The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (268 page)

The murder of the cardinal-primate at St. Andrews had deprived Affairs of Scotland.

the Scottish catholics of a head, whose severity, courage, and capacity had rendered him extremely formidable to the innovators in religion; and the execution of the laws against heresy began thenceforth to be more remiss. The queen-regent governed the kingdom by prudent and moderate counsels; and as she was not disposed to sacrifice the civil interests of the state to the bigotry or interests of the clergy, she deemed it more expedient to temporize, and to connive at the progress of a doctrine, which she had not power entirely to repress. When informed of the death of Edward, and the accession of Mary to the crown of England, she entertained hopes, that the Scottish reformers, deprived of the countenance which they received from that powerful kingdom, would lose their ardour with their prospect of success, and would gradually return to the faith of their ancestors. But the progress and revolutions of religion are little governed by the usual maxims of civil policy; and the event much disappointed the expectations of the regent. Many of the English preachers terrified with the severity of Mary’s government, took shelter in Scotland, where they found more protection, and a milder administration; and while they propagated their theological tenets, they filled the whole kingdom with a just horror against the cruelties of the bigotted catholics, and showed their disciples the fate, which they must expect, if ever their adversaries should attain an uncontrouled authority over them.

A hierarchy, moderate in its acquisitions of power and riches, may safely grant a toleration to sectaries; and the more it softens the zeal of innovators by lenity and liberty, the more securely will it possess those advantages, which the legal establishments bestow upon it. But where superstition has raised a church to such an exorbitant height as that of Rome, persecution is less the result of bigotry in the priests, than of a necessary policy; and the rigour of law is the only method of repelling the attacks of men, who, besides religious zeal, have so many motives, PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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derived both from public and private interest, to engage them on the side of innovation. But though such overgrown hierarchies may long support themselves by these violent expedients, the time comes, when severities tend only to enrage the new sectaries, and make them break through all bounds of reason and moderation. This crisis was now visibly approaching in Scotland; and whoever considers merely the transactions resulting from it, will be inclined to throw the blame equally on both parties; whoever enlarges his view, and reflects on the situations, will remark the necessary progress of human affairs, and the operation of those principles, which are inherent in human nature.

Some heads of the reformers in Scotland, such as the earl of Reformation in

Argyle, his son lord Lorne, the earls of Morton, and Glencarne, Scotland.

Erskine of Dun, and others, observing the danger to which they were exposed, and desirous to propagate their principles, entered privately into a bond or association; and called themselves the
Congregation
of the Lord, in contradistinction to the established church, which they denominated the congregation of Satan. The tenor of the bond was as follows: “We perceiving how Satan, in his members, the antichrist of our time, do cruelly rage, seeking to overthrow and to destroy the gospel of Christ and his congregation, ought, according to our bounden duty, to strive, in our master’s cause, even unto the death, being certain of the victory in him. We do therefore promise, before the majesty of God and his congregation, that we, by his grace, shall with all diligence continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed word of God and his congregation; and shall labour, by all possible means, to have faithful ministers, truly and purely to minister Christ’s gospel and sacraments to his people: We shall maintain them, nourish them, and defend them, the whole congregation of Christ, and every member thereof, by our whole power, and at the hazard of our lives, against Satan, and all wicked power, who may intend tyranny and trouble against the said congregation: Unto which holy word and congregation we do join ourselves; and we forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan, with all the superstitious abomination and idolatry thereof; and moreover shall declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto, by this faithful promise before God, testified to this congregation by our subscriptions. At Edinburgh, the third of December, 1557.”
g

Had the subscribers of this zealous league been content only to demand a toleration of the new opinions; however incompatible their pretensions might have been with the policy of the church of Rome, they would have had the praise of opposing tyrannical laws, enacted to support an establishment prejudicial to civil society: But it is plain, that they carried their views much farther; and their practice immediately discovered the spirit by which they were actuated. Supported by the authority, which, they thought, belonged to them as the congregation of the Lord, they ordained, that prayers

in the vulgar tongueh
should be used in all the parish churches of the kingdom; and that preaching, and the interpretation of the scriptures should be practised in private houses, till God should move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful and true

ministers.i
Such bonds of association are always the forerunners of rebellion; and this violent invasion of the established religion was the actual commencement of it.

