John Knox and the Reformation. Lang Andrew
incompatible with their vow to surrender if absolved. Knox represents them as merely promising to Henry that they would return Arran’s son, and support the plan of marrying Mary Stuart to Prince Edward of Wales! 26 In March 1547, English ships gathered at Holy Island, to relieve the castle. Not on June 21, 1547, as Knox alleges, but before April 2, the papal absolution for the murderers arrived. They mocked at it; and the spy who reports the facts is told that they “would rather have a boll of wheat than all the Pope’s remissions.” 27 Whatever the terms of the papal remission, they had already, before it arrived, bound themselves to England not to accept it save with English concurrence; and England, then preparing to invade Scotland, could not possibly concur. Such was the honesty of Knox’s party, and we already see how far his “History” deserves to be accepted as historical.
Next, what is most surprising, Knox’s account of the month of ineffectual siege by the French, while he was actually in the castle, rests on a strange error of his memory. The contemporary diary, Diurnal of Occurrences dates the sending (the arrival must be meant) of the French galleys, not on June 29, as Knox dates their arrival, but on July 24. Professor Hume Brown says that the Diurnal gives the date as June 24 (a slip of the pen), “but Knox had surely the best opportunity of knowing both facts” 28– that is, the number of the galleys, and the date of their coming. Despite his unrivalled opportunities of knowledge, Knox did not know. It is not quite correct to say that “Knox in his ‘History’ shows throughout a conscientious regard to accuracy of statement.” Whatever the number of the galleys (Knox says twenty-one; the Diurnal says sixteen), on July 13-14, they are reported by Lord Eure, at Berwick, as passing or having just passed Eyemouth. 29 They did not therefore suffer for three weeks at the garrison’s hands, or for three weeks desert the siege, but probably reached the scene of action before the date in the Diurnal (July 24), as, on July 23, the French Ambassador in England heard that they were investing the castle. 30 Allowing five or six days for transmission of news, they probably began the attack from the sea about July 16 or 17, not, as Knox says, on June 30. Perhaps he is right in saying that the French galleys only fired for two days and retreated, rather battered, to Dundee. Land forces next attacked the hold, which surrendered on July 29 (as was known in London on August 5), that is, on the first day that the land battery was erected.
Knox gives a much more full account of his own controversies, in April-June 1547, than of political events. He first, on arrival at the castle, drew up a catechism for his pupils, and publicly catechised them on its tenets, in the parish kirk in South Street. It is unfortunate that we do not possess this catechism. At the time when he wrote, Knox was possibly more of “Martin’s” mind, as he familiarly terms Luther, both as to the Sacrament and as to the Order of Bishops, than he was after his residence in Geneva. Wishart, however, was well acquainted with Helvetic doctrine; he had, as we saw, translated a Helvetic Confession of Faith, perhaps with the view of introducing it into Scotland, and Knox may already have imbibed Calvinism from him. He was not yet – he never was – a full-blown Presbyterian, and, while thinking nothing of “orders,” would not have rejected a bishop, if the bishop preached and was of godly and frugal life. Already sermons were the most important part of public worship in the mind of Knox.
In addition to public catechising he publicly expounded, and lectured on the Fourth Gospel, in the chapel of the castle. He doubted if he had “a lawful vocation” to preach. The castle pulpit was then occupied by an ex-friar named Rough. This divine, later burned in England, preached a sermon declaring a doctrine accepted by Knox, namely, that any congregation could call on any man in whom they “espied the gifts of God” to be their preacher; he offered Knox the post, and all present agreed. Knox wept, and for days his gloom declared his sense of his responsibility: such was “his holy vocation.” The garrison was, confessedly, brutal, licentious, and rapacious, but they “all” partook of the holy Communion. 31
In controversy, Knox declared the Church to be “the synagogue of Satan,” and in the Pope he detected and denounced “the Man of Sin.” On the following Sunday he proved, from Daniel, that the Roman Church is “that last Beast.” The Church is also anti-Christ, and “the Hoore of Babylon,” and Knox dilated on the personal misconduct of Popes and “all shavelings for the most part.” He contrasted Justification by Faith with the customs of pardons and pilgrimages.
After these remarks, a controversy was held between Knox and the sub-prior, Wynram, the Scottish Vicar of Bray, Knox being understood to maintain that no bishop who did not preach was really a bishop; that the Mass is “abominable idolatry”; that Purgatory does not exist; and that the tithes are not necessarily the property of churchmen – a doctrine very welcome to the hungry nobles of Scotland. Knox, of course, easily overcame an ignorant opponent, a friar, who joined in the fray. His own arguments he later found time to write out fully in the French galleys, in which he was a prisoner, after the fall of the castle. If he “wrate in the galleys,” as he says, they cannot have been always such floating hells as they are usually reckoned.
That Knox, and other captives from the castle, were placed in the galleys after their surrender, was an abominable stretch of French power. They were not subjects of France. The terms on which they surrendered are not exactly known. Knox avers that they were to be free to live in France, and that, if they wished to leave, they were to be conveyed, at French expense, to any country except Scotland. Buchanan declares that only the lives of the garrison and their friends were secured by the terms of surrender. Lesley supports Knox, 32 who is probably accurate.
To account for the French severity, Knox tells us that the Pope insisted on it, appealing to both the Scottish and French Governments; and Scotland sent an envoy to France to beg “that those of the castle should be sharply handled.” Men of birth were imprisoned, the rest went to the galleys. Knox’s life cannot have been so bad as that of the Huguenot galley slaves under Louis XIV. He was allowed to receive letters; he read and commented on a treatise written in prison by Balnaves; and he even wrote a theological work, unless this work was his commentary on Balnaves. These things can only have been possible when the galleys were not on active service. In a very manly spirit, he never dilated on his sufferings, and merely alludes to “the torment I sustained in the galleys.” He kept up his heart, always prophesying deliverance; and once (June, 1548?), when in view of St. Andrews, declared that he should preach again in the kirk where his career began. Unluckily, the person to whom he spoke, at a moment when he himself was dangerously ill, denied that he had ever been in the galleys at all! 33 He was Sir James Balfour, a notorious scoundrel, quite untrustworthy; according to Knox, he had spoken of the prophecy, in Scotland, long before its fulfilment.
Knox’s health was more or less undermined, while his spiritual temper was not mollified by nineteen months of the galleys, mitigated as they obviously were.
It is, doubtless, to his “torment” in the galleys that Knox refers when he writes: “I know how hard the battle is between the spirit and the flesh, under the heavy cross of affliction, where no worldly defence, but present death, does appear… Rests only Faith, provoking us to call earnestly, and pray for assistance of God’s spirit, wherein if we continue, our most desperate calamities shall turn to gladness, and to a prosperous end… With experience I write this.”
In February or March, 1549, Knox was released; by April he was in England, and, while Edward VI. lived, was in comparative safety.
CHAPTER IV: KNOX IN ENGLAND: THE BLACK RUBRIC: EXILE: 1549-1554
Knox at once appeared in England in a character revolting to the later Presbyterian conscience, which he helped to educate. The State permitted no cleric to preach without a Royal license, and Knox was now a State licensed preacher at Berwick, one of many “State officials with a specified mission.” He was an agent of the English administration, then engaged in forcing a detested religion on the majority of the English people. But he candidly took his own line, indifferent to the
Bain i. 2;
For the offering of the papal remission to the garrison of the castle before April 2, 1547, see Stewart of Cardonald’s letter of that date to Wharton, in Bain’s
Odet De Selve,