Chapter XIII · (continued 2)

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 301, 307, 312, 330; ♦Lesly’s History Of Scotland, pages 134, 136, 140; Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIV., chapter 33.

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

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 322‒323, 324; Diurnal of Occurrents, page 11.

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

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

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

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume II., pages 44, 273‒274, 167‒168, 305‒306.

² Ibid., Volume II., pages 31, 45, 148‒149, 274‒275.

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

¹ Ibid., Volume II., pages 21‒23; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., page 47.

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

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

“Howbeit I dar not plainlie spouse a wife,

Yet concubeins I haif had four or five,

And to my sons I have given rich rewards,

And all my daughters maryit upon lairds.”

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 149‒150, 173; Volume II., pages 15, 17, 28, 35, 42, 48, 51, 55, 65, 81‒88, 89‒118, 128, 153‒156, 301‒303. Register of the Great Seal, Book 26; Acts of the Lords of Council and Session, Book 36; Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, Volume I., page 201; Gordon’s History of the Earldom of Sutherland, pages 172, 478; W. Fraser’s Stirlings of Keir, pages 39, 40, 378.

Again Diligence announces—

“From this day forth our barons temporall

Sail na mair mix thair noble ancient blood

With bastard bairns of stait spirituall.”¹

¹ Lindsay’s Poetical Works, Volume II., pages 88, 119.

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

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

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

¹ Viscount Amberley’s Analysis of Religious Belief, Volume I., pages 98‒108. Hereafter it will come within my purpose to give a more detailed criticism of this work, especially the second Book, which deals with the Religious sentiment itself. Although the candour, the talents, the industry, and the literary culture of the author are worthy of all admiration, it must be admitted that his elaborate performance lacks the logical grasp of principles and ideas which characterise the highest minds, and that before all other qualifications is necessary to one who aspires to revolutionise the religions and theologies of the human race. It may also be stated that his sympathies were rather feeble to enable him to fathom the real sufferings and the inner pangs of the heart of mankind, or to reach and faithfully represent the deepest chords which have throbbed in the soul of humanity. This weakness of sympathy is most apparent in his treatment of Jesus Christ. He devotes about 240 pages to an account of Jesus and his sayings; but even from the standpoint of the school to which he belongs, the criticism is uncommonly contorted and flippant. Sometimes he condescends to sneer at the ignorance of Jesus​—“His intellectual weakness, his irrational prejudices,” and so on. He was evidently much offended because the moral doctrines of Jesus did not assign more respect to wealth and rich men​—it was a sad error on the part of Jesus not to extol them; since from these and such-like reasons the author is led to the conclusion that Jesus had only a very imperfect sense of justice, “crude ideas of social connections,” and no proper esteem for the aristocracy. The work in its historical character is also defective in consecutive continuity and in the appreciation of internal sequence. Volume I., pages 254‒496.

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

¹ Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume II., pages 28‒29, 396; Montalembert’s Monks of the West, Volume I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 295, 349; Anderson’s Annals of the English Bible, pages 111‒112, 495‒501. 1862.

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

¹ Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 14‒18, Laing’s edition.

² Lorimer’s Life of Hamilton, pages 123‒124.

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

¹ Hunt’s Religious Thought in England, Volume I., page 4; 1870. A copy of Firth’s translation of Hamilton’s treatise is inserted in Knox’s History. Works, Volume I., pages 20, 21‒35.

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

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

¹ Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 36‒40; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., page 341, 342, 370.

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

¹ Brunton and Haig’s Senators of the College of Justice, pages 7, 8; Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 36, 37, 45‒52, 150, 530‒533; Mair’s History of the Scots (Scottish History Society), edited, 1892.

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

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

¹ Tulloch’s Leaders of the Reformation, page 185; Hallam’s Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Volume II., pages 101, 107‒116; Dyer’s Life of Calvin. Compare Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume II., pages 35‒61. 1865.

