A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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Parliament (November 29, 1557) had accepted the French marriage, all the
ancient liberties of Scotland being secured, and the right to the throne,
if Mary died without issue, being confirmed to the House of Hamilton, not
to the Dauphin. The marriage-contract (April 19, 1558) did ratify these
just demands; but, on April 4, Mary had been induced to sign them all
away to France, leaving Scotland and her own claims to the English crown
to the French king.

The marriage was celebrated on April 24, 1558. In that week the last
Protestant martyr, Walter Milne, an aged priest and a married man, was
burned for heresy at St Andrews. This only increased the zeal of the
Congregation.

Among the Protestant preachers then in Scotland, of whom Willock, an
Englishman, seems to have been the most reasonable, a certain Paul
Methuen, a baker, was prominent. He had been summoned (July 28) to stand
his trial for heresy, but his backing of friends was considerable, and
they came before Mary of Guise in armour and with a bullying demeanour.
She tried to temporise, and on September 3 a great riot broke out in
Edinburgh, the image of St Giles was broken, and the mob violently
assaulted a procession of priests. The country was seething with
discontent, and the death of Mary Tudor (November 17, 1558), with the
accession of the Protestant Elizabeth, encouraged the Congregation. Mary
of Guise made large concessions: only she desired that there should be no
public meetings in the capital. On January 1, 1559, church doors were
placarded with "The Beggars' Warning." The Beggars (really the Brethren
in their name) claimed the wealth of the religious orders. Threats were
pronounced, revolution was menaced at a given date, Whitsunday, and the
threats were fulfilled.

All this was the result of a plan, not of accident. Mary of Guise was
intending to visit France, not longing to burn heretics. But she fell
into the worst of health, and her recovery was doubted, in April 1559.
Willock and Methuen had been summoned to trial (February 2, 1559), for
their preachings were always apt to lead to violence on the part of their
hearers. The summons was again postponed in deference to renewed
menaces: a Convention had met at Edinburgh to seek for some remedy, and
the last Provincial Council of the Scottish Church (March 1559) had
considered vainly some proposals by moderate Catholics for internal
reform. {106}

Again the preachers were summoned to Stirling for May 10, but just a week
earlier Knox arrived in Scotland. The leader of the French Protestant
preachers, Morel, expressed to Calvin his fear that Knox "may fill
Scotland with his madness." Now was his opportunity: the Regent was weak
and ill; the Congregation was in great force; England was at least not
unfavourable to its cause. From Dundee Knox marched with many
gentlemen--unarmed, he says--accompanying the preachers to Perth: Erskine
of Dun went as an envoy to the Regent at Stirling; she is accused by Knox
of treacherous dealing (other contemporary Protestant evidence says
nothing of treachery); at all events, on May 10 the preachers were
outlawed for non-appearance to stand their trial. The Brethren, "the
whole multitude with their preachers," says Knox, who were in Perth were
infuriated, and, after a sermon from the Reformer, wrecked the church,
sacked the monasteries, and, says Knox, denounced death against any
priest who celebrated Mass (a circumstance usually ignored by our
historians), at the same time protesting, "We require nothing but liberty
of conscience"!

On May 31 a composition was made between the Regent and the insurgents,
whom Argyll and James Stewart promised to join if the Regent broke the
conditions. Henceforth the pretext that she had broken faith was made
whenever it seemed convenient, while the Congregation permitted itself a
godly liberty in construing the terms of treaties. A "band" was signed
for "the destruction of idolatry" by Argyll, James Stewart, Glencairn,
and others; and the Brethren scattered from Perth, breaking down altars
and "idols" on their way home. Mary of Guise had promised not to leave a
French garrison in Perth. She did leave some Scots in French pay, and on
this slim pretext of her treachery, Argyll and James Stewart proclaimed
the Regent perfidious, deserted her cause, and joined the crusade against
"idolatry."

NOTE.

It is far from my purpose to represent Mary of Guise as a kind of
stainless Una with a milk-white lamb. I am apt to believe that she
caused to be forged a letter, which she attributed to Arran. See my
'John Knox and the Reformation,' pp. 280, 281, where the evidence is
discussed. But the critical student of Knox's chapters on these events,
generally accepted as historical evidence, cannot but perceive his
personal hatred of Mary of Guise, whether shown in thinly veiled hints
that Cardinal Beaton was her paramour; or in charges of treacherous
breach of promise, which rest primarily on his word. Again, that "the
Brethren" wrecked the religious houses of Perth is what he reports to a
lady, Mrs Locke; that "the rascal multitude" was guilty is the tale he
tells "to all Europe" in his History. I have done my best to compare
Knox's stories with contemporary documents, including his own letters.
These documents throw a lurid light on his versions of events, as given
in this part of his History, which is merely a partisan pamphlet of
autumn 1559. The evidence is criticised in my 'John Knox and the
Reformation,' pp. 107-157 (1905). Unhappily the letter of Mary of Guise
to Henri II., after the outbreak at Perth, is missing from the archives
of France.

