Short History of Scotland — 22 - Ch. 19: The Great Pillage, pt 2

In the Confession the theology was that of Calvin.

Civil rulers were admitted to be of divine institution, their duty is to "suppress idolatry," and they are not to be resisted "when doing that which pertains to their charge."

But a Catholic ruler, like Mary, or a tolerant ruler, as James VI.

would fain have been, apparently may be resisted for his tolerance.

Resisted James was, as we shall see, whenever he attempted to be lenient to Catholics.

The Book of Discipline, by Knox and other preachers, never was ratified by the Estates, as the Confession of Faith had been.

It made admirable provisions for the payment of preachers and teachers, for the Universities, and for the poor; but somebody, probably Lethington, spoke of the proposals as "devout imaginations."

The Book of Discipline approved of what was later accepted by the General Assembly, The Book of Common Order in Public Worship.

This book was not a stereotyped Liturgy, but it was a kind of guide to the ministers in public prayers: the minister may repeat the prayers, or "say something like in effect."

On the whole, he prayed "as the Spirit moved him," and he really seems to have been regarded as inspired; his prayers were frequently political addresses.

To silence these the infatuated policy of Charles I. thrust the Laudian Liturgy on the nation.

The preachers were to be chosen by popular election, after examination in knowledge and as to morals.

There was to be no ordination "by laying on of hands."

"Seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we deem not necessary"; but, if the preachers were inspired, the miracle had not ceased, and the ceremony was soon reinstated.

Contrary to Genevan practice, such festivals as Christmas and Easter were abolished.

The Scottish Sabbath was established in great majesty.

One "rag of Rome" was retained, clerical excommunication--the Sword of Church Discipline.

It was the cutting off from Christ of the excommunicated, who were handed over to the devil, and it was attended by civil penalties equivalent to universal boycotting, practical outlawry, and followed by hell fire: "which sentence, lawfully pronounced on earth, is ratified in heaven."

The strength of the preachers lay in this terrible weapon, borrowed from the armoury of Rome.

Private morals were watched by the elders, and offenders were judged in kirk-sessions.

Witchcraft, Sabbath desecration, and sexual laxities were the most prominent and popular sins.

The mainstay of the system is the idea that the Bible is literally inspired; that the preachers are the perhaps inspired interpreters of the Bible, and that the country must imitate the old Hebrew persecution of "idolaters," that is, mainly Catholics.

All this meant a theocracy of preachers elected by the populace, and governing the nation by their General Assembly in which nobles and other laymen sat as elders.

These peculiar institutions came hot from Geneva, and the country could never have been blessed with them, as we have observed, but for that instrument of Providence, Cardinal Beaton.

Had he disposed of himself and Scotland to Henry VIII.

(who would not have tolerated Presbyterian claims for an hour), Scotland would not have received the Genevan discipline, and the Kirk would have groaned under bishops.

The Reformation supplied Scotland with a class of preachers who were pure in their lives, who were not accessible to bribes (a virtue in which they stood almost alone), who were firm in their faith, and soon had learning enough to defend it; who were constant in their parish work, and of whom many were credited with prophetic and healing powers.

They could exorcise ghosts from houses, devils from men possessed.

The baldness of the services, the stern nature of the creed, were congenial to the people.

The drawbacks were the intolerance, the spiritual pretensions of the preachers to interference in secular affairs, and the superstition which credited men like Knox, and later, Bruce, with the gifts of prophecy and other miraculous workings, and insisted on the burning of witches and warlocks, whereof the writer knows scarcely an instance in Scotland before the Reformation.

The pulpit may be said to have discharged the functions of the press (a press which was all on one side).

When, in 1562, Ninian Winzet, a Catholic priest and ex-schoolmaster, was printing a controversial tractate addressed to Knox, the magistrates seized the manuscript at the printer's house, and the author was fortunate in making his escape.

The nature of the Confession of Faith, and of the claims of the ministers to interfere in secular affairs, with divine authority, was certain to cause war between the Crown and the Kirk.

That war, whether open and armed, or a conflict in words, endured till, in 1690, the weapon of excommunication with civil penalties was quietly removed from the ecclesiastical armoury.

Such were the results of a religious revolution hurriedly effected.

The Lords now sent an embassy to Elizabeth about the time of the death of Amy Robsart, and while Amy's husband, Robert Dudley, was very dear to the English queen, to urge, vainly, her marriage with Arran.

On December 5, 1560, Francis II.

died, leaving Mary Stuart a mere dowager; while her kinsmen, the Guises, lost power, which fell into the unfriendly hands of Catherine de Medici.

At once Arran, who made Knox his confidant, began to woo Mary with a letter and a ring.

Her reply perhaps increased his tendency to madness, which soon became open and incurable by the science of the day.

Here we must try to sketch Mary, _la, Reine blanche_, in her white royal mourning.

Her education had been that of the learned ladies of her age;

she had some knowledge of Latin, and knew French and Italian.

French was to her almost a mother-tongue, but not quite; she had retained her Scots, and her attempts to write English are, at first, curiously imperfect.

She had lived in a profligate Court, but she was not the wanton of hostile slanders.

She had all the guile of statesmanship, said the English envoy, Randolph; and she long exercised great patience under daily insults to her religion and provocations from Elizabeth.

She was generous, pitiful, naturally honourable, and most loyal to all who served her.

But her passions, whether of love or hate, once roused, were tyrannical.

In person she was tall, like her mother, and graceful, with beautiful hands.

Her face was somewhat long, the nose long and straight, the lips and chin beautifully moulded, the eyebrows very slender, the eyes of a reddish brown, long and narrow.

Her hair was russet, drawn back from a lofty brow; her smile was captivating; she was rather fascinating than beautiful; her courage and her love of courage in others were universally confessed.

{118} In January, 1561, the Estates of Scotland ordered James Stuart, Mary's natural brother, to visit her in France.

In spring she met him, and an envoy from Huntly (Lesley, later Bishop of Ross), who represented the Catholic party, and asked Mary to land in Aberdeen, and march south at the head of the Gordons and certain northern clans.

The proposal came from noblemen of Perthshire, Angus, and the north, whose forces could not have faced a Lowland army.

Mary, who had learned from her mother that Huntly was treacherous, preferred to take her chance with her brother, who, returning by way of England, moved Elizabeth to recognise the Scottish queen as her heir.

But Elizabeth would never settle the succession, and, as Mary refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, forbade her to travel home through England.