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Before this league was publicly known or avowed, the clergy, alarmed with the progress of the reformation, attempted to recover their lost authority by a violent exercise of power, which tended still farther to augment the zeal and number of their enemies. Hamilton, the primate, seized Walter Mill, a priest of an irreproachable life, who had embraced the new doctrines; and having tried him at St. Andrews, condemned him to the flames for heresy. Such general aversion was entertained against this barbarity, that it was some time before the bishops could prevail on any one to act the part of a civil judge, and pronounce sentence upon Mill; and even after the time of his execution was fixed, all the shops of St. Andrews being shut, no one would sell a rope to tie him to the stake, and the primate himself was obliged to furnish this implement. The man bore the torture with that courage, which, though usual on these occasions, always appears supernatural and astonishing to the multitude. The people, to express their abhorrence against the cruelty of the priests, raised a monument of stones on the place of his execution; and as fast as the stones were removed by order of the clergy, they were again supplied from the voluntary zeal of the populace.
k
It is in vain for men to oppose the severest punishment to the united motives of religion and public applause; and this was the last barbarity of the kind, which the catholics had the power to exercise in Scotland.

Some time after, the people discovered their sentiments in such a manner as was sufficient to prognosticate to the priests the fate, which was awaiting them. It was usual on the festival of St. Giles, the tutelar saint of Edinburgh, to carry in procession the image of that saint; but the protestants, in order to prevent the ceremony, found means, on the eve of the festival, to purloin the statue from the church; and they pleased themselves with imagining the surprise and disappointment of his votaries.

The clergy, however, framed hastily a new image, which, in derision, was called by the people young St. Giles; and they carried it through the streets, attended by all the ecclesiastics in the town and neighbourhood. The multitude abstained from violence so long as the queen-regent continued a spectator, but the moment she retired, they invaded the idol, threw it in the mire, and broke it in pieces. The flight and terror of the priests and friars, who, it was remarked, deserted, in his greatest distress, the object of their worship, was the source of universal mockery and laughter.

Encouraged by all these appearances the congregation proceeded with alacrity in openly soliciting subscriptions to their league; and the death of Mary of England, with the accession of Elizabeth, which happened about this time, contributed to encrease their hopes of final success in their undertaking. They ventured to present a petition to the regent, craving a reformation of the church, and of the
wicked, scandalous,
and
detestable
lives of the prelates and ecclesiastics.l
They framed a petition, which they intended to present to parliament, and in which, after premising, that they could not communicate with the damnable idolatry, and intolerable abuses of the papistical church, they desired, that the laws against heretics, should be executed by the civil magistrate alone, and that the scripture should be the sole rule in judging of heresy.
m

They even petitioned the convocation, and insisted, that prayers should be said in the vulgar tongue, and that bishops should be chosen with the consent of the gentry of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the parishioners.
n
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for her son-in-law, the dauphin, she was, on that as well as other accounts, unwilling to come to extremities with either of them.

But after this concession was obtained, she received orders from France, probably dictated by the violent spirit of her brothers, to proceed with rigour against the reformers, and to restore the royal authority by some signal act of power.
o
She made the more eminent of the protestant teachers be cited to appear before the council at Stirling; but when their followers were marching thither in great multitudes, in order to protect and countenance them, she entertained apprehensions of an insurrection, and, it is said, dissipated the people by a promise,
NOTE [B]
that nothing should be done to the prejudice of the ministers. Sentence, however, was passed, by which all the ministers were pronounced rebels on account of their not appearing. A measure which enraged the people, and made them resolve to oppose the regent’s authority by force of arms, and to proceed to extremities against the clergy of the established religion.

