CHAPTER III
THE TRIUMPH AND END
When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to himself—and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk, took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words—"Of you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear—but not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court. At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings, that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back, while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit, his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of prayer which he is in the habit of using—being far too courageous a soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the salvam fac employed by Knox:—
"Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"
"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example of such prayer?"
"Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"
After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient, returns to the original question.
"But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving any doubt?"
"Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart if His good pleasure be."
"But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that has so prayed before you."
"Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for further declaration I will demand ane question, which is this—Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they commanded others to pray?"
"Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.
"Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane condition with his commandment."
With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception, though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature—the preacher stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington, while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was no just comparison—and this twist and confusion belonged to his period as well as to himself—his grotesque argument has an appearance of reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did not.
The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough, indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal, waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and the great prophet and preacher John Knox.
The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation touching all that went on at the abbey—the gaieties, and the beautiful dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal, unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen. We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life—the continual tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St. Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse of the Knox we know:—
"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."
As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted at all.
During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade, separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady, Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and who had never spared himself during his whole public life.
It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps, will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known. But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray (which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton, the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them. Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so. Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but why did he fly?
Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs; and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite insignificant—one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own, looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial, respectable county family of Bowes—carrying off the two ladies in his wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him! All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.
When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St. Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in extreme misery," he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble, pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities and decoration sacrificed—the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and prophet.
A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said; but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again; and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed to be so, and at all events was tragically unfortunate and in circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name, was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country." "What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity that calls forth all our sympathies, "albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that have to oppose anything against me that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most unreasonable that in my decrepit age I should be compelled to fight against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."
These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed, and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.
The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan" bishops—called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron, and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service—had just been invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St. Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St. Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause—to use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men, for when one of the professors made a play at the marriage of Mr. John Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the Castle of Edinburgh—then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers—and "the Captain with ane or twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.
THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS
Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.
Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege, the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."
"I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St. Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out of it."
Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to the Castle of Edinburgh, which he said would run like a sand-glass—a prediction supposed to be fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more, occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the unseen.
Knox returned to Edinburgh in 1572, in August, the horrors of the struggle between the Queen's party and the King's, as it was called, or Regent's, being for the moment quieted, and the banished citizens returning, although no permanent pacification had yet taken place. He had but a few months remaining of life, and was very weary of the long struggle and longing for rest. "Weary of the world, and daily looking for the resolution of this my earthly tabernacle," he says. And in his last publication dated from St. Andrews, whither the printer Lekprevik had followed him, he heartily salutes and takes good-night of all the faithful, earnestly desiring the assistance of their prayers, "that without any notable scandal to the evangel of Jesus Christ I may end my battle: for," he adds, "as the world is weary of