CHAPTER XIX. THE GREAT PILLAGE.

The revolution was now under weigh, and as it had begun so it continued.
There was practically no resistance by the Catholic nobility and gentry:
in the Lowlands, apparently, almost all were of the new persuasion. The
Duc de Chatelherault might hesitate while his son, the Protestant Earl of
Arran, who had been in France as Captain of the Scots Guard, was escaping
into Switzerland, and thence to England; but, on Arran's arrival there,
the Hamiltons saw their chance of succeeding to the crown in place of the
Catholic Mary. The Regent had but a small body of professional French
soldiers. But the other side could not keep their feudal levies in the
field, and they could not coin the supplies of church plate which must
have fallen into their hands, until they had seized the Mint at
Edinburgh, so money was scarce with them. It was plain to Knox and
Kirkcaldy of Grange, and it soon became obvious to Maitland of
Lethington, who, of course, forsook the Regent, that aid from England
must be sought,--aid in money, and if possible in men and ships.

Meanwhile the reformers dealt with the ecclesiastical buildings of St
Andrews as they had done at Perth, Knox urging them on by his sermons. We
may presume that the boys broke the windows and images with a sanctified
joy. A mutilated head of the Redeemer has been found in a _latrine_ of
the monastic buildings. As Commendator, or lay Prior, James Stewart may
have secured the golden sheath of the arm-bone of the Apostle, presented
by Edward I., and the other precious things, the sacred plate of the
Church in a fane which had been the Delphi of Scotland. Lethington
appears to have obtained most of the portable property of St Salvator's
College except that beautiful monument of idolatry, the great silver mace
presented by Kennedy, the Founder, work of a Parisian silversmith, in
1461: this, with maces of rude native work, escaped the spoilers. The
monastery of the Franciscans is now levelled with the earth; of the
Dominicans' chapel a small fragment remains. Of the residential part of
the abbey a house was left: when the lead had been stripped from the roof
of the church it became a quarry.

"All churchmen's goods were spoiled and reft from them . . . for every
man for the most part that could get anything pertaining to any churchmen
thought the same well-won gear," says a contemporary Diary. Arran
himself, when he arrived in Scotland, robbed a priest of all that he had,
for which Chatelherault made compensation.

By the middle of June the Regent was compelled to remove almost all her
French soldiers out of Fife. Perth was evacuated. The abbey of Scone
and the palace were sacked. The Congregation entered Edinburgh: they
seem to have found the monasteries already swept bare, but they seized
Holyrood, and the stamps at the Mint. The Regent proclaimed that this
was flat rebellion, and that the rebels were intriguing with England.

Knox denied it, in the first part of his History (in origin a
contemporary tract written in the autumn), but the charge was true, and
Knox and Kirkcaldy were, since June, the negotiators. Already his party
were offering Arran (the heir of the crown after Mary) as a husband for
Elizabeth, who saw him but rejected his suit. Arran's father,
Chatelherault, later openly deserted the Regent (July 1). The death of
Henri II., wounded in a tournament, did not accelerate the arrival of
French reinforcements for the Regent. The weaker Brethren, however,
waxed weary; money was scarce, and on July 24, the Congregation evacuated
Edinburgh and Leith, after a treaty which they misrepresented, broke, and
accused the Regent of breaking. {111a}

Knox visited England, about August 1, but felt dissatisfied with his
qualification for diplomacy. Nothing, so far, was gained from Elizabeth,
save a secret supply of 3000 pounds. On the other hand, fresh French
forces arrived at Leith: the place was fortified; the Regent was again
accused of perfidy by the perfidious; and on October 21 the Congregation
proclaimed her deposition on the alleged authority of her daughter, now
Queen of France, whose seal they forged and used in their documents. One
Cokky was the forger; he saw Arran use the seal on public papers. {111b}
Cokky had made a die for the coins of the Congregation--a crown of
thorns, with the words _Verbum Dei_. Leith, manned by French soldiers,
was, till in the summer of 1560 it surrendered to the Congregation and
their English allies, the centre of Catholic resistance.

