The current ideas of both parties on killing no murder were little better than those of modern anarchists. It was a prevalent opinion that a king might have a subject assassinated, if to try him publicly entailed political inconveniences. The Inquisition, in Spain, vigorously repudiated this theory, but the Inquisition was in advance of the age. Knox, as to the doctrine of killing no murder, was, and Wishart may have been, a man of his time. But Knox, in telling the story of a murder which he approves, unhappily displays a glee unbecoming a reformer of the Church of Him who blamed St. Peter for his recourse to the sword. The very essence of Christianity is cast to the winds when Knox utters his laughter over the murders or misfortunes of his opponents, yielding, as Dr. MCrie says, to the strong propensity which he felt to indulge his vein of humour. Other good men rejoiced in the murder of an enemy, but Knox chuckled.
Nothing has injured Knox more in the eyes of posterity (when they happen to be aware of the facts) than this humour of his.
Knox might be pardoned had he merely excused the murder of the devils own son, Cardinal Beaton, who executed the law on his friend and master, George Wishart. To Wishart Knox bore a tender and enthusiastic affection, crediting him not only with the virtues of charity and courage which he possessed, but also with supernormal premonitions; he was so clearly illuminated with the spirit of prophecy. These premonitions appear to have come to Wishart by way of vision. Knox asserted some prophetic gift for himself, but never hints anything as to the method, whether by dream, vision, or the hearing of voices. He often alludes to himself as the prophet, and claims certain privileges in that capacity. For example the prophet may blamelessly preach what men call treason, as we shall see. As to his actual predictions of events, he occasionally writes as if they were mere deductions from Scripture. God will punish the idolater; A or B is an idolater; therefore it is safe to predict that God will punish him or her. What man then can cease to prophesy? he asks; and there is, if we thus consider the matter, no reason why anybody should ever leave off prophesying. 15
But if the art of prophecy is common to all Bible-reading mankind, all mankind, being prophets, may promulgate treason, which Knox perhaps would not have admitted. He thought himself more specially a seer, and in his prayer after the failure of his friends, the murderers of Riccio, he congratulates himself on being favoured above the common sort of his brethren, and privileged to forespeak things, in an unique degree.
I dare not deny.. but that God hath revealed unto me secrets unknown to the world, he writes 16; and these claims soar high above mere deductions from Scripture. His biographer, Dr. MCrie, doubts whether we can dismiss, as necessarily baseless, all stories of extraordinary premonitions since the completion of the canon of inspiration. 17 Indeed, there appears to be no reason why we should draw the line at a given date, and limit the operations of divine Providence. I would be the last to do so, but then Knoxs premonitions are sometimes, or usually, without documentary and contemporary corroboration; once he certainly prophesied after the event (as we shall see), and he never troubles himself about his predictions which were unfulfilled, as against Queen Elizabeth.
He supplied the Kirk with the tradition of supernormal premonitions in preachers second-sight and clairvoyance as in the case of Mr. Peden and other saints of the Covenant. But just as good cases of clairvoyance as any of Mr. Pedens are attributed to Catherine de Medici, who was not a saint, by her daughter, La Reine Margot, and others. In Knox, at all events, there is no trace of visual or auditory hallucinations, so common in religious experiences, whatever the creed of the percipient. He was not a visionary. More than this we cannot safely say about his prophetic vein.
The enthusiasm which induced a priest, notary, and teacher like Knox to carry a claymore in defence of a beloved teacher, Wishart, seems more appropriate to a man of about thirty than a man of forty, and, so far, supports the opinion that, in 1545, Knox was only thirty years of age. In that case, his study of the debates between the Church and the new opinions must have been relatively brief. Yet, in 1547, he already reckoned himself, not incorrectly, as a skilled disputant in favour of ideas with which he cannot have been very long familiar.
Wishart was taken, was tried, was condemned; was strangled, and his dead body was burned at St. Andrews on March 1, 1546. It is highly improbable that Knox could venture, as a marked man, to be present at the trial. He cites the account of it in his History from the contemporary Scottish narrative used by Foxe in his Martyrs, and Laing, Knoxs editor, thinks that Foxe may possibly have been indebted for some of the Scottish accounts to the Scottish Reformer. It seems, if there be anything in evidence of tone and style, that what Knox quotes from Foxe in 1561-66 is what Knox himself actually wrote about 1547-48. Mr. Hill Burton observes in the tract the mark of Knoxs vehement colouring, and adds, it is needless to seek in the account for precise accuracy. In precise accuracy many historians are as sadly to seek as Knox himself, but his peculiar colouring is all his own, and is as marked in the pamphlet on Wisharts trial, which he cites, as in the History which he acknowledged.
