CHAP. XIX. PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND-PRINCIPLES THE same intellectual and moral causes which had produced the spirit of reform in England and upon the Continent, had been as operative in Scotland, from its bounding river Tweed to its Grampian hills, and to many districts beyond them. Several noblemen and barons, as well as burghers and the minor clergy, became favorers of the wiser opinions and retrenching corrections of the Protestant reasoners.' Perceiving this advancing change, when Henry VIII. had desired his nephew, James V. to meet him at York, the Scottish prelates, to avert an interview whose results were most likely to be detrimental to their worldly interests; and to draw the king's mind into a coalition with them to suppress all ecclesiastical innovations, suggested to James that convictions of heresy would procure him large confiscations; and gave him secretly a roll of the names 'Sir James Melville's Memoirs, p. 60. Knox, after briefly noticing Risby, the scholar of Wickliff, in 1422, and Craw, a Bohemian, in 1431, who were both burnt for their antipapal tenets, begins his History of the Reformation with the Lollards of Kyle, in 1494, p. 2; and with Hamilton's doctrines and execution in 1527, p. 4-14. The more violent hostilities against the reformers in this country commenced in 1534, after the pope had sent thither a legate. p. 22. СНАР. XIX. II. 3 BOOK of the opulent individuals who could be charged with the mental change, and with whose estates he would thus be enabled legally to enrich himself, while their owners were burnt for their anti-catholic sentiments. The king disclosed the communication to his treasurer; who suggested to him the danger of such an attack; that its proposal had arisen from the desire of the prelacy to prevent any reformation of their conduct; and that as the patrimony of the church had been originally gifts from his ancestors, he might more safely and laudably increase the possessions of the crown, which had been impoverished by the donations," by resuming them gradually as the benefices became vacant from the deaths of the existing prelates. The king heard him with so much pleasure, and expressed this feeling so strongly, that the endangered churchmen charged the advising minister with heresy,' and offered James a yearly payment of fifty thousand crowns from the rents of the church, to induce him to favor them, and to risk hostilities with Henry by refusing to meet him 6 2 Melv. Mem. 60. 3 After recapitulating the troubles of the king's minority, which the clergy had promoted, the lord of Grange proceeded: 'And now your country is not yet so well as it ought to be. It were dangerous that your nobility should get intelligence that such greedy fetches should be put into your head, as under pretext of heresy to spoil so many of them of their lives, lands and gear.' Melv. p. 62. He then declared some of the grossest abuses of the Roman church, and the ungodly lives of the Scottish prelates.' ib. 62. Did not one of your predecessors, St. David, (a former king,) give the most part of the patrimony of the crown to the church, erecting it in bishoprics and rich abbeys; whereby you are so poor, and the prelates so rich, prodigal and proud.' ib. 62. 6 Ib. 63. "They shewed him that lord Grange was a heretic, and that he had always a New Testament in English in his pocket.' Melv. 65. XIX. as he had promised. In 1542 a war with England CHAP. ensued ; and James V. soon afterwards died, in the bloom of manhood, leaving Mary his only child and heir. 10 The reformed opinions continued to spread in Scotland, altho opposed by the usual cruelties." Cardinal Beatoun persecuted their professors; and after he had caused Wishart to be burnt at St. Andrews,12 was himself assassinated there.13 A contract had been long negotiated, and seemed at last to have been concluded, between the princess Mary 9 In 1540, Henry had sent sir Ralph Sadler to James, with some intercepted letters of cardinal Beatoun his chief connetable, which he thought shewed that the cardinal was laboring not only to bring into his own hand the whole spiritual jurisdiction of the realm, but under color of that, the temporal also. Sadler's State Papers, 1. p. 6. When sir Ralph delivered these, he also suggested to James his uncle's advice, To increase your revenue by taking into your hands some of these religious houses as may best be spared, which occupy a great part of the possessions of your realm to the maintenance of their volupty and idle life; and the rest of them which be most notable to alter into colleges, cathedral churches, and almshouses, as the king has done.' ib. p. 29. James objecting to this, Sadler expatiated on the vices and uselessness of the religious houses. p. 30, 31. In 1541, sir Ralph was dispatched again with copious representations on the misconduct of the Romish clergy, ib. 52-4; and James then agreed to meet Henry at York. 10 Mary was born 8th December 1542. Her father James V. died five days afterwards, on 13th December, leaving her the only survivor of his other children. Knox's Hist. 34. Mary was crowned at nine months old, on 9th Sept. 1543. Keith Hist. Scot. 32. James had lost two sons within forty-eight hours of each other. Melv. 70. "Patrick Hamilton was consumed by the flames at St. Andrews, 28th February 1528; Henry Forest in the same city, in 1533; two gentlemen at one stake, in the next year, at Greenside; five more, of which one was a layman, and the others, two black friars, a priest and a canon, in 1538; and two others at Glasgow. Keith, p. 8, 9. 