soon to turn; for every reforming sermon was apt to produce the
harrying of religious houses, and every punishment of the robbers was
persecution intolerable against which men sought English protection.

Henry VIII. now turned to Arran for support. To Arran he offered the
hand of his daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who should later marry the
heir of the Hamiltons. But by mid-April Arran was under the influence of
his bastard brother, the Abbot of Paisley (later Archbishop Hamilton).
The Earl of Lennox, a Stuart, and Keeper of Dumbarton Castle, arrived
from France. He was hostile to Arran; for, if Arran were illegitimate,
Lennox was next heir to the crown after Mary: he was thus, for the
moment, the ally of Beaton against Arran. George Douglas visited Henry,
and returned with his terms--Mary to be handed over to England at the age
of ten, and to marry Prince Edward at twelve; Arran (by a prior
arrangement) was to receive Scotland north of Forth, an auxiliary English
army, and the hand of Elizabeth for his son. To the English contingent
Arran preferred 5000 pounds in ready money--that was his price.

Sadleyr, Henry's envoy, saw Mary of Guise, and saw her little daughter
unclothed; he admired the child, but could not disentangle the cross-webs
of intrigue. The national party--the Catholic party--was strongest,
because least disunited. When the Scottish ambassadors who went to Henry
in spring returned (July 21), the national party seized Mary and carried
her to Stirling, where they offered Arran a meeting, and (he said) the
child queen's hand for his son. But Arran's own partisans, Glencairn and
Cassilis, told Sadleyr that he fabled freely. Representatives of both
parties accepted Henry's terms, but delayed the ratification. Henry
insisted that it should be ratified by August 24, but on August 16 he
seized six Scottish merchant ships. Though the Treaty was ratified on
August 25, Arran was compelled to insist on compensation for the ships,
but on August 28 he proclaimed Beaton a traitor. In the beginning of
September Arran favoured the wrecking of the Franciscan monastery in
Edinburgh; and at Dundee the mob, moved by sermons from the celebrated
martyr George Wishart, did sack the houses of the Franciscans and the
Dominicans; Beaton's Abbey of Arbroath and the Abbey of Lindores were
also plundered. Clearly it was believed that Beaton was down, and that
church-pillage was authorised by Arran. Yet on September 3 Arran joined
hands with Beaton! The Cardinal, by threatening to disprove Arran's
legitimacy and ruin his hopes of the crown, or in some other way, had
dominated the waverer, while Henry (August 29) was mobilising an army of
20,000 men for the invasion of Scotland. On September 9 Mary was crowned
at Stirling. But Beaton could not hold both Arran and his rival Lennox,
who committed an act of disgraceful treachery. With Glencairn he seized
large supplies of money and stores sent by France to Dumbarton Castle. In
1544 he fled to England and to the protection of Henry, and married
Margaret, daughter of Angus and Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV. He
became the father of Darnley, Mary's husband in later years, and the
fortunes of Scotland were fatally involved in the feud between the Lennox
Stewarts and the House of Hamilton.

Meanwhile (November 1543) Arran and Beaton together broke and persecuted
the abbey robbers of Perthshire and Angus, making "martyrs" and
incurring, on Beaton's part, fatal feuds with Leslies, Greys, Learmonths,
and Kirkcaldys. Parliament (December 11) declared the treaty with
England void; the party of the Douglases, equally suspected by Henry and
by Beaton, was crushed, and George Douglas was held a hostage, still
betraying his country in letters to England. Martyrs were burned in
Perth and Dundee, which merely infuriated the populace. In April 1544,
while Henry was giving the most cruel orders to his army of invasion, one
Wishart visited him with offers, which were accepted, for the murder of
the Cardinal. {94} Early in May the English army under Hertford took
Leith, "raised a jolly fire," says Hertford, in Edinburgh; he burned the
towns on his line of march, and retired.

On May 17 Lennox and Glencairn sold themselves to Henry; for ample
rewards they were to secure the teaching of God's word "as the mere and
only foundation whence proceeds all truth and honour"! Arran defeated
Glencairn when he attempted his godly task, and Lennox was driven back
into England.

