Scotland on the Edge of Revolution
Several forces together brought Scotland to the threshold of revolution: Knox's untiring effort to throw off the yoke of Rome, the words of other religious reformers, the seepage of Protestantism from England, the flood of Bibles and tracts pouring in from England and the Continent, the greed of nobles who had their eyes on the country's lands, and their anger at the French who had spread their influence over the court. The citizens of Edinburgh, still firmly Catholic in 1543, made no secret of their resentment of the proud, overbearing French who had slipped into the country under the regency of Mary of Guise. The Scots did all they could to make life harder for these intruders and unwelcome guests. Because the clergy backed the French, national pride merged with anti-Catholic feeling. People sneered at the religious processions in which images of the Virgin and relics of saints were carried and kissed. In September 1557 a group of skeptics threw the image of St. Giles from the church of that name in Edinburgh into the water and then burned it. According to Knox, image-breaking spread across the whole country.
The First Covenant and the Last Martyr
On 3 December 1557 a few nobles hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, Argyll, Glencairn, Morton, Lorne and Erskine, met in Edinburgh (capital since 1542) and signed the "First Covenant of Scotland." They called themselves the "Lords of the Congregation of Jesus Christ," and opposed the official Catholic Church of the country, which they called the "congregation of Satan." They pledged themselves to remain loyal to the "blessed Word of God," which called for "the reformation of religion and the state," and asked the regent, Mary of Guise, for religious freedom so that they could devote themselves to religious and conscientious matters as God required. The signers resolved to found reformed churches across Scotland and declared that all churches in the country should adopt the Book of Common Prayer that had been made official in England under Edward VI.
The Catholic bishops protested against this bold schism and asked Archbishop Hamilton to suppress it. Reluctantly, he ordered (28 April 1558) that Walter Mill, an aged priest who had cast off his habit, married and busied himself spreading Protestantism among the poor, be burned. The Scots, who revered the old man, were furious that the last Protestant in Scotland had been put to death for heresy, and they set up a stone tablet where he died. When another preacher was summoned to court, his followers took up arms, went to the regent by force and warned her that they would no longer stay silent in the face of religious persecution. In November 1558 the leaders of the Congregation also warned the regent that, if no decree of religious freedom was issued, they would bear no responsibility "if the people take to force to reform abuses." The same month they sent word to Knox that if he returned to Scotland they would protect him.
Knox Returns: Perth, St. Andrews and Scone
Knox waited some months and then arrived in Edinburgh on 2 May 1559. With a sermon the next day at Perth he lit the fire of revolution. By his own account he attacked idolatry fiercely and reminded the people of the ugliness of the Mass and of God's command to destroy the traces that accompany such worship. The "rascal multitude," as Knox called them, rose in revolt. When a priest in a nearby church began to say Mass, a young man cried out that they could not bear to witness idolatry that God had forbidden and condemned. The priest, according to Knox, gave the youth a heavy blow in the face; the angry youth hurled a stone at the priest, which hit the altar and broke a statue. After him, everyone present stoned the church and tore down its altar with all the signs of idolatry gathered there. The people then rushed to the monasteries and plundered them and broke the religious statues, though they let the monks carry out whatever they could on their backs. In three days these three places were so ruined that nothing but walls remained.
The regent was in a difficult and dangerous position. The victorious rebels in and around Perth threatened with death any priest who celebrated Mass, while her brother, Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, urged her to destroy prominent Protestants as Mary Tudor had done. The leaders of the Congregation, now relying on their armed supporters, handed the regent an ominous ultimatum on 22 May. In summary, it affirmed their obedience and said they had never failed to serve Scotland and the regent, even at risk to themselves; but now, with heavy hearts, they had to say that unless she ended the unjust oppression crushing them, they would be forced to take up arms in defense of their religion. They swore before God that what had driven them to break their old obedience was the unjust killing of the people of the towns, and that if their consciences enjoyed the freedom and peace Christ had bought with his blood, the queen's loyal subjects would take no step against the Creator's will. It was signed "the faithful Congregation of Jesus Christ in Scotland."
With the ultimatum the leaders called on the country's nobles to support the rebellion and published a notice warning the "generation of Antichrist," first of all the corrupt and deadly priests and monks, that if they did not stop their vengeful tyranny, they would be treated wherever caught as murderers and enemies of God, and that the Congregation would not compromise with them as long as they persisted in open idolatry and in tormenting God's children. The regent marched on Perth with all the force she could gather. But the Congregation took up arms and stood against her, and Mary, finding she could not overcome them, signed an armistice (29 May 1559). Knox returned to St. Andrews and, though the bishops and the archbishop had banned his sermons, preached against idolatry in the parish church (11–14 June).
The people, stirred by his words, dragged "all the signs of idolatry" out of the town's churches and burned them in front of the Catholic priests. The archbishop fled to Perth, but forces of the Congregation, claiming that Mary had broken the armistice with Scottish funds and French financial aid, captured Perth (25 June). On the 28th the rebels plundered and burned the abbey of Scone. Knox, who watched the terrible fire, called it a just judgment of God and denounced the place's old record of vice. (I leave out his specific accusations.)