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

¹ Diurnal of Occurrents, from 1513 to 1575, pages 18‒19. “And also there was sharp inquisition and punishment of heretics in Edinburgh, the king himself assisted thereto. Master Gourlay being adjured before, and Straiton obstinate in his opinions, were burned. The Sheriff of Linlithgow, and Captain James Borthwick, and divers others, fugitives from the law, were convicted for heresy.”​—Lesly’s History Of Scotland, pages 149‒150; Knox, Volume I., pages 56‒60.

² Knox, Volume I., pages 54‒57, 526‒531; M‘Crie’s Life of Knox​—Works, Volume I., pages 317‒323.

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

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

¹ Hamilton Papers, Volume I., pages 20, 22, et seq. 1890.

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

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 1‒7, 10, 14, 19, et seq., and pages 36‒38. The Diurnal of Occurrents says​—“In the month of November there came an English ambassador, with sixteen horse in his train, to infest this realm with heresy, which was then in England among them, but through the grace of God he came no speed but departed with repulse” (page 19).

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

¹ Ibid., Volume V., pages 81‒90, 97.

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

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 117, 129‒133; Sadler’s State Papers, Volume I., pages 15‒17; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 156, 443‒445. Archbishop James Beaton, the cardinal’s predecessor, had also aspired to a cardinal’s hat and the power of legate a latere, but he failed to obtain it. David Beaton was the only Scottish bishop on whom the dignity of a cardinal was bestowed by the undivided Latin Church.

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

¹ Diurnal of Occurrents, page 23; Knox, Volume I., pages 62‒63, 521‒522; Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIV., chapter 55; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., page 154.

² Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume I., page 216; Knox, Volume I., pages 63‒66; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., page 141.

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

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

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 357‒358, et seq.

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

¹ Ibid., pages 370‒371.

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

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 198‒205, 214.

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

¹ Lesly’s History Of Scotland, page 165; Knox, Volume I., pages 86‒88. In the fifth volume of the State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII., there is a list of the Scottish prisoners taken at Solway Moss, in which the value of their property and the names of their hostages are stated (pages 232‒235). See also the Hamilton Papers, Volume I., Appendix to Preface, page 98, pages 307, 311‒313. 1890.

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

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

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

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

¹ Sadler’s State Papers, Volume ♦I., pages 69, 74‒75, 81, 97; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 239‒241.

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

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

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volumes I., II.; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., page 432.

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

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volume II., pages 325‒327. Compare State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 350‒352, 371‒374.

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

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 521‒525; Morton’s Monastic Annals of Teviotdale, pages 36, 100, 243, 301; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, Volume I., page 271, et seq.

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

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volume II., pages 360‒371.

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

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 242‒243, 377, 449‒458, 467, 470‒472, 512; Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., page 142. There is a pretty full account of the plot against the cardinal in an appendix to the fifth volume of Tytler’s History of Scotland, pages 453‒470.

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

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 415, 425; Craufurd’s Officers of State, pages 77, 438.

² Diurnal of Occurrents, Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., page 443.

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

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 117‒118, 523‒527.

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

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 125‒138, 534‒537.

² Buchanan, Book XV., chapter 32; Knox, Volume I., pages 125‒137.

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

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 137‒171; Fox’s Acts and Monuments, pages 632‒♦667; Register of the Privy Council, Volume I., page 20. Wishart produced an English translation of the Swiss Confession of Faith, which was printed after his death.

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

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 147‒174; Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, Volume I., page 201; Tytler’s History of Scotland, Volume V., pages 456‒470.

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

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 560‒561. Spottiswood.

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

¹ Hosack’s Queen Mary, Volume I., page 13. When the citizens of St. Andrews came running to the castle, Knox says they cried​—“What have ye done with my Lord Cardinal? Where is my Lord Cardinal? Have ye slain my Lord Cardinal? Let us see my Lord Cardinal!” And when they were told that he was no more, they cried more eagerly​—“We shall never depart till we see him!” Then his body was shown over the wall “to the faithless multitude, who would not believe before it saw.” Works, Volume I., page 178.