In November the Congregation, after a severe defeat, fled in grief from
Edinburgh to Stirling, where Knox reanimated them, and they sent
Lethington to England to crave assistance. Lethington, who had been in
the service of the Regent, is henceforth the central figure of every
intrigue. Witty, eloquent, subtle, he was indispensable, and he had one
great ruling motive, to unite the crowns and peoples of England and
Scotland. Unfortunately he loved the crafty exercise of his dominion
over men's minds for its own sake, and when, in some inscrutable way, he
entered the clumsy plot to murder Darnley, and knew that Mary could prove
his guilt, his shiftings and changes puzzle historians. In Scotland he
was called Michael Wily, that is, Macchiavelli, and "the necessary evil."

In his mission to England Lethington was successful. By December 21 the
English diplomatist, Sadleyr, informed Arran that a fleet was on its way
to aid the Congregation, who were sacking Paisley Abbey, and issuing
proclamations in the names of Francis and Mary. The fleet arrived while
the French were about to seize St Andrews (January 23, 1560), and the
French plans were ruined. The Regent, who was dying, found shelter in
Edinburgh Castle, which stood neutral. On February 27, 1560, at Berwick,
the Congregation entered into a regular league with England, Elizabeth
appearing as Protectress of Scotland, while the marriage of Mary and
Francis endured.

Meanwhile, owing to the Huguenot disturbances in France (such as the
Tumult of Amboise, directed against the lives of Mary's uncles the
Cardinal and Duc de Guise), Mary and Francis could not help the Regent,
and Huntly, a Catholic, presently, as if in fear of the western clans,
joined the Congregation. Mary of Guise had found the great northern
chief treacherous, and had disgraced him, and untrustworthy he continued
to be. On May 7 the garrison of Leith defeated with heavy loss an Anglo-
Scottish attack on the walls; but on June 16 the Regent made a good end,
in peace with all men. She saw Chatelherault, James Stewart, and the
Earl Marischal; she listened patiently to the preacher Willock; she bade
farewell to all, and died, a notable woman, crushed by an impossible
task. The garrison of Leith, meanwhile, was starving on rats and
horseflesh: negotiations began, and ended in the Treaty of Edinburgh
(July 6, 1560).

This Treaty, as between Mary, Queen of France and Scotland, on one hand,
and England on the other, was never ratified by Mary Stuart: she appears
to have thought that one clause implied her abandonment of all her claims
to the English succession, typified by her quartering of the Royal
English arms on her own shield. Thus there never was nor could be amity
between her and her sister and her foe, Elizabeth, who was justly
aggrieved by her assumption of the English arms, while Elizabeth
quartered the arms of France. Again, the ratification of the Treaty as
regarded Mary's rebels depended on their fulfilling certain clauses
which, in fact, they instantly violated.

Preachers were planted in the larger town, some of which had already
secured their services; Knox took Edinburgh. "Superintendents,"--by no
means bishops--were appointed, an order which soon ceased to exist in the
Kirk: their duties were to wander about in their provinces,
superintending and preaching. By request of the Convention (which was
crowded by persons not used to attend), some preachers drew up, in four
days, a Confession of Faith, on the lines of Calvin's rule at Geneva:
this was approved and passed on August 17. The makers of the document
profess their readiness to satisfy any critic of any point "from the
mouth of God" (out of the Bible), but the pace was so good that either no
criticism was offered or it was very rapidly "satisfied." On August 24
four acts were passed in which the authority of "The Bishop of Rome" was
repudiated. All previous legislation, not consistent with the new
Confession, was rescinded. Against celebrants and attendants of the Mass
were threatened (1) confiscation and corporal punishment; (2) exile; and
(3) for the third offence, Death. The death sentence is not known to
have been carried out in more than one or two cases. (Prof. Hume-Brown
writes that "the penalties attached to the breach of these enactments"
(namely, the abjuration of Papal jurisdiction, the condemnation of all
practices and doctrines contrary to the new creed, and of the celebration
of Mass in Scotland) "were those approved and sanctioned by the example
of every country in Christendom." But not, surely, for the same
offences, such as "the saying or hearing of Mass"?--' History of
Scotland,' ii. 71, 72: 1902.) Suits in ecclesiastical were removed into
secular courts (August 29).

