Opening…

XIII. SECTION I

The Rise and Progress of the Reformation.

⭘ A new point of Departure――Mechanical Inventions――Aspiration for Unity and Independence; Modern Languages――Revival of Classical Literature――Revival of Art

⭘ Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages――Her vast Organisation, Wealth, and Power――She controlled Education, and subjected the Human Mind

⭘ Outline of the prevailing Belief of Roman Catholicism――Angels, Demons, Witchcraft――Worship of Saints, Images, and Relics――Ideas of Hell and of Heaven

⭘ Political Power of the Church in different Countries――The French Nobles; Oppression of the Peasantry――State of Germany; Rebellions of the Peasantry

⭘ Influence of Literature in Germany; Satirical Attacks upon the Church――Inquisition in Spain――State of Italy

⭘ Morals of the Priesthood and the Religious Orders

⭘ Influences sapping the Authority of Catholicism; Dante, Boccaccio, Savonarola――Influence of the Vernacular Literature

⭘ Printing and Publication of the Bible――Early Translations of Scripture into the Modern Languages

⭘ Awakening of the Moral Consciousness; Enthusiasm of the early stages of the Movement――Relation of the Reformation to Philosophy

⭘ Significance of the Revolt from Rome――Eras of the Reformation in different Nations――Proceedings of Luther; his Writings――Early Protestant Literature――Principle of the Reformation

SECTION II.

_History of the Reformation in Scotland to the Death of Cardinal Beaton._

⭘ Scotland after the Battle of Flodden――The Duke of Albany assumed the Government――His Regency

⭘ Henry VIII. interfered with the Government――The Earl of Angus seized the King, and usurped the Functions of the Crown――The King escaped; Forfeiture of Angus――Policy of the King

⭘ The Causes of the Reformation in Scotland――Position of the Nobles ――Relation of the Catholic Clergy to the People; Exactions of the Church――State of Clergy and the Religious Orders

⭘ Celibacy and Monasticism――Assumptions of the Priesthood

⭘ Monogamy――The Family the Foundation of Society――Communism

⭘ Inner Causes of the Reformation; Religious Feeling and Moral Sentiments

⭘ Heretical Books; Circulation of the Bible――Martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton; his Opinions――Friar Erth’s Sermon――John Mair, Gavin Logie, John Winram, Alexander Seton

⭘ Policy of the King――Persecution, Trials, and Executions for Heresy

⭘ Henry VIII. attempted to induce James V. to discard the Authority of the Pope

⭘ Marriage of the King; Mary of Lorraine――Persecution――Cardinal Beaton――Trials and Executions for Heresy――Can Persecution extinguish Heresy?

⭘ Encroachment by the King upon the Nobles――Acts against Heresy ――Projected Interview between Henry VIII. and James V.――Henry resolved on War; Conduct of the Scotch Nobles; Solway Moss; Death of James V.

⭘ The Crown fell to an infant Princess――Cardinal Beaton aspired to the Regency――The Earl of Arran elected Regent――Project of Henry VIII. defeated

⭘ He then orders an Invasion of Scotland; great and wanton ♦destruction of Property――Henry’s hatred of Cardinal Beaton; a Plot to murder him

♦ “destruc-” replaced with “destruction”

⭘ Heresy spreading――Heretics tried and executed――George Wishart preaching in various Towns――He was seized, tried, and burned

⭘ Plot against the Cardinal; Murdered in his Castle

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Chapter XIV

_History of the Reformation to the Overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church._

⭘ The Conspirators retained the Castle of St. Andrews; Knox joined them――The new Doctrines spreading――Arrival of French Troops; the Castle attacked; the Garrison surrendered

⭘ Death of Henry VIII.; the Policy of Aggression continued; the Scots reduced to extremities――Arrival of a French Army

⭘ The Religious Struggle continued――Attempts to reform the Catholic Clergy; a new Catechism published――Trial and Execution of Adam Wallace

⭘ Council of Trent――Authority of Scripture and Tradition; the Vulgate――Justification; Diversity of Views; Influence of the Jesuits――Debates on the Errors of the Heretics, and many other Doctrines――The Inquisition――The Jesuits――Index of Prohibited Books――Canons and Decrees――The Christianity of the West assumed three Dogmatic Forms

⭘ The Regency of Arran approaching its termination――The Queen-mother proclaimed Regent――Death of Edward VI.――Return of Knox; summoned before the Church Court; Summons abandoned――He again departed from Scotland

⭘ The Reformed Doctrines continued to spread――A new Covenant to advance the Reform Movement――Policy of the Queen-Regent ――Execution of Water Mill

⭘ Position of the Reform Party; they protested in Parliament ――Succession of Elizabeth to the Throne of England

⭘ The Queen-Regent influenced by France――The Crisis――A vehement Sermon by Knox; Destruction of Monasteries――The Queen-Regent threatened severe Measures――Manifesto of the Lords of the Congregation

⭘ An Agreement with the Regent; soon broken――The Demolition of the Monasteries and Images ♦proceeded with

♦ “preceeded” replaced with “proceeded”

⭘ Arrival of French Troops――The Lords of the Congregation deposed the Regent――Skirmishing between the Frenchmen and the Congregation――The Lords of the Congregation retired from Edinburgh; reduced to extremities

⭘ Negotiations with the English; a Treaty between the English Government and the Lords of the Congregation――Siege of Leith ――Treaty of Edinburgh; Peace proclaimed――Energy of the Reformed Preachers――Meeting of Parliament; Confession of ♦Faith――Acts abolishing the Authority of the Pope, and the exercise of the Catholic Religion

♦ “Eaith” replaced with “Faith”

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Chapter XV

The Creed and Organisation of the Reformed Church.

⭘ Confession of Faith――Belief in one God――Duty of Civil Magistrates

⭘ Preaching the Gospel; the Bible――The Sacraments――Abolition of Idolatry――Election and Admission of Ministers

⭘ Proposals for the Disposal of the Patrimony of the Church ――Temporary Expedients; Superintendents――Provision for the Ministry――National Education――Relief of the Labourers of the Ground and the Poor

⭘ Form of Discipline――Election of Elders and Deacons――Polity of the Church

⭘ Marriage――Burial――Contemners of the Word of God

⭘ Book of Common Order――Intolerance――The First General Assembly

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Chapter XVI

Reign of Queen Mary.

⭘ France declined to confirm the Treaty of Edinburgh――Death of Francis II.――State of Parties in Scotland――Arrival of Mary; Interest of her reign――Difficulty of her Position; the Nobles and the Preachers

⭘ A Royal Proclamation――Position of the Reformed Church――Mary’s first Interview with Knox――Parliament declined to ratify the Book of Discipline――Disposal of the Revenue of the Church; Knox denounced it

⭘ Proceedings against the Earl of Huntly

⭘ The Court and the Preachers; Interview between the Queen and Knox ――Precarious State of the Protestant Party

⭘ Earl of Lennox; Lord Darnley――The Queen preparing for her Marriage; the Earl of Moray opposed it――Intolerance――Energy of the Queen; she married Darnley――Movement of the disloyal Nobles; their Flight

⭘ Character of Darnley――He becomes the tool of the Nobles――A Plot to murder Riccio, and restore the banished Nobles――Murder of Riccio――Return of the banished Lords――Escape of the Queen

⭘ An Army rallied round the Queen, and the Disloyal Nobles dispersed――Birth of James VI.――Moray restored――A Series of Stirring Events

⭘ Origin of the Plot to murder Darnley――He was removed to Edinburgh ――Preparations of the Conspirators――Murder of Darnley――The Chief Actor in the Crime――Was the Queen in any way guilty of the Murder?

⭘ Trial of Bothwell――Parliament; many Acts granting Lands to the Nobles――Many of the Nobles recommended Bothwell as a husband for the Queen――Bothwell conveyed the Queen to Dunbar Castle, thence to the Castle of Edinburgh, and their Marriage was celebrated at Holyrood

⭘ A Royal Proclamation――Difficulties rapidly encompassed the Queen――A party of the Nobles seized Edinburgh and assumed the Government――Mary and Bothwell mustered an Army, but the Nobles faced it――Mary surrendered and Bothwell fled――The Nobles imprisoned the Queen

⭘ The Nobles soon developed their Plot――They deposed the Queen and appointed the Earl of Moray Regent――Meetings of the General Assembly――Coronation of the Infant King

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Chapter XVII

History of Protestantism in Scotland, and the Conflict of the Clergy with the Crown.

⭘ State of Parties――Moray’s Interview with the Queen――He assumed the Government, and endeavoured to restore order――Ratification of the Acts establishing the Reformation――Meeting of the General Assembly――The Regent’s Difficulties

⭘ Mary’s Escape from Prison――An Army rallied round her; Battle of Langside; Flight of Mary to England

⭘ The Regent struggled to maintain order――The Preachers petitioned him to punish vice and suppress the Catholics. During Moray’s absence in England his enemies multiplied, when he returned the struggle was desperate――The Regent shot, his Character

⭘ The Factions of the King and Queen distracted the Kingdom ――Earl of Lennox elected Regent――Efforts of the Reformed Clergy――Execution of Archbishop Hamilton――Both Parties issued proclamations and held Parliaments――The Regent slain――Earl of Mar elected Regent

⭘ The Earl of Morton elected Regent――The Queen’s party reduced ――The Castle of Edinburgh surrendered, and the Governor tried and executed――Death of Lethington, his Character

⭘ Polity of the Reformed Church――Leith Concordat touching titles and orders of the Clergy, and Disposal of the patrimony of the Church; opposed by the General Assembly

⭘ Knox resumed Preaching in Edinburgh――He denounced the Authors of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew――Knox’s last Public Sermon; his Death, his Work, and Character

⭘ Efforts of the Ministers to improve the Organisation of the Church; difficulties of Reconstruction――The Struggle between the Clergy and Crown was founded upon Theocratic Ideas

⭘ Morton’s Policy――The Bishops subjected to the Discipline of the General Assembly――Discussion of Episcopacy in the General Assemblies――A Form of Polity to be drawn up――Episcopacy abolished

⭘ An Address to the King

⭘ Second Book of Discipline contrasted with the First――This Treatise presented the definite Polity of Presbyterianism

⭘ Difficulty of carrying this Polity into effect――Scarcity of qualified Ministers; the Reformed Doctrines only partly introduced into the Highlands

⭘ Morton’s enemies pursuing him――New Court favourites――The Negative Confession――Trial and Execution of Morton

⭘ The King’s Favourites Supreme――A Plot against them――Attempt to revive Episcopacy――The Preachers attacked the Favourites and the Court――The Plot matured; the King and the Earl of Arran taken Prisoners

⭘ The dominant party held a Parliament, and passed a Vote of thanks to themselves; the Clergy also approved of the Enterprise ――Attitude of the Preachers toward the French Ambassadors

⭘ Escape of the King――Return of Arran――A new Plot――Capture of the Earl of Gowrie――Arran Supreme

⭘ Andrew Melville――Conflict between the Clergy and the Crown――A Scheme of Episcopacy――A series of Acts passed――Flight of a number of Preachers――Entire submission of the Clergy to the Required Conditions

⭘ Peculiarities of the History of Scotland――Lord Maxwell and the banished Lords surprise the King――Return of the Preachers ――Conceit of the King――Violent Language of the Clergy――Meeting of the General Assembly――French Protestant ministers

⭘ Execution of Queen Mary

⭘ Act of Annexation of Church lands――Defensive Preparations against the Armada――Revolt of the Roman Catholic lords――Vehement Speeches ――Position of the King――Establishment of the Presbyterian Polity

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Chapter XVIII

Continuation of the History of Protestantism.

⭘ Intense zeal of the Reformed Clergy――Apprehension of Ker ――Execution of Graham――Policy of the King; the Catholic Earls ――Earl of Bothwell――Parliament

⭘ The Clergy and the Catholic Earls; Act of Abolition――Rebellion of the Catholic Earls; Battle of Glenlivet; Advance of the Royal Army; Flight of the Catholic Earls

⭘ A National Fast――General Assembly――Vice of all Ranks

⭘ Return of the Catholic Earls; alarm of the Clergy; vehement Sermons――Black summoned before the Council; declined to recognise its authority――A Fast proclaimed; the King’s proceedings; a number of Citizens ordered to leave Edinburgh――A false Alarm; great Tumult

⭘ New move of the King――The Magistrates imprisoned; tried and convicted, and the Burgesses declared Rebels, and compelled to pay an enormous Fine

⭘ Ideas of the Relation of Church and State――The King circulated a series of Questions; Meetings of the General Assembly; the Court party carried their Measures――The Catholic Earls reconciled to the Church

⭘ The King engaged in Recasting the Polity of the Church――Churchmen in Parliament; debate in the General Assembly――Conference at Holyrood on the Clergy voting in Parliament

⭘ James and the Court of Session――General Assembly; a Modified Episcopacy introduced

⭘ The Gowrie Conspiracy――Accession of James VI. to the Throne of England

⭘ Ultimate Problem of the Reformation in Relation to the development of Civilisation

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Chapter XIX

The Social State of the People in the Sixteenth Century.

SECTION I.

Prior to the Reformation.

⭘ Aim of the Chapter――The Crown and the Government――Court of Session and the Privy Council――Staff of the Executive

⭘ State of the Borders and the Highlands――Modes of treating the Inhabitants of those quarters of the Kingdom――Feuds in every part of the country

⭘ State of Crime――Theft, Robbery, Murder, Rape――Defective Police Organisation――Crime in the Burghs; Acts of Violence; Begging; Harlots――Penance as a Punishment――Habits of Swearing

⭘ Deplorable Sanitary Condition――Early mode of Lighting the streets of Edinburgh

⭘ State of the Tenants and Labourers of the Land――Efforts to relieve the Poor

⭘ Religious feelings of the People――Altars of Churches――Processions, Patron Saints, and Altars of the various Craftsmen

⭘ Indications of the novel Doctrines among the People prior to the Reformation――Heresy in Aberdeen――Hanging and breaking of Images; Ballads

SECTION II.

After the Reformation.

⭘ Evidence of the Change of Religious Sentiments――Disposal of the Ornaments, Images, Vestments, and Silver work of the Churches

⭘ Proceedings against Idolaters, Harlots, and Swearers――Efforts to suppress Immoralities and Social vice――Long Struggle to secure the Observance of Sunday

⭘ Reformed Discipline compared with the System which it superseded ――A Treatise on Excommunication; its chief points――The Order of Fasting; Illustrations of the Sentiments of the Clergy, and the state of Society

⭘ Some of the Customs associated with Roman Catholicism continued by the People

⭘ Relation of the Sexes――Inconsistency of Celibacy――Loose habits of the People――Regulations connected with Marriage; Peculiarities of the Scotch Law of Marriage――Curious points came before the General Assembly――Age at which persons might Marry――Divorce

⭘ Provisions for the Relief of the Poor――Efforts of the Clergy to assist them――Difficulty of treating Vagrancy

⭘ A belief in Sorcery, Witchcraft, and Necromancy, has descended from Pre-historic Ages――By an Act of Parliament in 1563 Witchcraft was punishable by Death――James VI. a great believer in Witchcraft――Trials for Witchcraft

⭘ Many of the Witches were accused of Conspiring the Death of the King――The Earl of Bothwell was accused of trafficking with Witches against the King, and imprisoned, but he escaped――Euphame MacCalyean tried and executed――Barbara Napier tried; a speech of the King on Witchcraft――Richard Graham, a great Sorcerer, Tried and Executed――Bothwell continued his Exploits against the King ――At last he was driven out of the Country――The number of Witches executed in Scotland not so great as in other Countries

⭘ Censorship of the Press

⭘ Monopoly and the disturbed condition of Society were inimical to Commerce――The Coinage――Relative value of English and Scotch money

⭘ Mining Operations――Gold, Silver, Lead, Copper, Iron, and Coal

⭘ Commerce of the Kingdom――Foreign trade comparatively small ――Curious regulations touching the Export of Salt, Coal, and other things――Trade between the Highlands and the Lowlands

⭘ Laws fixing the price of Ale, Malt, and other goods――Whisky ――Prices of Boots and Shoes――Complaint of Bonnet-makers

⭘ Sumptuary Laws――Dress――Eating and Drinking at Marriages and Baptisms――Lent

⭘ Popular Amusements――Social results of the Reformation

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Chapter XX

_The Literature of the Nation in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century._

⭘ Relation of Education and Literature――Introduction of Printing into Scotland; first Printing Press; Chepman and Myllar ――Specimens of their Work――Other Scottish Printers

⭘ William Dunbar, the Court Poet――Editions of his Poems――Causes for his Writings being neglected

⭘ Dunbar’s Writings chiefly consist of short pieces――The range of his subjects pretty wide――Allegorical Poems; The Goldyn Targe ――Ballad sung at the Marriage of James IV.――The Thistle and the Rose――Merit of his short Poems――The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy ――Some of Dunbar’s poems supposed to be lost

⭘ Gavin Douglas――The Palace of Honour; his Imagery; Peculiarities of his language――King Hart, an Allegory――His Translation of Virgil; Original Prologues――Descriptions of Winter and May

⭘ John Mair――His Career as a Professor――His Writings, Opinions, and Views

⭘ Boece’s Writings――John Bellenden――His Translations; a Specimen of the Vernacular Prose of the Period

⭘ Complaynt of Scotland――Its Authorship uncertain――Character and nature of the Work――The Writer’s Opinions

⭘ State of Scotland――Discussion of the English Claims; Intention of the Protector, Somerset――Characteristics of the English and the Scots――The Complaints of the People against the Nobles and the Clergy――Shortcomings of the People themselves――Corruption and Vanity of the Nobles――Abuses of the Clergy; Heretics should not be Burned――Internal Strife――Characteristics of the Style――Value of the incidental Information in the Work

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Chapter XXI

Literature of the Reformation, and the later part of the Sixteenth Century.

⭘ Sir David Lyndsay――Influence of his Writings on the Reformation movement in Scotland――He was the most popular Writer of the Period, and wrote for the People

⭘ Lyndsay’s Attack upon the Churchmen and the Religious Orders, specimen of his Sarcasm――Satire of the Three Estates, its humour ――The Abbot, the Parson――The Play acted upon the Green――The Magistrates encouraged Dramatic Representations――Lyndsay’s other Works

⭘ James Wedderburn, and Robert Wedderburn――Characteristics of the Gude and Godly Ballads――Hymns of the Reformation――Influence of this class of Writings

⭘ Knox’s Writings――His Style, History of the Reformation, Admonitory Writings――Letter to the Queen Regent

⭘ Ninian Winzet――His Attack upon Knox, and the Reformers――Winzet escaped from Scotland――His Writings

⭘ Quintin Kennedy――His Writings――Discussion with Knox on the Mass ――James Tyrie, a Jesuit――His attack on the Reformed Church, answered by Knox

⭘ Knox’s Treatise on Predestination――History of the Doctrine of Eternal Decree――Theories of the Origin of the Soul――Views of Augustine, and others――Calvin’s view of the Eternal Decree, opposed and vehemently disputed――Knox’s Defence of Predestination unsatisfactory――The subject is beyond the powers of the Mind ――Knox’s Letters

⭘ George Buchanan――His Career as a Public Teacher Abroad――On his return home, he became associated with the Protestant party――His History of Scotland, Political Writings, Influence of his Views

⭘ Scottish Poets of the later part of the Century――Sir Richard Maitland, George Bannatyne, Alexander Scott, Alexander Arbuthnot, John Davidson――Anonymous Poems and Rhymes

⭘ Alexander Montgomery――Characteristics of his Poetry

⭘ James VI.――His Writings――Alexander Hume――James Melville――Latin Poetry

⭘ Theological and Religious Literature of the later part of the Century

⭘ Legal Literature――Dr. Henryson, Sir John Skene, Sir Thomas Craig, William Welwood

⭘ Progress of Science――John Napier――A Treatise on Revelations――His proposed Inventions for the Defence of the Island――Publication of his great Work on Logarithms――His minor Inventions

⭘ Progress of Medical Knowledge――Dr. Skene, Dr. Lowe, Dr. Liddel

⭘ Scientific Conceptions of the Universe met much Opposition in the Sixteenth Century――Moral and Religious Sentiments were the moving Influences of the Reformation

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Chapter XXII

Education and Art in the Sixteenth Century.