In June Mary of Guise fell into the hands of nobles led by Angus, while
the Fife, Perthshire, and Angus lairds, lately Beaton's deadly foes, came
into the Cardinal's party. With him and Arran, in November, were banded
the Protestants who were to be his murderers, while the Douglases, in
December, were cleared by Parliament of all their offences, and Henry
offered 3000 crowns for their "trapping." Angus, in February 1545,
protested that he loved Henry "best of all men," and would make Lennox
Governor of Scotland, while Wharton, for Henry, was trying to kidnap
Angus. Enraged by the English desecration of his ancestors' graves at
Melrose Abbey, Angus united with Arran, Norman Leslie, and Buccleuch to
annihilate an English force at Ancrum Moor, where Henry's men lost 800
slain and 2000 prisoners. The loyalty of Angus to his country was now,
by innocents like Arran, thought assured. The plot for Beaton's murder
was in 1545 negotiated between Henry and Cassilis, backed by George
Douglas; and Crichton of Brunston, as before, was engaged, a godly laird
in Lothian. In August the Douglases boast that, as Henry's friends, they
have frustrated an invasion of England with a large French contingent,
which they pretended to lead, while they secured its failure. Meanwhile,
after forty years, Donald Dubh, and all the great western chiefs, none of
whom could write, renewed the alliance of 1463 with England, calling
themselves "auld enemies of Scotland." Their religious predilections,
however, were not Protestant. They promised to destroy or reduce half of
Scotland, and hailed Lennox as Governor, as in Angus's offer to Henry in
spring 1545. Lennox did make an attempt against Dumbarton in November
with Donald Dubh. They failed, and Donald died, without legitimate
issue, at Drogheda. The Macleans, Macleods, and Macneils then came into
the national party.

In September 1545 Hertford, with an English force, destroyed the
religious houses at Melrose, Kelso, Dryburgh, and Jedburgh. {96}
Meanwhile the two Douglases skulked with the murderous traitor Cassilis
in Ayrshire, and Henry tried to induce French deserters from the Scottish
flag to murder Beaton and Arran.

Beaton could scarcely escape for ever from so many plots. His capture,
in January 1546, of George Wishart, an eminently learned and virtuous
Protestant preacher, and an intimate associate of the murderous, double-
dyed traitor Brunston and of other Lothian pietists of the English party;
and his burning of Wishart at St Andrews, on March 1, 1546, sealed the
Cardinal's doom. On May 29th he was surprised in his castle of St
Andrews and slain by his former ally, Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes,
with Kirkcaldy of Grange, and James Melville who seems to have dealt the
final stab after preaching at his powerless victim. They insulted the
corpse, and held St Andrews Castle against all comers.

How gallant a fight Beaton had waged against adversaries how many and
multifarious, how murderous, self-seeking, treacherous, and hypocritical,
we have seen. He maintained the independence of Scotland against the
most recklessly unscrupulous of assailants, though probably he was rather
bent on defending the lost cause of a Church entirely and intolerably
corrupt.

The two causes were at the moment inseparable, and, whatever we may think
of the Church of Rome, it was not more bloodily inclined than the Church
of which Henry was Pope, while it was less illogical, not being the
creature of a secular tyrant. If Henry and his party had won their game,
the Church of Scotland would have been Henry's Church--would have been
Anglican. Thus it was Beaton who, by defeating Henry, made Presbyterian
Calvinism possible in Scotland.

CHAPTER XVII. REGENCY OF ARRAN.

The death of Cardinal Beaton left Scotland and the Church without a
skilled and resolute defender. His successor in the see, Archbishop
Hamilton, a half-brother of the Regent, was more licentious than the
Cardinal (who seems to have been constant to Mariotte Ogilvy), and had
little of his political genius. The murderers, with others of their
party, held St Andrews Castle, strong in its new fortifications, which
the queen-mother and Arran, the Regent, were unable to reduce. Receiving
supplies from England by sea, and abetted by Henry VIII., the murderers
were in treaty with him to work all his will, while some nobles, like
Argyll and Huntly, wavered; though the Douglases now renounced their
compact with England, and their promise to give the child queen in
marriage to Henry's son. At the end of November, despairing of success
in the siege, Arran asked France to send men and ships to take St Andrews
Castle from the assassins, who, in December, obtained an armistice. They
would surrender, they said, when they got a pardon for their guilt from
the Pope; but they begged Henry VIII. to move the Emperor to move the
Pope to give no pardon! The remission, none the less, arrived early in
April 1547, but was mocked at by the garrison of the castle. {99}

