Alexander Taylor Innes

“ But like too many of them, he was self-conscious, self-willed and dogmatic; and his transformation in middle life, while it immensely enriched his sympathies as well as his energies, left him unable to put himself in the place of those who retained the views which he had himself held. All his training too, university, priestly and in foreign parts, tended to make him logical overmuch. ”

“ Edinburgh was still doubtful, and the queen regent held the castle; but a truce between her and the lords for six months to the 1st of January 1560 was arranged on the footing that every man there “may have freedom to use his own conscience to the day foresaid”—a freedom interpreted to let Knox and his brethren preach publicly and incessantly. ”

“ On James’s death there was a slight reaction, but the cardinal-archbishop took possession of the weak regent Arran, and in 1546 burned George Wishart. England had by this time rejected the pope’s supremacy. In Scotland by a recent statute it was death even to argue against it; and Knox after Wishart’s execution was fleeing from place to place, when, hearing that certain gentlemen of Fife had slain the cardinal and were in possession of his castle of St Andrews, he gladly joined himself to them. ”

“ Their leaders renounced allegiance to the regent; she ended her not unkindly, but as Knox calls it “unhappy,” life in the castle of Edinburgh; the English troops, after the usual Elizabethan delays and evasions, joined their Scots allies; and the French embarked from Leith. On the 6th of July 1560 a treaty was at last made, nominally between Elizabeth and the queen of France and Scotland; while Cecil instructed his mistress’s plenipotentiaries to agree “that the government of Scotland be granted to the nation of the land.” The revolution was in the meantime complete ”

“ His main work was now really done; for the parliament of 1567 made Moray regent, and Knox was only too glad to have his old friend back in power, though they seem to have differed on the question whether the queen should be allowed to pass into retirement without trial for her husband’s death, as they had differed all along on the question of tolerating her private religion. Knox’s victory had not come too early, for his physical strength soon began to fail. But Mary’s escape in 1568 resulted only in her defeat at Langside, and in a long imprisonment and death in England. ”

“ It was thus during the reformer’s absence that the murder of Darnley, the abduction and subsequent marriage of Mary, the flight of Bothwell, and the imprisonment in Lochleven of the queen, unrolled themselves before the eyes of Scotland. Knox returned in time to guide the Assembly which sat on the 25th of June 1567 in dealing with this unparalleled crisis, and to wind up the revolution by preaching at Stirling on the 9th of July 1567, after Mary’s abdication, at the coronation of the infant king. ”

“ Knox now took a leading part in the great transaction by which the friendship of France was exchanged for that of England. He had one serious difficulty. Before Elizabeth’s accession to the English crown, and after the queen mother in Scotland had disappointed his hopes, he had published a treatise against what he called “The Monstrous Regiment (regimen or government) of Women”; though the despotism of that despotic age was scarcely appreciably worse when it happened to be in female hands. Elizabeth never forgave him ”

“ But he left behind him a “Wholesome Counsel” to Scottish heads of families, reminding them that within their own houses they were “bishop and kings,” and recommending the institution of something like the early apostolic worship in private congregations. Of the Protestant barons Knox, though in exile, seems to have been henceforward the chief adviser; and before the end of 1557 they, under the name of the “Lords of the Congregation,” had entered into the first of the religious “bands” or “covenants” afterwards famous in Scotland. ”

“ A rupture ensued at once, and Knox appeared in Edinburgh on the 2nd of May 1559 “even in the brunt of the battle.” He was promptly “blown to the horn” at the Cross there as an outlaw, but escaped to Dundee, and commenced public preaching in the chief towns of central Scotland. At Perth and at St Andrews his sermons were followed by the destruction of the monasteries, institutions disliked in that age in Scotland alike by the devout and the profane. ”

“ In June 1547 St Andrews yielded to the French fleet, and the prisoners, including Knox, were thrown into the galleys on the Loire, to remain in irons and under the lash for at least nineteen months. Released at last (apparently through the influence of the young English king, Edward VI.) , Knox was appointed one of the licensed preachers of the new faith for England, and stationed in the great garrison of Berwick, and afterwards at Newcastle. In 1551 he seems to have been made a royal chaplain; in 1552 he was certainly offered an English bishopric, which he declined ”

“ All are to help their brethren, “for no man may be permitted to live as best pleaseth him within the Church of God.” And above all things the young and the ignorant are to be instructed, the former by a regular gradation or ladder of parish or elementary schools, secondary schools and universities. ”

“ The History of the Reformation in Scotland, more remarkable than the four Dialogues or interviews, which, though recorded only by Knox, bear the strongest stamp of truth, and do almost more justice to his opponent than to himself. Mary took the aggressive and very soon raised the real question. “Ye have taught the people to receive another religion than their princes can allow ”

“ It was, they said, “a devout imagination.” Seven years afterwards, however, when the contest with the Crown was ended, the kirk was expressly acknowledged as the only Church in Scotland, and jurisdiction given it over all who should attempt to be outsiders; while the preaching of the Evangel and the planting of congregations went on in all the accessible parts of Scotland. Gradually too stipends for most Scottish parishes were assigned to the ministers out of the yearly teinds ”