There are said to be but few copies of the first edition of the black letter tract on Wisharts trial, published in London, with Lindsays Tragedy of the Cardinal, by Day and Seres. I regard it as the earliest printed work of John Knox. 18 The author, when he describes Lauder, Wisharts official accuser, as a fed sow.. his face running down with sweat, and frothing at the mouth like ane bear, who spat at Maister Georges face shows every mark of Knoxs vehement and pictorial style. His editor, Laing, bids us observe that all these opprobrious terms are copied from Foxe, or rather from the black letter tract. But the black letter tract, I conceive, must be Knoxs own. Its author, like Knox, indulges his vein of humour by speaking of friars as fiends; like Knox he calls Wishart Maister George, and that servand of God.
The peculiarities of the tract, good and bad, the vivid familiar manner, the vehemence, the pictorial quality, the violent invective, are the notes of Knoxs History. Already, by 1547, or not much later, he was the perfect master of his style; his tone no more resembles that of his contemporary and fellow-historian, Lesley, than the style of Mr. J. R. Green resembles that of Mr. S. R. Gardiner.
CHAPTER III: KNOX IN ST. ANDREWS CASTLE: THE GALLEYS: 1547-1549
We now take up Knox where we left him: namely when Wishart was arrested in January 1546. He was then tutor to the sons of the lairds of Langniddrie and Ormiston, Protestants and of the English party. Of his adventures we know nothing, till, on Beatons murder (May 29, 1546), the Cardinals successor, Archbishop Hamilton, drove him from place to place, and, at Easter, 1547, he with his pupils entered the Castle of St. Andrews, then held, with some English aid, against the Regent Arran, by the murderers of Beaton and their adherents. 19 Knox was not present, of course, at Beatons murder, about which he writes so merrily, in his manner of mirth; nor at the events of Arrans siege of the castle, prior to April 1547. He probably, as regards these matters, writes from recollection of what Kirkcaldy of Grange, James Balfour, Balnaves, and the other murderers or associates of the murderers of the Cardinal told him in 1547, or later communicated to him as he wrote, about 1565-66. With his unfortunate love of imputing personal motives, he attributes the attacks by the rulers on the murderers mainly to the revengeful nature of Mary of Guise; the Cardinal having been the comfort to all gentlewomen, and especially to wanton widows. His death must be revenged. 20
The peculiarities of the tract, good and bad, the vivid familiar manner, the vehemence, the pictorial quality, the violent invective, are the notes of Knoxs History. Already, by 1547, or not much later, he was the perfect master of his style; his tone no more resembles that of his contemporary and fellow-historian, Lesley, than the style of Mr. J. R. Green resembles that of Mr. S. R. Gardiner.
CHAPTER III: KNOX IN ST. ANDREWS CASTLE: THE GALLEYS: 1547-1549
We now take up Knox where we left him: namely when Wishart was arrested in January 1546. He was then tutor to the sons of the lairds of Langniddrie and Ormiston, Protestants and of the English party. Of his adventures we know nothing, till, on Beatons murder (May 29, 1546), the Cardinals successor, Archbishop Hamilton, drove him from place to place, and, at Easter, 1547, he with his pupils entered the Castle of St. Andrews, then held, with some English aid, against the Regent Arran, by the murderers of Beaton and their adherents. 19 Knox was not present, of course, at Beatons murder, about which he writes so merrily, in his manner of mirth; nor at the events of Arrans siege of the castle, prior to April 1547. He probably, as regards these matters, writes from recollection of what Kirkcaldy of Grange, James Balfour, Balnaves, and the other murderers or associates of the murderers of the Cardinal told him in 1547, or later communicated to him as he wrote, about 1565-66. With his unfortunate love of imputing personal motives, he attributes the attacks by the rulers on the murderers mainly to the revengeful nature of Mary of Guise; the Cardinal having been the comfort to all gentlewomen, and especially to wanton widows. His death must be revenged. 20
Knox avers that the besiegers of St. Andrews Castle, despairing of their task, near the end of January 1547 made a fraudulent truce with the assassins, hoping for the betrayal of the castle, or of some of the leaders. 21 In his narrative we find partisanship or very erroneous information. The conditions were, he says, that (1) the murderers should hold the castle till Arran could obtain for them, from the Pope, a sufficient absolution; (2) that they should give hostages, as soon as the absolution was delivered to them; (3) that they and their friends should not be prosecuted, nor undergo any legal penalties for the murder of the Cardinal; (4) that they should meanwhile keep the eldest son of Arran as hostage, so long as their own hostages were kept. The Government, however, says Knox, never minded to keep word of them (of these conditions), as the issue did declare.