The garrison and inmates of the castle presently welcomed the arrival of
John Knox and some of his pupils. Knox (born in Haddington, 1513-1515?),
a priest and notary, had borne a two-handed sword and been of the body-
guard of Wishart. He was now invited by John Rough, the chaplain, to
take on him the office of preacher, which he did, weeping, so strong was
his sense of the solemnity of his duties. He also preached and disputed
with feeble clerical opponents in the town. The congregation in the
castle, though devout, were ruffianly in their lives, nor did he spare
rebukes to his flock.

Before Knox arrived, Henry VIII. and Francis II. had died; the successor
of Francis, Henri II., sent to Scotland Monsieur d'Oysel, who became the
right-hand man of Mary of Guise in the Government. Meanwhile the advance
of an English force against the Border, where they occupied Langholm,
caused Arran to lead thither the national levies. But this gave no great
relief to the besieged in the castle of St Andrews. In mid-July a well-
equipped French fleet swept up the east coast; men were landed with guns;
French artillery was planted on the cathedral roof and the steeple of St
Salvator's College, and poured a plunging fire into the castle. In a day
or two, on the last of July, the garrison surrendered. Knox, with many
of his associates, was placed in the galleys and carried captive to
France. On one occasion the galleys were within sight of St Andrews, and
the Reformer predicted (so he says) that he would again preach there--as
he did, to some purpose.

But the castle had not fallen before the English party among the nobles
had arranged to betray Scottish fortresses to England; and to lead 2000
Scottish "favourers of the Word of God" to fight under the flag of St
George against their country. An English host of 15,000 was assembled,
and marched north accompanied by a fleet. On the 9th of September 1547
the leader, Somerset, found the Scottish army occupying a well-chosen
position near Musselburgh: on their left lay the Firth, on their front a
marsh and the river Esk. But next day the Scots, as when Cromwell
defeated them at Dunbar, left an impregnable position in their eagerness
to cut Somerset off from his ships, and were routed with great slaughter
in the battle of Pinkie. Somerset made no great use of his victory: he
took and held Broughty Castle on Tay, fortified Inchcolme in the Firth of
Forth, and devastated Holyrood. Mischief he did, to little purpose.

The child queen was conveyed to an isle in the loch of Menteith, where
she was safe, and her marriage with the Dauphin was negotiated. In June
1548 a large French force under the Sieur d'Esse arrived, and later
captured Haddington, held by the English, while, despite some
Franco-Scottish successes in the field, Mary was sent with her Four
Maries to France, where she landed in August, the only passenger who had
not been sea-sick! By April 1550 the English made peace, abandoning all
their holds in Scotland. The great essential prize, the child queen, had
escaped them.

The clergy burned a martyr in 1550; in 1549 they had passed measures for
their own reformation: too late and futile was the scheme. Early in 1549
Knox returned from France to England, where he was minister at Berwick
and at Newcastle, a chaplain of the child Edward VI., and a successful
opponent of Cranmer as regards kneeling at the celebration of the Holy
Communion. He refused a bishopric, foreseeing trouble under Mary Tudor,
from whom he fled to the Continent. In 1550-51 Mary of Guise, visiting
France, procured for Arran the Duchy of Chatelherault, and for his eldest
son the command of the Scottish Archer Guard, and, by way of exchange, in
1554 took from him the Regency, surrounding herself with French advisers,
notably De Roubay and d'Oysel.

CHAPTER XVIII. REGENCY OF MARY OF GUISE.

In England, on the death of Edward VI., Catholicism rejoiced in the
accession of Mary Tudor, which, by driving Scottish Protestant refugees
back into their own country, strengthened there the party of revolt
against the Church, while the queen-mother's preference of French over
Scottish advisers, and her small force of trained French soldiers in
garrisons, caused even the Scottish Catholics to hold France in fear and
suspicion. The French counsellors (1556) urged increased taxation for
purposes of national defence against England; but the nobles would rather
be invaded every year than tolerate a standing army in place of their old
irregular feudal levies. Their own independence of the Crown was dearer
to the nobles and gentry than safety from their old enemy. They might
have reflected that a standing army of Scots, officered by themselves,
would be a check on the French soldiers in garrison.