England Steps In: Death of Mary of Guise
The regent, now so ill and weak that she expected death at any moment, fled to Leith and, by dragging out talks with the victorious Protestants, tried to hold them back until reinforcements came from France. The Congregation outran her by getting help from Elizabeth, Queen of England. In a letter to the queen of England, Knox assured her that he did not count her among the tyrannical women rulers named in the First Blast of the Trumpet. William Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister, suggested to the queen that by helping the Scottish revolution she could make that country obedient to England. Elizabeth judged this a wise answer to the claims of Mary Stuart, who after becoming queen of France (1559) called Elizabeth an illegitimate usurper and claimed the English throne for herself. An English fleet quickly gathered in the Firth of Forth and kept French troops from landing to reinforce the regent, and English soldiers marched with the rebels against Leith. The regent took refuge in a castle in Edinburgh and, after kissing all her companions, died (10 June 1560). She was a good-hearted woman who was forced into an unavoidable tragedy.
Her last defenders, besieged and starving, surrendered. On 6 July 1560 representatives of the Congregation, Mary Stuart, France and England signed the "Treaty of Edinburgh," whose terms later sharpened the quarrel between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth. By it, all foreign forces except 120 Frenchmen were to leave Scotland; Mary Stuart and Francis II were to give up their claims to England; Mary Stuart was to be recognized as queen of Scotland but could not declare war or make peace without the consent of the Estates; the Estates would choose five of the twelve members of the privy council; no cleric or foreigner would hold high office in the country; and a general amnesty was to be issued, with all prisoners freed except those whom the Estates opposed releasing. The treaty was humiliating to the absent queen of Scotland, and for the Congregation it was a victory without bloodshed.
The Confession of Faith and the Settlement
At its session of 1 April 1560 (a date the book gives), the Scottish Parliament approved, with only eight votes against, the "Confession of Faith" that Knox and his companions had drawn up and William Maitland had moderated. Its main points, which are still the official creed of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, are given below in summary. First, God is one, known and believed in three persons. Second, God created man and from him woman in his own image, and humanity was by nature without defect; both fell from this state of perfection, the woman seduced by the serpent and the man deceived by the woman. Third, by disobeying God's command, commonly called original sin, man lost his likeness to the Creator and he and his descendants became God's enemies, slaves of Satan and prisoners of sin; so all who are not born again are condemned to eternal death, and the new birth is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who stirs the hearts of God's elect and readies them to receive Jesus Christ. Eighth, the eternal God and merciful Father chose us in Jesus Christ before the world was made.
Article sixteen holds firmly that from the beginning there has been, and there is and will be to the world's end, a church, the assembly of God's elect, whose members worship God in purity and truth and accept him through true faith in Jesus Christ; outside this church there is no life or salvation. It therefore expresses deep abhorrence of the blasphemy of those who say that all who live justly will be saved whatever their religion. Article twenty-one accepts only two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, not because the bread is changed into God's real body, but because the followers of Christ, gathered around God's table, by the Holy Spirit eat the body of the Lord Christ and drink his blood. Article twenty-four states that empires, kingdoms, governments and cities have been entrusted by God to kings, princes and rulers, whose essential duty is the protection and purification of religion and everything related to it. To them belong not only the management of political affairs but the defense of God's true religion and the suppression of idolatry and superstition.
After approving the Confession, the reforming Parliament stripped the pope of his powers in Scotland, made the creed and the forms of worship of the reformed church compulsory throughout the country, and set penalties for those who celebrated Mass: corporal punishment for the first offense, banishment for the second and death for the third. But because the nobles who dominated Parliament cared more for land than for bloodshed, they did not take Calvin's theology seriously, and the persecution of Scots still loyal to Catholicism never reached corporal punishment. Now that the nobles were free to treat purgatory as a fable, they claimed that priests had plundered their ancestors' property by taking money or endowed land for intercession on behalf of the dead, who according to Calvinist theology had been saved or damned before the world was made. Confiscating Church property seemed the only way to repair their loss. Many Scottish monasteries were dissolved and their property seized by nobles.
At first no income was fixed for the Calvinist clergy, who, in the eyes of aristocrats now showing no interest in religion or theology, were merely a means of spreading revolutionary ideas in the country. Knox and his companions, who had worked so hard and run so many risks for the revolution, expected the Catholic Church's property to be set aside to maintain the reformed church, its ministers and its officers. They appealed to Parliament, which first ignored their request and finally set aside one-sixth of the plundered Church property for their purpose. Knox and his friends, thinking this a trifle, turned from the nobles and combined Scottish Presbyterianism with democracy.
Of all the nations that rose for religious reform, the Scots shed the least blood, and the fruit of their effort proved more lasting than others'. The Catholics bore their grievance in silence; the bishops fled the country; and many parish priests accepted the new faith with good grace. The crosses by country roads were pulled up, old shrines were abandoned, and days once kept as saints' holidays gave way to days of work and effort. Surely many people looked back on the past with regret and spoke well of it, and no doubt many others waited for their queen to return from France. Many signs of beauty vanished along with oppression and corruption. As hatred and enmity faded and people grew used to the new social order, sameness of religion and kinship of rulers ended the old wars of Scotland and England. Before long the weaker nation set its own ruler on the throne of the stronger one, and a single banner flew over the whole island of Britain.