⭘ Aim of Education――Origin and Progress of Parochial Schools, Subjects Taught

⭘ Grammar Schools prior to the Reformation――After the Reformation, High School of Edinburgh――Grammar School of Glasgow――Method of Teaching and Subjects Taught

⭘ Universities of Scotland――St. Andrews, new Colleges established ――Subjects Taught――Effect of the Reformation upon the Universities――State of the University of Glasgow, New Foundation ――Andrew Melville appointed Principal, His method of Teaching

⭘ The Leaders of the Reformation movement made the utmost efforts to reform the Universities――Reorganisation of the University of St. Andrews, order of Teachers and Subjects Taught――Andrew Melville appointed Principal of St. Mary’s College ――Reorganisation of the University of Aberdeen

⭘ Origin of the University of Edinburgh, Foundation――Robert Rollock, Method of Teaching, number of Students

⭘ Aim of a Liberal Education as then conceived――Method of Examination――Graduation――Growing interest in Education, Foundation of Marischal College――Limited Views of Science and the Universe which prevailed――Deficiencies of the System――Lack of Libraries

⭘ Music Taught in the Schools prior to the Reformation――Act of Parliament touching Music――Singing in the Reformed Church

⭘ Architecture――Carving in Oak――Painting and Sculpture almost a Blank

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Chapter XXIII

The Ultimate Problem of the Reformation.

⭘ Primitive Religious Feeling――Prime characteristic of the Human Mind――Influence of Cosmic Forces in the Early Stages of the Race, Crude Notions――Ancestor Worship, and Nature Worship

⭘ Brahmanism founded on a Pantheistic Conception――It issued in a System of fixed Castes――A Reaction against It

⭘ Buddha a great Religious Teacher――Early Stage of His Career――At last He found a New Light and the Secret of Spiritual Freedom

⭘ Henceforth Buddha proclaimed his doctrine of Salvation, founded a new Religion, and almost effected a Social Revolution in India ――But the Interest of Caste, and Considerations of State, Caused Buddhism to be expelled from India

⭘ Pantheistic Conception of the Universe――Nirvana

⭘ Religion of the Greeks――Romans――and Germans prior to the Introduction of Christianity

⭘ Respect for Honesty, Justice, and Humane Sentiments have been very slowly Developed

⭘ Distinct Character of Christianity――Roman Hierarchy――New Testament, Faith in Immortality――A Region of Belief, and beyond it a Region of Hope

⭘ Conclusion

THE HISTORY OF CIVILISATION IN SCOTLAND.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

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XIII. SECTION I

The Rise and Progress of the Reformation.

PARTLY owing to the insular position of Scotland, the means of intercourse with the other communities of Europe had for ages been comparatively limited, but, from the closing years of the thirteenth century onward, the commercial and foreign relations of the kingdom had gradually extended, and new historic conditions had arisen. The gradual development of the industrial arts, the extension of commercial relations, and the consequent improvement of the means of intercommunication, had at length permitted different nations to influence each other more freely and directly. Step by step commercial enterprise had become a power in Europe, and the narrow feudalism of the earlier period had begun to relax and decay. The energy of the people of Europe had rendered it possible for the various communities to influence each other in their ideas and opinions, as well as to confer benefits by the exchange of their diverse commodities. This mutual influence was most decisively manifested in the department of thought and feeling associated with the Reformation movement. There had been some slight attempts to sow novel doctrines among the Scots in the fifteenth century, but they were still firmly attached to the Roman Catholic creed. The principles and the doctrines of the Reformation were not originated in Scotland, they were imported; and in treating of the historic rise of this revolutionary movement, it is necessary to extend our view beyond the boundaries of the Island.

The mechanical inventions connected with the manufacture of paper, and the art of printing, had a relative bearing on the Reformation. In Europe, paper was first made from cotton about the year 1000, and from rags in 1319; and thus the material for printing on was rendered available. In 1438, the art of printing was discovered; and a few years later, cut metal types were invented and brought into use. Before the end of the fifteenth century many thousands of books had been printed and published in the various countries of Europe. Thus the printing press soon made literature more accessible to mankind; while the range of an individual thinker’s influence was at once greatly widened, his ideas and opinions being easily promulgated to an extent which, in preceding ages, was unknown and undreamed.

These new agencies appeared upon the scene when the chief nations of Europe were seeking unity and aspiring to political independence, and when their languages were assuming the modern forms. This had a close relation and a deep influence on the Reformation movement. The Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Germans, and the English, had each already begun to cultivate their respective languages, and to produce poetry and other compositions. But the languages of the three first were essentially descendants of the Latin; and it is a notable coincidence that, though the Reformation was attempted to be introduced among these nations, they still remain in the Roman Catholic Church. The Italians have produced a rich and varied literature, characterised by flowing cadence and dramatic power. Spanish literature is distinguished for its sonorous rhythm and its romantic characteristics. Both Italian and Spanish literature are somewhat poor in the departments of philosophy and criticism: in these departments French literature has taken a higher rank. German literature and English literature were also influenced by the Latins, but in a much less degree than the rest, each of them having retained a large body of vernacular words, which have been developed into a great and massive national literature. The action of the above agencies and others began to indicate that a revolution was looming in Europe. The fetters which had so long entangled and enslaved the human mind were soon to be snapped; and the time was approaching when the mass of traditions, of legends, and of wonders, would be subjected to a rude and irreparable shock.

It has long been recognised that the revival of Classical literature aided the Reformation movement. This however only affected the educated class, and if there had been no stronger causes of the Reformation, classical learning would have been comparatively powerless to touch the body of a nation; but being in accord with other and deeper causes of the revolutionary movement, it may be reckoned a considerable factor among the antecedents of the Reformation. Inasmuch as this revival of ancient literature contributed to weaken the authority of the theology of the schools, it trenched upon the supreme power of the Church, and by assisting to modify the forms of thought and opinion proved exceedingly favourable to the general movement. Even to awaken a spirit of inquiry was a step of the utmost consequence. Many learned men of the period had no intention of reforming religion, but owing to other tendencies which had been long in operation, their efforts conduced to that end.

At the same time the revival of art and the rise of modern painting in Italy gave an impetus to the onward movement. It is the essential function of painting to embody man’s feelings, emotions, and ideas of beauty, and within certain limits to give them living form and realised existence. The Church thought that art could help her; and to a certain extent it did. By vividly portraying Scripture histories and the lives of the saints, by presenting new types of serene beauty and pure joy, by giving form to the floating notions of angelic beings, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. But its effect was not exactly what the Church desired. Instead of tightening the fetters of ecclesiastical authority and encouraging mysticism and asceticism, it restored humanity to a sense of its dignity and beauty, and helped to show the untenability of the mediæval standpoint; for art is emphatically and uncontrollably free, and it is free in the realm of sensuous delightfulness from which conventual religion turns aside to enjoy her own ecstatic liberty of contemplation. Thus art early contributed to the emancipation of the modern mind by proclaiming to men the tidings of their greatness in a world of manifold enjoyment created for their use. “Whatever painting touched, became by that touch, human; piety at the lure of art, folded her soaring wings and rested on the genial earth. This the Church had not foreseen.”¹

¹ Symonds’ Renaissance, Volume III., pages 29‒32, et seq.

Before the Reformation the Catholic Church presented a vast and powerful organisation with innumerable agencies which penetrated into every form of society, and attempted to control the whole life of mankind. The body of the clergy, including the monks and friars, had assumed the characteristics and the position of a distinct caste. They were not only distinct, but in many respects antagonistic to the other classes of the people; in their view of life, their laws, their special privileges, their social duties, and in the aim of their existence, they were separated from the lay classes of society by an impassible limit. Their theory of life was to neglect and subdue the body, to mortify the flesh in order that the soul might be made perfect. Whether all this was done for the good of humanity or for the benefit of the clergy themselves is a question of the most momentous importance, and perchance some light may be thrown upon it in the course of this volume.

In every country of Europe the Church held a considerable extent of landed property, which varied in different kingdoms, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century the wealth of the Church was enormous. In England the landed estates of the bishops, of the cathedrals, and of the monastic orders extended into every parish of the kingdom; while the tithes and offerings which maintained the beneficed clergy brought in a revenue larger than the lands. In France a long series of causes and circumstances had combined to throw into the hands of the clergy a very large stretch of landed property; for many generations the Kings of France had vied with each other in heaping estates upon the bishops and in endowing monasteries. The title deeds of church property in France date from a very early period; and in Scotland the earliest body of charters relating to land rights are found in the registers of the Church. The Church lands however formed but a small part of the revenues of the clergy. They had the tenth of all the produce of land, which was extended to include not only all kinds of grain and vegetable produce, but also cattle, sheep, poultry, and all kinds of fish. There were also the votive offerings, many of which were at first free gifts, but had assumed the form of lawful demands. Then the whole life of every Catholic was interwoven with the ceremonial of the Church, and the priest had to be paid for confession, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and the rites of burial, and the saying of masses which were believed to lighten the suffering of the soul after death. Moreover, there were the offerings at the crosses and the shrines of famous and popular saints for their intercessory prayers to avert calamities, to grant success to schemes of ambition, to obtain pardon for sin, and to bring down blessing. Many of the crosses and shrines were supposed to be invested with miraculous powers, and the miracles which were said to have been wrought at them were innumerable. When to all these are added the large subsidies which must have been given to the swarms of friars spread over every country of Christendom,¹ it will be easily realised that the Church was in receipt of a large portion of the industrial produce of Europe, and drew into her coffers an almost incredible amount of wealth.

¹ Selden’s Book on Tithes; Speed’s _Catalogue of Religious Houses, Benefices_, etc.; Dugdale and Stevens on _The Revenues of the Monasteries_; Stubbs’ _Constitutional History Of England_, Volume III., page 521; Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, Volume VI., pages 344‒375; for Germany see Ranke’s _History of the Reformation in Germany_, Volume I., pages 272‒278.

Such education as then existed was almost wholly under the control of the Church, and the clergy themselves were the best educated body of men in the world. Rome was the head of the educational department as well as the centre of everything else connected with religion, morals, and philosophy. No university could be properly established without the sanction and the approval of its constitution by the Pope; but it does not appear that the Pope threw obstacles in the way of the erection of these institutions. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were upwards of fifty universities scattered over Europe: and all learned people were regarded as belonging to the clergy, for the Pope had long claimed them as the special subjects of his empire. It was well understood that all the members of the universities should talk and write in Latin, the universal language of the Church and the learned, in which all the knowledge of the times was sealed up and monopolised by the clergy. They were the canon lawyers, the historians, and the philosophers, for philosophy was wholly under the dominion of theology. They reigned supreme, and everything which they deemed opposed to the Faith or inconsistent with their theology was rigorously excluded from the pale of orthodox Christendom. Medicine and science were left to the Jews and the Arabians; as the Christian had higher objects with which to occupy his mind. If it had been possible to continue making Latin the only medium of communication and record, the sole vehicle of literature, with the Church as its depository, there would have been no Reformation. The modern languages even in their crude state aided the onward movement, and the comparatively rapid development of their varied literature secured its success. Hence, since the sixteenth century, in spite of every effort, the Latin tongue has been constantly falling more and more into the background; it was relegated into the study of the scholar, and into books intended only for the learned. But at the beginning of that century the spiritual authority and the power of the clergy stood unchallenged; and the minds of men were held in the most complete slavery. They declared the eternal destiny of every one, and to doubt their sentence was the most abhorrent sin; those who disbelieved trembled in silence, and shrouded themselves from their fellow creatures; the few who openly ventured to question the unlimited power of the clergy to absolve were the outcasts of society, detested and proscribed by the Church and hated by the people. The whole life and moral being of man was claimed to be under the supervision and control of the clergy; no act was beyond their cognisance, all the thoughts of the mind and the inmost secrets of the heart had to be disclosed to them. Every one was bound to inform against himself, and to submit to a moral torture which threatened him with the severest condemnation. If he concealed anything, he had to undergo the most crushing penance. The sacraments of the spiritual life could be granted or withheld according to the arbitrary judgment of the priest; absolution might be delayed and even refused; after death the body might repose in consecrated ground with the saints, or be cast out into the domain of devils. Excommunication cut the man off from the Church, beyond whose pale there was no possibility of salvation; no one could presume to hope for any one who died under its ban. The inward assurance of faith, of virtue, or of rectitude, unless avouched by the priest, was accounted nothing; without the priestly passport admission into the kingdom of heaven was impossible. But the sacredness of the priest himself was indefeasible, whatever his habits and life might be. The people might murmur in secret at his cupidity and licentiousness; he might even be openly exposed to shame, but he was still a priest and his verdict of condemnation or absolution remained equally valid. This was the crowning triumph of the Roman priesthood over the moral and intellectual faculties of mankind, but it was too complete to endure. Great as the power of the Church was, she could not bind the human mind for ever; she might cramp its freedom and retard its progress, but to arrest the onward movement and destiny of humanity was more than she could do, and the moral indignation of the people at last rent the veil.

The written creed of the Church comprised only a small part of the belief of Roman Catholicism. During the period of a thousand and four hundred years the Church had accumulated and interwoven with Christianity a vast mass of mythology, which consisted partly of notions belonging to the old heathen religions that were current in these countries when the Gospel was introduced into them, and partly of notions and opinions which prevailed among the Jews when Christianity was founded, and largely of traditions and legends associated with the Christian saints.¹ The popular religion of the middle ages composed from these diverse sources, contained a remarkable combination of beliefs, and a mass of crude, unsifted, and materialised notions. Tradition claimed equal authority with the Scriptures; the Church and the hierarchy were assumed to have the power of indefinitely multiplying the objects and articles of faith, and by degrees the whole imaginary belief of the Middle Ages was authorised and ingrafted upon Christianity. Externally there was a certain unity in the diversity of the public worship. Although each nation and even each parish had its peculiar patron saint, no one denied the influence and the power of the saints of other nations and parishes; as there was always plenty of employment for them all within the vast organisation of Roman Catholicism.

¹ Mackintosh’s History of Civilisation in Scotland, Volume I., pages 99‒102, 123, 128‒130, 437. Supernatural Religion, Volume I., pages 88‒141, 148, et seq., 1874‒77. If I might venture to pass a remark on this important work, it appears to me that the first part of it is by far the most effectively handled. When the author comes into the heart of the subject, to the examination of the evidence of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he always seems rather anxious to prove his special view; and his criticism loses much of its force owing to its excessive minuteness and length, and he sometimes fails to see the real bearings of the points in question.

All historians of opinions and doctrines are aware that there existed a speculative connection between the current notions of the philosophy of the age and those set forth in the New Testament; indeed, the speculative tendency of the early Fathers caused them to adopt the existing logical distinctions of philosophical schools. But nevertheless the opinions of the Fathers were all tinged by their belief in supernatural agencies. Numerous allusions and direct references to good and evil spirits, angels, and demons, occur in their writings; and the doctrine of the existence of demons stands in close association with the existence of evil in the world. In the onward development of Catholicism this class of beings seems to have constantly multiplied. “If we pass from the Fathers into the Middle Ages we find ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged with the supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost boundless, and the supply was equal to the demand.” (Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume I., page 152.) Compare Dean Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, Volume VI., pages 399‒332.

There were the realms of angels and devils, and the hierarchies of heaven and hell. The celestial host of angels was divided into three classes, and each class sub-divided into three orders;¹ and these beings formed circles around the throne of the Trinity. They were of a fiery nature, as fire had most of the properties of the divinity, and they were endowed with countless eyes and wings; their form, however, was human, their raiment priestly and exceedingly bright, and they were holy and full of joy. Occasionally they visited the earth as messengers, but angelic apparitions were far less frequent than the interferences and temptations of the demons. The latter were base and cruel, malignant, hideous, and hateful; they took a peculiar delight in the tortures which they inflicted, but the saints often mastered them, and exultingly repulsed their fiercest assaults. The devils were very numerous and ever present under the name of the spirits of the air; this world was their almost exclusive domain; sometimes they assumed beautiful forms, as of frisky women, to tempt the saints; sometimes the devil appeared in the shape of a monstrous animal, at other times as a priest to declaim in the pulpit. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Catholic writer of the fourteenth century, distinctly maintained that diseases and tempests were the direct acts of the devil; that the devil could transport men at his pleasure through the air, and that he could transform himself into any shape. It was generally taught and believed that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking the misery and the ruin of mankind; and that they were always hovering around the inhabitants of the earth, and originating wind, hail, and tempests.²

¹ In the primitive Church the doctrine of angels was indefinite, but it gradually assumed form, and most of the scholastics adopted the classification indicated in the text. The Council of Lateran, held in 1215, declared as the doctrine of the Church that the angels are spiritual beings, and were created in a state of innocence. But touching particular points, ample scope was still left for poetical and imaginary speculations. Some of the Fathers held rather curious notions about the angels. Clement and Origen assigned to the angels the office of watching over provinces and towns, in accordance with the notions of individual guardian angels. (Clement, Stromata, V., page 700.) Clement further says――“That they have neither ears, nor tongue, nor lips, nor entrails, nor organs of respiration,” etc.

² Malleus Maleficarum; Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume I., pages 72, 74, et seq. Regarding the devil there has been great diversity of doctrine and opinions. According to the opinion of Origen, there was still hope of the final conversion and pardon of Satan himself. Tertullian and Origen both ascribed the failures of crops, drought, famine, pestilence, and murrain to the influence of demons.

Closely associated with these demoniac agencies, was the belief in witchcraft, sorcery, spells, talismans, and conjurations. These vaguely connated notions rested upon the supposition that acts and operations were performed by persons who were under the influence of the devil, or who acted as the assistants of evil spirits. The Church had long encouraged these silly notions and wild hallucinations by recognising and treating them as facts; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the belief in witchcraft reached a height which produced the most frightful results. Many thousands of human creatures were burnt and drowned for the supposed crime of having sold themselves to the devil, and having held communication with evil spirits.

The intense and vivid sense of satanic presence which pervaded the minds of the clergy and the legislators of those times, induced them to look upon heresy and witchcraft as nearly allied, and the zeal against both grew together. The idea of demoniac power had so deep a hold upon the minds of men that even the Reformation failed to shake it; and for some time this revolution gave a new impetus to the persecution for witchcraft, and it required the enlightenment of other two centuries to weaken and dispel this dark and cruel belief.

The saints were an intermediate class of beings between God and the living Catholic world of Christians. As they were endowed with human feelings and sympathies, they were naturally supposed to be more closely associated with, and interested in, the welfare of their kindred upon the earth. This kinship between the blessed saints and their brethren and votaries still in the flesh seemed to be mutual; and each saint willingly kept up his special interest and attachment for the places and the associates of his earthly sojourn. By his intercession he exercised a beneficent influence; he was tutelar within his sphere, and so he became an object of devout adoration. So useful a class of beings could not fail to be constantly multiplied, and some of them deified, as they had assumed the position of the rulers and the disposing providence of the earth, and it appeared that the Deity had almost abandoned the government of the world to them. The unmistakable evidence of their place and power in the popular imagination was seen in the numbers of their altars in every church and chapel throughout Christendom, and the costly oblations that were continually offered at their shrines.

But the Virgin Mary was seated far above all the saints and martyrs. Since the beginning of the seventh century the worship of the Virgin had been constantly on the ascendant. Every cathedral, and almost every church, had its Chapel of our Lady; and in every breviary the hymns to the Virgin teemed with poetic images expressive of the homage paid to her: in the worship of the people she was addressed in words similar to those applied to the Deity. A copious and rich legend unfolded the whole history of her birth and life, a subject on which the New Testament was silent: but the spurious gospels had furnished ample incidents, which threw a halo of authority around the details.¹ Painting and sculpture both lent their aid to embody and realise this worship of the Blessed Virgin. At last the question was raised, whether she was entirely free from the sin of Adam, and there were great discussions on the point. The Council of Basle in 1439 passed a decree in favour of the Immaculate Conception; yet some still doubted, and Pope Sixtus the Fourth, in 1477, and again in 1483, declared that the opposite doctrine should not be called heretical, but his bulls did not prohibit those who differed from retaining their own views.² At this time the festivals in honour of the Virgin had increased to seven; and it is almost unnecessary to say that countless miracles were attributed to her.

¹ Supernatural Religion, Volume I., pages 308, 314, et seq.

² “Those theologians who sought to clear the Mother of Christ from the guilt of original sin, did not bear in mind that they only pushed the miracle one step further back, without entirely removing it; for in that case the parents of Mary must have been free from original sin, and again their parents, etc., and so on up to Adam. Bernard of Clairvaux seems to have perceived this difficulty.” Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, Volume II., page 23; 1847.