In the Confession the theology was that of Calvin. Civil rulers were
admitted to be of divine institution, their duty is to "suppress
idolatry," and they are not to be resisted "when doing that which
pertains to their charge." But a Catholic ruler, like Mary, or a
tolerant ruler, as James VI. would fain have been, apparently may be
resisted for his tolerance. Resisted James was, as we shall see,
whenever he attempted to be lenient to Catholics.

The Book of Discipline, by Knox and other preachers, never was ratified
by the Estates, as the Confession of Faith had been. It made admirable
provisions for the payment of preachers and teachers, for the
Universities, and for the poor; but somebody, probably Lethington, spoke
of the proposals as "devout imaginations." The Book of Discipline
approved of what was later accepted by the General Assembly, The Book of
Common Order in Public Worship. This book was not a stereotyped Liturgy,
but it was a kind of guide to the ministers in public prayers: the
minister may repeat the prayers, or "say something like in effect." On
the whole, he prayed "as the Spirit moved him," and he really seems to
have been regarded as inspired; his prayers were frequently political
addresses. To silence these the infatuated policy of Charles I. thrust
the Laudian Liturgy on the nation.

The preachers were to be chosen by popular election, after examination in
knowledge and as to morals. There was to be no ordination "by laying on
of hands." "Seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we
deem not necessary"; but, if the preachers were inspired, the miracle had
not ceased, and the ceremony was soon reinstated. Contrary to Genevan
practice, such festivals as Christmas and Easter were abolished. The
Scottish Sabbath was established in great majesty. One "rag of Rome" was
retained, clerical excommunication--the Sword of Church Discipline. It
was the cutting off from Christ of the excommunicated, who were handed
over to the devil, and it was attended by civil penalties equivalent to
universal boycotting, practical outlawry, and followed by hell fire:
"which sentence, lawfully pronounced on earth, is ratified in heaven."
The strength of the preachers lay in this terrible weapon, borrowed from
the armoury of Rome.

Private morals were watched by the elders, and offenders were judged in
kirk-sessions. Witchcraft, Sabbath desecration, and sexual laxities were
the most prominent and popular sins. The mainstay of the system is the
idea that the Bible is literally inspired; that the preachers are the
perhaps inspired interpreters of the Bible, and that the country must
imitate the old Hebrew persecution of "idolaters," that is, mainly
Catholics. All this meant a theocracy of preachers elected by the
populace, and governing the nation by their General Assembly in which
nobles and other laymen sat as elders. These peculiar institutions came
hot from Geneva, and the country could never have been blessed with them,
as we have observed, but for that instrument of Providence, Cardinal
Beaton. Had he disposed of himself and Scotland to Henry VIII. (who
would not have tolerated Presbyterian claims for an hour), Scotland would
not have received the Genevan discipline, and the Kirk would have groaned
under bishops.

The Reformation supplied Scotland with a class of preachers who were pure
in their lives, who were not accessible to bribes (a virtue in which they
stood almost alone), who were firm in their faith, and soon had learning
enough to defend it; who were constant in their parish work, and of whom
many were credited with prophetic and healing powers. They could
exorcise ghosts from houses, devils from men possessed.

The baldness of the services, the stern nature of the creed, were
congenial to the people. The drawbacks were the intolerance, the
spiritual pretensions of the preachers to interference in secular
affairs, and the superstition which credited men like Knox, and later,
Bruce, with the gifts of prophecy and other miraculous workings, and
insisted on the burning of witches and warlocks, whereof the writer knows
scarcely an instance in Scotland before the Reformation.

The pulpit may be said to have discharged the functions of the press (a
press which was all on one side). When, in 1562, Ninian Winzet, a
Catholic priest and ex-schoolmaster, was printing a controversial
tractate addressed to Knox, the magistrates seized the manuscript at the
printer's house, and the author was fortunate in making his escape. The
nature of the Confession of Faith, and of the claims of the ministers to
interfere in secular affairs, with divine authority, was certain to cause
war between the Crown and the Kirk. That war, whether open and armed, or
a conflict in words, endured till, in 1690, the weapon of excommunication
with civil penalties was quietly removed from the ecclesiastical armoury.
Such were the results of a religious revolution hurriedly effected.

The Lords now sent an embassy to Elizabeth about the time of the death of
Amy Robsart, and while Amy's husband, Robert Dudley, was very dear to the
English queen, to urge, vainly, her marriage with Arran. On December 5,
1560, Francis II. died, leaving Mary Stuart a mere dowager; while her
kinsmen, the Guises, lost power, which fell into the unfriendly hands of
Catherine de Medici. At once Arran, who made Knox his confidant, began
to woo Mary with a letter and a ring. Her reply perhaps increased his
tendency to madness, which soon became open and incurable by the science
of the day.

