History Of Scotland Vol. 2 - Part 2

( Originally Published 1909 )

Petition to the Scottish Parliament on the Part of the Reformers—The Parliament abolish the Roman Catholic Form of Worship, and prohibit the Celebration of the Mass under severe Penalties —The Change of Religion meets no Opposition from the Catholic Bishops and Prelates; but gives great Offence to Francis and Mary, who receive an Envoy from Parliament very coldly —The Church Government of Scotland is arranged on a Calvinistic and Presbyterian Model—The Clergy are meanly provided for, the Nobles retaining the greater Part of the Spoils of the Catholic Church—Debates on this Subject—Character of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland—Destruction of the Ecclesiastical Buildings—Queen Mary returns to Scotland; her Reception at Edinburgh—Intolerant Zeal of the Reformers, expressed in Pageants and by Riots, and by the vehement Exhortations of John Knox—These Disturbances appeased by the Moderation of Lord James Stewart, Prior of Saint Andrew's—Transactions with England—Correspondence between the Queens

THE Scottish parliament met on August 1, 1560. They had never assembled in such numbers, or had affairs of such weight before them; but the most pressing and important business was a petition from the principal Protestants, comprehending the chief lords of the congregation, desiring and urging the parliament to adopt a formal manifesto against the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome, the exorbitance of its power and wealth, and its oppressive restrictions on the liberty of conscience. The parliament, with little hesitation, adopted the declaration, that the domination of the Church of Rome was a usurpation over the liberties and consciences of Christian men; and to make their grounds of dissent from his doctrines still more evident, they promulgated a confession of faith, in which they renounced, in the most express terms, all the tenets by which the Church of Rome is distinguished from other Christian churches, and disowned the whole authority of the Roman pontiffs and the hierarchy of their church. The entire system of ecclesiastical government, both in doctrine and practice, which had existed for so many centuries, and been held inviolably sacred, was by these enactments utterly overthrown, and one altogether new adopted in its stead. The worship of Rome, so long that of the kingdom and of all Europe, was at once denounced as idolatrous; and, following one of Rome's worst tenets, secular punishments were men-aced against those who continued to worship according to the manner of their fathers. The celebration of mass was punished in the first instance by banishment, in the second by a forfeiture of goods and corporal punishment, in the third by death itself.

It is remarkable that the acts of parliament authorizing these great and radical changes in the religion and church government of the country passed without the slightest op-position on the part of the Roman Catholic churchmen, bishops, and mitred abbots, who had still retained seats in the Scottish parliament. They were confounded and over-awed by the unanimity with which the nobility, gentry, and burgesses united in these innovations. As their zeal for the peculiarities of their faith certainly assumed no self-denying form, it is probable no one ecclesiastic might care to draw upon himself, as an individual, the popular hatred, and perhaps the popular vengeance, likely to attend on any one who opposed the general demand for reform; and all might hope that the propositions approved in parliament had every chance of falling to the ground by the king and queen re-fusing their consent.

Neither did they in that respect calculate falsely. Sir James Sandilands, Lord Saint John, being sent to announce the proceedings of this reforming parliament to Francis and Mary, was very coldly received at the court of France, and the ratification of its statutes which he sought to obtain was positively refused. The princes of Lorraine, on the other hand, by their insolent carriage toward the envoy, by their general expressions of resentment, by the levy of troops, and their employing Lord Seton and other active agents in Scotland to draw together those who still favored the Catholic cause, intimated their purpose that the war should be re-kindled in Scotland in the next spring, by the invasion of a French fleet and army. But these intentions were cut short by the sudden death of Francis II., who had acted as much under the influence of his beautiful wife as she herself, their niece, had under that of the princes of Lorraine. Charles IL, the brother and successor of Francis, was entirely governed by the councils of his mother, who, jealous of the ascendency which Mark had acquired over her deceased husband, avenged herself, now that she had the power in her hands, by so many marks of slight and contempt, that the younger queen-dowager, overwhelmed with the reverse of fortune, retired entirely from the court, and took up her residence in solitude at Rheims.

The Scottish Protestants were rejoiced at the timely change which destroyed all possibility of their plans of reformation being disturbed by the power of France, and proceeded with full assurance of success to complete the model of their church government. The tenets of the celebrated Calvin, respecting ecclesiastical rule, were selected, probably because they were considered most diametrically opposite to those of Rome. This form of church government had been established in the city of Geneva, where John Knox and other reformed teachers pursued their theological studies, and it was earnestly recommended by them to the imitation of their countrymen.