This worship of the Virgin and the Saints was continually receiving fresh accessions. For many centuries the passions and feelings were kept in a state of excitement, as new saints were always arising and crowding on to the Calendar, and whenever a saint was canonised, it was deemed necessary to show that he had worked miracles; so all the lives of the old saints are full of miracles. Some of the saints had a world-wide fame; their churches were erected in every Christian kingdom, and their shrines sprung up in all lands; but others had only a national or a merely local fame, although within these limits they were worshipped with equal fidelity, their legends, their acts, and their miracles, were commemorated and presented to the eye in architecture, sculpture, and painting. A few of the patron saints of the western kingdoms of Europe belong to a comparatively late date, England placed herself under St. George, a personage of very doubtful origin; St. Louis was the Saint of the Crusades; and St. Thomas Aquinas of Scholasticism. Each order of monks and of friars were bound to hold up to the utmost the saints of their order, and it was the sacred duty of all who wore the garb to spread their fame with especial assiduity. It was also the duty of every king, burgess, and craftsman and parishioner, to assist in propagating the renown and the miracles of his patron saint.¹ Most of the chief churches of a kingdom had a commemorative anniversary of their patron saint, when his wonders were made the subject of endless sermons. Great processions, rejoicings, and feastings were held, and occasionally rendered more attractive by some new miracle, some marvellous cure, some demon ejected, or something which outdid the miracles of every neighbouring saint. Each of these notable saints had his life of strange incidents, the legend of his virtues and miracles, his shrines and his relics; and this legend was to his votaries a kind of gospel, which was worked into the popular belief by constant iteration. Legend, in fact, was the universal poetry of the times. The mythic literature of Roman Catholic Christianity is almost interminable in quantity, and its life and strength is centred in its particularity and individuality; whenever it is reduced to a more compendious form it withers, the chill of the tomb gathers around it; and under the searching grasp of comparative criticism, the specified particulars and the minute detail, are found to lack evidence, and one by one, each story is made to pass from the realm of fact into that of belief, or the hallucinations of the dark and perplexed imagination of the sons of men.

¹ Incidental evidence of this has already been given in the first volume of this work, pages 125 et seq., 406, 438. The great authority for the lives of the Saints is the large folio volumes of the Bollandists’ Collection, which was begun in 1643 by the Jesuit, Bolland. Within the past fifty years many of the materials relating to the Roman Catholic Church in England and Scotland have been published by the authority of the Commissioners of Records; and by Clubs and Societies formed with the object of printing early records.

The worship of the saints was connected with the adoration of images, and the veneration of relics. The legend was confirmed and kept alive by the somewhat dimly shown relics, which were generally in the church, either under or upon the altar. In 787, the Second Council of Nice issued a decree prohibiting the consecration of any church without relics; hence it may easily be understood that objects of such virtue and importance continually multiplied. The reliquary was the most precious ornament in the king’s hall, in the lady’s chamber, and in the knight’s armoury. It cannot be denied that there is something human and even amiable in preserving memorials of the departed; and this natural and universal feeling when transferred to the relics of the Blessed Virgin and the saints had an almost incredible power. No one doubted that the relics of the saints worked miracles; while the wood of the true cross grew into a forest, and the most perishable things――the garments of the Saviour and of the saints――became imperishable. To such a degree was the veneration of relics carried, and the belief in their virtue and miraculous powers had become so absolute, that the very devil himself failed to detect imposture. Up to the verge of the Reformation period the veneration of relics and the worship of images continued in unshaken authority.

As the Catholic Church developed and completed her organisation, the world after death became more and more distinctly imagined and vividly described. Hell, purgatory, and heaven, were palpably represented to the senses. The conception of hell and the doctrine of future punishment was especially clear and minutely elaborated; the site of the former, its topography, trials and torments, were all portrayed with harrowing exactness and repulsiveness. Hell was described in the writings of the Middle Ages in words too gross to be repeated here; its imagery, gathered from various sources besides the Old and New Testaments, had been for long accumulating. It was held and taught that eternal damnation was the lot which God had prepared for an immense majority of the human race; that their punishment consisted in the burning of their bodies in a literal fire; that the flames of this fire were never quenched and that the bodies of the damned were never consumed; that God had made the contemplation of their sufferings an essential element of the happiness of the redeemed; and that the saint was frequently permitted in visions to behold the agonies of the lost, and to describe the fearful spectacle he had seen. “He loved to tell how by the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had seen millions writhing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs rolling with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and mutilated and quivering with pain, tortured by pangs that seemed ever keener by their recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mercy to an unpitying heaven. Hideous beings of dreadful aspect and of fantastic forms hovered around, mocking them and their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and refined. Amid all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, feeding, and intensifying the waves of fire. There was no respite, no alleviation, no hope. The tortures were ever varied in their character, and they never paused for a moment upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while retaining their intensity withheld their light; a shroud of darkness covered the scene, but the ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the agonies that were below.”¹

¹ Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume I., pages 348‒349; St. Thomas Aquinas, In Question 97, Articles 4, 5, 6; Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, Volume II., pages 148‒149, 151‒152. There is a large literature on hell and the punishment of the lost. Besides passages in the Fathers, and in the writings of the Schoolmen, and in the legends of the saints, we have the well-known works of the great Italian poet Dante; but another of his countrymen, not so well known, Antonio Rusca, was the author of a book entitled De Inferno; Milan, 1621. It settles logically, and with great learning, every question relating to hell and its inhabitants――its place, extent, divisions, and torments. The more modern books which treat on the subject are very numerous, and quite recently the main points involved in the doctrine of future punishment have been handled from very opposite standpoints.

The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment as presented in the tenets of the Church of the Middle Ages, destroyed all sense of the Divine goodness, and would at length have extinguished the principles of right and morality. Religion, instead of exhibiting a pure and exemplary morality, had become a system of dogmas, of ceremonies and of relics, of asceticism and of abuse, of extreme credulity and of savage persecution, and all this was mainly supported and maintained by fear.

The doctrine of purgatory seems to have arisen gradually from the notion of a purifying fire, and it was afterwards brought into connection with the notion of the mass. It came in to soften the horrible idea of eternal torture in hell; in another respect it was simply a continuation of the doctrine of penance. The possession of the keys of heaven and hell certainly entailed a terrible responsibility upon the priesthood; and it is only charitable to suppose that many a priest might have thought that the key of purgatory might be used with much less presumption; and so it came to pass that praying souls out of purgatory by saying masses on their behalf was speedily developed into an elaborate office which demanded large remuneration. The purchase of indulgence naturally followed in the same wake; and so much alms-giving to churches or to churchmen was understood to secure the remission of so many years, or it might be, centuries of purgatory.

But the idea of heaven, the state of the blessed, was not nearly so firmly realised as the notions of hell and purgatory. Many had brought back visions of hell and purgatory, but no one had returned from heaven with clear information about it; though some of the saints might occasionally descend on beneficent missions to the world of living men, yet of the state of the blessed they gave only the vaguest tidings. In fact, the notion of heaven was mixed up with the prevailing cosmic theory, as well as with the theology of the age. The whole belief of Roman Catholicism was materialistic; a palpable image or a representation of everything was eagerly sought and as fully supplied.

At the opening of the sixteenth century the political power of the Church varied in different kingdoms. Although the head of the Church made the same absolute claims upon all the rulers of Christendom, the rulers did not always respond equally to his calls and pretensions. In England the aristocracy and the commons had united to limit the exorbitant power and influence of the Pope within the kingdom, and his remonstrances and threats were often unavailing. The English clergy, as a body, had a considerable share of political power; they constituted one of the estates of the realm, and the territorial wealth of the bishops being large, contributed to enhance their social importance. The Pope, however, was still recognised as the head of the Church, and by artful management, and the policy of seizing every opportunity to extend his influence, he as yet retained a firm hold upon the English clergy.

In France the clergy were very powerful in the Middle Ages; and in the first half of the thirteenth century they had begun to exercise an almost complete social tyranny. Heresy was a crime which fell under their jurisdiction; they had a monopoly of granting licences to marry and of power to sanction wills; they had an exclusive right to give judgment in cases of usury, that is loans; and thus became the judges in nearly all the important disputes of daily life. Indeed they interfered in everything, and upon every opportunity launched forth their excommunications, which, if not removed, ended in confiscation. The French nobles who tamely yielded to the encroachments of the kings, resisted the clergy, and entered into a bond to aid each other in defying the Papal ban. In 1249, King Louis issued his Pragmatic Sanction, an ordinance against the undue privileges of the clergy and the usurpations of the Popes. It established the rights of the national prelates to confer benefices as handed down to them, and the right of chapters and cathedrals to elect their bishops; it also abolished simony, which Rome in her urgent need of funds had introduced on a large scale. All these arrangements King Louis declared to be under the protection of his own royal courts. The decree forbade the levy of any tax by the court of Rome, unless it was sanctioned by the King, and consented to, by the national Church. This ordinance remained in force till the reign of Francis I. in the sixteenth century. The Pragmatic Sanction was not a very bold assertion of religious freedom, but it seems to have been highly valued by the French; although one of its results was to foster the growth of the royal authority which long proved fatal to the peace and happiness of the French.

The French nobility were a separate caste and paid no national taxes. Their estates descended to their eldest sons, but the younger sons, according to etiquette, also belonged to the noble class; they became very numerous, and though often poor they were extremely proud of their blood and privileges. Thus it was that the hard worked tillers of the soil of France from an early period were hard pressed by the payment of rents to the nobles, taxes to the King, tithes to the Church, and other fees and payments, which were rigorously exacted from them. In 1483 the French peasants laid their grievances before Charles VIII., hoping for some remedy, but in vain, as the new monarch proceeded to invade Italy, and thereby increased their taxes and shed more of their blood. Absolute monarchy became firmly established in France, and there the Reformation failed, not because the French were Roman Catholic, but mainly because the struggle in France was finally decided upon secular and political grounds. The persecution of heresy in France was excessively severe till Catholicism gained the upper hand, and as it was more favourable to despotic government than Protestantism, the absolute monarchy of France ruled the people almost without a challenge for nearly two centuries. But the accumulated oppressions and wrongs perpetrated upon the people for many generations at last exhausted their endurance, and they arose and laid the Throne and the Church both in the dust. The Reformation which was stifled in the sixteenth century burst with volcanic violence at the end of the eighteenth, when the people, goaded almost to madness, rose in their might, scattered the glittering brass of the Crown, and rent to shreds the hallowed veil of the Church, which had so long favoured the instruments of the oppressors.

In Germany the strife between the Emperor and the Pope had ceased; while externally there seemed to be peace with the head of the Church in that quarter of Christendom. But there were many other elements of discord among the Germans. As yet they were far from having attained national unity. The country, though nominally under the Emperor, was really ruled by a number of petty princes and prelates, and the Emperor merely held a kind of feudal headship. Germany was still under the meshes of the feudal system; she had a class of little princes and great dukes, and under them a host of petty nobles and lords, most of whom were poor but proud and independent, and these constantly resisted all the attempts of the higher powers to control them. They claimed the right of waging private war, and the public peace was often broken. It was only in the free towns of Germany that there was union and orderly organised society; the citizens were thrifty, toiled hard, and saved much, and thus they had obtained wealth. The great want of Germany was a central and organised government with sufficient power to maintain the public peace.

No class in Germany had suffered more from the lawlessness of the nobles and knights than the peasantry, who were still in feudal serfdom. Since the beginning of the sixteenth century there had been several insurrections among the peasantry against their masters; and at last these risings began to be mixed up with the religious movement. They were the natural result of oppression――in the circumstances rebellion was the only remedy. The peasants of Swabia, a district of South Germany, rebelled in 1525 against the exactions of the Church and the nobles, but they were soon crushed. The demands which the leaders of the peasants put forward were comprised in twelve short articles――“The right to choose their own pastors; they would pay tithe of corn, out of which the pastors should be paid, the rest to go for the use of the parish; but small tithes, that is, the produce of animals, every tenth calf, lamb, pig, or egg, and so on, they would not pay; they would be free and no longer serfs and bondmen; wild game and fish to be free to all; woods and forests to belong to all for fuel; rent when above the value of the land to be valued and lowered; common land to be again given up to common use; punishments for crimes to be fixed; death gifts, that is, the right of the lord to take the best chattel of the deceased tenant, to be done away with. If any of these articles be proved contrary to Scripture or God’s justice, such to be null and void.” But there was no chance of their demands being granted.

Other local rebellions of the peasantry followed, and severe and savage measures were adopted on both sides, and many were put to death. It has been calculated that before the Peasants’ War was terminated 100,000 were slain. Luther throughout this struggle sided with the ruling powers; he was firmly opposed to the use of the sword against the civil authorities. The sons of toil naturally thought that they should have found a friend in Luther but they were bitterly disappointed, as he openly exhorted the princes and the nobles to crush the rebellion, and urged them on in the work of slaughter.¹ It need not be denied that in some degree this rebellion was incited by the seed which Luther himself had sown, and therefore he deserves the less sympathy for his hard and cruel bearing towards the poor peasantry and their somewhat wild leaders. The monks, who had suffered severely at the hands of the peasants during the progress of the rebellion, blamed Erasmus and the new learning for causing it; Erasmus blamed Luther, and Luther blamed the wild teachers. But history must tell that it was the refusal of timely reforms by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities that was the real cause of these rebellions, and so persistent were the authorities against social reform that the German peasantry were doomed to groan under the yoke of serfdom till the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since then, unhappily for the German race, they have been subjected to a crushing and exhausting militarism, a modern form of despotism, which is threatening to extinguish the spirit and consume the heart of this great but too submissive people.

¹ Worsley’s Life of Luther, Volume II., pages 62‒64, 67‒69, 71‒73. There is a full account of the Peasants’ War in Ranke’s History of the Reformation in Germany, Volume I.

The revival of learning had a remarkable influence on the Reformation movement in Germany. Erasmus had a European reputation and influence, but there was a number of other notable scholars more immediately connected with the rise of the Reformation in Germany; amongst whom were Reuchlin, Buschius, and Hutten; they were called “Humanists,” and those who were bent on maintaining the old modes of learning branded them as “preachers of perversion, and winnowers of the devil’s chaff.” Greek in particular was declared to be heretical: the monks and masters of the Universities were afraid of the light. Reuchlin was the greatest Hebrew scholar of his day, at once a man of the world and of books, but Hebrew was not more in favour than Greek with the theologians of the old school, and they resolved to crush the leaders of the literary reformation. Great efforts were put forth by the enemies of light to overwhelm Reuchlin; the struggle was desperate, and for some time the issue seemed doubtful. His enemies were fast closing around him, when, as a last resort, he wrote to his friends throughout Europe, entreating them to make the utmost efforts to obtain for him new allies. He received from all quarters expressions of sympathy and assistance. Reuchlin’s victory in public opinion was completed by a satire which appeared in the beginning of the year 1516, entitled Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, etc. The aim of this memorable satire was to make the enemies of Reuchlin and polite letters represent themselves: “And the representation is managed with a truth of nature only equalled by the absurdity of the postures in which the actors are exhibited.... Never certainly were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality so ludicrously delineated. The Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum are at once the most cruel and the most natural of satires, and as such they were the most effective.... So truly, in fact, did it hit the mark that the objects of the ridicule themselves, with the exception of those who were necessarily in the secret, read the letters as the genuine product of their brethren, and even hailed the publication as highly conducive to the honour of scholasticism and monasticism.”¹

¹ Sir W. Hamilton’s Discussions, pages 203‒217; 1852. Ranke’s History of the Reformation in Germany, Volume I., pages 300‒308; 1845.

Hutten, who has generally been supposed to be one of the authors of the above satire, at first wrote in Latin rhyme, but he at length resolved to write in German for the instruction of the people. The burden of his popular German rhymes was that Germany should abandon Rome; and he exposed her tyranny and worldliness, and stirred up the people against it. Many other writers also freely ridiculed the existing priestcraft in fables, letters, and rhymes, and prepared the people for the inception of the Reformation.

Before the end of the fifteenth century Spain had fully entered upon the task of persecuting the heretics. The Inquisition was early established in Spain, and more effectively applied to crush all attempts for the reformation of religion than in any other country; and she long enjoyed the glory of being the most Catholic nation in Europe. The modern form of the Inquisition was adopted in Spain in 1484. It was at this time that Torquemada, a friar, was placed at its head with the title of Inquisitor-General, and he at once proceeded to organise the institution. After constituting the new tribunal, he framed a body of rules for its government, which were issued in 1484, and from time to time new rules were added till 1561, when the whole code was revised and published in eighty-one articles, which continued to be the law, with slight variations, down to the present century. Without entering into minute details, it may be stated that the Inquisition was not merely a court for the trial and condemnation of heretics; it exercised the duties of an organised body of police employed in searching out heresy, and thus it was one of its chief functions to hunt for the crimes on which it was afterwards to sit in judgment, and every member of its higher and lower courts was charged with this work. At times when its vigilance was aroused by the alarm of heresy, it had its spies and agents at every port and pass of the kingdom, fully armed with authority to arrest the persons and goods of all who incurred their suspicion. The forms of trial in its courts were all on the side of the inquisitors, and to render it an instrument at once of injustice and terror, all its proceedings were shrouded in complete secrecy. The part of the procedure relating to torture was full of inhuman cruelties; and when the evidence was not sufficient to convict the heretic, he was tortured in order to force him to give answers against himself. From 1484 to 1517 the victims of the Inquisition in Spain numbered thirteen thousand persons who were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three condemned to undergo penance, all within a period of thirty-four years.¹

¹ Limborch’s History of the Inquisition, Volume I., pages 119‒127, 156‒159; Volume II., pages 211‒226; 1731. Compare M‘Crie’s History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Spain, Works, Volume III., pages 50‒51; 1855.

Various attempts were made to introduce the reformed doctrines into Spain, but they completely failed. Everything savouring of heresy was utterly extinguished. In the sixteenth century, Spain constituted herself the great champion of Roman Catholicism; but the ends for which she leagued with the court of Rome were chiefly political. She aimed at subjecting all classes to the absolute will of the monarch, and the power and seeming greatness which was raised upon this foundation, contained within itself the vices which soon consumed her energy and ensured her decay.

At the opening of the sixteenth century Italy had made but little progress towards becoming a united nation. The country was divided into a number of separate states with varying and opposite interests. The chief states were Venice, Milan, and Florence, in the north; Naples to the south; and the States of the Church lying between them, over which the Pope had endeavoured to rule. These States of the Church contained a number of petty lordships and cities which claimed independence, and the Nobles and the Pope were always quarrelling as to who should bear the chief sway. Quarrels were constantly fomented among the Italian states; and the governments of the neighbouring kingdoms were apt to seize these comparatively weak principalities. Milan was claimed by the Kings of France, Spain, Naples, and the German Emperor; and through these internal and external forces Italy was kept in a sea of unrest and disorder. The power of the Papal Court was not so complete in Italy as it was in some other countries; and even excommunication had lost some of its former power and terrors.