In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he 11th May.

had passed some years in banishment, and where he had

imbibed, from his commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his sect, augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men’s minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion. A priest was so imprudent after this sermon, as to open his repository of images and reliques, and prepare himself to say mass. The audience, exalted to a disposition for any furious enterprize, were as much enraged as if the spectacle had not been quite familiar to them: They attacked the priest with fury, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vases; and left no implement of idolatrous worship, as they termed it, entire or undefaced. They thence proceeded, with additional numbers and augmented rage, to the monasteries of the grey and black friars, which they pillaged in an instant: The Carthusians underwent the same fate: And the populace, not content with robbing and expelling the monks, vented their fury on the buildings which had been the receptacles of such abomination; and in a little time nothing but the walls of these edifices were left standing. The inhabitants of Couper in Fife soon after imitated the example.
q

The queen-regent, provoked at these violences, assembled an Civil wars in

army, and prepared to chastise the rebels. She had about two Scotland.

thousand French under her command, with a few Scottish troops; and being assisted by such of the nobility as were well affected to her, she pitched her camp within ten miles of Perth. Even the earl of Argyle, and lord James Stuart, prior of St. Andrews, the queen’s natural brother, though deeply engaged with the reformers, attended the regent in this enterprise, either because they blamed the fury of the populace, or hoped by their own influence and authority to mediate some agreement between the parties. The congregation, on the other hand, made preparations for defence; and being joined by the earl of Glencarne from the west, and being countenanced by many of the nobility and gentry, they appeared formidable PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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from their numbers, as well as from the zeal by which they were animated. They sent an address to the regent, where they plainly insinuated, that, if they were pursued to extremities, by the
cruel beasts
the churchmen, they would have recourse to foreign powers for assistance; and they subscribed themselves her faithful subjects in all things not repugnant to God, assuming, at the same time, the name of the faithful congregation of Christ Jesus.
r
They applied to the nobility attending her, and maintained, that their own past violences were justified by the word of God, which commands the godly to destroy idolatry, and all the monuments of it; and though all civil authority was sacred, yet was there a great difference between the authority and the persons who exercised it;
s
and that it ought to be considered, whether or not those abominations, called by the pestilent papists, Religion, and which they defend by fire and sword, be the true religion of Christ Jesus. They remonstrated with such of the queen’s army as had formerly embraced their party, and told them, “That as they were already reputed traitors by God, they should likewise be excommunicated from their society, and from the participation of the sacraments of the church, which God by his mighty power had erected among them; whose ministers have the same authority which Christ granted to his apostles in these words,
Whose sins ye shall forgive shall
be forgiven, and whose sins ye shall retain shall be retained.”
t
We may here see, that these new saints were no less lofty in their pretensions than the ancient hierarchy: No wonder they were enraged against the latter as their rivals in dominion. They joined to all these declarations an address to the established church; and they affixed this title to it: “To the generation of antichrist, the pestilent prelates and their
shavelings
u
in Scotland, the congregation of Christ Jesus within the same sayeth.” The tenor of the manifesto was suitable to this title. They told the ecclesiastics, “As ye by tyranny intend not only to destroy our bodies, but also by the same to hold our souls in bondage of the devil, subject to idolatry; so shall we, with all the force and power which God shall grant unto us, execute just vengeance and punishment upon you: Yea, we shall begin the same war which God commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites; that is, contract of peace shall never be made, till you desist from your open idolatry, and cruel persecution of God’s children. And this, in the name of the eternal God, and of his son Christ Jesus, whose verity we profess, and Gospel we have preached, and holy sacraments rightly administered, we signify unto you, to be our intent, so far as God will assist us to withstand your idolatry. Take this for warning, and be not deceived.”
w
With these outrageous symptoms, commenced in Scotland that cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism, which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to break out on all occasions.