This modification of the reformed religion differed in its religious tenets but little from that of the Lutherans, and still less from that which was finally adopted in England.

But the Presbyterian system was, in its church government, widely distinguished from that of all countries which, renouncing the religious doctrines of the Roman clergy, had retained their hierarchy, whether in whole or in part. In vented in a republican country, the Presbyterian government was entirely unconnected with and independent of the civil government of the State, and owned no earthly head. The Church was governed in the extreme resort by the general assembly of the Church, being a convocation of the clergy by representation, together with a certain number of the laity, admitted to sit and vote with them, as representing the Christian community, under the name of lay elders. In the original sketch of the Scottish Church discipline, provision was made for certain persons named superintendents, who were intrusted, as their name implies, with the spiritual power of bishops. A digest of thé forms of the Church, called the Book of Discipline, was willingly received and subscribed to by the leaders of the congregation, the lay reformers offering no objection to anything which the preachers proposed, whether respecting the doctrines of the Church or the forms by which it was to be governed.

But though the clergy and laity went thus far hand in hand, there was a point at which their views and interests parted. This was upon the mode in which the revenue of the Church of Rome should be disposed of. No less than one-half of the land in the kingdom of Scotland, and that by much the more valuable, had, one way or other, been engrossed by the popish clergy; and the lay nobles, out-stripped by them in wealth, and often in court favor, envied their large revenues at least as much as they abhorred their doctrines and disliked their persons. The hope of engrossing the principal share in so rich a plunder was probably looked forward to by the nobles as a compensation for the destruction of the old form of church government, which presented so many good places of retreat for sons, legitimate or natural, and near relations otherwise not easily provided for in so poor a country. Having seen this source of influence destroyed, they were desirous in exchange to secure the funds out of which it had arisen; and their surprise and displeasure were great when the Presbyterian clergy preferred their claim for a share. Many of the aristocracy had already secured portions of the patrimony of the Church by feus, leases, and other modes of alienation exercised by the Catholic clergy, who, being still in lawful possession of the lands, were easily induced to sell or otherwise dispose of them to their lay friends; and without meaning to bring a charge of self-intended greediness against the whole body of Scottish laymen, distinguished as promoters of the reformation, we may fairly say that there was a large majority whose zeal for their own interest equalled at least that which they felt for the Protestant doctrines.

Thus determined on their own private views, it was with the utmost reluctance the Scottish statesmen were induced to listen to a proposal, framed on a report of the reformed clergy, that the church revenues should be divided into three shares or portions, to be applied : 1. To the decent support of the clergy; 2, to the encouragement of learning, by the foundation of schools and colleges; and, 3, to the support of the poor of the realm. Maitland of Lethington asked, with a sneer, whether the nobility of Scotland were now to turn hod-bearers, to toil at the building of the kirk. Knox answered, with his characteristic determination, that he who felt dishonored in aiding to build the house of God would do well to look to the security of the foundations of his own. But the nobles finally voted the plan to be a "devout imagination, a well-meant but visionary system, which could not possibly be carried into execution." At a later period the parliament were in a manner shamed into making some appointment for the clergy, payable out of the tithes which either remained in the hands of the bishops and abbots of the Scottish Church, or had fallen into the hands of lay impropriators.

By this arrangement the bishops, abbots, etc., were allowed to subsist as an order of proprietors, although deprived of all ecclesiastical dignity or office in the reformed church; and their possession of the church revenues afforded the means by which the ecclesiastical possessions were transmitted to the lay nobility by sale, lease, and other modes of alienation. The general regulation of parliament bore, that the church property, whether in the hands of the bishops or of lay titulars, as the lay impropriators were called, should be liable to be taxed to the extent of one-third of their amount, for the support of the Protestant clergy ; and a committee was appointed to modify, as it was called, the especial stipends payable in every individual case, reserving by far the greater proportion of the fund in reversion to the prelatic possessor or lay titular. The obvious selfishness of these enactments gave just offence to the clergy. John Knox, deeply incensed at the avarice of the nobility, pronounced from the pulpit of Edinburgh, that two parts of the church revenue were bestowed on the devil, and a third divided between God and the devil. A hundred marks Scottish (not six pounds sterling) was the usual allowance modified to the minister of a parish : some parishes were endowed with a stipend of thrice that amount; and the whole sum allowed for the maintenance of the national Church, consisting of a thousand parishes, was about three thousand. five hundred pounds a year, which paltry endowments were besides irregularly paid, and very much be-grudged. When it is considered. how liberal the ancient kings and governors of Scotland had been to the Church of Rome, it appears that in this point, as in all others of doctrine and discipline, the Scottish reformers had held a line of conduct diametrically opposite to that pursued by their Catholic ancestors.