Touching the morals of the clergy before the Reformation, there was a general concurrence of testimony against them; to the historian, however, this subject appears as a complicated problem tinged by the contorted notions of the age; inasmuch as it is difficult to reach the truth and do justice to opposing parties. From the beginning of the fifteenth century, a reformation of the Church had been loudly demanded; and the shortcomings of the clergy were generally, if somewhat reluctantly, acknowledged throughout Christendom. They neglected the religious instruction of the people, and their sacred functions were often prostituted to worldly purposes; while the exactions of the Church were becoming more and more unbearable. Nowhere were these abuses and grievances more rampant than in Italy. The Court of Rome itself was more corrupted than any of the political Courts of Europe; the unprincipled and faithless character of its policy was everywhere notorious; in fact, it was a system of intrigue, of cabal, and of bribery. The sacred bodies of clerical dignitaries who surrounded the throne of the Pope might agree to dupe the world; yet they rarely scrupled to supplant and deceive each other when their personal interests were at stake.¹ Many of the clergy did nothing but say masses for the dead, a more lucrative occupation than praying for the living. The education of the clergy and their modes of life were not well calculated to encourage self-culture nor the study of Divine truth, in order to qualify them to instruct others; and the root of the prevailing system directly tended to narrow their sympathy and to dwarf their humanity. Celibacy cut them off from all the interests and duties of domestic life, and this left them at leisure for mischief of all kinds. “The history of the clerical celibacy, in England as elsewhere, is indeed tender ground; the benefits which it is supposed to secure are the personal purity of the individual, his separation from secular ways and interests, and his entire devotion to the work of God and the Church. But the results, as legal and historical records show us, were very different. Instead of personal purity, there is a long story of licensed and unlicensed concubinage, and appendant to it, much miscellaneous profligacy and a general low tone of morality in the very point that is supposed to be secured. Instead of separation from secular work is found in the higher class of the clergy entire devotion to the legal and political service of the country, and in the lower class idleness and poverty as the alternative. Instead of greater spirituality, there is greater frivolity. The abuses of monastic life, great as they may occasionally have been, sink into insignificance by the side of this evil, as an occasional crime tells against the moral condition of a nation far less fatally than the prevalence of a low morality. The records of the spiritual courts of the middle ages remain in such quantity and in such concord of testimony as to leave no doubt of the facts; among the laity as well as among the clergy, of the towns and clerical centres, there existed an amount of coarse vice which had no secrecy to screen it or prevent it from spreading.... And in this, as in other particulars, the mediæval Church incurred a fearful responsibility. The evils against which she had to contend were beyond her power to overcome, yet she resisted interference from any other hand. The treatment of such moral evils as did not come within the contemplation of the common law were left to the Church courts; the Church courts became centres of corruption which archbishops, legates, and councils tried to reform and failed, acquiescing in the failure rather, than allow the intrusion of the secular power. The spiritual jurisdiction over the clergy was an engine which courts altogether failed to manage, or so far failed as to render reformation of manners by such means absolutely hopeless: yet any interference of the temporal courts was resented and warded off until the evil was irremediable, because a clerk stripped of the reality of his immunities, but retaining all the odium with which they had invested him would have no chance of justice in a lay court. Thus on a smaller stage was reproduced the result which the policy of the papacy brought about in the greater theatre of ecclesiastical politics. The practical assertion that, except by the court of Rome, there should be no reformation, was supplemented by an acknowledgment of the evils that were to be reformed, and of the incapacity of the court of Rome to cure them: there popes and councils toiled in vain; they could neither bear the evils of the age nor their remedies. Strange to say, some part of the mischief of the spiritual jurisdiction survived the Reformation itself, and enlarged its scope as well as strengthened its operation by the close temporary alliance between the Church and Crown.”² Everywhere there was a number of priests and friars, whose religious duties occupied only a small portion of their time, and whose standard of morality was formed upon an extremely low ideal; and it was the moral standard that required to be raised before there could be any real improvement in the social condition either of the clergy or the people.

¹ “The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral ♦weakness throughout Italy.”――Symonds’ Renaissance, Volume I., page 382, and the whole of the 7th Chapter.

♦ “weaknass” replaced with “weakness”

² Stubbs’ Constitutional History Of England, Volume III., pages 372‒374; 1878.

For several centuries before the Reformation much of the popular literature of Europe was directed against the vices of the clergy and the abuses of the Church; upon this theme the most orthodox and the most heretical were agreed. The secular clergy often despised the monks, the monks satirised the begging friars, and thus their inconsistencies were exposed to the people, and gradually the strength of the old traditions and prejudices were loosened and impaired, and the people partly prepared for a revolution in their opinions and belief.

From an early period in Italy the corruptions of the Church were ably exposed by persons who had not thought of renouncing her communion. The Italian poets laid open the abuses of the head of the Church as well as of the subordinate orders of the clergy. Dante, who was a sincere believer in the Roman Catholic Church, showed little faith in the infallibility of the Popes or general councils, and he describes the avarice and the luxurious lives of the clergy in the language of indignation and ridicule. In his treatise on Monarchy, he inveighed with remarkable boldness against the corruption of the Church; and in the same work he also attacked tradition, the grand fortress of Catholicism. Petrarch and Boccaccio followed in a similar strain; and the latter, especially by his broad humour, keen wit, and reckless pleasantry was exceedingly effective. He mercilessly assailed the popular religion; its pilgrimages, relics, and miracles were scoffed at in the most playful style; its corruptions were exposed, and the monks, the nuns, and the friars were stripped of their sanctity and derided in profane mockery and jeering scorn.¹ The Decameron of Boccaccio is the bitterest satire of the religion of the Middle ages ever written, and to this day it remains the most curious illustration of the belief and notions of that age. Many other Italian poets and writers employed their talents to unmask the ignorance, the vice, the greed, the hypocrisy, and the absurdities of the hierarchy, from the Popes downward to the wandering mendicants; and this warfare was continued down to the eve of the Reformation.

¹ Dante’s Inferno, H. F. Cary’s Translation; Petrarch’s Sonnets and other Poems; Milman’s _History of Latin Christianity_, Volume VI., pages 516‒518, etc.; M‘Crie’s _History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy_, Works, Volume III., pages 14‒19; 1855. “While so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy it may be wondered why the Renaissance, eminently fertile in the domains of arts and culture, bore but meagre fruit in those of religion and philosophy. The German Reformation was the Renaissance of Christianity; and in this the Italians had no share, though it should be remembered that, without their previous labours in the field of scholarship, the band which led the Reformation could hardly have given that high intellectual character to the movement which made it a new starting point in the history of the reason. To expect from Italy the ethical regeneration of the modern world would be to misapprehend her true vocation; art and erudition were sufficient to engage her spiritual energies.”

“True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that should embrace the system of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala, and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous in the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism.”――Symonds’ Renaissance in Italy, Volume II., pages 21‒23; 1877.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, Savonarola, a Dominican friar, became a religious reformer; he was an Italian by birth and education, a man of talents and great piety; but he seems to have yielded to the illusions of his imagination, and at last persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural gifts. In 1486, he commenced preaching against the vices of the popes, cardinals, priests, and monks, the tyranny of princes, and the immorality of the people; he was an eloquent and powerful preacher, and he called earnestly for repentance and reformation. He preached in various cities, and vast crowds of the people came to hear him. Florence was chosen as the scene of his labour, and for a short time he had a great influence in that city. His aim was to improve the morals of the clergy and the people, not to change the faith of the Christian world. He was also a warm friend of the cause of political liberty and freedom. From this standpoint he was one of the most ardent reformers. Towards the close of his career his mind seems to have become fevered and unbalanced. In 1495, Pope Alexander VI. deemed it time to extinguish so bold a preacher, and he was excommunicated and proclaimed a heresiarch; and he was afterwards taken, tortured, condemned to the flames, and strangled and burned in May, 1498, by the order of the Pope, who had himself committed many dark crimes.¹

¹ Symonds’ Renaissance, Volume I., pages 428, 471.

For two centuries preceding the Reformation a literature in the language of the people had been growing up in Germany, France, and England, and in each of these countries the vernacular contained a mass of writings which satirised the corruptions of the Church and the vices of the clergy. These compositions were sometimes in the form of rude rhymes and short poems, and sometimes songs or ballads, but occasionally they assumed a more ambitious form, as in the poems of Chaucer, and Piers Ploughman. As before indicated, the general result of this literature upon the minds of the people was that gradually and with difficulty they began to see some of the inconsistencies of the Church, and their moral and religious consciousness at last awoke to a clearer conception of their rights.

But the causes of the Reformation were manifold and extremely varied, rising so high and at the same time descending so low, and yet invoking so many venerated feelings and sentiments; and it must be added, so many prejudices and passions were inflamed on both sides, so many great prizes and vested interests depended upon the issue, that even at this day it is almost impossible for any man to assign the true and just measure of all the causes and influences which contributed to this the most momentous struggle of the Christian era.

Another important agency of the revolutionary movement was implied in the printing and publication of editions and translations of the Scriptures. In Italy during the fifteenth century much attention was devoted to the Hebrew language and to sacred literature. The Psalter appeared in 1477, and from that date parts of the Old Testament in the original continued to be issued from the press till in 1488 a complete Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino in Italy. The first edition of the Septuagint came from the Aldine press at Venice in 1518. Erasmus published at Basle in 1516 his edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, together with his own Latin version and explanatory annotations. The book of Job in Hebrew was printed at Paris in 1516. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible under the patronage and at the expense of Cardinal Ximenes, was printed at Alcala between 1502 and 1517 and published in 1520, in six volumes folio, six hundred copies on paper, and three on vellum. It contained in three columns the Hebrew, the Septuagint Greek, and the Latin Vulgate version of Jerome; the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch by Onkelos was printed at the foot of the page, and to it a Latin translation was given; the New Testament included the original Greek and the Vulgate Latin version. The work also had a grammar and dictionary of the Hebrew, a Greek vocabulary, and other explanatory treatises attached to it. Spain thus had the credit of printing the first complete edition of the Scriptures. It is said that this work cost 250,000 ducats. An edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament was published at Strasburg by Cephalæus in 1524 and 1526; editions of the New Testament also appeared at Paris in 1534, and at Venice in 1538; and about the same time editions were printed at various other places. Hebrew and Greek grammars and lexicons then began to appear, and commentaries on the Scriptures followed.¹

¹ Ginguene’s History of Italian Literature, Tome VII.; M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 31, 34, 36; 1855. Among the earliest books of any kind printed was a Psalter in 1457, and a Latin Bible about the year 1455, usually called the Mazarin Bible, the exact date of its printing is uncertain, but it is not earlier than 1450 nor later than 1455.

But these important works were confined to the learned, and could have had no impression upon the popular mind. The influences, however, which had contributed to produce them were general and not limited to any class; for the religious feelings and sentiments were as active among the unlearned as among the most cultured men of the age. The activity of the learned class, as manifested in the publication of the Scriptures, was the effect of general and widely spread influences which were running in a definite direction. Translations of the Scriptures were therefore eagerly solicited, and then for the first time began to be supplied. It is said that the Scriptures were translated into the Italian language in the thirteenth century, and it appears that fragments of very early translations were found in libraries during the fifteenth century. Nicolo Malermi, a monk, produced an Italian version of the Bible from the Vulgate, which was published in 1471. Before the end of the century it went through eleven editions, and in the following century through twelve. About this period also Italian versions of parts of the Scriptures appeared. An improved and more faithful translation of the New Testament was executed by Antonio Brucioli, and printed at Venice in 1530. His translation of the whole Bible was published in 1532, and revised and printed in 1541. Other Italian versions of the Scriptures soon followed. But in none of the modern languages were so many translations and editions of the Bible published as in the Flemish or Dutch tongue. A Flemish version of the Bible appeared in 1477; a translation from the Vulgate was printed at Delft in 1497, and reprinted several times before the Reformation at the presses of Antwerp and Amsterdam. A Flemish version of the New Testament from that of Luther was published at Antwerp in 1522, and reprinted twelve times within the next five years. During the first thirty-six years of the sixteenth century fifteen editions of the entire Bible were printed in the Flemish language, and thirty-four editions of the New Testament alone within the same period, twenty-four of which were printed at Antwerp; some of them were taken from the Vulgate, but most of them were from Luther’s version. The earliest French translation of the Old Testament from the Vulgate was printed about 1477; a French version of the New Testament was published in 1512, and a version of the Bible in 1530. The earliest Protestant translation of the Bible in French was printed at Neufchatel in 1535.¹

¹ Panfer’s An. Typ. In.; Simon’s Critical History of the New Testament; M‘Crie’s Works, Volume III., pages 38‒40.

In Spain the Scriptures were translated into the Castilian dialect in the year 1260, and other ancient versions of the Bible in the dialects of the Spanish people have been preserved in the libraries of the Continent. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Bonifacio Ferrer, a Carthusian monk, translated the whole of the Scriptures into the Spanish language, and this translation was printed at Valencia in 1478; but shortly after its publication it was suppressed by the Inquisition, and the whole impression ordered to be burned. A Spanish version of the New Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1543.¹ Luther’s German translation of the Old and New Testaments was published between the years 1522 and 1530. Translations of the Bible were published in the Danish language in 1524, and in the Swedish in 1526.

¹ The Bible of Saci, Book I. Andres.

Wycliffe commenced his English translation of the Bible from the Vulgate in 1380, and it is supposed that portions of it were widely circulated in manuscript. Tyndale’s English version of the New Testament was printed in 1526, and within ten years fourteen editions of it were published. Coverdale’s translation of the whole Bible was published in 1535; and another version, mainly based upon Tyndale’s, appeared in 1537. A revised translation was issued in 1539,¹ which was sometimes called Cranmer’s Bible. The publication of so many translations of the Scriptures in the languages and dialects of the people, and the numerous editions which they passed through, seemed to indicate that a crisis was approaching, as the religious sentiments of the people were warmed, and that their feelings and passions were being raised to a pitch of excitement which might be extremely difficult to control. The lower classes in many parts of Europe had been long groaning under oppression, and a sense of wrong had begun to rankle in their minds. A century and a half earlier the English peasantry had rebelled against their masters, and we have seen that the same classes had revolted against the Church and the nobles in Germany. The inconsistencies of the profession and the practice of the clergy could not fail to open the eyes of the people, while the social position in which they found themselves placed did not harmonise with the most elementary ideas of justice and truth. They therefore listened with keen emotion and swelling hearts to the impassioned appeals of the reformed preachers, who they easily won over the multitude; but there was much more difficulty in moderating the zeal and the passions aroused by their preaching. Even in Luther himself the destructive leaning was pretty strong and pronounced; he said――“I believe it to be impossible that the Church should be reformed without completely eradicating canons, decretals, scholastic theology, philosophy, and logic, as they are now received and taught, and instituting others in their place.”²

¹ Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities; Anderson’s _Annals of the English Bible_, 1862.

² Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, Volume II., pages 16‒17. “Luther railed against all speculative doctrines and pursuits with violent, indiscriminate recklessness. He frequently expresses the most withering contempt for Aristotle and all his works.”――Blakey’s History of the Philosophy of the Mind, Volume II., page 129; 1848. Compare D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation, Volume I., pages 154, 219.

This awakening of the religious consciousness, and its association with moral and social practice, soon led to important issues. The married life, which had hitherto been regarded as inferior to celibacy, now appeared in a new light, as something divine, as a law imposed by God Himself; and the domestic duties at once assumed a higher and nobler significance. Poverty was no longer considered an object in itself, and the life of the monk, though before deemed higher than the worldly energy and industry of the layman who supported himself by the labour of his hands, began to be regarded with contempt. Religious freedom took the place of blind obedience, and henceforward monkhood and priesthood lost much of their sway.

Again, in relation to knowledge and to thought, man returned, as it were, from the extramundane to the genial earth――from the alien region of authority to himself. He was at last convinced that the entire work of salvation must be accomplished within himself, and that reconciliation and grace were matters that stood in a direct relation between himself and God. With this conviction in the core of his soul, he found his real and true being; thus it is that the philosophy of the human mind is closely connected with Protestantism, for the principle of both is one and the same, though it realises itself in the course of development in varying forms.¹

¹ Schwegler’s History of Philosophy, Stirling’s Translation, pages 148, 149; 1868.

The Bible appeared to the early Reformers as the pure, genuine, and true word of God, and whatever had been added to it, was not regarded as a real advance upon the original, but rather as a debasement. The authority of tradition was denied, the mediæval hierarchy, and the scholastic tendency to rationalise Christian dogmas were rejected. In the first burst of their enthusiasm, the Reformers called the Pope Antichrist, and Aristotle, the chief of the Catholic school of philosophy, the godless bulwark of the Papists. The logical result of this would have been the abandonment of all philosophy in favour of immediate, unquestioning faith: but when Protestantism gained a fixed consistence the necessity of a definite order of instruction became as apparent as that of a new ecclesiastical polity. Melanchthon perceived the need of Aristotle, the master of form, and at last Luther allowed the use of the text of the Aristotelian writings, when not encumbered with scholastic commentaries. Thus there arose at the Protestant Universities a new, though simpler, scholasticism; the development of an independent philosophy on the basis of the generalised Protestant principle was the work of a later time.¹ Modern Philosophy began when the intellect threw off that entire subservience to theology which characterised it in the Middle Ages. In the words of one of the best authorities the chief divisions of modern philosophy are:――“1. The Transitional Period, beginning with the revival of Platonism; 2. The Epoch of Empiricism, Dogmatism, and Scepticism, from Bacon and Descartes to the Encyclopedists and Hume; and 3. The Epoch of the Kantian Criticism, and of the systems issuing from it, from Kant till the present time.

¹ Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, Volume II., pages 15‒16.

“Unity, servitude, freedom――these are the three stages through which the philosophy of the Christian era has passed in its relation to ecclesiastical theology. The stage of freedom corresponds with the general character of the modern era, which seeks to restore, in place of mediæval antagonism, harmonious unity. Freedom of thought, in respect of form and substance, has been secured gradually by modern philosophy. The first movement in this direction consisted in a mere exchange of authorities, or in the reproduction of other ancient systems than that of Aristotle, without much modification, and such adaption to new and changed conditions, as the scholastics had effected in the system of Aristotle. Then followed the era of independent investigation in the realm of nature, and finally also in the realm of mind. There was a transitional period marked by the endeavour of philosophy to become independent. The second epoch, the epoch of Empiricism and Dogmatism, was characterised by methodical investigations and comprehensive systems, which were based on the confident belief that knowledge of natural and spiritual reality was independently attainable by means of experience or thought alone. Scepticism prepared the way for the third stadium in the history of modern philosophy, which was formed by criticism. According to the critical philosophy, the investigation of the cognitive faculty of man is the necessary basis for all strictly scientific philosophising, and the result aimed at by it is, that thought is incompetent to the cognition of the real world of phenomena, beyond which the only guide is man’s moral consciousness. This result has been denied by the following systems, although these systems are all lineal descendants from the Kantian philosophy, which is still of immediate (not merely historical) significance for the philosophy of the present day.”¹

¹ Ibid., Volume II., pages 1‒3; 1874.

There is only a limited truth in the presuppositions of a complete parallelism between the progress of the development of the ancient philosophy and that of modern systems. “Modern philosophy has from the beginning owed its existence in a far greater measure to an interest in theology (though not for the most part to an interest in the specially ecclesiastical form of theology) than did ancient philosophy previous to the time of Neo-Platonism.” The most remarkable difference between the ancient and modern philosophy is in the science of mind. Psychology has in comparatively recent times been developed to a stage of completeness much beyond what the philosophers of Greece had reached; and the departments of moral and social science are now treated on a different and far wider method than in ancient times.

From the outset there were two chief doctrines which determined the course taken by the Reformers. One of these was the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, the other manifested itself in the constant appeal to the Bible as the only decisive authority in questions concerning faith. It is pretty evident that the German Reformers held mainly by the first, while those of Switzerland, Zuinglius and Calvin, gave the preference to the second.

Although the leaders of the Reformation did not adopt a bold critical method of inquiry, and though the systems which Luther and Calvin founded were essentially dogmatic at all points; yet the admission of an act of spiritual rebellion, of an appeal to conscience and to the judgment of the people, instead of the authority of the Catholic Church, involved a principle which must ultimately lead to consequences that the Reformers hardly intended and could not have ♦foreseen. Questions concerning the sacraments, the meaning of certain texts of Scripture, the forms of church polity, were discussed with the utmost zeal; but the grand issue of the revolution――the rebellion of the moral faculty against the doctrines that collided with its teaching――was as yet little manifested by the Reformers. They had rejected many of the traditions and external ceremonies of the Church, but they still looked to the Bible and historical authority for the basis of their theology. And yet it cannot be doubted that the Reformation introduced influences which had a powerful effect on the philosophy of the human mind;¹ and at length greatly modified the moral ideas and sentiments of the people, and led to political and social results. This revolutionary movement also gave a marked impetus to scientific inquiry. It was then that empirical science began to assume importance, and it is only from this epoch that it has a continuous history.

♦ “forseen” replaced with “foreseen”

¹ D. Stewart’s Works, Volume I., pages 28‒30; 1854. Blakey’s History of the Philosophy of the Mind, Volume II., page 128; 1848.