Perplexed and opposed by the great clan of Hamilton, whose chief, Arran,
was nearest heir to the crown, Mary of Guise was now anxious to
conciliate the Protestants, and there was a "blink," as the Covenanters
later said,--a lull in persecution.

After Knox's release from the French galleys in 1549, he had played, as
we saw, a considerable part in the affairs of the English Church, and in
the making of the second Prayer-Book of Edward VI., but had fled abroad
on the accession of Mary Tudor. From Dieppe he had sent a tract to
England, praying God to stir up some Phineas or Jehu to shed the blood of
"abominable idolaters,"--obviously of Mary of England and Philip of
Spain. On earlier occasions he had followed Calvin in deprecating such
sanguinary measures. The Scot, after a stormy period of quarrels with
Anglican refugees in Frankfort, moved to Geneva, where the city was under
a despotism of preachers and of Calvin. Here Knox found the model of
Church government which, in a form if possible more extreme, he later
planted in Scotland.

There, in 1549-52, the Church, under Archbishop Hamilton, Beaton's
successor, had been confessing her iniquities in Provincial Councils, and
attempting to purify herself on the lines of the tolerant and charitable
Catechism issued by the Archbishop in 1552. Apparently a _modus vivendi_
was being sought, and Protestants were inclined to think that they might
be "occasional conformists" and attend Mass without being false to their
convictions. But in this brief lull Knox came over to Scotland at the
end of harvest, in 1555. On this point of occasional conformity he was
fixed. The Mass was idolatry, and idolatry, by the law of God, was a
capital offence. Idolaters must be converted or exterminated; they were
no better than Amalekites.

This was the central rock of Knox's position: tolerance was impossible.
He remained in Scotland, preaching and administering the Sacrament in the
Genevan way, till June 1556. He associated with the future leaders of
the religious revolution: Erskine of Dun, Lord Lorne (in 1558, fifth Earl
of Argyll), James Stewart, bastard of James V., and lay Prior of St
Andrews, and of Macon in France; and the Earl of Glencairn. William
Maitland of Lethington, "the flower of the wits of Scotland," was to Knox
a less congenial acquaintance. Not till May 1556 was Knox summoned to
trial in Edinburgh, but he had a strong backing of the laity, as was the
custom in Scotland, where justice was overawed by armed gatherings, and
no trial was held. By July 1556 he was in France, on his way to Geneva.

The fruits of Knox's labours followed him, in March 1557, in the shape of
a letter, signed by Glencairn, Lorne, Lord Erskine, and James Stewart,
Mary's bastard brother. They prayed Knox to return. They were ready "to
jeopardy lives and goods in the forward setting of the glory of God."
This has all the air of risking civil war. Knox was not eager. It was
October before he reached Dieppe on his homeward way. Meanwhile there
had been hostilities between England and Scotland (as ally of France,
then at odds with Philip of Spain, consort King of England), and there
were Protestant tumults in Edinburgh. Knox had scruples as to raising
civil war by preaching at home. The Scottish nobles had no zeal for the
English war; but Knox, who received at Dieppe discouraging letters from
unknown correspondents, did not cross the sea. He remained at Dieppe,
preaching, till the spring of 1558.

In Knox's absence even James Stewart and Erskine of Dun agreed to hurry
on the marriage between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Francis, Dauphin of
France, a feeble boy, younger than herself. Their faces are pitiably
young as represented in their coronation medal.

While negotiations for the marriage were begun in October, on December 3,
1557, a godly "band" or covenant for mutual aid was signed by Argyll
(then near his death, in 1558); his son, Lorne; the Earl of Morton (son
of the traitor, Sir George Douglas); Glencairn; and Erskine of Dun, one
of the commissioners who were to visit France for the Royal marriage.
They vow to risk their lives against "the Congregation of Satan" (the
Church), and in defence of faithful Protestant preachers. They will
establish "the blessed Word of God and His Congregation," and henceforth
the Protestant party was commonly styled "The Congregation."

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