Here we must try to sketch Mary, _la, Reine blanche_, in her white royal
mourning. Her education had been that of the learned ladies of her age;
she had some knowledge of Latin, and knew French and Italian. French was
to her almost a mother-tongue, but not quite; she had retained her Scots,
and her attempts to write English are, at first, curiously imperfect. She
had lived in a profligate Court, but she was not the wanton of hostile
slanders. She had all the guile of statesmanship, said the English
envoy, Randolph; and she long exercised great patience under daily
insults to her religion and provocations from Elizabeth. She was
generous, pitiful, naturally honourable, and most loyal to all who served
her. But her passions, whether of love or hate, once roused, were
tyrannical. In person she was tall, like her mother, and graceful, with
beautiful hands. Her face was somewhat long, the nose long and straight,
the lips and chin beautifully moulded, the eyebrows very slender, the
eyes of a reddish brown, long and narrow. Her hair was russet, drawn
back from a lofty brow; her smile was captivating; she was rather
fascinating than beautiful; her courage and her love of courage in others
were universally confessed. {118}

In January, 1561, the Estates of Scotland ordered James Stuart, Mary's
natural brother, to visit her in France. In spring she met him, and an
envoy from Huntly (Lesley, later Bishop of Ross), who represented the
Catholic party, and asked Mary to land in Aberdeen, and march south at
the head of the Gordons and certain northern clans. The proposal came
from noblemen of Perthshire, Angus, and the north, whose forces could not
have faced a Lowland army. Mary, who had learned from her mother that
Huntly was treacherous, preferred to take her chance with her brother,
who, returning by way of England, moved Elizabeth to recognise the
Scottish queen as her heir. But Elizabeth would never settle the
succession, and, as Mary refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh,
forbade her to travel home through England.

CHAPTER XX. MARY IN SCOTLAND.

On August 19, 1561, in a dense fog, and almost unexpected and unwelcomed,
Mary landed in Leith. She had told the English ambassador to France that
she would constrain none of her subjects in religion, and hoped to be
unconstrained. Her first act was to pardon some artisans, under censure
for a Robin Hood frolic: her motive, says Knox, was her knowledge that
they had acted "in despite of religion."

The Lord James had stipulated that she might have her Mass in her private
chapel. Her priest was mobbed by the godly; on the following Sunday Knox
denounced her Mass, and had his first interview with her later. In vain
she spoke of her conscience; Knox said that it was unenlightened.
Lethington wished that he would "deal more gently with a young princess
unpersuaded." There were three or four later interviews, but Knox,
strengthened by a marriage with a girl of sixteen, daughter of Lord
Ochiltree, a Stewart, was proof against the queen's fascination. In
spite of insults to her faith offered even at pageants of welcome, Mary
kept her temper, and, for long, cast in her lot with Lethington and her
brother, whose hope was to reconcile her with Elizabeth.

The Court was gay with riotous young French nobles, well mated with
Bothwell, who, though a Protestant, had sided with Mary of Guise during
the brawls of 1559. He was now a man of twenty-seven, profligate,
reckless, a conqueror of hearts, a speaker of French, a ruffian, and well
educated.

In December it was arranged that the old bishops and other high clerics
should keep two-thirds of their revenues, the other third to be divided
between the preachers and the queen, "between God and the devil," says
Knox. Thenceforth there was a rift between the preachers and the
politicians, Lethington and Lord James (now Earl of Mar), on whom Mary
leaned. The new Earl of Mar was furtively created Earl of Murray and
enjoyed the gift after the overthrow of Huntly.

In January 1562 Mary asked for an interview with Elizabeth. Certainly
Lethington hoped that Elizabeth "would be able to do much with Mary in
religion," meaning that, if Mary's claims to succeed Elizabeth were
granted, she might turn Anglican. The request for a meeting, dallied
with but never granted, occupied diplomatists, while, at home, Arran
(March 31) accused Bothwell of training him into a plot to seize Mary's
person. Arran probably told truth, but he now went mad; Bothwell was
imprisoned in the castle till his escape to England in August 1562.
Lethington, in June, was negotiating for Mary's interview with Elizabeth;
Knox bitterly opposed it; the preachers feared that the queen would turn
Anglican, and bishops might be let loose in Scotland. The masques for
Mary's reception were actually being organised, when, in July, Elizabeth,
on the pretext of persecutions by the Guises in France, broke off the
negotiations.

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