When we inquire what was the meaning of a national revolt from Romanism, and look only to external circumstances, it will not appear to amount to much. It was the claim set up by the Government or the Crown for the control of those rights within the nation, which the Pope had before claimed as the head of the Christian empire; the clergy, monks, and friars had hitherto been regarded as subjects of the Pope’s sacerdotal rule. Now, where there was a revolt from Rome, the allegiance of this class of persons was annulled, and the civil government claimed as full a power over them as it had over its lay subjects; there were some partial exceptions to this, but the essential point was the entire exclusion of all the pretensions of the Pope to interfere with any of the affairs of the nation. Generally, matters relating to marriage and wills still remained under the jurisdiction of the clergy, but when the ecclesiastical courts ceased to be papal they became national, and the special matters with which they dealt, might, if necessary, be brought under the control of the Government. Even touching religious doctrine and the forms of public worship, the Government often claimed the final authority, which had been before exercised by the Pope. Thus externally considered, the revolt from Rome was rather a political and ecclesiastical arrangement than a purely religious matter. In relation to the ruling powers, it was an assertion of free, independent national life; the instinctive feeling for unity and the pride of distinct national independence entered as a very strong influence into the struggles of the Reformation, but it was not always on the side of the Protestants; and in those countries where the movement failed, as in Spain and France, it was probably owing to influences of this kind more than to any other cause. In the imperfectly tutored mind the instinctive tendencies, the inherited feelings, and the traditional notions, form a conservative and unreasoning force which it is almost impossible to overcome without a gradual change of surroundings and circumstances; while to many highly cultured individuals, the mere idea of belonging to the great historical and the only true and infallible Church is exceedingly soothing and gratifying. To be relieved also from all perplexing doubts and questions touching the spiritual and eternal destiny of the soul, is to many a matter of exquisite satisfaction; they glory in the thought of the certainty of their everlasting salvation; they glory in the notion that whatever others may be, they at least cannot be wrong; time may come and go, generation after generation of heretics and heathens may be whirled into everlasting misery, but they alone go on for ever, rejoicing that the universe was specially created for their eternal happiness.

The eras of the Reformation among the different nations of Europe were comprised within a period of about fifty years, though in some countries the struggle lasted longer. The revolt of Luther is usually dated 1517, the year in which he published his theses against indulgences, but the Reformation in Germany was only partly successful. Denmark and Sweden both broke off from Rome and adopted the Lutheran doctrines between 1521 and 1534; about the same time several of the cantons and chief cities of Switzerland became Protestant. England threw off the authority of the Pope in 1535. But the struggle with the Roman Catholic powers was long continued in the Netherlands, in France, and in Germany; and in the two latter the Catholics ultimately recovered much of the ground they had lost.

Luther was supported by the Elector of Saxony, and this enabled him to continue his controversy with the Church. His activity and writings soon raised a stir in Germany, which spread to other lands. In 1520, he published two pamphlets. The first was addressed to the nobility of the German nation, and in it we find the following sentiments:――“The Romanists have raised round themselves walls to protect themselves from reform. One is their doctrine, that there are two separate estates: the one spiritual, including the pope, bishops, priests, and monks; the other secular, embracing the princes, nobles, artizans, and peasants. And they lay it down that the secular power has no authority over the spiritual, but that the spiritual is above the secular; whereas, in truth, all Christians are spiritual, and there is no difference between them. The secular power is of God, to punish the wicked and protect the good, and so has power over the whole body of Christians without exception, pope, bishops, monks, nuns, and all. For St. Paul says――‘Let every soul (and I reckon the pope one) be subject to the higher powers.’ Why should 300,000 florins be sent every year from Germany to Rome? Why do the Germans let themselves be fleeced by cardinals, who get hold of the best preferments and spend the revenues at Rome? Let us not give another farthing to the Pope as subsidies against the Turk; the whole thing is a snare to drain from us more money. Let the secular authorities send no more annates to Rome; let the power of the Pope be reduced within clear limits; let there be fewer cardinals, and let them not keep the best things to themselves; let the national churches be more independent of Rome; let there be fewer pilgrimages to Italy; let there be fewer convents; let priests marry; let begging be stopped by making each parish take charge of its own poor; let us inquire into the position of the Bohemians, and if Huss was in the right, let us join with him in resisting Rome.”¹ This passage shows that Luther knew well how to catch the ear of the people, and it was a strain admirably calculated to arrest the attention of the princes of the day; nothing could be more gratifying to them than to set their own authority above the clergy and the Church. From this date Luther’s impassioned nature hurried him onward; and he burned the Pope’s bull and the canon law books in the month of December 1520. But it would be unjust not to mention that there were many in the Roman Catholic Church who earnestly wished for a reform of the discipline, the manners of the clergy, and the monastic orders, although they were averse to any separation from her communion or any breaking up of what was deemed her legitimate authority. This class of moderate men, though some of them were not without influence, were doomed to effect very little, because in times of revolution bold measures alone have the chance of commanding success.

¹ Luther’s Works, Walch’s edition; H. Worsley’s _Life of Luther_, Volume I., pages 169‒171.

Luther was a voluminous writer as well as a great preacher, and in spite of his faults, taking him all in all, he presents the characteristics of a veritable hero. His works are both numerous and diverse. They consist of sermons and expositions of Scripture, disputations, and controversial writings, many letters and circular epistles, maxims, and hymns, besides his translation of the Bible already mentioned. Most of Luther’s writings were produced on the spur of the moment to meet some exigency. None of them can be regarded as finished compositions, yet they are fresh and full of vigour and energy. Many editions of his works, more or less complete, have been published: one at Wittenberg, twelve volumes in German, 1539‒59, and seven in Latin, 1545‒58; one at Jena, eight volumes in German, 1555‒58, and four in Latin, 1556‒58; another at Altenburg, in ten volumes in German, 1661‒64, and there are several later editions. But it fell to the lot of the calmer and more learned Melanchthon to lead the stream of the newly awakened life of faith into its methodically circumscribed channel. Besides many other valuable works, he composed the first compend of the doctrines of the Protestant Church, which formed the basis of other treatises. His Loci Communes rerum Theologicarum seu Hypotyposes Theologiæ was published in 1521, and has passed through upwards of a hundred editions, about fifty of which appeared during his lifetime.

Melanchthon was appointed by the newly formed Protestant party to draw up a Confession of Faith, in a concise and moderate form, on the basis of the doctrines which he and Luther and other divines had determined. It was laid before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and hence it has been called the Confession of Augsburg. It consists of twenty-eight articles; and in the first twenty-one the principal doctrines of faith were discussed in reference to the Roman Catholic Church, but with remarkable moderation of tone; the last seven articles treated of the prevailing abuses of Catholicism. A confutation of this Confession published by the Roman Catholics, was soon after followed by a treatise from Melanchthon, entitled the Apology of the Confession. A similar arrangement was adopted in the Apology as in the Confession, but the number of articles was reduced to sixteen. This work long held the first place among the theological books of the Lutheran Church; and in argumentative power the Apology is exceptionally masterly amongst this class of theological literature. The Articles of Schmalkald, which were written by Luther in a far bolder strain, appeared in 1536, and the first German edition was published in 1538. With these may be mentioned Luther’s larger and smaller Catechisms, the larger one for the use of the clergy and schoolmasters, and the other for the use of the people and children.

The early Swiss Reformer, Zuinglius, proclaimed the principles of evangelical faith in various writings, which may be regarded as the beginning of the consecutive theology of the reformed Church. Besides his polemical writings, sermons, and letters, he wrote Commentaries concerning True and False Religion, published in 1525, and A Brief and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith. A Confession of the Reformed Church was published in 1534, which is known as the Confession of Basle. But owing to the controversy touching the Lord’s Supper, and the efforts made to restore peace, a second Confession was composed by the Swiss Reformers and divines in 1536, and is usually called the Helvetian Confession.

From the very commencement of the Reformation it became manifest that the Protestants must proceed upon a different method of attaining knowledge from that followed by the Roman Catholics. The radical difference between the two, which has continued to become wider down to the present day, may be shortly stated: The Protestants assert that the Old and New Testament is the only safe source of religious knowledge, and forms the sole rule of faith; the Roman Catholic Church assumes the existence of another source associated with the first, namely, tradition. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically claims the sole right of interpreting Scripture; but the Protestant Church concedes this right, within limits, to every one who has the requisite gifts and attainments, and in a wider sense to every one seeking after salvation; she proceeds upon the view that Scripture should be interpreted in its entirety according to the analogy of faith, and she also allows for the distinction between a critical and general understanding――between the common understanding and a deeper insight into the meaning of Scripture. Having presented a sketch of the antecedents of the Reformation, I return to the more immediate subject of the work.

SECTION II.

_History of the Reformation in Scotland to the Death of Cardinal Beaton._

WHEN Europe was on the eve of the first stage of the Reformation struggle, Scotland as we have seen in the foregoing volume, had lost her king and many of her leading men upon the disastrous field of Flodden. The citizens of Edinburgh, however, were equal to the emergency, and they immediately took steps to preserve order and to defend the capital; and it was at this time that the authorities resolved to build a wall around Edinburgh.¹ But the fear of an invasion was soon dispelled as the Earl of Surrey disbanded his host. In October, 1513, the infant king was crowned at Scone, and his mother named as regent; but her frothy disposition speedily led her into actions which rendered this arrangement nugatory, as in the following year she married the young Earl of Angus, which at once deprived her of the regency.

¹ Burgh Records of Edinburgh, Volume I., pages 143‒144, 146.

Meanwhile a party of the nobles were looking to the Duke of Albany as a likely personage to take the reins of Government. He was a son of Alexander Stuart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., who after his forfeiture passed into France, and had attained to a position of wealth and honour. As a member of the Royal family, after the infant king, he was next heir to the throne. He was requested to assume the functions of Governor of the kingdom; but the state of society in Scotland offered comparatively few attractions to a man habituated to the gay and fashionable society of France, and he seems to have been very loath to leave the enjoyments of his adopted country, even in exchange for the highest office in the Council of Scotland.

As usual there was strife amongst the nobles; while a fierce contest was raging among the dignitaries of the Church about the See of St. Andrews. Gavin Douglas, the provost of St. Giles, John Hepburn, the prior of St. Andrews, and Andrew Forman, the bishop of Moray, were all eagerly struggling to obtain possession of the much coveted primacy. After some very unseemly demonstrations of force, a compromise was effected by a distribution of benefices amongst the aspirants, and Forman obtained St. Andrews with the power of Legate a Latere, and the promise of a cardinal’s hat.¹

¹ Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIII., chapter 48; Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 125‒127.

In May 1515 the Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland, and received a warm welcome from the people, as they hoped to enjoy greater tranquility under his rule. The task, however, of restoring order amongst the nobles was exceedingly difficult. Although the new governor’s talents were above the average of his class, he laboured under the disadvantage of being French in manner and habits, and of being quite unacquainted with the usages and feelings of the Scots. He began his government with bold measures. Offenders of high rank were seized, imprisoned, and executed. But these proceedings failed to produce the intended effect, and were too much out of the usual course. In a short time Albany discovered the hopelessness of his task. He repeatedly returned to France to be free of the turmoil; and after a fluctuating sway of eight years, his regency terminated in 1524.¹

¹ Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIII. Among modern historians Tytler has treated the regency of Albany at greatest length. History of Scotland, Volume V. pages 101‒174; 1834.

The persistent interference of Henry VIII. with the internal affairs of Scotland added another element of anarchy, and he appears to have had a special animus at the Duke of Albany, continuing to tease and torment Scotland throughout his reign. Henry’s intrigues and projects were unceasing; he endeavoured to get the young King into his hands by encouraging his sister to flee with her children into England. He kept a number of paid spies and agents in Scotland for the express purpose of exciting popular tumults, private quarrels, and rekindling the jealousy of the nobles, in order to distract and discredit the government of Albany. Project after project arose in his passionate breast, which his ambitious and brutal nature pursued with unrelenting and murderous severity; sometimes his hobby was political, sometimes religious, at other times matrimonial, and in almost every instance he inflicted great suffering upon the people of Scotland. During the regency of Albany, the Earl of Angus, having previously been forced to leave the country, entered into a paction with the English Government in ♦1524, and returned to Scotland.¹

♦ “1224” replaced with “1524”

¹ State Papers, reign of Henry VIII., Volume IV., throughout. Tytler’s History of Scotland, Volume V., pages 99, 117‒119, 182.

At this time the chief nobles were much divided; and the Earl of Angus quickly matured his plot. Having secured the concurrence of the Earl of Arran and others, he seized the young King, and, as had often been done before in similar circumstances, he shortly concentrated in his own hands all the power of the Crown. Angus kept the King in close restraint, and revelling in his usurped authority, he exercised a severe tyranny on all who dared to oppose him. The kingdom remained in this state for several years, though two attempts were made to rescue the King from the grasp of the bold noble, in one of which the Earl of Lennox lost his life, while the chains of the captive were more firmly rivetted than before. The Douglases were complete masters of the situation, Angus himself was chancellor, his uncle treasurer, and they compelled the King to sign all deeds which they presented to him, while the revenue and the law of the country were wholly under their control. At last, with the assistance of Archbishop Beaton, James escaped from Angus in May 1528, and from that time to the end of his reign, he pursued the Earl and his adherents with relentless severity.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 301, 307, 312, 330; ♦Lesly’s History Of Scotland, pages 134, 136, 140; Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIV., chapter 33.

♦ “Lesley” replaced with “Lesly” for consistency

In September a parliament met and passed an act of attainder against the Douglases, and Angus was forced to flee into England. The King appointed the Archbishop of Glasgow chancellor, the Abbot of Holyrood treasurer, and the Bishop of Dunkeld, keeper of the privy seal.¹ These appointments indicated that the tide was turned against the aristocracy, and that the policy of the young King would be strongly influenced by the circumstances in which he had been placed. James soon manifested an unmistakeable intention to curb the nobles, but it must be added that he entered upon his purpose without a full and proper appreciation of the difficulties of the task; he seems to have greatly under-estimated the power of the nobles, and accordingly he had to pay the penalty. Whenever the nobles were excluded from the government of the kingdom, they began to show a leaning towards the doctrines of the Reformation; they were extremely dissatisfied with the king, and hated the clergy on account of their influence over him, and their control of the government.

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 322‒323, 324; Diurnal of Occurrents, page 11.

But the causes and circumstances which tended to promote the Reformation in Scotland demand a more minute examination. In the tenth chapter of this work it was noticed that the wealth of the Church gave the clergy much power in public affairs and the government of the country; it was also observed that the clergy generally ranked themselves on the side of the Crown in its struggles with the aristocracy. This deep-seated antagonism of interests between the clergy and the aristocracy was one of the chief external causes of the Reformation in Scotland; and in the development of Protestantism, the motives of this aristocratic connection finally issued in curious and instructive results. James V. was not insensible to the prevailing abuses of the Church, nor was he averse to moderate remedies, but he never entertained the idea of forsaking the religion of his fathers. He, however, incited Buchanan to lash the mendicant friars in the Satire of the Franciscans, and he encouraged by his presence the public performance of Sir David Lindsay’s Satire of the Three Estates, which was acted at Linlithgow in 1540. It was reported that he exhorted the bishops to reform their lives, and threatened if they neglected his warning that he would treat them after the manner of the King of England; still he was a faithful son of the Catholic Church, and pretty well under the influence of the clergy. Many of the nobles, from motives of self-interest, professed a willingness to embrace the reformed opinions, and gradually ranked themselves on the side of the Reformers; as time passed, and the prospects of the division of the church lands approached, they became more and more ardent in their adherence to the principles of the Reformation.

But strong as the influence of the nobles was in hastening on the Reformation, or rather the destruction of the Roman hierarchy, it is a misinterpretation of the historic phenomena to attribute this revolution to them alone. Besides the religious ideas and sentiments which the Reformers themselves honestly held and preached, there were also the domestic, the social, and the moral causes of the Reformation, and which comprised all the relations between the clergy and the people that had arisen and accumulated since the introduction of Christianity. The tenor of these relations and exactions have already been partly noticed in the Introduction and in the fourth and tenth chapters of this work, and again generally touched upon in the preceding pages of the present chapter, and I must now discuss the results which they more or less distinctly produced on the feeling and mind of the nation.

The exactions connected with the Roman Catholic rite of burial were the most teasing and heartless. They were known under the terms of “The Kirk Cow,” “The Uppermost Cloth,” and “Corse Presents,” that is, dues exacted by the parochial clergy on the deaths of their parishioners. These dues were sometimes taken from the surviving relations in cases of the most abject poverty, and however much concern the survivors of a father or a mother might have for the souls of the departed, surely it was a short-sighted piece of policy to lay on a heavy exaction at such a time, irrespective too of the circumstances of the parties. For these and many other obvious reasons the mortuary dues were the most hateful and galling to the people. On the eve of the Reformation (1559) a provincial council of the Catholic clergy enacted a canon relieving the poor from the mortuary dues, but they were to be exacted from those immediately above the poor in a modified form. The concession, however, came too late.¹ Then there were the paschal offerings, the Sunday penny, the penny offering, the christening pennies, and the lights at Candlemas for the feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary. At first these were free gift offerings, according to the benevolence of the giver; but in course of time they became obligatory, and the churchmen enforced the payment of them, when necessary, by fulminating the sentence of cursing and debarring the refractory from the sacraments of holy Church. The priest also claimed the right of common pasture for his cattle throughout the parish.²

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume II., pages 44, 273‒274, 167‒168, 305‒306.

² Ibid., Volume II., pages 31, 45, 148‒149, 274‒275.

The right of the Church to enforce the payment of tithes under penalties had been long established in Scotland as elsewhere, but this often led to disputes between the clergy and the people. An uncounted tithe was a tax on the fruits of industry, increasing in amount with the increase of production and wealth; and however much the hard toil of a man or a family might produce, the tenth part thereof had always to go to swell the riches of the Church. This exaction pressed extremely hard upon the class of tenant farmers and the toilers of the soil, who amid all their difficulties and struggles could not fail to see that the services of the clergy scarcely repaid them for the worry and loss of so large a deduction from the products of their industry. Such thoughts naturally would have arisen in the minds of the people, for strong as their religious feeling was, yet it had a limit, beyond which it could not be drawn upon with any chance of safety. Then the tithes were extended not only to include all kinds of farm produce, live stock, and poultry, but also the produce of gardens, descending to flax, leeks, and cabbages; tithes of pasture and hay, tithes of mills and fishings, tithes of wool and everything else.¹ That the collection of all these dues must have been a constant source of annoyance to the people cannot be doubted, or that it occasioned many disputes and quarrels was not surprising.

¹ Ibid., Volume II., pages 21‒23; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., page 47.

But from another point of view the practice of the Roman Catholic Church had issued in a social corruption of the clergy and the religious orders which was too palpably inconsistent to endure. Touching the principle of celibacy, it was briefly noticed in the fourth chapter that the clergy of Scotland had not strictly practised the rule of the Church; and in the sixteenth century this blot on the clergy was not a matter of doubt or dispute, it was a notorious fact and patent to the eyes of all. The result in Scotland was this, the rule of celibacy was enjoined by law but abrogated in practice among those of the clergy who were rich enough to support a household; council after council protested against it, canon after canon called upon the bishops and the clergy to put away their concubines, but all was in vain, on the failing of incontinence they seemed to be utterly irredeemable. Cardinal Beaton had five children; his successor, Archbishop Hamilton, had three; William Gordon, Bishop of Aberdeen, had several children, and one of his daughters married the Laird of Udny; Bishop Chisholm of Dunblane had children, in 1542 one of his daughters married Sir James Stirling of Keir, and her father gave her a dowry of £1000, and also bound himself to keep her and her husband for five years. The Bishop of Moray, when Prior of St. Andrews had three sons, legitimated in 1533; when Bishop of Moray he had five sons legitimated in 1545, and two daughters in 1550――making ten of a family. In fact most of the bishops and many of the abbots and monks had children at the period immediately preceding the Reformation. The statutes passed in the Provincial Council of the clergy held at Edinburgh in 1549, were prefaced with a confession that the cause of the troubles and heresies which afflicted the Church were the corruption, the lewdness, and the gross ignorance of churchmen of almost all ranks. “The clergy, therefore, were enjoined to put away their concubines under pain of deprivation of their benefices; to dismiss from their houses the children born to them in concubinage; not to promote such children to benefices, nor to enrich them, the daughters with doweries, the sons with baronies, from the patrimony of the Church. Prelates were admonished not to keep in their households manifest drunkards, gamblers, whoremongers, brawlers, night-walkers, buffoons, blasphemers, and profane swearers. The clergy in general were exhorted to amend their lives and manners; to dress modestly and gravely; to keep their faces shaven and their heads tonsured; to live soberly and frugally, so as to have more to spare to the poor; to abstain from secular pursuits, and especially trading.