There is no proof of this accusation of treachery on the part of Arran, or none known to me. The constant aim of Knox, his fixed idea, as an historian, is to accuse his adversaries of the treachery which often marked the negotiations of his friends.
From this point, the truce, dated by Knox late in January 1547, he devotes eighteen pages to his own call to the ministry by the castle people, and to his controversies and sermons in St. Andrews. He then returns to history, and avers that, about June 21, 1547, the papal absolution was presented to the garrison merely as a veil for a treasonable attack, but was rejected, as it included the dubious phrase, Remittimus irremissibile We remit the crime that cannot be remitted. Nine days later, June 29, he says, by the treasonable mean of Arran, Archbishop Hamilton, and Mary of Guise, twenty-one French galleys, and such an army as the Firth had never seen, hove into view, and on June 30 summoned the castle to surrender. The siege of St Andrews Castle, from the sea, by the French then began, but the garrison and castle were unharmed, and many of the galley slaves and some French soldiers were slain, and a ship was driven out of action. The French shot two days only. On July 19 the siege was renewed by land, guns were mounted on the spires of St. Salvators College chapel and on the Cathedral, and did much scathe, though, during the first three weeks of the siege, the garrison had many prosperous chances. Meanwhile Knox prophesied the defeat of his associates, because of their corrupt life. They had robbed and ravished, and were probably demoralised by Knoxs prophecies. On the last day of July the castle surrendered. 22 Knox adds that his friends would deal with France alone, as Scottish men had all traitorously betrayed them.
Now much of this narrative is wrong; wrong in detail, in suggestion, in omission. That a man of fifty, or sixty, could attribute the attacks on Beatons murderers to mere revenge, specially to that of a wanton widow, Mary of Guise (who had, we are to believe, so much of the Cardinals attentions as his mistress, Mariotte Ogilvy, could spare), is significant of the spirit in which Knox wrote history. He had a strong taste for such scandals as this about the wanton widow.
Wherever he touches on Mary of Guise (who once treated him in a spirit of banter), he deals a stab at her name and fame. On all that concerns her personal character and political conduct, he is unworthy of credit when uncorroborated by better authority. Indeed Knoxs spirit is so unworthy that for this, among other reasons, Archbishop Spottiswoode declined to believe in his authorship of the History. The actual facts were not those recorded by Knox.
As regards the Appointment or arrangement of the Scottish Government with the Castilians, it was not made late in January 1547, but was at least begun by December 17-19, 1546. 23 On January 11, 1547, a spy of England, Stewart of Cardonald, reports that the garrison have given pledges and await their absolution from Rome. 24 With regard to Knoxs other statements in this place, it was not after this truce, first, but before it, on November 26, that Arran invited French assistance, if England would not include Scotland in a treaty of peace with France. An English invasion was expected in February 1547, and Arrans object in the Appointment with the garrison was to prevent the English from becoming possessed of the Castle of St. Andrews. Far from desiring a papal pardon a mere pretext to gain time for English relief the garrison actually asked Henry VIII. to request the Emperor, to implore the Pope, to stop and hinder their absolution. 25 Knox very probably knew nothing of all this, but his efforts to throw the blame of treachery on his opponents are obviously futile.
As to the honesty of his associates before the death of Henry VIII. (January 28, 1547), the Castilians had promised him not to surrender the place without his consent, and to put Arrans son in his hands, promises which they also made, on Henrys death, to the English Government; in February they repeated these promises, quite incompatible with their vow to surrender if absolved. Knox represents them as merely promising to Henry that they would return Arrans 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 Popes 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 Knoxs party, and we already see how far his History deserves to be accepted as historical.