This unkindly parsimony toward themselves was the more acutely felt by the Protestant preachers, as the principal lords of the congregation, and the Lord James of Saint Andrew's himself, were the persons by whom these miser-able stipends were modified. " Who would have thought," said the ardent Knox, "that when Joseph ruled in Egypt, his brethren would have come down thither for corn, and returned with their sacks empty? Men would have thought that Pharaoh's storehouse would have been emptied ere the sons of Jacob were placed in risk of starving for hunger."

Wisheart of Pittarrow, a zealous reformer, was appointed comptroller, to levy and pay the allotted stipends; but as the poor ministers complained to heaven and earth that they were not able to obtain payment even of the small pittance allowed them, it became a common phrase to bless the good laird of Pittarrow as a sincere professor, but bid the devil receive the comptroller as a greedy extortioner.

Such were the original regulations of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which has now subsisted, with short interruptions, for more than three centuries, and set an ex-ample, with few exceptions, of zealous good men actually submitting to that indigence which had been only talked of by the monks and friars, and laboring in their important duties for conscience' sake, not for gain. Their morals are equal to those of any church in the world, and superior to most. As in the usual course of their studies they are early transferred from the university to the pulpit, the Scottish Church has not produced so many deep scholars or profound divines as those of the sister kingdom, whose colleges and fellowships afford room and opportunity for study till the years of full intellect are attained. On the other hand, few instances occur in which a Scottish minister does not possess a scholar-like portion both of profane learning and theological science. In the earlier days of the Church the Presbyterian clergy were hurried into some extremes, from their ardent desire to oppose diametrically their doctrines and practice to those of Rome, when it had been better to have conformed to the ancient practices. Because the Catholic Church demanded a splendid ritual, prescribed special forms of prayer, and occupied superb temples, the Scottish kirk neglected the decencies of worship, and the solemn attitude of devotion which all men assume in the closet; and the vulgar audience reprobated the preachers who showed so much anxiety to discharge their office as to commit their discourses to writing previous to delivering them. Because the Catholic priests easily granted absolution for such offences as their hearers brought in secret to the confessional, the kirk insisted upon performance of public and personal penance, even in cases which were liable to harden the feelings of the criminal, to offend the delicacy of the congregation, and to lead to worse consequences. Instead of the worldly pomp and circumstance which the Church of Rome assembled around her, the reformed preachers could only obtain eminence by observing an austere system of morals themselves, and exacting the same from others a practice which in extreme cases might occasionally lead to hypocrisy and spiritual tyranny. Lastly, as they disclaimed all connection with the State, the Scottish divines could not be charged, like the papist clergymen, with seeking the applause of monarchs, and a high place in courts; but they cannot in the early ages of the Church be acquitted of interfering with the civil government in cases where they pretended that religion was connected with it (a connection easily discovered, if the preacher desired to find it), and so dedicating to politics the time and reasoning which were due to religion. The current of ages, however, and the general change of manners, have in a great measure removed those errors, imputable to the Scottish Church, and incidental to every human institution, which arose from superabundant zeal; and it is hoped and believed that, while some excesses have been corrected and restrained, it is, as a national church establishment, still animated by the more refined and purer qualities of fervid devotion.

The fabric of the Roman Church having now been destroyed, unless in so far as its ruins afforded refuge to abbots in commendam, lay impropriators, and other titles given to such nobles as had enriched themselves at the expense of the establishment, the reformers were resolved to destroy those splendid monuments of ancient devotion, which, in their eyes, had incurred condemnation from having been the scene of a false or idolatrous worship. The work was in-trusted to the agents of the zealots among the party, who found ready assistance everywhere from a disorderly rabble, to whom devastation was in itself a pleasure. The basest covetousness actuated their superiors, who frequently lent ' their countenance to the destructive proceedings for the sake of the paltry gain which could be derived from the sale of the sacred vessels, bells, lead, timber, and whatever of the other materials could be turned to profit. Thus, by the blind fury of the poor, and the sordid avarice of the higher classes, "abbeys, cathedrals, churches, libraries, records, and even the sepulchres of the dead," says the eloquent Robertson, "perished in one common ruin." It is said John Knox him-self justified this unlimited destruction by the noted saying, "Pull down the nests, and the rooks will fly off!" an expression, the politic meaning of which could only apply to the cloisters of the monks and friars. Other ill-instructed preachers gave encouragement to devastation, by quoting the examples afforded in the Old Testament of the destruction of places in which idolatrous rites had been used: a manifest misapplication of Scripture, and one which, pushed to its conclusion, would have seemed to warrant an exterminating war against those who adhered to the old religion, as well as against the destruction of sacred buildings.