“Provision was made for preaching to the people; for teaching grammar, divinity, and canon law in cathedrals and abbeys; for visiting and reforming monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals; for recalling fugitives and apostates, whether monks or nuns, to their cloisters; for sending from every monastery one or more monks to a university; for preventing unqualified persons from receiving orders and from holding cure of souls; for enforcing residence and for restraining pluralities; for preventing the evasion of spiritual censures by bribes or fines; for silencing pardoners or itinerant hawkers of indulgences and relics; for compelling parish clerks to do their duty in person, or to find sufficient substitutes; for registering testaments and inventories of persons deceased, and for securing faithful administration of their estates by bringing their executors to yearly account and reckoning; for suspending unfit notaries, and for preserving the protocols of notaries deceased; for reforming the abuses of the Consistorial courts.”¹ This is a very formidable array of abuses to reform brought forward by the Roman Catholic clergy themselves; but the proceedings and canons of subsequent councils show that they were not carried into effect――indeed it would have been marvellous if the churchmen had complied with the canons of 1549. Sir David Lindsay in the Satire of the Three Estates makes Spiritually say――

“Howbeit I dar not plainlie spouse a wife, Yet concubeins I haif had four or five, And to my sons I have given rich rewards, And all my daughters maryit upon lairds.”

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 149‒150, 173; Volume II., pages 15, 17, 28, 35, 42, 48, 51, 55, 65, 81‒88, 89‒118, 128, 153‒156, 301‒303. _Register of the Great Seal_, Book 26; Acts of the Lords of Council and Session, Book 36; Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, Volume I., page 201; Gordon’s History of the Earldom of Sutherland, pages 172, 478; W. Fraser’s Stirlings of Keir, pages 39, 40, 378.

Again Diligence announces――

“From this day forth our barons temporall Sail na mair mix thair noble ancient blood With bastard bairns of stait spirituall.”¹

¹ Lindsay’s Poetical Works, Volume II., pages 88, 119.

This must have tended to lower the character of the clergy in the popular estimation; there seems also reason to believe that the example of the dignified clergy sporting with their damsels in the face of society had an injurious effect in other directions, by weakening the feeling of chastity and modesty in the relations of the sexes, it encouraged immorality among all ranks of the nation, it lowered and tended to discredit the whole group of feelings and sentiments which should be concentrated around the domestic circle, and which really forms the foundation of social well-being and virtuous life.

Celibacy and monasticism, and the associated group of ascetic and sanctimonious notions, originated from the same principle. Looking on the subject from the standpoint of history, and from the broad ground of morality and freedom, it is not necessary at this time of day to argue that the State should suppress and prohibit monasteries and nunneries. All that the State should be fairly called upon to perform is to see that protection is afforded to those who are forcibly seized and detained in such establishments. But circumstances might arise when it would be necessary for the government to interfere; in well-ordered communities, however, where public opinion has its proper influence, such instances would rarely happen. If men and women voluntarily resolve to shut themselves up within the walls of a building, it is best, perhaps to let them follow their special hobby; when the dominant idea and feeling of their minds lead them to adopt this mode of life, it may be pretty safely assumed that such persons would form comparatively useless members of society. It is not therefore on the ground of any theory of government that the system of monasticism is here discussed; but upon the principles of human nature, morality, the rational and harmonious exercise of the varied faculties of the mind in the development of civilisation.

It is true that the ascetic sentiment has often entered largely into other religions as well as Christianity. This is especially true of the great religions of the East, but it is not unknown in some of the less developed forms of religion. When Mexico and Peru were conquered by the Spaniards in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, they were amazed to find among the inhabitants of these countries religious customs and practices which much resembled some of those of the old world. The resemblance was most noticeable in relation to monasticism; as some of the customs of the natives corresponded pretty closely with the Christian monastic institutions.¹ In Africa and Asia the monastic type of religion has always existed; the horrifying macerations and ascetic rites of the Buddhists surpass those of any Christian order.

¹ Viscount Amberley’s Analysis of Religious Belief, Volume I., pages 98‒108. Hereafter it will come within my purpose to give a more detailed criticism of this work, especially the second Book, which deals with the Religious sentiment itself. Although the candour, the talents, the industry, and the literary culture of the author are worthy of all admiration, it must be admitted that his elaborate performance lacks the logical grasp of principles and ideas which characterise the highest minds, and that before all other qualifications is necessary to one who aspires to revolutionise the religions and theologies of the human race. It may also be stated that his sympathies were rather feeble to enable him to fathom the real sufferings and the inner pangs of the heart of mankind, or to reach and faithfully represent the deepest chords which have throbbed in the soul of humanity. This weakness of sympathy is most apparent in his treatment of Jesus Christ. He devotes about 240 pages to an account of Jesus and his sayings; but even from the standpoint of the school to which he belongs, the criticism is uncommonly contorted and flippant. Sometimes he condescends to sneer at the ignorance of Jesus――“His intellectual weakness, his irrational prejudices,” and so on. He was evidently much offended because the moral doctrines of Jesus did not assign more respect to wealth and rich men――it was a sad error on the part of Jesus not to extol them; since from these and such-like reasons the author is led to the conclusion that Jesus had only a very imperfect sense of justice, “crude ideas of social connections,” and no proper esteem for the aristocracy. The work in its historical character is also defective in consecutive continuity and in the appreciation of internal sequence. Volume I., pages 254‒496.

The monastic system was first introduced from Egypt into Christendom about the beginning of the fourth century. By the end of that century the system was in vogue and growing rapidly. “At first it called into existence a class of men who for self-denial, sincerity of purpose, heroic endurance, and unyielding fanaticism, have rarely been matched. They abandoned all the ties of home and friendship, renounced all the pleasures and even most of the necessaries of life; they scourged and macerated their bodies, lived in loneliness and desolation, and wandered half-starved and half-naked through deserts, till they had almost extinguished every natural feeling and every human sentiment within their breasts. No affliction could move them, no sympathy for suffering stirred their heart; they embraced misery with an ardent yearning; they gloried in multiplying forms of loathsome penance and in trampling upon every natural desire. To promote the interests of their church was their only passion, and to gratify it there was no torture that they were not ready to endure or to inflict.”¹ The monastic system under various orders of monks, but all founded on the theory of mortification, continued to develop till it reached enormous dimensions; and as centuries passed, the first enthusiasm of the monks died away, the monasteries became rich, and then multitudes entered into them merely to escape the burdens of life. At last the monasteries, instead of being the abodes of saints and holy men and women entirely devoted to the service of God, had become dens of corruption and of luxury; yet until near the end of the fifteenth century the ascetic theory of life, the philosophy of mortification, was everywhere held throughout Christendom; asceticism still represented the highest point of moral dignity, and Protestantism was the first effective declaration against it.

¹ Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume II., pages 28‒29, 396; Montalembert’s Monks of the West, Volume I.

According to every worthy conception of the philosophy of human nature, man has been constituted with feelings, emotions, sentiments, and ideas, which naturally seek gratification; and the chief question is how their varied claims should be subordinated and developed. Every feeling and emotion and idea has an unquestionable right to seek gratification, subject to the necessary limitations, on the ground of reasonable subordination in the interest of development on the lines of harmonious inclusion, instead of exclusion and unnaturally attempted extinction. The most advanced thinkers, moralists, and educators now recognise this; and history presents masses of evidence against the principle of rigid exclusion and asceticism――the method of maiming the body, dwarfing the human sympathy, and starving the mind, in order to save the soul. The results of this may be seen in the establishment of caste, in Oriental religions and despotisms, in oligarchies and aristocracies, in imperialism and fatalism, and in many other forms.

In the history of the form and the manifestation of the religious feeling and aspiration there has been a tendency in many quarters to draw the lines too sharply between the teachers of religion and the body of the people. This has often resulted in the establishment of a class specially charged with the oracles and message of God; and once the idea began to be entertained, sentiments and habits associated with it sprung up and accumulated around it, till the priesthood finally assumed a strong and commanding position. They were supposed to be the holy servants of God, and they should therefore show to the profane world of the flesh that they were exalted above the most natural and deeply rooted feelings of mankind. Accordingly they proceeded to renounce the idea of marriage, and to forego all the touching domestic feelings and duties associated therewith; the members of the priesthood from the highest to the lowest must forsake all such earthly pleasures; the salvation of the human race having been committed to them by heaven, they in sooth must rise to the height of their sublime calling. The intoxication of power inevitably asserted its supremacy, and then they declared themselves to be the final legislators for this world and the next. If a point of morals, a case of mutual association among any body of men, or a novel opinion were expressed, or a tradition or article of the creed which time had consecrated, were called in question, then, on all such matters, they alone were the arbiters who could pronounce a true verdict.

A celibate clergy among a rude people would probably command most influence. The priest with no family ties was supposed to have abandoned the engrossing interest of earthly enjoyments, to have devoted himself to his God, and to care only for the salvation and eternal welfare of his flock. With nothing else to divert his energies or to ruffle the serenity of his soul, he professed to toil for the benefit of his fellow-creatures. Many priests of all religions have earnestly laboured in such work; the Roman Catholic priesthood have rarely shrunk from facing danger and toil in the cause to which they have devoted themselves. It is, however, possible for the priests to make too stringent rules of self-denial――rules which aim at extinguishing the natural feelings of our common humanity, and by pushing this to extremes, instead of enhancing their influence, they may degrade themselves. It is possible to be over holy, by publicly professing to believe doctrines and to obey rules which in practice are continually broken by some of their number. Now this was exactly what happened in Scotland, celibacy was the rule and law of the Church but in practice the clergy disregarded it. It may well be asked, why should any class of men be placed in such a position? why should rules be imposed upon the clergy whereby their human feelings become twisted and tied down? Why should their humanity be shorn and mangled as if this was a necessary part of their calling?

The most sympathetic races are those among whom monogamy has been long established. All genuine social feeling and sentiment begins in the family circle, and this is the altar where, if anywhere, love should reign supreme. There the little ones looking up to their father with all the simplicity of a primitive faith, are full of trust and ready to be impressed with reverence. Those who do not love their own, will never care much for any doctrines of religion or morality, however clearly they may be understood. We have no faith in the son who rails against his father and mother; for the best part of our nature is almost unconsciously formed during our earliest years, while all those feelings and sentiments that assist in sustaining the development of the moral character and the finer emotions of the heart, those touches of kindness which sweeten human life and cheer the soul of humanity are the result of family life.

The family must ever be the foundation of society, the first link in the great chain of order, virtue, progress, and civilisation. It was the root from which the most complete social and political organisations have sprung; and the nations which have recognised and adopted this institution have had by far the happiest and most glorious careers of national life. But celibacy, monasticism, and the modern hospital establishments for the young, all discarded it, and proceeded on a single line of characteristic isolation. To retire from the duties of life and bury oneself in a monastery cannot contribute much to the onward movement of society, though it may suit the peculiar mind and circumstances of some individuals.

The evidence of history and psychology both point to the conclusion that monasticism, celibacy, and the hospital system, all violate and trench upon the fundamental principles of social development and healthy society. These systems ignore the doctrine that teaches us to cultivate and develop all our powers and feelings in harmonious subordination to a life of activity and energy, of untiring struggle and conflict with surrounding difficulties, of honest effort and endeavour, of toil and thought. No one has a right to shrink from his duties, and no one should be deprived of any of the enjoyments which our country and age afford.

In connection with these matters, the social miscalculations and economic errors, as formed and taught by the Socialists and Communists, bears a rather close resemblance in some points to the monasticism of the Middle Ages. The modern theories are not all equally impracticable; but the ideas of absolute equality of right, community of goods and property throughout a nation, must be characterised as utterly visionary. In the history of Christianity from the fourth to the fifteenth century there had been innumerable attempts to establish a sort of Communism in societies unripe for its reception, which ended in the results indicated in the preceding pages. All the theories of modern Socialists for the immediate reconstruction of society are based upon equally delusive notions; no theory can have a chance of practical influence and realisation, unless it work through existing forms of social life, and not by isolation from them. A higher moral standard, a clearer idea of justice, and a far greater willingness to look at both sides of a trade question must be attained, even before a great development of simple co-operation can be effected.

Having indicated the external, the political, and social causes of the Reformation, I proceed to consider what may be called the inner or religious causes. They are more difficult to realise than the other causes, and more important, because they are deeper and more intense. The first class of causes were transient and rather selfish, and when the aims which had stimulated their activity were gained, they fluctuated, and shortly ceased to operate. But the purely religious sentiment and aspiration were constant in their action, and persistent in their manifestation in the face of fearful odds; until they attained a complete triumph in the recognition of toleration and religious freedom.

The religious feeling and idea, then, were the constant and the real causes of the Reformation, though these contained immense social and political issues which were hardly foreseen by the politicians of that age. The political movements and combinations prompted by mixed motives, and often by selfish ends, in some quarters accelerated, and in others retarded, the religious upheaval, but all the political powers in the world could neither have accomplished nor prevented the final consummation of the principles of the Reformation. For no external power can extinguish the internal operations of the human mind. From the dawn of history, political power has been characterised by duplicity and a lack of honest principle; diplomatic jugglery and concealed falsehood, have reigned along the whole line of empires and nations down almost to the present century. The proof of this may be read in the records of every government that has existed, and in the honest testimony of the historians of the world. In the sixteenth century no political government had truth enough in its constitution to bring about this great religious revolution; no government had sufficient strength of moral purpose for so mighty a task; and at the utmost governments could only directly hinder or hasten it. Though the Reformation bore on its surface many marks of contact with the political powers, it may be affirmed that the religious feeling and the moral principle were the supreme influences of the movement; as these were its heart and life, the internal and invisible springs of its vigour, and the glorious features of its reality and truth.

There have been politicians who have laid down their lives in testimony of their adherence to political ideas, but they are few in number compared with the army of men and women who have cheerfully endured the tortures of martyrdom for the sake of their religion. Here, then, we have the grand influence and the motive power of this religious movement――an aspiration and a moral sentiment, the inner craving of the mind which ever seeks a Being worthy of its adoration.

In 1525, Parliament passed an Act prohibiting the importation of Luther’s book, and the propagation of his opinions. The Act stated that damnable opinions have been spread in several countries by the heretic Luther and his disciples; but that Scotland and her people has always firmly believed in the holy faith and never yet admitted any opinion contrary to it. It then declared that no person arriving with ships at the ports of the kingdom should bring any books of this heretic, nor dispute, nor rehearse, his heresy unless it was to refute it. It was reported that a translation of the New Testament in manuscript, was used among the Scots in the reign of James IV. Tyndale’s version in a printed form was brought into Scotland in 1526, and seems to have been pretty freely circulated. The first heretical books of any kind circulated in this country came chiefly from England. In 1535, Parliament commanded all persons who had heretical books in their possession, to deliver them up to the authorities within forty days, under the penalty of confiscation and imprisonment.¹

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 295, 349; Anderson’s Annals of the English Bible, pages 111‒112, 495‒501. 1862.

The first Scotsman who suffered for the profession of the reformed opinions was Patrick Hamilton, the Abbot of Ferne. While sojourning in Germany, he had received the proscribed doctrines from the lips of Luther himself. He returned to Scotland in 1527, and began to disseminate his opinions and doctrines. Early in the following year he was taken and imprisoned in the Castle of St. Andrews, and there tried, convicted, and condemned for heresy. On the 29th of February, 1528, he was led to the stake and burned to death before the College of St. Andrews.¹ It appears that he was married and had a daughter.² He left a short treatise in Latin, which contained a summary of his leading doctrines.

¹ Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 14‒18, Laing’s edition.

² Lorimer’s Life of Hamilton, pages 123‒124.

This treatise was translated into English shortly after Hamilton’s death by John Firth, an Englishman, who added a preface to the reader. As a reward for his zeal he was burnt at Smithfield in 1533. The book contains the ten commandments and eighteen propositions, mostly quotations from the Scriptures, which are put into the form of syllogisms. The doctrine of the Gospel is set forth and contrasted with the law, the doctrine of faith――faith in Christ, free grace, or justification by faith; good works are held neither to save nor to condemn the sinner; a comparison is made between faith, hope, and charity; and finally, “He that thinks to be saved by his works calleth himself Christ, for he calleth himself a saviour, which appertains only to Christ. What is a saviour but he that saveth? And thou sayest, I save myself, which is as much to say as I am Christ, for Christ is the only Saviour of the world.”¹

¹ Hunt’s Religious Thought in England, Volume I., page 4; 1870. A copy of Firth’s translation of Hamilton’s treatise is inserted in Knox’s History. Works, Volume I., pages 20, 21‒35.

Three editions of Firth’s translation were published at London, probably before 1540. John Firth was one of the earliest and most consistent of the English Reformers. “He had embraced the rational views of the sacraments that had been taught by ♦Zuinglius. He reasoned that if the body of Christ ascended into heaven it could not be in the Eucharist, for it was impossible for a body to be in more places than one at one time.... Firth complained that the error prevailing in his day was too much trust in the outward signs, as if by them was accomplished what could only be done by faith. He denies that the sign gives the Spirit of God or grace. Those that come rightly to baptism have grace already. The ordinance is a witness that they are in a state of grace. The life of a true Christian is a continual baptism. One result of attaching so much importance to the outward sacrament was the consigning of unbaptised infants to everlasting pain.”

♦ “Zwingle” replaced with “Zuinglius” for consistency

It was mostly among the lower orders of the clergy that the new doctrines were embraced. The friars were the chief preachers of the day, and they occasionally inveighed boldly against the prevailing abuses of the priesthood. A friar named Erth preached a sermon in Dundee, in which he touched upon the licentious lives of the bishops, and the evils connected with excommunication and miracles. The armed followers of the Bishop of Brechin immediately buffeted him and called him a heretic. Naturally the friar was displeased at this treatment, and he proceeded to St. Andrews to consult John Mair, the well-known doctor of the Sorbonne and the author of numerous works, whose word at that time was regarded as an oracle in matters of religion; and he assured the friar that such a doctrine might well be defended, and that he would defend it, for it was not heresy. The friar then intimated to all who were offended with his sermon that he would again preach it in the parish church of St. Andrews. On the appointed day all the regents and masters of the University, and other notable persons, attended to hear him. He ascended the pulpit, and took for his text the words, “Truth is the strongest of all things.” He spoke of excommunication, how fearful a thing it was when rightly applied, that it should not be rashly used for every light cause, but only against open and incorrigible sinners. “But now,” said he, “the avarice of priests and the ignorance of their office has caused it to be altogether vilified; for the priest, whose duty and office it is to pray for the people, stands up on Sunday and cries: ‘One has tint a spurtle; there is a flail stolen from them beyond the burn; the goodwife on the other side of the street has tint a horn spoon; God’s malison and mine I give to them that knows of this gear and returns it not.’” The people, he said, merely mocked at such excommunication. This part of the friar’s sermon was confirmed by acts of Parliament passed about the same date, in which it was stated, “that the dishonesty and misrule of churchmen, both in wit, knowledge and manners, was the reason and cause that the Church and clergy were slighted and contemned; and also that the damnable persuasion of the heretics and their perverse doctrines gave occasion to despise the process of excommunication and other censures of the holy Church.”¹

¹ Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 36‒40; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II., page 341, 342, 370.

Friar Erth, however, did not renounce the Catholic faith, but his plain preaching necessitated his flight to England, where he was imprisoned by Henry VIII. for defending the authority of the Pope. In Scotland, as in other countries, there was a number of earnest Roman Catholics who wished to reform the existing abuses and discipline without destroying the Church or forsaking their ancient faith, but things had come to such a crisis that their efforts in this direction were overborne and rendered futile; it was too late in the day, the time for compromises had passed. John Mair, noticed above, was for sometime a regent in the University of Glasgow, but in 1523 he became a regent in the University of St. Andrews. In 1525 he left St. Andrews and went to Paris; but in 1531 he returned to St. Andrews, and resumed his lectures. He was appointed Provost of St. Salvator’s College in 1534, an office which he held till his death in 1550. About the same time Gavin Logie was principal of St. Leonard’s College. Under him many of the early Scottish Reformers were educated at St. Andrews. In this connection might be reckoned Alexander Myln, the Abbot of Cambuskenneth, who was appointed the first President of the Court of Session in 1533; he manifested commendable zeal in religion, and died in 1548. At the same time John Winram was sub-prior of St. Andrews, and afterwards became one of the chief Reformers; and Robert Richardson, a canon-regular of Cambuskenneth, though an adherent of Catholicism, preached with great energy against the scandalous and immoral lives of the higher churchmen, and denounced the intemperate habits which prevailed amongst the monks. Alexander Seton, a black friar, and confessor to the king, preached during the time of Lent, with remarkable boldness against the corruptions of the Church, and especially against the life and conduct of the bishops. The favour of the King shielded him for a time from the wrath of his brethren, but he was at last obliged to retire, and sought refuge in England about the year 1536.¹

¹ Brunton and Haig’s Senators of the College of Justice, pages 7, 8; Knox’s Works, Volume I., pages 36, 37, 45‒52, 150, 530‒533; Mair’s History of the Scots (Scottish History Society), edited, 1892.