12 Wishart, the worthiest person of all those who supported the new doctrines in this kingdom,' was burnt at St. Andrews, 27th Feb. 1546. Keith, p. 41. 13 He fell on 29th May 1546, the murderers exclaiming as they put the sword to his body: Repent thee of thy former wicked life, but especially of shedding of the blood of George Wishart.' Keith, p. 43. BOOK 14 and Edward VI. ; but one part of the clergy and nobility prevented the marriage, by causing her to be taken into France,15 where, after much discussion, she was wedded to the dauphin Francis.16 Some of the French statesmen had objected to it:" and the Scottish prelates having opposed the nuptials, from their desire to have a native king, instead of a foreign sovereign who could not be resident, and over whom they would have no influence,18 the queen-dowager and regent, who had previously headed the battle of the established Romish Church in Scotland against the Reformation," became now 14 Melv. 71. 15 The lord prior, afterwards the well-known earl Murray, declared to Melville that he had been the chief assistant to transport Mary to France, and to break the contract with Edward. p. 82. She was taken thither in her sixth year. Keith, p. 55. 16 This marriage was celebrated on 24 April 1358. Keith, 74. Three weeks before this ceremony, the French cabinet surreptitiously procured her to sign, thus remote from her national counsellors, three documents, which, if there were any legal crime of that description from a sovereign towards the people, we might term treasonable papers. One conveying the kingdom of Scotland as a free-gift to the crown of France, if she should die without heirs; a second, mortgaging it for the repayment of a million of pieces of gold, which it was alleged had been expended in her French education and maintenance; and a third, declaring that tho her parliament might induce her to make a different disposition of the succession, her real mind would only be in the two preceding papers. Keith, 73, 74. His appendix contains the contract of the marriage, dated 19th April 1558, p. 15-18. 17 Montmorency opposed it, on the ground that it would be better to marry her to one of the princes, who could live with her in Scotland, and not to the future king of France, who could not reside out of his main country. But as Mary was the daughter of their sister, the Guises were desirous, for their own power, to see her queen of France; and their influence prevailed. Melv. 72. 18 They followed the politics of Hamilton, the archbishop of St. Andrews, who looked forward to the elevation of his nephew, the earl of Arran, to the Scottish throne. Melv. 73. Yet the Scottish parliament ordered the crown matrimonial to be sent to France, to make the dauphin king of Scotland. The act to this effect is in Keith, p. 76. 19 She had before gone to France to prevail on its king to assist her to obtain the regency; which was granted to her in 1554. Keith, p. 56,9. XIX. at variance with the Catholic leaders. From policy, CHAP. if not from inclination, she abstained from further persecution; and exhibited so much favor to the friends of the new system, that their numbers multiplied as it became more freely preached and more safely professed." 22 When the peace of Chateau Cambrises was in April 1558 completed between France, Spain, and England; and the queen-dowager received the intimation that secret articles had been attached to it by the French and Spanish courts, which formed a confederation between them and the pope for the suppression of the reformers by violence; and was enjoined by the state cabinet of Francis to begin the execution of this iniquitous compact in Scotland," by pursuing and punishing all heretics with fire and sword, before they spread further," the regent, tho regretting the command, obediently issued a proclamation, enjoining all persons to observe the Catholic religion, to attend the mass and perform its ceremonies.23 The nobility and estates of the country remonstrating, she shewed them the peremptory commission she had received. They pleaded her former permission, and declared their resolution not to counteract their consciences; 24 and her reluctant perseverance in the cruel measures she had been ordered to adopt, drove them 20 Obliged to address herself to the barons of the reformed party, and winning two of the states on her side, she obtained her intent, which made her shew greater favor to those of the reformed religion; overlooking their secret preachings, whereby the religion increased, so that the most part of the country became Protestant.' p. 73. 21 See last Chapter, p. 541, note 37. 23 Melv. 77. 22 Ib. 24 Ib. 78. |