The only rational cause assigned for this havoc was, that so long as ancient shrines, images long venerated, relics averred to have wrought miracles, and similar objects of superstitious worship, were left in the eyes of the people, they might have proved the means of occasioning a relapse to the ancient faith. But thus far the object might have been obtained by following the example of the reformers in England, who defaced altars, removed images, and burned the relics of popery, to show that there was no power in them to help themselves, but spared for a better and more rational course of worship the noble edifices in which they were installed. In scourging the buyers and sellers- out of the temple, no violence was menaced against the sacred edifice itself, though it had incurred profanation:

The ruin of the Scottish ecclesiastical buildings was, however, almost universal. The citizens of Glasgow alone set an example of rational moderation in Scotland. The mechanics of that city, under command of their deacon, took arms to resist the destruction of their venerable cathedral, at the same time offering their permission and assistance to destroy whatever could be made the object of idolatrous worship, but insisting that the edifice itself should be left uninjured; and, notwithstanding their having succeeded in saving this ancient fabric, we have never heard that popery has regained its footing in the ancient diocese of Saint Mungo.

Having thus entirely new-modelled the system of church government and of national worship, the parliament of Scotland resolved to recall from France the descendant of their monarchs, whose connection with that country was broken off by the death of her husband; naturally supposing that Mary, alone, and unsupported by French power, could not be suspected of meditating any interruption to the new order of religious affairs so unanimously adopted by her subjects.

With this view, the lord prior of St. Andrew's, the queen's illegitimate brother, and a principal agent in all the great changes which had taken place since the commencement of the regency of Mary of Guise, was despatched to Paris to negotiate the return of his royal sister. The Catholics of Scotland sent an ambassador on their own part: this was Lesley, bishop of Ross, celebrated for his fidelity to Mary during her afflictions, and known as a historian of credit and eminence. He made a secret proposal, on the part of the Catholics, that the young queen should land in the north of Scotland, and place herself under the guardianship of the Earl of Huntley, who, it was boasted, would conduct her in triumph to the capital at the head of an army of twenty thousand men, and restore, by force of arms, the ancient form of religion. Mary refused to listen to advice which must have made her return to her kingdom a signal for civil war, and acquiesced in the proposals delivered by the prior of St. Andrew's, on the part of the parliament. The young queen took this prudent step with the advice of her uncles of Guise, who, fallen from the towering hopes they had formerly entertained, were now chiefly desirous to place her in her native kingdom, without opposition or civil war, in which the proposals of the bishop of Ross must have immediately plunged her.

In 1561, Mary set sail for the country in which she was to assume a crown entwined with many thorns. Elizabeth had refused her a safe-conduct; and it is said that the English ships of war had orders to intercept her. The widowed queen of France took a lingering and painful farewell of the fair country over which she had so lately reigned, with expressions of the deepest sorrow. A mist hid her galleys from the English fleet; and she arrived safely at Leith on the 19th of August, in the aforesaid year.

Her subjects crowded to the beach to welcome her with acclamations; but the preparations made for her reception had been too hasty to cover over the nakedness and poverty of the land. The queen, scarcely nineteen years old, wept when she saw the wretched hackneys, still-more miserably accoutred, which were provided to carry her and her ladies to Holyrood, and compared them in her thoughts to the fair palfreys with brilliant housings which had waited her commands in France. Upon her landing, her subjects, softened with the recollection of her early misfortunes, charmed with the excellence of her mien, the delicacy of her unrivalled beauty, the vigor of her blooming years, and the acuteness of her wit, were almost enraptured with joy. Some part of the reception afforded by their loyal zeal was well meant, but certainly ill chosen. Two or three hundred violinists, apparently amateur performers, held a concert all night be-low her windows, and prevented her getting an hour's sleep after the fatigues of the sea. Mary, though suffering under the effects of this dire serenade, professed to receive the compliment of these "honest men of the town of Edinburgh" as it was intended, and even ventured to hint a wish that the concert might be repeated.