For some years after the fall of the Earl of Angus, the anarchy on the Borders, the disturbance in the Highlands, and the harassing conflict between the Crown and the nobles, fully occupied the time and attention of the leading churchmen of the day, so that heretics were comparatively little disturbed. The king, as we have seen, had thrown the government almost entirely into the hands of the clergy, who found sufficient employment in watching the nobles. These, neglected by the king and excluded from the offices of the State, were now manifesting a still stronger inclination to listen to the new opinions. But great as the power of the Church was during the reign of James V., it was not in a position to accuse and try any one of the great nobles for heresy.

In justice to the character of the leading Catholic churchmen of the age, it should be remembered, however, that their ideas and sentiments were very different from those of the present day, and in relation to the persecution of heresy this was specially noticeable. To take the life of a single human being for holding certain opinions on any subject whatever is a great and fearful crime; but in the sixteenth century it was deemed the highest virtue to cut off the obstinate heretic. This throughout Christendom was the common view. It is therefore unjust to judge them by the ideas and sentiments of the nineteenth century. The prevailing Roman Catholic creed seems to have produced upon the character of its most ardent professors an almost absolute indifference to the suffering of those outside the Church; and amongst men of this frame of mind and feeling it was regarded as their first duty to cut off the heretics, and to extinguish them root and branch for the glory and honour of God, the purity of the faith, and the good of society. These notions were so deeply ingrained into the prevailing religious creed and feeling that it was hardly possible for the Reformers to emancipate themselves from them; hence we find that Calvin openly avowed and took credit to himself for his share in the persecution and burning of Servetus. Calvin’s action in this matter was applauded by all sections of Protestants, and warmly approved by his most intimate contemporaries. Calvin, Beza, and others, wrote books on the lawfulness of persecution;¹ so difficult was it for even the greatest minds to disentangle themselves from the current trains of thought and associated sentiments of their age. It is deserving of remark, however, that the persecution in Scotland was not nearly so severe as in some of the other countries of Europe.

¹ Tulloch’s Leaders of the Reformation, page 185; Hallam’s Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Volume II., pages 101, 107‒116; Dyer’s Life of Calvin. Compare Lecky’s History of Rationalism, Volume II., pages 35‒61. 1865.

King James continued attached to the Church, and countenanced the persecution of the heretics. Henry Forest, a Benedictine monk, was taken, tried, condemned for heresy, and burned at St. Andrews in 1532. In 1534, the Bishop of Ross, under a commission issued by the primate, held a court in the Abbey of Holyrood, and many suspected persons were summoned to appear before it; and the king himself attended several of the sittings clothed in scarlet. A number of the accused, both men and women, “burned their faggots,” that is, renounced their erroneous opinions; while some fled to England, and to other countries. On the other hand Norman Gourlay, a priest, and David Straiton, a layman, firmly adhered to their heresy, asserted their innocence, and vindicated their faith to the last, and in consequence were both condemned, and on the 27th of August suffered for their opinions, being burned at Greenside in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.¹ In the case of Straiton there was a quarrel with the clergy about the tithe of fish. He had a boat in which his servants went to sea and fished, and when the collector insisted for the tithe of the fish, Straiton bade his servants throw every tenth fish into the sea again, and let him seek their tithe where he found the stock. Yet despite these executions the new opinions continued to spread, and between the years 1534 and 1537 many persons were accused of heresy. Some of ♦the accused abjured their opinions, while a considerable number of them fled out of the country.²

¹ Diurnal of Occurrents, from 1513 to 1575, pages 18‒19. “And also there was sharp inquisition and punishment of heretics in Edinburgh, the king himself assisted thereto. Master Gourlay being adjured before, and Straiton obstinate in his opinions, were burned. The Sheriff of Linlithgow, and Captain James Borthwick, and divers others, fugitives from the law, were convicted for heresy.”――Lesly’s _History Of Scotland_, pages 149‒150; Knox, Volume I., pages 56‒60.

♦ missing word “the” inserted

² Knox, Volume I., pages 54‒57, 526‒531; M‘Crie’s Life of Knox――Works, Volume I., pages 317‒323.

Henry VIII. was extremely anxious that the young king of Scotland should imitate his example and shake off the authority of the Pope. In 1535, he sent ambassadors into Scotland with a proposal for a marriage between his daughter and the Scottish king, and suggested that James should meet him at York, where they could confer together and cement the ties of friendship. Much showy flattery was used towards James to induce him to follow out the proposals of his uncle; various presents were sent to the king, consisting of horses, offers of the garter, and a copy of a book entitled “The Doctrine of a Christian Man.” A specimen of Henry’s efforts to convert James may be given from his instructions to Bishop Barlow and Thomas Halcroft, his ambassadors at the Scottish court in October, 1535: the following touches on the encroachment of the Pope on kingly prerogatives and royal authority――“That within the limits of your realm, such spiritual promotions and ecclesiastical dignities as appertain to the collation of your prerogative royal, your clergy have appropriated to the Bishop of Rome for to give and sell them away by prevention, at his own pleasure, without your licence, rather choosing to receive them of a foreign usurper, than of their own natural prince, to the intent your grace should have no liberty in their kingdom. And divers of them have encroached so large possessions, that in richness and yearly revenue they seem able to compare with you; and as for pre-eminent authority they far surpass your highness; which in no condition should be suffered by so noble a prince as your grace is, whom God has endued with prudent wisdom and discretion much excelling many of your noble progenitors, so that nothing is to be desired in you, save only a fervent love of God’s word, whereby without difficulty ye shall know the office of a king, righteously how to rule and not to be ruled of your subjects; which kingly office of God’s ordinate institution most highly preferred, Scripture depaindeth from the first creation hitherto. When God had created Adam and set him in paradise, subduing to his obedient subjection all creatures, and having no superior under God, without any restraint of free liberty save only to obey God’s precept, what was it otherwise than a perfect demonstration of a king’s majesty, to be in his realm as Adam was in paradise, lord over all.” After citing various examples of kings from Scripture, for the instruction of his nephew, which the ambassadors were instructed to beat into his head with all their eloquence and force; and then the practical application was presented to the young king, thus:――“And therefore this good King Josias, only attended to God’s word, the established foundation of princely governance, without any contrary respect, delayed not his royal power, effectually furthering a due reformation, whereby God’s pleasure accomplished, he prosperously reigned over the people; exhibiting an evident example unto your grace, both of courage and necessity, valiantly now in the clear revelation of God’s word, to enterprise a like reformable redress of your spiritual (so named) clergy, which as it shall be to the glorifying of God’s honour, so must it needs be to the advancement of your realm, also to such augmentation of inestimable riches and unrestrained freedom of your royal liberty, as never none of your noble progenitors hitherto could attain. How should not your treasure be inestimably augmented, if unto your highness, as of duty ought to be, were restored the title, jus, advowson, patronage, gifts and grants of all spiritual promotions, with free interest in their goods, lands, rents, revenues, and possessions, as rightfully belong to your regality, whereof so long season they have injustely dispossessed you by their subtle submission to the Bishop of Rome? What a kingly liberty were it to have them subdued under your obedience and subjection, which by unseemly sufferance are lords over you within your own dominion, whose visured holyness is hypocrisy, and their flattering fidelity nothing else save false dissimulation! If they feign humble submission of allegiance, they show it for a facid intent, to be exalted above your royalty. If they seem to motion you to justice, it shall be to revenge their cruel quarrels. If they offer to assist you with their riches, it is to maintain their extortionate causes. Finally, whatsoever purpose they compass about, always the principal respect is their private commodity, being a kingdom within themselves, confedered together without any profitable consideration of your common public weal.”

James V. replied to Henry in these words――“As to the matter shown by your said ambassadors, we may not of our conscience but first keep our part toward God and our obedience to Holy Kirk, as all our forefathers had done these thirteen hundred years by past.”¹

¹ Hamilton Papers, Volume I., pages 20, 22, et seq. 1890.

All the artful policy of Henry failed; the meeting between the two kings was indefinitely postponed by the advice of the Scottish clergy, and James remained firmly attached to the Roman hierarchy. The agents of the English Government assert that James was completely under the control of the clergy; and Barlow, the bishop of St. Asaph, characterised them thus――“his spiritual unghostly councillors, who, I dare boldly affirm that, if they might destroy us with a word, their devilish endeavour should not long fail.... Also, I am sure that the Council, which are only the clergy, would not willingly give such advertisement to the king for due execution upon thieves and robbers; for then ought he first of all to begin with them in the midst of his realm, whose abominable abused fashion, so far out of frame, a Christian heart abhorreth to behold. They show themselves to be in all points the pope’s pestilent creatures, very limbs of the devil, whose popish power violently to maintain their lying friars cease not in their sermons, we being present, blasphemously to blatter against the verity, with slanderous reproach of us, who have justly renounced his wrong usurped papacy. Wherefore, in confutation of their detestable lies, if I might obtain the king’s licence (otherwise shall I not be suffered) to preach, I will not spare for no bodily peril, boldly to publish the truth of God’s word among them. Whereat though the clergy shall repine, yet many of the lay people will gladly give ear.”¹

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 1‒7, 10, 14, 19, et seq., and pages 36‒38. The Diurnal of Occurrents says――“In the month of November there came an English ambassador, with sixteen horse in his train, to infest this realm with heresy, which was then in England among them, but through the grace of God he came no speed but departed with repulse” (page 19).

In 1537, Sir Ralph Sadler was sent into Scotland on a mission to the Scottish court. He was instructed to make every endeavour to induce James to resist the Pope and to join his uncle in common measures of defence, and to persuade him to give no heed to the false rumours and slanderous misrepresentations of the motives of his uncle which were so industriously spread. He was also to propose that James should meet with Henry, when they might have a personal interchange of views, from which much mutual benefit was expected to result.¹ The influences which controlled the policy of James V. were manifested in various directions. He went to France in 1536 in search of a wife, and on the 1st of January 1537, his marriage with Magdalene, daughter of the King of France, was celebrated at the French court. The King and Queen landed in Scotland on the 28th of May, amid great rejoicings; but the Queen had a very delicate constitution, and she died on the 7th of July, the same year, greatly lamented by the people. Shortly after an embassy was sent to France, and Mary of Lorraine, a daughter of the Duke of Guise, was conveyed to Scotland in 1538, and married to the King. She was a woman of remarkable energy and talents, and played an active part in the struggles of the Reformation in her adopted country. The house of Guise, however, was one of the most aspiring and ambitious in France, and its aims and policy were wholly devoted to the Roman Catholic Church. The marriage of the King of Scots, therefore, was a plain indication to Henry VIII. of the direction in which the policy of the Scottish King would tend for at least some time to come. But it is only rendering historical justice to state that James V., as compared with his contemporary across the Border, was a liberal minded king; and when he countenanced and permitted the execution of heretics he was merely allowing the law of the kingdom to run its course. He was at variance with the aristocracy as many of his ancestors had been before him; and remembering the treatment which many of the occupants of the throne and even himself had received at their hands, it is not surprising that he pursued the line of policy naturally marked out for him. There is no evidence that James was naturally cruel or inclined to push matters to extremes. Henry VIII. on the other hand persecuted the devotees of the Pope and the disciples of Luther with equal severity, and endeavoured to hold the position of Pope and of King, to concentrate the power of both in his own person, and reign above all law.

¹ Ibid., Volume V., pages 81‒90, 97.

In the autumn of ♦1539, James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, died, and was succeeded by his nephew, Cardinal Beaton. David Beaton, Abbot of Arbroath in Scotland, and Bishop of Mirpoix in France, was assured of the primacy in August 1538, and was installed in the See between the 13th and the 25th of February, 1539, six months before the death of his uncle; a few days afterwards his natural son got a grant of lands in Angus. Beaton was made a cardinal upon the 20th of December, 1538, and was exceedingly anxious to obtain from the pope the office of legate a latere. In December, 1539, he wrote to his agent at Rome to press his suit for a commission as legate. James V. wrote to the Pope on the 16th December, 1538, entreating that the office might be bestowed on Beaton, and again in August, 1539, in June 1540, and in March 1541. In February, 1544, the Regent Arran also wrote to the Pope touching the same matter, and a month after the coveted office was granted, and Beaton attained to the summit of his power.¹

♦ “1239” replaced with “1539”

¹ Statutes of the Scottish Church, Volume I., pages 117, 129‒133; Sadler’s State Papers, Volume I., pages 15‒17; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 156, 443‒445. Archbishop James Beaton, the cardinal’s predecessor, had also aspired to a cardinal’s hat and the power of legate a latere, but he failed to obtain it. David Beaton was the only Scottish bishop on whom the dignity of a cardinal was bestowed by the undivided Latin Church.

About the beginning of the year 1539, several persons, mostly of the lower orders of the clergy, were accused and apprehended for heresy. Thomas Forrest, a canon of Inchcolm and vicar of Dollar; two black friars, named Beveridge and Killor; Duncan Simpson, a priest at Stirling, and Robert Forrester, a layman, belonging to Stirling, were tried before a council held by Cardinal Beaton and the Bishop of Dunblane. They were all condemned, and were burned on the 1st day of March, in the presence of the king, upon the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. At the same time nine persons recanted, and many were banished. Amongst the latter was George Buchanan, who escaped by the window of his bed-chamber while his keepers were asleep.¹ The same year a friar of the name of Russel was apprehended for heresy. He had been preaching at Dumfries and other parts of the country; he was young and intelligent, and therefore it was not likely that he would be suffered to spread his heresies. Another youth of eighteen years, named Kennedy, was also apprehended. Both were brought before the Archbishop of Glasgow, who, it is said, was reluctant to condemn them. They were both, however, sentenced to death and burned at Glasgow. Russel before his death is reported to have spoken the following words:――“This is your hour and the power of darkness; ye now sit as judges, whilst we stand before you wrongfully accused and more wrongfully condemned, but the day shall come when our innocence shall appear, and then ye shall see your own blindness to your everlasting confusion. Go forward, and fulfil the measure of your iniquity.”²

¹ Diurnal of Occurrents, page 23; Knox, Volume I., pages 62‒63, 521‒522; Buchanan’s History of Scotland, Book XIV., chapter 55; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., page 154.

² Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, Volume I., page 216; Knox, Volume I., pages 63‒66; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., page 141.

These executions were not followed by the results expected. Instead of stamping out the heresy they only added more intensity to it, and the proscribed opinions were more firmly held by those who had embraced them. It has been maintained by some that if a persecution be sufficiently severe and prolonged it must extinguish heresy. A great deal depends, however, upon the state of civilisation the people have reached among whom the heresy exists. If a nation be in a comparatively low moral and social condition, and lives under a political or military despotism, heresies or opinions obnoxious to the ruling powers might be extinguished, or rather banished, from that particular quarter of the earth. In such circumstances persecution might be carried to a pitch which would crush the best of causes. But although the usual means by which heresy is propagated be cut off, it cannot eradicate what is believed to be the truth from the minds of those who have cordially embraced it. Oppressive laws and a tyrannical and merciless administration, if carried on long enough, will no doubt prevent the expression of heresies, or of any opinion whatever; still it can hardly be assumed that a heresy is extinguished because its expression is legally and effectively suppressed, which is the utmost that the severest persecution can effect. And it is just at this point where the influences arise in which the human mind derives a peculiar enjoyment from holding on to opinions that have been prohibited by Church and State. For there is unquestionably a high degree of inward pleasure in cherishing proscribed opinions which the judgment and the moral sense believe to be true, and upon this some of the very strongest self-sustaining and original elements of character have been developed. The bond of sympathy that radiated in the hearts of the heretics was not broken when one or two were burnt, indeed their memory and opinions began then only to be thoroughly grasped, and were afterwards retained with a vividness and a faith which their fellow believers alone could fully realise. If it had been possible to burn the enthusiasm of the heretic and of the martyr along with their bodies, truth and religion and morality would long ago have been banished from the world, or rather the higher characteristics of humanity could not have been developed. Hence heresy may be cursed and condemned, heretics may be tortured and consumed to ashes; and yet, as if to mock the limits of the powers which have vainly assayed to crush them, again and again heresies have risen up and shone with a lustre all its own, drawing fresh energy from the manes of the departed.

A parliament met at Edinburgh in December, 1541, and at once proceeded to deal with two measures which directly trenched upon the privileges of the aristocracy. An act was passed confirming the revocation of all grants of lands, lordships, customs, burgh rents, annual fishings, donations, life rents, and gifts, which had been made during the king’s minority. The variety and extent of the transactions which this act covered must have appeared extremely alarming, especially to those who had any hand in the Government within the period specified. Another act declared the Western and the Orkney and Shetland Islands to be annexed to the Crown, together with the lordships of Douglas, Bothwell, Preston, Tantallon, Crawford Lindsay, Crawford John, Bonhill, Jedburgh Forest, ♦Glamis, Liddesdale, Evandale, and the superiority of the Earldom of Angus, with all its forts, castles, and whatever else pertained to it. Though these measures were within the legal limits of the constitution of the kingdom, they were far too bold; but if the Crown had been able to carry them into effect the results would have been beneficial, as the disorderly state of the inhabitants in the annexed districts would have been remedied, and peace and order introduced. The Government was aware of the danger attending the path on which it had entered, and attempted to appease the ruffled feelings of the nobles and chiefs by proclaiming a general pardon for all crimes committed down to the date of the act. This, however, lost much of its calming effect owing to the clause which excluded the banished Earl of Angus and all his adherents.¹ The nobles now became nervously apprehensive, and their feeling soon manifested itself.

♦ “Glammis” replaced with “Glamis”

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 357‒358, et seq.

In a parliament held in March, 1541, new acts were passed against the spread of heresy. To question the supreme authority of the Pope was declared to be a capital crime, and even a suspicion of heresy was deemed sufficient to disqualify any one for office in the Government or elsewhere; all meetings for the discussion of religious doctrines were strictly prohibited, and rewards were promised to those who revealed to the authorities where such meetings were held. The Church was so solicitous to preserve the purity of her doctrines that no Catholic was permitted to converse with any one who had embraced a single heretical opinion. Another statute was passed which tells that one special feature of the Scottish Reformation had already begun to show itself; as it was directed against those who broke and cast down the images of the saints, or otherwise treated them with irreverence and dishonour.¹

¹ Ibid., pages 370‒371.

While these events were passing at home, Henry VIII. was assuming a more dictatorial tone, and making demands which no Government of Scotland could ever entertain. His project of a meeting at York was again renewed, and James agreed to meet him there. The King, however, on the advice of the clergy, in the end declined the meeting. Henry was greatly disappointed, and instantly burst into an uncontrollable rage, leaping in his fury and raving like a maniac. Nothing short of a war of conquest against Scotland could appease him. King James’s advisers would not let him go to York; and they had good reason for distrusting his uncle’s professed intentions, as the State papers amply testify.¹

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 198‒205, 214.

In 1542, Henry resolved on war, in order to let the Scots feel his power. The strife began on the Borders with all the old fury. James mustered his army and marched southwards, but tidings soon came that the English army had disbanded for want of provisions. The Scotch nobles refused to follow their king. Their hour was come, and they determined to show their power by mortifying the man, who had so ruthlessly punished them, and who, according to their ideas, had encroached upon the old rights of their class. Although forced to disband his army, James was very loath to be baulked in his intention of retaliating upon Henry, and very shortly after it was resolved that a smaller force should make a raid across the Border――a body which was said to have numbered ten thousand mustered. They had passed the Esk and were approaching English ground when a strange fate befell them. It was at this point that Oliver Sinclair, one of the king’s favourites, began to read the commission which appointed him to the chief command. The nobles present were enraged at this new encroachment upon their hereditary rights, a storm of talk arose among them, and all discipline and order was forgotten. Lord Dacre, the English leader, was hovering near with a body of cavalry and a force of three thousand footmen. When he saw the confusion of the Scots, he ordered his party to dash in amongst them, and in a moment the Scottish army was scattered in all directions. A number of the Scots were drowned in crossing the Esk, many were slain in the pursuit by the English cavalry, and upwards of a thousand prisoners, including nine nobles, fell into the hands of the enemy. This severe disaster happened on the 24th of November, 1542, and became known as the panic of Solway Moss.¹

¹ Lesly’s History Of Scotland, page 165; Knox, Volume I., pages 86‒88. In the fifth volume of the State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII., there is a list of the Scottish prisoners taken at Solway Moss, in which the value of their property and the names of their hostages are stated (pages 232‒235). See also the Hamilton Papers, Volume I., Appendix to Preface, page 98, pages 307, 311‒313. 1890.

The tidings of this disaster seems to have broken the spirit of the king. He brooded over his disappointments and what he regarded as an unbearable disgrace; and his mind became confused. He continued to sink lower and lower, and died on the 14th December, 1542. Although he was hard on the nobles, he was popular amongst the people. The line of policy which circumstances naturally led him to pursue, cannot be commended either for its wisdom or sagacity; yet, when everything is taken into account, James V. appears as a ruler fully equal to the average of his contemporaries.

The Crown then fell to an infant, Mary Stuart, born in the Palace of Linlithgow seven days before the death of her father. She was destined to become the most famous of the long line of Scottish sovereigns. In her infancy and innocent childhood she was an object of extremely fierce contention. Her youth and beauty, her talents and accomplishments, her success and failure, the strength and weakness of her character, her imprisonment and romantic escape, her flight into England, her long captivity and tragic end――all concurred to fill the story of her life with the most absorbing interest.

Immediately after the death of the king, Cardinal Beaton made an attempt to obtain the chief position in the government of the kingdom. He was to be the head of the Council and the guardian of the infant princess, associated with the Earls of Arran, Huntly, Moray, and Argyle; and a proclamation was issued at Edinburgh commanding the people to obey the Cardinal and the above earls. But early in January, 1543, the Earl of Arran was named as Governor of the kingdom, and recognised as next heir to the throne; and his appointment was confirmed by parliament in March the same year.

When Henry VIII. heard of the events in Scotland, he assumed that Providence had given him a great opportunity, and at once formed the idea of arranging for a marriage between the infant queen and his son. Matrimonial projects were all-absorbing matters with him, and if his exploits in this region of activity were not always attended with honour and glory, he certainly never lost his relish for the pursuit. His high sense of justice, his love of truth, no less than the unspotted purity of his motives, suggested to him that the banished Earl of Angus, and the Scottish nobles taken at Solway Moss might be made useful agents for the accomplishment of his scheme in Scotland! Henry proposed to the Earl of Angus and the captive nobles that they should enter into an agreement with him, to do their utmost to promote the marriage project, and to deliver the infant queen into his hands to be kept in England. They agreed to this, and also to recognise Henry as lord superior of Scotland; they promised to exert their influence to procure for him the government of the kingdom, and to deliver all the national fortresses into his hands. This bond between Henry and the Scottish prisoners was drawn up with great formality and minuteness, yet, with all his adroitness in taking advantage of the circumstances in which the Scotch nobles were placed, he gained very little by it.¹

¹ Sadler’s State Papers, Volume ♦I., pages 69, 74‒75, 81, 97; State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 239‒241.

♦ missing Volume number “I.” inserted

Arran was not a man of great talents, and yielded too much to the promises and bullying of Henry VIII. The Solway prisoners, on being released, had promised to do great service for Henry when they returned to Scotland; and the banished Earl of Angus, and Sir George Douglas, had undertaken to procure the government of the kingdom for him and to place the Crown on his head. But the performances of these Lords greatly disappointed the expectation of this ambitious and vain-glorious king. In short, his despotic demands were unreasonable and impracticable; for he demanded that the Cardinal should be seized and delivered into his hands; that the infant Queen should be betrothed to his son, and also delivered into his hands; and in truth he wanted possession of the kingdom of Scotland, although the means which he used to attain his end, were even more despicable than any which had been employed by any of his predecessors. In order to secure the support and confidence of the Governor Arran, in April 1543, Henry offered to give his daughter, Elizabeth, in marriage to Arran’s son. This he imagined would certainly secure the Governor to his interest. He said: “For we have a daughter called Lady Elizabeth, endowed with virtue and qualities agreeable with her status ... if we shall see him sincerely to go through with us in all things, to condescend to a marriage to be celebrated between his son and our daughter, if he shall think it for his favour and advancement to desire the same, and thereby to take his son conjoined with our daughter, as our son-in-law, being content according to that status to bring up and nourish him in our court with us.... And what honour, what reputation, what worldly glory, it shall be to him otherwise, for his son to marry a King of England’s daughter, and to be nourished up thereafter in a King of England’s Court, we doubt not he can consider.” But the one important condition in this proposal was that Arran’s son must live in England. Henry was playing with Arran, for he had no intention of giving his daughter in marriage to Arran’s son. He continued to clamour for the capture and imprisonment of the Cardinal, and to scold the released prisoners and the Earl of Angus that they had done next to nothing in advancing his designs in Scotland. After much underhand dealing and corruption, on the 6th of June, with difficulty the conditions of the treaty of marriage between the infant Queen and Henry’s son, and the treaty of peace, were agreed to by the Regent and a party of the nobles. In this transaction the Earls of Huntly, Argyle, and Moray, had no part. Shortly after, Henry proposed to give the Regent Arran the whole of Scotland beyond the Tay, but the offer was coldly received. On the 25th of August, the treaties were ratified at Holyrood by the Regent, in name of the Queen and the three Estates, in presence of a portion of the nobles, but the Cardinal and his party were absent. These treaties, however, were never ratified by Henry himself; and it is evident that he did not intend to carry his purpose into effect by treaty, but hoped shortly to take possession of the young Queen and the best part of her kingdom, unclogged by special conditions.

The general feeling of the Scots was decidedly opposed to the interference and domineering spirit of Henry VIII. The Regent and a section of the nobles lent their support to his schemes for a time, but at last a coalition was formed against him, and then the Regent sailed under the canvas of the Cardinal. While Henry professed a desire for peace, he was actively preparing for an invasion of Scotland. The course of events had turned against him, his friends were falling off; and so keen was the feeling against his schemes amongst the citizens of Edinburgh that they threatened to lay violent hands on Sadler, the English Ambassador. Henry himself, in his bullying tone, addressed a letter to them, in which he scolded them thus:――“We have thought good to admonish you to beware and eschew that outrage, whereby ye might provoke our extreme displeasure and indignation, and to forbear that attempt, not only for the detestation of it in all men’s ears, but also for fear of the revenge of our sword to extend to that town and commonalty, and all such people as shall by any means come into our hands, to the extermination of you to the third and fourth generation.” The ambassador found refuge in Angus’ Castle of Tantallon. Parliament met at Edinburgh, and on the 11th December 1543, the treaties of marriage and peace between the two kingdoms were declared to have been violated by the seizure and detention of Scottish ships by the English, and were therefore annulled.¹

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volumes I., II.; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II., page 432.

Henry then prepared to invade Scotland. It was indeed hard that the Scots could not see his many virtues; it was harder still that they could not believe in his benign purposes, nor appreciate the many acts of condescension which he had shown towards them; he had suffered them long, but his forbearance was at last exhausted, and he must let them feel the weight of his wrath. On the 10th of April, 1544, he issued instructions through his Privy Council to the Earl of Hertford, the leader of the inroads into Scotland; and these instructions were marked by a ferocity of spirit, a fiendish malignity, and a barbarity unmatched in the annals of Europe. Hertford was ordered in Henry’s name to make an inroad into Scotland: “There to put all to fire and sword, to burn Edinburgh town, to raze and destroy when you have sacked and gotten what you can out of it, as there may remain for ever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God lighted upon it, for their falsehood and disloyalty.... Sack Holyrood House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can. Sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man, woman, and child to fire and sword without exception where any resistance shall be made against you. And this done, pass over to Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto ye may conveniently reach, not forgetting among all the rest, so to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal’s town of St. Andrews, as that the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, especially such as either in friendship or blood are allied to the Cardinal; and the accomplishment of all this shall be most acceptable to the majesty and honour of the King.”¹

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volume II., pages 325‒327. Compare State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 350‒352, 371‒374.

The Earl of Hertford followed out his instructions pretty fully, he led two expeditions into Scotland, the great one in May 1544, and the other in September, and both were marked by the mere wanton destruction of life and property. Towns and villages one after another were sacked and burned, and wherever the English forces marched, death, desolation, and woe proclaimed the wrath of Henry VIII. The monasteries of Melrose, Kelso, Holyrood, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, and other religious houses, were committed to the flames and laid in ruins.¹

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 521‒525; Morton’s Monastic Annals of Teviotdale, pages 36, 100, 243, 301; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, Volume I., page 271, et seq.

In the reports of the progress of the expedition of May, Hertford gave detailed descriptions of the burning and sacking of Edinburgh, Holyrood, Leith, and many other towns and villages. When the army was encamped at Leith, he said, “The town of Leith we found to be of good substance and riches, at the least of Xᵐᵉ li., as we suppose, whereof there was a great store of grain of all kinds; finding also within the haven two fair ships of the late Scottish King’s, called the ‘Salmon’ and ‘Unicorn,’ for which I, the lord admirall have taken such order, that by the suffrance of God, the same shall arrive to your majesty with the rest of your navy.” From the same place he wrote: “We have daily sent forth both horsemen and footmen, as well by sea as by land, which have devastated the country hereabout, and within six miles of Stirling, in such sort as there shall not only remain a perpetual memory of our being here, but also, we trust, I, the Earl of Hertford, have so accomplished the charge committed to me by your highness in that behalf, as the enemies shall neither be able to recover this damage while we live, nor yet to assemble any power this year in these parts of the realm, whatsoever aid be sent to them out of France or Denmark to annoy your majesty’s subjects, or to make any invasion into your realm of England.”¹

¹ Hamilton, Papers, Volume II., pages 360‒371.

Henry VIII. evidently had engendered in himself a remorseless enmity against the Scots; and there was one man whom he detested more than the rest, and pursued with a venomous malignity. This was Cardinal Beaton, the most talented and strongest adherent of Catholicism in Scotland, and a politician, according to the standard of the times, of consummate ability. The Cardinal had worked hard against the policy of Henry, and had defeated it. Since the death of James V. Henry had marked out the Cardinal, and had employed every means to insnare and crush him, but Beaton was well aware of his venomous designs against him. Henry lent his influence to a plot against the Cardinal’s life, and at last promised a reward to the other conspirators who were concocting a scheme to murder him. As early as 1543 Henry had approved of the plot, and in the event of its being successful, that is, if the Cardinal was killed, and his murderers forced to flee to England, then he bound himself to protect them from all the consequences of their act.¹ But despite all the efforts of Henry and of those whom he employed the Cardinal eluded the machinations of his mortal enemies for several years.

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 242‒243, 377, 449‒458, 467, 470‒472, 512; _Statutes of the Scottish Church_, Volume I., page 142. There is a pretty full account of the plot against the cardinal in an appendix to the fifth volume of Tytler’s History of Scotland, pages 453‒470.

While these events were passing and ruffling the surface of society, the reformed opinions were gradually spreading amongst the people. The contradictory and vacillating policy of the Regent was well adapted to weaken the authority of the old religious creed. In March 1543, Parliament passed an act authorising all men to have and to read the Old and New Testament in the common speech of the country, English or Scottish. This liberty, however, was only enjoyed for a short time, and it is doubtful if any edition of the Scriptures was printed in Scotland during the brief interval in which the act was allowed to remain in force.¹ The Regent Arran, in a few months after the passing of this act, dismissed the two reformed preachers whom he had retained in his family, and the Cardinal soon obtained a complete ascendency. Those affected by the new opinions began to manifest their feeling by attacking and defacing the houses of the Black and Grey Friars in Dundee. About the same time attempts were made to mar the building of the Black Friars at Edinburgh, a movement which was repelled by the citizens; and these outbursts of heretical feeling quickly received a sharp check. A parliament which met at Edinburgh passed an act declaring――“How there is great murmour because the heretics more and more rise and spread within the realm, sowing their damnable opinions contrary to the faith and laws of the holy Church and the acts and constitutions of the kingdom.” Therefore all the prelates and ordinaries were exhorted, each within their own diocese, to inquire after all such heretical persons, and to proceed against them according to the laws of the Church, and the Regent promised to be always ready to do everything therein that belonged to his office.²

¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 415, 425; Craufurd’s Officers of State, pages 77, 438.

² Diurnal of Occurrents, _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume II., page 443.

The year 1544 began very ominously for the so-called heretics. The Cardinal was then master of the situation in Scotland, and he was not the man to let his opportunity slip. About the end of January he held a court at Perth, and many suspected persons were summoned before it and accused of heresy. A number of them were banished, but four men, James Hunter, a flesher, William Anderson, a maltman, James Randlson, a skinner, Robert Lamb, a burgess of Perth, and his wife, were all condemned. The four men were hanged, and the helpless woman, Lamb’s wife, who had a child at her breast, was drowned; she gave her infant to the attendants, her hands and feet were then bound, and she was thrown into a deep pool of water where her sufferings were ended.¹ This was the only instance of a woman being put to death for religious opinions in Scotland before the Reformation.

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 117‒118, 523‒527.

George Wishart returned to Scotland in the end of the year 1544. He was a popular preacher, and was supported by the Earls of Cassillis and Glencairn, the Lairds of Brunston, Ormiston, and Calder. These men were deeply in the confidence of Henry VIII., and were plotting the murder of Cardinal Beaton; but whether George Wishart was concerned in this plot, is a disputed point. The evidence, however, on which it has been attempted to show that he was implicated in the plots against the Cardinal’s life, certainly does not approach to the requisite standard. The only evidence connecting Wishart, the martyr, with the plot against the Cardinal’s life rests on the fact that a Scotsman named Wishart conveyed letters from Crichton of Brunston to Henry VIII., and it is only conjectured that this individual was Wishart, the preacher of the reformed doctrines. There are some presumptive circumstances which seem to point to him, such as his known association with the Laird of Brunston and others of the conspirators. But even if this conjecture were true, it would not amount to much, as people in these days did not view the murder of an enemy of their faith in the light in which we do, on the contrary, they thought it was rendering a service to God to cut off an able opposer of the truth.¹ Wishart preached in Montrose, Dundee, Ayr, Perth, and in other parts of the country. He delivered his sermons with much vehemence, boldly attacking the errors of the Church and declaiming against the profligacy of the clergy. Knox first appears in history in company with Wishart.²

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 125‒138, 534‒537.

² Buchanan, Book XV., chapter 32; Knox, Volume I., pages 125‒137.

In the beginning of the year 1546, Wishart was in Lothian, and preached in Haddington, where John Knox accompanied him. On the 16th of January he was apprehended at Ormiston, in East Lothian, by the Earl of Bothwell, and conveyed first to Edinburgh, and shortly after to St. Andrews. He was tried on the 28th of February, condemned, and executed on the 11th of March. When the fire was prepared, he was led from the castle to the stake imploring mercy of his Saviour and commending his soul to Him. He then addressed the people, beseeching them not to be offended with the word of God, for the profession of which he was suffering. He said――“For the word’s sake, and the true gospel which was given me by the grace of God, I suffer this day by men, not sorrowfully but with a glad heart and mind. For this cause I was sent, that I should suffer this fire for Christ’s sake. Consider and behold my visage, ye shall not see me change my colour. This grim fire I fear not, and so I pray you for to do if that any persecution come to you for the word’s sake and not to fear them that slay the body and afterwards have no power to slay the soul. Some have said of me that I taught that the soul of man should sleep until the last day, but I know surely, and my faith is such, that my soul shall sup with my Saviour this night ere it be six hours, for whom I suffer this.” He then prayed for those who had accused him, saying――“I beseech thee, Father of Heaven, to forgive them that through ignorance or an evil mind have forged lies upon me; I forgive them with all my heart; I beseech Christ to forgive those who have condemned me to death this day.” And finally to the people he said――“I beseech you, brethren and sisters, to exhort your bishops to learn the word of God, that at least they may be ashamed to do evil and learn to do good: and if they will not convert themselves and turn from their wicked ways the wrath of God shall swiftly overtake them.” He was then hanged, and his remains burned to ashes.¹

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 137‒171; Fox’s Acts and Monuments, pages 632‒♦667; Register of the Privy Council, Volume I., page 20. Wishart produced an English translation of the Swiss Confession of Faith, which was printed after his death.

♦ “267” replaced with “667”

The burning of Wishart aroused a deep feeling in the popular mind, and many began to say that they would not suffer the life of innocent men to be taken away. As the Regent had declined to authorise the execution of Wishart, all the odium of the deed rested upon the Cardinal, so that his enemies increased in number and bitterness. Indeed Beaton had been endeavouring to strengthen his position by the old custom of entering into bonds of man-rent with many of the nobles; he was secure on the side of France, and the faction of the Scottish nobles opposed to his line of policy had been almost put out of reckoning. Soon after the death of Wishart the Cardinal passed through Angus, and attended the marriage of one of his natural daughters at Finhaven Castle. When he was thus enjoying himself, news came that Henry VIII. was again preparing to invade Scotland. He hurried back to St. Andrews to put his castle into a state of defence, as he dreaded that it would be attacked. At that moment his enemies in Scotland were maturing their scheme to murder him, and the folds of the plot were fast closing around their victim.¹

¹ Knox, Volume I., pages 147‒174; Lord Lindsay’s _Lives of the Lindsays_, Volume I., page 201; Tytler’s _History of Scotland_, Volume V., pages 456‒470.

The Cardinal was living securely in his own Castle of St. Andrews, which a number of workmen were engaged in repairing. Early on the morning of the 29th May, 1546, Norman Lesley, the Master of Rothes, and two others, slipped into the castle; these were followed by James Melville and other three, who asked an interview with the Cardinal; immediately after them the Laird of Grange came up with eight armed men. The suspicion of the porter at the gate was now roused, but he was instantly stabbed and thrown into the ditch. Thus in a few minutes the party were within the walls of the castle; and with surprising alacrity its few defenders, and the workmen on the ramparts were led out, and all the gates guarded. The unusual noise had aroused the Cardinal from his bed, and he was ascending the stair of the castle when his enemies came upon him and ruthlessly murdered him. Meanwhile the alarm was given in the city, the common bell was rung, and the citizens, with their provost at their head, rushed in confusion to the castle, and loudly called for the Cardinal; but they were too late, and to show them that the work was done, the murderers exposed the body of the Cardinal over the castle wall. The conspirators, only sixteen in number, kept possession of the castle.¹

¹ State Papers, Henry VIII., Volume V., pages 560‒561. Spottiswood.

Thus perished Cardinal Beaton by the hands of a set of cruel and hired assassins. The Cardinal was the ablest champion of Catholicism in Scotland; and John Hamilton, a brother of the Regent, who succeeded to the primacy, was much inferior in energy and talents to his predecessor. According to the laws of the Church, Beaton’s moral character was extremely defective; but then amongst the clerical dignitaries of the period, the laws of purity and chastity were utterly disregarded, while the morals of the Cardinal were just those of his day. He has been often blamed for persecuting the adherents of the reformed opinions, but when compared with his contemporaries, it appears that the number of persons put to death by him was not great; and there is no evidence that he was naturally cruel. That he was much respected and even loved by many of the citizens of St. Andrews, seems evident. That the men who put him to death were not actuated by religious motives has long ago been clearly proved.¹ The feelings, sentiments, and ideas of those who originated, sustained, and continued the Reformation, were of a very different character from those which animated the mercenary and greedy plotters who cut short the life of Cardinal Beaton.

¹ Hosack’s Queen Mary, Volume I., page 13. When the citizens of St. Andrews came running to the castle, Knox says they cried――“What have ye done with my Lord Cardinal? Where is my Lord Cardinal? Have ye slain my Lord Cardinal? Let us see my Lord Cardinal!” And when they were told that he was no more, they cried more eagerly――“We shall never depart till we see him!” Then his body was shown over the wall “to the faithless multitude, who would not believe before it saw.” Works, Volume I., page 178.

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