The circumstance of the queen differing from the greater part of her subjects in religion was not, however, forgotten; and it seems very early to have been considered as a crime on the part of Queen Mary, by the more zealous of her Protestant subjects, that she did not at once, and forever, relinquish the Catholic religion, in which she had been bred up, and against which, in all probability, she had never heard a single word of argument till the first moment she touched Scottish ground. It seems to have occurred to no one that a sincere conversion could only be the result of argument and instruction, and that a hasty change of her early faith could only have indicated that the young queen was altogether indifferent on a subjest so serious.

Her zealous subjects, whose hatred to popery had become a passion, tried the effect of reproaches and menaces upon the young queen, without waiting for the slower course of argument and persuasion. Pageants were presented before her, calculated to throw dishonor and reproach on the religion which she professed; and shows, made for the ostensible purpose of honoring the queen, were so conducted as to cast derision on the Catholic worship. As Mary made her solemn entry into Edinburgh, she was conducted under a triumphal arch, when a boy came out of a hole, as it were from heaven, and presented, to her a Bible, a psalter, and the keys of the gates, with some verses, now lost, but which we may be sure were of a Protestant tendency. The rest of the pageant exhibited a terrible personification of the vengeance of God upon idolaters; and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, were represented as destroyed in the time of their idolatrous sacrifice. The devisers of this expressive and well-chosen emblem, intended to have had a priest burned on the altar (in effigy, it is to be hoped), in the act of elevating the Host; but the Earl of Huntley prevented that completion of the pageant. These are the reports of Randolph, envoy of England, who was present on the occasion, and who seems to have felt that by such proceedings the Protestants were acting too precipitately and overshooting their own purpose.

These were but innuendoes of the dislike felt toward the queen's religion : the following incidents showed plainly that the more violent reformers were determined that their sovereign should not enjoy that toleration for which they them-selves had, not many years since, been humble petitioners. The prior of St. Andrew's, when he went over to France, had been warned by the preachers that to permit the importation of one mass into the kingdom of Scotland would be more fatal than an army of ten thousand men. It is probable, however, that he did not hesitate to promise that the queen should have the free exercise of her religion, and she prepared accordingly to take advantage of the stipulation.

But when, on the Sunday after Mary's landing, preparations were made to say mass in the royal chapel, the reformers said to each other, "Shall that idol the mass again take place within this kingdom? it shall not." The young master of Lindsey, showing in youth the fierceness of spirit which animated him in after life, called out, in the courtyard of the royal palace, that "the idolatrous priest should die the death according to God's law." The prior of St. Andrew's with great difficulty appeased the tumult, and protected the priests, whose blood would otherwise have been mingled with their sacrifice. But unwilling to avow an intention so unpopular he was obliged to dissemble with the reformers; and while he allowed that he stood with his sword drawn at the door of the chapel, he pretended that he did not do so to protect the priest, but to prevent any Scottish man from entering to witness or partake in the idolatrous ceremony.

It was immediately after this riot, and the display of the insulting and offensive pageant before mentioned, that the young queen had the first of her celebrated interviews with John Knox, in which he knocked at her heart so rudely as to cause her to shed tears. The stern apostle of presbytery was indeed unsparing-of rebuke, without sufficiently recollecting that previous conviction is necessary before reproof can work repentance; and that, unless he had possessed powers of inspiration, or the gift of working miracles, he could not have, by mere assertion, converted a Catholic from the doctrines, however false, which she had believed in from her earliest childhood. Even Randolph, the English envoy, says of him, "I commend better the success of his doctrine and preachings than the manner of them, though I acknowledge his doctrine to be sound. His daily prayer for her is, that God will turn her heart, now obstinate against God and his truth ; and if his holy will be otherwise that he will strengthen the hearts and hands of the chosen and elect stoutly to withstand the rage of tyrants." Such orisons were little likely to conciliate the sovereign who was the object of them. Yet Knox afterward expressed remorse that he had dealt too favorably with the queen, and had not been more vehement in opposing the mass at its first setting up; according to the opinion of those who thought that a sovereign may and ought to be resisted in an idolatrous form of worship, or, in other words, excluded from the tolerance which her subjects claim as their dearest privilege.

Tumults arose at Stirling on the same score of the queen's private worship: but though Mary felt the injury, and ex-pressed her sense of it by weeping and sorrowing, yet she wisely passed it over, and trusted to the influence of the prior, her brother, who, by his great interest among the wiser sort of the reformers, by proclamations banishing the monks and friars, and other popular steps in favor of the reformed religion, procured a reluctant connivance at the celebration of the Catholic rites in the chapel royal. Mary, indeed, employed her brother as her first minister in all affairs, and especially in restoring quiet on the borders, where he executed many freebooters, and left England no cause of complaint.